Kane Owen (sellingsouls) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2022-05-12 07:46:00 |
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Entry tags: | #june 2018, bailey, bailey x kane, kane |
Who: Bailey and Kane
When: Friday night, June 29th
Where: Back Porch
Status: complete
After a rather eventful week, Bailey decided it was probably time to talk to her brother. She hadn’t really intended on reaching out right now, but maybe getting laid had loosened her up a bit. That didn’t mean she was okay with what was going on with Kane right now, but it felt a bit silly to keep ignoring him. So after work, Bailey stopped by to see her mother for a bit before she drove towards the Porch. It was kind of funny to think about. The bar was where she had seen Kane for the first time in years and she remembered wishing he hadn’t come home. Now he was probably the closest thing she had to a friend in this town and she worried about him. Something she hadn’t done since she was a kid.
After ordering her second drink, she finally pulled out her phone to send him a quick text. having a drink at the porch. Come by. Maybe he was working, or he was with That Guy, but Bailey could at least say she tried if he turned her down.
Kane had had an interesting twenty-four hours, to put it mildly. It had all ended on such a high note, it was almost hard for him to believe. He’d struggled inside to let Adrian go back home that morning, but then he’d slept like a baby for another several hours, completely sated and tired in a way that felt weirdly good. He’d woken up sometime in the late afternoon and began the process of hunting around for a buyer for the monster soul he’d collected the night before. He wanted that money in hand as soon as possible to give it to Adrian. Kane had no idea how the other man would explain how he suddenly had cash to burn to his family, but that wasn’t really Kane’s problem. Adrian had more than earned it.
The text from Bailey caught him by surprise as he was standing in the kitchen eating some Ramen noodles out of a tupperware bowl. Considering the cold shoulder she’d been giving him, he assumed that meant she was ready to talk. Kane came very close to ignoring it the way Bailey was ignoring him, but that was pretty petty. He felt too good to be petty, whether she liked the reason behind it or not. So Kane thumbed in be there soon and finished his food so he could get ready.
Twenty minutes later he walked into the Porch in jeans and a tight black t-shirt, glancing around over the Friday night crowd until he spotted his sister at a table. Kane rolled his shoulders as he walked over, and sat down across from her. “Hey,” he said casually, just for something to start with.
Lost in her own thoughts, Bailey didn't spot Kane until he was already approaching the table. Straightening instinctively, she wrapped her hand around her glass as he sat down. "Hi," she replied, unable to keep her gaze from drifting over what parts of him she could actually see, like she was searching for injuries of some sort. "I went to see mom before I came here," Bailey continued, opting for a safe topic to ease into the harder ones. "She seems more or less the same, but her nurse is moving to Portland, so they're going to be sending her replacement next week to meet me."
There was nothing to see but the usual ink on Kane’s arms as he folded them on the table in front of him, his eyes on his sister. He’d picked up some light scratches on his ass and thighs from fucking in the underbrush, but for the most part he’d come out totally unscathed. He hadn’t even had to work hard on the hunt. Kane nodded slowly as she spoke. “You want me to be there?” he asked. He had taken over the paying bills portion of caring for their mother, but Bailey had been fielding all of the stuff with the nursing agency and the cleaner and everything. He preferred not to deal with all those people, but he would show up if she wanted him there.
"No, I can take care of it," she muttered before taking another drink from her glass. It was almost time for number three. Bailey had been sure their mother would have passed on by now and she was both relieved and angry that it hadn't happened yet. Relieved, because despite her upbringing, Bailey wasn't ready to let go yet, and angry because the harder her mother held on, the harder it was going to be to accept it when it happened. Setting her glass down on the table, Bailey studied her brother, trying to squash all the prickles of lingering anger she felt towards him. "Do you really know what you're doing, Kane?" she asked finally, folding her own arms on the table to mimic his position. "You deal with dangerous situations all the time and I know that. But this is different."
There it was, Kane didn’t think it would take them long to get here. He had to smirk a little at her phrasing, and he lifted one hand to rub at his jaw a bit as he considered how to answer that. “Do I know what I’m doing in general? Fuck no, not really,” Kane said with a humorless chuckle. “Do I really know that Adrian Moretti doesn’t mean me any harm, so this is not actually a dangerous situation? Yes, I really know that.” His tone was calm and almost light -- he wasn’t trying to be sarcastic. He just really wanted Bailey to believe him. If she could trust him that far, maybe she could start to relax, and see that it wasn’t so bad. It was pretty twisted and fucked up, yeah, but they weren’t going to hurt each other anymore. Not like that, anyway. Kane still doubted she was going to take his word for it, though. Not that he thought he would be any more forgiving in her shoes. “I get where you’re coming from, though,” he added, just to say so.
“Do you?” Maybe he was putting himself in her shoes, but even then she wasn’t entirely convinced he would react so strongly if their situations were reversed. On some level, Bailey understood that her doubt was just years-long abandonment issues talking. He hadn’t stopped her from running off with Pierce because he hadn’t been around. And then the bridge between them had just continued to widen. Until now. “I don’t like this,” Bailey continued simply. “And I know you don’t care, and that’s fine. But I already told you before that you’re all the family I have left. If he does anything else to hurt you, I’m going to make sure the rest of his life is a complete misery. Okay?” Memories of driving him to the hospital after he had begun to bleed out still rose in her mind from time to time and it never failed to make her nauseous. Not because she was squeamish but because Bailey understood how close he had come to dying. And yes, she blamed Moretti for that.
“It’s not that I don’t care that you don’t like it,” Kane tried to clarify first. “I’m not over here just not giving a shit what you think. It just ... doesn’t change how I feel or what I know about the situation now.” Was that him not caring? Kane felt like he cared what Bailey’s opinion was -- he actively wanted her to be cool with it, but the fact that she was decidedly uncool with it hadn’t swayed that magnetic attraction that kept pulling him toward Adrian. Gods, he was so bad at all of this people-ing. “But okay, yes, I hear you, that’s fair,” he said, lifting his hands a little in a peaceful gesture. “If anybody’d done that to you, I would’ve gutted a motherfucker before you could ... get involved with them like this, so ... you’re a better person than me.” Kane offered her a small half-smile. “It’ll be okay though, Bailey, I promise. He’s not gonna hurt me.”
As much as she was loath to admit it, Bailey knew herself well enough to know that if Kane had disapproved of someone Bailey was involved with, she wouldn't have let that stop her from being with them. But his opinion mattered to her and she wanted her opinion to matter too, as annoying as that was. "You'll have to try and understand that it's hard for me to believe that when he already hurt you twice," she pointed out quietly. "I still think you're being a stupid asshole, but it's your life and you can do whatever you want. There are just a lot of questions surrounding Adrian Moretti and his family. Those question marks make me worry and they should at least make you cautious about this. All I'm saying is be careful."
Kane was tempted to roll his eyes and slam his head against the table a few times -- how could he make her understand that he’d been the aggressor both times things had gotten violent with Adrian? Kane had attacked and murdered him, Kane had kidnapped him from the gas station, Kane had been rapey and threatening at him before wendigo-Adrian had turned things around ... and he hadn’t retaliated, not on the same level. He’d neutralized the threat and left Kane somewhere safe, even lured Bailey to come find him ... if one of them was truly dangerous to the other, it was Kane. But he knew Bailey’s worry wasn’t fully rational, so he couldn’t rationalize it away. And maybe part of him didn’t want to reveal the extent of how fucked up he truly was to her. Only Adrian got to know that. “I do understand,” he said calmly instead. “And I am a stupid asshole, no doubt. This is all probably ... fuckin’ nuts. I know it don’t make sense, but it’s real, and it’s mutual ... I can’t just let it go. And me and him, we’ve talked a lot now, so if you’ve got questions, I might have some answers.”
Bailey didn't say anything at first, but finished off her drink before pushing her glass away on the table. Kane had never struck her as the kind of guy who... obsessed over someone else. It's real sounded like shit lovestruck idiots said and she just didn't understand it, especially from her brother who had always seemed pretty solitary. Was she jealous? Was it fear that this whole thing would somehow distract Kane from everything else in his life? It seemed so stupid and juvenile to be afraid of something like that. They weren't kids anymore. "Okay," she said, slouching a bit in her chair and folding her arms across her chest. "Why did his sister stab her boyfriend, leave him for dead and disappear for two weeks? Where has he been for five years? An innocent man went to jail for his presumed murder and now he's back like nothing happened."
Those were very valid questions, and Kane considered how to answer for a moment as the waitress turned up to take Bailey’s empty glass. While she was there, Kane ordered a whiskey sour. He probably should’ve started this conversation with a drink, but he’d been too focused on Bailey to stop by the bar first. “So ... I don’t know much about his sister’s situation,” Kane said once they were alone again, already knowing Bailey’s analytical mind wouldn’t like that. “But I do know the town was fucking with her pretty hard. When she disappeared, she was in the Cooperdale Tunnel. Like I said, I dunno details, but we all know this town can fuck with your head., make you act out of character. As for Adrian ... he was on the run. The thing that killed his friends was a wendigo, and it ... infected him, cursed him, I dunno how you’d put it. You remember how I was convinced he wasn’t really just a human dude? I was right. So he stayed gone, tried to find help for it ... and it’s controlled now, but there were people doing experiments on him, starving him, all kinds of shit for I dunno how long. He got out and went on the run again. I think he really only came back and blew his presumed-dead cover because Mila needed help.” Kane paused, eyeing Bailey and trying to suss out if she believed any of this.
"They searched the tunnel," Bailey pointed out. The town fucking with peoples' head was always the go-to excuse for shitty behavior. It still blew her mind that Mila Moretti was walking around free after attempted murder, but it was what it was. The only reason Bailey had brought it up was the woman's connection to Adrian and Adrian's connection to Kane. Of course, the talk of wendigos and infections and everything else just prompted Bailey to lean forward, her elbows on the table as she ran her hands through her short hair. She didn't speak again until the waitress returned with two whiskeys and Bailey drew her fresh drink towards her. "So Moretti is some cursed wendigo on the run from... whoever... back in his hometown, the first place they'd actually look for him? Or have they just let him go, because he's working again, Kane. It all sounds pretty crazy." Though, admittedly, this whole town was fucking crazy so it wasn't necessarily that she didn't believe it.
They may have searched the tunnel when Mila Moretti disappeared, but from what Adrian had told him, it sounded to Kane like she’d been in a place that couldn’t really be searched. Kane fully believed in such places, and considering what Adrian had to do to free her ... He definitely wasn’t going to tell Bailey about that part. He probably shouldn’t be telling her any of this, if he was honest with himself, but he wanted her to try to understand. Kane took a swallow from his own drink before he answered. “It does, and it is,” he said with a slow nod. “But so is pretty much everything about my life too, so who am I to judge? I been reaping people since I was practically a kid, I hunt monsters and sell their souls for a living, this is just ... more of the same ugly underbelly of reality.” Her words did spark a bit of worry in him that someone besides him was actively hunting Adrian, but he didn’t know that for sure. “And I dunno, maybe they let him go and moved on from him. Maybe him being ‘alive’ again makes him too hot of a target. That’s his shit to figure out. I can’t explain everything.”
Bailey had seen the ugliness too and yet her brain continued to try and protect her from it. It seemed silly at this point, given her job. Given what she saw in the street back when she was a young girl. Sometimes Bailey felt like she could handle the monsters... it was the people she was afraid of. The ones who smiled to mask the evil. "I don't need you to explain everything," she murmured. Tapping her short fingernail against her glass, Bailey listened to the music playing in the bar for a moment before lifting her gaze back to Kane's face. "Are you in love with this guy?"
Kane was lifting his glass when that question came and he set it down again with a clunk as he gave Bailey an ‘oh please’ sort of look. Nevermind that his stomach did all kinds of twisty, fluttery bullshit, she didn’t have to know that. “Come on, gimme a break, it’s not like that,” he muttered as he took a swig of whiskey. It wasn’t like that, it was just some weird power play and lust thing, wasn’t it? Only Kane knew better. Even just thinking about Adrian excited something in him that had laid dormant for so long, and he felt more seen and understood than he had in years. Even if the source was fucked up, it felt really good. “I just need it right now, okay?” he added, his gaze ticking to hers and then away again. “I know it’s not forever, probably not even very long. But I gotta let it play out.”
Bailey returned his look with one of her own. Maybe he forgot she was a cop and had gotten pretty damn good at reading people. Knowing when they were lying to her. And Kane was lying. The problem was, she didn’t know if he knew it. Pushing him on it seemed pointless, even if she wanted to tell him he was a fucking idiot. He probably already knew that. “Needing something is worse than wanting it,” Bailey said before reaching for her glass again. “But do what you’ve gotta do. If it makes you happy, then… I guess take as much advantage of it as you can.”
He couldn’t argue against that first point -- needing was definitely worse. Kane couldn’t really help it, though. Adrian was pretty much the only thing currently making him happy, in short bright bursts that he was never sure would come again once they faded. Their situation was complicated and dark, but the way he made Kane feel was undeniable. The prospect of falling in love again was just terrifying and surely doomed, so he couldn’t look at it that way yet. “Just ... promise you won’t interfere?” he asked, his tone a bit hesitant. “As long as everything stays safe and I’m fine, like you said. He’s not out to his family about hardly any of this, and when I told him I’d told you, he got worried. You don’t gotta see him or talk to him ever, we’re not having family dinners or nothin’, just ... keep it to yourself, yeah?”
It was Bailey who had to resist rolling her eyes this time, but she shot him another are you kidding? look before lifting her glass to her lips. "Who am I going to tell any of this to? Like I said, it's your life. I won't interfere in any part of it." If Kane was sure that he and Adrian were past the murderous intention phase of their relationship, then she would leave them to it. Bailey didn't have anyone in her life to spill the morbid details to, so Kane wouldn't have to worry about that either. They had spent the most of their lives living separate lives, so there was no reason to change that now. As long as Kane didn't end up in the hospital again, Bailey would let it go.
The way Bailey had just said she would make Adrian’s life a complete misery -- he was already well on his way, but there was always further to fall -- made Kane feel like the question was justified. His sister was obviously unhappy about all of this, and if she decided to toss a wrench into Adrian’s life and out him to his family or something, Adrian might never forgive him. “Okay, thanks,” he muttered, still watching her expression. Kane paused for a moment to take a drink, then sighed a bit. “And I’m sorry, again, to upset you with it. My approach was ... really unplanned and bad. I just thought I saw AJ and it fucked with me, I guess.”
If Adrian hurt Kane, she would make his life a misery. But as long as Kane wanted her to keep out of it, she would. No, she wasn't happy about it, but that wasn't going to change anything. Bailey let him speak, nursing her drink before she set it back on the table with a clink, sighing. "And you don't see any correlation between telling me about AJ, a guy you were in love with, and then Moretti in the same breath?" It was obvious, wasn't it? It might make Kane uncomfortable, but oh fucking well. Bailey didn't think this was the same thing as pushing the issue, but obviously there was a reason he'd felt the need to tell her about both.
Gods, their names even started with the same letter, didn’t they? That and coming from Italian heritage were just surface similarities though -- Adrian was nothing like AJ. At least not as Kane had known him. How he felt about them was probably a different story, though. Bailey calling him out did make him uncomfortable, and Kane polished off his drink and immediately wished for another. “I just haven’t been involved with another man since then,” he said shortly. Kane almost pointed out that Bailey hadn’t even known he liked men too, so of course they were related in his mind, but that felt like ‘protest too much’ territory. Instead he narrowed his eyes at her. “Why are you makin’ me feel like the asshole here anyway? I shared somethin’ real painful with you about my past, somethin’ else real hard about the present, and you gave me the silent treatment for days and now this bullshit where I’m apologizing to you and you can’t even acknowledge it?” He gestured between them, embarrassed anger bubbling up in his chest.
She didn't believe that excuse for a second and it probably showed on her face even if she didn't say so. Bailey tilted her head to study him as he spoke, casually crossing her arms against her chest. She really didn't want to argue with him, or even piss him off, but she wasn't going to bite her tongue in this situation, especially now that he was clearly getting upset about where the conversation was going. "Your apology is acknowledged," she said simply. "And I accept it. But I'm not going to apologize to you for not taking the news that you're screwing the guy who knifed you very well. And it has nothing to do with what you told me about AJ. Right now I think you're getting angry because you know there's more there than you want to admit to. I can see it pretty clearly, Kane, so I don't know how you can't."
She looked so calm and mild and distant, it just made Kane more flustered. He wasn’t supposed to be emotional, he wasn’t supposed to talk this much -- Adrian calling him chatty ran through his mind again -- and Bailey somehow had him all riled up inside. He hadn’t thought he wanted sympathy or understanding from her, but apparently he had deep down, and he wasn’t getting it. “So what if there is?” he countered, his voice tight. “What good is sayin’ it gonna do? You’ll just judge that even harder. Say I’m fucking stupid for catching feelings, right? You care so much about my wellbeing, you wanna know how many times I sat with a gun in my mouth, so sure nobody was ever gonna love me again? I can’t have that kind of life, I accepted that. So now ... yeah, no, I don’t wanna admit shit. I don’t wanna label it when I don’t even know what it is yet. When I know it can’t last and it can’t be anything. What’s it matter?”
"For one thing, it's easier to understand," Bailey said tightly. Her emotions were starting to simmer through her calm exterior and her fingers pressed firmly into her arms, trying to keep herself grounded. "Yeah, I might think catching feelings is fucking stupid, but knowing you might love this person makes it harder to judge you than if it was just fucking. There's no fucking reason why you can't have whatever life you want. It's just easier for you to pretend you can't, so you don't have to be vulnerable with someone else, or get close to them." Her voice was getting heated so she paused and took a moment to swallow, not wanting to fight in the middle of a bar. So she focused on keeping her voice from wavering. "And for the record Kane, I loved you. Even when we were kids and you were an asshole and you left me there. Even when I didn't see you for half of my life. I still do. I know it's not the same, but..." Bailey shook her head, her turn now to feel embarrassed and angry and she was thinking it was definitely time to go. She grabbed her bag to find her cash. "Just... be fucking careful, that's all I want."
“Oh yeah, that’s nice, throw that in my face, my deepest fucking regret,” Kane said. “I love you too, that’s why I’m still here. You and mom are the only reason I didn’t do it. And look at this, who can’t be vulnerable now?” He gestured to the way she was pawing through her purse, obviously about to walk out on him. “Gonna run away and not talk to me for another week?” Kane wasn’t even sure what he wanted out of the conversation anymore, he just felt exposed and angry and hurt and guilty and a lot of stupid things he hated feeling. How did they get under each other’s skin so quickly? It was like a goddamn talent. He both wanted her to just leave and not at the same time, just like he wanted to hug her and fight with her too. Why couldn’t he have a normal, straightforward relationship with anyone?
Temper flashed in Bailey's eyes and she let her bag go to fall back into place beside her chair. His words were like a challenge, one she wasn't about to back down from. Maybe she did want to run away from the conversation but she didn't like the implication that she couldn't handle it. "What do you want from me? I accepted your apology, I told you I wouldn't interfere with Moretti. I do care about your wellbeing. If I didn't, I wouldn't have been so pissed off when you told me what was going on. I wouldn't have cared at all. Maybe I don't know exactly how to handle that because it's not like we've been close our whole lives. This is new to me, okay?" Huffing, she clutched her hands in her lap beneath the table, wishing she could smoke inside because she desperately wanted a cigarette.
God, she was so stubborn. It was almost like they were related or something. Kane had the very mean thought that Bailey must have been a peach to be married to. He wouldn’t be any better at it, he was sure, and in all his jumbled anger he spared some for their parents who so thoroughly fucked them up. It was mostly on their dead father’s hands, but their mother had done her part too. “It’s new to me too, you know,” he pointed out tightly. “I haven’t had to answer to anyone since I left the Corps, and even there most of ‘em don’t give a fuck about you personally. But you’re over here like, interrogating me like I’m a perp, all cold and mad, can’t we just ... have a normal conversation? I don’t fuckin’ know.” Kane ended in a mutter, passing his hand over his face. He didn’t want either of them to be pissed off at each other, but he wasn’t even sure what to want outside of some vague idea of how siblings were supposed to interact. “This’s been hard on me, okay? I’m not out having a great fucking time. I’m man enough to admit I’ve got a lot of baggage.”
"I'm your sister, Kane. I'm not interrogating you like you're a perp, I'm asking you questions like you're my brother. Questions that I assume you'd want to know too, if our situations were reversed." Maybe she was being cold and mad, but that was Bailey's default emotion when something made her unhappy. "I'm asking questions because I care, even if I'm not asking them in the way you probably would want me to." Releasing a slow breath, she straightened a bit in her chair and picked up her drink. There was no reason to waste it if she wasn't going to storm out like she had planned to. Her lips twitched briefly in mild amusement. "You do realize that talking about relationships can be part of a normal conversation, right? Dysfunctional or not."
Kane didn’t really buy that -- Bailey didn’t know how to be a sister any more than Kane knew how to be her brother. Their age gap and shitty upbringing had really crippled their relationship, and Kane had just widened the gap by escaping as soon as he could. But he was relieved when she seemed to relax a bit. “I dunno, Bailey, ‘I’m worried he might kill you’ kinda goes beyond normal conversation,” he muttered. That definitely wasn’t her fault though, and Kane did understand where she was coming from with her concerns. He was just feeling particularly tender about it all and maybe he’d wanted a softer response from his only family. He could almost hear his father in his head calling him a pussy faggot for it, too. “He won’t, though,” he added, feeling like he had to. “But you’re right, I would be asking the same shit. If the dude was even still alive. I just ... I dunno, I want you to get it, but that’s probably too much to ask.”
The look she gave him was one of resignation now, because he needed to understand where she was coming from too. And maybe he did, but she wasn't someone who could flip her feelings off like a light switch. "It's hard for me to get something I don't understand. But I get that it makes you feel good, whether that's all it is or not. If you want me to be okay with what you're doing, then you need to understand that it's not going to happen overnight. Just give me some time, okay? Let's see if we can get through a few weeks without me getting a phone call or text that I have to come pick you up somewhere because you're hurt." Bailey didn't think that was too much to ask. Like Kane said, they weren't having family dinners or anything like that. She didn't have to be a doting sister to Kane's boyfriend. So that was something.
The stupid thing was, Kane struggled to understand it too. Or at least frame it in a way that might make sense to someone else. Something dark in Adrian called to all the darkness in him, and it had exploded into both violence and this intense attraction. He couldn’t logic his way through it, or explain it clearly to Bailey, it was just this all-consuming thing. Was that love? A fucked up obsession? Some mixture of the two? Maybe some part of him wanted Bailey to get it so she could help him get his mind around it, but that was dumb. She wasn’t inside either of them. “Okay,” he murmured with a small nod. “You got time.” By the time Bailey came around to accepting it, it might be over anyway, so maybe this was all moot. It was depressing to consider. Kane groped around in his mind for something else to say, but everything he tried out sounded stupid and lame, even changing the subject. He reached for their empty glasses instead. “You want another? I’m gonna go to the bar.” He needed some shots, and he didn’t want to wait on the girl to come back.
Bailey honestly wished she could help Kane figure things out, but she didn't know the first place to start. She had never been in his position and did everything she could to ensure she never was. Despite not knowing how to express it very well, she did want him to be happy. He deserved that much after the kind of life he'd been living. "Yeah... get me something stronger," she said, because a shot or two sounded pretty good in her head. Numb the bad stuff and try to have a normal conversation with her brother, since that seemed to be what he wanted. Maybe getting drunk was the way to go. They were both pretty good at that.
Since Bailey wanted something stronger, Kane ordered six shots at the bar and carried them all back to the table tucked between his fingers like a pro. He didn’t spill a drop as he set them all down. “Here,” he murmured as he lined half of them up in front of Bailey. Kane plopped down in his chair in front of the other half and arranged them in a line. He looked up at her and smirked faintly. “Race you? On three.” They both definitely knew how to drink, but Kane still thought he could put three shots down faster than his little sister. He was at least game to be proven wrong, and maybe afterward they would both feel better.
As soon as Bailey spotted the shot glasses in Kane's hands, Bailey straightened in her seat, pressing her lips together with amusement as he placed three in front of her. She studied the liquor before arching a brow up at him. "On three," she agreed. So it was getting wasted together. Or maybe it was Bailey getting wasted and Kane feeling a minor buzz. He did have more muscle mass than she did. Either way, it sounded like a plan to her. And even if she didn't beat him with the shots, he would at least see that she was a competitor. "One, two... three." And with that she began to down each shot glass, ignoring the way the liquor burned so deliciously down her throat.
Kane knocked his shots back in quick succession, clunking the small glasses back down on the table as he snatched up the next, until they were gone. He beat Bailey by just a half a second or so, and Kane swallowed hard against the burn of the liquor before he let out a laugh. “Got your ass,” he said, sitting back. He swiped the back of his hand against his mouth, enjoying the feel of that familiar warmth spreading through him. He might not get shitfaced tonight at the Porch, but he at least wanted some level of relaxed numbness. “You wanna play darts? I passed sniper school with flying colors, bet I could kick your ass at that too.” Kane offered her a crooked grin. Being competitive assholes was much more fun than arguing about stupid emotional shit, wasn’t it?
Bailey cursed when Kane beat her by thismuch and she set her last shot glass down sharply before scowling. Okay, so maybe she hated losing more than she was willing to admit. But at least she didn't have to buy the shots. His suggestion of darts prompted Bailey to roll her eyes. "Well, you make it sound so appealing," she snorted before pushing her seat back. "But yeah, we'll play. Twenty bucks says I kick your ass." Bailey had a steady hand, but not usually after two beers and three shots. She didn't care. She was stubborn and she would try to beat Kane even if she fell over doing it.