Cristobal Rodriguez ♦ Coyote (![]() ![]() @ 2017-12-01 12:51:00 |
![]() |
|||
![]() |
|
![]() |
|
![]() |
Entry tags: | ares, coyote, maui |
what you gonna do when it all comes out
Who: Kal, Daniel, & Chris.
What: Kal and Daniel have some questions for Chris following the events of the Halloween party.
Where: Chris's apartment.
When: Nov. 1, early morning.
Chris sat at his dining room table, drinking. Daniel had rushed off, gratefully getting BB to the hospital and the help she so desperately needed; Kal had remained silent, getting blankets from the paramedics before they left to clothe Chris and June's naked forms following their transformations. The elevator ride back up to their respective apartments was stone cold silent; Chris had carefully kept his eyes trained on the floor and, perhaps wisely, said nothing other than his one quip following their exit from the party room.
Fingers clasped around a cold beer (his fifth of the night, the bottle's siblings scattered around the table), Chris's vision swam. The longer he waited for people to appear, asking questions, the more anxious he felt; drinking had seemed like the only logical solution. After all, they would appear, eventually. Kal, angry, Daniel, possibly even angrier; who knew who else. Chris's carefully stacked deck of cards was tumbling down, and though he'd turned possibilities over and over in his head, the longer he was left to wait in the hot seat, the less sure he was of how to handle everything.
He kept trying to think of why Savoy had done this to him, why he'd outed him in such a theatrical fashion. It felt like sheer spite, really, not something to meet an end. What was the point? Maybe there wasn't one, just like he hadn't known why he was doing what he'd been doing for nearly the past year. All he could think was, shit, I did this again. All over again. History really does repeat itself, dunnit?
Turning the thoughts over and over in his brain, he nearly missed the first knock when it came. But another followed close behind, and another, each one harder and harsher than the one before. Daniel stood on the other side, silently fuming, feeling angrier and more helpless with every passing second.
"Open the fuckin' door, Chris," he shouted, "before I fuckin' kick it down."
It was what triggered Kal to finally leave his apartment and face off with Chris’s door. Daniel’s anger seemed to both comfort and urge Kal on; he was glad he wasn’t the only one angry, but seeing that Chris had angered Daniel too reminded him that what Chris had done had endangered them all, which only made his anger increase.
“You talk to him at all yet?” Kal asked as he stepped out of his apartment, the scent of a different weed hanging on his clothes--something that was meant to take the edge of anger off but didn’t seem to help at all. He crossed his arms and approached his friend. “Because I haven’t seen him or spoken to him since last night.”
"Me neither," Daniel grumbled, pausing briefly in his noisy knocking. He gestured down to his tee shirt and jeans, both rumpled from long hours spent in uncomfortable chairs. "Been at the hospital all night, but they won't tell me shit about BB since we're not related. That and they probably think I had somethin' to do with it, since 'a guy turned into a fuckin' werewolf' doesn't seem like a reasonable explanation for what happened to her, and I'm not sure they bought my 'she got mugged, I think' bullshit."
He returned to his knocking, scowling at the door. "Last chance," he yelled.
Chris sat frozen in his chair, unable to deal with the confrontation that had finally landed at his door. Part of him wondered if Daniel would, in fact, attempt to break down the obstruction in his path, and then a more lucid, intelligent part of his brain told him to get his ass up because he didn't need to test that theory.
"Relajarse," he called out, the smarter part of his brain forgetting to remind him to keep it in English. He rose from the chair unsteadily and made his way to the door; at the sight of both Daniel and Kal, he sucked in a breath, despite having heard Kal's voice only moments before. He stared at them for a brief minute, uncertain, before finally pulling the door wide and gesturing vaguely with one hand for them to come inside.
"You guys... you want a beer, or something?" He tried, weakly, testing to see if there was any goodwill that might somehow find its way to him.
“Save the beer for yourself,” Kal grumbled as he took his opportunity to push through the door and into Chris’ apartment. He looked around it as if there would be some sign of Chris’ betrayal but saw nothing. “You have a lot of explaining to fucking do. So sit down and start talking."
"And this time," Daniel snapped, "try not to leave a bunch of shit out."
His face was hot, a dusky flush that darkened his skin to the very tips of his ears. He was angry and it showed; but so, too, did his embarrassment, the shame of having been lied to for so very long, and having never so much as suspected.
"How long?" he asked, impatient as ever, even as he told himself he did not want to know the answer.
Chris lingered by the door, clearly torn between wanting to dip out and avoid this confrontation altogether. To his credit, his gaze only wandered out once, for a brief moment, but then he was swinging the door closed, turning his back to it. His eyes, however, stayed on the floor. Part of him wanted to play dumb, to ask what Daniel meant, but he knew precisely what information these two had turned up for.
"Ah... since we've been living here. Before, a little." That same gaze started to drift up, watching for reactions, feeling unsteady due to both his drinking and his leg; at least the former nullified the pain of the latter. He paused, sucking in a breath, trying to think of how much or how little he should reveal, and what would cause him to lose the least.
Kal’s brows furrowed as he turned his attention fully on Chris and stepped closer to his friend. “Are you fucking serious? After all that bullshit about gangs, all the fucking secrets, all your fucking promises. You’ve been fucking lying to us the entire time? You’ve let us stay here? You’ve let me invite kuku here when who the fuck knows what could be happening next? Are you fucking kidding me, Chris?”
"I fucking told you," Chris started, his eyes unwavering as they swing in Kal's direction. "I told you that moving here wasn't a good idea. So don't fucking tell me about lying on that, Kal, because I fucking said—" His hands started up, fingers clenching into fists before releasing them as he tried to keep his cool.
"Look, it's just like I said before, I... There's just things I can't—"
"No." Daniel balled his fists at his sides. His nails bit into his palms, already threatening to draw blood. "It's way too fuckin' late for that, Chris. There is nothing—" He dragged out the word, a snarl of a thing— "And I mean nothing, that you can't tell us now. What did you tell him about us? About me? Fuck, Chris, did you ever give a fuck about me, or was this just part of you helping him? Makin' sure I stayed here?" His voice, already ragged and strained, cracked altogether. "What?!"
"Fuck, no," he started, swinging back to Daniel, a pleading note in his voice. "I mean, yes, I gave a shit! I give a shit, about both of you, I just, I didn't want to go to jail, OK? I'm allowed to have a little fucking self-preservation, but I—"
“How many times have we both told you to be honest with us? How many times have we said we want to help you? You told us about the fucking gang but you keep this hidden? And saying not to move in here is not the fucking same thing as telling us you’re working for some god damn werewolf and feeding him information on us! And if not us, what about the rest of the people in this complex? There are couples here, people who are practically kids, and you live here amongst them all? What are you doing watching all of our downfalls?”
"There were kids here," Daniel said. His eyes widened, then narrowed just as quickly, as though he might somehow stare deep enough into Chris to see his most hidden motivations. "That little girl. She could've died here, Chris, all the shit that's gone on, and you still didn't say a word. Thank God they left before you could fuck them over, too."
His shoulders squared, his chin upraised, he took a step toward the man he had thought he had known. He jabbed an index finger into Chris's chest, glaring down at him. "What," he demanded, "did you fuckin' tell him about us? And what did he do with that?"
Chris's jaw ground, his head pounding. It was all happening exactly as he feared; even if he did say something, it seemed unlikely that they'd believe him. The battle was already lost, so what was the point of fighting?
"Nothing," he said, somewhat sarcastically. "But this isn't even a discussion, is it? You're both just here to blame me, regardless of what I've done. Maybe, maybe if you'd had just the slightest bit of trust, if you'd fucking understood the goddamn position I've been in—"
“Trust?” Kal rounded, nearly spitting the word out. “We did trust you! We believed that when you told us everything it was actually everything. We were the fucking idiots who believed you told us everything while you sat there, watching me try to find that little girl. When you sat back and acted just as surprised as we did with all the fucking changes in this place. You played right along when at any point you could have been honest with us. We could have helped you, we have always been here trying to help you.”
"Fucking bullshit," Chris said back, his attention wholly on Kal, his lips curled into a sneer. With each accusation, his voice rose until he was almost yelling. "You wanna talk about fucking help? What fucking help was it when you ran off to Hawaii, huh? Couldn't fucking stick around here, no, always at your fucking grandmother's beck and call, huh? You wanna say you've been here for me, Kal? Because you fucking haven't done shit to help me other than put me in the fucking position to be where we are right fucking now, you got that? If you wanna lay blame on anyone, it's you."
Kal’s fist met Chris’s nose before any of the men realized it was happening. It was such an automatic, mindless emotion for Kal that he didn’t realize it had happened until he felt the spark of pain in his hand after it met Chris’s nose squarely. Chris fell back, his hands going to his face, but blood was immediately visible as it dripped down his chin and onto the floor. “How fucking dare you,” Kal growled, advancing on Chris and breathing down at the smaller man. “How fucking dare you say that. I thought you knew me, I thought I fucking knew you, but that was all wrong. Say something like that again. Fucking do it and see what happens.”
A day earlier, an hour earlier, Daniel would have stepped between them, would've shoved Kal back and dared him to make good on his threat. Now he only stood and watched, his jaw set, his mouth a hard, thin line. A riot of emotion played over his face. His silence, rare as it was, had a heavy weight all its own.
"Fuck," Chris spat, his voice nasally as he fell back against the wall. "Fuck!"
He pulled one hand away from his nose, glancing down at the blood all over his palm. His nose stung; it wasn't the worst pain he'd ever experienced, but neither was it comfortable. Chris glared at Kal, then Daniel, and then back to the reason for his likely broken nose.
"Just fucking leave, all right? If I'm such a fucking liability, just fucking go." He leaned back against the wall, playing up a helpless vibe so they'd finally leave him be.
Kal leaned closer, his eyes boring into Chris’s. “Fine,” He growled before stepping away and passing Daniel to throw open the apartment door, leaving it to swing back hard enough that it creaked. “Enjoy your fucking life, Chris, and the perfection you fucking created.”
Daniel's gaze lingered on Chris even as Kal swept past him. For a moment it seemed as though he might speak. Chris kept his gaze, pushing off from the wall, one hand nearly outstretched in a pleading gesture. Then Daniel's parted lips closed once more, and he turned away. His anger was still there, boiling just below the surface, but even that could not distract him from the simple hurt he felt. He left the room without a single glance back, his palms dotted with blood from his own clenched fists.
Chris watched them go, his door still open as both men filtered out into the hallway and out of sight. Despite having told them to leave, Chris felt his stomach drop out. He stumbled forward enough to shut the door, leaning against the closed entryway, gently fingering his nose as he tried to pull his addled and alcohol-laced thoughts together enough to think of what he should do next.
Tears stung in his eyes, but he refused them, instead moving to the table to collect the phone lying there; his wallet and keys came to hand next, left elsewhere throughout his apartment, and then he waited merely long enough to ensure there was no one in the hallway before he left.