Fuck yeah, Treehouse!

Samir
A few weeks have passed since Sam teleported the couch he so lovingly made for Elijah into the apartment over Floral and Hardy. Its piercing presence has really tied the living room together. The Mercurial Elite does not have strong resonance and it has started to fade but the fact that it still stabs people when they sit on it for the first time has been a source of boundless amusement for the Hermetic apprentice.

Or Sam can assume. He gets text messages sometimes. He hasn't told Elijah where his ass moved to yet. Elijah wants to hang out today though and Sam doesn't want to fuck around with public transportation on a Saturday so Elijah has the distinction of being the first person to see the Mercurial Elite's new digs.

He had the previous distinction of being the first person to see the Mercurial Elite's studio apartment. It was fucking depressing.

So: Sam is squatting out by Russellville Gulch. It's thirty-three miles outside of Denver and another forty-six miles to Colorado Springs. His Airstream sits next to Cherry Creek which is dry as fuck this time of year and a path of trees stands sentinel in the distance. The state park is about a mile or so south of his location. In order to get to it Elijah has to engage in some minor trespassing and then some minor hiking.

The Airstream does not have a deck. There are a couple of lawn chairs and a table with an umbrella where he can set his laptop. That piercing quality is everywhere. If Elijah weren't actively looking for him and invited on top of that it's likely he never would have found the fucking place.

Sam looks a bit grubby but not unwashed. More like he's been camping for three weeks straight. He hasn't shaved his face in a while and his already brown skin has grown darker from being outside so much. Of course he's wearing sunglasses. It's sunny and gorgeous outside today. A slight haze from the west but that's to be expected.

As Elijah approaches the plot the other man abandons whatever the fuck he was doing to tramp away from the creek and greet him.

"Sup," he says.

Elijah
And it is. It really, really is because it looks so comfortable, and it is comfortable, once you get over the fact that you are going to sit on the couch, get stabbed, and then settle into a false sense of security not knowing if it'll happen again. It's like sitting on a sedative that makes Elijah's living room actually look pretty nice. Samir has a good taste in sofas when he's randomly making things for Elijah to sit on.

He concludes that he likes where Samir lives, even before he's seen the place, namely because of the lengths it takes to actually get there. It involves hiking (which he enjoys) and tresspassing (which is an endless source of amusement for him). He hasn't illegally been on private property since he broke into Elitch Gardens. Jumped the fence and said it was all in the name of transcendence or whatever was going on with that ghost girl who fell over the railing a few years back.

He was actively looking for Samir and he still got lost, ended up standing in a field for awhile while he yelled "I give up, Saaaaaaaaam, come get meeeeeeeeee."

Eventually he did find it though.

A little dirty but he doesn't seem to care.

"You have a fucking creek!"

Samir
"I mean..."

Looks a bit strange standing there in his wine-colored shit-kicker boots and black jeans with all that nature behind him. At least he's not wearing a jacket for the first time that Elijah can recall. In a t-shirt that shows off his nerd physique he looks like a kid who's been dragged out here for rehabilitation on a court order and not someone who chose this for whatever fucked-up enlightenment purposes he's concocted.

Sam turns to look at the creek. In the springtime it may burble. Right now it's still.

"It's not really mine, I just kind of look at it." He turns back to Elijah and then hikes a thumb at the trailer like to portend his impending disappearance. "You want a drink?"

Elijah
Does he want a drink?
"Yeah, whatcha got? I'll go for anything carbonated or anything above forty proof," he tells Sam.

It's pretty weird, though. He looks at Sam again, then at the creek- which Elijah is actually pretty content to let it stay over there. He eyes it cautiously, like he's still trying to figure out how deep it is. Concludes that he probably won't drown in it unless Samir beats him over the head with something or if he gets really drunk and just passes out face down in still water.

All things considered, Elijah concludes that would be a shitty way for his story to end. Yep, the creek stays right over there.

He meanders to the trailer.

"You don't have a deck," he announces, like this is a travesty.


Samir
"Am I supposed to?"

The inside of the trailer appears to have been decorated by a housewife with too much time and money. It's bright and clean but the curtains are tacky and all of the appliances are older than both the young men put together. A queen-sized bed takes up the entirety of the space to the far end of the trailer but it's a step up from an air mattress. Books and electronic equipment occupies every inch of storage space the trailer offers and then spills into the area under the bed frame.

Though the trailer has a space for a shower that would involve having access to running water. Which he doesn't. Yet.

Sam rifles around in the mini fridge for a few moments and then pulls out a can of off-brand citrus-flavored caffeine explosion. No alcohol. That's going to require some reality hacking. He offers a can to Elijah and cracks open one of his own before herding him back outside.

Elijah
"Dude. It's a trailer. You live in the middle of nature. Having a deck is required," he says, "plus it makes you way less likely to step out and fall flat on your face. It's a thing."

He looks around, doesn't touch anything until he has the off-brand soda in his hand and something about that makes him grin with absolute delight. Takes a long drink and bites back the aftertaste of Not Mountain Dew.

Samir
Their seating options are limited to the two lawn chairs underneath the patio umbrella and the ground. Sam is pushing it even living out here in the first place. He does not choose to sit on the ground. He sits his ass down in the lawn chair and watches Elijah's reaction to the drink.

"There's no high-fructose corn syrup in this shit," he says offhand. "Hope you like Mexican sugar."

Back to the matter of the deck:

"Dude, I don't know shit about building shit. I could probably just write a deck into the trailer's code but I feel like that defeats the purpose of living in the middle of nature."

Elijah
Raises his can again- concludes that Samir does not fuck around when it comes to soda and, despite what the corn industry says, you can taste a difference between high fructose corn syrup and real sugar. He might have had a little too much too fast, and he covers his mouth for a second to mask what is a decidedly weak burp. Somewhere, someone taught him manners.

"My dad runs a construction company," Elijah starts, "and for awhile he'd figured working with him was cheaper than rehab. I actually have mad deck building skills... I can also put a roof on your house if you decide to build something that needs a freaking roof."

Because, you know, he could have had an office job and played it cool and probably slept with the girl who did all the accounting paperwork. Instead, Elijah spent a couple summers busting tail and getting high or drunk or whatever after work. So, it was like Elijah actually worked construction.

Samir
"Ugh. A house? I had enough trouble keeping that shithole apartment clean. This is a lot easier."

He says like he didn't spend half his time cleaning the place anyway. This may be the first time he's joked open about his illness in front of Elijah but then again there's a decent-sized difference between someone who cleans often because they are a type A personality and someone who cleans often out of compulsion.

Besides: Elijah has spent time on psych wards. He knows what nonfunctioning obsessives look like. Sam does not look like a nonfunctioning obsessive. He does however smell and sound a little bit like he's been doing bong rips all afternoon.

"Let me think about it."

Like if he acquiesces to Elijah helping him build a deck they might as well start picking out silverware sets.

Elijah
"You live in, like, a magical fucking woodland wonderland, Sam. Like a fucking boss."

Doesn't say a damned thing about the fact that the outdoors is freaking filthy because, yeah, they both definitely know that it's dirty. The fact that Sam, despite smelling like Elijah's early high school years, is living in the middle of a germ-filled mess of nature is pretty fucking impressive.

"Also, you can totally trade in my slave labor for other shit. You made me a couch, and it's been a fucking source of hours of entertainment."

Samir
Not only is it filthy but it's crawling with lifeforms that Sam has only ever encountered in wildlife documentaries and Wikipedia articles. It isn't anything that's ever interested him before now. Seeing the world that exists on the other side of the Gauntlet had an affect on his brain that he has been grappling with for a while.

Either that or going into Quiet really fucked him up. He did get attacked by the amalgam of two teenaged girls. He has been withdrawn since then but it's hard to tell whether he's more withdrawn than usual or if that's his typical state of being. For keeping each other alive as they had the two don't know each other very well. You need time for that.

"Really?" This about the couch. Something about that statement makes him laugh. "Well, shit. Glad I could be of service. Here's to the couch."

Toasting with green fizzie-drink cans. They are living the dream over here.

Elijah
Clinks the cans together and down the hatch it goes. Doesn't shotgun the thing because this is a soda that was made with actual sugar. You don't just guzzle this shit. Besides, Samir lives int he middle of the wilderness. Elijah didn't know what it was that Sam did in order to keep his trash consumption in check, but he's in Colorado. They have to keep this whole nature thing pristine or else he'll get deported.

Then it's back to swamplands and avoiding his parents. Thank you, no thank you.

"I've acquired this temporary-but-it's-looking-like-not-temporary room mate named Aidan? The apartment is full of fucking Katrina refugees, but anyway. Aidan. Dreamspeaker, or whatever the fuck they call themselves now-" Hermetic problems. Can't be fucked to figure out the tradition's new name "-spends a fucking hour investigating this thing because it doesn't behave like a normal couch. He sees things like a super animistic view of themselves, and apparently my loveseat broke his brain for, like, a day."

Samir
Okay. That's fucking funny. Sam doesn't exactly fall out of his chair laughing but it's clear that this guy doesn't encounter much that strikes him as novel anymore. He lives on the Internet. The fact that he hasn't checked Reddit in ten minutes is a bit of a stretch for him. But he does laugh at the mental image.

"Seriously?" Yes seriously. "That's awesome. Next time I come over I'll turn it into a sectional. He won't know what hit him."

Elijah
"Dude, we could finally retire the IKEA couch! Because, seriously, the next time some fucking Quaesitor comes and sits in my living room I want a mildly pokey couch as a fucking even playing field."

Samir
"The fuck did you have a Quaesitor in your living room for?"

Elijah
"My apprenticeship was fucked before I started studying with Henry. He and this other guy wanted to talk with me and see if I was actually worth the effort of fixing the whole fucked-up-ed-ness over."

Throws his hands out wide.

"I haven't failed out yet! But seriously, it was like having a job interview with someone who is judging your soul."

Samir
"Ah, Houston, that's a big fat nope."

He puts the drained can as far away from him as he can get without throwing it on the ground. Removes the compulsion to fuck with it. It's bad enough he's been tapping the inside of his right middle finger against the lawn chair's arm and counting how many times he tapped and berating himself for counting and then starting over because if he was gonna tap on the damned chair he was going to do it in multiples of 23. Just to be civilized.

"So... why the Order?"

Elijah
There are two lawn chairs. He could, conceivably, sit in a lawn chair like a normal fucking person but he doesn't. Puts a hand down and settles on the dirt like he doesn't mind because, well, he doesn't. Actually kinda likes it, could go on about the feeling one has about being grounded and aware of your surroundings when you have a connection to land. Or, it could just be that he liked sitting on the ground. Did it in his apartment when there weren't people he was talking to that might take it oddly that he's camped out on the carpet like a four-year-old waiting for circle time.

"Because of words," he says, "like... the Order has this view on language- that there's this whole power and beauty and strength and definition and a bunch of other shit in language. I thought that the idea was beautiful, that the idea of naming something gave it strength and made it real and giving it a name informed the definition and..."

He trails off, realizing that he's rambling.

"They have this whole view that there's a language that spoke the world into existence, that there was Truth in that and I fucking loved it. Still love it. I thought it was interesting that the universe might be this gigantic, complicated piece of poetry and we're picking through extended metaphors."

Samir
Sam considers this. Gets through three sets of finger-tapping in the amount of time Elijah talks about his paradigm and the paradigm of the Order of Hermes and that's all well and good but he doesn't want to just sit on three sets. Four is a better number. A better ward against death than any other number he's tried and he hasn't discovered the extent of the things that could kill him out here. He hears coyotes and gunshots sometimes. Not the same kind of gunshots the city provides. This is a more reasonable use of firearms but it still wakes him up at night.

"That is quite possibly the gayest thing I've ever heard in my life," he says.

Elijah
"Dude, I have literally asked to blow you before and that was the gayest thing you've heard in your life?"

Samir
He nods a vigorous nod and stops tapping the fucking lawn chair.

"Yup." That's enough male posturing for one day. He asks, "So... what language is it?"

Elijah
"Enochian, language of the angels and shit," he said, "I know, sounds really Supernatural-esque but I swear it's an actual fucking language and Sam and Dean can eat me. It's weird, but it's absolutely fucking gorgeous and there is not an analogous human language for it. It's kind of the language of high umbral beings."

Samir
Sam considers this. Doesn't appear to judge it right away even though it's about as far away from what he believes as is the Verbenae paradigm. High umbral beings. Alright.

"Right on," he says. "So... that's why you joined the Order and had a Quaesitor sitting in your living room."

Makes total sense.

Elijah
There is something that Elijah doesn't say, that he has a theory. That if the language that spoke creation into being is spoken by high umbral beings, is there an analogue for the forces that live in the deep umbra? Is it all just a derivative of the same language or does it actually divide? He'd been thinking about Descent, about how that even fucking works. Doesn't want to know except he really... really does. All thought exercises before he passes the fuck out and doesn't dream.

Small courtesies.

Anyway. Quaesitor. Living room.

"Yep. Dude, it was weird- I think that, after a point, people that have been doing this magic shit for too long forget how to interface with actual normal fucking people. The Order has a whole don't meddle in the affairs of sleepers thing, which I think is there to keep people from, like, mindfucking their way into the presidency? But some people take it to the point that they're like ladida I live in a fucking tower and the magical world is the only thing that exists like it's not part of the same fucking world-" a second, "-and it's not just Hermetics that do that. Like, am I tripping? Do you see people do that, too? Am I overgeneralizing?"

Samir
"I mean..."

He's talking to someone who may as well live in a fucking tower but reality hacking is a different breed of beast. Perhaps. Humans can convince themselves of just about anything and the Awakened human is no different.

"I don't get out much. So."

Elijah
"Eh," he shrugs.

A beat.

"Hey, what's your last name?"

Samir
Elijah just discovered the fastest way to make a hacker paranoid.

"... why?"

For fuck's sake Sam.

"It's Lakhani. L-A-K-H-A-N-I."

Elijah
"It just bugged me that I don't know your last name? Like, I met you. And you know I've been in a shit car accident and a whole bunch of other things, and I had to find out you had a first name from Grace. I was just like, Elijah, you seriously can not keep being friends with someone you call 'that one dude'... and Lakhani is a fucking cool name."

Samir
Now is not the time for Sam to tell Elijah that he Googled the shit out of him before he went to go sell him drugs and that he probably knows more about him than is appropriate.

The night of the fire they did talk about their parents a bit. How Elijah's middle name was a girl's and how Sam didn't have a middle name because his mother didn't disclose who his father was if she even knew.

"Yeah, it's alright."

A beat.

"So... are you staying the night?"

Elijah
"Can I stay the night?"

Samir
"If you keep your hands to yourself."

Elijah
"Totally respecting your virtue, Samir."

Samir
He considers this for a moment. Stone-faced and even more so because of the sunglasses concealing his eyes. Then he stands from the lawn chair and tugs down the hem of his t-shirt and gives a jerk of his head towards the tree line.

"C'mon," he says. "I wanna show you this fucking treehouse I found."

Elijah
[I am not fucking excited about this. Manip+sub]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Elijah
"... you have a treehouse?"

Dubious, like he wasn't sure he wanted to believe Samir. Like this might be some truth that he isn't completely ready to face and soon enough he was meandering along in the grass anyway because there was a treehouse he could go see and Elijah guessed that maybe he could go see it.

Dusts the dirt off his butt and follows

Samir
[you are too fucking excited about this don't be a fag]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 ) [Doubling Tens]