milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

Bastian had been intending to go into his apartment.

This was not his apartment.

It was Milliways.

Might as well... he thought. Maybe he'd even find Atreyu again.

So. Twenty year old, at a table, scratching away with a pen, in what used to be a nice leather-bound journal, but is now worn with use.

[Going to dissapear for a little bit. Reinstalling media cards.]

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Maybe he would. With luck, almost certainly, because Atreyu was already taking a seat beside him--not at the table, but on it, legs crossing neatly beneath him. His hair was loose, strands sliding black over one shoulder, and his lips parted slightly in a truly welcoming smile.

He held two mugs, both filled with cocoa, and he offered the one in his right hand to Bastian, wordlessly.

Bastian looked up as the legs and feet came into his view and smiled, setting down the pen and taking the offered mug in ink-stained fingers.

Only after the cocoa had been blown on and a proper sip been taken did he say, "Hi," softly and warmly.

Atreyu's smile widened just a bit, showing just a flash of teeth, and he sipped from his own mug before answering. "Hello." He held his mug in both hands, fingers curled dark around white porcelain. "I'm glad you came back." He had turned his gaze down to his feet, but raised his eyes again to meet Bastian's. "Will you stay, for a while? This time?"

Bastian took another sip, thought about how he'd come. "Kinda strange. Does this place normally grab people at random doors?"

Bastian's gaze slid down to the left, away from Atreyu's, and his tongue played with the bar that was cemented to the back of his lower canines -- a retainer. He'd had braces; of course he'd had braces. His father was a dentist.

"'d like to."

He looked up. "Are there places to stay, here?"

Nodding, Atreyu settled a bit more comfortably against the table, glancing curiously at Bastian's journal. The words eluded him, in script--he hadn't learned cursive, yet. "There are rooms, upstairs, to rent. I am not sure how much."

He shrugged a smooth shoulder. "You might stay with me, but I am living in a tent by the lake." He slants Bastian a smile. "It might not be so comfortable, if you are used to a real bed."

Most of it was just mental wandering; working out details in the plot. A particular scene that was proving difficult and stubborn in the writing.

"Rooms. Mmm."

Bastian chuckled. "After all the time I spent in Fantasia very far from what would be called 'a real bed,' I don't think I'd mind."

But... He had a store to run. Granted, he could basically open shop whenever he wanted, be there whenever, go on vacation or not, if he wanted, but he still needed to be open enough to make a living.

And why rent a room when he had an apartment. It would be so nice to stay with Atreyu again.

Bastian looked up, uncertain. "Do you think you'd want to come stay with me, back in the real world? At my apartment? ....If the door lets you through, that is."

[ooc: Which is entirely up to you. And I need to dissapear for a little while. Fifteen minutes or so.]

"Oh." Atreyu's eyes went wide, then narrowed again, vaguely doubtful. "I would like to see your world," he murmured. A place so entirely new, utterly different, that he could barely comprehend it--a true adventure, unmatched, and he was not afraid. Perhaps he should have been. "But will I not disappear? Or--turn into a lie?" Far worse a fate, and he gritted his teeth an instant at the memory of Gmork, taunting him with the apparent inevitability of his fate. "This place is between, and...it makes its own rules, I think."

One hand clasped around Auryn, unconsciously protective, secure.

Bastian scowled. "I would never let you turn into a lie!"

He remembered the conversation between Gmork and Atreyu. And he thought hard, trying to find a way around it.

"It just can't be that way." Bastian wracked his brains. "...He said you had to go through the Nothing to get to my world, and then you would become a lie. But.... Maybe if you came through a different way, with me, and I would know that you are real, you would stay real. ...Maybe..."

Bastian looked down and mumbled the last word. For a moment, he'd had the bright enthusiasm he had, a long time ago, sitting in an attic reading a stolen book.

He wouldn't want to lose Atreyu.

Frowning, Atreyu set down his mug, resting his forearms against his knees, a bit disturbed by Bastian's sudden outburst and the trailing silence that followed. "Maybe," he said at length. "Everything may be possible, from this place." His lips quirked a bit. "I have found you again, after all."

He reached out after a long moment, covering Bastian's hand with his own. "Seeing you again. It was something I had wanted but...I hadn't expected to receive." He shrugged a shoulder, warm.

Bastian's lips quirked in return. "Yes, yes you did."

He looked at Atreyu's hand for a while, and then turned his over so that the two palms could clasp together, and Bastian looked up. "I thought about it, every now and then.
About going back.

Thought about you more often than I did about being there. Wished you could come see me, come watch my meets. See the things I accomplished."

His mouth curled sardonically. "I told someone, once. I wanted to share Fantasia."

In this case, Atreyu could touch more easily, more familiarly, and his fingers curled against Bastian's as he listened, eyes warming a bit with the quiet words.

"I hope they did not make fun of you," he said darkly, to the last comment. Bastian's tone told otherwise, unpleasantly enough. "Like the others." He had been more curious than sympathetic, as a child, and he regretted that now, given the weight of experience. So many things to regret, in their shared past.

Bastian shook his head, looking down at their joined hands.

"No, they didn't," he said softly.

She'd just passed it off as some fantasy of his, some part of his writing that he was too obsessed with.

"But they did not respect you, either," Atreyu hazarded, eyes quiet, unreadable except for a certain disappointment reflected in their depths. Bastian's world had so little appreciation for the fantasy its inhabitants could create.

He tilted his head very slightly to the side, regarding Bastian with the gleaming darkness of his eyes. "You have changed," he murmured at length. "I knew your eyes at once. But the rest is different, again."

Bastian said nothing.

He could feel Atreyu's eyes on him, but now it was different. He looked up, and grinned. "Sure did, didn't I."

Atreyu's lips curved a bit, a little mysterious, maybe, but only if Bastian couldn't see the quiet warmth in his gaze. "I prefer you as you truly are," he declared. "However that might be."

Grown up, now. Tall and perhaps broader than Atreyu himself.

"Tell me," he said suddenly, his curiosity abruptly demanding. "Tell me everything you have done." An impossible task, perhaps, but he didn't care at the moment about time or practicality.

Bastian laughed, and drank a hearty amount of his cocoa.

"Everything?" He set the mug down. "Wow, that's... That's a lot!"

"Let's see. There was the swimming. I did that. And the meets! Those are the competitions. Oh, I wish you could have been there to see those, Atreyu."

"Tell me, then," he said with the flash of a grin. "It will be good enough."

The savior of Fantasia was the master storyteller, after all. He still vividly recalled Bastian's words about his own world, his school and the bookshop and Kris Ta.

Many hours, cups of cocoa, and stories later...

"And when he died, there wasn't any family, so I inherited the bookstore. And I've been there ever since."

Quietly intent, Atreyu watched him for a moment more with eyes focused and dark, then nodded once, contemplative. A number of things he simply didn't quite understand--beyond his experience, or utterly different from how such things might happen in Fantasia. But there was always a familiarity to Bastian's stories. He imagined it might be a sort of family kinship.

"Are you happy, now?" he asked at length.

Bastian paused, and his expression slowly faded away, leaving a thoughtful half-stare.

Taking a sip, he said, "I like it."

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