Who: Hal and Wren What: AN AMAZINGLY PG CONVERSATION. About... feelings. Where: Aubade 402, Alfie’s former apartment given to Tristan so that he could bring all the trash in. :D When: After they move in. Warnings: NONE OMG.
Kyle had helped Wren move all her furniture into Aubade’s lower bedroom, even going so far as to help her set up a partition so she could shutter the bed from the sitting area like it had been in Hamartia. The entire lower bedroom was bigger than her old apartment, and she felt strange in the new space, like she didn’t fit in it, despite all the room.
Hal and Charlie were settled upstairs, snakes and all, in separate rooms that eclipsed their apartment, everything inside expensive and modernly pale. Wren thought the whole place seemed dead, all white and wood and silence, and she hadn’t managed to buy anything for her room upstairs, preferring the familiarity of the items below stairs. She had managed to find some new clients who liked the thrill of the address. They paid better for it, too, so she could at least keep up her end of the expenses for herself, Hal and Charlie. Tristan had spent the majority of the past two days asleep, and she suspected he was asleep now, too.
She let the evening’s client out quietly, then she showered and changed into a nightgown that trailed past her feet and boasted tiny pink roses. She looked up at the ceiling for a second, and then she padded upstairs as she ran a comb through her damp hair. Hal’s nurse was nowhere in sight as she peeked into the room, fully expecting him to be sound asleep.
Hal was awake, and in a truly foul temper. He'd been in a foul temper since they'd moved him from the hospital, since they'd told him he had to go out in a wheelchair and he had vehemently insisted that he did not have to do any such thing--and then had to be caught halfway to the floor. The wound was healing cleanly, and he had the proper kind of stitches in, but he was still unable to bear his weight for very long and that meant that he had the dubious honor of doing nothing but fucking sitting. All day. He couldn't even sit upright the whole time, he had to lie down for most of it, and if he lay down he couldn't do anything at all, not even watch television or read the newspapers or the car magazines that Charlie had brought from one of their garages.
To compound that problem, he knew exactly what the sounds downstairs were, and while he'd been just fine with Wren when she wasn't pursuing her salary in front of him, he found he certainly wasn't fine when he had to listen to it, even if it was just doors closing and footsteps moving in and out. He resented being in the rich apartment, he resented the situation with money (which is to say he had none), and most of all he resented the loss of his freedom.
He was awake on his back, the tv flickering on the opposite side of the room, and he turned his head to look at Wren as she came in. "Got yo'self some free time?" he asked, not bothering to hide his bitterness.
The bite in the question surprised her, because Hal had never tried to talk her out of her profession. Honestly, no one since Cassidy had, and that made her feel an unexpected bit of melancholy that she pushed down and away, not liking how it felt at all. “I have to pay for things,” she said plainly, walking toward the bed with only a glance at the flickering screen as she blocked it for a moment. The room was bigger than hers, but there was nothing personal about the space, nothing except for Hal’s presence in the bed.
She climbed onto the end, much as she had done in the hospital, and she tossed the comb onto the blankets, discarding it as she drew her knees up to her chest. “November and December were hard. They shut off the water and the power. This address is better for work so far,” she said with a little shrug. “I tried a brothel, but I don’t like giving the house most of my money, even if it is more money. My mother always said no brothels or pimps,” she added, before getting to the real heart of the matter. “You’re grouchy.”
“We in dis big ole place and you got a rich friend an’ yo’ still whoring?” Hal said, venting his frustration on the only person to speak with him all day. He didn’t see why Wren needed to be dealing with customers when she had a roof like this and friends like the one that didn’t mind when she carted injured friends in. “What for?” He said it aggressively, as if he was sure that whatever the answer was, he wouldn’t like it.
His eyes were bright but he still looked distinctly ill, a couple shades off color and a couple days’ beard on its way into darkness. He made an effort to sit up, awkward as it was, hauling a pillow into his lower back so he could manage it.
Hal had never referred to what she did as whoring, though it was the right word for it. Still, the jibe stung, and her cheeks pinked as she tipped her head to the side and looked at him more seriously, grey-blue eyes watering just slightly. “This isn’t my big old place,” she said, the emphasis intentional. “I’m not here so Tristan can take care of me. I’m here because he’s grieving and doesn’t want to be here alone. It doesn’t mean I’m going to take his charity and,” she continued, more forcefully, “whoring is all I know how to do. I never finished school, and I don’t even have the right papers to get a job. I’m proud of what I’ve managed to do,” she added, tacked on at the end like something important. “You never minded before.”
“You weren’t doin’ it in my ear befo’!” Hal snapped back. He was in a fine temper, and punched at the pillow under his hip to try to get it under him properly so the damn stitches didn’t hurt. “So you got yo’ roof, learn to do somet’ing else!” Taking a break from the fight with the pillow to catch his breath, he pulled at his hair (which was getting kind of long).
She considered helping with the pillow, but something in the way he was acting said maybe now wouldn’t be the best time to treat him as an invalid. So she stayed where she was, just straightening out her legs so she could poke at his leg with her toes for emphasis. “I was doing it above your head, just the same as I am now,” she replied, not backing down. “And neither you nor Charlie checked on me for months to make sure I could even manage to pay that rent, so don’t go getting angry about it now.”
“You never said you wanted help!” Hal practically shouted, incensed. “How we s’posed to know you hurtin’ for cash if you never check back wit’ us, huh? What, we psychic? I bet Charlie is sittin’ over dere on some savin’s and if you wanna milk him for it you only gotta climb couple stairs!”
She went on like he hadn’t even interrupted. “Whether you could hear or not, I still do the same thing for a living. Why didn’t it bother you when you couldn’t see it happening?” she asked, adding. “It isn’t my roof, and I don’t want Charlie’s money.” That last part sounded so, so hurt and angry.
“Den what you want? You want me to be callin’ you all de time? ‘Cuz I got better t’ings to do dan be callin’ every person I know every day,” he said, angrily. (Even more angrily because right now, obviously, was an exception. Jesus, he’d just texted Dot yesterday.)
“I want to know why it bothers you now,” she insisted, almost raising her voice.
“I said because I have to hear it!”
“Non, beau, you can’t hear anything now that you couldn’t before,” she said, and she did move, then, crawling up beside his hip.
Hal huffed air through his nose. “What you doin’?” He said, frowning down at her.
She stopped, and she sat there, just as she had on the foot of the bed, hugging her knees close. “I know you aren’t jealous, Hal, so why does it bother you?” she asked.
“Well, if you know so much.” The nearness seemed to take his temper down rather than aggravate it, and he subsided from yelling into a reluctant growl.
She reached out and pushed back some of that too long hair, pushing it back off his forehead. She smelled of nothing but soap, and even the nightgown smelled of detergent and nothing else. “I’m asking,” she said, not backing down, her voice firm without being loud.
“No yo’ not, you tellin’,” he retorted, frowning. Hal didn’t like it when she smelled of other men, or, come to think of it, when she wore things for other men, or when she was with other men. It was just usually he could get up and leave. He could have left hours ago. Got in a car and drove... somewhere.
“Now I’m asking,” she said plainly. “How can you not want to see someone if you care enough to mind if they’re a whore or not?” Just as plain.
“Dat don’t make no sense,” he said gruffly, looking away. He didn’t try to untangle the sentence.
She touched his chin when he looked away. “When was the last time you cared about someone enough to stick around, beau?”
“You keep actin’ like I’m leavin’. I’m still in dis town, ain’t I? And it in pieces.”
“Hal, you know what I mean,” she said, petting beneath his chin with her fingers. “What does it matter who I’m doing, when I go missing for days and you don’t notice? Charlie, too.”
Hal put up a palm and--gently--pushed her hand away. “Ah’m not a sick puppy.” He glared at her. “You tryin’ to make me guilty. Like you would notice if me or him go missin’. We go missin’ all the time, doin’ jobs.”
“I tried to get in touch with you, but neither of you answered. Like I didn’t matter,” she said, anger bubbling to the surface. “Charlie. Do you know when the last time I talked to Charlie was? When I told him he was my uncle. He got angry, hung up on me, and we never talked again.” She shook her head. “You keep defending yourself, like it’s nothing. I don’t want to guilt you. I just want to understand why it matters who I sleep with, when it didn’t matter what I was doing before.”
“I don’t know what Charlie’s deal wit’ his family is, but Ah’m thinkin’ mebbe you should respect whatever it is.” Hal said. “Dat’s not involving me.”
“We were talking about me, Hal. Not about Charlie.” She shook her head, and she let her feet slide to the floor beside the bed. “You know, sometimes an I’m sorry is all it takes to make someone feel better,” she told him, looking him straight in the eye when she said it, not waiting for a response before standing. “Are you going to keep doing it? Whatever got you shot?”
“Go away, Wren. You makin’ me feel worse, not better.” Hal reached a hand back and pulled at the pillow that kept him upright, brow furious and eyes averted. He threw it on the floor and fell back, hiding a gasp and turning his head.
“It isn’t all about you-” she began, but then he gasped, and the anger melted away, replaced by worry. She was back on the bed in an instant, coaxing his arms up. “Let me see.”
“No. Get off.” He curled around the pain, stupid pain, and fended her off with an elbow. “Leave me alone. Go’n.”
“Non,” she said, more force in her voice than she had ever used with him. “Let me make sure you aren’t bleeding.” Her voice dropped, and she looked down at him. “S’il vous plait?”
“Ah’m all sewed up, go AWAY.” It hurt, and if he was bleeding, he didn’t want her to know, because he didn’t want to need help, and he didn’t want to feel bad about her feelings, because dealing with his was enough. He couldn’t do much to stop her, however, limited enough by how much of his movement was limited by one damned bullethole, unable to even get his knees high enough or his weight shifted onto his side.
“If you let me look, I’ll leave,” she bargained, but her voice was soft and worried.
Hal groaned and stopped fighting to stay tense, unraveling a little. Charlie had managed to save some of their clothes, so at least Hal got to feel like himself with one of his old wrinkled car company shirts, but this one was thin enough that the bandage in place over his hip stood out. There was some blood, but not enough for serious alarm. It was enough to hurt like hell though, probably just strain on the stitches. Hal was nothing if not a strain on everybody.
Wren lifted the edge of the bandage, just enough to make sure the stitches themselves didn’t pull, and she watched his face to see how much pain was there. “What did they have to stitch up inside?” she asked, now that she saw the trajectory of the bullet. She was hurt, and she was angry, but that didn’t change the fact that she cared about him so much that it hurt sometimes. Even if he was being a cranky jerk.
“Stuff. Nothing too important.” This was generally true, in a way. If the bullet had hit anything “too important” he wouldn’t have lasted long enough for them to get the bullet out. He rolled back, or tried to. “All my insides still in?”
She nodded, tugging down the shirt he wore and leaving her hand below his hip for a moment. “Will they come back after you? Whoever did this?” she asked. She’d been trying not to ask, not if he didn’t ask about her first, but she just couldn’t do it in the end.
“Nah. Ah’m nobody to dem.” He didn’t push her away again, new lines at the edge of his eyes, even half-closed like they were. The weakness, however momentary, seemed to have chastened him a good deal, and he just lay there a moment, chin down on his chest.
She let her hand trace up the front of his shirt, and she leaned over him and kissed the corner of his mouth. “It doesn’t feel like it right now,” she said, “but you’ll be up and running away in no time.”
“I don’t like just lying here. Dere ain’t nothing to do but...” His eyes slid toward the door and back. “Listen an’ think.”
She went quiet a moment, as if she was trying to decide whether to say whatever was on her mind, and in the end she tugged her feet back up and hugged her knees again. “We were locked up for seventy-two hours, separated for most of them, blindfolded and tied up, and there was nothing to do but think and be sure I was going to die,” she said, switching from we to I without really noticing. “I thought about a lot of things I normally wouldn’t,” she admitted.
Hal turned to look at her face. He chewed on his lower lip a moment, and then he gave up. “Like what?”
"What kinda things you too scared to do, cher?"
"Live," she said plainly. "Instead of only going through the motions.
"You're not doin' excitin' t'ings, dat it? No vacations? What?"
She shook her head. “Life isn’t about that. It’s about people,” she told him. “When someone is playing Russian roulette with a gun at your temple and a bag over your head, and you don’t know which bullet is going to be the one that ends it for you, you don’t think about the vacations or the wealth you never had. You think about people.”
Hal didn’t know what to say to that. It wasn’t a situation he’d ever found himself in--he had the good luck that he generally knew where a bullet was coming from and why. A more pressing matter was at hand, however. “Who did that to you?” He was careful with the enunciation, and he was watching her face to see if she was going to try to hide the answer from him. (Because as soon as he knew, he’d tell Charlie, and as soon as he told Charlie, whoever it was better start counting the seconds.)
“It wasn’t about me,” she said, still focused on what she’d been saying. “They were ransoming a friend, and I was just something to use against him, that’s all,” she explained. “They’re in jail now, the people, because Luke’s family saved him.” She gave a shrug. “It doesn’t matter, Hal. What I’m saying is that I didn’t wish for a great client or a great house or even a great trip. I was just sorry I didn’t understand what caring about people was sooner.” She looked down. “And maybe it hurt a little that no one would have noticed I was gone, not like they noticed Luke was gone. Being alone like that, realizing you don’t matter so much to anyone at all, it’s hard.”
It mattered quite a lot to Hal, but he didn’t push for names. If they were in jail because of Brandon’s son, well, it wouldn’t be hard to find them. Hal and Charlie had been distracted by a steady string of bad luck that had put them in the spot they were in, but they could still pull a hit, and when a man couldn’t run it just made it easier. Charlie would be angry that he couldn’t kill the bastard himself, though. Maybe they’d have to wait until he did something stupid, like make parole. “People care different ways,” Hal said, finally.
“How do you care?” she asked plainly, bluntly, without pulling any punches.
“Me an’ Charlie don’t like makin’ a big deal about that kind of... hugging lovey dovey... stuff,” Hal said, looking pained at having to discuss it.
She actually smiled a little, just around the edges. “The two of you? You’re not both the same, beau.”
“Near enough.” It was a little defensive. “Yo’ in the wrong place if yo’ lookin’ for someone to hug and chat wit’ you on de phone, cher. Charlie is not real chatty, and me, I don’t like talkin’ bout t’ings that mean anything.” That, at least, was true.
“What do you do when you’re in a relationship?” she asked, curiously. She’d never been in one, and so the question was an honest, interested one.
“What kind?” he asked, testily, willing to give her the conversation because he realized that he sure as hell hadn’t been giving her much else.
“Hal, you aren’t like me,” she said, and the expression on her face was a fond one, “I don’t believe you’ve never been in love, and I don’t believe you’ve never wanted to have someone there in the morning, even after you’d slept with them the night before. Like that kind.”
“It never got dat far,” he said, seriously. He scratched at an itchy chin where the beard was getting thicker, and ruminated a moment. Hal didn’t do a lot of analyzing of his own feelings, and it made him distinctly uncomfortable.
She watched his fingers, and her smile widened a little. “Do you want a shave?” she asked, and there was something distinctly not-chaste about the question. “Why did it never get that far?”
Hal blinked at her with surprise, since he wasn’t feeling particularly amorous up until this point, and even if he was, he couldn’t even fucking sit up, so he wouldn’t be able to pursue it. He thought, for just a second, that teasing was uncharacteristically cruel of her. He dropped his hand and grumbled, like a distracted grizzly. Then he said, “I don’t know. It just didn’t. People got other t’ings they do wit’ their lives.’
“Who left” she asked, “you or them?” and she made a move to get off the bed, intending to make good on the shaving offer, if he wanted it.
Hal got hold of her wrist before she managed to get far enough away, and shook his head darkly. “I’ll do it myself. Later.” Some point where there was nobody around to help him, probably. Or maybe when Charlie was there and pretending not to make sure he didn’t fall over.
She didn’t argue, though she really didn’t understand his reluctance, but anything involving touch was pretty much a comforting thing for her, and she knew it wasn’t always that way for other people. She just rested her hip on the corner of the bed again, and she touched his rough cheek without breaking free of the grip. “It’s handsome,” she said honestly. “Who left?”
He let her go, the move only to prevent her from leaving or embarrassing him further by exposing what else he couldn’t do, and some of the tension went out of him as he let himself lie back. “Nobody. Why, you gonna go after some of my ex-girlfriends, cher?” It was a little tease, and he smiled to take the sting out of it.
“No, I’m trying to figure out why they aren’t around anymore,” she said truthfully. “You should have a few of them still pining. You’re handsome, and you’re good in bed,” she said bluntly. “Even when you’re being sulky, you’re charismatic,” she added, smiling and sitting back.
Hal decided to pretend there were all kinds of women who would be able to readily remember his name. “Mais yeah,” he said, grinning, “but dey all back in Musings.” He paused, and then added, “pining,” for effect.
She crossed her arms, and she did what she could to give him a stern look. “Hiding the truth?” she asked, and she leaned forward and gave him a kiss, quick and almost-chaste, before letting her feet touch the floor again. “Did someone hurt you?” she asked, plain as ever.
“Non,” Hal said, glibly, “I’m invulnerable.” More grinning, since he was lying on his back with a hole in his side. Then, faintly more seriously and with a note of caution he said, “Dat kinda t’ing is just history, cher. Why you diggin’ at it?”
She put a hand flat on his chest, right in the center. “You are who you are because of history,” she said. “Without it, you’d be someone entirely different. It’s important.” She knew that, had known that - it wasn’t a new discovery. But she realized she didn’t know anything about Hal, nothing about where he’d come from or how he’d gotten here. Charlie, she knew a little more about, but not Hal.
“No,” he insisted. “What’s important is now. You put what happened behind you and you live now. You t’ink I’d be able to get anything done from here out if I was worried about dis happening again?” He didn’t even have to make a gesture, he was already flat on his back and not going anywhere anytime soon.
“I mean deeper than work,” she said, quiet-candor in the words. “I mean family and things that touch your heart and things that scare you.”
He stared up at her with steady eyes. “I ain’t got no famille.” It was like the sound of a door slamming.
“Even that makes you who you are,” she said, but her voice was softer as she said it, not backing down, but understanding. The fingers on his chest splayed, and she sighed softly and stretched out beside him without any permission, her arm draped over him high enough that it wouldn’t hurt him, and she just hugged him that way, unmoving and still and quiet.