Day 1: Evening

Evening: 5:00pm - Midnight

[ IRL Timeframe: March 11th - March 18th, 2019 ]

The first day has come to a close, the only things left to do are get some food and get some rest. Fortunately the residents of Bamborough are hosting a party to congratulate the heroes on their first victory, unfortunately it's running for several hours this evening. There's only so much time for sleep. What kind of balance will your hero try to strike?

Unfortunately for everyone, the evil-allured knights will be treated to a rude wake-up surprise when they finally go to sleep. No matter when they finally set their head down to rest, they all wake up at the same time, in the same place. Only the evil-allured knights will have access to this post, click to see if you've been chosen.

The good-allured knights, meanwhile, are free of a visit tonight with the Princess and the Protector. The two of them, however, are due to have a chat. Questions have to be answered, after all! He's dressed in his usual attire:

He's the same height as Luka with dark skin and vivid blue eyes that match the color of the sky. He has wicked winged white eyeliner to accent his eyes and curly black hair with white tips piled on top of his head, it's a wonder how it stays up there. Surprisingly, or unsurprisingly, he's wearing a pajama robe that looks either blue or silver depending how it's touched or how it moves. Most importantly is that he's got brass knuckles on both his hands, like he's ready to fight. But he's not here to fight, he's here to give a whisper about what comes next.

First Night Event: Bamborough: Everyone invited.

The Weather
Starry Night.
64°F / 18°C
Quite breezy, all the trees are rustling.

Prompts:

Bamborough Party: To celebrate the defeat of the first monster, a full banquet is being held near the beach in Bamborough. Unlimited food, unlimited drinks, and most importantly of all was a small stockpile of blankets, sheets, pillows, and toiletries to offer any knight who might've forgotten something on the way out here. Naturally, every item is sponsored.

You're all over Social Media!: Videos were successfully taken of all twelve knights and the princess during the first battle, and now the world is abuzz about what happened! What are they saying about your hero? How did they even get this footage? Or worst of all, how bad are they dissing your camera skills for those that recorded themselves?

A late night walk: The first day is over, the first monster is dead. How's your character holding up? Do they seek out support from a fellow hero? Do they spend it alone? What kind of night are they having now that it's all real?

A late night meal: Anyone leaving the Bamborough party late enough will be able to spot that a local late night ramen shop is open for business. If your hero hasn't quite eaten enough, they can drop by for a bite. But be warned, a certain sleepy villain is getting a bite to eat herself. Care to share a ramen bar meal with the enemy?

Procedure:

Reply to the appropriate toplevel comments for events below. Indicate if a post is a private conversation with "Private" in the subject otherwise all threads should be open to interaction with others. Plan OOCly how you'd like to toss everyone around.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Mm... they sounds like good kids." He nods very slightly, though his attention is clearly a little distracted, lips pursed in thought. He doesn't know what 'changing the world for the better' looks like for these people, and it's a wonder to him that Garrot would expect something so grand from his kids. What a weird culture. What weird desires these people grow up with.

"I hope they achieve what they set out to achieve," he says mildly. "I'm glad they've learned to protect the people around them."

He smiles up at Garrot, a slight mischievous glint in his eye as he gestures down to the corner of the picture. "One left~"

"Shit!" Garrot swears under his breath, but honestly it's loud considering they're right next to each other. As if that weren't telling enough, Garrot just starts blushing as his eyes dart around. He's nervous! But he pulls his phone back, huddling around the screen as his larger frame blocks prying eyes. When he turns the phone back towards his pal after a few moments, it shows a boat in the middle of the ocean, at sunset... or maybe sunrise? Garrot takes up some of the frame, noticeably shirtless and tattooed and grinning ear to ear with an arm... wrapped around...

"This is Sly; Uncle Sly to the kids." His arm is coiled around the shoulders of another shirtless man who takes even better care of himself than Garrot does! The contours of his dark olive skin show that he's built up quite a bit of muscle on his wiry frame. The sharp teeth of his smile, particularly the orcish fangs jutting up from his lower jaw, almost sparkle between the light of the camera and the sun. His short, dirty blonde beard and golden blonde hipster-bun look immaculate, perfectly framing his angular jaw and pointed elven ears. And he looks like he's planning something...

"He's a real good friend of mine, part of the family. We've known each other for almost twenty-five years now! And I mean, he's smarter than I am... And a better doctor, for sure." Garrot slightly changes the way he's holding the phone with that moment of hesitation, but he accidentally fat-fingers the screen and slides to the next photo without his knowledge! Suddenly Sly has an arm around Garrot's shoulders as he kisses him on the cheek, one eye winking at the camera. The Garrot in the photo, on the other hand, is blushing brighter than the sky and his eyes are wide like dinner plates.

"And sometimes I almost want him to adopt my kids out from under me, because he seems better with them than I am!" He doesn't sound mad or sad about this, just impressed. Garrot nods, unaware that his ego takes a back seat when it comes to the people he cares about. And also obviously he's sharing a bit more with Gyre than he anticipated. Again!

Oh a babe! And another thing to make Gyre's nonexistent heart sick. It's okay. He's learned not to be so jealous of other peoples' happiness, but his breath definitely catches when Garrot accidentally pulls up the kiss picture. He smiles and the smile is incredibly painful at first. He does his best to fucking fix it while the other explains who this man is and does an incredible job of never saying the word partner. Or spouse. Or husband. He talks about this guy adopting his kids, and yet he doesn't call him his husband!

Gyre sounds immediately skeptical as he pipes up, "You told me you didn't have a partner!" He arches an eyebrow at him, a playful judgement on his face.

"Why are you trying to hide him?"

See, Garrot's an idiot sometimes. A lot of the time. When he sees Gyre's smile, he assumes his friend is simply appreciating the picture and the totally aromantic friendship between two adult men who are incredibly close. But when Gyre drops that word, that question, Garrot looks torn. Hurt, even. He doesn't need to see that he's showing off the wrong picture to get defensive.

"I'm not hiding him, and he's n-" He sputters for a moment, unable to say that they aren't partners, and then just falls silent for a moment more. "It's complicated." Garrot hates those words, because he's highly intelligent and a man of science. His shoulders slump, and he holds the phone between his legs, and it's only now that he sees the picture changed. He's opened up to Gyre so much already, what's a little more?

"We don't like to label it, we just... we keep it casual." And then he rolls his eyes, because he's sounding like a teenager, like one of his teenagers. "We're both busy enough with work and our own lives that we have to schedule time together. And after all these years, we've been at each other's throats enough." Have a sigh, Gyre. "So we see other people most of the time, because at least we're friends like this. If something goes wrong, then the kids have to deal with that shit." And now a solemn beat.

"They've been through enough already."

This sure is a lot more words to avoid saying the word partner! He even watches Garrot stumble over the actual word, and the entire time the other is talking, that skeptical eyebrow gets more and more and more skeptical.

"Does he help you watch your kids? You trust him enough to adopt them in your stead?"

Garrot whines at the questions, clearly uncomfortable in the hot seat. This is not where he expected this conversation to go and he was not prepared! His face has ascended to a full-on cherry red color because holy shit.

"Of course! They like him and he's basically the only person I'd trust if something happened to me, and-" Something clicks in Garrot's mind, a different approach he can take to this. "Why do you even care?!"

His new approach is deflection. This is gonna go so well.

He waves a hand, apparently dismissing both the deflection and Garrot's bizarre embarrassment, and he's smirking proudly, like he won the conversation here.

"Where I'm from, that makes him your husband." So there!!

He backs off from there though almost immediately, settling back on his butt. The smirk becomes a more friendly grin, and his tone shifts, just a little, just enough that it's clear he's gossiping basically, offering his thoughts because they're friends and Garrot definitely needs to be smacked in the head about this one.

"You all make things so much more complicated then they need to be. You can live your own lives and still be partners," he says, shrugging. "I was only curious because raising four kids by yourself seems, hmm... insane, I think is the right word?" Only two is a lot as well, but it's a little less crazy to him.

Garrot just shifts around unconfortably as Gyre keeps going. Mostly because on some level he can't disagree. These are good points. But...

"Where I come from," oh no he's playing that card, "there's more to it than that! Papers and rings and-" Garrot just shakes his head. He's totally right! What does Gyre know?!

"Besides, my kids aren't that bad." He pouts for a moment before sliding right back into proud parent mode. "I mean. Miri was a handful at first, and then the twins happened right around when we were on the same page. They were basically the same kid, and Miri kept an eye on them." He nods, because she's a good older sister.

"If Ursula came earlier in my life, I'd have ripped my hair out, but she's fine now." Because he knows what he's doing. "I mean, Sly and my mom helped but I did a lot of the work on my own!" He sounds proud of this, and he's ignoring the fact that his hair is starting to go gray. Probably from the stress of his ludicrous children and his job and everything else he has going on.

"That's worse! All those papers and rings, they're just a tool to force people not to change their mind! You know when you trust someone enough to care for your kids, and you know if that feeling fades. You don't need some," irritated handwave, "religion boss to tell you whether it's right or not." And it's not until this point that he realizes he was talking too loud and too long, and he folds forward to cough dryly into his hand as before.

"Fuck," he rasps, leaning over the rock to grab the tea that's been abandoned on the ground for awhile now. He's going to take a few long pulls from it, fingering lightly at his throat. This leaves him quiet and watching Garrot out of the corner of his eye as the other tells him even more about his kids. Damn, he's really learning a lot about this dude.

After a few moments with the tea, he clears his throat, nodding almost knowingly as Garrot acknowledges the help he got from his family. "All kids are hard sometimes. You'd probably be even greyer if you didn't have them around~" he teases, quieter now that his voice is giving him trouble again.

Garrot's demeanor flares up as Gyre starts to raise his voice. Are they doing this? Are they getting into a shouting match over his love life? They are not, because Gyre starts coughing. So the doctor returns the favor, placing a hand upon Gyre's back and giving it a gentle rub.

"Well, yeah." The teasing is a welcome change. "I'd make a great silver foxbear." He blinks. "Bugfox." And again. "Bugfoxbear?" It turns out silver fox bugbear doesn't flow at all.

"Y'know," he brings his other hand to his beard, not caring that the back rub isn't really necessary anymore. Plus it'll make his counter-tease a bit more sudden. "For someone who doesn't wanna be told what to do, you sure do tell me what to do and how to live. A lot." And he smirks, ready to turn the tables.

"Tell me about your kids?" It's an offer to change the subject, albeit horribly overt.

Wow! He bristles at the idea that he's telling anyone what to do, squinting out of the corner of his eye at Garrot.

"Nuh uh," he says, shaking a finger at him. "I think your world is nonsense, but I haven't said anything about how you should live with it." Criticizing tradition isn't the same as criticizing you, Garrot! "You can call that man... whatever..."

All the energy sinks out of him as he actually registers the turn-tabling that's just happened. He sort of falls over his words and then falls silent, biting his lip and pulling his eyes off Garrot for the first time in a bit. He watches the water for a few moments, trying to come up with how exactly he's going to deflect this. Garrot has offered so much! He ought to return the favor, but he can already feel the creeping desire to run out of this conversation before he's given up anything that important to himself.

Deep breath. How to recover from this long silence? Maybe just act like it didn't happen?

"Uh... there's six of them. They're all grown now." Another searching silence, and he manages this weird, proud, melancholy smile. "One of my daughters had her first child a few months ago."

Garrot halfway shrugs at the assertion that his world is nonsense, he can't deny that. But it's the shaking finger that really makes him start to grin and laugh, at least until. Gyre just. Stops. Then there's silence, discomfort. Garrot's not the most empathetic person around, but he's a doctor; he's had to tell people all sorts of bad news. He knows what it looks like when he's hit a nerve, when he's crossed a line. And this isn't like before, where his pal just stormed off in a huff.

This feels so much worse.

"You're a grandpa?! Congrats!" His voice is soft, and the backrub quickly turns into a one-armed hug. Garrot's reading that smile, the unknowable depth to it, and he's not sure what to say. So after learning so much about how to work with Gyre, he knows what he needs to do.

"We don't have to talk about them if you don't want to." There's something here that shouldn't be disturbed, and yet, well, Garrot knows he wants to do the right thing. The helpful thing. "And if you're ever worried about them, I can make a couple calls and send a doctor out there to check on them." His family is okay. Both of them are okay. And hopefully they all stay that way. Garrot's arm starts to tighten a bit around Gyre's shoulders. This doesn't seem normal, so he sure as shit doesn't want to leave him alone to deal with whatever this is.

The arm goes around him and he's immediately leaning into it, shuffling closer so that he's tucked up against Garrot's side. He seizes the first moment for levity he finds, laughing softly, weakly, "You have a word for that...?" How weird. He feels weird just knowing she had a kid, but these people actually have a word for that relationship. So bizarre.

He's trying to cling to this feeling, this confused superiority, but then Garrot is... interfering. He can tell by the tone of the other's voice that he's trying to help, but his help is the worst idea in this case. He takes a deep breath, and lets it out in the heaviest sigh.

"No. No. Don't ever do that," he says with this grim, unhappy tone. "I have ways to keep an eye on them when I'm there. That's enough." He sighs again, trying to summon the will to say more then that. But it's too much. There's too much to explain, and he's suddenly very tired. He needs to go unwind out in the forest. For now though, he settles for turning his head and tucking his face against Garrot's chest.

"I'll tell you more later, maybe. It's late."

First Garrot's surprised that the wild elves don't have a word for grandpa, but as Gyre starts sighing and emphasizing that he shouldn't do that, it's even clearer that there's some weird baggage here. He's confused, he's sad, and as Gyre's head meets Garrot's chest, that arm just squeezes him a little tighter.

"You don't have to tell me at all, and I'm used to late nights." His tone is the warmest and most compassionate fuck-you he can manage. "Take as long as you need, I'm here as long as you want me to be." See, Garrot's always had his family to fall back on, to help fix his mistakes. And it sounds like Gyre doesn't have that, which is bullshit because he should!!! Sure Gyre's a bit of a prick, but he's a badass and clearly a good guy! So Garrot will wait, and he'll continue resisting the urge to snatch his friend up and full-body hugbear the sad feelings out of his spine.

Hey, at this point, he wouldn't mind getting his spine snapped by a giant man! He can feel himself beginning to wallow in this very terrible, deeply guilty feeling, and he knows he needs to cut it out. He's not close enough with this dude to dump the full weight of his misery on him. He knows he needs to pull up on the spiral now before he has to lay motionless in the sand for the next week to recover. No one needs that, least of all him.

And so he reaches up out of the side hug, pressing his palm flat against the side of Garrot's face, a gesture he's hoping is just strange enough to lighten the mood.

"You're very sweet, despite your first impression~" he hums, and he forces himself to slide out from under Garrot's arm, taking up the tea thermos. He can take a drink here and put a little distance between them again. Yeah, he'll be fine as long as Garrot doesn't press.

"I hope that offer's still standing the rest of the week." Knowing he can go pick up a hug from someone with no strings attached is a very pleasant thought to him, honestly.

The odd gesture works quite well, because Garrot finds himself raising an eyebrow and almost asking about it. But then Gyre calls him sweet, and he goes a little pinker and starts grinning. See? He's totally a nice guy, and not a big scary jerk!

"It's standing for as long as you want it to." Garrot smiles at that, because he's not gonna just get bored of his new pal's problems. But then he shifts a bit, embracing that Gyre wiggled out from his arm.

"Do you... want me to head out?" Take this awkward little chuckle. "Give you some space?" Of course, Garrot still wants to do a vicegrip hug, but this isn't about him.

"Mmn," he murmurs, pushing himself to his feet and stretching his arms over his head. He's quiet for a moment after that, watching the water, rubbing his fingers over his scalp and quickly through his hair. Deep breath. He's finding equilibrium again, quickly after forty years of practice at it.

"I'm gonna go for a walk. We can head back to the uh, the party together, if you like?" He offers a smile over his shoulder before he turns and collects his plate from the rock. "I need to drop this off." And a farewell in the party crowd seems less awkward and weird then just dismissing Garrot like he's finished with him or something.

Honestly, that's a surprising offer to Garrot. Things had been so weird and awkward between them. Gyre had just up and left before, and now he wants to follow rules and social customs of this crazy world? So he shrugs, because-

"Sure." It's no big deal to him as long as Gyre's gonna be okay. He'd have brought the plate back for his friend, but this is fine too. Plus, it gives him a chance to change the subject, to make a joke. "But I wonder what people will say when they see two Knights coming back to the party together...."

He's smirking as he closes the distance. Make him laugh, make him smile, distract him from whatever that problem is that he can't fix. Garrot will be the problem himself if he needs to, he's an old hand at being a nuisance.

Look, he's been inundated with these customs for almost a full day and it doesn't take long for survival instincts to start kicking in. Also like, he wants this encounter to end differently then the last one. He wants them to have an opportunity to clear the air instead of just leaving things tense like the first time.

He grins at Garrot's insinuation, beginning to head back towards the party with him. "I've never had anyone on a beach. It'd be a shame if there were rumors before I got to try it~" he purrs, winking up at the other.

Flirting! Garrot can do flirting! That's a fun distraction from bad emotions that they shouldn't be dealing with during a two-week monster slaying gauntlet! This is totally fine, and the big guy's smirking back down at Gyre after that wink!

"You're not missing much, but on a boat?" He taps his phone, casually trying to bring attention back to the photos of Sly and himself. It's not kids, it should be a step in the right direction! "The seas aren't the only thing that'll sing." Garrot raises an eyebrow and winks back at Gyre. Ham it up, maximum distraction!

"Besides, if we went at it now, I bet the party would be over by the time we got back, and then they'd have nothing to talk about~" Honestly, he just doesn't want to kill the mood by telling Gyre that medically, sex on the beach is a terrible idea. That'd be both a mood killer and a boner breaker, and it might keep him back on his sad spiral.

Maybe he'll text Gyre some articles later so he doesn't do anything reckless.

"Mm, you're right," he says thoughtfully, glancing up at the stars for a beat. His attention only sliiiides back to Garrot when the other winks at him, and he can't help smirking wickedly.

"Is that a promise you intend to keep later then?" All this talk of boats and making things sing... He knows it's just flirting, but he sounds like he's taking it absolutely seriously. Don't play with his heart, Garrot!

Garrot pauses for a moment, contemplating the question. As much as he could keep that promise, there's a million reasons why he shouldn't. At least not yet. And they're mostly logistical for their time on this island.

"Why don't we see if we can stay away from each other's throats before we do anything with our pants?" And he just smirks with an intensity that could kill. He can be as flirtatious as he wants, because his kids aren't here! This is a wonderful realization for Garrot to have!

"The last thing we want is to cause problems." For their group. For their combat cohesion. For the media... though they wouldn't see it as a problem.

Gyre smirks back immediately, raising an eyebrow. "Mmm, we don't have to. That kinda thing can be fun sometimes," he says, checking his nails like this is not an attempt to ease Garrot into a more willing mindset. He just a very casual boy talking about very casual things here.

After a moment though, he does concede, "Problems wouldn't be good though, no. Especially this early on." Team dynamics can be broken so easily when they're new, he knows.

Garrot just chuckles- it's good that Gyre's on the same page. If they can get into a good rhythm, well... anything could happen. But he's not going to stop the flirt cannons over something as trivial as team cohesion! He just won't go past flirting.

"Don't get me wrong, I like a fun romp as much as you do, but..." He grins just a bit evilly, as if to drive home why they need to be working together. "If things got a little hot and heavy and angry... I've got a very strong grip." Is that bragging? A threat? A warning about how he gets in the sack? Maybe all three?! But then he just starts smiling, nice and polite.

"Besides, I'm the doctor and you can make shields, we can really keep people safe if we're working together!" It sounds like he really doesn't want to be angry with you, Gyre. Don't give him reasons to be angry, he's got this whole thing with his anger...

Day 1: Evening

Evening: 5:00pm - Midnight

The Weather

Prompts:

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