Who: Meredith and Loren What: Loren stops by for a visit Where: Meredith's apartment When: This past weekend Warnings/Rating: Nothing
The night air felt bitter on his hands and face when he zipped up a snug, black hoodie and hit the streets. It wasn't cold out, not by far, but the jacket was only a form of concealment. Darkness over short shorn hair, gun tucked against the small of his back. Not that he thought he would have to use it, but it couldn't hurt. Contrary to Jules' opinion, his only intentions with Meredith were brevity and directness, not strangling. The gun was out of necessity, as there was a murderer on the loose. Of course, this was a large city, and there always a murderer running free at one time or another. Loren was no vigilante, he had his senses set on just the one. Just him. The obsession was a runaway train, and he couldn't slow it down, didn't want to either. He dreamed about it, and Tate paced about it. God, he could still taste that desert death rot on his tongue. His job was beginning to get in the way of all this focus, and he passingly wondered how long he could survive without working. Long enough to find the monster? Somehow, Loren didn't put much thought at all into what came after that. That was the only point, the only destination, the only X on his map.
Blackened boot soles made a quick ascent of the stairs at Red Rock Villas, and he found her door not long after. Loren did not entertain the idea that she might have given him a false address, as he'd done to Jules. That wasn't a possibility, just like it wasn't a possibility that she was going to retain secrets. He took a deep breath to cram down the gristle and tension that lurked almost constantly beneath the surface these days, and then he knocked. So soft it bordered on polite.
When Loren had demanded a visit, Meredith had hoped it would be in a day or so, give her time to prepare, to figure out what the hell was going on and what she was missing. The conversation with the anonymous person on the journals, and then with Jules, had left her feeling as though there was something she wasn’t being told, something important. And then the accusations that she was being stupid... Well, Meredith knew she wasn’t the smartest cookie in the box, but she had never considered herself to be stupid. And those accusations just made her feel as though she had something she needed to prove. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to do anything to the person that had killed Hannah (and Meredith was still having problems coming to terms with the fact that the girl was actually dead), that didn’t mean she was just going to give up.
During the time between the end of her conversation with Loren and his actual arrival, Meredith had scrambled around trying to figure out how to download the conversations from her phone to her computer, where she could print them out or save them or do something with them. If Loren wanted information, she would give it to him; she had nothing to hide, nothing said there that she was necessarily ashamed of. But she still didn’t see what good any of it would do.
She had just figured out how to transfer things to her laptop when the knock at the door came. Quiet, polite, it wasn’t the knock of someone who sounded mad, but she still approached the door with caution. Rising up on her tiptoes, she peered through the peephole, and the somewhat familiar sight of Loren had her relaxing, just a bit. The deadbolt was turned, the chain released, and Meredith was soon pulling open the door and offering him a tremulous, barely brave smile. Red hair was knotted back at the nape of her neck, and she was dressed for bed in pajama pants and a pale green tank top, her feet left bare. No thought had been given to changing for his arrival. This should be a short meeting, she thought. In and out, and he’d realise she had nothing to offer for all of her conversations with the anonymous man.
Loren did not force his way inside, but rather waited for the girl to step back in blatant invitation. He kept his hands wedged deep into the black cotton of his pockets, weighing the whole jacket down in a showcase of nerves and anxiousness when he prowled past the threshold. Making his way into the living room at a slow pace, he finally drew some fingers from one pocket and dusted the hood off of his head. His hair was dark and recently shorn close enough that it was only slightly longer than the rough shading along his jaw. "Start talking," was all he said as he began to pace. More caged animal than man, he breezed toward the kitchen and circled roughly back to the front door, back to her. "Why are you talking to him?" It was the first time he looked at her, all steel in blue eyes.
When Loren set to pacing, Meredith pressed the door shut behind him, her back against it as she pressed flat to the wooden panel. His anxiousness was contagious, and she could feel her own heart start to beat faster as he prowled through the spacious, yet mostly empty, apartment. She opened her mouth to say something in response, but abruptly closed it as he rounded towards her, her own blue eyes narrowing. His gaze was hard, sharp, and she felt herself flinching away from it for a moment as she looked away, off to the side, anywhere but directly at him. Why was she talking to him? It was a good question, and one she didn’t have a good answer for.
“I thought I could keep him from hurting anyone. I thought I could keep him away from Hannah, honestly,” Meredith eventually said, and she had to push away from the door, away from him, edging out to the side and stepping briskly towards the computer where her phone was hooked up to it. “What does it matter why?”
"It matters because she's dead." His explanation was pointed and brief, and he set his teeth to a mimicry of stone shortly thereafter. Frostbite eyes followed her, although he did not move. His attention dropped briefly to the phone, noting its attachment to the computer, but he said nothing about that. "So your plan was to.." There was a muddled sneer, and a knot of eyebrows as he pinned his confusion on the ceiling. "What? Get his attention and talk to him sometimes?" Loren had almost half expected the girl to be on some pipedream, starstruck vigilante mission.. but that didn't seem to be the case at all. Loren understood revenge, whatever this was made no sense. "You think he just wants a pen pal?" There was a dry hitch, a partial laugh, amusement taking a nosedive into disbelief. "That's not what he wants," but Loren was thinking of Tate when he said as much.
Sitting down at the computer, Meredith pulled up the conversations she had had with the anonymous man, turning once they were displayed on the screen. “My plan was to figure out a way to stop him,” Meredith answered plainly, and there was no stammer in her voice, no weakness in her tone. “To keep him from hurting anyone else. That was my plan. Turn him in to the cops, maybe. Or something like that. I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but I thought as long as his attention was on me, he wouldn’t be hurting anyone else.” Meredith’s brow furrowed at that and she gave a quick shake of her head, rising and pacing towards the kitchen, pulling out a bottle of soda from the fridge and taking a long drink. “Was it a flawless plan?” she asked a moment later, putting the bottle down on the counter and leaning forward on it, towards him. “No. I know that. But I was trying.”
Once she migrated to the kitchen, Loren crouched before the screen as he scrolled through a couple of conversations. Whatever he'd been expecting to find, this obviously wasn't it. She was quite literally chatting with monsters, giving all kinds of details about herself. What books she liked. Fuck, he ran a palm across his face while tension sang in his jaw. "Do you have any friends or family?" He finally asked only this while cresting to standing height once more.
An obvious line of tension formed in her as he asked his next question, her fingers tightening around the bottle she had been drinking from, knuckles white, her jaw tight. “Just a few friends in the area, but I haven’t been here long.” Meredith didn’t say anything for a long moment, her eyes cast towards the counter. “And I don’t talk about my family. Not to anyone here. Sorry.” Her lips were pressed together tightly and she straightened, not looking at him still. “If that’s all you wanted to talk about...”
"And if they never hear from you again?" He prompted with an expectant twitch of dark eyebrows. There was nothing of threat or anger or compassion in the words, just wondering vacancy. Like the question was something to sate his curiosity, not something to make her fucking think. "Because if he does kill you.." Thinking of Tate, Loren couldn't imagine somebody going through acts such torture and malice for a one time instance. This wasn't a murderous version of hit it and quit it. ".. you might never be found." Finding Hannah had been only happenstance. How many square miles of desert were there? How many cave formations? Curious cowboys weren't always on patrol, and Loren somehow doubted that the boy he'd rode out with was very interested in killing his time between sandy dunes these days. Loren still couldn't shake what he'd seen, he might never be able to. He crushed boot prints into the carpet while advancing to the kitchen's edge, awaiting her explanation.
“He’s not going to kill me.” Meredith said the words before she even through them through completely, her voice sharp, her gaze even moreso when she turned it on Loren. But it softened quickly after that, something in her faltering as the seriousness of his words finally sunk in. Thomas and Spencer had no idea where she was, where she had disappeared off to nearly two months prior. If something did happen to her, then there would be no one to even tell them. No one here knew of her husband or son, and she had all intentions on keeping it that way, but this... this was making it difficult.
Glancing up towards Loren, she watched his approach for a long moment, just staring at him before finally looking back down, reaching up to wipe the tears that had welled in her eyes with the heel of one hand. “He’s not going to kill me. I won’t let him,” Meredith said a moment later, but there was much less conviction in her voice than there had been only seconds earlier.
Loren was admittedly expecting a better argument than what was given. She wouldn't let him kill her? Although he'd said something similar to Jules, Loren failed to see the irony. His mouth siphoned to the side, resisting the urge to rattle her by the shoulders. Meredith obviously hadn't thought this through. She had no game plan, no desire for revenge, just a half-hearted wish to stay alive.. should things come to that, which she apparently didn't believe they would. "He knows your name, apparently what you look like-" Ginger. "As well as things that you like. You obviously have nothing and nobody to ground you here, nothing to deter your loneliness.." Because Loren knew about loneliness, knew it could make a person seek things out irrationally. "And you have no problem with inviting people into your home.." She didn't know the first thing about Loren, or about who was in his head, and he was less than three feet away from her. Two feet, one foot.. he moved fast, and there was a tangle of knuckles in the pale green strap of her pajama tank when he shoved her back into the counter's edge. "How do you know I didn't kill her?" What if he was just a good actor, all those previous tears, all that worry.. what did she know about monsters and man?
Her brows furrowed together at Loren’s words, facts that she couldn’t really argue against because everything that he said, it was, in many ways, true. But there wasn’t time enough to ponder heavily over that, to find a way to counter his statements before she was pressed into the edge of the counter, a startled shriek escaping from her as she found herself entirely too close to him. Her skin, normally pale, had gone a shade even whiter, hands gripping the counter, pressing away from it and subsequently into him. “You didn’t kill her,” she stated firmly. “I don’t know why I feel that way, but I’m almost positive you didn’t kill her. You aren’t the one who’s taunting me.” Meredith was breathing hard, blue eyes bright with tears, and she brought a hand up between them, pressing the flat of it against his chest and trying to push him back.
Ignorant of her tears until now, the sight of them almost made him step back. But in the end, he set his teeth with stern resignation and remained where he was. He didn't crowd closer, but he didn't let up, and he didn't let her go. Loren ignored the hand pressing against his chest, it might as well have been folded origami trying to sway him. "How can you be sure?" She couldn't rely on a feeling, not if her entire life depended on it. Not if she was playing such a ridiculous game. He meant to startle some sense into her, to make her understand that she couldn't deter the inevitable. This was the reality of her choices. Loren tugged his fingers away from the strap of her shirt in a moment, although he'd put such a stretch in the threads that it now hung limp and nearly broken on her skin. He traded the strap out for her throat, and the grip was tight. This was not a game. "I'm here to kill you, so now what?" She wouldn't let it happen? His blue eyes betrayed nothing, not an emotion, not a drop of pity for her tears.
A gasp escaped her as the rough pull of his fingers stretched the strap of her tank, the fabric hanging down over her bare arm, unnoticed, for her gaze and attention was fixed completely on him. She tried to give another shove to his chest, but that was forgotten moments later when his hand closed around her throat. Her heart was beating like butterfly wings in her chest, one hand closing around his wrist, trying to quell the desire to panic, to start screaming out of fear. But somehow, she kept it together, lips parted with the heavier breaths she took. Maybe he was the one who had killed Hannah, and maybe she had invited the monster into her apartment, her safe place.
But that didn’t mean she was just going to lay down and let him kill her. Meredith operated on instinct, fingernails digging into his wrist as she shifted, bringing up a knee sharply, aiming between his legs, and a second time if he stuck around to let it happen. She was a fighter, perhaps not in experience, but in not giving up.
It was a waiting game, watching the shores of panic rise against the levees. When she bucked against the counter, more pressure secured her. When she dug her nails into the flesh of his hangman's wrist, he swatted her away. A mild annoyance that bit bloody half-moons and raw rainbows into his skin. It was the rogue knee that disengaged him, and Loren shifted away from her in order to prevent a contact. The second throw earned her freedom with a rough jostle and a quick step of retreat that pitched his back against the opposing counter for the time being. His eyes followed her as she righted herself, and despite her release, there was a level solemnity in his eyes that said he wasn't impressed. Her knees weren't going to do her a lot of good if she was drugged up in a hole somewhere. "Stop talking to him." It didn't sound like much of a request.
The moment he released her, she went on the defensive, rounding the counter and coming up on the other side of it, peering across the breakfast bar to him, her blue eyes impossibly wide. She was breathing hard, bright spots of colour on her cheeks from the flush that had risen, and in her haste to back up, she had one hand wrapped around a fork that had been laying out on the counter, holding it as though she would attack him if he came any closer. “Or else you’ll come and attack me again?” Meredith bit back, her voice sharp. “Everyone’s already told me I have his attention. If I ignore him, is he just going to go away?” The torn strap of her tanktop hung low on her shoulder, hair mussed from the knot she had pulled it into, the vision of cool and collectedness she had been not so long ago completely absent.
Pale eyes dropped to the quivering fork in her hand, and there was the barest ghost of a smile before he shook his head. "No, you won't see me again." If she wanted to play detective and martyr, that was going to be on her. Loren had originally considered - strongly - using her as bait, but Jules' handwriting still scrawled a brand of guilt in his mind. That's why Hannah died. Loren could only shrug when questioned about whether her silence would deter this anonymous creature's interests. Maybe, maybe not. "Just be smart," he said when he pushed forward with a heft of his hoodie's black hem. The gun from his back was brought into the light, but he held it in an awkward pinch of fingers while his other hand splayed, universal signal for meaning no harm. Before she had a chance to lunge after him with that fork, Loren set the gun flat on the breakfast bar. "You know how to use one of these?"
Meredith didn’t say anything for a long while, her expression wary, her posture on edge. The simple statement that she wouldn’t see him again had her faltering, just for a moment, confused. “I am trying to be smart, but apparently I’m not as smart as I thought I was.” Her lips thinned out, pressed together in a thin line that hardened several measures at the sight of the gun he pulled out. Breath catching in her throat, Meredith’s eyes fixed on the gun even as he sat it down and seemed to mean no harm to her with it. There were several long moments that passed, but eventually, she sat the fork down, giving it a little push to get it out of her reach as though to say she wouldn’t stab him with it, at least not without a struggle to get it back.
“No, I’ve never used one. I’ve never even seen one in person,” Meredith answered. “My hus-” And she paused then, brow furrowing down. “Never had a need for one,” she covered quickly. “Why?”
"Most people aren't as smart as they think they are." It was a small concession for her, and perhaps an extended laurel branch for the previous incident in the kitchen. Loren hadn't grabbed her so hard that she'd bear marks, but he supposed that for a girl who'd never seen a handgun before, even the slightest shake would have been a set precedent in violence. Some fingers cruised his hoodie's zipper anxiously, drawing those silver teeth open and closed, bearing a blue shirt underneath ever so briefly before he stepped forward again. Lifting the gun in his right handed grip, he turned it to show her the little black slide near the barrel. "This is the safety." The pad of his thumb drew it back and forth in demonstration before he curled his fingers around the barrel and extended the grip to her.
The fact that he was showing the gun to her had her on edge, but if he was going to teach, then Meredith was determined to learn, even if it was difficult to even bring her eyes to it. As he started to explain, she rounded the counter towards him, biting down hard on her lower lip before she gave a small nod of agreement, letting him know that she understood. But she didn’t lift her hand to take the gun immediately from him. There was definite fear in her gaze, and it took her several seconds to gather any sort of courage before she reached out to take the gun in both hands, holding it as though it was going to go off at any minute. “You’re handing this to someone who knows nothing about these, you realise. You’re not afraid I’m going to accidentally shoot you or myself, are you?”
There was a wordless smile as Loren crowded close to secure her fingers around the grip as he preferred. Placing his hand against the side of the barrel, he pushed it gently from side to side in an effort to get her to at least steady the damn thing instead of just swaying with it. "Firmer." His instructions tended to be monosyllabic except for the occasional reminder for her to not lock her damn elbows. Finally, Loren was either satisfied or just gave up completely because he stepped in front of the gun and captured her wrist so that she leveled it right against his chest. No, he apparently wasn't afraid of getting accidentally shot. "Aim here, and then.." A rough palm coursed over the back of her two-handed grip, taking one of her index fingers to the trigger whether she felt like it or not. "Pull." In this particular demonstration, pulling on the trigger didn't bring any loud surprises, the safety kept things quiet. "Got it?" He glanced up from the gun to her eyes, gauging her sincerity.
With Loren’s continued instructions, hands-on demonstrations, Meredith began to feel strangely disconnected from her own body. She knew what was happening, went along with it, but she felt separated from the entire event, as though she were watching it from a television, not truly there. Her hands curled around the grip, though her gaze darted back to him when he moved in front of her. With the guidance of his hand, her breath was held as the gun was levelled directly at his chest, and there was a brief moment where she swore her heart stopped beating. This was a long way away from where she had been earlier this year, so far removed from her husband and her son, and it felt like a completely different life.
One finger rested against the trigger, and she made a little noise as he directed her, her arms trembling for a moment before she gave a small nod of understanding. It took several swallows before she managed to bring her gaze back up to him, blue eyes bright with unshed tears, though their source was hard to determine. She wasn’t the sort of girl to simply break down into sobs, to turn into a miserable mess. No, Meredith pulled it all in to deal with later, when she could hide away where no one else had to deal with it too. Where her finger rested on the trigger, she kept steady, and slowly, her arms stopped shaking. She didn’t pull the trigger, didn’t make any threats towards him. She simply nodded her assent and tried to be brave.
The tears confused him, and Loren withdrew from their shared contact. In the absence of his own grip, he was proud to note that her hands were at least steady with the weight of the gun. The safety was on, so he was burdened with very little concern as far as unexpected gunshots went. His left wrist was leaking blood, weeping red from the deep gouges of her nails earlier. He didn't seem to notice until a bit of wetness streaked into his palm. The wounds were registered with dull, slate blue eyes. Loren seemed just as confused by the sight of his own blood as he'd been over her tears, and after a moment's consideration, he just wiped the red on the edge of his shirt. The cotton wasn't quite dark enough to camouflage a bloodstain, but this shirt was only one of the litter.
"What the hell ya crying for?" The question wasn't a rough scrape or even judgmental, but rather seemed to be hedged in fondness.
As the moments ticked by, and no one died because she held a gun in her hands, Meredith started to relax, bit by minute bit. It was almost imperceptible, because the tension never fully left her, but it was a step in the right direction. But it was the sight of the blood on his wrist, the way he stared at it, then wiped it away, that drew her attention once more, bottom lip bit between even, white teeth, before she sat the gun down, carefully, on the counter beside her. “I hurt you,” she said softly, and there was regret in her words, guilt colouring the edges. Gaze sweeping back up to him, she was quiet for several more heartbeats before she shifted, pressing her back against the counter and folding her bare arms across her stomach. “Can I tell you a secret?”
He only shrugged when she took notice of the blood. "I'll live." Although the scrapes stung beneath the recycled whirl of conditioned air, Loren found it pretty difficult to get shook up about injuries these days. He'd lived through taking a bullet to the head, anything less than that felt like sweating the small stuff. Loren watched the gun a moment longer after she left it on the counter, it looked stark and lonely against such pale linoleum. "I want you to keep it," he murmured before raising his eyes, figuring he should clarify before he left. But her question gave him pause, and Loren frowned faintly with the assumption that this secret would have to do with the killer. In which case he probably wasn't going to like it. "Yes."
Loren’s assumptions about what Meredith was about to tell him couldn’t be further from the truth. She closed her eyes for a moment, chin tilted to her chest as she took several deep breaths, releasing, attempting to bring some more relaxation to the moment. “I’ll keep the gun, but... well, it’s more of a favour I need of you.” Meredith looked back up then, head canted to the side, expression open. “You keep mentioning if something should happen to me, my family won’t know.” And her thoughts drifted to her husband and her son back in Colorado, and that caused her brow to furrow for a moment. Lips pursed, she turned and opened the drawer that was behind her, pulling out a pad of paper and scrawling an address down on it before thrusting the slip of paper at him.
“If something happens, let that person know.” A short pause. “He’s my husband. He deserves to know if something happens. I owe him that much.”
Loren folded the slip of paper without looking it over even once. His stoneblue attention was all for Meredith when she explained the elusive husband, words he hadn't even begun to suspect would come out of her mouth. It seemed like the kind of secret that should only be opened in emergencies, as Meredith had obviously concealed such history for a reason. Loren didn't have a very solid grip on the concept of a modern American marriage, but even he wondered if there was more to this separation than she was letting on. Maybe it had to do with whoever was in her head. He didn't ask, just gave a shallow smile and tucked that secret away for safe keeping in his back pocket. "Sure." He didn't reassure her that nothing was going to happen to her. It was something he'd done for Hannah, but he'd been very wrong.
He didn’t ask questions, he didn’t look for explanations, and Meredith was glad that he left it alone. And even though she didn’t know him well, she had trust that he would do as she asked in the event that something happened. Something happening. The thought made her stomach roll over, but it was a very real possibility, and she knew that; it had been pointed out to her enough over the past day. “Thanks,” she replied after a moment, and her eyes spoke volumes about how thankful she really was. Looking away, she glanced back towards the gun that lay on the counter, reaching out to touch it with the tips of one hand before drawing her fingers back again, towards herself, protective. “And I’ll... I’ll be more careful around him. I won’t contact him.” A pause, short, just a heartbeat of silence. “Promise.” And Meredith meant those words, she truly did.
Loren didn't believe her. Sure, there was enough sincerity in the girl's words to drown in, but it didn't mean very much to him. When he looked at Meredith, he saw the complexity that came with most women. The inability to turn away, the determination to prove oneself strong and useful, the thirst for such dangerous, risky things. Why else would she intentionally draw in the attention of a killer? It was too much like Hannah, the wannabe saints were always ready to line up for their smoking pyres. No, he didn't believe that Meredith would refrain from talking to the man for very long, but he didn't argue with her about it. Just gave her a nod and a soft smile before he made his way for the door. "Be safe.."