InsaneJournal

Who: Joey and Sam
What: An Alexander reunion that doesn't go so well
Where: Aria
When: The day after this
Warnings/Rating: Freaking out? Themes?

Sam hadn't seen Joey since she was seven, when he was her favorite fucking thing in the world, and when nothing else could even hope to compare. Being the youngest in a family of nine meant that there just wasn't a whole lot of fucking shit left for the runt of the litter, but Joey had always made sure she'd had food and a blanket and sneakers that didn't fall off her fucking feet. Sure, there was Tessy, but Tessy had been on her way out by the time Sam came around, and Sam had always thought her eldest brother hung the fucking moon. When he went away, she'd cried for fucking days, until a fistfight with one of her other brothers had shut her up. Too young to visit the jail, she'd bided her time time until she was old enough to go. But by the time that happened, she was married, and Alfonso didn't let her go anywhere but the garage, and even that required supervision. Jail wasn't going to happen, and she didn't have any money of her own to make it happen. And by the time she bailed, there wasn't any time for a pitstop, not if she wanted to get out of the state before someone dragged her back.

So, yeah, it had been a long fucking time.

When Joey asked for a home-cooked meal, Sam had immediately thought of Iris' place, but Iris' reaction had given her time to think. She didn't think Joey would drag her back home, even if her parents had sent him out here with that in mind. But every last fucker in the Alexander clan was a thief, and Iris couldn't afford to be robbed. Neither could Lou, and she didn't really want that to be their introduction to Joey. And, yeah, Sam got the whole stealing thing. She'd done it plenty herself. But she rethought, and she decided Aria was the best fucking bet. If Joey stole the entire fucking place, Neil could afford to replace it. So, after asking Neil to take Ash out to dinner, she called an order up for what she needed, and she charged it to Neil's tab at the hotel.

By the time work ended, she was waiting outside the shithole garage, her long blonde hair in two messy braids. She looked young and small, with only a hint of residual drug sickness hanging on her bones. She wore a pair of discount overalls that fit too loose, with an equally cheap long-sleeved yellow shirt tucked beneath the denim, baring a slice of hip and a pair of very expensive men's boxers. She didn't have any money on her, her shitty salary getting eaten up by the physical therapy she was paying for out-of-pocket now, but she figured she could borrow a pair of Neil's cufflinks, if Joey really needed some cash.

Nobody had ever visited Joey while he was in lock up, aside from the occasional Christmas visit from their mother. Which had honestly started out only slightly regular before deteriorating into nothing at all some fourteen months later. With anybody else, it might have stung. He was the oldest. By association he was supposed to be loved.. maybe not as much as Sam, but there should have been some favoritism somewhere. Not that any of his other siblings spent time inside prison walls, and not like he could compare shit.

Not like it bothered him either, really. Joey had been a fuck-up from day one, and that was a given. He wasn't going to ever go to college or work corporate. Shit, Subway wouldn't hire him with his record. It seemed fairly obvious that the only line of work that he could get into was criminal. Not that it was something he was necessarily worried about right now, he had no interest in making money as it was.

His tires squealed and spit gravel. The bike was all black, but nothing new.. and when Joey rolled up, there was a lengthy moment of frozen static quiet before he pulled off his helmet. "Sam?"

Nothing good had ever come out of the Alexander family. Well, nothing good had ever come out of being raised by the Alexander family. Sam lost count of arrests over the years, and it was only fucking marriage that had her rap sheet as clean as it was. And she'd learned from her brothers. She'd never stolen anything over $4,999 dollars, because, hello, felony theft, and she knew the tricks to avoid getting caught shoplifting and dealing. Until her recent fucked up possession problems, she'd only gotten nabbed for petty theft. She was still employable, if unskilled, but she'd grown up around so many criminals that she didn't even think about it like anything weird. She was, out of the family, the least criminal of the bunch, thanks to marriage at sixteen. But she still didn't view her brother as any kind of fuck up. She loved him, and he got a pass on pretty much fucking everything.

Sam was completely non-affectionate with most people, but when that bike came to a stop, she only gave Joey enough time to pull off that helmet, and then she was hugging the fuck out of him, not even letting him get off the fucking bike, arms tight around his shoulders, tiptoes on the sidewalk, like he was going to keep her from drowning or something. And, yeah, so maybe there was a year of Really Bad Shit in that hug, but fuck it. There was something unbelievably safe about having Joey in town, even if everything else was a mess, and even if she had no fucking clue how to fill him on half the shit he needed to be filled in on.

The hug was just what he needed, and Joey had to plant his boots on the greasestain asphalt to keep from tipping over with the bike and everything when Sam flung her arms around him like the most welcoming thing he'd ever felt in his life. He dropped the strap of his helmet onto the black grip of the handlebars in order to catch her with an arm grown wide from its days in the prison yard. It was disconcerting to hold her now when he hadn't seen her in well over a decade. She was still his baby sister, and while he'd seen some of the photographs that came with the rare letters from their mother, she was still seven years old in his head. She was still crying over skinned knees in those days and needing to be carried off to bed on the nights he came home so late he'd find her curled up by the front door. It was a long fucking time to think of her as being so small, it was impossible to rewire his brain now. Even when he could clearly see the changes that came with so many missing years. He didn't want to let go, but eventually he drew back enough to rustle some fingers through her hair in a way he hoped she'd find annoying.

"You're still short as hell." Then, a grin when he added, "I didn't bring a booster seat."

She trusted him to keep the bike from falling the fuck over, and she didn't fear that strong fucking arm, not like she would have if it belonged to anyone else. With him, she just held the fuck on, like he could fix everything in the fucking world just by being there. She remembered him as being larger than life, the way kids always remembered teenagers and adults, and he was just the same. Still bigger than her, and still stronger than her, and still absolutely fucking capable. When he rustled his fingers through her hair, she smacked his fucking hand, and she righted her braids as she stepped back and looked him the fuck over. "Fuck you," she said, her gapped-tooth smile bright and maybe a little wet at the corner of her eyes. Yeah, so she'd missed him. Who cared if he knew it? She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, a carryover from when he'd tucked her into bed as a kid, and then she smacked his fucking hand again.

"I don't need a fucking booster seat, jackass," she said with a grin. She grabbed the spare helmet from the back and, after slipping it on and tightening the strap, she climbed onto the bike behind him with an ease that said she was used to a bitch seat. Her arms wound around his waist, the hems of her sleeves climbing just enough to show the angry red scars that started at her wrist and climbed her forearm, but she didn't realize it, since she couldn't see her fucking hands. "We're going to Aria. It's a huge fucking hotel off the strip. You can't miss it, baby."

As a teenager, Joey had never been terribly strong. Maybe strong enough to put a the fat end of a baseball bat through a car window in order to steal stereos, and of course capable of hefting his little sister up while her deadweight refused to budge so that he could put her to bed, but that's about it. In those days, when crime was the gambit and outrunning the cops was the difference between freedom and spending your entire summer locked up in J. Hall, it was more important to be fast. Fast and lean, with the ability to dart into mousehole spaces and hide with arms wrapped tight around grune-torn knees while sirens burned past in the night.

Prison changed things. There just wasn't that much to do on those long days aside from work out and read. Joey'd never really been one for the latter, and he learned really early that being tough wasn't enough to keep from getting fucked with. One had to look it. So that was responsible for the sailors knots in his biceps and the gnarl in his knuckles when he held Sam close as long as she let him. He'd been afraid that it was all going to come back tenfold, the realization of how much he'd missed and how much he'd really fucked up his life.. but when he held her, none of that was at the forefront of a charcoaled mind. Everything was black and white memory, and with his eyes closed they might just have been back at the very beginning. She felt just as small, he sure as hell didn't see himself as any different than the same side-squinting bastard of youth with blood in his teeth.

He'd felt ancient in prison, because after fifteen years it seemed like it was only the lifers that didn't rotate every sixteen months. But right now he felt young, and he held onto that while holding Sam until she detached and climbed onto the back of his bike. "Head down the Strip then, yeah?"

The engine was already revving, and he had faith that she'd secured her helmet before he was flinging gravel from the back tire and spiraling onto the street. He flicked the visor down on his helmet to combat wind when Sam tightened her arms around him. The only reason that he glanced down was to believe it was even real -- and the scars had him momentarily swerving. But he righted, and he didn't say anything even if his body was tight like war.. he trusted her to shout directions. He trusted himself to think of what to say before they got there.

"Yeah, it's past Tropicana," she said of the behemoth hotel that she called home on and off. "Park in VIP," she added, because Neil had a few permanent spots where the high rollers stashed their toys. "Whoa, baby," she added when he swerved, not realizing why, too busy enjoying the complete fucking safety of his back under her cheek. And, yeah, she was worried about him. She couldn't imagine what it was like, coming out after nearly a lifetime spent inside. He'd been just a fucking kid when he'd gone in, and everything had changed so fucking much since then. She knew he'd have a shit time finding a job, and she knew crap pay would be frustrating. She hugged him tighter, arms almost painful around his waist. No, it would all be fine. She'd make sure he was taken care of and cool, just like he'd done for her when she was small. Maybe he could get work at the garage or something. They'd figure it out and, in the meantime, she'd make sure he had someplace decent to crash, and some decent food to eat.

She tapped his belly when the hotel came into sight, and she pulled her keycard out of the back of her overalls and swiped it at the scanner that led into the VIP parking garage. From there, she pointed to the spot in the front, where Neil's cars were. And, once he parked the bike, she hopped off and set the helmet back on the seat, careful of her inconstant fingers.

Once she was on the sidewalk leading into the hotel, she grinned, turning and leading the way in. She stayed far ahead enough so that she could watch his reaction to the huge casino's blinking and flashing lights, while staying close enough that he wouldn't lose sight of her blonde braids. She ducked into the VIP elevator's waiting area, and she flashed her cardkey to the disbelieving looking attendant, who pushed the buttons warily. When Joey joined her, she grabbed his arm and yanked him into the glass and marble elevator, leaving the dour and distrustful attendant behind. "Don't mind him. They're all fucking assholes if you aren't wearing designer shit," she said honestly of the people in this part of the hotel. She'd hated that shit at first, but she just gave them shit in return these days, immune to the looks. "Everyone seriously thinks Neil is slumming," she added, gap-toothed grin as the elevator doors cracked open.

Neil's door was right across the way, and she slid her keycard in and pushed the door open to the suite. It was quiet inside, and there was obviously no one in the expansive space, since the lights were dimmed. She turned them up, and she led him into the living room. "No one's here but us, so make yourself at home, baby," she said, while crossing into the kitchen.

The entire ride was white noise static where the world zipped by at a steady constant of fast food joints and apartment complexes before it melted into a strict melting pot of hotels and casinos. It wasn't his first night in Las Vegas, but he still probably would have marveled at the glittering lights if his thoughts hadn't been a good two thousand miles away. Back to the East Coast where she'd been little and never had those marks on her arms. After fifteen years of conforming to strict schedules and iron bars, Joey found that he wasn't entirely sure if it was his place or not to ask. Instinctively, he wanted to get to the bottom of it.. but she wasn't a little kid anymore, and he couldn't shake being aware of the fact that he probably might as well have been a fucking stranger to her after all this time. She was all Calamity Jane quickdraw with the hugs and the smiles, but Sam was far from seven years old. He wondered if she'd done it to herself, and there was enough guilt to bury himself with in that thought. He hadn't been there for her, and he knew their parents sure as hell hadn't. Before he knew it, they were navigating the secure VIP parking area -- all Maseratis, no Mazdas -- and he hadn't thought of what to say at all. Driving forever suddenly wasn't an opportunity either.

The hotel functioned as a distraction, even if he didn't want it to. The lights and the noise were as alien to him as the bottom of the ocean would have been. Cocktail waitresses in nothing skirts and coins spilling loudly from the slots like the glittering shell casings from a spent machine gun. It felt like he blinked and they were in the elevator, all that vibrant glitter getting lost behind them when the doors slid closed. If they stuck out like sore thumbs who clearly didn't belong, Joey didn't notice. He'd never belonged, and it was a little late to start taking shit personally now.

He remembered Sam saying that they were going to someone named Iris', and the impressive shimmer of all that Aria had to offer was enough to make him momentarily forget that. Even when she mentioned that Neil was slumming, he knew what she was talking about.. just not who. Once inside the suite, Joey crammed thieving hands deep inside of denim pockets while wandering marble floors and giving a long, long glance down from the wall of windows.

"So who is Neil?" He asked while still staring out the window, watching the night where the lights took over everything, even the stars.

She wandered into the massive kitchen, unaware of his thoughts. But, yeah, she figured all the bright lights and huge were something new for him. Fuck, she'd walked around the place with her mouth open the first time she'd been in the suite, and she didn't even have the excuse of fifteen years inside. "Sit wherever," she said, watching him at the window a few seconds, and then pointing at a leather stools opposite the marble island before pulling stuff from the fridge.


She twisted her braids together messily, and she unthinkingly shoved her sleeves up, vertical scars pointing to inner arms filled with old tracks. She set the rice on first, and the garbanzos second, and she started on the thin, palomilla steaks last. Al's mom had taught her to cook, and every single fucking dish she knew how to make was Cuban. She would have made him some black beans and rice, since she actually missed that shit, but it would have taken hours to soak the beans, and she didn't have that kind of time.

Once everything was simmering, she came back and leaned on the island. "Yeah, so Neil's complicated," she said. She thought of how to describe Neil, but nothing actually sounded right, so, yeah, she went with the more important description. "He's Lou's brother," she said, letting that settle for a second, and moving on before he could as who the fuck Lou was. "The kids mom and pops gave up? They're here. Lou found me like a year and a half ago, and Neil's his brother. Lou found Iris too. I was going to use her kitchen, but she's kind of..." She trailed off. She had no fucking idea how to describe Iris without making her sound nuts.

Joey wanted to be in a good mood, he really did. He wanted to ask about what she was cooking and tease her about the braids that had somehow maintained from the time when she was knee-high. But his mind was caught in the sandtrap of recalling the marks on her arms. He'd initially just thought it was something he'd imagined, but that twisted up briar of brotherly love and hate refused to cut loose, so there the thought remained. Right fucking there, headbanging to the doubt within. He had to snap out of it when she started in on the extensively fucked up family tree that they shared, though. Frowning, and clearly skeptical, he moved for the side of the island opposite from her. Crossing an elbow into it when he asked, "So.. Neil's our brother?" He didn't remember there being another brother, but their parents didn't really talk about the kids gone away. He just remembered them suddenly being gone, and a belt scared him away from asking any of the hard hitting questions.

She laughed aloud, all gap-toothed and entertained. "Fuck, no. I'm not that twisted, baby," she said, unaware of his deteriorating mood. She didn't know what being pissed off looked like on his face yet. Yeah, he'd always been protective, but she didn't realize it had stayed with him over the years. None of her other brothers were protective. It was dog eat dog in the Alexander family. "Lou is our brother. Lou Donovan, and Neil's his brother. Lou's adoptive family already had Neil once they took Lou in. Iris is our sister. She was adopted by some other fuckers. I don't know anything about them. But, yeah, Lou was raised with Neil. And Neil and me," she shrugged, not sure how the fuck to explain. "We hook up sometimes, and I crash sometimes," she explained vaguely. "We're kind of on and off, or whatever."

"So.. Neil's your boyfriend?" He was already halfway processing the other stuff about missing siblings. The fact that they'd been around, and that Sam apparently had a bonding relationship with both of them wasn't too surprising. Fifteen years was a canyon gap, enough time for a whole lot of things to happen apparently. Now prison just felt like a nightmare.. or maybe this was the dream. Something wasn't real, and he was just going to wake up at one point to realize that he'd been asleep, good or bad.

"And this is Neil's place.." He didn't like the way that she said it like that; hooking up and crashing. He was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, however. But for some reason he couldn't quite define, it was making his knuckles twitch. His back felt tense after the ride, and Joey felt awkward and hollow with the knowledge that he was sooo a fish out of water here.

"Does this Neil have anything to drink?" Cramming the calloused heel of one hand against an eye, Joey squinted at her with the other.

"No, he's not my boyfriend," she said truthfully. "It's complicated, baby," she said. "I'm kind of fucked up, and he has his own shit. But this is Neil's place, yeah," she said. "His sister is crashing here with him now," she said, realizing this entire family tree might be a little confusing. "But I'm not staying here right now. I'm at the garage where you picked me up," she reminded him, not wanting him to feel like there was a huge fucking wall between them. This place was upscale. "Do you have plans to stay somewhere? I can crash," she said, which actually meant I can help out, because, yeah, she worried. And, too, it would be fucking awesome to be with someone who actually knew her. Whatever she had with Iris and Lou, it wasn't the same as with Joey, who'd been there for her when she was small and needed him more than she needed anything.

As for Neil having booze, Sam knew that was a no. Lou had cleared everything out, but she didn't want to explain to Joey that Neil kind of had a drinking problem, and she didn't want to explain that she shouldn't be around booze. So, instead, she asked him what he wanted, and then she called the concierge to bring up a few bottles from the casino, on Neil's tab, of course.

She turned back to the food, taking the steaks off the head and draining the rice, and she left him to get the door, when the concierge rang the bell.

Confusing was one way to put it. "Uh.." What did he drink? None of the classy stuff that Sam was apparently used to, even if she insisted that she stayed at the garage. When he'd been a kid, when life ran redhot on games of car theft and handjobs under the Jersey overpasses, it'd been the cheap stuff. Boone's Farm and Mccormick vodka. He wasn't really sure what to ask for now. All he'd had since he got out of the pen was a six pack of Coors Light and a couple shots of Jameson paid for by some old trucker broad with a voice like gravel but a wallet like a saint.

"Jameson, I guess.." It was the freshest and most familiar, at least. He wasn't sure what went with cooking, and truth be told.. he wasn't all that hungry anyway. Joey had been, but the starving ache'd eaten up by nerves, and now he was here, and the nerves still were too. The concierge was quick, and soon he was twisting the lid off of a baby bottle in order to take a quick swig.

He didn't ask her again about the boyfriend because it seemed too distant to process at the moment. He ignored the question about where he was staying in favor of the more pressing shit, "But why are you staying at a garage? Your on and off boyfriend lives here.. so, what? He got kids and a mama? He don't want to put you up in some room? What, Samantha?"

The food was on the island by the time he returned with the bottle, and her elbows were on the island as well. She leaned over, all poor-ass girl from the armpit of Elizabeth, and she shoveled food into her mouth with pleasure. Yeah, so she hadn't learned a whole lot of fucking manners in her time with Neil, but she also hadn't cooked in a year, and it was fucking heaven. She didn't realize how out of sorts he was, and she looked at him with a hopeful expression, that same look she'd always given him when she was seven and wanted him to like something, or to be impressed by some stupidly childish thing she'd done.

And she tried to keep her inky blue gaze off that Jameson's bottle; she really fucking tried.

She considered his question, using the food and chewing as an excuse not to answer right away. Then, fuck it, she grabbed the bottle from his hand and took a swig. "I was in rehab, and we kind of got into a fucking thing. We're working on it, but, yeah, I'm not ready to come back," she admitted. It was as close as she could get to he kind of tried to fucking kill me without saying it. "The garage is safe and warm and shit, and it's better than the drug dens I can afford on my shitty pay, baby."

When she claimed the whiskey as her own, Joey busied himself with opening one of the coke bottles that the concierge had thoughtfully supplied them with. He wasn't familiar with mixed drinks, but he didn't mind a chaser. If it was in poor taste to pop the cap off by fulcruming the bottle against the polished edge of the counter, and knocking the top with his fist. The cap went flying off somewhere, and he barely got the opportunity to take a sip before she said something that nearly had him inhaling it instead. That'd be his fucking luck, wouldn't? Get out of prison only to die a few days later.

"Rehab?!" It was basically the furthest thing from the realm of possibility, and Joey glowered at her from across the food. He'd been all about stuffing his face a moment ago, but now he was suddenly without an appetite.

"But how? What for? What were you--" Then it was like a bomb went off in his head when he got into a rapidfire recount of the events since he'd first seen her. The scars on her arms were far from forgotten, and only more obvious now that she'd ruched her sleeves up to cook. Reaching over, he unceremoniously snatched the whiskey out of her hand. "Fuckin' give me that!"

His irritation was pretty much fucking palpable when he set the bottle aside and reached out to pull her arm and give it a twist so that the wrist went belly-up under the light. "Why don't you tell me what the fuck this shit is?"

So, maybe she was too busy laughing at the flying cap to realize shit had turned around. But that incredulous Rehab?! got her turning her attention back to him in a hot second. "Heroin," she began, thinking he wouldn't give much of a shit. They were all fuck ups, weren't they? Shit, it had taken her longer to find the gutter than it should have, yeah? And maybe she forgot that he'd been locked up, and that he remembered shit with her really differently. "I mean, it started with meth, but- Hey!" She stared at the bottle of whiskey as it got yanked away from her, and she started to realize that this shit wasn't going as planned. "Baby," she said said soothingly. "It's cool-"

But maybe it wasn't, because the grab to her arm made her knee-jerk. She froze for a split second, her skin going pale under the kitchen lights, and she screamed at the top of her lungs, a wordless sound of uncontrolled rawness as she fought to get her wrist free from his grip. Getting grabbed, even by someone she trusted, so wasn't a good thing just then. She dragged in deep, gulping breaths. "Let go," she pleaded, then louder. "Let fucking go." And she wasn't even seeing him then. It was just the grip, that was all. Just a reaction to that fucking grip.

She was fucking braindead if she thought that he wasn't going to care about rehab. Just because he hadn't been around -- and let's be honest, even when he had been around, he'd been busy running the streets and avoiding his bed like the Devil was waiting at the footboard with his foot a fuckin' tapping -- didn't mean he didn't care. The fury came from that seasick turn of guilt in his stomach, the awareness that even if he had known somehow, there would have been nothing he could have done about it. He'd been so young, so fucking stupid. Now she was making similar laps down entirely different tracks. "Cool my fucking ass, what the fuck are you doing, Samantha?!" Her soothing tone did nothing but piss him off more, and his fingers tightened to mottle a series of white stripes on her wrist.

"You think I'm fuckin'stupid?" Did she really believe that he didn't know what those kinds of marks were attributed to? Maybe he'd been on the inside, but the inside was as rife with junkies and sad folk as the outside world was. Maybe more than. He'd seen enough cats die from smuggled in drugs that death row looked like the goddamn rainbow of eternal life.

"Fucking answer me, Samantha!" He didn't immediately notice the way she paled.. and even if he had, he was out of touch enough to think that she was embarrassed. To hell with embarassed. He rounded the counter with the swift twostep of a starved jackal, twitching her arm belly up to expose the scar tissue. She was weeping and wriggling and he didn't give a shit because she needed to explain herself. She seemed dazed, but Joey didn't recognize it as panic. He felt rabid with wonder over who had done this? Because Sam hadn't done this to herself. Somebody had hurt her or somebody had turned her on to drugs, and he was going to find out who. Right now.

He nudged her back against the counter with an open palm shove of useless, big brother irritation. "Talk."

Anger didn't do anything good for her PTSD. She froze when his fingers tightened to bruising on her wrist, and for a second she couldn't even fucking talk. She couldn't do anything but stare and shake, inky blue eyes gone panic wide. And she needed a hit. She just needed a hit. She just needed a fucking hit. The fact that Aria was safe disappeared right then, fading away to fucking nothing. And if she could just remember it was Joey, that Joey wouldn't hurt her, that he wouldn't, but it was so fucking hard right then. Her brain was wrong. Shit, as much as she tried to pretend it wasn't her brain was wrong. "I didn't say you were stupid," she argued, but it was some weak and pathetic shit, even to her own ears. And yeah, she was wriggling and trying to pull free, but she stopped when it didn't work. Oh, god, she couldn't get the fuck away. When he told her to fucking answer she looked at him, and she sniffled like a weak fucking baby.

She knew rage. She knew rage. She knew that was rage on his face.

She'd opened her mouth to try to answer, to try to say something, but then he was pushing her back against the counter with that open palm, and she went from fighting to nothing, to not fighting, to not moving. The counter connecting with the small of her back reminded her of one thing, and of one thing only. It was a different fucking kitchen, and a different fucking counter, but oh, god it was the same. Just then, it was the fucking same.

Her voice was embarrassingly small when she spoke. And, yeah, now she was fucking dazed. "Anything. I'll tell you anything you fucking want, ok?" God, she was so fucking pathetic. She hated herself just then. She hated herself so fucking much. "I cut my wrists. I didn't want to go back into rehab, so I sliced my wrists." It was a shamed whisper, and her knees buckled as she slid to the cold tile, butt down and knees bent, not even trying to get out of his fucking grip anymore.

She didn't have to try to escape, he let her go. In the wake of horror, Joey released her for the sad and sniveling slide to the tiles below. The panic was in him now, with the way she'd stared back to him. Her eyes gone all wet and glazed and half-dead. He'd never seen eyes like that, and he didn't know what it meant. He didn't know what her numb words and her absolving of sins meant. He couldn't fathom why she'd collapsed aside from the fact that she was sad about it all.. and he was sad too. Joey let her fall down and he didn't try to pick her back up because she looked just then like if he touched her she might fucking break into a thousand pieces right at his feet. He'd never been that good at putting puzzles together, so her collapse seemed terminal. Cautiously, he knelt alongside her, and Joey didn't touch her when he asked, "Why, baby?"

"Tell me why, yeah?" She seemed breakable, and his big hands fluttered with uncertainty around her skinny shoulders when she started bargaining with him like he was walking her ass down the plank. He looked worried, but the expression crumbled into something broken and pained when he processed the very real possibility that she could have died from the drugs or the gutted wrists. He didn't know what to do about either of those things because violence and running away had always been the only solutions he'd ever known. But he wasn't going to hurt her, and he wasn't leaving. Even if he did edge back on his boot heels in order to give her a few feet of space.

"Why would you start doin' those kinds of drugs?" He hadn't raised her like that. Right now it was glaringly obvious that no matter how he'd thought of it while he was inside, he hadn't ever given her a leg up on anything at all. He was just a ghost walking with brevity through the memories of her childhood. A brief blip on the radar before everything apparently went to shit.

She looked up when he knelt alongside her, blonde hair falling into her face and cheeks stained and damp with tears she didn't even realize she'd begun to cry. Why? Oh, fuck, wasn't that a question. Why? She answered, and it was the residual fear-numb that got her talking, endless words with no real pauses, and muttered quiet. "Last spring, there was a hotel thing, and this guy, he fucked me up in a kitchen," she said, tugging her shirt across at the neck and letting him see the first few inches of that scar that plunged between her breasts. "The shrink I was seeing gave me meds, you know, and I just couldn't fucking deal with it, and then he stopped seeing me after I got hooked on the methadone he put me on, so I started getting shit off the street. I couldn't be around people, Joey, it- If they so much as touched me, it fucked me up. And then I saw the guy. I thought it would be better, but it wasn't fucking better. It wasn't better, and then I met this girl who parties hard, and there was coke and heroin, and-" She shrugged, she couldn't explain how the heroin made shit ok, not just then. "And fucked up stuff happened through the door again. This guy I'm super into, he's got someone bad over there, and he hooked up with me and strangled me and shit, and his ex tried to fuck me up, and then we got back here and shit was worse." She was sobbing by then, messy, snotty sobbing. "It's better now. I know it sounds really fucking horrible, but it's better now," she assured him, jagged breath and the backs of her hands rubbing at her eyes.

She looked over at him again, and she just wanted a fucking line, or a fucking needle, or a bottle. Fuck, she just wanted something. "Do you mind if I lie down? I don't stay here anymore, but Neil won't mind if I use his bed. Please?" she asked, like she actually had to get his ok for this shit or something.

Her explanation only brought a dozen other questions to the tip of his tongue, but he didn't ask any of them. Not yet, not now. She seemed exhausted and scared, and he didn't want to give her a reason to look at him again like she just had. Like he was the bad guy. Considering everything that she'd said and the scar on her chest, he wasn't all that sure that he'd be keeping his temper that well if she started telling him anything else just right now. It could wait.

Joey wanted to hold her and tell her that it was going to be okay. Because it was going to be okay, he'd fucking make sure of it. He'd find whoever had hurt her and drop them off a motherfucking roof. Even this current boyfriend who hadn't meant to strangle her, because Joey wasn't familiar with all of the hotel crazyness. Honestly, even if he had been, that shit still wasn't going to fly. Not anymore. But he didn't tell her that, even if the nervous tick in his jaw should have conveyed every violent fantasy.

He managed not to reach for her, and when Sam asked if she could lie down, his lip curled with something uncertain. She hadn't said that it was Neil who had strangled her, otherwise that option would have been thrown completely off the fucking table. Instead Joey just took a deep breath to try and calm his uncertainties when he glanced around the opulent setting. He seemed resolved to something. It wasn't anger, just something that brushed up against sadness when he glanced back in his sister's direction. "Yeah, go lay down, kid.."

She began to stand, carefully and with her back pressed as hard against the counter as she could manage, putting as much space between them as she could. She sniffled, and she looked down at him. She knew she was a fucking mess, but she didn't know how to not be a fucking mess just then. She took a few gulping breaths, and she tried to calm the fuck down, but it didn't work. No matter how she tried, it didn't work. She touched his shoulder with tentative fingers, and she squeezed there, squeezed hard, like shit might fix itself if she could just hold onto him for long enough.

After a second, she leaned over him, and she pressed her forehead to his hair, a bowed thing of a girl. "I love you," she whispered, small and young and completely fucking shamed for reacting like she had, before turning and running up the spiraling stairs. The door to Neil's room closed a second later, and the lock clicked into place, leaving him alone with the mess of the kitchen, and giving him the suite all to himself.

She curled up beneath the expensive blankets, and she blared the old, familiar opera from the room's built-in sound system so loudly that it carried throughout the place. She pressed the nightstand button that shaded the windows, and she tried really fucking hard not to call someone to set up a hit.

His eyes followed her when Sam raced up the stairs and the door slammed with finality. Joey sat there on the floor, and he kicked his long legs out so they spanned the tile. He didn't get up until the music had been blaring for a while, a strange but melodic muffle through the wall. The food smelled like it was well past burnt, but he wasn't hungry anymore anyway. With a sigh, he stood. He cut all of the burners off and stared down into the pots and pans where the steaks were charred black and the rice was dry as death. So much for the comforts of a homecooked meal. Although Joey had to smirk a bit at that because their mother hadn't been no fuckin' Betty Crocker. He'd clean it up for her after everything cooled. He even ran a sink full of soapy water in preparation, but he wasn't going to stand around in the kitchen just twiddling his thumbs in the meantime.

So he made his way into the living room with the rest of the liquor. After a lot of technological confusion, he managed to turn the television on. Taking a seat on the couch, his dirty boots went up on the coffee table as he knocked back some more of the liquor. He intended to wait her out, thinking that she couldn't sleep that long. But while his attention continuously strayed up the stairs, it wasn't long before exhaustion took him over as well. There was a movie on tv, and a bottle in his hand, but his eyes fell closed all the same as he settled into a dream where everything was right and nothing hurt.