The Favoured, The Fair and Ms. Vérité Claire

15 Amends

Luiz's curled lip pushed his nostril up into his incredulous, squinting eye.

"She wanted to make love to you and you rolled away?"

He was still wearing his winter coat even though Gray's Training Room was a sweatbox, and yet somehow he seemed more put together than Orson who looked and felt like roadkill.

Orson grunted, punching the boxing heavy bag in quick succession. "I thought she was sleeping."

"But she wasn't and you called her weird?"

One short-range punch almost blew open a knuckle.

Luiz rubbed his chin, puzzle solving.

"So she told you she liked you and you sent her packing and you've been punching the logo off this sandbag ever since and you're tooootally cool?"

"Move over or you'll get your hair stuck in the chain again," Orson ordered, steadying the bag. The tape on his fists was sliding with his sweat. He considered pausing to wrap his hands again, but Luiz was right. That logo was asking for it. "I've tried to call her. I've tried to explain, but - "

"She won't have it?"

"Her service doesn't record long enough. Anyway, she doesn't like me," Orson continued, pounding away. "She's just comfortable."

"Yeah. Gross." Luiz nodded, his eyes slow to roll but managing. "The last thing a relationship should ever be is comfortable." He tied his hair into a high bun which made his red toque stand nearly a foot high.

"You don't know her," said Orson, but his excuses and arguements sounded even more marrowless to him now. "She could have anyone she wants."

"So why doesn't she? Oh, that's right, because she wants you and you told her she was full of crap."

Orson hooked into the bag and felt the skin between his little and ring fingers split.

"She doesn't know what she wants yet," he said, shaking his arms out and stretching through pain. "I can't think it's me and find out it isn't. I wouldn't survive it."

Luiz bobbed his neck in sympathy. He placed his large, lazy hand on Orson's back.

"Orson, man, I'm gonna tell you the same thing you told me back when we first met, when we were both working for those d-bags at FNW, and yeah, okay I'll admit it was nice of them to invite us guys from the mailroom to the company retreat, but I only snuck onto that paintball range to light one up and they wouldn't let me off. You and I met behind that hay bale and you asked me why I wasn't firing my balls and I said, 'I'm a pacifist and I refuse to shoot.' You kept shouting times of day at me and I kept saying, 'don't bother, man, I'm a pacifist and I refuse to shoot.' So you said if I was gonna be a useless tool then you were gonna use me as a human shield, and I was all like, go ahead, let my death not be in vain. Remember? You dragged me all the way to the end and I took one in the eye from that guy Jones from legal even though I kept saying, 'I'm a pacifist and I refuse to shoot'? Blew my goggs off while my arms were up in surrender. I had orange paint in my hair for two weeks not to mention the beating my unders took and...where was I going with this again?"

"You were about to use my own words against me."

"Oh yeah, that's right. Take it as your own advice, just like you yelled at me while I was yelling at everyone else: 'Stop repeating yourself, you moron, you're driving me nuts!' Now let's go get some pizza or something. It's super roidy up in here. Random aggression makes me hungry."

Orson dried off his hands and wiped the heavy bag. "Nah," he said, half-sorry. "I want to get a little more time in here."

Luiz deflated, discouraged for his friend. "Well at least wear some gloves or something or you'll only be good for polishing windshields tomorrow. Later, brother."