2019-04-12 - Am I dead?

Regardless of wherever she was last night, Emily is here now. They've just wheeled the homeless guy with the failing liver out for some tests, and someone fussed around with the IV feeding Logan pain-killers, both of these activities - in the late-morning hours (not that it's easy to tell time in a room where the blinds are closed) - have stirred her out of what passes for sleep in a bedside chair in a hospital room. They told her, like, a thousand times that he was fine, that he was sleeping normally (if drug-induced) and would wake up normally, but damn. His face was not looking good, and Emily had to keep herself from pinching him just to make sure he wasn't comatose and the doctors were just stupid and didn't realize it.

So the nurse leaves, and Emily stretches out from that uncomfortable chair, groaning uncomfortably, reaching across to put her hand on the back of Logan's. Like she doesn't trust all those monitors to tell her if he died, like touching his hand is a much more reliable measure of life. There are pins-and-needles in her fingers, the circulation cut off from the awkward position of her 'sleeping,' but - as the feeling returns - he still feels alive, so she breathes out a sigh. And she should let him sleep, but still, "Hey," with a light slapslap to the back of his hand. She's awesome at keeping vigil.

'Fine' was relative. He was still alive, that much was true, and nothing was broken except that gnarly gash across his head that would probably end up scarring. His brains weren't even scrambled, at least not to a point that the MRI picked up anything significant. The morphine drip helps dull the pain and temper the dreams, but not entirely. He was still reviewing a life never to be lived behind his eyelids, now blurry and intermittent but still there; children and grandchildren and red-haired girls turning to silver-haired women, laughing in the porch swing under the sunshine. He wanted out, but the morphine wouldn't let him. It was torture.

And every so often, he would make sounds that the nurses just claimed were normal. Quiet groans, a whimper, a twitch of his finger. He was still alive, but fine? Fine was suspect. Fine was relative. At least whatever adjustment they made to his medicine calmed the ice running through his veins, and when she slaps his hand he feels it - it's enough to banish the eyelid movies for now, fingers moving at hyper-slow speed to curl around her own. "Am I dead?" he doesn't open his eyes.

"Maybe." A machine goes beep. Beep. Beep. "Maybe not." Emily's hand is warmer than his, but not by a lot, so it's just two cold hands stuck together, but at least now she's not slapping him. Baby steps. She's told him this a lot of times, but it keeps being true: "You look like shit." She keeps her hand against his, brings her other arm across the side of the bed, folding it on the very edge so she can lean her chin there; the changed perspective makes it so she can't see all the super-ugly parts of his face, just the semi-ugly parts on this side, the ones that just look haggard but not battered. "And your truck is definitely totaled." GOOD MORNING, SUNSHINE.

There's no fight, no quippy comeback. He feels like shit, so he can't imagine what he looks like. But at least he's probably not dead. Even cold, her hands feel too warm and too soft and too real for her to be dead, and if she's here and talking to him and touching him then that means he isn't dead either. Maybe. Probably. The talk of his truck at least reminds him of what happened in the first place, that slippery strip of darkened road, why had he gone out at all? Oh. Right. "You were gone," he says finally, peeking open his eyes to see her laying on her arm. She promised. "You weren't coming back."

Emily looks less like shit than Logan. Tired, tattered. But she's in one piece. Just that the piece happens to be wearing the same clothes as yesterday, and her ponytail is all fucked up, and the blue-green eyes that find the peek of his gray ones are red-rimmed and raw. "No," she says of being gone, shaking her head faintly, her chin moving on the back of her arm where it's perched. "I was just. Stuck. You were gone." All in a quiet, harsh-free whisper - not that there's anyone around to hear it, but juuuuust in case someone decides to come in and fuck with Logan's contraptions more, she doesn't wanna be led off by the men with the butterfly nets. "What happened?"

"Stuck," Logan repeats, it sounds thick and dry on his tongue. But he lets the word rattle around in his brain some, the brain they claim wasn't scrambled. "I wasn't gone. I was at home. Waiting," and arguing with ghosts, as one does. "I texted you. Called. Nothing." He rolls his shoulders uncomfortably into the mattress, cranes his neck this way and that. It makes him flinch, that minor effort. He keeps his voice low, but that's probably on account of the fact that his throat was so sore, everything was so sore. "She told me where you were. Room Nine. I went to find you, so you didn't come back to the house the wrong way." His fingers twitch, skim down the arm that she's got her chin leaning on. "You weren't there, either."

Despite having just figured out how to be 'comfortable,' Emily stirs again, catching his restless fingers with a fold of her own, a brief squeeze before she has to go far enough away to fuss with the tiny plastic pitcher of water and cup on the wheely-table-thingie. "No," she says again, changing the intonation enough to suggest sadness, apology even. She pours the water, she gets the bendy straw out of the flimsy plastic sleeve, she puts it in the water, and she brings it over so Logan can drink out of it. Since one of the side-effects of morphine is dry-mouth. There's a hard sorrow to affirm, "I wasn't there. I was stuck. You shouldn't let them make you believe things." That's Crazy's pro-tip.

There's no real strength in him to keep her at the bedside, but he tries when she slips away, sinking his fingers into her arm. It's not a convincing enough hold, and his fingers twitch back on the thin blankets when she gets up to get him water. "I didn't let her make me believe anything," he mutters; that's not really convincing either. But he's quiet until he sucks down enough water that it doesn't sound like his voice is trying to claw out of the desert anymore. "She said you weren't coming back. I told her she was wrong. That if you were at the hotel, we could... we could work through that," he frowns, red-rimmed eyes lifting to watch her. "I wasn't drunk, I wasn't high. I wanted to drive my truck off the cliff anyway," he admits, his voice still quiet. "But I didn't. Because of you. Because I wanted to come home to you the right way."

He furrows his brows, looking away from her and down to the morphine tube sticking in his arm. He should probably have them remove that. He'll think about it, at least, wasn't that enough? "Where were you? When you were stuck?"

Pausing, the cup lifted slightly, there's a silent 'all done?' asked by her expression before Emily sets the cup aside, leaves the wheely table close enough that Logan can pull it over all by himself if he wants more water. She sits back down while he's talking about working through things, and she scoops his hand between both of hers while he's talking about driving off a cliff, and she rubs the back of his hand with her palm while he's saying the 'because' things. Slowly, "I know that I haven't given you a lot of reasons to believe me? What with the running away a bunch and the hating of your whole house. But I really want you to trust me that I'm - that you're my whole family now, and I will always find my way back to you. Okay?" She doesn't cry, but there's some shaky breathing there.

Wherever she was will just have to wait. That bit she just said is important enough to her that she just headshakes about it for now. Not like a sketchy, hiding-something headshake; just a 'this first' headshake.

Logan doesn't really give the water cup a second look; he's done with it, he's had his sips, the focus was on her now. Or, well, the ceiling initially, because this was all very heavy and the memories from last night could still be felt weighing on him. But slowly, slowly, he lowers his eyes back down, sunken and shadowed as they are, and breathes out, his own breath shaky. "Come here," it hurts to move, but he does it anyway, shifting over to make room on the bed. It's not a lot, but it's a space just for her. And if she comes, he puts his arm around her. But even if she opts to stay where she is, the words remain the same:

"You're mine, too, Em. My family, my.." He shudders a breath. "My reason. Okay?"

The sound Emily makes when he moves would probably have become something like 'uh stop' or 'lay still, dummy' if she hadn't bitten it back like she did, hissed it through her teeth with sympathy-pain. She makes herself not bark at him for being dumb, makes herself nod and come here, moving with all the ginger carefulness of someone that, ohhh, spent two months sleeping on a waterbed and hating every second of it. So she climbs carefully into the small space, trying not to rip out any tubes or smash any of his parts, just to fit against his side, reaching across to find his IV-taped hand with hers, tucking his fingers into her palm. The squeeze she gives his fingers says a lot more than the tight-voiced, "Okay."

He shudders a breath. She exhales a sigh. And, now that they're okay, that she knows he's not gonna be like 'yo gtfo so over this tired routine,' she does cry a little bit, just a few relieved tears. "It's something," she says after a second. "That you weren't drunk or high. That's something. I think something you can be proud of?"

The nurse was probably going to bark at the both of them, and it hurt like hell to make room for her. But he adapts. He makes sure she doesn't squish his parts or pull out his tubes, and he squeezes his sore eyes shut when the tears spring there in the corners from the way that she squeezes his fingers. He squeezes her back, with all the strength he has left in him; it's not a lot, but it's enough. It was something.

"I wanted to," get drunk or high. Or both. "But I didn't. She said you would be there soon. With her. I guess I thought.." Well, we all know what he thought. None of it was very pleasant. He breathes out and lays his cheek on her shoulder, keeps his eyes shut and his hand in hers. "I just had to find you. I guess I suck at that," a weak joke. "Where were you?"

Emily's not good at propping people up, at handing out As for efforts. It's not her thing, but she tries because... well. "That's kind of a big deal, right? That you wanted to but you didn't? Like. That's a big step?" She doesn't need him to articulate what he thought. She can fill in the gaps, and - even if she's wrong on the details - the broad strokes are clear enough: it was terrible. There's a sniff, the end of those relieved tears, and his eyes are closed so he doesn't have to see the way her eyes cringe across the damage he's done to his face. Suffice it to say, it's lucky Logan started out pretty enough that he can afford a few bruises and a scar and still not be a trollface, because 'you're my family' doesn't have to mean 'the one I bang, uggo.'

Back to where was she: "They were just fucking with me." She burrows a kiss into his temple, on the unbattered side, exhaling into his hair. "Like they were fucking with you. Except I'm a better driver, I guess." He can have a weak joke back.

She's not good at propping people up and Logan's not the best at being propped. So there's just a quiet mutter under his breath: "Sure." It was a big deal. "But maybe you should throw the rest of the pills away," the ones she didn't find. "Behind the sink. In the basement. And in the shoe box in my closet." Emergency oxy. Just in case. Notice he doesn't tell her to throw away the bourbon, too. Baby steps. And though he doesn't see her cry (and therefore can't comment on her own attractiveness UGGO), he hears the sniffles. He squeezes her fingers all over again, brushing his thumb against her hand.

"You're here," that seems to be what matters anyway. "They'll have to find another way to fuck with us, if we have this." Just to emphasize, his fingers squeeze around her own again. "I told the guy in Room Nine that I was going to rip his dick off," he admits almost sheepishly.

Emily picks her battles, man. She kept her mouth shut and got a new mattress. She kept her mouth shut and now she knows where the secret stashes are. She'll keep her mouth shut about the bourbon and... "Okay," about the secret pills. "They'll probably write you a prescription for something. But you don't have to fill it. I'll go to the pharmacy and get you some children's Tylenol instead." Mary will love that. There, she manages a teeny smile at the thought, and he can feel lit in the pull of her lips against his forehead.

Before she leans her head back enough to see more of what's left of his face. "Why?" she asks of the dick-ripping before thinking the wiser of it. "I mean. Probably you shouldn't just threaten the genitalia of random strangers. You know?"

"Hmm," Logan breathes out as she talks of children Tylenol, a slow and lazy chuckle escaping him because it would hurt too much to do anything else. "Mary'll talk again. Better throw in some diapers, really make her wonder," he murmurs helpfully. Poor Mary, she never saw it coming.

But, as to the dick ripping: "She said you were there." It doesn't sound like he feels even remotely bad about it. "But you weren't," and that brings a subtle sound of relief. There's a long string of silence, and he turns his face up to her, squinting at her with red rimmed eyes. The apology is there, in that uggo face of his, in the sunken eyes and the frown that grows. He tilts far enough to brush a kiss against her jaw, feathery light. "I should've trusted you," he says there, into her skin, in a tone that's both an apology for not and a promise that he would, in the future.

Emily, as if thoughtfully, "I'll bring all the condoms back and ask for a refund, too." Of the pharmacist. Who fills her prescriptions. For the anti-baby pills. Whatever. This whole topic is just a footnote, though his little chuckle makes her lift her hand from his and lay it super-carefully on his cheek, to sorta hug his head. Gingerly.

But as to the dick ripping. She starts to say something, but he gets there on his own, with the trust, so she takes that kiss for what it's intended to be, nodding a little in its wake. "I know this thing, this us-thing, is really kind of fucked up, but you've always been the one. Even when I was really confused." Past tense. Like things are just so clear now~! "So just. Don't listen to them." Yes, he keeps saying 'she' and she keeps saying 'them.' It's an issue for a time when he's not hospitalized. "We can take that one weapon away from them?"

It hurt to laugh, but the footnote conversation is an easy distraction from heavier subjects. Which is why he helpfully suggests, "You should ask her if they're supposed to melt when inserted." Man, his ribs were sore, and he winces as another chuckle falls out, quieted only by the ginger hug that she gives to his head and the sincere kiss that follows.

He doesn't look at her questioningly when she says what she does, if only because brow-raising would probably pop a stitch. But always? Really? That must've been awkward for her. Almost as awkward as that first time he fucked her sister and.. well. We won't get into that. "Yeah," he agrees to her last point. "We can take that one away." From her or them, whichever. He moves to kiss her again, lingering there for a time, before he breathes out a sigh and leans his head back into his pillows. "You're not really confused anymore?" Since she brought it up.

Emily loved Logan, she just loved Lucy more; that's what she was prepared to square with. Then Lucy conveniently fell down the stairs, and yeah; now she has to square with the whole 'if my sister was still alive' thing, so yes. Let's don't get into that. That's the kind of thing the monsters make people confront while, say, their brother-in-law is off threatening to choke innocent bystanders with their own dicks.

So she kisses him back, carefully, and she shifts enough to free the arm she's been laying on for a thousand years, changing the angle of it so she can pet his hair for him. Also carefully. While the other hand is doing careful things to the scruff on his chin. Careful careful careful. "Not like before. Sometimes it's still," breath, "like if I stay still for too long, I'll get stuck. And something will see me, so I want to hide or disappear. But I have to get unstuck, because - " She leans up for a second, to look at what he did to his face, case in point. "I'm still afraid, I still don't understand all the rules, but I know the way home, and I think that makes a difference?" The question-mark is 'cause she's aware she's sounding crazy again, sorry. "But hey, if you can stop eating Oxy for dessert, I figure the least I can do is, like, comb my hair every day." Beat. "Not today, but that's your fault for being a bad driver."

Logan accepts the careful touches to his scruff and his hair without hardly even flinching. She was so careful, after all. He shifts his weight on the bed, enough so that he can reach up to stroke his thumb along the line of her jaw, and tuck back some of the hair she hasn't combed behind her ear. She did sound a bit crazy, but she was in like company at least. "I get it," about being stuck, about still being afraid. Because he still has that ghost that he argues with, the one that sits at his kitchen table and falls down the stairs, the one that pushes and threatens and makes him feel crazy. "But.." He trails, leaning back to look at her intently.

"You don't have to worry about your hair. You still look hot, even if it looks like birds are nesting up in there," he offers, quirking a small smile, before he leans to kiss her again. "You think they're gonna let me out of this place soon? 'Cause I'm pretty sure this bed is even worse than the water bed."

There are agreeing noises from Emily when Logan says he gets it. She believes he gets it enough that she's not going to keep struggling to articulate the impossible. But she makes a face about the compliment, such as it is. "I'd say 'right back at you,' but. Yeah." She looks at his face after that kiss, still being careful even when her chin-touching fingers make him turn his head enough that all the pretty blues and purples are reflected in her wide eyes. "I'll just remember how hot you're supposed to be and call it good."

Pushing up onto the arm hand she'd been laying on, then petting him with, she looks down at the significant bed real estate he's occupying compared to the wee portion she's claimed, and there's a 'really?' lift of one brow. "Technically, you're a grown-up, so you can go home whenever you want, they just won't be happy about it if you do." She leans back down, whispers in his ear, "But they're not gonna let you take the morphine with you, Logan." While she slides a foot out of the bed, reaches blindly till her toes touch the floor. "I'll find out," if they mean to let him go anytime soon.

There's a narrowing of his eyes when she turns his face, feigning annoyance. "You know, most women think scars are hot," he grumbles. Of course, what's happening to his face currently was definitely not a scar. Yet. He looks into the wide of her eyes, not to see his own reflection but mostly just to look, until she's getting up and he instead casts a look down to the IV jutting out of his hand. Her whisper gets a huff, but there may be the slightest shake of his shoulders from the warmth of her breath. "I don't need it," he says of the morphine, but he doesn't sound entirely convincing. He'll just have to work on that.

And as she lifts to her feet with a promise of finding out when he might be freed, he reaches out to pat her backside. Just a bit of grab-ass with the sister-in-law, completely normal. "Tell them you're my night nurse and you want to bring me home," he decides, laying back into his pillows as a lazy grin spreads across his lips. "But that you're more than okay with taking care of my 'needs' here in the hospital if they insist."

"Most women." Emily, with the droll laugh and the eyes that skate across the morphine that he totally, credibly doesn't need. Hah. She has her feet under her by the time his hand comes a-calling, and she lets it serve as a good motivator to skedaddle on out to the nurses' station - though she has to stop at the door and look back at him for a second, head tipped contemplatively. "I can hold this door closed forever. If properly motivated." Then she hisses a breath in across her teeth, indicating his face again - and also the IV full of opiates. "But do you really want pity-sex? 'Cause if you just wait till you're moderately pretty again," and not on morphine and maybe capable of moving more than two inches without wincing in pain, "I can promise you all the fun bruises and scratches."

Sighing, figuring he can mull that over at his leisure, she swings out of the room to annoy a nurse about how long Logan Miller has to stay here? Because the drugs are making him really handsy, so the nurse should probably think about restraining him if she doesn't want to get groped. "I mean, he was pawing at me, and I'm his sister-in-law." Scandalizing people with the truth just never gets old.