#neonbitemarks

The snow had started out light, small flakes spiraling to the cold ground but it had quickly picked up. Now, large and fluffy flakes were coming down heavily, the view from the shop's windows obscured, verging on white-out conditions. Byrne had meant to lock the door and flip the sign to closed but he had gotten distracted with tending to the fireplace, knowing that the older building wasn't the best at keeping out the chill, even with an updated heating system.

The chime of the bell had him turning, hands sliding into pockets as he took a few steps forward to get a better look at the other, unsure if they were a customer or just someone trying to get out of the quickly building blizzard.

"I heard you might need a hug or whatever. Shoulder to cry on. Someone to ignore all the bullshit with? I'm here to provide."

"Staring at me like that is creepy, just so you know." Dimitri settled his hands on his hips and folded his wings behind him. He'd been caught out in the open but knowing how warded this place was he wasn't exactly afraid of the person who caught him. "You one of Bells lost boys?"

“This is the last time I help Dimitri with shit,” Izzy grumbled under his breath. Awkwardly standing around some place he’d never been before wasn’t high on his list of things to do but he’d lost his grandfather to what looked like a serious, or at least heavy, conversation.

"I'm only here to retrieve Calla, not to socialize."

"What business is it of yours if I did? You gonna tell on me?"

Knocking felt so strange. Maybe less so because of the family's usual open door policy and more so because this was the door to the house where his father lived. Dimitri had never knocked looking for him before. It felt even more strange not to. Knowing that beyond that door was a whole new life he knew nothing about made him feel compelled to wait just outside the threshold, to be invited in instead of barging through like he might normally do.

Looking up when the door cracked open, Dimitri cleared his throat. "I'm looking for my dad... I mean, is Hypnos awake?"

Lux liked clubs because they were loud, a silly notion for someone who couldn’t hear much of anything. But he could feel it and that was what he liked. People were too focused on the noise to feel the sensations, sound pounding through the floors, bodies thrumming around him. He didn’t need music to dance and that was exactly what he was doing when he bumped into someone else on accident. Instead of awkward apologies he just turned his attention toward them and quickly signed - “Wanna dance?” But in doing so, just in case the other person didn’t understand, he pushed the words into their mind as well so they might think they just happened to understand.