WHO: Talcott Hester & Nick Furcillo
WHEN: backdated to right before the full moon before moon day
WHAT: chatting, coming clean about werewolf things, and Nick makes breakfast
WARNINGS: None!
He shrugged, grabbing a cheese shredder and trying not to look his standard of ‘awkward AF↪
Nick had used Ignis’s kitchen enough by now that he didn’t have to stare despairingly at the various cabinets and drawers, wondering where a whisk was. He hadn’t meant to get so familiar - he hadn’t meant to stay here longer than a few days, to get his feet up under him - but everyone had been so welcoming and kind. They’d treated Abi and himself with such an open consideration that Nick had allowed himself to think of what had happened back home as a nightmare - a terrible, detailed, implausible nightmare.
It’d been a nice thought. Of course, it hadn’t been true.
Now, he was grateful for the kitchen, because it gave him something to focus his nervous energy on. A breakfast casserole involved a whole lot of chopping and stirring, and it was nice to do while he thought about where he could purchase a cage. One that would hold him, in - oh shit, less than a week. Where had the time gone? Less than a week. And here he’d been, playing at being normal, being friendly with a bunch of compassionate people who didn’t know any better, spending so much time with Abi…
Nick stirred faster, lost in thought, and then promptly jumped a little when Talcott entered the kitchen, and immediately flushed at his reaction. “Hey,” he greeted him, flashing a half-smile, chagrinned. “Didn’t see you come in.” Talcott had shown him and Abi around early on; it’d been nice and stabilizing having someone around his age to hang out with. It might have been easy to get lonely, otherwise.
Talcott just laughed a little at the jump and set his book bag down on one of the counters. It was nice having Nick and Abi around - not that Noct and everyone weren't good too, but having people more his age had been fun. Even if all the weird time stuff made it so the others were younger than Talcott remembered from home they were still firmly in the "adults" category in his mind.
"Sorry, man," he offered as he moved to the fridge to pull out a juice carton. "Want some juice?" he asked as he pulled down a glass.
"What are you making? It smells amazing."
“Sure, thanks.” Nick accepted the juice glass, took a swig, and set it to the side so it wouldn’t be in the way. “It’s just-- you know, breakfast casserole. Uses up all the leftover veggies, keeps forever. Good hot or cold.” He shrugged, grabbing a cheese shredder and trying not to look his standard of ‘awkward AF’. “I’m kind of in that mode of feeling grateful and overwhelmed in terms of how to pay that back, so-- food. I cooked for a whole camp this summer. Managing to have something in the fridge for you lot’s relatively easier. The ingredient quality is better than prison-grade, so you already have that going for you,” he half-quipped. No shit, the canned stuff at Hackett’s Quarry had literally had the words ‘prison-grade’ printed on the side of the cardboard box. His Italian grandmother would have gone on strike.
He eyed Talcott, venturing forth carefully: “I understand they more or less did the same thing for you? Took you in and all?”
Talcott poured his own glass and leaned against the counter. "Yeah food here is definitely way better than back home for me too," especially the longer the night wore on and hunting animals stopped being as much of an option. "But I have seen Iggy do wonders with a can of beans," he pointed out.
He was about to point out that Nick didn't have to payback them for anything when the question came. "Sort of?" he answered with a question and a shrug. "I've known them all my whole life though. My grandpa worked for the Amicitia family, and Iris and Gladio always made sure I could hang around and do things with them. But uh - usually Gladio and the other three are a lot older than me, like they were all thirty whatever when I was last at home."
Nick paused in his motions, considering it. “That must be-- weird,” he concluded with a little shake of his head. “I guess Vallo isn’t really like… consistent where it pulls people from, huh.” Which made him glad - just a little - that at least he and Abi were from the same timeframe. It’d made some things awkward, but at least they knew each other.
“It’s not the same,” he said, and poured the egg mixture into the greased pan, “but I have a sister who’s ten years older than me? And that always seemed a lifetime, even though it’s really not.” Nick looked back to Talcott. “I guess this place is loads better than home? Iggy said something about a darkness.” Which wasn’t a phrase he was used to saying, but he could roll with it.
"I'm sorry you're stuck away from her," Talcott replied. Missing family was hard, not that he had any to miss. Well, he supposed the others from their world were that, but as far as the family he was born into he was the last.
"The Night when All turns to Naught", he answered, pulling on what the Cosmogony called it. "Which sounds cooler than it actually is," a huff of a soft laugh at that. "But uh - basically the nights got longer and longer and then one day that was it. The daemons, creatures inflicted by the Scourge, in our world only come out in the dark so an endless darkness is right up their alley, we're pretty outnumbered these days," he added. It was all fairly matter of fact. He'd spent most of his life in the situation, he knew it more than he could remember the time before.
Nick’s eyebrows had raised at the name of the darkness - damn, that sounded pretty fancy - but it sounded so terrible that he wasn’t the least bit jealous. Daemons, creatures… and a night that never ended. “At least our night of monsters concluded at sunrise,” he said, shaking his head. “I mean. Sort of concluded, I guess.” Until the next full moon.
Nick double-checked the oven temperature and put the casserole in, setting the timer. Nothing to do now but clean up. “I didn’t - neither Abi nor I really knew creatures - demons, monsters… werewolves… whatever you want to call them - existed,” he explained as he started to scrub down the plates, glad that he wasn’t facing Talcott. It made talking about it easier. “But it’s all of what you’ve known? I guess Vallo’s kind of a good break for you.”
Talcott started putting whatever was left on the counter that needed to go back in the fridge there. "Yeah, it's been nice," he admitted. Even if it still sort of felt like cheating too. Made him wonder what he'd done that could possibly have caused him to deserve this kind of break when others didn't get it. "Even if it still feels weird sometimes to do more normal things," he did little air quotes around the word normal, because what even was that.
"I hadn't heard of some of the stuff here before here?" he offered. "Like the daemons back home were pretty specific and there's not much around here that matches," well except that week the flans descended. "But some of the other stuff here is new to me too." He leaned back against the counter once everything was back in the fridge.
"Some of the grey area is new though?" he continued. "The daemons back home, once it was at that point, there was no going back, no saving anyone or reasoning. It's not like here where something someone might call a monster isn't that, or not entirely at least?" A brief pause. "Like werewolves," he went with, latching onto the example Nick had provided. "There's werewolves here among the local population and from what I've read and researched most of them are just regular old people too - have jobs and everything else and just happen to turn into wolves from time to time."
“Thanks,” Nick said as Talcott helped put stuff up, and wiped down the counters. Spend a summer cooking for kids, and you learned real fast how to minimize mess. “I’m glad you’re getting a chance at… you know. Normal. Or, you know.” He mimicked the same air quotes. “‘Normal’. You and the rest of them.” He’d read some of what they had been through… and he couldn’t imagine what awaited any of them home. This place really was big on the pros and cons, honestly.
As Talcott’s conversation continued, Nick kept his eyes on the counter as he wiped a spot that was already sparkling. “Oh yeah?” he asked, feigning mild interest, knowing his poker face was shite, but he wasn’t sure what else to do. “Our-- the head of our camp was--- Abi said he was a werewolf. None of us had any idea; Mr H. always--” Nick glanced at Talcott. “He always seemed fine to me. Nice, I mean. I don’t know what happened, why we were attacked like we were. I guess he escaped or…”
He tossed the rag to the side and turned to face Talcott, crossing his arms over his chest. “Do you have any suggestions? For who I might-- talk to about-- the full moon? I was bitten myself, you see. And it’s coming up and--” He chewed on his lip. “Someone told me that there’s this castle that’s got a lot of space. Skyhold or something? And that there’s a metal worker who might make a container or whatnot.”
The only surprise that Talcott seemed to show was a raise of his brows - but it seemed like most people here were something other than just run of the mill humans and he'd started to get used to that particular quirk of Vallo. But he wasn't suddenly thinking differently about Nick, or suddenly wary of him. He had no reason to. And while Talcott maybe wasn't the best at people, he was good enough to clearly see that Nick was struggling with it.
Mostly he just felt bad and kind like he wanted to give Nick a hug as Nick recounted their incident with the head of camp. It seemed like a damn nightmare.
Talcott leaned back against the counter again as he listened. There was a nod at the end. "Yeah, Skyhold. I'm sure there might be something there, if not I'm sure we can figure something out in the woods?" A pause. "Brigitte is the blacksmith, she'd be able to help you out, her stuff is amazing."
He shifted his weight as he thought about the rest of it. "I'm not really sure who specifically to talk to about werewolf stuff in general? But I can look around? There's probably some werewolf bowling league or something knowing Vallo."
Well, that had gone okay. Nick chewed on his lower lip and waited for the other shoe to drop - some semblance of appropriate horror, or fear, or… whatever. Nevermind that Talcott had never seemed anything but chill. Still, none of it came. Nick snorted out a surprised laugh at the notion of a werewolf bowling league, and it went a long way to relieving some of the tension he’d accumulated, his rigid posture deflating into normalcy.
“Maybe I’ll look for the league after making sure I’m not going to traumatize and murder people in a few nights,” he said, his voice wry. “But yeah, I’ll follow up with… all those people. I guess,” he said, his inflection changing as he gratefully moved the conversation away from his curse (because it really was his least favorite topic of conversation), “there really is all kinds of… athletic clubs and the like here? I miss football. Aussie rules,” he added, and belatedly realized he was probably speaking a foreign language to the other man. “It’s ah--- you clobber each other over a ball. But there are guidelines.” A pause. “..that are mostly followed.”
As far as Talcott was concerned Nick was a good guy. Whatever he might happen to change into for a night here and there shouldn't change that. And if he could help with that? Well, he would. After all that's what friends were for, right?
He laughed a little at the description of football. "Yeah we got a couple sports like that back home," he replied. Not that he had ever played a lot of them, but even in the dead of darkness people would have random pick up games and even a few leagues here and there. Something to focus on other than fighting. He grinned. "Iris tends to turn Monopoly into that though, just a heads up if she ever asks you to play."
Seeing that the timer on the oven was getting close to going off he started to grab some plates out. "But the whole werewolf thing? We got your back on that, Nick," he offered, shrugged lightly. "I think you and Abi are kind of stuck with us now," added with a wry grin.
Nick shot him a quick, shy grin, and grabbed the oven mits. “It’s cool,” he said with the sort of faux-casual tone that he used to cover up any particular depth of feeling. “I guess we can deal with being stuck with you guys, even if you threaten us with Monopoly.”
Board games? Way better than massacres and monsters any day. Nick pulled the casserole out of the oven. “Dibs on a corner piece.”