Chapter Text
Out of all of the adventures that Mellow has been on in the past however long it's been, this one must be the greatest of them all. From the living room of his new house (a big, empty house full of people, sounds, smells!) he can hear endless chatter and happy voices from all around. Ticketo and Ticketa are especially chatty as the jester makes food in the kitchen, light filtering through the windows of the entryway as folks chatter and banter and wander. Mellow moves to sit in the big red armchair in the living room, kicking his shoes out over the cushion so he doesn't get dirt on it, and takes a deeeep, slow breath.
Henry is still outside, with his head stuffed through the mailbox. No longer a problem after the fight they'd had. Not that I'd been able to do that much damage, Mellow thinks ruefully, glancing out the window as a familiar tension sweeps over him again. But there are enough people outside to dissuade or prevent Henry from coming in and punishing him again, so he takes another breath in and slowly sighs out.
All of his friends are here- even Tip, too, who he'd even desperately hugged and cried in front of in those last tense moments before his daring escape. It's only a little embarrassing that he'd cried in front of someone, but there's all the time in the world to forget about it and never talk about it again. He glances around the empty room, searching, but doesn't find his helpful friend anywhere. Maybe he's upstairs, talking with Scribbly again. Those two seem like they'd get along pretty well, considering they both don't have hands and like to talk. A lot.
Mellow finally glances over at the lamp, contemplating his options. The pasta carbonara that Ticketo said he's making sounds really good, of course, because it's pasta and pasta is just the ancient ancestor of spaghetti, so turning the light off now would just be that- putting the light out. Nobody will want to have dessert before dinner, of course. No desserts until after dinner, Mirianne had said. He sighs again, sinking further and further into the armchair until he slides off onto the floor with a huff. Dinnertime fast approaches, and he wants to be standing ready for its arrival.
Pasta carbonara is, as Mellow learns, just spaghetti under a fancy Italian disguise. Ticketo is a pretty good cook, according to himself, and Mellow is excited to find out if the shoe fits the clown. As people begin to get seated around the table (and the smaller tables made out of upended boxes, and the even smaller box seats due to the lack of actual chairs), Mirianne comes up to him with a pen and paper in her paws. "Since we'd gathered enough supplies to last us a couple days without an emergency grocery run, I'm going around and discussing options for future meal plans and bedroom furnishings," she begins without prompting, and Mellow moves to clamber up onto a chair to meet her at eye level.
"Okay," he says simply, swinging his feet as he listens to her talk. "I'm allergic to cheese, so no cheeses for me-ses, please-s." He hears Ticketa and Ticketa pause their conversation behind him, and despite the incredible urge to be nosy and look, he doesn't turn his head to check on them even as they start up a new topic, a little more hushed. Mirianne blinks owlishly at him- despite being a monkey- and writes that down.
"Good to know, Mellow. Any kind of food allergy is no joke. Anything else you can't or won't eat?" Mellow takes a minute to think about it, hemming and hawing for a bit just to watch Mirianne's tail twitch in irritation as her patience dwindles before finally replying.
"I don't like cauliflower, but broccoli is good. Spinach is pretty good, too, but not if it's dry. And… I like pop-tarts and candy corn and apples. Candy corn is like eating what a candle smells like, and it's corn so I'm still eating my veggies so it's okay, really. Not pears, though. And only some grapes are good sometimes, because even if they're all from the same bundle not all of 'em taste the same or can be really sour or sweet or mushy and-"
"Just things you won't eat or are allergic to, Mellow," Mirianne cuts him off as Ticketa giggles behind him, clearly having been listening in, and Mellow feels his face heat up a bit in embarrassment at all of the attention on him at once. He tilts his face down to hide his expression under his hat.
"Just milk stuff I can't have. I'll try whatever I guess, but I don't like cauliflowers and pears and almonds."
He doesn't hear anything much of anything for a moment as the conversations around him dim, only broken by the sound of the pencil against Mirianne's paper as she writes it down, going uh huh, and mm-hmm. He feels a little ridiculous after saying it all out loud, but Mirianne seems to be taking it very seriously, so he must also take it just as seriously. He glances back up to find her wandering off, absorbed in her notes, and continues kicking his feet as he tries to gaze discreetly around the room.
Ticketo is starting to dish out pasta from a giant pot as Catthew and Ticketa grab plates from him and ferry them around the room to everyone, with Ticketa even going as far as to stack plates up onto her arms and balance them out of the room, likely bringing them to all of the guests outside and still wandering around the grounds of the house. Once most everyone in the room has a plate, Ticketo himself brings two plates over to sit down right next to Mellow, setting it carefully down in front of himself and in front of the other.
Ticketo's plate is piled high with noodles, meat, parmesan cheese, and various spices, while Mellow's is just about the same- but distinctly lacking in the cheese department. Mellow looks quickly around the room to everyone else's plates and finds that only his is different. "I heard you tell Mirianne about your allergy," Ticketo explains when Mellow looks back up at him, the jester shrinking back slightly from the polite eye contact that Mellow tries to maintain. "Thought it would be easier to cheese up everyone else's plates when I'm handing 'em out than mix it all together and make something completely new just for you, y'know? …If, if you don't like it, though, I can always make you something else. Just let me know. I got it."
Mellow looks down at his plate, something painfully unfamiliar but sun-warm and peach-soft unfurling in his chest as he picks up his fork and takes a bite. As he chews, he leans his head over to rest it against Ticketo's arm- and even though the jester startles, he leans back against the kid next to him, and they both dig in together.
How strange: to be listened to, and to be seen and noticed like this. Mellow tries not to think of it too hard, even as the strange, bright feeling pushes itself against his ribs and fills his lungs.
There aren't enough beds. This is made immediately clear once the lights go out and people begin to settle down, the entire house falling into a melancholy lull. After they all end up sharing marshmallows around the fire, and with Mellow nearly falling asleep and falling face first onto the floor, everyone moves up and out of the living room to disperse themselves around the house to their varying levels of comfort. Tip and Scribbly have no problem sleeping upright, leaned against each other in the corner of the second floor, and several of the villagers have taken to napping straight on the floor itself- or, in Whisker's and Paisley's case, still on the roof outside. Ticketo, Ticketa, and two other lonesome clowns have all taken to cuddling in a pile around each other on a couch, and Mellow finds himself clambering back up into the red armchair and listening to Boon and Boone's tandem snoring down the hall.
The house and all of its residents are settling down to sleep, and despite not having a bed or room of his own, Mellow finds that he doesn't particularly mind. He kicks his shoes off and places his hat over the globe on the desk next to the chair, curling his hands under his head, and shuts his eyes- sleep will find him whether or not he's got a pillow of his own. The only thing that prevents him from falling immediately into a restful slumber is that no one else is in the room with him. He misses the sound of someone else breathing close by.
Even when he lived with Henry, the silence that filled that place was enough to keep him restlessly turning over for many, many nights. Clockey's quiet ticking was maybe the only soothing sound in that entire place.
…He doesn't remember why he misses having someone else in the room with him. He tries not to think about that, too.
Mirianne has plans to drag most of the adults out of the house in the morning to go shopping for food and furniture. Ticketo and Ticketa were too incomprehensibly sappy when they discussed their plans for the next day. Catthew and Tip were idly chatting earlier about exploring the sandy expanse when they wake up in order to find somewhere to go fishing. Miss Mania and some of the other office dwellers were discussing in hushed tones a way to get out of here and back to a big city. And Mellow hopes, with all his heart, that they have pasta for dinner tomorrow night, too.