foolishmortals

Entry tags:

round 1,
week 3

WEEK 3

[Karolina and Mulan are dead. The first, and hopefully the last, deaths of your stay here. Hopefully their deaths won't be in vain. Your third week here starts on a solemn note, and the mood here has taken on a significant downward spiral. If it's any consolation (it isn't), you'll find that you have two new floors to explore...even if one of those floors has about twenty STAY OUT signs nailed to it.

23 guests remain.]

[SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY]

{ooc: Don't forget to turn in your week 2 AC! As we're now officially in full murdergame mode, AC from here on out is extended till Thursday.}

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[The hand on his shoulder, heavy and warm, almost triggers something worse. But that, at least, is far enough away from this moment that instead he focuses on the hand itself, the way it covers almost his whole shoulder, the hypnotizing ink that zig-zags and spirals into foreign shapes up that big arm onto that broad chest, and something small unfurls itself in Lefou's chest in the midst of the panic and his hand instead rests on the wrist that reached out to him.

I'm here. Someone to take control, finally. His breathing recovers in shaky sighs, and he closes his eyes for a moment to try to ground himself in the grip of that hand.]

I-- Thank you.

[The little man wasn't recovered, not by a long shot, but at least it was a start. Maui could work with that, had worked with less -- not that he'd ever been in a situation worse than this, though. Getting his butt handed to him by a crab didn't even compare to what he assumed the scene was like upstairs.

But he wouldn't let himself think about that. Focusing on the task at hand was the most important thing. They'd already lost one person today, it was going to be his job to keep from losing another.

Applying just a hint of pressure to his companion's shoulder, Maui began to guide him from the room, steering him toward the bathroom with a careful touch.]

Can I leave you in here? Just for a second -- need to grab a few things from my room.

[Having his oar, a pseudo-weapon seemed like a great idea.]

[Before they start moving, he traces along the skin in between the savage-looking man's tattoos with his finger. He'd heard stories about natives from the colonies, but only second- or third-hand. The man before him was nothing like what he imagined. He was touching him gently, but firmly, a human touch not a violent one. And there was something enrapturing in just how very different he was, in the way that he dressed and the patterns of his tattoos.

His panic faded, but he still lets himself be led to the bathroom. It brings a sour taste to his mouth, reminds him how Gaston liked to march him where he needed him by his shoulders. But the words he leaves him with aren't harsh, not a hissed "You are humiliating me," or a threatening "If you don't stop sniveling, I'll send you back to Pere Matthieu".

He had the same result, either way. LeFou nodded. When he was alone in the bathroom, away from the body of the dead girl he'd carried down the stairs, it was easier to compartmentalize. The next step was to clean himself up.

Which was why when Maui returned he would find LeFou shirtless at the sink, his shirt and hands soapy from how hard he was scrubbing the fabric in his hands (like his life depended on getting it clean), the sink filled with brownish-red suds that he every so often rinsed underneath the stream of cold water from the tap.]

[ The touch was a ~~gay~~ surprising one. Instinctively, he flinched away, though he quickly covered his reaction by scratching at his side. Thousands of years on his own hadn't exactly made him familiar with any sort of intimate gesture.

After leaving Lefou, Maui ducked into his room. He didn't have much in the way of clothing to offer the man, and so instead, he stripped the top sheet from his bed and then scrambled back toward the bathroom. It would be a slightly more feminine look, close to what he had seen women in the villages wear, but clothes were clothes.

Said sheet was held out to the man as soon as Maui burst through the door. His gaze swept over Lefou's torso, studying him intently. The man certainly was no warrior, wasn't built anything like the warriors and voyagers that Maui had once known. It was no surprise that he was so stricken by the sight of blood. ]

None of this is normal for you, is it. [ Maui glanced at his offer, realizing that it might not make that much sense to anyone but himself. ]

Wrap it around yourself. It'll keep you covered while your clothes dry.

[Lefou shirtless is...probably someone's thing, but not very conventionally attractive. He's pale white and soft all over, with some freckles smattered down the line of his spine, a beauty mark on the back of his right shoulder.

He's so intent on scrubbing that he doesn't hear Maui come in until he speaks, and then he half-turns, his wet hands staying in the sink. The angle kind of squishes the ring-shaped scar on his stomach, but the scar is dark and stands out against his white-sand skin anyway.]

...I wish. I've never- carried-- but I...saw a lot of people die, in the war.

[He looks at the sheet, and then down at himself and then to the sink, then blushes.]

Uh- Thanks. Let me...get this stain out before it sets.

[ The scar was noted, and the Demi-god's mind wandered to somewhere in Lalotai. He didn't imagine that Lefou was the monster fighting type, but maybe he was wrong. People here had surprised him before. ]

Hard to forget something like that. [ Maui couldn't remember the face of every dead warrior he'd come across, but he carried their weight all the same. Fighting was normal, but it didn't mean it was necessary. ]

You know. Nice thing about leaves? Can always grab more.

[Surprisingly, that actually gets him to laugh.]

I definitely couldn't pull off that look.

[He turns back to the sink and keeps scrubbing, then rinses the shirt again and holds it up. It's...not as pristine white as it was when he arrived, but it's not obviously bloodstained, either.

He'll take it. He wrings out the shirt hard, getting the excess water out, and then throws it up and over the bar to the shower, reaching for the offered sheet and wrapping it over his shoulders like a shock blanket.]

...Thank you, again. You didn't have to-

[The god was quick to hold a hand up, waving it about rather emphatically in an attempt to shut the man up. He appreciated praise as much as any other god or demi-god would, but when it came on the back of a dead, headless girl? It didn't feel right.]

You feel like thanking me? Praising me? Do it tomorrow, do it when what happened there weighs a little less. Do it when I've done something worth being praised for, and not for just... taking care of people.

[Maui lived for the adoration of others. But doing that meant giving them what they wanted. Right now, he had a feeling that Lefou didn't want to be comforted over the loss of another one of their group. He might have needed it, but he doubted anyone would actively enjoy being in a situation like the one they found themselves in.]

Not the look I would have gone for -- [He nodded to the man's sheet-shawl.] -- But it's not bad.

[The concept of someone not wanting to be thanked immediately - let alone not wanting to be thanked for going out of his way to take care of someone - is so completely anathema to Lefou (who's used to Gaston who thrived on praise like a flower on sunlight, Gaston who got angry when he wasn't showered with adoration, who went out of his way to make sure you knew how much of an inconvenience it was and how grateful you should be for his presence) that it shows on his face, in the way that he's slapped speechless by the very idea of it.

It takes him a second to realize - specifically, when Maui nods toward the way that he's chosen to wear the sheet - what the man is talking about. If the situation weren't so somber, he might have blushed.]

I find I tend to look best when I'm covered up as close to head to toe as possible. Not all of us have the body for... [Meaningful Eyebrow Gesture at...good god the man is a gorgeous mountain range]

[The reaction was odd, Maui would admit, but then... he'd done nothing but preen himself and attempt to boost his ego whenever possible. It seemed only logical that someone had caught on to that sort of business. Maui supposed it could only be good for his image -- he was more than a two-dimensional being after all.]

What? I figured everyone was born from the gods and made for heroism. [He shrugged. Maybe he prided himself on his size and image, but if everyone looked like him, he wouldn't stand out.]

Don't know why you feel the need to cover up. I don't think anyone cares what you look like, and all those layers and covered can't be comfortable. [Maui made sure to wriggle his hips.]

Freeing, right?

[Somehow it's not "gods," plural, that bothers him (it's the fact that it's his mother's religion that brings him comfort when he prays, like wrapping himself in an old blanket or when he sees blossoms on the apple tree that he used to climb for her, not so much the idea that there's a god out there listening), but the "made for he-"

oh

my god

Unconsciously, he pulls the sheet tighter around his shoulders, but while the display is... well, it's something, and he doesn't seem entirely unappreciative of it, just. Maybe now isn't the time.]

That...might be the normal where you're from, but where I'm from there is definitely such a thing as frostbite. You'd be begging for a coat after a night.

[...probably could be phrased better but.]

Not too cold here. [ Maui heaved his shoulders though, more than willing to let the topic drop. He did make a note to pester the man more about it at a later date, though. ]

All I'm trying to say is you're just fine the way you are. [ He offered Lefou a reassuring smile, perhaps one that was a touch strained. The last time he'd tried to really talk someone up, it bit him in the butt. At least the man in front of him didn't seem the "plunge headlong at the lava monster" type. ]

You doing any better? Need anything else?

[The smile he gets in return is...not exactly shy, per se, but a little strained himself. It's hard to forget the circumstances of the conversation when he just finished scrubbing a young lady's blood out of his shirt.]

I'll be fine. [maybe not "okay," but fine he could manage.] Usually I do a better job of making sure the door's shut behind me when- [gestures] that kind of thing happens.

We're all off our game here.

[There was a lot that someone else, anyone aside from Maui, could have said. That Lefou didn't need to keep it all inside. That it was okay to let things out. But Maui was the king of letting things fester, had carried the burden of his birth on his shoulders for thousands of years before letting it out.

Maybe...]

Sometimes I wonder if moments like those aren't for the best. Beats the heck out of carrying it around inside you, right?

[The reply catches him a little back-footed, and his eyebrows go up accordingly. He tilts his chin down and reaches carefully out of his blanket shawl to scratch thoughtfully at one side of his mustache.

Thinks about Gaston, telling him to buck up and be a man. Being the paragon, the example that Lefou always tried to follow. Thinks about how he didn't recognize the darkness that Gaston was slipping into until it nearly swallowed him up too.]

I think... Maybe keeping too much of it inside is what makes monsters out of great men.

[The demi-god's expression shifted, almost looking pained. He kept his handful of secrets, but it wasn't as if he was walking around beheading little girls. He just... got angry with them.

Hell.]

Guess that makes sense. [Maui's voice was soft, and his gaze focused somewhere behind Lefou.] I mean, they did try to use our secrets as motives, right? If that's not an example of our burdens making monsters out of us...

[He'd never once considered hurting anyone to keep his secret, but... There was no denying how worried he was that someone would find out back home and use it against him.]

[He'd seen this before. Seen someone slip away, even when they were still standing there in front of you. Just in the eyes, sometimes, but you could tell. They were miles away.

His brow knit with concern and he took a step closer in the bathroom which was already borderline-crowded with the two of them.]

It didn't work... [It was an accident, Mulan was just a scared young girl forced to be a soldier, she had tried to get help.] But it could have.

[He hesitated, for a second, before reaching up to put a hand on Maui's shoulder. The gesture wasn't quite the same as the warm, blanketing touch of Maui's hand on his shoulder, just a few minutes before, but the intent was the same. I'm here.]

We're more than our secrets, M'sieur.

[Lefou had a point about Mulan, but it didn't change a thing about him. Not even the rest of his words were comforting. Maui's secret and the lies he told himself and others to cover it up -- they were everything.]

I hope you're right, short stack. [Maui forced himself to look at the man, scratching at the tattoo on the back of his neck. Now more than ever, it weighed on him heavily.]

I really hope you're right.

[Short stack really he's not that sm-

well, yeah, okay, he is compared to...all'a that.

He musters a reassuring smile when Maui looks down to meet his eyes.]

There... At the least, we can help each other, no?

If you want to talk, my room is number 103. I'll never say no to some company.

103, got it. [Maui patted the hand on his shoulder once, realizing that he hadn't so much as acknowledged Lefou's touch in the midst of his stupor. It felt strange, letting another man touch him, let alone the fact he was taking comfort in the gesture.]

Thanks, Lefou. And... take care of yourself, alright? Get some food and rest. We can't let ourselves fall apart.

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WEEK 3

This got real gay I'm kind of sorry

how DARE you

Cw: a little period racism, but also a lot more homo cw: Gaston

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Me, softly: "there's no heterosexual way to reply to this"

oopsie poopsie

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