Who: Henry & Revy What: Drinking and breaking brains When: Last Night Where: Revy's shithole apartment Rating/Warnings: Lots of language and mentions of lots of violence Status: Complete!
Revy didn’t live anywhere luxurious. It was a shitty complex in a shitty part of the neighborhood, which could bring some concern about safety - but she had that kind of reputation to where others should be concerned for their safety, if they got the nerve to actually fuck with her. It was a studio apartment so, obviously, nothing spacious - functional, not all that decorated aside from the intimidating amount of weapons lying around (grenade launchers included - she needed a case for all those fuckers). There was a tank by the window filled with shavings, where Steve the Rat lazily lounged.
He’d been a well-fed rodent. He disposed of any pizza leftovers with those ratty chompers of his; a homage to how she acquired him (which was a fucking weird story).
“Take a seat wherever,” she motioned - the living space and bedroom were technically one space, but she had a papasan chair and a love seat, with a tiny coffee table in front of her bed. “Don’t touch the weapons, I haven’t put a safety lock on them.” That’d be responsible of her, wouldn’t it? Revy had been procrastinating, fuck off. Several steps to the side and she was in the kitchen, the nook overlooking the rest. “I’ve got…”
Time to open the fridge, to view inventory.
“Pizza,” she announced, scratching the back of her neck. “Beer. Rum. And pudding cups.” Dessert. Pudding cups were scarce in prison, but she had an abundance of them now. No day but today, said that one musical about AIDs.
The last place Henry had ever expected to be was Revy Lee’s apartment. He wasn’t even sure how he’d ended up here. Time with Revy somehow always ended up being a blur unless Henry was behind his camera. Sometime, however, between the end of the latest photo shoot at the studio and now, time had blurred.
Revy’s apartment made Henry’s one-bedroom affair look like a castle, yet somehow it seemed perfectly hers, right down to the weapons on the table.
Wait.
Henry’s eyes were fixated on that collection of weapons (was that a bazooka?!). He knew Revy was a scary person, but this was a little too on the nose. He stared at her when she told him not to touch any of them. Why on Earth would he want to?
Somehow, though, there was something exciting about this place, as if Henry had stepped from his world to hers.
Beer or rum? Henry had a feeling he’d be drinking both before the night was over. What was that rhyme? Beer before liquor never been sicker?
“Rum,” he answered her. “And a slice of pizza if you’re offering.”
Hah. Rum it was, then. “Pirate drink and pizza, fuckin’ A.” Out came the ginormous jug of Captain Morgan, half-empty, and she retrieved glasses from the overhead cupboards. Then paper plates for the leftover pizza, which was topped in spicy ham and pineapple. Revy missed the simpleness of New York Pizza (massive, greasy), but she’d take what she could get. In retrospect, anything was better than cafeteria prison food.
“You want it heated, or?” Yeah, why the fuck not, if the dude wanted it microwaved she’d be a hospitable host. Revy was having a good night. “Cold pizza’s the best, but whatever floats your boat.” See, she was taking a chomp out of hers already.
Henry shrugged. “Cold pizza’s fine,” he said. Cold pizza went fine with rum. Hell, cold pizza could go with anything in Henry’s opinion.
He’d taken a seat on the loveseat. He didn’t trust the papasan chair. It wasn’t anything against Revy (although for all he knew there was a glock or a Smith & Wessen wedged between the nest-like cushion and its frame - hell, there could be a sawed off shotgun shoved between the cushions of the love seat for that matter), but he’d had some…experiences with papasan chairs.
“You really like guns,” he noted needlessly, his eyes once more on the arsenal.
“I knew I’d get along with you just fine,” Revy declared, a devilish twinkle in those molten-amber eyes, and managed to successfully juggle rum and disposable plates over. All set on the coffee table (which had an ash tray, and some left over hookah coal), and she’d take her spot on the papasan chair with its tiger-striped cushion. It was comfy. Maybe the most decorative thing she even had here. There was a dartboard on one of the walls too, but did that really count?
Henry’s observation caused a blink. First thing’s first - wash down the couple bites of refrigerated pizza with a gulp of spiced drink. “Most of it came as gifts.” Gifts from the dreamfairy, because the Revy that was stationed over at that rancid shithole somewhere in Thailand was notorious for her use in weaponry. Specifically known for her ability to dual wield guns, and her custom cutlasses were her pride and joy.
Shooting off a grenade launcher had its therapeutic aspects though, she’d give it that fucking much. “Considering the way this fucked up place works, I’m ready for war. If you don’t come into super special snowflake powers later on, then I suggest you get something.”
Henry took a large bite of pizza. Mm. Delicious. Crazy and scary, Revy sure knew her pizza. He looked up at her carefully, his brows knitting together a little bit. “Gifts?” He asked. Who gave guns as gifts? Gifts were DVDs, or books, or knick-knacks, or occasionally clothes...but guns? And not just guns, apparently. Henry couldn’t even identify half of what Revy had strewn around her place.
Most people would have been intimidated by the sight, put off, even downright frightened, but Henry wasn’t. Oh, this wasn’t normal by any stretch of the imagination and Henry wasn’t going to try and pretend that it was. However, Revy wasn’t a normal person. Henry had known that from the moment he’d met her face to face. She was loud, crude and abrasive, but what you saw with Revy was what you got. He liked that. It was probably why he’d agreed to have drinks with her at her place.
“I’m not going to get superpowers,” he told her through a mouthful of pizza. He reached for his cup of rum and took a healthy glug of it. “And I don’t know how to fire a gun,” he went on. Nope. The only thing Henry knew how to shoot was a camera and he wasn’t going to be hurting anyone with film, that was for damn sure.
He was a little perplexed and slightly alarmed by her warning, however. “Do you think somethings going to happen?” She was certainly prepared if something did.
“Gifts,” Revy repeated, offering him a disparaging smile. Like her dreamfairy was some kind of weapon-dealing sugardaddy that dropped off all kinds of weapons of destruction, though she had yet to officially use the big ones. She stuck with her cutlasses. They were her babies, fitting into her hands like gloves. “But it’s not a matter of if something’s going to hit the fan. It’s when. I’ll protect my own ass.”
Even if it wasn’t her main gig anymore, she was still a damn good gunslinger. Chang’s muscle. Her years in prison woke some kind of paternal feeling in him that she wished would fuck off; he didn’t want her to go off the deep end again, get lost in another Whitman Fever episode. It was tough reeling back from those.
She swirled the remaining rum in her glass, tongue in cheek, tightening her stare at him. “You want to learn the basics? One day that isn’t tonight, obviously.” Maybe somewhere actually safe like a range. Ranges were meant for firearm practice anyway - she learned her tricks on filthy streets during bouts of desperate survival. “Never know when you’ll need to save your own life. Or someone else’s, if you buy into the heroic bullshit.”
“I don’t,” Henry answered after another glug of rum. Then he set the mostly empty cup down to focus on his pizza. “I’m not a hero.” He was too much of a push-over to be a hero. But Revy may have had a point. “Maybe I should learn the basics,” he said around another mouthful. “Not sayin’ that I’m buying into the whole Network thing,” he said cautiously. He wasn’t, but it was getting harder and harder to ignore or shrug off what people told him and what he read on-line. “You think you can teach me?”
And he’d had a dream recently. It wasn’t a weird dream, nothing like what others on the Network talked about. It had been about moving into a new apartment. Nothing unusual about that. People had dreams about homes or new homes that felt like theirs, but really weren’t all the time. But instead of fading into the background like most dreams did, this one - this blaise run-of-the-mill dream had stuck with him. It felt as though it had actually happened.
“Hey, Revy?” He asked carefully as he reached for his cup of rum again. “What is it you dream about?”
“Yeah, sure, I’ll be your fuckin’ firearm Yoda,” she promised - sincerely. Revy liked Henry. He didn’t get on her nerves, didn’t seem all that judgey, his willful ignorance about the horseshit surrounding them was actually kinda cute. But when shit hit the fan and something weird happened, he needed a good way of self-defense. Guns were it. “We’ll set up some days of practice.”
Basically, if he wanted it, she’d be training him. He wouldn’t pick it up on the first try, but she saw it as a productive use of her time - considering most of her days felt pointless. Empty, restless, the sound of over dramatic sex in the background. She missed the days of rushing adrenaline, earning a fat paycheck for doing what she was best at; intimidation, and killing.
Old habits died hard.
His next question came unexpected. Hence the slow rise of her eyebrow, suspicious. “Thought you didn’t buy into any of this shit. What’s the question for?”
“I don’t,” Henry answered quickly - maybe a little too quickly to his own ears. He shifted slightly on the couch and looked down into his cup of rum. Another mouthful remained at the bottom. He downed it quickly and reached for the bottle Revy had brought to the table with her to refill his cup. “A lot of people talk about their dreams on the network, what they’re about and stuff, but you don’t. I’m not saying I believe in any of that, but I was just curious.”
He glanced up as he poured and tried to gauge Revy’s reaction. Henry was quiet and awkward around people. His co-workers and colleagues would have described him as a social outcast. If asked, Henry would have likely agreed. He was constantly attempting to read people in an attempt to say or do the right thing. Sometimes it worked, but often it did not.
Revy, though wasn’t like most people Henry had interacted with. She was open and honest. Very what-you-see-is-what-you-get. It was that trait of her personality that made Henry feel comfortable around her, despite her rash and abrasive nature. He looked back at what he was pouring and held his breath waiting for her response. He didn’t want to accidentally over step and piss her off. Especially with the firepower in the room.
Revy had predatory instincts. Came with the killer territory, which she was, through and through, even if she was stuck splicing footage of terrible porn for the sake of some cash flow. It wasn’t something she was born with, per se, but that’s how she had been molded. She found it difficult to be anything else, which was why regular civilian life had been a struggle. Henry’s tension was subtle, but she could still smell it - like a wolf stalking prey.
Except she had no ill will towards the guy. Hell, she even looked amused to know that he was still swimming up the rivers of denial but hey, she got it. Hard to buy into the dream shit until you experienced it for yourself. Odd happenings were one thing, but consciously knowing there was another you out there that existed in some other world, other timeline…
It was fucking trippy. If people wanted to trip, they’d shed cash towards hallucinogens. LSD, DMT, shrooms, peyote. In Orange County all that shit came for free, without the addiction and without the side effects detrimental to health - though she knew a couple people who’d say otherwise. “Most of the time I hear dreams mirror life, so that’s how mine kind of go,” she began, settling into the softness of the papasan chair. “Sob story childhood but amplified times ten, climbing up the ranks of the criminal underworld. There’s a shitty place around Thailand called Roanapur - doesn’t exist here, but it’s a shithole where your Big Bads like to station themselves. Russian Mafia, Triads, Cartels, the works. I got hired on with this company to that owns a boat to kind of be a modern day pirate - handle smuggling things overseas, kill jobs, whatever pays, we do.”
Henry listened intently to what Revy told him, sitting perched on the edge of the love seat, elbows resting on his knees and his cup of rum in his hands. Her dreams sounded exciting in the same sense a tornado touching down in the middle of your cornfield was exciting.
“Dreams mirror life,” he murmured before picking up what remained of his slice of pizza to thoughtfully chew on it. If that was the case than his dreams were going to be boring as hell and he wasn’t all that thrilled with prospect of having to go through his parents’ divorce again. Not that he actually believed any of this stuff.
Still…
“Did you actually do any of that stuff?” He asked around his pizza crust. He was aware Revy had a criminal record, though he hadn’t really asked any of the gory details figuring that type of stuff was personal and he didn’t really know how to appropriately react to personal stuff. “Like rise up in the criminal underworld and smuggle shit and kill people.”
Did she not seem like the type to not do any of that? Not like she gunned down anyone in front of Henry recently (or ever) for him to assume otherwise, but she’d drop hints of incarceration here and there. Revy never had any qualms with being straightforward with her record; it was what it was, she’d probably do it all over again because in the end, that is exactly who she was. Some dog of war waiting for someone with money to dish out an order and bang.
She’d taken a chomp out of her crust too. It was flavorless, hard from being cold, but she was still going to eat the fuck out of it. “Basically,” came her nonchalant reply, shrugged shoulders and all. Would it break Henry’s cute little brain? Revy didn’t know, but if he couldn’t handle it, then he shouldn’t be hanging out with her anyway. “It’s a business. Money and guns makes the world spin, and nothing pays better than getting it the wrong way.”
It was a main motivator of people’s involvement. Cash, the excess flow. People paid big for drugs, transporting things away from legal eyes, firearms that weren’t available to the general public, or for someone to do their dirty work.
She actually kinda missed it.
“You scared?”
He hadn’t really expected her to try and deny it, or try to explain or rationalize her life choices, but hearing her actually say it confirmed what Henry already knew.
He thought for a moment as he gnawed on that stale flavorless crust. His amber eyes moved around her apartment and its contents of various firearms. He should be scared, but he wasn’t.
What did he have to be scared of? That Revy would shoot him? Henry was confident that was unlikely to happen. She may have been crazy, but she wasn’t that kind of crazy that partook in shooting a guy she barely knew for the hell of it. There was no money in that. Besides, he was a nobody. No big bad mafia boss was going to order a hit on him because he was nowhere near important enough to ding on anyone’s radar.
He turned his eyes back on Revy, peering at her from under his shaggy light brown hair. “No,” he told her matter-of-factly. “Should I be?”
Henry was kind of weird.
Oh, it wasn’t a bad thing. Honestly, she didn’t really get why he’d been okay with the whole ‘let’s keep hanging out outside of professionalism boundaries’ thing; she wasn’t the nicest, or the most polite, had the mouth of a sailor and the perfume of a smoker. Leon and her at least had some trivial things to keep the other around, but this dude just chillin’ on her loveseat was something of an enigma.
There was a pause before a response. “Naaaaaaaah,” she drawled, sneering. His line of thinking was pretty accurate - there wasn’t a reason why she’d even go after him. Maybe the Rebecca Lee knee-deep in Roanapur shit would have shot at him for the hell of it, but Revy liked to think she was actually more mentally stable than her other half. It all boiled down to daddy issues. It was rough with him, in both realities, but she had never killed him in this one.
“Though now you’ve got me thinkin’ - what’s your story, dickcheese?” Don’t fret; it was a term of endearment. Her bare knees crossed (since she seemed always dressed in denim shorts) and in her palm rested the remaining rum. She’d been taking it easy. “You’ve just realized you’re in a room with someone who’s killed people, and you take it like it’s nothing. Something fucked up must have either happened to you, or…” Err. Revy hadn’t thought of an alternative. “Or you’re just strange.”
“Dickcheese?” Henry started at her, his mouth full of pizza crust. Then he burst out laughing. Dickcheese was a ridiculous insult, but as a term of endearment, Henry would take it.
Between laughter, he finished eating his pizza and with his refreshed glass of rum, sat back in the loveseat. “I don’t really have a story,” he told her, still grinning a bit. “Was born in Maine and then moved to Arizona when my father got a promotion or something. My mother hated it there. She picked up and left one day and moved back to Maine. Then they divorced. From the time I was 12 I was shuttled back and forth between them. One year in Maine, another in Arizona until I graduated. Then I went out on my own. So...pretty normal,” Henry shrugged. “I guess I’m just strange,” he said before taking a gulp of rum. Henry knew he was strange.
As the rum sloshed around his mouth and down his throat, he thought about what Revy had said. He’d never had any brushes with the law. He’d never been arrested or gone to jail. Hell, he’d had all of one speeding ticket since getting his license. The worst thing he’d ever done was skip his 7th period study hall in high school to drive around and take pictures of rural Arizona desert or the even more rural Maine woods. He was even a good enough son to call his parents on their respective birthdays, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day and Christmas, like a good son was supposed to. That was the only communication he really had with them, but that was more than some people he knew.
“Truth is,” he started after swallowing the rum, “I don’t really get people. I never stayed anywhere long enough to make the kinds of relationships you’re supposed to have as a kid, so…” Henry shrugged, “I just don’t understand them. I say things I shouldn’t, or don’t say things I should. Unless I got a camera in my hands and I’m out on a job, I’m pretty much the poster child for social awkwardness. Like right now, for instance, I should probably stop talking, but instead I’m probably going to continue to babble like an idiot until you tell me to shut up. I should probably tell you goodnight and leave and never go back to the porn studio. But I won’t.”
Revy pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, lips stretched into a smile. It kept that boisterous cackling from becoming anything more than a chuckle because fuck, was he serious? Really, his cheeks were fucking pinchable. “I’m glad you won’t,” she told him with sincerity, and she then tried to bring the glass for a sip but right when she thought she could do it, she ended up letting out another huff of laughter. “If the social awkwardness is what keeps your weird ass around, then fuck it, by all means, embrace it. If I end up corrupting you, though, don’t point fingers. You know exactly who you’re around.”
Now for that drink, the last chug, but she’d give herself a refill. The burn down her smoke-ravaged throat was barely felt, and the taste hadn’t caused her to cringe in years. Friends that weren’t strictly gun buddies for the job was new territory; she found herself liking it. They didn’t fuck you over like people of the trade had a habit of doing.
Henry grinned back at her. “You’re laughing at me,” he observed, but for the first time in his life not only did he not care, but he found he could laugh along with her. He had to agree with her, he was rediculous. The rum certainly had helped loosen him up.
“You like my weird ass, admit it,” he said and then paused when the way those words sounded hit his ears which made him laugh again. “That’s not what I meant.” Though according to the porn stars, he had a nice butt.
He gave her something of a shrug. “If you don’t mind my weird-ass, then I’ll stick around. I could stand a little corruption, I think.” She’d already offered to teach him how to use a gun, that was a step in...some kind of direction. “For all you know, my dull life may wear off on you.”
Pft, yeah, right.
“You know what I’ll probably dream about if dreams mirror life?” Yup, the rum had definitely loosened him up. “Being in my apartment, going to work, taking photos and going home. In other words, dull as shit.”
Ho ho ho. Corruption it was, then. “I could probably stand to live a duller life,” she countered, though with sour reluctance. It’d been dull for the most part, she hadn’t used her cutlasses for anything aside from that fuckwad of a bounty she went after several weeks ago (and met some fire throwing wizard, the fuck?). Aside from that, Revy Lee was lying low.
Definitely an adjustment.
Her boots were undone, and she got barefoot and cross-legged on the giant cushion on its wooden pedestal. “Trust me, that sounds like a fucking party to me. Keep hearing people wake up all sorts of fucked up. Injuries that carry over. Imagine how much of a pain in the ass it’d be to wake up with the shit beaten outta you, for no reason?” No thanks, but it’s not like she had a say in the matter. “There’s some crap I hope you don’t experience, but you won’t believe any of it until you do.”
Henry tilted his head a little to the side. He couldn’t picture Revy with a life like his own. Sure, she wasn’t out running around with the mob and snatching up contract killings as if it was candy, but she was still a force of nature. Henry doubted anything would be able to change that. He took a liberal glug from his glass.
“If I’m just going to dream about my actual life, what’s the point?” Henry asked. Not that he was buying into any of this. Nope. It was the rum talking.
Sure.
“Has any of your dream stuff …’carried over’?” He asked next, then glanced around her apartment, “I mean besides the guns and stuff?”
Blink. Blinkblink. “Item wise?” Most of it were lethal weapons (which spoke volumes of her lifestyle there, truly) but there was one particular gem - and that’s fucking sarcasm - that crossed over. It was one of those unpleasant yet personal items that made her practically shit an ocean of bricks, and it was stuffed under her bed because it was too much to look at.
But she couldn’t really bring herself to toss it away, either. “Haven’t gotten fucked up from it,” she mumbled. Injuries could come at any day now; things were dangerous over there, last she dreamt was her waking up from a concussion and fighting the Spanish maid at the dock and things were getting ugly. “There is...something.”
Fine, fine, off the papasan chair she went. Revy dropped to her knees, stuck her arm out under her bed, shuffled a few things until her fingers gripped on something soft. What she pulled out was a pillow. A pillow that was once white but was covered in dark gunk - at first glance it looked black, but it was the deepest red blood could be. There was a hole in it (a bullet hole, to be exact), and when she flung it across the room (the distance was only several feet, so it wasn’t much), a few feathers floated out.
“Catch!”
On reflex, Henry caught the pillow that was tossed to him and instantly regretted doing so. The thing was disgusting. Spending winters in cold arid Maine had given Henry enough nighttime nosebleeds to recognize blood on a pillow. This blood, however, looked as though it had been on the pillow for years.
Henry may not have ever actually shot a gun, but the hole in the pillow combined with blood gave him a pretty good indication what had happened. If Revy had been looking to finally give Henry a moment of pause, she had succeeded.
He stared at the pillow he clutched in his hands for a good solid minute before he looked up at her, his amber eyes a bit wide. There was no way this had materialized from a dream. The weapons were one thing Henry could just laugh and shrug off as part of the joke, but this? That was considerably harder to do.
“I don’t…” Henry started, “what is this?”
“The fuck does it look like, it’s a pillow,” she snorted, but alright, yeah, there was more to the story besides the fact that it was just a pillow. Revy rose to her feet and after a few strides with those long legs, she perched herself on the love seat's armrest. “Some things mirror, but some things are different. In a more fucked up way.”
Leon had been given a glossed over summary, and even the couple times he’d been here she hadn’t showed him this. It was like a secret she wanted to keep tucked away, her own bundle of fucked up dream baggage to hide and carry. Couple shots of rum in and she was loose enough to feel somewhat comfortable around Henry - he didn’t seem judgey. “Dream version of myself shot her dad in the face - using this pillow to silence the blow. Must’ve been around...twelve, thirteen maybe.”
Blood and feathers, that’s all that really stuck with her. Even seeing a pigeon’s feathers float in the air outside brought her back to that particular dream memory. It’d been after her unfortunate run-in with the cops - she’d been beaten, violated, and then came home covered in all kinds of wounds. Her relationship with her father had been shit anyway, and instead of even asking ‘hey kid, you okay?’ he demanded her to get him a beer.
Then she sort of snapped, yeah. Maybe even overreacted. But it was probably the one event that sent her dreamhalf over the edge and beyond, probably to the point of never really covering.
“I didn’t do that here, if you’re wondering,” she insisted, feeling the need to clarify. “Fuckhead’s probably still on the East Coast with a beer gut the size of Texas.” Or dead, who cares. “So you might end up dreaming about living in your apartment, taking photos, but prepare for it to have some kind of nasty twist to really throw you off.”
Henry stared at her without blinking. His mind struggled to process what she told him about shooting her dad (no dream Revy shot her dad – if you want to believe that, and you’d better, otherwise you’re going to go nuts) and he completely missed the last thing she said about his dreams potentially taking an equally fucked up course.
He thought about that dream of moving into an apartment that wasn’t his, recalling it as if it had really taken place only last week. He looked down to the blood soaked pillow still in his lap. Revy said her dad was alive and well here in the Real World and living somewhere on the east coast. Henry believed that. He had to believe that because he really couldn’t deal with the alternative. That meant, of course, that he had to admit that all the talk about the Dreams was true.
His mouth had gone dry and his heart pounded hard in his chest. He had no idea what to do now. No idea what to say. Hearing Cotton talk about his time in prison had been easier to deal with than this. That had actually happened. It was fucked up, but it was real. This….this could not be.
But it was.
Henry needed more rum. He shoved the pillow aside and went for the bottle on the table, fully intent on drinking straight from it if Revy didn’t stop him.
Ummmmmmmmmm. Wow, okay. Revy wasn’t really sure what to expect from him - maybe soiled pants, him running towards the door and getting the fuck out? It wasn’t the nicest story and the thing is, she hadn’t even spilled all the details of what prompted her father’s murder. Whatever helped him cope, she guessed, so she watched him drink from the bottle with rounded tiger eyes.
“Yeah,” she rubbed the back of her neck. “Unless you’re planning to call a cab, no fucking way you’re driving home tonight.” Nope, Henry was officially on his way to rum-drunk while she was feeling the loose lips and buzzed side effects. “You can take the couch, and I promise that’s not the pillow you’d be sleeping on.” With that reaction? Nah, she wouldn’t even fucking joke. Revy snatched the pillow so she could shoved it away. Out of sight again, tucked it in the darkness beneath her bed.
With that done, she turned around, hands on her hips, and watched him warily with a tightened gaze. “You gonna be okay?”
By the time Revy turned around, Henry had surfaced from the bottle for air. He kept one hand around the bottle’s neck as he caught his breath again, as though it were anchoring him in reality. He was looking up at her, his brown hair falling over his eyes. Drunk was settling into his body for the night, but it wasn’t the warm fuzzy kind of drunk Henry had expected when he’d started.
“Ye-yeah, ‘m fine,” he told her. It wasn’t entirely a lie. If he had been stone cold sober when she had told him she’d shot her father in her dreams he definitely wouldn’t have been fine. Already two glasses into their conversation, Henry had been able to take the bombshell kind of in-stride. Of course that meant having to shuffle around his perceptions and beliefs, which while easier drunk, was no less disorienting.
“Jus’ had to get my mind around...that,” he said and finally released the death grip he had on the bottle. “Better now. I think.” He paused a moment to fight down a hic-up that was threatening to come up his throat. “’m sorry.”
Daaaaaaamn. Did he just - yep, from the looks of it, he downed at least what looked like two or three shots back to back. Wasn’t easy to stomach, especially with what he’s had to drink before this. It’d hit him quick. You were supposed to wait in between each portion, that’s how you stretched it all out.
“You’re fine,” she replied, brows creased at the sound of his apology. What the fuck should he apologize for? Not like he did anything (though if he puked on her shit, then yes, she’d expect a fucking apology), so the kicked puppy look needed to stop. “If that freaked you the fuck out enough, you don’t have to stay here. I can call you a cab.”
Geez, she wasn’t going to force the guy to spend the night at the apartment lived in by the woman that probably just traumatized him.
He was maybe a little traumatized by what he’d just learned, but it really wasn’t Revy’s fault. Drunk Henry was far more inclined to believe all the stuff about the dreams. Drunk Henry didn’t have the skepticism that Sober Henry did. Drunk Henry may have been just a teensy bit more open to the idea that yes people around here could very well be living two lives, one while awake and one while asleep. Drunk Henry was going to keep Sober Henry from loosing his shit.
Drunk Henry also didn’t much care for the idea of having to ride in a cab to his house only to have to come back for his car tomorrow morning.
He shook his head. “I’m ok,” he told her. “Like I said, I just had to get my mind around that and that…maybe…maybe the whole dream thing isn’t as impossible as I may have thought.” He gave her a kind of lopsided grin. “Kinda really wasn’t expecting it.” Pause. “And I think I’m done with the rum now.”
“You’re a fucking mess,” she laughed, arms briefly crossed, her expression something in between amused and legitimately concerned. “And I’m cutting you off the shit before you start blowing chunks all over my furniture, you’re officially done.” Cap twisted back on the bottle, Revy stuffed it back into the confines of her barely stocked fridge. “Still not letting your wasted ass out the door, so you might wanna get comfy on that couch.”
She’d get him a clean blanket stuffed away, even spare one of her pillows. If she’d told that shit to one of her old buddies they wouldn’t have blinked an eye; probably laughed and replied with something equally fucked up, and Henry was far from those types.
Who the fuck was she befriending these days. First a cop, now a goddamn cinnamon roll.
“And the bathroom’s over there, if your liver decides to bitch out.” Revy pointed, right before tossing (not handing, let’s be clear) the pillow and sheets over to him. Let’s see how good he could catch drunk.
Come morning Henry was going to regret having drank so much so quickly. He’d likely become quite acquainted with Revy’s bathroom floor and her toilet. For now, though, he was doing pretty ok. He’d learned to drink at college and had spent more than one Friday evening (and some evenings in the middle of the week, let’s be honest here) drinking with one or two (or four or five if he was feeling adventurous) people from his dorm and getting just wasted. Henry had found he did better around people when his inhibitions were down. He just didn’t give a fuck.
It had not been a habit he necessarily wanted to continue after college when one found they had to be up in the morning and functional in order to get a job and keep a job. Freelance or not, potential employers didn’t look kindly on potential contractors showing up to an assignment hungover. However drinking to excess on occasion was still ok. At least it was ok now, Henry may be of a different opinion when he woke up in the morning.
Henry glanced towards her bathroom and took note of it and looked back just in time to get smacked in the face with the pillow she’d tossed to him. He fumbled to catch it, but it along with the sheets ended up on the floor anyway. He frowned down at them before very carefully stooping to gather them up.
“Thanks for letting me stay,” he said. Then he carefully made up the couch so that it was suitable for sleeping before hunkering down for the night.