#rresurrectionn

Confidence exudes from him, dripping from the tips of his fingers, down the apples of his cheeks. There’s an almost flimsy sort of air about the way that he carries himself, a boiling tension beneath the surface that begs to be let out. Dane tries to ignore it, tries to keep it pulled together, and it almost works aside from the fine cracks about his edges, and aside from the light in his eyes that reeks of desperation. The front that he puts on and the expression that he keeps in place is a lot to handle all at once, but so is the door that he’s stood outside of, and the person that’s behind it. 

Potential for rejection isn’t something that’s entirely lose on him, but he also has a long history with Elias that feels... different, from that. Different from what he’s running away from, and different from the sinking feeling inside of his chest every time that beast sneaks up in his peripheral and he catches a glimpse of it. It hurts, sometimes, when he lets it get too close. Maybe that’s why he’s bolting away from it. Maybe that’s why he’s defaulting back to what he knows, to the familiar anticipation of it all, to the obvious set-up of this situation and of the way that he wants to strip himself bare and know that he’s not going to be found wanting. 

Blood and sweat and violence are still swimming in his head, his inner wolf pacing back and forth at the hazy memory. He stands in a back alley now, waiting for August to emerge from a side door in the building that Kai has just emerged from. The other lycan doesn’t know that he’s meeting him here, but he remembers the night they’d spend together vividly --- he also remembers getting his ass kicked beforehand. Bruises and a split lip have healed up nicely since then, and the slight breeze carries the scent of the city to him, the people walking by on the pavements. It reminds him of London, sometimes, when he’s in neighborhoods like this --- dangerous, and dark. Places like this are where he’s always thrived.

Since coming to New York, Casey has made very few friends and a great many acquaintances. It would be a lie to say that he doesn’t overthink things, that his romanticism doesn’t sometimes get away from him, and he’s had many awkward encounters in the past as a result of that. Still, he finds it impossible to stop himself from hoping that one day it’ll be different for him, and it won’t be awkward or strained or weird. It’ll just be perfect and there will be no getting around that fact. Maybe his hopefulness is misplaced in this particular case, but who’s going to tell him that when he hasn’t even told anybody else about the little crush he’s harboring? Maybe he does need to make friends after all. Maybe he needs to stop dreaming of everyone he meets being The One.