Post by Kyle Shane on Apr 8, 2019 20:49:37 GMT -5
She stirred, mumbling dreamily. As she turned her shoulder beneath the comforter, she thought half-in-a-dream that she would contact with him. His presence when she slept was reassuring, and oftentimes when she laid against him, he gave her a kiss on the forehead, and she'd smile from faraway, drifting off into slumber. But now, as she leaned back against the space where he occupied, she didn't fold into the warm embrace under his arm; instead of nestling against his scrawny chest, she sank into five pillows stacked together to form a dummy of a human body. Still in the grip of Somnos, her brow knit with worry, gently guiding a hand up the side of the pillows in Kyle's place, and murmuring "putting on the pounds babe" before turning on her side, still worried, still in a far off way not finding things quite right, before she went fully under again. The stack of pillows at her side did not betray their effigy, and kept silent vigil in the dark.
The real deal was currently sitting across a round table, in a curved leather booth, eyes wide and head tilted in an invested manner, opposite a spectacle he found both sad and off-putting.
The club around them moved, a thing alive with tawdry, grimy commerce. Waitresses more sensibly dressed than the girls onstage slipped between standing patrons and working girls in heels and thongs, and one brought another round of shots for the table Kyle was seated at, laying them out efficiently. The stages behind them were circular, with a pole in the center of each, and on all of the three stages a girl was at work, two of them looking disinterested and aloof, one concentrating on her routine. The entire club was awash in fluorescent light, shifting from red to blue and back as the girls danced. And Kyle, in morbid fascination, was watching just one more act of calculated, simulated carnality across the table from him. And then the girl smiled, kissed the air next to her partner's cheek, and said, huskily, "Thank you, baby."
Patrick fired a look across the round table that was equal parts shame and murder, and smiled politely for half a second up at her before looking back at his brother. Sensing no more engagement to come from her mark, the worker came around the table, her fingers squeezing Kyle's nape. Kyle gave her a tip, and she went to the next table to greet another customer as Kyle leaned in to the table, as if to talk shop. "Man, that was - "
"Why are we here?" Patrick said curtly, blinking, his sour tone of voice trying to cut through all the bullshit. Kyle's voice rose, talking over him, with relish.
" - The SADDEST fucking thing I've ever seen in my life... this girl is working really hard to try and get a rise out of you, and you're looking like you're sitting through the bake sale announcements at morning Mass - "
" - Because I find this droll and pedantic in an attempt to shame me for my prudence, which is not based on not finding girls attractive, it's just that I don't find this arousing, it's a purely financial transaction and this girl is not thinking of my pleasure at all - And BY THE WAY, I have limited feeling in my extremities due to muscular entropy - So that's - You know - It wasn't because - "
Kyle smirked, looking up to the lights as he toyed with the edge of a shotglass. "And seriously? Who asks the DJ if they can play a Coldplay song? Did you seriously want that girl to give you a lapdance while he played something with piano?"
"Why are we here?" Patrick barked, making the table bang and spilling shots, his voice tight and high enough to make the doorman peek his head up. Kyle, the enjoyment bleeding from his face, lifted a shotglass.
"We're in a public place, with cameras, so that you and I can meet face to face, and there's enough witnesses that maybe you'll think twice about trying something, bro." He tilted the glass Patrick's way in a little salute, "And as we talk, I may think about hurting you. That's why we're here in a place surrounded by bouncers. And yes, because it makes you uncomfortable and off your guard."
Patrick's mouth puckered in a disdainful moue as one of the sex workers came in to side hug Kyle, touching him on the shoulder. "Yes, it certainly has the desired effect."
Kyle slammed the shot down, then continued, "I know that you sent a hitman to kill Array in New York. What I want to know is - "
"Why? Oh, brother, I thought we had progressed farther into our little quest for insight," Patrick said, rolling his eyes, "I wanted to kill the little twat because she has only ever been a distraction for you, and I'm convinced that she proved my point since she came back into your life and you immediately lost the wrestling championship you were holding onto."
"That doesn't ring remotely true at all," Kyle shook his head, "No, this isn't about Array. This is about you being petty that I left you to go to her apartment. This is because you want my attention more."
Patrick scoffed, "That's - ... brother, listen to me. You think that you were pushed into a position by the universe, but I have only ever been trying to give you the keys to take destiny into your hands. Fuck the universe. Fuck fate. Fuck love. Fuck 'serendipity'. Love didn't strengthen your resolve to be a better man. Love had you scatterbrained, unfocused, and not at your best and sharpest..."
Kyle sighed, and, after a brief pause where a worker he was familiar with came in to give him a kiss on the cheek and he slipped her a handful of singles to see her later, returned his gaze to his erstwhile brother. "That's ridiculous. I don't blame Array for that, or any of the circumstances of the airport. I do blame the piece of shit that hired a fucking hitman to attack her, but - "
Patrick, annoyed, slammed his hands on the table. "You're not listening!" Kyle spun his hand out, gesturing him to continue.
"You are here, instead of your new/old girlfriend. Why?" Patrick pointed his finger into the table, doggedly driving at a point. "You are still employed with Pure Class Wrestling, despite publicly on their own show having a crisis of asking where do you want to go and what else you can do for them, content wise. Why?" Kyle, irritated, held his hands out and squinched his eyes, trying to find the words to combat against his brother's line of questioning.
"You contradict your own message of love making you feel stronger because you are not a person that knows how to love, Kyle. You are a person who has always equated love with a never ending search for approval. Because Eric Shane never did say he was proud of you, did he?" Patrick's voice was a pantomime, aww widdle baby frown, "Because the audience became a surrogate parent for Kyle Shane when him and his college roommate signed up for a developmental school at age 18...." And here, Patrick's voice became more and more intense, "Because you keep coming back to this because you crave the reactions of the crowd to your latest crazy endeavor... latest on screen, shouting diatribe... or the latest, brilliant thinkpiece metaphor content you film on your laptop. Despite what you thought at Mass Destruction you are not chasing it for love as it is. Because love for you will never be your happily ever after with Array; because Array is just incidental, you already won her approval when she was still a tween and now it holds no value to you. So no, love didn't power you through and win the day against Gerard Angelo and love will not win you against the string of people they'll continue to throw at you, your Grimms, your Justin Michaels or whatever. Because wrestling promotions will so happily throw you onto an endless treadmill, have you running forever until you're broken down and can't run anymore, but, panting and wheezing every time, you'll take your second wind, climb up onto that treadmill and keep at it. Because you're chasing that hit of love-as-Kyle-knows it, that precious drug known as acceptance, approval. You're an addict, Kyle. You're a fucking junkie for it, because the quest for that high is all you've ever known. Isn't it. Isn't it."
As his brother laid out his monologue, voice rising, visibly foaming, Kyle's fist clenched, harder, harder, and he felt his face getting so hot he felt smoke might start coming from his ears. And then the waitress came by, defusing the tension as she took the shotglasses. Still, Kyle covered his mouth with his fist, mumbling, "Roast me, fuck."
Then Kyle sat forward, his eyes angry, and defiant, "No, no, fuck you. You wanna talk about someone chasing approval. You wanna talk about someone who daddy never said he loved him, so he grew up wanting to be hugged. Then how about the son of the slut up the street that Eric Shane banged; the pasty kid with the fucked legs who grew up so bitter, so isolated, so rejected from the rest of the world that he became a 4-Chan Guy Fawkes stereotype, a wannabe Anonymous who's only motivation was to get some sympathy from his brother because I at least lived in the same house as Eric. Fuck you, Voice in the Grey. Fuck you."
Impatiently, Patrick gesticulated, his voice rising, "And that's what I'm saying to you, I understand you, more than that little underage tramp ever could, I relate to you. Your demons play well with mine. We both know the endless quest for approval, the emptiness of having nothing else. Why do you want to be Remastered Kyle Shane and keep going at Pure Class Wrestling, when you proved all you can with a 450 day run as the representative of their company, what more would you gain from facing these people? Why can't you just let this go?"
"Because... Bec - " and his voice faltered, and he paused, thinking about it. But he took note of his brother who was leering at him wolfishly, eyes bugging out, and a grimace passed Kyle's lips. He wanted Patrick out of his face for a little while, and as he looked at the girl working the room just now, he hit on an idea. He smiled at a blonde as tall as him in a leather napkin-skirt and halter, called, "Hey, Bambi, I have a person I'd like you to meet," and as she turned his way he pressed an enormous stack of ones into her hand. "This is Bambi," he said as an introduction to Patrick, while staring him right in the eye, "She does a floor show that has to be seen to be believed, for the right price. Bambi, show my brother, would ya?" And Bambi, giggling playfully, took both hands and hauled Patrick up by his noodled arms with surprising strength, spinning him into a central spot on the floor and setting him onto a chair. As Kyle watched Bambi slink over to Patrick, he smiled, but the smile faltered as he went back to the question. Why?
The thesis may have him questioning, but it wasn't a new question. He himself had asked why he didn't take a step back. In fact, his PCW career had even started with him being coaxed out of walking away with the promise of a new platform. That wasn't him at this stage anymore, he was very much an established brand on Pure Class tv now. And starting over at the bottom carried different problems as coming in cold: he knew that, having been on top of the mountain and being taken down, he was going to meet everyone he had stepped on on the way up. Some understandably more bitter than others. So why?
"Ma'am, I assure you, you have your commission, but I do not require your services to - no, please -"
It was one thing to say all new, all remastered, better than before, and it took that typical Shane chutzpah to do it, but how, even, would he go about being a better and sharper version of something they had already seen? Was there even a way TO do that? Hadn't he thought going into Mass Destruction that he had spent a month polishing the most distilled, perfected form of craft he could ever have presented? And wasn't his bitterness and confusion over the loss so evident that he had to spell it out on the post-PPV Trauma? How could he even top that? And there, the thesis of the Voice in the Grey made sense, I mean... yeah, when you put it like that, the endless quest for the best content did sound like an addiction. So... why?
"You don't like that? You're not looking at me..."
"I... I know that you probably change into a cardigan sweater when you aren't ... on the clock... and you probably have a boyfriend... and this is just a financial transaction helping you get through college..."
"Aw, sweetie, you're killing the mood... why don't you just relax..."
But to defend his legacy over and over? Why couldn't he let this go? What did he have to prove? The stirring in the pit of his soul, the empty maw that growled like a caged tiger, spoke faintly, and it at least growled out that it was starting anew by finishing business with both Stormm and Grimm. And that part that was always empty and wanting to be fed, it's point made sense to him. Why should he give up now when he had successfully turned back Grimm and Stormm in the past, on his way to defending that championship; and since that growling, empty maw was still wanting more it wanted this. It really was an addiction, and in his darkest heart, he knew that Patrick was right, but he couldn't help it, it had it's hooks in. But it was more than just craving people accepting his content. That wasn't what kept him coming back to it. When he looked around at talent, he felt injustice, disparity, a "what the fuck does that dude do that's so great" and he wanted to take on the nominal best at all times and prove himself superior. That was the sweet spot. It's why he saw Grimm and how Grimm got by with these short, brutal, laconic pieces and some offhanded gruffness about snap crackle popping them, and felt he wanted to better that. It's why he saw Stormm continuing to live his life like what he and only he did in 2010's PCW ever mattered and anyone who wasn't here then is a rookie. The simple way men like them did things kind of bothered him and he wanted - needed, to prove that his way could stand out. But in the truly deepest part of his heart, he asked himself even if he did, would it ever feed that empty maw? Would it ever satisfy? He didn't know.
"I... really do need to apologize for... my lack of excitement, I have limited feeling in my extremities due to muscular entropy, it in no way reflects on you for all of your hard work."
"Awww, sweet baby. Why don't you tell me about that?"
He took up a glass of whiskey, his face in the liquid rippling in time with the Skrillex blaring over the club's speakers as he gazed into his own abyss. And then, Bambi led Patrick back over. Patrick, despite himself, was smiling and laughing. Bambi kissed him on the cheek. "Enchanting woman", Patrick blustered, with all of the social grace of a forum nerd that would wear a fedora. And as he sat, looking after her with a leer, his look scanned over to Kyle, who was downing the rest of his glass, hand shaking. "So... what's your answer, then?"
"I do not agree, and furthermore, I do this because I like it. I don't need your lectures." Kyle said stubbornly, looking at his reflection rippling in the whiskey. Then he cut his eyes back up to Patrick, who was gauging him shrewdly. "What?"
Patrick was biting on a cherry stem, playing games. "Tonight has been more... fun than I anticipated and I ...thank you for... introducing me to such..." and, glancing over at Bambi, his face spasmed in a tic and he swallowed, "-Lovely people, but now..." And his eyes looked above Kyle, and his face split into a devilish grin as it became apparent that he was setting something in motion he had in mind possibly even by the time Kyle had told him to meet here, and Patrick finished, " ...We're coming to my surprise of the evening." Kyle felt the shadow of the gorilla that had been watching the girls on the floor. The doorman stepped behind Kyle's shoulder, and with a sick feeling Kyle felt the gun jab into his shoulder. Patrick's eyes moved from Kyle to the doorman, and he smiled. "Get him up, Lawrence, thank you."
A rough hand clenched on Kyle's arm like an iron and hauled him out of his seat. Patrick, satisfied, gathered his crutches and laid a tip down, and as he passed a few of the girls he gave them what he thought was a charming smile, including Bambi. A few club goers were craning their heads out, in confusion. But they thought the bouncer was just tossing someone. The doorman, who Patrick had obviously paid off, forcefully walked Kyle past the strippers, and to the door. In due course, they were out on the curb, and being loaded into an expensive BMW. Only the finest things, huh, he thought sourly, but he was shoved into the passenger seat. Wheezing, and having to take a hit from an inhaler as he slid behind the seat, the wan ghost of Patrick looked across the console at Kyle, leering. Kyle responded by punching him, and then he felt the lip of the gun press against his temple from the backseat. Patrick, groaning, wiped a trickle of blood from his nose. "Ahh, ahhh," He moaned, but he held a stopping hand up to the meathead packed into the suit, and he pinched his nose as he looked over at Kyle, "Don't do that again."
As the car started and they edged out onto the city streets, Kyle sullenly looked out at the passing halogen orange street lamps, glancing over at Patrick, whose jaw was set with purpose, his eyes bugging with fervor. Patrick looked at him too, and he asked, "Believe it or not this is for your own good."
"My own good, right, my wannabe supervillain relative and someone I can only imagine he paid off or probably hacked the financial records of and blackmailed or -"
In the back, Lawrence, knowing he was being talked about, just shrugged easily; when he wasn't putting a gun to someone's head he was a fairly chill dude. Patrick overrode the digression. "We are family, Kyle, and as your older sibling I have a right, a responsibility for you not to go down this path. I see you grappling with the existential question but unable to let go of this vice. And this is what families do when one of their members have an addiction, isn't it? This is your intervention, Kyle. I'm doing this because I DO care about you. It's why I've done everything. Do you see."
Funny way of showing it, he thought with a grunt, then he sardonically sniped over at Pat "...Work about as well as your legs."
"There. Right there. You deflect criticism with a witty barb, but you are still addicted. You can't stop putting yourself out there and wanting people to laugh, to react, to give you love and approval." He extended two fingers and made the sign of the cross in the air, "I absolve you of your need, Kyle, you don't have to try to impress these people anymore."
"I'm not trying to - "
"Then why? Why can't you let your addiction go?" Patrick said, and before he knew it, they were pulling into a fenced construction site. He let Kyle stew in silence as he put it in park, and they sat there, next to piles of gravel and rebar, silent, and waiting. Kyle was frustrated, thinking he didn't have to justify himself, searching every inch of the surrounding to find a spot to break loose. But the question stuck in his craw and it wasn't so much that the crippled shit was asking, but he wanted to know. Because ego? Because honor? Because he didn't want to give someone the satisfaction of saying they beat Kyle Shane and smirking about that?
The reality was that wrestling was always the thing he loved that only loved him back intermittently. That that could inform so many of his other personal relationships was the hard part. As Lawrence, casually holding the gun into the small of the back, held him by the shoulder and marched him into the construction pit, he thought of trying hard again for Pure Class Wrestling in a thankless, possibly no win situation this very week. Beat Stormm and Grimm. Stake his claim. Be the man he said he was, remastered, revitalized, resurgent. But being honest he felt more negative motivation than positive willpower, and he didn't look at this as an opportunity to stand atop the mountain so much as a clusterfuck. All three of the men involved were at crossroads. Two of them had been taken off of thrones they had inhabited for over a year. They all desperately needed momentum, and would do all to get it. But he felt that hungry pull from the empty, never satisfied, rapacious hole in his heart and that hole fucking NEEDED, craved, shrieked out to him to get that win, impress these people, pinning Stormm and Grimm would make him feel whole.
And that may have been a lie. He could do it, but it would just be a fix. He would really never have enough.
Lawrence poked him with the gun, making him turn his head, his mouth twisting bitterly. And so what if he wouldn't? Nobody outworked him, so feeding validation to that empty hole was justified. Grimm wandered aimlessly squashing no-shows and doing Grimm things, in between being part of the crappiest nonstarter of a Black Hand stable ever formed. Stormm phoned in effort every week when he was booked in tag matches and filled the air with an unbelievably smug, punchable aura that wasn't warranted by his lackluster approach. He worked for that validation, he deserved it, and he chased it because not getting it when he had worked so much harder did not sit right. It was his right to -
Patrick, then, reached around and cuffed him, "Get out of your head."
Kyle straightened himself to his full height and adjusted the hem of his coat, despite the gun in his back. "Listen, I've given this a lot of thought, and - Why don't you go fist yourself, you weird and sad little prick."
Patrick had a little smile/grimace, indicating he was sarcastically charmed by the epithet, and he tottered in front of Kyle, and theatrically indicated an area in front of them lit by the headlights of the car. It was then that Kyle noticed the man trussed up and moaning, weeping uncontrollably in the headlights. Kyle looked from Patrick to the hostage, "No, no no no, Patrick what have you done -"
"Intervention, little Kyle, family intervention. You may not recognize this particular wasted branch of the family tree, he's a cousin by way of the Shane line. One of our daddy dearest's sisters brood, Jonathan here - " he poked the cowering, snivelling man, a wasted stick of drawn out flesh that made Patrick look healthy - " Our country cousin lives out in the sticks of our great state, has a particularly long file with the sheriff regarding the sale and distribution of cowboy cocaine, in general, Jonathan here is a blight on society."
Jonathan, his hands bound behind them, swept his dark ringed, drugged eyes among the three players in the tableau, and burbled out a string of garbled, run-together pleas. "YougottahelpmepleaseletmegoI donwannadie outhereman its cold pleasepleaseplease -"
With the doorman prodding Kyle to step forward so they all got closer, Patrick continued. "Addiction is ugly and forces you to sacrifice everything, to take four to get one, to screw over family to get just a fix. And Jonathan here's drug of choice is one a little different from your never ending quest to get someone to be proud of you like dad never was. Jonathan loves him the cocaine." He withdrew a vial, with big, crystalline white powder in it, "And he can have it, or you can make him go without."
Kyle's eyes narrowed to slits, "What kind of mind game - What?! No, Patrick, I'm not letting you give this dude drugs."
Patrick sighed, rolled his eyes to his hired on doorman, and Lawrence pointed the gun at Kyle's face again. "I'm not giving you that option. I'm giving you the choice. You can go home and indulge your demon, sit in your little sound stage and cut an angry promo decrying your opponents this week for twenty minutes, and if you do that, we will give Jon what will probably be a lethal overdose, even to his cocaine fueled engine. Or, you can take his place, take the drug from my hand and you take it. You take Jonathan's demon and you use it. And you don't go back to indulging your little obsession."
Jonathan Distant Cousin was rolling his eyes madly, slobbering and motormouthing "Pleaseman Idonknowyouthat well think I sawyouatta familyreunion once when we were kids pleasedontletthis guyskillmeIgotadogandabirdandacat - " and Kyle huffed, looking from Patrick, who was solicitiously holding out the vial, to Lawrence, who was stepping towards him, holding the gun up, and he looked back and forth. Why was Patrick doing this? Why was he making him make this choice? Patrick just stood there, eyebrows raised. Finally, Kyle balked, shaking his head. "I don't understand - why do you - Why am I supposed to - You're trying to make me trade one addiction, as you put it for another."
Patrick's face was in shadow as he looked down, "I'm giving you the option to choose to do something for your fellow man, Kyle. To walk away from putting all of your energy into feeding your own petty ego looking for that one moment that will never come - the one moment you think when PCW - when WRESTLING will finally, fully embrace you, give you validation, tell you they're proud of you. One or two might say it now and again but it never lasts. You're chasing an ideal, and you couch it in terms of perfection, but you haven't chose love." He indicates the vial with a nod of his head, "In a way... if you take this choice, you will be living up to what you talked about, about love making you stronger than being alone ever would. You would be - "
And there, while the ass was pontificating, Kyle saw his opening as Lawrence let the gun dip, and he turned in, hammered him in the wrist and punched the big man in the nose. Lawrence blinked twice, stepped back, and then in a fully, throaty baritone, he said "Ow, man, shit," and he held his hands up as Kyle collected the gun. He pointed it Lawrence's way, and the nightclub doorman, no matter if he had been bought, just shrugged nonchalantly and stepped out of the way, his demeanor suggesting he had nothing else to do with this. And while Kyle was making sure of him, he felt something over his shoulder.
"NO!" Patrick was roaring, and his fury and desperation gave him strength enough to jump at Kyle. For a moment the crippled hacker was airborne and then he tackled Kyle, and they both went down. As the two rolled around in the gravel, they wrestled for control of the gun, and there was a terrifying second, as Kyle looked into the mad eyes of his older brother, that Kyle was afraid. Patrick was given strength born of insane conviction, and as he ripped at Kyle and struggled to push the hand with the gun, Kyle worried that he was losing control. "Why - do you - have to make things so difficult?!" Patrick rasped, his voice a wheezing engine as he straddled Kyle, his clutching claw wasted hands trying to close around his throat.
"Cause I like making things hard, Bambi would have been able to tell you that," Kyle taunted, and he brought his knee crashing up between Patrick's legs as they twisted on top of each other. All the air left Patrick's weak lungs in a whine, and he fell over in agony. Kyle stood, gasping and breathing heavily, and he cruelly kicked Patrick's crutch away. He turned his head, looking at their cousin, then pointed the gun. Patrick was pushing himself up on an elbow, his bent body wracked with pain, and he was breathing shallowly. Kyle moved in on him.
"Thankyouthankyouthankyou" their cousin said, as Kyle untied him, and after rubbing his wrists, there was a brief, poignant second where he opened his mouth and appeared to be giving a sober appraisal of the Shane boy that did good, got out of his hometown and stayed clean, but the moment passed and the cousin Kyle didn't know took off running (as is, perhaps, a crackhead's wont) down the street. Kyle simply marveled and watched him run off for a second, then turned to Patrick. Patrick laughed, coughed, spit, and curled his lip, defiant even though his weak, broken body was not letting him move. He lay there, wasted limbs laying helplessly, and stared at Kyle, hate burning from his eyes, mixed with a twisted, perverse fervor of what he thought of as love. Kyle stared down, deadpan, holding the gun in one hand.
"You are unbelievable," Patrick panted, and he scooted back a little, grimacing. "You couldn't do it. You couldn't let one stupid little thing go."
"It was never about me letting that go, Patrick," Kyle said quietly, pitiably, looking down at the bag of bones. "I couldn't -"
"You can't just walk away from it. Even when I gave you logic, reason, an out. Even when I put a gun to your head and said, walk away tonight. You would never give it up."
"Because why should I give it up, Patrick?" he heard himself saying, but that wasn't him, it was the empty maw, the starving voice calling up from the bottomless pit.
"You came to me!" Patrick snarled, "You asked me for help, months ago, you wanted to know how I deal with it. And I saw you, wrestling with your demons, having pushed EVERYONE away, and still not able to let this go. Don't you see, I was trying to help you!"
Kyle nodded along, smiling hard, looking out into the street and back, "Yeah yeah help me, thanks for helping me, you never helped me, Patrick, you stuck a gun to -"
"And you wouldn't listen!" Patrick interrupted, pushing himself painfully to sit, but unable to get up without his crutch. Kyle, coldly, stepped on his hand. Patrick cried out shortly. But then he looked up at Kyle, eyes slitted. "If you won't listen. If you won't give this up, then you'll just be the same as you were when you came to me. Broken. Alone. Forever."
Kyle cocked the gun, and put it right to Patrick's forehead. He stared hard. Patrick was looking up, his mouth and nose leaking, and he continued to rant. "Go on! You know I'm right! You know that you're wanting something that can never be given. I've tried with you, Kyle. And until you admit I'm right, you'll never know peace. You'll never get what you want. Never! Never! Never!"
The construction site falls silent.
Kyle walks past Lawrence, who's nonchalantly and coolly smoking a cigarette and leaning against the car, and Lawrence just gives him a meaningful little look, tacitly asking where the other dude is. Kyle ignores it and tosses the gun aside. He turns away, walking down the street illuminated by orange halogen.
It's almost morning when he enters the apartment, having walked for untold blocks before coming home. Shuffling like a zombie, feeling old, feeling so much more tired, he throws his keys on the counter and trudges into the bedroom. Still clothed, he pushes five pillows set in an effigy of a person out of their spot. In bed next to the pillows, she's laying, curled on her side. He slips into bed next to her.
He feels her move her head, and she quietly speaks, a million emotions packed into a brief "Hey" all of which indicate she knows something of where he went tonight, but saying nothing. He doesn't say hey back. In time, despite the coldness and distance between them, she nestles in the bed and spoons against him, settling into position against his hard chest. Array appears to go back to sleep. He lays there, haunted, thinking of everything Patrick said.
He places an arm around Array as she breathes quietly next to him.
He doesn't know the answer to a single one question that was posed by either of them tonight, but he knows that at the moment, having her next to him comforts him just that little bit.
The real deal was currently sitting across a round table, in a curved leather booth, eyes wide and head tilted in an invested manner, opposite a spectacle he found both sad and off-putting.
The club around them moved, a thing alive with tawdry, grimy commerce. Waitresses more sensibly dressed than the girls onstage slipped between standing patrons and working girls in heels and thongs, and one brought another round of shots for the table Kyle was seated at, laying them out efficiently. The stages behind them were circular, with a pole in the center of each, and on all of the three stages a girl was at work, two of them looking disinterested and aloof, one concentrating on her routine. The entire club was awash in fluorescent light, shifting from red to blue and back as the girls danced. And Kyle, in morbid fascination, was watching just one more act of calculated, simulated carnality across the table from him. And then the girl smiled, kissed the air next to her partner's cheek, and said, huskily, "Thank you, baby."
Patrick fired a look across the round table that was equal parts shame and murder, and smiled politely for half a second up at her before looking back at his brother. Sensing no more engagement to come from her mark, the worker came around the table, her fingers squeezing Kyle's nape. Kyle gave her a tip, and she went to the next table to greet another customer as Kyle leaned in to the table, as if to talk shop. "Man, that was - "
"Why are we here?" Patrick said curtly, blinking, his sour tone of voice trying to cut through all the bullshit. Kyle's voice rose, talking over him, with relish.
" - The SADDEST fucking thing I've ever seen in my life... this girl is working really hard to try and get a rise out of you, and you're looking like you're sitting through the bake sale announcements at morning Mass - "
" - Because I find this droll and pedantic in an attempt to shame me for my prudence, which is not based on not finding girls attractive, it's just that I don't find this arousing, it's a purely financial transaction and this girl is not thinking of my pleasure at all - And BY THE WAY, I have limited feeling in my extremities due to muscular entropy - So that's - You know - It wasn't because - "
Kyle smirked, looking up to the lights as he toyed with the edge of a shotglass. "And seriously? Who asks the DJ if they can play a Coldplay song? Did you seriously want that girl to give you a lapdance while he played something with piano?"
"Why are we here?" Patrick barked, making the table bang and spilling shots, his voice tight and high enough to make the doorman peek his head up. Kyle, the enjoyment bleeding from his face, lifted a shotglass.
"We're in a public place, with cameras, so that you and I can meet face to face, and there's enough witnesses that maybe you'll think twice about trying something, bro." He tilted the glass Patrick's way in a little salute, "And as we talk, I may think about hurting you. That's why we're here in a place surrounded by bouncers. And yes, because it makes you uncomfortable and off your guard."
Patrick's mouth puckered in a disdainful moue as one of the sex workers came in to side hug Kyle, touching him on the shoulder. "Yes, it certainly has the desired effect."
Kyle slammed the shot down, then continued, "I know that you sent a hitman to kill Array in New York. What I want to know is - "
"Why? Oh, brother, I thought we had progressed farther into our little quest for insight," Patrick said, rolling his eyes, "I wanted to kill the little twat because she has only ever been a distraction for you, and I'm convinced that she proved my point since she came back into your life and you immediately lost the wrestling championship you were holding onto."
"That doesn't ring remotely true at all," Kyle shook his head, "No, this isn't about Array. This is about you being petty that I left you to go to her apartment. This is because you want my attention more."
Patrick scoffed, "That's - ... brother, listen to me. You think that you were pushed into a position by the universe, but I have only ever been trying to give you the keys to take destiny into your hands. Fuck the universe. Fuck fate. Fuck love. Fuck 'serendipity'. Love didn't strengthen your resolve to be a better man. Love had you scatterbrained, unfocused, and not at your best and sharpest..."
Kyle sighed, and, after a brief pause where a worker he was familiar with came in to give him a kiss on the cheek and he slipped her a handful of singles to see her later, returned his gaze to his erstwhile brother. "That's ridiculous. I don't blame Array for that, or any of the circumstances of the airport. I do blame the piece of shit that hired a fucking hitman to attack her, but - "
Patrick, annoyed, slammed his hands on the table. "You're not listening!" Kyle spun his hand out, gesturing him to continue.
"You are here, instead of your new/old girlfriend. Why?" Patrick pointed his finger into the table, doggedly driving at a point. "You are still employed with Pure Class Wrestling, despite publicly on their own show having a crisis of asking where do you want to go and what else you can do for them, content wise. Why?" Kyle, irritated, held his hands out and squinched his eyes, trying to find the words to combat against his brother's line of questioning.
"You contradict your own message of love making you feel stronger because you are not a person that knows how to love, Kyle. You are a person who has always equated love with a never ending search for approval. Because Eric Shane never did say he was proud of you, did he?" Patrick's voice was a pantomime, aww widdle baby frown, "Because the audience became a surrogate parent for Kyle Shane when him and his college roommate signed up for a developmental school at age 18...." And here, Patrick's voice became more and more intense, "Because you keep coming back to this because you crave the reactions of the crowd to your latest crazy endeavor... latest on screen, shouting diatribe... or the latest, brilliant thinkpiece metaphor content you film on your laptop. Despite what you thought at Mass Destruction you are not chasing it for love as it is. Because love for you will never be your happily ever after with Array; because Array is just incidental, you already won her approval when she was still a tween and now it holds no value to you. So no, love didn't power you through and win the day against Gerard Angelo and love will not win you against the string of people they'll continue to throw at you, your Grimms, your Justin Michaels or whatever. Because wrestling promotions will so happily throw you onto an endless treadmill, have you running forever until you're broken down and can't run anymore, but, panting and wheezing every time, you'll take your second wind, climb up onto that treadmill and keep at it. Because you're chasing that hit of love-as-Kyle-knows it, that precious drug known as acceptance, approval. You're an addict, Kyle. You're a fucking junkie for it, because the quest for that high is all you've ever known. Isn't it. Isn't it."
As his brother laid out his monologue, voice rising, visibly foaming, Kyle's fist clenched, harder, harder, and he felt his face getting so hot he felt smoke might start coming from his ears. And then the waitress came by, defusing the tension as she took the shotglasses. Still, Kyle covered his mouth with his fist, mumbling, "Roast me, fuck."
Then Kyle sat forward, his eyes angry, and defiant, "No, no, fuck you. You wanna talk about someone chasing approval. You wanna talk about someone who daddy never said he loved him, so he grew up wanting to be hugged. Then how about the son of the slut up the street that Eric Shane banged; the pasty kid with the fucked legs who grew up so bitter, so isolated, so rejected from the rest of the world that he became a 4-Chan Guy Fawkes stereotype, a wannabe Anonymous who's only motivation was to get some sympathy from his brother because I at least lived in the same house as Eric. Fuck you, Voice in the Grey. Fuck you."
Impatiently, Patrick gesticulated, his voice rising, "And that's what I'm saying to you, I understand you, more than that little underage tramp ever could, I relate to you. Your demons play well with mine. We both know the endless quest for approval, the emptiness of having nothing else. Why do you want to be Remastered Kyle Shane and keep going at Pure Class Wrestling, when you proved all you can with a 450 day run as the representative of their company, what more would you gain from facing these people? Why can't you just let this go?"
"Because... Bec - " and his voice faltered, and he paused, thinking about it. But he took note of his brother who was leering at him wolfishly, eyes bugging out, and a grimace passed Kyle's lips. He wanted Patrick out of his face for a little while, and as he looked at the girl working the room just now, he hit on an idea. He smiled at a blonde as tall as him in a leather napkin-skirt and halter, called, "Hey, Bambi, I have a person I'd like you to meet," and as she turned his way he pressed an enormous stack of ones into her hand. "This is Bambi," he said as an introduction to Patrick, while staring him right in the eye, "She does a floor show that has to be seen to be believed, for the right price. Bambi, show my brother, would ya?" And Bambi, giggling playfully, took both hands and hauled Patrick up by his noodled arms with surprising strength, spinning him into a central spot on the floor and setting him onto a chair. As Kyle watched Bambi slink over to Patrick, he smiled, but the smile faltered as he went back to the question. Why?
The thesis may have him questioning, but it wasn't a new question. He himself had asked why he didn't take a step back. In fact, his PCW career had even started with him being coaxed out of walking away with the promise of a new platform. That wasn't him at this stage anymore, he was very much an established brand on Pure Class tv now. And starting over at the bottom carried different problems as coming in cold: he knew that, having been on top of the mountain and being taken down, he was going to meet everyone he had stepped on on the way up. Some understandably more bitter than others. So why?
"Ma'am, I assure you, you have your commission, but I do not require your services to - no, please -"
It was one thing to say all new, all remastered, better than before, and it took that typical Shane chutzpah to do it, but how, even, would he go about being a better and sharper version of something they had already seen? Was there even a way TO do that? Hadn't he thought going into Mass Destruction that he had spent a month polishing the most distilled, perfected form of craft he could ever have presented? And wasn't his bitterness and confusion over the loss so evident that he had to spell it out on the post-PPV Trauma? How could he even top that? And there, the thesis of the Voice in the Grey made sense, I mean... yeah, when you put it like that, the endless quest for the best content did sound like an addiction. So... why?
"You don't like that? You're not looking at me..."
"I... I know that you probably change into a cardigan sweater when you aren't ... on the clock... and you probably have a boyfriend... and this is just a financial transaction helping you get through college..."
"Aw, sweetie, you're killing the mood... why don't you just relax..."
But to defend his legacy over and over? Why couldn't he let this go? What did he have to prove? The stirring in the pit of his soul, the empty maw that growled like a caged tiger, spoke faintly, and it at least growled out that it was starting anew by finishing business with both Stormm and Grimm. And that part that was always empty and wanting to be fed, it's point made sense to him. Why should he give up now when he had successfully turned back Grimm and Stormm in the past, on his way to defending that championship; and since that growling, empty maw was still wanting more it wanted this. It really was an addiction, and in his darkest heart, he knew that Patrick was right, but he couldn't help it, it had it's hooks in. But it was more than just craving people accepting his content. That wasn't what kept him coming back to it. When he looked around at talent, he felt injustice, disparity, a "what the fuck does that dude do that's so great" and he wanted to take on the nominal best at all times and prove himself superior. That was the sweet spot. It's why he saw Grimm and how Grimm got by with these short, brutal, laconic pieces and some offhanded gruffness about snap crackle popping them, and felt he wanted to better that. It's why he saw Stormm continuing to live his life like what he and only he did in 2010's PCW ever mattered and anyone who wasn't here then is a rookie. The simple way men like them did things kind of bothered him and he wanted - needed, to prove that his way could stand out. But in the truly deepest part of his heart, he asked himself even if he did, would it ever feed that empty maw? Would it ever satisfy? He didn't know.
"I... really do need to apologize for... my lack of excitement, I have limited feeling in my extremities due to muscular entropy, it in no way reflects on you for all of your hard work."
"Awww, sweet baby. Why don't you tell me about that?"
He took up a glass of whiskey, his face in the liquid rippling in time with the Skrillex blaring over the club's speakers as he gazed into his own abyss. And then, Bambi led Patrick back over. Patrick, despite himself, was smiling and laughing. Bambi kissed him on the cheek. "Enchanting woman", Patrick blustered, with all of the social grace of a forum nerd that would wear a fedora. And as he sat, looking after her with a leer, his look scanned over to Kyle, who was downing the rest of his glass, hand shaking. "So... what's your answer, then?"
"I do not agree, and furthermore, I do this because I like it. I don't need your lectures." Kyle said stubbornly, looking at his reflection rippling in the whiskey. Then he cut his eyes back up to Patrick, who was gauging him shrewdly. "What?"
Patrick was biting on a cherry stem, playing games. "Tonight has been more... fun than I anticipated and I ...thank you for... introducing me to such..." and, glancing over at Bambi, his face spasmed in a tic and he swallowed, "-Lovely people, but now..." And his eyes looked above Kyle, and his face split into a devilish grin as it became apparent that he was setting something in motion he had in mind possibly even by the time Kyle had told him to meet here, and Patrick finished, " ...We're coming to my surprise of the evening." Kyle felt the shadow of the gorilla that had been watching the girls on the floor. The doorman stepped behind Kyle's shoulder, and with a sick feeling Kyle felt the gun jab into his shoulder. Patrick's eyes moved from Kyle to the doorman, and he smiled. "Get him up, Lawrence, thank you."
A rough hand clenched on Kyle's arm like an iron and hauled him out of his seat. Patrick, satisfied, gathered his crutches and laid a tip down, and as he passed a few of the girls he gave them what he thought was a charming smile, including Bambi. A few club goers were craning their heads out, in confusion. But they thought the bouncer was just tossing someone. The doorman, who Patrick had obviously paid off, forcefully walked Kyle past the strippers, and to the door. In due course, they were out on the curb, and being loaded into an expensive BMW. Only the finest things, huh, he thought sourly, but he was shoved into the passenger seat. Wheezing, and having to take a hit from an inhaler as he slid behind the seat, the wan ghost of Patrick looked across the console at Kyle, leering. Kyle responded by punching him, and then he felt the lip of the gun press against his temple from the backseat. Patrick, groaning, wiped a trickle of blood from his nose. "Ahh, ahhh," He moaned, but he held a stopping hand up to the meathead packed into the suit, and he pinched his nose as he looked over at Kyle, "Don't do that again."
As the car started and they edged out onto the city streets, Kyle sullenly looked out at the passing halogen orange street lamps, glancing over at Patrick, whose jaw was set with purpose, his eyes bugging with fervor. Patrick looked at him too, and he asked, "Believe it or not this is for your own good."
"My own good, right, my wannabe supervillain relative and someone I can only imagine he paid off or probably hacked the financial records of and blackmailed or -"
In the back, Lawrence, knowing he was being talked about, just shrugged easily; when he wasn't putting a gun to someone's head he was a fairly chill dude. Patrick overrode the digression. "We are family, Kyle, and as your older sibling I have a right, a responsibility for you not to go down this path. I see you grappling with the existential question but unable to let go of this vice. And this is what families do when one of their members have an addiction, isn't it? This is your intervention, Kyle. I'm doing this because I DO care about you. It's why I've done everything. Do you see."
Funny way of showing it, he thought with a grunt, then he sardonically sniped over at Pat "...Work about as well as your legs."
"There. Right there. You deflect criticism with a witty barb, but you are still addicted. You can't stop putting yourself out there and wanting people to laugh, to react, to give you love and approval." He extended two fingers and made the sign of the cross in the air, "I absolve you of your need, Kyle, you don't have to try to impress these people anymore."
"I'm not trying to - "
"Then why? Why can't you let your addiction go?" Patrick said, and before he knew it, they were pulling into a fenced construction site. He let Kyle stew in silence as he put it in park, and they sat there, next to piles of gravel and rebar, silent, and waiting. Kyle was frustrated, thinking he didn't have to justify himself, searching every inch of the surrounding to find a spot to break loose. But the question stuck in his craw and it wasn't so much that the crippled shit was asking, but he wanted to know. Because ego? Because honor? Because he didn't want to give someone the satisfaction of saying they beat Kyle Shane and smirking about that?
The reality was that wrestling was always the thing he loved that only loved him back intermittently. That that could inform so many of his other personal relationships was the hard part. As Lawrence, casually holding the gun into the small of the back, held him by the shoulder and marched him into the construction pit, he thought of trying hard again for Pure Class Wrestling in a thankless, possibly no win situation this very week. Beat Stormm and Grimm. Stake his claim. Be the man he said he was, remastered, revitalized, resurgent. But being honest he felt more negative motivation than positive willpower, and he didn't look at this as an opportunity to stand atop the mountain so much as a clusterfuck. All three of the men involved were at crossroads. Two of them had been taken off of thrones they had inhabited for over a year. They all desperately needed momentum, and would do all to get it. But he felt that hungry pull from the empty, never satisfied, rapacious hole in his heart and that hole fucking NEEDED, craved, shrieked out to him to get that win, impress these people, pinning Stormm and Grimm would make him feel whole.
And that may have been a lie. He could do it, but it would just be a fix. He would really never have enough.
Lawrence poked him with the gun, making him turn his head, his mouth twisting bitterly. And so what if he wouldn't? Nobody outworked him, so feeding validation to that empty hole was justified. Grimm wandered aimlessly squashing no-shows and doing Grimm things, in between being part of the crappiest nonstarter of a Black Hand stable ever formed. Stormm phoned in effort every week when he was booked in tag matches and filled the air with an unbelievably smug, punchable aura that wasn't warranted by his lackluster approach. He worked for that validation, he deserved it, and he chased it because not getting it when he had worked so much harder did not sit right. It was his right to -
Patrick, then, reached around and cuffed him, "Get out of your head."
Kyle straightened himself to his full height and adjusted the hem of his coat, despite the gun in his back. "Listen, I've given this a lot of thought, and - Why don't you go fist yourself, you weird and sad little prick."
Patrick had a little smile/grimace, indicating he was sarcastically charmed by the epithet, and he tottered in front of Kyle, and theatrically indicated an area in front of them lit by the headlights of the car. It was then that Kyle noticed the man trussed up and moaning, weeping uncontrollably in the headlights. Kyle looked from Patrick to the hostage, "No, no no no, Patrick what have you done -"
"Intervention, little Kyle, family intervention. You may not recognize this particular wasted branch of the family tree, he's a cousin by way of the Shane line. One of our daddy dearest's sisters brood, Jonathan here - " he poked the cowering, snivelling man, a wasted stick of drawn out flesh that made Patrick look healthy - " Our country cousin lives out in the sticks of our great state, has a particularly long file with the sheriff regarding the sale and distribution of cowboy cocaine, in general, Jonathan here is a blight on society."
Jonathan, his hands bound behind them, swept his dark ringed, drugged eyes among the three players in the tableau, and burbled out a string of garbled, run-together pleas. "YougottahelpmepleaseletmegoI donwannadie outhereman its cold pleasepleaseplease -"
With the doorman prodding Kyle to step forward so they all got closer, Patrick continued. "Addiction is ugly and forces you to sacrifice everything, to take four to get one, to screw over family to get just a fix. And Jonathan here's drug of choice is one a little different from your never ending quest to get someone to be proud of you like dad never was. Jonathan loves him the cocaine." He withdrew a vial, with big, crystalline white powder in it, "And he can have it, or you can make him go without."
Kyle's eyes narrowed to slits, "What kind of mind game - What?! No, Patrick, I'm not letting you give this dude drugs."
Patrick sighed, rolled his eyes to his hired on doorman, and Lawrence pointed the gun at Kyle's face again. "I'm not giving you that option. I'm giving you the choice. You can go home and indulge your demon, sit in your little sound stage and cut an angry promo decrying your opponents this week for twenty minutes, and if you do that, we will give Jon what will probably be a lethal overdose, even to his cocaine fueled engine. Or, you can take his place, take the drug from my hand and you take it. You take Jonathan's demon and you use it. And you don't go back to indulging your little obsession."
Jonathan Distant Cousin was rolling his eyes madly, slobbering and motormouthing "Pleaseman Idonknowyouthat well think I sawyouatta familyreunion once when we were kids pleasedontletthis guyskillmeIgotadogandabirdandacat - " and Kyle huffed, looking from Patrick, who was solicitiously holding out the vial, to Lawrence, who was stepping towards him, holding the gun up, and he looked back and forth. Why was Patrick doing this? Why was he making him make this choice? Patrick just stood there, eyebrows raised. Finally, Kyle balked, shaking his head. "I don't understand - why do you - Why am I supposed to - You're trying to make me trade one addiction, as you put it for another."
Patrick's face was in shadow as he looked down, "I'm giving you the option to choose to do something for your fellow man, Kyle. To walk away from putting all of your energy into feeding your own petty ego looking for that one moment that will never come - the one moment you think when PCW - when WRESTLING will finally, fully embrace you, give you validation, tell you they're proud of you. One or two might say it now and again but it never lasts. You're chasing an ideal, and you couch it in terms of perfection, but you haven't chose love." He indicates the vial with a nod of his head, "In a way... if you take this choice, you will be living up to what you talked about, about love making you stronger than being alone ever would. You would be - "
And there, while the ass was pontificating, Kyle saw his opening as Lawrence let the gun dip, and he turned in, hammered him in the wrist and punched the big man in the nose. Lawrence blinked twice, stepped back, and then in a fully, throaty baritone, he said "Ow, man, shit," and he held his hands up as Kyle collected the gun. He pointed it Lawrence's way, and the nightclub doorman, no matter if he had been bought, just shrugged nonchalantly and stepped out of the way, his demeanor suggesting he had nothing else to do with this. And while Kyle was making sure of him, he felt something over his shoulder.
"NO!" Patrick was roaring, and his fury and desperation gave him strength enough to jump at Kyle. For a moment the crippled hacker was airborne and then he tackled Kyle, and they both went down. As the two rolled around in the gravel, they wrestled for control of the gun, and there was a terrifying second, as Kyle looked into the mad eyes of his older brother, that Kyle was afraid. Patrick was given strength born of insane conviction, and as he ripped at Kyle and struggled to push the hand with the gun, Kyle worried that he was losing control. "Why - do you - have to make things so difficult?!" Patrick rasped, his voice a wheezing engine as he straddled Kyle, his clutching claw wasted hands trying to close around his throat.
"Cause I like making things hard, Bambi would have been able to tell you that," Kyle taunted, and he brought his knee crashing up between Patrick's legs as they twisted on top of each other. All the air left Patrick's weak lungs in a whine, and he fell over in agony. Kyle stood, gasping and breathing heavily, and he cruelly kicked Patrick's crutch away. He turned his head, looking at their cousin, then pointed the gun. Patrick was pushing himself up on an elbow, his bent body wracked with pain, and he was breathing shallowly. Kyle moved in on him.
"Thankyouthankyouthankyou" their cousin said, as Kyle untied him, and after rubbing his wrists, there was a brief, poignant second where he opened his mouth and appeared to be giving a sober appraisal of the Shane boy that did good, got out of his hometown and stayed clean, but the moment passed and the cousin Kyle didn't know took off running (as is, perhaps, a crackhead's wont) down the street. Kyle simply marveled and watched him run off for a second, then turned to Patrick. Patrick laughed, coughed, spit, and curled his lip, defiant even though his weak, broken body was not letting him move. He lay there, wasted limbs laying helplessly, and stared at Kyle, hate burning from his eyes, mixed with a twisted, perverse fervor of what he thought of as love. Kyle stared down, deadpan, holding the gun in one hand.
"You are unbelievable," Patrick panted, and he scooted back a little, grimacing. "You couldn't do it. You couldn't let one stupid little thing go."
"It was never about me letting that go, Patrick," Kyle said quietly, pitiably, looking down at the bag of bones. "I couldn't -"
"You can't just walk away from it. Even when I gave you logic, reason, an out. Even when I put a gun to your head and said, walk away tonight. You would never give it up."
"Because why should I give it up, Patrick?" he heard himself saying, but that wasn't him, it was the empty maw, the starving voice calling up from the bottomless pit.
"You came to me!" Patrick snarled, "You asked me for help, months ago, you wanted to know how I deal with it. And I saw you, wrestling with your demons, having pushed EVERYONE away, and still not able to let this go. Don't you see, I was trying to help you!"
Kyle nodded along, smiling hard, looking out into the street and back, "Yeah yeah help me, thanks for helping me, you never helped me, Patrick, you stuck a gun to -"
"And you wouldn't listen!" Patrick interrupted, pushing himself painfully to sit, but unable to get up without his crutch. Kyle, coldly, stepped on his hand. Patrick cried out shortly. But then he looked up at Kyle, eyes slitted. "If you won't listen. If you won't give this up, then you'll just be the same as you were when you came to me. Broken. Alone. Forever."
Kyle cocked the gun, and put it right to Patrick's forehead. He stared hard. Patrick was looking up, his mouth and nose leaking, and he continued to rant. "Go on! You know I'm right! You know that you're wanting something that can never be given. I've tried with you, Kyle. And until you admit I'm right, you'll never know peace. You'll never get what you want. Never! Never! Never!"
The construction site falls silent.
Kyle walks past Lawrence, who's nonchalantly and coolly smoking a cigarette and leaning against the car, and Lawrence just gives him a meaningful little look, tacitly asking where the other dude is. Kyle ignores it and tosses the gun aside. He turns away, walking down the street illuminated by orange halogen.
It's almost morning when he enters the apartment, having walked for untold blocks before coming home. Shuffling like a zombie, feeling old, feeling so much more tired, he throws his keys on the counter and trudges into the bedroom. Still clothed, he pushes five pillows set in an effigy of a person out of their spot. In bed next to the pillows, she's laying, curled on her side. He slips into bed next to her.
He feels her move her head, and she quietly speaks, a million emotions packed into a brief "Hey" all of which indicate she knows something of where he went tonight, but saying nothing. He doesn't say hey back. In time, despite the coldness and distance between them, she nestles in the bed and spoons against him, settling into position against his hard chest. Array appears to go back to sleep. He lays there, haunted, thinking of everything Patrick said.
He places an arm around Array as she breathes quietly next to him.
He doesn't know the answer to a single one question that was posed by either of them tonight, but he knows that at the moment, having her next to him comforts him just that little bit.
