2019-03-13 - Impossible Things

As it turns out, Lonely Goose was a legitimate bed and breakfast that actually, on occasion, had guests. This was a fact that would become evident when Logan picked up the living room, threw Emily's blanket and pillow down the staircase to the basement and announced in a no-nonsense tone: "You can't sleep here anymore. We're going to have guests." He didn't offer her a room, he didn't suggest she sleep somewhere else. But that evening, he got heavily drunk and passed out on the recliner in the basement and left her the bed. He made sure to leave his clothes on.

The doctor came the next morning. But he wasn't the only guest. Too much Glimmer in a single place brings attention - it has to be tempered, somewhat. Smoothed out. Which was why they were all very, very lucky that another couple showed up around the same time. A man and a woman, who were not husband and wife, but seemed very happy to 'get away' for awhile. There was nothing special about them, except for the fact that the man seemed to have incredible stamina, if the creaking upstairs every hour on the hour was any indication.

And that is why Logan has been in a miserable fucking mood. He's down in the kitchen, slamming every single pot and pan that he owns while he cooks lunch. Upstairs, the moaning was at a fever pitch.

Emily doesn't say anything about where she can and can't sleep. But, then, Emily seems to have decided that not saying anything about anything is the best solution. She looks at Logan a lot, watches him, but there's been a whole lotta tongue-biting going on since all that shouting and shoving. Her dialogue consists primarily of when she'll be back from work, the word 'okay,' and the occasional 'excuse me.' Which is to say that she accepts this new edict silently, and throws his drunk-ass a pillow when it's bed/recliner-time.

The same doesn't necessarily hold for all the guests. She can be polite at them, even manages to strike up a conversation with the not-wifey in between all that fucking she's doing, but she's not really interested in the conversation. She's just pretending to be human. She does not talk to the doctor other than 'nice to meet you,' and she hasn't managed to bump into the not-husband, 'cause he's too busy bumping other things, it seems.

So she comes into the kitchen after her shift at the diner, while the headboard makes all kinds of noises upstairs, to find Logan taking out his frustration on the cookware. She sits down at the table with a book (we're on to Vonnegut now, lighter fare) and, as mentioned at the top of this pose, watches him. Like maybe he'll actually lose it and not just almost lose it. About the time not-wifey is oh-godding, Emily shares, "You seem tense."

Unlike Emily's new form of communication, Logan was avoiding eye contact on top of everything else. This was the new normal - simple words, keep her in the peripheral, keep his shirt and pants on and everything would be right with the world. He was familiar enough with the way she walked that he didn't even have to look up to make sure it was her when she came into a room; just a glance at the shoes, before he glares up at the ceiling over his head, and slams another pot.

"This isn't a fucking brothel," he says with gritted teeth, ladling some tomato soup into a bowl and dropping the grilled cheese he was making onto a plate. There wasn't enough food here to feed a small army; just enough for him and Emily. Unlike some bizarro-world B&Bs, all he offered was breakfast. People had to fend for them fucking selves if they wanted lunch and dinner. He drops her lunch onto the table and then stares at her, actually stares at her, as those words had been meant for her and not the people upstairs and expected confirmation that she understood.

Emily takes the lunch with a glance and adds, "Thank you," to her repertoire. She even starts eating it, tearing off a piece of grilled cheese crust and dunking it into the soup, putting that bite into her mouth while Logan stares at her and she stares back. She can do that all day, and somehow still manage to go through the motions of life. It's a practiced art. But, for now, since he's going to all the trouble of making eye contact, she can go to all the trouble of making words. "I'll tell them to stop." It's the sort of thing that should be an empty threat, not followed by standing up and walking out of the kitchen, which is what she does.

Logan should be making another sandwich. He's got the bread and the cheese and the butter all ready to go. But then he started staring at her and it was like he somehow got frozen in place. Stuck on the tile floor. Stuck looking at her. All while, above them, the clapping of the headboard was getting louder and louder and louder. "What?" he snaps when she gets to her feet, and adds another thing to his own repertoire - he reaches out, and grabs her arm to stop her. "You're not going to tell them anything. That's not what I meant." But what was it that he meant?!

"I'll tell them - " Oh, that wasn't a 'repeat yourself' what? Right, Emily stops repeating herself, and she pulls on her arm for a second, twisting it and leaning away in the same motion. Before that gets too awkward, before anyone has to get hurt or half-choked, she'll just take her fingers and peel his fingers right off, thanks, and then cross her arms in front of her, cupping her elbows in her palms. No touching! Uncharacteristically gentle, she invites, "Tell me what you meant, Logan." Just do it from over there, and she'll listen to it from over here.

Logan's brows slump into a furrow when she starts to twist her arm out of his grasp, but he's not so far gone that he doesn't realize he needs to let go. His fingers drop before she gets the opportunity to peel them off of her, yanking back like she's suddenly gotten too hot to handle. "You know what I meant," he says firmly, turning on his heel to go back to the stove and slap the grilled cheese into the pan. "If you want to find someone to go fuck you, you can do it somewhere else." He was repeating her words from the other night. Was he really still hung up on that? Upstairs, there was a loud groan that lasts far too long than humanly necessary. Sounds like the not-husband's met his maker. There's silence now. "You're not going to do it here."

Emily's not just playing dumb here. She legitimately doesn't know what he meant, and his insisting that she does is gonna make her mad, mad enough that she'll say something mean again and ruin all this hard work to stop being such a bitch and ohhhh, she inhales. Since he's gone and turned his back, he won't see her looking up at the ceiling as if for inspiration. Whether it's from some higher power or from homeboy busting a nut is debatable. But he'll hear her sit back down, quietly, and clink her spoon against her soup-bowl. After a long silence, which is really notable since everything upstairs is finally over and it's just Logan making his sammich and her eating some soup, "Do you want me to leave?"

There's a long suffering sigh that breaks up the silence that follows, but Logan was now staring hard at his grilled cheese that was steadily browning in the pan. At least the mess upstairs was done, though he was not looking forward to having to peel the sheets off the bed. Note to self: find that box of latex gloves they got at the pharmacy the other day. The clink of the spoon in the soup bowl has his shoulders tightening, the question that follows not seeming to put him at any sort of ease. "Is that what you want?" he volleys the decision back into her court, as he flips the sandwich onto the other side.

Another inhale. Man, he's just pushing all the buttons today. "That is such a - " Nope, Emily. Don't. It's a real 'lord give me strength' moment for her, but hey, this sandwich is good. She enjoys the fuck out of it, chew chew chew, relax her fist around the spoon that she's definitely thinking about jamming into his ear right now. "I'm afraid to leave." She can cop-out, too.

Those words that don't come to a finish make him bristle, and he shifts in his step there in front of the stove, rolling his shoulders back. The stance he takes makes him look like he's bracing for impact, but she doesn't continue. And so he plates his sandwich, he pours some soup into his bowl, and he shoves everything to the table as she takes the easy way out. He chews on her words as he takes a bite of his sandwich, sinking into his seat. "I see," he keeps his focus on his food, splashes another piece of grilled cheese into his soup, and pops it into his mouth. "So you don't want to stay." Full stop. "But you are too afraid to go." Does he have it right, Emily? His sunken gray eyes lift from his soup, to stare across the table at her hand. There is a long, -long- pause before he dares to speak again.

"Well you're not bringing anybody here to fuck."

Listen, don't say Emily didn't try. She really did. But Logan picked this fight, and she's made two very good efforts not to clap back at him. In fact, she makes three very good efforts not to clap back at him, just lets his long pause do what it needs to do. And lets his warning sit there in between them while she finishes her sandwich, wipes her hands on her pants, and picks up her book. She turns a couple pages, focuses her eyes on it intently, and tells it, "Then I'll just fuck people elsewhere." NBD. Oooh, or - she looks up at the (now quiet) ceiling quickly, tacking on, "Can I fuck them if they're staying here? Then I didn't technically bring them here..."

Good thing he spent all that time making himself a sammich and some soup that's now ice fucking cold. She looks at him blandly.

Logan went quiet the moment those words were out of his mouth. He says what he says and he drops his eyes back to his soup, and continues to tear pieces of his sandwich off to dunk. The quiet that lingers after is just fine with him, it doesn't even make him twitch in his chair. Maybe, perhaps, she was going to accept his demand. Maybe, perhaps, she was going to listen.

It was wishful thinking.

The words snap his attention back up - this time, above her hand, up to her face. At the same time, his sandwich grows instantly ice cold in his grip, and he didn't even have to check his soup to know it would be cold as well. So the sandwich is slammed back down onto the table with a thunderous slam of his hands, and he jerks to his feet. "You don't fucking get it. You never fucking get it. What do you want? You wanna fuck the doctor? Get in bed with that girl and her fucking boyfriend?" he snarls, "I can't take my goddamn shirt off in my own FUCKING HOUSE but you can spread your legs open for anybody here that's not me, yeah? I'm just here for you to fuck with and I don't even get the fun parts."

"Oh, I'm pretty sure I get it." Emily tilts the upper edge of her book toward the empty half of the table, where all the lunch he can't eat isn't, and the dishes from the lunch she did eat (it was good, she liked it) are still sitting. "You wanna fuck. Were you thinking right here on the table? Or...? I guess since you have guests, we better do it in your tacky-ass bedroom, huh?" She leans a little out of her seat, looking toward the door to the downstairs, then up at angry Logan, shrugging and pushing to her feet. Like this is happening right now. "Try to keep the self-loathing to a minimum afterward, though. Cry in the shower if you have to cry, you know?"

Stunned. That's what her words did to him, they stunned him. They kept him locked there on the hardwood floor, staring across the table at her as she so casually swings a look over to the basement door and picks herself up out of her seat, like they were just going to take off their clothes right here and now and go at it. Her words crash over him, wash away the anger. And in their wake, they just leave overwhelming shame.

"My fucking God, Emily," he utters, the fight gone, there's no heat in those words, even if his fists clench at his sides. "You don't get it, you don't. I don't wanna fuck you, Emily," he shoves his chair backward, because he was going to go down into that basement, but definitely not to put his dick in her down there, even if he couldn't move at this exact moment. "You're the one person in the entire fucking universe left alive that I would never, ever just fuck, you make me fucking feel something."

"The fun parts. Your fucking words, Logan. You want the fun parts?" Emily opens her arms out on either side of her person, hands spread, fingers turned inward toward herself. "Right here, climb on, fun for all ages." She takes a step backward, toward the door, head tilted that way, questioning look in place. "No? What do I make you fucking feel, Logan?" Empty hands land on the back of the chair in front of her, fingers curling across the top of it, nails biting into varnish. "Because you make me feel fucking..." Something. Like crying, 'cause that's what's about to happen. "...desperate."

"Stop. Please. Just stop, Emily," the tone of his voice was just short of pleading, the volume just a notch below shouting, as she opens out her arms while walking backwards to the door. He keeps the table between them, he doesn't move an inch, even though every part of him wanted to rush past her and lock himself in his tacky ass little basement prison and never come back up. Upstairs? The bed starts to creak again, slow and steady. He casts his eyes away from her at the question, his shoulders bunching with the knots of tension that had formed the past few weeks, inwardly cringing at what he makes her feel. Or, perhaps, what she makes him feel. When the response crawls its way out of him, it's spoken only above a whisper.

"Everything." He folds his arms around his chest, like he was trying to hug himself. Or grow small enough to disappear. "You make me feel everything, Emily."

Aww, that's sad. The self-hugging. Emily doesn't just fall to pieces, but something... gives... a little. It shows in the way her fingers soften on the chair, stop trying to scratch through the varnish; in the way the angry tears become mostly unshed sad ones, just a couple that overflow before she can blink them away; in the breath that she takes that's a slow inhale instead of a sharp sniff. And in the step she takes toward him, around the chair, to the edge of the table, getting near enough to lay her hand over his bicep - when the noise from upstairs gets through.

The other hand rubs over her face, dries a tear, muffles a groan. "Christ, are you sure you don't want me to tell them to knock it the fuck off already?" There. A small, hard-earned laugh, brittle but existent, while she cups her hand around the back of his arm, fingers pushing gently. Open the arms, Logan, she'll step right in and he won't have to hug himself.

Logan had no tears to shed, even after those words and the self-hugging and the emotion. Maybe he's cried too many already, maybe they are all dried up. Or maybe the shame of those words and those emotions was so intense that all he wanted to do in the moment was curl up and die, and there was no room for tears in all that other feeling. It made it worse that she didn't say anything. That she commented on the squeaking of the bed above them instead. It made it worse that she approaches him, touches him, sends a tremble up from the back of his arms through his shoulders and down his spine.

He rolls his eyes up to the ceiling and doesn't laugh at her joke. He doesn't give, either, his arms at first tightening around his chest resolutely, like he wasn't going to give her this. It doesn't last though, the firm refusal; it starts with a twitch in the muscle where her fingers are pressing, and then evolves into his arms dropping to his side as though they were just too heavy to hug himself with anymore. But he doesn't reach out to hug her. He couldn't give her that. "I don't want to fight with you anymore, Em."

She's stubborn. Stubborn enough to press until his arms uncross, stubborn enough to step into his personal space afterward. But not stubborn enough fold him into a hug that he's obviously not feeling. Or maybe just not willing to step all the way out on that ledge yet. "I'm really trying," not to fight with him. Emily lets her hand fall off his arm, since it served its purpose, turns it so her pinky can hook around the middle of his thumb, just the littlest possible bit of contact. 'Cause, tbh, she's still sort of afraid of actually touching him in this house, anywhere but the supposedly safe basement - but also she really does want to hug him all the hugs.

It's confusing.

"But I'm so fucked up, Logan. And you're so fucked up." And the people upstairs are so fucked up. Why can't they be polite enough to just wait like fourteen minutes! "And this is so fucked up. But I'm really trying." She said that already, but it's true, so she looks at him in his sad eyes and wills him to believe her with her intent ones.

He's stubborn, too. Stubborn enough to keep his arms hanging there at his sides, even as she steps into his space and her pinky hooks around his thumb; his fingers twitch, curl towards that simple contact and then go flaccid again. Nope, stubborn, that's just what he'll be. Even if there's the subtle sway of his body towards her own, a subtle forward shuffle until he was in her space as much as she was in his. "This isn't trying," is his response, his voice raw. "You and me. What we're doing. We're not trying."

There's a heavy sigh that follows those words, hanging his head enough to bring his sad eyes to her intent ones. "We're going round each other, we're not even really talking. And I can't fucking sleep on that chair but I can't fucking sleep in my bed, and I want to be near you and I can't and I want to touch you and I can't and this isn't trying, Emily." It's with those words that he cracks, enough to bring his free hand out to settle on her hip, threatening to pull around her. "We're just existing. I've been existing for an entire fucking year, I know what it feels like."

Emily shakes her head, the fight they don't want to have still there, regardless. "You don't get to decide that, you don't get to tell me that I'm not trying. Do you know - " But she stops, because she knows the answer, and it's that he doesn't; whatever the question was, he doesn't. Quietly, like something might wake up and take notice if she speaks too loudly now, she looks up at him and explains, as best she can, "Just existing is so hard, just being in one place, trying to be normal, to not scream and fight and run, it's so fucking," a shaky breath falls, "excruciating. So don't do that, don't tell me that I'm not trying." Or she'll quit trying, and those eyes will be too-bright again, and they'll fight again.

And, hey, now they're talking and touching, so that's progress, right? "I don't know how to fix this, but I can't leave it broken again. So I need your help. Please." That's a throw-back, that's what she said when she showed up however long ago that was. Still true~!

Logan's brows lift when she stops, when she doesn't finish whatever question she was going to ask. But the rest of it, the talk of existing and trying, it was clearly causing a lot of internal conflict. He flinches, shuts his eyes long enough to focus - and when they open again, there's definitely some mist in the grey of his eyes. "But this is excruciating, Emily. It is to me, how can it not be to you? We're fucking orbiting, it's like you're here but you're really not and I.." He exhales a trembling breath of his own, curling his fingers into her hip. "I need you to be here. Here."

It was a difficult thing for him to admit, but this whole conversation has very clearly been difficult for him. His fingers unclench, and he winds his arm around her, but the hold is loose; he doesn't drag her into him, he doesn't squeeze her, his fingers just come to land on the other side of her hip. "I don't know how to help," he admits, and there's so much naked pain in his voice. "Maybe you should just.." But it was his turn not to finish, because he can't say the words. So instead, he just quietly kicks the ball back to her. "Do I know what?"

Emily has just managed to lift her hands, to raise them first from his chest to his shoulders, listening and understanding to him - orbiting, here - and those things make her lean toward him, turn her face down for a moment so her forehead rests in the center of his chest. Like maybe it's okay to lean, to let herself lean, and then it's maybe she should just, and she pulls in a sharp breath through her nose, recoiling with her shoulders shrinking in and back. She even snaps her head back, pulling it back like that smack hit her square on the cheek, and she looks at him. Hurt.

"How easy it would be to just leave." She shakes her head at him, baffled and confused. "How easy it would be to push you until you break, and you cut your throat, and I can watch you bleed out, and then I can finally just come undone. To fuck you until we both hate ourselves. Those are the easy things, the things I can do without trying. This? Being here? Loving you and wanting to help you and not ruin you?" Her face crumples sadly. And she exhales, a lost shrug.

There came another trembling sigh from the weight of her hand upon his chest and the drag up to his shoulders, from the heat of her forehead there instead. He could feel his pulse quickening, she could probably feel it too, and for a very brief second in time? He tightens his grip around her, manuevering his hand to splay against her back and press, applying just enough pressure with the heel of his palm to curve her into him. It didn't last. Her head snaps back and his eyes flare open and then her words sting. But he doesn't lean away, he doesn't dislodge his hold around her, he doesn't tilt out of her orbit.

He just sighs. Heavy, pained, as though he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

"You don't think I know. But I do. Because it'd be just as easy for me to tell you to get the fuck out." It almost was that easy. "To just .. tell you to leave, or go find someone to fuck and just leave me here to fucking die." He swallows, tilting as her face crumples, hesitantly bringing his forehead down to touch her own. "Do.. do you think.. it's impossible?" The words take a couple of attempts to be fully verbalized, heavy on his tongue. "Wi.. with..without her?"

Honestly? "Yes." Emily doesn't hesitate to answer that question, even if all the things they just said were hard to utter and even harder to hear coming back at her. Even if, right now, his forehead is leaning against hers, and she sweeps her hand up from his shoulder, the backs of her fingers against the curve of his neck, and then settles her palm to against his perma-scruff, fingers laying lightly across his ear, thumb to his chin. "I think it's impossible." But.

She drags in a long, tattered-sounding breath, one that stutters to filling her lungs. "But we have to try, Logan. Even knowing that we'll never be whole people again, we have to - " Swallow hard, close eyes, breathe carefully. "We have to try. Because what's the alternative?" All the bad things they just said. Very quietly now, tipping his nose with hers, "Please don't die. I won't leave if you don't die, okay?"

Also, somewhere in the background, Alex totally comes 'home' to hear people fucking upstairs and these two hugging it out in the kitchen and does the one thing no character on a MUSH ever does: just walks to his room and says nothing and puts his headphones in and ignores them.

Well, at least that was a question he already knew the answer to, even if it still was a sharp knife straight to the gut to hear it tumbling off of her lips. It didn't make him back away though - in fact, it had quite the opposite effect; his fingers sink into her back as though he were trying to anchor himself to her, anchor himself to the impossible. There's another pained sigh, this one long and long-suffering, as he brings his own hand up to sweep the backs of his fingers against her cheek, while her own palm settles against his scruff. But as hard as her answer was, harder still was the rest of the words that she said. That they had to try, because of the alternative. "I.."

The words don't come easily, and they don't come at all. He nudges her nose with his, and tucks his fingers into her hair, and feels that overwhelming guilt washing over him again from being so close to her. Yet even all that shame weighing him down only brought him closer to her, even if he knew it was wrong. "I won't die," he whispers, breathing out and then inhaling deep while he's close like this, dragging the scent of her into his lungs. It was a shallow breath, but it was enough. "I won't die if you won't leave. But I can't just exist with you anymore, Em." He thought he didn't have any tears left, but there were a couple that slip now, as the words come out. This was horrible, what they were doing to each other, tying one another to the impossible. "Please at least let me come back to bed."

Emily wants to know what he didn't say. It shows in the part of her lips and the pull of brows, something he can feel against his forehead where theirs touch. But she also doesn't want to push. Maybe some other time, when it's not enough to hold and be held, when his hands aren't in her hair, making her breath stutter again in ways that she's just really not equipped to handle right now. Maybe when there really aren't any tears for her to swipe off his cheek with a pass of her thumb, for her to tilt and break that forehead contact, pressing a soft but heartfelt kiss to the trail of one and then the other. "Yes," he can come back to bed.

"Could you try to, maybe," and she opens her eyes finally, looking up with a small squint that doesn't want the moment to end but needs a little something that maybe is possible, "not be falling-down drunk every night? You don't have to go cold-turkey, but I'lllllll dial back the crazy if you dial back the alcoholism?" Compromise is an important step in relationship-building. So is the smell of him, and being able to lean into him, and the warmth of him, and good god she's going to have to sleep with him again. Emily puts those thoughts away and tips her nose into that scruff, that's much easier to deal with right now. Kinda.

Logan knows she wants to know what he didn't say; he can absolutely feel it in the furrow of her brow there against his own. But even with the knowledge of that desire, he says nothing at all - at least not with words. Instead, he speaks with his fingers, nestling the tips of them into the hair by her temple and sliding through, getting lost and tangled somewhere towards the back of her head. He speaks with his nose against hers, brushing tip-to-tip, and in the tight press of his lips when her own pass over his cheek and then the other, catching teardrops. There's far more to say in the way his arm slips tighter around her, to cling all the more desperately, fingers poised between her shoulderblades and kneading ever-so-subtly. And it's probably clear that he has more to say still; but the sudden descent of his lips has them landing against her cheek, a warm breath sighing into her skin. At least that composure roll was good for something.

He doesn't flip tables at her request, at her desire for compromise. But it does give him pause, a time for quiet reflection. Then she goes and puts her nose in his scruff and he forgets what he was thinking about to begin with. "Okay," he relents. "I'll try." Because that's what they were doing, right? Trying? "I'll try, Em. I promise."

There isn't even air behind the voiceless 'thank you' that Emily says against his cheek then, just the movement of her lips. And this moment is getting dangerous, with all that breath on all that skin, with her fitting against him to answer those kneading fingers, with both of her hands shifting to scoop beneath his chin and a kiss is right there. All she has to do is lean up, let it coalesce, her eyes are closed already and everything. And there are people having loud sex upstairs right now, so why shouldn't she just -

Not do it, ease the tension out with a cool exhale, release his chin and slip her arms around him lower, fitting them beneath his arms, lean into a much safer hug. It's heartening, warm and comfortable, maybe not quite the old closeness when there were three of them, but a throwback to when things were easier and every moment wasn't so goddamn perilous. Into that hug, she offers, "Do you want me to fix that?" She tilts her chin toward the sandwich she ruined, scooting her cheek against his chest in the process.

The slide of her fingers through the scruff on his chin to settle into a hold there brings a flutter to his pulse, he inhales a shallow breath and curls his fingers in around her hair, digging in towards her scalp. It was right there, a kiss, all he had to do was tilt down and let it blossom; and her eyes were closed but his were searching, flitting across her face and tracing every detail of her lips and the way they shape into that exhale that follows. The one that eases her own tension and just coils it more into him. She fits into the hug and he breathes into the top of her head, shutting his eyes and trying not to dwell on moments lost. She felt good here, too, buried in the arms that come wrapping around her after he untangles from her hair, burrowing her further into him.

There's no real answer to the question of the sandwich, he doesn't even look in that direction. He keeps his eyes closed and he tightens, and she puts her cheek against his chest and it makes his heart swell. And then the guilt comes back in a wave, trying to drown him in it, and another tear slips through to land in her hair. "No. I just uh.." want to breathe her in, so he does, holding his breath and the scent of her with it until his lungs burn and he needs to release. This was wrong. She was Lucy's sister. ".. I should.." kiss her, hold her, push her away. "Take a shower. And uh, fix the uh, thing. Toilet. Upstairs. It's broken."

Emily holds onto him while he talks about the things he should do, nodding agreement; yes, he should do those things. It's not a terrified hold, not one afraid to be alone. She's not holding the monsters at bay. She's just holding him, feeling his heartbeat against her cheek, the closest thing she's had to contentment since that awful, awful night ruined everything. For a moment, nothing is playing with her, pulling her in too many directions. There's just Logan, his back under her palms, the sound of his voice in his chest with her ear against it, the tear in her hair that she may or may not know exists, but she won't call him out on either way. "You should," she agrees at length, and her hands slack against his back, falling down his spine, pausing once at his hips.

"I'll - " Make vague gestures at the table with one hand while the other, reluctant to leave him entirely, stays against his side, even when she half-turns, takes a half-step back. Maybe she means clean up? Has she so much as washed a dish in all this time? Probably she means finish her book. Go somewhere quiet, where those people aren't fucking in her ears all afternoon, christ almighty, sit outside and catch her breath. Stare at the same page for three hours straight, thinking about her brother-in-law in the shower. Maybe she'll come to bed drunk tonight; maybe he's on to something with all the booze.

"Yeah," the word is nothing more than a huff of air, no intention in anything except his words to do all those things he said he should do. She takes a half-step back and he a half-step forward, and they are together again and he's not slipping away into the shower or upstairs to fix one of those things that he claims to not break to give himself something to do. He's just around her, no longer orbiting but colliding with fingers and warm breath and tears and the brush of his lips, faint but there along the expanse of her cheek. He tilts his head, another breath taken and he exhales it there against her, closer to the corner of her mouth, but when his lips dare to move..

"UNNNNFFFFF!!" The ceiling damn near trembles with the sound of mutual release, though it sounds like the man was a little more into it than his lady.

And just like that, the moment was over. Logan breaks away, lifts his gaze to the ceiling, and starts to laugh.

Emily wants that kiss so badly. The hand still at his side balls up his shirt, the one that was trying to say things about the book or the dishes comes back, lifted, fingers on his throat - but not the chokey-murdery way, in the pulse-feely, skin-wanty way. She turns her head, and she catches her breath, and that dude makes all that noise, and she mouths 'oh my god' hatefully up at the ceiling, tilting her head back and breathing out one very small hissy-fit. "You probably better put 'fix the bed' on your to-do-list," she adds wryly, giving him a little get-to-it shove with flex of her fingers on his shoulder now. While he's laughing, she detaches all her parts from all his parts, collecting her book with a swipe of her fingers across the table.

She makes a show of covering her ears, one side with her palm and one side with her book, while she slips out to the front porch, saying something about how that woman is going to need a vagina-transplant by the time they check out of this B&B, good lord.