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

[prince_of_beasts]

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.

[littlefairytale]

"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?"

[prince_of_beasts]

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.

[littlefairytale]

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.

[prince_of_beasts]

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.

[littlefairytale]

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."

[prince_of_beasts]

"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."

[littlefairytale]

"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."

[prince_of_beasts]

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."

[littlefairytale]

"Only like, castles and stuff?" She takes the glass offered and takes a big swig, she really is thirsty from being out in the sun. "This is... actually a lot like my childhood home. We lived in a cabin in a clearing, a little ways from the village. Though the only 'farmland' was a couple planters out front for some vegetables."

[prince_of_beasts]

Dimitri winces. 'Castles' isn't the worst tell -- Fódlan is littered with them -- but it's closer to the truth than he'd like. Then again, he brought it up in the first place.

"Then it was the dormitories at Garreg Mach, and from there I was taken to the Serena Eterna. There was the occasional hunting lodge, but this will be the smallest place I've ever truly lived in."

He mirrors Ruby, taking a smaller sip of lemonade. The cold is nice, but the sour hits his palate like a siege engine; he freezes in place for a long moment, staring at nothing, before he's able to recover his train of thought.

"It sounds like a good home. Tell me more?"

[littlefairytale]

"Oh, yeah. The dorms at Beacon and Atlas Academy were huge." Emphasis on the 'were', really, considering... considering. That's something she needs to not think about. "It was super weird adjusting that way around, too."

For a moment she's quiet, hiding it in her lemonade. She feels as if she's talked about the cabin a lot, lately. Strange, really, when the person she was when she lived there feels so... distant, but...

"It was a nice place. Lots of wood and soft furnishing. Not huge, but... still lots of open space. A nice porch, garden space... me and my sister shared a room, not because we had to, really, there was a spare, but... I liked having her there. Dad slept across the way. It was... it was nice. Homey."

[prince_of_beasts]

"It is comforting to sleep with someone nearby. Dedue and I shared our beds when we were younger for much the same reason."

Ah, but that's a wrench of heartache. One upside to Dimitri's difficulties with taste: he only has to take a sip of lemonade to erase that thought entirely. What were they talking about again? Right.

He huffs, amused. "It sounds like I have the least experience gardening of any of us. You may have to advise me."

[littlefairytale]

It doesn't go missed, that twist of pain, but Ruby doesn't comment. It's a dangerous, dangerous topic when thinking about Eleanor and Penny make her want to... well.

"Heh, I'm not that much better off. My dad and sister did most of the actual gardening. I was the baby of the house so they didn't make me do a lot of chores. But I've done some farm stuff over at Angel's farm so I've picked up a bit?"

[prince_of_beasts]

"Ah, that makes me feel a little better. I've been helping César and Mairi, and they've both agreed to guide me, so I'm not without help. And clearing the land is straightforward enough."

Dimitri sighs. "It may sound ridiculous, but -- I always dreamed of working on a farm. I know," he says, with a twinge of defensive whine, "it's demanding and difficult labor, nothing like the idyll some nobles imagine -- but I'm no stranger to hard labor or dirty work, and I thought ... "

He stares down at his hands, cupped around his glass of lemonade. His gloves cover the scars, but there's a persistent rattle as his tremors jostle the ice against the sides.

"I just thought ... surely my strength could do some good, for once."

[littlefairytale]

Ruby's face softens. "It doesn't sound ridiculous, Dimitri. It's very worthwhile. I've... found it's kind of fulfilling to make the mundane stuff at the forge, too. I do plenty of weapons, but... the tools, the cutlery, so on. Normal stuff."

Things that aren't just pieces of the never ending fight for survival.

[prince_of_beasts]

"Do you do nails, or are there apprentices who handle that? I'm told blacksmithing involves an incomparable number of nails."

[littlefairytale]

"Oh we all have to get in on the nails. The other apprentices definitely have a running joke about them that IIII did not understand for the first... like, couple months." And still barely understands now.