InsaneJournal

Current mood:	hot
Entry tags:	connor reilly, kris michaels

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The park was hot, the sun bearing down in the sky, and Connor had a bottle of water against the heat, lifting the hair away from the back of his neck so he could place the object there. A watch check said it was one fifteen. He'd spoken to Kris a couple of hours ago, asked if she wanted to hang out a little. The Slayer had sounded okay over the phone, at least to his ears, but he doubted she was what could be described as 'better'.

Still, he was going to keep it casual. Not like he wanted to interfere in anything, he just wanted to check on how she was. He liked to think that the two of them were friends, and friends looked after each other in whatever way they could.

The Destroyer took the cap off of the bottle, drank some of the cold contents. Just making a quick check-in, that was all he was doing.

Kris liked to think she was doing better, the physical evidence of her time spent under Katherine's control had faded completely, but there was still a lingering emotional and mental scar that would take longer to heal. She didn't get enough sleep and flinched on occasion when somebody got too close, but she was working on that. It was fortunate that she'd regained her appetite and had finally starting putting back on the weight she'd lost.

Hayden had been great, sticking close and offering support when she needed it, not that Kris was that good at asking, but she was trying.

She was still at a loss about what to do with the building she'd purchased in the hopes of turning a helping hand to the neighbourhood, something she had no intention of following through on. Not after the way they'd treated her. Kris was looking into selling it, to whatever bid came through, she just didn't care anymore.

Kris had checked in on a few people, visiting her girls more frequently given that she'd disappeared on them and God only knew what they'd been up to in her absence. Thankfully none of them had been stupid enough to try anything above their current skill level; all in good time.

When Connor had called Kris had accepted his invitation to meet up with a mix of relief and anxiety, she hadn't seen him since she'd made with the disappearing and she wasn't exactly the same, give her time.

Given the temperature Kris had stripped down to bare essentials such as hip hugging jeans, a form fitting tank-top, and a pair of boots that ended mid calf, leather wrapping around them like a second skin. Her hair was much shorter now so she no longer had to worry about the weight of it and simply brushed it back when it fell across the dark glass of her shades.

"You look hot," she commented with a wry smile as she approached Connor with slow confident steps, unaware of a few admiring looks from a few passerbys.

"Its got to be ninety degrees today." Connor had poured some of the water into his palm and was trickling it down the back of his neck, where it plastered his thin t-shirt to his back. "I don't think I was prepared for Chicago to get as hot as the desert."

He looked up at Kris from his position on the picnic table bench, noted that any bruises or other damage she might have suffered had faded. Bonus points for Slayer healing. "There's a vending machine in the park shelter over there," he said, gesturing with the bottle. "I've got change if you need one and can't break a dollar."

He pulled himself to his feet, feeling the heat pressing on him like a large hand. "How's your day going, other than too hot?"

"Good ole Searchlight," Kris muttered. "Didn't think it was possible to miss that place." She lifted her shoulders into a shrug and then plucked a wallet out of a pocket, checking through it. "I thankfully have change."

She waited until Connor was on his feet before she turned and headed into the shade of the nearby park shelter, not that it did much about the thick muggy heat. "It's alright," she answered as she stood in front of the machines and fed it coins. "Got some potential buyers for the gym so that's always good. The sooner I get it off my hands the better."

Kris tucked a short strand of dark hair behind her ear and then bent down to retrieve the water as it came rolling out of the machine, nicely chilled. "Yours?"

"I found a job in one of the bars downtown. Its only a couple of shifts a week, but the tips make up for the lousy hourly pay. So things are evening out, I guess." Connor listened to the gears inside the soda machine work, heard the clunk of the water bottle hitting the hard plastic of the shelf. The sun was a hazy blur through the clouds. He put his sunglasses on despite the fact that they were under cover now.

"You're not going back to the gym?" Maybe part of him had expected that, and he fiddled with the loose cap of his own bottle of water before putting it in his pocket. Good thing he wasn't the type to put his change into rolls, he was going to need another of these when the first was empty. "Not even to say fuck you very much?"

"Would you want to go back to a neighbourhood that you gave everything to only to have your ass sold out to a sadistic vampire who then straps an explosive collar around your neck and plays 'do as I say or I'll push the button and make your head blow up' with you?" Kris turned and looked at Connor, taking a sip of water. "No thank you."

She adjusted the way the glasses sat and then scratched her fingers along her neck, absently. "I'm hoping the bitch got one hell of an explosive surprise when I left the collar as a parting gift. She always threatened that she'd push the button if I was out of her sight for too long, here's to that."

Connor's mouth twitched into something that resembled a smile, but the eyes hidden behind the dark lenses were grave. That people often didn't appreciate anything wasn't a news flash to him, and his denim-clad butt made a dent in the pollen that had blown in on the breeze when he sat down on the wooden picnic table. "Here's to it," he agreed, lifting his bottle in a toast. "And forget those idiots. There's other neighborhoods."

I must be getting old, he reflected wryly. I'm teetering on the brink of giving advice. He looked at the space where the collar must have rested, Kris' sharp collarbones. "I don't know anything about Katherine," he admitted. "A vampire's a vampire, as far as I'm concerned, one doesn't stand out from the loud-mouthed bunch of them to me. Its probably different way up close, though."

Kris eased onto the bench beside Connor and took to picking at the label made wet by the contrasting temperature of the liquid and the environment. "Yeah, it is." She uncapped the bottle and took another long swallow. "Thanks for doing some legwork by the way. Appreciate it. Who knows where I'd be if I didn't get helped." Probably in little pieces or some sort of shadow of her former self with fangs.

"Katherine? Real piece of work, that's all I'm going to say about that psycho."

She blew out a breath and as she did the wheel of fate pendant rose and fell with the movements of her chest, skin slightly damp with sweat. "But, it's over and that's all that matters."

He made a noise a noise that consisted mostly of breath, watched some younger people ambling by. One of them had a skateboard tucked under an arm already scraped and cut from what must have been a fall. He marveled at the resilience of the young. There was sweat gathering at his temples and under the hair that rested on the back of his neck. Maybe he should get it cut short for the season.

"When I was a little kid, like little, like a baby, there was a man who said he was my father. That he took me to raise as his own because it was what God wanted him to do. He protected me in a hostile environment, kept me alive when he didn't have to, molded me into a hunter so that when the time came I'd be able to defend myself. A lot of the things I know, I know because of him."

Connor related this in a quiet tone, almost a reflective one. Introspective, staring at the contents of his memories. "In the end, I did things I would never have done otherwise, because I loved him and wanted to make him proud of me. To be a good son." There was a slight tightness in his throat. He drank, pushing the cold water past it. "When somebody's in your life like that, its hard to ignore them."

Kris was taken aback by the sudden reveal by Connor, not really expecting it. She always figured he'd do the deep meaningful thing with Rhiannon because they seemed close, never with her. She had a strange perspective on herself.

It was only when his voice took on that tight tone that Kris hand lifted and rested on his shoulder, width of her palm squeezing and length of her thumb moving out to stroke his upper arm. She'd pull her hand away if it looked like he didn't want the physical contact, but it just seemed like he might need it. "And I thought my family was fucked up," she offered softly and with a wry smile.

"I got to the point where I was seriously considering finding a way to trigger the collar myself, you know?" She blew out another breath. "Better that than being turned into a childe of Katherine."

He sat still as a statue, feeling the touch and allowing it, even if he didn't respond. "I was a kid, what did I know? It was only when I got older that I realized he was wrong about a lot of things, and yet there was always a tiny part of me that still would have done those things, whatever he wanted because he was my father. Love is...twisty, even when you know its wrong, that you're wrong. Wrong doesn't mean anything against love."

Connor wiped a trickle of salty perspiration away from his forehead, drank water. "How much did you love Katherine before it was over? Maybe just the tiniest bit?"

It was as he asked that question that Kris withdrew into herself, focusing her attention on the bottle in her hands and the way the label was now peeling thanks to her incessant picking and peeling at it. "Not enough to let her turn me, but enough." She unscrewed the lid and took a few sips of water, brushing a bead of water away from the corner of her mouth. "Cut my hair because I couldn't escape the memory of her fingers in it. Stupid, huh?"

"Besides I got it done in time for the good weather."

"Short hair is good. I'm thinking about getting mine cut. Its too hot for all this hair."

Connor took off his sunglasses, squinted at the lenses, then used his shirt-tail to wipe at them aimlessly before putting them back on. "You told me once," he said, looking away from Kris because this was not a thing he did easily, "that we do the best we can, and that sometimes things are going to knock us down when we don't expect it. Life is twisty too, but even when we get knocked down we can always get back up. Sometimes our friends help us."

It was draining, this baring of himself, no matter who was seeing it, and the Destroyer sighed into the heavy heat of the afternoon. "I consider you my friend. If you need anything....well, you know."

The sigh was pretty had to miss and there was a part of Kris that wondered which one of them happened to be recovering from a traumatic event, she guessed old wounds were hard to heal. "I'm working on that," Kris said with a nod. "I'm pretty good at bouncing back." She uncapped the bottle again and took a few more sips, brushing a stray bit of pollen off her jeans. "It's what I do best." She was already beginning to compartmentalise everything, pushing it to the back of her mind. Kris wasn't really good at putting her shit on other people, Hayden being one of the few exceptions to that rule.

She rolled the bottle between her palms. "But, thanks, I'll bear that in mind." Kris blew out a breath and picked at the edge of her thumbnail. "I don't know about you, but I can't sit still." Not after she'd spent weeks chained to a wall for hours after hours, subjected to being let out like some sort of goddamn pet. Kris slid off the table and looked over at Connor. "You can either join me or stay put, it's up to you."

"Nah, I think I better move. Its like being underwater to sit still. Really warm water."

Connor left a clean spot on the bench seat when he got up, dusted the greenish pollen off of his pants. He had said his piece, and now that the offer was there he could leave it alone. Learning to offer assistance when it might be necessary had been one of the hardest lessons to absorb, but he thought that by now he was doing a pretty good job. He finished his water, threw the bottle away before buying a replacement.

"Also, my birthday party is coming up, you and Hayden are both invited. Hope you can make it."

"I could do with a swim right about now," Kris shared with a small smirk.

The heat was blistering, Kris was seriously considered an ice cold shower or bath as soon as she got back to her place. There was no way she was walking Eddy in this heat or training with her girls until much later in the day, when hopefully it might be cooler.

"Yeah? When is it?"

"Soon. With all this stuff about twins and Inquisitors and whatever else happening, it depends on what else comes through the grapevine. Its a bitch when you can't even plan a birthday party without having to consider the end of the world happening."

Connor smiled ruefully when he said it, opened the new water. Even with the heat, it felt like a good day. Not knowing what was going to happen next and all.