singillatim | making my way downtown

Who: nikolai and you.
What: hanging out making good and bad decisions.
When: october.
Where: around town.

Content Warnings: always applicable for nikolai: potential violence, gore, animal death, bloodlust, maybe cannibalism but we're not there yet, drug abuse, just general darkness because why deal with your problems when you can make jokes about them.

— use what you got.

[ even with a fairly grievous injury, nikolai cannot keep still. luckily, he’s aided by the treasures he’s found in the home he’s claimed for himself, a spacious house facing the edge of town on one side, the snowy woods on the other. the perfect blend of community and privacy.

apparently, someone that lived here before indulged in quite the cocktail for various ailments. nikolai finds orange bottles and neat baggies all lined up in a drawer, some familiar and some not. being as inventive as he is — and a little desperate, the wolf bite and possible fracture at his right arm throbbing with near constant pain — nikolai manages to cobble together an effective mix that dulls the worst of his aches. it at least frees him to leave his house to head to the community hall to assess the state of things after the attacks. ]

What an interesting way to write.

[ he squints at the handwriting of the missing persons sign at the message board, digging for a pen in his pocket — but ending up knocking the bottle of pills to the floor. the bottle rattles and rolls loudly, a little overfull because nikolai is nothing if not ambitiously overprepared, and stops at your feet. ]

Have there been any leads on this — person with a lot of hair? [ nikolai sniffs at the message, then pulls back abruptly as if realizing that is. not a normal thing to do. ]

— handyman available.

[ nikolai is here to help — he’s traversing the town to be nosy while keeping himself busy with minor or major repairs after the attacks. he can fix locks, rebuild broken windows, patch roofs, help you burn a body, whatever you need. bonus points if you didn’t invite him in and he just decided your sad little house needed help because you’re not that handy. ]

— go to bed, idiot.

[ ingesting a mouthful of raw, dead wolf corpse was not part of his finest hour. it turns out feral wolf has all the necessary nutrients to make a man very ill. or maybe it’s just his monster, locked away but still swimming through his veins like an infection, doing the work for him. either way, he’s running a fever while out investigating the trails of blood that have begun cropping up around town, making notes across a hastily sketched map in a notebook pilfered from his borrowed home.

something compels him to get on his knees on the icy ground to examine the droplets further, his gloved hands touching the edges of the blood. if you see him smelling it or even tonguing it — yeah, he’s got a fucking problem.

the irritating sound of dogs barking just reminds him that he’s already been bitten by one creature and he doesn’t need to tangle with a second. when he attempts to get to his feet, he falters — embarrassingly — and tips right into you. ]

— NOTES.

[ ooc: will default to brackets. in the last event nikolai was bitten by a wolf and still sustains this injury. he also ate some wolf because it was that or eat a person. nikolai is also host a demon! in this game the demon manifests as more of an affliction, meaning nikolai will sometimes display animalistic behaviors and crave human and animal flesh. yes, the first prompt is definitely for all the annoying drug abusers who miss their candy, please come be nikolai’s problem. feel free to mix and match and just show up at nikolai’s house! he can often be found just doing Little ADHD Genius Things like trying to repair a plane in his yard or deciding that he can somehow build a boat in the spare room. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yeah, well, it got your attention, didn’t it? Besides, I could say the same about that guy’s—

[ He gestures vaguely to a note above his own, something about food written in a looping, old fashioned cursive hand. Difficult to read and definitely left by one of the Victorians.

Since losing track of Steve, Eddie has become a staple near the message board, loitering for ten to fifteen minutes multiple times per day just to see if anyone leaves him any information. So far, he’s had no such luck. He does, however, get to witness some questionable things—like this guy who’s opted to sniff the message for some reason. Eddie doesn’t call him out, though the corners of his mouth do twitch in amusement. ]

No.

[ The amusement faces and his eyebrows knit together, and it’s clear from the concern etched into his features that he’s probably the person who wrote the note. ]

I’m guessing you’re not going to be the guy who changes that, huh?

If it's a competition, I like yours better. [ only because the old fashioned script reminds him of his rigid childhood tutors who looked vexed every time nikolai entered a room. ] Unfortunately, I don't have any leads on your friend — I assume you're friends? — but I'm willing to try to track him down. A brisk adventure through the woods doesn't sound so bad.

[ he definitely looks like the person who wrote the note, loitering with a worried expression on his face. nikolai feels a pang of regret that he hasn't actually seen the boy, though the lack of a body is promising in its own way. not that he's going to say that aloud. the young man looks stressed enough as it is without any talk of corpses. ]

Can I have that back? [ he gestures to the little orange pill bottle of morphine that's rolled at his feet. ] Where did you see him last?

It’s complicated? But yeah, close enough.

[ It sounds like way more than it was; they were friendly acquaintances, at most. Between otherworldly happenings and Eddie being a wanted man, there wasn’t time to cement a friendship, though Eddie deeply regrets that fact. He might have fixed that here, if Steve weren’t somehow a year behind him in the timeline and didn’t remember a thing about 1986. It had been disheartening and upsetting, but obviously Eddie still cares.

After seeing him sniffing the note, Eddie would laugh when Nikolai offers to track him down, but he can’t afford to turn own the help. He just raises an eyebrow and looks a little doubtful. ]

What? Like some kind of human sniffer dog?

[ He eyes the morphine as he dips to scoop it up, and hands it back to Nikolai with a snort. He’s no stranger to drugs—drugs of all sorts, and he knows morphine when he sees it. While he has no room to judge (nor would he), he can't help but poke the bear just a little bit as he hands it back. ]

Feeling a bit of pain, man? I saw him just after the aurora started.

[Levi was, once again, doing unneeded patrols through the town. He's seen the blood trails, but since no wolves--or anything else--seemed to be coming into town anymore he's got his rifle slung over his back instead of in his hands. That was probably for the best since he jumps backwards with a gasp as Nikolai bumps into him.]

Ah!

[ nikolai does not enjoy leaning on others for help in any sense, and this being quite literal, he makes an effort to right himself from the boy despite the fever brightness of his eyes and the weakness plaguing him from his own poorly thought out decisions. he is mostly successful, peeling back with an apologetic hand in the air — which says quite a lot, since nikolai also rarely expresses sincerity to strangers except under pain of death. maybe he really is dying. ]

Are you all right?

I'm fine, you just startled me. Are you alright? You don't look so good.

[He frowns and holds an arm out in case Nikolai needs to steady himself more. This guy looked like shit.]

[ Part of the responsibility that Edward has taken upon himself to maintain in this place is doing routine patrols to keep an eye out for any suspicious business. Certainly, he has valid reason to suspect there could be some — having recently learned that one of the men from his world did some people-eating of his own.... a fact Edward does not intend to raise public alarm to, but rather has been quietly attempting to keep a handle on the situation on his own. There's also the fact that he is suffering from the lingering effects of some lead poisoning, and his stomach and his mind seem to be filled with ghosts: odd aches and whispers and thoughts and lapses of time and self. His nightmares seem to become more vivid each day. Control is a concept that threatens to slip through his hands no matter how tightly he holds onto it.

Needless to say, he's extremely stressed, and his own nerves are perpetually worn raw, and so when he sees a man on all fours on the ground, uncomfortably close to those droplets of blood, well. He's about had it! He's already reaching one hand for the strap that keeps his shotgun to his back, not that he means to use the weapon, but he's getting ready to go into Lieutenant Mode, brow furrowing severely, voice a stern, albeit mannerly, bark. ]

Pardon me—

[ He's a few seconds behind the actual barking. The dog barking. And Edward hears it too, even though he's more preoccupied with whatever's going on here to pay it much attention. But now the other man's getting up, more quickly than Edward expected, and he's tensing in some startle when— the other's body tips right forward, falls to him.

A pair of gloved hands (uniformed, as everything about him is, always, he refuses to wear civilians' clothing) come quickly up to the other's shoulders, grasping on tightly in attempt to steady the swooning body. God— has he been injured? That would explain the blood, the way he'd been leaning over it.... and now his severity is replaced with a concern instead, brows lifting upwards. ]

Here— steady, lad! I've got you.

[ .. well, this is a new one.

Bigby was trying to investigate some of the stuff around town himself - mostly the dog noises, but he's definitely noticed the blood on his way around town while trying to look into the former - and he isn't too surprised to find someone else trying to look into what's going on.

A little more surprised to find just how this other person has decided to investigate, though. It makes Bigby raise a questioning eyebrow. He's about to make a kind of sarcastic remark as he approaches the guy, but--

Well, that's the exact moment Nikolai seemingly decides to get up, making them bump right into each other. It's a good thing Bigby is relatively strong, even without most of his usual strength from back home. It keeps him from tumbling over, and he even manages to catch the other in his arms before Nikolai can fall to the ground either. ]

Hey, hey, easy!

[ Bigby doesn't sound too happy about the situation, though, and he will definitely let go of Nikolai the moment he's sure the other can more or less stand on his own feet without dropping into the snow. ]

What the hell were you doing?

[ He's refering to the blood tonguing, not the bumping into him-- though it might be hard to determine, given the lack of context in his speech. ]

making my way downtown — ota

use what you got; can't believe ur making fun of his slayer handwriting...

it's so make-funable

no subject

go to bed

no subject

no subject

go to bed!

go to bed