...Que.

[talktothehandsy]

Handy (or the Doctor, or John, or whotever people decide to call him, though he prefers the last), is here to ramble about his impending death.

"So um. Right! I'm a spin-off of the Doc, yeah? Some think I'm him, some think I'm just myself. Guess the jury's still out on all that, but...

See, I've got a problem. A big, random-repeating-of-words

Comments

[talktothehandsy]

It's a relief, the matter-of-fact way in which he's taking it in and going on about it - he really doesn't want sympathy, or pity. Even if he's royally pissed that the short human life he'd been given was being cut even shorter.

He takes in what he says with a slow nod - practical suggestions, those - and doesn't look away from him as he grabs a wheeled chair from the side, jerking it in front of him and plopping down on it, straddling it backwards.

He places his forearms on the back of the chair, resting his chin on them as he arches his back and neck to look up at him, blowing a strand of hair out of his eyes with a slow exhale of breath.

"I like my body, yeah. Love it, actually. Quite bouncy, bendy. On the bright side, when I die, I'll find out if I can regenerate or not." Or half-regenerate, however that would work. Might be something horrifying, like half his body regenerating while the other half slumps and dies. Or regenerating a new appendage. Or regenerating into a toilet. Each thought is more distasteful than the last one an he wrinkles his nose.

"What species are you, anyway?" he asks, too many distractions, and it helped the words, kept them from repeating, if he didn't focus on the same thing for too long. He can focus on one thing for a minute, go to another, then hop back to the first thing. He's kind of convinced he's just fooling himself into thinking that helps.

[witfrommytongue]

Ziggy hasn't the faintest notion what he means by regenerate, but he's a chill dude, he can wait to find out. The man'll tell him in his own time; Ziggy's not a one to rush this sort of thing. It confirms his idea that he's not human, though, which is pleasing. He looks human- an attractive human, at that; wild haired and freckled and rail thin, with a restless, rocking kineticism to him- but then, Ziggy looks human, and that couldn't be further from the truth.

'I am Infinite,' he says with a smirk, finding a couch to drape himself over. 'Although this body is human enough.' He smooths a hand down his chest in a languid, self-appreciative gesture. 'But only artificially. I am but a butterfly dreaming he's a man, yeah? Or something like that.'

'And what about you, lover?' Ziggy lets his head fall back, calmly watching upside down. 'I've never heard of any human snuffing it that way before.'

[talktothehandsy]

Watching him drape himself over the sofa, slowly spinning his own chair around to face him, he glances over the man's almost... blinding appearance. Not in any way where his clothes or hair's too bright, though the colors factored in, but it was a combination of all that with the confidence and not-quite-sober ease of movement.

Blinding isn't the word, really. Blinding things made you want to pull away, shield yourself, like the rare moments with Tyler, when she was happy for once and they were in the sun. Nah - the guy has a more subdued effect on him. He feels a little lulled in, calmer than he had been mere moments before.

"Infinite," he echoes, rolling the title against his lips. There aren't as many r's or l's, so he settles for popping the last 't' with a click of his tongue.

"Isn't it something like.. a caterpillar dreaming he's a butterfly? A caterpillar dreaming he's a butterfly dreaming he's a man. Sometimes I feel like, like, like-" He shakes his head after he finishes repeating it all. Maybe it's just his incessant prattling catching up with him.

"Well," he starts, focusing on the man's question, "I'm half and half. Part human and part Timelord, though fuck if I know which one's the more dominant."

He straightens and relaxes his fingertips against the top of the chair, leaning back and stretching his spine as he flicks his eyes over the ceiling then returns them to the man on the couch, curious.

"Infinite, huh?"

[witfrommytongue]

So, random repeating of words giant fucking problem indeed. He sounds like a needle stuck in the groove of a record, skipping itself over and over again until someone gets so irritated by it that they have to get up and fix it. This man fixes it himself, and it looks like an effort of will.

Sometimes Ziggy wishes he had the power to peel aside people's craniums and peer inside at their living brains. To prod at the flesh, pull aside sulci and gyri and read the inside white matter like a book. But he doesn't; all Ziggy Stardust has is his music. But you know what? That suits him fine.

He hums thoughtfully, a snatch of melody at the man's words. 'Time Lord, eh? I met a Time Lord once; gorgeous bloke, bit of a cricket fetish, I think. Snatched me out of a black hole by mistake.' Oh yeah, that had been a laugh. Nothing like adventure when you were least expecting it. 'But half and half?' His eyes rake down over the not-quite-Doctor's body, like he's stripping him with his gaze. 'Someone was breaking the rules when they brought you into being, weren't they?'

And yes, Infinite. He'll explain later, if you like, but for now, he's devoting all of his not inconsiderable attention on the man before him.

[talktothehandsy]

Most of the time the repeating embarrassed him, flustered him. He feels rather like he's by himself anyhow now, though, so aside from the fact that it happened, there's no other sign that it had. He doesn't act like it, anyway, tilting his head as he listens to the man's story about the fifth. "Yeah, the Doctor. Fifth one. One of my favorites; nice little blonde thing going for him."

He doesn't mind that the guy's glancing him over - likes it, really - though now he's suspicious he's wondering just how half and half he is. He glances down at his own lap and hums, and the frown's gone and he's grinning by the time he looks back up.

"Yup. I'm not meant to exist. I'm an impossible possibility - really, you'd think it would've gone to my head by now." He lifts a hand and wiggles his fingers. "Came from one of these."

He licks his upper lip as he considers something, gaze bouncing all over the room then landing back on the man in front of him. "The bloke you met, the Doctor - y'know, the Time Lord - that's who I came from. But it was a different version of him, one that looks like me. Him and a girl named Donna. Dunno if he's like a twin, or a distant relative, or if I should be prepared to saddle myself with some... daddy issues." He says the last thing in a way that is entirely unnecessary, as if he rather enjoys the idea of the Doctor bending him over his knee. And the placement of saddle next to daddy.

[witfrommytongue]

The Doctor, yeah. He'd been all sorts of riled up about Ziggy appearing out of nowhere on his ship; had done a great deal of hmmphing and pouting about it. Cute, really.

And again with this dude and his explanations that aren't really explanations at all. He'll infer, though, read between the lines if that's what he wants, and he comes away with something not too far removed from the truth. Mishaps of genetics; misdirected energy in combination with too many living beings results in more life; it's just the way it goes. Sometimes it's natural birth, sometimes it's cloning, sometimes it's something more like an anomaly. The latter, he fancies, is what applies here, and Ziggy chuckles, a low, musical sound at the intonation the anomaly gives the phrase daddy issues.

'So what's your name, impossible possibility?' Everyone's gotta have a name, after all. No-one's nobody at all without a name to know themselves by.

[talktothehandsy]

Usually it takes him awhile to come up with a response to that question, always so many things to think of. What should the person know him as, what identity should he put off, which would get the best results - ah, such a lovely, manipulative and constant identity crisis - but this time he doesn't think at all.

"Johnny," he says, with an air of decisiveness, like it felt good just to say the name. John's too formal, but Johnny... well, it feels more like him, the parts that don't have anything to do with the Doctor or Donna (and there was one time he'd had someone call him Doctor Donna, for funsies). The Johnny portion - if he'd been born Just Johnny he'd be the selfish, impulsive, hyperactive, kinda lousy, partying Aries, who likes having his hair messed with. Which he did - a small tug's enough to make him groan, but a solid, all-out hair mussing's enough to get him hard. Anyway, digress.

"And you, Infinite one - which you're gonna have to explain to me eventually anyway, or I'll need to do research - what's yours?"

[witfrommytongue]

He makes it a choice, this Johnny, when he announces his name, and Ziggy smiles faintly at the tone to his voice. He likes that. Most people don't think about their names or what they mean, what they say about them. Ziggy can practically see the decision in Johnny's eyes, and he respects that.

'Johnny.' For just a moment, all the attention he'd been focussing on the man goes instead to his name. He tastes it in his mouth, behind his teeth, feeling the way it sits on his tongue, wraps the syllables like fabric, balancing them thoughtfully. And then he smiles, wide and sly. 'My very great pleasure, then, Johnny.'

As for him; 'Don't recognise me?' He indulges a self-deprecating chuckle. 'Aw, you wound, man; I'd thought the cracks in the world were a little wider than that.' Almost everyone else he's encountered in the multiverse has recognised him immediately, though usually they tended to think he was this transuniversal doppelganger Bowie guy. 'Course, he's used to attention; it's a little pleasure every time someone knows him just to look at him. But he's always just as pleased to provide an introduction himself, and, languidly, he waves a long, pale hand.

'Ziggy Stardust, darling. Ziggy'll do just fine.'

[talktothehandsy]

He counts in his head, tapping out seconds against the back of his left wrist, watching the man mull over the name then sound it out. Absently he dances his fingertips back and forth over his forearm, holding his breath and counting seconds of caught oxygen. He doesn't have the back-up of a Time Lord and can't hold it quite as long, letting it out quietly when Ziggy finishes talking.

He recognized him, of course - had made a small note of it in the back of his head and didn't think about it any further - but he didn't want to think of this person as a celebrity look-alike, or someone who's a false fabrication in his world and real in another one. One day he'll meet Harry Potter and ask him about the cupboard.

At the self-deprication in Ziggy's low laugh, he chuckles in response, watching his own fingertips as they dance along a vein in the back of his hand. "I recognize you enough," he says. "'Course, I've met tons of famous folk, just don't get all excited about it. S'pose I ought to be drooling at your feet, trying to molest you."

He thinks he likes the casual use of pet-names and adjectives the most - darling, lover. Then again, he's always liked the way it gave hopeful people too much of the same, his constant throwing around of 'love' here and there and everywhere stumbling up even Martha.

Ziggy's a delightful name. It has a Z at the start, and he likes Z's, the way they buzz like bumblebees and wasps against the back of his teeth.

"Okay," he says, licking the front of his teeth when he grins. "Ziggy. Tell me about this Infinite thing."

[witfrommytongue]

'Oh, please, resist if you can,' he says in a parody of pleading, drawing the words out like string between his fingers. 'At least with the drooling, yeah? Kind of a turn off.'

The pet names are a quirk of his; a peccadillo, you might say. It's the same way in which he's overfamiliar with complete strangers, largely disregarding any sense of personal space in favour of arms slung 'round shoulders and mouths close to ears. It's a mark of his particular brand of charm that people don't seem to mind it. Or, well, not usually. Not the right kind of people, anyway.

As for 'this Infinite thing'... He plays an invisible keyboard in the air for a moment or two as he mulls words over in his head. 'A half Time Lord's gonna be familiar with the phenomena of black holes, yes? Sing-u-lar-i-ties?'

He smiles, sudden and glittering. 'That's where I'm from. The Singularity.' The word's capitalised, just as Infinite had been, and you can hear it in the way it's pronounced. 'Another dimension, you'd call it. We're not usually of the flesh-and-blood variety; corporeality doesn't come naturally.'

But a saviour's not a saviour unless he's got a body to crucify when the time comes.

i hate lj.

[talktothehandsy]

He nods along and idly spins his chair around in circles while Ziggy goes on, pressing his stomach to the back of the chair.

"So... is the body yours, did you build it from the ground up?" He asks as he spins around, eventually bringing the chair to a stop in front of him again. He's feeling a little dizzy by now, the room dipping down and up and in an out.

The Singularity. It sounds intriguing, anyway, but he's not going to press him for more of the same, pushing off the floor with his feet, the chair rolling backwards and knocking into the arm of the sofa, nearly tilting him out.

"What's your whole deal, anyway? Most alien types have a deal."

[witfrommytongue]

The chair Johnny's on wobbles perilously when he collides with the couch, and Ziggy catches him with a precautionary hand on one arm, chuckling, 'Careful there, Johnny; no need to do yourself any more harm than you already are, yeah?'

His eyes are unfocussed with dizziness, and Ziggy shakes his head, vicariously enjoying the stupid pleasure of spinning around and around until there's no central focus anymore. Things like that are humanity's expertise, and he samples them like fine wines. The question makes him lift a brow, though, and he stretches himself back, watching him down his nose.

'My deal?' So cynical; it's amusing, really. He probably means a spin, a slant, an angle, one of those terms. Expects Ziggy's out to conquer the world. If that's what most alien types do. But Ziggy just smiles beatifically. 'I'm here to save the world, baby. Rock'n'roll messiah.'

[talktothehandsy]

He glances down at the hand on his arm and spins the chair around again, disconnecting his hand from his person, wary of how overheated his skin was. He was like a walking microwave, after all. Or a lightbulb. Maybe a cactus. Nothing wrong with a good cactus.

"It's stupid to be more careful just 'cos you're dying, isn't it? If anything, you should be endeavoring to be as reckless as you possibly can. I mean, if you're dying anyway... No point in having less fun than you were before."

He's never liked staying still, though, and he doesn't enjoy having to sit there while he waits for Ziggy to stop spinning with the rest of the room.

He snorts out a laugh at the man's reply, startling himself.

"Rock'n'roll messiah?" Ignoring the temperature of his skin he takes the other man's hand, tilting it this way and that as he brushes a fingertip along a lifeline. Clucking his tongue he lets him ago just as quickly. "Alright then. What're you saving the world from, love?"