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
[ 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.