forthedog | Carrying the fire

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neil

Carrying the fire

Fires bring back a lot. There had been plenty of nights where it had been raining, or the territory they were in was too hot with Guard, and there had been no fire. But when there was it was easy to sit there warming your hands, cooking whatever food they had if they were lucky enough to have any, and you could feel like it was the center of the entire world. Heat and light. Life.

When he'd built the hut the firepit had just been a little cleared patch of earth; now he's dug an indentation in the ground, circled it with stones, brought in two stumps for sitting. Behind the hut he has firewood drying under a shelter. Light and life aren't nearly so hard to come by now and heat is pretty much constant but the fire still feels like it matters, like sometimes he should make it the center of things again.

He turns the spitted fowl slowly in the flames, smiling as he watches the skin darken and crackle. He could go back to the kitchen for dinner, sure. But sometimes half-burned bird that he's caught himself tastes better than even Eostre's cooking.

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Fresh from a shower, wet hair still curling at the nape of my neck and soaking the collar of my worn t-shirt, I make my way back to the hut in the dark, Max trotting along up ahead and the torch lamps lighting the way. My legs ache -- my whole body aches, but in a good way. Stepping off the boardwalk, my shoes crunch through dirt and sand, but I stop before I can make it all the way home, the smell of smoke and the flames just through the trees turning my feet.

I don't try to sneak up on him, but I don't say anything even when I lower myself down onto the other stump across the fire. I do smile though. Not really sure I could've kept from it.

He looks up and returns the smile, still turning the meat. "Good day?" It looks like it. It's honestly been a while since he's seen Neil this consistently at ease.

It doesn't take a lot of thinking to connect Tom to it in various ways. And Tom's also been missing most of the day, so...

"Not bad," I answer, nodding, looping a finger through Max's collar before he tries to steal the food off the spit.

"Eatin' alone tonight?"

"Doesn't look like it right now," he says, giving Neil a glance before he lifts the spit out of the fire, piercing the breast with the point of his knife and watching the juice burst out, clear. Done. But he doesn't dig in immediately. Have to let it cool.

"You eat yet?"

"Nope," I answer, and I know for a fact that's probably a fuckin' parrot or something, but after two years, that doesn't even seem weird anymore.

"So, how was your day?" There's a teasing edge to it, but underneath, a real, genuine curiosity. Maybe I even give a shit.

"Well, sweetheart," he says, tearing off a drumstick and passing it over, "they're really working us hard down at the plant. Careful, that's fucking hot." He grins and shrugs, lazily licking grease off one finger. "Good. Quiet."

"And you still managed to get dinner on the table," I snort, taking the drumstick and hissing at the faint burn of grease on the pads of my fingers. Muttering, "Goddammit," and elbowing Max's sniffing nose away, I take a careful bite, sucking grease from my thumb and giving him an approving nod.

"Thanks. Not bad."

"Could be worse," he says, eyes lingering for just a second on Neil's mouth. Just a second, no harm done. "Could be rat." He tears off the other drumstick and pulls a strip of meat off it, tossing it to Max before he bites into the rest. Unseasoned, greasy, faintly tough. For what it is, it's perfect.

"Used to be, the nights we could catch a rat were the good ones."

"Yeah, thanks. Invite me over one of those nights," I smirk, even though I know he doesn't mean here. You do what you've gotta do, and I guess I'm lucky I've never been that kind of desperate.

"How long were you out there? You and Tom, I mean."

He laughs faintly, tossing Max a piece from the breast. He'd used to feed Dexter on the sly, when Tom wasn't looking. Though he probably had been anyway, some of the time. Strange, the things we hide from people.

"It's hard to say. Thing about time there is it didn't matter so much. Everything bled into everything else." He closes his eyes for a second, remembering. "Two years? Maybe? It was something like two years when I left, anyway. Think for him it was maybe a year more. He has memories I don't have."

I nod, stripping the meat pretty quick and then tossing Max the bone. There were all those months that I remembered that Wendy didn't. Her New York City -- her life that I somehow stole away. Those few days that Brian Lackey lived, parts of my life that I've only watched onscreen.

"Isn't that just like... how it is? Everything bleeds into everything. 'less you got some reason for it not to." A fucking bright spot, whatever. Ten fucking years of my life and the only reason I knew how long it'd been is 'cause I was counting the days since he'd left me. Two years here and so much of it seems like a blur. But then, so many other things seems so sharp and clear. This place is different.

"There was a split in it," he says, taking another bite and closing his eyes again. Remembering how he'd looked in that fucking bar, lost and stubborn, like he knew he was out of place and he wasn't going to let it get in his way. Endearing and sort of sad. You'll find out. So he'd decided to test him a little first. Maybe part of him had even been trying to fight his own fate.

"Hobbes showed up. That changed everything. It was like... there was before him and then after him and that's what mattered."

I watch him, his face and all the little changes in it. The faint, unconscious smiles and then the darker things. Maybe regret or maybe just something left over when things weren't so easy -- if they're ever fucking easy. Maybe I can't read him at all. Sometimes I feel like it's not something I can understand, not completely, no matter how badly I want to.

One thing I do know, 'cause it wouldn't take a fucking genius, is a guy like Hobbes... I don't see how he could drop in and not change things. Just seems like he does that, without even trying.

"Better or just different?"

Maybe it's strange that he has to actually think about that, the fowl momentarily forgotten in his hands. Tom had showed up and that was supposed to be the beginning of the end. It had been the beginning of a lot of things. A lot of them had hurt. But he remembers talking to Neil before, about how growing can hurt.

"Better," he says finally, smiling faintly. "Took me a while to figure that out, though."

Nodding, silent, I can't help mirror that faint smile of his, lips twitching at one corner, eyes drawn to the fire, little sparks coming off it like fireflies.

After a moment, I don't know how long, I say, "I taught him to surf today." It had been easy, but I can't help feelin' like it was an accomplishment somehow.

"So that's why I haven't seen him all day," he says, finishing off the wing he's working on and tossing the bones to Max, offering the other wing to Neil. He nods off towards Tom's hut. "He's back there now, sawing fucking logs. He never usually goes to bed that early. Unless I give him a reason to." He grins. "He fall on his ass?"

"Couple of times," I grin and take the wing with a muttered thanks. "He caught one though. Only stayed on his feet a few seconds, but it was good. Really fuckin' good. Better than I did my first day."

Granted, Logan started me out slow and we sorta got sidetracked before I could even really get to that part, but... whatever.

"He's a quick learner," he says. "With some things. I'll have to get him to show me if he ever wakes up again." He goes quiet for a few seconds, watching Neil both idly and carefully, working something over in his head.

"Been spending a lot of time with him, haven't you?"

"Sure, I guess so," I answer, one shoulder rolling in a shrug. Thinking about it, all week there hasn't been a day I haven't at least seen him. I mean, I was an old lady through most of it, but I guess that still counts.

Huh.

"Hm," is all he says to that, his smile turning a little strange, and he remembers fighting about Marian. You can fuck her six ways to Sunday and I don't particularly care.

This isn't that, though. And there's no fighting to do about it, in any case.

"Just glad he doesn't feel weird about you. Guess I was sorta worried he might."

"Right," I murmur, head ducking, eyes on the fire. On the dog. On my feet. Suddenly anywhere but his face. "'s 'cause he trusts you." The tight, unexpected knot of guilt settles behind my ribs, making it hard to swallow, and in the end Max probably gets more of my food than I do. Before, all I'd thought about is what Eostre'd have done to me. Now, that seems secondary, 'cause that kind of easy, absolute forgiveness Tom seems to dole out so readily is something completely foreign to me.

He doesn't seem to feel weird, not at all, I'm not real sure I deserve it.

"That's part of it, sure," he says, still watching Neil intently, the shadows on his face, the change in his aspect and the way he seems to be looking everywhere else. He feels a twinge somewhere in his chest and for about the hundredth time he wishes he'd done things differently there, and he wishes he didn't want some of the things he can't help wanting.

"Maybe it's because he trusts you, too."

"He hardly knows me," I mutter, just about the same thing I said to him, just a few days earlier. He thinks it was just some one-off thing, 'cause we let him, and I guess it was, but writing it off as a mistake, as an accident, as just something that happened 'cause we were both fucked up... it feels like a lie.

I look up, at his face, catch his eyes, and something dark slithers up from the back of my mind before I can stamp it back down again.

"I know you," he says quietly, and he's not even sure why he says it, except that it's at least partly true. Knowing people and trusting them have always been two separate things for him and they've always taken a while, but for Tom they both seem to come quickly. He'd been trusting Mike long before he should have. Or maybe that was just something he'd told himself at the time, because the idea that Tom might see through him that easily was just too uncomfortable.

He meets Neil's gaze and holds it, sucking the last of the grease from his fingertips, and some instinct stirs but he ignores it. Establishing a line, a place he will not go to, just makes toeing that line all the more attractive.

"Yeah, I guess you do," I agree, just as quietly, and it's not just 'bout knowing details. About sharing secrets. It's more than that. It isn't really about words.

Whatever it felt like watching Tom out there on the water, that completely unguarded kind of happiness on his face that's so fucking rare that most of the time I'm not sure it exists, one thing was for sure... He's good. A good person, too fucking good, washed clean in a way I can't really understand, and a big part of me thinks I don't deserve to be any part of that. Mike, I've always felt, in a lot of ways... is like me.

He holds Neil's gaze for a few seconds more and then looks away again when that line starts to feel just a little too thin. Tonight... the setting could be very similar to a few weeks ago. The fire. Playing with it a little bit, maybe, but that's nothing new.

It hadn't felt right, then. What the hell does it feel like now?

"He's just forgiving like that," he says, a little distantly. "He knows that week was all fucked up."

"Yeah," I agree, huffing out a laugh, looking away almost at the same time he does, sucking distractedly at the grease on my thumb and then wiping my palms across my knees. Things were just too fucked up. If that was my excuse then, what would it be now?

I've been fucking around with just about anybody who'll let me, but this... it's different. Hell, this morning felt different too.

"I, uh... I better get back," I say finally, for no reason at all. I've got nothing to go back for, nothing to go back to, but suddenly I can't get this shit outta my head and I'm afraid I might fuck up. I really don't wanna fuck this up.

It makes him look up again, just a little sharply, and for an instant he feels like apologizing. It's been sort of an unspoken rule that What Happened That Week will remain... well, unspoken, and he's come close to breaking it.

Well, shit. Maybe he's tired of dancing around it anyway.

"If you say so," he says evenly, tossing the last of the bones into the fire.

Nodding, I get to my feet, dusting off my jeans and forcing myself to look at him. It's too hard, here in the dark, by the fire, letting myself dig up things better left buried. Two months ago, practically, and it was so easy just to shrug it off and act like nothing'd changed.

They did change. They're still changing.

Walking around the fire, I rest my hand on his shoulder on my way past, just a faint brush of a touch, and I murmur, "I'll see you later." Maybe tomorrow when I can go back to ignoring everything or whatever it is I need to fucking do.

He watches him move like he doesn't even notice he's doing it, all long, loose strides, and when Neil touches him it makes his breath catch. Just a little, just for a fraction of a fraction of a second, but it's there. Just a touch really shouldn't do that. It's just... this, all this tension bottled up.

He looks up and smiles faintly. "Sure."

Douse the fire and then maybe pay Tom a visit. Not to wake him up, not really to do anything... but he doesn't feel like being alone right now.

And if it takes a little conscious effort to keep him moving towards one hut and not the other, well, that's just the way it is.

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Carrying the fire

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