Pacifier

🍎Van🥀

I knocked back the glass and poured another. Tipped my head back, eyes closed. Waiting.

"You fucking bastard!"

I looked up at Larry slowly, bracing myself for the onslaught of fury I knew I was about to face. Grief drove people mad. I'd seen Larry lose people before. I was expecting hell. I was prepared for hell.

So I remained calm, on the outside at least. Looking up at him from where I sat at my desk, cigarette smouldering between my lips, feet on the table, a telephone in my hand.

I'd been debating calling Sam, putting him on red alert and all that, letting him know i didnt care where he took little Della as long as she was safe. As long as they couldn't get to her.

"You fucking bastard! I thought we were watching her fucking house?!" he shouted slamming his fist down on the table when he felt I wasn't listening, though I was.

I was listening and thinking, taking it all in, processing it slowly, calmly, knowing that I needed to tread carefully if I was to get the response I needed from him.

"Van fucking look at me and tell me why Ruby is dead..." he snapped, and when I looked up at him again he knocked my cig from my hand and sent the phone flying too.

"I was using that..." I mumbled, blunt and stupid, woozy with the whiskey I'd spent my morning drinking.

"Well you're not now, you're talking to me, we're having a conversation and you're about to tell me why the fuck Ruby is in a body bag!"

"Lau..." I drawled a lazy warning, warning him not to raise his voice, my ears burning with the paranoia that Izzy might be somewhere near by, listening in, learning more about the evil I attracted. Gathering more and more reasons to hate me.

The office was dark, I hadn't turned a light on for days. Id learnt of Ruby's murder in the dead of night and i had stumbled through the dark to the cabinet we kept the drink in, and I had drunk. Drunk in the sunrise until the morning slurred into the afternoon. I hadn't seen a soul all day, until now. Until Larry had forced the locked office door open and stormed across the room to me.

The me who was slow and out of sync and struggling to say the right thing. The alcohol had numbed me to tranquility but now I couldn't speak, not clearly not sensibly, not charismatically or encouraging the way I needed to be.

"Larry I was using that phone," i let out a long sigh, "Ruby's dead because the Reids fuckin shot her..." i said knowing as the words slipped from my lips that they were the wrong ones, that I was heading for a smack across the face.

And when it came I wasn't stunned or surprised and the pain ached a dull ache. My cheek bone throbbed and i felt the pressure behind my eye, but it wasn't bad and it didn't help. Maybe it helped larry but it didn't help me.

"Can you at least act like you care? Jesus christ you selfish cunt Van!" his voice was raised and it rung in my ears and when I sat up a little straighter, disorientated and nauseous the look in his eyes was sobering. Too sobering.

"I do care Larry," i said, dull voice, tired. I didn't sound like i cared but I wasn't very good at that these days. My father had done a good job of beating that out of me at a young age and now the only way I really knew to show that I cared was by getting things done. "I was using that phone to call Sam, red alert you know..."

Those words seemed to quell his strife a little but they didn't do much, not enough. They didn't take the red rims from his eyes or the tears I could see he was doing well to hold back.

"Have you..."

"I told him not to contact us until I made contact with him, save em being traced but..."