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

Kai ran a hand back through his hair, pushing it out of his face. He took another deep breath. Maybe he shouldn’t take such joy from offending her sensibilities; he didn’t actually like that it didn’t seem that she’d met a gay person in her life or whatever. It was only funny in this, very specific context – where he had enough power to laugh it off, whatever her new opinion of him was. She was quiet for a while and he wondered what she was thinking.

He lit his cigarette with his wand, a little clumsy as he did it. Kai was always better with lighters – it was just one of the many muggle methods he preferred over the wizarding one. Seemed safer, anyway. Couldn’t accidentally blow his face off with a lighter. “Hmm?” He dropped his wand back on the couch and took a long drag of his cigarette, wondering how he’d retell this story to Senna or someone. Maybe he’d go to a bar and recount it to Tony. Ha.

Speaking of… “Ah, I just… Made some mistakes,” he answered vaguely, smoke lingering at his lips as he spoke, before he blew it out in a stream. She still seemed pretty out of it, he thought; she was probably just looking for stories. Something to latch onto. Or maybe she was still trying to figure him out. There was some spectral version of Tony in his head, made more real by the fact that he’d seen him just a couple of months ago, that judged him for not being more explicit.

He looked back at her. “Why, how've you fucked up?" he asked casually, gently shifting the conversation back to her love life instead of his.

His answer to her question felt vague, but it didn’t seem that he had any intention to give her any details. Had she been more sober, she might have let her imagination wander into interesting directions but knew that whatever she came up with would eventually become tethered to her past. That was an adventure into the past that she did not want to take.

But when the question was redirected back at her, Eleanora felt more compelled to explain. The witch couldn’t quite put her finger on it, maybe it had something to do with her desire to open up to him so that he would see part of who she truly was or maybe it was some strange fixation with the painful moments in her past that brought her feelings of nostalgia but the thought of sharing didn’t make her tense up like it usually did. Eleanora wondered if that was an effect he had on people in general.

“I had this boyfriend in school, it feels an eternity ago but really it was this brief little thing as soon as I went back to Hogwarts,” she started. He didn’t know about her leave of absence and probably didn’t know about the dome, but she’d approach the topic with caution if he asked. It wasn’t a part of her life she wanted to share so willingly. “I can’t really remember exactly why we broke up, but the entire time we were together, I didn’t really feel like me,” she explained but it was hard to know if she had a sense of self to begin with.

“But to be honest, I haven’t much experience with boyfriends, I had one..” she frowned, “two in school and I went on a couple of dates with a guy recently, but unfortunately, I don’t have the head space for relationships if that makes sense?” she meant to state but in the end it sounded more like a question, she wondered if he could relate to something like that but for someone so seemingly well-put together, Eleanora could not imagine that he could relate.

He listened to her speak, his mind lingering on both his ex and what he assumed was Ellie’s new perception of him now that she knew he existed. She was too out of it or too polite to say anything, probably. He remembered thinking that she seemed like the kind of person who’d been brought up to accommodate other people; that seemed true again. The kind of person who’d been brought up with strict do’s and dont’s. He wondered if speaking to him was jarring.

Kai took another long, slow drag of his cigarette, half-wishing it wasn’t just a cigarette. He didn’t want to be more high though, not when he might have to apparate her somewhere after this. He zoned back into what she was saying. Back to Hogwarts? After summer or something, he assumed?

“I think I understand,” Kai said. Bad head space. That made sense to him. He looked around for somewhere to ash his cigarette, then reluctantly made himself get up and move across to the large windowsill he’d been half-lying on when she’d knocked on the door. He picked up the glass ashtray and tapped his cigarette on the side, taking it with him as he moved back to his seat beside her. “First relationship I was in, I totally... lost everything I was.” He phrased it differently in his head but an English word evaded him, so it came out more simply.

Kai leaned back into the couch. "I dropped out of school," he glanced at her, "did I tell you that? Yeah, dropped out of school because I was "in love"". He wiggled the fingers of his right hand slightly at those last two words.

His response filled her with a surprising sense of relief, a part of her always waiting for the scolding that often accompanied whatever silly, thoughtless feeling she expressed. Eleanora often felt that she was under constant emotional surveillance, and just as she would slip into the warmth of emotions like love, she’d be brought back with a resounding grow up as if her feelings were ones that made sense to no one but her. Even though Eleanora could not verify whether or not Kai meant it when he said that he understood, she wanted to think he’d said it with a conviction she could trust. But then again, apart from the occasional conversation she had with others about some of her more deeper, darker secrets, Eleanora was out of practice with communication and it was probably blatantly obvious at this point.

Kai spoke about having lost everything after his first relationship but couldn’t really conceptualize what her half-brother was like when he was completely out of his head in love. But the young witch could relate to a certain degree, and even if he spoke about dropping out of school, the thought that love that strong existed was still intriguing to her more childish sensibilities.

“That sounds lovely,” she thought out loud, “well not the losing yourself part just knowing that that sort of love exists,” she explained, resting her head on her knees as she watched him carefully. He looked like portrait sat like this, but the more this portrait spoke, the harder time she had reading him. “I think I’ve only ever been in love once, how old were you then?” she asked, curious to see how many of their details they could match. If he had left school because of love, Eleanora had only left because she’d lost it. 

“Does it?” he asked, raising his eyebrows, surprised at her comment. “Mm,” he glanced down at the glowing tip of his cigarette, made brighter by the lack of other light. Lovely wasn’t exactly how he’d describe that one, but he hadn’t been very descriptive at all, had he?

He could feel her eyes on him, and a more paranoid part of him wondered about her internal workings. Would she ever want to see him after this? Between showing up so out of it – embarrassing for her later, probably – and things she’d learned about him, would she not want to just disappear and let him disappear too? “Fifteen,” he answered, “Sixteen when I dropped out.” He leaned forward to ash his cigarette again, though it barely needed it. He did it with a flick of his thumb.

Would she tell her family about him? Sure, it was funny to drop things – Tony – on her, but he was in control of that. Would she tell her father, though? His father? “He was a bit older,” he added, continuing despite the turn his thoughts had taken “and he kind of… Messed with me? It wasn’t good. For me.” He shook his head, bringing his cigarette to his lips again.

"How old are you again? Eighteen?"

Fifteen was a difficult year for her too, though the reasons were entirely different. It had been after the war and things were complicated at home that summer, but fifth year had brought along River in a different sort of light and having him in her life had repaired her. Or, at the very least, had simply buried the confusion she had about her beliefs with confused feelings. But at least she still had him then. Reflecting on the moment still pained her, even if it felt considerably longer than she had last remembered. Eleanora wondered what his mum had thought about him dropping out, or if she was the kind that hadn’t cared at all. Her own mum had made such a big fuss about her wanting to leave school but rather than encouraging her to stay, she had tried her hand at reminding her what a failure she was for leaving. Her father thrived from discouragement, Eleanora did not. She wondered if Kai was more aligned with their father.

“First love’s a bit messy, isn’t it?” she reflected, but only because it had been how she felt about her first (and decidedly, last) experience with love. It had been easy to assume that his first relationship had been real love because it had been how she had experienced it. It was easier to understand him when she used her life as a stencil, even if it was obvious that he didn’t quite fit into it. For now, it would have to do.

“Nineteen, actually,” she corrected him gently, “my birthday’s in July,” she added as an addendum but it didn’t really matter. Eleanora couldn’t really picture him sending her a birthday card nor would she expect it. “Do you regret it?” she returned the subject to his first relationship, curious to know more about it. 

“Sure,” he said. A bit messy was a major understatement for his “first love”, but while he was a little more open to giving her details about that relationship if she wanted them – it had been so long ago – he wasn’t sure how much he was going to willingly steer the conversation towards his love life. Seemed kind of strange that they’d ended up here, but as he mentally backtracked through the conversation, it was quickly apparent it was his own fault.

“Oh,” he said, then, “September.” He didn’t remember if he’d told her that already. A more controlling part of him wished he’d been keeping better track of what she did and didn’t know. He regretted mentioning Tony by name, though he was sure she’d have forgotten that little detail already. Again, he wondered if she'd share anything they talked about. Nothing special or important about a September birthday, anyway, he supposed.

“Hmm? Oh." The heavy questions were coming out. Kai felt compelled to give a long-winded answer to a question like that. Talking about regret was philosophical – did he regret it had happened at all? Did he regret specific decisions he made? Any changes to his past would mean he'd be a different person today, so how did knowing that affect his perspective on past actions? Those were the kinds of things he'd be exploring if he was here with Senna, rather than his sister.

He still had trouble thinking that word.

"Yes and no," he said, not wanting to go full-Senna on her, but unable to simplify much more than that. "I mean, yeah I think it was a really fucked up relationship for a fifteen-year-old to be in. He messed with me a lot..." he raised his cigarette-holding hand to tap a finger to his temple. He shook his head. "I guess mostly yes." He was thoughtful for a moment, then awash with self-awareness. It was too easy to be drawn into talking and thinking about himself, his past. "Don't think about him much these days, though," he finished, looking at her.

"How about you, yours?" he asked, more to shift the spotlight than because he wanted to know. His first relationship had affected him quite deeply; it had set some standards and patterns for him that were difficult to break out of, even years later. But he preferred to pretend that it didn't, and that reinventing himself was simpler than that.

She tucked the little piece of knowledge regarding his birthday into one of the many cabinets of information in her head; while she did not expect him to ever send her a birthday card, Eleanora was obligated to do so, it was one of the many expectations of her upbringing and one of the very few that she didn’t completely hate. But the date would have to wait for later, the conversation on his birth date seemingly lighthearted compared to the very deep conversation they were having now. Eleanora was not sure how much of it she was actually processing, but she felt comfortable and reassured by his mild manner, and this was all it took for the girl to practically pouring her heart unto her unsuspecting half-brother’s flooring. Maybe she would do better not to appear on his doorstep in this state.

Mostly yes felt like a half-answer, the sort that you gave when you were not quite convinced, but you also didn’t want to share. Eleanora was no stranger to such answers, as they were the kind, she often gave people when they asked for her opinion, not the one of her family. She could not always defend their stance but had somehow come to accept it; formulating her own opinion, however, filled her dread and made her want to hide between pregnant pauses and vague, insignificant words. But Kai had given her an explanation, not one that satisfied her curiosity, but one much better than she would have been able to give.

Eleanora could not relate to his feelings, though, but only because her previous relationships had ended much too early to have a permanent effect on her life. In the case of River, it had been his death that had affected her more than the fact that they had been in a relationship; she lamented the loss of her emotional support, and unable to carry the weight of that heavy burden on her own, she collapsed under the pressure and called it the aftereffects od loving and having lost. It was a selfish thought that she could never fully express without feeling a little sick to her stomach for thinking it.

“I suppose all of my exes have stolen a little piece of me,” she started, “mostly unintentionally, it’s a bit of my fault for being too invested, but fifteen was a difficult year for me—” she explained, unsure if he could understand to what extent, or if he even knew he was a Lovecraft then. “And after I lost my boyfriend,” she let out a small breath, it was always a struggle to say it out loud. But she had made progress, in the past, she could not even think his name without crying. “it’s been an uphill battle trying to figure myself out since then,” she ended. “But I don’t regret it, I think regretting it is taking the easy way out, isn’t it? This ex, the one from school, was he more important than the one from two years ago?”
 

Stolen was a strange word to use, too emotive to be said so casually: I suppose all of my exes have stolen a little piece of me. Uncomfortably passive, he thought, but then she said fifteen, so he did the math, nodded. Wizarding Britain was too small for anyone to have had an easy year that year; he wondered if hers was difficult because she’d lost friends or family, and he wondered which side they’d been fighting on. Kai himself had had a pretty fucked up late-nineties here in the UK and he’d barely known anyone here back then at all.

Kai’s eyebrows raised slightly when she said she’d lost her boyfriend. Her expression, the way she said it made some things clearer. He wanted to say sorry for her loss, or something similarly appropriate, but Anthony and his commentary on her family had reformed in his mind. Ellie seemed ignorant rather than malicious, but her family weren’t so innocent. What if her “boyfriend” had been some death eater or something? It wouldn’t be the first assumption he’d make normally, but her family wasn’t a normal family at all. Instead he just nodded slowly, smoking his cigarette quietly from his corner of the couch.

“I suppose,” he said, though he wasn’t sure he’d phrase it like that. The easy way out. As opposed to what, he wondered? Acceptance, maybe? Kai straightened up a little as she asked a question, having been mostly quiet while she was talking. He felt compelled to offer some kind of meaningful advice, but didn’t feel nearly qualified to do it. She seemed quite determined to turn the conversation back to him anyway.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a beat, though it was ambiguous as to what exactly he was sorry for. He stalled a little on her question, shaking his head, trying to think up some kind of advice or reassurance for her. She was still coming down, he reminded himself, she probably just needed to be reassured. He blew out a stream of smoke to the side, then looked back at her. “It’s hard enough to work out your own shit when things are calm and nothing awful’s happened to you,” he said, “I’m sorry it’s been an uphill battle.”

He wasn’t sure what to add about past lovers. “They’re all kind of... important, right? Impacting in their own ways.” Tony was more present in his mind, more fully realised as a human as opposed to being more of a closed chapter – someone that, relative to him, only existed in the past. Had he had as much of an impact on Kai’s life? Probably not; Kai had dropped out of school for his first boyfriend, had enough breakdowns that he’d flown – literally, on a plane – to the other side of the world. That relationship hugely impacted how he related to other people. He compared them in his head. “Tony’s a good person,” Kai said, answering himself.

Eleanora had gone too far to backtrack now but his response made her reconsider her wording, wondering if she might have gone too far in her presumptuousness or if her insight was severely flawed. The witch was not accustomed to these types of conversations, but when she managed to find herself in them, it often worked better if she listened rather than spoke.

Who’d want to take the word of a volatile teenager anyway? She often reassured herself. It made sense, she had experienced something terrible but it certainly hadn’t gained her any wisdom as much as it had gained her significant emotional range, much of which was spent on the darker, more negative sides of the spectrum.

“It’s alright,” she responded as he apologized, managed a tight, but polite smile in gratitude. Though he had not been specific, it seemed like Kai communicated more between the lines than on them, she could more or less deduce his meaning. It was kind of him, she decided, for even if it was a common gesture in these types of situations, Kai didn’t seem like the sort to religiously follow protocol.

Regardless, Eleanora felt that the word I’m sorry, only managed to deepen the wound rather than cure it, so rather than go into details, she retreated just a little. This was not the topic she had considered discussing when she had gone over to him but it was right below the surface of everything else she was feeling; it was the reason she had left the party in the first place, after all.

Maybe she was complaining too much about insignificant things, her life was an uphill battle in some aspects but it was certainly a very comfortable one. Her idea of rebellion had been to hole herself up in one of the nicest apartments in one of the poshest neighborhoods courtesy of her grandfather. Eleanora was still learning how to pay bills using her generous allowance and when she had problems she couldn’t resolve, still had access to that ridiculously priced therapist her family had paid for to be at her beck and call. So in the grand scheme of things, in considering the other person in the room, her concerns felt invalid.

So, talking about Kai and Tony or his other exes felt more realistic. “They are,” she agreed with him there, though in her case both impacts had been difficult ones. “A good person…?” she wondered if that meant that the misdeed was on the exes fault and Kai was just blaming himself for the breakup. “How did the two of you meet?” she wondered, assuming that would probably be a much more pleasant topic than rehashing the details of their breakup.

Kai nodded. Tony was good – that was an easy statement for him to support. Didn’t bring up too many bad feelings. He didn’t elaborate on that, though she was looking at him like she wanted him too. He felt like Ellie wasn’t very used to being direct. Maybe he was just projecting what he thought about her onto her behaviour, but everything she did seemed so controlled and polite, and so reactive to things he did, that he couldn’t help but make assumptions.

It was sort of funny that she’d latched onto this one relationship; he had more recent exes than Anthony Goldstein. He supposed that was his fault though, it was Tony that he’d mentioned earlier. “Um,” Kai said, thinking back. He probably shouldn’t say his name again, though he’d done it twice now. There was a paranoid part of him that felt protective of his ex. “At a party,” he said. “Halloween party.” They’d met on Halloween, but they hadn’t gotten together until a few months later.

“It was just meant to be a hookup first,” he said, half-smiling. He’d approached Anthony not intending to ever see him again a day later. Most of Kai’s short-lived relationships – completely separate from one-night-stands – grew from friendships or were with people he had mutual friends with; Tony was a bit of an anomaly there. Kai leaned forward to ash his cigarette against the edge of the ashtray again. “We haven't been together for over two years," he added, reminding her (and himself?) of how irrelevant Tony was in his life these days.

"How are you feeling?" he asked her, tilting his head to the side. "Should drink some more water," he urged, nodding at the glass she'd barely touched.

It was difficult for Eleanora not to draw comparisons between her half-brother’s life and her own, especially when it came to things like relationships, even if they had so little in common when it came to the lives that they had lived thus far. He had met Tony at a party, she had met River as a child, she considered, struggling to find anything to latch onto that would prove there was a higher meaning to this conversation or that he (in his experiences and outlook on life) would help her reach a realization she felt on the verge of discovering.

Or maybe it was all wishful thinking, Eleanora half felt she was on the edge of a breakthrough for the last several years and even now, she still couldn’t reach that moment of catharsis she knew would dispel her of the sadness that lingered right beneath her skin.

“Hook up as in…,” she trailed off/ She had an idea as to what he meant but wasn’t sure if she was being judgmental for thinking that his romantic preferences somehow gave her insight into his sexual ones. Even if he did answer her, Eleanora wasn’t sure what she would follow that up with. What did she even know about any of that? Eleanora had never hooked up with anyone in her life. She didn’t have it in her to go so far with a practical stranger, no matter how attractive, how connected, or how right it felt.

Then again, she had never felt particularly attracted to the concept of all of the physical stuff as much as she had been to the concept of connecting. “Funny how those turn into relationships,” she added as an afterthought, “how did it turn into a relationship? Like did the two of you go out on dates and things like that?” she wondered. But that curiosity went beyond the relationship itself, it had more to-do with the type of relationship it was.

Eleanora considered his question and nodded, “Much safer, thank you,” she smiled a little. Taking a sip only because he had mentioned it but she didn’t feel thirsty, just a little dizzy.

“Oh, uh,” Kai frowned from confusion first, then surprise. A hook up? He racked his English brain for the words. “One night stand?” he offered, watching her for recognition. “Sex only,” in case that wasn’t obvious. She was nineteen, but felt younger on some things. Kai wondered if this was largely just him projecting versions of her he could imagine given what he already knew onto her. But then, she hadn’t known what a hook up was.

He nodded when she commented on relationships shifting. He’d have more to say on something like that if he was with Senna, he thought distantly. Something about relationships shifting all the time, people’s misconceptions about their permanent selves, something like that. When she asked about dates, though, he raised his eyebrows. Fuck me, he thought; he almost said it out loud. A relaxed: “Yeah,” came out instead. “Yeah, we went on dates and stuff. Drinks, dinner, weekends away.” He shrugged. “You know there are whole bars just for people like us?” Wow!

Kai realised – even as he was saying it – that, since the tongue-in-cheek element had a very real chance of being lost on her, he probably shouldn’t joke with that kind of language. He wondered if she even knew he was teasing, then felt compelled to talk more about it because she was obviously sheltered as fuck, and he had the space and time to help her adjust that... Even if she was still high right now.

“Yeah,” he said again, his voice low, “I mean, we used do all that kind of shit – we cooked together a lot." The smell of Tony's cholent drifted through his head. Had, y’know, future plans.” He shrugged again, but understanding the legitimacy of his relationships and his sexuality was absolutely a deal breaker for him. Kai wasn’t exactly keen on taking her to her first drag show or whatever, holding her hand through Gay one-oh-one, but that kind of shit was doable, if she was at a certain level of understanding. "I've dated women too," he said, then shrugged. "It's the same," he said. It wasn't exactly true, but the nuance was probably a couple levels higher than where she was at right now.

"That's good," Kai said. She looked a little more present. Warmer, too, now that she had the blanket and the heater was on. "Are you hungry, or...? I'm fine to keep talking too – you can just crash there if you want – but let me know if you want me to take you somewhere, right? I'll put you on the bus or apparate you or whatever, just let me know." He raised his eyebrows a fraction, meeting her eye to make sure she understood.

His definition of a hook-up followed the train of thought that she had initially suspected, which in turn only made her wonder whether this was out of the norm for him or a regular occurrence. And if it was a regular thing, which was a completely modern but very acceptable way of thinking in the twenty-first century, did it align with any other internal things.

For Eleanora, the need to connect stemmed from the distance she felt between herself and the world around her, a gap that only widened with time and filled her with a sense of dread for the future. Her therapist had once chalked it up to a need to be in control of everything after the incident but Eleanora suspected that since it was her parents that were paying him the least he could do is not blame them for whatever problems she possessed. And so, it was much easier to blame it on everything else.  

As he continued on to answer her questions, and she did have many of them, she got the sense that maybe she was much more out of touch with what went on than she had initially suspected. It wasn't as if she was completely oblivious to reality, nor that she wasn't aware that relationships like his existed but it wasn't a choice made by people her family associated with.

Was it a choice? Was it a preference? Was it something else? Her choice in partner, like everything else in her life, had been dictated by her family and their expectations. And so the young witch followed suit without much question because who could she ask? The last time she had asked her mother something in relation to sex several years ago, the woman had gone into a long-winded speech about how respectable young ladies ought to act and what sorts of topics were acceptable for her to discuss. That, was not an appropriate topic. 

Eleanora had been spending so much time understanding the complexities of her life, something she blamed on that weird, gray area between the last moments of drunkenness and the beginnings of being sober, a moment of complete clarity, that she almost missed what he was saying. Naturally, it made her feel guilty. 

"I'm sorry if I've offended you…" she started, looking at him to see if she had missed anything, "I'm not very familiar with these sorts of things but yes, I have heard of them before," she offered, a full-on, formal apology. It was difficult not to talk to him in the same way that she referred to every other adult in her life, in this distinctly full-sentenced way of expressing herself that made her seem less human and more like an object. In a way she was very much an object to her family, a bargaining piece for further respect, wealth, and whatever the Lovecrafts were after lately. 

"But do you have a preference? Dating women or dating men?" she asked. He had said it was the same but the idea did not make much sense to her. Furthermore, she was intrigued by the idea that dating both sexes was an option to begin with but she supposed that in her very limited understanding of the world, everything he had to say would interest her.

And to make matters even better (maybe worse for him) the fact that he cared or at the very least pretended to made it even easier for her to want to keep his company. She nodded in full understanding. "Thank you, I'd like to stay here longer if you don't mind but if you've got to go to bed, I understand…" she started cautiously. 

“Hmm? Oh.” He felt a little bad, because she was looking very earnest, at least within the bounds of rigid formality. “No, I’ll… I’ll tell you, don’t worry,” he commented, waving a hand to soften the bluntness of his words. Wasn’t she a perfect little pureblood? It was a touch unnerving. His cigarette was almost just a butt now, and his eyes were drawn down to its glowing tip in the dark. He eked out another, final puff before stretching forward to put it out in the glass ashtray he’d brought down. He watched a spark that had escaped his smushing drift up and then disappear.

“Um,” he said, feeling some pressure. He didn’t like to tell people outside of certain communities that he preferred men; enough people – straight, especially – already thought his bisexuality was just a stepping stone to gay. “Nah, it’s the same,” he said again, shaking his head. He patted the couch looking for a second cigarette. He found the packet and drew one. “It’s just people,” he said. “Just people, just bodies.” He motioned with his hands, then shrugged again, the new cigarette hanging out of the corner of his lips before he lit the tip with his wand.

He shook his head. “I’m not working tomorrow, I don’t care.” He blew a stream of smoke out of the corner of his lips, then picked up his wand and performed a quick air purification spell, for her benefit. His wand fell back on the couch somewhere, his cigarette went back between his lips. He inhaled slowly, savouring the physical sensation before holding his smoke to the side and exhaling just as slow.

Kai was getting kind of tired now. Not tired enough to leave her and go to bed – especially when she didn’t like quite seem like she was ready for bed – but tired enough to relax into the corner of the couch, stretching his legs a little as he did so. He thought about Tony’s mum’s cooking and then he thought about the last time he’d seen Tony, and the time before that. Then he thought about Ellie’s fascist family and her dead boyfriend.

“Might get you a pillow and stuff,” he said. “I’m not going to bed yet, but just in case.” He pushed up to his feet with some effort, then made his way to the cupboard in the hall. He had a proper spare blanket and a pillow for her. Now that he was carrying it back to the couch, he couldn’t remember whether she’d actually said yes to staying, but it didn’t matter. Now she had options.