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[as_damaged]

❝You've reached Allison Cameron, please leave a message.❞

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[ooc: you know the drill, if you need her and there's no recent post &c &c. whatever. ♥♥♥]

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[intheblanks.livejournal.com]

[Chase checks the time on his network device, leaning back to flash the digital display across at her. Five minute countdown, it could almost have been timed.]

Afraid not. Want me to rewind the last scene?

[as_damaged]

Somehow I feel like that would be less than heartwarming.

[She smiles, but it's a little tighter now. Honestly she'd kind of hoped the year would pass accidentally, with no fanfare.]

Too bad we can't switch over and watch the ball drop.

[intheblanks.livejournal.com]

[Honestly, that's one East Coast tradition he's never understood the affection for. A huge box of fireworks and a few bottles of something fizzy were all it took to see in the new year. He's still unemotional about what is, in his timeline, just another day.]

Really? I thought you were going out of your way to avoid the toast.

[Among other traditions.]

[as_damaged]

[She shrugs, tension seeping back into her pose.]

It's tradition.

[Not a tradition she has particular ties to, but she does make the effort just because it's the thing to do, if she's not somewhere she'd rather be, somewhere meaningful. Not at home with family, or out with friends, or-- well. It's distraction, more importantly; lights and anticipation and musical acts she's not interested in that could take the place of talking and thinking.

Wouldn't it have been nice.]

Is that why you brought the bottle?

[intheblanks.livejournal.com]

[Sighing, not aggravated just weary, and it is a minute to midnight, that can't be out-of-place, he pushes his hands back over his face, back through his hair.]

I brought it because I thought you'd like it.

[And if the film, and the meal - all the water - has done anything, it's this: he's stony sober by now.]

Why did you ask me to come?

[as_damaged]

I didn't think the champagne would go with dinner.

[It was an unfair question and she knows it. Really, it's the product of frustration-- she knows something is wrong, just not what; and knows enough to know she can't ask. Maybe they should just avoid the holidays, every year.

It doesn't much matter what they are or aren't to one another-- seeing him drunk and miserable is more than she can stand. She invited him because she didn't want to worry about the alternatives.

She invited him because she doesn't want to be alone.]

I asked because... I wanted you to come over.

[She sounds just as tired. It's a lame and hopeless answer, but she's not certain she has a better one. She doesn't know what a better answer would be.]

[intheblanks.livejournal.com]

[Maybe the right words don't exist, but it's not such a bad choice. Any belligerence over his right to drink (and he's not a drunk because he gets drunk, he's still telling himself, it's a choice not an affliction) ebbs with the weight of her choosing him. He bows his head, almost to his chest, guilty for spending time here. The definition of madness: repeating the same actions while expecting a different result.]

Either I'm someone who hurt you, or I'm someone you hardly know.

[It's a painful assessment, and he feels like a fraud for the inclusion of either. There's no choice where he hasn't.]

If you want company, you could have made a better choice.

[as_damaged]

If that's true, you don't have the right to critique my choices.

[She levels a carefully guarded look at him, because he's not wrong-- he's not right, either-- and really she has no idea where to go next. Certain things are evident. He's in poor shape; she cares about him; they can neither pick up where they left off, nor part ways entirely. Beyond that it's all a carefully poised disaster.]

[intheblanks.livejournal.com]

That's a terrible argument.

[But he actually smiles when he says it, and this time he checks his wrist, not the screen of his phone.]

We've missed midnight. Happy new year.

[If she lets him, or if she doesn't catch up with the movement before it's made, he'll catch her hand and kiss the back of it, and let it go. Chivalry (and warning her about what she's doing, that's chivalry too), now there's tradition.]

[as_damaged]

[She stiffens a little when he leans in, but relaxes not because he lets her go but because he doesn't go any further. It's the same old strange balance-- a game stacked against him, where the less liberties he takes, the more he could get away with. As long as he doesn't.]

I hope it is,

[she says quietly, earnestly, because it's more than just a platitude, and lets herself smile a little too.]