So It's Been Awhile
Okay, so saintlyloins brought it to my attention that I haven't updated this in awhile, so...
“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.”
~Andre Gide, French writer, humanist and moralist, 1947 nobel prize for literature, 1869-1951
Title: Brother's Keeper, Part Fifteen
Rating: PG-13 for the action sequence of dubious quality
Word count: 2539
Total word count so far: 38751
Author's notes that most likely no one will ever read: Yes, I did have to throw the phrase 'that person' in here somewhere. I think my muse has been watching too much anime, because the Fates know I haven't had time to. Still, the influences are leaking through.
Van looked up from his newspaper when Greg came into the room. “How did talking to your friend go?” he asked.
“He’s not a friend,” Greg groused, still not quite sure he was pleased with the way his conversation with Derek had gone. “You don’t have friends in Ghost Town. You have allies.”
“Sounds like a lonely way to live, but that could just be me,” observed his mentor. “Did you have a nice talk, at any rate?”
Greg flopped onto the couch. “Oh, sure, we had tea and cookies and a wonderful gossip.”
“Grigori,” Van said patiently. “I will put up with only so much more of this from you.”
Greg lifted his shoulder in the patented Riordan-household shrug, despite the fact that the gesture wouldn’t really be seen against the couch cushions. “I don’t know,” he said. “We talked in circles around Sun Tzu, and he didn’t seem to like the fact that I wasn’t my own master. Kinda ironic, don’t you think?”
“Hm,” Van said, and his voice was a shade tighter than usual. He regretted what he’d done, even if there had been no other way to do it. He just wouldn’t say so, because Sophia was right and Van was a self-sacrificing martyr and an idiot with no people skills. “More than just kind of. Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“If someone’s putting … y’know … on the market, then yeah. Ghost Town - doesn’t matter which Ghost Town - is where it’s going to start. Might be better to have an inside source, you know what I mean?” Greg considered the ceiling. “Man, I never thought I’d live to see the day.” The Forbidden Fruit. Out in the world, rather than in the Garden of Eden, and apparently being used as an experimental drug to keep demi-demons in their hosts past sun-up. The perversion of it made Greg’s soul twist.
“Hm,” Van said again. Which was pretty much all he’d had to say on the whole matter. He was surprisingly nonchalant about all of this, or maybe it shouldn’t have been so surprising after all, given that Greg’s introduction to Van had been Van as an expressionless, emotionless bastard. He knew better now, of course (though he still thought Van was a bastard, most of the time) but it was like Van was completely untouched by everything that had been going on in the past couple of days. Like he didn’t even care that they had a virtual freaking miracle on their fucking doorsteps, only it was a miracle you weren’t allowed to talk about.
Although, when Greg stopped to think about it, that was probably the case with most miracles. They didn’t really seem like the kind of thing you were supposed to talk about.
Or maybe it was the gunshot wound he was still recovering from. Greg tilted his head and looked guiltily over at the man who had taken him in, his gaze centering on Van’s stomach where he knew the still-forming scars would be. Gunshot wounds would probably make a man somewhat less communicative, right?
“I’ll be fine in a week or so, Grigori,” Van said calmly, reading Greg’s mind in ways that had nothing to do with telepathy and everything to do with nebulous, half-understood concepts like family that Greg was never in a million years going to admit to. “We’ll get some real field work done then.”
“Hmph,” said Greg. If Van thought he was going to go run around like an idiot while he still wasn’t healed, he had another think coming. If there was fieldwork that needed doing in the near future, then Greg was very definitely going to be the one doing it. He wasn’t injured, or anything. He’d let Van get hurt through his inexperience once. He wasn’t letting it happen again. “Guess so.”
Van glowered. “Need I remind you that I’ve been doing this for years? I managed just fine without you before you came to us.”
Greg snorted. “Somehow, I doubt that,” he said dryly, because he did. Though it was probably true. Van was one of the oldest Terryal he’d encountered that hadn’t maimed into early retirement. (Altessa was the same age as Van, and Terryal to boot, but she didn’t count. Terryal or not, you didn’t mention a woman’s age if you wanted your insides to stay arranged as they were. Especially if she knew six different ways to kill you in a second without using her hands.) With age came experience, or so the saying went. And Van had that - along with luck and some of the dirtiest tricks Greg had ever seen employed - in spades. Of course, it wasn’t like Van hadn’t had people watching his back before Greg came along. Rumor had it that Van had been partnered with Tess for about a year, until their methods proved too destructive. (“They let their personal shit get in the way of their professional shit,” was how Isaac had explained it. “And let me tell you, two Terryal in need of marriage counseling can do a lot of property damage.”) And he’d had another protégé, once upon a time. Which Greg really wanted to know more about, but one of the unspoken rules between them was that Greg wouldn’t pick at Van’s old hurts if Van returned the same courtesy.
“I get no respect around here,” Van grumbled, turning the page of his newspaper. “My sixteen-year-old niece bosses me around and my seventeen-year-old ward sasses me like it’s an Olympic sport.”
“We mistreat your horribly,” Greg agreed, completely unsympathetically. “Probably a special circle of hell waiting for us. The level for people who pick on old men.”
“I don’t recall Dante mentioning that particular circle,” Van remarked. “And just who do you think you’re calling old?”
“Hmm.” Greg pretended to consider the matter. “You?”
“Brat.” Van lowered his newspaper a little to narrow his eyes at Greg, which was about the only warning Greg got. Van lunged off of the loveseat far faster than a man who was two-weeks into recovering from being shot had any right to. He flung his newspaper at Greg to distract him.
“Hah!” said Greg, having seen this coming from a mile away. He rolled off the couch and scrambled across the living room. Van let him make it halfway to the practice room before he tackled him. “Argh! Bastard!” Greg thrashed indignantly and stilled when Van jabbed a pressure point on his back. “Fucker! That hurts!”
“Yes, well, that’s what you get for being disrespectful,” Van informed him tartly. “Old, huh?”
“Positively ancient,” Greg shot back, with considerable relish. “Tell me about the dinosaurs and - Ow! Stop that!”
“Dinosaurs? I’m forty-three!”
“That’s ancient!”
“You little-” Van stopped abruptly.
Intruder! Greg’s instincts yelped. He yanked himself out of Van’s hold and bolted to his room. The intruder’s presence was strongest there; Greg’s room would be where it entered, if Van’s apartment was its goal. He snatched his gun from the holster attached to the bottom of his nightstand and flattened himself against the wall, waiting.
*You idiot,* Van snapped, unseen just outside Greg’s room. *Who the hell taught you to go charging into danger like that?*
*Oh, don’t even start,* snarled Greg. He reached out and snagged a fistful of grey shirt as the intruder boosted himself into Greg’s room through the open window. He flung the would-be break-in artist on his bed and rested his gun against the other’s forehead. He barely avoided the thin blade his victim threw at him. The second scratched his cheek, but otherwise left him unharmed. It was, Greg thought, more an expression of temper than anything else.
The sound of the hammer being cocked was almost surreally loud.
Greg could feel blood trickle down his cheek. He let his gaze flicker to the two knives in his ceiling and decided that this had to be how Van felt when he was being unbearably stupid for the sake of being contrary. “You’re fixing that,” he snapped.
Derek shoved the grey hood back and looked every bit as annoyed as Greg felt. “A gun?” he demanded.
Greg shrugged and guided the hammer to rest. He set his gun on the nightstand and folded his arms across his chest. “They’re useful. And haven’t you ever heard of knocking?”
Derek sat up. “Thought I’d see how good you were,” he lied.
“Happy now?” asked Greg ironically.
Derek scowled. “You’re a lousy host, you know that? You’re supposed to offer me a drink before you start interrogating me.”
“There aren’t any plants for you to toss it in.”
They glared at each other.
“You’re better than I thought you’d be,” Derek admitted grudgingly.
“You too. You realize we’re like, four floors up, right?”
Derek shrugged. “I’m good at getting in and out of high places,” he said, which had to be one of the understatements of the year, in Greg’s opinion.
“How’d you find me?” he asked, genuinely curious.
“Followed your ki.” Derek considered, blue eyes measuring as though he was taking stock of other energies. “You live with your girl?”
“Ahem.” Van stomped in, glared at the knives in the ceiling, and thrust a first aid kit at Greg. “Local spy?” he asked grouchily.
“Local spy,” Greg confirmed. “If no one kills him for breaking in.”
Van grunted noncommittally. “Neighbors are pissed.” He eyed them both with what Greg read as annoyance, though he probably just looked expressionless to Derek. It took time to learn Van’s expressions, after all. *He scaled four stories with no equipment? What is he, some kind of ninja?*
*Got it in one,* said Greg cheerfully. *Now get lost. He’s really paranoid, and I think you’re making him nervous.*
*Brat,* Van muttered, his tone promising retribution, and stomped out.
“My girl and her uncle,” Greg said, picking up the conversation where it had left off.
Derek stared at him, looking a little unnerved.
“He has this effect on a lot of people. You get used to it,” Greg informed the other boy sympathetically.
“I heard that!” Van yelled from the living room.
“Well, it’s true! You do, you creepy bastard!” Greg yelled back.
Derek’s hand shot out and gripped Greg’s elbow. He had a strong grip. It probably could have left impressions in iron, and Greg didn’t really appreciate having it applied to his elbow.
“Ow,” he noted.
Derek didn’t let go. “I can’t sense his ki,” he hissed.
“Yeah, you get used to that too,” Greg said. He shook Derek’s hand off and carried the first aid kit with him into his bathroom.
Derek followed. “You don’t understand,” he said, frustration warring for dominance with disturbance in his tone. “I can’t sense his ki.”
Greg sighed. “I know. It’s like he’s not there when you can see him standing right in front of you, isn’t it? Only he doesn’t even have the grace to leave a blank spot so you can figure out where he is. He’s just not there.”
“I - you - he-” Derek stopped spluttered and squared his shoulders, evidently reaching some mental centering point again. “He’s your divine manipulator.” It wasn’t a question.
Greg splashed water on his face. “Yup.” He eyed the rubbing alcohol warily. “There wasn’t anything poisonous on your shuriken, was there?”
“No. And how the hell do you know what the right terms are?”
*Don’t skimp on cleaning that cut,* Van said warningly, secure in his omnipotent assholeness that Greg had, in fact, been intending to just slap a band-aid on it and ignore the rubbing alcohol and Neosporin entirely.
*But the alcohol stings,* he whined.
*You are such a baby. Get it cleaned, and properly,* Van ordered.
Greg growled. *Bastard.* He poured alcohol on a swatch of toilet paper and dabbed at his cheek. “Ow. Fucking fuck, I hate this stuff.” He eyed the impatient ninja. “And my education’s been a little eclectic. Learned the important stuff, though.”
Derek muttered something under his breath in Japanese. “I didn’t hear the door or the phone,” he said abruptly, in a completely random change of topic.
“What?”
“That person said that the neighbors were pissed. I didn’t hear anyone telling him, so how’d he know?”
Greg shrugged, and applied generic Neosporin and a band-aid before deciding he was done. “He’s omnipotent.”
Derek snorted. “You’d have been more convincing if you said ‘magic,’” he said, and something in his gaze sharpened.
Man oh man. Derek was way too sharp for his own good. Greg smirked, and said, “He’s omnipotent and he’s magic. Better?”
“Not really.” Derek leaned back against the wall and eyed Greg suspiciously. “My favorite teacher had these stories,” he said quietly. “About guardians. Real ones - men, not spirits. Said he’d come across a few, and that they weren’t a bad lot, but damn strange when they’d had too much to drink.”
“Hm.” Sounded like an accurate description to Greg, but Isaac would probably insist that he could hold his liquor just fine thank-you-very-much.
“He said that they understood the principles of ki so well that they could divine your thoughts before you thought them,” continued Derek, still watching Greg.
"Superstitious mumbo-jumbo!” Greg declared.
The ninja scowled. “Really.”
“You betcha. Nobody can read your thoughts before you think them,” Greg said. “Mostly they just know you well enough that they guess what you’re thinking before you think it.”
“I notice you’re not denying the part about the mind-reading.”
“I’m not?”
“Not really.”
“Hm,” Greg considered. Sun Tzu always said that informed spies did better work. “Would if I could,” he said cheerfully, and decided to risk it. *But that part’s true.*
Derek jerked, eyes wide. Then he pounced. There was no other word to describe his sudden, wild movement. One second Greg was scooting past the ninja to get out of his bathroom and the next he was pinned against a wall with a knife at his throat.
He reacted instinctively, grabbing Derek’s knife hand and brining his knee up into the other boy’s stomach. When he doubled over for a second, Greg wrenched the knife away and slammed his fist into the winded ninja’s back, knocking him to the ground.
Derek rolled and slammed his body into Greg’s legs. Greg went down, smacking his arm on the sink and his head against the wall as he did so, because bathrooms were a damn lousy place to fight.
“Ow,” he yelped indignantly. He eyed the ninja warily. “Feel any better, now that you’ve got that out of your system?”
Derek considered. “Yeah, actually.”
“Great. I have a bruise now.”
“Wuss.”
“Fuck you.”
“Kind of goes against your marriage vows, doesn’t it?” Derek asked dryly.
“Not married yet,” Greg grunted and got resentfully to his feet. His head hurt. Sophia was so wrong when she said his head was like a brick. If his head was a brick, the wall would be hurting, and not his head. Oh, fuck, the wall. Had he put another hole in the wall? Greg checked. Nope. Thank God.
“So what now?” Derek asked.
Greg held his hand out to help Derek up. “Well,” he mused. “Now I kind of thought I’d tell you everything.”
Derek took it.
“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.”
~Andre Gide, French writer, humanist and moralist, 1947 nobel prize for literature, 1869-1951
Title: Brother's Keeper, Part Fifteen
Rating: PG-13 for the action sequence of dubious quality
Word count: 2539
Total word count so far: 38751
Author's notes that most likely no one will ever read: Yes, I did have to throw the phrase 'that person' in here somewhere. I think my muse has been watching too much anime, because the Fates know I haven't had time to. Still, the influences are leaking through.
Van looked up from his newspaper when Greg came into the room. “How did talking to your friend go?” he asked.
“He’s not a friend,” Greg groused, still not quite sure he was pleased with the way his conversation with Derek had gone. “You don’t have friends in Ghost Town. You have allies.”
“Sounds like a lonely way to live, but that could just be me,” observed his mentor. “Did you have a nice talk, at any rate?”
Greg flopped onto the couch. “Oh, sure, we had tea and cookies and a wonderful gossip.”
“Grigori,” Van said patiently. “I will put up with only so much more of this from you.”
Greg lifted his shoulder in the patented Riordan-household shrug, despite the fact that the gesture wouldn’t really be seen against the couch cushions. “I don’t know,” he said. “We talked in circles around Sun Tzu, and he didn’t seem to like the fact that I wasn’t my own master. Kinda ironic, don’t you think?”
“Hm,” Van said, and his voice was a shade tighter than usual. He regretted what he’d done, even if there had been no other way to do it. He just wouldn’t say so, because Sophia was right and Van was a self-sacrificing martyr and an idiot with no people skills. “More than just kind of. Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“If someone’s putting … y’know … on the market, then yeah. Ghost Town - doesn’t matter which Ghost Town - is where it’s going to start. Might be better to have an inside source, you know what I mean?” Greg considered the ceiling. “Man, I never thought I’d live to see the day.” The Forbidden Fruit. Out in the world, rather than in the Garden of Eden, and apparently being used as an experimental drug to keep demi-demons in their hosts past sun-up. The perversion of it made Greg’s soul twist.
“Hm,” Van said again. Which was pretty much all he’d had to say on the whole matter. He was surprisingly nonchalant about all of this, or maybe it shouldn’t have been so surprising after all, given that Greg’s introduction to Van had been Van as an expressionless, emotionless bastard. He knew better now, of course (though he still thought Van was a bastard, most of the time) but it was like Van was completely untouched by everything that had been going on in the past couple of days. Like he didn’t even care that they had a virtual freaking miracle on their fucking doorsteps, only it was a miracle you weren’t allowed to talk about.
Although, when Greg stopped to think about it, that was probably the case with most miracles. They didn’t really seem like the kind of thing you were supposed to talk about.
Or maybe it was the gunshot wound he was still recovering from. Greg tilted his head and looked guiltily over at the man who had taken him in, his gaze centering on Van’s stomach where he knew the still-forming scars would be. Gunshot wounds would probably make a man somewhat less communicative, right?
“I’ll be fine in a week or so, Grigori,” Van said calmly, reading Greg’s mind in ways that had nothing to do with telepathy and everything to do with nebulous, half-understood concepts like family that Greg was never in a million years going to admit to. “We’ll get some real field work done then.”
“Hmph,” said Greg. If Van thought he was going to go run around like an idiot while he still wasn’t healed, he had another think coming. If there was fieldwork that needed doing in the near future, then Greg was very definitely going to be the one doing it. He wasn’t injured, or anything. He’d let Van get hurt through his inexperience once. He wasn’t letting it happen again. “Guess so.”
Van glowered. “Need I remind you that I’ve been doing this for years? I managed just fine without you before you came to us.”
Greg snorted. “Somehow, I doubt that,” he said dryly, because he did. Though it was probably true. Van was one of the oldest Terryal he’d encountered that hadn’t maimed into early retirement. (Altessa was the same age as Van, and Terryal to boot, but she didn’t count. Terryal or not, you didn’t mention a woman’s age if you wanted your insides to stay arranged as they were. Especially if she knew six different ways to kill you in a second without using her hands.) With age came experience, or so the saying went. And Van had that - along with luck and some of the dirtiest tricks Greg had ever seen employed - in spades. Of course, it wasn’t like Van hadn’t had people watching his back before Greg came along. Rumor had it that Van had been partnered with Tess for about a year, until their methods proved too destructive. (“They let their personal shit get in the way of their professional shit,” was how Isaac had explained it. “And let me tell you, two Terryal in need of marriage counseling can do a lot of property damage.”) And he’d had another protégé, once upon a time. Which Greg really wanted to know more about, but one of the unspoken rules between them was that Greg wouldn’t pick at Van’s old hurts if Van returned the same courtesy.
“I get no respect around here,” Van grumbled, turning the page of his newspaper. “My sixteen-year-old niece bosses me around and my seventeen-year-old ward sasses me like it’s an Olympic sport.”
“We mistreat your horribly,” Greg agreed, completely unsympathetically. “Probably a special circle of hell waiting for us. The level for people who pick on old men.”
“I don’t recall Dante mentioning that particular circle,” Van remarked. “And just who do you think you’re calling old?”
“Hmm.” Greg pretended to consider the matter. “You?”
“Brat.” Van lowered his newspaper a little to narrow his eyes at Greg, which was about the only warning Greg got. Van lunged off of the loveseat far faster than a man who was two-weeks into recovering from being shot had any right to. He flung his newspaper at Greg to distract him.
“Hah!” said Greg, having seen this coming from a mile away. He rolled off the couch and scrambled across the living room. Van let him make it halfway to the practice room before he tackled him. “Argh! Bastard!” Greg thrashed indignantly and stilled when Van jabbed a pressure point on his back. “Fucker! That hurts!”
“Yes, well, that’s what you get for being disrespectful,” Van informed him tartly. “Old, huh?”
“Positively ancient,” Greg shot back, with considerable relish. “Tell me about the dinosaurs and - Ow! Stop that!”
“Dinosaurs? I’m forty-three!”
“That’s ancient!”
“You little-” Van stopped abruptly.
Intruder! Greg’s instincts yelped. He yanked himself out of Van’s hold and bolted to his room. The intruder’s presence was strongest there; Greg’s room would be where it entered, if Van’s apartment was its goal. He snatched his gun from the holster attached to the bottom of his nightstand and flattened himself against the wall, waiting.
*You idiot,* Van snapped, unseen just outside Greg’s room. *Who the hell taught you to go charging into danger like that?*
*Oh, don’t even start,* snarled Greg. He reached out and snagged a fistful of grey shirt as the intruder boosted himself into Greg’s room through the open window. He flung the would-be break-in artist on his bed and rested his gun against the other’s forehead. He barely avoided the thin blade his victim threw at him. The second scratched his cheek, but otherwise left him unharmed. It was, Greg thought, more an expression of temper than anything else.
The sound of the hammer being cocked was almost surreally loud.
Greg could feel blood trickle down his cheek. He let his gaze flicker to the two knives in his ceiling and decided that this had to be how Van felt when he was being unbearably stupid for the sake of being contrary. “You’re fixing that,” he snapped.
Derek shoved the grey hood back and looked every bit as annoyed as Greg felt. “A gun?” he demanded.
Greg shrugged and guided the hammer to rest. He set his gun on the nightstand and folded his arms across his chest. “They’re useful. And haven’t you ever heard of knocking?”
Derek sat up. “Thought I’d see how good you were,” he lied.
“Happy now?” asked Greg ironically.
Derek scowled. “You’re a lousy host, you know that? You’re supposed to offer me a drink before you start interrogating me.”
“There aren’t any plants for you to toss it in.”
They glared at each other.
“You’re better than I thought you’d be,” Derek admitted grudgingly.
“You too. You realize we’re like, four floors up, right?”
Derek shrugged. “I’m good at getting in and out of high places,” he said, which had to be one of the understatements of the year, in Greg’s opinion.
“How’d you find me?” he asked, genuinely curious.
“Followed your ki.” Derek considered, blue eyes measuring as though he was taking stock of other energies. “You live with your girl?”
“Ahem.” Van stomped in, glared at the knives in the ceiling, and thrust a first aid kit at Greg. “Local spy?” he asked grouchily.
“Local spy,” Greg confirmed. “If no one kills him for breaking in.”
Van grunted noncommittally. “Neighbors are pissed.” He eyed them both with what Greg read as annoyance, though he probably just looked expressionless to Derek. It took time to learn Van’s expressions, after all. *He scaled four stories with no equipment? What is he, some kind of ninja?*
*Got it in one,* said Greg cheerfully. *Now get lost. He’s really paranoid, and I think you’re making him nervous.*
*Brat,* Van muttered, his tone promising retribution, and stomped out.
“My girl and her uncle,” Greg said, picking up the conversation where it had left off.
Derek stared at him, looking a little unnerved.
“He has this effect on a lot of people. You get used to it,” Greg informed the other boy sympathetically.
“I heard that!” Van yelled from the living room.
“Well, it’s true! You do, you creepy bastard!” Greg yelled back.
Derek’s hand shot out and gripped Greg’s elbow. He had a strong grip. It probably could have left impressions in iron, and Greg didn’t really appreciate having it applied to his elbow.
“Ow,” he noted.
Derek didn’t let go. “I can’t sense his ki,” he hissed.
“Yeah, you get used to that too,” Greg said. He shook Derek’s hand off and carried the first aid kit with him into his bathroom.
Derek followed. “You don’t understand,” he said, frustration warring for dominance with disturbance in his tone. “I can’t sense his ki.”
Greg sighed. “I know. It’s like he’s not there when you can see him standing right in front of you, isn’t it? Only he doesn’t even have the grace to leave a blank spot so you can figure out where he is. He’s just not there.”
“I - you - he-” Derek stopped spluttered and squared his shoulders, evidently reaching some mental centering point again. “He’s your divine manipulator.” It wasn’t a question.
Greg splashed water on his face. “Yup.” He eyed the rubbing alcohol warily. “There wasn’t anything poisonous on your shuriken, was there?”
“No. And how the hell do you know what the right terms are?”
*Don’t skimp on cleaning that cut,* Van said warningly, secure in his omnipotent assholeness that Greg had, in fact, been intending to just slap a band-aid on it and ignore the rubbing alcohol and Neosporin entirely.
*But the alcohol stings,* he whined.
*You are such a baby. Get it cleaned, and properly,* Van ordered.
Greg growled. *Bastard.* He poured alcohol on a swatch of toilet paper and dabbed at his cheek. “Ow. Fucking fuck, I hate this stuff.” He eyed the impatient ninja. “And my education’s been a little eclectic. Learned the important stuff, though.”
Derek muttered something under his breath in Japanese. “I didn’t hear the door or the phone,” he said abruptly, in a completely random change of topic.
“What?”
“That person said that the neighbors were pissed. I didn’t hear anyone telling him, so how’d he know?”
Greg shrugged, and applied generic Neosporin and a band-aid before deciding he was done. “He’s omnipotent.”
Derek snorted. “You’d have been more convincing if you said ‘magic,’” he said, and something in his gaze sharpened.
Man oh man. Derek was way too sharp for his own good. Greg smirked, and said, “He’s omnipotent and he’s magic. Better?”
“Not really.” Derek leaned back against the wall and eyed Greg suspiciously. “My favorite teacher had these stories,” he said quietly. “About guardians. Real ones - men, not spirits. Said he’d come across a few, and that they weren’t a bad lot, but damn strange when they’d had too much to drink.”
“Hm.” Sounded like an accurate description to Greg, but Isaac would probably insist that he could hold his liquor just fine thank-you-very-much.
“He said that they understood the principles of ki so well that they could divine your thoughts before you thought them,” continued Derek, still watching Greg.
"Superstitious mumbo-jumbo!” Greg declared.
The ninja scowled. “Really.”
“You betcha. Nobody can read your thoughts before you think them,” Greg said. “Mostly they just know you well enough that they guess what you’re thinking before you think it.”
“I notice you’re not denying the part about the mind-reading.”
“I’m not?”
“Not really.”
“Hm,” Greg considered. Sun Tzu always said that informed spies did better work. “Would if I could,” he said cheerfully, and decided to risk it. *But that part’s true.*
Derek jerked, eyes wide. Then he pounced. There was no other word to describe his sudden, wild movement. One second Greg was scooting past the ninja to get out of his bathroom and the next he was pinned against a wall with a knife at his throat.
He reacted instinctively, grabbing Derek’s knife hand and brining his knee up into the other boy’s stomach. When he doubled over for a second, Greg wrenched the knife away and slammed his fist into the winded ninja’s back, knocking him to the ground.
Derek rolled and slammed his body into Greg’s legs. Greg went down, smacking his arm on the sink and his head against the wall as he did so, because bathrooms were a damn lousy place to fight.
“Ow,” he yelped indignantly. He eyed the ninja warily. “Feel any better, now that you’ve got that out of your system?”
Derek considered. “Yeah, actually.”
“Great. I have a bruise now.”
“Wuss.”
“Fuck you.”
“Kind of goes against your marriage vows, doesn’t it?” Derek asked dryly.
“Not married yet,” Greg grunted and got resentfully to his feet. His head hurt. Sophia was so wrong when she said his head was like a brick. If his head was a brick, the wall would be hurting, and not his head. Oh, fuck, the wall. Had he put another hole in the wall? Greg checked. Nope. Thank God.
“So what now?” Derek asked.
Greg held his hand out to help Derek up. “Well,” he mused. “Now I kind of thought I’d tell you everything.”
Derek took it.