dhcmpirs

[dhcmpirs]

Dylan O'Brien in Ponyboi (2023)

#every kiss beings with. #//hello again god it’s me maya

[dhcmpirs]

Every so often he thinks that he has to pick between 'mommy issues' or 'absent father issues' and usually he angsts over his mother, on account of the fact that she'd at least been around. But when someone does something that feels pretty paternal, he's reminded how foreign the feeling is. Kay takes a second just to blink at the realization and he has to duck his head to hide how sheepish he feels getting any kind of genuine praise as he mumbles a quick 'thanks'. Nathan's proud of him for now and instead of dwelling on that he tries to tell himself that now is good, now is fine. "Something impulsive that wasn't particularly harmful? I guess?" A change he could see, something he could have control over while spiraling. "So a step forward."

This was all good news, and it wasn't that he didn't trust Kay, but he'd probably touch base with Isabella and Clara - not to pry or cross the line, but when it came down to it it'd be their recommendation that Nathan would take into consideration as to whether or not Kay could come back to work. "I'm glad kid, proud of you." It wasn't easy humbling yourself to anybody, not a shrink and not a doctor. He smirked a bit though, "What's with the uh-" Nathan gestured to the top of his head and swirled his finger around, "you fall on a bad dye job or something?" It wasn't a bad look; if the Thief was twenty-five, he'd probably think about doing the same thing; all the cool kids were bleaching their hair these days.

#nathan 03. #lupercalia 2.

[dhcmpirs]

Person: @nicolasxbianchi Location: Alpha Gauntlet Stands "Nicolas, right?" The guy was hyping up the big guy just like he'd been during the band's set. Honestly, Anders absolutely bodying that heckler earlier should have set a precedent for the kind of shit he was about to see in the ring. He's hung around that one fighting bar in town a time or two, he'd seen everyone wolf out, but this was something else. Kay made a note to ask Dante to never put him through this kind of stress, the gauntlet looked brutal.

#nicolas 01. #lupercalia 2.

[dhcmpirs]

Feeling somewhat sheepish and yet really excited and yet feeling like he should actually bolt from the premises in case he makes an idiot out of himself, Kay sits. Kay sits and the moment the chords get familiar he can't help but softly gasp. Because it all kind of clicks into place and he's mouthing 'Taylor Swift?' but he's shaking his head and grinning anyways. When he can't sleep, which is often now, he lays awake looking up at the ceiling of his bedroom thinking about how fortunate it'd been that he'd stumbled into 4 the Record, that Dante had remembered him from their whole bathroom tryst. It's always a montage from there, from the record store to laying under the stars and smoking, to fucking in the tent. To that house party, to running in the woods, to falling into the Otherworld together. To emerging out of the fountain and Dante kissing him like he mattered as they were soaking wet and standing in a foot of water. He doesn't know when he starts crying too, somewhere around thinking about laying in bed together and kissing at the end of the world. The strumming slowly comes to a stop and Kay sits there and he's just replaying everything in his head over and over and over again. In the bedroom, when he'd all but blurted out his feelings, he'd desperately wanted to tell Dante that he didn't want him to say it back. Not until he got better, not until he deserved it. The thing is, he loves Dante more than he hates himself. He knows that now.

Sniffling and wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand he draws a shaky breath. "Thank you, that was great that was-Fuck you're like, something out of a dream." Too good to be true and he's rambling so he takes a second to clear his throat. "I um, I write about you a lot, you know? And I keep telling myself that I'm going to fuck everything up and maybe there's a chance we do this and I don't get better. But I sit here and I look at you and none of those thoughts matter." And maybe he's doomed to self destruct, to keep fucking up and perpetuating the cycle he's been on his entire life. "I thought I lost whatever was left of home for me a decade ago only to find it in your arms." It's so cheesy out loud versus when he put it to paper at 3AM, but he means it.

"Alright, yeah, um... Sit... Yeah, take a seat, and I'll take a seat, and then we'll both be uh... Sitting." Fuck that sounded dumb, anyways; Dante took a seat as he perched himself on the surface of one of the picnic tables as cleared his throat. He strummed a preparatory few strings as his calloused fingers moved over the familiar chords. It was still in tune, but he was kind of just killing time before it was going to be too apparent that he was uncharacteristically nervous.

Performance anxiety had stopped getting to Dante a few years ago, but there was something that happened when he performed. It was like storytelling; in those old myths, you could be Thor for a few measures, you could be the All-Father giving up his eye for wisdom, or the trickster giving birth to an eight-legged horse. When he sang he wasn't Anders's younger brother, he wasn't the runt of the Tana litter, he got to be someone else.

Dante strummed as he looked towards Kay, and then, just like that, he was back into his own skin. Nerves immediately settled as the lycan opened his mouth and began to sing, fingers habitually moving over the chords as he started the arrangement. "We found Wonderland. You and I got lost in it, and we pretended it could last forever." Just over a year ago, Dante had been chasing after Kay in the woods, following after with the Red jokes, Mania Barbie, and the big bad wolf; something had happened that night, and maybe Dante wouldn't ever really understand it, but they were connected because of it. "We took a wrong turn and fell down a rabbit hole; you held on tight to me."

He'd been adamant from the start about what this was between them, a fling that wouldn't last because Dante wouldn't stick around. He wanted his brother to pack it in and go home so that Dante could fuck off to whatever came next. Anywhere but here, anywhere that meant he didn't have to put down roots. "Didn't they tell us 'don't rush into things'? Haven't you heard what becomes of curious minds? Didn't it all seem new and exciting?"

Anders wasn't the problem, Kay wasn't the problem, and Dante could have spent the rest of his life blaming the pack for not accepting him or blaming his brother for getting sick. Blaming his father for dying before they could reconcile, but he'd ended up in this city for a reason, and Kay wasn't his -purpose- or whatever... But he was integral to it. "I felt your arms twistin' around me when you told me about Wonderland, how you and I got lost in it. You said our lives would never be worse but never better."

Dante had tried to set things straight, he'd tried to put space between them and tried to do the whole 'tough love' thing, but love wasn't meant to be tough. Kay was a disaster, but so was Dante, and just because someone didn't love themself didn't mean they didn't deserve to be loved right where they were. "So, you and I will go on our way, too in love to think straight, even when whispers turn to talkin', turn to screamin'. We could search the world for somethin' to make us feel like what we have, and in the end, in Wonderland, we can both go mad."

A few tears stained Dante's cheeks, embarrassing and not conducive to the image of an aloof musician, but here he was, making an absolute fucking fool out of himself. Committed to the bit. "We'll find Wonderland, you and I'll get lost in it, and we'll pretend it'll last forever. We'll find Wonderland, you and I'll get lost in it, and we'll never be worse but never better."

The strumming faded out as Dante cleared his throat, blue eyes made bluer by the water that had accrued at the sides. He sniffed and then smiled uncomfortably because he'd just- yeah, he'd really just done that. "I'm like... So crazy about you, I love you so much I just sang a Taylor Swift song at you in a public place. I know I didn't say it before, I just-" He shrugged, "I've got my shit too."

#dante 12. #bookmark. #lupercalia 2. #//it's so beautiful

[dhcmpirs]

Kay blinked once, then twice, then three times and he'd been to a ridiculous amount of parties in his thirty years of life now. There was always a guy with a guitar at those parties, hell, that's practically how they'd met and he'd let said guy with a guitar fuck him in the bathroom. Crashing on couches in his early twenties, he'd even slept with a decent amount of those guys, the musicians trying to make a name for themselves by doing open mic night at bars. The thing was, none of them had ever played something for him beyond him maybe requesting a particular cover. He's a writer, he's a music guy himself, what Dante is proposing tics a lot of boxes, it's some Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist coming of age movie stuff. They can come of age at like thirty, they can come together except not like that....Except exactly like that later- "Yes. Yes I can even maintain eye contact."

"Well, nothing's perfect." It was a give-and-take, but this suited Kay, at least for now. Maybe Dante would bleach his hair again so they could be one of those gay couples that looked identical. The shorts were already rubbing off on Kay. "Can I uh-" Dante held up his guitar, "can I play you something?" It was a lame offer, but it was a quintessential white boy with guitar behavior to want to serenade your boyfriend. Boyfriend. That was still a word that Dante was wrapping his head around because he'd never really been that to someone in a way that was significant. Nothing that lasted, but here they were; Dante had really been in Rome for a fucking year now. His dad had really been dead for a year. The two of them had yet to really talk about it, Kay didn't ask, and Dante didn't like the subject. "Just me, staring and singing at you for an uncomfortable three minutes?"

#dante 12. #lupercalia 2.

[dhcmpirs]

There's a lot he could say to that. Like the fact that Anders had totally fucking bodied that guy. Or that he was wondering why the one guy knew how to play the spoons, was that some kind of lost art? But anything he could say sort of just goes to the wayside the moment Dante's hand runs through cropped hair. It was definitely done in a moment of crisis, but it was kind of a clean slate. The last time he'd shaved it had been after he'd left home nearly a decade ago. "Less to pull." Is what he says instead, aiming for playfully disappointed. Because it totally meant more choking was on the table, probably. He wasn't quite sure where they stood at the moment as far as that, he'd touched what had to be a soft spot. Dante was allowed to have them, hell he had plenty of his own. But he'd still called and Kay thinks that was what mattered. "And I like watching you play, you're great." That's somewhat sheepish because yeah, he could go on, he could gush about it. "Even accompanied by the spoons."

@dhcmpirs location: Wolfchella notes: kiss kiss

Dawg in You had just had their first performance which basically meant that Dante sang and played guitar while Connor played the spoons and Anders hit a drum he made every so often. Wasn't exactly groundbreaking work but it was fun and now someone had a concussion after Anders and Connor realized that the people shouting 'Play Wonderwall!' were making fun of the trio.

"Pretty terrible, right?" Dante asked playfully as he saddled his guitar across his back; the blonde was new, and looked kind of terrible but Dante was a sucker for exactly one manic fool who was prone to making bad choices. "We were shit, and if you say anything about Anders I'm throwing you over The Wall." That was his way of dispelling their last little argument when Dante had stormed out, so he could have a temper, nobody was perfect and his brother remained a soft spot to the lycan's ego. "The short hair suits you." Dante added as he ran his fingers over the bristly top, "I like it better than the long."

#dante 12. #lupercalia 2.

[dhcmpirs]

He knew it was bound to happen on account of Nathan's just a good guy, that he was going to wind up running into him and of course he was going to say something. It's different than stopping in to the office to see him where he can prepare to be on his best behavior. Kay can't really lie and say things are great when he has very obviously gone through the twink crisis of bleaching his hair with the help of a supportive lesbian. "It's uh, it's day by day at this point, you know?" He's still angry, he's still not talking to Cloe, he's spent more time with Keket trying to figure his shit out. "I got in with Dr. Swanford though, Clara and I talk pretty regularly." He thinks he's sleepwalking and he spends most mornings throwing up and locking himself in the bathroom, but that's just life now, maybe. The Keres is still popping up in his head despite him and Cloe going back to it but that's something he absolutely doesn't want to talk about, like it's going to be the Eye of Sauron or something and just know he's talking about it. "How's everybody?"

@dhcmpirs location: Lupercal notes: dad's checking in

There was a lot of responsibility that came with this position and while he hadn't heard anything negative about Kay, that didn't necessarily mean that things were going well. Nathan had been rooting for him since day one, he believed in him, and he was hopeful for him. What that looked like wasn't up to Kay though, how the senator supported him and if he even could. Regardless of how the next couple of months were going to go though, the former Thief was always going to be in the dhampir's corner. "Hey guy," Nathan greeted with some familiarity as he gestured with his chin towards Kay, "How've you been doing?"

#nathan 03. #lupercalia 2.

[dhcmpirs]

Dylan O'Brien on the Not Okay movie tiktok 3/11/2022

🍾

#every kiss beings with. #//wolfchella bayBEEE

[dhcmpirs]

It takes a lot to render him of all people speechless, sober or otherwise. It's like all the air has been sucked out of the room and the little voice in the back of his head that is definitely rational that he often ignores even gives a little 'now you've really done it'. There's so many thoughts going through his head, things he could say, things he wants to say, but he just can't. He doesn't trust that explaining himself further won't just make it worse when he's already panicking. So he watches Dante go again, doesn't take a breath until he's down the hall and there's this itch under his skin to just do something drastic, something that'll warrant attention. But he doesn't. He listens for the sound of the front door closing, he runs a hand through his hair and pulls at it and it suddenly feels like way too much hair and he's breathing too hard. Scrambling to get back over to the nightstand, he dials Milena's number and curses the fact that all he has in the top drawer of his dresser is weed.

He'd spent his life being the second-born son, he wasn't good enough for their dad, he wasn't strong in the same way as Anders was, and from the time he'd come to Rome the number of conversations he had with people where his brother wasn't brought up could be counted on one hand. He just always felt like a consolation prize and he couldn't even blame Anders for it. "I'm going to be thirty in a month, you don't have to worry about getting me in trouble. There's more to me than my brother." Dante's clothes were already on as Kay was babbling behind him about everything that he should probably not be saying at this moment. "You're right, I didn't." He was angry and reasonably so but he felt bad as soon as the words left his lips. There was a beat where he lingered in the doorway and pressed his forehead there for a second, idly beating his head against the frame. This was what happened when you stuck your dick into an actual hornet's nest, getting stung was inevitable. Dante sighed, guilt obvious on his face but as easygoing as he was he didn't want to let it slide, regardless of Kay's word vomit. "Whatever man, I'll call you, alright?" Dante didn't wait for the dhampir to answer before he took off.

#dante 11. #//le fin #//i cry

[dhcmpirs]

"Don't." He takes the pill from her anyways and he pops it like candy and then sits there with his elbows on his knees. It's a quiet plea on account of he can handle her chastising him. This though, trying to take care of him is something that feels like she's peeled a few layers of skin away. For all the stress he gives her, he doesn't really deserve her kindness and yet she's giving it to him anyways. "I'm still not sleeping or maybe I am, but it's in weird places." Kay very much wanted to make the joke of 'well how much time do you have', but he's too tired to annoy her again. "Gabe's gone, Cloe's an eladrin, I've been demoted from sidekick to somebody she used to know and I'm just-" Fingers run through his hair a couple of times, drag across his scalp, smooth over his face and mostly he just hates this. The constant hopelessness no matter if he's fucking up or not and God does he keep fucking up. "I just want something to cut out the withdrawl, I will get my shit together if you keep me from crawling up the walls." There's got to be something, he'd done things the old fashioned way last time he'd gotten clean, checked himself in somewhere. That'd sucked, but what sucked more was waking up on the bathroom floor literally crying and shaking and throwing up and tearing apart his house for whatever was left of his stash.

"You said you fixed it, you said you aren't haunted by the Keres anymore," she pointed out almost impatiently, feeling his pulse again and hating the accelerated, unnatural fluttering of it. Clara digs into her bag, rattling a few containers of pills. "What is making you 'lose your shit', Kay?" She's more patient and gentle now, happy to find the right pills as she opens the container. Clara offers him one, a pill only meant to slow his dangerously high heart rate.

"What's going on with you? All I know is you were doing much better before all of this."

#clara 03. #//i cry

[dhcmpirs]

Valentine's Day Scrapbook: Kay & Dante

"The world is always spinning, and I can't keep up, whoa Faster and faster, can't do it on my own Part-time soulmate, full-time problem, yeah So hold me like a grudge" - "Hold Me Like a Grudge", Fall Out Boy @danteragnulf

#dante. #edit.

[dhcmpirs]

The funny thing is that ninety-nine percent of the time he couldn't shut up and then that last one percent was always this kind of thing. "I've been listening to 'Iris' by The Goo Goo Dolls a lot lately. I used to listen to it a lot in high school but that was like, edgy teenage 'nobody understands me' kind of shit." I don't want the world to see me, because I don't think that they'd understand. That had been what he'd taken away from the song then, it'd been from a perspective that was purely his. "I didn't get that it's not being sung about being alone or like, abandoned by the world. It's about being afraid of being yourself and that some heartbreak is inevitable but this one person is worth it." Kay kind of curls into himself on the couch, knees pulled up to his chest and chin resting atop them. "It's kind of just easier to lay on the floor and put something on and let that kind of do the talking right now."

"We can start however way you want. If talking about what brought you here is difficult, what about telling me about your day? Or the story behind your favorite food?" Her words are calm and even as she reclines on her chair and eyes the former marshal thoughtfully. Everyone has heard of his dismissal from the ranks, but no one has been a specific answer as to why. Considering his status as a dhampir, and some of the behavior she had seen– Isabella had some guesses that she had locked away and ignored from the moment he had stepped into her office. Whatever clues she held where dismissed, because what mattered was to hear the situation from Kay's lips and ensure she had no bias in the matter. "Whatever is easiest for you, truly."

#isabella 01.

[dhcmpirs]

"No, it's not. But it's hard to sit and feel like the bridge hasn't been burned further, you know?" He gets what she's saying and he sees the frustration. This can't be something easy for her, being in the middle of his and Cloe's friendship divorce and he doesn't expect her to take sides. Kay couldn't ask her to, that's part of the reason he'd wanted to talk to her, she was going to give it to him straight. "For the longest time I think her and I were the only two who understood each other. And then I got here and I realized that everyone else in that place," He waves vaguely in the direction of where Camp was somewhere in the distance. "Understood her, too. And then she didn't need me anymore." It's with a huff he puts the cigarette back to his lips and counts down from ten as he takes a drag before speaking. "And now she's finally what she was meant to be and I'm just here. I don't think it's really anyone's fault, it just feels..." He'd sat down and written so many stupid ramblings on how he felt and to put it into one word was hard. "Shitty."

"Kay," she's far fresher with this supernatural bit; it'd only come to her knowledge after The Eye attempted to streak through her family because she apparently held some distant relation to some elf. "I think this is something that you should know," that's a better recovery, Milena is attempting to act as though she'd fit into this horrific world all this time, never naive to it's dark twists and turns, but with Kay's dramedy of a life, it's hard for her to gather her senses sometimes. "I'm sorry but that's silly of you two," the Fox doesn't want to play along to their friendship divorce, she'd already been a child of a literal divorce and look how well that turned out. She gratefully slips the cigarette from his fingers, takes a few rapid inhales before taking one drawn out inhale as though it'd ground her. "I highly doubt it was the trauma-bond keeping you two as pals." That's a hill she'd die on, so what if the three of them were barely functioning; they at least went beyond a superficial trauma-bond.

#milena 01.

[dhcmpirs]

Kay, Lupercalia

"I sure hope they have cigarettes in Hell." - Dale, King of the Hill

#edit. #lupercalia 2.

[dhcmpirs]

The panic is immediate, has him sitting up too fast and cursing himself for it. It's a very quick spiral into cursing himself for not saying the right thing and the apology is right there at the tip of his tongue and he's about to say it. The thing about relationships was that communication was important and he knows why the elder Ragnulf makes him nervous enough to bring him up the way he does. So Kay steeles himself for what very much might start an argument while praying to....Trent Reznor maybe, that it won't. "He's important to you, it's important to me that he likes me because I don't want to get you into any kind of trouble." Out loud it sounds rational but there's this big blaring sign at the forefront of his brain that's telling him that he can't just protect Dante from everything. He's also a grown ass man who just pointed out he has chosen to be here. It takes effort to crawl out of bed and retrieve his sweatpants from the floor and there's a lot of discomfort because yeah, he'd just gotten fucked six ways to Sunday but this is important. "I know I don't say the right shit and I know I worry about shit that probably doesn't matter," Some of those pills in the drawer had actually been prescribed for a reason. "But it means everything that you've been here when nobody else has." Crossing the short distance between them, sweatpants haphazardly on his hips, he can actually feel the word vomit. Like Cady in Mean Girls. "Like that's not lost on me and like you treat me like I matter and I want this to work so bad because I love you and I have no idea....." Rambling again, he pauses to blink twice and the panic is there again but he's looking at Dante comically mortified. "You didn't hear part of that."

Yeah, yeah, misfit this, never felt like he belonged that, whatever because here Dante was giving his best supportive boyfriend, and there Kay was once again talking about another guy. "Are we ever going to have a conversation where you don't bring my brother up?" It's not playful; it's pointed because they're lying there with their dicks out, and once again, Kay is talking about Anders. He moved to get up, afterglow officially ruined as he got out of the bed and started to reach for his clothes again.

#dante 11.

[dhcmpirs]

after much thought, i have decided to think less.

#about.

[dhcmpirs]

Kay sits there perfectly still and just lets her fret over him and he hates that he kind of likes it. His mom used to patch up any scrapes and bruises from brush ins with assholes in high school, chastise him the entire time. A girlfriend in college had done the same thing. It's stupid, the way he clings to attention and affection like a child. "I'm taking whatever I can to keep me from losing my shit." He explains, eyes on the bulletin board on the opposite wall of her office. "But I'm running out and would very much like to try to be functional." There's a dryness to all of it, like he's exasperated by the whole process because he is.

Days later. The office was closed; Clara had been making to leave but it had all been opened up again when she got word that Kay was back. The Aspect waited impatiently, finding what she could of supplies and putting them together before she heard footsteps in the hallway. With a bag of supplies, the Aspect headed back to her office and found him there. She let out a sigh of relief, a short lived look of it as she scanned him over with her eyes.

"You appeased the Keres? Then what happened to you?" Although she more than suspected what. Clara sighed again, this time a sigh of concern and frustration as she chucked the bag of medical supplies on the chair next to her and leaned down to hand-inspect the dhampir. Little floated lights flashed in one of his eyes, than another, and then illuminated the path of her hand as she turned his head by his chin. "You smell like weed." The back of her hand came to his neck, feeling his skin quality and pulse at once. "Demon blood again too?"

#clara 03.