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"For fuck's sake," Quinn murmured, stepping over some boxes in the hallway. What the hell was going on now...
She climbed the extended attic ladder and poked her head up, looking around. "El? You here?"
A grumbling came from between some boxes, and now that Quinn's eyes had adjusted a bit, she could see a faint light in that corner. Carefully trying not to trip over anything while at the same time avoiding the cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, she made her way over.
"The fuck are you doing?"
"Looking for something," El answered, sitting between dusty boxes, most of them opened, some partly unpacked.
"What's with the spelunking getup?" Quinn laughed when she noticed the headlamp. Where did they even find that thing?
"Unearthing the mysteries of the past," El chuckled without stopping to dig. "Sorry about the mess, I'll clean up later."
"Want a hand?"
"Yes, hold this please." El got up and pushed a pile of books into Quinn's arms. "And this, too." A few more landed on top.
She gave up trying to make out any details on the covers in the faint light, there was too much dust on them anyway. "What are we even looking for?"
El continued digging, and Quinn knew there was no point in repeating the question. She sighed and waited patiently, hoping this little excavation would deliver results soon.
"Ha! Getting closer!" El held up some old film reels and checked the labels, then put them on top of Quinn's stack. This stuff was getting heavy, so she just placed it on the floor. El wordlessly handed her a few more reels.
"Nu, pogodi!" El suddenly exclaimed, holding up yet another reel - apparently they finally found the right one.
Quinn raised an eyebrow. "Gesundheit."
"'Nu, pogodi! - Well, just you wait'. That's the name of the cartoon," they explained. "Couldn't for the life of me remember it. Dad used to watch those with me, and I randomly thought of them. Figured they should still be up here somewhere. Bugged the hell out of me that I couldn't think of the name."
Quinn squinted at the old movie. "Oh God, is it that stupid Russian Tom & Jerry ripoff? My dad made me watch those, too."
"Yeah, that's probably where mine got it from, now that I think about it." Their dads had been friends since before they were born.
"Hated them as a kid," Quinn grimaced. "Anyway, if you just wanted to know the title... wouldn't it have been easier to, I don't know, check the internet? Instead of breathing in a decade's worth of dust up here?"
"Probably," El shrugged. "But this is more fun."
"Uh-huh. 'Fun'."
El started going through the boxes again. "There should be a projector here somewhere, too... Wanna watch some retro soviet cartoons with me?"
"Did I mention I hated them? And they probably aged terribly."
"Probably."
"Besides, I bet someone put them online, so we could just stream them, instead of fiddling with this and possibly burning down the house in the process."
"But this has more style," El objected and wiggled their eyebrows.
"True."
"Found it!"
Quinn sighed, somewhat amused by El's antics. "Okay, fine. I propose the following: We'll get this thing downstairs, clean up at least a little bit, and cram the boxes in the hallway back up here. And then, if this old thing still works, we get reasonably drunk and I'll watch some of it with you."
"Deal."
"But this shit better not be your new favorite obsession," Quinn added dryly, half-joking - El definitely had fixated on worse things over the years.
"Well, just you wait..." they chuckled, ignoring Quinn's groan.