Ya Filthy Animal (Erik)

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One by one, a head turned as Oriel passed them by. He wore a smug grin which was only encouraged by their envious stares. Because why else would they be staring if not for envy? Over his brand new Christmas sweater.

It was the best, wasn't it?

Surely Erik would think so too?

Oriel hadn't seen much of the snake shifter over the holidays, on account of the engaged boy being further engaged in activities with his fianceeeeee. He still couldn't get over the sound of that word. Especially as it applied to a very specific special someone~

...he was getting mushy again, wasn't he?

It was true, however, that Oriel had spent a majority of his winter break staying at Phen's Dad's place(completely uninvited, yet not thrown out, curiously). It was there that he received this wonderful gift, chock full of love and warmth, all from the Sir Man Santa Clause himself! It must've been from him, after all, it was an unmarked package and there's no way in hell that Mr. Grumpy Alcoholic would've gotten it for him, right? Right.

Oriel helped himself into the dorm as usual, ignoring any and all tentative protests from Erik's roommates - none of them seemed to be hanging around today - and jaunted down the hall to his friends bedroom. "Feast your eyes!" he announced upon opening the door without so much as a knock, puffing out his chest proudly to show of his prized sweater of awesome.

The room was empty.

Phooey. Oriel must've just missed him or something. Because Erik obviously had nothing better to do than wait in his room for Oriel to suddenly drop by unannounced. Oriel spun and flopped back across the bed with a sigh, not noticing a certain coiled thing a little over a foot away. He stared at the ceiling for a brief moment before pulling out his cell phone and fumbling out a quick text to the southern delinquent.

hi. were are you?

He let his hand fall to the side, cell phone loosely grasped within it.

[Erik Stewart]

By the time Oriel came along Erik had grown nearly six feet and sported a layer of scales. As malignant as a curled-up, dark-colored, white-fanged serpent went, it really wasn’t in his agenda to menace anybody. He had thought to transform where no one could stumble upon him…which would have been a foolproof plan, if it weren’t for people’s habit of crashing his dorm room without a word in advance.

All that was gone now. The complicated processes of Erik’s human brain was covered up with a layer of natural snake instinct. It tasted Oriel on its forked-tongue rather than saw him; its poor eyesight could only make out a vague shape, which it recognized as nothing even remotely close to a ‘friend’. Slowly its body shifted, half hidden under the covers. For the most part it was content to let this upright bundle of smells go about its business - as long as it stayed away. Which was, incidentally, exactly the opposite of what Oriel chose to do. His weight landed on the tail end of the cottonmouth’s body. Its retribution was swift: in less time than it took to blink an eye, its twin fangs caught on the loose ends of Oriel’s sweater and pulled back, leaving it only marginally ripped.

The hissing came next, like the hiss of foam off the ocean waves. It curled up and poised as if to strike again, coils rolling over each other in a neat, natural figure-eight movement. Its body had puffed to twice its size. Its mouth opened wide to show its threatening white tissue, and its white, protruding fangs, as if to top the whole display off. Between its bottom row of spiked teeth its black tongue flickered to and fro.

No doubt it would strike again if Oriel didn’t move. At least it had missed the first time, or else he’d be taking another trip to the hospital.

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How had he not seen the slithery body of death nesting amongst the covers of Erik’s bed? Oriel must’ve been blind! Or just not paying attention. Or maybe it was camouflaged?? Whichever it was, Oriel had about 0.5 seconds to realize his mistake and get out of there before Mr. Cottonmouth decided he needed to go in for another strike.

Oriel felt the tugging on his sweater by the teeth which just narrowly missed his arm, and then heard the hissing. Oriel didn’t bother looking down to see what it was – he knew it already in his heart, in his soul, call it a 6th sense, or maybe it was just hyperawareness towards something that scare the shit out of him – but as soon as he suspected the truth, Oriel was practically rolling over backwards to get as far away from it as he possibly could. The furthest he could pathetically scramble was to the corner between the door and the wall.

He swallowed. “E-erik…?” Good fuck he hoped nobody else could hear the squeak in his voice. He cleared his throat. “Th-that you?” Of course it was. How many other snakes lived in this dorm? Only one and that one there was not DJ. “S-sorry, I d-didn’t see….” Fuck he sounded pathetic. “I’m just going to…wait outside.” Oriel nervously pointed in some direction that was away from Sir Snake. He sidled around the door until he reached the small opening he’d left when he came in, then slowly backed out. “You just…I don’t know, take your time and….come out, I guess, when you’re done being a snake…or something. Right. Gotcha. Bye.” Oriel closed the door, then returned to the common room where he collapsed face-first across the couch and tried to keep himself from hyperventilating. “Fuuuuck….” he whined.

[Erik Stewart]

The snake let Oriel stumble away. Louisiana and Florida natives often commented on how aggressive the cottonmouth was, how it would dart at people on land or in water, but this time it seemed content to sit and hiss. It showed no indication that it heard or understood Oriel. When he was a good distance away, it simply closed up its white mouth and looked vaguely at him, though its tongue hung out the side of its mouth as it hissed still. Then, slowly, all nearly-six-feet of it began to slink over the side of the bed and into the darkness under it. The whole process took nearly ten seconds.

It gave Oriel plenty of time to make his escape.

Erik wouldn’t emerge for a good fifteen minutes. It was all silent in that dorm room, most of its residents gone, and one an animal hiding under a bed. Then there was a sound: like cracking knuckles, something rustling over a hardwood floor, and then, distinctly a bump. “Got-damn-it,” came Erik’s voice, which sounded particularly southern today, though it was faint and muffled through the walls.

If Oriel ventured over towards his room again, he’d find him trying to dislodge himself from underneath the bed.

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Oriel took a small cluster of deep, slow breaths.

Then he took another several dozen. He must have thought he was ready to go and get up again about 10 times before he finally did. Though even after he did sit up, he just rested against the back of the couch, staring up at the ceiling and spacing out a bit. That…thirty seconds? No, it was probably only twenty…it rattled him a lot more than he would’ve thought. Sure, he’d never been overly-fond of snakes, but that was in a more ‘they’re slithery and weird and look slimy’ sort of way. It had never been in an ‘omg he’s gonna bite me and I’m gonna die’ sort of way…like it was a moment ago.

He closed his eyes, and stayed like that until he heard the curious sounds coming from Erik’s room.

Did he want to go check on him? To see if that sound, and that curse, meant that Erik was done being a snake? Oriel hesitated, took another breath, then pushed himself to his feet. He had exactly the distance it took to get from the couch to Erik’s door to pull himself together and put on his usual face of pompous arrogance.

“Hey, you done lounging around?” Oriel started as he opened the door again. He leaned against the frame and crossed his arms, smirking down at Erik’s predicament. “Fucking took you long enough, Snake-boy. I was getting sick of waiting.”

[Erik Stewart]

Erik looked up like he was surprised. He might have remembered Oriel, way deep down in the dredges of his memory - but not very well. In his post-snake awareness he hadn’t even realized Oriel was here. As far as he was concerned, he hadn’t seen him in almost a month. He furrowed his brows and managed to pull himself out from underneath the bed. He was lucky he had some leeway there; God knew the little nooks snakes could get into. “I hate it when I do that,” he grumbled, getting up from off his knees.

“Sorry, I thought I locked the door,” he said, but it was said with some reproach, and a little bit of a squint, like what the hell was Oriel doing here anyway? Why didn’t people ever knock? He was definitely going to start locking the door from now on. “You could’ve been wheeled out in an ambulance. Again.”

And he’d go to jail or something. He wasn’t sure if one could send snakes to jail but there would probably be some consequences.

Erik turned away. “You wanna smoke?”

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Oriel snorted in disdain, looking away for just a moment. “Whoops. Maybe you should get your locks checked or something?” Oriel was approaching the matter defensively, of course, as if he’d done nothing wrong by barging into Erik’s room. It’s what he’d always done. Never been a problem before. If Erik had a fucking problem with it, then he needed to fucking say it straight, otherwise Oriel would keep doing that kind of shit out of pure stubborn spite.

“Yeah, well, lucky for me you love me so much that you managed to spare me, even as an overgrown, sightless worm.” Oriel was just a little(lot) bit sour over being narrowly missed by those fangs. He took another breath and finally invited himself in, stuffing his hands into his pockets and reclaiming a spot on the bed.

“Yeah, sure.” And by that, Oriel meant he’d hold a cigarette and fiddle with it while Erik smoked. He wouldn't even hold it up for a light. Would just be a waste of a perfectly good cigarette if he did.

Balls, why was he here anyway? Why...? Oh, now he remembered. "So Erik!" He motioned over his torso. "What do you think~?" he asked expectantly.

[Erik Stewart]

That twinge of irritation wriggled in a little deeper. Maybe he would at that, said his blue eyes, though he didn’t say it aloud. Erik sucked in some smoke like he would a breath of fresh air. Soon the dorm room would sport nicotine stains on the ceiling as bold and yellow as the ones back home.

Erik had not been doing well. This winter had seemed to drag on the longest, and though the holiday rough spots were behind him now, the wounds they left were fresh and sore. He had forgotten to take care of himself: he looked thin and ragged, no matter how many times he cleaned up. Brown shadows had developed underneath his eyes. He spent most of his days in the depths of deep depression, neglecting to rise out of bed until three in the afternoon, sometimes later. He ate out of a sense of duty. Again he sucked at the nicotine. Again it felt like a little piece of heaven.

Oriel’s exclamation rang a little hollow. He wouldn’t get much of anything, just a flat stare.

Erik’s eyes slid up towards his face. “You come back after a month t’show me this?”

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Oriel could sense that Erik was irritated. Why wouldn’t he be? He had good reason to. But Oriel was being just as stubborn today as he had been on many, many other occasions where Oriel’s actions had pissed off the snake-shifter. It was another habit that Oriel was trying to change, but…fuck, he could only do so much at once. For the moment, the best Oriel could manage was not saying any of the million shit things he wanted to say that would inevitably make things worse.

Fuck fuck fuck….this was hard.

He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t worried about Erik, but he’d also be lying if he said he’d been worried enough to lose sleep over it, or to even do something about it. If Oriel looked at his friend now, he’d feel that pang of guilt for being so wrapped up in himself and Phoenix over the past month that he pretty near abandoned everyone else he knew. That same feeling he got when Erik pointed out that he’d been absent for that long in the first place.

“Yeah, I did,” he said with pure obstinacy. A half lie. Oriel would have come even without the sweater. He settled his hands sassily on both hips. “Is that a problem?” he challenged.

[Erik Stewart]

He knew he wasn’t about to fight. There wasn’t enough fire in him for that, but he was tired. Fed up was the word for it.

“Just leave,” he told him, turning away. Oriel could keep the cigarette, or leave it.

[listen i know this is rly short buT ITS ALL THATS HAPPENING]

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"Just leave."

Oriel should've figured he'd say that, though he was hoping to ignite a little something more in the skinny southerner. Something more than ten words of conversation. Oriel sighed as he stood from the bed, leaving the cigarette behind. "Fine," he said scowling. It was probably for the best anyway. That snake scare had put him on edge.

He took a step to the door then turned back to Erik. "I'll come back later, though. Got some shit for you. 'Sides..." he continued, not intending on making Erik feel guilty whatsoever, nope. "It has been a fucking month. I want to see you for more than just five fucking minutes, alright?" Oriel hovered by the door, waiting for a response.

((is okay~))

[Erik Stewart]

He hated when they stayed to talk. People never left when he told them to. There was always ifs and buts or - whatever. Erik rolled his eyes. It wasn’t like he made stellar conversation.

And he was angry. He was bitter and cold and gnarled up inside. He didn’t exactly blame Oriel for being absent - he was not a leech hanging on his belly, he didn’t care what he did - but neither did it soothe the gaping wounds in his psyche. Go away, was half of it. Leave me to rot, was the other.

“Maybe if you knock,” he spat, over his shoulder.

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Fuck, was he really that…upset…?

There was a tickle of fear welling up in Oriel’s belly as he regarded Erik’s cold attitude. “Right,” he breathed. Oriel clenched his jaw in frustration. “……I’ll do you one better and text you first, alright? Just….” Just what? Fuck, Oriel just wanted to hang out with his friend like they always did. Was that too much to ask?

“I’ll see you later,” he said. There was a tightness in his voice that he was convinced that Erik wouldn’t notice or give two shits about if he did. Oriel made sure to close the door behind him after he left.