Thread for dark_desert_hwy: John/Alice
WHO: John and Alice.
WHAT: Telling the truth.
WHERE: Alice's room.
WHEN: Immediately after this.
This might be the most fucked up situation John had ever found himself in. And he'd been in a lot of 'em. He didn't trust House as far as he could fuckin' throw him, of course, but still. It did make some stuff make sense. Not least of all you getting all pissy about her sleeping with someone else? John told his brain firmly to shut up, and knocked on Alice's door with the hand that didn't ache. Probably served him right, after all, hitting the guy, but still, he wasn't sorry. He'd deserved it.
She had been laying on her bed watching old movies in a pair of boxer shorts and a men's t-shirt. At the knock on her door, she swung her legs off of the queen-sized mattress, bounding to the door. She opened it up and grinned when she saw John, though it quickly dissolved when she saw the stern look on his face. "John?"
She looked so young. It bugged him. Made him want to protect her, though he'd probably done enough of that. He got right to the point. "Can I talk to you?"
"Of course." She moved a little bit so he could come inside, shutting and locking the door behind him and going to turn off the television. She sat down on the bed, pulling her knees to her chest. "You're not okay. What is it?"
John sat on the bed next to her and looked over. Fuck, she looks like a puppy who chewed up the paper. Fuck. Still. He figured nothing would be good until he got it out in the open. "I was in the bar this morning getting more coffee, and happened to run into a Doctor House." He couldn't keep the disdain out of his voice.
She rolled her eyes, untangling her limbs. "Oh. Yeah, House does that to people. Do you want an aspirin? Some vodka maybe?" She chuckled, but it was mirthless and dry.
Heh. John made a similar noise, shaking his head. "Nah ... but I wanted to ask you a few things." Again with the blunt. Things would go faster this way. "He said he's who you slept with, for one." Why it bugged him, well. That was the next thing to talk about. Maybe. This was weird enough.
She laughed again, laying down on her back and sprawling out her legs. "He was. Why, does it matter?" She closed her eyes so she wouldn't be tempted to cry. John sounded so... disgusted. She never would've slept with House if she'd thought it would push John away. She knew she'd never truly have John how she wanted him, but she at least craved his friendship.
"It doesn't, really ... just, we got to talking and he said some shit about you." He probably sounded chagrined, but it was more because he'd let House goad him into getting pissed off. "I don't trust him, so I wanted to talk to you and see what's true." There; that sounded like an okay lead-in. She looked upset, and it grated on him.
"You want the truth? Why, did he call me a whore? Say I came onto him? I did, okay? I came onto him. I was the one who suggested we fuck. Because I'm a scared little girl who just wanted to forget that this hotel that everyone hates? Is better for me." She rolled over onto her side. "Is that what you wanted to know?"
John snorted. "I don't give a shit about that. You're a grown woman, and you can think what you damn well please." The woebegone look on her face irritated him. She was smarter and more competent than this. And on the heels of his slight irritation, the words just slipped out. "He called you easy, and he said that at the end, you didn't say his name. You said mine."
... Well, shit. Now or never, he supposed.
She couldn't say anything while she looked at him, so she continued looking at the wall. "What do you want me to say?" She rolled back over to look at him, sitting up a little. "I did. I said your name. I couldn't get off because House fucked me like a whore, so I thought about what you'd be like." She looked at the fingernails on her right hand, which needed another polish job. "I bet you'd be sweet."
What she'd just said made no sense to him. Literally. He looked at her like a moron for a minute, brow furrowed, as if she was going to clarify any more than she had.
Eventually, though, he just reacted. One of his callused hands reached over and rested on top of hers. "I got him good, if it helps." It was a stupid compliment, a clumsy-ass way of saying thank you. But if she started to freak about how she'd made an idiot of herself, he didn't know what he would do. She wasn't an idiot - he was the jackass who didn't know how to handle this in the slightest. Not for the first time he wished Dean were here.
Her jaw dropped. "Your knuckles!" She sprang up to go get some ice out of the little tray she had made a habit of keeping full. Little rituals helped her keep her sanity. Alice put ten or so cubes and wrapped them in plastic, bringing them back out to touch them to his knuckles. "John, you shouldn't have."
"Yeah, I should have. Between what he said about you and what he said about Mary." John winced as the ice hit his raw knuckles. He hoped House enjoyed the fact his hand ached.
She bit her lip, one hand still pressing the ice to his hand, the other going up to smooth out his hair. "Bastard. He can talk shit about me, but dead wives are off limits. Next time I see him, I'll claw his eyes out." She winked at him, knowing full well that she was completely harmless.
That did make him smile, despite the weird tension in the air. "It was more at me than Mary," he said, biting his lip a little when her little hand ran through his hair. He'd never told House he was wrong, after all. She mattered to him. He just wasn't sure how. Maybe he should even tell her that. He didn't fucking know. That was the problem.
She felt her hand stroking his cheek, moving over the scar near his head. "How'd you get this?" I want to kiss it, see what it tastes like.
"A bar fight." His smile was a little rueful. "During Vietnam. Some asshole gave me a bunch of shit about being in the Marines, and shoved me into a table. I got up and kicked his ass."
She couldn't help it. Alice moved forward a little bit, pressing dry lips to the scar. She closed her eyes, sighing a little, trying not to do it in his ear. She moved away after a moment, smiling to herself. She let the ice stay on his hand. "Your hand feeling better?"
He let her do it. It kind of made his decision for him - she said she cared about him, and he had no reason to disbelieve her. He couldn't quite tell her the same thing, but he didn't want to hurt her feelings, either. So he'd come up with a compromise. Though he'd have whipped either of his sons if he found out they'd done what he was about to do. "Yeah, it is." John looked over at her. "But you wanna stay there? There's some stuff I want to tell you." It was a way of showing her he trusted her without telling her things that just weren't true. Maybe? Yet?
She didn't move away from where she was seated, just took the ice off of his hand and kissed the knuckles. "Okay. While we're being brutally honest." Alice felt her stomach fall to her knees. She knew this was the part of the story where he told her that she was like a daughter to him, that she was too young, too sweet.
He just started to talk, with no preamble. What the hell else was there to say? She was smart enough to understand. "Right after I got out of the service, I married Mary, my wife. We had our boys, Dean and Sam. Now, I told you she was murdered. But I didn't tell you by what."
He told her everything. Absolutely everything about the chase, down to the tiniest details he could remember.
There was nothing to say to any of it. No comforting words, no sweet platitude that would make anything okay, or even marginally better. She scooted closer to him and wrapped her tiny arms around his waist, letting her head rest on his shoulder. "It must have been hard."
"Yeah." That was a reaction he hadn't figured on, though, and it made him stiffen a little before relaxing. He wasn't a stranger to physical contact, but from pretty women? It'd been fucking rare enough.
Still. He let her hug him, even returning it. He hoped it made more sense to her why he was ... well, him. But he still felt like shit about making her feel bad. He kissed her forehead, briefly, but he still did it. How soft she was.
That made her giggle nervously. "I'm making you go soft, aren't I?" Her eyes were closed, her muscles tense. "Sorry. Thank you for telling me everything, though." The kiss on her forehead was so sweet, so fatherly, it made her want to cry.
John raised an eyebrow at her. This was all wrong. He might not be able to read women that well as, well, women, but he could read body language well enough. She was pissed. Or sad. And trying to joke to get past it.
Damn it. There was no way around it, not without making her feel like shit, and he would have felt like a heel. So he just sighed, keeping her in his arms a little bit longer. "You ... matter," was all he could say. He hoped to hell she understood.
"I know. I know I do. And I know what happens next. You're too chivalrous to fuck me and run, but you still care, so I'll be... some sort of friend. Thing." She couldn't help burrowing into his side anyway, burying her nose in the crook of his neck.
"I don't know." Damn it. He hated that she'd sort of pushed him to admit that, but he supposed it was fair. "I haven't a fucking clue."
She sat back, hand going to wipe her cheek before she even realized she was crying. "I know. But I'm not going anywhere." She chuckled a little at the irony. "In every sense of the word."
That was the thing. He couldn't have gotten away from this even if he'd wanted to. Which he didn't. He knew that much.
It was unlike him, but he took her little hand in his non-bruised one, squeezing it gently. He wasn't the affectionate type, and never had been. But he got that other people were.
She couldn't help smiling at that, since she recognized that it was a stretch for him. She kept nuzzling into his neck, content to just sit with him. The fact that he smelled like musk and leather didn't hurt.
He actually would have been okay with it going a little bit longer than it did, but his knuckles decided to throb. "Ow." He hadn't stayed to see House bruising. He hoped he had bruised. Otherwise, well, he'd feel pretty stupid.
She sat up a bit, kissing his bruised knuckles before putting the ice back down on them. "Don't take that ice off. Do you want some aspirin? I know I asked that earlier, but this time it's not sarcasm."
He shook his head. "Nah. Ice'll be fine." He didn't want this to get weird with Alice. He genuinely liked her on a friend level, that much he was sure of. Just, there was something else that went beyond friend. It was that little whatever that was messing with him.
She moved a little bit away from him, not wanting to confuse him any further. She couldn't help thinking about House flying through the air, though, and it got her to laughing. "Where'd you hit him?"
He did smile at that. "Uppercut. Right on the jaw."
"Well no wonder you hurt. Security always just used to right cross them on the nose. But you had to go for effect, didn't you?" She grinned, reclining backward again. "But I must admit. The visual is pretty nice. ... if I'd known what he was like, I wouldn't have chosen him to be my distraction sex."
Fair enough. He rose, cracking his back as he headed for the door. "Hey, an uppercut has the added plus of possibly making them bite their tongue. It can be funny."
"Did he?" She was still cracking up, grinning broadly. One of her legs reached out to poke him in the thigh with a toe. "I bet it felt good. Trust me. I wanted to."
"I don't know if he did bite his tongue. I didn't stay to watch." He'd wanted to find her that badly to talk, and that realization actually made him shift on his feet a little. Still, he nodded, a faint smile still there. "I think he goaded me. I shouldn't have. But still."
"Trust me, I doubt you're the first person to hit him." She shook her head, remembering how she'd had to play the part of the eyelash fluttering submissive to get him into it at all. "But I don't really want to talk about him. Want to watch a movie? North by Northwest was on."
"I wanted to change my clothes. But yeah, can I come back?" That was kind of a relief to hear, actually. She didn't look weird. She didn't look nervous, and because of that it was a lot easier for him not to be nervous.
"Of course. Here." She rifled through her bag and tossed him her key. "Just let yourself in." She spread out on the bed and turned the television back on. "Oh, good, I didn't miss the scene with the airplane chase."
He caught it, not quite sure whether to say thanks or okay or what. So he just nodded and left, but knowing he'd be coming back made a difference. That hadn't gone near as bad as he'd figured it would. Did that mean he had to be grateful to House? It might. Though he wasn't wild about the thought.
Eh, whatever. He headed across the hall to change, trying to ignore House and his aching hand.
WHAT: Telling the truth.
WHERE: Alice's room.
WHEN: Immediately after this.
This might be the most fucked up situation John had ever found himself in. And he'd been in a lot of 'em. He didn't trust House as far as he could fuckin' throw him, of course, but still. It did make some stuff make sense. Not least of all you getting all pissy about her sleeping with someone else? John told his brain firmly to shut up, and knocked on Alice's door with the hand that didn't ache. Probably served him right, after all, hitting the guy, but still, he wasn't sorry. He'd deserved it.
She had been laying on her bed watching old movies in a pair of boxer shorts and a men's t-shirt. At the knock on her door, she swung her legs off of the queen-sized mattress, bounding to the door. She opened it up and grinned when she saw John, though it quickly dissolved when she saw the stern look on his face. "John?"
She looked so young. It bugged him. Made him want to protect her, though he'd probably done enough of that. He got right to the point. "Can I talk to you?"
"Of course." She moved a little bit so he could come inside, shutting and locking the door behind him and going to turn off the television. She sat down on the bed, pulling her knees to her chest. "You're not okay. What is it?"
John sat on the bed next to her and looked over. Fuck, she looks like a puppy who chewed up the paper. Fuck. Still. He figured nothing would be good until he got it out in the open. "I was in the bar this morning getting more coffee, and happened to run into a Doctor House." He couldn't keep the disdain out of his voice.
She rolled her eyes, untangling her limbs. "Oh. Yeah, House does that to people. Do you want an aspirin? Some vodka maybe?" She chuckled, but it was mirthless and dry.
Heh. John made a similar noise, shaking his head. "Nah ... but I wanted to ask you a few things." Again with the blunt. Things would go faster this way. "He said he's who you slept with, for one." Why it bugged him, well. That was the next thing to talk about. Maybe. This was weird enough.
She laughed again, laying down on her back and sprawling out her legs. "He was. Why, does it matter?" She closed her eyes so she wouldn't be tempted to cry. John sounded so... disgusted. She never would've slept with House if she'd thought it would push John away. She knew she'd never truly have John how she wanted him, but she at least craved his friendship.
"It doesn't, really ... just, we got to talking and he said some shit about you." He probably sounded chagrined, but it was more because he'd let House goad him into getting pissed off. "I don't trust him, so I wanted to talk to you and see what's true." There; that sounded like an okay lead-in. She looked upset, and it grated on him.
"You want the truth? Why, did he call me a whore? Say I came onto him? I did, okay? I came onto him. I was the one who suggested we fuck. Because I'm a scared little girl who just wanted to forget that this hotel that everyone hates? Is better for me." She rolled over onto her side. "Is that what you wanted to know?"
John snorted. "I don't give a shit about that. You're a grown woman, and you can think what you damn well please." The woebegone look on her face irritated him. She was smarter and more competent than this. And on the heels of his slight irritation, the words just slipped out. "He called you easy, and he said that at the end, you didn't say his name. You said mine."
... Well, shit. Now or never, he supposed.
She couldn't say anything while she looked at him, so she continued looking at the wall. "What do you want me to say?" She rolled back over to look at him, sitting up a little. "I did. I said your name. I couldn't get off because House fucked me like a whore, so I thought about what you'd be like." She looked at the fingernails on her right hand, which needed another polish job. "I bet you'd be sweet."
What she'd just said made no sense to him. Literally. He looked at her like a moron for a minute, brow furrowed, as if she was going to clarify any more than she had.
Eventually, though, he just reacted. One of his callused hands reached over and rested on top of hers. "I got him good, if it helps." It was a stupid compliment, a clumsy-ass way of saying thank you. But if she started to freak about how she'd made an idiot of herself, he didn't know what he would do. She wasn't an idiot - he was the jackass who didn't know how to handle this in the slightest. Not for the first time he wished Dean were here.
Her jaw dropped. "Your knuckles!" She sprang up to go get some ice out of the little tray she had made a habit of keeping full. Little rituals helped her keep her sanity. Alice put ten or so cubes and wrapped them in plastic, bringing them back out to touch them to his knuckles. "John, you shouldn't have."
"Yeah, I should have. Between what he said about you and what he said about Mary." John winced as the ice hit his raw knuckles. He hoped House enjoyed the fact his hand ached.
She bit her lip, one hand still pressing the ice to his hand, the other going up to smooth out his hair. "Bastard. He can talk shit about me, but dead wives are off limits. Next time I see him, I'll claw his eyes out." She winked at him, knowing full well that she was completely harmless.
That did make him smile, despite the weird tension in the air. "It was more at me than Mary," he said, biting his lip a little when her little hand ran through his hair. He'd never told House he was wrong, after all. She mattered to him. He just wasn't sure how. Maybe he should even tell her that. He didn't fucking know. That was the problem.
She felt her hand stroking his cheek, moving over the scar near his head. "How'd you get this?" I want to kiss it, see what it tastes like.
"A bar fight." His smile was a little rueful. "During Vietnam. Some asshole gave me a bunch of shit about being in the Marines, and shoved me into a table. I got up and kicked his ass."
She couldn't help it. Alice moved forward a little bit, pressing dry lips to the scar. She closed her eyes, sighing a little, trying not to do it in his ear. She moved away after a moment, smiling to herself. She let the ice stay on his hand. "Your hand feeling better?"
He let her do it. It kind of made his decision for him - she said she cared about him, and he had no reason to disbelieve her. He couldn't quite tell her the same thing, but he didn't want to hurt her feelings, either. So he'd come up with a compromise. Though he'd have whipped either of his sons if he found out they'd done what he was about to do. "Yeah, it is." John looked over at her. "But you wanna stay there? There's some stuff I want to tell you." It was a way of showing her he trusted her without telling her things that just weren't true. Maybe? Yet?
She didn't move away from where she was seated, just took the ice off of his hand and kissed the knuckles. "Okay. While we're being brutally honest." Alice felt her stomach fall to her knees. She knew this was the part of the story where he told her that she was like a daughter to him, that she was too young, too sweet.
He just started to talk, with no preamble. What the hell else was there to say? She was smart enough to understand. "Right after I got out of the service, I married Mary, my wife. We had our boys, Dean and Sam. Now, I told you she was murdered. But I didn't tell you by what."
He told her everything. Absolutely everything about the chase, down to the tiniest details he could remember.
There was nothing to say to any of it. No comforting words, no sweet platitude that would make anything okay, or even marginally better. She scooted closer to him and wrapped her tiny arms around his waist, letting her head rest on his shoulder. "It must have been hard."
"Yeah." That was a reaction he hadn't figured on, though, and it made him stiffen a little before relaxing. He wasn't a stranger to physical contact, but from pretty women? It'd been fucking rare enough.
Still. He let her hug him, even returning it. He hoped it made more sense to her why he was ... well, him. But he still felt like shit about making her feel bad. He kissed her forehead, briefly, but he still did it. How soft she was.
That made her giggle nervously. "I'm making you go soft, aren't I?" Her eyes were closed, her muscles tense. "Sorry. Thank you for telling me everything, though." The kiss on her forehead was so sweet, so fatherly, it made her want to cry.
John raised an eyebrow at her. This was all wrong. He might not be able to read women that well as, well, women, but he could read body language well enough. She was pissed. Or sad. And trying to joke to get past it.
Damn it. There was no way around it, not without making her feel like shit, and he would have felt like a heel. So he just sighed, keeping her in his arms a little bit longer. "You ... matter," was all he could say. He hoped to hell she understood.
"I know. I know I do. And I know what happens next. You're too chivalrous to fuck me and run, but you still care, so I'll be... some sort of friend. Thing." She couldn't help burrowing into his side anyway, burying her nose in the crook of his neck.
"I don't know." Damn it. He hated that she'd sort of pushed him to admit that, but he supposed it was fair. "I haven't a fucking clue."
She sat back, hand going to wipe her cheek before she even realized she was crying. "I know. But I'm not going anywhere." She chuckled a little at the irony. "In every sense of the word."
That was the thing. He couldn't have gotten away from this even if he'd wanted to. Which he didn't. He knew that much.
It was unlike him, but he took her little hand in his non-bruised one, squeezing it gently. He wasn't the affectionate type, and never had been. But he got that other people were.
She couldn't help smiling at that, since she recognized that it was a stretch for him. She kept nuzzling into his neck, content to just sit with him. The fact that he smelled like musk and leather didn't hurt.
He actually would have been okay with it going a little bit longer than it did, but his knuckles decided to throb. "Ow." He hadn't stayed to see House bruising. He hoped he had bruised. Otherwise, well, he'd feel pretty stupid.
She sat up a bit, kissing his bruised knuckles before putting the ice back down on them. "Don't take that ice off. Do you want some aspirin? I know I asked that earlier, but this time it's not sarcasm."
He shook his head. "Nah. Ice'll be fine." He didn't want this to get weird with Alice. He genuinely liked her on a friend level, that much he was sure of. Just, there was something else that went beyond friend. It was that little whatever that was messing with him.
She moved a little bit away from him, not wanting to confuse him any further. She couldn't help thinking about House flying through the air, though, and it got her to laughing. "Where'd you hit him?"
He did smile at that. "Uppercut. Right on the jaw."
"Well no wonder you hurt. Security always just used to right cross them on the nose. But you had to go for effect, didn't you?" She grinned, reclining backward again. "But I must admit. The visual is pretty nice. ... if I'd known what he was like, I wouldn't have chosen him to be my distraction sex."
Fair enough. He rose, cracking his back as he headed for the door. "Hey, an uppercut has the added plus of possibly making them bite their tongue. It can be funny."
"Did he?" She was still cracking up, grinning broadly. One of her legs reached out to poke him in the thigh with a toe. "I bet it felt good. Trust me. I wanted to."
"I don't know if he did bite his tongue. I didn't stay to watch." He'd wanted to find her that badly to talk, and that realization actually made him shift on his feet a little. Still, he nodded, a faint smile still there. "I think he goaded me. I shouldn't have. But still."
"Trust me, I doubt you're the first person to hit him." She shook her head, remembering how she'd had to play the part of the eyelash fluttering submissive to get him into it at all. "But I don't really want to talk about him. Want to watch a movie? North by Northwest was on."
"I wanted to change my clothes. But yeah, can I come back?" That was kind of a relief to hear, actually. She didn't look weird. She didn't look nervous, and because of that it was a lot easier for him not to be nervous.
"Of course. Here." She rifled through her bag and tossed him her key. "Just let yourself in." She spread out on the bed and turned the television back on. "Oh, good, I didn't miss the scene with the airplane chase."
He caught it, not quite sure whether to say thanks or okay or what. So he just nodded and left, but knowing he'd be coming back made a difference. That hadn't gone near as bad as he'd figured it would. Did that mean he had to be grateful to House? It might. Though he wasn't wild about the thought.
Eh, whatever. He headed across the hall to change, trying to ignore House and his aching hand.