crossed over (alver x og cale)

Part 6

"Please drive."

Alberu Crossman absorbed the surprise he felt and digested the situation with impressive speed. He'd spent a significant portion of his life having to quickly grasp situations and act accordingly after all and this situation didn't take a genius to figure out.

The man who had slid into his passenger seat uninvited smelled foul, bruises lined his face and disappeared underneath a disheveled shit, and his voice vibrated with the harmonic of fear.

He was running from someone or someone and he needed help.

Alberu started the engine, considering what he'd do if this was some sort of trap. Well, the best course of action was to drive towards the police station for the time being.

Alberu barely got sight of some unsavory characters in the rear mirror who were searching the parking lot as he pulled away. His uninvited guest sank in his seat and Alberu was even more confident in his initial assessment.

"Where to?" He asked as calmly as he could. It wasn't that he was unshaken up by the sudden appearance of a stranger in his car. He could just properly manage and prioritize feelings like shock or surprise.

"...anywhere..."

Worry pinched Alberu's heart. Most people would ask for home or a hospital. Most people wouldn't be so desperate as to jump into a stranger's car.

There was something so distinctly broken about the man that Alberu couldn't just leave him be.

"How about the hospital?" He suggested, those injuries really did look nasty and he was worried there were more severe ones being hidden.

The man shook his head morosely and it looked like he was attempting to gather his composure. Alberu could see out of the corner of his eye how the man kept gathering his expression and then it would crumble all over again.

It was a bit heartbreaking.

Alberu didn't know him. He didn't know what happened to him or how he got so fucked over. He didn't know why he didn't want to go to the hospital and he didn't even know if he was a dangerous individual.

Rationally he should have taken him to the hospital or to a police station, regardless of what he said in protest.

Maybe he was inspired by the stranger's initial irrational decision to enter his car but Alberu wasn't interested in making the rational decision.

"Want to come home with me then?"

He didn't have any other intentions other than to help him clean up and gather himself. They were still strangers and this brief encounter would just become a strange story one day to tell. There was no reason for them to get to know each other better.

But Cale Henituse left an impression.

And even though it was pure chance that had caused their paths to cross, it was through their own decisions that they wound up staying together.

Alberu awoke with a frown.

It had been a few years since he'd slept on the couch like this. Perhaps that was why he couldn't help but remember it with burning clarity.

The day he'd taken Cale home on an honestly foolish impulse. How he'd wound up surrendering his bed for the night because it really didn't seem like Cale had anywhere else to go.

How things had just sort of evolved from there and despite all his best attempts, Alberu wound up pulled into Cale's gravity.

It was a really stupid story that he didn't really tell that many people. He liked Cale's version better. The one where Cale would dramatically describe being a bank robber and Alberu was his getaway driver. It was fantastical and ridiculous and a lot less tragic than the truth.