Vigilante | ✔

Part XII: Retcon

He sat in the diner for a while. Long enough that he actually felt a bit better as he walked to the door with his friends. Collin and Tucker paused outside and Eli did his best to ignore the feeling of that now all too familiar ache in his leg coming back slowly as he stood in the chilly night.

"You sure you don't want to stop by tomorrow?" Collin asked. "There'll be food," he added, waggling his eyebrows in a way that made Eli roll his eyes. He took in his friends' expressions. The badly disguised hope might have been what made him give in.

"Yeah, okay," he finally agreed. He figured it was time he started to be more social or people would start calling him a hermit. Besides, he did like free food.

The three young men went their separate ways, with Eli heading off on his own with a wave. He pulled his coat tighter around himself and began the short walk to the nearest bus stop. Fortunately for him, he didn't have to wait long and was soon inside the considerably warmer bus and on his way home.

Eli hadn't moved after the whole mess at the warehouse. A lot of people said he was stupid because of that. Eli tended to agree with those people. Still, he wasn't planning on moving any time soon.

He wasn't being sentimental either. If only to himself, he would admit that it was mostly just him being stubborn. A lot had been taken from him the night of the fire, leaving the crummy little apartment would somehow feel like losing again.

With a faint grimace as a sharp pain sparked in his leg, Eli unlocked his door. As soon as he stepped inside, he was pounced on by his newest roommate.

"Get off Matt," Eli said, shaking his leg to try to free it from the claws of the cat clinging to it. Not that it did him much good as the cat proceeded to climb up his leg. It must have realized it wasn't worth the trouble, because it gave up somewhere around Eli's knee and dropped back to the ground.

"Stupid cat," Eli muttered, even as he walked to his kitchen and dug around a cabinet for a can of cat food.

Matt, or Matthew as was actually the cat's proper name, had started living with Eli just a couple of months earlier. It had been scratching at Eli's bedroom window one night while he tried to sleep. Maybe Eli had let him in because he'd felt sorry for the scrawny little animal, or maybe he was a sentimental idiot like Michael said when he found out (granted, he thought the cat was named after a customer who suddenly disappeared and Eli just missed the guy's tips). Whatever the case might be, it had worked in the cat's favor.

Now it was fat, lazy and too clingy for it's own good. Eli thought it lived up to it's namesake.

He opened the can of food and emptied it into the cat's bowl while the animal lingered at his feet. It's tail waved from side to side and its blue-grey eyes watched Eli expectantly as it rubbed it's head against Eli's leg.

"Eat up," Eli said as he set the bowl down and patted the cat's black and white fur. He stood then, and walked over to his phone, noticing he had a message waiting for him.

Eli didn't even need to hear it to know it was his mom. She made it a point to call him at least three times a week, even though they both knew they didn't have anything to actually talk about (working at a coffee shop was not that interesting).

They'd never really seen eye-to-eye on many things (mainly Eli not being picky on which gender his dates were). Honestly, Eli thought they were both too similar to ever be close, so it was no surprise when he moved out as soon as he was old enough. After that, they'd only really talked on the phone, and even those conversations became more and more rare as time went by. Things were just too awkward between them, neither one knowing the other that well and both too stubborn to admit they missed each other. It figured all it would take to fix things between them would be Eli nearly dying.