#ohsunshine: dwight

[nightmarecountry]

stop smiling at me like that. from dwight!

"I get that a lot," says the Corinthian cheerfully, and doesn't. He eyes the nightmare looming next to Dwight, the unpleasant trio of grins sharpening like he's caught a scent he likes. "Hey - aren't you supposed to be working? Not slacking off to show him around, are you?"

The ram-skulled thing swings its massive head to stare at him. Its gloved hand drops heavy onto Dwight's shoulder, protective, and the Corinthian's eyelids curl back into twin sneers. No nightmare he's known has ever had a pet before.

"Technically," Graves rasps, still staring him down, like it doesn't realise--or just doesn't care--that prolonged eye contact is about the worst thing you can give the Corinthian, "I'm Johnny right now, and you're interrupting." And as he says it his voice shifts, little musical notes drifting from the golden fissures that cover him, so it is Johnny... and it's still Graves, too.

The Corinthian wants so, so badly to take their toy from them. He thinks about it, eyeing Dwight hungrily, letting the moment stretch--

--but the fight wouldn't be worth it, and he doesn't like to draw attention to himself, these days. Better that their master forgets he exists.

[griefbringers]

why have you come to me tonight? / dwight @ graves. he sounds tired, and is ashamed of himself for reacting to graves like that.

there it is: the first crack in the armour. like their creator, the griefbringers hurt the things they touch, the ones they love. they cannot help it. the gravedigger has often thought of what might have spurred lord morpheus to create the first griefbringer, and in moments like these, he thinks he has his answer.

"it's... what i am." christ, he sounds like the fucking corinthian. it's what i am. it's in my nature. i hurt you because i'm supposed to. he's better than that. he has reasons for doing what he does, reasons that go beyond his function, he just...

graves looks away, tense. the dreamscape around them swirls with fog and dusty soil.

"on another night i'd give you johnny. mykonos. someone who won't hurt you. but."

it swings its skull back to stare dwight down, the headlight glow of its eyes cold in the dark. dwight is on a long stretch of road, surrounded by deer. a buck lifts its antlered head by him and stares - not down the road, but into the woods...

...and someone's voice he'd long forgotten calls back from between the trees.

everyone has nightmares, the buck tells him. something is coming from the dirt, from the earth. the fog is thick and his heart is beating in his ears, pulsing, pounding... you're going to have to live with it.

[devourcr]

( @ohsunshine asked ❛ run . run & don’t stop . ❜ / from dwight/ deadly nightshade starters // always accepting !! )

the hammering of his heartbeat is deafening. amber eyes lock onto dwight just as he hears an axe splinter wood past their heads. she's close. as the only two left in the trial, armand has his doubts about splitting up, but the odds of them dying together if they didn't is higher than not. and frankly, dwight's never been an untrustworthy figure in the trials.

when someone was willing to take risks for him, armand's also more likely to give into altruism himself. after all, survivors were stronger as a group.

swallowing the lump in his throat, the vampire nods. ❝ you meet me at the door, we leave together, ❞ he says, though there's little time to ensure that he agrees. the only way they were going to get to the door was by separating their efforts. she could only chase one of them at a time, after all. one thing that he's positive of is that he has no intention of being skewered on a hook this time around. with that, he vaults the shack window, prepared to make a beeline for the door, hoping that by the time he gets it open, dwight will be there too.

[talentforlying]

@ohsunshine: ❛  why aren’t you more freaked out?  ❜ / from dwight — WYNONNA EARP STARTERS

' what, by the meathooks and ritual murder, the magic fuckin' fog, or the odd fuckers hunting us fer sport? bein' honest, mate, none of it's really a first time thing for me. '

to a certain extent, he's decided that he's dreaming. he's off-and-fucked to some bastard corner of the psyche where madcap kids in masks and zombies and flower-faced fucking skin dogs gambol through desiccated homesteads and try to stick him to the wall like a stag's head in a hunting lodge, and he just hasn't figured out how to snap himself back out of it yet. maybe he's pissed off the endless enough to land himself an endless ( ha ) nightmare, or maybe that crab-legged dickhead in the sky has his skull in a vice back home, feeding off his delta waves — maybe if he decides it's not real, then it doesn't work. maybe if he can convince these other poor sods that it's not real, they won't scream so fucking loud.

and anyway, it's not important to anyone else if his hands shake worse than ever on those sodding generators. it's only important if he cocks it up.

thundering footsteps pass above their hiding spot beneath the steps of the thompson house, spitting a spray of dust motes across the thin slivers of light cast between floorboards. almost arterial. constantine waits until they've faded away into silence before grinning at the kid, unlit cigarette pinned between his teeth like a bent nail in splintered wood, at an odd angle to the grain. ' fuck, i thought 'e'd never leave. you got a map, "pizzawhat"? or d'you figure we pick a direction and leg it? '

[griefbringers]

you have more power than i thought. dwight @ graves :3c

"that... shouldn't make me feel as good as it does," graves admits, and pushes the snout of his skull further under dwight's arm. it's hard to curl up together like this--graves is big, and his skull doesn't help--but dwight wants to hold him and graves... jesus, graves wants to be held. even if he can't face dwight while he does it, ashamed of the wanting, hiding however he can. "always feel pretty powerless, to tell you the truth. well," he adds, thinking of the same thing dwight must be: the last night terror, the gravedigger at its worst, "most of the time."

this guy is going to leave you, you know. he can't take your shit forever. and you won't change, not for him, not for anyone.

graves sighs. it's probably true, but that doesn't mean he wants to hear it, even from part of himself.

[griefbringers]

💋 dwigraves ???

calling it a kiss is generous. it's more of a bunting of graves' massive skull against the side of dwight's head, like an affectionate cat--and if dwight looks at the wrong angle, he might see an unsettlingly bright, monstrous tongue set deep within the skeletal maw, the same colour as the gravedigger's headlight eyes.

one of the many strange things about graves is the complete lack of facial expressions. everything has to come from his body, from the flickering and dimming of his eyes. he doesn't talk with his hands naturally, but with a voice that dies more often than not, he has to.

"i need to get a better face than this," he grumbles, then--just to be a shit--licks the entire side of dwight's face from jaw to temple in one awful slorp.

[griefbringers]

♦ graves for dwight.......

"Sacrifice."

not just from the trials. before and after, too: all the little things dwight lets go, the slights and the hurts and the way he makes himself small for other people. all the times he puts someone else's safety or wellbeing before his own, not fully knowing what it is he's giving up every time he does it. a lifetime of that and you become a shell of yourself. you can only look in, and not out: you can only see what's wrong with you, and not others.