Re: Motel 77: Cris & Sam
Cris hadn't given up. He didn't do giving up. He didn't need vibrant or okay, and he definitely wasn't tired. She called it clarity from the drugs, but it was like she was seeing whatever she thought projected out onto him, like the woman with the mouth, and no matter what he did or said, it was wrong. Sam was lying there, eyes squeezed shut, talking like fate, and he was just looking at her, trying to figure out what he was supposed to do here—because no matter what he did, it'd be confirmation of her insecurities. When blue opened milky, tears, he frowned. He tried so hard to be reassuring. He tried and tried, and he'd done good, he thought, 'til now, and he didn't know what he'd done to turn the tide, but clearly it was something. She was drowning herself and telling him it was him.
"Stop. Just stop it." He got up. He got the bag. He pulled out the sacka medication, and he dumped it on the bland comforter. Little orange bottles rolled loud beneath Spanish on TV, and he picked through them. He didn't know which one she needed, so he kinda moved them around. "Which ones are you s'posed to take?"
Cris shook his head, like he wasn't waiting for an answer. Because he wasn't fucking tired. Because he didn't need fucking vibrant. Because he was sick of her trying to save him from herself, like she was some plague, made human in black form, eyes worm-eaten, with tears running down ebony cheeks, and he was supposed to thank her? Fuck that. Fuck her for trying. He loved her and he wasn't drowning. He had a lotta shit going on and it was taking its toll, sure, but he wasn't drowning. It was like Penny sitting there on the phone, telling him everything was shit, when it wasn't, telling him she knew what it was like, when they weren't even talking about the same thing, when she was imagining some horror diorama and putting some figurinea him in it and saying, ah, yes, this is how it is. And it wasn't.
Because it would be way fucking worse if Sam went and left. He tried, tried, tried.