Kale Sullivan (body_of_work) wrote in astor_ridge, @ 2011-02-21 15:56:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | bas, bas and kale, kale |
Who: Bas King and Kale
What: Teenage angst & daddy issues
Where: Sabre Tattoos
When: Backdated to Wednesday, after Joe & Bas fight
Rating: R for bad language, traitorous thoughts
Status: Nearly Complete
After his fight with his father, Bas left the apartment, furious, ignoring even Rose; insensible with outrage, insult, feeling close to murderous, he decided he wanted someone sympathetic, someone who would take his side. He wanted someone he loved like a father, but wasn’t Joe King.
He didn’t have the patience to wait for the elevator, so he took the stairs, skipping two at a time; by the time he reached the lobby, he was panting. The back of his shirt was sticking to him; he pulled at it impatiently, cursing his dad as he ducked out into the cold. He’d forgotten his jacket. Now he was freezing.
By the time he reached the tattoo shop, he was in a lather again, blaming his father not only for the fight but for the cold, his forgotten jacket, the distance of the shop from Astor Ridge, shitty drivers and bicyclists who don’t pay attention. Bas flung himself into the shop and flopped in one of the chairs for waiting customers, bouncing a leg with impatient anger as he shivered. He didn’t immediately see Kale.
He was in the middle of prepping a belly-button piercing for some newly 18 year old girl, when the receptionist who took calls and appointments for him and the other employees came into the back to let him know that there was someone to see him. As per usual, he asked who it was, and only actually turned to make eye contact with the young girl when she explained that it was Joe’s son, and that he looked, as she put it, ‘really pissed off about something’. He let out a sigh and just nodded, requesting that she let him know that he would be out in just a few minutes, finishing the process of snapping on the latex gloves before reaching out for the sterilized needle.
Nowadays, it was hard to tell whether or not someone telling him Bas looked ‘really pissed off about something’ meant there was actually something wrong, or if the kid had just woken up and found there was a hole in his favorite Abercrombie t-shirt. He was 18, and had an even shorter fuse than his father, and people found it much easier to walk on eggshells around him than tell him he was being a punk.
Kale, however, never had that issue – but at the same time, Kale had a much higher tolerance for his attitude than a lot of other people.
As Kale had promised the boy waiting out on the chairs, the piercing he was in the middle of didn’t take very long at all, and soon after the needle had been pushed through the skin, it was replaced by a decorative dangling jewel. After everything had been cleaned up, and the girl and her younger friend (she was 16 – he only knew this because she too had wanted to get the piercing done, but the fake I.D. she had brought with her was one of the least authentic he had seen in a while) were done squeaking about how ‘hot!’ the piercing looked, he directed her to the front desk to pay while he removed his gloves, re-washed his hands, and then grabbed his jacket as he walked up front. He spotted Basile as he was walking up, but stopped in with the receptionist to let her know that if anyone came in asking for him, that he would be right outside. When all that was taken care of, he stepped towards the door, already reaching into his pocket for his pack of cigarettes as he looked over to Bas, brows hoisted up.
“You coming or not, Bambi?”
He obviously had something to talk with him about, if he had come all the way to the shop, so he’d give him the benefit of some privacy.
“Don’t call me Bambi,” Bas huffed, and he rolled his eyes. The nickname, gained years and years ago, was one he kind of felt sentimental about -- but it was sort of babyish -- and Bas wanted to be a man, not a kid. Still, he followed Kale out, privately hoping the older man would offer him a cigarette. He was old enough to legally smoke -- it wouldn’t be like he was corrupting his mentor’s son.
Outside, he sort of half paced, half twitched in place, dying to erupt but trying to seem cool; he waited for Kale to ask him how he was or why he was here.
Kale didn’t take it to heart, that he reacted in such a way to the childhood nickname that had stuck with him for as long as he had known the twins. Actually, he completely expected it, but no matter how many times Bas tried to act like a tough guy and tell him to stop, he would always address him in such a way, at least while saying ‘hello’. Just as Rose had been ‘princess’ the entire time he had known her, her brother would always carry the name ‘Bambi’ with him, taken from the fact that the animated woodland creature had been called ‘little prince’ during the entire film, both inspired by their royal surname: King.
Lifting the cigarette to his lips, he took out his lighter and sparked it, igniting the opposite end of the white stick that wasn’t being held between his lips. He didn’t offer one to Bas, not because he thought he was too young, but because if the kid went home smelling like an ashtray and Joe asked where he had been, Kale didn’t want to be on the receiving end of one of his lectures. Besides, it wasn’t something he wanted to encourage. If he thought he could quit smoking, he’d do it in a heartbeat, but seeing how it was all he had left after everything else he had given up, his several million attempts at breaking the habit always ended up failing.
His back leaned up against the brick wall of the building, watching the boy squirm around. He knew what he was waiting for, and eventually let out a long sigh through his nose.
“…what happened?”
He said the words, partially to appease the boy so he would stop moving around like that (he was starting to make him dizzy), and also because he had genuine interest about what had prompted him to storm all the way to the shop and seek him out.
“My fucking father,” Bas snarled, spinning on his heel to face Kale. “The asshole accused me of some bullshit -- I mean, real bullshit -- so unbelievable--” Now that he had his chance to rail, he was stumbling over his point, losing his thread in the heat of his renewed anger. “--like, who the fuck does he think he is? I’m his fucking son, not some tool playing pranks because I’ve got nothing better to do!”
It didn’t strike him as surprising, that Basile’s fury had been stemmed by something that had happened with his father, since they were two completely different people. Looking at Joe King, no one would have ever picked Bas out of a line up if they were trying to figure out which was his son. The only thing that gave him away was this: the fiery temper and blind rage that came from the smallest of things.
That reminded Kale of the fact that he still didn’t know what happened - he just had bits and pieces of the whole story, which didn’t help him at all. So, he took another drag of his cigarette, flicked the ashes to the side, and adjusted himself against the wall as Bas continued to rant, a quirk of his brow occurring at the mention of ‘pranks’.
“What pranks?”
Kale’s question had the effect of centering him; Bas stopped short and made an exasperated noise. “I don’t know, someone from the shop ordered a metric ton of sex toys with Dad’s credit card.” His face darkened with rage again; an unfortunate effect as he simply flushed red, his fair complexion going splotchy, his freckles sticking out in stark relief.
“It’s some perv who thought it’d be funny to send that shit to Rose or some dick who thought Dad’s too uptight.” Privately, he agreed, but he didn’t dare say so aloud -- not even to Kale.
Kale was admittedly floored when he explained what had happened, trying to wrap his head around the idea that someone who worked at Sabre would use Joe’s credit card to by sex toys of all things, and have them sent to his home. He didn’t know who the fuck was stupid enough to pull a stunt like that, without knowing that castration would be in their near future when Joe got his hands on the son of a bitch who had been responsible.
Then his body tensed for reasons other than the cold, nerves prickled when the youngest King was mentioned – Joe’s only daughter, and Basile’s twin sister, Rose – and that brought out a whole new string of concerns.
“What makes you think it was someone from the shop?”
He shoved his free hand into the depth of his pocket, shoulders hunching defensively against a new breeze of frigid air passed by.
“And why do you think it would have anything to do with Rose?”
“What?” Bas frowned and shrugged, shivering in the cold. “Why wouldn’t it be about Rose? Why else would someone do something like that?” Now he wished he had asked Kale to meet him somewhere; without a jacket, it was nearly unbearable outside.
“Who else would have Dad’s credit card? I’m sure there’s a receipt around here--” He gestured at the shop. “--and some wiseass thought’d be hilarious to pull this shit. The thing is--” Now his voice lifted as he grew heated again, indignant. “--it might be funny, only, you know, pranking someone I knew. My Dad should know that -- why the fuck would I send it to the house?” Bas appealed to Kale. “Does Dad really think I’m such a tool I’d do something like this?” There was a kind of tight hurt in his voice that he hoped Kale couldn’t hear.
His shivering wasn’t something that went ignored by the older man, who was larger in stature than the teenager standing in front of him, but it wasn’t like he had any extra clothing laying around the shop, and he also knew that Bas had too much pride to admit that he was freezing. Hell, he might have even offered his own jacket to him if he didn’t so desperately need it. If Bas wanted to be treated like an adult, than he’d either bear the cold, or speak up about wanting to go somewhere else.
Kale was on the clock, but if it meant knowing that his dear friend’s son didn’t catch pneumonia because he was too hot headed to remember a coat in the middle of winter, he’d let the receptionist know he wouldn’t be around for however long it took to get to the bottom of this whole situation.
As much as he wanted to think that the twinge of emotion in his voice had been masked, Kale heard it loud and clear, and looked down to the sidewalk they were standing on. A few beats of silence passed by – another drag of his cigarette was taken while he mulled everything over, eventually lifting those deep, soulful eyes to hone his vision in on Bas. His task, at the moment, was to be the calm, cool, and collected one – which wasn’t anything new, for the tattooist.
“Think about this. You’re suggesting that someone here at the shop took your father’s credit card, and used it to play a practical joke on your Dad? I’ve known your father for almost 10 years now, and I can tell you with the utmost certainty that no one here would be stupid enough to fuck with your dad. Christ, Bas, the son of a bitch nearly popped a blood vessel last year when Jeannie switched out the sugar for the salt on April Fool’s.”
He took another drag of his cigarette, rolling it between his fingers as he looked down, exhaling another stream of silver smog into the air around them as he continued.
“You know how your Dad gets, kid… He acts on instinct, just like you do. Doesn’t matter how logical or illogical it is.”
Bas listened to Kale but he kept his gaze solidly on the sidewalk and his foot, scuffing against the wall of the tattoo shop. It annoyed him that he felt a kind of pride at Kale’s description of his father, even if he was convinced he hated the man, and he simply grunted in response to Kale’s argument.
But his head snapped up at Kale’s final observation, eyebrows furrowed, expression clearly confused. “And my Dad’s instinct is to blame me.” Bas spat out the words, disgusted, and he kicked at the wall. “Fuck -- why do I fucking bother?”
It was only when Bas kicked the wall like a child throwing a tantrum that his head snapped to look over at him, his stare a bit harder now that he was behaving like such a brat. “Do you want to know the real reason why he probably pinned this on your head?” He lifted his brows, and then turned his head away in order to take another drag of his cigarette before he pushed off of the wall with his elbows and turned to face him. It was strange, now, being at practically the same height as the boy who had at one point in his life only come up to his chest.
“He’s not thinking about the fact that you’re too smart to do something like that - way too fucking smart. He’s not thinking about the fact that if it was you, you would have known better than to use his fucking Credit Card, and send it home where Rose could even come close to any of that shit. He’s not thinking, right now – all he knows is that someone did it, someone who wouldn’t mind seeing him squirm for a while…and you have to actually ask why his first instinct was to blame you?” He scoffed. “Jesus, Basile, you butt heads with that man more than anyone I know – your temper is just as bad as his, and neither one of you likes to admit when you’re wrong… You think this is going to resolve anything? You think that throwing a fit and kicking buildings is going to make him see the error of his ways? Yeah, Bas, he was wrong - he shouldn’t have pointed the finger at you, it wasn’t your fault…but you need to get it through your head, that if you wanted to be treated like an adult, you need to act like one.”
Before he could make his rebuttle, Kale took a small step forward – not to be intimidating, but to make sure that he was still keeping eye contact. He wasn’t yelling at the boy - he wasn’t even scolding him, he was just trying to knock some sense into that thick head of his by giving him some perspective.
“You wanna be a lawyer – you wanna be in charge of explaining why other people are innocent, yet you can’t take the fucking time to figure out how to state your own case to your father…?”
Bas swallowed, feeling his usual thrill when Kale talked to him -- really talked to him, like a man, not a kid -- but he mentally wilted at the other man’s response. He felt an aggravating mix of terror and pride at Kale’s comparison of him to his father; he wanted nothing more than to embody Joe King’s pugnacious determination. But he didn’t like the overlap of less savory aspects of their personalities, and he frowned -- sulked really -- glowering under Kale’s speech.
Still, unwilling to back down an inch, he snarled: “I’m not throwing a fucking fit--” which he knew only confirmed Kale’s observation. Then he shrugged, shoulders sharp, hunching against the wind and the other man’s words.
“It’s not fair,” he finally spat out. “I shouldn’t have to argue my fucking case to my fucking father!” He knew he should stop, he knew he should just calm down but he couldn’t seem to think himself out of anything other then abject hatred for Joe King right now.
“You believe me, right? That I didn’t do it?” He lifted his eyes then, finding Kale’s, and he clenched his teeth to keep the worry from showing on his face.
His immediate reaction to deny the clear as day tantrum he had just been throwing was something that made Kale turn his head away as he took in another drag of his cigarette, taking a look around to kill the time before Bas would start going off again. He had known this kid since he was 8, which made him experienced on gauging the ups and downs he was prone to have – sometimes he was just pissed off because things weren’t going his way, which seemed to be most of the time nowadays, but then there were instances like this – instances where he felt truly slighted and wronged, and was just pissed off about it instead of actually doing anything to change it.
The smoke he had taken into his lungs would be exhaled as a heavy sigh through his nostrils, letting whatever remained get blown out into the wind out of the side of his mouth. His lips rolled under, listening – actually listening, to what Bas was saying, without any interruptions. He was staring down at the sidewalk, when the newest question was sent in his direction, though he hesitated a moment before those burnt honey and amber eyes connected with the hazel hues of Bas’.
“Yeah. I believe you.” He took another drag from the cigarette, and flicked it into the first pile of snow he could find, turning around to face him. “But what do you want me to do, Bas? Do you want me to talk to your Dad, have me be the one to argue your case? Look, I understand that it’s just the principle of the thing that’s getting you all riled up like this – but there’s no way to just magically make this go away. So how do we fix it?”
He wanted to see him go into ‘lawyer mode’ – he wanted to see how good he had gotten from his studies about analyzing situations, and picking them apart, and reassembling them so they worked to his advantage.
Bas let out a huff of relief, a held breath that had kept his chest tight with anxiety, at Kale’s affirmation that he believed him not to be the culprit. He missed the days when that was enough to get him off the hook; now, Kale’s challenge frustrated and annoyed him. The other man was right; but Bas didn’t want to exert any effort to calm down and think. He wanted to storm around some more and make sure his father knew how pissed he was.
But Kale’s use of ‘we’ bolstered him, and he glanced back at the other man, hesitant and cautious. “I don’t know,” he replied weakly, a mostly automatic response to buy some time. “I have to go back and talk to Dad but he doesn’t want to see me as much as I don’t want to see him.” A slight warble entered his voice -- a kind of emotional crack -- and Bas cleared his throat. “Even if I went in, apologized for blowing my shit, and explained I didn’t do it -- he’s not going to listen to me.” He got defensive again, arms folded tightly over his chest to ward off the cold and Kale’s calm logic.
That distinctive sound of someone trying to speak around a knot of emotion was detected in Basile’s extended reply. He didn’t know when it had happened, or even how, but over the last 10 years, he had become something of a personal therapist, or maybe even a counselor for the people who knew him. It was something he didn’t exactly understand, seeing how he wasn’t the most outstanding example of someone who always made the best choices, but all he could do was provide them with a bit of perspective, and more importantly listen to them. He usually didn’t like getting himself involved in other people’s business, but the Kings were like family to him, making it harder for him to ignore the sympathy he felt twisting in his stomach when Bas’ voice cracked the way it did.
It worried him, sometimes, how desperate Basile was to be a grown up, when he still had so much to experience as a kid - sure, he was 18 years old, so he was legally an adult, but he was still a teenager. It seemed like he expected so much from himself, like he put so much weight on his own shoulders, making everything seem so much harder than it had to be. It was also hard, for Kale to place himself in Basile’s shoes, and harder still to try and place himself in Joe’s. He had grown up without a father, and it wasn’t like he had any children of his own, so the whole father/son relationship was completely lost on him, aside from what he had witnessed when the twins were growing up. It didn’t help that he had also missed most of their teenage years because he and Nell had been traveling at that time…
“Than you gotta make him listen…and I don’t mean going in there running your mouth and talking over him, because that’s the sort of adolescent bullshit that’ll just piss him off. You want him to listen to you – you want him to respect you? Than you need to go back there and talk to him like a man…but you only get back as much as you give, Bas. You can’t just…expect things.”
He lifted his hands, placing them on either one of Bas’ shoulders, lifting his brows as he spoke.
“If you can prove to him that you’re someone who’s worthy of his respect, than I promise you, he’s not gonna be so quick to blame you for things when he’s got no one else to blame.”
Bas nodded miserably as he listened, trying to believe the older man. “Did--” He hazarded a look up at Kale, nervous. “--is that how it was when you met my dad?” If Kale had to do this, had to step carefully and speak smart, earn his father’s respect, then maybe it would feel like humiliating.
“I mean, he likes you--” There was a hint of pride, of pleasure, of admiration now, and Bas watched Kale closely, searching for a hint of some lie. “--you didn’t have to do anything to earn his respect?” He wasn’t sure what he wanted to hear: that it was different for Kale, or that he stood up to his father.
The initial question into what it was like for Kale when he first met his father caught him a little off guard, though he did partially expect him to question the validity of his advice. It wouldn’t have been fair of him to spew off ideas about how to handle this situation with his Dad without having the experience under his belt to back them up.
He dropped his eyes to the ground between them as he listened to what was being said, making sure to reconnect them with his after he had resumed speaking. The next question that came was something that caused Kale to snort – not out of amusement, but just because he was reflecting on just how much harder he had to work to earn Joe’s respect than Bas probably ever would. It wasn’t easy, to respect a kid who had been raised in one of the many slums of New York, who used to be a drug addict and had a mile-long juvenile criminal record.
“Bas, I was a fuckin’ punk when I first met your Dad, and he knew it. I had to work my ass off, every single day, to get to where I am now with him...but I’m also not his son.”
Bas shook his head, disbelieving Kale was anything but the man before him; and he growled: “So why’d you want to impress him?” His face screwed up with hurt ire. “He’s such a fucking asshole--I wouldn’t bother with him if I didn’t have to!” It felt like sacrilege, shouting that, as if his father were God and could hear him now. He braced himself for an answering thunderbolt.
“And that right there is your biggest fucking problem.” Kale was speaking as soon as the last syllable had left his lips, his hands moving from Bas’ shoulders. “You think I wanted to impress your Dad? You think I put all my time and energy into earning his respect, just to make him happy? Fuck that….” He pivoted away from Bas taking one or two steps in the other direction, one of his hands coming up to rub at his brow as he let out a heavy breath through his nose, trying to decompress before turning back around to face him.
“Do you have any idea, how lucky I was, to get the chance to work for your Dad? Shit, he nearly turned me down until he saw what I could do… I knew he had high expectations, I knew that he was, as you put it, an ‘asshole’ who wasn’t easy to please…but I didn’t try and earn his respect to make him happy. I did it because I wanted to prove to myself that I was fuckin’ worth it – that I wasn’t some screwed up kid. I thought to myself, ‘if I can get this man to respect me as much as I respect him, than maybe I’m not as screwed up as I think I am – as he thinks I am – as they all think I am.’”
He stared at the boy for a while longer before he stepped forward towards him again, slowly and almost cautiously.
“Get it out of your head, that you have to do anything. You can keep things the way they are now – you can be bullheaded, and stubborn, and you can keep lockin’ horns with your old man for the rest of your fuckin’ life - but if you aren’t even going to make the effort, to satisfy yourself, than you’re on your own.”
It was a novel -- and alarming -- suggestion, that he try to deal with his father in a way that made him happy rather than his father; and Bas stared at Kale with thinly veiled surprise. The fact that Kale looked up to his father was sort of in the back of his mind, had always been, but to have it explicitly spelled out made him angry -- at his father. Kale was probably the fucking coolest man he knew and Bas would give anything to have half his cojones. He refused to believe Kale wanted, of all the unbelievable things, to earn his father’s respect because it made him -- Kale -- happy.
“He’s not trying to fix things with me--” Bas started, reluctant to let go of the only card he had -- his father’s error -- and he made a pained, frustrated noise as he stretched his arms up, tucking his hands around the back of his head. “This fucking sucks--”
Kale was feeling worn, trying to argue the same thing in different ways with Basile, so he was glad when he cut himself off and just figuratively, and literally, threw his hands up. Kale let out a breath, rolling his lips under as he stood in silence for a moment before speaking again.
“I know.”
When Bas would eventually look back up at him, Kale tilted his head slightly, curious to see if this would be the end of the conversation they were handing. He really hoped it was, since he felt like they were going around in circles, and to help encourage them to move on, he gestured towards the shop.
“How about we go inside so you can warm up, since you’re shaking like a God damn leaf, and get your head on straight before you go storming off back to the war zone, hm?”