🎵 𝄞 🎸 𝄫 🎷🎶 🎻 (jukejoint) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-09-09 21:47:00 |
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Entry tags: | christine daae, huntsman, john blake |
Who: Sam, Micah and an appearance by Ethan
What: A very bad, no good encounter
Where: The sidewalk
When: Let's say tonight
Warnings/Rating: Mentions of violence, drugs
Since the accident, Micah had turned into someone who didn’t really go out, at least not unless he had an actual purpose in doing so. Things were no different in Las Vegas, the times when he drifted from his empty apartment happening because there was something to be done. A gig at a club. Grocery shopping. His regular appointments with the counselor he had been seeing since his short stint in rehab. Nothing out of the ordinary until today. His therapist had recommended that he get out once in awhile, get himself around other people, even if only for a few hours. That was what had shooed him from his apartment that evening, towards the place he had gotten sandwiches with Ethan what seemed like a lifetime ago.
A taxi would have been easier, but instead, Micah walked from where he lived, cane in hand, his attention focused on the sidewalk in front of him rather than the people that milled around the edges of his vision. Getting out into the world again was easier said than done; he still felt distant from the world, not truly connected, and Micah had his doubts that he would ever really feel part of anything again. He was a criminal at heart, even if he had never been convicted of the crime. It was not something he would ever forget, ever be able to let go of, and Micah was intelligent enough to know that that was not punishment enough for what he had done. But he was too cowardly to turn himself in for anything worse.
Instead, Micah concentrated on one foot in front of the other, pausing at an intersection to wait for the sign to walk to glow white once more.
Sam had noticed the comment on the journals that said Micah, the jazz player, had disappeared. She figured he'd left town, gone the fuck away to somewhere nowhere knew him, where people smiled at him without knowing what he'd done. She hated him a little more when she saw that, because he could go get a clean slate somewhere, but she couldn't go near a man without enough drugs in her system to kill her. It was bullshit, and she'd raged around Tess' apartment when she'd seen the post, glad her sister wasn't home to see it. She hadn't told Tess about the shit at the hotel, and she didn't intend to. That was her own fucked up crap, and if Louis hadn't made it everyone's business then no one would have known but Neil.
But she thought he was gone and, after she stopped being pissed, she got drunk, and she got stoned, and she breathed for the first time in months. Ok, yeah, no chance of running into him on the street or in a bar, no chance of seeing someone that looked like him out of the corner of her eye. Ok, yeah, this was good. No, better than good.
To prove she was over this shit, over being afraid, she left Tess' that night, on foot, without one fucking drug in her system. She didn't have any real destination, and she had no real intention. She wasn't armed, and she didn't even have a pocket knife on her. She just turned onto the sidewalk, hands in her pockets and a plaid shirt hanging loose on her shoulders. Her shorts were short, frayed and faded, and she wore bright red flip flops that made smacking sounds on the sidewalk. She watched them, and she thought about shit and, for once, she didn't look everywhere.
When the light finally turned, Micah stepped down off of the curb, one step, two, and then he paused. Sam’s image was not one he had burned into his head, not one he lingered on in his memory, but there was no mistaking the woman who approached from the other side of the street, her head tucked down, the plaid shirt flapping in the desert breeze. He was frozen where he stood, up until she had come within feet of him, and then Micah moved. One, two, step back onto the curb, back and back, head ducked, and the escape might have worked had he not bumped into someone at his back. “Watch where you’re going!” a passing man snapped, and it was pure reflex for Micah to turn towards him, the soft Irish lilt to his words unmistakable. “Sorry,” Micah murmured, lips pressed together in a thin line as he watched the man go, steeling himself to where he stood, Sam forgotten for the moment.
Sam would never forget that voice, not as long as she lived. She didn't hear the footsteps or the retreat, but she heard the voice that haunted her nightmares. It never said sorry in those dreams, but that didn't matter. But, no. Micah was gone. The journals had said as much. But that ice-dread was already seeping down her back and coursing through her veins. Unlike the night in the hotel, she didn't have anything calming her nerves, no buffer to allay her fears, and she jerked her head up with unbelievable speed, stopping dead in the middle of the sidewalk and starting to shake all over. He was right there. She could see him, and she couldn't fucking force her legs to move. Not forward. No fucking way. She felt in her pocket for her phone, to call someone who could help, but a horn honked and a car slammed to a stop centimeters away, and she didn't even turn to look at how close she'd just come to getting run over in the middle of the street. Someone grabbed her arm, intending to drag her forward and out of harm's way. Forward, where Micah was, and she yanked on the hand that held her. "No. Let me go. Fuck, no, please."
For a long moment, things seemed to freeze in place. The world around Micah was largely ignored, his gaze coming to Sam though he wasn’t so bold as to even think of attempting to meet the woman’s gaze. It was, in a handful of words, the worst possible situation for either of them to encounter out and about as they were. Micah’s hand curled tighter around the curved end of his cane, knuckles whiting out with the amount of pressure he put on the wooden handle. A hard swallow, a long moment where he didn’t move to even breathe, and Micah finally glanced up and towards Sam, something sad in his eyes. It was a mixture of guilt and regret, a darkness that didn’t come naturally to him. It took the longest time for any words to come to him, and when he did speak again, his voice was rough, deep and raspy, thick with emotion. “I’ll go this way,” he said, pointing down a different direction on the walk, intending to remove himself from the situation, to spare her his presence. He had done enough harm, and he wanted to inflict no more upon her.
Whether it was Sam's screaming that drew the attention of other people on the sidewalk, or whether it was Micah's rush to leave wasn't clear, but a passerby grabbed Micah's arm to stop him, even as another one tried to soothe Sam. Sam wasn't thinking, though. All she knew was someone was trying to drag her toward the one person she never wanted to fucking see again. "NO!" she screamed, which made the person blocking Micah's escape more determined to keep him where he was. There was murmuring about someone calling the cops, which just made Sam all the more panicked, and she wanted a fucking drink, or a pill, or a needle, or something to make this shit all just stop. "You were gone," she whispered, repeating it more loudly a second later. "You were gone. She said you were gone. I saw it," she accused, betrayed by her own fucking belief in words on a journal. Breathe, just fucking breathe, she tried to tell herself, but the strange hands on her arms didn't fucking help matters. "I don't want to go near him," she finally managed, pointing an accusing finger in Micah's direction.
The resistance Micah encountered when he tried to leave, to remove himself from what he could tell would be a stressful, bad meeting, surprised Micah to the point that for a moment, he could only stare in confusion. “Please keep your hands off of me,” he said softly, shrugging his shoulder up as he sought to remove himself from that unwanted touch, all too aware of the way he could hear the panic welling up in the woman’s voice directly behind him. Finally, Micah turned, his expression pinched and tight as he looked towards her, the paleness of her skin, the accusations in her eyes. Micah could feel the muscles in his neck and back tense, on edge due to the rising ire in the air. “I never left. I don’t know who said I was gone, but I’ve not left the city.” He paused, lips pressing into a thin line. “And no one’s going to make you come near me. And I can be assured of that if I could simply be on my way so I don’t upset you even more.”
"She said you'd left," Sam accused, unthinking and shaking and fighting off the hands of the people who were trying to soothe her. "You fucking put her up to it, didn't you? To lying for you, so that no one would know? So you could go the fuck on and have your life be the way it was again? So no one would fucking know what you did?" She shook her head, the gap in their ages and her relative youth showing in the way her eyes leaked tears. "No. That isn't fucking right. It's not fucking right. You threatened me and terrified me for WEEKS after," she reminded him, her voice climbing above all their heads, "and now you get a clean fucking slate? I won't ever have a clean fucking slate. Why do you get one?" she demanded. Loren was fucking wrong. Cleaning up wasn't worth it, wasn't worth any of this shit. She was too raw for this right now, and she knew it. She knew it, but she couldn't do a fucking thing about it. Somewhere, someone dialed 911, and she faintly heard the beeping of the phone keys in the distance. Fuck this. Fuck this.
With the accusations that flew his way, it took a few moments for Micah to make any sense of it. There was a step taken back, his free hand coming up, palm out, a sign of surrender though he was hardly allowed escape. “I told no one anything like that, I promise you. If it was Bianca-” Micah broke off for a moment, his gaze darting this way and that, trying to figure out some way to diffuse the situation. They were drawing a crowd around them, and while Micah was used to being the center of attention, he did not enjoy it in this sort of situation. “I told Bianca to ask about me, about what I had done, because she was determined to associate with me. I wanted her to know the sort of person she was talking to. That was the only thing I told that girl!” The hand of surrender moved to his forehead, pressing there against his temples as he closed his eyes for a moment, shaking his head. “I don’t have a clean slate, no matter how much you imagine I do. So whatever life of happiness you imagine I’m living, you are incorrect. I hardly leave my apartment. I’m afraid to be around women for fear there’s something in me that will do that again. I don’t trust myself, and I do not think I ever will. I am sorry for what I have done to you. I am sorry that I hurt you.” His tone was nearly pleading, the crowd melting away, ignored, his attention a tight circle upon Sam.
She didn't believe him, and why should she? Her only run-ins with him - on the journals or otherwise - had been nothing but bad. "She said you'd left. She said you'd fucking left. Why would she do that if it wasn't true?" she demanded. "Fuck you," was her eloquent response to his nonexistent happiness. "Sorry doesn't make it any better. Nothing makes it any fucking better. NOTHING makes the shit you said after any better." She looked up when she heard the person on the phone, and she laughed a laugh that bordered on hysterical. "If the cops come, is that what you're going to tell them? That you're sorry? Huh? Why did you have her lie? Why? It was getting better. Things were finally getting better." And if she wasn't careful, she wasn't going to start crying soon, seeing as she was already verging on nonsensical repetition. She'd already done that once with him, and she wasn't going to do it again. No fucking way. "Fuck."
“I had no bloody control over what she did after I told her to ask about me!” Micah shot back, his voice rising, not out of anger, but frustration. “I wanted her to know what I had done and realise she needed to leave me alone because she wasn’t listening to a single word I told her! She thought I was a bloody good person, and even though I told her what I did, she didn’t believe me. So I told her to ask because it’s no secret how horrible I am. I know it, you know it, the whole bloody fucking world knows it.” He was breathing hard by the time he had finished, his head pounding, a cold sweat sprung up over his body. Micah didn’t even want to think about what would happen if the cops came. People kept threatening to press charges, but no one did a thing, which made the threats seem empty, only designed to scare, but he wasn’t foolish enough to think that someone wouldn’t try something in the future.
Ethan happened upon this nightmare the way he happened upon everything, by complete accident. With no sense of direction or purpose, only a thinly veiled attempt at chronic distraction from the pills sitting beneath his couch. Pills a certain sister had left behind that Ethan had yet to dispose of, and was just kind of hoping to forget about. It seemed like a safety net to Ethan, something that in the very back of his mind he could know was there, but he didn't have to actually acknowledge it. He could pretend it all wasn't there until he actually needed it, or until he truly forgot its existence for good. Whatever happened first. While he was praying for the second, he was secretly banking on the first. It was a strange hurricane of optimism and depression when the cab pulled up to a red light in lulling traffic. Ethan's window was down because the driver was smoking, and it wasn't long before the mob sounds of shouting crested beyond the more immediate symphony of the idling engine. Ethan came from relatively small towns. Despite the money and the family name, he wasn't big city. He was still intrigued by people, not jaded. The crowd drew his attention, although it wasn't so large that he couldn't make out the faces within. The girl was unfamiliar, or just forgettable.. but the man was quite obviously Micah.
"Stop the car," Ethan murmured and the taxi pulled over the sidewalk a few feet away from the uprising. Ethan eventually made his way out to the asphalt and padded up to the circle of backs. He pushed through with an elbow, chewing on a piece of gum, with all the revved interest of just another tourist. His plaid pants and black tee shirt suggested youth, emphasized by the dark flop of hair in his face when he glanced between the couple at the center of this.. argument? He wasn't really sure what was going on. "Micah?"
There was something so fucking pity me martyr about the way he said everyone in the world knew how he was, and it made Sam's stomach turn over and threaten to empty itself of the nothing that was in it. The hands were still holding her, offering assistance, telling her the fucking police would be there in a minute. Police, great. Just what she needed. Police. Fuck that. Fuck being clean and straight and not being able to breathe when she ran into this nightmare in the street. "Why can't you just leave?!" she demanded in near-sobbing hysterics. "I don't want to see you, and you're fucking everywhere. In my nightmares, when someone touches me, when I go out. Why can't you just leave?!" Which didn't encourage the people that were keeping Micah from leaving to let him go any sooner. "You're there, every fucking time I look in the mirror. Don't you see?" she demanded, tugging at the collar of her shirt and baring the thick, angry-red scar that began at her shoulder and dipped down her middle. "I have that every fucking day. Don't- Just fucking don't," she trailed off, the collar falling back into place as she heard someone say Micah's name. She needed to get out of there, or she was never going to be able to breathe again. Fuck. Who could she score from at this time of night. Fuck.
She shoved harder at the hands holding her, and she finally managed to break free of them. Air, and she could fucking breathe again. She backed up, backed up, and then she broke into a run. She heard someone yell about following her, but it was far away by then, and the rest of the spectators were holding Micah until the police got there. Fuck it. She was never going out again.
Every word she said, no, screamed at him was just another twist of the knife that was already buried deep in his person. There was something akin to defeat written across his face as he stopped fighting the hands that were holding him from escaping, stared after her as she took to a run down the street. A shuddering breath left him as he glanced down towards the ground, his heart pounding a furious rhythm in his chest. Leave. Leave. The word echoed in his head along with the sight of the scar that ran down her shoulder towards her chest, an image that wouldn’t leave even when he pressed his fingers to his eyes tightly. One step forward, Micah thought, and several dozen back. Her words filled him so much that he didn’t even hear Ethan approach, didn’t recognize the voice or the person that had taken note of the situation.