[OPEN] you see, i am the wolf, and this dirty little piggy lives inside of me

[infomodder]

WHO: Will Graham + YOU!
WHERE: All over
WHEN: Month of May (he will not be around the 15th-19th)
WHAT: Making friends. Losing friends. Getting experience with his shadow stag power. Aggressively playing pool. Fishing. Stuff and things, Coral.
WARNINGS: Standard Hannibal warnings apply (cannibalism and murder and sadness and season 2 spoilers). If anything else crops up, I will edit to add.
NOTE: Everything's been written up in prose, but if you'd prefer to do action, just reply with it and I'll match! And if you'd like a specific starter, shoot me a PM or something and I'll write it up in comments.




I. AROUND NONAH: Are we out of the woods? Are we in the clear yet?

He'd have gone to De Chima, had he not been there so recently for work, had he been sure he could keep himself from stopping by the old house. Worse, going into the old house, seeing if Mike Parker was there, perhaps checking in on his religiously conflicted roommate. Going to Virginia for leisure time is bound to end poorly, bound to have him finally giving up and checking in on this universe's version of Wolf Trap. Better to avoid all that inevitable mess by going somewhere else entirely.

So he opts for Nonah, and after going through the city itself, finds a nice patch of woods that doesn't seem too used. Seems more like the place where joggers go for morning and evening routines than anything popular, where parents might bring their children or couples might take to for a quiet, slow stroll. Once the noises fade to nothing but nature, he loses his shadow to its new, stag self, to get a better feel of how it works. They'll walk side-by-side as much as the stag decides to explore, bolting for a particularly playful squirrel, scraping his antlers on a nearby tree for reasons Will doesn't want to think about. Same with any rolling in mud. Probably just enjoying his freedom to be a strange, shadow stag; that's the story Will chooses to take on and believe as true. Every now and then, it might smack as more dog than deer, stumpy tail wagging, but Will doesn't pay that any mind, either. The thing's never far out of his sight—until something (or someone) truly interesting and not yet in Will's line of sight comes around, of course. Leave it to Will to not find this of too much concern and continue to take his time, walking fashion disaster that he is. Don't worry! That shadowy creature means no harm, and the guy following after who doesn't cast a shadow at all despite whatever sunlight is around has covered himself in a truly terrible plaid shirt and jeans that are two or three wears from being worn out. No threats here.

II. HEROPA: have you been herring a lot about the hook line and tinker?

Will doesn't work at the bait shop anymore, not technically. He is, however, still the owner, and that means he has to be involved. He's a little more involved than some of his employees might actually like, but at least whenever there's a minor issue plaguing the place, he can generally take care of it. If he can't, he knows who can. So every now and then, for anyone stopping by (or just looking in), they'll find a still plaid-clad Will Graham sporting a ridiculous hat that's clearly been worn by him for a while, however off and on. It fits his head, and the fishing hook stuck on the brim of it has been there so long it's created a dent. But Will isn't behind the counter or going through the shelves to fix them. Nah, he's the guy in the corner on a stepladder fixing some busted part of the ceiling or wall, or fiddling with wiring. He rather looks like the repairman.

If someone stops by to see him, specifically, here he is. If someone stops by with a question that the staff either can't answer or doesn't feel equipped to answer as well as Will can, he'll be pointed out as well. Yes, go ask the guy making an effort to center the WRIGGLE ROOM sign after it last fell about fishing seasons. That guy who's cleaning the front windows in the wake of the Flare and dragons alike will know far better than the person behind the counter why the hell the lures are different colors. Go pester him, he has the answers, he's the owner.

III. HEROPA 2 NAUTICAL BOOGALOO: We ain’t only fishin’

Will owes plenty of people fishing trips. Want to go fishing? Who the hell wouldn't? His preference is for standing around all day in waders, but if someone would rather go out, he'll get a boat. How accommodating.

IV. HEROPA 3 RETURN TO THE HOMELAND: Flowers and trees depress and frankly bore me

There is a house with a yard that's well kept but not much to speak of just yet. The dogwood tree in the center of it is in need of some nourishment and time without the world being in ruins to get back to its former glory, and the scattered beds of flowers weren't in any particular order. Until today, that is. Will's out with his sleeves rolled right over his elbows, bearded dog providing help by doing the best thing he can in this situation: lazing underneath some shade and taking a nap. He's got all the tools he needs, pots with plants waiting to be transferred over, dirty hands bare instead of covered with gloves. He's not dealing with anything too thorny or prickly, so there's really no need for that, is there?

Except for the fact that the soil he's using contains manure, and says so right on the bags waiting to be tossed out with the rest of the trash. Whatever, it's all as organic as organic gets, he'll just wash them more thoroughly than usual and everything will be fine.

V. MAURTIA FALLS LIBRARY: Take a look, it's in a book!

He isn't even certain if he can check out anything, considering where he lives and all, but he's been through the Heropa library more times than he can count. It's good to expand one's horizons, isn't it? Maurtia Falls could have something on their shelves Heropa doesn't, so while he's there and following the rule of minding his own damn business, he stops by just to see. Curiosity isn't always a bad thing, after all. Will pointedly avoids any sections that have to do with crime, true or fictional. Fiction is supposed to give him an escape, and hopefully nonfiction will teach him about something that isn't his usual. Why even bother looking at books that won't do either? It's always much better to bump into someone who has a stack of books that relate to dogs, fish, the history of railroads, and what appears to be the first in a series about magical cats that can travel through space and have kept their secret from humans for all of eternity, isn't it? Because that's what Will's going for. Magical alien cats.

VI. BARS, BARS EVERYWHERE: He drinks a whiskey drink, he drinks a vodka drink

Will keeps a rotation of bars in his head, places with a little more shade than usual. No loud and booming music, no crowd of youths looking to get their groove on. Will's more comfortable in the quiet sorts where the jukebox plays "oldies" and no one has any complaints about it. These are the nights were he slaps his watch over that tattoo to keep himself as much of a nobody as, well, everybody else in the dim, sometimes smoky lighting. His pool game isn't anything to write home about, but he's steadily getting better, with the goal to one day wipe the floor with Hank Schrader. And because some of these bars are the places that don't ask questions, or have family members of the owners (or their friends) coming through just a year or so shy of the legal drinking age, Will keeps his job and this aspect of his life completely separate unless there is a real need for someone to step in. He's not a complete hog at the pool tables, though, and some affable competition is bound to only help improve his game. Loser buys the drinks—what a great deal.

Comments

I

[khajidont]

As fun as flying is, it's never a good thing to solely rely on it, but that doesn't mean that Jaime particularly feels like wandering through suburbia each time he wants to go from one place to the next. After visiting a friend in Nonah, he winds up listening to the Scarab and cutting through one of the nearby forests to get to the Porter a little quicker when he runs into a stag.

Jaime has not, as a rule, run into much nature. Whenever it is particularly notable, he has to admit that it's usually been tampered with and, unfortunately, dedicated to trying to kill him in some way, shape or form.

Helpfully, Khaji suggests: Unknown: danger. Suggestion: lasers.

"Nuh uh," he mutters underneath his breath, because really, Khaji needs to learn to stop suggesting lasers as the response to everything. That had been his response to Mrs. G earlier that day because Jaime had felt insistently annoyed with her, though Khaji had sheepishly suggested gentle lasers.

Either way, he holds his hands up in front of himself and backs up a couple steps. "Oh, whoa, boy. It's okay, I'm just going to..."

He winces. "Why am I talking to you like you're a dog?"

[infomodder]

Will doesn't know a thing about flying (not like that), and hell if he knows anything about lasers. He does, however, know how to look properly not ancient from time to time, because when Jaime ends up talking to the stag like he's a dog (and Jaime isn't actually wrong with that), Will's pulled out his communicator. Shooting off a text to April about dinner or something similar, but he's effectively doing that walk-in-nature-while-paying-attention-to-technology thing some people in his age bracket might find a cardinal sin and absolutely wasting a good day out. The look on his face gives away that whatever he's reading is far more enthralling than the crunch of leaves beneath his shoes or the sounds of birds, which really just makes it all the more worthy of damnation.

Will can't hear what was said, but that stag certainly can. Whoa, boy, he knows what that means, and he responds in a rather dog-like manner. A well-behaved, trained dog who recognizes when he is overstepping bounds and knows that not only will his "owner" not appreciate it, but that's a good way to start off things on the wrong hoof. Ears twist, his head pulls back, and he stops in his tracks, obedient giant thing. This isn't exactly reflected when Will catches sight of who his shadow's run across—he balks for a moment, clutches the communicator tighter instead of dropping it, makes up for it all at once by shoving it away and taking a half-sprint to catch up.

"Jaime!" God bless Jeff Winger, the whole gym routine is paying off already. "Don't—" worry "—he's with me...completely harmless."

Right now, at least. Right now that bouncing curls have settled back in place and Will stops close enough that he could reach out and lay on a hand on stag's back. See? No threat, just a guy and his strange, shady deer friend. It could be a plague and a dragon, this is fine.

Aha, this is not fine. The more Will tries to keep in mind that Jaime comes from a completely bizarre world and this could be fine, the more he struggles to keep any sort of cool he had going for him. He's supposed to be the normal guy from the normal world who just doesn't understand all these weird powers and people who've wielded them, probably since birth. He should have relatively easy to understand and in no way too intimidating gifts granted by the Porter, not this. Oh God, he was almost normal, and he knew it tasted too good to be true.

[khajidont]

That's not a normal stag. Jaime knows it, Khaji knows it, and, presumably, Will knows it. The real question here is what Will of all people is doing with a stag all the way out here for? There's genuine surprise in Jaime's eyes as he looks at Will, and it's nothing he bothers concealing, because of all odd people to run into, Will's not one of them. There's more to him than meets the eye (not everyone can get into a squabble with someone like Power Girl), but Will's mostly a very smart guy who likes puns and dogs.

And stags, apparently.

"Will?" He doesn't stare at Will for long, however, mostly because staring at the stag is a whole lot more interesting. "Why are you with a deer?"

[infomodder]

Jaime comes from a world with superheroes (and villains), Will reminds himself at that question. Surely nothing is really too strange at this point, is it? If there are gorillas (still confused on what that actually means, Will Graham), then powers that involve shadows can't be too odd, can they? Probably tame, all things considered. Everything might still be fine, maybe. Maybe it can be swung that way.

The stag is definitely a whole lot more interesting than Will, though he'd argue that about a lot of things. Will turns to look at him, too, eyebrows lifted, and not long after, antlers start to shrink away, fall back into the rest of the head. As quickly as he can make it, the stag essentially melts to the ground and curls back up around Will's feet. For a second, if Jaime watches very carefully, it appears as though those antlers have shifted to hang off of Will's head, but then everything is relatively normal. Just a dude and his shadow.

"I can do it with others, too, but it's just been me today." He shrugs, shadow following suit. Completely normal (for now). "Thought it was a good idea to get a better feeling about how to control it, so...here I am. What's got you in the great outdoors?"

And without a single sign of weird deer around, for shame.

[khajidont]

"You got shadow powers! Weird!"

He doesn't sound as if he finds it genuinely odd - he knows several metahumans with powers varying from ones as powerful as his own to having corrosive sweat, which, ew - but he does sound rather impressed. No, not impressed -- intrigued. He's never seen shadow powers in action before, and in truth, he's not entirely certain as to how they work, or what the extent of what they can do is.

"Aw, I was visiting a friend, and figured I'd just take a short-cut." Short-cuts and friends? Those are boring subjects. Jaime's still a heck of a lot more interested in Will's powers. It doesn't occur to him that they're a thread - nor does it seem to occur to Khaji, now that the stag's gone - but he's genuinely interested in what everyone here is capable of. "What d'you mean you can do it with others too? Like, you could make my shadow into an animal too, if you wanted to?"

[infomodder]

The problem with being perceived as interesting or intriguing is that it's worked to lead Will Graham (and the world and everyone within it around him) to absolute ruin. He's naturally somewhat cagey about those who take interest in him, but Jaime is Jaime! He's a good kid! He wears stupid fishing joke shirts and walked right into a clownfish pun trap! What manipulative bones he has in him are probably reserved for getting out of trouble at school or the other usual aspects of teenagers, there is no threat here. Not from Jaime Reyes, upstanding young man who has never shown himself to be anything else.

Perhaps this like stems from the unspoken fact that all their friends are dead, no thanks to people with H-names. Calm down, Hal.

"Sure, but it's always...the same—I'll show you."

Will looks from Jaime to his shadow on the ground, twists one wrist in what could be taken as a lazy grab, and Jaime can get the full, front row show to the whole process if he just watches. At first, it changes angles, and then it seems like Jaime has suddenly grown antlers out of his own head. Only those antlers lift, a leg appears and puts a solid hoof on the ground, then three others follow suit as Jaime's shadow takes on the exact same shape that Will's had been a few moments prior. A stumpy tail pops out and the beast ruffles his feathered neck as he takes in the first "breath" of his new reality, glancing at Will with mild interest before dark eyes fall on Jaime. And, for the first time in Will's experience with these shadowy stags, the thing smiles in the same way that any animal could be considered to smile. (Why couldn't that have happened in his dreams and hallucinations? How is Jaime Reyes this awesome?) Having seen Dorian's essentially preen and prance and like ruler of the roost before settling in Dorian's lap and demanding to be pet like some prissy cat, this isn't too shocking, and Will waves one hand in the direction of Jaime's smiling, friendly shadow stag now offering a few wags of that stumpy tail.

"He's all yours."

Tada!

[khajidont]

"Oh, wow. Would you look at that." That's a neat sort of transformation, he thinks, and certainly unlike what he had expected, as if a creature would just rise up from his shadow fully formed. "He's... kinda cute? Hey, boy."

Is that a smile? Jaime grins at it, a foolish sort of expression if there ever was one, and holds one tentative hand out to touch it. Upon finding the shadow sure and solid underneath his fingers, his hand relaxes across his snout. Maybe it ought to feel a little creepy that someone can tamper with his shadow, but it's Will. What's he ever going to do with it, besides have a stag walking alongside his dogs? He never thought shadow powers could be anything but unsettling, but apparently they just need to be alive and happy, and he's sold.

He's pretty sure that most stags don't actually wag their tails, but heck, he's not complaining when it's this endearing. He's just not going to think too much about the implications of sending a living thing back to being... whatever being like a shadow is like.

"And all the ones you make are deer?"

[infomodder]

Solid as a stag that grew up in the wild outdoors, and Will? Is watching them closely. He doesn't find it foolish at all that Jaime seems to return that grin; he's essentially just watched a part of himself that may have never before been alive come out for a breath of air and its first instinct was to smile. For how strange that might have been, it had to be comforting, too, didn't it? Dorian's had decided the most worthy in the room was a mirror to gaze at, Will's had given him a wide berth as if his shadow remembered the last time he saw that stag and how poorly it had all gone (as if it was Will's fault, even). Not only does Jaime's shadow come to life, it immediately approves of him and wants to say hello—how is that not totally awesome?

The tail wagging thing is, perhaps, more Will than anyone else. It's his power, after all.

"They're all this," he clarifies, pointing to the feathery neck. This abomination deer that, until today, Will hadn't seen so happy. "I can make them smaller, make a couple small ones, but they don't get any bigger than this. And I've noticed that they can take on personalities and traits of their people, so to speak." And pin people to walls with their antlers, no big deal. "They're completely real, though. You could ride one if you wanted."

Will takes a step closer, almost confused by the entire scene in front of him, and to prove at least one point, wiggles one set of fingers so that stag loses a noticeable few inches.

Unsurprisingly, the shrinking process doesn't win Will any ire. Jaime has his snout, he's a pleased shadow camper.

[khajidont]

"Shadow powers, but you can only use it to make deer..." Jaime says, dropping his hands as the stag shrinks so he can continue scratching at its snout. It's a fascinating power but not, he thinks, a particularly useful one. It would be decent at giving someone else a fright, or maybe you could trample someone, or something, but he can't think of any situation in which Will would decide: ah yes, today seems like a trampling day.

"Gotta say, that's a new one. And I've heard of a lot of powers before." Will's is, admittedly, one of the more amusing ones. He has no complaints about it. It's neither gruesome, nor is it particularly disturbing, which is fine by him. "Have you figured out anything useful to do with it yet, or is it just... hey, shadow deer!"

Jaime looks down at the stag and pats it on the snout, telling it, "Don't worry, you don't have to worry about being useful."

...hey, it might have feelings!

[infomodder]

Might have feelings like the feelings Jaime has, even.

Trampling? Ah, no. That's too loud, too potentially non-lethal. If Will's shadow stags are going to contemplate murder and then go through with it, they'd it do it the way that had the best possible outcome: impalement. Those odd antlers aren't just for show, and Dorian Gray's wall got a taste of what they could do. But as long as there's no threat around and the stag is partially Jaime, he'll stay a docile thing, content to be pat and pleased that someone is considering his feelings. What a great kid to be attached to at the feet, he's finally found his Khaji Deer.

"How do you think I know you could ride one?"

Perhaps it seems a whimsical use of power, but when he had to get to his appointment with Chilton on time and the world was filled with the mad and a dragon gone out of her mind, he could rely on nothing else. He hardly considers that the same as physical contact, as curling up next to each other like he might with a dog—transportation simply wasn't the same as affection. Will being Will and his shadow being an extension of himself understood that just as well.

"They're a lot faster than I'll ever be, and easier to turn than cars." He shrugs. No big deal, right? Jaime's probably heard stranger. "Anything a real deer can do, they can do just the same."

There has to be some culture that rides deer like most people think of only being done with horses, anyway. Jaime could hop on his right now and Will wouldn't think it strange at all.

KHAJI DEER!!!

[khajidont]

"So you've got constant transportation, so long as you stay away from places that'll stop you from riding around on a deer."

He grins, privately amused by the mental image of Will hurtling along the side of a highway atop a deer, full-speed. He considers hopping on for a second, pressing down a little harder to see what he feels, but he dismisses the idea as quickly as it comes to mind. As big as the deer is, he's worried that it won't support his weight (stupid, really, because it's a shadow), and it's not like he's ever ridden a horse before. His experience with animals is sparse, informed mainly by Gunther and Koromaru.

Why not use your power for convenience's sake? Jaime hardly only flies when he's on-duty, and he's incinerated his own trash more than once, when he and his friends managed to generate a little too much.

"You'll just wind up finding out more uses for them, I'm sure. What do other animals think of them, do you know?"

:')

[infomodder]

"The dogs haven't seemed all that bothered by them, though I suspect they're more familiar with this sort of thing than I'll ever be. Nothing's acted different since we've been out today, either."

He frowns a bit, looking between stag and Jaime, completely unaware of Jaime using his own powers for convenience. Or of Jaime's powers in the first place, and it's nothing he'd fault him for not sharing. Some of these gifts end up more personal than others, talking about them can be as tricky as talking about a traumatic past or people from said past who didn't follow through the Porter. At least Jaime's asking about its abilities instead of trying to delve into why stags in the first place, which is something that Will's grateful for. So grateful he won't bring it up and risk that changing; it's fine just as it is, no point in ruining a semi-good thing, right?

"Maybe it's a four legs bad two legs good mindset, you'd have to find someone that speaks animal to get a better answer."

Jaime's shadow stag just seems completely delighted to be out and about, so maybe that's all that really matters. How these weird shadow beasts feel being real, not how anything else feels about them.

[khajidont]

"Maybe, yeah. You just always hear about animals freaking out about supernatural animals. Maybe that's all just stories, but it's hard to tell. We've got supernatural stuff going on back home too, so there might be some truth to it."

As the stag noses at Jaime's hands, as if looking for something to eat, Jaime laughs and holds his hands out in front of him, palms-up.

"Sorry, buddy. I got nothing." He glances back at Will. "Maybe they can tell these guys are basically good. I mean, they come from their owner, after all."

It's a roundabout way of saying that Will is good, which isn't what Jaime means to say, but it's nothing that he would shy away from saying either. Will has been decent, and he's been kind. Some days, that means a lot more than going out there engaging in heroics. Will must be someone's soft place to fall, somewhere around here.