Not Making This Easy

who: brett and eris
where: the uptown apartment
when: late morning

Eris had spent her time since leaving the hospital preparing. She'd gone to his place, taken a look at his clothes and while she'd taken some, she'd gone out and bought him new clothes afterwards. That and several sets of pajamas, so he could be comfortable. She had gotten a whole lot of new things. She'd stocked the apartment up with food, medicine, she'd had his prescriptions filled, she'd gone and gotten him the best crutches she could find, that would be the most comfortable for him. She had set up the bed, and she'd gotten a set of blankets and pillows for the couch, which was where she was planning on sleeping.

All in all, she'd been completely busy, getting everything as perfect as possible. So when they finally got there, she wasn't going to have anything extra to do, she'd just...very likely stand around and take abuse. Which she was planning for, at any rate. Dropping the keys on the small table inside the door, she stepped out of his way so he could get into the apartment, as she hung up her coat.

Brett made his way slowly into the apartment. Really, he should still be in a wheelchair, but he’d flat out refused that. Hell, he’d only taken the crutches she’d bought for him because there was no way he could get out of bed without them. And he was damned if he was staying in that hospital a moment longer than he actually had to.

He looked around, then made his way into the apartment proper, clearly checking things out. He took his time, then came back to her. “You didn’t have to do any of this,” he told her, tightly, clearly unhappy with everything she had put together.

She looked up from where she'd been crouched, unstrapping the buckles on her shoes. "Well, it's done now." she said, tone neutral. "Besides, I didn't actually do that much. Most everything was here from when we left. I just tidied up a little." she flat out lied.

“Bullshit,” Brett said, calling her on that immediately. He was more observant than that and they both knew it. There’s my meds in the bathroom. There’s new clothes in the closet. There’s enough food in this place to survive the outbreak of war. So don’t give me any of this ‘tidied up’ bullshit - you, of all people, know how I feel about this shit,” he said, collapsing back onto the sofa for no other reason than his leg wouldn’t allow him to stand any longer, which was really damn annoying.

She did know he was more observant than that. She sighed, and let him get his bitching out, leaning back against the wall. "Do you really think I went out and did all of that on my own? I do have people to do that sort of thing for me these days." she said. Which, while true, wasn't what she'd done. But he didn't know that. "Besides which. I don't know about you? But I didn't really want to come back to an apartment with rotted food in the fridge. I happen to want to eat at some point. You'll probably want to eventually too. You've got new clothes because your clothes stink, and were in poor repair. You’re not wearing them while you’re in this apartment. I used funds from your account, don't worry, I didn't foot the bill." she said, which also wasn't entirely true, but she doubted he'd go look. He hadn't been touching his funds from the agency since he'd left, much like she'd ignored hers for the most part, right up until she had to take a different route. "And yes, I know how you feel about this shit. But you asked me to get you out of the hospital, and I did. This is the only way I'm accepting responsibility here, until you're good enough to be done with me. So, you're going to have to get over it."

Brett glared at her for a moment, then looked away. “Fine,” he growled. He hated it when she had a point, it ruined everything he was going for.

"Pouting about it all day is going to get old." Eris told him, though there wasn't bite to her tone. He'd dropped his argument, so she wasn't trying to start a new one. She just wished he'd stop for a minute. It probably wouldn't happen, and she was prepared for that, but it would have been nice. She went into the kitchen area, and opened the fridge. After considering for a few long moments, she took out some orange juice. She didn't ask him if he wanted any. She poured two glasses, and put down some toast. When it was done, she brought it out and set it on the coffee table well within reach, even if she still didn't actually tell him anything about it. She took her own juice, and went to the record player, starting to flip through her albums. Good lord she'd missed music.

Brett ignored the drink and toast, much in the way that he’d used to do when they’d very first lived together. Objecting on principle to being waited on. “I don’t want the girls going through my things,” he told her, eventually. “You said you had people doing all of this - well, they need to stay away from my stuff.” He held his privacy in very high regard. She knew that.

"I believe we set the rule forth immediately that people weren't to come back here." Eris said, still going through the records. "So, don't worry. No one'll be here unless you inexplicably decide you want them." Finally picking something, she put the record on, and smiled softly to herself at hearing it play. Yes, she'd very much missed her records.

“Good - as long as that’s clear,” he said, gruffly, feeling a flash of irritation that she had, as usual, apparently already thought of everything. He said nothing for a few minutes, before reaching for the orange juice and taking a sip, since her attention was mostly on her music.

Eris drew in a breath, and let it out slowly, sipping more of her juice as she wished it had a shot of vodka in it. Though she'd mostly given up drinking, because it made her even more of a liability to the agency. People required her to be sober, so she was being sober. That didn't mean that right now she wasn't wishing for a little alcoholic lubrication for this circumstance. "I'm out tomorrow night, by the way." she added.

“Fine,” Brett said, dismissively, an automatic reaction. His follow up comment was more thoughtful. “You are? Where? For the business?” he asked her, glancing over and setting the orange juice back down on the table. He resisted the urge to rub his thigh - the wound was starting to ache again, but he preferred the pain to the pain killers. At least that way he at least had control over his mind.

She glanced over, not quite sure how to react to the sort of odd reaction there. Dismissal then questions. "I promised Mac I would sing." she told him. "He's having some financial difficulties with the Round, so, that should rake in some money." she explained. "So, no. Not for the business. I'll be back afterwards, however. Might stop at my place to get a few things, but I won't be gone all that long. Which I know, you don't care and you aren't really going to need me anyways, so it doesn't matter. Just wanted you to know I was leaving but also coming back." She could imagine him assuming she was ditching him if she left unannounced. Something that would definitely be her own fault from past behavior.

Brett looked unhappy about that, not saying a word for a moment. “Mac - he have any idea who did this? I know he didn’t say shit to the cops, but off the record?” he asked, in the end. He knew she was far safer in the Round than he was. He knew that half the patrons there were, and always had been, the scum of the earth and nobody had ever bothered a hair on her head there. He knew that the reason he’d been a target was because of who he was. But still, he had a protective streak a mile wide at times and he couldn’t switch off the fact that he hated her going there when he had clear, painful, unavoidable and unignorable proof of the danger lurking in the place. He didn’t have to put it that way though.

She shook her head. "No. I asked when I stopped to pick up the day's letters." she told him. "No one knows anything. It's the Round. Of course no one knows anything." she said. "But he would tell me if he knew." She assured him, because she trusted that Mac would do that. But really, as far as she knew, it was just random. Shit happened, and sometimes there wasn't an actual comeuppance for that. "I'm sorry. If anything gets found out, I'll tell you. Or your partner, I'm sure he'd love the chance to grill me again."

He squashed the urge to tell her to be careful. She didn’t need to hear it, and he certainly didn’t need her to hear him say it. “Yeah, figured Danny caught you visiting or some bullshit. Ignore him. He’s a moron. He tried to bring you up to me and either he’s the world’s worst at attempting subtlety - and I’m including myself in that, which is saying something - or he doesn’t know who you are. Which - thought the whole damn city knew that one.”

"I thought so too. I was there when the raid on Babylon happened, I'd thought he'd been part of it. But...who knows. Maybe I'm just not that memorable." Eris said with a shrug. "But I was on my way out when he got there. Kept trying to get out of me who I was and what I was doing there. I kept telling him he didn't have the right to question me." She smirked faintly. "I might have been slightly less than polite."

“Imagine that,” Brett said, the very ghost of a smile passing across his lips. “You, being less than polite.” He paused, then shook his head. “People don’t know much about my personal life. I doubt most of the think I have one.”

"That's because you don't have one, baby." Eris told him. She walked back over, and sat on the opposite end of the couch, sitting sideways to face him. "Remember?" It wasn't pointed. It wasn't meant to make him upset. But it was true. He knew it. She knew it. He didn't have a personal life anymore, he'd given up living to do the job. The only reason he wasn't doing it right now was because of a freak happenstance.

Right now he hated that he loved it when she called him baby. And it was at that moment that he really realised that the next few days, or weeks - living here, with her - this was going to be so very difficult. And he had no idea how it was going to go, what was going to happen. What he’d done, agreeing to this. “...I have a personal life,” he said, after a few minutes quiet, feeling like he needed to say something, though his tone was more subdued than normal. “Even if I haven’t been living it lately, there’s more to me than just work.”

"Like what?" she asked. And it was a genuine question. "Got plans for when you're better?" she asked, because she was still assuming nothing was going to work. That he was quite clear on things not changing, which reinforced her own ideas about things never changing. How it really just...she couldn't fix what she'd done. It was always going to be there, and even if in letters he'd been talking about seeing around it, he wasn't happy about anything. So, she was going to maintain that this was it, and when it was over it was really over. But that didn't mean she couldn't find out what his plans were.

Brett frowned, confused and frustrated with his realisation a few moments ago. “Can we not talk about this right now, Julia,” he snapped, attempting to get to his feet, but his leg gave way under him and he sat back down again, sharply. “Just leave it, for a while.”

Wincing, she sat forward, reaching for him, but she didn't actually complete the motion. "If you don't want to be around me, I'll leave, okay?" she said. "Don't keep putting weight on that leg right now. You can still have your way, and you don't have to push back your recovery time." She didn't especially want to leave, but she would, if that was what he was going to do in reaction to a conversation he didn't want to have.

Brett’s jaw twitched and he took a breath, both for the stab of pain that had shot through his leg as he’d tried to stand and for his own frustration. “You don’t have to leave. It’s just - it’s going to be difficult enough, us both here, without you forcing conversations about the future. So, give it a rest, okay?” he said, tightly.

"...I'm not 'forcing' anything." Eris said, standing back up to put more distance between them. "I asked because I'm interested, not because I'm trying to...I don't even know what you're saying right now. You want it dropped, consider it dropped. I thought it was better to maybe talk a little about things that might not actually pertain to 'us'. Just...normal conversation, that people have, when they're spending time together. So, apologies. I'll refrain."

“Fine,” Brett said, still tightly. He could have explained where he was coming from more, but she’d dropped the subject and he didn’t want to give any excuse for her to dwell on it, or reopen it. He’d got what he wanted, that was all there was to it.

Normally, Eris would have continued to argue. Really, she would have argued quite a few points, but at current, she didn't. He was hurt, she was there to make sure he didn't do anything too stupid, and if he did she could call the hospital and get him brought back in. That was her role, something she quite firmly pounded into her own mind when she'd been getting everything set up. She had a specific task, and she was going to do that to the best of her ability. It didn't include arguing with him. She fell into silence, then finished her juice, bringing the empty glass to the sink. She headed for the door, planning on getting a few things from the office to do, since he clearly wasn't okay with conversation at the moment.

He didn’t try and stop her as she left. It seemed for the best, right now. He had no idea what he was doing, what he should be doing. His leg hurt, he’d just spent two days in his own personal idea of hell, known as the hospital. He was tired, hurt, defensive and he had an inkling that things were only going to get more confusing and complicated from here on in. So, for now, he let her go. Closing his eyes, he laid his head back against the chair, determinedly thinking about anything else but the future.

Eris went to the office, and got the books. She got appointments, and new client folders that she'd been in the middle of going through when the whole 'Brett's been shot' thing happened. So, after getting an armload full of paperwork of different types, she went right back into the apartment. She sat up at the kitchen island, spreading the folders out in front of her as she started to do her work, extremely aware of him where he was. She wanted to say something more, wanted to start another conversation, but she didn't know how to do that. She didn't know how to really get it going, how to trust that anything out of her mouth might be acceptable. He didn't want to talk about him. She didn't want to talk about them. He'd dropped the business so she couldn't even really go into what she was doing right then. It was quite a long time before she told him something that could be just for his knowledge. "The bedroom is yours, I will be sleeping on the couch."

He’d been staring at the wall, thoughts going round and round in his head without any of them really landing on anything he could follow through, all bound up with intermittent dull aches of pain from his leg. He had no idea about the passing of time, except it was both flying and going interminably slowly. When she spoke, he turned his head to look at her. “Surely we could get another bed for the room out front?” he suggested. It was a one bedroomed apartment, but there was a room just off the office area they’d never actually got round to using for anything. Of course, he realised when he spoke, that could have all changed by now. He was hardly up on the direction of their business these days.

She opened her mouth, then shut it again, blinking as it was clear that threw her. He didn't even want her in the apartment at all? She'd thought the couch was fine. She'd be away from his space, she was making it clear she was being away from his space, but she'd still be there just in case. She kept staring at him for a moment, before she caught that she was doing that, and she determinedly looked right back down at her folders, though it was clear immediately that the shock of what he said there had made her lose where she was. It was gibberish staring back up at her. "I suppose I could do that." she told him, recognizing that she needed to say something. God, she felt like a fool. Right then, right there, she felt like the biggest idiot alive.

Brett frowned, seeing the look on her face, the way she held herself. He knew how to read body language, especially negative body language, and that’s what he was getting from her. He just wasn’t sure why. “...It’d be more comfortable than the couch,” he offered.

"Right." she said, a little too quickly. Not to cut him off, or anything, and it wasn't said tightly at all. More she was just going to agree there, as she was fighting the urge to flee. To just drop everything, and leave. There was a sick sort of hollow feeling in her gut, that she didn't expect to ease soon. She was also wracking her brain for anyone else who could do this. If he didn't even want her in the apartment, then this was flat out not going to work. She couldn't do even the minor parts of taking care of him that he'd allow if he wanted her that far away. She couldn't blame him, really, she understood, it just didn't make her feel any better. God, she really had thought maybe she'd at some point get past the place where he had the ability to make her this emotionally unstable. Clearly now wasn't it.

The feeling of confusion grew, to the point where he wished he’d never said anything at all. He wondered what the hell he’d gotten himself into - he’d been so focused on getting out of the hospital that he hadn’t even thought. And now he was here, in possibly the most awkward situation ever and his leg hurt and she was being all... Like that. And he didn’t know why. “Okay - tell me. What did I say?” he snapped. He didn’t have the patience right now to either work it out, or ignore it. He couldn’t deal with her being confusing at him.

She kept staring at the paperwork in front of her, still lost as to what she had been doing. But her concentration wasn't there either. When he spoke, she wasn't sure what to say. "Nothing." she told him, glancing over but she didn't actually lay eyes on him. It was more just in his general direction. She sat up straighter. "Is there someone else who you would be more comfortable with here?" she asked. She kept her tone neutral, a rather difficult feat for her at the moment, but she managed. "I can get them here. Or I can hire someone, and it'll take care of any personal issues that could come up."

“Bullshit it’s nothing, Julia. And no - there’s nobody else I’d prefer to be here,” he told her, gruffly, but honestly. He hadn’t realised it until he said it, but it did clear one thing up in his mind: there was nobody else he wanted here. There was nobody else. Maybe that just said something about the state of his life, that the only person he knew that he trusted to be around him right now was his ex-girlfriend, but that was that. “Don’t try and bullshit me, tell me what the fuck just made you go all like... that.”

"Clearly, you'd prefer I wasn't here either. You don't even want me in the apartment. No, you're telling me to go sleep in a storage room outside. Which, by the way, defeats the purpose of me being here 'just in case'. Which was the role I thought I'd be filling. So, alright. This is quite painfully obviously not going to work. I'm sort of fuzzy on why I thought for a second it would. So, I've made a mistake. You were high at the time when you set this up to start with, so, okay. But I don't really feel like we should continue with something that's obviously a miss step in the road. So I figured I'd ask first, and figure out how to get it sorted, before anything gets worse." Eris told him, that wish for a drink hitting harder. Yep. A screwdriver would be perfect right now. The man drove her to drink. Or at least to want to.

“What?” Brett asked, too thrown and confused to actually be angry as he normally would be. It showed on his face for a moment, before his default emotional response caught up with him. “Is that what you took from what I said?” he barked, anger catching up with shock and coming out full force. “Well - fuck you. I was trying to be... To think about you. Fucking sleep on the couch? Right - like that’s comfortable or in any way fucking suitable for anything more than one night. For either of us and it’d be worse for me, or I would have fucking suggested it, only I want to be able to walk again sometime this century and sleeping on a couch isn’t going to fucking help that at all. But, fine - you want to be all pissy and take this as some kind of fucking rejection just because I didn’t want to be cornered into giving you an answer about our fucking future when I don’t fucking know then maybe we should just call this whole thing off and I’ll get out of your hair and check into a hotel or something,” he said, grasping for his crutches this time before attempting to stand.

"We don't have a future!" Eris snapped at him, after blinking in shock again at the fact that he was apparently turning this into that. "And I wasn't asking about it at all! I was asking about you, you complete and utter idiot! You're the one who said you had a life! I wanted to find out what it might entail! Maybe hear you picked up a hobby, or a sport, or god, I don't know! You could be doing anything, I just wanted to know there was something! Remember the part where you wanted my life to not be all about you? I was hoping yours wasn't all about the job. That's all. That's what I was asking, you're the one who turned it into something about us. I wasn't talking about us. There is no us." she shook her head, and stood up, leaving her papers where they were.

"So don't turn this into me being a drama queen about that, because that is a dead end, and I know it extremely damn well. If you look at our past, you'll see that I've been the one who's always accepted it. The entire reason I left in the first place was because I accepted it." She took a second to breathe. "You can't sleep on the couch. My sleeping on the couch is probably better than my old apartment's bed, if you'll recall. It won't kill me. You shouldn't check into a hotel, because that's stubborn and ridiculous, and still won't mean you have someone around to actually call the hospital if something stupid happens. Knowing you, it will, mister 'I want to heal at the speed of light'. You're not going to. And gunshot wounds aren't anything to fuck around with, I know. So, you're staying here. It's just your choice who you have around to take the brunt of your attitude."

“Anything is better that that fucking piece of shit that you called a bed back at that rat infested flea hole of an apartment, but that doesn’t mean it’s good enough for you!” Brett shouted at her, getting himself up onto his crutches, but not actually managing to take a step. He had all his weight on the two crutches and his good leg and he just knew that that first step was going to hurt like hell. “And that still doesn’t get to the point - which was that you took it as being that I was throwing you the hell out, which is bullshit. But you’re determined to not be able to get it through you thick skull that, no matter what, I still damn well care about you. I thought I’d made that clear - dammit, Julia, that kind of thing doesn’t just fucking stop.” As much as it would be easier if it did. His life would be a whole lot simpler if that were the case.

"Well, I'm not there anymore, so it doesn't matter, and you don't really get to decide what is and isn't good enough for me anymore." Eris told him. Even if she knew perfectly well that it really wouldn't stop him. "Please don't start walking around." she added, voice lightening just a touch. It was almost imperceptible, but not quite.

She looked away for a moment, then back. "Caring doesn't just stop. I know that. It's why I'm here. And, it's why, even if you for some reason keep thinking that I'm going to be 'cornering' you or 'forcing' you to talk about 'us', it's not going to happen." She kept her eyes on him, a pained look on her features. "You were just shot, Brett. I know that this entire thing? Being injured, and having to deal with everything I'm sure that's kicking up for you--I know that's got to be very, very hard on you. Whether you want to say so or not. You're in pain, you're going to have to allow time to heal up, and you hate anyone helping you. I'm aware I'm already going to be cast in the Sadie role, here. I know. And you're going to be mean, and you're going to be stubborn, and you're going to snap at anything I have to say. About anything. But even if you want to believe that I'd do something like that to you, it isn't going to happen. This is all going to be hard enough without bringing up anything about 'us'. So, keep something in mind, just for your clarity. If you think that's what I'm talking about, at any point, I'm not. As far as I'm concerned, if a conversation about 'us' happens, you're starting it. Because I won't. The ball isn't in my court, and hasn't been for a long time. I'm not going to try and pull some fucked up twisted emotional blackmail on you where you can't leave or would have a hard time doing that, and because of it I could try and 'make' you talk about things. I care about you more than to do anything like that to you, especially now."

She had more to say, to address what he said about the level of 'clarity' he thought he was operating at versus the murky, utterly unclear level she thought was the reality of the situation. That she would like to know how she should have come to the correct conclusion when he'd done nothing but snap at her since they got back in the first place, but she didn't say anything to that effect. She just said what she had to say first about the bigger issue, or what she felt was the bigger issue. At least if that got cleared up now, maybe he'd have to reflect ever so slightly before he started yelling again about things she wasn't doing.

He sat down again, actually doing that when she told him to, though he scowled with it. And decided to say nothing about his reaction, because it wasn’t like he was in any position to go anywhere anyway. Or, at least, that was what he told himself. It sounded better in his brain that way. Less like he was just doing what she wanted. “You’re not fucking Sadie,” he grumbled, because that was the easiest point to pick up on. “She was a manipulative bitch looking for a meal ticket. That’s not you.”

"Then please stop treating me like I am a manipulative bitch who's going to pounce on you for conversations about 'us' at every turn." Eris said patiently. "Okay? I'm just not doing that. I know it's a big thing, I know there's a lot of issues, but there are more important things going on right now, as far as I'm concerned. I'm also aware that the only reason we're in the same room together is because of outside circumstance, not because you were ready to talk to me. So, it's just off the table, for me. I'm here because I want to be, just in case anything happens. I'll try to be as unobtrusive as possible while I'm at it."

“Fine, then get on with your work and I’ll be over here then,” he said, looking away. He didn’t have the energy for a fight right now. Especially one that he couldn’t leave when he wanted to - though usually, with their history, she was the one that did the walking away.

Eris didn't answer him, turning back to her paperwork. Her concentration wasn't on it, however. No, she could just feel him there, sulking. Internally, she felt like all of this was terribly unfair. His assumptions that she was going to be a raging bitch and use his injury to force conversations about their future was insulting at best. Hurtful at worst. It left her with a lingering, nagging feeling in the back of her mind that he didn't know her. That even if he said she wasn't going to be cast in the Sadie role, that didn't mean he wasn't casting her as someone else entirely in his own mind. And she didn't like the picture he was presenting. Unfortunately, she knew there wasn't anything she could really do about it, either. Brett did what he did. He was going to think what he was going to think, and that was that. Especially now, when she knew he was going to be having a hard time due to his being injured.

It was going to be a long healing process, that was for damn sure.