InsaneJournal

diced pineapple
Who: Kal & Chris
What: Something spooky is going on
Where: Chris’s apartment and the fourth floor
When: Thursday, April 20, after this thread

Daniel had gone off to find some food because what Kal had in his apartment wasn’t hitting the spot. Kal, on the other hand, finished what mead he still had in his Brita pitcher before stepping out of his apartment once more. With too much weed and mead mingling in his large body, Kal was feeling fucking fantastic and wanted to share in his happiness with his best friend, his brother, his neighbor, which is what brought Kal to Chris’s door, hammering on it loud with his fist.

“Chris! Open up!” He beat on the door again, one hand holding the frame for some minor support. “I know you’re not screwing around in there because Daniel just left. Open the door!”

"Jesuchristo, shut up! I'm coming!" Chris hollered back, his form a good few minutes behind his words. He was leaning on his cane, having been napping for want of something better to do. Once his doorway was widely ajar, he eyed Kal up and down. The bigger man stank of weed and other things, making Chris' nose wrinkle.

"Wow, did you just give up and pour all your pot out in the middle of the room and roll around in it? Christ. You're not coming in my apartment smelling like that."

“Well then, I know I have all your attention then because you won’t be able to escape and go to Daniel as an excuse, because he’s the one I toked up with and probably smells just as bad,” Kal leaned forward, hanging on the doorway, a devilish smile on his face. “But I mean, what the hell else are we going to do? You two can’t fuck all the time and I can’t just live off of mead--” he let out a loud burp and laughed, “Although I sure as hell have tried to.

“Come on, we gotta go to the fourth floor.” He patted Chris’s shoulder, hitting it much harder than he realized.

Chris was slammed sideways into the door slightly, which he did not appreciate; he let go of the door to gently rub his shoulder before looking at his friend with a newly wary eye.

"Why?" The simple question he always asked, now, where before he would have gone with his would-be brother without a second thought. "It's just a bunch of, what, palm trees and bananas up there. Did something else happen?"

“Come on, let's just go investigate. It's like the dream and I feel like we should go together. You haven't anything else keeping you here so come on,” Kal’s voice, despite being deep and masculine, almost pitched into a whine. He flicked at Chris’s shoulder and stood solidly in his friend’s doorway, obviously not intending to move anytime soon. He held up a hand innocently. “Promise I won't smoke in front of you.”

Chris rolled his eyes, the beginnings of a smile working at his mouth. "Fine. Lemme put my brace on; I'm not wandering around with my old man stick for just anyone to see." Despite his earlier words, he waved Kal into his apartment, shutting the door firmly behind the other man. Once that was done, he huffed and moved into his bedroom, disappearing from sight for a moment as he changed.

"So, you said you were smoking with Daniel," he started, trying to pry a little information out of his friend.

“Drinking first. Then we fell asleep on the fourth floor. Then we woke up and drank more and smoked,” Kal counted off the events on his fingers as he wandered through Chris’s apartment and filled the doorway to Chris’s bedroom where he paused and looked at his friend working on his leg brace. It made him frown for a moment, but the weed working through him made another thing come to mind, replacing the frown with a smirk. “Hey, do you still have that bowtie kuku gave you that one Christmas?”

Glancing up at Kal, Chris shot him another wary look. He finished up the last latch on his brace, then moved to pull his pants over his legs.

"Maybe," he offered, neither a confirmation nor a denial. "But that's not important, right? We're going to the fourth floor? But you and Daniel," he continued, trying to edge Kal back toward the topic he was more interested in. "Just drank and smoked? That's hard to believe, between you two chickens." He climbed to his feet, shuffling toward the doorway in an effort to corral Kal away from his bedroom. "Lemme get my shoes and we'll go."

“Drank, smoked, dreamed,” Kal replied with a glazed look to his eye that wasn’t entirely caused by the weed. He inched away from the door to allow Chris through. “And you should wear the bowtie on a date with Daniel. I think he’d like it. And what’s your relationship status, anyway? He’s your boyfriend, right? Like, behind closed doors.” It should’ve gone without saying, Kal had always been careful not to discuss Chris’s sexual orientation out in the open where people could hear. In fact, he was pretty sure he was on a very short list of people who knew and he sure as hell didn’t want to be the one kicking his friend out of the closet.

Chris gave a pained sigh, lurching past Kal to the living room and hoping that the larger man would take a hint and follow. He kicked a pair of sneakers out from beside his couch, taking a seat to start lacing them up.

"Why, you wanna know if he's single so you can take a shot? Why does it matter?" He focused on his shoes, bent over his legs, his brace shoving into his stomach as he pulled bunny ears through loops tight.

Kal shrugged, meandering around the apartment without much direction. “I think he’d be down for it, you both being boyfriends, not me fucking him, although I think he’d be down for that too, not gonna lie. I mean, why wouldn’t he?” Kal grinned, his voice indicating that he was joking… sort of. “Why wouldn’t it matter?”

His wandering took him to the doorway for the apartment and he looked at his friend, considering Chris’s leg. “You want to take the elevator?”

Chris nodded, elbows on his knees as he leaned over studying Kal. "Yeah, we'll take the elevator. Except, hang on a second. Are you trying to tell me that you approve of him or something? Because I promise you, I got it, I don't need you meddling in my relationships." It was probably the closest Chris would come to stating that he and Daniel were an item. His face took on a worried cast. "Did he say something to you?"

Kal pierced his lips and looked to the ceiling. “No…” he replied, obviously lying “But, you know, if you guys are ever alone and you call him your boyfriend, I think that’d make him happy. Just saying.

“Come on, let’s go!” He spun and went for the door, tossing it open and walking out into the hall without another word.

Chris groaned, finally rising to his feet as his friend lured him out with the lack of info. Once he was through his own door, he pulled it shut and locked it behind him; just because they were in a sealed building didn't mean he wanted other tenants going through his things.

"So you said the fourth floor reminded you of our dream?" He said, a little belaboredly as he caught up with his friend, "I think I passed by it on my way to the fifth, but it didn't make me think of Hawaii..."

“But it’s all the same,” Kal replied, not making all that much sense. “It’s the feel, the scent, the temperature. There’s pineapples, by the way, do you want me to open one for you?” He elbowed Chris playfully as they stepped into the elevator and called for the fourth floor. “But when Daniel and I were up here, we drank and smoke and fell asleep in the hut and we dreamed. Not together, we didn’t share a dream, but he dreamt of Ares and I dreamt of Maui.”

The elevator dinged and the doors swished open to reveal the fourth floor, without waiting, Kal stepped out and moved toward the hut. “Ever since this floor just feels right.”

Chris followed at his own slow pace, taking special care to move around plants and duck under large, low-hanging branches that threatened his person. His brace did not make it easy, but he followed in his friend's much larger footsteps. Now that he was actually out of the elevator and walking along the floor, it did make sense; the difficulty of moving through sand, the smell, which was nearly ocean-like, the florid scent of fruit. He hadn't seen pineapples in his earlier cursory review of the floor, but he could see them clearly now, along with the other growths on the trees and bushes above and around him.

"So," he started, once he'd caught up to Kal, brushing aside another leaf as he tried to keep it from smacking him on the ass, "are you gonna change into a grass skirt? It'd look good with your birthing hips and all. We just need some pig and we could have luau."

“No,” Kal laughed, glancing at Chris over his shoulder before looking ahead and continuing to move towards the hut. “I wish we had a pig though. I miss Hawaii, I miss it so much.” He turned to Chris fully, walking backwards with his arms out. Surrounded by the items of the hallway there was something that clicked, something that worked well for Kal. The elements were practically made for him and woke something deep within that could almost be seen. “Why don’t we go there, huh? I know you’re working on shit here, but could you take a long weekend? I’ll pay for your flight. We can go together, you can bring Daniel if you’d like as well.”

Chris paused where he came through the brush, eyes narrowing at his friend. There was something...off about Kal.

"You know I don't have time for that," he said, studying Kal's face closely. He couldn't quite put his finger on what had changed, but there was something about his friend's eyes. Maybe his hair, too...

"I think you might need a haircut, Kal. And...are you feeling OK?"

“Drunk and stoned, my friend,” Kal replied, a hand lifting to his hair and running his hand through it. It was longer, rather than settling at the base of his neck, it hung just below his shoulders, but Kal brushed it off as he glanced around the tropical plants, a frown plain on his mouth. “Do you think you’d be able to take four days off? Just four. We could fly out on a Wednesday evening, come home Sunday.” His eyes flashed to Chris, filled with hope and longing for the would-be weekend to his home away from home.

"I..." There was something definitely wrong. Or not wrong, necessarily, so much as strange. "Seriously, you look different, Kal. Like... bigger." It was a stupid description, but Chris couldn't say exactly what had changed. It was a lot of smaller things, adding up into the overall man. It didn't seem possible for Kal to be larger than he already was; maybe it was related to the floor, maybe it was something else. Maybe he was getting a contact high.

"I think I'm starting to get stoned. Is there pot on Hawaii? Like, around here, on this floor?"

Kal laughed, “Not that I’ve found. Although it’s the right climate for it…” He studied his friend for a moment, oblivious to the cause of Chris’s discomfort. “You know, when I slept up here I dreamt of Maui. He said he was a part of me, that he could see through my eyes, that he could see you and Daniel--all of it. And it all seems right, you know? It all seems so fucking real and being on this floor only makes it moreso. It’s just that…”

Kal looked down and began to fidget with the necklace he always wore around his neck, a black strap of leather with a bone carving of manaiakalani hanging from it. “This is Maui’s fish hook and I picked it up when I went to Hawaii before kuku and I moved and I started going to highschool, and I’m starting to wonder if I was meant to choose it.”

Shaking his head, Chris finally lumbered past Kal and took a seat on the bed inside the massive hut behind the man. Each floor never ceased to amaze him with the amount detail and the realism each offered.

"Whatever helps you sleep at night, amigo," he finally replied, sighing as he took his weight off his bad leg. He pushed aside memories of the coyote talking to him in his dream, the one he'd had just before he'd found all of this floor change stuff to be real. He cracked a grin, trying to take the whole situation far less seriously than Kal. "Like you need another reason to puff up that ego?"

Kal’s smile lessened and became almost soft. “It would be an honor, Chris,” he replied, his voice quieter as he moved his thumb over the fish hook necklace. He tugged at the fishhook slightly, in a way that should have only made the leather strand taught, but instead it snapped free. For a moment, Kal looked shocked--the necklace meant a great deal to him and to have the leather band break was the end of the world in his current drunken, stoned state--but then the hook began to change.

It was a moment Kal could only compare to when a plane he was on, flying somewhere over Africa, had a technical malfunction and for a few breathless moments seemed to plummet from the sky. It was seconds, if that, but time passed very slowly and Kal noticed each and every thing around him. For this, it was the leather strand breaking and his loss of grasp on the hook. It was the hook falling from his fingers, somersaulting through the air as it fell towards the mossy floor. It was the hook coming in contact with the ground and bouncing up once, and seeming to grow in size, and bouncing up a second time and certainly growing in size. It was the hook finally coming to a rest on the ground, about two feet in length, sharp and threatening, and somehow pulling Kal’s entire attention to it as if it were saying pick me up.

“Holy shit,” Kal murmured, staring at the hook as he began to inch toward it, his hand outstretched. “Chris, do you see this?”

It was impossible to miss. Chris' eyes were as wide as dinner plates, his form frozen on the banana-leaf bed.

"Yes, Kal, I very much do," he finally supplied, pushing forward to the edge of his seat. It was too much like the dream; he could easily see the large fishhook resting on the sand on the far side of Maui as his coyote-self feasted on golden pineapple. A hand (suddenly he vaguely thought of it as a paw, shaking his head and glancing at the appendage to find it still very and reassuringly human) rose to pass through his hair, an anxious gesture.

"Are you gonna pick it up?"

Kal looked at Chris, his lips parted from surprise but otherwise, beyond his knowledge, Kal still had that glimmer of something else about his person. And it wasn’t just a visual difference, Kal could feel something within him was satisfied, as if he had just accomplished something long planned. He looked down at the fishhook and nearly grabbed it, if not for a curious thought that passed through his mind. “Do you think Maui is going to possess me if I pick it up?” He asked his friend, looking back to Chris.

Chris' head was shaking, his mouth slightly agape. Shoulders rose and fell in a loose approximation of a shrug. He finally pulled his gaze away from the overly large fish hook, looking back to his friend with raised brows.

"I thought it'd be an honor?" He said, wondering if Kal had changed his mind. "I mean, you could always just leave it there..."

Kal let out a quick breath that wasn’t quite a sigh. He looked from Chris to the fishhook and back to Chris again. “I mean, it would but like… there’s a difference between being possessed and…” He shook his head and took a step back. “It’s just a hook, it’s just a fish hook, and I’m just stoned as fuck.” He nodded, agreeing with himself, and shook his arms before reaching forward and grasping the handle of the fish hook before lifting it from the ground.

It was heavy and made from bone, it seemed, but smoothly carved and so real. Kal held it up, his eyes glued to it, and it felt right. He twisted it around, moving it with ease despite its weight. “Chris, come and look at it.”

Chris grunted, annoyed at having to get up again, but did so regardless. He took the few, shambling steps required to gain Kal's side, his hands neatly tucked into his pockets as his gaze traced the outline of the massive hook. He did not look away from it as he spoke to his friend.

"So...you're still Kal, right? Like, you remember crashing at my house when you got super trashed at that one college kid's party, and my mom was working late?" Kal had passed out first, and Chris, still only slightly inebriated, had drawn dicks all over his friend's face with a permanent marker. Kal had returned the favor by upending an ice cold bucket of water onto a still-sleeping Chris' head.

“Yeah, you asshole,” Kal murmured, staring at the fishhook until he blinked and the spell was broken. He looked at Chris and smiled. “Still me, I guess. And this is still real, huh? Like, my necklace broke and became this. You think it’ll change back?” He lowered his hand and the hook clunked onto the ground but was still large enough that Kal held the handle with his hand as it rested on the earthy floor.

Chris' fingertips lightly brushed one side of the hook, feeling the smooth bone. It certainly felt real enough, but he snatched his hand away when it seemed like he might be trespassing.

"I don't know, amigo, but at least you've got shelves for it if it doesn't, right? Now, I think you promised me some pineapple since you dragged me all the way up here, huh?" He tucked a hand back into a pants pocket, moving forward through the sand amid the trees. Teeth raked over a bottom lip, stretching skin, as he peered out amid the greenery for what he was looking for. Chris spotted one such tree, and glanced back over his shoulder at Kal. "Feel like making good use of that thing?"

Kal smirked, the uncertainty of the situation and the moment of unease draining away. He lifted the hook back up and followed Chris to the tree in question. “Let’s see how this works outside of dreams,” he said with a smile and arched the hook over his head in an artful swing to hit the stem of the pineapple fully, causing it to go spinning to the ground. “You need me to open it too or are you alright with human hands?” Kal teased.

Chris bent at the waist, retrieving the pineapple with a carefully placed hand around the fruit's stem. He gave a mock glare at his friend.

"I don't know about you, but the obvious answer to that is no," he replied, holding the pineapple out toward Kal. "Plus, you know, if you open this, we can both eat and then figure out why your necklace did the whole Transformers thing."

“Let’s take it back to my apartment so I can open it with a knife and not destroy it by beating the crap out of it with the hook. Or rather, your apartment, so I don’t have to listen to you bitch about the pot stink in mine,” He smiled but Kal still eyed the hook in his hand. He definitely didn’t handle it with as much ease as Maui did in his dream and Kal was pretty sure if he tried to open it with the hook, he’d only crush the pineapple. “I wonder if it’ll turn back when we leave.”

"Only one way to find out," Chris replied, tossing the pineapple in his hand and catching it with the same. He led them out through the way they'd come in; ducking under branches, over sand, toward the elevator. At the very least, it was an intriguing trip, and Chris couldn't stop thinking about their shared dream. Maybe there was something to what Maui and Coyote had said; but whatever was going on here, he wasn't going to be the first to investigate.

The elevator doors opened, and Chris ushered Kal into it so they could go find some sense of normalcy while he sorted through his feelings about how to approach all of this madness.