Re: Gotham: Sam & Russ
Russ didn't notice shit until it was right in front of him; no, he fought change every fucking step of the way like change came into the room taking a swing at him and he had to take a swing right back or it would pop him one. He dug in his back pocket for the packet of smokes sitting there when she grinned at him like sweet had never coupled itself up to his name and ridden itself home. It hadn't and he shrugged beneath it comfortably. Nah, he wasn't sweet. Sweet was like trying to walk a tightrope over to someone: a risk and he didn't risk. Maybe that was why he hadn't noticed, because even if it had yelled his name from across that loaded bar when she'd showed up looking like trouble in a glittery shirt, it was risk.
His forehead contracted over Daniel. Daniel, the thin and raddled drunk whose thoughts were loaded with poison in a bottle and dreams of music, pure and golden as juice from an apple as it ran down your wrist when you bit into it. Yeah, anonymity was safe. There was no risk in feeling anything, and he didn't know if it was real life or it wasn't: it had felt real, loading all that shit onto paper.
"I think everything is real," he said bluntly, before he bit into his burger because the metaphysical made his head ache. Philosophers and he'd tried reading a thin book that purported to be an introduction and had scrambled his head so bad he'd tried it sober and drunk to see if it made more sense that way. "Safer, yeah. But I wasn't anyone I'm not now, just had none of that shit. Maybe he didn't tell you because he likes the person he is when he's not him." And that was the head-fuck, moving puzzle-pieces around until they made a picture that wasn't on the box. And it wasn't that he didn't understand that you could be the picture on the goddamn box or you could be the picture you wanted to make out of your own fucking pieces, it was that he'd figured he was alone in that, like other people had figured out that shit on the box-front. He'd been certain and he wasn't now. He had pictured Sam as sure of her picture.
"Daniel any better?"
But yeah, he understood that shit about something speaking for itself. It cramped shit, forced it into being twisted ways it wasn't. He nodded, the blue eyes crinkling agreement. Some shit didn't come with words and he nodded, and his weight eased back and some of that watchfulness untrammeled itself from the lines at the corners of his mouth and from his shoulders. "Yeah, okay."