#jouren

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Next one is the mushroommates... baby that is so stares at you

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"We're friends, aren't we?"

(heads up for mentions of death and some quickly discussed gore)

[It’s rare, lately, that Jouren feels that bone-deep pull back to Mawris. Discos said they all get it, but knowing that doesn’t make it any less unsettling to find himself drifting off into a daze and coming back to his senses in a field of scattered mushrooms, staring down old cellar doors, the sun-bleached paint chipping and wearing away with the sweeps. 

It feels like waking up again, when he breathes the stale air inside. Mawris is sat cross-legged on the floor, their eyes closed, and they lift their chin in a small nod to him. He’s not sure if they’re smiling for him, or if they’re just like that, anymore. 

“It’s been some time, Jouren- I hope you’re well!”

They don’t open their eyes to speak to him, but something tells him that’s a good sign. Affection, almost. He isn’t sure why he thinks that, but… the thought is there nonetheless. 

He grunts as he joins them on the floor, the gashes in his ribs lighting up with pain as the broken stalks of crushed fungi scrape against the inside of his shirt, against the pressure of his coat. 

“I think I made a friend… he’s intimidating, but-“

“I can tailor your shirts for you, if you need, you know.”

They tilt their head at him, eyes wide as they look at him, and he feels too exposed under their gaze. 

“I know… I know, I do, but…”

He stumbles over some excuse until they reach for his hand, the flesh of his palm meeting the coarse mycelium that fills the space that has filled the missing flesh of their own hand. 

“You don’t need to be like them, anymore. I promise, you don’t have to ache just for the sensibilities of the living. It has to hurt- I know it does. And I do want to help.”

Something about their tone makes his chest hurt, makes him too aware of his own unnecessary breathing. And he finds that he can’t hold their gaze. 

They let the silence draw out for a few moments before they clasp their other hand around his, giving it a light squeeze. 

“You don’t have to, of course! I remember sentimentality about things like that, when I was much more freshly dead. But when you’d like to stop hurting yourself, you can find me!”

Their voice is back to its usual chipper tone in an instant, and it feels like there’s a weight that vanishes, one he hadn’t noticed until it was gone. 

It’s several months before he finds himself falling out of that daze again, nearly tripping over the stairs on the way back into the cellar. 

Mawris has dug out more space, it seems. Distantly, he wonders what it looked like originally, when they first made it their home. 

When he finds Mawris, they look deathly serious and they’ve got one hand gripping the edge of a blood soaked table, and the other is knuckles-deep in a corpse. 

A seadweller, mangled nearly beyond recognition… he only realizes they had fins at one point from the royal pink staining the table, the floor, Mawris’s arms, a recliner that’s been shoved out of the way…

Jouren feels sick. 

He can’t bring himself to look away. 

Not as they take a blade from beside the body’s head and start cutting away at the jagged flesh, making clean lines of the gashes torn through the troll… deep enough that he thinks he can see spine. It looks like someone got a little too experimental with a dissection. With a fork. 

Mawris gathers the the scraps of removed flesh into a pile on the floor at their feet, and they take a deep breath. Steeling themselves for something. 

When they dig into their own throat, he feels suddenly like an intruder on something. Something… not sacred, that isn’t the right word, but unholy doesn’t feel right either. 

He sees them clench their teeth as they find something, and he could swear he feels something snap free just as much as he hears it. 

They raise the blade again, and this time, he breaks his gaze, leaving the cellar as quickly as he can, discomfort of the setting sun be damned. It’s bearable, anymore, and he can… count mushrooms, or something, until they’re done. He’s sure they knew he was there, even if they didn’t acknowledge him. 

Dusk has fallen by the time they come to greet him, finally. They’ve cleaned the viscera from their arms, and their smile is back. 

“Jouren! Welcome back!”

Their voice is far too gleeful, for someone who’s just been doing… whatever that was. 

Not for the first time, he wonders if they held the same grim expression when they… what, revived him?

He can hear Carver’s voice in his memory, chiding them for disrespecting the dead. except… he doesn’t think he’s talked with her about this?

Mawris takes his hand and gives it a gentle squeeze, and for an instant, there’s this lonesome, hollow feeling in his chest, in his throat. But only for an instant. 

“Are you alright? Discos said she felt ill when she first saw me working… do you need a drink? I’ve got tea ready, even if it may be a bit cool by now!”

He nods before he thinks about it. Sure, it shouldn’t be any surprise that they’ve had corpses in that cellar- he was one of them, after all- but the thought of going back down there feels like it should turn his stomach. 

“Um. Can we have it up here? Please?”

His voice sounds small, pitiful. And their brows twitch a moment before they nod. 

“I’ll be right back! Don’t go anywhere.”

The tea is long cooled, by the time it reaches his hands, but it’s bitter enough to make him aware of his own senses again. Worth the trouble, even if Mawris laughs when he makes a face. 

Beyond that, though, he says nothing. What would he even say? Would he ask them how they started digging around inside dead bodies like a purse? What they put in it? Why? He’s almost certain any new information he’d learn would be something to turn his stomach. He still remembers their cheery, careless demeanor while he was in the depths of coming to terms with his own death… this would be no different. He’s sure of it. 

But after some time, hours it feels like, they clear their throat. 

“Jouren… why don’t you visit more?”

He takes a breath, and finds he has no answer. Not one he’d like to share, at least. Because they unsettle him? Because going any farther than the first open area reminds him of his death, of the fact that he’s something strange now? Because, frankly, the fungus growing from the walls sends chills down his spine?

He closes his mouth and shrugs, and they hum in response. They’re on the wrong side for him to see what face they’re making, but he hears them move, and when he looks, they’ve turned to face him. 

“Jouren, we’re friends, aren’t we?”

Looking at their wide eyes, he’s aware of just how dry his mouth and throat are, and of how his shirt grazes against the mushrooms in his ribs as he breathes, and how, at this angle, those from his throat only just touch his chin. 

He wants so badly to say yes. 

So, of course, he does.]

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Drew some babies and

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"Im normal about my characters" *draws mawris and the dead guys ive got sprites for as plushies*

And for comparison

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[Ophioc isn’t a terribly wise man. This isn’t news, of course, but… he feels it at a new height, as he sinks back to the floor, tangling his fingers in his hair and bracing his arms on his knees to keep himself upright as he squeezes his eyes shut and just breathes.

The pain is an all-encompassing burn, that carries with it waves of nausea and disorientation, seemingly at random.

All this over a mushroom he didn’t expect to end up with to begin with.

It couldn’t have been enough to lose him a friend, maybe more; it couldn’t have been enough to have to carry the uncertainty of his fate- no.

It was an easy thing, breaking it off at the stem. Mushrooms aren’t terribly durable, and this seems to extend to the kind that cultivated undeath. An easy mistake to make, easily enough tossed into the trash before the consequences could reach him.

He’s still greeting the people that come to the door- of course he is, he craves something enjoyable of this holiday… he’s not going to let himself squander all of it for the sake of sitting with things that can’t be undone. He’s putting those years on the stage to use, smiling and chatting away with anyone that knocks, and if they notice something’s off, at least they have the decency not to say anything.

He hears knuckles against the door again, far sooner than he hoped. Digs his fingers into his scalp another moment as he rallies himself, and takes a breath to stand…

…And the door opens. Shit, he didn’t… he didn’t think Jouren would come back tonight. They knew he’d be here all night… he’s been trying to make it easy to avoid him, they’ve been through enough as it is…

He stands too quickly, intending to tuck himself away into his room as long as needed, but… he can’t move that quickly, right now. He can’t even catch himself on the way back down-

His meeting with the floor isn’t as jarring as he expects it to be, but a shoulder suffers for it, a firm grip around his arm, and another hand coming around to his ribs on the other side, all but carrying him to the couch to sit down proper. It’s more than he’s bothered to do for the past few hours, for sure.

“What happened? You’re, um… you don’t look great.”

Jouren trails off into mumbling for a moment, or maybe Ophioc just stops listening while he gestures vaguely, eyes falling closed once more.

“I’m a dumbass, don’t worry about me… it’s. I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.”

He doesn’t have to look to see the face Jouren is making at him. He knows the sigh of it well enough on its own.

“Come on, work with me a little bit. ‘D’you eat somethin’ that didn’t agree with you, or…?”

Ophi starts to shake his head, just enough to regret it, leaning into elbows on his knees while he tries to catch his breath again.

“…No… no, it’s just… dumb mushroom shit, ‘s my own fault…”

The words take too long to get out, and his voice shakes too much, it’s too telling, Jouren shouldn’t have to deal with this…

Their hand on his jaw is gentle, just lifting his head enough to look him over. Ophi opens his eyes and all, some attempt to prove that he’ll be fine, and he catches Jouren’s wince as the man’s eyes fall away from his face, down and to the side a bit… it takes him a moment to fill in the blanks of the mushroom he broke off, and that Jouren would understand better than maybe anyone else, here.

He opens his mouth to say something, but the olive beats him to it.

“Yeah… that’ll do it. Don’t think I’ve been this bad for it yet, but… yeah, no. Stay here, I’m gonna get you a drink-“

“Jouren, no. No, don’t let me- go have fun. Do halloween, you had plans-“

“Shut up.”

All his attempts to rally fall away again with a stern word and a harsh point, but the look in their eye is… soft. Something kind, something… not quite pity, but he hasn’t got the brainpower to find the match for it.

“You’re gonna stay there, and I’m gonna get you a drink, maybe call in some food, and grab some movies, and I’m not going anywhere ‘till all this lets up some. Then we can go get Mawris to smooth it over a bit, and can go from there, alright?”

Any sharpness to their voice falls away quickly, and Ophi lets his eyes fall closed again, leaning back into his elbows as he nods, just a little. He’d be lying if he said he’d not be at least a little glad to have the company… and maybe he hopes, a little, that he’s not chased Jouren off quite yet. They’re a good dude, and… well. Ophioc has missed his roommate.]

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[“Hey, man of the fuckin’ hour!! Bex bet me lunch that you’d died!”

Jouren closes his eye and takes a deep breath, rubbing at his eye. He forgets, sometimes, how loud the little guy is. It makes his eye socket itch. Or maybe that’s just regret from staying up yesterday.

Despite it all, he raises his hand in a small wave and offers forth a smile.

“Ophi, been a while. Aurrel get you with whatever Junie was sick with?”

He mostly ignores the elbow to his ribs, planting a hand on Aurrel’s face to muffle whatever he plans to shout next. Familiar routes, and whatnot.

Ophioc is quiet, moreso than usual, and he looks pensive when Jouren opens their eye to look at him. Distracted. Not that any of them are immune to that, especially this early.

The response comes, some time later than expected, and with… something to his voice that Jouren can’t place.

“Yeah, um… something like that, yeah.”

Jouren would be more than happy to sit with the silence- Ophioc has always made for nice silence- but Aurrel almost seems allergic to it. Not that it’s anything new, just… he forgot. There’s a lot Jouren had forgotten.

“So, what, you come back in fuckin’ style? You looking to impress someone- the fuck’s with your hair, man? What time did you get up for all that shit? Don’t you just have fuckin… class today?”

Aurrel’s still going, but… Jouren stops listening. There’s… something in how Ophioc is looking at him. Staring. He feels it under his skin, like the fungus that’s spread through his muscle, through his veins. He forgets to breathe, holding that gaze, until he finds he needs the air to tell Aurrel to shut up.

“Ophioc… you alright? Did I do somethin’, or…?”

There’s the creeping certainty that it’s because of what he is. What he’s become. That Ophi had met someone else like this… Carver or Mawris or someone else as unnerving about it. He’s glad, for once, to lack a heartbeat, because he’s certain he’d be unable to escape the feeling of their racing pulse under his thumbs, in his wrists, his thighs where they meet the bench.

Ophioc smiles, tilting his head a little as he nods, and Aurrel goes still.

He’s sure he does, too.

He can only see it for a moment, the jagged scarring running up the side of the troll’s throat, and where it splits to give way to something, pale and stringy like a miniature willow tree, before it’s obscured once more by hair that settles back into his face, over his shoulder.

Jouren is hardly a mushroom expert, but he can feel it well enough to be sure. The same hum in his bones that he gets with Mawris, or when Discos comes over…

He wasn’t ready for this. Not here. Not when he was starting to feel normal again. And, evidently, neither was Aurrel-

Jouren has never seen the man flee before, but it’s the only word that can come to mind in the moment.]

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Do u kno that um. Joruna has a very quiet lil voice and aurrel more than makes up for that but also he’ll be being a menace and she just puts her hand on his face and he stops for a minute. It’s a bit from when they were in troll elementary school. No they couldn’t explain to you why the hell it’s lasted this long. They have a day where they’re both off and jouren comes over and the three just like. Play board games or smth for a few hours. Or even just sit in a room doing their own shit. It’s just the matter of… despite everything, they’re here. There’s familiarity in old friends and they’re here.

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Anyways I’m related news. Sits here and thinks abt aurrel jouren friendship just being friends. Ur honor they were just some guys before and sometimes they bring that out in each other. For a moment the world is forgotten and they’re just a couple twentysomethings goofing around in a dq parking lot on the way to their friend’s truck.