sixthiterationlogs | [but i never thought that you would take it this far. what do i know? flashing lights, lights.]

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[but i never thought that you would take it this far. what do i know? flashing lights, lights.]

WHO: Major Lilywhite
WHERE: #46
WHEN: January
OPEN TO: Ravi Chakrabarti
WARNINGS: Will update as needed

Major has no idea how it happens, but he wakes up to .. light. Not the normal sunlight, peeking thorugh the windows that he's gotten accustomed to, but the much more impressive and much more desired .. artificial light. As in ... light bulbs. As in .. Thomas Edison's greatest invention. And, whereas he might normally tuck back into sleep for a little while longer instead of dragging himself out of bed at the ass crack of dawn, his eyes spring open with confusion and excitement.

The stained-glass lamp that's sat at the side of his bed, unused and defunct, is miraculously on, and Major feels like he's having a stroke. Or in the middle of the best dream he's had in recent months. He reaches out to switch it off and, sure enough, it functions just as a normal lamp would. He flicks the thing on, off, on, off, on, off a number of times before it all finally sinks in.

"Oh my god!" he shouts, throwing himself from bed. "Holy shit. HOLY SHIT!" He leaves the light on and then bursts out of his room, racing towards Ravi's door, which he bangs his fists on like he's playing some weird bongo.

"RAVI! RAVI GET OUT HERE! RAVI! HOLY SHIT, RAVI! WE HAVE ELECTRICITY!"

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"We also have a headache if you keep shouting like that," Ravi grumbles to himself, staring at Minor who appears just as tired of his other owner's antics. Trying to rouse himself out of bed, Ravi manages to get his feet on the floor, wondering if he's ever going to be able to embrace a morning with joy and wonder.

When he actually trips over a box on his way to hiss at Major to keep it down, he thinks maybe he's spoken too soon. Opening it up as he stumbles towards the main room, Minor after him, he leaves the clothes back in his room, but there are far more treasures to be found. "We have more than just electricity," he says, eyes widening as he gapes at Major, his own excitement ramping up.

He reaches out for Major to give him a tight embrace before leaning back frantically to dig out one of the bags of beans. "We have coffee!" he says, clearly favouring that more than electricity.

"Dude, c'mon, aren't you even a LITTLE excited about this? What's next? TVs?! VIDEO GAMES?! THINK OF THE POSSIBILITIES!" Major isn't normally an early morning person, but .. this is different. This is electricity. It's like it's sparked something in him that's making him go, like a primitive Energizer Bunny. He gives a few extra bongo bangs on Ravi's door before it finally opens, and it seems like Ravi's gotten a gift. Reaching down to scoop Minor and make their way towards the main room.

"You know, I'm a little hurt that you've chosen to sleep in his room instead of mine," Major says to Minor with some sternness in his voice, "But I also know that he keeps you locked up in there by closing his door, so I will forgive you, because you don't have the thumbs required to turn the doorknob and come to my room, which is obviously what you'd do if you could."

He's finished with his little scolding by the time he reaches the box, and, at seeing the look on Ravi's face, he thinks that maybe the new discovery has finally kicked in. But then he hears the bag, gets a fleeting whiff of the beans inside, and has to grip Minor closer for fear of dropping him in his excitement.

"HOLY SHIT." He covers Minor's ears as though to shield him from the language. "HOLY SHIT. Coffee. Oh my god, real coffee. Real jitter-inducing, heart-palpitating coffee!" He then gets a look of sudden seriousness. "... Why do you think we're getting all of this all of a sudden? It feels like they're buttering us up for .. something. And given the scale of it, it can't be good. Right?"

Ravi would like to point out that unless they've been graced with a large shipment of game consoles, it's going to be a while before they end up sitting on a couch watching Major's football teams do...football things (he really hasn't paid much attention to that, it's a bit terrible).

Staring into the box with the coffee, he's also barely paying attention because caffeine is in his hands, he just needs to boil some water or inject it into his veins, whatever way gets it into him fast. "It's coffee," he agrees, Major's excitement driving him to practically jump on the spot with glee.

He only doesn't because he's a grown man, thank you. "I mean, I've received a few things, but maybe this is a gift to make it even that you got Minor all those months ago? Or I'm supposed to caffeinate myself to the point of illness to stay awake?"

"How are we gonna make it? Do we have to like, figure out how to make a Bear Grylls-style filter and whatever? Cook it over an open flame next to an open can of beans or something?" Major leans in closer, just to get a big ol' whiff of the stuff. Even though they have the very rare and occasional feast in which he gorges himself, especially on the coffee, the fact that it's just .. there, in their cabin, tempting them and ready to be made, is nothing short of miraculous.

"Maybe." He glances down towards Minor before scooping him up. "I mean, a puppy versus coffee doesn't seem too fair, unless you're also the reason we suddenly have lights and electricity, in which case .." He covers both of Minor's ears with his hands. "It might make an even deal."

"We could always just boil water and pour them over the beans, or grind them up and run hot water over a man-made filter," he theorizes, because it's not like he's got to have a coffee maker to do it. Pot of boiling water and enough force on the beans will do the trick, even though it's not incredible. Nudging Minor along to go with Major, he tugs the box and focuses more on what Major was saying before.

"Hang on," he says. "Electricity, you said we have electricity, we have lights," he says, which is great, but that's not exactly going to change his life. "Did you test everything else?" he demands. "Not that a television showed up. Unless it did?" he asks hopefully. "Did we miss a box maybe?"

"Don't we have to grind them up or something first? Do you get the same .. uh, what's the word? Extraction of flavor by just boiling the beans?" Major has literally no idea how anyone makes coffee, aside from going to a coffee shop or a Starbucks and asking for a blonde roast or something more substantial. He wishes that they'd taught stuff like this in Home Ec in school. At least that would've been useful, if anyone just so happened to come through a mystical fountain into a stupid Penny Dreadful-era village.

He nods at Ravi's statements, one after the other.

"I - no. I just got up and there was a friggin' light on at the side of my bed. I immediately got up and ran down to the hall to your room. I didn't see another box? God, don't get my hopes up for a television. Don't do that, because you know how much heartbreak I'd suffer if you put the thought in my head and it turns out not to be true. You know how fragile I am when it comes to that stuff!"

"Major, I've been without coffee for months," is Ravi's dire reply, giving him a look that's mildly crazed given the gleam in his eyes. "If we ground it up and injected it into my veins, I would be okay with that because it means that I'll be getting something to get me through the morning."

He feels like they could go find someone with expertise, that maybe Helen or Mark would know (Mark, because if he's a botanist, he must have learned about coffee plants at some point, right?)

"Wait, we have lights. We have lights," he says. "I wonder what else we have?" he says, shoving at Major's shoulder to get him to move. "Go to the kitchen, check on if we have a microwave or something!"

"I know, I know," Major says, half-placating, half-dismissive. It's not like he hasn't been without his own set of addictions, though Ravi has been here significantly longer. Major can't let himself think that far ahead into the future. He isn't sure what upsets him more: the idea of being stuck here for years, or the idea of going back and leaving Ravi to fend for himself all over again. They're a pretty even draw, as far as he's concerned.

"We have lights," Major repeats. "We've already said this. Multiple times." But then the lightbulb (haha, they have those now!) turns on over his head, and he understands what Ravi's getting at. "Geez, okay! No need to get physical, physical," he protests, singing the last two words in an Olivia Newton-John style, because of course. "Yes, your highness, I will go and do that right now, your highness." Despite the snark, Major does as asked and heads into the kitchen, but not before calling out over his shoulder, "I don't know why you can't check yourself, if you're so anxious for your caffe--" He gets cut off by the sight of it: a percolator. It's an old-style one, that's for sure, but it's recognizable enough that he knows what it is. "You might wanna get in here, man. Like, now."

He's not sure what the lights will do in the long run, but he's so blinded by the short run that he doesn't actually give a damn, because he's so stupidly excited about the change in the status quo. He's also still hugging the coffee to his chest like he's afraid someone is going to swoop in and steal it, but then, that's a perfectly normal fear, right?

Ravi is too busy flicking the lights a few more times to immediately head down and see Major, but a moment later, he's in the kitchen, squinting at things. "Wait," he says. "This is like one of those spot the difference games, but with memory," he says, "because that was definitely not here before," he says, of the percolator.

"Ding ding ding! Very good, Contestant Number Two!" Major's making a poop joke, but he feels like the excitement of the percolator is going to outshine that fact. He gives Ravi a round of applause as he goes over to the device and picks it up, turning it around in his hands a few times to get a good look at the thing. "I'm pretty sure my mom has one of these as kitchenware decoration. On top of the cabinet, you know? I don't think we ever actually used one."

He looks over to Ravi whilst holding the percolator next to his face.

"Do you know how to use this thing?"

Ravi honestly doesn't hear a word that Major's saying, practically hearing a swan song in his head as the coffeemaker (ancient though it may be) looms in front of him, like a beautiful vision out of the clouds. "I mean, I've never actually used one before," he admits, peering at it curiously, with a scientist's eye. He doesn't say 'how hard can it be' because he knows that's a curse, but he intends to take this methodically.

Beginning to take it apart, Ravi inspects the chamber and the build, believing that he's got an idea. "I mean, you'd think it's just water heating into coffee and then sort of reverse-filtering it? So instead of dripping down, it just sort of steams up?"

Major crosses his arms over his chest as Ravi goes all Dexter's Laboratory on him and starts to investigate the percolator in a way only Ravi can. He takes a step back, observing, practically smelling the smoke coming out of Ravi's ears as he figures out how to use the thing.

He blinks at his friend, both brows perking together slightly.

"If you think I understood what you just said, you've got another thing coming to you. Are you saying the water boils up instead of filters down?"

"How about we just make a few test pots and see how it goes," Ravi suggests, because he doesn't want to go and get completely confident only to be shown to be an idiot. After all, he can see himself getting comeuppance if he decides that he's smarter at this than Major.

"Bring me some of the coffee?" he suggests. "I really hope it's already ground, otherwise we're about to have a miserable little while of mashing up beans."

"Right, yeah, that's probably a good idea," Major agrees, eyes drifting down to the percolator. Man, he wishes he paid more attention in science class, or maybe even Home Ec. He's pretty sure they talked about this kinda stuff there, though he can't really remember; it was a while ago, and it wasn't as though he was chomping at the bit to learn that sort of stuff. "Yeah, hang on." Major goes to rummage through the box to grab the package of coffee - a far cry from the modern, hermetically sealed sort he's used to, and gives it a squeeze.

"Feels like it's ground up, I'm pretty sure," he states, bringing it over to Ravi.

Ravi takes it, hugging it a little like it's a precious child, before he remembers that he's not alone with the coffee and maybe shouldn't be treating this like some kind of tender reunion. Clearing his throat, he gets to brewing, because that's the important thing.

"Not a word to anyone about how I embraced the coffee," he warns, because he knows it's not exactly a very proud thing that he wants people knowing.

"Do you two need a minute alone? Cause I can just take Minor and go back upstairs for a while if you'd like some alone time together," Major says, quirking an eyebrow as he watches Ravi all but fondle and cradle the bag of coffee. It's vaguely sensual and all together odd, even for someone like Major.

"I mean. You gotta do better than that, man. Let's see how this coffee turns out first before I go and start making promises not to use blackmail material."

"I could use several minutes alone, mainly because if I do get this working, you might have to fight me to have some of it," Ravi admits, because it has been quite a while since he's been given a chance to caffeinate and this little percolator doesn't seem capable of fulfilling the twenty-four ounce plus cup he wants to inhale.

"Unless one of your vintagey little cameras shows up, it's just your word against mine," he points out, a touch smug. "I could always go around telling people that you're the serial coffee hugger."

"I wouldn't dream of getting in between you and your beloved brew. You don't think I've learned after all this time? C'mon, man, give me some credit," Major says as he approaches carefully, nudging his friend with his elbow. He doesn't get too close, though, because ... well, like he said, he's learned. He's mostly just curious about these new gifts.

"Oh man, what I wouldn't give for one of those babies to show up in a box. Though I never really learned how to properly develop film, so I'd just be .. taking photos and letting them sit on the rolls 'til the end of time. Kind of a waste. Besides the fact that I don't think there's a damn person in this village who'd believe you if you said that."

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[but i never thought that you would take it this far. what do i know? flashing lights, lights.]

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