Fifth Floor Common Room, Saturday morning

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

Bruce was just going to walk past the common room and back to his dorm after his morning run, but a glance into the room meant that he saw one of the more bizarre sights he'd seen recently. There was a disembodied hand holding the remote control. It was channel surfing. Occasionally it would use the on-screen guide and scroll quickly through that.

As Bruce walked into the common room to investigate more closely, another hand went flying through the air. Out of pure instinct, Bruce raised his hand. The second Thing made solid contact with Bruce's hand, making this the first high five Bruce had ever experienced with a disembodied hand.

A small detail, but Bruce noticed both hands were left hands. It seemed strange to have two lefties in the same room, especially under these circumstances. All this weirdness meant that Bruce needed to take a seat and just observe for a while. He couldn't shake the feeling that the second thing was observing him right back, possibly looking for another excuse to high five. The first one, clearly, was too busy observing the TV.

[OOC: Just saying, if I were a disembodied hand, I would never stop giving high fives. Anyway, I'm up early on a Saturday, why not have an open CR?

ETA: Running off for an hour or so, then pinging will be slowish.]

Comments

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"Can you communicate with them?" Bruce asked.

[shes-got-legs.livejournal.com]

"With the hands?" Ariel, whose mind was on all her undersea friends, had to blink at Bruce for a moment to double check on what he meant. "Oh, no. I mean, I don't think so. They don't talk, if that's what you mean, but I don't see how they could, they don't have mouths! But they seem to understand you when you speak to them, and, well," she chuckled again, "having spent the summer without being able to talk myself, maybe I've just gotten really intuitive with nonverbal communication. Hands can be incredibly expressive when you need them to be."

Not dirty.

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"You couldn't talk this summer?" Bruce asked. "Sorry, we haven't met before, I'm so I'm clueless. I'm Bruce."

[shes-got-legs.livejournal.com]

"It's all right," Ariel giggled. "I've been pretty quiet. Ariel. Nice to meet you, Bruce."

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"Less quiet than you used to be, I assume," Bruce said.

[shes-got-legs.livejournal.com]

"A lot less quiet," Ariel agreed. "It's so great to have my voice back again; I tell you, you don't realize how much you use something until it's gone!"

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"I actually know how that feels," Bruce said. But since he was talking about his butler NO, NOT HIS PARENTS BECAUSE THAT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE he felt it probably wasn't best to bring it up here. But Alfred was a damn good butler. "Just... not with my voice."

[shes-got-legs.livejournal.com]

"Oh?" Ariel's head quirked. "What did you lose?"

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

... Well, fine. "... my butler. Don't laugh. Being spoiled can make it tough to adjust."

[shes-got-legs.livejournal.com]

Ariel laughed; she couldn't help it! It wasn't fair of him to ask that she didn't, because it was already out there. Her hand immediately went to her mouth, hiding her grin though her eyes kept it going. She tried to look apologetic, though.

"I'm sorry!" she said, and, yes, was still laughing a little. "I'm not laughing at you, I swear; it's funny because I know what you mean. That's why I think I like these hands so much. They remind me of my own helpers and friends back home!"

She wasn't saying that she was spoiled, too, of course. But of course she so totally was.

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"Because they're so friendly and helpful?" Bruce asked. She was comparing them to crabs earlier. That couldn't mean what he almost thought she meant. That was too weird even for Fandom, right?

[shes-got-legs.livejournal.com]

"Exactly!" said Ariel. "Isn't your butler similar?"

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"Well, mostly. Except he's a lot more sarcastic than the hands," Bruce said.

He took a quick look around to see if any were flipping him off. Nope.

Really, it felt like a missed opportunity for a good joke.

[shes-got-legs.livejournal.com]

Ariel's nose wrinkled a little. "Sarcasm's a little tough with just hands," she said, with the air of someone who would know. "You need eyerolls to really pull that off best, I've found."

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"Not if you're willing to be crude about it," Bruce said. "Most of the hands seem to be nicer than that, though."

[shes-got-legs.livejournal.com]

"I think if it gets to that point, though," Ariel reasoned thoughtfully, "it's not just sarcastic anymore. I mean, you know." She shrugged.

"Kind of hard to mistake those kinds of gestures for anything else."

Not that she'd know anything about that sort of thing, of course.

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"I don't know. It could just be very aggressive sarcasm," Bruce said. "I've met people who could pull it off."

[shes-got-legs.livejournal.com]

Ariel shrugged a little, almost forgetting entirely what brought them there in the first place. "I can't really see it from them, really," she admitted and barely held herself back from giving one of the closest hands an affectionate pat.