Re: log: dylan & max
Dylan liked her laugh, he thought that it sounded just like he remembered. Even if memory had proven to be unreliable at times, it seemed like a cemented fact of the universe that Max would be a constant. She was different, but the same. Different in small ways, like the tension he glimpsed in her neck on occassion when breath was drawn, like the drinks she knocked back like nothing, like the cigarettes, like the lines running shallow around her eyes. Yes, different, but still Max. As Max as he'd ever known her, and that, more than the whiskey, was comforting.
The world still turned, everything still existed in other doors and other worlds. And as much as Dylan didn't want to trust it, what the hotel represented to him now was possibility. Nothing ever ended, so he didn't believe in afterlives or heaven, but he still liked the idea of happy endings. The brevity of their illusion. Dylan liked optimism, he wanted to find it again one day. He wasn't drunk enough to think that now was the time to address more complex issues like life and death, so he answered her first question with nothing but a shrug, and was a little relieved when she continued on in explanation rather than waiting for him to really answer.
He smiled a little, but it was a shallow kind of warmth because yeah, he'd call her out as a pessimist for all of that. He was a little surprised that she still knew that about him, the way he would think. It was a testament of friendship, Dylan knew, but it also left the flickering itch of bad memories floating on rafts in the docile river of his buzz.
Her joke eased the feeling away, and his smile was a little more certain when he said, "Come on, you know I insist on buying you dinner first." He got the bartender to bring him a beer, malt dark in a pint glass, because they were going too fast for Dylan to stick to whiskey.
"I didn't hate everything, I just hated not being allowed to do what I wanted to do." He drank and nodded about his new gig, sparing her the tech details in favor of a simple truth. "I like it. Its a good way to become readjusted to the world, being part of a team again. And here I know that I'm helping the world without drawing lines in the sand. I don't want to operate in shades of gray anymore, I'd never been very good at it anyway."