Chapter Text
Broden Broderick King—known as Bog to his friends and, lacking those, his mother—wove his way home on rubbery legs. One drink too many had a powerful transmutation effect on his joints, turning them into some unclassified form of part-time liquid. For some stretches of his walk home his knees behaved as knees were supposed to, bending at all the right times, but they were prone to suddenly giving way entirely and pitching him off to the side. After slamming his shoulder into multiple walls and being nearly swallowed whole by a hedge, Bog tried to keep a hand on any handy walls or railing as a means of keeping himself from flying off the face of the earth.
Just then the possibility of detaching from earth's field of gravity and hurtling off into the stars seemed very real and very terrifying. To float in the great stretches of emptiness between the pinpoints of starlight, no sound, no direction, no anchor. Spend a virtual eternity drifting through the void before bouncing off a star and drifting once more.
But wasn't that what he was doing already?
Drifting through existence, from one weekend to the next, bouncing around like a pinball, his course directed by the happenstance of walls and other random obstacles. Plugging his way through the week so that he could hand his paycheck to his mother and then head off to a bar to get entirely, completely drunk. Bog prided himself on his wholehearted commitment to his weekend binges. At least, he did during the binges. Saturday mornings were usually occupied with extreme regret and slowly sipping the tea his mother handed him along with her weekly lecture.
At least the pain of the hangover grounded him, anchoring him to the earth and turning his thoughts away from stars, voids, and all the other quasi-poetical nonsense of the inebriated mind. And it kept him grounded long enough to meet up with his band—not friends, just people he knew who put up with his spiky personality due to appreciation of his skills with a guitar—and play for tips on some street corner. Hands on the strings of his guitar, feet firmly on the ground, carefully ignoring the cheerful flights of fancy that the rest of the band had about “making it big someday”.
Someday.
Somedays were elusive things. Not yet here, possibly tomorrow, possibly years from now. No fixed date. Bog had once had his “someday” to look forward to. But time dragged on, relentless and eroding, wearing down and destroying the foundations he tried to build in anticipation for his “someday”. The twinkle of a diamond ring pulled off a slim finger and pushed back into his hand and the “someday” was gone forever.
Bog looked sadly at the stars, twinkling through the haze of the atmosphere, so cold. Diamonds and stars, both so cold and empty. Nothing more than pinpricks of light and sparkly little rocks
“--told you not to mess with the chameleon circuit!”
The memory of light glancing off the faucets of a diamond faded out of Bog's mind as he turned his gaze from the stars and blinked at the sudden sound of voices that were emanating from an otherwise ordinary looking hedge.
“I just thought it would be useful to, you know, blend a little better!” There was a sound like a playground swing squeaking as someone began to swing harder.
“Oh, please! People don't notice. People don't care. We could park a 60s themed diner in an empty lot and people would just wonder why they had never noticed that before.”
“I also thought that maybe something a little more portable would be good. I mean, how many times have you forgotten where we parked?”
“I did not forget where we parked! Half the ship broke off and everything, including our ride, drifting off and got caught in the orbit of the nearest planet. That is hardly my fault.”
“The point is that it wouldn't have happened if we had been able to keep it with us--”
“Please, we can't go around lugging a trunk everywhere we go--”
“It doesn't have to be a trunk! If you would just stop and think you'd realize that we could—oh, hello!”
While leaning toward the hedge to hear its conversation more clearly Bog felt his knees going liquid again and found himself falling through the hedge in a tangle of long, uncoordinated limbs. A perky female voice greeted him and began talking cheerfully, but Bog was too busy thrashing around in the hedge of pay attention to what she was saying. Every time he thought he had surfaced he found himself embedded further in the bush, broken branches stabbing at him through his leather jacket and infiltrating his collar to spring an attack on his bare skin. The sound of the swing had stopped, then resumed again, faint and abandoned.
When someone grasped the collar of his jacket and gave a sharp yank Bog was sure that the hedge had began to take more aggressive measures against him. But he was suddenly free of the hedge, laying on his back, staring up at the stars. Well, partially free. His lower legs were still inside the bush, resting uneasily on a bed of twigs and leaves.
“Boggy!” The perky voice squealed in unrestrained delight. Despite the sky still being the inky blue-purple of night the sun had risen in Bog's vision, golden and blinding. “Boggy, I missed you!”
“Really?” Bog slurred, scrunching his eyes and trying to bring the sun into focus, “'M not usually a morning person.”
“Boggy? Are you okay?”
“'M fine. Can drive. Just gimme my keys and I'll go home.”
“He's drunk,” Another voice, not at all perky, said shrewdly.
“Just had a couple,” Bog said defensively.
“Why are you drunk?” The bright voice asked, the sun tilting to one side in a gesture of confusion, “Why were you in a bush? Are you okay? We brought you your guitar back! Well, you brought a guitar back. Just like we promised!”
“Thanks?”
There was a tapping noise and when Bog peered past the sun he could see a hand with purple-painted nails tapping on a wristwatch.
“Uh,” Said the wristwatch in an embarrassed sort of way.
“What?” The sun asked, immediately taking note of the wristwatch's tone, “What's wrong?”
“Um. We may be a little . . . early.”
“Early? How early?”
“About . . . two years?”
“Two years?”
“C'mon, that's pretty close. In the grand scheme of things it's practically nothing. Considering the tiny space of time humanity has existed on earth compared to the age of their solar system--”
“So he hasn't even met us yet?”
“Technically he has now.”
“And you promised no more paradoxes!”
“Please, it's a just a small paradox! A tiny one. It's hardly a paradox at all. I've had bigger paradoxes for breakfast and didn't even get indigestion.”
The wristwatch and the sun launched into a hush argument that Bog was unable to follow. He lay on his back, staring up at the stars, trying to figure out why these people had his guitar. Had he left it at the bar? No, he hadn't taken it with him, he was pretty sure.
“Sorry, Boggy,” The sun said, setting something down next to him, “See you later!”
The wristwatch stood next to him for a few moments and he saw a pair of sturdy leather boots hesitate in the grass. One nudged him gently in the ribs.
“See you later.”
Turning his head, Bog saw the boots and a pair of pink high tops walk across the grass and disappear, a door slamming shut behind them.
An unearthly screeching startled him into sitting up, trying to avoid being hit by what sounded like a car issuing its death rattle. The liquid that usually resided in Bog's knees how swirled in his head, making everything swim. When the water calmed, the world settling down around him, Bog saw only an empty playground, one swing drifting gently back and forth while all the rest hung still. A rectangle was pressed into the sand by the slide, footprints churning up the ground around it.
There was no one there.
Just a guitar case sitting in the grass next to Bog.
It wasn't his.