Who: Joseph and Louis What: In which Louis gets drunk, meets Joseph, and has a minor breakdown while Joseph is super patient. Where: Joseph's trailer, near Circus Circus When: Recently Warnings/Rating: Sadness. So much sadness.
Louis had decided that the best way to manage the turbulence in his head when work was over and there was nothing to distract himself with was to go out and wander the town. He avoided the clubs. If he was going to have sex, he was going to stick to encounters where the risk of someone wanting to call him a second time was eliminated entirely. He wasn’t foolish enough to think he could easily pick someone up anyway. His opinion of himself hadn’t changed since being with Evan. If anything, seeing him go had worsened it. Sex had gone back to being something Louis paid for.
Louis stuck to the bars and casinos to occupy himself, and frequented only the cheaper ones, places where he was unlikely to know anyone. Drinking wasn’t planned, but was just so easy in Vegas, where free drinks were the norm on casino floors, and drinks you did pay for were cheap. Wandering out of Circus Circus late on a weekend night, he felt good, or as close to good as he could manage, these days. He’d managed, blissfully, to avoid talking about what had happened entirely, had spent an entire conversation avoiding Sam’s questions and had yet to receive any communication from Neil or anyone else that might try to corner him into talking it through. He didn’t need to talk it through. He was fine, so long as he kept moving, and didn’t stop.
Louis didn’t really know where he was headed as he curved around Circus Circus. He gave the sign for the RV park a sidelong glance, shrugged to himself unnecessarily, and wove through the gate. He was drunk enough that the prospect of being thrown out didn’t bother him, but not so drunk that he couldn’t walk a somewhat straight line. It was something to do, a different way to walk back to his car, something else to look at. Colored lights and signs and casino games and busywork. They all occupied the mind, and gave it no room to do anything else. He didn’t pay any attention to the people, or to which way he was walking. He wandered around trailers, and hung close to the edge of the building, and observed. He liked this, being around people while he was drunk enough not to worry about what anyone thought of him, or to dwell on anything at all. The world was an attractive fishbowl, and he was merely passing through it, empty of thought or concern.
It was the end of a 20-hour shift, and Joseph would have preferred to just grab the dog and go for a walk in his uniform, but he knew Circus Circus didn't care for a cop walking around in uniform (it made the gamblers wary), and since he paid nearly nothing to park his RV at the RV park, he tried to keep things easy.
After changing into jeans, keeping the white, short-sleeved undershirt he'd worn beneath the uniform, Joseph grabbed the dog's leash and left the tin-colored RV. The entire thing shook as Joseph's feet hit the ground. The dog, big, bulky and furry, added to the tilt of the place, and Joseph lit a smoke as the dog shook out the effects of being cooped up all day.
Joseph was on the way back when he saw the curly haired blond, and he slowed and looked down at the dog at his side. A lift of brows conveyed surprise, and the dog wuffed in something like quiet understanding. People didn't wander around the place, and Joseph had to tamp down the cop in himself in order to keep from asking what the man was doing there.
A few steps closer, and Joseph felt the stirrings of familiarity. His heavy boots made the stones underfoot crackle, and the dog barked in earnest once they were a half-dozen feet away from the strange man.
Louis hadn’t expected anyone to pay him much mind, which was a side effect of being drunk and born of the assumption that he generally didn’t attract much attention, in his own estimation. It hadn’t really occurred to him that he was wandering through what amounted to a neighborhood in the middle of the night, even if it was behind a casino. Perhaps especially because it was behind a casino, people had a right to be wary of strangers moving through.
The bark of the dog was what initially drew Louis’ attention back, and he quickly catalogued the burly man holding on to the dog’s leash. The fact that he was attractive, in a rough sort of way, filtered through his sodden defenses before he had a chance to deflect it, but then slid off. The dog was of more concern. He wasn’t in any state to outrun a guard dog, and if the man was looking for trouble, he wasn’t exactly in fighting fit. “Can I help you?” he asked, overblown eyes turned on the man with the dog, the out of place, affronted phrase an unthinking reversal of the question that the other man should really be asking him. In the weird, low light, his eyes were dark, almost grey, and the lights mounted overhead cast shadows in the hollows under his high cheekbones. He held his long form with surprisingly little sway, and didn’t worry yet, usual anxiety dulled. The other man might just be taking a walk, as he was. Maybe he was fond of the forest of shiny bullet shaped mobile homes as a pictorial landscape for his thoughts. Oh, yes, he was very drunk.
Joseph's work life was dotted with drunks. He didn't need to smell the man's breath to know he was drunk. His body language and voice gave it away. The accent confirmed his suspicions about who this was, though he didn't make any indication of knowing anything at all. He wasn't sure if it was knowledge from Eames, or if it was his own memory of a disastrous wedding a few years back, but it didn't matter just then.
Salt barked, and Joseph held the leash tighter. The offer to help made a small grin cross the salt-licked features, and he laughed a quiet, rumbling laugh. "Going to make me coffee?" he asked, walking forward, past the man (Louis, said the voice in his head) and to the RV that was just a few feet away. He opened the door, let the dog in first, and then he stayed outside and let his arm extend along the door, holding it open. "In?" he asked. Couldn't make coffee out there, after all.
If it was a strange invitation, the knowledge didn't show in the fisherman's features. Joseph just held the door patiently, glancing inside once to watch Salt settle on the bed. He sucked on his cigarette one last time, stubbed it out, and lifted a brow.
It occurred to Louis that something looked vaguely familiar about the man, but it escaped him. He didn't look the type to have attended Donovan family gatherings, and he didn’t know him through his work. Where the man had been was just at the edge of his mind, if he really even knew him at all. Unable to fit him into a missing outline in a memory, he gave the idea up.
The stranger stood at the door to his RV, waiting on Louis as Louis stared back. The invitation was strange indeed, even to Louis in his present state, and his eyes narrowed briefly as he considered the man's motives. Well, if he was going to try to murder him, an RV would be the wrong place to do it. Someone would hear the noise, undoubtedly, the walls were very thin, and there weren't many places to hide a body. He had also intended specifically to avoid talking to anyone for more than the few seconds it took to buy drinks or pick up chips, but that resolve fell away swiftly. He wanted very badly to accept a genuine act of kindness without second-guessing it.
More logically, the man was looking for sex, and Louis would simply stand his ground on that one. If worst came to worst, he could probably drunkenly fend off unwanted advances, and if things went any further than that, there was always the diamond hard presence at the back of his mind as last resort. His decision made, he stepped up onto the RV, stopping for a moment as the whole thing trembled (much less than when Joseph had stepped up), startled. Then he mounted the remaining steps with more confidence, brushing past the man with the dog into the compact space, pretending not to notice anything about his presence, particularly not the sharp lines of the muscle beneath the undershirt, or the well-defined arms beyond that.
It was...very clean, inside. The design was, anyway. Modern, even, light and airy. He was impressed. RVs brought to mind images of classically American squalor and poverty. He’d seen it in films and firsthand, since he’d come to Las Vegas and begun regularly questioning people who lived in such places, ramshackle, no-longer-so-mobile homes populated by beer cans and dirty clothes. "This is quite nice," he said, not disguising that surprise even a little, and began searching around for the coffee pot. Coffee would help. “Are you in the habit of inviting strange men into your caravan?” he asked. Getting himself into trouble by being too gay hadn’t occurred to him. He didn’t much care anymore what anyone thought of anything he said. All of them could kindly fuck themselves. He nearly shared that thought with his new friend, but paused, waiting politely for an answer instead as he rattled through the cupboards.
"Hmmm." Joseph grinned at the fact that Louis had expected something unkempt inside the trailer, but he didn't say anything about it. Some of the trailers in the park were actually nice, but it was a result of middle aged people crossing the United States on vacation, or seniors doing the same on their retirement. Circus Circus had the only RV parking on the strip, and therefore the collection in the lot went from really expensive, to barely legal. His was cheap, but cared for, bought with the money from selling his fishing boat back home.
Joseph followed Louis in, and he folded away the bed the dog had claimed and took a seat at the table beyond it. It was, for all practical purposes, a booth. He sat sideways, spread knees off the side, and he pointed at the cupboard with the coffee, then to the pot beneath on the counter. "No," he said of inviting strange men in, and he left it at that for a few long seconds, as if there wasn't going to be anything more. "Remember you," he finally added, after a long expanse spent not watching Louis' movements at all. He scratched the dog's ears instead, wondered if the blond man remembered him, and tried to figure out if he wanted to mention Evan.
Bad news, darling, was what the voice in Joseph's head had to say, but Joseph wasn't sure yet. "Sugar and cream in the icebox." He pointed, and he fished out a cigarette and lit back up, leaning back to pop the window behind the table.
Long fingers spidered up into the cupboard and fetched the coffee, following Joseph's pointing finger. Louis opened the container and began casting about for a spoon to scoop the coffee with. He dumped a few rounded tablespoons of coffee into the coffeemaker. "Really? I thought I recognized you," he said, turning to look at him briefly over his shoulder. He was wearing a blazer and slacks, and a white dress shirt. All had clearly been pressed at some point today, but his tie, if he'd had one, was missing, and the shirt was limp with sweat and sun and wandering through the heat. He removed his blazer and set it on the counter, rolling up his sleeves up to his elbows, as if such a thing was important to properly making coffee. He filled the pot with water. "You'll have to tell me where we met, and what your name is," he said, matter of fact. "I don't remember. That might be a rude thing to say, and if so, I apologize, but I simply don't. I tried to place you, and I...couldn't." The words ran into each other a bit, but they were coherent enough. He poured the water in as he spoke, missing slightly and creating a puddle of water at the base of the coffeemaker. Most of it made it in, though, and he replaced the pot and turned the the thing on.
As it began burbling away, Louis finally investigated the sugar and cream situation, pulling open the 'icebox' as his new coffee partner so intriguingly called it, and removing both. "Why do you keep your sugar in the refrigerator?" he asked, unthinking, and set both on the table, looking down at Joseph for a short moment, making eye contact at last. His intent expression softened for half a second, then he turned away again. Busy, yes, keeping busy was certainly best. But there was nothing to do, now, nothing to turn to. The coffee was going, the cream and sugar were out. All he could do was stare at the coffeemaker for a moment, then turn awkwardly back to Joseph.
Louis sat down across from him. His legs were too long to fit comfortably beneath the table, so he slid them up onto the seat instead, looking across at him. He swallowed. There was no mistaking the fact that, drunk or not, Louis didn't quite look well. He wasn't the person from memory. There was an edge to his constant pressing forward, and a sharpness to his constantly moving gaze, his intent and purposeful movement, his difficulty sitting still, even now. He looked as if he might fly apart at any second. The edges of his eyes were wet - he was thinking that the last time he sat with someone smoking by an open window had been in Evan's apartment, close to the sill, sharing. He swallowed, and extended a hand to take the cigarette from Joseph and have a drag. "May I?"
"Not rude," Joseph assured him. Not being remembered was good. He'd left that particular wild summer of his life behind, and he didn't pull the memory out and relive it. Joseph didn't dredge up the past. There wasn't any point, and things left behind were better left behind. "Long time ago. Doesn't matter," he said of where he knew Louis from. He was as loathe to mention Eames to this man as he had been to Cory, and something said to keep mentions of Evan as nonexistent as possible. "Joseph Sullivan." His name, that he was willing to give. No point in lying there, no point in keeping things back there.
The question about the sugar and the refrigerator was innocuous, and Joseph actually smiled before answering. "Bugs," he explained, nodding toward the open window, which had no screen on it. RVs weren't as good at keeping things out as apartments or houses, but Joseph had grown up in a wood cabin, and he spent more time on water than land. Bugs didn't bother him. He figured the question didn't really matter to Louis, but there it was, the answer, and he watched Louis putter around, the attempt to draw out the process of making coffee both obvious and confusing.
Joseph was thinking about then when Louis took a seat, and his attention immediately turned to the fact that the other man looked bad. He wasn't sure Louis needed a smoke, but he handed it over anyway, and he reached for the icebox without standing, grabbed a bottle of water from it and put it in front of the blond man. "Hydrate," he said, as he waited for the coffee, and then he leaned back against the wall at his back and sighed. "Getting drunk won't bring him back," he said, a full sentence, and one he was sure he was going to regret.
"You recognized me from it. It must matter," Louis protested. He took the cigarette from Joseph, and took a long drag. Too long, actually - it had been a while since he last smoked, and he coughed a little, blowing the remaining smoke toward the window. He took another, smoother, shorter drag, actually enjoying the way the smoke burned in his lungs. He always thought smoking was a bit stupid in anything but brief bursts, but he was starting to understand the appeal. Knowing how terrible it was made it that much better, a self-destructive, fleeting, rasping pleasure. "Joseph," he said, and then took another drag, forgetting for a moment that he was meant to hand the cigarette back. Dull eyes watched Joseph's mouth for a moment. "I am Louis Donovan. But you know that, because we've met, sometime a long time ago, somewhere that doesn't matter."
Joseph was right. By the time he answered Louis' question, he no longer cared about the answer, though it was interesting. He handed the cigarette back to him. His mouth tasted like ash, now, and vodka. The bottle of water appeared in front of him like a totally foreign object, and he regarded it before picking it up. Fine, it would be good to get the taste out of his mouth. He knew, airily, that he would have a horrendous hangover tomorrow, and that drinking water now would help. It was very forward thinking to drink the water now. He cracked the cap open and took a swallow. The water didn't really get the foul mixture of tastes from his mouth, but it was cooling, and it quenched his thirst in place of the brewing coffee, or more vodka.
Louis glanced up just as Joseph spoke again, and took the statement like a slap, stunned. He felt less drunk, sobered by the words, and more drunk, since he felt sure he had misheard them. He stared at him, eyes frozen a little wide, brow raised, the corners of his mouth turned down. "I...what?"
Joseph didn't expect to get his cigarette back, and he was surprised when it ended up between his fingers again. He acknowledged the fact that yes, he did know Louis from somewhere, sometime, with a nod, and he put the cigarette damp filter back between his lips for a drag, unconcerned with the spit-wet.
While Louis was drinking the water, Joseph stood and poured two cups of coffee into white tin mugs with specks of blue paint, and he slid one across the table as he sat down again, cream and sugar reached for after the fact.
"Getting drunk won't bring him back," Joseph repeated.
Louis didn’t touch the coffee after Joseph slid it across the table, merely continued to look at him. He should have been able to brush the statement off and shove forward, but he wasn’t sober enough for that. “Where do you know me from?” he asked, again, but the question wasn’t fed by just a conversational curiosity anymore. He felt like he’d been trapped, against his will, by something he didn’t understand. Then, belatedly and without looking away, he added, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” That soothed him. Joseph had to be guessing at something, didn’t he? Guessing, that made a kind of sense. But such a good guess - the thought fractured. The color had drained from his face. He wasn’t trying to bring anyone back, anyway, so Joseph didn’t know what he was talking about in that regard either. Still, he sat across from an unknown variable, frightening in a way. “Tell me where you know me from.” He was tensed. If Joseph didn’t say something, there was little doubt he would bolt. Or stumble his way out, as it was.
Joseph considered just reminding Louis about the wedding. It would be the easier confession, but he was so removed from what he'd done that summer, and so worried about Trystan running his mouth on the journals, that he went with the harder confession instead. "Saw Evan in jail. Know about him from the first accident. Pulled those kids from the car." He wasn't expecting that statement to go well. In fact, he was expecting questions, ones that were similar to the ones Cory had voiced. "Didn't say anything important when I saw him. Was fine. Deserves to do the time," he added, trying to cut it all off at the pass.
Louis pulled his hands away from the table, quickly, and looked toward the door. He should just go. He really should.
"How do you know him?" Louis asked instead. But wait, he’d answered that question. “How did you know he was there?” And how did Joseph know that Louis knew Evan? He was rooted to the spot. He wanted to run, but his growing horror, he realized he had to know what was going on. "You were at the accident - but I wasn't there, you don't know me from there." It was too much information to put together at once, like someone had turned a puzzle upside down in front of him. All the pieces were out on the table, but his thoughts were still too slow to find their places. "Did he ask -" He cut himself off, biting his lower lip hard. About him. No, of course Evan wouldn't have asked about him, why would he ask someone about Louis who didn't know him, or who shouldn't know him, or who had barely known him, once, how he was doing? And why would he ask at all? Of course he hadn't asked. "You don't know him," Louis said, not knowing what else to say, voice gone rough, eyes wide and wet, mouth trembling, just a little. There was pain, raw and undisguised and ugly. The drink couldn't mask it. This, this was why he'd made an agreement with himself not to think about Evan, or talk about him. He reached for the cup of coffee to have something for his shaking hands to do, and pulled the mug into his lap without drinking from it, clasping his fingers tight around the speckled tin, heat slowly searing into his palms. The hurt underneath ran so deep he was afraid of it. He was angry, too. Why had he defended Evan? Why was he still defending him? Why did he still care if he asked for him? He clung to one certainty - he would not cry at this stranger’s table. He would not become the actual image of pathetic. He should have just gone home when he left the casino. "He could have been better," he said to the dark coffee, the hollow, sad faith of a betrayed child.
Joseph listened to the half-sentences, and he watched the maelstrom of emotions that crossed Louis' face. He let Louis answer his own questions, and he let the other man fade into a hollow assertion that even he (Louis) didn't believe. "Saw the second accident," he said of how he'd known where Evan was. "Would have known the name when he was arrested anyway," he said, reaching for his discarded pants on the doorknob of the bathroom door and flipping the belt enough to show his badge. "Don't forget the name that makes you become a cop," he said truthfully. As for not knowing Evan, he shook his head. "Know him. Trust me. Might be better after he does his time. Maybe, but has to be his own choice. Not anyone else's." He ignored the entire matter of how he knew who Louis was. Maybe Louis was drunk enough that he'd forget to pursue it.
Louis lifted the mug of coffee to his lips and sipped from it, mechanically, like it would wake him enough to make him able to handle this conversation. "They're saying he'll get twenty years," Louis said, when Joseph said he might be better when he came out. "At least." He wouldn't have been surprised if they found more charges to level against him, extend his sentence. He turned dull eyes up to look at the badge when Joseph flashed it, registering it against the growing numbness. It had been Evan's choice, that was right. He had been pushed to it by that awful girl, but, in the end, it had been his decision to make. Louis had held out a small fragment of hope that he might be enough to keep Evan from going back, and when he thought of him now, his mind returned again and again to Evan's back on the bed, before he'd gone to the clinic, before he'd gotten in the second accident and sealed his fate. He thought first, always, of Evan, lying there, turned away from him. But Evan's folly had turned the man across from him into a police officer. "Well. Some good came from it," he said, without feeling. “I worked in the CID in London’s police force.” It felt like a life that had happened to someone he didn’t know, someone who had been driven and focused on clawing his way up through the ranks, proving he was worth something, even if that was the only thing he was worth. He was looking down again. The presence at the back of his mind itched at him.
None of his thoughts seemed to quite connect, and Joseph was quiet for such long stretches that Louis continued to voice his thoughts as they came. "I haven't been to visit him," Louis said. He could see his reflection in the still surface in the coffee mug, and he pulled his hands closer to his body, until he couldn't anymore. No, he hadn't gone to see Evan. He'd known better than to do a thing like that. "I’ll be fine," he assured no one. He didn't look up, even then. If he shoved forward long enough and forcefully enough, perhaps his emotions would catch up to logic. At least the worst of it felt like it was fading back, now, after Joseph’s matter of fact response.
Joseph made a sound of agreement when Louis mentioned the twenty-year sentence, and he didn't make any sound of agreement at all about becoming a cop. He thought a girl's life was more important than him finding his way into a uniform, and he didn't think Louis needed that argument just then. "CID?" he asked, because he'd gone from a fishing boat, to hauling bales of hay, to walking a beat, and all without college or going anywhere outside the country. His GED ensured he was literate, but he didn't know what a CID was.
The comment about not going to see Evan seemed out of place to Joseph. Delayed. But he wasn't surprised by it. "Upstate now. Long-term facility," he explained of where Evan had been moved to. Not that it meant Louis couldn't visit, but it wasn't close, and he didn't think Louis would get anything from it anyway. He made a sound of uncertainty when Louis said he'd be fine, and he brought his own tin cup to his lips. "Not fine now," he told the other man. He might not be very schooled, but he was observant. "Just a break up. You'll get over it," he said, and it might seem calloused, but it was the practical kind of thing a seaman would say. Not romantic, and harsh like the ocean was harsh.
Louis had begun to feel sick, so he drank down another swallow of coffee like medicine, reasoning that it might help. He didn't even like his coffee black, but he didn't want to reach for the sugar now, after he'd already started drinking it. "Criminal Investigation Department," he said. "Detective work." That should put it into perspective for an American officer, he assumed.
Louis tried to imagine where Evan was now, what kind of place the long-term facility was, but he could only remember the memory he'd seen of what prison had been like for Evan the first time, and the thought of it being like that again drew up such a sharp twist of horror and revulsion that he pulled back from it immediately. Now he really, truly felt sick.
"Get over it," Louis repeated. He was a thousand miles away, his tone like he was speaking from the bottom of a well. There would be no getting over it. There would only be pushing past, and leaving behind, and bottling away, or he would really break down, worse than this, so much worse. If he treated it like a lesson, it felt less like his life had turned into a nightmare, where there was a psychotic in his head who might take control of him at any moment, and he was responsible for putting the man he loved into jail, someone who didn't love him, someone who perhaps never had. And this was why he hadn't been thinking about it, again, because the more he did, the worse it was, until he felt like he would simply be swept away by it, or lose control of himself completely, which would be inexcusable. Louis bit the side of his tongue, bile rising in the back of his throat, and tried to decide whether or not he should just go outside and throw up in the bushes, or use this stranger's bathroom. He couldn't decide which would be more humiliating.
The explanation of the detective work earned Louis a hum of understanding. Joseph wasn't a detective, but he understood what it meant to be one. Not his particular area of interest and, sitting there and looking at the frail man across from him, he wondered that Louis had ever made it as a street cop without falling to pieces. Maybe that wasn't required in London, doing time on a beat.
The repetition of 'get over it,' didn't make Joseph feel guilty, though there was something like regret at hearing it thrown back at him. His wife had left him, took their son, never looked back. Joseph had gotten over it, and he figured everyone had to learn to get over things like that in life. Nothing was guaranteed, and maybe it was life on the unforgiving ocean that had taught him that lesson. His childhood was all about waiting who the sea would claim that season, not waiting to see if she would; the sea always claimed a lover with each new tide of the season.
Joseph watched Louis bite his tongue, and he reached for his discarded cell. "Call you a cab," he said, part offer, part commend, nothing like a question. He wasn't doing much good here with his blunt ways, he knew, and he wasn't the kind of man to lie in order to make the man across from his feel better. The cab company put him on hold, and he gave Louis a long, hard look. "He's fine. Not lying. He's fine." Maybe that would help. Maybe it wouldn't. It hadn't with Cory, and he wondered if Louis and Cory had talked. Maybe they could make each other feel better.
Louis forced himself to drink a little more of the coffee, and staved off the burning in the back of his throat. He was so tired. Sleep might help. He was having a difficult time, lately, picturing a future in which anything fixed this. They said time healed all wounds, but, per usual, it was almost impossible to believe just then, in the thick of it. Perhaps he could at least go back to the way he'd been before Evan, forging forward and expecting nothing. It would still hurt, knowing what had slipped through his fingers, what he was likely never to find again, but it would be better than this.
At the very least, Louis ought to stop embarrassing himself in front of a complete stranger. He nodded when Joseph promised to call him a cab, and looked back at him, when he promised that Evan was fine. Louis believed that Joseph believed what he said, but he still remembered what he'd seen, that memory of pills and numb semi-consciousness and horror. But if he was fine, if what Joseph said was true, that was good. Louis might never see Evan again, but that didn't change how he felt about him. It would have been easier if things had simply broken off cleanly, and not been tied up in Evan falling off the wagon and going back to jail, the mistakes he’d made that had driven him to that end. As things stood now, he was still in love with Evan, as much as he had been during the brief time they were together. Even scorched by bitterness and anger and betrayal, he didn't know how long that would take to fade. It would be hard to forget. For a little while, Evan had made him feel as if he was worth something.
He set his coffee down on the table. "Thank you," Louis said, quietly, with a wan smile, "For your generosity." He was grateful, as much as he was ashamed of himself, as he began to sober up. He swallowed again, but he didn't feel in danger of being sick anymore. “I’m sure I just ruined your evening.”
Joseph was sure his entire conversation with the man across from him had been a farce. Him saying things, Louis agreeing with meaning any of them. But Joseph wasn't the pushing type, and he respected the man needing time to get over things with Evan. Never, for a moment, did he suspect it was as bad as it was. Joseph gauged connections in time. Years made for stronger ties than weeks, and he thought the amount of time required to recover went hand-in-hand with that. But it had been a long time since he'd cared about anyone in that way, and he knew he wasn't an expert.
"Didn't ruin my night," Joseph replied honestly, as he heard the cab pull up outside the RV. "Just talking. Talking doesn't ruin anything," he said surely. Maybe that was the cop in him talking, the one who saw atrocities every night, and who didn't think very much of small problems. When it was quiet, he worried about his own loved ones, long gone, wondered where his boy was, but those things weren't things he shared. Salt barked at the cab, and Joseph offered up a smile. "Need anything, know where to find me," he offered, and he meant it. Not that he could do much, but the offer was still genuine.
Louis saw the cab from the door and pushed himself up from the table, wobbling slightly before completely finding his feet. "Thank you," he repeated. He didn't know then whether he would or not. It was likely he'd still burn with too much embarrassment to seek help from him, but he might talk to him again. He still had to find out where he knew him from, after all - he hadn't entirely forgotten the question, but he was much too tired to look for the answer now. He set his coffee mug politely in the sink on the way out, and ran long fingers briefly over the dog's shaggy head before braving the stairs down to the cab.