“At least he went out in style..” Ford trails off with a quiet chuckle, realizing mid-sentence how fucked up it sounds. Who cares at this point, right? He assumes they’re all way past tiptoeing around the subject entirely. This wasn’t exactly something one takes lightly, especially in conversation. A man’s head has been stuck onto a spike, there was nothing mundane or light about that and there never will be. Blue eyes look over to Adrian, scanning his body. Ford carefully removes his own jacket and drapes it over Adrian’s exposed knees. Both because his frailness makes him anxious and because he obviously needs it more than him. Ford liked the cold, so it didn’t really matter to him.
A quiet, barely-there scoff sounds from him this time and it comes out more bittersweet than anything. A little like a sigh, almost. He shakes his head in minor disbelief before speaking, “I don’t even know what I would have done in that situation. Maybe run away. Leave town. I don’t know.” That’s when he moves to put out his cigarette, digging it into the concrete and watching as the remaining ashes smear against the gravel beneath his feet. “Nobody can exactly muster what their reaction would be if they saw the person they loved…like that. I mean, he was a raging fuckin’ piece of shit, but she loved him, so.”
The mention of all that’s happened to Izzy almost stings, a pain fluttering inside his chest at the thought of it all. “I know.” He states plainly, looking down at his shoes again. “Stabbed by Oliver Stone, no less. I’ve been waiting to see if he pops out of the bushes or something like that. That’s something he would do.” He laughs again, looking out over Izzy’s front lawn. “But, you know, that’s the price you pay for bein’ in a club like this, sadly. You’ll learn that soon enough, man, if you’re gonna be Ryder’s Old Man in the future or some shit. Look at Ollie, his Old Man was kidnapped too. Don’t know how Kane did that shit. Eli’s a fucking tank. Like, what’d he use, a fuckin’ U-Haul? But the game’s fucked up. Welcome.”
As he watches the other man start to take his coat off, to drape it over his knees, Adrian wants to protest. It was a kind gesture, but one that is so grounded in pity it spikes Adrian’s self loathing more than he’d like to admit. He knows how people look at him, what they think when they see him up close. He doesn’t love being reminded of his own frailty.
But he can’t pretend like he doesn’t appreciate the warmth. The chills have been bad the last few days. Though, he knows they’re not entirely from the cold.
“He was good to her, sometimes,” Adrian says in quiet, empty tone. "I guess it’s the kinda thing no one but Iz will ever really understand, huh?” He isn’t sure where the sudden impulse to defend Kane had come from. Maybe he feels like somehow he’s defending Izzy was well. He never would have done it if the man was still alive. Not when he can so clearly remember the marks he left on his best friend’s skin. Never mind his own.
The name that escapes Ford’s mouth catches Adrian off guard. Like a record scratch or a car crash and nothing else he says registers while his brain struggles to overcome the malfunction. “Oliver?” he questions quietly. His memories reel back to the Halloween festival, and passive refusal to give him the whole story. Club business, a constant reminder that Adrian would always have just one foot outside of the inner circle of the triangle that he had formed with Iz and Ryder. A few weeks later he was sitting with Oliver in the dive, like nothing had changed between them because Adrian didn’t know they had. But Oliver Stone knew... “There’s no way. He wouldn’t. They’re friends. We’re... we were.” But there was a way. Because at some point, the patch had been sewn onto his skin and Oliver Stone isn’t actually the Ollie he knew anymore.
Adrian takes a shaky breath on his cigarette, rage in his fingertips holding the filter so tight it came apart in his hand. He watched the flame burn out on the concrete. “Shit’s so fucked up,” he muttered, almost forgetting Ford was there.
