Vayan Plot: Aftermath

[nomorekaraoke]

The noise is too much. The noise is too much and it's eating its way inside his head and there's nothing he can do to keep it out but to pretend absolutely everything is all right, everything's fine

Comments

[sunnydalealum]

Back in the kitchen, Doc has pronounced Seth fit to be sent home under supervision. She’s volunteered to find Lorne and let him know.

She knocks tentatively on the door of Lorne’s office, and it drifts open under her knuckles. “Boss?” she asks cautiously, her voice a bare thread of sound in the silence.

There’s no answer. With the tips of her fingers she pushes the door a little further open, and slips through.

The room inside is dark aside from a faint reflected glow of city lights through the venetian blinds, an illuminated clock face on the wall, and a thin hard sliver of light from underneath the closed bathroom door. The sound that filters through that crack is even fainter than the light from the window, and there’s really no reason why such a tiny sound -- whispered, stifled, barely there at all -- should freeze her where she stands.

Hhuh. Ah-huh. Hh.

[nomorekaraoke]

One long moment of nothing passes, nothing at all where he just breathes. It's one of few times he'd call breathing laborious, but there you have it. It's the hardest thing he's ever done, but he's doing it, and slowly, oh, so painfully slowly, he bunches up enough control to splash some water on his face, to fix the mess he's made. Not looking himself in the eye, just checking his face for any sort of telltale signs, he picks up the pieces. He's fine. He's cool. He's peachy fuckin' keen. More importantly, he looks like it, and that's all that matters.

He takes a deep breath, slowly. He takes a deep breath and turns to walk out the door, turning off the lights on his way out. Time to be Boss Guy again.

[sunnydalealum]

She’s standing just outside the main doorway when the bathroom door opens, one hand poised on the door as though stopped in the act of opening it. “Boss?” she says uncertainly, looking around the darkened office. “Are you -- oh.”

(The carpet in here isn’t deep enough to take footprints. There’s nothing to show that she ever ventured further in than the threshold.)

[nomorekaraoke]

He looks up, clearly surprised that she's there. In the sudden darkness, he hopes, she can't see the way his eyes widen one too telling heartbeat before his mind catches up. "Hey, kitten. Didn't hear you knock or I'd been right there with you." He smiles, every inch the friendly boss, every last molecule focused on keeping up the front. He's been doing it for his whole lifetime, and old habits die hard.

"How is everyone?" His brow crinkles in real, undisguised concern. "Seth?"