2019-03-21 - Resolve

It's only a couple minutes later. Eleven minutes later, based on timestamps. Is that time to go kill yourself? One hopes not. But... it has been like fourteen months and eleven minutes, so...
Emily: No.
Emily: You come here.

Logan: where is here?

There must be a hotel or something in this town. A shitty one. Not, like, "hourly rates!" shitty, but shitty enough. Whatever the name of it - they always have names like Windcomb Inn or Seaspray Suites - that's what Emily sends back.
Emily: Room 9

Logan: I'll be there. 30m.

Thirty minutes is just enough time for Logan to splash some cold water on his face, change his shirt, and drive the however many miles it was to the Windcomb Seaspray Inn & Suites. A beat up rusted red two-seater truck parks in one of the spots and Logan pours out of it, heading to Room 9 and sweeping his hands through his hair as he does to make it look somewhat decent. But let's be honest, after a tumultuous evening that bled into a sleepless night involving disappointing your dead wife? He looks like shit. No amount of water, deodorant, or hair smoothing could fix it. Maybe Emily would notice that it takes him precisely 28 minutes and 35 seconds to show up at her door. He thinks he should shout something witty to set the mood and make it lighter - something like 'housekeeping!' or 'the prostitute you hired is here!' Instead?

Logan raps his knuckles on the door, and with a heavy heart says: "Em. It's me."

Emily: Bring me some clothes, please.

So hopefully Logan read that message before he climbed into his terrible truck 28-ish minutes ago. He really definitely shouldn't be worried about what he looks like, 'cause the person that opens the door looks like what Emily would look like if she went through the washing machine but not the dryer. She must have showered, because her hair's wet and half-combed through, with knots and tangles only partially resolved. It's not the kind of place that gives out complimentary robes, so the t-shirt from under the blood-stained sweater will have to do, and she's not even gonna bother with pants, 'cause who cares. She's fucked him, he's seen it. Her wrists have bruises, and her eyes have shadows. Anyway, that's what opens the door and looks out it at him.

Inside, the room looks... askew. The comforter's off the bed and living in an inside-out pile in the corner of the room, a towel is in the middle of the floor, and there are like 14 little bottles of shampoo collected in the middle of the table; she must have raided a housekeeping cart. "Come in." You know, to this catastrophe. She opens the door the rest of the way for him.

Logan's got a duffle bag for her clothes and a shiner from when she threw him off the swing; his eye hadn't closed shut, but the discoloration was starting to bruise around his eyelid and bleed down into the bag under his sunken eye. It would probably get worse before it got better. Needless to say, they were in good company this evening. There's a glance over her shoulder to the comforter in the corner, to the obsessive amounts of shampoo on the table, and then down to the woman with tangled wet hair and bruises on her wrist. He hesitates, then exhales, stepping over the threshold and into the chaos, extending the handles of the bag to her.

"I didn't know what to grab," and so he regrets grabbing one of his own t-shirts and throwing it in there along with the undergarment and pants. At least there's a sweater in there, too. One of hers. "You're staying here?" Just call him Captain Obvious.

Emily takes the bag immediately and disappears into the bathroom with it, talking to him from around the corner. The door's not closed, but it's one of those bathrooms where the fan comes on whenever you turn on the light, and it rattles a little, so she has to talk over the top of that. "For now. The night-clerk, he comes in to the diner at the end of his shift. He doesn't like anyone to talk to him. So we get along." Which explains how someone with a single breakfast shift worth of tips got herself a hotel room in the middle of the night. "Your face looks really bad." Saying it loudly, over the top of the bathroom fan, really doesn't do anything to soften that comment, so she sticks her head out for a second, and looks at him, and adds, "But I'm happy to see it anyway." Like it's been way longer than a few hours.

Logan stands by the door as she takes the bag and heads off into the bathroom, though unlike some very rude doctors in Gray Harbor, he doesn't keep a hand on the doorknob. Instead, he shoves his hands in his pockets and tries to pretend that this isn't the most awkward thing he's ever done. "Huh," he says of the night-clerk, and he's far enough away from the house, but that nagging voice with him forever tickles at the back of his brain. He bites the tip of his tongue, casts a look to the bed, and sends himself in that direction, sinking down onto the corner closest to the bathroom around the time that she pokes her head out of the door. "You're.. happy to see my face?" As though the concept was alien to him, and he slumps forward towards his knees, trying to ignore the temptation of the open bathroom door. He lasts about two seconds before he lifts his gaze to the open door. "I .. uh, I'm happy to see yours, too," although it felt weird to say. He was happy to see all of her. Which is probably why there's a follow up: "I'm glad you're not gone. Completely."

Emily's not putting on a show in there. She's just trying to get out of scuzzy clothes and into clean ones, so she pulls down what's apparently Logan's shirt right about the time he's pulling up his own eyes, and that's enough for now. Again, he's seen it, and the important bits are covered, so she comes back out, turning off the bathroom light and the rattling fan along with it. Someone should fix that. Just saying. "I was never not happy to see you, Logan," she explains. Rationally. Ignore the chaotic room, the tangled hair, the borrowed shirt, the no-pants, and it's a perfectly sane and rational human being who comes and stands in front of him, right between his knees, and scoops his chin, turning his head to eye that shiner. She's contemplating the bruise when she concludes, "I'm never going into your house again, though. You really should've let the tiny doctor look at this." The two thoughts are not connected except temporally, she says one, then she says the other. So maybe not perfectly sane and rational, but a reasonable facsimile thereof.

Logan lets that perfectly rational statement lay there untouched. There were so many things he could reply with, hardly any of them good, and most of them would start another fight. So he presses his lips in a thin line and watches her walk out of the bathroom in his shirt and nothing else, and it should be a sight that inspires so many things and yet there was only melancholy and a faint flutter of his pulse. He straightens as she comes between his knees, lifts his chin into her hands and lets her turn his head as she will, the lines in his brow deepening. That first thought strikes true, like a punch to the gut or a railing to the eye, and he leans back to stare up at her. "Don't do this, Emily," it was a quiet plea. "I need you there." His voice trembles, and as he speaks he lifts his hand to lay it on her hip, rolling his palm over the curve. "I'll throw out all the bourbon. The pills, too. I'll even get rid of the waterbed. Emily, I can't.." he drags his tongue over his lips like they are parched, like the words have made them dry. "I can't. Without you."

"It really was an accident," Emily promises, touching only the very, very edge of that bruise with her index finger, sighing afterward at the damage she can't undo. "It just got away from me, you know?" Then she's shaking her head sadly, settling a hand on the back of his neck, leaning down to kiss the center of his forehead, damp and tangled hair falling on either side of his face in the process. "You'll get the DTs if you do that," she manages with a hoarse laugh, the hand that had been gingerly prodding at his wound now shaking an overdone example in the air next to her. But seriously, "I can't, either. That house - I don't know if the voice is real, or in my head, or both. I'm not asking you to leave, I get it." What he can't do. "But that's not my house, and it makes me ache to watch you walk around there, wanting something that's gone forever."

Logan winces his eyes shut when she edges his bruise with the tip of her index finger; it was swollen and it hurt, but the cause? "I know," it was an accident. "I know it was," it's quiet reassurance, breathing outward as she touches the back of his neck and he leans into the kiss, shutting his eyes as the veil of her hair surrounds either side of his head. "Then I guess you should be there to help me," he says quietly of the DTs, no hoarse laughter for him - just a quick inhale while she was close, to smell the cheap, overdone perfume of the hotel soap that wasn't her smell at all. His hands climb up her shirt, slip around her waist, and hang there as she goes on. "So you'll just.. what, then?" he leans back, tips his chin up to bring those sad gray eyes up to her. "Stay in Gray Harbor and never see me again? 'Cause if you don't want me puttering around that house wanting something that's gone, that's not the way to do it." He swallows thickly, "You came back and asked me to help you. I'm asking you to help me now. I don't.." he closes his eyes again, really flinches them shut, evidence of how hard this is for him to say. "Maybe it's not her," he whispers. "Maybe you were right. When you said she wouldn't do this to you. To me. Em, she.. she wanted me to burn your picture. Why would Lucy want me to burn your fucking picture?"

Emily should gloat. About all the things - that he knows it was an accident, that she was right about whatever is in that house - but they're just sad things. "I don't know." That answers, like, everything he just asked, right down to the request for help. Right down to how she's supposed to look in his sad eyes and maintain resolve, which is probably why she stops looking at them and threads her arms around his neck instead, holding his head to her chest, leaning to bury kisses in the top of his hair. "What - " She breathes, tries to chase the sharpness out of her voice, to make it not sound like an accusation, soften the edges, keep the crazy from bleeding through. "What do you want me to do, Logan? Live with you? Fuck you in the basement of my sister's house?" Yes, the question is crassly-worded, but she sounds honestly unsure, like is this really his master plan here? What's the end-game?!

"I don't know either," now it was his turn for the dry, hoarse laughter as he shakes his head. Because he doesn't know, he still wasn't sure. It was entirely possible that death had twisted Lucy, had turned her into something else, but the whispers in the back of his head haunted him now. I'll forgive you, everybody makes mistakes. Burn the picture, kill yourself, we'll be together. It didn't make sense, none of it made sense anymore, except this part right here. Her. And he couldn't put that into words, so instead he puts those thoughts in the way his hands lay upon her body, pressing in and clinging. By the time that his face was in her chest, his cheeks were getting wet, teardrops bleeding through his shirt. But what she says next startles him, bothers him even if the sharp edges were smoothed, and he leans back far enough to stare up at her. "Jesus, Emily. Stop," he sighs, pleads. "I don't know. But I don't want to live in the dark anymore and I feel like.. like maybe I found a light. And it was so small but I saw it, Em, I swear I saw it, and I can't let it go."

Emily stops. She said what she needed to say about that, and if it hurts him? Well, it hurts her, too. Her own eyes fill when he looks up with his all tragic, and she answers through the first fall of those tears, "Then don't. Don't let it go, don't let this go." Where this has her forehead meeting his, so now all their tears are all mixed up together, which is just the saddest goddamn thing. "Just stay with me. We can be better people somehow, and we can fix each other, and - we can remember the real Lucy together, not what they're making her do to us." It's all a whisper, not frantic, not insane, but so hopeful. She doesn't kiss him, not really, but her lips touch parts of his face here and there. Not the bruised part, though, she caaaarefully keeps away from that, poor Logan. 🙁

"Then don't fucking go," Logan's voice is raw, shaking with all that emotion in the moment, as she lays her forehead to his and their tears mix together. "Don't fucking leave me, Em. I can't.. I can't. Without you." It was a reiteration of what he said before, one hand extracting from around her to put it on her face and smear her tears into her skin with a swipe of his thumb, while she doesn't kiss him and instead peppers his face with her lips. And he wants to kiss her, the yearning is there in the way he cradles her cheek and follows the shape of her lips with the tip of his thumb; it's there when he turns his head and brushes the corner of her mouth with the edges of his lips. "I'm a terrible fucking person," he murmurs there into her skin. "And maybe that voice is right. Maybe she'll never forgive me," he only just barely holds back a sob with his next words. "But I can't let it go. I can't let you go. And she can't hate me for living anymore than I can hate her for dying."

And before the ugly crying starts, before it gets ahold of him? He kisses her, even if she won't kiss him, firmly fitting his lips to her own and letting the kiss rapidly devolve into something of a desperate, breathless cling.

Emily was so, so convinced she had figured this out. She wasn't leaving, she was just going over here, somewhere safer, where the ghost doesn't get the lovely room in the attic while she's dungeoned in the basement, but now Logan is kissing her, and she's not convinced of anything anymore except that it seems very important to answer those kisses. And she's not in her sister's house, so it's okay if this gets away from her, too, like the swing-push did - just hopefully with fewer bruises to the face. (Because, no, Emily is not going to punch him in the face with all her strength to get him off; she's weird, but not that kinda weird.) "You're not a terrible person," she tells him urgently, like hungry kisses and hurried whispers will convince him.

"And you don't have to let me go. We'll." Get undressed, that seems important, too, something to do other than sob, something tactile, something that leaves marks worth having. In a seedy hotel room. Which is better than a tacky basement? Worse? Enh. "Figure this out. Later." Because pushing him into having sex with her hasn't had dire consequences in the past at all.