🎵 𝄞 🎸 𝄫 🎷🎶 🎻 (jukejoint) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2014-01-17 13:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | christine daae, james potter |
Who: Sam and Shane
What: Reunited and it feels so goooood
Where: Fremont
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: Language, as per usual
His helmet was tucked under his arm, black gloss stripped gray from years in the sun. It was like his fucking sidekick, traveling with him everywhere. He held it the side opposite the rib Russ had finished off like a fucking thief in a gibbet, crooked between elbow and hip. Shane was waiting for the fucking bus Sam was supposed to be on. His baby sister. He'd gotten there early even. But, after a good fifteen minutes and some impatient pacing, he sat on the slatted wooden bench by the fucking metal sign the sun was glinting off at an offending angle with his sunglasses as his only respite. It felt like someone was goring his temple with their fucking finger. Shane mumbled and pulled one bent, sad cigarette from the box in the front pocket of his jacket, leather over an old sweater he'd found in a generic THANK YOU-emblazoned plastic bag in the bottom drawer of his shitty dresser. It wasn't too cold out, but factor in wind riding and the fact that it wasn't summer, and a sweater, even one as moth-eaten as this one, seemed like a good idea.
So his dirty blond hair was sweat-stuck to his head, unwashed and unkempt, but relatively short. So he was a few days out from a shower. He didn't give a fuck. It wasn't in Shane to worry about what he looked like. Sam had never seen him, not really. He was pretty fucking sure there wasn't anything more than maybe one school picture of him kicking around his parents' apartment, and that had to be at least 25 years old, if not older. Maybe that shoulda been more incentive—making an impression—but, nah, he didn't give a fuck.
If she was going to hate him, she would hate him. Him having combed hair wasn't going to change that.
Whatever looks came his way for smoking by a bus stop, the man didn't see or he ignored them. There were so few fucking places left where you could light shit without someone coughing obnoxiously nearby while staring you fucking down, the whites of their eyes basically free from their skulls. He took shit where he could. Like the bus stop.
He didn't work over what to say. There was no mulling. He didn't think about anything. He sat on the bench and dragged the heavy bottoms of his boots over the bits of sidewalk worked loose by tourists and abuse, watching as it raked through sprouting greens that defied every fucking scrap of knowledge he had about the desert. And he waited.
Sam was running a little late. She'd spent the morning hunting up old dealer contacts, thanks to Clarissa, and it had taken awhile to find someone who was willing to give her shit to move, given her bail and junkie status. But, whatever, because even she knew better than to shoot shit she was supposed to be selling. Dealers could be serious motherfuckers, and she knew that from when she did some dealing on the side for Clarissa. And yeah, sure, it was crazy fucking tempting to put some of her earnings toward product, but she'd worry about that when she needed to. Right now, she was getting tested daily when she went to get her shrink meds at the public mental health offices, so that was deterrent enough. Shit had changed, yeah? And she needed to change with it. But no big deal. She'd always been resilient or whatever. You didn't make it back home without being able to go with the flow.
And she wasn't worried about meeting Shane. Meeting, yeah? Because she'd been like two when he moved. She remembered him as a voice on the phone until she was fifteen, and then he was gone, like most of her family. She assumed he'd made Russ' face looked like tenderized steak, but she wasn't worried about anything herself. If there was something the Alexanders knew how to do, it was fight and make-up, and it was never a big thing. Cruelty wasn't part of the family dynamic, not with each other, and a few thrown fists didn't change that fact. They had tempers, yeah? It wasn't malice or planned out shit. It was just fire, and fire was doused pretty fucking quick. So, yeah, she wasn't worried. She'd been worried when Joey rolled into town, sure, but she'd been a fucking mess then. She was better now, since breaking Iris in a hallway.
So, she showed at the busstop, and she pulled a whistle out of her pocket, which she fucking blew for as long as she could. If that didn't get Shane's attention, nothing would. And she didn't mind people staring. Whatever, as long as no one touched her, she could deal. She was jeans and one of Neil's work shirts, the sleeves rolled up and the hem not stopping until her knees. Her boots were traffic-cone orange, and her hair was in ponytails. She didn't bother trying to hide the vertical scars on her wrists anymore, just like she didn't do shit to hide the scar from shoulder to sternum, which just peeked out from between the shirt's buttons. She had earbuds tucked in her ears, and a bright green ipod nano was clipped to one of the shirt's pockets. She smelled like cloves and metal, and her eyes were cat-lined and inky blue as she pushed up on her toes to look over the crowd.
Shane wasn't supremely hungover today, which was a goddamn blessing. He didn't often push himself that fucking far, but it had been known to happen. Recently. But last night he'd drank in fucking moderation (cutting shit out wasn't really considered an option), so that he'd be able to meet his sister without his skull threatening to split open, a shitty pinata of brains and gunk. That was a fucking mood killer. It was a good thing too, because when that silver ring of the whistle cut through the air, Shane's bones rattled together. His muscles tensed.
It sounded like a fucking bomb had been dropped.
He lived in a world where fast reactions were necessary. Where little things like that shit could be the fucking precursor to your death. Still, he didn't reach for his gun, didn't rise, didn't much react. He lifted his eyebrows, picking the blues of his eyes up from the sand-blown gutter to sweep the sidewalk, sideways, over heads.
There was a girl, stringy blond hair in messy ponytails, with heavy boots a fucking construction orange, blowing on a whistle like it was what she'd been born to do. People dragged their feet by her, curious and annoyed, hoping to get an answer. What a little shit. Shane laughed, rough, and stood. He wasn't exceptionally tall—he wasn't exceptionally anything—, but he had a half-foot on the girl.
He knew from the fucking stupidity of the idea that it was Sam, but she looked like him too, the same tired eyes, only on her they showed more youth and femininity. She looked like the bleach-faced little girl in the too big shirt then too, one of her brothers', collar smeared orange with spaghetti-os. She looked like fucking Mom and Pops and everything else. Like fucking home.
Shane crushed out the cigarette with his boot heel. He looked at her through his sunglasses, lifted a hand to wave at the girl, but he made no move toward her.
She saw the wave, and she walked toward the person who owned the hand. And, yeah, so she was a little more careful these days. She wove through the crowd, intentionally avoiding any paths that had too many male motherfuckers crowding it. She flinched away when a guy asked the time, and she was maybe breathing a little too hard by the time she came to stop in front of Shane. And yeah, ok, there was no fucking doubt that this was Shane. She might have been just a kid when he left, but he looked like family. He looked a lot like Joey, with his darker hair and build, and the blue eyes were Alexander all fucking over. And he looked familiar in other ways, yeah? In ways that she didn't see much out here. They looked rough, her and him and Joey. They didn't look all scrubbed clean like Lou and Iris did, and some people might say that was all in her head, but she knew it fucking wasn't.
She was clean, veins and clothes, and she rocked back onto her heels and shoved her hands deep enough into her pockets to make the jeans slide down to hips gone slim over the past year. "You look like fucking Jersey," she said, her accent coming out in wide Os and gutter sounds. She grinned, gapped teeth and still holding onto youth for the most part, with the exception of the aging the drugs had done in the past year. But she was happy to see him, and it was obvious. Yeah, she'd been pissed about Russ and Joey, but she had a temper that flared high and bright, but that went out just as fucking fast. She could never hold a grudge, not even when she fucking should. Even Iris wasn't a grudge. Yeah, no, that was old hurt like a blade between her fucking ribs, one that hurt every time she took a fucking breath.
And, yeah, she waited a second longer, just to make sure the fucker wasn't going to bolt. Then her arms were around his shoulders, and her feet were tiptoes and traffic-cone orange on the ground. Family got fucking hugs, and that was just that, and it didn't occur to her that he'd left Jersey before she'd been old enough to insist on hugging every one of her stinking brothers. And Tessy, Tessy got hugged twice. But whatever, a hug it was, and she was just glad she was past the point of losing her shit about something like a hug. Poor Joey had gotten the fucked up side of that stick when he'd showed up in town. Hug, and then she elbowed his stomach, and she rocked back onto her heels, all squint and grin. "Can't believe you've been hiding out here this whole fucking time, yeah?"
Last time Shane had seen Mug, she'd waddled, she was chubby legs, gap-toothed, and loose, scrappy blond hair, chasing after one of her brothers as the boys and Tessy rough-housed and pushed one another off the bunk bed into dirty laundry for fun. He'd said goodbye to her, just as he had everybody else. She was the baby. She'd come last, but she'd been there, a little thing crooked on forearm, who tried to whisper goodbyes with kool-aid staining her lips. Family got fucking hugs was right. But add twenty years, and the hug was going to be different. There was no picking her up. It was hard to put that sticky baby back in Jersey together with the girl he saw in the boots. It was hard to remember all the intervening years.
Shane could only hope they'd been okay. He knew they weren't good. But, he hoped they weren't terrible.
A sloppy smile propped up the beetle-eyes of his sunglasses, and he hugged his sister. He gave her a squeeze, nothing cinching, just a light tightening around narrow shoulders. Then he let her go, taking a step back himself, to get a look at her, as the point of her little elbow hit him in the stomach.
The broken rib hurt. Shane winced visibly, but finished his drag on his cigarette before making any sound.
"I was here first," he said. His voice was almost a mumble, his words a softer Jersey, bleach on an already fading t-shirt. "Let's get fucking food, yeah?"
Sam stepped back with a quirk of brow for that visible wince, but she didn't say shit about it. She assumed it was fucking Russ, and she didn't want to bring that up, yeah? With the exception of Iris, who she could seemingly hate for fucking ever, she couldn't hold a grudge to save her fucking ass. Yeah, ok, so he'd beaten the fuck out of Russ, and maybe he'd gone too hard on him or whatever. But Russ had asked for that shit, yeah? He'd put himself out there, and he'd fucking asked for it. So, yeah, she'd bitched at everyone about that enough; it was time to call that shit even. So that quirk of brow was all he got, and she left it at that.
His mumble made her laugh, and her laugh had gotten stronger in the months since Ian. Yeah, ok, so shit was still shitty, and jail might happen, but she was actually doing better than she had in a long fucking time. "I'm louder," she countered. She'd always been louder, and the better she felt, the louder she got. It was nice, yeah, almost feeling like herself again. Whatever came of the Iris shit, it had let her shed some of that pent-up pissed the fuck off. Now that space was reserved for Chloe and her bullshit, but she was going to go with Neil's plan there. Leave it alone, maybe try not to fucking bitch and comment so much, and see if shit quieted down. She thought it was bullshit that the woman got to fuck everything up and everyone just let her. But yeah, ok, she could try not to run her mouth. She was shit at keeping quiet, but she could try.
"I'm buying the most expensive thing on the menu, and you're fucking paying," she teased, leaning against his side with another gap-toothed grin. Yeah, it was good having family around. It made her feel like nothing in the fucking world could ever hurt her.