New Boy in Town || Nathaniel & Freddie
Freddie, who generally made a habit of avoiding Bean Me Up on principle, had made an exception this morning. Not because he was in search of coffee - he’d gotten his tea at The Black Tap, as per usual when he was out - but because he was in search of Iann. And when his friend had proven elusive in his usual haunts, and hadn’t yet responded to the fairy’s texts - such a rarity that Freddie assumed his phone simply had to be off - Bean Me Up was left as the only likely option left.
And since Freddie and Ollie had been passing anyway…
He’d wrinkled his nose and decided to bite the bullet. It would be worth the few minutes spent in Tuah’s presence, he thought, to come in and monopolize a bit of Iann’s time and attention.
The only trouble, was that some daft git had been stood in the way of the door when Freddie’d opened it, and had ended up wearing his drink. A fact that said man apparently seemed to feel was somehow solely Freddie’s fault.
The fairy paused where he was as the other bloke spluttered and raged - Ollie bristling at his side - and gave the coffee-drinker a coolly unimpressed appraisal as he looked him up and down; taking in the painfully self-conscious, overly constructed ensemble, and the small splash of latte on his shirt, with a small snort of derision.
“Oi - I’d watch who you’re calling a bitch, mate,” Freddie said, “There’s some utterly enchanting women round here who’d have your guts for garters - literally - if you tried that on with them.” He narrowed his eyes slightly, straightening his own clothes. “And I don’t particularly care for it myself. So here, yeah?” With a small swirl of silvery dust, Freddie glamoured the wet stain into glittering white sand, and manipulated a small current of air to draw it into his palm. “Good as new.”
And he would have left it there - he should have left it there - but, being a fairy (and being himself), he couldn’t quite manage it. Not for this snotty little arsehole; or his affected overdone idea of fashion.
“Except…” Freddie said after a pause, a thoughtful considering sort of look on his face though there was a wicked glint in his eye, “-you really were bloody rude, love. And it’s far too early to have to tolerate that sort of appalling lack of manners.”
Freddie sent the pure white sand back in the direction it had come - only slightly lower - and let the glamour fall with a splash the instant it connected with the front of the other man’s trousers. “There,” he said with a sweet smile, “That’s much better. Now you look as though you’ve wet yourself; and on the way to the dry-cleaners you can think all about how better to comport yourself the next time you feel a bit hard done by.”
“Consider it a lesson in grace, hm?”
He would have a witty remark ready for the other if he wasn’t too stunned at what just happened. He felt the tingling sensation running through him when Mr. Fancy started wriggling his hand and some glittery dust covered the stain on his shirt and made it appear on his palm. Nathaniel placed his hand in his chest, his brows furrowing tightly and his eyes narrowing in suspicion. “How the Hell…” he said under his breath, darting his gaze between the silvery dust and the man’s face.
“What the -” Nathaniel took a step back when he felt the same tingling sensation as the dust swirled around him once again, causing the stain now to appear in front of his pants instead. It was one thing to witness some cheap trickery from afar, and it was another when it affected him personally. His frustration grew as he continued to link the extraneous events that had happened to him in the past months to this very outcome, a product of his overthinking and simply wanting to have something to blame for his stroke of bad luck.
Nathaniel could feel the air around him becoming staticky as his frustration increased, and a tension coiling tightly deep inside him as if waiting for release. He could feel something inside him began to shift, and if he wasn’t so absorbed in his own self-pity, he would’ve noticed it right away. Right now, he couldn’t stop the change that his body undergone.
“Thanks for the lesson,” Nathaniel glared at the man, his voice dropped a few octaves and sounded hoarser than his usual voice, like two stones had been grating against one another and lodged themselves in his throat. His eyes turned completely blue sans the small dot in the middle, and horns started to curve around his head from the base of his back skull. His nostrils flared as his hand trying and failing miserably to clean up the mess on his pants. “How mature of you to glitter bombed someone and play tricks on them after you’ve bumped into them. Making it look like I wet myself. What are you, fucking twelve?”
WIth an exaggerated eye roll he moved (glided) towards the counter and ordered his drink once again (he was determined to get his drink no matter what), dismissing the other completely. “What? You’re going to join him throwing glitter bomb at me too?” Nathaniel snapped at the barista when he noticed the other was looking at him than making his drink, narrowing his eyes as if to say ‘you better make my fucking drink, or I’ll call whoever’s in charge to make it for me’.
It didn’t seem to convey his message, however. Instead, the barista continued to look at him with a befuddled expression. Nathaniel was about to snap at him once again before the barista mused, “You always shift to your form whenever you’re angry?” Upon the look of confusion one Nathaniel face, the barista continued, “your horns are showing.” When he still failed to catch what the barista was saying, he was shown what the other meant with the other’s phone with its front camera opened.
“Oh my God.” Panic started to replace the frustration that he felt as he felt along the horns. “Where’s your restroom?” Once pointed towards the general direction Nathaniel quickly darted towards it to inspect himself. The stain on his pants was the least of his concern at the moment.
“Oh my God.”Nathaniel touched his face, which now felt rough to the touch, and he swore he could see an undercurrent between the lines. “No no no no no no. Change back. Okay. How do I change back?” He started pacing within the small space as he tried to remember how it went the last time.