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penumbramemes2024-11-16 04:50 pm
penumbra: test drive meme #1
TEST DRIVE MEME #1
↪ Test Drive Meme plot and interactions can be considered game canon as long as both parties in the game are accepted and agree to keep it canon!
↪ There are currently 50 player spots available!
↪ Threads on the TDM can be summarized for Activity Check
[art credit]
The last thing you remember is either simple or very complicated - you were asleep, or unconscious, or perhaps...you died. Whatever the circumstances, you closed your eyes at home and dreamed of a storm, and when your eyes opened again you were staring at the ceiling of your new home, injured perhaps, but with wounds bound and safe enough. For now.
Upon waking and exploring your new surroundings - a relatively nice, furnished apartment - you will discover a BlackBerry style phone, your apartment key, mail key, and a sensor for "buzzing" into the building, as well as a list of rules to live by in your new home:
The apartment you now find yourself in looks well-kept, the fridge is full, the lights are on, and the whole place looks as if whoever lived in this apartment before you simply packed up and left, minutes ago.1. don't use the elevator between 1:11 and 3:33 am.
2. you will receive mail from 'the building manager' shoved under your door. read it once and then burn it immediately.
3. if someone claiming to live on the fourth floor tries to speak to you, ignore them.
4. never enter the basement, or any area of the building below ground level
5. if you see a shadowy figure in the hallway, run.
If you leave that apartment, you'll find yourself faced with a dim hallway that leads to a small lobby with an elevator door. You're going to have to explore this new place sometime! Why not now?
Eventually, everyone will make their way to the lobby, the heart of the building, with its empty concierge desk and mail room. Like most of the other common areas of the building, the Lobby is a little dimly lit in a way that could be cozy or creepy depending on your perspective, with patterned carpet that hides nasty scuffs, and sturdy paint and drywall that's not likely to get broken too easily. All of it hardy and meant for a space that's open to the public.
One other major feature of the lobby of Penumbra Place is a large corkboard stationed on the wall behind the concierge desk. And on this corkboard is a large map of the city, burnt around the edges, torn and replaced with transparent tape in places, and scribbled on with large swatches of colour here and there. There are some pertinent places marked with these colours - the Dry Waste, Wet Waste, and the Chasm, as well as where Penumbra itself is located. See a picture of the markings here.
Underneath the concierge's desk can be found a small stockpile of supplies that looks strangely out of place in the dim lobby. The majority of the items look like they were salvaged or scavenged from the Dry Wastes outside, dirty and rusty and generally like a tetanus hazard from hell. The items cover a broad spectrum - shovels and pickaxes, makeshift weapons including a bat with nails driven into it, a large plastic waterskin half-full of stagnant water, first aid kits from the pharmacy that have seen better days. There are also a rather large stack of something that can't be found elsewhere in the apartment building - MREs, or meals ready to eat. These rations are light and shelf-stable for years, each providing a full day's food for an average human, and excellent for packing to eat on camping trips or expeditions.
How will you divide these spoils? Eat the MREs, or save them for an exploration mission? And what about that map?
Most importantly - just who left these items out for you to find?
There's a treat waiting for anyone who happens to venture outside and explore the businesses that are installed in the main floor of the building - Skidooch's Pub has a welcome banner above the open doors!
Echoing off the nearby buildings, all of which are collapsed and in ruin, is the sound of cheerful music, beckoning you into the dim, somewhat timeless interior of Skidooch's. The sound of the music contrasts sharply with the grey rubble and dead silence of the rest of the world, leaving it sounding a little tinny, and are there whispered voices somewhere in that recording or are you just imagining things? Best not to dwell on it, perhaps. Better to get into the mood for a party, because that's what's going on in Skidooch's!
Anyone who enters the pub will find refreshments set up, a dance floor cleared, and a huge very-spiked punchbowl ready and waiting at the end of the bar. There are delicate crystal plates and cups for the refreshments and punch. The foods are generally...a little old-fashioned. Some of them look quite appetizing, like the huge platter of completely normal deviled eggs; others are a little less so, like the ambrosia jello cake and towering aspic that stands in a place of honour at the center of the spread. Surprisingly though, if you take a closer look and the aspic doesn't put you off your appetite, there are quite a few good foods there, including stuff you might recognize from home. The punch is, as mentioned, heavily spiked, but has a lovely light fruit punch flavour.
Once you're inside Skidooch's, the music seems to lose that weirdly-echoing tinny sound and more just like lyricless jazz music, easy to dance to and also easy to talk through. The chairs and tables are comfortable, and the dance floor is beckoning. The longer you stay inside the pub, the more you forget your troubles, feeling them slowly ease away, ebbing and flowing until they become nothing, and you're suffused with a haze of nostalgic joy, whether you've been drinking or not. Why not sit down a while and get to know your new fellow tenants?
Just don't leave the party too soon, because if you come back, all you'll find beyond those open doors at Skidooch's Pub are discordant, repetitive old music, a spread of familiar food and drink that looks rotten, crawling with maggots and flies, and a complete lack of the people you just left there. The further you creep into the pub, the darker it gets, and you walk much further than you should to reach the full depth of the pub as it was before. Eventually, you'll find yourself in pitch darkness, with only that music playing.
Dare you continue walking?
Anyone who looks out of a window facing the "inside" of the U-shape of the building will see a gorgeous courtyard garden with winding paths to wander, trees and wildflowers, and gardening patches that are ripe for the taking. The only entrance to this area is a gate in the tall wall that protects the garden from the public on the opposite side of the bottom of the U-shape of the building, featuring the security of a small pad for you to use your individual sensor to "buzz" into the gardens. The words "Back Paths" are scribbled onto this gate in red spray paint.
It's understandable that you'd want to explore the gardens, when everything else in this world seems to be, for the moment, dry and in ruins, devoid of any life save the people in Penumbra Place. All that ruin and decay can get wearing on the psyche, if you're not used to it.
Upon entering the back paths, you'll find yourself at the start of that beautiful winding path. The gardens themselves are mostly grass and idyllic wildflowers, dotted with evergreen and deciduous trees, with wide grassy patches perfect for tossing a baseball with little Timmy, and the occasional garden plot. The weather in the back paths is always balmy, like a warm spring day just after the rain, the scent of loam and petrichor perpetually lingering in the air. It's a beautiful walk!
But...shouldn't that walk have been over a while ago? Haven't we walked much further than the visible length of the path as seen from the building? The path seems to go on and on, twisting and winding through the trees and grass, and have you seen that picnic bench before or is it just identical to the last one you saw?
Whether it's for an hour or 6 hours, you wander the back paths looking for the exit, until you finally, finally come to it. That gate, spray-painted in red on this side with the words "No Return." Stepping outside the gate, you find yourself back in the post-apocalyptic backyard of Penumbra Place. Walking around the building, you're captivated by how quiet it is, with no birds or animals making noises, no traffic, no signs of life. No lights in the windows of Penumbra Place. In fact, Penumbra Place has collapsed, with no sign of the building you left behind to come into the back paths.
The only place to go is back into the back paths. Any further exploring reveals only the empty ruin of the place. And once you're back in the gardens...how long will it be until you find the real exit?
The dawning of the second day of your new existence in Penumbra Place greets you with a song. A song that's stuck in your head, that is. It's a cheerful tune, melodic, a definite earworm, but one you've never heard before. It repeats over and over again, at first easy enough to ignore, but as the day goes on it gets louder and louder, drowning out the background noise of thoughts in your brain, eventually drowning out the ability for conscious, logical thought. It dominates your brainwaves, repeating over and over again, the music cheerful but the lyrics that you somehow know much more sinister:
The only thing scary is the void in my brain
Everything is burning, I am lonely every day
I'm just a tiny cell and my body is made of clay
The only thing scary is the chasm in my brain
Will you sing along?
As the night falls, the song abruptly comes to a halt, for everyone who can hear it at the same time. And then there are monsters.
In fact, to anyone who sang the song aloud there are suddenly monsters in the building, tall and with charred-black skin, looking as if they'd been burned and wearing crowns of moss, their mouths open wide and leering, full of sharp teeth, the long, crooked fingers tipped with claws that drip blood.
Or at least that's what those who sang see their fellow tenants as. Anyone who sang the song aloud will see their fellow tenants who didn't sing as monsters trying to chase and kill them, while seeing those who did sing as they really are. Team up with your fellow singers to slay the monsters! Or, well, if you didn't sing? Time to run from whoever did!
If your character sang the song aloud, please reply in this comment thread, as whether or not they sang will be very, very important during the game's first event.
back again;
In any case, their processes are surprisingly similar: search the place, wonder if it's aliens, gods, or cultists (his big three), pocket the phone and the key, and grab the biggest kitchen knife he could find. From there, he strides determinedly out of the apartment into the hallway and then around a corner-- only to come face to face with the most swole man he's seen since Benjamin the Monster Hunter, and it's luck more so than skill that has him jerking backward before he can accidentally poke his own eye out on his own knife.
"Ah!" He says — unfortunately 'says' is, stupidly, the correct word. He doesn't yell it, it isn't a yelp or a scream, it's a very mild, very apathetic sounding tone that does not at all match the actual sentiments of the message.
The young man in front of Bucky isn't much to write home about. Skinny, late twenties to early thirties, green eyes, dark hair. A hoodie and ripped jeans that puts him probably roughly from the same time period Bucky just came from. A few things are probably noteworthy: the dark, sleepless circles under his eyes. The way his left hand is missing an entire finger, with the pinky just gone. A glint of metal from behind the tears in the denim that reveal a prosthetic metal leg from his right knee down.
He's a scruffy mess, obviously confused, exceptionally wary, and as his heart rate spikes upon meeting a buff stranger in a creepy hallway, he can only think to vaguely gesture at Bucky with his borrowed blade and repeated, "Ah?"
But this time in like... a more questioning tone.
Damn it, he's supposed to be good at this shit now. Quickly, he amends, "I mean- who?"
Which is not much better, and so he quickly-quickly amends-amends again, "I mean- hey, what the fuck?"
no subject
He doesn't look to be in charge here and while looks can be deceiving, Bucky decides he'd rather pursue any leads while they're still porentially lukewarm and circle back to whatever details he can get out of this guy later.
"That your place?" Bucky asks, briefly making a mental note the doors they came out of, but not standing around waiting for an answer. He continues towards the lobby area cautiously, and while his gaze is constantly darting around in a haphazard orbit bouncing off the walls and ceiling, he never fully takes his eyes off of the other man, keeping the position of his knife in check.
no subject
(In his defense, he feels a little more at home with a baseball bat than a knife, but that's- it's totally not the point and definitely not important right now.)
The question-that-isn't-an-answer earns a blink, and Jack's got to glance back over his shoulder toward the apartment door before he realizes what Swole McBuffington even means. "What? No- that, I just woke up there. I don't live here. I don't even know where here is."
He only realizes once he finishes talking that not only had Bucky started walking, Jack started following, just- automatically striding after him, for reasons entirely beyond his own comprehension. His feet grind to a stop then, just so he can have maybe a slight headstart if he needs to turn and start hauling ass down the hallway in a dramatic chase sequence he will definitely inevitably lose for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with his prosthetic leg.
"Quick question, are you a kidnapping serial killer, or- like- a really motivated timeshare salesman or something?"
no subject
"No." Bucky doesn't seem frustrated or offended by the question. That mildly irritated look is just his happy face. If he was a serial killer wouldn't he be dead?
"I'm--" Not quite sure what he is. Just some guy trying to figure out what the fuck is going on and formulate some type of plan. Hopefully do the right thing.
"Military." Look he's got the dog tags and everything. And technically he's a veteran, but he doesn't see a way where anyone will let him get to the end of the line in peace or some sort of quiet retirement. They'll either use him up and throw him out in the next interplanetary war or copyright and patent him like stolen intellectual property and try to make money off of his body. So if he's occasionally still dabbling in non government sanctioned missions, still being watched like a multimillion dollar asset, 'military' is close enough, right?
"I'm going down there. I need to get to the fourth floor, or the basement. Are you coming?" Even if this place is Totally Safe Guys and this is just one big stupid joke, Bucky doesn't feel comfortable leaving a man with a metal leg who might accidentally shank himself behind.
no subject
Tony and Benjamin, eyeing each other up suspiciously by firelight.
"You army?" Tony asked the enormous bear of a man.
"Nah," Benjamin grunted.
"I knew a guy. He was a Ranger in the Army. You remind me of him."
And then another;
Roger's guy, looking Jack up and down and then asking, "You army?"
"No, obviously not."
"I knew a guy. He was a Ranger in the Army. You remind me of him."
Jack had been immediately dubious, because he possesses an ounce of self-awareness, and he'd asked, "Really?"
The guy shook his head and said, "No, not really."
Is this guy-- is he-
He's left blinking at Bucky, a little wide-eyed, a little baffled — until he snaps himself out of it with a shake of his head and shifts into motion again, cutting a wary glance over even as he clears the distance. "Yeah, okay, sure."
If this guy is a kidnapping serial killer, Jack's got to concede to the logic that he'd probably have already done the murdering by now. And... also, if he decides to do that later, there isn't going to be a whole lot Jack can do about it, either. All the same, he throws out a very unconvincing warning, "But- just for the record, I know karate. Like, so much karate. Aikido and Jiu Jitsu and- just, a crazy amount of karate, so I wouldn't try anything if I were you. Because of all the... karate."
He's never been a good liar, ever, in his life. Ever. It certainly doesn't start now. Can't blame him for trying, though.
no subject
A blob moving in his peripheral vision has him halting in his tracks and he raises his vibranium fist holding the knife. The tension that seized up in his shoulders doesn't relax until he hears a croaky sort of-- meow?
He glares at what must be the biggest loser of the cutest cat competition and carefully avoids stepping or tripping over it as he continues onward, towards the lobby and the elevator. Normally he'd head straight to the basement but it's probably the more dangerous option compared to the fourth floor, considering the former is 'don't go' versus 'don't talk to someone there'. He's not really sure what he's going to do once he's there though. Knock on every door and try to figure out who they're not supposed to talk to? At least in the basement he might not have to worry as much about random civilians and won't bother anyone looking around.
"What's your name." Bucky's dog tags say his name is 'James' so it might or might not be worth asking him back the same question depending on how close anyone has to get to be able to read it.
no subject
The metal fist stops him.
The cat stops him harder, and before he can help himself, he's cooing out a soft, earnest, "Aww, look, it's so ugly..."
It looks like a wrinkly little alien baby. Sphinx cats are so weird they wrap all the way back around to being cute again, and he'd be tempted to reach out and pet it if he didn't have more than enough experience under his belt by now to know better. Sometimes the things that look the cutest are the most eager to bite your arm off. No offense, Bucky.
It doesn't stop the little yoda-cat from rubbing up against Jack's metal leg, and he delicately extracts it from pudgy feline skin flaps so he can quickly catch back up again.
"Jack," he answers, and because he's sometimes oblivious to little glaringly-obvious details like dog tags, he asks anyway. "You?"
And in another testament to his chronic brain issues, it only just now catches up with him exactly where this guy said they were headed. Jack isn't actually stupid, he's really not, he just has- brain stuff going on, he's unpacking a lot all at once, and he only has so much RAM upstairs to allocate at any given time. Sometimes the processor chugs along at a delay. As soon as Bucky answers, he'll shoot out an immediate follow-up question:
"Wait- fourth floor or basement, did you get a note too? The list of rules, or whatever?"
no subject
Jack seems smart enough to not touch the cat. Maybe he's not the muscle of his usual operation but Bucky can appreciate a bit of common sense and a healthy dose of self-preservation.
"Yeah. I did. I'm not waiting until 1.12am to see what happens. But somebody on the fourth floor knows something. And I'll find out what's in the basement." No bonus points for guessing who's going to die first in a horror movie.
He has no idea what floor they're on so he's planning on just pressing the down button and waiting for the lift. Maybe it doesn't go to the basement and they'll have to exit on the ground floor and look for some stairs. His eyes dart around the lobby area once they're close enough to get a better look, trying to spot a stairwell or camera or any other details he can pick up on.
no subject
The lobby opens up to a series of mailboxes on the far wall, each labelled with the corresponding apartment numbers. On one wall, a large map hangs on a bulletin board, covered in telling and possibly informative scribbles. Branching off in either direction is what looks like a gym, a door with pool access labelled on it, the wide open expanse of what looks like a pharmacy, and- frankly, way more stuff than Jack would have ever expected to find in a hotel.
It makes him falter for only a second, before he's plowing on emphatically.
"I know you're Army-" he'd said military technically, but Jack's brain is still hung up on the dawning realization of a possible code exchange he's only just connected the dots on, "-but I have a little experience with the whole... list of strange rules subgenre, and I think you should maybe seriously consider that the consequences of breaking one of them might impact more people than just you. These things- they're not always human."
Does that sound crazy? That probably sounds crazy, but he doesn't really have time to have the whole definitive proof of the supernatural conversation if he wants to convince this guy to slow his roll a little.
no subject
He can always try to rip open every single mailbox that looks like it belongs to a tenant on the fourth floor. The map fleeting catches his interest in that he'll want to take a photo of it with his phone and study it in more detail later. If his phone even has a camera function on it. Maybe google what the fuck is a Wet Waste. Sounds like a doctor's joke for liquid diarrhoea. Maybe there's somebody in the bowling alley or the boutique that knows something. It's worth checking out what's behind every door. But for now his interest seems fixated on Jack.
"What're you saying? Like aliens or?" Bucky's eyebrows furrow deeper and he fixes a hard glare at Jack. "You know something about this building?" Want to share with the class maybe?
no subject
"I don't know, maybe?" He shrugs helplessly, gesturing absently outward with his knife without even really thinking about it. "It could be one of the big three. You know, aliens, gods, or cultists."
It does occur to him that maybe Bucky StrongJaw might've been being sarcastic about that whole aliens thing, but depending on your definition of the term and how familiar you are with cosmic horror, it isn't actually inaccurate. There's a fine line between alien and monster, and the Venn diagram seems to overlap somewhere around Eldritch.
"I don't know anything about this place in particular, but- weird is kind of... what I do. There's basically a nonzero chance that if I'm involved with a situation, it's because that situation's- inherently fucked up and not normal, somehow." A beat, and then, "I realize now that I'm hearing myself that probably sounds insanely egotistical, but I don't mean it like that. I just mean- I'm, like, magnetically drawn to fucked up shit, and ominous, foreboding rules lists are textbook fucked up shit."
no subject
"Yeah. Fine." Bucky knows enough shit magnets who just can't catch a break to be able to read between the lines there. Okay so, maybe he's in a little over his head here. Maybe they should come up with a plan before he tries pressing buttons on the elevator panel and accidentally gets them all killed.
"How does 'fucked up shit' work?" He doesn't even know what 'fucked up shit' is referring to here. It doesn't sound much different from an ordinary Tuesday morning where Bucky comes from. "We supposed to take out the aliens, gods or cultists and go home?" He's not particularly keen on killing anyone or anything but he's also not sure how far they need to go here.
no subject
"It's... situational?" He offers unhelpfully, scratching at the back of his neck. "Sometimes it's take out the aliens and go home, but sometimes it's- more complicated."
Usually it's more complicated, in fact. Sometimes it's Donald Glover is secretly an ancient shape-shifter that controls a pain demon named Sagoth, sometimes it's find a bigger god to eat the god that wants to eat you, sometimes it's blow up the murder cult or sacrifice yourself on a ceremonial knife and convince Bill Murray to reset your town full of mimic plant people. But all of that probably isn't very reassuring or informative right now. Probably better to keep it simple.
"If we can figure out who actually made the list, we might be able to figure out the reasons behind what's on it. That might be a... slightly safer place to start?"
Just in case talking to the entity on the fourth floor lets loose a poltergeist, or it turns out to be a Skinwalker or something like that. Although... maybe Bucky could handle the latter, honestly.
no subject
All that energy he was going to put into the basement potentially suicidal expedition seems to be rolling back in like a receding wave as Bucky contemplates their next move. How can they figure out who made the list? How can Jack even be so sure that it's not some resident's kid's or their kidnappers' stupid idea of a prank?
"...whoever we're not supposed to talk to on the fourth floor should know something about the list, right?"
Yeah he's definitely getting the hang of this supernatural occult schtick.
no subject
It's a not-unreasonable possibility, and although he's a little reluctant to trust the concept that Bucky isn't just going to go up there and immediately interrogate the Haunted Spectre Of Doom and Tomfuckery or whoever it is that maybe-lives there... they really don't have a lot of other leads to go on right now, do they? He could suggest maybe looking for some kind of computer terminal with tennant information or something, but hacking computers was always more of a Jerry (aka Leeroy, aka BigDick Swagmoney The Funky-Fresh Prince of Riverdale, aka Jeremiah Cumberbatch) thing than a Jack thing.
"The rules just say to ignore it if it tries to talk to us. They don't say anything about talking to each other in its general area, or... stalking it, figuring out where it actually lives, getting the jump on it, and gagging it before it has a chance to talk in the first place. Fucked up shit is almost always annoying precise with the wording, so loopholes and technicalities are totally fair game."
Almost always.
Usually.
Most of the time.
probably maybe needs a cw
"I'm going to check out the stairs." Then he'll decide if he's walking up or taking the lift. He'll have the chance to walk past and study the map on the way. Maybe peek into the gym and see if there's anyone else around. Or anything he'd consider weird lying around. At this stage he has no idea what he's looking for.
torturingtrying to fix him. Maybe he just needs his beauty sleep..."...fuck is a 'Dry Waste'? New Mexico?" Is this map a joke?
oh fuck yeah bro let's gooooo i love it lmao
(God, he hopes his friends are okay. Please let them be okay.)
"Cool," is all he says instead, deliberately aloof and totally chill, in the hopes that maybe it'll balance out what a psycho he probably just seemed like. "I'm gonna..."
Followed by a vague gesture in the general direction of the mailboxes. His intention had been to wander over to the one that matches his apartment number, to test out that small mailbox key he'd been left. To check and see if there was anything inside.
He doesn't get that far. His knees lock, his body freezes in place, and his eyes begin to glaze over. Vacant, unseeing, unblinking. And he...
falls.
He falls, and he falls,
and he falls, and he lands in the operating chair.
Pain, blood, lights. Burning flesh, the whir of a bone saw.
All of these things are familiar to Jack, but not like this. Not like this.
It's been a while since the last time this happened to him. He'll never get used to it, no matter how many times he experiences it. Being in someone else's mind, seeing through their eyes, feeling what they feel, their thoughts, their pain- and it's always some kind of pain. It's never, ever a memory of a trip to rainbow happy trampoline party funtime puppy surprise. It's always hurt.
When he snaps out of it, he comes-to gasping hard and heavy, the knife falling with a clatter onto the floor, and his right hand groping desperately at the shoulder of his left arm. Fingernails digging in without him even realizing it quite yet, leaving long and jagged scratches at the socket, along the pec, like he's trying to- like he wants to-
And then he's staring at Bucky, an uncommon streak of dread in his otherwise normally neutral expression. Dread, and empathy.
They couldn't fully put Jack to sleep either, when they took his leg. But it still wasn't anything like that. Not even fucking close.
no subject
"...you okay?" Why is he looking at Bucky like that? Why is he trying to rip his left arm off? It clearly hasn't occurred to Bucky that maybe Jack himself is the weird shit that he's supposed to be dealing with. He's a little quirky maybe but. Aren't they all? So far he's been harmless. That tightness in Bucky's jaw and hardness in his gaze betrays that little uptick in concern that churns in his stomach.
"Did something get you?" Bucky glances around and picks up Jack's knife, holding both his and Jack's in his left hand. He doesn't hand it over though. No shade on his competency with a knife, but at this stage he's more worried that the next time the knife drops it'll go through Jack's good foot.
no subject
What he saw just now, what he felt... It was fucked up. He's been tortured before — lost a finger to it, even — but it doesn't hold a candle to that.
"I-" he starts uncertainly, utterly failing to find words. He's a writer. He can be eloquent, and poetic, and he can express himself clearly and deeply in retrospect. After the fact, sitting down with a keyboard, documenting out the insanity he'd experienced, he can absolutely find all the words in the world. In the moment? Historically fucking awful, bad at conversations with strangers, bad with words, bad at coming up with things on the spot. Utterly humiliating garbage at lying, disadvantage and -5 on his deception checks. "I- I- um."
So, here's the other thing he's learned the hard way: after one too many slips of outright blurting the contents of those stolen memories to the people they belong to, he's come to the genius realization that people don't generally like it when their private moments are shoved into other people's brains like TikTok videos. Something about the existential dread of being known, maybe, or the fundamental right to privacy.
A complete stranger slash prisoner of war with a metal arm and a fist full of two fucking knives is probably not a person he wants to accidentally piss off.
So if he can't lie, and he can't tell the truth, what the hell is he supposed to say?
"I HAVE STUFF."
Ah, fuck. Fucking fuckity fuck sticks mcfucking fuckballs.
He hates himself so, so much sometimes.
Quick, Jack — try to salvage it. "Brain stuff."
Not better. That is not even remotely better.
"I mean- it's totally fine brain stuff. I'm not- crazy, or anything, it's not like- delusional psychotic murder brain stuff. Obviously. It's totally normal- well, it's not normal, there's no such thing as normal brain stuff, unless you- have a normal brain, I guess, in which case it isn't really stuff anymore, is it? It's just brain. Everybody has brain, because without brain- dead. But- sometimes my brain- does. Stuff. So. That's all. Don't worry about it. Is this a bad note to end on if I want to ask for my knife back?"
no subject
"Okay."
That's all he says after a long, pregnant, almost excruciating silence. What else is there to say? He has crazy, abnormal brain stuff himself. And worse, he had delusional psychotic murder brain stuff not that long ago. Maybe he still does, and it's just buried deeper in there than ever before, but he thinks (or has been led to believe) he's been fixed. But he doesn't want to talk about his own brain stuff, with anyone. So the bare minimum is the complete lack of expectation that other people talk about their brain stuff with him.
"You almost put this in your eye and you could have dropped it in your foot," Bucky points out without physically offering the knife back. He doesn't think it's a good idea to hand it over. But he won't insist on holding onto it if Jack really wants it back. He doesn't seem to care that Jack might or might not be a danger to others - still too early to tell although he's clearly more than slightly eccentric - more so that Jack seems to present a danger to himself.