~ Tнє Pαяα∂σχ Hσυѕє ~ now back to regularly scheduled chaos

| Eurydice | Valentine's Day Room | Orpheus |

"I can't say I blame him, to be honest." Eurydice answered. "But I figure, yeah, we're already in the room. Might as well go for it."

Eurydice paused for a moment, looking at the arm he held out in a moment of contemplation. She clasped her hands in front of herself, choosing to walk beside him, but not take his arm. She didn't want to be rude and completely turn him down, because he seemed nice, but she didn't feel comfortable taking the arm he offered to her.

"I saw that boy once, but I didn't really meet him." She nodded towards Zuko, hoping to smoothly move on in the conversation.

Sal Fisher | Valentine’s Room | strider

“Yeah…I mean…I’ve maybe had a crush, but I didn’t say anything about it, so…y’know…” Sal twisted the end of his pigtail around his fingers as he spoke, doing his best to ignore how bad at talking he suddenly was and how warm his face felt. At least only his ears were visible, but taking out his pigtails just to hide them seemed both extreme and likely to call more attention to it.
He wasn’t quite sure when the casual banter had turned into whatever this was, but it was exactly what he’d been trying to avoid. And they hadn’t even actually talked about the real reason the House had put them here yet…or had they? Maybe Zuko already knew and he was just trying not to make it more awkward by saying it. Or maybe it hadn’t even occurred to him to think about Sal in that way…which would be fine…it wasn’t like he had to, if he didn’t. Which he probably didn’t. Unless…
But Zuko was actually cool. And he was nice, and he’d died for Sal once, which hadn’t been ideal, but they’d gotten through it, so…
“Yeah…I mean, I…but it’s nice to see the House is accepting,” he continued, keeping his tone as causal as he could as he glanced at Matt and Joey again. There. It had nothing to do with them, but at least Zuko would know. And maybe his reaction would tell give Sal some idea how to actually have this conversation. Or…whether to actually have this conversation.
He hesitated, realizing abruptly that he wasn’t sure how long he’d been looking at Zuko. He wasn’t even sure when he’d glanced back…but he didn’t quite look away.
“Nice…confetti…” he added, his voice suddenly very small.

Zuko got the sudden feeling he had messed this up. He didn’t know how to classify his relationship with Sal besides the general label of ‘friendship,’ but he was starting to reconsider whether he actually knew what friendship was. Was this… feelings? It wasn’t anything like what he felt for Mai. It was stronger, and therefore much more frightening. Being with Mai had been easy. Not much had changed from when they were just friends, except he kissed her sometimes and thought about other things while doing it. He was beginning to realize that he might have been doing it wrong. Or maybe doing it with the wrong person.
“Right,” he mumbled, glancing back at Matt and Joey. Accepting. Technically, the Fire Lord could take whoever he wanted as a consort and nobody would be able to say anything about it. There were plenty of Fire Lords before Zuko who had secretly held relationships with others high up in the court, and it didn’t matter so long as their only offspring were legitimate. That didn’t mean there was overwhelming acceptance in the Fire Nation, especially in the Royal family. You married someone powerful you could produce heirs with. That was it. Anybody else was off the table.
Zuko felt his skin burn hot as he realized that wasn’t what he really wanted. It had never been that simple for him, but at least Mai had looked like the perfect partner. He shook his head, placing himself firmly back into reality. He was barely listening to what Sal was saying, and he was staring daggers at the couple in the corner, so he tore his gaze away as quickly as possible. His thoughts were taking him places he wasn’t entirely certain he wanted to go.
“Wait!” he snapped, eyes flying wide as what Sal had been trying to say caught up to him. “Does the House think… we…?”


“That all sounds really good,” Orpheus admitted, hand moving to his stomach as he realized he couldn’t actually remember the last time he had eaten. It had to have been earlier in the day, right? He couldn’t have just forgotten to eat… again. It was hard to remember that time existed with the sea as monotonous as it was. He played as much as he could to keep the sailors’ spirits up, but there was only so much he could do. The sun rising and setting was an indication of the passing time, but it all seemed to blur together.
“Honestly, everything sounds good right now,” he said after a moment, taking a chocolate. It smelled sweeter than anything he had ever tasted, and when he popped it in his mouth he was pleasantly surprised by the explosion of flavor.
“It’s… fruity,” he said as he swallowed, eyes widening. “I’ve never had anything like it. It’s like… if you put even more sweetness around a fig.”

“Chocolate!” Orpheus exclaimed, taking a look at some of the sweets that were left in the box. The word felt strange on his tongue, his mouth still unused to forming the vowels of L’s Japanese. “I mean… I’ve never had it before, but I think that’s what it is. My friend likes it, but he wouldn’t let me try any when there was some in a room, because… well… same friend. He doesn’t like eating things here. But I can see why he likes it.”

It was interesting hearing the word repeated by someone else - it gave Orpheus a sense of what his accent might sound like to L. There were so many words that didn’t exist in his language that the House found reasons to bring up. He couldn’t help but wish that chocolate was one of the things that existed in his world as well.
Orpheus took another one, biting into it and letting his eyes close as he savored the sweet flavor inside. It smelled… warm, almost. Like coming home, if that could be captured in a scent. He was fairly certain he had never smelled it before, though.
“This one is good,” he commented, searching in the container for a chocolate that looked similar. “I think this one is the same, if you want to try it.”
With that, he turned his attention to the other sweets. Eurydice’s theory had some bearing. There were definitely sweets there he had eaten before, but the vast majority of them were unfamiliar.

| Eurydice | Valentine's Day Room | Orpheus |

Eurydice was the third person in the train of the teaching of the word, so she was quite certain that she'd mispronounced it. It was very different from the language she and Orpheus spoke. "So, does he speak your language? Or do you speak his?" Eurydice asked, unaware of the translation system in the House.

She picked up the matching chocolate and tried it, turning the melty sweet over in her mouth thoughtfully. "Almost like almond, but missing something like almond, and it has something that I can't place." Eurydice said after she'd finished it.

“Oh,” Orpheus replied, eyes widening as he realized there were still things about the House Eurydice didn’t know. It was easy to forget how much there was to the House that didn’t always come up or get explained. Orpheus had been lucky to share several of his first blinks with L. It meant he’d gotten a pretty thorough picture of the place early on.
“So… we don’t actually speak each other’s language,” he explained, catching Eurydice’s dark eyes. “The House translates for us. Well… not you and I, us, because I’m assuming we’re speaking the same language, but probably for everyone else here. My friend speaks Japanese, but I always hear him speaking Greek except when he says words that don’t exist for you and I. Like chocolate.”
He gave a small smile as she tasted it, excited to see her reaction.
“It… is sort of like almond, isn’t it. It tastes almost like marzipan, but without the extra almond flavor?”

Zuko was now absolutely certain he had done something wrong. He didn’t like the way Sal’s ears were turning red or the way he seemed desperate to look anywhere but Zuko. He didn’t have very many friends, and somehow he had managed to just ruin his relationship with one of the only ones he’d ever had. How did he fix this? Would Sal even want to fix it?
He grit his teeth, gripping the tablecloth under the table with white knuckles. He let his gaze scan the menu, looking for anything to do that wasn’t going to push them both deeper down this inescapable rabbit hole.
He flinched at the sound of Sal’s arm hitting the table, but he didn’t move away. He didn’t think he wanted to move away until he was absolutely certain that this was unfixable. Of course, knowing him, he would just break it further while trying to piece it all back together.
“Unless… I wanted…” he repeated, swallowing back anything else he could say. Did he want… or more importantly, did Sal want…
He searched Sal’s expression, golden meeting blue, confusion and panic building in both of them like they were holding each other on the edge of a cliff and if one of then let go, then they would both fall. Or maybe only one of them would fall, but Zuko couldn’t tell who had a firmer grip.
It had been so easy with Mai. He picked up another piece of confetti, crushing it between his fingers as he remembered the way he had just walked up to her and asked her if she wanted to have dinner like, as a date, and it had half been a dare from Azula, but it had mostly been him. This wasn’t that easy.
“Do…” he hesitated, forcing himself to breathe. “Why don’t we try it out then? Just… just to see if the House is onto something? And if it’s not then we… we just go back to normal, or maybe we never talk again, I don’t know, but the more I overthink this the more I’m going to want to just shut myself up by kissing you and… f[oops!]. But uh… yeah. Confetti.”

Sal Fisher | Valentine’s Room | strider

“Oh,” Sal breathed, his voice abruptly very small as he stared back at Zuko, wide blue eyes searching gold like he expected to find something hidden there.
What he saw reflected what he felt. Panic, mostly. And confusion, and…maybe something else, though it was hard to see anything clearly through the panic.
He noticed the flinch, though, and pulled his hand back, gripping the edge of his chair firmly instead to stop it from happening again.
Which…at least helped to snap him out of the panic a little. He breathed out, pulling his knees carefully onto his chair and hugging them to his chest instead, trying to listen to what Zuko was actually saying instead of what he felt like he should be telling him.
“I mean…yeah. Yeah, that would be…nice,” he managed finally. “I mean, if you want to. The House is great and all, but letting it decide your love life seems a little…like not a good idea. But if you actually want to, then…yeah. I mean, I’d be…that’d be good.”
He was still blushing, and he still felt half certain he would say the wrong thing and ruin this somehow, but there was a different sort of panic there, too. One that echoed the words kissing you around his head, and fluttered around in his stomach like he had just missed a step walking down the stairs, but in a pleasant sort of way.
“Did you just…say you want to kiss me?” He added after a moment, as carefully as he could without sounding like he was trying to be careful. And maybe with just a hint of mischief in his eye.

| Eurydice | Valentine's Day Room | Orpheus |

Eurydice nodded at Orpheus' explanation. The House brought people together in strange ways. It let you meet people that you would otherwise never meet, but you couldn't even hear the words from their mouth as they said them. You could know a person and never understand their world. You could see someone many times and never see a sunset in the way they saw it. Except... sometimes you could. Because somehow, for some reason, Orpheus was from the same world as Eurydice. She was glad that she was able to hear his voice, unchanged.

"If it's mixed with the chocolate, then it's probably from the same world as your friend. And we don't have chocolate, then we probably don't have this either." Eurydice reasoned.

Sal Fisher | Valentine’s Room | strider

Sal had never dated, but it wasn’t like there had exactly been anything stopping him. It had just…never really happened. And then when he’d moved, everything had been new and disorienting and he hadn’t wanted to try starting a relationship on top of that.
Being in the House…it felt like it should have been a similar experience, but somehow, it wasn’t. It felt strangely familiar, like he’d already gotten used to the idea of being pulled here. Like…
He’d miss it if it were gone.
And he liked Zuko. He really, actually did. They’d been through some hard rooms and some really fun rooms, but even in the ones they’d struggled in, having Zuko there with him…
It had been nice.
“I hadn’t noticed,” he replied automatically, his ears turning a slightly deeper shade of red. “I…wasn’t kidding when I said I’d never done this, you know. I mean, lots of teenagers do, I guess, and it’s…but I’ve never really had an opportunity. Or someone I wanted to try it with. Until…y’know. Now.”
He reached up, touching the edge of his prosthetic as Zuko continued. If he was being totally honest with himself, that had been part of the reason, too. It wasn’t that he thought Zuko was shallow, or that he didn’t feel comfortable wearing it, but…still.
“No, it’s…it’s okay,” he managed, letting his hand fall back to his lap. “I mean…I do know my prosthetic makes that part a little harder, but…it doesn’t need to be a thing that we just…don’t.”

Sal Fisher | Valentine’s Room | strider

Sal noticed the sparks coming from Zuko’s hands, but it didn’t occur to him to worry about being burned.
It did occur to him that Zuko had to be extremely nervous to be using his bending even a little bit without meaning to. He hadn’t seen him use it that much, maybe, but every time he had, he’d had flawless control over it. Even when he’d been trying to break through the glass and save that person. Which had to have been more stressful than asking someone out was.
“I mean…I guess that makes sense. I could imagine moving in with people even if I wouldn’t want to date them. I mean, it’s not like you have to be dating your roommate, or…I don’t know if you have roommates. But it’s not like you want to date your crew. I don’t know, that comparison doesn’t really work, but…I get it.”
He leaned back a little, forcing himself to breathe out. He still felt sort of like he was about to ruin this somehow, or that the House might, but there was also the spark of something else, now. Something that felt a little bit like excitement, though it blended into the nerves.
I guess it would be like if you asked me to cut off my hair.
Sal paused, glancing at Zuko’s ponytail. He’d noticed it, of course, but…it wasn’t like he knew what other world’s styles were. And he’d noticed that Zuko’s smaller self hadn’t had the same style, but then, he hadn’t exactly been born wearing pigtails, had he?
But something about the way Zuko said it warmed him, anyway. He may not have known exactly what hair meant to Zuko, but he got the sense that somehow…he understood. The prosthetic meant something. Meant more than anyone in Sal’s world seemed to get.
“You know…out of everyone that’s seen me without it, I don’t think it’s ever been a choice on my part,” he said finally. “And…there haven’t been a lot of people. It matters, a lot. I’m just saying that…I’m not saying not to. That’s all.”

Sal Fisher | Valentine’s Room | strider

“You know…it’s okay if you actually did like Mai,” Sal replied, realizing suddenly that he hadn’t said that yet. “You know that, right? I mean, it’s okay if you didn’t, too, but it’s not like you can’t have ever had real feelings for someone before to want to date. You don’t have to explain.”
The prosthetic was harder to talk about. At least he knew what he was trying to say about Mai. He wasn’t sure he really did know how he felt about this…the idea of taking it off around someone on purpose sent a sort of uncertain shiver through him.
“That’s…I appreciate that. But also, if the choice is between seeing me without my prosthetic or dying, you have my permission to see me, okay?”
He wasn’t sure he was saying what he meant to be saying. But somehow…at least it wasn’t quite as awkward anymore. They were talking about it, and they were both actually okay with it. And it actually felt…kind of nice. Peaceful, almost.
“But…for real. Thanks. I know it’s kind of hard to understand when you’re not…well, me. But it really does mean a lot to me, so…yeah. Thanks.”

Sal Fisher | Valentine’s Room | strider

Sal hesitated, but he didn’t push. It wasn’t like it really mattered here, anyway. And Zuko had been banished, which meant…he probably hadn’t even seen her in years. That had to make it even more confusing.
“I meant you dying, genius,” Sal replied, shaking his head a little, though he didn’t bother to keep the amused note from his voice. “If you’re going to die unless you take off my prosthetic, take it off. Even if you’ll come back. Okay?”
A slightly more serious look came into his eyes as Zuko continued, and he nodded a little, resting his chin on one hand. “Yeah, I will. But also…I’ll let you know if I’m not comfortable with something. Communication is key, or something like that…but I’ll tell you. And I trust you not to be weird about it if I do, so…don’t worry too much.”

Sal Fisher | Valentine’s Room | strider

Sal wasn’t actually sure what all changed when you started dating someone, either. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to change, even…he liked the ease they’d found. He liked how they built off each other, even if it meant half the time they ended teasing each other. It wasn’t really the same as any other relationship he’d had, even without the dating part.
“Good,” he nodded a little, leaning back. “Because watching you get killed by that thing…well, it’s not a good memory. I know the House can be dangerous, and rooms can go bad, but still…I don’t want to see that again. Not if I can help it.”
He cared. He’d have cared even if he hadn’t known Zuko, but the closer they got, the more he wanted to protect him from anything else like that, even if he knew he probably couldn’t. He could at least try and stop Zuko from dying specifically for him again.
“Yeah, starting relationships always makes me hungry,” he replied, scooting his chair over a little so he could see the menu too. “That sounds good, though. Even though I don’t get why there’s a menu when apparently there aren’t any waiters. Is there even a kitchen?”