merry merry christmas, and I want you to know

[mansionstaff]

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

SUDDENLY, AND WITHOUT WARNING...



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.]

Comments

[rivalkidneypunch]

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?"

[flowerofmtsilver]

"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?!"

[rivalkidneypunch]

"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.)

[flowerofmtsilver]

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?"

[rivalkidneypunch]

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.

[flowerofmtsilver]

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."

[rivalkidneypunch]

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.

[flowerofmtsilver]

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.