If I Ever Feel Better (tag: killian)

[dex]

Working at the comic book store could sometimes be a pain in the neck and he always looked forward to a day off...until he actually HAD said day off and found himself sitting around the apartment with absolutely nothing to do. Should he go to the store? Nah...Poppy didn't need the help and even if she had to manhandle a few pimply teenagers out of the store she had more upper body strength than he did. Killian wasn't home yet, an intense video game session and Chinese take-out was out of the question.

"I have friends. I do." Dexter Reedy muttered to himself and pushed away from his drawing table, whipping off the special half-sleeves he wore to keep his panels all clean and neat. For a moment he felt confident--cocky, even! ...Until he took out his phone and scrolled through the contact list.

Mom

Kill

Poppy

Penny

Unable to really help himself, Dexter let out an embarrassingly goofy sort of noise, a crooked smile tugging his lips up. When he finally came to terms with the fact that he was staring at a bit of text on his phone like brain power alone could convince the perfect woman to call him, Dex's shoulders slumped and he sank down onto the couch, instantly depressed. It was silly! He shouldn't be unhappy, he had the friendship of the most gorgeous woman on the planet and that was cool. That was more than cool--it was just a shame that they couldn't be more than just really good friends.

"Who am I kidding...?" Dex mumbled to himself and curled up, bony arms clamped over his head. He'd told himself that he'd gotten over this before, he'd told himself that he wouldn't fantasize about Penny because there was no way on God's green Earth that anything would ever happen between them. There was a natural law that he was more than aware of: the Beautiful belong with the Beautiful...and if you weren't Beautiful, you better be Rich. Alas, there was the problem:

Dexter Everett Reedy was neither Beautiful nor Rich.

What did Dexter Reedy have to offer a woman like Penny? Free pie? A guided tour of Comic Con? A store discount on comic books? Dexter Reedy didn't have anything! He shouldn't BE Dexter Reedy if he wanted the girl (and oh GOD did he want that girl).

With pursed lips Dexter got to his feet and went over to the closet, pulling open the door to look at the full-length mirror on the door. He saw a skinny dweeb in jeans, a beat-up Super Mario t-shirt, and a button-down shirt that was too big for him. He lifted his chin, looked at himself from a few different angles, and then hurriedly buttoned up the shirt and awkwardly stuffed the ends into the top of his jeans. He licked a few of his fingers and used the saliva to push back his hair a bit.

"Oh, hi. I'm Dexter--NO, I'm Everett Reedy. SO pleased to meet you, guffaw-aaha-aha. Do you frequent this place often? I enjoy hand-dripped coffee from the hills of Bolivia myself, but guffaw-aha-aha...you can't be picky these days." When he tried a 'suave' smile at the mirror to match the posh, Upper East Side type of accent, it came out looking a bit like he was trying to check his teeth for broccoli. Dex frowned and unbuttoned the shirt, pulling it out from his jeans and looking around the closet. He spied a pair of sunglasses and then jammed them on his face, whipping off the button down shirt to tie it around his waist and puff out his chest a bit. With a hand he mussed his hair up and then pulled a good portion of it as far down as he could over one eye.

"I'm Dexx. That's Dexx with TWO 'X'S. Yeah, I'm in a band." Though it might have warranted his death later, he sought out one of Killian's guitars and took it over to the mirror, looking at himself with it thoughtfully. "Skinny? HAH! I'm not skinny--this is rocker chic. This is punk. You want to come see me play, babe? You can scream my name in the pit. Try not to lose a limb, patang-tanga-wow-ow..!" Dex pretended to strum the guitar before his energy petered out and he just put the guitar aside. The glasses came off and he tossed them back into the closet, shaking out his hair and staring woefully at the mirror.

"Hi, I'm Dexter Reedy. I'm Dex. I'm..."

Weedy Reedy.

"Whatever..."

Discouraged, Dex shut the closet door on his reflection and trudged his way back into the kitchen, grabbing a fork from the drawer and boosting himself onto the kitchen counter next to a cooling, fresh apple pie. It was Pie Day and his mother never failed to overnight him a frozen pie ready to stick in the oven and be enjoyed. It wasn't exactly as good as having your mother hold you and tell you you're her special little EverBear, but it did give him a warmth in his stomach.

[KILLIAN LIAM REAGAN]

Killian was a pleased man. It was his day off, the sun was shining, and he had just spent the afternoon receiving a rather fantastic blow-job from his ex-girlfriend. There was an exchanging of some words about how they may or may not have missed each other, the usual argument about Abby's name popping up in conversation, then some awkward kind of good bye involving a one armed hug and a kiss good bye that lasted too long. It didn't matter. All that did matter was that the sun was shining, he had three six packs of beer in his car (along with a pack of wine coolers, hidden under a t-shirt not to be seen by anyone), a bottle of vodka, two packs of new guitar strings and a craving to rot away his mind on his newly refurbished and renewed XBOX Live Gold Account. Plucking his keys from his pocket as he exited the all too familiar domicile of Mackenzie Lee Brewster, he trotted down the lawn, unlocked the car and swung open it's door. Homeward bound.

After some minutes of complaining silently about the state of his auxiliary chord and a gratuitous amount of dissatisfied flipping through the FM channels, the man had found himself home. Sliding into the nearest parking space of the apartment complex, it only took a moment for him to slip the key from the ignition and unpack the car. The path up to his building was a treacherous one to say the least between the the stairs, the toys left out on the lawn from the neighbors kids, the more stairs and the complex door system for security purposes. It was annoying to navigate and a little inconvenient, but the best neighborhood offered for $1300 a month. Never the less, by the time Killian had found himself on the doorstep of his and Dexter's humble abode, the dopey smile that he sported at the start of his journey was still going strong. Swinging open the door only made his smile stronger.

"Ooooh, is it pie day all ready?" The scent seemed to fold over him as he walked inside, the man not really speaking to any one directly, but hoping Dex was home. He wasn't normally the kind of guy who spoke to himself. Adjusting the bottles in his arms and giving a soft kick to close the door, Killian allowed himself to take a deep breath and look around. It was your standards bachelor pad; or, well, standard for the type of men that occupied it. Making his way through the living room, he didn't care to give a second glance to the objects strewn across the floor -- some art supplies, old mail, a pizza box, some xbox controllers. To an outsider, the pies aroma could almost seem out of place amongst the empty beer bottles and dirty laundry, but for the past few months, to this was home to the Irish man. And this was exactly where he wanted to be.

Stepping into the kitchen, he gave a quick nod at Dexter before turning to the nearest space of empty counter and unloading. So what if the gratuitous amount of liquor made him look like an alcoholic? Dex knew him better then that - after all, Dex knew he had free range of what the man brought into the house. In fact, he bought so much in an attempt to share. Dee Reedy was his right hand man and as such got the luxury of free liquor, compliments of the Reagan's family pub, the Blackwater Banshee. With out missing a beat, Killian had grabbed himself a plate, a spoon, and helped himself to a slice of pie. "Seriously man, your mother..." He took a bite, casually leaning up against the counter as he balanced the plate in his palm and looked at his friend, "She's a goddess. A goddess." He reached behind him and untangled himself a beer, cracking it open and taking a swig before returning to his pie. "This shit is delicious. Think she takes requests?"

[dex]

It was a little embarrassing how much Dexter perked up at the sound of the door opening and the clink of alcohol bottles as Killian made his way inside their shared 'bachelor pad'. Even if Killian was obviously the only one of them who would ever have a girl in said pad, Dexter could at least live vicariously through him. When the other man looked around the apartment, Dex gave him a bit of a doleful stare with a grim quirk to his lips along with a wave of his fork. The bounty of liquor was given an arched brow of question, but he didn't think it too odd. Maybe Kill had a drinking problem, maybe he didn't -- either way, they all had problems and he wasn't going to bring something like that up.

"You know, we could probably open up an illegal bar out of our kitchen. Pies and Liquor -- I think it'd work." He said from around a mouthful of pie, leaning over to inspect the bottles while Killian inhaled the scent of apples and cinnamon. Vodka, beer...Wine coolers! "Oh Thank God...I really need the hard stuff today." He confessed, fondling one of the wine coolers. As Kill probably knew, Dex was a terrible drinker. If it wasn't a 'girl drink', he probably couldn't stomach it. He took the bottle for himself and opened it, taking a sip while Killian praised his mother in sultry tones that probably drove his lovers wild.

"In any other context, those words would have made me cry. But yeah...Reedy's Pies, Best pies in Southern California. Marie Calendar ain't got nothin' on my mom. Cheers." Dex knocked his bottle lightly against Kill's beer and then poked at his pie with the fork. It was delicious...but sometimes it did make him homesick for that big house with his cousins and his aunt and his Grandpa. Then he would remember how he spent his entire life getting tortured in that very same city and the homesickness no longer bothered him.

"I know first hand that my mother would love to send you any type of pie you could dream of. I mean, she loves you and she doesn't even really know you. I told her you worked in a bar and that you played music and, somehow, she translated that as you work in a bar part time while crooning love ballads and waiting for your book of poetry to be published." When he called her, she made a point to ask how his 'sweetie-pie' roommate was doing. Did he want to come visit some time? Did he want a special pie for his birthday? Dex half suspected she was so thrilled with Killian because he was, perhaps, his first friend ever that was not a hopeless geek. It didn't hurt that his last roommate, Kang Bum-Ki, had been from Korea and hadn't spoke much English even if he'd been very nice.

Fiddling with the wine cooler in his hand, Dexter heaved a sigh and then cast Killian an uncertain, hesitant sort of look. If he couldn't talk to his best friend about this, who could he talk to? Not that Killian was all that romantic (or, lets be honest, functional) in his relationships, but he still had a stronger record with women than Dex did.

"Hey, Kill...You know Penny?" Nervous fingers began to shred the label on the bottle one tiny strip at a time. "You think I stand a chance? I mean--I know it sounds crazy! And she's my friend, we're just friends, I know that, but...but I just can't stop thinking about her. She makes the women I fantasize about look like trolls. What should I do? Be my Yoda, Kill. Be my Yoda." The cartoonist exhaled slowly, a bit relieved to have just gotten it off his chest rather than agonize over it all night by himself. Even if it did slightly damage his pride as a man...what little pride he had, at least.