Reviewers!
stella - oops. Um. Sorry I almost made you cry?
ladybugsmomma - sooner than you might fear. :)
Sphinx - Those are pretty much the emotions I would be feeling in this situation. I think, anyway! This is one of my favorite chapters in the whole thing, though there are many things I like about every chapter, so. Uh. Yeah.
And here comes the drop...
XX
Nate never comes in the next day.
The tablet gives his location readily enough – he's upstairs, safely sequestered in his apartment – but that doesn't take the sting out of the fact that he doesn't come in. Even the other regulars seem to notice his absence, though that's accompanied with quite a few amused glances in his direction when he keeps looking up every time the door opens, every time Eliot's kittens go pouncing on laughing customers who aren't Nate.
Alec's willing to give Nate space, but when closing time rolls around, when the sun sets outside the glass, when all the customers are gone and Eliot and Sophie disappear upstairs and Parker and Todd leave for the night, when the café's closed and he's all alone, he finally lets himself into Nate's apartment.
Nate's in the bedroom, hands covered with ink and paint. He freezes when Alec appears in the doorway, torn between terrified, defiant and startled. He finally settles on defiant, the other emotions buried beneath, flickering in the blue. He puts his hands on his hips and asks, "What?"
He's moved onto the clear wall now, and judging by the amount of the wall covered, he's worked all day. The wall is warm mustard yellow, painted in whorls and broad strokes – it looks like a tribute to Van Gogh, honestly; like a painting he'd seen years ago. Green and black paint forms trees near the top. Behind them, in the spaces left the normal white of the wall, there's an outline of…something. Something lurking, something that wasn't in the original. There's a single rabbit in the middle of the painting, too, and that doesn't seem quite right either.
(He's pretty sure that rabbit's not meant to be alone.)
"It…helps me think," Nate says, by way of confession, by way of explanation. "If I…get it all out of my head."
His hands leave yellow paint on his waistband, his shirt, his forehead when he brushes his hair back, no longer looking as defiant as he had. Looking lost and wired and scared and maybe just a little bit wild. Alec reaches out to rub the paint off Nate's forehead, and the older man lets out a small noise, almost a gasp, at the contact.
…But he breaks away before Alec can think to act, pacing out, reaching out to grab Real. He pauses there, as he realizes his hands are smeared with paint; he scrubs them off on his pants and picks the little bunny up.
"Could…can you get this to Sophie? I mean. I know it's…he's not a teddy bear, but…" he hands Real over, and Alec can't help but hold the stuffed toy close, wishing he could do the same for the man. "I…think she'll take care of him."
For a second, Alec can't talk. He can only stare at the painting on the wall, the unpainted shadow gathering behind the trees. It's a strange shape – amorphous, but corporeal enough that Alec can just imagine there's blood pooling beneath it. His hand convulses on the faux fur.
"Why? Can't…can't you?" Nate doesn't answer, so he barrels on, waves his free hand around the room, the walls with the black sketches, the wall with the pseudo-Van Gogh painting, the solitary rabbit before the hunting, hungering shadow. "What's happening, Nate? What's…what's scaring you?"
"I don't- nothing. It's nothing. It's-"
"Nate. For Pete's sake, stop. Just…stop. A'ight? You have a heart-attack every time Sterling comes into the café, my café, you freak out and bolt and your heart does that running-rabbit thing any time I touch – any time anyone…" He pauses, shakes his head. "Any time I touch you." He reaches out, catches the side of Nate's neck, the join of shoulder and throat. The other man's pulse speeds up almost instantly, his breath noticeably hitching, his pupils dilating. He draws in a slow, deep breath, visibly forces the fear back down, but Alec can still feel the thudding under his skin. "You don't feel noticed. You told me yourself you don't feel…real."
Nate's still, so still, so very, very still that Alec can barely tell he's breathing.
"Let us help you. Please?" Nate swallows, and his skin shifts beneath Alec's fingers; warm and smooth. He doesn't say yes, but he doesn't say no, so Alec keeps talking. "Let me help you."
Nate looks at the painting, then back at Alec before he sets the paintbrush down.
"I'm…not allowed in the Institute."
"We may have noticed."
They're sitting on Nate's couch, the stuffed rabbit between them. Nate's jittering, one leg jumping constantly with nerves.
"I'm not allowed there, but…see. I was allowed there." He pauses, looks at the ceiling. "Had free run of the place, see. Did you know….did you know that the hospital wing is on the same floor as the computer databases?" Alec's seen the Institute plans; can see them now, pinned to the wall next to the window.
"Those computers…I made them. Designed them. I put ten years of my life into them. They're made to, you-you know…adapt this place." Nate waves a vague hand that Alec takes to mean the entire city. "I wanted them to learn, to be able to learn, to…to fix things. I mean, if the ventilation system goes down, do you want to have to wait for an engineer to get there? Or do you want the computer to fix it before half the city dies?"
There's a second of silence, and Nate stands, pacing the length of the living room. "They're supposed to learn. They pick up…what anyone near them is feeling. What anyone near them is thinking." His mouth twitches in something that might have been a smile. "My son…spent six months in the room right next to those computers."
The tone in his voice – distant and haunted – makes the hair rise on the back of Alec's neck, but he just listens.
"Six months is an eternity when it comes to a computer." And Alec knows that, very well. "Sam lived his last sixth months there. Sam…Sam died there. And I thought…I thought it was…that was the end." He grabs Real, turns him over in his hands before he flops back down on the couch. Alec can't help but notice he's sitting closer.
"We…we tried to move on. It lasted about six weeks. And then Maggie left, and I was alone, and I was so, so close to giving up…" He draws in a shuddery breath. "Two years after. That's when I got…this."
The familiar paper appears in Nate's hand, but Alec doesn't reach out to take it. He knows what it says. He doesn't think he'll be able to forget it.
"What would you do? I mean…he's my kid. Or it…it thinks it's my kid." Alec knows, judging by the look in Nate's darkened eyes, which the older man thinks it is. "It took me a year, but…I. I found my way in."
It's not one computer in charge of the city. It's twelve – one for each month. Alec knows that much, anyone who lives in the Cubes knows that much – but he lets Nate explain anyway, hoping the words make the tension go away.
(They don't.)
"When the computer are talking, when it goes from the October computer to the November, the November to the December, whatever…security goes blind for ten minutes." Nate shrugs. "That's…enough time to get through any of the doors that would flag me." He pauses, winces, hands convulsing on Real's sides. "Usually."
There's a story behind that wince, just like there's a story behind every horrible sketch on the bedroom wall, but Alec doesn't want to hear it.
"You know…those computers….they control a lot. The lights, the weather….you think they're just…reacting to the conditions outside, what things would be like without the glass, but really…they just. They. They go with what they feel like. They weren't supposed to be that way. They…grew."
He scrubs his hand through his hair again. He pauses, looking at the bunny on his lap, like he's steeling himself against what he's going to say.
"And…they can control…time."
He says it so quick, so throwaway, that Alec doesn't hear what he says next. He's thinking: Billy Pilgrim. He's thinking: Time loops. He's thinking: What eight year old kid wouldn't try to save their father? and, finally, the one he says out-loud, interrupting whatever Nate was saying.
"How long has this been happening?"
Silence.
"Nate…" He says, because he's thinking about the numbers that don't match in Nate's chip, the ones that put him at fifty-two weeks in the future; he's thinking of a list with seventeen items, tacked to the wall above Todd McSweeten with a gun. "How…how many times have you…died?"
For a moment, the silence is so heavy that Alec's worried that his logical jump is not what Nate's going through; that he's wrong and now Nate's going to think he's insane, that…that this is something else. He worries and he wishes he could take the question back and then…
"Seventeen." Nate finally mumbles to the floor, to the stuffed rabbit pressed to his mouth. And Alec just stares in numb horror as Nate inhales against the musty fur, eyes closed. "I've…died seventeen times." He gathers himself, keeps talking to the rabbit.
"There's…a way. If I could shut the computer down, keep it down…it would stop. A code. I wrote a backdoor code that…shuts everything down. But…I lost it." Self-reproach slips in, somewhere, under the hoarseness, the tiredness.
"I...finished it the day Sam…the day Sam got sick." The words falter. "I haven't seen it since. I can't find it. Couldn't find it. Again. And so I'm going to die. Again." He draws in another breath; it hitches, and there is so much pain, so much raw frustration, in the sound that Alec reaches out, closes his hand around Nate's.
Nate goes tense, goes still; lets out another almost-whimper…
And melts against Alec's side, sprawled on the couch, long legs curled up, fingers still tangled in Alec's grip.
"I can't find it, so I can't do anything different. I've tried, and I owe him to try again, but…." Nate swallows, and Alec lets himself skim a gentle hand through the tangled curls, trying not to hurt at the way Nate leans into him, warm and trembling against his hip, his thigh. "I…I just…."
"Shhhh," Alec says, soft; soothing. "You're just…you're…you're tired." Nate's been tired since Alec met him, and it's a horrible, bone-deep exhaustion that seems to radiate from his very core. His hair's soft on Alec's fingertips as he untangles the curls, smoothes them out for a second. "You're-"
"Billy Pilgrim," Nate interrupts, and the words sound almost like a sob, though the older man's eyes are dry. "You were right. I'm Billy Pilgrim. I've…always…always been…" He's fading, here; as if his confessions, his words, have sucked the energy right from his fatigued frame. "I can't…can't fight it. The moment…is structured that way."
The guilt is almost thick enough to taste on the back of his tongue, curling like blood in his throat as Nate's eyes drift closed.
Alec sits on the couch for the rest of the night, Nate huddled against his side. In the pale light streaming through the window, his hair looks like seven shades of pure silver. Alec runs his free hand through it with a sigh.
"I, Billy Pilgrim," the tape begins, the book in his other hand reads, "will die, have always died and always will die on February thirteenth, 1976."
And Alec just says, lowly, "Hell no."