againinferno

[againinferno]

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 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?"

[againinferno]

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 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."

[againinferno]

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 ---"

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.

[againinferno]

[againinferno]

BONES AND ALL (2022) dir. Luca Guadagnino

[againinferno]

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.

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.

[againinferno]

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.

“—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?

[againinferno]

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

[againinferno]

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

+

[againinferno]

They're both the untimely victims of the jaw. That jaw that opens up beneath them and swallows them whole, spits them back out again when it feels like it. The jaw has blonde curls and eyes that feel like falling into a void. Dante can feel it now, crawling up his skin, begging him closer. "Okay." And he falls in step behind her as she walks. They're not going back to mansion, they're going somewhere else. But even when they get there, how can she trust that it is real? How can he? He grimaces in response to that thought -- he's never been there, not really. Only in memory, an imprint of her mind. So things that she left behind this morning when she left will still be the same, he won't know about it... "Tea? You drink tea, right?"

"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.

[againinferno]

Dante falters in his step --- she's right. If he doesn't know why he wants her beside him, then he should stop. He should ignore that gut pull towards her and call a car and get it over with. The bloodline, the bloodline, the B L O O D L I N E. "I'm ---" What is he? Sorry? Forgetful? Honest? How can he be any of those things when she is starting at him with those wide doe eyes, the same ones that used to beg him to keep her safe from the monster lurking behind the corners of hell. Hell, or where he was born ... where he was made. Dante feels all of his muscles clenching. "I wasn't following you..." Good choice, bud .... "Can you just stop for a second, please?"

It's very easy to pity. It is hard to protect herself. She always fucking does this, doesn't she? Throws herself upon the sword for a sad boy, hopes he likes her, hopes her insides being pulled out at least entertains them, at least helps her feel close to them.

Willow doesn't want to be close to him.

It'll taint the bloodline, isn't that what Nero said? When he pulled out? She was meant for him. Willow does not want that kind of connection.

She looks across the pavement at Dante and feels bile rise up in her throat. Her stomach churns.

"Well, until you do know -- stop following me."

[againinferno]

They're out.... aren't they? Underneath the buzzing night lamp, she becomes fuzzy. A forgotten memory brushes against the edges of his mind, and it's disgusting. It brings up bile in the back of his throat. No .... No.... Dante fumbles in his step. No... He can hear her whispers --- it's okay, it's okay, you have to do what you have to do to. "I'm ... Willow...." How can he express all he emotions he feels in one sentence. The one sentence to capture her to stay with him. Is that what he wants, to hold her again? Bile again. "I don't know."

Of course she knows, but it was Hell. She did what she had to do, and she's out now. Free. She got out. Didn't she get out? What the fuck is he doing here? Willow's pace grows faster, wanting to race once again as far from him and the memory of his home as she can.

It's cruel, withholding, running away - but what is Willow supposed to do? The feeling of him pinning her down, Nero's eyes on her, all the things he allowed, all the things he was forced to do to her... Should it make her love him? Should being his victim turn her soft to his cries? Should she feel pity for him, too?

Willow turns to look at him and flinches once again at the blonde hair. The look of him.

"What are you doing here?"

[againinferno]

Does she not know how desperately he wanted to run with her? How things might have turned out differently if he wasn't sunk into the image of his father? His eyes trace her outline. He knows it so intimately, and he hates that he does. The simple thought makes him sick to his stomach. Watches her fumble from her phone and put it away. The edges of his mind fuzz. Like a television in between the stations. It isn't enough to make him wince, but enough to make him think a fly is buzzing around him. "Willow..." he says it again, louder. She doesn't want to see you, she hates you for what you did. She hates you as much as you hate yourself, ugly, ugly, ugl--- "Willow, please.... don't ignore me."

The bottle blond isn't even the worst of it, though it is pretty revolting to think that Dante wanted to emulate his father more than he already did in that fucking mansion. She was right not to want him to come with her, right to run from that place and never look back -- whatever he might have to say to her, she doesn't want to hear, whatever trauma that bonded them then does not hold them together now.

Willow is so desperate to move on from what happened in that place. His voice, pitiful and slurred, makes her want to vomit.

She pulls her phone out of her back pocket with the intent to text someone, call for help maybe, but her hands are shaking too hard to type. Back in her pocket it goes. Back to-- Willow?

No, not Willow, someone else.

She attempts a mind-trick she knows she isn't steady enough to pull off.

[againinferno]

Joseph Zada as Johnny Sinclair Dennis WE WERE LIARS 1.01 - Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

[againinferno]

Of course she would walk away. He's seen himself in mirrors since the impulsive night where he dyed his hair blonde. He's seen the ghastly reflection that stares back him, baring teeth and beckoning him into acts he would never commit himself. It's that same reflection that is everywhere. In cars he passes, in shop windows, it stalks him like his own shadow does. It is who he is supposed to be. Isn't that why he was made? For everything that happened? The bile rises to the back of his throat and he thinks very much of turning around, pretending he never saw her. Yet there it is, that inkling, that sinking, disgusting, awful feeling that draws him back to her. "Willow?"

She’s thinking about killing tonight. It’s about the only reason she has to leave her house this week, aside from making a few appearances here and there, so people remember she’s alive again. It would be a top-up, a quick fix to make her feel good before the guilt and the trauma catches up with her later, a muted disappointment that things have to be like this is the most she can feel since coming back to Earth.

She’s been waiting outside, just toying with the idea really. Waiting to see who will catch her eye, if anyone at all, and fall unhappily into her unhinged jaw. It’s as much a shock to her to see Dante here, topside, as it is for him to see her.

Perhaps nastier for her, too. Given all that she went through at his hand. Willow almost pretends not to recognise him — but she can’t keep the stricken look on her face hidden for long. She turns away. Begins to walk.

[againinferno]

THE YIN STRUGGLES AGAINST THE YANG.

WRITTEN BY CHRISSIE. TWENTY-FIVE PLUS.

I DON'T HAVE DOCS. LIVE AND LEARN.

[againinferno]

Another sleazy bar, and another sleazy group of women to go along with it. It's all whiskeys and whispers of wanton in his ear and the dull, repetitive motion of the bass music blasting in every speaker. He hates it. Only when the latest girl flaunts herself over him, breasts pressed shamelessly against him, that Dante finally feels himself crack. He could have been nicer, he thinks as he stalks away, in pushing her off him. He could have made it less awkward for her friends flittering around them, but it's done now. It simply is. The cold air hits his skin like a welcome kiss. Alcohol in his bloodstream has made him warm, and it keeps him warm as he walks unaccompanied through the streets of Los Angeles. It keeps him warm until he sees @unpossession. And then his blood runs cold.