z shrugs. “maybe you’re just shopping in the wrong places.” he replies - but she has a point. the robes have always reminded him of church, of duty, of sins and punishment and confession. muggles, at least, have a lot more variation in their daily attire. they have fun with it, he thinks, and wishes he could capture that a little more. wixen just have drama, and most of it without any kind of soul, or reason. just drama so common that it stops being dramatic. “ew. no.” he retorts, refusing to hear even a bar of it. “just wear some bloody oxfords, or boots, or something. they look better.” he tries not to look too pleased with himself as she falls into a stunned silence - it hadn’t been intended as such a shocking kindness. he’d never meant to elicit such a reaction. but it’s still nice, to think that she could, that she would want that. he can’t help a tiny grin down at the ground, his head tilted away to hide it. home, he thinks, is like some twisted vine around her, stretching higher and higher. he can picture it wrapping around her, growing until she cannot move anywhere. until it kills her. the thought makes him sick. “of course i’m serious.” he says it softly, with nothing but sincerity. only dani, he thinks, could pull such a tone from him. only she could be the recipient of such a normal, such a kind offer. the rest of him is too far twisted. “you wouldn’t. you couldn’t.” i would kill for you, he thinks, without a single sting of remorse or guilt. “you have a lovely voice, dani. and i don’t work at home that much, anyways.”
“Oxfords? Oxfords? It’s like you don’t even know me at all.” Dani is shaking her head in disbelief, but is in all truth nothing if not amused. She prefers converse, laced up and light, perhaps most especially because her father despised them, or something with heels. “Boots, maybe, but not those plain boring ones. They need to be ... a bit fun.” Her mind has latched onto this idea, of moving in with Z, and she can’t shake it off. Part of her wants to: part of her is afraid of getting out would and could mean, of taking steps that mean actual growth. But a larger, domineering part of her wants it, she craves it, this life that Z is offering her. A place to call her own, a place to call home where she doesn’t feel like she’s suffocating, where she doesn’t have to be afraid of her father. Where she’s safe from his snarls, his eyes, his hands. She feels herself cracking, the lies she’s carefully crafted around herself breaking, breaking, breaking as she reaches a truth she knows, but tries to ignore. ( I deserve better. ) She feels her throat closing, with both relief and fear, and she looks at Z hoping that he knows what this means to her. “I don’t know what to say,” she says, and she chuckles, but it sounds like a sob, too. Dani swallows. Fuck it. “I’ll have to think about it, of course, but that sounds really nice.” An understatement, but she doesn’t want to scare Z off. Ever since Cyrus has moved out, home has been worse, and this? This is a way out that fits so perfectly that Dani can’t help but feel distrustful, afraid to accept it too easily. Still: she loves Z, and he makes her feel safe. She deserves better. And maybe he, too, deserves someone in his home. Maybe she can be his family, in return. “I’ll sing you to sleep every night if you want.”