abraxaslogs | Iɴ Hᴇʟʟ, I'ʟʟ ʙᴇ ɪɴ ɢᴏᴏᴅ ᴄᴏᴍᴘᴀɴʏ → sᴇᴍɪ-ᴏᴘᴇɴ

His hands come up a little immediately — not a full-fledged surrender, just faintly raised fingertips so his palms are slightly more upright than parallel to the ground. Deliberately casual posture, a calmness injected into every line. It's familiar, it's practiced, but it's not necessarily a conscious choice. Nothing so manipulative as all that. It's just the same reflex as he'd get trying to soothe a spooked horse or a sketched out victim before either of them had the chance to bolt on him.

"It's okay, don't freak out. I know you probably have a total blank going on upstairs, but that's- it's totally normal, alright?"

A tentative beat passes, and if it doesn't seem like she's on a hair-trigger, he'll lower his hands back down to his sides again.

"I'm Dean. This whole... memory loss thing, it's just a side-effect. It's temporary, it'll wear off eventually, I promise."

The knot in her gut won't stop doubling down on the absolutely empty certainty, like an ouroboros whose recognition of itself only speeds up the ever-looping cycle. Not knowing who she is. Where she is. Why she's here. Who. How. What. Her eyes focus, and she looks up again when the man starts talking. Not quite to quiet, but definitely careful. Calm. And her brow wrinkles as it feels.

Placating. Is that it?

She definitely doesn't like that.
It's annoying. Even if she can't say why.

He's probably right about the freaking out, though. Or, more aptly, the not freaking out that she shouldn't be doing — that she isn't doing; that she potentially should be doing so he can stop her doing it? Except. That's absurdly ludicrous somehow, too. Just looking at him. It's not fear at all. Even for being rather like a blotting wall against the endless aimlessness, he's

... expansive.

In some other way she can't find a word for.
But then, as soon as she doesn't think she can, she has it.

The word, the meaning behind it, and everything that is the man in front of her. Expansive. Entrenched. Unwavering. Sacrificing. So very many cracks everywhere, and yet none of the pieces fall away, nor anything else in contact with it. An aching wound that couldn't be sealed away, refusing to let itself find mirror-homes in anyone around it.

There's a small "Oh," as Jo's head tilts a little, looking at that tiny symbol on his pocket. Then, with a blink, bringing things a little more into focus again. In and out were a problem. An eyebrow raised as her hands found pockets to slide into. "Dean." She tries it out like she's trying to label his existence.

It doesn't fit the way the symbol does.
It doesn't feel wrong. Just not as correct.

"Why are we —" Stops the same way the last had but differently. Because why are we here is not nearly as important as: "Why do you know what's going on?"

And why did it feel like she didn't even have to question that she could trust him? That he'd be right?

There's something indescribably weird about hearing her say his name like that. Looking at her, knowing her, knowing that she's supposed to know more about him than almost anybody else on their current freakin' planet out there, but the way she shapes the word hits more like she's feeling it out on her tongue for the first time. Weighing, assessing; not necessarily finding it wanting, but still lacking the concrete surety he'd have expected to hear. It doesn't feel conclusive, and he couldn't put into words exactly why that is, what it means, or how he feels about it, even if somebody held a damn gun to his head.

He does what he does with all complicated feelings he can't immediately unpack in the moment: he shoves it aside to think on later (with no signed commitments on actually getting back to it), and focuses on the here and now. The next, more immediate question.

"Because this ain't my first rodeo," he says, and it sounds a little more relaxed, or relieved. Like he's being a little less careful, less concerned about whether or not he's gonna have to prove himself to her. He's not completely convinced the ice isn't thin, but it feels sturdy enough to walk on for now. "I've been through this whole song and dance a few times now. You, on the other hand? First trip. Congratulations, welcome to Imaginationland."

"Thanks. I hate it," rolls out of her mouth without any thought.

There's a second where she questions if that was rude, but then she realizes she doesn't care if it is. It's rude that she can't remember anything, and this guy — Dean; The Lovers — actually can. That he knows what the hell is going on, who he is, where they are, why everything is what it is. It's unfair and unfair is like a straight shot, rocket site for guiltless annoyance.

"Plus, whoever's imagination is?" Jo gestures more with her head than with the hand in her pocket — worn-in leather jacket all bunched up right at the pocket, too much sleeve, far too much jacket, and far too little her in it, in comparison — though that raises a little, too. Somehow, her hands feel like they should be involved with her words, not tucked away. "It's boring as all hell."

Like a slingshot right back, her words becoming rapid fire, shifting fast toward more steel than confusion. More demand to know than an uncertain plea for knowledge. "When does it end? How long do I have to be here?"

Edited 2022-08-07 22:22 (UTC)

Apparently she doesn't need to worry about being rude — it earns her a laugh, a breathy sound that may as well be an agreement. Tempted as he is to add in the factoid that this section of imagination is technically hers, he bites his tongue. Wouldn't do them any favors hurrying this part of the whole thing along, probably, so he settles on a wry look instead and plows right on.

"Come on," he says, holding a hand out. "We just had to get this part over with. We can head out, and it'll all come flooding back in again."

The hand-holding part probably ain't actually necessary for the leaving section of the tutorial, but honestly? He's not sure how else to escort her back to the waking world. Dean tends to operate on a gut instinct basis, and his ability to manipulate the Horizon is largely the same. Some people can manifest crap out of nowhere, Dean tends to open up closet doors to spawn the objects he's looking for. He doesn't question it, or how he knows to do what he does in this freaky psychic space, he just does it, and it works. Hence, hand. He can pull her back out with it.

"Mine's way better anyway."

Jo stares at his hand for a second.

Drawn back to that notion, it's weird that she doesn't feel afraid of him. Even though it's weird, oddly disconnected, to consider moving closer, too. But she wants out of whatever this mess is, and she's just going to have to make the leap that this dude is anything he seems on the surface.

At least that's what Jo thinks when she pulls her hand out of the pocket — excess leather sleeve unbunching and dropping that cuff halfway over her hand, so she has to pull out her other hand and tug it back on the first — before placing her hand in his. But that thought vanishes as she looks at their hands for that even briefer second. It feels familiar. No. Something else.

Safe. It feels safe. He feels safe.

Like she knows him. Trusts him.
For reasons, she can't explain.
Has no proof for.

But it's there.

She's relieved for those last words of his. Her brow crinkles, and she wrinkles her nose.

"Are you insufferable outside wherever not-here is, too?"

"Oh no," he says with a scapegrace grin and a little shake of his head. "No, I'm way worse."

Insufferable isn't even on the list of the worst things he's been called, and even if it was? She took his hand. That's not nothing. He'll live and die by the adage actions speak louder than words, and it doesn't escape him that she's been rolling with everything he's said from the second they started this. More or less from the second she woke up here, even.

There's something about people trusting him that makes him want to earn that twice-over. Prove he deserves it, even if he'll never actually believe he's met that mark.

Not that he realizes it. Not that he's thinking about it.

Come on.

He tugs, and a second later, they're back on the outside again. Cross-legged on the floor like kids, his hands falling away and his eyes blinking open one at a time to shoot her an appraising look.

We good?

Didn't take long, like he said. Wasn't hard. Couple weird seconds and then it's over, like getting a booster shot. She's tough, she doesn't need him to wear kid gloves, so a second later he's already pressing for round two with a, "You ready to see the real stuff now?"

Kind of a bland appetizer before the main course, he knows.

Suddenly Dean is letting go of her hand, causing something so settled in and rooted behind her sternum to give a strange hard lurch, shooting her eyes open. And. They're back. On the floor. In Dean's small, not quite crowded room, everything feeling insanely surreal, like her skin is a few millimeters out of place, hairs on her skin raised.

Torn between fuck that was weird and the impossibly unsayable Dean was right and what is she even supposed to make of that checking in expression over there on his face as she focused on him. Deciding with lightning speed as it all clarifies that she hates parsing herself as not remembering herself. Her family. Her life. The choices and consequences worth those choices. Not knowing him, but knowing him, letting him —

Nope. Absolutely not.
She was not looking at that right now.

Jo gives an abortive wave of her hands right above her knees; that's a whole lot more an admission of there not being much of a second option on the board so, than the uncomfortably irritable, "It wouldn't be hard to be better than all that. A tumbleweed has more life."

It left a bad taste in her mouth. But she hadn't moved to get up. Where the hell would she go?

Edited (doot doot doot editing tags is what I do for life) 2022-08-08 00:30 (UTC)

She's damn good at keeping herself in check, she really is. He's also damn good at reading people — especially the ones he cares about. Could she handle jumping immediately back into it? Absolutely, no doubt, she'd white-knuckle it just like the best of them do and they'd roll on.

Should she have to, though? Why? What's the rush?

There's a pause, a moment spent studying her, and then a gently offered out.

"We can rain-check this if you want. Take a break. Grab a beer."

He ain't judging.

If she insists, he won't fight it. Won't make a big to-do about it, he'll just settle back in again. They shouldn't need to hold hands this time, she should be able to just follow him in. Now's as good a time as any to test that.

"No." She doesn't even pause, shaking her head.

Waiting isn't on Jo's docket. There's too much she doesn't know, and she refuses to consider the idea of holding out on knowing it even longer. Not if she has a choice in it. She's gone longer and harder, all alone, for so much less.

"We keep going." It's not a question.
She doesn't want to be placated. Comforted.

More than anything, she'd like someone to punch for it all. But everyone is remarkably accepting and glad to have 'the summoned' here it seems, and it makes it hard to punch any of them, even as their joviality and friendliness make her want to hit something more. Like all the smiling faces have to have worse behind them.

Not knowing the possibility of anything else, Jo held out her hands again.

"Alright," he says, and it sounds like a split mix of resignation and acceptance. She holds out her hand, and while he could correct her, it just feels easier to reach out and take it again. Feels more natural than pumping the brakes and explaining that it's unnecessary.

He takes her hand. Closes his eyes.

And they're gone again.

When they open their eyes, it's to a sunny summer day somewhere in the middle of nowhere. They stand smack center on the yellow lines of an empty, winding highway. On one side of the road, Singer's Salvage with all its metal corpses of busted up junkers and the distant house at the center of it all. On the other?

Well, that one'll look familiar.

He's a little self-conscious about it, if he's honest with himself — and he rarely is. A little hesitant to see her reaction, and it leaves him scratching his nails through the back of short-cropped hair while he waits for it.

"It, uh... It's not empty. Most of the other hunters that got summoned here show up. Roll in and out of it. Kind of use it as home base so we can all figure out what in the hell's even running around out there and how to kill it. A few people that don't hunt, too, but... close enough. You know the type."

Soldiers. The lost and wayward that have seen too much violence. Kids that grew up holding guns. Whoever fits the bill.

Jo's not prepared, after that last foray of rolling bland nothingness, to suddenly get accosted with something that looks real. Real enough to send a slight shiver down her spine, all alertness and familiarity at that long road and foilage that groups like pure darkness. There's a rightness to it that shifts her whole posture.

A large part of her was deeply relieved at it all, and the other keyed to a different higher note of awareness, readiness. Something she knows, something she calls home. Everything else comes into an easier focus from there. Her brow wrinkles when she follows Dean's glance to the utterly out-of-place and out of context Singer Salvage Yard, then to —

Jo doesn't freeze.

She goes still. So very, very still.

Every part of her body. Except for her copper eyes, which can't stop moving. The coarse red-brown wood. The dot lights she can't remember how many she changed. The sometimes fritzy satellite dish that was all Ash's baby to coax. The chimney. The general run-of-the-mill country, backroad, dustiness roughness told the everyday traveler to keep rolling and find somewhere else. Somewhere nicer, cleaner, closer to the city.

She saw it as rubble. It is rubble. It's standing there. That's impossible. It's impossible. It's impossible. The refrains slams on a repeat with her too quick heartbeat. Before she can even get to the words what did you do — and god knows how they might have come out of her mouth mid-traction — Dean is talking again and trying to explain. Trying to normalize this daunting expansion impossibility explosion on fast and slow at the same time.

Jo can't hear him. His voice. The words. They happen. Fall into her, unable to be avoided. But she can't hear him. Not over the existence of the building she's staring at. The only place that was ever home. The one that made her heart and broke it just as mercilessly. The one she was denied. The one that was supposed to stay there in the rearview.

The one that didn't. Fire and screams and nightmares that aren't real. It died. It's dead. It's gone. Everyone in it, too. Harvelle's Roadhouse burned to the ground. But not a Harvelle. Like a ship without its captain. Like she couldn't tell her mother was half-rudderless without it, without the life she'd chosen. What a black irony that was.

It keeps standing there, dwarfing her vision, pin holing to only itself.

"How."

She can't even parse that it should be 'why' yet.

Edited 2022-08-13 21:50 (UTC)

She watches it, he watches her.

There's a case people like to make about the whole amnesia first time in the Horizon thing. Something about how it means more because people are a blank slate, unbiased by memories, acting on pure feeling and fresh first impressions. He gets it, but he also thinks they're wrong about it.

People are made of their memories. What she thinks about him when she doesn't know him matters, sure, but it doesn't matter nearly as much as when she's wholly... her. This, what she's looking at, how she reacts now? Means more than that empty place from a minute or two ago.

He keeps himself carefully in check. Carefully neutral, as best he can.

"Magic," simply, honestly. "This place, I don't know. It's whatever you want it to be. It's not exactly real. I couldn't tell you how it works, it just... is."

That wasn't the question. And it was. But it wasn't.

Jo keeps trying to tear her eyes away from it, but it feels half impossible. Like, if she so much as blinked, it would vanish. A true hallucination. One of those too real dreams of the dark muddled with old memory. Hell, if they were going for broken and broke, and scraping for any tokens of sanity to line that path, hadn't Dean occasionally spotlighted in some of those? Maybe the whole thing was rotten food — a blow to the head.

None of it is true; she knows that as she swallows and finds herself still incapable of breathing in. Feeling too small staring up at it. It was always so much bigger than her. Bigger than anyone in it. Even her parents. She was always smaller than the size of its shadow, and the length its name, their name, went in the dark. But this is so much more. Jo's half afraid she might start tearing up out of nowhere — this, more than anything. He could have shot her from as close as he's standing now, and it would have hurt so much less.

This isn't bleeding out. It's gutted. Flayed. It's trying to figure both how to blink too many times to make that edgeing blur stop and not enough times it shows. She has to try and clear her throat again and finds it thick, sticking, her voice turned a touch of confused rust. Her head cants a little toward him, and then making herself slide a glance in his direction, away from it, feels like tearing her skin off with her own nails, like a betrayal of it as much as a dare for it to vanish.

She wants it to; she might absolutely lose it if it does.

"You wanted it to be this?" Jo can't tell if her emphasis was meant to be on any of those words. It's all a mess, nothing straight, not even her tone. That vaunted control of her mouth went right out with the window with the baby, the bathwater, and everything that made any sense still even two minutes ago.

He doesn't have the single first god damn clue what to make of it. Dean's great at reading people, he's got good intuition, he's got empathy for days. He's good at getting a sense of the way a person's mind works, an understanding of how they operate, the conclusions they might jump to — most of the time.

Not now. Now, he's floundering out there in the middle of the damn ocean without a life jacket or a paddle, and not even the first stab of a guess at which way to swim for land.

That utter loss in direction manifests in the form of an awkward laugh, one without any real humor beneath that plastic surface level.

"Well, it uh... it was this or one of about a thousand different motel rooms, so..."

He wouldn't be able to articulate it if he tried, but there's something soul-crushingly lonely about the concept of his domain being an empty motel room. Frankly, he probably wouldn't even bother wandering into the Horizon at all.

In terms of (semi) permanent fixtures, landmark locations in Dean's life, he doesn't exactly have a long list of them to pull from — and all of them belong to the dead.

"Is it—"

Her voice stops before the rest of the question, it's thick, but it's not a crack-stop. It's an obvious choice. Because even if the answer might break her heart, she doesn't need Dean Winchester to be the one doing it. She's always been better at that than anyone around her, hasn't she? (Save her mother). As still as Jo's been, as small as her voice had still uncertainty, if with even stronger feeling, sounded on those two words, everything changes in the next heartbeat.

Jo starts walking toward it without so much as an explanation of what she hadn't asked or what she's doing. Maybe she doesn't know. All she knows is that she has to know. That if she thought she knew she missed it; she hadn't realized she was beyond starved, twisted deep into that guilt, for even a glimmer of insanity if it was shaped right. Steps straight and fast for that front.

For that simple slab of concrete that calls itself a porch, with a scattering of things she doesn't know if are right or wrong, they changed. The windows with curtains are just this side of too heavy, not to keep the sun out, but rather not to let people see everything inside from outside. Her hand is on the door — before she can let her heart squeeze that fear into stopping her right there — and she shoves it open like she had how many other times when it hadn't mattered.

But it's —

Oh, god.

It's all there.

The bar and mismatched stools and tables and game machine and the pool table and and and Jo's hand on the doorframe, the one she can't even register and wouldn't remember how it got there if she tried, her knuckles are going white on it.

Edited (augh reread typos ssssoorrryy for my billion edits) 2022-08-14 17:36 (UTC)

He doesn't follow immediately. Holds back, gives her space, gives her a few seconds on her own. He figures... maybe it's out of respect, or maybe it's just common sense. Either way, his gut says the right thing to do is let her take it all in on her own.

That's what he had to do with Bobby's, when he first got here with all his memories intact. Had to walk in and just... stand there, looking at the lost little details that got taken in the fire. The dusty bookshelves. The desk. The cutlery drawers with the false bottom. Had to take a walk down those stairs to see the panic room, to run his fingers over iron walls coated with salt.

But he does follow eventually, just like Cas eventually followed him. After those few minutes to process, it felt good to not have to be alone.

Maybe it'll be the same for her. Maybe not. He'll feel it out once he gets in there, heavy boots thudding quiet steps across the floorboards.

He doesn't say anything.

Waits for her to break the silence first, if she's going to at all.

Jo doesn't even feel it when she starts walking in further. It's very vision-changing as things get closer. It's a blur. It's all so entirely dwarfed by the feel of it when she reaches out her left hand, and her fingers trace that bar. At first, barely the tips of her fingers, like even if her hand isn't shaking, she isn't positive her hand won't pass straight through it.

But it doesn't, and as she keeps going, her finger touch more of it, until it's half her palm, and her arm is almost straight as she navigates past the stools that stick out without even looking at them.

She remembers Dean's there not when his feet are crossing the floor behind her but a few seconds before that when the screen door rattles closed behind him, and the main door stays silent and open. She doesn't have to look. It's so deep. Deeper than her bones. And she can't look at him. She can't. There are tears in her eyes, and the last thing she's ever wanted in Dean's presence was to look like this, anything like this near him.

What Jo says is for him,

but maybe it's for the whole room,
the whole of the last three years.
To the ghost she betrayed.

"I never came back," But she did. It's easy to see the lie, even though it isn't. She went back and saw what little was left, after it came up in one of her pre-set searches for anything weird. She went back to that. But she came back to this. To her home. Every new and old hunter's home away from home. She'd always known what it cost to leave. She'd always believe somewhere too deep down, too glaringly obvious not to see when she feels this stripped bare and devoid of her walls, that somehow she'd make it back.

Somehow, someday, her mother would miss her, accept her finally even micromentally, enough to bend.

He's not sure what he thought this would be like, how he imagined she'd react — but it wasn't like this. Didn't even cross his mind, how hard this might hit her. In hindsight, he'll be the first one to say he's a goddamn moron.

She says I never came back, and it breaks his heart. Cracks it right down the middle, on the spot.

What do you say to that? I'm sorry? What the hell good would that do, and more than that, why in the hell would she want to hear it in the first place? She's not the type. Those two little words never fly in the face of a hunter. They're meaningless at best, insulting at worst.

He doesn't know what to say, but he's always been a tactile person.

Maybe it's the wrong move. He's not sure, but he doesn't question his gut. Does it anyway.

He reaches out, and wraps a hand around her shoulder. It's not a push or a pull, just a simple offer of comfort. It's just hanging on. It's just an I'm here and an I'm feeling with you.

It ain't much — hell, it's practically nothing, but it's all he's got to offer her.

The moment his hands touches down, her shoulders shift. Out flat, back, slightly down. A precarious balance teetering fast as lightning between her muddy head, her bleeding heart, and that sour guilt in her stomach. It's not a relaxation into it. It's a reminder to all but stand at attention.

Of who she is supposed to be.

Of the worst fights in her life, in this room, where tears were never an on-the-board option because she wasn't the kind. It's not this room had never seen them; people'd been triaged on the pool table and gotten too drunk to keep it in, among so many other things. She didn't care. She didn't cave. She never allowed it. Always had to be ready to take whatever it was a sling it back twice as biting. She was Ellen Harvelle's daughter.

Her mom. It stabs into her chest suddenly, in this room that is all her mom, connection to a hundred things Dean had said yesterday about being stuck here. An ache rifting her rib cage open wider. That she slams close mercilessly at the moment it's born. Later. Later she can think it. Later. Later She can deal with it.

Jo closed her eyes, rolling her eyes behind her lids, pulling a breath in her nose, and it's all the little static prickles and wetness of the tears that still haven't gotten beyond swimming in her vision. She swallowed. Rough, thick, sticking. Let it out as a slow breath that made no noise, but likely Dean could feel through her shoulders.

When she opens her eyes again, it takes a second to blink, and her head tilts before giving a sweeping look over everything in front of her, right to left, trying to smother it, too, back. Even as every new small and large thing her eyes found beat a fist harder on the back of her sternum to get out. Instead, she kept her voice as close to the direction of even as it could be forced.

"It just appeared here, fully formed?"

Edited 2022-08-15 19:52 (UTC)

His hand lingers after the question — just another two, three, four seconds before he lets it slowly drop away. Says nothing about it, nothing about the shine in her eyes, nothing about the moment of raw feeling on display, clear to anybody who knows what to look for.

He clears his throat, like his is the one gone suddenly thick.

"For the most part," he agrees, his own eyes tracking around the place like he's trying to see it fresh for the first time — or see it through her eyes, some skewed equivalent of fresh. New and old simultaneously. "Tweaked a couple things myself. The TV, the lore wall. The rest of it, though... yeah, it wasn't and then it just... was."

Not like he had to take a hammer to some two-by-fours or anything. He didn't even really have to think about spawning it in particular, no conscious thought went into let's build the Roadhouse. It was pure subconscious manifestation.

Edited 2022-08-16 02:41 (UTC)

He changed things.

Jo's head turns so that she can look at him straight on finally.
She hates and drowns herself in the fact staring at him is easier.

(She's not even letting herself move to see if there are still six letters, in the shaky line of a small child and a stolen knife, carved seated-low on the inside of the bar. Whether the box of her father's things is still in the second storeroom — the one not for the perishables. If all the books and her mother's meticulous records of all the cases to pass through.)

He changed things. That earns a slow frown. Like he'd chiseled a new name on a grave marker. Because he felt like it. Because he could. She has no clue what to do what that feeling. Because he says it, but he goes on standing there, not saying anything more than she asked, but almost a little too precisely. Like she might pop if his words had any more pressure.

So she does something she does too well. She pivots.

"Should I expect that to happen to me, too?"

He changed things.

Because this place isn't a museum to him. It's not a tomb, it's not a grave, it's not a monument to the dead. To him, this is a living, breathing place that deserves life, and growth, and change. It deserves to be what it was, what it is, and it deserves to keep on becoming. They have a different relationship with these walls, the two of them. Hers runs deeper, longer, more foundational.

His is an idea. Potential, what if, what could have been, what he could never have — but somehow, inexplicably, has.

"I got no idea," he admits bluntly, shrugging, palms slightly out. "I don't know how this crap works. Not really. I'm just wingin' it like the rest of us sorry sons of bitches. I can tell you that you can make whatever you want to here. Sky's the limit. You want sixteen rodeo clowns to pop out of a closet, I'm not gonna kink shame."

A beat, and then more seriously, "Do you, uh... You want some time? I can leave you to it, if you need a minute."

It sounds like shit, but the impossibly solid floor of the only home she'd ever had in her whole life is under her shoes. A second chance, with a dream of a thing, not the real thing. But it looks so real, it felt real under her fingertips earlier.

What would she even make? What would ever come out of her unbidden? It's the only place that's mattered in her life. She'd gone to several people's places; she's been to Bobby's out there (no more real, but probably feeling like it was), but none of them was anything like her home. Nothing was. Nothing in the whole of the hunter community existed like the Roadhouse.

Until it didn't, and then nothing resembled it at all anywhere.

At that last offer, Jo's gaze goes far enough to make it a few inches above his head, more ceiling boards than anything else, before it comes back, and she's shaking her head. It's slow, conflicted; her brows pinch, and when she looks back down, it's not really at his face this time. Lower. But not specifically at anything in focus on him or the floor.

"I don't know how I'm supposed to have an answer for that."

"Fair enough," he says, mild and agreeable, with a conceding tilt to his head.

Another quiet moment passes.

"Well, I tell you what," it both is and isn't a proposition, and he says it while he heads for the bar. On top of it, a half-empty bottle of whiskey left over from the night before. He reaches for it immediately. "I'm gonna sit here and have a drink, and if-or-when you decide, you let me know."

Until then, he'll sit quietly, and drink in companionable silence while she processes — giving her space, but not leaving her alone. It's the best thing he can think to do.

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tobeclosetohim - 2022-08-22 14:13 (UTC) - Expand

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righteously - 2022-08-22 14:37 (UTC) - Expand

Iɴ Hᴇʟʟ, I'ʟʟ ʙᴇ ɪɴ ɢᴏᴏᴅ ᴄᴏᴍᴘᴀɴʏ → sᴇᴍɪ-ᴏᴘᴇɴ

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~Handwaves this was always Bill's Leather Jacket, Because It Was~

this is the way

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