[OPEN] RV Park Party

[eirs]

WHO: Any and all OUTSIDER personnel that wants in and their respective campervan companions. Or maybe you wandered out away from your group and found this commune.
WHAT: The gang parking together at night to swap information about the things they've found in their investigations, night watches around a fire, ghost stories......? General tomfoolery in the desert where there's no one else for miles. Cooking their hunts in successes and mishaps?
WHERE: The Mojave Desert
WHEN: Mid to Late May
WARNINGS: Will be updated or tagged in the thread as needed!

Comments

[gimu]

[ sometime later, when the business has abated and the murmur of the camp has settled into a lower hive drone, a shape separates from the darkness with a hiss of sand and the soft patter of someone mostly creeping along at ground level.

choso's head materializes only a few inches away from the crown of marcille's own noggin. ]

Is the sky not dizzying to you?

[picky]

[ Sleep paralysis demon Choso...

Marcille, on edge from hearing shuffles in the sand coming close to her head. There's still the sound of crackling fire and the murmur of other people around them, but somehow Choso lies in the sand without making a sound.

Marcille flinches when he speaks. Their heads would have bonked if not for Choso's pigtails acting as a barrier.

She finally registers who spoke and breathes a sigh of relief, pressing a hand over her chest. ]

Oh, it's you. [ She should scold him for creeping up on her, but Choso likely didn't do this on purpose.

She looks back up to the sky. ]

It is, a little, but I also missed it. What about you, Choso?

[gimu]

[ the hair proves once more to be his saving grace; this sleep paralysis demon was still, regrettably, immensely hard of head. crisis somewhat averted, choso lays his head down on the top left corner of marcille's blanket, peering up with an almost dubious air. ]

It is nothing like the sky in Tokyo. [ old or neo or anywhere in between. ]

It is so big, it feels like it will swallow us up the moment we look away.

[picky]

[ (marge voice) choso could you lighten up a little

No, Marcille holds and considers Choso's words as she looks above them again. The sounds of the desert are grounding—crackling fire, soft breathing from sleeping comrades, chirping bugs and scuttling animals that survived little apocalypses over the years—but for a moment, Marcille's vision is nothing but the sky streamed with stars, dark and iridescent as an oil spill.

She purses her lips and squints her eyes, resisting blinking. ]

But looking at it is a little scary too.

[ Anyway. Anyway! She finally tears her eyes away from the sky and glances to Choso at the corner of her blanket. Then she pushes herself to sit up. ]

There's room on the blanket if you want to lie down! You don't have to stay on the sand.

[ She will scoot. ]

[gimu]

[ the desert night is unlike anything choso has ever seen; a sky unending, unstained by the city glow so that the luminescence of the stars shines through all the brighter. vast. depthless. overwhelming. in the day, there was the sand and the mission, but here, where all light has been crushed into the shape of the outsiders’ campfires under space’s unblinking eyes, there is only the yawning dark.

when marcille makes room, choso cannot help but to scuttle a little closer, pulling himself over until his upper half is on the blanket, the rest of him gone to the shadows. (legs akimbo and splooted over the sand) ]

I am too large. You should enjoy your refuge.

[picky]

[ choso is huge, but so is the blanket. there's enough room for both of them on it, she knows, but there's also a vice grip around her chest that gets tighter the closer he scooches.

okay. she needs to get over herself. he's sober now anyway.

she scooches more and pats the blanket again. ]

It's okay! It's big enough. I won't make you... but you'll get sand in your clothes if you lie on it like that, and then it'll get in the van.

[gimu]

[ oh, no, the van. if sand and unnecessary detritus got into the van interior, yuji’s sensei would have so much to say.

so, so much to say. ]

Ah. You have a point.

[ he relents with a haunted look, scuttling bug-like and strange the rest of the way out of the shadows to better plop himself onto the blanket. somehow, this makes it all worse, as he lies on his stomach with his hands tucked away under the bulk of him, hidden in the excess cloth of his desert fit.

thus ensconced, he turns again, head tipped mostly sideways but both eyes on marcille nevertheless as he lets her take up his field of vision, blocking out the hungry dark behind her. ]

Are the stars different where you are from?

1/2

[picky]

[ HELP. marcille is watching all of this scuttling like ]

2/2

[picky]

[ ... she gives the smallest snort. ]

Can you even see the stars if you lie down like that?

[gimu]

[ holding his head up turns out to be a tiring affair, so within seconds he plops his head down, cheek smushed while he regards her comfortably. ]

I do not need to. They're up there. I acknowledge their existence.

[picky]

[ HELPPPP HELLO CAT ]

Well, if you say so.

[ She keeps her hands folded over her stomach and peers up at the sky again. ]

They're about the same as here, I think. Maybe the constellations are different, but stars are stars, aren't they?

[ A thought arrives. Her gaze lowers. ]

Like I said, it's been a while since I've seen them, though.

[gimu]

[ the stars are distant and hard to focus on, but Marcille is easier, a solid little presence he watches from his loaf position (a baguette loaf, if anything). ]

How long were you away? Underground?

[picky]

It wasn't easy to count the days in there... [ cause, y'know, underground ] But we did our best. Maybe a few weeks? It sure felt like forever, though.

[gimu]

[ he tries to conceptualize that, weeks. tries to measure it against time as he has experienced it; a span of weeks meant almost a third as long as he had been alive. a third of a life in the unknown dark, how must that have been? ]

Even if it is here, I am glad you are not down there now.

[picky]

[ choso she is fifty one years old help

but judging by the amount of growth she was forced to go through in such a short span of time, it may as well have been a hundred years.

marcille is silent for a moment, letting the words sink in. is this a general happiness, thinking that this situation is at least better than being underground with no star in sight? or is this a personal happiness—that she's here with him?

she gathers up her hair over her shoulder and loosely braids it. her cheeks go warm. ]

I've been meaning to ask... do you remember being drunk a few nights ago? And coming back to the hotel with fried cheese sticks?

[gimu]

Yes. Mozzarella sticks. You escorted me to our room.

[ regrettably, he does seem to remember, and with some clarity if the nod he gives is any indication.

his eyes shift from her reddening face to her hands, the twine of hair between her fingers, the way it twists with obedience into an orderly braid. he thinks of her that night, with all the colour in her cheeks and the margarita umbrella pinched betwixt thumb and forefinger. ]

I recall. The headache the morning after was atrocious. Why?

1/2

[picky]

Yeah, I bet it was.

[ bro you were so sloshed. she is just a little elf and you are a long wobbly palm tree. ]

2/2

[picky]

Oh, good. Maybe you remember those texts you sent to me then. You... You said you like me...? And Toji and Bakugo too, but...

[ unsure. she braids a little tighter. then she undoes it. the red in her face deepens. ]

What exactly did you mean by that?

[gimu]

[ it’s comfortable here, on this huge blanket under the desert night, with the cool breeze ruffling his hair and easing the dying heat. Marcille makes for a perfect little anchor point, a figure he can relax by, so that by the time her braid unravels, his eyelids are heavy, bones loose as the tension drains from him in easy increments. ]

That I enjoy spending time with you? I like to be around you?

[ pay attention, choso, don’t drift off yet. she may want a more in-depth answer. damn it, blink it away! awaken! ]

I want to give you everything I can?

[ there we go. good job. nailed it. ]

[picky]

E-Everything...

[ ok. ok! her flush is so deep it crawls over her nose. her heart leaps up into her throat and rabbits away. you would give everything to your friends, wouldn't you? and you enjoy spending time with them? this doesn't have to be romantic at all, but choso can differentiate friend-feelings and crushes, can't he? he wouldn't have talked with marcille about them otherwise. maybe. probably.

her overthinker brain is in overload. she lets go of her half-undone braid, claps her hands on her cheeks, and whips her head to look at him.

wait a second ]

Are you falling asleep?!

[gimu]

[ shit, is he? he blinks heavily, shuffling a little where he lies before he levers himself a little more onto his side, the better to face her hulking and seal-like, an arm down the length of his side, the other under him still rather tucked up against his stomach. ]

Not anymore.

[ as if to prove that he is, indeed, still totally awake, choso opts to reach out to Marcille with his big ol’ hand, finger curling around the end of a loose lock. ]

Why’d you undo it? It was so nicely made.

[picky]

[ he does look like a seal this way... it might have eased her up a little if not for his hand reaching for her. she freezes in place, eyes open wide and watching his finger curl around her hair, feeling that touch down to the root. ]

I-I don't know!

[ she blurts because she's been kissed and flirted with and complimented all in one night, and now this is choso, one of the first friends she made here, someone she feels safe around and cares for deeply, but what do you do when someone likes you this way? how are you supposed to act?

she doesn't know! so she leans away and bunches her hair into her hands. ]

I just don't— No one's ever liked me that way before! How can you be sure?

[gimu]

[ while a storm rages on inside marcille's braincase, choso regards her from his recline with a slow and contented blink and a tip of his head up, the motion giving the angles of his face the illusion (is it?) of a smile, a lightening of his expression. unbothered, he lets his hand flop back down to lie discarded on the blanket, feeling the pilling of the fabric under his fingertips as he watches the way her hair scrunches through her fingers. ]

Because I feel it. It's right there, every time I see you.

[ like it's so obvious, as evident as the sky overhead and the sand underneath. ]

And I don't like to lie. It's an ugly taste.

[picky]

[ It's a mistake to look at Choso when his hand falls away—the push-pull of wanting someone closer but being terrified of the proximity. And why is she so scared, suddenly? What happened to feeling safe? What happened to the fantastical image of love she carried since she was small?

From her vantage, Choso seems entirely content. In the firelight, she swears she sees a small upturn at the edges of his mouth, a residual thinning of his golden eyes. Like he feels safe too, with her. And happy.

She would make a home in that feeling if she could—knowing that the people she cares for are as happy to be with her as she is with them. Her heart hammers away. ]

There you go again. You just say these things to me sometimes... I know you mean them, and that's why I get so embarrassed.

[ She slowly lets go of her hair and carefully turns on her side to face him. Her blush burns over her cheeks, but she still forces herself to meet Choso's gaze. ]

So how do I... I don't know what you want from me.

[gimu]

[ habit nearly has him shuffling closer to preserve the warmth in them, but he stops himself at just a shift of his hand forward, palm rough over the blanket. tired once more of holding his head up, he lets it tip to lay heavily aside, temple on the ground and cheek smushed into his shoulder. ]

I don't know, either.

[ it's easy to just let the words, the admittance tumble its way out. this close, her sharp ears can pick up his quiet tenor, how his breath rumbles in his chest. this close, he can almost pick out the flecks of colour in her eyes in the dark. ]

Do I have to want something? [ a beat. ] Do you want me to ask of you? Will it make it easier to understand?