thebastion | [Day 205] It's the end of the world, get drunk

Entry tags:

!npc

[Day 205] It's the end of the world, get drunk

Who: Georges and anyone about
Open: Open
When: 205 sometime in the afternoon
Where: Around the Monument
What: The Cael way of celebrating everyone not dying involves booze, so drink up! (Fun fact: the Cael way of mourning may also involve booze.)
Format: Any
Warnings: Drunken shenanigans, likely. Also feel free to treat this like a mingle thread and not just talking to Georges! (Although he'll try to chat with everyone if he can)

So, just to double check: A cure has been found? Everyone's recovered? No one's dead? It's safe to leave the house now? Excellent.

With this fact well known, one can find Georges starting off his morning not hanging about the bar (as is his custom as the only bartender in the Bastion) but in fact setting up something in front of the Monument. Tables, chairs, some blankets to sit on when those inevitably run out... There's also something of a makeshift bar area, a variety of liquor in fascinating bottles set up along with some glasses.

Everything is all finished up around the afternoon, and Georges goes behind his little makeshift table-bar to cup his hands around his mouth so he can yell-

"DRINKS ON THE HOUSE!"

...What do you mean he technically never makes anyone pay for booze at the end of the world? Just come up and have a drink, Georges will be happy to recommend something. Or maybe bother someone else having a drink?

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He stood there for a long moment, dark eyes drifting along with his thoughts before he stepped forward and reached out, ignoring the robe and everything else to just touch Kaoru's face with his fingertips.

"I love you, Kaoru. I love you so much," he whispered, staring hard at the boy before stepping back and turning away towards the bath obediently. He wanted something else, something more, but didn't trust himself not to be dramatic or emotional again. A good soak would rattle his head free of the sticky mess he'd made of it. Hopefully he'd be less of a mess and more of a man.

His eyes fluttered closed in contentment for a moment as he leaned into the touch, his hands lowering the robe for a moment while he was distracted.

"I missed you." Softly, barely audible over the sound of the water, "I'm so glad I have you home safe."

Unwilling to let the moment hang for too long, he pulled himself out with a shake of his head and saw to shepherding Seimei into the bath properly, setting the robe aside and starting on his own clothes once he was done. Clothes shed, he stepped into the water, submerging himself up to the shoulders with a delighted sigh.

God. Of course they had been able to clean themselves in the hospital but nothing - nothing - could come close to a long, luxuriant bath with the one he loved, together in their own home.

He settled down beside Seimei in the water, and coaxed his onmyoji's head to rest on his shoulder.

"Thank you."

"What are you thanking me for?" the onmyoji asked, shifting in the bath to rest his head where Kaoru wanted. He could have fallen asleep right there, he realized. He just wanted those moments, the closeness. Soaking off his drunkenness was helping, though.

"I have not done anything meriting your gratitude. I have made a mess of myself, of us. I can hardly be considered someone of particular value at this point," he muttered, shifting again to slide an arm around the redhead's waist, fingertips trailing lazily against his side. He felt braver with his action hidden under the water and his good sense inhibited by local spirits, and he wanted to touch the boy, so why not?

"Do not thank my, Kaoru. I am no one worth thanking."

"Not true," Murmured halfway into Seimei's hair as he nuzzled closer, his left hand gathering strands that had dipped into the water and gently twirling them around his fingers, "I know they are not all things you have been proud of, but you've done a thousand, thousand things in your life so far, and every one of them has led you here. I can't be grateful for that? That you're you, that you're mine, that you're here?"

A soft sigh at the arm slipping around his waist, and he shifted a leg, foot sliding between Seimei's ankles. Not about to wrap right around him, but enough to link their legs together and further the closeness they had.

"You haven't made a mess of anything, Seimei. I'm here. You're here. Surely that's all we need?"

"Your optimism forever astounds me," Seimei murmured with a soft sigh, a wet hand raising to stroke Kaoru's cheek gently. Dark brows flicked upwards when he felt the foot, but he didn't recoil. In fact he shifted closer still, the side of their bodies flush as he closed his eyes and nuzzled his nose gently against the hair at the redhead's nape. Kaoru's words brought other things to mind and he thought on them for several moments before speaking up again.

"It is all I need, but I think you need more to thrive than I do. I am little more than cave moss to your brilliant, flowering field. I need no light but yours to live and have no desire to seek out other sustenance, but you..." he sighed softly, fingers sliding from cheek to neck to shoulder, grazing their way down and back up.

"You need the sun and the rain and everything in between. I need to learn to adapt. I am failing to do so. I do not want to talk to all of these people and be involved in their lives, but if I do not, I fail to be a part of your life as well. We may be all we need for one another, at the end of the day, but you are too vibrant to be nurturing this bit of clinging vine all the time."

"Maybe true," he demurred softly, unwilling as he was to concede the point. ”But all it takes is you and I to become an Us. Nothing is ruined as long as we are each here for each other."

His fingertips alighted on Seimei's skin, drawing nonsense patterns from collarbone to collarbone in reciprocation as his foot gently stroked up and down Seimei's leg.

"...you're a rare flower in your own way, you know."

A shiver coursed the onmyoji's slender frame, dark eyes drifting sidelong to focus on Kaoru's face. The hand was one thing, the foot entirely another. Particularly when Hikaru could burst in at any time. He did have to wonder where the other twin was.

"I doubt anyone would draw the same conclusion," he snorted softly. "I am no flower. I have never been referred to in terms of grace and beauty and no amount of your biased flattery is likely to convince me otherwise," Seimei drawled, reaching up and poking one of Kaoru's cheeks.

"It is true, though. I have said it before...I must make more effort to communicate with these people. I opened my house, it was not enough. I offer my services, but these children of their modern times find my arts archaic and laughable. I have no idea what to offer them when they are too ignorant of the past to accept what they are given. My advice is ignored completely when spared, What am I meant to do with these people, Kaoru?"

In hindsight, Kaoru should, perhaps, have locked the door when he closed it. He just had to hope that Hikaru was otherwise occupied and that, if he did come home, he would hear their voices and know well enough to give them space.

'Hope' being the operative word.

"You are, you are!" Sticking his tongue out a little at the poke, shifting a little in the water so he can look Seimei in the eyes and poke him right back. "Biased flattery it may be - I'm not about to deny that. But aren't you supposed to cave to my opinion under any circumstance? Or at the very least leave me with my belief that you are the most wonderful thing in my world intact? Even if you think I'm delusional it would be cruel of you to shatter it..."

"Mercy, mercy!" he laughed, raising both hands and leaning back against the wall of the bath. "You are quite impossible to compete with and your logic is so entirely sound, how can I ever dispute?" the onmyoji asked, arching a brow with notable sarcasm. Sniffing faintly and leaning back to close his eyes, Seimei dipped his hands in the water and poured the contents of his cupped palms over his face.

"You are ignoring my legitimate concerns," he complained, cracking open one dark eyes and pursing his lips. "Though I suppose it matters very little. Their opinions will not change and I am hardly inclined to sell myself like a product. Focusing on this conversation of 'You and I and Us" seems more pertinent."

"I was getting around to them." Still pouting a little, for all that he was glowing slightly. It was good to hear real laughter from Seimei. A relief, really. He hummed for a moment, tilting his head to the side in thought.

"...I think you've tried everything that you can. In the sense that everything that you've tried so far has been about you doing things for others. You opening the house, you offering advice. So let's not make it about you doing and make it about them doing instead. What can they do for you? I'm not saying you aren't skilled already, and I'm not saying you have to change. But there are so many people here I'm sure you can learn something new from. You don't have to master it in a week, you don't even have to be good at it."

...and that would be his tongue poking out again as he teased,

"I'll even go with you. If you're scared."

Edited 2014-08-26 01:59 (UTC)

"Me? Scared? Preposterous," the onmyoji grunted, clucking his tongue and looking away in a huff, entirely put on. A moment passed in thought as he shook his head, unsure of what to say in answer. There was very little he wanted in life besides creature comforts and Kaoru. The trouble was that Kaoru was a social butterfly where he himself was...much more inclined to compare himself with a hermit crab or turtle.

"I do not want anyone to do anything for me," he replied, reaching up and scratching his collarbone with a sigh. "I take care of myself and do things for my home on my own. So far as learning other people's trades..." he trailed off, eyes narrowing slowly. Was it arrogant to want to be himself and not cater to the preferences of those around him? Was he being foolish or childish somehow by not wanting to give up those things that had made him who he was? He shifted slightly, looking over his shoulder at the folded robes tucked away by Kaoru, dark eyes flickering with his insecurity.

"I do not know," he said at last, turning away slightly and ducking behind the veil of his hair, expression uncomfortable. "I am an onmyoji. I shouldn't have to learn to be a chef or a farmer or anything else..."

"But it doesn't have to be their trade... Paar's been teaching people how to speak Dragon... or there's Colin and his library..."

He shifted a little so that he could get started on washing Seimei's hair, reaching for a bottle and a scoop for water so he could wet it properly, but pausing a moment, his arms around Seimei from behind.

"You don't have to give anything up, and you don't have to become something else. You're perfect to me as you are. But if you do want to communicate with others here, you may have to go to them."

"Starfury-san's library is precisely why mine is rendered irrelevant. And I don't need to speak dragon when I can understand every spoken language by man or beast," he pointed out with a discouraged sigh.

"It seems like when I do try, the attempt falls terribly short of the mark," he muttered, glancing at Kaoru before shifting where he sat, turning so it was easier for the boy to reach his hair. Not that it wasn't all around them in a mess of black tendrils, forever like snakes in the water.

"I am, perhaps, not so memorable to these people as I was to the people of the past. I am used to being feared and ridiculed, I suppose. Now I am treated with bland indifference and somehow it is worse."

He hummed lightly under his breath, pouring warm water over Seimei's head and combing the long, slippery ropes of hair back from his face and gathering them together so he could soap them evenly.

"...I don't know what else to suggest, other than to just get in there." He sighed, massaging Seimei's scalp, "Colin has a lot of things in his library that we don't have in ours. And you get on okay with him..."

He ducked slightly when the water ran over him, jarred out of his increasing melancholy long enough to sigh and reach up to rub his face.

"I am complaining over trivial things. I apologize. I believe I get on well enough with most of the people I meet, honestly. I do not know why I am having so much trouble. I did not think I was particularly resistant to communicating with others, but I do not like making house calls uninvited. I have allowed my doors to remain open to others, but it is difficult for me to make the same concessions in etiquette. I rarely find that I have anything to talk about with them. Speaking of their cultures always seems to upset them and that is the only thing I can question and discuss. Their private lives are simply that, and my interest or advice is rarely welcome," he sighed, describing at length only a few of his problems, but enough to emphasize that there really was one.

"I am not good at small talk, Kaoru. I am not...hm. I was never a very good noble."

"You're allowed to complain to me," he smiled, both hands going into Seimei's hair as he shifted position to make his massage a little easier. "I understand you'd be hesitant to wander into someone's residence - even I have misgivings over doing that. But we're not the only ones here with our doors open…"

A slight pout of thought as he concentrated on Seimei's hair for a while, fingers working down to his nape and back up again before he started rinsing the soap away.

"…the offer you made to me when we first met - you offered to teach. Does that still stand? Or was that a special offer just for me? I'd be flattered if it was… but I'm sure there must be people here who want to learn… "

"Yes, its open to anyone. As I recall I made the overture to Hikaru as well, but I think he imagines everything I do to be mere trivial illusion and magic tricks," Seimei sighed, tilting his head back slowly. He didn't manage to swallow a low moan in time, shivering under the redhead's touch and closing his eyes.

"I wanted to teach you, more than anyone else, but as an onmyoji - and the highest ranked one in the court - it was expected of me to tutor those seeking knowledge. I was never specifically made to be a teacher, as that would have monopolized time better spent in service to the Mikado, but I had no qualms answering questions. Without anyone here to serve, teaching people the arts is all I would have."

A soft chuckle at the sound that escaped him, leaning forward to kiss Seimei's temple briefly before settling back again and trying to elicit another.

"…Hikaru just thinks that because it's not real for him yet - he hasn't seen you work. He doesn't know what you can do - thankfully. If he did he really would start asking for magic tricks. Enjoy your peace while you can, my love."

He continued stroking through Seimei's hair, even though all the soap was out of it, one arm bringing Seimei back to settle against his chest.

"There will be people who want to learn, it's just a matter of finding them… I'd still advise you to go out and see others every now and then." At least the ones he found the least irritating… "I know it's not your way to impose on others - that in the past either they summoned you to them, or they came to you, and that it must be weird to go places you haven't been invited to. These kinds of things can be hard to break out of, I know that. But I still encourage you to go to them, as well."

A smile, leaning his head against Seimei's.

"Sometimes good things happen. When you talk to strangers."

"I don't believe he will see me work, since I have no intention of going into the Skyway again without your express permission," the onmyoji replied with another little shiver of pleasure, half-opening his eyes in order to slide them sidelong over what he could see of Kaoru. He rested against the younger man's chest without any protest, content to be where he was moved about. Few things soothed him more than the redhead's attention.

"You are right, of course. You are always right, but I have no skill at these things. I cannot bear the humiliation, Kaoru. How am I to seek out strangers in this place? What have I even to offer them? Am I simply expected to walk up to a person empty-handed and somehow garner their attention? Things...do not work that way. Do they? Even if they did, that seems terribly disrespectful."

"It worked on me." He replied softly, one fingertip tracing the curve of Seimei's jaw gently. Not that Seimei was the first - Tamaki had ambushed them with nothing but his idea and his intuition, two years ago, but even then that had been under completely different circumstances. "...we all arrived here with nothing, anyway..."

A soft hum and a shake of his head. It wouldn't do to dwell too much on the arriving here, it was the being here that counted, after all.

"Nobody will think badly of you, my love." He murmured, winding his arms around Seimei gently, "And there is no need to force yourself to approach people in ways that are unusual to you. You have nothing to fear if you want to reach out. And a safe place here to return to, always."

"That was different," he muttered, sinking slightly into the water. He wasn't about to explain the differences between their interactions and those with other people. If the boy couldn't see that for himself, Seimei wasn't about to point it out. There was something to be said, though.

"I did not go to you empty-handed, Kaoru. You might not have been able to see what I was holding but it was always there. I trusted you with it from the moment we exchanged words, and you have it in safe-keeping now. However, it is not something I can offer - or would offer - to anyone else. Ours was a very different circumstance."

He inhaled deeply, huffing a soft sigh before snorting a short laugh that sounded bitter even to him.

"For all the times I have gone out and attempted to help, all the times I have bothered making any effort to include myself in their little gatherings, I do not think it has amounted to very much. I hardly speak to someone who shares my home, I have lost my closest companion in all my years. I had never imagined a fault in my own character, but perhaps it is simply that. Perhaps I am not to sort of person people wish to be acquainted with," Seimei mused, resting against Kaoru with another sigh.

"If that is the case, I genuinely have no idea what to do. I will not stop helping where I have the ability to do so, but it is exhausting, involving myself where clearly there are others more capable and more...popular, I suppose."

"I didn't know that in the beginning, though." He confessed softly, pressing a kiss to the side of Seimei's forehead. "I wish I had. I don't always figure that kind of thing out quickly - epecially not when it comes to myself - and I was always a little envious, that you could be so perceptive. But I thought we were all the same, at the start. All of us lost. All of us uprooted..."

The hand around Seimei's waist stroked lightly up and down his side. He was truly sorry for how things had turned out with Taisan, and still blamed himself for the loss. Even if he were to repeat the apology until he was hoarse, nothing would change now, he knew that.

"It's their loss, my love, if that's what they think." A soft sigh, nuzzling into Seimei's hair, "I don't want you to give up - I would like you to keep trying. I don't want you to feel like you have to compete with anyone or to just... keep battering your head against the wall, either."

Edited 2014-09-04 04:07 (UTC)

"Perceptive? I wonder," the onmyoji murmured, shivering under the touch to his waist and hip. Dark eyes drifted closed completely as his head fell back against Kaoru's shoulder. He relaxed visibly, the tilting axis of his world stabilizing slowly as the alcohol ran its course. The words drifted to his ear, filled his mind.

"I will not, I swear. I will never give up, if it is what you want. I will try despite my failings and do whatever I must to be part of your world, Kaoru. I simply...wish you to know that it is not a lack of desire that impedes me so much as me being unfit for the task."

"It's not that you're unfit - you're just unused to this kind of interaction. And that's perfectly all right - certainly not anything you have to apologise for or feel bad about." Murmured quietly, his hand continuing to trail up and down beneath the water, "…you never have to apologise to me at all, Seimei."

He stroked through Seimei's hair again and let them sit in silence for a while, just the two of them and the water. When he thought back to their first bath together… it was amazing, how far they had come since then, never mind the very beginning.

He ducked his head slightly to kiss the side of Seimei's neck.

"But... my love, if we sit here much longer we're going to shrivel up and disappear completely."

He inhaled deeply, puffing a long sigh of disappointment before groaning and sitting himself upright with a small, noncommittal nod. Damn to the depths the fact the water had to prune them, he could have just stayed there all night, wrapped up in everything Kaoru. Letting the hurt and doubt go meant holding onto what mattered more again. He didn't want to part so soon after everything he'd admitted.

Still...

"I will finish cleaning up and rinsing myself. If you would be so kind, could you find me something clean to wear? I will be out in a few moments and go wherever you will it," he remarked, cupping water and bringing it to his face. It wasn't cold enough to banish what Kaoru's lazy touching had done,but Seimei figured it would flag by the time the boy went off and came back.

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