ArchivedLogs:Dresses and Hair

Dresses and Hair
Dramatis Personae Rasa, Shelby
In Absentia	2013-04-09 Roommates catching up... again.
Location <XS> Rasa and Shelby's Dorm
7:30 AM, do you know where your roommate is? Shelby left right after classes yesterday, slipping a note to Rasa that read, ‘goin to chek on Hive’. She did not return that night though a text came in around midnight professing that she was alive and so was he. Of course, curfew was well past by that point but old habits are hard to break for street kids. Especially street kids with crushes on cranky architects. There will definitely be hell to pay if she is caught but Shelby is intent on /not/ being caught. She is as stealthy as a ghost creeping back to the room she shares with Rasa. When people are encountered, she is less stealthy and more casual--just a kid up early, that’s all she is! Really! La la la! The door to the room cracks open by 7:30 and she slides inside, still wearing the clothes she’d set out in yesterday. The skateboard she’d salvaged from somewhere is under her arm and she props it up against the wall near the door before padding towards her bed, where a pile of laundry sits on the foot of the mattress. She’s moving quietly, carefully, to avoid disturbing Rasa, though a quick glance goes towards the opposite bed to check on the wakefulness of her roommate. Rasa is, indeed, awake, but not in his... hir... the bed. This fact is demonstrated by the empty bed and the fact that ze appears in the doorway shortly after Shelby arrives. Ze is dressed in a bathrobe that doesn't quite fit anymore, given hir taller stature, and is carrying hir shower kit, with a pair of flipflops on hir feet. Hir hair is still a mess of curls from washing, the lax ringlets damp against the collar of hir robe. Ze is freshly shaven and appears to be wearing maybe a little bit of makeup. Ze freezes up when ze sees Shelby in the room, hir head tilting a little to the left as ze looks hir over and frowns a little. Ze moves over to hir side of the room and starts putting things away. "Um. Hi." Ze ducks hir head as ze pulls out a pair of underwear and faces away as ze tries to put it on under the bathrobe. There is a lot of adjusting and then ze looks to hir closet to start picking out a skirt. Empty bed means that Shelby gets right back to sorting through clothes, tossing discarded items onto the floor. Tidiness is not her strong suit. When Rasa does arrive, she cranks a look over her shoulder and flashes a grin that is undeterred by frowning. “Hey!” Eyes go up, eyes go down, in a quick assessing look before she turns back to the task at hand. So there is privacy for hir while underwear is going on, at least. But when Rasa moves to the closet, Shelby interrupts by holding out a wrinkled yellow sundress, more appropriate for Arizona than New York. She doesn’t look while she holds it up, other hand still sifting. “You wanna try this on? You might be able to fit it, it’s supposed to be like...baggy on a girl. Just might be short on you.” "Um. Okay." Rasa looks the dress over and then takes it from Shelby, feeling the material in hir fingers before laying it out on hir already made bed. Ze goes to a drawer and pulls out a pair of white compression shorts and slips them on under the bathrobe as well. Only then does ze slip the bathrobe off hir shoulders and hang it up on the back of the closet door. The shorts do a decent job of keeping in tight, but also are form fitting, so don't leave much to the imagination. Hir back is toward Shelby as ze starts to pull the dress on over hir head. "How was Hive? Okay? I... I actually don't know the guy, so it feels a little strange to ask." Rasa is still blushing as ze tries to smooth the dress over hir chest and down around hir hips, glancing toward a mirror to try and make sure that the shorts aren't really obvious under the bottom hem. Shelby tries to be a good roommate. Tries being the operative word there. She’s working against a handicap, the sort of handicap that leads her to tilt a look over while Rasa’s getting into those shorts. Yes, yes, she is checking out her roommate. There can be no mistaking the nature of the look. This makes her less a good roommate and more a /terrible/ one. Especially since after the dress is in place, she comes over to help with dress-adjustment. Totally innocent, though! She really is intent on helping twitch the folds of the dress into a pleasing and comfortable arrangement, studying the effect critically in the mirror around Rasa’s arm. “That’s a really good color on you,” she observes. “Hive’s okay. I mean, dude looks like a skeleton and is kind’ve acting like a slug, not talking much out loud yet. But he wanted me to stay the night with him.” And /that’s/ the important thing, right? "Stay the night?" Rasa considers this with a wrinkle on hir brow. "Um, thanks for the dress." Ze flashes her a quick smile that is more awkward than anything. "I … hope flip flops are okay, because I don't really have anything that fits," shoes being the worst casualty of Rasa's new size. “Just for sleeping. I don’t think he even had the energy to get it up, anyway.” Shelby tilts her head, studying the smile in the mirror. Awkward. Huh. She considers this for a moment before putting on another grin. “It’ll look okay but you might get a little cold...you should take one of my hoodies too. You okay?” The question comes two seconds before she turns away to raid her clothes again. A matching /pink/ sundress is found. Solidarity through clothes! Shelby begins shucking things off without a care for modesty, exposing random sketches and paintings scattered over her body underneath her clothing. A living sketchpad. Soon hidden though, as she wriggles the dress on over her head. "I... am okay. It's just been a rough weekend." Rasa admits, finally having a little bit of private face time with hir roommate. "A sweatshirt would be helpful. I'm supposed to go shopping if things continue to remain the same, but..." there's a note of disappointment in hir tone. Ze moves over to the bed and sits down on the edge, careful to keep hir knees together, feet wiggling into a dry pair of flipflops. "I hope he recovers well." Rasa offers, quietly. The sentiment sounds distant and perfunctory. Notably, Shelby does not look for anything resembling underwear. She just smooths the dress down, pulls a skinny belt out of the pile and secures it around her waist before blousing the fabric a little. “McCoy had anything to say about that?” she asks with another glance. “Like, when your juice is supposed to be back or...?” But it’s the last remark that gives her pause, that tone of voice finally getting through the fog of taking care of business. She pauses, forehead rumpling. So she invites herself to take a seat on the bed beside Rasa. Closer than she would, ordinarily, without fear of contaminating hir with Shelbyitis. “Hey. It’s gonna get better, okay?” "They are not concerned yet. They just want me to rest and heal up before they put me through the stresses of extra tests and things to determine if my brain is... broke... broken for good or not." The staff recognizes the amount of stress Rasa is under, even if Rasa isn't good at grasping it right now. "How do you know it's going to get better?" Ze asks flatly, hir cheeks burning with embarrassment. “Your brain isn’t broken.” Again, Shelby sounds certain of this. Not that she can give whys but the arm she curls against Rasa’s back is almost as good, right? “And if they’re not worried, you shouldn’t be worried, right? They’re the know it alls. They probably see this shit all the time. I mean, fuck, look at all the kids that’ve come through here. /Someone’s/ probably gone through something like this.” The question is worth a longer amount of consideration, her lips pursed and her forehead wrinkling again. After a moment of that, she looks up to study Rasa’s profile. “It’s kinda like my arm, right? I thought my whole life was over, everything I liked, everything I wanted just poof, gone ‘cause of some asshole. But then we started charging people to look at it, and that was pretty cool. And then it got fixed. Stuff gets better.” "Yeah, well, your friends didn't run off to go hang out with that asshole," Rasa mutters angrily, swallowing hard and staring at hir knees. "I'msorry," ze follows up, body shaking a little under Shelby's arm. "It's just been bad and I've been lonely and I get it that Hive isn't just some asshole far away and is people's friend." Hir jaw is set when ze finishes speaking, hands rubbing against his thighs, but not pulling away. There is a moment when Shelby’s arm stiffens against Rasa’s back, indignation, maybe even a matching anger tensing her muscles. Her expression twists again. But with the apology, and the explanation, she breathes out slowly. “Nnngh,” is her initial response. Fortunately, a better one comes soon and with it, her hand sliding up to give hir shoulder a squeeze. “Okay, I totally get that.” She mulls it over for a time. “There’s been a lot’ve shit going on right now and it’s hard to keep up. Maybe...how about tonight, we do something? We could go down to Salem Center, or...have like a movie night or something in the rec. Invite Ivan along. Do popcorn.” Rasa leans a little against Shelby as she speaks, suggesting stuff, though, hir face never losing that red tint. Ze is still shaking a little, despite the fact that anger has been dispelled. It's not a huge whole body tremor, but the tension of someone holding things in. "Going out... isn't exactly fun right now. Hard enough to go to the toilet or - Eloise is helping me with that now." Rasa fidgets uncomfortably, but presses a little harder against Shelby. "Maybe we could just watch something in here, on a laptop, just friends?" Pressing harder leads to Shelby’s other arm coming up to create a loop around Rasa. Sideways hug! “Eloise is good peepz, we’ll have to like...get her something nice. Maybe some’ve the candy Pete and Ivan got. I’m totally up for movie night in here too. Saves me having to study,” she says with a grin, her chin coming to rest on Rasa’s shoulder. “You pick what we watch, huh? ‘N I’ll score some popcorn from Savita. It’ll be like date night except I promise to keep my hands to myself.” That was probably a joke. Rasa settles down a little bit when Shelby paints a nice picture of in room hangouts. "Maybe we can push the beds together so no one is sitting on the floor," ze offers at length, considering the whole plan, only vaguely waking up toward the end to the fact that Shelby is hitting on hir. "Shelby." There is a serious tone here. "Are you actually trying to … do physical stuff with me, or are you just a compulsive flirt?" Brows are furrowed, eyes turning to look over at hir roommate. Shelby’s eyebrows go up as Rasa’s go down. “Whoa, beds together...damn, you’re moving kinda fast for me,” she says, and this time it is /obviously/ a joke. The grin makes it so, as do the twinkling eyes. The roomie is given a last squeeze but now that zie has been sufficiently distracted, the ginger teen lets hir go and straightens up to begin fussing over her hair, separating it into hanks to work up two sloppy braids. “Flirting is fun,” she claims, “and it’s a good life skill to have, y’know? I mean, if you /wanted/ to fool around, sure, I’d be down for it. But mostly I’m just trying to get you to smile.” She cuts a sidelong look at Rasa, eyebrows still raised. “It work yet?” Rasa shakes hir head and closes hir eyes, flopping back on the bed. "Probably not a good tact right now. Everything's kind of fucked up because I kissed someone. I kind of don't want to do anything physical for a long time." Ze curls up into a ball on the surface of hir bed and runs hir fingers through hir hair to shake apart some of the ringlets so that they will dry. "I am sorry I'm not better." A slight detour leads Shelby off of the bed to find elastics to secure the braids with. She returns only seconds later with a brush. “I gotcha,” she says, and oddly enough, she sounds like she really means it. The brush is waggled at Rasa, offering up hair doing while her other hand pats her thigh as a potential pillow. “Just don’t let it turn you off of stuff forever, ‘kay? I mean...yeah, you had pretty shitty luck with your first kiss. It’s not your fault. But fooling around is a good way to blow off steam too. You’ll see. When you’re ready’n’all.” "Yeah. I don't think I've heard of anything like that happening - well, aside from Rogue's death kiss." Rasa does move over and rest hir head on Shelby's thigh, hooking hir fingers around the calf of that same leg. Despite saying that ze doesn't want 'physical stuff,' ze does rub hir cheek against the other girl and stays close. "How are the twins?" “Man, how much would /that/ suck? Makes me glad I just do pictures.” Shelby plies the brush carefully, because curls are trickier than her own straight-to-wavy locks. She uses her fingers as often as the tool to loosen up snarls. “Y’know, I always wanted curly hair? You’re making me jealous here...” She works in silence for a moment, smoothing each newly silky curl over her thigh while moving on to the next. Then, with a sigh, “They’re pretty fucked up. I think Shane’s got B’s head turned around wrong. Not sure if they’re gonna come back. Bastian probably would but...y’know. Twins.” "I don't suppose I could talk to Shane?" Rasa asks quietly. "I mean, there's probably no point. I shouldn't say things like that. It's just - he's kind of helped me from time to time, so I want to try. It's what you do, right, when people have helped you in the past?" Ze sighs, the feel of the brush bristles against hir scalp is relaxing. “I bet he’d like that. I think he’s got this stupid idea no one really wants him around, y’know? And you were inside of his head before it all went sideways, you might have more luck than the rest of us.” Shelby continues brushing until the whole of Rasa’s hair is shiny and fluffy and nearly-dry. Then she pulls an extra elastic off of her wrist to pull the front and sides back from hir face, secured only loosely to maintain some volume. A few stray wisps are teased out for framing and then she cocks her head, pleased with the effect. “There. Gorgeous.” Rasa sits up slowly and reaches up to feel the little tendrils around hir face and gives a small smile. "Thanks," ze says as ze turns to look in the mirror, the reflection causing a small amount of pause. "I... I guess I'll have to talk to him soon." Ze stands up and stretches a little, trying to rub some more disappointment from hir face and wake up a little more. "I … actually don't know how to get a hold of him." “That’s easy,” Shelby claims, bouncing to her feet and tossing the brush back onto her bed. She bends to begin stuffing schoolwork and books into her backpack. There are as rumpled and messy as the rest of her side of the room. “I’ll give you his number. B’s too, if you want. I bet he’s going crazy, it’s been /days/ since he got to sit in a classroom. C’mon, we’re gonna be late. Don’t forget your phone, I’ll program ‘em in on the way over, huh?” "Oh. My. Well, I could give him the homework for the classes I'm in." Rasa agrees. Ze heads over to hir desk and pulls out hir very unused cellphone. It's not even a smart phone. It's a saaad little analog thing. But it does text! Ze grabs the rest of hir books and shoves them into hir bag before slipping hir feet into hir sandals. Aaannnd they go out the door.