aterat | [OPEN] Kindness For Children

Entry tags:

[OPEN] Kindness For Children

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

"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.

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?”

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."

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.

"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."

“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?

"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.

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.

"Don't worry about it," Tommy said with a shrug. "The Shepherds blew. Doesn't matter. Mom was good, though.

"As for here, someone has to be in charge of this. So yeah, not dressing up."

Mono guessed his idea wasn’t so good after all. The boy was a little disappointed, but if that was what Tommy wanted, then the child wasn’t going to question it. “Okay, then.” He responded with a little shrug, before looking back to the sign again. It gave him something to think about, anyway. "Do ya need any help with stuff?"

"You like painting?" Tommy asked with a smile. Kid might enjoy it. Help him get out some stress or something. Mrs. Kaplan had mentioned something about art therapy for traumatized kids once.

Mono tilted his head at the question, the answer being as usual that he didn’t really know. “I dunno, never really did any painting before…” He looked at the poster again curiously. “But I wanna try if you think it’s okay that I might not be good at it?” Because it could be interesting to try new things. Luna had been asking him what he liked doing, and it felt a bit awkward sometimes to not have many ideas or answers.

"If you're not good, I'll paint over it when it dries," Tommy said with a dismissive shrug. He's not that bothered. ANd he wants his best employee to experience more of the world.

“Oh, okay!” He responded, feeling a little better to hear that Tommy could at least fix it if he messed up somehow. Sitting on the ground next to the trays of paint and the poster, he put his message bag aside and adjusted the brim of his hat enough to keep it from getting in his way of seeing what he was doing. “So what do I gotta do first? Want me to fill in the stuff you drew that doesn’t got colours yet?”

"Yeah. The words are the best place to start," Tommy noted, moving to kneel by the kid. He needs to get another paper plate to start putting paint on so that Mono could help him. "I'll start on the creatures and stuff."

“Okay! I can do that, I think.” He responded with a look of determination, tilting his head at the letters as Tommy began pouring out more paint for him to start. The letters would be easier compared to the creatures anyway, since he wasn’t sure what the best way to paint some of those would be. So dividing the project that way seemed like a pretty good idea.

Taking up a paintbrush, he began to carefully fill in the letters as best as he could. A look of complete concentration on the child’s face, before he glanced at Tommy after he got one letter mostly filled in. “Like this, right?” He asked, wanting to make sure he was doing okay.

Tommy had turned his attention on toward the things he was going to start painting. It wasn't until the guy spoke up that Tommy looked over.

"Looking good. Maybe when the letter dries go back over it once more."

Once Tommy responded, he gave him one of his clumsy, tilted smiles and looked back at the letters he was painting. “Okay! I’ll do that and make sure they look really good.” He responded, sounding at least a little proud of himself for having gotten the hang of it pretty quickly.

"Any work you do is going to be great," Tommy promised, because he already had evidence of that. With that he went back to the bat and was silent for a bit.

"Do you wanna talk about being gone for a while?"

“Thanks, Tommy.” He responded with a little clumsy attempt at a smile. The confidence his boss had in him was nice! Especially when he’d never really done anything like this before. So the boy was happy to continue filling in the letters, being very careful to make sure everything looked even and filled in like the pictures Tommy was painting in.

The question does get a little pause, though. His face scrunching up a bit with concentration as he tried to think of what to say to that. There was something a bit scary about admitting what he’d learned about himself to people, even as those he had seemed more prone to reassuring him than being upset at him… “I dunno… It was kinda bad, so I dunno if it’s a good thing to tell people about.”

"You okay?"

Really, that's all Tommy cares about.

"We missed you, you know. Me and the kids. You're really important."

“Dunno… I guess I’m better here than I was there.” But okay was a stretch, perhaps, knowing what he did about himself now. It was scary, and no matter how determined he was to not become that thing? It still bugged him knowing that it could happen and would when he went back.

But he glanced up from the letters he was working on when Tommy said he and the other kids had missed them. “I’m sorry I was gone. I didn’t really remember this place and you guys when I was there, but I realized when I got back I missed you guys too? At least when I knew I was here for sure.” His return had been quite confusing, to say the least… And damaging. He was surprised he didn’t get in trouble for it. Then again, the harbor district tended to get ignored a lot of the time, maybe no one minded since not many people were there like the rest of the city.

Tommy got being scary. Perhaps more than some people did. He just didn't think it was something Mono wanted to hear about.

"Glad you missed us," Tommy said with a smile. "I'm sorry pretty amazing. Hard to not miss me."

Mono would honestly find it more than a little surprising to think Tommy might know what that felt like. It still confused him to have learned things about some people here. He only ever imagined most of those adults who were around him, always helping him or making him feel better about things, like heroes. But for now, the boy remained oblivious to that, tilting his head at his boss with a clumsy attempt at a smile. “You are! So I’m I could see you and other people again.” He responded with a little nod, “And that I could help with your neat poster!”

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