[Heavy Is The Crown]Confessions - Creed

Grey

Grey

Dialectical Hermeticist
You haven't walked these corridors in years.


Was her room always on the left, there?


Was this door always here?


You're sure you were just in the kitchen...


The walls wobble, your vision skews. God, you're drunk. No wonder there's no-one here. Your feet are like pendulums, your head like a nut in a vice. You stop, by the big mirror in the bathroom which, for some reason, is adjoining the living room. Do you look as bad as you feel?


You wake up screaming, twenty minutes late for work, soaking in sweat and the reek of last night's drinks.
 
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Letting out a frustrated grunt, Thom dragged himself out've bed and checked his mobile. A curse followed and a rush to the bathroom, taking the worlds quickest shower before he threw on some clothes that were presentable and clean-smelling enough and moved to the door of his apartment.


Open.


"Oh, fecking Christ," he sighed with a hint of his accent, rubbing aching eyes and checking his pockets for the essentials. Keys, wallet, mobile, cigarettes, lighter, painkillers. Check and triple check. "I've got to get my shit under control..."


Trailing off and slamming the door, he made his way downstairs and started his junker, punching the call button on his phone. A name lit in the display and he shielded his bloodshot eyes enough to make sure he was calling the right person.


'Eli S' it read.


When she answered he went right into an explanation before she could say a word. "I'm on the way, El, I swear to ya. Got a bit locked last night and woke up screaming over my alarm."


The alarm bit was a lie. He assumed in whatever state he'd been the night before, he just hadn't set one.


"I'll make it up to you, if you need me to stay later or something," he admitted sheepishly before going silent, hoping that her reply wouldn't be to just straight shit-can him. He needed this job, but he wasn't about to start begging. He wasn't THAT shook just yet.


Preparing for the worst, he got into his beater and drove off, screeching out've the drive and heading toward his workplace as he balanced the phone between shoulder and ear.
 
"Keep swinging your balls around like that, Tom, and you're gonna lose 'em," she says, voice like five years of packs a day - though you know she doesn't smoke. "Just get down here."


When you arrive, it's as much as you expect - quiet, but not so quiet it doesn't need a watchful eye.
 
Pushing open the door, Thom looked around curiously before heading toward the back. "Hey El, you still around?" he asked with as much brightness to his voice that he could muster. His head throbbed, but he ignored it, along with ignoring the yearning for a smoke.


Heading to the older timeclock, he punched his card and replaced it into the green steel card-holder that swayed and wobbled dangerously at the slightest movement.


"I'm just gonna get things up here sorted," he called back with a shake of his head and stepped up to the edge of the bar, resting his hands on the worn wooden top and tapping his fingers.


"Everything right with the world, ladies and gents?" he asked with a tired smirk to the 'professionals' that were already in their usual spots.
 
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There's a chorus of husky assent, or disagreement - hard to call - and Ma Mathers smiles beneficently over the top of the bar at you, face like an old but well-meaning lemon. She only drinks lemonade; but she thinks it's a cocktail.


"You havin' a nice day, Tommy?" She asks, slur more to ill-fitting teeth than drink.


There's a snort across the room. You can hear Eliza's chair scrape across the floor in the room above. It's quiet here.
 
Giving a kind smile and topping off the older woman's lemonade, Thom gives the question some thought. "Dunno if I'd call it the nicest, Ma," he said with a wink and a light smirk, "But I made it out of bed and made it here. A win in my book."


The snort from across the room catches his attention and he turns toward the sound instinctively. It's easy to hear in the near-silence. Not that it's usually busy at this time of day, but there's a bit more commotion or something.


Shaking his head, he goes into autopilot and tops off drinks, then starts wiping down the few sticky messes left on the back of the bar by the previous tender, sighing from his nostrils at the feel of half-dry booze on stainless steel.
 
Click of footsteps - light, but audible. Her silhouette fills the doorway. Shadow falls across you.


"Thomas."


This is not the first time your name has had the tone of a kick in the balls.
 
The man straightens at the words, back popping audibly. "Surprised me, boss," he said in a low tone, glancing her way cautiously and then finally moving over toward her. If scorn was to follow her call-out, he hoped it would be a violently public affair. That'd be just what he needed - judgement from a bunch of drunks about being one'a them.
 
"What time were you meant to be in today, Thom?" She asks, eyes meeting yours; flinty.


The rest of the peanut gallery is craning to watch.
 
"You know damn well when I was meant to be in, Eliza," Thom hissed in a hushed tone through his teeth, eyes bitter and sharp. "I'm not sayin' I don't deserve the arse-chewing, but at least do it back and away from the audience."


He blinked, as if realizing what he'd said and gave a sigh. What the hell was wrong with him today? Echoes of dreams and drunken memories flashed through his head and it rubbed his brow as if to push them back and away.


When he opens his eyes, they've cleared a little and he meets her's again, expecting daggers.
 
Awkward coughs.


She holds your gaze for a long moment.


She steps back into the next room, clearly inviting you to follow.


There's a wolf-whistle cut off by a oof somewhere behind you.


"Have some respect you little shit." Ma Mathers says, over the coughing.
 
Exhaling through his nostrils, Thom realizes he's holding his breath. A couple comments from the peanut gallery follow him, but he shrugs them off along with the whistle, and follows the woman into the other room.


His jaw goes rigid. Somewhere in the back of his mind, worry creeps forward, tendrils trying to blanket all rational thought.


Was he about to get shit-canned? Not that it wasn't deserving, of course, but where would he go then? Another dive bar? There was no going back to the university. He hadn't burned all of his bridges, but he had heard the talk. The rumors. Hell, he'd had an ex-colleague outright ask him if he'd gone mad!


Realizing he was stuck in his own head, he sighs and meets her gaze again, waiting for the inevitable.
 
You're not two steps in when you feel it. Unfamiliar, at this point. Like it could knock the wind out of you.


When's the last time you got a hug from another human being?


"Jesus Christ, Thom..."
 
The sudden hug makes Thomas Creed's mind go blank. The look on his face, if seen by a third party, would be the perfect caricature of shock and confusion.


"What," he starts, stammering a little. "Eliza, what."


The feeling isn't a discomforting one, but it's alien to him. Foreign.


Added to the confusion, he finds himself unable to form a coherent thought, deciding to be silent for a moment instead of rambling nonsense.
 
She releases you, takes a step back. There's the memory of a smile on her face, but her eyes - while softer - aren't pleased.


"Relax, Thom. I'm not firing you - this time. But I do have a condition for you," she says, fishing something out of her pocket.
 
Thomas blinks as she steps back. Where there was a strangeness to the hug before, it stays lingering in the lack of one. Another blink and she looks at him again and speaks.


"Well, that's a relief," he says with a sigh to accent the words, then tilts his right brow upward. "Condition? You're not gonna' ask for my first born or anything, are you?"


A laugh follows, albeit a nervous one, but his voice and laugh have taken on a relieved tone.
 
"I called up an old friend of mine," she says, watching you carefully - reminds you of a teacher. "A psychiatrist who is willing to give you some free sessions."


She folds her arms,


"That's my condition."
 
At the mention of a psychiatrist, the man's lip lowers and his eye gives a faint twitch. At this point, opening up to someone - professional or not - almost seemed a worse situation to be in than being jobless.


"Huh." The words escape him, but he doesn't follow up for what seems like minutes as he thinks through what to say and what the hell to do.


"Well... fuck," he finally says, pulling his fingers through his hair and exhaling. "I guess it beats not havin' a job." He grins to show he's kidding, but his eyes don't share on the joke. Just thinking about it makes his mind start to race and a cold sweat begin to sheen on his forehead.
 
"Damn right," she says, and there's a familiar undercurrent of anger and something else in her voice.


"I'll give you the details later. You're still on shift, buddy."


She pats you on the shoulder, walks by, out.
 
The joking grin dies on his lips as the woman's tone flashes of anger and something he can't quite place.


"Aye aye, captain," he states, pushing away a smart-ass comment at the shoulder-pat.


He smiles as she walked away and heads back to the bar to get back to work.
 
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Afternoon becomes evening becomes night. No incident. Relatively good turnout. Some guy who likes his AC/DC has been pumping coins into the faux old-fashioned juke.


Shift ends. You're free. Or at a loose end, depending on your perspective.
 
Stretching, Thom gives an exasperated sigh and clocks out, giving his eyes a rub.


"So help me god, if I ever hear Back In Black again I'll jam something sharp into my fuckin' eardrums," he grumbles aloud, checking his phone as he heads toward the front again - this time off the clock.
 
No messages. Low battery.


It'd be generous to say it's raining - cold droplets descend like a half-assed mist and the streetlamps fugue into bright smears in the deepening evening.
 
A scowl. "Hold a charge, you twit," he snaps and wipes some stray droplets from the phone's screen with shaking hands.


He stares at them for a moment, as if perplexed.


Not tonight, damn it, he tells himself and pockets the mobile, clenching the other fist and shoving both into the pockets of his jacket for his cigarettes.


When they appear, he stops walking and tries in vain to light one.


First it's the lighter. Then, the cigarette is soaked. Cursing, Thomas throws them on the ground and keeps walking, looking down at his feet.
 
Home again, home again.


Except it looks like a new store opened on the corner.


'Needful Things', the sign reads, and the window - faux-old timey shit, tastefully worn in a way that'd be charming if this place wasn't definitely so new that the look had to be engineering - is full of high caliber whiskey at suspiciously good prices.


The rain doesn't quite dim the smell wafting from the open door, into a little front hall - stairs at the back, door into the store on the right.


But home is just down the street.
 
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