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Darius and Kenneth were still holding hands, somehow, when the giant light and sound behind them seemed to suddenly push them through time and space. There was a feeling like water flowing around them, and above and below, but they didn’t get wet. Because it wasn’t water. It was just…is. Yeah. I don’t fully get it, either.
In any case, after an indeterminate period of whatever that was, of being enveloped in some type of matter and existence and being transported along them to somewhere, during which managing to keep your hand clasped together with someone else’s feels like a very impressive feat, they felt a final whomp and then were standing firm on their feet, unmoving. Don’t ask me where they were standing or on what surface, exactly, but they were still and able to catch their breath and the all-encompassing sound had ceased, so they could easily hear the complaining British voice very very close by.
Wait, what?
“Fuck, my knee!”
Another British voice joined the first, because why not. The time gods could be from GMT, it might (kind of) make sense.
“Baby, are you okay?” Ooh, that second voice was worried.
Darius’ and Kenneth’s heart rates were slowly returning to normal and with that, they could finally begin to look around and take in their surroundings. A stunning but cross-looking curly-haired man scowled as he limped over to take the proffered hand of a muscly wall of a beautiful ginger man, who immediately started rubbing the other’s back and making cooing noises.
Kenneth felt a slight twinge of worry at bringing his new girlfriend amongst these adonises. Darius, however, wasn’t moved at all. She had already noted the fact that the two of them were deeply obsessed with each other. She had also noticed that the dimpled man had been injured by her and Kenneth’s arrival—smacking straight into him when disembarking the Highway of Everything Everywhere All At Once. She approached them as the one rested and the other fawned.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, that was a total accident. We, umm…” She gestured to Kenneth to include him in her apology. “We don’t actually know what’s happening or where we are or how we got here?”
The injured one had a bit of snark in his words. “Yes, we can tell.”
His devoted partner gave the aching knee one last kiss and straightened up, extending his hand to Darius. “I’m Nick, and I get it, and it’s definitely not your fault. And you,” he said fondly as he helped the other to his feet, “stop channeling Tao.”
A wry smile accompanied a softened voice. “Yes, okay, fine. People should be careful with first visits, but I know they didn’t mean to run into me on purpose.” He took his turn to shake Darius’ hand and introduce himself as Charlie.
At this point, quite unsurprisingly, a few moments later found them all seated at a table in the boundless nothing being served a lovely cuppa and biscuits by Nick. Darius introduced Kenneth and then spoke up again, her curiosity doing a decent job of calming her nerves.
“Charlie, you mentioned ‘first visits.’ But, uh…to where? Or when? I mean, what is this place?”
“Oh!” He looked mildly surprised. “I would have thought you’d at least know that? We’ve not had many people visit us here without doing so intentionally, even if they’re not great at the fine-tuning yet.”
Darius and Kenneth looked at each other, intrigued but wary, and their hosts caught the confusion of the glance between them. Charlie leaned forward.
“Do you have any theories? Or, I mean, where were you trying to go?” Both Charlie and Nick now looked utterly curious, the bumbled entrance completely forgotten.
Kenneth, the architect of something that never should have done a damn thing but apparently took them somewhere, had lost his bravado from the riverbank. His mouth opened and closed a few times like a trout, before Darius put her hand on his and turned to make the presentation herself, worried he might make an even worse impression.
“So. Kenneth here has been working for a while to develop a Time Machine.” She noted the two pairs of raised eyebrows across the table but pushed on. “And he was…interviewing. For a partner to…do research with.” She looked at him fondly as holding his hand even tighter. “And when he accepted me as his…colleague, we got closer, he heard my story, and decided to target our first destination for a moment in my past.”
Kenneth’s gaze upon her said it all; what an amazing summary, what care she used to charitably explain their origin story, how much he wanted to help her, and what a proud reminder that it had, in fact, worked!
“Uh, yeah, so that didn’t work.”
Once again, an annoying British Invasion. The two American lovebirds dragged their eyes from each other and glare/worried across the table. Darius was busy reviewing and analyzing the facts in her head as Kenneth spoke up.
“What do you mean? My machine did exactly what it was supposed to! And it clearly pushed us through the space-time continuum! I mean, look around us, this is no longer the Pacific Northwest!”
Nick smiled kindly at him. “Well, no, that’s fair. But that’s sort of my point, when you think about it. If you had time traveled, wouldn’t you have been in the exact same place, but just in a different year?”
“Exactly!” contributed Charlie. “We’ve all seen Michael J Fox drive into a barn by accident in 1995!”
Nick beamed inwardly at the memory of having Marty McFly in the background the first time he realized he wanted to hold Charlie’s hand, but he made a supreme effort to focus on the conversation at hand. Which he could tell was still not entirely clear to Darius and Kenneth.
“What we’re trying to say is, you haven’t traveled through time.” He felt horrible watching their countenances fall. “Not that that’s not such an interesting idea! And you guys should totally keep trying for it if that’s what you want!”
Kenneth was starting to gape again but Darius had it covered. “Okay, there is some logic to that. So maybe we didn’t time travel. But what, then? We’re not in the middle of the river anymore, standing on a boat while my colleagues yell at me, so…”
Kenneth managed to pick up this thread. “Yeah, if this isn’t time travel, was it some kind of wormhole or transport through space instead? Did we just accidentally jump to a British basement somewhere?”
“You, really, really didn’t, mate.” Charlie dead-panned. “Who do you know whose basement is a boundless void?”
Kenneth and Darius had to admit that was fair. But they were still so, so confused, and finally the pair in front of them took pity on them, and invited them over to a bank of screens. The kind of bank of screens that would have been against a far wall, if there had been any walls in that place.
Nick took a breath as he tried to think of the clearest way to summarize things. As he did so, Charlie jumped in with a crucial question.
“So, have either of you read fan fiction before?”
Kenneth looked confused. Darius did not.
“I fucking love an Agatha All Along fic.”
Charlie smirked. “Yeah you do.” He turned to Kenneth. “Did you ever have a movie or tv show that you loved with your whole being? Enough to want to know more about their story than you could find in the original work?”
Kenneth considered. He’d been busy the last few years on this project and wasn’t exactly up on his pop culture. But, he also was no stranger of the concept of inventing alternate realities of situations he wasn’t in control of…
“I think I get it.”
Nick looked pleased. “Okay, so you know the basic idea. That doesn’t mean this will make a ton of sense, but the thing is, that’s what you’ve done.”
Darius wasn’t buying it yet. “What’s what we’ve done? Written fanfic?”
Charlie barked out a laugh. “Oh, you’re definitely not the writers here!”
Nick took pity on the two confused faces and turned to the screens. “See this here? Here Charlie and I work for a professional rugby team. Here in this other one, we both end up teaching at a university in Ohio. Ooh, and down here, this is one of my favorites, I’m a service Dom!” Nick immediately notices the wide eyes and blushes, and while Charlie can’t help giggling, he also takes over with compassion for his boyfriend.
“I have a few favorites here too, you know. I can’t resist this one where you helped me reno my home. And I’ve always had a soft spot for this one where I somehow become a genie serving your beck and call. Oh and what about – in the right corner there is the one where I rented a cottage from you for the summer and fell in love. Fan favorite!” They both had mushy eyes at this point and barely noticed Darius and Kenneth anymore, until Darius quite obviously cleared her throat.
“What do you mean, fan favorite? And in what way, exactly, are you two both standing here right next to us, but also in all of these other realities at the same time?”
“Yeah, so, that’s the thing.” Charlie led the shell-shocked duo back to the table and sat them down gently. “You didn’t travel in time or space. You traveled in creation. You found the place where people who love us give us life.”
Nick snuggled up next to his love at the table, and the comfort he radiated started helping Kennth and Darius feel the same peace. “It can get chaotic sometimes, but also, it’s lovely every time for a different reason. Sometimes the stories we get to live out can be difficult, sad endings sometimes even, but we feel the reason behind the tale every time, and it gives us life.”
Charlie nodded enthusiastically. “Every time I get to play a part in something that brought someone to a new understanding of themselves, or of their community, or of what wild and precious joy their life might bring? I mean, damn. It takes my breath away every time.”
The visitors were slowly starting to understand. Darius spoke aloud as she tried to work out exactly what it meant for them. “So, we didn’t travel back to a time before my mom died, but also, it’s totally possible that someone dreams up a reality here where she’s still by my side?”
“Yes, that’s exactly right.” Nick’s eyes already shone with tears, which surprised neither his long-time partner nor two strangers who’d only known him for 20 minutes. “I will warn you that sometimes the creativity strays outside what feels real to you. There may be some universes where you don’t end up together.” (This caused Darius and Kenneth to look at each other in dismay.)
“But,” Charlie added, “you can remember one important thing. It’s the love between you both, the connection you’ve already shown everyone around you, that started this whole thing in the first place. That’s where creation started, and the imagination, and the hope, and the freedom to dream.”
And absolutely no one at the table thought that sounded bad, at all.