2019-10-07 - What He Deserves

It all starts with a sniffle.

Surprisingly, Elise isn't the kind of person that has a lot of chill. Being out of work - the hospital is apparently rather generous with bereavement leave considering how often people die in this town - has left her feeling rather restless, especially since she couldn't fill the time with anything except Graham filling her. Not even Felix seemed to need her lately, though it was doubtful it had anything to do with him being charitable and more to do with the fact that his guys weren't getting blown up 24/7. And since the house could only be cleaned so many times and there's only so much funeral planning one can do and there's only so much room in the refrigerator for the seemingly endless leftovers that Elise was making? She started working out.

She runs early in the morning. Yoga is at ten, followed by kickboxing at 11:30. Then she comes home for a shower and probably to have sex with Graham. Then it's house cleaning, followed by more sex and then another run around the neighborhood when the sun goes down. Dinner. Sex. TV. Relaxation yoga. Relaxation sex. This was Elise's new normal. But today? Today, she comes home from her morning run looking like she hit a wall. Clammy, kinda pale, and sniffly, she slumps into the house in her cute yoga pants and cute top and kinda ugly-cute face, looking like she could use a nap. "G? G!" she groans, staggers, and decides the couch is about as far as she can go right now. "Do we have any soup?" Like he would know.

Contrary to popular opinion, Graham doesn't just hang around all day long doing (Elise and) nothing (else). True, he still attempts to keep his backward hours, which means she has to do all that shit in the morning by herself while he commits himself to sleeping like the dead - which joke he almost makes at some point, then quickly walks that back 'cause too soon. <.<

Anyway. Since she's home all the damn time now, Elise will learn that Graham spends a lot of his time on Google Maps, driving around adjacent towns, looking for likely places to rob - though he doesn't tell Elise that's what he's doing; we can just assume she's not stupid and can figure this shit out on her own. That's what he's trying to do this morning, slumped at the kitchen table with his tablet and a box of tissues ('cause his nose is running but he's fine, gdi). He perks up when the door opens, leaning to be sure it's Elise that comes in and not, yanno, a person like he is.

"Why would you ask me that question," he grouses at that volume that allows Elise to ignore him, but also is loud enough that he could be accused of picking a fucking fight. Regardless, he peels himself out of his chair and heads to the refrigerator, like that's where he's gonna find soup. "There's, like, six hundred containers of curry in here. Which one is the most like soup?" He'll feel bad about being an asshole in a minute, don't worry.

Elise is not stupid. Elise is also not in the fucking mood for Graham's bullshit right now. Which is why she says loud enough for him to hear all the way in the kitchen: "I'm not in the fucking mood for your bullshit right now, fucking Christ!" She pushes herself up off the sofa and staggers into the kitchen, looking like death warmed over. "Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you sitting at the fucking table and looking up places to rob, because I really think you getting yourself killed is a fucking awesome idea right now," excuse her. She's just a little emotional right now.

Like this is his takeaway from her clap-back, Graham tilts a little container of some kind of curry and replies, "So not the yellow one? Pink it is." He gets a different container, one whose contents are pinkish, and goes to all the trouble of putting it in the microwave for her and everything, such a swell guy. He's not dressed, because why would he be? T-shirt, boxers: before noon, that's his uniform. "Go sit down or something. I can heat up 'soup.'" Air-quotes because it's not soup, it's Thai whatever, and he's obviously a racist. But he does feel a little bad and softens his tone to add, "Seriously, El. I got this. Go watch TV." With some coke-whore sniffling on his part; that curry is going to be at least 1% snot.

The stare that Elise levels at Graham is one of those that conveys her willingness to totally kick him in the fucking face right now, break his stupid sniffling nose, and not care. "There's no such thing as pink curry," she huffs, slams the refrigerator shut when he goes to the microwave, and collapses into his chair at the table. "I don't want to watch TV, I clearly came home to watch you be an asshole to me in my kitchen," but there's a whole lot less heat in the clap-back, mostly because that overwhelming crappy feeling is warring with her desire to be a bitch right now. Oh, and also she finally notices his sniffling and the tissues, and now she sort of feels bad, too. "Are you coming down with something?" and/or doing coke. She bites the tip of her tongue before the accusation comes out. At least she's gone from kill-staring at him to concern-staring.

Under the hum of the microwave, Graham will just tell Elise that she's fucking wrong, because that's curry, and it's pink, and also, "No," he's not coming down with something. So they're going to have a fun day bitching at each other, 'cause this is clearly the mood they're both in now. Thankfully, the microwave intervenes - DING! - and he brings warm food and a spoon to the table, swapping it out for the dormant tablet. There's a 'happy now?' smile, then another big sniff, then he plants a kiss on Elise's temple and takes his tablet and goes in the other fucking room.

Don't talk to him. He's busy not being sick. Till tomorrow when he it's all shivers and GOOD CHRIST ELISE, can't she psychic-heal this shit?!

Elise can't psychically heal this shit but she can psychically break his fucking tablet, which is exactly what she does before she goes right upstairs, slams the door, and has no after-run sex with him. It will be the first night in a long time where they also have no lunch sex, no dinner sex, no dessert sex, and definitely no relaxation sex.

And in the morning? Yeah that's definitely not happening either. Mostly because in spite of being achy from head to toe, Elise wakes up sometime in the early morning, bolts out of bed, and brings up all of that not-pink curry soup before collapsing on the tile floor because it's cold and her face is way, way too hot.

You know what Graham does when she breaks his tablet? He sits around and cleans his goddamn guns at the kitchen table all day. He has like eleven of these fuckers stashed around here somewhere, so that's what he does all
damn
day.

Then drinks about half a bottle of NyQuil and snores in Elise's ear all night. Thus, he peels an eye open groggily for her dramatic wake-up call, asking a blurry, "What the fuck," before the penny drops. His stumbling out of bed after her would be super-sweet if he was trying to be nice and come make sure she was fine, but really it's just because, "Move," his turn. At least he lands on the rim of the tub afterward, not the floor, though he nudges her in the thigh with his big-toe. "Don't die, Elly, I'mma go get us some medicine." Eventually.

Nothing is more romantic than throwing up together~

"What the fuck," Elise repeats the thing he said in bed except she says it on the floor while he does his thing. But after he lands on the tub and nudges her with his toes (gross), she manages to crawl over to him and drop her head in his lap. She was burning up and so was he, but he was also soft and therefore better than the tile floor. "What the hell is this, I never get sick. No, no.." she flops a hand at him when he talks about getting medicine. "I got this, baby, I'll take care of you, I'm so sorry I was a bitch to you," you know, just in case she really is dying. "I love you, G, I'll take care of you."

Except nothing happens when she puts her hands on him to try and make him feel better, except that she puts her fingers all up near his crotch. "You feel better, right?" 'Cuz like, she totally think she has this.

Graham would argue that having girlfriend-hands on crotch-area is more romantic - not to mention head-in-lap. But he's not going to argue that today. Today, he pats her useless hands with feverishly warm ones, pets her hair briefly, and should lie to make her feel better but, "No, I feel like - " For the love of God, man, don't make a fucking joke about being dead. " - shitty shit. But you look - " SERIOUSLY DON'T SAY DEAD. " - really bad, baby, get up and go back to bed." He tries to kind of pull her that way, hooking his hands under her arms and dragging, but it's really lacking oomph, even if she only weighs 13.5 pounds (because of the throwing up), and his hands slip off by the time he gets his feet under him.

"I'll be back in fifteen minutes." OR he'll shoot the pharmacist in the face when they report they are sold out of Theraflu Severe and also NyQuil oh and Tylenol Cold but here's some Pepto, at least?

"What do you mean no?" Elise wasn't taking no for an answer, "Let me try again, I got this." It's insistent, and she presses her palms into him with whatever force she has left. It's not a lot of force, it's like zero force, but she's trying goddammit. "There, I know that worked, I feel it working, you're fine now," she decides, making little to no fuss when he pulls her up off the floor .. only to have her slump back into him. "Don't leave me." It's pathetic, but she twines her arms around him and refuses to let go.

That pharmacist isn't going to shoot himself, Elise. Graham has places to go! Or he can just stay here, leaning his cheek down on top of her head and being miserable. When he says, "Fuck, you're hot," it's not a prelude to sexytimes. 🙁 It's just before he nudges her feverish forehead with his chin - then hastily says, "Move," again and reacquaints himself with the toilet.

All day today.

Eventually, the solution seems to be that they curl up on the bathroom floor, wrapped up in all Elise's quilts, fighting for toilet-time. At some point, he dumps them both into the shower, because they've gotten too gross to tolerate, but that's really about as much as he's capable of doing for the next 48-hours. The pharmacist gets a reprieve.

You learn a lot about a person when you spend 48-hours trapped in a bathroom with them sharing a single toilet, but in between the horrendous stomach issues and the fever and the chills, Elise finds the most comfort wrapped up in Graham. With her face firmly planted on the cold tile floor, mind. But at some point in the middle of all of this, she tucks her nose into his throat and doesn't care about the gnarly smells or the fact that he hasn't shaved and is starting to get scratchy; she just cares about him and them and this moment, where she's had one single take-away:

"I wanna spend the rest of my life with you, G. You're the only future I want, you know."

Eventually they make it back to the bed, but Graham finds himself waking up one morning in the bathroom again. Alone. The door is closed, and he still feels like shit, and it must be his eyes and the wariness of it all that makes the whole room look a little gray and bleak and dull. But at least he can move, and there's seemingly no threat in his belly that would suggest he needs to stay here. The house is eerily quiet. Dead quiet.

Aw, those are nice things she says. Graham almost definitely meant to say something back, but wound up just patting her in the face like 'that's nice' before knotting himself back up over his abdomen. At some point, he does manage to say something about how he wouldn't be able to stand any other person in the whole world but Elise right now. Then he gets unconscious.

And justifies waking up in the bathroom alone because he probably slept-walk in here so as not to throw up all over his sleeping (barf-)angel in the bed. He's up, by virtue of some help from the vanity in the bathroom, so he tries to wash some water on his face and cough up at least part of the shit in his lungs. Towel hanging over the back of his neck, he stumbles out to inform Elise that, seriously, he's going to get them some more medicine while he's at least moderately upwardly mobile. "Fifteen minutes, El...ly?" It's gonna take him a minute to grok the quiet; between being sick and having known exactly where Elise is every second of every day for the last six months, he's unprepared for confusion.

Things brains justify on their own: walking around with a gun when you walk around with a gun all the time. Graham obviously barely notices the thing, too busy rubbing his face with the towel around his shoulders and puzzling over how he lost tabs on the person he stalks all the fucking time. So he stumbles to a stop in this room with this glowing giant, quickly clutching a hand over his stomach like he's bracing himself for the inevitable deluge... which never materializes, so that's good. "Oh shit," he realizes blearily, disoriented to the point that he has to brace himself with his empty hand flat on the tiled wall. "What the fuck did you do, Dre?"

Get it done, make it quick - those orders get a dark look from a ghost-pale face. "He's not a fucking deformed puppy," is the kind of thing he'd NEVER say to felix in real life, but it falls out of his big mouth when he's sick and confused.

Graham doesn't know this isn't real yet, even with Andre asking about some baby that clearly doesn't exist in the real world. Keep that in mind, because this is some ballsy shit if it works.

If not, he's going to be such a pretty corpse. 🙁

AT LEAST have the grace to shoot him in the temple and not the back of the head, please.

"I am not killing Andre," might be followed by the words 'you fucking psychopath,' but that's harder to hear since he really intends to whirl and cold-clock what he assumes is Felix with the butt of his gun. It doesn't work exactly like that, though. Maybe the hit isn't hard enough to do any damage, or maybe it's not actually Felix? Whatever happens, it does not resolve itself with Graham getting the upper-hand. Just with Graham firing off one round by accident (which ricochets off the ceiling) when he stumbles backward, off-balance. Yes, his hand is shaking now, but sometimes...

...sometimes you have to take a stand in your nightmares even if you can't in real life. He will pull the trigger if he has to but "Let's talk this through."

Graham needs that wrist! He uses it for things! Like guns and whenever Elise isn't home! All of that agony factors into the accchhh noise he makes when it breaks and the gun hits the tile floor as a result. It doesn't go off again, so that's nice. Twisting painfully with his wrist held to his chest, he gets to look over his shoulder in due time for Andre to start bleeding, and it's a lot. "I'm so sorry, man, just keep it together, all right? I'm gonna get you some help." Lies and more lies. There's no answer for who he thinks he is or look what he did, just a grab for the gun he dropped...

...but he's not getting there first, despite scrabbling pretty hard after the thing. A one-handed guy with the flu < healthy Dreamboss.

The gun stops somewhere near the edge of the room, and so does Graham, still holding his wrist to his chest, on his hand-and-knees for a second because wow, his stomach wants to empty. The door shuts, a shiver gets him pretty hard, so it takes him longer than it should to pry himself to his feet; mostly, the wall does the heavy-lifting. There are tears - TEARS! - in the breath he blows out through his cheeks while he leans against the wall, literally bracing himself for the fact that he's about to have to Ol' Yeller his hamburger buddy.

"I'm so sorry, man," he says again, more for his own benefit than Andre's at this point. "I'll - " Shuffle over, handle the gun awkwardly in his left hand, put it to Andre's temple, squeeze the trigger, cry some more. " - miss you." Suffice it to say, it will be a while before he knocks on the door to be let outta here. His heart's broken now. </3

Importantly, Graham has only used two bullets in the gun. Granted, his wrist is broken and he's sobbing so much that the front of his shirt is soaked from drying his eyes, but he could still wreak some havoc, dammit. After he tears himself away from the awful spectacle, he walks over to the door and starts banging the butt of the gun against it (the way he failed to bang it against Felix's head). OPEN THE DOOR, WHOEVER, SO HE CAN SHOOT YOU, TOO.

Graham doesn't know how much PERIL there is in touching Sticky Notes, so he pulls the thing off the door with his bare hand, stares at it, crumples it up, and throws it onto the floor of the hallway. Like that will really just stick it to whoever or whatever is being mean to him. Then he shoves the door open with his one good hand and his shoulder, fatalistically resigned to whatever is on the other side of it.

Graham needed to see that? NEEDED to? No. He coulda guessed how his life plays out, thx. So he sags against the door behind him, watching all this with a few more tears sliding off his face, completely failing to reconcile the simple impossibility of everything; like, if he just took stock for a second, he could figure out this can't be real. But how's he supposed to take stock while he watches Elise drown like a thousand times, so that he almost misses the kid entirely with his hands to his ears. Well, one hand; the other one is more like his arm, since he's not about to bend his wrist right now. That shit stings.

But he sees the kid, and he hears him, and he knows this kid in the way-far-back of his mind. So hurt or not, he stuffs that gun somewhere out of sight (waistband) and nods. "Yeah, bud. I do. Let's do that." He rips his eyes off those movies and pins them to this kid. "Let's see," anything but this.

Graham also doesn't have time to enjoy this moment properly. Which is a bummer, because it would warm is currently sad and broken heart all the way down to its core. Alas~ Just not in the cards today, G. No matter that he's still holding that little-boy hand in his own, the kid is gone, leaving him sputtering unhappily at this brand new torment, pawing emptily at the air where the kid should be and isn't...

...but at least now he's home? He stumbles, dizzy and hurt and sick and sorrowful, out the bathroom door toward the sounds. "El? Elly? Baby, I really need you, El," and so on.

Hold on, does Graham still have that gun from the other room? Because some 30-40 year old Asian man that he doesn't know that's walking into his house with his Elise and whoever that toddler is? Is about to get shot if so. <-- That's the half-second thought that has him reaching.

This is the half-second thought that intervenes. --> This little blonde child doesn't need to see that. He keeps the tears stuck to his eyeballs rather than spilling over when he scooches next to little Bubber, nodding and minding his breath carefully. "She does," in a whisper back. "We should get out of here, bud. Let's go before someone," gets shot, "sees us, a'ight?" He has one working hand; he offers it and, ripping his eyes away from the kitchen, tilts his head toward where he knows the front door is.

Every OTHER time he walked through a door, he got away from something awful. He'll take those odds.

Graham doesn't do anything especially badass. There's no ninja-backflip. He just lets Mister Elise come for him, then grabs the back of the guy's shirt with his one good hand, gives him one solid shove, and lets momentum send him careening toward the stair-rails where that kid's adorable face was mashed a minute ago. It leaves him looking at this other Elise, blue eyes shot red, purty mouth pulled down at the corners with too much pain today. "I guess there's no version of your life I can't figure out how to fuck up, huh?"

ASSUMING that kid hasn't come back down the stairs yet, this is where Graham walks over and shoots her husband in the head. He's very sorry to do it - not as sorry as he was to shoot Andre, but sorry still - but what's the alternative? NOT murder her Dream-hubs? Please.

Yanno, Graham probably should have planned for Elise attacking him after he shot her old man. This thought drifts through his mind during the, "Stoppit! Let go! Goddammit, woman!" that he gripes out while they scuffle over that gun. It's hard to fight off a Dream-version of one's girlfriend under the best of circumstances; while half-dead with flu and sporting a broken wrist? Yeah, there was no other way this was going to end.

BAM!

"No no no no," replaces the peevish diatribe of moments ago, and - broken wrist or not - he catches this Elise in both arms hurriedly. It'd be a Hollywood moment if he didn't look like death warmed over, and she wasn't knocked up with a dead nightmare's spawn.

This looks right: Graham, slumping to the ground with a bloody and now dead Elise in his arms; some guy he doesn't know, dead over there by the stairs; a couple kids that aren't TECHNICALLY his roaming around somewhere. If he was in the right frame of mind to be able to step back and survey it, he'd nod and yep, called it.

He's not in that frame of mind. He's in the frame of mind where he clutches that dead body and cries, really wracked with sobs while he nods, 'cause it's true! She doesn't deserve this. He tells her corpse that, how sorry he is because he should've just stayed away and she'd be fine. Okay, yes, she'd be bored and one day he'd snap and show up and THIS would happen, but she'd be fine until then! And it doesn't have to make sense. It's his Dream and he'll blubber nonsensically if he wants to.

You would cry too if it happened to you~

Maybe for one fraction of one second, Graham thinks about what bullets taste like. He could pull the trigger and find out... but suicide really isn't his bag. So that might be a way out, but it's not for him. He carefully puts down dead-Elise, dragging himself backward across the floor to the stairs without getting up, butt-scooting right back over there.

So they won't get him with suicide. But staying here with this kid, leaving Elise out there to maybe have a life that doesn't end like this one did? "Kinda, yeah," he answers honestly, nodding slowly back and up at Bubber on the stairs. He even manages to keep his voice upbeat, like this is FINE, whatever is coming from the kitchen is NBD. "What should we play, man? Me personally? I like cars." And he does get up about then, holding his good hand down to the kid; they can go upstairs and leave the creepy shit down here.

So seriously, so sagely, Graham answers for what this kid likes, "Cars, my man. Really fast cars." Nodding follows about the going outside, about the not feeling good - "Yeah, me neither. Let's do that." Go outside, he means. He gives the pale-to-the-point-of-transparent hand a worried look, one that sweeps the encroaching darkness before it lights back on the door, and one of two things is going to happen: either his luck turned and the door opened or...

...he's breaking OUT. Which is the same as breaking in only even easier.

Graham's not crying. YOU'RE crying. "Nah, bud, you don't gotta be sorry - " But or no but, tears or no tears, there's no time to finish that sentiment. He freefalls out into nothing, gonna leave this world for a while~

And land on the cold tile, knocking his chin, groaning at the pain that shoots up his arm. He doesn't know that no one's going to answer when he bawls for Elise. It's going to take a panicked up-and-down search of the house before he collapses on the bed, crying quietly while he waits for his Elise to re-materialize from wherever she is.

Which we will find out tomorrow, because seriously. Comeuppance.