burnout.

ari diakos. 27. somehow in upper management at mount olympus.

[outofthewood]

And most importantly, Lucas, enjoy cool moments. There will be some. And these moments will justify all the others. You will see.

[aristondiakos]

( @emrexbasak )

[aristondiakos]

kaseywsinclair​:

“Are you a shifter?” The words weren’t very quiet, a stage whisper as voiced she them by his ear— they were nearly the same height, making her show of pressing up on her toes comical and redundant, a silly show before she grinned and shrunk back to normal size. “My best friend is one, the guy from the club? He turns into a fox and sometimes he scares my rabbit, but it’s really lovely. I could see you as a fox, maybe one of those arctic ones, that are all white and regal.” She gestured towards the sidewalk ahead of them. “We’ll walk very slowly and you can tell me the whole story. I love hearing them you know, sometimes I need to take a break from telling.” Kasey grinned. “Mango for me and,” her head tilted as she considered him. “Something sour for you. Blue raspberry.”

+

Ari’s eyes widen as Kasey so easily guesses what he’s become, gaze flitting around to make sure no one around them is paying attention to the pair. “Yeah,” his head ducks slightly, not out of embarrassment but for privacy, leaning in closer to Kasey. “But how did you know?” There’s something different about him, and he isn’t trying to hide it, but the fact that she seems to understand without explanation surprises him. Maybe it’s because of her friend. Ari didn’t know any shifters, before he came one — at least, none he could recognize as such. This is all so different from being a human. “No, I’m not a fox. I uh, I am white though.” The thought brings a smile to his lips as his hand curls around the strap on his bag. Maybe he should keep it more a secret, but Ari wants to talk to Kasey about it. “It happened at that festival a few months ago. I didn’t really know it then, though. Just that something was different about me.”

[aristondiakos]

Flying is very quickly becoming Ari’s favorite thing. There’s nothing like the feeling of being high up in the sky, his wings spread out against the wind, far enough to touch the clouds as he passes by above the world. Like he can go anywhere he wants, anywhere at all and there’s nothing to stop him, nothing to get in his way. But there’s no place out there for him that’s not Corinth Bay, not truly, and so he always circles back around to come home. But perhaps he’s becoming too comfortable in his new skin, less careful, because this time he doesn’t realize he’s been followed until he’s already back on the ground, shifted back into his human skin. Blue eyes turn startled at the sound of movement by the tree line, holding his clothes in his hands and it feels like he’s been caught red handed — until he sees who it is. “Oh, shit,” the words fall quietly in a muttered breath, and truthfully, he’s not certain whether it’s better or worse than a random human. ( @milos-othonos​ )

[aristondiakos]

eliastaylcr​:

     “I guess that’s understandable.” Elias had no reason not to believe Ari, and more insane things had happened around here than dragon shifters suddenly existing. Shaking his head a little, he couldn’t help but laugh at the story. The vineyard probably wasn’t too bothered with that, and Ikaros didn’t seem like the kind of guy to get upset about his brother destroying it in dragon form. Elias’ smile fell ever so slightly and he nodded. “Yeah, I know what that feels like,” he admitted quietly. During the time he had not been able to shift it felt as if a huge part of him was missing. “But it’s good that you feel that way. I’m sure it must be nice to feel a little more completed.” And then, because he just had to ask, he added, “Can you really do the whole fire thing too?”

“You do?” The question comes out lightly, in surprise, though perhaps if Ari had given it more thought he wouldn’t have voiced it at all. “I thought you were born a shifter?” Maybe it isn’t his business to ask, but for a moment his curiosity overrides his better manners. “Yeah, it does,” he says, and he cannot help but grin. He’s never felt this good about himself before — nor does Ari think he ever would have, without this transition. There was nothing particularly good about him before, nothing special or noteworthy, much to the chagrin of his parents. But this is everything he never knew that he needed. Ari shakes his head lightly, but he’s still smiling. “Not exactly, no.” He’s going to just tell Elias right there, but then the thought occurs to him that he could show the other shifter instead. “I can show you what I can do, if you want to see it.”

[aristondiakos]

henryfitzgercld​:

    Henry listened intently to Ari’s story. How he himself had learned to shift sounded almost amateur like in comparison — but what had been his options at the time? There had been no one willing to show him the way it worked, and so he had to figure it out himself with the friends who were there for him. Sure, a vampire probably wasn’t the best helper, but at least Lucian had been there for him. “That must have been great.” His voice showed nothing but excitement, because that was what this was — exciting, and Ari deserved to see that. He nodded slightly, even if Henry himself had actually held back, afraid of what could happen in his dragon form. “It’s certainly not the same as flying a plane, is it?”, he asked jokingly.

“It was,” he nods his head in agreement, a grin spreading across his face. Without exaggeration, it had probably been one of the best moments of his life. Blue eyes light up in delight as they linger on Henry, the shifter leaning forward on his heels. “Do you want to? Go flying?” He probably shouldn’t be so quick to immediately be willing to take off from work, but the prospect of flying with another wyvern is too exciting to pass up for Ari. To know more of them, the things they can do shared only between their kind, it’s something that he wants to experience. Ari got a taste of it that first day with Dreki, the way he guided him through the shift and into the sky, but now he wants more. As much more as he can get.

[aristondiakos]

ikarosxtheoinos​:

“Stories written by men who’ve been villifying women even during a time when they did not even have the right to land, let alone to craft their own story.” Ikaros interjected, “She was a nymph, an oceanid specifically. She was cursed, turned into a monster. A hydra. Artemis gave her the power to choose whatever form she wished.” The trickster offered, even when he was a child of the wine cult Scylla was considered old, one of the original shifters who were regarded as heroes - guardians and blah blah blah. “Oh Ari, there was no one like you before you were a dragon.” Ikaros said cheekily, embracing a cheesy sentiment as he teased his brother lightly. “There might be.” He shrugged, “It’s worth looking into.”

+

“Did you ever get the chance to meet her?” It doesn’t sound like it, but Ikaros seems to know a lot about the woman, and it has Ari curious. It seems sad to him, then, to be made the villain of tales when she had in fact been the victim. He’s not sure how anyone could’ve come out of that remaining kind, but it sounds as if she did. Is that the way people would see him? Something monstrous? Ari hopes not. He would never willingly want to hurt anyone, but that likely matters little when face to face with something that could kill you. He smiles, a light blush rising against his cheeks at Ikaros’s sentiment, though he has a hard time in believing the validity of the words himself. Ariston hadn’t been anything special, before he became a wyvern. “I’ve never felt like this before.” Not just the magical changes, but even his own comfort level in his skin. More confident, maybe. More willing to stand up for himself. The vampire in the side street. That was something he never could’ve done before, both practically and mentally. “It kind of feels like I was always meant to be this way. Is that corny to say?”

[aristondiakos]

emrexbasak​:

“Oh really, history? What area?” Emre was interested now, “I studied history, classics mostly. And math, art, engineering. Magical theory.” The reaper bragged, a smile on his lips as he did. Though truthfully it all felt useless and irrelevant now. A collection of accolades and he was the reaper house’s glorified handyman. Somehow he could see Ariston a couple decades from now, a scruff of a beard on his face, salt and pepper decorating a receding hairline. A disheveled tie marked the future historian as professional but still unwilling to take himself overly serious. “I think the socials suit you,” even though someday Emre might not. The eternally young reaper would have to watch as Ariston eventually became recognized for his work, as he grew into his profession, as he got older and perhaps wanted more from his life than someone who could never change. “I’m happy for you, we should celebrate. It’ll be one year since I stopped your face from getting blow off soon enough.”

+

“Social history, right now. We’re starting with Norse, actually, if you can believe it.” Talk about coincidence, but Ari isn’t complaining. Anything that gets him closer to understanding himself he’ll take gladly, even if it’s to only understand the customs of the time, what foundation their beliefs were built upon. It’s certainly not as accomplished as Emre’s list, but Ari doesn’t mind. If anything, he’s just proud of the reaper’s accomplishments. He leans over, pulling the other man lightly into a kiss with a smile against his lips. “Yeah, we should. That sounds great.” It seems almost crazy, the fact that nearly a year has gone by. It barely feels like it, with everything that has been happening around them. But it’s also been the best one of his life. “I’ll take the day off from work, and we can hangout in the city together. Maybe walk the farmer’s market, or check out the bathhouse.” Though quite frankly, Ari would be just as happy with a day spent in bed, just the two of them. 

[aristondiakos]

penelcpes​:

She could feel his nervousness, how fluttered around him like a shroud of smoke. Empathy was one of her most prized traits, and Penelope wanted to reach out and touch his hand— to assure him that this would be fine, that he would be alright here, but part of her suspected that doing so would cause him to dart away like something burned. The rift could suspect what had changed in him, his soul mirrored that of the dragons she had caught flying overhead the city— and a smile curved at her lips. “I suppose that big changes always lead to the desire for more.” Penelope tipped her head. “You’ll have to read to catch up to the rest of the class, but if you find yourself curious about the topics, I’d be happy to show you more.” Her fingers ran along the spines of her bookcase, before she pulled one out. “This is on Norse mythology, perhaps one of the better renditions. You might find it interesting.”

+

“Yes, of course,” Ari nods his head along in agreement, eager and yet still a pinch nervous. It sort of sets it in stone now, that is is something actually happening, a step forward that he’s taking in his life. The fact that Professor Kastellanos is willing to allow him to make up the work he’s missed so far is now basically a guaranteed yes. It causes Ari to rub his palms against his jeans, an anxious tell that the shifter hasn’t quite learnt to evade yet. But he wants it. He knows he does, despite the little bit of apprehension that sits inside his chest. “Norse?” His eyes fall on the book immediately, and Ari finds himself sitting forward in his seat slightly. He’s incapable of covering up his interest, not that he would truly try, the thought far from his head at the moment. Right now, all he can think of is Nidhogg, and the wyverns, and the fact that somehow his lineage is traced back through there. If the book could offer him more to learn on that, then he is eager. “Is that what the current course is covering?”

[aristondiakos]

ikarosxtheoinos​:

“Everything I’ve heard about Scylla said that she was a good person, kind. Stories later painted her as a monster but that was before she became one of the original shifters.” Ikaros offered, “She also wasn’t creating more Hydra.” The trickster added, dragons were inherently destructive were they not - and the ability to create more of them was a threat to just about everything else in this world. “I think it’s very likely others were awakened alongside you.” Ikaros said simply, “If you want to find more like you I’d be happy to help. You’re my brother, I can’t have you running off on a dragon quest without me.” 

+

“That’s not what the mythos behind her story tells.” He’s not arguing it, though, only making note of the fact that the one most commonly retold paints a different light. Ariston figures that Ikaros likely knows more about it than any human scholars, though. “I guess so.” More than one Hydra, he can see how that could’ve been dangerous, if that power fell to someone of a worse nature than what Ikaros claims Scylla was. When is a monster not a monster? The million dollar question. “Thanks,” he says lightly, a smile tugging at his lips. The idea that Ikaros wants to help fills him with warmth, and Ari is glad to know that he has his brother on his side through this. “There has to be more than just me around here, right? Here in the city.” 

[aristondiakos]

eliastaylcr​:

     “I don’t know much about all of this either,” Elias offered some sort of comfort paired with a crooked smile. He didn’t want Ari to feel bad, and so he shrugged his shoulders a bit awkwardly. “My grandma told me a lot of stories, but I never know how much of it is true and how much was just… fantasy, you know? I figured dragons are.” The smile on his lips turned more crooked, and he tilted his head to the side as he let his eyes wander over Ari’s figure, trying to picture him as a dragon. “Have you tried it yet? To shift, I mean?”

“I don’t think dragons is something anyone expected to be real.” Ari responds kindly. It’s not something he would’ve ever thought of, which granted, the just recently human knows doesn’t count for much. But considering Emre’s reaction as well, Ariston thinks it’s justified to say that no one would’ve seen this coming. “My boyfriend didn’t believe me at first, when I told him. I had to show him.” But he doesn’t hold it against the reaper, considering it sounded fanatical even to his own years. Some things have to be seen to be believed. “Yeah, I did. Kind of messed up some of the vineyard here on accident with it. But the feeling was just... extraordinary. Like something I never knew was missing just clicked into place.” 

[aristondiakos]

henryfitzgercld​:

     Henry wondered what kind of superior coincidence this was. He had wondered if there were others like him out there, and to find another sitting in the kitchen he had spent so much time in himself was mesmerizing. It was a puzzle he wanted to solve, wondering if this meant once upon a time, a very long time ago, their ancestors had stemmed from the same family. “Yes, it was the same for me.” And now more excitement grew, turning into a huge smile on Henry’s lips. “This is incredible. Have you done anything with this new power yet?”

It’s a comfort to Ari, to know of someone who has equally been changed by this new state of being. Though he and Henry were little more than acquaintances before, casual conversations shared in the halls between rooms of the reaper house, it nonetheless fills him with a delight to recognize the other man as one in the same. “I, uh, I went flying. Dreki came by here a few weeks ago, he showed me how to shift. I didn’t even know what was happening until then.” Just that there had been something strange overtaking his body. At first, Ari had simply attributed it to oncoming sickness. To know the true answer has him overjoyed. “It’s... it’s incredible. I’ve never felt anything like it before.”

[aristondiakos]

emrexbasak​:

Arms wound around Ariston’s exposed midsection as Emre sat behind him and pressed cool lips to the curve of the shifter’s warm skin. Apartment hunting hadn’t gone all that great, but the reaper had a few places in mind now. Soon. In the distance Paloma’s EDM shook the portraits that Emre had sketched that hung still to the wall. Different forms and shapes, lots of Ariston - his hands, his eyes, his lips, the bend of his nose, the sharpness of his cheeks. Places that Emre had come to memorize and replicate time and time again whenever he got bored. “I didn’t even know you were thinking about going back.” Emre said, pleased to hear that Ariston was finding a sense of direction - this change looked good on him. It was clear that the shifter was more self-assured, and more confident. It was sexy. Emre let go of the other and laid down lazily on his side, head propped up in his hand, “Well don’t keep me in suspense, what are you taking?”

+

Ari leans into Emre’s touch, a smile playing on his face as his boyfriend’s lips press against his skin. “Neither did I, really. It was kind of a rash decision.” Hopefully one that he wouldn’t come to regret, but so far, that hasn’t been the case. It’s a careful tiptoe back into his studies, rather than a full on dive, but he thinks that’s the best way to approach this situation. Even if it’s a slow progress, at least it is progression, or so Ari figures. “I missed the cutoff, technically, but the professors were willing to work with me on it.” He’s grateful for that, honestly, rather than being forced to wait for the next semester. His body twists in the bed, in order to face Emre, where the reaper lounges at his side. “History, right now. Maybe literature later. As far away from business and law as I can possibly get.”

[weltenwellen]

Fernando Pessoa, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems

[aristondiakos]

“I started taking classes at the university.” Ari announces, half dressed and sitting on Emre’s bed. It’s a weird sort of pride he feels about the decision, rather than the dread and outright panic even the thought of such a thing used to send him into, and it’s something he wants to share with his boyfriend. “It’s not much, just a few courses, but... I don’t know, I felt like maybe it was time to try again.” Maybe he wants to do more with his life now, than just waiting for each day to pass to the next. Ari has spent so long merely surviving, but now it feels like he’s been given the chance to try and start actually living. And it’s something that he wants. “I doubt it can go any worse than the first time, at least,” he attempts to joke, a halfhearted laugh leaving his lips. ( @emrexbasak​ )

[aristondiakos]

penelcpes​:

It was early in the semester, which meant that her office hours often went by without a single visitor— leaving her to her notes and reading, skimming through articles and preparing for lessons. She’d have a guest in next week, which she was excited for but her students were not, and Penelope was busy typing up an abstract when a knock on her door made her look up. Curious. A shifter, but he was something that she had long considered to have died out: there was a strain of something ancient in his blood and for a moment, the rift wondered if he knew it as well. She offered a smile, gesturing towards one of the empty chairs. “We did start last week, but we can discuss.”

+

“Thank you,” he says, moving to take a seat at the chair she gestured towards. This is unlike him, to do something like this without giving it an overt amount of thought. It’s still kind of terrifying, if Ari is being completely honest, but not enough to prevent the shifter from following through with it. That is, if she agrees to allow him within her class. He’s well aware he’s technically missed the deadline here, and is asking for an exception to be made. “It was sort of a last minute decision, but... well, things happened. I suddenly had more opportunity to do what I couldn’t before. More open possibilities.” And maybe the confidence to do them. “I’ve been thinking a lot about my future, I guess.”

[aristondiakos]

eliastaylcr​:

     Elias had never heard of anything like this. He wasn’t too well-versed on the supernatural world in general, but his grandmother had told him pretty much everything about shifters. Dragons hadn’t been part of her stories, and neither had been shifters who only started being that later on in life. “I had no idea that the gene can be… triggered. I figured everyone was just born like that.” His head tilted to the side as he watched Ari, a crooked smile appearing on his lips. “Yeah, I was. My whole family can turn into black panthers.”

“I didn’t know anything about all of this, before it happened.” Well, he knew they existed, but only as a concept. Ari hadn’t actually met any before, so far as he knew. All the knowledge he has, both about wyverns and shifters in general, has been learnt while figuring out how to deal with this transition that’s happened to him. “I don’t think it was just some... regular, Tuesday thing.” No, the ritual surely had to use a lot of magic, in order to bring a dead bloodline back to life. But again, his tongue gets tripped up on where to draw the line between saying too much and saying nothing at all. “I don’t really know all the details, honestly.”

[aristondiakos]

mateoaguilars​:

A dragon. The vampire moved fast, but it seemed that he was beat for speed by something mythical— great wings drew the air around them into whirlwinds and Mateo looked up, at the serrated edges of a jaw filled with too many teeth. Not often was he at a lost for words, and he wasn’t now either, spilling a barrage of curses in every language that he knows them in. If this was a way to meet his end, he supposed it was one of the more dramatic ways; it saved him the horror of bearing a fate that was peaceful and anti-climatic, at least this was something worth talking about. Instead of the closing of teeth, he is met with the bite of winter gales and a freeze that would halt anyone with a beating heart in their tracks. Discomfort wrought through the vampire as he turned and ran. Ice crunched underfoot and he didn’t bother to look back, to give the shifter the satisfaction of knowing that he had turned the table not only around, but on its head.

+

There’s a satisfaction that runs through Ari’s veins as he watches the vampire speed away, and for a moment, considers giving chase after him. He’s not sure if it’s a newfound predator instinct inside the shifter, or merely his own internalized need for retribution. But Ari lets the thought pass as he closes his jaw, because in the end, he is not that kind of person, nor does he want to be. Instead, his wings beat as he takes off higher into the sky, away from the side street that’s now covered in ice. He had no intentions of transforming today, his clothes in ruined tatters below with no alternatives to change into, and so Ariston chooses to fly home instead, high above the clouds in hopes that the cover of the night will hide him from any curious eyes. 

( END. )