knowthyexits | (no subject)

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hank

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She's exhausted, but if she stops moving, Sarah knows she's going to have to think about what's happened in the last week and if she does that, it brings her back to the feelings of loss and the feelings of grief that she's terrible at processing. She's been serving at the Winchester since it happened, only goes home to sleep and feed the dog, but keeps going, otherwise.

As it stands, her shift has been over for hours, but she's still there -- at the bar, with a glass of Scotch in her hands that she's not sure she even wants to drink. Mostly, she wants something to blame, but there's no way to do that here because it's not the fault of machines or fate that Cal is gone.

There is no fate but what they make. Maybe she's contributed, helped to lead them down this road? Maybe she should just accept that some things happen and they can't be stopped -- but that implies that she can't stop the impending apocalypse, that implies that she's useless and Sarah refuses to accept that as a truth. Still, here, in the bar, she pretends that she can control what she feels. She pretends that it doesn't wreck her inside to know that someone she loves is gone. Kyle is gone, Andy Goode is dead, Charley is gone and remarried.

She always had John, though.

Now, she doesn't even have him. That's the thought that drives her to drink back the alcohol, summoning another with a muted request.

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"I've spooned Lew Ashby before. Believe me when I say a dog would be a step up."

Hank loved the guy, he did, but nobody could deny his uncanny resemblance to a scruffy mangy little mutt.

"I'll be sure to tell Cato. And Lew Ashby," Sarah says, topping up her drink one more time. She's already feeling looser, more out of control, but she's behind closed doors now. She knows she won't make that much of a fool of herself. "He seemed nice, even if he seemed to think I had intentions on you."

At the 'nice' comment, Hank pulled a face as if in disagreement and wandered over to the nearest seat. He slumped back into it, legs spread open, glass brought back to his lips.

"Did he now," he commended nonchalantly before taking a sip. "He's probably just jealous. Of you," he clarified.

Sarah's not drunk enough to be misunderstanding. So, when Hank says what he does, she gives a disbelieving snort. "Of me?" she echoes. "He did also mention that you two had a 'no homo' situation going on, whatever that means. Is it one-sided, then? You? Or him?"

"Ha. Completely mutual. Nobody goes near my pooper," Hank assured her with a pointed look. Depsite Lew's attempts at dry-humping him, Hank could safely say that neither had any inclination to doing anything unholy with the other. Or any other guy, for that matter. Which seemed almost unlike the norm on this Island.

"Charming," she deadpans, shaking her head. "Well, whatever your business is with him, he's concerned about you. At least, that's what it came off like." Another drink, and this one settles in her stomach with a little bit of heat. The room is starting to spin, and she's starting to forget why she's so upset.

Hank shook his head with something like amusement and gave half an eyeroll. "He's shit-stirring. Don't worry about it." A slap upside the head when he got back to the Compound would be coming Lew's way soon.

"Gonna come join me?" He pushed out his lower lip in a pout. "It's lonely over here."

"Only because I'm somewhat drunk," she says, refilling her glass one last time before walking the distance between them carefully, settling down on the edge of the bed with the glass in both her hands. "And I'm not worried about your friend. You might be. He seems bored enough to be asking me, of all people."

Considering Hank had had less than half of what Sarah had just downed, he was feeling rather more sober than he had been planning to tonight.

"You really want to spend the evening talking about Lew Ashby? 'Cause I can save you the trouble and just give you a copy of his biography, if you want. I'll even autograph it for you."

"Is that what you wrote?" she asks, pressing her hand down to the edge of the bed as she leans her chin into her hand, elbow propped up by her knee. "Maybe I will give it a go. It's not like I have much else to do these days besides training the dog and serving food."

Well, and the chemo treatments, but she likes to pretend those don't exist.

"It's the latest dogwater to bleed from this troubled scribe, yeah." It wasn't the only thing he'd written and Hank was certain it wasn't the last, here and back home.

He gave Sarah a side-glance, as if sizing up which book would suit her best. "God Hates Us All," he eventually told her. "Start with that. It was one of my first." The first book to have started him on the pathway he'd eventually followed to LA.

She snorts, slightly, giving him a bleary-eyed smile. "God Hates Us All?" she echoes the title, shaking her head. "That sounds like it could be a personal biography about my life." Because she's stopped believing in that kind of higher power a long time ago. "Do you like it? Writing?"

"It's more...writing likes me," Hank replied immediately. It was an answer he always gave, so he didn't even think about it, didn't wonder whether it was still true. "I like words. I write about shit that turns me on creatively." And it just so happened that his sexual oeuvre also happened to turn a lot of other people on too.

She finishes her drink, manages to set it down on the nightstand before she lies back on the bed, palms folded rigidly over her torso as she stares at the ceiling. "I wasn't aware that the act of writing could be provocative," she murmurs, the burn of the alcohol making her throat hoarse. "What turns you on, Hank?"

"Then you should definitely read something of mine," he told her. If she did, she'd see right away how his writing could turn even him on.

He probably shouldn't have done it but when Sarah laid down, Hank pushed up from his seat and joined her on the bed with a bounce, crossing his legs beneath him Buddha style.

"Um." He huffed out a laugh. "All kinds of shit." For a lack of anything better to do with his hands, he fished out another cigarette and twisted it between his fingers, leaving it unlit. "How about you?"

She cranes her neck to look at him through the haze of what little hair she's managed to grow back. She stopped wearing the wig when it got long enough to style in a pixie-like style, messy in all ways and worse for the wear now that she's been drinking and in disarray. "I meant with writing," she clarifies evenly.

Still, she's about to answer, even though she's not sure why. "I don't know. I guess deep down, I just like the idea of something -- someone -- normal. When it comes down to it." It's why she could see herself with Charley and Andy Goode. Still, what she wanted and what she fell into were two different things, always, and she always managed to find a way into the difficult.

Hank makes the noise of a buzzer on a gameshow when a contestant has just gotten the answer wrong.

"'The idea of someone normal'?" He echoed, deeply unsatisfied. "That's what turns you on? I'm talking about instinct, passion, all the stuff that sits just below the surface, ready to light up like flashpaper. Normality can't turn you on."

"Says you," she counters stubbornly. "There's something to be said for the knowledge that someone is good. Someone is normal. Someone isn't fighting against an impending future that may or may not happen." She offers a wistful smile. "Also, I like a man who can take care of himself."

"Fuck," Hank said bluntly around a laugh. "You must dislike me immensely then." But that was okay. He usually won women over eventually.

"Isn't that what I keep saying?" she asks with a smirk, rolling her eyes given that 'liking' Hank is something that's come with a great deal of time and pressure -- she likes some of her wounds as much as she liked him when they first met. "Immensely is a good word for it."

"That's cold, woman. How can you not love a face like this?" Angelic wasn't a look Hank could pull off well but that didn't mean he wouldn't give it a go. "That's just the liquor speaking, I knows it."

Sarah gives him a wary look. "Isn't the liquor something that usually makes someone like them better? Because it's not doing any favors for you in either direction right now, positive or negative. "And your face has no effect on me, either way."

"Nonsense," Hank argued, pushing to his knees and flopping further up the bed, head on the pillow now. "Women would pay to wake up to a face like this. Fortunately, I don't charge."

She rolls her eyes, nudging at his hip with her knee as she shifts onto her side. "Don't be an idiot," she says, then waits for a moment. "I wouldn't pay anything for this."

"What tha what tha?" Hank replied, slipping a hand between his face and the pillow to keep it in safe quarters. Some of his greatest conversations with Karen had been during pillow talk. Of course, that was mostly after all the sexing when his libido wasn't controlling his mouth. Still, he was quieter here, less boisterous. Despite what it might seem, Hank thought beds were sacred places.

"You be seriously fucking mistaken, lady. I know we don't be having currency here but you wouldn't even give me a chicken for this? Or a cow? Some magic fucking beans?"