Connect The Dots {Kel!}

[҉ Kenneth Lorne]

Kellan had never yelled at him, at least not seriously. Yes, there were the times when she would tell him off for eating the last of the mint chocolate chip ice cream, but she never looked like she wanted to punch his lights out at the same time. The looks she was giving him! And the words she flung at him! It almost made him lift his hands in self-defence.

"Agh, Kel!" He shouted back, hoping to quiet her incessant noise. Her haughty laugh made his cheeks darken. "I don't know what to do, okay?! Tell me what you want. I'm not a mind-reader, you know! We've been through this before; I'm an idiot. I get you're upset, but I don't know how to fix it! Tell me how to fix it!"

He wanted to stand up, cross the table, and shake her. But however dumb Ken was when it came to relationships, he wasn't a psychotic boyfriend. He'd never hurt Kellan, not if she decided to take a flamethrower to his pants or tried bashing his head in with a baseball bat. Not that she would ever try something like that, but it was understood that Kenneth would never lift a finger to hurt the girl. But her mood made him feel violent, and he really, really wanted to break something.

He ran both his hands through his feather-blond hair and let out a noise of frustration.

"I don't know what I'm doing. How the fuck did this happen?!" He was more asking himself than Kellan, because he knew she'd obviously have an enlightening answer. Everything was his fault, clearly. This wasn't something he could put a bandaid over and hope healed on its own. This right here was going to require some invasive surgery, and perhaps if that didn't work out, a full-blown amputation.

His heart beat an erratic tattoo against his breast bone and he tried to grasp the consequences of his inaction. He couldn't fully comprehend Kellan's annoyance, her pain, her frustration. He had his own to deal with right now, and he wasn't able to appreciate her turmoil too.

[Kellan Grace Callahan]

Despite spelling it out for him, Kenneth still wasn't getting it, and that, more than anything else he'd done or said in their whole one-sided fight, frustrated Kellan to no end. She stared at him for a moment, jaw tight and an unmistakable are-you-kidding-me look in her eyes before she laughed again.

"I can't tell you how to fix this, Ken! I can't tell you what to do and what to… what to say to me. That's your job! You have to figure it out."

With exams coming up and the end of the semester just a few days away, Kellan and Kenneth knew that the summer was going to be rough on them. He was staying in New York while she would be on the other side of the ocean in Kent and at her granddad's house in Ireland. Until tonight, the two of them thought that the distance between them during the summer months would be their only worry. Apparently, Kellan realized, they were wrong.

Just as quickly as her expression had changed from doleful to venomous before, it changed back. Kellan looked away from Kenneth and down at the carpet she was sitting on, pulling at the fibers with her fingers. This wasn't supposed to be happening like it was.

"I'm going home for two months. Maybe… maybe we should take that time to just… I don't know, to just be apart," she spoke softly, the hurt and reluctance in her voice apparent. Obviously they were going to be apart physically; 3,500 miles we going to personally make sure of that. But that wasn't what she was referring to, and she prayed that Kenneth didn't make her spell this one out for her too. She wasn't sure if she could do that.

The blonde finally looked up to Kenneth sitting on the couch and she couldn't remember the last time she'd felt to hopeless.

[҉ Kenneth Lorne]

She was right. Of course she was right. It just frustrated him that she threw him to the sharks with nothing to defend himself, and no way to climb back into the boat. He was adrift in unfamiliar territory, and it terrified him.

He opened his mouth to say something, but it looked like Kellan wasn't finished talking. But when she did speak, he wished he'd been smart enough to talk first. Because he didn't want to hear what she said. No, he didn't need her to expand and clarify on this one. Ken knew what 'being apart' meant. His teeth clenched together to stop himself from saying anything rash, and he studied her while she plucked at the carpet. When he didn't say anything, she looked up, and he saw her expression. She wasn't angry any more, it seemed. That was a good sign. But that didn't mean Kenneth's nerves had cooled any degree.

"So," He summarized, "I'm doing a shit job being a good boyfriend, and the boss is firing me. Is that it?" It could have been said a little more eloquently, but Kenneth felt cornered here. Kellan was suggesting they take a break, but breaks only lead to break-ups. And although Ken really screwed up, he'd been doing a bang-up job at being the patient, understanding boyfriend, hadn't he? Because he'd fucked up once, Kellan was going to break up with him after all this time together. Was she just looking for an excuse to give him the boot?

His mind wheeled with the numerous unpleasant possibilities, and it pulled a darkness into his eyes neither of them had experienced before. He glowered at his girlfriend, or soon-to-be ex-girlfriend it would seem.

"You know what? That's fine," He shrugged, looking at the blank screen of the television behind her, "I quit. I was working too hard anyway," Ken crossed his arms over his chest, but the action didn't stop his heart from bleeding. He became very still, and very serious, and if Kellan didn't know him so well, he looked intimidating. He couldn't meet Kellan's eye, and instead just stared straight ahead, teeth gnashing together.

He suddenly wanted to be anywhere but here. He wanted to go for a drive, and not come home till his tank was empty. When he got back from the gym today and saw Kellan's car in the driveway, his chest swelled with anticipation and excitement. But now he hoped when he got back, her car would be gone, and he wouldn't have to deal with this anymore.

"I have to go," Ken announced without warning, springing to his feet. He stalked around the couch and snatched his keys off the kitchen counter. "Have a great summer. And if you come back with a better boyfriend, then good for you."

He was a dick. He knew how awful he sounded, knew how terribly he was treating Kellan right now. But she cut him, and for once in his life Kenneth wasn't strong enough to defend himself. So he lashed back, childishly wanting her to feel the same pain he had, even if he'd been a thorn in her side for quite some time already. He was about to leave out the front door when he remembered he didn't have his wallet on him. It was in his gym bag... where had he left it? So much for the dramatic exit - he had a feeling he might be speeding tonight, and if the cops pulled him over without a license, it was game over. So he stayed, looking around, eyes deliberately averting Kellan still sitting in the middle of the room.

If he was being honest with himself, which he wouldn't be for a few weeks, he would recognize his desire for his ID as a stalling mechanism in hope that Kellan would stop him from leaving. Subconsciously he was begging Kellan not to let him walk away, so they could actually sit down and talk about it like rational people instead of ridiculous teenagers. He might be moody and unpleasant, but if the girl asked him to stay, he would. But for now...

"Where the fuck is my bag?"

[Kellan Grace Callahan]

Was that how he saw their relationship? As a job? Kellan knew that she probably wasn't the easiest girl to keep around all the time - she didn't like staying out too late or making out in the back row of the movie theater, she talked, laughed, and kicked in her sleep, cliche romance made her cringe, and she almost always kept most of her clothes on - but she didn't think that she was that horrible.

Kellan didn't think Kenneth was a bad boyfriend either. Not at all. She knew that she didn't tell him this enough, but she'd always appreciated how understanding he'd been from the start. It couldn't have been easy for someone with a dating history like Kenneth's to settle down with someone as inexperienced and modest as she was, but they made it work. At least they had been making it work. Now Kellan wasn't so sure.

She was suggesting they take a break for the summer, but it seemed to her that Kenneth had a different idea. Like he was breaking up with her. Between telling her he was quitting and the look, that terrible, scary look he gave her, she didn't know what else to think. So she did the only thing she could think to do; she got even more angry.

When Kenneth told her he was leaving, she wanted to point out that this was his place and that it would be pretty stupid for him to leave her here, but what he said next cut through her like nothing anyone had ever said to her before. He didn't care if she found a new boyfriend.

Kellan's heart stopped. Was he serious or just mad? She hoped it was the latter, but he said it with such animosity that she didn't know how to take it any other way than completely seriously.

"Don't even bother leaving," she said, pushing herself up from the living room floor and ignoring the way her voice trembled at the end of her sentence. She already told herself and Kenneth that she wasn't going to cry, but Kellan knew she might make a liar out of herself if she didn't get out of that apartment soon. "I don't want to be here anyway."

She grabbed her own keys and the backpack she'd brought over from under the coffee table and threw the backpack over one shoulder. She stormed across the living room, giving Kenneth the worst look she could muster up as she made her way toward the front door. In her tantrum, she noticed that his gym bag was laying right next to the side of the couch, but there was no way in hell she was going to do anything that even remotely helped him.

She reached the door, and after fumbling with the lock and deadbolt for what seemed like forever, the fuming blonde slipped out the door and slammed the mass of metal behind her. But it didn't end there.

Kellan needed to get the last hit in, but slamming the door didn't seem like enough. She needed something that was really going to sting, Something that he would think about all summer. She knew just the thing. She turned around, threw the door back open, and leaned inside the apartment.

"And just so you know, I totally would have slept with you that night if you would have just acknowledged me," she shouted before slamming the door again, this time with even more force than before. Kellan, emotionally drained and even more confused, didn't look back as she marched off to the Mini Cooper outside, got in the car, and sped off. It only took three blocks before the tears began to fall.