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[bloodprayer]

⛧
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[confiscated]

Michael, right?

It's Tate.

[bloodprayer]

hey! you bought the snake, right?

[ he knows full fucking well who this is. his heart hammers in his chest, his mouth goes dry, and his fingers slip over his phone in his haste to respond. ]

what's up? you need help with your new family member?

[confiscated]

that's me. glad u remember

i could use a little bit of that offered help setting shit up, yeah

[bloodprayer]

okay! no problem. send me your address and i'll drop by soon.

i hope the [ what did tate call her again? oh, right - ] scaly bitch hasn't gotten you into too much trouble.
did you decide on a name for her yet?

[confiscated]

k

[Tate doesn't double think it, linking the details to his beachside place. The cramped one floor apartment with a decent view, it's become his new home and he doesn't even consider the concept of the karma of its first visitor being his invited guest, versus the intrusion of Derek's friend in their other homes.]

maybe i should just keep calling her that
it's the stand in for now, at least.
open to suggestions.

[bloodprayer]

[ Michael has no idea how to drive, so - the deliveries he's handled for his job have all been on foot to places nearby. He had to get to the porter to Heropa on foot or through busses and hitchhiking, but he's been here for a while now. Getting to Tate's place won't take long.

Heropa sure is sunny. He didn't think his dad would have wanted to live somewhere sunny. ]

i'm not very good with names! maybe you could name her after somebody you know.
or after a character in a book you like.

though i think scaly bitch has enough character to stand up on its own.

[quickfingers]

[x]

[Here's the thing about anonymous posts and trying to meet up with fellow anonymous people; there's high risk, high reward. Doubly so when you're the Deputy Ambassador of a porter city and have anon comments talking about your dad's previous murder sprees potentially connecting back to your person when you decide to be a fool and try to meet up with a stranger. Who also had a murderous father? At least - well, at least there's a weird forged bond here already. Murderous dads. Fucking great.

Peter's in De Chima faster than even he imagined, dawdling around a pizza joint that's not too far from the porter. He waits to give directions to it, watching the plate glass window from across the street to see who comes and who goes from a park bench. Great thing about super speed is the ability to watch everything go by in slow motion when you want to. Bad thing about super speed is you become an insufferable prick when it comes to waiting.

Fuck. Fuck. He should bail? He should just bail. He's bailing. He's sitting back down. He's filling in the last word on this crossword and rubbing at his eyes as he waits for literally anyone to come by and go inside the dingy mom and pop pizzeria.]

[bloodprayer]

[ It's obvious, as soon as Michael enters the pizza joint, that he's the guy Peter's been waiting for. The nervous way he glances at the bell above the door that chimes when he heads inside, the way he keeps wringing his hands in the hem of his shirt, the way his eyes dart around the room looking for someone who seems as out of place or as nervous as he is... there's no subtlety here. He may as well be wearing a sign around his neck that screams ask me about my psycho dad.

He's just a kid, and he doesn't look like a big enough reward to make up for the risk Peter's taking. He stands at the front of the store until someone on staff asks him if he's okay, and, red-faced, he nods and puts his dead down, looking at the floor as he walks inside. He sees Peter, but his eyes pass right over him, even if they make direct eye contact. There's a second or two where it looks like he's figured out that Peter's the guy he's supposed to be meeting, but the final dots don't seem to connect. He ducks into a booth in an alcove by the window, whipping out his phone and frantically typing into it. Presumably, while Peter's watching. ]

are you here? did you bail?
it's okay if you bailed. but i'm here
i'm the guy with the blond hair. blue t-shirt

[quickfingers]

[Peter lifts his head when he first sees Michael, getting an up close and personal once over of him in the fraction of a few seconds it takes for the door behind him to properly close. Speed has its perks, like letting him find out there's a knife and a set of housekeys in Michael's pockets and little else on his person. Not a lot to go by, Peter leans back against the wall with his arms crossed as he slips back into a reasonable rhythm for the moving world around him.

Brows raised, however.]

Blond, blue shirt. You're my not-date. Sup?

TEXT.

[bragnificent]

[ Reggie's not really sure how good of an idea this is, but-- it kind of feels weird not to reach out? Considering how the two of them left things, that is. Reggie's feelings about it all (not that he even knew what those were before he left) are definitely more complicated now since he's been home and back, but, well. Complicated isn't always bad.

And he won't really know until they interact again, because all he can do otherwise is work off his memories, which are not necessarily reliable given... well, everything. How long it's been for him. How drunk they were. But either way they're friends, right? So. ]

michael hey
its reggie
howve u been

[bloodprayer]

[ Michael sees Reggie's name pop up on his phone and his heart almost stops. Did - he do this? Sabrina interrupted him when he was bleeding over Reggie's floor and praying for insight on how to bring him back, but, uh - maybe the pentagram was enough? Maybe the universe saw Michael was willing to bleed for him and pulled Reggie back from the ether.

Or something. That makes sense, right? Michael's stupid enough to falsely take credit for this, at least for now. He's excited to see Reggie's name - but he's just as excited to think he has dominance over the porter. ]

ahhh!!! you're back!
i was scared i wouldn't see you again. i missed you!!
how have you been? how are you NOW? do you remember being here? i guess you do, if you're talking to me. um um um
oh! i've been
i mean
wait, fuck how i've been? i missed you, that's all that matters. sabrina, she missed you too!
oh, i know sabrina now. i guess we're friends? she's nice. and she knows you! you really are a popular dude.
i don't know anyone else who missed you but i bet a lot of people did. because of the... popular... dude... thing... that i just mentioned.

how are you. did i ask that? how are you again anyway!!!!

[bragnificent]

[ Oh yeah, it was definitely a good idea to text Michael; any doubts Reggie might have had go away almost immediately when he gets the enthusiastic reply back. He has no idea what all is behind it, of course, but he doesn't really need to know. It's enough just to have been missed at all -- by as many people as he'd like to assume might have, even if he could probably count the actual number on one hand -- and, he likes the attention. ]

lol
yeah i pretty much remember everything
so much time passed for me while i was gone some things are still a little foggier than others but i think thats p normal, yknow
like thats not gonna be an all at once kind of thing

[ Memories just kind of work like that in general, so it's not a huge concern to him; he remembers more about this place the more he seeks out the places and people who fill those memories.

He sends a selfie of himself in his sunglasses and a hoodie, flashing a peace sign. ]

im fine
u met sabrina?
howd that happen

[bloodprayer]

hahahaha well
like i said, i'm just happy you're back. foggy-brain or not.
and i'm really glad you remembered me.
life is boring and sad without you around. :/ i know we're not all that close yet... but you're the best person here. this entire week just... sucked.
so. yeah.
iiii aaaaam happy you're back. heheh

i went to your place to look for you, she did too.
super nice girl.
didn't even loot your stuff. looks like some other people did tho.

[bragnificent]

of course
how could i forget :P
but i dont blame u mikey id get pretty bored around here without anyone like me to talk to
sometimes i still do 😂
whyd it suck
or i guess why else

[ He'd ask "how happy" but that's probably redundant at this point, even if Reggie wouldn't mind at all hearing someone wax poetically on why they love having him around so much. ]

not rly ur typical meet cute huh
that sounds more like the plot of some dark romantic comedy
but i take it things went well
& yeah i know
ur best buddy tate did that

[bloodprayer]

[ it won't take much for michael to start going on and on and on about how fucking cool reggie is, with or without prompting. he's barely able to stop himself from doing it after being called mikey. kinda makes his heart flutter, getting a nickname from someone he likes so much. this is a good day. ]

why does there have to be anything else?? it really just... sucked, thinking there was a chance you'd be gone for good.
idk, man. life's real boring without people you like. and it's hard to like anyone more than reggie fucking mantle.

it went okay. i think. she helped me out with some stuff, i promised i'd help her find a way home if she wanted it.
she's rad.
definitely romcom material.
totally thinking about asking her out.

[ he's totally not. he actually has a bit more to say about her - gotta try and make his introduction to sabrina sound totally normal in case she springs the slightly gorier details of their meeting on reggie behind michael's back - but then reggie goes and mentions tate and michael's easily distracted. ]

tate and i aren't best buddies.
he got angry at me while you were gone for like, no reason.
i didn't even do anything. i don't know what his problem is.

[confiscated]

hey.

where are you.

[bloodprayer]

?
i just moved my things to maurtia falls. you okay?

[confiscated]

do u still work in jeopardy?

whatever, doesn't matter.
I need your help

[bloodprayer]

yeah.

[ it's hard to settle the excitement that rushes through him, so - he lets it boil over, his hands shaking as he types. ]

um, okay. anything you need.
whats up?

[confiscated]

my snake died. can you bring it back?

text

[melodramagic]

[ Salem isn't at all aware of what Sabrina's been up to all day. A small blessing as if the Familiar had found out his witch was about to make contact with their potential assailant from a week ago, he might have chewed her ear off over it the way Aunt Zelda might have.

Maybe it isn't a bad thing necessarily that her aunties aren't here.

Of course she feels like a stone's been dropped in her stomach when she sends him a text, but she has no real way of knowing whether the ghastly face she glimpsed that terrifying night was the boy she met in Reggie's apartment. ]

hi michael! it's sabrina spellman
how are you doing?

[bloodprayer]

[ Michael hadn't been expecting to hear from Sabrina, but - shit, he really should have planned for it. ]

oh! reggie's friend! wow, it's been a while.

[ That night in Nonah - it wasn't all that long ago, but until he saw the notif on his phone about thirty seconds ago, Michael had managed to put it completely out of his mind. He tends to get hyperfixated on one thing at a time, quick to lose sight of his real problems, his real threats, in the face of something more immediately relevant; he'd been focused on another problem, obsessing over it to the point that nothing else mattered. And now he feels blindsided.

Fuck, okay, be cool. He worries the bottom of his lip, figuring out the best way to reply. ]

i'm okay. actually, some good things have been happening for me lately!
my job's going pretty well, reggie's back, i'm living in a new house, i've made a couple more friends... lots of things have been going on. it's pretty overwhelming? i'm still trying to figure things out.
how are you?

[melodramagic]

yep that's me! I know, I feel kind of bad not checking in after the apartment
how is your hand?

[ But he also didn't clean the blood properly, which leads her to wonder if he had done that on purpose. Would he have? Michael might have been attempting to use a pentagram, but that night he had come across as so... so lost and unassuming. A stark difference from the strange figure in the rubber suit.

With every word she reads that face pops up in her mind. Was she imagining it? Did the darkness trick her into seeing something else? ]

that certainly sounds like a lot. is this a good time to talk?
I'm alright. been trying to give the job the government gave me a proper go but so far not much has turned out the way I hoped

[bloodprayer]

it's totally okay.
actually, i should have been the one to check in with you. i was kind of a mess when we met and i know i should apologize for... everything. but.
i might have felt kind of. shy and weird about doing that. guilty, i guess.

[ More realistically, he just hates that sabrina caught him and he hadn't spent the time figuring out the best way to handle her - but he should have taken credit for Reggie coming back when the iron was still hot. He'll still try to, if it comes up naturally, but he knows giving Sabrina more reason to think that he's powerful or dangerous or else deluded enough to believe he has control over the Porter could be... damaging to him. ]

but that's no excuse? so. sorry. for the blood. and the breaking and entering.
thank you again for helping me.
my hand's ok. and i'm totally cool with talking.

i'd actually kind of like to get to know you better. we haven't had the chance to just, like, talk.
what job did they give you?

[melodramagic]

[ As easy as texting is apparently, Sabrina finds this conversation isn't helping her figure out if Michael is the culprit. She can't pick up tone that well from text yet and even if she could, this conversation is just pleasantries anyway. ]

you don't have to apologize to me
I think reggie deserves that more

[ Note to self: what does Reggie know about Michael? ]

I would like to get to know you as well! I don't know if it's my imagination but I felt back then maybe a sort of connection?
to be honest I don't know what else I could call it

[ Liar. ]

an occult investigator
can you believe that?