autumnshowell

[autumnshowell]

Autumn catches Aria, lets the moment be the moment, and something blossoms in her chest, deep and riled at the gesture, woken up at the feel of her fingers scouting across her cheeks, racing slow over scars.

Eyes blink open, as if from some far off dreamy place when its over, and glitter in the corners of her eyes; further relief that for once it doesn't feel like everything was for nothing. She pushes back into Aria as she whispers, uncaring for any would-be onlookers. "I do too," she says again, simply - she wishes she could find more words right now, but she's too busy being relieved, too busy pushing all the worry of the past few weeks out of her body in exchange for something nicer.

The moment ends, the gentle closeness, and Autumn nods. "I'd like that, a lot." It's a huge trade up from how she'd expected this meeting to end, and there's a youthful energy playing on her face that hasn't been there for, well, months right now, as if she's unburdened in the moment - the horrors of everything are still waiting, she knows that, but for now they just don't matter for her.

Outside, she snatches up Aria's hand - for the first time not really worrying what anybody else might think about it, or who they might say it to, or who might find out.

Aria smiles, just slightly, at the way Autumn seems so taken by this - by the fact that she's loved and wanted. She can hear the hitch in her breath, the way her heart stumbles and trips and falls. She leans forward and takes her lips, unable to resist it any more - still holding her in place, thumbs tracing their patterns along her cheekbones.

When she pulls back, she kisses the tip of Autumn's nose, then her forehead. "I hope that was okay." She murmurs, nuzzling into her. "We're both completely fucked in the head, but I love you and I want this." It's all whispered, pressed into the planes of her face, into the crease where her the bridge of her nose meets her cheek, into the corners of her lips.

It's all attention and affection she's been building up and wanting to give her for weeks now. The time before the first full moon had been full of craving, too, but now she's letting herself be the one to make the move.

"Do you want to go for a walk?" She hopes that Autumn understands - that she wants to be alone with her, away from prying eyes, breathing in the cool air of the night. "We can go down to the beach. It's nice in the winter."

[autumnshowell]

✨ - One assumption my character has about your character.

Autumn sort of assumes that Morgan has it all figured out. She sees her and she sees somebody who has a business and a place in the community and is (at least outwardly) content with most of it. She knows Morgan has some hangups because of their experience at the Masquerade but she also sort of sees her as aspirational in a lot of ways.

[autumnshowell]

💞 - Five things my character likes about your character. (aria <3)

She met Aria in a bookstore looking for horror novels - it was genuine sparks into fire real fast. She likes that they enjoy the same things but differently.

Her style - Aria's got a way of dressing and presenting and carrying herself that Autumn envies a little bit but even moreso appreciates.

Her handsiness - Autumn didn't know how touch-starved she was until she was flooded with it once she and Aria started going steady - somebody who not only isn't afraid to but like, wants to just lay hands on her sort of rewired Autumn's brain a lot.

She thinks Aria's photography is amazing and cute loves the way she looks at things because sometimes she sees her using her photographer's eye and she gets a look on her face that makes Autumn wanna write poetry.

Her whole face. Her whole face. Pookie face. Eyes dark like little wells she wants to stare into til she can see the bottoms. Lips she wants to bite aaaaaaaah. Nose and cheeks she wants to nuzzle into aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahh

[autumnshowell]

🔍 - My character's first impression of your character. (kevin)

Autumn was first aware of Kevin as one of the upper classmen at their high school, and around that came all the trappings of the differences in their age, which in those high school days seems sort of like a huge canyon even if now she often forgets she's three years older than him. When they more properly 'met-met' when she started in at the Bowling Alley, she was sort of immediately taken off guard by how friendly he was, maybe because of how quickly that silly old High School mystique had been dispelled, and she was left with the impression of a fellow prisoner of Port Leiry, desperate to not be there but also not really sure how to escape - I think that's where their friendship probably started.

[autumnshowell]

AUTUMN | DANNY | BIRDIE | JEN | RAFAEL | YUISA

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💞 - Five things my character likes about your character.

❌ - One thing my character hates about your character.

☀️ - One thing my character loves about your character.

♾️ -  A random headcanon about our characters' relationship.

��� - One assumption my character has about your character.

🔍 - My character's first impression of your character.

📝 - My character's worst memory of your character.

🫂 - My character's response to someone assuming our characters are dating.

👗 - An outfit my character would wear.

[autumnshowell]

Squinting to center her double vision, it only barely works, Autumn bracing herself against a rickety counter as she shakes off the worst of the aches and dizzyness, at least for the moment - she's still confused, and still feels sick, and still feels sore, but she honestly can't tell if it's better or worse than the first night, having known what was coming - at least she'd had the good sense to get out of town this time, except she absolutely did not remember an abandoned gas station, so who the hell knows how far off from her car she is. The newcomer is smiling, but Autumn can't quite muster anything convincing, her expression lingering on Arte in a sort of confused mish-mash of wariness and surprise. The mechanic? From Palmer's?

She's hungry again, already - not the sort of cloying, all-consuming pangs she'd been feeling the weak before the full moon, but now something weaker, more bedded down - she only vaguely remembers it from that first whirlwind week.

Autumn takes the granola bar, snatches it up like taking too long might trigger a trap or something. She tears it open with her teeth so she can hold her trap up, and wolfishly carfs at it, the shivering cold settling into her the longer she's awake. "Fank oo." she says, still apprehensive, while Arte also offers up a bag of clothes. Granola bar unswallowed but entirely in her mouth, she akwardly snatches the bag up, too, bringing it back a few steps before she hunches down to open and search it. "wha ah yoo ere?"

It is the second full moon since they had dragged the woman out of the burning car, and Arte still hasn't found the nerve to come face to face with the person whose life they had ruined. At first, they had meant to reach out sooner, to try and help ease her into this life that they had inadvertently dragged her into, but in their panic, they had sought out Flick and had been met with the destruction of their old friend's home. The ordeal had distracted them from what they had originally meant to handle, and suddenly the month had passed and Arte caught wind of a new werewolf who had nearly killed her girlfriend.

Crap.

With each passing day, Arte felt like too much time was passing, that they were only making the situation worse by stalling, but at the same time, there was no guidebook for any of this. They hadn't been able to find Ael either, a factor that made their gut twist in anxiety. But they were the one to do this, so they had to be the one to figure it out. To clean up their own messes.

They slowly step out into the light, good eye tilted towards Autumn and a nervous half-smile on their lips. They have a peanut butter granola bar clutched in their hand, and they carefully extend their arm, trying not to tremble too badly. "I.. I have c-cl-- stuff to w-wear too," they add, holding out the bag slung over their shoulder.

[autumnshowell]

Looking him up and down after they bump shoulders, that knee jerk flare of snapping anger has already fallen back asleep, her stuttering lie of an excuse for stopping dead hanging in the air like their breath while she looks away, embarrassed for staring too long when he breaks the silence with a confused tone.

The question makes her shake her head, her expression a fleeting smile with a bit of warm notalgia in it. "No, not since I was like fifteen."

"A friend of mine lives up this street-" she says to recover, finally breaking her stare and motioning up the sidewalk. "Maybe I've just seen you around here." He seems to have bought that she meant looked instead of smelled - but its the knowing what he is that makes her not quite want to break away, to know where he might be going.

Jude's in his own head about making the small trek down the street to knock on Kevin's door -- And instead, he's trying to clear his head by skateboarding up and down. Normal, mostly. Casual, sure. He doesn't actually notice the approaching person or car until he has too close of a call and stumbles onto the sidewalk.

She doesn't look familiar, really, but the smell tells him exactly what she is.

He picks up the board and tucks it under his arm, tilting his head her way. "Uhm." Jude tries to wrack his brain for any hint of where she might know him from -- "I.. I mean I work at the skating rink? You go there often?"

[autumnshowell]

Her face presses into Aria' hand one way, her eyes screwing shut at the coolness of her touch.She braces for everything she's convinced herself she's going to hear tonight - that she's too dangerous, that Aria's too dangerous, that it was never meant to be anything real, that it was just... whatever Vampires do. That this was all a farce that went too far and that now it was time for them to go away from eachother and it was time for her to be alone again, but this time, she doesn't even have the false approval of her mother to chase, or a nowhere job to lose herself in, or, well, anything.

She can feel it, coming back again, all the abandonment that she's been running away from for what feels like forever. But then it doesn't come. Aria's voice speaks into her ears and she looks up to her, expression a mixture of apologetic surprise. It's like her entire takes a breath. But when Aria continues she has to look away, because if she doesn't she'll be overwhelmed by it, not just by being told she's wanted, but at the notion that she's worth effort. She manages a tiny little laugh of relieved joy, laced with a barely-repressed sob at that it's not over for them, but just starting. "I do too."

"You're sick? Autumn, I.." Aria shakes her head and watches as she gets down on her knee. She can feel the muscles in her face twitching until they settle into a confused frown. She finally lets go of her wrist in the shift, but instead she turns to face her, lifting both hands to cup her cheeks. It's something she's always needed - the comfort of touching and being touched, having something tangible and real in her hands.

There's a moment where she just looks at her, processes what she's saying about what's going to be the rest of their lives - the realization that she's immortal doesn't even hit her here - and shakes her head. "So, we figure it out." It's resolute, firm.

"I don't want to break up with you. You don't.. want to, either? Right?" She needs the confirmation, needs to hear her say it. But still she leans forward and touches their foreheads together. "There are other ways we can get what we need, yeah?" She's thinking of the scar on her thigh, the memory of a jolt of electricity shocking and burning her.

"Maybe it's too soon to say this, but I want to navigate this with you -- forever. I can handle hunger. I do handle hunger." Though, not very well. "You won't kill me and I won't let anything let you die."

[autumnshowell]

Watching her hand cupped in Daniella's, Autumn relaxes once the cool of the other's touch warms with the touch of her own. Here her eyes widen as they watch Daniella's bleed red red into themselves - the vice of it gripping into her wrist, pulling a sharp sigh from between the young woman's lips as she watches a vampire drink from her wrist - that gravity-pull of blood out of her system familiar in the same way a mostly-forgotten memory is - instinct reminding her of what the mind's been told to forget; curtains drawn over a dim light.

Autumn wonders what it must be like to be like Daniella - endlessly young, insurmountably powerful - she wonders what the other vampire is like, who has left her so many little signatures of their own, and if she'll ever find out who they are, if she already knows them or if they look on from far away. If one day they might kill her.

All normal.

When Ella comes up from the drink, she looks at the bleeding wound on her hand, eyes perring over it, entranced by the blood seeping gently pooling on the surface of a newly forming bruise. She shivers, then, a little cold if anything, and heavy in her limbs like she's holding a heavy weight despite the nothing clutched in her fingers. "I think so," she says, even if she's clearly a little tired - either from the hour or the injury or both. Her eyes drift to Daniella. "You're a really kind person." She smiles.

She can feel a slight tension and stills her fingers, she supposes maybe the touch wasn’t completely welcomed, even if Autumn thinks this is all normal because of her, she’ll stay respectful. Brushing up her shirt sleeve she lets her hand drop back to take the other’s and raises it slightly.

“You are very kind. For a long time feeding on humans wasn’t something I felt comfortable doing, guess the habit of asking just kind of started from there.” She says with a hum, eyes flooding and darkening as she focuses in on her meal and leans in, she tries to bite quickly so it’ll be no more than a prick of pain. Her eyes close as she takes in the rich flavor, as she satiates her hunger. And when she’s done she unclamps cleanly. Her other hand comes up and she brushes over the wound with her thumb, licking the remains off the pad of it then lets Autumn’s arm come back to rest on the girl’s leg again.

“Thank you for that. I’d offer a bandage, but for obvious reasons, I don’t really carry those,” she says in an attempt at a joke before shifting to give Autumn more room. “You alright? I tried not to take too much. But that possibility is what the noodles are for, I’d hate you being lightheaded or woozy when you do leave.”

[autumnshowell]

Autumn looks down the hall, both ways, before she follows him in. She's nervous, if only because this is still all so insane to her. It's been almost a handful of days since all of it. She's dirty, positively filthy and she knows August can smell it on her because she can smell it on herself - the lingering filth of that first night, bloody hands scrubbed somewhat but not nearly clean enough, the first on her shoes and hands from a half-dug hole... she needs to grab a shower because she's not sure how long she can dodge A.J. before he comes looking and there is just still so much to hide.

"I'm sorry to bo..." Whatever she'd been about to say dies on her throat as she sees the state of things. Her memories are hazed out, but Aria's apartment comes flickering back - static on a blurry screen.

Deciding its better to just not mention it out of politeness, she pulls her hood back, rubbing the cold out of her knuckes, scarred deep but healed over as if the offense that had marked them was years in the rearview instead of days. "I, uhm... found your thingonline while I was... looking for some information and I thought maybe you could... help."

It’s daylight, so he’s resting. It seems to be the only time he can as of late. Nights are full of restlessness, full of trying to keep up and hope the wolf doesn’t just take over. His apartment is a mess from its chaos and he is surprised one of his neighbors haven’t filed a complaint.

The first knock makes his ears perk, but he doesn’t move. Maybe they’re here to finally complain, thoughts of hiding under his blanket disappear as a louder thudding hits the door. He lets out a swear in native tongue before pulling himself up from the near shredded mattress and sliding on a pair of sweats and a baggy t-shirt, mumbling still all the way to the door.

“Hold on…” he finally grumbles in English before he pulls the barrier open enough to not let the sight of his place to be seen. Whoever she is, he has never seen her before. And then she speaks. His zine…oh, work. This is the first time someone has approached him about that.

He studies her a moment warily. And that’s when he catches her scent, mixed with nerves. Why would another wolf seek him out, it’s then that he realizes he hasn’t said anything, head ducking a moment as his embarrassment washes over him. “I – yes, come in, if it is about that we shouldn’t speak in the open.” He forgets the state the beast has left his home in and opens the door enough for her to enter.

[autumnshowell]

fine little sad smile jet eyes, dark and dismal, beauty throughout resting on hideous nature my fear and fervor, equal measure in wonderment i stir, wishing to taste again and feel and fuck and follow into dark reaches hollow and harrowing together we feed our worst and apart we starve together -- 'park bench' A.H. 12/24

The page itself is dog-eared from fidgeting fingers that worry at the corner and the surface is smeared with the tell-tale swipes of a rubber eraser. It needn't look pretty, or pleasant, so she's careless with the script. She hasn't written a line she's proud of, or that sparks something in her, for years and years now. But even now, even after everything, she feels hungry - food doesn't touch it - it's not even that kind of hungry. She wonders if Aria feels it too, or if her violent explosion of anger and resentful words have fulfilled what was a moment's desire and a lifetime's regret and chased her out of her life. God, she hopes not, but to find the answer sinks all her hope into tar and mires it in uncertainty that sticks to her like boiling pitch.

[autumnshowell]

Autumn watches with what's honestly only a bit of minor surprise as the earthen bed of her three-foot deep pit go semisolid like quicksand, the remains of her mother's putrefying flesh and bones sinking into the Earth inside of a doubled-ply of heavy duty leaf bags. It feels like she should take her hat off out of respect. She doesn't.

Good riddance, she thinks, wiping the wet from her eyes, because she refuses to feel bad about this on top of the things - people - that actually matter to her.

Reaching down into the shallow grave and offering a hand to Jamie, the disheveled girl pulls this sudden compatriot up with little effort. She doesn't reply the the annoyed little tagline, watching her step past and then casting one more spare glance at the hold before she takes a few steps after her.

"So, that was magic? Like, you're a witch or something right?" That completes the Halloween Trifecta, she figures - at the outset of fall she might have been more shaken at the revelation, but since then she's been covered head to toe in blood, turned into a motorcycle sized maneating canine, eaten a family member, and fallen in love with and then completely fumbled that love with a vampire. Magic just seems like it's late to the party at this point. But it does beg the question.

Autumn doesn't give a terrible amount of space for an answer. "Can you fix this?" It's a stupid, idiot, naive question that she can't let go of, no matter how much everything points to a big neon sign reading 'You're Fucked!'

"Don't worry, I have no intention of sharing your secret with anyone. It stays between us. Promise." Jamie walked over to the other girl to steal back her vodka for a quick swing. "Like I said, I knew this was gonna happen. if I wanted to, you would've already been caught."

And she means it. As much of an ass as Jamie could be, she had a heart and she felt for the girl. She was just another person whose live was completely changed by the supernatural and not for the better. It was familiar.

"Gross," she made a face, putting the bottle away. "I don't envy you wolves. But like I said, Alpha, find one if you haven't. I'm sure you can, like, smell each other or whatever. It's not ideal, but better than to do all of this alone," says the witch shunned by her own coven. But hey, at least she wasn't talking out of her ass.

Hearing the other's voice break, Jamie rolls her eyes before jumping down to the poor excuse for a hole. She touches the earth, and just loud enough to be audible begins chanting the same familiar spell she mastered from helping Kore dispose of her carcasses for years. Soon the ground begins to shake, and earth to swallow the remains. It takes moments for the body to be completely buried, much deeper than the girl had managed. Nobody would be finding that any time soon.

"There, happy?" She asked in an annoyed tone — with reason too; Jamie hadn't cast a spell in weeks and had no intention of casting another so soon. She felt drained. "Just do me a favor and eat a pizza next time you feel peckish." She cleaned her hands on her own jeans before turning back to the other. "Oh, and it's Jamie, by the way. Call me lady one more time and I'm digging them up."

[autumnshowell]

What makes your muse angry?

What makes your muse angry?

add some depth: why does it make them angry, describe the first time this made them angry, when they feel this anger what do they do, do they think that they will ever reach a point where it doesn’t make them angry?

Autumn doesn't like feeling stupid - when somebody makes her feel stupid, or is treating her like she is stupid, it produces a dangerous little ember of insecurity that catches on all the other loose-leaf insecurities and misgivings in her head and sparks a blaze.

This was something she dealt with constantly with her mother, who would talk down and gaslight her all the time - to the point where, even when Autumn knows she actually isn't in the right or doesn't have the right answer, she feels a need to double down, to the point where she convinces herself of the comforting little lies she tells herself.

Part of this is personal pride, sure, but a lot of it is aggravated by an abusive upbringing and a slate of mental health problems and developmental & spectrum disorders that go un-diagnosed and thus untreated.

Before being bitten by Arte Ryan, Autumn's general reaction to any angry feelings was to bottle them up, thinking little more than mean thoughts towards the world in retaliation while she let the feelings simmer down until all the angry fat rendered off into a stew of self-critique and self loathing. She'd hold this until the container for it became overfull and would then take it out on herself, either in the form of intense isolation or, very occasionally, self harm (Autumn tends to hit herself, because the bruising fades and doesn't leave a mark, something she would worry about receiving further critique about)

Now though, Autumn is cursed with a mark of the wolf, and aside from turning into beast every full moon, that old paradigm of bottling until she can burst in private simply doesn't work anymore. When she's made to feel stupid, or really just challenged by others in any sort of way that offends her sensibilities, there's now this intense urge to lash out, like letting it lie indicates a willingness to roll-over and take it that feels downright antithetical. When she first turned back to human and all the compulsions visited on her by various vampires caused a rush of confused explosive, and violent anger. Being angry makes her seethe in a way it didn't used to. She has violent, mean spirited thoughts about people who make her feel small, and is quicker to jump straight to outward anger than she used to be - in some ways it's good; she's less likely to let things sit and stew until the fester now, but if pushed too far, too close to a turn of the Full Moon, who knows what could happen?

[autumnshowell]

🎈(aj)

Autumn's front teeth are pretty big - and she's always been self conscious about them in the way she's self conscious about anything she doesn't like about herself - when she got braces, she thought (perhaps stupidly) that braces would change those, too - and at some point, even has asked a dentist if they could do work on them, but said dentist talked her out of it, and urged her not to worry so much about things like that, because they aren't broken, and don't need fixed, and that's the story about how a 17 year old Autumn cried happy tears at the dentist.

[autumnshowell]

She's not sure if he's looking at the marks left behind by the red wolf because there might be some key to helping, or if he's just taking advantage of a rare glimpse at the rest of her. Internally, Autumn chastises herself for holding onto that thing razor of hope that this is something that can be fixed. That there's some magical potion or poultice or word or something that can rewind the clock of her life to the moments before disaster.

Aria being pulled into the conversation though has made her nervous. Autumn doesn't want to implicate her any more than her trying to help had already done - and doubly so doesn't want to reveal that her vampire nature had, ultimately, been one of a dozen dominoes in her life that had landed her on 'bitten by a werewolf'. So she tries to defect it, steering the conversation onto the topic of his ready ability to take her at each and every of her insane words.

It's a bigger mouthful than she's planned though, and her eyes search wildly around the rivulets of gold wreathing their way down the bottle's neck and base.

It's of course not something she's ever seen before, a fact highlighted by the incredulous stare that bounces from the bottle to the man. At this point, just how surprised is she able to be? Monsters aren't the fiction she's always enjoyed but a very real very close threat. Port Leiry isn't the sleepy tourist-trap she and Olivier grew up thinking it was. Hell, her mother wasn't even the person she grew up thinking she was.

So is a man who can breath magical gold really a stretch?

Autumn lets out a long sigh while he lays down the price of covering up matricide - business as usual. She stares into the glass he's poured her for a while, its little bubbles break out of their liquid containment and into the air where they're lost to her eyes, now just a part of everything else.

She's still making sense of about a dozen new memories, some of which make sense, slot nicely into things. Others that don't. There's a dozen questions she wants to ask - but they can wait, she thinks. She drink up the glass of bubbly, and winces. "Augh, I think I preferred the bugs."

Eyes traverse the scarring; mentally tracing the routes of each tooth in its venomous path across her flesh. Certainly werewolf. A nice mouthful of Howell's been claimed in the jaws of whatever beast tried her for dinner that night. It looks years old; pinkish pale streaks on even paler skin rope around her. AJ's got little shame or concern about walking around the island to look a little closer at her with her shirt off.

It's silent when he does. But he's already made a mental note of all the werewolf alchemical formulas he can access a hell of a lot easier if he merely plucks a couple hairs from Autumn's head. Borrows a claw that she'll grow back, maybe tug out a tooth or two, if he convinces her it's charitable; he's always been talked into the next fad via pity and sobs. Though it's not a conversation he'll have today or tomorrow; a newly changed werewolf of her capacity needs more time to get her bearings. AJ's got no idea what it's like to be thrust into a new world all so suddenly; his world is golden gates of kings and knowledge; it's always been as such. But he can act like he sympathises when he's way too many drinks deep and she's airing her crimes to his face. He'll cut her some slack, it's really something to go and eat your mum for dinner.

More money than God, huh? I am a god. The narcissism is palpable.

It's all in the grin when he leans back from peering at her mark of the wolf and watches her continue to drop back swigs of Anty like the unhinged, feral woman she's evidently becoming. Somehow, he likes her more than most in his employ.

He's continuing to make light jests despite the weight and gravitas of Aut's continued conversation: "I am a merciful God, love." He casts lightning, he doesn't dodge shit. "And a wicked boss." Probably. He doesn't know really, because who is telling AJ Astor about his ability to run anything, besides his own agenda. But Autumn covers the bases; everything but the blackspots in her memory; a wolf trait, he's sure. That's a mind in a conflicted haze of man to beast.

He's somehow far too prepared to accept the idea that he's about to knock another person off the planet when she nips the idea in the bud. She's aware? Then what does that make her? Very understanding (he's never had a girlfriend quite like that), or something else entirely? AJ tips his head curiously, wondering if Aut's missing a part in her story on purpose (because she's sure not foolish enough to omit details to him, surely?) or if she's not entirely clocked what she's said in its entirety.

Is he going to say she's mad? Nah. AJ smiles, looks at the Anty she's put down in front of her and he leans down. Blows a gentle puff of alcohol-laced breath across the rim of the bottle; gold flecks spill out, fixing themselves on the glass and rippling south; in a bout of lightening. (since she presented the idea.) It isn't encapsulating the glass completely but merely adding some minor, golden details like artistic little veins.

He leans back and winks at her when he slips back to refill his champagne. Now that that's out of the way, he thinks. He wonders what else she's blind to know.

"Write down the address. It'll be clean." Simple. Matter of fact. Like it's easy. To wipe a crime scene of evidence and foul play. He's got one of his own, statued at the doorway. Yet, he's still joking, "No charge." not really, and he points out a little more affirmation: "But no quitting on me, local girl, just because you need a night off a month to go get bloody hairy, aight? I ain't about that."

Good drivers are hard to find.

"Any other skeletons we gotta discuss, or you getting pissed with me?" He can't sober up now.

[autumnshowell]

who: @moonpains where: August's Apartment

Knocking on doors is one of the single worst anxiety triggers in her life. It's met in competition only by calling strangers on the phone and submitting resumes. Even with the bravado and irate fervor that has haunted her in this new form of existence, the very human element of her still hates it.

First her knock goes unanswered and she's not even sure if she actually touched the door with her knuckles, so the second one she, of course, pounds on the thing carelessly, forgetting that she's a lot stronger at a baseline now, so she's wincing when, this time, the door does open.

"Uhm, August Choi?" She asks. "I found your uh, your zine?" She peers in through the opening. "Can we talk?"

[autumnshowell]

He does her a favor and starts to cut the conversation off. Autumn's sure she's not exactly the most warming presence right now - not that she ever has been, living life these past few years inside a circle of like, three people, one of whom was Kevin, one of whom was her mother, and the third of which is now a wandering Ghost-Asshole sometimes, apparently. Everyone else, the friends she's cultivated in the past year, are too precious to her to endanger with her presence right now. Morgan, Kevin, Elyse... A.J. she has to wing, because running away from it all is going to take money that he provides. Aria - well, she's fucked that one up far more royally, probably. She smiles. "Autumn," she replies. He starts to head off and she stands there, shoving her hands in her pocket against the winter chill. She starts to call after him, to ask him not to mention her at the arcade, but ultimately the sound catches in her throat and she turns to go home.

Mylo gave her a sympathetic smile. "Ah I'm sorry -- that sucks." he agreed. "Well ehm-- I don't have -- many friends here -- yet. But ehm -- if you ever need a -- distraction, or just -- I don't know, if you ever want to hang out with a random stranger -- I'm always down for it." he offered, god it was awkward, but she was one of the first people he had talked to that weren't his boss, coworker or sire since arriving here. "I'm Mylo by the way! I ehm -- well maybe I'll eh -- see you around? If you swing by -- retrocity at any point -- feel free to come say hi to me -- or something -- I won't take up anymore of your time tonight -- sorry!" he awkwardly said.

God he used to be good at making friends, was this some sort of weird vampire-side effect? Suddenly being socially awkward around other people? Is he allergic to humans now? The extrovert inside him was absolutely dying right now.