[It's about five or ten minutes later that there's a soft knock at Corbin's door and a pyjama-clad Peony stood sheepishly outside with her familiar Bernie curling around her ankles.]
[Her nod is small and she herself rarely silent as she reached out to him for a hug. Normally, Peony kept her negative emotions under wrap. Being sad isn't pretty. She'd heard that since she was a child. Being anything other than a joyful sprite wasn't permitted.
But, with people she could trust, she could let the mask slip.]
[Corbin is used to bubbly Peony, mischievous Peony, even annoyed Peony, bouncy and colorful and impossible to miss. He's not entirely sure what to do with small, sad, Peony. Or, he knows where to start, and he's hoping he can figure the rest of it out after that.]
[So he wraps his arms around her and holds her close, gives her room to hold him or pull away or whatever she feels comfortable doing.]
Hey.
[He wonders if she's going to cry, and it occurs to him that he should have put on a shirt, just in case, otherwise he might end up wiping tears and snot off his shoulder. Oh well, nothing to do about it now, and he's had grosser stuff on him. He can wipe it off later.]
[Peony gives him a squeeze around the middle. She can brush the fingertips of her other hand given how weedy Corbin is, but in a weird way she finds it comforting. A reminder that not everyone here is a superhuman or strong as an Ox or just better than everyone else.
Bernie, the Familiar, brushes against Corbin's ankles with a mournful whine.
She doesn't cry, because she's holding her shit together, barely holding it together. But she is.]
[Corbin looks down at Bernie and gives him a bit of a smile that he hopes is reassuring. He's trying, okay?]
[He shrugs, his arms still wrapped around her]
It's alright, I'm a light sleeper. I'll just take a nap later if I need it.
[He'll give her a bit longer before he suggests]
You wanna sit? Or, I dunno, we can cuddle if you want to. Up to you.
[He kind of wants to get a couch in here, but there's nowhere to really put it. He'd need a bigger room. But his bed is cozy, piled up with blankets and pillows for when he needs them, shoved to the side when he doesn't. The lamp casts a warm glow over the whole thing, reflected dimly in the various shiny trinkets he has hung from the ceiling and on the walls.]
[Peony gives him another squeeze before pulling back. She looks up, because gosh, Corbin is a lot taller than her. The shinies on the wall do catch her attention and she cocks her head to the side as she observes them.]
Do you know how to make a fort?
[It seems childish. But, it's a very genuine request.]
[He's got a lot of blankets, pillows, sheets, all kinds of materials, shiny things to hang, a couple of chairs, even some interesting sticks that he'd brought in from the Wilds that they could use to make a blanket fort with.]
[Peony gradually brightens as she helps him to build a fort. She wont say it out loud, because that's what normally gets her in trouble, but when she was little her nanny used to make forts and dens for her out of bed sheets.
It's nostalgic and comforting in equal measure.] I kind of miss my tent.
[Corbin grabs another few pillows from somewhere and plops them down into the almost finished fort. He kind of wishes he had some of Caleb's dancing lights, but they'll be fine.]
Yeah? What was that like?
[He takes a look at the fort and, deciding that it's fine structurally, he grabs some of his shiny baubles to hang up inside]
It was nice. [Bernie has already made himself comfortable inside of the pillow fort, snuggling down into the blankets.]
I used to put bells and shells on the inside. To make them all pretty.
My parents would let me camp on the grounds sometimes. Once they forgot I was there because they had gone away to this big fancy wedding up North and I got to stay out there for a whole week. It was great.
[He carefully digs around in some boxes under his bed, full of random crap that he's collected, not good enough for his walls, but that he still didn't want to throw away, and he eventually pulls out a string of slightly dented bells. He spends a few minutes buffing them with a shirt]
My folks, we live in this house out in a national forest. [Pause as he realizes that Peony probably wouldn't know what that was] Like, a forest that the gov'ment said you can't just go and cut down trees or hunt without their say so. But we go campin out there a lot, and we fish, my dad's real good at it. Sometimes I go with just my friends, sometimes it's my folks, my brother used to take me out to meet the dryads when I was little. It's a good place.
[The bells now shiny again, he hangs them up inside the tent]
That sounds really nice. I've only met a few dryads. They're kind of funny around humans. Titania showed me once but I had to hold onto her skirt the whole time. There's a few in the Queenswood and they can be a real pain if you don't pay them off first.
I'm a little jealous you get to live there all the time.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[voice]
[It's a rare request from her.]
I would normally bother Morgana. But if I bother her much more I think Damen might literally turf me out.
[voice]
[His room isn't even messy right now, Caleb had been over the day before so he'd cleaned up some.]
[He does have to get up and put some pants on though. Just to be polite.]
Come over whenever, Pea.
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[It's about five or ten minutes later that there's a soft knock at Corbin's door and a pyjama-clad Peony stood sheepishly outside with her familiar Bernie curling around her ankles.]
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Hey there, Pea. C'mon in.
[He'll move aside so she can step into his room and close the door behind her]
You needa hug?
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But, with people she could trust, she could let the mask slip.]
Hi...
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[So he wraps his arms around her and holds her close, gives her room to hold him or pull away or whatever she feels comfortable doing.]
Hey.
[He wonders if she's going to cry, and it occurs to him that he should have put on a shirt, just in case, otherwise he might end up wiping tears and snot off his shoulder. Oh well, nothing to do about it now, and he's had grosser stuff on him. He can wipe it off later.]
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Bernie, the Familiar, brushes against Corbin's ankles with a mournful whine.
She doesn't cry, because she's holding her shit together, barely holding it together. But she is.]
Sorry for waking you up.
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[He shrugs, his arms still wrapped around her]
It's alright, I'm a light sleeper. I'll just take a nap later if I need it.
[He'll give her a bit longer before he suggests]
You wanna sit? Or, I dunno, we can cuddle if you want to. Up to you.
[He kind of wants to get a couch in here, but there's nowhere to really put it. He'd need a bigger room. But his bed is cozy, piled up with blankets and pillows for when he needs them, shoved to the side when he doesn't. The lamp casts a warm glow over the whole thing, reflected dimly in the various shiny trinkets he has hung from the ceiling and on the walls.]
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Do you know how to make a fort?
[It seems childish. But, it's a very genuine request.]
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Yeah, I do. Let's see what I got to work with.
[He's got a lot of blankets, pillows, sheets, all kinds of materials, shiny things to hang, a couple of chairs, even some interesting sticks that he'd brought in from the Wilds that they could use to make a blanket fort with.]
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It's nostalgic and comforting in equal measure.] I kind of miss my tent.
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Yeah? What was that like?
[He takes a look at the fort and, deciding that it's fine structurally, he grabs some of his shiny baubles to hang up inside]
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I used to put bells and shells on the inside. To make them all pretty.
My parents would let me camp on the grounds sometimes. Once they forgot I was there because they had gone away to this big fancy wedding up North and I got to stay out there for a whole week. It was great.
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Bells! That's what it was missin...
[He carefully digs around in some boxes under his bed, full of random crap that he's collected, not good enough for his walls, but that he still didn't want to throw away, and he eventually pulls out a string of slightly dented bells. He spends a few minutes buffing them with a shirt]
My folks, we live in this house out in a national forest. [Pause as he realizes that Peony probably wouldn't know what that was] Like, a forest that the gov'ment said you can't just go and cut down trees or hunt without their say so. But we go campin out there a lot, and we fish, my dad's real good at it. Sometimes I go with just my friends, sometimes it's my folks, my brother used to take me out to meet the dryads when I was little. It's a good place.
[The bells now shiny again, he hangs them up inside the tent]
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[Peony perks up at the bells being strung up.]
That sounds really nice. I've only met a few dryads. They're kind of funny around humans. Titania showed me once but I had to hold onto her skirt the whole time. There's a few in the Queenswood and they can be a real pain if you don't pay them off first.
I'm a little jealous you get to live there all the time.
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[He digs around for a bit in a drawer]
Aw, hell yeah cookies.