InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "same thing we do everynight..."

Loren knows not what he's done. (skelterhelter) wrote in rooms,
@ 2014-12-30 00:45:00

Entry tags:

!ocean's eleven, *log, cristián martin-argüelles, loren chapel, sam alexander

quicklog: sam & loren & maybe additions
Who: Loren & Sam
What: Hospital visits
Where: Oceans 11 Door
When: Nowish?
Warnings: TBD

[This door was familiar in the way that too many years in Vegas had been familiar. Winters still got cold, even in the desert, and Loren bundled up in clean suit for the occassion, blue on blue. Slate and navy. Vegas wasn't the kind of place that he wanted to visit ever again, there were too many twisted memories there, too many buried bodies, burnt bodies, too many casualties in the name of vendetta. But this door wasn't his Vegas, and he'd long ago stopped worrying about people recognizing him or looking for him. When the world thought that you were dead, that gave a man a lot of leeway.

The hospital was easy to find, the hotel gave Loren a door that was only a few blocks down from the hospital, and that made things easier than fishing for a cab in streets he didn't trust. Inside the hospital, he approached the front desk and asked after Sam, gave her social security number, her middle name. Loren had the kind of face that was almost always still, but there was a permanent sadness to his blue eyes that didn't have to be feigned. It apparently made nurses feel bad for him, and the lady frowned as she typed in the details on her keyboard

The nurse apologized then, saying that at this point in Sam's assessment, family was only allowed to visit. Loren smiled, warm but not too warm, a warmth that was sad like worry could be cured if he tried hard enough. It was for the sake of the desk nurse, Loren wasn't worried about Sam. He'd spoken to her, she was alive, that seemed like good news. She wasn't in surgery or trauma, and that meant that if he was close enough, he could visit her.] She's my fiance. [He explained the believable. The nurse, predictably sighed and apologized and motioned him for the correct hall.

They even gave him a little sticky badge that said visitor. He hadn't been expecting the guards at Sam's door, and Loren gave pause before them, having already sized them up on his walk across bleached tile.] Name? [One of the men asked while holding out his hand like he expected a wallet to confirm such things were all legal and documented.]

Loren. [It was calmly stated, no smile for them. These guards were no small time security, and Loren wondered where they had come from because they sure as hell didn't seem like cops. One had a thick neck, and Loren contemplated the kind of pressure it would take to snap it, just in the strange way that a mind can wander to contemplate space and time, sometimes Loren wondered about different methods of unjustified murder. He had issues, he'd accepted them. Then the man handed Loren's wallet back and gestured him into the hospital room where Sam was. She'd apparently requested him and gone through all of the chennels with Goon 1 and Goon 2. There was a glace between the two guards that Loren caught on his way inside. Maybe it was Loren's posture or his smooth stride or just the fact that he looked like the kind of guy who was ready to stare down a gun barrel with a slow blink. If the men were imagiative enough, maybe they thought he was some kind of investigator. But Sam had requested him, and here he was, no problem.]

Hey. [His voice broke the silence, unsure if she'd fallen asleep since their phonecall.]

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Hospital: Sam & Loren

tinieblas
2014-12-30 07:12 am UTC (link)

[By the time Loren showed, they'd gotten Sam cleaned up and moved upstairs. She'd met Neil's guys, and she was so fucking out of it that she didn't even stop to wonder why the fuck Neil had guys. But she gave them names of people who were cool, and she told them Micah wasn't cool like twenty fucking times, though she didn't really remember one time from the next.

She was still high as fuck when Loren showed, and this was years in the past, medicine wasn't as advanced, and the doctor had already come and talked to her about the detox shit. She'd signed papers, and she'd asked about suboxone, but they didn't know the drug, and she guessed it wasn't approved yet or something. They talked about other shit, but she was still fucked up enough to think that doing what the nice counselor was talking about - vitamins, advil, cold turkey - was a good idea. The doctor approved, because she'd had three more seizures, and they were cautious about administering anything.

So, she'd basically signed her damn life away for a detox, but she didn't get that yet.

There was a camera in the room, and the girl in the bed was wearing blue scrubs and the plaid she'd worn when'd been brought in. Her slipper socks were yellow, and her hair was damp from the quick wash they'd given her.

She was comfortable, yeah? No bad shit yet, and she just watched Loren come in with glassy eyes.] Hey, baby. Don't let Micah in. Fucking promise, yeah?

[Because she forgot this shit was even a secret, yeah? The seizures, the doctor said, could fuck with her memory. But she knew who the man who'd entered the room was, even after not seeing him for years.

She pointed at the phone.] Unplug it? Bad guys like to call and fuck with people in hospitals. [Ian.]

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Re: Hospital: Sam & Loren

skelterhelter
2014-12-30 07:48 am UTC (link)

[The camera in the room was the first thing that he noticed aside from Sam wrapped in in a clean bed. Loren had done a good job of keeping his face shielded against the triage entry cameras and the little bulbed things in the hall, but a camera in the room was different. He immediately took a chair and positioned it so that his face wasn't made visible by whatever the thing was meant to capture.

He couldn't tell if she looked worse than when he'd last seen her or the same. She'd been hospitalized before, he thought(again, memory was unreliable with him), but Loren didn't know about any of the craziness that came into her life after he'd split Vegas altogether.]

Nobody is coming in. [He promised her, utter seriousness in that. He had plans to check all of the nurses credentials as they came in, he wanted to monitor what they put in her IVs. He wanted to see the certificates on the doctor's office wall if need be. But he wasn't going to let anybody in here without Sam's okay. Although in her current state, he wasn't sure what kind of okay she could give that would satisfy him.

He unplugged the phone without asking more, stashed it in a closet and frayed the wires with a knife taken from his ankle, just in case the nurse discovered it and wanted to plug it in again. This hospital seemed nice, but a little short-staffed, it'd take them awhile to replace a simple telephone.]

Micah do this to you? [He looked at her, eyes cold.]

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Re: Hospital: Sam & Loren

tinieblas
2014-12-30 08:09 am UTC (link)

[She didn't notice the camera at all. Like everything else, it was just too fucking nuanced for her just at that moment. She kicked her legs impatiently on the bed, using the flat surface to slip the socks on more surely. She looked small there, yeah? Big fucking bed and circles beneath her eyes from not sleeping. The plaid was too big on her, rolled up at her wrists to bare the blown IV lines that failed before the one on the side of her hand worked. But Loren had killed Micah once, yeah? He had, yeah? She couldn't remember completely, but she fucking thought so, and she wasn't worried. It was maybe stupid and hella trusting, but being too fucking trusting had brought her to this fucking end to begin with.

He said nobody was coming in, and she closed her inky eyes for a second. Just a second, because she opened them again and looked at him, trying to remember why he was there. But, oh, yeah. Right.] Some people are ok, just make sure it isn't Micah pretending to be them or something, yeah? He can do that.

[Which sounded kind of nuts, maybe, but she wasn't exactly clear, and the nurse came in with something mild to help her rest.]

Micah wrote to me. [She looked around for her journal. But, yeah, no, it wasn't there.] He sent pictures and stuff. I told Neil and Cris. You should go protect my brother, but don't go or whatever. [Fear flared in her eyes.] Don't go, yeah?

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Re: Hospital: Sam & Loren

skelterhelter
2014-12-30 08:26 am UTC (link)

[She wasn't making too much sense to him, but from what Loren remembered of his years in the hospital, sense had been difficult to come by. Anything that had to do with the brain, injuries or chemicals out of order, it took awhile for a person to differentiate where certain parts of the world stopped and started. Loren could tell she was drowsy. There were circles under her eyes and maybe she was just tired, but he stood up for a moment to assess her IV bag and the discarded med syringes in the hazard box nearby. They seemed to be giving her fluids for dehydration and high levels of benzodiazepines. Something to ease seizures and also ensure sleep.

Loren pulled his chair up closer to the edge of her bed, and he would have let her drowse out, but she was still talking Micah. Loren's brow furrowed.] So he's still up to old tricks. [Loren considered that with his tongue behind his teeth. He took note of the names she gave on the little pad of paper beside where a telephone once sat. Neil and Cris. They were allowed inside to see her, he took that to mean.

When the fear glazed wide and glassy in her eyes, it punched through his chest like some misplaced memory of Hannah, and Loren swallowed it down. He leaned back into the chair beside her bed, and he placed his hand on the rail to prove he was there at all.] I'm not going anywhere. Now get some sleep if you can.

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Re: Hospital: Sam & Loren

tinieblas
2014-12-30 08:53 am UTC (link)

[She watched him pull that chair up, lazy and slow tracking eyes with pupils that were still pins and points of black in a sea of red-rimmed blue.] Yeah. I was supposed to meet him, but I chickened the fuck out. I fucked up. [Her eyes welled up, and she dragged the back of her hands against them, bruised skin coming away wet.] I fucked up, yeah? Lou would be safe. Everyone would be fucking safe if I just did what he wanted, but I chickened out. [Agitated, and she twisted the white blankets at her hips. Twist, twist, until the white was in a fucking curl that was unforgiving in her palm.]

I fucked up. [Repetition, and she looked at the hand on the rail. She let go of the white, after staring at his fingers for a while and deciding with the slow lethargy of meds and a really rough fucking night. She touched her fingers to the back of his hand, like it was proof or something, and her fingers shook against his skin.]

He'll come eventually. He won't fucking give up. He'll kill Lou, and he'll come eventually. He'll laugh, and he'll say the shit from before, yeah? [She looked up at him.] Right? I wanted to just be done. I did, but fucking Neil came. If I was done, this shit would be over, Loren.

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Re: Hospital: Sam & Loren

skelterhelter
2014-12-30 09:13 am UTC (link)

[What Sam was describing sounded like some backwards hostage negotiation. Loren wasn't following because he wasn't entire sure about who Lou was except that he was on the list. Loren didn't shrink away when her eyes moistened, and he tried not to be stone cold as an ice hotel either. Loren just... dealing with other people's emotions meant dealing with his own, and yeah, he acknowledged how fucked up he was. But he was working on it.]

Thats why you let the professionals negotiate with terrorists. [He tried to smile, but his smiles always looked crooked after a joke like Loren wasn't sure if the punchline actually was one.] We'll talk about Micah more when you're straight, I've got some things to tell you. [And she looked exhausted, he doubted she'd remember anything he told her.

Loren glanced down when she touched his hand, and his fingers remained wrought iron tight around the bed's bar. He did not lift a finger, or react or stroke or even seem to breathe for that moment. His hand stayed steady, finger on a trigger steady. Then Sam's hand quaked, and Loren thought it might be shivering.]

Are you cold? You want me to find you some extra blankets? [He wouldn't leave her, but Thing 1 and Thing 2 outside the door could do something other than giving side-eyes to the nurses if they wanted to be useful.]

He's not going to kill Lou. [That was a promise.] Micah couldn't kill a roach in his apartment if it meant having to hobble off the couch. At that party, whatever he did, he was stronger. Thats not him. [Loren leaned a little closer.] He was crippled even before I carved half of the spleen from his body. He's not killing anyone. He's not tough, and he's not a boogeyman. He's weak, and he doesn't want to feel weak, so he's doing this because he thinks there's something to prove in it. [That was the only way Loren could think of it, and the Husky ice-blue of his eyes were wide and serious when he conveyed to her that there wasn't anyway Micah's threats were going to happen.]

Then something came to him and Loren frowned.] You wanted to be done? [Lower voice because what he was about to ask was a real touchy subject in the hospital, even if she was already on suicide watch for drug withdrawal alone.] Suicide?

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Re: Hospital: Sam & Loren

tinieblas
2014-12-30 09:28 am UTC (link)

He's not a terrorist. [She was slow and not clear, but she knew words, yeah? Terrorists like killed bunches of people in countries or whatever.] He's a sadist or something. But that's not really right. IDK. [She shook her head, and she leaned back against the pillow when he said he had shit to tell her. She wanted to ask, but she didn't want to know, and the uncertainty made her shrink the fuck back, even as her fingers drew some unthinking letters on the back of his hand. The letters corresponded to the shit she was saying, one melting into another, and lulling to her like the scratch of charcoal on paper did.

She shook her head. She wasn't cold. She didn't think she was. The socks were warm, and so was the flannel plaid, and her hair was mostly dry now or whatever. The petichiae on her cheeks made her look flushed, but she was ok. She thought she was ok.

But he said that Micah wasn't going to kill Lou, and she believed that shit. She wanted to mention Cris too, his kid and wife, and the fact that Lou had taken fucking pictures of where Lou worked, and tracing that shit back would be crazy fucking easy. But she didn't want to tell anyone about Cris, yeah? So she just listened about killing roaches and she shook her head, faster and fucking faster, and now it really was panic in her eyes.

She sat forward.] No, no, no- Nuh uh, no. He's different now. Before- Before he gave a shit about pretending he was all fucked up and innocent. Not anymore. Now he says it's my fault he went to fucking jail, and Lou's. He's not the same. He's like- [Ian] He's different. He doesn't fucking care, Loren. He doesn't fucking care. He keeps telling me to shoot up, and he like fucks with my head. He kept messaging me about Meredith, and how Neil was tired of me. He likes to make me say shit. He'd not the same. Don't think he's the same. He's not scared of anything. Not like before, yeah? He's not.

[Her hands were back on the sheets, twist, twist, twist, and she crossed her legs beneath her and rocked a little bit.] No one would get hurt. No one would get hurt, and this shit wouldn't happen again. [She gave him a sad, sad broken look.] I can't do it again.

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Re: Hospital: Sam & Loren

skelterhelter
2014-12-31 05:54 am UTC (link)

[Loren didn't argue the terrorist thing. Sadist, terrorist, it was terminology made to sound different by the news anchors. It was all fear, and Loren hadn't lived in fear for a long time. The only recollection he even had of the emotion was involved in relation to other people. People he hadn't been able to do right by. Hannah. Jules. Others he tried not to remember.

Sam sat up in her skinny bed, and the more adapted to body-science(he still didn't know big words, he''d only relearned to read a couple of years ago) part of his brain told him that sitting up wasn't good, not in the condition she was in. Blood pressure could plummet in a hot bath, it could spasm at any differece in elevation. Yet the nurses had pumped her full of fluids to control that kind of thing, and so Loren just sat back, he watched her. He pulled his hand away from the metal bed rail because he knew what it was like not to want to be touched. Despite her touching him, he made all things backward. It wasn't even that he never wanted to be touched, just that he didn't want to touch. It made him uncomfortable, it made him scared of wanting more. Loren didn't know what a man like him was capable when he wanted more than a friendly trace of letters on the back of a hand. If he ever wanted a woman like that, it would terrify him to the point of... who knows.

But that was a lie told to himself. He'd read his own file years ago. Loren knew exactly what he was capable of. He watched Sam curl up in her sheets and protest Micah's strengths. A man with nothing to lose and nothing to fear could be a dangerous man, Loren knew this from experience.

He knew about the curiosities of suicide, even if he never talked about it. He knew about bad thoughts and bad deeds, wanting them gone. Loren didn't know about wanting to vanish just because it meant saving somebody else or making the pain of others stop. That made him think of Hannah, even if his face didn't react. Martyr.]

You won't have to do it again. You never had to do it. [He paused, thinking about the empty room and when his eyes skimmed her skinny bones, it wasn't with sympathy or concern. Hannah. He thought in the formulation of survival instincts.] You should eat something.

[Pause. Small smile.] It would make me happy f you did. [Because martyrs were about that.]

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Re: Hospital: Sam & Loren

tinieblas
2014-12-31 06:12 am UTC (link)

[She sagged, the twist of blankets and rocking tiring her out really fucking fast, and she expected to start feeling crashsick soon. She didn't realize yet that there was a huge fucking difference between being fluish after a binge and going cold turkey, so she wasn't fucking panicked about it or anything. She just sagged against the pillow as he pulled his hand back. She couldn't tell what he was thinking. She was starting to get headachey enough that she wasn't even aware he was thinking of anything, yeah? The seizures or whatever, or maybe she was thirsty, and she smacked her lips as she looked over at the IV, to see if the liquid was like working or whatever.

But he was talking, saying she didn't need to do something again; she couldn't remember what. She was glad when he said she should eat, because she didn't have to remember whatever the fuck she'd just lost, yeah? She bent her knees up against her chest, easy to do in the folding accordion of a hospital bed, and she looked like a little kid, oversized flannel and her toes pressed together and her blonde hair clean and golden thick in waves around her flushed cheeks. She shook a little, the beginning of a seizure, but the medicine did its job.] What's this shit going to be like? [She wasn't sure if he even knew what she meant, but maybe, yeah? The nurse had said shit, hadn't she?]

I'm not hungry. [But he said he'd be happy if she ate something, and he'd come all the way here for her, yeah? No clue it was machination, because she just wasn't machinating. She never learned that trait, and maybe it was because she'd lived a completely sheltered life until 20.

Whatever reason, she closed her eyes, and she nodded.] Yeah, ok. but not much. Ok?

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Re: Hospital: Sam & Loren

skelterhelter
2014-12-31 07:23 am UTC (link)

Okay [Was all he promised. When the nurse brought in the little plate of food, which consisted of chicken fingers and red jello and juice, Loren took a bite of each first, testing. Sam was already nodded sideways and she didn't protect his actions, his precautions. Time passed, and when Sam stopped with words or questions, when she was reduced to deep breaths and blips on a machine, Lorn curled over the hospital bar. His fingers found the flesh of her arm, where drugs had built up scabs that would one day be scar tissue. He felt her hair, smelled it. Not Hannah, not dark enough, but he slumped there, and the room was quiet except for the machines. Intimacy that wasn't intimacy at all, everything quietly beeped. He'd make her eat when she roused, until then Loren closed his eyes. Not sleeping, resting.]

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Re: Hospital: Sam & Loren & Cris

foundling
2014-12-31 07:47 am UTC (link)

[The hospital was outmoded, sanitized in attempts at "Southwestern style," toothpaste greens, flakes of pale purple, and a sandy orange near stained tiles. Cris picked up on the year quick enough—there were corkboards outside of each room, white sheets of paper pinned there, laden with the names of the nurses on shift, as well as scrawled shorthand of the date. 2001. Thirteen years ago, he was working UC, but he'd been in enough hospitals to look at the equipment being towed around and know it wasn't right at a glance, sí? He didn't know much about Ocean's 11, other than it was a movie with George Clooney and his friends, so he spent the jaunt to Sam's room, held at a brisk pace of tennis shoes, gleaning as much info as he could from the surroundings.

Luckily, that was something he was good at.

And by the time he bypassed Neil's men at the door, he was able to feel comfortable enough in the setting to pass through it.

Maybe comfort was too strong a word, because the moment he entered that quiet den of machinery pumping, a tray of barely-touched food askew, and someone else there, his skin pricked. He didn't think it was Micah. Maybe he shoulda, but the guys guarding the door, they didn't look shifty, like they'd taken money from a sweaty palm, and they weren't on edge. Plus, they were Neil's. Maybe he didn't like him, but he trusted him to look out for Sam. So, yeah, the guy lying draped over the bar of Sam's bed and spilling over on to her, his fingers slipping through her hair, not Micah. But that didn't make him harmless.

Sam was there (relief), asleep or out, her arms a sad story, capillaries open and coloring her high. She looked bad, and not just because she was hooked to a wall of monitors. There were circles under her closed eyes, her skin on fire. And whoever this was—not a brother, he didn't look like her—was just there. Touching her.

Maybe it wasn't his call to make, but he made it. Sam had enough men grabbing at her without her consent. Cris came forward fast, the ballcap riding high on black hair and his scarf still tight, all of the night's emotions surface, and he wrenched the guy off Sam with one hard jerk, fists balled in the guy's collar and yanking. He wasn't trying to scare the girl in the bed, 'cause waking up, out of it, in the hospital, with two men grappling on the floor wasn't a good way for anyone to wake up, but what choice did he have?

The motions to subdue the other man were automatic, rapid-fire muscle memory, forcing him forward and, if he managed, to the ground with all of his weight and pinning him with a painful dig of knee to his back. And if a gun showed, glinting hard under lights as bright as these, he kicked it away.—His voice was sharp.] Who the hell are you? Huh? [And with alarmed concern:] Mami, you okay?

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Re: Hospital: Sam & Loren & Cris

tinieblas
2014-12-31 08:44 pm UTC (link)

[The girl on the bed was so fucking out of it, sleep and what remained of the drugs in her system and she had no clue anyone was draped over her and touching her. Completely fucking oblivious, but she wasn't scared of Loren, yeah? Loren was helping her, and she was unworried in her sleep, unconcerned in the foreign room full of beeping things. Trusting as all the meds from the IV began to kick in hard and make her more unfocused than before.

But the swift movement of Loren being yanked away woke her, and she sat up in a wide-eyed panic. And, yeah, the sudden move was shit for her blood pressure, and the numbers on the machine slid downward as the girl on the bed weaved, but she found her center of gravity as the machines started beeping angry warnings, and yeah, ok, she forgot she could put down the bar on the bed, because she clambered over that shit. Luckily the IV tubing reached and stretched, holding better than Sam's fucking legs did. The world was a spinning fucking top, black in spots, and she just sagged back against the side of the hospital bed as one of the guards from outside opened the door to see what the fuck was going on

Somewhere overhead, someone called a nurse using some code Sam didn't even hear, and she just tried to grab for Cris' sleeve with her fingers, plaid over her ruined hands.]

No. Está bien. I couldn't remember your number, and I don't know Neil's, and Loren's was written on my hand from the other night on the journals. Ok- He's ok. He's making sure I'm ok. I called him. He knows Micah. Knows what Micah looks like. He knows. [Desperately, because black threatened around the edges of the low numbers on the machine, and she wanted to make sure no one fucking hurt anyone in this room because of her. The guard was moving closer, and she was pretty sure that was a fucking glint of metal in his hand.] Friends. Ok? Friends. [Because she was sure Loren was armed too, if he ever managed to get up.] Ok?

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Re: Hospital: Sam & Loren & Cris (pt 1)

skelterhelter
2015-01-01 10:19 pm UTC (link)

[Time had passed since Sam had last said anything, and her labored breathing let him knew that she was sleeping. If fitful and drowsy half-consciousness could be considered sleeping. Loren watched her blunt little nails dig into her hands in her sleep, and the only reason that he'd laid his hand(with more caution than he'd have given a rabid animal), was because he didn't want her to accidentally rip out her IV in case she seized or just had a nightmare. Loren thought the drugs were supposed to keep both at bay, but he didn't know. He could speak Russian and Farsi, but reading and writing still got all jumbled like his brain hadn't figured out how to connect itself perfectly after all of these years. So he didn't ask for a magazine from the nurse's station. Loren just closed his eyes, and rested, listening to the beeps of her heart monitor while he considered the events of tomorrow. The last time he'd been at this hotel, he'd lured multiple men to their deaths. He'd even brought Micah back to life after playing Dr Strange Surgery on the man in his own kitchen, but now as a member of the Hand, he knew that he couldn't just run around torturing fuckers for the hell of it.

It was about that time that rage came storming across the room. Loren's gun was in his lap, and he thumbed the safety while the rest of his body remained sleep-still. He watched the man's approach through the distorted bulbous chrome of the hospital bed rails. The room was still lit enough that it gave him a decent assessment in that half-lidded glance that never lifted to the man quickening his pace across the tiled floor. Height and weight were considered as less important factors than muscle tone. Dark hair, Hispanic. It was the glint of the badge on the man's hip, which caught the light mid-stride, that was when he passed the gun beneath Sam's mattress with just the use of his thumb, slowly, slowly until it was out of sight. When he drew a deep breath, it was still like sleep, but his core tightened in preparation for the attack a moment before it even came.

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Re: Hospital: Sam & Loren & Cris (pt 2)

skelterhelter
2015-01-01 10:49 pm UTC (link)

Loren was lax muscle like a man rising out of dreams, nothing like a man who had yet to truly find sleep. He went down easily, not even a milliliter of resistance to be found in his body. Subdued, right. But hey, Loren played nice, with enough knowledge to turn his face to the side so that he didn't crack his chin on the tiled floor when the man swept him down easily. Boneless body, easy. Yarn doll, easy. Loren thought about the chair that he'd been hauled out of. He thought about the string on the blinds, he thought about pair of knives at his ankles, and he even thought about the angry man's scarf becoming a noose. The hidden gun that he'd stashed in the bed wasn't even an option, too much noise. Guns were final resorts these days. There were a lot of ways to kill sometone, but if the Hand had taught Loren anything, it was that showing those kinds of cards were best saved for when it would be the most effective.

When Sam began to explain that Loren knew Micah, Loren closed his eyes and exhaled. He really hoped she didn't go into all of the ways that he knew that man. Torture and murder, even if followed by resuscitation, seemed like a bad thing to admit to the police. Then again, what jurisdiction did this cop have in this door? Not enough for Loren to worry about it, even if he did give Sam a single sharp look, a wordless warning that he didn't trust the guy on his back. Loren didn't exactly have a reason to. But Loren wasn't resisting, he stayed flat and compliant, maybe annoyingly compliant for a man who(now that Cris was up close) was obviously made of more lean muscle than the average citizen. There was a deep, long scar that dug a good five inches across the back of his skull, visible through his extremely short hair. Sam and him had a little something in common there.

The man's knee dug into Loren's back, and even if his teeth grit, there was not a sound of protest from him.] Did you skip your police brutality training? [Loren's voice was something to lighten the mood that Mr. Angry had brought to the room. Besides, Sam was scrambling out of bed now and tangling her tubes with her sheets. From where Loren was stomach-down on the floor, Loren gave her those blue eyes that didn't know how to be anything but cold. His smile was a reassurance, though. He wouldn't kill her friend with the anger and the Spanish and the knee in his back like a blunt spear. Promise.]

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Re: Hospital: Sam & Loren & Cris (pt 2)

foundling
2015-01-01 11:30 pm UTC (link)

[Cris wasn't blind and he wasn't stupid, whatever white boy thought. He saw the careful seclusion of the gun, a common enough tactic to look out for, and he noted the complete lack of resistance, as he and the men toppled to the mopped tiles like two sacks of flour, one atop the other. Yeah, this guy was someone who'd been on the wrong (and right, surely) end of a fight one too many times, a jagged scar shining through buzzed hair (military or mercenary, Cris would have guessed. The man was wiry, smart enough to move his chin, so as not to crack it on the ground, had prepped, with a tightening of controlled muscle, for being torn from Sam's bedside, had had a gun, and was from the hotel (he'd seen the name)—it wasn't that much of a stretch). Cris wouldn't have gone so far to say the compliance was annoying.

He looked up at Sam, her white fingers sewn along his sleeve, and he eased up. He didn't apologize and he didn't help the guy up. He just got off of him, ignoring the quip like it was nothing. Cris heard the step of a man behind him—one of the guards—and he ignored that too. Sam looked woozy and the machines were telling him her BP was plummeting. She was gonna drop.

He put an arm around her waist and turned her back to the bed, careful of the tubing lolling at their feet.] Okay. I got it. [His eyes were on Sam, to the exclusion of all else. Only, before he let her back in the bed, he bent in front of her to fish the stowed gun out from between the sandwich of trolley and mattress. He aimed it to the side, toward the floor, and ejected the magazine, checking in the chamber for another round. Once it was clear, he tossed the thing in the nearest trash, magazine tucked into his pocket. He tugged Sam's starched sheets back into place and patted there.] Come on, mami. Before the guy behind me drops me. [His thumb jerked in the guard's general direction.]

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Re: Hospital: Sam & Loren & Cris (pt 2)

tinieblas
2015-01-01 11:47 pm UTC (link)

[Being a chickenshit wasn't her thing, yeah? But she still screwed her eyes shut, world spinning, and she waited to hear a gunshot or something. This was why she didn't like involving people in her shit. It was why she hid in a door, away from everyone, because people just ended up getting caught up in her crap, all screwed up, and she hated it. And it was happening again, yeah?

She shouldn't have called Loren.

She shouldn't have told Neil and Cris about Micah.

What the fuck was she even thinking? Nothing, yeah? Right, nothing, because she'd been fucking scared, and fucking scared resulted in her being fucking stupid. Eyes closed, and she could hear the struggling, and all she could think about was how many people she'd just sucked way the fuck on down with herself.

Cris was here, which meant Lou knew about this shit now, and he was probably out there, running around like a complete fucking nut, just like last time. The goons outside, they were Neil's, which meant he'd been dragged right the fuck back into this crap, instead of living his new life with his girlfriend or whatever. Cris' family was probably in danger, and Loren was going to get his ass thrown in jail or something, and all for what? For Micah? Because one fucking asshole wanted to have sex with her or whatever? Classic. That was just fucking classic, especially since she put-out for anything that would get her high.

So, yeah, closed eyes, and she was such a fucking idiot.

The arm around her waist made her open her eyes again, and the room spun with the low blood pressure numbers that proclaimed themselves with increasing anger on the machine beside the bed. Fear-wide inky blue, but then she realized who it was, and it was ok. Arm around Cris' shoulder, and she let him help her back onto the bed. Plaid and hospital socks and cheery scrubs, and cold sweat made the underside of her hair damp, and she just looked from one man to the other.] Sorry. Nothing happened. Go- Everyone, just the guards, everyone, just. I made a mistake. Go.

[Maybe she was holding on too tight, fingers on Cris' shoulder. Contradiction, yeah? But whatever.]

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Re: Hospital: Sam & Loren & Cris (pt 2)

skelterhelter
2015-01-02 12:35 am UTC (link)

[Loren slowly got back into his chair, gun collected and properly holstered while Cris rescued the tipping Sam. Loren was a rescuer, he had a thing for helping out the defenseless(the more violent end result, the better), but contact? Touch? That was not his protocol. He'd managed it for several minutes while Sam slept just to ensure she didn't seize out of her IV lines, but aside from that, no way. Too many bad stories, too many hang ups, too personal even as impersonal as the touch of a hand could be. So basically, he was appreciative that Cris was there to catch her.

She said to go, and like a machine accustomed to following orders, Loren stood.] I will stand in the hall with the guards tonight. [There was a brief twitch of his blue eyes toward Cris, and Loren stepped up to Sam's bedside table, pulling a steel pen from his jacket's inner pocket. He wrote something on the notepad that sat on the little desk, where the phone had once been before Loren removed it at Sam's request. He knew she didn't read Russian, but decrypting it might give her something to do aside from lying in this hospital bed all day and night feeling guilt or shame or her own ineptitude.

The pad of paper read: вы должны держаться подальше от разгневанных мужчин.

Then he tucked his pen back into his pocket, and ceased to regard Cris at all when he tilted his head toward Sam. It was a farewell, although he'd promised to remain outside her door.]

I'll see you at the Rodeo, nastuschka. [Nастушка was something that wouldn't be written down, but he thought that she might get the gist withthe way he tipped his invisible cowboy hat toward the bedbound Sam he'd called a cowgirl. It was a promise for a date they never set in stone because it was make believe. Because neither of them were capable of that kind of norlmacy any time soon. Loren might never be, but he thought Sam could once she got out of here. He'd wanted to talk to her more now that she was conscious, he wanted to find out all of the things he'd missed and -- but it wasn't the time. So he gave a nod, and a turn, and he headed for the door with the guards that were bound to be glorious company for the evening.]

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