Don't mind me, I'm only nine months late (three months early?) in posting this :P
When Philip catwalks out of the bathroom, Fallon falls off his seat cackling, Dorothea shakes her head and lifts a hand to hide her smile, Willard just stares as if all the tulle and velvet are draining the life out of him, and Yuliy sinks further down into his seat like he wants the ground to swallow him whole—all of which are fair and valid sentiments.
With absolutely no shame and a beatific grin, Philip twirls around in what they're pretty sure is a ballerina costume for ten-year-old girls, retailored with some extra satin and sparkles and lace (no need for much adjustment in size though) with help from Dorothea, who looks like she still can't believe what she did.
"Don't I look just like them?" he crows, doing a mock curtsy for good measure. Garish plastic fangs line his teeth as he hisses dramatically.
"I think the sad thing is that you actually do," Dorothea quips dryly.
It was Fallon's idea to do something for Halloween this year, and somehow the rest of the Jaegers got roped into it as well—likely because Philip saw an excuse to get high on sugar, and Dorothea saw an excuse to play around with makeup and costumes. Yuliy's not quite sure how they convinced Willard—something about doing reconnaissance around the city while 'undercover'. Philip mostly took it as an opportunity to mock the vampires that they spend their days hunting and proceeded to somehow find a way to make a costume even gaudier and even more ridiculous than the kinds of things that Royal vampires typically wear.
"Can you even move like that?" Willard asks skeptically, glancing down.
Oh, and he's wearing four inch stiletto high heels. "Sure I can. I'm pretty sure these kinds of clothes are what actual dancers wear anyways, and they've gotta be able to move in stuff like this, right?"
Which is, sadly, some pretty good logic.
"Not the high heels, though," Yuliy mutters, and Philip wrinkles his nose at him, putting a hand on his hip.
"I could take your eye out with these things," he declares acidly, and he's probably right; those things could be weaponized. "And I'll have you know, I was practicing walking in these for hours last night."
Willard sighs, removing his monocle to polish it briefly, likely to just avoid having to look at Philip any longer. "Good to know you all were spending your time very productively."
"Very," Dorothea agrees, though her straight-faced facade cracks when she glances at him again. "I have to say, Frankenstein with a monocle is definitely a look."
The professor shakes his head, not deigning to dignify that with an answer. The giant headband giving the impression of a screw in his head makes it quite difficult for any of them to take him seriously for once, not to mention the green face paint that they bullied him into wearing and the stitches that Dorothea drew on with eyeliner.
"I still think mine is the best," Fallon proclaims, finally done laughing himself to death over Philip's costume.
With a flourish, he flicks his thick red velvet, white fur-lined cape over his shoulder, and nearly drops his plastic golden crown in the process. Dorothea rolls her eyes for the hundredth time that night as Fallon happily flaps around in his cape and robes, adorned with stuffed animals sewn on.
When none of them say anything, he beams at them, flapping his cape a little more. "Get it? I'm reigning cats and dogs!" No one laughs, and he continues, undeterred, "'Cause, like, I'm a king, and I've got these stuffed animals-"
"We get it," Philip says loudly, looking anywhere but at Fallon, who grins.
"Oh, come on, it's a good joke!" he exclaims, reaching out to ruffle the blond's hair.
"Hey, cut that out!" he squawks, flouncing away. "God, I can't believe I'm going to have to walk around next to you."
Yuliy coughs quietly. "Pot, meet kettle."
"Oh, shut up. Like your costume is any better."
That is fair. Never before has he been so offended by something he one hundred percent agrees with.
To begin with, Dorothea and Fallon were the ones to pick his costume for him, which already drastically reduced the chance of it being anything with any dignity whatsoever. They thought it was funny, and he knows when he's outvoted. It doesn't mean he has to like the fact that they got him the cheesiest, most stereotypical, most ridiculously cartoonish werewolf costume ever, fake torn red plaid and jeans and all. Why did all the werewolf costumes have red plaid shirts and jeans anyways? Why was that a thing?
The wolf face hood thing doesn't help either. The fake fur is stiff and itchy and it's ruining his peripheral vision. He's probably going to pitch this thing into the first dumpster they see. At least they let him get away with ditching the huge furry paws, since they would get in the way of his staff-wielding. Unfortunately, they did not let him ditch the clip-on tail.
He's pretty sure that Dorothea is the only one here wearing anything that looks at all presentable. She went with a classic witch costume that she somehow made almost entirely from scratch, and her black coat and corset actually look kind of cool with their plum purple accents and kimono-like sleeves, complete with the sweeping pointed hat and black high heeled boots. Instead of magic spells and potions, she has a sniper rifle and spare ammunition in her back pockets, and she can do much worse than turn people into toads.
Oh, and it's still three o'clock in the afternoon.
"Do we really have to be in this all night?" he grumbles, tugging at one of his furry ears irritably.
"Oh come on, where's your Halloween spirit?" Fallon demands cheerfully, throwing one burly arm around the teenager. "We gotta look the part for the pumpkin carving, and the haunted house, and the trick or treating, and the movie marathon-ing-"
"Ooh, I'll go get the pumpkins!" Philip volunteers, vaulting straight over the back of the couch, somehow without breaking his ankles in those heels. Yuliy has to grudgingly hand him that one; he would rather stab himself with those things than wear them.
o0o0o
In hindsight, it was a good thing that Dorothea bought extra pumpkins, because while Yuliy is pretty good at carving up vampires, it turns out he doesn't quite have the finesse needed to gouge out those perfect little toothy grins. And also because Fallon somehow accidentally chopped his entire pumpkin in half while trying to open up the top.
While staring at his third attempt (he's downgraded his expectations to just carve a very simple, very straightforward smiley face, please and thanks), by now covered in pumpkin guts and seeds, Yuliy asks no one in particular, "Can't I just paint on a face and-"
"No," three voices answer at the same time. As he subsides, scowling half-heartedly at his failures, he catches a suspicious flicker of a smile from Willard in his periphery.
They decided—well, the others decided—to all base their pumpkins off of their costumes, making Yuliy glad for the first time tonight that they picked a wolf for him. Of course, Willard's carving of a silhouetted screw through a head looks just fine; he's always had the patience for meticulous, attention-to-detail stuff like this.
Meanwhile, Yuliy's pretty sure that Dorothea's carving out the perfect silhouette of a cat in a witch hat. Even Fallon's not doing too bad with his simple design of a crown, able to easily carve away pieces of the pumpkin with flicks of his knife. And Philip might not have the physical strength of the rest of them, but he's determined enough to do his costume justice that he's making good progress anyways.
When they're finished, they stick candles in them and throw them onto the front porch in a nice, cheerful line. Yuliy's only thought is that first thing in the morning, he's punting his into the forest out back for the squirrels to eat.
"Hey, is that supposed to be an ear or an eye?" Philip snickers, poking one heel through a questionably shaped hole in Yuliy's pumpkin.
He grunts wordlessly, deciding not to admit that that was supposed to be the nose.
"Well," Dorothea declares cheerfully, hands on her hips, "that's done."
Philip grins up at the others, all fake vampire teeth. "Haunted house?"
o0o0o
The haunted house would've almost been funny if Yuliy hadn't almost accidentally punched one of the actors that jump scared him.
He was trailing along in the back with Willard, so he received ample warning of any scares (and also ears that will be ringing for probably the next twenty-four hours) from Philip and Fallon screaming in the front and Dorothea laughing her head off at them afterwards. Why the former two had been so eager to come here when they were so easily spooked, Yuliy had no idea, nor did he have any idea why the two were so easily spooked when they'd all seen much, much worse throughout their years hunting vampires.
Maybe it was therapeutic, to scream at things that they knew they could just walk past after, rather than to vocalize fear for the things that they knew they couldn't run from.
And that was fine. Yuliy was more or less expecting them to be utterly dramatic about it anyway, and even brought earplugs for the occasion—not that they helped much. Once or twice, he even found himself cracking a smile while Dorothea cackles at the two boys in front blubbering at the latest jump scare.
Unfortunately, the staff did make them disarm themselves (understandably, or this could've ended much differently) before they went in, and that put Yuliy on edge. He tried distracting himself by thinking about all the hidden doors and swinging panels and secret passageways that must be in this large building that they're only traversing a small part of-
Which was exactly how an actor who didn't catch the three in front managed to startle him so badly that he nearly punched them on reflex.
Luckily he caught himself just in time, but Yuliy still spent pretty much all of the rest of the night sulking, even though the others didn't actually give him any grief for it except for a half annoyed, half amused, "We can't take you anywhere" from Philip.
o0o0o
Somehow, it's midnight and the others are still full of energy after trick-or-treating, during which they managed to encounter a party of vampires on the way back to their hideout.
The Royal leading the charge was suitably appalled by Philip's costume, and shrieked, "What are you supposed to be?!"
"You, obviously," the blond snarked back in obvious delight before stabbing one of his heels into her eyeball and peppering her with bullets. Yuliy couldn't quite tell if she was screaming more because of the costume or the bullets, either of which would be understandable.
"Hey, let me try one of those sour ones," Fallon says hopefully, only for Dorothea to jerk her pillowcase of candy away from him.
"Not on your life," she snarks, and slaps Philip's hand away. "Hey, I see you there. If you want anything from mine, you gotta trade for it."
"No fair, you got so many good ones…"
Yuliy drops his bag on the kitchen table, exhausted. The fight actually cleared his mind a little, but now that they're inside, he can smell all the sugar in the air, and it's making his head spin. He picks half heartedly through his bag for anything he might want.
"Don't eat anything sweet before going to sleep. Your perfect teeth will be infested with cavities."
Suddenly, he's not in the mood for any sugar.
"Hey, Yuliy, can I have all your chocolate?" Philip asks, grinning his fake vampire grin as he reaches for Yuliy's bag, probably thinking he's being inconspicuous. "Since you can't eat it 'cause you're a dog and all."
"Sure," he mutters, surprising Philip. "You guys can have whatever's in my bag."
He makes his way to the living room, finally taking off the wolf head with a sigh of relief. One of the ears got clawed off by a Slave vampire earlier, and where the muzzle should be is a mass of stuffing spilling out. With a snort, he tosses it aside where he'll probably forget about it tomorrow, and he reaches for the TV and the collection of films they gathered the day before.
Horror films always cheer him up, so long as he's not sitting next to Fallon and Philip. Getting jump scared in movies isn't so bad, not when the movie is going to just keep rolling no matter what he does. And it's always fun to join Dorothea and occasionally Willard in dissing all the stupid things that the characters do.
He's got the first movie set up by the time Fallon and Philip join him in the living room, haggling over candy. They take the couch, Dorothea throws herself into the armchair, and Yuliy grabs a fluffy blanket off the back of the armchair and plops down at her feet, dragging the fabric over himself and casting an envious look at her fuzzy socks.
"Where's the professor?" he asks, twisting to look up at her from under the blanket.
Grinning, she yanks the blanket down over his head, laughing while he untangles himself, grumbling. "He's in the kitchen."
The two of them are in the middle of discussing how the movie plot deviates from the book which it was adapted from when Willard walks in with a tray of mugs. Yuliy's sharp nose catches a whiff of chocolate, previously undetectable under all the other sweets they brought home. "Is that hot chocolate?"
He smiles (a little creepily, given that the only source of light is the TV and he's still wearing his full Frankenstein makeup), and Dorothea gives an amused snort as she reaches for one of the cups.
"Thanks, but are you sure they need more sugar?" she asks, gesturing at Fallon and Philip, who are steadily making their way through their trick-or-treating candy at a somewhat alarming, if impressive, rate.
Willard shrugs. "It was cold out, and we did run into vampires. I thought we could use a pick me up." He hands one of the mugs to Yuliy. "This one's tea."
Yuliy mumbles a thank you, hiding a surprised but pleased smile in the mug as he warms his hands around it, breathing in the aroma. The warmth is starting to make him sleepy.
A pair of screams from the other side of the room elicits a curious "hmm?" as he peers over the rim of the ceramic at what's happening on screen. Behind him, Dorothea crosses her legs and hums.
"Twenty minutes," she remarks idly. "Not bad."
"We should've played the sequel first. They would've screamed in ten."
"Yeah, but then the story would be out of order."
"They're both just your standard murder movies. Does the story matter that much?"
"Point."
Willard comes back with another chair to set down next to Dorothea. "So when are we getting to Phantom of the Opera?"
"After the sequel, I guess? Or we can go straight to that after this. I dunno how long we're gonna be up…"
Yuliy glances back to see Willard peering over the rim of his cup at the two boys on the couch as he speculates, "Well, I'm guessing the two of them will either be out like lights in another half hour in a sugar coma, or wide awake until the sun rises, so who knows?"
The images moving onscreen are getting fuzzier by the minute as Yuliy lets the warmth of his drink and blanket lull him farther and farther into the realm of sleep. He's never had much experience with Halloween; it wasn't celebrated in his tribe and he hadn't heard of it until he met Willard, but despite having given up most of his dignity the moment they stuffed him into that ridiculous werewolf costume, he couldn't think of a better way to spend a blustery, cold night in late October than with the people who made it special.
Dang, I haven't celebrated Halloween myself for a while, even before covid XD