christian hadley. (byexample) wrote in ofourowndevice, |
There was a big difference in lightly teasing people when there was no way they could hear about it and doing it to their faces and that difference meant all the world to Christian, it was important to him. If at any point during his redemption -- his recovery -- he had been teased to his face he would have gone right back to the only thing he'd known and relied on for years by that point, he would have fallen right back off the wagon, perhaps never to clamber back on again, let alone stay there, a place he had been for decades now, and proudly so. It hadn't been easy but people hadn't been overly cruel to him, he hadn't had members of staff laughing at him where he could overhear them, and that was a good thing. These people didn't need to hear people snickering at them when their backs were turned, they didn't need to hear nasty rumours and cruel stories about where they had come from and why they were here. Christian didn't allow that kind of talk and taunting and Michael could tease them out of earshot as much as she liked so long as that was how it stayed. Some of them deserved a good push now and again and Christian believed that was what Michael gave them, she wasn't being cruel for the sake of it, because she got some twisted kind of enjoyment out of it. No, what she did was different.
"Nineteen or twenty, though I'm not sure that last one counted." He had a somewhat grim look on his face, certainly in his eyes, when he said that. That last guest hadn't lasted forty-eight hours, Christian remembered that a little more clearly than he might have liked. He smiled then, lightening the mood a little so they didn't talk a walk down the parts of memory lane that were probably best left alone. "So how was your night? I didn't hear much in the way of rumours on my way from my apartment, but that doesn't mean there aren't any good stories to tell."