but do you feel like a young god? Who: BB & Daniel. What: Daniel complains about Chris, and BB sort of listens. Where: BB's apartment. When: Nov. 11.
BB lounged on her couch, her broken leg propped up on the storage box that passed for a coffee table. Her face looked like it'd been pounded into concrete for a few minutes solid, though her eyes were wide and bright and alert—her usual demeanor, despite the wounds. She tilted a glass of fruit juice down her throat as she listened to Daniel explain and complain about Chris's—the mysterious boyfriend, now ex, that he'd done his best to keep under wraps (well, mostly done his best, if his best was actually to keep her up at all hours, was BB's gauge on the situation) for the past couple of months—many sins following the Halloween party.
BB only half listened, mhm-ing in what seemed like the right areas, her hands gently fingering more bruises and cuts that were hidden under soft, comfy pajamas, despite the pant leg of her left shin being rolled up to accommodate her bright green cast. Her attention was more wholly fixed on the lightly roaring TV diagonally across from her, blaring Steven Universe—what she'd been watching until Daniel had shown up.
She held up her empty glass, mhm-ing again as Daniel made another complaint, and wiggled the vessel in midair. Her hand boasted a wide number of bruises in various colors, and some cuts, though none deep enough to leave a scar.
"Refill," she interrupted, without looking away from the screen.
"I feel like you're not even listening," Daniel said, more sullen than usual. All the same he took the glass from her hand, shuffling off to fulfill her demand. "Or is it just you're glad I'm not gonna be gettin' laid on the regular for a while? I'm so glad this has all worked out for you, but I'd appreciate some fuckin' support."
He trailed off, disappearing into the kitchen. The refrigerator door opened and closed, punctuating the steady stream of incoherent mumbling coming from the room. He returned in short order, looking no happier for his having completed his chore. "It'd be nice if you at least pretended to give a fuck, y'know."
"I do," BB replied, a little haughtily, her gaze swerving away from the screen. One hand lifted, counting out on fingers as her eyes rolled to the ceiling as she recounted everything Daniel had complained of during the last hour. "Asshole carried me into the room in a bag, said there were consequences for things people did, that your boyfriend—sorry, ex-boyfriend—was in cahoots with him, that probably everything between you guys was a lie. Though, I mean, I'm not upset that I'll be able to get some sleep, after all of this."
She motioned to her cast, and then reached for her juice. He set it directly into her hand, not withdrawing until he was certain her grasp was sure.
"So I'm guessing you didn't let sleeping dogs lie. What happened when you talked to him?" Pulling the glass toward her lips, BB's brow furrowed as she waited for her answer.
"Same shit, different day." He sat down on the sofa beside her, folding one leg and a bare foot beneath him. In his hand was a beer stolen from the fridge, something bottled whose label he had not even spared a glance. "We don't understand, we don't know the whole story, if we just trusted him... then he said some shit about Kal leaving him for Hawaii and Kal popped him one. He had it comin'."
He tipped the beer back. It did little to help him collect his thoughts, but once he had swallowed he started talking all the same. "I still don't know what the fuck he was thinkin'. I shouldn't even care."
BB shrugged, cradling her glass carefully between both hands.
"Yeah, he sounds like a douchebag. I mean, it only sounded like you two were having the best sex of your lives while you were keeping me up at night, but, eh, not like you can't get that again," she commented, teasingly, then took a quick sip. Daniel merely rolled his eyes. "OK, so you fucking care. You want me to tell you to dropkick him? Cause it sounds like that already happened and you're still messed up about it.
"Maybe you need to get laid," she offered, spreading one hand wide. "The whole, swap out one horse for another. Oh, wow, gross, why did I say that..." BB made a face. "You know, gotta say, though, if I was in his position, and I knew everything was comin' down and the two people I was most scared of hearing it from cornered me, I think I'd be a lil' defensive too." She shrugged again, taking another sip.
"Don't you fuckin' take his side," Daniel snapped. "He sold you out, too, y'know. All this?" He waved at BB, a single broad gesture to encompass her many injuries. "His fault. He knew about all this shit since before we even moved in. Every fuckin' second with him, every word he said, was total bullshit." He shook his head. His hand tightened around his beer. "He doesn't get to be defensive. He gets to lay in the fuckin' bed he made. Alone."
"Mhm, def sounds like you want him to be alone," BB returned, then sighed heavily, rolling her eyes. "I can't believe I'm the one about to say this, but Chris didn't hold a fuckin' gun to my head and deliver me to that asshole living at the top of our building. I went up there, by myself I might add," she said, giving Daniel a long, mostly teasing glare, "because I'm impatient and too curious for my own good. You think this is the first time I broke a bone? Fuck no."
She drained her glass to the halfway mark. "And besides, you don't even know what it is he knows. It sounds like you both dropped in on him cause you were mad and scared and needed to fucking vent. Which, like, I don't blame you. It was fuckin' scary, though I'm disappointed I missed out. What a time to be unconscious..." She clicked her tongue, shaking her head.
"But am I saying you should forget it all and just, I dunno, forgive and forget? Fuck no. He lied. And that's fucking shitty as fuck. It sounds like he deserves more than just a broken nose," she ended with, swirling her glass as Steven and the gems fought their way through another temple, seeking more answers regarding their joined past.
Daniel grunted a non-response. As she had spoken he had picked off about three-quarters of the bottle's label. Scraps of it had fallen to his lap, a little snowfall of blue and white confetti against the dark denim of his jeans. At last his bitten nails stilled, at least for a moment.
"You went up there," he said, "because you wanted answers. Answers Chris has. That he's always had. And withheld, over and over, in spite of me and Kal both asking him point blank what was goin' on, and always offerin' to help him." He turned in his seat, openly staring now. His hands subtly shook, so he tightened them on the now empty bottle. "You could've died, BB. We all could've. If he really l— gave a fuck about me, he wouldn't have put us in that spot."
BB's brows drew up, her ears catching the word Daniel had almost dropped. But she didn't press it, didn't start singing some ridiculous song like "Chris and Daniel, sittin' in a tree..." Her mental ears were piqued in a different direction.
"All right then, spill," she said. "What's he know about all of this? What'd you guys find out?"
"A whole lot of nothin'," Daniel admitted. "He claims he didn't tell werewolf-dude anything about us, but I don't believe that. And everything else he said was just justification for his bullshit, so." He shrugged. Leaning forward, he set the empty bottle on the floor beside the couch. "I moved in in February. He said it's been goin' on since before that. Now you know as much as I do."
BB's head skewed sideways, her arms flying out, making juice spill everywhere. Daniel started as droplets rained down on his clothes, wetting the shreds of paper that still dusted his jeans.
"That's it?" She stared at him like he'd grown a second head. "Why didn't you get more out of him?? Jeebus, Daniel, now I went all the way up there for nothing?"
She groaned, loudly and dramatically, shaking her head. She kept her arms splayed, bent at the elbows, rising up from her seat a little as she tried to edge away from the spilled juice. "Also, I need paper towels. Stat. We've still gotta actually check out the tower, you know? Maybe give you something to do, keep your mind off of the fact that you're not getting your dick wet anymore."
"Hey, fuck you," Daniel snarled. For emphasis he flipped her off, though he rose from the couch and went to procure paper towels for them both. "I asked, several times, but then he picked a fight with Kal and it all went to shit more than it already had. Sorry I was too busy watchin' my fuckin' relationship explode, I really should'a remembered hey! BB will have questions later. What was I thinking." The volume of his steady stream of complaints fell and rose again as he moved through the kitchen, then returned to the couch, paper towels in hand. He threw the entire roll at BB, letting it land with a thump against her chest. She clutched it without a second thought, and immediately started blotting up the spilled juice.
"We're not going to that tower until you can walk," he insisted. "And we're not going without a full group of people. Everybody in the building we trust, and can get to come with us. OK?"
BB sighed, but nodded. "Yeah, whatever. I mean, everyone's gonna want to, like, see for themselves. And then maybe everybody'll apologize for calling me crazy about the fucking spa day this weird-ass place offered us." For a brief moment, she concentrated solely on the spilled juice, her cast-encased leg sliding to the floor as she scooted down her couch. She held a pile of the used papers in her hands for a second, her gaze landing on Daniel as her expression turned thoughtful.
"Look, I'm sorry, OK? It sucks. Believe me, I know. I'm still trying to figure out where Alice and I even stand, if we stand anywhere or anything. But the one thing I know is if she gave me a second chance, I'd take it. Not, like, to try and get into her pants again or anything, but I miss being friends. What I did was shitty, what he did is shitty... But maybe he was like me, and he was just..." She shrugged. "He was doing what he could, how he could. Doesn't excuse it, but it explains shit, kind of?" Her hands rose, offering the garbage out to him so he could add it to the growing pile in the kitchen.
"Also, I think the trash needs to be taken out."
"You're a fuckin' chore sometimes, you know that?" BB merely grinned in reply. His voice had grown almost imperceptibly softer, and he took the soiled towels from her all the same. His shoulders sagged, his steps slower than before as he went back to the kitchen. No further complaints wafted out from the room; she heard only the sounds of his collecting the trash, carefully tying it off and replacing the bin bag.
"I'll be right back," he said, and disappeared into the hall.
Twenty minutes passed before he returned. He looked less angry than before, but less energetic, too, as though his rage, once gone, had left only a void in its wake. He stopped by the kitchen on his way to the living room, a fresh beer in his hand. He sat down beside her and drank from the bottle, still silent, still mulling over everything she had said.
"So what did you see up there?" he finally asked.
"Not much," she replied, stretching out for where she'd placed the remnants of her juice glass, setting that down on another surface so she could put her cast back on the storage box. "Lotta computers. Some screens, this really creepy looking chair. Like, dentist office chair but if it were more of a horror movie." BB frowned, plucking up her glass again and draining it. She let the butt of the empty glass settle against her stomach as she leaned into the couch, half glancing at the forgotten TV.
"Didn't even get a good look at... you know, the guy. I guess our landlord from hell, or however you wanna frame it. You said he looked like a goddamn wolf at the party?" BB turned directly toward Daniel, her brows drawn together over her eyes.
He nodded, glazed eyes staring off into some middle distance. "Like a werewolf, straight off a movie set. Hairy hands, claws, the whole nine yards. His name is—was—Savoy. He ran outside with Obed and Isobel hot on his heels, but I dunno what happened after that. Nothin' good, judging by how Obed and Isobel looked when we finally got out to the lobby.
"It honestly would'a been nice if he'd done some villain-style monologue, but he didn't say much that's helpful. Chris was helpin' him, but I guess he had others workin' for him, too. Doin' what, I dunno." He gestured with his beer bottle, an idea coming to him. "Whoever worked at the spa, I guess? Maybe others." He chewed his tongue, remembering too late Savoy's implication that Chris had not been entirely helpful to him. He ignored the faint flush that rose in the wake of this recollection.
"Anyway, you really did miss a show. Your friend June actually turned into a bird."
"You're shitting me!" BB laughed. "Seriously? What'd you—" Her memory answered her own question. She pointed a finger in his direction. "And you were Ares, again, huh? Shit. How's it feel to be a Greek god, literally? I'm sure there's plenty of guys and girls who'd write home about getting to fuck a god of war, you know. Lining up and down the block."
A sharp laugh broke free of him; his lip curled in a rakish but quickly faded smirk. "Yeah, maybe. I dunno." He rubbed at his nape, embarrassed and finding it increasingly difficult to untangle the threads of how he felt about all this. "It feels good, but it's… there's no control, y'know? Ares just did what he—we? I dunno—wanted, and I was just along for the ride. Thank God he was only thinkin' about you. And June, she was right there, too, clawin' this big snake's eyes out…"
He laughed again, interrupting himself. "Chris was Coyote, fur and all. And when we got out to the lobby he an' June were both naked as jaybirds, right there in front of the paramedics and Isobel and everydamnbody."
BB giggled at the mental image, sorely upset that she'd missed the whole thing; one thing she did not miss was the way Daniel's face and tone changed whenever he spoke of Chris. She pushed in the other direction.
"You know, I was doing some reading—big shock, I know, don't give me that fucking look—and Eris and Ares are actually siblings in their fucking pantheon... Well, like, depending on which version you go with. But how's that? No wonder he was so worried about getting my cute butt to safety. And now you can get my cute butt some more juice. Please," she added in a proactive attempt to dissuade more pouting on his part. In emphasis, she rounded out her bottom lip, making her eyes as wide as she could.
"What, so you can spill it all over me? Sure, why not." He made a show of struggling out of his seat, where he had only just gotten comfortable. He did not, however, make even the slightest effort to pick up the trail of label scraps that marked his earlier paths to and from the kitchen. He returned in a moment, a fresh beer for himself in one hand, the entire carton of juice in the other. He handed the carton to her as he sat, retrieving his already-open bottle to join his new one.
A beer in each hand, he now felt slightly more prepared for the remainder of this conversation, and the next set of chores she might assign to him. "I'm not surprised they're related," he said. "They're kinda similar. I mean, so are we. But when you were hurt… he was as pissed as I was. He didn't give a fuck about any of it… not the snake, the werewolf, the fuckin' lava... it was really somethin'. Felt really good, even if I was worried about you the whole time."
Despite having just asked for the juice, BB immediately put it down, seemingly happy just to give someone else orders and have them complied with.
"Sounds like I really missed out. Those dreams with Eris were... bizarre, to say the freakin' least, though I won't lie and say I miss having a crab arm." She burrowed back into the couch, turning slightly sideways.
"Guess it's good I had you around then, since I'm sure Gus and Alice..." The side of her mouth quirked, realizing how uncharitable she was being toward two people she'd hurt and been hurt by in return. "Did either of them say anything? When I went missing?" The hopeful note in her voice was unmistakeable.
"I um…" His nose wrinkled. It was readily apparent he did not want to answer, at least not truthfully. "Not to me. But that doesn't mean they didn't say something to somebody, you know? But if it helps, I mean I couldn't see a lot before everything went to hell, but when Alice saw you…" He shook his head, a frown playing on his lips. "She was upset. You should try to talk to her. I'm sure she'll be glad to know you're… doin' better? Not sure if OK is the right word…"
BB quickly masked any disappointment with a swift nod.
"Well, guess it's good I'm finding more brothers than I, like, seriously need," she said, grinning. "Also, I hope you cleared your schedule, because you are definitely staying here with me, all day, because you so totally owe me. But I'll be nice—you can pick the movie. Labyrinth or The Dark Crystal?" She pointed toward the small set the TV stood on, which held a number of ridiculously titled films that looked like children's nightmares put on DVD.
"Labyrinth," he said. "Bowie fixes everything."
This time, she did not even have to ask. Daniel stood yet again, moving toward the TV table and the gathered DVDs there. He found the movie in question and proceeded to set it up, finding himself more grateful than he would have expected to have something other than himself to focus on for a while.