Pain?

Bret directs Charlotte the short drive to his house, and arriving, he takes back his keys and gets out of the car to lead the way up the short walk to the front door.

He takes it in stride, as if not thinking a thing about having Charlotte there - whether he really didn’t care, or whether it was the alcohol skewing his judgment wasn’t clear.

Letting her in behind him, the screen door shuts on its own with a quiet bang.

The house is bigger than one would expect a bachelor to live in, indicating that perhaps he had won the battle to keep it over four years ago. The interior, however, was probably what one would expect. It was fairly clean, but cluttered, the living room scattered with everything from old magazines to clothing that hadn’t made it from the washer to the bedroom. The carpet of the entryway had been neglected, with evidence of his job caked to it and his boots that were by the door. The kitchen off to the right was well-stocked with food and not atrociously dirty, though the sink was half-full of dishes that needed to be washed, and those that had been washed hadn’t been put away. The air the house wore was one of someone who perhaps had let go of some things for the sake of mourning what they once had.

Bret tosses his keys on the coffee table in the living room, and flops down on his couch, pulling out a newspaper from underneath him and letting it fall to the floor on top of a week’s worth of papers.

Leaning his head back and closing his eyes, he knows he needs to eat and drink something to take the edge off, but his brain just doesn’t quite seem to want to get him there. “Make yourself at home,” he mumbles. “Ignore the mess.”


Rick lifts his eyebrows in surprise at Misty. “No…Carson didn’t say anything about it…I thought it looked like he’d been socked good by someone with a hard fist, but I didn’t ask him. Figured if it was bad enough he’d come to me, but he didn’t. Why?”


Jason grimaces slightly, knowing he must sound ridiculous. “Um…yeah, I guess that’s what I’m saying.”

He pauses, trying to come up with something they could work with. Spying a paperclip, he picks it up and unfolds it. “I tried to block one thing out once before, but…I don’t know if it worked or not.” A slight color to his cheeks indicates he’s not willing to say just what it was or when. “I figure unless you want to pull someone in here who can make me mad, physical feeling is the best place to start. I wanna know if I can make it so you don’t feel my pain.”

Taking a moment, he draws in his breath and holds the paperclip to his finger. Concentrating on what he feels, he runs the edge along his skin making it sting.