Explanation and Part 1

Author's Note: GASP! I know! I decided to start a week earlier than planned because I got everything done I was planning on getting done. Anywho, this is the sequel to the earlier story. It doesn't have a title as yet, so if you have a good idea for a title email me or something.
I will be starting out each part with a quote because... it's part of the plot... or something. Each part is about 2000 words and there will be 30 parts because that's how I figured it out for NaNoWriMo (for another story not this one). So as my buddy Maurice Moss says: Put seatbelts on your ears because I'm about to take them for the ride of their life! You may want to change that to eyes though since you're not listening to it.... >.>

Sic infit - So it begins...

It had been a few months since Arthur’s last adventure. He lived in a loft not far from the middle of town. He didn’t have a steady girlfriend, but went on dates frequently. He was still having trouble getting over Sabrina not matter what he told everyone else.

James came over a few days a week to hang out. He had been given his job back and lived across the middle of town from Arthur. They had sold the Rolls Royce and split the money. James still had the coin he had stolen from Cal, had a case made for it and wore it as a necklace.

As far as Arthur knew, Cal and Sabrina were still together. He didn’t follow the tabloids as much as actually buying them, but he did look at the covers while standing in the check-out line and the two were frequently on the covers for one reason or another. Sabrina had sold their business to Arthur and was no longer a partner. She had said she had everything she needed from Cal and wanted no contact with her former best friend.
On this particular April night, it was dark and stormy. Rain pelted the windows of Arthur’s loft. The light from the outside world poured in through the wall of windows. It crept over the dark colored furniture into the large spacious beige and blue checkerboard painted room. It didn’t reach the second floor balcony where Arthur’s colorful bedroom lay. Arthur was curled up on his couch with his quilt. His honey brown eyes absorbedly watching a musical movie. He had invited James over, but James had opted to go to a club with his other friends, but he said he would stop by after if Arthur was still awake.

“Have you missed me, good m’sieurs?” Arthur’s tv sang as a banging sounded on the door. Arthur jumped and, pulling the blanket tighter around him, walked over to the door to peek out. He unlocked the deadbolt, but left the chain across, just in case. The pounding sounded again. Arthur pulled the door open as far as it would go.

Outside, soaked to the bone and covered in blood, stood Cal. “Arthur, let me in,” he wheezed and fell against the door.

Arthur gently closed the door and took the chain off before opening the door. He picked Cal up easily and wrapped him in the blanket he had been wearing. There were bloody footprints and hand marks on the floor and walls. Arthur sighed not wanting to have to explain to his neighbors why there was a blood trail leading to his door. He carried Cal over to the couch and turned off the tv.

Cal opened one green eye, the color of Irish grass. “Your blanket will be ruined.”

“It’s washable. Are you okay?” Why am I doing this? This is my enemy.

“Do I look like I’m okay? Whose blood do you think this is?” Cal motioned weakly at his figure.

“Better get you cleaned up so I can patch up your injuries. Take off your clothes.”

“You haven’t turned gay on me too, have you?”

Arthur rolled his eyes and picked up Cal again. “I happen to enjoy James’s company. We get along. I’m straight, he’s gay and that’s all it will ever be.”

“Wait, lock the door,” Cal said before losing consciousness. Arthur looked at him confused, but walked into the bathroom and set him in the empty tub sans the blanket. He walked over and picked up his cell phone on the coffee table. He dialed James’s number. Club music assailed his ears.

“Hello?” James shouted.

“James, I need your help.” Arthur said quietly.

“What?”

“I need your—“

“Wait, I can’t hear you. Give me a minute.” The music faded in a moment. “Okay, now what did you say?”

“I need your help. I’ve had an unexpected visitor.”

“Who? Sabrina?” James asked disgusted.

“No, you’ll see when you get here.”

“I’ll be there asap.” James hung up.

Arthur sighed and walked back to the bathroom. Cal was still passed out in the tub. The blood was drying making his shaggy brown hair crust to his face. He looked like he might have a black eye and possibly a broken arm. The metallic tang of blood assailed Arthur’s nose. Probably someone trying to rob him or some mob boss finally got to him. Arthur sighed for the third time in not so many minutes.

He held Cal up and gently peeled off his shirt. Cal groaned when the shirt ripped some skin off. Arthur turned Cal over and gasped. His back was nearly in tatters. Blood seemed to be streaming from his entire back. Scabs were formed over other scabs with blood flowing freely from newer wounds. Arthur gagged and turned away from the sight. He shuddered to think what Cal did to deserve this and got to work.

By the time James showed up, Arthur had cleaned and patched Cal up to the best of his ability. Luckily, Cal had no broken bones and no wound was too serious that Arthur couldn’t deal with it.
He had woken up soon after Arthur had finished putting the blanket in his washer. He was now sitting on Arthur’s couch, wrapped in Arthur’s quilt sipping Arthur’s coffee.

“This coffee, if it can even be called coffee, tastes like shit,” Cal said between sips.

Arthur was about to reply when a knock sounded on the door. Arthur opened it just as James came rushing in. Arthur was taken back by his newly-cut short spiky platinum blond hair and the neon green eyeliner around his cocoa bean brown eyes. He ran around the loft looking for someone, his eyes passing right over the blanket bundle on the couch.

“Well, who it is? Where are they and why is there blood outside your door?”

Arthur gestured to Cal, who wiggled his fingers at James. “Hello, James. Nice necklace.”

James’s eyes widened and he grabbed Arthur’s arm. He took him into the open kitchen, under the balcony. “Why is Cal sipping your nasty ass coffee, sitting on your couch, wrapped in your blanket?”

“He’s injured. He came to my door not an hour ago,” Arthur said.

James turned to look at Cal, who was regarding them with curiosity. He noticed the black eye, the stitched up cut on his cheek, the dried blood still caked in his hair and said, very eloquently, “Oh.”

“Still look good enough to eat?” Cal said and took another sip, but his hands shook too much and he dropped the cup on the hardwood floor. The brown liquid quickly spread and reminded Arthur vaguely of the blood he had recently washed off Cal.

James rushed over and Arthur went to get some towels. He opened up his linen closet and surveyed his many different colored towels. As his mother said, ‘you never know what color of mess you’ll have, better to have a towel of the same color than stain another’ – or something to that effect.

Arthur came back out with some brown towels and mopped up the spilled coffee. He sat in a chair near Cal who started shivering despite being wrapped in a king-size quilt. James sat next to Cal, itching to hold him close. Arthur could tell some kind of exchange had happened between them, but didn’t want to bring it up.

“So, care to tell us what happened?” Arthur asked. He motioned to Cal’s wounds. “And how did you know where I live?”

“You didn’t think I would bring you into my house, let you steal from me and not follow your every move, did you?” Cal said and pulled the quilt tighter around himself.

James chuckled quietly and Arthur rolled his eyes. “I should have figured.”

Cal shivered and pulled the quilt tighter. “Yeah, you should have.”

“You still didn’t tell us why you’re here. What happened?” James asked.

Cal glanced at the door which wasn’t locked. “Lock the door.”

Arthur got up and walked over, locking all the locks on the door, but before he could sit down, Cal pointed at the blinds.

“Close the blinds, close and lock all the doors.” He shivered again.

Arthur raised an eyebrow and nodded to James who helped him close the blinds and the doors. Cal refused to let them keep the lights on and made them sit by flashlight.

“Now that we have complied with your paranoid requests, will you tell us?” James asked exasperated and flopped down next to Cal, his arm on the back of the couch.

Arthur was getting worried about Cal against his better judgment. “Who hurt you?”

“Sabrina.” Cal said simply and buried himself in the king-size blanket., which wasn’t hard as you could only see his face anyway. It looked to Arthur as if Cal felt safe in there.

“What did she do?”

“What hasn’t she done? She because abusive soon after we got together, which was fine originally. I like a little S&M in my diet, but over time, it became more than just play. She would tie me, naked, to the bed, stomach to the mattress, and whip me until my back was raw and bleeding on the black satin sheets. Now she’s after my house, my empire, and my life. She has also become very well acquainted with a few judges.”

“And we care why?” James said and folded his arms. Probably to keep from hugging Cal, Arthur thought.

Arthur glared at James when he saw Cal’s eyes glistening with unshed tears. “Cal, why does the judge thing matter?”

“Other than putting me in jail for something I didn’t do? Well, I know for a fact that one of those judges is corrupt and has ties to North Korean officials high in the government.”

“And?”

“James, shut up.”

“Obviously, you have no idea what Sabrina is capable of. I had to dig my way out of my own basement with a broken wine bottle like some kind of Alcatraz prisoner. When I crawled out of the wine cellar covered in mud, blood, and sweet red wine, she was on the phone with the judge. I heard something about nuclear, Pentagon, and soon.”

Arthur laughed. “Do you really think Sabrina would start a nuclear holocaust Third World War?”

James and Cal gave him a look.

“Oh.”

“When do you think this will happen?”

“I’m not sure, but I know that she’s the one pulling the strings.” Cal cowered in the quilt.

“Well, we have to do something about this!” James stood up and took the quilt-wrapped Cal’s arm. He pulled him up only to set him back down when Cal cried out in pain.

“Oh no, I did my good deed for the decade. It’s your job to stop her. You’re the heroes. I’m just here to look good and bang the women,” Cal said massaging his arm.

“And get the crap beat out of you apparently,” Arthur noted and then felt bad about it.

Cal glared as well as he could with his swollen eye.

“If we’re going to stop Sabrina then you are coming with us.” Arthur stood up as well.

“Do I look like I can go anywhere? I can barely move let alone take a long journey.”

“James can carry you until you are well enough to walk,” Arthur said and walked up the stairs to his bedroom.

“What?! I will not carry this bigot around! Arthur! Arthur!” James pouted and sat down next to Cal folding his arms again.

Cal smirked, then grimaced. “It’s you and me, honey bunch.”