noah parker (vantage_point) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2018-04-18 16:53:00 |
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Entry tags: | #flashback, #october 2017 |
WHO: Magnus and Noah
WHERE: on the road
WHEN: October 12-ish
STATUS: complete
WARNINGS: language?
“You know they named Greenland ‘green land’ so people would try to colonize nice, lovely sounding Greenland and not figure out it was an icy hellscape until they got there?” Glasses perched low on his nose, Magnus leaned over the steering wheel and peered up at the weather they were driving into. The temperature was dropping noticeably the further they got, and, mentally, Magnus was going through all the sweaters he had packed. “Because that’s all I can think of when I hear the name ‘Point Pleasant.’”
Was the story about Greenland’s name true? Debatable. Were there much nicer places to head than northern Maine in the middle of fall? Definitely.
The drive to Point Pleasant from Chicago was two or three days, depending on how much sitting in the car they could take in a day, and Magnus didn’t mind taking first shift behind the wheel. (—or second, and third, considering the Honda Accord had been given to him by his mom once she had upgraded to a Toyota or something, and Magnus was not in the market for actually buying a car himself.)
What little he actually knew about Point Pleasant boiled down to things he considered folklore at best, unproven things going bump in the night, and if his friend hadn’t gone missing, Magnus would have written it off entirely. Not that Magnus thought Slenderman had abducted his friend—likely he had made a run for somewhere nicer, and the local police just couldn’t be arsed to do their jobs, but still. He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t concerned.
“You know? Like, if that was actually a pleasant place, they would not have to call it pleasant anything. Hawaii doesn’t bother calling itself ‘Pleasant Hawaii’.” Magnus pushed his glasses back up his nose, and glanced over at Noah once he’d come to a full stop at a red light. “Tell me we’re still on the right track, Parker.” A pause. “And then tell me we still have pretzels.”
They had been on enough road trips together that Noah had lost count. Riding passenger while Magnus drove usually entailed several things: a lot of talking, occasional Googling, combing Reddit for bizarre threads, and navigating. He generally enjoyed all of those things, depending on his energy levels, which were still pretty high at the moment.
"No, Johnson, I'm just letting you drive us into the middle of nowhere blindly," Noah said, raising an eyebrow at him. "We still have pretzels." His backpack was already open, so he fished out the bag and undid the twisty tie before tilting it in Magnus' direction, setting it between his leg and the center console. "It does sound like they're trying too hard, but it's probably got more to do with them being some backwoods town on the ass end of Maine."
Since he wasn't sure if Magnus' Greenland thing was just based on a line from the second Mighty Ducks movie, he typed Greenland Etymology into Google. He didn't always fact check what Magnus said, but when they were in the car it wasn't like there was a lot else to do at the moment so he skimmed the Wikipedia entry.
"Though it says here that some exiled Viking murderer named it that, if you want to draw any comparisons to what the founders of Point Pleasant might have been like." Noah had read up what he could find—there wasn't a ton since it was a small town that got some summer tourism, with the occasional footnote appearance in the history of Puritanical witch hunt madness and a few other unsubstantiated paranormal rumors that were likely false.
“Even if you’re navigating us to the right spot, it’s still the middle of nowhere, let’s be real,” Magnus shot back with an arched eyebrow of his own, then flashed Noah a grin as soon as he held out the bag of pretzels and made a quick grab into the bag of pretzels to stuff his mouth full of them. After countless trips to places that had not once turned out to be even remotely haunted, Magnus had concluded that the snacks were the most important part of the trip, and Noah wasn’t letting him down.
This was far from their first trip to somewhere no one had ever bothered putting on the map, and, well. Magnus wasn’t a small-town person. Frankly, he considered anything that didn’t have two competing coffee chains with free wifi to be absolute backwaters, and thus the judge was still out when it came to Point Pleasant. It definitely had a bed and breakfast and, presumably, some revenue coming in through tourism, so Magnus had already called in ahead of time to make sure they had room for them—not that he had been particularly worried about that.
“I mean. What American town isn’t founded by a bunch of murderers.” The sentence sent pretzel crumbs spilling all over the front of his sweater, and he shrugged big. “The important part is that they’ve moved past that by now. Ideally.”
Magnus squinted at some street signs in passing, then tilted his head back to look over at Noah. “I’m not worried about whatever werewolves they think prowl the woods, but man, I do not trust these small, weird Pleasantville communities.” Or maybe he had rewatched Hot Fuzz one too many times, but well. Who could blame him.
Noah rolled his eyes. “Point being, I am navigating us to the right spot, since I have no desire to end up in the incorrect middle of nowhere.” That could end up being a little frightening in a mundane way, given some of the long stretches of road that passed nothing but fields or trees or whatever broken only by the occasional house that was probably home to someone’s shotgun-wielding racist grandpa.
Not that the correct town might be any better on that front, or any place for that matter, but it gave Noah a sense of control when he had his bearings. There might’ve been people who liked hitting the road and seeing wherever it took them, visiting these quaint, tucked away towns for the hell of it, but he wasn’t one of them. He was always ready to take off for whatever place given a reason, but his idea of a fun time typically involved being in a city of some sort and not having to deal with like, everything shutting down for the night at eight p.m. or only having three restaurants to choose from.
Noah hummed his agreement, glancing out the window to see where they were passing through. It was picturesque in an autumnal way and there was still some daylight left. He pulled up the camera on his phone to text a picture to his mom. “Yes. Ideally, the past three hundred some-odd years has been enough time for that.”
Looking back, he caught Magnus’ eye. “What, you don’t want to end up with your own Stepford spouse one day?” Noah asked sarcastically, grinning at him. “But yeah, dude. They’re fucking creepy and who knows what they’ll do for the greater good.” He had also watched Hot Fuzz too many times. But the point remained.
“For the greater good,” Magnus echoed with a solemn nod, as ominously as he could, but he couldn’t keep a straight face for long, and he certainly couldn’t help but snort at the idea when he caught Noah’s grin. “Can’t you just picture me coming home to my perfect Stepford wife? Hi honey, where’s the meatloaf? Hope our kids’ bowl cuts are as straight as ever! I sure had a long day hitting the green with the boys—” He cut himself off, eyebrows furrowed, “Is that what people say? I don’t even know golf speak.”
Magnus gave a dismissive wave of his hand, and a very decisive shake of his head. “Anyway. The real horror would be living in the suburbs in the first place,” Magnus concluded, and that’s what he kept telling himself about whatever the situation they were driving towards would be.
And yet. Something was rotten in the state of Denmark, or Dan wouldn’t have vanished off the face of the planet. He didn’t know him overly well, but he did know he had been the guardian of his younger sister and took that title very seriously, and that wasn’t the kind of person who ran off to god knows where without telling anyone, Magnus reasoned.
They passed a sign declaring a roadhouse a few miles down, and Magnus thought about it for a moment while he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “I think I’m gonna need to stretch my legs sometime soon. How do you feel about a cup of coffee and maybe a disgustingly greasy sandwich?”
Noah laughed. Hard. Head tilting forward, he pressed the back of his hand to his mouth to stifle the sound a little. Imagining Magnus in khakis and a polo living in some cookie cutter house with a white picket fence with a wife and kids wasn't impossible, but if it happened anytime soon, Noah'd check Magnus hadn't been swapped out with a pod person. It just didn't seem like the sort of thing that would suit him, or Noah himself for that matter. At least as they were now. "God. Maybe? Something with 7-10 splits. No, that's bowling," he said.
"The scariest thing of all: the ennui of the suburban lifestyle. Bowl cuts and everything." Noah felt certain Point Pleasant would turn out to be disappointingly humdrum. It sucked, but people went missing all the time for perfectly ordinary reasons. He hoped Magnus' friend had just found something better and skipped town and that they could make some headway on confirming that, for Magnus' sake. Whatever else they could get for their channel was a bonus.
Noah leaned back in his seat, gaze returning to the passing scenery. "You know my weakness for disgustingly greasy food. I could also do with getting out of the car for a bit. We should also probably pick up some more pretzels and Red Vines," he added, to keep track of the snack situation.
It didn't take too much longer for them to reach the roadhouse as advertised and Noah clambered out of the car, stretching his arms above his head. "Ugh, it got colder," he said, leaning back into the car to retrieve his orange hoodie and pull it back on.
Noah’s laugh was infectious, but Magnus tried his very damned best to straightface his way through the next sentence. “Bowling on Thursdays, book club on Saturdays, and making cookies for the PTA bake sale every other Sunday, with your kid named, like, Kylie, except it’s spelled with an a and y and two e’s. Ain’t that just the dream?” Magnus flashed Noah the smarmiest smile he could muster, before making some very heartfelt retching. “Seriously. The day you hear me consider moving to the ‘burbs, just put me down without hesitation. It’ll be a mercy killing.”
“Remind me to make my next haunted online acquaintance in, like, Los Angeles or something.” Magnus reached for his denim jacket and pulled it tight around himself, a deep scowl etched into his face at the weather. His hands clasped behind his back, Magnus bent over and stretched, accompanied by a nice cracking sound.
“And remind me to look for some Mountain Dew to get me through this drive with the sugar caffeine double-whammy,” he added, once he straightened up again. College may have been over, but Magnus’ eating habits hadn’t quite caught up with him yet, and he liked to pretend they wouldn’t anytime soon. “Has anyone pretended to have caught a mermaid on tape lately? I wouldn’t hate researching some hoaxes in Maui instead of Maine.”
Once he pat down his jacket pockets for his wallet and locked the car, Magnus was happy to lead the way into the roadhouse, and beelined for the counter. “I’ll take a cup of coffee, aaand—” He turned to catch Noah’s eye, quirking an eyebrow upward in the universal gesture of ‘you too?’
Magnus' efforts were not in vain. The combined delivery and the mental picture he fleshed out pitched Noah's laughter further until his sides ached a little. "Book club where you'd no doubt discuss the merits of Jonathan Franzen with all the gravity in the world." He looked at Magnus, eyes still alight with amusement, and grinned wide at him. "You've got a deal, as long as you'll put me out of my misery if the suburbs get to me first."
What was a friendship without some kind of murder pact anyway? It probably wasn't even their first one.
After Noah layered, he did a few lunges, one leg then the other. “I’m going to hold you to that. Seriously,” he said, looking over at Magnus. Somewhere that wasn’t colder than Chicago didn’t seem like a big ask. He added Mountain Dew to his mental shopping list. “There’s gotta be someone. Or what does it take for Florida Man to move from meme to cryptid? I could go for eating my weight in cubanos and hanging out on the beach in Miami.”
Finished stretching, he grabbed his backpack and slung it over his shoulder before Magnus locked the car, readily following after him and to the counter. At his look he said, “Also coffee. Definitely coffee. And a double bacon cheeseburger, thanks.” That had some kind of protein content, or whatever. It was food. Once handed his coffee, he took a sip of it. “I’ll go grab snacks and drinks, then meet you over there?” He tilted his head toward the dining area, since the food would take slightly longer.
“We’ll be three weeks into discussing Franzen before I realize we’re not actually talking about Franzia at all, and that’s when I’ll have to hightail it out of there.” Magnus couldn’t help but laugh, and he nodded his agreement as he held his pinky finger up. “It’s a deal. I won’t hesitate.”
Magnus placed Noah’s order and a grilled cheese sandwich for himself, then, after a moment of deliberation, ordered two custard pies to go with them, and carried those and his cup of coffee (thanks, five disastrous months of waiting table for that skill) over to the first dining table he spotted that wasn’t within smelling reach of the bathroom.
Seeing that Noah was still curating snacks, Magnus indulged himself and made his way over to the fine book selection on display—some comics, a certain number of bodice rippers, and an uncountable amount of nudie mags—and ended up picking out something particularly terrible looking about Skinwalkers or some such. Some people enjoyed trash television, Magnus loved himself some awful, awful books.
His newest treasure and a sightseeing map of the northern east coast in tow, he settled down at the tiny dining table again, and spread the map out between the two custard pies and coffees. “You know I would look fucking splendid in some Hawaiian shirts,” he lamented out loud, once he noticed Noah returning from the corner of his eyes, “Instead of freezing in—” He made a sweeping gesture over the map, narrowly avoiding his cup of coffee, “Nowhere, PA.”
Noah hooked his pinky finger with Magnus’. “Me neither. I promise,” he vowed solemnly. Or at least tried to. He basically lost any ability to keep a straight face once he started laughing.
While Magnus handled their food, Noah veered away, first to a trash can to dispose of what trash they had accumulated since their last stop, then toward the small convenience store section. He set his coffee on a shelf and picked up another bag of pretzels and a couple boxes of Red Vines. He should probably get something else, too, though he tried to be judicious about their choices after the Reese’s Pieces Incident of 2016. (Pro: Delicious. Cons: Very melty once warm and easy to spill everywhere.) After brief deliberation, he decided Chex Mix and some kind of chocolate granola bar would do.
Grabbing some Mountain Dew for Magnus and Coke for himself, Noah cradled their items in one arm and picked up his coffee, setting it down again to pay at the register and quickly put everything away into his backpack. He headed back toward Magnus, catching his comment. "I could rock some board shorts. We could have coconut shaped drinks instead of garbage coffee," he said, placing his backpack on the ground next to his chair.
Seating himself, he noticed that Magnus also bought pie and he set his coffee next to it. "How did I forget about pie? You're a good man, Johnson," Noah said, leaning forward a little to also look at the map. “But Pennsylvania is offering us the finest of Amish windmills and—” his gaze swept over the attractions listed, skipping the historical ones and settling on “—the Houdini Museum. Shit, I actually kind of want to go there.”
Magnus downright groaned at the thought, and propped up the collar of his jacket to keep the even just imagined cold out. “Ugh, don’t remind me. We could be sitting in the sun somewhere, drinking things with tiny straws, and instead…” He trailed off and took a long sip of his, frankly, godawful coffee. Predictably, he pulled a face and reached for the sugar.
“You know what I want one of these days? For one of these small towns to turn out to be, like, Twin Peaks at least.” Said with a very pointed look at his mediocre cup of coffee, and he poured what was most likely a diabetically dangerous amount of sugar into his coffee, before reaching for the cream as well, “But I bet you instead we’ll drive straight into the Hills have Eyes first.”
Maybe being cold made him slightly more dramatic than the Northern US really deserved, but, well. He had thought Chicago was cold, and watching the temperature drop with every twenty miles they drove wasn’t particularly confidence inspiring, far as Magnus was concerned.
“I’m the best,” Magnus corrected, with a very self-satisfied grin, and toasted his coffee at Noah, only to chuckle. Who wouldn’t enjoy some lovely Amish mills? “Maybe we’ll get lucky and see the world’s largest frying pan or something while we’re at it. Really broaden our horizons.” Still more sights than the mid-west, though, he was pretty sure. “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say the only thing the Houdini museum is gonna do is make your money disappear,” Magnus mused with a shrug, but if they passed it during opening hours, they both knew he wouldn’t object to stopping at it. “But if you’re just looking to get rid of twelve dollars, I will always be happy to take those off you.”
Noah sighed. “We've made some decisions with our lives, that's for sure," he said, though, even with the complaining and idealization for a place with sun and beach based relaxation, he knew he'd get bored with that—probably sooner rather than later, considering his spotty track record when it came to taking a break—and that Magnus probably would, too. Still. The coffee was abysmal and the cold fucking sucked. Not that, objectively, it was even too bad yet, but it was worse than Chicago and that trend would only continue as they pressed northward.
"There's a chance for this town in Maine to turn out that way," Noah said, hopefully, as he watched Magnus try to salvage his coffee. He had given it up as a lost cause. Why ruin perfectly good sugar? "Once we pass through the Hills Have Eyes and Silent Hill. Too many hills."
"I wouldn't go that far. Maybe the best after me and a couple others. Top ten, for sure, maybe even top five," Noah teased. He knew that grin of Magnus' well and he couldn't quite resist giving him shit for it. But Noah still return toasted with his coffee. “Not seeing the world’s largest anything has definitely been holding back my personal growth. I can’t even imagine how much further I’d be in life if I had seen like, the world’s largest umbrella.” Though even as he said that, it was the sort of shit he would stop for if they had time. He hadn’t gone to too many roadside attractions and they were generally underwhelming, but they had a strange appeal. "I mean, you're probably right."
Pulling out his phone, Noah searched for a TripAdvisor review, only skimming quickly. Someone at the counter called out that their order was up, so he got up to go get that, saying over his shoulder, "Apparently it provides some kind of three hour, politically incorrect, show, so I'm going to need you to deliver at least half of that for my twelve dollars."
“Well, it’s never too late to meet a Kimberley and take a different turn in life. Bet one of my cousins is probably game, if you’re in the market for sitting home with three bawling spawns and the occasional Miami vacation.” Magnus said it as nonchalantly as he could, but man, his straight face was severely lacking today. They were two dudes who, entirely by choice, traveled the country in a seven year old car and visited towns to disprove ghosts and werewolves—maybe they both weren’t quite right for the homebody, beach-dwelling lifestyle. Choices indeed.
“If the coffee is this bad in Point Pleasant, I’m turning right back to Silent Hill and hoping Pyramid Head puts me out of my misery,” Magnus promised, still frowning, but his coffee was halfway towards digestible by now, and he was happy to let that warm him from the inside. They still had a ways to go until they got to Point Pleasant, and he held a little bit of hope that not all coffee would be quite this unsalvageable.
“The best,” Magnus insisted, with the most half-hearted of glares, but he cracked soon enough and just shook his head. “I won’t settle for less than the world’s largest yarn ball. Else this trip will have been a total waste.” He vaguely remembered seeing the largest chair on a trip with his parents once and, clearly, it had been a very impressive experience indeed. Now, a three hour show…
“I mean, are you really daring me to? Are you? ‘because this trip is longer than three hours, and you know I can keep going. And going and going…” He waggled his eyebrows, a smirk already curling up the corner of his lips, and continued on well past Noah walking off towards the counter, to make his point. Before he could return, Magnus busied himself folding the map back together very, very badly and finally pushing it aside to make room for their indubitably gourmet meals. “We remembered to bring Peptobismol, right?”
Noah grimaced. Exaggeratedly, to make his point. "Yes, because we weren't just making a pact to put each other out of our misery instead of dealing with that suburban life. There aren't enough trips to Miami in the world to make up for dealing with spawns right now," he declared, then broke into another grin. "Besides, what would you do without me?"
"Google Maps needs a checkbox for 'route regularly goes by coffee chains'. Seems like the kind of thing Starbucks would pay for." It wasn't his favorite coffee, but it was drinkable. The devil you know. He steeled himself and downed some more of what he had.
Noah adopted seventy percent of his patronizing tone in light of Magnus' glare. "Top ten is very respectable. Find me the World's Largest Block of Cheese and you'll move up the ranks." That probably was already a thing. But then Noah had, indeed, opened himself up to a whole other experience, which he realized about the same time as he said it.
Seeing the eyebrow waggle, Noah rolled his eyes and casually flipped Magnus off before turning to grab their tray of food, a heaping pile of napkins, and a couple plastic forks for the pie. "I shouldn't encourage you. But you're making a pretty tall claim and I want to see where you end up going with this, so. Yeah, I am," Noah challenged as he returned, grinning at Magnus. He placed the food between them, now that the space was clear of the map. Picking up his burger, he half unwrapped it and nodded. "Lots of it. So we're only sacrificing our arteries." He took a huge bite, since he was pretty hungry; the burger was as disgustingly greasy as promised, but delicious.
“I’d be sitting at home writing angry letters at the Travel channel.” Magnus flashed Noah a grin of his own, and welcomed the arrival of their greasy lunch—dinner? linner?—with open arms. “It does. It’s not like Google isn’t already logging everything I’ve ever done as it is. I’m also waiting for a ‘avoid places your exes work’ checkbox, while we’re at it.” He gave his most exaggerated suspicious look. “I know you’re listening, Google.”
“How much entertainment value do you think there is in two hours of the song that never ends? Is that twelve dollars at least?” They had spent a considerable amount of time road tripping, so Magnus liked to think they had learned to be prepared for anything, and the bag of emergency supplies and sleeping gear in the trunk attested to as much, but there was no denying that Noah was far better at keeping track of those things than Magnus ever had been. “Arteries shmarteries,” said around a cheesy mouthful of his toast, that, two to three hours from now, he would most certainly come to regret, but then again, Magnus would eat just about everything as long as it was deep-fried.
“So, realistically—” Magnus swallowed around more cheesy crumbs, “What do you think Point Pleasant’s gonna be like?” Magnus leaned back in his chair, ignoring any tell-tale creaking, and took a long drink of his coffee to wash down any crumbs. Most small towns had some sort of urban myth going on, far as Magnus thought, and the only difference between those and Point Pleasant was the absolute wealth of those stories the town had. Some of Dan’s radio shows were still online on the channel’s webpage and he had shared them with Noah; they had everything from haunted houses to their own rendition of Slenderman, apparently. “World’s most boringest town overcompensating terribly?”
There was probably a time when Noah was going to need to stop eating junk with the almost alarming frequency he did—and it was likely approaching sooner rather than later—, but it hadn't caught up to him yet and he was going to keep avoiding it as long as he could. Swallowing his bite of food, Noah looked at Magnus, unimpressed. "No, no, no. That's like, twenty seconds of content looped ad infinitum. It'll get you maybe a quarter, and that's being generous. I expect some variety."
Noah liked to be organized. He wasn't stringent about it—mostly he had a list in the back of his mind and occasionally on his phone if it got too long—, but he had learned over the years that he felt better when he had some idea of what they had to minimize being caught off guard. They'd been doing this long enough that it was just second nature by now. "Yeah, those are a problem for middle-aged Magnus," Noah said, not that he was one to talk. Or to really think that far into the future in more than an abstract way.
Devouring more of his cheese and bacon burger mess, Noah considered Magnus' question. "Quiet. Populated by people who have too much time on their hands when tourist season is over and the dead of winter has set in," he said, shrugging. "The amount of stories per capita is a little impressive, but maybe it's just a matter of like attracts like and more of the people who stay there by choice are just into supernatural shit. What's your take?"
“I will not let you toss quarters at me for the rest of the drive, don’t even try.” Magnus—if ever so gently—kicked Noah under the table for good measure, and started making a mental list of most entertaining things he could do for the remainder of their road trip. He had faith he could come up with something suitably grating.
There was a snort, and Magnus nodded in very decisive agreement. “Suck it, middle-aged Magnus, I’ll see you at your first bypass.” To underline his point, he squeezed some ketchup onto his plate and started dabbing what was left of his toast into it. He had a few good years left, he was pretty sure, before all of it would catch up with him, and with the last of his toast, he pulled his pie closer and pushed the other towards Noah. He wasn’t going down by himself.
“I mean, there’s a chance there’s a secret government facility out there pumping hallucinogens into the water. Which, on the scale of likelihood, I give a -4, but you never know.” Magnus pursed his lips as he thought it over. For the most part, he figured it was just another small town far enough away from good entertainment that it fostered these kind of stories. “But more likely the next proper theater is just. Forty miles away, and they gotta stay busy somehow.”
Noah arched an eyebrow at him, nudging Magnus' foot with his own under the table in response to the kick. "Don't sing the same handful of songs on a loop and I won't be tempted to," he countered. He was sure Magnus could come up with something better than that, where certain values of 'better' might actually be worse. Either way, it'd be more interesting. Would Noah end up regretting ever bringing this up? Maybe. Would that actually ever stop him from enabling Magnus? No.
"You'll always have Nowhere, PA to look back on fondly," Noah said, finishing off the rest of his burger. He wiped his fingers on a napkin, not that it did a lot of good, then picked up his fork as Magnus pushed the pie toward him. Noah's future self probably also deserved whatever he was going to get.
He took a bite of pie—it was the sort of baked good that was masked with enough butter and sugar that it was fine. "I'm not sure either of us knows enough about chemistry to test and prove that. I guess I could call my mom." But it seemed unlikely to be necessary. "There are only so many trees you can stare at before one of them starts looking like a wendigo," he agreed, then shifted topics. "Once we're there and checked in at the B&B, who or where do you think you're going to want to hit up first?"
“I promise nothing.” To punctuate, Magnus was prodding the air with his pie fork, and trying hard to keep the grin off his face, and not succeeding at all. It was becoming a theme. “Magnus’ and Noah’s healthy Cholesterol levels, last seen in Pennsylvania. RIP.” Despite his better knowledge, he was already contemplating a second cup of potentially deadly coffee, until he remembered Noah had already stocked up on Mountain Dew for him, and his organs would beg for mercy sooner or later anyway.
“We could just drink a lot of their water, and the first one to sees Puff the magic dragon wins? Loses? I’m not sure. One of those,” he suggested, which was probably just as likely to lead to results as the two of them attempting amateur chemistry.
“I messaged Dan’s cousin, and she agreed to meet me for coffee, so I’ll text her once we actually arrive, but other than that…” Magnus shrugged, and shoveled another forkful of pie into his mouth as he thought it over. Sure, he would have loved to knock at the local sheriff's department and ask some questions, but… “I figure there’s not much point in going to the police? Like. I figure they won’t be terribly impressed by me showing up all, what’s up, I’m a douche with a youtube channel, want to share some case files with me?” A pause for more pie. “No idea how Nancy Drew does it. But anyway, there’s plenty of places to check out, if any of the stories are to believed.”
Noah narrowed his eyes in what was supposed to be, but barely passed for, a glare. "I don't either. I guess our mutually assured destruction remains on the table," he said, trying to keep his tone serious and dramatic. And utterly failing. As soon as he caught Magnus' grin, he couldn't help but laugh. For all the complaining, he was in a good mood, since no food regret had set in yet.
Water… was a liquid composed of hydrogen and oxygen. But not too much of either. Then it was something else. That was about as much as Noah had, chemistry-wise, since he hadn't exactly followed that particular path. "We'll probably end up drinking their water, since I'm not paranoid enough to remember bottled water all the time, so I guess we'll see what happens."
Noah ate more pie as Magnus presented his options, then picked up his coffee and sighed. It was listing toward being lukewarm, so he took a larger swig of it. "I mean, the police are rarely the first place I'd go for anything," he said. He hadn't had as many negative firsthand experiences as some people he knew, but that was luck more than anything. "Especially since they don't seem to have done much of anything with locating him already." Setting his coffee back down, he palette-cleansed with pie. "Nancy Drew didn't have the douche with a YouTube channel thing working against her. Probably helped. I figure I'll just start checking out places around town and talking to people and we can compare notes? Then we can follow up on whatever seems promising, whether it's food, beer, or supposed hauntings."
Finishing off his pie, he pushed back from the table. "Bathroom, then we can get back on the road? Do you want me to take over driving?" He didn't particularly care either way, since it was Magnus' car, but the offer was there.
“I feel like that’s one of the very cornerstones of our friendship,” Magnus gave back with a laugh of his own, and crumpled up his unused napkin to toss at Noah. “What, you don’t want them to think you’re the nutcase in their weird little town?” Maybe he wasn’t doing Point Pleasant proper justice with his assumptions, but it was decidedly more fun to imagine it as some strange weird place rather than the unremarkable, boring homestead it probably was.
“Yeah, that’s true.” While Magnus had no personal reasons to distrust the police, he was also a young adult in the 21st century with access to the news, and harbored no particular love for most government institutions—he had a very busy calendar of marches to attend to. As one did. “I imagine we won’t quite pass for the Hardy boys, either. But, yeah, that sounds like a plan—” Lucky at least Noah tended to make those. “Especially if you can find a lead on good beer. That’s one spirit I can believe in.”
He washed the last of his pie down with the coffee and inadvertently pulled a face, but nodded slowly. The grilled cheese was weighing a little heavily on his stomach, and the pie was maybe not helping measures all that much—the idea of pretzeling himself into the passenger seat was more tempting than usual. He considered it. “If I take shotgun, can I keep my dj privileges?” Magnus stacked their dishes and got up as well, stretched once more for good measure, then returned the them to the counter. “Because then yes, thank you.”
Noah batted the napkin away, or tried to. It bounced off his chest and into his lap, so he picked it up and tossed it onto the remnants of his burger. "Nah, I'm sure Spectrophiliac Ned would defend his title of town weirdo to the death," he said, grinning. They were likely making unfair assumptions about Point Pleasant, but. Well. When had that ever stopped them?
Protests. Marches. Caustic allegorical fiction and op-eds. There was more than enough to do, on top of living the rest of his life. "Yeah, we're probably not wholesome enough." Were the Hardy Boys wholesome? He didn't really remember, they just seemed like the sort to say 'golly' and 'gee whiz', which they'd never be able to say convincingly. "I'll conduct a thorough and exhaustive investigation into any beer rumors. In the name of research."
Driving would be a good distraction and give Noah something else to focus on, if Magnus decided to follow through with his entertainment act. Plus, there were good odds that he might just end up in a food coma. Noah stood as well, slinging his backpack over one shoulder while Magnus took their tray. "You can have them until you fall asleep," Noah offered over his shoulder, veering to hit the restroom before going back outside into the cold.