ph_logs | OUR HOUSE

OUR HOUSE

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!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

1. wadda hell? bulnosaur

The first time Dimitri visits the house on moving day, he finds a strange bulb in front of the steps. It looks like an undergrown cabbage, or maybe an artichoke, but there was no such thing growing there the day before. And who would plant one cabbage in the middle of the steps?

Gingerly, he pokes it with the tip of his sheathed sword. It shifts -- Dimitri leaps back, hackles bristling -- and reveals itself as the back of ... some sort of greenish toad creature, emerging from the dirt with a disgruntled croak.

Dimitri stares. "What?"

(Bulbasaur will be hanging around the house for all subsequent prompts.)

2. moving day (closed to CR)

The moving itself is a flurry of activity, construction a joy. Dimitri never tires of using his strength for something other than violence, breaking a sweat without shedding anyone else's blood. A cart borrowed from Mairi carries materials, supplies, furnishings; they could borrow a horse, as well, but Dimitri's happy to heave the harness over his shoulders and do the hauling himself. When he's forced to take a grudging break from hauling, he's helping to move furniture into the house and up the stairs. When he's not doing that, he's arranging furnishings in the living quarters. (He does scuff the wall of his bedroom while he's moving a wardrobe. Oh well.)

As the day goes on, he shows no signs of slowing, despite the warning signs of sunburn on his face and neck. Someone might have to corral him into taking a break.

3. warm welcome

Dimitri doesn't have much to bring over from the Oak and Iron: his sword, the stone ducky, and the deerskins he's been using for camping are the only real personal belongings he has. After the accumulated clutter of the Serena Eterna, it's an undeniable relief, but he's left wondering ... well, what now?

He doesn't have to think about it right away. They have visitors! And some part of Dimitri does feel correct inviting people into a space that's his. The same energy drives him forward; he's quick to greet guests at the door, all but bouncing on his toes. "Welcome! It's good to see you!"

4. night

He should have expected sleeping in a new place to be hard.

The Oak and Iron hadn't been so different from the Serena Eterna, which itself hadn't been so different from the Garreg Mach dormitories, which had been close enough to Fhirdiad Castle to feel familiar. A house is different -- even with three people to share it with, it's nothing like the quarters Dimitri's used to, whole communities in their own right. Wooden walls feel flimsy and insecure, the surroundings at once too loud and too quiet, ringing with the cries of night-beasts rather than human activity.

So he can't sleep. So he says he wants to take a last look around the premises -- which he does -- and instead finds himself pacing circuit, after circuit, after circuit around the house, twitching at every creak and rustle from the woods.

wildcard

HMU here or

bird1312 on Discord!

"It's good to see you as well, Dimitri."

She smiles, having drawn further into the house, looking around at the results of all their work. A feat and an accomplishment, really staking their claim on this place enough to say this is ours, pouring dedication into it. Much more involved than re-papering a few walls.

"I wouldn't have dared miss this, not after you were kind enough to extend an invitation. Thanks again for it."

"Of course! You're a friend. You're always welcome here."

Dimitri would only admit it under duress, but it feels right to have a place that's meaningfully his. Whether it's nature or nurture, his upbringing or generations of Blaiddyds chosen for their devotion to place and people, inviting friends across his threshold soothes something that's been restless and lost. It's not his home, but it is a home, and it's his.

"How have you been? You work at the town hall, yes?"

"Still do, yes. I've been well - busy, since we're still cleaning up some after the floods, but well enough. Going to the festival and having fun there as well. Did you get to attend?"

The more she talks, the more she can see that this rests well on Dimitri's shoulders. Being here, being the host. He's got more of the shadow of the ship off of him.

Dimitri wears it well; like the proverbial centipede, it comes naturally, so long as he doesn't think to be self-conscious about it.

"I did! I mostly remained on the outskirts, but it was good to be amongst people without some catastrophe happening." Dimitri wrinkles his nose. "Though I spent the whole time dreading it."

"Dimitri you're starting to turn into a tomato!"

Ruby's out doing what she can to tame the garden, getting plenty of sun herself, but between her Aura and the kind of skin that tans before it burns the only effect is that she's a shade darker than usual.

Still, she rests a hand on her hip and says, "Maybe we should both be taking a break in the shade..."

Dimitri frowns. "A tomato?" He's been working in the heat, but surely he's not that flushed? "I'm alright for now -- I have to finish moving this load, regardless." He shrugs one shoulder, shifting the collection of boards slung across his back.

"Yes, a tomato! You're not all the way there but you're going to be if you're not careful." With mock sage tone and nodding: "I spent months on the road with a pale blonde and ginger, I know the signs."

But still, she shakes her head and lets her hand drop to just gesture loosely. "Finish with that one then at least come sit down long enough to have some water?"

Dimitri scrunches his nose -- he's fine, really, he's hit his stride and doesn't want to interrupt it -- but Ruby's clearly willing to argue the point. Dimitri sighs. "Al-right, in a moment." (It comes out whinier than he meant it to.)

'A moment' is more like 'ten minutes', which quickly becomes 'half an hour'. Dimitri would never admit to stalling, but he deposits his stack of fence posts, and then because they're fence posts they need holes dug, and making sure they're aligned upright and sturdy enough to hold the cross-braces without wobbling is its own complicated affair, and there's always some new thing to be done. Eventually, though, he's shooed away from the work again, and makes his way back to Ruby.

"I think Darcy made lemonade," he says, inclining his head towards the porch.

The stalling isn't exactly a surprise—if any of them have ever been any good at slowing down, well, she's never seen the evidence. She finishes up what she was doing with the overgrown plant life and then has to play a game of 'find your Budew that looks like a plant in the garden' before, finally, Dimitri is convinced to stop for a bit.

"Ooh, lemonade does sound good..." she says as she heads toward the porch steps, glancing back to make sure he is coming. When she's ahead of him, Budew is visible sleeping in her hood. "Should help keep us going. I shouldn't be surprised by how much work this is, but..."

She shrugs a little. The closest she's ever done to moving house before was reorganising her dorm room after moving to Beacon.

Budew is adorable.

Dimitri rolls his shoulders and stretches out his arms, fingers laced in front of him. "I might actually be sore tonight. It's not at all like training for combat."

The shade doesn't cool him off the way it ought to when they step onto the porch. Dimitri may be more sunburnt than he'd thought.

Ruby isn't the kind of girl to say 'I told you so' without much better reason, but she does make a mental note that they need to find out what this era does for sun protection and salve.

"Right? It's like using whole new muscles. Except it's actually all the same muscles but in different ways and harder." She takes her hair down and re-does it quickly, fixing strands that had fallen loose over the course of the day. "It'll be worth it, though."

"It will," Dimitri agrees. "It's good to do work building something for a change."

Alas, Dimitri's hair is still in the mid-length stage where it flops about to the bottom of his nose, but remains too short to tie back. For the moment he's become a hedgehog of hairpins, one of which pops off as he reflexively reaches to scratch his temple. He wrinkles his nose down at it.

"Perhaps I should invest in a hat."

"We have got a lot of summer left. It's probably a worthwhile investment. We're outside a lot here."

Alright now where's that lemonade...

"I'm still—" a beat, she chews at her lip for a moment before continuing. "I don't think this has fully settled in yet. The house thing."

There's a folding table set up near a pair of lightweight chairs, with a small collection of glasses and a ceramic pitcher of lemonade sweating in the afternoon heat. Dimitri pours two glasses gingerly, supporting the pitcher with his free hand, and offers one to Ruby.

"I'm not sure it has for me either," he muses. "I'm not sure it will until I've slept here. Right now it feels like another construction project." He frowns into the middle distance. It came up at the Never-Have-I-Ever, and it's been on his mind throughout the process. "I've never lived in an actual house before."

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Eventually Darcy gets up to join him. By contrast, the sounds outside are also too loud and too quiet, but in a different way- no cars, no revelry, no distant sound of trains. He doesn't know what half the noises outside are caused by, and that's not a good feeling.

Downstairs, with their coat thrown over his shoulders (they still need to look into a fucking dressing gown), he rubs his face and gestures towards the kitchen.

"I'm making tea."

Dimitri freezes, staring at Darcy's lamplit silhouette. His eyes shine red out of the black. For a moment, he's a beast, a wild thing of the dark woods, skulking at the edges of the firelight.

The moment breaks. The line of his shoulders buckles. He rubs his face, and drags himself up the steps of the porch (there's a grouchy croak from underneath). "Thank you," he rasps.

Yeah yeah, his brother the feral cryptid. The wood stove is still going, burning low but still on as Darcy retrieves the things to make tea.

Quietly, "Claude brought us some chamomile. It's meant to help you sleep, I think."

Faerghus favors stone hearths over metal stoves, Fódlan not yet having industrialized iron production. After two years on the Serena Eterna, though, it's strange and familiar to once more be staving off cold nights with simple fuel and radiant heat. An alien relief, to once again know how their shelter is warmed, and the limits of its fuel.

"Chamomile," Dimitri echoes in the same hush. He settles into one of their armchairs, and pulls his legs up with no regard for decorum. "It's my favorite. I wonder how he knew."

There's no doubt in Dimitri's mind that Claude did know, and the choice was deliberate.

"He seems really observant," Darcy notes. In the dim candlelight of the kitchen, steam from the kettle billows visibly, and Darcy sets about preparing their cups.

"If you're still not up to sleeping after this, do you want to go spar out in the field or something?"

"Please." Dimitri hesitates. "Actually ... I thought I might begin making plans for the garden, if you'd be interested in helping?"

Darcy visibly winces at the idea of dirt, but it's Dimitri and they do kind of need to get the farm up and running. So much of the last two years has been doing things they don't want to do for the sake of others.

"Sure. Do we have gloves yet?"

If he touches a worm with bare hands he's going back in the house and not leaving until they re-invent concrete.

"You're fine with blood, but not dirt?" Dimitri asks, mostly teasing. "The gloves we used for construction should serve, but I was thinking of drafting more than labor. It's too dark to begin hauling rocks even for me."

"If God wanted me to be covered in dirt and not blood then I'd leak dirt every month."

Well, used to, anyway. He nods, passes Dimitri his tea, takes his cup and the candle in either hand.

"Drafting I can do. Just. Don't expect me to know anything," he warns, "you want to grab some of the leftover snacks from the ice box?"

"You -- what?"

Leaking dirt? What on Earth is Darcy talking about. They were just talking about blood, so -- hang on --

"You what? Every month?"

" ... oh."

He's never going to live this down, is he.