Title: Of Comfort and Despair
Fandom: October Daye series
Rating: PG
Length: ~300 words
Content notes: A little October Daye snippet.
Author notes: Takes place between A Local Habitation and An Artificial Night.
Summary: Just a little something about that leather jacket Toby acquired in ALH.



I slam the door of my apartment shut and lean against it from the inside. Now that I’ve stopped walking, I can feel how tired I am. Serves me right, I’ve been trying to get lost in San Francisco’s alleyways, taking wrong turns at every opportunity, and I have nothing to show for the night’s work, again.

It’s the third night in a row and this is getting ridiculous.

When you start seeing a friend—or should that be acquaintance? enemy? Maybe I should just stick with "Tybalt"—in every half-feral cat trying to get at scraps from restaurant back-doors and dumpsters, you know it’s time to turn your steps homeward. Well, that, and the whole thing about how dawn and me and being outside aren’t exactly a winning combination.

I can feel myself starting to slide down the door, so I push myself away from it and pretty much faceplant my bed straight away. I take a deep breath and wrap my jacket—Tybalt’s jacket—closer around me. I’ve been wearing it so much that the scent of pennyroyal and musk is almost a memory on it, mixed with my own sweat and perfume and a tang of copper. Still, it's strangely comforting. For a moment, I can feel the ghost of his arms around my shoulders, hear the memory of his voice in my ears.

"And what are you doing here?" he says in my head.

"Returning a piece of clothing to its rightful owner," I reply.

Annoying and arrogant as he was, the fact is he was a constant in my life, and now that he’s gone, I feel more lost than I care to admit. I kick off my shoes and cover my lower half with a blanket, upper half still wrapped in the jacket.

Thing is, I know for a fact that he doesn’t even want it back.