MCA0: Saturday Night

[needsaparrot]

There's a Galaxy Quest marathon on Xander's tv, which is a fancy way of saying he tossed the S2 dvd in and hit play-all, but he's only half paying attention to that, while futzing around with various apartment-building designs on his laptop, and once again not staring at his cell and waiting for a certain ringtone.
_
[For, shockingly, a phone call, but if anybody wants to wander by after, sure, it's open.]

Comments

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

And there would be the ringtone that Xander's totally not waiting to hear.

[needsaparrot]

And there would be Xander not letting it get much past When you're wea-- before snatching it up. "Hey."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Hey, you," Bridge replies. And as stressful as these past couple days have been, he can't help but be cheered up at least a little by the sound of Xander's voice on the other end of the line.

[needsaparrot]

"You okay? Where are you?" If that pattern sounds familiar, at least the second question doesn't have the hell in the middle of it anymore.

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"I'm fine," besides the fact that he's barely slept since Thursday night. "I left San Angeles a couple of hours ago. I'm on my way to Las Vegas now."

[needsaparrot]

"San-- your Earth is weird. Vegas?"

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Personally I think it's everywhere else that's got it wrong. And it's where she's going! Or went. She's likely there by now already." Possibly had already left, even, but all he could do is follow the trail and hope he'd eventually catch up to her.

[needsaparrot]

"You're tracking where she's going before she gets there?"

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"No, but it's where she was going *when* she was going which was hours ago and where I'm going is where she's gone, only after, and besides, when I got off the bus in San Angeles, I followed her energy trail to where the buses that were leaving to Vegas were. And she got on one of those."

[needsaparrot]

"I continue to fear the fact that I followed that."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"I think it's a good thing!" Bridge insists. "I mean, I know lots of people don't always follow, but you do, and-" Z does "...yeah."

[needsaparrot]

"Willow does. Which... explains a lot, really."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"You like your people babbly?"

[needsaparrot]

"It does seem to be a plus."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"I'm glad you think so."

[needsaparrot]

He does, which makes him all the more concerned about the things Bridge isn't babbling about. "You really okay?"

He's not asking whether Bridge has enough money for a cross-country bus trip. Though that's kind of on the list too.

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"I'm not the one who ran away," Bridge says quietly. Even though he technically kind of did.

[needsaparrot]

"Right, so I already know Z isn't. That's not an answer about you."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Mostly I'm just worried about her," Bridge admits.

[needsaparrot]

"You got a backup team if you need it," Xander says. "Luke and Anders were all for rounding up a posse."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"S'good to know. Though I'm not sure how she'd feel about a posse, so I'm hoping it won't come to that."

[needsaparrot]

"I get that. Sometimes--" He thinks of that moment on the bluff in Sunnydale, though thank God this isn't that bad. "--there's one one person who can get through to somebody. It's good she's got you."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"'Course, I've got to actually catch up with her first before I can even *try* to talk to her," Bridge says with a sigh.

[needsaparrot]

[only one person, wtf.]

"Maybe you can figure out where she's going before she gets there? I mean, besides knowing what bus she got on. I know sometimes you know whether people are gonna zag or zig..."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Usually when I do that, the person's right in front of me, though. That makes it easy, because their energy is *right there*," Bridge says, frustrated. "This is just a trail and I don't even know if I can read someone from far away." Which is not to say he's not gonna try it.

[needsaparrot]

"Wish I could help," Xander says, and if he wishes a little more because he remembers what a complete ass he was when someone else ran away all those years ago, well, a healthy dose of deserved guilt never hurt anybody.

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Just talking to you is helping," Bridge says honestly. "And... when we get back, I promise, I'll tell you about everything."

[needsaparrot]

"I should tell you about everything now, so we get that out of the way," Xander teases him, because it's easier than trying not to sound like he wishes that was now. "Like I got four new tenants today."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"I hope none of them are evil," Bridge says. "I mean, I'd hate for the one time I wasn't around to do an aura-check to be the one time it really would have been useful."

[needsaparrot]

"One of them's Peter's brother. Petrelli. I hope he's not evil; that would kinda suck for Peter."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Hopefully he would've noticed by now if his brother was evil," Bridge says. "I mean, unless it was a recent turn of events, which is not entirely unlikely."

[needsaparrot]

"Well, he's copied your powers, right? So he'd probably have to. Unless Nathan's like, really sneaky evil. Like great guy until you discover 20 years later that it was him who took the last Bavarian Creme in the box."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"I think there might be a statute of limitations on doughnut thievery though," Bridge points out.

[needsaparrot]

"Nineteen years and six months. See my point? Eeeeevil."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Oh, clearly." And for the first time since Thursday, Bridge actually manages to laugh, a little.

[needsaparrot]

Not a sound Xander's unhappy to be hearing for the first time in days, either. "The new librarian moved in downstairs too. He called me sir. It was disturbing."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Being called sir is disturbing?"

[needsaparrot]

"By a librarian? Librarians are supposed to called me pained sigh, my name, pained sigh." Going by the, uh, one librarian he knows, yes.

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"I hope this rule doesn't apply to library *aides*," Bridge says. "Because otherwise I've been doing it wrong."

[needsaparrot]

"Well, yours doesn't have to involve pain."