Tower Talk

[Kaze]

Kaze parks several blocks away and walks to Circle of Creation with Starbucks coffee and Hawaiian pizza. He slips inside and makes his way to the Arrow Quarter, up in the tower.

He knocks cautiously standing to one side of the door rather than in front of it. "Hello? It's me. Kaze." Kaze says, a little unsure what he's doing here, but remembering what he's not.

[Phoenyx]

It takes a few minutes before the sound of pattering feet comes from inside. The door is swung open.

Phoenyx looks like she's come straight from the gym upstairs, with a towel around her neck, form-fitting clothes and toussled hair. The dark rings under her eyes suggest she hasn't been sleeping well.

"Hi," she says quietly, avoiding his eyes. "Come in."

She backs into the room. "Look, I'm not... trying to make anything happen. I just though this might be better. Than the phone."

[Kaze]

"Hi." He says.

Kaze nods, enters and shuts the door gently but firmly behind him, cutting off any retreat.

"So...I don't know if there was something you wanted to say..." He ventures. "I...proposed to you but you said 'no'...might have found my dad."

[Phoenyx]

Okay. That was unexpected.

"Um... really?" the Arrow asks. "I... didn't know you were looking."

She gently reaches to take one of the coffee cups, flinching a little as her fingers catch his. "Sorry..... um... Thank you." That came surprisingly easy. "Look, Kaze... I realise that's a very big thing for you. But... we need to talk about the other thing. About you and me. Is... is that okay?" This was clearly awkward - Phoenyx hardly ever asked that.

[Kaze]

Kaze does not flinch from the incidental contact, in fact he lingers over her finger with the back of his hand rising it slightly to gently prolong the touch another second or two.

"I... Phoenyx...I would really like that... but I don't know what to say. I mean, based on what we said the last time...I don't know whatto say."
Kaze sighs, "I should listen, and not talk so much. I'm going to just do that now." He says decisively.

[Phoenyx]

The moving of his hand makes all kind of feelings happen.

Phoenyx's eyes look up, and she sips from the cup. "Kaze.... you're...." He's your friend. Say it.

The Arrow falters. "I... don't want... to fight, Kaze. I... don't want to be... nervous... seeing you in Concillium. I just want things to go back to the way they used to be."

She walks away, shoulders slumped. Suddenly, she whirls around. "I miss you, you big dummy, don't you get that?I know things can't be the same, but... well.... Maybe... we can try being friends. Again. I miss having that. And. I know. You don't.... want... me..." the words are forced out, and She avoids looking at the other Obrimos, "but... Maybe we can do. That."

[Kaze]

"Phoenyx..." Kaze chokes up a little. "I...you know I proposed to you, right? I mean...I know I did it the wrong way...totally the wrong time...but people who don't want people don't propose to them...."

Kaze sighs. "I want you. I just...don't want to have sex with anyone whose not my wife."

He is quiet a moment and then says, "That's why it's hard to just go back to being just friends. I mean...not impossible, I guess, but not easy."

[Phoenyx]

The Arrow stares, goggling, gaping. It takes several seconds of her mouth moving up and down before she says something.

".... what?!" She exclaims, leering at him. "THAT'S what you thought you did?! That's Bullshit! You turned down sex and said you didn't want to sleep with someone without being married! How the fuck is that a proposal?! 'Will you marry me' is a proposal! Getting down on one knee with a ring is a proposal! Not saying 'I want you body and soul'! Not saying 'I imagine being married to you'! Not 'wow nice tits Phoenyx, but my new-found dogmatic patriarchal beliefs mean I can't put my dick inside you any more like we have just FINE for the the last EIGHT MONTHS'!"

So much for not wanting to fight. But this was an entire revelation to the Arrow that, to her, was never made clear.

The little Arrow slams the cup down and begins advancing on him like an enraged tiger. "You made it all about your faith and all about how you didn't want to violate your new beliefs! Now I fucking hated that, because it meant you were picking something else over me but at the very least I grew to understand it! I grew to think maybe we could still be friends!"she jabs a finger in his chest. "But now you're saying you walked away and have been thinking, for the last three months, that I turned down some cryptic marriage proposal buried among the twisted Christan reasons for not fucking without a piece of metal on my hand? Are you fucking serious, Kaze?"

Overreaction? Maybe, a little, but this was sounding a hell of a lot like there were two very different versions of the same story.

[Kaze]

Kaze raises his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Yeah." He says. "I guess...all that. I did everything you just said."

The young apostate sighs. "Phoenyx. I...I'm bad at this. All of it. I know, okay? I'm not doing it on purpose, to hurt you."

He says. "We just didn't know each other very well at all even though we'd been together, for a while and I don't...I don't do confrontations. I didn't just now find my faith. I had it before I ever met you, before I Awakened. I...compromised it and even, hid it I guess. And yeah, I just didn't tell you anything that I thought you wouldn't want to hear. I was wrong. When I told you that I wanted to marry you, I didn't really propose it, because I was pretty sure you weren't going to be happy to hear it; especially that I wanted to have a family. This? What we're doing right now. I don't even think it's fighting. It's 'talking', just...we're both really bad at it. I mean, sure. I talk, a lot. But about stuff that matters? To me? I suck at that."

Kaze sighs again. "I don't want to go back to the way things were because that was me not telling you what I really felt or being truthful with you. I am not rejecting you. I am trying to be honest, so whatever we can have, friendship or more, is really based on honesty, from my side. You were always honest. I mean, the guy you were with wasn't really me, not what I was holding back. This is me. I would rather you hate who I really am then think you love someone I am pretending to be, to get along with you and avoid fights."

[Phoenyx]

Didn't know each other? "I told you things about me! And you don't do confrontation? You attacked people with a katana!" The Arrow's voice is getting louder. "Oh, it's fighting, Kaze! I've been trying to come to terms with your faith being central to your life and it not being about me, and it turns out since the first time we slept together it was never what you wanted and was all some huge lie!" She continues advancing on the Apostate. "AND NOW you're saying the person I fell in love with isn't actually you!"

Phoenyx looks up at Kaze, and their are tears in her eyes. "What are you trying to say, Kaze? That nothing we did together means anything? That you want to get back together? Why can't you just tell me what you want?"