Merritt Mckinney

He's losing his mind.

Considering everything, Izzy thinks the fact that he turned into a successful, relatively well-adjusted businessman with a wife who is entirely out of his league is kind of a miracle. His main addictions are the Sweet Tarts and mini-Tootsie Rolls they keep at the restaurant's hostess stand. Those are kind of a problem, if you believe his dentist, but he isn't too concerned about it since he also manages to run one of the most successful bars in the city without ever drinking all that much.

It might have something to do with his cooking, too, and the fact that he knows what most people want despite what they actually decide to order. All that is beside the point right now, though, when he's fairly certain he is actually going insane.

Two weeks ago, someone had stopped him in the street, thinking they recognized him. It wasn't impossible, considering the previously mentioned super-successful restaurant-and-bar, but they had called him the wrong name. When he had corrected them - a beat too late - they had turned the shade of a particularly ripe tomato, apologized a dozen times, and hurried away.

What makes him pretty sure he's losing his mind, though, is the fact that, just for that instant, he knew it was the right name. A name belonging to someone with his face, even if it possesses a few more lines and a lot less hair, whose story he knows as well as his own. And since then, he's felt disjointed, like he's two people at the same time. His dreams are full of people he's never seen before, but whose entire life stories he remembers the next morning. He dreams of places in New York he's never been but that he can find by memory the next time he has a free afternoon.

(After the third one leads him straight to a rundown apartment building with a laundry chute that leads straight to an alley that leads straight back to the street, he gets very drunk and swears off the experiments.)

He knows it's showing. He knows people are starting to worry about him, can see the questions on their faces even before they get around to asking if he's feeling okay. He's gotten very good at ignoring them outright or coming up with a quick excuse, but he's not sure how much longer he can go on before he has a complete breakdown.

If that isn't already what this is, anyway. Which is possible, considering the constant stress of the restaurant industry, but he's never had a problem before.

It only gets worse when he wakes up one morning remembering El as a woman nearly half his age with whom he had flirted constantly but who had never gone for his passes. How to explain the on-again/off-again relationship she had with another member of their little family. How he's sure even now all that flirting had just been meant to prod the younger man into actually doing something before they all smothered in the sexual tension. How, despite all that flirting, she had been one of his best friends in the world.

And when she corners him in their apartment three nights after that demanding to know what's going on, he's pretty sure he's really and truly fucked.

Who: Daniel, Dylan, Henley, Jack, Merritt, and Robert Torre
What: After Daniel finds Torre - or is found by him - and texts Merritt, things fall into place for a final showdown.

Note: This is still in progress.

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Who: Daniel, Dylan, Henley, Jack, and Merritt. With some special guests.
What: The Horsemen follow through on their plan to break Dylan out of Torre's influence. It gets a little more complicated than they were expecting.
Warning: Violence

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Who: Dylan and Merritt
What: A few days after Merritt's phone call and this, Dylan shows up at the theater.

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Who: Dylan and Merritt
What: After talking to Max, Dylan stops by the suite. He and Merritt talk some things out and raid the minibar.

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Who: Daniel, Henley, Jack, and Merritt
What: Merritt realizes Daniel's keeping something from the rest of the team and eventually finds out about the Bible. A team meeting is called, and they finally make a dedicated effort to finding Dylan's real name.

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Who: Daniel and Merritt
What: The bad nights and managing to get along

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Who: Dylan and Merritt
What: Bullshitting, drinking, what's been, and what's next.

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