me vs you vs reality {Dom}

[Erik Stewart]

It was growing dark out, but it was no pretty twilight; it was instead a hot and muggy evening, hazy with humidity, one that pressed down on the shoulders. The sidewalk was still damp with recent rain. Puddles collected here and there where the pavement dipped. The town took on a blue tone that turned a foggy gray in the distance, only punctuated by a few yellow-orange street lamps, and the last of the sunlight sliding away. It was typical of an east coast summer night.

The clubs hanging around Pilot Ridge saw a lot of traffic on weekend nights, no matter the heat, so it was no surprise that the occasional group passed along the streets. They almost always came in two’s or three’s, laughing and talking and carrying on, young people from the meta school, from the public school, from the college. It was easy to miss the figures standing a ways from the main road, facing each other, speaking – their words impossible to pick up on unless you were standing right up next to them.

Erik was the one closest to the wall, his back facing it but not quite touching it, yet. Even in the growing night he was distinctive. The figure had his long, deer like legs and his dark hair, his white skin; even the way he held himself was translated perfectly, one shoulder raised, half turned away, frigid, surly.

The other one was taller, older, and unfamiliar. He was either not getting the hint or he was ignoring it. He said something to him, and Erik faintly mumbled something in return.

The low muttering didn’t go on for long. Soon Erik straightened up. Their voices became clearer the stronger they got.

“…I never said I would,” he was saying.
“At the bar,” he responded, the last part of his sentence indistinct.
Still they bickered – for that was what it was, if he was close enough to see the flash of Erik’s teeth and the way he was staring at him through his dark lashes.
They hissed and spat and their voices took on tones of increasing outrage.
Finally, Erik balled his fists and leaned forward. “Yew couldn’t get it t’stand anyway, whiskey dick.”

That was the last thing he’d say before he was stopped short by a loud clap against his face. The sound rang somewhat dull in the heavy air.

[Dominique Chevalier]

Finals were over for the local collage and there were hoards of uni students ready to celebrate. What better way f than having a torrid one night stand with a 20 year old high school student? Legal /and/ taboo.

Raising a finger, Dom signaled his intention and then stopped to draw out a smoke. The first was offered to the woman he had been drinking, of course, and when she took it with a giggle Dom managed a smirk and raised the lighter.

It was a random thing, happening to glance across at the movement nearby and seeing a very familiar figure across the street. The sight of him had Dom’s mood drop like a stone, leaving him feeling frustrated and with a strong desire to hit something. Erik, because that was who it was, wasn’t alone and Dom wished he could pretend his eyes scanned the other body with indifference.

This was not how he wanted his night to go. With a quick pull of his cigarette, Dom looked back to the collage student he had chosen to talk to with a murmured excuse and an offer of his lighter. Erik could handle himself, and if he wanted to go and fuck strangers in alleys that was his business.

The sound of the slap was loud enough to carry.

Not a punch or a shove, a slap. You didn’t slap someone when you wanted to start a fight. You slapped someone for a whole set of other reasons.

Dom had started moving before she’d had a chance to take a puff, a blunt “later,” the only farewell he had time to give.

His legs ate up the distance between himself and the strange man, the ground under the concrete shifting ever so slightly with the terrakentic’s anger. Erik was still upright, and so the entirety of his attention was turned towards the stranger. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he asked quietly. “Back off.”

[Erik Stewart]

Erik had yet to look up. He must have recognized his voice, must have known, but he kept his head where the other man had left it: to the side and facing down, nursing his sore cheek.

The stranger had turned to face Dom, obviously stunned – glancing down at his feet in faint confusion at the brief tremor – then up again, with a face molded into hostility, now that he’d a moment to gain his bearings. “The fuck you think you are?” Whether it was the alcohol, or whatever else it was that gave his eyes that shine, it was clear he thought it was he who had the moral high ground, here; after all, things in dark alleys weren’t often disturbed. “This’s none of your business, man.”

Erik had straightened up in the meantime. He was wiping the back of his wrist against his mouth. “You missed a spot,” he said.

The what are you talking about was surfacing through, just barely popping out his lips, but Erik didn’t wait for his reply. He’d got what he’d wanted, which was his attention. He spat, the glob of mucus tinted red; it landed smack in the middle of his face, across the bridge of the man’s nose. There was a line of blood resting between Erik’s bottom lip and his lower set of teeth, visible now that his lips were slightly parted.

He’d seen another blow coming, he’d been anticipating it, but it found him anyways, with a closed fist and a hard swing, a real punch if there ever was one – it sent him reeling back and seeing stars.

[Dominique Chevalier]

Who fuck did he think he was? Well, that was an easy enough one for Dom to answer. If there was anything he had to hold onto, it was his name.

When Erik spoke up, and spat, for a split second Dom almost threw up his hands and left. But that urge left as Erik fell back against the wall. That slap had been hard enough to split Erik's lip, and that punch had almost flattened him. Under him, the ground surged through his feet, and he felt hot and molten and destructive.

He shoved the guy hard in the shoulder, grasped the front of his shirt and dragged him forward by the front of his shirt.

"I'm Dominique Chevalier," he snarled, "who the fuck are you?"

All the frustration, the anger at those around him who'd let him lose sight of himself, at his own failings and his inability to fix them, combined with the sight of Erik's blood dripping down the stranger's face had built and built inside and needed release. And he'd finally found it. He let go and then swung an uppercut towards the guy's chin, catching it and snapping his head back. The next punch was already being thrown.

And the next.

Then the next.

They came, one after the other, relentless and merciless and thoughtless and seemingly without end. His ears were ringing; maybe he'd been hit, Dom wasn't feeling it. All he could feel was a deep and steady thumping of his own heart, in his ears like a heavy drum.

[Erik Stewart]

He was too distracted by the hurt in his jaw and the seething hatred to understand that Dom was here. That was, he knew he was present – he had caught on to that – but it was the significance that eluded him. Right now he could only see red, could only feel pain and desperate rage and a sense of loss, all at once, even as he wiped his lips and waved a hand to rid it of the stray drops of blood that’d come leaking through his teeth.

Erik had hardly any time at all to look up when he heard a crack. He was familiar with the sound. It had a crunch to it, like biting into something hard. At first he’d been half expecting it to have come from himself – another blow, perhaps – but he found soon enough that it was the man’s face it was coming from, not his own. Erik stared. Dom’s name formed on his lips but it didn’t leave them, just hesitated there, where Erik had paused, mouth agape.

Then it came again, and another, and another. He flinched each time. That man had filthy hands, he’d a scratchy half-beard, he’d got in his face and made demands and wheedled and threatened him with his alcohol yellowed teeth, front ones poking out over his bottom lip like a rat’s, he was a piss poor excuse of an asshole, he’d followed him when he didn’t want to be followed, pressed him for answers, slapped him when he got them, and didn’t like them; but still, when Erik saw his jaw want to rearrange itself around Dom’s fist, his first instinct was to stop it.

Erik reached for Dom’s sleeve. It was easier to grip than his bicep. “What do you think you’re doin?” he cried, pulling. “You’re gonna kill him.”

[Dominique Chevalier]

Like a crack between tectonic plates, the smallest crack in the control Dom had been working so hard on maintaining was devastating. Pressure that had been building for months was bursting out as fast as it was able, looking for some sort of release.

He couldn’t even feel his hands, though he was aware, distantly, that hitting someone in the face was foolish- it was all bone. But it didn’t hurt; like a clock’s pendulum he kept up the rhythm until something grasped at his sleeve. He rounded on Erik in a moment, ripping his sleeve from Erik’s fingers and shoving him away with one hand.

Catching himself in time, Dom dropped both his hands but his face was still twisted and dark.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” he snarled, lip curling. Erik was here, he’d been hit, his face was already swelling, and Dom’s sharp eyes flickered down to the injured cheek before returning to fix Erik against the wall.

“You must be sort of magnet for violent fuckers,” he spat. This was the sort of person that the fucking southern snake shifter chose to hang out with? What did that make Dom? “Or do you just go out looking for the meanest son of a bitch in the place?”

[Erik Stewart]

Erik staggered backwards. He retracted his hand, holding it to his side. His mouth was set, eyes glaring; he lifted his chin up in response. He was ready for whatever else tonight wanted to throw at him. At least, in theory. The blood under his nose and around his lips was already starting to dry up, though the color was still a bright cherry red.

“He followed me,” he responded. Erik ignored the man’s groaning; he was holding his bloodied face, and he supposed if he could see it, it’d look pretty bad – but the fact that he was making noise at all suggested that he wasn’t dead, at least. “I don’t know th’ guy.”

Erik wasn’t surprised to see that Dom was still angry, and whatever vestige of him that had once considered that he deserved thanks had fled, instead replaced with a fierce resentment of his own. Half of it was embarrassment at being caught in yet another degrading, ugly situation. Some of it was the pain in his face. The rest he wasn’t sure of; he only knew it was there, and that he felt it when he stared into his face. Erik snarled. “An for your information, it was you that fuckin’ beat his face in, asshole.” He turned his head, just slightly. “I’ve got another cheek if you wanna take another.”

[Dominique Chevalier]

For a moment. something other than anger flickered over Dom's eyes. For that moment, it would be obvious that Erik's invitation had been unexpected; and unpleasantly so. His knuckles ached badly, the skin that stretched over them split in places. They stung. No doubt it would feel similar if he hit Erik on the offered cheek to hitting that man who was now on the ground. Maybe a little more painful, now that his knuckles had been split.

"Fuck you," he said finally, after a pause that felt far longer than it could have been. "Go find someone else to finish the job, if that's not enough for you."

His hands were trembling as he pushed away from the wall, the adrenaline still pumping as he lifted an unsteady cigarette to his lips and lit it. Under his feet, the earth pulsed, and his feet matched that pulse as it grew faster and faster until he was running, bare feet slapping over the dirt, putting as much distance between him and the alley as possible.

[Erik Stewart]

Erik stopped to wait. It was likely that he’d let Dom go through with it, if he wanted. The lack of reaction, the lack of impact on his face, was a relief – if not completely unsurprising. Dom probably thought it beneath him to take him up on it.

This time when the earth rumbled, he knew what it was. The excitement left him without fear – and without comprehension. He would realize, later, that now was the angriest he’d seen him. It would be obvious in retrospect. He’d never have thought he’d see Dom bashing in someone’s unsuspecting face.

“Hey. Hey!” he called, as he watched Dom turn his back. He called after him again, even after he’d broke into a trot, cupping a hand next to his mouth for extra projection. “Fuck you too!”

There was nothing else for him to do but watch him go. The man was still groaning, and he supposed he could have kicked him, or spoke to him, just to tell him what a piece of work he was, but he didn’t; he’d been taken care of already.