notgoingtorun | [for eden]

Neal had been settling into the island as well as could be expected. He was a chameleon after all, and if there was anything he excelled at, it was fitting in at just about any situation, so adapting to island life wasn't as hard as he'd expected it. He missed New York very keenly at times, and it wasn't helped by the fact that he'd fully assumed the identity of Victor Moreau, and he could only talk in vagaries about the people he'd left behind.

But conmen didn't get to say goodbye. They just dusted themselves off and started over again, which was exactly what Neal did.

At least the weather was beautiful. It almost made up for the clothes he'd been forced to wear. (After all, one couldn't exactly wear a Devore while lounging in the sand.) He tried to make a t-shirt and shorts as fashionable as possible, but he only had so much to work with.

Neal was stretched out under a palm tree, just at the edge of the beach. He had a book open in his lap, but mostly, he was watching the waves roll in and trying not to think of home.

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"No, stop!" Eden called out, running hard after Mr. Muggles. While he was more Claire's responsibility than hers these days, she still took the purebred out for his walks sometimes — except that, as it turned out, letting him off his leash had the unfortunate side effect of sometimes turning those walks into runs, and she'd left her sandals closer to shore. Running on sand in bare feet was not fun. "Goddammit, you little bastard, get back here —"

She winced visibly as the dog made his way directly for a man sitting under a tree, yapping shrilly as he jumped into and off of the stranger's lap. "You arrogant, little — god, I am so sorry."

Neal was only sort of reading, and all of that stopped the instant that a fluffy little dog wound up in his lap.

At least it wasn't a dinosaur. (He still had a hard time believing that.)

"Hey there, little guy," he said, holding his hand out for the dog to sniff, and then began to scratch the dog between the ears. "It's no problem," he said, turning to look at the woman who'd chased after the dog. "Maybe if he was a Saint Bernard it would be."

True to form, Mr. Muggles was far more interested in the attention of strangers than in actually listening to the woman who had been his caretaker for the better part of four years. "If he were a Saint Bernard and he acted like this," she said wryly, "I might've had to cut him loose years ago. He's a menace to society, that one. No respect for a good book." In spite of her words, though, she smiled, playful. So long as he was a good sport about it, she couldn't be too bothered herself.

"This thing?" Neal tapped the cover of the book with his free hand. "It's Dan Brown, it's not exactly the height of literature." In truth, he was lucky to have gotten that off the shelf -- it mostly wanted to give him books about true crime. The place really did have a sick sense of humor. "It might be better off if killer here had a little fun with it."

"Oh, in that case," Eden laughed, "I retract my apologies." Bending down, she hooked her fingers in the dog's collar, pulling him gently away so she could lift him up, held in one arm while she held her free hand out to the man. Never mind that Mr. Muggles was inclined to fuss (he didn't care if Claire carried him around, but god forbid he play nice for long with anyone else), she figured she ought to at least introduce herself. "I'm Eden."

Neal reached out to shake her hand. "Victor," he said, the name coming to him easily now after a few weeks on the island. "Pleasure to meet you." He hauled himself up off of the sand, somehow managing to make it look cool. He'd had a lot of practice, lounging on beaches. It was what he thought he'd do with the rest of his life, at one point. "And who's your little friend?"

"Oh, this is Mr. Muggles," Eden said, giving the dog a little shake. He snapped at her arm, but at least he was settling down. "He belonged to an old friend of mine — the name was not mine to choose. You're new around here, right?" She was sure he looked familiar, a lot like Lucy's old boyfriend, but he was long gone, so this had to be someone altogether different (well, probably).

Neal could think of worse names than Mr. Muggles, but it might take him a while. Then again, he was used to pets being named after famous people, so he didn't have much room to talk.

"Yeah, I am pretty new. Is it the lack of a tan that gives it away? I've only been here a few weeks, still working on settling in. I'm planning on lounging on the beach for as long as possible."

"Work up a tan, start looking like one of the natives," teased Eden. "Yeah, no, it's just that I'm pretty good with faces, and... yours is definitely new. But then, I've been here for ages, I have kind of a head start on that kind of thing." She didn't always know who people were, but the new ones got easier and easier to pick out.

"I'll work up a tan, but I'm not stooping so low as to some of that acid-washed denim I've been seeing in the clothes box," Neal said with a laugh. "I can only go native so far, and that's crossing the line." He'd been lucky that he'd been able to avoid anything too humiliating, but he knew full well that the day was coming where he'd be forced to wear tie-dye and cut-offs.

"I suppose it's hard to keep people straight with people coming and going all the time? From what I've heard, at least."

Eden nodded, dropping down to sit. She wasn't invited, exactly, but she tended to make herself at home wherever she was, and besides, it felt rude to just loom over Victor while they talked, even if he would undoubtedly tower over her standing. "It can be," she said. "Some people don't stay all that long, others stay years. It's when people look alike that things really start to get confusing. Friend of mine dated a guy who looked a lot like you once, actually."

He would be more shocked by it if he hadn't already been told about so many absurd things that happen here on the island. "I've heard about that," Neal said. "People with the same faces, people who should only exist in books or movies." He leaned back, elbows digging into the soft sand. "This guy who looks like me -- is he still here?"

"Oh, Bruce, no," Eden answered, shaking her head. Clipping the leash onto Mr. Muggles' collar, she let him out of her lap, grip tight on the end so he couldn't get far. He was a little terror, but he was important to Claire. "No, he's long gone. Vanished a... god, a couple years back now, I think. I used to have a doppelgänger, too. It's pretty weird."

"I can imagine. It's enough to want to put people in nametags, just to keep them straight." Neal chuckled quietly. "I can only guess how weird it would have been if that guy would have shown up to meet me when I got here. I would have been even more convinced that I'd just gone crazy."

[for eden]

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