Thursday after open casting
Things settle back down into a more normal day after the nitwits are all ushered out. Bill wanders back to the kitchenette to grab a cup of coffee -- every time he uses the fucking coffee maker, he's tempted to tear it apart and clean the shite out of it, but he can't be arsed -- and is on his way back to his desk when he passes the door to the
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He feels the familiar surge of adrenaline and tastes the acrid burn of bile in the back of his throat, feels the thunder of his heartbeat in his temples and his back teeth, and he thinks for several long seconds that he's not going to be able to rein back the impulse to fight.
The bright, searing rage (fear, he thinks, but the two are so often synonymous when it comes right down to it) roils frantically in his belly and chest, and he can't grip it, can't hold it the way he usually can.
It takes him a long fucking time to gear down.
He barely has the energy to be surprised at Johnny's patience when he finally gets himself under control. He twists his wrist and Johnny lets him go, apparently satisfied that Bill isn't going to take a swing at him.
Bill rubs at his eyes with one hand, refusing to acknowledge the unsteadiness of it, and rolls the other into a quiescent fist at his side.
"I'm sorry," he says, and he sounds like shite, his voice is ground-glass and gravel.
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It would be ludicrous to ask if Bill's okay - the answer is a great big neon NOT AT FUCKING ALL - and it would idiotic to just let it go.
Behind Bill, on the tiny screen, Ivy laughs and says, "So when I do I get to meet the boys?"
He steps forward again, reaches for the stop button and doesn't acknowledge Bill's full-body recoil. He turns, leans back against the desk next to Bill, says fuck the State of California and lights a cigarette. He holds it out to Bill who stares at him for a moment before accepting it.
Johnny lights his own, folds his arms across his chest. "When was the last time you slept, man?"
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He shakes his head and picks up his cup of coffee. It's still too hot, but he swallows several mouthfuls anyway, and chases that with a drag off the cigarette Johnny had lit for them. It burns the back of his throat and all the way into his lungs; he isn't used to Johnny's hand-rolled smokes. "That girl, Johnny," he says, and he recognizes the fact that he's changing the subject quite deliberately, that he's only doing this partly for Ivy St. Claire (Diesi). Mostly he's doing it to protect himself from Johnny's too-intent eyes. "I saw her last night."
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From where he's standing, Bill's about to either fall the fuck apart or turn up in a clocktower with a high-powered rifle - it's no good, and Johnny considers Bill's friendship too valuable to let it go down either way.
It doesn't cost him anything to let Bill evade the question, and now he's curious, wants to see where this will go. Bill's reaction to Ivy's tape was - is - pretty fucking powerful.
"Where'd you see her? Is she all right?" He keeps his tone level and mild, but puts his free hand squarely between Bill's shoulder blades, gives him a firm, circular rub. "We used to be good friends, once, but we kinda stopped moving in the same circles."
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He takes another puff on the cigarette -- God, these motherfucking things are harsh, how the hell does Johnny smoke these every day -- and then swallows the rest of his coffee to soothe the burn of it in his throat. It doesn't really work.
"A club," Bill says, and leaves it at that for the moment. "And no, I wouldn't say she was anywhere near all right." Johnny frowns, a deep furrow between his dark brows. Bill can't think of a way to soften the facts, so he doesn't try. "She's hooking and strung out. She looked half-fucking dead."
She looked like grief had fucking eaten her alive, actually, but Bill doesn't say that, and he absolutely doesn't think about Keira, or about Nic, who already has one foot in Ivy's world as it is.
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"Freaked you a little, hey?" He doesn't wait for Bill to answer, just half-shrugs. "I didn't know, man, I'd have tried to get her some work, something, shit, I'd write her a check, but like... you know how it is, somtimes people start down a path and..." He makes a helpless gesture with one hand, the other hand moving up from between Bill's shoulders to start working the knots at the base of his neck.
"It's fucked up and it's horrible, and I hate to say it, but there's probably nothing anybody can do." Not his usual 'all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds' but Johnny's tired this week, tired and feeling old and worn out, and if Bill's willing let his masques slip a little with Johnny, then Johnny's cool with doing the same in return.
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That isn't true. Actually. He'd expected Johnny to fucking do something to fix it.
He thinks about that for long, silent moments, distantly aware of Johnny's fingers kneading at his neck but ignoring it in favor of considering just what the fuck that says about him, about his state of mind, that he'd honestly fucking wanted Johnny to tell him lies, tell him that he'd take care of Ivy, tell him that it was in his power to heal her.
What the fuck? What the fuck, he's never believed that shite. He's always known that there is usually not a whole fucking lot to be done sometimes, and it's never eaten at him like this.
Just what the fuck does he want?
He struggles with it in his mind, twists it around for long seconds trying to understand just what the fuck his problem is; he can feel his hands fisting and unfisting, and he can sense Johnny close, both hands on Bill's shoulders now, not exactly rubbing them as much as just holding them, and he realizes he's hunched over slightly, hunched like he'd hunched once upon a time (not as long ago as Bill would have liked) when he'd taken a knife slice across his chest, it had gone through the kevlar like hot butter, and it hadn't been deep, hadn't even scarred, but it had fucking bled like a goddamned river...
He wants to not know what he knows.
He doesn't want Ivy's face to ever belong to anyone he fucking cares about.
He sort of expects the face that shutters into his mind's eye to belong to Nic. God knows he's dreamed it enough times.
But it isn't. It's Orlando.
He straightens abruptly, and Johnny pulls his hands back, not quickly, but casually, like the holding had been no big deal to begin with. "I picked Orlando up at a dealer's house early Tuesday morning," he says conversationally. "He called me, told me Orlando was there."
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Johnny blinks slowly, his fear coalescing into a sharp spike of dizzying anger, before the bottom of his stomach drops out and he's left with worry and guilt.
Mostly guilt.
Shit. Fuck. Goddamn.
He pulls out another smoke from his pocket, lights it and stares at the floor. "I wish I could... take back what happened between us, and shit, man, I'm sorry, look, I'll talk to him. Because I don't... I love the pants off that kid, but it just wasn't..."
He trails off, watches the smoke rising from between his fingers. "I'll fix it."
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Not lack of sleep tired, maybe (maybe a little bit), but more the heavy heart kind of tired.
Bill's Gran had been tired like that for most of his memory.
And now he wonders if Orlando had been tired like that, too. Heavy heart tired, hurting tired.
And Bill hadn't even fucking asked him if something had happened, dammit. Hadn't even had the clarity to see that it was something more than just stupidity. Shite. Fuck. Fuck. Fucking Shite.
"I didn't even bloody ask him," Bill mutters, and jerks a hand through his hair. He's somewhere between furious with himself and unnerved at the fact that he hadn't seen, hadn't fucking realized...
"I just fucking assumed..." He looks at Johnny, shakes his head. "Assumed," he says again, but doesn't finish. "What happened?"
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Johnny assumed that Bill was taking a shot at him, mentioning Orlando might be using, might be circling the drain, because he assumed that Orlando would've confided in Bill, who, near as he can tell, is one of Orlando's oldest friends, definitely his closest.
"Shit," Johnny sighs, and pinches the bridge of his nose, takes his glasses off and puts them down on the table. He pinches off the end of his smoke; it burns his fingers and he wipes the black ash on his jeans.
"Shit," he repeats. "Orlando and I... Um. We were never really together, you know? I mean, in the sense of... well, we just weren't. So we couldn't really break up, by that logic, but I guess, for all intents and purposes, we did. If that makes any sense."
Johnny wonders, for a moment, how much he should share.
"Just wasn't... meant to be, I guess," he adds slowly, and decides to leave the explanations at that. "But... I didn't know he'd do something so fucking stupid, man, I really thought... Yeah, it's my fault, but I thought better of his fucking brains, okay, but clearly the boy got his stupid at a two-for-one sale."
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Becuase Orlando had mentioned it.
"--there are plenty of people there who would have me," he had said, and Bill had... well, he just hadn't fucking caught it. He had missed it.
"Bugger it," he says and uses one hand to squeeze at his temples, thumb and middle finger exerting enough pressure to distract him, at least for a moment, from the hard roll of guilt in his belly. "What the fuck is wrong with me."
And maybe if he wasn't such a fucking prick, Orlando wouldn't have felt the need to make subtle (ha! Orlando, fucking subtle, the world is upside-fucking-down!) allusions to what had happened, would have just fucking told him, maybe would have fucking called Bill before he'd decided to make his little foray back into the fucking Never Never land of drugs and ownership. Motherfuck.
He sighs and squeezes his temples one more time before looking at Johnny again.
"He needs help," he says, and sees the flicker in Johnny's eyes that he's almost certain means that Johnny already knows that. "Something more than either you or I can give him, J.D."
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Johnny knows this, and he knows that Bill is right, but he can't help setting his jaw and saying, "I'll talk to him."
Bill studies him a moment and Johnny suddenly wishes fiercely for a drink or something stronger, a lot fucking stronger, actually, and his hand flexes on his thigh, a convulsive motion that he can't seem to control.
"I'll talk to him, I need to anyway, we didn't leave it... badly, you know? But obviously we didn't leave it good." Johnny sighs, lifts both hands into his hair and digs his fingertips into his scalp a few times. "Shit. Listen. I want you to come by the house after work, okay? Bring Keira. I'm having the new kids over and I want you two to be there. I'll make sure Orlando comes, too, okay, do him good to get out of his own head for a while."
Johnny tips his head back, stares at the ceiling for a moment, then cracks his neck, looks back to Bill. He shrugs. "No, I know I can't fix Orlando, but what kind of shit would I be if I didn't try?"
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His eyes stray to the monitor screen for a moment, but there is no picture there now, no pretty, laughing Ivy for Bill to compare to his memory of her, no girl who's smile was eerily similar to Keira's, who had been so consumed by grief that she was hardly recognizable now.
It isn't going to happen that way, he thinks, but he isn't sure what he means. Even so, there is some kind of immense pressure in his chest, and he can't rid himself of the nagging sense that there is more than one person in Bill's life right now that could be forced to walk down a path similar to the one Ivy had walked, forced by circumstance or by the inability to clearly see the path being walked, and the only thing that Bill could conceivably do to prevent it is--
He could leave. He could stop this. He could turn the file and everything he knows over to homicide and he could back out of their lives, remove the possibility of some of that danger. Because someone wants him dead, and that someone doesn't mind innocents getting caught up in the crossfire. And even if that doesn't happen, there is still the possibility of his own end, and of subjecting them (her) (him) to the same kind of grief (maybe not exactly, but close enough, isn't it?) that had chewed up Ivy St. Claire.
For the first time in his adult life, he wishes he had someone he could go to for advice. Wishes there was someone he could tell everything to, just lay it all out, because he's beginning to suspect rather strongly that his own judgement -- which he's always trusted, always believed in without qualification -- is not trustworthy.
He's aware of Johnny watching him -- he could tell Johnny, he thinks, but he knows he won't, doesn't think he would be able to stand seeing distrust when he looks into Johnny's eyes -- and waiting, so he does what he always does.
He shoves it away, pushes it into the furthest corner of his mind, separating it from what he needs of his mind to operate on a daily basis, pushing it away.
"I told her I'd take her out on a proper date tonight," he says, "but I'm pretty sure she'll be okay with the change of plans."
He glances up and catches the edges of something on Johnny's face, old ache and another glimse of that weariness. It's gone nearly as soon as he looks at it, easing into Johnny's familiar smile (even that, though, looks strained and frayed at the edges), easy and accepting. It looks for a moment like Johnny is reaching for him, probably to rub his back or throw a casual arm around Bill's shoulders, but Bill just isn't up to it, he's too raw for contact, casual or otherwise.
He shifts and locks up his body language, closes it off, and if Johnny had intended some kind of physical gesture, he abandons it.
Bill isn't surprised.
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