Lennon Marx (movedthrough) wrote in zenithrp, @ 2016-01-06 11:03:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | #day 015, lennon, tobias |
Who: Lennon and Tobias
Where: Lennon’s room
When: evening
Warnings: Lennon (a bit of dirty talk, lol)
This was turning into an awesomely chill evening, and Lennon was down for it. They hadn’t had any crazy challenges to do today and the house had been calm as far as he could tell. He was still feeling slightly concerned about Marco now that he knew what was going on with the guy, but he still believed it was better for him to know so he could help if he needed to. He had no complaints about how the day had been, and also he’d been able to keep the tentative plan of having Tobias over to hang out and sketch.
On the opposite side of the room from his bed and computer desk was a two-seater couch and coffee table, and he and Tobias were set up there with sketchpads, art pencils as well as colored ones and a bottle of wine he’d hooked from the billiard room and two glasses. How could you ask for anything better than that? He was currently drawing a picture of the Titanic sinking,* because why the hell not? “Do you have a thing you like to draw the most?” he asked idly as he worked on sketching in what felt like hundreds of small windows and portholes.
It was a good day, in Tobias’s book. Playing video games with Chase, and then sketching with Lennon, it didn’t feel like he had been kidnapped by complete strangers and forced to live in a mansion with twenty something other strangers. Apparently distraction was key. Distraction kept the fear and panic at bay. It probably helped that save for his first day there, there hadn’t been anything super crazy happening. Nothing he’d been forced to do.
So he was sitting there now, content with the silence, his hand moving quickly over the sketchpad Lennon had given him. He was drawing a sketch of the mansion from the outside, using his memory for most of the details. “Nah, not really,” Tobias said, glancing up at the sound of Lennon’s voice. “Whatever strikes me as interesting? I’m not big into sketching people, though. I don’t know why. What about you?”
“I don’t really have one thing,” Lennon said. “Maybe a few things. Boats and cars. Nature stuff. And I kinda like drawing people, but a lot of people aren’t into having a sketch done of them.” He tucked his pencil behind his ear to reach for his wineglass. “Or all they want you to do is dirty pictures, like this one guy I went out with for a while. He thought his dick was epic for some reason and kept wanting me to draw him naked.” No, actually Lennon didn’t have much of a filter. He also liked to toss out there that he wasn’t completely het and see what kind of reaction that got. It was a thing.
Tobias’s brows shot upward and he barked out a small laugh. “Wow. So it’s like… you were Jack, and he was Rose. Did you actually draw it?” Amused, Tobias glanced down at the sketch he was working on. The mansion was not very epic at all. Definitely not like nudity. For some reason it didn’t click in a big revelation kind of way that Lennon was gay. Or bi. Being bi himself, Tobias was comfortable enough with it, being away from his stepfather. Distance had helped ease some of his insecurities with his sexuality. Not completely, but enough that he wasn’t blushing and uncomfortable with Lennon’s comment. If anything, it kind of made him feel more relaxed around the guy. Sometimes if straight guys knew Tobias liked men too, they got all weird around him, or treated him differently.
“Yeah, I drew it,” Lennon said, smirking. “Still have the sketches somewhere at home. They were pretty damn good if I do say so myself.” He drained his glass and reached for the bottle to pour some more, then picked up his sketchpad again, pleased by Tobias’s lack of negative reaction to what he’d said. It might not mean anything or it might, who knew? He was just enjoying having a normal evening and a normal conversation without anything crazy happening. “I didn’t draw a big necklace around his neck though.” He worried one corner of his lip between his teeth as he started in on all those windows and portholes again.
Tobias's first thought was Lennon's family going through his apartment, looking for clues as to his whereabouts and coming across the sketches. That would embarrass Tobias to no end if he knew he'd left nude sketches around. But... Lennon's family might be open to that stuff. Or know him well enough to not be surprised by it. "That's okay. I kind of think you'd have to adorn his... you know what... with jewelry instead." Tobias chuckled to himself, happy to be around someone he felt comfortable joking with. He tried to be humorous from time to time, but it didn't always come across as a joke. Or... people didn't find him funny. It happened. "So I hung out with Chase earlier," Tobias explained, turning the pencil around in his hand to erase a small mistake. "Played video games. He's really cool. Quiet, but cool."
Lennon’s family wouldn’t be surprised about anything they might find if they went through his apartment, so that hadn’t been anything that had worried him at all. They were big on self-expression, on letting their kids be whomever they might be without repercussions. Once Lennon had finally been placed with the right people, growing up had been fantastic. He snorted laughter at what Tobias said. “It could be a new artistic market!” he said. “Dicks and balls draped in various kinds of jewelry. Oh my God, people would really think I’d lost my mind then.” How cute was it that Tobias had said you know what instead of dick? Precious, really. “Oh yeah, Chase is awesome,” he said, turning the sketchpad around so he could get to a different section of his boat. “I like hanging out with him.”
"Well, they already have rings for... you know." Tobias gestured quickly toward his lap. "Weird stuff like that! But I think, yeah, you could totally come up with something new. Necklaces, bracelets." He snickered loudly. "Even if it was for art, I guarantee someone out there would buy it and frame it and put it on their wall. They'd come up with some profound meaning in that kind of stuff, even if it's basically for a laugh." He shifted in his seat and began to draw a few birds flying above the mansion. "Are you going to go to that dinner thing that guy was trying to put together? Jack? Might be cool to at least see the faces of everyone here, even just to know who's hanging around the place."
The fact that Tobias was talking about cock rings was super amusing to Lennon. There just might be hidden depths to this guy, he thought. “Yeah, there’s all kinds of crazy shit out there,” he agreed. “But I’m talkin’ about a vintage look. Drape it in pearls or those fake diamond necklace things.” This was awesome. It was as ridiculous a conversation as he might have with Marco. He nodded when Tobias asked if he would go to the dinner if it happened. “Sure, why not? I’d be interested to see if he could pull it off. I betcha there’s people who’d hide in their rooms and pretend it wasn’t going on.”
"Oh, vintage," Tobias said with a laugh. "Okay, yeah, that makes sense." He was trying to remember how they got on this particular topic, but it didn't matter. It was distracting, and distracting was good. Setting his pencil down on his sketchpad, Tobias cracked his knuckles, thinking about the house dinner. He couldn't blame people for hiding in their rooms. He'd probably be there now if he hadn't met friendly people. "I guess if we're all stuck in this situation, why not get to know everyone else? I'd think being so solitary would make it all worse."
Sometimes Lennon thought that the only way he was getting through this was via distraction. It was all about those times that he could make himself forget they’d all been taken against their will. If you didn’t factor that in, it could be like they were at some vacation house, hanging out. Well… on days they didn’t have to do some crazy test or be tortured by random sounds. “See, that’s where I’m at with it,” he said. “There’s people here I haven’t even seen, and that’s kinda crazy since we’ve been here two weeks. I’m out of my room a lot, so if they’re around, I should’ve seen ‘em.”
"Maybe they leave the house a lot," Tobias suggested, even if he wasn't entirely sure. There were tons of people he hadn't seen yet, and while he was super curious about them, he wasn't about to go knocking on doors. He'd only met Chase because of Lennon. Lennon seemed like one of those guys who was comfortable talking to anyone, so Tobias kind of wanted to cling to him a bit if it meant being introduced to others. He'd always liked having friends who were far more outgoing socially than he was. "That kind of reminds me," Tobias said, picking up his pencil again. "Chase had mentioned going into town? Like, I want to check out that art gallery, and he told me about the tower, where you can see really far... you want to come with?"
“Maybe,” Lennon said, not sounding all that convinced. “This is a big place though. I guess there’s lots of rooms for people to hang out, like if someone was reading in the study you might not see them.” It was mildly creepy to consider how people could stay separate somewhere like this, keep to themselves. He’d been thinking that getting everyone together in one room could only be a good thing. He was busily shading the sky in his drawing, needing a break from tiny portholes, and he paused to glance at Tobias when he spoke again. “Yeah, I’d be into that,” he said with a nod. “I haven’t been up in the tower yet.” He could imagine Chase just wandering the town for hours to pass the time, exploring to have something to do.
He had thought about that. The mansion was bigger than any home Tobias had ever lived in, and there were a few rooms still that he hadn't explored. It made sense that he might miss people here and there. But if Tobias was stuck there, he felt like he ought to get to know people. If he knew them, it might make this whole thing less scary. Maybe. Maybe knowing them would make it worse. There was really no way of knowing. That was scary too.
"Cool." Tobias paused and scrunched up his nose briefly. "It's like, I'm making plans to do stuff with people like I'm at home. Like this is a normal life. I don't know if it's me consciously trying to ignore the fact that I've been kidnapped by crazy people, or what."
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” Lennon said, able to relate perfectly to what Tobias said. “Here we are, God only knows where, subjected to strange obstacle courses and having the heat turned up to a billion degrees and shit, and we’re doin’ our thing. I guess… I don’t know how to do anything else.” A shadow passed over his expression: a touch of regret, a tinge of sadness, maybe. “I’m used to making do, and what else can you do? Hide under your bed all day waitin’ for the boogeyman to get you? Mope, pout? That’s not my thing. I like to hang with people, find fun shit to do.” It made sense to him, anyway.
“I think it’s okay to mope, considering the circumstances,” Tobias countered before shrugging. “But I think at some point, you have to stop moping and just deal. Wise advice coming from someone who’s still essentially a newbie, right?” He grinned at Lennon. “It’s been tolerable, so far. The experiments, if that’s what they are, aren’t that bad. And meeting cool people has helped too. So I guess it’s easy to kind of forget how I got here.” He was afraid that if he thought about it too much he would have a full blown panic attack. He knew he needed to stay grounded.
Lennon had moped some since he’d been here, but it had been very rare. He remembered drinking with Kai one night… and now Kai was gone. Vanished, like several of the others had. “Yep,” he agreed, giving Tobias his best lopsided smile in return. “Puttin’ on your big boy briefs and gettin’ it done, I guess. It’s all you can do.” He sketched a few more lines, thinking over what he wanted to say next. “Only time I think about how I got here is late at night. I think I’d rather forget it, pretend like this is normal.” It might not be the most healthy thing, but at least he was honest about it.
“Briefs? Nah, boxer briefs,” Tobias corrected. “Briefs are too constricting, you know?” Oh right, just what he needed, to get into a conversation about underwear. “Thinking at night is the worst. It’s like, your brain is completely clear except for all the bad things happening in your life. Everything you ignore during the day.” He was nearly finished with his sketch. “Here, though, I seem to sleep like a baby almost. Which is weird… you’d think I would be awake constantly, super paranoid.”
Tobias was hilarious in a low-key way, Lennon thought. He could drift into as many random conversational topics as Lennon could. “Wonder if Cassi’s has underwear? I didn’t think to look. Although that’s kinda different from clothes. I might be worried about if it was really clean or who wore it before.” His pencil stilled as he reached for his glass again. “Ya know, I sleep pretty good here too. Except for the night when the creepy voice woke everyone up.” He had wondered if maybe they emitted some kind of knockout gas through the ventilation system, but he’d never noticed any odd smells. It could be something that was odorless. Man, this place had made him more paranoid than he’d ever thought about being before.
“I didn’t even look for that,” Tobias admitted. “But I was also with one of the cute girls, so it probably would have been weird to be looking for underwear. She might have been creeped out or whatever.” He set his pencil down to crack his knuckles and take a small break. “I think they kind of have to use some kind of drug, right? To make sure we all sleep in case they need to move whatever. I don’t know how it works. You guys have been here longer than me, at least, so you’re probably starting to catch onto things? What was the worst task you had to do so far?” Tobias wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know, but maybe it was best that he did. Just so he could prepare or something.
Lennon wondered who Tobias had been hanging with that day and he almost asked, but he got distracted by what he said next. “They have to, yeah,” he agreed. “No other way around it. ‘Cause you know, when somebody gets taken out and someone else put in, they have to change the rooms around too. It still messes with my mind how they’re all different. Did you see Chase’s bathroom yet? It’s ridiculously awesome.” When Tobias asked what the worst task had been, Lennon frowned slightly. That was subjective; if he asked someone else, he might get a different answer. “For me I guess it was the day they pulled half the people out of the house and put them down in town and the rest of us had to find them. I mean, they’d tied people up. There was a dude that was at least eighty years old here and they left him restrained until we found him.” That had been kind of awful. He knew because it had been Juno and himself who’d found Reginald and Kiley.
“I didn’t go into his bathroom.” Tobias laughed. “I think that might be weird? My bathroom is pretty crazy, though. So much nicer than back home. Like, it’s probably the size of my apartment back home, which is the sad thing. Chase’s room is pretty cool. I like that loft thing he has? My room is nice too, but still. Definitely weird how different all the rooms are. It’s like they want us to be comfortable here, or whatever.” He rubbed the nape of his neck and leaned back in his chair, most of his amusement dying away at the thought of them, whoever they were, tying people up in town. That was kind of morbid. “Were they in danger? Or was it just a ‘find them’ kind of thing.”
“Why is it weird?” Lennon wanted to know. “We were playing video games for ages and I had to pee. You go in there and the shower thing looks like you’re underwater. I can’t even describe it… you’d have to see it.” He started shading on his sketch again. “Yeah, the loft bed’s super cool. I slept there once.” His own room wasn’t anything super fancy, but it suited him. It was eclectic and comfy and a lot nicer than his apartment, for damn sure. A line furrowed his brow as he thought about Tobias’s question. “Well… I dunno if they were in danger, exactly. I just kept thinkin’, what if something unexpected happened? Unless somebody nearby was watching them every second, like the camera crews on Survivor, it could have been dangerous.”
Tobias shrugged. "Seems like someone's bathroom is their only real privacy here. Well, maybe not for Chase, since he doesn't have camera in his room. I'll check it out next time I'm in there, if he's cool with it." He spared a curious glance at Lennon when the guy mentioned sleeping in Chase's bed, but decided against asking why. It was kind of not his business anyway. He considered what Lennon said about the others being in danger, and recalled what Chase said about Cecilia's dog. It was probably better to just assume these people would do whatever they wanted, even if it was sick or illegal. "It's probably a good thing they were found," Tobias said lamely, for lack of anything more wise to say. "Doesn't seem like these people are messing around."
“Don’t see why he wouldn’t be,” Lennon said. He didn’t think anything about saying that he’d crashed in Chase’s bed once. He might’ve if it had been for sexy fun reasons, but it had been more for reasons of terror. It was a little bit funny looking back on it, but it hadn’t been that day. He figured they had to do whatever they could to get through the things that happened here. What else could you do? His pencil slowed when Tobias said that the people in charge weren’t messing around. “They’re not,” he said, not looking up from his drawing. “I might act like I don’t have a brain in my head or I don’t give a shit sometimes, but even I know that much.”
Tobias wondered just how thorough the town had been searched. Maybe there were underground tunnels or something leading out. He was too scared to look himself, terrified that he might get "zapped" from the thing in the back of his neck. He'd much rather someone else try and then rescue him, as cowardly as that sounded. Tobias just wanted to try and get through this whole thing with as minimal pain as possible. At the moment, he chewed on his lower lip, unsure of what to say. He didn't want to sound like a baby by admitting he was scared. "Well," he said finally, reaching out to pick up his pencil again, "I guess it helps that there's a couple people here I can hang out with. Like, it's not so bad knowing I'm not alone."
“Yeah, man,” Lennon said, pleased with Tobias’s comment. “Seriously, you can come hang with me anytime, even if it’s the middle of the night. We gotta help each other out.” He felt like they could get through the bullshit of this place as long as there were a few people they could count on. If he let himself think about it too long, he might possibly get scared, so he usually didn’t. Bravado could carry a person a long way.
“Thanks.” He wasn’t sure he could just knock on someone’s door in the middle of the night, but the offer was there and that was good enough. Besides, Lennon was pretty close to Tobias’s room, so that was even better. He wouldn’t have to run very far if something scared him. Glancing down at his sketchpad, he was mildly satisfied with how the drawing came out. It had certainly distracted him for awhile. That and Lennon. “I’m hungry,” Tobias said, looking up at Lennon again. “You want to go raid the fridge with me? I guess a silver lining to all of this is that kitchen is stocked.”
Tobias was really great to hang out with. How had he come up with the notion that they needed a snack when Lennon had been beginning to think the same thing himself? “Shit, yeah,” he said. His drawing wasn’t entirely done but he could finish it anytime. He set his sketchpad on the coffee table and stretched. “I’m all about that kitchen. Dude, I wanna see if there’s stuff to make a chocolate pie sometime.” He got up and grabbed the wine bottle, also liking the idea of being mildly sloshed tonight. “Let’s do it up.”
“Chocolate pie? You can bake?” Tobias grinned as he set his stuff down and stood. “I can’t bake anything. I even burn those ready to bake cookies? Really sucks.” If that Jack guy could cook, and Lennon could bake, Tobias felt pretty much set, food wise. Hanging with Lennon had taken Tobias’s mind off of almost everything, which meant he definitely needed to hang out with the guy more often.
“I can bake intermittently,” Lennon said, chuckling. “Sometimes stuff turns out and sometimes it doesn’t. My little sister always used to nag me into baking with her.” Was Tabitha scared? Did she cry because he was gone and nobody knew what had happened to him? He shut that thought down immediately, unable to bear it. “I’ll try one sometime,” he said, walking ahead to the door to open it for them. Snacking and more wine sounded about right.
* - anything I post that Lennon has drawn is not mine, since I am not the least bit artistic! JSYK.