paixaorpg | A maybe-date [Active/Closed]

Entry tags:

hope estheim,
xion

A maybe-date [Active/Closed]

Character(s): Xion and Hope
Content: A date! Sort of. Except Hope didn't call it that and Xion doesn't know what that means anyway.
Setting: Haja o Que Houver
Time: Week 29, after this post.

Xion was looking forward to this. It was nice to make new friends, and... things had been a little weird for her in that department recently. So it was nice to just hang out with someone again, even if she didn't know all that much about Hope yet. She wondered why he'd seemed so nervous over the journals, though.

With that little tidbit tugging at her and trying to make her paranoid, she made her way to the hotel. She wasn't wearing her coat, decked simply in jeans and a hoodie that appeared to be up to most of the people around, but Hope would still see her face. She waited outside the building, glancing around for Hope to make sure she saw him when he showed up.

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Hope stepped off the train, trying to hide his smile. He was definitely nervous, but it wasn't like he was going on a date, right? Neither of them had said it was a date anyway, so that just meant that it was only them hanging out and getting lunch together, right? Xion was really cute, though...and she was kind of nice, too...

He searched around a bit, and ended up asking someone how to get to the hotel from there, since the map wasn't the most perfect thing in the world and he couldn't make it zoom in far enough to see what the hotel looked like. He guessed that she would be dressed the same way she was when he met her the first time, or when they went to play tag--that bluish-black hoodie and jeans. His face lit up a little when he saw her through the crowd--it was pretty easy to pick out a head of black hair from a sea of blond.

He had to steel himself to walk over to her, though, and he had butterflies in his stomach. This wasn't a date. He just had to keep telling himself that.

"Hey," he said, making his voice more steady than it wanted to be.

Xion looked over at Hope as he approached, smiling. "Hi," she said, standing up straight now that he was here. He didn't sound as nervous as he had yesterday, which was good. Maybe whatever had been worrying him was over now. "How're you?"

"I'm good," Hope answered before he had time to think about it. He gave a short laugh, that sounded a little nervous. He wasn't going to get past this, was he? Vanille's teasing from the day before sure didn't help anything, either.

"This is the place, right? Haja o Que...whatever." He figured he sounded pretty stupid not remembering the last word of the name, but it was pretty hard to pronounce in the first place. Who thought up these names, anyway?

"Yea, I think so." Xion looked up at it. "I don't remember the name exactly, either... it's a really weird one. The words don't even mean anything, do they?" Xion didn't know about other languages, after all.

After a moment of trying to figure it out, she decided it wasn't important and looked back at Hope. "Should we go inside?"

"Maybe in whatever language the people who built this place used. A lot of places on the map looked like they're named the same way." He looked up at the building while Xion was quiet.

"Y-yeah, let's go." The place was pretty big, so it was a little intimidating. Hope wasn't used to giant halls and tall ceilings like the one they walked into, though he had now been in ruins that were like that.

"Yea, I guess you're right." Apparently, Xion wasn't nearly as intimated by it, because once Hope said that she headed right in. It didn't take long for them to find the restaurant area, and even though they got a few odd looks from the natives, their clothes weren't outlandish or revealing enough to get them into any kind of trouble.

Xion sat down at one of the tables, looking around the room with interest. She'd only ever been in restaurants a couple of times, so the whole idea of it was very new to her.

Hope sat down across from Xion, putting his hand for a second on the back of his neck. "I wonder what kind of food they have here," he said, looking over the menu. Thankfully, the ceiling was a bit lower here, so he didn't have the massive architecture looming over his head now. It felt at least a little more comfortable. Not that he was agoraphobic or anything, just that the giant room wasn't something very common to him. At least, one that wasn't split up into a lot more stories.

He decided on what he wanted to order and told the waiter when asked.

Xion had stared quite blankly at the menu when she first got it, not recognizing half of the things on there, but once Hope had made up his mind she just picked something that sounded good and handed her menu back to the waiter. Now came the tricky part- she didn't know what people talked about when they were eating lunch or anything. Just ice cream. Was it different?

Hope had actually kind of been hoping that Xion would start the conversation, but she didn't seem to be any better at starting this kind of a conversation than he was.

"S, uh...what do you do when you've got some time to yourself?" It was a pretty lame question, but he couldnt' think of anything else,and if they weren't talking the whole idea of getting lunch together was kind of, well...pointless.

Well, at least he'd gotten them started. Though when Xion thought about it, she didn't have that much of an answer. "I guess... I hang out with my friends, and train, mostly." Off the top of her head she couldn't think of much else. And she'd had nothing but free time here. "What about you?"

'What kind of training?' was the question that first came to Hope's mind, but she'd asked him something else before he had the chance to say it.

"Not much, really. That's why I got everyone to play a game of tag, I wanted to meet some new friends so I would have people to hang out with." He was going to take advantage of the fact no one knew he was a Pulse l'Cie here--or even what a Pulse l'Cie was, for that matter. When he got home...there would be no more time for playing.

Xion smiled. "Yea, that was a lot of fun." She hadn't thought it would be, but she'd really enjoyed it. It had been nice to play with people like that... she wondered if there were more games you could play with others? "Do you play that a lot?"

"I haven't played tag since I was a kid. I only picked that game because it's easy to learn, and it's not hard to explain to a lot of people all at once. There are all kinds of games for people our age to play though, and most of them are more fun than just chasing each other around." Hope had to laugh a little, because the fact he'd picked tag of all things was starting to feel a little embarrassing.

"Really?" Honestly, Xion didn't think that should be embarrassing at all. Though it wasn't like she had much of an idea of what someone 'her age' should be doing anyway. "Like what?"

"Like sports games, or something." They were all too complicated to explain in any brief way, and she'd probably never heard of the ones they played in his world. Chances were pretty good that no one here but Light and Vanille had.

Xion frowned, trying to figure out what that meant. Sports games? The word 'blitzball' made its way cross her memory, probably something Sora had known about, but she didn't know what it was. Instead of asking, she just nodded. "Oh. Ok."

"I'll have to explain one of them sometime. It would take a while though." Hope smiled a bit.

"Alright." Xion nodded a bit, before looking around at the crowd of people once more. "There are a lot of people here..." It made her a little uncomfortable, to be honest. She wasn't used to crowds. Still, she'd come to have lunch with her friend, so she wasn't going anywhere.

The waiter brought out their food after Xion's comment. "Do you wanna go somewhere else?" Hope asked as he picked up his utensils to cut off a bite.

"I don't mind, just as long as we finish eating first." It didn't really make any difference where they were. Maybe Xion new of someplace fun. She had been here long than he had.

Xion shook her head. "I'm alright." Tentatively, she started to eat her good as well. Luckily it turned out to be pretty good. "I just don't see crowds a lot, I guess. So it's interesting."

"Oh," Hope said, not really sure what he should say now. "Okay." He took another bite of his food, starting to feel kind of awkward again.

"Do you know of anyplace cool we could go after we eat?" Even if Hope didn't want it to, this really was starting to feel like a date. And it was making him want to blush a little.

"Um..." Xion thought about this for a moment. There weren't many places that she'd really been to, but there was always here one fallback. "We could go to the beach, or something." Everyone liked the beach, right?

There was a beach? Hope really needed to get out of Light's apartment more...

"That sounds great," he said with a grin. The last time he'd been to the beach was...in Bodhum...

That got Xion to smile back, happy that she'd get to go there with someone. The last time she'd been, they'd been looking for Roxas, which... hadn't been the most fun thing ever. "Have you ever been to the one here?" she asked.

"Uh-uh," Hope answered, shaking his head. "It's been a long time since I've been tot he beach at home, too..." His voice trailed off as his thoughts took a more melancholy turn. He'd been trying hard not to think about it this whole time, since he got here to Paixao, but...

Being surrounded by Nobodies all the time (and not knowing she wasn't one herself for quite a while), it took Xion several moments to pick up on the emotion. Once she did however, she got worried. "Are you ok?" she asked. She hoped she hadn't done something wrong...

And that snapped him out of it. Hope shook his head again and blinked back a tear. "Yeah, I'm fine," he answered her. Those thoughts were best saved for another time. They weren't something he needed to deal with right now.

Xion was still pretty worried, even though he snapped out of it quickly. But if he didn't want to talk about it, Xion certainly wouldn't push it. There were plenty of things she didn't want to talk about either. She nodded a little, trying to show that she wouldn't ask if he didn't want her too. "Ok."

Hope was quiet for a minute or two while he ate, though the awkward silence kept grating on him.

"What's the beach like?" he finally asked, trying to get a conversation going that would stay. As long as he didn't let his mind wander to Bodhum he'd be fine.

"It's really nice," she said, smiling a little at the thought, "I haven't really been there a lot, but I like it." Nevermind that she had nothing to really compare it to.

"Sounds nice," Hope said after another bite of food. He hadn't ordered anything big, so he was actually getting close to finishing already.

"How far away is it?"

"It's a little ways outside the gate," Xion said. Really, it kind of surrounded the city, so no matter which way they went they'd get there eventually.

Right. Island. Hope stopped himself before he asked which one. "You wanna go there with me when we're done eating?"

Xion nodded, smiling again. "Sure." It'd be nice to go and just enjoy it, for a change.

Hope took the last bite of his meal, then waited patiently for Xion. They weren't in a rush for anything, so he didn't mind waiting--even though normally he wasn't very patient.

Xion finished hers up pretty quickly, the pair paying for the meal before setting out again in the direction of the nearest gate. "How long have you been here?" she asked as they walked.

"Only a few weeks," Hope answered. He had his hands clasped behind him, and let his arms swing and bump against his back a little as he walked.

"How about you?"

"Um... a few months now, I think." It'd been so long now... vaguely, she wondered when she would officially be a year old. That seemed important, somehow.

"Did you get pulled here in the middle of something, like everyone else?" Hope didn't really want the answer, it was more for the sake of conversation that he was asking.

"Not... in the middle of something, I guess." Axel had just dragged her back. So more of a beginning or an end, maybe. of... something. "Did it do that to you?" She hoped it wasn't anything bad.

"Not really, I was sleeping. We were on an airship, running away." Hope didn't really want Xion to ask him why they were running, because he wasn't sure that he wanted to explain it to her. There was still the chance that maybe some people here did know what l'Cie were, and he didn't want to lose his new friends so soon after meeting them.

"Running?" Xion asked before she even got a look at Hope's face. The instant she heard that, she was worried- had something happened? Then after seeing Hope's expression, she looked away. It was... pretty obvious that it wasn't the best topic.

Hope stopped dead, just for a second, then shook his head. "There were people who didn't like us very much. Me, and Light, and a couple of others who were like us."

This was bringing back too many memories. He looked forward, and saw the "sun" starting to set over the gate. "It'll be nice to watch a real sunset again," he said, trying to get the topic to change before it got any worse for him.

Xion nodded, not pressing. She could definitely understand why he might not want to talk about that. She wouldn't either.

So instead she focused on the gate, which wasn't too far ahead of them. "Yea, definitely." Especially at the beach. Or, at least, she was assuming that.

Only a few minutes later, they were walking along the beach. The sunset was beautiful, just like it was in Palumpolum. It was hard to believe this whole place wasn't real, with the sun looking just like it always had on Cocoon. The sand felt real, too.

It didn't take long at all for Xion to find a good spot, sitting down on the sand and not at all minding that she'd be covered in the stuff when she stood up again. She looked over at Hope with a smile. "It really is nice here."

Hope sat down next to her, pulling his knees up and leaning on his hands behind him.

"Yeah, it is."

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A maybe-date [Active/Closed]

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damnit i posted in the wrong place again

*patpat* <3

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patpat <3