applesaucedream | I'll See You in My Dreams [WIDE-OPEN PARTY THREAD]

Entry tags:

I'll See You in My Dreams [WIDE-OPEN PARTY THREAD]

Sometimes the rift only gives the denizens of Manhattan strange dreams. Sometimes, two people will find themselves together in the Dreaming. And other times? Other times, the Dreaming takes hold of dozens of people at once, throwing them all together into one shared mental space while they sleep.

Tonight is one of those nights -- what's more, the rift has outdone itself this time, telepathic tendrils reaching out through the rift into other universes to pull in even those who haven't been physically transported to this world...yet. You might meet a stranger from another world, or you might run into your next-door neighbor. You might notice right away that this isn't the waking world and that you are not alone, or you may drift through blissfully unaware that anything is out of the ordinary. You might not even remember this in the morning at all.

And that's probably going to be fortunate for at least a few people, because what you will notice is the overwhelming desire to get cozy with someone. It's chilly in this big house where you've found yourself, but luckily for you, there are beds, beanbags, and blankets galore, all of them just perfect for getting cuddly with your new friends. Consider yourself lucky that dream-world cameras can't upload photos to the real-world internet.

[It's a Dreaming party, and everyone is welcome! Tag a friend, tag a stranger, whatever! Everyone who's been pulled in will be feeling unusually friendly and cuddly, so get a-snuggling. Some characters (particularly those with strong telepathic defenses) may not be as strongly affected as others; the extent of the Dreaming's effect on each character is up to the mun's discretion.

Also, when we say everyone, we mean everyone. Non-members are welcome to tag into this post, so feel free to voice-test new characters here, and to invite friends who aren't in the game to come do some meeting and greeting. If you've come upon this post and aren't a member of this game, you are welcome to tag into this post.

For those who are familiar with the brbG parties, this is basically like that. Post a tag with your character's arrival and await replies. Time is bendy in here, so each character can have multiple replies/threads. Have fun!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That's a yes, then. But who? Family? Siblings, parents? Friend? Girlfriend? She's not going to push the subject. The specifics aren't really important.

She just wants to let him know that she would actually be there to listen if he wants to share, but she's not sure how. When he shifts, so does she, but rather than move away from him, she moves up a bit and puts her hand on his cheek, turning his face towards him, and she kisses him. Not the rushed, messy, sexual kisses they've shared so far, but just a sweet, gentle one.

He shifts as if to pull away from her hand, but ultimately lets her -- and it's not what he expects, not at all. Peter's not sure what to do with this, actually, but he's not objecting. Not really.

Lucy's not sure what she's doing with this herself, really. Reaching out? It's been a long time since she was emotionally intimate with anyone. But she doesn't really expect Peter to deal with that very well, so there are limits to how open and trusting she can be.

And she's definitely not going to discuss it. Unless Peter wants to, but she doubts that. Instead she just rests her head on his chest again, ending up just as snuggled up as before inside their cocoon.

Wasn't he going to pull away and give her the cold shoulder a moment ago? Instead, he seems to be putting an arm around her and setting his chin on her head.

He's caught on by now that this isn't the real world. His real world doesn't have a house like this, and in the real world Lucy wouldn't have just kissed him like that -- they'd be fucking or they'd be arguing right now. And he wants to say it -- having admitted it to Charley and having killed Jerry, it's been worse to go back to pretending.

"It killed my parents," he says softly, admitting it to what he thinks is only his own sleeping mind. "I was nine."

Lucy's honestly not sure what this is. She's assumed it's another one of those intergalactic parties with the Doctor. It certainly held some similarities. Yet it doesn't feel quite right, and she's not sure why Peter would be here. She does actually think this has at least some ties to reality, however, even if she hasn't been considering it a lot.

Hearing Peter tell her breaks her heart a little though. Which is impressive, since she'd been starting to think she didn't have much of a heart left to break. Numb and careless and snarky worked rather well for her.

"I'm sorry..." she answers quietly, the sadness evident in her voice. If nothing else, Lucy had at least had a fairly happy childhood. It wasn't until a few years ago that things went wrong.

That's...different. He hasn't actually told anyone about that (other than Brewster) since he was ten or eleven and he finally got it into his head that no one was going to listen. He's spent a long time trying not to think about it, or about who he might have been otherwise.

"So am I," he admits, feeling a little hollow...but a little relieved. He can't imagine telling this to the real Lucy -- she doesn't strike him as all that sympathetic, for all her prying and her attempts to coax more information out of him. It's a bit pathetic, isn't it, that he has to turn to a dream for this.

Lucy is unsure what to do to comfort him that she isn't already doing. She just remains close to him, listening to his heartbeat, waiting for him to continue, but he doesn't. She considers sharing something with him in return, to return his trust.

"...My husband murdered my big brother," she admits quietly after a few more moments, her voice a bit raspy. "Right in front of me. Because I tried to take my own life..." Not many people know about that. It hadn't been for show, it had been personal and private. A lesson, a promise, to tell her to behave, or else. Most of the stuff she's shared with Peter, she's not so bothered if anyone knows. It's things she's distanced herself from, made herself cold. But this one still hurts.

Never mind that in all likelihood, he's still safe back in her universe. It never happened to him. But she remembers, and she never saw him again after that, being put in isolation, then coming here. She'll never see any of her family again, neither of her two brothers, nor her parents. This might be a blessing, given the state of her, but she still misses them if she lets herself think about it.

Peter takes in a sharp breath. She said abusive, but he didn't (doesn't?) think it was like that. He wishes briefly that they could talk like this for real -- but he'll just have to make the best of whatever this is.

Realizing he should offer some words of comfort, he gives her a little squeeze. "I'm sorry," he says, knowing it isn't adequate. For him, though -- well, it's not like he's normally the supportive type at all. "My girlfriend was killed a few months ago," he adds, since apparently they're sharing all their worst memories. "Vampire. Minion of the same vampire, actually."

"Stop trying to one-up me," she answers with a smile, though it's a very weak one, and a bad joke. It's difficult to remain completely sincere over time, but given the fact she's close to tears over both their fates, it's not an unkind joke.

"I guess it's not so strange you didn't want to talk about her," she adds, sympathetically. It's a very long way from snarking about how unsurprising it was for him to be single. "What happened?"

"What, you don't want to hear about the shitty time I had in foster care?" chuckles Peter, finishing off his beer. Maybe he'll decide it's full again later. He sniffs in a breath, considering. "She went to answer the door," he replies. "It was posing as a deliveryman, and I'd said it could come up." Thus the invitation. Thus Ginger's death being 100% his fault.

Not even a single 1% of blame given to the actual vampire, huh? And she wouldn't mind listening to Peter talking more about his childhood. Now she understands why he was snippy about her privileged upbringing, too.

She doesn't put up with his whining, but she has no problem with him sharing things that actually affects him on an emotional level - not just how annoyed he is about living in a dump.

"What about the vampire?" she asks. Since apparently it came to visit Peter, who is clearly still alive.

Oh, it was also 100% the vampire's fault. And he's pretty sure it's at least a little bit the fault of every magical creature ever. That's part of the reason it's so unreasonable for the rebels to expect him to live like he has been, aside from the pittance they expect him to live on.

What about living in a shithole apartment with sparklepires for neighbors doesn't affect him on an emotional level?

"Dead now," he shrugs. "Charley killed it -- Charley was the one who brought it to my doorstep, actually. Didn't mean to. We killed the parent, too, later."

Granted, she has more sympathy for his hatred of non-humanoids now. She's just become so used to it herself.

"That's good," she answers with a nod. She has nothing against dead vampires. Also, she has slightly more respect for Peter, knowing he has fought vampires and lived - and not just by hiding.

"And if you really to tell me about your shitty time in foster care, I would listen," she adds with a smile. "And I could tell you what it's like to be married to the dictator of Earth, and then being in prison for a year and a half without a trial."

"That is good," he agrees. "One of the best things I've done." One could argue that surviving a vampire by hiding is perfectly respectable. It's so rarely effective, after all.

"That kind of explains a few things," comments Peter, skirting the issue of whether he wants to share about foster care. He's sort of done his best to forget that time in his life, really, even if the couple he was eventually placed with weren't that bad in and of themselves.

It's certainly fairly respectable at the age of 10. Not quite so impressive when it's in a panic room and various other people are getting murdered outside. But thankfully Lucy doesn't know that bit.

"Like my fashionable attire when we first met?" she asks. Or, you know, her rather unconventional way of dealing with people in general. Or having sex with him so quickly. Or any number of things, yeah.

Doesn't having the foresight to get a panic room installed count for anything? He's a survivor for a reason. A cowardly reason, sure, but the end result has been good apart from the self-loathing.

"That," he agrees, "and that you're insane." He says it without malice, for once, though apparently it doesn't occur to him to ask himself whether he should be saying that to her. It's only dream!Lucy, anyway.

"Yes, well, we all have our flaws," she agrees. Though honestly, she's impressively emotionally stable from what she's been through. Not that it's guaranteed to last. Peter's lucky she hasn't been crazier.

"Some of us more than others," notes Peter. He's being non-specific, at least; he didn't say her in particular. He kind of means himself as well.

She's not going to inquire further about who he means. She could think of a lot of flawed and/or crazy people. Instead she's going to reach over and grab her drink and take a sip from it, before going back to cuddling. Now they've seemed to be over the unusualness of the cuddling, it's a nice way to just be.

"You didn't ask me why I was in prison," she points out after a few moments. Just, you know, might be a good idea to inform Peter he's snuggling with someone who is technically serial killer (even if it was the same person she killed twice), sooner rather than later.

Peter blinks. "Why were you in prison?" he asks, having needed the prompt to think outside himself long enough to be aware that there's something odd about that. It sounded to him like just another item in the litany of woe, really; he didn't think about cause and effect when she said it.

"I murdered my husband," she answers, already worrying how Peter is going to feel about this. She's already covered how abusive he was, and that he was a murderer himself, so she doesn't try to justify it yet. "And then sixteen months later, they tried to resurrect him, but I stopped them. I thought the explosion would kill me, but instead I fell through the rift and landed in front of you." Just in case he was wondering why she was acting so strangely when they met.

Peter stiffens, his immediate reaction to wonder if it's so wise to cuddle up with an admitted murderer. Fortunately, the atmosphere of the dream has him relaxed enough to actually think about it instead of hurrying (or teleporting) away. Her husband -- she killed her husband, who was abusive alien scum and killed her brother. When he looks at it that way, it's a no-brainer. Their situations are not so different as that.

"Are you sure that counts as murder?" he asks. "I don't think it was murder when I killed the dread vampire Jerry."

Yeah, taking credit for that. Hey, it was his idea that got the vampire killed! He frowns, parsing out something else she said. "Who's 'they'?"

"His followers. Doesn't really matter. And I suppose technically you could count it as defending the Earth against alien invasion," she answers. "But trust me, it wasn't very heroic." Especially seeing as it was more or less an execution, than anything else. He'd been defeated and captured - there wasn't really any danger. Except the danger of him escaping. And his resurrection, well, that might have counted as a heroic sacrifice, if it wasn't for that she didn't really feel like she was sacrificing all that much. But Peter hasn't commented on her expecting to die.

"The real thing is never heroic," he shrugs. For how good it felt to know that Jerry was dead, it didn't undo anything. It didn't make him feel like a hero, that was for sure.

He gives a little snort, trying to lighten things. "Meeting me was better than dying, though, right?"

"Well, most things would be better than dying," she answers fairly. "But yeah, you've grown on me." She gives his stomach a little pat and smiles. She actually feels quite fond of him at this point. Certainly more than she's felt for anyone in a long time, but that's not really difficult to achieve.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject