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Los Angeles to MHA #12, Friday Morning
Sometime in the summer of 2021, Ulysses had left Fandom. He'd tried texting Illyana about it, repeatedly, since she'd been MIA when it had been time for him to go, but nothing seemed to get through. In time, he'd stopped trying.
He'd met Ford, a golden retriever in the body of a buff jock, when fate had decided they should be roommates. They'd kind of drunk messed around once, freshman year, but... Ulysses loved Ford, unconditionally, and if the guy had had even one sexually ambiguous molecule in his body they'd probably be married by now, but Ford was that truly rare Kinsey zero in contrast to Uly's ever oscillating four. So instead, once they'd graduated, they'd moved to LA together. Ford was trying to write the next great American screenplay; Ulysses had tried to pursue acting, like he'd thought he'd wanted to all through college, only to quickly discover it was probably the lamest, most soul-crushing thing he could do with his life.
So he'd stopped. And was now just sort of... floating from one dead-end job to the next. Drifting, in search of meaning, in search of a purpose or a great guy or at least someone who could make Carly stop making fun of him. (Oh yeah, he'd met Carly along the way, too. She was blonde and snarky and whip-smart, and seemed to hate most people except him... Yeah, yeah. He knew.) Life was -- It just was. A chain of Ulysses doing stupid things to feel something, to feel his heart pounding so fast he could barely breathe, and couldn't tell whether it was terror or excitement or both. He didn't even know why he did it. To avoid boredom? To feel alive.
Just for the fucking fuck of it.
It sounded grander than it was. Mostly, lately, he just did shit like end up in some guy's bed, mid-thrust when the front door unlocked and an 'oh shit my husband's home!' sent him scrambling out through the balcony half-naked.
... Yeah, that had been his Wednesday night. Followed by this strange, off-putting nightmare he'd been having two, three times a week for a month, now. It was so vivid and freakishly real that it always seemed to be hovering over him even after he woke up - like it wasn't just a dream, like it was trying to tell him something.
Carly had completely dismissed this premonition, of course. Just suggested he needed smoke a 'smidge less pot before bedtime'. But she wasn't a double Scorpio, so what did she know?
Anyway, that wasn't the only thing on his mind lately. There was this guy Gabriel he'd been talking to on an app, trying to push to meet in real life so he could be assured the dude wasn't just a giant catfish. Guy kept flaking, and yet Ulysses just. Couldn't. Stop trying. (Look, something about it felt like destiny, the guy looked so familiar but not in an 'I fucked him at a party last year and forgot about it' kind of way --) But last night, he'd finally succeeded, and they'd set a date!
Uly had called Carly once Gabriel was 43 minutes late.
But then, right in the middle of the call - Am I tragic? Don't -- don't answer that. - Gabriel had shown up, apologizing profusely and looking exactly as hot as his pictures, if not even hotter, and yeah. Yeah, they had a good date that culminated in heavy making out and handjobs in a back alley around the corner from the cafe, and even that was somehow... perfect, and intense, and literally felt to Ulysses like the universe had collapsed in on itself for a second there at the climax.
And the best part was Gabriel had felt it too. "I'm almost afraid to see what happens when we actually have sex," he'd said.
The whole thing felt like fate.
And then Gabriel had rushed off to band practice, and Ulysses had left to go home, delirious and happy while biked across town, vaping. Until his front wheel caught something, anyway, and sent him tumbling to the ground.
And then, getting up, gathering his stuff and his pride, he heard someone call for help. And he followed the noise as if in a trance, and didn't realize what he was seeing was all familiar to him from many, many nights over the course of the past month or so until it was too late, and he rounded the final corner and saw --
Well, something that made him scream in terror.
And then immediately pass out.
And then he woke up in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room, surrounded by --
Wait, wasn't this all his stuff?
"What the fuck?"
[ooc: NFI, everything under the cut NFB for distance and taken/paraphased from Now Apocalypse episode one, 'This Is the Beginning of the End' and a little from episode two, 'Where Is My Mind?'. MY BOY IS BACK. Older but not any smarter.]
He'd met Ford, a golden retriever in the body of a buff jock, when fate had decided they should be roommates. They'd kind of drunk messed around once, freshman year, but... Ulysses loved Ford, unconditionally, and if the guy had had even one sexually ambiguous molecule in his body they'd probably be married by now, but Ford was that truly rare Kinsey zero in contrast to Uly's ever oscillating four. So instead, once they'd graduated, they'd moved to LA together. Ford was trying to write the next great American screenplay; Ulysses had tried to pursue acting, like he'd thought he'd wanted to all through college, only to quickly discover it was probably the lamest, most soul-crushing thing he could do with his life.
So he'd stopped. And was now just sort of... floating from one dead-end job to the next. Drifting, in search of meaning, in search of a purpose or a great guy or at least someone who could make Carly stop making fun of him. (Oh yeah, he'd met Carly along the way, too. She was blonde and snarky and whip-smart, and seemed to hate most people except him... Yeah, yeah. He knew.) Life was -- It just was. A chain of Ulysses doing stupid things to feel something, to feel his heart pounding so fast he could barely breathe, and couldn't tell whether it was terror or excitement or both. He didn't even know why he did it. To avoid boredom? To feel alive.
Just for the fucking fuck of it.
It sounded grander than it was. Mostly, lately, he just did shit like end up in some guy's bed, mid-thrust when the front door unlocked and an 'oh shit my husband's home!' sent him scrambling out through the balcony half-naked.
... Yeah, that had been his Wednesday night. Followed by this strange, off-putting nightmare he'd been having two, three times a week for a month, now. It was so vivid and freakishly real that it always seemed to be hovering over him even after he woke up - like it wasn't just a dream, like it was trying to tell him something.
Carly had completely dismissed this premonition, of course. Just suggested he needed smoke a 'smidge less pot before bedtime'. But she wasn't a double Scorpio, so what did she know?
Anyway, that wasn't the only thing on his mind lately. There was this guy Gabriel he'd been talking to on an app, trying to push to meet in real life so he could be assured the dude wasn't just a giant catfish. Guy kept flaking, and yet Ulysses just. Couldn't. Stop trying. (Look, something about it felt like destiny, the guy looked so familiar but not in an 'I fucked him at a party last year and forgot about it' kind of way --) But last night, he'd finally succeeded, and they'd set a date!
Uly had called Carly once Gabriel was 43 minutes late.
But then, right in the middle of the call - Am I tragic? Don't -- don't answer that. - Gabriel had shown up, apologizing profusely and looking exactly as hot as his pictures, if not even hotter, and yeah. Yeah, they had a good date that culminated in heavy making out and handjobs in a back alley around the corner from the cafe, and even that was somehow... perfect, and intense, and literally felt to Ulysses like the universe had collapsed in on itself for a second there at the climax.
And the best part was Gabriel had felt it too. "I'm almost afraid to see what happens when we actually have sex," he'd said.
The whole thing felt like fate.
And then Gabriel had rushed off to band practice, and Ulysses had left to go home, delirious and happy while biked across town, vaping. Until his front wheel caught something, anyway, and sent him tumbling to the ground.
And then, getting up, gathering his stuff and his pride, he heard someone call for help. And he followed the noise as if in a trance, and didn't realize what he was seeing was all familiar to him from many, many nights over the course of the past month or so until it was too late, and he rounded the final corner and saw --
Well, something that made him scream in terror.
And then immediately pass out.
And then he woke up in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room, surrounded by --
Wait, wasn't this all his stuff?
"What the fuck?"
[ooc: NFI, everything under the cut NFB for distance and taken/paraphased from Now Apocalypse episode one, 'This Is the Beginning of the End' and a little from episode two, 'Where Is My Mind?'. MY BOY IS BACK. Older but not any smarter.]