afraid_of_marshmallows | Midnight Manor Boarding House's Living Room, Wednesday Night

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Midnight Manor Boarding House's Living Room, Wednesday Night

Okay, sure. Arden didn't know much more than what TV said about throwing movie nights, but surely she had the gist. Many ~~moddable~~ pizzas and sodas had been ordered from Pizza Planet - look, Arden loved sweet tea, but even she knew soda was necessary for movie nights. A truly disturbing number of bags of popcorn had been popped and put into bowls and a quick stop at T&C had been made to grab a couple of different popcorn seasonings in case people wanted to experiment with popcorn flavors.

All that was left was to wait for people to show up. She'd texted both Kamala and Cal in full capslock mode about the glory of this movie, and then had ~~handwavily~~ tried to contact as many other residents as possible to tell them about the movie night - texts, email, sign on the door, whatever. Sure, nobody had to come, but she at least wanted to make sure everyone knew they were welcome. She'd also invited Steven and Watts (while double checking that, yes, it really was okay to move furniture around the living room and also eat in there) and had made sure to get a few bags of unbuttered popcorn just for them. Did she think the butter flavoring had any actual dairy in it? No. But she was gonna be careful all the same.

Now she was just pushing the furniture around to make sure that every possible seat had a good view of the incredibly large TV and was in reaching distance of a bowl of popcorn and places to put their cups of soda and plates of pizza down. Midnight Movie Night was about to begin, showcasing the absolute work of art and cultural tour de force that 2 Fast and 2 Family 4 Oceans, the fifteenth 2 Fast 2 Family sequel that was also a prequel to the Oceans Edge series.

This was gonna be great.

[Open to all Midnight Manor Boarding House residents!]

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There had been a sign on her door about a movie night, and so after much deliberation, Henry made her way downstairs.

And was just gonna hang out in the back of the room, cracking open a can of root beer and leaning against the wall.

Steven gave Henry a small wave. Nothing too exuberant so as not to overwhelm her when she was making an effort.

That earned him a nod in return. And a: "Sup?"

"Doing all right," Steven said. "Yourself?"

Look, Steven dealt with Marc when he came around the outskirts of a gathering. He knew better than to do anything that ran the risk of making someone who wasn't normally outgoing feel self conscious about being around people.

"Been worse, I guess," Henry said with a shrug.

"Weather been all right?" Steven asked, because as a Brit he could small talk with the best of them. "Sometimes summer around here can be a nasty surprise for some people."

Edited 2024-05-30 01:36 (UTC)

"The weather," Henry took a sip of her root beer, "has been fucking gross."

"Heat or humidity?" Steven asked. "Or both?"

"Both, ugh," Henry shared. "It's like I'm permanently sticky."

"And your clothes get damp as well," Steven agreed. "At least Midnight helps control the climate in here. Back home - er, London, for me - there's not much by way of air conditioning. Especially if you live in an older building."

"Barcelona was like that," Henry commisserated.

Edited 2024-05-30 03:08 (UTC)

"That's often the way of it in Europe," Steven said. "At least, in the Europe of my world. The buildings are old and lovely but not built for modern conveniences like air conditioning. My flat in London is on the top floor as well. Heat rises and all that."

"Winter wasn't so bad."

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"Oh hey, Henry," Arden said, sitting up to throw their housemate a casual wave. "Have you seen the iconic cultural gift that is the 2 Fast 2 Family movies?"

"The first one? Maybe?" Henry replied. "Which one is this?"

"Oh, back when they were still pretending that, like, plot, continuity, and the natural laws meant anything," Arden said with a laugh. "This is the fifteenth, which will come out in some worlds in...2040? I think? The school library has a bunch of movies and books that haven't been created, yet or at all, so we get to see it early."

"Of course it fucking does," Henry said, with a slight eyeroll. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she'd accepted the whole "It's so weird! Like, so weird!" thing about this place. But acceptance didn't mean embracing, not yet.

"I didn't know that until after I applied to work there, though," Arden said. "I don't know why I thought the Library would be normal, but..." She shrugged. "On the plus side, my checkouts and returns are a lot less boring than they might be other places."

She reached over to help herself to a flew slices of pizza, holding one up in a silent offer for Henry to help herself, before putting it on her plate.

"How goes it with you?"

Arden could probably see the moment Henry decided fuck it and reached for a slice. And a plate, because she was going to pick the olives off that veggie pizza. And she may be kind of an asshole but she wasn't the kind of asshole that threw food on the floor.

"Fine? Not nearly so exciting as yours, with the checking out and returning of weird shit."

Said with what might have been the slightest glimmer of amusement and not derision, for the record.

Arden was glad to see Henry take some. Less pizza to put away later, if nothing else.

"I should mention," she said, with that kind of wry amusement back, "that the weird shit had been taken out and returned by a gremlin, making it even weirder."

"What? Gremlins aren't allowed to watch hokey action movies?" Henry asked.

"They are, but they're also still on fucking notice until I get over the bite I got last week." Arden glowered, not at Henry, just off into space. "Piece of advice - don't get bitten by fucking gremlins."

Especially when out on a very normal friend outing with your just-a-friend.

"I try to avoid being bitten in general," Henry shared. "Not into that."

"I'll keep that in mind, for any strategic not-biting I have to do in the future," Arden said.

"If you try and bite me, we're gonna have words," Henry pointed out.