OLD SENTENCE MEME.

danny’s steps on creaking snow warn dylan of his coming, buying him the time to take a breath before the words cut the air, before he feels danny against his back and the younger’s arms around him. he closes the lid on the pack of cigarettes he’s been toying with in the chilly london air. the plastic that had covered it just a minute ago is still in his pocket, golden strip rebelliously hanging outside, visible against the black coat to anyone who’d notice that sort of thing.   “ i know. i QUIT ten years ago. ”   he’s not yet put the box away, fingers pulling the top open and closes again and again in thought.   “ i wasn’t gonna light one. ”   it’s true, even if danny has little reason to believe so — dylan wishes he’d had disclosed this earlier so it wouldn’t come as a surprise now, but he knows he never would’ve brought it up: danny would only worry about something dylan’s put long past him.

“ i never DO. i always swear i will when i storm out, but it’s the walk that actually does the trick for me. ”   this time, it’d taken a minute longer than normal, but just like every other time, by the time dylan had opened the pack and stared at the rows of cancer sticks for a good minute, he’d calmed enough to no longer have the impulse of breaking a good eleven and a half year’s streak. he turns his head as much as he can towards the other without breaking the hold  ( it’s rarer for them to be this way around, he realises, but he could get used to it ).   “ look, i’m sorry i got so heated up about it all, i was mad at the arcana and you picked a bad day to pick a fight with me. ”

he could say more but he doesn’t want to — not now, anyway, when he’s pretty sure danny doesn’t want to continue the conversation either and the moment’s too perfect to be ruined with talking. instead, he chucks the full pack of cigarettes to the snow, bringing his hands over danny’s, and allows his head to rest on danny’s.   “ i love you. ”

RE.

ooc.   …i’m gonna give you the benefit of doubt for the sake of answering the question here. i meant ‘justify’ in CHARACTERISATION SENSE. dylan likes his distance — even in the already existing villain au, the two most defining murders are both via a proxy. even the versions of him that i play with the darkest morals, he still likes a certain level of detachment because it guarantees him the sense of control over whomever he’s using for the crime, safety from the victim, and more time for an improvised way out should he need one. that’s why i find it hard to make him a serial killer for a verse, because it clashes with that one point in his characterisation and i would have to justify the change in m.o.

so there’s the answer to your slightly passive-aggressive question.

send 💬  for me to make you a starter with a random line of dialogue.

this isn’t happening. no, after months and months of trusting danny   ( reluctantly, but trusting all the same ), this isn’t happening. something threatens to crush dylan from the inside, he can hear fuller’s voice in his mind clearer than he should and he’s not sure if he wants to kick danny’s or his own ass for ever making him trust a convicted criminal so much that the betrayal he had once known to be inevitable can hurt like this. there’s a shake of head, one dylan doesn’t intend to do as he’s hearing less and less of the sounds around them and more his own blood rushing through his veins, telling him to throw something, kick something, yell, act out even half of the anger he feels, screw atlas’s feelings… instead, he’s frozen to place, teeth grinding together. even now, he can’t bring himself to do anything to trigger atlas’s traumas. i hate you for doing this, he wants to think, but it translates differently: i hate myself for letting you.   “ danny, don’t…”

commanding tone is lost as his voice threatens to break  ( he wants to believe it’s of anger, even when he full well knows it isn’t ). fists unclench, eyes drop to the floor before being shut altogether: dylan knows what he has to say — final attempt to plead, final wish to hope danny could find it within his manipulative ass to care — but he can’t say it with danny staring back at him, not even in these circumstances.   “ if you DO this… you’re dead to me. ”

dylan almost wishes that was true.

he’s not proud of it, but he’s first instinct is to count them and internally measure up the box, move the one slipped out of its place and stuck to the box back to the orderly line with the others before he even considers picking one up and biting into it — they’re good, he’s man enough to admit that despite considering himself slightly more of a muffin guy. a quick estimate says he can get away with eating four and leaving the remaining eight to the horsemen, letting them presume the box originally contained two each… one each, if he manages to eat eight before being interrupted.

at some point, during eating cupcake number four, he lifts the remaining ones out of the box and to a plate with a hastily written  ‘ share! ’  note written next to it. cupcake number six, and he picks up the post-it pile again and scribbles  ‘ thanks. ’  on top of it, leaving the message understated on purpose as to not raise suspicion when he’s going to drop the empty box with the note on top of it on sophie’s doorstep. cupcake number seven, and he gets another idea.

a few hours later, an unknown woman drops off a cupcake-less cupcake box to the door of the collins residence, with the same  ‘ thanks. ’  note on top of it, but with one difference: inside lies a quick-print cell phone picture of five horsemen sitting on one couch, faces more or less covered in frosting. one more note reads on the back of it:   this picture may never see the light of day.

deep ass starters.

for some reason, he hadn’t expected atlas to be the first to ask about his childhood; less in the sense that he didn’t think daniel cared and more that he’d just subconsciously presumed someone else would bring it up first. dylan doesn’t shy from it: after a year of complete secrecy and demanding absolute blind faith in him, he promised the horsemen transparency for as long as they have questions about what happened and who he is — it seems there’s still room for inquiries, after all this time. regardless, brows furrow, and he takes a moment to fit the words in his mouth — not to deceit, but to summarise — before he finally responds.

“ good. SCATTERED, maybe. ”   he doesn’t want to refer to his past as broken or incomplete: his childhood could have been a lot worse.   “ when dad lived, he was always going from one show to another. i couldn’t come along every time. i taped his shows a lot when he was away. ”   starting with lionel is unintentional but easier: a part of him still assumes his father is the more interesting topic.   “ after he died and we lost mum’s house in france, she put me in a group home. it gets messy from there on. the EYE helped me out a lot. ”

aww thank you, this was a nice thing to come back to <3