There was a bustle of kindness, of care. Jade and Barry calm but sensitive, asking does she need anything. Telling her she's safe now. Casey was grateful, but after about five minutes she wished they would just forget. Not forget, really, but start acting normal. Throw some jokes around. Order pizza. Act like they don't know. Like Dennis.
Dennis, who had heard every embarrassing detail, moved through the room like the world hadn't shifted. He wasn't careful or gentle or overbearingly kind. He behaved as if nothing had happened. Like he hadn't gotten fired. Like he hadn't held her uncle by the throat and walked Casey to her only chance of salvation. Like he hadn't faced down Detective Dunn and was willing to walk out in cuffs rather than have the police find her there. Dennis was a wall of carefully constructed nothing and Casey just wanted to sit next to it for a while and feel the alone.
No questions, no touches, no half hesitant glances. Cool silence. That's what she wanted. But Dennis went down the hall.
Jade and Barry had other ideas. They moved on to distracting now. Talking and forced cheer, they were trying so hard. Casey excused herself. Said she was just tired. She forgot her things weren't here any more, that her room would be empty now.
Her shadow walked the hall before her. It passed Dennis's door and then stopped, waiting for her to move. She knew calm would be inside. That she could borrow it. He would probably let her. But it wasn't fair to him and one of these days Casey was going to start caring about that. Acting in ways that showed that mattered.
She noticed then, the crack in the slightly open door. Dennis had not latched it all the way and she realized that for all his show, Dennis had been distracted.
Fingertips pressed just enough to open. A sliver of room came into view through the crack.
Dennis sat at his desk, and it took her a moment to understand what he was doing. Scattered pieces of one of his model figurines was on the desk before him and his fingers were moving, sorting order in the chaos. Arranging and selecting each little piece, rebuilding.
His entire focus was on pieces he could put back together again. Pieces that looked jagged but fit so perfectly once you found where they belonged. There were no missing parts, no worn edges that wouldn't quite go. This was brokenness he could form into clean perfection.
She wondered then, at all the figurines she had seen lined up on his dresser. She had assumed they were done as a hobby. For enjoyment. Now she considered the opposite. That they were for the moments when Dennis's life fell apart and control was stripped from him, he could find it at his fingertips. He could narrow his focus and see only each item coming together in front of him.
Maybe it was a stress relief. A way to get through the broken times. She remembered all the figurines lined up and her heart ached realizing how many of them there really were.
Dennis didn't hear the door, didn't feel her gaze. But as his fingers worked and his brow pinched she watched him scowl and rub his eyes. He reached then to the drawer to his left, pulling out the pair of straight black glasses without looking away from the pieces in front of him. He brought them to the dresser, but his hands held before he put them on. His eyes fixed on the glasses she had given him, brow lowering, staring at them as if they were some reminder. She didn't know of what exactly but his hands began to shake.
Breath built to a panicked edge before his right hand fisted white, the glasses clattered to the desk top as his hands scrubbed over his eyes. Then with a sigh, his body calmed. His back straightened in his seat. Dennis reached forward and selected the glasses, slipping them on. He returned his attention to the pieces in front of him. Casey slipped quietly away.
"Well you're gonna need your stuff, Case." Barry was saying, he had come to find her after Jade had reminded him that Casey had moved out and hadn't left anything here. "If you tell me where you were staying we can go get it."
A thousand 'what ifs' surged to her mind. What if her uncle knew where she had been staying. What if he was waiting. Watching. Ready to find her again. What if she sent Barry and he got hurt. What if they led him right back here. She was tempted to say just leave it, there wasn't anything she needed. But that wasn't true. Her money for one thing was still in her room. She couldn't just leave it all.
"Look, you don't gotta come. We'll go, load it all up, and be back in no time. You can hang here." Jade added, picking up her jacket like it was decided, shooing Barry towards the door.
"Just need an address and a key, hun." Barry held out his hand, and Casey relented. She relented the what ifs and the fear her own thoughts were building. Her uncle didn't know where she lived. Her job hadn't known. He couldn't find her.
But she had told herself that before. And he had shown up in the afternoon sun like a relentless shadow. If shadows could grip and pull you into the dark with them. If shadows could slip like oil against your skin and stay there, impossible to wash away. The kind of shadows that winked out light.
They waved and hollered good bye and promised again that they wouldn't belong. Quiet shut the door behind them and Casey stood in it. This wasn't the kind of alone she wanted to be.
She moved just for something to do and settled on the couch. But she didn't like it, sitting with back to the empty space. Exposed in a pristine room that was too empty. She heard a door shut down the hall, and Casey popped to her feet.
Dennis felt the breathe move his chest, just a fraction away from a natural pattern, but if he focused he kept it even. It hadn't helped. He turned the completed figurine over in his hands, missing that breath of relief when it was completed. It usually helped. When something threatened to shake him out of the place of control he could always find it here. But not now. He moved through the pattern of his day but it wasn't enough. No now every thought was followed with echoes.
He hung his shirts from the dryer.
You're done here, Crumb.
He folded his work clothes and set them in a box at the back of his closet.
sometimes he hurts me
He stood in his room and stood unseeing at the door. Tremors threatened and he forced them back. With a sigh he twisted the handle with more force than necessary and entered the hall. It took him a moment to realize he couldn't hear Barry or Jade anymore. Neither of them operated in silence, and he wondered if they had gone out. If they had taken Casey with them. That would be like Barry, insisting an evening out could erase anything.
She hadn't gone out.
She stood at the end of the hall, arms wrapped protectively around herself, eyes settled with too much intent on him. There was silence and there was each other, with stretching space in between.
Dennis couldn't cross it, speak the pleasant 'how are you,' hear the scripted, 'fine.' It was a useless conversation he couldn't have.
He saw the shadow of fear. That desperate look for hope. Like she just wanted it to be over. To breath and forget.
Forget the memories listed to the detective in their kitchen, now etched in detail in Dennis's mind. Forget that she had been stripped of what it felt like to be human, that so much had been taken from her she was left rattling alone in a calloused shell.
Forget that someone had hurt her in unimaginable ways.
Dennis couldn't forget, but he could pretend. He could face her like it was nothing. Asking if she was okay was a reminder she wasn't. Dennis didn't say anything at all. He turned and stepped back into his room.
Casey stood at the end of the hall, blinking at the place his shadow had been.
It took them a surprisngly long time to be back with all her things. They were shoved in the corner of her pale grey room and left for her to sort through. She sat on her floor, pretending to do just that while the others readied for bed. But her hands didn't reach for any boxes.
There was no point unpacking. She would only be here for six days. They'd let her stay until she was safe, then she would have to find somewhere else to go.
Barry wouldn't like it. He'd probably try to convince her to stay. He didn't know why she couldn't.
Casey knew.
It was an odd thing, having everyone look at you like you were the victim, the poor thing in need of help. Innocent. But she wasn't, was she.
She had taken and used and hurt and hadn't once considered what it would do to him. It confirmed what Casey had known inside all along. There was something wrong with her. Her uncle would have never hurt her if she hadn't in some way deserved it.
She pushed up from the floor and stepped into the dark hall. Barry and Jade were behind closed doors. Casey's feet took her to the one place they shouldn't.
Dennis was not an emotional man. When emotions arose he stood to the side, watched them from a calloused distance, let them play out and die. He had learned long ago what it was to not feel pain. not feel broken. He had learned to handle this.
So why couldn't he close his eyes without starting at the smallest sound. Why did his heart beat like it held anger. Why did his hands wants to close around something other than empty air.
He felt wrong. Like his body wasn't right unless it was doing something. Like his thoughts weren't real unless they were empty. He was usually pleased with his mind, mildly proud at how well he remembered. But he couldn't get it out of his head. Not just what she had said but how she had said it. Every detail jotted down as permentally in his mind as it had been written in Detective Dunn's notepad.
A new sound and his eyes snapped open. Definite footsteps and his body moved from his place on the couch.
Casey stood a timid silhouette in the darkness.
"You should have told me."
Dennis hadn't planned the words, hadn't prepared for the anger that suddenly flooded him, the way his body moved him towards her with an intent that should have frightened. But he couldn't stop thinking that maybe he could have done something. If he had known, she would have never run terrified from her uncle, that man would have never found her. He could not reconcile the simple thought that he had put her out there, into her uncle's path with no safe place to turn. He had let anger drive her out without considering what it would do to her. Barry had worried, Barry had said, what if she needs help. But Dennis hadn't relented. He had been cold. He had been callous and Casey had almost paid because of it.
"I couldn't have," Casey answered, voice carrying a strain, and energy to it that Dennis didn't like. It felt destructive. "I didn't want to involve you, and Barry, and there's nothing you could have done."
"If you explained why you lied, we would have understood. You could have stayed," Dennis argued with forcible reason. The kind that insisted with irrational superiority that it was being calm, that didn't recognize how strained its emotions really were.
Casey scoffed, arms folding, defensive, shifting back into scorn. "You didn't kick me out because I lied, Dennis. You kicked me out because of what I did."
She stared up with defiant eyes, daring him to refute it, to avoid the subject she had placed forcibly between them. But Casey didn't want to be pandered to with gentle concern. Casey didn't want to be soothed in weakness. Casey wanted to fight, and Dennis was an edge of unsteady emotion that she wanted to push.
"I knew about your past and I did that anyway, Dennis. I used you."
Casey wanted his anger, wanted to find that scorn in his eye, to be looked at as the broken, twisted thing she was because Casey didn't want pity. Pity was for the weak, defenseless victims. Pity was for the innocent. Casey had too much darkness inside."I made you be what you hated, Dennis. I did that."
Dennis stared down at her, angry now. "You didn't make me do anything, Casey."
He should be angry. He reminded himself that he should be. She had used him, dirtied his hands and cost him what she knew he was afraid of losing.
Secrets couldn't be put back in the dark. He had discovered her lies but now he knew the reasons for them. She had gotten out the only way she could.
He could understand that. Respect it. But it didn't explain why her hands had reached for him, why she had pressed herself into his space. Held herself against him at 2am in a memory that would not leave his aching mind.
Her past could explain why she had lied but it would never explain why she had kissed him.
She had been irresponsible and selfish and had disrupted every laid plan in his life.
But he couldn't look at her and see that now.
He didn't see her brokenness, her stubborn refusal to be weak. He didn't see the fear or the anger or the shame. All he saw was Casey, soft and complicated with too much experience behind too young eyes. The lines of her face were small, thin but strong. That was the thing about Casey, she looked delicate, but she would never be. Even in her fear she fought. She fought the shadows and clung to that impossible light, forcibly refusing to let it go out. Even when she didn't know it, even when she thought there was nothing left but darkness, she still held that edge of light in her eyes. Of hope. Of compassion. Of care. She shied away from her hardened edge, ashamed, so torn by the things it made her do, never realizing it was what made her so capable of accepting that rough exterior from others.
She walked that tattered line between hardened and healed, she knew pain but believed in life. Believed in doing better, being better. She was one of the few, who could be broken and only be more beautiful.
Casey watched the angry stance of him shift into an almost gentle calm. She didn't know why, felt panic that this wasn't going to plan. He should be furious with her. Angry and hateful and everything she deserved but the man who had towered over her in frustration now settled back into calm. His hands moved, not touching, but towards her. Memory flashed of her knocking against him in that train en route to shops with Barry. The way his hand had steadied her. So naturally. So simply. Casual unresisting strength, the only way Dennis knew how to be soft.
"You should be proud, Casey. Of telling the detective."
It was the voice that spoke them that broke her first. Low and just a little uneven, enough that she could hear how he was affected. It was the words that pulled her down.
She should be proud.
Of something she had done.
Casey didn't know how to be proud of herself anymore.
She had known all along that when the anger came that Barry could never be near it. His calm and caring soul couldn't bear these types of tears. They were harsh and mean and split slits in her soul as they fell. Dennis didn't falter back. His shadow moved and hands gripped her, warm and steady touch. It guided her til she was sitting, knelt in front of her, hands constant pressure on her arms. A shield with space between for Casey to fall apart. These weren't the kind of tears that could fall against someone. They needed room to implode. They needed room to die away.
Then pain replaced the anger and Casey hands sought against him, gripping into his shirt as her head fell into the hollow of his neck. She breathed in the scent of Dennis's soap, clung to the wall of him as Dennis shifted. He moved from kneeling in front of her and turned her easily against him, settled simply beside. She clung and he stayed in a still kind of silence and the feeling of panic died away.
Dennis stared into deep shadow and felt her curl tighter against him.
His hands couldn't hold her.
Shouldn't he have known? With her curled and safe and dropping into sleep all Dennis could wonder was how he hadn't known. Before, when his touch had traced lines he struggled to forget, why hadn't he felt it? Shouldn't people know when something isn't right. Shouldn't they be able to tell when they're doing something wrong? Were his own hands really so tainted that they couldn't feel that tinge of dark anymore? He hadn't known. It was all he could think, he hadn't known how old she was, hadn't known it was wrong. But the guilt didn't care about excuses. It settled and twisted and made his hands unsure of each other.
He couldn't hold her, but he stayed perfectly still as she clung to him, and let sleep pull her softer against him. He let his shoulder shift as her head rolled and he felt her breath on his neck. He let his own eyes close and his own body relax and he let sleep pull on the both of them.