2019-06-13 - Is Dream VD a thing?

Some amount of time elapsed. Graham has no concept of how much time it was. He pushes his way back in through the door, still going, "El? Elly? Elise?" And looking like someone that just got in a car accident - yay, all new bruises! - had blood and worse things vomited on him, was chained to a chair, threw up on the floor, and might have dragged one of his legs through some brain matter while he was trying to stand up. But whatever, he sprints through the house, full-tilt, heading for upstairs, since that's the last known location of one Elise Kruger. "Elise!"

"Graham?" Elise was not upstairs. The voice comes from the kitchen, and she pokes her head out as he starts full-tilt up the stairs. It would be readily apparent that enough time has passed for her to have a shower and get dressed; she's just in a pair of leggings and a t-shirt though. "Graham! Why are you shouting? Jesus. I didn't think you'd be back already, you've only been gone like two hours. What'd they even have you ..." Those words trail off as she steps fully out into the living room and sees him there on the stairs, covered in blood. Her eyes widen, and all the color drains from her face, before she practically sprints up the stairs to him. The words come out in a rapid rush as she starts to check him over, pawing frantically at his shirt. "Ohmygod what happened, why are you covered in blood? Are you hurt, did you get into a car accident?! Did they beat you up? Did they call you to the Club to beat you up?!"

She's in one piece? Oh good, that is all that Graham needed to know. He sinks down onto the steps in the middle of her pawing, sitting about a third of the way up them, sliding his hands down her arms to grasp both her palms in his. There, his hands hang loosely while he looks up at her, blue eyes shot through with red and shining in a glassy, dazed way. "No. Yeah. I got in a car accident, and then. El - " He swallows, dragging his teeth over his lip, really just working it over badly for a second. "Something happened to me, El. Something fucked up." And there's a vulnerable belief-check in the look he passes to her.

Elise was totally all in one piece! And extraordinarily terrified, but managing to hold it all together as he sinks down onto the steps and she follows him right onto her knees. It was easy to throw herself into nurse mode, to start working at the buttons of his shirt to see where all that bleeding was coming from, but then he slips his hands down her arms and takes her own away. The glassy-eyed look makes her hiss a breath through her teeth. "You got into a car accident," she repeats slowly, professionally, while leaning forward to check those glassy-eyes for pupil dilation. "Did you hit your head? Graham, I'm going to need to take you to the hospital if you hit your head again, I can't take that risk.." she bites the corner of her bottom lip, stalling out when he says that latter part. He gets all the wide-eyes of belief that he needs. "What do you mean something happened to you?"

At this point in Graham's life as a person with abilities, he has no idea how to turn this shit on or off. So the wrinkles in his forehead are semi-permanent through this conversation, and the squeeze of his hands on hers with cold fingers is going to come-and-go, but Elise is going to have to come to grips with something during the retelling of the events that brought Graham to this state: The parts she finds the worst to hear, which may or may not coincide with the parts he finds the worst to tell, are the ones where his eyes scan hers the most insistently.

He recounts this gruesome incident with surprising clarity. All the little rationalizations he made up during that horror-show are included, but he also tells her what actually happened, and not just how is brain tried to make it make sense. And then we get to, "And Elly, I can - " Swallow. "I can feel what you're feeling. Right now. Like, baby, I can taste your terror right now like it's my own."

This was not the story that Elise expects to hear; by the time he gets to the part about Heather, it was as though someone injected ice through her veins. The terror grips her; it is a palpable thing, and for him it almost washes out even his own emotions due to the strength of hers. She grips at his hands, keeping her eyes on his, though she winces them shut when he talks about the ball getting spit in his eye, and dry-heaves when he talks about Heather vomiting a severed cock - his severed cock? - onto his lap. Instinctively, she checks to make sure it's still there; it's not some lewd groping, she just needs something of a reassurance. By the end of it, she was crying; not overly dramatic sobs, but just tears from the intensity of it all.

And while there was terror, unadulterated fear, there was never disbelief. Not once was there doubt. Still, by the end? There is a small thread of relief that weaves through the other emotions, thin but recognizable. Relief that Mac was gone, even if there was sympathy and sadness for his daughter. "Baby, I.." her lips open but no sound is produced, her brow furrows as she cups his cheeks and draws his face down so that she could look at him better. She's grown up in Gray Harbor, she's heard stories. She's worked in the ER for months now, seen the patients that come in ranting and eventually end up in psych. She knows insanity.

It's not here.

"How.. how is that possible? How is any of this possible?" It's not disbelief. It's a real question. How?

He had his one failed composure check earlier. Now, Graham is managing to keep it together for the most part. He's doing some shaky breathing, shakier when her tears fall, but he keeps his eyes from overflowing, though there's definitely extra moisture shining them right up. Leaning into the cup of her hands, resting his own on her forearms with tight fingers, he answers honestly, "I don't know. I dunno how it's possible, but it's so fucking real, Elly." That last comes out in a scared whisper, like instinct kicking in: keep this shit a secret, G, or it won't end well.

"It's like... listening to a radio station from too far away, like when we used to try to get radio from Seattle, remember? And if we just started driving toward the city, eventually it'd come in clear." Breathe. "That guy that has his sister locked in the attic, we had a Moment outside. It's not just me." He throws that in because it's vaguely comforting?

It was harder for Elise, because a different sort of instinct was working for her. A tremor tickles down her spine as her brain works overtime to make sense of this, to hobble together some kind of logical story. But Graham wasn't crazy, and he had no symptoms of a serious concussion that would trigger hallucinations. She'd checked his pupils for dilation earlier; she was one-hundred percent certain that he wasn't on drugs. The terror grips her, but the desire to make sense of it all was strong. But even for ancient forces, it was difficult to find logic in the face of a connection as strong as she had with Graham. She wasn't going to think him insane. She wasn't ever going to not believe him, not when her bullshit detector wasn't going off in her brain.

"Okay," she takes in a few breaths, moves her hands away from his cheeks and around his neck to pull herself into him. A strong hug, a fierce hug; it was a protective embrace. "We'll figure this out. There's.. there's gotta be something.. maybe in the.. the library, or," she swallows. "You should come to Church with me. We can talk to Father Daniel, maybe.. do you think they were in a cult? Some kind of weird sex cult? Maybe they.." she was going to start crying again, but his talk of 'Moments' leaves her blinking. "You.. you what? You had a Moment with the guy that's keeping his sister in the .. I thought it was his sex dungeon in the basement, not the attic?" Like that matters.

She says 'church' and he says, "Nooooo no no." Graham physically recoils from that idea, leaning out of the hug that he could really, really use to put his eyes back on Elise's, shaking his head seriously. "I can't talk to a priest about some girl that had devil horns stuck to her head and threw my dick up at me and now I can read minds." It sounded ludicrous, abbreviated like that. Also, he clearly hasn't read the wiki because he can't READ MINDS, but whatever; he'll learn that as he goes.

He gets hung up on the same thing she does. Something mundane. Something real. "Nah, I'm pretty sure it's the attic. But it was like he felt sorry for me, baby. How fucked up is that? That wife-murdering asshole sister-fucker," lol poor logan, "felt like... like he needed to feel bad for me."

"No, no Graham, baby. Stop. Father Daniel's a good person, he'll understand. If they're in some kinda, I don't know.. crazy weird devil sex cult or something! He'll understand," this was all Elise could come up with. Those people were in some crazy weird devil sex cult and now Graham can.. blink. "You can read my mind?" It was said flatly, eyes widening as she stares up at him. Everything else is forgotten in the moment, she's going to hang on this one point for a moment. "You can tell.. y-you can read my thoughts? Like right now?"

"I didn't say he wasn't a good person, but I'm not - " The end. Graham's not. He blinks at her blinking at him, like he can't immediately place the cause of her confusion, his nod a slow thing to work itself into existence. His chin dips, then his forehead follows, and its his turn to reach up and cup her face in his hands, sliding his thumbs along the line of her jaw while he leans toward her, forehead-to-forehead. Jagged breath stumbles out of him, across her lips, and he really tries.

As much as a guy that has no fucking clue what he's even trying to do can try, anyway.

Finally, "No. But I could. I could feel it, Elly, not like reading someone. I wasn't just picking up cues, it was like that staticky signal came through clear, and I could feel you, just as sure as I could feel myself."

Elise takes in a shaky breath as he leans his forehead to her own - her own brow furrows, and he can feel the wrinkles being created. There were many thoughts she had in the moment, but he could feel her emotions in the moment: there was fear, yes, it was still very present. But with it, the quick fluttering of her heart, something light and buoyant that comes from benig close to someone dear to another. And the subtle twinge of excitement. She was thinking this was crazy, absolutely crazy, terrified that he could read every single thought she was having in the moment, but also sort of excited about it.

Then comes the answer. No. The breath pushes out of her in a quick exhale, relief with just an edge of disappointment. "Oh. Okay," she breathes out, opens her eyes and leans away from him. "Maybe.. maybe this will all go away. Maybe it's just.. adrenaline? I don't know, I don't know," she admits with a flinch. "We need to .. to get you in the shower. Washed up. There's .. we're going to have to burn all your clothes. Oh my god, what if the police come?"

"Then why did that guy look at me like that?" No. "Why did he feel like that about me? Like he felt so fucking bad for me. And sad. If it's just temporary?" But Graham nods at her slowly anyway, willing to believe damn near anything at this point, anything that makes this slightly less impossible. Even the things that he just knows, through and through, don't feel like the truth.

Her very well-founded fear about the police earns her the smudge of a reassuring kiss, just a quick press of his lips against hers, and the quiet certainty, "They won't. I'm gonna get cleaned up and call Felix. I'm gonna tell him that Mac ran me off the road, then threw me in a room somewhere, shot his daughter then shot himself, that he meant to leave me there to die a slow death, but I got loose, and I booked out. He'll bury this shit deep. All right?" He doesn't even try the trust-me smile, just looks hard into her eyes, his clear and sober and intent; this part, he understands.

"I don't know," Elise says honestly of the guy across the street. "You've heard all the rumors, he threw his wife out a window, fucks his sister, and keeps her chained in his sex dungeon. Why would that guy feel sorry for you? It doesn't make any sense," And it doesn't, when you put it like that. But all Elise cares about right now is how SHE feels about Graham; not about how some lunatic in a creepy B&B feels about Graham. So she touches his cheeks and leans into the kiss, probably completely unaware that it was briefly smeared with Mac's nut slime. Maybe he forgot to tell her the part where his NUT ROLLED DOWN HIS FACE AND OVER HIS MOUTH AND STUCK TO HIS CHIN.

"All right," she doesn't need the trust-me smile. She just does, trust him that is, staring into his eyes for a longer moment before she throws her arms around him and squeezes him. "God, Graham, I'm just.. so fucking thankful you're okay. We'll figure out everything else. Just as long as you are okay."

You almost definitely can't catch anything from kissing someone who has the blood of someone's Dream-testicle on their face. Calm down.

But fine. Graham doesn't kiss her anymore for now, just so she doesn't have to worry about getting the Dream AIDS or whatever. He just nods with slow acceptance: It doesn't make any sense, and agonizing over it won't make it make any sense. "I guess I could go pound on his fucking door and ask him why," but that scenario plays out in his mind's eye, and he tilts his head into shaking it.

(But let's just imagine how that would play out, plz. 'yo can you like tell me wtf happened to me???' 'GET OFF MY LAWN!' 'no dude i will shoot you' 'I PSYCHIC CUT YOU AND MY CRAZY GIRLFRIEND TELEKINESIS KNIFES AT YOU')

This pose is all over the place now. Back to the angsty bits: "Thank you for believing me, baby. I know this shit sounds crazy, but I fucking swear to you, it was real." While he pulls himself to his feet with the help of the stair-rail, drawing on her hand, too.

MY CRAZY GIRLFRIEND SISTER*. Get it right.

Elise wrinkles her freckled nose, perhaps not envisioning that scenario as going over very well at all. And instead she lets him draw her up with a pull of her hand, a big sigh exhaled. "I believe you," she says quietly, firmly, and her emotions lean into this faith. "I believe you, G. I'll always believe you," she reaches to turn his head, draw him down for another kiss, because Elise knows nothing of Dreams or nut-slime or the nut-AIDs that may be on Graham right now. Then she pats his cheek gingerly. "Except when you're bullshitting me. And if you don't think I know when you are, you're wrong, and you're just bullshitting yourself."

And with that, she hurries him up the stairs, so she can strip him down and ... give him a bath. He needs one 🙁

Before he gets his bath, Graham has to stop in the hallway and have a MOMENT with the cat. A brow-quirk, slow-smile moment, because being a kitten is AWESOME and Mew-Mew only has AWESOME feelings. He scoops her up, scratches her happily, and will explain that shit to Elise while she's helping him take a bath. So see? It's not all terrible. He gets to know all about KITTEN-YAYS!!! (and had better figure out how to turn that shit off before he goes nuts from it).