breaking down

who: eily and jason
where: the club then a hotel
when: late afternoon

By the time he arrived at what would in a few days be Eily’s club, Jason felt a bit like a ghost. His breakfast with Maddy had helped a little but he’d had no appetite since and that coupled with not enough sleep had left him pale and pinched-looking. The building was open, a few workmen were still at task so he let himself in, looking around for a tell-tale blonde head and frowning when he couldn’t see one. Eily hadn’t been at the hotel and he hadn’t wanted to wait for her there but now he was wondering if that had been a mistake if she’d already left for the day. The little stage where she had sung for him was still there and the sight of it would’ve made him smile if not for recent events. Still though he went over to it and sat down on it’s edge, not caring if his already rumpled clothes picked up a coating of dust and tried to figure out if he should stick around a little or just head back to the hotel.

Eily had been upstairs, giving a few last minute instructions for specifications on the living space up there. She wanted it to be up and running as soon as possible, and had actually gotten positive news on that score. But she'd also been told she had company, and therefore she bounded down the stairs to see who it was. When she spotted Jason, she could tell immediately that something was the matter. Ghosting up quietly behind him, she crouched down, then slid her arms around his neck, hugging him from behind. "How's my man?" she asked, voice soft, in his ear. Her tone suggested she knew the answer wouldn't be positive, but she wanted a proper answer.

The touch had an instant effect on Jason and he sank into her arms, hands going up to rest over hers and his eyes fluttered closed. For a moment he didn’t reply and instead he just let himself enjoy being close to her, breathing in her smell and feeling better than he had in days. “Exhausted,” he said quietly. “”I missed you.”

She smiled faintly at that. "Poor boy." she said, giving him a squeeze. "I missed you too." she added. "So, what can I do to make that exhaustion go away?" she asked. "I was going to take you upstairs to see how things are going along, but we can just bug out, if you're tired. Go, fill a nice bath, I'll order some wine..."

“You’re amazing,” Jason replied, a touch of wonderment colouring his tone as he held her even tighter. “But as much as I’d like to see what they’ve done upstairs, I think a bath’s a better option.” In fact he was fairly certain that he could use one given that he’d been running around in the same clothes for three days now.

"A bath it is then." Eily said, kissing his cheek. "I'm going to go tell these guys I'm leaving and what I expect done by tomorrow, you go hail us a cab." she said, giving him one more squeeze before she stood straight, going to do just that. It would be fast. Then they'd check in somewhere, and she'd find out what was going on with Jason.

Doing as he was told, he smiled slightly despite everything as he watched Eily go and talk to the workmen, dimly wondering how he might have been coping if he hadn’t had her. He shook that thought away however and stepping outside, flagged down a cab that was just turning on to the street.

After giving instructions, Eily grabbed her coat and headed outside, stepping up next to Jason then getting into the cab, asking to be brought to the nearest hotel. They all had bath tubs. She was thinking the sooner they got someplace and relaxing the better. It didn't take long for them to get to their destination, or to check in. Once they got to the room, she locked up behind them, after she ordered a bottle of wine, and then, it was into the bathroom to start filling the tub.

Despite the unfamiliar room, Jason couldn’t help but note how domestic it seemed and to his surprise he liked it, finding a comfort in it that he wouldn’t have done with anyone else. “How’s the building coming?” he asked, unlacing his shoes, wanting to enjoy just being there with her for a while before his news cast a shadow over the evening.

"Fine. It's shaping up quickly enough. Actually, I was going to tell you tonight--the apartment should be ready to move into by tomorrow. It'll be a little rough yet, but we can work with it, I think." she said, giving a little smile as she unstrapped her heels. "So, we'll have a home to call our own then. But that's not what I want to talk about." she told him, moving to sit next to him. "I want to know what's got you upset."

“Well that’s good,” he replied, lips almost curved into a smile only to falter at what she said next. Not that he blamed her for asking, he had just hoped that the reprieve may have gone on a little longer. He let out a small sigh and ran his hand through his hair, eyes focused somewhere in the middle distance. “Dodge’s dead,” he said, the words hurting as much to say as when he told Maddy though this time at least his voice didn’t crack. “Him and Thomas and a couple of the others where killed at the apartment the other night.”

"Oh god." Eily said, gasping quietly. She watched him, knowing he'd been going to go his own way, but that didn't mean that he wanted people dead. Actually, she imagined it made everything worse, the fact that he hadn't been on good terms with people when they died. "What happened?" she asked.

Jason didn’t look at her, worried what might happen to the last of his composure if he let his eyes meet hers. He didn’t even take her hand as much as he wanted to, instead resting them on his legs. “A mob hit I think,” he answered, his voice sounding far too matter of fact given that he was talking about the murder of his closest friends. “The cop at the apartment didn’t say that but from how he described how things went down...” It made the most sense, really it was amazing the crew had gone on working undetected as long as it had.

Eily tensed at the word 'mob'. After all, that was where she came from. Though she'd also done her level best to take it down, which was where Eric had come in. He'd done a decent job. But there was always going to be a mob. Plus, it could have been the other side. The DiGiovanni. "Do you know why?" she asked, her instincts kicking in in different ways.

He shrugged. “Territory? Somebody could’ve got wind of what Dodge was up to, objected to someone making a mark who wasn’t in their pocket.” He sighed and grabbed his hair again. “Fuck, maybe he just said the wrong thing to the wrong person, Dodge always has a knack for pissing people off.” He realised his misstep and his throat tightened. “Had the knack.”

The knock at the door had Eily getting up, grabbing the wine and shutting out the world again. She walked over, poured him some, and held it out in front of him. "Is there going to be any reason for anyone to come looking for you?" she asked, getting right down to what she was thinking about. She could be supportive and sweet in a minute, she first needed to know if he needed to be protected. As much as she didn't participate in the family business, it wasn't like she didn't know how it worked.

Taking the glass, Jason noticed his hands was shaking slightly and frowned, Eily’s question not registering right away as he stared at his hands and willed them to stop to no avail. “I don’t think so,” he finally replied, resolutely ignoring his trembling fingers. “Given how slick it was at the apartment, if they wanted me taken down as well I would be, I’m not hard to find. Either I’m not a threat or this was just about Dodge and the others were just collateral damage.”

"How certain are you?" she asked. "Because if you need to be protected, it'll happen. But I need to know what kind of threat level we're talking about, if there is one." she told him, reaching out to put her hands over his gently, to stop the shaking there. She crouched to do so, looking up to catch his gaze.

“As certain as I can be given what I know,” he told her, sounding more confident than he felt but then he’d given the matter a lot of thought over the past couple of days; as long as he didn’t know who had killed Dodge and why, there was no way to be sure. The touch on his hands startled him but he was quick to relax again, Eily managing to do what he couldn’t and stop the shaking. It was her eyes meeting his that undid him though and it took all he had to not just bury his head in her shoulder and weep as the wall he’d put up began to crumble away. “I just...I...I don’t know what to do.”

Eily knew what it felt like. Jason hadn't lost family, per se, but as close as. She knew exactly what it was like to have your family ripped away in no time, with no warning. She'd been through it herself. So she could understand, in a unique sort of manner. "I know." she said, not trying to stop the break down. He probably needed it.

Of course she knew, she was probably the only person who could understand what he was feeling and that was all the permission he needed as the dam broke and tears sprung to his eyes. He didn’t say anything, didn’t trust himself to speak, but instead put the glass to one side and pulled her up to him so he could wrap his arms around her, needing to feel as close as he possibly could in that moment as he began to cry.

Eily held him, trying to be as there as she could be. A solid, steady port in the storm. She threadded her fingers through his hair, very lightly, slowly, and felt the sobs wrack through him, feeling his tears against her skin, soaking into her clothes. She knew how this felt. She was quiet for a while, but then began to speak. It was quiet, just for him. A murmur. "This is the part where it's sharpest. Where the pain is what blocks out everything else." There were a lot of parts, ones that would likely be worse coming up for him, but right now, she knew where he was at. "Where it feels like there's nowhere to turn, and there can't possibly be a tomorrow, because the world stopped being the world as you understood it."

He’d cried in front of her before but not like this, in fact he wasn’t sure if he’d ever cried like this; so hard that it felt like his lungs were burning, his face wet with fresh tears not matter how much seemed to be caught by Eily’s shirt. Despite all that, her words still reached him and he latched on to them as firmly as he’d done to her, seizing them and letting them keep him afloat on a sea of surging emotions. The world had changed, irreparably so but he had her to cling to, his constant.

"Most people will tell you that tomorrow it'll be better. And the day after that, and the day after that, but that's not true." Eily said. "Tomorrow's going to be just as hard as today. And the day after that. You don't know when it gets better. It does, but it isn't a daily thing, where things happen in increments. There'll just be a day where you wake up and your first thought isn't going to be about them. And that'll be a better day. You'll think about them later. And it'll hurt again, and things'll be black, and awful, but you learn how to walk with the pain. You know about that. You know how that goes. It's going to be a lot like that."

The sobs were slowing now, her voice slowly bringing Jason back to himself. The honesty might have come across as harsh but he needed that, a truth fitting the life he led, not empty platitudes attempting to clumsily sooth feelings. His grip on her lessened, less the frantic clutch of a drowning man but instead just reassuring himself that she was there and not going somewhere else.

"I'll be there. You won't have to learn how to do it by yourself. And you know I've been there. And there are probably going to be days where you kind of hate me. Because I'll be the one kicking your ass to get you doing things you don't want to do. But you'll come out the other end, and that's what's important." she promised. She drew back, just a little, so she could look him in the eyes. "There's a lot about being a survivor that hurts, and it never quite heals over. But it's going to be that much harder to take you down afterwards."

He actually laughed a little a that, a desperate, bitter kind of laugh and his hand went to cup her cheek, the other still fisted in her skirt. “God Eily, what would I do without you?” he said quietly, looking at her through red rimmed eyes still bright with tears with something between bewilderment and being amazed.

She gave him a little half smile. It covered a dark thought that if they hadn't decided to give things a go, he might be among the dead. That was best left to the shadows of her mind. "You'd be a wandering mess, of course." she told him, voice slightly teasing. "Now c'mon. Get those clothes off. There's a bath calling for you."

Drying his face with the sleeve of his shirt, he nodded and reluctantly pulling away from her began to unbutton it, grateful the trembling in his hands hadn’t returned. “I’d be more than that you know,” he said, glancing up at her. “Who I am with you...it’s better I think.”

She picked up his wine glass and held it for him as he got undressed, and she heard splashing in the bathroom. it must have overflowed. She didn't rush to correct it, though, not overly concerned. Instead, she just walked over and shut off the tap, then went back to him. "I make you a better man, is that what you're trying to say?" she asked.

“I think so yeah,” he said, an uncharacteristic shyness in his voice as he shrugged out of his shirt. There was more there, words looming in his mind that he still wasn’t sure if he could say aloud but they scared him less now as his conviction that Eily was without a doubt, the most perfect woman he knew.

She smirked. "Well, I guess that makes me a keeper, then." she teased, still lightly. She leaned towards him and gave him a light, soft brush of a kiss. "Either that or you'll have to find someone else just like me and good luck on that. I'm different than any girl you've ever met." Which she'd told him before, she believed.

Jason caught hold of her wrist, his expression more serious than it had been a moment before though his voice stayed gentle. “You don’t need to tell me that Eily,” he said quietly. “It might have taken me time to realise it but there will never be another woman in my life like you.”

She was caught by surprise, with the sincerity in his voice, his eyes. He was definitely meaning what he said, and she took that in. "Just like there'll never been anyone in my life like you." she told him, reciprocating the sentiment. She believed it as well. He was...just different, like she'd tried to explain to Ally. How she couldn't ever quite put her finger on what it was, but it was true, it was there. Something about Jason was unique, not like any man she ever knew. and ever would know.

That made him smile, a real one this time and with a small tug, he brought their lips together in a kiss which, while soft hummed with a undercurrent of wanting, trapping the unsaid words behind them

Eily returned it, also knowing sometimes when you were hurting, something like this? Was just necessary. It helped. Crying was one thing, talking was another, but occasionally everyone needed to shut off the waterworks and shut the fuck up. From there...getting lost in someone else was the way to go. So she threw herself into it, wanting to give him whatever he needed.

And what he really wanted was her, to get lost in the feel of her against in him and the sounds she made when he touched her in the right way but at the same time he was acutely aware that he needed to wash and the past couple of days had played havoc with his body so it was with reluctance that when they broke for air he pulled back a little. “I really should attempt to get clean,” he said, a rueful note in his voice that made it clear he really would rather be doing something else.

She smiled. "You do that." she said. "I should too. Should I wait til you're finished, or come with you?" she asked. "Make sure your back gets scrubbed properly?"

“”If you come with me, I’m fairly certain that’ll defeat the purpose of me actually getting clean,” he pointed out with a smirk as he pushed himself up off the bed. “I’m not exactly renowned for my restraint around you am I?”

"You are not." she agreed. She handed him his glass of wine, and gave him a kiss on the cheek." Have a good soak." she told him. "Then, after I'm all clean, I'll give you a back rub. It'll be nice. Then there'll be sleeping. Or maybe I’ll rock your world, then sleeping, we'll decide when we get there."

“Promises, promises,” he said with a grin as he turned and headed into the bathroom, the demons of the past couple of days banished for the time being with the knowledge that Eily would be there to help him through.