September October, Same Thing (Kiko)

[Dr. Roman Tilford]

Rome had already decided that screw the months, screw the neighbours, he and Kiko both had time off for the weekend, and they were going to start decorating, damn it!

With the supplies they'd loaded up on the previous week, Rome had spent the better part of the morning unboxing and taking inventory. The new shed had already been delivered and set up, and the vast majority of the garage junk had been rehomed into the shed for the time being. With the cars parked out front instead of in the garage, Rome was eager to get to work.

Surrounded by what could only be described as Halloween exploding all over the living room, he started to drag things outside. They'd sort of agreed on placement, but that was on paper. Things could change once they started setting up. "Kik? What do you think about putting the swinging reaper on the tree?" He pointed to a low-ish branch of their resident front yard tree. "Or should we figure out how to rig him onto the porch, or closer to the garage?" He really was like a little kid, excited over the prospect of decorating. And having them up all month.

And maybe a little of November. Just because.

[Tsukiko Aoki]

Kiko had donned a witches hat and was carrying a broom and pointing it about importantly.

"I don't think we should put it on the porch," She decided, squinting thoughtfully at the creepy animatronic. "It's probably a little scary for small children, and we do want them to come up to the door. Let's put it in the tree, so any easily frightened children can avoid it if they need to."

[Dr. Roman Tilford]

Rome was still heavily in love with the scary thing. There was no doubt in his mind that they were going to pull off an amazing haunted... garage. Thing. Whatever. They were going to decorate the hell out of the garage.

"Tree it is." Like any sensible man, he'd left the instructions inside the box, which was currently laying on the lawn looking rather abandoned. Instead of reading, he simply looked the thing over to try to determine how best to rig it up. After a few moments of untangling strings, he thought he had a hold on it, and started to get to work. "What do you want to put up next?"

[Tsukiko Aoki]

Kiko planted both hands on her hips as she surveyed their yard, and the garage.

"I think if we want to start with the garage, we need to put up partitions first so that there's a path from one end to the other. Then we can work on decorating it in sections, what do you think?"

They had bought some black metallic fringe door curtains from Party City, which she planned on using to create sections along their makeshift corridors. One "room" would be full of spiders, another would be a witch's room, and another would have skeletons dancing.

[Dr. Roman Tilford]

As always, while Rome was all over the place, hopping mentally from one place to another, and one decoration to another, Kiko was the logical one. Tilting his head once the grim reaper was secured to a branch, he turned to look at the garage.

"We can do that." He headed back into the house for a moment to pull out the materials for making the partitions and lay them on the lawn. "How do you want to divide it? We need the witch's room... spider room..." There was at least one or two more, and he wanted to get this just right.

[Tsukiko Aoki]

Kiko pursed her lips as she surveyed their materials.

"Hold on just a sec," she ordered as she strode back into their house. Soon enough she emerged once again, paper and pencil in hand.

She jotted down a list of the rooms they wanted and counted out the number of partitions they had.

"Okay I think something like this..." She suggested as she drew a rectangular maze on the paper underneath the list of rooms. She then divided the maze into rooms, labeling each one.

"I think that should cover it."

[Dr. Roman Tilford]

Like a good husband, when Roman was told to wait, he waited. Watching his wife go, Rome sat himself on the lawn surrounded by their supplies. This was going to be the best Halloween ever. Even James was going to be jealous, and James loved holidays.

Once Kiko was back, he got back up and glanced over her shoulder as she sketched. She was always the logical one. If it was left to him, he'd be going at it without much of a plan, and it would probably turn out... yeah, not so good.

"Okay. I'll start working on the partitions. Then we can start filling the rooms with stuff." The nice part of using the garage was that at night they could just close the door and keep everything in place and safe. Grabbing the materials to make the rooms, he started moving them around and, after several references to Kiko's drawing, he felt like he had a good layout. "Kik? Ready to start making rooms?"

[Tsukiko Aoki]

Kiko marched over to survey Roman's handiwork.

"Are they stable? We don't want them to fall on anyone who comes through."

She pressed a finger against one of the partitions experimentally; she hoped that the walls wouldn't be subject to too much force, but you could never be sure. Especially if they ended up having either teens or drunks come through -- although if either she or Rome could tell someone was drunk they could probably just call a cab and send them home.

Of course, there were probably plenty of parties to keep the typical town drunks occupied -- was Mr. Spencer likely to come around to haunted houses, or would he try to haunt the bars on Halloween night? Hopefully he would stay at the bars and she wouldn't have to call the cops on him.

"Do you want to start with the spiders or the witches?" She asked once she was satisfied that the partitions would stand.

[Dr. Roman Tilford]

Rome's building skills were pretty much limited to things like Lego. All the boy scout handiness he might have been taught when he was young was long since out the window, likely replaced by some obscure video game knowledge that wouldn't give him any assistance in life, but it would certainly help out his scores. Still, he'd given the partitions a good shake, and nothing seemed like it would topple over. At least not right now.

"I think so. We could always invite James, Chase, and Niko over and let the kids run wild in it." Meaning Niko and Chase, of course. James may like to call him Kid all the time, but if they were measuring maturity, he wasn't quite sure which one of them between himself and Chase would actually win out.

Tilting his head, he referred to the drawing again. The spider room would probably be the most fun, but did that mean do it first or last? Kiko had been excited about the witches... yeah, okay. That settled it. "Let's do the witches first. Because..." He grinned and stepped forward, wrapping his arms around her waist and kissing her hair. "I have the cutest witch around to help me."

[Tsukiko Aoki]

Kiko grinned at Rome's decision as she lightly punched him in the arm. "You shameless flatterer!"

But she didn't object; witches were fun.

"I can be the witch who lives in the house," She said happily as she went to fetch the cauldron. "And if Niko or Chase knock my rooms over I'll turn them both into frogs."

[Dr. Roman Tilford]

Rome grinned playful, pretending that the little punch to the arm was a mortal wound. "Ahhh the witch got me! I'm meeeelting!" He proceeded to sink to his knees, hands on his chest, and finally flopped over on his side on the concrete floor. He remained there for a moment before peeking up at his wife mischievously. It was fun to be twelve years old when the rest of the year you had to adult.

By the time she was back with the cauldron, Rome was back on his feet and once again testing the partitions, trying to make sure that everything was still sturdy. "I don't know about frogs. James might protest because they're sticky or something. Maybe cats. He likes cats." Because they were clean, and James was particular about clean. "What can I help with? Can I hang bats?" Among the massive pile of things were multiple rubber bats that you could hang from the ceiling. "... Do we have a vampire room? We should have a vampire room." He had gone from responsible adult to twelve years old quickly, and now his attention was all over the place.

[Tsukiko Aoki]

"If James objects I'll turn him into a frog, too, and he'll never be able to wear a tie again."

She placed the cauldron on the ground at Roman's feet and began to rummage through the decorations piled in it.

"Bats, yes. Do you need the ladder?"

[Dr. Roman Tilford]

Rome squinted a little at the idea of James as a frog before shaking his head. "Oh no, he'd find a way. He'd find the tiniest little tie ever and wear it. ... I should steal his lobster tie again. Save the world from it."

He watched Kiko move the decorations around before looking up at the ceiling. "Maybe the step ladder. Something little." After a bit of poking around, he found the rubber bats and started toying with them. Before long, he'd devolved into less decorating, more playing with them and giving them dracula voices. Moving one like it was flying, he brought it up to Kiko's neck. "I vant to suck your bloooood!"

[Tsukiko Aoki]

"I'll use my witch powers," Kiko looked up from the cauldron and waggled her fingers spookily in Rome's direction, "So that he can't wear a tie. All ties will dissolve upon contact."

She turned towards the shed, eager to get the step ladder, when Rome snuck up on her with a bat. She shrieked, and then glared at him.

"Less blood sucking and more decorating! We're only on the first room, Romey!"

[Dr. Roman Tilford]

Okay, this he could get on board with. Laughing, he applauded the idea. "Brilliant, Kik! No more paisley, no more lobsters!" Poor James. Rome dearly loved his best friend, but the idea of no more ties thrilled him.

Decorating was like one big game, but really, Kiko was right. Heaving a dramatic sigh, he pitched the bat back into the garage and into the pile of its' brethren. "Okay okay fine. I'll get the ladder, you go make a scary witch room."

After retrieving the smaller ladder, he lugged it back and started hanging bats (like he was supposed to be doing in the first place). "You know, this'll be so much fun when it's done. Let's keep it up all year." Because that wouldn't get old fast.