#mpxchristopher

@mpxchristopher

he can’t help it; the way distress reels him in like a moth to a flame, tempted to go closer, to figure out what the source of it is, to see if there is something he can do. the young man who passes him is seeped in sadness, though he looks as put together as anyone else around. he takes a moment or two just to breathe, to let it wash off him again, to let it go, but he doesn’t manage to.

within a heartbeat he’s turned around to follow after the other male, keeping a proper distance, trying to think up some reason for why he would be following him, and then he decides to just go for whatever shitty reason he can come up with on the fly, which is a really lame one but has never failed him - things like this happens a lot.

“Whoa shit,” she cusses, stumbling over her feet for a brief moment as Christopher pulled her out of the way. Her other hand grabbed onto his shoulder, steadying herself in her heeled boots before regaining her balance. She let go of him, because Blair had never been one for hand holding, and was frankly more comfortable taking a step back.

Christopher and Dionysus both flop down on the benches outside the roller rink, exhausted from a day of skating for hours and hours and teaching and monitoring and more skating. The god hadn’t realized how much of a workout it would be to skate around all day when he had signed up for the job. It’s not like he regrets it, more that he hadn’t been anticipating it and was decidedly not in shape for it. But he’s been getting a little better at the latter, if slowly. It does mean that he has to eat even more now if he wants to keep his halo of chub tucked safely around his body.

Something thumps softly against Dio’s shoulder and he hums a laugh when he realizes its Christopher’s head. The poor kid must be especially beat today if he’s using Dio as a pillow right now.

“C’mon Bri, let’s go get some pizza or somethin’.”

Dionysus waits a moment but Christopher doesn’t respond, and the god leans awkwardly to check on the other only to find out that Christopher has, in fact, fallen asleep right then and there.

“Bri. ‘Ey, Bri. What-?”

The man had said he had wanted to join Anise while she went hunting for wild, late-autumn mushrooms in the forest, but now he doesn’t seem to be paying much attention at all. Which would have been fine if she hadn’t needed him to help her hold something while she cleared some humus away from what appear to be Velvet Foot mushrooms. But in the early evening twilight, she needs an extra pair of hands to hold a flashlight while she makes sure her find is the edible Flammulina velutipes and not its toxic lookalike, Galerina marginata.

As such, she had begun flashing her flashlight on and off slowly in what she had thought to be Christopher’s direction to get his attention, but when she flicked the light on, there was no sign of her friend at all.

“Bri! Where’d ya go? I need hands, Bri.” Despite the fact that a touch of grumpiness creeps into her voice, Anise can’t deny the uncomfortable feeling that Bri might not be along with her anymore. That would be bad for at least one of them, if not both. For all she knows, Christopher might be lost in the woods somewhere, maybe hurt or stuck. Or, if he had decided to simply go home, that would leave Anise alone in a darkening forest that is known for its none-too-friendly creatures. Sure, Pan lives here, but Pan is no guarantee that some night creature isn’t going to come hunt a stick-thin little girl for sport.

When it first begins to snow, Anise ignores it. A few little tufts of powder snow aren’t going to cause her any problems. It might end up collecting in the hood of her coat which will take a while to dry, but there’s an easy fix for that, and she does so by pulling the hood over her head with one hand while carefully balancing her textbooks in the other. Leave it to Anise to carry around so many textbooks that they stop fitting in her backpack. At least the ones in her arms are her least favorite ones, but she’s renting them so...better to keep her physics book and her English anthology as safe as possible.

This becomes more difficult when the snow begins coming down in thicker waves, and soon enough it’s building up on the ground at their feet as Christopher walks her back to her apartment. She’s not sure why he does it, but Bri seems to join her walking most of the times when the two of them are both headed home in the same time. She likes the company, especially because Bri knows when to stop trying to fill the space with boring and irrelevant conversation. Anise’s head gets so easily clouded by small talk.

Aryeh puts a hand on Christopher’s shoulder as he moves toward the guy currently mocking their mutual friend. With all her quirks, Anise has managed to attract the attention of some rather unkind people. Aryeh knows Anise can handle herself, and would probably rather do so than be protected by her friends. Still, Aryeh feels Christopher’s rage at the guy like it’s their own.

Eventually, the guy says something terribly cruel, something that makes Aryeh take their hand from Christopher’s shoulder. They’re done waiting for Anise to handle this herself. With just a few brisk paces, Aryeh is standing nearly between Anise and the guy, who is looking very confused now since he knows Aryeh to be rather timid, and Aryeh has a flash in their mind of the scene in Harry Potter when Hermoine punches Draco in the nose as they lift their own arm and land one good hit directly in the guy’s face. His nose is soon bleeding unrelentingly, and Anise is staring with enormous moon-like eyes at the unusual display of violence from Aryeh.

A very grumpy Pan sits huddled up in his sweater almost too close to a campfire. It’s the middle of the day, but the growing cold of winter is already more than the wild god is interested in combating. Nearby sits a demigod that Pan has grown somewhat fond of if for no other reason than his similarly simplistic way of thinking and his interesting accent. Over the fire there’s a fat rabbit roasting on a spit and between the two men is a basket full of out of season fruit that Pan had grown specifically out of spite for the season.

“Everyone thinks I should be a vegetarian, but they don’t get it. It’s the opposite. It’s because everyone buys meat. I don’t buy meat. I hunt for all my food, meat and plants alike. I know when to stop hunting, and I mostly eat plants. Yet everyone still thinks they know me, that I shouldn’t eat animals because they suffer for it. My animals don’t suffer. What I kill I treat gently and with honor.”