player-suggested mini-event: A STRANGER'S BED

[riverviewmod]

who: everyone in Riverview!
what: Player-Suggested Mini-Event
when: August 26th - August 31st
warnings: please put any necessary warnings in the subject lines

a stranger's bed

As a lead in to September, Riverview's ♥ Month of Romance, this is a completely optional mingle that will cause affected characters to end up in each other's beds. There are various options for both established and new CR. While it's easiest for characters still living in Communal Housing, anyone who has moved to their own homes can be affected and end up finding their way to Communal Housing, or within their own housing.

Residents of the Quarantine may notice that various businesses selling food and drink - cafés, diners, bakeries, restaurants, and other such establishments - are heavily advertising a new flavor that's supposed to be the biggest thing since pumpkin spice. A flavor additive that's said to subtly change the flavor of whatever the diner is eating or drinking to optimize the dish, drink, dessert, or any other food item it is added to for each person's individual taste, it's been selling like wildfire and is the latest trend.

After the cause of the rash of amnesia was revealed to be plant-related, sellers are keeping the origin of the secret ingredient very close to their chests, since it is a derivative of a recently-discovered plant dubbed chameleonis. Depending on the method of ingestion, this additive can have a variety of unexpected side effects, but only once the person who has ingested it becomes sleepy. Methods of ingestion include:

● Ingestion: Beverage: When ingested as a flavor shot to drinks ranging from sodas to coffee to alcoholic beverages, it can cause a desire for closeness to a particular other person. Affected characters end up crawling into bed with that specific other character when they become sleepy.

● Ingestion: Food: When ingested as a flavoring added to a baked good or other meal, it can cause an intense desire for body heat when the character becomes drowsy. It won't matter to an affected character who is providing the body heat, so long as it's someone, and they will end up sleepily crawling into someone else's bed for warmth.

● Inhalation: When inhaled ether from a steaming hot beverage or soup, or as an essential oil or aroma from a bakery, it can cause disorientation when a character becomes sleepy. Affected characters either aren't sure which bed is theirs and simply crawl into the closest one, occupied or not, or become convinced that another character's bed is their own.

Feel free to post up a top-level for your own character either affected and invading a random bed or unaffected but open to having their bed invaded by affected characters, or tag around to other people's top-levels.

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Edward Elric | Fullmetal Alchemist | OTA

[alchemyfreak]

Around the City:

Ed hadn't thought much of going out for a bite to eat that evening. Agreeing to try whatever new ingredient the waitstaff was absolutely raving about if only to get the sales pitch over with. Although it hadn't cost anything extra and he couldn't deny that it was good, someone like Edward should have been more skeptical of a situation like this one, especially so soon after the disturbing events of the plants no longer inhabiting the city. Although he hadn't felt the full force of the amnesia, he certainly knew it hadn't been quite such a pleasant experience for everyone else.

Before the week was up locations all over the Quarantine were using this ingredient, not just as an optional add on but as a necessary part of any specific recipe they might be offering. The most alarming thing was that no matter how many warm beverages he drank or layers he piled on, he couldn't quite escape the chill that was oddly out of place in late August. Feel free to bump into him around the city before he retires for the night, possibly with a cup of the culprit in hand!

Floor Six: [Feel free to select A/B/No affect for your tag]

A.) If the person in his bed is lucky, Ed's been drinking some of the new ingredient and by sheer coincidence finds himself perfectly content to share a bed with the exact person that found themselves in his at that moment. He might shift to get more comfortable, but other than that he's not going to mind the presence of someone he's been somehow craving the presence of that night. He's also not going to bother questioning that feeling, considering he's too tired at the moment to put thought into it.

B.) Alternately, Ed just doesn't care. Whoever it is doesn't matter because they're warm and he hasn't been able to shake this chill even if he does keep himself nearly fully covered even in bed. He'll be shifting closer in his sleep and one might find him actually draping an arm over them to encourage the new warmth present in his bed. How they react to Ed's sudden apparent new clingy behavior might be another story.

In Bed

Edward may not be too keen on living off of this new ingredient, so he certainly doesn't spend the entire time affected by any sort of influence. Most nights he finds his way back to his own bed without any issue, blissfully unaware that he might wind up with company sometime after falling asleep. His reaction to said company would vary by who it was, and how he's feeling in that moment but overall one can imagine finding him very flustered. If you're there for body heat, just remember to watch the limbs so that it doesn't backfire on you!

Overall, Ed is used to sharing a bed with others, it wasn't exactly something one could avoid in Attollo and even in Purg if the weather was bad enough body heat may have been the only option. Ed might not even register another body in his bed right off, because it wouldn't strike him as odd until he woke up and realized just where he was and why it was strange.


Coming Home:

After a long day Ed finally manages to get back to the communal housing. Beyond ready to crash for the night (seriously, what were they putting in those new recipes?) Ed moves across the floor to his bed, only to find out that it's already occupied. The question now is who was there, why, and was he tired enough not to care and just climb in next to them?

[For tags with Ed affected let me know which affect you'd like, A or B!
Ed won't be prone to wandering into other people's beds but if you'd really like that as an option let me know and I will write up a top level for you with C (may also include A/B).
Or link me to your Top Level!

Please note Ed's a CRAU with info here regarding age and appearance differences.
If age is a factor for you or your character he's 21ish, for reference! If you'd like to chat/plot feel free to reach me at TransmutedSelf]

Floor Six - A

[ragnarsson]

This has been a weird week. At this point, Ivar's just sort of accepted the inevitable. Either he's going to have someone in his bed or end up in someone else's bed. Ivar doesn't really know how he ended up crawling into Ed's bed, but he doesn't care. Once he's there, he curls up around the shorter man, and falls into a deep sleep without so much as a single word.

Perhaps because of the unusual limbs of his bedmate, he finds himself dreaming of being in a blacksmith's shop, hammering out armor and weapons. He rolls over in his sleep, restless after the loss of his girlfriend mere days ago.

[alchemyfreak]

Luckily for Ivar, Ed doesn't move much in his sleep, as long as he's not having a nightmare. Even then it's usually only just as he's waking that he shoots upright. So, he doesn't seem to even notice Ivar there, at least not right away. He does when the other starts tossing, restless from his dreams and the stress of losing Letha.

Ed snaps awake at the movement, he's not a very heavy sleeper unless he knows someone's watching over him. With all that had been going on lately in the Quarantine he certainly wasn't a heavy sleeper, to the point that it probably showed around most people that knew him at all.

Golden eyes narrow in an attempt to work out what was going on, and sure enough there was someone else in his bed. The same as before. Ed sighs, pushing himself up on one automail limb - both of which he'd been keeping covered ever since finding Lola in his bed. He couldn't do anything about them being hard, but at least if this was going to be a pattern he could do something about them being cold.

He didn't really place this guy right away, sure they had met but it had been brief and Ed was tired from working all day plus distracted by said work. He'd been more interested in the Milotic anyway, so Edward was almost positive he hadn't minded too much, or even noticed. He didn't remember if he ever got his name, though.

"Hey... Are you all right?" Maybe the voice wouldn't be enough to rouse him, but Ed's going to try to that before reaching with his free hand - the flesh one - to grab his shoulder and try to shake him awake lightly.

[ragnarsson]

Ivar rolls over again, pulling the blanket up closer. Though his mind is full, he's gotten so little rest this past week that his body is doing its hardest to keep him asleep. It wasn't easy, considering the stress his thoughts had been giving him.

Ivar swats at Ed's hand when he tries to shake him awake. The last person who had done this was trying to wake him up because there was a fire. Considering the likelihood of that happening again was slim to none, he was not having any of it. He mumbles out an insulting phrase in Old Norse. "Hvata brott, hrafnasueltir." Go away, raven starver. It was one of those things that didn't really make much sense without context.

Then he rolls away from Ed, closer to the edge, and tries to go back into a deeper sleep. Who cares if he's in a bed with a man he barely knows? As long as no one is about to slit his throat in his sleep (always a distinct possiblity back home), he's not leaving.

[alchemyfreak]

Right. Ed can take a hint, and honestly if the guy's just going to sleep he's not about to complain. His eyebrows raise at the insult, but considering he's in bed with his device nowhere to be found for translation purposes he just gets a bunch of gibberish from that insult. At least he could figure out that it meant to leave him alone, if nothing else.

When Ivar rolls away he just shrugs and shifts to get comfortable again, at this point not even caring if he stayed there. Which left him with another dilemma, of course. How was he supposed to get back to sleep like this?

[ragnarsson]

Once Ivar is left alone, he falls back to sleep again deeply. This time, he doesn't dream, instead falling into that black void that comes with dreamless sleep. His body is exhausted and will take the opportunity presented to rest.

But, even exhausted, Ivar can't stay asleep forever. Eventually, he wakes back up. It's a slow process, his mind made slow from lack of response for days. Stretching out to his full height, he finally notices who he's in bed with. Well, after ending up with an undead vampire and Dodger next to him, this is actually an improvement. Ivar doesn't make any move to leave, reluctant to leave the warmth of the blankets.

[alchemyfreak]

When Ivar wakes up Ed makes no move to kick him out. Honestly, he's dealt with stranger things than this so as long as the situation remained peaceful he hardly cared who wound up there. He wasn't exactly sleeping well to begin with, after the nightmare that came with the memories he'd lost earlier in the month so having random people climbing into his bed wasn't really helping on that whole not getting any sleep thing.

On the plus side, if he was awake and not talking in his sleep, maybe he'd be able to understand what the hell the guy was saying now. There was always the option to go through his nightstand for the device if need-be. "Is this becoming a habit around here, or is it just me?" Feel free to ignore the question Ivar, honestly he's expecting that.

[ragnarsson]

Ivar sits up, cracking his neck. Well, at least Ed is taking this in stride. That's a better reaction then Ivar himself would have had if the positions were reversed. No longer mumbling while half-asleep, his words are able to be understood, though still with that peculiar Norwegian accent. "A bad habit, no less."

He looks around for his weapons. Contrary to what most of the residents of Riverview think, he doesn't sleep with all of them. Just a single knife for protection, which he'd placed under the pillows, as usual. The rest of them are sitting neatly on the floor beside his wheelchair.

[alchemyfreak]

Ed is used to weird shit, and near-strangers in bed hardly tops the weird shit he's used to. "Between the fire and the amnesia, we really didn't something else this soon." He's not going to kid himself into thing something else wasn't coming, but did it have to be on the heels of those two? He was well past done with this month.

Considering he'd already met Ivar briefly the wheelchair is not a surprise even if realizing it was there suddenly might have made him double take. The weapons? Well, Yuffie lived on Floor Six, too so Ed was used to someone always having their weapons on them. Not that he was one to talk, considering he was basically his own weapon. "If this keeps up I might start sleeping outside."

[holds_up_walls]

Lyle had unfortunately tried this new spice. A baked good. It had been very good, there was no doubt about it. The fact that he should possibly be weary of something weird happening with anything new hadn't even occurred to him.

But it was on this night that he had suddenly gotten very cold while wandering home and had pretty much been drawn into the first room he had seen. He hadn't even really thought about it, just laying down with the person who happened to be in the bed.

Let's see how long before Ed notices the Irishman who just joined him.

[alchemyfreak]

Ed was seriously getting used to this by this point, and that alone should have been alarming. So when he wakes up to find someone else had climbed into his bed he's not even surprised anymore, but he does take a moment to check who it is, because the variety certainly wasn't expected. By now he was waiting to wake up beside a complete stranger, but everyone so far he had at least met once - not sure if that was more or less awkward, by now.

He's not expecting to find Lyle of all people in his bed, but he also finds that far less awkward than Lola had been. Even if he had woken up to find her not so much in his bed, but on the floor. He'd gone back to wearing sleeves at night, in an attempt to keep the chill from startling people awake again though. Which meant when he put all of this together, he shrugged and dropped back onto the mattress with a sigh.

Not intending to wake the other, but mostly mumbled to himself, "You have got to be kidding me." He might not be awkward about sharing beds after a year in Attollo, but that doesn't mean he expects things to go smoothly with whoever showed up in his bed, whether he knows them or not.

[holds_up_walls]

Normally Lyle was a heavy sleeper, but tonight for some reason, he wasn't. Maybe it was because of whatever he had eaten that had caused this. Normally he had more control than this. It wasn't often his judgments were clouded by a baked good - as strange as that sounded.

Somewhere in this sleep, he felt the person that he had joined move, but his mind wrote it off as he was imagining it. Clearly that couldn't have happened right? But when he heard the person mumble under his breathe, he did hear that and he could no longer ignore it. He opened one eye to see what that sound had been. It took a few long moments to realize there was someone else in the bed and then a few more to realize that he wasn't in his own room.

Well... this was weird. How did this happen?

But he did recognize the person that he had ended up with.

"Ed?"

[alchemyfreak]

He had rolled back over with his back to the older guy as Lyle gradually drew awake. However, he wasn't about to get back to sleep any time soon and sure enough Lyle had figured out exactly what was wrong with this picture. Ed didn't move when the other spoke, shrugging a shoulder at the questioning tone.

"Last time I checked." He did shift then, sitting up once more and looking at Lyle curiously. "I take it you got lost." He is well aware that none of this had been intentional by this point, but he can't help the smirk and teasing a little - as if there was any other reason to find Lyle, of all people, climbing into bed with him.

[holds_up_walls]

"Well that's good unless you've managed to change who you were in one night." Lyle trying to make a joke at this after suddenly awoken to find himself in someone else's bed. There's was the strange relief that it was someone he knew and not some random person he didn't even know their name.

"Yeah... I think I did." Lyle turned over on his back to look at the ceiling, at least as much as the bed would allow considering there were now two people in it. "I don't really remember much of anything except that I was cold and needed to get to bed. I must have just wandered in here by mistake."

[alchemyfreak]

"That seems to be happening a lot around here. The first day I woke up to Lola on the floor..." He seemed to reconsider that admittance before adding a little hastily, "She got in my bed by mistake and freaked out when she felt my arm. I guess our beds are in the same place, just different floors so it made sense at the time."

A pause, considering that before Ed sighed. "Lola didn't remember it, either. Something is going on in this place and after the amnesia I should probably be less surprised." The surprise came with how close together they were, actually.

[holds_up_walls]

"Huh... I guess same bed different floors makes sense. Eight different floors seems a little weird. I don't know where she lives."

He was quiet for a moment, staring up at the ceiling as though willing other thoughts to come back to him.

"I did have someone else end up in my bed. So yeah... I'm kind of seeing there is something going on. Don't quite know what it is related to."

[alchemyfreak]

"The second floor." He doesn't realize that her bed is actually a mirror image to his and she turned toward the wrong end of the building on top of being on the wrong floor.

"Was it someone you knew? I'm still trying to come up with a common factor, so far I haven't found myself in anyone else's bed though." Which meant as far as he was concerned it was everyone else affected and not him, so he had no idea what might be causing it. "Knowing this place, probably another plant or weird insect. Get any bug bites lately?"

The last part's a joke, mostly.

Floor Six - A

[tempredmental]

Yup. Keith had gotten another whiff of whatever that stuff was again, and, now that he was tired, he found himself going too many floors up. Yet, it didn't bother him. Instead, he wandered over, strangely calm about it, and slid into bed next to Ed.

[alchemyfreak]

By now, Ed is so used to this he doesn't even bat an eye at the shift of his bed with the new weight. He turned onto his back to get an idea of who this time and couldn't help but be surprised to find Keith there. This was no weirdly awkward situation with a stranger, but it certainly wasn't someone he would have thought nothing of sharing a bed with. No, even for Ed this one was a little weird.

What was weirder still was that Keith being there didn't even remotely bother him. Not in the same way that he had just been shrugging this off in previous nights, no Keith's appearance was almost a comfort in a way. Definitely not as expected, and he's seriously reconsidering swearing off tea again if it was going to prove unsafe even here.

He doesn't even bother with a greeting, this whole situation was too unreal to process. Instead, completely deadpan, "Did you try that new spice?" The one that was just being advertised before all of this crazy started, the one that he suspected was to blame for all this insanity.

[tempredmental]

Keith had just started to settle in and consider sleep when he heard Ed speak up. Wait... what? He blinked and looked over his shoulder.

"New..." He frowned a bit, and then shook his head. "No...?" After the amnesia recovery tea, he'd been avoiding trying anything new or weird. "I just..." He yawned. "Wait, this isn't my bed?"

[alchemyfreak]

Keith was smart, probably smarter than Ed considering by this point he'd just gone fuck it, and gave in. Couldn't possibly be the worst thing that's happened to him, as he generally views everything that happens to him anymore.

"Pretty sure I'm not the one that's lost." The room wasn't exactly bright, but he could recognize his own roommates in the dark considering how used to them being there he had to be after all this time. "I guess it's not exactly easy to tell when all the floors are identical." What does he know about the private and shared housing?

Ed turns back onto his side as if not fussed whether Keith decided to stay or leave with a shrug. "I'm going to figure out what the hell is causing this if it kills me."

[tempredmental]

Keith stared, slowly taking in the differences in personal items between this floor and his own. It was gradually beginning to sink in.

"Quiznak."

He thought about it for a moment, and then, "Ah! That stupid bakery!" He been walking past. "They wanted me to try some of the pastries they'd made with the new filling, and I turned it down, but the person outside giving out the samples waved the stupid smell at me."

He looked back at Ed.

"Do you think just the smell would affect someone, too?"

[alchemyfreak]

Both eyebrows shot up at the first thing Keith says, because he has no clue what that means, but he's going to focus on the more on topic mention as Keith brings up the bakery.

"It's certainly possible, Lola showed up after getting sprayed with some new perfume. We kind of figured the two were related almost immediately. I'm betting it's whatever they're selling as this new mystery spice. They must be putting it into everything."

Hard to believe, but if they could do it with other seasonings, why not?

[tempredmental]

Welcome to Altean Curse Words 101, Ed. Quiznak is apparently a very bad word, but Allura and Coran used it a lot, and the rest of the Paladins picked up on using it as well, really fast.

"Yeah... she showed up in my bed, too," Keith said. "So, maybe that was it..."

And then it hit him that he was still in the bed.

"Oh!" He got up quickly, managing to deftly avoid getting tangled up in Ed's blanket. "Sorry... I- yeah. I didn't meant anything by it."

[alchemyfreak]

Before Ed has a chance to respond Keith is scrambling out of his bed like it was a trap, which only gets a quirked brow in response. Nice delayed reaction there, Keith. “When Lola showed up we thought it might have something to do with those new powers she apparently acquired, but- not if it’s affecting half the population.”

Either way, he’s sensing a theme here. “We should probably try to put a stop to using this new ingredient, whatever it is. Chances are they’re going to want to get rid of it, the same way they did with the plant causing the amnesia.” By ‘we’ he means he’s going to look into it, but details. “Thanks for the information.” If the last thing Keith says registers to him he doesn’t respond to it, because it doesn’t really bother him. If anything, it’s just amusing how easy it is to fall back into old habits of not caring about sharing a bed with friends.

After a pause he just looks confused. "What are you apologizing for?"