roadrunnermuses | open post } { pointless shippiness

Entry tags:

[meme]: random rp

open post } { pointless shippiness

I really wanted shippy things and didn't feel like combing through memes. So I made a post! Comment to this post with your characters, who you want and an option from the list below, and I will start a thread. Shenanigans will ensue.

OPTIONS:

1 - Fluff
2 - Angst
3 - Crack
4 - Surprise Me!

IF YOU CHOOSE SURPRISE ME, it will probably be crack. Because I'm in that sort of mood.

Muselist is HERE and it's not completely updated, but I'm going to try and do that tonight. You may select SURPRISE for what character you want, but if you do it will likely be a crossover ship of my choosing. I don't really do M/M slash, but M/F and F/F are both fair game. Annnnnnnd that's it.

... Go, fight, win!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The thing about falling through a rift in time and space is that Cami O'Connell is fairly used to weird. She's from New Orleans after all - they are a culture onto themselves, a pocket of occult and flamboyance that meets in a world where the waters could rise up and wash them away at any moment, and in a way, Chicago is the same. It's a little pocket of crazy and she's taking her time to try and understand it as best she can.

What she could do without, however? The constant invasion of other people into her head. To be more specific - other people's emotions, because the rift decided to take her natural talent for empathy and amp it up to eleven. It's frustrating, it's driving her crazy, and with the couple on one side of her apartment having a heated argument the grieving widow next door and the just complete depression coming from the man across the hall, she needs, desperately, to be somewhere else.

Sometimes, it's just too much.

Which is how she finds herself standing at Ethan's front door before she can even think. Sometimes with someone directly with her, she can focus her ability on their emotions, weed out the rest and if they're calm, sometimes she could even manage a decent night's sleep. Ethan is someone she trusts, probably more than anyone else in Chicago, and she does her best to wipe the frustrated tears away as he opens the door, trying not to worry him anything more than she has to.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I should have called, but I just needed to get out for a while, and I didn't know where else to go."

Even on a good day, Ethan Hale can hardly handle his own emotions on a good day. In fact, he can't at all. He has this tendency to shove it all back inside of himself and avoid them as much as he can. The fact that Cami has this power that forces her to feel the emotions of everyone around her too? He does worry about her. He can't imagine having to deal with all of that at once, trying not to be drowned out in the feelings that could potentially crowd out her own voice.

It's late at night. His brothers are all asleep in their rooms. They have a big house near the woods on the outskirts of Chicago, and Ethan never really sleeps so he's been up, restlessly, doing things like he always does. Sleep is something that has to sneak up on him. He's too restless for anything else.

He opens the door to the sound of the knocking, swallowing thickly as painful worry wraps around his chest at the sight of those tears on her face even as she tries to wipe them away. Ethan sucks in a sharp breath, reaching out a hand to rest against her arm in an attempt to steady her, to steady her and to help her focus on this and on him.

"No. No, Cami, don't be sorry. Don't be sorry at all. It's okay. You can come inside. You can stay here," he says, and the worry is clear in the tone of his voice (the ache of his voice as his hold on her arm tightens, and he tugs her gently through the doorway). "Come in."

There's a look of immediate gratitude that accompanies her coming inside, and the contact with him helps. It narrows the focus on the other emotions around her, even though most of them are latent and sleeping as it is. Regardless, the focus is on him, his worry for her, which she hates but it at least keeps her from feeling everything all at once, so it's easy to pick up on.

"Thank you. Really. And I'm sorry to just stumble in like this."

His hand remains on her shoulder even as she steps inside like he hopes that might anchor her to him and to this moment instead of-- instead of how she has been whisked away by countless emotions all over the city. He shakes his head as he looks at her face, and his voice is very soft when he finally speaks.

"There's nothing at all to be sorry about," Ethan says softly, and then there's this lopsided but warm smile that tugs on his face. It hurts him to see her feeling so lost, hurt, stumbling about like she is. God, he wishes he could help more, help to block out all of those emotions she is forced to feel. If this will help, he wants to help. She is a beautiful, wonderful woman, and she deserves far more than a storm cloud in her head that doesn't belong to her. "I could actually use the company so if we're being honest, you're doing me a favor."

She's pretty sure that on the scale of keeping someone company versus making sure someone doesn't have a mental breakdown through the influence of emotions that aren't hers, she's the one having the favor done for her, but she's not arguing. Knowing that she isn't entirely inconveniencing him is making being here a little lighter, and she starts to breathe a little easier.

"Then in that case, I'm happy to help," she says with a nod. "Something on your mind?"

"Not in particular, but I have a difficult time sleeping at night when most people sleep so I stay up late hours and it can get a bit too quiet and lonely honestly," Ethan says as he heads into the kitchen where he'd been at, and he keeps his hand gently against her arm like that might help keep her grounded here to this moment whatever else might try to force its way inside of her head. There's a tiny smile as he looks back at her. "So then I end up making lots of food in advance or reorganizing my entire kitchen, and then I've got quite a bit of extra food on my hands."

And it becomes a bit of a problem naturally.

Her eyebrows raise a bit at that, and a slow smile stretches across her face. "Food. Now you're speaking my language." She takes another step forward and grins. "I might be able to take some of that off your hands."

Ethan's smile widens when he sees that slow smile on her face. "See? You are being very, very helpful to me. Thank you," he says as he leads her inside toward that kitchen where he does have various items in mid preparation. Cooking is a passion for him. It is something he can do with his hands that results in something both positive and productive

instead of negative and destructive.

Cami is not complaining about someone who's willing to cook for her. It's not that she can't, but most of the time after working at the bar she just either got food from Sophie or tossed something frozen in the microwave. She is usually too exhausted to put that much effort into something.

Basically, she's more than willing to be someone's test guinea pig.

"What are you working on?"

"I'm working on sandwiches, which isn't too fancy honestly, but they keep really well, which is a positive given I've been making so many of them. Actually, there's homemade bread for the sandwiches, and a serving of homemade chips that come with each," Ethan admits with a tiny but charming smile in her direction. "I've been working on developing different flavors for those homemade chips so some are barbecue flavored, some plain salty. All crunchy."

He throws out burnt ones as he is kind of a perfectionist with food. He'll make any part of the food that he can do himself from making pasta to making the bread. He only uses the freshest ingredients.

Homemade chips? Really? Granted, she wasn't expecting cheap Lays that you could get in any grocery store, but she definitely wasn't expecting that, and it shows on his face. She contemplates the food in front of her, before looking up at him again.

"Okay, maybe you don't want to feed me. Because if this is as good as it smells, I may never leave."

"I happen to really enjoy your company so I think I'll take the risk," Ethan says with a tiny little smirk before he instinctively licks his lips and then sits beside her, reaching for a chip to hold it out to her.

She is very attractive, and he can't help but notice that too as he leans against the counter a bit so he can be a tiny bit closer to her.

"You may be brutally honest. I can handle it."

Cami eyes him and the chip for a moment, before taking it from his fingers and studying it for a moment. She pauses, looking up to meet his eyes again before popping the chip in her mouth. She pauses for a moment, chewing, before her eyes flutter closed at the flavor.

"Oh my God, that's really good."

Ethan simply watches her react to that food. He leans against the counter as he meets her eyes, taking in that reaction, how her eyes flutter close at the flavor. There is nothing more beautiful to him than being able to make someone react to his food like she is reacting to his food now. Ethan's smile widens across his face.

"You think?" He takes a bite of one of the chips on his side as he looks at her with unmistaken fondness, appreciation. "I really tried."

To make very good food.

"You succeeded," she nods in acknowledgement. "You succeeded big time. You would have given Sophie a run for her money back in New Orleans." There's a brief pang of grief for a moment, but it's a feeling that she knows is her own. She misses Sophie - she missed her before she came to Chicago and she still misses her now. She feels like she would have a better idea of what to do in a situation like this, if only by the virtue of having grown up submersed in the supernatural, whereas Cami just lived on the fringes for the most part.

"She was the cook for the restaurant I worked in back home."

There's a slight pause as Ethan looks over at her. It's as if he can sense that there's a brief pang there. He has no idea what it must be like to be a wanderer, to have one's entire life uprooted and forced to be left behind. On top of that, they have to grapple with gaining some new ability, and it must be so difficult to deal with. He can't begin to imagine it.

He looks over at her with concern clear in his expression. Ethan reaches his hand out to rest it against her arm. "Would love to try some of her food though," he says even if it is very sadly not possible. "Were you close to her?"

"Yeah." There's a beat. "Well, as close as you can get to someone you work for. She was also kind of going through a lot at the time, and then she ... passed."

Or was violently magically murdered by her niece. Take your pick.

"So I guess not as close as I would have liked to have been."

"I am very sorry for your loss," Ethan says after a moment, and he means that genuinely. It is terrible to lose someone even if you weren't family with them.

There is still that loss.

He reaches his hand out to rest it against her arm before he looks down at her face, and then he bites his lip a tiny bit because she is utterly beautiful. Sometimes it strikes him suddenly.

She turns towards him at the touch before nodding. Loss is hard, she knows. She's had more than her fair share, it seems. But she's learned how to weather through it if nothing else, and his sympathy is appreciated, even if she doesn't know what to make of that look on his face at the moment.

"Thank you. She was a good person - she didn't deserve what she got."

"It seems like good people... get really terrible endings too quickly far too often," Ethan says, and he swallows thickly before he releases a breath and slides his hand away from her arm so he can clean up the kitchen a bit.

It makes him think of his mother who died too soon, slowly, painfully.

Cami nods in agreement to that. Her uncle wasn't necessarily a good man, but he did the best he could with the situation he was given. Sean didn't deserve any of it - he was collateral damage in the war with the witches. And Davina - God, she misses Davina. She's another one who she keeps hoping would fall through the rift to Chicago if for no other reason than the fact that she could just be a girl, not a trophy to be fought for by the factions of New Orleans.

"It's sad, really. People should get what they deserve, in the end."

His father is still out there alive, king of the bloody werewolves. His mother, who was tortured by him and chased by him and forced into the position she was in, is dead because of him. No one gets what they deserve on either side. Monsters live forever. Good people die too soon. There's an ache that spreads through his chest at the way she says it.

"They should but they rarely ever do, do they?" There's a slight pause as he breathes in sharp, looking up at her face as he finishes cleaning up the kitchen. "Sounds like you have quite a bit of experience with that."

There's something in the tone of her voice that reaches him.

"Well, I'm from New Orleans."

It doesn't have as much weight as it does in this universe, but it has enough. Katrina still happened here. Her city was still washed away in this universe, even if it wasn't really hers.

"My New Orleans was a different kind of complicated, but people still lost more than they deserved to."

Ethan is quiet, and there's deep concern in his expression at what she says. He swallows a bit as he looks at her face, and his hand rests against her arm as if in reassurance.

"...can I ask what kind of complicated? It's absolutely okay if you don't want to talk about it. We can talk about far less painful subjects as well, but..."

He asks because he cares about her.

"No, no, it's okay." She shakes her head a bit. Talking about the politics of New Orleans is actually a little easier than Chicago, maybe because she's finally getting some distance from it. "Basically what you guys have here with angels and demons and whatever else? We had that too. Except for us it was vampires, werewolves, witches and humans. The werewolves were mostly confined to the bayou, the witches and vampires and humans all lived in the Quarter. But even with all the treaties in the world things were never peaceful. The werewolves were forced out by the vampires and cursed, the vampires had the witches under siege and humans mostly looked the other way because we were the lowest rung on the food chain."

There's a beat.

"And then the Originals showed up and everything just sort of ... " Her voice trailed off, and she made a noise like an explosion while gesturing with her fingers.

"When I fell through the rift, the werewolves and the witches had just made a move on the Quarter to force the vampires out, and for the most part it worked, save for Klaus and Elijah, but I think that's mostly because they knew there was no way they could win."

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