InsaneJournal

Who: Danny Ketch and Jessica Drew
What: Danny is finally talking about some of his issues.
When: Sunday night.
Where: Jess’ apartment, 812.
Warnings: PG or PG-13 for potential language. Danny has grown into a bit of a mouth.

Opening up was a lot easier when you didn’t think you would have to live with the consequences. Danny had already made that final decision. It was why it was so easy for him to ditch the booze, and why he was getting so philosophical, and why he was trying so hard to tie up any loose ends. He didn’t want any unfinished business anchoring him here, and he didn’t want to leave anyone up a creek. Hopefully everyone else just thought he was trying to get his head back on straight, but the truth of it was that he was a man getting his affairs in order.

And once they were, he’d step off the roof and finally be free.

It was the only way he’d been able to quit the booze like he had. What did he need booze for when he knew the end to his long years of suffering was right around the corner? So now he was going down the list. Get rid of the booze was number one, and he’d already checked it off. Another thing on his list was talk to Jess, and give her an explanation as to why he’d become such a mess. She deserved that much. It was a risk, considering she really was smart and stood a chance of putting the pieces together if he told her too much, but in Danny’s mind, she deserved to know.

Did he want to talk? No, not really. He didn’t want to burden anyone else with his crap. He didn’t deserve the relief it would give him and he knew it. Still, when he took his walk off the roof and made an abrupt meeting with the ground, he didn’t want her to question how he’d gotten there. The note would help explain it, sure, but the problem with suicide notes as Danny saw them was that they were cold pieces of paper or digital copy that you couldn’t ask questions of. If you were going to do yourself in, your loved ones deserved to ask you a few questions first.

His clothes looked better, largely because he actually bothered to wash and fold them. He’d considered shaving the beard off entirely, but decided instead to just trim it. Truth was, he kind of liked the beard. He looked better, too. He’d gotten the best nights sleep he had in ages, and he actually seemed happy. His eyes weren’t quite as hollow and lifeless as they had been and there was some color back in his face. Did he look great? Not by any stretch of the imagination, but he looked leaps and bounds better than the boozing zombie that had been meandering around Lawrence since he’d shown back up. Most noticeable was the confidence. The grin came easily to his face and he walked with something almost like a swagger. His personality had taken more or less a complete 180 since he’d made the decision, from depressed to a happy that was bordering on euphoria. It was why he wasn’t nervous when he threw on his big coat and headed over to Jess’ for the talk. Any other time he would have been, but with his new unshakable confidence it didn’t even faze him. He just stepped up, knocked a few times, and then leaned one arm against the doorframe to wait, all the while preparing a team-up joke.