Connie Maheswaran (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
conniemaheswaran) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
victory_road2020-04-28 01:46 pm
conniemaheswaran) wrote in victory_road2020-04-28 01:46 pm
There, Right There! - Closed Action
Who: Dirk, Spinel, Connie and Akane
When: 4/21
Where: On the road
What: Party of four for one Pokémon journey, please! It's a classic setup for gags, goofs, and feelings galore, with one problem: Akane and Connie have realized their feelings for one another, and are making it a problem for everyone but the object of their affections. Whoops. Prompts in the log below.
Warnings: Teenage dumbassery, Dirk
When: 4/21
Where: On the road
What: Party of four for one Pokémon journey, please! It's a classic setup for gags, goofs, and feelings galore, with one problem: Akane and Connie have realized their feelings for one another, and are making it a problem for everyone but the object of their affections. Whoops. Prompts in the log below.
Warnings: Teenage dumbassery, Dirk
Spinel goes feral in the woods | ota
And she thought her life was a joke.
Still, when they get to Ilex Forest, there's just so much around her that it overwhelms her senses. Thick trees covered in leaves, Pokemon hiding in the bushes, the noises of dusk coming to life. This... is...
The perfect place to play!!]
Gotta explore, gotta explore... I gotta explore!!
[And she runs to the nearest tree, hugging it as much as her arms can reach, and she starts to climb up.]
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She loved her friend. She really did. Too much. Which was the problem.
If she was going to quash these feelings, she needed space and advice, which she couldn't get while being within earshot of Akane.
That being said, she was hardly expecting Spinel to find the tree she'd been hiding on.]
GAH!
Oh, uh, hi! Spinel!
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[Spinel plops down on a branch.]
Whatcha doing up here? Having fun?
[Obviously Connie must've climbed up here to play and explore too!]
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Uh, haha, yep! Just... enjoying the majesty of nature.
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[Can she joke about that now? Maybe she shouldn't joke about it.]
I think I can see why you humans like Earth so much. These are so fun to climb!
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Yeah. It's, uh... yeah.
[Forgive her for being awkward, she's still somewhat dazed over the whole Akane thing.]
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Something wrong?
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[Connie looks at Spinel and sighs. Screw it, she's a good a semi-confidant as any.
Semi-.]
You know when, back on Earth, you were feeling so many emotions at once that you just wanted to destroy everything?
It's like that, but I don't have the luxury of incredible superweapons and Gem powers. And this place is too pretty to tear up anyways.
OTA
But it's still kind of fucking weird, like he's chaperoning them or something. In a way, maybe he kind of is?
Lol.
No.
He ain't chaperoning shit.
He is, however, perfectly content to sit on a tree stump for a few minutes and half tune out whatever everyone else is doing to put the finishing touches on the bulbous bottom of a cherry red smuppet.
Yes, he is one of those people who puts his needles and thread in his mouth. (Not to mention being a person who sews only very technically not-nsfw paraphernalia in mixed, public, mostly underage company.)
No, he does not take constructive criticism.
Re: OTA
She's wondering if maybe she ought to ask Carly about this instead, but she kind of feels like she's already imposed on Carly enough as it is.
And also, she's not entirely sure this is the best first conversation that didn't revolve around adorable baby unicorns to have with a person, but oh well.
"Um, Mr Dirk?" Was that too formal? But she doesn't really know him. "Can I talk to you about things? Connie things?"
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After a short but noticeable lag, he finds his words.
"Holy shit. Never call me that again."
....maybe don't start asking your favour by burning the person's mental capacity to the ground and salting the scorched earth.
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All she did was call him 'Dirk-san' while using respectful speech--she's honestly not entirely sure why he reacted like that. Dirk's-- kind of weird. But he's important to Connie and he's definitely a better person to talk to about Connie than Spinel so she tries again.
"... Bro?"
Maybe it was the polite language he didn't want. So she'll just-- call him something respectful but not particularly polite. Aniki works.
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"Is there something wrong with 'Dirk?'" He tries not to sound strained, but this is really not a thing he wants to make into a fight. Why does everything have to be a federal fucking issue. Why is this happening right now.
Oh, fuck. It hits him again at the same time he thinks to ask himself where the hell she's getting these terms from, and now he's got two problems instead of one--
"Nevermind. Later."
Five seconds in and this conversation is already a fucking nightmare.
"You wanted to talk. What about Connie?"
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"She really loves Steven Universe, doesn't she?" Akane blurts out finally. "I know it's-- she said it was complicated. But I can tell. And I'm-- I'm engaged. Back home."
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He has some decisions to make, and quickly.
This chick is coming to him as a person. A fellow human being. She has no idea what he knows; her justified belief is that he must know nothing, or next to it. But what he already knows is everything. Everything except from where exactly in canon she hails.
He makes an excuse not to respond for a few seconds by turning the smuppet over in his hands, testing the seams with his short nails--the kind of thing that passes as ruminative.
The most ethical choice, of course, would be to defer the question. It's literally impossible to participate in this conversation without exceeding the bounds of not just personal privacy but personal autonomy.
Frankly, though, he already knows he's not going to do that.
He knows a few things. About life, about love... about the philosophies of happiness. About choice, and the lack thereof--free will, or the absence of it. About chance, and about predetermination.
What kind of friend would he be, he muses, if he did not choose to set Connie up with the available choices to maximise her happiness? Now, if he had a little more power, a little more control... that would be a different matter. But he would never use his voice for something so repulsive, let alone irresponsible. A heart is a big responsibility.
He knows who would, though. She'd love this, she would love to get her teeth into these two, she would just eat them up. But not until she'd finished whipping the whole thing into a spun-sugar fabrication. The kind of candy construct that, when bitten into, contained nothing but sweetness and air, pure and cloying emptiness baiting the sharp throb of dental agony, the taste of regret and a night of painful stomach cramps lurking just a mouthful away.
disgusting, he thinks, and refrains from curling his lip by pretending to be almost finished inspecting his handiwork for those qualities that cannot be discerned by eye alone.
He's not going to do that.
All he's going to do is offer them a little help. That's all.
".... you've got at least two different questions you're asking there. Let's narrow that down. So, do you want to ask me about Connie, or do you want to ask me about you?"
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"I don't know what you mean," she says, nervously. "And-- even if I did, it probably wouldn't matter."
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She's basically from the 1980s, old-fashioned to the extreme. Traditional, in the Japanese way. Kind of sheltered, even.
It's cute. He likes it.
But he has to speak to her on her level, or he's gonna lose her.
"Some shit's just private, or at least best heard outta the mouth of the horse herself. I can say Steven is pretty important to Connie, there's a whole shared history there. But I've also never met him. He's gone, which makes you and Connie one-for-one on missing other halves."
He pauses, letting it hang for a moment.
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"Oh, we're playing a cards face-up kinda game," he says instead, managing to at least pretend like he wants to sound like he didn't anticipate this revelation. "My bad."
--but he can't just play around. This is something that requires actual thought and attention.
Uh.
Ugh. Okay.
"The 'right' thing to do..." He pretends to think about that. He is, technically. He's thinking about how to address the meaninglessness of that question to someone when he can neither know her thoughts nor 'assist' them. He also can't just tell her the truth, and he can't just wrap it up for her in a different package. His options here are very limited.
Fortunately, he has experience with this.
".... is not to tie your own hands before life does it for you, first off. And second, not to handicap yourself permanently for someone who may or may not ever be there for you, and for whom you may never be given the chance to be there for yourself. I hate to say it, but those stories of lovers hanging on over years of waiting and oceans apart? They were miserable and they wasted their stories on something that could never happen."
He pauses, taking a breath.
He... got a little more intense than he meant to at the end.
"Which is all to say, don't worry about people who've been left behind, or who've left you behind."
Another pause, this one a little more difficult for him to break.
"And the people who love you... either they fall in love with the shit you can't see in yourself yet, and it's your job to either learn to see it or else let them down."
Assuming what they see ever existed in the first place. It's entirely possible, he's learned, for a man to fake his entire self, and then it's your fault when it falls apart under the weight of you. But it is your fault, for falling in love with a lie--and thinking you loved the liar.
Or is it?
"... or that's it, actually. Those are your choices."
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So after a very long moment, Akane nods.
"Connie's my best friend," she says, softy. "I mean, I thought she was my best friend. But on the roof, talking together, I looked into her eye and I wanted-- I wanted to kiss her."
She looks down, well aware of how her cheeks are heating up. It's scary to tell someone about this. Especially a near-stranger like Dirk. But then, everyone's almost a stranger here and Dirk's proved himself. He's-- sensible, like Doctor Tofu, only without any stupid crushes on anyone's ends to make things complicated.
"So-- I kinda leapt away from her."
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Dirk does not say 'wow,' and he absolutely does not wear 'wow' on his face to any degree. But he thinks 'wow,' and if it's possible for 'wow' to be an emotion, he feels it.
There's something manifestly weird (if not a little revolting) about hearing a teenage girl describe what he felt standing next to Jake English in person for the first time in their respective lives. And the hours that followed. He decides, in this moment, two things.
One: he hates the way he still remembers that feeling.
Two: he absolutely needs to help this poor fucking anime girl before she fucking hurts herself on it.
"Okay. Don't do that. That's step one." And then, in case he wasn't being clear enough, he continues. "You have to be strong."
He manages not to do the thing with his voice where the word STRONG is somehow capitalised even though he's not getting any louder, and it takes so much effort.
"Did she notice? Say anything?"
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Akane's tone of utter disgust is possibly nostalgic to Dirk, considering how many times he'd have heard it watching Ranma episodes.
"So. We had to move rooms. And Connie said she'd sleep on the floor and I said I'd sleep on the floor and then we agreed that I'd sleep below the topsheet and Connie would sleep above it. And, well, that's what we did."
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"Clearing. Now. I need to blow off some steam."
Connie is clearly irritated about something... although thankfully her ire doesn't seem to be directed at Dirk. At the moment.
He'll find the smuppet later. Maybe.
His kinesthesis, though--
Muscle memory does have some drawbacks, as demonstrated by the smuppet's fate: 'swiped' through the air at nearly the upper limit of human speeds, there's no sylladex for it to go into, so it's launched sideways into the forest. A bright, soft cherry red missile sailing into the brush.
He does catch the sword, though. His calloused hand closes confidently around the hilt, his grip like steel.
And he frowns, his heavy brows meeting over his shades. But he doesn't say anything. He stands, levelling the blade with one hand, and nods once.
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Halfway through the bout, before either side can truly secure an advantage, she groans, throws down her sword, and flops onto her back. "This isn't working," she grumbles, apparently dissatisfied.