InsaneJournal

Who: Sam and Liam
What: Patching Liam up, freaking out
Where: The Ranch → Neil's
When: Right after Liam visits Tristan's House Of Ow
Warnings/Rating: Drugs and talk of violence

After Sam had hung up with him, Liam had listened to the emptiness of the cellphone for a long while, his eyes closed and his head tilted back against the exterior of the Ranch where he sat. He had been surprised when he stepped outside to see that night had fallen while he had been within in Tristan’s care, and the fact that so many hours had passed was slightly alarming. Time had meant very little inside, so focused had he been on what was happening, on the feelings that it brought within him. Everything that had happened didn’t seem to be enough to fill the time that had passed, which brought on a further level of need to sort everything through, to figure out what had happened and what had changed within him.

After some time, Liam pocketed his phone and gave a scratch to his bare arm, stilling at the scrape and the sensation that it brought, the echos that washed through him in its wake. For a moment, he was still as the evening air, his gaze distant, lips slightly parted for air. Liam was sure that there would be moments like this in the days to come that would bring him back here to the Ranch. Reminders, sensations that drew him back, and he wasn’t entirely sure he was ready for that. Letting out a sigh, he grabbed the bottle of water that sat at his sandaled feet, opened it, and took a long drink, the cool water soothing to his empty and nervous stomach. He wanted Sam to get there now, wanted to not be alone with only his thoughts for company.

Sam had no idea what she expected to find at the Ranch.

She had fallen asleep on the couch, while working on a sculpture, hours before Liam called, and the unexpected ringing woke her from a comfortable fucking sleep. The whir of the MIG the best kind of white noise, and even the couch at Aria was nicer than the beds she'd slept in during the months after the hotel incident, and it had taken her longer to come to her senses than it normally would have. As soon as she'd managed to make sense of Liam's tone of voice, though, she'd known some shit was seriously wrong. She hadn't woken Neil, or let him know she was going (Roommates, right? No responsibilities.). Instead, she'd just called for a car and gotten into the sleek black interior when it came around.

She was dressed in striped pajama pants of the male variety, stolen and way too fucking big on her, and her undershirt was covered with a grey, zipped hoodie. By the time the Ranch came into view, she was completely awake, and by then she was worried. Floggers? Yeah, ok, sure. But razors? Why the fuck had Tristan cut him? And why hadn't she patched him the fuck up after? She patted at the pocket of her hoodie for the Xanax bottle she'd tucked inside, and she swallowed a pill dry; she needed the fucking help just then.

The car pulled up in front of the main doors to the Ranch, and Sam just opened the rear passenger's side door. "Hey. Get your fucking ass in here," she called out, having caught sight of Liam as soon as they neared the property. At least he was standing. That was fucking good. Right?

The sound of the car drew his attention long before Sam pushed the back door open, his hand curled around the bottle of water he had been sipping on since leaving. There were no words offered, no wave or even a smile as he strode forward and slid in the back seat beside her, fingers tugging the door closed as he settled in to the comfortable seat. “Thanks,” Liam murmured, pushing a hand back through his hair as he finally looked over towards her, the corner of his mouth lifting up in the faintest of smiles by Liam standards. His eyes were reddened and bloodshot, tired in a way Sam had likely never seen him. His hand dropped away from his hair and back to the bottle of water, clutched between his knees as his attention was drawn down. No explanations were offered, no stories about what had happened. Sam was simply one of the few people that Liam felt truly comfortable around, and just having her there made things better.

Sam told the driver to head back to Aria, because fuck if she was sending Liam home looking like he did. Neil would just have to deal. She looked at him for a long fucking span of seconds after, and she tried to figure out where to start. He didn't look like he was dying, which was good. She'd been half afraid that she would find him mostly dead, and she wasn't sure she could handle mostly dead, even with the Xannie in her system. "You look like shit," she finally said, as honest as always. "Where are you bleeding?" she asked, looking him over in the dark interior of the car. "Fuck. What were you thinking, Liam? What was she?" Because she knew Tristan had anger issues, but leaving any client looking like Liam looked had to be against some fucking law or another. She realized she'd asked him multiple questions, and all without giving him a chance to answer, and she pressed her lips shut.

Liam didn’t say anything for a long while, his expression something distant and far away with as lost in his thoughts as he was. “I probably look worse than I actually feel,” he said, turning to look towards her, shifting so that his shoulder was butted up against the seat, body angled towards hers. “And it’s just my chest. It’s nothing, honestly.” The smile he offered her was wan, just a pull of his lips on one side that never even attempted to reach his eyes. He seemed incapable of looking at her for too long, especially when her questions grew more serious, more to the things he couldn’t answer easily. The ‘why’ was something he had been thinking over ever since it had started. It boiled down to simple curiosity that had devolved into something much darker than he hadn’t been fully prepared for. “Honestly,” Liam began, realizing that he was using that word a lot as of late. “I’m not entirely sure what I was thinking. I was just curious. And it bit me.” He paused, his lips thinning out into an expression that bordered on amused. “She bit me, theoretically, I suppose.” The expression faded as quickly as it had appeared as Liam gave a shake of his head, cracking open his bottle of water to take a long drink from it, his gaze taking on that distant look once more. “I feel like something in me changed. But I’m not entirely sure what that is yet.”

Sam's gaze dropped to his chest, as if she could see the damage through the fabric of his shirt if she looked long and hard enough. She knew what Tristan did for a living. It wasn't any secret that she had the Garden and the Ranch, and Sam knew what took place at the Garden. Before shit with Micah, she even liked some pain of her own on occasion, but this was nothing like that. This was some seriously sadistic shit, and Liam just took it? It didn't make sense to Sam, not outside of sex. "Why didn't you ask her to fucking stop?" she asked, once he admitted that he'd just been curious. "And what the fuck do you mean she bit you? That can't be legal." Could it? Theoretical wasn't something Sam had any experience with; her life was all about literal, and she didn't even understand what theoretical meant. "We'll get you home, and we'll get you cleaned and bandaged up. Deal? You can crash, while you figure out what changed." Sure, it wasn't her place, but it was half her place, right? Anyway, she wasn't sure razor marks beneath his shirt wouldn't freak her out. Better to do it somewhere safe.

Closing the bottle up, Liam sat it on the seat between them, fingers lacing together between his knees, his wrists still slightly reddened from the grip of the cuffs, nothing that wouldn’t fade within the hour. “She warned me when we started that she wouldn’t stop. That it would be done when she said it was, and I agreed to it.” Liam paused then, tilting his head to the side as he tried to think. “She didn’t really bite me, Sam. It was just a saying that I worded poorly.” Again with that faint smile that didn’t linger longer than a handful of seconds, and on the heels of that, Liam let his eyes close, sinking further back into the comfortable seats of the sedan. “I consented to it all. And she opened my eyes. I don’t believe I’ll be doing that again, but it was...” He trailed off, tongue tracing along his lower lip. “An experience.” Slowly, bloodshot blue eyes opened as he looked over towards Sam, squinting to see her in the darkness. “Thanks. For coming out here. It means- well, it means a lot to me.”

"I really don't think that's how it works. I think there are fucking safe words and shit. Liam, you're supposed to be the mature rationally impossible fucking person in my life. The moral fuckwit that doesn't do anything deviant. Seriously. What the fuck?" she asked, watching his eyes close as he leaned his head against the seat. "Jumping off a bridge is an experience too, baby. That doesn't mean I recommend it." She paused a moment then, watching the Vegas lights stream by, because jumping off a bridge was exactly the kind of stunt she would have recommended a year earlier. "What did she open your eyes to?" she asked carefully, because maybe she didn't want to fucking know. If it was liberating or some shit, it might seem too appealing. Not like she was having any luck getting over shit on her own these days, and the pills weren't working anywhere near as good as they used to. She wasn't expecting the bloodshot drag of his eyes, and she stayed lost in thought for a moment before staring back at him. "Shut up. No thanking me. Anyway, Neil is the one who's willing to let you bleed in his bathroom." She bit her lip. "How bad is it under your shirt?"

“I suppose I didn’t realise that was my role in your life,” Liam said in response to her definition of him, though he supposed it was, in many ways, true. “People do things everyday that are insane. They jump off of bridges with elastic cord. They jump out of perfectly good airplanes. I can kind of understand why they do it, things that scare them.” His voice trailed off into a hum, settling into silence for a long while as the world passed them by in a neon blur. “And I think,” Liam started, speaking slowly, choosing his words carefully. “I think it made me realise that things can hurt a lot, and it might hurt so much that you don’t think you can take it, or that it’s so intense you might crack under it all, but in the end, you can survive. The pain fades. A numbness settles in, and you’re left to ponder over how you got through it and how other things don’t seem so horrible in comparison.” A quiet sigh escaped him as he tipped his head back again, letting his head loll to the side, cheek against the seatback, his gaze heavy-lidded as he watched Sam. “It’s not so bad. I won’t make you patch me up, Sam. You’ve done enough just coming out there for me. Honest.” And he reached out with one hand, palm up, not making any effort to touch her, but offering. Liam wasn’t about to do something that would freak her out like he had done last time.

"Well, now you know," Sam replied, and she sat back with a reluctant sigh. "I used to love all that shit," she admitted of jumping from planes and bridges. She didn't like admitting it, that she'd turned into some scared fucking woman that didn't take risks or feel things anymore, not without an unhealthy dose of drugs in her system. But the rush of adrenaline, which she understood and remembered, sounded nothing like what he was describing. It made her frown. "Why the fuck would you want to hurt, just to see if you can live past it? You can live through a lot of shit, Liam. It doesn't mean you should invite it the fuck in." Wasn't she proof of that? Surviving things wasn't always what it was cracked up to be. "Oh, shut up. Either Neil or I will do it, and you'll just fucking deal," she said of patching him up. She looked at his hand like it was something completely foreign, as if she had no fucking clue what she was supposed to do with it. After a second longer, she placed her palm on his, and she quirked a brow at him, her expression all what now? The car slowed and pulled into the entrance of Aria, but she didn't make any effort to move or open the door. Instead, she just waited.

Liam curled his fingers around Sam’s for a moment, ignoring the way the car stopped, the way the world stood still for that short moment. A short squeeze of her fingers and he released her hand, gaze coming back forward as he looked at the back of the seat in front of him. “Maybe it’s because up until tonight, my life was pretty much smooth sailing.” One shoulder shrugged up before Liam gave a short shake of his head, taking up his bottle of water to drain the last bit from it, his hand giving the bottle a hard squeeze, crushing the thin plastic before he calmed and screwed the lid back on. Another shake of his head, and Liam opened the door of the sedan and stepped out into the night air before turning, leaning down, and offering his hand out to Sam once more, this time to help her from the vehicle should she want it.

She watched the bottle crushing in silence, and she scoffed at his hand fondly. "You're the one who's fucking falling apart, Liam. I'm cool as a cucumber." Which she kind of was. She climbed out of the car, thanked the driver, and shut the door, before tugging very briefly on the side of Liam's shirt, careful of whatever the fuck was beneath it. "Come on," she said, giving a gap-tooth smirky grin at the doorman, the one who didn't like her. But most of the people in the Aria penthouses didn't. It was like she brought the property value down just by breathing in their building. But whatever. She'd given up giving a shit about that stuff ages ago. She proudly led Liam into the marble hall that housed the penthouse elevators, knotted hair and pajama pants, and her fingers toyed with the bottle of Xanax in the pocket of the hoodie. "Want something to take the bite off, or you ok?" she offered, a whisper in the elevator. Not that Neil would stop her from giving Liam a pill or anything, if she waited to get upstairs. Neil let her do whatever the fuck she wanted, generally.

For a moment, Liam nearly argued that he was not, in fact, falling apart, but the words simply wouldn’t come to life. Instead, he followed behind Sam, adopting a familiar posture of hands shoved deep in the pockets of his shorts, his shoulders hunched up towards his ears as he gave a nod to the doorman, a few quick steps bringing him up alongside Sam as they moved through the lobby. Appearances had never meant much to Liam, something that was likely obvious by his bargain basement, thrift-store wardrobe. When the doors of the elevator closed in front of them, Liam stepped back, letting his back come to rest against the wall of the elevator for only a moment before he grimaced and stepped away. Her offer of something to ease the bite of the world came just then, and had it come before or some time after, Liam likely would have refused. As it was now, he was so far down the rabbit hole that any bad decisions made that evening could be chalked up to him having ‘a bad night’. “I thought you already made the determination that I wasn’t okay, Sam, so if it’ll soften the edges of everything, then...” He trailed off, ducked his head, and looked towards the floor of the elevator at his feet.

"No, you tell me if you need it. I'm not pushing pills if you're really ok. You tell me, baby," she said, barely paying attention to the elevator that had once so impressed her with its shining reflective walls. She slid her key into the slot that allowed access to the penthouse level, and she looked over at him once she did, waiting for his answer. He still looked like shit, admittedly, and the longer she looked at him, the more she wanted to take another pill herself. His deadpan monotone and the sluggish minimalism of his emotions was slightly fucking terrifying, and Las Vegas just kept making her feel young these days; she didn't like it. The doors opened, and she yanked at the side of his shirt again as she pulled him forward. "Neil will leave us alone, unless we need help," she told him as she unlocked the door to the suite, having talked to him on the drive over to the Ranch.

Liam didn’t say anything until the elevator was in motion, pondering her words, his own answer, the later of those more difficult than it had any right to be. Sliding his hands from his pockets, Liam folded his arms over his chest instead, chin tucked in towards his chest. “No,” he finally said, keeping to those same soft tones. “No, I’m not okay. Yes, I’d like something.” It was as honest as he could manage right then, that same feeling of vulnerability, of frailty still plaguing him, lingering with him since that day. “And yeah, I’d like to keep from involving Neil if we can. I don’t mind you seeing me like this, but I don’t think I can handle him seeing it as well. Anyone else, really.” The words cut off as she tugged him forward, and like a small puppy, he stumbled along behind her, and if he could have, he would have grown more silent at the sight of the interior of the suite as it was revealed to him. Blue eyes were wide, somewhat taken aback at the luxury of the place and the immensity. “Shit. I’m living in the wrong place, I think,” Liam murmured under his breath, with more emotion than he had displayed since sliding into the Sedan beside Sam.

"I think you have to be really fucking loaded to afford this place," Sam said with a scoff, because even Daniel's place wasn't like this. "Come on. We'll use the bathroom in my room," she offered, even though it meant Liam traversing the winding staircase. But it would give them some privacy, and she'd have a chance to pop another fucking pill if things got too intense. She motioned to the stairs, and she made a beeline to the bar, where she grabbed a bottle of something dark and amber. She followed him, close enough to do something if he faltered. What? Scream? Get out of the fucking way? Probably, but it was better than nothing, right? The main level was littered with metalwork, sculptures in progress and the MIG she'd left turned on when she left earlier. Her bedroom, at the end of the hall from the master bedroom and up the stairs, was filled with even more metal, and she opened the door to the messy space and kicked the room's sound system on almost immediately, letting a soothing aria fill the space. She wasted only a second pulling out the pill bottle from her pocket, and she downed one and handed two to Liam, chasing it with the single-malt.

“I’d feel out of place if I spent too long here, anyways. And I could never spend the amount of money this place probably costs. I send most of it back home to my mama. Keeps her shop up and helps her stop worrying about things.” His eyes continued to roam over the place as he ascended the stairs, one hand gripping the railing tight as he did so, the aches and pains of the day that would likely plague him later only faintly making themselves known now. There was no falter, no reason to for Sam to scream or scurry out of the way, but he was grateful when the ground was level again and steps were easier.

Inside the room, he slipped his sandals off, kicking them beside the door, his hand soon filled with the two little pills that promised to take the edge off. He chose to swallow them back dry, the bitter coating leaving a bad taste on his tongue, but it was something else to concentrate on. “You take many of those, Sam?” Liam asked, taking any opportunity to turn the concern back on her instead of on him. That was easier to deal with, thinking about other people, helping them where he could.

"Neil's parents don't need any money," Sam said, even though she'd never met them. If they'd been able to afford to buy Louis from her folks they didn't need a cent, and she knew they were big in something - construction, maybe? She didn't add that this place felt more like home than anywhere else she'd been lately, and that it had more to do with safety and being wanted than the high ceilings and gorgeous views. "Why don't you bring your mom out here?" she asked instead.

The question about the pills was met with a shrug. "These? Not so much." Which was true. She had other drugs she took more of, and even she knew it was turning into a fucking problem. She'd promised Loren a week of being clean, and she still intended to try for it... eventually. Yeah, just not yet. "Take the shirt off," she said, walking ahead of him into the bathroom and starting the water in the sink and running it warm as she reached beneath for the first aid kit, which housed more baggies of drugs than it did legitimate first aid.

Just thinking of his mother being out here, in Vegas, made Liam crack a grin. “Have you ever seen the movie Steele Magnolias?” Liam asked, following behind her as she moved towards the bathroom. “That’s basically my life back home, you must realise. Mama would not do well here in Vegas, that much I know. Some days, I don’t do very well here myself. I wouldn’t inflict this upon my mom.” There was a falter in his step as she requested him to remove his shirt, but it lasted for only a moment before he lifted the hem of the t-shirt up and over his head, dropping it on the floor just outside the bathroom as he appeared in the doorway. The welts were still pink and vibrant against the paleness of his chest and back, marks that would fade but last long enough to be a reminder. The worst were the handful of shallow cuts on his chest, the rake of fingernails from shoulder to hip. One shoulder butted against the doorway, and Liam did his best to look at anything other than Sam. The remark about the pills was something he’d address later. For now, there was this, and little room in his head to deal with more.

"I haven't," she said of Steele Magnolias. "I think I was like two when that came out, baby," she said, the number one she pulled out of thin air, but she was pretty sure it was a long fucking time ago. She did smile when he talked about his mother, though, because thieves or not, Sam did love her family. She was hiding from them, yeah, but she loved them. She pulled out some items from the kit, and she dunked a washcloth in the wet water. Then, sleeves pushed up, she turned to actually look.

It was an inadvertent thing, unthinking, when her back met with the wall behind her. She didn't even realize she'd moved away until the solid presence stopped her, and she took a really deep breath to keep herself from hyperventilating. Ok, yeah, chest injuries and sharp things? Maybe not the best fucking thing to look at. She rubbed an unthinking hand against her shoulder, as the washcloth dripped at her feet. Then after a few seconds, she motioned to the end of the tub. "Sit the fuck down," she said, impressed at how solid her voice sounded after the blink of inky panic in her eyes. She turned to squeeze out the towel, dry-swallowed another pill, and turned to deal with the cuts; those were the worst of the bunch.

Liam had known something was wrong with Sam for a long while, but he was of the belief that if there was something that needed to be said, then it would be said. He didn’t pester, didn’t prod, but seeing the look of panic on her face, that terrified expression that gripped her for several moments, Liam was starting to believe that perhaps he needed to make an exception to his rule. But not here, not now. “Sam, I can go if this is too much for you right now,” he said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder to gesture behind him.

"Shut up," she said, and she just let herself breathe for a minute, let the added drug kick in, and then she nodded toward the edge of the tub again. "Sit, or I'll shove you. Seriously," she added, in case he thought she was bluffing. "You look like ass, Liam. We're going to get you cleaned up, and then you're going to get a decent night's sleep in the most comfortable bed in the world, and we can talk about it in the morning. Sit down," she repeated.

There was something in her tone that did not lead Liam to arguing, so instead he sat on the edge of the tub, leaning back against the wall, his hands loose in his lap. Whatever those pills were that she had given them, Liam was sure they were starting to kick in with how unfocused the world was becoming. It felt a bit like being drunk, without the nausea that he always got with that, and made the desire to struggle or fight against her fly out the window. “Most comfortable bed in the world?” he repeated, blue eyes falling shut. “Is that an official title or simply something that you’ve made up?”

"Shut up," she repeated, but there wasn't any anger in it. She straddled the edge of the tub in front of him, and she began to clean the dried blood from the marks left behind by the razors. Her hands shook, but the rest of her was still and calm, and it was easier if she focused on parts of him at a time, without realizing it was all part of a whole. Each slice was cleaned and covered with bandage and gauze, and she methodically went from one to the next, humming along with aria as she did, head bowed, and it was pretty fucking obvious she wasn't thinking just then, she was just doing.

And Liam didn’t say another word as she worked, eyes opening a sliver to watch her, but even that lasted only a few moments before they drifted shut once more. The world was slowing down bit by bit, the events at the Ranch growing further and further away with every passing minute. This was a place he could settle in, a place he could certainly get used to if given the chance. Whatever it was that Sam was going through, whatever it was that she had suffered, Liam was quite sure that his evening had been nothing in comparison. Sometimes change wasn’t always good. Letting out a sigh, Liam opened his eyes as the last slice was was covered, his gaze unfocused as he tried to steady upon her as best he could. “Thanks,” he murmured, one hand lifting as though to touch her hand, but he hesitated, letting it drop back down to his lap instead.

It was a good call, dropping his hand, and she sat back for a second and looked at him, her inky eyes lazy. She wondered where the bottle was, but she'd left the fucking thing in the bedroom, and she stood without warning and went to get it. She came back in a second later, a pair of stolen men's pajama pants and an undershirt in her arms, and the bottle in her hand. "Change, then come out?" she asked, not waiting for his reply before closing the door and taking a long sip from the bottle. She found her weed, the stuff she didn't smoke when Neil was around, and she lit a joint and took a long inhale of the sweet, sweet blunt, the distinctive smoke scenting the air almost immediately. Muzetta's Waltz played, and she sat back against the headboard and waited for him to come out, the joint added the much needed, final layer of soothe to her nerves. She folded the messy blankets back, so he'd know there was an invitation to climb in.

Liam didn’t say a word as she departed and returned with clothing, simply giving her a small nod of his head before he was left to his own devices in the spacious bathroom. It didn’t take long for him to change, his face washed, though it did little to wash away the fuzzy feeling that he was feeling from the Xanax. Opening the door of the bathroom, he was greeted by that sweet smoke, his brows raising in question that never gained a voice, instead simply padding across the room towards her, though he hesitated in climbing beneath the inviting blankets. “I can sleep on a couch or something, Sam. I don’t - don’t want to freak you out or something.” His voice was low, his words strung together on an unseen string, gaze half-lidded. She had grown to be such a jittery thing, and Liam wasn’t entirely sure it was him or something else, though he favoured the ‘something else’ for some reason he couldn’t quite pinpoint. “Or hell. The floor is looking pretty damned inviting right now. I feel about ready to drop.”

"Get in bed," she told him, holding the joint out. "I won't crash in here once you're asleep," she said, not specifying where she would crash, because that was pretty fucking obvious, wasn't it? She didn't address freaking out, because she wasn't going there, no fucking way, not as raw as she felt just then. "Feel any better?" she asked instead, her gaze dropping to his covered chest and the raised ridges of the bandages there. She didn't actually mean physically better, but it was just instinct, glancing down at where she knew the injuries were. "Will you go back?" she asked a second later, because, yeah, she wasn't sure anyone should go through that fucking shit in the first place, even if it was their kink, and she didn't think he should do it again. Part of her thought it might be cathartic, but the other part of her was fucking terrified. She had no idea how she was going to talk to Tris after this, and she refused to think about it just then.

No further complaints were voiced right then, and instead, Liam tucked himself beneath the blankets, sinking into the plush mattress with a sigh he could not hold back. He gave a look to the joint that she held out and shook his head at the offer. “I’ve never done that, so I think I’ll pass for the moment.” The world was fuzzy enough without something else dulling his senses even further, a feeling that he was growing rather fond of as every minute passed. “And I’m not entirely sure I feel better yet. It’s hard to think about that right now,” Liam murmured, giving a tug to the blankets, smoothing them out a moment later. “And I’m not sure. Maybe? No?” And that indecision, the fact that he couldn’t say for sure that he wouldn’t return was frightening in its own way. “I think she saw too much. It’s fucking frightening, Sam, having someone look at you like they see right through every façade that you try to hold in place.”

"I'm not sure those are facades, Liam. That's being pushed to your breaking point, and it's completely fucking different," she said, voice gaining strength as she spoke. "Someone crying and begging because they're hurt or scared? That isn't who they are. That's just a fucking reaction to shit." A long drag on the joint silenced her tirade, but it was obviously something personal, and she was giving too much shit away tonight. She didn't mention the fact that weed might as well be legal, because it was slightly reassuring to see a little of the old, moralistic and uptight Liam again. "You went through some traumatic shit. Don't make the mistake of thinking how you feel right now means anything more than that. Just fucking sleep it off, and you get to cook breakfast in the morning," she said, reaching for the sound system button on the nightstand, silencing the opera she was so fond of lately.

The perspective that Sam was offering was not something Liam had entertained even for a moment since leaving the Ranch. He was sure that she had a point, that there was truth in her words, but he wasn’t entirely sure that it was his truth there. “I think there’s some truth in it, though. Maybe not everything, but there’s something in there that I had never felt before. And it wasn’t entirely bad.” But as the night drew on, less and less of what he was saying, thinking, feeling was making sense to him. Instead of arguing with her on it, he shifted further down in the blankets, tugging one up towards his shoulders, rolling over so that he was on his side facing her. “French toast?” he asked, turning the topic to something that was safe for both of them.

She wasn't sure what wasn't entirely bad about getting beaten up. She'd gotten in plenty of fights in her life, but they were mostly fair fights. From what she could tell, he'd gotten restrained and hurt and it wasn't even about sex. The thought made her start to hyperventilate a little, and fuck that, new topic. Which, yeah, french toast. "Go to fucking sleep, Liam. French toast in the morning, and good fucking coffee," she agreed. If Neil didn't have either, the concierge would find some for them. She took a last drag off the joint, and she tapped it out in the ashtray on the nightstand, resting the butt there for later. At least, she knew, he'd be able to sleep. She could tell by that fazed out, first time drug user look in his eyes. She missed those days, when the drugs that were supposed to calm her down actually did. She slid off the bed, and she looked down at him. "Don't steal my shit," she added with a smile.

“Your shit is safe with me around,” Liam murmured, and as she slid out of the bed, there was something in his expression that spoke of wanting her to stay. Not for anything other than her presence there, the knowledge that someone was close if that feeling of frailty came back to haunt him unexpectedly. But he didn’t ask, wouldn’t presume to even think of asking. Instead he gave her a sliver of a smile before those blue eyes slid shut and he gave in to the embrace of the drugs that slid through his system.

She lingered a moment longer, watching him finally give into sleep, and then she padded out of the room and closed the door quietly behind her. She considered waking Neil, considered actually talking to him about how fucking freaked she was, but she was too fucked up for that in the end. Instead, she quietly cracked open the door to the master bedroom, and she curled up in one of the plush chairs in the room. She tugged the hoodie over her head for warmth and, after listening to Neil's steady breathing for a few minutes, she fell asleep.