2019-04-22 - They ACTUALLY talked about dreams

It wasn't quite yet dawn; outside, the glimmer of the stars over the bay was obscured by heavy clouds from which sheets of rain fall. It was a peaceful sound though, the constant steady drip of a thousand water droplets hitting panes of window. What wasn't so peaceful was the sudden trembling gasp that comes from the woman who was all of a sudden returned to the bed beside Alex, neck and wrists covered in blossoms of yellow-blue bruises. She's ruined another shirt of his, the collar torn and a few buttons missing. She's dripping wet, as though she'd come from the storm outside, and when she kicks the covers from her feet in a sudden flurry of motion, her feet are torn, bloodied, leaving a mess in his sheets.

"Oh god," she croaks, her fingers still wrapped around the pendant, still there and secure and the only thing on her that wasn't ruined. Her eyes were wide, wild, but she finds something of a calm when she realizes he's there beside her, and she wants to curl up beside him and pretend that nothing happened but all the relief that she finds in this moment just opens the floodgates of all the other emotions.

She bends towards her knees and she starts to sob.

Good morning, Alex.

Yesterday was busy for Alex, with all the Eastering and fucking, so forgive him for failing to so much as stir when Violet disappeared from his bed. Maybe there would've been some movement if she'd physically left? Like, if the bed had shifted when she slipped away... but even then, he probably still would have found a way to sleep through that. So, while Violet is off being attacked by evil things, he's dreaming normal dreams - and then she's back, and those normal dreams end abruptly, like a light-switch: one moment, he's asleep; the next, he's wide awake. That's a man that's both raised a child and survived his residency enough to choose emergency medicine after it.

Maybe it's the croak that rouses him, because he's already sitting up by the time the sobbing starts. He braces his weight with his palms on the mattress, scooting his rear-end beneath him and sliding across the sheets toward her, then lifts his palm to the center of her back, between her shoulder-blades. "Violet?" It's too dark to properly assess this situation, but he gets the gist in one quick look, the broad strokes visible if the details are masked by a rainy pre-dawn. His breath hisses in just once, and he follows her name with no more questions, just the hand smoothing across her back, the other reaching across as far as he can, hand curling around calf loosely, just holding her. She's not dying, so he can wait till the immediate terror passes.

Violet was tense, coiled tighter than a spring ready to pop, but she doesn't even jump when his hand lays solid weight upon her back. He'd find her violently quaking, spasms in the muscles and shaking through from head to toe, the sobs choking in her throat as he curls his hand around her calf. She folds up into him, this broken and soaked thing, buries her face into his neck and tries to breathe in the scent of him through nasally gasps. It's going to take her a minute to calm down, a minute for her hand to unclamp from the pendant and curl around him instead, fingers sinking into his clothes, his skin. Him. And she clings and she cries and she bleeds until she can't cry anymore. She still does the other two things though.

Eventually the immediate terror passes. The sobbing subsides. And she manages to croak out: "I've ruined the sheets." Because that's the real problem here.

Alex is mostly quiet through this crisis. He doesn't try to shush her or insist that it's okay; the only articulate things he says come when she turns to him, and he assures quietly, "You're here, Violet. I'm with you." Then he hushes himself, the hand on her back stroking over damply tangled hair, casting fingers across it but not trying to work them through it, bringing it down her back and then smoothing his palm over her spine and shoulders again. The other hand moves but little, up her calf to her knee, down toward her ankles - but it stops there, the dim awareness pulsing through him that her feet are damaged staying his fingers from touching her poor feet.

When she gets to worrying about the sheets, he bows his head into her hair, smiling a small smile at the silliness of that concern. "Don't worry about them. I have other sheets. I'm going to turn the light on, okay?" It's his 'about to ask an uncomfortable question' tone, like he wants to brace her for what that light's going to reveal.

She didn't let him go easily, when he lets her know that he was going to turn on the lights. For a blip in time, she digs her fingers deeper into his shoulder, drags herself more heavily against him, and keeps him anchored there in the bed with his hand there at her ankles. At least she didn't go on apologizing about the sheets, though it was probably there on the tip of her tongue and barely held back. Instead, she burrows a little more securely into his neck. "It as a Dream. You're here. You're real," she whispers, perhaps to reassure herself. Then with a nudge of her lips to his neck, a fluttering kiss, she lets him go so that he can turn on the lights and she can properly assess the damage she's done to the bed.

Staying right where he is while she clings, Alex waits it out. His worry is a contained thing right now, taken one step at a time: get her to know she's awake [check], get her not to make it worse by panicking [check], get her to be okay enough that he can turn on the light... [check]. So he leans away enough to reach the bedside lamp on his side, scooting to the edge of the bed and reaching across with one arm (another time it sucks to be short, since the thing's beyond fingertip grasp when he's not right at the headboard, but he gets there).

Flinching against the light, squinting with eyes unaccustomed to the brightness, he puts his shoulder between himself and the lamp, casting a shadow across the macabre scene of her feet and the sheets. He scoots back against her, drawing arms around her once more, waiting to see if seeing this mess starts the check-box process all over. Breathing gently, curling his fingers around her shoulder, the other hand sliding hair back off the side of her face, he agrees quietly, "A bad Dream." Capital D.

Violet winces her eyes shut when the lamplight floods the room, and she lifts her hand to press her fingertips into the corners of her eyes. It takes her a moment before she peeks them back open, casting a long look down the line of her legs. "Oh," she breathes out, teeth scraping into her bottom lip. Her vision was blurry without her glasses, but it was easy to see the blood and the torn skin. But at least it doesn't send her spiraling all over again. She leans into him, into the arm around her shoulder, into the hand on her face, and she works on keeping her breathing steady. A bad Dream, with a capital D.

"Alice, she.. she wanted to talk," it was hard to put the pieces back together in the right order; she lifts her hand to curl it over his own. "I got up and sat in the bathroom, I didn't want to bother you. It was her for awhile, I was here for awhile," that part she's sure of, she insists. "But then, it wasn't. I can't.. it's getting harder to figure out when it's her. And when it's not." That brings out a quiet little sob, though she chokes it back. "Are.. are my feet bad? I can't.. they hurt."

"Does she normally wake you this late?" Sure, Alex. Let's use words like 'normal' in the context of 'psychic sister locked up in nuthouse.' That makes sense. But he fails to grasp a better word, so it's the one he rolls with, letting the question stay as-is while he gives her hand a small, comforting squeeze. He scrunches the blankets up at the foot of the bed, then scoots away from her slowly, taking his movements little-by-little in case there's any resistance or pull-back from Violet while he's shifting away. Just down beyond the middle of the bed, where he can - now that he's not light-blinded - assess the state of her feet. "How did your feet get hurt, Violet?" Talk him through it, while he confirms that her feet are just wounded, not destroyed.

No, there was nothing normal about this situation. And yet, "Sometimes." Violet replies with a sigh, closing her eyes again to block out the sight of her bloodied, dirty feet. "It depends.. on the medicine they give her. I've been trying to .. to not.." There was quiet shame in these next words, heavy with guilt, "To not talk to her when I'm here. When I'm with you." She doesn't try to keep him from shifting away, though she keeps a hand on him even if that means she has to stretch; she needs to feel him, touch him, have something solid under her fingers. The question of her feet draws her focus, and she peeks her eyes back open to watch him, decidedly not looking at her toes anymore.

"I was in the bathroom, and then.. I .. I was at the Pourhouse. And my .. my father.." she was starting to tremble again, those poor bruised wrists. Not to mention the bruises on her neck. "I think he was going to kill me. I got away, I ran, I wasn't wearing shoes, I ran all the way back here."

Alex badly badly badly wants to fix these feet. The touch of his fingers to the top of Violet's foot is small, his thumb just scooting beneath her toes, moving them only a little - which makes more blood well out of the scrapes, which makes him want to fix them even more. But he makes himself stay here, where she can touch him and take what comfort there is from that, and where the best he can do is whatever it is he does: prays behind his eyes without dropping them closed, believes that he can fix this, and that they won't get infected so she doesn't wind up with gangrene and ugly stumps. It's soothing, cools the blistering edges of wounds that seem eager to wind up festering, but it won't knit the deeper gashes entirely.

Still, he makes himself sit there, not make her hobble into the bathroom to clean this mess. He looks to the bruises on her neck, the ones on her wrists, and he breathes in through the story about her father, out through the story of her running home. "Is your father always the villain in these dreams?"

There's a catch to her breath when his fingers touch the top of her foot; she wills herself to stay still though, steadying her breath as she curls her fingers against him. She tries to keep her focus on him in the moment, not the ache in her feet, not even the soothing, cooling sensation that happens while he's down there. At least it helps ebb the pain. "No," she replies, and this makes her frown, looking down at the pendant that hangs around her neck. It glimmers in the lamplight, an opalescent shimmer; she reaches for it with her other hand, touches the surface. "Not always. It's.. it's hard to explain. It's not him, it's not Alice. They.. Alice, the real Alice, she told me They want to make you suffer. They want you to feel pain. The last time?" she swallows. "I was at .. at the hospital. And m-my father said you put in the call. To have me committed," she bites her bottom lip. "And I saw you in the window and I heard you on the phone and you were telling them I was crazy and my dad told me I was going where I belonged," she shakes her head.

There's quiet for a moment. Real silence. Then, a quiet utterance, "And this time I saw you having brunch with your daughter and you watched him choke me and pretended you didn't even know who I was."

Man, just a couple of weeks ago, Alex would have been plying her with sedatives so he could call the men with the butterfly nets to come and get her. Now? Her talk if they sparks curiosity, yes, and confusion, but it's his part in her nightmares that really tightens the corners of his eyes when they stop assessing all the damage and just settle on Violet's. After a few seconds of this, just looking at her quietly, he nods. "I understand." And probably he does? At least enough to get away with saying he does. The trouble for him is that he can't solve this problem, and it keeps his heavy brows pulled together firmly.

But there are problems he can solve. "Can you walk to the bathroom with me? A little soap and water will go a long way." He mostly means toward making sure she doesn't get an infection, but also toward making him not obsess over fixing this, and his smile - though small - is edged with apology.

Violet lifts her eyes up to catch the tightening in his smile, and it makes her wince even more so than the pain in her feet had. There was apology in the blue of her eyes as she reaches out, touching the corners of his mouth. "It wasn't you," she whispers, a reassuring thing. "They just want to hurt. So they use things, whatever they can. It's why Alice told me I can't trust anyone. Sometimes I don't even think I can trust myself." It was a hard thing to admit, it comes out in a shaky voice, another held-back sob. But when he talks about going to the bathroom, she nods her head, letting him help her off the bed. It will hurt to walk, but she will go, tears dripping down her cheeks as she leans heavily into him.

"What happened to you?" she asks quietly, gently. "When you had that Dream? You never told me."

Too bad Alex isn't a big enough guy to just scoop her up and carry her there. It'd be totally awesome - but, if he tried, he'd almost definitely throw out his back or drop her, and that'd just make things worse. So they'll just have to do this the hard way, with him putting her arm around his shoulders, leaning down to fit his own beneath her arm and offer the other hand across the front, all the points of contact to help keep the pressure off her feet. It's a short walk to his bathroom anyway, and he toe-nudges the lid of the toilet seat down to give her a place to park. At least the dull clink-thump of porcelain is comfortingly normal, and she can settle there.

The light goes on, and the water in the sink starts warming, and Alex fusses around in his bathroom cabinet for things. Doing things helps him, makes him not think about things so he can say without the tightness, "Alice seems well-versed about them." He hasn't gotten around to the capital-T yet. Picking his words with care while he soap-and-waters a washrag, "But I hope that she doesn't make you not trust yourself?"

Her question comes, and he pauses, breathing in briefly. "I promise to answer you. But let's get through this, hm? Talk. It helps." Because he's going to crouch on the floor and clean up her feet and legs, and after the soap will be the rubbing alcohol, so talk, Violet, 'cause that shit stings bad.

They'll make do, even if he isn't a big strong man that can carry her to the toilet. She relies on him to keep most of her weight off her feet, and while she can't hold back the tears she can at least contain the sobs from the pressure on the cuts. She drags her hand along the tiled edge of the sink before she comes to the toilet, slowly lowering herself onto the lid. She casts her eyes to the door and cinches them shut, trying not to imagine herself sitting there on the floor, having conversations in her head. She doesn't answer his question, but she swallows with uncertainty - the truth was, Violet just didn't know how to answer that question.

"Okay," she breathes out when he promises to answer, reopens her eyes to catch the blurry image of him there crouching by her legs. She focuses on him, not the door and not the memories of bad Dreams. "I've been trying to keep her out, to not talk to her while I'm here," she's said this already, those words heavily laden with guilt, but there was more now as she licks her lips and continues on. "I.. I didn't tell her about you. About us. I .. I want to say that I was going to, but I'm not sure that's true," she looks away as teardrops hang onto her lashes, focusing on her hands. "I share everything with her, Alex. There was nothing just for me. I wanted there to be something just for me. And I knew what she would say.." and the conversation comes rushing back, firing in all synapses. "It came out last night. It was an accident. She was going on and on, and I was thinking about you and it just.. I didn't mean to share it with her. To share you with her. She said I couldn't trust you. And I know that was her, that was really her. But the rest of it, I'm not sure." She drags her teeth over her bottom lip, reaches up to touch the pendant again. "I'm sorry. That I kept you a secret. But I'm more sorry that I didn't understand why you are keeping me one, too."

Alex can't just 'don't be' with this particular sorry, not in so many words. He stops the soap-and-water - or maybe he's done, and this is just a good place to pause the ministrations, since the dirt is gone and the blood is wiped away, and it's just the cuts themselves - and he kneels uncomfortably on the tile floor in front of the toilet, very unglamourous, all this. But it lets him hold her hand for a moment, looking up at her with a serious but gentle expression to say, "You don't owe me an apology, Violet. We all do things to protect the people we love, and to protect ourselves. You're not alone, and you haven't done anything wrong."

With a breath, he braces her for the fact that, "This is going to sting." It's rubbing alcohol time! "Do you know if she's mad at you now? Now that you're awake?" Beat. "Hmm. Now that you're... out?"

Her fingers curl around his own when he reaches out to hold her hand, squeezing as she wills herself to meet his gaze. But what he says makes her flinch, damp blonde head shaking. "I didn't do that to protect her," she says quietly, a salient point, and leaves it there. Her hand keeps hold of his for another few seconds, before she grits her teeth in anticipation of the rubbing alcohol. As to whether or not Alice is mad? "I don't know. I could .." hiss goes a breath, her eyes wincing shut. She continues on. The composure roll works!

".. I could reach out. But I .." there's a blip. "I don't want to. Not now. Not here. And even if she was still mad I don't know if it would.. she's never getting out, Alex. She's never going to be in my life like she was. I.. I have to live, I have to be here and present and .." God this was hard for her. The tears drip down, not just from the sting of the alcohol. "How could I ever be normal like this? How could I g-get married, have kids? How could I ever be somebody that you want to tell your daughter about, not just to talk about Easter presents but tell her I'm your.. that I'm your.." The words fail her, she just stammers, stalls out.

One brow lifts - which at least means they're not both knitted hard now, so that's good! - and Alex starts after her 'protect her' comment with an intake of breath. But then doesn't finish, just goes back to what he was doing, dabbing alcohol in all the stingy places. He works quietly while she's talking, all the way through till she peters out, and then he's on to band-aids. Just for the biggest cuts, the little scrapes will get left as they are, they'll be fine.

So he's putting things in the trash, and he scoots himself up onto the edge of the bathtub, just to get off his knees. Leaning awkwardly forward, facing her at an angle but still facing her, Alex reaches across to hold her hand again, folding his around it, the other turning up her chin so he can stay in her teary field of vision. "I didn't know how much pain I was causing you, Violet, and I'm so sorry for that." Slowly, seriously, "I want to explain to you why I'm so particular about telling Sophia about us, if you'll let me. I don't know if it will make you feel any better, but it might. Will you listen?"

Words have failed Violet, so she has to suffer through the sting without distraction now, as the alcohol seeps into the cuts big and small. But at least it ends, and he's coming around to hold her hand, and she leans forward into the hand that takes her chin. "No, no," she shakes her head, wincing her eyes shut again. "You aren't causing me any pain, Alex," that is insisted. It was true. Well, aside from all the pain he was causing with the rubbing alcohol. "What you make me feel is.. so much more complex. But it doesn't hurt," she grips his fingers and breathes out, a shuddery sigh.

There was probably more she had to say, but he asks if she'll listen so she bites the edges of her tongue and nods her head. "Okay. I'll listen."

Alex breathes out through the whole 'no no' and the insistence that follows, and he's not got the world's most readable face, but let's give Violet credit here: she just angsted at him about how he won't tell his daughter, and monsters threw it in her face, and it's not causing her pain? All of that is summed up in the dubious, "Mhm," that follows. He'll buy that it's complex, but yeah; better just to move on instead of dither over semantics.

Besides, he's technically ESL, so probably it's a language thing. <.<

Brace for dialogue, assuming there are appropriate pauses for breath and stuff in here: "I wasn't in love with Amy for a number of years before we agreed to divorce. But we stayed together, I stayed with her for my daughter's sake. I still don't know if that was the right thing to do or not, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Now? Now that it's over, the one thing I don't want Sophia to feel? Is guilty that her mother and I were stuck together until she wasn't 'our problem' any more." Air quotes. "Like we were just trying to do our duty by her, so then we could go off and start our real lives, unburdened. And Amy," who he HATES and it comes out in the teeth-grind around her name, "has rushed fast into a new family for herself, without stopping to think or care about all of this, what it has to feel like to be the reason your parents were miserable for years, biding their time. So that's why I'm treading delicately when it comes to you and me. Because she's getting half-siblings, and a new stepfather, and I want her to have time to digest those things, without adding 'dad's girlfriend' into the mix."

He lifts a questioning look at the end; does it make sense? Earnestly, "It's really not about you. I just need to ease into this with her."

It was a many layered feeling, Alex, geeze. Lrn 2 English.

Anyway.

Violet quiets so that she can listen, leaning towards her knees so that she can get a clearer picture of him. Her glasses were still on the bedroom table after all, and that was too far away. Her pale gold eyebrows start to knit together, leaving wrinkles in her brow - but this was no look of judgment. She was listening, understanding, taking this all in. It was a lot. But towards the end, she releases a slow breath, and scoots closer to the edge of the toilet so that her knees touch his, and she can reach for his face and put her palms against his cheeks.

"Thank you," she whispers, and it takes a stretch, but she manages to kiss him, a light peck of her lips to his own. "Thank you for telling me. For explaining. I..You're a good dad, Alex. A good man. I just.." her eyes were welling up with tears again. "Those Dreams, Alex, they're not you. They aren't you. I just don't think They want me to trust that I finally found a place where I feel like I belong. A place I can.. I can.." She gulps back another sob. "Escape to. But coming here brought me back. This," she squeezes his face, and then releases his cheek so she can touch the pendant, "This. You. You were my way out this time."

Alex leans back toward her, so she doesn't have to pry his head off, and returns the peck of lips. It helps. And he reaches across in turn, not to hold her head, just to brush his thumb over her poor tears. "It's just complicated and ugly, but I'm sorry that I didn't take the time to explain it properly before now." Now, when it's like five in the morning and she's been bleeding all over his pristine house.

He nods when she continues, smudging away the dropping tears and disappearing them with the rub of his fingers against his palm, magic~! "I don't know about them," really, he knows, like, nothing. "But I want you to feel safe and wanted here, with me. If there's anything I can do? Anything that helps? Just tell me? Please. I will do what I can to help you, all you have to do is ask."

"I don't know about Them either, not really," Violet stresses the capital T, eventually he'll get it. She leans into his hands so that he can magic away her tears, and shudders another sigh out of her lips. "I only know what Alice will tell me. But she doesn't.. She doesn't tell me everything. And sometimes I can't tell what's real and what's the medicine or the Dreams or the.." She trails off, trying to find the words. There was so much guilt in the blue eyes that finally lift to his darker ones. "I love her, Alex. I would die for her. But I don't want to be there with her. And I don't know how to make this stop, because it's not just happening to me. It's happening to you, and to her and I don't know who else."

With another big breath, she straightens up, casts a look down the front of her and across his battered shirt. "I want you to tell me about your Dreams," she decides, as though that was something he could do for her. "But I want to get out of this shirt, and I want to get into the bath," even if he just fixed up her feet. "I just .. I just want to wash this all away."

Doctor 'Tell me what I can do to help you' Reyes doesn't even flinch when Violet wants to get into the bath after he just used, like, a third of a bottle of isopropyl on her feet and three band-aids. <-- that's why i rolled, okay?! cuz she's just flushing his money down the toilet she's sitting on!!!

"I understand," the guilt she's feeling, he means. And all the things that neither of them understand. "If it helps, I think it has something to do with here, this town. Because I never had a dream like that at home." He's off the rim of the tub then, reaching to start the water running at the same time, fingers under the spout to wait till it warms up before he stops the drain. "But I also almost never managed to actually heal?" He pauses, mms irritably. WHY DO WORDS FUCKING SUCK SO BAD?! "Anyone. It happens a lot more reliably here."

Someone should tell him to stop doing that. Just saying.

"So I guess..." He makes hand-weighing motions while the bathtub fills.

What a horrible person Violet is. Flushing a whole $1.79 down the toilet. She'll remain blissfully unaware of his internal crisis and unravel her hands from his own so that he can reach back and fill the tub. While he does that, she slowly starts to unbutton what's left of his shirt, after wiping what's left of her tears away with the back of her hand. "What could it be about this place, though?" Alice hasn't revealed everything to Violet, that much was certain. Her brows twitch into a furrow as she gets to the last button, and his shirt sags open, artfully draping across her breasts to keep her mostly modest. His pendant comes to settle on her bare skin, shimmering pink against pale. "I don't know. There are so many stories, so many things I've read about and researched. But I've never been able to put my finger on anything specific," she frowns.

Something he says stirs her though, and she lifts her brows at him. "Are you.. trying to heal people? At the hospital?"

AND she stained up his sheets and ruined his shirt. She's costing him a fortune. But since he got a great success, she doesn't have to know about the cheap-bastard side of Alex.

"I don't know." About this place. "Sophia noticed it too, though. So it must be something?" With that very profound divination in the air, he listens to Violet's commentary about what she's read and researched, and he nods a little sadly that there's no grand conclusion to be reached. And while she's very pretty with his tattered shirt opened, it's not the time to be looking at her like that, so he limits it to a momentary drop of his eyes, and then a perfectly suitable kiss pressed to her temple while he slips out from in between here and the bathtub.

Something she says stirs him right back - specifically, the way she says it. And his brows lift in return while he's putting away what's left of his band-aids, making sure there's a dry towel in here, those sorts of things. "Occasionally? I think people might notice if I'm doing it often, so only when it's - " Okay. He's trying to side-step the truth and is bad at it (FOR LACK OF PRACTICE, he's just that decent), so he just reels it back in and says honestly: "Yes. Occasionally. Why?"

"Mm," Violet hums at the talk of Sophia noticing the weirdness of the town, it just makes her frown, an expression that not even the suitable kiss to her temple can fully chase away. She runs her fingers along the chain of her pendant and gingerly moves it over her head, grasping the watch for a moment longer before she sighs and tucks it out of the way. Some place safe, where it wouldn't get destroyed by the water. She was just about to shift out of what remains of his shirt when he answers her question, and she turns and blinks at him.

"Alex, you.." Wow, she was going to sound really crazy now. "You have to be careful. Alice says.. says that when you use it too much, that's how They know. Doesn't it ever make you feel weird? Like the.. like something is watching you, the hairs on the back of your neck stand up?"

Almost absently, just one of the little things Alex does without thinking about them because they're quietly important, Alex slips a clean, folded wash-cloth under the whole necklace, curling the chain so it stays on the thing, and all of that stays away from the water. Wordlessly. Then he's fading toward the door, about to explain why but -

Yes. Now is when she sounds really crazy. Definitely this whole conversation up to this exact point was 100% crazy-free.

Slowly, "Noooo?" He lingers now, not because of the potential nudity but because now she's making him think about all that hospital-praying he does, and his eyes narrow while he casts back through his memories, intent on being forthright now that the conversation is rolling. "That is, I'm almost never alone at the hospital. And I know that what I'm doing is strange? I suppose I just assumed it was the guilt associated with being sneaky about something." Catholic people have all kinds of guilt. 🙁

"No," It's such a strange word to use in this conversation, but she says it firmly and with conviction. "No, I don't think you think that's what it is. If you really think about it, Alex, if you look back.." Well. She might be insane, but he's been all up in this crazy train and if he's not going to believe her now after everything? That's on him. "I know the risks that I'm taking every time I talk to Alice. I think it's why the Dreams are so... consistent," what she didn't know was all the sexy projections she's been doing lately. "You just need to be careful. You can't.. you can't use it all the time. You can be a doctor and you can help people without it," she twitches, frowns, and casts a look back to the tub.

And with all that crazy, she gets to her feet, hisses through her teeth, and drops his shirt. "You're coming in with me right?" she looks over a naked shoulder, back to him. "I want to know. I want to know what you Dream about. You promised."

Full-disclosure: Alex is not trying to get out of the bad dream conversation. He's being completely honest, hitching his thumb toward the bedroom, "I was going to change the sheets." But whatever, he can do that later. It's not the super-sexy bath of his dreams, but he did put the kibosh on pergola-sex in favor of cupcakes, so maybe these are his just desserts. ('Cause cupcakes... desserts... get it? Is funny. 😃)

"Here," he adds, reaching across the distance to offer her a hand. Not with undressing, but with standing up, something to lean on and hold while she gets into the bath. Which is also going to wind up hurting, so he's braced for having his fingers squeezed off; it probably happens to him a lot. "I don't use it all the time. But I will - " Take a breath. Fidget his teeth across the corner of his mouth. " - take your concerns under advisement." And move on to what Violet wants to know about, so he doesn't have to do his terrible job of tap-dancing around telling her no, he's going to keep doing what he wants and fixing people, gdi. "The last bad dream was the night of the car accident on Bayside, when someone nearly went off the cliff?" He's not allowed to say who, but c'mon; the whole fucking town must know by now.

Just think, this could all have ended differently if he'd fucked her under the pergola. Instead, he's helping her to her fucked up feet and she's leaning into him, flinching as she goes. "You can change the sheets later," even though it's going to bother him the entire time they are in this tub. "I .. I need you. Right now. Okay?" And he did say to tell him if there's anything she needs that will help. This was also all his fault.

There's a lot of frowning as she gingerly steps to the tub and he tap-dances around using his mental-healz in the hospital. There's a lot of hissing as she puts her feet into the water, and probably a lot of thinking about how this was a terrible idea. But she gets in, and she submerges, and eventually the pain subsides into a dull ache, and she lays her arm on the side of the tub and puts her cheek down on it, casting bright blue eyes up to him. "That was a bad night for me, too," she murmurs, and there's an idle thought given to Logan - did he have a bad night, too? It's something she mentally files away. "Go on," with the dream telling, she encourages. "And come on," into the tub, she means.

Alex's, "Of course," comes out of him without reticence. She needs him, so he stays, helping her into the bath and wincing sympathetically at what he imagines of the stinging. Once she's in, he thinks to rummage in his medicine cabinet, finding her a couple of Tylenol and filling the toothbrush cup with water from the sink. All that gets put on the edge of the bathtub for her while she's acclimating to the water, and then he quits his t-shirt and his boxers, leaving it all in a rumpled pile with his ruined clothes. That's just how this night is, Alex: everything is all messy, so learn to cope, dude. Mostly, he does the undressing now because he cannot possibly tell this story and take off his clothes at the same time, it's just two things that don't mix at all. So he climbs in behind her, without the hissing and ouchies, though there's a side-eye to the rising water level; if it spills over, he will probably come unglued. Now that ALL THAT IS ACCOMPLISHED, he can explain.

"When Amy told me she was pregnant, I knew her parents were going to tell her to have an abortion." Exhale. Pressing on. "I begged her not to tell them until it was too late, but she did. And I spent about three weeks in this utter fucking agony that they were going to convince her to get rid of the baby. So I dreamed that they," he swallows and settles his arms over Violet's, leaning against the back of the tub for now, "talked her into it. Only, I still knew Sophia, I could remember her, and every moment of my life with her in it so." Okay, so he might be getting a little choked up back here. "I knew exactly who they had murdered, it wasn't just an unborn baby, it was my baby, my Sophia. So I was choking Amy's father - who has always been a snide prick, by the way. And then I was going to murder her mother. And Amy. And we would all be in Hell, where we deserved to go." So that's Alex, who concludes with a weak chuckle, "The nurse came and woke me up before the murdering, though. Which I think was for the best."

There's a murmured word of thanks for the Tylenol and water that's put down on the bathtub's edge, and she swallows back the pills as he works on joining her there in the tub. This was probably not the right sort of time to get starry-eyed and blushy, but she folds her arms on the edge of the tub again and puts her chin down on her forearm, watching with quiet adoration as he leaves his clothes in a messy pile there upon the tiled floor. Yes, she was in pain, and just come out of a terrible nightmare - but he had a nice everything, okay? She was allowed to look.

And then he was there in the tub behind her; I'm going out on a limb here and guessing he has a nice large bath since he's got the $$, so there was more than enough room for the both of them - which means she's able to lean back against his chest and stretch out comfortably, the back of her head coming to rest against his shoulder. She's quiet as he talks, but when he starts to get choked up - well, let's just hope this is a big tub, else all the sudden movement she's about to do is gonna send water right over the edge to DRIP ON THE FLOOR. Ohno.

But seriously, she's careful at least, twisting until she turns herself around on her knees. She's not exactly a water siren beauty in her current state, but she's soft and warm from the water when she comes to pull her arms around his neck and embrace him. "Oh, Alex," she breathes out, full of genuine sympathy for him. "That is horrible." There's not a lot of dialogue here, but she's going to hold him as best she can there on her knees in a bathtub, laying her forehead to his own and sighing. "But that wasn't when They..when They bit you, was it?"

NO HE HAS A TINY TUB BECAUSE HE'S A MIDGET but not really, his house is tricked out.

Appreciative of the effort she makes to hug him, Alex drums up a small smile. Yes, he got choked up, and there were definitely a few moments where he was perilously glassy-eyed, but he weathers it without actually resorting to tears, just swallows thickly and leans into her forehead. "It was not a place I'd like to visit again," he answers for its horribleness. "I did backhand Amy's mother - who is a fucking cunt, by the way." Did he mention that he hates these people? He hates these people. "And woke up with my hand bruised. But you're talking about when Marilyn cut my hand and Amy told me she was having twins." Is the gist of that story. He settles his hands loosely at the small of Violet's back, looking... tired... more than anything. "That one was - confusing."

AT LEAST THEY ARE SMALL TOGETHER~

There's a twitch of a furrow to Violet's brow when he calls Amy's mother a 'fucking cunt' that he can probably feel against his own forehead, but she doesn't comment. Mostly because she hasn't met these people and yet somehow hates them, too. Sympathy hate, it's a thing. She lifts a hand to stroke wet fingers along the line of his jaw before she tilts her head to give him a small kiss, and then she slips back into place into the water, her back to his own again. "Why was it confusing?" It was her turn to ask questions, and him to talk, so she does that. But while she asks, she picks up his hand and brushes her lips against his thumb, before she puts his arm back around her.

Oh, it's totally a thing. When Alex murders Violet's father with a happy cocktail of barbiturates and whiskey and the M.E. concludes that it was a drunken accident? It will totally because of the sympathy hate. So don't worry, he gets it. \o/

"It was," he breathes, thinking, kissing her shoulder absently while he does this thinking. "It was like things that had happened were happening again. Marilyn, the receptionist at the hospital?" Like Violet doesn't know everyone in town already and he needs to tell her these things, gg Alex. "She was herself but not. And she had these messages supposedly from Sophia, but they were from Amy. Which is this thing that she does when I won't answer her calls." Which is this thing that he does to be an asshole, but let's not go down that road. "I had to go to my office to call her, and it was just... this series of these petty little squabbles we had over the years. But the hospital was strange, distorted. And then - I don't know. Amy was asking me to help her, because Phil was gone, and Sophia told me about the twins. Then I woke up, because my phone was buzzing."

They had that conversation. Back when he thought Violet might be insane. <.<

Violet reaches for the washcloth that he's put nearby as he starts to talk, filling it with gel soap and lathering it in the water. She listens, her lips twisted into a near permanent frown, as he talks of confusing twists and things that seem real but aren't. And as she listens, she runs the washcloth over his arms, scrubbing gingerly because even though she was a dirty girl? He was a very dirty, dirty boy.

Oh wait, sry, forgot it wasn't that kinda scene. Anyway!

"I've had Dreams like that before," she murmurs, casting a look down to the bruises upon her wrist. "And I've had Dreams where things happen that haven't happened but do happen," which is even more confusing. "And then I've had.. had Dreams where nothing bad happens at all. Dreams where I'm in .. incredible places, and it's amazing and.." she breathes out, twists to lay her side against his chest, so she can scrub the washcloth over his shoulder. Dirty boy. Ahem. "You leave. When you're Dreaming. You just.. disappear, from wherever you are. I know that because of Alice, because I thought she would just wander away but she'd come back and she'd tell me where she was. Or I'd wake up in the middle of the night and she was gone. And sometimes I'm in one place and I'm wide awake, Alex, I'm not sleeping but then I start to Dream," she looks conflicted on that. "And I make my way out and I'm somewhere else entirely."

Yeah, sorry. Murder-dad and aborted-daughter and cunty-ex just don't make for sexy bathtub times. Alex would be all over it if there was just a way around the weighty issues that got them here; alas. He's cool with being washed off, saves the trouble of doing it in the shower later - though it does beg the question, wtf is his plan for this day now? Like, is he going to get out of this bath and get dressed and go to work? Call out sick on Easter Monday? Hmm.

With all two of his data points, he posits, "Does everyone leave, though? Both times, I've woken up exactly where I went to sleep. And the only real evidence that anything actually happened were a couple of nicks and bruises that, realistically, I could have done in my sleep." So here's another begged question: is he not getting dragged in so deep because he's just a small fish? Frustrated, and not just by the whole 'in the bathtub with girlfriend and can't bang her' thing, he summarizes, "How has no one studied this."

'Cause Alex also doesn't know about how nothing gets out of this town.

Violet worries the corner of her bottom lip as he works through his questions and she works through the not-sexy scrubdown of his body, eventually turning the washcloth onto herself. There's a quiet wish that she could just wash away the bruises, but all that she ends up doing is hurting herself when she scrubs a little too hard, flinching as she tosses the washcloth away in an irritated manner. She settles after, her back to his chest, and tries to relax. "I don't know that nobody hasn't studied this," she says to him with a shake of her head. "But things in Gray Harbor they don't.. make it out of town as strange as they seem when they happen here. Haven't you ever heard people talk? They just.. make everything seem so normal. And you know, when I was at the University..." She presses her lips together, trying to explain properly. "I started to forget things. My memory.. it started to slip, just a little, just some things, like my brain started making up logical reasons for why things happened the way they did. It wasn't until I came back that I remembered how things actually happened."

I mean, Alex could fix the bruises if he tried really hard, but Violet was like 'no, monsters will eat you' so that's what she gets.

Or. Hold on. Let's see if he can do it again anyway.

Nope.

Bless his heart, he tries, though maybe Violet never has to know that. That the brush of his thumb across her collarbones was meant to do more than it does, but he cursed a bunch retelling his bad dreams, so God probably got mad and put him on ignore for the night. Leaving his hand with nothing more useful to do than reach for hers, threading fingers and laying the pair of hands on the edge of the bathtub. All this while he listens to Violet explaining things that make no goddamn sense (stop cursing in your mind, Alex, God don't like it), leaving him to say finally, "This just keeps getting stranger and stranger, Violet." His brain may pop soon. "Creeping toward the top of the 'strangest nights of my life' list." With a small, hard-fought chuckle and a tightening of his arms around her.

That little brush of his thumb against her collarbone might not chase away the bruises, but it does help her relax after that moment of irritation, letting her head rest back against his shoulder. She sighs out, a dry laugh hanging on the tail of his hard-fought chuckle, and she turns her head to tuck her nose against his neck. She breathes in, then tips up her chin, so that her lips skate against him. "We should probably just... be," she decides after a moment, closing her eyes. "I'm here. You're here. This is real, and this feels.. right." She lays her hand overtop of his own, palm to his knuckles, and squeezes. "I'm right where I want to be."

"Probably." Alex agrees with the sentiment. Enough that he makes every effort to just be, to worry about things he can fix when he must - like the sheets, the clothes rumpled on the floor, the fact that he has to drag his tired ass into work (does he take Violet in to her shop? or just slip her some sleeping pills and leave her in his bed all day after they change the sheets?), etc. - but not right this second. Right this second, he relaxes in the bath with his strange-but-delightful girlfriend while the morning is trying to get itself started behind the thin scrim of cloud-cover on a drizzly Easter Monday.

And yes, he's gonna wind up throwing that girlfriend-term around out loud before much longer; hopefully, Violet doesn't faint.

Till then, the curtain falls on this particular scene, splashy bathtub sounds fading out as the house-lights come up and the audience files out, like "so wait, did they fuck in the bathtub or not?!"