05-20-2024, 05:21 PM
For a few seconds, Near stares at the door like maybe, just maybe, he can bore a hole into it if he concentrates hard enough. Why not? Why shouldn’t Jude’s freakshow bullshit be communicable? (It doesn’t seem to be). Vaguely, he wonders if Guthrie is ever going to call him again, or if the blowup has guillotined the head right off the feeble body of whatever they had been doing with one another. He cannot fathom, at least at the moment, finding it in himself to call Guthrie again. The first one of them to reach back out would assume the responsibility of apologizing, and hell if Near is going to apologize for telling the truth. It isn’t his fault the truth is so fucking stupid. So that, he guesses, is probably that. He imagines he’ll feel shittier about it later; for now a00 thick layer of surreal hangs over everything, blunting the edges of what should cut.
He drags a hand through his hair, hits a snag, sighs. Turns back around to face his apartment and its unwelcome new fixture of Jude. Jude whose swift *yes* sparks a dull throb of surprise – not that he doubted the smug asshole was leeching some gratification from his dismantling of the loose semblance of a life Near had cobbled together here, but because he didn’t expect the confirmation to be quite that sanguine.
“I fucking told you,” he mutters. “You angling for a chance to call me insane again, too? I had it in my head that we were on the same side of … something. Whatever. That maybe we could do … something. With the shit ton of money I have sitting in the bank, I don’t know. I was wrong. You don’t want to do shit and you hate me. I get it. Here.” He lobs the sandwich bag toward the couch with an underhand toss, like throwing a scrap to a dog. “Take that. Go get your goddamn shoes.”
He drags a hand through his hair, hits a snag, sighs. Turns back around to face his apartment and its unwelcome new fixture of Jude. Jude whose swift *yes* sparks a dull throb of surprise – not that he doubted the smug asshole was leeching some gratification from his dismantling of the loose semblance of a life Near had cobbled together here, but because he didn’t expect the confirmation to be quite that sanguine.
“I fucking told you,” he mutters. “You angling for a chance to call me insane again, too? I had it in my head that we were on the same side of … something. Whatever. That maybe we could do … something. With the shit ton of money I have sitting in the bank, I don’t know. I was wrong. You don’t want to do shit and you hate me. I get it. Here.” He lobs the sandwich bag toward the couch with an underhand toss, like throwing a scrap to a dog. “Take that. Go get your goddamn shoes.”