Nick and Kyle

[x-wolfcub.livejournal.com]

Seems like Nick's long day confronting the Catseye situation isn't over.



Nicholas Gleason collapsed down onto the stairs of the mansion, letting out a long sigh. He wasn't quite sure how he had avoided both a wing and a pipe wrench to the head after his encounter with Forge and Jay, but somehow he was still in one piece and without a concussion. If his situation with Catseye wasn't complicated enough, this just threw a new cat in the bag (no pun intended). But his peace wasn't meant to last as the staircase began to vibrate underneath of him. The boy quickly let his face fall into his hands, hoping he'd disappear like an ostrich.

It wasn't so much that Kyle had intended to scare the poor kid. Much. It was that he'd been right there, and fixing a loose step and then Nick had just flopped right down and given him the opportunity to do it. He let the stairs shake for a few more seconds and then popped out from underneath, hair wild and face smudged with dust and holding a nailgun in one hand. "So, moping or hiding?" He asked, all too casually.

"Both actually." The boy quickly let himself lean back against the staircase. Still very jumpy from his last encounter, his eyes focused in on the nailgun in the other man's hands. Was there seriously anyone who wasn't holding a potential weapon today? "Do you need any help?" Maybe he could play this encounter cooler than the other.

"What, shooting things fulla nails? Nah, I just had to reinforce some steps. Folks keep running up and down them and I mean, we've got what, half a dozen folks with claws..." Kyle counted on his fingers. "Lesee. Me, Yvette, You, Dori..." He paused, and then flipped the last finger up, all five claws out. "Oh, and Catseye about half the time. Less sometimes now that she's trying to be more human more often."

The boy stiffened his spine at the mention of Catseye's name. He was about as subtle as a porcupine at a balloon factory, but tried to play it cool. "Not to mention Yvette when she forgets her shoes." The boy let out a herky-jerky laugh and turned his face away, hoping that Kyle hadn't noticed, although knowing that there was little to no hope of that.

"Dude, you're about as freaked out as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs." Considering that Kyle could hear Nick's heart going thud-thud-thud-thud and smell the fear, he was pretty sure that someone had given him a dose of 'hurt her, we kill you'. Not that Kyle wasn't about to do the same thing. "Any of us if we forget our shoes, really. Part of the whole feral thing. I mean, you've got it easier than most of us though. You default to human normal."

"Yeah, but sometimes I wish that I could just disappear into the forest. It'd be easier if I was fully equipped most of the time." Nick forced his face again towards Kyle, swallowing hard as is eyes still lingered on the nail gun. "I guess I'm just a little jumpy today about a few things, that's all."

Kyle followed Nick's eyes to the nailgun and barked out a laugh before putting it down. "Dude, if I was gonna hurt you, say, if you were talking to a friend of mine about the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing and she was confused about it and I was pissed, I wouldn't shoot you with a nailgun." He grinned, showing sharp teeth. "I'd just drag you out somewhere and run you down like a lame deer."

Nick swallowed hard before banging his head roughly against the handrail behind him. "You too huh?" He began bracing himself, starting to realize what was about to be in store for him, and hoping that this wasn't going to become the normal routine throughout the day.

It took Kyle a second to figure out what Nick was asking, and then he laughed again. "Forge or Jay? I smell motor oil and I don't smell hair product, so it can't be Marius." He caught the expression and then nearly doubled over, trying not to crack up entirely in front of the poor kid. "Both of 'em? Damn." Then he sat down, elbows on knees, and claws in. "Look, Catseye can seem like she's just you know, kinda odd, most of the time, but she's just figuring out stuff that most of us got like, five or six years ago."

"I would never do anything to hurt her Kyle, you have to believe me on this one." The boy was pleading more than anything else. He hoped that if his story didn't change between each telling maybe they'd start believing him. At least with Kyle taking in his claws, he thought that he had a legit chance of walking away from another talk without becoming a human pincushion.

"Oh, I know you wouldn't on purpose. You're not a shithead." Kyle said plainly. "It's not the on purpose I'm worried about. It's the by accident stuff. She already was so messed up about stuff that she was gonna run away and hide in the woods forever. I'm saying that you're a normal guy, even when you're all werewolf guy. Catseye's not a normal girl. She didn't even know she was human until a couple of years ago."

"Yeah, I know." He paused for a second, his mind and eyes drifting to a far away place. "But I can't help the way that I feel about her, ya know? And I've put the ball completely in her court at this point. But at the same time I don't know what to do." He let his shoulders arch over. Maybe Kyle wasn't so wrong with the shithead comment.

"Okay, so you like her, wanna do the boyfriend/girlfriend thing, and have basically left it up to her. And you're not gonna hurt her, so if she says no..." Kyle shrugged a little. "We're not gonna have to actually play rock, scissors, paper to see which one us puts the fear of God in you? If she doesn't want to, you'll back off?"

Nick nodded. "Of course I will. You don't have to worry about that in the least." His face showed the lines of both hope and fear. Hope that Kyle would believe him. Fear of the pipe wrench that he knew that regardless of what happened over the next few days, would be haunting him in his dreams.

"Dude, if you're not gonna be a crazy stalker asshole, then the only thing you gotta worry about is how long you go before I pull you into my 'fix shit you've clawed up' roster." Kyle said, grinning. "I mean, unless you and Catseye start making with the nookie, in which case we get to have this conversation all over again, only I'll be holding you upside down from the roof."

"Don't worry. Regardless of everything, that conversation is a very long way from happening." Nick let out a slow sigh of relief, hoping that this might be the last of the 'Kill Nick' speeches of the afternoon. "Are you sure I can't help you with the steps?"

"No, but now that you''re offering to be all helpful because you're totally scared of me, I have about half a dozen roof tiles that need to be replaced and you just volunteered yourself to help." And then Kyle could just oh-so-casually point out how high up they were, just in case later on he did need to have this talk again.

"Yes sir." Nick added with a feigned salute, jumping up to his feet. At least on the roof he wouldn't be at risk of another 'Big Brother' or 'Big Sister' coming at him randomly. At least one that couldn't fly....