[brighton] tonight, i'll sleep with demons in my hair || kai

It’s just people, he had expressed and just like that, the entire thing sort of made sense but only for a moment. Yes, technically, they were all just people but things only seemed to make sense if those people paired with the opposite people. .Eleanora supposed that the alternative was just as well, even if she wasn’t exactly comfortable with knowing (or maybe figuring out) the dynamics of that type of relationship.

But it was difficult to picture herself in that sort of relationship, where she might find herself sexually or romantically involved with a woman. Apart from the disapproval of her parents, it all just didn’t seem normal. And then there was that word again, lingering around and showing just how affected she was by the ideals of her family.

“But it must be different,” she insisted, her brows furrowing just a little as she struggled to make sense of it. “I have girlfriends, well like friends that are women,” she clarified though it was unnecessary, it was obvious that her expertise on the subject was less than limited, it was practically nonexistent, “And if I considered dating them, I—can’t imagine dating a woman, the intimacy must be terribly complicated,” she added, her voice rising in pitch just a little as she considered it.

Eleanora didn’t give sex much thought but only because she tended to only desire it within the context of a relationship. The last two relationships in which she had been intimate with her partners, they had both been male. The intimacy had been mostly their doing and even for that, she had felt that something had been wrong with her.

Eleanora watched him as he smoked, almost preparing herself for him to send her on her way or insist that she leave, she was being mighty curious at this time of night but all in good spirit, though it was hard to know whether he’d understand it as such. She wasn’t looking for an explanation about his choice in lifestyle as much as she was looking for understanding of the subject as a whole. “You don’t mind, do you?” she asked again, just to be sure, her eyes following him as he walked to the hall.

She normally didn’t sleep well in the homes of strangers but this felt different, Kai didn’t feel as much of a stranger to her anymore. “I hope this isn’t starting to feel like an inquisition, because that’s hardly my intention,” she added with a small smile.

He watched several things flicker through her expression – nothing he could pinpoint, he didn't know her that well after all – and then looked away while she started talking. Must it be different though, he thought distantly? Different to what? He wasn't sure exactly what it was she was asking – something about the differences between men and women – but she was clearly having some difficulty grappling with these ideas.

I can’t imagine dating a woman, “‘Cause you’re straight?” Kai offered helpfully, though he didn’t think she heard him. He was still focused on her, but things felt a little more parallel now that he was feeling heavier, more tired. Maybe she was coming down, though, and he should be more present, in case she needed something. “Intimacy?” he asked more directly, frowning. “Like, sex?” She might seem a bit younger than she was, but Ellie was an adult; he didn’t feel the need to cushion it. Besides, there was something satisfying about being so direct with her. Unsettling her. Maybe he shouldn’t enjoy it, but he did.

Besides, it was good for her. It was two thousand and three, for fuck's sake. The image of sitting her down for an episode of Queer as Folk drifted into his mind and he couldn't help but be amused.

Kai shook his head as he came back into the living room, arms full of bed things. “Mind?” he asked, his lips forming the words around his cigarette. "Nah." He put the pile down on the couch, straightened, blew a stream of smoke to one side, and took a seat beside her again. "It's fine." He realised he might come off as a bit gruff – it was that time of night – and put in some effort to elaborate. "Like I said, I'm not working. Friends stay over all the time, it's cool."

He wet his lips with the tip of his tongue and considered about taking a sip of her water before thinking better of it. "And I don't mind talking about this stuff," he said. It was true, mostly, despite whatever contempt bubbled up in response to her questions. "Better you know," he added, thinking more about her knowing him than her knowing about the rest of it as a concept. "How are you feeling, though?" he asked, leaning back again, turning his head to look at her as he rested it on the back of the couch.

Eleanora heard what he had said but only barely, though she had always felt that the word straight felt incredibly mishappen if its opposite was meant to define the non-conformative and took pride in something she believed was forward-thinking on her part. It only felt like a small victory when placed in conjunction with the bigger topic at hand, that the witch felt completely out of her element when thinking of relationships between individuals because she lacked the experience, the worldly knowledge. Though it made sense to sit here in her half-brother’s living room and blame this faulty upbringing on her parents and conservative values, even if it had been most of their doing, she considered that maybe it had much to do with her own disassociation with the world around her.

Talking to Kai only made her feel like an even bigger failure than she thought herself to be and in a way, it was a weirdly comforting thought to come to the realization (once again) that she lacked much more than she brought to the table. It had been her choice to separate herself from her friends and because of that, she had missed on the many interactions that might have made up for this inability to understand things like any other normal person might. Eleanora could have never expected to receive this type of education from her parents and hardly ventured outside of the recesses of her own thoughts, often fixating on the past and forgetting it had ever happened. What else was to be expected? Nothing, really.

“Well no, not just sex,” she started to explain but it was a thought she could not really put forth into words. Eleanora had not really had the experience to say one was better than the other but intimacy seemed to allude to more than just physical pleasure because for the witch it had never just been about sex with anyone no matter how much she wanted it to be. It was the sort of connection that surpassed the level of friendship, the feelings in between the lines of a romance novel, the hidden, the omitted, the alluded. Then again, maybe her understanding of these concepts was obscured by her romanticized notions of relationships in the first place. “…Nevermind,” she said after a moment’s pause, it felt like a silly notion the more she thought about it, “I hear what you're saying,” she finalized. She had heard it, even if she had not completely understood it. In the end, she decided to concede a battle she never truly thought she’d win. Eleanora had never been good at winning, to begin with.

And the conversation moved forward, making it easier for her thoughts to settle and for her to relax a little but never completely. Eleanora had always been taught to be aware, to understand changes in voice and body language but around Kai, she felt even more incapable of doing any of these things. She could not read him and it made it difficult for her to feel completely at ease in his presence. It made her anxious she would do something wrong. “Thanks again, for everything,” she said, a smile appearing on her face as she contemplated the word friend and wondered if it actually applied to her or if he was using it as an example.

“Is it?” better she meant. “If there is anything I could answer for you about…anything you’re curious about really, the family or me, don’t hesitate to ask you’ve been more than forthcoming it only seems right I’d be the same,” she offered, taking another sip of water but only because he asked if she was okay.

“I’m…better? Though I’ll probably regret all this drinking I’ve done tomorrow morning, I don’t do it often, all the drinking makes me feel…dirty?” she offered, it wasn’t exactly the right word but she hoped he’d understand.

He waited for her to elaborate, one eyebrow quirked. “Maybe we can talk more about it when you’re sober,” he suggested. Maybe he just needed to get her some pamphlets from the center. A crash course, so to speak. There was a nagging part of him now, though – maybe because he was a little less high – that found it all less funny and more irritating. Was it really his job to educate her? He’d meant it when he said that it was probably better for her to know, but it got less fun the longer the conversation went on.

“Oh, uh…” Kai shrugged, feeling a bit put on the spot. “Maybe we’ll save that for when we’re sober too,” he said with a light shrug. He didn’t have any specific questions right this moment, but now that things were actually happening, he’d have to think about it and see what he wanted to know. He wondered about her dead boyfriend, of course, and then there was the whole death eater thing. He wanted to pick her brain about her thoughts on Britain’s political landscape, both historically and presently. What did a kid from an upper class, pureblood family think about the current minister for magic? He was curious about a lot of things – mostly just her perspectives – but he didn’t think this was the right time to talk about most of it; he wondered if she could walk straight.

“Dirty?” he repeated. The way she’d said it had sounded very moralistic to him, like she felt uncomfortable and off, rather than dirty in the literal sense. Getting trashed didn’t seem like something someone like her would think was okay. Then again, weren’t messy socialite daughters a common trope? Regardless, Kai wasn’t sure what to say to it; he relied on various substances a little too much, probably.

“Do you want to have a shower, or…? The bathroom’s down the hall to the right,” he added, realising he probably should have told her that a while ago. He didn’t think that that’s what she was really trying to get at, but he was getting tired now. “Maybe tomorrow,” he added; she looked pretty zoned out. Kai leaned forward in his seat a little, taking another drag before running a hand back through his hair. “There are towels in the cupboard in the hall,” he said.

Sober, he said and Eleanora could not help but smile a little bit at the word; that feeling of haziness, the difficulties in making conversation, the world slowing down considerably around her as time sluggishly passed on, in retrospect she hadn’t felt as sober as she did tonight in a long time. “Of course,” she said with a nod, but without any of the energy, the word sort of tumbling forth from her lips and into the space between them to fill the blank air with something. But, her entire body feeling heavier, as every little discomfort and inconvenience suddenly made its presence known, what she supposed was signs that the potion she had taken was wearing off.

He had been disturbed by her thoughts and questions, she had concluded, even if he hadn’t really given her evidence of feeling as much. But Eleanora had a habit of projecting her own irrational fear of not being liked by others, the ending of their conversation not really feeling like much of an ending at all but more like a..rejection.Deep down she knew why she had shown up at his door in the middle of the night, but she couldn’t really come to terms with why she had assumed he would listen. Maybe it had something to do with her mistaking his kindness for interest, the thought that they were still siblings (even if only half) something she often thought about. Did he? He hadn’t written her back, after all.
Whatever it was, it all felt too deep to process at that very moment.

“Yes, I—” she started but fell silent when he asked her if she’d like to take a shower. That wasn’t the dirty she had meant but it was part of it; the loss of control, the excessiveness of her behavior, the hands and lips on her as she sort of drifted in and out of reality sort of dirty. “Thank you,” she said instead, standing up slowly as began to walk down the hall before she paused, seemingly unsure of what to say and hesitating on whether she should say anything at all as she turned back to look at him.

“Thank you,” she said again, “really, I can’t tell you how much this means to me,” she said quietly, her eyes finding the ground for a moment as she tried to unclutter her thoughts. “I’ll take a shower and go home,” she said, she didn’t want to find more ways to inconvenience him so instead settled on finding elsewhere to be, even if she hadn’t really thought about what elsewhere was.

Maybe she’d stay up all night and return home only to sleep for the next several days as she often felt like doing when her mood took a dip. “You don’t have to stay up,” she offered, standing there awkwardly for a moment before moving down the hallway, collecting a towel from the cupboard, before disappearing into the bathroom.

Thank you, she said, getting to her feet. Kai tried not to feel frustrated. Ellie thanked him again, for the shower, but she was clearly thanking him for a lot more than the shower. Rich people, he thought distantly, disdain in the tone of his thoughts. They all spoke in circles. “It’s just a shower,” Kai mumbled, his mouth feeling a little dry. She was drunk, he reminded himself, drunk and high on whatever it was she’d taken.

It was clear to him that his amusement had faded into irritation.

“Uh, no, it’s fine, don’t do… That…” He followed her into the hall as she moved towards the towel cupboard. “Next shelf down,” he told her with a nod. She was already heading for the bathroom, but he was definitely going to stay up now; he at least needed to check in with her again before she tried to apparate. She didn’t look up to it at all. If she insisted, then he wasn’t going to stop her, but if it was all just because she felt bad for inconveniencing him or something then that was just stupid. She’d already done some major inconveniencing, might as well take the alread-made-up couch and avoid getting a splinching injury.

Kai moved down the hall, passing the closed bathroom door with a glance, and went to his bedroom. He rifled through his drawers briefly, eventually pulling out an old, soft flannel shirt. He grabbed some clean basketball shorts too (probably wouldn’t fit but, oh well). Once out in the hall again, the man knocked on the bathroom door once. “I’m leaving some clothes out here if you wanna get changed. To sleep in or whatever,” he added. “I’ll be in the living room.”

Kai hesitated for just a moment, then dropped the clothes in a neat pile on the floor and went back out to the living room to wait for her. He picked up his guitar on the way past and climbed back up onto the window ledge to pick at the strings quietly in the dark.

Eleanora stopped herself right before she apologized for saying thank you. At this point in her life, it had been all the repetition that had made those two phrases the most appropriate forms of conversation when nothing else was to be said. And while normally one of those phrases was deemed acceptable enough to end the conversation there, Kai seemed unimpressed. Then again, it was late at night or better yet, early in the morning, and at that hour no one was usually in a talkative mood. “Oh—” she said, nodded as she moved over to the shelf to reach for a towel, making sure to carefully re-arrange the towels she had not taken and return them to their previous state.

If she did her best to leave things in the order they were when she had first entered his flat, would he even remember she was there several days later? The thought stuck with her and made her hope that would be the case, feeling terribly embarrassed for how impolitely she had acted even if their conversation had given her a sense of hope that she was capable of understanding and existing outside of the purview of her parents (even if she was doing a poor job of that this far). It was also nice to know that her brother had surpassed her expectations.

In the bathroom, she turned the water on, after struggling with the settings for a bit, then stood back to lean against the door, closing her eyes as she tried to get rid of the memories from earlier by taking her mind elsewhere. The sudden knock at the door made her open her eyes, a little startled as her heart raced. Hearing Kai’s voice, she visibly relaxed. “Uh—” she paused, “Okay—thank you…?” she said, unsure of whether she should say it this time, saying it anyway, and sounding like an idiot for asking it in the form of a question. Shaking her head she prepared to shower.
…
She didn’t last long, Eleanora had always been a fan of relaxing, long showers but she felt awkward doing it at someone else’s house when she wasn’t even sure what products she could use or whether Kai wanted her there for that long in the first place. She opened the door slightly, reaching a hand out to grab the neat pile of clothes in front of the door, and walked out several minutes later, her hair still slightly wet and hanging loosely down her back with her hands occupied by the towel and clothes she had removed.

She walked slowly back down the hall, the sound of the guitar grabbing her attention and making her pause before entering unannounced. “You play the guitar,” that was obvious, “That’s splendid,” she added with a small smile. She was tired now and it was obvious. “…Should I do…something with this?” she was unsure of how this worked, Eleanora still didn’t do her own laundry in her little flat and she had never worked a muggle washing device assuming he had one.

Kai picked at the strings absentmindedly, his fingers moving to make familiar shapes along the frets. Ellie knew where he lived, now. He hadn’t wanted her to show up at his work, so he’d (very cleverly) given her his home address and now she was showing up here instead. Excellent, he thought. Something to think about.

Another thing to think about, of course, was Tony. He’d come up in conversation, and it was late; it was easy for Kai to let his mind wander in that direction a little bit right now. He wondered how the other man would feel about the fact that he’d been mentioned, or the fact that Kai had used his identities to make a conversational point to little-miss-Lovecraft, who was currently showering in his shower. Huh. Better not to think about it.

It wasn’t took long before Ellie came back, and Kai kept plucking a quiet tune. He was no musician, really — and he had friends and exes who were, so he understood that fact well — but he knew enough chords and felt comfortable enough with his fingers on the strings to look like he knew what he was doing, to someone who didn’t play.

“Yeah, a bit,” Kai said, amused but not really disliking how easily impressed she was. “You want me to wash those?” He asked, a bit surprised. His hands stilled, then he straightened up. He was careful as he leaned forward to place the guitar on the floor again. “Just put the towel over that,” he said, pointing casually to one of the chairs by the little table on his right.

“You’re staying, right?” he clarified. Then: “I think you should stay — couch is comfy. I’ll make us breakfast tomorrow.”

Eleanora could vaguely feel the beginnings of a headache but ignored the feeling, instead of wondering what other hobbies and talents Kai kept to himself and why he might not have shared them with her during their first meeting. The obvious answer was that it was sudden, not necessarily invited, and he had no obligation to really share anything with her that he did not wish—she had even suggested as much on several occasions. “Oh…um…no,” she said, feeling a little awkward at the thought of her brother washing her clothes, well her other brother, had it been Andy she might not have minded as much.

But those were personal effects, as comfortable as she felt now that she had showered and didn’t smell like a cloud of smoke and sweat had lingered to her skin and hair, she still felt overly conscious of how much of a stranger Kai still was to her even if she longed to be closer than that. It was still early, she reminded herself, or maybe it was late. He had gone all of his life probably knowing or not caring that she existed and she had lived up until this point unaware. Was it too late, then?

“I’ll take care of it, thank you,” she said again, frowning as the word of gratitude left a strange taste in her mouth. Walking over to the chair, she extended the towel and placed it, making sure that she smoothed out the wrinkles as if that would somehow take away the fact that it had been used. “Only a few hours then,” she promised, walking back to sit on the couch, holding her clothes for a moment before her eyes scanned the room to find the bag she had brought along. Reaching for it, she smiled again.

“Only if you want, I normally don’t eat much in the morning and after all, I’ve had to drink I probably won’t be able to stomach it,” she said instead, “just do whatever you normally do and I can let myself out,” she said. “Sorry for keeping you up…”

His eyes followed her as she lay the towel over the back of one of the chairs. “Okay,” Kai said, not in the habit of turning offering into asking. He slid his legs off of the sill and bounced down onto the ground. It was late, wasn’t it? He stretched his arms up above his head, then yawned into one hand. He almost kicked his guitar over on the way down, but sidestepped just in time.

He shut the curtain. “I can drop you off wherever, too if you don’t feel up to it,” he added casually, belatedly. “No hassle,” he said. Kai glanced at the couch again — pillows, check, blanket, check. The heating was already on — he’d just leave that on all night. She knew where the kitchen was and where the bathroom was. Cool. He felt like he’d ticked all of the necessary boxes to leave her alone now. Responsibilities, done.

“Well,” he started, “just come knock on my door if you need anything.” Kai knew full well that it’d probably have to be a burning-down-house level of bad for her to come knock on his door, but it wasn’t his responsibility to guess her every need, so he wasn’t going to try. He moved to the doorway, pulled the door half shut behind him. “Goodnight, Ellie,” he said, glancing at her, hand raised in a small wave. Then he let the door shut and went to his room.