psychoshenanigans | Skeleton City // PSL

Vincent has no way of knowing that there is a mostly-naked inhuman creature being marched through his home, but he can at least hear the dainty slap of wet, bare feet doddering after Robin.

The ghost kid is at least tracking water all through the house.

Water tracking through his house is, unfortunately, the least of Vincent's worries. He grumbles some non-words and goes back to eating his food, resigned to his fate.

Robin brings Phalanx back into the bedroom, depositing him near the bed. Then, he crawls over the mattress towards the dresser. He reaches down for a lower shelf, but he can't open it very far before it runs into the bed; there's just enough room for Robin to stick a hand in, fish around blindly, and pull up a small wad of half-folded shirts.

"Okay... Let's see..."

He pulls up a pair of pants, next, and another pair... Some socks... More shirts... All of which are too large for most humans, let alone Phalanx.

He eventually finds a long-sleeve black shirt, holding it up with a smile.

"Yesss, we'll start here." He gestures with it out in front of him, for Phalanx to take, "Put this one on."

Phalanx can do this. Phalanx both recognizes clothing and enjoys wearing it. There aren't many things in this world that the disorganized bunch of spirits can handle with confidence, but this is one of them.

So, with no hesitation whatsoever, Phalanx takes the article of clothing, finds the largest opening, and sticks a foot in.

Good, he's confident. Robin figured that would be the case. He turns back to the drawer to fish for more clothes, glancing back just long enough--wait, wait, wait wait wait.

"Hey?" he says, surprised and maybe a little appalled. "No? That's not how you do that."

He points in a circular motion. "It's upside-down."

Phalanx stops when admonished, looking back and forth between Robin's gestures and the shirt, full of thought and concern. They're really trying to understand the problem here...

...And when they're pretty sure that they understand what Robin is trying to say, they reach down and flip the shirt ride-side-up. However, one leg is still stepped most of the way into one sleeve, so they're really only succeeding in twisting the shirt up and trapping themselves more thoroughly into it.

Goodness, the look on Phalanx's face is one of someone following instructions that they really can't see the reason behind. What good is this doing?? Phalanx is clearly questioning Robin's sense, here.

"No, that's..." Robin trails off, realizing fairly quickly that his words are falling on deaf ears. Suddenly, the bundle of rags that they had previously been wearing makes a lot more sense. Rather than taking twenty hilarious minutes to try and guide them through the process, Robin just crosses back to Phalanx and takes over for him.

"Here, it goes like this..."

He takes the shirt, tugs if off of Phalanx's leg, and bunches it up to drop the neck-hole over their head and around their shoulders and down their torso like any sane, clothes-wearing person would do.

Maybe Phalanx is suddenly dragged back to memories of being a toddler, being unwillingly wrangled by much bigger, bullying humans. Maybe all of the memories filling Phalanx's head just happen to be from souls who'd never had the experience of wearing civilized clothing.

Whatever the reason, when that shirt shoves down over Phalanx's head, the creature seems to... panic. Just a little bit.

Luckily, said panicking is completely ineffectual, mostly just resulting in a startled gasp and a round of aimless arm-waving and pathetic full-body wriggling.

If Robin has ever wondered what it would be like to try and dress a giant, flopping, half-dead fish, he now has an educated guess.

"Stop, just... hold still..."

Robin used to be good at dressing toddlers, but that was a very, very long time ago. As it is now, he may have put too much stock into thinking that this was the one area he wouldn't have trouble with.

While he's trying to make this whole shirt thing work, Vincent appears in the doorway, blocking what little light was coming in from the room outside.

"What is going on in here?" he asks tiredly, like a parent taking care of two teenagers.

When Vincent's (much more authoritative) voice suddenly speaks up from the doorway, Phalanx immediately freezes in struggling either into or out of the shirt, and turns to glance back toward the giant man.

...Unfortunately, the shirt is still covering most of their head, so they can't really see a whole lot. But at least the wriggling has stopped.

Vincent, who cannot see, does not look back at either of them.

"I was just--" It's funny how much Robin sounds like a kid, all of a sudden, "It's fine, I'm just trying to--"

"Okay, yeah, no," Vincent cuts him off, waving his hand. "Phalanx, what's going on?"

"Mm--!" Phalanx had not been expecting to be called upon, and their voice is just a little muffled from the shirt partially in the way. They try to wiggle their arms through the sleeves, or something less awkward than this, but with the way one arm is somehow folded up in one of the sleeves, it doesn't work very well.

"It's... it's upside-down."

"Was upside-down," Robin corrects, rolling his eyes. The absurdity of the situation is finally starting to sink into his adult brain. "Tried to put a shirt on leg-first, this one."

And then he laughs a little, because it suddenly also hits him how dumb it looked--and Vincent drops his head with a world-weary sigh, and whatever tension may have been building in the room evaporates as the giant man scratches the back of his head and tries to decide if something this idiotic is worth getting involved in.

"You fuckin' blockheads..." Is what he grumbles, lifting his head to speak into the room again, "Well, do you need a hand, or what?"

"Hand. Hand, hands... hands..!" Phalanx helpfully answers, as the pitiful struggles begin again.

Whatever they're currently feeling probably isn't a clear emotion with a single name. A little bit of frantic, a bit of resignation, a dash of annoyance, and a touch of claustrophobia. Probably some embarrassment in there too, wherever more advanced emotions sometimes appear.

"Haaaands..."

Robin's small chuckle dies down into little more than a raised eyebrow while Phalanx starts spinning their many, many wheels. He almost raises a hand and an offer to help, but Vincent (who was not laughing and does not find any of this particularly funny) is already two steps ahead of him--almost literally.

The giant man takes a small step into the room before crouching down in front of Phalanx, his knees protesting with little popping sounds. He keeps his head down as as he reaches up, feels around for Phalanx's arms, and very patiently starts guiding a wriggling limb through a sleeve.

"Hey, now..." Vincent explains in a surprisingly quiet, sensible voice, "The sooner you put your clothes on, the sooner we can go do something else."

Some combination of Vincent's demeanor and his sheer size probably speaks right to whatever pieces of Phalanx still carry the memories of children, because the pile of ghosts calm down just long enough to be wrangled through shirt sleeves.

They're fussy but quiet while the large man pulls and loosens a sleeve off of their arm, they finally unfold the thing, and then finally go flailing and flapping into the sleeve the right way.

With one half of the shirt figured out, the rest won't be so difficult, either.

Unlike Robin, Vincent spends a lot of time with children. This one may be tall and made of dozens of ghosts or something, but he knows the sound of a little one winding up into a meltdown. Robin probably means well, but he's being an impulsive dipshit about the shirt. And about everything in the last hour, really. It's one thing to be a freak around rational adults, but that kind of shit won't do anything to help a kid.

"There y'go," a soft confirmation when he can feel their wrist at end of the sleeve, "And the other one..."

Which is much easier; Vincent's blind grabbing is even more informed as he finds and tugs a half-crumpled sleeve back into its tube shape. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he still can't believe he's even doing this, even humoring that this thing is in his house--but he's never been one to hold genuine ill will towards anyone who seems like they're just having a hard time.

Robin has been watching, of course, his arms crossed over his chest. He isn't sure if he's jealous, entertained, or even charmed. This is what he wanted out of bringing Phalanx here in the first place, after all, and Vincent has always had a natural knack with people that Robin just can't seem to duplicate.

Once there are two arms in two sleeves, Vincent leans back from where he is still crouched in front of Phalanx. He aims his face upward, but misses "eye contact" by a good half a foot.

"There's hands," he says, "Does Robin have anything else for you?"

"Yeah," Robin finally rejoins, picking up some socks and, with another second of consideration, leaning down to pluck up a wadded-up knit blanket from halfway under the bed. He hands them generally in the direction of Phalanx and Vincent. "They can just wrap up in this."

He does not give directions for the socks, but at this point, he maybe just wants to see what will happen if Phalanx is given socks without guidance.

What does Phalanx do with socks? Absolutely nothing when a blanket is the other available option. Those socks are either picked up and then dropped, or ignored altogether. Either way, Vincent is going to have to figure it out himself. Greedy, grubby fingers go reaching out after the blanket as soon as its held out.

With some well-practiced swaddling, Phalanx quickly becomes a ghost-cocoon.

Vincent had instinctively reached out for the socks, but when nothing falls in his hands (but rather falls on the floor), he blinks out of habit and sighs quietly to himself instead.

"Okay."

Robin watches Phalanx wrap himself up, remembering their positive response to the blankets he'd bundled them in earlier that day... His earlier thoughts of putting them in pants are quickly cast aside in favor of keeping them warm and semi-appropriate, should company come knocking.

Vincent scratches his head, still kneeling on the floor. "...So're we good here?"

"Good," Phalanx affirms. "Good-good."

Looking like exactly one half of a respectable person, Phalanx seems satisfied with this whole dressing endeavor and is ready to move on to whatever is going to happen next.

--Or, actually, they need to stop and suddenly stoop down to pick up the socks first. After those are wadded up and disappear with Phalanx's hands back into the blanket, then they're ready to move on.

Somehow, Robin is still surprised to see the socks get absorbed into Phalanx's blanketed mass. What are they doing, holding them? Did they stash them up by their shoulders? Will one of them fall out of the bundle later, halfway between the bedroom and the door?

But, much like his compromise with their clothes, he's willing to let this one slide if it'll keep everyone happy with their current lots in life.

"Great," Vincent finally agrees, climbing back to his feet with a grunt. As he leaves, his voice trails behind him, "Come eat, we'll talk about... stuff."

Robin perks up at the mention of food (or maybe the mention of negotiation, it's hard to tell) and sidles back up to Phalanx's side.

"Have you ever had the stir-fry down here? It's good." He puts an arm around their shoulders, guiding the blanketed creature back through the door to follow Vincent's very short walk to the kitchen.

Vincent says a thing, Robin answers back, the three of them all start moving... and Phalanx's only response to the whole thing is following happily along with the pack. Because it maybe doesn't dawn on them that some of those words were actually meant for them and not just being exchanged between the two normal people in the room.

Vincent has done a minimal job of making some room at the low table for more than just himself. There are a few containers of greasy-smelling things all open in the middle, and Vincent is quick to sit back down in an old, creaky chair and pile some more sauce-glazed nuggets of something onto a plate with a fork.

When Robin gets only silence, he asks again, "Phalanx, that question was for you. Have you eaten this kind of stuff before?"

His eyes are on Phalanx for an answer, even as he reaches out towards a stack of plates on the table. Other things on the table include beer cans, stained mugs, reference books, and a dusty vase that holds scrolls of parchment rather than flowers.

Oh! There's a sound of surprise as Phalanx catches up, looking between Robin's face and the mysterious meal laid out before them.

"Maybe..." The word trails out as Phalanx hugs their shroud closer so it doesn't touch anything on the table, and leans to peer into the open containers.

"...Did you make it? In a kitchen?"

All of the food in the cartons look edible, at the very least. The little mounds that Vincent has taken are the best color (a shiny, orange-brown) despite their unflattering shape. There's a mix of soft grains and pale-looking vegetables in another. The biggest container holds the soup that Vincent was eating earlier, filled with noodles and thin strands of something stringy. There's a box of thin crackers, dried strips of fish, even a shallow box that inexplicably appears to be filled with a solid loaf of cooked egg.

"Someone else made it in their kitchen," Robin explains, the corner of his mouth quirked up at the funny question, "We just brought it home."

"Ingram kept trying to give me extra 'cause of that job we did for her last week," Vincent adds, stabbing one of his glazed nuggets with his fork, "So uh, help yourself, I guess. Not a lot of room in the fridge for leftovers anyway."

Sitting down would make sense. Scooping portions of food onto a plate would make sense.

Carefully picking a cracker out of the box with bare, still-stained fingers and delicately snapping it in half is what Phalanx decides to do instead. Just... standing next to the table, breaking a cracker apart to inspect the texture.

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