Re: Motel 77: Cris & Sam
"I wanted to fix it," she said of the shit that happened with him and Meredith in that cramped room in his mind. "I talked to her. She was anon, and I tried to make her get that it wasn't about her, but it didn't go good, and then I tried to fix it with you, and that didn't go good, and you busted your hand up." Words that fell like drips of water into the waterlogged ocean at the bottom of that murky lighthouse. But she leaned back into him, yeah? She didn't pull away, and his belly at her back felt like soft warmth, each inhale seeping its way against her spine, and each exhale reminding her that shit was still going. Nothing had stopped, and everything wasn't in some stasis, even though it felt like it was. "I went home. I tried to help Lou and Neil, and I fucked that up too. And then I made shit worse with Meredith now, and it isn't about me. It's about them, yeah? Lou and Neil, and Lou issuing ultimatums to his brother, and me and you stuck in the middle, and I can't make it better." Maybe too many words, but they weren't anything she could keep in, even though she suspected he didn't want them.
But he was wrong about her not wanting to be there. He was wrong about that.
He touched her hair. He touched her cheek. She closed those blot-blues and pale lashes fanned against mauve circles of illness beneath her eyes. "I want it to be ok. I don't want Lou to make Neil choose." Because that's where shit stood when she left, yeah? And family, family had always been everything to Sam. She'd lost Joey, and she knew how lost Lou was without Neil, and she didn't want to be the axe that ripped their shit asunder, and all because she couldn't handle Meredith talking to her like she was what she was. But he was right about her not being strong, yeah? She knew that, standing there like a leaf about to shake itself off a long-barren branch. "I hit her." That was her closing. Because she had, yeah? "She said I wanted Neil to fuck me, and I said she wanted you to fuck her, because she said you were an asshole, and I hit her." She'd hit Meredith, and it hadn't been the other way around. The fact that Meredith was yanking her back at the time, it didn't allow the blonde girl with the broken expression to absolve herself. There was no absolution to be found in explanations about Meredith's overlapping mouth, yeah?
She knew he was tired of this shit with Neil. She knew he had to be tired of this shit with Neil. But Neil was inexorably tied to Lou, to family, to the past. She loved the guy, even if she wasn't sure about being in love with him anymore. She worried about him, and it was a lot like the worry she felt for the man with his arms around her. Delicate, and she thought everyone more delicate than herself.
But she remembered the shit Penny said, yeah? About Cris. She remembered.
He picked her up. He tucked her in. And she knew she needed meds, but she didn't want to move. He wasn't good with sickness, and she didn't want to be the one who taught him the ins and out, and that was another problem, yeah? That was her baggage, like she needed anymore of it. "I know you want to be here." His arms around her now, in that bed, and she knew he wanted to be there. "I know. I want to be here with you. But I know you're not good. I know, and you can't deal with my shit too, ok? I'd be a selfish cunt if I didn't see that. I see it. My eyes are fucking clear, and maybe that's the drugs, but I see it." She rolled onto her back, so she could see his face, and her calloused fingers lifted to press cold and tremble against his jaw. "I can't help. I can only make your shit worse. Don't you get it? I can't help, and I'll kill myself trying."