kindasuitsme

He's not all that good at counting days.

It bothers him slightly, but he thinks it bothers him more that he cares. It's irrelevant now, isn't it? Whatever pretends to be time down here, the name that Daisy's sure he won't keep. He has been reading more and more books, trying to jar himself out of his own perspective, but this plan contains the fatal flaw that he can't read while Daisy does her thing.

She'd find it insulting.

Tonight, for a given value of, Matt's in another of these somewhat-less-than-reputable bars. He is drinking, half waiting for Daisy and half hoping that this will be a night she forgets about him.

Matt is not sure how he gets back to his place.

He knows it lightens and goes dark again a few times before he moves from the couch. When it's dark, fear makes him shiver; but it's the sort of paralytic animal fear that means he doesn't risk traversing the space between couch and light-switch. It's the fear a child feels.

He was wrong.

He was not prepared.



Everything he ever did with Sandy, the Girls, shit, everything Obadiah Stane ever did and everything leading up to the moment of his death, that was nothing. He has been elevated or cast down into an entirely new sphere of experience. He still feels hacked to pieces.

At least he never has to go through it again.

(If that's the case, though, why does everyone he's met down here seem filled with either caution or bravado?

Isn't there nothing left to fear?)


* * * * *


Matt ends up concluding two things:

He would like a drink.

And if he has to look at Titus Andronicus again he'll be sick.

In that spirit, he drags himself to the library.

The same librarian is at the front desk, which makes Matt relieved enough to cry. He arches an eyebrow when Matt hands him the book.

"When I said back on time, I didn't mean you didn't get to finish."

Matt has difficulty meeting his gaze.

"I read fast."

"Do you." Beat. "How was Gestalt?"

"Eh. Little dead."

"That's hilarious."

When Matt finally looks up, he may be projecting due to general dread and misery and the jumbled sense that he did not get put back together in the right configuration-- but he thinks he sees some sharp, annoyed value of concern on the librarian's face.

"Got any other recommendations?" he asks.

The librarian's eyes narrow. They're brown, a warm chocolate brown that seems startling in his sharp, annoyed face.

"Lots," he says. "If you like Titus, you'll love the Duchess of Malfi."

"For bars."

His mouth presses into a displeased line.

"Well, do what you want, I guess." He takes up a pen and scribbles on a fresh notecard as if the paper has offended him. "Here."

Matt takes the card carefully, eyes flicking down the list.

"Thanks," he says.

"Sure." The librarian's tone is sardonic. "I'll be waiting on de Sade and Dante."

Matt says, "You've got a good memory."

To which the librarian smiles, another mordant sliver, and says, "Years of practice."


* * * * *


Matt discovers the subway system and, as he was with the discovery of Downside's variable architecture, is immediately enchanted. One, there is a subway system, and two, it's a little … surreal.

He could sit there all night, on his way to absolutely nowhere, but he has some self-destructive drinking to accomplish.

The building's a seedy-looking place crammed into a block with seedy-looking others, neon declaring Pins & Needles. Seems promising. Inside, the people don't quite remind him of Gestalt's crowd: there's a canniness in their awareness, almost a swiveling to look when he comes in. He can't actually catch anybody looking, though, or at least not staring.

He orders a gin collins and sits down.

The gin seems to help with his suspicion that he's come back not all-the-way put together. He knows in the back of his mind that the warm gloss will fade, and likely leave him feeling as bad as before, but for the moment he'll take a temporary solution over none at all. He tries to ignore the feeling he's being looked at.

He is starting on his fourth gin collins when he catches the flutter of a dress at the corner of his eye. A warm, lovely voice floats towards him, making his stomach drop:

"You're not drinking alone."

Daisy looks beautiful in the dim light, her pale dress and pale skin and golden hair making her seem lit from within. Something luminescent under deep water, swaying with an unseen tide. She tends to get Matt thinking in poetics.

O be to me though thy hard heart say no--

"Daisy." His voice sounds rough enough to crack, though even he hears the slur in it.

She slides with careless grace into the seat opposite.

"I was wondering if you'd find this place." She smiles. "This absolutely proves my theory."

"I just wanted a drink."

"Hmmm." She laughs, just a soft one. He still wants to lean in to hear it better. "I don't know, sweetie-- Matt, was it?"

"Yeah-- yes."

"Hm. I just don't know. The thing is, I've got experience. I've been everywhere," she sighs, "and seen everything, and done everything, and it gets a person very aware of patterns. What's underneath."

She flashes him a lovely smirk, and he feels sick.

"I don't," he says very carefully, "know what I want yet."

"Don't you?"

He thinks she's going to get up and leave, it feels like a coda. But when she does rise, it's to cross to him and draw her fingers over his shoulder and he can't summon a single thought strong enough to make him move.

"Won't you kiss me, Matt?" she breathes against his ear.

It might be the fear that keeps him rooted to the spot.

But it's probably the gin that has him thinking what the hell.


* * * * *


When he wakes up, he doesn't have even the faintest hangover.

He is lying in a sticky pool of what-- as he recalls-- is his not entirely dried blood, and that sick, hacked-to-pieces feeling has returned with a vengeance.

Daisy is gone. But she has left a card, signed with a lipstick-print of what he's willing to bet is not lipstick.

You see darling, I was right after all.

Come back and see me anytime.

In the morning light, Matt starts to shiver.

On his third day Downside, Matt scrubs his kitchen floor with soap and water and thinks about pain.

There's no record of it on his body; his mind and his floor are the sole keepers of that privilege. That having been said, his mind remembers it perfectly well and he's in no hurry to repeat.

And yet.

He never figured out the appeal while he was alive. Sure, he likes pain, but only certain kinds of pain: nonlethal, non-tendon cutting; being struck or held down; vampire bites forever and ever, though he wonders if they actually have vampires in this version of forever. He never liked the rest of it, the hardcore stuff. Your hacking up and setting-on-fire and nails dug into open wounds.

So why, why oh why oh why, did he keep going back?

Even if he pulls a miraculous feat of self-analysis and figures it out by the end of the week, he's not sure that it'll help.

---

"Titus Andronicus … de Sade …"

The librarian who scans his books (using the omnipresent, omniuseful ten-digit code he's been assigned) sounds amused beneath a patina of boredom. "You do know that there's a third book in The Divine Comedy, right?"

Matt's lips quirk.

"This might be purgatory, but I highly doubt it's Paradiso."

The librarian rolls his eyes and hands over the books.

"These back on time or I hunt you down."

Matt wants to say I hope you do. He wants to ask how he got this job. He wants to ask if he had a sentence, and if so whether he went through with it, and if so whether he regrets it.

Instead, he asks for directions to a decent bar.

"Try Gestalt." The librarian scribbles on a note card. "Not too many torturers, usually."

Matt's eyebrows climb. "Does that make a difference?"

The librarian snorts.

"Just try it. Later you can drip blood in the water all you want." A pause. "And seriously, don't fuck up the books."

---

On the fourth day, following a reading of Titus Andronicus that now seems to carry real-world implications, Matt tries the bar.

He likes walking through this part of Downside. There might not be any sun or distinguishable weather, but the variable architecture is a real trip. He reaches the place easily enough. He's almost sad for an end to the walk.

Then again, he has forever to wander.

It's ... typically barlike, inside: dim lighting, booths, a pool table and pinball machine. But whereas Matt usually melts anonymously into these types of places, surfacing only to chat up cute strangers, now he experiences an acute, first-day-of-school anxiety.

Trying to get a drink isn't much better.

"Hey fresh meat, you buying?" hollers the bartender. She flips blue-black hair over her shoulder; she's pierced and tattooed. More than a drink, he wants to ask her how she gets it to stay.

"Uh," he says, drawing closer. "You do a Rusty Nail?"

She flashes a fierce grin. "Do I. You paying in space or trade?"

His guide explained this part to him, but he can't give up the space; it's not really his to give. Matt consequently came prepared, and digs through his pockets.

"Will any of this work?" he says, laying the odds and ends down on the counter. At the sight of one of them, a lump of rectangular plastic, the bartender's face lights up.

"A Gameboy!" she squeals. "This is retro shit, it's not even color."

Matt interprets this to mean that it's a commodity of at least some value.

"Will that work?" he says.

"If I can scrounge for batteries, but there's always shitloads ... oh to pay, of course, I'm keeping this." She swipes the Gameboy off the counter and pockets it, then proceeds to sling bottles and glasses at a rate that should be deadly.

"Your Rusty Nail," she presents with a flourish, and grins. "Drink up, twiggy."

Matt grimaces.

No one's called him that since tenth grade.

"Thanks," he says. "It's ... Matt, actually."

The bartender waves a dismissive hand.

"You'll ditch it," she laughs. "Everybody does."

And before he can ask her what she means by that, someone orders a drink and she's off.