Liam Roberts is an (author) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-10-21 19:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | christine daae, raoul de chagny |
Who: Liam & Sam
What: Sleepover
Where: Liam's room at the Wynn
When: After this conversation.
Warnings/Rating: Mention of drugs, some cursing. It's Sam, after all.
He realised that Jack had advised against telling anyone where he was, but Sam wasn’t just anyone. And it seemed that she knew Jack, so he didn’t really think she counted into the number of people Jack was advising him against relaying information to. That, and the prospect of company for the night, someone he trusted, at that, was far too appealing to turn down. So he gave her the hotel, the room number, ducked his head out into the hallway to give a heads up to the two security guards that were keeping post outside his door about her upcoming visit, going so far as to give them a picture from his phone so they knew who they were looking for. That done, Liam settled back into his favourite activity since things got so exciting: pacing.
Empty energy drink cans littered the top of the dresser along with the amber vial of pills that Jack had sent over. Something to help him sleep and something to sedate him, neither of which were on his agenda for the night. Sleep meant vulnerability, vulnerability meant he could be hurt, and he had had more than enough time spent being vulnerable under Tristan’s hands to leave himself in that position again. So another energy drink was cracked open, something artificially sweet and brimming with enough caffeine to leave his heart pounding and his hands shaking, but it drove away that desire to sleep, and that was enough for him.
He gave a glance to the journal laying on the bedside table, the leather cord wound around it and knotted off, some effort at keeping himself from the thing, but it was hardly secure in the slightest. It did, however, keep him from getting a glimpse at all of Tristan’s promises, the thought of which had his stomach twisting and turning. When the bile rose in his throat, Liam beelined towards the bathroom, filling a glass with water to wash the bitterness away, just as the knock came at the door. Wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand, he peered through the peephole to see Sam’s familiar form standing just outside, and secure in the knowledge that it was her and no one else, the locks were thrown and the door pulled open.
Sam was in a shitty mood, and it had nothing to do with the hotel's bullshit for once.
She showed up at Liam's temporary door dressed in camo leggings and one of Neil's stolen button downs, her hair in two pigtails and heavy combat boots on her feet. She was no worse for wear, had no bruises anywhere on her, and was (relatively) straight. There was some meth in her system, but that was her new escape of choice, and it was one that most of the people around her wouldn't pick up on. No needle marks, no sniffing, no smell of booze on her skin. So, yeah, she was pretty fucking chill as she knocked and waited for the door to be opened, giving the security guy a look that said she knew she was too low rent for this place, but she didn't really give a shit.
There was a bag over her shoulder with a few things she might need. Some more meth, something wood to whittle at, her iPad, her journal and a few changes of clothing. She wasn't moving into this place or anything, but she appreciated the chance to get away and talk to someone she trusted - and when the fuck had that happened? Liam's transition from complete ass to friend was something that snuck up on her, but whatever, she was going to just accept it. So, yeah, maybe she had offered to come for her own selfish reasons, because Tristan was absolutely fucking terrifying to consider angering otherwise, but she was feeling a little better about her fears since the hotel. Huh, fucking hotel giveth, fucking hotel taketh away.
When the door open, she shoved in like she owned the place, and she gave Liam a look over. "Hey, baby."
Sam was a familiar person, trusted, someone Liam felt he could count on in more ways than one. So when she shoved in the room with a walk that claimed ownership, Liam simply stepped aside and let her in, the door pressed closed behind him, each lock thrown to provide some modicum of security. “Hey yourself,” Liam responded, arms folding over his chest, fingers tucked up and under his arms, still for as long as it took for her to look him over, and then he was moving away from the door. His strides were quick and long, taking him across the room in only a matter of moments before he turned on his heel and pointed at the single king sized bed that dominated the room. “If I had known I was going to have a sleepover, I would have gotten two beds. But. I don’t think I’ll be sleeping. So. It’s yours.” Liam was not a person who ever became nervous, stressed, upset, but here, he was frazzled. A laptop lay on the floor beside one wall, forgotten for the moment, but other than that and the multitude of chips and energy drinks that cluttered the surfaces, there was nothing personal with him. No clothing, not even a bag of toiletries. The room was clearly a spur of the moment decision with no planning in it.
After looking him over, she looked around the room. "Spur of the moment decision, huh?" she asked, moving away from the door and tossing her bag on a chair, before flopping back onto the bed. She still kept an eye on him, keeping track of his location in the room, but she was more relaxed than she'd been the last time they'd been in a room with a bed together. But that was before things had shifted all over the fucking place too, and everything felt safer now with him.
She smacked a hand down on the mattress. "This shit is so not as nice as the bed in Aria," she told him, turning onto her side and glancing over toward the chips and power drinks. "You'll have to sleep eventually, Liam. Lie the fuck down and tell me what happened." Because whatever had happened with Tristan at the hotel had obviously fucked him up. She kicked her heavy boots off, letting them fall off the side of the bed with a thud, and she looked at the nightstands for an ashtray. It better not be a nonsmoking room, or it would be a really long fucking night.
“Something along those lines. Better here than skipping town, right?” Liam managed a faint smile, an expression that failed to reach tired blue eyes, and before he gave in to her demands that he come to the bed, he moved over to grab one of the energy drinks, something in a garish green can. Cracking it open, he sat down on the mattress beside her, draining half of the drink down before he said anything else. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her right then, both hands curled around the can, bare toes pressing into the thin pile of the carpet, eyes fixed on the ground.
“Do you want the part where we fucked, or the part where she killed me.” There was something distinctly hysterical rising in his voice, and as the words left his mouth, Liam got back up to his feet, drink in hand, to pace. It was a familiar path, one he had been treading a better part of the evening, gaze constantly flicking towards the door as though he were afraid she would burst in at any minute. “Tell me about your evening. I’d rather hear about that,” he finally insisted, pausing long enough to look at her before that pacing began again.
"There's nothing wrong with skipping town when there's a psychopath stalking you, baby," Sam replied, noticing that smile that didn't reach his eyes. This new lifestyle of his wasn't doing a fucking thing for him, but that would sound judgemental and, amazingly, she kept her mouth shut about it for once. Instead, she just watched him with the drink, noting the shameful way he didn't meet her gaze, and she tried not to wince when he mentioned the fucking and killing. "Have you talked to her since?" Because she knew Liam. She would bet her fucking MIG that he had.
When he started pacing, she scooted back against the headboard, sitting up and pulling a pack of smokes from the front pocket of her shirt. She tapped one out, lit it, and pulled an ashtray off the nightstand and set it on one of her thighs as she watched him. "My evening was boring, Liam. I talked to some woman who got handsy, but I made her fuck off, and then I talked to someone about wine. Nothing big happened other than me not being afraid for the first time in a really long fucking time, even about the shit I wanted, which I can't ever remembering happening. There. A happy fucking story to go with your shitty one."
Liam glanced up towards her for a moment at the mention of skipping town before he gave a shake of his head. “If I start running now, I don’t know that I would come back. Once you start running from something, it’s hard to stop.” The pacing picked up anew, another drink, nervous movements that were wholly foreign for the usually calm and collected Southern boy. “And yeah, I’ve talked to her. I don’t know why I talk to her, but I did.” His pacing paused as he moved over towards the nightstand after Sam plucked the ashtray from its surface, unknotting the leather cord that held his journal closed, and in a moment, he had flipped it open to his most recent conversation with Tristan. “She’s charming. Read for yourself.”
The pacing continued as Sam spoke of her own evening, and he had to admit that he was glad she hadn’t had a traumatic one. She had enough horrible things in her life without the hotel exacerbating things even further. Dropping down to sit on the edge of the bed, Liam turned to look at her, quiet for several moments. “I’m glad it wasn’t horrible for you. Boring, I would take boring. Boring is good.”
Tristan was fucking nuts. Sam had always known that a little, but reading the shit in Liam's journal only drove that truth home like a fucking knife to the gut. She'd always appreciated how fiercely protective Tristan could be, how she always felt like Tristan would fuck up the world to keep her safe. But now, on the other side, it was just a fucking nutcase making claims that belonged in some fucking horror movie. Sam shuddered, and she set the journal aside and then pushed it even further away with her fingertips. "You contacted her. Why? Why are you obsessed with her, Liam?" she asked, and she really wanted to understand. Sam ran away from dangerous shit as fast as her feet could carry her, and she didn't understand why Liam ran toward it. Sure, Sam liked her thrills, but this wasn't thrills. This was fucking insanity.
As for her own night, she shrugged. "Yeah, it was nice. Bitch to wake up and have all that bad crap back, but it was nice for a night." It hadn't changed anything, though, not really.
“I’m not obsessed with her,” Liam countered, but as soon as he had said it, he knew that wasn’t the entire truth. Why had he contacted her? Perhaps on the hope that the person he had been with at the hotel wasn’t her, that he would receive some confirmation of that. Or maybe he was obsessed, a moth drawn towards the flame that would singe its wings. He needed to leave her alone, to back so far away from it all, but still, he found himself coming back to her, talking to her, punishing himself. Sighing, Liam flopped back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling with both hands resting on his stomach. “I’m obsessed with her, aren’t I? Normal people don’t keep talking to the person they’re scared shitless of. If you were the one doing this, I would have you committed.” He turned his head to the side, giving her a long look. “Thanks for coming over. It - I needed that.”
She watched him flop onto his back, and the smile she gave him was undeniably fond. Fucking idiot, but she had come to care about him over the months. "You're obsessed," she agreed, because maybe if he accepted it then he'd figure out why. "You like people that treat you like shit, baby. We're friends, aren't we?" she asked, proof that he liked people who made it difficult for him. She wasn't a shrink, but she was sure there was something there to look into. "I would run as fucking fast as I could in the other direction, Liam. I have the self-preservation skills of prey. I hide, I run, and I don't want get caught. You walk right the fuck into the fire." She was a little impressed, even if he was an idiot.
She shrugged when he thanked her. "No big fucking deal. I wanted to get out of the suite anyway. Things with Neil are fucked, and I have no idea what the fuck is going on in my life. So, coming here was completely selfish. You have enough shit going on that you don't try to fix my life." Not that anyone else did, either, and maybe that was part of the problem. Iris was insane, and Tess didn't like static, and Neil? Neil was just Neil.
Liam’s brows rose at that comment before he simply rolled his eyes and looked back up towards the ceiling. “You don’t treat me like shit, Sam,” he countered, though he supposed there was some truth in her words when he looked at it close enough. But examining things, trying to puzzle them out, that wasn’t what he wanted to be doing right then. The situation was too close, the emotions too raw, and he hadn’t slept since before the hotel had pulled them all in for that little fiesta. “Running isn’t my thing, though. Well, I’ll run as far as the Wynn, but you know what I mean.” He let out a sigh and pushed himself back up, hands propping him up on the mattress. “And you know you’re always welcome to come see me if you ever need a place.” A glance in her direction and Liam was back on his feet, pacing over towards where the pills Jack had sent over rested on the dresser. The two vials were picked up and he moved back over to sit with Sam, settling with his head resting against one of her legs.
“Jack seems to think these are a good idea. I don’t like ‘em though, Sam. I might have asked you for them once, but...” A soft sigh escaped him and the two bottles fell to the bed as he covered his face with his hands. “I don’t like being out of control, right now. I feel like she’ll find me if I let my guard down.”
She watched his progress toward the pills, and man did she understand that fucking shit. She was the queen of medicating, wasn't she? "Yeah, well, you get used to it," she said of the pills, and she leaned over to put her cigarette out, watching the trailing smoke for a few seconds before turning back to look at him again. "She isn't going to come in here while we sleep. Now get your ass back here, so we can both crash," she told him. She hadn't been expecting him to try to fix her problems, even if she mentioned them. He was like Iris that way, tied up in his own shit, but that's part of what she liked about talking to them; they didn't shrink her, and they were a good distraction from whatever was going on with her. "Drink the fucking thing and get back here," she repeated. She knew he didn't plan on sleeping, but she also knew it was easier to crash with someone else in the room, especially when things were scary as fuck. And it wasn't even that Boss didn't scare her; Boss did. But it was a manageable fear, and those were a nice fucking change of pace these days.
His hands fell away from his face, turning towards her as she spoke, quiet for a long moment. Finally he gave a nod, coming to some sort of decision as he sat back up and finished the last few swallows of his drink, going so far as to take one of the pills that Jack had sent over. That done, he crawled up onto the mattress with her, settling on his left side facing her. “You know something, Sam?” Liam murmured, tucking one arm up beneath his head, trying to relax. It was an effort to do so, his heart still pounding frantically, cheeks flushed from all the caffeine and other stimulants in his system. “It’s not that I like people who treat me like shit. It’s that I’m drawn to people who don’t mind telling me what to do. Because you don’t treat me like shit, but you’ll certainly tell me to sit the fuck down.” There was a faint, tight smile. “You mind leaving the lights on?”
"Someone needs to tell you to sit the fuck down every once in awhile, Liam," Sam assured him, bluntly fond exasperation in her tone. "You need to find some decent fucking asshole who'll spank you, but who doesn't threatened to eat your heart out with fucking ketchup." Asshole, as in male, because Sam had firmly decided that Liam was as gay as they came. It made her grin, remembering their first meeting in a dark and dusty motel, and she yawned and pulled an exasperated face about the lights. "Fine, but no snoring," she warned him, but she wasn't actually serious. She didn't expect to get much sleep, a fact which she drove home by grabbing the remote and turning on the television, closed captioned and muted, to some infomercial for a dishtowel. She considered ruffling his hair, but that kind of affection only came easily with Tessy, and so she just shoved his shoulder lightly. "Goodnight."
The blankets were tugged up, just around his waist. “If you meet one of those decent assholes, send them my way. Male or female. I’m learning not to be choosy anymore.” Because even though Sam might have decided what he was, Liam was still wavering, sitting on the edge of something that he was wary of. But that was for later. Instead, he gave her a cheeky grin, one that was actually honest, before he rolled over onto his stomach and shoved both arms under his pillow, drawing it up and under his head and chin. “Goodnight, beautiful,” Liam said in return to the shove, and then those blue eyes were closing. He might not sleep for a while, but at least there was some peace in not being alone.