It took a while before the discomfort of sitting on the floor leaned against the door to her apartment sobbing broke through the flood of emotion her head tilted back and thumped against the door. This was all just so very fucked, why couldn’t she just keep walking? Come on! That was like the first thing anyone living in a city should learn! It's not your problem just keep walking but noooooo she had to poke her nose into things and now? Well she was probably gonna die, right? There’s no way that monsters like that would just leave her be, sure Maeva had -said- that she would be left alone but why should she trust the word of a literal bloodsucking monster? In fact a monster like that might just tell her something like that and watch her squirm for a bit till she gets bored!
Her phone buzzed breaking her from the spiral of oppressive thoughts, the ding was a breath of fresh air to break through her mental fog and despite it very much likely being her boss asking where she was that was still something concrete that she could cling onto like a lifeline to take back some semblance of normalcy. Sniffling a bit she wiped her tears and runny nose on a sleeve as she thumbed the button to light up the lock screen. She was right it was exactly who she thought it was, Charlotte just stared at the screen for a few minutes formulating a response before her phone buzzed again.
Charlotte had one real friend in this world, most ‘friends’ tend to kinda drift away over time especially if you were like Charlotte and had a hard time putting in the effort to maintain them. It wasn’t that she disliked having friends, she wasn’t quite that misanthropic, but it was hard when you barely had the energy to get out of bed most days and people just didn’t quite understand that you can’t exactly afford weekly trips to the bar or whatever.
Which is why she appreciated her friend all the more. She’d met Nessa back in highschool before everything went to crap and the girl had this weird persistence to her that, while sometimes annoying Charlotte appreciated so when her phone buzzed a second time and it was Nessa asking her if she could pop over for a bit she didn’t hesitate to answer needing the distraction more than anything.
N - ‘busy today? Got some news to share in person~’
C - ‘sure, ya I could use the distraction you still know the address right?’
She didn’t get a response but she didn’t really need one. Honestly the girl would show up even if she hadn’t responded. Half the time she thought that Nessa only texted when she was already on the way over. Still it was a reason to stand up to try and clean up her messy hair and wipe the tears from her eyes trying to hide the mess she's been in before the message interrupted her spiral. It was really only a few minutes later as she was putting the kettle on that the door burst open, Charlotte had been fairly certain that it was locked but that never really seemed to matter all that much when Nessa burst in.
“Ahhh! I smell tea!” came the shout from the entryway leaving Charlotte just shaking her head the water wasn’t even boiled yet so there was no way for anything of the sort to be detected. The woman rounding the corner was on the shorter end of things standing somewhere around five foot one and was a ball of endless energy, she never really stopped moving be it just her leg bouncing or she was rocking back and forth while talking she was like a perpetual motion machine wrapped up in an adorable bundle of wavy hair and what amounted to ‘boho chic’ clothing.
“The water hasn’t boiled yet, you can’t smell anything but your own imagination.”
“Aha! but you make tea every time I come over.” which was a fair point after all she did just that. So she didn’t respond. Her snark levels were just about empty after the night she’d had. So she just bustled about getting everything ready while Nessa settled in on a stool at the table. She was for a few moments uncharacteristically quiet. When she did speak again it was quiet and serious in a way that made Charlotte freeze, she’d never really heard her friend be so icy serious.
“So ya did something really dumb last night.”
More than just that tone, there was an implication and that made her blood run cold, her heart skipped a beat she wasn’t… How? She wasn’t to say anything she hadn’t said anything.
“W-what do you mean?” something that earned her a pointed stare and a dismissive wave of Nessa’s hand.
“You know damn well what I’m talking about, there’s no point playing stupid they can’t listen in right now. Listen very carefully because this can’t be kept up for very long. The best thing for you to do would be to just forget everything, but I’m willing to bet that’s not really an option huh?” She was interrupted by the kettle starting to whistle and that too gave Charlotte a moment to get settled or at least stop the rising panic attack from getting worse.
“I didn’t… see anything.” she started weakly keeping her back to the girl as she poured the boiling water into the mugs just buying herself as much time as she could. It was a pointless effort however.
“Listen, getting involved with supernatural shit is never good, like... never. So just be careful okay?”
It had been nagging at Charlotte for a bit now, of course it had been the reason for her panic attack and retreat back into the apartment earlier, that -anyone- she met could be a monster, could be something other than human and that was a terrifying prospect for someone to suddenly realize out of the blue and now it was becoming, well not just becoming it was flat out stated that her friend was one of them too.
“You’re a monster too.”
