Entry tags:

!complete, bo dennis, kenzi malikov

Who: Bobo & Kenzi
What: Talks after Killian's death
When: Early/Mid April
Where: Bo's Crackshack
Rating/Warnings: Lowish
Status: Complete!

Life was sucking pretty hard donkey balls at the moment.

The past two weeks were hellish. Legit. Killian cursed and running amuck, Henry’s heart being snatched up for collateral, then apparently hers was supposed to be used for some kind of fake happily ever after curse - and by ‘used’ it’d be crushed to a fine powder worthy of nose-snorting to be put in a bubbling pot of hocus pocus, and then she’d, y’know, die. Obviously it hadn’t gotten that far, because she was standing outside of Bo’s apartment with her knuckles rapping on the door as a sign of I’m heeeere, let me in.

Not in her usual fabulousness, though. Kenzi looked worn around the edges, that lustrous and usually flat-ironed hair whipped up into a messy ponytail and the shoes on her feet weren’t anything impressive - standard flat black boots, meant for her days of feeling like a walking dirty butthole. But she hadn’t seen her succu-bestie in a while thanks to dreams leaking over and hitting the fan of reality here, and she’d been cooped up with either Henry or whisked away by Killy’s regal ladyfriend.

Platonic girl cuddles were much needed.

“Bobo, it’s me,” she sighed. “I need to see your face.”

With the shit, both good and bad, that had been happening of late, Bo was happy that her dreams had decided to not progress. She didn’t know if she could handle anything regarding the clusterfuck that was her love life plus whatever decided to come next in the dreams on top of the crap that was going on with Killian and the shit that had been stirred up after her day trip back to Canada.

The latter was something she was doing her utmost to ignore. She’d talked about it with Lara once they were back, but since then she’d buttoned up about it.

She was sitting on her couch poking around on her computer, clad in one of her silky robes like her dream self had. There were boxes around, but despite the whole agreeing to move in with Lara a couple months previous, the only things of hers that seemed to have found their way to Lara’s place was part of her wardrobe, toiletries and her trunk of weapons that her dreams had gifted her with. Hearing the knock followed by Kenzi’s voice, she quickly shut down the computer and set it aside.

“Coming!” She called as she got up and made her way to the door. Upon opening it, she had a smile on her face, happy to see her bestie, at least until she saw the way Kenzi looked. And instead of saying anything, she just pulled Kenzi into a tight hug.

Hugs. All the hugs. Bo was tough and steely, but there was always something so squishy about her when it came to hugs. Could be the boobs, though (and it was probably the boobs). “Heeeey, wondersnatch,” she tiredly drawled and squeezed, before taking a step back to grab her by the shoulders. It was necessary to give her bestie a lookover. “Waking up with booboos still?”

Really, there was always so much blood to wash off of Bo’s clothes in this Fae-Dominated World. At least she had Lara to heal-bang with, but she’d always worry. Someone had to worry about Bo, without the pressures and expectations of her peeps.

It probably was the boobs. Bo had plenty of them. Though it was also possibly partly that squishy heart of hers that helped give the squishy sensation to the hugs. And she liked giving Kenzi hugs.

“Not for a few weeks, thankfully.” While Bo did at least have Lara that she could heal-bang, she prefered not waking up covered in her own blood. “What can I get ya? Alcohol? Ice cream? Pizza?” She’d start with the simple offerings of things they tended to binge on when emotional. Or for no reason at all.

There was usually a routine for them when it came to dealing with things of the emotional variety, wasn’t it? It was usually icecream. A ton of ice cream had been shoveled into their mouths when Dyson revealed the reason why he was being a douchecanoe to the extreme - because he’d sacrificed his love for Bo to the Norn to give her the extra oomf of power to defeat her long lost succu-bitch of a crazy mommy. Kenzi seemed a little head in the dream game, and honestly, she was fine with that.

It meant she could warn Bo about certain things. Because she might be weak, and all human, and maybe a tad (a lot) immature about some things, but she was someone who was fiercely protective over her sometimes all too trusting, I-want-to-help-everyone-ever bestie. And this noodly-armed thief was always there to keep her grounded, and maybe help sort of soften the blow when it came to all the bullshit of the cray-cray variety.

“Ice cream and booze,” she decided with a smirk, stepping into the mini-version of the crack shack. “Depending on the kind you have we’ll make a float? Or I’ll consume them both separately, I’m not really picky today.”

It was a pattern that Bo had easily caught onto. And really, eating and drinking away feelings when in the company of friends was a good way to dealing with emotions. Sometimes talking didn’t work as well as a bottle of vodka and a pint of some variation of ice cream. Or a couple pints of ice cream, depending upon the thing at hand.

And luckily for Kenzi, Bo had recently restocked on ice cream. She’d been eating her own feels away, mostly in the form of chocolate bars and things gotten at chocolate shops.

“Lucky for you, I just restocked on ice cream. I’ve got Chocolate Therapy, New York Super Fudge Chunk, Vanilla Caramel Fudge and plain Vanilla. So pick your poison.” Bo moved to her kitchen to retrieve spoons and the ice cream. And she had plenty of booze to pair with the ice cream.

Ohhhh, options. Kenzi perked a bit, waddling behind Bo like a baby duck to its mother, and viewed the selection after opening the freezer. “You restocking on the goods means you’ve been filling some kind of hole,” she pointed out, and then quickly made a couple additions after she realized how naughty it sounded. “Emotional holes, I mean - you know what I mean.”

A pint of the vanilla and caramel it was. Only spoons required, no bowls needed - both of them could annihilate this on their own, as it was their coping ritual. There was also the part where they’d get obliterated by a copious consumption of liquid courage (why did her mouth always taste like wet puppies after a heavy night of drinking?), and even if it might turn into the kind of sloppy drunk with crying and streaks of ebony mascara running down her, at least it was in good company.

“When’s the move in date with Muscles, by the way?”

“Gee, Kenz, I didn’t know you wanted to fill my holes like that,” she said teasingly. She couldn’t help but take that open door opportunity. It was a jovial moment before Bo focused on the more serious note. “Yeah, I have. Though not with just ice cream.” Bo had hit the spectrum of filling her emotional holes. Alcohol. Chocolate. Ice cream. She was pretty certain all it got her was a potential for chocolate poisoning, if there was ever such a thing. “Things I’d rather forget got poked in the few hours I was in Canada.”

They definitely didn’t need help polishing off a pint of ice cream. Or bottles of alcohol, even. They had this coping ritual down to a frightening science. Which wasn’t a bad thing, they could do much worse things than getting drunk out of their minds, and devour all the ice cream in the freezer.

“We haven’t exactly set one yet. It’s a conversation that keeps getting postponed because of something else happening. Or getting, uh, distracted.” Because they tended to get distracted by each other rather often.

After sifting through Bo’s selection of bottled booze, Kenzi chose an old reliable to sip on - a moscato, which was sweet and would pair well with their decadent ways of coping. No glasses for that either. Hell, they could pass around the bottle because who cared? The two were like sisters and the dreams cemented that too; the two of them just got each other. A bond forged by the heart. Girl Power. Stuff like that.

“You need to catch me up to speed about what went on in our home country, Bobana,” she pointed out, in the process of ripping the tinfoil from the tip of the bottle and uncorking it. Pop it went. “Things got so crazy and - I didn’t even get to ask, I’m sorry. Do I need to call in a favor and have someone get run over? Because my connections with the cousins are still pretty legit, you know.”

Bo grabbed a bottle of alcohol for herself, at least for starters. Chances were that she and Kenzi would mix and match alcohol, and she didn’t care about glasses where Kenzi was concerned. They were definitely sisters, and Kenzi certainly didn’t have the foot soup disease so she didn’t care about sharing drinks and ice cream.

“Hey, don’t apologize. I wasn’t exactly in a mood to talk about it when I got back.” Alcohol and stuff in hand, she moved over to the couch and plopped herself down on it. “But no, you don’t need to get anyone run over.” It wasn’t easy to think about now, but Bo needed to tell Kenzi. “First of all, it was the longest day of my life because we flew there and back the same day. I refused to stay there any longer than was necessary. The getting of a passport itself went fine, so I can actually join Lara on an expedition later this spring. But the guy I was dealing with, he recognized my name, my real name, from a missing person’s report. Apparently my parents actually cared enough to put one out for me.”

And she left it at that for the moment. “My real name, if I haven’t told you, is Elizabeth. Or Beth, but I prefer Bo.” That hadn’t come up in the dreams yet. Bo hadn’t actually told anyone her name was actually Elizabeth Dennis.

Kenzi pried the lid off the icecream, spoon ready to shovel in and hone on those heavily saturated parts with caramel, they were the best. But she listened carefully as she sat by Bo, legs crossed Indian-style, blinking those ice blue eyes as the story unfolded.

Well. The reveal about ‘Beth’ wasn’t a surprise. There was a part she dreamed about already - Kyle’s sister, coming into their humble shack of crack and screaming about how Kenzi had been living with a murdering monster. Alongside the Fae Fightclub stuff that’d been going on, but in the end the issue was resolved and they had all covered for Bo.

It wasn’t something she’d told her yet. Honestly, she was going to tread the dream thing carefully with her bestie - Bo was going to get the brunt of all the emotional smackdowns coming their way, and she didn’t want to always bombard her with crap news. “You’ll always look like a Bo to me,” she chuckled awkwardly, scooping at creamy cold sweetness. “So what happened? Did you talk to your parents?”

Grabbing her spoon, Bo dug into the ice cream after Kenzi did. She already hated her dreams and the fact she was a succubus here, but she’d find some way to power through it. She was a survivor, after all.

“Thank you, I far prefer Bo.” Which seemed to be the name her birth mother had wanted to give her, but that wasn’t something she wanted to get into just yet. Before answering Kenzi’s questions, Bo took a swig of alcohol. God she needed liquid courage to talk about this shit.

“Fuck no. I’m not going back there, not after the things they said to me, that my mother said to me. Her words still echo in my head each night when I try to go sleep. Or most nights, anyway. But no, I don’t think they deserve it. They thought I was the devil twelve years ago, what do you think they’d think of me now with the whole being a succubus thing and having a girlfriend? I’m not putting myself or Lara through that.” Perhaps she was painting her parents in an unfair light, she knew they were good people, but they had hurt her and Bo was incredibly angry about it.

“After finishing the passport stuff, we had some time before the flight back here so we went to a chocolate shop and I think I bought half of the store. And I ate three quarters of that before getting on the plane.” She’d saved the drinking for after getting back to Lara’s.

Damn. Point. Last thing her parents needed to know was what Bo really was. Personally, for Kenzi, Bo was exactly just that - Bo. Succubus powers were just a perk in her eyes, but if her mom n’ pops didn’t have a grasp on how love was love no matter who you loved, then they wouldn’t understand the rest of the complications of her life.

“Family’s complicated,” simplified the thief, letting her bestie take the reigns on the pint of ice cream. “You still love them, don’t you. Even if they’re closed-minded douchenozzles.” It was the same with her mother. There was a lot of love Kenzi had for that woman, even if she’d chosen a scummy man over her own daughter, even if she didn’t seem worried that her little girl decided being homeless on the streets was a better future than sharing a home with that man. “But that’s their fault, not yours, and they’re missing out on the amazingness that is you, Coochie Poo.”

She had almost said that living here could provide a fresh start, and to some, it probably did. It started that way to her, up until Killian was sucked up into a cyclone of evil, lost his shit, and the only way to end it was for him to be killed. As soon this place gave you something, it could take it away just as quick.

The OC needed a warning label about emotional trauma, seriously.

That was the crux of the issue, or at least one of them. Bo did still love her parents, but she buried it under the anger and pain she had. They had instilled an intense flight response in her, one that had lasted until she got to Orange County. And then she’d met Kenzi again and had met Lara. Now, she couldn’t leave without two people coming after her. Which was still a bit of an odd feeling to her, but she liked it.

And there was another hefty helping of ice cream going into her mouth.

“I don’t like to admit it, but yes I do still love them under everything else. They’re my parents, and I know they’re good people. They were just shit at understanding me, and they had shit timing for telling me I was adopted.” Really, it had felt like they’d simply wanted to wash their hands of her by telling her that. And she didn’t think she’d ever forgive them for that. “I’m still not quite seeing what’s amazing about me other than my love of running into trouble and trying to be a good person.” Fully accepting and embracing her succubus self was going to be a longer battle.

“It’s the doe-eyes of naivety,” Kenzi chuckled, hugging the wine bottle close to her like a lifeline. Because it was true, Bo had this thing where she wanted to help everyone who even wibbled their lower lip at her, and was sometimes a little too trusting towards others. Many times she served to be that voice of skepticism that the succubus so desperately needed, because there were many occasions where she sort of...dove into things and then got fucked over, and not in the way she’d prefer. “You can still see the best in people even when they’ve screwed you over. You’ll do it with Dyson, and you’ll do it with Lauren.”

Though she liked the wolfman more than the fae doc, to be frank - but she knew the Kenzi she was there would support whatever made her bestie happy. It’d be like that here too, and at least here Bo didn’t have the pressure of the two warring sides.

“I am good at the doe-eyes of naivety,” Bo confirmed with a soft sigh. She knew she took people at their word way more than was actually healthy for her. While in this life she was bad at it, her dream self was much worse. At least if Dyson or Lauren showed up here, she wouldn’t be caught in a whirlwind of emotions and following after them with doe-eyes. She was very solidly, and very happily, with Lara and she wasn’t going to do anything to mess that up.

“That’s why I have you around, to keep me real and reel me in when needed.” She said, nudging Kenzi’s shoulder with her own. “I’d probably be dead in a gutter somewhere without you.” She smiled at her, knowing full well that would probably be what would happen. At least in the dreams. Some fae would do her in without her realizing she was being set up.

“Takes a bullshitter to know a bullshitter, and most of them thus far have been snakes in disguise,” huffed the petite thief, rolling her eyes. Most fae were distrustful to her thanks to her very human status, and she was distrustful right back - but that was her nature too. Liars and thieves in every corner, Kenzi was always cautious and when gut told her something was up, usually her gut was right.

It was also how she survived living in a tent city in subway tunnels. A pretty face, sure, but she was very street smart and learned the tricks of the trade quick, otherwise she would have ended up face-first in a puddle of piss, dead, with her ass in the air years ago from being homeless.

But the nudge was returned, her mouth stretched into a sly smile. “So they’re not that much different than humans, when all they wanna do is cheat and screw people over. Seems like a common trait for the bipedal peeps.”

“The more fae I meet, the more glad I am to remain neutral despite continuous pressure to choose.” How many times had Light Fae reminded her she was unprotected and thus hits on her were fair game? The Dark Fae were just as bad as the Light Fae, though perhaps they were typically more straight-forward with their callousness. But at the end of the day, Kenzi was her bestie and the one she’d side with no matter what. Bo had been raised among humans, had been raised as being human, and thus she would always choose humans.

Bo had to wonder if one day her bleeding and overly squishy heart would get her killed, or anyone else around her killed. She may trust people way too easily, but no one fought harder for the ones they cared about than Bo did. She would go through Hell itself to save Kenzi if that’s what it took, and she’d do it without hesitation.

“Sometimes I wonder if fae are worse. Yeah humans can be pretty shitty, but the level to which the fae take callousness is an entirely different level.” She looked at Kenzi. “At least I’m the only fae here in Orange County.” Not that she’d mind if Hale or Trick showed up here. She wouldn’t even necessarily mind Dyson, she didn’t have feelings for him in this life. But any of the other fae that were prominent in their dreams? They could stay away.

Fae had the potential to be worse, exposed to all those different kinds of arcane magic and inherited skills that could do all kinds of damage. Look at Vex and his ability to make anyone into puppets - he could force anyone to do anything against their will, make their body move while their voice and head screamed otherwise. It was a scary world, but where else did the Kenzi that existed there belong?

The siren, the wolfyman, the fae doc (ugh), the midget blood magic bartender, and her suckyface bestie - they were her people, even if all of them had their dick moments.

“Still surrounded by weirdos, though,” she pointed out. “This place embraces the different, doesn’t make you choose sides, but I miss the free drinks at the Dal. Just sayin’. Your boss should hook me up outta association.”

Some of the powers the Fae had were scary, and went far enough as to take away people’s autonomy. Such as Vex, whose powers Bo had a taste of first-hand. In fact, he’d made her stab herself which really hadn’t been fun. At least the Siracon had protected her from further assault from his powers once she’d gotten ahold of it.

“I’m not sure what I could do about that, if my boss would go for the free drinks for life thing.” An idea crossed her mind then, one that had drifted across it a few times before, but she’d never done anything about it. “What if I got my own bar? You know, make my own Dal here in Orange County? It’d be blessedly fae-free, save for my sexy ass.” But that would require business savvy that Bo didn’t have.

Now that was an idea. Most people drank to cope anyways (re: them, with their wine), though the charm of the Dal had to do with the fact that it was a common place between the light and dark faes - it was sanctuary. “Only if you hire a midget to tend the bar,” Kenzi pointed out, sneering. “You might have to pull some non-legal strings depending on what your immigration status is, but it’s totes doable.”

Birkhoff, with his clicky fingers of computer godhood, helped on that end for her. He had helped her start anew after things with Massimo went tits up (ex-sugar daddy with creepy mommy issues), and he had made sure they wiped him clean of all his moolah. A guy couldn’t really do much without resources, could he? “I’d volunteer to bartend, except I’ll probably end up eating the merchandise instead.”

“No eating the merchandise,” Bo lightly chastised, wagging a finger at Kenzi playfully. “Though that would require my learning business because there’s a big difference between bartending and running a bar.” And then there was that whole...immigration status thing. That she should get taken care of. She at least had a legitimate passport now? So maybe she could take steps to legally change her name, or just get her green card. Or something.

“In the meantime, however, do you want me to make you a drink? I’ll mix anything you want.” She then looked at Kenzi. “And if you wanna talk about what all happened, I’ll listen. I’m not going anywhere.” They didn’t always talk about what bothered them, but Bo was putting it out there. Besides, it would hardly be fair for her to dominate the conversation with her issues when it was obvious Kenzi had her own.

It could always be something to work up to, right? Bo was young, this place was a new start - if she wanted to take some classes before starting up her own money making well, more power to her. Kenzi would be supportive and ready the flashcards for studying. Trendy lattes too, that was a study staple.

“I’m probably going to take care of this bottle,” she informed the bestie, forcing a ghost of a smile. “But it’s cool, I - I’d sort of rather a distraction anyway.” Things were still raw, her heart ached, but if she were to actually talk then it’d be April Showers running down her face. “I’m good with this. With you.”

That was something Bo would need to decide at some point, if she wanted to actually try to finish out her high school degree and then take some college classes for business. But that wasn’t something she needed to decide right this minute.

Bo gave her a small, understanding smile. She knew that feeling well of not wanting to talk about something and wanting the distraction. So she wouldn’t push. “Then we’ll feast on alcohol, ice cream and movies. And we can order pizza later if you want.” But for now, it was just sitting with Kenzi, eating and drinking their feels away and indulging in movies that they could either make fun of (such as with horror movies), or watch some other feel-good movie. Footloose seemed to be a staple of theirs, but who didn’t love Footloose?