2019-03-12 - 2019-03-13 - Slices of life.

A week after that pharmacy trip, and everything is okay. People have their moments, and there have been a couple of bad ones, but nothing brutal. And the relative placidity has been fortifying, so much so that Emily has even started taking walks around the block all by herself in the past three days. She had meant to be heading out to do exactly that, but, after two weeks sleeping downstairs, she's okay to just trot on down there and retrieve a sweater for this walk.

Which is how she walks in on a half-dressed Logan sometime after breakfast, and the brakes she hits at the bottom of those stairs are so hard that she clips her heels on the last one. And this is where she has to make two rolls to see how this plays out.

So Emily does not just die right there. But the saucer-wide eyes are stuck for about five solid seconds, and then she starts baaaaacking up the stairs. Somehow, she does not trip, either. She'll just take the first three backward, then run up the rest of them. "I DIDN'T SEE ANYTHING!" And also doesn't need a sweater for her walk now.

Emily took walks and Logan fixed things, it's what he did. He fixed so many things around the house that someone might believe he was breaking them first in order to have something to do, but surely that was nonsense. Surely this was just an old house that he was trying to keep from falling down around them. He'd spent the morning fixing one such thing, and it'd left him sweaty and grease-stained, which meant the shower had been necessary. There was still steam sticking to the mirror in the tiny bathroom tucked to the corner of the basement, Logan in a damp towel around his waist. He probably should've shut the door; the bathroom was directly in front of the stairs. But he was brushing his teeth and the water was rushing. He hadn't heard the creak of the stairs until it was already too late and she was stuck on the stairs.

She stares. He stares harder, sunken eyes wide, the toothbrush shoved so far back into his mouth he might as well be deepthroating it. And then she slowly backs up, and he quietly nudges the door closed with his foot.

Wow, get psychic, Logan. Then you can close the door with your MIND instead. When Emily spends like forty minutes in the shower tomorrow morning WITH THE DOOR LOCKED? It has no thing to do with this at all. She doesn't have much to say for the rest of the day - but that's not all that abnormal; she just gets that way sometimes.

And maybe it really doesn't. Maybe she wasn't in there like 'holy crap i'm sleeping with arms every night.' Because when she comes upstairs? She's dressed. Job interview dressed. Hair and make-up and everything. As noted above, she doesn't have much to say about it, just - "I'll be back in an hour. You'll be okay?" By himself. In the haunted house.

There'd been no mention of it from him, either. It certainly hadn't been the reason he lingered down in the basement the next day, spending an abnormal amount of time deciding exactly which shirt he should wear while the water was endlessly on in the bathroom a few feet in front of him. Maybe he was just waiting to brush his teeth again, even if there were perfectly good bathrooms upstairs where he could perform that exact task. Either way, by minute 36 of her shower (geeze, Emily, stop wasting water, there's a world crisis), he'd be upstairs. He politely tried not to stare when she came up, interview dressed. Would he be all right, here by himself in the haunted house? "Sure."

And he was, for the most part. Okay that is. When she returned, he was out in the front of the house on his hands and knees in the mulch underneath the window that once had those ugly curtains. The brief rainstorm that had come and gone made certain his shirt was sticking to him, as he busies himself with pulling weeds. But he draws back when she comes up the pathway, a smear of dirt left behind on his brow when he wipes it with the back of his hand. "You get it? The job?"

She was totally gonna say he looked nice, too. But she doesn't. Because it's too weird. She just nods and leaves. It'd be poetic if it was forever, but it really is about an hour, and then Emily is back and Logan is... pulling weeds. And wearing the rainstorm, which makes her stop on the walk up to the door, looking confused. It's another moment when she's totally gonna say something, and her lips part and everything, and then she just doesn't, but she her face does some acrobatics about it, regardless.

She nods about the job. "My life's ambition, finally realized. Mister Carey," who runs the diner, "said to say hi. Alice," who is the hostess at said diner, "told me that Mister Carey heard from Sarah at the drug store that I'm staying at your house." She makes gestures at her own brows then, tipping her chin to indicate Logan's. "It's very sordid. Do you want a towel or something?"

There's a twitch of a brow at the facial acrobatics, a look that suggests an expectation of words that do not come. At least she answers his question, and he sweeps his hands on his damp jeans and bundles up the weeds that he's viciously murdered to keep his hands busy. "At least you'll have money," is his only remark about the job, and as he gets to his feet, his eyes follow the line of her body from her shoes all the way to her neckline, before he realizes he's basically drinking in the sight of her and looks very guilty about it all. "I just need a shower. You should've told Alice to mind her own fucking business." There's a twitch of his brow as he looks to the window, because he can see her reflection in the glass without having to look directly at her. And he sighs as he turns away, to take the weeds to the trash. "You look .." He bites his tongue and opts for a neutral adjective: "Nice," and that's all he says before he's gone behind the house.

He avoids her for hours. He sets out dinner on the table but takes his elsewhere, disappearing into the bowels of the house. It's a big enough place that he can simply vanish and not be seen if that's what he wants. But somewhere around eleven, she'd hear music in the backyard. The fairy lights were on and a full moon hangs in the sky. He's drunk, dancing with a bottle of bourbon on the patio. His voice carries the tune, at least: "~dancing in the moonlight, everybody's feeling warm and bright~"

"Maybe next time," Emily will tell Alice to mind her own fucking business. She was on an interview, after all, and - well, that's all. She was on an interview, and now she'll have money, and that's her DEAD SISTER'S HUSBAND looking at her like that, so she's not allowed to like it, so she goes inside while he's out back, and she puts on the worst pair of jeans she owns, and a yellow sweater because yellow's not her color, and spends the rest of the day reading Hemingway. Wordlessly. While he putters around out of sight.

So it's around eleven and Hemingway gets left inside when she peels herself out of the sofa, following the noise. She wears confusion like a security blanket for now, opening the back door and looking through that insanely pretty picture at drunk-dancing Logan. Leaning in the doorway for a full verse, she does nothing to disturb him, letting him get it out of his system. But a light goes on in the window of the house next door, and she can see someone pressing their face to the glass and peering into the backyard over here, so she slumps out of the doorway and comes to get him. And it's hard to stop someone from dancing and try to take a bottle away from them without falling in to step, so she does that, scoops an arm around his waist and pulls on the bottle and the arm attached to it with her other hand. Without a word, again.

The neighbor slams the window closed. Passive-aggressively louder than they need to. Tomorrow, Emily steals their mail.

He doesn't notice her in the doorway, or maybe he does and it doesn't matter. He can hold a tune but his rhythm needs work; it was a shuffle-step-shuffle sort of dance around the cobblestone patio that he built with his own hands, beneath the lattice where ivy grew and moonlight peeks through. He certainly doesn't notice the peeping Tom from next door, not that it would stop him; no, his attention only lifts from the bottle when he sees the yellow of a very ugly sweater swimming towards him, feels her arm around his waist and she's falling into step too. It occurs to him that this was his DEAD WIFE'S SISTER, that maybe he shouldn't put his arm around her and his hand on the small of her back. That maybe he shouldn't put the bottle of bourbon to her lips and encourage her to drink. Maybe he shouldn't sweep with her as the music changes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X-Mrc2l1d0&list=RDNiG_o6nBp6I&index=4). He probably shouldn't encourage her to dance beneath the full moon and the fairy lights.

And he definitely shouldn't be locking eyes with her, singing to her, his voice gravely and not at all as slurred as it should be with that bottle being half empty. "..relax your mind, lay back and groove with mine."

For about twenty seconds, Emily does all those things. She takes a drink right out of the bottle and chokes on a cough, she dances with him while they smell like bourbon together, and she likes it. For about twenty seconds, it's just really nice. Chilly, maybe, but she she's warm with her eyes answering his, and damned if he isn't warm as long as she stays close to him, and then a breeze ruffles, and something harmless flits across the face of the moon. Breaks a spell. Her hand drags up from his hip, climbs his spine, hangs from his shoulder for a moment with a squeeze, with a 'come here' pressure on him and her face tipped up just for a second... Before she walks off abruptly. Not through the house - whatever harmless thing that shadowed the moon could be waiting inside, could right now be standing in the door she left open behind her, watching this tableau, waiting to pounce - but through the side gate. She goes and sits on the front porch, curls tightly, and waits for the night to get over itself.

Hours later, when she's finally more cold than stubborn, she creeps quietly inside again to find where Logan landed. Did he pass out in the backyard? Did he stumble inside and crack his skull somewhere in a fittingly poetic end? Did the thing in the doorway laugh at him? Did he make it downstairs to bed? Her hope is on the latter, so she can climb under the covers and go to sleep 'normally,' holding onto him in the last hour or two of dark.

It was doubtful that Logan would remember very much of that evening or the twenty seconds that passed where everything felt right and normal and so very warm. But he would remember the pressure on his shoulder and the heat that it sent through his entire arm on that side. He'd remember the reflection of the fairy lights in her eyes when she tips up her head and he turns down his own, the fleeting nudge of his nose to the tip of hers, before his arms were left empty and cold and the music felt distant and the bourbon no longer tasted so sweet. He'd remember those things for days after, lingering like some kind of phantom pain that both tortured and pleased, offering reminders at the least opportune moments.

He didn't follow her to the front porch; he instead collapsed on the steps outside the back door. It was almost artistic, her in the front and him in the back, separated by an entire house full of ghosts and memories of death. He finished the bottle of bourbon and barely made it to the bed in the basement, forgetful that they shared this space now and stripping out of his shirt, his pants, collapsing ontop of the covers. But he was still somewhere between asleep and awake when she finally comes down, he just had his eyes closed so that she wouldn't know that he was fully aware of what he was doing when he puts his arms around her and clings to her until morning.

Yeah, the same Emily that ran away when he was half-dressed? Copes with it right then. Briefly, she wishes there was anywhere else to go - even has a second where she thinks about just sleeping in her car - but then she heel-toes off her shoes, and she climbs carefully across his goddamn waterbed, slooshyslooshshefuckinghatesthisthing. She helps his sleeping pretense by moving his arms for him some, tucking in against him, turning her face into the curve of his neck. If he's going to sleep with most of his clothes off, he's going to have to deal with that warm breath till she drifts off.

In the morning, before he has a chance to get away and start his day and leave her there for the monsters to find her all alone, at the first feel of stirring next to her, Emily makes herself wake up. She blinks against too little sleep, and she holds onto him with her hands sternly on his shoulders, looks him squarely in the eyes. And she says, "I'll pay you rent. I'll save some money and get back on my feet, but I'll pay you rent, too." Like 'at least you'll have money' is the thing that's been stuck in her craw.

He'd remember that, too, the warm breath that tattoos itself upon his neck and haunts his dreams so that when he finally falls asleep? He's dancing with Lucy on the back porch and she's there in his arms but she feels empty, as thin as the air. He wants her to be warm, she feels like ice, so he turns his head to kiss her. And as his lips touch hers, they aren't dead and cold, no. He can practically feel her pulse on his lips, the heat radiating out of her and seeping into him, but when he turns his head back to smile at her, it's not Lucy anymore. It's Emily, in that ugly yellow sweater, and he wants to kiss her again.. but when he does, the side of her head opens up and the blood rushes down, but she's grinning and blood is pouring out of her mouth as she speaks: "Just cut your throat already, Logan, get it over with."

He awakes with a jerk, startling the bed and creating tiny waves underneath them. His head throbs, and her breath is still there on his neck even though she's got him by the shoulders and was staring at him in the eyes. It takes him a full sixty seconds to understand where he was, what was happening, and so her statement was met with silence until it processes. Money. Right. He hadn't had guests since she's been here. "Okay," he doesn't fight it, he just extracts himself out of bed and takes a couple of oxy from its hiding place in the end table, swallowing it dry to push out the dreams and the memories but not the warmth of her breath on his neck.

He leaves the house, he doesn't even ask her if it's okay, if she'll be okay. He just leaves her with the ghosts and the monsters because he has to. But he has to come back, too, even if it takes a few hours - stumbling back through the door and weighed down with a couple bags of groceries.

Emily and Hemingway get left alone together. In 1961, Hemingway shot himself in the head in his house in Idaho. She has a type. When he comes home, she's sitting at the kitchen table, with all the Tic Tacs they bought however long ago scattered in front of her. It was one of those Valentine's Day boxes, so she's got the little pink-and-white pellets, and she's eating them. One at a time. Not sucking on them, eating them. Crack, crunch crunch crunch, crack, crunch crunch crunch.

She puts the book down on the table between her and the Tic Tacs when Logan comes in. She leans forward on her elbow, chin on her palm, the other hand still picking up Tic Tacs one at a time, and she watches him with his bags of groceries.

She and Hemingway must not have been alone while he was gone. When he gets to the pantry to put away his groceries, everything - everything in it has been destroyed, things are smashed, things things are scattered on the floor, things are leaking on the shelves, it's like a murder in there.

"I got lonely."

Logan tries not to look at her; he keeps her in his peripheral, feels her heat on his breath, and focuses in on Hemingway amongst the Tic Tacs instead. There are no words, he just veers to head straight into the pantry and stops short just beyond the door. The plastic bags rustle in his fingers as he surveys the damage that has been done, shoulders slowly sagging until he was at a full on slouch. "I can see that," is his response, spoken into the pantry as he sets the bags down upon the floor, and puts his palm down upon the shelf closest to him, exhaling a long sigh. He hates to do this, to tap into his aspect, to feel the rush of the Glimmer. He hasn't used it since she died, not really, all the messes he fixed since then were with his own hands. But this.. this was a little much.

It feels like stretching an old muscle. His fingers slide over the shelf to the first jar, and the pieces of glass slide back into place, fitting themselves back together. Onto the next as he steps further into the pantry, the pickle juice dripping down onto the floor suddenly flying back up as though somebody's put this pantry on rewind. The jar mended, he takes a breath and moves onto the next. He was going to be here awhile. He was going to call attention to himself.

For a few minutes, Emily watches him and eats Tic Tacs. When it becomes obvious that he means to do this thing, though, to stay there and turn eyes toward them, she pushes her chair back from the table. The little candies scatter with the nudge of the book from this gesture, a couple of them rattle onto the kitchen floor, and she knows how to make him stop. Pay attention, Logan, because she's going out of the kitchen. Listen, there are her footsteps on the stairs going up... and up... alllllll the way to the attic.

Whether or not the door is locked is irrelevant. Emily can open it. And if he won't stop, if knowing that she's about to 'get lonely' up there with all his Lucy-things? Then they can call attention to themselves together, because she can destroy all the things in here, too. Her footsteps creak on abandoned floorboards, and he's trying to put cayenne pepper back into a broken jar and that's not warm breath tickling his neck now, that's a merry little giggle right in his ear, that's something capering with delight and wanting to know why he's bothering? Just leave it all broken, just run up the stairs and then fall back down them and leave Crazy alone in this house to wreck everything, they can all be together again~

Logan knows better than to be in this pantry, putting back together what was broke. But this was what he did, wasn't it? He couldn't fix himself, so he had to fix everything else, pick the pieces up off the ground and put every pepper flake back into the bottle. Flex that muscle until it was loose and limber, it was as familiar as riding a bicycle, and they were here anyway, taunting him, so did it really matter? But wait, were those footsteps on the stairs, pattering across the hallway? He strains to hear, flinching at the whisper that cuts like a chilled knife against his throat, and he knows when he looks back he'll see the empty chair behind him and a flash of limp, no longer vibrant red hair there in the corner of his eye. Stay here, leave it all broken, fall back down the stairs and die and..

"Emily," his voice sound strained, weak, but it stretches out of the pantry and beyond the kitchen. He turns after, crunching over broken glass and kicking over his groceries as he follows, throwing himself up the stairs and feeling vertigo once he hit the hallway. Everything was tipsy turvey upside downy, he could so easily tilt back over and bleed out on the rug. He throws himself down the hall instead, to the attic door. "EMILY," firmer now, a demand, "Don't you fucking dare," destroy his shrine, the one he hasn't touched in a year, yet there's not even a single speck of dust on any of the contents that were exactly the way Lucy had left them.

He gets there juuuuuust in time to hear her throw the lock on the other side of the door. He could go get the key, sure, but let's be real: it won't do any good. There's no sound once the lock is home, like the room swallowed Emily alive inside it, footsteps and creaky floors and breath and heartbeat, all eaten up by the room in the attic. There's no more Emily, it's digesting her hair and her Hemingway and her pushing him and her hugging him. She's all gone. Logan's alone in his big empty house again, isn't that what he wanted, anyway?

Hours and hours and hours. Shadows lengthen, lose strength, blur, disappear.

"Logan?" From the other side of that locked door. Could be Emily. Could be Lucy. Could be all in his head. It's been quiet for a lifetime by now.

"EMILY!" Fat lot of good it did, to shout her name at the door that slams shut in his face. He could go get the key, of course he could ... but instead he slides his back down the door and collapses into a heap on the floor. The truth was, he was terrified - too scared to open the door and remember, too scared to go back down the stairs. So he sits, and he puts his head up against the wood grain and strains to hear the silence, and he shakes and he only just manages to keep himself from sobbing, but at some point he grows hoarse from saying her name over and over, like a broken record: "Emily, Emily please, Emily, Emily."

Hours and hours and hours. It was just him and the door and the silence and the raw feeling in his throat. He lost track of time, lost track of the shadows, lost track of himself.

The voice stirs him, he picks his head up off the door and stares at the knob. He's still curled up in a ball beside it. He doesn't want to venture a guess who is on the other side of the door. Instead, he simply says: "I'm here."

"I didn't destroy anything. It's all still fine. Everything is okay." So it must be Emily, because why would Lucy ruin all her own things? Then again, why would Emily lock Logan out of a room in his own house? And why wouldn't she just open it now, now that it's getting dark and not just a little bit scary on her side of the door? Except for the sound of her voice, there's nothing, not so much as a creak, not a muffled sound, nothing at all.

"I think I should come out of here now. Okay?" The shadow under the door moves, a sign of life, and then the door itself rattles against the frame. "So you have to unlock the door now, okay?" Yeah, that's Emily, Lucy never sounded like she was going to panic, hysteria was always Em's purview. "Logan, open the door now." It rattles. It thumps.

Is it really though? Is everything ever really okay? Logan's sunken gray eyes were on the door knob, watching it rather than the shadows under the door for signs of life. It rattles, and he feels his pulse quicken, until it becomes something of a loud thrum in his ears as her own voices pitches to panic. Let her out, she wanted out. "I don't.. I don't have the key," he scrambles to his feet to try the knob, to twist it this way and that way. The key was downstairs - not down the attic stairs, which were safe and normal and didn't give him an overwhelming sense of vertigo. But down the bad stairs, the stairs where Lucy took her spill and broke her crown and he didn't want to go tumbling after, not really.

"I don't have the key, Emily, just.. just do your thing. Just open the fucking door."

"You have the key." It's a real 'quit fucking around' tone, one that grapples to make this just some sort of terrible joke and not a TERRIBLE joke. The knob turns and turns, rattles and clatters, and there's another dull thump against the door, the sound of her palm hitting it hard. "Open the door. Please." Thump thump, harder this time, with more to follow, one hand banging on the door and the other turning the knob with increasingly frantic rattles.

"Logan, please open the door, Logan, open the door, please please please. I can't," do the the thing, and there's a pause just to prove she must have tried, but the lock doesn't so much as wiggle in that silence. It sits, stubborn, and there's just a lot of pleading panic behind the door now. It fades, going distant, and the shadows behind the door move. And then, "The window won't open, please open the door."

Or leave her in there. This is what crazy gets. Mmmm, or race down the stairs, that'll be safe, nothing will grab your ankle at the top and trip you.

"I don't have the fucking key!" Logan smacks his palm against the door as though he were proving a point, "You were the one who locked the fucking door in the first place, Emily, just fucking open the damn thing." He grabs hold of the knob and jiggles it again, he jerks it one way and then the other but finds the door unyielding. The banging hand on the other side raises his panic, until he's throwing his shoulder into the door. She thumps, he thumps, she bangs, he bangs. "Just open the door, Emily, unlock the fucking door, Emily."

Or just leave her in there. The thought did occur to him, when he casts a look back over his shoulder to the stairs.

"I can't fucking believe you," he hisses through the door, shoves his shoulder into it with one more THUNK but this time it brings a jolt of pain down his side, and he groans. "Stay right fucking there," as though she could move, and he practically punches his fist into the grain so she could tell how pissed off he was. It splits the skin on his knuckles. He can't even fix himself.

He turns and he goes, down the stairs one at a time, hits the hallway that tilts and that's when the vertigo sets in again. He has to put his hand on the wall, dragging it along to keep himself from falling over. And he stands at the top of the stairs where Lucy stood and he wants to think of anything else but all he can see is her down there, bleeding out. One foot at a time. He just needed the damn key.

Alllll the way down the stairs, he has to hear her losing her mind on the other side of that door. So much please, so much let her out, so much don't do this, Logan, so much don't leave her alone in here. All the way down the stairs. If he trips and falls and dies, she's going to be trapped in there FOREVER. No pressure, Logan. No rush, surely Emily won't completely crack up in the two hundred thousand years it's taking him to manage one flight of stairs. Geez.

Emily will just be here. Trying to kick down the door. What's going to be awesome is when he gets back with the key and the door just opens without it. It's just about making him go down there and get it and about making her be alone. That's how these things go.

One step at a time, try to ignore the screams and the whispers and the warmth on his neck from memory's breath. Hold the railing and put one foot out and then the other, careful not to step too far to the edge of the stair, least your foot slide out from under you and you wind up bleeding out. He has to keep his eyes open even though he really wants to close them and shake away the images of Lucy there on the floor, one side of her head caved in. It's a miracle that he manages that flight of stairs even if it takes him two hundred thousand years until his feet were on the rug that really ties the room together and Emily's panicked screams come streaming into his ear again as loud as though she were shouting right into it. The key was hanging in a little box by the door; he snatches it, and braves the stairs again - going up is at least a little easier than falling down.

The key felt burning hot as he holds it to his palm. He goes down the tilted hallway and up the attic steps. "I've got it, I've got it, I.." he doesn't even get the key in the hole. The door just creaks open, groaning. In the next instant, he snatches Emily's hand and pulls her through the gaping crack in the door, slamming it shut again without looking in. "What the FUCK were you doing?!"

Aww, but she didn't even touch anything. And there definitely won't be anything/anyone inside the room, giggling her ass off at this mess, laughing and laughing and laughing while Logan goes down the stairs... and Logan comes up the stairs...

The Emily that yanks out the door has the too-bright eyes, a tear-stained face, hair that's messed and scattered, bruises on her hands and knuckles, broken nails. "ME?! What were you doing! Why would you - how could you - " Both of those battered hands clasp one of his, and she drags him away from this horrible room, and she can take the stairs in a rush, because she isn't afraid of falling down them, just runs full tilt and come with her, all the way down the stairs, over the rug, through the kitchen, into the basement where, "From now on, you lock this fucking door when you don't have any clothes on, do you understand me?!" She just needs to slap a good 'young man' on the end of that statement.

"You shouldn't have been in there, you shouldn't ever come up here!" Logan wanted to shake her, he did shake her, gripping up her arms and likely leaving more bruises. He had to get it through to her, she had to know, shrines were for the dead and never for the living! But then she was grabbing his hand, dragging him down the stairs and through the tilted hallway and he felt sick because she was going so fast down those stairs, over the rug and through the kitchen to grandmother's house they go~. Or, well, down to the basement, and he wants to throw himself away from her and tell her to get the fuck out of here and never come back. But she's shouting words that don't make sense in the grand scheme of things, and instead of pushing her out the door he seizes hold of her hand and stares.

"Did you see her?" his voice cracks, it was raw and hoarse, he'd been calling her names for hours after all. "Did you see her, Emily, did you see Lucy? Was she there?"

The list of things Emily shouldn't do is so long that not going up to the attic? Is so far down it that she doesn't even register the importance in it, how much it matters to Logan. She shouldn't, for example, gape at him like he's gone insane - not least because the measure of her hypocrisy would be so fast that she'd choke on it. And she sure shouldn't yank her hand away from him, after dragging him aaaaaaaall the way down here, like suddenly his hand is ew-gross and she doesn't want it touching her.

And she definitely shouldn't tell him, in a tone that's baffled and frustrated and so over him at the moment, "Why don't you go up there and see for yourself. You locked me in there so you could ask me if she's there?" Like it all just dawned on her, his big master plan. What's more, like this also just dawned on her, and she would never have believed it from him: "You fucking coward."

It didn't make any sense, did it? It was like this room had gone as tipsy-turvy upside-downy as the hallway and the staircase, her with it. He flinches as she yanks her hand away, as though it physically hurt, and he stares at her in disbelief as she yells at him. As she looks at him like that. But it was those last words that really cut deep, and his face crumbles as he jerks back from her and turns stiffly away. She could probably see the tremble in his shoulders, the stiffness there too. "Why don't you go fuck yourself, Emily?" the words are sharp on his tongue, and he thinks he should just walk away from her and let her walk away from him.

But instead, he whips back around - and she can probably read all the emotions there from the simple look in his eyes. Pain, loss, confusion. Anger. Guilt. It was a whole gambit, growing more extreme as he pushes his fingers into her shoulder and shoves her back. 'Why the fuck would I lock you in the attic? Have you lost your fucking mind?" he grabs her shoulder then and pulls her back, yanks her back, "I told you not to go up there, you locked yourself in that fucking room! I called you for HOURS! Why would you go up there, WHY!"

Mean Emily. Mean Emily says, "I don't have to fuck myself, I can find someone else to fuck me." And mean Emily starts up those stairs again right now, like she'll do it - just to stick it to him, or get it stuck in to her? Hmm, the point is just that she intends to do it, to go away and leave him with his shaking shoulders in his tacky basement bedroom in his stupid haunted house, but she also intends to fight with him as long as he's willing to fight back.

So he turns, and he pushes, and he yanks, and she looks at him closely, keenly, grabbing the front of his shirt with both hands and shaking him with them. "Yes," you dumb bastard, she's lost her fucking mind. "I went in there to stop you, before they noticed you, because I wanted to save you. Because I love you and I need you and I want you and that room is so fucking sacred to you, but there's nothing sacred, Logan, not anymore, and you have to figure that out. Or they're going to kill you and eat you, and I'll be alone again, and they'll play with me." Frantic-fast-talking, "That's why they made you, why you locked me in there, so you would be mad and make me leave so you'll die and I'll slip away, there's nothing in that room, it's empty." So there, she gives him one good shove with both hands to his chest. "Quit pushing me."

It was a terrible thing to say, that thing about going out and fucking somebody else, but it shouldn't have stung like that. He was just confused and mixed up and pissed off, and he's got his hand on her wrist after he tugs her back off the stairs, the grip a promise that she wasn't going to go out and get fucked any time soon. "You can't just.. just go out and fuck somebody!" But why, Logan? He doesn't give any excuses, and he loses his grip on her hand when she grabs the front of his shirt and shakes him because she's lost her goddamn mind.

Then there were excuses and reasons and none of them made any sense, and some of them made more sense than he should. And he wanted to tell her the same things, that he needed her and wanted her and loved her and wanted to save her, but then she was pissing him off all over again. She shoves him, he shoves her back, solidly towards the wall. "Fuck you, stop pushing me!" Even if he started it. "I didn't lock you in the goddamn room, I wouldn't ever lock you in a goddamn room! I wasn't even upstairs, I was in the goddamn pantry, how the fuck were you going to save me locking yourself in the fucking attic?! You scared me to fucking death," he pushes her again, for good measure.

Emily hits the wall proper-hard, knocking her head against it and everything, going, "Ow," once in the middle of this epic shoving and shouting match, a real break from the moment when she reaches up to rub the back of her head with the flat of her fingers. She looks at him for a second, not hateful or frantic, just... like... 'too hard, man,' like kids whose game of two-hand-touch accidentally turned into tackle and a reminder of the rules is now in order. Which at least means she stops pushing him back, though she still twists a hand in his shirt, tightening one into a fist full of fabric and putting the other one on his throat, fingers into flesh.

"Are you done pushing me now?" Or is she going to have to choke him.

He hadn't meant to push her that hard, it was written all over his face when she hits the wall and her head goes 'thunk'. If there's ever a good way to immediately snuff the fire out in somebody, this was it. "Shit," the anger crumbles, replaced with genuine concern, "Shit, I'm sorry, let me.." he reaches not to shove her, but to try and touch her head, though his fingers barely skate through red locks by the time she's twisting her hand around his shirt and putting her other hand on his throat. His eyes flare open, and he stumbles back - but, well, two can play at the shirt-grabbing game.

So even though he says, firmly: "I said I'm fucking done," he drops his hand to grab fistfuls of her shirt, too, bunching it up with his fingers while extending his neck with a tilt of his head, forcing more of it into her hand. "Are you gonna fucking choke me now? Is that what you're gonna do? Lock yourself in a fucking attic and blame me for it and then choke me out?" He pushes his throat into her hand. "Do it. Tell me to fucking kill myself again too while you're at it. It gets me so fucking hot," he sneers. He's found his anger once more, it seems.

Emily's fingers tighten. For a slow count of ten, they squeeze his windpipe and horrible things could happen, and horrible things could be happy about them. Her eyes hold his unflinchingly, and her teeth bite down on her lower lip hard, and she says in a low voice, "I know what gets you fucking hot, Logan." Her fingers loosen but don't drop, and the other one pulls on his shirt, pulls him all the way to her, and she shrugs a shoulder so his pulling on her shirt makes that shoulder bare. "I can feel it in your pulse right. Fucking. Now."

Emily's fingers tighten again. But only for a slow count of three this time, then they slack, and they stroke the beginnings of bruises on his neck. "You want to feel my breath again, right here." Where her index finger traces the line of his neck. "Or here," and she leans to look at the side of his neck, puts that index finger on the pulse-point just below his ear. "You want something warm that you can hold that's real."

It was a slow count of ten, but felt even longer for Logan, who maybe leans his neck all the more prominently in her grip. Because maybe he really did have a death wish, and was it suicide if she kills him? But maybe he trusted her not to, to stop before she went too far. The release leaves him pulling in a shaky gulp of air that only gets choked off again at the tightening of her fingers. His eyes bulge, and his pulse does in fact quicken - by the time she passes her index finger along the line of his neck, it was fluttering so fast that he might actually pass out.

The sad reality is? She wasn't exactly wrong.

"You're wrong," he says anyway, through gritted teeth, winding the fabric of her shirt around his fingers. One good yank and he'd tear it, he was certainly stretching it along the threading. "Why do you gotta be so fucking mean to me, Emily? Why do you gotta be such a fucking bitch? Maybe something warm is good enough for you, maybe all you need is a good fuck from a stranger in a filthy fucking hotel. But that's not what I want," and his hand tightens around her shirt, "You're real. You're warm. You're not just something."

Why does Emily have to be so fucking mean to him? That's a good question, one that at least stops her from playing with his neck for a second, honestly taken aback. Like she never considered it before. Or maybe like she never would have considered he even noticed - what with all the bourbon and the pain-killers. Since she wasn't ready for it, she doesn't have an answer for it, and her hand slips away from his neck, rests folded on his shoulder. But her shirt is ripping, the neck of it biting into the shoulder it's pulled across, so it's not a good time to ponder deeper mysteries like why she's such a bitch.

"STOP," comes out of her suddenly but importantly, followed by more, "Stop stop stop," a half-dozen times. She takes her hands off him entirely, hovers them in the air a few inches from him, and her fingers twitch like they really, really want to go back. Really a lot. She leans against the wall hard, closing her eyes and making him disappear from her vision, breathing out, "Just please stop, Logan." And the very hardest thing to say, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

The question might take her aback, but he was still going. Because the words were out and that just opened the door for more; maybe he should be on the pain-killers and the bourbon because at least those took the edge off. There were far too many edges here, jagged and sharp ones that he could get cut on, and he never thought he'd want her hand on his neck again, but he tilts to chase the touch when she pulls it away from him. "This isn't fucking like you, Em, where the fuck did you go? I miss you, I.."

But the 'STOP!' throws him off-guard, leaves his mouth hanging open but the rest of the words not coming out. Maybe it was then that he realizes he's ripped her shirt, and she's telling him to stop and her hands are in the air. His breath catches and suddenly he puts his hands up, too, all that anger replaced by pain. He's still staring at her as she leans into the wall, with her ripped shirt and their hands in the air, and he's so close that he can feel her apology as she speaks it. And it just reminds him of her breath on his neck. There's nothing but anguish left. And guilt. There's a lot of that too.

He closes his eyes and he backs up because the pull towards her is too real. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm fucking sorry," he mumbles, keeping his hands up, palms showing, and then he just walks into the bathroom and slams the door shut.

Interestingly, though .. there's no click of the lock.

Emily locks it for him. She starts to do it without a word, but given what just happen? She comes over a second later and bangs on the door and shouts through it, "I did that!" Then she runs up the stairs. And that's the night that Emily decides she would rather sleep on the couch ALONE than in the bed with Logan. So that's how bad that was for her. How's he faring?! Good? Easy-breezy?

Except she wouldn't be alone. Because after the bourbon-oxy cocktail out on the back porch, and after the long walk downstairs to his waterbed that she wasn't in? Logan gathers up his pillow, his blanket, and he waits until he's pretty sure she's asleep there on the couch upstairs. Only then does he go back up.. to sleep on the floor in the living room. Just so she wouldn't have to be alone.

Wow, maybe Emily will step on his throat and teach him a lesson for being so nice.

Maybe Emily should stop being such a fucking bitch!

Maybe Logan should put some goddamn clothes on.

Logan definitely sleeps in his underwear tonight JUST BECAUSE OF THAT COMMENT.

Maybe Emily will step on something else then just because of THAT comment!