. (isconfetti) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-04-15 00:25:00 |
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Entry tags: | arthur, eames |
Who: Evan and Cory
What: Sushi
Where: Evan's apartment
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: Nope. Cory only throws his food once. Good Cory.
The stitches had come out that morning, and Evan was in a better mood than he had been all week. He still wanted a drink, and his mouth was still cotton, but his neck hadn’t itched for a good three hours, and it made everything seem more tolerable.
Evan had spent the past three days nearly silent. When he felt like he was going to die, after spending days in bed while his neck knitted, then spending days bent over the toilet dry heaving, he’d largely ignored Cory. But now he finally felt a little human again. Not totally human, but he was willing to take what he could get. He knew Cory was somewhere, because Cory was always somewhere, and with his good mood came renewed strength, and the desire to take his life back. He didn’t know why Cory was doing what he was doing (the Arthur argument would only go so far), but Evan knew exactly what the younger man thought of him, and he was feeling good enough to want to fight it out.
It didn’t escape Evan’s notice that it was the first time in years that he’d cared enough to want to fight anything out. He wasn’t completely dry, because he was too much of a drunk to dry out cold turkey, but he was more sober than he could ever remember being. His stomach wasn’t even cramping and, man, it felt awesome. Becky was still in the corner, but Becky was always somewhere, and he’d stopped worrying about her a long time ago.
Evan padded to the shower, turned the thing on scalding, and climbed beneath the stream with a pleased groan.
Cory was not given to deep introspection. He felt like doing something, so he did it. He didn’t feel like doing anything, so he didn’t. He wasn’t suited to long-term plans, had no great aspirations for his life, and he didn’t decide what he was wearing that day until two seconds before he had to walk out the door. He wouldn’t tell Noah, but Arthur had been dead silent and withdrawn for the last few days, and as far as Cory could tell he wasn’t forcing him to do a damn thing. That, coupled with the familiar red blacktop nightmares that were back after a long hiatus, made Cory feel like he’d lost a couple years of his life somewhere and no time had passed at all.
Cory didn’t think much of Evan’s place, just like he didn’t think much of Evan, but after he dumped most of the liquor, he carved out a niche for himself behind a bookcase at one side of the living room. Even while playing nursemaid, it was obvious Cory was no housekeeper. The sleeping bag Noah had brought for him was squished to one side and padded with dirty clothes, and various electronics--a Nintendo DS, an ancient laptop, his ipod and expensive headphones--were littered about a half-open backpack. At all hours of day and night Cory had the headphones around his neck or on his head, shutting out everything in favor of television shows, sci-fi movies, and video games in which various futuristic armies or soldiers died in new and fantastic ways. If he had a nightmare, he woke up and played old Zelda games, face glowing in the dim room.
Cory all but ignored Evan except when it was obvious Evan wasn’t feeling good. Early on, when moving was still difficult, he had a tendency of showing up at Evan’s elbow (headphones still on) and providing an arm across the room. He stocked the fridge with gatorade and the cupboard with chewy gummy vitamins, he bought a lot of canned and frozen stuff so he could pretend to cook, and he measured out cups of alcohol with the same deadpan as a pharmacist doling out white paper bags across a counter. He could be seen scratching out a list of all the things Evan had a prescription for, though he didn’t interfere with any of the pills yet, and he went with him to all his meetings and appointments, waiting outside with one of his video games in hand. He was a very shabby shadow with a headphone-muffled soundtrack, and he almost never smiled.
He was heating up Chef Boyardee in the kitchen when Evan headed toward the shower, and Cory would have flushed a toilet to make a temporary ice bath if he hadn’t known the pipes in this building were too fancy for that. “Don’t use up all the hot water,” he shouted across the apartment, just to make himself feel better.
Evan’s mood meant that he probably would have used up all the hot water, except for that whole thing about the apartment building being too fancy for that. The hot water never ran out in the place, and Evan knew he’d just emerge wrinkled and crankier than he already was. So project “use up the hot water” was prematurely aborted, and Evan took a shower that was on the longish side, but not enough to worry anyone about possible drowning in the shallow shower stall. He wandered from bathroom to bedroom repeatedly after, turning on some old rock, and he sang about wanting to paint a red door black. It was a sign he was definitely feeling better, the singing, and his voice was scratchy-passable, loud enough to carry into the kitchen.
After a shave, which Evan hardly ever managed, he wandered into the kitchen in jeans and a wifebeater, still towel drying black hair that really needed a cut. Eames wasn’t around, and he hadn’t been for days, as far as Evan could tell. There was just Cory, who was annoying even when he wasn’t being annoying. “Any coffee?” he asked, knowing Cory would likely crab at him or ignore him (the kid only seemed to have two settings). The shower had helped sober him more, and he glanced toward the table, where Becky sat twiddling her thumbs. Still there, cool, mark the calendar, he thought. “You don’t even have to spike it,” he conceded about the coffee. “Black’s fine.” Now that Chef Boyardee? Now that he was feeling human again that stuff was going to have to go.
Cory had slid his headphones off his head to hear what Evan had put on the stereo, and he rolled his eyes high up toward the ceiling at the sound of the guitar riffs. The singing was new, but Evan’s obvious cheer was a good sign, and Cory left the headphones off as he turned back to the stove. Canned stuff had to be heated with attention, or you burned the bottom, and there wasn’t enough pasta in the can to get sloppy about burning it. He pushed the button on the fancy automatic coffeemaker he’d figured out a couple days before, and by the time Evan appeared, the shiny silver pot was full. Cory looked up from his saucepan and he looked surprised but pleased at Evan’s obvious attempt at the shower and shave routine. He pointed a sloppy spoon at the coffeemaker. “Get it yourself, if you want it.” He hadn’t had time to pour himself a cup, but he was going to, at some point. Cory missed the glance at nothing this time.
Evan pulled two white cups out of the cupboard, and the white thing was definitely a theme. He filled one for Cory, then wandered over to the table with annoying “I own the world” laziness. He sat across from Becky, nursed the cup for a moment, and then took a long drink of the strong, black liquid. It burned going down, and that was a good thing. “That’s not food,” he finally said, after watching Cory stir for a few minutes longer. Evan had this thing about being unhurried, and he watched for a while longer still before speaking again. “We should order something. Sushi?” He figured Cory would hate sushi, and it was an intentional suggestion. Even as out of it as he’d been in recent days, it was obvious that Cory was stuck somewhere in high school - video games, headphones and dinner from a can. The clothes, the clothes were terrible too, but one thing at a time.
Cory thought the white thing was something a decorator had come in and inflicted upon the apartment while Evan was in a drunk stupor, and he was under the mistaken impression that once the man was sober he’d hit it like a time bomb with some color, maybe a movie poster or two. Cory was surprised that he got a cup of coffee too, a courteous sort of action that he did not associate with Evan, but he was too surprised to really say anything. Cory took the cup, sipped, and then took his lunch off the heat. He looked up when Evan attempted conversation. This was a whole new day, man.
Cory made a face when Evan mentioned sushi. Raw eggs weren’t his thing, he usually just ordered chicken teriyaki when someone insisted, and sushi was out of his price range, anyway. “My bank roll doesn’t go for raw fish,” Cory said, getting a white bowl down and plunking it down to dish out some of the limp pasta. At the same time, an appetite was good, and he gave Evan a look that was quite transparently an attempt to do something nice for him, an obvious concession. Cory was pretty transparent as a rule. “You can get delivery or something.” Cory brought his bowl and his coffee to the table, and pulled out the chair across from Evan, not seeing the apparition Evan saw.
Evan watched while Cory sat, and for a moment there was Cory and Becky, Becky and Cory, and then she disappeared, only to reappear at the far end of the kitchen, where she paced a line along pale tile. He watched her for a few seconds, and then he looked back at the kid-man across from him. “That isn’t real food. If you’re staying, we’re doing groceries,” he explained, because when he wasn’t too drunk to care, Evan liked the good things in life - expensive sheets, rich food, attractive men. He didn’t like lunch from a can, and he reached back to grab the phone that was affixed to the wall.
The sushi place was programmed into the memory, and Evan ordered himself a sashimi plate, along with a spicy tuna roll, and then he looked at Cory for a second before deciding on chicken teriyaki and some tempura. Harmless, kid food. He spent a few seconds longer on the phone, blatantly flirting with whoever was on the other end of the line, and then he put the phone back on its base. Another sip of the coffee followed, and he reached for the ashtray in the center of the table and tugged it toward him. He only had bad cigarettes, because he didn’t care what he smoked when he was drunk, and he’d need to get something better - but right then, he just wanted to light up. “Throw that away, man, and hand me the smokes from the cabinet,” he said, motioning at the bowl of slop Cory was preparing to consume.
When Evan looked back at Cory, Cory was looking at the empty kitchen, right at the girl he couldn’t see. He didn’t defend his food and he didn’t turn back to give Evan a speculative look for several long seconds. He didn’t say anything right away, he just stirred the limp pasta around in his bowl, not quite eating, just turning it around and mixing it up. Cory sat forward with his elbows on the table and his shoulders hunched forward, exactly like the kid Evan imagined he would be. He looked a little tired and a little careworn, and also young, and the combination brought to mind kids that stayed up too late to watch ill-advised horror flicks.
Cory didn’t have an objection to the cigarettes. He’d probably die of second-hand anyway, he’d been working in a casino since he was twenty-one, and he’d probably smoked more than most men who didn’t smoke at all. He got up from the table, leaned over and rose up on his worn-out socks to get the cigarettes. He flipped them across the table toward Evan before he resumed his seat. “What’s she doing?” he asked, without preamble.
Evan expected a fight for the smokes, and he was starting to realize this was going to be a weird day. He felt good, Cory wasn’t bitching, and he might get some decent food and a smoke before anyone threw anything. Yeah, definitely a weird day. That was only proven by Cory’s question, which made Evan look right at Becky. It had been a long week, and Evan didn’t remember half of what happened in his life these days. A side-effect of the drugs, memory loss, and the booze didn’t help. He couldn’t remember telling Cory about Becky, but he must have, and he looked back at the kid with the mushed around canned pasta a second later. “Pacing. She does that a lot.”
Cory had been heaping all the pasta into the center of the bowl and then letting it collapse back down again in red dribbles, but now he was watching Evan’s face like it would tell him something. A great wave of jealousy came over him--his expression, as always, a window to his feelings--but once it broke, it seemed gone, leaving behind oddly broken amusement. “Yeah, she never could hold still.” Evan had told him about the hallucinations when they met in the hotel, and Becky had been a ballpark guess that apparently was right on the money. Who else could it be, really? Cory looked down again at the bowl, and didn’t eat. The spoon made ceramic tinking sounds as he moved it against the side, scraping sauce off and dribbling it into the center again.
“She’s not real, man,” Evan explained, and there was something in his voice that said maybe he still wasn’t sure about that. Countless years of therapy, countless anti-psychotics, and he still thought she was a ghost so regularly that he’d stopped telling the shrinks about it. It was hard to prove a hallucination, especially when the person was dead. Weird stuff happened every day, and Evan had too much of a fixation with the process of death and dying to doubt the existence of something beyond life. He was there, countless times, when the final spark of life left a person. It was impossible to explain to someone who hadn’t studied precisely that, who hadn’t spend every internship hour of his college career walking the solemn halls of a hospice. The shrinks all made it sound obvious, that of course she was a hallucination, but how did you prove something like that? And she was still there, wasn’t she, after all the magical pills that were supposed to drag her away. “She’s just a hallucination.”
Cory looked up from under a fringe of rough dark hair, his eyes barely visible. “Yeah, I know.” He finally abandoned the spoon, not really hungry but going through the motions because he’d gone to so much trouble to make the food, he might as well. He stuck his fingers up over his forehead to push his hair back, a little pointlessly because it fell right back. He chewed on his lower lip and then finally decided to say what he’s thinking. “I’d still like to see her.” He escaped the table with his bowl just in case Evan’s reaction wasn’t a good one.
“Yeah, I get that,” Evan said truthfully. He would want to see someone he’d lost too; he’d just never cared about anyone enough to give a shit if he saw them again - no point in lying about that. He wasn’t exactly the poster boy for sticking around until the sun rose. The knock at the door saved him from any other bad attempts at sympathy, and he went to collect the food. He’d been better at sympathy than anyone he’d ever known... once. But it was different when you were responsible for whatever you were offering sympathy for, and he was out of practice in caring. Because, see, he did care on that level. It was the one-on-one, we’re together stuff that he was terrible at. He came back a second later and put the bag of expensive carryout on the table. “The chicken’s harmless.”
Cory put his bowl in the sink and surveyed that and the saucepan, thinking that now he’d have to do dishes for no reason, and avoiding looking across to the table. When Evan went to the door to answer the delivery man, Cory looked around once at the kitchen, hoping despite himself. He didn’t see anything, and he figured it probably wasn’t right to hope that he would, anyway. It might be one of those things where you were supposed to be careful what you wish for. Cory was back at the table when Evan returned with the food, nursing fresh coffee and looking more distant but less tired than before. He didn’t argue about the chicken and popped the top off the bowl. “...Thanks. Got an appetite now, huh?” he said, in an utterly obvious attempt at changing the subject.
“Yeah, but I never gave up eating,” Evan replied, that devil-may-care, break all the girl’s hearts smile on his mouth. He wasn’t thin enough for it, having given up eating. “I just didn’t give a shit what I ate before,” he explained, and there was a difference. He unwrapped some chopsticks, and he tucked a piece of sashimi into his mouth and actually closed his eyes at the buttery consistency of the fish on his tongue. Yeah, this was heaven. It wouldn’t matter as much the next time his stomach was clenching as his mind screamed for a drink, but it was heaven, now, and he’d take it. He opened his eyes a second later, and he pointed at the door with his chopsticks. “I’m not going to die anymore. You’re not obligated to stay,” he offered, no anger, just the truth, chill and calm, like everything else he said.
Cory dug through the bag until he found a plastic fork, and then he started stirring the chicken teriyaki bowl so that the sauce was distributed properly throughout the rice. He picked out the slivers of pink ginger and laid them in a discarded heap on the upturned lid. Looking up, he caught the tail end of some pink fish flesh disappearing into Evan’s mouth and his mouth contorted comically. He looked back down and finally took his first bite. “Stuff tastes better when you’re dry,” Cory commented. “But you won’t stay that way if you think a few days is going to do it.” He plopped his elbow on the table again.
“No, but I’ll have to do it on my own eventually,” Evan said rationally. “Unless you like crashing, in which case-” He motioned to the apartment. “Be my guest.” Evan was easy that way, and as long as Cory wasn’t throwing stuff everywhere or getting in his face, then he didn’t care that Cory was there. “Spare room is locked, but there’s a key.” He shrugged, picking up another piece of sashimi between his chopsticks. “I don’t know if this will stick, being sober. I have a feeling it’s more Eames than me doing it, man.” He shrugged, ate the piece of sashimi, and then he shrugged again. “Anyway, your guy, so he has the hots for him, huh?” Might as well talk about it, Evan thought.
Cory rolled his eyes. It was so astonishingly high school, and yet he managed it. “I like having a bed, my bed, but thanks. The sober will stick if you want it to stick. You have to want it, Evan.” He punctuated this last sentence with a little stab of his plastic fork in Evan’s direction, and a little bit of sauce dripped off and back down into his bowl. “Eames wants it because he doesn’t want to die.” Cory’s eyes got a little distant as he tried to see if Arthur was listening, but he didn’t appear to be there at all. So Cory shrugged and decided to answer Evan’s question. “Yeah.” It was pretty obvious, he figured.
“Whatever reason he wants it, I’m glad,” Evan said truthfully. He wasn’t exactly the poster boy for a strong will, and he was willing to admit that to himself. No point in being scared of introspection. “He hasn’t been around since they stitched him up across the door, not like he normally is.” Which was saying a lot, because Eames was a largely silent presence in Evan’s mind. There was still will and influence there, but not like normal. “Tell Arthur he’s become a challenge now. I think that might be dangerous.” And that came with a smirk, the smug look of a man who had spent a lot of time convincing attractive things to come home with him. “And alright, keep your twin sized bed.” Another smug smile, and another bit of fish.
“Arthur’s not around at all,” Cory said, without thinking. The smug smile earned Evan a bit of chicken flicked from Cory’s fork across the table, and he was quite earnestly aiming for his face. “And the challenge thing doesn’t make a difference, even if I did carry stupid messages for him. He’s not going to give in, he’s got some kind of hang up or something about it.” Cory shrugged his lack of knowledge and made sure to forge his mostly falsified lack of concern in there too.
Evan didn’t even bother to try ducking. He lazily plucked the piece of chicken off his face, and he just gave Cory a look that was all unimpressed elder sibling. “How old are you?” And maybe it was an honest question. He was fairly sure Cory was older than he acted, and depending on how much older, well, it was either Evan’s fault or it wasn’t. “You have more faith in Arthur than I do,” he added, smirk and dimple and blue eyes that said he was pretty sure he could tap Arthur if he wanted to.
Cory scowled deeply and gave his next bite of chicken a good stab. “Oh, don’t start with me.” Cory felt like half the world sounded like his mother, telling him to grow up all the time, get a job, move on, blah blah. “And stop smirking like you know all about him,” Cory added, feeling uncharacteristically defensive and stepping up to anything that presented itself, including the topic of Arthur. “He’s known the man for years and he hasn’t so much as talked to him about it, and I don’t think you’re his type.”
Evan grinned and grinned, and somehow there was hardly any movement behind all that smug smirking; it was effortless. “Do you know what men’s types are, Cory?” More smugness, and a dimple, which only added to the illusion of a lazy lion waiting to pounce on something that interested him.
Cory frowned. He read the lion look but didn’t think it was directed at him. Arthur, maybe, but not him. He took another bite of the rice and chewed to buy himself a little bit of time, and finally shrugged again. “Everybody has types.”
No, it wasn’t directed at Cory, but the frown still made Evan laugh, scratchy and low against the back of his throat. “What’s Arthur’s type then?” he asked and, man, his mood was actually getting better, which was unheard of this far into a conversation with Cory.
Cory directed a deeply distrustful look in Evan’s direction. “You’ll just go tell Eames, who is probably listening, anyway. And then Arthur’s going to be pissed at me.” Having eaten perhaps a quarter of the chicken and rice, Cory looked for somewhere to scrape the ginger off so he could replace the lid and stow leftovers for later consumption or perhaps a destiny as a new kind of mold.
Evan leaned back in his chair, and he didn’t exactly argue that he wouldn’t. “I thought we were talking about whether or not I could seduce him,” he said, following another bite, this time of the spicy tuna roll. “Anyway, there’s this door party in Paris. I’m going to let Eames go.” He didn’t ask permission, because he didn’t need it. His returning strength meant that telling him what to do wasn’t going to be as easy as it had been in recent weeks - his dimpled smile only backed that up. Evan wasn’t the kind of man who could pull off harmless.
“Maybe you could,” Cory said, begrudgingly. “If that stupid doctor could, you probably can. It just won’t mean much.” The pink bits successfully discarded onto a napkin, Cory stood up and took his container to the fridge, where he pushed it next to the soda cans that made up most of the groceries he picked up lately. “And anyway you can’t seduce him because he knows you’re supposed to be drying out, so he won’t fall for it. And Eames does, too, even if he does go to this lame party... oh no.” Cory scraped his hand down his face and looked annoyed. “Then Arthur’s going to go too.”
Evan didn’t bother explaining palate cleansers to Cory, who was (he’d decided) a perpetual teenager. “None of the people I have sex mean anything much,” he offered unapologetically. It had always been the case, and Evan believed in telling people that right up front - minimize the wailing at his door after the fact. “You’d be surprised what people fall for,” and then, a smile, “I know he will.” He pushed aside what was left of his own food, waiting to see if Cory wrapped it up too. “I told the little jerk on the journals I would round up some entertainment for him.” Smirk.
Cory was only concerned about cleaning up after himself, as evidenced by the disaster area that was the living room and the kitchen. He sniffed in distaste at the idea of an endless string of people that didn’t give a fuck about him jumping in and out of his bed. Maybe it’d be okay one or two times, but didn’t he get tired of the constant rejection? That’s what it would feel like to Cory. He came back out with more coffee and plopped down again on the chair, again pushing his hair out of his face and having about the same effect as before. “What jerk?” he said, blankly, not getting the entertainment reference at all.
Evan was generally the one doing the rejecting, but he didn’t understand Cory’s mind enough to feel the need to clarify that. He watched the hair pushing for a second, and then he began to put away his own food. “You need a haircut,” he said, casual and unthinkingly, and then he stood to put his leftovers in the refrigerator. “Raoul something or other. If you read his stuff, he’s a real piece of work.” He grinned. “Hookers at a nineteenth century wedding announcement, sounds like a good time to me.” And it did. Man, he was feeling better, and it wasn’t even dampened by the girl pacing just inches away from him on the other side of the refrigerator door.
“So do you,” Cory retorted, bristling again, but more like a hedgehog, small and harmless, than anything that would really bite back. He sipped his coffee and sighed at the thought of Eames bringing hookers anywhere, which would make Arthur grouchy and cause chaos. But as long as Evan didn’t drink, that was all Cory cared about. “Yeah, I know who you mean, I think.” Cory was downplaying his attention to the journals, which he watched all the time for the distraction of it. “Get through this party thing and then we gotta talk about all these pills.” Cory tipped his weight back in the chair, balancing on two legs and sipping at his coffee.
That was Evan’s cue to take a nap or something, because he was in too good a mood to think about detoxing just then. “Yeah,” he managed, and he walked to the edge of the kitchen and forced a grin as he looked back at the kid tipping back the chair. “Who knows, maybe we’ll find you a girl,” which might have been dangerous territory, but Evan didn’t care. Whatever else was going on with Cory, he definitely needed friends that weren’t on glowing screens, and a girl would be even better. Anyway, Evan felt responsible for screwing the kid’s life up, and Evan’s solution for everything was a drink or sex. Cory wasn’t going to drink, so that left sex.
All four legs of Cory’s chair came down on the floor with a jarring thud. His expression went dark, and it wasn’t at all the irritated expression he wore when Evan did something to nettle him, or the bristled expression when he was feeling defensive. For once, he actually looked his age, and he looked almost as angry as he had in the Passages hallway where they had first encountered each other. “Maybe I’m not in the mood for a replacement.”
Evan just watched the show of anger, but he didn’t flinch away from it. He didn’t even look like it bothered him, because it didn’t. Grieving was his degree, after all, and he just watched Cory for a minute with blue eyes that were perfectly serious. “Not a replacement. Can’t replace someone who’s gone,” he said, voice going solemn.
“Yeah,” Cory said, particularly venomously, as if Evan had just attempted to argue with him about it. He left the kitchen table, not kicking anything in an admirable show of maturity, and brought his hands up around the back of his neck. He turned away from Evan in an obvious separation from the conversation, and put his headphones firmly back on his head.
Evan watched the kid a moment longer and then, after tapping his fist lightly against the doorframe, he turned and left the kitchen entirely.