Rebels & Mutineers is set in modern day New Orleans, Louisiana. R&M is fueled by player's plots and group input.
Supernatural people have always had their place in society, hidden in plain sight or locked away for their own protection. New Orleans, a haven for the strange and mysterious and a magnet for the supernatural.
Established: Oct. 27th, 2018 Recently Updated Posts && Recently Updated Threads
05.11.19
As the community reels from the untimely death of Lucia Lovelle, life has to move on. Primrose readies for the annual Prom celebration! Keep your eye out for a event board and have fun!
02.27.19
It's not too late to vote for February's OTM winners! The winners for January, keep an eye out on your messages for your winner's graphics for your signature. Already voted? Make sure you check out the Mardi Gras event board! Party up, have a good time, and enjoy!
Post by Cameron Gallagher on Jan 3, 2019 5:03:58 GMT
"Um... hello?" Cam muttered awkwardly, hoping to God there was someone right outside his room. He knew he should have waited for Aisling... but evidently she was busy doing lord knows what and Cam was not a patient human. So there he was, stuck between an armoire and a tall bookshelf. They formed a steep, upside-down "V" shape as his outstretched hands held each of them in the precarious position. His arms were just wide enough to keep them from falling on top of him, so he wasn't dead yet... which was cool. That was cool. This situation, though... did not make him look cool. He was actually pretty fucking embarrassed.
He heard footsteps outside his room and decided to try again for help, praising his former self for leaving the door wide open. "Hey, p-- person," he called, groaning to himself because why was he like this he didn't fucking know.
"Piper!" he greeted with relief when he finally saw her. He had never really had a conversation with her but he knew of her, having seen her around plenty. Not to mention, the Davies family was becoming quite wellknown around Phalanx. He knew Jaxon was a good guy and he'd kind of always assumed that the same could be said for his siblings. Cam didn't have evidence to prove otherwise, but he was really just glad for his life that the young woman had stopped, even briefly, in his doorway.
"This is... pathetic. But... hey. How're you? Could you like... maybe... grab one of these?" he asked, his monotonous voice keeping a low volume out of fear of the whole house finding out about this display of utter failure.
"Before they crush me... would be cool," he elaborated.
Post by Piper Addison Davies on Jan 15, 2019 3:36:33 GMT
It had been an interesting number of weeks. About a month ago, Piper had been living in a vacant house, clinging to the few things that she could gather for warmth and survival. In the meantime, she had been reunited with all three of her brothers, she had moved into Phalanx House, and she had gotten a job. An honest to god job. Sure, she was working as a bartender, and it wasn’t exactly a life of glitz and glamour, but it was enough to make some money to survive, and to put away for her future. And, of course, to give money to Astor as often as he would let her, in exchange for letting her stay there. In her mind, it was better that way. In her mind, nobody could hold anything over her if she did her part. Besides… despite her personal reservations, the idea behind Phalanx House was a solid one, and anybody who took in wayward gifted youth and taught them how to control themselves while giving them an education that they might not otherwise be able to get deserved whatever meager support she could offer. It wasn’t much, but it was the best that she had.
As it happened, tonight was Piper’s night off at the Gorgon’s Head, which meant that after she was finished playing violin for the evening, she could make her way back to Phalanx. It was still weird, being in a house that she wasn’t technically trespassing on, and having an actual bed. There were still nights when she couldn’t quite drift off to sleep because the mattress felt too soft, though she often heard people complaining about how hard they were. To her, a bed was a luxury that she had been missing for the last year, which meant that now she was going to cherish every single moment that she could lay on one.
Piper made her way up the stairs, and headed down the hall towards the room that she shared with her brother’s… girlfriend. Aisling was a nice girl, if a little quiet and reserved, but Piper kind of preferred it that way. Still, there was something that was slightly strange to her about sharing a room with the girl who was dating her brother. However, she was only about halfway there when a voice caught her attention. It was a voice that she recognized, partially because she had practically yelled herself hoarse at both him and her brother after they had been fucking stupid enough to get arrested. She stopped in the doorway, turning to the side slightly as he called out to her, and let herself take a moment to survey the scene. He was standing in his room, stuck between his dresser and a bookshelf, both of them looking like they could fall at almost any moment. It was a precarious position to be in, and she felt for him in that respect, but really he should have waited before Jaxon, or literally anybody else, got home to help him.
“Hi.” Her response was brief, curt, and as he asked the question, she pursed her lips, thinking about it for a moment. “Mmm, nah.” She stood where she was for a moment, watching his reaction to what she said. However, after that moment passed, she rolled her eyes and stepped into the room, shoving down the bolt of fear that she felt at the prospect of being alone in Cam’s room with him. “You going to not do stupid shit to get my brother in trouble if I do?” She asked the question as if she wasn’t going to help him if he said no, even though she knew she would. Despite the general irritation that she felt with Cam currently, she wasn’t about to let him get crushed by two large and potentially heavy pieces of furniture. Reaching forward, she gripped the bookshelf, picking a place that was not at all near anywhere his hands were. Slowly, she leaned back, tipping the weight of the much heavier bookshelf back until it was firmly settled back and no longer in danger of crushing the scrawny man in front of her. “So do I get an explanation on why you were in danger of getting crushed or…?”
Cameron Gallagher| This is not my best, but if you need more let me know <3
Post by Cameron Gallagher on Jan 16, 2019 0:21:50 GMT
"Mmm, nah."
"O-kay, I probably deserve that," he muttered, though he wasn't about to give up... because he wasn't ready to die. "I know you're mad," he added, prepared to defend himself with a second half of that sentence but he froze. It was okay, though... the excuse probably wouldn't have been valid anyway.
"Look-- I didn't get Jaxon into trouble. I mean-- I didn't make him do anything," he explained. "The stupid shit happened very mutually." He'd have never pressured Jax into doing something he didn't want to do. "And we were high, so, like, good decisions weren't made." It wasn't his bad decisions... it was the weed's bad decisions. It was his bad decision to smoke the weed. All actions that happened after... he was absolved of all responsibility.
"I... don't want him in trouble," he added seriously after some hesitation. "I'll be more careful, okay?" He'd be careful, said the boy, seconds from being crushed by furniture due to his own careless decision-making.
She decided to help and he was pretty relieved as half of the weight he struggled to support was lifted from him. "Thanks," he said, turning to push the wardrobe back into position. It opened and several contents came pouring out-- an aggravation he was shocked hadn't happened earlier. He groaned with irritation, kneeling on the floor to begin picking up what had fallen-- a mess of clothes and books.
He'd have expected Piper to just leave, but once she questioned him, he found himself glad that she had stayed. Even though answering that question wasn't the first thing he wanted to talk about.
"Uh... because I act impulsively without considering the consequences of my actions?" he muttered, brushing his fingers through his hair. "I don't know-- I was trying to clean up some shit and before I knew it things were fucking defying the laws of physics." He probably wouldn't have been able to replicate that situation if he tried.
Post by Piper Addison Davies on Jan 17, 2019 0:19:32 GMT
“I know you’re mad.” He didn’t know the half of it. Piper wasn’t mad… well, she was, but that wasn’t the prevailing emotion that had lead her to yell at the both of them when they returned to their room after Ash had gone down and gotten them both out of jail. That had been born out of fear. The fact that Jaxon could potentially go back to jail, so soon after he had gotten out and so soon after they had all been reunited, had been enough to throw her into a panicked frenzy that she hadn’t felt since Ezra had gone missing. She had just been reunited with her whole family, under a roof that actually felt safe enough that she didn’t lay in her bed at night, awake and afraid. The last thing that she wanted was to lose her brother after all that had happened. “Can you blame me? He’s my brother. I just got him back.” She crossed her arms over her chest, daring him to disagree and willing him to understand at the same time.
“Oh yeah? Whose idea was it?” Piper hadn’t actually gotten that answer from either one of them when she had confronted them both, but she had her doubts that it was Jaxon. He had his own stupid ideas all on his own, she had no doubts about that, but trying to steal a Dr. Pepper machine wasn’t quite his style. Some light arson, some vandalism, but theft? There was, of course, the possibility that she was wrong, that her brother had been the criminal mastermind behind it all and had picked up tips in juvie, since… she didn’t really know him anymore. She had spent seven years without him. When he had been taken away, she was only twelve. He didn’t know about her ability to shift into a bird, and she had only been able to guess at his ability to start fires without matches when she came into her own power. The two of them were very different people than they had been, and it was something that they were going to have to come to terms with at some point. Still, it didn’t mean that she wanted to think about the fact that her brother could have become such an idiot that he would steal a minifridge from a bar of all places. “Well I definitely didn’t think that you came up with that brilliant choice sober.” The sarcasm in her voice was biting, but she didn’t really care.
Piper had to bite down on her lower lip to keep from laughing as one of the drawers of the armoire spilled open and spilled its contents on the floor. Her task done, she could have turned and left. Every alarm was going off in her head and telling her to get out. This man may be Jaxon's roommate, but she didn't know him, and considering he had been arrested with her brother, she was having some serious doubts about whether or not he was a good person. But there was something about him, something that kept her in that room, though she was slightly turned towards the door and prepared to run at a moment's notice. “Really? Never would have guessed that about you.” A smirk found its way onto Piper’s face, as she leaned against the wall, her eyes darting from the boy kneeling on the floor in front of her to the door, and then back again. He was scrawny enough, almost as scrawny as she was. That alone was enough to alleviate a part of her fear, but she also knew that people were often much stronger than they looked. “I’m a little surprised you didn’t wait for your partner in crime.” Not even Piper was sure if she meant Jaxon or Aisling.
Piper looked down at him, a hint of pity igniting in her. She had been mean to him without giving him much of a chance to find out who she was, but at the same time… she wasn’t sure that she wanted to get to know him. She wasn’t sure she wanted to get to know anybody. So many people had walked in and out of her life, and left her scarred and battered and bruised in more ways than one. Why would she invite that on herself again? “So how long have you been rooming with my brother?” More than that, she wanted to know just how much idiocy this boy had been getting her brother into massive amounts of shit that involved the police, but she was giving him a break, at least for the moment.
Post by Cameron Gallagher on Jan 20, 2019 2:46:12 GMT
Fuck. Right-- she was Jaxon's sister. Sometimes he forgot about that. I mean, the two were polar opposites. He was lowkey afraid of Piper and he was also about ninety-three percent sure Jaxon would watch his steps on a sidewalk to avoid crushing ants.
"No, I get it. Sorry," he muttered, remembering how Jaxon had spoke about his siblings before they'd been reunited. He knew that they loved each other and that they'd been through a lot. He didn't need to know the details to know that he'd intruded on a very delicate situation without having meant to.
"Whose idea was it?"
How the fuck was he supposed to answer that?
"Uh, okay, if you mean like... who initially brought up the idea? That was me but--" he added quickly, raising a finger in his defense. He was used to defending himself, and yet, he was still terrible at it.
"I wouldn't have made him do it. He was all for it-- he wanted Dr. Pepper." Which, again, was a completely reasonable motive behind their actions that night.
He scoffed, waving a hand. "If I'd been sober I'd have made it at least four more blocks before getting caught." A lot of things about that plan were aggravated by their drunken state, namely the thought process leading to the idea itself.
He laughed a little at her next comment, shaking his head. "I'm sensing some aggressive sarcasm," he pointed out. "Maybe you don't know me as well as you think I do."
He shrugged, having wanted to wait for Jaxon to fix the room but deciding against it. "I've been really tired lately, so I can't really go out. Unless I want people pointing and screaming." He tended to lose control quite easily much to his absolute detestation. "I've been trying to entertain myself and failing. If I didn't start soon I was going to start counting my arm hairs." Also, waiting for Jaxon would have involved asking Jaxon for help... which... was like four pegs down on the masculinity scale.
"Geez, a while. I've sort of lost track," he admitted. There was so much he'd been trying to forget for so long that it had actually taken him some time at Phalanx to start living in his present, aware and alert. The time before that, his mind had operated on auto-pilot.
"Since he got here, pretty much. I've been here for like six years." He hadn't really wanted a roommate, but he was grateful to have been paired with Jaxon. "I really like him," he pointed out. "He's really cool." He glanced at her, gesturing to a small chair by his bed. "You can sit down," he offered. "You want a soda?" he offered, undoubtedly having a stash of Dr. Pepper under his bed.
In hindsight, maybe offering her Dr. Pepper wasn't the best idea.
"He uh... told me he'd been trying to find you guys. I'm glad you're all back together." He'd felt for Jaxon in his situation, knowing he'd been struggling. "Sorry if I overstepped."
Post by Piper Addison Davies on Feb 2, 2019 3:15:57 GMT
Piper knew by now that Cam was Jaxon’s roommate, and it appeared that the two of them were pretty good friends. Still, in her mind, that didn’t excuse the fact that the two of them had gotten arrested, and she wanted someone to blame. The Jaxon that she had known was not the type of person to get caught, and he certainly wasn’t the type of person to willingly get in trouble. Before he had gotten caught, branded an arsonist, and tossed into juvie, he hadn’t really done anything that could warrant separating him from his siblings. At least, that was true as far as she could remember; it had been seven long years since Jaxon had been taken from her and the rest of her family, seven years full of abussed, stress, and moments that could have absolutely taken the place of Jaxon being an idiot when she still idolized him. So, while she was somewhat sure that the whole theft hadn’t been his idea, she wasn’t sure about his level of willing involvement.
From what she had seen from the moment that she had stepped into Phalanx House, she got the feeling that Jaxon was a little bit of a people pleaser, and as much as she loved him, she knew the kind of trouble that could get someone into. After all, she had trusted various foster fathers in the past, and that hadn’t exactly turned out well for her. Eventually, she stopped trusting anybody, except for her siblings. Jaxon, it appeared, hadn’t taken the same route, and whether or not it was because he felt safe and she was still preparing to get told to get the fuck out at a moment’s notice was lost on her completely. She was far too busy trying to not get too worked up at the man before her, who was currently the subject of her wrath.
Cam spoke, and her lips pressed into a tight line as she looked at the floor. What was she supposed to say? That it was fine? It wasn’t, and she wasn’t about to lie to him to spare his feelings on the matter. As far as she was concerned, he was a bad influence on her brother anyways, and she had never really been one to care about other people’s feelings. Unless, of course, the person was someone that she was personally close to. Someone she trusted. Instead, she nodded her head, indicating that she had heard him but that she was just awkward enough to not know what the fuck to say to that. However, he continued on, and her eyebrow arched as she crossed her arms over her chest. She knew it. Of course Jaxon wasn’t the one to come up with that little act. “Oh I’m sure he did, but why the fuck would you try to steal a whole mini fridge?” That’s right, she wasn’t pissed that they had tried to steal something. She had done that plenty of times on her own, a matter of simple survival. No, she was pissed that they had gotten caught and arrested. “One or two bottles in a jacket and you might have actually gotten away.” She shrugged. “But no. You lot had to go for the big prize and get yourself in trouble with the actual law.”
“And if you had been smarter, you wouldn’t have gotten caught at all.” Piper blinked up at him, a sweet smile on her face despite the remarks falling from her lips. She knew that she was being mean, but as far as she was concerned, this was someone who had endangered her continuing to have any kind of interaction with her brother, and that could not stand. So yeah, maybe she was a little biassed against him now. Sue her.
Everything clicked into place about his current situation, though. She had the opposite problem, she couldn’t shift at all unless she was completely focused, but it appeared that his control over his ability was tied to his exhaustion level. She couldn’t help but feel bad for the guy. At least she knew that she wasn’t about to shift into a big fuckin’ falcon in the middle of Bourbon Street if she got annoyed. “If you want, I can stay and help. Can’t promise I’ll be the best company, but I’d rather my brother not get all mopey because his roommate got crushed by furniture he couldn’t move by himself.” Even if that would solve a problem or two of hers, she wasn’t about to pay the price for it. Besides, maybe he was right. Maybe she didn’t know everything about him based on her snap judgement the day that she had walked into the police station, anger barely concealed in her eyes. Maybe. If there was one thing that she had learned in her years in foster care, and in interacting with generally shitty people, it was that her first instincts were often correct, and she was cautious about giving anybody a second chance. She had seen firsthand what happened when she gave second chances, and it was never good.
“I’m good standing.” Piper did reach out and take the Dr. Pepper though, she wasn’t completely rude. The fact of the matter was that everything about being in this room, open door or no, made her feel on edge and ready to run. Her fight or flight reflex was in overdrive, and she was mentally assessing the number of ways that she could use the can in her hand to her advantage if something was to happen. Instead, she popped the top and took a sip, smiling at the flavor. Over the years, most of the foster families that she had been with weren’t exactly the name brand beverage type, and if they were, well, something like that wasn’t meant to be wasted on the rent-a-kids that they got from the state. So this was actually her first time drinking a real Dr. Pepper. Admittedly, it tasted pretty good, though she was sure that she wouldn’t be robbing any convenience stores and trying to lift a whole damn mini fridge full of it.
“I didn’t even know he was in New Orleans until the day he found me.” She remembered it vividly, right down to the exact note that she had been playing when her eyes caught the mop of blonde hair that was so familiar and foreign all at once. “By that point I had lost track of Elliot and Ezra, too. Finding out they were all here…” It wasn’t something that she had been prepared for, and she stared down at the fingernails of her right hand, as if suddenly very interested in the short, little nubs of nail that she did keep. “Do you have any siblings?” Maybe then, he might understand. Maybe then he might see it from her point of view, if he didn’t already.
Post by Cameron Gallagher on Feb 6, 2019 17:03:19 GMT
Yanno, people kept asking why they'd tried to steal a mini fridge and honestly, Cameron didn't have an answer. "It was dumb, okay? We were high and had serious cravings for Dr. Pepper," he admitted. That and it was kind of fun, but something told him that wouldn't be a good thing to tell her. Murder sounded fun sometimes but it didn't mean Cam ran around doing it. "You probably don't need me to tell you this, but we weren't exactly weighing logical options." Yea, stealing a couple of bottles would have been easier. No, they hadn't been thinking about what would have been easier. They hadn't been thinking at all, really, which was why he found himself unable to satisfy everyone's curiosity on the matter.
"But... lesson learned. Substance abuse with your brother? Not a good way to spend free time." He wasn't blaming Jaxon in the least bit, but it was impossible not to acknowledge that they were a bad combination when under the influence of anything, really. I mean, Cam wasn't so sure he trusted he and Jaxon on a sugar high.
Piper threw at him that he wouldn't have gotten caught had he been smart, which, he couldn't argue with. "Yea... I wouldn't call that night one of my smartest moments." He wasn't particularly proud of it, despite what some people seemed to think.
She offered to stay and help, which surprised Cam, to say the least. "You don't have to help anymore-- you saved my life. So I think you've reached your quota," he assured. "Thanks, though." It was nice of her to offer, and far more than she needed to offer. "But you should stay. I mean... if you want." He wasn't going to pressure her into staying but he wanted the company. He wasn't sure why he did, especially since she was so pissed at him, but he wanted her there.
He nodded when she decided to stand, feeling a sense of accomplishment when she accepted the soda. Continuing to sift through his mess of possessions on the floor, he listened to her recall how she'd found her brothers. "Good thing for Phalanx, I guess," he acknowledged. The home had managed to aid in more than one major reunion. "I'm happy it worked out for you guys," he said genuinely. "I remember how upset Jaxon had been."
Did Cameron have any siblings? It seemed like a simple enough question, though he felt a pit in his stomach when the words hit him.
He nodded after a moment's hesitation, pausing even longer before he spoke. "A brother," he admitted, suddenly feeling like his throat couldn't swallow. It was a conversation he didn't want to have with her, and so he made an effort to redirect.
"You can turn into a bird, right?" he asked, and despite the quick change of subject his tone carried genuine curiosity. "That's pretty badass."
Post by Piper Addison Davies on Feb 8, 2019 10:17:41 GMT
Yeah, Piper was definitely still questioning why the hell they had stolen an entire mini fridge. She understood stealing; after all, that was something that she’d had to do more than once in her time living on the streets. The first week that she was on her own, she’d had to steal some clothes in order to bundle up at night, before she found the house that she had been squatting in when she had run into both Ezra and Jaxon on the same day. She had made use of her resources, but in the end… there were things that she’d had to do in order to scrape by. One of those things, however, was not stealing an entire mini fridge of Dr. Pepper because she was under the influence of multiple substances.
More than that, though, she wanted to know if this was something that was common for Jaxon. She hadn’t known him for seven years, and who knew how his time in juvie had changed him? More than anything, she really wanted to know just how many trips to the police station she would be making with Ash to bail his ass out, because that felt like the kind of thing that she should warn her boss about ahead of time. How would that conversation even go down? “Hey, sorry if I have to leave from time to time, my brother is an idiot who likes to get high and get arrested. I’ll try to keep it to a minimum”? Somehow, she had a feeling that wouldn’t fly with even the most liberal of employers, but she didn’t want to just leave Declan hanging, or make him depend solely on her coworkers when she had to run off. Maybe she just wouldn’t come down and bail him out, but let him feel all of her wrath the next time he saw her, instead. That was just as threatening of an option, right?
Piper couldn’t help but chuckle when he said that substance abuse with Jaxon wasn’t a good idea. “Yeah probably not, especially if this is the result. Like I said before, I’d really love to keep my brother out of jail for the time being.” Still, she wasn’t placing the blame for this wholly on Jaxon. She wasn’t even really placing it wholly on Cam, they were both being stupid, though she would be lying if she said she didn’t think that he had been the instigator for this particular bout of stupidity. She did feel a little bad for giving him such a hard time, but there was something about getting under his skin that was both easy… and a little on the enticing side to her. The explanation for it was beyond her at the moment, but she did know that for whatever reason… she wasn’t compelled to leave just yet. Whether or not that was a trend that was going to continue, well, they would have to wait and see, now wouldn’t they?
“If I leave, who’s going to keep you from getting crushed? You seem to be a magnet for that kind of thing.” There was a certain amount of sarcasm in her words, and she was intentionally laying it on thick. The fact of the matter, one that she was absolutely not going to say out loud, was that she didn’t really want to leave. There was certainly still a part of her that was on edge, looking towards the door and constantly analyzing his movements for signs of aggression or intention. So far, she hadn’t seen anything that made her want to run, and the fact that his door was still open made her feel a certain level of comfort. Lord knew she had plenty of experience with people hurting her, and they never wanted an audience, or to run the risk that someone could walk in on them. “Besides, Jaxon will probably be back soon… maybe, and I would really like to talk to him.” Honestly? Waiting around with Cam was seeming less and less like a thing that she wanted to avoid. He had gotten under her skin, annoyingly so, but it wasn’t something that she was avoiding. Nor was it something that she was questioning any more than she needed to.
It was sweet, what he had said about Jaxon, about being happy that her siblings had found a home where they could be together. Piper was happy too, she had spent so long trying to get custody of her siblings, and then trying to take care of them even after she had been kicked out… it was nice to have a place where they could just be together. Of course, there was still the part of her brain that was convinced that Mr. Perona was going to ask her to leave; there was a reason that she had been stocking up on supplies, which she had kept in a cloth bag under her bed. That was something that she hadn’t told Jaxon or, god forbid, either of her two little brothers.
Piper watched Cam as discomfort flashed over his face, and she felt a little guilty. She knew what it was like to have a topic that she didn’t want to talk about, and it was the same look that she got on her face whenever anybody asked about her time in foster care. So he had a brother. She filed away that information, as well as the look of discomfort and the obvious attempts to deflect. It might surprise some people, but she wasn’t one to push someone to talk about something that they obviously weren’t comfortable with, though she was certainly curious what had happened between the two of them to pull that kind of a reaction out of him. Maybe someday he would tell her, but that was something that she was going to leave up to him. She took another sip of her soda, a small smile curling over her lips at his question. “Mhmm, a falcon. It comes in handy a lot.” It was how she had kept an eye on her brothers when they were split up, ond after she had been kicked out. “And you… can change your face?” She was still learning about the supernatural world that seemed to operate in New Orleans, and she wasn’t sure of the exact term for it, but she was really curious. “Can you change other things? Like could you make your voice sound like someone else?”
Post by Cameron Gallagher on Feb 8, 2019 15:43:19 GMT
He smirked when Piper mentioned that she wanted her brother out of jail. He couldn't blame her-- so did he. "See, that's what we both said to each other not long ago. But booze and weed have terrible memory." They had made an effort not to get into trouble. It just happened. Wasn't that usually how it went?
"I'm good at it," he admitted. Getting crushed, he meant. He was good at getting crushed. In every sense of the word. He was indeed a magnet... for weight pushing him down. Sometimes, it felt like getting out of bed was impossible. He just didn't have the strength. Piper, though... she seemed to be lifting a lot of that weight. Whether she meant to or not.
"I wasn't always, yanno. I was an angel as a kid," he shared with pride, laughing at the memory. "Like... mowing lawns for neighbors, picking up their groceries, shoveling their driveways, even did my homework." He wasn't quite sure where he learned the reckless behavior-- it certainly hadn't been observed by watching his brother.
Normally, he'd have been anxious for Jaxon to return to relieve him of the burden of making small talk. Somehow, though, it wasn't seeming like a burden. Which, in hindsight, was crazy, because if anyone had asked Cameron who he'd wanted to spend time with that day Piper would not have been on his list of people.
"A falcon," he repeated, genuinely thinking it was pretty cool. He was relieved, and surprised, that Piper hadn't pushed him to talk about Malcolm. Maybe she wasn't as predictable as he'd thought. "You ever afraid of, like... getting eaten or something?" he asked, suddenly forgetting about the pile of shit sitting in front of him. He leaned back, his head resting on a book on his floor. "I mean... being a human is hard enough. And then you also have to worry about being a falcon." Surely there were dangers that came with being a falcon. Hunters, predators, maybe even diseases.
Another smirk pulled at his lips. "Yea, a skinwalker, we call it," he explained. "More than just my face," he said, holding up his hand and waving at her. As his wrist moved, her darker complexion ran down his fingers like dripping paint. It was pretty, he thought. Certainly an improvement from his bony, almost gray coloration. "Not exactly... well, sort of," he said in response to her question about changing his voice. "It's all physical changes to my own body," he explained, all the while, his voice gradually rising in pitch. "I can reshape my vocal chords... make my voice sound higher or lower. But I can't adopt a different voice." So, he couldn't pull a new voice out of thin air, but he could manipulate his own beyond recognition. "Usually when I change my appearance, the point is to not be me...not to become someone else." So matching someone else's voice exactly hadn't ever been something he felt the need to do.
Post by Piper Addison Davies on Feb 9, 2019 1:42:26 GMT
Trigger warning: Mentions of past sexual abuse of a child
The thing about Piper was that she had a tendency to make snap judgements. First impressions were everything to her, and Cam… well the fact that the first time she had officially met him was when he was sitting—high and drunk—at a police station with her brother hadn’t boded well for him in her eyes. If he was looking for her to like him, there was a slim chance of that happening after the whole mini fridge incident. However, she was also sure that given her little display of temper with both of them that her being his friend wasn’t exactly high on his priority list. She had started off the day thinking that was good, but now? Now she wasn’t quite as sure, and it fucking infuriated her.
The other thing about Piper was that she had a really hard time admitting when she was wrong, partially because she didn’t like to be wrong when it came to judging someone’s character, since it could insinuate that it could go the other way, and she knew what could come from that. More than that, though, was the fact that her snap judgments had a tendency to be negative, and if those judgments weren’t right… that usually meant that she didn’t have a reason to push them away, that there was someone in her life that could potentially hurt her or leave her behind the way so many people in her life had. So, in a way, her standoffish, judgemental, and generally bitchy attitude was a kind of defense mechanism that nobody at Phalanx had any reason to know about. Now, that defense mechanism was being threatened because of none other than her brother’s roommate, and that annoyed her. If one person slipped through the cracks, even if he was always going to be in her life in some form, then what was to stop another? And another? One of those people who came along was bound to be the one who finally shattered the hardened shell that she kept around herself, revealing the weak and vulnerable part of her that she kept locked away. Nobody needed to know about that. Not even her brothers.
“Hey, me too.” How could she not be? Between the situation that she had been in at home, the role that she had played, the tears she’d stifled as she let Jaxon stand between her and her mom’s boyfriends, the people who had left, the foster fathers who wouldn’t leave until they had their fill… how could she not be good at getting crushed? The secret, the skill that she had perfected so long ago, was not letting anybody know that you were crushed. It was staying strong, and finding a reason to. The fact that she hadn’t really found a way to deal with everything that had happened to her, or that she hadn’t really let herself feel any of it up until this point in her life, was not something that she let herself think about often. That would be admitting that she didn’t have control over her situation, and that would be admitting weakness. You didn’t survive the kind of life that she and her siblings had lived by admitting weakness.
“Wow, I can’t really picture it to be honest.” Piper tilted her head slightly to the side, regarding him and trying to imagine the sweet, ever helpful little kid that he was describing. In a lot of ways, the only person coming to mind was… well, any one of her brothers when she had asked them to do something, except maybe when Ezra was throwing some kind of tantrum. “From thoughtful angel to reckless… I don’t know, devil feels too strong. Demon maybe?” She shrugged, not really caring if the word choice fit him. There were plenty of people who would call her a demon too, it was just a matter of perspective. “How the hell did that happen?” Maybe it had something to do with the mysterious brother that he didn’t want to talk about. Okay, so maybe her curiosity was piqued more than she wanted to let on, but she wasn’t pushing. If he didn’t want to talk about it, she wouldn’t go any further, especially since she was actually managing to make conversation with someone, and she found it… pretty nice, no matter how determined she was to hate him.
She had never really thought about getting eaten, to be honest. Falcons didn’t have a lot of natural predators in the air that she knew of, especially in more urban areas. The exception were Great Horned Owls, those were assholes, and she had found herself on a chase or two involving one… and having to shift and hide, sans clothing, to avoid getting attacked. That was also not common knowledge, and she preferred to keep it that way. “Falcons are apex predators, which means that I don’t have a lot of predators to worry about. Great horned owls are dicks, though.” She laughed tucking some almost unruly curls behind her ear. “I’m more worried about some liquored up dumbass with a gun, to be honest.” She could fly fast, but not even she could dodge a bullet without being a certain distance away. “When I’m flying… I don’t really have to think. A lot of it is just letting myself run on autopilot. Which tends to suck when my autopilot decides it wants a field mouse and I have to remind myself that that’s not going to digest well when I shift back.” The thought of the last time that she had actually eaten a field mouse was enough to make her stomach twist, and she took another drink as if she hadn’t just casually mentioned that sometimes she craved bleeding meat as a bird.
The perks of shifter life.
Piper watched in unguarded awe as his skin shifted from his normal—she assumed—pale coloring to one that resembled hers a lot more. “Woah.” It was amazing, what she still didn’t know about the supernatural parts of New Orleans despite having lived on the streets with some of them for a year before she had been ushered into the warmth and relative safety of Phalanx House. “That’s… really cool.” The number of times that she could have used that, disguised herself as some kind of social worker or something to get Elliot and Ezra out of the foster home they were living in and into her care was limitless. She didn’t even think about how she could have used that ability to make herself look different to the foster fathers that had crept into her room at night. Instead, she turned into a bird, and he thought her ability was badass? “So you’re saying I don’t have to worry about you using my voice to give Jaxon a hard time?” A teasing comment that didn’t come with some kind of dig at him? Who was she becoming? “Seems like a pretty damn handy ability to me.”
Post by Cameron Gallagher on Feb 9, 2019 18:18:54 GMT
Cameron scoffed when Piper said the words. Me too.
"Wow, do we have something in common?"
The apocalypse was among them.
She couldn't picture Cam being young and sweet? It didn't surprise him. He shrugged. "Neither can I." And he'd lived through it, so that was saying something. He couldn't help but be amused, though, when she called him a demon. "Wow. Okay." So he was a demon now. Granted, it wasn't the first time he'd heard the implication. "Should I get my grandparents on the phone? You guys would get along great."
How had he changed so drastically? Could he really blame it on the death of his parents, or had it been something within him, like he was destined to get caught in this decline?
It didn't matter. It wasn't like he could tell her that.
"Uh, life," he explained. It sucked. And honestly, it should have been explanation enough. Life-- it's a dick.
Of course, his mood shifted when Piper brought up the struggles of eating mice. He grinned, his jaw dropping slightly when she let the words out. He was surprised she had shared so much. "So you've eaten a mouse," he said incredulously, chuckling. "That's fucking gross, Piper." Like, in case she didn't know. He couldn't imagine keeping something like that down. He didn't want to imagine it-- it made him feel sick thinking about it.
He smirked, feeling a sense of accomplishment when Piper was clearly interested in what he could do with his skin. He let his body return to its default setting, though, not wanting to deal with the aftermath of phasing for too long. "And, no, as much as fucking with you and your brother would bring me great joy, I could never get him to think I was you for long." He could pull it off with someone who didn't know her as well, if he was being careful. But people had pieces of them that Cameron couldn't duplicate. Mannerisms, ticks. People were more complex than the skin that covered them.
"Besides, you know, your eyes are really darty," he added with another smirk. "Darty? Not a word. They dart a lot. Things like that... your brother would pick up on." And, yanno, Cam had noticed because he's creepily observant.
"So, what do you and Jaxon do for fun?" he asked curiously, raising an eyebrow. What did Piper, the enigma, do in her spare time other than fly around eating mice? "In here we toss a ball back and forth a lot, play video games, but I'm told the female mind is far too complex for such archaic means of entertainment."
Post by Piper Addison Davies on Feb 14, 2019 5:26:43 GMT
Piper was just as shocked as anybody else that her and Cam had anything in common, aside from Jaxon of course. They were just so different, so opposite that having any kind of common ground was unthinkable, and having one was enough to jar her a little bit. “Oh see, now you ruined it by mentioning it.” She shook her head, looking to the side before her eyes darted back to him. She didn't like looking away from him for too long, not because of any kind of attraction between the two of them but because some part of her brain decided that he was the biggest threat in her vicinity, and it was that part of her brain that she chose to listen to most often. It had never really steered her wrong in the past, either, so she saw no reason why she shouldn’t continue with that particular practice.
The comment about his grandparents stung though, and she flinched back slightly. Piper knew what it was like to not be approved of by the people that were supposed to care for you, she had been on the receiving end of it multiple times. Thankfully, she had her siblings… but as far as she knew, Cam didn’t have anybody like that. Maybe that was why he was, well, the way that he was, but she wasn’t exactly keen on asking him about it either. It wasn’t any of her business, and she hadn’t exactly signed up for a “get to know you” session with the man who had nearly been the reason her brother had landed in jail. “Not unless you’re prepared for me to ream them out. Me giving you a hard time is definitely different than your grandparents doing it.” There was something fierce in her voice, it was the voice of someone who was ready to fight the entire world, the voice of someone who had been through their fair share of shit and who saw the difference between her world and the world that other people dealt with. She had a very strong sense of right and wrong, and while it might not exactly line up with what was lawfully right or wrong, it was that moral compass that guided her to do the things that she did. That was the reason that she had actually stepped in the room and helped him instead of leaving him there to get crushed by his furniture or, more likely, leave him for someone else to find. She couldn’t leave someone defenseless, no matter her personal feelings, and she would stick up for anybody whose family had turned their backs on them in one way or another. That was just who she was.
“Fair enough.” Life was a dick, and she knew that unless people found something to live for, it had the potential to be… absolutely awful, honestly. She didn’t know how people tolerated living day after day without people who relied on them, but now she had a feeling that was something that she was going to have to start to learn. Her and her siblings were, finally, in a place that felt mostly safe, and while she wasn’t exactly settling in and getting her hopes up, she knew that her siblings had already somewhat started to adjust to life at Phalanx. Not that she was all that surprised, the three of them had all gotten there before she had.
Piper watched the changes in Cam’s face like a hawk, noting the look of disbelief and glee on his face, and instantly felt that she had made a mistake in telling him that much about herself. Not even Jaxon knew about her eating a field mouse, nobody else knew, and now she had a feeling that kind of thing was going to be thrown back in her face. Great. “Oh believe me, I know. It took me a week to get the taste out of my mouth.” To say nothing of her body’s reaction to trying to digest a field mouse, fur and all. To say that it hadn’t been pleasant was the understatement of the century, but she was not about to give Cam more ammunition. “That’s the shitty part about being a shifter. You give that animal part of you an inch, and the next thing you know you’re swooping down and grabbing dinner on the go… except that you can’t digest it when you shift back.” She glanced down at the floor, thinking about the awful stomach pain, the vomiting, the bits of fur and bone that made her vomit more knowing that they had been in her stomach only moments before. There were some things that you just didn’t come back from, but the animal part of her brain paid no attention to the rest of her, which meant that occasionally she had to remain in her falcon form long enough to digest whatever she had eaten. Also not a pleasant experience, by the way.
“Good, honestly I feel like seeing a second me roaming around would send me into some sort of episode.” That, and she really didn’t want her younger, more impressionable brothers turning to the same guy who had stolen a mini fridge of Dr. Pepper with the oldest bad influence in their lives for advice, or anything of the like. “Are they?” She had never really noticed how her eyes moved, but the more that she thought about it, the more that it made sense. She was part bird, of course her eyes darted around the room. Well, that and she was constantly monitoring Cam and coming up with possible routes out of this room, but that was something else that wasn’t going to come spilling on out of her lips anytime soon. “I mean you do have about seven years of him not being in my life on your side, you still might get away with it. Not that I’m encouraging it or anything.” God only knew what he would say, or what Cam would find out about her. No, definitely not encouraging.
“For fun?” That one required a little bit of thought. When they were younger, most of their time had been spent protecting each other and their younger siblings from the various foster families that had housed them, and it didn’t leave a whole lot of time for fun. But there had been a few times, some instances when they had gotten a free afternoon or something and could actually spend time together. “Well, we used to do normal kid stuff. Play card games, go on the monkey bars, that kind of thing. Now? I guess we’ll see, I haven’t gotten to spend a lot of time with the resident criminal.” She shrugged, and then caught the end of his sentence. “I don’t know who told you that, but they’re full of shit, especially when it comes to someone like me.” She had zero problems telling anybody exactly what she thought of them at any given time, and if Cam wanted to know something, all he really had to do was ask. Whether or not she would tell him everything, well, that was another story entirely. “I love video games, and I can kick my brother’s ass at football any day of the week… I just usually skip out because the idea of fucking with my hand is enough to make me want to pass out.” She chucked, shaking her head as she pushed off of the wall, crossing the room and sitting down in the chair that he had indicated earlier without even really thinking about it.
Post by Cameron Gallagher on Feb 15, 2019 16:43:36 GMT
He probably had ruined it by mentioning it, but he still considered it a success. He laughed, raising his hands defensively. Noticing her response to his comment about his grandparents, though, he quickly continued. "I'm joking," he assured. "Come on, if I didn't joke about life I'd be a pile of obese flesh rotting in self despair." He knew very well that he was a lot, especially for someone who was getting to know him and treading water, unsure of what was okay to make light of. He didn't blame people like that, especially since he was pretty easily offended when the right buttons were pushed. But grandparents? They were nothing.
He did grin though, when she-- was she defending him? "Yea, it is," he agreed, his voice low. And the truth of the matter was that if his grandparents had been before him at that moment, giving him the shit that Piper was giving him, he wouldn't have been taking it so lightly.
While he could dish out the same shit, he almost didn't want to give her shit about the mouse if it meant he didn't have to hear about it. "Jesus Christ do you want me to puke on these books? Because I might, and that'd make me pretty upset," he said in good humor. "Do you regularly eat worms too? Of are you one of those upscale falcons?" As much as he joked about it, he did find the whole thing interesting. Still, he definitely didn't envy her. "I don't think I'd be a fan of that. I mean, if you don't have that much control in that form." It didn't sound like something he'd be good at fighting.
He smirked when she mentioned how she wouldn't want to see herself walking around. "Jaxon caught me once," he admitted. "I was... I was him. I wasn't doing anything illegal," he defended quickly, knowing that'd be a concern. Because he didn't actually want to get Jaxon into any trouble. "I thought he'd be pissed, but he just thought it was cool." If Cameron saw someone else pretending to be him, he probably wouldn't think it was cool.
Are they? "Definitely," he admitted. "I mean, it's not that weird. I've seen other people do it. But it's noticeable enough." He didn't feel like sugar-coating it would do her any favors-- now she was aware. He didn't think it was particularly weird, though. If anything, it was something that made her stand out. As if she needed something else to help her with that.
Asking her what she did for fun wasn't supposed to be something that required her to think. When she repeated the question, he raised an eyebrow. "Yea, fun? It's this thing that you have when you're doing something you enjoy... when no one's telling you how to spend your time," he elaborated. In case she had trouble grasping the concept.
Hearing that she played video games brought Cameron an unreasonable amount of joy. "So you're agreeing to come back another time to play Portal?" That was what he got from that. "Oh, you can definitely kick my ass in football too. Not into sports." Which apparently made him like... less masculine or something but they didn't really interest him and he was scrawny. He wasn't interested in embarrassing himself.
Post by Piper Addison Davies on Feb 24, 2019 3:36:32 GMT
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Piper was pleasantly surprised. It wasn’t that she thought that Cam was the scum of the earth for existing or anything, but she had never really thought what his sense of humor would be like, and finding out that it wasn’t really all that different from her own was something that she hadn’t really been prepared for. If she was being somewhat honest with herself, she was actually enjoying talking to him, though the persistent reminder at the back of her head that he was the one responsible for the little stunt that had led to her brother’s subsequent arrest was making her feel a little on the guilty side for even thinking that. She wasn’t sure what it was, maybe the fact that Cam didn’t seem cowed by her, or the fact that he wasn’t afraid to give her the same kind of hard time that she was giving him, but whatever it was, she was starting to think that maybe, just maybe, he was a better guy than she had initially thought. Not that she would be making that thought public anytime soon. It was hard enough for her to come to terms with the fact that she might actually be wrong about somebody.
There was something about the way that Cam was reacting to the information about the mouse that made Piper want to laugh. Normally, she didn’t exactly share how intense her predator drive was, especially with someone that she didn’t know, but the words had spilled out faster than she had been able to stop them. At least he wasn’t looking at her like she had lost her damn mind, though to be honestly she wouldn’t be surprised if he did. “If you do, don’t expect me to clean it up. Your oversensitive gag reflex is not my fault.” She smirked, pretending to consider his next question. “Oh no, I’m definitely one of those upscale falcons. Sitting around all day, grooming my feathers.” Honestly, the picture that she was painting for him was much prettier than most of the times that she actually spent as a falcon, sailing through polluted air, trying to enjoy the sights and battling the reflex that urged her to hunt.
“I have control.” Defensiveness sharpened her tone, and she bit down on her lip. “It’s just… the predator instinct is something that’s ingrained in all predators, a centuries old practice. Sometimes, it’s hard to fight, especially for me.” It wasn’t that she wasn’t disciplined, she was, but she reveled in the freedom of actual flight and let herself get lost in it, and sometimes that lead to her control slipping just enough that her body’s natural instincts took over. And ate mice. The memory of it alone was enough to send her stomach rolling, and she was only too glad to move onto a new subject.
“You… turned into Jaxon?” Disbelief flooded her face, but she dug her heels in the second that she started thinking about Cam’s face morphing into that of her brother’s. There was something about that whole idea that was just too weird, and she sure as hell wasn’t going there. “You better fucking not have.” The words were tinted with a little bit of lecture, but also a lot of surprise. She was too in shock thinking about the skinwalker before her as someone other than himself, and the idea unsettled her. At his next words, however, she was able to smile, even if it felt a little on the forced side. “That sounds like Jaxon. I’m pretty sure I could murder someone and he’d still be happy to see me.” Not that she would murder anybody, but it would be interesting to see Cam’s reaction to that statement all the same.
“Huh, weird.” So he had picked up on something about her. Piper tried to crush the somewhat triumphant feeling that had started in her, reminding herself that part of the reason her eyes were darting around so much was because she was actively searching for any and all escape routes in case something happened. She was the type of girl who planned everything, right down to the dufflebag that she hadn’t really moved out of because she wanted to make sure that anything she wanted to keep with her was ready to go the second that she grabbed that bag. “Must have something to do with spending half of my time as a literal bird.” She shrugged off the idea as if it was nothing more than a fact of her life, but she was also making a conscious effort to keep her eyes in one place, though she couldn’t keep her eyes from darting around completely. Keeping them in one place for too long just didn’t feel natural, and if anything, made her feel more uncomfortable than she liked to admit.
“I know what fun is.” She rolled her eyes at him, her cheeks flushing in embarrassment. “Excuse me for getting caught off guard by a question that didn’t involve my shifter diet.” And then she mentioned video games and his whole face lit up. Of course it did, most of the boys that she knew around her age were obsessed with video games, and finding a girl who liked them was, supposedly, a rare thing. “Hey now, I never said that.” Alone in his room with him? Already she was starting to second guess the fact that she had stayed in here this long, and she couldn’t really see herself coming back, unless she had a reason to… “Tell you what. I’ll come back here and play Portal 2 on two conditions. One, you teach me how the hell to play because I’ve never even heard of Portal. Two… you need to cheer me on for the next game that breaks out in the backyard.” A smirk peeled over her face as she took a sip of her Dr. Pepper, trying to ignore the smile on his face and pretending like it didn’t make her feel like the sun was shining.
“Right now, nothing… but it’s kind of important.” She looked down at her hands, each one of them looking thin and fragile in a way that made her nervous sometimes. “I play violin, which… kind of depends on being able to use my hands. I break something, and it heals wrong? I could be out for a long time re-learning how to play properly.” She sat down, immediately second guessing the action that had brought her closer to the man that she barely knew, the one that she had to keep reminding herself was trouble. “What do you do for fun? Other than getting crushed by furniture.”
Post by Cameron Gallagher on Mar 1, 2019 2:24:50 GMT
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"It's not oversensitive-- it's repulsed by the thought of me picking mouse guts out of my teeth," he said with a laugh. He was pretty sure that was something that warranted a gag reflex, but hey, maybe he was oversensitive. "I'm a little squeamish," he admitted more seriously, shrugging. "Blood and stuff... I don't do it." So... now she had some ammo.
"I didn't mean it like that," he assured when Piper got defensive about the control that she had. "Sorry. I mean... having to fight the instinct to do something, though. It's gotta be hard sometimes." He knew what that was like so he could empathize with that.
He had been ready to defend himself the moment he admitted to having used Jaxon's face. "Look-- I'd never do anything illegal or dangerous using someone else's face. I'm not an ass," he pointed out. He hadn't even been willing to use someone else's face to get away with the crime he and Jaxon had gotten busted for. "I just wanted to be able to follow someone without her knowing it was me. And I know that sounds serial killer-...ish... but she's stealing money from Agard's." So... he'd had a good reason.
He smirked when she acknowledged her bird eyes. "I like it," he said... a little too abruptly. "I mean... it's fine." What was he saying?
A grin fell over his face as she struck back. Maybe she did know how to have fun. "Hey-- you've gotta have those kinds of answers ready to go," he said, snapping his fingers. "Sounds like a good deal to me. Bring your brain-- it's strategic," he warned with a smirk. Running around and shooting at things-- that wasn't for him.
His brows furrowed when she talked about her hands. He got the idea that she was genuinely concerned about something happening to them. Despite not quite understanding, he nodded. "I hope you can keep playing without having to relearn... but you don't strike me as the type to step down from a challenge." If anyone could fuck up her hands and then relearn how to play the violin, it was Piper.
She asked him what he did for fun and he pointed his thumbs at the piles of books he was practically lying in. "I like to draw, too. That's pretty much it." He didn't consider himself a particularly exciting individual. His childhood had been full of running around making his own fun outside fueled by imagination and admiration for his brother.
"Do you have any favorite types of food, or are you all about the mice?"
