WARNING: Domestic violence depicted within. Please proceed cautiously and skip to the very final paragraph of the chapter for a list of content warnings/a chapter summary.
Names and details in the below recollection of events have been drastically changed for reasons of privacy.
Day 27: "Split it up"
Kei's voice cut through the din of the upbeat swing music, rousing Kurama from his thoughts with a few soft words. "Hey, Kurama?" she said, leaning her elbow on the table and pillowing her delicate chin on her hand. "You look contemplative."
"Do I?" he said. He wore his most charming, disarming smile, but Kei wasn't fooled for a second. Her eyes narrowed, slits of bright amber against her copper skin.
"Yes," she said. "It's suspicious as hell."
"Is it?" Kurama said in that same, absent tone. "How interesting."
"You've got a particularly mischievous look in your eye, in fact." Her eyes narrowed further. "And the evasiveness isn't helping your case, for the record."
Neither of them spoke, for a time. Flashing lights from within the café cast odd, rippling shadows over their spot at a table on the patio. A flowering jasmine vine on the patio railing perfumed the air with rich fragrance, one matched only by the scent of Kei's bath products—strawberry basil, as he both recalled and smelled. Herbal yet sweet, complex yet understated, it suited her perfectly. But the look of suspicion on her pretty features and didn't suit the delicacy of her heart-shaped face, chin still resting on her upturned palm, watchful eyes still narrowed and trained unerringly on him.
He wasn't deterred by her scrutiny. It felt thrilling, if he were honest, to be looked at by her in that way. Her attention did not perturb him at all. He enjoyed their back-and-forth, their repartee, their games of semantics and matched intellect. But lately she had made no secret that she disliked certain intentions Kurama harbored, and when she caught him staring contemplatively into the distance, it was those plans he'd been thinking of. Surely telling her his thoughts would only result in an argument, petty though it might be.
And yet… she was a part of his plans. She would be at the dinner with him, Shiori and Kuwabara Sr., after all. Keeping mum on the issue (pun not intended and likely a product of his association with Kei, interestingly enough) wasn't an option. But how should he talk with her about it?
Kurama decided to proceed with delicacy, as was his custom. "I'm thinking about that dinner we have planned," he said, honesty at war with subtlety in every word he spoke. "My mother is narrowing down a date for the evening."
Kei stiffened at once, though she tried to hide it. "Ah. I see." She averted her eyes, staring over his shoulder at the rest of the café patio. Mimicking his delicate delivery, she said, "And what are you thinking about that dinner?"
"Various things." Kurama hedged, just in case he might need to divert the conversation should it proceed badly. "Mulling over different options."
He meant, of course, that he mulled over the different options regarding how he could poison the well between Shiori and Kuwabara Sr. Kei knew that, of course. She always seemed to know what he meant, even when he didn't wish her to. But he had phrased it in such a way that, perhaps, she might take it to mean he was mulling over different options for the date and day of the week of the event itself. That was what he would claim should the mood sour. Kurama was not one to neglect a contingency plan.
But Kei surprised him. She looked at him for many moments in silence, hand eventually slipping off the table to fall into her lap. Her long bangs hungover one eye in a mahogany fall; she brushed them aside and behind her ear with a fingertip, nails tracing the subtlest of paths over her warm skin.
"Did I ever tell you about my friend Christa?" she said.
A completely unexpected segue, one Kurama had not predicted in any capacity whatsoever. But that was why he valued Kei—for her ability to say the unexpected, and to keep him guessing. This time, however, he merely shifted toward her in his seat, unsettled (but intrigued, in spite of himself) by the odd way she looked at him. Like she had seen something she didn't like in the angle of his jaw, her own pulsing when she clenched her teeth.
"I can't say that you have, no," Kurama said.
Kei took a deep breath.
Then, slowly, she spoke.
"We met when I was… well. About my age right now, I guess. And Christa and I were friends up until… you know." A low laugh, embittered and small. "She had shit taste in guys. I mean, really shit. And one day, after a string of relationships with guys not worth even a minute of her time, she brings over Ryan."
Between them on the table sat two cups of coffee. Kei's was mostly empty, but still she picked up her spoon and traced its tip through the dregs of cream and sugar, eyes drifting downward to drown themselves in bitterness.
"Now Ryan, he was a real piece of garbage. I knew right away," Kei said, words gruff below the nearby pulse of smooth swing music. "She was too deep in it, too desperate to be loved to notice the amount of stuff she did for him and the lack of stuff he did for her in return." Here eyes flickered upward, one second amber, the next cool silver. "I'm talking literal, physical stuff, by the way. In not time flat he moved himself in with her. She paid the rent. Bought him clothes. Paid for food. And what'd he do? He sat at home and played video games. Quit his job after they moved in together, in fact, he got so comfortable on her dime. Said he wasn't feeling the job anymore and needed time to think. Time for which she footed the bill, and—anyway."
Another deep breath, this one shakier than the last. She set down her spoon, metal clinking against thin china.
"I wasn't shy with my observations," said Kei, tone oddly dull. "Christa was my best friend, after all. We were always honest with each other, and she always told me everything he did. About the screaming matches. The way he said, when she put on weight, that she was lucky to have him because no one else could ever love such a whale. About the night he overturned their mattress, with her in it, because she fell asleep on his side of the bed. The time he stole and wrecked her car. The way he got access to her bank accounts and monitored her spending. The things of hers he sold with no apology." Her fists clenched atop the café table. "Things like her grandmother's wedding ring."
Kurama felt he should say something—something to mend the broken look in Kei's eyes. At that distant resignation, one paired with a prickling anger he could feel rather than see. But he said nothing, because Kei kept talking—and because he had no idea what to say, in the first place.
"Damn, did it all piss me off." Kei shook her head, a humorless laugh leaking from between her teeth. "I'd listen and I'd tell her, girl, he is not good for you. He's got you on a hook and it's so deep in your skin, you can't even see it cutting you anymore. He's abusive, and you need to run." Again she shook her head, more sadly than before. "But she didn't. Not until things got worse."
She sat there for a long time in silence.
Then, like a mousetrap snapping, she raised her head, looked Kurama in the eye, and said: "One night she calls me at 3 AM saying he's outside her door with a gun."
Kurama had not known what to say before. He knew even less what to say then. But Kei wasn't interested in his opinion. Her gaze dropped like a stone to her coffee cup, lips thin and white against her sun kissed skin.
"She was staying at a bed and breakfast while on a job site a city away—that was her job, an oilfield site technician. The B&B was near the field. Anyway." Her hair fell forward; she tucked it behind her ear, gesture sharp with impatience. "They'd had a fight, and he drove to where she was staying, and he was outside shouting. I heard him over the phone, yelling at her to come outside." The distance in her eyes preceded her change in verb tense, Kei's mind slipping backward in time, returning to a moment long since passed. Her shoulders tensed like a plucked bowstring as she said, "And I don't think twice; I get in the car with Tom and we drive down there, to where she's staying, and he's on her front porch with a .45 in one hand, a bottle of scotch in the other, just yelling into the night, just screaming. I take photos from the car, just in case we needed evidence at some point, and then I crawl over the neighbor's hedges to get to the back door. Smuggled her out and got her away." Back up her eyes rose, meeting his, all amber gone, only cool silver left around her pupils. "And do you know what happened then?"
"No," said Kurama. It was all that he could say.
Kei smiled.
Kei said: "She stayed."
Kurama did not speak. Kei traced her spoon around the bottom of her cup.
"She stayed with him for months after that," she said. "I don't remember why she eventually left. I think it was over something small—a small thing she wielded as a big reason to leave. I remember being proud of her for it." Kei shook her head again. "But, man, even when she finally worked up the nerve to leave, she couldn't just go. I had to rally, like, every buff dude I knew and take a posse to her apartment, kick the guy out for her. He was too deeply entrenched to just break up with. He had to be excised, like a tumor." With the edge of her spoon, she cut a thin, straight line across the tabletop. "And I was happy to be her scalpel at that point."
"Kei." He reached for her hand without thinking, placing his over hers like a cage—one that offered protection, not confinement, or so Kurama hoped it seemed. "Why are you telling me this?"
Her crooked smile didn't quite reach her eyes. She said: "Nothing I did mattered, when it came to breaking up Christa and Ryan—and damn did I try to split them up. I told her a hundred times to leave him, and she ended up pushing me away, because being force-fed the truth hurt. I hadn't heard from her in weeks when she called me to help get him out of her life. Just goes to show that it wasn't until she was ready to let go that she found the will to leave. It wasn't until she saw the truth for herself that she finally left." A small shrug, subtle and slow. "I couldn't feed the truth to her. She had to taste it on her own. And sometimes I think that if I'd pushed less, wasn't as hard on her, she'd have left sooner. Sometimes people dig in their heels when you tell them what to do. Motivation comes from within, not from meddlers like us."
And there it was—the real reason she'd broached this subject. Kurama withdrew his hand, settling back into his chair with body language carefully moderated to convey casual indifference. He wanted to cross his arms, turn away from her cool grey gaze, tell her his motivations were pure and for his mother's benefit… but he didn't allow himself the luxury.
"So what do you suggest?" was all he said, instead.
"If someone is bad for someone else, they'll leave when they're ready, and not a minute before," said Kei, eyes hard and intent upon his cool, masked face. "Meddling might not do you any good. It might just make things between you tense, and that doesn't help anybody. Because if it does go south, you'll need to be there for her, and if she doesn't trust you when it all falls apart…"
Kurama read in the subtle changes of her phrasing that Kei was no longer speaking in generalizations; she was talking about him and his mother, specifically and almost explicitly. He further read in the clench of Kei's fingers and the set of her tight shoulders that this subject pained her—and when he felt compelled to make a joke, he wondered what fueled that compulsion. A desire to waylay an awkward conversation, or a desire to banish the pain from Kei's grey eyes?
He wasn't certain. Nevertheless, the joke slipped free.
"So you'd advocate I use reverse psychology, in that case?" he said with teasing affability. "Meddling without appearing to meddle, to preserve allegiances?"
Grey vanished, replaced by warm brown eyes that appeared on the wake of a glare—but he saw the way her mouth twitched with the beginnings of her crooked grin. "That's not what I mean and you know it, Kurama."
"Isn't it, though?" He smiled his most disarming smile, reaching for her hand again. "Thank you for the excellent advice, Kei. I'll be sure to heed it."
She laughed, a musical sound he preferred to the beat of the music trickling from the café. When she batted his hand away, feigning offense with a dramatic huff, he deemed his attempt to diffuse the tension successful—but as the night wore on, and night became day, and days became weeks, his mind often drifted back to the tale she'd told him, and back to the look of pain she'd worn during that retelling.
I've never told that story about my friend Christa before. It was early in my relationship with Tom. When she called, he went with me. It's how I knew how good he was so early on. Also that incident happened while I was up late writing an LC chapter; it's the only reason I was awake at that hour to take her call. That feels significant somehow.
Many thanks to those still reading, because they consistently make my day: xenocanaan, Kaiya Azure, cestlavie, ladyofchaos, and C S Stars.
CONTENT WARNINGS: Physical abuse, emotional/verbal abuse, financial abuse, mention of a firearm, mention of alcohol
SUMMARY: A friend of mine once lived with an ex who abused her financially, mentally beat her down so she wouldn't leave him, stole from her, and abused her physically. I helped her get out of the situation, but it took a long time for her to realize what a piece of shit (even though her friends and family were quite vocal in what they observed from him). Kei relays this story to Kurama to basically show him that no matter how hard he meddles with his mother's love life, sometimes people just don't respond well to meddling. If his mom wants to dump Kuwabara Sr., it'll be because SHE wants to, not because Kurama told her to.
ALSO NOTE: It was absolutely NOT CHRISTA'S FAULT that she stayed with Ryan as long as she did. He was a snake who carefully broke her down mentally in order to keep her compliant. The most dangerous time for a victim of domestic violence is WHEN THEY TRY TO LEAVE their abuser; the death rate skyrockets at that point. Fear and psychological manipulation kept her in that situation, and she is not to blame. Ryan is, full stop. I will not tolerate any victim blaming in the comments section.
If you or someone you love is a victim of domestic violence, please call 800 799 SAFE (7233, the National Domestic Violence Hotline in the US) to get help. You are NOT ALONE.