openmisc | Daniel/Emery

He smiles a dopey smile in his direction. It's a very endearing image. "Perhaps not. But they are soft." Daniel stands, passing by him, placing a hand on his shoulder as he settles on the couch. "Tell me more about this tree." The cat shapeshifting he understands. The emptying of the stone is a little more complicated, but he can understand it in an abstract way. But he's lost at the tree.

He accepted a lot of easy touch from Daniel for a while there. But that was when he was at his lowest and most miserable. It probably never would have begun if he hadn't collapsed crying on the man that one stupid night.

It's a different experience now. Not bad. But. He's not any better at being petted in this shape than as a cat.

"This warden was... closer to me than anything else on the boat, anyway. A piece of something bigger, not a whole, I don't know, embodied person, even. He was actually a mask, not a philosopher's stone." Itself a vast simplification but whatever. "But it was something from his world. When people dream there they actually go someplace else instead of just hallucinating for a few hours. And you can get things from that place." In Emery's defense, explaining anything to do with John Doe has its challenges.

"A mask - " he pauses. "The floating ghost - man?" He brings his legs up to the couch, watching him intently.

"I remember him. I shouted at him in the library..." he says, more to himself. Then, his attention back on him, he nods. "And that's where you got the tree?"

"Sure." So they did overlap. The time when Emery simply wasn't on the barge is easy to forget, except that Daniel had time to give up and go without him. Not something he resents! No one staying aboard makes sense to him. But a little uncomfortable to sit with. "He got the tree thing. It did look like a tree and do tree... Things." Someone is not that knowledgeable about trees. "But it could sort of reason. And it operated the same way as alchemy. I made an exchange."

Daniel sets down the cup, regarding him very carefully.

What does he think tree things are? That's a question better saved for later.

Daniel smiles, pulling his feet up onto the couch. "And that helped. Made everything quiet. Made you - quiet." In a way that Daniel can't actually express.

"I'm glad you're here."

"You said to come. So you're surprised, what, because you didn't think I'd get out of there?" Emery shifts but doesn't seem to quite know where to go. He finally just... Hops himself up onto the back of the couch. Gargoyle perching suits him better. "Neither did I."

Daniel leans to the side to give him room and then sets his cup on the side table. "I'm not surprised because I didn't think you'd do it. I'm surprised because I didn't think you'd actually come."

He's pretty sure that's a lie, but when has he begrudged one of those? He looks down with weary exasperation. "Where else did you think I was gonna go?"

Daniel flinches at that. "I don't know. I didn't - know you cared that much to want to stay."

He looks up to him, turning a little so he's not craving his neck. "But I'm glad. Do you want to watch this show with me?"

Sometimes when they talk, they argue, and Daniel doesn't want this to be an argument. They can continue the conversation later.

He wasn't trying to argue. But it does sort of... happen. He hasn't exactly learned to have a normal conversation. He doesn't want to watch the show, particularly. He'll probably be bored. But he does want to... Huh. Do whatever it is Daniel wants so he can sit here. He thinks about clarifying, but he meant what he said. This is the only place he wanted to go. Why Daniel's being weird about that, he doesn't know.

"Sure, put it on," he says after a pause, disquieted but trying.

That seems to settle Daniel, and he flips on what he had been watching prior. It's all about the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, a place Daniel has never been, with a design he's never fathomed. He loses a bit of the tension in his shoulders, pointing out things to Envy that Daniel is sure he doesn't care about, but Daniel does. And not only does he care, but he wants to share it. Eventually, he pushes himself up to sit on the back of the couch beside him so he can point out his favorite parts and everything he's learned.

Does Envy care about a structure some human built in some location? He actually starts to, and then remembers that the alchemical ordering of the universe is not his job, and he actually doesn't give a shit if it is a place of power in a location of significance or if it's just a silly looking pile of metal. Freeing.

Not caring is actually sort of fun, on that level. Not giving a shit sparks joy.

But not as much as when Daniel clambers up beside him. He may not have consciously pieced together all his strange little human selves, but people didn't generally rise to meet them. Except this one.

Half an hour into the documentary, Emery's closed the distance between them entirely, arm to arm, mostly ignoring what's on the TV with everything he has.

Daniel can tell that he isn't paying attention, but that isn't the point. He pulls his feet up beside him, balancing with his back against the wall (perching isn't his normal state), and turns to Envy with a grin.

"Are you terribly bored?" he asks.

"You're boring," Envy says without missing a beat. It's the same tone he used to say he didn't have anywhere else to be. It's true. Envy doesn't know how to combine true with other things like nice or tactful. "I knew that. I still came."

"Shut up." He laughs, not taking offense to that. He was with Tim and he was with Connor because they liked the same things he did. He talked to them about boring shit. But Envy - it's different.

"Did you develop a personality and hobbies for a graduation?"

"I tried. I didn't like any of them that much, so I don't know if it mattered." He shrugs, very aware of the way his shoulder and Daniel's slide against each other when he does. "I learned a couple things, but they were boring, too. I don't like sitting still that much." For Emery, I like and I don't like are still daring, radical statements, but he's learning.

They are radical enough that Daniel turns to look at him, really look at him. The casual touch is less surprising, less startling, than the notion that Envy has wants and desires.

"What do you like to do?" he asks, almost afraid of the answer.

"Cause problems." Emery speaks with an odd confidence. Emereal knew. So did the others, but everything was still too loud, too... too painful to understand. "Make noise. Run. Find things nobody's ever looked at before. Break stuff and see how it works." Cooking eggs wasn't torture or anything, same as Daniel's dumb TV show, but it was a pause on a long, busy road. A thing to get done for a reason.

Daniel blinks at him, startled in the best way. "Well, there are places we can go so you can have that. Places with plenty of room to run. To make noise. To - oh, you should come to my workshop." Daniel sits up higher, turning to him, legs pressing against Envy's.

"When I was on the Barge, I always had my projects, remember? Taking apart everything and putting it back together. Parts all over the floor. Creating from gears and wood and metal. Well, I hardly have room for that here, so I rented a space for it. I have a lot of projects still and you - you could share that space with me. Break all the stuff you want."

"I don't want to break something when you're trying to get it to work," Emery says. Forestalled random destruction is her love language. "It'd be more interesting to see what it does, anyway. Unless you want me to try to see how it holds up." He's still a creature of alchemy, and alchemy is a science first.

"No, not my things!" he assures him. "I'll get your own things to break. Or - well, I suppose finding out the durability of some of them would be useful. And I can always put it back together later."

His grin warms. "What fun!"

The strange thing is that he agrees. Poking an egg until it's too hot to harbor bacteria is not fun, because you know the answer before you start. After a few trials, you know the solution and the problem is over. "Just give me whatever you need broken." He smiles, and it's crooked, but it's earnest, too.

Daniel laughs. "Good. We can go tomorrow." It's already getting too late to make a trek out to the workshop today and he, frankly, wants to keep Envy all to himself, away from the world, for a while longer.

"Any other changes I should know about?"

He does sort of wonder where Daniel was going when Emery ambushed him, but if it was urgent, they'd know already, right? "Emptied the stone, no more noisy echoes of human souls, put weird dream wood in instead. Those are the important parts."

Ice cream is sometimes urgent, but not this time. That can wait.

He runs his fingers through his hair. "That's all important, yes. You'll tell me if something else comes up?"

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