Kip Everett Pryor (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
niceguysfinishlast) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dreamlikenewyork2016-06-18 10:34 pm
niceguysfinishlast) wrote in dreamlikenewyork2016-06-18 10:34 pm
"What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here."
Who: Kip Pryor and Finlay Bennett
What: "But I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo..."
Where: Fin's place
When: Saturday morning
It was a good 15-20 minutes that Kip stood on the sidewalk out the front of the apartment block where Fin lived. He had three cigarettes and only just stopped talking himself out of this bullshit and pissing off back to the tube station. He knew why he was here, he just had no fucking idea how he was going to pull it off. What he knew was that he owed it to Shannon to at least try. He owed Shannon so fucking much, and he knew he was a cunt of epic proportions. He just hadn't realised how much of a cunt until Fin went full-on psycho-boyfriend at him. Had Kip been jealous of him? Fuck, yes. Had he dealt with it in the best way? Fuck, no.
He flicked the butt of the last smoke to the ground and stubbed it out with his toe. He went inside and checked in with the doorman. He told him he was a friend of Fin and Shannon's. The dude knew who Shan was. Kip didn't know how he was supposed to process that information. He didn't bother trying. By the time he got to the door of the apartment he was looking for, he sighed heavily and pressed the buzzer. No point prolonging it. if he did that, he would just chicken out like a pansy. He hoped it wasn't Fin who answered, which was dumb. He knew that. He just hoped maybe there was intermediate buffer, like Fin's dad, who could be a go-between. He had no idea what Fin's dad looked like, and that was probably a good thing with this, all things considered.
It was Fin. And as soon as he saw it was Kip, his face went from somewhere between exhausted and sleepy to downright murderous. Kip braced himself.
"No. No, fuck off. Fuck you, fuck whatever fucking show pony you fucking rode in on. You can go fuck yourself!" Fin hissed, keeping his voice low so he didn't wake Shannon down the hall. It all all his self-control not to lose it and start screaming in the bastard's face.
"Dude, I just want to talk to you. To you and Shannon. Can you just..." Kip hesitated, balking when he didn't realise what his next move should be. "I know you hate me, but I just wanna talk to you and try to explain."
Fin pushed him out the door, kicking it closed behind him and shoved Kip up against the wall. "You're a cunt. And I have no idea why the fuck he still wants anything to do with you. He doesn't even know! You have the hide to stick around so he's still gotta call you a friend, but you ain't fit to wipe his ass! I dunno how the fuck you got my address, but you can lose it, and you can fuck off. You ain't talking to him, and you ain't talking to me." He let go of the fistful of Kip's shirt he had and shove him when he released the grip.
"Can I just see him? I wanna apologise. Just let me do that much," Kip pleaded. The guilt he had suffered for so long was raging inside him. He really didn't know if this was what he was supposed to do. It seemed like so fucking little in the face of the seriousness of it, but meeting Fin had put a fire under his ass like he didn't expect.
"You not seeing him!" Fin spat. But he stopped, glaring at Kip. His eyes narrowed. "No, you know what? Yeah, you can see him. You're gonna come in and you're gonna see him right now, and if you try to fucking walk away, I'm going punch you so fucking hard in the dick, you'll be pissing blood for a year." He was sleep-deprived and his nerves were shot from the ordeal of Shannon's pain the night before. It would only take one tiny little thing to push him over the edge. If he was fired up enough, he could have a hell of a temper on him... but he always had a reason for it.
Kip looked at Fin in silence. Fin's flip-flop here made him nervous. Without a word, he followed Shannon into the apartment. It was a nice place. Not huge. But then, Kip was used to growing up on a farm himself, and living in the city in a puny apartment never appealed to him. He needed to be able to escape when things felt too much. "Fin..."
"Shut the fuck up. I have nothing to say to you, and you have nothing to say that I want to hear," Fin growled under his breath. He led Kip up the hall to his bedroom and stopped at the door. He pointed at Kip sharply. "You wake him, and you're dead."
What the hell was Kip about to see with Shannon? He went into the bedroom. The first thing he noticed was a really expensive drum kit sitting in the corner before he could even see the bed. There were bongos beside it too, and a ukulele on the floor against the wall. Fin was a drummer? A moment or two later, the bed came into sight. Shannon was asleep, but he was curled up on his side and had a pillowed hugged in against his chest like a brace. As soon as Kip saw him, he saw something was really wrong. "What's wrong with him? Is he sick?"
"Oh, you care now, do you?" Fin bit back, keeping his voice low. "Look at him. Fucking look at him. Don't touch him." He shoved Kip closer to the bed.
It was really confronting. Kip felt his stomach give this weird lurch. He had spent so long trying to avoid seeing Shannon at his worst because he never knew how to cope with it. Shannon was grey. It was a paleness and then some. His eyes were closed, but they looked red and swollen. His face was patchy, like he was flushed with a fever, and his hair was damp from what looked like sweat. Yeah, it was sweat. Shannon was sweating quite heavily and the closer Kip got, he could see Shannon's knuckles were white in the grip on the pillow.
Soon, he was forced to close his eyes and look away when a flash of a memory shot through his mind of Shannon lying small and broken, unmoving, in the middle of that paddock. "I shouldn't have come," he mumbled and turned, pushing past Fin to leave the room. He would have kept walking too, but Fin was a quick bastard. He caught up with him and grabbed his arm. "Ah, fuck!" Kip cursed through a hiss when Fin's nails sunk into his flesh at his elbow.
"You're a fucking weak selfish coward," Fin told him lowly, his blue eyes locked on Kip's face. "He might still care about you, but I hate you for what you put him through. You made him feel like he didn't matter, and like every thing else in your fucking like was more important to him. Friends don't do that to each other. You're a fucking loser, and you don't deserve to be anywhere near him. So go. Keep fucking walking. But you can bet your fucking ass I am going to make sure he never speaks to you again."
Kip's own temper flared and he had no filter to stop him. He back-handed him to get him off him. "You don't know anything about me!" he growled. Damn not knowing his own strength. Fin fell back into the wall and his nose started to piss with blood. Kip panicked, because he hadn't intended to hurt Fin. Or Shannon. It was the last thing in the world he intended. Kip caught the other guy before he crumbled to the floor, remembering in horror that Fin had something wrong with his head, or whatever it was, that made him dizzy. If he hurt him here, Shannon would be out for blood.
Even if he had a hand to his nose to catch some of the blood that was gushing from his nose, Fin was still staring dangerously at Kip. "Truth hurts, doesn't it, cunt?"
It jarred Kip to have Fin still pushing all his buttons. It actually felt like Fin was sucker-punching him below the belt with every word. "I fucking have feelings for him! Alright? I have for years. But I'm a retard! I was too dumb to ever be able to take care of him! I couldn't even look him in the eye after I did this to him. Then you come along and... and..."
That was the last thing Fin expected Kip to say, and it just made him feel more angry. He couldn't do anything, though, because his nose was literally gushing with blood. It was rubbing him up the wrong way to hear the Kip apparently had feelings for Shannon too. He didn't know what to do with that information. "You must be the biggest fucking asshole I have ever had the displeasure of being in breathing space of, and I've met a hell of a lot."
He didn't care if Kip left now. This information had thrown him off guard. He went into the kitchen to get some paper towel and ice for his nose. He got both and dumped them into one of the basins of the sink and turned the water on into the second one. Blood was splattering against the stainless steel, and he pressed a wad of the paper to his nose. The ice went to the bridge of his nose, and as he was trying not to gag from the taste of blood at the back of his throat, he felt a bad headache throbbing behind his eyes. He wasn't going to escape this encounter without bruises.
Kip didn't leave. He didn't know why, but he followed Fin into the kitchen. Even if it might get him knocked out, he took the ice from Fin's hand and held it against his nose for him so he had both his hands to try to clean up a little. "I knew he'd never feel the same. I wasn't good enough for him. I was dumb. I was... so fucking dumb. You're right, I'm a selfish cunt. Why do you think I steered clear of him? He deserved better."
Fin snorted and more blood sprayed into the sink. "Don't piss in my fucking pocket and tell me it's raining, fucker. You steered clear of him because he was damaged and you didn't want to deal with it. You had a pile of non-disabled fellow cunts to hang around with and fuck at your disposal. But you got one thing right. He's too fucking good for you. You expect me to feel fucking sorry for you? I pity idiots. I don't pity selfish fucks."
"It's my fault he's disabled!" Kip argued helplessly.
"Yep," Fin responded without hesitation or care for hurting Kip's feelings. "With friends like you, who needs fucking enemies? All of the people who called himself his so-called 'friends' from before the accident barely have the time of day for him. Stop looking so fucking shocked. He's told me everything. Everything. You didn't have feelings for him. You're just jealous someone else is more important to him than you now."
Kip swallowed and looked at the floor in shame. "I did," he murmured. "I still do."
"Well, you can back the fuck off and slam your cock in a door. He's mine," Fin snapped and took the ice back, nudging Kip away with his shoulder. "I don't need your help."
Kip sharply scraped his fingers through his hair, gripping at it in frustration. "Can you just stop for a minute and listen to me? I'm not trying to steal him off you. He'd never wanna date me. I didn't even know he was gay! He never told me. I thought he was straight. It was always one-sided, for fuck's sake. He's always been too good for me. But he was the best friend a dude could ever had. He meant the world to me, and I fucking hurt him. I destroyed him. Don't you think I know he's like this because of how much of a dumb fuck I am?"
Fin did stop. Despite his anger and the headache that was developing, he was listening. For Shannon's sake, he was listening. "All he wanted was his friend, not a fucking fully qualified nurse. How could you not see that? You never gave him the chance to tell you!"
"No, I didn't. Because seeing him like that fucking terrified me. Every time I visited him, all I could see was him lying there in middle of that paddock. I thought he was fucking dead. I didn't know he wasn't for hours later when they finally thought to come tell me. I thought I killed him," Kip cried, turning away to bury his face in his hand.
"Once you knew, you could have learned about what he was dealing with. You could have visited him and just shown him he wasn't alone, and you still cared, but you didn't. What do you expect me to feel for you here?" Fin demanded, getting frustrated himself. "I just want you to walk off something tall so I never have to see your fucking face again. Or see the crushed, hurt look he gets in his eyes when he tries to brush off how hurt he is that you want nothing to do with him. You think I don't see it? I see it. I just don't let him know I see it."
"Because I can't read!" Kip finally revealed with a burst of anger, but he reigned himself in when he realised his voice had risen. He did care about Shannon. He didn't want to wake him when he was obviously sick, or at least feeling really bad. "You might not believe I had feelings for him, but I did. Because he was the only one who never gave up on me or judged me for being a retard. He never cared. And I know he loves you. I fucking saw how he was looking at you. I know. I'm not here to fuck with that, but none of it is fucking easy for me to see because I know I fucked up and threw it all away. I fucked up and I hurt him. But every time I looked at him, I just saw how much I hurt him, and I couldn't handle it. I know that makes me a weak cunt. You're right. Nothing you've said is wrong. You're everything I'm fucking not, and that's exactly what he needs."
Fin sighed. He was leaning over the sink with his elbows resting on the edge of it. "Look, I think you just need to go right now. I need time to cool off and he's in too much pain to pretend he's not upset with you. I'm not letting him get upset when he's already been crying all night with how much pain he's in. I'll talk to him about all this when he feels better. You need to go."
Kip nodded. He knew Fin was right here. "Will you tell him I came?"
"Yeah, well, I'm not going to lie to him and tell him I walked into a door. We don't lie to each other. Just go. I don't want to look at you anymore," Fin mumbled tiredly.
"Fin, I'm sorry. I just... want you to know that."
Fin re-adjusted the ice on his nose and checked to see if the blood flow from his nose had eased at all. "If you don't get your shit together, I'm not letting you near him."
Kip swallowed and nodded, but he didn't say anything else. He got Fin's message loud and clear, finally turning to leave. He paused only briefly to look back at the country boy. Fin had only known Shannon such a short time in the grander scheme of things, and he was taking care of him no questions asked. Kip needed a drink and a joint. And he needed a warm body to fuck. All this was too much, and inside, he was feeling like the biggest piece of crap to ever exist because he really did know that everything Fin had said had been the complete and utter truth.
COMPLETE
What: "But I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo..."
Where: Fin's place
When: Saturday morning
It was a good 15-20 minutes that Kip stood on the sidewalk out the front of the apartment block where Fin lived. He had three cigarettes and only just stopped talking himself out of this bullshit and pissing off back to the tube station. He knew why he was here, he just had no fucking idea how he was going to pull it off. What he knew was that he owed it to Shannon to at least try. He owed Shannon so fucking much, and he knew he was a cunt of epic proportions. He just hadn't realised how much of a cunt until Fin went full-on psycho-boyfriend at him. Had Kip been jealous of him? Fuck, yes. Had he dealt with it in the best way? Fuck, no.
He flicked the butt of the last smoke to the ground and stubbed it out with his toe. He went inside and checked in with the doorman. He told him he was a friend of Fin and Shannon's. The dude knew who Shan was. Kip didn't know how he was supposed to process that information. He didn't bother trying. By the time he got to the door of the apartment he was looking for, he sighed heavily and pressed the buzzer. No point prolonging it. if he did that, he would just chicken out like a pansy. He hoped it wasn't Fin who answered, which was dumb. He knew that. He just hoped maybe there was intermediate buffer, like Fin's dad, who could be a go-between. He had no idea what Fin's dad looked like, and that was probably a good thing with this, all things considered.
It was Fin. And as soon as he saw it was Kip, his face went from somewhere between exhausted and sleepy to downright murderous. Kip braced himself.
"No. No, fuck off. Fuck you, fuck whatever fucking show pony you fucking rode in on. You can go fuck yourself!" Fin hissed, keeping his voice low so he didn't wake Shannon down the hall. It all all his self-control not to lose it and start screaming in the bastard's face.
"Dude, I just want to talk to you. To you and Shannon. Can you just..." Kip hesitated, balking when he didn't realise what his next move should be. "I know you hate me, but I just wanna talk to you and try to explain."
Fin pushed him out the door, kicking it closed behind him and shoved Kip up against the wall. "You're a cunt. And I have no idea why the fuck he still wants anything to do with you. He doesn't even know! You have the hide to stick around so he's still gotta call you a friend, but you ain't fit to wipe his ass! I dunno how the fuck you got my address, but you can lose it, and you can fuck off. You ain't talking to him, and you ain't talking to me." He let go of the fistful of Kip's shirt he had and shove him when he released the grip.
"Can I just see him? I wanna apologise. Just let me do that much," Kip pleaded. The guilt he had suffered for so long was raging inside him. He really didn't know if this was what he was supposed to do. It seemed like so fucking little in the face of the seriousness of it, but meeting Fin had put a fire under his ass like he didn't expect.
"You not seeing him!" Fin spat. But he stopped, glaring at Kip. His eyes narrowed. "No, you know what? Yeah, you can see him. You're gonna come in and you're gonna see him right now, and if you try to fucking walk away, I'm going punch you so fucking hard in the dick, you'll be pissing blood for a year." He was sleep-deprived and his nerves were shot from the ordeal of Shannon's pain the night before. It would only take one tiny little thing to push him over the edge. If he was fired up enough, he could have a hell of a temper on him... but he always had a reason for it.
Kip looked at Fin in silence. Fin's flip-flop here made him nervous. Without a word, he followed Shannon into the apartment. It was a nice place. Not huge. But then, Kip was used to growing up on a farm himself, and living in the city in a puny apartment never appealed to him. He needed to be able to escape when things felt too much. "Fin..."
"Shut the fuck up. I have nothing to say to you, and you have nothing to say that I want to hear," Fin growled under his breath. He led Kip up the hall to his bedroom and stopped at the door. He pointed at Kip sharply. "You wake him, and you're dead."
What the hell was Kip about to see with Shannon? He went into the bedroom. The first thing he noticed was a really expensive drum kit sitting in the corner before he could even see the bed. There were bongos beside it too, and a ukulele on the floor against the wall. Fin was a drummer? A moment or two later, the bed came into sight. Shannon was asleep, but he was curled up on his side and had a pillowed hugged in against his chest like a brace. As soon as Kip saw him, he saw something was really wrong. "What's wrong with him? Is he sick?"
"Oh, you care now, do you?" Fin bit back, keeping his voice low. "Look at him. Fucking look at him. Don't touch him." He shoved Kip closer to the bed.
It was really confronting. Kip felt his stomach give this weird lurch. He had spent so long trying to avoid seeing Shannon at his worst because he never knew how to cope with it. Shannon was grey. It was a paleness and then some. His eyes were closed, but they looked red and swollen. His face was patchy, like he was flushed with a fever, and his hair was damp from what looked like sweat. Yeah, it was sweat. Shannon was sweating quite heavily and the closer Kip got, he could see Shannon's knuckles were white in the grip on the pillow.
Soon, he was forced to close his eyes and look away when a flash of a memory shot through his mind of Shannon lying small and broken, unmoving, in the middle of that paddock. "I shouldn't have come," he mumbled and turned, pushing past Fin to leave the room. He would have kept walking too, but Fin was a quick bastard. He caught up with him and grabbed his arm. "Ah, fuck!" Kip cursed through a hiss when Fin's nails sunk into his flesh at his elbow.
"You're a fucking weak selfish coward," Fin told him lowly, his blue eyes locked on Kip's face. "He might still care about you, but I hate you for what you put him through. You made him feel like he didn't matter, and like every thing else in your fucking like was more important to him. Friends don't do that to each other. You're a fucking loser, and you don't deserve to be anywhere near him. So go. Keep fucking walking. But you can bet your fucking ass I am going to make sure he never speaks to you again."
Kip's own temper flared and he had no filter to stop him. He back-handed him to get him off him. "You don't know anything about me!" he growled. Damn not knowing his own strength. Fin fell back into the wall and his nose started to piss with blood. Kip panicked, because he hadn't intended to hurt Fin. Or Shannon. It was the last thing in the world he intended. Kip caught the other guy before he crumbled to the floor, remembering in horror that Fin had something wrong with his head, or whatever it was, that made him dizzy. If he hurt him here, Shannon would be out for blood.
Even if he had a hand to his nose to catch some of the blood that was gushing from his nose, Fin was still staring dangerously at Kip. "Truth hurts, doesn't it, cunt?"
It jarred Kip to have Fin still pushing all his buttons. It actually felt like Fin was sucker-punching him below the belt with every word. "I fucking have feelings for him! Alright? I have for years. But I'm a retard! I was too dumb to ever be able to take care of him! I couldn't even look him in the eye after I did this to him. Then you come along and... and..."
That was the last thing Fin expected Kip to say, and it just made him feel more angry. He couldn't do anything, though, because his nose was literally gushing with blood. It was rubbing him up the wrong way to hear the Kip apparently had feelings for Shannon too. He didn't know what to do with that information. "You must be the biggest fucking asshole I have ever had the displeasure of being in breathing space of, and I've met a hell of a lot."
He didn't care if Kip left now. This information had thrown him off guard. He went into the kitchen to get some paper towel and ice for his nose. He got both and dumped them into one of the basins of the sink and turned the water on into the second one. Blood was splattering against the stainless steel, and he pressed a wad of the paper to his nose. The ice went to the bridge of his nose, and as he was trying not to gag from the taste of blood at the back of his throat, he felt a bad headache throbbing behind his eyes. He wasn't going to escape this encounter without bruises.
Kip didn't leave. He didn't know why, but he followed Fin into the kitchen. Even if it might get him knocked out, he took the ice from Fin's hand and held it against his nose for him so he had both his hands to try to clean up a little. "I knew he'd never feel the same. I wasn't good enough for him. I was dumb. I was... so fucking dumb. You're right, I'm a selfish cunt. Why do you think I steered clear of him? He deserved better."
Fin snorted and more blood sprayed into the sink. "Don't piss in my fucking pocket and tell me it's raining, fucker. You steered clear of him because he was damaged and you didn't want to deal with it. You had a pile of non-disabled fellow cunts to hang around with and fuck at your disposal. But you got one thing right. He's too fucking good for you. You expect me to feel fucking sorry for you? I pity idiots. I don't pity selfish fucks."
"It's my fault he's disabled!" Kip argued helplessly.
"Yep," Fin responded without hesitation or care for hurting Kip's feelings. "With friends like you, who needs fucking enemies? All of the people who called himself his so-called 'friends' from before the accident barely have the time of day for him. Stop looking so fucking shocked. He's told me everything. Everything. You didn't have feelings for him. You're just jealous someone else is more important to him than you now."
Kip swallowed and looked at the floor in shame. "I did," he murmured. "I still do."
"Well, you can back the fuck off and slam your cock in a door. He's mine," Fin snapped and took the ice back, nudging Kip away with his shoulder. "I don't need your help."
Kip sharply scraped his fingers through his hair, gripping at it in frustration. "Can you just stop for a minute and listen to me? I'm not trying to steal him off you. He'd never wanna date me. I didn't even know he was gay! He never told me. I thought he was straight. It was always one-sided, for fuck's sake. He's always been too good for me. But he was the best friend a dude could ever had. He meant the world to me, and I fucking hurt him. I destroyed him. Don't you think I know he's like this because of how much of a dumb fuck I am?"
Fin did stop. Despite his anger and the headache that was developing, he was listening. For Shannon's sake, he was listening. "All he wanted was his friend, not a fucking fully qualified nurse. How could you not see that? You never gave him the chance to tell you!"
"No, I didn't. Because seeing him like that fucking terrified me. Every time I visited him, all I could see was him lying there in middle of that paddock. I thought he was fucking dead. I didn't know he wasn't for hours later when they finally thought to come tell me. I thought I killed him," Kip cried, turning away to bury his face in his hand.
"Once you knew, you could have learned about what he was dealing with. You could have visited him and just shown him he wasn't alone, and you still cared, but you didn't. What do you expect me to feel for you here?" Fin demanded, getting frustrated himself. "I just want you to walk off something tall so I never have to see your fucking face again. Or see the crushed, hurt look he gets in his eyes when he tries to brush off how hurt he is that you want nothing to do with him. You think I don't see it? I see it. I just don't let him know I see it."
"Because I can't read!" Kip finally revealed with a burst of anger, but he reigned himself in when he realised his voice had risen. He did care about Shannon. He didn't want to wake him when he was obviously sick, or at least feeling really bad. "You might not believe I had feelings for him, but I did. Because he was the only one who never gave up on me or judged me for being a retard. He never cared. And I know he loves you. I fucking saw how he was looking at you. I know. I'm not here to fuck with that, but none of it is fucking easy for me to see because I know I fucked up and threw it all away. I fucked up and I hurt him. But every time I looked at him, I just saw how much I hurt him, and I couldn't handle it. I know that makes me a weak cunt. You're right. Nothing you've said is wrong. You're everything I'm fucking not, and that's exactly what he needs."
Fin sighed. He was leaning over the sink with his elbows resting on the edge of it. "Look, I think you just need to go right now. I need time to cool off and he's in too much pain to pretend he's not upset with you. I'm not letting him get upset when he's already been crying all night with how much pain he's in. I'll talk to him about all this when he feels better. You need to go."
Kip nodded. He knew Fin was right here. "Will you tell him I came?"
"Yeah, well, I'm not going to lie to him and tell him I walked into a door. We don't lie to each other. Just go. I don't want to look at you anymore," Fin mumbled tiredly.
"Fin, I'm sorry. I just... want you to know that."
Fin re-adjusted the ice on his nose and checked to see if the blood flow from his nose had eased at all. "If you don't get your shit together, I'm not letting you near him."
Kip swallowed and nodded, but he didn't say anything else. He got Fin's message loud and clear, finally turning to leave. He paused only briefly to look back at the country boy. Fin had only known Shannon such a short time in the grander scheme of things, and he was taking care of him no questions asked. Kip needed a drink and a joint. And he needed a warm body to fuck. All this was too much, and inside, he was feeling like the biggest piece of crap to ever exist because he really did know that everything Fin had said had been the complete and utter truth.
COMPLETE