psychoshenanigans | Skeleton City // PSL

This part of the city is not especially quiet, especially during the middle of the day... but Vincent lives on the sixth floor of an old building with boarded-up windows, so the sounds are more of an amalgam of echoes and white noise by the time any of it makes it into the room.

Like waves on a beach. Live there long enough, and you won't even notice anymore.

The two of them sleep peacefully and uneventfully in this metaphorical ocean, until suddenly brought back to waking by a gruff voice, "--What the fuck."

If Phalanx can wake up that quickly, they'll also feel a shift in the bed next to them as Robin gets excited. "Vince...! You'll never believe what I found..."

Waves of nonsense noise against the soft beach sand describes how Phalanx receives many sounds, so the ambiance here is downright soothing. The spirits are in a deep state of rest by the time that a commotion finally drums up around them.

It's confusing, at first. If ghosts can dream, it apparently takes them longer to pull out of it than might be expected. The first words are mumbled and caught by blankets. Then, as Robin shifts around, Phalanx follows suit, moving enough that they can speak out from underneath their hood.

"--No, put it back."

The thing that made the second voice seems surprised (but not that surprised) when something speaks from the inside of the blankets.

"Please don't tell me it's a prostitute," the (probably a) man says.

"No, no. Don't be ridiculous..." Robin does not seem phased, scooting over close to the bundle of Phalanx and starting to dig into the pile with a hand, maybe just searching for any part of it that isn't made of blankets, "You know how I found the noble girl?"

"Yeah," he replies, flatly.

"And that assassin?"

"Yeah," he replies, flatter.

"And the one with the spikes?"

"Yeah," he replies, irritable, "Don't tell me that this is just what you do now."

"Well, I thought I was done, and then I found someone very interesting getting into trouble in the marketplace..."

As he says this, he finally pulls the blankets apart enough to at least expose some of his new friend's face to the open air, as if to show whoever has come into the room.

Voices are pleasantly bouncing back and forth outside of the blankets, and by the mumbles that follow each round like a sleepy echo, Phalanx is also taking part in the conversation. At least, they think they are.

It isn't until Robin fishes in and finds a hand, then peels back Phalanx's hood and protective layers of blankets to let the light in, that they truly begin to join the conscious realm.

"--the marketplace. Marketplace... I was shopping," Phalanx says as their strange eyes squint and blink at nothing, pretending to be more awake than they really are.

"Oh," the man says, before very suddenly saying nothing.

It seemed like he was going to, like he'd just gotten an idea or come to a realization, but now he stands quietly, a very tall stranger who only fits in the room because this apartment, this building, this whole city block is just the petrified remains of a much older time, when people were generally taller and some things weren't made out of stone.

But truly, this man is broad and towering like no one they have seen down in the Underground yet. He's got brown hair like Phalanx had, a few hours ago, but it's scruffier and falls over his eyes. His gaze is not directed at the stranger, or at Robin, but rather at some undefined point up near the corner of a boarded-up window.

Robin continues chattering like nothing happened, and like Vincent hasn't started smelling the air in the room as if there were something in particular he was trying to pick up on.

"They're special. Really talented. And listen, I'm going to set them up somewhere downstairs, but until then, they'll need a place to stay..."

"Not here," Vincent interjects, quickly turning his focus back on Robin, "Forget it."

"Aw, Vince...!"

Robin is cut short by the man extending an absurdly long arm, grabbing the front of the man's shirt, and dragging him over to hold him up until his pretty heeled shoes are hanging a good foot away from the ground. It looks effortless, he doesn't even turn his head to look as he says: "Don't fucking start. Get out of my Gods-damned room."

Robin giggles a little, wiggling his feet. He can't help the spread of a shit-eating grin. "Vince, listen..."

"Get out of my fucking bed," Vincent's indignation doubles as it finally occurs to him just how invasive this is, "What the fuck is wrong with--"

"Vince."

And then Robin starts whispering something, and Vincent--though irritable--drags his friend over to be closer to his ear. For a moment, it seems like the two of them have almost forgotten that Phalanx is even there.

Phalanx's body flattening down against the bed like a startled animal is what gets the creature to really wake up. That big arm swooping in to drag their new friend away definitely does the trick. They stay quiet and still, like they could maybe become invisible right there in the middle of the bed, having no idea that the effort is not exactly needed...

And the fact that there are mixed signals coming from the two men's words and voices and body-language does nothing to reassure Phalanx that they aren't actually in trouble. When the tall man (the giant man) says to get out of his bed, Phalanx starts to scoot slowly backward, toward the opposite edge of the mattress.

"Sorry... sorry..."

At the tail end of his whispering, Robin trails off, his eyes catching and following the cowering creature... Though his flickering smirk grows steady as he continues hanging, his arms slack and his tone close to mocking.

"Oh, look. You've gone and scared him, Vincent."

Lifting his head just the slightest amount, his expression turns to surprise. "No, I..." The rest of his sentence gets caught, he wrestles with something, a lot quieter now, "But I can't just..."

Whatever it is he can't do, it doesn't seem to matter much--because his shoulders slowly sink, and Robin gets lowered to the floor along with them.

Vincent finally talks awkwardly at Phalanx, raising a hand uselessly, "Hey, I'm sorry, don't--"

Robin, possessing far more people skills, simply rolls his own shoulders and crawls back onto the bed, following until he can put an arm calmly around Phalanx's shoulders.

"It's okay, friend. He's not actually mad."

(Even if a tense sigh from Vincent might suggest otherwise.)

Yeah, Phalanx hears that sigh and is picking up on the differing demeanors between the two men. Unlike many of their other expressions, the current look of caution and skepticism is pretty clear on Phalanx's face, glancing between the other two.

"Are we...?"

And that's as far as the poor confused creature gets before shrugging into the tangle of cloak and blankets they're still caught up in and giving up on words. Usually this is the part where someone kicks them out of the building or calls them names and informs them of what kind of monster they are. So, Phalanx leaves the air open for one of the two men to fill it with whatever is going to happen next.

Vincent still doesn't appear to be really looking at them, though the shape of him continues to shrink. He's still very large, very tall, but he slouches forward and seems to somehow take up less and less space.

Robin, though, he's way ahead of the two of them--grabbing the far side of their head so that he can guide their face closer to him and kiss the top of their head encouragingly.

"No, no, don't worry. You aren't in trouble."

He seems warm and friendly again, the cold smirk gone just like that. Maybe it's that change of tune that makes Vincent finally loose some of that irritation in favor of something quieter, more confused. Robin seems content to keep his tall friend in the background again, further assuring Phalanx:

"You can stay. Isn't that right, Vincent?"

From the other side of the bed, Vincent hesitates... eventually grumbling something about him staying out on the couch.

"Stay?" Phalanx asks sort of in Vincent's direction, before getting a little shy and looking toward the man that he knows a little better. "We can stay?"

"Yes."

And for a moment, Robin's already snug hold of Phalanx turns into something of a hug again. A good, warm feeling--as well as a little bit of a sad feeling--well up in his chest. Vincent, for whatever it's worth, makes a quiet sound in agreement.

The moment is very fast, over in just a second or so, as Robin eases up on his hold of Phalanx and says to the both of his friends, "In fact, I think we should run you a bath."

"...Seriously?" Vincent asks, but Robin acts like the question was a rhetorical one.

And for just that second or so, Phalanx's head reflexively dips toward Robin's shoulder. Just a small, human gesture of relief and gratitude that the creature probably doesn't even notice.

It's over a moment later, of course, as Robin straightens up and surprises the both of them with a sudden, new idea.

The echo is immediate, in a much more delicate version of the giant man's tone.

"--Seriously?"

You know what's more fun than befuddling one person? Befuddling two.

So the echo makes Robin laugh. "Of course. You're filthy."

"...He is?" Asks Vincent, to whom this is apparently new information.

"Absolutely." Robin replies, reaching over to pick up Phalanx's hand as if he could use it as an example. "I think we aught to make him look presentable, don't you?"

By the look on Phalanx's face, this is news to them as well. Blinking at the appendage and spreading their fingers curiously, they seem surprised to see the grubby, long-standing stains.

...Either that, or they're just noticing for the first time that they have hands.

No one really answers Robin, but he isn't the sort to mind. He'll observe Phalanx's own fascination with their hand for just long enough to get another idea, and then he's moving again, suddenly tipping away and rolling whimsically back towards Vincent.

"Heat's out within the hour, probably? Better get in there before it's cold!"

And then Robin is gone. Well, not gone, exactly, because his energy is something of a constant presence even when it is milling around the apartment and making water sounds start to happen in the bathroom. But he leaves Vincent standing near the doorway, half-turned after Robin, looking no less confused than he had this whole conversation.

"But..."

It's still a couple of hours until they shut the grid off. Vincent turns back to the stranger in his bed, with next to no idea what Robin is playing at.

"--Mm," is the little, inarticulate sound of protest as Robin bounces abruptly out of the room to leave the two strangers together. Staring after him, Phalanx can only search sluggishly for words to convey their apprehension, until another sound enters their brain and helps out.

"But..."

Vincent gets another echo in miniature, repeating him with barely a beat between the two.

The echo is a little weird, but Vincent doesn't think much of it. Probably just a coincidence. He's confused, this guy's confused. The whole thing is a little... sudden.

"Uh..." And now that he's alone with what the cat dragged in, the relative silence gives Vincent plenty of room to reach a whole new level of awkward. "Hi, I guess."

But even Vincent is smart enough to know he should probably at least try to make these circumstances a little less awful. He doesn't really know anything about this guy, or his situation, or if Robin said about him was even true (though he does not think Robin was lying, either). He can just tell that they're nervous, something he finds totally and completely fair.

"Sorry," He finally admits, trying to sound genuine even if it is embarrassing, "I, uh, didn't mean to scare you. M'just not used... to people. In here."

Edited 2017-10-06 05:37 (UTC)

Phalanx is never exactly confident in the conversation department, but they usually aren't all that cognizant of this fact either. There are usually more than enough things going on to mull over and be distracted by that their attention is on anything except the words coming out of their own mouth.

But, they're also rarely trapped one-on-one in a situation where conversation is so expected, and almost never with someone who is so sound-oriented. All at once, the poor creature is severely aware that they really should say something here, and it needs to make sense. On whatever unconventional level that Phalanx processes their surroundings, the fact that Vincent is ears-only hasn't been overlooked.

"...We're not used to it either."

And that's the best that they come up with.

"...'Kay."

Truly, off to a riveting start. Something clunks around in the wall as a water heater turns on, but Vincent barely notices. He shifts to start shrugging off a massive case he'd been carrying on his back.

"...So, you... Okay?"

Again, an honest question in an awkward setting--but if this poor guy is just someone that Robin drugged and kidnapped against his will, Vincent wants to at least give him the chance to say that while the aforementioned troublemaker is busy dicking around in the other room.

"Okay. Alright. We're alright... we're... all right. All of us are right."

They're trying. The effort is there in their tone, as they make several attempts to string words together in a way that makes human sense. And as they do so, there's the shuffling sound of the creature moving around on the bed. Scooting across the mattress, maybe getting closer.

Vincent listens as the stranger answers. It does not actually assure him that things are fine, but it does cement the fact that whatever's going on with this person is probably way out of his league of expertise.

"S'that right," he eventually says. He can hear them shuffling closer, but he doesn't actually move his head to look at them. "S'there a lot of you in there?"

That's what Robin told him, anyway. He can't help but sound a little skeptical--but that comes from years and years of living with less-than-healthy people who think all kinds of things about themselves.

"Mhmm," Phalanx answers a little distantly, very matter-of-fact, and they sound much closer this time. They sound very direct. Probably looking the giant man right in the face.

"We're all here."

"Well... That's good."

Weird, and not really what he was asking... But unlike his chatterbox of a partner, Vincent isn't in it for the mind games, or even to gather information. He merely talks as a means to an end, with that end preferably being drinks, or something that will pay him. For now, he would accept this person being a little less skittish.

It seems to be working, a little. He tilts his head, belatedly and intentionally, to point his face towards where he thinks that Phalanx's face must be.

"Wouldn't want 'em wandering around somewhere else, I guess..."

Though, clearly, any confidence he may be gaining in the conversation does nothing to improve his basic communicative skills...

"No, no..." At least Vincent's awkward stab at conversation is met with wholehearted agreement. He might accidentally be speaking right at Phalanx's level. "They don't. We don't."

And, goodness Phalanx sounds pretty close now. By the best guess, they must be propped up on their knees and peering right at Vincent's face, and it's followed by a pause that sounds an awful lot like staring. And a second or two after that comes a little gasp of surprise.

"...Glass!"

Vincent can't see it, but there's a finger pointed alarmingly close to his face.

Vincent talks with kids a lot. Now that he thinks of it, this guy kind of talks like a little kid anyway. And they aren't slurring or anything, so it's probably...

Immediately forgetting what he was thinking, at the sudden gasp. He looks surprised, belatedly leaning back a bit-- "What?"

He's already reflexively reaching up with one of his giant hands, feeling clumsily for what he thinks is a finger being pointed right in his face. The rest of his thoughts follow a beat later, "Oh, you mean... my eyes?"

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