Who: Severin, Erin, and Colt What: Severin goes to sleep at the Academy, and Erin and Colt do what they do best - they fight over it. Where: The Academy When: The night before the masquerade. Warnings: None.
After Will had left, Severin had only lasted a few hours in the abandoned apartment down the hall before contacting Colt on the boards. The dead woman was everywhere he looked, everywhere he walked, everything he touched. It had all belonged to her, and he had seen what made the wheels of her mind turn at the moment she decided to end her life. It was all he could think about as he walked through the apartment - these were the dead woman’s things. This was her bed, this was her home. If she had followed through on her plan, she would be somewhere deep in the blue darkness of the river by now, hair twisting about her face like seaweed, witnessing boats pass by over her head with sightless eyes. They might not find her body for weeks still, and he dreamt of her when he tried to sleep on the couch, rotting down there in the dark.
He’d managed to get a cab after a long stretch of walking along the road outside the Bathos. He had money that Will had left behind for him in his pocket, all of it, since he wasn’t sure how much he would be expected to pay if he ended up staying in the Academy long term. He knew he could get more money to pay them with, but it would take time. He hoped feverishly that it would be enough, and that they would be willing to wait. He couldn’t go back to that apartment.
The Academy was the opposite of all of the closed in, claustrophobic feelings that the apartment gave him. It was clean and new looking, well-kept and open, across a long drive. When he stepped out of the cab, the wind ran through his hair, ruffling it and biting a little at his cheeks. He was wearing his green coat over clean clothes - Will had bought them, and he shied away from the thought. He didn’t want to think about Will.
After the taxi driver reluctantly dropped him off at what appeared to be an abandoned building, he nearly forgot to pay, too entranced by the place before him to bend much thought toward the driver. The man shouted at him, startled him, and he ended up paying him twice what the ride actually cost before he drove off into the night, taillights bobbing and then disappearing down the road.
The security man at the front waved him in through the gates, and he walked across the drive. It was dark inside, and so very quiet, and everything seemed new and fresh and clean. It smelled like fresh paint when he walked inside, and he wandered through the moonlit halls, peering in on freshly furnished rooms and expensive furniture.
When he at last found a room with a bed, he paused in the doorway. He hadn’t actually expected that, and, for a moment, he thought he might be dreaming again. The building was too beautiful, too white and comfortable and empty and clean. He pressed down on the comforter with a hand, feeling it give. “Goldilocks,” he murmured, before climbing onto it, assured that it was, in fact, real.
He lay there for a long moment, eyes closed, letting out a breath. Quiet. How long had it been since he’d had quiet? Since the long stretches of road he’d travelled toward Seattle, and even those had their blasts of noise from drivers who went by. This was true silence, true absence of thought. The only voice he could pick up was the guard at the gate, and he was faint enough. There was an illusion of silence, here, of peacefulness that he’d been unable to find in the Bathos. Even at night, someone was always awake, their thoughts racing as they tried to sleep or went about curing their insomnia with incessant activity. He relished the real silence of it a thousand times more than the soft bed. He fell asleep there, curled on the comforter, without even taking his shoes off.
Erin was really angry at Colt by the time she pulled to a stop in front of the Academy. The Seattle night was (like most Seattle nights) close and gray, and one could feel alone in the mist even in the familiar shadow of the renovated building. Slamming the car door, Erin walked on soft shoes past the first guard and gate, and then into the interior lobby, where a second guard took his shoes off the counter and his eyes off a game recap as she swept past. He offered a polite good evening that she did not reply to, probably because she was gripping the Blackberry so she didn’t throw it. Moving around him to glare at the screens, she demanded Severin’s location and stalked off as soon as she got it.
Erin, more than anyone, knew exactly where she was going in this building. She went up several flights of stairs, passed through three sets of doors, and finally found herself in the proper bedroom. Honestly she was surprised to find Severin asleep--not being able to imagine herself sleeping comfortably in a strange place--and pulling up short, she tried to backpedal silently out of the room without waking him.
Without warning Severin sat straight up in bed, whipping his head around to stare at Erin. For a brief moment he looked genuinely terrified, and then it subsided slowly into recognition. "You're here," he said, a little flat, and looked out the window. Still night, unless he'd slept through the day, which seemed unlikely. "I was having a dream," he said, as if that illuminated everything. He was far away, still pulling himself from the fabric of the nightmare. "It was cold there. Cold. I was on the floor, and they...they..." He lost focus on the train of thought, and he tugged on the bottoms of his sleeves unconsciously, making sure his arms were covered. In the dream, there had been needles.
Then he squinted at her, gaze sharpening for a brief moment. "You're angry." He'd only just woken up, so he'd had no opportunity to get the thoughts around him in some semblance of order. He'd had a fleeting impression that she was upset, however, and he watched her.
His expression changed entirely in another moment, his face falling. "I shouldn't be here," he said. The next thing he'd picked up from her was that he should be elsewhere, and though the underlying reason and the context escaped him, it made sense. It must be why she was angry. Colt had told him he could come, but she'd decided that she didn't want him to stay. "I'm sorry," he said, sliding toward the edge of the bed. "I'll go."
A flood of regret for waking him was then dwarfed by the proper return of her original purpose: concern. As always, Erin’s thoughts were a ramble to herself, a tumble of information and emotions that were just a domino effect from one thought or another. She was worried about him alone, and then she was worried about the things he said about the cold, which she didn’t understand, and then she was worried about not understanding, and then she was angry at Colt for not understanding either, but being a fool about the whole thing. The strength of the interior monologue only increased as she drew nearer. “You don’t have to stay here by yourself,” she said, both uneasy and anxious. She looked strange, both pale in the semi-darkness and yet utterly normal in her odd jeans and coat. “That idiot told me he sent you here.” She made a little line with her mouth.
He realized after a moment that he might have misinterpreted her, and it left him tentatively hopeful. “I told him I needed to go somewhere. I told him I couldn’t stay,” he explained. “I asked him if I could sleep here. He let me.” Colt hadn’t really told him to go anywhere, as far as he was concerned, just agreed to give him a place to sleep for the night.
She seemed to suggest by the fact that staying here wasn’t a necessity that there was somewhere else for him to go, and he thought on that for a moment. “It’s quiet here,” he offered. “I don’t mind it.” Everything felt lonely and empty and cold now that Will was gone. He’d left him behind, because he was too much, too...something. He imagined staying with anyone else over the long term would create the same effect, and this was one test he did not plan on testing to see if the results were repeatable. “I ought to stay where I can’t...” his hands fluttered in his lap, searching for words he didn’t have. “Where I won’t be any trouble to you. I can pay,” he said, looking up. “Money will not be an issue.”
Erin had been alone her entire life, in almost every sense of the word, but she was not empty nor cold. She talked to herself a lot, mostly in her own mind, and she had some trouble with the holding hands and the kumbaya part of life, but in the end, she was still warm, and she still cared. She sat down on the far edge of the bed and waved one hand negligently. “As if money has ever been an issue for Colt Byron. I just didn’t think you’d like being stuck here all by yourself without...” she looked him over, and then at the room. No bag, no clothes. “...well. Anything.” Colt was such a moron sometimes. Why he was so sensitive about Severin, who was just a little odd, is all, she didn’t know.
He folded his hands in his lap, looking down at them. “I have some things,” he said quietly. “Some clothes. I left them back there.” That was about it, though. He had his clothes, and the weather beaten copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream he’d picked up when Will first took him in tucked into the pocket of his coat. At the apartment there was another set of clothes, and that was all. He looked up, utterly calm. “If you shelter me, when they come, they will kill you.” The ring on his right hand flashed in the dim light of the room, innocuous, innocent. Just a piece of jewelry. He didn’t even realize that it was there.
Erin didn’t put any particular significance in the ring, but his calm warning gave her a slight chill and she frowned at him. “You shouldn’t say things like that. They’re not always true, you know. You don’t know what will happen for sure. Besides.” She reached out to pat his arm in a manner meant to be reassuring. “This place is built to shelter people. That’s why he bought it.” It was hard to have a conversation with Erin that didn’t end up being about Colt in some way.
It was true, but she didn’t believe him, and he expected Colt wouldn’t either. He would just have to see to it that they were kept safe, and he resolved to do just that. He wasn’t going to allow anyone to be harmed for sheltering him, no matter what.
Severin glanced out the window. A car pulled up, just close enough that he could hear the echoes of the thoughts of the passenger. “The king approaches,” he murmured, leaning forward, frowning. The talk of the people after him had set him on edge, and Colt’s unexpected arrival made him wonder immediately if something was wrong.
It had taken Colt longer to get to the Academy than he would have liked. He’d had to wait for the car he’d originally tried to send for Erin, and he’d had to get himself out the door (no small feat). He arrived in a foul mood, impatient, and exhausted. Physical therapy had drained him that morning, and a visit from the doctor had revealed that the grafted vein in his leg was jostled by the fall with Joss, resulting in fever and infection. He felt, quite frankly, like shit. And now he had to go running down here for something that would have kept just fine until morning.
The look on his face was so thunderous that the guard didn’t even greet Colt as he walked in, the drag, drag, drag of his leg even more pronounced than it normally was. He headed straight for the elevator and the fifth floor den (the only room with a bed at present).
Colt stormed the short way to the room, controlling his gait as well as he could manage as he neared. He rounded the corner and entered the room without any greeting, and he just pointed his cane at Severin, using the wall for balance. “See. He’s fine, woman. What the hell did I tell you?”
Erin muttered something to herself at Severin’s announcement about a king, and it was quite clear that she didn’t think much of the appellation. Her comments in her own mind about Colt’s selfish inability to comprehend the difficulty of other people were even more colorful, but it was all layered with a thick concern for both Severin and “the king” who apparently refused to acknowledge a weakness of any kind even if it would be better for them all if he did.
She got up with some notion to meet him before he tried to get all the way up the stairs, but she was distracted, and then Colt was in the doorway, looking like death warmed over and about as friendly. Erin’s mind colored up with indignation as she stood up and walked over, giving the cane a good smack out of her way if it still had the gumption to impede her progress. (She was careful, however, as always, not to knock him over.) “You can’t send him out to some empty building in the middle of nowhere!” she railed at him, almost shaking a fist in impatience.”This big drafty old place is empty and cold and the guards don’t have any idea about anything except to prevent intruders, so if something happened to him they wouldn’t even notice until morning, you thick-headed creep!”
Severin stayed on the bed, watching them silently but attentively. It seemed to him that he was the cause of far too much conflict and chaos in other people’s lives lately. He flinched a little when Colt’s thoughts collided with Erin’s and both went up in volume and intensity, and he turned his eyes out the window, looking out across the lawn. He tried to make himself invisible, to not be there. His parents had fought only rarely despite the rocky patches in their history. A few years ago an argument between adults in his presence would have garnered indignation, impatience for them to work out their difficulties, and worry. Now it was mostly worry, and an intense desire to disappear. After he stared out the window for a moment, he grew distracted, forgot himself in the flow of thoughts, eyes shut and listening.
Colt motioned around the room. “It’s nicer than my apartment, Erin,” he argued, and it was. “He was fine, or I would have sent for a doctor. I talked to the kid, thank you very much.” He looked at Severin. “You’re fine, aren’t you?” he demanded. He didn’t understand her anger. He’d told her they’d check on him come morning. Why the hell didn’t the woman trust anything he said? Not a damn thing. “Woman, you are going to have to start trusting me about things every once in a damn while. We need a place for all these kids that show up here with no place to go, somewhere for them to get a decent night’s sleep without offering to crawl into any bedroom that’s offered them on the forums. He’s a start,” he said, pointing at Severin again. “They’re all over eighteen. It’s not like we’re taking in underage kids.”
“There’s not anyone here but the guards, and they’re not hired to do anything but watch,” Erin said, incensed that he dared to make this about him and her estimation of him. “He can stay with me, since your apartment is so poisonous, not that it ever occurred to you to ask me for help.” Her emphasis should have been on the ‘me’ since she worried a great deal that he underestimated her even while he overestimated her, and her insecurities about his perception of her maturity tended to make her extremely touchy about even the smallest things.
Severin was a little more used to the way their thoughts intensified and wove in and out of one another than he had been in the park, but it didn't make the experience much more comfortable. Even while Erin was still talking, insisting that he could stay with her, he began speaking himself, quietly. He was tired of being a burden on others, and it showed. "I can go stay on my own if I'm going to be trouble, I can find a place to stay, I just needed a place for the night, I'll have money enough by Monday, I just like the quiet here." The speech was a steady flow, continuing on after Erin had stopped talking. He didn't seem to notice, still looking out the window. "Just need - a fortress. A moat, and a catapult and a blunderbuss." His ears were ringing - he was hearing "Voices, voices, voices." He let his hands slide over his eyes. "I like it here because of the quiet," he said, the words clipped, short, and pointed. He was angry, but it was hard to tell why - he seemed to be struggling to keep it from washing over him and failing. He didn't have those sort of defenses anymore. I might be able to...think here, to drag myself out of the swamp but if you don't want me," he said, his voice pitching up. "If I will embitter you, I will go. I'll go back to the woods." His hands slid up, back, into his hair. "Maybe I'm better off there, maybe they should just take me back, finish what they started." His breath caught as he thought about that possibility, and he squared his shoulders.
"I would be of use," Severin said, looking up at them, dropping his hands into his lap.
Colt looked from Erin, to the boy, and back again. “I don’t have a bed in my apartment, Erin,” he told her, doing his best to keep his voice even. “He’s grown. There’s no need to be treating him like he’s not, and he’ll be fine here. If I didn’t think he would, I wouldn’t have let him stay. You have got to give these kids a chance.” That was true enough. If he thought Severin had any intention of burning the place to the ground, he wouldn’t have made the offer. “Now, if you’re inclined, we can stay in one of the other rooms on this floor for the evening. There’s plenty of couches, and we can talk about this at sun-up like rational people.” He said it with the realization that they generally were not rational people. “That masquerade is coming tomorrow, and we all want to be getting some sleep before it gets here.”
Erin broke off her accusations in favor of Severin’s long stream of nonsensical fretting, and she shot him a look and a series of thoughts that were full of concern for his fragile mental state. As soon as Colt spoke, however, she lost her temper again, as he brushed aside the boy’s concerns--and hers--in favor of his own reasoning. Face flushing, Erin rounded on Severin--perhaps too quickly, in her haste to get back to Colt. “Nonsense, you’re staying with us, not by yourself. Just wait here a moment.” And she marched up to Colt and started ushering him back out into the hallway, where she could shout at him in totally illusory privacy, but with the thought in mind that it would bother Severin less that way. “Masquerade!” she shouted at him voicelessly, before they were even out the doorway, in something like a goose’s hiss. “As if you ever go to any such thing.” This was an old argument, and Erin’s hurt in the wake of being left out of the last party was still spiky and strong.
Colt let himself be ushered, giving Severin a look that said women. In the hall, he let Erin hiss at him, and he just stood there, leaning on his cane as she did so. “Well, we’re going to this one. There’s a woman bringing by costumes for you to try in the morning,” he told her, fully expecting that to temper her anger. “Erin,” he said, voice calmer, more rational than it had been inside. “He asked to come here. He doesn’t want to bother either of us by living in our space. You got to let the boy do what he wants to do.”
“We are going?” Erin said, shrilly. “You didn’t even ask me. And don’t say one more word about that boy, Byron, you never think anything through when it doesn’t have to do with your own idiot self.”
Colt almost told her that she was acting like a child, that she was having the kind of tantrums he normally had, but he refrained, and he kept his voice down (a rarity). “It was a damn surprise, woman.”
This derailed her slightly, but she recovered. “Were you going to ask me to the masquerade or were you just going to kidnap me, throw me a dress and shove me into a car?!”
“I was going to send you a damn invitation in the morning with an old seamstress, Erin,” he said, voice rising slightly. Going to the damn thing was a challenge for him, and it went against his entire sense of hiding his gait away where no one could see. “If you don’t want to go, you can just say as much,” he said, pride stung.
He wasn’t the only one with pride issues. Erin’s complexion rarely changed color, but it was safe to say that if it flushed when she got angry, it would be. “You didn’t ask me! What, you’re just going to assume I don’t have anything better to do, that maybe I wasn’t going with someone already?” This was patently untrue, but Erin had enough issues, and being undervalued was now added to the list. She made an inarticulate sound of rage at him and turned to storm off.
Colt grabbed her elbow, the grip firm but without any violence or roughness. “Erin, stop fussing,” he ordered. “It was supposed to be a damn surprise.”
Erin didn’t take kindly to being ordered to do anything. “Your problem is that you never think about anyone else before you do things.” She remembered Severin, even in her temper, and tried to shake him off while reorienting herself.
Colt let go of her elbow, his hand falling uselessly at his side. “Fine. Forget I mentioned a damn thing.” He raised his voice. “SEVERIN,” he called out. “Get the hell out here. We’re going to Aubade.”
“We are not. I am going home so I don’t pass out in the morning, and as you so kindly pointed out, you don’t have a bed.”
Severin had his head resting in his hands, and he was staring at the blanket on the bed. When they were done shouting at one another, he said simply: “I think I’ll sleep here.”
Colt looked at the open door, and then he looked back at Erin. He looked tired, and he was tired. It was late at night, and he didn’t want to fight. He wanted to take the damn problematic woman home and fall into a real bed with her. Barring that, he wanted everyone to shut the hell up.
Erin seized up and closed off. Fine. Let them do what they would. She turned then, and this time, the storming off was going to happen, and nobody better get in the way.
Severin felt like trouble walking at that moment, and he kept staring at the comforter, trying to weed out the jagged thoughts from Erin, fading away as she moved to leave, and Colt's angry, exhausted frustration. He was so tired of driving people away. Will's face before he had left appeared in his mind, unbidden, and he shut his eyes again, trying to make it disappear. He folded his hands together - he looked like he was praying, but whatever he was whispering under his breath didn't sound like any sort of familiar prayer.
He wanted to help, and yet again, he found himself helpless. So, instead, he pretended none of this was happening, and resolved that he would leave after the masquerade, and stop making people miserable because they felt they had to take care of him. He wasn't a child. He would figure something out. He had money but money...money wasn't really the problem. But he would find a way.
Colt watched Erin leave, and he didn’t stop her. He was prone to fighting, prone to ordering people around, and he was ornery as hell; he knew that. But he’d reached his limit, and he watched her go. He’d send the seamstress in the morning, along with the invitation and a few dozen roses, he decided.
“Severin, you go on and sleep. I’ll be down the hall,” he said, already moving in that direction. He pulled his cellphone out, ordered the guard at the front to follow Erin home, to stay until the light had turned on in her apartment, and then he found a couch and fell into a pained, exhausted sleep.