I'm sorry," he begins, like he always does, in a whisper, as if he's afraid God will hear him, one hand doubtful at his temple, fingers rigid and twitching, the other hanging limp, useless. The contraband rolls flat on the floor, painfully loud, coming to a stop by her foot. He looks down and away, as if for escape, eyes dim and recalcitrant, and she tries very hard not to be sick all over her nice blue shirt.
His jumpsuit makes him look pale, larger-than-life, a puppet, a little boy playing dress-up with daddy's uniform. She wonders if he looked like this when he asked Kate to marry him. If he looked like this when he left. (He left, oh, he definitely did, the pills are proof enough, she doesn't need his file to figure that out, and she feels a sudden hollow surge of sympathy for Kate.) The sweat beading his forehead makes her want to cry and slap him hard and show him what disappointment means.
"How long?" she asks, soft, trying not to scare him, trying not to hate him, and as he shifts his weight, the clock's incessant ticking rings out so loud, and the keys in his pocket jingle. Janitor was a bad idea.
He looks almost as if he's going to say I'm sorry again, only this time it'll be a question, one last shot at innocence, at denial, but then she moves closer, by an inch, and that leaves them just half a pace apart, and she can smell the shampoo in his hair, taste the dry need in his veins, and his face quivers. His eyes flutter shut, as if her reaction will make it real.
"Five months." His voice is dull and cracked, like dry leaves crackling, like static, like he is thirteen years old and trying to talk like a man.
She nods, because there is nothing she could say even if she felt inclined to speak, and bends at the waist to retrieve the meds, lock them away where he will never, ever find them again (she hopes, but doesn't waste her energy on a prayer), but he beats her to it, eager to please her, to help her, and this is the worst part of all, this misguided confusing chivalry that makes her think of tents and salty surf and sand between her toes and wanting to be safe more than wanting to be saved.
His thumb brushes against her palm as he lingers, hanging on as long as he respectably can, and when he looks up at her at last, long fingers, cold and clammy, slipping home to his front pocket, his eyes are black, pupils blown-out and glassy and empty. The canister is warm in her hand.
A door slams at the next house over and someone is waxing lyrical about the Sox, the fucking Sox, can you believe it, and he jolts and shakes; there is grey at his temples when he bows his head and she leads him out the back door, into the half-light. She doesn't hear the way his footsteps halt for a moment by the medicine cabinet before continuing, so much heavier than hers in the empty room.
They are two steps from the door, from the blessed end, when he falters--"Don't"--, reaching half-out, as if he's going to touch her. The light makes him look even older, and she wants to tell him to shut up, to stop, to go home and get some sleep and come back thirty years from now. Maybe she even flinches, because he thinks better--worse--of it and his hands go to his hips by default, and she takes it back, this is the worst part, him trying to be someone he won't be for decades. Being so close makes her ache all over, and she imagines this is what it is to be a junkie.
She needs to lie down.
"Don't--don't tell--" and he is whispering again, pleading, and she doesn't know who he's afraid of, Kate or James or the bogeyman, she doesn't want to know, because she knows it isn't her, and that is more than enough.
"I won't if you won't" comes out smooth, cutting him off, and she's not sure whether she meant that or not. Her smile reeks of rehearsal, and he reels away, blinking, not a little afraid, because she said this to him before, in another life perchance. That explains the sour twist of deja vu in her stomach that is almost like guilt.
When his half-smile appears, even more wooden than hers, she has to look away. Sorry dies in her throat as she locks the door behind them and brings her forearm to her forehead to shield her eyes from the sun, blinding in its brightness, and maybe, just maybe, to disguise her expression. Sorry is the worst word.
He asks her if she's okay, tentative, barely audible above the thumping of her heart, eyes hurting for her more than they hurt for him, and she hopes to God that saying yes doesn't make her a liar.