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kellen,
kyle

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After a few hours of unsuccessfully trying to sleep, Kellen abandons the couch to which he was relocated (in deference to Ruckus' continuing convalescence) and takes instead to roaming the night-empty corridors of the school. He had stepped into the bedroom to let Leech know he was going, but seeing the pair of them peacefully drowsing peaked his irritation, and instead Kellen merely snagged a pack of cigarettes and his boots before leaving.

The first of the nightly dorm checks has passed, and the second is yet to come; therefore, the dorm halls are not entirely silent when he reaches them. Most of the students might be asleep, but pausing near Ness' door to listen assures Kellen that not all of them are. Smirking faintly at the completely unashamed noises carrying through the door, he keeps moving, lighting a cigarette along the way. Eventually he stops again outside another closed door, and though the room beyond is silent, there is a strip of dim light showing under the frame.

Without much consideration, Kellen pushes the door open, sticking his fuzzy head around it before entering fully. The smirk returns as he spots his 'lab partner' on his bed, looking half-asleep over a thick book, of which Kellen could probably only understand one word in ten. "Must be an exciting read." He enters the room uninvited, closing the door behind himself and crossing to the desk near Kyle's bed, hopping up to sit on the edge of it and looking expectantly at the other boy.

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Kellen turns away again, facing forward to hide the tiny smile that forms, just one corner of his mouth tucking back. Though predictable in some ways, no one can say Kyle's not entertaining. Reaching the bottom of the staircase, Kellen turns away from the lower halls in favor of opening the door to the outer courtyard where a blast of chill air makes him hunch his shoulders up.

"If that were the case, could we maybe relive one good moment over and over again, or skip the shitty ones?" Now that his expression is more under control, Kellen glances to his companion with a mildly curious look, slowing to let the other boy catch him up. Though there is a somewhat paved path that winds between the various school buildings, Kellen avoids it and thereby the lights as well, trekking through the dead grass and around trees, instead.

No one has likely called him entertaining before. At leas not to his face, but Kellen doesn't seem the type to shy away from up-front judgement to save feelings, and Kyle can't decide whether that is good or not. "Doesn't really work like that." Shaking his head, because really, where does Kellen get these illogical thoughts, he trips over himself a step and hooks his first two fingers into the back pocket of Kellen's jeans so as not to get lost. His night vision isn't what it could be, regretfully, but the unsolicited contact could be shrugged off as survival skills all the same right now. "When we get to 'elsewhere', I'll show you what I mean. About the strings."

Kellen is obviously more used to skulking around shady places, or maybe it has to do with his eye color, as Kyle explained to him the first time they hung out, but his night vision seems better, either way. He pauses momentarily when latched onto, raising his eyebrows in amused surprise at Kyle's self-salvation methods, but certainly not complaining. Whether he recognizes Kyle's offer as an excuse to gloss over the moment or not, he doesn't remark on that, either, merely shrugging again. "Sure, I look forward to it."

Around another large oak, suddenly they're behind the chapel, and Kellen's reaching out to open the vestry door. There'll undoubtedly be someone in the chapel proper right now, but he doesn't intend going in there. With what looks like ease of experience, he manages to pick the lock on a cabinet door by the dim light of moon and candle-shine coming through the glass panel on the inner chapel door.

Kellen doesn't bother to explain his motives, taking a bottle of wine and a couple of candles from the cabinet before closing it and then, after a quick peek through that chapel door, instead moving towards a narrow hallway that runs alongside the pews, hidden by an intricate gilded-iron screenwork.

He moves behind Kellen like a buoy on a tugboat, trying not to thump along too loudly when he feels his fingers tugged every few steps. Kellen doesn't seem to mind, and Kyle quite likes the feeling of being shadowed around in the dark, like he's being protected, even if there doesn't seem to be anyone around anyway.

The chapel isn't somewhere he really pays much attention, being that it seems to be the one area of existence he has little curiosity in. Religion just seemed so... nothing. Even in the bit of light from in the building interior, he tightens his fingers a little around the fabric they're clawed into, maybe afraid some deity will try wrenching him away before Kellen gets them to Elsewhere.

The hallway leads them in short order to the small entrance area of the chapel (surely there's an archaic Catholic name for it, but Kellen doesn't know what). Here he leads the way left and through another door, this one a narrow tower full of spiraling steps. Up, up, and up more, until Kellen's head finally emerges through the trapdoor in the top of the bell tower.

One very large bell hangs suspended in the middle of the room, with two rows of smaller ones to either side of it, five bells in all. The room up here is wider than the tower itself, but only the edges have a floor, leaving a wide open space in the center circled around with short banisters and a narrow catwalk against each wall. The walls are mostly open, unglazed windows, but the wind isn't so strong up here and is even less noticeable once Kellen's found a corner and knelt there.

Straightening his legs out, he settles the wine bottle between them and finally removes his cigarette, tossing it out one of the dizzyingly high windows. He snags Kyle's sleeve and tugs on it to coerce him into sitting nearby. Once he has, Kellen digs a swiss army knife out of a pocket and starts to work on the cork of the wine bottle, speaking with a little distraction. "So, these strings?"

He thinks Kellen might have been a spider monkey in a previous life, as it seems everytime they steal time alone together they end up climbing to the highest points around the grounds, ignoring whether they are meant for climbing or not. He lets go, regretfully, to follow up after the gymnast, though the tug at his sleeve is encouraging and he scoots close enough that his ankle is hooked underneath Kellen's.

"Oh, yeah." He reaches down to yank free one of his shoelaces, figuring he won't need it right away, holding by the end and dangling it between the edge of the platform and Kellen's face, careful of the improvised corkscrew. "So this is time. This is our existence, with a beginning and an end. Start and finish." He reaches out to free one of Kellen's hands from the bottle, carefully turning it palm-up like he's afraid it will shatter. "String theory, doesn't like the beginning middle end thing. It thinks like this." Still holding ever so lightly to Kellen's wrist like he's taking a pulse, he lowers the shoelace into his hand, letting it coil and overlap into a spiraled sort of heap, "All things are happening all the time. The string overlaps, touches other parts of the string, things don't happen in order, they're just... always happening. You don't move forward or back, you just... move. Things happen. There isn't a structure, or a start, or a finish. There is just... time. And stuff."

Kellen initially makes some noise of agreement, just to let Kyle know he's listening. He's maybe having some difficulty with the cork. When his hand is abducted, though, it sharpens his focus, and he actually looks up to watch Kyle's shoelace trick. It seems he's following the layman's explanation pretty well; however, when Kyle finishes, Kellen gets that crooked one-eye-squinted look of cynical confusion. "But, it is start to finish. I mean...I went to sleep yesterday, and I woke up today. Five years ago I was five years younger. It doesn't just skip around like that."

He narrows his gaze somewhat accusingly at the tangled shoelace in his palm, then offers it back to Kyle and returns his own attention to the wine bottle. "What good's this theory if you can't skip the shit parts?"

He's encouraged enough by Kellen seeming interested in the first part, but slowly the attention seems to scrutinize as he continues. Finally, when he starts to re-string his shoe, he offers a half-apology of, "Don't think I'm explaining it right..." Because that must be the reason. Because Kellen isn't unintelligent, Kyle is just weird, and now he has fucked up science in his eagerness.

He wraps his arm around his knees when he's done, ankle still just barely touching the other boy's, but looking a little defeated now as he watches the cork fight the abuse, "It's... it applies to time travel, really. Not life." He offers weakly, but he should probably just stop and enjoy this, without spewing facts.

After a few short moments of struggle, Kellen makes a triumphant noise, and his knife emerges with the majority of the cork on it. Lifting the bottle, he peers into it, spotting flecks of cork floating in the dark red liquid. "Well, close enough..." With a shrug, he offers the bottle to his companion, only then noticing his somewhat downcast demeanor. "No, your explanation makes sense, it's just kinda...a useless theory. Maybe time does work that way, but if so, there's not much use knowing about it."

He pries the remains of the cork off his knife and tosses the wood into the large hole in the center of the tower, pocketing his knife again. "It reminds me of Slaughterhouse Five; ever read that? We had to do it last year, at my old school. That was one fucked-up story."

"Would make more sense, if I had more shoelaces." He decides, and yes, that makes him feel better for some reason. Kellen doesn't seem caught up in these things, like they are trivial matters but not without merit. He's never had that perspective before, but somehow, it makes him feel better.

He sniffs at the bottle before tilting it to make a hesitant gulp, using his tongue to work the bit of cork out of this mouth to spit over the edge. He doesn't make a face, instead just blinks and licks over his lips before handing it back. "Yeah, once. Didn't like it."

Kellen takes the offered bottle, tilting it up to get a good mouthful and wrinkling his upturned nose in an unarguably adorable way for the dry flavor of it. "Jesus' blood isn't very tasty, is it?" He peers at the bottle cock-eyed for a moment, but takes another swig before passing it off. Of course, he's never taken communion like the majority of the students here, so he wouldn't be used to the cheap wine they use for the purpose.

"I dunno if I liked it or not, but it was wacky. The way he kept jumping all over the place." Kellen slumps against the wall, shimmying his shoulders around in an attempt to get comfortable against the cold stone, and lifts his hips to dig a pack of smokes from a hip-pocket of his tight black pants. After transferring a cigarette to his mouth, he turns those 'ambrosial' eyes back on Kyle, bright with interest. "If you could go whenever, and relive it, when would you go?" His hands go to patting himself down in search of his lighter, but his gaze stays steady on the other boy.

His mouth is a little cottony after the swig, but otherwise he doesn't think he minds, shrugging at the question, "Sorta used to it, I guess?" For some reason, his mind chooses that moment to remember Kellen is... pretty isn't the word. But neither is galvanic, as much as he wants to tell Kellen that. He forgets the answer to the question for a minute, just watching Kellen's fingers and the way his shirt moves over skin when he shifts, "I'd like to visit other realities first, probably. But..."

He thinks of growing up in Florida, and not seeing snow until he was 12, thinks of his mom pulling him up into her lap, just to hold him, thinks of the first time he figured out magnets, but really, he doesn't want to do them again. "I think, I like new stuff too much. Would rather just have a lot of new firsts sooner, than redo stuff I've already done."

There's a headtilt for the idea of other realities, since that wasn't mentioned in his overview of string theory and he didn't really consider it. He doesn't go into it now, but maybe makes a note to do so later. Finally locating his lighter, he sets flame to his smoke and drops back into his previous, semi-comfy position, while wishing he'd thought to grab a jacket or hoodie on his way out the door.

"But do you think you'd realize you'd done it before? If everything's already happened, or is happening right now..." Trailing off and obviously uncertain of his grasp on this discussion, Kellen shakes his head like a dog getting water out of its ears. "New stuff's okay, I guess, but unexpected change is kinda...shitty." He probably wanted to say something like 'depressing' but that might be too much of a give-away. His eyes finally slide away, looking up at the bells now like he isn't really seeing them. "Most the time. More than half, at least." If it wasn't already apparent that Kellen's in a less exuberant mood than usual, it certainly is now.

Kyle isn't really sure when this became an actual conversation about time and existence and whatever else, but Kellen doesn't seem pleased about whatever he's really thinking. "Oh. Well, I guess if I didn't know it was happening over again, that wouldn't be so bad. I guess... there was this one week, we were living on the beach, and my dad was away and it was just mom and me. It was... nice. I'd like that again." He finishes quietly, chewing at his thumbnail before glancing back up at Kellen.

"But I think," He starts carefully, curling his fingers around the wine bottle again but not making a move to take it, "I still like firsts. And I think, I like you, too. That can't be so bad." The way Kellen seems coiled like an angry cat is obvious, but he's not sure if its the conversation or something else bothering him, "And you?"

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