safe behind the firewall ,

[Daphne Hayes]

DAPHNE ROSE ,
CAN I LOSE MY NEED TO IMPRESS?
IF YOU WANT THE TRUTH I NEED TO
CONFESS I'M NOT ALRIGHT I'M BROKEN
INSIDE AND ALL I GO THROUGH LEADS
ME TO YOU
-----------------------------

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----SHE HAD BEEN DOING WELL for herself back there. at least for a little bit. february to august, those had been the clearest of all months. mostly because daphne hayes wasn’t under the influence more times than not. well, those six months were up and now the senior in high school was cursing herself for missing out on all the summer parties she didn’t go to for the whole alcohol thing. after her break-up with peter, it was hard to stay sober. the last few weeks leading up to her and jason in the park were very hard. it all started with reed turner’s beach house party. surrounded by too much alcohol was far too hard for her. and then jason helped her out in the relapse thing. so now, daphne has been back in this funk where she was embracing her shak side and partying just about every night, which made for a great back to school week. it seemed the more she drank, the farther she distanced herself from her friends. even now, she may have just started her senior year, but she was far from feeling it. she befriended a lot of college kids, and completely putting up a wall between her and her friends. she couldn’t remember the last time she hung out with bailey. the two parted ways shortly after anne regained her memory... a memory that didn’t include bailey. daphne felt bad for her, but she sided with anne, since the two had been friends for a long time and anne needed her. besides, from what daphne had been hearing, bailey found a new trio to be apart of. good for her, right? daphne did feel sorry the way things ended with them. bailey was a good friend.

somewhere deep inside, daphne wished she had the will to stop, or that she had a friend that made her stop. someone out there that cared enough for her well being. daphne believed she had someone like that, maybe several... they were all just to afraid to call her out on her obvious problem. she could see how that would all play out. daphne accusing, some arguing that it was just drinking, not like she was doing blow or shooting up. then she would later argue how it’s not like anything bad happened before - even if twice she was in a car where there was a drunk driver. one ended up dying and the second lost her memory for awhile there. but, nothing happened to her personally, so she’ll be fine. two brushes with death, so now she was basically invincible, right?

tonight had been a beach party. big bonfire, the whole bit. half the people there she barely would consider her friends but they all had one thing in common to daphne. they didn’t give a damn about her, and that was why she drank as much and often as she did. no one could tell her otherwise. no one could be the fucking angel on her shoulder telling her she shouldn’t do something. it scared her how quickly she became so reckless again. it was almost like daphne wanted to see just how far this path she could go down without anything terrible happening. the brunette found herself looking up at the stars in the very early hour of two am. beer in hand, she kept tracing the opening with her finger as she felt the sand falling through the long slight curls of her hair. daphne wasn’t alone. she was accompanied with a few other kids her age. it was nearing the end of the party and she was just laying around with her half-drank beer. there wasn’t much thought going on inside her head. “same time tomorrow?” daphne heard the voice, but she couldn’t place who it was. it was a girl, but for all daphne knew she might not even know the name of the person who said it. a few people giggled in their own drunken haze of another night of partying coming to a close.

“the night doesn’t have to end here...” that was kevin. he was one of reed’s friends. or, at least that’s what he told daphne, one that lived in the same apartment before he moved. she never got confirmation on that from reed since his bar opened he got busy. hell, this kevin, could have been that neighbor reed used to have who reed was convinced had a meth lab in his apartment. daphne felt a hand on her leg. what the fuck? she tipped over the bottle of beer over in the process of sitting up straight. it was kevin’s hand getting dangerously closer to her thigh. she pushed his hand aside and laid back in the sand. “get your fucking hands off of me. i wasn’t going to sleep with you sober and if you think that’s changed because i’m trashed, i’m still sober enough to still not want you.” she heard a few snickers at the drunk rejection. “and you made me spill my beer, so get me another one.” kevin muttered something under his breath and she heard him get up. she sat back up to await for something she didn’t need and too drunk to really care. “so does this mean you’re dating that dean now?” kevin was back and was handing daphne a new can. oh, the things you say to people when you’re drunk. daphne was looking up at him as she took her beer. one night, she might have admitted that she was crazy for this guy named dean. “no.” she simply said and shrugged before opening the can and taking a drink.

“you do know you and him are going no where.” daphne rolled her eyes, even if she felt like the statement was true. she had been crushing on dean since january. it was now september. “this coming from the guy who just got rejected,” daphne sneered, narrowing her blurred eyes at him. kevin shook his head, “you probably held his fascination for a few months there. then you started that fake relationship. if I were him, that would totally turn me off. if you’re willing to go along with a fake relationship, how would you treat a real one?” daphne opened her mouth to say something back, but realizing she didn’t have anything to say she closed it again. fuck, he got her there. was she wasting her time subtly pursuing dean? “you’re wrong,” she decided to say, shrugging her shoulders. “really? then why hasn’t he asked you out? he probably doesn’t even find you pretty anymore. just another girl pathetically hanging on.” daphne was so not liking kevin anymore. she kind of wanted to punch the possible meth head. but he was right, why hadn’t dean asked her out already? she broke up with peter in like… may. it had been a summer, what was taking so long? it was getting almost pathetic how many times she had been over to dean’s apartment. abruptly, daphne got up. she stumbled, of course on her way up, but she dusted the sand off her red sundress and threw the barely-drunk beer can at kevin. “you know what? fuck you for getting involved in my business. you should just go home. i’m sure there is plenty of meth to make back there.”

daphne heard a few protests asking where she was going, but she ignored them all as she traveled her way up the beach and started walking along the street of the neighborhood. dean’s place actually wasn’t that far from here. then again, no house or apartment building in the shaks was far. even in her drunken haze, she knew where she was going. some shortcuts too. like, sneaking along side some houses, cutting through yards to get to another street that would have taken double the time if she went the regular way. she knew the shak streets like anne knew designer shoes. it didn’t take as long by the time she got to hitten apartment complex. she smiled as she climbed the familiar steps, went inside, and up the elevator. the smiled disappeared though when she remembered why she ditched her new ‘friends’ and ended up walking to dean’s apartment. once she reached the fifth floor of the apartment building, she really felt all the alcohol hit her like someone punched her in the gut. she was just not feeling good. not the ‘I’m about to puke and pass out drunk’ but more of the ‘I don’t feel good and I think I’m kind of angry.’ she stopped at his apartment door and knocked a few times. there was a chance too that he wasn’t even going to be home. who was she to assume that he was going to be in? daphne heard the door unlock and open. she straightened herself up in case she was slouching. she took a hand and flipped her brown hair behind her. daphne then folded her arms across her chest and squinted her eyes towards dean. not really giving him a greeting she just blurted out, “do you still think I’m pretty?”

-----------------------------

[/color][/center]
STATUS, complete
CRED, format and graphics to me
LOCATION & TIME, hitten apartments, september 12, 2007
LYRICS, 'i'm not alright' - sanctus real
CLOTHES, here
TAGGED, dean
I SAY, and that's what i get when i don't rp her forever >.< sorry if it's rambly. hope it's ok i posted it now. i know we were talking about it and i had to dump the massive muse i had for her.
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[Dean Stillings]

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Dean T. Stillings
So then I say can't find a lover
Well there's no other way of pulling me under
Cause it's gotta be fate if we're under the covers
It's all gonna be A-OK, A-OK

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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -[/center]
------------- IT'S A LONG WAY HOME, AND IT FEELS A BIT SHAKEN and only when anxiety lifts, is the path cleared. And that's home Dean felt. He felt anxious. The people around him felt like home, but Valkyrie did not. He felt a lot of everything. Dean Stillings had never had to worry about being settled. He had been in Valkyrie almost a year now and it was the longest he had ever stayed in one place for a long time. He did not like the feeling. He missed waking up and not knowing what city or even country he would be lying down to sleep in a mere eighteen hours later. That spontaneity felt good. He had stayed initially because of Fiona but now she was living with the people who's kid she saved. And she was doing well there. Apparently, she had found God, and good for her because he certainly hadn't. But she was gone now. Hell, he would feel better if he just went and visited her probably. But what was keeping him here now? One Daphne Hayes. He liked her, he liked her a lot. And what was keeping him from making a move? Probably the fact that he still felt like he should be... on a different continent? He had hurt another girl like that. He had just left, leaving only a letter because he didn't want to deal with letting her down. He left the letter and took off because that's who he was. He was a wanderer. Probably do well as a gypsy. He didn't see the point of being grounded when there was a whole world out there to be explored.

------------- DEAN JUST DIDN'T WANT TO HURT THE GIRL. Daphne was strong but she was also younger than him. Only by like two years but still. For some reason he cared more about hurting her, he really didn't want to. Dean was actually out right now. He was at bar, just hanging out with some guys. Nothing major, no one was getting trashed or whatever. A lot of people in Valkyrie seemed to forget that you can just go to a bar to hang out and that not every time you drank you had to get trashed. Don't misunderstand, Dean liked to get drunk and have fun just like everyone else, but boy knew how to hold his drink. He knew how to not act like an idiot, or an ass while drinking. He also knew how not to get behind the wheel or with a drunken driver. I guess the thing is, Dean just has a lot of experience with the drunk and how it screws them up. His brother, his older brother, the infamous Dr. Stillings, the man Dean idolyzed all throughout his childhood, when he had lost his wife began to drink. And the man turned into a sad, pathetic, sick, drunken bastard who tortured his kids to no end. One of which, Chase Stillings, ended up getting into a car accident caused by drunken driving, and getting put into a coma for months before the plug was pulled. And then he was just gone. Yeah, Dean had had enough to do with alcoholics.

------------- DEAN PUT HIS HANDS IN HIS POCKETS AS HE walked down the street towards the Hitten Apartment building when he felt a soft buzzing in his pocket. He reached in and pulled out his cell, smiling to see a familiar name buzz across the screen. - Laura's Cell - Laura is his niece, Chase's sister. Chase and Laura had been closer than close. Dean had initially come back to Valkyrie for the purpose of checking on her when he found out about Chase's accident. She had not been receptive to him at first. Well, that's putting it lightly, too lightly. She was furious with Dean and how he had left and left over and over leaving them with their father. It took them a long while before she accepted him back. Of course, as soon as that happened she got a great job as the assistant stage manager of a traveling tour of Evita the Musical. She had been traveling around the country putting on shows since January, completing her second semester online. It was impressive, but Laura had always been a hard worker. He slid the phone open in order to answer and placed it to his ear. "Hey kid, how ya been?" "HI! I'm not calling too late am I?!" Laura yelled back, she seemed like she was talking over a lot of noise. Dean scoffed as he entered the Hitten building, "What? No of course not, where are you?" "Oh umm.... somewhere in upstate New York, we resting before we hit the big city!" "Ha, doesn't sound like resting" "resting... pre-stretch party, all the same!" Laura paused for a moment before adding, "Hey, when you going to meet us somewhere, see the show?"

------------- DEAN WALKED UP THE STAIRS TO HIS FLOOR before he continued down the hall. He wanted to go see her, he was just nervous if he tasted the freedom of travel he wouldn't be strong enough to come back. He opened the door to his apartment and tossed the keys on the coffee table. "I don't know yet, have to figure some things out." "Since when did you become so settled? Come on! you know you want to." Dean laughed because it was true. "Ha, don't worry, I'll find a way, always do. Hey I'm gonna let you go, have fun." "Bye Dean, talk to you soon." Dean shut the phone and set it down on the kitchen counter. He smirked slightly. It felt good to talk to the last sane member of his family. I mean, Fiona was available to chat but she still had a lot of issues and the last time he talked to her in person she had still been very lost. Laura on the other hand was the most level headed person he had ever met. He yawned slightly when he heard a knock at the door. He raised an eyebrow at it before walking over. He peered through the little peep hole and grinned to see Daphne on the other side. He quickly undid the lock and opened it onto the brunette who he very quickly could see was drunk. “do you still think I’m pretty?”

------------- THE OLDER BOY LAUGHED SLIGHTLY, WAS SHE kidding? "Yeah of course I do." He replied. He looked at her slightly confused before stepping forward, "Here, come on in." He put his arm around her shoulder gently and lead her into the small apartment. He let her go slightly more towards the couch and smiled slightly at her. "Now, to what do I owe this drunken visit?" He asked, and what happened to being sober? his brain added accusingly.

---

STATUS;; complete
TAGGED;; daphne hayes
CREDITS;; format to me, inspired by everyone, graphics to me
LYRICS;; 'do it alone' by sugarcult
CLOTHES;; here, ignore the scarf
NOTES;; Yay!
[/blockquote][/blockquote]

[Daphne Hayes]

DAPHNE ROSE ,
CAN I LOSE MY NEED TO IMPRESS?
IF YOU WANT THE TRUTH I NEED TO
CONFESS I'M NOT ALRIGHT I'M BROKEN
INSIDE AND ALL I GO THROUGH LEADS
ME TO YOU
-----------------------------

[/color][/center]

----THE SLOPPY DRUNK SWAYED a little at his doorstep, standing her ground as best she could, blinking more than a sober person to keep dean from going out of focus. oh shit, the queen was wasted and she wasn't even with anne or bailey, who were great drunk buddies. she knew she wasn't going to wake up the next morning at anne's house and groggily mend the killer hangover as they tried to piece together the events of the previous night. she missed her best friend. she missed hanging out with her all the time too. but she was here, in the freaky hitten apartment complex, drunk off her ass and mumbling nonsense and probably going to say things she shouldn't to the guy she had been chasing after forever. "Yeah of course I do." daphne smiled, or at least attempted to because it probably came off as a sloppy grin. so that kevin was a douchebag. spewing off stupid remarks, like he and dean were bffs are something. now that he openly admitted that she was pretty, she felt better. fifty times better since she was drunk. this visit was going to get interesting fast, she hoped he knew that. she didn't respond, since she got the answer she was looking for.

he guided her into the apartment and shut the door behind them. man, was she use tot his apartment. it always looked the exact same. like he moved in two weeks ago. it always kind of made her nervous. because well, she knew dean never stayed in one place for very long. he was traveling around the world. sometimes she would wonder if she come over to visit and find the apartment empty one day. almost like he was never here. kind of made her want to carpe diem-it and tell him how she felt. but it was always complicated with him. she was never... available half the time. why were feeling and emotions so confusing? if you liked someone you should tell them, right? especially if you think that person might be thinking the same things you are. daphne sometimes felt like a junior high kid though, crushing on dean. he just seemed so much older than a couple years older than her. maybe her attempts to fit in with the older crowd was working because she didn't feel fourteen right now. and with a little alcohol in that mix, she was feeling rather confident.

daphne got near the couch and turned around to face him as he said, "Now, to what do I owe this drunken visit?" she poked a finger into her chest, "whaddya talking about? iii'm not drunk." she giggled as her words became slurred and the swaying became more noticeable. "i'm joking. i'm so drunk, i'm pretty sure i'll be passing out. so i better get this show on the road before that happens." daphne fell back on the couch pulling her hair off her slightly sweaty forehead. she sat back up and outstretched her hands towards dean, motioning him to join her. she grasped his hands when he walked closer and she pulled him down next to her. she briefly thought of how she should tackle this. she held up a finger, signaling she needed a minute. daphne looked up at the ceiling, maybe the answer would be up there. nope. ok, back to dean. "do you think i'm undateable because iii was in a faaake relationship?" she didn't really give him that much time to respond because she was off on the next statement, "beeeecause, i talked to this meth maker... or i dunno, i think he iss. but he saiddd you'd be turned off by that because i wouldn't take a real - real relationship seriously."

daphne pulled her feet up, and crossed them. her hair fell down in her face as she faced dean. she squinted her eyes, once again searching for the words inside her head. "am i a bad person for doing that?" she wondered more out loud than to dean. she sometimes wondered this question. yeah, she felt that her a peter transitioned from fake relationship to real relationship somewhere down the line but she didn't want to admit that, because that wasn't how it was suppose to happen. it didn't make sense to her how she could start falling for peter who was still always going to be the one for coco. it was now that daphne wouldn't mind passing out because at least she would then stop talking. if she could remember right, this was the first time dean saw her this wasted. since, shortly after meeting him the quad got into a car accident and daphne stayed sober. so the thought of looking absolutely ridiculous didn't even cross her mind. like, if he was going to think less of her because this was the real daphne. the one that embodied her for a scary three years. she was so use to this side of her that she didn't know if she could do the sober thing again. the temptation this time around was hard enough, giving it up only to relapse again would only make her sink even farther. peter helped her stay sober though, so for that, she would probably be forever in his debt. but now that SS was tracking her and her crush on dean, daphne knew that some might be wondering if dean could handle such a train wreck. it was embarrassing that she was nicknamed the hot mess and she was hard to control. she hated drama, but it always seemed to follow her no matter where she went, or like now, who she was with.

-----------------------------

[/color][/center]
STATUS, complete
CRED, format and graphics to me
LOCATION & TIME, hitten apartments, september 12, 2007
LYRICS, 'i'm not alright' - sanctus real
CLOTHES, here
TAGGED, dean
I SAY, so... really on the short side to the point where i am embarrassed. >.<
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[Dean Stillings]

•• Dean Stillings ••

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SO THEY SAY I CAN'T FIND A LOVER
Well there's no other way of pulling me under[/center]

------------------------------------------

------ Other than being eternally restless, Dean did have one good piece of news coming around in his life. His niece, you may remember her, pretty, intelligent, sarcastic, can be bitchy? One more hint: theatre geek, most specifically, stage manager. You got it! Laura. Laura Stillings was coming home to Valkyrie. She was coming through with the show as it's final stop. She has another job offer but they want her to finish High school so she's coming back in order to finish out her senior year. Which is good, he would hate for her not to have her high school degree at least. He had at least followed through and gotten his GED. Although, lets face it, Dean would be perfectly happy doing odd jobs all his life as long as he got to hopscotch across the planet. It was something amazing. Travel, I mean. Especially when you are doing it on your own and without much cash. Its an adventure. And come on! how many nineteen years olds almost 20 year olds do you know who can actually say, and not be lying, that they had run to catch the cargo car of a train and road it from Tibet all the way to St. Petersburg, befriending a homeless traveler and his pet dog on the way before spending a day camped outside the Winter Palace where Czar Nicolas was killed, then hitching a ride to Germany? Dean had spent many nights under that stars, many days walking from Venice to Rome and back, many weeks without any way to be contacted or found and many years being the most free teenage boy on the entire planet.

------ It was a dream, and he missed it. He would go back to it, for now he should just focus on what's keeping him here. Possibility of college... check. Roof over his head, over rated... check. Laura was coming back, maybe he could repair some of the past damage to their relationship. He did abandon them with an abusive father, aka his dear older brother. Dean was just a fifteen year old kid though, what could he do? He was just a scared kid. Was he scared to leave out on his own and runaway? Nah, that was easy. That had always been the easy part. It was home that had terrified him. He hated those few years, he felt powerless so at fifteen, he left. He didn't care about school, he just felt like he was doing no good where he was. He considered inviting Laura and Chase, they were fairly mature for their age, but Dean was a fifteen year old boy! He couldn't be responsible for them, he was too young. He was too young to be on his own but he felt old for a fifteen year old. So he left with no good bye but a note saying he would be back eventually. Chase seemed to understand but Laura, who had always gotten the worst of Joe(his brother) do to her stunning resemblance to her mother and Joe's perverted obsessions that he no longer seemed to feel bad about, she didn't. He had caught a bus up to Seattle and got a job in this old man's shop. He stayed there for a bit until he got is first real girlfriend, freaked out and caught another bus and just rode it till they kicked him off. That started it and while he would come back to check on them maybe once a year, he never really talked to them. So yeah, he had damage to repair on that front.

------ The last reason he had to say was the friendship and companionship he had found in Daphne Hayes, who just so happened to be the drunk girl entering his apartment at the moment. "whaddya talking about? iii'm not drunk." Dean scoffed slightly and raised his eyebrows at the girl. He smiled slightly as her face broke out in a grin and she giggled. "i'm joking. i'm so drunk, i'm pretty sure i'll be passing out. so i better get this show on the road before that happens." Dean nodded, at least she knew. Although he had kind of thought she was over the get trashed stage of her life. But hey, maybe it was just a night of fun you know. He nodded, "Yeah well, you know you can crash here if you want." He said casually as she dropped onto the couch. He raised his eyebrows as she put her arms out for him to come to her. He stepped on over to the couch and took her hands in his as he sat down on the edge of the couch next to her. "do you think i'm undateable because iii was in a faaake relationship?" What was this girl on tonight? Dean didn't think of her as undateable. Come on, look at her. She was gorgeous beyond belief. Funny, adorable. Smart and he was able to talk to her like no one else around lately. He never understood why girls seemed to be so insecure. Didn't matter how beautiful, or how amazing they were, they never seemed to believe anyone when they told them.

------ Before he had time to respond though, Daph had continued. "beeeecause, i talked to this meth maker... or i dunno, i think he iss. but he saiddd you'd be turned off by that because i wouldn't take a real - real relationship seriously." Dean looked away for a moment before shaking his head, "Look, " Dean began, "You're not undateable. And seeing as this douche bag might be running a meth lab and therefore inhaling toxic fumes, I doubt he's the most reliable source." Dean said plainly, with maybe a small touch of annoyance. "What are you doing hanging with meth dealers anyways Daph? Drinking a bits on thing but hanging around with that crowd's just..." He paused as he looked for a less harsh word that dumb, " hanging around with that crowds nothing but trouble." The sad thing was he probably sounded very hypocritical. He had done the whole party, drink, hang out with a very bad crowd thing, he had just sort of gotten over it. He hung with reckless crowds but not dangerous ones and yes there was a difference. "am i a bad person for doing that?" He looked down at the pretty brunette and put his hand on her shoulder, bringing him so she was leaning on him a bit, "No." Dean said, "He might be because he did it to piss off another girl or whatever. I'm so glad I was never in one place long enough to get into high school drama." He added with a small tone of amusement to his voice.

------------------------------------------

STATUS;; complete
TAGGED;; D&D<3
CREDITS;; format to me, inspired by everyone, graphic to me
LYRICS;; 'do it alone' sugar cult
CLOTHES;; Here!
NOTES;; SOO late. and kinda suckish, my muse was failing me but yay for D&D!
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