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

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

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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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm fine.

[Sam grits the words out between clenched teeth, very obviously Not Fine. As much as instinct tells him to pull away from Stephen, he doesn't want to disturb his sleep even more than he already has - and he's not sure he could move right now, anyway.]

[Stephen couldn't help the little snort at that response, not budging but a brow lifting as he considered his companion.]

Would you let me get away with 'I'm fine' in this situation? [He's onto you.]

I was hoping you might.

[It does, after all, come perilously close to talking about Feelings, and he knows Stephen's avoidance of that.

Sam sucks in another breath and lets it out slowly, his body shuddering.]

Sometimes I have bad dreams. About Afghanistan.

I'd say sorry but we both know that's a lie.

[But at the same time that is not a fun admission, Stephen's hand stilling over Sam's chest momentarily at the shudder.]

Is there anything that helps?

[Because like fuck is he leaving Sam to suffer that alone.]

Time.

[This time, he manages a one-shouldered shrug. He's sure Stephen knows about this kind of thing just as well as he does.]

Eight years ago, I would've been curled up on the bathroom floor. I could barely function after I came back home. Picked myself up, got a whole lot of therapy, and here we are today. But it never really heals, you know?

[A pause, and then:] I goddamn hate sand.

Yeah.

[Stephen didn't care for this. Didn't like that something was bothering Sam that he couldn't really fix no matter how he wanted to. He couldn't do this for the man, it had to be something Sam did for himself as much as it galled Stephen.]

Well you've got open invitation to show up at the Sanctum. [Not specifying why, knowing Sam would understand the intent. For those evenings when his own company was just too much and he needed another person in the room even if all they did was sleep.]

Look I'm fairly certain hatred of sand is universal.

Edited 2017-09-14 01:06 (UTC)

Thanks.

[He manages to relax enough to pillow his head on Stephen's shoulder, rearranging the covers a little.]

I can't go to the beach. The sand would get everywhere - I had to strip the jetpack down once, twice a week, clean everything out, put it back together. I could do it in my sleep if I had to. It'd get into the cracks in my gear, flay my skin raw when I flew. Had to keep going up even when my skin was cracked and bleeding.

[Stephen let Sam settle in, a hand lightly smoothing over his side in an almost reassuring stroke as the man was slowly starting to untense, listening to what he was describing.

He wasn't entirely sure what he could say, or if he should say a damn word just yet or let Sam vent for now. Wasn't that part of therapy, being able to get your thoughts out to a sympathetic companion?

Didn't stop him from laying a light kiss to his temple though. Don't look too hard into it, clearly he's just offering some comfort is all.]

[Sam's the sort of guy who's free enough with physical affection that he doesn't really think too hard when it comes from other people, even when that other person is Stephen.]

I love flying, don't get me wrong. Hell, you know I do. But the war itself- shit, you don't need me to tell you about it. Only thing that kept me going was my wingman, Riley. We went through training together, got deployed together-

[Sam pauses for a moment, buries his face in Stephen's shoulder.]

He got hit by a RPG he didn't see coming. I heard his screams on the comms, wasn't nothing I could do about it. Couldn't even go after the guys who did it because it would've been the same as painting a target on my back.

I still had three months left in my deployment, and I had to keep going up every day. I was the only guy they had left, you see. Didn't have a choice. But you bet your ass I quit as soon as I got home.

[Stephen in general wasn't very touchy-feely. But at the same time, he knew that Sam was a physical person, could guess that he'd find comfort from it with the way he'd all but curled in on the sorcerer.]

Not surprising you'd be done after a thing like that.

[Just slipping arms around him to tug Sam in close, for a tight, warm hug, trying to be reassuring in a way that he figured would help rather than come across as aloof or worse, as flippant with how he cared about his wingman. It was obvious in every way after all.]

[After a moment, Sam returns the embrace, his shoulders shuddering with silent sobs. Unsurprisingly, he's not the kind of guy who's worried about crying in front of other people - and he's certainly close enough to Stephen to not worry about expressing emotion.]

Not long before I got here, we had this big fight at an airport in Leipzig, Steve's crew against Tony's. Vision fired some kinda beam at me, and I evaded. Sort of thing that's second nature after you've trained enough, you know? You see something coming, you get the hell out of the way.

Except when I dodged, it hit Rhodes, and he dropped like a goddamn rock in that armor of his. I tried- I tried to dive, but I wasn't fast enough. And I know it's not my fault, I don't think he'd say it was if you asked him, but goddamn, sometimes it sure as hell feels like it.

[Stephen held firm, hand running over Sam's back, dipping his head to rest his forehead against the top of the man's head, small continued bits of contact. Little things that he hoped added up to something helpful.]

It's... hard being the one who survives in that situation. All I can really do is echo what you already know for what it'll help. It wasn't your fault, no matter how it feels.

[It really does help to have someone there with him, someone grounding him with touch. Sam appreciates it more than he can express; it's not often that he has anyone with him during one of his episodes.]

Nah, but being locked up in superjail right afterwards didn't help much, either. Ross had some goddamn prison built in the middle of the ocean, called it the Raft. And guy like me? Let's be real, it's not like I could escape from regular jail without help. I don't need any special containment measures. Only one who did was Wanda.

[And god, he's glad she doesn't remember that. But that's a whole other kettle of fish that he's not touching right now.]

People and their fucking special prisons... [Grumbled more than anything, ire stirring in him. The more he heard piecemeal about Sam's world, the more he was reminded of the disaster of the Registration Act and the deep divide it had caused in the world's heroes. He hadn't liked it then, and he sure as hell didn't like it now.]

Let's be real jail is a shitty place to do any sort of coping.

Yeah, tell me about it. Especially 'cause Lang wouldn't shut the hell up, like, ever.

[Sam has regrets - okay, not really, but there were definitely times when he'd wanted to throttle Scott.]

Other you's lucky he didn't get caught up in that bullshit.

[Maybe if he just talks about inconsequential things, he'll be able to distract himself.]

...Yeah? D'he try and play neutral party Switzerland or what?

[He'd tried that at first. But with how things went it didn't sit well with him, the way things were being handled, good people being treated like criminals in what basically amounted to a witch hunt.]

Dunno what he was up to, I'd never even heard of him till he showed up here. Maybe he missed his Hogwarts letter.

[Not that Sam knows all the superheroes in his world, but it seems to be a much shorter list than it is in Stephen's.]

Owl must've gotten distracted by a lady owl or something.

[It was a better thought than the other following his poor decision-making footsteps, that much was for sure.]

He hates Harry Potter jokes, you know. No sense of humor. Must be 'cause he's new to the whole magic thing.

Or because he was bullied by Gryffindors.

Get shoved into the Potions closet often enough that'll kill anyone's sense of humor.

All those flobberworms.

[He shakes his head with mock sadness.]

So is magic like, a natural thing, or could anyone do it?

A crying shame.

[Poor Babyface.]

Some branches of magic are tied to specifics. Species, or more commonly bloodline if you're working something that taps into ancestors. But generally magic can be learned by most people to at least some degree.

[A pause, and then:]

So I could learn magic?

[Let's be real, Stephen, you knew this was coming.]

I don't see why not- you're open-minded which is usually one of the hurdles to jump, and I don't see anything that'd hinder you otherwise.

[He's not at all surprised.]

But the most important question - do you have a Sorting Hat?

[Sam everyone knows you're a Hufflepuff.]

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