After the little (ha!) incident with Logan, Benji dragged Keye to his dorm room. Why? Well, he wasn't going to let him go until he was sure he fully understood what had happened, for one thing. For another, he hadn't seen him in a while and they might as well hang around together for a bit.

He nudged open the door - he hadn't left it locked. He rarely did, since his roommate had gotten expelled two weeks ago (a messy business involving vandalism and the sale of certain substances in small plastic bags). Said roommate had been almost fanatical about locking the door when they weren't there, whereas Benji was far more lax.

"C'mon in," he said listlessly, a faint smirk twitching on his lips. "Don't stand out there in the cold."

And Keye was indeed cold. He'd recently taken a couple of spills into the snow, and was consequently wet. He was taking advantage of the icy water on his shirt to mop at the swollen mess of his bloodied nose. He was a lovely, lovely sight.
After a moment's hesitation, he shuffled in and stood directly inside the doorway as was his habit.
"Cold in here too." he said tersely.

"It is when you've been rolling around in the snow," Benji said, glancing at him over his shoulder. "Seriously, this is the second time you've been here, 'n both times you've turned up sopping wet. Some luck, huh?... "

He gestured vaguely to his side of the room. "Siddown. I'll get you something for your nose so you're not using your shirt as kleenex."

"If it weren't for bad luck..."
Letting the end of the sentece trail off, he wandered over and sat down on the floor, his hands dangling between his knees.
"Uh...oops." he looked down at the shirt. Alexander would slaughter him for that. Or at least fuss until he'd almost rather be slaughtered.

"If it weren't for bad luck, I'd probably never see you," Benji commented, finishing the sentence for him. He ducked out of sight momentarily, then reappeared with a box of tissues, which he dropped on the floor in front of Keye. He also swiped a folded blanket off his bed and draped it loosely over his brother, then sat on the floor opposite him.

"So."
He folded his fingers together and rested his chin on them.
"About this Logan kid..."

He grabbed a tissue, pressing it to his nose.
"I was about to say, if it weren't for bad luck I wouldn't have no luck at all. But yeah. um..."
And then his expression became very guarded.
"I already told you."

"You didn't tell me what he did to you," Benji frowned. "How do you know him?... How could he do any of those things you said he did?"

He was trying not to sound disbelieving, or accusing, but it seemed to be coming out that way. He'd grown tired of getting halfhearted explanations, or no explanations at all.

"He uh..."
He wrung his hands. For goodness' sake, he hadn't even said it right out to Alexander!
"Listen, I can't really explain it to you. I...it's unbelievable. Sounds like fiction. It's like...supernatural and shit."
Excuses, excuses.

"Supernatural?"
Benji's voice rose.
"Yeah? Well. You know that Jibril guy? He sprouted wings. Right in front of me. I saw 'em. Touched them, too. How's that for supernatural? So try me. I can't promise anything, but I'll try to keep an open mind. Now talk."
He was getting pushy, wasn't he.

Keye shrank back, looking at Benji reproachfully from under his hair.
"He can make...like...invisible hands and teeth and stuff out of the air. The first time I met him, he followed me home, and there was this broken glass, and...he made it fly at me. The second time he choked me and stopped me from running away, and then he took me into a...into a house..."
His momentum was interrupted as he found it more difficult to talk.
"He, uh...did things. I, uh...you know. Things people do...with...without clothes on. I didn't want to. He did it, though. And, and then, there was...I...later, h...uh...gimme a minute, okay?"
He buried his face in his hands.

Benji stared at him. He wanted to say: That kid can do that? But that's impossible!

Instead, he said, "Yeah. Take 's long as you need."

Whether I think it's real or not, he sure seems to think it is,... why would he lie about it, anyway?
If Benji were Innish, this would all be a lot easier.

"Well, later..." he continued, his voice soft. "He found me again. And he...used his...freaky air teeth and his hands and he choked me and beat me up and bit me with them. And I mean, these things...couldn't see 'em, but they're big and things went crunch and I was all broken up in places. A-and...and..."
He put me on a leash and treated me like a dog and kept me tied to a pole for a week.
"That's all. No, I'm lying, it's not. But the rest is...pathetic. He kept me like a dog. Tied up, leashed...gave me water out of a bowl...not much to eat. Beat me up, took me out on walks just like a fucking d-d-dog, and...well, I got out, later. There's a point where I just don't remember much about it anymore."

He wouldn't make this shit up...

"I'll kill him."
It was said fiercely, and if one didn't know Benji, one would think he meant it. The sentiment is definitely there, but he would never actually be able go through with it. The only things he's ever killed are digital creatures. And some bugs.
Still, it's a sign of how much he likes (cares for?) his twin that he thinks he could.
"If I see him again, I'll kill him."

"No, no!"
His hand flew to Benji's wrist, grabbing tightly.
"It...it's like you s-said. He's just a kid."

"Just a kid?" Benji looked incredulously at him. "If what you're telling me's true, then he's sure as hell not 'just a kid'. He should be locked up in a mental institution,...no, he should be dead, if he's that much of a fucking psycho..."

"And what about the other guy, Benji? Your friend the angel, he sure as hell isn't gonna let his precious little friend get taken away or killed, and I promise, he's stronger than you."
A sniffling sort of laugh. Keye shook his head.
"I appreciate it, though."

"...True," Benji said grudgingly, then scowled and added, "He's not my friend, though. I only met him once... 'n anyone who's friends with that Logan creep is no friend of mine."
He smiled, though there a definite lack of warmth in it.
"Heh. Hey, anytime, Keye."

"That's why I freaked out so bad. I thought he might try and do something to you or...something. I dunno, I wasn't too clear."
He let go of Benji's arm, covering his face with both hands again.
"Sorry about...starting a fight and leaving you with no idea what was going on."

A little warmth crept into Benji's expression. He raised a hand as if to touch Keye, but then didn't.
"It's okay,... well, it's not, but at the same time, it is. I understand, now, at least." He risked a grin. "It's not like you were doing it on purpose to piss me off or anything, right?"

Finally he lifted his head and, forgetting the tissues, wiped both his eyes and his nose on his sleeve.
"So...uh...while we're at it...anything else you wanna know? Tell?"

"Anything else I want to know?"
He smirked and nudged the box of tissues towards Keye to remind him of them.
"Only everything, of course," he said, serious despite the eye-rolling that accompanied the statement.

"If I tell you everything, you have to tell me everything." he took a tissue and used it instead, although by now most of the mess had been transferred to his shirt.
"Also, I gotta have specifics. I can't start with everything."

"Fair enough, I guess..." Benji shrugged. It would be like truth or dare, only without the dare part. He chewed on his lower lip for a moment, thinking...

"Okay. Here's how it'll work. We'll start at the beginning and go up from there. We can take turns." He nodded to Keye. "You go first. What's your earliest memory?"

Keye had the same thought, apparently.
"Think we should make popcorn or do our nails or something?" Abruptly, he flopped down on his stomach, propping his chin on his hands.
"Seriously though, if you have any ice, that would be awesome. Let's see...earliest memory...uh...let's see, I went to this day care thing, my guess is it didn't cost anything and the toys were all crap, but they gave me graham crackers, and I swear to god they were the best thing ever. Your turn."

"I'm out of popcorn and nailpolish. And ice." He grimaced. "Sorry."

Benji chuckled a bit at Keye's recollection, then frowned as he tried to bring up his own earliest memory.
"Mine is,... playing hide and seek with this kid down the street. I think I must've done it a lot of times,... I kept getting found." He grinned. "Mmkay,...who was your first best friend?"

"That's easy. I still know him. This kid named Bo. We met in kindergarten...he was a year older. I didn't talk at the time, and he had just moved from Austria and spoke no English...so we sort of got attached to each other. Was yours the kid from down the street, or somebody else?"

"Somebody else. I don't remember what happened to that kid... I think his name was James... but that's beside the point. I had my first best friend in first grade,... we were friends 'cause we both had a thing for dinosaurs. He got switched to another class the next year, though, so we didn't stay friends," Benji said, sliding back to lean against the wall. "I don't even remember his name now... 's amazing that you still know your first friend. All these years..."

Blink.

"Why didn't you talk? In kindergarten, I mean."

"Dinasours were awesome, definitely."
He tapped his fingers against the floor. Well, it had to get to something uncomfortable at some point. Still, after he'd explained about Logan, how much worse could it get?
"I didn't talk 'cause I was scared my mom would find out somehow and be mad about whatever I said. Uhhh..."
Next question. What's a good question to ask your long-lost twin brother?
"I can't think of anything better than what's your favorite food kind of crap. Oh, I have one. Where was your favorite place when you were a kid?"

Benji raised an eyebrow at Keye's explanation, but didn't think it sufficiently suspicious to probe further into it.

"Uhhh,...let's see... Probably my dad's office, 'cause he let me play with the stapler and rubber bands and the ink pads for stamping things,... and the chair, you know, one of those ones that spin around." He snickered. "I was easily amused. What was yours?"

"Outside the school there was this storm drain, only it didn't go right down into a deep pit or the sewers. It was this little storm drain with like a big pipe and that connected to a ditch. And if you went down in the ditch, you could get in the big pipe and sit down on this ledge, and no one ever thought to look there. So it was this cool place and you could watch the bus wheels and people's feet go by. Real private. Thinking back, it was kinda gross...I mean, it was always wet and kinda muddy and there were spiders all over. I loved it, though. Listen, I'm bad at thinking of questions."
He twiddled his thumbs, hesitantly starting to smile up at the ceiling.
"High school. Your favorite subject. Class. Whatever."

"I totally got grounded for going places like that," Benji grinned. "My mom was always like-" here he imitated a squawking, scolding mom-voice, " 'You stay away from there, you'll get wet and catch pneumonia and die!' Way overprotective."

He bit the inside of his cheek, thinking. "My favorite would have to be... phys ed. Math in close second, but it was too easy to be interesting. After you tell me what yours is, I'll come up with the next qestion."

"Oh, I didn't even go to P.E. Most of the time. It's a wonder I graduated at all, actually. So that left basically just math, which was easy. But every other class it was like they were speaking a different language (except for Chem, and I skipped too much to get a decent grade or even really understand what was going on) so math was preferable."

"Sheesh. Uhh,...okay. Got a question... it's kind of general, though..."
Benji didn't feel like being patient,... and he also wasn't playing fair, as he was going to ask a question that couldn't exactly be turned back on him.
"...You said a while back you don't like to talk about how you were before you turned eighteen. What were you like before you turned eighteen?"

"I was a shithead. I was dumb, good for nothing, and a bully. I made a lot of stupid decisions, I did drugs, drank, was an asshole to anyone and everyone for no reason...and, ah, I came pretty close to doing the unforgivable--killing--a couple of times."
His voice trembled slightly, but he managed to keep his composure.
"I...even forced myself on a girl once. But all I did was kiss her, honest. After she put her stiletto heel into my instep, I kinda...snapped out of it and said to myself, what the fuck am I doing? I don't want to be like this. So I started acting better to people, but I kept on with the drugs. I was a real nasty kid."

Benji said nothing, for more than long enough to make the silence thoroughly awkward.

Then he said, "...Whoa."

He hadn't been expecting an admission like that. He'd expected something less,... harsh, for lack of a better word.

He let out a mirthless little laugh, staring fixedly down at his hands.
"Heh. That's exactly why I didn't wanna tell you."

"Uh... yeah..." Benji ran a hand through his hair, thoroughly messing it up (though it was never very neat anyway). He almost regretted asking. "Yeah, I can see why. Geez..."

"You're doing alright now, though?" he asked, with a certain kind of gruffness that meant he felt something he didn't want to admit to.

"Oh yeah. Totally reformed."
He inspected his fingernails.
"Well, I mean I still brawl a little, but...yeah. I'm way different now. Anyways! Next question!"

"Uh... hell... I don't know if I have any more..." Benji frowned. "Wait, wait. Okay. That guy you say's your dad. How'd you end up with him?... You're kind of a strange pair, if you don't mind my saying so..."

"I am...not actually sure. I mean, we met...almost a year ago, and he...invited me to one of his extracurricular classes...and one day I was sorta messed up--that kid, from back there in the snow, attacked me and my friend, and my arm was bleeding. So he was gonna give me a ride hom but ended up taking me to get stitches, and it just kinda went from there."