deercountry | i've looked at clouds from both sides now (𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐥)

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i've looked at clouds from both sides now (𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐥)

^{Who: Peter Graham + you! Prompts will be placed here.
What: Canon update business, potential event things, tba.
When: Through the month of November.
Where: Various places in Trench / tba.

Content Warnings: This character comes with demonic possession by default. There's a gif including nudity (non-sexual, just a couple of people shown naked from behind) in one of the posts.}^{Additional warnings will be placed in individual spaces.}

^{( On Peter's birthday and Blessed Month, he will go through a canon update that's given him updated memories. For weeks 1 - 3 he will mentally be MIA, and Paimon/Charlie may be interacted with. On week 4, Peter will return. Closed starters will be placed under the appropriate posts. Please hit me up @ plot post / plurk / large bat#2354 / pm if you're interested in a starter / if you'd like to plot for the month! )}

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Only existing as a text message and a chance encounter for now, Charlie exhibits many trademarks of nervousness. Midoriya's own tells are a little different, ranging from wide-eyed staring to rambling with poor volume control to outright shaking, but he's seen them in others. This Charlie reminds him of Eri, a little girl he helped rescue and was fostered at his school because she needed Pro Hero supervision. She was timid and quiet.

"It's true you shouldn't be out too late..."

This would be true of most people, given that it's rare to have night vision and Beasts increase at nightfall.

"Is there a way to contact your mom? I can at least hang out with you for a little while. We still need to find your shoes, or get you new ones. It's winter. Would you like to do that?"

He should be firmer about preventing Peter's toes from freezing off, but he's very aware that he needs to give Charlie as much agency as possible. Something is wrong keeps buzzing in the back of his mind.

Shoes.... Charlie slowly looks down, an odd motion where only her eyes are moving, not her head. It keeps her body looking painfully stiff, but she's not shutting down on him; no, she's listening. Focused. She doesn't want the boy to leave her, she'll do whatever he says.

But she's just now realising that she isn't wearing shoes. Or maybe the awareness was there but simply on the cusp of her mind, unable to be focused on until now. There's a certain detachment from herself and it keeps her strange. This "spirit" is especially lost.

"Yes." She nods once, still stiffly. She'd like that. To get shoes, and to— stay with him. And almost as if to solidify that, Charlie nudges shyly closer to the boy, practically brushing his body with her own.

"I don't think she'll answer. She's... busy." Working on her project for her job. And dad's at work until much later on; it's Peter who takes care of her in the afternoons.

Returning to the first matter of hand suddenly, pace off-beat, the more realisation creeps in, and scares her a little—

"My feet are cold."

Midoriya is an introvert, but friendliness is in his nature even if it's not the outgoing sort. He leans ever so slightly away to preserve his personal space and looks up (and up, Peter is half a foot taller). Then he foregoes his usual comfort zone and places a gentle gloved hand on Charlie and Peter's shoulder. All Might the greatest Hero would surely give someone a comforting shoulder touch (more like a shoulder clap, but Midoriya isn't that bombastic). Japanese parents often work long hours, so it's not so strange to Midoriya that afternoon hours are Peter-supervised.

"I'd let you borrow mine, but I don't think they'd fit. I don't want your feet to get hurt if this takes too long... How about we just get you some shoes? Let's see if there's a stand that sells them."

If she has any question on where that is, Midoriya gently ushers her in the correct direction with that hand on her shoulder. The Boardwalk is usually bustling with local foot traffic, but due to the cold weather, it's been commandeered into warming tents to prevent hypothermia in new Sleepers emerging from the ice downshore. Midoriya begins trying to flag down a Waker carrying cloaks and other wool-lined clothing. These shoes might be free if they're convinced Charlie is a new Sleeper.

Charlie, also an introvert, isn't one to draw too close to people, usually — there's a distance, something that feels natural. Comfortable. It goes beyond simple shyness, a necessity to keep an arm's width away, maybe more. She's always preferred her own space, tucked carefully away from people.

Maybe there's a part of her that was never supposed to be so close to humans. A part that flinches back; she can't understand why.

But there's still something that longs to linger close to familiarity, when she needs it, and here in this strange place, breathing strange cold air, not knowing or understanding why home seems so... far away... she stays close to him. The nice boy with the curly green hair. She lets him lead her, following his direction obediently, and the nearer they get to the Boardwalk and the few strangers selling their things, the more she begins to nudge to stand behind Midoriya, at least just a little. Shyly, and enough that she's able to be slightly behind him. The strangers look weird and have weird things and she doesn't make eye contact.

But there's something she needs to tell him, if he's going to get her shoes. It's important, or at least it's always been within her household. She whispers it to his ear, a secret between her and Midoriya.

"My Grandma likes me to have boy shoes." Charlie doesn't know that she looks like a boy in this very moment, doesn't understand that concept. Only that she assumes he'll think she wants girl shoes, and... she can't. Grandma would get upset if she wore something like that home.

Midoriya allows Charlie to have as much or as little space as she wants, which results in almost bumping into her at times.

As far as Midoriya is aware, Peter presents as a boy. Charlie is unknown, so anything she says is a clue about who she is and what her life was like. Her relative prefers that she wear shoes for a certain gender, but Midoriya is more interested in Charlie's thoughts. He puts on his calmest, gentlest smile, the one he uses to comfort his own mother (which is a feat). He's here to make sure feet don't freeze off, not tell someone what shoes they should wear, so he just informs her,

"No one cares that much about boy or girl shoes in this city. You can wear whatever you want and no one will make fun of you. Which do you like best--or do you want shoes that are neither?"

It's not strictly survival-related, but it does fall under a Hero's duty to reassure someone he's helping. It's the same reason he carries cute band-aids with All Might's face on them for kids.

Her hands fidget in front of her chest again, anxious. But then Midoriya's sending a smile her way, and it's nice and soft. It's not the way people usually smile back home. Dad's smiles are thin and faint, more of the ghost of a thing. Mom's are... strained, tight. Peter doesn't smile.

Only Grandma smiles at her with something that feels soft, and gentle, and loving. Like Charlie's a very important treasure.

Midoriya's softness, kindness, is like a warm hand to hold onto, and it makes the words feel real and believable in a way that maybe others wouldn't be able to make them seem. People here... don't care?

It's a rare time that Charlie's been allowed to choose what she wants, when it comes to things like clothing. Grandma picks new things sometimes, or Charlie inherits Peter's old clothes. She's still refusing to look up at any of the shop vendors themselves, only staring at Midoriya.

"They have ones that're neither?" Pinpointing curiosity in her monotone way of speaking may be difficult, but there's a hint of it there to the way she lingers on the concept, hesitates at it. After another long pause, mumbled again, head dipping down— "Maybe.... maybe those. I might like those."

All Might told him to smile even when he was scared. Midoriya has had mixed results from this. It's not as flashy as his mentor's, but when he does genuinely feel the smile in his heart, it's sweet and warm. Like his mother's smile when she looks at him and sees how much he's grown as a person.

"No problem." And now he's speaking to the Waker, "Excuse me, do you have gender-neutral shoes? Yeah--just shoes. For walking around, yeah. Measure? Oh sure."

He takes the offered string and bends to pull it flat on the ground next to Charlie's feet. He hands the folded piece of string back and waits while the Waker hurries to their tent of supplies. He places a hand on Charlie's arm. It's not so much that he's afraid she'll run away, but that he wants to remind her that they're connected and she's got someone looking out for her.

"Looks like they found something--Look, they're coming back. Try them on..." he says solicitously. It's hard to read expressions in her voice, but the plain fact of the things she says and the way she keeps her eyes on him tell him what's needed and what's important to her in the moment.

The thing that is only really the echo of a thing looks downwards to watch, and she can't understand, in the moment, that the bare foot clearly isn't hers. Mercifully, "Charlie" still perceives herself as herself — whatever that means. There's that lingering odd awareness that things aren't right somehow, but it remains dreamlike. And once again, she is no stranger to that feeling.

So she watches, inquisitive by the method of measuring; it's different and her attention is tugged by the bead and string, the movement and sound of it. The hand on her arm is met very calm, unmoving. No tensing beneath the boy's touch. He has her.

She reaches for the shoes as the person returns, taking all of her own time to slide one on and then the other, staring down at them for a few long, silent moments. They don't look like the shoes that girls at school wear, or the boy shoes that she's used to wearing. There are no specific colours or patterns, no delicate or chunky parts. They're neither. (Maybe she could decorate them herself?)

She's never seen something like this before, and her eyes are wide and then she's moving to shuffle around a little bit, testing them out. Nor far, she stays close enough that her fingers can ensnare gently in the material of Midoriya's sleeve, holding onto him.

"These are good. I like them." But there's a belated thought, a little worried. "I don't have any money, though."

The way Charlie clings to his sleeve reminds him of little Eri, who was learning how to show affection without fear. Charlie seems to be going with the flow well enough. It's rather like a dream, in which being in a body not usually one's own is odd but ultimately not that unsettling. Midoriya has had a dream more than once where half his body was nothing but thick formless smoke that could not interact with the world in any way. He was not scared, only determined to figure out a way to speak, but it was very disorienting.

Midoriya is already profusely thanking the departing Waker.

"It's okay. That person is a Waker. When people arrive and are all confused, it's their job to make sure they're safe and have clothes--for free. We don't want people freezing before they find a place to stay. C'mon," he says, moving slowly enough that Charlie can still hold onto his sleeve. "We have to get you home. Do you remember where that is?"

Waker is a strange word for a job. She's never heard of anyone called a Waker, before. Charlie chews over it silently for a few moments, but keeps the thought to herself — ultimately, that doesn't matter. Midoriya knows what to do, how to handle it, and she'll follow him.

She does, now, fingers still grasped against the boy's sleeve, still moving a little oddly. But the shoes are nice, comfortable, and already she's forming more ideas for how to decorate them, what might be workable with her hot glue gun. She has the pieces of her magpie's collection memorised; there's a place for everything, organised chaos. Her mind zeroes in on the focus of which items she might like to attach to the shoes (they will be neither Boy Shoes nor Girl Shoes, just Charlie Shoes).

The charm from Mom's old bracelet, one of Dad's cufflinks, orange ribbon from a birthday party three years ago, a selection out of her stash of beads, all saved in her things. Maybe she'll even use her markers to colour the cloth of the shoes different ways, too. That could be nice. She's never gotten to do that, before.

She's staring down at the tops of the shoes as she walks, not looking forwards, fully trusting Midoriya to guide her, when the question comes. Home. Do you remember where that is?

Charlie gently mumbles the response after only a short pause — gives the address she knows by heart, one belonging to a residence in Salt Lake City, Utah. She even says that part too, the zipcode, the full thing. But something in her flickers uncomfortably, once again reminded that none of this seems like home. It's a quiet upset, an echo that whispers you're lost, making her feel very small.

"There isn't a beach near there. So I think.... I think I'm really far away from home."

Peter is taller than him, but Midoriya distinctly feels like he's adopted a child. It wouldn't be the first time he helped a nervous child he encountered on their own. He and others at UA quickly came to care for Eri like she was their child or little sister.

Charlie collects crafting decorations like Midoriya collects entries about Heroes in his notebook. Midoriya is a nerd whose favorite Pro Hero makes liberal use of US states as names for his moves. He knows of Utah. It's definitely inland. The only beaches it would have would be lake beaches, according to Salt Lake City's name.

"That's right. This city is very far from either of our homes. I'm from Japan. We're an ocean away." An ocean through space and time, probably. "But it's going to be all right. Peter-kun and his friends are here. Let's take care of you first. Why don't we get something to eat at a cafe until someone comes to get you? It'll be good to get out of the cold. What do you like to eat?"

He flashes a kind, winning smile. Food can be a great comfort, he hopes.

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i've looked at clouds from both sides now (𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐥)

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cw: some gender "norms" / complication things

Re: cw: some gender "norms" / complication things

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