[open] life is a flower

[broshaw]

Who: Sharky Boshaw and YOU!
What: Flower Power baby!!!
When: Across September
Where: The laundry room, Bobby B's, and the usual hot tub prompt!
Warnings: General Sharky warnings apply (so check his info post)

[laundry room] hyssops
[Sharky's breakfast had taken place in the buffet, next to a bunch of tall purple flowers that were actually super pretty. By the time he finished, he found himself suffering from an intense need to do some late spring cleaning... some fall cleaning, really.

Anyone who comes into the laundry room today will find it completely stuffed with various bits and bobs: old Tommy Bahama shirts; denim jeans from the diner; swimsuits; leather boots; and a whole pile of absolutely trashed clothes from his arrival back home. Sharky is in the midst of it all, stripped down to his boxers (out of respect for the young impressionable eyes on the ship!), his boombox playing a variety of disco music at a frankly obnoxious volume. He's hand-washing his boots while all of the laundry machines rock and roll.

The second the effects of the flower wears off, he'll abandon almost all of this mess for someone else to clean up, but right now? Right now, he is single-minded on his task, to the point where he won't notice if someone else comes in.]

[bobby b's] purple hyacinth
[He'd thought they were just more intense cleaning flowers, but the joke's on him! Hyacinths are a completely different kind of flower, and they do something much worse than turning him into a temporary clean freak. This one is a straight-up bummer.

Sharky can be found suffering from an intense bout of remorse in the evening, sitting in the back of Bobby's with a pack of cigarettes, his boombox, and a half-drunken bottle of old, expensive whiskey. Despite his bleary eyes, he isn't anywhere close to passing out, too busy going over the last fifty-ish years of his life and picking apart all the ways he's fucked up his life.

For some reason, he's picked some twangy indie-sounding chorus music to listen to, although at a much lower volume than he usually bothers with. Country music is the traditional music of a sad Montana boy, but he's fresh out, so he's making do.]

[hot tub] pansies
[What is with this dude and the color purple??? Anyway. After dealing with chronic cleaning and a level of regret that normally only comes after a long night of getting cross-faded, Sharky's doing his best to avoid any and all flowers!

Unfortunately, the hot tub is slowly being crowded by thirsty flowers; his usual 1 AM skinny dipping sesh means tolerating whatever fucked up thing said flowers are going to do to him. After about five minutes of standing nervously around in his shorts, he decides that they must be safe enough, so he shucks off his clothes and plops down in the hot, bubbly water that he knows and loves so well.

No drink this time; instead, he's just quietly reading a Nancy Drew book and enjoying some peace and fuckin' quiet. The boombox, a constant companion these days, is set up by his towel, playing the BeeGee's greatest hits at a normal volume. Sharky sings quietly to himself as he reads, and it sounds so normal to him that he doesn't even realize his mouth isn't moving while he does it!]

[wildflowers]
[hmu for something specific, or set up a prompt with a flower in the header and I'll roll with it!]

Comments

Bobby B

[knotawolf]

He winces as he passes the open door of the bar; something about that music is the right twang to hurt his ears, it's almost like it's hitting a high-frequency that's specifically designed to not be ignored.

Huffing he goes to find the source, making grumbly noises to try and drown it out. "Stop it!"

[broshaw]

Sharky can't say he blames Yufei for that reaction -- PEG music fuckin' sucks. It's just, you know, the only thing that he has that reminds him of home. Which sucks even more, like, c'mon, man!! He'd take surfer rock over Peggie bullshit! Hell, he'd take that awful rap music the Highwaymen always blasted!

"It's terrible, I know," he groans.

[knotawolf]

"Then why are making it!" He glares at the boombox and it suddenly goes to static, which isn't much better at this volume, but isn't giving him the urge to start howling along.

[broshaw]

"Hey, man, don't bust my radio with your telepathy or whatever!" The complaint is offered in a tone of voice that implies he's equally as happy to not listen to more of that shit as Yufei is.

"It's the closest I got to Conway Twitty, okay? I'd listen to the BeeGees, but I don't wanna taint the best music on the ship with bad vibes, man." He lifts his glass, realizes it's empty, then goes to fill it up again. "You wanna drink?"

[knotawolf]

He stops glaring and the radio comes back into tune singing about water washing away sins as Yufei grumps about it.

"Can't. Or eat." He perches on the back of an arm chair, crouched down with a soft jangle from the keys hanging off his belt. "You said the ship 'runs on vibes' and now vibes are bad? So ship can't run?"

[broshaw]

Sharky lets the chorus end, then does Yufei (and himself!) the favor of turning the boombox off properly.

"Ugh. That sucks, man." He can't imagine what that'd be like. He'd probably shoot himself if he couldn't eat, and that's saying something because he has a huge self-preservation streak. "The ship, ummm, it runs on bad vibes. Like... death and torture and shit. I'm just bummed out and homesick. Totes different vibes."

Ugh. He's so goddamn bad at this shit. He could be better at explaining stuff if his brain wasn't so fuckin' fried from underage drinking and copious drug use. Maybe if he hadn't been drinking fucking ethanol, like an absolute fucking idiot...

"Ugh. Just... trust me. The ship's probably lovin' this. I'm just not."

[knotawolf]

"Miss your forest. Understand. I miss forest too." He's never experienced sadness before, not like this. Especially when there's literally nothing he can do about these things. "So when sad, ship runs better."

Doing some hard thinking about that.

"But then won't feel happy again because ship is happy because you were sad? So is good! You are helping."

[broshaw]

Sharky uses that hard thinking time to take an awfully big drink of whiskey, now that he knows Yufei isn't gonna want any.

"I... Huh. Yeah, I guess so. Gotta be real with you, though, I'm not super stoked to be helping the ship right now." Because he's never been good at suffering for the sake of other people's wellbeing. He's barely even good at doing it for his own sake. "It's still better than back home," because he burned half of it to the ground even before the Collapse, "But ugh. If I wanted to suffer all the time, I'd have joined the fuckin' cult."

[knotawolf]

He wrinkles his nose at the smell, even if he could drink it, he wouldn't have wanted to put something that smells like burning tires anywhere near his face.

"Helping the ship means not sinking again. Did not like that at all." He shakes himself like... well, like a dog, to try and dislodge that memory, ending up sprawled across the chair and looking at Sharky upside down. "Are suffering now? Not bleeding."

A few moments before he thinks to ask, "What is cult?"

[broshaw]

"Oh, right... you went on that." Because even though he's kind of dumb, Yufei obviously has more balls than Sharky. As per usual, Sharky is avoiding doing any of the heavy lifting that makes his chill lifestyle possible. Didn't want to fight the Project when they showed up, wanted to ignore the Highwaymen, wouldn't have even bothered with either if they hadn't directly fucked with him and his...

"It's a mental sorta suffering. Like... ummm, I keep thinkin' about all the shit I fucked up back home, and how I'm still basically fuckin' up here." It's probably the fucking flowers, he knows that much, but he doesn't know which ones!!! (Proooobably the purple flowers growing along the bar.)

The vocab lesson is almost a good distraction, except for the part where Sharky's forced to lament his shitty grades in English. "And a cult is... ummm... huh. A religion? But like, crazy and fanatical and usually pretty fucked up."

[knotawolf]

"Went on..?" He doesn't get it, he just woke up there. Because he chewed on the sign up sheet and that's good enough since he very much can't read.

"That is over. It's the..." Trying to think up the word he wants... "Is in past. But we are now. Now is what's important. Can't 'fuck up' because are doing what needs to be done now. Right now."

He sounds pretty certain about that, there's a nice bit of confidence that comes with not having a concept of past or future.

[broshaw]

"Oh, uh..." He doesn't know how to explain that it was a different-but-identical ship, so he kinda just slides right past that.

"Yeah, but, like... Who I was is who I am? Right?" This is the most confusing philosophical conversation ever had. "And if I was the kinda guy who fucked up stuff without realizing it, aren't I gonna stay the kinda guy who fucks stuff up?"

[knotawolf]

"Who you was is who you was. Who you are is who you are." This is might be extremely existential, or Yufei has no idea what he's talking about. It could go either way. "You are Sharky. And you are making the ship better. What part is wrong?"

[broshaw]

Wow. He didn't know Yufei was so smart and philosophical and shit!

"I like to think I'm making the ship better..." At least all this bad mojo should be helping fill the engines, maybe? That kind of makes him feel better. Or maybe the flowers are just starting to wear off a bit. Either way, he doesn't immediately take another drink, instead offering Yufei a lopsided smile. "Man, you're pretty good at this cheering-people-up thing. You should write a thank you card to whatever therapist you had back home. I mean, you'd have to pretend you could send it to them, but still."

[knotawolf]

While he doesn't really know what that means, he gets that it's a compliment and he beams in response. It takes so little to make him happy.

"Can't always see when things are changing. Like seasons. But then they do and everything different. Is like that. Can't see you are helping, but are and will know when food is made to be more and damage is fixed. You will see then. Is good."

[broshaw]

"You're right. I just wish it didn't have to suck so much, y'know?" He lifts his glass in a salute, "But that's what whiskey's for. And weed. I got a whole bunch of wild-ass weed from my man Aiden -- you can't drink or eat, but can you smoke?"

[knotawolf]

"Like fire?" That's... probably not what Sharky is asking him, because they'd talked about fire before. "The sticks in the square packages with the ends everywhere. I do not think so. Need to breathe for that yes? Didn't need to when ship was sinking. What makes it wild-ass?"

[broshaw]

"Aw, boo, man!" That's gotta suck. No drinking, no eating, no smoking, no running, no digging, no nothing! "It's some fae-based shit, so I thought maybe it'd work on you. Can't you, like, make yourself breathe? Suck in air or something?"

[knotawolf]

"Think this is broken." He looks down at himself, stretching his legs out and slapping his flip-flops against the soles of his feet. "Should be eating. Drinking. Sleeping. Breathing. Bleeding. But don't. Can't."

He takes a deep breath just to see if he can, it works but it sure doesn't look natural. "Can try? Fae? Fairy? Is it mushrooms?"

[broshaw]

Wow, that's so super unnerving. It's always weird watching people mimic things that he needs to do naturally for living. But Yufei has proven himself a wise and chill person, so he isn't going to hold the wonky forced-breathing against him!

"It's weed -- like the sticks people smoke." Meeting Yufei on the same language level. "But, uh, why doesn't your body work right?"

[knotawolf]

He's more familiar with cigarettes than marijuana, but he thinks he gets what Sharky means; the stuff that smells like when skunks get hit by cars. He wrinkles his nose because he's not sure he wants to put that in his body, even if it's just smoke.

"Think something broke when came here. When taken from forest. Was fine before!" Though now that he thinks about it, it might have not been fine, and he didn't notice because he was so confused that he didn't really try to eat or drink for a few days. "Maybe was demons. They make things bad. Waste food and hang things in trees."

He snarls more at that second one than the first. Getting whapped in the eye by some dangling wooden symbols hung in branches is a far worse offense.

[broshaw]

"Oh, mannnn. You got demons in your world?" He squints as he ponders whether or not the Seeds count as demonic entities or not. Probably not -- they didn't have horns or hoof-feet or anything cool like that. Just massive motherfuckin' assholes.

"Maybe you should ask Friday about it." Which is apparently his go-to solution despite never doing it himself. "She's pretty smart, and maybe she knows how to fix whatever got broken."

[knotawolf]

"Shadow smoke. Can disappear. AND STEAL FOOD." He yells that towards the walls as if maybe a demon will manifest there and he can attack it.

"Wear red and black..." He gestures with his hands like he's putting a hood up, not knowing the word for cloaks or capes.

"Friday can fix things?"

[broshaw]

Sharky looks at the yelled-at walls as if expecting a demon to appear so Yufei can beat it up. (Un?)Fortunately, nothing manifests, so they're probably in the clear.

"So, like, super traditional cultists, huh? People worshipping demons and like, IDK, sacrificing people and whatnot??" So basically like his cult, but you know, less metaphorical demons and more literal ones.

"And yeah, sorta? I mean, she basically runs the ship, and she's always fixing the big ass holes people put in the ship and all that shit. She's also the one who wakes people up after they die, I think?" He doesn't know how the resurrection stuff works.

[knotawolf]

"Yes! Is like that. Sacrifices make them powerful, become less smoke more person. But then can kill them." There's probably something symbolic there that they can only be defeated when they're at the height of their power. But Yufei can't really comment on that.

"Did she bring us here?"