[ these names come as choso ambles into the lobby proper, looking all the world like a man three sheets to the wind. his pigtails seem all in disarray, with a little cocktail umbrella tucked into one tuft, the other somewhat undone, and his face as cherry-red as a salary-man after a work mixer. ]
[ What a thing to read the second before a gangly, unkempt, red-faced Choso sways in through the sliding double doors. Marcille only sees him in her periphery, but her eyes are rereading that one word over and over again, waiting for it to vanish or become another name somehow. Except it doesn't.
You.
Her????
She hears Choso's voice and slowly turns her head to look at him like a rusted gimbal. Her eyes are wide as saucers, her face is completely red, and her heart feels like it'll beat out of her chest. And there he is, looking like a drunk mess, and he likes her. (And other people too, but still.)
Sorry, but she's not speaking first. She's just staring at him with her mouth open. ]
[ regrettably, choso clocks the expression perfectly, but attributes it to, maybe, a different cocktail. maybe marcille got room service. does room service give mai tais? more piinya cors? ]
Hello, Marsheel. Would you like a cheeshe shtick?
[ he holds out a little container as he meanders closer, weaving in that tightly controlled little way of the sojourning drunkard. one step forward, one step left, two steps forward, another step right, wao.
the smell of tepid mozzarella sticks permeates the lobby air like a flush of pollen. ]
[ OKAY well, she can't let him stagger all over the lounge. The nightlife in Vegas means that the area is flush with people and partygoers who are all looking at the small blonde woman and the bumbling drunk man holding a smelly cheese box. She can't sit there and gawk forever.
Still red-faced, Marcille forces herself to her feet, grabs Choso's upper arm, and presses her hand to the middle of his back to stabilize him. ]
Y-Yeah, um, I am a little hungry!
[ He's more drunk than she thought. She tries to guide him towards the elevator. ]
Let's go eat in your room, okay? Do you have some water there? Maybe some other snacks?
[ thankfully, someone here knows how to behave in massively public spaces, so choso is quite content to pass the reins to smart, unsauced marcille. he is an exemplary drunkard, thanks ever so, amicable and easily-steered so they reach the elevator in record time.
really, the biggest miracle here now is that his blood mark has remained admirably solid and dry. ]
We have sho many.
[ choso seems Proud, glittering at the elevator doors as they slide open. one step in, keep going until wall is found, come to stop with cheek against the mirrored glass. ]
[ Thank god Choso is an easily-steerable drunk, even in a crowd. Having him push his cheek up against a filthy elevator wall is not ideal, but the support helps Marcille free one hand to press the elevator buttons. She remembers their room number from when Yuji woke her up in the middle of the night. (She also briefly wonders if Yuji is in the room at the moment; he could probably help with this.)
Going up. Marcille breathes a sigh of relief, ignoring the whiff of cheese that comes with it. She's honed in on getting Choso to his room, purposely pushing other thoughts away as they creep up on her like a tide, back and forth forever. ]
You really are drinking a lot lately... It's not good for you.
[ She makes the mistake of glancing at his face without thinking. Even if his cheek is still smushed, her cheeks burn and she whips her gaze away immediately.
When the elevator pings and the doors slide open, she takes his arm with both hands and peels him off of the elevator wall with some effort. He's heavy and she's still not that strong. ]
[ at mention of drink, something in choso sort of balls up, like a little fist, and it tastes a little like chagrin just like how it also tastes a little like shame. ]
I have? I can shtop, if you dohn’ like it.
[ he’s earnest, for someone whose face remains smushed, a flicker of fretfulness in his half-lidded eyes as he considers it. is it worrisome? does he make marcille worry when he’s soused? does he make yuji?
thankfully, they hit the right floor before the worry can erupt outward some more.
marcille is as strong as she needs to be: at the slightest tug from her, choso peels himself off the cool glass like a gummy hand, blinking in the sudden light change between smushed-against-reflection and oh-it’s-my-floor as he begins to coordinate his legs through the long motion of walking. it takes some doing, as he must adjust, must shorten his strides for her littler legs, must slow his wheeling pace to match her more sedate gait. ]
Ish jus’ down tha’ hall. Forgive me, Marshle, you are tryingh sho hard.
[ That earnestness is always disarming. As exasperated as Choso makes her, Marcille could never be upset with him for long when his intentions are good. (From what she's seen of him, anyway.)
It's not healthy, she almost says. It makes me worry. You have to take care of yourself and stay alive for as long as you possibly can.
The doors open and they amble along before she can verbalize her feelings.
She's patient, worried more about him dragging along walls or tripping over himself from with weirdly purposeful he is with every step. ]
I've got it. I visited Yuji there once while you were out.
[ When he was having a nightmare..... Anyway, thankfully these doors are similar to the ones on the base, sliding open once the resident comes close to them. She leads him inside. ]
Did you? Thank you, Marshle, tha’sh sho good of you. He likes you.
[ the hallway mutes them, a simple genius of design muffling the sound of their passage; his big-shoed tromping, her easy alto, both compressed and contained ‘til choso, for a wild little moment, wonders if he’d gone deaf for too much rum. the door sliding open a moment later allays it all, and when he steps into the familiar storm of their shared room, choso cannot help but heave a big sigh of relief. it morphs into a hiccup midway.
at the question, he lifts a big paw to point at what seems to be a nest. ]
Tha’ one.
[ though one of the beds seems entirely made up and barely touched, the other is truly a chaotically fluffy nest piled high with sheets and blankets and all the extra whatevers the room provided.
snacks heap in a pile on one of the dressers, like a repository of everything choso and yuji have managed to get their paws on in the duration of this impromptu pseudo-vacation. ]
[ There's that word again. Like. A small and sweetly packaged bomb in her chest. She sees the digitized word in front of her eyes again, only this time she hears it in Choso's voice. You. Likes you. She shouldn't still be thinking so hard about it. Choso is drunk and like could mean so many things. He said that he and Toji were friends. Bakugo took care of him when he was bleeding. At this moment, would Choso know how to separate closeness from having feelings for someone? He wouldn't, right? (It's not like Marcille has any frame of reference herself.)
She's momentarily distracted from her spiral by the dichotomy happening between the two beds. Yuji had the potential to be tidy, but the bed's particular tidiness seems eerie somehow. Odd that Choso keeps crumbs off of his bed when he seems fine with hoarding everything else on top of it. ]
Okay...
[ She walks him to the small set of cozy chairs and the side table that accommodates every standard hotel room. Still avoiding his eye, she turns him until he faces her, his back towards the chair. She stares at their feet, heat irresistibly growing in her cheeks. ]
You can sit here, okay? It's better that you're sitting up anyway. You might get dizzy if you try to lie down.
[ Once Choso sits down, unless he does something else, she'll take his cheese box, set it in the table, and then go to pick out the breadiest snacks and a bottle of water from the pile. ]
[ it strikes choso now like it strikes him every time that she's so close that... Marcille is small. not tiny, not hedgehog-small, but smaller. from this vantage, as she maneuvers him about like a bemused ox, he can see the uniform strands of her hair worked into obedient place, glittering blonde and bright where they fall over and part around the long arc of her ears in shining little strands. it arrests him, her hair, distracts him so that when he notes the flush of her cheeks spreading over her skin, he forgets to mention it, forgets until the moment the back of his knee meets the chair and re-introduces his hind end to the concept of gravity.
having plopped down so heavily in his seat, choso hands over the cheese box with a puzzled sort of grace, as of a man swept up in the dance of ritual without remembering how he got there. ]
I don' wanna lie down anyway. Are you oh-kay, Marscheel?
[ how horrible, the concern is genuine, glimmering unmistakable as a silver fish in a clear pond (of alcohol).
when next marcille steps into the bubble of his reach, choso meets her with an outstretched hand, fingers curled loosely into his palm as if to nudge against her reddening cheek with the backs of his knuckles. ]
[ She doesn't answer that question, too lost in the churn of her thoughts and the rabbiting of her heart. She carries it along with the water bottle and plastic-wrapped pastry in her hands, still avoiding Choso's eyes even as she approaches. She looks up only a foot or two from the chair and staggers backward immediately, narrowly escaping his large, furled hand held out for her cheek.
All of her blood rushes to her face. Her heart beats up into her throat. She looks at Choso's earnest expression, the genuine worry in his droopy eyes. On his head, the paper cocktail umbrella is still sprouting from one pigtail. The other pigtail is even looser after being pushed up against the elevator wall.
A heartstring gets pulled—not for the first time since they've met.
This. Is just like what happens in her (trashy) romance novels.
Someone reaches for the other person's face and says that they look feverish, when on the inside, they're just trying to stifle their feelings. Marcille has done her fair share of daydreaming of these moments, inserting shoujo-like facsimiles of herself with blurry visions of her One True Love. Now it's happening to her in real life. Choso is doing it without even realizing it.
Her head jerks away, her gaze fixing on a corner of the ceiling. ]
I-I'm fine! Why? Do I look sick? I didn't even notice! I feel completely normal!
[ Her voice is wobbly. She thrusts out the water bottle and pastry to him. ]
[ When she ducks away, Choso cannot help but think of the cat colonies back in Tokyo, of the way the calico with the bent ear would slip away with a fluid grace just like Marcille's here now. Thinks of everything the others told to him, so when she whips away and affixes her eyes elsewhere, he bows his head in kind drops his gaze to her hands as he lets his own big paw drop to receive the offerings instead. He holds the pastry like it's made of paper, pinched between two awkward fingers while his other hand envelopes the bottle in time to promptly forget about it, balanced on his knee like a funny little prize. ]
Yhou look red ash a beet. Maybe you need a chhhair, too.
[ It doesn't help that he stares, that even if he's trying not to needle her with the laser focus of his attention, his eyes still dart and flit and look too much, seek too much at any one time. Fascinated with the shade of red that's painting her cheeks, Choso ends up staring right at her again despite himself. ]
[ Being stared at by Choso is like being targeted by a ray of sunlight—Marcille can't meet it directly, but she can feel it beaming onto her cheek, well-meaning if overwhelming. ]
Maybe I shouldn't...
[ Why is she lying. She's not doing anything else here. She finally lowers her head, her gaze darting from his eyes to his pigtails.
He's like a big, bumbling dog. Her instinct to take care of him overwhelms her instinct to run.
She sighs through her nose. ]
I will. Hold on one second...
[ She reaches, presses her fingertips on his head, and uses her other hand to carefully pluck the umbrella from his pigtail. ]
[ in that tiny moment when it seems like marcille might not stay, choso’s expression falls just so; his brows pinch together faintly, the corners of his mouth tugging so slightly downward with his lower lip jutting just a little further out to make a pout of his face. it’s not a lot, but it’s enough to be noticeable when his expression goes and brightens up again only a second later when she huffs and agrees to stay.
a big, bumbling dog indeed.
rather like said dog, the effort it takes him to be Still and Unmoving when her fingers find his head is so immense as to be physically palpable; it’s in the tap of his feet, shoes clunking together while his fingers flutter around his snack and drink; it’s in the way his muscles tense, holding the whole of him in tightly-controlled stillness as he feels the tiny bright umbrella in his pigtail get lifted free of its scruffy prison at last. ]
Yoru and I had some drinksh. Sheveral. Many. A number I cannot recall.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
[ choso fails to Comprehend. ]
toji, bakugo, and you???
[ these names come as choso ambles into the lobby proper, looking all the world like a man three sheets to the wind. his pigtails seem all in disarray, with a little cocktail umbrella tucked into one tuft, the other somewhat undone, and his face as cherry-red as a salary-man after a work mixer. ]
I haff arrived.
no subject
You.
Her????
She hears Choso's voice and slowly turns her head to look at him like a rusted gimbal. Her eyes are wide as saucers, her face is completely red, and her heart feels like it'll beat out of her chest. And there he is, looking like a drunk mess, and he likes her. (And other people too, but still.)
Sorry, but she's not speaking first. She's just staring at him with her mouth open. ]
no subject
Hello, Marsheel. Would you like a cheeshe shtick?
[ he holds out a little container as he meanders closer, weaving in that tightly controlled little way of the sojourning drunkard. one step forward, one step left, two steps forward, another step right, wao.
the smell of tepid mozzarella sticks permeates the lobby air like a flush of pollen. ]
You look hungry.
no subject
Still red-faced, Marcille forces herself to her feet, grabs Choso's upper arm, and presses her hand to the middle of his back to stabilize him. ]
Y-Yeah, um, I am a little hungry!
[ He's more drunk than she thought. She tries to guide him towards the elevator. ]
Let's go eat in your room, okay? Do you have some water there? Maybe some other snacks?
[ Bread? Crackers? Anything? ]
no subject
really, the biggest miracle here now is that his blood mark has remained admirably solid and dry. ]
We have sho many.
[ choso seems Proud, glittering at the elevator doors as they slide open. one step in, keep going until wall is found, come to stop with cheek against the mirrored glass. ]
Sho Yujshi won’t get hungry.
no subject
Going up. Marcille breathes a sigh of relief, ignoring the whiff of cheese that comes with it. She's honed in on getting Choso to his room, purposely pushing other thoughts away as they creep up on her like a tide, back and forth forever. ]
You really are drinking a lot lately... It's not good for you.
[ She makes the mistake of glancing at his face without thinking. Even if his cheek is still smushed, her cheeks burn and she whips her gaze away immediately.
When the elevator pings and the doors slide open, she takes his arm with both hands and peels him off of the elevator wall with some effort. He's heavy and she's still not that strong. ]
C-Come on...
no subject
I have? I can shtop, if you dohn’ like it.
[ he’s earnest, for someone whose face remains smushed, a flicker of fretfulness in his half-lidded eyes as he considers it. is it worrisome? does he make marcille worry when he’s soused? does he make yuji?
thankfully, they hit the right floor before the worry can erupt outward some more.
marcille is as strong as she needs to be: at the slightest tug from her, choso peels himself off the cool glass like a gummy hand, blinking in the sudden light change between smushed-against-reflection and oh-it’s-my-floor as he begins to coordinate his legs through the long motion of walking. it takes some doing, as he must adjust, must shorten his strides for her littler legs, must slow his wheeling pace to match her more sedate gait. ]
Ish jus’ down tha’ hall. Forgive me, Marshle, you are tryingh sho hard.
no subject
It's not healthy, she almost says. It makes me worry. You have to take care of yourself and stay alive for as long as you possibly can.
The doors open and they amble along before she can verbalize her feelings.
She's patient, worried more about him dragging along walls or tripping over himself from with weirdly purposeful he is with every step. ]
I've got it. I visited Yuji there once while you were out.
[ When he was having a nightmare..... Anyway, thankfully these doors are similar to the ones on the base, sliding open once the resident comes close to them. She leads him inside. ]
Which one's your bed?
no subject
[ the hallway mutes them, a simple genius of design muffling the sound of their passage; his big-shoed tromping, her easy alto, both compressed and contained ‘til choso, for a wild little moment, wonders if he’d gone deaf for too much rum. the door sliding open a moment later allays it all, and when he steps into the familiar storm of their shared room, choso cannot help but heave a big sigh of relief. it morphs into a hiccup midway.
at the question, he lifts a big paw to point at what seems to be a nest. ]
Tha’ one.
[ though one of the beds seems entirely made up and barely touched, the other is truly a chaotically fluffy nest piled high with sheets and blankets and all the extra whatevers the room provided.
snacks heap in a pile on one of the dressers, like a repository of everything choso and yuji have managed to get their paws on in the duration of this impromptu pseudo-vacation. ]
No food on bed, tho’, ssshorry.
no subject
She's momentarily distracted from her spiral by the dichotomy happening between the two beds. Yuji had the potential to be tidy, but the bed's particular tidiness seems eerie somehow. Odd that Choso keeps crumbs off of his bed when he seems fine with hoarding everything else on top of it. ]
Okay...
[ She walks him to the small set of cozy chairs and the side table that accommodates every standard hotel room. Still avoiding his eye, she turns him until he faces her, his back towards the chair. She stares at their feet, heat irresistibly growing in her cheeks. ]
You can sit here, okay? It's better that you're sitting up anyway. You might get dizzy if you try to lie down.
[ Once Choso sits down, unless he does something else, she'll take his cheese box, set it in the table, and then go to pick out the breadiest snacks and a bottle of water from the pile. ]
no subject
having plopped down so heavily in his seat, choso hands over the cheese box with a puzzled sort of grace, as of a man swept up in the dance of ritual without remembering how he got there. ]
I don' wanna lie down anyway. Are you oh-kay, Marscheel?
[ how horrible, the concern is genuine, glimmering unmistakable as a silver fish in a clear pond (of alcohol).
when next marcille steps into the bubble of his reach, choso meets her with an outstretched hand, fingers curled loosely into his palm as if to nudge against her reddening cheek with the backs of his knuckles. ]
You're really warm.
no subject
All of her blood rushes to her face. Her heart beats up into her throat. She looks at Choso's earnest expression, the genuine worry in his droopy eyes. On his head, the paper cocktail umbrella is still sprouting from one pigtail. The other pigtail is even looser after being pushed up against the elevator wall.
A heartstring gets pulled—not for the first time since they've met.
This. Is just like what happens in her (trashy) romance novels.
Someone reaches for the other person's face and says that they look feverish, when on the inside, they're just trying to stifle their feelings. Marcille has done her fair share of daydreaming of these moments, inserting shoujo-like facsimiles of herself with blurry visions of her One True Love. Now it's happening to her in real life. Choso is doing it without even realizing it.
Her head jerks away, her gaze fixing on a corner of the ceiling. ]
I-I'm fine! Why? Do I look sick? I didn't even notice! I feel completely normal!
[ Her voice is wobbly. She thrusts out the water bottle and pastry to him. ]
H-Here!
no subject
Yhou look red ash a beet. Maybe you need a chhhair, too.
[ It doesn't help that he stares, that even if he's trying not to needle her with the laser focus of his attention, his eyes still dart and flit and look too much, seek too much at any one time. Fascinated with the shade of red that's painting her cheeks, Choso ends up staring right at her again despite himself. ]
Thank yhou. Join me?
no subject
Maybe I shouldn't...
[ Why is she lying. She's not doing anything else here. She finally lowers her head, her gaze darting from his eyes to his pigtails.
He's like a big, bumbling dog. Her instinct to take care of him overwhelms her instinct to run.
She sighs through her nose. ]
I will. Hold on one second...
[ She reaches, presses her fingertips on his head, and uses her other hand to carefully pluck the umbrella from his pigtail. ]
How did this even get here?
no subject
a big, bumbling dog indeed.
rather like said dog, the effort it takes him to be Still and Unmoving when her fingers find his head is so immense as to be physically palpable; it’s in the tap of his feet, shoes clunking together while his fingers flutter around his snack and drink; it’s in the way his muscles tense, holding the whole of him in tightly-controlled stillness as he feels the tiny bright umbrella in his pigtail get lifted free of its scruffy prison at last. ]
Yoru and I had some drinksh. Sheveral. Many. A number I cannot recall.
no subject
Yoru? I've heard her name before... She's one of the Outsiders here, right?
I guess you weren't technically alone when you were drinking... That makes me feel better, at least.