2019-07-26 - Throwing Up The Ocean

It was three o'clock in the morning. Mew-Mew was asleep on the bed, perfectly unaware that her humans disappeared at some point in the night; it's far possible that she even prefers having the bed to herself and doesn't give a shit. But either way, she leaps up with a hiss and a sudden frantic slapping of little paws in the air when Elise comes to suddenly, arms flailing as she bolts upright, barely managing to twist off the side of the bed before she vomits salt water onto the floor. What a way to wake up.

Hold on, Graham is gonna need a minute to catch up to this situation. He jerks 'awake' at essentially the same time that Elise does, kicking the covers off his whole body in a violent trashing that is pretty much going to be the nail in the 'omg fuck you both' coffin as far as Mew-Mew is concerned, and she goes tearing ass out of the bedroom with a loud mrrrrrr noise. Most of that noise is hidden under the sound of Elise vomiting up all her guts and his gasping and kicking and stuff. "What the fuck," he asks in a breathless huff, hurriedly reaching a (slightly bruised but he dunno that yet) hand to lay it on the middle of Elise's back. "Are you throwing up?!" See? He needs a minute to catch up.

It should be quite clear that she's throwing up, but just in case Graham can't tell? Elise will just continuing vomiting water over the side of the bed as he thrashes himself awake. Really, it was somewhat impractical just how much was coming out of her, and the smell was terrible. Like raw sewage or still pond-water that's been sitting for ages. When he puts his hand to her back, she's cold and clammy and wet. "Oh my god, oh my GOD!" she sounds hoarse, voice raw, and she only speaks when she's finished throwing up all that water. "What the hell is going on?!"

An ever so eloquent, "Holy fuck," falls out of Graham even while Graham himself is falling out of bed. On his side, so he doesn't land in all that nasty shit she's barfing up. He disappears for a second, returning a moment later with all the towels there are in the hall linen closet and a bottle of shampoo. The former he throws over this huge puddle she's created, making no effort to do this in a way that doesn't just create a huge pile of sewage-smelling towel. The latter he opens quickly and shoves at Elise (after he takes a quick whiff out of it himself), saying, "Smell this, it'll help." He will continue moving around in here a minute, flipping on the bedside light on his side - because they needed to see how shitty they look 😃 - and digging around in his underwear drawer, etc., while he waits for Elise to be able to talk.

Holy fuck pretty much sums up this ordeal. Elise keeps herself tilted over the edge of the bed (which just means she's breathing in this horrendous smell with every heaving, shallow pull of breath), in complete shock. She doesn't even register what Graham is doing until he shoves the bottle of shampoo at her and she starts to frantically huff it like some cocaine addict trying to snort the last few invisible lines of powder on the mirror. And now she has a headache that worsens when he flips on the bedside light.

It's safe to say that Elise looks like hell warmed over. Or, well, it looks like she's been held underwater for a considerable period of time; her skin's so white that it's practically translucent, her hair hangs in tangled mats. She's got bruising on her neck, on her arms, and the t-shirt she went to bed in is soaked to her skin and all torn up. But maybe she knows she looks like she's been to hell and back, because with bulging eyes and the shampoo bottle still shoved up against her nose, she looks at him as though he were not looking as pretty as he usually does. "What the hell happened to you?" Beat. "What the hell happened to me?!"

Graham smokes. She can bitch at him about this, but he's gonna do it anyway, so yeah. The underwear drawer has a pack of cigarettes in it, and he shakes one out of there, lights it, then follows that up by lighting the joint that's in the same pack, and holding that out to Elise. He has accomplished a great deal in the ninety seconds that he's been awake, so pardon him for scooting onto the edge of the bed, where the hand holding the cigarette proceeds to shake like a leaf, blood running down the back of his hand from busted knuckles. It's not a lie: "I don't know." He's got a cut above one eye, and they both have shadows like the dude hasn't slept in a century.

But at least he's not barfing up the entire Pacific Ocean.

"Fuck, El. You're soaking fucking wet." Normally, this would be awesome news for Graham. Not so much right now, though.

Elise would totally win first prize in a wet t-shirt contest right now. But there's no contest going on in their bedroom at three in the morning. Sucks to be her.

There's no bitching when he breaks out the cigarette; she actually looks like she might barf up another gallon of the sea, but she somehow holds it back. One last huff of the shampoo bottle is taken before she climbs to the foot of the bed with him; she's shaking, too, and it was obvious that movement was painful. The joint is taken, but so is his hand, a sob sticking in her throat as she looks down at his broken skin. "You're hurt," she utters, smoothing a touch across his knuckles.

There's a sigh of relief when his skin starts to knit together underneath the touch she lingers there, and she bends into him in a needy sort of way. "I'm so sorry," she's probably not apologizing for what happened to him in his Dream. "I couldn't help you, I couldn't help anybody. "

"Smoke, it'll help your stomach." Helpful Graham blows out a big plume of smoke that's not going to help her stomach, hissing it out through his teeth. And, since there's a huge pile of nasty wet towels on the floor, he'll just go ahead and flick ashes over into that mess, leaving his arm halfway around her very damp self to show the scratches on the back of that hand, too - not the same, not busted knuckles, just a line of nail-scratches. With his free hand, the one that's now essentially repaired, he carefully gathers up the damp mess of her hair into a tail, loops it a few times, pushes it out of the way, and leans over to rest his head against her shoulder. They're just needy-leaning into each other all over the place.

Since he just said he doesn't know what happened to him, let's focus on Elise for now; "Help who, baby? What happened?"

There's a low groan as Graham exhales that plume of smoke out, and she turns her head to bury her face briefly into his shirt because she might just puke again. No matter what, her room was going to smell awesome for the next couple of days. But he says smoke, and she's got to put her brain on something real, so she lets him light the joint before she takes a big inhale ... and promptly starts to cough. Look, Elise might be a bad girl, but it's been awhile since she's smoked a joint with Graham. At least she doesn't vomit up more saltwater.

It takes her a minute to clear her lungs, another pull taken of the joint (this time, with less choking) before she's even remotely capable of putting words to this senseless mess. "I ... I was at work but everything was wrong, every time I tried to help somebody they died, and then I saw Bubber," their pretty little toe-head baby boy~ "And he was running and I tried to catch him and he.." she swallows hard. "And I don't know, it was all so confusing, one second I was in the hospital and the next I was on the docks, and Felix had you and I tried, Graham, I tried to save you and he kept telling me I failed, I failed, and they shot you and Bubber came out of nowhere and he fell into the water and I tried to help him, I tried to get him, and I.." she wasn't making much sense.

"I think I died, Graham."

Pitching toward the edge of the bed a moment, Graham looks around and behind Elise, at the mountain of towels covering the entire ocean she threw up on the floor. She thinks she died: "By drowning." Look at him, figuring that out all by himself! He returns his head to her shoulder from there, never mind that she's soaking wet, eyes closing while he smokes through that cigarette like his life depends on it. "This is like what happened to you before. With that kid and..." He trails off; she knows, she was there, he doesn't need to rehash all that. "Do you think - what if you hadn't woke up, El? What the fuck would happen? What the fuck is happening?" Grabby time, he leaves his cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth and wraps both arms around her tightly, squeezing hard. Way harder than he oughta be squeezing his 14-pound-girlfriend. Ease off, Lenny, she needs her bones!

Any other day, she'd probably mock him for stating the obvious. Like way to go, Sherlock, how'd you piece that puzzle together? Today though, right now though, she just nods gravely and sucks another lungful of smoke from the joint. It helps keep her somewhat relaxed for the things he says after that. What if. What if she hadn't woken up.

What the fuck would've happened?

She's never needed those grabby hands of his more, and there's a noise of uncertainty - of downright fear - that catches in her throat and comes out in a whimper as she climbs onto him, against him. "I don't know," she utters truthfully, painfully. "None of this makes sense, this never happened before ... before the ..." she's going to put two and two together, eventually. ".. before we started to glow. Shit."

All that roaming around and he did, and Graham didn't think to grab them an ash tray. His powers of deduction may be totally awesome, but his foresight still leaves much to be desired. At least Elise is soaked, so the ashes that fall on her while he hugs her as hard as humanly possible won't light her on fire or anything. "Where's the fucking switch, then? How do we turn it off? Thanks but no thanks." His voice is a little muffled, since he's trying to make sure he doesn't actually drop the cigarette out of the corner of his mouth, but he still manages to convey a whole heap of buyer's remorse with regards to these spiffy new powers.

"Elly." He'll have to take away the one hand, sorry, because the cigarette needs to come out of his mouth. "I don't want you to die saving a kid we haven't even got to make yet."

sry he sobs and is angsty also its v dramatic (and this is the kind of random meta i mean that makes no sense when you can't see the ooc comments in the log)

Elise doesn't even seem to notice the ashes falling on her, but she's got her own issues with only having one hand on account of smoking something. "I don't know, I don't.." she makes some noise about not having an ashtray nearby, takes another puff and climbs off his lap long enough to grab the ashtray off the dresser - which, these things are probably lying all around her house, he really needs to stop smoking. She snuffs out her joint, and then snuffs out his gross cigarette, and then she puts the ashtray back and climbs onto his lap again so they can have their moment about her not dying before she can shit out their future baby.

'What if .. what if I'm seeing the future? What if this is our future?" It's a logical leap. "What if I just have to change things, I just have to figure out what to change so that you don't get shot and I don't drown and Bubber..." she sucks in a breath, "I just have to figure out how not to fail, maybe that is what this is all about."

As soon as this crisis passes, Graham will go around the house and collect all his fucking ashtrays, okay? Then he'll just ash into random dirty dishes that he now has to leave around everywhere since all his ashtrays are gone, Elise.

There's a moment, when she's crushing out his cigarette, where he makes a sound of protest in his throat, and watches with sad eyes while the smoke dies. Not that there was much left to smoke with the way he was guzzling on that thing, so she probably did the right thing. The protest sound turns into a brittle half-laugh when she starts talking about how to change the future, and he leans his forehead down onto her shoulder, breathing her in even if she smells like nasty docks. "What're you failing at that gets me shot and our kid falls in the water? 'Cause if I'm getting shot - baby," he hates to break this to her but, "that might be on me, not you."

Graham could always just stop smoking like a gross person and lrn 2 vape like Sansa Stark. She cool. Get a Juul. That could be their new advertisement, somebody patent that shit.

Anyway, Elise neverminds the grumbling coming from the peanut gallery that is Graham, squashes his cigarette and gets back to nuzzling into him now that the cloud of smoke is gone. At least the stringent smell of nicotine and tar and other murderous, cancer-causing substances takes away from the sewer smell of her towel-covered vomit. Man, this room's gonna smell great for weeks~ "I don't know," what she's failing at. "That's just what he kept saying. That I failed, that it was.." she takes in a breath, turning her head to nuzzle her nose into his cheek.

He hates to break it to her, that it might be on him and not on you, and she hates to argue (at the moment, she usually loves to argue). So she just kisses his cheek, the side of his mouth, and sighs. "It's not set in stone, right? We can still change things. We can make it right. We can figure out how to make it right."

yes small words are good words

"I'm so sorry." Graham takes the nuzzle well, holds up through it like a champ, but this whole thing about changing stuff and making it right hits a little harder, has him squeezing his eyes shut hard and leaving them that way. He's not crying, it's just very late and he's very tired! "I'm so sorry that you're in all this, baby," he says into her kisses, aww, tightening his hold on her for a few seconds afterward, finally releasing it with a long, slow exhale against her skin. "We'll figure out how to make it right," he agrees, just without a whole lot of oomph. Not that Graham has suddenly turned fatalistic...

...but he might be feeling a little fatalistic right this exact second.

"No, baby, stop. G.." There's a quiet sniffle as she trails off into his apology, leaning back towards his knees so that she can gather up his face into her cold and clammy hands. It's enough to turn his face up to her, even if his eyes are closed shut. "Look at me, okay? Listen.." she warms her fingers on his skin, slow strokes of the tips of her fingers across his cheek, the line of his jaw. It doesn't matter if he looks at her or not, the words come out anyway.

"You don't have anything to apologize about. You tried to push me out of this and I went hard, I didn't listen. But I love you," she leans forward, touching her nose to his nose. "I'm all in with you. I'll always be all in with you. We'll figure this out, we'll do it together, I'm not going to let you down." It was a solemn promise. "And you're not gonna let me down, either."

Graham's not full-on falling on his sword here, but it's worth asking, "What if you could get out, though?" One more hard squeeze of his eyes, then he's good. Besides, she's all cold-and-damp anyway, so it's not like she can prove a goddamn thing about the wetness gathered on his eyelashes. "If we could get you out, and you and your mom and dad could just fucking go - " But he looks at her, and he shakes his head, brows crumpled while he silently talks himself out of even finishing this plan.

His teeth grind for a second, and it's just, "All right. We'll figure this out." Have they both said that more than once already? Seems like it. He puffs out a few breaths to get over himself.

What does her being cold and damp have to do with him crying? CRYBABY GRAHAAAAM. "Baby, what? No." Elise crosses her eyes, staring at him like he's grown two heads suddenly. Though, actually, his growing two heads would probably be an easy pill to swallow right now. Hadn't she said this before, to him? It felt like so long ago that they had this conversation, what had he even told her? "There's no getting me out, G," it's not even said sadly; it is just a fact of her life now. "Not unless you get out with me. Not unless you go with me," she swallows, settling her palm on his cheek and stroking her thumb against his chin.

"I'm all in, G," she says it again, quietly. Resolutely. "You're stuck with me. No matter.. no matter what that means."

The breath Graham takes is just the residue of his whole master plan - because he had a whole master plan. He exhales it without a word, just holds a look on Elise that's pretty damn sad. And that ends with a slow nod, sans argument, he hears her.

Besides. Seriously. WTF would his whole life be if Elise got smuggled away somewhere safe? Who would he stalk?! It'd be so boring!

So he just repeats, "All right." He folds his fingers around hers; his are still blood-smeared and shaking, but at least they don't hurt, and they're not ice cold, so! "I guess we should keep a bucket next to the bed, though," while he smudges his lips against the back of her hand, then turns it over and leans his face into her palm. Thus muffling, "Way to fucking commit, Elly."

There's a long, drawn out silence that follows; she just touches him, lets him kiss her hand and lean his face into her palm. With her other hand, she twitches fingers along the collar of his shirt, down the line of his arm, to his blood-smeared knuckles. Maybe she was thinking of what else to say; maybe she's already said enough. Her brows furrow as she stays there with him, trying to find her anchor here.

"We need to figure out what happened to you," she finally says, her voice nothing more than a whisper. "Were you there with me? Your hands weren't.." she swallows, lashes fluttering as she tries to hold back her own tears. "If it's all connected, if what happened is because of this.. this thing, maybe if we don't use it.."

"No, I was - " Graham stops looking at the top of the mountain of towels, pulling his attention back onto Elise with the twitch of a pained smile. He has a lot of smiles to choose from; this one is tired and wan. " - somewhere else, I guess. Don't cry, baby." The corner of his eyes crinkles for a second, 'cause he totally just said 'cry baby' out loud at her, but he somehow presses on, despite that. "We're all right. And you're right. Whatever it is, we're in it together, right?" His turn to scoop her face in both hands, pressing a careful kiss. "Maybe you're right," he says against her lips. "If we stop doing things, I'm sure we'll be fine."

Elise was holding it together - just barely! but still - so she doesn't burst into tears. She just slumps, leaning he face into his hands now, her prettily freckled nose wrinkling even as she brushes a kiss to his lips. "We are," in it together. All in! "Maybe I should talk to Julia more about this. I thought she was just .." what's a delicate word to use here? Fuck it. ".. crazy, but if she's been dealing with this kinda thing for forever?" it makes her wince. Poor girl.

"But right now, right now I just want to take a bath," she sags. "You should take one, too. You're a mess." Says the girl who looks like a drowned ocean rat.

"I mean, are they mutually exclusive? Seems like, after a while of this, crazy's probably inevitable." Graham ultimately just shrugs a limp shrug about Julia and her possible insanity. The shrug transitions to a nod after a few seconds, and he scoots toward the edge of the bed on his side, where there's not a bunch of nasty towels, letting his feet down. "Yep," for baths and looking like messes. "Go ahead, I'll throw all this shit in the wash."

But first, he turns back abruptly to catch both her hands, squeeze them hard, and rattle off importantly, "I need you to know - if you're right, and this shit happening to you is the future? I need you to know that I'd rather have a couple years with you that end horribly than a whole safe life without you." So never leave him or else someone's getting stabbed in the throat!

"Yeah," Elise agrees about crazy being inevitable, though it makes her knit her brows in thought. She'll need to put that aside - she's already being threatened with her inevitable drowning, if she thinks about her inevitable descent into insanity, she'll get there quicker than anticipated. So instead, she slides off his lap, putting her brain power to more important things - like baths.

And then he has to go and derail it like that.

Her hands seized, she looks up at him with huge brown eyes that almost abruptly fill with tears as his words get her all choked up. She's quick to wriggle her hands out of his grip so that she can throw them around his neck. "I love you, G," she squeezes into him, embraces him with all the strength she has in that 14lb body of hers. "And if I didn't just throw up the entire ocean, I'd fuck you so hard right now." #truth

Yanno what sucks? Even if she did drown, it's not like Elise would be the first person to come back as a crazy ghost. THERE'S NO ESCAPE!

Probably, Graham should have been braced for the sudden hug that comes after that important information he just relayed. But he's not firing on all eight cylinders right now, what with it being the middle of the night, so he comes this close to getting bowled right over by that, stuck grabbing the footboard with a flailing hand in a less-than-beautiful gesture. But at least it's for something nice, and he buries his face in her neck in response. "I love you, El." (gawd they're precious with the 'G' and 'L' thing) "And if you didn't just throw up the entire ocean - " He nods, what she said, he agrees.

But she did. So she better go get her swamp-smelling ass in the bathtub. Not least 'cause he wants to smoke more and not listen to her bitch while he does it.