Fic: Call Me Conrad (12/16)
Title: Call Me Conrad
Fandoms: Buffy/Hollyoaks/Harry Potter
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Some people just need straightening out.
What with all that happened since the solstice, not least the previous day's revelations about Rhys, Craig had almost forgotten that he had proposed to John Paul. His mother hadn't, of course and neither had Myra McQueen. That was why Craig found himself enjoying an engagement party in Dog, for some value of 'enjoying'.
Craig's mum didn't exactly approve of the McQueens, which was why the party was in the morning before the pub opened for the lunchtime trade. At least two of John Paul's sisters didn't care, and had been knocking back wine as fast as it appeared. The only reason that Myra hadn't joined them was that she was proudly showing off her newly-discovered son to all and sundry, something that made Craig uneasy.
"He knows, I'm sure of it," he said to Jake and Jack, standing quietly near the sandwiches. He glanced over to where John Paul and Justin were cooing over Charlie, making doubly sure his other half was out of earshot. "He's up to something."
"It could be perfectly innocent," Jake pointed out. "Maybe he just wanted to sound out the McQueens, see how they'd react to the long-lost son returning."
Craig shook his head. "You didn't see his face," he said. "Whatever it was, it wasn't that simple."
"Perhaps you've made it that simple," Jack suggested. "You boys keep telling me that what you did before Christmas should be making things better around here, perhaps this is something being made better."
"I don't think it works like that," Craig said. "We haven't changed how people think."
"But we have changed what causes them to think," Jake said consideringly. "Maybe you two outing Niall has made him look at things in a different light."
"Maybe," Craig said dubiously. He would have argued the point but Myra chose that moment to head they way.
"Myra!" Jack said warmly. "And Niall, good to see you, son. Or do you prefer Matthew nowadays?"
"I don't know," Niall admitted. "I was Matthew when I was a kid, and I hated it. It was the only thing I'd been left with, and I was so angry about being abandoned..." He sighed.
"I don't blame you," Myra said. "I was angry too. Your Nana was right, though; I'd have made a terrible mother back then."
"Did you ever think about going back for him once you were older?" Jack asked.
"All the time," Myra said, "but there was always something. Having to move, or another baby on the way, or another boyfriend leaving. And then you would have been fully grown, and it didn't seem fair to sweep in then. Not when someone else had dried your tears and wiped your nose all those years."
"I..." Niall began, and he looked torn. Craig could sort of understand the idea of hating someone and wishing they were around all the same. He still sometimes felt that way about his biological father.
"Enough about us," Myra said with forced cheerfulness. "Have you two come up with a date for making honest men out of each other?"
Craig couldn't help smiling and looking over at John Paul. "We're looking at the summer," he said. "It's just too complicated to do anything sooner, what with college and all."
"Are you going to be OK with that?" Niall asked. "You being in Dublin and him being here? Long distance relationships are supposed to be hard."
"Oh, we're solid," Craig said confidently. After what they had gone through, he was certain that mere distance wasn't going to keep him and John Paul apart. They knew each other too deeply for that.
"You've got to admit 'Midsummer Marriage' has a certain ring to it," Jack said.
"Civil Partnership," Craig corrected pedantically.
Jake snorted. "Semantics," he said. "You two are committing to spend your lives together. That's basically what a marriage is, isn't it?"
"Don't look at me, love," Myra said with a laugh. "The only one I wanted to stay with..." She trailed off, looking suddenly apprehensive. Niall shifted uncomfortably.
"Do you know anything about your father, laddie?" Jack asked Niall gently.
Niall's face closed down. "They told me he was dead," he said, "died in prison."
Craig, Jake and Jack all winced together. Becca's death was still too raw a wound for them. Myra however made a broken sound and raised a hand to her mouth. "Dead?" she asked. "He disappeared, his parents wouldn't talk to me, I never thought... I thought he'd just left me."
"What was his name?" Jake asked. A question that Niall should have got in first, Craig thought; none of this was the surprise to him that it should have been.
"Martin," Myra said faintly. "Martin Brownlow."
"Oh my God!" Jack said, sounding faintly stunned.
Niall's eyes lit up. "You knew him?" he practically demanded.
Jack nodded wearily. "I was the arresting officer," he admitted. "My first great failure."
Jack was looking down, so he missed the flash of hatred on Niall's face that rapidly turned to confusion. "How do you mean, failure?" he asked.
"I was young," Jack said wryly, "well, younger. Thought I was God's gift to the Force. Young Martin was a tearaway, but I thought I could befriend him and turn him around. I got nowhere; he fell in with a bad lot, then kept pushing and pushing until I couldn't turn a blind eye any more. I hoped that the shock of detention might do what I couldn't, but it didn't. Apparently he fell in with an even worse lot and got killed in a stupid fight over nothing. A wasted life, that can't be anything but a failure."
"At least you tried," Craig ventured.
Jack sighed. "Aye, but it doesn't help. For years I kept thinking that if I'd just said or done something different..."
"You can't change the past," John Paul said as he slid up to Craig's side. He looked at Craig and smiled broadly. "Hey, gorgeous."
"Hey yourself." Craig couldn't keep an answering smile off his face, Niall temporarily forgotten. "There's a few things in our past I'd change if I could."
"Don't even think about trying," Justin said from where he had appeared beside Jake. "What brought all this on anyway?"
Craig gave him the quick run-down of Martin Brownlow's life and death. There was something very sad about the fact it took less than thirty seconds. Justin seemed to agree; "That sounds uncomfortably familiar," he said.
"There but the for grace of God?" John Paul asked.
Justin nodded. "Except I got unbelievably lucky at the end." He smiled up at Jake.
"You were never in so deep," Jack said sadly.
"I was Warren's good little minion," Justin objected.
"Aye, but for all that I don't like the man, Warren has his limits." Justin's face scrunched up at Jack's words; evidently he thought Warren's limits went a long way. "Most people want to be liked or respected," Jack continued. "The gang that young Martin got into in prison, they weren't like that. They just wanted to be feared, by all reports. Most of them came to sticky ends, and precious few even finished their prison terms."
Justin looked intrigued at something Jack said, but Jake got in before him. "Probably a good thing for the rest of us that they were locked up, then," he said.
"Not so good for my dad, though," Niall said pointedly. Jake looked embarrassed as his gaffe.
"No, prison did your father no favours at all," Jack agreed. "When I started thinking it did more harm to most people than good, that was when I knew I couldn't be a policeman any more. If I hadn't arrested him, your father wouldn't have got caught up with those gangs."
"We're back to not being able to change the past," Craig pointed out. "Besides, you can't know that for certain. Someone else might have arrested him, or he might have met up with them some other way, or found some other reason to want to be feared."
"At least you were trying to do your best for him," Justin added. "Though if he was anything like me, he probably didn't appreciate it." He looked at Niall, who was beginning to look a little pale. "Are you alright, Niall?"
"I'm... I think I need to sit down," Niall said unsteadily.
"It's a lot to take in, I know," Jack said, and suddenly Craig got it. Judging by the looks on their faces, so did his friends.
"It's a hell of a shock, finding out that your parents aren't perfect," Jake said softly. "I couldn't believe it when Dad cheated on Mum. I didn't really believe it until he left, and then I was so angry."
Justin nodded reflectively. "I think finding out my dad's death was suicide was what pushed me down the wrong path. Suddenly nothing was certain anymore, and I couldn't cope." He looked at John Paul, who shook his head.
"I learned not to trust my father at an early age," he said. "The last time we saw him, he stole our Christmas presents."
"Don't look at me," Jack said quickly. "My parents are still happily married."
"The benefits of living a long way from here," Craig commented. He turned back to Niall. "The point is, there are people here who've got some idea of what you're going through and know first hand how badly it can screw you up. If you ever need to talk... just don't ask me to keep anything from John Paul, OK?"
Niall swallowed and nodded, and Craig managed to force what he hoped was a convincing smile onto his face. He was pretty sure now that Niall had known the score about the McQueens and his father for a long time, long enough to get well and truly screwed up by the generally mystically bad atmosphere Hollyoaks used to have. Maybe they had just straightened him out, but Craig wasn't going to trust John Paul's safety to luck. No, he was going to keep a careful eye on Niall, or Matthew, or whatever he ended up being called. If there were any signs that Niall hadn't abandoned whatever plans he had made, Craig was going to come down on him like a ton of bricks.
******
"You don't have to try so hard, you know."
Warren looked round from where he was unlocking the side door to The Loft to see Justin leaning against the wall nearby. The kid was still looking entirely too unconcerned for Warren's taste, which only served to remind him that he knew just as little about what Justin was up to as he had done two nights ago. Jack had tried to pass off all the talk of poisoning as part of a game, but Warren hadn't been fooled. Amy's new boyfriend had looked far too scared, and who the hell plays games like that past midnight?
"What are you on about?" he snapped.
"All this business about buying into the Dog, you're trying too hard. You don't need to be impressive to get people to like you."
"Oh, because that's worked so well for you."
Justin smiled a little, apparently impervious to Warren's sarcasm. "Surprisingly, yes," he said, "though I've had an unfair advantage lately." He quickly lost the smile, pushing himself off the wall. "I'm serious. Think about the people you don't put on this big brash act for. Louise and Katie, they're the ones who love you. You were yourself to me eventually, and I still like you even after all the shit you've pulled."
"So what," Warren retorted, "if I'd been all sweetness and light to Claire she wouldn't have flipped and kidnapped Katie?" And demanded that Warren murder Justin if he wanted her returned safely. Justin didn't know how seriously Warren had considered that. If he'd been more certain that Claire would keep her word...
"Claire was a psycho," Justin said, interrupting his thoughts. "She never stood a chance around here."
Now that was a strange thing to say, Warren thought. Claire Devine had by all accounts simply walked into Hollyoaks and wrapped everyone around her twisted little finger. She had been top dog until Warren had manage to steal The Loft out from under her, and he'd been lucky to manage that. By rights she should still be the top dog, but somehow she had let it fall apart and left herself wide open for Justin to shove her off the stairs. Warren's eyes narrowed as he considered that; was Justin threatening him? "She never stood a chance?" he asked, watching the boy carefully.
Justin shrugged. "This place can be unsettling," he said easily. "People do stupid things more often than they would elsewhere. Someone like Claire, who didn't have that good a grip on reality in the first place... well, it was bound to be a big explosion."
"Right," Warren disbelievingly. "So we've gone from 'be nice to everybody' to 'Hollyoaks has bad feng shui.'" Justin didn't look like he was trying to be threatening, and his usual idea of being subtle was just pitiful, but Warren was wary all the same. Something was giving Justin the idea that he could talk to Warren as an equal, and Warren doubted very much that was Josh Ashworth's say so.
"What the heck is... no, never mind, this is about you." Justin paused and Warren drew breath to say something else sarcastic else, keep the kid off-balance. Justin's raised hand stopped him. "No," Justin said forcefully, "this is important. I get the whole being the big man thing. It's like something Jack said this morning, people want to be liked. What I don't get is why you think you have to be aggressive about it?"
"No one ever got anywhere by being a nice guy," Warren sneered, laying on the sarcasm thick. Justin just gave him a small smile.
"You should watch Jack work some time," he said mildly. "It's like he spends his life... Oh!" His face lit up at some revelation, and Warren took a half-step backwards instinctively. "Who told you Warren Fox wasn't good enough?" Justin demanded softly.
Warren couldn't help but remember. He could practically feel the rain soaking him to the skin again, his foster father's cruel words ringing in his ears as he was shoved out the door. Standing there shivering, that was when he had sworn he would do anything to prevent Katie going through the same hell. Anything at all.
"They were wrong, whoever they were," Justin said, breaking the spell. Warren was surprised to find Justin right up in his face. The quiet intensity in Justin's eyes kept Warren from pushing the kid away.
"Warren Fox is a guy worth knowing," Justin continued. "He protects the people he loves, and you can't ask more of a man than that." He grinned abruptly. "Except maybe he could stand to love a few more people. Seriously, Warren you don't need to prove a thing."
"That's enough," Warren snapped. He was having a hard time keeping it together as Justin's insights hit close to home, and anger was what came to him first. "What do you want?" he demanded hotly. "And before you say 'nothing', remember that I know you."
Justin shrugged, still infuriatingly calm. "A quite life?" he offered. "That's not going to happen, though. I'd settle for just one emergency at a time."
Warren looked at him narrowly. "Not threats? No warnings this time?"
"Would they do any good?" Justin asked rhetorically. "Oh, Jack said 'No' by the way, but we all knew that was going to happen."
"Why do I get the impression you didn't try very hard to persuade him?"
"Because this isn't my current emergency," Justin said bluntly. Warren was surprised; he'd been expecting more slippery niceness, not such a flat dismissal. "My current emergency is about to stick its head in the lion's mouth again, and on current form that means someone's going to find a really weird way to get hurt. Whatever it is, they're going to expect us to fix it, so I'd really appreciate it if you didn't kick anyone's paranoia into high gear right now."
That was as animated as he had seen Justin in a while, Warren thought. All in aid of dismissing him as unimportant. "You want me to back off so I don't worry your friends?"
"I want you to back off so that nobody dies," Justin fired back. "That's a very real possibility even if you do back off, because people keep putting their lives in my hands and we're still making things up as we go along." He took a deep breath and steadied himself, suddenly looking as young as he really was. "Please, Warren, just this once?" I don't..."
I don't want to get anyone else killed, Warren filled in for himself. That was what scared Justin far more than Warren could. That was his way in, but only if he was prepared to risk someone dying as a result. Warren had no illusions about how nice a person he was. He knew he could kill - had killed, to protect Louise - but not for something so small.
"Some day soon," he said grimly, "we are going to sit down with a beer and you are going to tell me exactly exactly what is going on."
It wasn't exactly a promise to leave off, but Justin seemed to take it that way. He smiled, big and genuine, and said, "Yeah, we will. Just..." The smile faltered. "Just be sure you want to know. Even you will lose sleep over this crap."
Warren didn't stop him when he turned and left. He was thinking about what Justin had said, and how the kid had changed over the last few weeks. He had hinted at 'real evil' again, but he had gone out of his way to make Warren out as nothing of the sort. Was it just some ploy to keep Warren off his back? Justin seemed to believe in it, but it made no sense. It especially confused Warren that Justin thought he wouldn't like the answer so much that he wouldn't want to know it. Ignorance had never been bliss for Warren; knowing more about what was going on than anyone else around had kept him out of jail and made him money on more than a few occasions. Not wanting to know something just because it was nasty... no way.
Fandoms: Buffy/Hollyoaks/Harry Potter
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Some people just need straightening out.
What with all that happened since the solstice, not least the previous day's revelations about Rhys, Craig had almost forgotten that he had proposed to John Paul. His mother hadn't, of course and neither had Myra McQueen. That was why Craig found himself enjoying an engagement party in Dog, for some value of 'enjoying'.
Craig's mum didn't exactly approve of the McQueens, which was why the party was in the morning before the pub opened for the lunchtime trade. At least two of John Paul's sisters didn't care, and had been knocking back wine as fast as it appeared. The only reason that Myra hadn't joined them was that she was proudly showing off her newly-discovered son to all and sundry, something that made Craig uneasy.
"He knows, I'm sure of it," he said to Jake and Jack, standing quietly near the sandwiches. He glanced over to where John Paul and Justin were cooing over Charlie, making doubly sure his other half was out of earshot. "He's up to something."
"It could be perfectly innocent," Jake pointed out. "Maybe he just wanted to sound out the McQueens, see how they'd react to the long-lost son returning."
Craig shook his head. "You didn't see his face," he said. "Whatever it was, it wasn't that simple."
"Perhaps you've made it that simple," Jack suggested. "You boys keep telling me that what you did before Christmas should be making things better around here, perhaps this is something being made better."
"I don't think it works like that," Craig said. "We haven't changed how people think."
"But we have changed what causes them to think," Jake said consideringly. "Maybe you two outing Niall has made him look at things in a different light."
"Maybe," Craig said dubiously. He would have argued the point but Myra chose that moment to head they way.
"Myra!" Jack said warmly. "And Niall, good to see you, son. Or do you prefer Matthew nowadays?"
"I don't know," Niall admitted. "I was Matthew when I was a kid, and I hated it. It was the only thing I'd been left with, and I was so angry about being abandoned..." He sighed.
"I don't blame you," Myra said. "I was angry too. Your Nana was right, though; I'd have made a terrible mother back then."
"Did you ever think about going back for him once you were older?" Jack asked.
"All the time," Myra said, "but there was always something. Having to move, or another baby on the way, or another boyfriend leaving. And then you would have been fully grown, and it didn't seem fair to sweep in then. Not when someone else had dried your tears and wiped your nose all those years."
"I..." Niall began, and he looked torn. Craig could sort of understand the idea of hating someone and wishing they were around all the same. He still sometimes felt that way about his biological father.
"Enough about us," Myra said with forced cheerfulness. "Have you two come up with a date for making honest men out of each other?"
Craig couldn't help smiling and looking over at John Paul. "We're looking at the summer," he said. "It's just too complicated to do anything sooner, what with college and all."
"Are you going to be OK with that?" Niall asked. "You being in Dublin and him being here? Long distance relationships are supposed to be hard."
"Oh, we're solid," Craig said confidently. After what they had gone through, he was certain that mere distance wasn't going to keep him and John Paul apart. They knew each other too deeply for that.
"You've got to admit 'Midsummer Marriage' has a certain ring to it," Jack said.
"Civil Partnership," Craig corrected pedantically.
Jake snorted. "Semantics," he said. "You two are committing to spend your lives together. That's basically what a marriage is, isn't it?"
"Don't look at me, love," Myra said with a laugh. "The only one I wanted to stay with..." She trailed off, looking suddenly apprehensive. Niall shifted uncomfortably.
"Do you know anything about your father, laddie?" Jack asked Niall gently.
Niall's face closed down. "They told me he was dead," he said, "died in prison."
Craig, Jake and Jack all winced together. Becca's death was still too raw a wound for them. Myra however made a broken sound and raised a hand to her mouth. "Dead?" she asked. "He disappeared, his parents wouldn't talk to me, I never thought... I thought he'd just left me."
"What was his name?" Jake asked. A question that Niall should have got in first, Craig thought; none of this was the surprise to him that it should have been.
"Martin," Myra said faintly. "Martin Brownlow."
"Oh my God!" Jack said, sounding faintly stunned.
Niall's eyes lit up. "You knew him?" he practically demanded.
Jack nodded wearily. "I was the arresting officer," he admitted. "My first great failure."
Jack was looking down, so he missed the flash of hatred on Niall's face that rapidly turned to confusion. "How do you mean, failure?" he asked.
"I was young," Jack said wryly, "well, younger. Thought I was God's gift to the Force. Young Martin was a tearaway, but I thought I could befriend him and turn him around. I got nowhere; he fell in with a bad lot, then kept pushing and pushing until I couldn't turn a blind eye any more. I hoped that the shock of detention might do what I couldn't, but it didn't. Apparently he fell in with an even worse lot and got killed in a stupid fight over nothing. A wasted life, that can't be anything but a failure."
"At least you tried," Craig ventured.
Jack sighed. "Aye, but it doesn't help. For years I kept thinking that if I'd just said or done something different..."
"You can't change the past," John Paul said as he slid up to Craig's side. He looked at Craig and smiled broadly. "Hey, gorgeous."
"Hey yourself." Craig couldn't keep an answering smile off his face, Niall temporarily forgotten. "There's a few things in our past I'd change if I could."
"Don't even think about trying," Justin said from where he had appeared beside Jake. "What brought all this on anyway?"
Craig gave him the quick run-down of Martin Brownlow's life and death. There was something very sad about the fact it took less than thirty seconds. Justin seemed to agree; "That sounds uncomfortably familiar," he said.
"There but the for grace of God?" John Paul asked.
Justin nodded. "Except I got unbelievably lucky at the end." He smiled up at Jake.
"You were never in so deep," Jack said sadly.
"I was Warren's good little minion," Justin objected.
"Aye, but for all that I don't like the man, Warren has his limits." Justin's face scrunched up at Jack's words; evidently he thought Warren's limits went a long way. "Most people want to be liked or respected," Jack continued. "The gang that young Martin got into in prison, they weren't like that. They just wanted to be feared, by all reports. Most of them came to sticky ends, and precious few even finished their prison terms."
Justin looked intrigued at something Jack said, but Jake got in before him. "Probably a good thing for the rest of us that they were locked up, then," he said.
"Not so good for my dad, though," Niall said pointedly. Jake looked embarrassed as his gaffe.
"No, prison did your father no favours at all," Jack agreed. "When I started thinking it did more harm to most people than good, that was when I knew I couldn't be a policeman any more. If I hadn't arrested him, your father wouldn't have got caught up with those gangs."
"We're back to not being able to change the past," Craig pointed out. "Besides, you can't know that for certain. Someone else might have arrested him, or he might have met up with them some other way, or found some other reason to want to be feared."
"At least you were trying to do your best for him," Justin added. "Though if he was anything like me, he probably didn't appreciate it." He looked at Niall, who was beginning to look a little pale. "Are you alright, Niall?"
"I'm... I think I need to sit down," Niall said unsteadily.
"It's a lot to take in, I know," Jack said, and suddenly Craig got it. Judging by the looks on their faces, so did his friends.
"It's a hell of a shock, finding out that your parents aren't perfect," Jake said softly. "I couldn't believe it when Dad cheated on Mum. I didn't really believe it until he left, and then I was so angry."
Justin nodded reflectively. "I think finding out my dad's death was suicide was what pushed me down the wrong path. Suddenly nothing was certain anymore, and I couldn't cope." He looked at John Paul, who shook his head.
"I learned not to trust my father at an early age," he said. "The last time we saw him, he stole our Christmas presents."
"Don't look at me," Jack said quickly. "My parents are still happily married."
"The benefits of living a long way from here," Craig commented. He turned back to Niall. "The point is, there are people here who've got some idea of what you're going through and know first hand how badly it can screw you up. If you ever need to talk... just don't ask me to keep anything from John Paul, OK?"
Niall swallowed and nodded, and Craig managed to force what he hoped was a convincing smile onto his face. He was pretty sure now that Niall had known the score about the McQueens and his father for a long time, long enough to get well and truly screwed up by the generally mystically bad atmosphere Hollyoaks used to have. Maybe they had just straightened him out, but Craig wasn't going to trust John Paul's safety to luck. No, he was going to keep a careful eye on Niall, or Matthew, or whatever he ended up being called. If there were any signs that Niall hadn't abandoned whatever plans he had made, Craig was going to come down on him like a ton of bricks.
******
"You don't have to try so hard, you know."
Warren looked round from where he was unlocking the side door to The Loft to see Justin leaning against the wall nearby. The kid was still looking entirely too unconcerned for Warren's taste, which only served to remind him that he knew just as little about what Justin was up to as he had done two nights ago. Jack had tried to pass off all the talk of poisoning as part of a game, but Warren hadn't been fooled. Amy's new boyfriend had looked far too scared, and who the hell plays games like that past midnight?
"What are you on about?" he snapped.
"All this business about buying into the Dog, you're trying too hard. You don't need to be impressive to get people to like you."
"Oh, because that's worked so well for you."
Justin smiled a little, apparently impervious to Warren's sarcasm. "Surprisingly, yes," he said, "though I've had an unfair advantage lately." He quickly lost the smile, pushing himself off the wall. "I'm serious. Think about the people you don't put on this big brash act for. Louise and Katie, they're the ones who love you. You were yourself to me eventually, and I still like you even after all the shit you've pulled."
"So what," Warren retorted, "if I'd been all sweetness and light to Claire she wouldn't have flipped and kidnapped Katie?" And demanded that Warren murder Justin if he wanted her returned safely. Justin didn't know how seriously Warren had considered that. If he'd been more certain that Claire would keep her word...
"Claire was a psycho," Justin said, interrupting his thoughts. "She never stood a chance around here."
Now that was a strange thing to say, Warren thought. Claire Devine had by all accounts simply walked into Hollyoaks and wrapped everyone around her twisted little finger. She had been top dog until Warren had manage to steal The Loft out from under her, and he'd been lucky to manage that. By rights she should still be the top dog, but somehow she had let it fall apart and left herself wide open for Justin to shove her off the stairs. Warren's eyes narrowed as he considered that; was Justin threatening him? "She never stood a chance?" he asked, watching the boy carefully.
Justin shrugged. "This place can be unsettling," he said easily. "People do stupid things more often than they would elsewhere. Someone like Claire, who didn't have that good a grip on reality in the first place... well, it was bound to be a big explosion."
"Right," Warren disbelievingly. "So we've gone from 'be nice to everybody' to 'Hollyoaks has bad feng shui.'" Justin didn't look like he was trying to be threatening, and his usual idea of being subtle was just pitiful, but Warren was wary all the same. Something was giving Justin the idea that he could talk to Warren as an equal, and Warren doubted very much that was Josh Ashworth's say so.
"What the heck is... no, never mind, this is about you." Justin paused and Warren drew breath to say something else sarcastic else, keep the kid off-balance. Justin's raised hand stopped him. "No," Justin said forcefully, "this is important. I get the whole being the big man thing. It's like something Jack said this morning, people want to be liked. What I don't get is why you think you have to be aggressive about it?"
"No one ever got anywhere by being a nice guy," Warren sneered, laying on the sarcasm thick. Justin just gave him a small smile.
"You should watch Jack work some time," he said mildly. "It's like he spends his life... Oh!" His face lit up at some revelation, and Warren took a half-step backwards instinctively. "Who told you Warren Fox wasn't good enough?" Justin demanded softly.
Warren couldn't help but remember. He could practically feel the rain soaking him to the skin again, his foster father's cruel words ringing in his ears as he was shoved out the door. Standing there shivering, that was when he had sworn he would do anything to prevent Katie going through the same hell. Anything at all.
"They were wrong, whoever they were," Justin said, breaking the spell. Warren was surprised to find Justin right up in his face. The quiet intensity in Justin's eyes kept Warren from pushing the kid away.
"Warren Fox is a guy worth knowing," Justin continued. "He protects the people he loves, and you can't ask more of a man than that." He grinned abruptly. "Except maybe he could stand to love a few more people. Seriously, Warren you don't need to prove a thing."
"That's enough," Warren snapped. He was having a hard time keeping it together as Justin's insights hit close to home, and anger was what came to him first. "What do you want?" he demanded hotly. "And before you say 'nothing', remember that I know you."
Justin shrugged, still infuriatingly calm. "A quite life?" he offered. "That's not going to happen, though. I'd settle for just one emergency at a time."
Warren looked at him narrowly. "Not threats? No warnings this time?"
"Would they do any good?" Justin asked rhetorically. "Oh, Jack said 'No' by the way, but we all knew that was going to happen."
"Why do I get the impression you didn't try very hard to persuade him?"
"Because this isn't my current emergency," Justin said bluntly. Warren was surprised; he'd been expecting more slippery niceness, not such a flat dismissal. "My current emergency is about to stick its head in the lion's mouth again, and on current form that means someone's going to find a really weird way to get hurt. Whatever it is, they're going to expect us to fix it, so I'd really appreciate it if you didn't kick anyone's paranoia into high gear right now."
That was as animated as he had seen Justin in a while, Warren thought. All in aid of dismissing him as unimportant. "You want me to back off so I don't worry your friends?"
"I want you to back off so that nobody dies," Justin fired back. "That's a very real possibility even if you do back off, because people keep putting their lives in my hands and we're still making things up as we go along." He took a deep breath and steadied himself, suddenly looking as young as he really was. "Please, Warren, just this once?" I don't..."
I don't want to get anyone else killed, Warren filled in for himself. That was what scared Justin far more than Warren could. That was his way in, but only if he was prepared to risk someone dying as a result. Warren had no illusions about how nice a person he was. He knew he could kill - had killed, to protect Louise - but not for something so small.
"Some day soon," he said grimly, "we are going to sit down with a beer and you are going to tell me exactly exactly what is going on."
It wasn't exactly a promise to leave off, but Justin seemed to take it that way. He smiled, big and genuine, and said, "Yeah, we will. Just..." The smile faltered. "Just be sure you want to know. Even you will lose sleep over this crap."
Warren didn't stop him when he turned and left. He was thinking about what Justin had said, and how the kid had changed over the last few weeks. He had hinted at 'real evil' again, but he had gone out of his way to make Warren out as nothing of the sort. Was it just some ploy to keep Warren off his back? Justin seemed to believe in it, but it made no sense. It especially confused Warren that Justin thought he wouldn't like the answer so much that he wouldn't want to know it. Ignorance had never been bliss for Warren; knowing more about what was going on than anyone else around had kept him out of jail and made him money on more than a few occasions. Not wanting to know something just because it was nasty... no way.