OUR HOUSE

[saltwaterlungs]

CHARACTERS: Phil, Dimitri, Darcy, Ruby, the Venom Symbiote, and you!
DATE: June
LOCATION: The farmhouse on 499 Winter's Avenue
SITUATION: Home-making and housewarming
WARNINGS: Usual warnings for all characters involved but otherwise n/a

I'll light the fire, you place the flowers in the vase (Closed to phil/dimitri/ruby/venom)

Moving out of the Oak and Iron has been on Darcy’s mind- well. Virtually since she got to Pumpkin Hollow. But with Phil back and all, they started making plans for it in earnest. A combination of saving up and mysterious brass from some old dude fairy (??? she isn’t asking too many questions) means that they have the means. All they have to do is do it.

The week prior to the housewarming is spent working in and around the construction of a couple of new rooms, subdivided up from the old floor plan. Paint, wallpaper, fresh fabric to reupholster some of the furniture, a lot of cleaning. Plus there’s the logistics of moving all their stuff, which is significantly harder without cars and on an island that’s bigger than one ship. Darcy doesn’t even have that much shit, it just all stacks up somehow.

She spends her time mostly between generally assisting the move, setting up the kitchen, and putting her room together once they’ve finished building it. Darcy can be found doing any of those three things.

Rest your head for just five minutes, everything is done (Open)

It’s not going to be the shindig to end all shindigs, but once the dust has settled and everyone’s recovered from moving everything around, friends and family will get a call inviting them over. All the windows are open for the mild Summer night air, the curtains drift a little in the breeze, and the song of crickets can be heard from anywhere in the house. The lights inside the house are warm and cheery, and seem to beckon you in, the shadows around them seeming… darker, somehow.

There’s lemonade with some Phil-made ice cubes in it, and Darcy hasn’t moved from the kitchen in service of making canapes to feed anyone who shows up. Cold cuts on bread, sandwiches with cucumbers left over from the carnival, small fish cakes. It’s a good way to break the kitchen in. When the food has been made, Darcy sets up out the front on the porch, curled up with some lemonade on one of the chairs, looking out into the night and making some small greeting to anyone who approaches.

Life used to be so hard, now everything is easy cause of you

[wildcard!]

Comments

[abhorrently]

There's enough to do, with chatting to others and trying the canapes Darcy made and admiring the house's improvements, feeling the warmth that has nothing to do with summer and everything to do with what all of them have been sinking into this place, such that it touches the foundations. The regular greetings and all, and then probably a thousand things were taking his attention, to say nothing of the others. New neighbors, old friends, César with a suspicious looking jar in his hand filled with red.

With these shadows, the sky is the sort of tone where she imagines if one touched it, they'd come away with darkness clinging to their fingertips. Perhaps she has the advantage, being able to see some in the dark, while he carries his glow with him. An unmistakable herald of Phil's presence.

"Fine, just getting some outside air." Which is true enough. "And what about you? I'd bet you haven't sat down once since people started showing up."

[goodweather]

He laughs. "More or less. It's busy, but a good busy. This is a good thing to be busy with." No one's dying and everyone's fed. That's pretty good to him.

"I hope it doesn't break your heart too much that I've moved away. I'll be in town each day for work, though, so I'll still be around, and I'll swing by once in a while." Taking on a bit of the posture and tone of a diva: "And of course you can always hear my dulcet voice on the radio."

[abhorrently]

"You say that like we aren't all listening in the office, waiting on your words with bated breath. It's part of our routine." Or at least, she's listening. It's fortunate for her that Town Hall is already supplied with a radio, so she never has to miss a broadcast if she's working. "As long as you're happy with where you're living, and you keep that promise to drop by, then all my heartbreak is bearable, soon to mend. May my next neighbor be half as pleasant as you have been."

A pause, as she turns over a thought in her mind, the brief debate visible on her face before she makes a decision.

"...If I say I have something for you, and it is not a gift for your household, since we were told not to bring anything, would you consider accepting it?"

[goodweather]

His head tilts as Fever makes her proposition.

"Well, given all those conditions, I don't see why not." He's being facetious. Of course he would. "What is it?

[abhorrently]

She reaches into her pocket and pulls out something small, extends her hand. It's a key that she's offering to him - ordinary brass, unadorned.

"This is something I was truthfully meaning to ask you before you moved, but such as it is...this is a copy of the key to my apartment. I wanted to ask if you would hold it, for two reasons." She takes a breath. "Firstly, that I've lost my key before, and if I'm ever in need of a copy, I'd rather know it was with someone I trust than hiding somewhere to be found. And second...to offer you the choice to use it, if you like. Or if you need to."

A choice, just like the choice to accept or refuse it. Hells, he could take it and throw it away if he pleased. Though she'd feel a certain way about that.

[goodweather]

Fever offers him a key, and immediately he is brought back to a day nearly a year ago now, sitting across from Cassandra as she weeps for him. Grieves for him. He'd handed her the key to his own home on Earth then, as a declaration of return and loyalty: I will come back. More importantly, I will come back to you.

This is a declaration of trust, and both an offer and a request: come back to me.

He takes it. He clutches it in his fist. It will go with him every day, clattering alongside his own housekey and the key to his room.

"I don't know... what to say. I mean, this means more to me than I can say."

He slips it onto his keyring.

"I wish I could offer you the same, but I'm not the only one who lives here. But you're always welcome. Call me on the stone any time. Knock on the door. I'll always come and meet you."

[abhorrently]

It's funny, the feeling that blooms when he takes the key, puts it with the others he owns. It keeps unfurling petal by petal, until it's something the color of twilight. A seed she hadn't paid any attention to until now.

Come back to me. Let me spend time in your presence. Time they didn't really have before. Time with greater quantities of peace in it.

Phil doesn't have to say anything. Yet he does, and Fever then thinks she has something of an idea of how much it means. In all her thinking, she hadn't really considered the possibility of essentially getting a key in return.

The surprise is clear on her expression before she smiles, something almost fleeting in its vulnerability. How much that touches her is clear to see. She could say something like I'll try to not make you regret that and laugh, but what comes out is more sincere.

"Thank you. I hope the others won't mind you making such an offer."

[goodweather]

“They’ll be alright,” he assures, “but if you’re ever truly concerned, we’ll stay on the porch.”

He leans back against the wall, quiet. There are fireflies bobbing in the field.

“It’s almost strange, getting to live a life like this again. I’ve always been a civilian. Three years abroad is nothing to the decades I’ve spent being average, but there’s still some parts that rub that didn’t use to.”

He keeps his gaze straight ahead. “I think part of it is that I’ve never lived with this many people since I was a kid. And they’re all young adults. And… one of them’s my kid. I’ve never done this like… this.”

As a dad, he means.

[abhorrently]

He's serious, so she presses down on the urge to chuckle, turns it into a more affirmative hum.

"No one expects you to suddenly know what to do. Except maybe yourself. Hasn't even been three months since you arrived, remember?"

She comes to lean against the wall next to him, looking out at the fields, thinking about how far they extend. And then down through the trees, to the sea, out and out until one bumps up against the edges. Fever knows well enough she's got no wise response to the uncertainties, but there's no real way to learn except by doing. He can cut himself some slack, and the world won't collapse for it.

"As long as you stay open to talking, I don't think anyone will mind if you just make it up as you go along. Darcy loves you, that's not in question at all. And you love them, and that counts for a lot."

A tiny pause.

"Of course, I'm not a parent, so I could be full of shit. But there's a lot of different kinds of families out there. Who's to say one can't be you, your kid, and the sad-eyed stray youths that turned up on their doorstep?"

[goodweather]

"My wife and I used to agree that we were both too old to become parents. If I ever see her again, I'm gonna have to tell her that we got to skip a few steps."

Aha ha ha.

"I'm not gonna try and be Dimitri's or Ruby's dad. They have their own... stuff, going on, I think. But. Yeah. It's, uh, some kind of, unit thing that we have." Not like they bought and built a house together or anything.

"Trying to be a dad for one of them is stressful enough. I worried at Darcy a bit too hard about it a few days ago. You know, for as long as I've had them, we never actually got to do what kids and parents do. Not really."

[abhorrently]

Unit thing. She's no expert on the subject, but she's pretty sure he doesn't have to be their father to be part of their family. Still, she'll let him figure that out on his own. Phil's smart. He'll manage it.

"Think you're going to end up making up for lost time?"

What do kids and parents do, anyway, when one of them's half a bird and one of them is dead-ish? (Look, she never got the full picture on what Darcy's deal is.)

[goodweather]

“That’s the hope. Either that, or at least we can spend the rest of our time having a family relationship that’s more than just ‘minimize how much the other one dies.’”

Or be there for them after they die, or have someone there for you when you die, or… yeah.