Mental pictures of houses and nights spent in them
Who: Emerson, Alice, Vox, Nico, Ravi, Chase, Kasper, Tristan, Mink Simon What: Little snippet narrations for them all
Emerson Amsel
His house was a home that acted more like a prison but not as much of a prison as his mind. The best part about being in a prison for so long with as many comforts as he had was that no matter what it would always start to feel like a home. His place was tidy enough to almost pass mother's standards and cluttered enough to feel like a constant hug.
He poured over the perfect vegan fettuccine with extra vegetables and an olive oil sauce with pride and hunger. It was a different kind of hunger that led him through the maze of his own world and into the room where he kept all his computers. His house was two stories but he hardly ventured upstairs for anything other than sleeping. The guest room was always empty but it was made up in case someone dropped in to visit, not that anyone ever did. It was just good manners to have an extra bed and even more extra linens on hand for emergencies.
It was this computer room that he enjoyed the most. Televisions were used as monitors and they were mounted all over the walls, four walls full of different sized outputs. Of course the machines hooked up to them were all incredible at generating heat even if he'd tweaked them all with his powers to work at optimum settings. That's why his cooling methods were state of the art, and expensive. Anyone who didn't know what they were walking into might think the room was a little claustrophobic but to him it felt like a room of opportunity. All the screens were lit up with different surveillance and all he had to do was look at the camera feeds to move the cameras displaying that feed. He could feel all the connections. All the technology, all the people on the other ends milling about like ants.
He settled into his plushy chair with its ergonomic back and watched them all, thinking up stories in his head, sometimes having conversations with the ones that he commanded the cameras to follow. His job was quiet as he eased noodles onto his fork and slowly appreciated them before swallowing... but no one could ever say it was dissatisfying work. The world was alive at his finger tips and he was such a big part of it.
Vox Bishop
Vox and Violet had lived together their entire lives. Just because they were out in the real world that wouldn't change. There was no reason to fix something that wasn't broken and his sister was his world. It was true that they had been through trying times as they left Father and the facility behind them in varying degrees of finality but Vox still found himself hoping for the best.
Violet didn't eat and so Vox made a habit of being subtle about his own food habits, he slid into a chair at a small bar in the kitchen and he sighed. It hadn't been long enough since the death of Henry had rattled him and the food before him wasn't quite as satisfying as it had been before. Violet suffered her own losses and it seemed like fate was continuing to be especially cruel to them in that they should experience all things together. Vox wished he could take his sister's pain and he knew she wished the same for him and yet they suffered together. Always together.
He abandoned his photo worthy plate of chicken marsala from a restaurant in St.Genevieve and began to wander around the apartment aimlessly. Violet was out picking up supplies and he had opted to stay behind so that he might eat in privacy even if it seemed like he was failing even that most basic duty. They had artfully modern furnishings with art his sister had painted on the walls and the occasional depiction of one of his heroes, Charlie Chaplin, Marlon Brando, the list went on but the trend stayed the same. He ended up at his closet, full of suits and bowties waiting to see occasions they were far beyond like the inside of Walgreens and grocery stores. Vox found that he wasn't afraid to over dress for life, it would continue to throw him into one situation after another and he may as well look his best and be at his most comfortable, a good thing that two those ideas intersected for him.
He missed his sister. He missed Henry. He even missed a Father that he thought he'd known and one he never knew at all. The idea of his birth parents crossed his mind yet again and it was such an unsatisfying one. Perhaps he would go into town tomorrow and find something new to lose himself in. A new art gallery that Violet might appreciate or a new cinema marvel... but for now maybe he cross the eerily tidy rooms back into the kitchen and clear his plate. If it weren't for the art pieces and old movies scattered across the floor someone might think they didn't live there at all.
Nico Ledford
Strykertown. A land of wealth and amazing opportunity and he was in it. Who knew years ago when he'd been a struggling business major at Columbia that he would end up here... and with the title he had no less!
Nico was never the kind of person who people thought would make something big of himself but a good friend in college saw something entirely different. Saw him for the kind of asset he could be. Nico was the sort of businessman that was capable of being responsible and cunning and keeping himself together while not crossing the line into wanting more. He had been satisfied with his impending future as a working class hero and now he was equally satisfied with being the CEO of a fortune 500 company.
People like Siobhan were nice to have around because they always reminded him of what it was like to be who he actually was and they never let him get a big head about anything. Even he had to admit though that it was pretty fantastic to be able to write someone up a check for a million dollars and not think twice about it. He could help people in his position without using his annoying and unfortunate power. At least that's what he was thinking as he stood in the window of his incredibly valuable loft and looked out over the city. Nico let someone else, a professional far better trained than him, clean his apartment and sometimes even come and make him meals when he didn't feel like eating pizza or trying a new mom and pop place downtown so he was used to sitting in some kind of cleanliness but he didn't have to work for it.
It took some adjusting for the cleaning people to understand that his sleep hours were as weird as his personality and not take it personally when he pranked them by doing things like purchasing a white bathmat that turned red like blood when it got water on it. He liked to think by now that he had a good working relationship with his cleaning crew and that they appreciated him because of the big paychecks they got for putting up with him.
Just because he was a CEO didn't mean he could shirk on the duty of keeping people's lives interesting, right? When he thought about it he didn't even buy most of the furniture in his loft. It was a really good thing he didn't care about all that. He wasn't the type to get sentimental about things.... unless they touched his golf clubs.
Mink
His apartment was a nice rich place, a real upgrade from the one he'd burned down previously during the blackout. He wasn't sure the city really talked about things like that anymore but he knew there were sects on the internet that caught wind of it and wouldn't let it go, as if he was on the internet enough to care. It wasn't his fault he was afraid of the dark and had access to a box full of candles, things just got out of hand. If the people who ran the electricity in the city did their jobs Mink wouldn't have had to light so many candles and nothing bad would have happened.
He stood by that assessment.
The strangest thing about his apartment was that there was no technology to be seen. He didn't have a television or any gaming systems and he kept his laptop turned off in the floor of a closet buried under other things other than the few times he pulled it out to use it. His phone charged in a very specifically designated place and because he didn't mess with technology as much as possible he compensated by reading a lot of books and spending a lot of time in front of the mirror.
His aesthetic was mostly crocheted things and pink accessories with gray or black accents and his bed had a canopy. Of all the things he liked to do he really liked to sit on a little alcove at a window and read by natural light while munching on bitter snacks. He just wanted to live a quiet life away from all the things that gave him trouble and he resented anyone and anything that didn't let him do it.
Flordeliza "Alice" Fonseca
Home was such a strange word to a person like Eliz. Her home wasn't some place with four walls, her home was a city and all the people in it. Her home was every Wonderlands member that came to her to find themselves or to find a purpose in the world around them. No matter where she went in this city... she was home.
The night called her forward and she didn't want to turn back to the place where she laid her head at night. That place was nothing but a distraction. She turned down and alley, hand outstretched so her fingertips could graze the bricks of the building she passed by and she turned her face up to the beginnings of a drizzling rain.
Home.
Simon Maeloch
The holidays had been good to him and his parents, his dad had been mostly with them through the festivities and there had been a lot of tears from every kind of emotion. Tears of frustration and apology from him, tears of gratefulness and sadness from Simon and his mother. It was hard on them to lose him even though he sat right in front of them every day. This was a kind of loss that Simon wasn't sure anyone who didn't experience it could really understand. A loss with lingering hope that dragged itself out for so long that by the end he was sure he'd be so tired he wouldn't know what to do with himself.
No matter how much he tried to resent it he had to admit that he was a little happy being dragged away from home to do things with Stars and Stripes. He'd been afraid at first and angry but then he met Vance and Felix and Josh and Logan and even Miss America herself wasn't so bad once he got to know her a little bit better. They were the kind of people that he didn't even know he needed.
Being the good Christian boy that he was he had to admit that he counted this a blessing from God, just in time for the holidays.
He liked to be at home, he did, but sometimes when he walked in the door and smelled the cleaning products ripe in the air he knew his mother had a bad day and he longed for the days when he used to come in and smell her dinners cooking or his dad's cigars. These days she hadn't the energy to cook and he wasn't going to push her, he ended up cooking a lot himself but they had lost something they would never get back and this scenario could really only end one way.
So tonight his home was the Stars and Stripes tower, it was becoming more and more common for him to spend the night there and use all their assets. It troubled his dad less to have him somewhere else considering his new attachments. Horns this big were kind of hard to hide and even harder to explain over and over again. He felt selfish and wrong but some nights he thought being around was more trouble than it was help.
Kasperi Kennett
Mom didn't do the laundry again, Frank was making flourless cakes, Hassan was trying to be his dad when he ALREADY HAD ONE OF THOSE.
Why did life have to suck so bad when you were a teenager? The world was made for adults and even as he got closer to being an adult he was being punished left and right for following his dreams! He left highschool so people would stop treating him like a kid and the still did. It was SO LAME.
He huffed and threw his clothes into the washing machine and looked over the options and all the dials in a silently horrified confusion before he abandoned the entire thing and went upstairs to his room. On the way up the stairs he yelled "MOOOOOOOOMMMMM LAAAUUUNDRRYYY!!!!" in a voice of desperation. When he threw the door open and walked inside he let it shut behind him with a vaccuum suction sound. His door was lined with material that made it close entirely with no gaps and his walls were covered every inch in sound proof padding of a medium quality that they could afford. They made him get rid of his microphone's batteries so it couldn't actually get turned on and project his sound but they let him keep the microphone itself on its stand.
He also had a guitar and drum sets and his entire room was done up in various shades of black and gray and you could barely see the floor because it was covered in laminated band posters (since he couldn't put them on the wall) instead of the actual hardwood that was under there.
After a long second of admiring his disgusting room with clothes thrown all over and empty bowls and plates his mom had yet to collect he threw himself down on his bed that smelled just the way he liked it, strongly like his own BO and AXE, and curled all the blankets around him in a ball.
Chase Beckett
He barely lived his his apartment, it was more likely that you'd find him at his desk at work or in the safe house where he and Arkin ran the Collector operation. He had mostly abandoned his cleanly habits instilled in him from the force but he was by no means a slob.
Once or twice he considered getting a dog as he sat on the cheap little loveseat he picked up at a store when he moved in and ate his frozen dinners.
Who was he kidding, he didn't have time for a dog.
Tristan Cadwalader
Tristan's apartment was not just his own anymore and that was exactly the way he'd wanted things. The pillow incident nights previous had been an unwelcome effect to the overarching situation but he wouldn't allow it to poison his idea of a picture perfect relationship with the woman he loved.
Of course they hadn't exchanged vows of love since the night before the incident itself but he was sure that the words still lived in her heart and he was ready to wait patiently for them to reveal themselves to him again. It hadn't taken him long to meet her or to recognize what a wonderful addition she would be to his life and as far as he was concerned things were progressing down the line splendidly. He couldn't have been more lucky, even if some would turn their nose up to the overly tattooed woman who wore the badge of her Coalition days as a warning to others of what could happen to them.
That was why he loved her, because she had the goodness and strength inside of her to stand proud of who she was and he would be ashamed of himself if he didn't stand right next to her with the same bravery. She embodied the qualities he hoped to have in himself.
There was no other option in his mind than to invite her into his home, in all of it's IKEA furnished wonder, and ask her to stay. It had occurred to him as he stood over the place on the floor inbetween the kitchen and the couch of his sitting room where Danny had once shed his human body in lieu of his monstrous form that Eddie was the first to be invited into his home since the boy. He wondered where Danny was now and if his newly adopted family understood the intricacies of his condition as much as they claimed to. If it weren't for them Tristan might have adopted the boy himself.
At least with a child like Danny, Tristan would have known that adopting him was the best option for them both and the world. No one would judge him for housing a child considered as dangerous as he had once been if not more. A child misunderstood. A child he missed so deeply in his chest that all he could do was buy a new rug to place over the blood stain and try to forget.
Ravikiran Dey
Money, so much money. Ravi could eat the money, bathe in the money, sleep in the money and yet he didn't think he'd ever have enough. The only shit he needed in this godforsaken world was money and security. Since he was rolling so deep (as far as he was concerned) in the first part he should really strike out for the second part, huh?
His little love shack in the Rails was anything but piddly and he was proud of it. He had more to impress and convince ladies to undress than he knew what to do with which was funny cause next to his natural charm none of it really mattered. Everything in his shack screamed wealth and culture and exotic excitement. Of course to him all it meant was 'hey another weird ass thing I brought from home' but the white city girls? oh they ate that shit up.
He settled into a black egg chair and reached into a pocket in the sky near him to pull out the remote to his tv, clicking it on to one of those programs about people buying old Storage Units and hoping something cool was inside and he waited for someone to lose it all. He had a mini bar set up in the corner of his place calling to him to make a drink but he was too tired from a day of rocking the city with the best gang the world had ever seen.