bsumone | ❝ The moon is a friend ❞

[ sort of continued from here. ]

It takes some time for Laurent to fix it in his mind that this is really happening. He's leaving Earth to go explore strange, unknown worlds. It's actually... Is it exciting? Is that what this feeling is? It's been so long since he's felt anything even close to enthusiasm. Ah, but everything in this world reminds him of someone he'll never have again. Leaving it and all the memories of him behind feels like relief; like release from a long curse of darkness -- metaphorical darkness, that is.

Laurent packs quickly. He can't imagine he'll need a lot. There must be some way to clean or obtain new clothes. It seems that Janus isn't limited by the space travel of this place and time. Or is that just Laurent being foolish? When he's done, he has only one suitcase and a cooler filled with, uh, food for the journey.

In just about an hour he shows up at the location Janus sent. It really was 'middle of nowhere cornfield kind of shit.' Definitely not somewhere Laurent would've gone without purpose. Tucking his phone into a pocket, he looks around. Surely the ship that would carry him away from this wretched world couldn't be far.

"Hello?"

Jan is no stranger to picking people up from random locations and just... dragging them with him into his life. Most of them find a place in one of the locations he takes them to. Some ask to be taken back home. None have ever stayed around for as long as he would maybe like them to but that's fine, right? He's a wanderer in his soul and not everyone is built for that kind of life. Jan affectionately refers to that collection as his strays and he's super excited to add a whole vampire to that particular list.

He's taking a nap while he waits for Laurent to roll in, not entirely sure how long it takes a vampire to get ready for a journey that will last... an amount of time. That all depends on what Laurent wants, really. Jan wakes up when his motion sensor goes off and he sits up with a yawn to flip on the monitor, grinning when he sees the vaguely confused figure looking around. Another button is pressed and the air around the ship starts to shimmer as his cloaking shield lowers.

The ship that's revealed isn't necessarily the sleekest thing in the universe, and it looks a little banged up and rough around the edges, but she's fast and has a good amount of space inside for him and most importantly it's his. The back hatch opens with a hiss and Jan steps out of it, grinning as he throws open his arms and heads toward Laurent. "You made it!"

Were Laurent more interested in pop-culture, he might have considered some form of cloaking. Alas, he's not a sci-fi buff so the mere idea of these sorts of technologies are completely foreign to him. He doesn't jump, but he's definitely startled when the ship seems to shimmy into existence before his eyes. Once Laurent realizes what he's seeing, whatever he felt a few second ago melts into awe. Dark eyes widen by degrees as he drinks in the sight of the ship.

The hissing draws his attention, just in time to see Janus. Is he seriously planning to come over and hug Laurent? IF that happens, the vampire is likely just going to stand there. He's a true wet blanket and not a terribly affectionate thing... at least not since his lover's death. Sorry, Janus.

"I couldn't pass up this opportunity." A chance to experience something new, truly new, for the first time in such a very long time. A chance to leave behind all the things that reminds him of someone who no longer exists. How could he pass that up?

Don't worry, it's not a hug, it's just an overly excited greeting. Jan's still smiling wide when he finally reaches Laurent and he claps a hand on his shoulder as a way to say hello. "Most people can't!" He turns a bit and looks back up toward the ship, reaching out to place a hand against the exterior.

"Pretty, isn't she? This here's the Medusa. She may not be the fanciest girl on the block, but she does her job as perfectly as I could ask of her. Come on, I'll show you inside." Jan moves to drape an arm around Laurent's shoulders, decides there's too much height to even try, and drops it instead to simply head back into the ship from the way he came.

The first area is a small cargo bay, some sealed boxes tucked along one wall, and just general things scattered around. He keeps moving, heading through a door into what looks to be a mess hall or just general living space. It's a little messier here, the table littered with magazines and the remnants of his dinner that he hadn't bothered to clean up yet. Jan casts Laurent a sheepish grin. "Common area, more or less. There's a fridge over there," he gestures toward a door set flush with the wall, a glass pane showcasing the cans and containers inside, "that you can put your uh... snacks in, if you want."

Laurent's seen a lot of things in his long life, but a spaceship isn't one of them. Not even the actual Earth space shuttles. Oh, he's seen pictures and maybe even one or two on TV. But never in person. So even if the Medusa isn't the fanciest, flashiest ship around, Laurent can't help but be awed by her.

If the untidiness bothers him, there's no indication of it. In truth, he's a bit of a cluttered person himself, so it only serves to make the ship feel like it's lived in, like it's really someone's home. Those dark eyes follow where Jan indicates. It really doesn't matter whether the blood's warm or cold. It does tend to last longer when it's refrigerated, though. Making his way over, Laurent opens the cooler he brought and starts stacking the blood bags in there.

"Are you the only one who lives here?"

Well, that's certainly something Jan's never had in his fridge before, and he has had a lot of uh... interesting things in there. Blood bags are new, though, and Jan's nothing if not excited about new experiences! He leans back against the wall behind him as Laurent puts his stuff away, trying not to smile about the fact that he's about to have himself a passenger again. It's been a while and, honestly, Laurent seems more... thankful for it than most. Then again, Earth hasn't exactly caught up to the whole space exploration thing so it makes sense.

He nods at the question and pushes himself away from the wall. "All me. That's why I like people so much." Jan grins and motions for Laurent to follow him. "Come on, I'll show you the living space and then we can head up to the cockpit." He heads up a short hallway and hits a few numbers on a control panel to open one of the doors, stepping aside so Laurent can peer in. "This one's mine. Yours is just across the hall; we'll get you to put in a keycode so you can, y'know. Lock me out at your leisure. It's a little smaller, but mostly because it doesn't have all the beep boop switches and shit." Jan steps to the control panel outside of the room Laurent will be staying in and just hits a button a few times before stepping aside. "Four-digit code, go ahead."

It's certainly a change in style from what Laurent's leaving behind. More... spartan. Perhaps for the best. A confined space such as this isn't an appropriate one for collecting things. He drinks in the ship as they move through it, still in awe of it.

Following behind, Laurent peers down at the control panel. After a beat, he puts in 1-0-6-6. An easy enough series of numbers to remember. He doesn't make any effort to hide the digits. Why should he? This is Janus' ship. He's entitled to be where he wants within it. Besides, surely there's some emergency override for the lock.

"Why would I wish to lock you out? I'm not completely antisocial."

Jan shrugs as he stays leaned against the wall, his arms folded over his chest. "Sometimes people want privacy and believe it or not I'm completely capable of respecting that." He grins, though, and tilts his head to the side as he pushes away from the wall. "Though I'll also never turn down an invitation." Jan casts Laurent an overly exaggerated wink before he starts off down the corridor. "Come on, let's get this show on the road."

He leads Laurent to the cockpit, swinging himself into the main seat directly in front of the console. There's a lot of lights blinking, some sort of soft beeping sound, and somehow that's all supposed to make sense to the person looking at it. Jan presses a button and a wall panel opens up to push out a second seat just to the back and right from where Jan is sitting; it's not as comfortable as the pilot's chair, but it's a chair all the same, and frankly he thinks it's very important that Laurent be able to see them exit the atmosphere.

"I hope you've made your peace," he says as he starts flipping a few more switches to get things powered up and ready for takeoff.

Edited 2023-10-20 23:36 (UTC)

Privacy. Laurent's had nothing but for the better part of the last century. The servants didn't bother him. Short of spending time out among strangers... Well, let's just say he's had no meaningful contact with anyone in a very long time. After a while, too much privacy turned into loneliness. Hence Laurent's willingness to run off to worlds unknown with a total stranger.

Oh. He probably should've told someone in his household staff he was leaving. Oops.

Following along, the cockpit also brings him a sense of awe. If he followed any sort of sci-fi, it might bring that to mind, alas... he hasn't. So it's all very awe-inspiring to such an anachronistic creature as Laurent. Perhaps one day he'll ask questions about what all the lights and beeps and buttons mean, but for now, it's a mystery the vampire is content to let exist without answer. Taking the seat that appears for him, Laurent fastens any safety equipment and keeps his eyes out the window.

"There is nothing left for me here. Let's go."

"You got it." Another button pressed and a soft whoosh sounds around them. "That's the cloaking field settling in, no one outside can see us anymore. And I, like an idiot, forgot that it also comes with a uh... let's just call it a really strong UV blocker, like you've put on the world's strongest sunblock. If things go how I think they should, well... It shouldn't bother you one bit."

Jan looks over his shoulder at Laurent one more time with a small smile before he looks forward. Something settles over his gaze, more serious than any face he's shown Laurent until now, as he starts methodically going through all of the checks for liftoff. He watches one screen closely before finally pushing forward on a lever and finally, finally, they're lifting off of the ground. The ship tilts forward a little, the field in front of them flattening around the air blasting downward, and they hover for just a moment before shooting forward and up.

And up.

And up.

Through sky, and clouds, and still more sky. Jan's smiling, eyes glued ahead. "Make sure not to lose focus. This is the best part." There's a moment that feels almost tense and then--

black.

Jan slows the ship down before turning it, rotating back to face the earth below them. "And there she goes."

There's very little out there (on Earth, anyway) that's new to Laurent. In his very long life, he's done and seen so much (and most all of it with his gumiho, whose presence now haunts his every memory). Leaving Earth? That's new. That's thrilling! Something he's never done before, something that, when he looks back, won't be tainted by the memory of his lost love.

Laurent's eyes are glued ahead. He can almost feel the moment when Earth's gravity tries to hold them back, but the ship finally breaks free. Or maybe that's just his imagination. Still, there's no hiding the awe on his face once they're higher than the clouds and the sky gets darker and darker, shifting from that deep indigo of night to true black.

And all the stars! Tiny pinpricks of light so very, very far away. It's enough to leave Laurent breathless (though he hardly has any need for breath).

And what's even more amazing? When Janus turns the ship to give him one final look at the place he's leaving. It's so different to see the whole (or rather half) of the planet hanging in the silence of space. Laurent leans forward in his seat, dark eyes wide and fixed on that little blue-green place.

And if his eyes well up a little, well, Jan could always pretend not to notice, right?

To be perfectly honest, no matter how many times Jan has left a planet's orbit, there's always something absolutely beautiful about looking back at it. Earth is one of the prettiest, with its swathes of blue and white clouds coating the orb in the distance, and when he looks over his shoulder over at Laurent it's easy to tell that he feels it, too. A small smile spreads across Janus's face, soft and understanding, and he nods a bit to himself as he turns his head back around to let Laurent have this moment to himself.

"She's always so pretty. Like a perfect marble."

A couple more buttons are pressed and the engine whirs all around them. Jan angles the ship and bunches a lever forward, shooting them from 0 to Unnemurable in an instant. Space warps around them, disorienting at first before it seems to settle into something... natural.

They don't look like they're moving, but they're going faster than anyone or anything on Earth could ever even conceive of.

"Any requests? Unsurprising, maybe, but none of the other planets in the Milky Way are actually hospitable; we'll have to hit the next galaxy over to find anything," said like it's just a little jaunt to the next town, "but if there are any that you've ever wanted to see for yourself, we can do that." A pause, and he double-checks the shield surrounding his ship. "...We can get real brave and get as close to the sun as my ship can handle. Check the strength of my UV shields. Unless you wanna wait to test that theory out."

Oh, sure he's seen photos of Earth from space. And most of the planets, actually. They're quite lovely and Laurent has always enjoyed beauty in almost all its forms. If he still needed to breathe, he'd definitely be breathless at this sight. That perfect little blue and green world, dotted with brown and white from mountains, deserts, and clouds. Wondrous!

Even the change as they begin to move leaves Laurent in awe. The distant dots of the starts stretch into long lines as they move at speeds even he can't comprehend. For a split second, it makes him feel dizzy and he grips the arms of his chairs. But before he can even blink the sense of movement falls away. Smooth motion, unlike any train, plane, or ship he's ever been on (and oh, has he been on many! Long voyages across the sea in a time when there was no other option but to sail if he wanted to safely get from Orient to Occident).

The question brought a thoughtful look over the vampire's face. Where in all of known space would he even think about going? The silence stretches long, long enough that it seems like maybe Laurent doesn't have an answer. Until finally, he fixes his eyes on Janus. If he happens to look, he'll see more life in them than anyone has in nearly a century.

"Take me somewhere beautiful."

Jan glances over his shoulder when Laurent finally answers him and he smiles, bright and wide, before nodding. "I know just the place. It's probably one of my favorite ports to hit up, just because it's fun, and it's just super pretty to get to, too." He turns back around and punches forward, popping in some coordinates and promptly turning his chair to face Laurent with a laugh.

"This is where I'd normally get up and head back to the mess to just chill while the autopilot gets us closer, but this isn't a long trip. I mean, not comparatively, anyway." Jan stretches his leg out and lightly nudges Laurent's with his foot, still smiling. "You look excited. That makes me excited."

He turns back around again as a monitor beeps at him to take hold of the controls, guiding them through the mentioned debris; they're still moving too fast for any of it to be seen through the window, but everything is so far apart that it's easy to make it through without trouble.

When they break through the other side, Jan slows the ship down bit by bit until a bright, vibrant expanse stretches in front of them. A planet sits in its center, looking calm and peaceful, and if Laurent looks close enough he'd be able to see the shape of another ship leaving its atmosphere to take off in another direction. "There she is. My second home."

Is he excited? Is that what this feeling is? That sort of fluttering anticipation growing in his stomach at the thought of seeing something unknown to him? It must be... It's been so long it's hard to remember what that feeling feels like. It's actually... amazing to feel something like that again!

"I am excited," he replied quietly, eyes still fixed ahead on all of space seeming to bend around them. It's all so... new to him!

He manages to tear his eyes away for a moment to watch Janus expertly pilot the ship. The ship slowing feels strange, but Laurent barely notices with that gorgeous sight just outside. Even from this distance, Laurent can tell why Janus would spend a lot of time here.

"I can't leave the ship until nightfall," he reminded.

❝ The moon is a friend ❞

Leaving Earth behind

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time for some Fake Space

I'm definitely not here for the scientific accuracy, be as fake as serves our purpose!