Static Crush {M/M} ✔

Chapter #33

After Damo leaves, there's a long moment of stunned silence.

Then Theo says, "I'm going after him." She grabs her coat off the hook on her way out the door. "But you lot are gonna explain what just happened when I get back! And I can't believe I'm saying this, but with words, not fists."

There's a moment after she leaves where the silence returns, settling on them like a miasma. Hale tries to rewind to the moment before he walked in, before he saw Damo looming over Rayner, back to the itinerary of apologies he'd procured on his walk. Instead, the last five minutes replay on a loop. The moment he walked into the workshop. What he'd seen. The anger that he'd only just managed to suppress reaching an explosive high, and the frenzy after. He finds himself reflecting on it with no small measure of shame and disbelief.

They're not the only feelings stealing his focus either. With the return of Hale's senses comes a throbbing ache in both hands. His bruised knuckles radiate pain up to his wrist like lances of lightning. He flexes his hands experimentally, which only causes them to pang him worse. The scrapes have healed, but the sensation doesn't go away. It is, he supposes, a very good thing that he's the one with a nervous system and not Damo.

Before he can collect himself, Rayner says, "Hale... I'm so sorry."

Hale would think he'd misheard, if he wasn't capable of recalling the audio of the past few seconds an infinite number of times. Rayner slumps back against the table, posture bowed like a tree braced in a gale.

"I should be the one to apologize," says Hale. "What are you apologizing for?"

"For—" Rayner gesticulates at the table, at the space between them, hands hovering over his face a moment before they collapse into his lap in defeat. "All of that! I didn't know. I thought, for a second, that you said something a little—not like you. I should have known it wasn't you."

There's a question Hale wants to voice, but it makes him feel a little nauseated. He asks it anyway. "What did he say?"

Rayner cringes. "Everything I wanted to hear. It doesn't matter. I should have known."

Frowning, Hale tries to sound reassuring, "He looked identical. He stole my jacket."

Rayner crosses his arms over his stomach, looking shaken. "Yeah. Still. I shouldn't have dismissed all your concerns about Damo. You always said he was bad news."

Hale doesn't know how to explain that his judgments may have been premature. He can't reveal what Damo said to him without talking about the Network hack. He'll have to explain that soon, but for the moment, it seems too much.

So he changes the subject.

"I believe it's I who should be apologizing."

Rayner waits, brows twisted in silent inquiry.

"For my outburst."

Rayner chews the inside of his cheek. "I've never seen you that mad."

"I also want to apologize for earlier," Hale adds. "What I said about Melissa—"

"You don't owe me an explanation," Rayner jumps in. "And you don't owe me an apology either."

That strikes a chord of anxious confusion in Hale.

Rayner takes a deep breath. "Okay. I'm just gonna...lay it out. 'Cause here's the thing. I didn't help you out of there or anything with some kinda caveat that you have to stick around. There was no expectation of reciprocity attached. That's basically the opposite of generosity, and it's not my bag, and anyway, you've had enough of human expectations ruling over you, so... What I'm trying to say is, if you want to return to Melissa, I'm not going to stop you. But I'd be lying if I said I haven't gotten attach—" He clears his throat and lifts a hand to his neck, scrubbing the back of it like the honesty gives him hives. "Never mind," he amends. "That's what I've got to say."