savetheearth | in our short years, we come long way [closed]

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in our short years, we come long way [closed]

Who: Brooke Reynolds, Ravindra Savarna
Where: Rachel's house, then Ravi's house
When: 10/31, right after the vermaxi attack
What: Brooke's hanging out with Ravi for his birthday! They'll watch Bollywood movies and try to ignore the feeling that they might not remember each other if either one of them leaves the city.

All right. Cool. Nothing for Brooke to worry about anymore at Rachel's house except 1) the aftermath of the giant monster attack; 2) that she technically has to look after Luci; and 3) she promised Ravi she'd hang out with him. Fortunately enough, she's full of adrenaline and only a little alcohol (funny how fighting for your life can sober you up), so even if she didn't work nights, she won't be falling asleep anytime soon.

She pulls out her phone and composes a text to Ravi. It takes a little longer than usual (damn capacitive touch screens), but it gets the message across.

You are not gonna believe what happened at this party. I probably shouldn't be driving.

Appending Rachel's address to the text, she dithers on whether or not to send it. She takes a look around the trashed backyard and wonders if she should stick around to help clean up. She's awake, after all. But she promised, too. She promised she'd hang out with Ravi, and... well, if they only really know each other through network-related stuff, who's to say that they won't end up forgetting each other if one of them ever moves out of Locke? It's not a possibility Brooke wants to consider.

She hits send, sighs into the all-too-quiet night, and steps back inside.

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It was a good thing she hadn't canceled on him in favour of staying to help clean up, because if she had, Ravi would've pretended to be understanding while secretly resenting her for marking him down on her priorities list.

He was awake for her text, of course, and responded to say that he was on his way. He considered asking for the details, but figured he'd be getting them anyway so it was better to just wait until he saw her instead of delaying his departure to find out sooner.

When he arrived at the address she'd given him, he sent another text to let her know he was out front in the grey corvette--because going to the door at a house full of people he didn't know and wasn't there for? Wow, no.

While she waited for Ravi to arrive, Brooke took the time to scribble out a note and leave it in a prominent location. Went to a friend's, back by dawn, I'll take Luci home. --Brooke. Simple and to the point. Trying not to wake anyone who might be sleeping off the encounter, she slipped out the door and looked at the driver's seat of the grey Corvette with a smile that hung a little heavy with weariness.

After walking around to the passenger side and getting in, she let her weariness show more readily. "Hi, Ravi." Once the door shut behind her, she dropped the metaphorical bombshell. "So we just got attacked by a giant monster. How's your night going?"

WELL THAT CERTAINLY KILLED THE MOOD. The cheerful greeting died on his lips and he stared at Brooke with that special brand of concerned horror that only a sudden bombshell like that can elicit.

"Not as well as I thought," he answered cautiously, once he found his voice. "Is everyone okay?"

"Rachel's backyard is pretty messed up, and I think a bunch of us got hit with echoes, but... yeah. No major injuries." For which she was unbelievably thankful. Last thing she needed was something like a broken arm. Ha. Hilarious.

"Remember that scorpion I was talking about a while back? I'm pretty sure it was leaking that thing's venom." She sighed and leaned back in the seat. "Happy birthday to you, dude."

Another point for the 'being around the monsters triggers Echoes' hypothesis. But that was barely a footnote in his mind at the moment, his attention instead focused on the fact that his friend had been attacked.

Was it wrong to feel irritated that something like this had to happen on his birthday and overshadow the mood for the rest of the night? It was probably wrong, because it seemed petty and selfish, but goddammit, that was how he felt right now. It was easy to feel that way because no one had gotten hurt, but it seemed wrong to just brush it off and ugh no he hated going down this rabbit hole of anxieties.

He took a deep breath and tried to shove all that aside. He shifted the car into gear and pulled out, using it as an excuse to delay his response so he could come up with something appropriate. Brooke obviously was unconcerned, and if that was just a mask he had zero interest in yanking it off right now. He settled on a response that stayed on the subject without making it too heavy, and asked her, "What was it? The monster."

"Big," she said quickly. She didn't remember many other details in the blur, but that was a pretty important one. "If I had to guess? It's a vermaxi. And it took a lot of people just to get it to run away. Forget about actually hurting it." But she was powering through the sentence like she had better things to concern herself with—and she did. It was her friend's birthday, dammit. She'd sort through the events of the evening, good and bad, when she had more time to devote to it.

"Anyway. Bollywood, huh? I tried looking some scenes up, but all I got on YouTube was something called 'Benny Lava'." And then she got distracted watching misheard lyric videos for a half hour. She looked over to Ravi, finally. "They're all about love, right? And music?"

The radio, turned down but not off, was playing Bob Marley. Pretend that was mentioned sooner. Ravi didn't even think about it, car radios are just white noise to him and it's easy enough to talk over.

"Vermaxi?" he repeated. That sounded vaguely familiar but he couldn't place where he'd heard it from. More importantly, if something like that was loose, that was...a really huge damper on the night, actually. Damn you, timing! Couldn't you have waited to throw in something like that?

It was dangerous, who know when and where it would show up again, how would they handle it next time, would things turn out worse next time, UGH no he didn't want to focus on this. Thinking about it just irritated him because it was completely overshadowing this time he was supposed to be spending hanging out with a friend on his birthday. Brooke obviously wanted to pretend it was no big and move on, so he forced himself to shove it aside as well. If she brought it up again then he'd worry about addressing it properly.

He almost wished they'd stayed on the vermaxi topic when she mentioned that video. Not his language, still kind of insulting! (He has a lot of issues with that sort of thing, sorry Brooke.) "That isn't Bollywood." He couldn't keep himself from sounding slightly irked by it. "It is Tamil, Bollywood is Hindi."

It was unreasonable to expect someone who'd had only the barest of brushes with India's film industry to know the difference. His annoyance was probably more about the vermaxi thing than her ignorance, anyway. A brief pause, he inhaled sharply and exhaled hard, trying to breathe out his negativity so he could respond at the appropriate emotional level. "Mostly, yes. Love and sudden song and dance numbers. You will see a lot of very sad weddings."

"My bad. Sorry," she said, sincere as hell. Not only was she afraid of angering Ravi—there's nothing scarier than when a calm man gets angry—but she really didn't know the difference. Her specialties were corpses and religion, not linguistics. If nothing else, it got her focusing on the more benign of their two quickly diverging subjects.

"I—uh." There was no sense getting defensive after she'd already apologized, so that sentence died before it even got started. "Sad weddings?" she asked after an awkward pause while she thought of a question, or a statement, or something that wasn't trying to cover her own tracks. "Do you mean, like, arranged marriages that don't go the way anybody wants?"

It was probably an offensive question, she thought only a second after it hit her ears. Truth be told, she only knew a few things about the culture of India, and they were stereotypes. She'd warned him about that, sure, but actually confronting it brought an uncomfortable realness to her ignorance.

She'd made an honest mistake and given a prompt and sincere apology. It was not reasonable to continue being annoyed. Ravi knew he had a problem with holding onto negative emotions long after all reasonable recourse had been attained, and he knew it could become self-defeating very quickly. Tonight hadn't been ruined yet and he wanted to keep it that way, so he forced himself to take some extra care with his responses to avoid any kneejerk reactions.

Or kneejerk lack of reactions. His inclination was to say nothing and let it go, but he knew from personal experience that if you apologize and somebody breezes past it without comment, it feels pretty awful. So he was careful to tell her, "It's fine, you didn't know."

And then breeze past it. "Exactly that, yes." He tried to keep his tone light. Fake a good mood and the mood will follow. "It is all very dramatic. Ah--and sometimes they steal whole scenes out of American movies. I never knew that until I moved here."

Edited 2013-11-17 19:35 (UTC)

"Really?" she asked. Presumably they weren't going to steal the plot to Die Hard or anything, but lifting entire scenes seemed strange. If nothing else, she was glad that Ravi didn't seem mad—or if he still was, she couldn't tell—and they could have a nice, educational conversation that she probably didn't deserve but he was giving her out of the kindness of his heart anyway.

You know, like friends do.

"I guess nobody on this side of the ocean cares enough to sue." Otherwise she probably would've heard about it sooner. "So... how bad is the cribbing? I know you said whole scenes, but do they ever just take entire plots and turn them into tragic musicals?"

"Really." Brooke, get your self-worth issues outta here. Too much of that in one car and we'll have a self-loathing singularity.

"Oh yes, that too. Humko Deewana Kar Gaye, the whole movie is a rip-off of some English film." A dismissive gesture, indicating he couldn't remember the name of the source material. "Some scenes are shot-for-shot. It really is uncanny."

Oh man, pretending he wasn't annoyed was paying off. Getting to talk about something he was knowledgeable on, without the risk of being embarrassingly corrected, was putting him in a pretty genuinely good mood.

"But," he glanced aside, flashing Brooke a smile, "Humko Deewana Kar Gaye is a better movie." Pause. "So probably we won't watch that one tonight."

Brooke could feel the mood in the car lightening, meaning she no longer felt nearly as awkward or vaguely scared to be participating in this conversation. Instead, she listened attentively, because this was part of what made friends so great: Hearing them talk at length about the things they love.

"So this is going to be the Failure to Launch of Bollywood movies? Awesome." She hated herself for making that reference, but only a little less than she did for actually having seen that awful movie. Anyway, she thought with a grin and a sidelong look at Ravi, even a genre made up entirely of romantic musicals had to have some stinkers. And she desperately wanted to know just how bad they could get.

"It isn't all romantic comedy. We have action movies too, you know." Pause. "About love. With dancing." (not actually joking...)

The mood had improved just in time. Here they were, Ravi's apartment complex.

He parked, killed the engine (good-bye Bob Marley white noise), and climbed out to lead her upstairs to his apartment.

When was the last time he actually invited someone over? He can't even remember. Last boyfriend? God, he just went full-on recluse after that breakup, didn't he? Not to say there haven't been people over, but they'd either been invited by Alex or were just dropping by. It's kind of nice, kind of awkward--he's really forgotten how to host. He was just going to hope Brooke doesn't care that much.

There was no 'excuse the mess'ing when he opened the door. The place was clean. Really clean. Since he does an annual deep cleaning right before Diwali every year anyway, he opted to spend the evening getting started on that. Company coming over was a perfect excuse.

He took off his shoes when he entered, leaving them by the door. If Brooke did not do the same, he didn't mind, but any attempt to enter the kitchen without removing her shoes first would be corrected.

"Make yourself comfortable," he said, closing the door behind her once she was inside, locking it out of habit. "And feel free to grab something from the fridge if you like."

Meanwhile, there was one mustachio'd tabby-and-white kitten curled up on the couch, a black cat sleeping on the cat tower in the corner of the room, and a mysteriously absent third cat yet to show herself.

Following Ravi inside, Brooke found herself incredibly impressed with how clean the entire place was. It made sense, though—probably something that had been ingrained in him over the course of med school. She followed suit and removed her shoes out of a desire to not seem impolite or anything. His house, his rules.

She was about to politely decline his offer of taking things from the fridge all willy-nilly like she owned the place, but then she saw his cats—first the seasonally appropriate one, then the one on the couch—and couldn't stop herself from commenting on just how adorable they both were.

"Oh my gosh, Ravi, your cats are so cute. I wish my landlord let me keep pets." Walking further into the living room, she bent down and scratched the tabby between the ears. "How long have you had them?"

Both cats had looked up at the sound of Ravi and Brooke entering, but the black had quickly labeled Brooke a nonentity and returned to napping, while the tabby-and-white stared at her intently, ears perked in curiosity. He sniffed her hand as she reached out to pet him, but approved of her immediately and set to purring while she scratched his ears.

"Ah, that one is my roommate's, actually," Ravi answered, moving to stand by the TV, across from the couch. "A few months, only. His name is Gomez Addams, but usually we call him Gogo."

He indicated the black cat, still busy ignoring the rest of the room. "And that one is Adhirat, I have had him for seven years."

"Adhirat?" she repeated, wondering if it was as referential as Gogo. She probably wouldn't be able to spell it right on her first try, at any rate. Deciding it would be rude to pay attention to cats all night instead of her friend, she tore herself away from the tabby and straightened herself back up.

She'd had enough experience with cats to know that, once one determined you weren't worth its time, it was a total exercise in futility getting it to pay any attention to you. So her choices were Gogo or Ravi, and Ravi was much more talkative and personable. And, let's be honest, he had opposable thumbs that could work remotes deliberately. "What does that mean?" she asked, hoping she wasn't accidentally being offensive again.

Ravi would argue that Gogo was the more personable of the available options, though he would concede on the talkative part--now. Back when Gogo had been one of the network's talking cats, that would've no contest.

Asking what his cat's name meant was absolutely not offensive. He thought nothing of the question, answering her almost offhandedly as he knelt to look through the shelf of DVDs beside the television. "Midnight. It is very cliché, I know. He answers also to Adhi and 'you stupid cat.'"

"Seems seasonal enough, if you ask me. Very witching hour-esque." Brooke grinned at herself while she watched Ravi look through DVDs with titles she didn't always recognize. And only some of that was because of a series of weird gaps in her pop culture consumption.

"Speaking of. You didn't get a cake for yourself or anything?" she asked, looking towards the kitchen but not leaving the living room. "Come on, man, it's your birthday. Unless you've got celiac or something." Which she totally understood if he did. More than that, though, she wanted Ravi to celebrate despite everything else, and cake always helped.

"Ah--no." Awkward pause. He didn't really want to admit that the main reason he hadn't gotten a cake was because...he didn't have anyone to help him eat it... Not even Alex, given his new dietary needs. "I did get a cupcake from my roommate, though," he added, faintly hopeful, like a tentative peace offering.

Brooke leveled a stare at him. "Are you serious? Just a cupcake?" Hm. She briefly considered just how late it was, and the fact that she didn't have her car and would already be asking Ravi to drive her back to Rachel's at the end of the night. No sense being too big of a jerk to him.

"Tell you what. It's way too late to get a real cake now, but I'll get you one that we can share for the next time we hang out. Because there will be a next time," she added, very sure not only of herself but of her expectations of the night. She punctuated it by breaking her disbelieving stare and turning it into a friendly and certain smile. "Mark my words."

No Brooke don't sound disapproving about that!! He loves sweets but he knows he will eat way too much if he's not careful about it. If you give him a whole cake and leave the leftovers with him, disaster.

But all he gave her was a tentative, "Alright." He wasn't...going to argue against cake.

What he was going to do, though, was get this mission back on track. He found what he was looking for and slid the DVD out of the shelf, popped the case open, and put the disc into his DVD player. "Speaking of food, though," he said, standing, setting the case aside, "do you want popcorn?"

"That depends," Brooke said, happy that her plan to force Ravi to eat a cake with her seemed to have work. "Is this the kind of movie that's better with popcorn?"

One look at the DVD cover, once Ravi was done preparing it, gave her her answer. "Ra.One?" It looked like a superhero movie, but from what she knew about Bollywood, it would be so much more than that. "Yeah, I want popcorn for this." She almost followed through with a suggestion of alcohol, but cut herself off before it got that far. She was supposed to be responsible today.

Oh, it was definitely more than just a superhero movie. Remember the part where he said Bollywood does action movies too? About love? With dancing? Yeah.

Yeah.

"Popcorn it is," he said, and moved off to the kitchen to get that ready.

After fixing a bowl of popcorn and some negotiation over drinks (he wouldn't argue a request for alcohol, but he'd keep an eye on how much was leaving the kitchen), he returned to the living room to set the drinks and the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table. He took a seat on the couch beside Brooke, opposite Gomez of course, and picked up the remote to turn on the TV and get the movie started.

"It's amazing," was all the warning he would give Brooke about this one.

No more alcohol for Brooke tonight, in the interest of keeping herself sober enough to enjoy the film and also to stave off alcoholism. Guilt was one of the more powerful motivators she'd run across—she had somebody to disappoint now, and on top of that, she didn't want to upstage Ravi's birthday again with drunken antics. So it was just water for her, and as she settled in and let him begin the festivities, it wasn't too long before she knew she was in for a trip.

"His name is actually Lucifer. Oh my god." If this was how the movie started, she couldn't wait to see how ridiculous it got.

"It gets better," he responded gleefully. Cheesy one-liners, bad overacting, a hilariously over-the-top script with matching cinematography--bad movie heaven, basically.

And then the even cheesier 'all a dream' reveal that meant the previous scene was bad on purpose--but the bad-on-accident parts that followed only made the filmmakers' attempt at self-awareness that much more hilarious.

Wow. Wow, it really did get better. Brooke could barely believe this whirlwind of a journey she was being taken on—nor the fact that at a couple points she actually felt kind of bad for the characters. Like, in a serious, emotional way. She didn't really know what it was like to lose a father, and the grandiose musical numbers kind of took away from it, but she could still empathize with Prateek and his mother pretty well.

Despite all that, though? Wow. She was definitely entertained by this entire thing, up to and including the overwrought climax with really cheesy bungee cord effects and CGI. The songs were surprisingly catchy, too, and she even understood a lot of the words. She'd expected the entire thing to be in Hindi, but even without subtitles she probably could have gotten the plot. Not that there were very many twists or turns. Aside from the twisting and turning train that G.One parkoured his way through.

"Holy crap, Ravi. You have amazing taste in movies."

Like a good friend, Ravi also pointed out and explained the things that were only funny due to cultural context--like the subtle-as-a-brick-to-the-face symbolism of G.One being framed by a statue of Ganesha while stopping that same train. God of obstacles--puts them where they need to be and removes them from where they don't. About as subtle as crucifying your hero to compare him to Jesus.

He glanced to her, grinning. "I know. You're welcome."

He leaned back against the couch, the grin fading for a more subdued smile. The third cat had joined them somewhere during the movie's 3 hour course, leaving a grey tabby sprawled across Ravi's lap at the moment. Idly stroking her fur, he focused on the cat for an excuse not to look at Brooke as he spoke. "We should do this again sometime. You pick the next movie."

It barely seemed like three hours, honestly. For a movie about a malicious computer program taking over the real world (that didn't star the Dude), it was paced pretty well! And Brooke definitely appreciated an insider's view on the symbolism. Entertaining and educational!

But when Ravi suggested she pick the next movie, well. "Wait, really? But I don't know anything about Bollywood. What if I pick one that sucks?" Remembering that she probably wasn't supposed to enjoy Ra.One as much as she did, she corrected herself quickly. "I mean, so-bad-it's-bad sucks."

She had absolutely no qualms with doing this sort of thing again, though. It was a pretty great night so far. She knew she wouldn't have to worry about this memory fading.

He tilted his head to give her a flat look and a short, exasperated sigh. "Brooke. I am from India, but I'm an American now. I watch bad Hollywood movies, too."

He was only mock-exasperated, at least. That was the sort of thing he'd only find irritating if he was in a terrible mood and looking for excuses to be angry.

"Oh my god, that's not what I meant," Brooke said abruptly, her eyebrows raising with her widening eyes. "Sorry. I just didn't know if Bollywood movies were our thing together or not. I know you're American." Wow, could that have sounded worse? Well, probably.

"There's got to be a couple Nic Cage movies that fit the bill, in that case." Smooth recovery. She put a finger to her chin, just as part of the show; she already had one in mind. "You ever see Drive Angry? Nic Cage escapes from Hell in a muscle car and Nic Cages all over the place." If there were a better way of describing the plot, she didn't know one.

The rush to correct herself got a chuckle out of him. "Don't worry about it," he said, giving her a gentle nudge with his arm. "Our thing will be hilariously bad movies, wherever they are from."

And Nicholas Cage was always a ~~national~~ treasure on that front. Ravi'd seen enough of him to know exactly what Brooke's description was supposed to mean, and it sounded perfect. "I haven't seen it, but I know now that I want to."

Brooke took the nudge playfully and smiled. "I like that as our thing." Which was the leading candidate for most honest thing she'd said all night, even counting the party. Really, she just liked having a thing with him. Or with anyone. That their thing happened to be incredibly entertaining was a plus.

"I'll bring it next time." And it made her incredibly happy to know that there would be a next time. "Man. I'm really glad we did this. This was a good idea." The thought of actually having a friend on the network that she could do stuff like this with brought a very clear smile to her face.

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in our short years, we come long way [closed]

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