The Doldrums (Odion, Adam)

[Lani Hunter]

Lani’s brows raised and he looked at Adam with a smile on his face. Lani opened his mouth to reply but whatever he was saying got stuck in his throat. Right never give up the truth from one liar to another. Lani closed his mouth again and swallowed trying to regain the masks he’d let fall around Odion. It might have been an innocent or even accidental comment for it to be directed at Lani but it struck him all the same. He avoided Odion’s gaze for the time being and plastered the smile on his face retreating into his proscribed role. It wasn’t easy to follow the path that Adam used to find his solutions and it wasn’t easy to back away from what he’d been trying to do with Odion, but it was what Lani did and he closed off and let the mask come down as he tried to reason through Adam and Odion’s stories.

“I can roll with that,” Lani said with a teasing smile, Adam was crazy, but they all were a little bit unstable. Lani connected his face with the palm of his hand, he was going to teach Adam how to deal with dealers if he wanted to keep this up. “Adam, I can’t even believe you trusted them a second time.” As Lani said it he realize how terribly ironic it was that he was usually the one not to be trusted and he was giving unsolicited advice on trust. In the end Lani did like Adam, he was a good person, if a crazy person, at his core and Lani had few friends in this world and he liked to protect those that he could. He’d probably complain about it but he’d help Adam out of a problem if he needed it. He couldn’t say everyone only got one chance, because that wasn’t something he lived by. It was a matter of recognizing the web of lies and taking truths with a grain of salt.

Lani watched Adam pace for a little while and turned his eyes back to Odion for a moment and gave a shrug. He apparently had some super secret master plan that not even he was aware of. Lani looked at Odion for an answer but the redhead didn’t give an answer and that left only more questions for Lani. Lani’s eyes flickered to Paco who seemed absolutely content to let himself be carried around by his owner. Glancing at Odion for a moment in surprise. He gave a suspicious look to match the one that Odion was giving him before a smile crossed like a ripple over his lips. Why would Odion do this to him? Adam was a good roommate and he didn’t want to have to find a new one. Adam was a very excitable person and Lani wasn’t sure how he was going to be able to explain this away. Lani looked over at Adam shock crossing his face. He wasn’t moving things in his sleep again was he?

“Have you ever thought that maybe they haven’t moved at all?” Lani asked and he leaned toward Odion, cocking his head toward Odion as if to closer hear what he was saying. Lani shrugged nonchalantly. “Eh, I’ve been living with him for a while. Definitely more aware than your average guy. But I don't know, nothing special.” Taking his eyes off of Adam for a moment he looked at Odion. “What do you suppose we should do now that he’s caught us?” He really shouldn’t have encouraged Adam’s conspiracy theories. Honestly, Adam was starting to get on his nerves blaming him for random acts here and there, he figured why not deliver what Adam thought he was doing. Or maybe Adam would catch onto the trick from experience, though he didn’t seem to be the kind to learn from things. He knew he’d made a mistake when he’d played ghost on Adam.

[Deleted]

Forget the eggs! Obviously this train of thought was too complicated for the red-head to grasp, which was why he kept asking question to which the answer ought to have been completely obvious! Lani was willing to listen to reason, wasn’t he? And offering a sliver of intelligent advice, oh how he misjudged Lani, he should have trusted him from the very beginning!

“Yeah, yeah, I know, I get it, you can’t trust those guys any farther than you can throw them,” Adam finally said something agreeable towards something that either of the other men had mentioned. He planted his palm against his forehead, taking either temple between his thumb and forefinger. “And it was a crappy bag of grass anyway, I think they cut it with catnip or seaweed or the dried up leaves from that Valentine’s Day bouquet I tried once in high school.” He looked at them and held up a hand before either said anything. “It was totally mine, by the way, a girl gave it to me. For, uh…a concert! Yeah.” Not really, it was a gift from his dad to his mother.

When Odion spoke next, that was the first time that he was rendered speechless.

Wait, was he finally giving it up? Adam was right? And here Adam thought that he was just going crazy!

Wait, wait? What was that that else was he saying? Adam looked between the two boys, confusion readily apparent on his face. He thought he could tell where this conversation was going but…

But still it was…suspicious.

Adam pointed again. “Yeah..yeah! Damn, right I caught you! You, you tricksters, you! All this time, all this time—!” he was shaking his finger now at them, trying to think of the words. “I wasn’t completely sure until this moment, but I knew you were up to something sneaky! Like, like…thieving and trickery!” But what was going to happen to him now that he’d exposed their secret? The blonde swallowed nervously. Could this be the end of Adam James Anderson?

[Odion Martins]

“I hadn’t ever dealt with them beforehand,” Odion said, supplying his opinion even though he hadn’t been asked. Dealing had been easier in Europe, he seemed to know the ropes better on the other side of the world. But here he had been desperate, and his substance of choice which also happened to be legal simply wasn’t cutting it. And since when did he really give a damn whether something was legal or not before participating?

There was no super secret master plan, but Odion was sure they could come up with one. Well, he could anyways. A half smile crossed Odion’s face for only a second, but his eyes couldn’t give him away as they were shielded behind his pair of sunglasses. But Lani wasn’t stupid, Adam was. If Lani didn’t want to participate, all he had to do was play dumb and Odion would leave. But that would only be too easy, not nearly as much fun.

Facing Adam again, Odion let his sunglasses fall down his face for effect, as though taking a better look at the blond. “Hmm,” Odion said contemplatively, his neck tense from trying not to laugh. Odion turned to look at Lani again, “And the dog? How smart is he?” Not that such a thing could be measured, but Adam didn’t need to know that. Odi cleared his throat and stood up slowly. His head still hurt, but now he was the one pacing. “There are two, perhaps three options,” he said, holding up one finger. “One, we walk away from this like nothing happened to keep everyone safe.” Odion held up another finger, a peace sign. “Two,” he stopped his pacing and just looked at Adam sadly, “we all know what two is. Or three.” Odion held up three fingers before putting both hands behind his back and staring at Adam. “We teach you everything we know, and you don’t say a damn fucking word about it to anyone.”

Everything might look different to everyone involved here. To Odion, it meant that maybe it would amusing to try and teach Adam how to do parkour. Really, it would be hilarious. But who knew what Lani thought it meant, hopefully he could assume that Odion wasn’t going to teach Adam anything, mostly because Adam was too stupid, but also because Odion wouldn’t admit being a thief to anyone if he could help it.

[Lani Hunter]

Lani watched Adam and nodded, well at least he was willing to listen to some advice. The telekinetic quirked a smile, he hated that saying, it no longer applied, he could indeed throw most people pretty far, but he’d yet to come up with a better quip. “Oh if there was catnip in it you should given it to the cats,” he snickered, cats were endlessly entertaining on catnip. Lani still didn’t know why giving catnip to cats was considered a thing that was okay to do, but for a person to be smoking weed it was a terrible crime. Lani’s brows rose as Adam spoke and he had to hold in a laugh. Why would smoking a Valentine’s Day bouquet even be something that came to mind? Then Lani realized that this was Adam and he shouldn’t ask silly questions so he just smiled, very much amused by this whole situation. Lani did glance at Odion, a brow raising, he had a lot of questions for the redhead.

“For a concert?” Lani asked skeptically then shrugged letting it go, “Whatever you say, Adam.” Lani watched Odion for a moment before turning back to Adam, this was endlessly entertaining and Lani was chewing on his tongue he didn’t know how much longer he could do a straight face. He missed this kind of thing, doing things just for the hell of it with Odion, recently they’d been ducking blows and dodging answers and it was nice to remember what it was like to just be the two of them again working together. Lani almost blew their cover and laughed but he held it together and tossed Odion an impish grin. “I think they’re about even.” He shrugged and gave a teasing ‘sorry, not sorry’ expression to Adam, grinning wickedly, “But, I’ve learned that Paco is not to be trusted.” This was why everyone was suspicious of him, with that smile and the spark in his eye there was no way he wasn’t up to something.

Raising his hands in a shrug, “What can I say Adam? I was trying to keep it from coming to this.” Adam had hit the nail pretty much on the head with that one, take both thieving and trickery and put them together and then you had Lani in a nutshell. Lani crossed his arms and watched Odion as he paced happy to let Odion take the lead here, Lani was just playing along. He had a feeling he was going to do a lot of apologizing after Odion left here today. Poor Adam, he just made it too easy sometimes. “Eh, scratch that, I’m taking option two off the table,” he interrupted, he wanted to teach Adam a lesson not scare him, well partially scare him. But Lani still had to live with Adam and Adam was already paranoid, the last thing Lani needed was for Adam to start walking around the apartment with something sharp.

Lani raised a brow at Odion, he wasn’t serious, was he? No, he couldn’t be serious, that would be ridiculous. Adam would be the worst thief on the face of the planet. If anything Adam would be useful as an informant. Lani could see Adam buying and selling information against the government, well, he already did that actually. Lani was starting to get a little uneasy about this trick, partially because the situation was starting to feel a little too familiar. He shook those memories out of his mind and looked at Adam his expression now serious as he waited for Adam to contemplate his options and silently prayed for Adam to not do anything stupid.

[Deleted]

“Some pretty expensive catnip, if you ask me, I can buy that shit down at the Wal-Mart for like, five bucks.” And this dime-bag had obviously cost him a lot more than that and didn’t last nearly as long. Adam didn’t feel like going into the details of the bouquet-smoking. He had a phase in his life where he would try and smoke anything just to see if he’d get a buzz of some sort. It was an interesting string of experiments, but he still determined that weed was the best.

By this point Adam didn’t know what to think of his tricky roommate and his mischievous companion, only that he was certain they were hiding something, something big, and didn’t want him to know about it. Not really, though from the sounds of it, they were considering letting him in on the big secret? Already Adam’s brain was exploding with possibilities of what exactly they could be up to, anything and everything from being the masterminds of an anti-human meta supremacy group to being secret operatives for the CIA/NRA/FBI/Interpol/CPA/NCAAP/NBA/INSCOM/NASA/USSS/USAF/DFAS/FLOTUS/HALO/MFA/NSA/PO/SWAG/SUSFU/CDC all the way back to just being a couple of dick-heads set of yanking this guy’s chain. Especially when they started bringing Paco into all this.

“Nah, no,” he started, vaguely covering of the ears of the dog still held in his arms. “Paco’s cool but he’s missing more brain cells than your average dope-head. If he was ever useful, I would’ve put him to work by now.” On…something. Though even Adam couldn’t find a better use for the dog other than being the yippity companion he was supposed to be.

Adam leaned in as Odion listed off the options, swallowing visibly when he came to “number two” and then becoming visibly relieved when Lani effectively saved his life. Was he holding his breath there for a moment? Nahh, no way was Adam scared, not of something like this, nope! “Uh…there isn’t a way we can just…somehow merge the number one and three together is there?” Learning about what they knew but then walking away or something, but then no, he would become too much of a liability wouldn’t he? But shit! Adam knew how to keep a secret! It was Odion who didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut! “Or maybe, do a trial period, like 90 days, though 90 days is a little too long so we’ll make it two weeks, and if you still don’t like me, then we go back to number one? Because I can totally do number one! I can do number one all day, all you like! It’s..it’s the number two that I traditionally have trouble with.”

[Odion Martins]

Mostly ignoring Adam's strange comments at this point, Odion laughed at the catnip comment. He glanced at the little dog and shrugged, it wasn't a big loss to the big picture he had only recently made up. "What a shame," Odion said, wanting nothing more than to defenestrate the animal. "Let us know when you get a real dog." Not that Odion really meant it, he hated dogs, period. Little dogs were just the icing on the hatred cake.

Odion nodded, glancing at Adam in an almost sorry way. "Yes Lani, you're right," he said, having a hard but not impossible time at hiding his smile. Scaring Adam was part of the lesson, whatever the lesson was at this point, which was mostly for their own amusement. They really were bad guys.

Odion almost glowed at Adam's contribution to this whole thing, almost proud. "Option four," he said, glancing at Lani. See, it was all going to go well. "What do you think about this?" He asked, crossing his arms over his chest, looking at Lani over his sunglasses. Yes, this was going smoother than expected. Hearing Adam go on about number one and number two just about caused Odion to hemorrhage from trying not to laugh.

Odion hoped Adam would have just as much fun as he was going to have during their two week torture trial.

[Lani Hunter]

Lani was just smiling and nodding at this point, he’d never smoked, well, it perhaps wasn’t best to say never, he was hesitant to try it, he’d tried it once but stopped after the first puff of smoke when he found the lingering smoky sensation in the back of his throat so unpleasant. Since then, never. He knew that Odion smoked and he’d never made it a secret that he thought it was a terrible habit, but then Odion had never really smoked around him so they’d never really talked about it. “Life’s hard,” Lani agreed sarcastically at Adam’s lamenting over the catnip. Honestly, Lani had some for the cats that he kept in the drawer near where he kept the rest of their toys, that had been the idea at least, he never actually made an effort to make sure the cat toys eventually made it back there. Point was, if Adam really wanted to smoke some catnip he didn’t need a dealer.

The telekinetic gave Odion a sidelong look as if he were sharing the joke. It was a good thing they were both good actors or one of the two of them might have broken down and started laughing by this point. In an effort to hold in his own laughter, Lani’s expression had gained a light that just lit up with a neon sign that he was up to something. He was more than happy to let Odion take the lead because Lani didn’t think he could. Poor Paco, Lani didn’t mind him too much, it was almost like having another cat, but the poor dog couldn’t compete against the three cats who were now bigger than he was. And if the dog was being locked in the room with Adam while he was smoking, it was small wonder he was missing a few brain cells. Lani nodded and suppressed a smile, finally having to put a hand over his mouth in a mock thoughtful way as a way to manually keep himself from smiling. He narrowed his eyes at Adam as if he were considering with nefarious intentions.

Adam was a whole lot smarter than he let on and it seemed he was starting to realize the gravity of the situation. Well, considering the joke was moving on quite well, the gravity of the fake situation. Lani cocked his head in an interested way as Adam started formulating his own option. Damn, it was a good thing Adam had never been exposed to the real danger of Lani’s previous boss. His old boss didn’t do options, and if he was in a mood and inclined to do so he certain wouldn’t take someone else’s options. Adam would have been dead or worse before they’d gotten to negotiations. Lani almost lost it all and started laughing, Adam definitely thought he was still in control of the situation, didn’t he? He looked at Odion and again almost lost it, Odion looked like he’d just found a new toy and couldn’t wait to see what he could do with it. Lani was reminded a bit of the cats when they started playing with a new toy. Adam in Odion’s hands was a hilarious, if a little bit discerning, concept.

Lani shrugged and dropped his hand from his mouth and gave Adam a once over with hard eyes. “We have procedures in place for people who don’t make the cut, I don’t see why we can’t give Adam a test go.” He’d let Adam make up in his mind whatever those procedures might be and if he really wanted to risk finding out. He caught Odion’s eyes and Lani caught the spark from the blues. It felt so nice to be just joking around with Odion, without the heaviness of their previous conversation, not the strain from their fight, though the bruises around Odion’s eyes seemed to be a reminder that struck just as hard as their blows had a couple nights ago. Lani waved a hand toward Odion. “Option four it is then,” he said decisively, “He’s all yours Odion.” He dropped that and dropped onto the couch giving Odion an innocent smile, if Odion wanted to make his roommate’s life hard he was going to have to deal with the consequences, Lani already had to live with him.