Who: Neil and Sam What: A visit. Where: Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services. When: Reeecently. Warnings/Rating: None.
Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services looked like prison. It was barbed wire fencing and cream stone with small, wire-mesh lined plexiglass windows. Inside, the entrance lobby was crowded on visitation days. An hour, and it meant that people lined up hours in advance to get frisked and get their name on the list of people allowed inside. There was a maximum number permitted because of fire hazards, and getting there early mattered for anyone who couldn't grease a hand here or there. The bodies pressed close in the lobby ranged from the poorest of Las Vegas' citizens, to a few middle class stragglers. People with money didn't let their family come here, to this place with its barbed wire, but not everyone had money. And the people locked behind the double set of barred doors were a danger - either to themselves or to others - and the atmosphere was tense and sad. Parents brought bags of things for their locked up child, only to be informed nothing could go inside. Spouses railed at being frisked, at being treated like criminals, but the cops were used to it, and they got everyone lined up outside the double doors to wait without much incident.
Conversations happened, as they did when people were herded together with a common purpose: Who are you here to see? and What are they in for? And, finally, the bell rang indicating visitors could be led in. The entire group was crowded into the small space between the two barred doors, and when the first door was locked, the second opened, allowing the visitors into the main area. There were police officers lining the far wall, and the patients were brought out in a single-file line. Tables dotted the space, and nothing was permitted beyond holding hands. There were more patients than visitors, and some rocked in corners, while others banged their heads against walls, while others cried and got reprimanded for hugging their loved ones.
Sam had no idea if Neil had made any calls about being allowed back to her room, instead of needing to stay out in main population, but she was hoping he had. It didn't even have anything to do with her. She just couldn't imagine him, with all his fucking money, around people who drooled all over their shirts and screamed while they tried to jump whoever had called 911 on them in the first place. For her, this wasn't that much different than home had been before her marriage, but she knew this would be a whole new fucking world for him, and she didn't want him to have to deal with it.
And, yeah, she was fucking nervous. She'd been nervous for days, before Lou, since she'd run her mouth at Lin, and since that shit had made it to Ella. No, before that even, since Chloe's post about Neil spending the night with her, and since the guy at the party. She'd cut herself off from talking about her shit with Neil to everyone except Lin, because she knew she was thisclose to losing even Neil's friendship over it, and now she was stuck somewhere between being pissed and sad that Lin had run to Ella about it. But there was a new, dull terror, too. Something that had settled in after the sedation from the night before had started to wear off. It was the fucking reality that Lou could be dead, and that she wouldn't even know. And she wondered why shit just couldn't calm down. Her shrink told her, that morning, that she needed to worry about her own stuff just now, but how the fuck was she supposed to do that when everything kept falling apart?
She hung back, shoulders against the wall leading into the patient rooms. She was one of the youngest patients in the facility, and she was certainly the cleanest and least life-worn of the group. She was, too, one of only a few females. Her long blonde hair was loose, because ties and clips could be dangerous, and she wore a pair of faded sweats and the same bright orange top that every patient in the room wore. The shirt, with its block-black SNAMHS on the back, made the patients intentionally easy to pick out in the crowd. Her unfocused, inky blue eyes watched the procession of visitors that filed past the Ian Russell Wing plaque.
Louis was okay.
That was what Lin had told him, and so that was what Neil chose to believe without acknowledging the doubts and questions that lingered in the back of his mind. Details were sparse, but bottom line, Lin was with Louis and Louis was okay. Which was what mattered, right? He hadn’t gone off and done something stupid. He was fine. And yeah, maybe Neil was angry beyond belief with his brother, and maybe he thought Louis was a complete asshole for showing up at his door and punching him in the face without preamble, but Neil was just as angry at himself, thought himself just as much of an asshole, and regardless he still cared about his brother. He still didn’t want him hurt. But he wasn’t, and so now he just had to convince Sam of the same. Sam, who was in some fucking mental health facility with Ian circling round the gates like a lion, taunting her with the fact that he knew she was there and making some goddamn donation like he could achieve sainthood through money alone. Sam, who’d been through so much, and was stuck with him, a guy who had so much difficulty just saying I love you. But he remembered his conversation with Ella, and her soft belief that if he just said it often enough, she’d come to believe him eventually. And, really, he couldn’t continue on like this, claiming he cared about her without offering any proof to back it up. Daniel might have been a supreme son of a bitch, but he wasn’t necessarily wrong; neither was Louis. He needed to fix something, because right then, things were going to shatter completely if he wasn’t careful.
Neil made the necessary phone calls in advance to ensure he wouldn’t be forced to stay with the main population, pulling strings and sliding money in the right hands to get what he wanted. He got there early, too, despite all of that, wearing jeans and a shirt and still managing to stand out despite trying to appear ordinary. He waited in line, and he listened to the stories of those who came to see their loved ones, tired eyes and sad faces and things clutched in shaking fingers that were taken by the police officers who were dead set on enforcing the rules. The cops made him think this place was something like a prison, and fuck, it was depressing. Parents and siblings and spouses were frisked, searched, and sent in to see the people they cared about for a limited amount of time, and compared to their pain he felt like he had no right to be here at all. Hell, he was part of the reason Sam was here. He had, in a way, done this to her. It made him reluctant to strike up conversation, or give any answers to the questions asked by others, some first-timers like himself who clearly had no idea what to expect.
Finally, he got inside, slipping away from the crowd and finding one of the cops who clearly recognized him as the rich bastard who’d paid for privacy through nothing more than his appearance. To hell with rules; he spotted Sam leaning against the wall, and after indicating that was who he was here to see he surged ahead, steps slowing as he neared, unsure of exactly how to act. “Hey.”
She noticed him while he was talking to the cop, but she didn't move. She'd barely fucking seen him in months. Yeah, there was the day at Ian's, but that was a drug haze, and whenever she had moments where she remembered things from that day clearly she ended up a fucking mess. Before that, she'd seen him twice, and she'd been so high on Xannies both times that they were all a fucking haze, too. There was nothing in her system now that kept her calm, and she really couldn't remember the last time she'd actually looked at him without something dulling her senses. And, sure, yeah, it made her want to turn and hide in one of the patient rooms, but the sedation that lingered in her body didn't dull anything; it made her just a little unfocused and a little slow, but it didn't do anything about her feelings. And she wasn't even sure if she wanted to run because she was afraid he was going to tell her to fuck herself, or because she was afraid he was going to tell her that Lou was dead, or because she just wouldn't know what to do around him. Coming back from pathetic declarations of love was hard, yeah?
When he stopped in front of her, she had to tip her head up to look at him. She thought it was fucking unfair that he could make her melt with three letters, one syllable, and fuck the universe. But it was the truth, and she tried to keep her feet on the ground and still. The woman she'd been at the party would have come up with some witty retort, something smart and confident and teasing. But she wasn't that woman. Sure, they wanted the same things, but there was nothing witty coming to mind. "Yeah," she managed, which wasn't even a real fucking greeting. And then she didn't even notice when she actually moved, not until her arms were around his shoulders, the soles of her cheap, unlaced white sneakers squeaking on the linoleum floor as she stretched against him to manage it. If she wasn't so much smaller than him, she would have bowled him the fuck over with the force of the impact, but she'd never been soft. So, yeah, not so fucking smooth, and she knew the cops would pitch a fucking fit in a second, because hugging wasn't allowed, but she didn't really care.
Neil was seconds away from asking yeah what, an attempt at teasing, to soften whatever uncertainty lingered between them, but then her arms were around her his shoulders before he could make a sound and her body was against his, the force of the hug surprising even if he had too much bulk and height to be thrown off-balance by it. He didn’t push her away, and he didn’t care that the cops had begun to scowl and move forward; he hugged her back, protection and warmth in the way his arms circled around her waist in return. “It’s okay,” he said against her ear. “I’m here. Everything’s fine.” He looked up as the cops approached, a glare lighting up his gaze and something like a snarl tugging on his lips, and they stopped, caught in a sort of silent stand-off where locked gazes said everything words could and more. He’d pulled a lot of strings and dished out a fair amount of cash to have the rules bent for him, and he wasn’t letting a couple of bodyguards or whoever the hell these guys thought they were put their hands on either him or Sam to pry them apart. After a long, long moment, his hold on her loosened, dropped, and he gently nudged her behind him, the cops watching with narrowed, displeased expressions all the while.
“C’mon,” he said, never taking his eyes off the guards. “Show me where your room is.”
She didn't notice the guards. She was too caught up in how fucking safe he felt. She liked to consider herself seriously fucking independant. She liked to think she was snarls and a good right fist, but that wasn't true beneath the surface, and she'd already known that before the stupid fucking party had seen fit to paint her desires with a bright red brush. Yeah, it didn't mean she wasn't a stubborn and mouthy pain in the ass, because she was, but that wasn't all she was, and the force with which she clung to him made that pretty fucking obvious. She had no fucking clue, standing there, where shit stood with them. There was Ella, and there was Chloe, and there was whatever the fuck had happened with the guy at the party. There was the fact that she really didn't know what he wanted; she didn't know if he knew what he wanted. And, yeah, she'd forced herself to accept that whatever she felt for him overshadowed what he felt for her. Or maybe he just wanted different shit. Maybe he wanted to be whoever he wanted to be, with whoever he wanted to be. Not just her, or whatever, even though he claimed that was bullshit. But none of that mattered just then, because it was so fucking hard to feel safe lately. Sure, she could put on a good face about Ian's insidious bullshit, but it still ate at her; she was just trying to hide it better now.
When his arms dropped, she stood back, and she followed his gaze to the guards, who looked seriously pissed off in that macho way that said they didn't like eating crow. "Yeah," she said from over his shoulder, fingers tugging on the back of his shirt as she turned and started down the stark, blue hallway.
There were doors on either side, all open, narrow metal doors with an opening in the center and locks on the outside. She stopped about halfway down the hall, and she ducked into a room that mirrored all the others in the piss-smelling hallway. It had two cot-like beds, one on either side of the small room, and there was a window between that was high and small, scratched plexiglass and wire-mesh lined. "This is me," she said, and she motioned to the adjacent bed. "She's out there for an hour." She looked around the room, trying to see the sparse and tight space through his eyes. "They don't let us hang out in the rooms, so they're just for sleeping," she said, as if she needed to apologize for the fucking place. That out of the way, she sat on the bed, and she looked at him. "Hey," she finally said, mirroring his greeting from out in the visiting area.
He’d never been a paranoid kind of guy, but Neil didn’t like the way the guards were looking at him or at Sam and he refused to show them his back until they were far enough down the hallway that he felt comfortable with the amount of space between them. It was definitely no fancy rehab facility, this place, and if he hadn’t known any better his first assumption would’ve been that it was some kind of prison. Even the room was barely one step up from a cell, but Sam had said being here was helping and he figured that was what mattered, right? Even if he wished she was someplace better, someplace where money could buy more than it could here, but he had to keep reminding himself that money couldn’t magically solve all problems. He tried to keep his expression casual and calm, not wanting her to think he was judging or whatever as he looked around the small space. He nodded when she said they didn’t let her or the others hang out in their rooms, because that made sense, he supposed. He knew he should say something, that he was supposed to, but he didn’t know where to start, and he remained standing when she sat on the bed.
“Are you--” He paused, reconsidered. “How are you? Really, I mean. Don’t just tell me what I want to hear.”
Sam would have told him that any place you couldn't walk out of was a prison. Sure, he'd managed to buy his way back here, and Ian had managed to buy himself a fucking wing, but no one was letting her walk out the door without paying her shrink off or handing a shitload of money to someone who didn't care that they would be held responsible if she killed herself. Not that she intended to kill herself, but she knew they thought she was a suicide risk or whatever. Suicide, drugs, same shit in the end.
She sat there, on the edge of the bed, and she watched him. She noticed he didn't sit, and she could tell from his fucking body language that he had no fucking idea what to say to her. She didn't know whether she wanted to laugh or cry about that, so she just looked down at her hands, where paint still lived beneath her ragged fingernails. She didn't fill the silence, like she normally would have, and there was something about her that was accepting in a way she hadn't been before. Like she'd finally finished fighting for it, and she let him break the silence when he was ready to. Her head lifted, and she tilted her head. The almost-smile she gave him was gap-toothed and passive. She'd thought, when she saw him again, that she'd want to scream. It was what she did, yeah? She screamed and threw punches and shoved people she cared about into the nearest piece of fucking furniture. It was her way of making sure they gave a shit. But she just looked at him this time; she was pretty sure it would just make shit worse if she lashed out. And what the fuck was she going to fix, anyway? "I still feel fucked up from freaking out. They don't let you scream it out here, cry it out, what the fuck ever. You can sit down on the other cot, yeah? You don't have to stand there, baby."
It was hard to be relaxed and at ease in a place like this, and even without knowing that Chloe had given Sam the complete wrong idea about him spending the night, which admittedly did sound bad when worded the wrong way, Neil knew he had a lot to prove. She was convinced that he only cared about her, that his feelings for her were lukewarm in comparison to hers for him; that was his own fault, though. He knew that. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be here so much as he didn’t know what to do. His own instincts were shit, which had been proven time and time again, but without even that he had nothing. The time when things were normal and uncomplicated seemed so long ago, and it had just been one thing after the other after the other to the point where it seemed life would never give either of them a chance to catch up. But he hadn’t given up yet, despite coming close, and he tried to ease up on the tension in his shoulders. “What do they let you do, then?” He glanced down at the cot when she mentioned he sit, and after a moment’s consideration decided that might be better than standing. A smile flickered over his features, and he sat at the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his knees as he leaned forward. “Louis is fine,” he added, though at this point that probably meant next to nothing. Louis was just one problem amidst many. “I know telling you not to worry is pointless, but you should be focused on yourself, you know? Not stressing about the rest of us.”
Until he sat on the cot opposite her, she was sure he was going to discomfort his way right out of the room, and she wouldn't have blamed him. She tried to see the place through his eyes, and she couldn't even come close to imagining what he saw when he looked around. And it's not like she was any prize just then, either. She didn't exactly look great in orange and sweats. "They drag us out of bed at six for breakfast, then we have to do group for an hour, then social, then lunch, then one-on-one, then social, and then dinner. I get to fingerpaint," she said, her lips turning into something like the beginning of a smile, because how fucking ridiculous was that? It was like she was ten or something. "They just don't want the depressed people in bed all day, so there's a lot of talking, and a lot of sitting in the common room and rocking and shit." It definitely wasn't club med. "Oh, and we can't forget the fucking public showers with the lukewarm water, where they watch us like hawks to make sure we aren't trying to drown ourselves in a centimeter of soapy water."
She was surprised when he brought up Lou. She didn't know why it surprised her, but it did. "Just, get him somewhere decent, yeah? Not Iris' place, but somewhere else decent. He can't come back from that shit on his own." Because no one knew that better than her. She took a deep breath, a shaky one. "I talked to Iris," she said, and now she was just fucking rambling, but she couldn't seem to stop. Maybe it was not talking to anyone she actually knew since she'd been in, not in any real way. "You know what she fucking told me? She told me she knew what Ian had done, the kind of man he fucking was, what he did to people, and she didn't care because he wanted her." The anger was there, just beneath the surface, even through the sedation, and she scooted back against the wall, laceless sneakers on the cot and knees bent. She folded her arms on her knees, and she looked at him across the small space. "Talk, yeah? Just about whatever."
To Neil, this place sounded like a bizarre cross between prison, a mental hospital, and summer camp. He tried not to smile at the thought of finger painting, but if it helped who was he to judge? “Sounds fun,” he remarked, trying for humor. “The fingerpainting, I mean.” There wasn’t much humor to be found in the rest, but he tried looking at it positively. This place was helping, and hell, wasn’t that better than things had been before? “Sounds like they’re big on social stuff. Which, I mean, makes sense. They might be pushing it with the public showers, though.” He smiled again, and there was something almost hopeful in his expression. He wanted her to get better. He wanted her to walk out of here in a couple of weeks, maybe, stronger than she’d been before. He was just terrified of making things worse again.
He decided not to mention the fact that he and Lin had decided to go a more observational route with Louis, at least for now, instead of trying to force him into shit and take away his control. “Yeah. Look, don’t worry. I’ll take care of Louis. He’ll get through this,” he assured her. And, really, he hadn’t come here to talk about Louis, not beyond reassuring her that he was okay and that she didn’t need to worry. He wasn’t expecting her to mention Iris, and his eyebrows shot up when she admitted having spoken to her. Yeah, he didn’t think that was a good idea, but he didn’t interrupt, though he frowned at what she said. “That’s fucked up,” he said, bluntly. Iris clearly had a hell of a lot of issues that didn’t bode well for those connected to her. “She needs serious help, Sam, and a lot of it.” As for talking, he didn’t know what to talk about. His life had all but become about other people and their problems, and there wasn’t much else aside from that. “Not much to talk about,” he shrugged. “Uh, Ash and Aiden are a thing, apparently. I don’t even know what the hell to think about that.”
"Oh, yeah, it's a fucking blast," she said of fingerpainting. She rolled her eyes when she said it, because it was better than nothing, but she missed actually being able to use a brush and layer on thick bolts of color. She missed her torch, too, and scrap metal. But this place wasn't about distractions, so they didn't offer many of them. "They want us to think, so they don't give us a lot to focus on but thinking - or talking. They're big on fucking talking, too, so, yeah, social." Except she was working on not blathering her crap to everyone these days, so she wasn't talking as much as she might have. Once, she couldn't stand anyone knowing anything about her hardships, but Lou had stripped her of her fucking privacy, and it hadn't seemed to matter anymore. She was having a harder time dragging that silence back than she'd expected to. And she wanted to get better. As much as she hated this fucking place, she knew she needed to be somewhere or something. She was only fucking up at Neil's place, and she didn't have money, and it was too late to go back on coming here anyway.
She took his reassurance about Lou at face value, because she really didn't have it in her to fix Lou's shit. She could accept that now, just like she could accept the fact that she'd made things hard on Lou with her own shit, which was why she'd come here, quietly, to this hellhole. And it was why she'd stay until they said she could go. No more making other people fix her fucking problems for her. She looked out the small window, when he said Iris needed help. He was right, but she was pissed enough that she couldn't make herself care. It was a new thing for her, being that angry, and she wasn't proud of it. She looked back when he said there wasn't much to say, and she just stared at him for a few really long seconds, inky blue eyes and waiting to see if he filled in any of the blanks she'd found out about recently. But he didn't, and she just ended up nodding about Ash and Aiden. "Yeah, she told me. He's a good guy, yeah? It's a good thing." She sighed after a second, and she hugged her arms around her knees more tightly. "Baby, you don't have to stay," she offered, and she nodded toward the door. "It's cool. I give you a pass."
“I bet you’re the best fingerpainter here,” he told her, and that was only half in jest. She had talent, anyone could see that, even if she wasn’t allowed to have the usual tools of her trade here. “What do they want you to think about? The same things they want you to talk about?” A place like this would drive him crazy, not that Neil would ever admit that; he tried to stay out of his own head as much as possible, and he wasn’t a fan of talking much either. He had enough trouble talking to people he knew, to family and friends, never mind strangers. But Sam needed this, and being a failure and an asshole wasn’t something anyone could fix. No one aside from himself, at least.
He didn’t know what to make of the way she was staring at him, like she was waiting for something. Mentioning Chloe’s mugging didn’t seem like a good idea; he was pretty sure she’d take it the wrong way, and as for Ella, well, that never even crossed his mind. He didn’t see either of them as anything but friends, people he cared about in a platonic sense. Of course, he didn’t know that she already had a skewed view of things; if he did, he would've done his damnedest to make her see things right. “I know he’s a good guy. It’s just...” He trailed off with a shrug. “She’s my little sister. I don’t know. If she’s happy, then I’m happy.” His brow furrowed when she said he didn’t have to say, and he shook his head. “I don’t need a pass, Sam. I want to stay. I want to be here, because I want to see you.” Him not knowing what to say didn’t change that.
She managed to crack a genuine smile when he said she was a good fingerpainter. "You know, I already know that I'm fucking younger than you. No need to rub it in," she teased. But her expression sobered again when he asked what they wanted her to think and talk about. "All kinds of shit. Why we're angry or sad or whatever. Who we want to tell off. Who sucks in our lives. A lot of the people here have fucked up wives or husbands or family," she said, not even realizing she fell into the same category as most of all of them, in one way or another. "Why we want to hurt ourselves or other people. That kind of shit. I think they just want to open floodgates or something, yeah?" She shook her head. "They don't get that the hotel already did that shit better than they ever could. You know, give me the inside look on what's wrong with me."
She wasn't surprised when he didn't fess up about Ella or Chloe, but it made her shoulders slump slightly, and she rubbed at her face with her hands and wished the fuzziness of the sedation would wear the fuck off, so she could think straight around him. If she was going to salvage this friendship, occasional booty call, whatever the fuck she was, she needed to keep her fucking head. "She seemed really into him when I talked to her, baby. And Ash seems smart. I don't think she'd walk into something bad, and Aiden's still a fucking virgin. How much harm can he really do?" She liked Aiden, sour fucking moods and all. And maybe Ash would be good for him and lighten him up some, yeah? And then he was saying he wanted to stay, and she really didn't fucking believe him. That was the thing, she had no fucking clue when he was saying shit just to spare her. Because, contrary to popular belief, she knew he was a good guy, and she knew he didn't want to fucking hurt her. He'd never dump her while she was locked up, for starters, and maybe that's why he didn't mention Chloe or Ella.
She hesitated a second, and then she climbed off her cot and onto the one he was sitting on. She didn't scoot back against the wall. Instead, she just scooted closer to him, and she let her head rest on his shoulder.
“Rubbing it in? Me?” Neil adopted an expression of exaggerated innocence, broken a moment later when he relented and grinned. “I bet you could fingerpaint a hell of a lot better than I could,” he said, and it was only half-joking. His grin faded when she described the sorts of things they were forced to talk about, and he found himself wondering if Sam talked about him. He was definitely someone who sucked in her life, and hell, pretty much everyone they knew fell under the category of fucked-up in one way or another. He wondered if the shrinks or whoever would tell her that she should leave him, that he was a bad influence and she’d be better off; not that he’d necessarily disagree. “I don’t know,’ he said, carefully. “Maybe they just think... keeping everything bottled up is unhealthy. Can’t deal with shit if you keep it all locked up, right?” He shrugged. Maybe it was hypocritical of him, since he wasn’t a huge fan of talking himself, but maybe that had something to do with why he was such a disaster. “You can’t take the hotel bullshit seriously, Sam. It fucks with us. That’s all. You’re not still thinking about it, are you?” In his opinion the hotel had given him Norman, so fuck that building and everything connected to it in the slightest.
He didn’t know what made her shoulders slump, but he figured it had something to do with him. As usual. There was no way Aiden and Ash bothered her. “Yeah, I know. Ash is smart, and Aiden’s not a bad guy. She could do a lot worse,” he agreed. He rubbed the back of his neck, and mustered up a smile. “I was telling her I should give him the talk, you know, you’d better treat my sister right or else.” The anger he’d felt when Louis had showed up at his door seemed so far away now, and he couldn’t imagine punching anyone else out unless the circumstances were extreme.
Closing the space between them had occurred to him, but he hadn’t even begun to muster up the necessary courage to do so by the time she rose from her cot. He watched as she crossed the floor, as she sat beside him, and he only hesitated for a moment when she moved closer. Something in his posture relaxed when she leaned her head against his shoulder, and he slid an arm around her waist, his other hand finding hers and entwining their fingers. “I miss you,” he said, quiet.
His expression of exaggerated innocence made her smile. It was so fucking normal. Like the world wasn't falling apart or ending or whatever, and like Ian wasn't lurking with his fucking plaques and wings named after him. "Art isn't your thing, baby," she told him, no criticism in it. If he spent all his time staring at canvases, he wouldn't be him. Part of Neil's appeal was that lazy careless thing he had going on. She'd liked it from that first night she'd met him at the Venetian, and she realized that it was fucking ironic that it drove her a little crazy when it related to her. She knew that wasn't fair. She couldn't like something about him, and expect it not to apply to her. But that was logic and not feeling, and she wasn't very good with logic. It had never been her thing, because it had never really fit into the dirty survival story that was her life. "Yeah, but talking to them really doesn't change shit, yeah?" Except maybe that wasn't true, and she shook her head, blonde hair going all over her face. "That's not true. If I say shit long enough to them, maybe I can make the words work with everyone else. Who knows." She had started staring at her hands halfway through that sentence, and she looked up when he mentioned the hotel fucking with them. Yeah, she was thinking about it, but it wasn't as important as it had been before her conversations with Ella and Chloe. She didn't answer immediately.
She grinned at the idea of him giving Aiden a talk, because it seemed almost weirdly proactive for him. Hell, punching Lou back had been proactive too, and she wondered if she realized that he'd been changing lately. Maybe that was why he'd made the move with Chloe or whatever. Maybe that was behind the shit at the hotel. But sitting there, with him in the space, she just didn't want to have the conversation. She didn't want to tell him she knew. She wanted to fucking pretend. Just for a few more minutes. They didn't have long, after all, and they'd already lost time standing and looking at each other. Well, she'd lost time. He'd walk out of here and go back into the world. She wouldn't. And, fucking weak as it might seem, she wanted him to come back, and shoving him seemed like the wrong fucking thing to do to make that happen.
She held her breath until she was sure he wasn't going to pull away when she sat beside him, and she closed her eyes when his arm went around her waist. She looked down at his fingers, uncharacteristically silent. "Yeah?" she asked, tipping her head to look up at him, without moving her cheek from his shoulder. She believed him. She'd never doubted that he gave a shit about her, that he cared. Love was a different thing, and she knew he liked having her around the suite, being loud and messing up his lazy little life. "I miss you too." She looked at him a few seconds longer, tired blue eyes. "When I get out of here, can we talk, yeah? Not now. I don't want to now," she added quickly. She wanted to pretend there was no Chloe for a minute, no Ella, no guy at the party. Even no Ian. "Ok?" she asked hopefully. "We only have a few more minutes anyway." And then quickly, needily. "If I'm still here next week, can you visit?"
Yeah, no, art wasn’t his thing. He could appreciate it. He could spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on famous paintings and whatever the hell else. But he wasn’t into it, and he had no actual talent of his own in that arena. “I know,” he said. “It’s yours.” He didn’t have a thing, and he couldn’t really remember a time when he had. As for talking, he didn’t think it changed anything, at least not what had already happened. What it could change was the future, what had yet to happen. “Yeah, maybe. Talking can’t change the past, but it can, I don’t know, help you get past it or whatever. I’m not exactly an expert,” he admitted. He noticed that she didn’t answer about the hotel, about the party, but he didn’t push. Here and now, in this place, he was even more reluctant to push than usual.
Nothing had happened with Chloe, and he had no idea she thought the situation was far more than it had actually been. Sleeping on a couch in a hotel room while she was in another room didn’t constitute making a move, not to him, but he probably should have known better than to think the truth wouldn’t come out all twisted and distorted like it usually did. The problem was that he worried so much about Sam taking things the wrong way that, in the end, he sabotaged himself, and what he feared ended up happening anyway. Half of him expected to pull away from his arm, and he was pleased when she didn’t. “Yeah,” he echoed, looking down at her. He smiled when she said she missed him too, and when she said she didn’t want to talk now, well, that made his decision for him. “Okay. We can talk once you’re out of here. As much as you want, about whatever.” He’d come with the vague intention of things to say, words that had never quite made it past his lips, but he tucked those away for later. Later, when she wasn’t looking at him and asking to talk at a point in time that wasn’t then.
He nodded, giving her fingers another squeeze. “I’ll come visit next week, if you’re still here,” he promised. And then he was quiet, wanting to stretch out the last bit of time they had before he was forced to leave as much as he could.
She grinned when he said art was her thing. "I thought, before all this shit started with Ian, that I could actually do something with it. Get my GED, go to art school or something. Shit doesn't work out, yeah?" Her tone said she wished it fucking had. Her shrink would have said that was a good sign, that it meant she still wanted things, but she just didn't like the feeling of disappointment. "Maybe if this stuff ever calms down," she added tentatively, worrying that it just wasn't realistic. She was twenty-two, but she felt so fucking old some days, like all she wanted was to hide somewhere, which was absolutely not like her at all. She smiled a lopsided, gap-tooth smile when he said he wasn't an expert about talking. "Baby, you don't ever say anything except what people want you to," she said, but she didn't sound angry about it for once. It was fucking endearing, when it wasn't ripping her heart out. "But, yeah, maybe. And not saying things doesn't actually fucking help with anything," she conceded.
She was quiet after that, for a few long minutes, and she looked back up from where her gaze had dropped when he echoed her yeah. She had no idea that he'd intended to say anything to her, except maybe to tell her about Chloe or whatever, but she'd given him that opening at the beginning, and he hadn't taken it. So, yeah, she had no idea. And she opened her mouth to maybe bring it up herself, but the words didn't fucking come out. Instead, she tugged at his fingers with he squeezed hers, and she smiled when he said he would visit again. That made her breathe easier, and it was an obvious thing, the way her breathing slowed. She turned toward him a little, loathe to move her head from his shoulder. And, yeah, so maybe this was the safest she'd felt since Ian had donated his fucking money to the place. She was trying not to drag people into her shit, and she was getting better at pretending. But, yeah, she was scared, and she felt less scared whenever he was around. It was dependant, and she didn't want him getting that feeling that he was responsible for her, not when she thought she'd finally dislodged it, so she didn't say anything.
She looked at the clock in the hallway, visible from the hole in the door, and then she looked back at him. Ten minutes, and who the fuck cared if she was pathetic for ten minutes? She looked back at him, and she moved her head from his shoulder. "Want to see what I learned at the party?" she asked. Before he had a chance to respond, she stood and stepped between his thighs, nudging at his knees with her legs. She moved close, and she smelled of fingerpaint and cheap soap and even cheaper detergent. Her fingers, when they touched his rough jaw, were scratchy and calloused, dry and cracked from the hard water and unforgiving chemicals in the soap. She only hesitated a second before ducking her head to kiss him, blonde hair messily going everywhere. But the kiss was slower than the ones in the past, no desperate rush to get anywhere, no bite, not too much spit. It was almost soft, kind of chaste, parted lips but no tongue and only the pressure of her fingers against his cheeks increasing. And maybe she should feel shitty about kissing someone else's man, but fuck it.
“You still can,” he said immediately, before her tentative suggestion that her dreams might still be possible someday. Ian wouldn’t be around forever, he couldn’t be, and one day all this shit would be behind them. “You have time, Sam. A lot of time. Don’t give up on shit you want, okay?” Having a goal was something special, at least in his mind, and to lose it was almost worse than not having one to start with. Her observation that he only said what people wanted to hear stung, true as it was. “Yeah,” he shrugged. “Like I said, not an expert.” Him not saying things had only ever made things worse, but his feeble attempts to change that didn’t fix anything either, so he was left at a loss and continued on as he usually did for the most part. It was hard to keep trying and fucking up in succession, over and over.
But when she smiled, yeah, that made him feel a little better. That tug on his fingers made him feel like less of a failure too, and he tipped his head to the side quizzically when she asked if he wanted to see what she’d learned at the party. He didn’t get a chance to ask, though, not before she was nudging his knees apart and moving closer than he could remember her being in a while. He leaned into her touch when her fingers found his jaw, and god, he hadn’t realized just how badly he’d wanted to kiss her and for how long until just then. He reached, fingers finding her hips with a feather-light touch, more winding in the fabric of her shirt than anything else, following the pace she set without pushing for more. But not pushing didn’t mean he didn’t respond, not at all; he slid forward, just a little, parted lips and warmth and eagerness thrown in.
She kissed him like the world was ending. Not fast and pushing, and not with the intensity of a finish line, but with feeling that she couldn't manage to put into fucking words just then. It got a little sloppy every so often, too eager and a whimper against his mouth, but she remembered herself and backed off each time, a huff of breath against his lips and a self-critical whine as she tried to remember her lesson from the party. Her fingers dragged along his cheeks, rough and jagged nailed, and she unthinkingly slid her fingertips behind his ears and tugged him closer. One of her knees found his thigh, when he he slid forward, and all she wanted out of the fucking world was for his hands on her hips to keep her grounded forever. Her weight pressed against the muscle of his thigh, giving her more height on him, and she was breathing hard and looking down at him by the time she stopped and pulled back slightly. This close, she was freckles and very obviously unfocused eyes, blue almost eclipsed by black, and her breathing was a fast, fast confession about how hard the kiss had been to break. She hesitated a second, and then she kissed him one more time, tongue and quicker this time, less patient, and then she swallowed hard and forced herself to stop completely. Her fingers slid back to his jaw, and her chest rose and fell, and she had a hard time getting words through her kiss-puffed lips.
In the visiting area, a bell rang, and she didn't move. She didn't want to fucking move. He'd said something before, and she tried to remember what, trying to stall the inevitable progression of time. "You'll be sorry you said that, when I'm hitting you up for money for supplies and classes," she finally said, remembering, and still unable to move her fingers from his jaw, the rough feel of skin and stubble a tactile thing she just couldn't tug herself away from yet. And it wasn't commitment, yeah? Money was something he'd always been good at giving, and she wasn't trying to imply he had to put her up after or anything. She remembered, too, that shit about him not being an expert, and her lazy gaze softened as she tried to figure out how to explain him to himself. "Baby, it's a good thing, yeah? Wanting to make people happy. It's not a bad fucking thing." And that was true. No matter what anyone said about him, she knew he wasn't machinating. She grinned a little, fond exasperation and gap-teeth. "It's fucking frustrating as shit, but I wouldn't dig you as much otherwise," she admitted. And then the bell rang again, and footsteps sounded in the hall. She looked back at him, and she kissed him hard and fast, once, and then stepped back.
He liked her eagerness, liked her whimpers, and it was hard not to pull her back every time she backed off. His fingers tightened on her waist, from tugging on fabric to taking a more solid hold, and he slid closer to the edge of the cot, straining upward for more of her mouth even as she tugged him towards her. What he really wanted was to pull her down, to get them at the same level, but he didn’t push. He let her lead, even if there was a hint of demand and the desire for more in the way he deepened the kiss before she stopped. His chest rose and fell as he looked up at her, breaths coming short and heavy, and he made an aborted motion to stand before she kissed him again.
The bell didn’t register until seconds later, and even then it was just the sound that filtered through and not what it actually meant. “No, I won’t be,” he said, clearing his throat to get rid of the hoarseness. As for it being a good thing, he shook his head. Yeah, no, he didn’t agree with that. At least he recognized his own shortcomings, even if he couldn’t fix them. “I don’t make people happy, so it doesn’t matter what I want.” He shrugged, though he did manage a smile when she said she wouldn’t like him as much otherwise. Then the bell rang again, and the addition of footsteps made him realize that his time had come to an end. Dammit. He didn’t have a chance to respond to the kiss before she stepped back; the door opened, and the cops he’d stared down in the hallway smirked as they told him visiting hours were over.
“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, shooting them a dark look before rising from the cot. Neil hesitated, just for a moment, brushing his fingers against hers before turning to leave, the cops flanking him on either side as they shut the door behind him and led him into the main area, where he joined the throng of dejected people shuffling back out into the real world.