ringing in the new year

[beastkeeper]

For the most part, the beginning of every new year on the block is the same. There's the party, held down in the common room (barely distinguishable from the lobby, but hey, who cares), and the reminders that go up in the week prior, telling people to bring food to share (not that everyone does — the witch provides more than enough, anyhow). There are, of course, smaller parties, held in the apartments upstairs or on the grounds, and the combinations of creatures always rotates (more or less), but the overall air remains the same. The end of one year and the ushering in of another is cause to celebrate.

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[ex_dengue_145]

[ The thump startles J. Hadley, jostling him out of the almost meditative state he'd reached sitting on the floor of the front hall, his shoulder half-leaned against the doorjam and his half-eaten bowl of canned supper forgotten. He starts, scrambling backwards from the door in a brief panic, his heart yammering away in a disjointed chorus of company, finally and you shouldn't have come.

It takes him more than a moment to place the voice if only because his general lack of visitors means he has very little information to reference it against. A face, if he's lucky, but more often than not nothing beyond a first name, last initial, a vague sense of where of they live in the block, maybe what car they drive if they happen to peel away in eyeshot of his living room window. It would've taken longer if it hadn't been Ada.

Ada, J. Hadley knows. Most of the time he feels sorry for her that he does. ]

Ada—? [ His voice cracks awkwardly and he clears his throat. ] Ada, s-shouldn't you be downstairs? At the party. Circe's p-party.

[ecdysis]

I've been, [ Ada replies, the words spoken on a sigh. A moment passes (they slip away from her as easily as fall leaves) as she settles herself against the door, half standing and half not, one finger running lines around the number plaque. ]

You weren't there, [ she adds momentarily, in a tone of voice that suggests mild surprise. (She wasn't surprised, of course, not when she knows exactly what it is that the witch gave him for a power. Why things turned out the way they did, she doesn't know, but, she figures, it'd be rude to ask.) ] I think they're playing the countdown on the radio. Or the television.

[ Another pause. (For each of J. Hadley's stammers, there's a pause or a drawn-out vowel in Ada's speech.) ]

Aren't you hungry?

[ex_dengue_145]

[ You should go now.

(He doesn't say it.)

J. Hadley has spent so long in this apartment with the shell of his ear pressed morosely to the door, his eyes glued to the thin slice of greenish fluorescent light that seeps in from the hallway, that he knows precisely how Ada is leaning against the door just by the sound her clothes make against the wood and the way her shadow shifts and then sits against one edge of that thin, uneven slit of light. There's even a tell in how the door settles against is hinges, one side obviously taking a fraction more weight than the other. Very tentatively, J. Hadley draws himself up onto his knees and presses his hand against the door to test her weight against it from the other side. It feels dangerous even though he knows it isn't; the door would protect her, a solid in and half of wood to keep Ada and all of her lovely, functioning insides away from him and the rot he know sprung from his skin.

(He hadn't meant to make Circe angry, it had been an honest mistake, he hadn't been going anywhere really—) ]

I. I heard. [ It takes a moment to get the word out. Sometimes they never come at all. ] The countdown on the r-radio. And the suh— And the suh-singing. [ He'd smiled then, even had began to hum along in wavering tones through his nose. ]

[ Carefully he lifts one finger then the next, then the next, from the surface of the wood, peeling his hand from it with a deliberateness that comes only with full-blown reluctance. Moths fly, don't they? It was only a matter of time before Ada flittered off and so J. Hadley feels less the urge to chase her off. She'd manage it on her own. ] I ate s-some. Nothing buh-big, but.

[ It goes quiet on J. Hadley's side of the door, quiet to the point where it seems as though he's suddenly disappeared from behind it. ] —was it n-nice, Ada? The party?

[ecdysis]

[ Moths flit from place to place, and when J. Hadley goes silent, Ada almost leaves, the press of her shoulder against the door lightening for just one moment when he speaks, again.

For a moment, she's silent, too, although the light that filters in at the bottom of the door (or rather, the light that doesn't) is evidence that she's still there. ]

It was warm, [ she tells him, one hand tracing new patterns on the door's surface, the word meant more figuratively than not. ] Too bright, for me, but very warm. [ As drawn to crowds as she is, there's one thing that Ada shares completely with her namesake and that is a preference for the night to the day. Turn on too many lights, and there's little that will keep Ada around for very long. A bright light in the darkness, and she'll stay. But constant light, and she'll seek out the darkness instead.

She wonders, from time to time, if J. Hadley has the same compulsions. She imagines that he does, if only from questions like that, and after spending a lifetime in that little darkness of his apartment she imagines that most everything would seem like a light, if not a fully obtainable one. ]

I have a little champagne, if you'd like it, [ she offers momentarily, eyes searching the door as if she could see through it. ] I've taken a sip of it, but no more than that, I promise.