Connect The Dots {Kel!}

[҉ Kenneth Lorne]

It was Thursday, and Kenneth and Kellan settled into another comfortable night. CSI was just finishing on the tv. Empty plates that once held pizza sat on the coffee table in front of them. Ken had an arm around Kellan, watching the finale of the show with intense concentration.

"It's gotta be the chick," Kenneth whispered conspiratorially to his girlfriend, beginning to lean forward as the suspense built. "She screwed him over in the beginning, and she had to kill him so he wouldn't kill her. It was preemptive. Wow their relationship is really messed up," He fell silent so he could watch the rest of the episode.

"You think it was the guy?" Ken asked suddenly, looking for another opinion. He hadn't been paying too much attention, but now that he thought about it, his girlfriend was being kind of quiet tonight. Maybe she was just really into the show, like he was. He painfully dragged his eyes away from the monitor to examine her.

[Kellan Grace Callahan]

It wasn't a secret to anyone that Kellan didn't like living in New York. The city bothered her, so much in fact that she started staying in her dorm more often than she ever had. In her semi-reclusiveness, she'd developed a new love. Crime shows. CSI (all of them, minus Miami because she couldn't forgive David Caruso for his horrible acting and even worse one-liners), Law and Order, Southland, Criminal Minds, Gangland; if the show came in on the tiny television her parents bought her for her dorm, she watched it. Somehow and a some point, she'd passed her newfound love for these shows on to Kenneth. Or at least he just watched them with her because he knew she liked them…

Just as Kenneth noticed, Kellan hadn't said much for the majority of the night, which, for the notorious chatterbox, meant she was either sick, worried, or upset. Tonight was no exception. She hadn't been paying attention to Kenneth or the show, and it took her a few seconds to realize that her boyfriend was even talking to her.

"Hmm?" she asked, forcing her mind to pull itself out of whatever black hole it had sucked itself into. He was thinking about revengeful murderers. She was thinking about him. Kellan processed the delayed version of what Kenneth asked her and shrugged.

"You're probably right."

But she had no clue what he was talking about. The last thing she remembered was seeing was garbage man discovering some senator's daughter dead daughter in a dumpster in a graffiti-stained alley, then the show's opening credits. Everything after that was a blur.

Kellan, who had been sitting sideways with her feet curled under her and her head against Kenneth's chest since the show started, sat up straight and stretched her legs out in front of her - her first signs of life for what had to have been at least a half hour. She looked at Kenneth almost apologetically and gave him a sorry excuse for a smile before turning back to the TV, this time with an attempt to actually look like she was paying the least bit of attention to the last five minutes of the show.

[҉ Kenneth Lorne]

She didn't seem as into the show as he was. He looked at the small digital numbers on the clock below the t.v. Just five more minutes left. They could make it through five more minutes, right? He was a bit anxious that Kellan seemed off, but he was also eager to watch the conclusion play out as he wrote it in his mind. He was torn between his girlfriend's unusual mood and good entertainment.

Well, His shoulder devil tapped him on the head, if she's in a bad mood now, she'll still be in a bad mood at the end of the show.

But, His shoulder angel contradicted, if she's upset about something, and sees you sacrificing something she knows you care about for her sake, won't that earn you brownie points?

Kenneth blinked at the screen, Since when do shoulder angels care about brownie points? The little shoulder angel shrugged.

Since you clearly are going to need some soon. And just like that, they both vanished, leaving Kenneth to mull over the possibilities. But then the show got too engrossing, and he found himself cheering as though he'd just watched a touchdown take place.

"Yeah, baby! I knew it!" He should seriously consider being a writer for the show, "Who called that?! Oh yeah!"

His celebratory mood lasted for a good five point oh seconds before he remembered Kellan and her strange apologetic smile.

"Kel?" He said at last, turning the tv off and turning to look straight at her, "You okay? You seem kind of..." he made a face, seeing as how none of the words he could think of sounded very flattering for her current behaviour. She wasn't being outrageous or anything, just very... peculiar. For Kellan. And though Kenneth could be think, inconsiderate, and just plain ignorant, that didn't mean he was always an idiot. Most of the time, yeah. He was likely due for a spell of idiocy any moment now. But he wanted to be there for Kellan when she needed him. He kinda wished she would just tell him though, when that was. He was never good at guessing games, and one of the reasons he liked Kellan so much was because she wasn't like other girls, constantly making you guess what they were thinking or feeling or wanting. She was usually pretty direct, which was why her silence tonight was a little offsetting for the boy.

[Kellan Grace Callahan]

Kellan wished he would have finished his sentence. She seemed kind of what? Annoyed? Disappointed? Frustrated? Because any of them would have been correct. At first it was just disappointment. Then a few weeks went by and the disappointment turned into frustration, and then she was just plain annoyed. Now it was an accumulation of the three. But of course she hadn't mentioned any of this to Kenneth, despite the fact that it was all his fault.

"I'm fine," she answered, which was of course universal girl code for 'Actually, I'm not okay. I just don't want you to know it.' But Kellan couldn't and didn't expect Kenneth to know that. She wished he hadn't shut the TV off because she couldn't turn her attention back to it. Pretending to watch a show was a heck of a lot more convincing than staring at a blank television screen. She was forced to focus solely on the confused Kenneth.

"I just…" she started, but then she stopped. She didn't want to do this now. Her disappointment and frustration and annoyances could wait for another time. Instead she lied.

"I just want ice cream."

And with that, Kellan pushed herself off of the couch. She scooped their empty pizza plates off the coffee table and crossed the living room to the kitchen. After tossing the paper plates into the garbage can, Kellan took a few steps over to the freezer, opened the door, and began rummaging around in search of the mint chocolate chip she'd brought over a few nights before.

"So are you ready for exams?" she called to Kenneth, her head still buried in the freezer. She hoped the switch of focus from her to him wasn't too obvious.

[҉ Kenneth Lorne]

Maybe if the show was still on, Kenneth would be the oblivious boyfriend both he and Kellan expected him to be. But when they had nothing to focus on but each other, Kellan's meaning between the lines didn't go completely unnoticed. He could sense she was upset over something, and while hoping he wasn't the source of it, he already expected he was. He just couldn't figure out why, and because of this inability to glue the pieces together, his ignorance granted him some lack of sensitivity.

"Ice cream sounds good," He agreed, letting her clear the 'dishes' off the table. He watched her leave for the kitchen, and debated turning the t.v. back on. Her question about exams distracted him however, and he grunted, "As ready as I want to be." Ken grabbed the couch pillow and placed it where Kellan had formerly been sitting, unconsciously keeping her by his side while she was away. Or maybe he was just cold, and was using it for warmth.

Her deviating conversation piece worked for a bit while he mused over his classes. But school could only occupy Kenneth's mind for so long before it bored him. He was about to say something about Kellan's strange mood when he heard something moving around upstairs. Oh right, Harmony was still here. The demoness had mentioned she was going out later when he'd spoken to her before Kellan arrived. Then his mind went on another adventure, wondering what his roomie was up to tonight.

He began humming a tune to himself, one of his new songs, and rolled his neck back to watch Kellan upside-down while she scooped out the ice cream. He'd have to remember to pick some more up for the next time they hung out. She might really be in a mood if he didn't have mint chocolate chip around to help soften her up. The thought of going into combat without her favourite ice cream as a weapon didn't appeal to him. He was glad she'd have it when he asked her what was wrong upon her return to the couch.

[Ϛ Harmony and Discordia]

Harmony had meant to leave long before Kellan arrived, so the two of them needn't even see each other, but a combination of trying to think of somewhere to go, taking too long to get ready, and Kellan being earlier than she expected had lead to her being stranded in her room for nearly an hour while they watched some TV show. She didn't particularly feel comfortable walking right past the pair of them to escape (especially after the nude incident), but she couldn't go out the fire escape or something — Kenneth knew she was still home.

Finally, she heard movement in the kitchen, far too subtle to be Kenneth. She grabbed her messenger bag and took off down the hall, making barely enough noise to suggest her presence. She walked briskly past Kenneth and the couch, and gave a small wave and a quiet, "I'm late. See ya later," and then the door was open and she was outside.

OOC: Not sure how much of an opening you wanted here but feel free to catch her just before she's gone, seeing as she hasn't close the door or anything yet (: Also sorry it's so short q:

[Kellan Grace Callahan]

Kellan was a nice girl. She always said thank you, never forgot to call you on your birthday, and did whatever she could to make sure her friends and family were happy. She was polite and tried to get along with everyone.

But she didn't like Harmony.

She could never pinpoint the exact reason why she just couldn't stand the demon girl, but a lot of it, most of it really, came from jealousy. For the first nine years of her life, Kellan was the baby of the family. She was the cute little girl that everyone would fuss over. Then Hailey was born and everything changed. Kellan hated to lay the blame on her parents' decision to have another child, so she blamed her jealous tendencies on her dumb little sister herself.

Kellan had just dug two spoons into the half-eaten carton of mint chocolate chip ice cream when she saw Harmony out of the corner of her eye. She tried to stop it, but an annoyed look immediately took over her face. Kellan understood that while it was her boyfriend's apartment, it was also Harmony's. The other girl had way more of a reason to be there than Kellan did, but it didn't mean Kellan enjoyed seeing her there.

Harmony didn't have to like Kellan. It wouldn't have offended the blonde a single bit, especially when Kellan had very few positive things to say about her. What Kellan didn't like was how Kenneth's roommate didn't even acknowledge her presence as she rushed out the door. She could at least pretend to be polite...

Instead of taking the ice cream back into the living room where Kenneth was waiting, Kellan, obviously annoyed, just leaned against the kitchen counter and devoured a massive spoonful of ice cream to keep herself from saying what she really wanted to say.

[҉ Kenneth Lorne]

There was nothing in the word that Kenneth enjoyed more than embarrassing people. Good, clean, fun embarrassment. It was healthy to blush every now and then, and Harmony rarely gave him the opportunity to make her go red. So he leaped on any openings she gave him, and her quick scurrying away (for unknown reasons to him) was just dying to be announced.

"Kay, BYE HARMONY I LOVE YOU," He turned in the couch when she walked by it to the front door, "I'LL MISS YOU SO MUCH!" The couch became a lifeboat as he reached toward her dramatically, "DON'T STAY OUT TOO LATE!" And as the door shut behind her, "PENETRATION IS OVERRATED!"

Yep. He's just that cool.

Now that he was turned this way, he could see Kellan perfectly fine, mouthful of icecream. He gave her a lopsided grin. "That looks really good," he hinted, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. Kenneth didn't realize Harmony had put another dark cloud over his girlfriend's head; his roommate had put him into a fine mood, and he was left wondering why on earth Kellan had that look on her face.

When she didn't move immediately, Ken insensitively asked, "You gunna let that go soft before I can get some?" And then he chuckled to himself and muttered under his breath, "that's what she said..."

Because let's face it. Guys don't grow up.

[Kellan Grace Callahan]

At first Kellan thought that maybe she was just being dramatic, and even kind of a bitch. She didn't like Harmony and Harmony obviously didn't care for her enough to even say hello to her, but Kellan knew it was stupid to let the other girl unknowingly bring her down to a worse mood than she was already in.

But then Kenneth yelled that he loved her, and that just made Kellan's blood boil. She knew that he was just joking around, but it didn't make it sting any less. Those stupid words, the ones that she nervously admitted to him in the middle of the night a few months ago, were the reason she was upset in the first place.

Kellan looked down at the green speckled ice cream and gritted her teeth. She thought back to their first date, where during the intermission of his little concert for his mother's young patients at the hospital, she and Kenneth devoured the ice cream in the pediatrics wing's cafeteria. Strawberry for him, mint chocolate chip, her long-time favorite, for her.

Now, some time close to two years later, she suddenly hated mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Kellan noisily tossed her spoon into the sink, not even flinching at the terrible noise the metal of the utensil and sink made as they collided, and pushed herself off of the counter. She stomped across the living room and stopped in front of Kenneth.

"Here, I don't want it," she said viciously as she dropped the carton on the coffee table in front of the couch. The cardboard container wobbled, but stayed upright. "Maybe you can share it with Harmony since you love her so much."

The frustrated girl stood before her boyfriend with one hand on her hip and the other hanging down her side with a clenched fist. He wanted to know if she was okay. This was his answer.

[҉ Kenneth Lorne]

And so it began. Kenneth jumped at Kellan's words, then once again when the ice cream plunked on the coffee table. He stared up at her, and then she raged about... Harmony?

"So... you don't want the ice cream?"

He knew they were the wrong words the moment they slipped out, but he honestly had no idea what was wrong with her. Even her stress on that four letter word didn't make it click in his head. His conversation with Dorian long ago was forgotten, and even the incident Kellan was upset about was a fuzzy memory. She had driven over to his house at 4am and awoken him to tell him about a nightmare. He'd done the gentlemanly thing and let her inside, comforted her, and promptly fell back to sleep. But these events weren't going through his mind right now.

No, he was wondering how Harmony had put Kellan off mint chocolate chip ice cream.

"Kel, you know me. I'm not the sharpest tool. If something's bothering you, you have to spell it out for me," Yeah, he was going to play the 'I'm a guy' card, but really, what else could he do? "What did Harmony do?"

If Harmony had done something to freak Kellan out, he dreaded the conversation he'd have to hold with the demoness. Harmony could be pretty intimidating when she wanted to be. He wondered if maybe that was it; he would believe it if Kellan said she felt uncomfortable around Harmony. How could he ask his house mate to tone down the intimidation factor? That would be... awkward.

He was so absorbed in his thoughts about how Harmony had wronged Kellan that he never stopped to consider the possibility that he was responsible for her anger. Which would make sense, seeing as how she was lashing out at him. But Kenneth couldn't really put two and two together, and he seriously wondered if maybe his girlfriend was going through that crazy time of the month. Of course he knew he'd earn the cold shoulder if he voiced this thought out loud, and kept this opinion to himself.

He might not be an intellectual, but he possessed some common sense... Some...

[Kellan Grace Callahan]

They never fought. Like any couple, they would get on each other's nerves every now and then, but Kellan and Kenneth didn't fight. Tonight was different though. It had been bothering Kellan for much too long, and the girl could only push it aside for so long before it all started to boil over. She wanted more than anything to just pick up the stupid ice cream and throw it right at his stupid face.

"Do you really need me to tell you why I'm mad right now?" the embittered girl asked. She assumed it was a rhetorical question, but the more she looked at Kenenth, at the seriousness his face held, the more clear it became that he did need her to tell him. Kellan wasn't mad a Harmony. Sure, she didn't really like the girl, but she wasn't necessarily mad at her.

"It's not about her, Ken. It's about you."

Kellan couldn't understand why Kenneth didn't see the problem, or at least see that there was even a problem to begin with. She knew that she had never been this upset with him before, or any of her friends really, and it killed her.

Frustrated, Kellan closed her eyes and took a few shallow breaths. She didn't want to fight about this, but she knew she had to do something. Her eyes opened and she took one more breath, this one deeper, before she began.

"Why is it so easy for you to tell Harmony you love her, but you completely ignore me when I say it to you?" she asked. She thought that maybe she would feel better once she got that out in the open, but it didn't help. Instead of giving him time to answer, she continued.

"That was months ago, Kenneth. Months. I told you I loved you and you know what you said? You told me not to die. I know I told you I didn't want you to say it unless you wanted to and you meant it, but I didn't think you'd just act like it wasn't a big deal. It was a big deal for me, Ken. A really big deal. I've felt like such a idiot these last few months, so thank you."

She knew she was close to crying. Way too close, so she stopped her rant, fearful that tears would fall for sure if she said anything else. Kellan Callahan never cried.

[҉ Kenneth Lorne]

"Okay..." She wasn't upset with Harmony, so what had he done? Then she went on to explain what ticked her off, and he stared at her in disbelief.

"I uh... I'm sure it was a big deal for you," He tried his hand at peace-keeping, "I'm sorry you felt like that... uh... that definitely wasn't my intention..." But the more he talked, the more it looked like Kellan was going to cry. Eek! Usually Ken was pretty good when girls got teary-eyed, but the best thing about dating Kellan Callahan was that she never cried. So a couple years of being spoiled by her dry eyes had him out of practice. What was he supposed to do? She didn't look very huggable right now.

"Kel, I didn't mean to hurt you!" He knew he sounded desperate, and that was because he was, "Please, please, please don't cry. I don't know what I can do to make this better. How can I fix this??" How had their comfortable Thursday date night turned into this? He wished he was all djinn and could rewind time to before this shit went down. But then what would he do? How would he have prevented this? Ask Harmony to leave earlier?

He was thinking so hard about ways to save his own hide, that he didn't have any time or room to contemplate what Kellan needed. Despite the time they'd spent together, being together, Kenneth was still selfish enough to ignore what it was that Kellan wanted. He was so focused on an instant solution, that he couldn't look back and see what he could have done a while ago that would have prevented this in the long run.

[Kellan Grace Callahan]

Kellan didn't know what to expect from Kenneth, but after letting him know why she was mad and exactly how upset she was, she thought he would at least say that he was sorry, not because she had been feeling like a complete idiot lately, but because he was the one who was making her feel that way. Was he even sorry at all? Should he have been, or was she just upset and overreacting?

It only took Kellan a fraction of a second to decide that no, she wasn't overreacting. She had every right to be mad at her boyfriend, and he wasn't doing much more than digging himself into an even deeper hole.

"I'm not gonna cry," she defended, as if he accused her of something much much worse than letting a tear or two trickle down in a moment of weakness. It was more to convince herself than him. She'd cried in front of her friends once. One time, and that was when she found out that Angela had named Kellyn after her. She'd never come close to even shedding a tear in front of Kenneth, and there was no way she was going to let that change tonight.

He asked how he could fix things, but she didn't know what to tell him. Kellan couldn't make him apologize. She couldn't make him tell her he loved her. The only thing worse than an insincere apology, she thought, was an insincere 'I love you.'

She stared at the spot on the couch that she had been occupying a few minutes before and took a step forward like she was going to sit back down, but she stopped after just one step. She too wanted to fix the whole mess, but she couldn't bring herself to get too close to Kenneth. The other side of the coffee table was close enough. Kellan sighed and sat down cross-legged on the carpet.

"Should we talk about this?" she asked. She wanted to, but didn't want to. Tonight was starting to suck.

[҉ Kenneth Lorne]

Ken nodded, as though it would help her to not cry. He wanted her to come sit with him, but watched as she made the conscious decision to keep her distance. Man, he'd fucked up so badly she didn't want to be anywhere near him. They may as well have this conversation over the phone. He thought about suggesting it, but then thought twice. She'd probably take it as even more of an insult if he'd rather not look at her when they were arguing.

What he really wanted right now was for Kellan to be happy. In his head, there was nothing wrong with that. However, the lack of imagination was really a hindrance to him at the moment, and he couldn't for the life of him dream up a way to make this possible. All his usual approaches were rendered useless by her permanent frown; a joke would be inappropriate and insensitive, a grin would be inconsiderate and purely moronic... singing didn't sound like too clever an idea either.

Then she suggested they talk. His stomach clenched, and he wished even more than before that time-travel was possible. Or that he'd suddenly develop the ability to phase and just drop through the floor. Kellan might feel uncomfortable thinking about 'a talk', but Kenneth felt like someone was lighting his stomach on fire. And it wasn't indigestion from the unhealthy food they'd been consuming earlier (though it probably didn't help).

"Uh... do we have to?" Maybe things will go back to normal on their own, Kenneth thought hopefully, like they always do. If we don't talk about it, then it'll go away... maybe... "I mean... you don't really seem like you want to talk about it..." He tried flipping it so it sounded like it was Kellan's idea to not talk. Because not talking was a fantastic idea and he was wholly ready to support it.

{Practically a MONTH later. I'm so sorry!}

[Kellan Grace Callahan]

Usually Kellan wasn't the kind of girl who wore her emotions on her sleeve. If she didn't want you to know that she was upset, that she was angry, anxious, or feeling down, she did an excellent job of keeping it to herself. Tonight though, with Kenneth seemingly so oblivious to the problem that she had let stay bottled up for weeks and weeks, she didn't even bother to hide her frustrations.

With his response, her expression changed in an instant, warping from annoyed but mostly just sad, to a look that she knew she had never given him before. One full of such animosity that it would have made Medusa, whose stare alone turned victims into stone, crumble to the ground.

"No, I guess we don't," she spoke slowly and sharply.

'Should we talk about this?' really meant 'We need to talk about this,' but apparently Kenneth didn't understand the unspoken meaning behind girl language.

Kellan didn't want to yell at him. She didn't like to yell at anyone, except maybe her sister, but after finally expressing the frustration and disappointment that she'd been holding in so long, it was inevitable. Kellan couldn't help it; she just kind of exploded.

"I just told you that I've been upset for months because you pretty much ignored what I had to say when I poured my heart out to you and told you that I loved you, but you don't think that this is something we need to talk about?"

She laughed, but it was one of the most humorless situations Kellan could ever remember being in. In fact, it sucked pretty damn bad.