abraxaslogs | Now that you're actually not cool, I kinda like you better. (Open/Closed)

The feeling of helplessness, of being confounded by the genuine affection and care of others, it's familiar. Julie lost every single person she'd ever known or loved in one fell swoop, and then she was trapped in a place where no one could be trusted. Where everyone was out for themselves, and they were all under the constant monitoring of someone who could read their very thoughts. She forgot, for a long time, how to function outside of that atmosphere of fear and suspicion and doubt. Trusting that anyone actually cared, was honest or real with her, it did not come back easily. There were steps forward and back. Months and months before she could even begin to believe anything anyone said to her.

"Honestly, getting railed probably would help." It's more thoughtful than that sentence has any right to be, Julie's mouth in a pensive frown. "Not that like, getting banged is a proper fix, but more that... that you'd see. You'd see that, to someone else, they can't notice the things you do. And it's hard to think about all that kinda bullshit when you feel good."

This is, of course, making the leap that whoever Abby fucks will be good at it. The point stands, but it does require the sex be decent.

Julie scoffs a little, rolls her eyes. "It sounds like he's just a dick. Some people are dicks. They'll say anythin' they can come up with to hurt other people, usually 'cause they feel like shit themselves. And with guys like that, sometimes the way they get girls is to make those girls feel just as bad as they do. 'Cause the only way he can have you is to convince you that you can't do better. And you can.

Have you ever tried that kinda meditation where someone makes noise with a bowl? Like oooooooooooooooooooooooh." She helpfully lows out a long, single note, mimicking the movement of circling the rim of a bowl.

Abby adjusts this diagnosis from 'railed' to 'eaten out.' As if the bigger importance is her pleasure, and the one thing all three of her friends made clear was that shoving a dick in it wasn't the be all end all of pleasure. "If good fucking was a replacement for therapy the world would be a very different place."

Better world? Who the fuck knows.

"I knew what he was when I invited him into my room." Matt Press was a psychopath. If there was ever a genuine concern she might end up dead in a ditch due to a person she knew, it was him. And she was fucked up enough to go along with it just to have any attention at all. After a few weeks of isolation.

Abby will just- stare, trying to parse out what the fuck Julie's on about with meditation and bowls. Her eyes shift to the wine glass, "How many of those you have before I got here?"

"Sure would," she agrees. "But it can at least keep the stress down. Hard to get into a mental spiral when you're fucked out and exhausted. Plus, y'know, endorphins and shit."

With a snort, Julie rolls her eyes a little. The vast majority of people involved with shitbags know it. The problem isn't knowing -- it's getting entangled before you know. "So then what, you get off on bein' treated like shit? Either you invited him because you knew what he was, or in spite of it. I'm not sayin' you're ignorant, I'm sayin' you settled. Maybe not entirely 'cause of him, but definitely some of him. Between you and him, you got it in your mind that he was the only option. Unless he was the only guy in your town, then he wasn't."

She shoots Abby a look. "I'm not fuckin' drunk, this is coffee. It's a thing, it's about the sound... waves, or vibrations or somethin'. Like how there's different kinds of yoga? There's different meditations too, and the one with the bowl is about the noises." God, Julie wishes she had a better memory for this kind of thing. It's so obnoxious to know exactly what you're talking about, but not how to describe it.

"You should talk to Stephen Strange, he'll know what I'm talkin' about. He's a total culture vulture for Asian stuff like that. His domain is like, part Himalayan mountains."

Abby wanted a drink, was it too early for alcohol? Maybe. But this was definitely a 'I need grain alcohol topic' they were getting into.

Abby fell backwards on the floor, settling for just not seeing Julie see her as she talked. "I guess settling is the word. He's a piece of shit, but he actually spoke to me. While all the rest of my friends disowned me over something that wasn't even my fucking fault."

As much as it shouldn't feel big anymore, being here for months and all that being her involved. Nothing about here compared really, to the feeling of the three people you trust most in the whole world turning their fucking back on you. Not having time for you as your parents lose their fucking minds. And not caring enough to check on you while it all happens. And just like with Press, she still fucking cared.

"I couldn't deal dealt with dad getting a new girlfriend and mom being a fucking zombie after the divorce, and he was there." Was it a bad fucking idea, sure. But a little late to fix that now.

"I don't know how you take your coffee." She'll let the insinuation sit with a smirk. She listens to whatever the fuck Julie has in mind. Soundwaves can mess with your head, that's a given it's a thing people sell all the time. Sleep patterns and noise machines exist for one reason or another. Money. "So some sorta Tibetan Monk shit?"

"I get it." Julie admits it immediately. Her goal isn't to make Abby feel bad or imply that she's naïve or unwise. But she wants to make sure that Abby can see the pattern. Not seeing it means it keeps going. "Look, sometimes there is all you really need. Just don't think you can't do better than some fuckin' creep. That's all. You can. You just have to choose to believe it."

A lot of life, Julie has found, is just faking it until everyone else buys it too. False confidence is just as effective with other people as real confidence usually is, and having everyone else believe in you tricks your mind into believing too. And Abraxas is a rare, rare opportunity for the Summoned, where they can make themselves into exactly who they've always wanted to be, and no one will be any the wiser.

"Anyway, the only way you're ever gonna find out is to try, right? And if he would really say no to you 'cause of your thighs or your boobs, then fuck 'im. I'll teach you how to set his shoes on fire from across the room."

She nods a little. "He's a master of the mystic arts," she says, clearly sarcastic. "Which is like a Tibetan wizard, basically. I think. But he's white. Like, very white."

"Working on believing that," It's hard, okay. Everything her life has done so far, except being here, has reinforced this idea. It's true, in her head. It takes some work to make it clearly false. It wasn't there when she first visited the Horizon. There's a lot swimming around her head, but it's clear she's feeling better as white clouds form off her shirt as she wrings her hand on the hem.

She bats the clouds apart once she spots them.

"I do still need to talk to him, if I don't it'll just be fucking weird. And it's better to find out who he is now rather than wait." The seeds of an idea are taking root in her head, based on Julie's advice but disregarding a lot of it for a better plan. Or a stupider plan. Or a brilliant plan. Who can say? "Even if I don't try to fuck him. But I might, I don't know."

Sex feels like a thing she wasn't meant to just have, especially since romance still feels impossible.

"So... you know him because you sell him weed." Listen, she's not presuming anything other than every stereotype that applies to 'master of the mystic arts.' "Does he have a hundred year old van with a shag interior?"

Julie knows that it's hard, it's so hard to let go. But one thing she figured out is that being brought to Abraxas is the rare opportunity to just dismiss those things entirely. Every day is just a matter of realizing, little by little, that things can be different now.

She watches Abby break up the clouds with a small smile.

"I think you should," Julie says, eyebrows arched. "It's stupid and cliché, but that whole you miss one hundred percent of the shots you don't take thing is true. But do what you think is best."

Sputtering a little, Julie laughs at the idea of Stephen as a van-dwelling hippie. "God no," she manages, still chuckling. "Stephen is like, a neurosurgeon. Literally. And also a sorcerer, which is "the mystic arts", I guess. He's pretty much the smartest person I ever met."

"I think if I'm going to take a first shot, it should be with someone who flirted with me as me. Instead of me as a prince." She might make a play at Sylvain later, she wasn't against it or anything. Just her mind was putting all her options out there she had an option that knew her, and that just felt better.

"If my magic is all rainbows and happiness you'll know I didn't strike out."

'White Guy master of the mystic arts' has to live in a van down by the river. You don't get to be a doctor or whatever and be a master of the mystic arts. That's just not how it goes! "So talk to a neurosurgeon about meditation shit? That's really where we've ended up?"

"I didn't know you had that option." It doesn't much surprise Julie to hear that someone was flirting with Abby. More that she wonders if it's one of the usual suspects, or someone a bit more interesting. "Gettin' railed helps, but don't expect it to be like, a miracle cure. You still gotta work on your own shit, unfortunately.

Taking a sip of coffee, Julie shrugs. "I mean, who knows brain shit better than a neurosurgeon?" she asks. Not that she thinks it's the same as a therapist or psychologist, but for the way that soundwaves can interact with the brain? That seems like something that might crop up in medical school. "And sure, maybe the whole schtick is a little Steven Seagal-y, but he is the Sorcerer Supreme of his world. Or maybe of his whole universe? I'm not exactly clear on how it works. But he knows his shit."

Abby's self esteem might be caked with barnacles and the bottom of the ocean, but it didn't mean other people who she knew cared about her got to say that sort of thing. Not without a thoughtful well articulated rebuttal. Abby stuck her tongue out at Julie, like a fucking grown-up.

She knew there was no such thing as a magical dicking to cure emotional trauma, it was just nice to have a distraction in a world without reality TV, porn, or mindless action movies.

She had to consider, if anyone knew how the brain worked, and what reacted things, it'd be someone paid to poke at it with sharp objects, right? "So what I turn back on that brain DM thing and think- what- Brain Wizard and it'll send the message to him?"

She knows how the network works, she has decided to not know because it allowed her to say brain wizard with a straight face.

Julie smirks when Abby sticks her tongue out, then uses her invisible hand to boop the end of Abby's nose.

"Yup, pretty much. But you might wanna also send it to Stephen Strange." Julie is playing along, to an extent -- she actually isn't sure how sophisticated the whole 'identify people by thought' actually is. She knows it can be narrowed using description, like by certain groups, but she doesn't know if it needs a proper name to target someone. Maybe it knows based on the person. Julie has no idea. "Y'know, just in case. Or you can just go to his place in the Horizon and hang out 'til he shows. Sometimes I do that. He has lots of cool shit to look at. It's a big, New York-style townhouse, in front of some Himalayan mountains."

Now that you're actually not cool, I kinda like you better. (Open/Closed)

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