umbrellajackassery | {Another day goes by, I think it feels just like yesterday

"Uh, duh." He takes the bag and pops one of the doughnut holes in his mouth. At least some things stay consistent through the years.

He leans across the bed and throws the nightstand drawer open, fishing for a lighter before he sits back up, drawer abandoned and left open. "You want in?" He asks, holding up the blunt he'd rolled before flicking the lighter into action without waiting for an answer. Little bit of wake-n-bake, perfect for a Saturday morning. Was it even Saturday? Klaus doesn't know.

He actually had to think about that question, but shook his head as he dropped down to the beanbag chair, just leaning back until he was at a comfortable angle that wouldn't end up with spilled coffee, "Nah, m'good."

Of course, he knew that cigarettes, coffee and open, blatant flirting with whoever was at the counter that day being his only vices hadn't changed anything, his powers were still the same, the ghosts were just as loud and for the most part incoherent, but he was ever-hopeful that he'd be able to repeat just what he'd done with Ben with any kind of predictability.

That and he was still hoping he'd actually, finally, get to see who he was hoping for, but aside from those few moments Dave's ghost remained elusive.

"Wait-- seriously?" He asks around the blunt now lit and tucked between his lips. He frowns and stares at his older self incredulously. "Dude, I thought you still smoked..." He squints for a second. "Maybe it was the other us.... One of you definitely smoked a joint with me the other day." Look, he's doing good to roll with the fact that he has like a half a dozen Ghosts of Christmas Future roaming around the house. Telling them all apart in some intricate kind of way is asking a lot, okay?

"Still don't get it though. The sobriety thing you're doing." He holds his hit in as long as he can before he blows out the excess smoke. "It doesn't make sense."

"Yeah, one of the others." He replied easily enough, swiping the bag of doughnut holes back so he could stuff one in his mouth, something to keep him from running it off before he had his thoughts in order.

"As much as it absolutely pains me to say it, and believe me it does, old Reg was right about one thing, I'm never going to learn what I'm really capable of if I keep cutting myself off from my abilities." It wasn't exactly a lie, it wasn't the only reason, either, but he didn't have the slightest idea how to even start to explain about Dave.

There was also the part where sobriety -so far- hadn't actually helped, as the bitten-ragged fingernails and the fact that he tried to sleep in the library or the parlor as often as not would attest to, but he wasn't yet ready to admit defeat.

"Did you seriously just give Dad props?" He wrinkles his nose against the whole idea of it. "Whatever. I don't care. You can be an lame old man if you wanna." He will happily puff on this blunt by himself, but he never promised to not be a complete dickbag of a teenager about it. Which is to say that when he exhales his hit, he blows the smoke in the general direction of the older Klaus. On purpose. Like a brat.

"Oh, hey--" there's a flail of limbs as he sits up and leans forward against his knees. "Five said something last night I wanted to ask you guys about. I mean- it just doesn't even make sense and he said I should ask you guys." Maybe he should work on the getting to his point part of this. He pulls another hit from his blunt before actually explaining. "So, he said that you did something really amazing to save everybody's asses and we'd all be dead if you hadn't. So, like--" he waves his hand in a vague circular-forward motion. "tell me?!"

"I'm just as disgusted by it as you are. More, even." His tone was level, though mostly because his mouth was still full of doughnut and he couldn't quite get the level of disdain into it as he wanted, also doing his best to ignore that plume of smoke. It had been deliberate, he knew, because it was exactly the same kind of thing he would have done.

The actual question, though, caught him a little bit off-guard, and while he didn't actually choke on his coffee, it was probably not as subtle a reaction as he would have liked, "It was, uh..." He gnawed at an already-quicked thumbnail briefly, brow furrowed as he tried to work out how to explain, "Okay so, you remember in Lord of the Rings when Aragorn goes and gets a fuckin' ghost army?" He didn't wait for an answer, just continuing on, "It was a little bit like that, but just you know, much, much smaller scale." As indicated by drawing his hands together, only a few inches apart.

It wasn't a lie, one singular ghost was a much smaller scale than an entire ghost army.

He squints at the start of that explanation, but waves a hand to urge him on-- of course he's seen the movie, continue, man!

"Holy shit, seriously?" His eyes are wide and he's got a grin a mile wide running across his face.

"Absolutely dead serious." He replied, "And I'd like to be able to do it again on purpose, sometime." A sigh as he settled back in his chosen seat, "The problem, is that I'm still not totally sure how I did it the first time, and also I don't really want to summon any of the ghosts that are hanging around this place, yech."

A sigh, picking up his coffee again to take a gulp, "So as much as I hate it, because being sober sucks, even after that first detox, it's what I've gotta do if I want to figure out how to control all this." If he wanted any actual chance of somehow being able to manifest Dave again, if it would even be worth it.

"Problem is I don't even know if it's actually working." Partly because of his reluctance to try manifesting any of the ghosts he usually saw, they were bad enough when they couldn't actually touch him, having them there and solid would just be so much worse.

"Yikes. Don't blame you there." He wrinkles his nose a little. The ghosts anywhere in a near enough radius to here were all sort of awful. Then again, all of them were kind of awful, so he's not sure how Klaus will ever find a feasible way to practice that one.

"How else are you gonna practice, though?" He tips his head curiously.

"And that's the problem, right fuckin' there." He sighed, taking another hefty swallow of his coffee before setting the cup down, only to pick it up again so he'd have something to do with his hands besides chew already ragged nails, "Can't practice here, but still have to at least try and be ready if the situation comes up elsewhere."

Not that he had any idea how that would happen, either, "Because it's either that or just start stabbing people and see what happens, but that's just an even worse idea."

"Well, I guess there's the cemetery but..." His eyes widen at the mere thought of it, and the wide array of ghost-personalities that might flood him with. "Your milage may vary? And also? Yikes." He makes a face.

He drags another hit and holds it for a moment before letting it out again. "You really never smoking ever again in your whole life?"

At the suggestion of trying a graveyard, he grimaced reflexively, and hard enough to make his face hurt, just shaking his head as he realized that the younger version was making almost the same face.

He just shrugged at the question, "I guess, if that's what it takes. But fuck me this is not one of my better decisions. I've definitely had worse ones, but..." He shook his head again, gnawing absently at the corner of a thumbnail once more.

"Come on," he leans halfway across the bed, holding the joint out at him. "One hit won't kill you." He's an ass, he doesn't care though. Smoking alone is fine, but smoking with a buddy is always better.

"Wouldn't kill me, you're right, but it would be a major setback in the progress I've made so far." Which was, essentially, none, he just wasn't quite ready to admit as much yet.

He winced slightly as he gnawed down to the quick of that thumbnail, something that had clearly happened a few times already, given the state of his fingers, just tucking it against his palm, the rest of his fingers curled over the top of it to apply pressure, picking up his coffee again with the other hand, "And for once in my life I'd like to actually do something I said I was going to do."

"Laaaame." he whines, and draws back to flop against the pillows again, taking another huge drag off the joint.

Sorry, dude. Your teenage-self is kind of an ass.

He couldn't help the quiet simmer of a laugh that bubbled over at that response, "You know, when I got warned about peer pressure, I didn't have any idea it was going to be a literal peer."

He took another slug of his coffee before setting the cup aside where he wouldn't knock it over while he dug through the pile of detritus on the nearest chair for his emergency supplies kit, the one that was mostly a first aid kit, wrangling neosporin and a bandaid onto his quicked thumb even as he rambled, "Probably because nobody making those warnings could have predicted anything like this, even if they were fans of sci-fi or whatever and I'm pretty sure none of them were, way too grounded for that kind of thing."

He laughs a little at that remark, but doesn't otherwise comment on it.

He watches his future-self dig around for something in the mess on the chair, an eyebrow perked in his direction. "Yeah, they'd have to be tripping pretty hard on some serious whacked out shit to think of this." he agrees with a nod.

"Yeah, shit yeah, I mean, doppelgangers are a thing, obviously, but not something usually featured into anti-bullying campaigns." He flapped that freshly-bandaided hand before picking up his coffee once more, stuffing another doughnut hole in his mouth and offering the bag back over as he added: "Shit, I don't even believe it sometimes. Figure maybe this is all just my brain firing off while I'm asphyxiating in the back of an ambulance or somewhere. Having a heart attack on somebody's floor or something, who even knows."

He falls a little quiet at that remark and for a moment just focuses on smoking his joint. He's still not used to how... freely and easily the older versions of him talk about dying and overdosing like it's just some natural part of his life now. He isn't sure he wants that to be so normal. For defying death to become another high he's in a never-ending chase with.

He sighed at that silence, scrubbing a hand up over his face and through his hair with a muttered: "Sorry."

He sat back then, unexpectedly more somber than he had been moments before, "I mean... at least now you know how badly the rest of us fucked up, and when you get back, if you want to get back, however the hell that's even going to work..." Realizing he was dangerously close to sidetracking himself he shook his head, flicking his hand before settling again, "I'm just saying, you can do better. If you even want to."

He shrugs at the apology, a silent, off-hand 'whatever', even though he can't quite bring himself to form the word with his mouth.

"It's just... scary, y'know? You... you guys act like- like dying is just... almost like it's a game or something, I mean..." He stares down at the burning bud paper between his fingers. "Maybe that's not the right word, but... it just seems like it doesn't matter to any of you. When did it stop?"

He managed to stop himself from saying 'when everyone else stopped giving a fuck about me' because he now knew that not all of them had, at least not completely, though it had certainly seemed like it for a good long while.

"It still matters, it's just that..." His brow furrowed, thumping his bandaged thumb against his coffee cup, trying to think, he'd never had to justify this before, not even to himself, and he didn't have the right words to so now that he had to, "I don't fuckin' know." He finally concluded, shaking his head and reaching over, flicking his fingers, "Gimme."

Despite the otherwise heavy and serious edge around the conversation, he can't help the smirk and the way he mumbles a quiet, "Win!" as he leans over to hand the joint to his older self. He's content to just let that heavy line of conversation and finish the joint with his doppelganger before he wanders off to find something else to keep his attention for awhile.

{Another day goes by, I think it feels just like yesterday

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