#whatever happens we've got us [al calavicci / observingly.]

[quantumleapt]

@observingly dreams: who did this to you?

“  who  did  this  to  you  ?  ”   always accepting.

"Al."

It's barely a breath, but the soft murmur relaxes too tight shoulders, whole body sagging into the floor. A smile, somewhere between dazed and beatific, appears on too pale features, and hazel eyes fall shut with a sigh. He can almost feel a hand running through his hair, matted with blood, fingers so familiar skimming over the head wound before moving to... what, hold him in his lap, just like they used to on so many summer's days, so many lifetimes ago? Anything's possible now that his eyes are closed. He's here. That's all that matters.

"Berto..." Sam ventures, curling up tighter as if he's half-awake and dreaming. "...You found me." It's a reverent, awe-filled phrase, a notion that, even after all this time, he still isn't quite able to grasp. No matter what, Al will be there, Al will find him, Al will bring him home.

It's one of the few fundamental truths he still has.

But there's panic, anger in his tone-- from the sounds of it, Al's about halfway to the admiral voice-- and the reality of the situation starts to slither over his skin, seeping into his subconscious and the pit of his stomach.

"...I don't know," he answers honestly. "Can't... remember. I..." With effort, he opens his eyes to half-mast. Blinking a few times, he sees only darkness. "...where are we, Al?..."

[quantumleapt]

@observingly dreams: how did you come, by way of australia?

SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1952) SENTENCE STARTERS. always accepting.

This isn't exactly what he'd imagined.

He'd imagined, if, no, when it finally happened, it would be something more... triumphant. He'd leave the tilting at windmills far behind him, charging into the sunset as the curtain fell.

Then again, he always was an impossible dreamer.

And, as Sam opens his eyes-- his eyes-- and looks up at Al's face, feeling the warm hands holding his own, he can't help but be grateful for it, because nothing he could ever imagine could possibly be any better than this.

"...It's good to see you too, Al," he murmurs, tear-filled eyes crinkling as he smiles.

[quantumleapt]

It’s so blue in here… wherever here is. He doesn’t understand what happened. A second ago, he was in the cornfield, headed home, and now he’s here. He should be flipping out, but… he’s not scared.

He gets the idea he’s maybe waiting for something, or someone. He guesses he’d be okay staying here longer, but, this weird bench is pretty uncomfortable, and he can hear voices outside. 

Well, there’s no reason to wait around forever.

He hops off the bench, heading toward the direction of the voices. He lays his hand on the wall, curious to see what it’s made of, and the doors open immediately with a metallic whoosh. 

He steps outside, into a sea of white and metal. He feels a little small, especially when the guy in the middle of the… hallway? Corridor?… snaps his head up at the sound of the door opening, whirling around until their eyes meet. 

Why’s he looking at him like that? Why does he feel bad? Then again, he must look kinda dumb, big Bambi eyes and messy, floppy hair and ears that are still too big for him and all. 

“Excuse me, sir?…” he begins.

He knows him, doesn’t he? He’s gotta.

“...Where are we? See, I... I gotta get home. I gotta help Dad and do my chores so I can practice, ‘cause break starts tomorrow, and…” 

How did he not notice the thing in his hand before? It whirrs and beeps and his eyes widen in wonder. 

“What’s that?” he asks, looking up at @alavicci , so excited that his heart’s trying to bust outta his chest. “Does it run on ARPAnet?” 

[quantumleapt]

"Hey, Al?..."

The sleepy murmur breaks the low-volume drone of the late show, and bright hazel eyes meet brown. Sam's curled up on the couch under a blanket, and @alavicci is pacing, alternating between working quietly on the handlink and cursing Ziggy, and he can't help thinking that all of this feels really familiar.

"...I know, I know, I shouldn't ask," he begins, tone light and curious, "and you probably can't tell me, but... what was I like? ...Before."

He huffs a laugh as his fingers twine in chunky, crocheted yarn, picking at it absently.

"I just... I can't remember, is all, and... that must be almost as hard for you as it is for me."

[quantumleapt]

His breaths are slow, getting slower and deeper as he breathes in home. It's wool and cedar balls, cologne and aftershave, and thick, sweet smoke. There's a heart pounding against his ear, and he buries his face in the warm crook of a neck that's always felt like it was tailor-made for him. He smiles, sleepily, at the rumble of words echoing from beneath sternum and ribs, and reaches painful and too-heavy arms up to wind around neck and shoulders, one hand brushing against scratchy fabric, the other toying with the small curls at the back of his neck.

God, he's tired.

There's an urgency in Al's tone that Sam distantly registers. He should listen to him, should answer him, though he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to wake up.

"...I hear ya," he murmurs, before his fingers stop their movement. He can hear him. He can feel him, touch him, smell him. His head moves back, and glassy eyes blown wide squint in the bright, white light, taking in the worried countenance that always makes him feel like his heart is moments away from breaking.

"...Al?..." his voice is too high, too strained, and the vision in front of him blurs, eyes stinging hotly. He doesn't want to move, doesn't want to breathe in case everything falls out from under them.

"It's you. It's really..."

Even as the words leave him, he can't believe it, and he holds onto him with everything he has, weak as it is, burying his face in his neck again. Safe harbor. Driftwood in a maelstrom.

"I missed you," he murmurs, "God, I missed you. I..." he takes a shaky breath. "I'm stayin', Berto. Don't... don't let me go?..."

it's a half - way point. somewhere impossible. a world both here and nowhere. a dream, or something so much like it. he doesn't know how; he doesn't know why – they are questions, both, that plague the admiral, leave him pondering, leave him nervous. still, there are hands, hands that grasp, hands that hold. he keeps sam fast to him, against his lap. it's an unreality, the makeshift improbability that makes gooshie overrun with tangential technobabble, the sort that would sooner see the elder of their team perplexed into palpitations.

❝  it's me, sammy. alright? i'm here, honey. i'm here.  ❞  words that slip - side from him, a veritable fountain of words and promises, spilling out and bleeding from his chest as quickly as anything.  ❝  we're gonna get you fixed up real good, you hear me?  ❞  he does. god help him, he does. somehow, some way. if this is what sam's been preaching about, some higher power ... he'll give his right arm for the privilege.

it's a blankness, a stark - white home to something that shouldn't exist. catholicism teaches a kind of limbo, a world that lives between. give it a name. hell, any name. as long as it's real, as long as he's his.  ❝  you just stay with me.  ❞  just stay. just stay.

[quantumleapt]

@guttersniper​​ dreams: 🏠 (domestic) cuz i love throwing mutt in situations he’s not equipped with. but also because he deserves it.

STARTER CALL. always accepting.

The radio’s playing something peppy and upbeat that brightens up the yellow kitchen. The sweet scent of sugar and maple permeates the whole house, mixed with the fresh, spring air that lazily rustles the curtains through the open window.

Sam’s moving around the kitchen as if they’ve lived there for years instead of just a few days, swaying lightly to the music as they hum and sing snatches of the song under their breath. Al, clad in one of his several bathrobes, is perched on the counter and doing something similar. The only clue that he’s not actually physically present there is that, when he swings his legs in time with the rhythm, they swing clear through a set of cabinets. 

The dress Sam’s wearing, blue and white checkered, brushes the floor, as they kneel down and rummage through one of the cabinets Al is not currently phasing through. They sing to themself in time with the bridge.

“Friends ask me, am I in love, I always answer yes--” They pull out a pan, only for their attention to be drawn by Mutt’s appearance in the room. Their face immediately lights up. 

“Mornin’, sweetheart,” they greet, moving over to Mutt and pressing a kiss to his forehead. “You’re right on time,” they continue, “because, it also happens to be morning, uh... back... back home. So, I sent along my mom’s pancake recipe, and Gooshie and Tina and Verbena and everyone’re cookin’ ‘em up right now. We’re havin’ a--” Family meal, is the unspoken but plainly obvious meaning, one that they feel and mean with everything they have, but one they’re still wary about expressing, “--we’re gonna get to eat together. Y’know, I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before!” 

They smile, soft and warm, as fingertips tuck a lock of hair behind the boy’s ear, smoothing it down with an easy stroke.

“Your stomach okay? You feel up to pancakes?” they ask. “And do you wanna have sausage or bacon with ‘em? Al likes bacon better and I like sausage better,” because I’m right, is similarly unspoken, a certain something in their tone conveying a long-standing, but no less playful, feud, “but you’re the deciding vote.”

[quantumleapt]

His voice dies in his throat as a stabbing, shooting pain bursts above his left eye. He inhales sharply, air suddenly seeming in short supply.

Distantly, he hears @alavicci 's voice, full of concern.

"I don't know," he murmurs, resisting the urge to lean on the mailbox. At least... before, everything around him was real, even if it didn't feel like it. Now, he knows that it's all fake, all a hologram, and his fingers start to feel numb again, the pain spreading across his forehead. Everything smells so empty in here, so metallic and too clean, that it almost makes him feel sick.

Back when they first built the imaging chamber and were running the first few tests, they'd made plenty of notes about it. Tried to figure out ways to make it more comfortable, make it feel less like you were floating in an empty void.

They'd tried putting some furniture in, but the floral sofa in Al's office he refused to get rid of and that was probably older than the two of them combined interrupted the holographic pattern. Another one-- white and sleek and modern that everybody had spent a whole afternoon trying and failing miserably to put together-- blended in great, but Sam had tripped over it and launched himself right into Al, who'd caught him with a laugh, saying jeez, I know ya fell for me, kid, but this is ridiculous--

The pain explodes and he flings his arm out, thankful his hand finds something to brace itself against-- the wall, maybe, or maybe the door that refuses to open.

He'd never, ever come close to anything he could call his life flashing before his eyes, not before now, as thousands of sights, sounds, words, flood into his mind. There are some constants, though, and he clings to those like the wreckage of a sinking ship; slow dancing in the living room, a voice harmonizing with his own, a hand in his that he feels lost without.

Hazel eyes immediately find brown.

"...I'm gettin' my memory back, Al." Sam's voice is soft, enraptured, enamored, as he roves over familiar features that he's only now seeing and knowing. He's so lucky that he gets to wake up every morning to the sight of the bravest, kindest, strongest person he'd ever known, his best friend and the man he--

"Oh my god." It's a whispered revelation as love blooms in his chest, apple blossoms and all the flowers of May after a long, bitter winter. There's so much emotion that it's even harder to breathe, and tears sting his eyes.

"How could I have forgotten you?"

[quantumleapt]

@alavicci inquires: “ lean on me, kid. ”

'KID' NICKNAME STARTERS. always accepting.

"'M fine, Al..." comes the weak protest, try as he might to make it sound convincing.

Then again, there's really no way he could make it sound convincing, seeing as though he'd all but passed out the second he set foot in the office-- his office.

It's like stepping into a dark room, then all the lights flashing at once, confetti and balloons and everyone jumping out and shouting 'surprise,' the smell of sticky-sweet birthday candle smoke permeating the air.

Sam thinks he's been to a few of those... maybe one or two were even thrown for him, or for other hims he'd been... but instead of cake and presents, it's a surge of memories.

Bursts of laughter and coffee gone cold, late nights, sore throat from belting out lyrics sung a thousand times before, burned and bitter popcorn and too salty cups of ramen, waking up in the morning with a sore neck, head on his notebook and a blanket around his shoulders that definitely hadn't been there last night.

He'd stumbled, doubling over, one hand scrambling for purchase on the doorway and the other knotted in his hair, clenching as pain roared to life behind his forehead, eyes squeezing shut with the force of it all.

Sam feels hands on him-- still such a strange sensation-- the worried tone of the voice that was now more familiar than his own, and he doesn't fight it, instead sinking into the touch as an arm is wound around his waist, a hand clasping his wrist and pulling it over a pair of shoulders.

He feels the coolness of the penny ring. His eyes sting with burning pinpricks. He doesn't know why.

"...'m fine," he says, quieter now, swallowing thickly and voice strained, "...just a headache."

[quantumleapt]

@andstrange​ inquires: 44 for al

SPOTIFY WRAPPED. always accepting.

44. like or like like - minature tigers.

“Tell me how you feel about me, do you like or like-like me? Tell me what you really feel, do you like me?”

“Just say you do.”