It had been a little over a month since Audrey shacked up in the Westley's cottage along the beach, and by now, he's given up exercise and had been devoting the last few hours to laying on his back and staring up at the ceiling. Ultimately, his plan of living on his own and "finding himself" had failed. Now he was more depressed than before. Scruffier, too.

He felt no point in getting up. What was there to do in the first place? There was nothing. There was no one. He couldn't talk to anyone, as it had started to feel odd calling up his friends and chatting. This wasn't good. He had regressed, feeling lethargic and otherwise sorry for himself, but most of all, he was apathetic. It was the last one that got to him the most. There was no motivation to do anything at all. The only thing he could do there as lie there and stare until it was time to go to sleep.

It took almost all of the energy he had to sit up when there was a knock at the front door. Then he had to somehow walk over and answer it. The reaper's body was sluggish and uncooperative as he stumbled to his feet, but he managed. Dragging himself to the front of the house, he grabbed the door handle and opened the door, only to have a sudden jolt of adrenaline running through him as he was startled by a group of men and one woman.

"'Sup, dawg?" greeted the menace with a wide grin. "What goes on?"

"Have you been bathing?" questioned Kristopherson, wrinkling his nose. "The place stinks, man."

"What are you guys doing here?" questioned the man with a befuddled expression. He certainly didn't invite the others over, nor did they ever announce themselves. It was totally random and unexpected for them to show up. Audrey wondered if they understood what "living by oneself" meant.

"Miranda said you'd be lonely, so we thought we'd stop by." explained Daniel. "You don't mind, do you?"

"No, not at all..." Audrey said, still confused and uncertain as to how to deal with the situation. "I'm not dressed, though..."

"We can see that. Put on pants." instructed Alois.

"Put on deodorant." added Kristopherson.

"Shave that thing on your face." chimed in Daniel.

"We can probably wait out here, in the meantime." stated Ciel.

"Nah, no, no, it's cool. Come in." the reaper replied, stepping to the side to make way. "I'll go put on pants."

"Thanks, man. It's windy as fuck out here." Westley complained, stopping to check his appearance. "My hair's all fucked up."

"So's your face." jabbed the blonde Phantomhive, earning a collective "oooh" from the other along with a few chuckles.

"Laugh it up, asswipes, you're in my house." Daniel shot back, failing to intimidate any of them as the others filtered inside while ignoring him.

Essentially, they invited themselves to sit in the living room on the couches while Audrey disappeared into a bedroom in order to put on actual clothes. Only one of them felt a tad out of place, as she had never gone anywhere with her boyfriend and his friends before. Along with Patricia was Travis, then Daniel and the Phantomhives. While Kristopherson was there, Logan had to work and was unfortunately unable to make it.

"So what's the plan?" questioned the woman. "What do you guys normally do when you come over here?"

"Well, we usually go to the beach, but it's a bit cold." said Kristopherson. "I'm fine with going, though. What about you guys?"

"Nah, not too interested." Alois replied, shaking his head while making a gentle face of displeasure.

"Really? You always suggest we throw Ciel into the ocean, though."

"Just don't wanna." the menace shrugged, trying not to make a big deal of it. Really, the idea of the ocean made him uncomfortable but he still felt the need to come, as it was a rare opportunity to be together with the whole group. He assumed that no one would be broken hearted if he stayed on the sidelines a bit, if they went to the beach.

"Whatever you say, mate."

"What is the plan, though?" questioned Ciel. "If there's no beach, then what do we do? Sit around, playing monopoly?"

"We are not playing monopoly with your cheating ass." accused Daniel while pointing his finger.

"I wasn't cheating. You're just bad at it." replied the Watchdog. "I saw some shops a while back, I suppose, so there's that. Or we could just talk."

"Anybody have any exciting news?" chimed in Alois, looking around the room expectantly. "I, for one, am doing well."

"Yeah, of course you are. You're the mascot of the supernatural cities." joked Kristopherson. "Personally, I've started selling stuffed animals at my shop. The kids seem to have taken to them nicely."

"Think I could get one for my sister?" questioned Daniel.

"Sure. Where is she, by the way?"

"At her friend, Gerry's house." the Westley answered. "She likes supernatural stuff. Like, stuff made by supernaturals. I got her a new book the other day, and she read it by bed time."

"What book?" asked Patricia, leaning forward slightly from her seat on the couch.

"Uh, 'Stomach Book'? Something like that?" Daniel was forced to speculate since he didn't remember the exact name. "It's by some guy named 'Oswy'."

"Oh, I've read that." nodded the bluenette. "It's good. You can borrow it sometime if you'd like, Patricia."

"I might just have to take you up on that. I've never read a book from Gehenna before." the woman replied.

"Just stop by whenever."

"What's going on with you and Travis, lately?" questioned the blonde politely. "Anything new, different, and exciting?"

"Well, I got a book published and Travis is working on his next one." Patricia stated while her boyfriend nodded along. "Other than that, not a lot."

"Am I the only one who nothing interesting is happening to?" inquired Daniel, feeling left out in all of this. "Like, all I've been doing is sitting in an office all day, giving out paperwork and making appointments for people."

"Maybe it's because that's what you're doing." suggested Patricia, causing the man to frown.

"You're lucky you're Travis' girlfriend..." he scowled, only to cause the boxer to roll her eyes.

"You should step out of your office more." Kristopherson offered. "You'd see more. Just the other day, I had this guy come in- name's Benjamin Naokes- he says he went to your office for help getting a police job."

"Yeah?" Daniel vaguely remembered it. "So?"

"He's a police officer now with a stable job to support his wife and new baby." the Miles informed. "He came into my shop looking for baby clothes. You're the one who made that possible, you know."

"I guess..." the Westley conceded. Indeed, Daniel has a rather direct influence on the lives of others whether he or they realise it or not. Some desk jockeys at the Gehenna Welfare building weren't as lenient as Daniel. Believe it or not, the man was soft at heart, despite his sometimes selfish and immature tendencies.

Somehow, the air felt tense. Everybody there felt like they should be talking about something. Unfortunately, none of them had any real conversation ideas. It had been a long time since all of them had gotten together to socialise. It was foreign to them now, leaving them to wonder why it was so easy while they were all in school together. Even the addition of Audrey didn't help much, leaving them to resort to general small-talk as well as holding miniature conversations with only one or two out of the seven people there.

Part of the problem was that they were all adults now, wondering what exactly "adults" do together. They felt compelled to be doing something, rather than just sitting there. It was like they needed to somehow arrange a playdate. They continued to talk about things that were going on in there lives, along with other things.

"Supernaturals have started sneaking into England from Southern Scotland." Alois said while reading his e-mail on his phone. "They're trying to escape Iscariot, so I can't blame them. Good on them for making it to Pyestock. Most of them just headed North, though."

"Why'd they wanna do something like that?" questioned Daniel. "Couldn't they just stay put?"

"Not really. Y'see, Northern Ireland is part of the UK, so that means that HELLSING has jurisdiction there. Iscariot had dibs on the south, though and they're a bit meaner." the menace tried to explain. "Most of them just went North so they wouldn't have to leave the island, but a few decided that they wanted to try living with other supernaturals. Even if you're careful, living around humans can be risky."

"True." chimed in Kristopherson with a nod. "I always close shop and stay home on full moons so I don't accidentally get caught outside when the sun sets."

"That must suck…"

"You do what you gotta do."

"What do you do if you get stuck outside?" questioned Audrey, arching an eyebrow. "There's not a procedure for that, is there?"

"Nope. Can't exactly get a werewolf-friendly cab. Maybe on Halloween, though." answered the wolfman before the blue demon chimed in again.

"Shouldn't risk it." Ciel chastised. "I don't know what the reprecussions of getting caught outside in werewolf form are. There's no system, but the stress from having a process thrown together and being in the middle of it would be stressful."

"I'm not actually going to do it, Ciel."

"He's a worrywart stick in the mud." reminded the bluenette's spouse. "It means he's concerned for your well-being."

"Why, thank you. I'm touched." Kristopherson added, jokingly putting a hand on his heart. "You're such a sweet man."

"Alois sure knows." jested Audrey, causing the others to laugh. Alois, however, shrugged and didn't see much humour in it.

"Yeah? So?" the blonde questioned. "He's my husband. I'm supposed to know that. Excellent joke, Audrey. Comedian extraordinaire."

"Oh, come on. I haven't seen you guys in forever." the reaper said. "My dragging skills are a bit rusty."

"Try harder. That was disgraceful."

It was all a way to test the waters and become comfortable with one another again. All of them had grown since the last time they were all together, even if that was only mere months ago at Preston's funeral. Though, they didn't exactly play around together then, either. There were important milestones reached since then, good things happening, bad things, too. Things that were downright awful happened, too, but the world keeps spinning and life goes on.

Finally, they had the opportunity to talk about it all. They went around the room, asking about accomplishments and failures, dishing out praise and consolation when appropriate and necessary. All of them could see just how this trip was effecting Audrey and wanted to talk about it, but alas, he wouldn't discuss it. They didn't know if it was out of embarrassment that the trip didn't have the desired effect or if he simply didn't feel like it. Whatever the case may be, it was a conversation for another time.


A/N: Can you tell that I have no idea what I'm doing?

Man, it's been so long since these guys have just talked about nothing... That awkwardness is going to extend into the actual story as well, as you can see. They're a bunch of friends who kinda drifted apart after all of this shit happened and they kinda need to recover from it and repair their friendship. Shit happened. There's not really any "getting over it", there's just "getting through it", as quite a few of them are going to find out. I hope I can throw in some serious character development, here. This "beach arc" might not be all fun and games...

Whatever's gonna happen, I'll try my best to not make it suck~!

Oh, unrelated, but I have a problem on my hands. Basically, I have a bunch of random-ass supernaturals in my sketchbook that I don't know what to do with. But, when I create a character, even if I'm not gonna use them, I feel like they need to have at least a name or it bothers me. Basically, my question is: If I post these doodles to tumblr, would anybody be interested in naming them or making up stuff about them? I wanna know if there's any interest at all before I make a game out of it. If nobody wants to, that's fine as well.

Well, on that note, I guess I'll see y'all next time.

Until the next chapter, my duckies~!