coolerjunpei | expi inbox

[ he's about to try and explain that one-a-day calendars are a bit weird when you're a ghost and sometimes your best friend forgets about the passing of time when he gets really into studying ancient dead languages and one time spent five weeks immersed in books and charles had already been bored out of his mind then and if he'd had to tear away one calendar page per day he might have chucked himself into a lake —

and then junpei just sort of off-handedly delivers the punchline to his joke-slash-riddle, and any words charles has just promptly dissolve into laughter. ]

I hate you, [ he says, in the tone of someone who couldn't possibly mean it less. shaking his head, he looks around, and seems to finally realise they're still standing up. ] Oh, hell, should we sit down? Like, not on the floor? Can't be good for you, that, or comfortable.

Just wait 'til I get going.

[He's got more! Not enough to fill a calendar, probably, but there's more where that came from. He follows Charles' look around the room, like, oh yeah... he is upright indeed.]

Standing isn't good for me...? I could sit. I could have another drink, too.

[He didn't entirely finish the last one, but it's somewhere else now, so please pick him another drink (birthday privilege) while he shuffles backwards to sit on the edge of the bed.]

Hey. What part of the chicken has the most feathers?

[ he sure meant that sitting on the floor is what's not good for him, but instead of correcting him, charles just shakes his head with a fond smile and turns away to the now-abandoned bag to pick him another drink — a beer, since he seems to prefer those, an ipa that he grabbed mostly for the higher alcohol content.

he hands it over as he then falls back to sit on the floor himself, right across from junpei. and with a raise of his brows, ]

No clue, but I'm sure you're about to enlighten me.

[He hums as he scoots back a bit on the bed and crosses one leg over his knee, considering the beer - ooh, fancy.]

You're not even going to guess? It's a chicken, how many parts could it have?

[Pleeeease guess. Pleeeease. He's doing his very best pleading eyes, but he keeps making a face like he's going to laugh at his own bit, so it's - goofy.]

Come on. What part has the most feathers?

[ but i haven't even drunk anything is charles' first thought when the floor seems to lurch under him as he stares at junpei (or maybe it's his stomach doing a full one-eighty, he's not entirely sure here). his second thought is, shit, he's cute. his third thought is just a solid what.

no, you know what, he'll... get back to this later. maybe. possibly.

right now, he's got a joke-riddle to answer, because apparently he's got no defense against junpei looking at him like that. ] Right, okay. Uh, the wings?

[ he doesn't even really think about it — just says the first thing that comes to mind. in all honesty, he's not entirely sure he could reliably describe a chicken right now if he was asked to. ]

[For his part, Junpei is delighted to get any answer at all, even if-]

Nope.

[—and he waits for a moment, as if getting the answer wrong is going to go poorly for some reason? No need to worry about that right now. Since there isn't any catastrophe, Junpei's free to lean back on his free hand and say, a teensy bit smugly:]

It's the outside.

[Hold the applause!!]

You got any?

[ charles just grins as he gets the answer wrong, as he expected — and then sort of waves his hand a little as if to say, well, go on, when the correction isn't immediately forthcoming —

and then he just. groans, tipping his head back, and then just promptly falling onto his back on the floor for dramatic effect. and then, from the floor, ] Well, if they ever make bad jokes an Olympic sport, reckon you've got a good chance of winning.

[ he takes a moment to think of something, and remembers something junpei had told him, about the alternate histories and the movie reference. so... ] Why'd someone want to have a DeLorean as a second car?

Yeah, I'll take a couple gold.

[He shifts to lay on his side, leaning on his elbow and waggling the beer briefly for emphasis. Thanks, he's the world champion of bits. But ooh, a movie riddle, that's interesting--]

A second car? Why does it have to be a second car?

[He thinks about it... he thinks about it some more... he drinks his fancy beer, he thinks some more...]

I dunno. Why?

[ charles, still sprawled on the floor, pushes himself up on his elbows and grins the kind of sunny smile that precedes him being impossibly annoying. ]

So they can drive it from time to time.

[ see, he can do this too! not as well though, and his arsenal of jokes is definitely not quite as good, but. ]

[Junpei looks at him for a long moment before he scoffs, and then as he takes another sip of beer, actually properly bursts into giggles and nearly spits it all out.]

You're making time travel jokes?

[On his birthday, and everything!! He clearly find this very funny, actually, although that may be the drinks snickering away about time to time. In fact, as he snorts about the really good joke all over again-]

That's just what the movie's about!

[ meanwhile, charles' sunny grin turns into something less pointed and more fond, yet doesn't really dim in intensity at all. he gives a slight shrug, still leaning on his elbows, and says, ] Just for you.

[ and really, he did pick it on purpose! and it seems like he might say more but then he's distracted from words by junpei laughing some more, and just stares at him for a while there. take a picture, it'll last longer, his inner crystal voice pipes up inside his head, dry and sarcastic, and charles tells her to kindly shut the hell up.

which is why he's a bit slow in responding — ]

Yeah, I know, it came out when I was in secondary school. [ the i'm from the 80s you numpty is implied. fondly. ]

[Give him a minute to get the rest of his laughter out - it's so stupid, the joke, it definitely doesn't merit a fresh bubbling wave of little snickers when he thinks about it again, from time to time; it's the simplicity of it, really. It's maybe finally allowing himself to not linger on the past few weeks, after telling himself he was going a really good job of not doing that before.

And it's also probably the alcohol, but mostly the other things. Junpei sort of wheezes at the end of it, finally, sinking back to stare at the ceiling.]

I think I was... negative twenty, when that came out. [21, but who's keeping score] But I've seen it.

[ charles can't quite help the pleased smile at his continued laughter, because the joke was so stupid and definitely not deserving of this much amusement, but — it makes him feel lighter, somehow, watching junpei laughing, the most carefree he's seen him, yet.

he hauls himself up to a sitting position, slumping forward a bit to lean his elbows against his knees. ]

Well, it's a classic, innit? Think I even saw it in the theaters.

[ he's seen a ton of movies in the theaters over the years, because sneaking in as a ghost is really easy, so he's sort of lost count of what movies he's seen and where... and when. ]

[There's something about sitting around and talking about nothing at all - movies they've seen is fun and light and carries no weight and shoulders no terrible burdens, after all - that reminds Junpei of university. He'd spent his share of hours sitting around talking about nothing with roommates and friends, and it was only a few years ago but it feels like a lifetime away, and while he stares at the ceiling and tries to do math, god, what is he thinking - it also just feels good, to talk about nothing. He has Charles to thank for that, a thought that floods him with a sudden warmth.

He turns his head to look at Charles sideways, fond, but this is a talking-about-nothing moment, so he says:]

Did they have collectibles? You know, like— themed plastic cups and stuff?

[ in turn, charles is used to this — talking about everything and nothing, whiling away hours by debating the differences between modern clothes fabrics and turn-of-the-century ones, or maybe going off a tangent about whether he'd be able to win against a kraken with his bat if he really tried, or a number of other things; he's never had trouble to find things to prattle on about, and it's easy to fall back to the habit, here. ]

Some theaters, yeah, [ he says with a shrug, ] But the one nearest to where I lived was real small. With luck you'd get popcorn. [ he pauses and adds, ] Tickets were cheap, though. And then after, well, no one's gonna check if a ghost has a ticket, yeah? So it's unlimited movies any time you want.

[ another pause and he chuckles under his breath. ] You know, I'd go see movie productions sometimes, too. Sneak onto the set, go around, see how stuff gets filmed. It's pretty cool.

[No commemorative cups, no business. Junpei tuts and shakes his head.]

No popcorn? There's not even a point without mostly stale, kind of burnt popcorn.

[It's part of the experience, the Theater Ambiance! Why go out to the movies without any of the perks? No point at all.

He shifts onto his side again, careful not to wobble too close to the edge of the bed, but mostly staring at Charles expectantly. Movie magic? How the sausage gets made? Do tell.]

You saw stunts and stuff? Anything good?

[ nodding, charles tries to pick the highlights of everything he's stumbled across over the decades. ]

Well, there was this one action movie where they had a chase sequence and it was pretty aces, had this one guy jumping from the car to a moving train and all. The fight training's cool to see, too, when they do the choreographies, you know? And sets in studios, some of them are insanely detailed and you kind of feel like you're walking in the movie.

[ remembering a particular incident, he snorts and shakes his head. ] One time, we actually put our disguises on, went around pretending to be inspectors for set safety. Had to spend days convincing Edwin to do that. But we got a whole tour round the place, got to talk to the stuntpeople... wish we'd done it more often.

Huh, neat. Guess it wouldn't ruin the magic to see the cool stuff behind the scenes...

[Who is he kidding, he'd be dazzled by anything behind the scenes. He wants to go walking in the movie sooo badly...

The anecdote makes him laugh and he waves a hand like, hold on,] You did better than me. This one time, not a movie set, it was an office building—this one time me and Seven - uh, he's the real PI who lets me tag along - we did a fake inspectors thing at this office, right? But Seven's the size of a house, real intimidating guy, and I... forgot we were doing it that day, so I showed up in a ratty t-shirt with none of the fake badges or anything.

[Ah, memories,] Needless to say, we didn't get in through the front door.

[ charles, for all his issues with his short attention span, has always been a good listener when the subject matter is interesting — idly, through his amusement at picturing the scene in question, he thinks that he could probably sit here for hours and just listen to junpei tell him random anecdotes of his life. because, well, he knows the broad strokes, but this? this is the first time he's referring to anything specific like this, the first time he's mentioning anyone by name, and charles feels a bit blindsided with how badly he wants to know more.

he laughs, then, shaking his head with a fond little sigh. ] Not very professional of you, yeah? Was he mad? Seven, I mean?

[ but, ] Right, if we're trading stories... one time I freed this owl from a mausoleum, thought it was this dead witch's familiar, but, uh, turned out it was a forest deity and it was really insistent it owes me a favour, so... it took me to draw this sword out of a stone, you know, like a whole King Arthur thing and all. It also turned into a dragon, which was less cool, but anyway, that's how I got my sword. Never used it much cause I prefer the cricket bat, but... [ he shrugs and laughs sheepishly. ] Edwin made me promise to stop freeing random animals that hang round dead witches and to stop talking to random animals if they talk to me and want me to follow them.

[ a pause. ] Your turn.

[Junpei scoffs, shaking his head. Seven, get mad at him? Him, Junpei? Impossible. Or, well, not impossible really at all, but-]

No, it was funny. Eventually. And if I didn't already know you guys can do actual magic, that would sound like complete bullshit, you know that? Magic owl dragons and swords in stones...

[He shakes his head again, amused; he believes it! It's also very fantastical, especially when he has no magical dragon stories of his own to share. He drums his fingers on the beer bottle, thinking.]

So uh, I got to play bodyguard once, I guess? One of my friends is a professional harp player, if you can believe that, and his sister- Clover- tells me that his fans are nuts so I've gotta hang around at this performance or else. She made me put on a tie.

[Pause for dramatic effect. Lamentation about wearing a tie, etc.]

Turns out, it was a con to get me to go to a harp concert, except I still had to stand the whole time. [...,] Uh, there's no animal in that story... The harp player, we called him Snake, that counts.

[ charles laughs, because yeah, he can see it — he probably wouldn't believe himself about their cases either, if he hadn't... sort of lived through them.

but he quiets, then, to listen, nodding along and appropriately makes a face at the mention of a tie — really, he gets it. formal wear? absolutely not.

and then he just, well, loses it, quite frankly, just falling sideways on the floor and giggling because — ]

Wait, seriously? They had to con you to get you to go to a harp concert? And you fell for it?

[ sorry, sorry, he'll get his mirth under control! still snickering, charles looks at him with sparkling eyes and just blurts out, ] Mate, that's right adorable.

Wh— hey!

[Hey, no laughing at him, that's very rude - except that Charles laughing makes Junpei laugh, too. He still twists to grab the pillow and chuck it vaguely at Charles on the floor.]

Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, I'm just the cutest. Do I look like someone who goes to harp concerts? In ties?

[A tie, Charles!!]

[ and because he's a nice person, charles actually lets the pillow hit him in the chest, instead of phasing through it — sure, he can't feel the hit, but it's the principle of the thing!

still grinning so hard his cheeks would be hurting if they could be, ] You are, [ and he doesn't even really notice what it is he's agreed with, because he's more focused on what follows: ]

Being honest? You don't look like someone who even owns a tie. [ immediately, he lifts his hand up, placating in advance. ] I mean, neither do I! Wouldn't go to a harp concert, either, and definitely wouldn't wear a tie. So I get it.

[Oh, he's cute, well - he'll remember that. Maybe. He sighs and flops back down on the bed, now critically without a pillow. Dang.]

I still don't own a tie. I borrowed that one.

[He definitely had the vibe of a little schoolboy on picture day who also believed for at least two hours that he was doing security detail. Now that he's thinking about it, though...]

Think this means you owe me putting on a tie. For laughing.

[ of course he doesn't own one. of course he borrowed it. all of that makes perfect sense to charles, and doesn't detract from his previous assessment of adorable.

he pauses at the request, though, tilting his head. ]

I mean, sure, guess it's fair. [ with what logic?? his, apparently. ] Now or later? [ it's a genuine question and all, because... ghost clothes. he can technically change them at any point, though he might muck up the whole suit thing without a reference picture. ]

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