"Running low." Conrad stood from the mini-fridge, bloodbag in palm, looking down at the few packets left beached along the white wires of the chilled shelving.
Worth grunts his acknowledgment, watching Conrad from under an equally chilled smile, legs crossed over the top of his desk.
Fidgeting, Conrad shuts the fridge door and pulls a folded bit of paper - a cheque - from his back pocket. He sets the paper down, presses two fingers atop it and slides it across the desk, in the general direction of Worth's ankles. "This is an investment. Self-preservation. You wouldn't deny me that, would you?" The words feel ugly in his mouth, heavy with their necessity.
Worth sniffs, face twitching. "I know someone as can help ya out. Getcha some fresh." A hard stare out of a squinting eye. "Ya need the fresh stuff, Connie. Y'know it. I know it. As yer doctor -"
"My doctor lives on the South Bend, and has a degree on his wall."
Worth's grin is brief and mean and he gives Conrad an impatient look because, no, they both knew Conrad had not taken his 'condition' to no mainstream medicinal facility in the time as he'd had it. "As a doctor," Worth presses, "I can't letcha compromise yer health gettin' sub-par nutrition. Ain't humane."
Conrad's protest shrivels up, because he can't have this conversation with Worth of all people. Knew he wouldn't understand. Knew he'd be dismissive. Worth leans forward to claw at the bit of paper on his desk and Conrad, mildly relieved, turns to take his exit but then there's a clatter of a rolling chair hitting a cabinet and a fist in the back of Conrad's jacket collar and something crumpled and small and thin is shoved down the waistband of his trousers, as if Worth had been aiming for a pocket but got the wrong fabric fold - and Conrad is propelled from the clinic, a hard shove between his shoulder blades, door slammed after, and stands there in the alley fuming, digging his cheque out of his pants, the tiny sharp edges of the paper as needlepricks against his skin.
X x XxX xXx X xX
Halloween.
Conrad found himself at Hanna's door, politely refusing the offered bowl of candy, to a red-headed snickering apology. Conrad had just come from a party his studio had thrown, smelling of flavored cigarillos and alcoholic punch, things that had soaked into his clothes, his skin, his hair. He couldn't get drunk, could Conrad, at least he didn't think so, and had only made an appearance because, well, he had to make an appearance. And then, now, here, he was making an appearance to match the other, well, appearance that he'd made.
Or something to that affect.
Hanna was glad to see Conrad, even though maybe perhaps Hanna had preferred the knock on his door to be a group of trick-or-treaters. Or a client. But that was okay! Because Bach/Moriarty/Donatello had rented awesome vintage horror movies, VHS yo, and Toni had a gig she was playing but Veser had been free so -
Conrad was ushered into the warm, festively decorated apartment with Hanna's usual aplomb. He remained at the door, feeling over-dressed, having just come from a gathering of professionals and their clientele.
"I feel like we should be out and about, tonight." Hanna deliberates beside a punch bowl, sealing a lid over a tupperware of snack mix. Conrad surveys the scene, chest heavy with the ghost of empty parties past.
"Where's Toni's gig?" Veser asks from the stretch of futon, opposite of which had been set up an old rabbit-eared television with a VCR sloppily wired underneath. He had lifted his chin at Conrad in greeting, who had in turn pressed his mouth up in something that could have been a smile if it weren't on Conrad's face.
"Like, next state over," Hanna laments, flopping to his back with a squeak of the futon's frame. "I think it's late enough that all the trick-or-treaters have retired," he muses, "And Conman's looking boss as hell right now." Hanna struggles to his elbows, holding a hand up to catch the piece of candy Caligula/Barbarella/Akinori tosses him. "We need to be public with this."
Conrad had gone purple. "It was a mandatory - I was meeting with publishers."
"Learn to take a compliment, dude." A piece of candy lands against the slope of Veser's hoodie and he barks sarcastic thanks before shoving it at Hanna, who is laughing.
Conrad looks to Franklin/Frylock/Frederico, who had dressed in a torn flannel shirt, patched jeans tied to his hips with a double-looped twine belt. Conrad takes a breath, scrutinizing, "Scarecrow?"
A congratulations hitches up the corner of the dead man's mouth. "Very good. Stockbroker?"
"Hah," Conrad snorts, fang poking through his smirk. "Sure. Commission-slave, either way."
X x XxX xXx X xX
And one evening, Conrad sits down to process his mail, spots-opens-reads and ignores an e-mail from Toni, who wanted to know if he thought her tall blonde friend was cute, and if he was single, and if he maybe had a night free to go on a double-date with her and whoever it was that she would bring - and
Conrad deletes the note without replying, having broken out in a cold sweat. The hazard, he surmised, of friendships - especially friendships born in tragedy and trauma and all things secret and unusual. Toni Ipres was unusual the same way Conrad was. The same way Hanna might have been. Definitely the same way Veser was, and the dead man. They all had this otherness in common, something that kept them from maybe enjoying the 'normal' things in life - some to a more extreme bend than others, but still.
It wasn't unusual that they'd keep in touch. That they'd be friends.
Conrad, having had all the punishments of his own unusual-ness foisted on him his whole life, resented the fact that it only took a massive fuck-ton more unusual-ness to maybe get his life, well, not back on track, but, on some sort of track. He didn't know how to handle it, the change in social ease, and frankly had never been prepared to even try. He spent that weekend processing font designs, pointedly not wondering who it was Toni Ipres would have brought to the double-date.
X x XxX xXx X xX
And one morning, daylight savings' fuckery found Conrad an hour behind, the sun rising just as he made it through Hana's door with canvas grocery-bag handles clutched in white-knuckled fists. He was spitting fury, even as the dead man helpfully stuffed a scarf into the small inlet of a window that was the apartment's only source of daylight.
"Dude," Hanna had soothed, having been pulled from sleep by the pounding racket at his door. " 'S cool, bro. Me casa es tu casa."
Conrad had been too obstinate - he'd never had a curfew when he'd been alive and liked to stretch the night hours to their very limits, just for some semblance of control. All it had gotten him this morning was a lumpy futon that smelled like Hanna's creepy magic garbage (read: not great), while the esteemed Mr. Cross himself puttered around the coffee maker in the kitchen, threadbare terrycloth robe lopsided on all the bony parts of his frame.
That evening, Conrad wakes to the noise of laptop keys rapidly clicking and skittering across his consciousness. Hanna is perched on the edge of the mattress, the laptop set up on the seat of the rolling chair that belonged to a cluttered desk (which shouldered in against the same wall the bed was crammed). Conrad had, sleeping, wrapped around Hanna's waist like a cat seeking warmth, and woke to all due mortification.
Or, well, Conrad would have woke to all due mortification, except the first thought to actually thread its way past his lips was "What are you working on?"
And Hanna, easily, replies, "Answering some questions in a forum." He doesn't sound tired, nor chipper, neither annoyed nor enthusiastic. Hanna sounds like someone who was working, who was in the middle of work, not someone who was too polite to point out that - their position? Kinda weird. A thought which pounced on Conrad only after he'd returned home, and only then because his traitorous anxiety kept pulling up the sensation of that threadbare terrycloth, and the way the fabric had left corn-row bumps between the skin of Conrad's forearm and the bony frame from which the robe had been hanging, lop-sided.
X x XxX xXx X xX
Whooo, I can't believe this fic is a little over two
years old! The Con/Worth picks up after the mild
Con/Hanna stuff has a chance to die down, I
promise. JUST STICK WITH IT. Hanna needs ta be,
like, that bridge between worlds. Know'm'sayin'?
