Back again! Thank you to cajun-beauty, WhisperingNights, Baby Sweet, Nikki, Akaiama, princessezzy, ..silencio., Slightly Sinister Sinestra, xMax-Tatex, terracannon876 and empire14 for reviewing!
Well. Um. What is there to say, other than 'Hi, I'm alive and was randomly inspired yesterday to continue this fic.' It was always great fun to write and it was surprisingly easy to slip back into it. I wouldn't say I have a plan but I do have some more ideas. Angsty, of course.
I wrote two thirds of this yesterday evening and this morning, so yay! (The first third's been there since '07 ...)
In case you can't be bothered to reread the previous chapter (since this carries directly on from there), quick summary:
Kai's got the flu from hell, Ray's sliced himself to pieces, Max has just left his side in hospital as his step-father turns up, Max sees Kai, they hug, both get a tiny bit of lust but Kai pulls away.
I heard someone coming down the corridor and took a few steps away from Sir, who had already turned away to lean against the wall.
"Dad?" My dad looked at me with concern and opened his arms a fraction, enough for me to see the invitation and no one else. Chewing on my bottom lip as suddenly tears welled up out of nowhere, I walked forwards and pulled him into a quick, tight hug, similar to the ones I gave at school and oh-so different to the embrace I had just shared with Sir … Kai. I pulled away, smiling weakly to try and remove the look of worry from Dad's face.
"You ok, Max?" I shrugged. "How's Ray?" I shrugged again, signing that his dad was with him to avoid the fact that I couldn't speak of him without degrading him.
Dad didn't know, after all.
"Who's that?" Dad lowered his voice and gestured with his head to where Kai was still leaning against the wall. "He doesn't look so good." I turned to look and frowned.
"Sir! Go home!" I ordered again.
"He's your teacher?" my dad spluttered. I nodded.
"For my sins," Kai agreed, his voice a hoarse, dry raven's croak.
"You must have a lot of sins," my dad joked. Kai smiled ruefully. "You want a ride back? You look rough, if you don't mind me saying so."
"Yeah, that'd be great."
He fell asleep in the car, snoring surprisingly loudly. I watched him in the rear-view mirror - he had insisted on sitting in the back - and hoped that Dad was concentrating too much on the road to see the smile spreading across my face.
Thoughts of Ray sobered me up instantly and I stared out of the window, agonising over my decision, should I have left him with his dad? I knew the answer; it ate away at me all that long drive home.
No. No, I shouldn't have left him. I shouldn't have left my wounded, confused, scared, upset, all round fucked-up boyfriend alone with his even more fucked-up step-father. Why the hell had I? Something niggled at the back of my mind, but hovered just out of sight and sound.
Stupid hovering thing, I thought moodily as we pulled up outside Kai's flat.
He had given Dad extensive directions before falling asleep (somehow sensing that my dad wasn't one of those people blessed with inner maps) but, alas, even this had failed and Dad had driven quite literally twice around the town before noticing the place by sheer luck. I'd previously told him that he should wake Kai up and ask for directions again but he just shook his head and gave me a reproachful look, saying something about Kai clearly needing rest. Well, I'd thought sourly, so do we and this isn't helping us get back home! I was so, so tempted to just tell Dad myself but then that would mean revealing that I knew where he lived (which not even Ray knew) and probably how I knew (which I would never tell anyone, ever, until I was much older and talking to impartial enough people that it didn't matter). Not to mention I would probably call him Kai by accident, which was something else I now needed to be careful about. Yay.
So I wasn't in the best of moods when I swivelled in my seat and gave him (still fast asleep and snoring fit to burst) a hearty punch to the thigh. Although I half-wanted an aggressive response it was still a shock when, faster than I could react (I was sleepy, ok?) and before his eyes were even open, he grabbed my fist and squeezed hard. Bones shifted in my hand and I yelped with pain. I tried to pull away but succeeded only in convincing Kai to reduce the strength of his grip very slightly. My dad, in the middle of a tricky parallel park, turned in alarm to see what was going on. Kai opened his eyes, looked first at my dad and then at me before saying,
"Don't hit a teacher, Tate," in a hoarse voice that was somehow nasty and sympathetic at the same time.
"Max!" my dad scolded, glaring at me. Defiance fought with embarrassment and I kept my head high even as my face turned steadily redder.
Besides, he hadn't let go of my hand yet.
That alone made the sleep deprivation, pain in my hand and getting lost seventy billion times worthwhile.
Fuck, I had it bad.
"We're here," I blurted. He regarded me wearily.
"I guessed that," he said in his awful, sick, sandpaper voice. Letting go off my hand, he rubbed not just his eyes but his entire face before reaching for the door handle. "Thank you very much for the lift, Mr Tate. I'm sorry I inconvenienced you."
"Don't be silly, Mr ...?"
"Hiwatari. I'm not silly, it's four o'clock in the fucking morning, excuse the language."
I fought back a laugh at the fleeting look of shock on my dad's face, but I must have made some sort of noise because Kai (both legs out of the car and braced to drag his body out too) turned and glared at me. He looked pretty feverish, I noticed worriedly.
"Expecting you in school."
"What?" I replied at a volume that apparently neither Kai nor my dad appreciated. "But … Ray! No sleep?! I'll never be able to concentrate!"
"Oh, you think I'm going to get so much sleep?" he snarled back. Such was my shock that I got halfway to hiding behind the headrest before grabbing control of myself and glaring back. "You turn up," he continued roughly. "I don't care if you spend the day asleep or texting Ray but you turn up."
"But-" I began to protest again (it was difficult through a throat that had slammed shut with the shock of Kai's unexpected anger) but he looked away and got out of the car. Without another look he walked towards his front door.
Like I meant nothing. Like he hadn't just wasted an entire evening helping me sort out Ray's mess and then hugged me and held my hand, for fuck's sake. Well, screw him. See how much I cared. My throat was now thoroughly locked but with great relish I made several obscene gestures in quick succession out of the window. His back was turned but I hoped that he'd catch the intent anyway. Telepathy or something.
Sadly, Dad definitely saw them. I expected a lecture which I could just tune out but instead he gave me a disappointed look and revved the engine by accident as he drove away. A few minutes of silence later, he asked,
"Can you talk?"
I shrugged.
"Bit." I was expecting it to be about Ray, even though he knew from past experience that I dished out info about Ray only when I wanted to.
"You going to go to school tomorrow?"
"Yeah."
He looked at me in surprise. (he wasn't the only one surprised by that remark. I thought I was going to say no.) "Really?"
"Yeah. What do if not?" I should really have signed that last sentence, it made so little sense in the bite-size words that were all I could manage. It's risky though, taking Dad's eyes off the road for too long. He smiled sadly out the windscreen and said,
"I'd do nothing, Max. That's all I'm good for, isn't it?"
I squirmed.
"Nev'r said that!"
"No," he agreed placidly.
We drove in silence after that. As we came nearer to our road though, he spoke again.
"You seem close, you and this teacher."
I flinched. I definitely one hundred percent guilty-flinched. Did he notice? How could he not? Forget butterflies, I had snakes inside me.
"O-oh? How come?" Amazingly, my throat remained loose enough to allow speech, though my hands twitched.
Dad wiggled most of the fingers on his left hand thoughtfully.
"Not sure. Just a hunch. Well, that and the fact that you're actually going into school tomorrow."
I forced a smile and found a reply.
"He's a good teacher, even if he can be an absolute bastard."
Dad laughed a little at that, which confused me.
"Some of the best teachers I ever had at school either screamed at us until we cried or beat us until we bled. It must be a genius thing."
"Tch. Kai's no genius."
Fuck! I knew I'd do it sooner or later, but not on the same day that I found out what his name was! It was ridiculous. Almost comical, in fact. Dad was watching me with a small smile.
"He lets you call him by his first name?"
Think, Max, think like a bloody supercomputer!
"No," I replied and found a conspiratorial grin spreading easily over my face. Dad grinned back and pulled up outside the house.
"Get to bed, you anarchist," he said fondly. "Grab as much as sleep as you can."
"Gladly," I grumbled, opening the door and shivering at the cold dawn air.
Shit. Dawn? I was going to school tomorrow - today? I mean, it's not like I hadn't spent a day and a night awake before; I had, many, many times. I'd just never gone to school afterwards. But now there was Kai and so now I apparently followed the call of my dick wherever he wanted.
I lay shivering my covers, waiting for my body heat to transfer to the duvet wrapped around me. Dad clomped up the stairs and called goodnight to me through the door. I didn't bother replying, just squeezed my eyes tighter together and tried to get to sleep. As I slowly succeeded, my brain began to wander, as it does, and it made … connections.
My dad turned into Ray's step-father and suddenly I remembered and realised in full, black and white horror that froze the blood in my veins and set a whirlpool in my mind; I had left Ray to his step-father. Thrown him to the worst fucking wolf of them all because I had been too pathetic to tell anyone and, really, so fed up with Ray's disastrous coping methods that in some deep part of me I'd actually thought, good. Maybe this'll stop him.
But it wouldn't stop him, of course it fucking wouldn't (nothing would, I felt), but definitely, absolutely not the same person who caused it, Max, you … argh. I had no words for how I saw myself just then. Spineless and selfish and stupid. So fucking stupid and careless.
Without thinking about it, I wriggled out of the covers and swung my arm as hard as I could at the sharp corner of the solid wooden bedside table. It rocked and nearly fell over and my arm reached a stalemate between pin-and-needles numbness and enough pain to make me need to stuff the duvet into my mouth.
I knew that Ray would ask me why I hadn't used the knife when I went to see him tomorrow. He wouldn't understand the explanation; that I used the knife to make me feel better. This was to make me feel worse.
(happy smile) God, I love character torture far too much.
I have a question, my lovely readers. There will be at least one character death, I'm not telling you who. xD My current plan is to end this in a vaguely positive way - character goes through hell and comes out other side ready for a completely new beginning. But, I don't know. Anyone want more deaths, and/or a negative ending? Is entirely plausible. Throw some ideas at me if you want, I'll see if they fit.
As usual, expect any oncoming romance (hint hint xD) to be tainted very strongly with enough angst to tar a road.
Love everybody who's reading this.
All opinions welcome.
xIlbx