[Sullivan doesn't reply - leaving Dom on read while he tends to business in his room, waiting for Dom's inevitable visit. The room is as it always is, bare boned in that there is nothing hanging on the dark green papered walls; no trinkets on any surface aside from the bones that sit on display across from the window. Bones donated and traded for, coveted for what they are more than what they resemble.
The window curtains are drawn and a dim, warm light resonates from the desk lamp as Sullivan smokes in the arm chair next to it. It's like he can sense the approach - voice somehow carrying through the door before it can even be knocked on:]
[ He's got emotions he can't name running wild, in his chest and in his head, messing with his focus when he tries to use magic to find Death himself. Eventually he resorts more to his instinct than a spell, and when he ends up in front of a door hearing that familiar voice call him through it, Dom holds his breath.
Carefully, he pushes the door open and looks inside — first to see where Sully is, what he's doing, how he's dressed. His tattoos are as strange as last time, and the circumstances are so different they seem to take him out of reality for a little bit. ]
… Hi.
[ With the door shut behind him, Dom stands in place and… doesn't move forward. It feels wrong to be here. It feels worse to think about going back in this state. (It smells like a cat's been here, even with the smoke.) ]
[He stays where he is, lounging in his chair with his legs crossed; cigarette held between two fingers after a particularly long drag. The smoke plume drifts upward, and Sullivan's eyes are on Dom with a mixture of intrigue and his own sense of predatory hunt. Just like he'll eventually turn Iggy into something with a backbone, he's now feeling duty-bound to ensure Dom accepts his darker half.]
How far have you gone? In hurting others, deliberately or otherwise?
[ Dom looks like he's ready to move; he looks like he can't bring himself to leave this spot. Gaze averted, picking up details from this room, looking back at Sully and trying to reconcile everything that's brought him here, the reluctant press of his lips eventually breaks, tense when he makes his confession. ]
U-uhm, just… I… I've punched people before. Scratched them. I bit my friend. He bled pretty bad. While I was a person. I didn't infect him with... you know.
[ Stiff, sounding less and less steady with each terrible word, arms crossed tight. ]
My moms help me calm down back home. It's — I don't know, it's really hard without them. This place fucks with my head a lot.
You want to control your impulses - but what are they?
[Sullivan takes his time in standing up, cigarette hanging from his mouth as he takes three slow, steady steps toward Dom with his boots dragging on the floorboards. It's not unlike the approach of one wild animal to another, sizing each other up and digging in to those baser natures to see what one another's next move is.]
What's the worst you're capable of, Dom? Without knowing that, how can you ever train yourself backwards into containment?
[ It riles him up, the way Sully makes his approach. It feels familiar, on the wrong side of the coin between predator and prey, fingers tense, muscles crawling on the back of his neck. He almost forgets that the spirit is human — or human-shaped.
That's his mind slipping away, losing ground while he loses focus until gravity jolts him awake. Wary, uncertainty in his stare, Dom draws his brows together. Why is Sully asking that when he said— ]
You're the one who told me what I'm capable of.
[ Killing. ]
Shouldn't I — shouldn't I be able to stop myself from getting there in the first place? So I don't need containment?
[Avoiding the word is just as damning as ignoring the act - but Sullivan relents a little, because the other option would be pushing harder. Explaining that there are things worse than death he could be capable of. Betrayal at the top of the list. But Dom is the one circling around one aspect of their session, and so he towers over him, glancing down.]
If you were my dog, kept in my backyard... if I didn't know how high you could jump, do you think I could succeed at building a fence to keep you in? One little understimation and you would be gone.
[He wets his lips.]
I asked you what you're capable of. Not what you've been told. What you think.
[ Not what Sully meant, certainly not in the acidic way Jules threw it in his face before, but his ego and its defenses go right up before Dom avoids eye contact, tense with reluctant shame. ]
I'm capable of really bad shit, okay? Every time I break out there's — there's dead stuff around me, I'm covered in fucking blood and I don't even know where it all comes from. I can't remember what it's like when I change, but it's like there's these… leftovers of it in my head. Telling me it's what it still wants to do. What the fuck am I supposed to do about that? Other than just telling it to shut up and ask everybody I love to lock me away so they don't get hurt? But I still want to hurt them!
[Sullivan is quiet, but then moves his hand - cupping Dom's cheek. It could be a soft gesture, but the way his fingers curl to hold on to his jaw leave it with an undertone as he tilts up his chin, staring into his eyes. There's a wild creature in this boy, one viciously aligned with him, and who is he if not someone who tries to help his own?]
Listen to it.
[Three words, like heavy drops of water into a pond; dripped right into Dom's brain.]
The next time it speaks to you, listen. Don't push it away. Obey it. Because you really know who's talking, don't you?
[ Me. Us. Words that come and swiftly kept swept away by his denial, by a sense of morals instilled to him by his mothers, that everything the monster is is also everything he should not be. Dom presses his lips, discomfort and reluctance, desperate for an escape from the truth. Whatever guidance he came here to seek, it's a mirror too ugly to look at. ]
You said you'd help me in whatever way I needed, right?
[ A little colder now, looking at Sully with something that could be misconstrued as bravery. But they both know this is him running. ]
So I just need you to fuck me like you did before.
[Say that. Mean it, too. He looks at Dom and he wonders how he could possibly take some of this assertion and transplant it into Iggy; they're such opposites under his wings and yet from both of them he sees just as many flaws as he does talents. Sullivan chuckles.]
I can do that. Will you do something for me, in turn?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
I'm sure he'd be supportive as well. But you're aligned with me, so it's my hand that is best to teach you right now.
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Yea that's fine
It's not like I want other people to see me
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I await your arrival, Domingos. My room has plenty of privacy.
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U can just call me Dom
I'll come find u in a bit
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The window curtains are drawn and a dim, warm light resonates from the desk lamp as Sullivan smokes in the arm chair next to it. It's like he can sense the approach - voice somehow carrying through the door before it can even be knocked on:]
Come in.
no subject
Carefully, he pushes the door open and looks inside — first to see where Sully is, what he's doing, how he's dressed. His tattoos are as strange as last time, and the circumstances are so different they seem to take him out of reality for a little bit. ]
… Hi.
[ With the door shut behind him, Dom stands in place and… doesn't move forward. It feels wrong to be here. It feels worse to think about going back in this state. (It smells like a cat's been here, even with the smoke.) ]
no subject
How far have you gone? In hurting others, deliberately or otherwise?
no subject
U-uhm, just… I… I've punched people before. Scratched them. I bit my friend. He bled pretty bad. While I was a person. I didn't infect him with... you know.
[ Stiff, sounding less and less steady with each terrible word, arms crossed tight. ]
My moms help me calm down back home. It's — I don't know, it's really hard without them. This place fucks with my head a lot.
no subject
[Sullivan takes his time in standing up, cigarette hanging from his mouth as he takes three slow, steady steps toward Dom with his boots dragging on the floorboards. It's not unlike the approach of one wild animal to another, sizing each other up and digging in to those baser natures to see what one another's next move is.]
What's the worst you're capable of, Dom? Without knowing that, how can you ever train yourself backwards into containment?
no subject
That's his mind slipping away, losing ground while he loses focus until gravity jolts him awake. Wary, uncertainty in his stare, Dom draws his brows together. Why is Sully asking that when he said— ]
You're the one who told me what I'm capable of.
[ Killing. ]
Shouldn't I — shouldn't I be able to stop myself from getting there in the first place? So I don't need containment?
no subject
[Avoiding the word is just as damning as ignoring the act - but Sullivan relents a little, because the other option would be pushing harder. Explaining that there are things worse than death he could be capable of. Betrayal at the top of the list. But Dom is the one circling around one aspect of their session, and so he towers over him, glancing down.]
If you were my dog, kept in my backyard... if I didn't know how high you could jump, do you think I could succeed at building a fence to keep you in? One little understimation and you would be gone.
[He wets his lips.]
I asked you what you're capable of. Not what you've been told. What you think.
no subject
[ Not what Sully meant, certainly not in the acidic way Jules threw it in his face before, but his ego and its defenses go right up before Dom avoids eye contact, tense with reluctant shame. ]
I'm capable of really bad shit, okay? Every time I break out there's — there's dead stuff around me, I'm covered in fucking blood and I don't even know where it all comes from. I can't remember what it's like when I change, but it's like there's these… leftovers of it in my head. Telling me it's what it still wants to do. What the fuck am I supposed to do about that? Other than just telling it to shut up and ask everybody I love to lock me away so they don't get hurt? But I still want to hurt them!
[ Getting more frustrated, sad — angry. ]
no subject
Listen to it.
[Three words, like heavy drops of water into a pond; dripped right into Dom's brain.]
The next time it speaks to you, listen. Don't push it away. Obey it. Because you really know who's talking, don't you?
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You said you'd help me in whatever way I needed, right?
[ A little colder now, looking at Sully with something that could be misconstrued as bravery. But they both know this is him running. ]
So I just need you to fuck me like you did before.
no subject
[Say that. Mean it, too. He looks at Dom and he wonders how he could possibly take some of this assertion and transplant it into Iggy; they're such opposites under his wings and yet from both of them he sees just as many flaws as he does talents. Sullivan chuckles.]
I can do that. Will you do something for me, in turn?
no subject
What do you want me to do?
no subject
A favor, redeemable at a later date. Can you promise that?
no subject
—what kind of favor?
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I don't know what to think, dude. You're ... you're a death spirit.
[ And death, regardless of being inevitable, merciful or necessary, always hurts someone, somewhere. ]
no subject
[Most people would not, so.]
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What the fuck, dude. No.
[ So... a favor it is. But also: what the fuck. ]
impending 🎀?
So, circling back. You want to be fucked?
🎀