Topic: Perspective

Scotty · Date: 2009-10-31 14:15 EST

The difference between a cool, overcast morning and a beach blazed by the unchanging light of two suns was almost overpowering.

Rhy'Din felt and looked like fall; it felt and looked like a real place, all blowing leaves and half-bare trees and a chill wind under gray clouds. Rain, and fog, and the smell of the sea it bordered permeating everything.

The beach felt and looked like anything but a real place. It was familiar; you can't spend months in a place without it becoming familiar. But it didn't look like reality anymore, if it ever had to begin with. There was little real about an unchanging place, where the suns always shine and no fog rolls in off of an ocean seemingly tamed.

Where, despite being able to handwave whatever you might want into existence, you can't really leave. As cages went, it was a fine cage -- all needs cared for, no worries aside running afoul of the other denizens.

But it was still a cage.

Harold had gone to work this morning. Scotty had work Monday. An actual job. He was still some bowled over by that. And not only a job, but a job as a mechanic no less. A job where he could work with engines (albeit of a somewhat older style than he was used to), where he could fix things, where he could lose himself in connections and motion, doing what it seemed he'd been born to do.

So, after seeing Harold off to work, Scotty figured that he should likely go and pack up what they had left that they wanted to keep from the beach. He hadn't failed to note that the distortion that let them cross back and forth was getting further away on both sides, and harder to reach. He had to hike about two miles this time to find it -- mercifully it seemed to be a linear motion -- and then once he was back on the beach, he had to hike again to the house.

Honestly, he hadn't stopped too often to try to gain perspective on things. He'd come to the conclusion early on that trying to come up with theories was going to drive him to madness -- he was smart, be there no doubts, he could concept and design and that was on top of a mechanical aptitude that most people envied. But the beach defied any laws of physics or biology or even reality that he knew, and every time he tried to wrap his brain around it, all he ended up with was a headache. It was a wholly unfriendly place to anyone who liked having a concrete understanding of their universe.

Therefore he couldn't understand why, walking back to their little home, he suddenly felt so afraid to leave.

There was no dust settled when he came through the front door, but he still had to pause to grapple with... with everything. He expected Harold to come down out of that attic, but Harold was at work, one reality over thataway. He itched to go through a meticulously carved routine, from the fabric of an unreal place, that was his attempt to inject more reality into it. There, boots off. Into the kitchen for a glass of water, then start making dinner. If Harold wasn't hanging about the attic, he would be on the beach, and so when he came home, Scotty would have dinner made. He didn't like cooking for himself, but he really liked cooking for someone who appreciated it.

And while he was making dinner, he'd have tea, and generally lose himself in the required focus to make a good meal.

After dinner, they might have a roll in the proverbial hay, or they might just sit and read side-by-side in bed, or they might go back out onto the beach to talk with the others there. Less likely the last one. It had been a long time, or at least it felt like, since the people out there felt real themselves. As though the very unreality of the beach had seeped into them, hollowed them out, and they became... this.

Whatever this was.

Scotty hadn't stopped often to try to gain perspective. He couldn't. His biggest problem was, though, that he didn't know if he hadn't stopped because there was simply no time to do so, or if it was because he was afraid of what he would find there if he did. What would the picture look like, if he stepped back and breathed and looked at the whole?

He had to literally keep himself from taking off his boots, and following that silly routine. Had to literally stop himself from calling up the ladder to the attic to see if Harold was there. Harold was at work. He had a job himself to go to Monday. He had an actual job, in a place with real weather, and aye, it had dragons and vampires and zombies and whatever else, but it was still more real than this.

He scrubbed a hand through his hair, looking around the house, just inside the door.

Looking around their home.

Scotty · Date: 2009-10-31 14:58 EST

The stoneware mugs were hand-thrown, glazed a messy-looking rusty brown that faded to blue, with speckles and little streaks of other colors; greens and violets mostly, some orange in with the rust. No two of them were alike, and Scotty adored those mugs. They had been in the cupboard, but he didn't know if he had put them there, or if they had always been there. Such was the nature of the beach. He railed against it -- he didn't like being handed anything by anyone -- but he still had an almost irrational fondness for those mugs.

There were six in all, and he had a favorite, which was the last one he stuffed with tissue and wrapped up. That one was a little more wild looking than the rest, and there was a flaw on the handle, a little bit of clay that hadn't been smoothed off quite right. When he was still trying to peel his eyes open before his morning coffee, he could find that mug by the flaw and touch alone.

He wasn't particularly prone to looking for meaning in things like Harold was, but in this place where all things were perfect, even Scotty couldn't miss why he was so attached to that damned stoneware mug.

He tried not to let himself think about what he was doing right now, and in his life, he had become an expert at not thinking about anything more than the rise and fall of his own breath when times were tough. His last stand was always that: His right to keep breathing and his sheer ferocity in defending that right.

He breathed now, but it wasn't quite so simple as it used to be.

Scotty was an expert in running, too. Not so much in the physical sense -- he could move fast when he had to, though he wasn't any sort of marathon type -- but in every other sense of the word. He'd been in enough bad places in his life that he knew what escape was. Either literally, or emotionally, or mentally. For most of that life, whenever he was otherwise trapped in a bad place, he retreated into mechanics and his own mind, a quiet child who was solemn most of the time and very good at becoming invisible. He could lose himself for hours in mechanics. Lose himself through his hands, through motion, through work.

But there was no where to run on the beach. And no machines that needed fixed.

He set the last mug in the carry on, then leaned on the counter and tried not to expect Harold to sneak in for a snuggle. That was another routine they'd built -- he would be cooking, or washing dishes, or whatever else, and Harold would do a fine job distracting him from it.

There was no where to run on the beach, and nothing that needed fixed, but somehow...

Somehow, despite the very unreality of it all, they managed to build something real here anyway.

Scotty leaned on the counter, dropping his head. Stared off well past the edge of it; through the floor, through the ground, through everything and into nothing. Wherever his focus was had nothing to do with the universe around him.

Breathed.

Scotty · Date: 2009-10-31 15:50 EST

Harold had drawn throughout the book for him, and it still made Scotty smile to flip through it. Marker work, over alien script, scrawled through margins with clovers and words, and plenty of meandering leaves and vines. Mostly in red. Both the color and the subject brought back good memories.

He had his own notebook, filled with rough, relatively unartistic sketches of trees and leaves and that, brought back to Harold after he'd gone exploring, looking for reality past the bounds of unreality. Into the pages, he pressed leaves to go with. He would go out to Harold's tree, at the side of their little house here, and pick more leaves to take with them.

With no where to run and nothing to fix, time had to be spent finding ways to keep occupied. For Scotty, he occupied himself in cooking or keeping house. Harold occupied himself with botany and art. And, naturally, they kept each other occupied as well.

Harold's tree was his own creation, a tree that was made up of parts of many trees. Willows and dogwoods and oaks and maples and a slew of trees he didn't even know the names of, but liked the looks of. It was one of the last things Harold had built here, out of the fabric of unreality. To Scotty, that tree looked beautiful and whimsical and sad, all at once.

When he picked over his own memories of this place, he found that those three feelings colored most of them right now.

The earliest days on the beach had been a sort of chaotic madness, and everything was still new and something to be fascinated with. And back then, Scotty didn't have a whole lot to do with anyone. He liked those people at a distance, but he wasn't a people-person. He much preferred to be alone, and so George had made him a hammock under his pier, where he could retreat away from the others. And that time was spent in theories or concepts, away from the rest.

Even as Scotty was picking leaves off of Harold's tree, he caught himself looking across the way at his pier. A pointless construct that served no purpose except that it was his, and under it hung a hammock that George had made for him. It was there because Scotty had lived under one like it for three days on Risa, before the beach, and had become deeply attached to that little spot. Enough so that going back aboard ship had filled him with dread. He knew he was attached to it, though, not because it was a home so much as an escape.

The pier here that mirrored it wasn't a home either. It had been something more like a den he could sneak back into and most everyone respected that space and gave it to him.

And George had made him a hammock to sleep in.

Beyond the pier was where everyone met, had orgies, got drunk, or lost themselves in woe. A long time ago, or so it seemed, there had been stories told and warm thoughts shared, and even despite himself, Scotty had been slowly drawn out of his den and into that warm circle. It never quite occurred to him, and still didn't, that eighteen was not all that old and that there was still a part of him that wanted the affection of family. He had rather thought, and still did, that so long as he was breathing he would be fine. But the stories told, and George, and Winnie -- once-and-future husband and wife -- had won him over regardless. There eventually came one night when he fell asleep snuggled up in Winnie's arms, and it was one of the first times since his earliest memories that he felt safe and warm and loved.

But then the stories stopped, and the reality bled out of them, and now there were bodies that looked like them but had lost whatever it was that had made them alive and warm and safe. And those bodies went through half-familiar motions, but something had slowly broken in them until they stopped caring. About each other, about themselves. They just lived in a holding pattern of unreality.

Scotty could understand machines, and he could fix them. But he couldn't fix the people he had loved.

He still missed them, but they had left him long ago.

Scotty · Date: 2009-10-31 20:56 EST

He'd claimed the house before he had gotten too deep into it with Harold, and so, it had been more his briefly than theirs. But that had been an extremely brief period. Even though they were still new to that whole relationship thing, they both craved stability, and the house became that.

Now he packed up Harold's knick-knacks and clothes, and his own. Carefully. An assortment of things they had gathered, rather like a proper couple, over this time they had been together. His dyes and brushes, Harold's markers. Both their PADDs -- even though Rhy'Din didn't have a network, the split-dilithium batteries would keep those running for a long time, and they'd be able to communicate within a couple miles of each other. He made sure to download as much an assortment of knowledge as he could before he packed them, too.

The sand-dollars, the shells, the dried leaves Harold had given him. A slew of things. He'd be lugging back quite a bit on his own, while Harold was at work.

If someone would have asked him even six months ago whether or not he would be engaged to a male, he would have looked bemused. One, because he preferred the ladies. And two, because romance was often the last thing on Scotty's mind. He was far too intent upon Starfleet, and getting as far away from Earth as he could. Another escape. The best he did was catch himself staring at a pair of long, shapely, female legs, then write off the prospect of a date. Mostly because he just wasn't able to screw up the nerve enough to ask for one.

It had rather taken him aback that Seeker had to reassure Harold that people 'like them' were all right at the Red Dragon Inn. Scotty had still been trying to process everything, and therefore had missed most of it, but when 'like them' came up, he'd asked, "Terrans?" Because, well, there were still some cultures that didn't care much for humanity. You wouldn't likely find open arms with a Klingon, after all.

Turned out that Seeker meant 'like them' to mean 'same gender couples.'

For his part, Scotty couldn't even fathom that being an issue. Where and when he came from, people didn't even really pay attention to that sort of thing. Hell, where and when he came from, there were plenty of beings that didn't even have a gender. He preferred females, or at least, he certainly liked looking at females... but it hadn't been any sort of shock or anything when Harold expressed an interest.

Of course, he had turned Harold down. Not because he was a guy, but just because he was messed up at the time.

It was a frustrating time. Scotty was watching his only friend self-destructing in a fiery ball of devastation, and he couldn't seem to do anything about it. But between the booze, and the rampant sex with anything with a pulse, Harold professed that he had a thing for Scotty.

Scotty professed right back -- in retrospect, maybe a bit too sharply -- that he had standards. And that Harold Lee didn't meet them. Of course, he regretted saying it that way. It wasn't how you treated a friend, especially one who was in an emotional spiral downwards, crashing and burning.

"I'm all or nothin'," he had finally said. And he meant it. He had standards, and no matter how little he knew about romance, he had expectations. He never fooled around with anyone on that beach, or even before that on the ship, because he refused to throw himself out there for something less than real, less than love, less than worthwhile.

He said it, and Harold Lee set about proving himself worth it.

Scotty had never had anyone do that for him before. It was a little unnerving, really, that Harold took his words seriously enough that he turned almost a clear 180; stopped falling into the sack with whoever pretended to want him, stopped treating himself like he was worthless. Not to say that it was easy. Even now, Scotty took whatever chance he could to remind Harold of just how much he was worth, either by deed or word or touch; he knew how hard that struggle had been.

Harold had always been worthwhile. But it wasn't until Scotty decreed his standard, and Harold decided he wanted something more, that Harold started fighting to believe it and act it himself.

And Harold had done it for him.

Not for a guarantee. Not for a promise. Just for a chance.

If anyone would have told Scotty six months ago that he would be packing up his fiance's clothes, and his own, he would have probably laughed it off. Or shook his head and said, 'That's daft.' And yet, there he was, doing just that: Packing up their things, those things collected through an unlikely romance, so that they could go somewhere where they had a chance. No guarantees, nor promises, aside those they had made each other.

Apparently, those at the Red Dragon Inn were fine with people 'like them'.

He decided that 'like them' meant only one thing: Just Harold and Scotty.

Scotty · Date: 2009-10-31 22:19 EST

The carry-on was large, heavy and guaranteed to be less than fun to lug along across a universal boundary. His backpack was also loaded quite heavy. He grabbed everything he knew that they cared about on a deeply personal level, and their clothes, but that was it. Scotty figured that, if precedent held, it would be three or so more trips before it became almost impossible to make it from Rhy'Din, back to the beach and vice-versa. But he wanted to save those, in case Harold changed his mind.

Scotty stood only long enough to take in the house one more time, eyes unreadable, then set off across the sand, head down under the weight he was carrying. Aside Seeker's crayons, he'd also brought along a phaser for Tara. It rather took the sting out of leaving; he had a feeling she was going to get a kick out of it. He only hoped she didn't actually go vaporizing anyone with it -- he made sure to set it to 'light stun' as a default.

He set out, boots sinking into the sand, and didn't look back. Maybe three more trips. He wasn't necessarily saying a permanent good-bye. And Marley and Ayel were still back there, with his sorta-brother. Harold said he wanted to come back to the beach to get married.

He supposed that was fair. Harold had only asked for a chance, and he had only granted a chance. And despite the nature of unreality around them, what they built here on that chance was real, solid and theirs. It was something they both had to face a whole lot of fear and trust issues to get to, and they'd done so. Scotty wouldn't begrudge Harold a chance to come back.

He would miss their home, too. Their kitchen, their shower, their bed. It was only now, as he walked away after packing their things up, that he realized why he was so afraid.

This was the first home he'd ever really had.

It was in the middle of unreality. It was a cage. It would eventually kill him, too; not physically, but something else that mattered more than a body, because it was a cage. It was populated by people he loved, but had lost to things he couldn't fix like he could a machine. It was a place without real weather, or fall, or leaves.

But it was still the first home he'd had.

Scotty didn't look back. Left it open that they could come back here, to this beach in No Man's Land.

Ahead, after a hike, was Rhy'Din. A job. Harold, waiting. Fall leaves, and rain, and an Inn where people were still alive and vibrant. Hell, even the dragons, too.

Ahead, another chance. He would take it.