Keep Yourself Safe

Nathan

Nate has never been to his father's place but he's been in the city for nearly a year and the address is on a street that is familiar to him so he doesn't have to know exactly how to get there. Only that he can.

He doesn't think Flood or anyone else will still be after him but he isn't quite thinking straight when he leaves Florentine Gardens. Doesn't remember to sign out and the receptionist doesn't catch him leaving because he goes out a side door. Doesn't want to go home because he doesn't want to be alone and in not wanting to be alone he doesn't want to involve anyone else either. Doesn't want to run to Lux even though that is what she would want and he doesn't want to talk to Molly right now either. Molly and Flood have some alliance that he doesn't understand anyway. He and Carole aren't talking and won't talk until the case goes before the grand jury and someone finds out she's the one who handed in the anonymous tip about the Ziplock bag in the basement.

A creature capable of conjuring appendages out of shadow threatened his sister and his parents tonight. Says something awful about Nathan that he doesn't worry about his mother, maybe. But his mother is in Nebraska and his mother keeps a shotgun in the closet even though she is not herself a violent woman. He's not worried about his mother and he never has been.

So he rides his motorcycle downtown to the address from whence his father sent him a letter on his birthday last year. Hopes it's still his father's address. He has no idea. He parks the motorcycle and pulls off the helmet and carries the helmet with him to the front door. Every shadow leers at him. He's wide-eyed and breathing fast by the time he reaches the front door.

Knock knock knock knock knock knock knock.

Theodore

Theodore Amherst lives in a townhouse in a residential portion of downtown Denver. He can commute to work easily if he wanted to commute instead of take his car. He doesn't often commute to work, because that's what his car is for. By sheer chance is Nathan able to get all the way to the door without security stopping him, without a fence barring his way, without somebody asking the kid what he thinks he's doing. There is no front yard, or if there is it is sparse.

And it is dark, here. Outside Theodore's house. Darkness is everywhere, isn't it? That streetlamp over there casts a dulcet pat of butter-yellow on the kerb but the butter-yellow dissolves and dissipates and bubbles into darkness and there's a sewer drain somewhere and it's nothing but black there. People are out because it's a Thursday and the weather's doing whatever the weather does, a cold-snap, snow in the air, and the people are hurrying to their home or to that Thai-Hawaiian fusion place on the corner or they're starting their weekend early.

What is it, 10 o' clock pm? 9 o' clock? Most people aren't settling in to sleep by then. Not if they're busy.

The door flings open and there is Theodore, dressed in khakis and a marled dark blue-green sweater, glasses perched on his nose, devilish eyebrows doing a number that means surprised as fuck. His expression starts off intense and intimidating like he's going to glare somebody into - and then that expression lifts (with his eyebrows, see) into something baffled, concerned.

"Nathan, what's this about?"

Nathan

The door flies open and the person standing outside on it startles because he was hoping his father would at least give some indication of checking before he did open the door. Once he'd pounded on the door he had turned his back to it to keep his eyes on the darkness behind him. Breathing fast and willing himself to breathe slow. His will saying No. No, you're scared out of your fucking skull, kid. You need a lot of oxygen to stay sharp.

So Theodore sees a leather-clad back and short straw-colored hair before the person knocking whips around and then he sees his son's eyes are afraid to blink and his nostrils are flared because he's breathing through his nose fast enough that a medical professional would label him agitated.

Has his father ever looked at him like that before? He can't remember. His father has seen him look scared before but he was a child then. Ghosts weren't real then.

"Are you alright?" Nate asks fast because he wants to get the question out before he looks over one shoulder first then the other to make sure no one is coming up behind him on the sidewalk.

Theodore

"Why don't you come inside," Theodore says. He steps back, holding the door open, and he looks up and down the street as well, as if he might see some cause for Nathan's distress.

Nathan

He raises a hand like he's trying to catch another thought. Pluck it out of the air and put it in this one's place. But then he abandons the effort and brings the hand up to his unscarred temple. Keep the rest of his thoughts from tumbling out as he nods.

Wait a minute--

He looks over his father's shoulder like to make sure no one is skulking around behind him. Could be his father is under instructions to act normal at the door. It's not paranoia if you have reason to believe in the delusions sprouted up inside your head but Nathan looks the kind of paranoid that could get real dangerous real fast.

"Because I--" he starts to say before he lets go his head and turns it sharp when the breeze blows an empty cola can hard into the street. Could have been a shoe kicking it. It's just the fucking wind, Nathan.

"Jesus Christ. You're alone? Right? Nobody's come by in the last..."

Theodore

"Get inside, Nathan," Theodore says, and this time it is not a request. This time it is an order. Doesn't snap out brisk, sharp. But it's imbued with the habitual wielding of authority.

"I'm alone right now." He is a perceptive man, Theodore. And he's giving Nathan a close look, although trying not to be too obvious about it.

Nathan

Doesn't matter how long it's been since Theodore was allowed to be a father to his kids. The oldest one at least can remember responding to that tone. And then he went into the fucking Marine Corps. Nathan's compliance is not a difficult thing to secure if he respects and trusts an authority.

But he doesn't move until his father says he's alone right now. Only then does the young man nod a harried nod and give a final just-making-sure glance over his shoulder. He releases a breath that he'd been holding all this time and it shudders out of his body as it departs and he steps into his father's house for the first time.

When the door shuts he's wandering slow through the foyer with both hands scrubbing his face. Breathing slow and purposeful. He does not suffer from an anxiety disorder. He is not emotionally unstable. He does not relive his time in the war and he does not believe things that are not true. It does not take long for him to coax himself down out of a state of heightened alertness and he does not talk to himself while he does it.

Theodore

Theodore's place is nice. Hardwood floors and a stone fireplace and where the walls aren't covered in bookshelves they're covered in framed photographs or art prints. Those photographs do not seem to be of people he knows. This probably isn't a good time for Nathan to investigate what it is his father (estranged, until recently) chooses to put on his walls. Nor is it a good time for him to study the books. Many of them are law books. Many of them are thick and weighty reference tombs. Many of them Theodore has had for years. It was only in his childhood that fires and breakins plagued his things.

Theodore shuts the door. He latches the door-chain.

The lights in the hall are off. The lights in the living room are off. A gleam of knicknacks, ambient glow on picture frame glass. The only light that's on is a small light in the kitchen, an oven-light.

"This way," Teddy tells him, and leads him into the kitchen. The kitchen is nice, too. More kitchen than a bachelor should need, but where else are his ladyfriends going to make him breakfast (all right all right all right) where else is he going to dazzle ladyfriends with his breakfast making skills? There aren't a lot of knickknacks in the kitchen; it's very utilitarian, very heartless.

"Wine?" he says. Nathan's not still on medication, is he? No; he's off it. He said so at their dinner. "Orange juice?"

There are no pictures or menues on the refrigerator.

Nathan

He's six feet tall in his bare feet and with motorcycle boots on Nathan is another inch or so taller. Doesn't quite tower over the old man but he does have a hand or so on him. Enough that Theodore has to look up to see his face if they're standing close. Doesn't take any effort to get his kid to follow him into the kitchen. Theodore can hear his boots clomping on the floor as he walks behind him.

Once they're there he drops his hands from his face and flexes his fingers several times. Hovers on the threshold between the kitchen and the living room and he doesn't like having his back to the darkness but he's making himself tolerate it. Now that the adrenaline is done pumping through his body he's covered in sweat and the sweat is evaporating and he's colder than he was earlier.

In the unnatural fluorescent light Nate is very pale and his eyes are still very dark and he looks sick from the fear that drove him out here. He already confessed to hearing voices at dinner last weekend. Could be he's having some kind of an episode but he doesn't look like he's on drugs.

Nate's voice is weak and a bit gravelly when he says, "Whatever you're having."

Theodore

"Take a seat." There is a floating kitchen island accompanied by two stools. Above it hangs not a myriad of pans but an industrial steel lighting fixture, something very modern and very expensive looking and very heavy. Amber coloured lights, when Theodore flicks the light on it bathes the kitchen in an easy ambient glow. Mingles with the oven light. There are still any number of shadows: but nobody to make 'em wick to life, eh? No thin stiletto of a man with clover-green eyes. Right?

Theodore takes a couple of glasses (the kind of wine-glasses without stems) from the floating kitchen island, which is apparently nothing more than an extremely convenient booze cellar. He takes out a bottle of red - a merlot - and doesn't need to fumble around to find the cork-screw. Theodore knows where everything is because Theodore lives alone. He decides where things go. He doesn't have a cat and he doesn't have a dog.

Had a dog, but Nathan probably doesn't even know that.

As he pours, he watches Nathan. He has a decent poker face. He waits until Nathan has at least fidgeted with the glass before saying anything else. That anything else is, "Follow a hot lead that turned too hot?"

Nathan

Long ago he taught himself not to want to see his father. He didn't have a choice. His mother decided for them that they were not going to have a relationship with him after the judge finalized everything. If his father sent letters while he was in high school Ron was a farmer. He was home during the day when the mailman showed up. Easy enough to tell the kid Well what do you expect but Nathan didn't expect anything.

So he can sit here now and know nothing about Theodore's life and just observe. Make nothing of it. Watching him go through the rote of fetching glasses and opening and pouring wine gives Nate something to watch without attention. Let his nerves get used to silence again.

It's now that his hands start shaking. His body has to rid itself of the hormone now. Metabolize it. They don't shake so bad he can't hold the glass but it makes him frown to see the merlot slosh as he tries to hold it. The rim of the glass clacks against his teeth before he takes the first sip and then he sets it back down.

Nate huffs out a laugh that sounds pained. His eyes are aimed down at his glass now but Theodore can see a deep furrow between his son's brows.

"I think I need new friends," he says. The second sip is more of a deep swallow.

Theodore

The only friend Nathan opened up about last time was Carole. Easy to talk to the man who has no luck with women about one's own shitty luck, perhaps. Theodore watches Nathan's hands shake and if he's concerned, well. Of course he's concerned. He is leaning his forearms against the island counter, but not sitting down.

"Things didn't go so well with what's her name?"

Nathan

"I haven't seen her."

Of all the places he could have gone tonight not to be alone he decided to come here. He's staring down into his wine glass and making nothing of the color of the wine. From where he stands Theodore can see his son is troubled. Maybe he's always been troubled.

He draws a breath in through his nose and looks back up. Laughs another breathless laugh. It looks like that frown is never going to leave his face.

"A man attacked me in the park last year. Messed me up pretty good. A few of my friends are friends with him, and they're... I can't tell you what they're involved in. It's nothing good. But I tracked him down tonight, the guy, because I found out one of my friends is... maybe getting more involved with someone who's on an Interpol watch list because of... he runs a PMC, goes around to different country and blows up cars and buildings and shit. I don't know why. But he asked my friend, she's a nurse, if she would be interested in working as a medic for him, to help him and his buddies when they get jacked up during their blowing-shit-up operations, and she didn't tell him no exactly, and I... don't know. Maybe something got knocked loose when that guy attacked me in the bookstore. I thought since she wasn't listening to me I'd go to the other guy, from the park, because she's got this weird relationship with him and might listen to him. Like I thought if he knew what was going on maybe he could reason with her or something, I don't know. So I told him. And he..."

Hard exhale. Nate takes another bracing slug of his wine.

"If I tell you what happened after that you're going to think I'm crazy."

Theodore

Nate's glass looks a little low. Theodore refills it with the ease of someone who used to tend bars although he probably never had to do that. There's no pretending that Theodore looks anything other than concerned by this story, or intent on it. He can be intent, can't he. Focused.

"Did he agree to talk to her? Did he threaten your life?"

He is almost matter of fact about this. There was a time in Theodore's life when he was threatened by the mob; it's not something Nathan probably knows about either, following the divorce as it did.

"Do you want to go to the police?"

Nathan

He can't answer both questions with the same answer. Theodore can see the chasm into which the first answer falls and the deepening of the frown just before he says:

"I thought he was going to kill me. Or go after you or Hannah."

Which means the next logical question is whether he wants to go to the police. Nate laughs a sharp laugh and rubs his brow.

"If I didn't think they'd lock me in a padded room I would've done that after he attacked me the first time."

Theodore

Theodore frowns. He rubs his forehead with the pads of two fingers. There are dark circles under his eyes if you look closely, bruising. Not as if he was punched, just as if he's been troubled lately, that exhaustion.

Rephrase, Counsellor.

"Do you think going to the police is worthwhile?"

Nathan

As his agitation abates and he can no longer feel his heart slamming in his chest Nate can see the lit world around him better. His father's frowns and the way he rubs his head. The fact that he has the same exhausted sleep-deprived bruises under his eyes that Nate has always had. Nate has never gotten enough sleep. He always looks tired. It's disheartening seeing it in his father and part of him has to wonder if his father has always been this kind of tired too.

"I don't know." He blinks hard and takes a less impassioned swallow of wine. Tasting it. Another hard exhale. "I don't know if it would help or just..."

If he went to the police he doesn't have much doubt that Flood would show up in his bedroom one night and drain him dry. He dodged a similar fate tonight. No way to impress upon his father how close he came to disappearing tonight.

His eyes move across Theodore's face and his frown takes on a different character.

"Hey, I'm... I can go. I don't want to keep you up all night. You look like shit."

Theodore

"Thanks, Nathan," Theodore says, dryly. "Must be where you get it from."

There are conversations Theodore doesn't want to have with Nathan. There are things Theodore believes or doesn't believe that he doesn't want Nathan to see. That's why he's trying carefully to choose his words. That's why he's just not sure what to say. Again. He never knows what to say to Nathan Marszalek. Was Nathan Amherst once.

"And there's no need to go. You can sleep here tonight."

Decision made, apparently.

"Does this guy you went to talk to know you're not somewhere else?"

A round-about way of asking: did you escape from a trunk, kid.

Nathan

That dry gratitude brings about the first true lightening of the tension between them since - well. Possibly since the divorce.

It's possible Shira needed to have full custody of the children to slake her jealousy of her husband. Because they spent the same amount of time with their son and daughter but it was always Teddy they preferred. As if it had escaped her notice that her distance and her aversion to free physical affection had an effect on them. Even now Nate can remember the easy way he spoke to and was around his father as a child. Has more memories of being with him than being with his mother. But then his last name was Amherst then. She took that away from him and couldn't figure out why the boy hated her the next five years he lived with her and Ron. Not at home. Ron's farmhouse was not and never will be home.

With such a gap between them Nathan falls back on bluntness. Dad, you look like shit. And he tries not to smile with the dryness. Fails when the retort comes back at him. He laughs. It's not a boisterous light laugh but there it is. He starts to relax.

And then his father asks if this guy knows he's not somewhere else.

"Whaddaya mean?" he asks.

Nathan

[perc + empathy: what conversations don't you want to have dad huh?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )

Theodore

[I don't know, son. That was in the narrative. Manip + Subt.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

Nathan

[jess is insisting on a reroll]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Theodore

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )

Theodore

Nathan can tell that there are things Theodore doesn't want to say about the police force. Doesn't think Nathan needs to know. Doesn't think will help Nathan. What did the police ever do for him, eh? They never found out what happened to his mother. They never found out what happened to his second girlfriend, back when he was still in high school. They found who robbed their house a couple of those times, but nothing was recovered. And since he grew up, Theodore's seen worse.

He teaches people about the law. He doesn't believe in justice anymore. Does he?

His ex-wife took his kids from him because he had an affair. Had more than one, but it was just the one affair that he got caught in. Because fucking another woman meant he couldn't be a good father. He probably shouldn't've told their judge buddy to try sticking his wick in and seeing if she didn't freeze it off; that just escalated things.

He doesn't talk about it with the kids. Never has. Never will.

What was the point? Oh, yes. He doesn't seem nearly as against the idea of not going to the police as a law-abiding upstanding member of the legal community should, perhaps.

"Whaddaya mean whadda-I mean," Theodore says. He turns his wine glass around. Says, "Did you escape or did you walk away free?"

Nathan

When Nate realizes what his father thinks happened his eyes go briefly wide. Like oh jesus. That's not what happened at all. Or maybe he's imagining how much worse tonight could have gone and his throat has gone dry with an renewed flush of panic.

He picks up his glass and he takes a drink and he frowns again as they double back to the thing he doesn't want to tell his father because he doesn't want his father to think he's insane. Just as much that he hasn't told Theodore as Theodore hasn't told him but they're different breeds of beast.

"He let me go," he says. "I was at his associate's apartment. We were just talking, it just got..."

Oh, you know. A .45 handgun aimed at his chest and then--

"It got out of hand pretty fast."

Nate doesn't want to pound red wine in front of his father. His hands aren't shaking anymore. He takes another swallow. Theodore hasn't refilled his own glass yet and Nate's is getting empty again.

Theodore

Theodore hasn't touched his glass yet except to reposition it. He does now, eyebrows lofting and you can still see what a rakehell he was (is [could be]). He drinks deep, who cares how you're supposed to drink wine. And when Nathan's glass is empty, he'll refill it again, although not quite as much.

"But you think he's going to come after you again? Or you think your friends are going to ..." Theodore trails away. "Place you in difficult positions?"

Nathan

Exhaustion settles over Nathan's broad shoulders again. He's still wearing his jacket. Hasn't taken it off because up until a moment ago he didn't think he was staying. There's no sense fighting his father on that point. Even if they haven't seen each other for half of the kid's life Nate can tell he hasn't changed. If anything he's gotten more stubborn in the last thirteen years.

Never told the old man he admired him when he was little but you never have to ask kids how they feel about their parents. Kids are terrible liars. Puberty changes that. Puberty and the ability to form lasting memories. The loss of egocentrism. Kids only admire their parents because they don't see them as people.

Nathan doesn't know how he feels about him now. Of course he loves him. But he's had to reconcile the pain of losing him with the blame his mother placed on him. The thought all middle-grade kids have when their parents split up. That somehow it's their fault.

But looking at him he can see that he's trying to understand what happened. Of course he is. Lecherous alcoholic that his ex-wife made him out to be or not he was a good father.

"They already have," he says with a laugh. Reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose with a hand that's never known a wedding band and then drag his hand down his face. Tongues an incisor before he kills what's in his glass. "I didn't help. I could've just minded my own fucking business and not cared about who was doing what but I got involved. This is the only chance I think I'm gonna get to stay not involved, so. Um. Smart thing to do is to just keep walking away. If they keep doing what they're doing the cops are gonna get involved anyway."

Oh hey look. More wine's in his glass.

Theodore

"You should keep yourself safe," Theodore says. Of course he does. "You want to see the jacuzzi?"

Nathan

If the number of stories Nate has referenced or half-told involving attacks and hospitalizations are any indication he has not been very safe since coming to Denver. A correlation between his lack of safety and his and Theodore's continuing not to speak to or see each other might exist but correlation does not equal causation. He came here tonight instead of any of the other places he could have gone. He wanted to make sure his father was safe. It goes both ways.

He snorts. It's a light sound.

"You have a jacuzzi?" he asks. "Teaching must not be all that bad, huh?"

Says the guy who appears to be slowly abandoning a course of study that would have him being a journalism professor one day.

Theodore

Theodore never sat down. He straightens now. Late but he's not dressed for bed yet. Late and the wash of ambient light from his industrial metal Restoration Hardware lighting fixture-thing pulls green shadows out've his blue sweater. Green eyes, isn't that what he has?

"Inheritance helps," Theodore says. He is smiling faintly, and it isn't that the smile doesn't touch his eyes. There's just a faint stitch between his brows because he's still looking at Nathan so carefully. There's been an easing, and his hands aren't shaking the way they are. Maybe he's thinking more clearly, maybe he's not. Maybe the wine's just relaxing him. Theodore doesn't know.

Theodore never knows what's really going on.

"Come on," he says, and moves so that he can gesture Nathan from the island. Doesn't look as though he wants to hug the kid, but there is a moment when it seems as if he might touch his shoulder or something. Doesn't do that, though.

Nathan

With that Nathan finds his feet and abandons the stool and the island counter that was not holding him up so much as letting him not stand anymore. And he can sense the warmth his father has for him even if it does not show itself in a grip of a hand to a shoulder. Five years with Shira Marszalek after thirteen years with Shira Feld-Amherst means Nathan doesn't really know what to do with people who want to hug and squeeze his hands and smooth down his hair.

He isn't exactly starving for physical affection but that's because his capacity for it has shrunk. Part of why things with Carole were difficult to start out anyway. Neither one of them knows what to do with another person's hands. They understand each other but two fucked-up people will rarely fix each other.

The rest of the night they ask each other questions. Both of them tired and neither of them ready for bed but at a certain point a man has to admit that the next day will come faster than either of them want. Theodore tries to set Nathan up in the guest room but catches his shadow in the doorway of the master bedroom more than once. Not like when he was a child looking to confess a nightmare but like an adult making sure nothing bad has happened.

Nathan, [fucking] go to bed.

In the morning whenever it is that his father rises Nathan is not in bed but he hasn't gone. He's lying on the couch in the living room fully dressed with his arms crossed not just over his chest but over a book he'd fallen asleep reading.

He'll still be here in the evening when the sun falls but that's another scene.

Theodore

[Roll credits.]