Abandonment Issues

[Existentially Odd]

It was not acceptable.  The two century-old vampire fumed as he stormed through his house, smelling Will everywhere, knowing he\'d come home from fuck knew where, but was now gone.  Again.  With no fucking explanation, not so much as a motherfucking note.  He hadn\'t returned phone calls or text messages for days now - for all the redhead knew, the cocksucker had gone and lost his damn mobile phone... or just got his ass ashed up somehow and he\'d never learn why.  Now the bitch just breezed back in like he owned the place, and blew back out again, calm as you please, with no interaction.

He\'d been going out of his motherfucking mind with worry and of course it hadn\'t occurred to him that the same thing had happened the year before.  The vampire didn\'t remember stupid shit like that, nor even stop to contemplate how differently he regarded Will now, as opposed to the same time last year.  It hadn\'t once entered his tiny, frenzied mind over the past few days of being without his only companion.  His only friend.

Shit was not like it used to be, ever since he\'d settled in this place.  It was the adventure that had called to him at the time, that had ruined things between he and Reed

of course he hadn\'t had a part in that, had he?  Clinging to his accidental lover and scaring the shit out of Captain Human by asking to sire him so they could be together forever hadn\'t had an impact, surely!

but he\'d stuck with it.  Fucked if he was a quitter.  And Will had just invited his bony ass in and stayed and he\'d got used to that deal, he\'d grown accustomed to the blonde being there, teasing him, trading insults, sharing shit with him.

Then the asshole just up and leaves!  No hint it was going to happen, no word once Indie had figured out that he hadn\'t been home in at least a day, it just stretched out into almost a week (he thought) until now.  Suddenly, the whore was home and oh God was the redhead furious for putting him through this!  He was going to get his ass pounded in ways no homo would ever ask for once Indie got his hands

his younger, less experienced, less strong hands

on him!

He searched the entire house, noting the return of the bike in the garage and figuring that Will couldn\'t be too far away - maybe out getting a drink, though the bastard was in no way regular or predictable, so fuck knew where he might be.  Once the small abode had been gone through, the vampire rang Will\'s mobile, not expecting it would be answered and just about hurling it across the room when it wasn\'t.  Thankfully, he restrained himself (just) and threw it harmlessly into the couch cushions instead, before stalking back into his bedroom.

After a vigorous shower, the redhead dressed himself up in his usual uniform for going out - wooden-heeled boots, old blue jeans with a few rips in them, a black T-shirt and a maroon-coloured button-up shirt over the top of it, tucked into his tight jeans and only done up as far as his midriff.  He threw a black leather jacket on, finger-combed his hair and went pacing around the neighbourhood, walking far enough away that he would be able to find someone clean, who wouldn\'t recognise him again.

He drank from a few women, perfunctorily but gently enough that they weren\'t jarred out of the experience enough to scream, then stalked his way back home.  Will still wasn\'t there and it only made him angrier.  He slapped his leather jacket down on his bed and paced out to the lounge room, unlocking his phone in order to send a text message this time: Where the fuck are you??!!  He didn\'t expect to get an answer any time soon, so he thumped down onto the couch and tried to click through as many channels as he could without the TV glitching.

When a key eventually turned in the lock of the front door however long it was later, he sprang up from his position on the couch and hurled himself towards it, intending on greeting William with a punch in the face and maybe a body-blow if he could get one in, too.

[pinkroses]

Will wasn’t in a great mood - but was more peaceful now then he had been when he’d left the house earlier. Now he knew where things stood with Anna, she was pissed at him and he had no intention of forgiving her any time soon yet, although that would stop him from demanding her attentions as much as he could. He knew it would annoy her more, which was part of reason why he wanted to spent time with her.

He was lost in his thoughts when he arrived home and wasn’t even considering whether or not his housemate was home as he put the key in the door. He’d had his phone off since he’d left a few days ago and had forgotten to turn it on again, so he had no idea how much Indiana had been trying to contact him. In fact, he\'d forgotten that they hadn\'t seen one another for a few days.

So when the red head launched himself at the blonde, William was completely unprepared for the blow to his face, but he reacted swiftly, grabbing Indiana by the shirt and shoving the younger vampire backwards across the room with a snarl, not really caring where he landed. His fists were clenched as he stood in the doorway, his grey eyes flashing angrily.

“What the fuck is wrong with you? Shit, you’re a lunatic,” William growled, lifting a hand to lightly touch his cheek where Indiana had landed his punch. He knew any bruise would heal quickly, but the very fact that there would be one at all was annoying as hell.

[Existentially Odd]

The younger vampire stumbled into the back of the couch, tipping it forward into the coffee table and spilling the television and console controls he\'d been toying with onto the carpet, but grateful that the furniture stopped his semi-flight across the room.

He picked himself up and was back on his feet, hands on hips and glaring triumphantly at his roommate (from a bit of a distance, in case the prick launched at him) in an instant.

"The fuck I am!" he snarled back.  "Where the fuck have you been for the last week?!  You don\'t answer your fucking phone, you don\'t tell me you\'re fucking leaving - for all I knew, you were staked and I was left with running some pathetic garage sale to get rid of your shitty stereo and all the rest of your useless crap!" he bellowed, flinging an arm towards Will\'s room for emphasis before repositioning it regally on his hip, blue-brown eyes flashing dangerously and his head cocked back at an antagonistic angle, so that he was looking slightly sideways and down his nose at the older vampire.

[pinkroses]

There was something quite satisfying about seeing his attacker tumbling over the sofa in an ungraceful sprawl and a smirk crossed his face as he watched Indiana scramble to his feet once again.

“What the…?” Will began, but then he paused as he remembered he had actually disappeared for a few days. With Anna reappearing and then being attacked upon entry to his home, his trip had almost slipped from his mind. William tried to forget about it as soon as possible every year. He didn’t like to dwell on it. A couple of days a year and then pushing it aside had always worked for him in the past. He guessed his disappearing act may have given Indi some kind of reason to be annoyed… but to react like that?

“If I wanted you to know where I was going, I would have told you before I left. I would have invited you along. But I didn’t. It’s touching that you care enough about my welfare to fucking attack me as soon as I walk in the bloody door though,” William said lifting a hand to touch his heart, then snapping the final words as he slammed the door shut behind him, stepping closer to the redhead.

“And I’m home now anyway. I’m not… staked.” (Really it surprised him that Indiana had even considered something like that might have happened to him.) “You can stop worrying your pretty little head about me now,” he added, dropping his keys on a table by the door and folding his arms across his chest as he glared at Indiana.

[Existentially Odd]

"Worrying my pretty head about dealing with your shit!" the redhead corrected hastily, pointing an imperious finger at the carpet on the emphasised word to show that there was a damn difference in their perspectives.

Of course he hadn\'t been fretting about William\'s safety!  No!  It was all about the possible inconvenience of having to clean up after him, should he be dead.  Yes, that was it.  Never mind the fact that the relief that was now flooding through him at seeing Will\'s face in their home again was just about giving him goosebumps, and never mind that the urge to hug the bastard was rising in him almost as quickly as the urge to punch his head in had. That shit he would have to deal with later, and concentrate on saving face now.

"So where were you, then?" he sneered, turning and righting the couch and then walking around it to pick up the remotes off the floor, speaking again when they were in his hands and he\'d popped back up to his full height.  The couch between them was a deliberate move, as was holding stuff in his hands; it quelled the urge to get up close and personal with the other vampire for the time being.  "Was there an urgent sausage-fest you just couldn\'t resist getting your ass on across state lines?" he jeered, making a crude squatting motion as he did.

He might have paid attention to the odometer on Will\'s bike and noted just how many extra miles had been racked up on the thing in one of his pacing fits while he was waiting for the fucker to return home.  He might have calculated just how far the guy could\'ve got in each direction, too... unless he\'d not gone far and just done a whole shitload of taxiing around.  Likely, he wasn\'t about to get the truth out of Will by teasing him that he\'d attended some sort of homo orgy, but he couldn\'t help where his mouth took him.

[pinkroses]

As Indiana moved around the sofa, picking up the remotes and tidying up the mess they’d made, William sidled around the other side of it, letting the redhead keep the safety barrier between them, although he thought it was for a different reason. He assumed Indiana wanted to keep it between them because he was going to say something else to piss him off and didn’t want to be shoved across the room again.

And it was probably a good thing that the sofa was there as Indi spoke again, making those obscene gestures. William tried to push the thoughts of Suzanne, Resolved and Peregrine from his mind most of the time, but he had been at his wife’s grave this week and to have the redhead talk about her that way, in ignorance or otherwise, was infuriating.

William snarled with his fangs showing clearly, leaning forwards, his fingers curling around the back of the sofa. He felt as though he wanted to leap over the sofa and rip the other vampire’s head off and it showed in his expression. He resisted that, just about, as he contemplated throwing the sofa at the younger vampire, smashing that perfect nose, putting a real dent in those dimples. But instead of completely losing his cool William got a grip of himself, straightening up again and smoothing out the cloth of the couch with a light stroke of his fingers.

“I went to Vegas. Stayed at the Bellagio. They\'re very accommodating when you pay the right people. Won a few grand on Blackjack. Sorry if you were upset you thought you were missing out on a… sausage-fest. I’ll take you next time,” William said, the lie slipping from his lips like silk, but it would be far easier to see through than the normal untruths which he came out with and an unusual hesitation stopping his words as he repeated Indiana’s turn of phrase, his lips curling up in disgust at saying it.

[Existentially Odd]

When that vicious noise issued from Will, the redhead pulled his head in - literally - staring warily at his companion.  That wasn\'t a warning noise so much as an open threat of impending peril and he knew he\'d overstepped some line.  Some invisible line drawn where Will wouldn\'t tell him it was, because he didn\'t matter enough to know, even after all this time.

And he\'d thought he\'d begun to get to know the guy; how wrong he\'d been.  That snarl told Indie that he had no fucking clue about what was going on, but that Will was ready to protect himself in any way necessary.  Honestly, it hurt.  Not only had he not been told Will was up and leaving, he was now being threatened and warned off asking more, being fed some bullshit about Vegas.

It was bullshit, despite the easy tone, because the snarl had told the younger vampire so. Not to mention the disgusted expression on Will\'s face as he repeated Indie\'s joking words. It was there in cold grey eyes, too; fuck off, bitch, you don\'t know what you\'re fucking with, and you know what else? You\'re not worthy of knowing this shit about me.

Yeah, it hurt alright and it made him realise that joking about this stuff was no way to get answers.  Thing was, he wasn\'t about to just ask nicely either, \'cos fucked if he\'d prostrate himself before the blonde and open up his legs for a good ole\' fashioned ball kicking.  He was nobody\'s bitch-fool.

"Right," he said through stiff lips, breaking eye contact with Will and staring at the couch a moment before he flopped down onto it, the remote in hand but not being used as he stared unseeingly at the screen before him.  "Well, do me a favour; just delete any messages off your phone without listening to \'em.  Or reading \'em.  I was just...

worried
fearful
afraid you\'d left me without so much as a goodbye
like they all did
another eats the dust, getting the fuck out of dodge
because of me

He couldn\'t even think of a cool alternative to \'worried\' that might save him some face so he just shut up and started clicking the remote, expecting Will would walk away, now.  In case he didn\'t, and option-a-for-ass-pounding was still on the cards, Indie was coiled despite his sprawled position, ready to run if it came to it.  Will could kill him, if he wanted, and they both knew it.  Now wouldn\'t that be a pretty end for them?

[pinkroses]

Will kept his gaze on Indie as the redhead recoiled - he hadn’t meant to scare his friend, it was just a spur reaction, instinctive at the insult to his wife, the woman he’d loved and sacrificed his life for. But he knew Indie had no idea what he’d said that was so bad. He was always picking at Will, making jokes, and usually Will took them good naturedly enough so there was no reason that would be obvious to Indie why this was different.

He pursed his lips slightly as Indie mentioned the messages he left him and dropped a hand to tap his jeans pocket, wondering where he’d left his phone, curious as to what Indie had said. It was probably still in the rucksack he’d taken with him, which was now in his bedroom. If the redhead had said nothing Will probably would have just deleted them, but now his interest was sparked. Maybe he should have said he was going, or at least left a note. But it was too late now.

William moved slowly around to the front of the sofa, noting how tense Indie looked and keeping his movements smooth and cautious, as though his housemate was a scared animal. He sat down, sprawling over his half of the sofa as normal, resting his chin on his hand, his elbow propped up on the arm of the couch. A part of him had wanted to stalk off, to shut himself in his room and turn up the music on his shitty stereo or leave the house, hunt down Anna, or Vivi to take his anger out on her.

But he liked his life here. He liked Indiana. He was happy here and Anna had to come here to fuck things up. No doubt they would be having this conversation if he\'d seen Indie before going to see Anna - but he would have been in a better mood and been able to come up with something better to get Indie off his case, like he had last year.

So he stayed, knowing staying and calming down Indie would be better in the long run than letting the redhead stew and the bad feeling between them fester.

“I ran into a fledgling,” Will said staring blankly at the TV and Indie’s channel flicking for a few moments.

“My fledgling,” he added in clarification, glancing Indiana’s way. “I felt her nearby, I hadn’t seen her for a hundred and fifty years or so,” he added with a shrug. With Anna so close and Will had plans to see her again, he guess it was pointless keeping that from Indiana.

[Existentially Odd]

Will\'s casual manner of approaching the couch and sitting just the same way he always did had the desired effect on the vampire; he calmed down somewhat, though he made a show of shuffling out of the way infinitesimally.  In all the years they\'d lived together, Indiana had been threatening to buy another couch so they could have their own space but he\'d never done it.  They\'d begun their co-habitation together on a whim, needing companionship from one another, and touching/wrestling/sprawling on the same bit of furniture every night was part of the ritual.

Besides, Will had always retorted that if Indie did buy another couch, he\'d just join him on his anyway, so it would be a pointless exercise (until they broke their current one with all their flopping about, perhaps).

Indie looked sharply at his companion, wary of this information.  Years ago, Will had told him of a wife named Susanna and children (when he\'d spilled his guts about Reed), and he\'d always kept that information close, so the idea that the fledgling was a \'she\' shouldn\'t have surprised him as much as it did.  Will had been married, once, he\'d just moved on from finding women interesting... possibly because of this woman who\'d come back into his life?  There\'d been vague mention of fledglings and specific scorn for the process of making them all - since the relationships had never worked out - but he\'d never been told a name (or sex).

Somehow, the notion of another - even a woman, for whom he believed Will to hold no particular interest in - so intimately connected to his friend returning suddenly to his life threatened the redhead.  He and Will were close; they could never get that close, though.  The fact that he hadn\'t seen her for a hundred and fifty years might also mean she was about Indie\'s age, too... another advantage he didn\'t have.

"Yeah?" he asked curiously, ending his silent, possessive speculation and pushing ahead for information.  He needed as much on this bitch as he could get hold of.  "How\'d that go?"  He wondered if he was being told the reason for Will\'s few-days-absence and decided he wouldn\'t push for clarification by asking if he\'d taken her with him to Vegas, at this point.  Not being snarled at by your best friend was a good thing and something he was wanting to have more of.

[pinkroses]

William gently ran his thumb along his jaw line as he mulled over his response. It hadn’t gone well, but he hadn’t expected it to. And Anna… well, what could he say about her?

“It was… disappointing. She’s exactly the same. Stuck up, stubborn, acting as though it’s the eighteen hundreds and nothing‘s changed in the world. She’s wasting her immortality. It’s fucking ridiculous,” William said, letting the disgust show in his voice and expression as he toed off his shoes and lifted a foot to rest on the coffee table.  And the worst part was Will knew a large chunk of this was his fault. If he had stayed with her, or made her leave, forced her to abandon her tribe, he could have taught her so much better, trained her properly, given her a life worth living.

William didn’t often open up much, but Indie was the person he would talk to when he wanted to. And this… this he wanted to talk through. And talking about Anna was preferable to talking about Suzanna.

He had to figure out what he wanted to do. Something was beginning to form, and that was partly why he had left Risk when he had, instead of finding Vivi as had been his original plan. That would have pissed off Anna, but he wanted to do more than that. She had betrayed him, chosen a stinking human over him and William was getting more and more angry about that as he thought on it.

“She’s living just outside the city now. In some shithole of a cabin. I think she’s settled there, for a while at least,” William murmured, wiggling his bare toes as he gazed at them thoughtfully.

[Existentially Odd]

Indie was intrigued by Will\'s scorn, wondering what motivated it.  Hatred?  Burned love?  It seemed based on passion, at any rate, for who was William to condemn someone as \'wasting their immortality\'?  He wasn\'t exactly the poster boy for Ultimate Undeath.

The dude didn\'t sleep days and he thought that that was making the most of eternal life?  While he kept himself holed up, away from people, fearful of anything that didn\'t move him along the ground and generally just doing whatever Indie decided would be entertaining?  Seriously?

The redhead pressed his lips together, so that he didn\'t let a smirk free to advertise the irony in these statements.  "Well... if she\'s gonna\' hang around this city, shit\'s gonna\' get pretty real for her, right?  She can\'t keep pretending it\'s the fucking back of never if she\'s... wait, is she gonna\' be hanging with us?"

He\'d meant to say \'you\', not \'us\', enquiring as to whether or not Will was going to educate his fledgling on the ways of the modern world, since he sounded so disapproving of her lifestyle.  But he\'d said \'us\'.  Damn.

[pinkroses]

William’s head turned sharply towards Indie, his eyebrow raising as the word ‘us’ was used. He hadn’t wanted Anna to meet the redhead, he wanted his fledgling and his friend kept separate as much as possible and as he imagined Indie and Anna meeting a spark of jealousy flared up. Anna hated him, if she hit if off with Indie (as so many women seemed to), it would suck on so many levels.

“That… wasn’t what I had planned,” William said carefully. “I believe she didn’t really have any intention of entering the city for anything but going to the outskirts for food.” He wasn’t sure how to delicately put that he didn’t want his fledgling anywhere near this house and the redhead. But maybe subtle wasn’t the best way to go.

“I’m going to see her again in a few nights time. I think she needs a bit of space from me for now. She’s still kind of pissed at me because of how we left things. It wasn’t terribly amicable,” William said, undecided on whether or not to go into more detail or not. If Indie asked, he would probably give a brief overview, if not, well, what he’d said so far might be enough of a summing up.

He lightly bit his lower lip as he gazed across at Indie. “She might find you a little overwhelming right now and I don’t want to scare her off.” Not yet anyway.

[Existentially Odd]

William said: I want to give her some time to adjust.  We\'ll ease into things and see how it goes.

Indiana heard: You\'re not good enough to come near my little princess, you lunatic, so get the fuck back in your cage.

His jaw skewed obstinately and he couldn\'t help but glare at William, hurt beyond speaking for a moment.  There was a black ball of tension knotted in his chest very suddenly and he hated Anna purely - and Will too, for doing this to him - with no real grounding beyond the fact she\'d get her sire\'s attention and Indie would be left alone.  Again.  Except this time, he kind of got told to expect it.  That was a change.

"Right," he exclaimed with a bitter laugh, smiling with his mouth while his eyes hardened.  "Hands off your bitch while you get her back onside.  Got it."  He looked away from his housemate, jaw still set mutinously and fists bunched ineffectually in his lap.  He was so overwhelmed by his stupid fucking emotions currently, that he didn\'t know what to do first.  The urge to get the fuck away from William was the strongest, though, and as soon as the buzzing noise cleared from his brain, he\'d figure that out and act on it.  Until then he sat.  Impotently.

[pinkroses]

William watched Indiana as his friend stiffened up. It was painful to watch the redhead close up so suddenly, and over something so stupid, over Anna, a woman he felt like he should love but that he couldn’t help hating. She had his blood running through his veins and how could he deny that connection?

And if he had to choose between them… he preferred Indiana, but he had had a century and a half to mull over what she had done. As good as he was at ignoring things, something like that still sprung up occasionally.

The blonde shuffled closer to Indie, reaching out to put a hand on Indie’s thigh, one he wouldn’t let the redhead brush aside. He could feel the tension in his roommate and hated seeing him so worked up.

“She is a bitch. She’s a pain in my ass and she betrayed me. She chose a human over me and I want her onside so I can hurt her. She just rocks up here and I can feel her just… there…” he said, lifting his hand and wiggling his fingers beside his ear, as though indicating an annoying sound.

"Come on, kid. She\'ll be gone before you know it," he said with a smirk.

[Existentially Odd]

Even though he flinched when he was touched, he didn\'t get away from Will\'s strong hold and, a moment later, he was pretty glad he hadn\'t.  Looking slightly perplexed, he turned to stare at the blonde, trying to see if this was the truth or not.  William was never above lying but they\'d had an unspoken agreement from a few weeks in that there\'d be no lies coming his way (he thought) and there seemed to be sincerity in the cold grey eyes directed towards him.

Relief settled through him like water bleeding into a stone.  Will wanted revenge on his fledgling (although why he cared after so long that she\'d chosen a human over him was beyond Indie... it\'d obviously been a big deal), to charm her then harm her, and he was totally down with that.  He would help with that, if he was allowed.

"A\'right," he agreed reluctantly, the tension in his body relaxing and the fire in his eyes subsiding as he was reassured by Will\'s proximity and his touch.  It sucked royally that he\'d come to rely so heavily on the older vampire to stave off his loneliness, to be his partner in everything (but the bedroom), but he\'d accommodated that by now.  After two years together (hell, after two months), Indie had conceded to himself that William would be his new Reed, without the fucking and he was at peace with it.  No, more than that, he protected it; threats, he didn\'t take lightly.

What he hadn\'t realised - though he was pushed close to it when Will disappeared without notice for those days - was how wrapped up in Will his self-worth was.  For the first time in his existence (not that he could remember back beyond Reed to know it was a pattern he\'d repeated, to a lesser degree, with many mortal buddies beforehand, in his two hundred and forty-one year life span), he\'d hitched his star to another immortal.  One very similar to him as far as indifference for the world at large went, one who\'d assimilated with him more completely than any other person he\'d ever met.

Should he lose Will, or wreck the relationship somehow, it was a blow he\'d never recover from.  His heart sent out repercussions that should have warned him - as should his instantaneous, fight or flight mechanism being triggered every time Will did something he perceived to be a threat to their union - but he was too blinded by machismo to see it.  Machismo and fear so deeply rooted in his psyche that he wouldn\'t have to look on its black unfamiliarity until the very end of his days, likely.  And then it\'d all become clear and cause him to end himself.

Prompted subconsciously by this black, sticky tar deep within him, he therefore asked a question that had nothing to do with Anna, for he\'d accepted his place in that scheme with the speaking of one word.  The bitch would go down, but his time for participation was in the future, once Will had had time to ease her back into some sort of relationship with him (and he was still threatened by that, so he preferred not to think too heavily on the details just yet).

"Where\'d you go?  Really?"  From the slightly wounded way he looked at Will, the blonde would know he meant the days before Anna - though maybe he\'d just been to get Anna, he couldn\'t be sure.  The bike\'s odometer didn\'t necessarily mean anything, right?