- (tinieblas) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-12-20 00:08:00 |
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Entry tags: | !ocean's eleven, *log, daniel webster, sam alexander |
Ocean's Eleven: Daniel & Sam
Who: Daniel & Sam
What: Visiting the patient
Where: Ocean's Eleven
When: Before this, fuzzy timelines
Warnings/Rating: Language, talk of addiction
Sam wasn't worried about Daniel, not in this door and not in this hospital. Yeah, so the door was old or whatever, which was obvious given how everyone was dressed, but it was close enough that it wasn't like old old, yeah? Just older, and Sam didn't really worry about the medical stuff being outdated or anything. Addiction was addiction, and there wasn't much anyone could fuck up in a hospital; it was the outside world that was a threat, not these white hallways and sneakers squeaking as the floor reflected up.
She'd come in the middle of the day, after a whole lot of thinking about sneaking in at the dead of night. But she figured Daniel's room was all hooked up with big, outdated cameras, and she just wasn't up to that kind of thing. So, she spent a day clean, jitters and her stomach clutching and the bone itching beneath the skin of her arms, and she went.
Her overalls were the same ones she always wore when leaving her door, old and so worn her knees were visible beneath the fraying denim. She wore Cris' stolen grey hoodie beneath the overalls' straps, and a white tee beneath that, but it wasn't cold in this door, and she was grateful for that. Her Docs Martens were canary yellow, and she counted the steps from the front door to the nursing station of the secure hospital wing. She signed in, and she showed a license she'd bought around the corner for ten bucks, which she'd pickpocketed at the corner before that.
She didn't have anything with her, despite Daniel asking for food or whatever. No dough, baby, and she figured Lin had covered all the books and music and shit that Daniel was probably demanding in annoyance.
Yeah, no, it was just her that stopped in the doorway to Daniel's room, door shoved open and curtain pushed aside. She wasn't marrow skinny. There was still soft to her, the curves of her face and her thighs and ass beneath the worn overalls; she wasn't using enough to completely lose her interest in food. Her hair was loose, shared-water washed at the carnival, and she smelled like cotton candy and citrus and some other man, even from all those feet away from the bed.
Without greeting, she climbed onto the bed and squeezed her inconsiderable bulk beside the patient. She grabbed the nurse call button/remote combo, and she turned on the heavy old set that hung in the corner of the room without asking for permission or whatever. "That thing is fucking huge, yeah?" She looked over at her bed companion, and she gave him an unapologetically gap-toothed grin.
Daniel was sitting on his bed, and he was slumped, but not because he was tired or injured; in fact, Daniel had been up and around the room for a couple days now, trying to work his anger out on something that wasn't Lin while his skin crawled with rancid fire and raw neglect. When Sam walked in, however, he'd been sitting with his journal open on his lap, staring just past the television with the blank stare that was now customary. Lin had gone off to wherever he was staying, probably to shower, since he had to bathe sometime, and there wasn't any privacy in Daniel's room because they didn't trust him with it. He would be back within the hour, because he was never gone long, perhaps because he didn't trust Daniel with that, either.
For his part, Daniel trusted himself to do the cowardly thing, which was nothing. He sat and stared at the television or watched the writing scroll on the journal and learned more about how much he hated every fucking thought that crossed his own mind. He hated the room, the people, the hospital, his body, even the black scrawl of his own ink on the blank page, which had never been anything but an ally before. He hadn't even decided if he would try to be what Lin wanted, or if he would find a way to close that door so he didn't have to be himself anymore.
One thing that did hold Daniel's interest was the news. In his world, he'd been in the thick of international politics in 2011, and he had, as it were, been at the top of his game. He could watch the news and reminisce, and he knew most of what was going to happen on the international stage before it actually did. It was a test of his memory, which was rubbery with disuse, but it was, at least, something he could enjoy without the ceaseless self-hatred which permeated the rest of his existence. (Daniel's dramatics held another source of bitter amusement in his own mind.)
Sharp blue eyes cut through the air to watch Sam. He watched how she moved, took a breath of her newly masculine smell, eyed the state of her shoes. He looked at the arms she was concealing with the hoodie and shifted over so that her slightly damp hair could seep a patch of moisture into the skinny curve of his shoulder in the loose hospital shirt. He was sitting on top of the half-made bed rather than inside it. Even his ankles were pale and skinny where they were visible, and he flicked his black gel pen between his fingers where they stuck out from the brace around his wrist.
As usual, he leaned into the physical contact. He did that even when he was angry at Lin or pissed about his last shudder of DT. Sober, Daniel wanted physical contact, especially with Lin and Sam, who were both safe people he loved enough to hate only sporadically. "It seems normal. I didn't have one in Vegas." He had, but it had come with the apartment, and he'd used it for a bookshelf until she showed up one day with Titanic and a boy wearing nail polish.
She always knew Daniel would let her get close. With Neil gone, close wasn't a thing that happened in her life. Even with Cris, it wasn't like that or whatever. But Daniel was always a warm body, and she didn't even have to worry about him telling her to get the fuck off his bed or something. She grabbed the blanket, and she tugged it up to her waist, and it was nice, yeah? To have another human being close, and not just for a fuck or something. It was a little like falling asleep on Cris' couch, but Daniel knew everything. Out of everyone in her life, he knew the most pieces of the puzzle. He might not even realize it, and she didn't want to dump weight on him by telling him all about his importance in her life, but he was different from the other people she talked to, and she didn't even have words to explain how or why. It wasn't a romantic thing for her anymore, and she never expected a fucking thing from him, but there wasn't any hesitation in her limbs as she settled against his side, curves and old clothes and tangle of hair. It was love, yeah? The real kind, and not the kind that came with sex and faded away before the sweat dried.
She glanced down at the pale skin-over bones of his ankles, and she kicked off her boots and rubbed her feet against them, warmth in the press of soles. "It's fucking huge. They're all tiny now. Like if you turn them sideways, you can't even see them anymore. The ones in my door are crazy. They have knobs and they're in black and white and have antennas," she told him. It was information, a peace offering, something to make him chill and not worry about her. She didn't want him worrying, because she knew he wasn't good with it, and he really didn't need to get worked up in here. Immobility was a bitch when worry was a heavy thing against the brain, and she knew it from being in rehab more times than she wanted to remember.
"I fought with Russ," she said, and maybe it seemed out of the blue, but she knew he liked gossip. It was a recluse thing, and she figured it was worse here. When he was locked in his own place, it was an option, being locked away. His choice, even if it wasn't his choice at all, but it was all perception. Here, it was like prison. He couldn't leave, and the fact that it was for his own good didn't matter. The brain was screwed up that way, and she was there to distract him. Sure, talking was nice, too. It went back to him knowing all the pieces to the puzzle, and while she never actually expected a kind word from him, she knew he would listen and give a shit. Sometimes that was all that mattered, yeah? Knowing someone would listen. "Your turn, baby."
Daniel knew more than Sam thought he did. The hotel had given him a lot of opportunities to pick the brains of his fellow inhabitants, and Daniel, ever the reader (good writers are always good readers) followed their doings like the avid devotee he was. He also had an identity or two during previous holidays and parties, wherein the hotel liked to give them masks and shades. He had no particular moral objection to concealment, and he had never troubled himself to illuminate Sam on the Barber’s identity. She had used him in much the same way, however; a friendly ear that didn’t condemn.
Daniel watched the canary boots thunk heavily on the floor after a short fall off the bed. Some of the ice melted out of his eyes and he pulled his legs up to shove them under the blanket with hers, and he let some of the tension ease out of his shoulders as he sat back on the pillow. He was trying not to twitch too much, because she would give him that big-eyed knowing stare and he didn’t want to deal with it.
Daniel thought about the name. “Big guy, didn’t fit his clothes. Messy hair.” Something about Russell had amused Daniel, and little flickers of not-quite-nice amusement slide up and over his lips before vanishing. “What about?” Daniel loved gossip. He wanted to know what everyone was doing, even (especially) if he didn’t know who they were. He was even interested in the silly comic book people. If only they had more interesting handwriting, was his only objection. It was always this horrendous text, text, text. Disparaging, impersonal keyboards.
“Finish one of yours, and we’ll talk about mine,” he said.
"You remember that party thing in summer? The one where we had other people's bodies or whatever? We fucked," she said, no hesitation, because it was Daniel, and because she wasn't Lin, yeah? She couldn't entertain him with her brains, and he hadn't wanted to fuck her in forever, but she could talk to him about things; she knew he liked that. He was a nosy bitch, and she thought that was a writer thing. Whatever the reasons, she didn't mind telling him things she wouldn't tell other people. Maybe it was the same thing that made her willing to curl up against him like this, which she wouldn't do with her family even. But she wasn't thinking too much; she wasn't there to think too much. "We agreed to meet up after, and I went to the place and he was there. We talked, but he kept saying he was waiting for someone else, so I bailed, and I didn't tell him it was me. I stopped trying to hide the way I talked after, so he could figure it out, but he never did I guess. Not until Halloween, when he saw some memory or something, and now he's all weird about it."
She rolled onto her side, front against the narrow span of his hips and nudging his arm beneath her head and her tangle of blonde. She could see him better that way, and it was warmer. She wasn't good in winter. The years of drugs had made her easily susceptible to cold, and her fingers and toes were always frigid. "So, he was being an ass, and I called him on it, and he admitted it. He keeps going on about how he was into the anon chick, but not into me, and he talks like we're two different people," she said, and she was at a loss about how to fix it. "I offered to fuck him or whatever, but he said no, because I'm not her. Which I get, yeah? But now he won't stop being fucking weird." Russ was a friend. No, Russ was like family, and half of her people had disappeared, and the other half were busy with other things, and she didn't want to lose Russ because of this. "I knew he wouldn't be able to deal. It's why I didn't tell him."
Daniel grinned. The muscles in his face felt creaky, and his teeth seemed small under his lips, but he did it. “That is a fantastic meet-cute, cherie,” he said, licking the French off the top of his mouth and still grinning wide. “It’s a Tom Hanks movie. It’s better than daytime television.” Daniel made a negligent gesture at the television that in some countries would start wars between tribes.
“So he was waiting for someone else that wasn’t you, because he painted himself a pretty picture of what he wanted. I wouldn’t worry about it.” He lifted the hand with the brace on it and drew the back of his first finger down the length of her arm to her wrist. “He’s talking about you like you’re two people because he decided you were. It’s all in his head.” Now he poked the center of his forehead with his left thumb. This conversation didn’t make him like Russ any less. He was rather more fond of the idiot man for the monumental fuck-up that was the male psyche. Daniel did that kind of thing all the time. He painted people in his mind how he liked them to be.
“He’ll get over it eventually. Let the other woman die.” Shrug. “You disappointed?”
She reached beneath the blanket and tickled him when he grinned, because she knew whatever he said was going to be hella annoying, and she couldn't smack someone who was in the hospital. But she tickled hard, ok? Jabbing little fingertips that stalled somewhere in the middle of his mention of someone named Tom, and she had no clue who that was. "Lin would totally know who Tom Hanks is, yeah?" She had no clue, but she didn't think the meeting with Russ had been cute, man.
She watched his finger on the sleeve of the hoodie. Anyone else, and that arm would be yanked back quick, but she knew he could see through her bullshit. Maybe everyone else could too, but they were too scared to admit it, so they pretended her long sleeves were all about the winter cold. But she didn't draw back from that touch, and she knew that he couldn't feel anything through the fabric anyway. "Yeah, I know. Russ and I met when we fucked like three years ago. I saw him winning big at the tables, and I got him to take me up to his room so I could steal his bank." She didn't sound even the slightest bit guilty about it. "But he got to know me after, and he thinks of me like his kid sister or something. He doesn't listen when I talk, you know, like brothers do." Daniel didn't have any, but she had a tendency to think being a writer meant he understood absolutely fucking everything about everything. "I knew he wouldn't be into it."
He shrugged, and she didn't need to think about her answer. "Nah, I'm kind of seeing someone or something. Maybe. I'm not sure yet." She sat up without warning, and she reached back for some of the stupid hospital stationary by the old phone. The pen there rolled before she caught it with her fingers, and she crossed her legs and began to sketch him.
Daniel was still black and blue in some places, the majority of the bruises around his arms and neck fading in flushes of purple, but he only flinched away from her even as he kept grinning. He didn’t hurt enough that her little prods into his ribs did more than vindicate his opinion. “Rom-com star,” Daniel said, aware that she might carry tales to Lin regarding Daniel’s apparently improved facility with pop culture. He decided Tom Hanks was old enough that it wouldn’t matter. Daniel regularly pretended to be from the stone age so that Lin could hiss in exasperation and explain who Miley was. Daniel liked that.
Daniel’s fingers were gentle as he brought all four of them back along the seam of her sleeve. He stroked her as he would a cat, eyes now distant off in the other direction, head relaxed and tipped in her direction as he listened. “Because he doesn’t think of the right things when he looks at you. If you want him, I can help you get him, but I have a suspicion that you like being Sam, even if it means you have to be Sam the Kid Sister.” Pause. “That has got to be fucking annoying,” he added, without rancor.
Daniel glanced at the paper in her hands but didn’t comment. The ballpoint was sticky. He kept his pen and didn’t offer it. It flicked in his free hand as he plucked it again from the journal pages. “What’s the ‘something’ you’re seeing?” he asked, alertly.
She smiled when he kept grinning, even if it meant her tickle assault sucked. But, whatever, she liked that he was smiling. The last time she'd seen him, he'd been so out of it that he didn't smile. He was sad as anything, and she wasn't sure he even remembered her being there. He might hate it here, and she got that, she understood, but he was more alive than he'd been in fucking ever. It helped explain why Lin was so much cheerier too. She'd attributed it all the the technology, outdated as it was, but now she didn't think so. "What do you know about rom-coms?" Her inky blue eyes lit bright. "You watch those fucking movies where everyone loves each other and won't admit it until the last five minutes, don't you?"
She liked the touch of his finger. She liked affection, even if it was sorely lacking in her life, and she was loose limbed on the bed, like nothing bad in the world could happen. So fucking trusting, and she should've outgrown that shit already. "I know Russ really well, baby. He can't handle me. Even if I wanted him. We talk about his mom being a drunk, and he gets all pissed about it. It doesn't matter how many times I explain about addiction, he doesn't get it. He doesn't get other stuff either." She shrugged her shoulders, and she laughed when he said it had to be annoying, the kid sister thing. "It is annoying. I told him so. But, yeah, he sees my problems first, and then me. I get that I'm screwed up, but I'm still more than my problems or whatever."
She was quiet for a few long seconds. She didn't ask for his pen, and she made do with the scratchy one that had the hospital name imprinted on the side. She smudged the ink in places with her thumb as she talked. "Some guy I met at the Halloween thing. He's cool. He dances, and he's Spanish," she said with a waggle of blonde brow, trouble with a gap-tooth grin.
He remembered, but that was about it. He remembered feeling things without any particular reason or rhyme attached to them, but he’d been in his own head for the most part, and slow to realize she was there, slow to realize when she was gone. He mostly remembered Russell’s amusing lurking and the far less amusing shape of Lin in the corner. There was a plunk of music he wasn’t sure if he’d imagined, and there was the image of stitching coming loose amongst the cornflower blue of clouds in his mind. None of that made any special sense.
“Enough,” Daniel said evasively, looking again at the television as if it had lately insulted his mother. “They’re on television a lot. Maybe they think they’re soothing instead of infuriating.”
Daniel wasn’t too interested in talking about addiction. He recognized what he was, and he’d been semi-forced into several thrice-weekly conversations about it. He’d even wrote a book on it, not that any of these people realized that. Maybe it had been a different kind of book, he mused. He hadn’t thought of that book in a long time. The characters seemed distant memories now, the concept the long echo of rattling pills in half-empty bottles, years gone.
“Spanish!” Daniel said, putting on a show of vague horror. “What did you go and do someone like that for?” Another grin.
She looked at the television, which was maybe the antichrist or something, and then she went back to sketching. Smudge, smudge, smudge, and regular lifts of her head to look at his face. Without warning, she leaned forward and dragged her inky fingers along his cheekbone, as if feeling it would make it easier for her to get the shadows right, which it would. All those years working with metal, back before her grip went to shit, it made her more tactile than visual, and she could memorize what was under her fingertips better than she could remember what she saw with her eyes. "People like happy endings, baby. It makes them feel warm or whatever."
Naive, young, and sometimes stupid, but she still noticed when he completely ignored the addiction topic altogether. She didn't blame him. She didn't like talking about it either, and she avoided it whenever she fucking could. So, she let him have the silence, and she ignored the way he ignored the topic. He was here, yeah? That was enough addiction talk for anyone.
Instead, she gave him a sheepishly crooked grin when he put on that fucking exaggerated show of vague horror. Gaze down at the paper, and then she looked up and saw him grinning. Whatever. She would do nearly anything to make him fucking smile, even if it meant being the brunt of his jokes. She laughed. "Hijo de puta," she said, her Spanish completely fucking Jersey white girl, but without hesitation. Straight up and unthinking, and she'd been talking a lot of Spanish lately. "You never want to take me dancing, yeah? I had to find someone who would."
Daniel had no particular objection to Sam’s artistic leanings. He didn’t even mind when he was the object, as long as he didn’t have to see it or stare at in introspection for any particular length of time. The last thing Daniel wanted to be was introspective. He was not the least artistic himself, not in that way, but he liked to think he was a good viewer the way that he was a good listener. He might not be able to play a note, but he could appreciate the music. He looked away from the television semi-permanently and watched her smudge cheap ink with interest. He twitched with surprise when she touched his face, a gesture he associated with affection, but he realized quickly this was not the case, and smiled back over her fingers at her.
Daniel knew enough Latin-based languages to know what that meant, thanks very much. “No, I don’t like dancing. You know, I never liked dancing. I would just go to those places for the people and the booze. They tell me I’m not allowed like anything fun anymore. He takes you dancing. With that whole tango thing?” Daniel waggled his eyebrows, shifting on the pillows so he was tipped over in her direction and his shoulder didn’t knock against hers while she was working.
He rubbed one hand over the other absently, working restlessly at an itch that wasn’t there.
"You danced with me the day we met," she reminded him, head still down and that halo of blonde along her arms as she smudged and drew, drew and smudged. "It was like for five minutes before we went up to your room, but whatever. It counted." She looked up at him, grin, crooked and her tongue pressed against that space between her teeth. "And bullshit. You can still do the boring fun stuff you like, yeah? Concerts and museums and shit, and you can fuck Lin again," she said, because why the fuck not? Might as well. Daniel liked sex. Dude, Daniel liked sex. "I took him dancing. Hello, it's 2014," she said, and whatever if a nurse heard and thought she was crazy. "Salsa, actually, like the shit they always danced in the parties back home." Her expression went fond, and maybe she wasn't supposed to have fond memories of the hovel she'd grown up in, but she did.
He rubbed at his hand, and she noticed without even needing to look up. She set the paper and pen on the nightstand, and she scooted back to where she'd been before, stretched out beside him and bending her knees to slip her legs beneath the blankets again and curl against his side. "Your turn now, yeah? I told you about my secret lover or whatever." She had. She wasn't talking about him with anyone else, but if it distracted Daniel? Then ok, sure, why not?
Daniel gave her a little smile that was the kind that some men wore after they'd eaten something sweet they weren't supposed to have. "I don't like what they call 'dance music' anymore," he said, dryly. "But women always like to dance around in those places." He paused, and something more like caramel slid over his mouth and face, smoother than before and warm in his eyes. His lips relaxed and his head tipped vaguely to one side. "Maybe not just women. Lin too." The club he had met Sam in seemed very far away, and for some reason he didn't much like the idea of all that pushing and shoving now, especially if he couldn't drink to make it all just dull rhythm with sex at the end.
Daniel tipped his chin up to see what she'd done on the paper, not long, just a glimpse. Then he looked back at her as she cuddled closer again. For a few seconds he was silent, just breathing, thin ribcage and fragile bird of his heart fluttering against the bars. "I don't have any secret lovers. Just the vampire that I think just wants to play a little game. ...I'm sure Lin does, though." His mouth soured.
"I love clubs. They have a lot of fucking temptation, though." She couldn't count the number of times Neil had dragged her and MK out of places with loud music and gyrating bodies, where everyone was rolling, and there were white lines on the back of the toilets. "This was like an old place with an orchestra," she admitted of the salsa location. "You would dig it or whatever. Lin could dress up nice. Go on Sunday. No booze on the Lord's day or something like that." She didn't see the point of pretending about the addictions with him. She had to pretend with everyone else, but she didn't need to here, and it was kind of nice for a change.
She tipped her head back to look at him as he was quiet, and her arm slid along his ribcage and rested there, light and just over that thump of his heartbeat. Closer, she smelled like the fair, cotton candy and limes and powdered sugar from something doughy. "Tell me about your vampire or whatever. That counts." She heard the souring in his voice when he mentioned Lin fucking other people, and she didn't even need to look up at his face. "He loves you like crazy. Give this sober shit a chance, yeah? For him. If not for yourself or whatever." Because they'd let him out of this place eventually, and the real world was so hard; she knew that better than anyone.
At this point, everything Daniel thought of was a temptation. Everywhere he wanted to go had a drink, and everywhere he wanted to hide had the scent of smoke or something that would take away the itch, the hurt and the guilt. The crowds and their many invisible staring eyes disturbed him, but only because of what he thought he would see looking back at him. Sometimes the weird shit in his head and in his veins messed up his sense of smell, but whatever she smelled like, it was something good. He wondered briefly if that was what he smelled like to the vampire. Something tasty. “He just wants to play, like I said. He thinks I’m somebody else… or something. Not sure. Hard read.”
Daniel worked his fingers over his hands again, rubbing at his bones under his skin. “He wants me whole again. Not having all that sex and worship itches him like the needles and the booze itch me.” Daniel shrugged like it didn’t matter, which he always did when it did.
"He thinks you're someone else?" she asked, and her curiosity was idle in the warm closeness of the hospital bed. Even the annoying beeping from the machines had turned into a kind of soothing white noise. Repetitive, yeah? And she closed her eyes and snuggled closer, like Daniel was some real skinny body pillow that was all hers to wrap herself around. It was stupidly young, and she didn't even give a fuck. "So, you're still talking to him or whatever? After the party. Does he know you ended up in this joint because of him?" She was guessing, yeah? But it sounded like it was present or whatever - wants and thinks - like it was something that was still happening, and not something that ended at Halloween.
"Someone else. Another drunk writer." Daniel smiled, almost... fondly. "It's a common affliction. Helps you relax." Daniel flicked his fingers into vague curves, and ticked the ends of his right hand down onto invisible keys, his eyes half-closing, his expression nearing that vague concentration that she had worn as she worked on her ink and paper.
"He gets our names mixed up." Daniel opened his eyes again, the sharp liquid blue shallow and surprisingly clear. The skin around his eyes was soft and pale, more sensitive than the rest of them. "He wrote at me. He knows. But he did something... I don't think he wanted to kill me." Abruptly Daniel's mouth compressed in a sour hint of annoyance, but it was just a flash, soon gone.
He glanced down at her with indistinct amusement as she nestled ever closer. "You're going to push me off, or get us in trouble with Big Brother watching, if you get too much closer," he said, smiling.
"We all want you whole again. The methadone will make shit better once you're out, and you can't get high or drunk on the naltrexone. You do it a few times, and you get too sick to fucking care. If they caught you with enough in your system and it's mandated, then you have to like go get the shit every day, and they watch you swallow it. It's good, baby. Give shit a chance, yeah?"
"What the hell is good about all that?" he asked, trying to ignore the hypocritical bent to this conversation.
"Do you like talking to him or whatever?" she asked of his vampire. "Is he going to hurt you again or try to give you fangs or something?" she asked, because that was different than killing him, and the concern was completely fucking transparent in her voice. Whatever. Sometimes knowing people worried was ok, and she knew it made it easier, yeah? Feeling like you mattered, even if he would fucking pretend forever that he didn't want anyone to give a shit about him. But she didn't buy that. Even with her own shit going on and blinding her to things, she didn't buy that.
“I like talking to everyone,” Daniel said, neutrally. He was not as stupid or as easy to manipulate when he was sober, and sometimes he could be a real bastard, but the most annoying thing about him was his tendency to talk around things. He talked around things so often that he trailed more words in circles than he did answer questions, excepting perhaps with her, on certain days, under certain pseudonyms. (Lin required an altogether different level of dedication.)
But he was right about Big Brother, and Lin would probably show soon. He was talking to her again, and she didn't want to fuck that up by having him walk in on her and Daniel in bed, even if it was completely fucking innocent. So, she drew back and pressed a kiss to Daniel's cheek, and she crawled out from under the blankets and off the bed and righted her shoes and clothes. She stood there, and she looked at him and considered his hypocritical question. She could give him some bullshit answer, or joke about his deliberate hypocrisy. But she went for honest, yeah? She'd been there, and she wished she could go back there again; she knew.
"It's good because it makes you want it less after a while. It makes you think of bad shit when you jones, and there's no fucking high, and it kind of becomes pointless. But you need to stick to it. It's really fucking easy to think you're cured or whatever, and then you slide right fucking back. And that's if you're lucky. If you tumble off fast it'll kill you after," she said, inky blue eyes serious.
She glanced over at the sketch she'd discarded, but she left it. "Let me know when you're out, yeah?" she asked.
She had now looked at the sketch two or three times, and he looked at it too; human nature. He stopped smiling when she pulled away from him, feeling a little cold and forlorn with no one paying worship or attention to him. Lin would be back soon, but he didn’t know how soon, and the television was on commercial, so it didn’t show him the time. When Lin had stayed in the bow-front house, or when his vices had blurred the world, the time hadn’t mattered so much. Now he checked the time all the fucking time. He rubbed his hands together under the blanket and tipped his head.
“Did you tumble?” he asked, scowling at her with concern.
He answered about the vampire guy, but she wasn't sure she trusted that shit, and she was meddlesome enough that she considering talking to the fucker, just to make some tiny blonde threats that would amount to seriously nothing. But, yeah, ok, so she worried. Worrying about the people she cared about was her thing, and even hiding in an empty fucking door didn't seem to change that.
But instead he asked about tumbling, and she rolled her eyes. "I'm fine, yeah? If I get really fucked up, I'll let you know." Her smile was playful enough that it was probably a line she was feeding him. He couldn't help her now or anything. He didn't have the money, and she didn't have any fucking money, and Neil wasn't around. No fucking freebies where she lived or whatever, and she was handling shit the best she could. She'd been fine until Micah showed, but she wasn't at this hospital to worry him about anything. He was the one hooked up to a bunch of bullshit, yeah? It was a Catch-22, because she needed help, but asking for it might fuck everything up worse.
She shook her head. "Maybe stay in this door. It's nice here," she said, and she meant it.
She didn’t need to ask for it. She forgot who she was dealing with, and sad, pathetic little Daniel, with his weak spine and pasty face, without the booze and the drugs he was all brain, brain and observance and bitterness. His blue eyes narrowed sharply into new blades, and he rolled over one hip to grip the edge of the bed and pull himself into an upright recline, most of his weight on the side of his body and his head fully upright. He tipped his chin down and gave her a glare full of knowledge.
“You are. You are, and you didn’t tell me. Get the hell back over here.” He was going to snatch at her wrist and keep her in place and until Lin came. Lin would deal with it.
Uh uh. No way. Nope. She was tied to shit, and she wasn't weak from being in a bed. She backed away. He would start asking fucking questions, and she was terrible at lying. The only reason people didn't know about her shit was because no one actually pushed at her about it. They all saw her fucked up and just let it go, and they didn't ask about Micah. No one fucking asked about Micah except for Cris, briefly, and he'd left it alone too.
But, yeah, no. Daniel was so fucking vulnerable, and there was no way she was getting him involved with this shit if she could help it, and she wouldn't be able to help it if he got her back onto that bed with him. Neil had been passive as fuck, yeah? But she missed that he always listened to the shit she said, and that he was always there to talk to, and Daniel was the closest thing she had to that right now.
She shook her head, and she backed up to the doorway. "Get some rest, yeah? Don't fuck up," she added, and she tried to be a little fucking stern about it.
And then she turned, and she bailed, before he could look at her with those blue eyes again.