[OPEN] Kindness For Children

[doubled_speed]

Who; Tommy Shepherd, Open
What; Small Pranks and Halloween Plans
Where; Apartment Common Rooms, Courtyard Outside of Apartment Buildings
When; Week of October 10th
Warnings; None Anticipated

I. An Homage To Loki | Apartment Building Common Rooms

It was that time of the year again, perhaps the hardest for Tommy in some ways. With what would be Halloween (and thus his birthday) approaching, a black mood was settling over the speedster. He wanted nothing more than to flee, to hide, to fall back on old habits and avoid it all. But there were those who would disapprove of that he thought. Gar for one thing for caring about Tommy. Wanda and Enis as she'd been at the Sphere, who had worked so hard to realize his dream of an amazing haunted house. And the one friend he hadn't intended to make.

It was this last missing friend whose opinions kept Tommy from running from the season. This last one was the one whose opinions motivated Tommy now as he moved through the common rooms of... Well, he doesn't remmeber which apartment building he was in right now. He'd been laying his little playful traps in them all. What mattered was that right now he was busy in the reading nook, putting down a bowl of wrapped hard candies. This joke here was a simple one. They looked like peppermints, and each one was actually powerfully flavored with cinnamon. That should shock someone pretty seriously, right? And if that wasn't enough, buried under all of the candies was Tommy's best attempt at drawing Loki's face, complete with horned helmet.

"Okay, what next," he said to himself. "Too bad there aren't books here. I could put fake fortunes or treasure maps in them. Damn."

II. Making Your Own Holiday | Courtyard Outside of Apartment Buildings

Somewhere along the line of his little pranks and watching his couriers run about, Tommy had come to a conclusion.

There needed to be more little things for the kids, and Tommy wanted to give them something he didn't reliably have back home. Which was why he was out in the courtyard now, standing by large, rolled out strech of paper weighted down at the corners with rocks. In his hands was a plate with globs of paint on it: orange and black and purple and green. And on the paper below was a few words sketched out lightly in pencil.

'Fall Candy Quest!' the sign did, or would, proclaim, along with a date and time for later in the month, and little sketches of spooy things like bats and cauldrons, as well as images of different candies.

Comments

II. Making Your Own Holiday

[monochromatically]

One of the said couriers, who had recently returned and eventually returned to work, eventually happened upon Tommy in the courtyard of the coloured apartment buildings. The boy wasn’t really sure what his boss was working on, but it looked a bit like a sign or advertisement like you sometimes saw stuck to a wall or in the window of a shop.

He still wasn’t quite as quick to join in as he had been before, but he was adjusting to a few things, so perhaps that was to be expected. But seeing Tommy focused on something with a bunch of colourful paint? That got the kid to approach with his now empty letter carrying bag over his shoulder, the brim of his postman hat pulled low over his eyes more firmly than usual as he stopped a few steps away.

“What’re you doing?” The boy spoke up a few minutes after squinting at the letters and pictures Tommy was painting in, not quite able to keep the curiosity out of his voice.

[doubled_speed]

"Making a banner," Tommy said before even thinking about it, before turning his gaze to his favorite lieutenant for the business. "You delivering something to me? That'd be cute actually."

[monochromatically]

“Oh…” He mumbled, realizing that much was probably kind of obvious. He tried again, though, since mostly the kid wasn’t sure what the quest thing was. Honestly, he didn’t even know what Halloween was. “What’s it for? I dunno what a fall candy quest is. Is it kinda like a contest or something?” That was probably the most words the kid had said throughout the day, honestly. But if anything, one of the things that had not changed was that the boy was very pro candy.

He crouched down to get a closer look at the pictures around the words and stuff, before his little nose wrinkled a bit at the comment. “Still don’t think I’m cute.” Adults calling him cute was still weird. It would always be weird. Probably weirder than it was before, in the kid’s opinion. “And nope, I just finished delivering the stuff you gave me for today. Got nothing left.” Though he did feel a little bad if Tommy had wanted something. “Got a cookie from the bakery though, if ya want half.”

Okay, so being considered cute did have the odd perk, even if t was still weird.

[doubled_speed]

"It's a holiday in my world," Tommy said with a shrug. He didn't need to give away too much just yet, because he wanted Mono to enjoy it too. "Where kids go around and get people to give them lots of candy. And what they win? Is the candy."

Of course he's cute, and Tommy rolls his eyes at the suggestion that he's not. Still, that doesn't change that he thinks the delivery would be cute, even if the kid wasn't cute in his own eyes.

"Nah, you have the cookie. You earned it."

[monochromatically]

Well, Mono had enjoyed learning about holidays the last time there was one over the winter months. So this fall thing sounded pretty neat to him too, even if it didn’t make a lot of sense. “Candy is a good prize for winning.” He agreed it sounded better than other things that he knew people sometimes won when they competed for stuff. “So kids just gotta go walking around from one person’s door to another? And adults that live there give em candy?” Straight forward, simple, seemed like something that might have some kind of catch behind it…

But this was Tommy setting it up, and Mono tended to trust his boss as easily as he trusted one or two other adults in the city when they said things were a certain way.

“Okay, if you say so. I don’t mind sharing, though.” He added with a little nod, he could definitely eat a whole cookie himself. Especially these days, since coming back. He hadn’t needed to eat where he was last time, and he missed the sweet snacks like cookies and (of course) candy.

[doubled_speed]

"Yeah, but that's how it works at home. I don't know that I can get it to work here. So I wanna find some place to stage it for the kids," he said. "Sometimes at home they dress up in costumes as things they aren't, but we can bring that later."

Though he thinks this might be popular with at least the kids that work for him, so he doesn't intend to give up.

[monochromatically]

Mono supposed that since it wasn’t something celebrated here that it might not be easily done, but people sure had taken to that funny Christmas Holiday last winter, hadn’t they? At least he’d seen and helped a little with the trees. So maybe this fall holiday thing would catch on too! The mention of costumes gets a little noticeable perk up in tone from the boy. He liked his hats, so costumes also seemed kinda neat. “Costumes? What kinda stuff that they aren’t do they dress up like?”

[doubled_speed]

Yes, they really had. Tommy... was always torn about Christmas. It wasn't something in his family's tradition, on any side. But he did his best.

"I mean, anything. Princesses and ghosts and monsters and race car drivers. Anything they like that isn't them."

[monochromatically]

It was all new to Mono, of course. Holidays were something people who were… well… still functional people did. Thus, it wasn’t a thing where he was from, and he could hardly remember a time where it might have been otherwise. So instead, he was latched onto Tommy’s words with a keen interest. He didn’t know what a race car driver was, but ghosts and monsters and princesses? One of those things wasn’t like the others, and it was the others that were a bit confusing. “Yeah? I dunno why people’d wanna be monsters…” He mumbled thoughtfully, he didn’t like thinking about that at all.

“I like the idea of costumes though. It sounds kinda fun. ‘Specially if you get to wear a neat hat or a mask.” He added, tugging on the brim of his postman hat again.

[doubled_speed]

"It's fun, where I'm from. Because those things aren't real."

Which wasn't entirely true, but little kids didn't care.

"But masks are super common for it."

[monochromatically]

“Ohh… I guess that would kinda make it less scary.” He said with a little nod. It would probably make more sense in other places.

The kid definitely was intrigued though, “Did you ever do that? Like dress up and stuff and go get candy from people?” What kinda thing would someone like Tommy dress up as, the boy wondered?

[doubled_speed]

"No," Tommy admitted, his voice a bit soft. "I... My parents weren't the best people. By any stretch."

And that was something he dealt with whenever his birthday came up. Right now, this was how he was dealing with it.

[monochromatically]

Oh… That was sad, if it was something kids normally got to do in Tommy’s world. It made the boy sad to hear that Tommy hadn’t had good parents that had done things like that with him, like he was trying to do for the kids here now. “I’m sorry…” he mumbled, a little awkwardly. The boy didn’t really have a lot of experience with things like parents, but he did have plenty of experience with bad adults, or at least adults that weren’t the way they were supposed to be.

He tilted his head slightly, getting an idea. “Maybe since you didn’t get to before, you could here? I never dressed up for a thing like this either, so maybe we both could?” It was an innocent idea, but the kid thought it was a sound one.

Holiday

[akindofmagic]

England was having a good day off and enjoying the cooler weather. He'd even decided that grabbing a cup of tea to go was in order and he wandered around. He was dressed a little more warmly than usual since the weather was getting a bit colder now.

Arthur had lesson plans he needed to draw up and was heading back to his own place when he caught sight of Tommy's scroll, or at least that's what it looked like to him. So he made his presence known by walking around to look more fully at it instead of being rude and lurking over the lad's shoulder.

Taking a sip of tea to warm his insides before speaking, he smiled at it. "Ah yes Halloween. It is getting to be that time isn't it."

Unfortunately America wouldn't be around to do their usual scaring each other contest. Last time the younger nation had been lucky to enable Russia to scare the bejeebers out of him.

[doubled_speed]

Someone who knows the name of the holiday, correctly assumes it from the banner, and sounds like that? Tommy looks over at the person curiously. Ah, a cup of tea.

"I didn't know the Brits celebrated it much."

[akindofmagic]

Arthur gave the lad a quick smile as he realized the boy knew his accent. "Well, celebrated it long before it became the holiday it's known as today but with bonfires." His brother Scotland still did it that way in fact. "However, we celebrate Guy Fawkes Day in November and that is more important. However, Halloween does seem to be catching on even if the costumes are a bit more traditional back home."

He caught himself and smiled. "America does it in a bigger way naturally, but there's something of a longstanding tradition of people scaring each other."

[doubled_speed]

That sounds... suspicious. Dude doesn't look that old.

"Remember remember the fifth of november. Yeah, I've seen the effigy burning before," he says with a shrug.

Of course America does it in a bigger way. He's just like that.

[akindofmagic]

"Ah, so then you're familiar with it, that's wonderful." There was always a little girl that he knew named Alice that brought it up to him every year without fail. She was such an adorable little bright face, that always called him 'Sir'.

"I'm rather happy to find that someone here that knows of it. That's quite unexpected." So this one had to be from Earth as well, which was comforting.

[doubled_speed]

"I'm from New Jersey, it's not like I'm not aware of things," Tommy said with a shrug.

Sorry, this is just who and what he was.

[akindofmagic]

"New Jersey?" And this had England both surprised and relieved. "Then you're one of.." and here he caught himself and assumed a more formal tone after he cleared his throat.

"You're from America, that's wonderful."

[doubled_speed]

One of what? Tommy raises an eyebrow at that.

"Dude, you really just expect me to let that hanging sentence go?"

[akindofmagic]

Arthur nodded. "I have a friend that's American so you're one of his own people."

Friend was a good term although Alfred might laugh to hear it. Sometimes that one couldn't take anything seriously. They'd been through so much together and things just were complicated at least in England's mind. He still recalled the offer of friendship and America had gone running off with a whale of all things.

[doubled_speed]

"Not all Americans know each other," Tommy says, very tired that it might even seem to be suggested. Feels sorta racist, bro. Which probably wasn't the intention.

"When you're like me, nationalism seems stupid."

[akindofmagic]

England smiled. Sure he didn't like the idea that the other was misinterpreting his words but it suited his purpose to confuse. "I'm sure they don't."

The country was pretty big but even if this boy met America, no doubt the younger nation would treat him as if he knew him his whole life. It was one of the meant things that Arthur secretly admired about Alfred. That nation could make friends in almost an instant with his own people.

The last part got his attention though. "Like you? What do you mean?"

[doubled_speed]

Perhaps he could. Or perhaps Tommy would be prickly. Authority in any form was not a friend of his.

"A mutant," he said with a shrug. "I feel more connected to British mutants than I do to most Americans."