dǫçţǫŗ şɭęęƥ (shone) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-02-06 14:38:00 |
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Truth be told, Dan was a little nervous about meeting Five for coffee. He had good relationships with each of Allison’s siblings, his in-laws, but the last time Five was here he didn’t really seem to want to try to connect. Which, alright, there was no rule about having to do that with some guy your sister married - and Dan certainly wouldn’t have pushed the issue - but ever since he and Allison started dating, he’d liked how large and, quite frankly, how nuts her family was. His own family had been small, and with Abra not being around in Vallo anymore and Dan having no idea how his sister Lucy was even doing, it was easy for him to feel bereft in that regard. But the Five that had shown up, Dan would be glad to get to know - he appeared to be a little more open to the idea, anyway. So Dan started with coffee. It was a place called The Grind, enclosed in glass and framed with wooden beams, and he’d been here with Allison a few times - he’d also recommended it to others, because in his view, it was some of the best coffee in the city. He thought Five might like it as well, given the fact that the place offered ‘tasting flights’ and served espresso in snifters in order to emphasize how intense the aromatics were. Baked goods weren’t too shabby either. He ordered himself the largest size coffee, just plain, with room for cream. Nothing very fancy, though he enjoyed a good sugary whipped air concoction every now and then. “So how are you settling in?” he asked, once Five had placed his order and Dan had paid. “This is definitely a change from - well, life back home in general. For a lot of us.” Making a mental note to pay Dan back in some fashion for the cup of coffee, Five shrugged. He took a moment to glance around at the coffee shop, noting the view and exits in turn, mentally tallying the number of patrons and employees out of habit. He refrained from counting random attributes (approximate age, hair color) and accessories (hats, scarves, jackets, watches), though the urge lingered just under the surface. But giving in would waste more time instead of letting him have a few seconds to think about his answer. Looking back over at Dan, he said, “All right, I guess. Klaus is letting me stay with him and his cat for the time being.” How long that’d last, he didn’t know, nor did he know which of them might cave first and want Five to move out. But he hadn’t ever lived with anyone besides himself or his family, and he hadn’t been sure he’d wanted to be alone, though he also hadn’t wanted to intrude or impose if he could help it (even if Allison had said otherwise). Maybe it was something that would sort itself out over time, and, for now, he’d just make things work to the best of his abilities. “Someone offered to teach me to play video games,” he added a second later. “So that’s something, I guess.” Nevermind that he couldn’t place what that something was. But it surely had to be better than doing nothing but trying to mentally map his way around the city and figure out what he was going to do now. Because he had o idea, and the thought of drifting unsettled him. In fact, it kind of scared him. Though he kept that buried deep down to prevent himself from dwelling on it. Because he was supposed to be getting to know his brother-in-law, not turning over useless thoughts over a cup of coffee. “How’d you settle in, when you first got here,” he asked, giving Dan his full attention. Dan found a table for them to sit at, something near a window (and he’d take the seat where his back faced the door - he didn’t mind). The coffee was good, it had a good balance of sweetness and acidity, and he wrapped his hands around the mug to let the heat seep into his skin. As far as weather went, he was looking forward to springtime - warmer temperatures were on the horizon though, something less with a nip in the air that felt like the chill coming off a pile of snow, or like a slap. “Jules Waffle, right? I think that’s the cat’s name,” he chuckled a little. “Ben was here before, living with Klaus when they got the cat.” Ben had come and gone twice, however, so Dan wasn’t sure if the third time would be the charm. It seemed like an unfair whiplash to the rest of the family, but then again, life in Vallo also wasn’t fair sometimes. He made the best of it, however. “Well - I had my credentials all transferred somehow, so I got a job at one of the hospitals right away,” he said. “Allison arrived around the same time I did, so we got to know each other. I got to know other people too. Ended up making connections. Then I offered to move into the mortuary with Sabrina because it showed up and I didn’t want her to be alone there. Before I knew it, things had kind of just - fallen into place. I got my CNA certificate and started nursing school, and a new job at the clinic another Outlander started. Now here I am. It just kind of happens. Time passes, and you look up and...it feels a lot better, being here.” There was really no right or wrong way to go about it, but he supposed time really was the most important factor involved. Sitting across from Dan, Five took a slow sip of his coffee, more to avoid thinking about Ben than to warm himself up or assess the taste, though it did have that added benefit of allowing him to do just that. It wasn’t bad, and, in fact, kind of reminded him of Elliott. Not so much the exact mix of flavors so much as the memories still being incredibly fresh in his mind, though there was something a little reminiscent of the man’s own brew. As he swallowed the coffee, he decided he didn’t want to think about Elliott, either. It was his fault he’d died, and he knew it, but he didn’t have to dwell over it. Those sorts of things were better left to the middle of the night with no one around. Instead, he focused entirely on listening to Dan. It made sense, he supposed, that things fell into place. It didn’t sound to him like Dan hadn’t attempted to do things, either, which he suspected helped more than doing nothing likely would have. But was that how that worked for everyone? Were there people who never settled? Or people who took longer? How did they go about it? And why did this bring up so many questions he’d not thought about before? “How’d you get into nursing,” he asked, pushing his other, less relevant thoughts aside. Five didn’t think he possessed the empathy required to be a nurse, and while he might not have personally liked doctors, he could respect doctors and nurses of all kinds for what they had to deal with. And the immense amount of care some people must possess to go into such fields. “I had a few orderly jobs on and off over the years - but I went through a bad patch where I couldn’t really hold down a job for very long. I was in a particularly rough spot when I had this...nudge, I guess? To go to a small town called Frazier, in New Hampshire,” he started. A vision, premonition, gut feeling - Dan would chalk it up to the Shining, even if at the time he really had still been trying to drown it in booze and drugs. But he’d hit rock bottom and he needed to crawl out again; that feeling of hopelessness was not one he’d forget anytime soon. “Anyway, I met a guy who helped me find an apartment and got me a job as an orderly at a hospice center. I started connecting with the patients there, helping them pass on and helping them not feel so scared.” You’re a strange kind of doctor Doctor Sleep He took a sip of coffee - it had hit him like a ton of bricks, that he could have purpose. That maybe his purpose was this. The turning point, really - when he’d decided to use the Shining for good. “I was working in hospice here at first, then after I started taking more nursing classes I realized I really liked it and I could still help people, just in a more general medicine sort of setting. That’s the gist of it. Was a longer story than I thought,” his mouth twitched up in a half-smile. Without interruption, Five listened as Dan spoke. He shut off the part of him that wanted to analyze and turn over the other man’s words, reasoning he could do so later if he really wanted to, focusing on simply listening. Every so often he brought the cup of coffee to his lips to take a sip, though he kept from fidgeting otherwise. “I think most stories are,” Five replied with a small upturn of the corners of his mouth in response. “Either because they are, or because of the storyteller. Or both.” Having listened to him, Five decided he didn’t immediately hate Dan. He might have even liked him, to a point, though he could argue he didn’t know him quite well enough to say without certainty that he liked him. That thought, however, highlighted the point that Dan might have known him better than he knew Dan (not to mention that others seemed to know him despite having no memory of meeting anyone. Would that ever not be weird?), even if he didn’t think they’d been especially close. It was still strange (and a bit unsettling) to think one of them had a second chance at a first meeting while the other had only a single first. It made him wonder, briefly, if his siblings had really thought or spoken about him before or after his first appearance in this place, though he wasn’t sure he wanted an answer. Pushing that thought away, he glanced down at his cup, then looked around the cafe and out at the view, asking, “How’d you find this place?” The Grind was one of Dan’s favorite coffee shops in Vallo - there was a Starbucks, sure, and he jokingly recommended it for newcomers to the concept of ‘Earth,’ who had never heard of or experienced a frappe before. But it wasn’t great coffee. Just mostly burnt and overpriced. “I think I just kind of stumbled on it?” he said, fingers idly tapping the sides of his mug. “The first time I met Allison in person, I met her here.” So it was a little bit special for that reason too. But he didn’t mean to sound like much of a sap there, alas. Sometimes it happened. “So what kind of video games are you going to play?” he asked Five, finding that fun since he doubted the Hargreeves siblings really got to indulge in entertainment consoles growing up. Not with their training and their father who didn’t know a damn thing about proper child rearing. It occurred to him, briefly, that he could be overstepping in an unintended way. That this place might not truly be for him. Not because the coffee tasted disgusting (which wasn’t true) but because it held memories he might not be able to fully comprehend. It was a place that surely had more meaning to Dan (and his sister) than himself, and Five couldn’t quite figure out how that sentimentality fit into bringing him here. He doubted it had anything to do with it, that he was likely overthinking things, but it still made him wonder why here, out of all the likely places in this city. And why did he have the sensation he was trespassing? Taking a sip of coffee to push the thoughts away, Five diverted his attention to talks of video games. Admittedly, it wasn’t one of his more well read subjects, having minimal (read: no) experience personally, if one didn’t count seeing arcade games in various locations while on jobs or seeing a passing advertisement here and there on the tv or in a newspaper (and he did not count those at all). He swallowed his sip and shook his head a little, his shoulders rising slightly and falling. “No idea,” he admitted. “She mentioned Mario, and that’s what brought up video games, so maybe that.” And maybe he’d look up a bit on Maria just to be safe. “Do you play video games,” he asked, wondering if they were really more a kids thing. Not that he’d judge if Dan did. Five merely remembered seeing mostly kids and young teens at the arcade games he’d come across, and it made him wonder if it were one of those things people were supposed to outgrow as they grew up. “I don’t, but I’ve heard of Mario,” Dan replied. “There are a few games in that series. I grew up with just my mom, mostly - we didn’t have a lot of money, so could never afford one of the consoles. Plus I was more into libraries and things like that.” He had been a kid with his nose in the books - and there was something soothing about libraries anyway, the smell of them which maybe would sound weird to the average person but he had also been a weird kid. Of course, no one believed him about the Shining and it was easy to write off as Danny just being antisocial or traumatized - both were true, but it ran so much deeper than anyone knew. His mother did her best, though. He’d never fault her for anything. “Hopefully you’ll have fun. At least here in Vallo, you get to try all sorts of new things - things you might not normally do.” Then Dan paused, the coffee a comfort in his hands and the buzz of the shop a dull roar, before continuing. “I’m really glad you decided to meet me today. Tomorrow I’m taking Claire for dinner at a new place opening - The Leaky Cauldron? If you want to join us.” An overwhelming urge to reach out and connect, to say something about himself that could, perhaps, speak of some semblance of being able to relate -- even just a little -- hit him. Five promptly stamped it out with a reminder that whatever he might have said, Dan likely already knew. He washed the strange, overwhelming feeling of being known without knowing down with a sip of his coffee. It didn’t matter, he decided. All it meant was that he didn’t have to explain anything to anyone. He didn’t have to deal with anything that came with talking about certain subject matters. Setting the cup down, he tilted his head slightly, studying Dan. “If it’s not something I’d be interrupting between the two of you, sure” he said. He could understand the importance of standing dinner dates with someone important in someone’s life, or in having plans already. But he could also understand the possible obligation behind an invitation. He didn’t know Dan well enough to know if he felt obligated to include him because of his sister, though if he had to guess, he’d lean toward not so much. Not counting any expected general social niceties when one married someone with family around. He also might have been a bit apprehensive at the idea of meeting Claire (though he’d likely not admit to that, especially not to someone he’d just met and clearly played an important role in her life). He hadn’t lied about wanting to meet her one day. But he hadn’t expected that one day to include having likely met her before with no memories of it ever having happened. “Great,” Dan responded with an easy smile - he truly wanted to get to know Five, this Five, better and was happy to include him in all sorts of gatherings with the family. Because he was family, and now Dan was a part of it too - and he loved that, he really did. Loneliness and sadness had soaked into his bones, weighing him down, and that had only just been alleviated with the introduction of Abra into his life. Then he lost her too, and a chance to know his sister. It still pained him, to know that if Vallo was ever done with him and sent him home that he’d be going back to nothing. Maybe it was why he was determined to make the most of every moment he had in the here and now. “And you’re definitely not interrupting,” he promised. “It sounds like a good place, so I’m glad to try it together with the both of you.” “I’m glad, too,” Five said, giving Dan a small smile. He couldn’t be 100% glad was the exact word for it, but he knew he wasn’t angry or upset at the prospect. Overall, it was a positive association he had with the idea, and he decided to leave it at that for the time being. Besides, he was going to meet his niece, and that was a positive. Defining it further in the moment was just unnecessary. “So, do new places open all the time?” He couldn’t help but wonder about the permanence of this place and how people adjusted to it if there was more change than not. He knew things changed, but he suspected some semblance of things staying the same were nice. Even just a restaurant or a park bench or the knowledge of certain family members acting without thinking. Those things helped ground everything else. At least, he thought so. “Pretty frequently - but a lot of business and homes appear from people’s worlds,” Dan said, and actually, come to think of it - it did tend to happen pretty often. Seemed like everytime he checked the network there was something that had popped up and someone was having a grand opening - it was a lot to keep track of sometimes. “I guess you never know what could show up here from day to day.” That was what kept life interesting here in Vallo - never a dull moment, right? “I’m sure you’ll see what I mean, the more you settle in,” he pointed out, and he’d be here to help with that. And more coffee too. Always that. Will I? Five thought, and he wasn’t sure if his thought was in response to Dan’s comment about him seeing what he meant or about him settling in. Or both. It could be both. That, coupled with the knowledge that he’d never actually settled anywhere, didn’t sit right with him. None of this did. However, he was, if nothing else, adaptable. He could adapt to this situation, even if he couldn’t settle. He’d survived this long; he could survive a bit longer, he reasoned. He could figure out how to make this all work for him, or how to work within the confines of this place. One way or another, he’d adapt to his surroundings like he always had. “I guess I’ll see,” he said, raising his cup in a small toast to Dan before taking another sip, glad the coffee wasn’t awful. One less thing to adapt to. |