loki laufeyson (toberuled) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-07-19 17:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | eames, loki |
Who: Evan and Louis
What: Evan returns from his several day disappearance, and a breakup occurs.
Where: LAX.
When: Recently.
Warnings/Rating: Sads?
Louis was at the gate waiting for Evan by ten minutes before the time he’d specified. He sat close to the doors with a newspaper in his lap and a pair of coffees on the bench beside him. He stared at the newspaper, and thought about reading it, but his eyes didn’t do much more than scan the words on the page, studying them like pictograms without meaning.
He didn’t know how to feel. Evan was alive, and coming back, and these were things to be grateful for. But now he had a decision to make about what to do with this Bianca girl, whose last name had proved easy enough to find when he looked up the accident details. And, much more importantly, there was the open question of Evan himself. Would he be willing to get sober again and stay that way? Had the girl done irreparable damage to his progress? How closely would Louis need to watch him to be sure he didn’t try to harm himself, or drink himself into a coma? How much could he do without Evan simply driving him off and drinking himself to death in private?
Everything else had taken a backseat to hunting Evan down when he went missing, and thus, he hadn’t spoken to anyone about Loki breaking out of his prison on the other side of the door. He was still bound, anyway - it didn’t matter where he was. He could only wreak so much havoc without his magic, and while it wasn’t ideal, he was still neutralized for the time being, long enough that Louis could focus on his troubles on this side of the door for a while.
Before Evan had contacted him, Louis drove around town, ducking into bars, clubs, anywhere that served alcohol, looking for him. He even checked the bar where they’d met, hoping that he’d gone somewhere he could expect to be found. Louis ran down every lead he had, treating Evan’s disappearance like a case, but he didn’t have card numbers to track or inkling of where he might have run to, and there was only so much he could do without a paper trail to follow. How did Evan even get to Salt Lake City? And what did he before he got there? That question was a dark hole that would swiftly drag Louis in deep, so he shied away from it.
Louis even went so far as to report Evan missing after the first 24 hours, half sure he’d hung himself in some dark corner of Las Vegas. He called the police again after their call to report he’d been in contact with him. After that he got a few short hours of dreamless sleep, laid low by exhaustion. Now, in the airport lounge, he looked for the thousandth time lately like he hadn’t been sleeping. It was good luck that he was a policeman, once - it got him used to long days and nights with no rest, running on fumes. He ate up his nervous energy in the early hours of the morning working on a case a young woman hired him for the previous week, and that calmed him down a little. He also had an uncharacteristic cigarette on the sidewalk outside, and the faint smell of smoke still clung to his clothes.
At last, Louis gave up pretending he was going to read his paper. He set it on the plastic seat beside him, picking up his coffee and watching the arrival gate, waiting for the plane.
Evan felt like shit, and Evan looked like shit.
Evan had spent the entire flight trying to unsuccessfully sleep through his hangover, and even in first class, with plenty of leg room, he felt all kinds of cramped, man. His head was pounding, and his mouth tasted like cotton, and the first thing he wanted to do once the plane landed was head to find the airport bar and have something to take the edge off that didn't come in a tiny bottle. There was no Eames to calm the need, no Eames to enforce the choice to stay sober. Nah, man, there was none of that. There was only the shit that girl, Becky's sister, had said on the journals, and he deserved it. See, it wasn't even that he was pissed off, because Evan knew he deserved the shit that girl had said, but he couldn't change the past, and if he couldn't change the past, well, he'd just drink the past away, man.
So, in summation, Evan looked like shit one he got off the plane. He weaved as he walked down the hall that led into the terminal, and he squinted behind very black sunglasses as he looked for Louis.
Evan was rumpled, shirt half untucked, blue jeans wrinkled, one shoelace untied. He had a 5 o'clock shadow, and his eyes (behind the shade) were impossible bloodshot. He smelled like whiskey and cigars, and there were unspent poker chips in his pockets that jingled as he walked out. He had no suitcase, because he'd just been buying shit and discarding it for the past few days, and his hands were shoved lazily into his pocket. A drink, and then a nap, yeah, that was all he wanted from the universe.
The terminal was crowded, and Evan lifted the black shades to look for the tallest man in the room with blond curls.
Louis wasn't difficult to spot. He stood close to the gate as the plane came in, and when Evan walked out he locked eyes with him right away. He watched Evan lift his shades, exposing tired eyes, his gait unsteady. Louis was crestfallen, and his worry jumped up another notch, but not surprised. He was already coming up with a plan in the back of his head as he moved toward Evan, how he would get him back to the apartment. Once there, he'd send him to bed to get some sleep. He'd already eliminated anything in the place with alcohol, or that could be made do with by a desperate and creative alcoholic. It would be safe, for the time being. Assuming he could get him out the door without him veering into the bar, of course.
Louis didn't quite know what to say, and it showed. So he simply pressed one of the coffees into Evan's hand, still hot, and fell in beside him. "How was the flight?" Perhaps if he pretended at nonchalance to begin with, this would all go easier.
Evan made a grateful noise as he took the coffee in his hand, and he took a long, hot sip before he grimaced at the sound of a screaming child running past. "It's way too loud in here, man," he grumbled, and the noise level was enough to chase away the thoughts of lingering to get a drink. His head was complaining, and he just wanted to get somewhere quiet and dark. Maybe a quiet and dark bar, but he'd take pretty much anywhere that had less noise going on in the background. "The flight sucked," and he looked over at Louis as he walked, "and you're trying to ease me into a lecture. Don't bother, man. I feel better than I have in days." Which was true. Bianca's words didn't keep swirling around his mind when he was drunk and, even hungover, he was too miserable to concentrate on them. It was total win-win, man.
"I'm not," Louis insisted, and he hadn't been. All he wanted was to get Evan back to the apartment without incident, hopefully without being dragged into a bar, and then they could talk. He wanted to ask him why he hadn't come to him for help, where he'd been, who he'd been with, the very thought sending a stab of jealousy through him, but he didn't. He maintained his composure, assisted by general exhaustion, and took a sip of his coffee rather than voice his thoughts.
Louis walked with Evan out the doors and to a waiting car, still patiently idling. He held the door open for him, and prayed he'd climb in without a fight. "Come on. Let's get you somewhere a bit quieter." Hopefully that would be a vague enough carrot to dangle in front of him that he wouldn't insist on a specific destination. Louis had a great many things to say, and he didn't believe Evan for a second when he said he was better, but it could wait. It could all wait, since he had no idea how to begin.
Evan rattled off the location of a local bar to the driver, just as soon as he'd stretched his long legs out in the backseat of the car. It was a quiet bar, one that promised to be empty at this time of day, and Evan just leaned his head back against the seat and groaned thankfully at the silence of the car's interior. "Drive slow, man," he added to the driver. "No quick turns, and you'll get a sweet tip." Convinced that would do the job, Evan turned his head to look at Louis. "You know it's not your job to save my ass, right?" he asked, clammy hand sliding up along Louis' jaw fondly. His eyes were still covered by the impossibly dark glasses and, this close, he was pure whiskey, but it was obvious his expression had softened. "Missed you, man."
Louis had spoken with the driver before getting out of the car earlier, before Evan had even stepped off the plan. So the man began to drive back into the city, but not to the bar - his instructions were to go straight to Evan's apartment in exchange for a hefty tip. All Louis could do now was hope Evan wasn't going to hate him. He looked over at him, smiling faintly. "But I interviewed so well," he said. Evan's hand at his jaw nearly made him falter altogether, abandon his hard-fought courage and crumple. He wanted to fix this, to make it right, but there was nothing he could do to undo the damage that girl had inflicted. All he could do now was try to stay between Evan and everyone that wanted to hurt him - Evan included. That hand on his skin, though, cool and soft, and the smell of whiskey. "I thought you might be gone for good," he confessed, looking back at him. He didn't tell him he'd been convinced after the first day that Evan was dead, after all the things he'd said about what his life was worth. Louis thought that he was holding himself together admirably, thus far. Somebody had to.
It took Evan, in his hungover state, a few minutes to realize they were headed the right way. "You did interview pretty well," he agreed, thumb brushing over Louis' lip, and he chuckled a lazy and quiet chuckle as he made to shake his head. The movement was abbreviated, because head shaking was so not good. "Nah, man, I just wanted to get chill again. I'm chill, and so I'm back. You still living at my place?" he asked, honestly not knowing. Well, no, knowing that Louis should have bailed, but he had a feeling Louis was domestic violence waiting to happen, the kind of guy that never left, no matter what. "You should find someone else, Louis. I'm not kidding, man," he said, his tone turning as serious as his tone ever did. He rolled his head back to look in the rearview then, and he tugged his glasses down the bridge of his nose. "Stop the car, if you aren't taking me where I asked to go."
Louis smiled a little when Evan made such an affectionate little move. It made him feel, for a moment at least, like things might be alright. He didn't know what to make of 'getting chill', though, so he didn't comment. "I am," he said. "Unless you'd rather I not stay." He felt uneasy about living in Evan's apartment, like he was pushing too much, overstaying his welcome. Really, the immediate risk to Louis seemed to have disappeared. The only reason to stay was that someone ought to keep an eye on Evan, especially now. And that Louis liked being near him, of course.
"I know you're not kidding," Louis said, face falling slightly. For once, he didn't think that meant Evan didn't want him around. It did mean he'd started to think, to Louis' mild panic, that he shouldn't be with him anyway, and that wouldn't do at all. "But I can make my own decisions," he said, softly.
The driver looked back at Louis, who froze when Evan asked to stop the car, not quite sure what to do. He'd thought maybe Evan wouldn't notice until they got back to the apartment if he could just hold his attention, and he hadn't accounted for the possibility that he might actually fight it. The driver shrugged his shoulders and began to pull over - a tip only went so far, and he wasn't going to keep somebody locked in a moving car against their will.
Louis put a hand on Evan’s arm. "Evan," he said. "Don't." Somehow, he'd thought that if they could just get back to the apartment, if he could just hang on to him long enough to dry him out, everything would be fine. He felt a spike of hate for that girl again - she'd done this, this was her fault. "Let's just go home."
Evan didn't say anything until Louis' hand lighted on his arm, and then he lifted those red-rimmed eyes to look at the other man. "Nah, man, nah. You deserve better than this shit. That girl, she was right. I'm no good for anyone, and I'm only going to screw you up, like I screw everything up." When the car pulled over, he looked toward the sidewalk, and then he looked at Louis once more. A second passed, and he pressed a dry, whiskey kiss to Louis' mouth, and then he pulled away with obvious reluctance.
"Find someone who doesn't kill people and isn't an asshole, Louis. That guy isn't me. You can stay at the apartment, but-" Here, he shook his head. "I'm going to get a drink, man," he finished, changing course mid-sentence and extricating himself from Louis' long limbs and shoving the door open.
Evan had size on Louis, despite it all, and booze made him stronger somehow, and his feet found the sidewalk before Louis could do a damn thing about it. He slammed the door shut, and he motioned to the driver to go on.
"That's not - Evan," Louis said, but Evan cut him off with a kiss. He wanted to tell him he was wrong, that he wasn't going to screw him up, that he wasn't sure anyone could screw him up any worse than he already was if they tried. The flat kiss tasted like whiskey, and he didn't even enjoy it, too busy noticing that the car was stopping, and then Evan was pulling away from him.
This was all moving too quickly. Now Evan was sliding for the door, and Louis tightened his grip on his arm. "You're not..." He trailed off. Evan had just said find someone else. That did mean what he think it meant. It did. Louis leaned out after him, panic seizing around his heart. This couldn't be it. This couldn't be all. "It's not your fault," he tried, helpless, trying to fix something much too big to be fixed when Evan was already on his way out the door, still wanting to put him to rights even as he pulled away. Evan was already out of the car. Louis was still sliding over when the door slammed shut in his face.
It was it. It was all. The car started moving again before Louis realized it, and he hit the back of the driver's seat with enough force to surprise even himself. “Pull over.” Sharp and harsh. He stumbled from the car while it was still rolling, shoes skidding a little on the pavement, but by then Evan was already around the corner and out of sight.
He ran a hand through his curls, and bit his lip, tongue finding the back of his teeth, eyes wet. Right. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. He'd always known Evan would push him off eventually, but because he wasn't good enough for Evan - not the other way around. There was no other way to interpret what he'd said, though, he'd even said it more than once. Go find someone.
Louis backed toward the car. He should have chased Evan, gone after what he wanted, but after having Evan tear his arm out of his grip and leave him in the car, he couldn't bring himself to do it. The message had come across loud and clear. He’d offered to let him stay at the apartment, but that was a guilty courtesy, nothing more, the sort of thing one offers to do for a person in need.
Louis climbed back into the car, and told the driver to drive on. Back to the apartment. He had to...he didn't know. He felt fuzzy, and a little numb. Get his things? Yes, he ought to do that. Clean himself out of Evan's life, and not trouble him any further, because he couldn't keep anything from breaking. He'd been powerless to put a stop to this, or change Evan's mind. He rested his face against his hands, breathing.
And still the small voice said, with jealousy, with sadness, with desperate worry - who was going to take care of Evan now?