o5 . bone house mingle!

[necrolord]

Who: necrolord and CR!
What: Several teens move into the horrible necromancy mansion, and sometimes they bring their friends.
When: Early March.
Where: Bone House in Gaze.

Content Warnings: Skeletons, discussions of death and grief, violence where marked, vomit where marked. Note all the usual warnings of this character.

Comments

[terriblepurpose]

Watching Gideon gather up an armful of food after ruffling his hair, Paul thinks of reversals and exchanges. He keeps thinking of them as he nods, mutely obedient, and follows her up the stairs when beckoned, a luminous shadow in her wake.

"No one on Caladan eats snacks in bed either," Paul offers, quietly, toeing off his boots by her bedroom door before he sits on the bed next to her. Before he can tell himself not to, he leans against her side, ever so briefly, and takes in the room around them. It reminds him of the way the young soldiers back home would decorate their barracks, all disciplined exuberance.

It's not the grim captive cell he pictured when he understood what was keeping her here, the devotional chain named Harrowhark that wraps around Gideon's heart, tethered in turn to a pair of endless black eyes. He draws his knees up to his chest and comes to bend over them, shifting slightly away to give her back her space, as if he's not already and still imposing on her generosity.

"I could go back for a shirt, if you really want one," he says, in an answer to her joke that comes late and soft, but there is an attempt, in those sibilant voices, to be joking too. "I think I saw a - gift shop? - by the mouth of the abyss. Just before the field of eyes. Hard to miss."

[lipochrome]

Gideon privately thinks that Paul's father has eaten snacks in bed at least once, but she's also pretty sure that telling Paul that would not be helpful right now. Instead, she leans a little closer towards Paul, wordlessly giving him permission to do the same. That's what all this is about, after all.

The joke isn't half-bad, if a little dry, and Gideon smiles, mostly at the fact that Paul is even trying for humor. That's a good sign. "Aw, man, a gift shop and everything? Damn. Well, tell you what. You can make me a shirt, instead."

Or: don't go back there. Stay here. But Gideon doesn't need to embarrass the both of them like that.

Once she's confident that Paul is settled (as settled as he's going to be, at any rate) she plucks a pair of now well-worn tinted glasses off the nightstand. One side of the frame is slightly bent, as if it was kept in a small space for a long time, but otherwise, they're in good condition and very, very cool.

Gideon had said that Paul's eyes are too bright, and she means it -- how is anyone supposed to get any sleep, with lights like that? But she also thinks he's stressed out, and uncomfortable, and perhaps a little out of his depth. She'd felt that way on the First, sometimes, and these helped.

"Here," says Gideon, opening them up and passing them to Paul. "Try these on."

[terriblepurpose]

When they're in Paul's hands, he stares at the glasses like he doesn't understand what they are, which is ridiculous. He's seen Gideon wear them a hundred times if he's seen them once, an elegant fusion of style and function that he only ever thinks of as hers. He turns them over in his hands delicately as he leans back against her, throat working silently.

The world slips behind a veil of smoke when he slides them into place, fingers light and unfamiliar on their arms. He turns towards her with his chin tucked downward, half-shy and half-furtive, although he couldn't name why for either, or what the nuanced difference between them is. (He could; it's better if he doesn't, even to himself.)

"You can laugh," he says, gratitude welling in a hundred softly mingled voices, quiet like the verge of tears, "I must look terrible."

But he thinks he might look less terrible than he did, and it's less terrible for him to look at her like this, the unsettling blue toxicity partly filtered. He lets a little, settling breath escape him, a strand of miserable tension slackening across his shoulders.

Something Paul is learning about calamities is this: in the aftermath, you continue, whether you want to or not. The flesh of your body makes its demands felt eventually, and with the glasses on, he looks at the assembled snacks and remembers that he's hungry.

"It's not going to be a very good shirt," he warns her, reaching for a little bundled bag of something or other, because she lent him her glasses, and that means something he's still turning over and over in his hands while they sit on his face.

[lipochrome]

Gideon doesn't laugh. She does grin, though, and even though there's some humor in that expression, it's mostly something else. Pride, maybe? Gideon isn't especially sure what to call it and doesn't really care, either. Who needs to name their feelings? All she knows is that Paul is wearing something that's hers, and that's...pretty cool, Gideon supposes.

"Well, you don't look as cool as me, but pretty much no one does. But that's still much better. We'll get you a sick chain and maybe a jacket with bone spikes, and then you'll look like the second-coolest person on the Ninth in no time." Cooler than the nuns, even!

Gideon goes for the snacks as well, choosing some dried fruit and chocolate blend labeled Trench Mix. There's nothing like a good Trench mix. Gideon's mouth is perhaps still a little bit full when she responds next, because it's so much more fun to talk to your buds and eat than to do the two of those separately.

"Are you kidding? I've never seen you half-ass anything, ever. I'm sure it'll be great, and if it sucks, we can just say I'm wearing it ironically."

[terriblepurpose]

A realization slots into place for Paul in this moment, caught between the mundane and the tragic. He's in the midst of opening a packet of smoked mushroom jerky when he has it. He is thinking about this room, and listening to Gideon weaving a future for them with her words, and she is vital and warm and alive beside him, and he understands something else about why he came back to this place, to shelter under this roof.

The world is miserable. So is he. So is she, even if she's brave enough not to show it. Things aren't going to get much better any time soon. He can see futures unfolding before him like scrawled maps, and he doesn't like where most of them lead.

But here, with her, he feels better, more safe. He feels watched over, in the way of being seen. Gideon looks after him. He tries to look after her. Paul does know what this feeling is. He just never expected it to come back to him.

"I'd like that," he tells her, bumping his knee against hers, "But now I might have to make the shirt bad on purpose, to give myself a chance. You've played your hand too soon."

Then, softer, so she knows he doesn't mean that: "You'd still manage to make it look cool." Softer still, but this time so she knows he does mean this: "Thank you."