THE INFERNO RISES AGAIN.

#okay so he’s gonna be a bitch #damn #writing.#unheaven

Dante steps inside without hesitation, like he owns the threshold. Like he was always allowed here, and her surprise is just another performance he’s already seen through.

His eyes flick over the now-silent house, lips twitching at the click of her fingers.

“How thoughtful,” he says dryly. “Didn’t want them to see the black sheep scratching at the door?”

He doesn’t sit. Doesn’t remove his coat. Just stands in her entrance like a blade she forgot she left outside.

“Rules change,” he adds casually. “Especially when the people who made them start bleeding.”

He lets that linger.

“You always throw parties when the house is burning, Emma? Or is this just your way of not looking down?”

Dante looks at her, the whole of her. Her words hitting into him as if they were arrows, fire. Every single one coming with poison, and not a word untrue. As she speaks, his head dips downward, taking on board all of the shame the Germanicus family has ever felt. At least from her. If he took on it all, he would drown. Her question stumps him, a sudden block from her hatred. "I, uh, I don't know." A feeble hand into his hair. "I just wanted to be cool, when I came here. A lot of the cool guys I saw had blonde hair, so I did that ..." He sounds childish, and he knows. A clear of his throat. His next question delivered in a sigh. "Does it really matter?"

It's easy to think the worst of people these days. Willow wants to call Dante so many things, none of them good, none of them with the gentle voice she used to speak to him with. When they were in the manor, Willow looked at him and saw somebody revolting against the confines of his own cage.

Without that cage here now, closing around the both of them, it makes it much harder to look at his face and overlook the sneer, the snobbery, the judgement. Dante has always seemed immature, too... But never this immature.

The fever breaks on her rage. She looks at him with bewilderment. Cool? Monkey see, monkey do. He's never looked like more of a child. He's never looked more like his father. Willow wants to ruin it for him, rip him to shreds with her words -- but he seems so small. Why does Dante get to be small, now? Why does she have to rise above?

Her jaw twitches, wound tight with restraint.

You look like him; I don't like it; I can't look at you now and not see what he did to me, what you did to me, what you did while he watched. I can't look at you and not want to rip your eyes out.

"It doesn't suit you."

Dante flinches.. not at her words, but at the truth braided into them. He doesn’t respond right away. Maybe there’s nothing to say. Maybe anything he says now will feel like salt on wounds he helped carve open. The silence stretches.

Finally, his lips part, but the old confidence is gone. There’s no scoff. No clever retort. Just a bitter truth he’s been trying not to taste.

“I never wanted to look like him. I didn’t think I did.”

He doesn’t ask for her forgiveness. Doesn’t pretend innocence. He sees the twitch in her jaw, the bloodlust behind her stillness. He sees the cost of restraint in her.

“Maybe it doesn’t suit me.”

A pause. His voice lowers.

“But it made it easier to survive, didn’t it?”

He doesn’t ask her to understand. He knows better than that. He’s just giving her something. If not comfort, then clarity. He turns slightly, as if offering her the side of him that doesn’t look like the man who hurt her.

“If you need to tear me apart, I won’t stop you.”

A breath.

“But I think you already did.”

#writing.#unpossession

"It's all about what you want, isn't it?" Willow snaps. "What you need, what I needed to say to make things easier for you, your arranged marriage, your father, your fucking house---"

And then it leaves her. The anger fired out like a bullet, her heart deflates and all that's left is her pain. She doesn't feel guilty, she means it -- every word -- but she can't keep spewing it at him. He's hurt and confused and --

"Why the fuck did you dye your hair?"

Dante looks at her, the whole of her. Her words hitting into him as if they were arrows, fire. Every single one coming with poison, and not a word untrue. As she speaks, his head dips downward, taking on board all of the shame the Germanicus family has ever felt. At least from her. If he took on it all, he would drown. Her question stumps him, a sudden block from her hatred. "I, uh, I don't know." A feeble hand into his hair. "I just wanted to be cool, when I came here. A lot of the cool guys I saw had blonde hair, so I did that ..." He sounds childish, and he knows. A clear of his throat. His next question delivered in a sigh. "Does it really matter?"

Willow is very still, feeling a familiar rage simmer beneath her skin that she is so, so very used to repressing around him. They aren't in Hell now, not in his home, not under his father's watchful eye --- She remembers suddenly that she doesn't need to stop herself from lashing out the way she wants.

So she doesn't.

"Shut the fuck up." Oil-slick eyes look back at him, fanged teeth bared and ready to sink into him. "Don't follow me to my door like some sick, lost puppy, unearth all my fucking -- shit and then insult my home."

Willow shoves him once, a single finger jabbed into his shoulder.

"I let you in because I pitied you, and your sad, drunken fumbling for thoughts and things to say --- but I don't. I don't have anything to say to you."

Dante accepts her shove in the shoulder, so much that he stumbles back into the door behind him. It isn't much, but it's enough. She pities him. Why should love him, how could she love him? His eyes narrow slightly as he takes it all in. Her poorly painted kitchen, with the flickering light that he's sure she has tried to fix too many times, and the flyscreen that isn't sitting quite right. None of it anything he is used to. The paint peels from the wall, even if she doesn't notice it. Dante groans, but swallows it down. "I'm not ---" he looks down at her, with those wide eyes, "-- sorry, I just wanted to see you again. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have followed you home, I just --- I just thought, fuck."

Willow does not want to get drunk with him. There's a part of her that worries that he'll use it as a battering ram past her defences. She likes her defences. She likes feeling safe, protected from him, from his whole fucking family. Emma has been calling her non-stop, but she knows not to come over here. She's tried speaking to Willow through Hawk, through Zero -- but never directly. Why can't Dante give her the same crumb of respect?

This is an invasion. She is too nice, too sad, too wounded, to tell him outright to fuck off. Willow takes one tentative dip into his mind and sees that he can't even fathom why she might be furious right now.

It isn't sweet. It's the kind of emotional incompetence that men hang their women with, that destroys the minds of everyone around them. Willow turns away.

"I think I have some wine in the fridge." He can get it himself. She's tending to her tea.

Dante can feel it. A different energy than when they were --- ugh. His entire body shivers with the idea. Behind him, the door closes. They are alone in her house. Somewhere, disgustingly, in the back of his mind, is his father's voice. He looks at the words with contempt, and picks each of the apart as he moves toward her fridge. Takes the bottle of wine out, grimaces, and puts it back. "How poor are you, exactly?" It isn't a question he expects her to answer, the grimace on his face is enough of an answer as he takes in the swell of her kitchen around him. Hades, people actually live like this? A throat clear, and he listens to the end of the kettle boiling. "So, is this like --- your whole house, or ---"

#the boy.#please appreciate him in all his glory

egosdeaths

timotheechalmet

BONES AND ALL (2022) dir. Luca Guadagnino

#and if i throw up all over the nice rug? what then?#the boy.#willowdante.

Willow squints, leans her forehead against the door. The wood is chipped in a particular spot by her head, a blade dug in there once, now pulled out, the hole never filled. She thinks bleakly that it could act for a metaphor for her whole fucking life. Augusta and the constant search for things to fill what was left of her with.

Dante is asking her questions to prolong their conversation. It is not much of a conversation. The door swings open and she could easily step inside, shut him out, and end it.

"I like chamomile." She says angrily. Defeated. Willow leaves the door open behind her as she walks to the kitchen to make them both a cup.

She's angry. At him? At chamomile? It's soggy and it tastes weird, my ex drank it, it smells like potpourri and lies. All these options run through his head as he looks at the open door in front him. But she likes it … Dante continues to find himself incredibly confused by Willow. Behind him, he shuts the door quietly, and peers around as he enters. This is nothing like what he imagined -- no, not imagined, got forced upon. Dante feels the bile at the back of his throat. "Okay. Got anything stronger than chamomile in this house, or what?" he asks, as it he's not already reaching for the flask in his pocket.

“—What?” Willow stomps ahead. He’s following her. This irritates her but she doesn’t have the heart to say stop it, or go away. He’ll see where she lives. Does that mean she’ll have to move? Will he respect her simple request to leave her alone after they… What, talk?

What does Dante want from her?

It’s painful enough. He wants to take more? Do more? Has he gotten a taste for it now?

For her?

Keys jingle. She makes it to the door.

“Yes, I drink tea.” She looks at him, like, I’m English of course I fucking drink tea, are you thick?

#dante co-wrote that tweet #the boy.

He hates the jingle of the keys. It draws him out of it. This mist that had surrounded him as he followed her, scented with foie gras, and iberico ham, and truffles behind his belief. The warm arms of home, those same arms that can turn any minute and betray him. That's why, by the time she retorts back at him about tea, he's picking at the skin on the edge of his wrist. It's bleeding there. It's all that can keep him grounded, for now. "Like? Breakfast, or green, or chamomile, or some weird-ass blend of berries..." he's teetering, hovering. He's not coming closer to her door, nor is he going away. Dante is but a knives edge.

#unpossession.#writing.

contrasting aspects of existence, such as darkness and light, cold and heat, passive and active.

#SELF PROMO.

reinventboy

challengers (2024) // bones and all (2022) dir. luca guadagnino

+

"I'm going home." Willow says. Childlike, on the verge of tears. Homesick and wondering when the fuck this sleepover is going to end, wondering when she's going to get picked up and put back in her own bed, where she belongs.

She shouldn't have gone out tonight. Her heartstrings tug gently at her conscience but there is no room for that now. Willow has to get out of here, before Nero appears, before the concrete floor beneath her disintegrates into wooden parquet and burgundy rugs.

"I'm not stopping. I'm going home." She turns away from him, keeps walking.