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thejusticelounge2013-07-21 12:00 pm
bossymarmalade) wrote in thejusticelounge2013-07-21 12:00 pm
Entry tags:
recompense
I did something very wrong. I took advantage of a friend who just needed a friend.
A married friend who just needed a friend.
A married friend who is a woman who just needed a friend.
A married friend who is a woman that I love who just needed a friend.
A married friend who is a woman that I love and she was in distress and she just needed a goddamn friend.
where are you this is not a conversation for Watchtower forum.
I’m in space. I can be in LA if you want?
Within ten minutes, Kyle was outside Kate’s apartment, sitting on one of the patio chairs and studying his hands with the intent of a college student doing last-minute exam cramming.
He brought with him a bottle of tequila and a handful worth of limes, all neatly lined up on her bannister. The tequila sat by his feet.
He would be, honestly, happy for just a night of distraction and drinking if Kate was up for that. He was up for anything Kate was, now that he thought about it. TV or talking, whatever worked for the moment. He just wanted to be with her.
Kate, however, was in little mood for distraction. She needed to hash this out—hell, she figured Kyle needed to hash this out—and as she zetaed into the pad on her patio, his body language didn’t really dissuade her.
Thank fuck he’d brought that bottle of tequila, she thought. They could really end up needing it, depending on how avoidant Kyle felt like being.
Though, admittedly, he’d told her most of the story already. It didn’t take a ton of thought to figure out who else they knew who was married and a good friend to Kyle. A good friend with sexual tension, no less, and who hadn’t been at home recently. Not that Kate would spill the beans about this to anybody, not even Ollie, but it wasn’t hard to understand.
“Ese,” she said. “You done beating yourself up or should I leave you to if for a while longer?”
"I’m done," Kyle said almost immediately , but when he looked up at her, it was only then that he seemed to actually register she was there. She was leaned by the patio door, the screen closed behind her to prevent insects but the air conditioning from inside wafting in tendrils into the new summer heat. Almost wafting from Kate, Kyle thought, still half-dreamily. It felt good, the coolness.
He stood up and dodged past her into her apartment, bold-facedly as if it was his to inhabit. From the kitchen, as he collected a couple short glasses, he asked, "So? I wanna hear your thoughts, Kate. Slap some on me, I really need to hear you right now. I can tell from your face that you know my deal. It happened in Paris, by the way. She asked me. So. You talk, I listen?"
Kyle came around and held a glass out to her. “Por favor."
“Your deal,” Kate said, vaguely amused at the wording, and followed Kyle through the door. “Yeah, bro, I figured out your deal. Madre di dios.” It was, she gathered, not the time for How Fucking Stupid Can You Be, namely because Kyle’d clearly done that already by the way he’d been slumped on her patio and how neatly he’d lined up the limes. It was a Thing.
She took the glass from him and went back towards the patio to collect limes and tequila before coming back through to the kitchen. “Wait, she asked you what? To go to Paris?” Or to kiss her, was the unspoken part, but she figured Kyle was able to figure that much out, and she figured he wouldn’t be the same kind of upset, necessarily, if the kissing had been by request. Upset but not…
Well, this kind.
She twisted open the screwtop, then sloshed some of the tequila into his glass before hers. “I gotta know how it happened before I can talk.”
Kyle explained in a series of staccato sentences, like giving a report - meeting by the cafe, talking out some of confusions that Zee had, ending up at her hotel room by his demand - he used the word ‘demand- and then how it went down once they got there. Kyle’s kiss, her saying no, him leaving.
He gave it like a report on purpose, his eyes not leaving hers as he turned the glass of tequila slowly in his hands. He wanted to be told he behaved wrong and bad, this much was obvious, and Kyle wasn’t trying to hide it either.
"So there you go," Kyle said, and raised his stubborn chin slightly, because damned if he wasn’t cocky about being contrite. Even he was aware of the utter…Green Lanternness of that attitude; but it was Kate and by now he knew she could handle Kyle’s quirks. “So…yeah?"
Kate sipped her tequila—okay, fuck, it wasn’t the sipping kind of tequila, but like fuck was she going to do shots before she got a chance to get her say in—and listened to Kyle’s debrief, leaning against the counter a little and lifting an eyebrow slowly over the course of the narrative.
She didn’t appreciate the I’m Sorry So There attitude, even if she expected it, and she knew he knew she’d likely spare little in getting past that and into some actual truths. “So…you’re wanting me to tell you that this was a really bad idea, right?” she started, and another sip and…fuck this, she grabbed a lime and cut into it, squeezing the juice into her glass, then rummaged around for some Cointreau.
“Which si, it was, considering the history of the two of you and that she was feeling vulnerable. But it sounds, underneath all of your self-flagellation, like you misread the situation and that’s why you kissed her. It was pretty stupid,” Kate continued, finding the bottle and tugging it down so she could open it. “And it would have been stupid in any situation. But I think the problem for you, ese, isn’t really what you did and what Zee may or may not have wanted to do. The problem’s in why you went in the first place, why you made those judgment calls, why you exploited the situation.”
She slugged back a big swallow of the impromptu margarita, and turned to face him again. “It’s not that you’re wrong. It’s that something isn’t right WITH you. It’s not an inherent thing, it’s where the hell your brain and your heart are at.”
Kyle threw his tequila into his mouth, not swallowing until a construct knife sliced open a lime, and he grabbed a wedge, sucking it directly after he finally swallowed. He made a noise at the back of his throat as he did, the tang making him sound like a rusty lock being pulled open.
"Where the hell is my brain and heart at," he repeated and then wryly motioned to his groin, looking back up at Kate. "Isn’t that the point? What else could it be? Other than really ugly things, I guess…" His shoulders slumped as he looked around Kate’s apartment. Her coffee table and the TV that probably hadn’t been switched on in weeks.
"Somewhere deep inside me I wanted to hurt her. Maybe that’s it. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just a Nice Guy. Awesome." He knew Kate would read into his capitalizing of those words. "Maybe I’m an idiot who does stuff without thinking. Maybe my judgement’s off because as a Lantern, I secretly I get off on exploiting people who are weak. Maybe I did it just to see if she wanted it too. Wow, so many choices, Kate! And all of them so very much the opposite of what I thought I believed in."
Kyle leaned against her dining table. “What does it matter? Point is I’m disappointed in myself, for going against my own morals. I fucked up, and…and I fucked up."
Groaning, Kate shook her head and sprawled her hand over her face for a moment, as if to rub away cobwebs. “You’re going too far into ugly, cariño," she said. “You’re not listening. You’re saying ‘either I’m thinking with my verga, or I’m a terrible person’, when I’m not seeing either of those things."
She added a little more tequila to top up her glass, then gestured him into the living room with a nod of her head, flopping down on the sofa. “Because let’s face it. Even good people sometimes make bad choices. You wanna know what I think? I think you were as lost as Zee was before you even got there, and she didn’t realize that you weren’t the best person to call because you fake it pretty well. I think that you feel like you don’t have a goddamn direction, outside work stuff of either the art or the Lantern variety, that you don’t have a set idea of who you wanna be as a person yet after Ha…now that you’re single. And when people are in that place, they make really bad decisions, it happens all the time."
Swigging some of her drink, she added, “It happened to me. So maybe I’m wrong and I’m projecting, but I seriously doubt it. It’s not an excuse for being a pendejo, but it doesn’t make you an irretrievably terrible excuse for a human being."
Kyle flopped down next to her - close, knees bumping because that was the kind of mood he was in and also it was Kate and she was used to it by now (dios she was so used to him and it was such a comfort and a relief; especially when he caught glimpses of those earrings she wore) - and he listened as she spoke. He didn’t swig, but just sipped at the tequila, a thing of lime curled into his other hand.
What she was saying wasn’t too far off-base with what Roy had said, and that was a relief. Kate, of course, was more precise and detailed. Roy was Roy. Both opinions mattered. But in this case, perhaps Kate’s did somewhat more.
He smiled, his shoulders relaxing considerably and it wasn’t just from the tequila. It wasn’t that he thought Kate was gonna yell at him, far from it. If he’d really fucked up, if she was really angry, he wouldn’t be here right now, he knew that. But it was always nice to hear someone else sort through his thoughts, when they were all just a sticky jumbled mass to him.
"Not an excuse, no. I’m not here to excuse myself." His teeth toyed with the edge of the glass as he spoke, eyes focused on a capsized DVD boxset of Babylon 5. "I knew you’d know how to sort me out, Kate." He laughed suddenly and turned a bit, grinning at her and pointing with an extended index, while the rest curled around his glass. “Hey! I just remembered. I tried kissing you too. Jesus. Patterns are patterns are patterns, huh?"
Kate pushed her hair back behind her ears with her free hand. She wasn’t entirely certain that Kyle had heard her, per se, but at least he’d calmed down, stopped doing the scapegoat thing to himself and wallowing in the melodrama of it all. She pursed her lips around the rim of the glass.
"You did," she pointed out. “Though I’m totally in a better place than Zee sounds like she was, si? And I told you you were rushing it. Maybe you’re trying for things, relationships, that are familiar, that you know you want, that you wanted in the past, instead of looking for new stuff. Maybe that’s part of the key to it."
After a second, she said, “Aside from all the half-baked psychology, Kyle…just…promise me you won’t just go CHIDO CHIDO CHIDO KATE and not take anything away from all of this? It’s easy to say ‘oh, I’m a shitty person’, it’s not so easy to be a good person and fix the damn problem. But that’s what you gotta do, sabes?"
"Well yeah, obviously you are, geez. You have people you can talk to…" Kyle said and fell quiet for a bit. “I do know what I want, but at the same time I don’t want it. It’s kinda cliche now, at this point. And frankly sometimes it’s a relief I don’t have to deal with - another - person. Maybe that’s all part of it, yeah. The past. I tend to live in the past a lot, I have trouble letting things go."
He wasn’t sure if Kate already knew that (he assumed she did) and instead laughed at her impression of him and nodded, knocking his knee against hers. "You’re right - and no, I’m not gonna go the self-pity route, I’ve seen what that kinda self-flagellation does, to…ah, to other people. That’s not me." He got up and grabbed the bottle of tequila, putting it on her coffee table after he poured them each some more.
"If I see her again, I’ll find out if she wants to hear what I have to say, and I’ll apologize. That’s…what I’ll do. I’ll be proactive but not pushy. Sounds good?" He was being earnest. Talking to Kate did have a calming effect on him, and allowed the sticky thoughts to be cleared out, enabling himself perspective beyond his own anger.
Not certain she wanted to know if Zatanna didn’t have people she could talk to about things, Kate busied herself with poking at the slice of lime in her drink until Kyle spoke again. “You don’t have to…you don’t have to be in a relationship," she said, and shit, the tequila was kicking in, she was slightly losing the theme here.
"You can be single and awesome. You just gotta be single and not be a douchebag, or with someone or someones and not be a douchebag. Just…you can’t step on other people’s lives while you figure yourself out, you have to be careful, that’s part of figuring yourself out," she continued, and winced a little as Kyle poured her even more to drink. dammit. at least she could crash here tonight and sleep it off. Damn Lantern ring sobriety.
"That sounds like a good plan. Just know you might not like what she has to say, but it’s her truth, and in this you have to let it be about her." At least he wasn’t dodging it, she thought, and was glad she wasn’t at the point yet where she would accidentally say as much aloud.
"Yeah, I know," Kyle said. And then he paused, letting what Kate was saying sink in. He frowned a bit. “Yeah. I know. I think I’ve been very careful, but." He raised a hand, just slightly, to indicate he wasn’t arguing. "But your reminder doesn’t help to, well. To remind me. Especially when I’ve just done bad. So: duly noted, Kate. I came to you for advice and damned if that isn’t great advice." He grinned and clinked glasses with her.
"Honestly, these whole ‘I feel so lonely I could cry’ and/or ‘breaking up is hard to do’ schticks are getting a little too cliche among this crowd, wouldn’t you say?" Kyle mused, licking some lime juice of the side of his finger. "So I’m not going to do that. I’ve always bucked the trend, heh. Cosmic policing corps notwithstanding."
He slumped against the back of the couch and smiled appreciatively at her. "And thanks, Kate."
Not entirely clear on how Kyle had been careful when he obviously hadn’t, Kate spent a moment or two trying to figure out what he meant. The alcohol didn’t help. Maybe he meant after what had happened with Zee? Yeah, that must have been what he meant, she resolved.
"Just take the advice, that’s all I’m asking," she said, leaning into him a little bit before settling her gaze off him and onto the glass in her hand, with the narrowed look of someone who had had a little too much and was therefore in introspective mode. “You can be all lonely and shit if you want, just…don’t consciously decide how to feel. And don’t overdo it in public."
She was worried that Kyle wasn’t quite getting it, but at this point she no longer had quite the capability to put that across in any kind of diplomatic way. “De nada. Just don’t be a dick."
"Well the good thing being," Kyle said, turning the glass around and around in his hand. "When I do act like a dick, I got friends who smack my nose with a rolled up newspaper and are all ‘No me chingues, Kyle?’ and that is always comforting. Ahhh—"
Kyle was getting increasingly jolly with each glass he threw back, just as much as Kate was getting increasingly heavy-lidded. It was adorable, really, since her eyes were already so large and deepset. And in some strange way, it felt to Kyle like ‘the good old days’; that is to say, when he’d just moved back to LA, over the Warriors bar, him and Kate getting into paints and charcoals and all that fun stuff. "— believe me, I’m not just here moping about for ‘someone’ to love me. I don’t give a damn about ‘someone’. And y’know both Zee and I did talk about, like, what ifs. We decided that it just wouldn’t work out. And this was ages ago, but it’s true, she was right." He sat back and looked over at her, smiling pleasantly and only slightly wistfully.
"Just like you were right. Some people work better as friends. Very sexy friends, granted; but I tend to attract very sexy people. It’s a curse, I know. Woe is me."
He sighed dramatically - if only to tease her for giving him the ‘don’t overdo it in public’ advice - at most to hopefully let her know that he was, indeed, listening and taking it to heart.
"Don’t be a dick. Yes ma’am. Will do. Not. Will don’t? I will don’t be a dick." He burst out laughing.
A married friend who just needed a friend.
A married friend who is a woman who just needed a friend.
A married friend who is a woman that I love who just needed a friend.
A married friend who is a woman that I love and she was in distress and she just needed a goddamn friend.
where are you this is not a conversation for Watchtower forum.
I’m in space. I can be in LA if you want?
Within ten minutes, Kyle was outside Kate’s apartment, sitting on one of the patio chairs and studying his hands with the intent of a college student doing last-minute exam cramming.
He brought with him a bottle of tequila and a handful worth of limes, all neatly lined up on her bannister. The tequila sat by his feet.
He would be, honestly, happy for just a night of distraction and drinking if Kate was up for that. He was up for anything Kate was, now that he thought about it. TV or talking, whatever worked for the moment. He just wanted to be with her.
Kate, however, was in little mood for distraction. She needed to hash this out—hell, she figured Kyle needed to hash this out—and as she zetaed into the pad on her patio, his body language didn’t really dissuade her.
Thank fuck he’d brought that bottle of tequila, she thought. They could really end up needing it, depending on how avoidant Kyle felt like being.
Though, admittedly, he’d told her most of the story already. It didn’t take a ton of thought to figure out who else they knew who was married and a good friend to Kyle. A good friend with sexual tension, no less, and who hadn’t been at home recently. Not that Kate would spill the beans about this to anybody, not even Ollie, but it wasn’t hard to understand.
“Ese,” she said. “You done beating yourself up or should I leave you to if for a while longer?”
"I’m done," Kyle said almost immediately , but when he looked up at her, it was only then that he seemed to actually register she was there. She was leaned by the patio door, the screen closed behind her to prevent insects but the air conditioning from inside wafting in tendrils into the new summer heat. Almost wafting from Kate, Kyle thought, still half-dreamily. It felt good, the coolness.
He stood up and dodged past her into her apartment, bold-facedly as if it was his to inhabit. From the kitchen, as he collected a couple short glasses, he asked, "So? I wanna hear your thoughts, Kate. Slap some on me, I really need to hear you right now. I can tell from your face that you know my deal. It happened in Paris, by the way. She asked me. So. You talk, I listen?"
Kyle came around and held a glass out to her. “Por favor."
“Your deal,” Kate said, vaguely amused at the wording, and followed Kyle through the door. “Yeah, bro, I figured out your deal. Madre di dios.” It was, she gathered, not the time for How Fucking Stupid Can You Be, namely because Kyle’d clearly done that already by the way he’d been slumped on her patio and how neatly he’d lined up the limes. It was a Thing.
She took the glass from him and went back towards the patio to collect limes and tequila before coming back through to the kitchen. “Wait, she asked you what? To go to Paris?” Or to kiss her, was the unspoken part, but she figured Kyle was able to figure that much out, and she figured he wouldn’t be the same kind of upset, necessarily, if the kissing had been by request. Upset but not…
Well, this kind.
She twisted open the screwtop, then sloshed some of the tequila into his glass before hers. “I gotta know how it happened before I can talk.”
Kyle explained in a series of staccato sentences, like giving a report - meeting by the cafe, talking out some of confusions that Zee had, ending up at her hotel room by his demand - he used the word ‘demand- and then how it went down once they got there. Kyle’s kiss, her saying no, him leaving.
He gave it like a report on purpose, his eyes not leaving hers as he turned the glass of tequila slowly in his hands. He wanted to be told he behaved wrong and bad, this much was obvious, and Kyle wasn’t trying to hide it either.
"So there you go," Kyle said, and raised his stubborn chin slightly, because damned if he wasn’t cocky about being contrite. Even he was aware of the utter…Green Lanternness of that attitude; but it was Kate and by now he knew she could handle Kyle’s quirks. “So…yeah?"
Kate sipped her tequila—okay, fuck, it wasn’t the sipping kind of tequila, but like fuck was she going to do shots before she got a chance to get her say in—and listened to Kyle’s debrief, leaning against the counter a little and lifting an eyebrow slowly over the course of the narrative.
She didn’t appreciate the I’m Sorry So There attitude, even if she expected it, and she knew he knew she’d likely spare little in getting past that and into some actual truths. “So…you’re wanting me to tell you that this was a really bad idea, right?” she started, and another sip and…fuck this, she grabbed a lime and cut into it, squeezing the juice into her glass, then rummaged around for some Cointreau.
“Which si, it was, considering the history of the two of you and that she was feeling vulnerable. But it sounds, underneath all of your self-flagellation, like you misread the situation and that’s why you kissed her. It was pretty stupid,” Kate continued, finding the bottle and tugging it down so she could open it. “And it would have been stupid in any situation. But I think the problem for you, ese, isn’t really what you did and what Zee may or may not have wanted to do. The problem’s in why you went in the first place, why you made those judgment calls, why you exploited the situation.”
She slugged back a big swallow of the impromptu margarita, and turned to face him again. “It’s not that you’re wrong. It’s that something isn’t right WITH you. It’s not an inherent thing, it’s where the hell your brain and your heart are at.”
Kyle threw his tequila into his mouth, not swallowing until a construct knife sliced open a lime, and he grabbed a wedge, sucking it directly after he finally swallowed. He made a noise at the back of his throat as he did, the tang making him sound like a rusty lock being pulled open.
"Where the hell is my brain and heart at," he repeated and then wryly motioned to his groin, looking back up at Kate. "Isn’t that the point? What else could it be? Other than really ugly things, I guess…" His shoulders slumped as he looked around Kate’s apartment. Her coffee table and the TV that probably hadn’t been switched on in weeks.
"Somewhere deep inside me I wanted to hurt her. Maybe that’s it. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just a Nice Guy. Awesome." He knew Kate would read into his capitalizing of those words. "Maybe I’m an idiot who does stuff without thinking. Maybe my judgement’s off because as a Lantern, I secretly I get off on exploiting people who are weak. Maybe I did it just to see if she wanted it too. Wow, so many choices, Kate! And all of them so very much the opposite of what I thought I believed in."
Kyle leaned against her dining table. “What does it matter? Point is I’m disappointed in myself, for going against my own morals. I fucked up, and…and I fucked up."
Groaning, Kate shook her head and sprawled her hand over her face for a moment, as if to rub away cobwebs. “You’re going too far into ugly, cariño," she said. “You’re not listening. You’re saying ‘either I’m thinking with my verga, or I’m a terrible person’, when I’m not seeing either of those things."
She added a little more tequila to top up her glass, then gestured him into the living room with a nod of her head, flopping down on the sofa. “Because let’s face it. Even good people sometimes make bad choices. You wanna know what I think? I think you were as lost as Zee was before you even got there, and she didn’t realize that you weren’t the best person to call because you fake it pretty well. I think that you feel like you don’t have a goddamn direction, outside work stuff of either the art or the Lantern variety, that you don’t have a set idea of who you wanna be as a person yet after Ha…now that you’re single. And when people are in that place, they make really bad decisions, it happens all the time."
Swigging some of her drink, she added, “It happened to me. So maybe I’m wrong and I’m projecting, but I seriously doubt it. It’s not an excuse for being a pendejo, but it doesn’t make you an irretrievably terrible excuse for a human being."
Kyle flopped down next to her - close, knees bumping because that was the kind of mood he was in and also it was Kate and she was used to it by now (dios she was so used to him and it was such a comfort and a relief; especially when he caught glimpses of those earrings she wore) - and he listened as she spoke. He didn’t swig, but just sipped at the tequila, a thing of lime curled into his other hand.
What she was saying wasn’t too far off-base with what Roy had said, and that was a relief. Kate, of course, was more precise and detailed. Roy was Roy. Both opinions mattered. But in this case, perhaps Kate’s did somewhat more.
He smiled, his shoulders relaxing considerably and it wasn’t just from the tequila. It wasn’t that he thought Kate was gonna yell at him, far from it. If he’d really fucked up, if she was really angry, he wouldn’t be here right now, he knew that. But it was always nice to hear someone else sort through his thoughts, when they were all just a sticky jumbled mass to him.
"Not an excuse, no. I’m not here to excuse myself." His teeth toyed with the edge of the glass as he spoke, eyes focused on a capsized DVD boxset of Babylon 5. "I knew you’d know how to sort me out, Kate." He laughed suddenly and turned a bit, grinning at her and pointing with an extended index, while the rest curled around his glass. “Hey! I just remembered. I tried kissing you too. Jesus. Patterns are patterns are patterns, huh?"
Kate pushed her hair back behind her ears with her free hand. She wasn’t entirely certain that Kyle had heard her, per se, but at least he’d calmed down, stopped doing the scapegoat thing to himself and wallowing in the melodrama of it all. She pursed her lips around the rim of the glass.
"You did," she pointed out. “Though I’m totally in a better place than Zee sounds like she was, si? And I told you you were rushing it. Maybe you’re trying for things, relationships, that are familiar, that you know you want, that you wanted in the past, instead of looking for new stuff. Maybe that’s part of the key to it."
After a second, she said, “Aside from all the half-baked psychology, Kyle…just…promise me you won’t just go CHIDO CHIDO CHIDO KATE and not take anything away from all of this? It’s easy to say ‘oh, I’m a shitty person’, it’s not so easy to be a good person and fix the damn problem. But that’s what you gotta do, sabes?"
"Well yeah, obviously you are, geez. You have people you can talk to…" Kyle said and fell quiet for a bit. “I do know what I want, but at the same time I don’t want it. It’s kinda cliche now, at this point. And frankly sometimes it’s a relief I don’t have to deal with - another - person. Maybe that’s all part of it, yeah. The past. I tend to live in the past a lot, I have trouble letting things go."
He wasn’t sure if Kate already knew that (he assumed she did) and instead laughed at her impression of him and nodded, knocking his knee against hers. "You’re right - and no, I’m not gonna go the self-pity route, I’ve seen what that kinda self-flagellation does, to…ah, to other people. That’s not me." He got up and grabbed the bottle of tequila, putting it on her coffee table after he poured them each some more.
"If I see her again, I’ll find out if she wants to hear what I have to say, and I’ll apologize. That’s…what I’ll do. I’ll be proactive but not pushy. Sounds good?" He was being earnest. Talking to Kate did have a calming effect on him, and allowed the sticky thoughts to be cleared out, enabling himself perspective beyond his own anger.
Not certain she wanted to know if Zatanna didn’t have people she could talk to about things, Kate busied herself with poking at the slice of lime in her drink until Kyle spoke again. “You don’t have to…you don’t have to be in a relationship," she said, and shit, the tequila was kicking in, she was slightly losing the theme here.
"You can be single and awesome. You just gotta be single and not be a douchebag, or with someone or someones and not be a douchebag. Just…you can’t step on other people’s lives while you figure yourself out, you have to be careful, that’s part of figuring yourself out," she continued, and winced a little as Kyle poured her even more to drink. dammit. at least she could crash here tonight and sleep it off. Damn Lantern ring sobriety.
"That sounds like a good plan. Just know you might not like what she has to say, but it’s her truth, and in this you have to let it be about her." At least he wasn’t dodging it, she thought, and was glad she wasn’t at the point yet where she would accidentally say as much aloud.
"Yeah, I know," Kyle said. And then he paused, letting what Kate was saying sink in. He frowned a bit. “Yeah. I know. I think I’ve been very careful, but." He raised a hand, just slightly, to indicate he wasn’t arguing. "But your reminder doesn’t help to, well. To remind me. Especially when I’ve just done bad. So: duly noted, Kate. I came to you for advice and damned if that isn’t great advice." He grinned and clinked glasses with her.
"Honestly, these whole ‘I feel so lonely I could cry’ and/or ‘breaking up is hard to do’ schticks are getting a little too cliche among this crowd, wouldn’t you say?" Kyle mused, licking some lime juice of the side of his finger. "So I’m not going to do that. I’ve always bucked the trend, heh. Cosmic policing corps notwithstanding."
He slumped against the back of the couch and smiled appreciatively at her. "And thanks, Kate."
Not entirely clear on how Kyle had been careful when he obviously hadn’t, Kate spent a moment or two trying to figure out what he meant. The alcohol didn’t help. Maybe he meant after what had happened with Zee? Yeah, that must have been what he meant, she resolved.
"Just take the advice, that’s all I’m asking," she said, leaning into him a little bit before settling her gaze off him and onto the glass in her hand, with the narrowed look of someone who had had a little too much and was therefore in introspective mode. “You can be all lonely and shit if you want, just…don’t consciously decide how to feel. And don’t overdo it in public."
She was worried that Kyle wasn’t quite getting it, but at this point she no longer had quite the capability to put that across in any kind of diplomatic way. “De nada. Just don’t be a dick."
"Well the good thing being," Kyle said, turning the glass around and around in his hand. "When I do act like a dick, I got friends who smack my nose with a rolled up newspaper and are all ‘No me chingues, Kyle?’ and that is always comforting. Ahhh—"
Kyle was getting increasingly jolly with each glass he threw back, just as much as Kate was getting increasingly heavy-lidded. It was adorable, really, since her eyes were already so large and deepset. And in some strange way, it felt to Kyle like ‘the good old days’; that is to say, when he’d just moved back to LA, over the Warriors bar, him and Kate getting into paints and charcoals and all that fun stuff. "— believe me, I’m not just here moping about for ‘someone’ to love me. I don’t give a damn about ‘someone’. And y’know both Zee and I did talk about, like, what ifs. We decided that it just wouldn’t work out. And this was ages ago, but it’s true, she was right." He sat back and looked over at her, smiling pleasantly and only slightly wistfully.
"Just like you were right. Some people work better as friends. Very sexy friends, granted; but I tend to attract very sexy people. It’s a curse, I know. Woe is me."
He sighed dramatically - if only to tease her for giving him the ‘don’t overdo it in public’ advice - at most to hopefully let her know that he was, indeed, listening and taking it to heart.
"Don’t be a dick. Yes ma’am. Will do. Not. Will don’t? I will don’t be a dick." He burst out laughing.