RESEARCH ( barry berkman.. ) ✔

o30. santa shooter part 2..

Vagueness. A mist fell over her consciousness, just as Adelaide felt the numbness of her thoughts break through the wall of mindless bravery. Through that fog of actions which followed, she has regained partially her senses only when the door of her car slammed behind her entering the vehicle. Mechanically, she secured the gun and dropped it into compartment for depositing before the front passenger seat.

Adelaide's hands clasped on the steering wheel, heartbeat in her ears. Hands shook with the fade of her knuckles to white. With rapid eye movements, she checked the mirror closest to her and realized, from the blur, that tears had stormed in, accumulating and edging falls. Her chin was shivering and without knowing, her breath had hitched in her throat, struggling to come through and clear the tension of her fast beating heart.

"Fuck," an ailing curse left her lips. Adelaide pried her right hand, a quake contained to rattling bones, off the wheel and tremored it onto the keys, failing to find the contact. "Fuck!" a shout went past. There was vein stressed on her temple and the first tears fell undone. The car started and she had to sniff back everything, even the continuous urge to check her mirrors, to see if the consequences of what she did and did not do were already following, running to catch up.

There was only one place where she knew safety from the crippling fear and there was only one five minutes drive separating her from the only embrace which could truly calm her, even if the world was crumbling. And it was. Adelaide felt the control slip away from her grip and she was about to swallowed by a void of darkness. The realization was that, at last, she fucked it up. Badly.

Barry's capacity to hold back was hanging by a thin thread called realization of his physical strength being able to cause true damage to the end receiver of an outburst. One shove? It could be perceived as a punch. A punch? He could kill someone, especially Sally, who stripped from ego, personality and spite, was a small woman, now stepping over a line. 

Months ago, Barry would have been too malleable to distinguish this line, but now, his thread tore in under a second of the contact Sally forced with him. In the lack of space, he brought his arms between them and his hard hands stopped Sally's shoulders, nudging her back. The push allowed him to step aside and get up from the couch.

"Don't walk away from me!" Sally shouted, louder than the music, scattering away the overall discretion they have both been keeping. Now, several pairs of eyes saw her reach for his hand only for him to clasp her wrist and shove it away. 

"You're drunk," Barry pointed with his other hand at her. His breathing heaved and he struggled to not allow the blank mindset to settle in. 

Fortunately, those words made Sally see through the light and her determination morphed into sadness without going back. "I'm... what?" she mumbled, falling back down to sit on the couch she has previously left the warmth of to nag Barry. Their glasses spilled on the carpet with the last touch which now stung poison on his lips and regrettable mistake on hers.

Sally knew she had to apologize when her hands gripped her knees, but with her mouth opened, she looked up only to realize there was no one to apologize to. The atmosphere was intoxicating with suffocation and warmth which strangled ropes around the rage ready to explode. 

Barry panicked. 

He carried no weapons underneath the red costume, not in the white fur, nor in the waistband, tucked and kept to the suspenders, but the danger has never stood in a fatal bullet. It was rather the permanence of anger which stained so deeply. Barry felt it resurface, like sweat through pores. It clogged his emotions and each step he took, until he faced the cold night air was a struggle.

Stepping outside diffused some of the disability to feel, but he did not stop walking just yet. He started counting things around him, taking the scenery in with all the costumed people, unaware of the Santa tightening his gloved hands. Oh, he despised the gloves, so in the last few steps, Barry ripped them off of him, freeing chills on his roughened skin and cooling off the final flickers of anger.