Time Throws Us Along [Closed]

[hallelujahjunction]

Who: Dan and Elle and Stacia, Dan and Bunny
What: Dan addresses the fallout of his conversation with Miguel.
Where:
When: After Christmas
Warnings/Notes: Cocaine? Cocaine. And all the other Dan warnings.

I. Elle and Stacia

Bunny's gone on a mission for a few weeks, one that Dan can't accompany him on, and the only upside Dan can see to that is that he doesn't immediately have to tell Bunny what's bothering him. Instead, he can use their bathroom counter to do lines of cocaine, which is how he spends the evening, getting coked up and smoking his vape and hitching a ride on the sleigh to Amsterdam to party. He comes back late the next morning wearing someone else's clothes, pockets empty and hair glittered, with a hickey on his neck, and goes straight to sleep, all thoughts of dooming his home universe utterly, temporarily banished.

The downside is, of course, that the comedown from a coke binge lasts for days, and the older he gets the less he feels like he's bouncing back and the more he feels like he's crawling back up from a pit. The exhaustion is the worst of it. Dan's used to feeling full of aches and pains and hangover, but such punishing fatigue sneaks up on him, so a few days after his wild night he's sitting in the communal relaxation area, listening to an audiobook on his iPod, nursing a mug of cocoa with one hand and holding some tissue to a nosebleed with the other, when he just slips off into sleep and doesn't wake until someone nudges him.

II. Bunny

By the time Bunny gets back, Dan's ready to have a proper conversation about all this with him. He was hesitant to bring any of it up, because the emotions around saving Dan's family have always been so heightened. Somehow this happy event has also brought them to the worst arguments of their relationship more than once, has exposed every crack they have, every way they see the world and life and death differently. Dan doesn't want to suggest that they should have done anything differently when the last time he floated that idea, they fought so bitterly and painfully that Dan feels it like a wound that never quite heals.

But after talking to the girls about it and having some time and distance, he's leveled himself out (and sterilized all traces of the cocaine out of their bedroom) and prepared his little mental list of all the things he and Bunny need to catch up on. Not out of apology, but just out of gratefulness that Bunny's back, he's sewn together a new flannel for Bunny, gotten some rosepetals and candles and gussied up the bed. And then he's dressed in his coziest pajamas and settled into bed himself, ready for Bunny to come be cuddled up with and groomed and adored upon his return. He perks up when the door cracks open.

"Hey, honey. Welcome back."

Comments

[hallelujahjunction]

"I can give information. I can share and cooperate. I just can't fall in line." He gives Stacia's hand a squeeze. He's glad they understand, glad that not only do they understand but that they also feel the same way. None of them feel the capacity to bending the knee to authority; it's not even that they don't want to, but that all three of them feel compelled against just rolling over, like it's something in their constitution.

"And I know better than to run from y'all. You're both faster than me." He laughs, then yawns and sits up, gathering the tissues and his other accoutrements. "Mind accompanying me back to my room and dropping me off? I'm still so tired I might fall asleep in the hallway if I go it alone."

[credit_not_blame]

Stacia giggles because while fleeing would have been an understandable impulse, it certainly wouldn't have been successful overall. Even if they didn't immediately give chase as though he were a squirrel, they would have hunted him down in other ways. But they didn't have to, because Dan politely acquiesced!

"Yeah, sure," she says, standing up herself. "The bed's going to be a comfier place to recover than a chair. You set for snacks and water and stuff?"