not_every_mage | Holiday Inn, Limbo City, Friday Evening

Holiday Inn, Limbo City, Friday Evening

Anders had booked and paid for the room, ignoring the clerk's dirty look at the blood and muck on their clothes. They wouldn't be the only people caught in the day's devastation looking for someplace to sleep tonight

He'd silently followed Dante through the hotel halls to their room, and placed a quick order for pizza before he took off his boots and crashed out on the bed. The thousand bruises and scrapes of the battle stung his skin.

He should shower. He didn't want to move.

He turned to Dante, still registering faint surprise at the newly white hair. (He supposed they were lucky if that was the worst permanent change Dante saw.) Words failed him when it came to addressing the true horror of the day, but he should at least say something

"They said the pizza should be here in about half an hour," he said. "I'm actually impressed it's not longer, considering."

[OOC: For one, NFB.]

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"I got to 'get Anders to a bedroom and buy a load of pizza' and stranded there," Dante admitted, smiling without realizing it at the touch against his skin. "I could probably do that a few months more and not get bored."

It was still a surprise, how warm Dante could make Anders feel with something like that little flicker of a smile.

"Well, I know that was my plan," he teased. "So it's not a bad place to start from."

"I'll figure out the details later," Dante said, eyeing the box. "Right now, we got a second pizza box to snag."

It was his turn to slide out of bed and pad over to grab the other box. "I still think we should do a roadtrip after grad," he said.

"I'd love that," Anders said sincerely. "If I'm sticking around for a while, I need to see this world beyond the island. And you need to see something that isn't that, Baltimore or Limbo City."

He opened the fresh box of pizza and selected a slice. "Where would we go?" he asked, tone an invitation to daydream together.

"Go down south, see if Florida's as tacky as they say it is," Dante mused. "Hit the mountains on the way there... then do a theme park."

He grinned at Anders as he sat back down on the bed. "Hey, we can go to Disneyworld."

He was half-joking. A third?

"With the castle?" Anders checked, turning back towards Dante. "I'd like that. Do they really have mouse ears with names on them?"

Anders already knew what he'd get Dante for a souvenir, yes.

"I think so? I've never been," Dante said. "Supposed to be one of those things all good folks take their kids to do at some point."

He reached for another slice. "We missed out. We need to fix that."

"Make up for our terrible deprived childhoods," Anders agreed solemnly. "Only it'll be more fun than it would've been then, because we can drink now."

"I wonder if they have booze in Disneyworld," Dante mused. "I'll bet if they do it's the good booze. Imagine having like four kids running around hopped up on sugar in that place."

Anders shuddered. "To go by the kids of mine I've seen, the place might not be standing by the end of the day. Especially if somehow I got four of them."

All right, Leo had been more-or-less well behaved, but Carys? Carys was a force of nature.

"So we go to Disneyland and get drunk on frazzled parent booze," Dante said. "Then... New Orleans? I hear that place is fucked up."

One way of putting it, yeah.

"Fucked up how?" Anders asked, suspicious. "Fucked up like we'd get in trouble?"

"Fucked up like they have weird booze and great food and half of them are French or something," Dante supplied. (There were some things he hadn't gotten around to learning by age seven at home.) "And they got hit bad by a hurricane a while back."

"Fake Orlesians, but not the stuffy kind," Anders summarized. "Sounds like a good party. Maybe a bad place to live, but a good party."

He nudged Dante with his foot again, thoughtful. "Maybe we could stop at the beach along the way," he suggested. "Just spend a day eating ice cream and trying to swim."

"Hey, that'd be the next stop," Dante said, poking Anders back with his own foot.

He felt both less and more tired, but in a good way. "California. Beaches and babes."

"I have this weird feeling you'd be at home there," Anders said easily. He was tired, too, but not in a bad way at all.

After a battle like today's, going to bed full of pizza and all talked out was possibly the best ending the day could have.

Dante grinned at him. "Does seem like my kinda place," he said. "Lazy and fun. But we can hit up Portland after and let you chill with the hipsters."

"With the bikes and the fancy coffee?" Anders wondered. "You're so good to me."

Dreamily, he added, "We should go to the Grand Canyon, too. It looks amazing on TV and I want to see it for real."

"That place looks fucking huge," Dante said, grinning. "Think it's on the way to California."

Anders nodded. "I don't know why I want to see a big hole in the ground, but I do," he said, and started to pry himself off the bed. "I think I'm going to have a shower before we fall asleep talking."

Dante smiled at him. He was starting to come around on this 'planning for the future' thing. "Want company or are you tired of my bullshit?"

"I like your bullshit," Anders said firmly, tugging at Dante's hand. "Come on. We can save water, all of that."

Dante let Anders tug him along, smiling slightly to himself.

He hoped Anders wasn't looking back; he was pretty sure his expression was nauseatingly fond.

Anders didn't look back, in part because he had his own nauseatingly fond grin to hide. He busied himself unwrapping tiny bars of soap and getting the water temperature just so instead.

"I'm glad we did this," he said, as he tested the water one last time. "It's good to get a little space from everybody else."

"Yeah," Dante said, pulling his shirt over his head. He tossed it aside to the bathroom floor, getting to work on his pants. "It's... I dunno."

He looked up at Anders. "I can get stuck in my head," he said. "It's good to just kinda be and still get it all out there."

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