[closed] we'll go tearing up the back streets

[erbier]

CHARACTERS: Ilde, Angel, Gio
WHERE: The Bearings
WHEN: D37-ish
SUMMARY: A teenage gangster teaches his older sisters how to do their lipstick right.
WARNINGS: Terrible fashion choices.

[ He's already taken her out shopping. After the vigil she had agreed to go with him out of the simple fact that she did not wish to return to the Bearings after Ren's rebuke. It wasn't terrible, she was somewhat familiar with the game of it all, having been taken on similar outings by the Subspace punks she humored with her attention. They too liked to point at ridiculous things and suggest she buy them. They were easier to deny. They had some reverence for her mystique of demureness, her quiet shyness. Gio, although younger, although newer, knows her better than that just by dint of the symbiote. Can feel her balk not out of self-identity but of nerves and uncertainty. So he pushes. Tells her there are more colors and patterns and has her try things on for hours until she convinces him they should stop for the day...

She might have been avoiding him ever since.

It's funny, all the horror she's seen in her life and this is what truly unsettles her: self-expression, beauty outside the tiny box that she has known. Blonde hair, blue eyes, pale skin.

She tells these things to Angel. That she feels overwhelmed by it all, and of course, the suggestion occurs that why don't they explore it together? Angel is already easier with the whole act of it, her closet is full of very different things than Ilde's...

That is how they end up in Ilde's sparse bedroom, piles of clothes scattered everywhere, unopened makeup spread out on her bed.

Ilde eyes it all warily and reminds herself that nothing here can kill her. ]

Comments

[erbier]

( You do look lovely. )

[ It intrigues her to watch the boy attend to Angel. The sense of her confidante's pleasure at it all is apparent to her, and that pleases her in kind. They were both touch starved, Ilde cannot be jealous of Angel enjoying the softness any more than she would expect Angel to be jealous of her own forays. Angel deserved it, to be pampered and indulged, to be made to feel pretty.

Ilde has always merely been pretty, it was a statement made to her, a fact of her existence. She had never put any work in to it. It was a trait she took for granted, and when Gio had suggested all of this to her she had found it difficult to see the point. It had even made her uncomfortable. What if, in her attempts at beauty, she found only ugliness? Exposed something in herself other than the pretty virgin Dreus had adored.

She doesn't need to be that girl any more. She wipes off the peach colored lipstick with the back of her hand, and reaches once more for insolence. She speaks as she applies it in the compact. ]

Does your power have a name?

[ She remembers it, from when she had first met him in the garden. Another little boy awoken among the brood, she had worried for him, but now she realizes that he is far more capable than she gave him credit. So are the others. Though it hardly stops her from feeling sisterly towards them, such is the Hive.

She looks at the red color on her lips for a long moment before lowering the mirror. ]

It is interesting how much a color changes you.

[ Red lips mature her. ]

[tropism]

[ a slight gasp, turning his attention from the perfume in his hands to ilde: ] That is excellent. You have to wear that from now on!

[ lord, what a face. that is so beautiful, so wonderful. he is very excited about this potential, it feels like electricity humming underneath his skin, as it always does with things that he feels in potential. growth that feels like the sun settling in his bones. it is always the same, exciting feeling, being a part of something huge.

and he is excited about everything. not in the way he had to carefully slot himself in a unit, but one where he feels he belongs despite things obviously for themselves. he finds that one charming, too. charming, and only slightly tinged with want, because how lovely that must be. to want to be with someone else and to pick scents and colours with them that remind them of each other. giorno, for most of his short life, had been aiming for the world; and now that he doesn't have to, he can only look at himself, figuring out his wants and needs. it is an odd feeling, to want something for yourself that isn't the world.

power and colour remind him of home. fugo reminds him of home, too. does your power have a name? it does, but he hasn't used it here in a while, although he's done smaller things, like transform smaller items into animals or show mara how he heals injuries. his Stand, though, he keeps for himself still. it is the only thing he has from his world. ]

Gold Experience. [ he purses his lips in thought. ] Then again, we all had names for them.