smash_logs | merry merry christmas, and I want you to know

Entry tags:

merry merry christmas, and I want you to know

Who: YOU
What: KISSLETOES
When: December 14th - January 1st
Where: Everywhere
Warnings: Sloppy makeouts.

SUDDENLY, AND WITHOUT WARNING...

title or description

The entire school has become covered in mistletoe overnight. It grows out of the walls! The ceilings! Everywhere you least expect it? HOW CAN THIS BE??

It's probably best not to think about it. Attempts to uproot the plants or burn them away only makes the plants grow back faster. For the time being, it seems the school must live with it.

[OOC INSTRUCTIONS:
+ Post dudes, get kisses!
+ Some (NOT ALL) plants are cursed. If you manage to step under a cursed plant, you will exchange a memory when or if you exchange a kiss. The memories will be first-person and very vivid, and characters will feel like they are experiencing the memory in real time, though in reality the transfer is instantaneous. Memories can be as short, long, happy, sad, or traumatic as you like.
+ If you'd like to participate, we highly suggest making a list of a few memories (with accompanying links/descriptions) that are up for grabs, and linking or posting the list in your top-level comment. Memory exchange is COMPLETELY OPTIONAL. When in doubt, OOC communication!
+ PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE TAG YOUR CHARACTERS
+ That's it, we love you.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Char was, he sorta thought, feeling better. Better was kind of a subjective term, though. Mistletoe season was here yet again, but it was hard to muster up much enthusiasm for it when his month had been going so wretchedly. For the most part, he chose to ignore the little white berries, avoiding them as best he could.

Still, it was pretty much a holiday time bomb just waiting to go off. Passing through the student kitchens on his way to the RA rooms, he got hit. It was hanging right in the doorway -- he really couldn't have avoided it if he tried, to be fair.

Great. Good. Cool. So now what?

Vinnie had been in the kitchen, minding his own business and fixing himself a hot drink. He hadn't spared much notice for whoever was coming or going - until a telltale hitch in an otherwise steady rhythm of footsteps caught his ear. 'Twas the oh-so-seasonal sound of someone getting trapped under a mistletoe.

Mildly curious, the Venusaur turned around to see who the unlucky victim might've been, only to find the plant had not only spontaneously sprouted over the one exit out of the kitchen, but it just had to nab Char of all people as well. If Vinnie ever hoped to actually leave this room... he'd have to go through the Charizard. Only replace the words 'go through' with 'kiss'.

His face fell into a dour mix between incredulity and frustration. "Seriously...?" The question was more directed at, say, the fates more than Char specifically, but it just fell out of his mouth like a disgruntled sigh. He just wanted to go back to his room and drink his tea. That's all he wanted.

Well, the good news was that he wasn't stranded alone. The bad news was that he wasn't stranded alone. Things with Vinnie were still really weird. The word "boyfriend" continued to cast its shadow over everything, and the uncomfortably candid discussion of Aiden definitely hadn't made things relaxed and natural. Add in the unwelcome prospect of having to kiss him, and this was a lovely little bouquet of "god please not today."

Char sort of debated just asking Vinnie to leave him stuck here, but a quick glance around the room made it clear that wouldn't be possible unless Vinnie didn't feel like going anywhere all day. Ah. The good old S.S. Inevitable had clearly laid down its anchor today. Neither of them really relished the idea, but they could both tell that they were at a standstill until they got it out of the way.

"Just get it over with quick," Char grumbled, looking away awkwardly. "I got places to be."

For once, Vinnie had to agree with the Charizard. Neither of them wanted to make a big deal of this. There was really no way out of it, so the whole affair might as well be as quick and painless as possible. Easy, no point in making it more complicated than it needed to be by shoving the clusterfuck of their conflicted emotions into the mix.

With a huff, the Venusaur took a quick swig of his tea - he wanted to at least enjoy it for a second before getting this kiss over with - before briskly walking over and planting a quick peck on Char's cheek. He was fully intending to be on his way the moment the curse was broken, but that brief contact transferred more than he'd intended.

Heartbeat pounding loud like drums in his ears, blood like iron on his tongue. Green's final Pokemon staggers, struggling to stay standing, before they too collapse. It's over. The trainer is breaking - where there was once that cocky pride, determination, the slow death of his dream transforms that joy into disbelief and despair.

Looking up at at Red, still quiet even in victory. His eyes are burning, his breathing fast, but somehow somber. The price of victory was his friend's defeat. He still feels.

Why bother? This whole time, they were nothing but an annoyance. Always an ambush ahead, obsessed with proving their superiority. Self-centered, pointless obstacle. Pain in the ass.

Good riddance. Never have to feel insecure around that dumb Bulbasaur again. Never want to deal with that pissy Charmeleon again. Finished with that whole team of stubborn jerks.

Red looks down at us, and his face softens. He's proud.

It wasn't a one-way transfer, either: just as Char was experiencing that moment through Vinnie's eyes, he was giving back a moment of his own -- one not that far off from the moment of victory that Vinnie remembered.

This is Green's house? First time seeing it. The long journey home from Indigo Plateau is a hazy, half-conscious blur, but he remembers the parts before just fine. The weight of the loss feels crushing. They'd worked so hard. Busted their asses to stay a step ahead. For just a short, short moment, they'd done it, too -- tasted triumph just long enough to have it pulled out from under their feet.

He doesn't know how to fix this. There aren't any more chances to try and get ahead again, are there? He insists that he doesn't really care about needing anyone's validation, but... it really, really stings. The look on Green's face since they lost is physically painful. He knows that outside the house, Pallet's probably alive with excited talk about their golden child, their new Champion.

Char crawls under Green's bed, presses himself against the wall. His flame's small enough that he isn't even burning the underside of the bed -- good. He doesn't want to come out. Back at Indigo? He was still conscious enough for Professor Oak's words to come trickling, muffled but still audible, into his pokeball.

You have forgotten to treat your Pokémon with trust and love, huh?

Fuck that. He doesn't need it. Not like he was getting his hopes up for it. Even so, he hides out of arm's reach, ashamed and anguished. He wants so desperately to be acknowledged that it's maddening, but it's already hopeless, isn't it? Red's team won't look to any of them as a challenge when they're not the ones with the title. There's nothing he can possibly do to make up for this loss. He curls up tighter, bites down on his tail in frustration.

Once the moment passed, Char was left standing there. No longer rooted to the spot by mistletoe, but looking so stricken by the memory Vinnie had unintentionally passed on that he may as well have been slapped instead of kissed. At first, just confusion, then the dimmest little hint of a years-old hurt, and then anger started seeping in, slow-burning, but strong.

Involuntarily, Vinnie staggered backwards a step the instant the memory faded - the moment of contact only been for half a second, but everything still felt painfully real. He couldn't even tell how long it'd been in that stolen fragment of time. That deep, sinking feeling of loneliness was steeped into every minute, stretching them into hours until the days lost all meaning.

Vinnie knew loneliness, but not like this. It wasn't his nature. For him, loneliness was an ailment - a powerful, paralyzing force that had to be fought against. But feeling it from Char's perspective, it went deeper. Rooted deep into the core of him, it longed desperately and feared bitterly at the same time. In the dark, it was hard to even tell where the loneliness ended and Char began.

The worst part of it was... he hadn't been completely wrong, either. For a long time, Vinnie hadn't considered Char to be anything more than a thorn in his side. Call it the ignorance of youth, or chalk it up to the fact that apart from wandering into their lives every few weeks to fight, they never actually got to know each other until they started attending the same school. Besides, the Charizard wasn't exactly open about his feelings. Even against the standard set by his teammates, he was especially secretive.

Which made it all the more wrong that Vinnie was suddenly given such an intrusive peek into his memories. That was a place he was not allowed, and the Venusaur knew it. Horror and regret filled his eyes, but even still he couldn't tear them away from the Fire Type.

He... knew, didn't he? He must've seen something too. It felt like it'd been a long time since Vinnie felt this poisonous anger aimed at him, but he suddenly didn't miss it.

The air was tense and still, until a loud SMASH! shook the Grass Type from his thoughts. It wasn't until he dumbly glanced down that he even realized that he'd dropped his tea in his shock. Hot water splashed onto the floor as the mug broke into large ceramic chunks.

"S-shit!"

Char always had been the kind to bear bitterness for a long time. He'd made no secret of his resentment towards Red and his team, and much of it had stemmed from that loss years ago -- he'd never forgiven them for the way that had hurt Green, nor for the callous, infuriating way that they refused to ever acknowledge that hurt in the least. As years went by, though, that sting started to fade. Not because of any forgiveness on his part or any apology on Red's, but simply because it became clear this was a lot like the grudge he bore to Aiden: one he'd never really get a resolution to, because he was the only one who felt wronged.

Still, as long as that grudge had been around, he'd questioned what had just happened. At first, he'd wondered if it had been entirely in his head, just his bitter, spiteful nature imagining things. Vinnie's reaction, however, made it clear. That was real. All his resentful supposing had been spot on: they hadn't mattered in the least. They were pointless.

A more logical mind might suppose that what was true years ago may not have been true now, but with their history as conflicted as it had been, it was much harder for a Lonely heart to give it the benefit of the doubt. Betrayal cut him and cut him deep, and this -- having such a shattering blow pulled out of him only to find out it'd barely been an afterthought to Vinnie -- felt like a betrayal. It felt... ridiculous. Humiliating, even. All that time spent trying so hard to be Vinnie's equal, all those shaky steps and that effort to understand him, his endeavours now to not rock the boat and let him nose his way uninterrupted into Char's family... he'd been trying so hard for someone who'd written them off as an annoyance.

He couldn't begin to piece the words together, at first, but the noise of the shattering mug broke the spell of silence, and broke it thoroughly. Ignoring the puddle of hot tea, Char stepped forward, ceramic fragments crunching under his feet. "Wasn't just in my imagination, was it?" He demanded -- not just talking about the strange exchange of memories, but the message in them: exactly how little their efforts had meant.

The accusation put Vinnie on the defensive right away - that champion battle had been years ago, ancient history by any standard. Every one of them had grown up and moved on since then, but even still, Char still hadn't let that wound heal over, had he? No matter how much he grew as a Pokemon, a brother, even as a teacher, he was still all too eager to rip off that scab and revisit the grudges of his younger years.

What exactly was Vinnie supposed to answer for, anyway? For winning an unfortunately timed Pokemon battle? For not having enough emotional maturity as a teenager? He was barely the same person as that Ivysaur back then, expressly because he knew he had to become a better, stronger person.

It wasn't like he could deny what was obviously true - but on Char's part, it was completely irrational to continue hanging onto what was so unreasonable. For expecting all of Red's team to be on the same wavelength, for their definition of getting stronger to be universal without ever bothering to get to know them... they were just as equally guilty.

But somehow, Vinnie was coming out as the monster in all of this? He wasn't going to just take that.

"Things changed," the Venusaur stated, standing his ground. "We all fuckin' changed."

Given just how long Char held onto his grudges, he never had been the sort to react well to being told his hurt was ancient history he ought to just get over. Especially when it wasn't like he was the one who had brought it up in the first place. Sure, Vinnie only lost a perfectly safe "eh who cares" little memory, but Char'd had something deeply private dragged out of him. Who was Vinnie to get to decide if it was a big deal or not?

Anyway, how was he supposed to believe that it was really so different? Any little hint of mutual understanding between the two of them had come at the expense of a long and bumpy road, one where the exact same problem had come up for years: a struggle to be worth acknowledging. It was no secret that Char's trust was slow to earn and quick to lose. For well over a year now, he'd barely spoken to Vinnie. There'd been the encounter at the Pokemon Center, and there'd been the mistletoe the year before -- a strange mirror image of this year, though Char had never realized it.

It was easy, in the heat of his temper, to look back on what they had through a skewed perspective. A few years of furious provoking and struggling to be seen as a rival, first and foremost, exactly like his Charmeleon years had been. Some hesitant baby steps toward trust... and how many of them had been Char taking that step? Opening up to him about Aiden, helping him with his stakeout of the fake Red, taking care of him during the week he'd been a Charizard, showing his horns and asking for help planting Bulba's garden... when he was feeling defensive in the first place, it wasn't hard for Char to look back at that and bend it into him always being the one going out of his way to hunt for acknowledgement.

"Yeah? And what changed, exactly? You think you get to strut up and decide we've suddenly been important all along?"

"I'm not tryin' to rewrite the fuckin' past here," Vinnie snapped back. "I'm just tryin' to do better by you!"

Once again, that pissy attitude always painting Red's team as a bunch of self-righteous pricks. When was the last time they'd even been like that? Well, apart from Marie. But he was the only one of them that still clung onto the black and white notion of his rivals being his enemies. The rest had all tried to reach out to them, to actually be their friends so they could coexist at the school instead of constantly being at odds. But even that could be twisted into an act of someone on their high horse, in Char's eyes.

They were all just Pokemon trying to get by, but that just wasn't enough for him. It wasn't good enough to satisfy his wounded pride, ever.

"For all we used t'fight, we barely knew each other! Just a bunch of ignorant teenagers who only made contact every few towns t'kick the shit out've each other - we weren't even on the same page. You seriously can't see how things're different here?!"

"Do better by me?" That, Char found hard to believe, and he made no secret of it. His tail flame was making the effort to flare up, even if all it was really managing to do was fall back on sickly wisps of smoke, and the tilt of his eyebrows was nothing less than incredulous. It was hard for him to appreciate Vinnie's efforts when he'd so stubbornly avoided Vinnie over the past year -- as far as he was concerned, things had all but ended on that front once Bulba and Vinnie were going out.

A point, of course, that he was still going to avoid as stubbornly as he had when he'd first started up the show of neutrality. He, naturally, was a level-headed individual who didn't get carried away in the heat of the moment at all, and his determination to not muck up something this important to Bulba was still as strong as it had been day one.

"I let you know a little of me, and where's that got me? Fuckin' nowhere. Only thing that's changed is which team you're tryin' to be on!" (Whoops.)

Vinnie's eyes grew wide, like Char had just verbally sucker punched him. Everything in his field of vision felt like it was spinning, but that might've been from the fact that his whole body was beginning to shake. On instinct, his hands had balled up into fists at his sides, and his pulse quickened, spurred by his growing outrage. With a vicious snarl, Vinnie just lost it.

"I'M NOT TRYING T'BE ON YOUR STUPID FUCKING TEAM!"

In the spilled tea, small ripples were spreading out from Vinnie's feet, and the ceramic shards were trembling (tink tink tink!) as the Venusaur's anger leaked out into the ground they stood on. It took all his self control not to sock the Charizard in the face right then and there, or to shove him out of the doorway.

"The fuck do you think I am?! Seriously! Am I the self-righteous jackass who thinks he's above than you, or am I the parasite tryin' to worm my way into your family? You could at least make up your fuckin' mind about what brush t'paint me with. Would it've been easier for you if I just shot down Bulba from the get-go?"

That was a cheap blow, and he knew it - but Vinnie was too far gone to care right now. Too many frustrations bottled up for too long, and now none of those efforts mattered.

"You already made it perfectly clear I'm not wanted. What else do you actually fuckin' need from me?! T'get down on my knees an' beg your forgiveness? Or do you just get a kick out of ignorin' me now?"

That explosion of anger ought to be enough to tell Char he had overstepped his bounds, but the Charizard in him was only spurred on further by such a visible display of aggression. Even if he'd crossed a line, the idea of backpedalling or admitting any wrong was unthinkable. His wings snapped open, blocking out the doorway, and his tail flame made a gallant attempt at a threatening flare-up, though all that really made it do was spew out smoke.

"Who's sayin' you can't be both?! You decide where you belong and you park your ass there, and it's everyone else's job to deal with it because fuck them, right?" It felt a little obvious (and more than a little unfair) to even point it out when Bulba and Vinnie'd been at it for over a year, but, well, 'tis the season: "It's almost fuckin' Christmas, ain't it? What do you expect? Tiny violins play as Bulba abandons you for us? Is it gonna be his job to try and juggle us both? Or are you gonna come chargin' in like one of the family and expect us all to make room?"

He was putting out just as many low blows as Vinnie -- more, to be entirely honest -- but Char was hard-pressed to care. The jealousy and protectiveness in him were deeply-ingrained; this was nothing he hadn't been feeling right from the start.

"You got no right to act like you're tryin' so damn hard and bein' so damn wronged. Nobody forced you to do shit. You walked right into this and started cryin' when it weren't some happy perfect hugbox like you had with Red! So don't you act like I'm bein' some unreasonable-ass tormenter, and don't call my team STUPID!" The last line rose into a roar, vicious enough that the muted glow of flame rose into his throat.

Vinnie's lip curled in a sneer. "Fuckin' listen to yourself. You sound like Marie."

Maybe he was throwing his own little brother under the bus by saying so, but the Venusaur was all too aware of his faults. From the beginning, the Water Type had always been resentful of anyone on Red's team playing friendly with Green's - but it had become especially vicious once he started blaming Bulba for stealing his brother from him. The Wartortle clung onto that bitterness and loathing, that miserable insecurity, until it drove him to do the unthinkable.

"I forgot, you're the only one allowed t'be the victim around here. Forcin' everyone t'put up with you is your job, right? If they don't like it, then it's their own fuckin' fault for expectin' anything or not tryin' hard enough or not reading your goddamn mind while you're digging up every old grudge you ever had."

There was a part of Vinnie that was still trying to pull himself back - you know exactly why he's like this. You know what happened to him, you know how lonely he is and how far he's come. You didn't even deserve to know half of it either, but you do. None of this was right. He felt uglier and more unworthy with every word he spat out.

"And you wonder why anyone has a hard time respectin' you."

Char's anger always burned hot. Shouted words and the whipcrack of tails. Teeth and flames and fists. As frustrating and obtuse as he could be, his anger, at least, was open and honest. It blazed blisteringly until it was all used up, but it didn't hide anything.

This time, there wasn't any heat.

There was a good reason why Char was so slow to let bits and pieces of himself be known, and why he shoved away any bits and pieces of others that were offered to him. Those little bits of trust could be weaponized too, too easily. He'd just done it himself, knowing how much Vinnie had struggled with where he belonged. It was probably no less than fair that he had it thrown at him too.

That didn't dull the hurt in the least. There never was any dulling these Kerosene-deep cuts. Char looked suddenly airless, his posturing vanishing as his tail limply wilted against the floor and his wings crumpled in close against his back. There wasn't any huffy glancing away or fiery protests this time: he met Vinnie's eyes, stare wide and unflinching as it began to almost palpably freeze over.

He didn't have a single leg to stand on, and he knew it. He couldn't call Vinnie wrong or act like respect meant nothing when the memory that had been dragged out of him had proven all those pathetic, vulnerable points right. There'd been a time when he'd vigilantly refused to let any of his weaknesses shine through, lest Vinnie use them against him, but somehow, he'd stopped actually expecting that to happen. It had caught him utterly unprepared, and it smarted all the worse because of it.

Couldn't deny it, couldn't shrug it off: he swallowed it whole, in the same sealed-away Kerosene way he used to know so well. "I got by fine without your respect before this. I'll get by without it now." He couldn't even muster up the fire to raise his voice for it.

He had nothing left to toss at Vinnie after that. He got out of the doorway, turning to leave Vinnie to the shattered remains of his mug.

It wasn't until Char had turned around and left that Vinnie realized how fast his heart was beating, how loud it had become when the rest of him suddenly fell so quiet. It rang inside him like a hollow sound, and for a moment he was stuck in place, unable to move.

Until everything he said caught up with him and dragged him under, like a riptide.

Oh, god. The horror hit him so hard, he was staggering - Vinnie had to lean against the wall to even stay upright. There was simply no way he couldn't be disgusted at himself. He knew how it felt... he'd felt it firsthand.

They weren't even that different, but the Venusaur had just been so angry and frustrated and... all he'd wanted was to make things right. He'd never bothered to understand Char as an Ivysaur, that was shamefully true - but once he tried, he knew he had to be a better person, and a worthier rival. And now he'd gone and destroyed everything.

He shouldn't even have bothered feeling indignant that all his efforts towards trying to understand the Charizard were being invalidated, not when he'd so thoroughly messed it up himself. There was absolutely no way Vinnie could make this right, was there? Hell, he'd seen Max labour and toil endlessly to try and make things right with Char, to little effect.

What was he going to do now?

Vinnie could already see the disappointment in Bulba's eyes as he was torn between the two again. And Green was going to detest him... and he'd deserve it.

Filled with self-loathing, Vinnie stumbled away from the emotional warzone - he just needed to get away, right now. Only the broken mug remained as evidence of the fallout.

Edited 2014-12-20 07:55 (UTC)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

merry merry christmas, and I want you to know

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