Helpless Guys Standing Around in the Rain
By the time Kris was missing for five days, Hayden's truck tires were almost bald from circling the neighborhood. The same old streets, the same places, over and over, until he looked like some kind of lurking sexual predator. He had a spiral notebook on his truck seat, a chewed pencil marking a place between the pages. He kept track of who he called, who he talked to, where he looked, and when. He jotted down ideas and scratched them out. He tore out newspaper articles about George Robinson. Being meticulous didn't get him answers, but it helped Hayden keep track of his racing thoughts.

He kept coming back to Aspire. He had this idea that he'd run into one of her Slayers at the gym, or somebody else Kris knew that he didn't. Hounding her neighbors just turned up loose ends. He wanted to avoid going to her family and upsetting them, unless he knew for sure it was time.

The truck brakes complained when Hayden pulled up to the curb and shifted into park. It was dark out, but he saw a figure huddled near the doors, like he was waiting on the gym to open. Keeping an eye on the guy, he picked up his notes and climbed out of the truck, giving the door a heavy slam. The weather was miserable, clammy and cold, like walking through a low-hanging cloud. Mist beaded on his hoody and short beard as he jogged up the steps and lifted a hand in greeting.

"Hey, man." Hayden pushed the hood off his hair and squinted in the bad light. His jeans were old and a little tan at the bottom, like clay stains from the construction sites had never washed out. "Can I talk to you for a second?"

Toby was huddled into his jacket, tapping his fingers on his phone. He was just finishing another - yeah, another - voicemail to Kris when some guy appeared in front of him and he lifted an eyebrow. His glasses were pushed up his nose as his iphone slid back into his pocket.

"Uh... sure," he smiled, a little uncomfortably because he didn't know this guy and whilst he was usually more than happy to speak to strangers, he was busy being worried about Kris because she had, apparently, just vanished, so what good Toby thought calling her cell phone incessantly was going to do, he didn't know.

He looked up at the doors to the gym, shut and mocking its emptiness and its woeful lack of Kris. After everything that had happened with the locals and then that George guy - who had mysteriously turned up dead - Toby was a little worried she'd been hunted down by a torch and pitchfork bearing mob. He was going to be ready to kick some ass, if that was the case.

"What can I do for you?" he asked, looking at the stranger through the slightly damp lenses of his glasses, trying to utilise some kind of judge of character. The guy seemed okay on first glance, but then again, so had Nathan and Toby had very nearly been dinner for that guy.

"I'm Hayden." He stuck out a hand for shaking. A car sloshed by on the wet street, drowning out his voice so he needed to lean closer and lift it. "Listen, my girlfriend runs this gym," he said, pointing needlessly at the door and the dark rooms beyond it. "I haven't seen her in a few days. I was wondering if you ran into her."

He lifted his shoulders, trying to put it off like a casual question. The worry was there in his tired eyes, the beard taking over his face because he didn't feel like shaving. A scent of a recently smoked cigarette clung to his sweatshirt. He blinked through the rain and looked at the other man in earnest.

"You must be Hayden, then," Toby said, shaking his hand firmly. He had heard bits and pieces from Kris when he could poke them out of her. Hayden's name had been one of the last pieces of information. "Wait- deja-vu."

He shook his head, "I've been trying to call her. No sign. She and I have like, a couple of one on one sessions a week and she missed one that she'd rescheduled. Called me the day before and everything. But with everything that's gone down..." he sighed, wrinkling his nose as his glasses slid down his nose a little, the rain making them slide whichever damn way they felt like, and today they apparently wanted to succumb to gravity's siren-like lure.

Hayden shook hands and gave the bespectacled guy a questioning look. Uhh... "Yeah, Hayden... both times." He nodded. It was the first time in almost a week that he smiled, albeit an exhausted one. He chalked it up to situational deafness, because the guy looked kind-of worried, too. The amused look was short-lived, though, and he got back down to business.

"You said she trains you?" So he was a customer then, or maybe a friend, if he was around a lot. "What's your name?" The little notebook at his side grew damp, so he stuffed it in his sweatshirt pocket, its squarish shape still visible. The news that Kris missed an appointment hit him like a gut punch. Until now, a small part of Hayden stayed convinced it was just him she wasn't calling. It told him she was pissed at something he didn't realize he'd done wrong.

"It's been a long few days," Toby admitted with a sheepish grin. After all, he was trying to set up his own business as well as worrying about Kris - which was taking up a disturbing amount of his time that he wasn't about to go into. The weather was awful. He glanced skyward, a few wayward drops of rain managing to hit their mark and landed on his glasses, spots of water lingering on the lenses.

He nodded, "Yeah. Has been for a while now. I also bring her food so she doesn't starve on the job and coffee for good times." He rubbed the back of his neck, fingers brushing against the scar. It was a nervous habit that had recently come back into play. He blamed the email from Kathleen. "Uh- I'm Toby. Yeah." He cleared his throat. "I'd like to think I count for something in the friend stakes too, not just a pupil with way too much time on his hands." He gave another smile, less sheepish but kind of tired. "I mean, it's not like her to just disappear like this, right? So... I'm hoping there was no torch and pitchfork mob, because as much as I've learned a lot from her, I'd still get my ass handed to me by an angry mob."

"Nah, I don't think so," Hayden said, glancing at the neighborhood around the gym. There was nobody on the street. Nothing to see but the weather and the locked up windows and doors. "She left me a voicemail that said she was going to meet this guy, George Robinson, who was running his mouth about her. She said she had a bad feeling about it. I tried to call her and tell her to wait for me." The guilt was there, in his voice and the hard set of his mouth, the way he didn't make eye contact.

If only he caught the phone. If only he convinced her to ride with him. If, if, if.

He rubbed his jaw and watched a stream of water drip off the roof, creating a puddle. Hayden's hand circled round the back of his neck and squeezed the tight muscles. "The guy's dead. There was a news article about it." He reached into his pocket and pulled the smudged paper out of the notebook. Pressing the creases flat, he said, "I can't get my brain around it. They keep mentioning a brunette, but Kris didn't do it, so there's gotta be somebody else. I don't wanna call the cops and say she's missing. They might think she ran."

"Of course Kris didn't do this." Toby said with conviction. "I met the guy once, when she and I were cleaning up the most recent break in." He frowned, remembering it and kind of thinking the guy got what was coming to him. Then he felt bad for thinking that. "He seemed kinda... sneaky. But not sneaky enough to fake his own death, that's a low blow even for some kinda lowlife."

He wasn't making a lot of sense, but he didn't on the best of days. "I mean, say she met him, what could he have done to her? He's dead. And if he'd lunged for her or something, then he woulda died from like, blunt force trauma rather than being poisoned. That's what the articles are saying, right? Nothing about him being bludgeoned to death." He paused, rethinking his phrasing, "Not that Kris would bludgeon."

"Depends on who," he said, tipping his head towards a shrugging shoulder. Then he realized how that sounded and put up his hands. "Always a bad guy." Except when... shit. He knew of at least one brunette who could poison people and would do it, and that was Elfleda. But Hayden kept his mouth shut on that possibility, because he didn't have enough to go on to make that leap, and he wasn't about to get into Kris's history with the Corruptress. Not when he knew her reputation was shaky, however undeserved.

The idea of it, though, made his chest hurt.

"I put the word out to some friends," he said, tucking the newspaper clipping away. "Got people checking her patrol routes. I asked around the neighborhood." Hayden gestured vaguely around them. "Everybody's tight-lipped. I thought I might run into some of the girls she trains here. So far, no luck." He stared at the locked door. "I dunno, maybe some kind of location spell. My roommate's a practitioner."

"Mm, magic." Toby gave an exaggerated shiver. "I completely have managed to spend most of my life avoiding the supernatural and every derivation thereof. Apparently fate decided enough was enough." He looked down the street like someone would magically appear who knew where Kris was.

No one turned up.

"But if that's gonna work, why not give it a shot? What've you got to lose? We don't know where she is now, right? So that won't change if the spell doesn't work." He nodded, brain kicking into gear. "But I mean, I've been looking too, I don't know anyone else she does, but I've been here to check she hasn't come by, all the people in the neighborhood just kinda... scuttle past like particularly guilty crabs, but that's 'cause they trashed the place, not because they have her holed up in a basement somewhere." He frowned, looking at Hayden, "...Right?"

Hayden gave him an incredulous look. "You think these people could keep Kris looked up?" He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the residential street. Clearly, Toby had never seen the Slayer really angry. With the looks she gave, even Hayden had to brace himself and try not to flinch and duck.

The researcher stuck his hands in his sweatshirt pockets. "I'll dig up a locator spell. We can use some of her stuff as an anchor." The stowing of his hands didn't last long. He reached up again and pushed a restless set of fingers through his hair; it was a big deal when the easygoing Hayden couldn't stand still. He looked Toby over again, trying to get a good read on him. "You... you want in on it?"

Toby watched Hayden fidgeting and wondered if this was the same guy that Kris had been upset about when they had first met. He knew that they had sorted things out since then, which was a good thing because he obviously made her happy. God, he was hoping they could find her because it was sucking without her around. Who could Toby test his baked products on now?

Of course, that wasn't the only reason he wanted Kris back. But in his mind if he trivialised his worry for her, then it wouldn't seem so scary that he was terrified for her, or something.

"I'd- yeah, I'd like in on it," he said finally. "And no, I don't think they could keep her locked up in a basement somewhere, she'd like hulk her way out or something, but still it's just weird that she's vanished and the Stepford neighborhood's acting like they all know something when we know for a fact that they're all useless." He raised his voice a little on that last word like it made him feel better to insult everyone from afar.

"Yeah." Hayden scratched the back of his neck and then his arm got still. Why, he wasn't sure, but it wasn't until that minute, hearing Toby say 'vanished', that he knew in the pit of his stomach that Kris was hurt bad. He stood listening to the rain pelting the sidewalk, his green eyes staring without focus at his boots. The tightness in his throat made it hard to talk.

"I've known her for six years," he said, more quietly than before. "She came home banged to hell a lot of times, but she always made it home." He jumped into some stupid situations, trying to keep her safe. This time, he wasn't fast enough. Not even close. "Shit." Rubbing his eye sockets with thumb and forefinger, he tried to get a full breath into his lungs. His girl. His 'erastis'. He loved her so much, it was in his bones.

Toby took a hesitant step forward, resting a hand on Hayden's shoulder and squeezing gently. "Hey, it's okay. We'll find her." He could do this, step into the shoes of the reassurer. God only knew he'd been the reassuree for long enough considering Alec was poking him through this process. He wet his lower lip. He didn't drop his hand from Hayden's shoulder. "We're gonna try this spell, right? And if that doesn't work, we'll find some other way. Something else that we can do to find her. Start with search parties and fine tooth combs and dogs and stuff."

He swallowed. Kris was going to be fine. "And I might not know her all too well yet, but she's tough, right? I mean, she's really tough. So wherever she is, you can bet she's raising hell to try and get out." He hoped he was making sense. It was all logical in his mind, but whether or not it was when he was speaking was an entirely different matter.

"She's really tough," he agreed, getting a grip. He wasn't crazy about the image of Kris locked up someplace, but he was bolstered by the reminder that she'd scratch, punch, and kick like a hellcat to get out. That mental picture of her -- brassed off, chin lowered to her chest, brown eyes looking up past a raised eyebrow -- was easier to contend with than thinking of her injured, or even thinking of how beautiful and soft she was, when nobody else was looking.

"Alright. I'll put a call out for help," he said, "Let me get your number and email address." He got out the pencil and an empty page of the notebook.

"Exactly. Tough." Which meant Kris could handle anything that was thrown her way. In fact, she would handle it all and she would handle it well. Better than anyone else could handle it ever. She was going to be fine, back to kicking Toby's ass on a regular basis and getting rid of the worry that was sitting heavily on Hayden's frame and on his features. Toby barely knew the guy from Adam and he could see how worried he was.

It gave him a little more faith in men as a gender that there were people like Hayden who loved their girlfriends that much.

Toby rattled off his phone numbers and his email address so that Hayden knew how to contact him. "And if this doesn't work, then I guess we move to some heavier stuff. Bloodhounds and all that... We'll find her." The promise that Toby would be there to help every step of the way was implicit. He would do and offer whatever he could to help with the search. He liked Kris, damnit, she was one of the first friends he had made in this place.

"If this doesn't work..." Hayden closed the notebook and stuck the pencil in the spiral binding. He couldn't finish his sentence. He had gotten creative with where he went for help before. Elfleda and Darian made him pay dearly for it, but he'd do it again in a heartbeat, if that's what it took. "Plan B," he agreed. Bloodhounds and demons and maybe beating the crap out of a neighbor, until they started to talk. Because he couldn't lose his girl again.

"Thanks, man." He clapped a hand around Toby's upper arm. "I really appreciate it."

"Well, we can just hope it'll work. Whatever happens after that we can work it out. Okay? Seriously, we'll work it out." Toby had kind of assumed that Hayden would let him take part in the rest of the search as well. He was already wondering what they could do the next time around, whether or not there was anything more if turning to the supernatural didn't help.

Maybe there were other people they could ask for help if this spell didn't work? He took a deep breath and then squeezed Hayden's shoulder once more before he dropped his touch. "Anything to help, man, just- Just let me know and stay in touch. I wanna do what I can."

"Alright. I'll email you my information." Hayden pulled his hood up and looked around. "If you run into any of the Slayers she trains, do me a favor, let them know I'd like to talk. They know who I am." Over the time since Kris took them on, he sent books on demons and whatever else Kris needed from time to time, old supplies from his studies as a Watcher and contacts he kept on the Council.

"See ya." Hayden jogged back out into the light rain, getting his truck keys out of his jeans.