sweetchaos (sweetchaos) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2019-10-19 21:14:00 |
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Entry tags: | #january 2018, caden, caden x max, max |
Who: Caden and Max
Where: Back Porch Pub
When: Thursday afternoon, 01/05
Status: Complete
Max could honestly say that the last week had been the worst week of his life and that was saying something considering he'd just spent two years in prison. Those two years had been mostly boring but this last week... Well. After stupidly heading out of Alex's place he'd been careful to follow the wall but that hadn't mattered in the end. Something grabbed him by the ankle and dragged him what felt like hundreds of feet away from the building before flinging him against a car, his leg busted up and his adrenaline spiking so hard that he ran despite the pain. He'd ended up in a car somewhere, not sure whose car it was or why it was unlocked but it was shelter and he'd stayed there for what had been the longest twenty hours of his life. He'd drifted in and out of consciousness, cold and shaking despite the warm clothes he was wearing. Time had become some abstract concept that didn't apply to him and more than once he'd woken up and thought for sure he was in some limbo.
It wasn't until early Thursday morning that the fog lifted and Knox appeared outside of the car like a guardian angel, waking him up and bringing him back to reality. Max had been dehydrated and near-delirious from blood loss but he refused to go to the hospital. His sister was a powerful witch, he really didn't need some damn doctor poking him. Fortunately Knox agreed with him and took him home to be treated by not one, but two witches. It turned out terrifying shit helped with getting Patrick sober enough to be useful. Since then he'd mostly slept. Shayna Mae gave him some herbal medicine and - save for Saturday, which had been a completely different sort of torture - he'd been feeling okay.
He was healing fast now and he contributed that to his family's powers so it didn't feel that weird to him. He didn't live with three witches and not gain anything from it at least. Things at home were really weird this week but that... was a whole other story. It was Thursday, he felt like himself again and the pain was gone so he wanted to do what he'd been meaning to do since he got home - go out, catch up with people and not think about all the bullshit that seemed to so easily accumulate in his life.
He headed for the Back Porch Pub where an old friend of his worked. Or used to work, could Max take anything for granted anymore? So much had changed while he was gone and if he was honest with himself, he was a little scared the fog would return while he was out and about and vulnerable by himself. At least he'd be stuck at a bar this time, that was a small mercy.
Caden had opened the bar and was finishing up the last couple of hours of his shift before Gavin arrived. His knuckles were swollen and sore from where he had hit his father, but it was a good kind of pain. The bar itself was a bit quiet. There were two men at the bar and a couple of people scattered around at various tables, watching ESPN. He had just restocked a couple of bottles of top-shelf liquor when the door opened and a quick chill breezed inside. Caden turned back to see who had walked in - he was half-expecting Joseph to come by, probably with a gun - but he was stunned for a moment to see Max O'Reilly. "Holy shit," Caden said with a grin. "Thought you were in prison."
"And you weren't wrong, for a while," Max said with a grin and at least that felt familiar, neither Caden nor the bar had really changed so for a moment there was a sense of that normalcy he so needed. "You'd be wrong now though," he added jovially and started peeling off the layers of winter clothing to hang them up before grabbing a seat at the bar. "I feel like I'm entitled to one on the house as an incentive to keep me coming here," he chuckled and held out his hand for Caden for their usual slap instead of handshake routine. "How've you been, man?"
Caden chuckled and reached over to go through their usual routine of greeting before reaching down to grab a glass. "I guess you deserve to have one on the house for bustin' out." He was mostly joking. He was guessing Max wouldn't come back to his hometown if he was on the run. No one was that stupid. "I've been good though. Pretty much the same old shit since the last time you were here. What'd you want on tap?" He probably could have mentioned being engaged to Roxy, but he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to talk about all of that right now.
It was always a gamble whether he could get shit from Caden so Max counted this as a win, his smile widening a little, "Porter sounds good," he said but his smile faded a second later when Caden started prepping his drink. It was hard to miss that two fingers were missing off his left hand and while the bruising on the knuckles of his right weren't anything Max hadn't seen before, he knew for sure Caden'd had all his fingers two years ago. He frowned slightly, his expression somewhat bemused. Caden didn't like a fuss, Max knew that much, but how could he not ask? "Looks like you left a couple of digits at home," he said but not until his drink was safely on the table in front of him. "What the fuck happened?"
Caden cocked a brow but didn't bother looking down at his hand, though the instinct was there. "Just had an accident, man. I'm fine. What about you though? What'd you get thrown away for?" There was the Point Pleasant rumor mill, of course, but Caden rarely listened to that shit, and frankly, he didn't usually buy into anything the drunks in this bar bitched about. Caden occasionally saw Max's brother and sister around town, but he didn't know them well enough to stop and ask about Max. So he really had no idea why Max had gotten arrested in the first place.
"Was doing a job up in Caribou," Max replied, not surprised or very bothered by the fact that Caden didn't want to talk about it. He probably wouldn't want to talk about something like that either and he knew his buddy well enough to know when to back up. Some things you didn't rub in. "Either someone ratted me out or they got lucky because I did everything right. Empty house, scoped it out beforehand, figured out the security real easy and yet... here we are." He couldn't shake the feeling someone had wanted him put away for whatever reason, it wasn't like Max hadn't ruffled some feathers in the past. "But now I'm back. Home sweet home, just in time to get ripped into by some fucked up thing in the fog."
"From one prison to another," Caden said. They had been lucky enough to avoid prison, he and his brothers, but shit happened. Sometimes he thought if he got put away and was released, would he come back here? If the opportunity presented itself to get out of Point Pleasant, would he take it? Damn, it was tempting. "You got a job lined up and everything?" He figured Max was back at home with his family, and he had no idea how long his friend would actually stay, but hell, at least Caden had someone else to grab a beer with in this place that he had no blood relation to. "You need something to do?"
"This is my only future plan for the moment," Max admitted, tapping his fingernail against his pint of beer. "And that's how I like it." Yeah, he needed a job, especially if he was going to get his bike back, but the only good job in Max's mind was one that was minimum effort and rarely legal. Of course Caden could line up jobs like that so that wasn't to say Max wasn't interested in what he might have to offer. "I should probably get busy with something before my sister gets me working the farm." It was the dead of winter but Shayna Mae always had something going on though she wouldn't want anyone else meddling with her herbs.
Caden grinned. "Yeah, workin' with family... what a blessing." Since it was slow in the bar, Caden began to pour himself a pint to drink with Max. "We've got some stuff, if you need the cash. Nothing too strenuous. Might need a car, but..." He assumed Max had one, or could borrow one from his family. "If you don't find anything better, that is," he said with a look before he lifted his glass to take a sip of the lager. "Unless you sister makes you stay on the farm, of course. How she doin', by the way?"
"I could always take on a few extra jobs," Max replied before sipping his beer. He knew damn well what kind of work Caden was talking about and anywhere but Point Pleasant he wouldn't take that risk but it was different here. He was home, the magic was stronger and everything felt more fated. "And shit, I don't know man. Things at home are weird right now. Aidan brought some chick home and she won't leave, Shayna Mae is pissy about it, Aidan's being dumb about it in that way you only get stupid about tits so I don't know. At least the house is big. How about you? You and Roxy still a thing or you got a new someone?"
Caden cocked a brow and smirked. He knew all about getting dumb about tits. But hell, his family couldn't be the only dysfunctional one in this damn town. It made him feel better in a weird way to know they weren't. "We're still a thing," he answered after a brief moment of hesitation. "Got engaged on Christmas." That felt like ages ago, to be honest, but Roxy hadn't started pushing for wedding planning or a date or anything, so it was okay. "What about you, though? You got someone waiting on you in town somewhere?"
Max quirked a brow because that was big news and yet Caden told him in such a dismissive manner, like it was no thing at all. He could make all sorts of jokes about how he was pussywhipped or brainwashed but it seemed like Caden had been through a lot while Max was gone. Missing fingers, engagement, Max wasn't going to say shit about it. "I was gonna drop in on Jordan when the fog hit," he said instead with a wry little laugh. "Wouldn't have been bad waiting it out with her but she'd moved out so I ended up stuck with some new kid. So no, nobody waiting. I did get a warm welcome home though so I'm good."
"Oh damn," Caden said, grinning. "Would've been nice to be stuck for a few days with a lady. I was, but not the kind of lady I would've fucked." Zania had been fucking crazy - in a witch kind of way - and way too chatty for his liking. But she had been hospitable enough and hadn't kicked him out, so he wouldn't complain about it. "Sorry to hear about Jordan, though. Guess you're going to have to charm a new lady to give it up on a regular basis." He nearly pointed out Jocelyn to Max, but she was a good waitress and he didn't feel like potentially starting any drama within the bar. Some women couldn't help themselves.
"Guess I gotta," Max chuckled, even if he hadn't felt up to any such shenanigans for a while, things had just been fuckered. "So who'd you get stuck with?" It couldn't have been worse than lying in a car, delirious with pain and exhaustion but fuck did he not want to get into all that. "Anyone I know?" He'd always been a bit amazed at how loyal Caden was to Roxy throughout the years in the sense that he didn't cheat on her but there were still plenty of girls Caden thought were fuckable. They'd been to plenty of strip clubs together and it was rare that Caden didn't like a dancer.
"Oh, shit, man... Zania Castell? She owns some spice shop in town." She was also a witch and roasted a shit ton of spiders. But Caden wasn't sure he wanted to talk about that. Especially not out here where other people could overhear. Zania was good looking in an unconventional kind of way. He didn't like her hair much, but he had no desire to fuck her, so it didn't really matter. "I couldn't fuckin' drive anywhere else, so we were stuck in there for a while. Nothing too bad. "She was... different."
"She's friends with my sister," Max said with a little grin. "I'd have preferred being stuck with her than that guy who's living at Jordan's old place." Alex had been nice and all, Max still needed to bring his winter clothes back to him, but it hadn't been fun. Maybe if it had been more fun he'd have stayed inside and not gotten himself hurt. "She had a kickass Christmas party going on the night I got home." The thought of that made him grin because that night he'd had sex with a woman for the first time in two years and it had been damn good. The crowd had been fitting for a Castell party, just a bunch of weirdos and Max had had a good time. Caden would not have fit in there at all though.
Caden had no issue with her, but he knew right off the bat that if Zania and Shayna Mae were friends, then Caden realized his instinctive reaction to her had been the right one. They just weren't his kind of people. Not that there was a lot of people who were. He sipped his beer and cocked a brow at the grin on his friend's face. Parties sounded like a chore to him, especially Christmas parties, so for him, there would have had to have been plenty of alcohol or pussy involved for him to consider it 'kickass'. "Yeah? You two fuck or something? She looks like she'd be the psycho in bed type."
"I wouldn't know," Max said with a little laugh. "It's often the quiet vanilla ones who are the biggest freaks in bed though, but no, I haven't fucked her." He tried not to fuck with witches if he could, one wrong move and they'd make his life miserable and he had enough trouble with women without adding hexes to the list. "So how's the family? Your brothers okay? Your dad dead yet? Your sister still AWOL?" You didn't often talk shit about people's families to their faces but it was different with Caden; his dad was a piece of shit and always had been.
"Yeah, my brothers are my fine. Aaron ended up in the hospital thanks to his girlfriend a few weeks back, but he's doing better. Gavin's... Gavin. He and Ollie finally got divorced, now he's fuckin' Charlie Harris. Kat... hell, I don't know. I haven't spoken to her in a while." Caden shrugged. He had no desire to talk about his dad, or even his mom. Max knew enough about his family to know that shit never changed. "Are you going to stay livin' out there in the woods? Or come join us down here in the land of the living?"
With anyone else, Max might have asked what the hell had happened with Aaron's girlfriend but this was the Lucas brothers they were talking about and while Aaron was generally the sweetest one of them, he was bound to feel some of that good old Lucas curse. He sipped his drink as he thought about it and shrugged. "I'm staying a while with the family, dad's in a rough shape." And he was broke as fuck - that was the deciding factor here here and when he did get money in, getting a new place wasn't a priority. "Everything's changed so much since mom died. Shayna's like this matriarchal power house who's taken over everything." He chuckled, knowing full well Caden would hate it if he was in his place but Max didn't mind. His sister took care of shit, fretted about him and made sure he healed well and was guarded against ill will. That went far in making him forgive anything she did that might annoy him. He never talked about his family's abilities with outsiders, even if he and Caden had been friends since high school. Caden wasn't a witch and it was nice to have normal buddies who didn't think of him as anything different than themselves.
Caden remembered when Max's mom passed in the kind of vague way that everyone in this town remembered when someone passed. But his lips quirked at the thought of tiny, petite Shayna Mae O'Reilly becoming a powerhouse at anything. But he knew how women could get about trying to exert their power over others. "Sorry to hear about your dad," Caden said. It was strange to feel any sympathy for someone else's father because his own was so shitty. But he knew now everyone dealt with the same dysfunction that his family did on a daily basis. "Is he sick?"
"Guess you could say that," Max muttered. Caden was no stranger to people drinking too much and given how bad of a drunk Joseph Lucas was it didn't seem comparable. Patrick was still a good dad, he was just sad and drunk all the time. "You should take the night off soon, come with me to Cherries. You can think of it like a bachelor party rehearsal. Roxy won't mind, right? Or is she getting more possessive now that you're putting a ring on her finger?" Maybe she already had one, an engagement ring. Max was having a hard time wrapping his head around that but hell, people moved on in life, maybe Caden was 'growing up' and becoming boring.
"Man, you don't have to try and convince me of that," Caden said, tilting his glass toward Max. "I'm down for it." He thought briefly of dragging Aaron out of the house and to Cherries with them, but he would probably just sit around and mope, even with a pair of tits in his face. "What are you doing Friday night? Gavin'll be fine here without me. And Roxy isn't going to have a problem with it. Nothing's going to change, even with a ring." And if she did have a problem with it, Caden really didn't give a shit. Besides, the weekend girls were a hell of a lot sexier at Cherries than the girls on a Wednesday night.
"Friday night's a go," Max replied and that was about it for their chat that day. Whatever little thing they talked about after that had nothing to do with events - recent or other wise - and that was exactly how Max liked it. He could enjoy his beer, crack a joke every so often and admire the view whenever the new waitress came out front with a drink for a customer. "You've switched up the staff," he commented to Caden the third or fourth time she came out there. "Is Miles still working here?" He liked Miles, he was easy going enough to roll with the bullshit you often got in the Back Porch but he was also a zero drama kind of guy and Max definitely appreciated that.
Caden finished off his beer and refilled a few for other customers when Max asked about the staff. He watched Jocelyn serve a table near the back. He was faithful to Roxy, but Jocelyn Day always provided a nice view. Front and back. "Yeah, Miles is still here. He stepped up a lot when Aaron got hurt. Mila quit, so we needed a new waitress, and Jocelyn needed a job. That's about it. Miles usually helps us close, that way Gavin's not here twenty four seven." Caden smirked as he grabbed a small tray of glasses to put away. "She's a bit too young for you, though." Yes, he was talking about Jocelyn, but Max probably knew that.
Max laughed. "No harm in looking," he told Caden and really, if she was old enough to work in a bar then she probably wasn't too young for him. "What was that rule again... Divide your age by two and add seven? To figure out if someone's too young to fuck? I think it was seven. So twenty-two is a go." He wasn't sure he'd want to fuck someone that much younger, the early twenties tended to be a crazy time for people but it really depended on the person, he supposed. "Can't really stick with women my own age, I know them all already." He gave the new waitress another little glance and grinned at Caden. "Don't worry though, I won't chase off your new girl."
Caden watched Max explain this age rule, his brows drawn together curiously even as amusement was evident in his expression. "Shit... I never heard that before. Good to know, I guess. For you. But yeah, I think you went through all the women in this town your own age. The ones who'd give you the time of day, anyway, but I appreciate you keepin' your hands to yourself with that one." Jocelyn was headed back to the bar with a new order in her hands. Caden glanced at Max as he walked down to meet her and take it. "You can always look though. Think of it as Cherries, just with more clothes."
"Clothes can be fun," Max said with a one-shouldered shrug and when she passed by he gave Jocelyn a friendly little smile before turning back to Caden. "So when's the wedding? And I'm only asking to figure out how many bachelor party rehearsals we've got time for." That wasn't the only reason he was asking, if he felt like risking one of Caden's famous shitty moods he'd be asking a lot more questions about it. He was trying to picture Caden in a tux in a church and failing horribly.
Caden watched Jocelyn go too, because they weren't busy and the only other people in the bar were men. But Max's question drew his attention back and he shrugged noncommittally. "We didn't set a date. We're not planning anything yet. I mean, the engagement just happened. I keep hoping I'll be able to talk her into going to Vegas for a week or something. Just elope and spend the money she'd waste on a wedding on a fun vacation instead." Honeymoon, whatever. "So we've got plenty of time to practice those bachelor parties, trust me. Especially if you're planning on staying in town for a while now."
"That sounds more like your speed," Max said, still not managing that mental image of Caden even trying a tux. "Not like she can have a big church wedding what with the church burning down. Wonder if they'll rebuild it anytime soon." He didn't care if there were churches in town or not but he had to admit it had been jarring to see such a familiar landmark being gone. "Wait... Did it burn down before or after you proposed?" he added with a cocked brow and a teasing smile.
"I figure if they can raise the money, they'll rebuild. But I don't know who the fuck they would be. The priest disappeared the night the fire happened and no one's been able to track him down. And it burned down before I proposed, asshole," Caden said, but with a grin and very little malice. "Maybe they can build a Hooters on the site or something. Make it useful."
Max barked out a little laugh at that idea, picturing just how pissed off everyone in the congregation would be if the lot was used for anything other than a church. "Knowing this fucking town? The priest set the fire because he was possessed or some shit," he groaned and tilted his pint up to finish his beer. "They'll send another one - the church I mean. They're not happy unless they got their pious little claws in every town in the country."
Caden cringed, although it was probably true. Some fucking demon took over the pulpit and burned the place down. "Yeah, well, there's another church in town. May not be Catholic enough for some, but it's better than nothing. I've seen the guy out on the corner during fall festivals and shit. When we had the Six Festival, I think he was trying to save souls. Guess people'll have to find God somewhere else if they're not happy with it. Good luck to them." He could have toasted with a drink, but his glass was sadly empty.
Max wasn't a fan of preachers in general, the kind of people trying to save souls would probably deem his whole family beyond salvation and want to see them burn since religious people weren't generally chill about witches as history had made plenty clear. "Well they can play hide and seek with Jesus all they want," he snorted. "I'll have another beer instead." He reached into his pocket for the cash he had on hand, knowing better than to count on Caden's continued generosity. "I'll pay for that one."
"You got it." Caden reached out to take the empty glass from Max before starting on filling up a new one for him. He figured Max would be frequenting the Porch while he was home, and Caden couldn't be generous enough to always make every drink on the house. Thankfully Max wasn't one of his dick friends who expected him to be. "Make sure you think about my offer, if you need extra cash," Caden reminded Max after placing a new glass of beer in front of him. "I'll let Gavin know."
"Oh I don't need to think about it," Max muttered. "You call me when you got something." It was reckless but a lot less depressing than the thought of getting a 9-5. There were a few things he could do for a living without going crazy but it was the regular hours that killed it for him most of the time. Regular hours were definitely not a problem when he ran errands for the Lucas brothers.
"You got it." Caden knew Max was reliable, and he didn't think Gavin would give him any pushback about it. The silver lining to living in Point Pleasant was that the cops were generally too caught up in the unsolved and unexplainable to give the Lucas brothers much thought beyond occasionally nailing them for fighting or driving while intoxicated. They had no clue what went on in the bar. Caden was confident that wasn't going to change, even with Max on board.