JUNE EVENT: CAMP

[sailmods]

early on June 10th, Friday's morning announcements end with a request for everyone going on the latest excursion to meet her in the atrium. she seems in noticeably better spirits than she had been last time, and she leads them cheerfully to the tender. once they are all aboard, and the door is securely shut, the interior fills with gas, and, perhaps, their last thought before they slip into unconsciousness is "oh shit, not again."

passengers wake up on a rickety old school bus, driving down a dirt road surrounded by woods. what is it that they notice first? that, no matter what they were wearing before, they are now wearing a camp t-shirt and legitimately horrifyingly short shorts? the overstuffed backpack between their knees? the words "take one down and pass it around" dying on their lips? the fact that Friday is absolutely driving the bus?

or, maybe the fact that it's already slowing down, pulling up in front of a massive wooden sign, saying:

 

 

 

 

 

CAMP AION

when they get out of the bus, Friday is the one to divide them up into their cabin groups, and she is the one to give the counselors their very official-looking clipboards and whistles. she explains that they are in charge, and that she will be back to pick them up in a week, and... very little else. she responds to nothing outside of whatever is on her unseen little script, and she gets back on the bus shortly after, leaving them there.

welcome to camp. let's make some summer memories!

Comments

[anbruch]

[ typical, diluc would think, that kaeya has to choose a spot higher than he. when they were young, it had been one of the multitudes of pointless things they'd argue about. who found the best shell, whose stone skipped the furthest — he remembers wrestling about with kaeya when they couldn't come to a conclusion. on warm days, he still finds himself thinking of the grit of sand in his mouth, black earth at his nailbeds. diluc doesn't wish for what-ifs and could-have-beens. the lashings that bridged them both together have long since rotted out. the scent of it used to haunt him, cloying as the mud that seeps along the lakebeds, but it is something he's grown to live with. like his anger, like his father's death — like kaeya, who he'd once been so certain about. if anyone else were to leave him, diluc believed in the turn of his youth, it wouldn't have mattered so long as he had him.

but, what else is new? here they go again, bickering and finding excuses. falling into the same patterns, as diluc eats the thorny backwash of his feelings and pretends it doesn't taste like anything at all.

maybe it's a combination of all these things, the glitter, or the way that kaeya still watches his back for him like diluc does. either way, it's a soft and tired ugh that escapes him as kaeya settles in. ]

That so. [ of course he'd thought so. the flat line of his mouth doesn't fit the way he tucks the monstrosity (carefully, certainly) into his pocket. but, he won't talk about that. or comment on anything else, for that matter. instead, there's almost the roll of his eyes as he glances up to him. ]

Don't you already torment him enough during working hours? [ as he says this, he situates himself too. he yanks the knife back out of the tree with one, smooth motion. he'll continue to whittle later. ] Last he needs is to deal with you in his external circles too.

[icespy]

[ unlike diluc, who molds himself into the tree until he becomes as much its shadow as trunk and leaf, kaeya's presence is far more obtrusive (some might say even deliberately so). he leans his weight back against his arms, every inch the languorous louche, legs swinging idly with his usual inability to stay still; not out of a nervous tic - he quashed that habit quite thoroughly ages ago - but simply a need to always keep moving, coins dancing through his fingers and mouth weaving endless words, some frenetic energy constantly coursing through him to stay one step ahead of whatever's trying to catch up.

(nothing's ever made him want to run as much as diluc. away or to, even he doesn't know.) ]

Ouch! I'll have you know, Master Diluc, that not everyone finds my company such a chore. In fact, I've been told I have quite the model profile for paintings, provided I keep my mouth shut.

[ what goes unsaid of course, though perhaps not unheard, is that kaeya's company changes with each person he's with, chimerical as light glittering off the fractals of a crystalline prism, altering to whatever he needs to project to best achieve the goals he's after. it's really only ever with diluc that the ever-shifting crystal finally stills, becoming a mirror that strips away all his illusions to reflect back the truth of the image underneath, an ugliness he prefers not to face...and yet here he is, all the same.

(he keeps the ridiculous rock, stores it away instead of chucking it into the unknown as expected. what does it mean, if anything at all?) ]

[anbruch]

[ it'd been the opposite, once upon a time. no matter how diluc had carved for kaeya a place within the light, he'd tucked himself into the shadows that diluc left behind. it had only been when they were older, that diluc had realized it had never been quite right. molded to the shape of his own selfishness, the clean line of his edge - kaeya had never been allowed to breathe in ways that would make him. him, without diluc. diluc, without the storm-borne boy who'd shown up at his doorstep.

back then, he'd startled at the darkness. marveled at the boughs of trees, the delicate nature of spiderwebs. freckles, that smattered the pale of diluc's arms like so many nameless stars. how stupid diluc was, to never realize it. to never see the pattern of his scaling, the glimmer of his teeth - the star of his eye fixed upon the bruising thrum of diluc's tender heart. and yet, diluc finds himself here again. as always, as ever, circling the raw boundary of the wounds that kaeya's left on him.

he digs his fingers in.

i don't, he thinks. i never did. ]

That implies you're able to keep your mouth shut long enough for someone to make that assessment, [ he huffs, something sour cramping the hinge of his jaw. he crosses his arms over his chest, lets the faux bark bite against his back. his pale legs balance against the broad of the branch, posed in such a way that he might move at a moment's notice.

he doesn't.

the rock feels unusually heavy in his pocket. ]

What do you want? [ there's always something, he thinks. why would kaeya ever want to see him otherwise? ]