i am coming to believe in a soul’s violence;

LELIA is born

AUGUST 1990

ELYAS is born

NOVEMBER 1998

The NOUR PACK is killed by a sect of AN SEANREACHT

ELYAS (8) and LEILA (14) are the only survivors

MONTH 2000

WILL joins the Blackrock Pack

JULY 2002

LEILA is shot and killed by hunters

SEPTEMBER 2002

ELYAS finds himself in Blackrock, Montana and attacks SARA by accident. RORY sees it happen but is too young to put the pieces together

DANTE forces him out of wolf form and into the pack

MONTH 2007

DANTE leaves Blackrock

Sad and angry, ELYAS bites THEO after recognizing her from a small town when LEILA was alive

WILL asks him to stay and he thinks himself in love with her, so does.

SEPTEMBER 2008

SHAWN SELVIG “leaves” the pack

MONTH 2009

LEON joins the back

MONTH 2011

WILL and ELYAS sleep together. It does not go well.

ELYAS disappears into the woods for the better half of six months and finds MAR. She smells of Dante and an easier time, he stays with her for too long.

AUGUST 2012

ASTER and HEMLOCK join the pack.

MARCH 2019

Drags PEYTON out of wolf form, just like Dante did for him

JUNE 2019

WILL names LEON as her second in command

ASTER and ELYAS get stupidly drunk following the annoucment

Two weeks later, ELYAS moves out of the PACK HOUSE and into his own apartment

JULY 2019

GREY joins the pack

NOVEMBER 2019

SOLA rents his spare room

DECEMBER 2019

when: December 2019 where: The Last Drop who: @aldcr

“…I didn’t know you worked here. Been a while.“

A significant amount of rage – the rage of his childhood – threatens to flare to the surface seeing Dante here, in his place of work. Stalking back in like he had any right to be here. At the Last Drop. In Blackrock. In Elyas’s life. “You don’t know a lot of things.” It’s short and childish, but in this moment he feels seventeen again. 

(He still remembers Will’s hand on his shoulder in the Packhouse living room telling him: “He’s gone,” a gentle squees. “And he’s not coming back.”

It was the first time he’d ever cried in front of her.)

“A while, huh?” Because if he’s already come out swinging it’s only fair to keep it going. “Is that what we’re calling it?”

She watches Elyas expend close to no effort before a fiver and a number’s left behind for him, his mind clearly somewhere else for the entirety of the (one-sided) conversation. “Me? Nah,” she says, cocking her head to the side as she looks at him, and then at the napkin that lays forlornly on the floor. 

“But I’m pretty sure those dimples of yours are gonna land you in some, one day,” she says. It passes for teasing. Those same dimples will probably get him right out of it again, but they both know that.

“… You doin’ alright?” He looked– lost. It feels a little too familiar. Kicks a little too hard between the ribs. Makes her want another glass of whiskey.

How many of his winters had belonged to the woman in front of him? How much time trapped in the wolf had he spent with her? The thought always catches him off guard, hits him a bit like a freight train in the most unremarkable of situations. Like now, as her eyes hold laughter seemingly at his own expense and he stands behind a bar in front of her. Elyas smiles, big and wide. “Somehow I doubt that.” He opts to ignore the pointe look she gives the napkin. Opts instead to grab her half-finished glass and starts crafting her a new drink.

“That’s where you’re wrong, Mar.” He has the booze pouring but it’s a practiced, mindless task so his attention is mostly on her. “These dimples are going to save my ass.” He places the finished drink in front of her. “On the house,” it’s paired with a wink.

FLASHBACK THREAD

Timeline: Shortly after Grey’s arrival at the pack house. Status: CLOSED ( @aldcr )

They’re aware of human inventions. They’ve spent enough time creeping through the alleys and along roof tops to at least have a passing knowledge of them but this is the first time in their life really that they’ve ever been forced to confront human machines up close.  All of them are strange and bright and too loud and  incomprehensible. The buttons are the real problem. There are always too many, labeled with words and symbols that Grey doesn’t know in tiny print that’s hard to make out. The worst part is that every button seems to be able to break the entire machine if it’s pressed wrong and Grey always presses buttons wrong. Within the last week they’ve set a fire inside of the microwave and flooded the room with the laundry machine and done something to one of the machines attached to the television so that it is set in an entirely different language that none of the wolves in the home understand. So that morning, when one of the many machines outside starts to emit discordant human noises, Grey doesn’t even bother trying to find the special button that will turn it off. They take their pillow and fold it around their head so it’s jammed over both ears and when that doesn’t muffle the sound enough they simple wander outside and lay on the porch and wait until someone else gets home to deal with it. It’s unfortunate that, that person has to be Elyas, but beggars can’t be choosers.  “I didn’t touch it,” Grey promises without needing to be asked. “It just started making that noise. Can you make it stop?”

It still feels empty in his home, which isn’t unsurprising given the fact that it’s only been his for less than a month. He doesn’t quite think of it as home yet. Can’t quite think of it as home yet. And that’s the biggest problem. For, as much as the Pack house is too much and too loud, it’s still the closest thing he’s had to a home in a long time. It’s why he still finds himself turning toward the large house at the edge of town. What sends him wandering up the porch towards the front door.

Today though, something is off. From inside the radio blares at an ungodly sound and he’s not sure why no one has turned it off yet. Aster must be out. There is no way she would put up with this shit. Standing on the porch, his more sensitive ears ringing at the noise level, he scowls. Grey is there, with a pillow around their ears, and he should have fucking known. A sharp breath is blown through his nose, but he crouches down to meet at eye level with them.

It feels weird seeking Milo out like this, at this time. He knows what it looks like, what it seems like he’s offering. He’s not a fool, he’s seen the trail of people who duck out of the Whitegrass mansion at the early hours. He’s not one of them.

It’s just that he can’t stay in the Pack house another night. He can’t face Will’s sad eyes on him one more time as they’re lives crumble around them. Dante’s gone, and Will seems without a compass. Julien is dead, Shawn lost to the winter winds. It’s the two of them, and it’s too much for Elyas to bear.  So he can’t be home. And he can’t be alone. And Milo is a friend.

There isn’t a good enough excuse for him to be here, and that thought alone is making him shift uneasily. Grey should be working, sure. But it’s pretty obvious by the way the two of them interact that he’s not here to check in on them. It’s a threadbare justification for his presence at best. He’s pretty sure just about anyone could poke holes through it.

He’s here for her, in reality.  The wolf’s memories are always murky and ill-defined. He doesn’t spend a lot of time trying to shift through them, not anymore. He’s too far removed from that part of himself now, by force of habit. Because the memory of her still bleeds dark and red in his mind, just like the bite did. But it’s not the only place her face sparks at his memory.

“Hey are you ready—” It happens far too quickly, and yet at the very same time he feels like he’s moving through molasses. As if he’s watching a car crash, the world sort of narrows around him. Things seem to move too slow and too fast at the same time, and he can’t tear his eyes away from what is likely going to be a very large fuck up they’re gonna to have to deal with. They are going to have to deal with this, but that fact is in the back of Elyas’s mind as he stands, mouth agape, in the doorframe of his roommate’s room.

Every other time he’s knocked. Every other time he’s been the polite young man absolutely nobody raised him to be and he’s fucking knocked. The one time he just pushes open the door, and it leads him here.

He had a question he was in the middle of asking. One small part of his mind is still trying to figure out where the last half has gone. Or — hell — what it even was in the first place. But the rest of his brain has gone incredibly silent in the face of his half-naked roommate. He remembers a second too late that he should be looking her in the eye and definitely not where he’s currently looking. But by the time he drags his gaze away from the expanse of skin, he knows he’s been caught. He wants to make a joke, make light of it. His usual coping mechanism, but his skin feels a little too hot and mostly he wants to run.