Lessons never learned

[Dustin Graves Rare]

You know in the cartoons, when a character got mad, they either had smoke coming out of their ears or maybe even the top off their head exploded. Well that was Dustin right at this point. He knew he needed to chill out but with everything that happened in the last hour there was no way in hell that was going to happen. If there was one person that he didn't get along with in the whole world, it was that damn Aislynn. He didn't know what her problem was or even why he had to talk to her, but she had always been right there when he was already ticked off. Which pissed him off even more. It was the same thing every year many times a year. For some reason he could never just avoid it. It was like their fathers loved watching this happen. 

However, at the moment a very pissed off Dustin was marching his way over to the Hermes cabin. Normally he wouldn't just walk in and be rude, but he was being rude today and opened the door a little to hard. If it broke somehow he would offer to fix it later and as he looked around, he noticed that the place was a little full. With the children of the god and some of the children who have yet been claimed. They all turned to him with mouths open, though no one said anything. "Where Lilythe?" he bit out a little to harshly. Fingers pointed to the bedroom of the cabin leaded and he made his way over to it. Half tempted to open it but knew better because he would more than likely be beat in the head by the only person that would be able to chill him out at the moment. So with that in mind he knocked on the door. Hoping that she would just let him in so he didn't have to explain things to the whole cabin. 

 

@Lilythe Rayne

[Lilythe Rayne Rare]

Lilythe had been unpacking her things. She had gone away for a while this time, so her room was fairly bare. Rushing around, she tried to make the room less like the jail cell it currently looked like with its blank walls. She had just finished putting up a painting that she'd been given by one of the Iris Cabin kids a few years back when she heard a knock on the door. "Just a minute!" Lilythe straightened the painting and then headed to the door. 

As she opened it, she quirked a brow. There was Dustin, the Ares Cabin Leader, and he looked quite upset. "I take it my welcome home greeting will have to wait." She chuckled softly and gestured to the room. "Come on in." Stepping back, she let him into the room and then looked out to her siblings and the other campers hanging out in the cabin. "Hey guys, could you give us some privacy? Go out and find an activity to do or put in your headphones, yeah? Thanks." Lilythe closed the door behind her and sat on her bed as she looked over at the boy. "So... what happened?"

[Dustin Graves Rare]

Her voice rang out from behind the door and he couldn't help but be calmed by it just a little bit. Though as soon as she opened the door he watched her eyebrow raise. He could only look at her, he knew that there was still fire burning in his eyes. He could feel the heat pouring off him, with how mad he way. He let out a small sigh. "Welcome home Lilythe." he muttered as he walked into her room. It looked like she was still putting things up. Dustin himself never really left the camp anymore. He did school here. There wasn't any point in having the teacher look down at him for something he really had no control over. He let her have her moment with the other cabin people before she turned back to him and went to her bed. He slumped over a little knowing that she wouldn't be able to do anything about it but he knew that she knew she was the only one that could talk him out of the horrible spree that was getting ready to happen. "I don't understand why, it's every time something happens or I am in a slightly bad mood that SHE ends up bumping into me. It's always her!" he grumbled more as he started pacing the room thinking about her face. He just wanted to shove it into the ground, but something told him that he couldn't do that because honestly it would look frowned upon. REGARDLESS! He didn't like her. He wasn't sure that he was ever going to like her. Something about her. Meh! His fist  clinched tightly as he stopped in front of Lilythe and looked at her. He hadn't been this hot in a while and he really hoped that she could talk him down.

[Lilythe Rayne Rare]

Lilythe quirked a brow as he muttered his hello. Clearly it must be fairly upsetting if he couldn't even manage to realize how rude he had been and was continuing to be. As soon as he entered, she had closed the door behind them so they had total privacy. She listened as he spoke and had to hold back a small chuckle. There was only one girl it could have been. "You really need to stop letting Ash get to you." In all honesty, the young girl probably wasn't intending anything malicious. It likely just made her laugh to see him get all riled up like this. She would have to have a talk with the girl about learning when pushing someone's buttons went a little bit too far. Until then, though, she was going to have to help Dustin work through things.

"I know that she can be irritating. And she likes to push your buttons. But when you get worked up like this you're just giving her what she wants." In essence, he was rewarding her by showing her that she was getting to him. His best defense would be to stop showing any reaction whatsoever. The girl would eventually give up if she no longer got the reactions she was looking for. "I'll talk with her for you, but I can't promise it'll do much good."

[Dustin Graves Rare]

He couldn't help but cross his arms and sigh hard at the comment about letting Ash get to him. He honestly couldn't help it. He didn't know why he let it happen maybe it was a trait that he got from his father. He doubted if he was going to be able to just let it go. "That is easier said than done." he said as he sighed harder. Honestly, he would if he could but something about the girl just bugged him and he honestly had never said anything bad about to her or back at him for him to act this way. He just.. well he didn't know. It made no sense to him either. 

He went to protest her statement but he couldn't because look where he was at the moment and look what he was doing. Being rude and things like that. He put his head down and in defeat and sighed letting all the anger that was in him out as much as he could possibly do. "I'll try and do better." he told Lilythe as he glanced around the room and blinked but looked back at her when she said that she would try and talk to her about it. "Yeah, maybe that would work too. I'll try and make sure that I don't cause any issues with her as well.. better yet I'll try and stay away from her." 

[Lilythe Rayne Rare]

Dustin was a good kid. His temper tended to get the better of him every now and then, but his heart was in the right place. Aislynn was a lot for anyone to handle on a good day. Those two mixed like oil and water. Lilythe knew that he would continue to get frustrated, and Aislynn would continue to poke at him. She couldn't help herself any more than he could. Keeping them apart was honestly the best solution, though it wasn't always reasonable. Lilythe was certain there would be more chats like this moving forward, but for now she was going to focus on the current one. "So what exactly did she do? I can't talk to her about it if I don't know what it was." While Lilythe was fairly certain Aislynn could just look at Dustin funny and it would set him off, she was also equally sure that she had done more than that. 

Lilythe made herself comfortable and sat on the bed now that Dustin seemed to have de-escalated. She knew he wouldn't ever turn violent with her, but it wasn't outside the realm of possibility for him to accidentally enrage everyone else in the cabin while he was doing so. Ares kids manipulated anger the way Aphrodite kids manipulated love. And neither of those was a great thing when it happened subconsciously. Now that things seemed a bit calmer, Lilythe didn't feel as much need to be on edge and standing at attention. 

[Dustin Graves Rare]

Dustin only deadpanned when she asked what the girl did. Honestly, he wouldn't lie to her but the only thing she had done was look at him wrong at the moment. He hated that it bothered him the way it did. He wanted to be like everyone else and get along with everyone but there was just certain kind of people that got on his nerves and people like her did that to him. Now, was she a good girl? She could have been but from where he stood at the moment that was a big no from him. He looked away from Lilythe because honestly, it was now embarrassing to even have had it go this far. "She didn't say anything." He told her as he once again crossed his arms. "She just looked at me with that look of hers." Yeah, he was being a little baby-ish but he couldn't help it. Honestly, it was all that he could do from snapping right then and there. It was something that Dustin did a lot. When he was up and already pissed at the world he would go fight one of his brothers. At the end of that, he always felt better, even the other person normally felt a little better. 

He took a deep breath before glancing at the door again. "Do you think I pissed some people off?" He questioned as he glanced back over to Lilythe. "I'm sorry." He said to her, this time it wasn't a mutter or anything it was pure. He didn't want to cause Lilythe to feel any type of way. Though he knew that being a child of Ares meant that he could very well do just that. Anger mainly. It was interesting to say the least when a couple of his siblings were mad he remembered half the camp was on edge. 

[Lilythe Rayne Rare]

It took everything Lilythe had not to chuckle outright as he admitted that all Aislynn had done was look at him funny. Between his hot temper, and that girl's impish nature, the two were going to be like oil and water. "Dustin..." She couldn't help herself, as she shook her head with a smile. "You're a cabin leader now. You're going to have to figure out how to deal with difficult campers." The camp was doing better about not having small children being cabin leaders anymore, but teenagers weren't really adults either. There were still a lot of growing pains that came with being a teen, and learning how to manage your emotions was one of them. 

"Probably." Lilythe admitted as he asked if he pissed people off. "You're still learning to control it though, so it's to be expected. Don't worry about it. They'll get over it." She reassured him. Dustin always felt bad after he came down from an anger spell. He just needed some help de-escalating once he was angry. He wasn't a bad kid, any more than Aislynn was. They were just very different. "Just focus on figuring out how to curb that anger of yours in the moment. I know it's difficult, but you'll be better for it."

[Dustin Graves Rare]

He flinched when she called his name. He knew that she was trying to not laugh at him, and honestly he couldn't blame her. He was still very much a teenager and being the son of Ares, he allowed his emotions to rule him. Mostly his anger. He couldn't help it anymore than the next Ares kid. She brought up the fact that he was a cabin leader and he frowned more. Now feeling a little more disappointed in himself. "You're right," he muttered letting his head down. "I should think before I act, I've been trying to work on it, really I have." 

He bit his lower lip as he sighed again. This time it was because he knew that he had pissed off more than a couple of people in the cabin. He, however, couldn't help but chuckle a little as she told him that he needed to work on curbing his anger in the moment. "That is easier said than done." he chuckled out. "I'm a child of Ares. You think its easy for any of us to do that." He teased knowing that she was right. If he could do it then it would be easy for his siblings to do it as well, and well you seen how they acted more than half the time. 
 

[Lilythe Rayne Rare]

Lilythe sighed softly. "I'm not scolding you Dustin. I'm just..." She moved over to give him a hug. "Trying to help you grow so that you can be the leader you were born to be." Pulling back, she smiled at him. He had really grown up in the time she had known him. Soon he would be an adult and there wouldn't be many more times where he came to her like she was his older sister. It was always bittersweet when that happened with campers. Lilythe loved all of them as if they were her family. They are my family. She mentally corrected herself. After all, Camp Half-Blood was the only family she had ever really known. 

"You're going to have to learn." Lilythe chimed in. She moved back to her spot on the bed and laid down, propping herself up at an angle with her hands behind her head. "Otherwise the Athena cabin will keep winning capture the flag." She winked. The rivalry at Camp Half-Blood between the cabins of the two war gods was palpable. It was no longer the animosity it had been when she had been growing up here, but the two definitely still had the drive to prove that they were better at 'war' than the other. She was glad to hear him chuckle though. It seemed like he was calming back down. 

[Dustin Graves Rare]

Dustin was shocked when Lilythe came out and hugged him. He honestly wasn't expecting it at all. He had wondered if that was all that he honestly needed in life. His mother had nothing to do with him because of his father and he had been on the streets since he was young. He knew nothing but trying to cause trouble for the longest time and getting the chance to prove to everyone that he wasn't his past he needed to be a better man. Hell, he needed to make sure that he showed his siblings that he wasn't just a mean person. He wanted to show them that he could lead them as Lilythe had said to him. "I know you're not." He told her with a small smile. "I do need to be told a couple of times more than normal but I'll make my siblings proud of me." He told her truthfully as he stood up a little taller. He was going to have to prove to himself that he could do it. Maybe he needed his older sister to come and knock some sense into him. Granted, he knew that she would have no trouble in doing that. 

He took a seat in her chair and sighed a little. "I'll get there. I'm still pretty young you know." He said with a cheeky grin though he knew better than that. He watched her as she placed her hands behind her head and made a comment about how the Athena cabin kept winning capture the flag. He frowned for a moment and thought of the last game that they had. He almost had it but no.. it was taken right out of his hands. He had ended up getting knocked out for something stupid he did. "Na." he chuckled as he ran his hand through his hair. "I'm going to run the best game this year." He said sitting up higher. "Wanna be on my team this time?" he asked her with a cheeky grin. He didn't know if she was going to play but he would totally call dibs on her.  

[Lilythe Rayne Rare]

Lilythe smiled softly at him. "I know you will." It made her happy to see the pride that he took in his position as cabin leader, and his determination to do better for his siblings and himself. She could see how hard he was trying and he was going to do great. It was bittersweet to see all the kids that had been little when she was first made a cabin leader nearing adulthood. "I'm glad you still think you're a kid. Most people your age like to remind me that they're 'basically an adult now'." Lilythe playfully rolled her eyes and chuckled.

She had known the dig about capture the flag would get him. "Right now I think I'm on the other team. You know I have to balance it based on numbers." Lilythe shrugged. Whenever Chiron was away, Lilythe was the temporary activities director in his stead. That often meant coordinating the capture the flag games. She had done it for several years now, both with Chiron's help and without. It wasn't something that she minded. But it was always fun to see how many kids were disappointed when she wasn't on their team. "But with everyone coming and going, you never know. It could change again."

[Dustin Graves Rare]

Dustin could only chuckle a little as he knew that she would have called him out on still being a kid pretty much. "Well, not a kid per say." he mused. "An older teenager." He laughed as he shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. "I would love to say I'm an adult but I'm not at the moment. Still learning pretty much everything there is to learn at the moment." At least that was something that he was very knowing of. He knew that he needed to get things done pretty fast if he was going to keep his spot as cabin leader. Maybe he needed to talk to his older sister and asked what she did to keep herself sane. 

Dustin' couldn't help but huff when Lilythe told him that she was on the other team. "Come on." he mused with a small pout on his face as he looked at her. Honestly he was trying to guilt her into playing with him.  But he knew that it wasn't going to work  at all. So, he would just let it go for the moment. "Well," he started and stood up from the chair to stretched a little. "I'll just have to wait to have you on myside then." He mused some more as he placed his hands in his pockets. "I think I should get going. Honestly, don't know what I would do without you Lil." he told her, giving her a rather soft expression, one that he normally never used. 

[Lilythe Rayne Rare]

Lilythe smiled at Dustin. He's really growing up. It used to take hours of going in circles with him to calm him down. She wondered if he realized just how far he had come since the little kid she remembered. "Have a great rest of the day, Dustin. I'm always here if you need me." She said with a smile and walked him to her bedroom door. As he left the cabin, she shut the door behind her and lay herself in bed. She was more than overdue for a little bit of self-care today.

~Fin~