Devlin Molony (deva) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2018-04-26 02:18:00 |
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Entry tags: | #october 2017, devlin, devlin x noah |
Who: Dev & Noah
What: Chance meeting
Where: Juniper Inn
When: Monday 10/16
The best bit about being soulmates with a kindred free spirit was that they didn't need to be glued together at the hip all the time. Greer was off doing her own thing and Dev had gone out on his own, exploring and trying to put together some of that scattered bits of information he had. It was all like a giant puzzle and he had such few pieces but if they all belonged to the same corner, maybe he'd get at least a small glimpse of the big picture. He returned to Juniper late that afternoon determined to look at listings for cheap places to rent since it was becoming very obvious they were staying there for a while and an inn was expensive for anything long term.
With Greer out and about their shared room felt a little too lonely. Dev wanted to be where other people were even if it was just the staff. There was something comforting about being near people, especially after a long day of stalking around on his own. He took a seat in the dining room, sprawling comfortably as he started going through his phone, looking up local rentals.
Noah had spent the day walking around Point Pleasant to get a general idea of the area. Getting out to stretch his legs was a pleasant change of pace after being cooped up in the car the past few days, even if it was overcast and gray. He had split off from Magnus to head back toward the B&B once the afternoon had worn further on.
His original intent was to head back to his room, since he didn’t have an exact plan yet for the rest of the evening, but after he passed through the entrance, he caught sight of a dark-haired man in the dining room. Noah assumed the guy was another guest and not someone who had wandered in randomly--he had been too much of a disaster to notice other guests at breakfast to know for sure, as he had needed to mainline a lot of coffee before he felt halfway functional. There didn’t seem any harm in getting to know who else was staying there a little, so he wandered into the dining room. “Hey. Mind if I join you?” he asked. The guy was scrolling something on his phone and Noah didn’t want to interrupt him; at the same time, he likely could have just done that elsewhere if he didn’t want company. Still.
"Absolutely," Dev replied even before he looked up. He smiled brightly once he did and gestured at the nearest chair for Noah to sit down. It had been a bit lonely at the inn since Rost went back home but then they'd spent a good chunk of time with him anyway. He loved meeting new people, especially travelers. He hadn't met this guy before so he was probably new - or had spent time hiding away from the other guests, that was always a possibility. "I'm Dev, or Devlin if you're the formal sort, and you are?"
Noah dropped into the seat offered to him, smiling back. He wasn't by nature the most sociable person, but it was something he had worked to improve at over the years with as much writing and travel for paranormal investigation as he tended to do. Both of these things usually tended to go more smoothly when he didn't come across as a totally aloof stranger, especially when they’d be staying in the same small town for more than a few days. The accent stood out, since Ireland was even farther afield than where Noah came from. “Nice to meet you, Dev, I'm Noah,” he said, leaning back in his chair to settle comfortably. “My buddy and I got in late last night. Have you been staying here long?”
Not the formal sort then Dev noted happily. "Too long," he replied. "Me and my lady are looking for a more permanent place to stay now so we should be outta here soon, I hope. Where'd you hail from, Noah? And what brings you to Point Pleasant?" Given what he'd learned about the place so far it was beginning to feel like a magnet for the weird. Every tourist was suspect to him now and he itched to know all the real reasons why people were slinking into town this close to winter.
The "now" part surprised Noah, as it implied it might be a recent decision. He could understand temporary lodging when moving to a place, but his attachment to home was such that he couldn't imagine deciding to stay on any kind of permanent basis at any of the places he and Magnus had driven to. "That's cool. I'm from Chicago, though on the road quite a bit. We're here for a couple reasons. One's to look into the disappearance of this guy my friend knows from online--Daniel Valiant; the other is to look into some of the weird rumors that get around about this place. What about you? Is this your first time here or had you been before and decided to settle now...?"
"I heard about him," Dev replied with a slight frown. "No trace of him from what I gathered and yeah, this place has plenty of rumors, some of them even seem true." He eyed Noah curiously, wondering if he was chatting with him in search of clues or if he was really just a chatty sort of person. Given why he'd come to Point Pleasant Dev was willing to bet it was the former but he didn't mind. "It's my first time here, came up from California with my woman, we're in a permanent state of seeking things so I couldn't really tell you what we're looking for.
“Yeah. I don’t know if we’ll find anything about him that the police haven’t, but it’s the sort of thing my friend can’t move past without trying. Which I get, since I’d be the same way,” Noah said. Though he had the endgame of wanting more information about Point Pleasant overall, getting to know the other visitors staying at the B&B was more for socializing, since it was a form of cohabitating, even if briefly. At Dev mentioning some of them seemed true, Noah’s eyebrow quirked, but he didn’t question it quite yet. “Was there anything about Point Pleasant that got your attention versus… I guess anywhere else?” he asked, smiling a little.
"Your friend goes missing you're gonna do your bit, police be damned," Dev replied and that he understood. Cops weren't always useful, especially if it wasn't just the mundane human-type crime that was going on. "There's been more than a few things that caught my attention here, from the vibe of this very inn to the angels in the cemetery. Have you seen them move yet? It's uncanny." There was a slight hint of amusement to his small smile as he was pretty sure Noah didn't believe in many things. He had a vibe about him that felt a little closed though that wasn't any psychic ability of Dev speaking as much as his lizard brain picking up on small tells here and there.
“That’s pretty much it, yeah,” Noah said. Even for mundane matters, he had a lot of distrust for cops in general given the way racial profiling tended to go down, though he hadn’t had many personally disastrous run-ins with them. To be safe, he tried to avoid them whatever the case might be. Especially with the loose approach he and Magnus had toward things like trespassing. He raised an eyebrow, unsure whether Dev was pulling his leg. “And no, I can’t say I’ve made it over to the cemetery yet, but it’s on my list of places to see. Are they animatronic or something?” he asked, smiling a little in amusement. The implication seemed to be that they just moved. Which seemed ridiculous. Not that angel robots would make much more sense, but statues didn’t move otherwise, as far as Noah was concerned.
Dev's eyes widened and then he let out a hearty laugh, complete with a slap on his chest. "Oh lord," he tittered. "That'd be something. Animatronic angels at the cemetery." He chuckled again, then sighed as if to release the last of it and shook his head at Noah. "Nah, I don't know what they are. Haunted, possessed, cursed. Just statues. Pay proper respect when you go there, yeah?" He had no reason to think Noah wouldn't, even skeptics tended to be respectful of cemeteries but it still felt right to tell him, a warning as much as a request. Those angels gave off some seriously strange vibes.
Noah grinned as Dev laughed; it was a little infectious, and his own laughter joined. Plus, he was aware of the inherent ridiculousness of what he said. “It’d probably be garish, but everyone’s got their own sense of style,” he said with a shrug, but he did listen to Dev’s assessment with genuine interest, even if he didn’t believe it. “Yeah, of course. I try to save being an irreverent ass for places are less consecrated, as a general rule,” he said, lips quirking. He didn’t believe there was anything of the dead hanging around other than in memory, but he tried to be respectful in cemeteries. It felt weird to not be. “What did you mean about the vibe here in the inn, by the way? I haven’t noticed anything, but I also basically got here and collapsed immediately.”
Dev shrugged. "There's something here but I haven't checked what it is exactly, not sure I want to know until it's time to go." It would be just his luck to wake something up and then have to live with it for months - or longer! "Sometimes not knowing is alright for a little while. Safer." He winked at Noah, fully aware the man probably didn't believe in any of this and Dev was a rambling lunatic for all he cared. That was okay, Dev wasn't going to censor or change himself for anyone.
Noah smiled, amused. He didn’t really think Dev seemed particularly crazy or anything; everyone was entitled to their own opinion, even if Noah found it personally misguided. He was pretty sure Dev had picked up on, since Noah wasn’t taking any pains to hide his disbelief or act any way other than as he was, either. “Yeah, definitely seems safer,” he said, jokingly. “Though my friend and I have a bad track record of poking into things where we don’t belong, so who knows what’ll happen.” Personally, he thought getting reprimanded by one of the inn staff for wandering into rooms that weren’t theirs would be about as bad as it could get. Which wasn’t very. “So what do you think’s fun to do around here, other than not disturbing the dead?”
'Fuck the groundskeeper' Dev almost said and he grinned cheekily at the thought. "Oh you know, there's a lot of interesting places to explore and when you're not in the mood for that there's always sex, substances and songs." He shrugged one shoulder, still smiling. "What kind of things do you guys keep poking at?"
Noah chuckled. “I’m pretty sure those three things are attainable most places, if you look in the right places.” Not that he tended to be seeking out those things outside of home. His travels with Magnus tended to be for a purpose. “Supposedly haunted places. Slenderman rumors. Cryptid sightings. So far we haven’t really uncovered more than the occasional skilled visual effects artist or a guy in a Wookie costume. Investigating falls somewhere between a hobby and a passion project, since it doesn’t pay the bills.”
Dev smirked. He knew very well a lot of the supernatural out there was fake as sometimes his own was too. He'd definitely embellished a story for money, telling people what they wanted to hear when whatever objects he was touching didn't give him much to work with or outright lying about what it was that he actually saw. "The unexplainable can be hard to document," he said with a little shrug and he was under no illusion that he would change this skeptic's mind.
“Yeah. People keep trying, but the standards for YouTube and most of the internet are pretty low, so it gives us a lot of material to go poke at,” Noah said. He had picked up on the impression that Dev might be a believer, but Noah wasn’t particularly interested in debating the issue since Dev hadn’t said anything provocative. “It’s usually good for writing material and better than being stuck in an office at any rate.”
It wasn't that long ago that Dev had felt defensive of the supernatural and eager to debate with anyone who was skeptical but he'd mellowed out some in the last few years and eased into the mindset that people saw the world the way they needed to see it at each juncture. "Sounds like a fun line of work," he agreed. "Not easy to find that these days. So do you publish your findings somewhere? I'd love to see it."
Fishing out his wallet, Noah pulled out a business card and offered it to Dev. "Our YouTube channel is called 'Beyond the Hoax'." Noah wasn't sure if Dev had any actual interest in watching what they put out, since it was all from an angle of debunking, but he had asked. As far as channels started by a couple of random assholes who were too opinionated about horror media went, Noah was was relatively proud of theirs. He was good at crafting a narrative that they could still ad lib around and Magnus' film editing went a long way. Except their first video was total nonsense, but they kept it up for posterity. "The other link is the website for my writing, which is a bit all over the place. What's your preferred line of work?" he asked out of curiosity, since Dev also indicated living an itinerant life.
"I'm currently a landlord," Dev replied with an expression and tone that suggested that this was a little baffling. It was what it was though, he found himself owning an apartment in Los Angeles of all places and he had a tenant who paid the rent on time - for the most part - and was only mildly insane. "My preferred line of work is none to be honest, I don't believe we were put on this earth to toil away under the pressing weight of capitalism."
Noah basically lived out of his parents’ house or a car. He was lucky that they were supportive, since otherwise it would have been impossible to make the whole freelance writer, part-time paranormal investigator, thing work. Which was something he hated. “Yeah, capitalism is a fucking shitty system,” he said in agreement. “Like I’d still want to be a writer either way, it’d just be a lot less stressful if making money to survive didn’t have to be part of the equation.”
At that moment, his phone buzzed. Several times, in somewhat rapid succession. Which meant it was Magnus and he wanted attention. Or food. Probably both. Normally, Noah tried not to be rude and on his phone if he was talking to someone, but it’d only get worse before it got better. Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he glanced at his message notifications and gestured vaguely, giving Dev s small smile. “I should see what my friend wants. But it was nice to meet you. Good luck on your apartment search, but I’ll probably see you around ‘til then.”
"Yeah I'll be here," Dev said easily. It was a small town too so even if he and Greer found a place by tomorrow and moved on out, he was sure he'd run into this guy again. Especially if he was snooping around all the spooky rumor places. "Good luck with your debunkin'," he drawled with a touch of humor since he knew so many of the things Noah was dying to debunk were actually true.