ximilialog | [MINGLE] OPEN TO ALL | Movies, Music, and Mario Kart (Movie Night!)

Entry tags:

[MINGLE] OPEN TO ALL | Movies, Music, and Mario Kart (Movie Night!)

CHARACTERS: EVERYONE! Post yourselves some top levels!
LOCATION: The Mess Hall
DATE: a few days after the mission
CONTENT: We all could use some TLC, right?
WARNINGS: Nothing serious! People can warn on their threads as they go.

Welcome to our usual little movie night! It's been a crazy last... week and a half? Something like that. Once everyone has settled in and things aren't quite so exhausting to face, Newton proceeds to collect new goodies for yet another sleep-over in the mess hall. For anyone new, they'll find the place is suddenly full of pillows, of sheets and things spread out to do around the tables. Tonight's a triple feature, the final movie of the night being one that definitely isn't good to watch if you value sleep, orbers.

But first, food!

And tonight's theme, carefully selected with love, is Mediterranean foods. Baklava is the obvious one, but there are plenty of others to choose from. Armenian Losh Kebabs! Egyptian Lentils with Rice! Lebanese Hummus! So, so much olive oil! And the reason behind all of this very themed, far more uniformed food might have something to do with the sign that Newton hung behind the food station:

Ah, yes. It seems Andy has been given all rights to the choices on the table. Or at the very least, Newt tried his damned best to cater to her preferences for apparently saving his life at some point. It's the least he can do, right?

(Also, before you ask: yes, there is booze, and there always will be.)

Onto the cinema!

The first movie is an easy one — Back to the Future! A fun little affair, nothing too serious, and always a classic. But would you be surprised to find the next movie staring one of our very own? Rita Farr shines in Spartacus 452, some silly little late 70's, early 80's space movie she had partaken it, it seems... Either way, she looks gorgeous, huh? Total babe alert. And the last movie? That's saved for the very end of the night, with a warning that it's not for the faint-hearted. A scary movie, straight out of Japan: The Grudge. Who doesn't love a ghost story? Just don't go blaming anyone if you have a hard time sleeping tonight! Or if you hear things that you worry might be some ghoulish apparition; the Ximilia isn't haunted, c'mon.

Boo! Ha, it's just a little cleaning roomba. Gotcha.

But before the scary movie, more things of note:

The tea table, joined by a shorter, traditionally set-up tea table, is chockful of different types of teas. It had seemed to be a pretty decent hit the first time, so why not bring it back? Only this time, Sabriel has volunteered her magical tea pot that she'd purchased many missions ago; with this particular pot, you may brew the most perfect batch of whatever tea your heart desires. Relax, enjoy yourself...! Especially before —

Ah, yes. Mario Kart. The best way to ruin friendships. There's an old, very used Wii sitting beside a television. Mario Kart is already there, ready to go, press button to start and all of that jazz. Try not to cry at any sight of Toad on the select screen; we're all a bit tender about Hivawei still, aren't we? If Mario Kart isn't your style, the Wii does apparently have a complimentary disc for Wii Sports. Please, don't break the television with the remote. Pretty, pretty please...

But that's not all! A very old, scratched up, but functional Sega Genesis sits beside the Wii. Maybe there are a few games in the pile you might be interested in? Or you could be totally predictable and uncool and just go straight for Sonic. We know everyone does.

... This is gonna be pretty weird for you before-television-types, won't it?

Finally, a little light-hearted group activity. Newton is quick to approach a decorated corner of the mess hall where a small 'stage' has been built, set up with a guitar and a microphone from the Ximusic Room. It's open to all for their karaoke or music-playing needs, but not before Newton fulfills his next very important task:

"This one's a belated birthday present to a special member of our team!"

He proceeds to play a ditty, one that launches right into:

Watch on YouTube

Just for you, Yelena. Happy Birthday, ma'am.

(And yes, the birthday calendar is as available as ever. Add more birthdays to it!)

There is a table down from the karaoke where a polaroid camera sits — and a paper that says 'PHOTO STATION'. It's clear what the purpose is if you look at the wall, which is already collecting some polaroids on it: it's a place for people to take snapshots together with the old camera so that they, too, can have a little keepsake. After all, so many of them have come and gone... it'd be good to have something to remember each other by, in case someone left. Why not take a photo together? Enjoy the moment.

Congrats on making it another month, everyone.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Like Alina, Wei Wuxian isn't much for movie night. It's not that he has anything against it, it's just that during the period of time when he'd been avoiding Newt, he and Gwen had made their own tradition of snuggling up to watch things on her phone together. But Gwen is gone now and he can't bear the thought of being alone. (He could go to Itachi's room of course, but he's trying to give the man a break from his constant presence these last few days.)

So he's not too far from Alina when she utters the comment, and it's instinctive the way he snorts in agreement, his lips curving up into an almost smirk.]

It's silly, isn't it? Everyone losing their minds over one single hungry ghost! [It takes him a moment to even realize it's Alina he's responding to, and he tenses for just a second when he realizes but then relaxes quickly. He doesn't dislike Alina, it's just their last encounter hadn't exactly been his best.]

[ an unplaceable sense of deja vu rockets through her. she hadn't forgotten wei wuxian among the ship's crew — gwen's friend, mal's friend — but what she could remember had been drowned out by a pulse of defensive anger. some deep well of resentment she hadn't been inclined to revisit.

sitting across from him, none of the same comes rushing back in, once she places his voice. awkward tension, and awkward tension alone, rests on the cusp of her shoulders. which might be worse, in truth; there's an edge of discomfort that can't be helped, knowing how closely he had tread to the truth, lecturing her on lessons she had already been unfortunate to learn firsthand.

in her lap, her fingers curl around a satin pillow, fiddling with its tasseled edges. some idle habit of seeking out comfort in what feels like precarious territory she isn't wholly certain how to navigate. ( he's mal's friend, she reminds herself. she'd do well not to scare him off for a second time, knowing what mal has lost. ) ]

Half of them have met real ghosts now, [ she mumbles, wry. their first mission. forsythe heights. conversing with spirits is hard to reconcile for her head, even now, but the depiction of them on-screen ... it feels almost insultingly, laughably, wrong. her mouth twitches, vaguely. ] I can't recall any spirits ever wanting to eat us.

We probably would have given them a bad case of indigestion, anyway.

Mmmhmm. [He says with a perfectly straight face.] I'm too spicy.

[And there's the smile and the wink. Thankfully, despite the somewhat awkward tension between them, Wei Wuxian is good at breaking through that sort of thing and shaking it off. It's rare he feels awkward about anything for any matter of time. Anyway, it's nicer to sit and joke with Alina than to allow his mind to dwell on his aching heart.]

Although, [he offers casually, continuing the conversation] there are some ghosts that like eating people. I've met ghosts like that. [He gestures at the screen.] They only really get that bad if they've been left alone for too long though. [He lets out a tsking sound and shakes his head.]

Clearly the cultivators in that world must be terribly lazy!

[ wei wuxian's forced confidence isn't subtle, but then — she supposes it wasn't intended to be, designed only to shatter through a barrier of tension between them. it's no wonder he and mal are friends for the habits they share, hiding bumps and bruises behind amiable smiles, but before she can decide how she feels about that comparison —

he has to go and say that. some of the amusement drains from her face in a slow, owl-like blink. a furrow dips between her eyebrows, cinching them together in stark, startled confusion — just on the verge of incredulous. ]

— Did you say you've met ghosts who have tried to eat you?

[ unbidden, gyeongje flashes in her mind, souls left to stew and called monsters for it. none of them, as far as she knows, had been interested in consuming then — though she would have hardly put it past the lord to represent them as inhuman. but more importantly than all of that: ]

How is that possible? Surely they're not that ... [ her eyes dart to the screen, trailing off, before finishing, ] Corporeal.

Of course! [He answers, as if this is a totally normal thing to say.] Hungry corpses mostly, but some other kinds too. They're usually really easy to set to rest though, they're pretty low level. Not all ghosts are corporeal though.

And most ghosts don't want to really hurt people. Or well, most of them don't start that way. [He nods at the terrifying ghost woman on the screen currently murdering a woman.]

They're just people who weren't buried properly or who died violently. The more violent the death, the stronger the resentment, the stronger the ghost.

[A pause and then he laughs, rubbing at the back of his neck.] I forget it doesn't work this way in some worlds. I take it your ghosts aren't like this?

[ ... if she's intended to draw reassurance from this, she can't say with any confidence that wei wuxian has succeeded. her eyes trail from his chin to the indicated movie on-screen, tipping her head to view it through a lens of context. if nothing else, his story has reduced it from bizarrely comedic to tragic. as though some parts of the world find violent deaths and the unfinished business of the dead to be worthy entertainment.

her mouth tastes like ash, on her next swallow. ]

Ghosts aren't real.

[ it carries the same incredulous notes of a child insisting sankt nikolai is just a figment of stories, not some generous man coming to fill their house with a feast, no matter how their peers protest. belated, she realizes the tone she's taken is absurd; with all that she's seen, with sabriel's undeniable dealings with the afterlife ... the phrasing is all wrong.

she shakes her head, tries again: ] In Ravka, I mean. If they exist, I've never had cause to see one.

[ thoughtful, she blows away the steam pouring off of her tea, peering into the herbal blend. ]

We have legends, of course, like any other culture. Many of them are as you've said — vodianoi are male spirits that only kill when they've been insulted. Rusalka were women wronged by the men in their lives and seek to drown them as revenge.

[ not that alina could particularly blame rusalka for their need to right that wrong, if they proved to be real, for how closely their stories strike an angry chord within her. a fact she, wisely, does not share aloud. ]

Mmm, we've our own version of that as well. I'm sure any culture must have them. The vengeful spirits of women wronged by men. [What goes unspoken but implied, that in every culture there will always be too many women who've been wronged by men. In the height of his anger and descent into demonic cultivation, he'd had an army of ghosts and demons at his beck and call, but the ones he trusted the most—the ones who served at his right hand as the Yiling Patriarch were all women whose lives had been shattered by men. They were his strongest and fiercest soldiers.]

They don't drown men though. [They were usually more gruesome than that.] Water ghosts are something else entirely and those are the ones that like to drown.

[He pauses then, growing a little more contemplative.] Cultivators always try liberation first. Free the spirit from whatever resentment binds them to the living world so that they're free to move on.

I think ghosts like that deserve it most. Someone who suffered so much in one life shouldn't be bound to that suffering.

[ try. alina hones in on the word, sinks claws into it. what freedom is there, for women wronged by the hands of powerful men? she can only picture genya's poison circulating through the king's veins, the promise of a tormented death looming over his sickbed. perhaps the only way to lay resentment to rest, sometimes, is to see the cause of your pain buried in the ground.

but even that feels like a lie. like living under some false pretenses that the ghosts of the past can't return to haunt you. can't resurrect, even after your tormentor is long gone. free to move on, wei wuxian says; alina's brain struggles to comprehend how such a thing could ever be possible. ]

It sounds more simple than it must be, in practice. Some suffering is too great to be eased.

[ and, sometimes, it has echoes. ripples through the future. she steers her gaze away, fixated on the screen without truly seeing the flashes of gore unraveling. ]

I doubt many vengeful spirits are so willing to move forward while their tormentors get to live on.

[ living though she may be, her own bitterness feels a testament to that — that acidic feeling that curdles her stomach every time kirigan dares to walk these same halls, feigning innocence. unbothered and weightless, as though his cruelty hasn't cost him a single night of peaceful sleep.

subconsciously, her fingers tighten in the blanket nestled over her lap. ]

[It's interesting to see the assumptions she's made, and Wei Wuxian pauses before he considers correcting them. It isn't the first time he's sensed something powerfully angry in Alina, and he isn't sure if correcting her would help or hurt. In the end though, he speaks.]

I said it involved freeing the spirit from the resentment that binds them. [He offers gently.] I didn't say how.

Sometimes, [he offers casually] leading them to whoever wronged them and leaving them in a room together will suffice. [It isn't how all cultivators do things, certainly it was veering dangerously close to the "wicked path," but it is, on occasion, how he had done things. Generally, it depended on the level of the crime. (But he'd set Wen Ning on his murderers without a second thought and without regret. As far as he's concerned, sometimes that's just what justice looks like.)]

But many of the dead lose all sense. The resentment festers and overwhelms them, and then they becomes like this. [He gestures towards the movie.] A child and woman wronged who did nothing to deserve their fates, but whose resentment has turned them into creatures that maim and kill indiscriminately.

It's anything but simple, but would you leave ghosts like that to harm the innocent?

[ she could laugh, if there were any humor to be found in it. isn't that what the volcra are, to some extent — just brutal things warped into something mindless, by the man who wronged them? isn't what what aleksander is, by some definition? a resentful shell of whoever he had been, once, slaughtering innocents on his path to power. it makes her failure sting all the worse for it, a reminder that slides between her ribcage like a well-placed knife.

even locked in a room together, she doubts she'd have any hope of enacting justice in her current state of power. ]

Of course not. But those aren't traits unique to spirits, either.

[ it chimes with the faintest note of offense that he'd have the gall to ask. her lips roll together, having the sudden self-awareness to unclench her hands, flex her fingers, in some attempt to look not quite so affected. ]

And once they've lost all sense, [ she pauses, eyes jerking back to wei wuxian. ] What comes after, if liberating them fails?

Edited 2023-04-24 02:01 (UTC)

Hmm. [He acknowledges in agreement. They certainly aren't restricted to the dead, but the dead are who they're talking about, and the dead lose themselves in ways the living cannot. But to explain that would require a thorough explanation of how resentful energy works, and he doesn't find himself in the mood to get into that.]

In theory, liberation first. If liberation fails, then suppression. [He frowns at that, but doesn't pause to explain his obvious annoyance just yet.] If both fail, then elimination.

But suppression is a stopgap that often allows the problem to fester and is sometimes done to leave the problem for someone else. And elimination is exactly what it sounds like. Elimination destroys the soul. [No re-entering the cycle, no second chances, just oblivion.

He lets out a soft sigh, a weary smile rising to his lips.] It isn't always so easy, being a cultivator.

[ instantly, she regrets the line of question. it's what she had suspected, of course — what could be a more natural next step, when all other options have been exhausted? when there's no saving a soul that's festered like an infected wound?

the knowledge still rests oddly on her bones. that single syllable — elimination — thuds through her skull with the persistence of a heartbeat. alina clears her throat, as though it might allow some of her inexplicable discomfort to vanish. ]

Important work can never be easy.

[ saints, she loathes how much of an empty platitude that sounds like, even if there's no mistaking the defeatist note to it. resigned, in her own way. ]

I think ... [ she halts, an awkward pause. starts again, more tentative. ] Many of us wish we could be anything other than what we are, and yet — we wouldn't choose to be anything less, if being what we are means someone else gets to be at rest.

[ the corners of her mouth strain around a half-hearted smile. ]

I don't know if that makes the work easier or not, but it has to make it worth it.

[The irony is lost on Alina. How could it not be when she only knows a few pieces of his story?

Many of us wish we could be anything other than what we are, and yet — we wouldn't choose to be anything less, if being what we are means someone else gets to be at rest.

He doesn't flinch. He's too good at lying about himself to flinch.

He still tells the people of the Ximilia that he's a cultivator. Only those from his own world have ever known the full truth. (And now, Itachi and to some extent Ziggy.) He tells them he's a cultivator and were he a cultivator, Alina would be right about how he feels about cultivation. If he still had the touch of spiritual energy running through his veins. Despite how difficult it could be at times, despite the danger, he'd loved it. He'd never wanted to be anything else back then.

But then Alina is right even now, if perhaps not about cultivation. we wouldn't choose to be anything less, if being what we are means someone else gets to be at rest. Because for all that he misses cultivation, for all that his heart aches for those days, he had made a choice for the sake of someone else. And as Alina says, he would never choose something else. (If he had a thousand chances to make the same choice, a thousand lives lived, he would always rip that burning bright power from his own chest and place it inside of his brother's.)

He's quiet for a moment, his eyes dropped to the floor and a wry smile curling at the edges of his mouth.]

Maybe it being worth it just makes it easier to bear the work.

[ no, alina thinks. nothing makes it easier.

not the weight she holds just beneath her clavicle, with sharp awareness of the collar it had once worn. not the weight upon her shoulders that threatens to crush her into dust (and would, if fate were more merciful to allow her an ordinary life, a mortal life). not the weight that concaves her chest every morning she wakes from a fresh nightmare, her failures playing out behind her eyelids in crystal-clear clarity.

no, none of it is easy, even if the price it demands is worth the purchase made with their blood and grief and fatigue. what wei wuxian suggests is just the lie they peddle to themselves when it feels easier to submit. one she's come to know like an old friend, lately.

but she won't dash that smidgen of hope. instead, she smiles, a strained thing that pulls the muscles in her mouth taut. ]

Maybe you're onto something.

[ it tastes like a lie in her mouth, swallowing down dirt and ash. ]

I'll let you know how true that is, once I've figured it out.

[If he knew what she was thinking, he would laugh perhaps. Or maybe he would only shrug. His sacrifice was never about hope. He gave it knowing exactly what he was giving and exactly what it would cost him. (It was about what was right, and it was about protecting his brother. He'd have given up his soul for his siblings' happiness if he could have.)

But then he doesn't share any of Alina's bitterness about the sacrifices he's made. All of the bitterness in him is for the sect's failure to protect the innocent. The wrongs done to him, well...there's no point in feeling angry about those anymore.

He returns the smile with a kind one of his own.]

My situation is less complicated than most, I think. It's easier to be at peace when you've already met your end. [His smile softens. Despite the admittance, there's nothing in him to suggest the same sort of internal turmoil she feels over her situation.[ It was worth it for me, Miss Alina.

[ when you've met your end.

she wonders, distantly, if it isn't sick to envy him for that. it's the finality of peace she hasn't been afforded — not yet, perhaps maybe never. something that seems simpler, most days, than continuing to fight. than wearing herself down to the bones, wondering if there will be anything left of her once she's done — if not anything left of her that feels as though it singularly belongs to her, and her alone.

(maybe, alina thinks, that's the real disease within her. kirigan had once made it so much easier when she wasn't fighting him at every turn. when she merely had to follow, rather than lead.)

a breath shudders out of her lungs, soft. if his casual method of imparting that knowledge shocks her, the creases in her expression fail to show it. he's not the first among the dead she's encountered, here — but he's come to terms with it in ways clara, so eager to live onward, hadn't. it hadn't been easier for her to shoulder, but ... she supposes, perhaps, that wei wuxian had lost the same thrill for living that had been infectious in clara oswald.

she casts her eyes toward him, sidelong. any number of questions manifest on her tongue — how he could be so content with it, why it had been worth the sacrifice. her concern diverts itself elsewhere, for a moment, no longer thinking of her own need to hear his answers — but someone else's feelings on that matter. ]

Does Mal know?

[ that his friend is dead, that is. she can't imagine it would ever be digestible for him, when dubrov and mikhail's ghosts still haunt him with guilt. ]

[He nods and his eyes warm at Alina's compassion for Mal. Mal has known since just after E-23B, when he'd revealed to Wei Wuxian his death at Aleksander's orders. It had only made sense to share with his friend about his own demise. He hadn't told Mal how he died though. There's only one living soul aboard the Ximilia who knows that as he's sure even Huaisang never found that out. He's sure the clans made a tale of his defeat at their hands, and it would dampen their glory if people knew that in the end it was Wei Wuxian's choice alone.]

He's known for some time, yeah. [He shakes his head, still smiling.] I don't make a secret of it, but I try not to make it a burden on others.

[ oh.

he hadn't told her. alina doesn't fault him for tucking it away, out of her sight; she has no right to know of wei wuxian's burdens, but — she startles, internally, to realize the number of secrets that have wedged their way between them. by her hand. by his. sometimes, she's struck by the inexplicable notion that they might be strangers to one another, if they stopped wearing the costume of children they haven't been since ...

her eyes dart to her hands with an absent nod, thumb skimming over an old ridge of scar tissue puckering one palm. it can't feel like anything other than a loss for mal to discover the friend he's made here is long dead, resurrected to right a regret. not that he would tell her as much, apparently.

after a heartbeat of silence passes between them, she dares to ask, curiously quiet: ]

Then why share it with me?

[ he hardly knows her. never mind that he had been the one, after all, to warn her of what she might divulge. her brows pinch together — thoughtful, puzzled. maybe it's just easier to share your truths with someone whose impression of you had begun as poor, in the end, without a deeper meaning attached to his admission. ]

[He studies her for a moment, surprise in his expression, and then he only shrugs and shakes his head.]

I mean it when I said it's not really a secret. [He pauses then, pondering the thought.] I suppose now there are some here who I'd like to...to tell on my own time. [It's possible Finn wouldn't take it too hard, but...he doesn't want to risk it.]

But most of my friends here already know. I hope it isn't a burden on you, Miss Alina. [They aren't close and that always makes it easier. Wei Wuxian is perfectly at ease sharing about his fate, but it always makes it harder when the person he's sharing it with cares enough about him to mourn. It's the only reason he keeps it quiet sometimes.]

[ simple as that? though it bounces around her skull, she doesn't let it eject itself from her mouth. it isn't her place. isn't her secret to keep, nor to share. she clasps her hands around one knee as she tugs it toward her chest, as though that might bind her from any commentary on the matter. ]

I won't tell anyone.

[ that seems more imperative than any other worry he might harbor. the privacy of it all — it's been integral to her, this past year, aboard a station that seems to know of everyone's secrets. who have had little hesitation to come knocking at the vault of her own secrets, as though it hasn't been physically painful to pry it open for herself — for mal, for clara, for shang-chi — let alone strangers.

wei wuxian, it seems, has come to terms with that ache in ways alina hasn't. in ways she can't imagine ever being okay. and so she smiles, reassuringly as she can. ]

I wouldn't worry yourself over it, not with me. I've gotten better at carrying burdens lately.

[ other people's, especially; that reply carries the only slightest hint of self-deprecation in its undercurrent, to her credit. ]

[It isn't the answer he's hoping for and the sudden sting of guilt makes his heart ache just a little.]

Anyone who comes aboard the Ximilia is proficient in the art of carrying burdens I think. It comes along with regret. [He offers her a soft smile.] All the same, I'm sorry if I've added to yours.

If it helps, I really am at peace with it. And in the meantime, I'm grateful for the borrowed time I've had here and all of the people I've met. [His eyes take on an almost childlike wonder then and he gestures to their surroundings.] Where I'm from, we don't even have motorized vehicles yet. Imagine getting to be here, living amongst the stars.

Well. [ a beat. she's not denying its beauty, but: ] I don't like heights.

[ she lets it carry a certain sense of momentum with it, a gravity to it — for nothing other than the purpose of injecting levity. lightening the heavy shroud of tension that sits on her shoulders. scrambling to make herself appear less awkwardly socialized than she has, thus far.

( that she must appear like, if he feels so compelled to keep apologizing. ) ]

You don't have to keep apologizing. I've made friends with the dead.

[ it had hurt worse, then. it still hurts worse, now, envisioning where clara might be — if she ever escaped the sword dangling above her head, the dread of an inevitable death, or if ... alina swallows, shunts the mournful thought away. ]

There's no burden you could add that I haven't already felt the weight of.

[The words taken as they are might pass for naivete or arrogance—he can't imagine someone being so sure they've experienced every type of pain to know every kind of burden—but after a moment's pause, he sets aside the mild exhaustion they stir and allows that even if the words are clumsy, he understands her meaning. Alina is not someone who doesn't carry burdens of her own.

It doesn't help the weight in his chest that only seems to grow heavier, but that's not Alina's fault. He hadn't wished for his disclosure to add to her burdens at all, and it has. Whether she can handle the weight is irrelevant. With a soft near imperceptible sigh at himself, he resolves to mind himself better next time.]

Hmm, it's a dreary topic though, isn't it? [There's a playful lilt to his words now and he offers her a smile.]

Now tell me, even if you don't like heights, there must be something new and exciting that you've experienced on our missions.

[ she doesn't fashion herself as much a fool as she had once been, these days. if kirigan has given her any gift, it's the new sharpness to her perception. and so, it doesn't miss her notice that it seems like wei wuxian is minding her the way an adult minds a child that's scraped their knee — offering a distraction, as though it might detract from the severity of what's been said. something that strikes her as a pretense, however charitable like. a mask that must be worn.

it's her own extension of kindness that she doesn't call him on it. they all have their means of coping; perhaps this is simply his, even if she feels mildly insulted that he must think she can't see through that transparency. ]

You're asking the wrong woman. I'm not an exciting person.

[ that's her own pretense at work. instinctually underselling herself. minimalizing it, so she won't draw greater notice and unwelcome scrutiny. not that she doesn't whole-heartedly believe it's the truth, anyway; what's new and exciting for her is rarely the same for others, and always overshadowed by her special penchant for drawing misfortune regardless.

she tips her head, rolls her lips together. thoughtful, even if she's hesitant to reach for an answer that's more than surface-deep. ]

Chocolate, [ she says, decisively, and then grants a sheepish smile. a roll of her shoulders matches it. ] You'll find I'm easily pleased, too.

[His smile softens and he remembers too the first time he'd tried the sweet concoction. Gwen had been sure to have him try what she'd called the "pure" kind, something sweetened but otherwise unaltered from its original form.]

I'd never seen a shower before. [He admits, matching that sheepish smile.]

Sometimes exciting is subjective, don't you think? I know showers are a simple concept, don't misunderstand, and truth be told I still prefer baths. [He laughs.] But the engineering of it was new, and the use of faucets to direct it all so neatly...it was exciting for me. [He grins at the memory.]

[MINGLE] OPEN TO ALL | Movies, Music, and Mario Kart (Movie Night!)

I

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw for allusions to suicidal ideation just incase

continued cw for references to suicide

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)