2020-02-24 - Death is Preferable to Dying

Of course, Alexander meant well. He's taking great care of Bennie, making sure she eats, even when her stomach revolts and doesn't want food. He didn't know that opening a pudding cup would be so problematic for the blonde, who can't seem to get the little foil top off, claiming it to be the product of the Devil before it got launched across the room. Now she's threatening that the spoon will follow. "You think I'm hungry? I want my goddamn pills, you motherhumping twiddle-mouth hemorrhoid!"

Look, pudding isn't terribly nutritional, but it's easy to get down, and it's better than jello, at least. Alexander watches the pudding cup sail across the room and splatter against the worn wallpaper. He rubs at his head, still wreathed with bruises. "I think you need the food," he says, stubbornly. "Whether you're hungry or not. Would you prefer something else, or should I get another cup?" The insult is ignored, although his mouth might twitch with amusement at it.

When that insult doesn't result in a satisfactory response, Bennie's hand rears back and she launches the spoon like a throwing ax. Sadly, without a Physicalists ability to send it effectively, and lacking any aim or real strength in her arm currently, it sort of just bounces on the ground in front of Alexander and goes for his shin with no more force than a mosquito sting. "TWAT WAFFLE."

Alexander twitches when the spoon is launched at him, tensing up in instinctive reaction - insults are fine, but it seems actual, physical aggression triggers an instinctive response that Alexander has to throttle down. He takes a breath, holds it, lets it out, then bends down to pick up the spoon. "What exactly is a twat waffle? I mean, a twat isn't really a waffled pattern, and it's not in a position to place between waffles like a twat waffle sandwich, or anything. A dick waffle is more logistically sound, if you think about it." He waggles the spoon at her, then moves to grab the pudding cup. "Do you need me to reduce the symptoms a bit?"

Bennie leans forward into a web of fingers, cradling the sides of her head and resting the weight of everything against her palms. She has no answer as to what a twat waffle even is, or could even possibly be, beyond words that sounded awful when strung together and flung at your best friend. "What I need you to do, is get me my Adderall before I explode into teeny tiny shards of Bennie like porcupine quills. "

"No," Alexander says, simply. There's no malice to it, just the tired response of someone who has heard this request before - sometimes from Bennie, sometimes from others. He puts the pudding and spoon off to the side, neatly on his dresser, then moves carefully to sit on the very end of the bed. "You'll get through this, Bennie. This is the worst of it. Get through this, and you'll start to feel better."

Bennie feels Alexander sit on the edge of the bed and her head pops up. "Death is preferable to dying." Her eyes go to the door and back to the man sitting there, as if mentally judging the distance. "Fine. I'll get them myself." Surprise dashes for the door are much more effective when one doesn't announce them first, but she's unfolding herself from mattress and making a run for it, dressed in a pair of Alexander's oversized sweats because everything she owned seemed to irritate her skin.

"It really isn't," Alexander starts-- and then Bennie is rolling and running for it, and he snarls, "FUCK!"

He rolls across the bed himself, and lunges at the door, but she got the jump on him, and reaches the door just a fraction ahead of him. Just enough to be able to get the door open. "Bennie, don't. I will not let you leave, and you won't like how I stop you!"

Instead of dashing out the door, Bennie spins on Alexander getting right up in his grill. Which might be more imposing from a detoxing manic if she didn't look like a fluffy muppet in those clothes. "You're threatening me? I could break you down into so many bone fragments your coffin will be a coffee can." Her face twitches, her expression breaks. She might either cry or make good on her own threat depending on which way the wind blows in the next moment.

Alexander stops when she spins around, his hands coming up. "I'm not going to hurt you, Bennie. You're just not going to like it." His eyes are nearly entirely black, and flat as he tries to reach for her mind and calm her from her agitation. However, between the spikes and flares of her withdrawal, and his own lingering concussion, he's not able to feed the soothing feeling to her in the way that he wants. He tries words, instead.

Alexander is bad at words. "Look. If you have a pill, this is going to be twice as long, and twice as hard. I know it hurts. I know it does. But you have to get through it, or you'll have to do it again."

Instead of comforting it's like a jab of an ice pick right between her eyes. Bennie's hand flings up, pressing the heel of it to dig and rub between her brows as if she can ease it. The headaches. The headaches always come when someone tinkers in her mind and doesn't leave something pleasant in the wake. Like they're pulling out little tissue samples until she's left with nothing to be able to think think THINK. "GET OUT." Of her brain? No, the room. Her hand goes to his elbow to direct him out, conceding the battle.

She's not running, and she's trying to touch him! Both of these combined is enough to send Alexander skittering out, although he closes the door behind him, and locks it. He doesn't leave, though. Instead, he rests his back and the back of his head against the door, and lets out a low sigh. "I'm sorry, Bennie," he says, quietly, although still loud enough to get through the pasteboard of the cheap door. "I wish I could make this easier for you."

There's a thump against the other side of the door, a kick given to the barrier between them. But that little outburst did nothing to sate her ire, and Alexander can feel the air around him grow warmer, as if there's been a solar flare in Bennie's sunshine. Then the first crack is heard, blissfully not from Alexander's own bones, but from the dresser inside his room. It's like she's found the one stress point in the furniture that makes it all fall like a house of cards as if someone forgot to put the crucial piece in their IKEA Fluberzorne and all the boards collapse upon the clothes they were holding.

Alexander grunts at the way the door shakes, and lets his body slide down it, quietly, until he hits the floor with a thump. Then, "It sounds like you just broke my dresser. You're going to be upset about that later, you know." Dull and resigned. He rests the back of his head against the door. "Sit down with me. Let's talk. It'll distract you."

Bennie's panting audibly, trying to rein it in before he ends up with swizzle sticks for bedroom furniture. "Better that..than your trachea." There is a single solitary sob noise before the door moves in it's frame again, the fraction of jarring coming as Bennie slumps against it to the floor, huddled up against it in the fetal position.

Bennie says, "I can fix a dresser. Not a dead best friend.""

"Yes. Better than my trachea," Alexander agrees, without rancor. "I appreciate you refraining." He falls silent for a moment as she slumps to the floor, then sighs. "I'm sorry. If Zachary were here, we could keep you from hurting as much. I've never done this without him," he confesses, quietly. "But we'll get you through. Just remember why you're doing it. What you want after you feel better."

"It's my own doing." Comes Bennie's quiet reply as her hand slides up on the door as if craving physical contact with something. Her fingertips tap lightly on the surface. "Who's Zachary? Tell me about him. He must be important to you." And yet Bennie can't recall him ever being mentioned. Tap tap tap.

Alexander draws in a breath. He hadn't meant to bring the name up; it'd just slipped out, and on the other side of the door he lets it out with a full body shutter. "Zachary." A long pause. "He was my best friend, once. A preacher. A healer. He was beautiful and warm. It was hard not to love him, and he had the most beautiful mind, Bennie. It was like a diamond, filled with light and facets and brilliance. No doubt, no fear...just purpose and confidence." He sighs. "We'd do this work together. I'd keep people calm, make sure they had water and food and all of that, and he'd make sure they didn't go into shock or die from the withdrawal. It's harder. Without him."

"He sounds...magnetic." Bennie almost sounds wistful, likely because she feels the exact opposite right now. Her mind just fuzzy edges and incongruent lines that trail off into nothingness. Tap tap. "He helped addicts?" 'Like me' goes unsaid.

"He was. He walked in a room and smiled, and everyone just looked in his direction. When he listened to you, it was like the whole world was listening. He wanted everyone to have a place, and no one to--" Alexander trails off. His head thumps against the door. "He helped some, yes. I think. I truly believe he helped some of them. Some joined the Church afterwards. Others left, but I really do believe some people got better."

The tapping has turned to light scratching, just her fingernail scraping over the surface of the door, not gouging. Just a plaintive scratch, like an animal sad at its captivity. Talking helps, but there are complications with distracting Bennie's mind with talking, mainly: questions. "Was that his goal, with the church? To rehabilitate people and convert them into...I'm sorry, what...what religion did you say? I. It's hard to concentrate."

There's a long silence. Then he laughs, softly, and a little bitterly. "It was a cult, Bennie. We were going to find God's Chosen - people like us, and you, and we were going to...make people better. Keep them on God's path, and make a paradise of the Earth. Originally, by helping junkies, healing people. Preaching the Gospel - at least, the Gospel as Zachary saw it." Another of those long pauses, before Alexander says, "Things changed, later. They tend to. It ended badly."

Alexander's silence is echoed in her own after he makes it known it was a cult and the loose details he gives. Even the scratching and tapping has ceased. At some point she's slithered down onto her belly and craned her head to see out of the crack at the bottom of the door. A single finger wiggles out to his side of the barrier. "Tell me?"

Alexander's head hurts. It's a pounding, unpleasant thing that comes and goes, and remembering Zachary makes it bloom faster than usual. His voice cracks, "There's not much to tell, Bennie. We hurt people. We hurt a lot of people, and then when I couldn't anymore, I killed him."

"Let me help you." Comes the quiet voice through the crack beneath the door, no hesitation, no malice, no judgment at Alexander saying he hurt people and killed this man Zachary. Her finger makes a little curl in a c'mere gesture. "But you have to touch me."

Alexander hesitates. Not just because he has that whole THING about touching, or because he's crying and maybe he doesn't want her to know that. But also because she's currently in the throes of withdrawal, and if she's going to decide to set him on fire? It's definitely going to be about right now when his guard's down. But, after several harsh breaths that aren't quite sobs, he says, "I don't know how you can help me, Bennie," but still...still, there's the lightest, tentative touch of his fingertip on hers. "Except by getting better. And forgetting about this whole conversation."

Nothing is set on fire. Nothing breaks. But Bennie's warmth is present again. While mentalists can tinker in memories and feelings, the woman seems to have her own tricks for helping those types of situations. She's grown stronger. Maybe it's just the progression of time, maybe it's the drugs leaving her system. Staying quiet, she focuses. Focuses on something beyond herself and her own pain, and turning all that energy to Alexander instead. Dopamine and Serotonin are just chemicals the body produces and she just gives his a little kickstart. It's not curing cancer, it won't make him mentally stable. But it's something?

Alexander relaxes, all at once, his body not high or intoxicated, but just suddenly feeling...better. He blinks a few times, and then slowly curls his finger around hers, as if they were pinky swearing. "Thanks, Bennie." Then he laughs, soft and low. "And I'm sorry. I didn't mean to start rambling about stupid shit. We're supposed to be getting you through this."

Bennie doesn't tighten her little grip with her finger, just lets Alexander set the tension and the tightness and the strength of it to his own comfort. "Hearing you. Helping you. It is helping me Alexander. First that you would confide in me, second that I can help ease your pain, however temporary. Means I'm not the waste of air I'm starting to believe I am."

"You're not," Alexander says, and it's almost a snap. "Don't. Don't think of yourself that way. Of all of my friends, you're definitely one of the least assholish." He squeezes her finger, briefly. "And that's not an insult. All of my friends are assholes, to one degree or another. I don't trust people who are too nice." More seriously, he continues, "This doesn't make you weak, Bennie. It's one of the hardest things you can do. I've known people who'd claim to be a lot stronger who never had the courage to try and get through this. To let it hurt them so that they can get through it."

"I called you a twat waffle. I'm pretty sure that earns me at least a few poop shoot points." Bennie has a little chirp of chipperness there, Alexander knowing far better than anyone that it's genuine and not forced. But her voice turns somber again, "I know. Won't be too much longer now. Worst is almost over." The mantra she's been running over and over in her head, no doubt in his voice too.

"And you broke my dresser. And threw pudding at my wall. You get to clean that up by the way," Alexander tells her, loftily. "And fix the dresser. It'll be good for you. Keep you occupied for a bit." He chuckles. "And it is. You'll get through this. And then we'll deal with your other problem."

"As long as you let me use my mojo for the dresser. Not sure I should be trusted with a hammer or power tools right now. But first, a nap. Will you stay?" Voice implying there are bonus points if he sticks with that finger hold and she'll crash out right there, curled up by the door.

"You don't have to repair it right now," Alexander says, "but if you want to use your abilities, you can. Just remember to be careful about it." He smiles as she asks the question, and he squeezes her finger one more time, then just lets their skin lightly touch as he nods. "Yeah. Get some sleep, Bennie. I'll be here."