normal_norman (normal_norman) wrote in _fracture_, @ 2014-02-13 21:24:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | chapter 1, justin, norman, the regent hotel |
Captain Jay and Normal Norman
Who: Justin and Norman
When: Late morning/early afternoon
Where: Hallways then the bar
Second day waking up in the hotel and Justin still wasn't sure what to think. Aside from the fact they were seemingly thousands of miles from his last known location, and aside from the fact they seemed physically unable to leave, there seemed to be no identifiable threats to the place. Unless you counted the really kinda rude lady who seemed to man the front desk from time to time.
Still, Justin found it difficult to entirely let his guard down. Little things, like the fact that when he'd had breakfast, showered and dressed for the day in a short sleeved, well pressed white shirt and khakis with a precise front crease, he pocketed his folding knife. It was a small, but useful weapon and he felt better having it on him. Not that he was going that far. He figured that every hotel had a bar. He intended to find it.
Norman was still patrolling the hallways, trying to figure out if his friends had shown up here or not. He hoped someone had, but it felt like the wrong thing to hope for. Then they wouldn't be back home with their families. They wouldn't be sitting with his sister or his mother now, which he was pretty sure one or more of them had to be. And that made him feel a little better, knowing that someone was with his family.
He sighed as he kept walking, cloak swishing out around his body. He rolled his d-20 between his fingers, feeling the familiarity, the normalcy, that came with having that dice in his hand. When he looked up, he saw a man in the hallway with him and started a small jog toward him. " Excuse me, hi there!"
Of all the things that Justin expected to see, some kid in a cloak running toward him was not even on the list. "Hi?" he suggested, trying not to come across too freaked out. He figured he did a pretty good job there.
Norman smiled again at the man, extending a hand immediately when he was close enough. "Hey, I'm Norman. On a mission to meet people here." Really he was on a mission to see if his friends were around and it's possible that this man had seen them. It's possible that anyone could have seem them, just as much as it was possible no one had. But Norman preferred to hope for the best.
Justin took the hand and shook it. "Justin. Nice... cloak," he said, cautiously. "How long have you been here?" he asked. And where are your parents? also crossed his mind, but he didn't ask. Probably the answer was 'I have no idea'.
"Really? Thanks! I have a couple different ones here, thankfully. Can't always wear one cloak, you know? How boring would that be?" Smiling, he went to tuck his hands back into his pockets and rocked back on his heels a little. "Two days. You? I'm here patrolling for some friends of mine, since someone else said he'd met a friend here. Have you met any of your friends from home here?"
Justin came to the conclusion that the best thing to do was just... go with it. "Sure, variety is the spice of life, right?" he suggested. "Though, I've never been much of a cloak guy myself. I work on boats, and a cloak would probably get in the way." There, that seemed sensible enough, right? "I've been here since yesterday. Just me, nobody else I know."
“It’s just me right now too, but I’m hoping some of my friends are here and I just haven't found them yet.” He got that most people didn’t understand the cloak. It wasn’t like he was oblivious to it. He’d made the choice to continue wearing them throughout high school too, but he got that most people didn’t. But he figured he’d have a better chance of making a friend if he talked about Justin’s interests first. “Working on boats has to be fun. I don’t really know much about boats, but it seems like it’d be pretty rewarding, being out on the water all day.”
“And all night,” Justin agreed. “Sometimes we’re at sea for days, weeks at a time. You’ve never seen stars until you’ve seen them in the middle of a calm Pacific ocean. All spread out above you, and then reflected in a surface so still and clear it’s like a mirror. Everything’s quiet around you and it’s like you’re sailing through space,” he said, his face taking on a wistful expression. It was clear that he was talking about something he loved.
And Norman picked up on that, smiling back at him as he listened to Justin’s explanation. Almost nothing was better that watching someone talk about something they were passionate about. “It sounds awesome. I wish I could go out on a boat right now and see them. Maybe there’s a lake around here with a boat on it and you could show me how awesome they are?” The opportunity to make a new friend was too hard to pass up, even if he was basically just inviting himself out to sea with Justin.
Justin knew that you didn’t get that kind of view without going far out into the ocean, but he wasn’t going to crush someone’s enthusiasm that way. Especially not when maybe, if he could get the guy into a boat, he could get him to understand just what is out there. An entire world. “If we find a lake and a boat, I will definitely take you out. It’s such a rush,” he promised.
“Cool!” Norman wanted to offer something in return and luckily he had something up his sleeve. “You ever play Dungeons and Dragons? Or Magic the Gathering? I have some stuff here with me, if you ever wanted to play…”
“No?” Justin suggested. “But - I’m always open to new experiences?” The one thing that he’d learned over the years was that you never, ever said ‘no’ to something that could probably be played on the move and looking at this guy, he screamed ‘sit down fun’. “Maybe you could show me sometime?”
Norman brightened, perked right up with big eyes and a big grin on his face. “Yeah! I’d love to! To one or both, but yeah I’d love to! Did you want to learn now? I have a couple really good starter decks, I could start you off on a blue one. It’s got lots of ocean scenery and spells in it. You’d probably really like it.”
Justin considered it for a moment, then shrugged. “Sure - it’s not like I was doing anything else. Was just gonna go find the bar, but really, that was more a ‘hey, I have no damn idea where I am and I don’t really know anyone, let’s go meet people’ idea than anything. Ocean spells sound kinda interesting and possibly cool, so… lead the way, fearless leader.”
He definitely liked this guy. Fearless leader? He could get used to that. It was way better than Nutjob or Fucking Idiot. “We can go back to my room and get the cards then head to the bar, if you want? Or we can just play in my room. Whatever you want. But yeah, I think a blue deck would work really well for you. Lots of ocean spells, cool mermaids, lots of really awesome ship art.”
“I’m just going to go with whatever you think is best,” Justin told him. “I have absolutely no idea what we’re doing here so I’m just going to follow your lead. Take me wherever. Give me blue cards. Teach me the rules. I’m hoping I can pick things up fast - I try and pick up as many card games as I can. Time at sea, when the weather’s decent? Can be kinda boring. So - teach me something new and I’ll learn it,” he promised.
“Sounds like a deal. It’ll be great,” Norman promised, looking back to smile at Justin again before he upped his pace in his excitement to get to his room. Once there, he opened the door and stepped inside, reaching for his suitcase before looking around. “Let’s go find the bar? I think that’d be cool. Probably a bigger table, which will help.” He didn’t waste time sticking around in his room, not when there was Magic to be played, so he headed back toward the door and to the hallway. “So, what do you do out on the ocean? What kind of job takes you on the ocean for that long?”
“I work out on yachts,” Justin told him. He decided to couch the explanation in terms that he thought that the other man would understand. “The kind of ones that you see in movies - the really big ones. I grew up around boats, and then decided that I wanted to sail professionally. So, I hire out to whoever needs me. Preferably sail, the kind that needs a crew.” He smiled, remembering one job that he thought would really appeal to Norman. “A couple of years back, I got to crew on a tall ship - you know, like the ones from Pirates of the Caribbean. They had this thing where they were sailing this ship - beautiful, she was, Caroline Rae, round the world. They’d built her to the same design as the Mary Rose, and they wanted a crew to sail the circumference. One of the most challenging jobs I’ve had, but man - wow. Seriously. Wow.”
“Holy crap, that sounds awesome! A real-life pirate ship? So cool! I don’t even really know of anything cooler than that.” And Justin got to be on it for the whole circumference of the world? Wow was right. “I’m really jealous. I’ve always wanted to be on a pirate ship, but you know...without the threat of scurvy. Wait, is scurvy still a thing that happens?” Norman asked, taking a corner that he hadn’t before in hopes of finding the bar down that hallway.
Justin laughed a little at that. “Scurvy is something that used to happen. Before they realised that vitamins were actually needed in a diet. These days, it doesn’t really happen. Thing about it - how long could you last at home without fresh food? Pretty long time, right? Even if you take into account refrigeration and having a freezer. Even if you were onto canned goods? You can get a pretty long time, right? And even if you don’t have that, you’ve got supplements and - yeah, not so much of a problem anymore.”
“Well, that makes sense. And that’s good. I would hate for someone to get scurvy. It sounds horrible, even just the name. Scurvy…” He shrugged a little, still leading them even though he wasn’t really sure where he was going. More like just hoping he’d get them there. “Did you make a pirate name for yourself? You should have. You could make a pirate for your D&D character! You already know all the nautical terms,” He said, enthusiasm clear in his voice as the idea dawned on him.
“I was First Mate Jay for the whole trip. Which I guess isn’t the best pirate name ever, but there was a rule onboard that nobody could go by their actual name. Captain decided to go classic and be Long John Silver. So, yeah - there was a whole thing.” Guys wearing cloaks didn’t hold the geek realm all to themselves, after all.
"First Mate Jay, that's still pretty cool. But you should be a pirate captain this time. If you decide to be a pirate for D&D, which we can totally do. Run a whole pirate campaign and everything. It'd be really fun, actually..." And a decent introduction to newcomers to the game, which might be nice in a place with a lot of people Norman figured hadn't played before.
“Hey, you want to give me a promotion, that's fine by me,” Justin said with an easy laugh. Norman appeared to know exactly what he was talking about, at least. Justin might be a total beginner to this kind of stuff, but the more the other guy talked, the more he figured that he would probably enjoy this - either that, or Norman’s enthusiasm was just contagious.
Norman caught sight of the bar up ahead and forged there a little quicker, smiling as he entered it. He figured one of the small tables was good enough for them to play on and started that way, not really thinking about actually getting drinks until he got there. He wasn't really even thinking about drinking, only teaching his beloved game to Justin. "I can get us set up, if you want a drink or something. Shuffle the decks and stuff."
Justin headed to the bar and poured himself a whiskey and soda. "You want anything?" he asked, heading over to the table. He watched the set up with interest, watching for any steps he may need to remember in the future.
Norman looked up in the middle of shuffling the cards, a set of blue card protectors indicating that it was indeed the blue deck. "Uh…is there soda? Sprite or…Coke is good too. I don't care." Smiling again, he looked back down at the cards and placed the shuffled deck in the middle of the table and began to shuffle his deck, a white and green combination. "Ok so, remember how I said blue is a spell deck? I'm playing white and green, and this one is a little bit of a mix. A spell and attack deck, because I gaffed some specific green ones that I really like. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First thing's first, here's your life," He said, pulling out a twenty-sided die marbled with purple and red. "You start with 20, and I start with 20. And we each have the option to cut the other's deck, to make sure we're not cheating."
Justin took the die, rolling it in his fingers as he got Norman his drink. "So cards and a dice with too many sides. This is going to be a whole new experience for me isn't it...?" he asked as they settled down to play.
“Not too many sides. The exact right amount to start with,” He said with a grin. “You know, it will be, but it’ll be a fun one.” Norman smiled and started dealing himself his hand, excited to reach his new friend the wonders of Magic the Gathering.