loki laufeyson (toberuled) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-11-12 20:01:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | eames, loki |
Who: Joseph and Louis
What: Drinks and a not so successful attempt at kissing.
Where: A local bar.
When: Recently.
Warnings/Rating: Nope.
Louis had chosen to meet with Joseph not because Eames had told him to, but because he felt he owed the other man something for putting up with him. A few drinks, at least, and perhaps enough distraction to take his mind off an issue that could cost him his life if he pressed it too far. He didn’t know if he’d be able to manage that. He wasn’t sure he had the faith that Eames did that it would be so easy, but he could try, at least. It was a step, perhaps, in the right direction.
Keeping in mind Joseph’s line of work, his dress, and his trailer, he hadn’t chosen a particularly expensive place. It was clean and respectable, but dimly lit and decidedly casual, a popular neighborhood spot. He’d dressed down from his usual well-pressed, clean-lined, conservative pieces, just a button up cornflower blue shirt with the cuffs rolled back, no jacket or tie in sight. He’d tamed his hair, as he’d gotten into the habit of recently, so it wasn’t quite as unruly, and tried to look at himself in the mirror and see the statue from the party, the one who had been so sure that everyone wanted him. It made him think of Eames again, a bit guiltily. He didn’t know what sort of effect having sex with him might have on the other man’s relationship, but it wasn’t going to be good. Even if it had been a random encounter under the influence of the hotel, the regret over the consequences of it lingered.
Louis arrived at the bar at 11, just on time. The room was thick with people, busy and full, but he found a space at the bar without too much difficulty. He ordered a drink, scotch on the rocks, and glanced around for Joseph, checking the door with his eyes. He had been very, very drunk when they last spoke, but there would be no mistaking him. He’d made something of an impression, and he did stand out from a crowd.
Joseph had gotten off patrol an hour earlier. He'd gone back to the RV, and he'd showered and changed into jeans and a white button-down. He'd shaved away his five o'clock shadow, and he'd stepped into some boring brown shoes, and he'd walked Salt. He'd tried not to think too much while he was doing any of these things. This was just drinks. The fact that he'd been feeling strange since that party didn't factor. Drinks, and he'd shut the door to the RV and promised Salt he'd be home in time to watch the first round of nightly infomercials.
The walk to the bar Louis had selected was short, and Joseph made it with a cigarette between his lips and a slow stroll. He watched his city as he went, and he listened (in the way off-duty cops do). It was getting colder. Felt like holidays. Joseph took as many shifts as he could manage during the holidays. Didn't like thinking about trees and tinsel and boxes wrapped up crooked. It always made him think of a little boy's laughter, and that made him think about everything. Joseph didn't like thinking.
Outside the bar, Joseph stubbed out the cigarette. He walked in, looked around the place, and he found Louis at the bar with little difficulty. It made him think of Casey, who he'd seen Louis talking to on the journals. Everything was bringing things back these days. Even Trystan and his refusal to eat. He walked through the crowd, broad shoulders and cop-stiff gait, and he edged up beside Louis at the bar and ordered himself whatever was on tap. Elbows on the sticky wood, Joseph looked over at Louis. "Good choice," he said of the place, which was casual enough not to be the kind of trouble a cop couldn't resist getting involved him. "Brother send you?" he asked - his new theory since seeing Casey's name on the journals.
Louis picked up his drink as Joseph approached, under the impression it would mask his worry. He was tired, having spent the entire day tracking down a missing sister for a very rich resident of Turnberry, and it helped to make him a bit less nervous. Less energy made it a little harder to get shifty with anxiety about how he was doing. Joseph did indeed stand out from the crowd - Louis spotted him the second he walked in the door. He smiled a little when Joseph complimented him on the bar, relaxing a bit. At least he'd judged him accurately.
The question about Louis’ brother was a surprise, though. "Neil?" he asked, instinctively. Neil had been on his mind a lot this week, since his alter had switched, apparently with catastrophic results. How bad it would be in the long run remained to be seen. Then he remembered Casey, fresh in town, and added, "Or Casey? And, no, no, neither of them asked me." He kept his eyes up. He wasn't going to scare Joseph off right from the outset by indulging his itching urge to just let his eyes linger for a while on the sharp outline of his arms as he leaned against the bar, or, worse, his lips while he was talking.
Joseph didn't react to Neil's name, but Casey's got a rough grunt of a sound, just before he brought the newly-provided beer to his lips. He wasn't sure if he felt better or worse, now that he knew Casey wasn't behind any of this.
Years had passed - so many years - but Joseph remembered every last thing about Casey Donovan. He had to blink that away as he turned slightly to look at Louis, and he didn't think anything about that odd aversion of eyes the other man gave him. "Then why? Eames?" he asked, because he was getting more comfortable with the idea of Eames these days. He didn't immediately think the British man was trying to set him up by sending Louis to him.
"Don't care why Eames wanted you to get in touch with me. Care about why you actually did," Joseph explained, taking another swallow of his beer.
Louis shifted a bit, glass in hand. "Well..." but then Joseph went on to shift away from the subject, so it wasn't necessary to confirm what was likely already obvious. "...I wanted another chance to talk to you," he said, because 'I like you' apparently wasn't awkward enough. He resisted the urge to just down the rest of his drink. That hadn't gone so well the last time. "Sober. Or more sober, anyway." He ran his fingers through his hair. "I wasn't exactly at my best when we last spoke. I owe you more than a drink for that."
Louis did take another sip of his scotch, then. Neatly handled, that awkward question, handled with grace and more awkwardness. "How do you know Casey?" He had caught the vague affirmation at his name. "I didn't know you knew anyone in the family." Something nudged Louis' memory, but didn't quite catch, there but not quite.
"Don't owe me anything," Joseph said honestly. "Don't keep track of those things," he assured Louis, and he wasn't just saying that to say it. Was the truth. Plain and simple. If Louis had said he wanted to talk to him because he liked him, that would have gotten a different response. Joseph was a plain man, and he didn't read into the things people said. Louis' reason was taken at face value. It was what it was.
Joseph pulled a pack of smokes from the front pocket of his shirt, and he tossed the pack on the bar, a silver lighter with a boat engraved on the front tucked inside the plastic. He lit one, after glancing around to make sure others were smoking, and he flicked the lighter cap with his thumb, even as he pushed the pack over to Louis, in case the other man wanted one. "Knew Casey once. Remember you too. Tried to tell you before," he explained. He did remember Louis, clearer now that he'd seen him twice. Remembered him as being quiet and uncomfortable in his own skin. Nothing like Casey.
Louis looked down at the pack for a moment before plucking a cigarette from it. It couldn't hurt, he supposed. He was beginning to feel as if he'd already managed to say the wrong thing about two minutes into the conversation. Maybe choking the oxygen to his brain would help, somehow. He extracted the cigarette with long, careful fingers, tapping it on the bar. He took another sip of his scotch while he waited for use of the lighter. "If I'm honest, I don't really remember all of what you said when we last spoke in person," he said. He did remember Joseph's recognition, though, and it filtered through what he could recall of the conversation. "...I thought you recognized me because of Evan," Louis said, moving swiftly past the name so it didn't have time to call up those unpleasant feelings he seemed to be getting better at boxing up and putting away. "You weren't...with Casey at a wedding once, were you?"
The incident sprang to mind immediately. The embarrassment of his parents, their shame and anger that Casey would bring someone so rough to such an important family event as his sister's wedding. He remembered it still, clear as day. He'd been younger then, just as thin and willowy and unsure as he was now, more so. That incident had been one of the reasons he became sure that staying in London to work for the police was the right thing to do, rather than moving closer to home again. His parents, he knew, as he burned with anger at how they were treating his brother and his date, were not people he wanted to live close to anymore. Casey had always been the member of his family he had looked up to most. He had always been so charming, so successful, and everyone loved him, for good reason. He’d been a font of excitement and happiness when he was in the house, and when he’d left, Louis had missed him. It became a harder place to live, with Casey gone.
"Not surprised," Joseph said of Louis not remembering their previous conversation. "Surprised you remember any of it," he admitted. Not angry. Just the facts. He watched Louis' fingers on the cigarettes, long and tapered fingers that were nothing like his own strong and stocky ones, scared over from nets and lines. The question about Casey was answered with a grunt, a wordless yes, and he didn't look up from Louis' fingers as he made the sound. He wasn't sure how much Louis remembered about the wedding. He didn't want to remember it - or Casey - at all, if he could help it.
Joseph filled the silence that followed with a long pull on his own cigarette, and he looked straight ahead as he tapped it out on the ashtray that the bartender had pushed over. The lighter was back between his fingers a moment later, open and close, and open and close, and the soothing click a thing heard over the din of the bar. He finished off his beer, and he asked for another. He was off duty. He'd walked. It was fine. Helped with the not thinking. "Alright after the party?" he finally asked, something to fill the silence. He knew Eames had slept with Louis at the thing, and he knew Eames was on his ass because of it. Kept that to himself, though.
Louis watched Joseph's eyes on his hands. His mother had been convinced, when he was a boy, that his long fingers meant he had a destiny in playing the piano, or the violin, but it had never stuck. He went to lessons dutifully, but had no talent for music, to his parents' chagrin. They remained free of calluses, stained a little around the knuckled from ink, writing reports at work. He liked to write them by hand before recording them on the computer, get his thoughts out in an analog rush, then edit them on the machine. "I'm sorry about that," he said, despite the lack of accusation in his tone. "I don't normally...drink much." That much was true. It had never been his vice, not until recently. "I know it isn't worth much now, but I didn't think it was right, the way they acted. My parents, I mean." He huffed a breath. "And by 'I didn't think it was right', I mean to say it wasn't right. At all." He swirled the liquid in his glass. "Cold comfort now, I'm sure." He remembered finding Casey's date striking, rough around the edges or not, but it had been almost an academic observation. Men that attractive tended to fall into the category Louis self-selected out of by designating them out of his league. He'd just wanted his parents to leave Casey alone and let him have a good time at the wedding with his date, rather than making everyone uncomfortable.
Louis took a drag from his cigarette, grateful to have something to do with his hands other than pick up and set down this glass, and fixed it between his fingers. He exhaled the smoke through his nostrils. "Alright, yes, thank you." He watched Joseph for a second, wondering if he knew about Eames or not. "What was it like for you?" His voice grew a little quieter. He doubted Joseph would even answer the question - he seemed averse to extended sentences or personal subjects. But he wanted to know what this strange, terse man might have experienced at that party.
"Nothing wrong with drinking," Joseph said, non-judgemental. If there wasn't violence, driving or addiction involved, wasn't anything wrong with getting lost in a bottle when things got bad. "Evan was gone. Were upset," he said unnecessarily. He didn't like Evan Hampton. Didn't like the things Evan Hampton had done. But that didn't extend to the man at his side. Couldn't blame him for loving someone who wasn't worth it. Didn't say that though. It wouldn't go over well. As for his parents, that statement earned Louis a shrug. "Was there for shock. Just didn't know it. Wouldn't have gone if I had." Because that was true. No matter what he had felt for Casey, how much he had felt for Casey, he wouldn't have let himself be familial revenge. He was easygoing, but not that easygoing. "Never talked to him after. One time thing." Men. Men were a one-time thing. One summer. "Was married anyway," he said into his fresh beer, taking a long swallow as soon as the words were out.
"Informative." That was Joseph's response about the party. He wasn't ashamed of what he'd been; he knew himself too well for that. That happened when you spent most of your time alone - you thought about things. "Know about Eames," he added, because he was on beer three, and on cigarette two, and why not?
Louis sipped from his glass. He was determined to meter his drinking this evening, though it would have relaxed him and made the conversation easier if he overindulged. Yes, he had been upset, and he was still. Pressing on, however, seemed the only way for anything to improve. And besides - he had learned his lesson. Next time, he would hold more of himself back, wait before getting so attached. If there was a next time. He wasn't expecting one.
"I don't think that's true," Louis said. There for shock? Not likely. Well, perhaps a bit. Casey undoubtedly wanted to see the looks on their parents’ faces. But he wasn't so cruel as to bring him only for that. "Casey wouldn't have brought you if he didn't want you there with him." Louis' conviction on that was firm. Whatever faults his brother might have, putting someone into a situation like that to watch them squirm and feel miserable wasn't one of them.
That Joseph had been married at the time was a stranger thing. If Eames' assumption about Joseph was right, then he was, or had been, even further in the closet than Louis thought. The surprise registered on his face before fading. "Oh." He wondered if Casey had known Joseph had a wife. It might be a good idea to ask. "I didn't know." He took another sip of the scotch, now mixed heavily with water from the melting ice, then set the it down, occupying himself with his cigarette. "I know I likely can't convince you otherwise, but Casey isn't a bad man. I really don't believe he meant for things to work out that way." Louis put the cigarette to his lips, taking a short drag before letting the smoke billow gently, thoughtlessly, from his mouth. His mind was otherwise occupied, with a nagging insecurity he hadn't even known he would feel until this moment. Of course, he hadn't known about Joseph and Casey until now, either. "...Are you still interested in him?" Louis asked. His eyes, slate colored in the low light at the bar, were keen. Jospeh said so little that he felt he might miss a few dozen sentences if he didn't keep watching his body language every second.
It was hard to tell, since it was dim enough, but Louis might have colored a little, high on his cheeks. "Yes, well." He nudged the scotch glass with his fingers. "I feel terribly about it, really." He looked up from the glass. "I wouldn't have...I'm not in the business of going around with people who are with someone else. I don't do that sort of thing. I wouldn't have, if I'd known." He picked up the glass again. For all his resolve not to constantly pick it up and put it down, here he was, doing just that. "How was it informative?"
Joseph made a sound, one that was clearly disagreement, but he didn't voice it. He'd understood at the time. It'd been clear. Louis was going to defend his brother, no matter what. He wasn't going to change that. No point trying. Didn't really want to anyway. It'd been long years. Who knew what kind of many Casey had grown up to be?
Louis' comment about not knowing he'd had a wife made Joseph chuckle. "No reason you would have. Not when I was there with Casey. One time thing. Mistake. Not who I am." And there was that closet, deep and dark and shut tightly. "Never said Casey was bad. Spent the summer with him. Knew him. Not a bad person." Because regardless of what had happened, of the opportunistic invite to the wedding, Joseph didn't think Casey had spent that summer on the docks just to use him. Confused kid. Messed up family. Explained a lot, and he didn't harbor any anger there. "Haven't thought about him in years. Not still interested," Joseph explained. "Not who I am," he repeated, and it made him think of Trystan and that one attempt after Casey, the one that had gone terrible wrong. No. Definitely not who he was, even if the party wanted him to think otherwise.
"Eames slept with someone before you. Not your fault. Shouldn't be guilty," Joseph offered, refraining from getting another beer when his head became slightly foggy. He lit another cigarette instead. "Hotel seems to think I don't go after things," he replied easily. It was a simple admission, without any details to make it complicated. "What did you learn?" It was learning experience in Joseph's opinion, however much people might not want it to be.
Louis could tell Joseph didn't agree with him about his brother, and instinctually, he moved to defend him again. But Joseph cut that off at the pass, mollifying Louis. He didn't like to think of Casey doing something like that for any reason, but Joseph didn't seem angry, or to think less of Casey for it. He did seem unwilling to think much about anything surrounding Casey, though, and he listened to him state, several times, that what he'd done with Casey had been a one time thing, that it wasn't who he was.
Louis didn't have any right to tell anyone to face their fears or confront the things about themselves they might not like, though it saddened him to hear him say it. Maybe, with a little more time in this place, he'd come around. "Who we are sometimes isn't who we expect," he said, quietly. Louis had been forced to face a great many things about himself in the past few months that he would have preferred never to know, and had learned well that people could surprise you, sometimes in the worst of ways, with things even they didn't know they had in them.
It was difficult not to feel guilt, even if there had been someone else. The feeling was blunted by the simple fact that he couldn't have known it was Eames, but still. Louis downed the rest of his scotch and set it aside, and when the bartender offered another, he took it - no ice, this time. "Learn?" he asked. Good question. "Well, I learned that if the hotel thinks anything about me, it thinks that I'm needy and don't think enough of myself. That's not news to anyone." It was blunter than he normally was, but he was trying to shed the habit of tiptoeing around absolutely everything. It went down hard, but he was trying. "What aren't you going after?" Louis asked. Though his answer had come easily, it was still cryptic. Louis had a good guess at the answer, but he didn't say that.
Joseph's reply to Louis' words of wisdom was, largely, a non-reply. He made a sound to acknowledge it, but that was all. Wasn't the kind of man to look deep. Wasn't the kind of man to think on the past either. Would be hard to keep moving forward if he thought of everything lost. Was better this way. Lots of work, and not much thinking about anything. Wasn't that he was scared. Just didn't want to think about it. Too old for changing things anyway.
Louis' drink (no ice) earned a look, but no recrimination or reproach. Didn't matter to Joseph if Louis ended up puke drunk again. Could still make him some coffee, convince him to go for a walk with the dog in the cool night air. Not like home, too dry and no salt, but the cooler nights were something Joseph looked forward to every year.
"Not what the hotel thinks," Joseph corrected. "Didn't come from the hotel. Came from us." Because despite all that determination not to dig too deep, Joseph couldn't lie to himself either. "You think that too?" he asked, because self-awareness didn't come easy. As for what he wasn't going after? "Life," he replied bluntly. He didn't think he was dying, not literally, not like the hotel had interpreted it. But close, possibly. In a different way. He couldn't remember the last the time he'd felt alive. Maybe back on that dock, on his boat, when his son was born. Not in a long time.
Louis caught the look Joseph gave him, and swallowed, feeling an immediate rush of shame and hypocrisy. Drinking had put Evan behind bars, after all, and he had hated it then. Yet, here he was, ready to try drowning his various inadequacies and anxieties in scotch. He tapped his fingers on the edge of the glass, not picking it up.
"You said that before," Louis said. He'd said so multiple times when they spoke on the journals, if he remembered right. "And if that's the case, if it comes from us, then I'm not sure. I know I'm not really what I was then. But I know there was some truth in it." It was a difficult subject, and not one he had much experience talking about, but there wasn't much use pretending it was all a lie. Anyone who'd known him for more than a few minutes likely had a good feel for his sense of self-worth, or lack thereof. Few had the opportunity to see the lengths to which he was willing to go to keep someone, the pathetic leagues he would run, but that was true as well. That had to change. He just hadn't the faintest idea where to start. "I think you're right," he said. "I think it was trying to teach us a lesson."
He studied Joseph for a long moment, and slid a little closer to him along the bar, fingers sliding over the edge. "If you did go after it," Louis asked, "Life, I mean. What would you start with?"
Joseph noticed that Louis didn't pick up the drink, but he didn't comment on it. That was just Joseph's way. Instead, he listened to Louis come around to there being some truth in whatever the hotel did to them, and he made a sound of agreement. "What lesson?" As in, what lesson did it teach Louis, since Joseph had already stated clearly what lesson the hotel wanted to teach him. Hotel was just a little behind there. Joseph had already known about his failures. "More important, changing anything?" he asked Louis, because that was his own area of concern. He knew, but that didn't mean he had any idea what to do about it. Going after things, it just wasn't him.
Joseph didn't move away when Louis slid closer, though his gaze did drop enough to indicate he'd noticed to lessening of space between them. He thought, and he tried to come up with an honest answer that could be stated in one word, but it was hard. He had so many regrets. "Water," he finally said, and maybe it wasn't the most significant thing he could change, but it was the most tangible.
Louis finished his cigarette off, and crushed it out in a nearby ashtray, blowing the remaining smoke out over the bar. "If anything, I think it was trying to teach me about...confidence." He bit his lip, and added, a touch wry, "Having some, namely." Was he changing anything? "I'm trying," he said, looking back at Joseph. It was plain, what he was thinking. He'd at least managed to get as far as asking Joseph here, hadn't he? That was a start, if nothing else.
"Water?" Louis repeated, puzzled. "I don't understand." He held his ground despite Joseph's quick look at the smaller space between them. Confidence. He was trying it on.
"Trying to have confidence with me?" Joseph asked, ignoring everything else in favor of that very plain look.
That was unexpected. All attempts aside, Louis blinked, faltered momentarily, and said, "Well - yes, actually." It was all a little deer in headlights, and probably not very attractive. He felt caught out, but what else was there to say? He paused. "How am I doing?"
Joseph wasn't expecting the plain response. Wasn't sure what he was expecting, but it wasn't that. Maybe some stammering and a no. Not what he got. He grinned, and he pushed his glass to the bartender, watching as it was filled again from the tap. It was a chuckling grin, something that came with a headshake of understated disbelief. "Not bad. Ask again after this beer."
Louis smiled, haltingly, then widely, once he was sure he was not actually being laughed at. He, too, did not get the reaction he was expecting, not at all, and his embarrassment lifted when Joseph laughed. "Alright," Louis said. "I can wait." He picked up his scotch glass at last, Joseph's request for another beer a tacit permission, it seemed, to drink a bit more. "You didn't answer, about why you'd go after water," Louis pointed out. He had noticed that, that Joseph had breezed past the question.
"Have to do something between now and the end of this glass," Joseph clarified, taking another swallow, "or the opinion stays the same," he explained. "Water. Miss it. Not made for dry land," he explained, looking down at the floor beside him when he said it. "Miss the smell, the give underfoot, the sky. Miss water." Missed his boat. Missed the fish that dwindled every year. Missed the smell of salt and the simple life. "Wasn't made for neon lights and bars." Even one like this.
Joseph took another swallow, and he put his glass back down on the counter. "Feel more confident?" he asked. Being and feeling were two different things.
Louis felt as if Joseph had finally said something a little closer to the truth, something that actually meant something to him. He hadn't known about his affection for the sea, or that he'd lived on it, but it suited him. "Why don't you go back, then?" he asked - it seemed the most obvious question. The desert seemed like the opposite of anywhere Joseph would want to live, and he didn't even seem to like Vegas, not that Louis blamed him. "What stops you?"
But he was supposed to do something, wasn't he? His play at confidence didn't count for much if he didn't even try. He set aside the glass of scotch after barely sipping at it, unthinking. "A little," he said. He blinked, and then he leaned forward, quick enough that it was almost a short fall, his heart dropping into his stomach. Either he was going to kiss Joseph, or he wasn't. He would make it far enough to press his lips to his, or Joseph would pull away, and that would be that. And he wouldn't find out if he didn't try, no matter how many times his panicking thoughts reminded him it was a terrible idea to try to kiss a closeted man in an open bar, and that he was the last person who might be able to encourage someone to do something that reckless despite themselves, that he wasn't Casey, and Joseph wasn't Evan. But, in the end, the worst thing that could happen was rejection. And he knew rejection. He had to stop being scared of it sometime. He was familiar enough with it now that it was high past time to stop being so fucking afraid of it, so he tried. Because confidence was a thing he was trying on.
"Lost that life," Joseph said, and it wasn't intentionally cryptic. He had lost that life. He didn't blame Casey. He didn't blame his wife. He didn't blame the man she'd gone off with. He blamed himself. "Can't go back sometimes."
Joseph figured out that Louis was going to kiss him about a second before Louis leaned in. What sparked in his eyes just then wasn't rejection, and it wasn't disinterest - it was fear. He was a cop. They were in public. People might recognize him. More than that, he was panicked at the very idea. He'd crawled firmly back into his closet after Casey, and while he was toying with the idea after the party, this was... something.
Joseph moved so quickly that the barstool tilted and toppled, the crash loud enough to earn them some clapping, which made Joseph go red to the very tips of the greying hair at his temples. He righted the chair, and he stammered apologies to the disgruntled looking bartender, and he avoided looking at Louis.
If they hadn't been in public, Joseph thought... but that was as far as the rational thinking went.
"Have to. Go." Joseph didn't even manage to dream up an excuse, not even a bad one, to cover his awkward departure, which came immediately after. The cigarettes and old, engraved lighter were left on the counter, the words on the back of the lighter visible now that it had tipped on its side - Happy Father's Day - almost worn through by the press and rub of calloused fingertips.
Louis froze completely when Joseph pulled back so fast and abruptly that he turned the chair over. He'd been at least somewhat prepared for rejection, but not for a reaction of such sharp and intense distaste that Joseph nearly tripped over himself getting away from him. He caught Joseph's eyes for half a second and realized how scared the other man was. It made almost no sense to him, refusing to mesh with anything else he'd seen of Joseph, and Louis was pierced with guilt and shame. What had he been thinking, trying to kiss him in public? Now half the bar was staring, and Louis had gone utterly pale aside from the high spots of color on his cheeks.
Yes, he certainly knew how to pick them. Men who drove drunk and killed innocents, and men who were ashamed of the idea of being seen kissing him in public. Maybe later he would be able to rationalize it better, think through what had happened more clearly, but, in the moment, it stung too deeply. There was no getting it right, was there? Either he didn't press enough, and he was scolded by everyone around him for not going after what he wanted, or he pressed too hard, and frightened him off. The voice at the back of his head, reminded him, amused, that he was poison. As if he needed the help.
Louis fumbled his wallet from his pocket, laid down enough money to pay for both their drinks, and carefully picked up the bar stool, righting it again. He took the lighter from the bar without looking at it, stuffing it into his pocket. He'd mail it to Joseph - or something. He didn't know. A girl beside him at the bar asked if he was alright, and he couldn't even bring himself to make eye contact with her. He downed the rest of his scotch and walked out the door, eyes fixed straight ahead, refusing to look left or right, and see people watching him leave.