fandomhigh | Fandom Library, Wednesday, September 4th

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Fandom Library, Wednesday, September 4th

The library was on some kind of origami kick. At least, she was assuming it was the library? There were origami how-to books scattered across the table, crumpled up sheets of origami paper from attempts that didn't quite work out, and even a few interesting finished pieces. Arden was charmed right up until she saw a bunch of books huddled on the safety of the circulation desk, their pages also folded into the beginning of shapes.

"All right!" she called across the library, not fussed about whether or not she was making too much noise for a library, this was important. "We do not use other library materials for origami paper! Not books, not magazines, not periodicals, not things I'm forgetting off the top of my head! Origami paper only!"

She wasn't sure if it was gremlins or the very stacks themselves that sighed and grumbled at her announcement, but she didn't care. Not since she was going to have to spend the rest of the afternoon attempting to unfold and flatten pages in much-abused books.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well, yes, Arden had been thinking about sexy lust, because had Gray seen his brother? And she hated to admit it, but there was also something kind of hot about the other kind, just in that competence is really sexy and--

OH LOOK IT'S A DIFFERENT BROTHER. SHE WAS GOING TO LOOK AT HIM NOW.

Gold star for Arden. "Castor, he's..." Give her a second, Gray, you rattled her.

Gray is Sloth, Raiden is Gluttony, Daman is Envy, Galen is Wrath, Bellamy is stupidly hot. Five down, two to go, meaning Castor is...

"Greed, right?" she checked. She'd been leaning that way, but the gold glitter made her think she was right. She could also see Pride, in like a counterculture way, but she was going to go with her gut instinct.

"Ding ding ding!" Gray confirmed. "So, what you need to know about Castor is that he's kiiiind of a klepto. He sees it, Greed wants it, it ends up in his pockets without him even really thinking about what he's doing. So you'll want to go through your stuff before we head home, and if anything's missing Al can make Cas give it back."

"O-oh!" Arden said, brows contracting. "I'm not sure I'll have anything he wants? Like, none of my jewelry is even good jewelry, it's all cheap shit from, like, Claire's and the Walmart we looted."

Gray shook his head. "Doesn't matter. Our sins aren't logical. Like, I could be in the middle of an actual battle for my life and Sloth will decide I've done enough for right then and it's time to take a nap." He shook himself out of his whining. "As long as it's shiny or sparkly that's enough to catch Greed's eye. When Ray was moving out there was a whole thing about some measuring cups that look gold.

"And also, it doesn't matter if it's not worth much money, it's yours, so, if it's missing you deserve it back. But it's not really Castor's fault. You can't get mad at us for what our sins make us do, even when it's really, really annoying. We can't win against them." Did Gray sound exhausted? Yes, because this shit was exhausting to live with.

"Okay, so Greed's basically a magpie, gotcha," Arden said, because sometimes she thought in birds. "I think that's where I keep tripping up. Like, I can't think of anything that I might have that it would make sense for either Greed or Envy might want, but it doesn't have to make sense. It's kinda just like...weather. There's no controlling it, it's a thing that happens and expecting rhyme or reason from it's just dumb."

Beat.

"...Am I getting it?"

Gray was nodding along. "You're getting it. And speaking of Envy," he presented her with a green glitter-edged card with a photo of a very pretty dark-haired, bronze-skinned guy with the most incredibly green eyes you'd ever seen ~~who doesn't have a PB because I can't pick between like, four pretty guys~~. He might even out-pretty Bellamy, but he looked considerably less thrilled about having his picture taken. "Meet Daman."

"Oh!" Arden said. Yes, again. "He's not white!"

And then clapped a hand over her mouth because that wasn't one of the things we were supposed to say out loud, Arden ~~at least, not where the white folks could hear~~.

"No?" Gray said, and then clarified, "I mean, no, he's not? In human terms, anyway." He looked at the picture of Daman. "He gets it from his father, and he was a fallen angel, so." He shrugged. "His mother was Dacian. That's in what's now Romania."

Wait. Go back. "Oh! We're not...none of us are actually related by like, blood. I don't think." He and Alastair didn't know anything about their mothers, so. Who knew? "Our fathers were the first seven--well, eight--angels that followed Lucifer when he rebelled. The Supreme Being cursed their firstborn sons, you see, and that's us. The Cursed Sons. It's a whole...thing." Gray was now picking awkwardly at the corner of one of the two remaining cards, which was shedding red glitter all over his clothes.

"...Oh," Arden said, because apparently that was just how she was going to respond to everything now. "I knew about your dads being fallen angels, but I guess I always thought--well. I guess I didn't ever really think. You're all just brothers, so I figured..." Now she was feeling very stupid. "I mean. Not that you have to be blood-related to be family. I'm sorry I just...assumed stuff."

And was very grateful that they were having this now, so she didn't say something like, 'you're not white!' to Daman. Would he even understand? Get why it was almost a startle reflex? Being a Nephilim, did he even notice? He was probably always used to being a single face in a crowd...

She shook her head. "Did the eighth angel not have a son?" she asked, trying to shift the conversation to the topic that was clearly not super-awkward and emotional!

...Whoops. Again.

"No, he did," Gray said quietly. "Kallias--Melancholy--died. A long time ago."

Way to bring down the mood, Gray! "We decided to be brothers," he explained. "When we were eight." Actually, they had probably been nine or even ten by that point, but honestly it all bled together into one long miserable slog of training for several years there. "It's...you don't need to worry about that. It was a long time ago. Anyway. Daman."

No, Gray, Arden was probably going to have some questions about some things you'd just said there.

"I'm so sorry," Arden said softly. "I know my parents left a hole and I never even knew them. Losing your brother--" especially a brother he'd had for however many hundreds (thousands?) of years "--must be so much harder. Even if it was a long time ago."

Arden did have questions. Many questions. Questions she might even circle back around to asking sometime (like how had Kallias died? Weren't they immortal? Okay, probably not those, but maybe the whole 'deciding to be brothers thing'), maybe even after the parade of ~~hot~~ brothers here, but right now it seemed kinder to just move on.

So, yeah, she would be worrying about that, thank you.

"So, Daman. Envy. Might find stuff to envy because of reasons."

"Envy is a bitch," Gray told Arden earnestly, shaking Daman's photo a little bit in emphasis. "It's so hard to live with." They didn't compare, because that set off a couple of the sins, but the general consensus among the brothers was that Envy and Sloth were the two hardest sins on their bearers: Gray's physically; Daman's mentally. "It's like I said, there's no logic to it. If you're holding an ice cream cone, Envy will make Daman all bitter and envious that you have an ice cream cone and he doesn't, even if there are more ice cream cones in the freezer and the freezer is right there."

Pause. Regroup. Stop ranting about how frustrating Envy was. "So. Yeah. You might not even see Daman. He doesn't really...it's for his own sanity, you know? If he's around us--anyone--too long Envy starts working on him, so he mostly keeps to himself. Ray likes to have us all eat at least one meal together when we're all home, so, maybe then, or you might see him at Krave. If everyone else is envying him, the beast is fed, so he dances there a lot."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can find a couple of things to envy about him, so maybe that'll help," Arden said. Hot, confident, open about his powers, loving and understanding family...Yeah, a few things. "But it does sound really hard. Having to stay alone to protect yourself and everybody else."

Didn't sound familiar, not one bit.

"Uh, is there anything I can do to help, if that triggers with me as the target? I mean, it sounds like he'll probably leave, but...anything?" Beat. "I guess that's open to everybody. Y'all are opening your home to me, the least I can do is try, you know?"

"Not really," Gray sighed. "It is what it is. If you could try not to think envious thoughts about him, that would help--when it's not a crowd and he can pick up where it's coming from, that's harder on him--but no one can control that completely, so..." He shrugged. "Just, if he's bitter and cranky or just walks out of the room...that's just Daman. Speaking of cranky."

Gray flipped up the next to the last card, the one with red glitter and a glowering guy with a buzzcut. "Galen. Avatar of Wrath. Short-tempered and overprotective." Did Gray sound fond? Yes, because that was his bro.

~~somewhere, canon!Adrian perks up~~

"Raiden told me to just avoid him," Arden said. "Which, you know, can do. Is it just everything that sets him off? Or is it more anything can?"

That...also seemed like it would be very hard on someone.

"The second one, mostly," Gray said. "He's very...tense, because he's always waiting for it, y'know? Which makes him mad. And then once he does get set off, he gets mad at himself for being mad about whatever it is, and then it spirals, and...yeah. It's...not great.

"Galen has kind of a bonus gift. We don't know why." ~~It was because in the first book everyone was going to be able to do it but then the writer changed her mind.~~ "It must be tied to Wrath somehow. But basically, if he looks a human in the eye he can see, like, all the darkness in their soul. All that ugly stuff we all have. I don't know if it would work on you since, y'know. But what you do with that information is up to you." Gray thought Arden would be fine, considering she was a sheltered teenager and also not human, but he wanted her to know it could happen anyway.

She had a lot of petty little sins though! Her own little forays into envy and lust and wrath, the kind that made her feel guilty because these were her friends and resenting them for things was unfair.

But goddess did she feel them.

She didn't think they made her a bad person, but there would definitely be at least things for Wrath to notice. ~~And then laugh at because, honey you are babytown frolics~~.

"Now I'm half-tempted to let him look to see if he can tell, you know? What does he do with that? Like. Just sits on it? Calls people out? Tells you you're being a jerk...?"

Edited 2024-09-04 20:47 (UTC)

"It depends," Gray vagued. "On, like, what he sees, and also what kind of mood he's in." Not that he was ever in a very good one.

"Okay, okay. Last but...the opposite of least, we have Alastair." Just the most arrogant ice prince you ever saw surrounded by purple glitter, with Werther's Originals glued to the corners of the card.

"...Are the candies because he's older?" Arden asked, lost on that. She'd vaguely gotten some of the color-coding of the glitter: red for wrath, purple for royalty, gold for greed, green for envy, she wasn't really sure what blue had to do with lust but it might just have been 'the color of glitter Gray had left,' but the Werther's confused her.

"Pride then," she said, because process of elimination was helpful that way. "How does that...manifest? Is that a good word?"

"They're his favorites," Gray explained. "We like to say Al's like a grandpa. He likes his tea and his candies and his books and whatnot." And he had glued them to the card so he could explain that to Arden and make Al seem somewhat less intimidating.

Gray could go on for hours about how Pride tied Alastair into knots, but he said, "Alastair's gonna come off really arrogant. That's because he is, but like...you know that Beyonce song? 'Ego'?" He shrugged. "He can back it up. Al's the oldest. Not just of the seven of us, but of all the Nephilim. The same way Lucifer was the firstborn of the angels, before he fell. That means he's...stronger."

Arden relaxed a bit at that. "Oh, that's something I'm used to. Arrogance is kind of par for the course for most Othersiders. Even if it's not as intense as Alistair's is, it's still something I'm at least used to."

She looked thoughtful. "So, by being the First - the First among Firsts, since you're all sons of the First to fall after Lucifer - he kinda got a measure of power more than everybody else? Like when you first start cutting a cake, before you realize you've gotta make sure there's enough for everybody?"

Now she was wondering what the birth order was. And if it mattered for anybody but Alistair.

"Ooooh, I bet Envy hates that."

"You'd be surprised." Running their circus was enough of a pain in the neck that even Daman mostly landed on sympathy.

"But, yeah. Alastair has power over us. Like, if he gives me a direct order, I have to obey it. Most of the time he doesn't have to do that because we obey his orders anyway, but...he can. If he has to. And a lot of the things the rest of us can do he can do just a little bit extra. Any of us can put a human to sleep with a touch." That probably came as news to Arden, but Gray was moving on to, "Al's the only one who can modify their memories. But what you really need to know about," and possibly the point of this entire presentation, "is that he knows when you lie to him."

"Oh?" Arden asked, and then, "....Oh. Okay. Um. What did you tell him?"

She was not a very honest person, Gray. Oh huh. More stuff on her soul for Wrath to see, if that worked on her.

"I'm gonna guess he doesn't like that very much."

"I told him that you were human. And my friend. And you're from another universe so it's not like you have to worry about the stuff a human from our universe would, anyway." And by the end of their conversation he was pretty sure that Alastair had been aware Arden wasn't a totally mundane human, on account of how he'd agreed to let her come to their house.

But he wasn't telling Arden that. He was telling her, "It doesn't work over the phone, anyway," because that was true. "And you can, like, leave stuff out or tell him something that's true but doesn't really answer his question." Getting around Alastair's truth-sensing was something all of Gray's brothers had honed to an art form, and Arden didn't even have to worry about him reading her thoughts! "Just try not to directly lie, okay?"

Arden nodded slowly. "Do you think he'll ask?" He knew the question she meant. "Do you think it's better for me to just...say?" She looked a little uneasy. "A few weeks ago, I - well we, Cal was there with me, thank the goddess - got jumped in Baltimore because they knew who I was. I don't know how they did, but...that's got me a little shook up. But on the other hand, like...your world isn't mine? And I dunno..."

She trailed off and then something Gray said snagged her attention. "What do you mean? About the not having to worry about stuff a human from you universe would, I mean?"

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