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#1 I ACCIDENTALLY A WHOLE BRIBE (FOR COOPER / early june)
Ghoul is not usually the type to take an interest in playing legislative games, but after this recent shitshow of an election, he's decided to shake things up. The entire Council is apparently corrupt or crazy or selfish or unpredictable in one way or another- and you know what? That's fine. If the Council members are so quick to take bribes, then he'll find a motherfucker to take a bribe.

That's where Cooper comes in. Not because Ghoul thinks he's the most corrupt, but because he's the only one he's ever met at all. Cooper seems pretty okay for a vampire, and Ghoul figures it's easier to start on familiar ground.

Which is how Cooper ends up with a determined looking Ghoul starting off their meeting with, "I wanna get a law changed."

#2 THE SLOWEST SUFFERING (FOR LILLIAN / early june)
The talk with Cooper had gone all right, but this wasn't where he expected the conversation to lead him. He'd assumed the bribery thing would be a one-and-done deal, but no. Now he has to write up some sort of bullshit formal proposal, and it feels like every word he manages to jot down sucks a little bit of the life force out of him.

It's awful. There are even books (fucking books!) spread out on the table in front of him, because he thought a quiet, cozy picnic area in a park would be a nice place to think.

It's not helping much, actually. After a while, he abandons the small notebook he'd been scribbling in and directs all of his attention to his phone screen. The shit he's scrolling through has nothing to do with his project, but hey. It's fine. He deserves a break.

#3 FULL MOON: DURING/AFTER (OPEN TO EAST END PACK / june 9th/10th)
And all too quickly, that time of the month has come around again. This time, he's prepared. He remains in the den for the duration, spending the night in the basement with some of the others. Keeping an eye on things with the newer members, being a nuisance towards older ones- the usual, really.

Once morning rolls around, he drags himself upstairs to recover. Face-down on a squishy sofa in one of the common areas is where he stays for most of the day, sore and half asleep.

#4 HILLINGDON HOUSE CALL (OPEN TO HILLINGDON & HILLINGDON ALLIES - feel free to reply as though he's made it inside the building and is wandering around, as well! / mid june)
Ghoul has a ghost to check in with.

He ends up finding Hillingdon House without much trouble. The place isn't as big as he'd imagined it to be (that's what he gets for looking at it from the front), and it seems pretty normal. Still, he ends up stuck outside of it, staring with a pensive look on his face. What the hell does he do with it? Knock on the door like some kind of jackass? Just waltz on in there? Where a bunch of hunters are?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Daryl didn't react to the elbow. It was a fair retaliation. But he did scoff at the declaration, "Pfft. Yeah right. Like we'd pick you for that. Can't have someone who stumbles over their own paws and rolls over for a belly rub representing us. What kind of hunters would people take us for then?"

"I don't fuckin' do that." That is downright offensive. He would never.

...Wait, did he do that at some point? Ghoul suddenly looks unsure of himself. It's hard to remember- no, it doesn't matter. "Y'know, fuck you. I didn't come here for this," he gripes. What did he come here for? A few things, if he's got to be completely honest. His curiosity being one of them.

Before Daryl gets a chance to question him, he goes ahead and asks, "How's it been here since shit went down?"

"Sure you don't," Daryl answered like it had happened. Which, technically, it hadn't, but he was pretty certain if he'd wanted it to, he could have made it happen. After he got all purr-happy with Ghoul, the kid had pretty much capitulated to Daryl being all up on him.

His eyes flicked over to the kid's face, checking for the lines. Looked like they hadn't scarred over. That was good.

"Tense. Daybreak ain't exactly someone anyone here likes pissing off. Just, you know, had to." He squinted at the kid, "Why? They getting on your case about the heel-face turn ya'll did?"

Ugh. Being a wolf is fucking embarrassing. Ghoul lets out a moody puff of air, reaching up to briefly rub his knuckles over the area he notices Daryl eyeballing.

The wound healed near-perfectly and isn't bothering him in the least, but the rubbing is a nervous action more than anything. "Yeah, I know. 'M glad you did it," is what he murmurs as he tucks his hands away by crossing his arms over his chest. "Uh, no- I don't think so. Haven't noticed nothin' different so far. I never got along with most of 'em too good in the first place, though." Shrug. Whatever.

He's concerned about what Daybreak might do to the pack in the future, sure, but he's currently more afraid of Katherine than he is of them.

"Then what's wrong?" Daryl didn't usually like pushing the whole touchy-feely sort of narrative, but he liked the kid. And Ghoul looked a bit shook up.

He set a hand to Ghoul's back to guide him forward and around a chair, "Sit down. Talk."

"What? Nothin'." Oh no, not a feelings-talk. Ghoul winces and desperately looks for something sturdy to latch on to, as if that will save him. "Y'really don't gotta-" Fuck, there's the chair.

It may as well be made of nails and glass, for as uncomfortable as he looks when he finally, slowly sits down in it. He then stares down at his hands, which he wrings together a few times and shrugs. "It's not any one thing. Just got a lot goin' on, and it's- y'know, tense. You said it yourself. Ain't no reason t'get all worked up over it, just deal with it as it comes."

"Don't mean it's easy," he murmured, moving to flop into the couch not far from the kid. He pulled his feet up to rest them on the coffee table and let his body otherwise relax as best it could. He got the feeling there was more than just things being tense, but it was difficult to make a guess at it.

"Man, it ain't been easy for like six years." He follows that sentence up with one of those uneasy laughs. "For real, it's nothin'. Katherine's just on a fuckin' warpath, kinda makes us all on edge." When the alpha isn't happy, no one is happy- and not even particularly in a she's actively making everyone's lives miserable way, even though that's a very real possibility. It's a deeper matter of the pack not being unified, and they can all sense it. Everything feels off. Everything.

This pack-hivemind shit is for the birds.