Re: Apartment: Sam/Russ/Louis
Louis bowed his head a litle, and smiled, wan but present for a fleeting moment. "Point taken." He liked Russ' warmth, and his straightforward insistence about what families did for each other. Maybe people would cynically refute what he said, but personally, Louis believed the rhetoric of doing for family without need of thanks. It was difficult for him not to feel like a burden, waking people up in the dead of night without even knowing how he'd ended up in the state he was in, but that quickly crumbled under self-preservation for his sanity, the will to be somewhere protected and amongst trusted, safe people.
He followed the pair of them down into the basement apartment and almost stopped in the door. This...was not what he'd expected. The new Sam, the serious one, was meant to have a sober apartment with dark walls and minimal decoration. This bright, warm, comfortable place said more to him about her remaining the person he'd known than any words could come near to. He slipped off his shoes without thinking and was bare-footed again. That same grit was on his feet, unwashed still. It was obvious that he'd been walking outside, but there was mud on his soles that hadn't come from an alley. He didn't think about it, just rubbed his feet on the doormat before stepping inside.
He watched as she went to put on coffee, and he sank down onto the couch, against the arm, one hand wrapped thoughtlessly around it like an anchor. The softness of it only made him more tired, but sitting and reaching pulled at his chest and made him wince. He glanced between the two of them, waiting for someone to say something. No one did. "You deserve an explanation," he said, haltingly. "I'm afraid, though, that I don't have much of one." His eyes fixed on the wall, distant. "I don't know where I was yesterday." Saying it out loud made his stomach sink, a little. "I remember getting up, leaving the house, and walking. I was going to get coffee...I think. Then, nothing." He swallowed. "I think I had a dream, but that's all. I woke up in that alley across from the dove, just an hour ago. More than twelve hours gone. Twenty? Nearly a day. I wasn't drinking, it was still morning. Between the manor and the cafe, though, and then nothing. It's all...gone."
He folded his right arm into his lap. "All I have is what I woke up with." He glanced at Russ, then away again. "Someone painted on me. I think they also cut me, and they burned me." His voice didn't shake, but he still kept returning to that spot on the wall. "And they took my clothes." That was all there was to the story - the gash on his hand, the burn on his chest, the designs beneath his shirt. It was all stated as plain fact, but with the unspoken question of why beneath it all. That stare at the wall was distant enough to make clear nothing was quite connecting yet, and he intended to keep it that way. If he thought about it, if he really thought about what might have happened in all those missing hours, if he lent any credence at all to that terrible dream, there was no telling what it could do. It couldn't be allowed to become real. An embarrassing story of his own lack of awareness, and that was all. Had he fought it? Had he been abducted, or convinced, tricked into coming along? The not knowing made him sick, and he shied from thinking about it too much.