2019-09-18 - All That Matters

Nine o'clock on the eighteenth, and Graham had to go. His timing is really terrible, but the wheels were already in motion before, yanno, Pam and Karl got executed, ahem, so he had to go. Promising to be back by dawn, off he went, and then it was quiet from him for a few hours. Around one in the morning, he texted a quick check-in - Hey be home in a few hours. - and then quiet again.

True to his word, he's home by dawn! If Elise is awake, she gets to see him dragging a nearly unconscious Andre into the house via the garage, hauling that giant in and slumping him onto the sofa so he can pass back out. If she's not awake, then he does that, and then hustles upstairs to make sure she gets awake.

Nine o'clock on the eighteenth, and Elise literally can't even with Graham. He has to go, fine. The coals were already in the fire baby, whatever. She didn't do a very good job of pretending that she wasn't irritated by this, but off he went regardless, and the house was less one person. Elise wasn't the kind of person that sits around despondent though - she was so used to being constantly busy that the past however long since her parents' death had been absolute torture for the sheer fact that she wasn't running at sixty miles an hour anymore, anyway. So Graham was leaving - fine. Fine. Everything was fine, and she'll prove that by being COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY normal.

By the time the text came through at one a.m., the house smelled like a Thai restaurant and the fridge was overfilling with food. By 3 a.m., every single bathroom in the house was pristine. By 4? Elise was asleep on the sofa, having run herself exhausted, but at least being unconscious meant she didn't have that worry gnawing in the very back of her brain.

By dawn, she jolts awake from the sound of Graham dragging Andre into the house. Startled, it takes about thirty seconds of blurry-eyed staring to realize she wasn't dreaming, and then she was leaping to her feet. "What the fuck happened?! Is he okay??" But Graham was going to have to shout his answers because she was already running into the (extremely clean) bathroom to get her first aid kit.

Graham doesn't drop Andre directly on top of Elise while she takes her sweet time to move out of his way. He just dumps him into the opposite end of the sofa, stepping back, catching his breath after all that exertion. He'd have fared better, except that he left some of his blood in Felix's truck, but Elise can find out that part later. Also, he's not about to be shouting about a shootout through the whole house, so she's gonna have to wait for answers till she gets back down here.

In the meantime, he'll go into the kitchen and get himself some water to drink. When Elise is back downstairs, he tosses in from kitchen to living room, "He got shot in the chest and the head, pretty sure. I dunno how you get a through-and-through to the head," he talks right over the top of dealing with the worst of his own through-and-through over the kitchen sink, "but he figured it out. Chest, too."

Elise would say 'I can't believe this' except that she can. She can really, truly believe that Graham would come home a few days after her parents got shot in the face and dump a half-dead body on her sofa and expect her to just take care of it. What was perhaps harder to believe was that she wasn't even mad; she will never tell him this? But it almost feels like something of a relief. She could fix this, she can be useful here, she didn't have to feel like a failure, like she was powerless and that everything was out of her control.

"That's because it's not a through and through," she says plainly when she dumps her equipment onto the couch beside Andre, pulling on a pair of purple latex gloves. "It didn't go through the skull at all, it ripped off a chunk of his scalp though. Holy fuck," she mumbles something under her breath, grabbing the gauze and alcohol to start prepping the head wound. "Get in here and help me get his shirt off. Was anybody else hurt?" It's not an afterthought, but the reality of the situation hits her right in the gut when she asks that question about 'anybody else', her eyes bulging. "Are you okay?"

"Good thing he already shaves his head." Can she hear the helpful smile Graham is wearing while he says this? He hopes she can. It's at least half him gritting his teeth in here, using up bunches of paper towels to get himself into a shape that is most likely to minimize the amount of rage and/or worry from Elise. "Pretty much," he answers for the well-being of anybody else, himself included. To make a long story short, "These assholes just rolled up, talked some shit, and started shooting. Andre got the worst of it."

Aside from the dead dudes.

"He's high as a fucking kite now, though." Whatever, this will do. He washed the blood off, and he's got a paper towel folded up and held to his left bicep, and he's still wearing that dark 'Acme' uniform, so it's not like the blood is all that visible (plus most of it is Andre's). Anyway, all of that to say: he comes back into the living room to help her with Andre's shirt, looking pale and shot in the arm, but in WAY BETTER SHAPE than Andre.

So he knows: "Let's just get through what we gotta, then we can talk through it, a'ight?" (He means she can yell at him.)

Oh, Elise can most certainly hear Graham's helpful smile. Can he hear her grinding her teeth? It's the only thing stopping her in the moment from going off on him as he wanders back in with the paper towel on his shoulder and his stupid pale skin and she's glaring at him but it should be fairly obvious that she's also assessing him, trying to determine the extent of his wounds. Whatever, he'll live. "How much did you give him, and of what?" It's spoken in a very 'I'm a professional god dammit' tone of voice, before she launches into her work.

Elise isn't a doctor, but she knows how to stitch up wounds and keep somebody alive. It's going to take awhile and there's at least one time where she inadvertently pokes a needle into Andre, but he's way too high to notice. Use your imagination to fill in this pose with medical-sounding stuff, 'cuz that's what Elise is gonna be doing this round, until it's all over and Andre's patched up to a point where he probably won't die tonight and is unlikely to get sepsis and die tomorrow, too.

She peels off the gloves after, dropping them in the bin before she stalks over to Graham, brows collapsing into a furrow. "Let me see your shoulder," she half-demands, but there's a considerable amount of care there, too. "This was really stupid. What were you thinking? What were you doing?"

"Somewhere between four and eleven of these." Graham tosses the bottle of something painkillery to Elise. Oxy is a painkiller, right? That's what they gave Andre, if so. After that, he stays out of her way unless specifically directed to do otherwise, going off to get some blankets and stuff for the giant sleeping on the sofa. It takes several trips, since the best he can do is stuff things under his good arm and lug them back and forth.

But it keeps him busy while the 4-11 pills he was busy chewing in the kitchen have time to kick in. Then she's all done and wants to fix him, aww, so he leans against the arm of the sofa, back to Sleeping Beast, and lets her have a look at his really stupid wound - which is actually surprisingly unbad for being a bullet that went right through his arm, a couple inches north of his elbow.

What was he doing? "Getting jumped. I'm sorry." No but really, he is (just like he always is but LOOK AT HIS FACE, he really is).

"Getting jumped? Getting jumped," Elise looks from the wound in his arm up to his stupid sorry face, "You left the house in the middle of the night to go do nothing and somehow mysteriously got jumped while hanging out with Andre and you both got SHOT?" This is Elise, not believing his story, regardless of whether she believes that he's really sorry about it. At least she has the presence of mind to hit his good shoulder when she reaches out to smack him, and we're not even going to roll for it because he's injured and therefore can't escape her Thai Kung Fu. "This is really fucking stupid, my parents were just killed and you're running around getting shot and bringing back bodies and FUCK you, Graham, what were you thinking?" she hits him again for good measure.

It's probably safe to assume that Elise doesn't have a good grip on her emotions in the moment, because right after she hits him? She grabs him by the shirt and pulls him back into her, clutching him with whatever strength she has in her. Which is a lot, she's got a lot of strength in her in the moment. "God dammit, G, I can't lose you too, I can't fucking lose you, too," she blubbers, squeezing her with all her might.

There are at least three 'first offs' that occur to Graham, but not one of them gets spoken aloud. He just takes his well-deserved abuse, wincing into a low, "Ow Elly," in the middle of her tirade, like he needs her to know that was too hard. Which fact he's biting back a second later, just grinding his teeth through the new jolt of pain when she squishes him with fourteen-pounds of force, breathing out through his nose till he's able to ease into being hugged without the hurting.

He persists in informing her, "I'm sorry, baby," after he gets his right arm around her, slung over her shoulders with his hand at the small of her back and his nose in her hair. "It wasn't supposed to be a shootout, just burglary." LOL 'just.' Assuming she doesn't beat him any further, he paints the sequence of events in broad strokes, including his conclusion that the security guards at the gate called the Foster Assholes. The story ends: "On the upshot, nobody," that Elise knows, "got killed, and that Percocet problem is solved."

Which is awesome, because they're going to need to keep Andre supplied for a while, whoops.

Lucky for Graham, he is not abused any further, unless he counts the fourteen pounds of force with which she hugs him. He's probably going to come away from this with bruises, all things considered; she was hugging pretty aggressively. "Just a burglary," the response makes her snort through her nose, eyes rolling as she nuzzles into his cheek, taking in a breath of him. The 'broad strokes' make her grit her teeth and mumble curses in Thai under her breath, but she doesn't beat him again. She just breathes out, peels herself off of him, and goes to find her needle so she can stab him with it a few times sew up his wound.

"I'm still pissed at you," even if the Percocet problem is solved. "But this is it, right? We're not going to wake up tomorrow because one of these Foster security assholes found out where you live and they hold us up at gunpoint? Because Graham, I don't really know how much more of this shit I can take before I fucking crack," just being honest here. "I just.. I need some time. I'm living on a roller coaster and I need the ride to calm the fuck down for awhile, just a little fucking while, and you have to give me that. Promise me you'll give me that, just a little fucking while, just let me bury my parents and not have to worry that I'm going to have to bury you, too, okay?"

She says all this without managing to stab him with the needle. Although it's very fucking tempting. VERY FUCKING TEMPTING.

This is where Graham ignores the needle in Elise's hand and looks right down into her big brown eyes, his own bloodshot and red-rimmed but determined to be convincing even when they're not. "This is it, no waking up tomorrow with a fresh crop of enemies, I swear." It's a poor performance (he's had a night, okay?), and it's just not enough to fool the woman that knows him best. There's a twinge of worry in his face when he sweeps down to kiss her freckled cheeks: he doesn't know that for sure, so that was a hollow promise at best.

She presses on with not knowing how much more she can take, and it weighs a lot. So he nods around a long exhale. "I can do that. I'll - " What? File for FMLA from organized crime? " - lay low for a while. I can do that." Because saying it twice makes it more convincing!

In spite of how much Elise wants to believe him, there's no mistaking the doubt that settles heavily in those big brown eyes of hers as she turns them up into his own red-rimmed blue ones. She doesn't say anything though, she just breathes out a weary, exhausted-sounding sigh, and focuses on the task at hand. She's quick and efficient, closing him up and smearing some ointment on the wound, before she wraps gauze around it all, and then he's done. She sets the needle aside, rubs some wet-wipes on her fingers... and curls up beside him, cheek on his shoulder.

"You're the only family I have left now, you know," she's quiet, the words quivering with emotion, but while there's tears glistening on her eyelashes? They don't fall. "I know what I'm asking isn't realistic. I know what I signed up for. But I have to..to.. bury my mom and my dad, and the police are going to come and ask me questions and I have to protect the person who did this, and I.. I need you to help me. Hold it together. Please."

Graham suffers these ministrations stoically. Not because he's suddenly the toughest dude on the planet, but because it's the goddamn least he can do, to keep from hissing and whining while she makes sure he doesn't wind up dying of blood poisoning. So when he quietly says, "Thank you, Elise," she better realize that he appreciates the shit out of her.

He shifts carefully to accommodate her tucking in, looping his arm around her, fingers tangling in her hair while he bends to bury a kiss against her temple, nodding there. "I will, I'm sorry, things will settle down for a while now, I promise." There's a big lump he has to swallow - finally catching his breath after all that chaos, really having to come to grips with being the only person Elise has left (his own family fucked off/he fucked off from them so long ago that he's just USED to it) - and it leaves his voice raw-edged afterward. "I'm so sorry, baby, I thought I had this shit figured out, and nobody was gonna get hurt. This was an easy fix. I swear to God, it won't happen again."

Next time: rocket launchers.

Elise probably shouldn't be squirming about to crawl into his lap while Andre is snoozing nearby, but she needs the closeness in the moment. This reality that they were living in was far too heavy, enough to make it a struggle to breathe sometimes; but he was warm and alive and maybe a little pale.. but here. And she needed him, even if she didn't want to burden him with that. "I'm sorry too," she whispers, her own voice raw and edged with emotion, turning her head to kiss his cheek, his jaw, and down the line of his neck before she sniffles into his shoulder and settles.

Nearby, Andre sputters, mumbles, and opens his mouth to snore loudly.

Elise breathes out, laughing in spite of herself, the sort of ill-timed humor that is just built out of disbelief and emotion in the moment. "We're going to have to keep him, you know. At least for a couple of days. To make sure he doesn't get infected," she sighs, tipping herself back to look up at him, brown eyes wet and glistening. "I love you, G. I hope you know that. Even if you're the biggest idiot I know."

Enh, Graham shouldn't be willing to let her do all that stuff while his buddy who took like forty bullets for him is asleep unconscious, like, two feet away. But he does, winds up leaning his head back against the sofa, only to have to roll it over to the side for the sudden snore that breaks the comfortable silence. "Least we never got around to getting that dog," he agrees with dull humor.

He lifts his hand to cup her cheek while she's looking back, running his thumb over freckles and across shiny lashes. It takes him a second to say anything after he nods, 'cause he knows but sometimes the reminder goes a long ways, and this is one of those times. "Thank you, baby. I love you, too, and I'm really so sorry that I'm - " 'Not a better person' is where that was going, but he clips it, shaking his head. "You're the smartest thing I ever did, Elly." Thing. Person. Same diff. "And I promise to do better." With a small kiss. That would become a big kiss if it weren't for the snoring.

"We should really go upstairs."

"I know I am," Elise replies of being the smartest thing that he's ever done, and it would sound a whole lot more smug if she wasn't so damn emotional right now. "And you know what? You're the smartest thing I've ever done, too, G." As well as the stupidest, but she doesn't say that. She just tips her forehead to his own to stare down into his eyes, shoulders relaxing at his promise. It might be bullshit, but in the moment? All that matters was that he said it. For tonight, she'll believe him, and linger in the kiss, because this is what matters right now.

Beside them, Andre's snoring practically rattles the windows. Elise turns her head, and huffs out a sigh. At least they could have sex in front of a dog and it wouldn't be weird. "Let me get him another pillow. And some water. He's going to be in a lot of pain when he wakes up," she frowns, pressing another kiss to his lips before she slips off his lap. "At least I made enough food." It probably won't last a day with Andre staying around./

Briefly, while she's getting pillows and water and after Graham has struggled to open the bottle of pill he tossed at her earlier so he can sit some on the coffee table for when Andre wakes up, Graham legitimately takes a minute just to catch his breath. He covers his eyes with the one working hand, struggles with a lot of feels, and takes a big, steeling breath before he stands up from the couch, looking...

...not great. "Fuck this night in its fucking ass," he tells the living room, then plods off after Elise and her extra pillow, collapsing his weight on her shoulders pretty much entirely when he finds her, hanging his head down on her collarbone and everything. Plaintively, "I wanna go to bed, El." Some of this may be pain pills talking, bear in mind. "I wanna go to bed, and deal with none of this shit till tomorrow."

Joke's on Graham: it's already tomorrow!

Elise takes her own moment to catch her breath there in the kitchen, while she fills up a glass of water from the sink, her hand trembling so terribly that she has to refill the water after most of it sloshes out. But she hears him in there, yelling at the living room, and he's not going to have to plod very far at all because she comes right back to him. "Oh, baby," she sighs as he leans his weight onto her, slipping her arms around him. She's burdened him enough up to this point; tonight, she'll take his weight instead. "I got you," she whispers, combing her fingers through his hair, down around to brush a caress along his cheek and jaw. "Come on. Let's go to bed. We have each other," a kiss to his cheek, to his temple. "That's all that matters. We'll handle everything else, we'll handle it together."

Graham, boyfriend of the year nominee. It's not enough that her parents got killed by his man-crush; it's not enough that he made her an accessory to what's technically a quintuple homicide; he just has to go and throw his angst at her, too. Oh well, at least he's being honest about it, knuckling the small of her back where his fist is balled, taking big gulps of Elise-scented air to get over himself.

One last broken exhale later, and he's ready to go upstairs and fall into bed - with Elise. To whom he clings. 'Cause she's been the one reliable thing in his life for a lotta years, and they have each other, and that's all that matters, awww.