[FIN] It's My Birthdayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

[BlackFireKitsune]

His brief coughing fit made her tense a little bit with worry, but he seemed alright after. Not wanting to suffer the same fate, she carefully and with some difficulty pushed herself back up to a sitting position. "Don't die or anything," she commented sarcastically, though she couldn't help the bit of concern in her voice. Yes, lay down and try to drink, that works perfectly well, yes good.

"Never ever," she repeated with a shake of her head, then took another swig of beer, savoring the effects the alcohol was starting to have. "I never even needed to until last year, but even then I haven't." A pause. "I don't have any brothers or sisters either."  

[Suudonym]

"It's my birthday and I'll die if I want to!" he exclaimed, raising the bottle as if in toast. He then leaned towards Seraphine, his voice a conspiratorial whisper, "It's okay, I don't actually want to."

He gave a long hum. "So what about that whole 'independence' thing? Not into it?" Didn't sound practical, but if her parents didn't mind it then that was her decision, he supposed.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

His exclamation earned a small smirk, and she similarly leaned in to receive the whisper, to which she responded at an equal volume, "Kay good, because that would really suck."

She leaned back to take another drink, then swished the bottle a bit with a frown. "Of course I am. We had more than enough money for me to have all the independence I wanted - last year. This year's just been made of too much suck and fail though." She couldn't even list off all the bad things on both hands anymore - both because too many had occurred, and also because she no longer had two hands with which to count.  

[Suudonym]

"Damn straight!" he agreed, then paused and frowned. "Well, okay, no, my camaraderie is imagined. This year hasn't been too bad for me, in the grand scheme of things." He tipped the bottle back at his lips once more, minding gravity this time. He sprang up suddenly - or attempted to, stopping short when he remembered that he was currently inhabiting a beer fort. "You know what's better than this year? Cory's got an iPod dock in his room, and he totally left mp3 player in it." His motions towards exiting the hovel said a lot about his intentions for that information.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Lucky you," she countered, though any bitterness was directed at herself. It had been almost a full year since everything started happening - her parents going bankrupt and Anastasia getting stolen - and thus, it had quite literally been the worst year of her life. "I could count all the s**t that's happened in the past year on both hands for you, but," she shrugged and took another swig of her beer, "I kind of can't." The promise of music - because why else would he mention that and then hastily depart their beer box fort castle thing? - at least lifted her spirits somewhat. A little. Except... "Does he have any good music on it?" An mp3 player was only as good as the music within it.  

[Suudonym]

He looked over his shoulder as he made his way to the crawlspace of an entrance and stuck his tongue out with a cheeky grin. "'Cause there's a beer in one of them hands?" he guessed haphazardly, raising his voice a bit to account for the muffling of the draped sheets. After successfully extricating himself from their lair, he spoke increasingly loudly to keep his words easy to hear as he disappeared down the hall to his friend's bedroom, "Uhhh probably, it's Cory. I used to get most of my music from him." It wouldn't be long before his footsteps would be heard returning, Nate toting a small docking station on his head and holding the accompanying mp3 player in the hand that wasn't balancing the other device.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

She blinked in mild confusion while finishing off her current bottle and placing it in a window, then held her empty hand out for Mordecai to pass her another opened one. A beer in one of...? Oh. Oh, yeah, she was talking about counting and hands. "Nah," she replied with a shake of her head that she wasn't even thinking about if he would see the action or not, "'cuz I only have one to count with, and that's the one the beer's in." She raised the bottle to her lips for another sip, watching his lower half through the various sheets and chairs in her line of vision, then lowered it. "You wanna talk about s**t happening, I could tell you so much crazy ridiculous s**t. S'probly enough for two people, even." Hell, every bad thing could be traced back to that single point last year.  

[Suudonym]

Entering the fort was significantly more challenging with the bulky speakers in his arms, through he eventually managed to worm his way in. He paused to narrow his eyes at Sera, unsure of the meaning of her explanation - humans had two arms, by and large, and as far as he was aware, she wasn't a part of the minority that didn't. "Oh we can talk about s**t happening," he said, disguising his curiosity with a flippant tone as he situated himself, located an outlet to plug in the dock (he hadn't factored the need for an outlet into his original construction plans, but damned if he wasn't going to pretend he had the ability to think that far ahead), and scrolled through the music on Cory's iPod. He snorted lightly at the screen before selecting a song and setting it into the cradle.

Chopin's Nocturne in E flat major, Opus 9, Number 2 filled the beer fort with an idiotic amount of class and elegance, and Nate spared a few moments in silence to uncap and down a bottle's entire contents. "Ahh yes," he drolled in a posh accent, swirling the emptied bottle, "the stock market."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Her eyes narrowed appraisingly at his choice of words and his choice of music - though mostly his choice of words. "Son you are walking a dangerous line," she warned sarcastically, waving her beer bottle at him, "'cuz if you're gonna bring up the ********' stock market, which, I will have you know, was the ********' start of this shitastic year of s**t, then I am gonna have to start talking about all the goddamn crap that's been happening and I dunno that you really want me to talk about that." Sera ended her mini-tirade with another long drink from her bottle of beer. At some point, during her quasi-warning, her shortened arm had removed itself from her hoodie pocket to prop itself against her hip to give more meaning to her words. Putting her hands on her hips had always been a thing she did before, and was more or less a habit, if not second nature entirely.  

[Suudonym]

As she put her hands - hand - on her hips, her earlier words suddenly made a lot more sense, the inaudible 'oooohhhhhhhh' more or less visible in his expression. Passingly he wondered if he was drunk enough for this, then realized that if that was his first reaction, the answer was probably that he was well on his way. He cracked another beer.

"Yo," he said, swirling a pointed finger at her, "we can talk about stocks." The classiness of the immediate vicinity dropped rapidly as Nate scrolled through Cory's mp3 player and chose a different song, a loud, modern one typical of rowdy clubs. He set it back in the cradle and stared stone-faced at Sera as it played, suddenly and loudly joining in with the chorus, "--stocks, stocks, stocks, stocks stocks stocks, everybody!"  

[BlackFireKitsune]

She was too busy taking a drink to notice most of his reaction - not that she even realized what he was reacting to - but she gave him a single eyebrow raise in response once she'd finished. But he was already speaking and scrolling through music, so she focused on that instead - and his incredibly serious face while joining in with spoof lyrics to an obviously ridiculous song. Contrary to her feelings and emotions up to that point, she absolutely could not prevent the grin and the laugh that resulted. "I can't look at you while you're doing that," she said with a shake of her head, looking away before looking back again - then shook her head again with another highly amused laugh. Clearly it was hilarious in her current state, which was rather more inebriated than he probably was. "Nope, can't," she reiterated with a giggle - the laughing was mostly stifled - and raised her bottle to take a drink again while pointedly looking not at Nate.  

[Suudonym]

At her confession that she couldn't look at him, he decided to make a challenge out of it, pivoting at the waist like the head of a Noctowl to remain in her direct line of sight, eyes open wide and unblinkingly as he followed her gaze, continuing to parody the lyrics, "Everybody!"  

[BlackFireKitsune]

His actions luckily came right before she took a sip, so she quickly refrained from doing so - and thus had to lean forward a bit as she lowered the bottle - just in time for her laughter to return. "What, no-- stop it," she said through a grin and a giggle as she raised her arm - and her bottle of beer - parallel to the floor in some vague, likely useless effort to block him from her as she leaned away, still laughing and attempting to not look at him and his absolutely ridiculous behavior.  

[Suudonym]

He rocked his head side to side in rhythm to the song, his mouthing taking the shape of a large oval - in addition to the still widened eyes - as he gave his response, "NnnooooOOOOOOOOOOPE."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Oh my god, you are the most ridiculous person," she laughed with another shake of her head, then she realized she had the perfect way to foil his plots - by firmly closing her eyes. "'Nnnnoooope' yourself," the brunette added as she then raised the bottle to her lips again to finally take a sip. She couldn't laugh at his behavior if she couldn't see it.