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Ted hates Las Vegas.
This is a new thing, a post-prison thing, a post-realizing-his-life-really-is-completely-different-now thing. He used to be crazy about Vegas. He went there at least three or four times a year.
"You have a risk-seeking personality, Ted," one of his shrinks told him. "Possibly even more than that. I would say risk-craving. If there's even a chance you could get rewarded, you don't know when to stop."
The idea that that might be a bad thing made absolutely no sense to Ted at the time. Obviously if you had a chance to win big, you didn't back off. No guts, no glory.
"I advise against extreme sports," the shrink told him, closing his file at the end of the session. "Maybe don't try skydiving."
That ended up being their last session, because Ted decided he didn't really need therapy anyway, and definitely not from somebody who gave such stupid advice. You had to risk big to win big. Everybody knew that, especially everybody in the business of making money.
He had plenty of time to revise his opinions on the subject in prison, where he learned that sometimes a big risk led to a big fall on your ass. Or multiple, repeated big falls on your ass, supervised by large, angry guys who didn't give a shit about your delayed therapeutic revelations.
It turned out that he needed to revise his opinions on a lot of things.
"Ted!" Charlie calls from the craps table, holding a pair of dice up for the woman next to him to blow on. She's a tiny blonde in an even tinier dress. Charlie's tastes are impressively consistent. "Ted, the table's hot. Come on."
Ted shrugs, shakes his head, and waves Charlie off in an awkward mix of gestures that's going to give him a crick in his neck if he isn't careful. "I'm good," he says, holding up his half-empty glass like that means something. "I'm fine." Charlie turns away and Ted takes a drink, grateful for the slight burn of rum and cola down his throat.
"I have the nickel slots," he says, mostly to himself now. He does; there's a little corner of the low-risk low-reward machines here, mostly deserted because it's a Friday night in a casino populated by people who have the time and money to play much higher stakes. Ted's seen a few B-list actors go by, and at least a dozen people he remembers from the pages of business and finance magazines. And, well, Charlie's here. That's enough on its own to say something about the clientele in this place.
Once upon a time, Ted would've fit right in. Unfortunately, now is not that time. Now, all he wants to do is go back up to the suite, strip down to his boxers, lie on the bed, and watch Pay-Per-View while draining the minibar. The mental image of himself is pleasantly pathetic, a beaten man who learned his lesson the hard way. He could be a cautionary tale. A comfortable, drunk cautionary tale with easy access to decent porn.
But if he does that, Charlie will feel bad, and he owes Charlie too much to go around deliberately making that happen.
He drains the rest of his drink, and a waitress appears with a fresh one before he sets it down. "Can I help you with anything, sir?" she asks with an exaggerated, aggressive grin that makes him wish he could buy her a round instead.
"No," he says, offering his most harmless smile, the one he learned while he was learning how to be risk-averse. "I have the nickel slots."
**
Charlie decided they were going to Vegas because, according to him, Ted seemed a little down lately.
"I'm fine," Ted had told him, because that was easier than explaining I had coffee with your dad's fiancee, Charlie, and realized that I'm going to be pathetically pining over for the foreseeable future. Vegas could do nothing to solve his Olivia problem. Only the possibilities of divine intervention or Mr. Crews the elder moving to Beirut after his nuptials held any hope of solving Ted's Olivia problem.
In the meantime, he had extensive plans to self-medicate with a careful blend of alcohol, bad TV, and possibly strippers. All of which, come to think of it, could be found in Vegas.
"Okay," he told Charlie, "I'm in."
"Great," Charlie said. "Dani's coming with us."
"Dani?"
"My partner."
Ted knew Dani was Charlie's partner. He just never thought of her by name. In his head she was strictly known as "the hot, scary one."
"Why's she coming with us?" he asked, leaning against the counter and watching Charlie happily dissect a starfruit. "I mean, I don't mind, of course, I'm just curious."
Charlie popped a section of the starfruit into his mouth and chewed it thoroughly. "I lost a bet."
"A bet? What kind of a bet?"
Charlie looked at him for a minute and then smiled that bright, eerily empty smile that people who don't know him very well tended to take to mean he wasn't entirely there. "Not important."
"Okay." Ted pushed off the counter and headed for the stairs. In all honestly he didn't know Charlie very well, either, but he knew enough to recognize a mask when he saw one, and he had a pretty good idea what was on the other side. In his experience, people who kept pushing at Charlie past the invisible line tended to end up with broken bones. Also, in all honesty, Ted was living on the man's charity, so in addition to being stupid, pushing would be rude. "You, me, and Dani. Road trip."
"Road trip!" Charlie echoed brightly, tossing another bit of fruit into the air and catching it in his mouth. Ted was never entirely sure if this side of Charlie was a mask, too, but if it was, at least it was an easier one to look at.
**
Charlie's table is indeed hot, based on all the whooping and hollering coming from Charlie himself and his ever-growing cheerleading squad. The part of Ted that's Charlie's money manager is hoping he'll quit while he's ahead. The part that used to love this shit is itching to get over there and throw the dice himself. And the part that went to prison still wants to slink off upstairs for a nap, especially since he's now lost eighty dollars to the same slot machine.
Dani sits down at the machine next to his, punches her token in, hits the button, and wins. The smallest possible payout, but still, it sort of sums up his night.
"You having fun?" she asks, looking sideways at him and hitting the button again.
"Yeah," he says, giving his own machine a sour look. "I'm having a great time."
"Cool." They sit in silence for a while, working their separate machines. The waitress comes back around twice with refills of rum and Coke for him and something clear for Dani before finally he can't stand it and turns to face her.
"So what was the bet?"
She blinks, her hand hovering over the button. "What bet?"
"That Charlie lost. He said you were coming to Vegas with us because he lost a bet."
She blinks again, then laughs, hitting the button with a satisfied smack. "Charlie lost a bet, yeah, but that didn't have anything to do with this."
"Oh." He stares at the screen of the machine he hasn't bothered to feed for a little while now. "Then why..."
"Why does Charlie do anything?" she asks, pushing her stool back and scooping her tokens into a cup. "He's a weird guy."
"He's a good guy." He knows there's absolutely no need to defend Charlie, especially to his partner, but it feels wrong not to say something.
"Good. Weird. Kinda short." She's smiling, and he readjusts his mental balance of scary vs. hot in favor of the latter. "I'm going to go up and get changed for dinner."
"Dinner?" Dani has a way of making him feel like he's missing something, even more than usual. She always seems like she knows things. That's probably what makes her scary.
"Yeah, we're going to Tao." She swirls the cup in her hand slowly, making the tokens rattle against each other. "Charlie didn't tell you?"
Ted looks across the floor again, to where Charlie is neck-deep in women and throwing the dice again. "Guess it slipped his mind."
"It'll be fun."
"Tao." The word is a dry, heavy stone in his mouth, a single solid syllable. "I guess that's appropriate."
"I don't know about that," she says with a careless shrug, "but I hear the food's amazing."
**
Ted and Charlie met in prison. Ted's never managed to mention to Charlie that they actually met twice; or rather, Ted met Charlie before they met each other.
There were a variety of people in the prison dedicated to the project of putting Charlie in the infirmary as often as possible, any time he came out of solitary. Ted spent a lot of time in the infirmary as well, because while he wasn't an idiot, even an idiot could've seen that it was a hell of a lot safer in there than anywhere else. It was amazing how many little things could go wrong with a body, with just a little bit of help.
"You again," the nurse said, flatly, not a question. "What is it this time?"
"Nosebleed," Ted told her, still blinking rapidly from the pain of jamming the heel of his own hand into his nose hard enough to do damage.
"We have a full house," she said, looking down at her lists and folders. "I don't know where I'm going to put you."
"Put him in four," another nurse chimed in, looking up from his own paperwork.
"You think I should let him spend some quality time with the violent offenders?" the first nurse said dryly. "It's almost too tempting."
Ted's nose throbbed in the steady beat of a bad idea.
"Crews is out cold," the second nurse said with a shrug. "I don't think he can do too much damage while he's unconscious."
That's how Ted Early met Charlie Crews: holding a towel to the nose he had been too squeamish to actually break, but had pulped pretty well nonetheless, and sitting on a cheap molded-plastic chair as far away from the unconscious guy in the bed as the room would allow. The guy in the bed looked like Ted's nose felt, but from head to toe. And worse.
Charlie didn't wake up the whole time Ted was sitting there, but Ted felt like they forged a little bit of a bond anyway. That bond was mostly rooted in guilt from his side of things, and serene lack of motion on Charlie's. Ted would later have to acknowledge that this was appropriate.
**
Charlie looks around Tao and smiles; not the empty smile that makes the hair on Ted's neck stand up, but the genuinely pleased one.
"Is it Zen?" Dani asks.
"This place is the complete antithesis of everything Zen," Charlie says, slipping his jacket off. "I love it. I want one of everything."
"No, he doesn't," Ted sighs, falling into step behind Charlie, Dani, and the host guiding them to their table.
The food is sublime, of course, and the wine; Ted has missed eating like this, dishes designed to titillate and tease the senses, food that is also art. Charlie approaches his with simple delight, Dani with a sort of polite bemusement, and Ted tunes them both out to better allow himself to savor.
Charlie and Dani tease each other about work, about people Ted doesn't know, but somehow it doesn't feel like exclusion. It feels like he's a guest, like he's been invited in. He settles back in his seat, indulges more in the really very good wine that Charlie has indicated should be kept flowing, and listens.
Dani smiles like she's a little out of practice, sharp on one edge and crooked on the other, and she looks at Charlie closely when he isn't watching, like she's trying to see something just under the surface and out of focus. Ted could tell her to save her energy and her time; anything Charlie's keeping submerged is going to stay there. It probably doesn't do well in the sun.
Dinner comes and goes, dessert comes and goes, and Dani turns in her seat to look down at the dance floor. "You should go out there," Charlie says, miming some hopelessly awkward movements that are probably supposed to represent dancing. "Boogie down."
Dani flicks her hair out of her eyes, not bothering to look at him. "I don't dance, Crews." From the angle Ted's sitting at, he can see that she's smiling, just a little, her eyes tracking the light and motion across the floor.
"But you could. And you should."
She shakes her head and stands up. "I don't think so, Crews. I'm going to visit the ladies' room, excuse me..."
Charlie watches her make her way across the room and smiles. "You think she's having fun? She doesn't like to admit it."
"Yeah. I think she is." Ted watches Charlie carefully scrape up the last chocolate-sauce-soaked bit of dessert from his plate. "Charlie, what is all this about?"
Charlie shoots him a puzzled glance and sucks the sauce from his fork. "What's all what about?"
"This, all of this," he waves his hand around to encompass Tao, Nevada, the universe. "Packing up me and Dani and dragging us to Vegas, out of the clear blue sky deciding you wanted to go on a random road trip, throwing money around on gambling and food and--" Charlie's giving him the you're-crazy look, a slight tilt of the head and narrowing of the eyes. "I'm just asking. What brought this on and why?"
"Do you think I have Machiavellian schemes, Ted? Riddles within riddles?"
"I've gotta be honest, Charlie, I have absolutely no idea sometimes." And that's God's honest truth; he's indebted to Charlie, he relies on him and his kindness for what he has left in life and what he's managing to put together, and as thankful as Ted is for that it doesn't change the fact that at least half of the time he has absolutely no idea whatsoever what's going on inside Charlie Crews' head. Good, evil, or indifferent, Ted has no more idea than the leap of faith he keeps taking over and over because so far Charlie hasn't let him hit the ground.
Charlie's smile has faded and his gaze sharpened a bit, enough that Ted shifts uncomfortably in his seat. He has a feeling Dani knows this look better than he does, that this is how Charlie looks at suspects. No, not sharp enough for that, not scary enough; this is how he looks at witnesses. "You really don't know why I did this, Ted?"
"No, Charlie." He shrugs, unable to break eye contact to reach for his wine and wet his throat. "I don't."
"It's really not that complicated."
"Not-complicated for normal reality or not-complicated for Zen?"
Charlie blinks and then laughs. The tension breaks, and Ted has a feeling he may have just looked more than a little foolish. "I wanted to have some fun with my friends, Ted."
"That's it?"
"Yeah. That's it." Charlie wipes his mouth and raises his hand slightly, signaling the waiter for the check. "And we have lots of fun left to have, so get with the program."
"Is there an agenda?"
"More like guidelines. I want to see if we can get Dani to dance, and then we'll go play blackjack, I think, you and me. And if we win big, we'll buy the dealer a new car."
"Charlie..."
"Go with it, Ted." Charlie smiles at him, bright and still and Ted knows he's going to find himself disappointing that long-ago therapist one more time and engaging in the extreme sport of trusting Charlie Crews. It's his life these days. "Can't win if you don't play."