Inkling

5.8 The Stupid

11:50 A.M.

The world was seeping under the door and pooling around Lincoln's feet. He kicked at it gently, urging it to leave the room, to leave him in the silence that was only moments before. But the silence was gone. It had hung fragile as it was, with Lincoln waiting for Max to say something. Speak. Make a noise. Something to assure him that he was still there. Max was undoubtedly waiting for Lincoln to do the same. Reassurance was funny that way, it always left something to be wanted. No one ever knew how to reassure him. His mother had always seemed tentative to attempt to do so.

People had the irksome habit of treating him with extreme, and distant, care. His mother had told him once that his hard exterior was no mask for his true fragility. He never understood that; how she could think he was hard and cold on purpose. How she could think that she had nothing to do with making him so.

"Lincoln?" It was Max, softer than he had ever heard him speak. Max was usually fairly loud. He talked like someone used to being talked over. Lincoln opened his mouth, leaned his face closer to the door, and said nothing.

He had, actually, thought of something to say when he heard what sounded like a sack of clothes falling off a truck, but outside the door. Max was yelling something. Still, it took longer than Lincoln was willing to admit to drag himself off the ground. It took even longer still to unlock and open the door. Partially because a bit of him still really did not want to leave, but also because he could hear low voices on the other side of the door. A voice he would recognize anywhere, and one he was sure he had heard somewhere. A sharp woman's voice. Sharp, probably, because she was talking to Max. He had that effect on people.

It was with this thought that Lincoln flung open the door, and found himself face to face (or rather nose to forehead) with Max, whose hand hung suspended where the doorknob had been moments before. They stared in surprise for several seconds. Lincoln cleared his throat.

"What's going on?" He winced at the dryness of his tone. How uncaring they must think him to be. It was about then that Lincoln noticed the young woman sitting on the floor behind Max. "Who is that?"

"We have met, Mr. Locke." She said with a slight scowl. After a moment she stood, uneasily, and came to stand a bit behind Max. Mostly because Max was standing very close to Lincoln, closer than he had realized. "Miss Sophia Jennings."

"Ah!" Lincoln nodded, "a friend of Miss Valera."

"Yes."

They stood there like that. Max and Lincoln too close. All of them a bit too much of something. Sophia too reluctant to explain herself. Max too uneasy in the presence of them both. Lincoln too ready to start running at any given moment. All too quiet and angry and annoyed to start the conversation they knew needed to be had.

"We should go somewhere else." Max said at last. The other two nodded and they exited the tenement house much slower than any of them had entered it.

So they ended up where it all began. It had begun to rain ever so slightly, and by the time they reached the small cafe it was snowing. Max darted inside, shivering intensely. He was soaked. Lincoln could see Max's skin through his shirt.

He relieved his head of its soggy hat and chose a the chair across from Max. Sophia came in last, looking like she wished to speak. The man behind the bar - who served both the tea and the gin - stopped her from doing so when he tossed a coat at Max.

"Oh thank the heavens! Richard you lovely fellow I could kiss you!" He cried, hugging the coat to his chest before throwing it on and popping the collar so it covered half his face when he hunched down.

"I'd prefer you didn't, Mr. Max." Richard replied flatly, leaving a pot of tea and three cups on the table.

Only after her first cup of tea did Sophia find the words she was looking for. "I was with Daisy, for brunch, when an old woman who was not really an old woman approached us about a book."

"How is an old woman not an old woman?" Max asked absently, stroking his jacket sleeve lovingly.

"When she changed appearance after leaving the restaurant. Maxwell, what is going on?"

Max leaned forward, "what book did they ask about?"

Sophia scowled. "I don't know. Just a book that her dead son had and she thought you might have it."

"Why would I have a dead man's book?"

"Well I imagine she was pretending to be the mother of Ira Rose." Max leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

"Ah" was all he said.