~~Julias~~
“I wonder if he took me seriously.” Julias paced back and forth from his window, and only occasionally glanced out to look at the city lights. His eyes were fixed on his drink of red. His last attempt at maintaining at least somewhat normal eating habits.
He leaned forward and put his free hand against the window, but still his eyes stayed on his drink. The swirling pool of red was not transparent, and his gaze drowned in it.
“How am I going to do it? How could I explain… I mean… with Viktor it was…. Yeah, I don’t want that.” With a weary sigh, Julias walked back into his kitchen and put the glass on his counter. “I don’t want to hurt him, and now I just left this bombshell on his… he doesn’t deserve that. I can’t gave him half-truths. Fuck Viktor. None of that manipulative shit.” The whole conversation had been a horrible attempt to recreate Viktor’s proposal, and just like then, the proposal had been terrifying. Smart. Way to ruin everything, Julias.
He snatched the glass up and raised it with his sights set on the sink. With a strained hand and tight grip, he slowly, very slowly lowered the glass back down.
“Don’t smash the glass, control yourself,” he said between clenched teeth. After putting the glass down, he walked toward the door, all the while looking at his shaking hand. He flexed and released it while his skin grew more and more pale. “Blood stains are a bitch.”
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“Where’s that kid gone?” Julias strolled down the street as fast as he could without drawing attention. It was a cold night, but he didn’t mind. While most everyone was in trench coats of some shape or another, Julias stuck with the suit. It was a nice suit; he felt good wearing it. He felt tall around these people. They were just sheep, after all.
“Yeah, I wonder… how he’ll feel walking down this street after it’s done.” A woman walked by and took a moment to glance Julias up and down. She was attractive, with her blond hair tied into some fashionable shape against her skull’s crown. Julias managed a small nod and kept walking. “Never the same. He could shut himself up even more, or… become cold and dead. I don’t want another Viktor. If this is going to work, he needs to want it. I can’t trick him into this.”
He kept walking. That was it then. He’d have to explain to Jack tonight what this was really about, instead of letting the man stew for days with all his half-truths.
“I wonder if he’ll hate me. I wonder if he’ll tell anyone. If he told anyone, and I had to clean up that mess, and kill him….” No, don’t think about it. Jack was a smart man, and a disturbingly tenacious little man at that. He could trust him. But shit happens, and if Jack did indeed try to spread the truth once the secrets were out, it would be on Julias’s head.
“Fuck, not just my head. This isn’t just a business deal. He’s your friend. He’s your-” His voice stopped, and he came to a dead halt in the street and looked around. Something wasn’t right. His insides clawed at his ribs and demanded aggression. Someone was inside the domain. Someone was on the hunt inside his domain.
He broke into a run. People in his way were quick to move, and those that didn’t were tossed aside. A few unlucky people found themselves more than knocked aside, and more than one crashed into nearby members of the street crowd with loud hollers of pain. He got faster, and bulldozed through a couple holding hands, each getting pushed to either side and landing against the sidewalk with bone crunching noises.