2019-09-24 - Ascent

The whole world lurches, a transition from one darkness to another, from ubiquitous sound to unsettling silence. Were it not for the way Alfie's body experiences that same disorienting shift, that rough upheaval which may well result in a rather visceral emptiness, he might note what few sounds break that stillness: a distant rumble which could just as likely be thunder as the lingering echo of the awfulness he just experienced; his own racing heartbeat thudding too loud within his head; breath interrupted by gagging.

A cry of thwarted desperation marks Alfie's passage between dream and reality - a loon that cries at dusk. He bends at the waist to sit up but winds up curled up in the fetal position on his side. His eyes open, bulge as muscles in his face, throat, and stomach expand and contract. He shudders and spits a beige mess of liquified battered and deep fried food in a mess of acid and orange juice and vodka onto that cold, hard ground. He continues to spit to get that taste out of his mouth as shudders turn to shivers.

"Hello," he asks the room. His voice is pathetic, trembling, emotionally spent. He does not feel rested.

The room offers no answer. Not in voice or music or shapes surfacing from nowhere. It speaks, instead, in dimly surfacing details, in the faint outline of something leaning against a wall, defining a boundary, a perfectly normal border of a perfectly normal space. It speaks in the resolution of that faraway noise as it grows closer, thunder resolving into hurried footfalls, into the creak of a door somewhere.

And light. So much light. Even with the warmth of incandecent bulbs, it's jarring, going from tenebrous pitch to sallow glow in an instant.

The, "Alfie?" from above sounds half-choked, strained. The voice of someone trying to rein in wild hopes as her heart jumps at every half-imagined sound. It's been a difficult morning for Sparrow. Oh, sure, there were pancakes to go with the panic, but that fear never left. Once Monica and Corey both took off to go about their days, once she'd found Alfie's phone by his bed, her texts unanswered, that terror only redoubled and has kept her on edge since. She knows there's no logical reason he should be down here, but... "Please..."

Alfie rolls. The way opposite his vomit and he rises to his knees in the darkness. He fumbles for a wall, reaching as far as he can before him and to his side. Nothing. Just the suggestion of shapes. But those could be patterns crafted by his imagination to make sense of the nothing. He looks up, daring to do so, searching for a red and distant light with the terrible thought that he might not be free. That the door was just a trick to give depth to his pit. The idea seizes his throat with anxiety and sends tears to his eyes to wait on standby, to spill if needed.

That's when the light hits. Alfie lifts his arm to shield his eyes from the subterranean sun. He makes a sound that might be a curse in some forgotten mole language but is mostly just an expression of shock and pain.

Sparrow's voice draws out the tears. Strained fear becomes relief, tempered only by the caution that he'd seen her there too before he fell. "Sparrow," he answers. "Down here - I'm here." And he gets a sense of what 'here' is now that the basement is illuminated. It gives weight to a troubling dream. This isn't where he fell asleep.

A choked sound from Sparrow preceeds a clatter of fumbled phones falling down wooden stairs, a hiss of, "Shit," spit down at the gadgets as she hurries past them. They can wait. She doesn't need them anymore, doesn't ened to keep useless watch over either device now that she knows where he is. Bare feet slap against the vinyl floor as she rounds the edge of the stairs toward the source of Alfie's voice. And that smell. Gods, that gives her pause, slows her steps to take in his state, her own not quite as it had been upstairs, tonight's pajama's mismatched from memory. Confusion flashes through desperate relief, the latter winning out as she sinks down on his cleaner side and reaches for him, seeking to wrap her arms around him a little more tightly than might be comfortable. A sob bubbles up unbidden, shaping the, "You're here," that spills against his shoulder into something nebulous and messy, slurred just to the edge of understanding.

There's a rare pang of shame in Alfie as he takes note of the vomited mess. And he does his best to avoid looking at it twice. As easy said as done as he watches Sparrow descend the stairs behind the tumbling telephones. He stays on his knees and showcases relief in a tearful smile as he wipes his eyes with one forearm and his mouth with the other. He doesn't have pajamas nor the buttoned-up formal wear that he'd taken into his dream - the closest approximation in his possession would be the work clothes in his room.

He wraps his arms around her, confused and relieved, and a little less worried that he'd done something wrong to wind up here. He may be a lightweight, but he only had one drink with dinner - and he definitely remembers going to bed. As long as he's thinking back to the right night. "I don't understand," he says into her shoulder.

"Me either," shouldn't sound so reassuring, but there's far too much surety in Sparrow's tone now that she has Alfie in her arms to lend any panic to that uncertainty. It just doesn't seem as important as his presence right now. One arm holds steady around his body while her other hand fusses, pushing through his hair, running over his shoulder, cradling his cheek, a restlessness that only starts to settle after her rough sobs have subsided, leaving her breathing heavily against the side of his head, that heaving punctuated with sniffles and kisses.

Even still, it takes her a moment to tell him, "I saw the floor swallow you up," as if it had actually happened, clarifying, "In my dream. I dreamed it," a second later. "It felt so real. So fucking real." Sniff. "So I went to go curl up with you. But you weren't there. And I panicked. And I couldn't find you--" The rest of the thought is strangled, caught in her throat as it tightens with the need to cry again.

Shared confusion substitutes for the assurance of knowledge. It's a poor substitute, but there's still comfort in it. He doesn't fuss, he clings, both arms wrapped around Sparrow, and his eyes leave her shoulder damp. He lets some of the tension leave him as Sparrow peppers him with kisses, but the relaxation is short-lived when she relates matters of dreams.

"I was kneeling beside the bathtub, in the dream," he says, distantly. "You were drawing. Listening to music. I took the earbud and-" He shrugs and clings, not letting the latter gesture interrupt the former action. "Fell." A beat. "Why am I in the basement?" There's a trembling desperation to that last question.

Sparrow nods against Alfie's head as he starts relating details that match with her own, her hold tightening on him like the floor might open up and try to steal him again. "Yes," explodes trembling and wet against the shaved side of his head, any further confirmation or explanation on hold until she fights off another bout of overwhelming emotion. The quiet string of profanity which preceeds a few deeply drawn breaths certainly seems to help her recenter. "I dunno. I dunno. I--" Another sniffle, and her hand lifts from his back so she can swipe at her nose. "When you weren't in your bed, I was sure, sure you had fallen... somewhere. But I couldn't find you. And Corey and Monica were way more rational and told me everything was fine and it was just a dream and--"

One thought catches up with another, and something clicks. After another sniffle, she straightens slightly, just enough that she might be able to look at Alfie as she tells him, "I was in the bathtub. Drawing. I had this idea in my head that--" She shakes her head slowly. "I can't place it now. Nothing was right. Except the music. And you. Right there. Comfortable. But then you took up the earbud and... You fell through the floor. And I banged and banged on it until I woke up."

There are no answers - not that they have. But there is that revelation in the realization that they'd visited the same place - or a place so similar within their dreams that they must have shared a nocturnal wavelength. "I'm here," Alfie tells Sparrow - as much a comfort to her as a reassurance to himself. Telling himself that he's free from wherever it was that they had gone. It takes a couple of minutes before he's able to pick up from where Sparrow left off, banging on the floor.

"It was black. Almost everything was. I fell and fell and fell and I could see red above me, distantly. Getting smaller. The music was around me, vibrating through me." He's in a race to get the words out once he starts. The word 'music' is said like a question. He doesn't know what that was - not exactly. "Then I was at the door."

Sparrow draws away farther as Alfie speaks, a few inches of space between them, enough room to breathe, to look him over. Fingers push through his hair. Her thumbs swipe over his damp cheeks, even while he talks, clearing away his fallen tears while her own remain messily smeared across her face. Her fussing stills when he mentions the door, frown growing more pronounced. A faint flicker of curiosity is quickly killed, shoved away for later, for when she isn't so glad to have him back, for when she can smell more than the vomit spilled across the basement floor beside him. "You're here." As if repeating it might make it more true. "And I'm not leaving your side today. I'll skip lab, okay? I just--" Her fingers curl a little tighter where they've stilled against the sides of his neck, a thread of lingering desperation expressed in that tension. "Let's get you cleaned up, okay? I can take care of this--" With a shallow nod toward the mess on the floor. "--later, okay?"

Most days, Alfie wouldn't accept that - wouldn't want Sparrow to sacrifice for his sake. Today, he just nods, he doesn't need to hear the offer twice, for her to skip, to spend the day with him - awake and far from sleep. "I could wait on campus," he suggests, however - though not with a lot of confidence behind it. He leans in toward her as her fingers fit around the back of his neck. And while he winces when Sparrow mentions cleaning up the deep fried vomit, he doesn't offer to do that in her stead either. He starts to stand, unevenly, with a notion of getting to where he can get cleaned up. "I don't think I want to be down here," he adds, with regard to his unplanned trip to the basement.

"I don't wanna go anywhere," Sparrow admits in little more than a whisper. Steadier on her feet, she helps Alfie to his, patiently bracing while watching how he moves as if she might be checking for injury. Like maybe he actually fell. But there's no concussion, no broken bones. Just an evacuated stomach and an unshakeable discomfort that nothing at all is right with the world right now except that he's here, with her, and that weird music is gone. "We'll hide in my room." Her fingers twine with his and curl tight, possessive, protective as she takes the lead in heading up and out of the basement, away from the smell and the mystery of how he got here. "And just like... binge Netflix all day, okay?" She doesn't usually need this much reassurance, this much confirmation, but every step is an offer, both confident and cautious, checking to make sure what he needs matches with what she needs.