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 Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 8:18 pm
Khal awoke sprawled across the couch in the living room, fully dressed right down to his shoes. He smelled like beer and his head felt like he'd spent the evening knocking it against a wall. Opening his eyes didn't help any. The sunlight flooding the apartment just made his sensitive eyes start watering. He squeezed them shut again and swore. Attempting to get up blindly only resulted in him losing his balance and rolling off onto the carpet.
He opened his eyes again, this time slowly, and pulled himself back up onto the couch. Every movement just set off the headache in new and horrible ways until he was holding his head in his hands. "Aaaah."
He couldn't remember a lot about the last night. He went to Kam for some advice, and instead he got a very good reason to drink. And then... he came here, didn't he, and he remembered being kind of angry and upset for a while - but what else was new. The last thing he remembered was probably the weirdest thing, and hard to believe could have actually happened. Kaia would never have hugged him like that, especially not after what he'd done. But. Everything must have worked out all right, considering she hadn't teleported him somewhere he'd regret waking up.
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Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 8:38 pm
Khal was never really a morning person, Kaia had lived with him long enough to know that. He didn't get up before noon unless he had something to do and he usually stayed up well into the night doing absolutely nothing. Kaia, on the other hand, was just the complete opposite. The fact that she had a weirder night than she'd had since, well, since she could remember didn't change her habits. She'd at least tried to make as little noise as possible while she was up, which was why she was sitting at the kitchen island with a book on the counter top and the waffle iron she'd bought at the thrift store hissing quietly next to her.
When she heard the thump from him rolling into the floor she glanced up, just in time to hear him groaning. In the comfort and privacy of the kitchen, she rolled her eyes at his predictability but scooted off the stool anyway. She grabbed a soda out of the fridge and the bottle of aspirin she'd had out on the counter since she woke up, then went out to meet him in the living room.
One glance at his attempt to shrink away from the sun and she made a detour for the nearest window. She pulled the curtains closed with one hand and finally sat down next to his writhing, whiny self on one of the couch cushions he wasn't stretching his spider legs out on.
"Quit sulking, you did it to yourself." Regardless, she popped the top of the soda can and set it down, quickly followed by a couple of aspirin from the bottle. She pointed at it with a no nonsense look on her face, and patted one of his calves lightly to emphasize it. "Sit up and take it, come on." For someone that did not approve of his drinking, she was being particularly mothering.
Maybe he'd just redeemed himself enough while he was drunk and sloppy.
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Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 10:53 pm
"But Kaia, I have never felt so horrible in my entire life this week," he whined back, trying to sound as pained as possible. It was clear already she didn't buy it by the way she continued to cajole him.
He glanced at her, half-suspicious this was some sort of trap. But in the end, with her bearing down on him like this, he didn't have any other choice. He twisted himself around until he formed a crude mimicry of a seated individual, careful not to swing any arms or legs in her direction as he did so. The pills were chased down by the soda and now there was nothing to do but wait for them to take effect, whatever that effect was going to be.
She was awfully calm about all this, he noticed when his headache had dropped in its intensity ever so slightly. Weirdly calm. Was this part of Kam's Tao of Ladies? Not that he could recall. He was on his own today. As long as he could be considered awake and upright, he may as well bite the bullet and find out how well he did - or didn't.
"So, uh..." This small talk thing was harder than it looked. "How was your evening?"
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Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 11:04 pm
"Well, maybe you'll think about how you feel right now the next time you decide it's a good idea to drink so much beer." She doubted it, but she could chide him for it while he was sober. She would do the same thing next time he inevitably walked in drunk too.
She shifted in her own seat as he started to twist around awkwardly, moving a little away from him so he could rearrange his stringy limbs without giving her a faceful of shoe. Then she just watched him down the medicine with a pleased look, as if it were a great accomplishment to make him stop acting like a child long enough to take some aspirin.
She waited with him in the uncomfortable silence it took for the medicine to kick in, getting up just long enough to rescue a waffle from burning to char, and sitting back down while the iron cooled. She was just readjusting in her seat, legs tucked up beneath her, when he caught her off guard with the question.
Her cheeks flared red instantly as she tried to work up some kind of lie but honestly, she wasn't that great at it. Mostly because her body did everything it could to be a dead giveaway. It just didn't want to work with her.
"Fine," she replied slowly, fidgeting her suddenly twitching hands in her lap. "Apart from fighting with you while you were drunk, I guess. It was mostly uneventful, and you apologized." She shrugged and tried to play it off, but in the end she just looked uncomfortable. She knew what had happened and it felt bad to lie, but if he couldn't remember at all then things would just go much more smoothly for them. At least, that was the idea.
If he did remember, well, she supposed things were a little more complicated.
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 12:05 am
He saw her turn a bright scarlet and felt his own face began to flush involuntarily at the implication. It was a bad lesson to take away from all this that he only had a way with women when he was too drunk for his sober self to take any notes. Something must have happened. But this was Kaia. She was like the most prudent girl he had ever met. And no matter what he knew Kam had reassured him on the subject, she already had a boyfriend and wouldn't have gone for anything like that. And he'd already taken an aggravating personal vow not to get involved, for the sake of Kaia's happiness. Well, unless her boyfriend was asking for it. There were a lot of ways he could do that, Khal liked to leave that definition very open to interpretation when dealing with people in general.
"That's good." He was beginning to notice that the apartment smelled strongly of bleach. And it was clean. Really clean. Everywhere. This was not a normal clean; this was a dangerous clean. He had ******** up big time. Like, goddamn. "That's - yeah. Uneventful is good."
Khal had to know though. Somehow. Kaia's boyfriend be damned, he would never have to know. He leaned back heavily into the couch. "I guess it was really uneventful then."
God he was so terrible at this why couldn't he just ask her directly and then they could both get back to pretending like last night hadn't happened even faster.
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 12:22 am
She watched him as he mumbled his way through a completely unhelpful dialogue. She was trying to decide if this was just his normal failure at small talk or if it was some above and beyond fail at trying to find out what had actually happened. He seemed awkward and unsure, and even if he was odd sometimes, he was never quite so emotionally distant. Not with her, anyway.
Did that mean he remembered? Partially, if not totally? She'd been counting on a round of booze-induced amnesia to help her this time but maybe she just wasn't that lucky. Amnesia wasn't something to count on.
"Yes," she started, then glanced down at her lap where she had finally just folded her hands and finished with, "No." The blush on her face was brighter as she tried to fight with words that weren't coming out. Even if she couldn't say them, it was clear something had happened and if Khal was probing the subject on purpose then that was probably a dead give away that solidified any suspicions he had.
"You were stupid and drunk," it was as if she were chalking it up to that, despite the fact that she had been very not drunk and very much forward with him. Even she knew it was a poor excuse because it was spoken quietly, as if she had no faith it would hold up.
She shrugged though and looked back up at him with a very forced smile. "No one really means what they say when they're drunk, right? Don't worry about it." She could quote some fine pieces of conversation about lamps to him to prove her point, but she mostly just wanted to sweep it under the rug. As much for Chase's sake as it was for their friendship. She was having a hard time walking the thin line they'd drawn between them.
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 5:21 pm
Kaia was pretty much radiating discomfort at this point, and Khal had little doubt why. He knew better than to do it, he knew that. She'd been dating this guy since before they'd even met, well before he'd been in a state of mind to start considering his attachment to her able to become more than it was. The disorganized feelings only cemented themselves at the moment he thought he was going to lose her. The hopeful side of him was convinced that something about last night had been right, for both of them. Neither of them were going to come out and actually say it.
Or maybe he really had been a drunken idiot and that's all Kaia really thought of whatever he'd said and done. She was implying it pretty strongly now, the harder he pushed the subject. This was his second chance to redeem himself. He'd over-reached. Broken friend code. He just needed to be cool and not make this any more awkward than it already was. This was reasonable. For her, he could do that, he could make those kind of sacrifices. Even if maybe he selfishly didn't want to. They were just friends.
He stopped stalling and put his thought process into drive against the headache. It was just a mistake on his part. He made a lot of those. The halfhearted reaching in his voice evaporated and he sounded like he was back to his old self. "Oh, yeah, I'm not worried. Haven't been that drunk in a long time though so I guess I just overdid it. Don't let my drunk a*****e self get you down though. You're right, people say a lot of stupid s**t when they're wasted. So thanks for uh, letting me crash here and recover."
He slid back down into a reclining position with his legs dangling off the couch to make room for Kaia. His head rested against the opposite couch arm so he could drape one of his own arms over his eyes and block out even the ambient light. "Listen, when I feel a little less like I'm wearing the crown of the king of all hangovers, I'll probably go rent some movies for us for our 911 shifts. You like action, right?"
And suddenly he hit an awkward point and stumbled on it for a moment, trying to fumble a recovery mid-sentence. "Or, you can come with. If you want. Pick out... girl movies, or whatever."
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Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 5:56 pm
"What else would I do but let you sleep it off?" She tried to laugh, as if it were a joke, but she only managed a small, tight lipped smile. The fact that he was playing this down now and no longer pushing the subject to make her admit to something they would both regret was a good sign. She should have felt glad that he was backing off and falling back into his old self, but she didn't.
She felt disconnected again. He'd been open and honest and for one of the first times since she'd known him, she had felt close to him. She could remember the way her heart beat faster, and the feeling of his arms around her, but now it was beginning to feel like that Khal was an entirely different person. His words made it seem that way, how he played everything down as if it didn't matter.
She'd done that first, though, right?
Suddenly, she didn't know if she had started this spiral into emptiness or if he had. She didn't know what she wanted, except an end to the awkwardness. She was sad in the aftermath of his affection, even if she knew it was the best for them. For everyone. It was just one quick moment to remind her that he could be someone else, maybe if things were.. different. She couldn't destroy what she had with Chase over one moment, though, not when he made her smile and held her without having to be drunk and uninhibited by sober thoughts.
"When have I ever made you watch girl movies?" She managed a laugh this time and a smile that didn't seem quite too forced, despite the fact that her head was still swirling with thoughts. She just had to find the friendship again and put everything else behind them, there was no sense in wrecking things with Khal, who was admittedly her best friend in the world.
"I'll come though, I don't want to be stuck watching James Bond or something else with a terrible plot." She made a small face at the idea of explosions and martinis, then turned to head back toward the kitchen. She looked more put together on the outside, even if she was still fighting herself inwardly. "There's waffles in here, if you want some before they get cold."
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Posted: Thu Jun 16, 2011 11:11 pm
"Maybe not girl movies exactly. Documentaries." Educational anything was about exactly opposite of his interests. Learning history was especially boring and pointless. Who cared what some random place was doing like a hundred years ago? He seemed mock-insulted by her take on the James Bond franchise. "Hey, come on. Dude's a secret agent stopping terrorists, and they made like twenty movies out of that. It's better than you think. You should give it a chance someday."
"Oh, s**t, what kind?" At the invitation, he made the long, slow haul off the couch, being careful not to upset the raging headache any more than it already was. It hit him in waves. Even with a nasty hangover, he wasn't going to pass up her offer. He was the 'bottomless pit' variety of teenager, and as far as Kaia could tell he'd never had a home-cooked anything until he'd ended up in her care. "I'll be right there."
He was trying so hard to act like everything was normal that he was slipping up on what normal even was now. They crossed paths at the doorway to the kitchen and he touched her lightly on the shoulder in passing, something he'd done fairly often, just a friendly gesture. Then she could feel him seem to almost jump as his hand twitched in some too-late realization. Wordlessly he withdrew the offending arm so that he'd crossed both of them close to himself, as if to prevent any further contact. It might be taken the wrong way now. Everything was just kind of weird and even the innocuous stuff was suddenly suspect.
It felt like it was going to be a long day.
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