Uncanny
| Uncanny | |
|---|---|
"You //should// fear it." | |
| Players | Hyde Park Things are made a little more real to Gareth, and Darwin learns just what it means to challenge a changeling to a game. |
"--Shows up for like, two classes all semester and wanted me to smudge it. Like, legit tried to bribe me. I don't care of drama is an elective, you take my class seriously or I fail you!" Darwin complains in the company of Gareth, leading the way into his apartment. Clack go the keys on the counter, followed by a bag of half-eaten burger from the diner the two of them frequent. Miel is out for now, and the place is spotless thanks to his efforts. "Oh! Miel did your laundry, it's right over there." "What did they try to bribe you with?" Gareth wants to know, laughing at the story, sneaking some fries out of the bag before he flounces over at the laundry. "Aw, fuck, I need to say thank you. Everyone's doing my laundry at the moment," he says, scratching the back of his neck self-consciously. "/Everyone's/ doing your laundry?" Darwin repeats, lifting a brow. "Just money. Came from a rich family, just thought he could pay is way through. Insulting," he scoffs, then casually corners Gareth in the kitchenette, fries and all. "Well, you did my laundry, Miel's done my laundry, Ji-Ho washed my socks... Is it a *thing*?" Gareth says, squirming under Darwin's gaze. "Ugh, I mean, money is nice but bribery could be so much more *interesting*." He blinks at Darwin, a fry hanging out of his mouth as he's cornered. "Hi." Darwin makes SUCH a face. "No! That's a student! A high schooler!" He pokes Gareth's middle, then leans over to steal the fry with his teeth. "Hi. You wanna' stay a while?" "No I didn't mean sex!" Gareth says, just as shocked as Darwin steals his fry, laughing. "I meant like.. a promotion. Or oooh a free trip first class to Australia..." he considers idly. "Yeah, of course I wanna stay a while. I'm even prepared..." he says with a sly grin. "Man, I'd love to travel. Ji-Ho asked how many continents I've been too, like it was a dig. Then he called me boring." Darwin steps out of the kitchenette, moving towards the living room. "Am I boring? Some of my students think I'm /weird/." Then he smiles. "Brush?" "See, it'd be a good bribe," Gareth nods firmly, following after Darwin. "Brush!" he confirms, pulling a large grooming brush out of his coat. "And no you are certainly anything but *boring*." Darwin grins. "Okay, cool. Like I said. No doggy talk. No whosagoodboy. At least, not when I'm... like that. I have to protect /some/ dignity. I won't be able to talk to you, but a small price to pay for a free massage. Sit on the couch and close your eyes." He snorts. "Sit, boy." "Yes sir," Gareth says, doing just as he's told. "Okay, but I apologise in advance if one or two slip out," he says, slipping his coat off and settling on one side of the couch, brush held in his hand, closing his eyes tight. "Just uh... nudge my leg when you're done or something." After a quiet moment, Gareth will feel the cushion beside him dip with weight, as Darwin climbs up and settles across his lap. He's /heavy/. And big, nearly spanning the length of his couch with his tail stretched out. From what Gareth can see, Darwin is a silvery-gray wolf, the coat around his neck a pure white. There is... so much fur. He sits with his head held upright, turned ever so slightly so that a blue eye can peek back at Gareth. Gareth peeks an eye open when he feels the weight on his lap, both eyes opening as soon as he appears to be not going mad. "Oh my god, Dar," he says breathlessly, his frame stiff. There's a small edge of fear to his voice as he looks at the wolf in his lap. Centuries of fight or flight reflexes are being shoved down so very deep as he manages not to *immediately flee*. "Oh my god, it's real. It's all fucking real. You're really a wolf." His brain appears to be short-circuiting. "Oh my *god* Darwin you're beautiful," he finally gets out, his hands coming up and hovering just above Darwin's fur. "Can I touch you? Is that okay?" Darwin stiffens slightly in what might be concern, but when it's clear that Gareth has wrangled himself, he settles across his thighs and casually folds his forepaws. His jaws part in a wolfish smile at the compliment, and he answers with a growly grunt and a dip of his snout. "See that could be an 'I'll eat you if you do' or a 'yeah sure', but I trust you," Gareth says, his voice higher pitched than usual, letting out a nervous giggle. "But we're going to go with 'yeah sure,'" he says, burying his hands in Darwin's ruff. "Oh my god you're so *soft*," he whispers. And then buries his face in Darwin's fur. Darwin chuffs a short, wheezy sound. Possibly laughter. He immediately pushes his neck back against Gareth's fingers, then allows himself to be used as a pillow, his nose searching for Gareth's palm to lick. There's layers to the fur, a denser undercoat, and none of it seems to care about the current season. It smells... like Darwin's usual shampoo, just a hint of green apple. Gareth wraps his arms around Darwin's upper body, as best he can, and hugs him tight. "You're real," he mumbles, voice muffled in his fur before he laughs and draws back. "Okay, okay," he says, taking the large brush in hand and starting to run it down Darwin's sides, careful to not press *too* hard. Darwin twists slightly in Gareth's hug to try and lick at his chin. Then comes the brush. He unfolds his forepaws to streeetch them out until they touch the couch arm, his hindlegs doing the same. A visible shiver works down the length of his body, and his neck curls, snout tucking against his chest. Another grunty sound. It could mean anything! But it sounds closer to approval than anything else. Thump-thump goes his tail against the couch back. Gareth's head turns towards the thumping sound, delight spreading across his face. "God I don't want to tell you you're a good boy, I want to tell you how fucking *amazing* you are, oh my god," he laughs helplessly, leaning in to press a kiss to Darwin's brow before he concentrates on *brushy brushy*, running long strokes down Darwin's coat. "Fuck wolves are *big*." All that heralds Miel's return to the apartment is the sound of rattling keys in the lock, and then the door opens to admit him. He shuts it with the slant of his hip because both of his hands are occupied. He walks a few paces into the apartment proper before his eyes tell him what he has walked in on: the sprawl of wolf and man, the brush, the thumpy tail. For a moment he does consider fleeing, honestly, but here he is standing in the open light of the apartment holding a cardboard crate, so he just says: "Oh. Hi." Darwin can't blush, but he certainly feels warm. So many sweet compliments. He doesn't know what to do with himself. Especially not while he's being brushed. He basically melts across Gareth's lap, guiding him by way of just... eagerly pushing back against or up into the strokes. His hind claws rake against the tweed cushions, and at some point he turns, belly up. PET HERE. Then the door opens, and Darwin flips back over, ears perked. "Wow you want *belly rubs*," Gareth says, his tone veering dangerously close to whosagoodboy, petting just as he's told. His hand is almost trapped as Darwin flips over, a guilty look shot up to the door. "Oh. Hi!" he says with false brightness. "Darwin's out," he says innocently. "Did you know he had a dog?" He just about manages to keep a straight face. It's remarkable how good Miel's facial control is. You'd think his expression was carved in marble. "You know," he says, "it's hard to avoid knowing, especially what with all the hair." He carries the cardboard crate the rest of the way across the apartment to the kitchenette and puts it down on the counter with a heavy sigh, like it was too damn heavy for him and he's been suffering since he got it. He's really not very strong. Darwin stands, carefully avoiding Gareth's legs as he turns and maneuvers his front paw against Gareth's cheek. Look away. When he's sure Gareth's gaze is averted, he shifts back, fur melting to cloth and flesh. It's not exactly a smooth transition, and it looks at least /somewhat/ uncomfortable, but when Darwin's back in human form, he flops back across Gareth's lap, thoroughly relaxed. "And here I thought I had my tracks covered. Hi Miel." He folds his hands behind his head. "He was just brushing me. That brush is /great/. What'd you bring?" "It's true, I've just known Darwin a while, and I *never* knew he had a dog," Gareth says with a toothy smile to Miel. He closes his eyes and looks away as his face is shoved by a great big wolf paw, lifting his arms to give Darwin the space to flop back into his lap and dropping them back down when he's there. "I'll leave the brush here. I thought that he probably didn't have any way of grooming when he's... you know," he explains to Miel. "Do you need a hand with anything?" he asks Miel. "I thought I was going to get paid in cash for helping these guys at the farmers' market this morning, but instead, I got paid in blackberries. And... jam? Or jelly? Or -- I don't know how you tell the difference." Miel's body language whispers relief in the drop of his shoulders, although it's hard to tell how much of that is because Darwin is rescuing him from social awkward by being a human again and how much is because he's been lugging this box for forever. He futzes around in the kitchenette until he finds the kitchen scissors so recently used to mangle paper plates and uses them to slice the tape holding the box shut. Weirdly, he fails to answer Gareth's offer, though he does slant a look across them on the sofa again. Darwin pushes upright. "Fuck that! I mean... Good that you have blackberries but..." He grunts, finally squirming his way off of Gareth and pushing to his feet. "You want the place to yourself, Miel? It's totally fine. I know you don't exactly have your own space here..." He pauses then, sparing a quiet moment of gratitude towards Gareth, fingers curling loosely beneath his chin before he looks back towards the kitchen. "Should be enough tupperware..." "Oh, fuck, yeah, man, sorry," Gareth says apologetically in agreement with Darwin, moving to stand as well, hovering awkwardly as he watches Miel in the kitchen. "I'm not chasing you out of your own house, man," Miel says with a little laugh. He pulls three full boxes of fat blackberries out of the crate, and then starts pulling jars out. Blackberry preserve; blackberry & rose preserve; blackberry honey; blackberry & blueberry preserves. "They said the barter system was alive and I did some math and they were offering to pay me way more in fruit than in they were in money. Please don't get mad at these nice farmers because I did math." "Okay," Darwin laughs. "Fine, they're off the hook. I haven't been to one of those in a while." He looks over his shoulder at Gareth. "Wanna' go? I'll get you something. A reward for not crumbling into doggy talk." He reaches across the bar counter that divides the living room from the kitchen. "May I have one?" "You were a little too big for doggy talk," admits Gareth. "I'm pretty sure you could fit my head in your mouth so no. No doggy talk." He grins at Darwin and shrugs. "Sure, next time it's in town, I'm game." He gives Miel a surprisingly shy smile. "I guess I figured it out. Okay. Well. I figured *something* out. And then had to be told the rest." "Do you //see// how many there are?" Miel gestures expansively at the berries. He drops his hands, bracing them over his hips as he turns a bright, dark look on Gareth. His eyebrows darting up, his lips lift at one corner, and he says: "Oh yeah?" Darwin snaps his teeth at Gareth, playfully. Then he takes a whole fistful of berries. "He dug. And dug. And I guess he knows people. He's good, though, Miel. I trust him with my life." "Really I'm curious as to where your teeth go," Gareth muses at Darwin. "And that's the question that bothers me most. Even though I have no idea where all the *fur* comes from either. But it's the teeth I don't get." He looks back to Miel. "Look, in my defense, when you think the mundane is all there is, 'people are being replaced by Russian sleeper agents' was the only thing that made sense." He blows out a breath. "And uh.. my friend who I went to, well. Guess I got lucky in my choice of friends." He scuffs a socked foot on the floor. Miel shrugs his shoulders in a slightly detached way. He eases back from the counter, moseying away from the veritable smorgasbord of softly gleaming dark fruits and jars of preserve, to put his back to the wall and swing one foot outward, watching both of them. He smiles a little quizzically as he watches Darwin omno berries, and he says, "So you can tell me my story?" Darwin has a bit of an existential crisis as he's made to think about /where shit goes/. "The teeth go in the teeth!" ... Right?! "It's probably related to ephemera." He does not elaborate, and just resumes popping berries, looking at Gareth expectantly. "Your personal story? No, I uh.. didn't dig that far. I was looking into patterns and I didn't sleep for three days and after *that* I thought it'd probably be rude too dig further," bit late, Gareth, little bit late for that. "Do you *want* me to?" Miel throws back his head and laughs aloud: a bright, startled sound, full of breath and volume. He rakes his hand back through the dark waves of his hair and says, "Sorry, I didn't realize that there was a Miss Manners approach to getting to know the guy you thought might be an axe murderer." He tucks his thumbs into the belt loops of his skinny jeans and says, "I hope you've gotten some rest, though." "He came over and thwacked me with a newspaper!" Darwin says, then reaches to pinch-and-or-tickle Gareth's side. "He deserves no mercy." Gareth looks a little relieved when Miel laughs and gives him a small smile. "Well by that point Darwin already said he trusted you so I stopped digging into you," he admits. He flushes at Darwin's revelation and tries to pull away from him. "*Dude*!" Miel's glance slides away, though the shadows of his smile remain, lingering about his lips like the memory of warmth. "Positive reinforcement works better," he murmurs, not looking directly at them as moves away from his initial leaning spot. Darwin grins SO big, but relents. "Positive--" He flusters, then clears his throat. "I... don't know too much about the lost folk, but I do know an irritating man that seems privy to a lot of things. Maybe I can introduce you at some point." He plucks another blackberry. "I got a new board game," he says to Miel. "If you're up for it." "Oh? What's his name? I'll keep an ear out," Gareth asks of Darwin. He gives Miel a wry smile. "I was hoping he wasn't going to *tell* people it's *embarrassing*," he admits. "Oh sure, a game sounds good," he says with a cocky smile. Teeth scraping the curve of his lower lip, Miel looks up at Darwin with peculiar intensity as he says, "Show me the game and you're on." "Jessup," Darwin says, oblivious to how his eyes narrow at the sound of the name. Be he seems delighted that Gareth wants to play too, and beckons them back towards the living room, around the coffee table. He pulls out a relatively modern edition of Risk. Gareth stares at Darwin. And then stares at Darwin some more. "*Really*? Doctor *Solomon* Jessup?" he asks eventually, his shoulders drooping. "God damnit." He scuffs at the floor again and follows after Darwin and Miel. "We've met." He doesn't expand. Miel watches this interplay with a slightly baffled expression, though it melts to a grin when he identifies the game. "I see," he says. "You intend to make a whole night of this, then." He cracks his knuckles, meaningly, as he moves forward to join the others at the coffee table. Darwin grows /slightly/ intimidated by Miel's intensity. "A whole night? Well, we'll see how long Gareth will tolerate playing board games with weirdos." He blinks at Gareth. "You know him? That's good, yeah? What's the problem?" he asks, settling down on his knees to unfurl the board and place the pieces. "Do... weirdos play board games differently?" Gareth asks cluelessly. "At least it's not Monopoly," he says, folding down onto the floor cross legged. "It's not a bad thing, I just didn't realise." He considers the board carefully. He gets out his phone and not-so-surreptitiously googles 'how to play Risk'. "We can," Miel says. He pulls the rulebook out of the box and spreads it open on the coffee table. For a moment he seems intensely focused, skimming down the lines of text with alert eyes, and then he says, "Want to see how a weirdo plays board games?" "I only know him because I mistook him for something /bad/, and now he keeps coming back to my school to give presentations on bugs," Darwin grouches, then laughs a little when he notices Gareth looking up rules. The game commences after some discussion on how to play. Darwin is, indeed, very competitive and aggressive in his plays, attacking borders and spreading his territory. "Bring it," Gareth tells Miel with a grin, nodding to Darwin. "He gave me a book on bugs to read. It's very interesting." And then he's back to playing the game. This is not a game he's experienced in, expanding too quickly and leaving his flanks uncovered. As the game commences and continues, because it takes a long time to play, this must happen in summary. The way in which Miel predicts Darwin is uncanny. Most games have some deception, some bluff in the strategy, between die rolls, and with Miel's faint smile on his lips, he seems to just ... be reading him like a book. But he's not like-- demonstrably a great Risk player. He keeps checking the book, at one point having to confer with Gareth's phone and the rulebook about how troop movements are supposed to work, and he shows very little sign of similar deep acumen versus Gareth. He also is a terribly distracting board game player for other reasons in that he can't stay still. He twitches, he wiggles, his foot jiggles against the floor, he gets up and walks around between turns, he brings over berries, he gets water for everyone, he pops microwave popcorn and puts it in a bowl and brings //that// over -- but every time it's his turn, he's back to uncannily, frustratingly predicting Darwin. Darwin is left bewildered after the third victory. He looks between the board and Miel a few times, then the rules, then back to Miel with sharp smile. The longer they play, the more Darwin tries to guard. Guard his troops, guard his tactics, guard his /face/, because that is surely what's making him so easy to read. As Miel overtakes him once more, Darwin drops his head in his hands. "What the fuck." He reaches for some consolation popcorn. Gareth is not quite as *physically* active as Miel, but it's clear he's using his phone to keep himself from jiggling too much, catching the bounce of his leg here and there. When Miel's not int he kitchen, he's occasionally in there making coffee. He's not that good at the game, thinning out his numbers across the board without realising. He tilts his head as Miel plays, watching the moves he makes against Darwin, and the moves he makes against him. When Darwin swears a small smile settles on his face, something a little knowing falling in to it. Quietly, with laughing eyes but a sober mouth, Miel says: "I think I'm about to win, Darwin, so I'm going to let you in on a little secret to go with the ones I just took from you. When you play a game with the fae, you're agreeing to a bargain, and it may not always just be the bargain in the rulebook." His eyes flicker aside to Gareth, and then he says, "Magic isn't always as solid and real as turning into something beautiful and dangerous, you know." It's when Gareth sits back down for what feels like the third time does Darwin wonder if there's some /other/ game going on here, some game where restless people gather in the kitchen to conspire. He hangs low over the board, squinting at Miel and his laughing eyes. "Took from me?" he blink-blinks. "Hah!" His face lights up, and he looks genuinely delighted to be the victim of FAE MAGIC. "Jeez, I hope it's not anything too embarrassing." He makes his last move on the board and leans back on his palms, all smiles. Gareth inclines his head to Miel. "You did say you were going to show us how a weirdo plays games," he agrees with a small snort. There's a surprised look to Darwin at his *delight*. "You know, that's kind of my fear," he admits to Miel, his lips curling up in a half-smile. "Not death, like, that bit's easy. Just... the other stuff." He points at his mind. "That that could be fucked with." He plays his last move, bowing slightly. "Game's yours," he tells Miel. Some of the humor fades from Miel's expression in the face of Darwin's reaction. He meets Gareth's gaze and says quietly, eyes gone very dark, once again shading a little too intense: "You //should// fear it." He tilts his head, and then rises to his feet again, moving around to Darwin's side of the board, where he kneels. One hand dropped light on his back, he leans in close to murmur his own secrets in his ear, breath soft and warm and voice gone very serious. "/Death/ is a bit easy?" Darwin asks Gareth, arching a brow. His easy smile lingers until Miel comes over to whisper in his ear, then fades when he flushes. Where the tangible fur in Gareth's hands made things real to him, Darwin hearing his own secrets on someone else's lips has an equal effect. He swallows, lifting a hand to push through his hair and comb it out of his eyes. "Well. Good to know," he finally says, reaching to scoop away the game pieces. "Humans can kill me, Dar. Crossing the road could kill me. I'm not scared of yet another way to die," Gareth says with a wave of his hand, chewing on his bottom lip as Miel shifts over to Darwin to talk to him. "I get the feeling that it's *really* easy to agree to a bargain, huh?" he asks quietly, eyes worried as he watches the pair. Miel's fingertips linger on Darwin's back just for a moment. He looks at him like he might be about to say something else. Then he shakes his head and eases off, drawing away, returning to his earlier position to start gathering up the pieces from the board game so that they can be safely put away. "It's easy to lose yourself," he says. "The important thing to remember is that no matter what you think or how it feels, the self you have-- you want that. Keep that. Anyway, sorry to be a downer. It's gotten to be kind of my thing. Do either of you know how to bake? Because I don't at all." Darwin might've been impressed with Gareth if he weren't so rattled. "You're not a downer. Like I said, good to know. Good to... prepare for. Just in case." He works himself back up to a smile, replacing the box lid. "I'll have to find something trickier." At Miel's question, he wobbles his hand. "I just kinda'... apply heat until things are less red. Gonna' make some ribs for Javi when he comes over." "Baking, baking, hmm..." Gareth says, already looking down at his phone, flapping a hand at Miel. "Don't worry about it. Best way to learn, huh?" he asks with a wry smile. "What do you want to bake?" he asks. Miel gestures vaguely at the boxes of blackberries. "I guess we could just eat them. Some of those preserves would probably go nice on a waffle with butter," he says thoughtfully. He sucks on his lower lip and then sits a little straighter. "Javi's coming over?" he asks. "Oh, I might actually have stuff for a pie crust. How hard can it be to make a pie?" Darwin asks, so painfully optimistic and oblivious to the ways of pie. "Javi's supposed to come over at some point, for a crash course on spirits. He was pretty interested, and it makes sense, since he can see into twilight. Ghosts /and/ spirits hang out there." He eyes Gareth. "I need both you and Javi soon, to do that ritual. Miel kindly helped prepare." "Oh cool!" Gareth says, looking up from his phone, eyes narrowing between Miel and Darwin. "I just want to confirm that there's no blood needed, right?" Miel stares a little blankly at Darwin for a moment and then startles out of that train of thought to eye Gareth. "What for?" he says. "We're not vampires. That's someone else." "God, no blood! Uh, at least not for this one. I mean, don't get me wrong, blood is used a lot in rituals. But I'm not a ritemaster, I don't usually mess with them. Plus they'd take my deposit if I got blood on this carpet," says Darwin. "It only lasts a month, but... if you wanna' guard your mind, Gareth? Keep your thoughts in tact? It'll be worth it to you." "See? Blood in rituals!" Gareth says, pointing at Darwin as he answers Miel. He jumps to his feet and heads to the kitchen. "Okay, baking, how hard can it be?!" Eyes crinkling at the corners as he fights a smile, Miel asks, "What if you use theater department blood? Would that work? I mean, I know you've got some, and you had paper plates... oh, we're doing this now?" He starts to stand up again. "We're on thin ice as it is with paper plates, but..." Darwin smiles weakly at Miel. "On a budget. I feel like theater blood would insult the spirits." He moves to aid in the kitchen, and by aid I mean helping to keep it from catching on fire. "Also real blood's cheaper," Gareth says with a grin. Don't ask how he knows that. It's clear as he starts baking that he has *no* idea what he's doing. He's pulled up some random blackberry pie recipe and he keeps flicking between different lines of the recipe with no rhyme or reason. But it's cool, Darwin has pie crusts. "I mean it's about the intent, isn't it? Like... we're intending to make a pie, we're intending to make a moon--" This is not actually how rituals work, but Miel doesn't know how pies work either so it sounds right to him. This is going to be an adventure. | |