( OPEN ) we are here and going to make it everyone's problem

[cranekin]

WHO: Team Everlight and YOU
WHAT: Breaking the ice with a spontaneous slumber party
WHERE: Everlight wing
WHEN: Some time after arrival
WARNINGS: Destroying friendships with UNO or something. Will edit for real as things come up.

(The fun thing about being taken and thrown into a new place is no one really knows you so when Tsurumaru Kuninaga is missing from dinner, he's sure no one really notices. Eventually someone will learn that whenever he's missing for too long, he's probably up to something if he doesn't actually have something to do.

He returns some time towards the end of dinner, when most people have probably begun to settle a bit for the evening. He stumble-dashes back to the base with an armful of plastic shopping bags and oooh he is definitely up to something…)

& SET UP

In the Everlight wing, they need to do some ☆re-arranging☆. Some desks and chairs need to be borrowed from rooms to drag outside for the food. While they're at it, they might as well grab the blankets and pillows too. They might also have to figure out what appropriate music to play. So maybe someone knocks on your door to commandeer your furniture and time. Or maybe they figure out a way to play music so everyone can hear and you end up drawn out by music.

Maybe you get sent out to buy more snacks and drinks for everyone while you're standing around with nothing to do. Let's go, Everlights. It's time to drag people into early shenanigans.

& FOOD & GAMES

There is plenty of food to be found. Check out the mixed bottles of different flavored sodas and teas, assorted chocolates, and other sweets from the convenience stores. Eventually, a couple of pizzas and a few more substantial things might show up on the table. Some of them are traditional flavors characters will be used to seeing but others may… be more out there. There sure are a lot of more experimental foods combinations in the future, huh? Have you ever tried coffee-flavored water? Yogurt-flavored potato chips? Flaming hot lava chocolate? What about calamari Oreo pizza? Well, now is your chance.

There are also stacks of playing cards and maybe some other silly toys and games from whatever is the equivalent of a dollar/pound store in the future.The 100 Kryptos store? Which version of UNO do you know how to play? Do you know how to play Werewolf or Mafia? There are plenty of bottles to spin. Give someone a call and see if they answer or else you have to eat one of those cursed pizza slices. Of course, when enough people gather around, there are plenty of other ways to make your own fun.

& CHILL

For more introverted characters that might want a quieter place to hang out, some Everlight has probably left their room open. Pillows and blankets have been piled into the room to make it a quieter, more laidback place to hang out. When was the last time you made a pillow fort?

// WILDCARD/OOC

Hello, Tsuru gets bored easily and he wants everyone to have ☆good vibes☆ because bad vibes make him sad so he is steamrolling and dragging people into slumber party shenanigans. It's in the Everlight wing but other characters can hop over if they're curious or dragged in. I asked the mods about the potential consequences of staying the night and they said it would be fine for the slumber party so go wild.

Treat this as an open mingle and feel free to come up with your own ideas and tag around. If anyone really needs me for anything, you can DM me or catch me on plurk (yosakoi ).

Comments

slides in here late

[ecad]

( maybe he'd stopped to think of what the other's time spent at the orphanage had been like, how it must have been to be surrounded by so many others that needed looking after and to be the one they turned to. of course he doesn't know the whole story, and he won't unless wolfwood tells him, but it had to have meant something to him, with as ardent as he'd been about protecting the place.

he hasn't shared space like this with anyone since he and his brother were still very new, too young and naive to know what their future held, and there's something nostalgic about it that makes his chest ache. but he isn't going to dwell on it.

vash is sitting cross-legged near the center of his fort when the other man speaks up, and he rests his hands on his thighs as he looks up at him, squinting a bit in contemplation and then peering all around him. )

Expert or not, I value your opinion. ( he grins, cheeky. stop feeding off of each other, you dodos. ) What do you think it's missing?

shhhh

[yoke]

[ there’s not that much of a story: a boy in a man’s body makes a bargain for the safety of the only place he’d been able to call home; who still dreams the stupid, foolish, impossible dreams of a child wishing to return to happier days. as the days go by, the prospect of returning to hopeland become more and more slim. a part of him thinks maybe it’s better that way—would he be able to go back in his current state? would they even want him there, as bloodied and broken as he is?

it’s enough that he’d been able to protect it. this is the extent of what he deserves.

but he isn’t going to dwell on it either. nick hums thoughtfully, making a show of looking at the fort from all angles before he joins vash in the middle. he sets his pillow down next to him, lying on his back as he makes himself comfortable. ]

That’s better.

don't u shhh me

[ecad]

( there's nothing wrong with wishing for happier days; vash catches himself thinking about the year he and nai had spent together following their birth, each and every day passing them by with a whole slew of new things to learn, new things to know and sometimes he lingers on the memories of them playing the piano together. side by side, fingers dancing over the ivory keys as easily as if they'd never been meant to do anything else.

and then there had been nothing. for so, so long there had been nothing and until he'd been accepted by the occupants of ship three, there had been loneliness. the bone-deep kind of thing that sticks to everything it touches, leaves you feeling empty like no living, breathing thing should ever feel.

sometimes happiness is all about perception. sometimes it's circumstance. sometimes, it's what you make it.

if wolfwood is ever allowed to go back to the orphanage … vash thinks he wants that for him more than he's ever wanted anything for himself. but that just goes without saying, doesn't it?

he watches him settle, a ridiculously wide grin spreading across the line of his mouth as he leans to nudge him with a rather pointy elbow. ) Are you saying it was missing you? ( he laughs, bright and musical and genuine. ) Honestly …

shhhhhhh

[yoke]

[ it's as expected; wolfwood wouldn't be surprised if vash ever told him that one day, because that's exactly the kind of thing he would say. and it's equal parts overwhelming and a little frustrating: the mortifying ordeal of being known going hand in hand with something he'd long since convinced himself of, even if it may not be necessarily true. they never told him the worst part of killing would be living with it; that it stays with you forever no matter how hard you scrub at the blood only you can see on your hands.

he did everything for the orphanage, he did everything for those kids, and this is all he's good for. because if he ever once believed he had any other purpose, that he was capable of anything else—then all that killing, all that pain wouldn't matter anymore. and what would he be then?

but vash has always seen it. wolfwood was just too much of a coward to accept it. ]

I didn't say anythin'. [ he takes vash's pointy elbow with a chuckle, eyes still closed as he tucks his arms behind his head like he's getting ready to sleep. the crooked grin on his face says otherwise, though. ] But now that you mention it, you might be right.

YOU SHHHH

[ecad]

( it's part of the reason he doesn't use his gun unless he absolutely has to; there's something to be said about harming another, for any reason, but killing them? he doesn't think he would ever be able to live with it. he'd watched wolfwood shoot rollo and he still can't live with it, and he hadn't been the one to pull the trigger.

says a lot about his moral compass, doesn't it? the conscience that weighs him down more and more with every single step he tries to take in the right direction? one forward, two back, that's how it's always been.

but maybe that's why he tries so hard to be a good person. maybe it's why he tries so hard to stick to those morals, to never even let them bend, much less break, because once he's given those up, there's nothing left. nothing more to follow but whatever lines the wind draws across the dunes.

( he lives for the day when he can tell him he's more than just the killing. he's always been more than the killing, because he has such a big heart and cares so much for those closest to him. )

vash contemplates him quietly for a moment as he settles, then scoots down to lay on his side next to him, chin propped in a hand. ) Mm … yeah, I see it now. ( quietly, so quietly that it might as well have been to himself. ) I think it's pretty much done. Best pillow fort I've ever built.

belatedly, cw: death, suicidal ideation.

[yoke]

[ sometimes he still thinks of it—what if he didn't shoot rollo? what if he'd waited a moment longer? would vash have really gotten through to him? was it really too late for the kid as he had thought? he'll never know the answer. wolfwood has lost the ability to regret; given the opportunity to go back in time, he likely would have done the same. doing it for the contract was an easy cop-out excuse, but he knows better, the ugly truth that lies at the heart of it.

here's the thing, him and rollo weren't so different: kids turned into monsters, turned into killing machines. two sides of the same shitty coin. maybe it was a mercy—was rollo even living at that point?—or maybe it was the selfish, cowardly part of wolfwood that wished someone would do the same to him.

but it doesn't matter now. they'll never see eye-to-eye on it and maybe that's okay. vash has seen all that ugliness in him and he's still willing to lay on his side next to him, sharing his space; soft voice and equally soft words that wolfwood still catches. something softens in his expression, cracking one eye open briefly before reaching out and tugging him closer, like he's back at hopeland and soothing livio from another nightmare. ]

Now you can be a part of the official pillow fort builders' club.

[ecad]

( he thinks — he's always going to think that it could have been different if he'd just waited. if he'd given rollo a chance to come back to himself, instead of continuing to give himself over to the monster in his head, the monster that insisted he'd abandoned him when he'd needed him the most.

but he had, though. hadn't he? he hadn't returned in time enough to intervene, and every day since then he'd spent it thinking that he just hadn't been able to hold on long enough. hang on, little man. you're fine —

there was no way he could have known what would happen in his absence, but een after everything has been said and done, knowing that now doesn't make him feel any better about it. and if he ever found out about what was rolling around in wolfwood's head — thoughts of mercy, of an uncertainty about wishing someone would show him the same sort of mercy — to say he wouldn't handle it well at all would be putting it very, very mildly. but.

it isn't his life to live, is it? nor is it his to keep from ending. even if he would do anything in his power to do just that.

he gives over a soft, quiet grunt when the other man reaches for him and pulls him that much closer, close enough that to settle means tucking himself in against his side, and he does just that, trying to ignore the way his heart is well on its way to tripping over itself right through the spaces between his ribs. after another moment of thought, he gently rests his head on his shoulder, close enough now that he can inhale the scent of his cigarette smoke at its source, and since when was that such a comforting thing?

he hums, quiet and thoughtful. ) I don't think there's any such thing as that … but maybe I'll start one! ( cheeky! )