fandomhigh | BWI Airport Portalocity Lounge, Saturday morning [05/04].

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!event: newbie shuttle

BWI Airport Portalocity Lounge, Saturday morning [05/04].

"What the ever-loving fuck is a Portalocity Lounge?"

Apparently, it was precisely the place where Wayne was standing, squared shoulders, thumbs in his belt loops, frowning up at the softest, most sparkliest banner he had ever seen...and he'd een to at least a baker's dozen of Dary's traditional soft birthday parties, so he knew a soft fucking banner when he saw one.

"That," he stated, to no one in particular, especially since he seemed to be the first one there (if you're not five minutes early, you're five minutes late, bud), "is fucking 10-ply."

But it was what it was. No going back now, ain't no reason to get excited, he supposed. Pitter-patter. So he turned his head sharply to one side of the lounge, eyed the chairs against the wall, and went to have a seat, one hand on his knee, tohe other around the smallest cup of coffee he could get, and settled in to wait.

[[ and the ocd ~~is incoming~~ has landed! Let's get at 'er. ]]

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Wayne was of the opinion that anyone who wanted to could say fuck, but he might have been disposed to inform this girl that she might want to take about 10, 20 percent off there.

But there was a dog, and no amount of excitedly dropped F-bombs could distract him from that.

He also thought for a second that maybe the dog had said 'no,' but that was just silly. Dogs couldn't talk.

"Didn't know we could bring dogs," he noted, sounding maybe a little petulant about it, but making himself feel better by pointing out that the dogs were much happier back home on the farm. He tilted his head at Barnabas for a moment before clicking his tongue a little, patting his knee to see if that good bo wanted to come over and say hi.

But not actually say hi, because dogs couldn't talk.

Edited 2019-05-03 19:07 (UTC)

"I'm a service dog," Barnabas said wryly, "I provide a very valuable service." That tongue-click and knee pat got the canine version of a haughty look. "I'm Barnabas," he said, "Pleased to meet you."

Delirium looked between the two of them, confusion evident. "I didn't bring Barnabas," she explained, "Barnabas brought me so really it's not bringing a dog but a dog bringing a girl and that's ok because it's a school for people. Did you want to pet him? Is that what.." She clicked her tongue and patted her knee, "means in whatever language it is where you came from? You can just ask him. Barnabas likes pats and scritches.."

"Delirium," Barnabas sighed.

"What?" she asked, "You do. Your tongue gets all pantsy and you sometimes do the leg flobber thing.." she stomped her foot several times in a row to indicate it, "but that just means it's a good itchy spot that you wanted scritched but didn't know it until just that very minute and for a communication doggo sometimes you're not so good at knowing your own communication things and that's why I'm asking the boy right there whether he's trying to communicate with you in his own language."

To Wayne, she said, "Barnabas speaks English, mostly."

"...You're not 'exposed to give dogs human names," said Wayne, after a very, very long time and a suspicious look down into his coffee cup with a furrowed brow, because that was a lot to process right now, what with the talking dog and everything. Then he looked back up, still frowning deeply, and blinking maybe a few times. "But maybe there's an exception for talking dogs. Fuck. I don't know."

Then he looked away, off to the side, frowning even still as he tried to sort out this sort of new territory. Because of course he wanted to pet the dog. All he could think about was how he wanted to pet that dog. Scratch his ears. Maybe rub his belly. But it felt a bit awkward, didn't it, knowing that dog could talk, and here you'd just met him and was already thinking about how all you wanted to do was rub his belly.

Processing this a little more, he turned back toward the girl. "Does he shake--" he started, then stopped, because the dog apparently could answer the question himself, and turned his attention now toward Barnabas and tried again.

"Do you shake hands?" he asked.

Seemed only polite to shake a talking dog's hand before you went and rubbed his belly, at any rate.

"Oh, I didn't name him," Delirium asserted, "I'd have given him a much more interesting name. Barnabas suits him, don't you think? He has a very 'Barnabas' look about him."

"Thank god," Barnabas muttered under his breath.

"All dogs talk," Delirium informed the boy, "just not all of them speak English so good as Barnabas does."

Barnabas gave Del a fond but long-suffering look before turning his attention to the boy. He raised a paw for a shake, "I'm Barnabas and this is my charge, the Lady Delirium."

That was a pretty fair point, really, about how all dogs talked but not all of 'em spoke English. Or maybe he was just going to latch onto that part because it made sense and this whole talking-dog thing was throwing him through a bit of a loop.

But he also figured, as far as things to toss you went, a talking dog wasn't half bad. Or it was possibly just jet-lag. Or maybe that gas station sandwich...

Either way, he bolted up to standing, because even with a dog, you should always stand to shake a man's hand, even if it seemed a little counter-intuitive since he had to bend back down for it.

"Barnabas!" he said, giving that paw a firm and respectable shake. "I'm Wayne. Good to meet you."

Then he straightened, turning squarely toward Delirium, offering out a hand to her. "Lady Delirium. Seems fitting." Considering the hallucinated talking dog and everything. "Same to you!"

But his attention was going right back to Barnabas. This was all incredibly weird, but also weirdly fascinating. How often did he get the chance to converse with an actual English speaking dog? Not very! So he was going to make the most out of it, even if it was all in his imagination.

"Par-lay vooz Fran-say?" he asked Barnabas in very bad and very phonetic French. "Or is it just On-glaze?"

Delirium knew what to do with that hand! She took it and shook it. She shook it a lot. Excitedly. Most people didn't shake her hand. Most people weren't brave enough to touch the anthropomorphised personification of insanity. Not, it should be mentioned, that she was doing anything but shaking his hand like it was an extremely stubborn catsup bottle. "Hi Wayne! Good to meet you too!" Shake.. shake.. shake..

Barnabas, for his part, would have grimaced if dogs could do that but instead he gave a single quiet whuff. "Yes, I speak French. I speak every known human language. It's necessary, you see," he explained, "Delirium doesn't always choose to speak English. Sometimes she makes up whole new languages."

And Wayne was just going to let Delirium shake his hand for as long as she needed to, really. Weren't no harm in it, really, and it seemed to make her happy enough.

Well, maybe not quite as long as she needed. If it went on a little too long, long enough to get particularly awkward, he might subtly try to claim his hand back, but he wasn't going to make a big deal about it.

"Is that sooo?" he asked, a question borne more from pure politeness than actual intrigue, and he took a moment to maybe consider Delirium a little more closely. Made sense, really. She looked like she'd just about fit right in with the Skids, and they definitely had a language all their own, one Wayne didn't have any particular interest in learning for himself ever. And he had read that there was a considerable meth problem down here in the States...

He may have made a bit more of an effort to get his hand back once that comparison decided to take off its jacket and stay for a while.

She'd let go of his hand when he tried to retrieve it. Delirium smiled back when he took that moment to consider her. One green eye, one blue with little silver flecks that swam about it in like tiny fishes, looked up at him.

"It is so," Barnabas said with a tiny rippling shake that served him as a shrug. He watched Wayne's subtle withdraw and pointed out dryly, "Unlike her older brother, the Lady Delirium is - mostly - harmless. A little scattered," understatement, "but mostly harmless."

Delirium was distracted by the bus. "Do you think they'll let me drive? I'm a really good driver."

"The bus already has a driver," Barnabas put in quickly.

"Oh," Delirium said, a little bit sadly, "I'm a very good driver, though."

"Yes," Barnabas agreed, "but we'll let the other driver do his job today, ok?"

She nodded.

Those eyes weren't doing anything by way of convincing him that this wasn't all just some sort of weird hallucination or dream or something of that kind. And Wayne wasn't so sure he liked the cut of that mostly, there, either, Barney-bud, and he had a side-eye just for you just to prove it.

"Y'know what I think?" he asked, his voice finding a bit of a higher pitched than his previous monotone seemed to allow. "I think it's a good idea, lettin' the bus drivers be the ones drivin' the bus. I'm a pretty good driver, too, but I don't think I'd want to drive. Leave it ta them, I'd say, gives you the chance to really just kick back. Maybe enjoy the scenerayyyy."

Barnabas would nip you so hard if you ever called him 'Barney', Wayne.

"I concur," he said to Delirium, "and also, perhaps, sit back and enjoy the scenery and kick nothing." Because he knew his charge and had caught her opening her mouth about to ask something that would undoubtedly give him a headache.

"I could help the driver," Del offered.

"No," said Barnabas patiently.

"But.."

"No," Barnabas said with slightly less patience. Delirium sighed and turned her attention back to Wayne. "What do you drive? Is it a big car or a truck? I bet you drive a truck. You look the truck-y driver-y sort."

Just be glad he didn't just drop this whole conversation to go all mush-mouth and start going on about what a good bo you were, Barn, because, so help him, sure as God's got sandals, he was fighting back that urge this whole damn time.

But for the time being, he just gave Delirium a nod. "That's a Texas-size 10-4," he said, which seemed even more appropriate when talking about trucks. "Got a nice truck back home on the farm, but I also know my way pretty well around a tractor, a combine, your basic hay-balers, skid-loaders, oh..." He squinted a little, looking away modestly, "just about pretty near anything you might need for chorin', really."

Barnabas was the goodest of boys and Delirium would tell him so her ownself. If he'd said it. Which he hadn't yet. Not that that ever stopped her.

But she was distracted by the truck talk. "Chorin'?" What a lovely new word.

Truck talk was good talk to get distracted by. Only thing better than getting distracted by truck talk was probably dog talk, really.

He wasn't too terribly surprised by the idea that someone like Delirium might not exactly be familiar with the word chorin', either.

"Ain't nothing like a good long day of chorin'," he told her with a nod, "except maybe the beer you have after it. Not sure what I'm going to do about that out here, but...I'll figure something out."

"It's a," pause, "quaint antimeria for the word 'chores', Delirium. 'To do chores'."

"Oh," Delirium said, "We do chores too. Probably not the same sort of chores because I've never seen you in any of my realms nor any of the other realms and you look sort of solid and reals-y and truck-y driver-y so you proooobably can't do the sort of chores I do but maybe you can. I don't know. Can you?"

Her nose wrinkled at the mention of beer. She was too polite to say anything about the habit of drinking a beverage made with rotting grain and water. It made people smell bad.

She went back to the better topic. "What do you combine?"

Wayne felt he could probably make a pretty good argument that it still didn't make people smell half as bad as cow shit and pig piss, to be faaaairrrr.

Delerium earned herself a bit of squinting as she went on about solid and real-sy and felt inclined to agree that the sorts of chores she was thinking of...whatever those were...were definitely not the sorts of chores Wayne was thinking about.

"Oh, you know," he said, "mostly corn. Some hay. Bit of a baaarleh."

Delirium would argue about the whole piss part of that. The tang of beer had a distinctly uric overtone.

"Are your eyes ok?" she asked when he squinted at her. "Did you get something in them when you were chorin'? Or maybe you're sad to not be chorin' now and you're squinting to try not to cry because you're homesick for corn and hay and barleh?" She was quite concerned. "What happens when you combine those? Do they turn into something nice? The corn and barleh sounds sort of cereal-y but the hay part sounds very yuck. Not for horses, they like hay, and so do bunnies but not people, not so much. Orrr," Del said, thinking, "Maybe you have fever in your eyes from the hay? Is that it? Are they itchy? You keep making a scrunchy-uppy face like maybe they're sore. Or itchy. You know?"

...yeah, okay. That wasn't doing anything to cure Wayne of his perpetual squint. If anything, Del, you've only gone and made it worse.

And after thinking of about a different answer for every little piece of that, all he came out with in the end of it was a squint-filled, "...kaaaaay."

Far as he knew, there wasn't really anything wrong with his eyes. That was just kind of his face.

"Cahmbine," he added, because he felt that, at least, should be explained, "not cuuumbine. That's a machine for a harvesting, not the same as just puttin' things together. Figgure it ouwt. And hay's good fer beddin', too, if you got lots of animals. Don't imagine it'll be much use out here, though."

But he kept squinting like something was bothering his eyes! She was trying to be helpful!

"Oh," Delirium said after a moment of thought, "Like the Corinthian."

Barnabas made a sound like he was about to choke up a hairball. "No, Delirium," he said when he was done making the shocked noise, "Nothing like the Corinthian. More like a tractor."

"Oh," she said again. Paused a moment and offered tentatively, "There are stables? On the island? They might need some combined hay." Her gaze went a little vague. "Other animals too but not so many that would want some hay. Some bunnies right now? Not wild bunnies, they have their own hay, but pet bunnies that don't have pet humans to go with them no more? And.. an Alot of hay?"

She cast a glance at Barnabas. "How did the Alots get out?"

"These," he said with a whole lot of patience, "are not your Alots. You have Alots of Stuff."

"Oh," Delirium said for the third time in a row.

After a long moment and a lot more squinting, Wayne almost just settled on another 'kaaay' but instead decided to go with, "I'd just like to see more dogs, m.k mostleh. Fuck, if I'm not going to miss my dogs."

So excuse him if the squint went a little focused on Barnabus again with a bit of wistful envy.

Barnabas gave a small sigh and offered, "You may pat me if you wish." It wasn't that he objected to pets. He was singularly concerned with the dignity of his charge - he had to be; she certainly wasn't.

"There are dogs," Delirium offered, still kind of staring off vaguely into an area of space. Her eyes tracked like she was watching something. Counting. "More than just Barnabas. Lots and lots of doggies and a big.." She beamed. "Person-shaped puppy! He's a puppy and he's such a good boy but he's people-shaped and he can talk like people too! And he has a friend like Barnabas!"

In her defense, Zack Fair was a human-shaped puppy.

Good luck closing this barn door now that it was wide open, Barnabas.

Because Wayne was wasting no time in crouching down and patting you and offering ear scritches, and, really, he wasn't messing around with them, either. He was kind of an expert. He had dogs and he loved them fiercely. Though he believed firmly in excerise, discipline, and affection, in that order, he did not skimp on the affection part when he got to it.

Plus, patting a pupper was easily much more comfortable territory for him than trying to parse out what in god's green earth Delirium was on about with people-shaped puppies.

Though he supposed he could think of a few people who might fit that description, really. Dary. Squirrely Dan. Which was ironic, if they were also calling him squirrely.

He thought about commenting on being glad that there'd be no shortage of dogs on the island, but...well...there was a dog right there, and he was patting him, and that was sort of sucking up all the retail space on this boy's brain.

"There's a good bo," he murmured at he pat, becaus ehe really couldn't help it. "Such a good bo."

Barnabas gave a goofy doggy grin at the patting. Speaking of human shaped puppies, there seemed to be one patting him right now.

"Do you think it's nice at the school?" Delirium asked, fidgeting with a button on her jacket, "The island's nice. People can be nice or not-nice sometimes but people can be talked to when there needs to be talking happening but schools are different and full of kids and sometimes they're nice and sometimes they're not-nice and no talking does nothing to help it and I've never been to a school before, have you?"

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BWI Airport Portalocity Lounge, Saturday morning [05/04].

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