Closed RP Mutualism

[Wendigo]

He laughed, all of his exhaustion suddenly vaporized by the one comment. It was a good laugh, deep and rumbling and, maybe, just a touch unhinged, but not dangerous. Joyous. Was he afraid of her? No way she was serious. He’d found her clinging to a treebranch and had almost run off to eat her somewhere quiet. And she was worried she’d scared him?

“Scared of you?” He beamed at her – it was a rare occasion of Todd grinning, showing all of his teeth. But there was no threat in the smile as another chuckle resonated through his chest like an earthquake’s aftershock. “If I remember right, you were a little scared of me for a second there.”

His hands moved almost blindly over the board, following the simple instructions of the game to move his stones around as he shook his head and let the smile fade back some.

“Sorry about that. By the way.” He didn’t look apologetic, but he looked like he was trying to look apologetic. “I didn’t mean it. Just ran myself a little ragged for a while. Can’t even remember what about, really.”

That last bit was a lie, but he was looking at the board, so he didn’t have to meet her eyes when he said it. He remembered clear as day why he’d pushed himself so long and so hard. Another little girl, but one who’d never understand. No more than Arlo did.

But Adelyn might, with her claws and her sharpness and the ferocity he’d seen behind her eyes from moment to moment. It was rare, but it was real. She just needed to feel it, and he knew deep down he could help her find that.

“Just saying, I see you hiding it, and you don’t have to hide from me. Y’know?” And now he looked up, with that same earnest sparkle in his eyes as he gave her a somewhat gentler smile. Reassure her. It’d be a while before she was ready to be as genuine as he was being right now.

 

[Katpride]

Adelyn blinks at him for a moment, her eyes white and wide and startled. Then she smiles, and laughs a little herself. It’s really nice to see him smiling! And laughing, even if it is a little bit at her expense.

“Only a little bit!” she still protests, because it’s true. She shook off that instinctive fear pretty quickly once she realized he wasn’t a threat to her. Although… It’s still odd that he pinged her danger sense at all, now that she thinks about it. What does he mean, that he ran himself ragged, and that’s why he scared her? Her animal side doesn’t get up in a tizzy every time someone’s just a little tired and cranky.

She thinks about it for a second, but it doesn’t make any sense at all. Maybe it doesn’t matter, she reasons, brushing the thought aside. They’re well past that now. “It’s okay.”

She drops her gaze to the board to take her turn, and when she looks up again she finds that Todd is already looking at her. The expression on his face is one she isn’t entirely familiar with, at least not from him. It would be more suited to her father, she thinks, mentally digging out a memory of her dad smiling at her after she’s finished a big project, all open and earnest and… proud, she thinks. Proud of her?

She has to look away. She hasn’t done anything to earn that pride, that unconditional support. It seems like every time she turns a corner she ends up causing more problems for people. Her family, her friends, random strangers… Her Shift has caused nothing but heartache. She doesn’t know what she’s still doing in this city, where she has to hide herself away all the time. She hasn’t made any progress towards her goals, hasn’t found the courage to do anything extraordinary.

Todd is her friend. He’s like her, as much as anyone can be. But she doesn’t think he’d understand, not really. He can walk along the street without anyone stopping to stare. He isn’t afraid to be himself. Or, he has a self that he can be, just be, around people. Normal people. And those people will like him, and they won’t be scared of him (why was she scared of him?), and they’ll help him change the world.

She runs her hand over the back of her claw, down her wrist, up her forearm, and back, the motion soothingly repetitive. And she keeps her eyes locked on the corner of the table as she says, “Yeah. It’s silly of me, I know. I know you already know. It’s just… habit, I suppose.”

Her grandparents don’t mind so much. They hadn’t seen her since she was a tiny thing, when she first came to stay with them, and they’d been living within driving distance of Uncle Barclay for years and years. But she’d picked up the habit in those dizzy weeks traveling across the country with her parents, all the better to cut off the worried glances they thought she didn’t notice. She’ll never tell them how many of their whispered conversations she overheard, once she Shifted her ears, but she won’t forget about them, either. She knows more than enough about exactly how hard they took her Shift.

She finds a smile, somewhere, and tries it on, turns it on her friend. It’s a little too small and a little too sad, but it’s better than nothing. What she wants to say is something like, my parents worry, or but it’s fine! It doesn’t bother me. What leaves her mouth is, “I’m used to hiding.”

She shrugs, one-shouldered, and scoops more pebbles into her goal, black lashes casting long shadows over white eyes.

 

[Wendigo]

“You shouldn’t have to be.”

Rocks clicked in the silence that followed that little statement. He didn’t say it aggressively. He said it like it was fact, as much fact as the sky was blue or her instincts were sharp. He acted like he didn’t see the strained edges of her smile, the same strained edges he’d worn for so long for everyone. Including Adelyn. Including Sam.

Sam, who he remembered abruptly. Sam, who was waiting for him. Maybe hammer in hand, or with a burning blaze that would send away his cold for good. He blinked at the board, at the game he wasn’t going to win, and dwelt on that for a second. He might never see Adelyn again. He looked up at her, at her smile, at her smallness, and his own smile faded a touch. He wasn’t quite irritated. He wasn’t quite dangerous – no more than he’d been this whole time.

“You’re strong, Addy. Stronger than people know. You’ve got it there under your skin, and you shouldn’t have to hide it just in case people are scared of you. If that’s all it takes to scare people, maybe they should be nervous.”

He finished his move, even though he already knew he wasn’t going to win. He didn’t need to win – this was a game, after all, and maybe Addy deserved to win. She liked this game, she’d picked it. She wanted him to play it, and some part of him still wanted to see her really smile. With teeth, perhaps. Or at least with her eyes, unlike the sad smile she just tried to give him. He wanted her to know that she deserved to be happy, as happy as he was. Happier, even.

 

[Katpride]

Adelyn keeps her eyes downcast, counting and recounting the few pebbles still on the board so that she doesn’t have to think about the prickles behind her eyes. Her claws scratch at the callused pads of her fingers, tracing pale lines that only barely have the chance to fade before she circles back to remake them.

“Ha, um.” She clears her throat, picking up a single pebble between two claws and gently depositing it in the adjacent empty space on her side. Her scaled claw disappears back beneath the table after its token appearance, and she doesn’t look up once as she scoops the stone she’s moved and the two pebbles on Todd’s side into her palm, moving them over to her goal. “That’s real kind of you to say.”

The real problem is that her strength isn’t under her skin anymore, she wants to say, but she doesn’t think she has the words to explain that to him. She doesn’t think that her parents deserve to be scared, or nervous, or anything less than perfectly happy, she wants to insist, but that would mean admitting that she knows that they aren’t, and so she says nothing of the sort, only clears her throat again and explains, “That’s, um. That’s a move you can do if you have an empty space on your side. If you end in the empty space, you can take the pebbles on your side and the ones opposite.”

She should’ve mentioned that earlier. It’s a big part of the game and the strategy. She lets herself feel bad about that, instead of all the other things she can feel bad for, and braves a glance at Todd to say, “Sorry. Should’ve told you that earlier, huh?”

She looks away quickly, though the edges of a wry smile still twist her lips, something bitter as lemon rinds sitting right beside the unhappiness in her eyes.