boo

[bu773rfly]

Who: All troublemakers and part-time ghouls [that means open]

Where: The movie room, then the Quad

When: The very night of Halloween!

What: Get SPOOKY, get SLEEPY, get STUPID, it's a sleepover costume party.

Content Warning: none for the post; byocw (bring your own content warnings)

[It starts a few nights before, with a network post.]

10.27.xx 19:28:16 un:hudie

20:00....Halloween night...the movie room...

You'd better be there. You'd better be in costume.

10.27.xx 19:29:43 un:akapassionista

I can't wait to see everyone's Halloween costumes!! ♪♪(o*゜∇゜)o～♪♪

[You'd better. Because it's a party!

Kaede and Erika have dressed the room up for the spookiest night of the year. It's nothing professional - lights dimmed, music playing, store-bought balloons with jack-o-lantern faces on them, paper cutouts in pumpkin and ghost shapes stuck to the wall. A "bat" is fluttering around, but if you squint, it's actually just Erika's familiar with black paper stuck to her wings. There's some kind of plastic tub in the corner full of water and...apples? Is it supposed to be bobbing for apples? All in all, it has some kind of DIY charm to it all.

Of course, everyone's actually here for the refreshments, and there's plenty of those. Some Bender specials, mostly the non-enchanted fare, but you might find a couple of the milder curses and blessings on the table. Bowls of popcorn and chips and every other genre of snack food you can scrounge up at Fantasy Costco. Candy galore. A modest assortment of Faerunian treats familiar from missions. Paper cups and plates and napkins. Soda bottles and a water pitcher and a few big bowls of punch. (One is labeled "alcoholic". Be ye ware.)

And by the way, costumes really are mandatory. There's a sign out front saying so. If you came unprepared, there's a bin of costume components outside to choose from, capes and headbands and masks and whatnot, but they might not coordinate well. If you think you're getting in without making an effort, Kaede and Erika (themselves dressed in bargain bin warlock and bard kit, respectively) are ready and waiting to chase you down and apply whatever degree of force or Sleep they need to correct the issue, with costume accessories and water-resistant face paint in hand.


About two hours into things, the two get everyone's attention and move the party outside to the Quad. Out there they've got a campfire going, picnic blankets spread out for sitting on, ingredients for s'mores laid out, and...pumpkins! And tools for carving or painting them. A sign out by the campfire announces a contest for the best decorated pumpkins, but nobody ever comes along to apply judging standards, so everyone's just free to show off their creation.

Things wind down a little after midnight. You can head on home...or just sleep out here, between blankets under the stars. It's that cozy kind of night.]

Comments

[napstar]

[ Minato doesn't mind waiting while Shinji figures it out. Minato needs time to figure out what he's saying pretty often too. He'll just run a finger over the rim of his cup and he stare it down. Shinji figures it out quickly enough though. ]

Yeah. They're not long...

[ They happen and then they're gone a few seconds later. ]

[petsthedog]

[Wild. He feels things all the time. Usually in various shades of Bad with an occasional nicer one if for example a dog is involved, but they're there.]

Do you...want to?

[If so he may be less equipped for this conversation than the dating one tbh.]

[napstar]

Noooooo.

[ His shoulders slouch as he's whining. He's very unenthusiastic about that idea. ]

I thought Kaede-san's were mine. When I forgot everything.

[petsthedog]

[Yikes.]

Sheesh. That must've been a lot.

[Especially considering the whole, nearly died thing and being laid up that entire time.]

So--you just, wanna know what it's like? Havin' 'em more often, I mean.

[napstar]

Yeah.

[ Not what it's like for Minato to live with. He's more or less experienced that in a slapdash way. It wasn't great. But even now he can sense Kaede's joy over something happening at the party. It pulses a bit, lowering and then rising again when something new happens, but it remains persistent. ]

There's... It's always there...

[petsthedog]

[He rubs at his neck, trying to think how to describe it. Depression is a strange beast, making Shinjiro perhaps less familiar with an experience like Kaede's, but his has never manifested as an absence of feeling. It was more like a swamp, or quicksand. Always sucking at his ankles, trying to pull him under. His strength to resist varied based on the day.]

I guess if I had to come up with words for it.....it'd be kinda like if you had a TV but the remote was busted, so you couldn't really control it that much but you get real good at tuning out or in, depending. If you wanna pay attention, you can, or you could cover your head with a blanket and go to sleep. And...sometimes there'll be a real loud part or somethin', and you'll get startled outta whatever else you were doin', and maybe you'll just go right back to that after or maybe you'll get sucked in for awhile before it goes to commercial and fades back out, y'know?

[Does that even make sense, hhhh. He tried.]

[napstar]

[ A TV huh? And the remote's busted and you ignore it and wow this is a lot of words to follow. Minato does his best to follow along but the alcohol in his blood hampers that more than he would have expected. ]

... I like sleeping.

[ He's totally lost. ]

[petsthedog]

[There's a pause. That. Did not go as planned.]

....It can be nice. Sleeping too much ain't good for you, though.

[Neither are Persona-suppressing drugs but nobody ever said Shinjiro Aragaki wasn't a hypocrite. Let him fuss ok.]

warning: suicide ideation

[napstar]

's nice.

[ He goes silent for a moment. Swirls his cup around. Stares at the liquid inside. ]

... Sometimes I think. It'd be nice to sleep longer. On and on and on. Forever.

[ Most recently when everything with Vista Virs happened. Everything seemed pointless, every hill seemed like a mountain, every step felt like weights were attached to his feet, but all of it was inside his soul. Hours spent staring at the ceiling and walls because he couldn't bring himself to get up, wishing he was asleep instead. Sleep it off, sleep it away, sleep until it's better or gone or he's gone. And he would have spent more time asleep if it weren't for all of his friends' concerns. ]

[petsthedog]

[....Ah. That's a familiar line of thinking, isn't it. He's a bit surprised to recognize it, but then again....he'd never really managed to get to know Arisato that well. Maybe it's because they were too similar, in that respect--finding it easier to deal with things by not dealing with them. Sleeping it off or running away, two sides of the same coin.]

That'd be easier, huh? Disappearin' like that. I get it.

[There's a pause. Is this what the question was about?]

...She cried on me too. When she found out what happened.

[....]

S'hard, not wanting to hurt them. There's only so much you can fake, and they always know.

[I'm happy you're alive, Maya had once said, I hope someday you can be too. He doesn't have any advice for Arisato, though. This is one of the reasons he always tried to distance himself, after all.]

[napstar]

[ Disappearing? Is that what it is? He doesn't feel like he's running away from people but when he gets like that he wishes everyone else would disappear. That's... Hm. It's the same thing, isn't it.

He assumes Shinji's talking about when Takaya killed him, though he's vaguely aware she could have cried on him over any number of things that happened since they've been in the Bureau. He nods either way. He doesn't want to be the reason Kaede is hurting. But she accepted that he broke her heart, and she said she wanted him around anyway, even as she cried all over him. ]

Kaede-san will definitely know. She keeps knowing.

[ She's been calling him out on his lies recently. There's no escape. ]

[petsthedog]

[It's absolutely what he's talking about, at least. She would possibly cry if she found out he died a second time, but that's why he hasn't brought it up.

That said, he rubs at his neck, looking awkwardly off to the side as he considers something. Arisato's drunk, for sure. Probably not blackout drunk, he can still stand and talk more or less fine, but it's still possible things could get lost in a haze by the next morning. Maybe he won't even remember talking about this later. But...]

...Look, I know we--ain't exactly good at, uh, talkin' and crap. But I--

[god, this is hard. It goes against every instinct he has, to reach out rather than draw away. But the rest of SEES is gone. He's been thinking more about them, since Wonderland ended and his mind re-shifted. If he's .... trying to do more than drag a living corpse around, to make something like the life he wanted Amada to have when he was finally gone, then the least he can do is extend this hand to the last member of the only family he ever had.]

If you ever want some place where it's -- okay not to feel all the shit people want you to. Come find me.

[He told Will once, that he felt like he could breathe around him, because Will had his back, but didn't make him feel like he had to dread a grief for his absence. Maybe he could be something like that for Arisato. If he wants it.]