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Who: Richard Stroud (Bro Strider) & YOU~
When: June 17
Where: Winding Way Bookstore & Expresso Yourself, potential to move anywhere else/into a Blackout area if that's the way it goes c:
What: A couple of general prompts looking to boost CR and lay down some more roots in the game. c: Any format is fine, I'll follow you.

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[The Winding Way Bookstore]]
He ducked in here to get out of the heat then found himself hanging around for longer than he expected, lingering around the fantasy section and eyeing up a sinfully expensive set of Lovecraft works. Try as he might to ignore the fact that they're there he keeps going back to them...

Maybe if he drags himself away and has a drink he might walk out of here without buying anything.

Later on, when he's leaving the place (and he's bought something if that bag he's carrying is anything to go by), he makes it part way down the street before the bottom of the bag splits and several books go thudding to the sidewalk. He stops dead, rubs a hand over his face and lifts his attention briefly skywards.

"... Fuckin' really..?"

[Expresso Yourself]
Later on and with the weather still uncomfortably warm he's sitting outside the coffee shop - a common haunt for him since L took over - with a glass of iced water and a book that, from the illustrations, appears to be about angels. There's a notebook open beside it, with a few half-formed doodles of a winged boy wearing aviator shades. Though the facial features are unclear, the wings certainly aren't.

Now and then he'll look over at it as if he hasn't really been paying attention to what he's doing, only to add a little more detail to the edge of a feather. He still has no idea who that boy was and as much as he doesn't want to force another damned Echo... the curiosity isn't going away.

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Lyall probably looks a bit silly, in the summer with long sleeves and a wide-brimmed hat, but he's still not fond of sunlight. It prickles strangely on, and under, his skin. So he puts up with looking a bit silly, so he can be out as often as possible during his couple of weeks before summer school starts up and he'll be busy again, for at least half the day. What he's out doing, though, is hunting blackouts, and ghosts. There's not much else he can do with his time that's useful-- as in, not playing video games or reading all day, or bothering his boyfriend.

So he's out prowling the streets looking silly when someone else rivals him for slightly silly: the young man with his books all over the sidewalk, practically at his own feet, as well. He stoops to collect the one nearest. "And here I thought Winding Way had better bags than that." He offers it to Richard with a small smile.

"I'm thinkin' they should have a word with their supplier," Richard mutters as he crouches down, taking the book being offered to him while he gathers the rest up.

"Lucky me, my car's--" Then he looks up, the briefest of double-takes flickering over his expression at how the other man is dressed. ".. My car's not too far from here."

Ehem.

He straightens up, flashing a quick smile. "Thanks. I coulda done without making a spectacle of myself today."

"I think that's everyone's wish." Lyall picks himself up, as well, with the last book in hand. "To get through the day without making spectacles of themselves."

Guessing what that pause and brief expression change was for, he adds, a little apologetically, as if he needs to apologize for dressing strangely: "Some of us has more luck than others."

"You're not wrong there," he comments wryly, just a hint of understanding sympathy in his tone. Alright, so maybe he's not walking around looking like he just wandered off a poorly wardrobed film set, but he's sure there are going to be a lot of things in his uncertain future that make him want to sink into the floor.

"Sounds like you have one heck of a story to tell, bro."

"It's actually fairly simple," Lyall admits with a sheepish smile. "Sunlight irritates my skin, so in order to be out in it without being crabby, I have to cover it up to some extent. The heat doesn't really bother me like it used to, anyhow."

It's the simpler, non-network explanation for the outfit, anyway. There might still be some questions, but on the whole people seemed to accept it.

And the rest of his clothes are in the laundry, Richard wonders, but manages not to say (oh how he wants to).

"Sounds like a pain in the ass," he comments instead, shifting the weight of the books in his arms. Turns out they're a little heavier than he thought when he doesn't have the benefit of a carrier bag. "But, hell, ain't any of my business to be questioning a stranger on his choice of attire. Some kind of medical condition?"

Hey, his clothes aren't that bad... it's just a long-sleeved button-down and, well. All right, the light scarf is probably a bit much... but he doesn't feel right without it, these days. The hat, he'll admit, it definitely silly, but nothing else has a big enough brim without going full-on straw or sombrero, or something.

"Something like that. It only came about a year and a half ago." Lyall makes a face, not sure whether that outs him as from the network or not. Most people know by now that's when they started, don't they?

It's the hat, mostly. Definitely the hat. The mention of the time span gives him pause, though. Richard hasn't been on the network that long, but he's been on it long enough to have got a good idea of the timeline of the thing.

"A year and a half," he mutters in echo, one eyebrow briefly twitching upwards. "That's some coincidental timing, ain't it."

"Not so much coincidental as... ah, causal," Lyall admits, wincing a little sheepishly at the cat being out of the bag. Or the wolf, in his case. "If you're thinking what I think you're thinking, anyhow."

He has a feeling he knows what they're doing here. Dancing around something that neither of them want to admit being part of for fear that the other is an outsider.

"That depends," he responds casually. "What do you think I'm thinkin'?"

"You're going to make me say it, aren't you," Lyall surmised, somewhere between amused and resigned. He gave in and did so: "Yes, I am one of those numbered people. The sunlight issue, among other things, has to do with that."

"One of us was gonna have to," he quipped back, relaxing slightly at the admission. Shifting the weight of the books in his arms he placed one hand on top to keep them from sliding.

"But you and me both, bro. Always good to see another adult in on this thing."

Lyall relaxed, too, with relief that he wasn't the only one who had to confess-- and that he wasn't likely to get himself into trouble with this particular confession. "We're not alone, as adults, in all this-- though it does sometimes seem otherwise, doesn't it?" As a teacher, he had more than enough of them that he saw every day....

"I'd say we're severely outnumbered by minors." He'd never admitted it like that, having to be so surreptitious about it when he didn't know the status of the other. His heart might have sped up a little, though he'd be loath to admit it.

"Gets me wonderin' on the thinking of it all. How are kids supposed to protect themselves from this kind of shit?"

"Whoever or whatever has done this to us," Lyall answered grimly, "I doubt they paid much attention to the ages of those they affected. Or much cared about what, exactly, we would do to protect ourselves. I'm a biology teacher, of all things. I've never used a gun or swung a knife in all my life, nor do I much want to." He paused to verify they weren't in hearing distance of anyone else, and added, "And just because I happen to be a werewolf doesn't mean I am the least bit interested in actually using my teeth."

Yuck. Except not always so yuck, given how most people smelled to him, these days. He still found the idea disgusting, just also sometimes appealing. ... it was complicated, okay, and still not something he wanted to do.

It wasn't something Richard could get his head around, really, but he was still dealing with the idea that the kid he was keeping an eye on these days had developed a kind of bloodlust that meant he would charge headlong into dangerous situations without a second thought for his own safety.

"Not gonna say I can't defend myself if I gotta, but this? This ain't a guy coming at you with a knife in an alley, what the hell are we meant to do about this?" Slightly agitated, he tapped the toe of one shoe against the floor. "... I ain't even sure if it's safe to talk about this in the middle of the street."

"We're all right, for the moment. There isn't anyone within earshot, or I'd know it." Lyall and his super-senses... which Richard might not actually know about, so that might seem like a rather over-confindent statement, to him. "So unless someone cares enough about two random gentlemen talking on the sidewalk to try and read our lips, we should be fine." He shrugs with a little smile. "I do have some sense of self-preservation left, after all. I'm concerned enough having to take one or two days off a month for the full moon, without having strangers overhear me talking about it."

He just dips his head in a small nod, taking his word for it. No, he doesn't know about the guy's super-senses but at this point it's the kind of thing he can take for granted.

"Your employers okay with that? I mean, do they know..?"

Richard's lucky enough to work for himself, but he can't imagine it's easy for those of them who have more visible problems.

"Oh, they don't know, though I don't know how much longer I'll be able to manage that," Lyall admits. "The sick days I've been taking are terribly regular. It's just that no one is really thinking 'werewolf', so at the moment it's just annoyance that I'm sick so often. I don't know how long that will last." He's been considering just going to his principal and coming clean, but he doesn't know how that will go... so he's holding back, for now.

"Guess they might not have connected the dots before," he considers. People didn't tend to look for that kind of supernatural shit, right? No one was going to think 'werewolf' when they realised someone was taking a couple of days off every month.

At least, not until the fact that the supernatural was very much real was thrust under their noses.

"Caught between a rock and a hard place, yeah? I can't say I envy you."

Jin decides to take a break on the way home. He's heard good things about Expresso Yourself, and some of it on the network, so he feels like it's an ok place to have a surreptitious conversation with his cell phone.

He pauses to look at the sketch on his way in. "Not bad." He compliments, leaning against the door jamb with a curious cast to his face. His drawing skills are mostly drafting skills, though he's taken his fair share of figure drawing classes. He's a little annoyed at how much his engineering work has shifted to 3D modeling, though he did learn early versions of that in school as well.

"Trying to remember something?" he asks, having settled on that as an easy way to quietly ask if the guy is numbered.

A twitch runs through him when he's addressed, surprise jolting him out of his thoughts and quickly shaken off with a rough clearing of his throat. He lifts the pencil from the paper, frowning at the sketches.

"You could say that," he responded carefully, catching the potential meaning behind that question. It was easy enough to see who other networked people were when you were using the network, but outside of it..? Well, they didn't exactly go around wearing badges.

"Something from another life, maybe."

He nods. "Yeah, been there." He mutters. "You mind if I take a seat? Maybe another set of eyes will help a little bit." That and it's nice to know that there are other adults around dealing with this shit. He feels a sense of kinship with this guy. There aren't too many people around his age on the network, at least not lately... Now that all the kids are out of school, their posts have ramped up quite a bit.

"I'm Jin. Jin Aznable. Work as a medical engineer over at LockeHealth Robotics."

He's noticed the same thing and having recently lost one of the few adults he'd managed to gain any kind of connection with (that had been a nasty shock, contacting him only to realise he had no idea who he was) he's noticed the lack of people his own age all the more.

"No, man, help yourself." He straightens up, gesturing to the seat opposite. "Richard Stroud. Wrote a book once and it seemed to give people the impression that I dispense good advice for all those in the same position that I was at ten years ago." A shrug follows. "Pays the bills. You know how it is."

He shifts his hair back as he takes a seat. "Stroud... Stroud... Oh! I heard of your book. Didn't read it, sorry. But I've heard of you." He smiles. "Mostly if I read nonfiction, it's meant to make me angry and confused, not uplifted."

"So I see you've got an angel or something somewhere in your past, huh." He says, pursing his lips at the drawing. "Looks like a kid. A kid angel in sunglasses..." He ponders.

There's the briefest flash of a grin at the acknowledgement. For all the popularity the book has in certain circles, it's actually fairly rare that he runs into anyone who's aware of it. "No worries, bro. If I hadn't written it I wouldn't read it either."

Attention back to the drawing, he turns it around to give Jin a better look. "Somethin' tells me it isn't an angel. Comes to me in flashes, y'no? Feels like he's important to me but I can't put my finger on why."

"Hey, at least you wrote it. Better than I could do." He smirks.

He inspects the picture. "Not an angel, then... I guess you don't have to be an angel to have wings, in an infinite universe. Maybe he's a bird boy. I guess if he's not an angel he can't be your guardian angel." He purses his lips.

He looks at Richard. "Hmmm." It's tough to tell from a drawing, but he kind of feels like they look alike. "Maybe you're related."

Guardian angel? His eyebrows arch slightly at that. Richard's never really been the religious sort, it never sat right with him, though the idea of 'angel' had definitely occurred to him given the circumstances under which he'd been hit with this particular Echo.

It's that second statement that has him pausing, looking back down at the drawing and gently drawing the lead of the pencil around the line of the boy's jaw.

"You think so? Hard to tell with those shades... Can't count it out, I guess." He frowns. "Looks kinda like my nephew. Younger, though."

He smirks. "Well, I mean, anything's possible when it comes to your past life. I'm not super religious myself, it being in my interest to assume there's no god to get mad I'm playacting as him, but who knows what your world was like."

He puts his thumb up towards Richard's face. "I dunno, depends on how you look with shades. I think the resemblance exists, at least. Your cousin, the bird-kid, maybe. Or your bird-son." He shrugs. "I'm not sure how much help I'm being, though."

There's no way to tell, not really, but grasping at straws is the best either of them have now, right? While he listens to Jin, he silently observes the drawing, then suddenly goes very, very still.

".. My brother," he whispers, the answer coming to him with such sudden, stunning clarity that it makes him nauseous. Richard turns slightly pale, rubbing one hand over his face, voice muffled against his palm. "He's my little brother."

He blinks, a little upset by the averse reaction he seems to have suddenly evoked. But then he realizes it's an echo. "Oh. Hey, that's something, right?" He reaches over to pat his arm awkwardly. "D'you think that means you had wings, too?"

He shakes it off quickly, a shudder running up his spine. That's the second time that's happened and he's still not quite used to the feeling. Torn between being glad of a little more information and irritated that another of those echoes have been prompted, he toys with the edge of his sketchbook for a moment.

"Fuck, I hope not. I saw a kid not long ago with wings and it looked like he was havin' all hells of problems with 'em." As you might expect, really.

"If I did have them, I would've thought that would trigger them, if nothin' else would, but all I got was this."

"Ah, right, yeah. It'd make getting clothes that fit pretty damn hard, that's for sure." He quips. He hums. "Yeah, you'd think..." I mean, he feels for Richard, having to deal with echoes, but he's gotten more or less to the point of echos being both few and far between and more or less not something to worry about.

After all, he's already lost thirteen years or so, so what more could really be done to him? Well, he knows what more, but he'd really rather not think about it. "Well, something weird must be going at least. Let's hope it doesn't really get too much crazier. Maybe you'd have to write another book."

Richard stares for a moment then lets out a short, barking laugh that's definitely amused. "Shit, I don't know if I'd do that again."

Yeah, sure, writing that thing had really set him up good, but it had been a pain in the ass and he's not that eager to go through it all over again. Especially over something like this.

But...

"Then again, I can see the marketability in it."

Right as the bag rips, John's stepping out of the shop with a few new books of his own. He gives the whole scene a mournful look because he's had books end up on the ground too, before making his way over to help.

"Faulty bag, hm?"

"No shit," he sighs out irritably, though he pulls himself up a few moments later and clears his throat. "Might have packed it a little heavy."

He rubs a hand through his hair before he starts picking the books up. "At least it ain't raining."

"Small mercies. Would you like me to go back inside and fetch two bags instead?"

Because, looking at it, it might indeed have been packed too heavily. And Richard's going to need at least one new bag anyway.

He has the look about him, just for a moment, of the sort of person who isn't used to small kindnesses. Startled, maybe slightly touched by the offer.

"That'd be kind of you," he responds with a crooked smile. "But I can probably manage to get these to my car."

"If you say so."

Then he'll just help with picking them up.

Richard pushes the torn bag into one pocket while he balances the books against his other arm, straightening up once the last of them have been picked up from the floor. He's just lucky, he thinks, that it's a dry day.

"Thanks for stopping. Good to see not everyone's infected with bystander syndrome."

He snorts quietly, because that seems like a very dramatic response. Like some sort of crime took place. It's only politeness, as far as he's concerned.

"It was nothing."

Funny, really, how you could get so used to people being rude as hell that when someone actually showed some human decency it came as a surprise.

"If you say so, dude. Thanks anyway." He pauses to get a good balance on the books so he can avoid dropping them. Enough money was paid for the leather-bound set that he really doesn't want to damage them.

"See you around."

"Perhaps."

Not likely, but he shrugs and waves before he turns to head the other way. Maybe Richard will see him around.

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outside the Winding Way :)

eeee c:

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Winding Way

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