deercountry | If I had died

Entry tags:

If I had died

Who: SHIRO & OPEN
What: Catchall for December Shenanigans, House Meeting, Event, Silent Hill Player Plot
When: All through the month.
Where: Mouse House, Around Trench

Content Warnings: Silent Hill type imagery/body horror, violence against snowmen, will update as needed

See the headers below for specifics!

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His ears perked up and he gave a small nod, the pressure of "befriending them" taken away and it allows him to become more relaxed.

He tilted his head and lifted a brow.

"Adam-san isn't particularly difficult to get along with..." plus Adam was pretty much by his side day one when he got here.

"He can be a little prickly," Shiro says, though there's way too much amusement in the words for it to be a serious complaint.

More like an old joke.

"He's fought people with kitchenware before. You know, fight first, talk later."

"That's fine, I can be massively prickly," he offered with a shrug. "I'm outright antagonistic plenty of times." There's something to be said about being self-aware.

His ears pressed down.

"I've seen people fight with rubber ducks."

I see why you adopted him - Shiro thinks, something his partner will more than likely pick up on. It's not a bad thing. Just an observation. More of that back and forth between them.

"That's fine," is what he says aloud. "It doesn't bother me."

And it doesn't. Really it doesn't. Though he blinks, startled more by the statement about ducks than anything.

"Rubber ducks?"

Ritsuka froze, realizing he had never... told that many people about the Fighter and Sacrifice situation he had going on back him. His ears bent back and he cleared his throat.

"Rubber ducks and jungle gyms, she was young and had to rely on imagery she already knew," he bit into his food.

Okay. That was clearly the wrong thing to ask. He can't undo it, can't take it back. So, forging ahead it is.

"Understood," he says, simply. We can leave it there. "Remind me to ask him about the Carrot Incident sometime where you can hear it. He gets this look like..."

And here Shiro makes a game attempt to imitate one of Adam's patented Takashi You Idiot expressions. Swerving the subject hard away from discussions of kids fighting with ducks. He really hopes he looks ridiculous.

Ritsuka couldn't help it, he laughed. He blinked, somewhat surprised by the sound but couldn't help but laugh again.

Oh heck yeah. Nailed it.

"I'm serious! He looks just like that."

But he's grinning as he says it, too. Then he holds his hands up in pretend glasses, to enhance the look.

"Takashi you are impossible."

He put a hand over his mouth, trying to hide his laughter but unable to stop. He managed to calm down and took a breath.

"It's... nice to see how much you care about one another."

Shiro can't keep up the stern expression. It drops pretty quickly, and he ends up grinning too. Mission successful - getting the kid to laugh.

"We've known each other a long time," he says. "If we can't give each other a hard time, no one can."

He thinks of his own parents... he doesn't have any family meals with them. His dad actively avoids coming home as long as possible, it's just him and his mom so she can watch him eat to make sure he eats exactly like old Ritsuka did. There wasn't any gentle ribbing, there wasn't any love. His brother, when he was home, didn't eat in front of their mother either...

His family had been broken ever since he awoke in the hospital when he was ten.

He broke his family...

"I definitely give my family a hard time."

"We can work with that."

There's a lot to unpack there. He really doesn't think Ristuka means it in the way Shiro did - at least about his partner, anyway. But that's okay. It doesn't mean they can't work with it. Doesn't mean they're not used to people who can, accidentally, throw strife around. Just look at Keith.

He won't push Ritsuka to explain. Not unless the kid wants to.

"I mean - we're all people, here. We can't really fault anyone for a personality. And I'm not expecting everyone to get along immediately."

His ears perked up and then he looked up at Shiro. His ears bent back as he gently chewed his food.

"Has anyone told you that you're too nice? You and Adam-san, you take in some random, shitty-attituded kid and just go 'yeah, he's fine.' You understand that's not typical?"

That and Ritsuka is just used to horrible, terrible people.

For a good few seconds, Shiro just kind of stares. Like the thought has never, not even once, occurred to him. He blinks - and you can almost see the loading wheel over his head.

He stares.

And then he laughs. Leaning up against the counter, shoulders tucked up around his neck, laughing.

"I've - Believe me. I've heard that so many times," he says. "First person I ever took under my wing was exactly that. Everyone told me there was nothing worth seeing in him." That amusement dims, just for a moment, turning to fondness instead. "He's turned out to be so much more than any of the 'typical' people ever thought."

Ritsuka watches, and for a moment, he wished he had his camera to capture the faces Shiro made. They were the same faces Buzz and Woody made, the same ones Jessie made. It was the face of someone who loved deeply and freely and knew, without a shadow of a doubt that the person they were loving was extraordinary.

He'd made that face about Seimei, endlessly.

He sometimes likes to wish that Woody and the other toys made that face when they thought about him... but he knows... they don't remember him, so they can't even if once upon a time they did.

He looks at Shiro.

He really is a very good person. A person that people are drawn to, he's sure, by the very nature of his kindness and openness.

He lets out a soft sound and goes back to eating, he's not sure he should be troubling such kind people. He feels like a ripped picture from a magazine pasted onto an oil painting. Out of place and an eyesore.

Ritsuka doesn't know what to say, no. He KNOWS what he wants to say, none of it is particularly optimistic or kind. So it's best to say nothing at all.

After some more silent eating he looks over at the food.

"Do you want more, I can clean up, otherwise."

Shiro's laughter dies down, eventually, but he's still amused, he's still grinning. He's just going to casually finish up his own food, and move to start cleaning up his own dishes.

Listen, he's hopeless in the cooking department. But he can do the cleaning.

So when Ritsuka offers to do it, he just shoots him a smile - another one. This one meant to be reassuring.

"Hey, you did all the work with the food, I can clean up, no problem."

"Oh... um, thank you." His ears bent back and he watched Shiro do the dishes. He felt his lips twitch and he smiled at Shiro's back, his ears resting at neutral.

"Yeah... thank you."

"No problem."

Another look over one big shoulder, another grin. Welcome to the family, Ritsuka. Enjoy this unrelenting support.

"Welcome to the household."

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If I had died

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