2019-02-28 - The mo(u)rning after

It was early when Logan left the comfort of his super classy waterbed. It seems that not even oxy-bourbon can keep him in that state of sleep for very long. The nagging headache and dry mouth got him out of the bed, even though the presence of someone else in it made him want to stay. It left him with a dirty, guilty feeling - that want, that desire to be close to somebody again, particularly considering who it was there on top of his blankets. He hadn't exactly remembered her coming, either; the whole night was a fog, really, most of the details lost to huge gaping holes in his memory. But there were flickers, like peering through a solid sheet of rain. White roses. Cutting throats. A glass shattering on the floor. So much anger.

Logan tucked her into the blankets and left, creaking up the basement stairs. He drowns his headache in some oxy stashed in a white envelope behind the microwave and sweeps the glass up off the floor. When morning light filters through the window framed with curtains embroidered in tiny geese, he starts breakfast. Omelettes, bacon, slices of avocado. It doesn't take overly long, and he makes Emily a plate along with some OJ, all set on the table. But he doesn't call for her. She'll either get up, or she won't.

Emily sleeps through that stirring. Maybe the waterbed is more awesome than she expected? 'Cause she doesn't so much as bat a lash when he ditches her. It's one of those hard, dreamless, impenetrable sleeps - that ends suddenly, sharply. He's not down here, so he won't know about the gasp-awake while he's up there finishing breakfast, the confused staring around the basement while he's finishing setting the table. Whatever yanked her out of that slumber is put away by the time she comes up the stairs on sock-feet, looking...

Well. Looking like someone that rolled up in a rainstorm last night, drank the equivalent of six shots of bourbon, and slept in her clothes in an unfamiliar waterbed in a basement. From the doorway to the downstairs, with the heel of her hand pressed to the side of her head, the frog in Emily's throat goes, "Hey."

Logan was already seated, pushing a bite of omelette around his plate, when he hears footsteps on the stairs. It sounded strange, even in a house that was frequently occupied again; there were never any footsteps on those stairs, not ones that didn't come from him. His storm-gray gaze flicks up, a forkful of omelette eaten. "Well, you look like shit," echoing the words she said to him the other night, he remembers that. He had no right to say it, either, considering the dark bags under his eyes and the wrinkle in his sweats. He points his fork over his shoulder, to one of the upper cabinets. "Tylenol's in there. Motrin, too," she doesn't get to know where he keeps the good stuff, she wouldn't understand. "Sleep okay?" he knows the answer, but it's the polite thing to ask.

Emily takes that opening salvo with a nod and a ready, "Thanks." Almost like she was expecting it, just not expecting it enough to have formulated any kind of witty come-back. She slouches across the kitchen to the indicated cabinet, shuffling her feet through a region of floor that ended the night covered in glass and booze. Tylenol, Motrin, she shakes out some of each, cupping four pills in her palm, fingers closed around them for a second. She has to think about that question before deciding, "Yeah," with surprise coloring the edge of her voice. "So this is what you do now?"

The reply earns a subtle lift of his brow; he tracks her with a tired gaze across the tile, until she was behind him and he'd have to twist to watch her still. It was a good thing he swept, though the floor might still be a bit sticky where the bourbon spilled. He returns his attention back to his plate, shuffling a piece of avocado about before he eats another forkful of omelette, dropping his head in a slow nod. "Yep," he reaches for his glass of OJ, "The diner let me go a few months back. Said they were real sorry, that they understood, blah blah blah. Still can't come to work drunk," there's a dry chuckle with the words. "My fault. But hey, I can come to work drunk whenever I want now."

Putting the pills in her mouth when he starts talking, Emily listens through that answer, and can he feel the judgey eyes on the back of his head while he talks? Because they're stuck there as if with nails, the really thick nails with the grippy ridges on the end. In the silence that follows, she moves to the sink, turns it on, and drinks right out of the faucet to get those pills down, hair getting wet in the basin in the process. She drinks some extra water, too, wiping her mouth with the side of her hand afterward. Then, "Makes sense. I guess liver disease is a viable ambition. You look like you're halfway there, so kudos."

Logan certainly must feel them, those judgey-judgey eyes, for he reaches to scratch the back of his head during that period of silence. "Are we back on this again?" He slides his hand around his glass of OJ to take a drink, rolling his eyes as he does. He keeps his back turned until his eyes stop wheeling around, and then he twists to look at her there at the sink. "I run this place well enough. I make enough to keep the lights on. I fix what's broke, the house isn't falling apart. And I'm not falling apart either," that last line, that wasn't spoken with as much confidence as the others. He slowly turns back to his food, scraping his fork against the plate. "I wake up every morning. I take a shower, I change my clothes. I eat three squares every day." Needless to say, he was going through the motions.

Emily slow-claps for him. Three... four times, folding the fingers of one hand around the fingers of the other in the middle of her palm on the last clap, letting the plunk-plunk-plunk of the recently run sink take over where she left off. The comment that follows, while she continues to lean with her hips against the edge of the counter in front of the sink, has absolutely no place coming on the heels of that brittle response to his ability to spin his wheels. "I really miss you." Quiet and so honest it's raw, right down to how fast her eyes fill up but don't overflow, he'll just be a swimmy blur for a few seconds.

It was jarring, the clapping; it makes his shoulders twitch and then hunch over, as he furrows his brows into his breakfast. He tries to ignore her, going through these motions, too - fork up, food in mouth, drink the orange juice. Rinse and repeat. He was in the second round when those words hit him like a brick to the back of the head. Good thing it was so hard, his head. The orange juice freezes mid-lift, then slowly lowers back down to the table; the sigh that comes after is pained, the sound of a heavy heart. "Em.." he starts, the legs of the chair scraping far too loudly across the floor as he lumbers to his feet. It was not a very far distance to cross, from his chair to the sink where she was, to slip his arms around her and squeeze her into an embrace. "I miss you, too," he whispers into the hug, his voice as raw as her own.

She makes it a little easier, at least. The second that chair-scrape hits her ears, Emily straightens off the sink, and she half-steps, half-leans Logan's way, drawing her hands away from a clasp to slide arms around his waist in return. Her head bows, forehead against the center of his chest, and a couple tears get away no matter how stubborn she is about them, and her fingers knot up in the back of his shirt. Neither one of them can smell all that great right now, but she breathes deeply, like the only air worth catching is contained right here, in this hug. After a long spell of silence, just breathing, "We have to get better."

It didn't matter how ripe she smelled in the moment; to Logan, when he bows his head and tucks his nose into her hair to take in a breath of her? She smelled real. She smelled like home. His arms tighten around her, threatening to squeeze the breath right out of her, his eyes wincing shut at her words. It rings in his ears, throbbing in his temple like the headache that he'd chased away earlier, but he doesn't have the right words to say how he feels in the moment. So he just breathes her in, slowly, carefully, letting her scent fill his lungs and remind him of the good days. The days of sunshine even in the rain, that far off distant time where he once felt happy and whole.

It didn't matter though, that Logan had nothing to say. Something else filled the silence. Giggling, quiet laughter that skips through the living room and only just barely filters here into the kitchen. There was another scent, too, startling crisp and clear. Lucy's perfume.

Logan's fist tightens at Emily's back. He was shaking.

What Emily wouldn't give to let that squeeze be the whole end of her, to just pop and be done, her brains scrambled like the omelette getting all cold over there next to avocados and toast. She holds onto him fiercely, smooshing her cheek against his chest, letting it work and be enough, like this is when everything turns around. They have to get better, so they're going to; simple as that.

Will she ever hear those things or smell those things like he does? Definitely not fast enough enough to understand the sudden shaking, to pull her head back and look up at him, concern replacing all that stubborn cynicism. One hand stays balled up at the small of his back, and the other flattens between them, over his heart, and it's - "Hey, it's okay, I'm here, and I've got you, and we're safe, Logan. You're okay."

Then her shoulders tighten, and she breathes in, and her face twists with a hair-pull-sharp pain. "God dammit."

Emily's words, the quiet reassurances that it was okay, that she was there, that she had him - it didn't fall on deaf ears, but the voice sounded far off and distant. The giggling was far more prominent for him, twinkling laughter that rang in his ears - the wide-eyed look on his face was quite akin to the photographs of WW2 soldiers who were shell-shocked. It was like he was there but no one was home. He jerks away from her suddenly, as though they were about to be caught in some sort of intimate act; the shame floods after, guilt and overwhelming pain making his eyes watery. He stumbles for the living room, but of course there is nothing there. There's no one there.

But there's something there, for Emily. Logan's looking for ghosts, he doesn't think to look outside; someone's rolled up the blinds in between the window panes. It was raining, pouring, but for a brief second in time, the rain transforms into white rose petals, falling from the sky and turning into puddles on the ground,.

Left there in the kitchen, with the dawn of understanding brightening her eyes... making them too bright... Emily says, "No." She's not pleading or crying or desperate. She's just saying, "No. No, no, no, because you're not alone." For a terrible moment, they both are, though. He's in the living room, and she's not, but she insists, "No, it's not real. It's not happening, because we're not alone RIGHT NOW." Hysteria runs the needle up in her voice when she falls into steps that chase his, and things start to become unintelligble when they tumble out of her lips. "...no because I'm not alone and you can't change the rules so it's not happening because it's not real..."

She points to the window, to the fall of white outside it, then claps both hands over her eyes and refuses to look at it. "Close them, make them close," the blinds she doesn't know how to work, too bad they ripped down the perfectly functional curtains. "Make them close because I'm not alone and it doesn't happen when I'm NOT ALONE and they can't CHANGE THE RULES in the MIDDLE OF THE GAME so make them CLOSE," or she may never stop.

Drink yourself to death, Logan. Just slip away Emily. It would be so much easier .

They weren't alone, no. Or were they? Because while Emily was still in the kitchen, Logan was starting to chase the laughter through the living room. He bypasses the window with the rose petals falling like snowflakes, each catching the wind and drifting until they melt upon the grass. Then Emily's in that same space and surely he can hear her screaming about the window, but he's following the laughter past the rug that covers up the spot where Lucy died and he never goes up these stairs except to clean the rooms. Except for right now, this morning, he's most certainly leaving her alone. "Lucy, Lucy fucking stop this. Just tell me why," he could be heard pleading, but his voice disappears as he goes upstairs, as though he'd entered another dimension.

Splat. Splat. Splat. Rose petals slam against the window, sounding like blood splattering across the glass.

Emily can't. She can't close the blinds. She can't stop talking about the RULES. She can't stop Logan from going up the stairs. She can't hear the ghost that's luring him up there. She can't even know that the place she can't do all these things is in a mess on the floor in the middle of the rug that really ties the room together. All she can do is bring her knees up and put her head down and clench her eyes closed and cover her ears with her hands and insist that it's not FAIR because "THEY CAN'T CHANGE THE RULES!"

Logan is gone and the roses aren't and she's alone. Her diatribe is nonsense now, not safe and not fair and still alone but she came home and Logan has his fucking ghost and it'd be a lot easier to just quit so she'll just quit and he should quit too because it's not fair and they changed the RULES.

It wasn't fair, it really wasn't. They weren't alone, they'd been there together, embracing. Touching. Together. How could they do this, just change the rules like that? And now Logan was gone, far away, she couldn't even hear his footsteps in the hallway above her. The house fell still. Nothing made noise, nothing except the

SPLAT. SPLATSPLAT. SPLAT

rose petals upon the windows, rose petals slipping through the windows, drifting through invisible cracks in the glass. Fluttering upon an invisible breeze. One, two, three upon the rug, melting into a puddle of blood upon the rug that really tied the room together and was now soaked again, ruined. One, two, three petals upon the floor, drifting lazily around Emily, not touching but certainly taunting her. She wouldn't be able to hear her own voice anymore. Just the splat splat splat of rose petals turning to blood, Lucy's blood. Maybe Logan's, too, perhaps he was cutting his throat over the sink right now.

But then, further in the distance, a voice. "Emily?" It was Logan's, but far away. Distorted. "Em?" She'd feel like she was adrift, floating. There was another SPLAT! And then the front door bursts open. No petals out there, they were all in here now. Wouldn't it be so easy to leave, Emily?

She just wants it to stop. That's why she's here, where there's someone who knows she's not crazy because she's definitely not crazy , but she will be if it doesn't stop, so okay. Going out there will make it stop. Sure, that's easy. Emily peels herself off that rug, slapping those horrible things off her hands and knees and feeling them squish under her sockfeet, so she shuffles through them like maybe that way they won't feel like they're swollen and bursting.

She has her fingers in her ears, humming to herself to keep that awful sound out, and they're painting the roses red, "...and many a tear we shed..." Logan can stay here, he'll be all right or dead soon anyway, and she can go out there and they can have her and it'll stop. Probably she won't be SAFE but what's safe anyway? Safe is safe. She can't hear herself anyway, so she holds the door open with a look, "...because we know they'll cease to grow..." Normal people will collect her and put her in a nice padded room where she'll be safe and They can play with her like a dollie. "...in fact they'll soon be dead..."

She's had a rough year-and-change. It's probably very nice outside. She didn't want to come inside in the first place, he said please and she did, dummy.

It was very nice out here. Come outside, Emily, slip away. Don't worry about the house with its soon-to-be ghosts, Logan's been dead for a year. It was beautiful, no rain, just sunshine that bathes her face in golden warmth when she finds herself at the door. But it was an odd time of the year for that tree to be in full bloom. Odder still for the blossoms to be white roses, beautiful funeral roses, petals slipping off in the wind, drifting flowers that bleed upon the pavement. That floating feeling was stronger, as though she were on a wave.

"Em, EM!" The voice - surely Logan's voice - it was louder now. Odd how she could smell the scent of his breath on that wind, he wasn't here. He was gone. Wasn't he? Odder still was what he was saying: "Wake the FUCK up!"

Invisible hands grab her, try to pull her back into that house of the dead. She should leave. Out the door, go away. Never come back another day.

That's not Logan. Logan stayed in the house with the ghost. Emily walked out the door. That's what happened, and you can't change what happened. So that's what happened. He's in there with the ghost, and she's out here with the roses. So she shrinks away from those hands that want her back inside, it's too hard in there, always staying one step ahead, it's very nice out here.

Besides, it's sunny and that means Lucy's probably here somewhere, so she peeks from under the eaves through the branches, against the dappling shade of the roses toward the sunshine. "Lu...? Lucy, Lucy, Lucy?" Quit pawing at her, just get shoved away and stay over there, you, you're about to ruin all the things, because if Lucy will keep her safe, because Lucy always kept her safe. That's what happened, and you can't change what happened.

So yes. Get shoved away. Get shoved away hard, she'll choke him if she has to, keep him at bay. He wants to die anyway, so what does he care if she takes her hands off her ears and throttles him with them? "We should just give up, Logan," are the waking words, eyes too bright when they hold his.

Except that it's not sunny when she steps out the door. It starts to pour when she gets to the tree, a flood of rain that wasn't rain at all. She calls for Lucy, and the blood falls. They were painting the roses red.

No one was keeping her safe.

No one.

No one except those hands that wouldn't give up, even as she was becoming slick with blood. She'd drown if she stayed here, so it was a good thing that those were waking words. A very good thing that those eyes were bright in the dim, damp light of the basement. Logan was ontop of her, on the waterbed which was sloshing this way and that with his movement. Her hands were on his neck. But he was still shaking her. "Fuck you get up I won't lose you too!"

Emily has her hands around his neck when she says, "Oohhh, I think it's too late for that." If she squeezed long enough, they'd both be done. That thought is written in the narrow of her eyes, the chew of her lip, the momentary pressure of thumbs against his Adam's apple. She's a heartbeat away from killing him and getting herself locked up, everyone wins!

But her hands fall off of him, with the taste of blood still in her mouth. The land slack just above his knees, leaden, stuck there. She should apologize, just like yesterday, and just like every day for a year leading up to yesterday, but it's enough to breathe right now. That's the best she can do. Breathe and look up at him and not be crazy. Blinking, "Hey."

Whatever other words Logan had to say were briefly choked by the pressure of her thumbs; he was no longer trying to shake her, but grip at her arms, try to pull her away. Then she lets go, and he collapses into the waterbed beside her, making the mattress violently slosh as he gulps back breaths. "Fuck, Em," he clasps his throat, there were probably marks. He should hate her. He should kick her out and tell her to leave.

He shouldn't put his arms around her, he shouldn't pull her close, he shouldn't be clinging to her like she were a life raft in this super classy sea.

"Don't do that again," he breathes, he clutches. "Where did you go? I came down here to wake you up, you were.." Here, but not here. It was hard to explain, so he doesn't. He just holds her.

There's a long stretch of silence as he tries to steady his breathing. But soon, he speaks again. ".. I made breakfast." She would know what it was before he says it. "Omelettes."

Where did Emily go? Somewhere that only a headshake describes, a tiny one. She burrows into him for a moment, just not being alone, feeling someone warm and familiar, someone she loves and doesn't want to murder. She turns to him, and she breathes against the neck she bruised, wanting to tell him to open his throat again and kiss the bruises at the same time. It's really fucked up. "And toast and avocados. Tylenol and Motrin." Because those things happened, and you can't change what happened.

"We should go eat that." Because maybe it just all hinges on that. Sitting down and eating breakfast like humans do. "And I could use a shower. A thousand showers." At proximity, with a dull, bone-weary laugh, "So could you. Why is this room so tacky, Logan?"