theotherright | come sail away IC inbox

It's fiiiiine! He's just stuck in a little post-death loop of unhappiness, and needed to do something with his hands. He's fiiiine.

Okay but sarcasm aside, he genuinely is more fine than he was a few seconds ago before the door opened. Crichton thought to get him something? That's actually really touching??

"Matching, eh?" Something about the idea brings a slow grin to Arthur's face. His energy's in the pits, so he doesn't spring off the sofa as he would've in his first week here, but he holds out a hand for the glasses. "You'll have to tell me how we look in them, so I can admire us properly."

Well, it could be worse. Arthur could be doing space drugs.

"That's right. We can be twins. For all you know, we look the same." They could look the same, maybe a little, if you squint.

He puts the glasses into Arthur's hand. "No one looks bad in aviators."

"You're this handsome?"

Arthur's sense of humour has made a special appearance for the occasion!

He pops the aviators onto his face, gets them sitting on there comfortably, and the result is radical as hell. Then he spreads his hands in a 'how do I look' sort of gesture that betrays a certain non-zero amount of self-consciousness.

"Well, um, what do you think?"

"You bet your ass I am." Arthur might sense some movement from Crichton but he should be grateful he can't see his roommate doing what can only be described as fondling his own ass while he shakes it.

He stops so he can get a good look at Arthur through his own dark shades.

"I'd let you fly a plane in those." Thumbs up that Arthur also cannot see.

Thank god and christ that there is not a specific identifiable sound associated with that action.

A snort. "But would you get on the plane?" And then, in more of a thinking-out-loud sort of way: "Suppose it couldn't go much worse than driving a car..."

Arthur's sanity is barely hanging on as it is.

"Arthur...?" There is a definite tone of suspicion in that. "Tell me you didn't drive a car while blind?"

Arthur
takes
a little
too long
to answer that.

"Well, I-I-I don't want to lie to you."

It's a simple question. It should have a simple answer. Why is it taking so long??

Oh.

That's why.

...

"Arthur! What the hell were you thinking?!"

"I was thinking we had to get somewhere, some- some way away, a-a-and I had a car!"

The maths! The maths adds up!

"One of us could see! It is not as bad as you're making out."

The maths, Crichton!

"One of us..." Oh no. No, he doesn't mean...?

"You were letting the thing that stole your eyeballs from you tell you where to turn? And that seemed like a good idea?"

You suck at math, Arthur.

You know those moments when you should quit while you're behind and stop talking? Well,

"Well, no, i-it only takes one hand on the wheel to steer, so I, I was- I was just working the stick and pedals..."

Now Crichton remembers what Arthur said about his left hand. And his own slowly drags over his face, disrupting the aviators on its way down.

"Arthur... do you know how insane that sounds?"

"It was a means to an end, all right? I don't think you quite understand how few options I had."

Now Arthur is definitely not going to tell him that they also totally crashed the car.

"So, why don't you tell me the whole story, Bullseye?"

He can guess how it ends. He is 80% sure a crash is how this ends.

"Bulls--" Oh my god. "I-- alright, alright, I deserve that."

The story definitely doesn't end anywhere good, because Arthur's tell for 'things that went badly' tends to be fiddling with his left hand, and just now there's nothing quite so grabbable and move-about-able as his left hand.

"The whole story's a bit-- long, really. W-we ended up where we were trying to go." A month and change later.

"You really had me going, you know that?" Crichton chuckles. So funny, being held at gunpoint. Happy memories.

Happier than the ones that seem to come with this story. Crichton's been living with the guy long enough now that he can tell what it means when his hand starts doing the Jitterbug.

"So, you didn't end up with the car in a ditch?"

"Most successful bluff I think I've ever pulled." Ha ha, they have fun.

"Well, no, I-- well, yes. But the baby wasn't hurt at all--" Oh. Oh he didn't mention the baby up until now. He totally could have just kept not mentioning the baby.

"Ah..."

Arthur wears the face of someone who knows they've just ripped the top clean off a can of worms.

"Baby?!" Crichton sputters like a backfiring car.

"H-ow? WHY? Why were you and your left hand driving a baby anywhere? And you DID land in a ditch? With the baby in the car?!"

There they go, worms everywhere.

"Yes, we landed in a fucking ditch," Arthur snaps, feeling suddenly cornered. "Because we drove off fast, because there was a-a-a-an insane cultist woman trying to kill us and probably the child as well! I'd like to see you handle that better!"

(The missing step in that sequence of events is the oncoming car, please don't make him talk about the oncoming car...)

Edited (it's no longer 4am) 2022-10-07 11:20 (UTC)

Okay. Fine. That's probably fair. He wasn't there to see what happened in person.

"Okay. Okay. Sorry. You did what you had to do, I guess. Just sounds like one hell of a wild time. How'd you even end up in a situation like that?"

Arthur winds himself back in, embarrassed. He didn't mean to get that heated. (When does he ever?)

"Right. Right, no, sorry."

A sharp sigh. "Another long story. But, I, all right, not so long that I can't elaborate." He would like to be a little bit less of a cagey bastard. You know, in some things. Well, towards Crichton at least.

"We saw a... a stopped car, at the side of the road, a couple of hours out of town. Doors open, blood leading into the forest. Well, o-of course we stopped. I wanted to see if we could help, you know. And uh, some way into the trees there was..." He moves his hands, trying to communicate the whole... the whole baffling, frightening mess that happened in that forest. "A cultist, a baby, a body. A monster. We- we got out as soon as possible, with the child. Got her to her mother, further on down the road."

That last part is important, to include.

Crichton crosses the room and grabs the chair from the desk to turn it around backward and straddle it. He figures this is going to be a long one, might as well get comfortable. And, as predicted, it's just as wild as he was expecting. At least there's a happy ending?

"Arthur, you must have the worst luck of any man I've ever met." Including himself, which is really saying something.

"But, I'm glad you saved that baby and got her home. Sorry I yelled at you about it."

"You're telling me," says Arthur, whose bad luck is directly worsened by an audience that wants nothing more than to put him into situations.

He sounds wry about it. Buddy, you don't even know.

"I... no, I suppose I was asking for that," he answers with a trace of humour. "I think I told that story in perhaps the worst possible way."

At least he can be self-aware!

"...But I'm glad too. I think sometimes that I..." He struggles for a moment with a way to say it. That he's a net force for bad in the world. That it would be better if- no, not every thought should be said out loud. He finishes instead with: "Well, I'm glad I could do something good for somebody."

Edited 2022-10-16 16:09 (UTC)

"Maybe start with the baby made it home safe part first next time you tell it, huh?" There's humor in that too. Water flowing under the bridge.

"Arthur..." Crichton's tone turns serious, reading between the lines of what hasn't been said. He'd be lying if he said he hasn't had similar notions cross his own mind. So many people have been hurt because of him, it feels like. An endless parade of good intentions paving the way to hell. "Sometimes bad things happen to good people, sometimes a lot of bad things. Doesn't always mean it's your fault. The universe doesn't play fair."

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