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Josh has been living in his new apartment for around five days, now, and he’s finally got some money in the bank, enough to pay for food for him and Jack and rebuild his bankroll. It’s around a thousand bucks in all—the Super Bowl was pretty much Christmas for him. He knows for a fact that he deeply annoyed Vasquez the Disembodied Voice with his cheering when his team won, but he had bet all two hundred dollars in his bank account on them because he had no other choice, and actually come out better for it. Josh can milk a thousand bucks for all it’s worth. Josh can milk it so hard he can make cows.
…Metaphors have never been his strong suit, but anyway, he’s been breathing easier.
It’s good to know that the apartment wasn’t a fluke, that his luck really is changing after the worst run he’s ever had, so he’s feeling a little better about his life.
Not that much better, especially now that he’s staring forlornly at his coffee maker, having realized that there is no coffee to actually make.
He definitely has enough money to get a reasonable amount of coffee, but he’ll have to go to the store for that, and how the hell is he supposed to get up the energy to do that without coffee? Now that’s what Josh calls ‘cruel irony’.
Anyway, Josh doesn’t really want to leave the building right now anyway, because he woke up at two and now it’s three and he’s pretty much on call for Goodnight’s fabled dinner party, which is happening tonight, as Goodnight informed him with a slightly uncomfortable intensity earlier this morning.
Josh isn’t sure why Goodnight’s so into this, since he could always just…invite Josh over to shoot the shit or something, have a drink, eat some food, kind of a welcome party, nothing too special, but this is looking to be a whole, fancy, real deal kinda thing. There’s got to be a reason for it (maybe it’s just growing up rich and Southern, though Josh doesn’t actually know if Goodnight comes from money, he just assumed from how he talks), but…
Here’s the deal: Josh is still trying to suss these people out, so he really doesn’t know much of anything yet. So far, he’s just been observing the climate of the fourth floor closely but also from a distance, which is why he’s actually kind of excited about the dinner party. At least he’ll be able to get more information about his surroundings by observing the occupants of the fourth floor in a controlled environment, because it’s not like he’s had much of a chance to even get a basic grasp on everyone here. They’re weird, and Josh has high standards for weird, but, hell, he still hasn’t even met Vasquez the Disembodied Voice in person, even after having a fifteen minute argument over whether football or soccer (fútbol! Vasquez the Disembodied Voice insists) is better.
(Josh still thinks soccer is some boring, under complicated shit, but then Vasquez the Disembodied Voice brought up baseball and, like, check and mate, because Josh loves baseball but will admit that he can see how it’s not exactly riveting to the unenlightened.)
Josh asked Sam what the hell Vasquez the Disembodied Voice’s deal is, but he only received a shrug and a cryptic, “These are rough times.”
Josh does not disagree, but he was unable to acquire any further information. Still, the guy will be at the dinner party (he asked), so there’s something. Josh is slightly worried about meeting him, though—what if he’s deformed or something? What if Josh puts his foot in his mouth about it? He has to keep making good impressions if he’s going to get anything from these people.
But none of that is the point right now. The point is that Josh is out of coffee, and he is not happy about it, because he needs some damn caffeine to be the smooth, charming devil everyone, including himself when he looks in the mirror, expects him to be.
Then he has an epiphany: he has neighbors he talks to now, and he remembers how his ma used to go next door for sugar, which people always gave her because everyone loved her. So if he just goes to someone for “sugar” (okay, that sounds like a euphemism for cocaine, a drug which Josh is somewhat pathetically proud to say he’s never done, because you can get nosebleeds from that) he can get the stuff he wants (still sounds like he’s looking for drugs) and be friendly.
(Friendly enough to extort the people around him for his own means.)
God, Josh is smart.
He pets Jack, who’s sitting on the couch looking about as regal as a ridiculous little circus dog can, just for a second before he leaves his apartment (because if Jack doesn’t get at least some attention, he gets grouchy), crosses the hall, and knocks on Red Harvest’s door, because, and this is weird, he’s probably interacted with Red Harvest most out of everyone here, even though the guy’s not exactly a sparkling conversationalist, and that’s an understatement. Thank God Josh can carry a conversation completely on his own.
Red Harvest opens his door while saying, “I know, Goody, I’m coming.”
Then he sees Josh and blinks, because no one’s actually used to Josh yet, but this is how it works when anthropologists go to some isolated place to study the culture—people don’t immediately warm up to them.
(The truth is that Josh has been watching the Discovery Channel. A lot.)
“Yes?” Red Harvest asks.
“Hey, RH,” Josh says, smiling. “What’s up? I was just wondering if you’d do me a solid and loan me some coffee, or anything with caffeine, really. Instant is fine. I ran out.” Josh shrugs. What can you do?
Red Harvest stares for a second, as if he’s mulling over his response. Josh is not a patient man, but he doesn’t rush him. He is a potential source of caffeine.
Red Harvest says, finally, “I d…” He does that awkward throat clearing thing, and then continues. “I don’t drink coffee. Or caffeine.”
Josh gapes, because Red Harvest is, like, in his twenties, right? Don’t most kids in their twenties drink coffee like fish? “Seriously?”
Red Harvest does not deign to answer Josh’s admittedly mostly rhetorical question. Instead, he just walks out of his apartment, closes the door behind him, pushes past Josh, goes over to Goodnight and Billy’s apartment, and unceremoniously lets himself in.
“For God’s sake,” Josh hears Goodnight complain before the door closes. “RH, how many times have I told you to knock?”
Josh rolls his eyes and follows Red Harvest, and he actually does knock on the door to Goodnight and Billy’s apartment, because if there’s something his ma drilled into him, it was manners. (That’s right—when Joshua Faraday is rude, he is rude by choice.)
Horne (look, Josh can’t call him ‘Jack’, it’s too confusing) opens the door. Josh can’t see inside because of Horne’s bulk, but he can hear people banging around, and Goodnight chattering.
“Jesus, is everyone in there?”
“…Except Vasquez? Yes. It’s becoming a bit of an…operation,” Horne says delicately. “And no, we do not have coffee. No one here drinks it except Emma, and she’s got…some business today.”
“Not even Vasquez?” Josh asks a little desperately, and this is starting to alarm him, because he’s apparently a complete caffeine junkie. He thinks he’s going to collapse if he doesn’t get his fix soon.
“Oh,” Horne says, sounding a little surprised, maybe because Josh is taking initiative to meet Vasquez the Disembodied Voice. “Well, I think he does. If you’re really so dedicated, you might as well try.”
Josh nods, relieved, if vaguely worried that Vasquez the Disembodied Voice doesn’t actually have coffee and then Josh will have to die and also always remember to fucking stockpile the stuff because apparently, and he cannot stress how brain-bending this is, almost no one here drinks it, which is the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard.
(It is not the most ridiculous thing he has ever heard, but it’s at least in the top fifty.)
“Now, run along,” Horne says. “Someone will get you when it’s all ready.”
“Chisolm, you are cutting those potatoes too thick,” Goodnight barks from inside the apartment. “I expect better from you.”
Josh raises his eyebrows. “And when will that be?”
Horne sighs heavily. “Hopefully sometime before midnight.”
And the door is closed in Josh’s face.
Josh is immediately bored, but then he remembers the coffee potential hidden in Vasquez the Disembodied Voice’s apartment and perks up as much as he can with no mind-altering anything in his system. Anyway, it’s probably best to get a feel for Vasquez the Disembodied Voice before meeting him for the first time at an attempted fancy dinner party. Just in case he is deformed or something.
At some point in his thought process, Josh ended up in front of the never-opened (at least not in front of him) apartment, and he sucks up any worries he may have (because what is he, a wimp?) and knocks on the door.
“What?! This dinner party cannot be happening yet!”
“It’s Josh!”
“Why?!”
“Coffee!”
Josh might as well have said “open sesame”, because at that, the door is wrenched open, and finally, finally, Josh is face to face with Vasquez the Embodied Human, who is…
Hot.
He’s leaning against the doorframe, well-muscled arms crossed over his chest, a wide, amused smile spreading over his face and revealing all of his teeth, which, okay, does make him look kind of threatening, like he’s being aggressively handsome. “Coffee?” He asks, and as Josh remembers Horne’s words and takes a closer look at the man in front of him, he feels hope flare up in his sluggish brain, because this is definitely a hardcore caffeine addict--his clearly perpetual five o’ clock shadow coupled with one of the worst cases of exhaustion-induced raccoon eyes Josh has ever seen give him away. There’s nothing that can convince Josh that this guy is staying upright and rakishly handsome with no help, and, considering the word that moved him to open his door, Josh can guess what that help is.
(Also, Josh can clearly see a coffee stain on Vasquez’s blue shirt.)
Josh shoots Vasquez a confident grin, glad for his autopilot smiles that save him from stupid, obvious staring. “Yep. I was wondering if you’d spare some for me?”
“What makes you think I have any to spare?” Vasquez asks lightly.
Josh half-pouts. “Come on, don’t play with me like this.”
Wait a second, are you flirting? Jesus, stop flirting. Stop flirting! Thou shalt not fuck thy neighbor, Joshua!
Vasquez just snorts with laughter and then moves out of the way. “Come inside, guero, I’ll get you the good stuff.”
“Bless you, man,” Josh says, sighing in relief. “You do not know the hoops I had to jump through to get to this moment.”
“Yeah?” Vasquez asks as he reaches into a well-stocked cupboard to get out a bag of ground coffee.
“Yeah,” Josh says, and then, for whichever reason, he starts telling Vasquez all about it.
Billy thinks that, objectively, this could be much worse. Goodnight could be channeling his stress and big feelings into something much less benign than an elaborate, nostalgia-tinged dinner party for the new neighbor (who Billy is almost sure would have no problem being officially welcomed to the fourth floor through pizza and beer). That this whole thing is so harmless is probably some kind of psychological victory.
Objectively.
Subjectively, Billy is in hell.
None of this would be happening, he thinks mournfully, if Goodnight hadn’t had a nightmare that tossed him face first into some kind of episode which inspired him to completely throw himself into what he had assured Billy would be a casual gathering. He’ll probably be over it soon, but right now he is turning life into an exercise in Gone With the Wind style drama because he’s wired on sleep deprivation and also just generally really into this to the point where Billy is starting to think that maybe the “casual gathering” was never going to be casual, even if the preparation was originally going to be a little less stressful.
Maybe Goodnight just misses the old days when he regularly ate dinner with seven hundred dollar cutlery of varying sizes and actually saw his family.
Billy really, really sympathizes, okay? He may not show it, but he feels for people, and he understands them, at least by now, and Goodnight? Well, Billy’s been feeling for him since they met. Which is pretty impressive, considering that at that point in time he was convinced that feelings were for suckers and that romantic love was the creationism of emotions—patently false, but something a mind-boggling amount of people believed in anyway.
And that is why Billy is letting Goodnight has turn the preparation of roast beef and about four sides into pure tyranny.
But he doesn’t have to like it.
Even Billy is not immune to criticism here, and if Goodnight complains about the way he’s cutting the bell peppers, or any food item, for that matter, one more time, Billy is going to stab something. Not a person, because he is forty and has more self-control than that, but the inanimate objects around him are definitely in danger.
Billy specializes in knives. He is cutting the vegetables perfectly.
Sam was helping at first, but he is now sitting on the couch, reading one of the books Goodnight puts on the coffee table, because, and Billy quotes, “You know what? I’m done! My ancestors didn’t fight and die for me to put up with white Southern gentlemen ordering me to do their damn busywork! I’m gonna read a goddamn book and you are not gonna test me.”
Goodnight, abashed, did not test him, so now Billy and Jack are the only ones on kitchen duty, along with Goodnight, who isn’t even really helping because he can barely cook. In fact, he ’s mostly just ordering them all around (he has, he says with Shakespearean theatricality, a vision), which Billy is honestly only tolerating because at least he gets to order Goody around in the bedroom.
Red Harvest is not on kitchen duty. Instead, he’s setting the table and straightening up the apartment with a frightening, almost Goody-level intensity, because if there’s something Red Harvest’s excellent at, it’s making things look nice (he missed his calling in interior decoration, Goodnight once said, much to the confusion of Red Harvest himself, who hadn’t been sure if he was being insulted or not), and not even Goodnight was going to let him in the kitchen. No one wants a repeat of the noodle incident.
“Really, Goodnight,” Jack says in response to something Billy, who is good at blocking out frustrating stimuli, didn’t hear. “I know what I’m doing. I’ve cooked for more’n a few before.”
Goodnight just huffs and goes back to stuffing bell peppers with ground meat, but has the sense not to push.
“RH!” Goodnight nearly yells, abandoning the bell peppers to descend on Red Harvest. “The teeth of the knife face the edge of the plate! Not outward! And the salad fork is to the left of the dinner fork! What, we’re supposed to have the big fork and then the little fork? Like philistines?”
“Setting tables is an art now?” Red Harvest asks, narrowing his eyes at Goodnight.
“It most certainly is,” Goodnight says, nearly hissing. “Presentation is one of the most important aspects of a good dinner party! That’s why I chose you for this! I meant it when I said it was a vital job!”
Red Harvest frowns a little. “I thought you just wanted to keep me out of the kitchen.”
“That was admittedly a major factor in giving you this job, but it’s no less important for it! You have to put your heart and soul into this!”
Red Harvest gives Goodnight a flat stare. “I am.” He pauses. “No I’m not. But I’m t…I’m taking it very seriously. Until you interrupted me. And I did it on purpose.”
Silence falls over the apartment as everyone looks at Red Harvest.
Goodnight looks on the verge of a conniption, though there is a pretty good argument for this whole thing being an extended conniption, so maybe not. Red Harvest’s expression does not change.
“I’m sorry,” Goodnight says in a low, dangerous voice. “Did you just say you’re setting my table wrong on purpose?”
“Just the…the knife. And forks. It looks better my way.” Red Harvest nods to punctuate his statement. “I have a vision.”
Billy rolls his eyes skyward as the two paragons of sanity in front of him just look at each other, and then goes back to watching them while cutting the bread (which is, thankfully, the last thing that needs to be sliced, out of the somewhat ridiculous amount of sliceable things they apparently have), because this whole business is starting to cross the line into amusing. Sam, who’s struggling to keep a straight face from behind his book, seems to agree with him.
“Red. Harvest. This isn’t time to experiment! This is time to do exactly as I say! I know how to do this, and this is the way it’s been done for centuries. Since the dawn of formal dinner parties, this is how the table has been set.”
“Not sure how historically accurate that is…” Sam says in an undertone, and Billy snorts.
Red Harvest and Goodnight stare each other down until Red Harvest finally heaves out a sigh and starts rearranging the cutlery to classic specifications. Billy and Sam trade a look that says, clear as day, ‘this has circled from concerning to rage inducing to hilarious’ (they’re well versed in the art of glance-talking), and both choke back a laugh when they hear Red Harvest mutter, “He just wants to do it the same way as always…no creativity…who’s the philistine now?”
Josh, for some reason, still hasn’t left Vasquez’s apartment. Okay, he knows the reason, which is that he’s enjoying shooting the shit with Vasquez, who actually talks, and who reacted in absolute glee at the chance to gossip, so Josh is getting some good research out of this, even if it’s just some basic stuff, because Josh doesn’t want to go too personal and make things awkward, because this is something not awkward. Well, Vasquez occasionally shushing him so that he can watch the telenovela playing, even though he admitted ‘it’s very awful, but I still want to see what happens’ is a little weird, but Josh is honestly surprised at how overall normal Vasquez is, even if he’s currently suffering through an episode of what-the-fuck-ever that he’s not following at all.
Finally, after the fifth time the people on the screen erupt into screeching, Josh loses his patience and asks another question, because he deserves a good time, and he’s pretty sure that Vasquez will take the bait if Josh makes any kind of inquiry, impolite or not, because even Vasquez looks bored. Josh is just saving him from the shit on TV. “Seriously, are they this quiet all the time?”
He’s pretty sure that Vasquez knows he’s not talking about the people on the screen, who definitely aren’t quiet, and that he’s leaving out Goodnight in that statement. The bait works, because even though Vasquez sighs and rolls his eyes, he answers Josh’s question, as he’s answered pretty much all of Josh’s questions, and quite eagerly, he might add. Josh is good at reading people, and he thinks it might be that Vasquez hasn’t had anyone to talk to in a while, for some reason that he’s not going to explore (right now). “Nah, they’ll talk more once they get used to you.”
“…Even RH?”
“Even RH. He’ll never be chatty, but he’s not completely silent.”
“And, okay, while we’re on the topic of RH—what about that cat?"
Vasquez shakes his head fondly. “He says he’s had Purple since he was eighteen, and that she was a street cat first. He says she wandered onto the tribal area he lived in.”
“Tribal area?”
“Red is Comanche, he grew up in a tribal area in Oklahoma. And the dinner party should help them all loosen up, I think,” Vasquez adds.
Josh snorts. “I dunno, I heard Goodnight from inside, and he did not sound loosened up.”
Vasquez laughs. “He gets like that sometimes. Usually he’s friendly, though. A little bit of a…drama queen?”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“Good guy, though. All of them are. Es que el tiene sus problemas, como todos.”
Josh shrugs, breezes past the Spanish, and asks, with some less-than-innocent interest, even if, yes, thou shalt not fuck thy neighbor is going to have to extend to her too: “Hey, what’s Emma’s deal?”
Vasquez grimaces. “Don’t even try. Her husband died last year.”
“Oh,” Josh says, insides gone cold. “Shit. That really sucks.”
Vasquez sighs heavily. “Yeah. From what I know, he was a very nice man. Emma, she only moved in after he died, to take over being landlord since he left all that to her for after his mother retired and she did, from the job, after…”
Josh makes a note to dial down the flirting a few thousand notches, and sits back, wondering what else to ask to lift the cloak of look I didn’t expect her to be a widow off the room. There goes his light research.
Thankfully, he doesn’t have to think of anything, because they’re saved by the bell—or, rather, someone knocking on the door. Josh can somehow tell the person doing so is annoyed, which is impressive, putting that much emotion into knocking on a door.
Vasquez sighs and says, “Well, it’s time.” He opens the door and grins. “Billy, what’s up?”
Billy rolls his eyes. “We’re finally done.”
“How’d it go?” Josh asks from inside, even though he totally knows. (Not well, it didn’t go well, Josh calls it.)
“It was an emotional rollercoaster,” Billy says dryly, and then he furrows his brow. “What’s he doing here?”
Vasquez shrugs, “He came over for coffee and didn’t leave.”
“Vasquez has been sharing some fun facts about this place with me!” Josh interjects helpfully.
Billy rolls his eyes again. Josh wonders if you can dislocate eyes from rolling them too much, or if you can dislocate eyes at all. He’s pretty sure that if you can, Billy’s in grave danger. “Chismoso,” Billy mutters at Vasquez.
Vasquez scoffs. “Oye, yo necesito pasar el tiempo con algo.”
Josh doesn’t know what any of that means, so he just ignores it, which has always worked for him before.
“C’mon, guero, time to do this,” Vasquez says, and it takes Josh a second to realize that he’s ‘guero’, whatever that means.
(Now that he thinks about it, he thinks he should feel a little guilty that he never learned a damn word of Spanish, considering that he grew up in Southwest Texas.)
Josh shrugs, straightens his shirt, halfheartedly smooths down his hair, and heads on over to Goodnight and Billy’s apartment.
Then he takes about two steps inside and stops cold, because, look, from almost the moment he first entered the fourth floor, he’s felt like he’s been transported to an alternate universe, and now this is another alternate universe and it’s just…apartmentception. Josh isn’t sure if anyone makes Inception jokes anymore, but he thinks he can indulge in the privacy of his own mind.
He hasn’t actually ever been in Goodnight and Billy’s apartment, so he’s not sure if it’s always like being slapped in the face by Southern elegance gone terribly wrong, but considering that Vasquez looks both confused and disturbed when Josh sneaks a glance over at him, Josh is pretty sure it’s not. Still, that’s exactly the vibe right now, from the dinner table that Josh is sure wasn’t made to fit seven mostly tall people to the abundance of cutlery and dishes somehow neatly cluttering the spotless white tablecloth.
The whole place smells great, at least, with a truly impressive amount of food covering the kitchen counters. There’s a roast, and a lot of bread, and stuffed bell peppers, and what might be soup, and some other stuff Josh can’t really make out. He’s not going to keep count.
Other than that, the place is the opposite of welcoming, everything arranged with military precision; even, once he looks at it, the food on the counters, and God, it’s so clean. It’s like Red Harvest’s apartment, but less like the product of charming, harmless neurosis and more just…neurosis. Finally, Josh sees Goodnight, the man of the hour himself (though, actually, he’s pretty sure that he’s technically the man of the hour), fluttering around the apartment like a manic bee. This is the point when Josh gets genuinely concerned that he might leave this place in a body bag if he spills something.
Red Harvest is also wandering around, circling the dinner table like a caged lion, playing around with the cutlery while Sam says, “Really, Red, it looks fine. Even Goodnight thinks so. Just sit down on the couch, you don’t have to keep going.”
“Dios mío,” Vasquez says in a hushed voice from next to Josh. “So much went wrong here.”
Josh nods, and then opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, and then considers booking it, and then sucks it up because he is the one who said (to himself, because it’s not like he has many other interesting people to talk to) that he wanted to observe the inhabitants of the fourth floor in a controlled environment, even though now that he thinks about it controlled environments don’t exactly engender normal reactions from everyone, so…in short, Josh is going to stay here. And watch the trainwreck. And probably end up wishing he was still living next to the clowns.
(Okay, actually, not the clowns. Never the fucking clowns.)
Finally, Josh manages to eke out, “That’s a hell of a lot of silverware.”
He doesn’t know why he said that instead of literally anything else, but Billy just nods, a serene but still somewhat scary expression on his face. “I know. He just opened up a drawer I’d never seen and they were all there.”
Josh and Vasquez both choke on a laugh at the same time.
“Nice,” Josh says, and then he winces as Goodnight spots them and descends on them.
“Welcome,” he says grandly. “So nice of you to make it, Joshua! Same for you, Vasquez, though…” Goodnight looks Vasquez up and down. “You couldn’t find something nicer to wear?”
“I left my apartment for you, compadre,” Vasquez says, sounding irked. “Show some gratefulness.”
“My apologies, Vasquez,” Goodnight says, nodding. “But—”
“You know what, Goody,” Billy says, with something sharp in his voice, “Let’s talk for a second.”
Goodnight’s head snaps over to Billy, and he smiles beatifically. “Oh, well, alright, dear.”
Sam, who is now trying to physically pull Red Harvest away from the cutlery, mutters, “Finally.”
Billy is glowering, and Josh is a little extremely scared, but Goodnight just walks down the hall with him with a bounce in his step, and they lock themselves in their room.
Sam snorts, “Billy goes with the flow a little too much sometimes.”
“What?” Josh asks, because he’s definitely missing something here, but everyone just shrugs.
Jack says, “Red, come on, I’m going to start serving the food, and the dinner table is set perfectly.”
“I need to do it right,” Red Harvest says stubbornly.
“You already did it right,” Jack responds gently. “An hour ago.”
“Bets are on for how traumatizing it’ll be for him to watch all his hard work be destroyed when we start eating,” Sam mutters. Josh jumps.
“Jesus, where’d you come from?”
“Between the idea and the reality falls the Shadow,” Sam says, deadpan. “I’m the shadow.”
Josh knows he’s screwed his face up into a look of total confusion, but no one pays attention. He wishes he had someone to share confused looks with, but everyone’s just kind of getting on with things.
“It’ll settle down in a second.” Sam rolls his eyes. “Could’ve settled down eons ago if Billy’d tried talking sense into Goody, but, hey, he’s used to a lot.”
“To be fair, Goody’s used to a lot too,” Vasquez interjects.
“Oh, fuck, what did I get myself into?” Josh asks, out loud, because why not.
Vasquez scoffs. “Ha, tell me you’re not having any fun, guero.”
Josh pauses thoughtfully. “Fine, this is some fascinating shit.”
“Fascinating?”
"I've been watching the Discovery Channel a lot," Josh finally admits.
“The Discovery Channel, really?”
“You’re one to talk, Mr. Bete al basurero.”
“You don’t even know what that means.”
“Bete al basurero, Vasquez?” Sam asks. “Seriously?”
Vasquez rolls his eyes and huffs. “I wanted to see what happened!”
“It sucks, even he thinks it sucks,” Josh informs Sam.
“Sh,” Vasquez hisses sharply.
That’s when Sam gives Josh and Vasquez an appraising look. “You two are getting along pretty good.”
Josh furrows his brow and doesn’t say what’s that supposed to mean? because he doesn’t wanna fucking know. Vasquez is fun and normal, that’s all.
Vasquez ignores Sam and says, “I’ll fix the situation with RH.” He calls out, “Oye, Rojito! Como andas?"
Red Harvest's head swings to look at Vasquez, and for a moment he bears, Josh thinks, an uncanny resemblance to an owl. His expression brightens, though he somehow manages to still not smile as he walks over to Vasquez, something that could generously be called a bounce in his carefully measured, silent steps. "Hola, V. Estas mejor?"
"Bueno, he estado peor, no?"
Red Harvest shrugs and nods. "Estas mejor que Goody. El esta, ‘sta loco." He frowns very slightly. “No digas, pero creo que me puso loco a mi también.”
"Ja! No me sorprende. No es tu culpa. Vamos, let's go sit; you too, guero."
Yep, maybe Josh should learn some Spanish.
Josh pauses in front of the table along with everyone else, raises his eyebrows, wonders how Goodnight could throw so much energy into this whole thing without the problem of space, and says, with finality, “Yeah, I’m not gonna fit here. I mean, all of us aren’t gonna fit here. Do you guys usually sit at this table when everyone comes here to eat?”
“It’s…not usually like this,” Red Harvest says.
“No, really? I can’t believe this is how I’m meeting y’all for real. A situation that’s weird even for you. Tell me that it doesn’t get crazier than this.”
“It, it…doesn’t get crazier th…” Red Harvest cuts himself off and shakes his head. “Can’t say it.”
“But it’s not usually like this,” Jack says. “I’ve lived here longer’n anyone than Sam, and I can tell you…you came along at a…”
“Weird time?” Josh suggests.
“I actually think he may have caused the weird time,” Sam offers.
Josh can’t really figure out what to say to any of this, so he just scoffs, which is usually a pretty foolproof response when a smile won’t be entirely appropriate. He continues staring down at the table. “RH, you did a great job with the silverware, but I’m six foot five—”
Vasquez scoffs. “You cannot be more than six foot three.”
“Whatever. And I’m not gonna fit there. I really mean it. At least, not with breaking all this shit.”
“That’s fine china and real silver, thank you,” Goodnight says from behind him, and Josh, along with everyone else, spins around to face him and Billy, who’s got his usual pokerface on but who also looks a little smug and a little relieved.
It’s understandable, because Goodnight looks much more relaxed, if a little regretful of at least a couple of his life choices, as he critically takes in the living/dining/disaster room. “I’m sorry, I went a little off the rails there.”
“No, really,” Sam says in a monotone.
Goodnight huffs playfully. “Well, what was I supposed to say there other than the truth?” He deflates a little. “I really am sorry, especially to you, Faraday. I’m not usually so…”
“Oh, I know, I’ve been reliably informed.”
“I’m not sure how we’re gonna handle this,” Goodnight says. “We usually just use the table and couch, but there’s so much food and more people than usual…”
Red Harvest shrugs. “Eat on the…floor.”
“What?” Goodnight asks in horror. “RH, are you insane?”
Red Harvest narrows his eyes. “Said the pot to the kettle.”
“…Fair.” Goodnight pauses. “I’m so proud of you for learning how to make effective comebacks.”
Red Harvest nods in thanks.
“Anyway, maybe that…isn’t that bad an idea. What do you think, Billy? Wanna risk staining the carpet so that we can eat some good food?”
“Well, you know how I cherish that carpet,” Billy responds, dry as toast, “But I think I can risk it.”
Vasquez laughs, full-throated, and Billy actually cracks a smile as he says, “Let’s get a tablecloth.”
“Oh, no,” Goodnight responds airily. “Don’t worry about it, I have another one.”
“What?” Billy asks. “Where’s all this coming from?”
Goodnight doesn’t respond, just goes to a closet in the hallway and pulls out a tablecloth. They make quick work of laying it out on the floor, grabbing a reasonable amount of plates and utensils and laying those out too, and then trying to make themselves comfortable on the hardwood floor. Josh is kind of reminded of making pillow forts with his ma when he was a kid.
There’s a lot of laughing and talking and Josh is…feeling pretty nice.
Once they’re finally settled, Jack starts cutting up the probably cold roast beef and Josh shoves a full stuffed bell pepper in his mouth. It’s good.
He listens to everyone talk, basking in their chatter, their friendship, their warmth, their everything, and realizes that he isn’t observing anyone. He hasn’t even thought of the Discovery Channel in the past half hour. He doesn’t want to watch these people from the outside looking in. He just wants to be here.
Josh launches into a story about an old buddy of his and a poker game gone terribly wrong, and when he’s done, he sits back, sees that everyone’s laughing (with their eyes or mouth, Josh isn’t picky with this crowd), and beams.
“So, this wasn’t a total loss, then?” Goodnight asks hopefully, later on when Josh is getting ready to leave.
Josh pauses, smiles, shrugs, and decides to tell the truth for once. “No, it wasn’t. I had a really great time.”