smash_logs | All the stars were fallen embers

Entry tags:

All the stars were fallen embers

Who: Saurs.
What: Night time rendezvous
Where: Here and there.
When: 11/23 ~~get out~~
Warnings: That's gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

Bulba wasn't worried.

…

Ha.

Ha ha ha no of course Bulba was worried, don't be silly. He'd been worried since the ~~really vague~~ moment he had held Green in his arms again, looking worse for wear and mumbling things about things. He'd never felt more torn in that moment, between wanting to usher his trainer somewhere warm and safe and wanting to grab the Venusaur's hand to drag him with them so he could watch over them both.

In the end, he'd taken Green under wing on his own, much to Vinnie's apparent relief. But even as the Ivysaur tended to the gym leader and kept an eye on his wounds, his thoughts would stray back to Vinnie.

Over the next few days, he'd try to check in on him but his concerns were generally met with brusque replies as they were shrugged off. On more than one occasion Bulba had grumbled about what a bullheaded idiot he was.

But he'd noticed the dark rings that were slowly starting to appear under his eyes. How frazzled he looked sometimes. All the little things were adding up to be someone that was not getting a lot of sleep. Bulba could only imagine why.

So that night, once he was sure Green was all right for the evening, the Ivysaur slipped out of the RA dorms with a blanket tucked over one arm and a small flashlight in his pocket.

One, two, three quiet knocks on Vinnie's door.

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No one answered. Not a single sound could be heard.

~~"Motherfucker," spat Bulba at the door.~~

"Augh," groaned Bulba at the door instead.

Vinnie was not in.

Where the hell was Vinnie.

The Ivysaur backtracked to the common room, in case the Venusaur was toiling away his restless hours on a video game. Only quiet darkness greeted him there, and Bulba walked off with a slight shiver. Briefly, he entertained the possibility that he would have gone to one of his team mate's rooms, but he had to bite back a dry laugh. Bullheaded idiot, remember. The chances of Vinnie actually seeking anyone out were exceedingly low. But then where had he gone?

Well if he followed his nose... Outside? But it was far too chilly out at this time of year to make sleeping outside very good, even if he was fond of his snowy mountain top.

Unless.

Taking a chance, Bulba wrapped his blanket up around himself and flicked his flashlight on. Through the cold night air he trekked until he reached his destination, quietly slipping through the glass doors. The warmth of the greenhouse touched his face and he shut the door, holding the flashlight close to himself.

Well, the hunch proved fruitful - there was definitely the smell of Venusaur in the air, though it was probably hard to pick him out from a distance with such little light. Somewhere in the back of the greenhouse, a familiar looking flower with a thick, weathered trunk and unbalanced leaves moved slowly, up and down, to a slumbering rhythm.

A blanket and pillow lay to the side in a messy heap, completely unused. Most likely it had been Vinnie's intention to sleep in human form, but opted out when met with some obvious frustration. He formed a rather large and warty loaf instead, uncharacteristically tucking his legs away and out of view.

Every so often, his ears flicked nervously. There was a tension in his face that couldn't be soothed by sleep, something in his dreams. A pity no drug tripping Abras were around to open up those worlds - as it was, Bulba could only speculate.

Thank goodness. He was glad that he did not have to go back out bumbling in the dark, where it was cold. He could just bumble about in here, mixed up between jittering around and feeling super silly about it because this was a place he came to everyday. In the daytime. When he knew which plant was which shadow and that the shadows really were just shadows.

He ignored them, focusing on where the beam of light touched. When he located the Venusaur he dipped it down, not wanting to disturb him more than he already was. Bulba's brows furrowed as he watched him sleep for a moment. He couldn't begin to even guess what might have been going on in these particular dreams. Not accurately. Not that he'd really want to. In the end, it didn't really matter what they might have been. The part that mattered was that it was something that drove him away someplace lonesome and kept him in its clutches even there.

Silently, Bulba took a seat besides him. There was great care taken to not touch him just yet-- he wasn't sure just how lightly Vinnie was sleeping, or how kindly he'd take to having his attempts at sleep interrupted. There was a light poof, and the boy was only an Ivysaur curling up into a similar loaf. With his flashlight pointed up at his side towards the roof and his blanket loosely nested around him, Bulba laid his head down and watched the Venusaur's face.

The addition of his own scent to the air was soft at first, but it steadily grew as he put in the effort to try and offer any sense of soothing to his slumbers.

As Bulba approached, the Venusaur's ears flicked nervously at the minute sound. He was a light sleeper as a rule, but either he was simply too exhausted to fully wake, or he was able to brush off the noise as part of the ambience out here, where there was only a thin pane of glass to keep out the night. When it was clear that this lapse in silence did him no harm, his ears returned to its flattened position along Vinnie's head.

Even with the Pokemon's thick skin, the swollen bruise of impact against his face was visible on his snout, giving away the damage underneath. His brows wouldn't unfurrow, and occasionally there would be a twitch in his jaw, a stiffening as though the muscles there were ready to clench teeth - but without the full motor controls to do so.

A hitch would sometimes interrupt the tempo of his breathing, but they were growing less frequent the longer Bulba remained. Slowly but surely, it was evening out. It was enough to perhaps reassure the younger Saur that he was doing something for him - that this made a difference.

Sleepily, Vinnie flared his nostrils with a soft huff, though even this smallest of sounds seemed to echo in the greenhouse air. Who knows what it meant - but it could've been interpreted as begrudgingly content.

Edited 2012-12-07 08:24 (UTC)

The shiny grass type wasn't sure if he could really take that to mean any sort of content or not, but it was a nice thought. It all did seem to have some sort of positive effect though, no matter how small or slow it might have been in making. The fact that his scent seemed to be doing anything at all was enough to keep him there, diligently monitoring the small changes in Vinnie's overall demeanor. At least until his own eyes began to grow heavy and it became harder and harder to keep them open.

Though that was before the small beam of light besides him sputtered out into nothing.

Vinnie disappeared in the dark, as did everything else that Bulba had been able to see before. The Ivysaur tensed. Nnnnooo oh no. He had not expected those batteries to go so quickly (or maybe he had just been out there for that long), and had not brought any spares. Everything was draped in darkness.

A seed of panic stirred within him, and Bulba made a very quiet whine in the back of his throat.

It shouldn't have been so bad. He wasn't alone... but the other party didn't even know he was there. That was enough to feel a bit like loneliness in this situation. So he was more or less alone and it was dark. It was so dark, now that his eyes needed to adjust again. Things happened in the dark. Bad ones and scary ones. It held strange things and hid strange people and was just so lonely and...

And slowly but surely, Bulba had been inching himself closer to Vinnie's warty side. Alarmed as he might have been, his scent continued, stronger than before in a bizarre effort to soothe himself too and ease the small whimpers he made.

Closer, and closer... until the Ivysaur's leaves pressed against Vinnie's side. Perhaps a soft sound could be ignored, but something brushing up to touch him was definitely grounds to be alert. His tactile sensitivity was still on edge, prone to sending him on the defensive with the smallest unwanted touch.

With a heavy shudder, the Venusaur jostled himself awake, ready to get to his feet the instant they were needed. With the sleepy haze lingering in his vision, his eyes were taking their sweet time adjusting to the dark. Even then, it would've been difficult to see anything clearly.

In the dark, smell came to him quicker than sight. The scent of Ivysaur was surprisingly strong in the air - like he'd been here for some time - and it snapped Vinnie back to his senses. Alarm faded into bewilderment.

Blinking blearily, he groaned in the general direction of the smaller Saur. "Bulba...?"

"Nnnn, go back to sleep..." was the small, guilty reply from the Venusaur's side.

Despite however bad he felt that he had woken Vinnie up on accident, however, the panic that mixed with a sudden rush of relief at the sound of his name was far greater. He acted on his nervous energy without so much as a thought. One moment it was just his leaves gently brushing Vinnie's side, but in the next he was completely snuggled up against him with another soft whine.

"Sorry for waking you," he continued as if that hadn't just happened.

The Venusaur gave a long, frustrated groan that, translated, may have sounded something like oh my goddd... You know, as if Bulba was the completely crazy one in this scenario.

Instead of ignoring this newfound attachment to his side, Vinnie sluggishly sat up and twisted himself around to better get a look at the Ivysaur. There really wasn't much to see though - it was only after adjusting to the dim light of the moon that he was able to make out the faintest shape in the darkness.

"What're you doing here..." A quiet mumble, but with a slight exasperation to his voice that betrayed how goddamn tired he was.

Bulba's ears flicked slightly, but they went straight back to laying against his head. Maybe this was a stupid idea. He kept his head down, talking softly to his claws.

"You weren't sleeping well," he said. Your secrets were not well kept, Vinnie. "And you never actually say anything to anyone... so..."

There was a tiny shrug that Vinnie could feel.

Still sounding baffled by this logic, Vinnie grumbled, "So you... snuck out here to sleep with me?"

That sentence sounded a bit bad. He was too sleep deprived to notice or care.

For this moment and this moment only, Bulba was thankful for the darkness that hid the burst of warmth that flooded his face.

"Yes," he squeaked.

"You really didn't have to," he muttered back in rely. As selfless as the gesture was, any benefit that might have come from it was pretty much neutralized by the fact that Vinnie's sleep was now soundly disrupted. If huddling up against him was Bulba's idea of being sneaky, then stealth was really not his strong suit.

With a grunt, he laid his head back down, but somehow keeping his eyes closed was a more difficult matter. His beady red eyes stared out blankly, having already memorized the shapes and shadows carved out by the darkness from the last time he tried to conquer sleep. As much as he blinked and tried to clear his mind, there was too much restlessness inside him now. Knowing that Bulba was there, his senses were fixated on this new rhythm offsetting his own. Comparing them, the smaller saur breathed much faster - he could feel the movement of the Ivysaur's body against him.

Seemed a bit too fast for comfortable sleeping, really. If he didn't know any better, he might've thought Bulba was scared by something. This was the greenhouse though - they knew this place like the back of their hands by now. What was there to be scared of?

Bulba had always been a bit jittery in the dark. Just how scared he got came and go with his experiences, but his encounter with a cosmic life destroyer that left everything in darkness had more or less solidified this little fear of his for life. Even so, it wasn't wildly out of control all the time. Usually he had a pretty good grip on it.

Ever since Halloween, however, his jitteriness had been back in full force, though he couldn't tell you why.

So when a renegade branch went a'knockin' against the glass planes of the green house, the Ivysaur bolted straight up and sideways. He landed a good few inches away from Vinnie, drawing in a series of quick breaths.

The noise hadn't scared Vinnie a bit - but Bulba's overblown reaction? That startled the shit out of him. Suddenly on high alert again, he scrambled to his feet in an instant, sputtering and growling, his eyes wide. It took a moment for the shock to subside, replaced by the realization that nothing was happening. There was nothing. It was a branch in a stray breeze.

What the fuck, Bulba.

"What the fuck, Bulba!?" Vinnie hissed the words through his teeth - if being woken up hadn't irritated him, then this definitely did. He clawed the ground with unconcealed agitation, his heart still racing.

Oh. It hadn't been anything at all. Of course it hadn't been anything. Bulba shrank back, shuffling away from Vinnie to sit behind his blanket and look as though he was just part of the fixed flora around them instead of a sometimes quivering saur.

"I'm sorry!" He yelped quietly, sounding every bit as ashamed and frightened as he felt.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I just... mm..."

Bulba there was really no way around this now, c'mon.

"I don't like the dark."

"You don't like the dark?" echoed the Venusaur, sounding a little incredulous. Okay, that weird skinny man on Halloween was fucking terrifying, but that almost a month ago. He didn't expect Bulba to be that traumatized...

But then again, if you had a fear of the dark already, then that'd be pretty bad, huh. His glare softened, suddenly regretting the way he snapped - Bulba had, after all, despite his fears, wandered out here to keep him company. As much as Vinnie wanted to just scold the Ivysaur for being dumb enough for putting himself into such an uncomfortable position, he bit it back. He was still pretty cranky, but at least it was tempered by some tentative appreciation. Besides, it would be pretty hypocritical for him to be derisive about an irrational fear.

Going pop! into human form, he shuffled over to where the younger Grass Type was busy trying to make himself as small as possible. As carefully as he was able, he burritoed up the Ivysaur in the blanket and brought him onto his lap. "Tch... c'mere."

There was just a muted mumble of, "Uh huh" in response to Vinnie's echo as Bulba hid his face behind his claws as best he could.

He felt pretty stupid about this now. This had been a dumb idea and now the Venusaur probably thought any number of things about Bulba the Big Baby. He heard him transform, but he was too afraid to look up at him for fear of what sort of expression might have been waiting for him.

Moving the blanket knocked over the forgotten and temporarily useless flashlight. The small clatter and the scooping were some of the last things Bulba expected, and a tiny, startled, "vy!" made it past his lips.

What. What what what.

He laid motionless in Vinnie's lap for a moment, quietly processing this development as his heart continued to race in his chest for more than one reason now.

"Not that I don't appreciate it, but you're not made for sneakin' around, are you?" he remarked under his breath. It wasn't necessarily a shortcoming, but it certainly differed from what Vinnie spent his teenaged years doing. Bulba's ~~sparkles~~ unique colouring alone pretty much disqualified him from not standing out.

Well, the other saur wasn't moving, so he must have been properly burritoed. Good. As much as it would be poetic justice for the trouble he gave everyone as a Bulbasaur, the last thing Vinnie needed was squirming. With a soundless heft, he took the Ivysaur up in his arms - they were, thankfully, light creatures - and grabbed the wayward pillow with a spare vine as he stood. There was no way either of them were going to fall asleep out here, not Bulba and not Vinnie if he was subjected to more starts like the last one.

"Al'right. You're going back to bed." Convenient excuse to keep being stubborn about receiving help? Yes. He didn't care - no arguments allowed.

Edited 2012-12-08 00:20 (UTC)

He'd been too shocked to move before, but now that he was up in the air and getting excused back to bed, Bulba had to try and squirm a little bit. "It was fine until the batteries died," Bulba said meekly with a wiggle. He really was pretty burritoed up in there.

Another wiggle.

Bulba looked up at him, his brows furrowing. "... But what about you?"

Vinnie held back from mentioning that carrying around a bright stream of light made for even worse sneaking, usually.

He raised a brow at the question, but promptly diverted his gaze away from Bulba's worried expression by keeping his eyes focused on where he was walking. "M'going back to sleep," he grumbled back as though that was the obvious answer, but without conviction, and noticably leaving out the little detail of where.

A second vine pulled open the greenhouse door, and immediately the night air washed over them both. The blanket shielded the Ivysaur from the cold, but fresh goosebumps dotted Vinnie's bare skin as he stepped outside.

He was going to say something about that missing detail, but then came the cold. As wrapped up as he might have been, there was still a rush across his face that made him draw in a slight breath. It did not deter him from the matter at hand though.

More pressing than the missing detail of where he was sleeping was the missing detail of anything keeping the cold off Vinnie. Bulba, of course, could not let that go quietly.

"Vinnie, wait! What are you doing, grab that other blanket first or something...!"

Wiggle wiggle wiggle.

"Vinnie!"

Vinnie grimaced, more for Bulba's nagging than the cold itself, and dryly reminded him, "Ice mountain."

It wasn't really that far to the safe, temperature regulated haven of the school. And Vinnie was totally a man. He could tough it out - though his steps were more brisk, driven by the cold.

If he had the will to nag than you knew Bulba would probably be all right.

He scoffed back at him and wriggled regardless. "I don't think even you would walk around shirtless and barefoot on an ice mountain."

Snort. "S'not clearly as cold here."

It'd be pretty easy to notice if it were. Perpetual blizzards, and all. As of now, the first snowfall of winter had yet to even come.

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All the stars were fallen embers

Toni "the worst ever" Zed

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