i can't see where you comin' from

[attagirl]

Who: Axton, Rhys, Fiona, and whoever the hell else ends up wandering it. Probably Lilith. Maybe Vaugh and Krieg. Gren? Who knows. It's a nightmare.
What: The Borderlands cast is a total clusterfuck.
Where: Casa de Tales of the Borderlands.
When: Right now! Except at like two AM.
Warnings: There's gonna be so much cringe.

Axton is still baffling a little at the strange turn his conversation with Lilith had taken on his way over here, but he'd eventually just pocketed his comm device and kept walking. Two AM, two PM, what did it matter - it wasn't like anybody here had 9-to-5 jobs they were trying to keep a schedule for, right?

So whatever. Axton is totally charming. Axton can definitely just have friends, despite what both Rhys and apparently Lilith believe to the contrary. Which is why he's scruffing up his own hair and smoothing his shirt a little before, expecting Fiona, he knocks at Rhys's door.

Comments

[hybridification]

[THE STORY SO FAR, just to get this out of the way:

Axton is bored. He decides to text Rhys, Fiona, and Lilith. Axton and Rhys subsequently get into a dick measuring contest about who has more friends, Rhys mentions Fiona's name, Axton thinks that that's awful suspicious and asks Fiona about it.

Fiona, who knows that Rhys is a human trainwreck, denies knowing him to try and stay out of his drama and tries to deflect, asking Axton (who has had his pride hurt by Rhys having more friends then him so he wants to make friends with Fiona RIGHT NOW) to come over. So she then texts Lilith, asking for some advice. Lilith, being a great anti-wingman, stalls Axton while Axton tells Rhys that he's going over to Fiona's house.

Problem: Rhys lives with Fiona, who he's not supposed to know, and until now has kept his address a secret. So he texts her, politely inquiring what the fuck is going on. Fiona tells Rhys to answer the door because she doesn't want to.

Vaughn and Gren also live here.

So.]

Since asking Axton to leave his guns at home was met with scoffing, Rhys is about 98% certain that he's going to be shot here, in the doorway of his and Gren's shared house, with Fiona, Vaughn, and Gren all in states of relative sleep. Worse things may have happened at one point, but Rhys isn't really sure what they are.

At the very least, he has the gun that Axton gave him. And while shooting Axton with his own gun would be an awesome plot twist in a wild west movie, he's pretty sure that he won't get to fire a single shot before everything goes to hell. He tucks it in the back of his waistband anyway, just in case, and tries not to freak out, because freaking out tends to be what summons Jack into his peripheral and the very last thing he wants to deal with right now is a narcissistic, megalomaniac AI who is hellbent on murdering Axton and everyone he works for.

Deep breaths. Being calm, trying to master the art of deflection and talking down. It's always been more of Fiona's bag than his own, but Rhys has some form of conversational skills and a very vested interest in staying alive.

And so, scene: Rhys opening the door with his most award-winning smile, just about a foot or so, while he leans in the doorway and uses his other had to smooth his hair back.

"Hey." Pause. Consider your life and your choices, Rhys.

"You're probably wondering why I'm here. Before anything else, I just want you to know that I can absolutely explain this."

[attagirl]

"What the fuck?"

Axton blurts it before he means to blurt anything, because there were a few things that he was reasonably expecting to see when that door opened, and absolutely none of them were Rhys. It's two in the morning and he suddenly has no idea what the fuck is going on.

'I must have knocked on the wrong door,' he reasons to himself, because that makes total sense, and then Rhys insists he can explain things -- so, nope, that means that this is the door he was expected to arrive at. He's not angry, exactly: no, it's pretty evident that he's too completely lost right now to actually make it all the way to anger.

Finally, he settles on what has to be the only rational answer, here.

"Dude, you can't just go barging in on this girl's place because she's got the same name as some friend of yours. That's not healthy. You need to take a step back." Yeah, Axton. Yeah. That's right. That makes total sense and explains everything.

[hybridification]

Well, that's an encouraging start. Rhys doesn't open the door any further, but instead tries to figure out how he can actually explain this. He doesn't want to out Fiona as being his friend after she pretended not to know him, but at the same time, there doesn't seem to be a more believable explanation to point out why Rhys is actually here.

So, he can't really explain. But he's going to try anyway.

"...would you believe that Fiona suffers from severe memory problems?"

Boom. First thing that came to his head, and Rhys kind of likes the sound of it, so he continues- "Yeah, it's pretty bad. She forgets my name a lot. Or that we're friends at all. As a matter of fact, she probably forgot that I lived here when she invited you over for a bootycall."

#nailedit

Rhys smiles, letting the door open a little wider in his confidence.

"Sorry, man. What a weird situation, right?"

[murderpotato]

Gren had been trying to get some sleep, but the problem with being a murderpotato is that his sense of hearing makes it real hard to sleep when there are people walking around and talking outside his door. He recognizes Rhys' voice, of course-- but there's the other one that he doesn't know, and there's also the fact that it's fucking two in the morning right now. The likely options are as follows: a.) one of the many, many people that want to murder Rhys has shown up to kill him, and he has answered the door for them like a dumbass or b.) this is a fucking booty call and Gren is having exactly zero of that shit.

He gets up, tosses on a pair of jeans, and emerges from his room like a bear that's been roused from an early hibernation.

"The fuck are you doin' at fuckin' two in the morning," he says, walking towards Rhys and the increasingly unfortunate Axton. "I fuckin' swear, if this ain't some important shit right now--"

There's a metal thing stamped on the forehead of the guy in the doorway, which is a 100% match to the description that Rhys gave him of one of the people who would be by to kill him. Rhys looks calmer than he probably should in the face of someone who wants him dead, but Rhys is also an idiot.

There is one clear course of action here.

Gren pushes Rhys aside and punches Axton right in the face.