middaeg | Party like it's your birthday [OPEN]

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Party like it's your birthday [OPEN]

Who: Connor & OTA!
When: 15th August
Where: Connor and Hank's cottage
What: Connor's very first birthday!
Warnings: None so far, will update if necessary

[It starts with a video on the 14th. Connor is sitting and petting a very large dragonfly by his head, because that isn't weird at all.]

Hello everyone. I just wanted to send a message out to let everyone know that it's my first birthday tomorrow, and I'm inviting people over to join me for the evening at my home. If we've met, you can assume you're invited. If we haven't met, well... I'd like to meet you, so you're invited too. There will be food, and the backyard has a giant pool. I hope to see you there.

--

[And on the actual night of his birthday, of course Connor is confined to his pool because of the full moons. Which is fine, he supposes, as long as people want to swim with him. As promised there is plenty of food, laid out on a table near the back of the cottage, and he's even set out a couple of small tables and seats. The backyard is large and lit up by floating lights, but most of it is taken up by a huge pool.

Connor himself is swimming around, though if he spots someone he'll come over to greet them. He'll look very different to his usual self, his teeth long and sharp and his eyes a milky blue instead of the usual warm brown; he's mostly blind above the water tonight. His fingers are unnaturally long and tipped with claws, and the little balls at the end of his whiskers and ear fins glow a soft blue. His entire body is covered in scales now. He still sounds the same though, and if approached he seems pleased that someone actually turned up.]

((Feel free to mingle amongst yourselves too!))

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Rich backs away just slightly from her, instantly cowering for reasons he doesn't have the intelligence to explain. Something about Ada... besides the obvious redness in one of her eyes, and besides the bizarre glint there that Rich isn't getting close enough to look at... something is off. He knows he's hurt, but he didn't expect a reaction like that from her. Maybe she has a fear of blood?

He looks away from her, trying to bring his wound away from her sight.

"I'll be fine, seriously. I, uh, I don't know what happened, just sort of cut my cheek open, but it's not a big deal..."

From the way his voice hitches and cracks as he speaks to her, it seems clear that he won't be fine, and Ada probably will catch a glimpse of sharp canines, seeming to get longer and larger every time Rich opens his mouth.

Her eyes widen in fear and surprise, but— despite the strange feeling of frozenness that pushes into her veins at the sight of Rich's pain, her brows furrow in newfound resolve. To keep him from shutting her out, Adeline curls four gloved fingers around the door with a knowing, concerned kind of frown.

"Rich," Adeline replies, her voice low and even. "will you let me in? Please, let me help you— who did this?"

The irony is lost on her— as well as the glimmering moon over Connor's cottage, lying in wait behind a wisp of cloud, searching for the precise moment to prey on her as well.

"Ada, please... you don't have to worry. It was me, okay? It was an accident, and it's an accident that I'm dealing with now. I'm just going to wipe up the blood, so you don't need to freak out!"

He bares his teeth at her for a moment, defensiveness heightened into something like rage by the moonlight. He can't close the door on her, though, and that anger does fade as he retreats deeper into the room.

She shrinks— if only for a moment, the widening of her eyes highlighting the new, strange gleam blooming in the corona of her iris. For that moment, however, Rich sees Adeline in a way he never had prior; why, in a way she had never felt prior, total paralysis by fear.

Adeline draws a shaking breath. Against that icy, buzzing adrenaline, she pushes back— both literally and figuratively, finding her way inside, shutting the door behind her.

"Will you let me help you?" Ada murmured, her tone barely holding sound in comparison to Rich's outburst. "Let me see— why don't you sit?"

Perhaps it's bravery, but her fingertips still tremble as she inches towards him, hands placid and open.

Rich stares at her with something very different from her obvious fear. He notices her trembling, her wide eyes, her trembling breath... and each one only makes him angrier. He swallows back a growl as she comes closer, but still steadily glares at her.

"I don't need help. You're scared anyways! Just leave if you're freaked out!"

It's only natural to be scared of him. He's a violent bully. An asshole. Not the kind of person to worry about.

"―don't be stubborn with me," Ada hisses, her voice all breath and trembling― but her brow is furrowed regardless of the frightful gleam the moon has shone into her golden eye. "this isn't us, Rich, it's the moon! We're naive to this world, but we're certainly not stupid!"

Summoning her strength, she shuts the door behind them― effectively trapping them together, sinking into a pool of skirts against the door. The glove she offers trembles, and the ice of fear-frozen blood begins to trickle into her veins, but what remains resolute is her gaze: she keeps Rich focused on her eyes, one sapphire and one golden, unmoving, commanding.

"Come here." Ada swallows softly, letting her heart edge its way through the fear she can't shake. "I'm not afraid of you."

Edited 2019-09-20 02:04 (UTC)

"The... what?" He looks out the window frantically, and then quickly, his brain starts to catch up and explain why he's been so agitated. "Shit. Shit!"

Is this what it's going to be like, turning into a monster? Not only is he dealing with terrible changes happening to his body, but the changes have to twist his thoughts around too? That's not what he wants!

He reaches up with both hands, and then cowers, covering his face with them instead.

"Sorry, Ada... I'm sorry I fucked up..." At least he isn't backing away from her anymore.

Adeline finds her way closer― arms open, but keeping a comfortable distance just in case her offer of embrace upsets him.

"―hush," She murmurs, features painted with quiet concern, soft ears sloped against her head. "oh, dear, you haven't done anything wrong. We do things we don't mean when we're upset, and that's all right."

Ada tilts her head a bit, attempting to see a wound he's mostly covering. "Are you badly hurt, darling?"

Rich is fairly touch starved, so he doesn't seem interested in flinching away. He at least knows where his anger was coming from, so he can keep it more in check.

"I didn't even mean to get upset.. I don't know. I guess it just hurt like hell."

He slowly moves his hand away from the wound he has, showing off the nasty gash. "It's just a cut. I'll be fine once it stops bleeding."

Gently, Adeline tugs a glove from one palm― revealing porcelain skin covered in scars, now all healed over and cool to the touch. For a moment, she stares into it in consideration, but she knows without opening a new wound that she won't be able to heal Rich as she may have been able to back in her homeworld.

Regardless, she presses it to the gash; her touch is warm, but the striations over her palm are cool. Her eye is beginning to itch fervently, but her focus is on Rich, not herself.

"―it's quite all right― you're in pain, Rich. You don't need to apologize to me."

Ada brings her palm away, newly-bloodstained, to replace it with her glove and a bit more pressure. The opposite hand, the one still gloved, finds his own― gently running a thumb over the new addition of claws, a kind of melancholy curiosity sitting on her features.

Rich eyes her hand with a bit of concern, but he doesn't say anything. It's not like she asked him about his scars. He knows better than to pry, no matter how worried he may be.

He winces softly as she touches her hand to his face, though he at least doesn't squirm away, letting her examine both the wound and his talons.

"Just because I'm in pain, doesn't give me an excuse to hurt other people. I should know better than that."

He looks down at their joined hands.

"Seriously, I just need a bandage. I'll be more careful from now on."

"―that's noble of you to recognize, Rich, but it was no excuse― think of it as an explanation. If I was hurt, it was only in passing. I promise."

Giving him a soft squeeze, Adeline stands to retrieve a hand-towel― bending at the sink to moisten it with the pitcher, intending to clean Rich's wound. Her eyes, however, are drawn to the mirror, to herself.

What she sees is strange. She knows her appearance― it was hard not to, seeing as she had a twin― but what she finds there is a change, something past the reddening of her right eye; a bloom of gold within her iris, gleaming faintly. She reaches forward to touch her face, her eyelid... gasping softly, fearfully.

Beginning. She fears for what might be next.

"...As long as you promise, I guess. I won't hurt you again."

He looks down at his claws for a while, until he hears her gasp and looks up in surprise.

"Ada...?"

He notices her studying her face, and his heart sinks immediately, knowing just what has her so concerned.

"Ada, it's okay... it doesn't hurt, does it?"

"―no, I― it..." Her soft, hesitating stammer is uncharacteristic; lingering at the mirror, totally fixated on her eye. "it's... itching, it stings, but it... I'll be all right."

Adeline is audibly stunned beyond words― emotions in a strange whirlwind, on the edge of screaming or crying or hiding, a tremble having found its way into her fingertips. What gives her greater pause― not pause, what makes her wince― is the burning, a strange searing at the crown of her head, doubling over at the washbasin.

"―hah― nnn, that..." Her throat dries into a rasp, struggling just to breathe. She can feel the moon, as if it had two great eyes to see through the roof of Connor's little cottage, to bore directly into the top of her golden head.

Ada can't see it, but a perfect trail of bright scarlet has followed the part in her hair, trailing onto the nape of her neck.

"Ada!" Rich sees clearly what Ada can't, and despite his own injuries, he ignores them and rushes to her side, reaching out before hesitating and noticing his talons again.

"You're... shit, I'm sorry, you're bleeding..." He thinks she is, but he doesn't want to touch it in case he harms her. He fumbles and wraps a towel around his hand, then tenderly wipes it over the part in her curls.

She gasps softly at the blood― no stranger to such a sight, but what from? As gently as she might, Adeline follows the trail of heat upward to her scalp... to find two equal cuts at the top of her head, stinging with touch. "―nngh!"

It's difficult, but she does her best to swallow her fright; albeit half-heartedly, feeling a strange electricity course beneath her skin― no― something icy in her very blood, going gooseflesh over her bare neck and arms, bracing against the washbasin amidst the onset of trembling.

"―I'm sorry," Adeline gasps, offering Rich a brief glance of open fear before turning it away from him in a meager attempt to save some manner of face. "I don't― what is this? What is happening to me?"

Rich is also feeling a strange tangling of emotions in his gut, but he thinks they may be on the opposite end of the panic and fear that Adeline feels. He's desperately trying to hold onto those emotions, normal and understandable in such a situation...

And instead, he keeps feeling a hunger and rage that he can't seem to shake, a desire to find the source of that blood and rip it free.

It's those feelings that leave him backing up and away, back towards the door.

"Transformations. They said they'd start happening eventually. We... must've got hit at the same time."

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Party like it's your birthday [OPEN]

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