Re: coffee: sam & neil
Sam had no idea what Neil did for a living. She knew it involved a lot of money, but she had no fucking clue beyond that. But her trusting naivete meant she assumed it wasn't bad enough to worry about, whatever it was. Yeah, ok, so her idea of bad didn't include theft and fraud and shit like that, but really bad stuff? She knew he wasn't involved in that, just like she'd known he hadn't killed anyone before Micah. Seven years was a long fucking time, but people didn't change fundamentally, not in her opinion, not without some serious life crisis. And if all the life crisis they had in Vegas didn't turn Neil into some cold blooded murderer, then time wasn't going to pull it off either.
She didn't hear him come in, because she was too caught up in the sketch. Time was lost to the scratch of lead on paper, and she looked up when he pulled the chair out; she grinned. Yeah, she looked better. It didn't take much though; they'd seen each other, what? Two, three times since he'd come back, never alone after that first time in the drug den. And, yeah, she'd been some level of fucked up on each occasion. Looking better? Was fucking easy. But her inky eyes were clear, and her arms were unmarred from anything new; old track marks were faded things that hid in the crook of her elbow, but nothing recent. And the circles that lived beneath her eyes spoke of fragility, not of being fucked up or using. Yeah, she looked ok. And he looked good in that suit.
She put the pencil down as the waitress came over to see what he wanted. Lead-smudged fingers pushed blonde hair behind her ears and, yeah, ok, so she knew Cris and Meredith wouldn't like this meeting. But, whatever, because not seeing each other hadn't made anyone feel better. And she was worried about him. He looked tired, and she knew he wasn't much of a talker without a sturdy fucking push.
"Hey, baby." She grinned, casual, and she handed him the pencil and flipped the page on the sketch book to give him a clean page, just because she was a shit and she wanted to see what he did with it. "So, awk?" This. Because seven years was a lot longer than one year, yeah? And the world wasn't falling the fuck apart right now, which was a first since he returned.