Aidan O’Reilly (alwaysathief) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2019-09-24 20:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | #december 2017, aidan, aidan x knox, knox |
Who: Aidan and Knox
Where: The O’Reilly House
When: Afternoon, Sunday, December 31
Status: Complete
Aidan didn’t know what it was about the little bronze bird, but the moment he saw it he had to have it. He’d been walking down Main Street, minding his own business, just out for a stroll to see what kind of damage the fog had done on the town. It amazed him how quickly people were able to cover it all up and move on, washing the blood off the street like sweeping dust under a rug. The only remaining signs of the incident seemed to be the damage done to some of the buildings, but he knew those would be repaired with haste and then people would move on and forget, at least until the next calamity.
The bird was on a table, sitting just on the other side of the glass inside an antique shop. Loomis’s shop of blah blah blah. Aidan didn’t know, nor did he care. But when he saw the bird, he continued on, then stepped casually into the shop. He wandered for a few minutes, picking up things here and there, watchful of the shop owner who was nowhere to be found. There didn’t appear to be any cameras either. He didn’t even look at the bird as he pocketed it, then continued to window shop for a few more minutes before leaving.
It was an easy lift, but every one was just as exhilarating. The adrenaline kept Aidan warm despite the weather, but he hurried to his truck a short time later, wanting the chance to examine his prize up close. He decided it was a raven, small enough to fit in his hand, but weighing a hefty amount, like a paper weight. It seemed to be made of solid bronze and Aidan stared into its eyes as if daring it to blink. He smiled, eventually setting it aside before making his way back home, the bird riding shotgun in the old pickup truck.
Aidan bound up the porch steps and into the house, slamming the door behind him. For a thief that could be as quiet as a cat, he could be hella loud when he wasn’t working at it. “Hey Knox!” He called out. “Where you be?”
The cold didn’t bother Knox in a physical way, he’d always been immune to the negative effects of any weather no matter what form he was in. He was nature, so nature couldn’t harm him. But that didn’t mean he didn’t appreciate the coziness of being indoors when it was freezing out. There was something to be said for a roaring fire when the windows were showing the outside world white with snow. Knox was lounging in the living room of the old house, sprawled out on his belly on the rug in front of the fireplace, his hands busy with some whittling. He felt Aidan coming home before he even opened the door, but the call of his name was a surprise. “Yo!” Knox called back. “In here, littlest bro.”
Aidan grinned and turned towards the living room, shedding his coat along the way and dropping it on the couch before plopping on the floor beside Knox. He knew that no matter how old he got, he would always be the youngest, especially to Knox. It had bothered him as a child, made him want to prove he was older, more mature, even when he wasn’t at all, but he’d long ago stopped caring about being the baby. “I got myself a little something,” he said, holding the bronze bird out in the palm of his hand. “Check it out.” He didn’t always feel like showing off his prizes. More often than not, they disappeared into his room, never to be seen again. But this one excited him for reasons he couldn’t explain and he needed someone to share it with.
Knox knew that when Aidan said ‘got,’ he usually didn’t mean with money, but that had never bothered Knox much. Stealing was just the way of things -- animals did it all the time, and what were humans but very smart animals? He looked keen as he set down his stick and knife and reached out to take the trinket. It was shiny and nearly glowed in the firelight, intricately carved and lovely. Knox rolled over onto his back, holding the bird up and turning it over in his hands, peering at it curiously. There was something strange about it, a sort of undercurrent of Moreness that Knox couldn’t place. “It’s pretty,” he said, his eyes ticking to Aidan. “.... more than that, too, I think.” He offered it back. “Where’d it come from?”
“More than that?” Aidan asked, curiosity spiking. He’d not picked up anything extra, but he wasn’t Knox either. The familiar had powers that Aidan didn’t always understand, but just accepted as they were. Aidan took the bird back and tried to reach into it himself, but was unable to feel anything but an absolutely brilliant conduit of electricity. He could run a current through the bird that would fry someone to a crisp. “An antique shop in town. It had all kinds of weird things, not just old lady furniture. Like books. Games. Clocks. All antique-y though.” He hesitated to call it all junk when he’d been so taken with something from inside.
Knox could feel Aidan trying to magically tap into the bird but not quite get there. It wasn’t surprising, but still a tiny bit disappointing, because he was curious too. There were a lot of things he could sense and pick up on, but they were often not specific. Or Knox just didn’t know how to interpret them. He rested his fingertips on his chest and hummed vaguely. He thought he knew what shop Aidan was talking about, but he’d never gone in. It had a bad aura around it. But a lot of Point Pleasant did, didn’t it? “Old things can have a lot of resonance that sticks around, maybe that’s it,” Knox murmured. “Good find though, it sure is shiny.” He gave Aidan a lopsided grin.
“Thanks,” Aidan smiled, shifting the bird from one hand to the other, enjoying the weight of it. “Do you think...do you think that was the worst of it? Or just the beginning?” He asked, abruptly changing conversation topics. “There’s death all over town. Blood and gore and, shit, the town’s all torn up. I keep thinking, if this was just the beginning, we’re in for a ride.” They went through a lot there in Point Pleasant, more than he suspected most towns ever had to deal with, but it felt like they were sliding towards a darkness they’d never seen before. Aidan thought the O’Reillys could weather any storm, but this one was starting to make him nervous.
Knox rolled easily with Aidan’s subject change. Conversations always flowed pretty well with his family, even when they weren’t easy for him with people on the outside. He just understood the O’Reilly’s more instinctively. Knox’s smile faded as he considered. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly after a moment. “I want to hope it’s the end, but ... it doesn’t feel like it. But on this dark and bloody ground, I don’t know that there will ever be an end. There’s something old here that feeds, and I think it’ll always be here. If the fog’s connected to something bigger though ... I don’t know, lil bro. I wish I did.” Knox sounded genuinely regretful. He reached over to give Aidan’s knee a squeeze. “I do know we’ll get through it though. We always do.”
Aidan tended to think he could handle the darkness that was there in Point Pleasant, but this time it had fed on his big brother and that shook him up more than he was willing to admit. He’d’ve never wished for Max to be back behind bars, but a week more might’ve kept him from being hurt. How fucked up was that that prison was safer than home? “I know,” he muttered. “I’m just worried about Max. And wondering if we need to, like, amp up our wards or something. Cause if the fog’s part of something bigger…” Aidan sighed as that thought lingered, unable to figure out what that might mean for them. “You’ll keep an eye on him, won’t you?”
Right, Max. Knox’s expression clouded over even more. The injury had been very worrisome to all of them, and combined with Max’s behavior the day before ... well, he was definitely concerned. Knox just wasn’t sure there was anything any of them could do about it. They still had no real idea what had been in that fog, or what they were dealing with. “Of course I will,” he said to Aidan for now, giving a solemn nod. He kept eyes on all of them as much as possible. Max might not have been O’Reilly blood, but he was still part of the family. “I agree about the wards though ... your sister and I are doing the new year dedication ritual tonight, I’ll bring it up to her.” The wards would be stronger with Aidan and Patrick involved as well, so hopefully they could get the patriarch on board as well.
“Bout what time are you doing it?” Aidan asked. “Need me to join?” It wasn’t exactly how Aidan had planned on ringing in the new year, but he could hold off on the drinking for a little while longer if it meant keeping his family safe. He’d learned a long time ago that he couldn’t properly perform magic while toasted. The last time he’d done that, he’d shocked himself so bad he’d had scars for weeks and Aidan hadn’t even thought it was possible. It just went to show him that anything was possible when you were falling down drunk.
Knox gave him a wry little smile. “Late. And it’s sort of a solitary thing for her, I think,” he said. Shayna Mae had been doing the ritual alone for the past few years, after taking it over from their father, and she liked to do it nude, so brothers weren’t usually invited. “Enjoy yourself tonight. We’ll need you to help strengthen the wards though, maybe something we can do tomorrow ... or whenever nobody’s hungover.” Knox chuckled faintly. It made him wish -- not for the first time -- that Max had magic too. Four was more stable than three, and all Knox could do was amplify what the witches already had.
If Aidan had known his sister was going to do the ritual in the nude, in the snow, he would’ve never offered. But he’d always left that up to someone else, the right of being the baby in the family, and until someone called upon him to step in he was fine with that arrangement. Maybe that made him a bit of a slacker, but they all had their roles to play and he felt like his was better served elsewhere. “Tomorrow’d be better. Maybe late afternoon. Then we call all sleep in,” he grinned. “Just maybe hide the liquor so dad doesn’t start on the bottle again. We need him sober if he’s gonna be doing magic.”
Knox grinned back, because gods knew he liked to sleep even if he didn’t strictly have to. He didn’t comment on Patrick and the liquor, because gods also knew that man liked his booze. If it got hidden, he would find it, and bitch the entire time until he did. They would work it out, either way. “That sounds good. I’ll leave the Patrick-wrangling to you two, he don’t listen to me much anymore,” Knox said. He sounded casual about it, but it was still kind of sad. His mission was to protect the family, but there were some things he couldn’t shield them from, like their own dark habits. He stretched with a little groan and rolled over before sitting upright. “You got big plans tonight?”
Aidan tried not to think too much about his father, which meant he thought about him more than he would’ve liked. Sometimes he felt like he was enabling him, but even if he wasn’t making moonshine, Patrick would still find something to drink. What he knew for certain was that, no matter how much he drank, he would never allow himself to become like his father. RIght now it was fun, a vice but not an addiction. He hoped if it ever got that bad that someone would be able to drag him out of it, but he was pretty sure his father was way past that point. “Naw,” he answered. “I might get sloshed and set off some fireworks. Thought that might be fun. But otherwise I’m just hanging out tonight. Not really into the party scene.”
Neither Aidan nor Shayna Mae had ever been huge partiers, and Knox was kind of grateful for it. He wanted them to have fun and drink deep of life, of course, but being protective of them was woven into his very essence, and they were all safer at home. Max had been a different story, but Knox hadn’t kept as close an eye on him growing up as he had the others. Something he occasionally regretted, considering where Max had ended up. But he was free now, back in the family, and there was nowhere to go but forward. “We’ll prob’ly catch you after the ritual then,” he offered with a little grin. “Ring it in together.” Knox reached over to clap Adian’s shoulder and give it a squeeze.
“Sounds like a plan,” Aidan grinned back at Knox, giving his hand pat before rolling up to his feet. “I’m gonna hunt down some food. You hungry?” He doubted Knox would want to eat anything he made, but thought it was polite to offer. He knew Knox would’ve done the same, though whatever he made would’ve definitely been worth eating. Maybe tomorrow they’d feast for the start of a new year. If he was feeling up to eating, he suspected he could goad Knox into it. He’d even offer to help, so long as that didn’t ruin it.
Knox was both always and never hungry, in that weird paradoxical space he lived in between Human and Not. He laughed a bit, already reading Aidan’s unspoken question under the question. Knox got to his feet as well and thumped the boy on the back again. “Come on, I’ll make you something,” he said, grinning. If he didn’t make a hearty snack for Aidan, he would end up munching on chips or Pop Tarts or something not nearly as delicious. It would be a pleasant distraction for a little while, something to do with his hands for one of his family. “You worked up quite a little thievin’ appetite, I bet,” he teased as he headed toward the kitchen.