Lucien would eventually arrive in the apartment after a pleasant ride on the sailboat of sleep, and he would be questioning why I've been watching him like a stalker, questioning why he slept with this stranger, questioning if he really should live this widely, and I don't want for him to relinquish any of that spontaneity, so I tug my vision away from him and into the door left wholly ajar from when Lucien volleyed through it at the noise I formed while dodging the hell that is his bathroom floor, and sluggishly I slide my legs across the sheets towards the hardwood panels and the chill that they have hosted since the morning delivered its sensual flavors expressly to them. Endeavoring to produce as little sound as is possible, my toes graze the floor, gradually pooled with the rest of my body, prepared to exit the room and leave Lucien to his rest -- which he severely needs after the toll that last night took on him.

This decision allots me time to explore the remainder of the apartment, as I was either fixed on the confusion of my first impression or being whisked away into activities that I couldn't deny due to Lucien's inconsolable avidity for them, but now that the morning draft has swept through the area and obliterated the residents' whims to remain here, I am alone to map the space without interruptions from the erratic writer whose field of expertise is utterly unknown to me, just as this apartment is, but I'm praying that by the time I've finished charting this house, only one of those will be a secret to me, but if I discover both, then that's a welcomed bonus, too. There's enough manuscripts lying around for that goal to be feasible.

Lucien has made no effort to clean his house, even in the time where I was endeavoring to do something as elementary as brush my fucking teeth stained dirty from Lucien's terrible spaghetti rings, but I suppose that provides me with more items to investigate, though these items probably won't ever move locations, as Lucien is a man who claims that tidying up an area is another example of how humans are artificial in order to impress other humans as if their opinion of something as transparent as the state of an apartment is critical, as if it will motivate Lucien to alter it because he actually gives a single shit about what other people think.

I'm now feeling inundated by the plethora of items strewn about the apartment like the fragmented remains of dirt after a bullet smites the ground in which it sat, a warzone devastated by its own purpose, and I'm not sure how to begin to sort through it all. I am cognizant that Lucien has collected these objects throughout his life and has never bothered to separate them into the trash or to charity or to a protected box for the special ones, but he obviously would refuse the idea of my help with finally doing so, and one day he will find himself locked inside of a room with a pile of clutter restricting any path outside, so even if I'm ruining his pretentious doctrine about leaving things undisturbed, I will clear things out so that he will never ruin himself with a monster of trash knocking at his door with the key in its greasy fingers.

There's so much to do, which is already difficult enough, but I also have to organize his possessions subtly so that he doesn't confront me about why I have wrecked the natural order of things, embarking on a tangent of how every grain of sand is on the beach through the cycle of life and is sometimes carried in the shoes of visitors to other destinations, and I'm not ready for that spiel when it's so early in the morning and I haven't doused myself in bitter coffee and the clarity of thought.

Perhaps arranging the smaller items into piles in hidden places is a productive way to go, so that's what I do, careful to hush my work so that Lucien won't catch me rattling the cycle of life in a place as paltry as his apartment that never affects that cycle because Lucien rarely ventures outside except for work at the library. My goal is swimming along adeptly, and it's like a routine now — locate a curio, locate a pile, and place the curio in that pile. Nothing can stop me in this rhythm, and it's not so arduous anymore, except for when I'm halted by the only one with the power to do so.

"Oh, hey, Allen," Lucien greets, like hospital paddles to the chest, jolting me back to reality. "You're up early." He stares at me for a prolonged moment, then shrugging and pivoting away. "But as they say, early bird catches the existential despair of writing, though by the looks of it, you're merely scouring my apartment for information about this mysterious man named Lucien Carr."

"Well it's not like you gave me anything."

"Fair enough." Lucien wrangles the milk carton from his refrigerator and pushes the door back into place afterwards, gesturing towards me with it. "So what have you found?" His eyes switch back and forth from me to a spot in the corner where a pile is located amidst the densest forest of cobwebs in the entire apartment. He looks anxious about that particular area for some reason unknown to me, but I respect him, so I don't plan on visiting it.

I haven't lingered too long on anything, because Lucien has nothing of note that's congealed into one extravaganza in the living room of his apartment, rather items dispersed around the area with tiny bits of meaning inside of them instead of a grand mass of meaning, and there most exciting item I've seen is an intricate puff of spider webs in the corner, which Lucien didn't even spin himself, which he might not have noticed at all, which may have distracted him while writing if he did notice it. I'm not saying that Lucien's apartment is boring, just that it's so complex that everything cancels each other out and leaves the viewer frustrated because only Lucien understands this place, but locations such as these cannot be deftly explained to others. They're felt deep within, with emotional ties that I do not possess and most likely never will, and sifting through the heaps of objects stored in this apartment may be entertaining, but it is not fruitful in the slightest. However, I am content with the notion that I could possibly understand it one day, once this apartment belongs to me as much as it belongs to Lucien, but that day is far down the road, so I must admit that I have found nothing special beyond a new opinion of him.

"I've found that you hoard lots of items," I allow as an excuse to appease my friend who won't settle for anything less than a halfhearted reply, exclaiming that there is always something that catches a human's eye, even if it is not significant; it just needs to be more prominent than the other objects around it, and though my discovery is not a corporeal phenomenon, Lucien will settle for it.

Lucien's focus is bent towards pouring a glass of milk that he's selected from the cabinet, demeanor too calm for it to be natural. "And because of that, you straightened some of them out, yes?"

Whether he guessed this by my nature or noticed it immediately, I'm not sure, but it's alarming nonetheless, and a panicked swallow crawls languidly down my throat to try and escape, but I'm still caught in the crossfire of my own trials.

When Lucien glances up and spies my nervousness, all he does is laugh. "For Christ's sake, Allen. Don't be so frightened." Bolting the lid of the milk jug on its prior position, he restores the carton to the refrigerator and continues to ridicule me. "If you're scared that I would be upset with you for messing with the 'natural order', then you're wrong, because every force in the world is natural."

I only stand here, shocked by Lucien catching me in the act of ordering his items and by his claim that what I did was somehow natural in his perception, and he observes this, my bewilderment, and elaborates.

"Every event is bound to occur, because that is what both history and the future dictate. If you travel to the past and affect something, then nothing would've changed, because the past carries on with the actions you imposed in there, as that was part of its history. Time is always moving, and it never stops or revises itself for the activities of a member in this constant flow, because those activities are a planned segment in the line, therefore rendering all plots natural and part of the life cycle. That is, if you believe in solely linear time, because fuck Einstein, right?" Lucien tips a waterfall of milk into his throat, some of which tumbles down his shirt, but he ignores it to speak against the liquid. "So really, Allen, you did nothing wrong. This was bound to transpire."

I'm silent, which doesn't really irk Lucien, as he's now pulling off his milky shirt and pounding it against the ground to add another piece of clutter to his apartment while wringing out some of the milk in the process, and without so much as a word, he stalks to the grimy bathroom for a shower.

I toss a brief peek at the contents of Lucien's crowded flat and rearrange only one item to the pile closest to me, somewhat satisfied by my companion's permission to do whatever the hell I please with his possessions, and I'm all of the sudden back to my duty, though this time I'm not so worried about it anymore.

I suppose Lucien can really help people like that, soothe their guilts, and for that I'm extremely grateful, even if it's minor.  

~~~~~

A/N: allen is such a mom omg

sensualism: sensual experiences are the core part of cognition

~Dankota