milliways_bar | (no subject)

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As much as he tried to convince himself that he wasn't getting sick, Tommy wasn't immune to that weird flu that's been going around after all.

Because now his name isn't Tommy. It's Wayne.

And after several days of not shaving in his flu-ridden delirium, he decided to give himself a mustache.

"Aw, c'mon, Miss Bar," he says, his usually rapid New York City bark replaced with a slow, Midwestern drawl. "You can't deny a fella just one sip of whiskey, now can you?"

A napkin appears. Yes, she can. Because of reasons.

Wayne sighs. Deeply, and sadly. Almost depressive, defeated. His shoulders hunched over, he slouches on a bar stool and lights a cigarette with tremulous fingers.

And yes, he's wearing a straw cowboy hat.

[OOC: Probably one of the last victims of the IMDb flu! Tommy is now Wayne from a movie called Jesus' Son.]

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Now he's quiet for a moment. He knows he hasn't won this, and never aimed to in the first place. He hasn't won anything in his life.

"'Cause I don't got nothin' else."

She clucks softly, her hand tightening slightly around his arm.

"Why d'you say that?"

He glances at her and gives a resigned shrug.

"'Cause I just don't. No kids, lost my wife, lost the house. Never could hold down a job for more than a couple months, and after my wife left, there didn't seem no real reason to, other than to eat and keep a roof over my head. I don't need much. I don't want much."

Pausing as he gazes out toward the road ahead, he sighs.

"I just wanna forget."

She feels a sharp stab to her heart.

It's still Tommy underneath it all, and there's a fierce protectiveness rising up at the thought of him suffering, even secondhand. However, it's more than that.

"So did I, once 'pon a time."

She keeps her eyes ahead, expression giving nothing away.

"You ain't the only one who's lost everythin'. Everythin' I once had's gone up in smoke. So I drank t'forget, drove off the people in my life, an' you know the real sonnovabitch in all that? I didn't forget. Not even a moment. It was all for nothin'."

Not expecting a reply like that, he snaps his gaze toward her when she speaks, a line between his brows. He may not know (or remember) everything about her. But now he realizes why the look that he's seen in her eyes before seemed so familiar. (It's what Tommy saw in her eyes, too.)

Now her expression is set firm against the sorrow behind her words.

Quieted, he turns to stare ahead of him as well.

He sighs again, as his long, loping stride somehow manages to match up with her step. Like they've walked together like this before. It's comforting. His heart is heavy; yet her hand around his arm seems to take up a small part of the burden.

"'M sorry, darlin'. I don't want for anybody to lose what means the most to 'em. But at least you got somethin' else back, didn't you? Someone?"

She wasn't fishing for an apology, she was just trying to snap some sense into him. She'd say as much, except his question catches her off guard.

She looks up, eyes a little round. Opening her mouth, she realizes she doesn't know what to say. She never expected to be in a position where she'd have to explain their relationship to him, and it quite frankly isn't fair. The automatic, sure thing answer is no, I didn't, because Tommy isn't a 'someone'. He isn't a thing, or a future, or something she can ever hold onto. Except — something changed over All Hallows' Eve. She'll be damned if she knows what, but it felt like there was a moment between them where things — shifted. And, Wayne or not, she's not going to say something Tommy might remember later and hold against her. She don't know how he feels anymore, she just knows that it's complicated, and he gets his feelings hurt awful easy.

Of course, if he is going to remember anything, he'll remember this long awkward pause where she looks more than a little devastated, like a city reduced to rubble. So she blinks hard and looks away, shaking her head almost imperceptibly.

"Not sure how t'answer that, Wayne."

Her voice is low, lacking emotion. She cares about Tommy perhaps more than anyone else in the universe, but she lost her whole life, and Tommy's repeatedly told her that's the one thing he can never give her.

So no, she didn't get somethin' else back at all. What she needs to live, she takes. Everything else is whiling away the time until she ends up wherever Sam is.

"Point is, y'can't run away forever. Things always catch up t'you."

Her answer takes a long time coming, and he immediately wonders if he'd crossed some line, making her uncomfortable. He didn't mean to, and he wouldn't insist on an answer if she didn't want to give one. It's not his place. At the look on her face, another apology is on the tip of his tongue when she responds with a stoic, noncommittal statement. And he'll accept it without pressing her, falling ruefully quiet again.

After some silence, he shakes his head.

"It don't feel like I'm runnin' from anything when I been sittin' so still. Ain't nothin' been chasin' me. If there was, they'd passed me by a long time ago."

He sniffs and shrugs, lifting his chin a little (but not by much).

"I take what comes to me. Good or bad. I'm happy when it's good things. I try not to complain when it's bad things. Not much more I can do."

Shit, she needs a drink. Ain't that ironic?

She scrubs at her brow, wondering just how hypocritical it would be to send him off upstairs while she knocks back a drink or two. Just enough to steady her nerves, and loosen the sudden rock in her throat. It shouldn't bother her. She's known the way things are for a long time, now. But, for some reason, she feels all tied up inside.

Maybe it's just 'cuz he's sick. Maybe it's 'cuz they haven't seen each other in so long, and now he don't even remember who he is. She's just a little off-balance, is all.

"Well, s'hard t'walk when you're three sheets t'the wind."

It's blunt, but not unkind.

"You stay in one place long 'nough, you'll die there. Life don't come t'you, Wayne; you hafta go to it. If you're not ready t'take it by the horns, you're always gonna be missin' out. Who knows what might'a been right under your nose that you couldn't see, 'cuz you were too busy lookin' for oblivion?"

He appreciates the bluntness.

"And that's why sittin' still is best for me. Less chance of fallin' over."

His tone is wry, staving off the seriousness as much as he knows how.

"I mentioned I never could keep up with my wife. She's like you, a free spirit an' all. I loved her 'cause of that. She told me pretty much the same things you said, but we both eventually figured out that I ain't like her and never would be. And she deserved more than what I was."

He looks at her, with the weary expression of one set in his ways, though there's something in his eyes that isn't quite dead yet.

'M alright where I am, darlin'. You don't hafta save me."

There's a hitch in her step. He'll be able to see the frown from where he is, even without her looking at him. That doesn't last long, though. She turns to face him, halting their progress to the bar.

"Who said I was tryin' t'save you? Or turn you into some kinda free spirit?"

She arches an eyebrow. She's a gentle soul underneath all that Texas steel, but sometimes she gets this look about her like you could very well be the stupidest fella on Earth. It's not mean-spirited in the slightest, but it still rests on her with blatant incredulity, like maybe you should rethink your words and get back to her when you're making sense again.

"You said all y'do is drink until y'run outta money, then go t'work so's you can start drinkin' again, 'cuz you ain't got nothin' else. So which is it? You like the empty merry-go-round of sittin' in one place like a bump on a log, or y'do it 'cuz there's nothin' else t'do?"

He abruptly stops walking when she does. His expression doesn't change, even as she makes her points, asks him questions that he's heard before but could never find the right answers for. If anything, that droopy mustache of his only accentuates the permanently hangdog look on his face.

He shrugs.

"It's all I know."

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