{When you're on next, a prompt for you} "Just what happened last night?"
@doubting-tomas
For a moment she acted as if she simply hadn’t heard Tomas’ question and ignored his question in favour of tending to her grazed knuckles. After so many years of boxing and, quite frankly, punching anyone and anything that looked at her funny she’d hoped the skin on her knuckles would be too tough to be damaged anymore, but no such luck. At least the amount of scars on her knuckles made her look tough. Eventually she sighed, glanced up at him over the fire with tired eyes. There was no point in ignoring him, he’d just end up cornering her about it later, or acting all concerned and wounded like some kind of kicked puppy and dammit, why did he have to care so much? Wouldn’t it be better for them both if he just did a runner like the rest of the people who were meant to look out for her? She felt guilty for thinking it, but not nearly as guilty as she felt for hoping he would never stop caring.Â
“You know that bar, the one by the hairdressers with the creepy, weird mascot? It’s like, scissors with boobs or something, you know the one. Anyway, there’s a bar next to that, it’s pretty decent if you don’t mind your shoes sticking to everything. I was meant to be meeting this girl, just for a bit of fun, y’know, nothing serious,”Â
Thom waggled his eyebrows in the way he always thought was suave and she laughed and settled into her chair and her story. Â
“Well yeah, anyway, there I was just drinking, waiting for her to show, but there’s this dude there and he’s like, a total creep. I’m talking leery face, looking at everyone’s tits, probably has a dead body in the boot of his car creepy. And he uh, he keeps hitting on this girl at the other end of the bar, to be honest I think she’d sneaked in with a fake ID, but he keeps hitting on her even though she’s like, obviously uncomfortable. So I go over and I’m like dude, she’s said no, and then he called the two of us sluts and I obviously wasn’t about to let that go.”Â
A hesitation, she watched his features darken and offered across her following words carefully.Â
“And well uh yeah, long story short I may have hit him, and uh, got into a bit of a bar fight. Well, I dunno if I’d call it a bar fight so much as a bar, I dunno, disagreement. The point is he came out of it worse than me, and I text the girl I was waiting for and walked this teenage girl to the taxi rank because she was crying a lot and that’s uh, that’s pretty much that.”Â
When she finished her tale, Thom at least looked torn before he started grilling her for getting into fights and putting herself in danger, and even then she could tell he was, under all of the concern, proud of her, kind of, because alright it was a stupid thing to do, but the guy had it coming anyway. At least it didn’t look like he’d bee angry for too long.Â
Which was kind of the point, actually, because that wasn’t what had happened last night at all.Â
What had happened was this: it had been one of those days that was just too much, where it felt like her skin wasn’t sitting right and her hands wouldn’t stop shaking no matter what she did. And she’d tried, she really had, she’d gone for a run, and when that hadn’t worked she’d tried praying and art and-well none of that had worked so in a last ditch effort to not feel so terrible she’d gone to the cheap gym in the town to work it out with one of the punching bags. Except, on the way back from the gym, there had been a guy, and he had been a creep, that much was true at least. He’d catcalled her (kat-called, there was a pun there, for a better day) when she’d been walked back in her shorts and she’d just…snapped.Â
Two punches, she reckoned the guy managed to get in two punches before she’d floored him. Poor bastard had never stood a chance. When the fog had finally lifted she’d checked to see if her was still breathing (he was, and groaning, thank God, thank God, oh God what had she done?) before calling an ambulance and running.Â
She couldn’t tell him that. Better to sit there and listen to Thom’s lectures about looking after herself than admitting to him, to anyone, what had happened. It sat in her stomach and twisted it though, and crushed down on her chest till she could barely breathe. Once, when she was little, she’d beat up a boy from school who’d called her a freak. It was one of the only times she saw her mum really angry (an anger that turned to concern eventually, and Kat was sorry, she was so sorry). “You can’t beat up everyone who does something mean, Katherine,” she’d said, “or you’ll become just as bad as them. You need to learn to think with something other than your fists or I don’t know what’ll happen to you.” Well, that question had been answered when she’d ended up in a cell at 17 for half killing a guy on the streets of North Cana, hadn’t it?Â
“You’re alright though, yeah?”Â
Thom’s voice cut though through her thoughts. She nearly told him. God, she nearly told him, but she stopped herself last second because she was selfish, she was selfish and she couldn’t bare to see disgust in his eyes when he looked at her, so she lied, again.Â
“Yeah, I’m fine.”Â
