otherbitches | IC Inbox [ RUBI ]

Quentin makes a face like he's swallowing something awful whole, but his head rolls towards the stairs, one hand flicking to invite Billy up. Beyond the upper door, the place stinks. Heavy, round body smells--sweat and blood, the humid air that fills the caves between organs leaked out through her neck. His accoutrement still sits by the fireplace, bucket sucked dry by Ianthe, chair rocking gentle as night air slithers from window to window, picking up bits of human scent on the way out.

The knife is on the kitchen counter, still bloody. Quentin doesn't think to hide it. He drifts to the bench next to his table, sitting with his hands laced between his knees. Look away. The rest of the place looks inordinately mundane. Just a place where just a guy lives. This is where she chose to die.

It's immediately and alarmingly disgusting, the wet, humid smell of human meat, of her life blood. Quentin was right, man, he doesn't need to see this, it doesn't make him feel better. Knowing what she smells like inside out, how it beckons back to a dank and wet-smelling iron works, human meat and something else, something otherworldly.

He steps into Quentin's space. Looks at the tub, the window, then toward the kitchen and the knife. He looks back at the tub and says aloud: "I don't know what to say to her. When she wakes up."

"I kinda want to strangle her."

The hands between his knees scrape up over his face, muffling a mild groan. "Y'know--i'm glad you've got a couple days to think about it. You didn't...you didn't have any idea? That things were off with her?"

What a question. "No." Well that's not right. "Not like this."

Nothing about this has been easy. Their own bombastic fight that still doesn't feel solved, that might never get solved. Tensions in town. Murphy. Her waking up to House dead. Whatever else is happening over there.

"She said she was afraid of dying. Too afraid. I said, 'no shit.' Who isn't afraid of dying?"

Who isn't afraid of dying? He's not wrong--but it's been ages since Quentin had any normal way of dealing with that fear. "...I guess if we were back home, I would've told her to take a pill. Maybe drink more. I dunno. But...in a place like this..." His knee starts to bounce. "Do you know anything about where I'm from?"

What he knows is vague and uncertain, whispered by The Ghost Face, meant to unsettle Billy, meant to make him furious. It worked.

He says slowly, quoting Danny: "Death didn't stick. Couldn't leave."

His face twists, obviously angry. "I know you knew people I knew. Harrington. Wheeler. Byers."

The way his expression curdles worries Quentin, but the names that follow give him a good idea of why Billy looks so sour. His hands wring together, voice drops low. "...It was an awful place. I didn't realize you and Jim were from Hawkins. Not till...I mean, not till really recently. It didn't feel like great news to drop out of nowhere."

He's not any good at this part, the empathy and the hurt sharing. It's still new to him and it works best if you have tits and touch his face. He's got no script for, 'good game out there in the fog, buddy.' How'd Harrington do, anyway? Ever learn to plant his feet?

He ends up shrugging, and it probably sounds stupid to say: "It's whatever. We weren't friends." A reminder to himself that he has no business shaking with fury with Danny Johnson in his ear.

"Did you get used to it?"

They would have been friends if Billy was there. He's sure of that. You make all kinds of friends when you're integral to each other's survival. But that's a fight he's not trying to start before he's even settled this one. Billy brings it back to the point in a surprisingly graceful turning, and Quentin regathers his thoughts with a sigh.

"...No. Some days, maybe you feel that way, but--look, when you're surrounded by death like we are here, when it can happen anytime...it itches. Like someone breathing down your neck, never speaking, never touching you. Tickling. Sometimes you have to scratch the itch.

"Die, or go crazy."

"Dying didn't make me—" He trails off, frowning. Maybe it did. Less crazy, more crazy, who can say. So far, he's only bit it once, and that was disruptive enough. It can happen again, and theoretically, he'd rise again, punctually. Quentin has died a hundred times, maybe more. Billy doesn't think about his killer. Not now, with his eyes on porcelain.

"Well. What do you think? It gonna fix her?"

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