Who: Neil and Sam What: Post-hotel fuzz. Where: Aria. When: After the Vegas plot. Warnings/Rating: Some mentions of injuries.
Neil wasn’t sure how he ended up on the sidewalk outside of Passages, but he assumed he must have managed to drag himself out somehow. His back still stung from the huge zombie thing’s claws, his torn shirt stained with dried blood, and one cheek sported an impressive set of marks from nails that weren’t quite as long or as sharp as a monster’s. Hospitals were last on his priority list, because fuck that; he had a first aid kit at home somewhere, and that would be enough. No doctors. He didn’t want them looking at his knuckles, at the bruised skin that told the story of what he’d done without needing words to fill in the blanks. Just thinking about it make him feel sick, because he knew that wasn’t him. Beating up women? Acting like some kind of animal, even worse than Erik in his worst rage? It was like a bad nightmare, except this one he couldn’t wake up from. Sure, he could blame the blue glow, but that felt like he was just making excuses for himself.
The cab he hailed was slow, and the streets were a mess, which meant that by the time he reached the Aria he wanted nothing more than to drink himself into a stupor and drink for days. First, though, there were people he needed to check on. Louis, yeah, but Sam was top priority, and he kept replaying the horror in the theater over and over within his mind. What if she was passed out somewhere? What if one of those things had-- no, he couldn’t let himself go there. He reigned his thoughts in, kept them away from death, and focused on getting his key in the lock. He needed to call, or check with the police, or... fuck, he had no idea. If she wasn’t fine, if she couldn’t answer a phone or get to the journals, what the hell would he do then? His concern was almost as strong as his own self-loathing, which pushed Erik’s presence to the very end of his list of things he gave a damn about right then.
All the lights were on, which was his first indication that he wasn’t alone. Neil paused, letting the door swing shut behind him as he listened for any sign of an intruder before it clicked. Of course. If she was okay, why wouldn’t she come here?
“Sam?” His intended quest for the first aid kit had vanished, replaced by the new goal of finding Sam. There weren’t many places to look, and his room was first; when he tried to turn the knob, it wouldn’t budge. Bingo. “Sam, open up. It’s just me.” He kept rattling the knob, though it did little good, and steeled himself to physically force it open himself.
The first turn of the knob woke her, even with the whiskey and the painkillers in her system. Or, maybe, because of them. She was hyperaware, hypersensitive, and her first instinct was to find something to defend herself with. Her fingers found the whiskey bottle that had tipped over on the floor with little effort, though she hissed at the pain the movement brought. But then Neil spoke, and she let the bottle drop onto the floor again. Fuck, fuck, fuck. She wasn’t sober enough, or lucid enough, or steady enough to lie to him, and opening the door meant lying. She took a deep breath, and she tried to sound calm, though she failed miserably, and she knew it as soon as her voice cracked on his name. “Neil? I’m fine. Resting. Use one of the fucking guest rooms.” There, cursing helped. Cursing always helped people think she was fine.
Somehow, she had ended up standing on the bed, back pressed to the wall behind the headboard, but she didn’t remember how or when. She let herself slide back down to the pillows, the oversized clothing making her feel a little better, like she was covered from head to fucking toe, like if she could just hide the marks, then no one would know anything was wrong. Even Neil, if he saw her. She convinced herself of that as she sat there, watching the doorknob and trying not to break down when she heard his voice. But that was a fucking dream, not reacting to the way he sounded, and it was Christine’s idea to turn up the music. Christine, who Sam couldn’t remember ever being thankful for hearing until that fucking moment. She stretched, another hiss accompanying the movement, and she turned up the aria that was playing. Better, she couldn’t hear him now, couldn’t hear the doorknob rattling and, she thought, he’d go away. Neil was always fucking calm, and the last thing she expected was for him to find a way to open the door. That was more her style than his, refusing to let him shut her out.
She crawled back under the blankets, pulled them up over her head, and willed the entire fucking world away.
Neil heard the way her voice broke, and he knew right then that okay was the last thing she was. If he looked like hell, he could only imagine what she looked like, and the thought of her being at the mercy of someone who’d been as violent as him in the darkness of the hotel made him downright furious, a feeling which somehow managed to be stronger than his own self-loathing. He tried not to dwell on the fact that she might have been the one he’d attacked, because that woman hadn’t sounded anything like Sam. It didn’t make what he’d done any better, but a stranger was a little more tolerable than someone he cared about the way he cared about her. “Bullshit,” he called through the door. “You’re not fine. No one is fucking fine, and if they say they are, they’re lying. Let me in.” It was an assumption, maybe, but he was pretty sure everyone had gone through something that left them messed up in one way or another, even if it wasn’t physical.
There was no telltale sound of footsteps that indicated she intended to unlock the door, and he slammed his shoulder against the unrelenting wood in frustration. Did she really think he was just going to walk away and pretend everything was fine? Even without Erik making a ruckus in his head, that just wasn’t an option. He stepped back when the music turned up, loud enough to drown out his shouts, and studied the door with a scowl. Fine. If she wasn’t going to let him in so he could make sure she wasn’t bleeding to death in his bed, he’d let himself in.
Now, he didn’t often break down doors, but he’d seen enough movies to know that ramming it with his shoulder was just going to cause a lot of pain with no results. Instead, Neil braced himself and aimed a kick at the door, near the lock, which resulted in a thump that was loud and underlaid by the faintest crack of wood. He tried again, and again, uncaring that he was ruining the door in the process and it was going to be little more than useless after this. All that mattered was that the splintering wood meant he was getting through, and no amount of loud music was going to change that.
She didn’t hear the impact of his shoulder against the wood, the music blocking it out, but the kicking was impossible to miss. “Fucking stop!” she yelled, but the music likely eclipsed most of that too, and she dragged her fingers through her wet hair and tried to block out the noise by covering her ears. But the reality was still there, the fact that he was going to break through the fucking door, and that there wasn’t anything she could actually do to stop it. She had to force herself to think past the ache that was everywhere and, momentarily, she wondered if he’d talked to Louis, if Louis had run his mouth about the pictures. Fuck. She couldn’t imagine him being so determined otherwise. Christine was going on about how she should just open the door, oui? And Sam realized there was some logic in the suggestion. If she didn’t open it, Neil would just break the fucking thing down (like he was doing now), and her hiding would make him think something was wrong. She should have realized that. earlier Dammit.
She climbed off the bed as the wood began to splinter, and she had the presence of mind to leave the blanket behind, because hiding behind a blanket? So not fucking her, not if she was really ok, like she wanted him to believe. She straightened the neck of the shirt she’d stolen from his drawer, knowing she could do fuck-all about the bandages at her throat, but if he thought that was all there was, then that would be better than the truth. She could bluster through that. She could bluster through everything, she thought. Her entire life was fucking bluster.
Her progress to the door was slow, movement not her friend in any way, and she hadn’t bothered to turn down the blaring opera that filled the vacuum of the room. Every last light was lit as she yanked the shaking door open - closet, bathroom, nightstand - as if bad things lurked in every dark corner. All that light made a few things immediately evident, her skin was still flushed red, warm from a fever that hadn’t yet abated. There were three bandages along her throat, and she intentionally dragged her hair forward, as if the damp, blonde strands could cover the things, but everything else was hidden beneath the stolen shirt and pajama pants, both impossibly big on her and making her look impossibly young and fragile. She countered that by turning away from the door with as much attitude as she could muster, putting distance between them and not getting a good look at his face yet, the scratch there still unnoticed. “What?” she demanded, already halfway across the room, managing to fight through the pain to put the distance there. “I was trying to fucking rest. I’m fine, Neil.” There were orange pill bottles on the nightstand, glowing in the light of the lamp, and she cursed herself for not hiding them. Fuck.
Even if he’d been able to hear her shouts over the music and the sound of splintering wood, Neil still would have refused to stop. Louis hadn’t said a damn word, but he wasn’t stupid, and his imagination was more than capable of providing him of all sorts of terrible scenarios that involved her and some psychopath in the dark. A few more kicks would have splintered the door entirely, making it easy to knock right of its hinges, and he barely managed to catch himself from aiming another kick at the wood when the door was pulled open. He hadn’t been expecting it, since the music drowned out the sound of her approach, and the sheer surprise of it made him stare uncomprehendingly for a long moment. “Sam--” He had no idea what he was going to say, and even as the words caught in his throat his gaze took in her flushed skin, the bandages along her throat, the way his clothes made her look so much younger and delicate in a way he’d never quite thought of her.
Then she was moving, and Neil managed to break out of his paralysis to trail along behind in concern. “No, you’re not,” he protested, even as he caught sight of the pill bottle on the nightstand. “Your arm was fucked up, and those zombie things-- you passed out. What happened to your neck?” Because he was pretty sure the blue monsters hadn’t gotten her there, and he didn’t like the way she tried to hide the bandages.
She followed his gaze to the bottles, and she motioned to her arm and shoulder. “I got them looked at already, ok? They hooked me up with some drugs, and I just want to sleep the fever off,” because she could feel how warm she was. It’s not like she could hide the flush in her fucking cheeks. “When I fell,” she lied about the bandages, and her hand moved to her throat, a thoughtless flutter of fingers that was more appropriate to Christine than to a hand that wielded a blowtorch on a regular basis. The fabric of the loose shirt slipped past her fingers with the gesture, bruises evident on her wrist for an unguarded moment. She would have hurried to correct that, to yank the fabric down, but she noticed the scratch to his face then, remembered that blue fucker behind him, and she took a step forward.
“Just shut up,” she said, “and tell me what happened to your face.” She knew he wasn’t the man in the kitchens. Even with the fucked up crap at that hotel, she knew he wasn’t the kind of man to tell her he wanted to hurt her just because he enjoyed making her suffer. That wasn’t him, and she knew it hadn’t been one of those events where they weren’t themselves at all. “Did that blue thing get you?” she asked, concerned, taking another few steps forward, but no, that mark on his face wasn’t deep enough for some nasty monster, and she reached for his wrist with a hand that didn’t have as much strength as it normally did, fingers unhealthily warm. “We have to get that fucking cleaned,” she said, pulling him toward the master bedroom’s huge bathroom with an unfocused wince of pain at the quick movement. Practical shit was a good way to stay calm, to stay strong, and it was easier to focus on whatever was wrong with him, at least if she wanted to keep the act in place. The fact that she shouldn’t be on her feet could go fuck itself.
At the very least, Neil could believe that she’d gotten herself looked at. The bandages didn’t look like a home-done job, and the pills had to come from a doctor, but while he knew where the injury to her arm had come from he wasn’t so sure about her neck. She’d fallen, huh? And who knew what other injuries were hidden beneath the too-large clothes she wore. “Don’t lie to me, Sam,” he said, because he knew she was, and the bruises around her wrist that were revealed when the shirt’s fabric slipped only solidified that belief. He wasn’t thinking about himself, which meant he’d forgotten that the marks on his face were painfully visible, and he hadn’t had time to change between Passages and here.
“I’m fine. Don’t change the subject.” He swatted at her hand, not in the mood to let the topic go or to be worried about just then. Okay, so maybe part of it was not wanting to talk about the crazy woman who’d attacked him and who he had attacked in turn, but he didn’t even know where to start with that. Not when he was pretty sure someone had attacked her, and any chance of him making sure she was alright would go out the window if she equated him with whoever this mystery person was. “No-- well, just my back, but I’m fine,” he insisted, even though he allowed himself to be pulled along, weak as she was. “You need to rest, and you need to tell me what happened. It’s just a scratch.” It was clear to him that she shouldn’t have been moving, much less being out of bed in the first place, and he tugged back on her wrist in protest.
It was a good thing he allowed himself to be pulled, because any effort in the opposite direction would have likely sent her toppling. She flicked on the bathroom lights as she entered the tile-lined room that was bigger than most of the fucking apartments in her life, and she let go of his wrist when he tugged back, gratefully leaning against the counter for support as she got her bearings. In the light, it was pretty fucking obvious that there were bruises in the shape of fingers on her neck, beneath the bandages, and the fabric of the loose shirt caught on the edge of bandages at her arm and down from her collarbone. “Take the shirt off,” she said, the mention of his back taking priority over the scratches on his face. Well, maybe not priority, but those were definitely nail scratches on his cheek - human nail scratches. She gave him a long look as she stood there, not answering his fucking questions, and she moved away from the counter with obvious effort and turned on the shower for him. “Wash up. Is there a first aid kit I can find somewhere?” she demanded, voice going intentionally determined, so he wouldn’t give her shit about it. “You’re a fucking mess, Neil. Don’t argue.” More telling, was the fact that she didn’t actually seem inclined to stay in the bathroom with him. Because normally? She would have gotten right in the fucking shower with him, and there was no point in pretending he didn’t realize that. She would brazen it out if he called her on it, because she wasn’t one to back down from anything, but she was hoping that wouldn’t be the case. She’d have to lie about what had happened then, and she wasn’t really sure she could fucking manage it. Jesus, she was getting as bad as Christine, and when the fuck did that happen? She lifted trembling hands to her temple, and she pushed her hair away from her face without thinking of her wrists.
The lights revealed more than he’d ever wanted to see, and Neil sucked in his breath sharply as his gaze traveled over the bruises he hadn’t noticed outside. “Fuck, Sam,” he breathed, shaking his head, because he could imagine how those bruises had gotten there and he didn’t need Erik to push him into uncontrollable rage territory at the thought. He didn’t like the way she looked at him, probably wondering about the scratches on his cheek which, he knew, didn’t look the least bit like mark left behind by a monster, but he remained defiant and refused to elaborate. “Forget the first aid kit. I can get it,” he said, and then his tone turned angry, though it wasn’t directed at her. “I’m a fucking mess? Look at you! I’m not an idiot, alright? I know something bad happened to you, because that’s pretty damn obvious.” He ignored the running shower, ignored her demand that he take his shirt off--which was probably going to hurt like hell once he managed it--and moved forward when she pushed her hair back. “Listen,” he said, his voice softening with the lack of distance between them. “I’m fine. I’ll wash up, if it’ll get you to stop worrying, and I’ll get the damn first aid kit, but don’t pretend you’re fine.” He wanted to touch her, but there were bruises at her wrists and who knew what else hidden beneath the clothing, so he settled for brushing her hair back behind her ear instead. “Just... get back in bed, please? I can take care of myself.”
“Don’t treat me like I’m a fucking invalid, Neil. Just- Just let me do it, ok? You look like a fucking wreck, and it gives me something to focus on.” Which might be the most honest she’d been about anything since leaving that hotel behind. She didn’t step back when he moved forward, sheer, stubborn, determined will keeping her where she was standing. When he tucked her hair back, she looked up at him and raised a hand to the marks on his cheek, tracing them to see if the hand that had made them was any larger than hers. “What the fuck happened to us in that place?” she asked, her gaze sliding from the marks to meet his eyes. She was associating what happened to her to whatever happened to him, that was pretty fucking obvious, because she knew he wouldn’t hurt anyone, not if he could help it. That turned her thoughts around, quick and without hesitation. “What did she do to you?” He wouldn’t hurt someone without provocation, not Neil.
She took a long inhale, steadying, and she let the music that still filtered into the bathroom calm her. She took one step around him, and the sight of the back of his shirt made her inhale sharply, the sound nearly a hiss. “Come on. Get under the water with the shirt on. It’ll be easier to pry it away that way,” she said, tucking her hair up with fingers that still weren’t fucking steady. She considered pulling her clothes off before getting the near the water, but she let the hem of the shirt fall as soon as she started to tug on it. “Bed once we’re done,” she conceded, unwilling to let him boss her around, the determination something like steel in her voice. The shower was huge, a walk-in affair with a bench along one side, and though she couldn’t avoid the spray to get to it, she fully intended to get to the fucking bench, whether he wanted her to or not.
Neil was fully prepared to argue, but it was what she said last, that it gives me something to focus on, which made him pause. His sigh was long and drawn out, a sign that he was about to relent, and he flinched instinctively when her fingers traced over the marks. It stung, and she wouldn’t have difficulty noticing that they’d likely been left by nails that belonged to a female. “I don’t know. All I remember is some weird blue light, and then... something happened. The way I acted, it wasn’t me,” he said, trying not to sound like he was making excuses for whatever he’d done. It could’ve been worse, sure, but he still didn’t like remembering the way his fists had rained down on the mystery woman before he’d been compelled to leave and return to Passages. “She came at me with these knife heels, tried to get me on my knees. I fought back, and-- fuck, I don’t know. We were going at each other. It was insane.”
Arguing with her, he saw, was going to get him nowhere, and she didn’t have the energy to keep pushing. Damn it. “Fine,” he conceded, “but I’m telling you, it looks worse than it is.” He kept hold of her arm, though, intent on supporting her even if she claimed she didn’t need it, and he kept her on the opposite side of the spray in an attempt to make sure she didn’t get as soaked as she did. He hissed when the water hit his back, because yeah, it fucking hurt, and he’d much prefer to deal with it on his own, when no one else was around to see how serious it was. Getting the buttons undone was easy, but actually peeling the shirt off, that was done a whole lot slower, while he tried to pretend it didn’t hurt as much as it did.
She didn’t say anything until she’d settled on that tile bench, and she let him get the buttons open and start fighting with the shirt before she reached out and tugged on his arm, not relenting until he sat his ass down beside her, so that she could get to his back, where the fabric was clinging angrily to the deep gouges. “I’m guessing the blue light was something Loki did,” she admitted. “I talked to Louis a little.” It was easier like this, sitting behind him, where she couldn’t see the concern on his face, the assumptions about what the fuck had happened. “She attacked you,” she said after a long pause, one where she tried to figure out how the fuck she felt about that exactly. There was a definite hint of jealousy in her voice, along with something else, something worried. “How bad did you fuck her up? And do you know who she was?”
She didn’t stop tugging the fabric free as she talked, knowing it would distract him from whatever the fuck she said just then. “I think it was still us, Neil. Just, god, I don’t fucking know. Some version of us without any of the shit that makes us moral or human or something. I don’t think we can just go, you know what? It wasn’t fucking me. As much as I hate to fucking admit it, I was still there somewhere. And before you ask, no, I didn’t hurt anyone.” Well, no one but herself. But it wasn’t like there was a point in lying about that, not when the wet shirt clung to her body and outlined a very clear path of now-wet bandages from her collarbone done, between her breasts and toward one nipple. She reached for the soap and, carefully, she started cleaning the grit and fabric that remained from the rips in his skin. “I ran my mouth, and I taunted, and I cried like a fucking pussy when I couldn’t take it, but I didn’t hurt anyone.” There was anger in the last sentence, anger at herself.
He sat without offering too much resistance, secretly grateful that she wouldn’t be able to see his face. The whole macho men don’t cry thing had never been something Neil subscribed to, but that didn’t mean he wanted his expressions to be so easily read, not now, when pain had a fierce competitor in pure, untouched anger. “Probably,” he sighed. “I hate to cast blame around, but I’m pretty sure most of the bad shit was Loki.” He paused, because Louis was a touchy subject, especially now. “Yeah, so did I.” It wasn’t a very enlightening answer, but he was worried about him, even though there was no doubt in his mind that Louis hadn’t intended for any of it to happen. He wasn’t like the crazy demigod stuck in his head, plain and simple. He understood the worry in her voice when he admitted that the woman had attacked him, but the jealousy, that he didn’t get at all. “Yeah, she did, but I could’ve walked away. I should have.. Honestly? I don’t fucking know. It was dark, and then I ended up at the hotel.” He shrugged. “No idea. Like I said, it was pretty damn dark, and I didn’t recognize her voice.”
Hearing confirmation of his suspicions that it had still been them, somehow, wasn’t what he wanted, but he couldn’t argue when she was pulling on the shirt and it took all his willpower to keep from crying out. Instead he cursed, which did the trick in terms of vocalizing how much it fucking hurt, and once the shirt was off he took a couple of deep, shaky breaths in order to collect himself. “I know you’re right. A part of me knew what I was doing was insane, but I don’t think it was who we really are or anything like that. The blue light, it messed us up, Sam. Even if a woman attacked me now, I don’t think I could hit her back. In the hotel, I didn’t fucking hesitate.” Which he wasn’t proud of, but Neil was distracted from his own transgressions by Sam, and her rather simplified description of what she’d gone through. He turned to try to look at her, wincing at the pain that flared along his back at the movement, and caught sight of the bandages made visible by the water. “I think I’d rather hear that you hurt someone,” he said, “instead of someone hurting you.” While he heard the anger in her voice, he had no idea what the hell to do about it, or how to tell her that crying didn’t mean anything; a lot of people had probably sobbed and begged and pleaded that night. It was nothing to be ashamed of.
“Maybe he fucked up this time. Loki. Maybe this was enough for Louis to see him like he really is. Maybe he won’t get a chance to take him over again,” she said, hoping it was true. She didn’t say what she was thinking, that she wasn’t sure someone wouldn’t just lock Louis the fuck up if they knew he was behind everything. They needed to get him to stop before someone else did, someone who didn’t realize Louis wasn’t the monster that Loki was. As for the jealousy, it wasn’t something she was conscious of, not just then. “Why didn’t you walk away?” she asked. Normally, she imagined that if someone tried to tell him to kneel, he would just laugh it or tell them to fuck off, but the light had changed something, and she tried to figure it out as she sat there, watching the water as if it was the most fucking interesting thing in the world.
The cursing didn’t stop her, and she didn’t flinch away from him or react with any fear. She hadn’t been afraid of the fucker in the kitchen, that was how it had been, and she just kept at it until she could reach her hand beneath the spray of water and watch the water she trickled along his back from her palm run clean. “You’ll survive,” she told him, something that was almost a smile in her tired words. When he turned, she tried to stop him, predicting that wince before he even managed to make the movement, but she didn’t have enough strength in her hands just then, and she pushed at him after, until she she could just shift forward and press her cheek against his shoulder, careful to keep from pressing against the marks on his back, or against her own now-wet bandages. “I don’t know how I fucking lost track of it,” she said, trying to reach out and turn off the water, but unable to reach without stretching. “I walked into the kitchen, and this guy was there, and I wanted to fucking forget everything. Just, all the confusing shit, and all the emotions, and all the crap I don’t know what to do with. So I was a bitch. I didn’t touch him, didn’t go near him, but I ran my mouth, and I couldn’t stop. I knew I was sick, I could barely walk straight, and I was fucking burning up, and he had a knife to my throat, and he had a cock, and he said he wanted to hurt me. I fucking cried, Neil. I didn’t kick his ass, and I didn’t run, and I didn’t do any of the normal shit that a normal fucking person would do when someone is cutting them open. I sobbed like a fucking idiot.” She wasn’t actually thinking about her words, not by that point. She was just rubbing her cheek against his cool, bare shoulder, and the words were just coming, even though she’d intended to just shut the fuck up about all this. “At least you fought,” she finished, quieter than all the rest.
The fact that it might take something of this magnitude, widespread destruction and death, for Louis to realize that Loki was a real problem didn’t seem very reassuring to him. Then again, Neil was already of the opinion that Louis was aware of the problem; he just hadn’t figured out how to control Loki yet. Surely he wanted to, but willpower was an issue. “Maybe,” he agreed carefully, focusing on that rather than the pain which seemed intent on clawing his back to pieces all over again. “He knows Loki is a problem, Sam, and he knows he has to deal with it. The problem is how. If he can’t figure it out on his own, we’ll have to help him, before--” He cut himself off abruptly, not liking where his own train of thought was going. “He’ll be okay,” he said instead. “Loki’s a fucking fictional character. There has to be a way to rein him in.” As for why he didn’t walk away, that was simultaneously difficult and easy to answer, and he gave a slight shrug of his shoulders. “Because I’ve spent my whole life walking away, and I was sick of it. This time I wanted to fight back.”
Once the initial ache and sting began to fade to a dull throb beneath the spray of water, he found it easier to take hold of his pain and shove it down, far beneath the surface, where it wouldn’t show so easily. “Thanks,” he said wryly, and despite the pain in his back and her bandages, the feel of her against his shoulders was somehow reassuring. He listened to her story in silence, reaching absently to turn off the water when she couldn’t reach, muscles twitching in protest as the movement aggravated the already raw wounds. It was a very intentional effort, keeping Erik shoved away so he wouldn’t hear, like covering a child’s ears, and it was only halfway successful. Which, really, was better than nothing. “It doesn’t matter if you ran your mouth. He shouldn’t have touched you, whoever this asshole was, even if you think you goaded him on. Most people would’ve done exactly what you did, Sam. Usually when someone’s cutting you open, you’re not thinking straight. The woman I ran into, she didn’t hurt me, not really, but if she’d had a knife to my throat and started slicing me up... fuck knows what I would’ve done.” He was quiet for a long moment before turning fully, carefully twisting around on the bench, and he looked at her bandages for a moment before forcing his gaze back up to her face. “Yeah, I fought, but I went too far. You’re still one of the strongest people I know, Sam. A hell of a lot stronger than me, that’s for sure.”
“I sent him pictures,” she admitted of Louis. “Hardest thing I’ve ever fucking done, but I wanted Louis to remember what Loki was really about, the next time that bitch tried to kiss Louis’ ass to get his own way,” she admitted, and even through everything else, she realized the comment about being sick of walking away was telling. She would never have thought of that as something that bothered him. He was always so fucking calm about every single thing, to the point of making her want to poke at him nearly constantly. “Walking away from what?” she asked.
“Are you going to try to find them?” she asked when he twisted around on the bench, and she had a hard time holding his gaze for a moment, which was completely unfucking like her, and she knew it. “Her, are you going to try to find her? He posted looking for me, but I didn’t answer,” she admitted of the man in the kitchen. “I don’t want to fucking talk to him, and I’ll kill him if I get near him when I don’t hurt all over, Neil. I swear, I fucking will,” she said, and despite the shaking of her voice, it was obvious she meant it. “He fucked me while he cut me open, and if I hadn’t passed out because of-” She paused, and maybe she actually needed to say it, to tell someone, maybe it was not thinking and the fever, maybe it was just that she trusted him in a way she didn’t trust anyone else, but she kept going after a second. “He shoved his fingernails in after he cut me, just to make it hurt more, and I couldn’t fucking handle it. I went black, and he left me there, bleeding all over the fucking place. I didn’t wake up until this morning, and the guy who has Meg, he took me to a clinic before I came to.” She shook her head, and she looked back up at him, from where her gaze had dropped to the marks on his back. “You didn’t go too far, Neil. You could never go too fucking far. It’s not in you. And you’re pretty fucking strong. If you weren’t, Erik would have already caused a lot more trouble than he has.” She touched her overwarm fingers to his cheek, to the nail marks there. “Are you going to let me get you bandaged up, or are you going to make me pull the I don’t feel good card?”
Pictures, Neil knew, would make it impossible to ignore what Loki had done, and he almost thought that forcing Louis to confront that head-on was too much. “Yeah, I think he’ll remember.” Imagining what was beneath her bandages was bad enough, but actually see it, that was something else entirely. He sighed, using the sound to buy time as he tried to articulate an answer. “I don’t know. Conflict, I guess. It’s like that blue glow took away whatever kept me rational, and I didn’t stop to think about what I should do or what was smart.” Normally he was calm, which Sam had obviously noticed, but it took more effort to remain controlled under pressure than it did to just let go.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. That was an easy answer. “I don’t want to look for her, and so far she hasn’t come looking for me either. I want it to stay that way. Which probably makes me an ass, but I’d rather not dwell on the past.” He frowned when she said the guy had gone looking for her on the journals, and he made a mental note to flip through and see which posts matched what she’d told him. “You don’t have to talk to him. He’s either an idiot or a psychopath if he thinks you’d actually respond.” Neil really, really didn’t want to hear the details, but he felt like it might be good for her to get it out, so he kept his mouth shut and listened while his mind helpfully supplied images of what it must have been like. “I don’t think anyone could handle shit like that, Sam,” he said after a moment, doing his best to keep his voice controlled. “Lucky Meg’s guy was there, though. He can’t be too bad if he gave enough of a damn to take you to a clinic.” The fact that he hadn’t been there bothered him, even though he’d had no way of knowing, only able to act on assumption, but he still felt like he should have called immediately or at least gone looking for her. “Maybe I didn’t go the whole too far, you know, but I should’ve stopped. The blue glow just pulled out what was already there.” He shrugged about Erik, because he didn’t think he was nearly as strong as he seemed to believe, but he did relent when it came to the scratches. “Yeah, yeah. You can play nurse and bandage me up.”
“I guess I screwed that whole no conflict thing, huh? Just by walking into your life.” She sounded like that was a good thing, sounded like that for the first time in the conversation, like something might be a good thing, She didn’t push about him looking for the woman he’d hurt, and maybe that was her projecting, because the last thing she wanted to do was find the man in the kitchens. Maybe, once she stopped hurting, she would change her mind about that. Maybe she’d want to find him and show him what being scared felt like, but not just then. Then she wanted to hide, and she was perfectly willing to let Neil hide too. “I should have been able to handle it,” she said, surprised he was still there when she was done talking, somehow expecting that horrible fucking truth to send him running. “This doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change me. You start treating me like something that breaks and I’ll beat your ass. I know where you sleep,” she reminded him. When he seemed so resigned to the fact that what he’d done made him an asshole, she shoved his shoulder, despite the fact that it was going to make both of them hurt like a bitch. She stood a moment later, though it took her a minute, and she walked around in front of him, bruises mapped out beneath the wet shirt and pajama pants and her hair clinging to cheeks that were redder with heat than they had been when he’d arrived. She looked down at him, and she dragged calloused fingers along his cheek and jaw. She almost asked how Erik was doing, but she held back the question. They had enough trouble right then, and even Christine didn’t insist. She started to demand he tell her where the first aid kit was, but she was unsteady on her feet, and she had to catch herself on his shoulders. She stiffened, a moment of fear she couldn’t fucking hide, and then she relaxed into it. “Maybe bed first, bandaging and re-bandaging later.” For both of them, but, yeah. Ok, so she was a little fucking stubborn, but it felt like letting that bastard in the kitchens win, being weak.
It was true, at least, that Neil didn’t have a lot of people like Sam in his life. She was like a walking ball of conflict, all raw feeling and impulse that was so unlike everything he was, but he didn’t think it was a bad thing, that sort of influence. Maybe some balance wouldn’t have hurt, but in a way they could balance out each other. “I guess. Too bad I like you too much to walk away,” he teased. Maybe he had no idea what they were, but he did know that he was in over his head, and there was no backing out now. Oh, he knew she was still tough, even though he was worried about her, and he felt the overwhelming urge to keep her safe whether she liked it or not-- he wasn’t sure how much of that was him, and how much was Erik. “Hey, give me some credit. I know you could still kick my ass any day. I’m not going to start going soft on you,” he said, feigning insult. The shove to his shoulder made him wince, and he looked up at her afterward, feeling an unexpected wave of exhaustion wash over him. Even so, he caught her tenseness, and bed sounded like a pretty damn good idea. “Alright. If I’m going to live anyway, I might as well sleep.” So it didn’t make much sense, that sentence, but he’d had enough insanity for a lifetime, and he just wanted it all to go away for a while. He stood with only a slight wince, clearly intending on supporting her on their trek back to the bed.
Even though what she wanted more than anything right then was to curl up against his chest and just let him be the fucking strong one, she couldn’t let herself do it. More than anything, she didn’t want him to look at her differently, to start seeing some fucking victim when he looked at her. She had enough trouble figuring out how to deal with whatever she felt for him, for how weak that made her feel, like she was fitting into some goddamn societal mold by wanting the things she wanted. She wasn’t raised to think softness was ok, not in a family full of criminals, of boys who would kick your ass as soon as you cried, girl or no girl. She loved her family, loved her brothers, but she realized that all had a part in this confused shit she had going on right now. So it warred with what she wanted, now that she was hurting and scared and unable to show it, all that learned strength and defense mechanisms that only went skin deep, once it was all said and done. His statement about her still being able to kick his ass helped, and she was too feverish and tired to see through the feigned insult. His reassurance helped enough that she was willing to let him help her back to the bed if she couldn’t manage it. Sure, maybe hiding in his bed for eternity was a show of weakness, but she couldn’t resist that one. And he was probably the only human being with a dick she could tolerate being around just then. Maybe more than tolerate, whatever.
She managed to get out of the shower with only her hands on the tiles to keep her from slipping, and she managed to shove him out of the bathroom with a towel, so that she could get out of the wet clothes without him there. It took longer than it should have, wrestling with the shirt, getting rid of the bandages, losing the damp pajama pants. She winced and hissed through her teeth, but she leaned heavily against the closed door the entire time, so he couldn’t burst in and play hero. She wrapped the largest towel she could find around herself, leaving only the stitches at her collar and throat visible, the burn and clawmark on her arm already starting to look less red and angry. The bruises on her thighs were dark and deep, but she couldn’t do anything about them, and she opened the door and gave him a look that said he shouldn’t fucking dare say anything. But all that was fairly exhausting, and she held onto the doorframe and eyed the distance to the bed. In the end, it was Christine that pushed her to place a hand on his arm in a silent request for help.
Neil hadn’t been counting on being pushed out of the bathroom, and he protested all the while until the door had actually been shut on him. Bursting in and playing hero did occur to him, but he tried to give her some space, instead focusing on finding some dry pants and a t-shirt that was loose enough to aggravate his wounds as little as possible. Once he was dressed he waited by the door and listened, worried that she might pass out or something, but after what felt like an agonizingly long time the door finally opened. He stepped back, and he couldn’t not look, the stitches catching his attention almost immediately. It was difficult to keep from reacting, and he inhaled deeply before letting it out, long and deliberately even, to refrain from commenting on her injuries. “Come on,” he said instead, more than willing to support her in getting to the bed. “We could both use some sleep.” It wasn’t far, the bed, but he knew it must have felt like miles to her, and he was patient with every step they took.
She could tell he had a hard time not reacting to the stitches, and she deviated from her path to the bed just long enough to tug one of his shirts over her head, not bothering to remove the towel until she’d done the same with a borrowed pair of pants from the drawer that she had to tie at her hips to keep them up. She did it quickly enough to make her head spin, but the goal was to get the scars and bruises hidden as quickly as possible. She didn’t say anything, not a word. She just crawled into the bed, and she reached out a hand and started the opera playing from the room’s speakers again, because she didn’t want to fucking talk, not about the stitches and not about anything else. She dragged the blankets up to her chin and, luckily, the exhaustion took over within seconds. It was an unthinking, already half-asleep thing when she reached over and patted the bed, making sure he was still there, and stilling once her fingers came into contact with skin as she fell into a fitful, fevered sleep.
He pretended he didn’t know the real reason why she stopped to pull on a shirt and a pair of his pants, simply keeping hold on her while she changed in order to ensure that she didn’t lose her balance. Following her lead, Neil didn’t try asking about the scars or commenting on them, even though he wanted to, and so he simply mirrored her silence. He was too tired for conversation anyway. Once she was settled, he crawled in beside her, opting to lie on his side rather than on his back, and when she reached over he closed his hand around hers and squeezed. She fell asleep before he did, but it didn’t take long before he drifted off into blissful forgetfulness.