2019-07-30 - We're Totally Still Friends

At some point, Alexander can be found outside the apartments. He's not here to see a tenant, so the security guard has absolutely no interest in letting him inside to wait. Which, let's face it, isn't an unreasonable decision: he's wearing an ancient t-shirt with a few holes in it, old jeans with a hole in the knees (and not in the cool, fashionable way), and stompy boots. He does NOT look like he belongs here.

For his part, though, the man doesn't seem to mind it. He's standing under the summer drizzle just far enough away from the building that it's not worth the security guard hassling him to stop loitering with his head tilted back and his eyes closed, leaning into the rain with a kind of desperation. Whatever sleep he'd been forced to get in the hospital has been drained away, and he looks ragged and worn again. So, like Alexander. At least he's clean-shaven, and the bruises on his arms are fading. One leg is bulkier than the other under his jeans, proof of the bandaging still there, but he walked here, so it must be healing well. Or he's an idiot. Even odds.

By the time Alexander turns up, the target of his little manhunt is waiting for him. Outside the building, not quite under the awning that would provide him with some shelter from the incessant rain. To be fair, he too does not look like he belongs here. Ratty tee shirt that exposes heavily inked arms, and dark cargo pants tucked into boots that lace to his mid-calf. Or would, if he'd bothered to lace them up properly. His dark hair is askew, and there's a cigarette between his lips in the process of being lit. His eyes tick up as he hears someone approach. Lighter shaken out and capped and slid into his pants pocket, and he prowls on over, and draws to a halt. Smoke's exhaled away from the other man, a glance skyward.

"Are you finding what you are looking for?" Mexican-accented English. No question, really, who that might be broaching the man's little bubble of damp solitude.

"No," Alexander says, heavy with resignation. "It's not cold enough." He tenses as Ruiz approaches, but he doesn't flinch away. His face really only has two modes - that reptilian blankness that he takes on a great deal, and then every feeling he has as clear and easy to read as a book. Right now, there's the latter, and it's easy to track the anger in the set of his jaw and thinning of his lips as he turns to look at Ruiz, but also the hurt and even a bit of shame and fear as he doesn't quite meet the other man's eyes. The exhalation of smoke, the smallest hint of cherry red at the end of the cigarette, that becomes a focus that makes him cringe, visibly cringe, and look even further away, to stare at rain falling into a nearby puddle.

"You're not on duty, but you're here. Visiting someone?" It's a staccato burst of a question, like he can't really help but ask it. "Sorry. To interrupt. You could have told me to come at a different time. Or just dropped it in my mailbox. You know where I live." A hint of bitterness there, sharp.

The anger, the hurt, the shame and the fear are felt, on some level, whether he wants to or not. It's barely even a conscious decision now, to feel what others feel. To make it his.

Despite the cringing from Alexander, he doesn't make to put out his smoke. It's barely even burned down, suggesting he only just stepped outside and lit up, not too long before the younger man arrived. "Visiting someone," he repeats quietly. Hard to say whether that's agreement, or acknowledgement of the possibility. "And she's sleeping. You're not interrupting anything." So there is a someone. That he's visiting. He sniffs sharply, rubs at his nose, then digs in his pants pocket for something. A business card of some kind is extracted, and then a key shortly after. It's held out to Alexander. "I'd meant to drop this off when I gave you the clothes. Lo siento."

Alexander turns, slightly, to keep Ruiz's movements in sight while trying to avoid looking at his face. A sharp jerk of his chin, an acknowledgement of the response. Wariness in every line of the man's body, he reaches for the key, careful not to touch. The business card is given a curious look - nosiness, thy name is ALWAYS Alexander Clayton. His dark eyes flick upwards, braving the cherry glow long enough to try and study Ruiz's face. Only for a moment, before they stare at his collarbone, instead. "What are you going to do? With what you saw?" A twitch of jaw muscles, teeth ground, then his jaw deliberately relaxed as he plays nervously with the key in his hands. "Your message sounded like you wanted to yell about it."

The key is held out with the business end pinched between forefinger and thumb, giving Alexander plenty to grab without an accidental brush of contact. As for the business card? Oddly, it looks like it might be one of his own. GHPD logo and captain something or other. The precinct doesn't have budget for more than one captain. There is something scrawled at the bottom. Could be a phone number.

"I haven't decided yet," is his unwavering reply. His voice is rough-edged and pitched low, like something hewn from sandstone and abraded to the point of rawness. He pulls from his cigarette again once the key's been relinquished; the thing is scissored between inked fingertips, ash flicked once more with his thumb as he expels smoke through his nose and mouth. "You need to stop.." He'd meant to qualify that with something. But after grasping for the right word for some moments, seems to give up. His jaw is tight as he falls silent.

Alexander's eyes narrow in on the written scribble. A twitch of his lips, like a silent recitation, before he looks away. A quick hum of a seven-note tune under his breath. But whatever curiosity he might have for a random number, the answer to his other question draws his attention more squarely. "I'm not doing anything--" illegal was maybe what his first word was, but he grimaces, changes it to, "wrong. It's not wrong to take notes. To write things down. Maybe they're wrong, and maybe they sound fucking crazy, but I have the right to be crazy in my own home, and I don't care if you think it's stupid or horrible or if you think I should be locked up upstate." The words just tumble out in a sort of ongoing explosion of frustration and fear, as if he's had an ongoing argument with something in his head ever since he realized the room had been opened.

There's not a blessed word from the dark-eyed Mexican as Alexander goes for a hike up Mount Rant. He smokes, and watches the younger man sidelong, and otherwise seems content to just let him get all of that off his chest without any interruptions. When he's done, a little flickered raise of the cop's eyebrows. "I don't frankly give a shit what you do in your own house, Clayton. But in future. No more of this fucking lone P.I. bullshit. You come to me instead of going behind my fucking back." Because he's a goddamned control freak, that's why. "Do you fucking understand me?"

Alexander's eyes snap up to Ruiz's, a flash of surprise, then of anger. His shoulders square. "Going behind your back?" He sounds...astonished. "I've lived in this town my whole fucking life, Captain. Nothing in that room was about you, and I don't answer to you. You don't know half of what this hellhole can do to you, and you keep acting like you do and it will eat you alive. Maybe YOU should be coming to ME."

"Don't presume to have any. Fucking. Clue. What I do or don't know, Mr. Clayton." The cop's voice is drenched in barely constrained fury, and he pulls in close. Far, far too close, to offer those words. No, he does not touch him, but he may as well have, when his face is thrust mere inches away from Alexander's. "I have, and will continue to come to you." And then he pulls back abruptly, if the younger man hasn't already set about putting some distance between them. The stoop of his shoulders, the curl of his lip, all liquid, unadulterated violence. "No more fucking games." Two more steps back, and then he turns and prowls back off for the building proper, half drenched in rain, cigarette flicked away as he walks and left to sputter and die in what's rapidly becoming a flash downpour.

When Ruiz moves forward, every muscle in Alexander's body screams to back up, to put some distance to between them - or to react to that boiling air of potential violence and hit first, hit hard enough to eliminate the threat or buy himself time to escape. It's all instinct and learned survival stimuli rather than malice, primal flight or fight that Alexander has to visibly rein in to avoid breaking in either direction. He manages it, but his whole body is shaking with the effort as Ruiz is close enough for him to smell the smoke on the cop's breath. And, for whatever his MANY social flaws, he can recognize a man pushed to that knife edge of violence and, for whatever reason, despite his own anger still simmering visibly in his features, he doesn't try to cross the line. Even if a part of him CLEARLY wants to move things to the physical, work out his rage and fear in a way that doesn't require social skills at all.

Instead, he bites out, "Fine. I suppose I will see you again. Don't die." And then he's also turning on his heel and stalking off, on the long road towards the city center. He kicks at rain puddles as he passes in petulant bursts of temper that turn to cursing when he forgets his injured leg.