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“Are Mama and Barclay dating?” Aubrey asks Dani one day as she watches them interact from across the foyer.“I’m going to the supermarket.” Barclay says, brandishing a list towards Mamas’ face. She’s sitting on one of the overstuffed and incredibly comfortable armchairs by the fireplace. “This all good by you?” He asks.She doesn’t even bother to look at it, totally absorbed in a book that she’s squinting at through very narrow, very grandfatherly silver rectangle reading glasses.They’re on a leather cord so when Mama takes them off they’ll hang around her neck. Seriously. Aubrey thought glasses cords only existed in movies. She has an uncapped highlighter tucked behind her ear, one end lost in her mass of curls. “It’s perfect. Drive safe.” She says, and then Barclay leans down and Mama leans up and they kiss. On the lips. It’s over in about a second, and lacking the preceding or subsequent cheek kisses that would edge it over into the realm of platonic.Mama slaps Barclays ass as he walks away, just barely hard enough for Aubrey to hear the impact.“Huh?” Dani asks.“Uh, wait,” Aubrey says. “Is dating… a thing? With Sylphs? Like do you… get together? Romantically?” She thinks so, given all the hardcore flirting and crushing she and Dani have been doing towards each other since Aubrey moved in, complete with hand holding and making goo-goo eyes at each other, but she could be wrong. If she is wrong, she’s going to be very embarrassed and, honestly, quite sad.“Yeah, of course,” Dani says, giving a rather pointed glance down to where their hands free hands are clasped on the table between them. Aubrey flushes. Dani has been studiously sketching a flopped, napping Dr. Harris Bonkers and Aubrey’s been playing her stupid addicting color matching game that is the only reason she keeps her phone both on her and charged. She’s almost beaten it. Dani continues, “But what does that have to do with Mama and Barclay?”Aubrey gestures at them. Barclay has stopped after the ass slap and is giving Mama a lovingly exasperated look. Mama is chuckling quietly to herself, grinning at her book. “So they love each other, yeah? Is it platonically? Familially? Romantically?”“Yes.” Dani replies, sounding absolutely certain.“Yes?” Aubrey asks.“Yes.” Dani says. She finds Jake Coolice next.“So, Jake.” She says, doing a Cool Guy lean against one of the walls.Jake immediately copies her position on the opposite wall. “So, Aubrey.” He says. They both fold their arms at the same time. Jake pretends to smoke a cigarette. Aubrey cannot remember for the life of her when they started this ritual, but she really likes doing it.“Are Mama and Barclay… together?” She asks.Jake blinks. “Right now? I don’t know. I haven't seen Mama yet today. And I think Barclay is at the store.”“I mean like, are they married?”“What’s married?” Jake asks.“Never mind.” Aubrey says. “Thanks anyways, dude.”“No prob, Aub.” He says. They do their secret handshake. Palm slap, back of hand slap, fist bump, and then they slap each other on the face. Not as hard as possible, but not gently either. Aubrey only briefly entertains asking Ned or Duck before dismissing it. They’re not any more likely to know the answer than she would be. There’s only one person she can think of that would have this kind of - clearly arcane, given that nobody knows the damn answer to it - knowledge of past, present, and particularly future events. Aubrey groans. Indrid’s camper is just as warm as it was the first time Aubrey set foot in it, which is to say that she feels moderately parboiled the second she crosses the threshold. The smell - both deep and sharp all at once, like spoiled milk and rotten eggs and unwashed dude pits - hits her the second she pulls her scarf off, making her wrinkle her nose and stifle a cough. Her scarf is new, deep orange merino wool, Barclay had knitted it for her because he understands aesthetics but also wants her not to freeze to death. There’s no place to hang up her things, so she just holds them in her increasingly sweaty hands.“So, Indrid.” Aubrey starts slowly, waiting for him to join in. “Do… you know… anything… abo-,”“The suspense of waiting to hear how you will finish this sentence is killing me, Aubrey. I am agog.” Indrid says, scribbling something into a sketchbook and not looking at her. He’s wearing a knee length white silk robe that’s more stain than anything else, an equally stained white tank top, and periwinkle meundies boxer shorts, patterned with otters holding hands. These, mercifully, are unstained. Aubrey honestly didn’t think anyone other than women going to bed and boys in middle school wore boxer shorts. His feet are bare and his toenails are just slightly too long.“I kept waiting for you to jump in!” Aubrey says, defensive. “You did it with Duck and Ned and I that one time -,”“ And I that one time , yes, because you’re much more predictable around other people. You have a lot of questions and are overwhelmingly indecisive. How am I supposed to know which one you’ll pull on me first?” Indrid asks, briefly layering over her and then veering off. She's not sure he’s actually writing anything, or drawing. From where she’s standing it kind of looks like his pen is just making loops.“I have ADHD,” she says, “It’s kinda my thing.” Aubrey gently scooches a crusty mug under the table with the very toe of one of her docs, because she doesn’t really want to touch it but she does want it further away from her. She might have to give her boots a decontamination shower. “Are Barclay and Mama dating?”“Do you think they are?” Indrid asks. Some of his hair falls into his face and he doesn’t bother to push it back. It has about the same texture as a block of cheddar cheese left out in the hot sun, and kind of gives her a craving for mac and cheese. Not completely, because his hair is gross, but Dani makes really good mac and cheese and Aubrey could totally go for anything she makes, any day of the week, even if it’s just boxed Annie’s and it always makes Barclay look like he’s dying inside, because he can make it homemade. Her mom used to make it homemade. Barclay and Mama kiss goodbye in pretty much exactly the same way her mom and dad had kissed goodbye before work in the mornings.“Parental.” She says. Indrid actually bothers to look up at her, eyebrows raised in confusion. “I mean,” she continues, realizing that he isn’t in her head and did not see the path to get to the point she just made, “They kiss each other on the mouths whenever one of them so much as goes to the grocery. It’s very long time married parents of them. And they cuddle on the couch during lodge movie nights.”Indrid wrinkles his nose. “Gross.” He says, going back to scribbling. It’s definitely not words or a sketch, she’s sure of it. Indrid probably just doesn’t like eye contact. Aubrey has to draw upon years of “think before you speak” lessons to not immediately make a comment about how his current living conditions perhaps rank a step above two old people cuddling on a couch. Barclay isn’t even that old looking, at the most forty-five, fifty on a bad day, and there’s dirty underwear in Indrid’s sink. She promises herself that she will not, ever, under any circumstances, ask to use his bathroom. She’ll pee in the woods if she has to.“You didn’t answer my question.” She says.“I don’t have the answer.” Indrid responds, peevishly. Aubrey would kind of like to bash her head against the nearest wall, but she’d probably receive either a thumbtack to the skull or a disease for her troubles. She looks at her feet. Her butter yellow docs stand out sharply - which, they typically do, but the contrast against them and the grungy carpeting is stark. She thinks it used to have been tan. It’s been worn threadbare and is intermittently splotchy with different shades of brown, stains from general muck. The snow on her boots have melted dark watery patches into the floor. A piece of paper near her right foot has a sharp lined and incredibly detailed drawing of Duck’s face, and a mysterious dark liquid has dried on it. Barclay would never allow this in the lodge. It’s a weekly battle with both Jake and Mama to get them to straighten up their living spaces.“Why do you live all the way out here, and not at the lodge with everybody else?” Aubrey asks. She wants to fidget, but if she starts tapping her little flame from finger to finger she might start a grease fire. She shuffles her coat and scarf around to hang on one arm and starts chewing at her fingernails instead.“There’s too many futures wherein someone walks in on me there, naked.” Indrid says, absentmindedly scratching a toenail against one sallow scrawny chicken leg of a calf. Indrids handwriting is blocky and print, not whatever cursive he thinks he’s making. His handwriting is all over the walls, and you do have to pick your pen up at some point to write a new word. Far away, someone rolls a snoop check , to snoop , and Aubrey very quietly opens her third eye, and projects it to look over his shoulder.It’s just short little scribbly loops.“Wait, really?” Aubrey asks. She shuts her third eye again.“Yeah, like one in three.” Indrid says. “Same ratio for walking in on someone else. Has it not happened to you yet?” He briefly lifts his face away from the page and must see the horror in her expression, because he goes: “Goodness, no. I’m messing with you.”Aubrey crosses her arms and scowls. “So why are you out here in the woods all by yourself?”Indrid snaps his sketchbook shut. “Aubrey,” he says, “If I really just gave away answers all the time, for free, I’d be down in New Orleans or Sacramento or wherever the hippies go these days, making a fortune as a soothsayer.”Aubrey takes the hint. “Well, thanks, I guess.” She puts on her coat, scarf first, but it seems like either the wool or her nose has sucked up the ambient stank and she’s doomed to smell this particular aroma for the rest of her life, or at least for the next ten minutes, which might as well be the rest of her life. She opens the door and walks out.Immediately, she opens the door and pops her head back in. “Heeeyy.” She says. “Do you get running water out here? And do your windows like… open? I know it’s winter or whatever but like… maybe five minutes of some cracked windows might be nice for you. And a shower. I dunno. Just thinking out loud.”“On your way home, I see at least four possible futures where you hit a squirrel and cry a lot about it, and once you’re there I see six possible futures where you trip and fall flat on your face in front of Dani. There’s also three in the next week where you piss your pants.” Indrid says, waspish. “One of those is also in front of Dani. Just so you know. Something to keep in mind. To think about.”Aubrey slowly pulls back and shuts the door, grimacing.If she drives way, way under the speed limit on her ride back to the lodge, it’s not like Indrid can see it. Nor can he see her double check her shoelaces to see if they’re tied. Or triple check. Or quadruple.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Aubrey loves Dr. Harris Bonkers, PHD, very deeply and with her whole heart. She’s been kicked out of motels for trying to sneak him in. She’s beyond willing to kill and die for him. One time she spent 75 cents at a library printing him a full color PHD with his name on it. She learned how to sew for him so that he’d always have nice absorbent and washable bedding. She loves his fluffy feet and his gigantic ears. She loves how big and meaty his head is and how sleepy his soft pink eyes look. He loves to go absolutely ape shit at 3 AM and bite her on the toes as he launches himself at 60 MPH off every wall in her room like a goddamned bottle rocket.
He has a routine. 2:30 AM: dig, vigorously, at whatever he can fit his big rabbit-y paws into, mostly her body under the blankets. 3 AM: slam himself into every single surface he can find, and do major backflips. 3:30 AM: rearrange his entire house via picking up everything he can lift with his mouth and throwing it as hard as he can against the walls. This includes, but is not limited to: his food dish (full of food), his wood log, all of his chew toys, his baby keys, his wicker basket, his hay mat, and his jingly cat toy balls. He then falls asleep for a little nap with naught a care in the world.
She doesn’t really get why he does this. He’s crepuscular. He should also be resting. This does not stop him.
She sleeps through it for the most part, but some nights she has trouble sleeping over things like, oh, collapsing a building onto one of her friends-slash-teammates a little under a week ago.
“Dr. Bonks,” she groans, “Please. I’m begging you.”
He, being a rabbit, does not listen, and begins flinging his keys into the air. Her little toe throbs from where he nipped it before binkying away. Aubrey throws her forearm over her eyes and then very quickly removes it when an image of the Pizza Hut sign falling into the store starts playing on the backs of her eyelids.
She sits up, very slowly, and swings her legs off the bed. Dr. Bonkers hops up the ramp she's got set up against the foot of her bed the moment he sees her moving and starts shoving his massive (for a rabbit) head into her hands. She pets him obligingly and then dashes into her attached bathroom and shuts the door quickly before he can run after her and start biting her ankles for not giving him enough love.
Aubrey splashes some water on her face, cool, not cold, as she wants to go back to sleep at some point. The sign had seemed to move in slow motion, as it fell. Aubrey turns and presses her forehead to the window beside the sink. It had taken an age to hit the building, and during that age Aubrey saw the beams of her house, crackling, falling, collapsing. Aubrey opens her eyes, exhales, and draws a little bunny in the condensation on the glass with the tip of her finger. She wipes it away -
A tall, white shape is walking along the side of the lodge, almost blending in with the terrain. It has no arms and a short little body that melds into pantaloon-esque legs that are laboriously walking through the snow, dragging a snowboard on one... foot? It’s more like a peg. She’s not really sure how the board is attached. As she stares at it, shaken out of her thoughts, it stops, turns, looks at her, and stands absolutely, deliberately still.
On a hunch, Aubrey T-poses at it.
The creature vibrates in place, and then there stands Jake Coolice, T-posing right back in a lurid green and yellow striped jacket and bright orange and blue snow pants. He
glows
under the waning moon like a torch, or a bioluminescent fish dialed up to
six billion
. It feels like someone took a bunch of highlighters and chucked them at Aubrey’s face. He looks like an ad for the dye they use to make safety vests. He’s not wearing a helmet. Aubrey opens up her window to yell at him for it.
“Go-,”
“JAKE COOLICE!” Mama yells from somewhere else in the house through her own open window. Aubrey watches Jake do a full body lurch in surprise and slip on his snowboard, falling face first into the snow. He doesn’t even bother sticking his arms out to catch himself, seemingly resigned to his fate. Mama, despite not being paranormal in any way herself, does have a supernatural sense for when people are, as she puts it, ‘up to dumb shit’. “GET BACK INSIDE!”
Jake scrambles upright and dabs at Aubrey. She whips, then tries to gesture for him to come up to her room. She thinks she might just give up on sleep. He attempts to Naruto run back to the house, as much as one can Naruto run with the hindrance of a snowboard. Aubrey shuts her window.
She opens the door of the bathroom and scoops up a waiting Dr. Bonkers so he can’t nip at her for ignoring him, holding him like the gigantic baby he is. She turns on her little desk lamp, giving the room a dim amber glow, like she’s lit a few candles.
Jake knocks on her door a few minutes later. “Hi!” He says. His nose and ears are a bright, clown red. He’s wearing black leggings, and a shirt many sizes too big for him that looks like bowling alley carpet threw up on it. She’s willing to bet money that it’s Mama’s. His sunglasses are hung in the neckline.
“Hi.” Aubrey replies. They do the handshake, slap, slap, bump,
slap
. His hand feels like a block of ice against her cheek. “Your hands are
cold
.” She complains.
“I know, right? Feel ‘em!” he says, immediately shoving both of his hands to the sides of her neck. Aubrey squawks and twists away.
“Jake!” she yelps. He cackles. Moira, her neighbor, taps politely on their shared wall. “Sorry! We’ll be quiet now.” She says, leveling a glare at Jake, who doesn’t even bother to look sheepish.
“It’s fine,” he whispers, “Moira doesn’t even need to sleep, she just likes to.”
“
You
need to sleep though,” Aubrey huffs, sitting down on her bed and petting a now sleeping Dr. Bonkers. “Why are you awake?”
Jake flops down on the bed next to her, making the springs creak. “The hills look totally tubular with the fresh snow and the moon.” He says. “And it’s not so bright out that I have to wear my goggles to see it!” He looks over at her and taps a finger underneath one of his eyes. His irises are a soft purple color, not quite blue or pink. He yawns. “Why are
you
up?”
“Well…” Aubrey says, then hesitates. She’s gone and absolutely fucked Mr. Tarkesian's whole shop, and with the Pizza Hut sign down, are they still getting business? Did she upset the pizza equilibrium? Did she bring down a lot of Kepler’s economy within like, four months of moving in? That has got to be a new record for… something. Really, it only shows that they should quit the whole “capitalism” thing and just go back to bartering, if all it takes is one fallen Pizza Hut sign to theoretically mess everything up so bad.
“Do you think we could convert Kepler to the bartering system if we tried hard enough?” Aubrey asks.
Jake cackles.
Aubrey blinks her sleep-crusted eyes open at… some time in the morning. Amnesty Lodge has gone and woken up around them. Barclay’s made cinnamon rolls, the rich scent makes her feel a little bit like levitating out of her bed and floating down the stairs on smell-lines like a cartoon character. Jake is asleep on his back next to her, Mama’s cool shirt has ridden up and leaves his stomach exposed.
Without thinking, Aubrey slaps it as hard as she can.
Jake makes a nose akin to a rubber chicken and his entire body snaps together like a clamshell. He rolls off the bed with another yelp and a thud.
“Aubrey!” He yells. He’s already standing up and fumbling for his sunglasses on her nightstand.
Aubrey books it down the hall, laughing. “I’m sorry!” She yells back as Jake charges after her, also laughing. “I didn’t even think about it!”
Aubrey tries to take a turn through the dining area both too sharp and too late, sending both her and Jake skidding directly into Agent Sterns usual table, sending him, his coffee, and his copy of Kirby’s dumb ‘zine flying.
Mama makes them clean it up, tapping her cane on the floor as she watches them with her other hand on her hip, Barclay making anxious, concerned noises over Stern’s ruined suit in the background.
It’s not the worst way to start her morning.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Aubrey -,” Someone says from behind her.Aubrey cuts the voice off with a wave of her hand. “Gimme a minute.” She leans forward in her seat on the couch to watch Moira gently place another card on her very impressive card house on the coffee table. Moira is constructing it to look like Amnesty Lodge, somehow getting straight, flat cards to stand in a dome shape. Dani, who is sitting next to Aubrey with her feet tucked under herself, looks up from her drawings (of the residents, she’s going to cut them out and set them up around Card Lodge like paper dress up dolls) and twists around to see who it is.“Oh, hi Duck!” She says. “What brings you up in our neck of the woods?”Aubrey leans over the back of the couch. Duck doesn’t normally come up to the Lodge unless there’s an abomination, so she’s a little surprised.“It’s Ranger Rick!” She crows. “Howdy!”Duck rolls his eyes and stuffs his hands in his pockets. “I uh, have some stuff for Aubrey, actually, but if y’all are busy it ain’t urgent.”“Come sit down!” Dani says, lightly patting the cushion next to her. “Moira’s showing Aubrey her talents.”Moira waves at Duck, putting another card on the roof. “I’m almost done,” she says. “I’ve done this before, the other one stood for a while before there was… an incident.”“Jake startled Barclay and he accidentally threw a plate across the room like a frisbee,” Dani fills in, “It was a sad day.” Aubrey leans into her to look at the page. She’s just finished cartoon Agent Stern, who is both much poutier in the mouth and twinkier in the body than his 3-D version. His tie has… something on it. Aubrey squints. ‘Big Stinky’, it reads, the letters formed in a manner that makes them look like part of a design, the Y curling into the bottom edge.“How do you do this stuff, Moira?” Duck asks, sitting down on Dani’s other side. “I mean, I build model boats -,”“Woah, my abuelo’s here!” Aubrey laughs. “Hey! I didn’t realize you were in West Virginia!”Duck sticks his tongue out at her. “As I was saying, I build model boats. I can’t tell y’all how many times I’ve gone and messed up one of them because my hands shake so dang bad. What’s your secret?”“Well…” Moira starts. She looks around the lodge as if she’s about to let them in on some deeply hidden knowledge. She leans towards them. “I’m dead,” she says.Duck blanches. Moira throws her head back and howls with laughter.“Seriously, though,” She says, still chucking as she places one final card on the roof, “How many dead people do you know with shaky hands?”Duck rubs his jaw. “I can’t say I know any other dead people.”Dani pats Duck’s knee. “Step one: die in the light of Sylvain. Step two: profit.” Then she holds a hand out and wiggles her fingers. Aubrey takes her hand.“I was asking for my pen, but this is great too.” Dani says.“Oh.” Aubrey says, her face heating up. She pulls the pen out from behind her ear and gives it to Dani. Moira covers up her chuckle with a polite cough and Duck raises an eyebrow at her, but then Dani grabs Aubrey's hand again, so it’s all good.She sticks her tongue out at Duck. Duck sticks his tongue out at her again. They make faces at each other for a minute, until Moira interrupts them with a soft but pointed sigh.“Oh, right.” Duck says. “So my Ma had me take some of my old stuff from my college days out of her house, y’know, clothes and things. And, well,” Duck rubs the back of his neck, “I used to dress like you do way back when. Was wonderin’ if you wanted to look at some of the clothes before I go and donate ‘em. They’re probably all too big for ya, but you’re... crafty.”Aubrey looks over at Duck. Even out of uniform, he’s still wearing a buttoned up polo shirt (tucked in, with suspenders) and green pants. When he’s not wearing Beacon, he looks like someone made a game about being a park ranger and chose the middle option in every single slider during character creation. He looks like the most medium dude in the world . He looks like his idea of a wild night out is karaoke night at the library . She tries very hard to picture him in her current outfit - her black velvet platform boots, ripped red leggings, a black calf length pleated skirt, a fashion belt that’s attached to nothing, a neon yellow turtleneck that has a black zipper down to the middle of her chest, and her jean jacket - and finds that that particular image is far beyond her. Duck is beautifully tepid and perfectly hug shaped, and in no way can she picture him even standing within 500 feet of the Old Hot Topic, before capitalism took it over and gave it Funko Pops .“You… were punk?” Aubrey asks, trying and failing to sound curious rather than incredulous.Duck shrugs. “I was a burnout. Really liked upsettin’ my mother by wearin’ things she hated. Went to a few raves way back when. What,” he asks, “Is that really so shockin’?”Aubrey opens her mouth, hears her father say ‘ think before you speak ’ somewhere in the back of her head, and shuts it again. He’d probably told her that over a hundred times, most likely somewhere in the low thousands, and the lesson still hasn’t really stuck.“Let's go see these clothes.” She says, finally. Duck keeps his personal truck very clean, which is nice, because it means Aubrey has fewer places to impulsively stick her nose into, such as all the cupholders, the glovebox, and the sunglasses compartment. She’s both shocked and yet also not at all when upon opening that last one, a little baggie of weed and a pipe fall out.“Oh ho ho !” she says. “What’s THIS !”Duck doesn’t even glance away from the road. “Aubrey, put that back.”She gently shakes the bag at him. “Can we smoke?” She asks, excited.“No!” Duck exclaims. “I have to drive you back after this!”Aubrey puts everything away. “Some other time though? Can we? Can’t really smoke at the lodge, what with Agent Narc around.”Duck snorts. “Fine.” he says. “You have to invite Ned though. He’d whine if he found out we hung out without him.”“Duh.” Aubrey says. “Where do you buy weed around here anyways? I don’t even know if Sylvans smoke, so I haven’t bothered to ask.”“I get mine from Ned, but I think he gets it from Kirby and upcharges for it. I just haven’t cared enough to find out, because I smoke so rarely it don’t really make a difference to me.”Aubrey hums. “You know, I’m not really surprised by that at all.”“Also, it’s super illegal ,” Duck says, “And I could lose my job if anyone found out.”Aubrey waves a hand. “Things are only illegal if you get caught.”She hears Duck sigh. “You need to stop talking to Ned.” Duck’s apartment complex looks like it was meant to be quaint, once upon a time, and has since dropped the act and fallen straight into plain. She meets one of his neighbors, a lovely old butch lesbian whose name Aubrey immediately forgets, as per usual, and is relieved that Mr. Tarkesian - Leo , Duck called him - is not in.The inside is still plain, but in much the same way Duck himself is, friendly looking, homely. She takes her boots off by the door, thankful to be in a shoes-off household. The countertops are a light granite formica, and the walls look purple until Duck turns on the lights, and then they’re a soft blue. His kitchen table has an unfinished model ship sitting on the end of it. Aubrey inspects his fridge, which is covered in magnets and photos. Some are of the forest and other wildlife, clearly taken by Duck himself, and a few are of Duck and a widely grinning woman who looks a lot like him, except a good five inches taller and a few years younger.“Is this your sister?” She asks.“Ah, Duck Newton.” Hisses a slimy voice in the cupboard to her right, and Aubrey jumps so hard she swears she feels her soul try to leave her body. “You have finally brought home a visitor! Here I was thinking that you would die alone and have that beast eating you for weeks.”Duck points at the cupboard. “One, Mrs. Meatloaf is much more civilized than you, Beacon, so watch who you call a beast. Two, underwear drawer .”The cupboard goes silent, but maintains an air of scorn.“Yeah, that’s Jane.” Duck says.“Who’s Mrs. Meatloaf?” Aubrey asks.They spend a good thirty minutes on cat introduction before they actually get around to cracking open the two large tupperware containers occupying Duck’s living room.“Again, this is all probably a lot too big for you.” Duck warns, popping the first one’s lid off. “They’re probably too big for me, even. I’ve lost a bit of weight since then. All that walkin’ in the woods for my job.” He lets and the abominations hang in the air, unsaid. “And the pants will probably be too short. But that’s… fashion now, right?”“You say fashion in the same way Barclay says hipsters ,” Aubrey complains. The clothes don’t stink, per say, but they do smell strongly of being old. His apartment is starting to give off the odor of a secondhand store. “Dani has a sewing machine I can borrow, I can take stuff in.”The first box is mostly flannels and ripped shirts, a lot of them from rock or metal bands. They aren’t fashion ripped, just hard worn. “I used to skateboard,” Duck says by way of explanation, shaking out a Kiss t-shirt to show her and then re-folding it at her nod. “I took a coupl’a hard falls.” He puts it in her “keep” garbage bag. And, yeah, she can kind of see it now, burnout Duck Newton, smoking joints in the woods after school and wangsting away the hours on a skateboard. Still can’t quite see the raves, but, oh well.There’s a few sports bras in the bottom. Duck takes them out one by one and smiles at them, a mix of rueful and nostalgic, before tucking them into the “donate” bag.Aubrey opens the other box and on the top is some… black fabric... with... chains? She lifts it out.“Oh my god.” She says. She can feel hysteria bubbling up in her throat, her voice shaking. “Duck.”He glances over. “Oh, hell. Those .”Aubrey looks down at the Tripp pants she’s holding in her hands, and immediately starts laughing so hard she chokes.“Oh yes,” Duck says, “Laugh it up. I was the coolest motherfucker on campus, just so ya know.”Aubrey uses the veritable parachute she has in front of her to blot at her tearing eyes. “Tripp pants!” She shouts. “Dude! Tripp Pants !”She pulls out two other pairs, laughing so hard she’s wheezing. One is black with neon green stitching and straps, the other has one black pant leg and one red. They took up most of the space in the tupperware. Her stomach hurts . “Duck Newton, king of underpass goth dancing -,” The thought of Duck in eyeliner and black lipstick flailing his arms around fucking kneecaps her with a baseball bat and sets her off crying again.“I told ya I went to raves!” Duck says.“Yes!” Aubrey says, “But you look like you have strong opinions on fucking toilet paper ! You look like you actually buy and read the local newspaper!”“Well, I’m sorry that I just want to get the word out there that Charmin Ultra Soft is not the best way to go. They got all those commercials and a mascot, but it’s propaganda, y’see. I get Quilted Northern. Much cheaper and much kinder on the behind,” Duck says mildly, “And I really don’t see the harm in supportin’ our local journalists.”Aubrey kicks her heels against the floor and covers her face with her hands, squealing. “Stop! You’re killing me!” She gasps. “I can’t! I can’t!”It takes her a while to calm down. She hears Duck start laughing too, at some point. She keeps her face covered, because if she looks at him she’ll lose her mind again.“Those are relics ,” She bites out, “Go put a pair on. Not the black and red ones, I’m wearing those. We’re going to the lodge.”Duck exhales.“ Please ,” She begs.He goes. The car ride back to the lodge isn’t quite tense, but they are both so desperate not to look at each other that it certainly feels that way.“You wear a mouth belt ,” Aubrey reminds him as they park, “You cannot, legally, be embarrassed about these pants.”“I’m not embarrassed!” Duck says. “They’re just not very comfortable .”Aubrey, who has a lot of fabric bunched under her belt, shoves him gently. He shoves her back. They half wrestle all the way through the front door.“Hey, Barclay!” Aubrey shouts, as he’s the first person she sees, probably walking into the kitchen to start on dinner. He turns to her, smiling, and freezes.“Duck’s giving me some of his old clothes! How do we look?” She strikes Wonder Woman’s pose. Beside her, Duck shrugs.Barclay laughs in a way she’s never heard him laugh before, booming across the whole entry. He folds in half at the waist, one arm clutching his stomach, and slowly tips over onto the floor, the other hand catching him. Mama comes out of her study and immediately leans into the wall, covering her eyes with the hand not white-knuckling her cane. Her chest shakes with silent laughter.Dani’s perched up in a window seat, her cheeks slowly going bright red. Aubrey winks at her. She buries her face in her hands, gets up, and runs out. Aubrey can barely hear her giggling over Barclay, who is laughing so hard he’s making little grunting noises, slapping his hands against the floor.“Duck,” He says later, breathless and shaking, mostly using a table to stay upright. Agent Stern had come down from his room right as everybody had been winding down, and his immediate about-face had set everyone off again. Jake is still lying on the ground next to one of the couches. “You can stay for dinner, if you promise to take those off and wear normal pants. I will not survive otherwise.”“I would love to wear normal pants,” Duck says, and Barclay wheezes. Aubrey runs off to find Dani.“I’m in here,” Dani says from behind the closed door to her room after Aubrey gets to the top floor and calls out for her.“Can I come in?” Aubrey asks.“... No,” comes the reply. “I’ll die.”“Can’t have that,” Aubrey says. “What’d you think?”“I think that you need to take them off forever.”“Ah.” Aubrey says, then: “Would you wanna help me do that?”The door stays silent for a good five seconds, and Aubrey’s about to start apologizing profusely when she finally replies.“Aubrey, I can’t think sexy about you when you’re wearing the equivalent of emo bellbottoms .” Dani says, although it sounds like she gave the concept some serious thought and is deciding on this answer as she says it.“Okay,” Aubrey says. “What about after?”“...We’ll see. Please get rid of them.”Aubrey dashes away to her room to do exactly that.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Uno.” Dani says quietly next to Aubrey, putting down a green two card. Jake makes desperate eye contact with Aubrey from across the table. They are the only two people left who don’t have uno. Mama drums her fingers on the tabletop, her final card pressed flat to her barrel chest. Barclay taps his last card against his lips. Aubrey thinks about sneaking some of her cards under the table and incinerating them. If she gets her hand hot enough, it might go up with minimal smoke. She could even blame any smell on Stern, who’s hanging out by the hot springs, smoking a cigarette. Jake has six cards, which is least he’s had since they started playing. Aubrey has four.Aubrey looks at her hand, then back at Mama. She thinks she might hyperventilate. This is her first time at “Lodge Uno Night”, as Dani had called it when she’d invited Aubrey, and she’d like to win. It’s not really lodge-wide, because the only people actually playing are herself, Dani, Jake, Mama, and Barclay. The latter two both have on homemade “Uno Beast” shirts.Mama sighs. “Come on Aubrey.”“I’m thinking!” Aubrey cries. “I gotta pay attention to my strategy here -,”Barclay makes an amused noise as Mama says, “Strategy? Kiddo, this is Uno, there is no such thing as strategy-,”“Fine!” Aubrey puts down a yellow two.Mama looks at her hand for a long moment, and draws a card.Barclay grimaces and takes one off the deck as well.Jake levels a very serious look at Aubrey. “Do you have something that can take her down?” He asks, pointing at Dani, who is smiling so serenely that she might as well be out of a fairytale or something. A maiden sitting in the woods with bluebirds alighting on her brown, freckled shoulders, a pure white unicorn resting its head in her lap, bleached hair up in intricate braids. She doesn’t have any red cards. She drew on red last time around, and she hasn’t picked up since. Aubrey has a wildcard.“I do.” Aubrey says. “Are unicorns real?”“Now hold on,” Barclay says, “You can’t team up like this, that’s against the rules.”“It’s tactics, my man!” Jake replies, reversing the order. “I’m thinkin’ with my tactical brain now!”“Your tactical brain -,” Mama starts as Barclay draws a card and curses. Mama stops, draws one, and sets it down, yellow nine. “Jake, Aubrey, for the last time, there are no tactics in Uno .”Aubrey puts down her wildcard. “Red.” She says, turning to Dani in triumph.Dani sets down a draw four.Distantly, Jake lets out an outraged wail. Aubrey can feel her mouth opening and shutting, although no sound is coming out of it.“Fuckin’ A.” Barclay curses quietly, picking up his pencil and writing their names down on a legal pad. “Come on. Points everybody, let's add em.”“Give her twenty-eight from me,” Mama says, sliding her cards over. “Dani, where’d you cheat?”Dani blinks demurely. “What do you mean?”“Oh, come on, you love this shit.” Mama says. “The reveal is your favorite part. I didn’t even see you do it.”Dani’s impressively innocent poker face cracks and dissolves into smugness as she reaches over and pulls the played cards apart. She had, at multiple points, played two cards rather than one, and played sixes over nines and vice versa to change the color, which she points out with obvious delight.“You lose if you cheat.” Aubrey says, finally. Mama takes Aubrey’s cards out of her hands and counts them up.“You lose if you get caught cheating,” Barclay corrects.“And I don’t get caught,” Dani adds.“You’re not a vampire, you’re a demon.” Aubrey says, and Dani cackles, grabbing and squeezing her hand under the table. Aubrey thinks she might be in shock.“Oh no,” Mama says, “Did nobody tell you? Dani is a notorious cheat. We’re the only ones left in the whole lodge who will play with her.”Aubrey turns to Dani. “You wound me.” She says. “I trusted you. And you used me.”“Please,” Dani says, crossing her arms and tipping her chair onto its back two legs, “Mama and Barclay were trading cards under the table the entire game. I’ll bet money Barclay is sitting on at least two draw fours right now.”Barclay’s face tinges a little darker, and Mama’s face goes carefully neutral.“I don’t know what you mean.” Mama says blandly. She slaps Barclay on the shoulder as he slowly hunches in on himself, pretending to add up Dani’s points for much longer than he needs to. “Barclay doesn’t know what you mean either.” She continues. Barclay coughs. She hits him again.Barclay hands Dani the stack of cards, still flushed. “The winner deals,” he tells Aubrey, “As a punishment for winning.”“But you didn’t have anything to play when we were on red last,” Aubrey tries one final time, planitive.Dani sets the deck down and takes both of Aubrey’s hands in her own, which makes Aubrey blush. “Hon,” she says, “I had the draw four the whole time. And I saw that it was yellow when Barclay made Jake draw two, so it’d be safe to pick up.” Her hands are so soft, winter smoothing away her calluses caused by gardening. Aubrey wonders -“What kind of lotion do you use?” Aubrey asks.Dani giggles. They play a few more rounds. Lodge Uno is weirder than the Uno that Aubrey had played with her family - Jake keeps making them get up and switch the seating order whenever he feels like someone’s ganging up on him, and the points system, and the cheating - but it’s hysterical. She resolves to make Duck and Ned come up for it. It ends on a particularly spectacular note when Aubrey tauntingly hits Jake with her third draw four card of the round (she’d gotten very lucky) and Jake lets out an inarticulate gurgle of pure rage and launches himself at her. Aubrey goes to bed with her face aching from smiling. Dani won points-wise, but Aubrey claimed moral victory for being the only one who didn’t attempt to cheat.She and Jake had shouted a lot, which is probably why her throat aches the next morning and her voice is gravelly and rough.When her eyes snap open the day after next, though, she feels much, much worse.“Oh no.” She tries to say at the ceiling. It comes out as a squeaky croak.The Lodge has Aubrey on a weird schedule, one she hasn’t been on since high school, really. She wakes up before 8AM most days, because Barclay really appreciates help in the kitchen so he can serve breakfast at 8:30 sharp. Also, if she’s not up by breakfast usually somebody (Jake, typically) comes knocking asking if they can have her serving if she’s not going to eat it. She slowly rolls out of bed and stands, wobbly, pulls on pants and one of Duck’s hand me down shirts that she hasn’t tailored yet, and wanders downstairs. Her ears feel like she’s stuffed them full of cotton and she thinks someone scrubbed her throat with sandpaper. She, Jake, and Dani are going skiing today. She’s not allowed to be sick. Mama will make her stay home.She really does mean to head into the kitchen, but she ends up curling up on Mama’s favorite overstuffed armchair instead. It’s the one near the fireplace but not right next to it, , upholstered in some really beautifully, tragically ugly plaid. It had been calling to her, she can hardly be blamed. Having a physical form that does things like get sick is overwhelmingly inconvenient. She wishes she was Moira. Moira doesn’t have a body that can crap out on her like this.“Good morning,” Barclay says to her. Aubrey peels her eyes open, wondering when she’d dozed off. He’s set a plate of cut strawberries and blueberry pancakes on the arm of her throne of misery, drowned in chocolate sauce and with a sprinkle of powdered sugar on top of them. Aubrey’s sure the scent wafting off of them would be amazing, if she could smell it.“I think humanity taking on a physical form was a mistake,” Aubrey grouses, picking up the knife and fork. Her voice cracks and squeaks mid sentence. “Metaphysical is the right amount of existence for me.”Barclay frowns at her, his thick eyebrows furrowing. “What?”“Thank you for the pancakes,” Aubrey says, cutting into the stack. “I want to return to being a single celled organism, swimming in primordial soup.”“Are you okay?”“Phenomenal,” She replies, shutting her eyes and chewing. “Could I have a glass of water? Please?”Barclay comes back with a glass of water, which is good, but also Mama, which is bad. “How’re ya feelin’, kiddo?” She asks.“Never better!” Aubrey responds. She tries to make it sound cheery, and fails spectacularly. She’s further undermined by wincing when she takes a gulp of the proffered glass of water. Mama puts a wrist on Aubrey’s forehead, her lips pursed, and Aubrey tries not to lean into it, then sighs, giving up. Mama slides her big cool hand down to cover Aubrey’s eyes. She usually smells like a woodshop, polish and dust and wood shavings, with a faint hint of metal and gunpowder. Right now Aubrey’s nose is picking up absolutely none of that, which is pretty disappointing.“That’d be a fever, yeah.” Mama says to Barclay.Aubrey shakes her head against Mama’s hand, even though it makes her head pound. “It is not. I just run hot now because. Fire.” She says. “Fire stuff.”Mama chuckles. “Do you now,” She says. “I think you need to go back to bed.”“Skiing,” Aubrey says.“Nope,” Mama replies. “Come on. Ain’t like the mountain is gonna get up and walk away. You can take a day. You don’t even like skiing all that much.”She doesn’t, but she does like seeing Dani bundled up like the Michelin Man. It’s her favorite part of the whole thing.“Finish your breakfast, and then back to bed with you.” Mama says, taking her hand off of Aubrey’s face. Aubrey almost pitches forward, but rights herself at the last second. Jake bursts into her room later, bundled up completely in more eye searing winter gear. This time it’s a solid hot pink coat, lime green snow pants, and a turquoise scarf, mittens, and hat. Aubrey flips him off, groggily. He flashes her a hang ten.“Heard you weren’t coming skiing!” He says, loudly. Aubrey has a sudden flashback to being seven and begging her parents for a little sibling, wishing for one on every star. Her childhood self did not think that one through, and now she’s paying for that particular wish.“I’m sick,” She groans at him.“Excuses, excuses!” He crows. “You’re a coward.”Aubrey takes a pillow off of her bed and throws it at him. He catches it easily.“You’re just a weeeeenieeee,” he continues, “Sickness means nothing to the slopes!”“Jacob Frozenwater, get out of my roooooom,” Aubrey whines. Jake chucks the pillow back at her, merciless.“Is that how we’re gonna play it, Audrey Large?” He cackles. He goes to say more and is thankfully interrupted by Dani, who comes in with a cup of tea from Barclay and chases him out.“Raspberry, honey, and lemon,” Dani says, setting the tea down on the bedside table. She’s got army green snow pants on and a brown turtleneck, but no jacket. “Barclay said it’s good for your throat.” Her voice is gentle, a little nervous. “I’m sorry you’re feeling yucky,” She continues, sitting lightly on the edge of Aubrey’s bed. “I can stay home if you want, keep you company.”Aubrey is briefly very, very tempted, particularly when Dani puts a hand on her forehead and gently pets her sweaty hair. But…“No, go have fun.” Aubrey says. “I’m just gonna sleep.”Dani leans down and kisses her forehead before heading out.This pattern continues for the next few days - Jake actively mocking and taunting Aubrey for not leaving bed, and Dani bringing up teas and soups and introducing Aubrey to her favorite book, The Bone Witch. Mama comes up and kindly scowls at her sometimes, tells her that she better be feeling back to normal by the time the next abomination rolls around and giving her things like Sudafed and Mucinex and Zinc, and, at one point, a small wood carving of Dr. Harris Bonkers. She shows it to him (He’s been sleeping curled up on or next to her), and he promptly tries to eat it, so he probably loves it. In all, it’s over rather quickly. Her fever breaks within the first 24 hours, and the cough and snot and her sore throat linger for only a few days after that.And then she wakes up one morning and feels back to her regular self, but it was really nice to have Dani keeping her company.She burrows her way under the quilt as Dani gently taps on the door and lets herself in. “Hey Aubrey,” She says quietly, shutting the door behind her. “How’re you feeling?”“You know,” Aubrey says, slowly sitting up and resting on her elbows, “I’m still feeling a little down. My throat is still hurting and I’m still all congested… Think I need an extra day. To just. Chill. I think.” She fakes a little cough into her elbow.Dani stands beside the bed with her arms crossed, one hip popped. “That bad, huh?” She says. There’s something akin to a glint in her eye, but her face remains soft and empathetic.Aubrey worries her lip between her teeth. “Maybe half a day.” She says.Dani takes Aubrey’s hand in her own. She experiences a brief moment of holyshit WHAT as the world suddenly flips and then Dani has her in a fireman's carry and is bringing her down the stairs.Aubrey squawks and wiggles for a few seconds. “Holy shit!” She says.“I did some fighting classes on Sylvain.” Dani says to her, adjusting her grip and smiling.“How long could you carry me like this?” She asks just as they pass Agent Stern, who is just exiting his room, adjusting his tie. “Hi Stern!” Aubrey chirps at him.He blinks owlishly at her. “Hello, Miss Little.”“Probably a while.” Dani says, rounding the corner into the common area. “I’m strong.”Aubrey pats one of her biceps, appreciative. “I can tell.”“Welcome back to the land of the living!” Barclay says as Dani lightly sets her down in front of him.“Good to be back, Barclay.” She replies. “What’s for breakfast?”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Dr. Harris Bonkers, PHD, is just a regular old bunny. A white New Zealand rabbit, weighing in at 13 pounds which is a little chubby, with sleepy pink eyes and pink ears and a head like a cement mixer covered in cocaine. He likes to be scratched on the head and to be cuddled, both of which he frequently demands of people via headbutts and occasional gentle nips. He’s patient when Aubrey has to flip him onto his back and clip his toenails, and his favorite treats are baby carrots, banana slices, and dandelion leaves.Above all, he’s not particularly special. He’s extremely special to Aubrey, of course, but we know he’s just a rabbit. Because he’s only a bunny, he doesn’t remember things, such as the day when Aubrey picked him out. She’d been wanting a rabbit for a very long time - but Dad, if I’m going to be a magician, I need an assistant - and had spent months researching and setting up a portable enclosure and a carrier for after she left home. All that was left was the rabbit itself. She walks into her home town’s family owned pet store one afternoon with her mom, greeting the tired teenager behind the register, chatting quietly and making faces at the fish before moving onto the small animals.The sun is setting, pouring rich gold light in through the windows and onto the worn green carpeted floor, their voices barely audible over the burble of the fish tanks, chatter of birds, and the squeaking of mice on their wheels. Aubrey and her mother creep over to where there are three powder puffs of rabbits, grooming each other in a little pen and glowing a vivid white in the sun.Aubrey gives a quick, nervous glance back towards where the cashier is, just out of sight, wondering if he might come back to check on them. He won’t, which is a little reckless of him, but he’s being paid $7.75 an hour and isn’t allowed to sit down. Besides, we know Aubrey and her mother won’t hurt anything. Aubrey kneels down next to the pen, her mother standing behind her to block out the sun.“Their names are Marzipan, Custard, and Nougat,” Aubrey’s mother read from the sign hanging above the cage. There’s two other names that have been blacked out and are unreadable, but used to say Meringue (Girl) and Buttercream (Boy). “Marzipan is the only girl.”Aubrey hummed in acknowledgement, sticking her hand into the enclosure. One of them pulls apart from the pile and sniffs her, then darts away. She reaches in and picks it up, gently, which it acquiesces to. There’s a tattoo in its ear to tell them apart. This one says WRM, and then either a very squiggly 5 or a sharp looking S. WRMS.Aubrey holds the future Dr. Harris Bonkers up to her mom. “Look in his ear,” she instructs.Her mother does. Her eyebrows furrow. “Worms?” She asks.“Worms,” Aubey agrees, nodding sagely.They learn soon after from the teenager that his tattoo reads WRM5, and that his name is Nougat. He doesn’t try to talk them out of their pick, but he does mention that Marzipan is slightly nicer. On their way home, with Dr. Harris Bonkers - heretofore Nougat - on Aubrey’s lap in his carrier, they both conspire to tell her father that the 5 is an S. It’s just funnier that way, they agree.When Aubrey thinks about her mom, as she often does, particularly when she’s lonely or wanting advice, she thinks of a variety of scenes. One of them is her mother in that pet store, holding a baby Doctor to her chest, limned in amber, her skin glowing bronze. She smiles gently, rubbing his soft ears between her fingers and pressing a kiss to his little baby head. She gives Aubrey a warm hug outside the pet shop, after. She smelled like her perfume, Ralph Lauren’s Magnolia, the scent rich and sharp and very much like home. Aubrey had broke down crying in the perfume section of a Macey’s once, after, and when she pulled herself together she sprayed down a sample paper and carefully sealed it in a plastic bag. It’s still in her backpack.Dr. Harris Bonkers doesn’t know the significance of the scent, being a rabbit, but he does always hop over to Aubrey and shove his face into her hands when he smells it. His owner always smells like distress when the little bag comes out, and that means she’ll be wanting cuddles.Bunnies also don’t have opinions on home environments that extend past “stressful” or “too small” or “boring”, but to the outside observer Amnesty Lodge is beautiful, charmingly rustic and practically glowing with natural lighting. The temperature inside is perfect, the beds are soft, the food’s always hot, the showers have wonderful pressure with water that never runs cold, and everything gleams in a way that screams elbow grease went into this cleaning effort. None of that matters to a rabbit. Dr. Bonkers doesn’t leave Aubrey’s room much anyways, not without a harness and leash on. He’ll be leaving it more later, but now, a week and a half after the water elemental, the Lodge isn’t rabbit-proofed and Aubrey still keeps her bags half-packed, ready to leave.It’s sunny Wednesday afternoon when we pan over Aubrey’s unmade bed, across her room, and zoom in on Dr. Harris Bonkers, PHD, sleeping on his side, stretched along one wall. We see him open his red eyes, roll over, and give a particularly hearty stretch, yawning and revealing his long front teeth. He licks his lips and washes his whiskers with his fluffy white front paws. He uses his litter-box, because he’s exceptionally well trained, chews on one of his applewood sticks, and then notices that the door of his owner’s room is open.Aubrey, on her way out that morning to go exploring with Jake Coolice and some other Lodge residents, hadn’t shut it properly, and over time the moving air of everyone exiting their own rooms had pulled it the rest of the way open.He holds the short twig in his mouth and cautiously pokes his head out of the door. Because he’s a prey animal, his eyes are located on either side of his face, making it so he doesn’t have to swivel his head as a human would to check both ways. He lingers there, for a moment, then hops out and bounds down the hall. He loops it like a racetrack twice, firing off a couple quick binkies, and then a door opens in front of him and he slows, stops. A tall, plain looking man in a suit steps out and looks around, lured by the noise of small feet scampering, before his eyes land on Dr. Bonkers by his feet. We would consider him to be blandly handsome, the sort of person one's eyes would land upon and cause them to think, huh, nice, and then they walk past him and promptly forget his entire existence. A typical, forgettable, carbon copy white guy. Sexily boring. The sneaky type of frat boy, one who definitely has a family crest tattoo. The Doctor thinks of him as both larger and pinker than his owner, and not smelling of hidden baby carrots.Agent Stern, FBI, looks down at this rabbit - who is roughly the size of a large cat - which has suddenly appeared. His eyebrows furrow, and he looks around for anyone nearby. There’s Dani’s door at the other end of the hall, which is open, but she typically has headphones on, plugged into a portable CD player the likes of which he hasn’t seen since his childhood. Aubrey’s is cracked, but he knows she left earlier. The rabbit blinks up at him. It has a stick in its mouth.“You’re a rabbit,” Stern tells it, as if the rabbit doesn’t know. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out an iPhone and takes a photo of it. He seems disappointed when he looks at the result - he’d been hoping it wouldn’t show up or it’d show up wrong, and finally he’d have something to rub in his coworkers faces. Unfortunately, it seems to just be a regular rabbit. With extraordinarily creepy bright red eyes. It has just dropped the stick in its mouth at his feet. Stern frowns and picks it up, turns it over in his hands, notes how it’s been chewed at either end. He thinks of the Monty Python movie, which is unfortunate, because he thinks that if he becomes afraid of this animal - which is absolutely of a punt-able size and shape - he might have to turn in his badge and gun, regardless of how dreadful looking those red eyes are.“Do you… fetch?” He asks it. It, in typical rabbit fashion, doesn’t answer. “I’ve never had a pet. I certainly have never had a rabbit. I don’t know what you want.”Terrifyingly, the rabbit stands up onto its hind legs in response. Stern takes a step backwards, alarmed, then realizes with dismay what he’s done. He slowly lowers the stick back towards it, his fingers holding as far away from where the rabbit can get to as possible. It leans to grab it back from him, overbalances, and falls back to a safer way of life, on all fours.“So, fetch then, yes?” Stern says, and then tosses the stick down the hall towards the stairs. The horrible creature doesn’t move, and he realizes that he just tried to play fetch with a rabbit. He about faces and shuts the door, locking it for good measure.We see Dr. Bonkers turn and lope down the hall towards Dani’s room, because he can smell green things growing in there. We cut to Stern just in time to watch him write down “research rabbit use in cult activity” in a little notebook before visibly giving up and chucking it against the wall with a small thud, throwing himself onto his neatly made bed and groaning into his pillows.Out in the hall, Dr. Bonkers hops into Dani’s room. We can tell that it’s a nice room, much bigger than the one they set Agent Stern up in, facing the side of the Lodge that gets the most light. Dani has it decorated with tapestries depicting lush forests, white fairy lights strung across her ceiling, her walls painted a soft pear green. She’s using her room as a greenhouse, a humidifier going in one of the corners. Dani herself is sitting at her desk, studiously tracing something on a light board. She has massive headphones on. We see her as a beautiful, chubby girl with long bleach blonde hair, a little bit of a hippie but in a culturally respectful way that most hippies miss the mark on. Dr. Bonkers sees her as pinker, much smaller, and much rounder than his owner.She doesn’t notice him, and we follow him as he snuffles at a variety of potted plants that crowd her room. They’re all up a little too high for him to get a mouthful of leaves, so he wanders over to where her bare feet are hooked up over the bars connecting the legs of her chair, and headbutts her in the calf, hoping for attention.Dani yelps in surprise, scaring him, her hand jerking and sending her pen flying, and he bolts out of the room.We follow him as he hesitates for a moment at the top of the stairs, having hopped straight past his stick, and then he slowly makes his way down them. He slips a little on the hardwood floors of the ground level, and we pull away to look over the main room of the Lodge. There’s some people there, although most are out on a nature walk. There’s two people playing a very heated game on a chessboard, one that doesn’t appear to follow the rules of chess. As we watch, one tries to stack a pawn and a rook on top of each other as the other player begins to sweat nervously. Moira is sitting delicately on the window seat near her piano, reading a thick book about the CIA. When we pan over her shoulder, we can see that she is actually reading a much smaller graphic novel behind it.Barclay is crocheting a hat beside the fireplace as he waits for his bread to finish up in the oven. We see him as a man who perfectly fits the description of tall, dark, and handsome, with long, loosely curly hair up in a bun. He’s got legs like tree trunks, hairy arms corded with muscle, massive shoulders that strain his flannel, and a soft belly. He’s the sort of man you see in a coffee shop and take creep photos of to share with your friends. The sort of man you fall in love with for an entire day. The sort of man who looks like his shits smell like old spice. Dr. Bonkers sees him as bigger than his owner, and frequently smelling of vegetables. Dr. Bonkers hops over to him and goes up onto his hind legs to place both paws onto Barclay’s knee.“Hm?” Barclay says, scowling slightly at his work as he realizes he grabbed the wrong sized hook and needs to start over. He looks down at Dr. Bonkers and his mouth opens in surprise. “Oh!” He says. “Hello!”As a bunny, Dr. Bonkers says nothing. Barclay puts his project aside and reaches down to pet him.“You’re Aubrey’s rabbit, aren’t you?” He asks. “Harris Bonkers, correct?” Dr Bonkers shoves his head further into Barclay’s meat shovel hands. Dr. Bonkers is by no means a small rabbit, but we know what they say about big feet. Big hands. Barclay’s hand almost covers his back entirely.“Oh, so sorry, you’re right,” Barclay says. “Doctor Harris Bonkers, PhD. How could I forget. Your mom only tells me it every day.” He cautiously reaches down and scoops Dr. Bonkers up, one hand on his belly, the other cupping his hind end, and settles him down into his lap. Dr. Bonkers responds by headbutting Barclay in the stomach and then sitting down. “You studied at Vassar. Very accomplished for, what, a three year old? You should be proud,” Barclay tells him. Dr. Bonkers does not reply.They stay like that for a while, Barclay absently stroking the Doctor’s back as he stares off into the middle distance, doing mental arithmetic on bills, what food items they’re running low on, how stocked they are when it comes to toilet paper. There’s a concept on Earth of a farm wife, one that he’d learned about on his travels cross-country. The farmer himself is beholden of the property title and tends the crops and animals, ostensibly in charge, but the farm wife is the one who turns the profit, pays the bills, organizes everything. Without her, the animals and the land and the crops wouldn’t exist, a puppeteer of sorts. Barclay had never intended to be a farm anything, let alone a wife, but he’s found himself in that role through some strange turn of fate. Mama has the money, bless her, but not the skills to keep the farm - or hotel, or home for exiled aliens from outer space - operating.Barclay smells bread that is becoming a little bit too baked, and realizes he’d forgotten to set a timer when he placed the bread in the oven. He very quickly picks up Dr. Bonkers who he sets down onto the floor. “I’ll be right back,” he tells him, rushing off towards the kitchen, “Stay right there.”Dr. Bonkers, being a rabbit, doesn’t do things like listen to orders. He hops off to explore, heading down the hallway towards Mama’s office door, which is cracked open ever so slightly.We follow Barclay, who rescues his bread with no small measure of relief. The Lodge kitchen has a few ovens - it needs to, what with how many people there are to cook meals for - so Barclay now has four loaves of sourdough, slightly more browned than he would like, but serviceable. He slumps back against the cool granite countertops and over-dramatically wipes the metaphorical sweat off his forehead with a loud, “whew!” He dutifully sets to tidying up the already clean kitchen, slipping his oven mitts (tan, patterned with a six armed man standing in front of a grill wielding a variety of utensils - I’ll feed all you fuckers, they read) into their respective drawer, the loaves cooling on their racks.Dr. Bonkers is by now up to something more interesting than what Barclay is doing, and because we can only watch a man wipe down a counter for so long - no matter how handsome he is, or how beautiful his butt is when he bends over - we cut away and back to our favorite rabbit.Mama’s office has survived her moving back into it, mostly because she’s not been mobile enough to thoroughly dishevel Barclay’s cleaning efforts. She hasn’t even complained about it yet, not beyond a single plaintive, but Barclay, my piles, which made him incredibly nervous. One time he had tried to sneak into her office to clean it, just a few months before she’d brought Aubrey back to the Lodge. She’d been waiting inside with a baseball bat. They both blinked at each other for a moment, because it was gone midnight and Barclay had just flicked the lights on. Then Mama, without breaking eye contact, used the end of the bat to slowly push one of her desk piles onto the floor, sending papers flying everywhere. Barclay had slowly backed out of the room and shut the door, grimacing.Due to this reorganization, Dr. Bonkers finds nothing to put into his mouth upon entering her office. Mama is in there currently, her head down on her desk. We watch him hop around, sniffing, his nose wiggling up and down, whiskers twitching. On her desk Mama has Thacker’s open notebook pushed halfway off the desk, and a bottle of painkillers next to a glass of water, untouched. She’s not sleeping, although to the casual observer she certainly seems to be. When we zoom in on her we find her shoulders are stiff and tight, jaw clenched, her foot stretched out in front of her like it’s hurting.We see Mama as an intimidating older woman, her thick curly dark hair frosting over grey. Her features are strong, sharp, square jawed with thick brows and a lightly scarred face that looks like it was made for smiling. She’s beautiful, handsome even. She’s wearing a sweatshirt and loose jeans, but one can still see her muscles beneath it. Dr. Bonkers sees her as slightly browner than his owner, much bigger, and smelling of wood.She looks up when Dr. Bonkers reaches up to inspect her leather duster, hanging on a coat rack, his paws slipping off of it with a whisper of a noise. Her eyes are, perhaps, a little more shiny than usual. She scans the room, her hand automatically going to the knife clipped to her belt, still keyed up from her time in Sylvain. She relaxes when she spots our Doctor, but does squint at him, puzzled. She watches him explore her office for a few minutes, smiling a little when he starts rubbing his chin on various pieces of furniture to mark them as his own. She puts an elbow up on her desk, resting a cheek in her hand, and then her gaze falls back onto Thacker’s journal and her expression darkens, mouth twisting into a bitter frown.We see the inside of Thacker’s book, where he’s written the word balance, over and over, carved in deep graphite lines spanning across both pages, petering off into unintelligible scrawling, then reverting suddenly back to normal handwriting, mid sentence.
have not discovered the source of the Quell, as the Sylvans call it, but I feel as though I am getting closer -
Mama shuts the book with a frustrated snap, her shoulders slowly rising up around her ears. She’s grinding her teeth, digging her blunt fingernails into her palms, her breaths coming in faster, shallower. I should shut the door, she thinks, cold sweat forming on her bruised temples, and pushes her chair back to stand up, right as Dr. Bonkers launches himself up off the floor and directly into her lap.She looks down at him, startled, hands hovering mid air above him. He raises up onto his hind legs to try and shove his cheese wedge of a head into her fingers, demanding pets. Mama tries to reboot her brain, having been startled out of her oncoming panic attack. Dr. Bonkers, not receiving the attention he demands, reaches up to put his front paws on her chest and jam his face right into hers. Mama splutters for a moment, now having rabbit fur in her slightly open mouth, and then slowly lowers her hands to stroke down Dr. Bonkers’ back.“Quite a bold little thing, aren’cha?” Mama asks, her voice rough. She clears her throat. “You’re Aubrey’s little friend, yeah? Dr. Bonkers? What are you doing out here, huh? Ain’t she with Jake?” She pets him in silence for a few minutes, feeling her heart rate drop back into a range that wouldn’t make her real, human doctor shake his head at her and preach about stress and cholesterol for fifteen minutes. She doesn’t have time not to be stressed. She’ll stop being stressed when she’s dead. Dr. Bonkers shuffles his body up her own until she has to cradle him to keep him from falling down. He rests his head on her shoulder and starts clicking his teeth together, so quiet she doesn’t think she’d hear it if it wasn’t happening in her ear. We can see that his eyes are shut, his ears slowly drooping.“Did you escape?” She asks him quietly. “You better not have chewed through any lamp cords. We need those.” She presses her nose into his fur and inhales. He smells like animal, predictably, with a little hint of hay and dust. “I should go put you back,” she says. She doesn’t move.Barclay comes in a few minutes later, pushing her door open the rest of the way. “Knock, knock,” He says, rather than knocking with his hands. Mama doesn’t look up at him.“Howdy,” she replies, her face still pressed into Dr. Bonkers’ back.“Ah, that’s where he went,” Barclay says, crossing the room to lean his hip against her desk next to her. He frowns at the untouched water and pills. “I was about to issue a rabbit AMBER alert.”“He come visit you too?” Mama mumbles.“Yep,” Barclay replies, reaching out to put a hand on Mama’s shoulder that doesn’t currently have a rabbit on it and massages it gently. “Came and put his paws up on my knee, demanded my love be delivered to him right then and there. Christ, Mama,” he says, “Your back is like a bag of rocks.”Mama hums in response, and then grunts when Barclay’s fingers stumble across their first muscle knot and start working in on it. “I need to go put him back, Aubrey’ll be worried if she comes back and he’s not there.”“I’ll do it,” Barclay says, “You shouldn’t do stairs.”“Barclay, I’ve got a busted ankle, I ain’t dead.” Mama says, looking up at him. She’s finding that she’s very reluctant to relinquish Dr. Bonkers to somebody else. He’s very warm against her, and she’s beginning to realize that it’s been a hot minute since she’s touched anybody. Beyond knocking out whatever is left of Thacker and hauling his unconscious body through the gate, that is. “I’ll bring him up.”We watch Barclay consider his options, and then relent. “Fine,” He says, “But take your meds first.”Mama sighs, then does so, making sure to show Barclay that she hasn’t hidden it under her tongue or something, which is gross, Mama, stop, good lord, I didn’t ask you to do that! And use your crutches, he tells her, which she ignores.There’s no one around to notice when she has to stop and breathe at the top of the stairs, hissing out the pain between her teeth. Dr. Bonkers has migrated on up to her shoulder, which is strange and uncomfortable and incredibly nerve wracking. She doesn’t know how Aubrey lets him hang out there so casually, he’s too big for Mama’s shoulder, and hers are much broader than Aubrey’s. She keeps expecting him to fall.She enters Aubrey’s room and immediately sits down in the armchair in the corner, her ankle loudly protesting being used. She definitely needs a cane or crutches. Dr. Bonkers hops back down to her lap, and Mama looks around. She’s struck, suddenly, by how hotel-like the room feels. Nothing of Aubrey is anywhere, really. Sure, her bed is unmade and there’s a bra on the floor, and Dr. Bonkers has his hutch set up next to her bed, but it feels… sterile. Amnesty Lodge has never felt like a hotel to Mama, always home, and she’s made sure all the Sylvan inhabitants feel that way too. They paint their rooms, tack posters and pictures to the walls, reupholster furniture, buy new sheets, do everything to make it feel like a place of safety and stability, which all of the Sylphs need after being exiled. She hadn’t been there to do that with Aubrey.Mama scratches between Dr. Bonkers’ ears and spots Aubrey’s suitcase and backpack next to her bed. They look full. A bottle of conditioner sticks out of the water bottle holder in her backpack. Mama’s sure if she opened the closet and the drawers they’d be empty, if she looked in the bathroom there’d be a toothbrush on the sink, maybe, the shower scrubbed free of any washed away hair dye.“Well, shit,” Mama says, covering her mouth with one hand. “I fucked this right up, didn’t I?”Granted, she doesn’t know if this problem started with her. Normal people, folks with homes, don’t just hop in the truck of a stranger who’s just leveled a gun at them. Someone with another place to go doesn’t start living in a hotel full of, well. Mama doesn’t think of them as such, not anymore, not for a long time now, but they’re probably still monsters in Aubrey’s head. Kind ones, good ones, probably even cute ones, in Dani’s case. She’d seen how Aubrey had looked over at her on that first night. Mama herself has had that same expression plenty times about pretty girls and handsome boys. But still, monsters.Mama might not have started this problem, this way of living like a ghost, one foot perpetually out the door, but she knows she damn well didn’t help. But she knows she can.She kisses Dr. Bonkers on the head. “I’m sorry,” she tells him, “I didn’t do right by your owner. I’ll do better now.”Dr. Bonkers doesn’t respond. He’s only a rabbit, after all. Nothing particularly special, but extremely special to Aubrey. And pretty special to Mama now, too, who’s planning on how to set up the Lodge to be rabbit-friendly, plotting her next trip to Home Depot, trying to think of where her folder of paint chips might be. It’d been in her largest desk drawer, under the Largest Desk Drawer Pile, so who knows where Barclay’d hidden it during his ‘organization’ of her office. She’s got to make this place feel like home to Aubrey too.Mama puts Doctor Harris Bonkers, PHD, down on the floor, giving him a baby carrot out of her sweatshirt pocket, which he appreciates. She hobbles out of the room, shutting the door firmly behind her. She’s got some wrongs to make right.Mama looks down at her cast, feeling the throbbing in her ankle. Maybe she should make a cane first, though.“Barclay!” Mama calls, limping towards the stairs. “Where’d you put all my piles?”We see Barclay in the kitchen, starting in on dinner. He continues chopping some onion as he yells back, “In the filing cabinet! In alphabetical order! Which is how they’d better stay, Mama!”We pan out to watch Mama thump across the lobby behind him. “How in the hell am I supposed to find anything like that?” She grumps.“By learning the organizational system, which is very user friendly and easy to use!” Barclay responds cheerily, dumping the onion into a pan and starting in on some garlic, wiping his eyes on his shirtsleeve. “And start using the damn crutches the hospital gave you! I can hear that you aren’t!”Mama grumbles her way into her office, where we can hear her exaggeratedly throwing open cabinets and shutting them again, which makes Barclay smile down at his cooking. We cut to check in on Stern, who is dutifully writing “investigate piles” into his notebook, and then to Dr. Harris Bonkers, who has finished his carrot and is now asleep on Aubrey’s bed in a patch of sunlight. We see Dani’s door, now shut, and then pull back away from the lodge. Here, Aubrey and Jake and a few of the younger Lodge members had taken advantage of one of the last few warm days of the year to go on a nature walk. They’re on their way back now, just passing into the clearing surrounding the Lodge. We watch as Aubrey - clearly not for the first time - discreetly scoops up a handful of leaves and tries to shove them down the back of Jakes shirt, who dodges, squealing, and tries to rub his own handful of leaves into her hair. Barclay watches them out the kitchen window, sighing. Never a dull moment, he thinks, then opens a window to yell at them not to track leaf bits into the lodge, or he’ll make them both sweep the whole thing.It’s a peaceful sort of chaos.Aubrey files in with Jake later, having chased each other around the yard for a good long while, after shaking their jackets off outside, Jake bee-lining for the kitchen and Aubrey quickly jogging up the stairs after saying hello to Moira and Barclay. She frowns at Dani’s closed door, walks over, and raps on it gently. Sometimes it’s closed because she wants alone time, and other times she shuts it because she’s sad and isolating herself.“Yeah?” Dani calls.“It’s me,” Aubrey replies, then mentally kicks herself. It’s me who, exactly? She thinks, but then Dani throws open the door with a smile.“You’re back!” She says. “How was the walk? Y’all were gone -,” she glances at the clock, “- Wow, all day!”“It was great!” Aubrey says. “You doing okay? I know that like, sometimes you shut your door because you’re sad, and then with you not wanting to come with this morning... Sorry if this is crossing some boundary, but I thought I’d -,”Dani laughs. “No, no I’m good!” She says, leaning a hip against the doorframe. “I just have a big commission from someone I was working on and I wanted to try and get it done today. And then something like…” Dani pauses, pursing her lips and scrunching up her nose. “Touched my leg. Which was bad! I don’t think we have rats, but I’m gonna let Mama know later, just in case she has to set up traps again.”Aubrey thinks rats are wonderful when they’re pets, in cages, but cannot say the same for ones that roam wild. She went to New York City one time and saw one dragging a piece of pizza much, much larger than itself and it scarred her for life. She looks around as if she expects to see one popping out of a hole in the wall Tom and Jerry style.“Dinner’s ready!” Jake yells up the stairs. “Come get y’alls juice!”“Okay!” Dani replies. “Anyways, Aubrey, thanks for checking in on me, that was really sweet of you.” She reaches out and grabs Aubrey’s hand, tangling their fingers together. At this moment in time, we know that they’re not dating yet, so the gesture makes them both blush.“Hey,” Aubrey says, looking down at the chipped green polish on Dani’s fingernails, “I was wondering if -,”“Dani!” Jake shouts. “Aubrey! I said come and get y’alls juice!”“Coming!” Dani bellows back. “Why’d you have to show him that vine, huh?” She asks, quieter, laughing. “What were you gonna say?”Aubrey shakes her head, the moment gone. “Oh, nothing.”Mama squints at her from across the room all through dinner. Aubrey alternates between trying not to squirm in her seat under her gaze and trying not to melt when Dani reaches out and starts playing with her fingers, running her thumb along her knuckles and then freaking out when she discovers that Aubrey is double jointed, which distracts the whole room for a good long while as Aubrey does a variety of hand contortion.After helping Barclay wash the dishes, she heads upstairs and collapses face first into her bed.Dr. Bonkers leaps up onto her back.“Ugh,” Aubrey says, reaching a hand behind her to awkwardly pet him. “Hi Bonks. What did you get up to today?” She asks.Predictably, Dr. Bonkers, being a rabbit, says nothing.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Agent Stern has had to stay at a variety of places over the course of his life. His parents moved around a few times when he was a kid, they had a summer home in Maine, and his job sends him all over, so he’s seen quite a few corners of the country. His sister had rented out the hotel where Twin Peaks was filmed for her wedding, a move he still thinks was to spite him. It’s not a totally off-base deduction, given that when she told him about it she’d said I thought you’d enjoy it here. I mean, you became an FBI Agent because of Twin Peaks, right? And he’d said no I didn’t, and she’d gone of course, how could I have forgotten, it was the X-Files, all while smirking like a cartoon villain. Because Stern is an adult, and not a child, he had kindly not stepped on her foot or initiated a wrestling match (which he would have thoroughly thrashed her at for the first time in his life, because he’d just completed training when she’d made the announcement, and all his sister does for exercise now is yoga), and instead ignored her for the rest of the day. Or until their mother had popped him on the ass with a dish towel and told him to go make nice, anyways.It was, unfortunately, a very nice hotel, and fortunately, a very nice wedding with minimal mayhem. He only made his sister’s soon to be husband cry once, in a remarkable feat of restraint.Not all of the places he’s stayed have been pleasant. The US government does not often splurge on its trainees, people ranking below Supervisory Special Agent, or anyone who isn’t actively making easily identifiable, current problems disappear. Seeing as he works for UP, he spent a long while staying in a variety of pay-by-the-hour motels and sleeping in the barracks with sheets at least two other people had already slept on. But that was only while he worked his way up the ranks via the merciless grind of brown-nosing, never turning down extra work, being in the right place at the right time, and the occasional strategic application of softcore blackmail on fellow agents. No extreme blackmail, of course, he’s not suicidal, more… letting people in on the fact that he knows information. Of course he won’t tell anybody about your affair, but he will bring up promotions right after telling you he never would, just to… nudge folks in the right direction. Hardly even blackmail, honestly. It has not made him many friends, sure, but now he gets to stay in places like Amnesty Lodge. It’s a nice place, that does not have bed bugs, despite what the young woman (Audrey? Aubrey?) had told him. However, the niceties end with the food, scenery, and amenities, because Stern is fairly certain that this place houses a fucking cult. He doesn’t think so at first glance - there’s very little in the way of weirdness, but the evidence, when it stacks up over time, is damning. He writes it down in his notebook as it comes to him.Evidence:
Everyone here knows each other on a first name basis
There are exactly two cars in the driveway and many more guests than that
There is no bus system to explain how the guests got here
No new guests have arrived and none have left in the time that Stern has been staying here
All of the guests wear one item constantly - by itself this would not be concerning, and it did not make him raise an eyebrow until Aubrey started wearing sunglasses indoors 24/7, and then he began noticing it on everyone.
He appears to be the only one who is paying money for his room
Everyone here hates him. Usually there’s just one or two nuts per town, but this is a hotel full of them. He can clear a room in seconds just by walking into it and thinking ‘I am going to talk to someone in here.’ He’s aware that this is very petty of him. That's why he hasn’t sent this particular note to his long-suffering supervisor without extreme rephrasing.
The owner threatens him.
She was rather rude about it, and only subtle if you only listened to her half of the conversation and were blindfolded as to not see her body language or facial expressions
Her nickname is “Mama” and everyone genuinely calls her that regardless of their age or relationship to her. He refuses to do so, which no one has remarked upon.
He’s positive she's the leader, as she has no item.
She’s an artist, as it turns out, and he’s been of the opinion that all artists are either already cultists or a half step away from becoming one since his freshman year of college, when nobody in his required art credit would talk to him after he said he intended to be an FBI agent
The only ones with social media presences are the aforementioned owner and Aubrey
Aubrey has not posted on her social media since she arrived in Kepler
The rule board.
He doesn’t notice the rule board - although it's a wall painted with chalkboard paint, so it’s more a rule wall - at first. Not because it’s concealed or something, he just assumed that the rules of hotels could be condensed into be courteous and don’t dick around, and as such did not change from hotel to hotel. The first lines are rather normal, anyways. It’s not his fault he didn’t read it.It does come to his attention that it’s rather abnormal when he comes into the lobby from picking up his takeout one evening to see Barclay adding to it in white chalk. Stern reads it - it’s been edited at many points, and there’s multiple people’s handwriting in various levels of legibility, though most of it is in Barclay’s delicate print. AMNESTY LODGE RULES:- NO RUNNING BY THE HOT SPRINGS- NO BANISTER SLIDING- NO RUNNING IN THE LOBBY- KEEP COMMUNAL AREAS TIDY- CLEAN THE KITCHEN AFTER YOU USE IT- BARCLAY GETS TO PICK THE MUSIC WHILE CLEANING- EAT AT LEAST TWO MEALS A DAY, PREFERABLY THREE. I’M LOOKING AT YOU, MAMA.- TELL SOMEONE BEFORE YOU GO OUT PLEASE MY HEART CAN’T TAKE IT- NO SAYING THE WORD “BOOCHIE”- NO PLAYING THE SONG “THAT’S HOW I BEAT SHAQ”- NO STANDING ON THE TABLES- NO STANDING ON THE FRIDGE- NO PLANKING ANYWHERE IN ANY CONTEXT OTHER THAN LEGITIMATE EXERCISE!- NOBODY CAN PLAY ROSALINA ON MARIOKART (UNTIL CERTAIN PARTIES LEARN TO SHARE)- NO USING A SKATEBOARD OR A SCOOTER TO GRIND DOWN THE RAILINGS - NO SKATEBOARDING OR SCOOTERING ANYWHERE OTHER THAN OUTSIDE - NO ORDERING GINO’S MOZZARELLA STICKS AND NOT SHARING WITH MAMA- NO GIVING MAMA GINO’S MOZZARELLA STICKS (it gives her nasty gas and I can’t deal with it)- NO CINNAMON ROLLS (UNTIL CERTAIN PARTIES LEARN TO CONTROL THEMSELVES OR THREE YEARS FROM 9/20/2017)- (completely illegible scribbles)- NO YODELING AT NIGHT - NO YODELING AT ANY HOUR!- YOU HAVE TO LET MOIRA PLAY 1) WII FIT TRAINER IN SMASH 2) KING BOO IN MARIOKART. SERIOUSLY GUYS IM NOT FUCKING DEALING WITH THIS AGAIN I WILL BAN VIDEO GAMES AS A WHOLE DO NOT TEST ME- JAKE AND DANI ARE NOT ALLOWED IN THE KITCHEN TOGETHER BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 10PM AND 7AM UNSUPERVISED- !!!JAKE IS BANNED FROM COOKING!!!- BARCLAY RESERVES THE RIGHT TO BAN ANYONE FROM THE KITCHEN AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON!- ANYTHING TAKEN FROM THE COMMUNAL CLOSET MUST BE WASHED BEFORE BEING RETURNED!- BE KIND TO JAKE (｡•́︿•̀｡)- NOBODY IS ALLOWED ON THE ROOF UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES OTHER THAN MAMA OR BARCLAY OR MAMA!!- Help Barclay clean. This isn’t a rule I’m just asking. Please.- AUBREY IS BANNED FROM UNSUPERVISED KITCHEN TIME UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE- ABSOLUTELY NO HOT POCKETS ALLOWED ON THE PREMISES Barclay turns around, makes eye contact with Stern, and drops the chalk on the floor, where it breaks into three pieces. “Uh,” he says, eloquently. Aubrey is sitting off to the side, next to Dani and holding her terrible rabbit. She looks rather chagrined until she glances up, sees Stern, and immediately takes on the facial expression of someone who has just seen their mortal enemy whilst working retail, and will be forced to be nice to them. Dani… smiles. Allegedly. It feels a lot more like she’s baring her teeth.“Good evening,” Stern says. “Did something happen?”“No,” Barclay and Aubrey say at the same time.“Aubrey here microwaved something she shouldn’t’ve,” Madeline says from behind him, seconds before she claps him on the shoulder with one shovel of a hand, jostling him. She knows he hates it, and that’s why she keeps doing it. He ignores it. People only do things you hate to get a rise out of you, as he has learned by dealing with his sister over the years. The lack of rise he’s forced himself to give has yet to cause either of them to quit, but he’s still holding out hope.There is a distinct smell of rubbery, artificially flavored preservatives in the air, which is something he hasn’t smelled his entire time at Amnesty Lodge. “...Right,” Stern says. “Dani's never had a hot pocket!” Aubrey bursts out. “That’s a crime! I was righting a wrong!” Dani giggles, covering her mouth and leaning into Aubrey’s side.Barclay rubs his nose. “Aubrey, I’ve put in a lot of time, money, and effort to achieve and maintain the level of food snobbery we have going around here -,”“Let hot pockets into your foodie heart, Barclay!”“Hot pockets aren’t food, they’re nuclear waste!” “That Gino’s?” Madeline asks as they argue, gesturing to the paper bag he’s holding. She’s not been using her cane very often as of late, and hopefully will cease using it permanently soon. He’s ready to not have it ‘accidentally’ jab into the tops of his feet anymore.“No,” Stern says. It’s Gino’s. There are mozzarella sticks. He’s not sure which rule re: Gino’s to follow, but only the latter one is in Barclay’s handwriting, and seeing as he is the chef, Stern would like to stay on his good side.“Huh,” Madeline says, leering at his takeout in a way that makes him clutch it a little tighter, protectively.“You almost blew up the microwave!” Barclay continues, gesturing violently towards the kitchen.“Everybody forgets where they put forks sometimes!” Aubrey says.“C’mon Barclay,” Dani says, stroking Aubrey’s rabbit like its teeth aren’t terrifyingly long and its eyes aren’t blood red. “Jake’s done worse. Remember when he exploded an egg at three in the morning and we thought someone was shooting?”“Jake is banned from cooking for life!” Barclay says, exasperated.“Aubrey, no more hot pockets,” Madeline says, walking over to Barclay and slinging an arm around his massive shoulders. Stern is above average height for white American males ages 25-35 and is good at looming, and yet these two tower over him in a way he does not experience frequently (outside of his workplace). He does his best not to be intimidated by it, but he feels an undeniable sense of relief when they are far enough away that he can allow himself to pretend that they’re not the size of giants. “Banning them only makes me want them more,” Aubrey complains. Madeline raises her eyebrows at her, but she’s smiling. At no point in the argument has there been any real bite to anyone’s words, making it the most confusing fight Stern’s ever witnessed between people whose relationship should be the one between a hospitality worker and their guest. Aubrey grumbles something that makes Dani giggle again, then says “Okay, fine, no more hot pockets.”“And apologize to Barclay for the attempted murder of his microwave,” Madeline continues. “It’s not like I meant to,” Aubrey argues. “It’s a manslaughter charge at best.” she waves a hand like manslaughter charges are of the same level of criminal activity as jaywalking.Madeline taps her foot.Aubrey sighs. “Sorry about the completely accidental near destruction of the microwave that I totally noticed in time.”“Thank you,” Barclay says. Madeline departs with her customary slap on Barclay’s ass, which makes Stern wonder when exactly his life went so off the rails that he thinks of a public ass slap as customary. This time, Barclay rolls his eyes and slaps hers back as she walks away, making her stop and wolf whistle at him.“You need somethin’ from me, Barclay?” she asks, wiggling her eyebrows. Stern snaps a subtle photo of the rules and makes a strategic retreat up to his room as to not hear the conversation go any further.He shuts the door behind him just as he hears Aubrey and Dani come up the stairs. “.. Not a huge loss,” Dani is saying. He can tell she’s smiling from her voice alone and also statistical reasoning - if Dani is talking to Aubrey, she’s probably smiling. “Did you like it though?” Aubrey asks. “Uh,” Dani says, nervously, and then starts to laugh. “Not at all, I’m so sorry! It was like eating glue!” Aubrey laughs as they walk by his door. “If I’m being honest, I didn’t either,” she whispers, just barely loud enough for him to catch. “I remember them being really good when I was in high school, I dunno what happened.”They’re out of earshot before Stern can catch the next sentence. He sighs and sits down at his desk to boot up his laptop and email the photo of the rules to his supervisor. He eats his takeout, mozzarella sticks first. He has some odd paranoia that if he doesn’t scarf them down quickly like a dog with a stolen turkey leg, Madeline will drop out of the ceiling wearing a grappling harness and take them away from him before shooting him for not sharing. It’s really not bad food for a small town restaurant - his brother-in-law swears by hole in the wall Italian and Greek places, but Stern’s never gone to one. He generally prefers buildings that look like they could pass a health inspection, but his options are limited in Kepler. He has to rewrite his email multiple times before it stops sounding whiny. “I’m upset because nobody here likes me and I haven’t found Bigfoot yet because everyone is about as communicative as a brick wall due to aforementioned hatred of me” isn’t very becoming of an agent, and makes him sound like a 13 year old who moved and is having trouble fitting in at their new school. “I’m disappointed because my investigation has experienced multiple setbacks due to a lack of rapport between myself and the citizens of Kepler (mostly Madeline Cobb and her cohort) despite my best effort” is so much better. He attaches the photo of the rules and an aside of oh, I discovered this today, mind doing some research for me about them to see if there’s any cult connections? I would myself, but the internet in the radio quiet zone is, well, the internet in the radio quiet zone, before hitting send.The fact that the rules were in plain sight and he just hadn’t bothered to look at them for the months he’s been here goes unmentioned. Scullie won’t ever come to the lodge unless something catastrophic happens, given that they wouldn’t even haul their ass a state over for the weirdest sinkhole on earth, so what they don’t know can’t hurt them. Bigfoot would have to rampage through the town murdering folks to get them to pay attention at this point. They answer his emails to be polite, not out of any actual interest. They don’t think anything paranormal is real.Honestly, with the lack of forward movement in his case, Stern is starting to think Bigfoot might be a hoax as well. He rests his head down on his desk with a thunk. His computer bloops at him not even a minute later, and Stern looks up in shock. Scullie emailed him back without a 72 hour wait, which is a first.
what is boochie?
Sent from my iPhone
Rude, but Stern will take it over three days of radio silence (hah). I don’t know, Stern writes. I’ll look it up. He regrets looking it up.
the fuck is going on over there. as for cobb - have you tried directly telling her that she’s interfering with an investigation and to cut the shit?
Sent from my iPhone
It’s questions like this that remind Stern that not everyone has an older sister who is a demon from hell. He pulls out his headphones and listens to That’s How I Beat Shaq as he begins to compose a reply that will encompass why that’s a bad idea, without making him sound like 1) a coward, 2) an abused child, or 3) a doormat. He gets through the first thirty seconds of the song (after nearly a full minute of loading and buffering) before ripping his headphones out and staring at them in abject horror and betrayal. He can still hear it playing tinnily.Something hits the floor with a bang in the lobby, and someone yelps and curses loudly.“I told you to use your cane!” Barclay calls, his voice a mix of worry and exasperation. Boom, says Aaron Carter, I put it in the hoop like slam. “Christ,” Madeline calls back, “I’m gonna have to now! Jesus wept, that hurt!”Stern opens the top drawer of his desk and pulls out his metatarsal protectors to lace back into his shoes with a sigh, having foolishly taken them out a little while ago with Madeline using her cane less and less. This fucking place, he thinks. It’s like boom! shouts Carter, alight with tweenage excitement and screechier than an unoiled door hinge. I put it in the hoop like slam! Stern can already feel the song hooking into his brain to be stuck in his head forever. He puts his head back down on his desk. I swear that I'm telling you the facts! says Carter, and Stern considers crawling out the window to become Bigfoot himself. 'Cause that's how I beat Shaq!
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
As with most mornings, the smell of something cooking draws Aubrey out of her room bright and early. Or, out of Jake’s room. She’d fallen asleep in there last night with him and Dani after an intense game of slapjack devolved into something that was supposedly a pillow fight, but felt more like a potential snuff film. Jake stumbles down the stairs behind her, eyes shut, bouncing off the walls and the occasional potted plant that Aubrey has to deftly rescue, else they’ll face the wrath of both Dani and Barclay. The former for harm to her plants, and the latter for getting dirt on the floor. Dani’s still asleep, having generously been allowed to take the bed in exchange for not murdering the shit out of them both.
Aubrey had taken a second to look at Dani, with full intent to wake her up, but the sight of her wrapped up in Jake’s penguin printed sheets, her sleep shirt ridden up her soft stomach, had made Aubrey’s face flush an undoubtedly embarrassing shade of red. The best course of action was to flee
immediately
and allow Dani to wake up on her own time.
Jake thankfully peels open his eyes to go down the stairs, but shuts them again the second his feet hit the landing. Aubrey more or less drags him to the kitchen. She can hear Barclay and Mama chattering through the open door, which is
great.
Mama’s been sleeping - well, high school Aubrey would have called it a normal amount, but now-Aubrey is self aware enough to look back at her 16 year old self and say
that bitch was depressed!
Regardless, Mama’s been sleeping later than normal, frequently staying in bed until past 10 in the morning. Barclay brings her breakfast up to her and comes down a few minutes later looking like he’s folding all his emotions up and tucking them away to deal with later.
Aubrey steps into the kitchen to see Mama sitting on the counter, grinning into the bowl she’s whisking some batter in, her hair pulled back into a low ponytail.
“Hey,”
Aubrey says immediately, “Why does
Mama
get to sit on the counter?
I’m
not allowed to do that, this isn’t fair!”
“Life ain’t fair, kiddo,” Mama says. “I own the joint, I can sit wherever I please.”
Barclay turns to face Aubrey, smiling with fond exasperation. He opens his mouth to say something.
Aubrey screams in sheer shock.
The kitchen goes silent for a moment, and then the waffle iron beeps. Barclay pops it open and jimmies the waffles - perfectly browned and smelling good enough that they’d probably wake Aubrey from a coma - onto a plate, and then turns back to them.
“Aubrey -?!” Barclay starts, and then Jake, who has now opened his eyes, screams too.
Mama, who was looking at the two of them like a spooked horse, snaps out of it and starts cackling.
“Your face!” Jake shouts, horrified.
“Your face!”
Barclay rubs a hand over his jaw,
shorn of its thick beard,
and sighs heavily. “My face,” he agrees, taking the bowl from Mama and pouring the batter into the waffle iron.
“What did you
do?!”
Aubrey yelps.
“Shaved,” Barclay says. “That happens sometimes. Slipped with the trimmer and decided the whole mess had to go.” But that’s not all he did - now that Aubrey’s breaking through the shock of being able to
see his chin,
she can tell that his hair has been cut short too, the ends now brushing halfway down his neck rather than past his shoulders. He must have cut six or seven inches off. What’s left is shockingly curly rather than wavy, styled half up and half down - the top half french braided and the bottom tucked behind his ears with a few bobby pins.
Aubrey splutters wordlessly for a few seconds. Jake has clapped both his hands over his mouth.
“Neither of you are getting any waffles if you keep that up,” Barclay says, leaning back against the counter next to Mama and putting a hand on her knee.
“Now, don’t be mean to the kids, Barclay,” Mama says. “I just about screamed too -,”
“Is everything alright?” A voice asks from behind them. Aubrey and Jake swivel around at the same time to see Agent Stern standing in the doorway to the kitchen, clearly on high alert, practically vibrating with tension. He’s less
scary government spook
and more
huge nerd
when he’s wearing dark blue sweatpants, and a shirt that says BOSTON UNIVERSITY on it in huge letters, which is making her want to bully him for participating in college pride after leaving college. Not that she knows the etiquette on that sort of thing, she didn’t
go,
but if she wore one of her high school t-shirts now, even to sleep in, she’d want to punch herself in the face.
“Everything’s fine, thank you Agent,” Barclay says, his tone clipped.
“Barclay startled the kids, is all,” Mama says, “Sorry for wakin’ ya.”
“They
startled
me,”
Barclay says, but he’s smiling, so he’s not actually mad at them. “I shaved,” he explains.
“I can see that,” Stern says, blinking a little owlishly at them all. “It… looks nice?” he says, although it sounds more like a question than a statement.
“Thank you, Stern, your opinion was asked for and is greatly valued,” Mama says, in a tone that helpfully clarifies that she means neither of these things, making Barclay roll his eyes and gently cuff her on the back of the head. “As I was sayin’, I just about screamed too. Last time I saw your jawline was - Jesus wept, musta been what, nine or ten years ago now? Thacker was there.”
Aubrey’s eyes swing on reflex towards the wall between them and the cellar door, because she’d make a terrible spy. Granted, she sees Jake turn to look too, so she’s not alone.
Barclay laughs. ‘Right!” he says. “I forgot, good lord. He was mad because you wouldn’t let him grow a beard.”
“I’m going to go back to bed,” Stern says, mumbled like he’s not sure if he should address them or not. Barclay gives him a very halfhearted wave.
“It ain’t like I was the one not lettin’ him grow it, he can blame his damn hair follicles.” Mama grumbles, tugging once on the end of Barclay’s braid. “I just made him shave so he didn’t look like a mangy rat.”
“I believe you called him a child snatcher,” Barclay replies, smiling, the motion strange on his suddenly nude face. This is the most Aubrey has ever heard them talk about Thacker without devolving into a prickly, sad silence.
“‘S what he looked like!” Mama exclaims. “He called me a homophobe for that I think, so it all evens out in the end.” Barclay laughs. The waffle iron beeps again, and he opens it, then starts dividing them up onto plates.
“I forgot about that part!” Barclay says, chuckling. “That was when I learned h-,” he turns back to them and Aubrey, whose sense of object permanence is a little shot when she first wakes up, screams again, cutting him off. So does Jake. Barclay exhales heavily.
“Get out of my kitchen,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “No waffles for you two.”
“But - wait,” Jake says. “Did you make them with brown sugar?”
“Yes,” Barclay replies. “Brown sugar and love, your favorite, just how you like ‘em, and now you don’t get any, because you’re screaming at my face.”
“But -!” Jake immediately whines.
“Out!” Barclay says, flicking his hands at them. “Rude people don’t get my waffles!”
Dani, who is polite, and does not scream upon setting eyes on Barclay, very kindly gets waffles for Aubrey and Jake, who end up hungrily sulking in the back of the lobby.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Kepler, and by extension, Amnesty Lodge, is great, but
weird.
And not just because there’s vampires and werewolves and Bigfoot and life threatening abomi-
bom-boms
wandering about. Aubrey thinks she has a pretty good handle on that stuff! She can shoot fire out of her palms,
neat,
and her new buddy Ranger Rick the narc (is he a narc if the person he narcs to is himself?) has a talking sword, that’s fine, she can deal with that. She’s watched TV before.
It’s weird as in she’s never seen this level of absolute comfort in a hotel before,
ever.
And Aubrey’s stayed in a
lot
of hotels and motels in the past year she’s been on the road, so she thinks she would know when something’s odd. She’d missed it at first between the whole Monster Bear Trying To Kill Her thing and the whole
Yer A Wizard, Aubrey
thing, but it’s definitely there. Jake Coolice - who immediately and unfortunately began growing on her when she’d gotten back from the hospital a week ago and he’d walked up to her, said
gnarly stunts bro! Thanks for saving our bacon!
and gave her a fistbump - wanders downstairs at half past ten in the morning wearing a maroon velvet tracksuit and eye searingly yellow faux fur coat. Every piece of his outfit is
much
too big for him. He knocks out ‘shave and a haircut’ onto the kitchen door and yells wordlessly for a solid three seconds, then goes silent. Barclay opens the door and stares at him. Aubrey attempts to disappear behind her magazine
(National Geographic
- Water: There’s Plenty of it, Everywhere), not wanting to be there if Barclay is about to snap at him. He’d be quite right to, honestly, their posted breakfast hours end at 10:00, and there’s never any reason to scream in a public area. Unless there’s like, venomous snakes on the loose. Aubrey, wondering if there’s any dangerous snakes in West Virginia, reaches into her vest pocket for her phone before realizing that she’d left it up in her room, because there’s no signal or wifi here. She takes a deep breath and holds it until her flare of anger goes away. She thinks she woke up, as her father would say,
in a bit of a snit.
Instead of righteous frustration, Barclay holds open his arms, and Jake falls forward into his chest with the rustle of plastic hairs and a loud sigh. Aubrey watches them over the top of her magazine. Barclay winds up more or less holding Jake upright as he rapidly turns into a non-newtonian fluid, going noodly and loose-limbed as he generally drapes himself against whatever part of Barclay he can touch. Jake rubs his cheek against Barclay’s apron as Barclay ruffles his fluffy blonde hair, frowning down at him sympathetically.
Aubrey decides that some things are better left as unknowns. She can’t get deep in the weeds of the lodge’s idiosyncrasies, because she’s not staying. Not
permanently,
anyways. She’s got miles of open road in her future. Sure, she’s got a knack for this, but she’s going to be a
magician.
She’d left home to be a magician, and her mother is going to look down on her from heaven or wherever the fuck the afterlife is and see her name lit up in neon, see her act on stages in NYC and Las Vegas and LA and be
proud,
because Aubrey can acomplish whatever she puts her mind to, just like her mother always said.
No matter how many setbacks runs into, she’ll get there eventually. Aubrey left home a year later than she’d intended, because grief counseling, therapy, court dates, househunting, fighting multiple insurance companies, and six months of whacked out meds (sleep, anxiety, different sleep, she’s cool with just CBT and
without
Effexor, actually,
thankyouverymuch)
as she’d tried to claw her way to stability kind of got in the way, but she’d
left.
Aubrey scowls at the page she’s on as she reads the same sentence for the tenth time. If she can get out of
that,
she can get out of anything. Monster hunting, Kepler, and Amnesty Lodge is just… a detour. A bump in the road to stardom. There’s
gotta
be other human magic users out there, she’ll be gone as soon as they scrounge another one up.
She’s reading the same sentence for the fifteenth time trying to make it stick in her head when she notices Barclay shuffling over with a Jake shaped limpet attached to his side.
“Hey,” Barclay says quietly, gently peeling Jake off of his side. “Mind if Jake sits with you? He’s having A Day.” Somehow, she can hear the capitalizations in Barclay’s voice. His apron is a powder blue and ruffled around the edges.
Todays Menu: Eat It Or Starve,
it reads across the chest.
Aubrey wrestles her eyebrows back down from her hairline. “Sure,” she says, somewhat suspicious but mostly just confused. Barclay plonks Jake down onto the couch beside her - hideously plaid, overstuffed, probably the most comfortable thing she’s ever had the pleasure of sitting on, and a matching set with the armchair next to the fireplace, which is another oddity in and of itself. The only person she’s ever seen sitting in it was Mama, the night before they went after Yogi But Evil And From Hell, and since she’s left it’s been vacant, as if there was some sort of flashing sign saying something along the lines of MAMAS CHAIR TOUCH AND DIE!!!!!!!!! Aubrey thought about sitting in it, then wondered if death curses were a thing, and thought better of it. Better safe than sorry.
Jake, who is absolutely swimming in his coat, snuffles forlornly into the near blinding polyester.
“What do you want?” Barclay asks Jake kindly.
Jake grumbles for a few seconds, sinking deeper into the cushions. There’s a lot to sink into, so he could probably keep going for a while. “Eggos,” he declares, finally.
Barclay’s face spasms beneath his beard before settling back into its usual nervous, yet affable faint smile. “Of course,” he says.
“It’s August,” Aubrey tells Jake as Barclay walks back to the kitchen. “Why are you wearing a huge coat?”
“I’m having A Day,” Jake says quietly, as if that explains anything. Aubrey notices herself grinding her teeth and takes another deep breath, in through the nose and out through the mouth. Jake glances over at her. “You too, huh?”
“I’m fine,” she says. She reads the same fucking sentence again. The words become meaningless noise after the first one. Aubrey’s about to use her newfound magic to light the damn thing on fire when Jake speaks up again.
“It’s the lodge’s leisure suit,” he says.
Aubrey looks over at him and raises an eyebrow.
“If you’re having a bad day you can just go into the communal closet and pull out the leisure suit and everyone has to let you leisure and Barclay will feed you whatever you want. I usually just have eggos,” Jake explains. “But you can have whatever you want. Unless Barclay’s wearing it. Then Mama cooks, and you can have whatever she can make. But you can only wear the suit for two days in a row or else you have to go talk to Mama or Barclay about whatever’s up.”
Aubrey looks back at her magazine. “What if two people have a bad day at the same time?” she asks. “Hypothetically,” she continues, spotting the horribly sympathetic look Jake gives her out of the corner of her eye. “Because I’m fine.”
Jake carefully withdraws himself from the coat, stands up, and drapes it around her shoulders before sitting down again. It smells faintly of lavender, and the interior is a slippery blue satin that she can't help but run her fingertips over.
“I’m fine,” she says again, blandly.
Jake shrugs. “I was getting too hot anyways.” He picks at a loose thread in the cuff of his velvet sweatshirt and bites his lip.
The silence that follows sprints straight past
comfortable
and body slams into
awkward
like a WWE wrestler.
“This thing looks like somebody poached Big Bird’s mammalian cousin,” she grumbles, breaking the quiet, and Jake honks with laughter. Despite herself, Aubrey grins.
Barclay comes back with a small plate full of plain Eggo waffles, which he places on Jakes lap.
“You too, huh?” he asks Aubrey, folding his arms and shifting his weight to his right hip.
Aubrey, who is watching Jake munch down
dry, plain eggos
with no small amount of horror, says “Not even syrup? Powdered sugar? Anything?”
Jake wrinkles his nose at her and slumps into the corner of the couch, tucking his feet underneath himself. He’s wearing socks that have baby seals on them. “I’m
leisuring,”
he says. “You’re not allowed to judge me when I’m in the suit.”
Barclay chuckles, shrugging his shoulders as if to say
well, what can you do?
“Do you want anything, Aubrey?” he asks. “Since you’re wearing the coat and all.”
Aubrey looks at the magazine and very carefully does not attempt to read the words on the page. “I’m okay.”
“You sure?” Barclay asks, raising his eyebrows at her.
“Mm-hmm!” Aubrey says, feeling guilty just for existing. She’s not paying for her room here, so she doesn’t think she should ask for anything extra. Both Jake and Barclay frown at her. She looks at the National Geographic harder.
Barclay walks away after patting both her and Jake on their heads.
Aubrey puts the magazine down and tries to steal an eggo off of Jake’s plate. He smacks her on the wrist and commits to some industrial strength munching, using his feet to keep her back.
“I’ll let you have one if you play with my hair,” he says after he’s swallowed the last of his waffle. There are three left on the plate, which has been teetering dangerously on his lap during their thirty second battle.
Aubrey looks suspiciously at his hair, which is slightly crispy from being bleached. The roots are also blonde, just darker, honeyed.
“...Deal,” she says. Jake hands her an eggo and slumps onto his side until his head is in her lap. The waffle is… not as bad as she had expected it to be, but very dry and very bland. It’s fine. It’s all just fine. Jake hums softly as her fingernails scratch over his scalp - they’re getting long, she needs to cut them soon.
Barclay reappears moments after she’s finished chewing the last bite, holding an orange freezer pop, which he hands to her. The top piece of plastic has already been cut off, and it’s wrapped in a paper towel. Aubrey looks down at it, back up at him, and down again.
“How did you know orange was my favorite?” she asks.
“Everybody likes orange,” Barclay says with a shrug.
“Not Mama,” Jake mutters through a mouth of sugary carbohydrates. “She says grape is better.”
“Mama only tells you that so you don’t feel bad for taking the last one,” Barclay says. “She hates grape just like everyone else.”
Jake looks up at him in horror. “But she eats them!”
“I once saw Mama cut the mold off a piece of bread and microwave it because her toaster had broken and Th- our friend dared her to do it,” Barclay says. Aubrey does not miss his glance over his shoulder at her vacant chair. “Granted, she was forty and depressed and I don’t think she’d ever do it again, given the Gorp Wars -,” again, with audible capitals, “- But don’t underestimate what she’ll put in her mouth.”
“Grape isn’t
that
bad,” Aubrey says, sucking some of the juice out of her popsicle. The plastic bites into the corners of her mouth. Sure, it’s the worst flavor, but only because the others are so good.
“You are wrong,” Jake replies, and then grabs one of her hands and puts it back on his hair.
“Does West Virginia have any venomous snakes?” Aubrey asks.
“Timber rattlers and Copperheads,” Barclay says immediately. “They won’t bother you if you don’t bother them.”
“But really,
don’t
bother them,” Jake says. “I can confirm that copperhead bites feel very bad and not good at all.”
Aubrey looks down at him in alarm.
“Turns out you shouldn’t just grab random snakes with your bare hands,” Jake says sheepishly.
“You just grab
snakes?”
Aubrey asks. “You just
grab
them?”
“Yeah!” Jake exclaims. “No!” he corrects, when Barclay gives him a sharp look. “Not anymore! I learned my lesson!”
“And
you
sent me out into the woods
knowing
there’s snakes in there -,” Aubrey starts, pointing her freezer pop at Barclay, who puts his hands up.
“They don’t bother you if you don’t try and
grab them!”
Barclay says. “And they’re not that common!”
“They’re still out there!” Aubrey says. She wants to add something else, be funny and keep the levity going, but the rest of her words turn sour in her mouth, curdling on her tongue and never making their way past her teeth. She bites into her popsicle instead.
“Again,” Barclay says, “Just don’t grab them or stick your limbs into any bushes and you’ll be fine.” He starts to walk back towards the kitchen. “Holler if you need anything,” he says over his shoulder. “And don’t just sit around all day! Doing things helps!”
Aubrey grumbles wordlessly and sits back into the couch, kicking her feet up onto the coffee table. She accidentally pulls Jake’s hair a little when her fingers get stuck in a bleach-induced snarl. He hisses and whacks her on the knee with his fingertips.
“Sorry,” she says.
“‘S fine,” he mumbles.
There’s another few minutes of silence as Jake finishes his plain, dry waffles, and Aubrey eats her popsicle. She continues petting Jake’s hair. His haircut looks to have been an undercut, at one point or another, but has since grown out, edging into accidental mullet territory. It’s long enough up top to support two tiny french braids, which hold together mostly due to the damaged dryness of his hair.
“Do you not have
conditioner?”
Aubrey asks him. “Seriously, what is up with your hair?”
Jake cracks one eye open and shifts over onto his back to look up at her. “I have head and shoulders two in one -,”
“Never mind,” Aubrey says. “You’re hopeless.” It is not the right thing to say, and the air goes prickly around the two of them again. Aubrey casts around quickly for something to say.
“Maybe we can have like. A hair party,” she says quickly, “And I can teach you how to not do… this. To yourself.” She drums her fingers on his scalp.
“Sounds cool,” Jake says, a little absently. He’s playing with the cuff he has around his left wrist; Aubrey’s pretty sure it’s the thing that holds his disguise together. She’s gotten good at picking them out - when she’d first arrived at the lodge, they’d been innocuous, and her eyes would slide past them as though they weren’t there at all unless she really focused on looking at them. Now they stick out on the residents as if framed in neon, anklets, bracelets, necklaces, rings and earrings, Moira’s silver hairpin.
“What do you usually do when you’re having A Day?” Jake asks, breaking her out of her thoughts.
“I ignore it,” Aubrey replies. Jake huffs - his breath his hot against her wrist, which has fallen down onto his face as she relaxed further. She picks her arm up and moves it along the back of the couch, the only place she can put it without putting her hand on his chest, which would be weird, and she doesn’t want him to think of it as a come on, or something.
“That’s one way of doing it, I guess,” Jake says, a dubious note in his voice. “Usually I make Dani play with my hair and paint my nails, but she’s working on a commission right now and no one’s allowed to bother her under pain of death, or whatever. I go skateboarding sometimes too. Have you ever skateboarded?”
“I did when I was like, seven?” Aubrey says, screwing up her face as she tries to think of her experience with it. From what she remembers, she’d gotten pretty good at tricks 1-3: getting on skateboard (without falling), getting off skateboard (without falling), and rolling around slowly through the streets of the beachside village she and her parents had spent a few summers at when she was little (also without falling). “That’s a long time ago,” she continues. “I don’t know how you guys age, because sometimes Barclay says he’s six thousand years old even though he only looks fifty, but for us that’s a long time.”
“Barclay’s
not
six thousand,” Jake scoffs, but he doesn’t elaborate with a better number. “Wanna try again? It’s like riding a bike, you’ll be fine,” he says, sitting up, then standing up, and then extending a hand to help her off of the couch.
“What the hell,” Aubrey says, taking his hand. “Sure.”
It turns out that skateboarding is not like
riding a bike
in any sense of the word. For one, they do not have the same number of wheels, nor do you sit whilst riding a skateboard. For another, Aubrey does not pick it right back up again, and, overestimating her retained skill, hops onto Jake’s skateboard only to promptly eat shit. He helps her to her feet. She’s not hurt, or even rattled, because Jake had the foresight to loan her his knee and elbow pads, as well as some wrist guards that look like someone looked at a kevlar vest and thought, this would make a sick pair of fingerless gloves. She doesn’t think they were wrong, but Aubrey’s fashion sense is still, in some cases, stuck in the scene phase she had in middle school.
“So there’s… some issues,” Jake says, not unkindly.
“Uh huh,” she says.
“Like balance,” Jake continues, “And where to put your feet.”
Aubrey takes a deep breath, pushing down on her immediate instinct to go inside and hide in her room. She feels ridiculous, standing there in knee pads and a gigantic yellow coat that looks like someone swilled it in a vat of highlighter juice. Jake is wearing two different colored crocs and velvet, so she’s not alone in that, at the very least.
“I noticed,” she says, forcing herself to smile. “What’d I do wrong?”
“Well, first things first!” Jake says. “Are you a uh,” his nose wrinkles. “There’s like a hand thing? And one’s better?”
“I’m… left… handed?” Aubrey says. “Wait - do you guys not have that?”
“I don’t have hands!” Jake says, throwing the hands he very much has in the air. Aubrey cackles again. “I mean, I do
now,
but - ugh! Words!”
“If you didn’t have hands, does that mean you never had like, a secret handshake?” Aubrey asks. “That’s
sad,”
she says when Jake shakes his head. “Here, let’s just -,” she holds out a hand. “Whatever happens, happens.”
It ends up being simple - palm slap, back of hand slap, fist bump, and then, on instinct, Aubrey reaches out and gently hits her fingers against his cheek. No wind up, barely hard enough to feel, and Jake looks at her, wide-eyed, and does it back.
“If we hit each other,” he says, sounding genuinely excited, “We have to do it in front of Barclay.”
They have a few more practice runs at various strengths before getting back to skateboarding.
In the end, she does end up re-mastering skateboard tricks 1-3, cruising smoothly down the road in front of the lodge as Jake does a variety of complicated looking maneuvers that don’t seem like they should be possible without a ramp, or something of that sort. It does make her feel better, zipping along underneath the trees with the wind in her face, the soothing rumble of wheels on asphalt echoing around them. The coat is too heavy to flap in the breeze, but it does lift a little, like a parachute. She thinks she could probably get through a conversation without insulting anybody or feeling like she has to apologize for ever opening her mouth or daring to exist in public. Barclay calls them in for lunch via strategic application of sending Moira to shout at them to come inside.
“You have quite the yell for someone who doesn’t have any lungs,” Aubrey remarks as they walk inside.
“Thank you!” Moira says. She preens for a moment, smiling, before she seems to remember that she has an aura of
Being Above It All
to maintain and shuts it down. Aubrey has the leisure coat slung over her shoulder - it’s become too hot to wear it, even in the shade.
“Have you ever worn this?” Aubrey asks. Moira looks at the coat like it just insulted her mother.
“No,” she says. Aubrey is entirely unsurprised by this, given that she’s only ever seen Moira in long, floating skirts and elegantly cut pantsuits, draped in scarves and linen and silk. Her color palette lends itself more towards neutral colors, with the occasional hint of periwinkle and sage. This neon shag rug of a coat would probably not be high on her list of things to wear. Nonetheless, Aubrey picks the coat up off her shoulder and holds it out to her.
“I… don’t…” Moira says, grimacing, “I don’t need it… I’m doing fine, thanks.”
Aubrey holds it out some more. Jake slows his jog up the driveway until he’s standing beside her. Aubrey looks over briefly and gets a glimpse of puppy-dog eyes the strength of which she’s never experienced before now. She looks away reflexively and frowns at Moira as well.
Moira purses her lips. A moment later she takes the coat off of Aubrey’s arm and puts it on in much the same way one would disarm a bomb: very carefully.
Barclay laughs upon seeing her, which Moira gracefully bears, staring off into the middle distance serenely, and then sweeps it off of her body in one smooth motion, levitating it back over to Aubrey before vanishing entirely on the spot.
“How’re you guys feeling?” Barclay asks. He’s holding a glass of water in one hand and a newspaper in the other.
“I’m okay,” Jake says. “Aubrey’s gettin’ pretty good at skateboarding again!”
“Hell yeah I am,” Aubrey says, and sticks her hand out to shake.
Barclay drops his water, and Aubrey almost laughs herself sick at the expression on his face, her cheek stinging. Barclay makes them both go eat lunch outside, out of his sight, as penance, but they can hear him laughing in the kitchen from their spot on the back porch.
It ends up being a pretty good day.