Who: Henry, then Daniel, and Sam. What: Henry once again astonishing people with his relative sanity in comparison to Daniel. Where: The hall outside the fairy tale door. When: Recently. Warnings/Rating: Sam's language. Some triggery topics. Notes: Part II
She laughed when he asked if the glitter was gold. "Fuck, no," she assured him. "Yeah, no, there are these tiny pieces of paper, yeah? Cheap and the size of like a needle head, and they're painted to sparkle. They cost like a penny or something, and rave and hipster kids like to sprinkle them all over when they party. He likes that shit, and nail polish, and probably lipstick," she said of Lin. "Ok, it's totally sexist, but he likes a lot of girly shit, like Titanic." Which, she realized, king Henry probably didn't know about. "He doesn't want Daniel's money or anything," she assured the man in the drapes, even as she twirled what was left of her clove against the dirty carpet.
She looked up when he moved back, and the easiness melted away. She was worried about seeing Daniel. Worried he'd be pissed, or that he'd turn around and go back in the door, or that he just wouldn't be ok. Because, yeah, it had been brassy as fuck for her to storm over here, but that didn't mean she wasn't nervous about actually seeing Daniel again. "It was nice meeting you, yeah? If you need anything, hit me up or whatever," she offered, standing.
“A pleasure, mistress.” Henry wrapped the blue velvet close around his body and executed a bow worthy of his ancestors, this time dropping his chin close to his chest and bowing his head low as well. Then, with another appearance of the smile she liked so well, he straightened to his full length, put out a bare foot tinged with old dust that was soon followed by lean calf, and moved out into the hallway.
The change was immediate.
Daniel was wearing the same clothes he had worn in the hospital, the black slacks made of combination of silk and cotton that one found on the Strip in the glass shops framed in silver. They were so wrinkled that the white cat hair barely stood out against the overall rumpled appearance of the weak white shirt. Tiny, hairlike threads were unraveling from the sleeves as they hung over his thin shoulders and stopped short of his elbows. Purple shadows were sunk low under the fringe of his cloudy blue eyes, and he seemed generally indifferent to his surroundings, so much that he didn’t even look up until he noticed the box of smokes in his hand.
Daniel stared at it and then looked up and around immediately. The sight of her seemed to strike him like a blow. He didn’t retreat, but instead took a quick step forward toward her, expecting that she might suddenly crumple at his feet. When she did not, he came to a quick halt and stared at her. Her face was clean, and she was upright. The hall smelled of cloves. “...How long has it been?”
Sam had never actually watched someone walk through the door, and she stared, inky eyes wide and obviously fucking surprised. She didn't know what she was expecting, but that shit wasn't it, and it made her skin crawl to think she and Gwen swapped out just like that. It made her feel less like the other girl lived in her head, and more like they just shared a body or some shit, and that was freaky. She was so weirded out by it, that it took her a few minutes to actually look at the man that had joined her in the hallway.
She didn't recognize the pants or the shirt, because she'd been too fucking out of it at the hospital to notice things like that, but she did notice how wrinkled he was, and she noticed those purple shadows beneath his eyes. She knew what not sleeping looked like because, yeah, she was used to seeing it in the fucking mirror. She watched him notice the smokes, and then she looked up at his face again, even as she held her hand out for the box.
The step forward surprised her, but she didn't back off. There were two people in the entire world that she wouldn't back away from if they moved at her quickly like that, and he was one of them. And, yeah, it was weird actually standing there and looking at him after all these months. She expected him to look better somehow, as if Lin's hipster influence would have translated into ironed clothing and a tiny fucking sweater or something. But he looked just the same as always, and she didn't like that. "Two weeks, baby," she replied, keeping it simple, and she sat her ass back down on the floor to indicate that she wasn't planning on leaving anytime soon.
Daniel stayed where he was. He was afraid to move, afraid she might suddenly become the fragile thing in the bed back at the hospital. To him, it had been a handful of moments ago, a blur of visions, the empty hallway, the dusty carpet, then the door again. Daniel only needed a moment to decide that he did not want to face what was beyond that hallway, then he turned, took a step back into the dank, stone-lined passage... and he didn’t have to face anything at all.
Daniel looked down at her as she sat, taking the box out of his nerveless fingers. Again the cloying fingers of clove smoke scraped the top of his throat, questing. Daniel coughed.Her folding into the wall was such a deliberate movement, such a gesture of permanence, that he obviously could not understand why she was there. “What are you doing?”
Daniel turned a rough chin and set it on top of the edge of one bony shoulder, sharp through the cheap line of his white shirt. The dark tunnel was empty, without occupation. Daniel’s keen blue eyes spotted the tiny bit of stub there in one corner of the threshold. He was so sober that every dust mote seemed to have more meaning than it should. “Were you… talking to Henry?”
"Sit down, baby," she suggested, watching him try to make sense of everything. And it looked like he was trying to decide whether to fucking bolt or not, and she held out a hand for the box of smokes, knowing he'd have to do something proactive to get it to her. "I came to find your fucking ass, once Lin told me you'd been gone for weeks," she admitted, because there was no point in lying. "I might have ripped him a new asshole," she explained, all unapologetic shrug of shoulders, because she wasn't really sorry. Lin and Neil, they were both too fucking passive in their own ways, and that shit was just going to end up with the people they gave a shit about getting hurt.
She watched his gaze settle on the stub of the clove, and she nodded. "He's nice. I was expecting some big, furry sonofabitch. But he was nice," she repeated, some surprise there. "Yeah, anyway, I was worried, and I wanted to see you." Which was just plain honest.
The aria that was tinnily filling the hallway from her earbuds changed to something Italian, softer than the angry German, and she leaned forward and set the tiny tree on the floor between them, a peace offering. "So," she went on, because she figured talking would calm him ass down, "he's dead, and I don't actually know how to feel about that shit. I don't even know if I fucking believe it, yeah? Even though I saw pictures or whatever."
Daniel was quiet through all this talking. He was thinking about leaving, because he knew the longer he stood there the more likely he was to take some metaphorical misstep. What was she doing, talking to him? She should be talking to someone more likely to make her happy. Wasn’t that what sick people always wanted? Sober and calculating, all Daniel could think of was making her run away so he wouldn’t have to be responsible, but the things Daniel knew that would make her run weren’t things he was willing to do, not to her. Not now.
His expression grew temporarily anguished. Stalemate. The expression flickered, narrowed, and then it sunk down into his eyes and disappeared under the surface of the shallow blues.
Daniel sat down, his limbs slowly sinking down under him until he was all angles compressed into a small space, monochrome and fatigue. His eyes dropped down to the metal tree and its reaching branches, and the pupils widened and dimmed at the same time. She catered too easily to his weaknesses. He stretched out and brushed the highest gold limb with his longest finger.
He stopped. Something she said caused everything to stop. He looked up and his skin was suddenly as thin as rice paper. “Dead? Who is dead?” She had just been talking about Lin. And then Henry… Daniel rolled over onto one hip and fished into a back pocket desperately for the book, the journal.
She knew she'd won something when he sat his ass down. She might not have Lin's book-smarts, but she was ok at reading shit, so long as it wasn't Neil and his confusing lack of decisiveness. So, yeah, she knew, and she watched his gaze drop to the tiny tree. It took her a second to realize why he'd frozen up on her, and she shook her head, even as he reached for the book. "Ian. Ian's dead. Lin's fine, baby," she assured him, because she couldn't imagine anyone else that would make him reach for his journal that quick.
She gave that a second to settle, and then she crawled over to him, passing the tree and leaving it right where it was. She plucked the cigarette box out of his hands, and she sat down next to him, the aria a comfortable volume when she was so close. She left space between them at first, something like a foot of dirty and dusty carpet that kept anything from touching. And it took her a few seconds to scoot closer, knees bent against her chest and the too-long legs of her overalls almost engulfing her shoes. She stopped when her shoulder was touching his, and then she let her head rest on his shoulder.
She fumbled with the cigarette box, dropping it against her knees once before she managed to fish one of the smokes out. She held it to him. "They're from my sister's fucking shrink. Nice guy. Wants to fuck," she explained, pulling a smoke out for herself and then fishing the ornate lighter back out from the front pocket of her overalls.
He looked as if he could not believe this about Ian. He was suddenly afraid to look at the book, and as it shuddered open under the span of his palm, he let it fall onto its side, closed. Daniel knew what he had asked for, what he had been willing to pay for. He had done it not just to protect Sam, to protect Lin, but also himself through them. He was fully aware that there were plenty of people on those journals that would do what he asked. Ian was dead. Perhaps at his hand, perhaps not. He would pay. Daniel separated his fingers from the book as if was too sharp for him to touch, letting it remain where it lay.
Slowly, he worked his feet out from underneath his legs and pushed out his heels over the dusty carpet, leaving turned out threads and dislodged dust. He thought he could hear himself creaking.
Daniel didn’t draw away as she came closer and after a moment relaxed enough to let her lean up against him and the wall together. She smelled like cloves, and he probably smelled like a heap of wet dust. Daniel took in a breath and let it out, husky and more movement than breath. He shook his head to the cigarettes, working a sandy tongue against the top of his mouth. “Shrinks aren’t supposed to fuck their patients,” Daniel said, with a hint of cold disapproval.
"Wants to fuck me, not my sister. He's not my shrink." She shrugged, making it obvious that she really didn't care. "Maybe he wants to fuck my sister too. Who the fuck knows." Either way, it obviously didn't bother her, and she tucked away the cigarette he refused and lit her own. She slouched down against him, and she looked at the book he'd pushed aside. "Does it fucking bite?" she asked, wondering why he'd reacted so badly to the thing with Ian. It didn't occur to her that he'd paid to have the man killed, because killing people just never fucking occurred to Sam. Punching them in the nose? Yeah, sure, ok. But not killing.
She was quiet for a few minutes, just listening to the music that played from the dangling earbuds, the cigarette getting shorter and shorter between her calloused fingers with each drag. "I have a place. An art studio, but it has a fold-out couch, and it's paid for, so even if I go completely fucking broke they can't take it," she said, not actually understanding that there would be property taxes to pay at the end of the year. In her mind, the water and power could get cut, but whatever; she'd lived without both of those things in the past. "And the hospital waived my medical shit to look good with the press or whatever, so I'm not depending on anyone right now," she said, babble that was meant to make him calm down, because she assumed he was remembering how she'd looked in the hospital, and she assumed that shit made him nervous.
"Everything's cool," she assured him, rocking against his shoulder for a second. "You should go home to Lin, baby. He misses you."
Daniel was not exactly bothered by the idea of this amorous shrink, but he disapproved, and Daniel’s sobriety made his disapproval a thin blade kept under bland cotton, keen but easily concealed. He chose not to pursue the question or the topic, and the decision was obvious as he tipped his head back and exposed a neck prickling with unkempt beginnings. The messy frizz of curls acted well enough as makeshift cushion against the peeling wallpaper of the hotel, and he left it there, heavy on the top of his spine. He did not answer her question about the journal, allowing the pinging notes from her headphones fill the space.
“That’s good,” Daniel said, when she spoke of her new place. The world was too sharp, every molecule too bright, and he half-closed his eyes. He was thinking too many things at once. “Once you start working again, or selling these, you can save up for maintenance, for a rainy day, taxes.” He lifted up one hand, the one attached to the arm between them, and slid two fingers into the hair at her temple, threading it through and rearranging it. His expression made no change when she spoke of money at the hospital. “You could have asked me, and I would have paid.” He said it calmly but not casually, the vague spring blue of his eyes barely visible.
“‘Home to Lin’?” Daniel echoed, now shifting for the first time in several minutes to look at her. His mouth was creased into a faint curve. There was something about it faintly dangerous, as if it had more waiting to surface.
She looked at the discarded journal, as if the thing would answer her question when he didn't. But, yeah, it didn't work like that, and she just assumed her assumption had been correct. She was used to Daniel ignoring shit he didn't want to discuss, and that hadn't changed in the year or whatever since she'd seen him, apparently. It was no big deal, because she didn't like talking about a lot of shit, and she wasn't going to be a fucking hypocrite. Well, not intentionally, anyway. Sometimes it just happened.
It had been so long since she'd talked to him in person, that she didn't actual get the sharpness in his voice that indicated sobriety. She didn't actually have a memory of his slur, because she'd been drunk or fucked up most of the times she'd seen him, and all of their contact since then had been slanted words and cursor blinking. "Maintenance and taxes?" she asked, not liking the sound of that, and she frowned. She'd spent almost all of her money on the studio and paying Joey's place for the next year, and she hadn't put anything aside. The little amount she had left was going to go to a new bike, so she didn't have to keep driving the two-hundred dollar piece of shit that Russ had sold her at Christmas, but if she was going to need to pay taxes or something, maybe not. "Is it a lot?" she asked, obviously having no fucking clue. When he said he would have paid, she smiled. "Yeah, I know, but don't you think it's time I do shit for myself?" she asked.
She closed her eyes when his fingers tugged their way through the hair at her temple. His fingers didn't feel anything like Ian's, and she just let her head rest more against his shoulder and made a quiet, young sound of pleasure at being touched without fear. She didn't see that frown of his when he asked about Lin, and Daniel's brand of faintly dangerous didn't register right away, because it wasn't fucking loud and screaming enough. "Yeah, baby." They were shacked up or whatever, yeah?
“How much it is depends on how much you make and how much you own. I don’t know the laws in this state, a lawyer handles it. You’re going to want to save something though.” A thin hint of his teeth became visible under the line of his upper lip, a gesture with only a hint of humor. There was no danger in it, as it was fully surface and without true depth of meaning. “Or you could ask me, as I keep saying. I expect favors.” He was not looking at her when he said this last, he was looking at the metal tree, intently, tipping it onto one edge so he could look at the underside of the lower branches. Daniel made a sound he never made drunk, a whistling note that came through his teeth as he pressed his lower lip flat. He only whispered it, a casually American sound of appreciation.
Daniel took his hand from the tiny glimmer tree. He folded his fingers over one of his knees, and the tightly interwoven cotton-silk blend had no give against his waist, so he had to slide a little farther down the wall, growing smaller in the conversation.
“What do you think Lin did before he met you or me?” Daniel asked, conversational, with perfect diction and enough awareness to hide any obvious interest implicit in the question. For some reason he glanced quickly at the journal by his side and then away again. “Has he talked to you?”
"I don't make anything," she said honestly. "I haven't been back to fucking work since I checked myself into that place that Ian dragged me out of," she said, and the words managed to come out fairly even, with only the smallest hint of fucking warble. She didn't actually get that the money from the settlement was income, and she didn't have a lawyer anymore, not now that Ian was dead and no one needed her to testify anywhere.
She watched him examine the tree, which she didn't think much of. Her paintings were better these days, yeah? And the trees were just something to keep her hands busy, because she had a serious problem with stillness these days. "I can give you a painting for your legal advice and shit," she said, and she pulled her cell out of her pocket and scrolled through the pictures of the studio housed there. Eventually, she found a clear one of one of the walls, where a large canvas of a woman was visible, oil, but strangely lifelike. The woman's face was submerged, with her hands reaching toward the surface of water that was pale and somehow suffocating for all its lightness. It was an overhead view, and more startling for the odd angle, and she watched his face for a reaction to it.
His question about Lin was unexpected, and she turned her face to look at him, all inky blue eyes and dark circles underneath. "He posted all over the place and probably read tons of shit. I think he had a roommate who bounced or whatever, and he dated that Aubrey guy and had sex with all my female friends on the regular." Because that was what she knew about Lin, yeah? "Has Lin talked to me?" she clarified. "Sure. Well, he's been yelling more often lately, and he's been talking less, because I don't do anything how he thinks I fucking should. But I don't think that's what you're asking, is it, baby?"
Daniel was unimpressed with Sam’s artistic dry spell. “You will.” It would come back to her, as she did not avoid it intentionally the way he had. Even so diminished he still wrote, terrible snatches of information with no purpose and little sense. He tended to avoid reading them again, and wondered at whether writing with ink in prelude to text might improve the situation. He shook his head. Probably not.
Daniel looked over, turning a messy head and focusing his attention on her movements, the wax and wane of her voice. He hadn’t known that she was painting, that she did very much painting, and Daniel had always preferred canvas to anything more physical. Something about life being on a wall, like a mirror, reflections… He didn’t finish the thought. Daniel crossed his body with his arm and reached out to take the phone and examine the photo, his grip on the case inexpert as he tried to avoid touching anything that might make the phone turn off or turn over. He peered into the glass, trying to see the oils underneath, and then, once he took in the color, the face. His squinting expression smoothed as he stopped trying to see and started considering.
Daniel was still looking at the painting when she replied about Lin. “Yelling? About what?” Daniel knew about Aubrey, and he was unwilling to give in to the idea that he had been wrong about both of them, as they seemed a more likely pair than not. They talked the same way and Daniel had been half-expecting a very visible reconciliation in ink ever since he started talking to both of them. “Angry yelling?”
She gave him a look that was confused when he said she'd go back to work. "You think answering phones at a shitty gas station is something to hurry back to?" she asked, because, yeah, no. "I mean, I have to get a job, yeah? But I spend all my time welding and painting now, and I was kind of hoping I could go to school or something. They give money for that shit, yeah? Even if I run out or whatever?" She'd been considering art school for months, but being locked up or freaked out had gotten in the way thanks to Ian. Maybe now it would be cool. "I could go back to construction, but-" She trailed off, and she shrugged. Maybe it was stupid to want to do something more, and welding had been enough for her once, yeah? "One of my brothers is working at the gas station, and we don't see eye to eye on some shit lately," she admitted, because putting Joey first was just a thing, and it wasn't going to change.
She watched him squint at the painting on the tiny screen, and it made her grin. "I can have one delivered or something," she told him, because she knew the layers of color didn't translate on the phone's little screen. "They're huge, though, five-by-five, so don't expect something tiny." Which also didn't translate so good on the screen. "I like the oils. My doctor at Future Hope got me started painting at the beginning of the year. I cut too deep, and I couldn't hold a torch at first, so she gave me a big old fucking brush - the kind you paint walls with - and pointed me at a white wall," she admitted with a small shrug. "So, I guess I have you to thank, since you paid for the joint."
The question about Lin yelling wasn't surprising, but she thought it over before answering. "He's been really fucked up at everyone, yeah? Pissed, I mean, at how we handle shit or whatever. Neil says it's just Lin's way of coping, trying to joke everything off, but he's having a really hard time with shit recently. Can't you tell he's depressed?" she asked, because that was super obvious, and she had no idea he thought anything about Aubrey, or she would have clarified that shit. "I mean, I don't think it's back to the mental hospital depressed or anything, but it's bad enough that I'm worried about it," she confessed.
Daniel sighed and thought that he should have realized she wouldn’t understand what he was referring to when he talked about work. Maybe drunk, Daniel could forget about his advantages and his own unique vocabulary hammered out of centuries of family silver, but not at the moment. “When I said ‘work,’ I meant your art, sweetheart,” he said, somewhat gravely, prodding at the phone inexpertly in an attempt to get the picture on the screen larger and brighter.
He ignored the comment about the gas station. Daniel had a confused picture of Sam’s siblings, a mixed crowd, faceless and nameless, all of them completely incompetent and unable to support her in any sense of the word. He made an unmistakably derogatory sound at the mention of said brother at the gas station, his sole contribution to that particular suggestion.
Daniel brought the phone away from his face when she mentioned delivering the painting. He didn’t want to commit to such a massive artistic statement on his walls, which were bare because he had stripped them of all personality with the specific intent of avoiding unnecessary inspiration or reminders of more productive times. He was much better at controlling his expressions sober, and he kept his face kind, without aversion, so she would know his reluctance didn’t have to do with the painting itself. “I’d need to see it first,” he said. What she said about cutting took the marrow out of his bones and froze it solid, and he carefully directed his eyes to a vague spot of dust between his feet. He held the phone out to her once more.
To Lin’s trials and tribulations, Daniel only made a soft sound of positive inclination. One couldn’t even call it an acquiesce or agreement. It started on the roof of his mouth behind his tongue and filtered forward through his teeth, suggesting thoughtful understanding and no more. Daniel didn’t notice that Lin was depressed. Daniel didn’t notice anything because he kept himself too drunk, and he set at it with such a will he probably wouldn’t have noticed if Lin turned purple overnight. It was only if Lin had gone missing entirely, or suddenly became mute, now that, Daniel would have noticed. Sober, he was guilty about it, guilty, and something else... something with a more bitter taste.
"Work pays money, yeah?" she asked, because she'd never think of her painting or welding as work, not really. Even if she managed to actually make money, she'd probably still never think of it at as work. She'd started welding because it was the only thing her overprotective husband would let her leave the fucking house for, since her pop and brothers worked in a shop, and she'd loved it from the very beginning, but it wasn't work. Work was I-Beams and casinos going up and igloo lunch boxes and shit. She rolled her eyes at the sound he made when she mentioned Joey, and she nudged his shoulder with her own. She knew Joey was a fuck-up, but he'd spent like fifteen years in a jail, and she thought that was a pretty good reason for being unable to help with anything.
"No big deal," she said of the painting with a shrug. It wasn't like she'd been doing it long, and she didn't actually expect him to want to hang it or anything. She just knew he didn't leave the house much, yeah? And she was pretty sure a visit to the studio would earn her a loud fuck, no. "You don't have to be weird about it. I didn't mean you needed to like it," she said, assuming that was the reason for the haste in the return of the phone, which she immediately tucked into her pocket.
She leaned across him, and she tugged one of the curls that threatened to bob along his forehead. "So go home, yeah? Because he's fucking impossible right now," she said, a significant amount of fondness in her voice when she talked about the tiny menace of a hipster. "And you have this crazy patience with him that no one else does, and he maybe needs that." And she felt like she'd spent all her time since coming home making everyone else feel better about what had happened with Ian. But she did want Lin to go back to being, well, Lin, and not some unhappy harpy.
“People would pay for your art,” Daniel said, calmly. “You have to find the right audience and the right venue.” He absolutely ignored her reaction to his opinion of Joey. He hardly cared, not at all troubled by the idea that she might not like him passing judgment on her relatives. Daniel passed judgment on everyone, and he always had. It was one of the great advantages of erudition and wealth. It didn’t make him right, it just made it difficult for people to argue with him to any advantage.
Daniel tipped his head and laid it nearly flat on his shoulder. The gesture was tired, and required that he bring up one knee and support his elbow so that his arm might provide a decent cushion. “I’m not weird about it. I didn’t say I didn’t like it. Try not to put words in my mouth, Sam.” It was without ire, and the blue eyes were a pale blue and yet deeper than they had a right to be. He let her pull at his hair and smiled a quiet, purely physical smile. He used three fingers to tap under her chin. The contact was brief and without clear meaning.
“That’s why you’re sitting out here? Consorting with Henry to toss me back out into the desert?” He still smiled, even through the accusatory questions, and seemed unhurt by the attention. His voice went a little vague and he let his lashes sink low against the hollow cheeks. “To take care of Lin.” He was the worst possible person to take care of anyone. He might be able to stay sober maybe twelve hours at most. He’d see what he could get done in that time. It would have to be enough. Daniel took his head up as if it weighed more than he expected and put a hand behind him against the wall. Disused muscles worked to get him upright and he stayed that way. He looked up and down the hallway; he was thirsty, of course, but hungry too.
Daniel put a hand out to assist Sam to her feet.
She had no clue what erudition meant, and she would have said as much had he said it aloud. But, regardless, his reaction to Joey didn't bother her. She'd grown up in the kind of family that always got shitty looks from the decent people, and she'd developed that I don't give a shit attitude that came along with it. As for people paying for her art, yeah, maybe. "It still wouldn't be work, even if they paid, baby," because she didn't do it for that. She did it because, like the fucking opera that she always had playing, it helped her get through shit. "When I want a needle, I paint or I weld, and I'd do it if no one ever gave a shit, and if I had to use my last fucking penny," she admitted, and then she grinned, gap-teeth and so much youth. "Or your last penny. Whichever."
The lean of his head didn't bother her, and the touch of his fingers didn't either. Someone else would probably get an elbow to the face. Hell, even Joey had gotten that, but not him. "No, I'm out here because I was pissed the fuck off that Lin left you in that door for two fucking weeks," she admitted. "I was worried about you, yeah?" She shrugged. "But you're ok, so now I move onto worrying about Lin. Lin worrying about other fuckers, it's what I do. Worrying about my own shit is too crippling," she said casually, as if it wasn't anything at all. But she smiled when he put his hand against the wall, a young kind of victory smile that said maybe - just maybe - she wasn't completely fucking defeated yet.
She took his hand when he held it out, and she climbed to her feet with the agility of youth, leaving the little tree against the door. "Anyway, worrying about us is good for you," she teased of herself and Lin, though she knew he worried about Lin a whole lot fucking more, even if he didn't admit it.
Daniel didn’t try to explain the difference between work, the verb, and work, the noun. He didn’t reach into his deep experience with a thousand senior journalists and even the dusty voices of a hundred writing teachers to say that even art takes work, and don’t expect appreciation when you deserve criticism. Daniel didn’t think Sam needed any of these things from him, and the too-sharp clarity of Beast-induced sobriety made that effortlessly obvious. “Art School is a good idea. You can apply for scholarships that will pay. You write an essay about yourself and get some recommendations from people for scholarships. You’ll do well. Ask Lin to help you with the applications.” Daniel could help with the essays, but he was withholding promising anything that would require less than half-bottle a day.
He left Sam to her own devices once she was on her feet, and reflected on how long it had been since he had assisted anyone physically in any form. It made him think of times past, and he wondered what day it was, what month, what year. He wondered how old he was. How long had he been in Vegas? Daniel glanced over his shoulder at Henry’s door. How much of his life belonged to Henry, and how much to the bottle waiting at home? Lin probably only took the moments in between, and if the boy had any sense he’d be angry about it. Maybe he was. Maybe that was what was waiting at home. Daniel didn’t want to face that. He didn’t want to face anything. The cowardly center of his heart compressed in sudden panic, and the sky outside the distant window suddenly looked menacing.
Daniel pulled his hand from Sam’s and stared blankly at her face. He didn’t want to be worrying about people. He shouldn’t be. And no one should be worrying about him. That was the whole fucking point of this whole ridiculous charade. It was supposed to be a short road to the grave and he was supposed to be getting there mostly oblivious and on his own steam. His jaw worked, and for a second he looked angry himself, the dim light casting little shivering shadows down the line of his jaw and adding old ink to the expanding index of blue eyes. The moment passed. He stepped away from her, and bent down to pick up the gold tree, gentle, with the tips of his fingers.
He caught Sam’s eye. One side of his head jerked for the stairwell, indicating that she go first. “Go on.”
"Yeah," she said of asking Lin for help with applications. It wasn't a bad idea, and maybe she'd do it once Lin calmed down and started singing television jingles without that screaming desperation again. She couldn't imagine writing a fucking essay, but maybe it would be ok if Lin cleaned it up or something first, yeah? What did she need to be able to write for? She didn't expect Daniel's help. If there was something she'd learned in the past year, it was that she needed to fend for herself, and she needed to learn to do a better fucking job of it than she had been. When she'd first gotten to Vegas, she'd been a pro at it; she'd just forgotten along the way.
Sam had no fucking clue that he was worrying about worrying, because Daniel already worried, whether he knew it or not. That was no fucking secret to her. She didn't try to take his hand back, and her expression was curious when his jaw tensed (she really wanted a fucking paint brush just then). She watched him pick up the tree, and she watched that jerk of his head. She took a step back toward the hall and the stair, as he indicated, but she stopped mid-step and moved forward instead.
Her fingers, when they found his shoulder, were calloused through the rumpled shirt he wore and, even short as he was, she had to push up inelegantly on her toes to press a closed-mouthed kiss to the edge of his lips. "I'm going to stop in my door," she said rocking back, her expression saying maybe that was a crock of shit, and maybe she just wanted to give him the cab ride alone. "Yeah? Tell Lin I'll check in with him later," she added, stepping back and turning in the other direction, up, toward the Marvel door.
Daniel watched her go. He realized he could not recall if her scent was any different, if the warmth of her flesh had somehow cooled. The edges of his memories with her were very visceral and yet bled down with spilled golden whiskey and blunt time. The blurred remnants swam at the front of his memory for a few moments until he finally let them go, and they slipped back into an indefinite past that started somewhere in a bloody alleyway and never really started back up again.
Turning to face the end of the hall, Daniel set the tree in the center of his palm, balancing it there. The hunger was starting to grip at his guts, and the debated finding a drink before he found home, but the edges of the tree cut fiercely into the line of his fingers. Home first. Long enough to look at some paperwork for Sam. Shake Lin by the scruff of the neck. Get things on the right track. He could go back to what he was supposed to be doing after that. There was no hurry. He’d get there in the end.