#aldy.nonhc para

[wordsmithings]

[ PILLOW ] Our characters build a pillow fort together

ooc: answer under readmore because it's long XD

Reza’s narrative:

“So, is there any particular reason why we’re building a pillow fort in the middle of the living room?” Reza looked up once he fastened the end of the loose bedsheet on his end, his brow arched and his lips curled into in amusement. He could see Chae was doing his very best avoiding his gaze, and even with the distance between them, he could imagine the flushed cheek and reddened ear tip that Chae was trying very hard to hide.

It made him want to close the distance between them and bite Chae’s ear, if he was being honest.

“You said you’re good with your hands,” was the reply that he received. Reza’s eyes drawn to the man’s hand; fingers long and delicate, more so than his at least, fumbling over the sheet at his end.

“Yes, well.” Reza got up from where he had crouched down, stretching his arms above his head. “When you tell me you wanted to see me, I wasn’t expectin’ this.” He smiled when he caught Chae trying to steal a glance when he stretched before looking away again.

“What were you expecting?” Reza walked around their pillow fort and crouched next to Chae, close enough that he could feel the warmth emanating from Chae against his cold skin.

“Something more… laborious?” He looked at Chae, a mischievous smile across his lips when he confirmed red tint on Chae’s skin grew darker at his words, if that was even possible. “You look like a cherry, by the way. Should I lower the temperature for you?” A teasing lilt coloured his voice when Chae’s eyes widened as he quickly looked away, his hand quickly covering his cheek as if that would brush the redness away. Reza then took the end of the sheet and tied it to the chair for their makeshift fort. “There, all done. Now what do we do?”

Chae seemed hesitated to answer, his gaze fixated on the ground. Reza wondered if he should assure the other than he wasn’t going to do anything that Chae wouldn’t like, but he didn’t have it in him to promise such thing. “I was hoping,” Chae’s voice came out softer than expected, and Reza had to leaned forward to catch his words, “that we could watch a movie or something. I’ve never done that before, so...”

Both of his brows arched, and Reza took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Well, he’s never done this before either, but he never saw the appeal. But if that’s what Chae wanted, then who was he to deny his request. He’s a guest at the man’s house anyway. “Sure. What kind of movie are we watchin’?” Reza got up, groaning when his knees popped at the movement. “You have snacks, yeah? It’s no fun watchin’ movies without snacks.” He made his way towards the kitchen, ready to ransack the inventory for their snacks and drink.

It was cozy inside the pillow fort, and other than letting his feet rest on Chae’s lap and eating his popcorn and drinking his hot sweet cocoa, he didn’t do much else. Reza didn’t remember much about the movie. Something about the miracle of Christmas or some Hallmark bullshit. He was too busy watching Chae watching the movie, anyway, smiling to himself when Chae admonished him with flustered look for watching him instead of the movie.

Reza made a mental note to do this again in the future.

Aldemar’s narrative:

“Scoot over a little.” Aldemar plopped himself next to Chae under their makeshift pillow fort, fluffing up the pillow before leaning his back against it. He was in the middle of cleaning the house when Chae came over. The house was a mess after babysitting the kids for his pack, but he decided to have the pillow fort stay up a little longer and invited Chae to accompany him for pizza and beer. He handed the can of beer to Chae, opening his own beer and took a large gulp. There were pizza boxes between them, and a rerun of The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse on the tele. “I don’t know what you like, so I got half-and-half of everything. Well, not everything, but.” Aldemar gestured at the pile of pizza boxes, hoping Chae understood his meaning.

He smiled to himself when Chae took a slice of the pizza at the top before grabbing a slice for himself. “Thanks,” he heard Chae mumbled, and Aldemar nodded in acknowledgement.

“This is certainly better than the first time we met.” Aldemar laughed good naturedly as Chae whipped his head around, the faint rouge colour started to bloom on his cheeks. He had met a few times at the Little Duck, and he would like to think that they had bonded a little better, enough for him to be able to joke around with Chae without making it awkward. “Sorry, sorry.” He patted Chae’s shoulder, asking for forgiveness for his little teasing. “I am glad you’re looking better than the last time we met, though.” He squeezed Chae’s shoulder lightly before letting his hand fall to his side.

“Yeah, well.” Aldemar glanced towards Chae, watching as he hugged his legs to his chest as if to make himself look smaller. He wondered if Chae was too embarrassed to talk about their first meeting this much. “I don’t usually need rescuing from high places.” Chae shrugged, taking a bite of his pizza.

“It would be very concerning if you do.” Aldemar chuckled, shaking his head as he finished his slice of pizza in a few bites. He heard Chae muttered under his breath, though he didn’t bother to comment what it was. “Anyway, thanks for coming over. You didn’t have to help me clean the house, though.”

Chae shrugged. “It’s no big deal. We get to finish early if we clean it together.”

“Cheers, mate.” Aldemar clinked their beers together and took a sip. “So what do you want to watch?”

They both settled in as they watched reruns of Long Island, chattering away about nothing and everything. It was cozy, and Aldemar couldn’t ask for nothing more to spend his day off.

[wordsmithings]

[ PARK ] Our characters take a scroll through the park in the dark + Zhyan&Aldemar

“How are you only wearing that?” Aldemar turned towards his companion at the question, his brows arched as he blinked a few times. He looked down at what he was wearing; a thin grey crew neck shirt overlayed with green plaid shirt, paired with old navy jeans and a pair of joggers. He wouldn’t say that he was hip, as the kids said, but he thought he was dressing pretty decently. “It’s negative three degrees right now.”

Ah. So the problem didn’t lie at his fashion sense but rather the inappropriateness of layering or lack thereof. “The cold never bothered me anyway.” Aldemar winked, thinking that Zhyan would get the reference, though it was hard to tell judging by Zhyan’s reaction. “I get warm easily.” He shrugged, smiling at Zhyan. “Perks of being a werewolf, I guess. We always run hot almost all the time. Which is a problem during the summer.”

Zhyan tilted his head, seemingly contemplating Aldemar’s answer. “I see,” was the reply he received after a moment of long silence. “Must be hard for you during the summer.”

“We do what we can with the cards we are dealt with.” Aldemar shrugged again. Years of experience eased the pain of his body overheating in the summer, and with practiced ease he was able to manage just fine. Aldemar turned towards Zhyan, holding out his hand. “Want to see how warm I am?”

Zhyan looked hesitant, looking at the extended hand then at Aldemar’s face then back to his hand. His brows furrowed together, and Aldemar noticed the curl at the corner of his lips as he contemplated Aldemar’s offer. Well, he wasn’t going to force Zhyan to take his hand, but before he pulled his hand away, Zhyan closed the distance between them and took his hand in his. “It’s warm.” Zhyan looked up, a look of wonder (or at least it was in Aldemar’s eyes) on his face.

“And your hand is ice cold.” Aldemar grabbed both Zhyan’s hands in his and started rubbing them together, hoping to warm Zhyan up. “Come on, let’s get you out of the cold, hm.” Aldemar walked forward, his large callous hand still holding onto Zhyan’s as they strolled through the park, wishing he had brought a pair of gloves or heating pad for his companion.

[wordsmithings]

FRIEND for Topher

[ FRIEND ] for your character to hug mine when they had a bad thought.

“Hey, I’m here. I’m here.” Aldemar skidded across the ground and stopped himself in front of Topher, crouching to their level. He came as soon as he could when he received Topher’s text, worrying for the other’s safety. He made a quick scan of their body to make sure that they weren’t hurt, at least not physically. Once satisfied, Aldemar looked back at their face, though it was turned away from him at the moment. He heaved a quiet sigh. Now that the immediate danger wasn’t a threat to their safety, he felt the adrenaline crushing down, his heart that beat wildly against his chest began to slow down.

“Wanna tell me what’s that about?” He asked them gently, trying to get Topher to talk to him. All he got was a text saying that they were having a bad thought. What it was, Aldemar had no idea. When he received no reply to his follow-up texts and his calls went to voicemail, he became overly worried for the other. It was a good thing he was quick to find them, sitting by the curb all by themself. “You don’t want to talk about it, huh.”

There was a mumbled answer from them, and Aldemar sat next to them with a groan. “Alright, we can do the sitting quietly by the road for a minute.” He wrapped his arm around Topher’s small figure and pulled them in a half hug. He felt them stiffen against him, before slowly relaxing. “I don’t know what you’re going through, since you’re not telling me. But I’m here for you, ‘kay. Talk to me whenever you’re ready.” Aldemar pulled them into a tight hug, careful not to crush them with his strength. When he felt Topher wrapping their arm around him, he couldn’t help but smile, patting their back softly. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll get through this. What that is.”

[wordsmithings]

[ WALKING ] (Aldy)

[ WALKING ] for your character to have seen a ghost.

“Ah! Oh my God.” Aldemar was sure that his heart was going to burst out of his ribcage at how loudly it was beating. “That’s not funny, Salim!” He called out, pushing away the fake ghost that was hanging from the ceiling instead of giving into his urge to simply rip it off. It came down when Aldemar opened the front door, scaring the shit out of him and resulting in him letting out a yelp that he wasn’t proud of. He was just glad that he didn’t shit himself there too.

The mansion was still in a state of disrepair, though it looked much better than the last time he was there. There was only so much one man could do to repair the whole estate, after all. Aldemar had asked why Salim didn’t hired a few more hands to help, but he had said that he wanted to restore the mansion to its formal glory by himself. It was an arduous task, from the looks of it, but whatever got Salim’s motivation going, he supposed. There were tacky Halloween decorations littered the house, which made the mansion looked more alive than it had ever been for the past decades he was in Fenrirswood.

“I got a call from the neighbours again about the noises. Come on mate, you promised you’d keep it down.” There was no response from the other, and Aldemar couldn’t hear any work being done around the house. Except for the creaks on the floorboards that he stepped on; the house was quiet. Eerily so. “Salim?” Aldemar called out, brows furrowed slightly as he looked around the ground floor, trying to find the owner of the house. He called out several times, only met with silence each time. “Har. Har. Very funny, mate. You got me with the ghost hanging by the door, I’ll give you that. That’s enough of Halloween spirits for today, hm.”

The floorboards creaked again; this time accompanied by the sound of someone being dragged along the ground. Worried something might’ve happened to Salim, Aldemar quickly followed where the sound coming from, bounding the steps to the upper floor as quickly as he could. When he arrived on the first floor, he threw opened one of the rooms where he thought he heard the noise from and found Salim sprawling on the floor. “Shit.” Aldemar rushed to his side, shifting the gears in his mind into an emergency mode. The pulse that he felt against Salim’s neck was faint, but it was there, nonetheless. His body was cold, which was unnatural for his kind.

Then the door slammed.

 Aldemar looked up, and there it stood: a woman in yellowed and tattered wedding gown, her long black matted hair obscured her face, her skin white and pale. There was a shackle around her right hand, the rattling chains dragged behind her as she swayed from where he stood.

Fuck. Salim wasn’t lying when he said the mansion was haunted.

The ghost started lounging at him, and he tried to shield Salim with his body, as if it had any effect in the situation. Running high on adrenaline, Aldemar got to his feet when the woman screamed from the corner of the room, and he bolted towards the door, carrying Salim on his shoulders with practiced ease. “we gotta go we gotta go we gotta go we gotta go.”

Aldemar skipped the stairs altogether and jumped to the ground floor through the banister, landing on his feet and using that momentum to keep running. He wouldn’t do that in normal circumstances, but this wasn’t what one considered normal, so he figured he’s excused. As he ran to the front door, the ghost in the wedding dress was already there, screaming loudly that he swore his ears bled because of it. Did Salim had to go through this all this while?

Without thinking much, Aldemar slammed his elbow against the window, shattering it before getting out of the house. There was no way he was going to let some dead people bully him into staying, after all. When they were a good ways away from the mansion, Aldemar stopped and looked back, catching what he thought was her eyes looking back at him, before slowly retreating back into the estate. That was when his knees buckle, and he dropped to the ground, looking up to the sky as he tried to catch his breath.

Soon after Salim started to stir, groaning and mumbling to himself. “Right. I’m not letting you in there.” Aldemar got up again, Salim still on his shoulder, and turned towards the old Cadillac to drive back to his house, where he was sure there were no hauntings going on.