Chapter Text
Thursday, 30 January 1986
Her buzz is real, tonight, and she’s barely drunk anything.
Helen did pour herself a scotch upon coming home, but that doesn’t really count. Having a drink after sitting on that desk next to Geoff has become something of a habit since she got the job. Some might even call it a coping mechanism.
Despite the months and months spent doing this, newsreading together, he remains as stiff and unwelcoming as he was on that very first night, hardly ever glancing at her throughout the bulletins. When he does, it’s always with that unpleasant glint, doing little to conceal the disdain in his eyes, reminding her without a single word of what he thinks of her.
That she’s a joke he’s forced to put up with.
So yeah, most evenings, she gets herself a drink, the alcohol relaxing the tension that always accumulates in her muscles just sitting by Geoff’s side, helping her feel more like herself again, the way removing all those layers of makeup from her skin does, too.
Tonight, she gets herself some scotch because she feels like it. She puts on some music because she wants to. More often than not, she uses music as a way to ground herself, breathing to the beats of the songs she listens to, letting it all throb through her until the voices quiet down and her body loosens.
On days like today—good days—she feels like those beats are pulsing through her veins with the whoosh whoosh of her heart, feeling alive and pretty fucking great, unable to keep herself from swaying a little to the music as she explores her closet, picking out some options for Geoff’s cocktail party, tossing too many of them on her couch. She should go for something classy and sober, aware of Evelyn Walters’s distaste for anything with actual colours.
She can’t stop thinking about how Evelyn had snubbed her only a few weeks back at the Christmas party, though, her contempt even less subtle than her husband’s, and Helen wonders if wearing a see-through dress would be too much of an obvious fuck you.
The rush of giddy anticipation that floods her insides when there’s a knock on her door only makes her buzz worse. She may or may not have timed her impromptu try-on session to match Dale’s supposed arrival, already getting familiar with his schedule after a handful of days spent in each other’s orbit.
There is just something about Young Dale that makes her blood a little warmer—and it’s not exclusively caused by the way he keeps gazing at her as if she was every bit as incredible as he claimed her to be. She’s used to men gawking at her, a lot of them doing nothing to hide it. It feels different with Dale, though. It could be purely professional admiration, remembering the proverbial stars that had sparkled in his eyes while she delivered that special ‘Breaking News’ update, yesterday.
But he’d looked at her just the same hours later on the threshold of her home as he was about to leave, clearly exhausted from the insane day they had, and the reading practice she insisted upon at 11 pm.
While some practice had happened, there had been a great deal of them just being a bit silly, too.
At some point, Helen had found herself guffawing in sheer delight at Dale reading an article in a tone clearly meant to be a mocked imitation of Geoff’s somewhat monotone voice—and he’d nailed it, too.
“I think I’ve just offended all the newsreaders’ gods by doing that,” he’d said afterward, his cheeks adorably pink, looking both sheepish and rather pleased with himself for amusing her so much.
“Nah, you’re fine,” she’d reassured him with a rumbly chuckle, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. “It was an improvement from the original, trust me.”
Part of her had dreaded going home, earlier. An hour later, relaxed by both the wine and Dale’s pleasant company, she felt better than she ever imagined she would, only two days after swallowing most of her pills in this very house.
That’s why a few minutes later, when he’d stood on her doorstep, about to leave, still gazing at her in that way of his, Helen suggested he came by after work tomorrow, for more practice.
He’d agreed so quickly that his face had flushed pink again, while Helen could only beam, more than a little tickled.
So, maybe she’d planned for him to arrive while she was wearing outfit number one, pleased beyond measure when she flings the door open and Dale seems to freeze at the sight of her, in a rather flattering way.
It’s not like she’s actively trying to erase from his mind the image he must have of her, face-planted in her own vomit, but it can’t hurt to give him other things to remember her by.
“Hi!” she greets him with a grin, which he responds to, his eyes definitely wider than they were a couple of hours ago at work.
“Are you going out?” he asks, with a mix of amusement and some confusion.
“Oh no, this is for Saturday,” she explains as Dale comes in, closing the door behind him.
As Helen whirls around a little and talks about the party—and her very mature desire to offend Evelyn—she knows she should slow down a little, that this hyped-up side of her can be as intimidating to some as her lower moods.
Nothing much she can do about it at the moment, the man currently standing in her living room greatly responsible for the way her spirits have lifted after the abysmal start of her week.
Part of it is also caused by how well things went at work, yesterday, still riding that high. She’d outshined every other news outlet with her special update about the space shuttle tragedy, Lindsay having no other choice but to reinstate her while agreeing to all of her demands after seeing those numbers. Having officially signed that new contract today, she feels like this might finally mark the day they take her seriously in that newsroom.
On a more personal level, Dale has been something of a life saver—literally.
Making genuine connections with people is something Helen has always struggled with, especially in this industry. And Dale…he’s caught her completely off guard, making her feel like they’ve been friends for years, which is ludicrous considering they only started talking to each other four days ago.
Yet here she is, twirling and strutting a little in front of him, unable to remember the last time she felt this comfortable just being herself around someone, without that someone running off, usually after they got what they wanted from her, or she did something that put them off completely.
Somehow, being around him makes her feel safe without being judged. Even when he’d asked about the pills last night, she’d sensed no judgment from him, only understanding.
Maybe she’s a tiny bit smitten—and why wouldn’t she be?
He’s sweet, and thoughtful, funny in his own dorky, sometimes awkward ways, able to make her laugh without barely trying. He’s also driven and ambitious, which is definitely something she can relate to, although he seems to take a more rational approach to things, compared to how she usually goes in all guns blazing, passionate and impulsive. And they make a fantastic team at work, as proven yesterday during the special update.
He’s also easy on the eyes, a whole twenty percent easier since she got her hands on his hair.
“Have you been getting people making comments about us at work?”
Too focused on what she’s doing, having whizzed back to her room to change, Helen doesn’t immediately pick up on his discomfort as he brings up the rumours, having learned to tune off office gossip years ago. She had to make her way up in spite of the endless flow of vulgar comments made about her, and she’d had to work thrice as hard as any man in that newsroom to get where she is now.
Who the fuck cares?
As it turns out, Dale cares.
He cares a lot more about it than about outfit number two, although his initial reaction is satisfying enough, needing a second to collect himself before telling her he likes it.
“Do you have a cocktail suit?” The thought of him in a suit is more than a little intriguing and appealing.
“I’m not invited,” he reminds her.
“But I’ve got a plus one,” she points out, still oblivious.
While she innocently fantasizes over the image of him all dressed up, showing up together at Geoff’s party, Dale is more interested in getting his point across.
“No, see, I actually think going as your plus one’s gonna make it worse? I think we should keep some distance, really. Just for the next week or two.”
Helen moves past him to turn off her sound system, the music more grating than soothing at the moment, as she finally starts acknowledging what Dale is actually telling her.
“What the fuck are they saying?” she asks, annoyed. “Calling me a slut? I don’t care, they’d say that anyway.”
“I just…don’t like people talking about me.”
Having turned off the music, all there’s left now is the sound of her heart, already beating a little faster against her ears.
His words and what she now recognises as blatant discomfort are all it takes for her buzz to be extinguished, as if a bucket of ice cold water had been thrown upon a cosy fire, both her mood and her thoughts doing a 180 in seconds.
She has been a bit hyper tonight. Combined with all the shit he’s seen from her already, it might have been the deciding factor in him realizing that hanging out with her isn’t worth the trouble, especially if he really doesn’t like being talked about.
Rarely a day goes by without Helen being talked about at work, never in a good way either, and they both know it.
Being the subject of lewd gossip simply for having become friends with her could be more than Dale bargained for when he’d come over a few nights ago, only wanting to be nice by bringing back her things.
It becomes clear in that moment that she may have completely misread the situation; it wouldn’t be the first time. That what she thought was a real connection and instant friendship was nothing more than pity, Dale too kind to dismiss her right away, not after he’d found her half-dead on the floor.
“Are you…are you sure this is just about the gossip?” she can’t help but ask. “Is this your way of trying to tell me that I’m a little bit too much?”
She wouldn’t typically utter those thoughts out loud, aware of how embarrassingly needy it makes her sound, but it hardly matters, the whiplash from her mood swing having dissolved any filter she may have had.
He looks almost taken aback by her reaction. “We can still hang out after hours,” he tries. “Just…not at work things.”
It doesn’t make her feel better at all.
Actually, it makes her feel like shit, a familiar, throbbing kind of humiliation now squeezing her heart and lungs at his pity-driven platitudes, all too aware that the core message in what he’s saying is that he doesn’t want to be seen with her, or to even be associated with her.
“I’m sorry,” he eventually utters, acknowledging her distress and his role in it.
“It’s okay,” she lies, although it is okay, for him to be honest.
She’d rather he says this now rather than in a week, or a month, when she would have had all that extra time to fabricate more layers of illusions about whatever connection she imagined between them.
Three days.
She’s made it three days before fucking up with someone she likes. Almost a new record—although not quite.
After Dale nothing short of flees her home, the tension in the room much too uncomfortable for them to try and pretend they can still ‘hang out’, Helen grabs her half-empty glass of scotch from the coffee table and downs it in one go.
Although she puts the music back on and turns the volume all the way up, it doesn’t help, unable to focus on either the beats or her breathing as she pours herself another glass.
Already, the voices in her head are louder than anything she can do to try drowning them out—sounds or alcohol, it doesn’t matter.
They’re rooted too deep within her brain to be smothered.