2022-05-15 - A Little Bit of Mind Xanax

Maybe it's been a few minutes. A few hours. Ariadne doesn't really know.

What she does know is that she wakes up with a soft inhale, like she's forgotten to set an alarm and just remembered something -- but whatever it was, more than likely brought on by whiskey-fueled half-dreaming, escapes her. This isn't her room. The sun is still up but low on the horizon, very low now. Where -- Ravn. Shifting around beneath the covers, she finds his face and nuzzles in nose to nose.

"I'm right here," comes the softest murmur, half-reminding him and half-reminding herself. A softest, sticky-lipped kiss before she sighs and pulls back by an inch to simply look into his face. She can't keep the concern from shadowing her own. He's breathing. He's here. He's alive. It makes her stomach just a little sick with relief.

The room isn't a pleasant bedroom like Ariadne's. This? There is a bed here -- one man's, so it's good they're on friendly terms. There is a desk, under stacks of magazines and books. Everything else is books and crates. This is an office, in which sometimes, somebody sleeps. A folklorist's office -- or maybe the office of someone who spends most of his free time trying to either help the living or helping the dead. It's definitely got nothing on the lovely lavenders of Ariadne's bedroom on Broadleaf.

And the man in the bed is not accustomed to sleeping next to someone. Every so often he whimpers. Every so often he wraps himself into Ariadne's arms. Like their first night together, there's an ongoing battle here -- neuropathy versus the need to be close.

It takes a long time for him to stop shaking. It probably doesn't have a lot to do with the asthma.

The next time Ravn decides to be close, the redhead wraps around and remains aligned to him. Never mind that he's a little bony in places; she'll tolerate the pokes of joints for as long as necessary. After all, the buzz is wearing off and she's managed to scrounge up her phone. Checking emails and texts can be a thing while she waits for more coherence to return to him. No sounds from the phone -- it's been silenced. Just the close quiet of Three Oak and the old wooden architecture around them.

Her eyes wander for a bit. So many tomes on the desk, the matte gleam of magazines and stacks of paperwork. It's an office indeed. No wonder the bed is so small. Sleep wouldn't be a priority here. It'd be considered a hinderance. How sterile, in an academic way.

A press of a kiss to his temple. <<I wish I could take it away,>> Ariadne starts off in Hungarian. In English, her voice a sweet and anchoring murmur, "I can't take it away, but I'm here. I'm here, dearheart. It'll be okay in a bit. Not right now, but in a bit."

When he does speak, at last, his voice is raspy. "I nearly drowned."

A heartbeat.

Another heartbeat.

"Because I can't run and breathe at the same time."

It takes a few more moments for the redhead to find her own words. They keep jumbling up in the flashfire of horror to make her break into cold goosebumps. Her throat works in a careful swallow.

"I know."

Another heartbeat. Ariadne curls in closer for a gentle if lingering hug, her nose disappearing into his coppery hair.

"But you didn't and that's the most important part. No what-ifs. Just now."

"I was so lucky," Ravn tells the pillow, raspily. "I managed to open the door in the same place. I think -- they helped us. Because the odds of that working are infinitesimally bad. I've never done it before. I didn't have time to think. And I opened it to the middle of the river. The riverbed must have moved. We went to sometime in the past. Where the figurine belonged."

As she listens, Ariadne keeps her breathing steadfast as the day is long. The rise and fall of her chest will be felt along with the animal rhythm of her own heart.

A nod, a nuzzle again to his hair, a kiss planted there. She minutely shifts to make sure her entangling with his arms and legs is still comfortable, still noted as 'present'. "Della and Mikaere told me about the figurine, sort of what happened. Jules was possessed. You went after her. You survived and she did too. You're both survivors. You beat the odds. You came back." Her voice breaks the tiniest amount here to reveal just how scared she'd been about the possibility of not coming back even existing. "Riverbeds move," she notes in her marine biologist pragmatism. "And you did your best and it worked. It worked."

"Just proves how little it takes." Frustration in Ravn's voice, tinged with anger, and most of all, with the hoarseness of a recent asthma attack. "How fragile we are. That one time on the island, with the pirates. Same thing. I couldn't run and breathe. When my father took me to the Red Sea. And the Great Barrier Reef. Dive instructors said the same thing. Can't take this boy down, he won't be able to breathe."

He sighs. "It takes so little, do you understand? I keep hearing that man, a year ago, at the coffee shop, saying, 'if the zombies come, I'm pushing you out of the way. You can't keep up. They'll take you first and I'll be safe.'"

A very sickening rage flinters through her before Ariadne composes herself. It makes her next swallow taste funny.

"And I could get hit by bus crossing the street. Or in a car accident on the way to work. Or I could go out for a jog and just not come home. We're all fragile...just maybe a little bit more than others, sometimes. And yet, we keep going. We keep going even if it's utter bullshit, how unfair life is." Her voice still continues to flirt with closing off in her own brand of emotions. "Because there's people to come home to and you came home. And that's what matters to me. That you came home."

She buries her nose deeper into the coppery locks. "And that man in the shop is wrong anyways. You could trip him and then it'd be his problem, stupid fucker."

In spite of his misery, Ravn cannot resist a weak chuckle. "Yes. He is wrong. Stupid fucker. That day. That very day."

He coughs and then says, a little stronger, "That very day, de Santos and I agreed to found HOPE. Because that's how it works. We reach out. We have each other's backs. We don't leave anyone to the zombies. And that's why I had to do what I did. I can't just stand there and watch Jules get taken away, when I am the only one who has any chance at all of saving her."

Beat. "And I was so very afraid."

"I would have been scared too, Ravn. I would have been so scared," Ariadne whispers back. "And hell, you know more than me about all of this Veil fuckery, so you were brave. You were so brave. It sounds like no one else was sure about what to do."

Her hand takes up a tentative gentle rubbing along his bicep now, sure to stop at the very instant of causing issue. "You worked through the fear and you learned, right? Now you know how to deal better with this if it happens again. You made HOPE proud. Maybe you're not going to get a parade with balloons and confetti, but we know what you did. You and Jules, you both came back." She seems hooked hard on this concept in particular. "I know, Della knows, Mikaere knows. You've proved again how you've got our backs."

Ravn manages another half-choked laugh. "I don't want a parade. I just want to be alive. And for Jules to be alive. And for us to be back. Which we are. That's all the parade I need."

He manages to relax enough to turn around and slip an arm around the woman sharing his bed; closely because there are no alternatives to closely in a bed for one. "Have to stay alive to get grilled by your mum, after all."

Ariadne briefly retracts limbs to allow the resettling of the Dane's body and then it's her turn to disappear a little into his own personal space. It means her damp hair bunts in somewhere abouts his face and neck.

She can't help the wispy laugh as well. "I would be very, very sad if you weren't able to be grilled by my mom. She's so waiting to do it." An audible swallow. "I'm so glad you came back, Ravn. It's too soon for you to go," she whispers roughly now. "It's always too soon. You always have to come back, okay?" Yes, those are relieved tears clotting up her voice now.

"It would be a little silly to get Lost now." Ravn's voice is quiet, raspy -- but not without a trace of humour. "All that time spent alone. All that time, running from Benedikte. I'd have loved to fall into another world where she could not follow. Would be very silly to disappear now that someone very much wants me to stay around."

What else can he do? He has no idea what to do with a crying woman -- and least of all one who doesn't seem to want anything. He wraps that arm around her and just holds her because this page of the manual is missing. Like so many other pages on how to interact as a member of the tribe of man.

"It would be very silly," agrees Ariadne in a whisper which half-breaks upon his neck. It's not many tears, just another one of those upsweeps into temporary overwhelming relief. A sniffle, maybe two, and she then sighs hard as if to mark a cesura upon the feeling. No more for now because the now is far more pleasing than what-ifs.

Pulling her face back out of the refuge of his collarbone, the barista looks into his face in turn. "So, now I'm going to get all momma-hen on you, you're forewarned. You need to better shower off, for one, really get the grime out of your hair and all -- and please, have Aidan look at you? He can heal, right? River water doesn't belong in anyone's lungs." Bringing her hand up into view, she cups his cheek and thumbs across an eyebrow. "Do you want some tea or anything? Oatmeal? Nothing too crazy on a stomach."

"I just want -- to go on. Like normal. It's just Wednesday in Gray Harbor." Ravn sounds mostly tired. "I got Jules out, or maybe that figurine got Jules out. Life goes on. It was my fault anyhow."

He's quiet for a while. Then, "Sometimes we make mistakes. And they'll say I didn't mean to do that. That I did the right thing, that no one else had a better idea. But it won't change the fact that sometimes, you make a decision, and the decision is wrong. And then all you can do is try to pick up the pieces and duct tape them back together. Because you can't do nothing."

Her damp hair rumples up more against the pillow as Ariadne nods, listening. Her eyes track through his face yet, marking little tells here and there. Ah, but the weariness. It makes her own heart sore.

"What do you mean you made a mistake? How is getting you and Jules out a mistake?" she asks quietly. "I didn't really get what happened from the others except the figurine possessed Jules and opened a door through the Veil."

"It did that because I told it to tell Jules who it was. So it did. It took her to a native village by the Chehalis, in the past. An old man there told us of the tamanous, the helpful spirits. And of the older monsters, the ones that appear in indigenous stories all over the world." Ravn looks at the ceiling. "The chaos powers. The ones that feed on us. He told us that the village, and all the children in it, were about to be eaten. And he told us to go. That's who the figure is. A power item from the Chehalis Tribe, from Jules' ancestors who married into the Quinault. And she is its shaman now."

He continues to look but takes a moment before adding, "I am glad she found out. But the way -- I was careless. I asked for something and we got what I asked for. And it nearly killed us. I should know better. I'm a folklorist. It's the monkey's paw, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Ever."

"Oh, wow..." A non-interruptive murmur from the redhead as the nature of the encounter unfolds. She continues resting her palm against his lower cheek and thumbs his eyebrow slowly, slowly, in no terrible hurry, all to soothe. A power item. Admittedly, Ariadne does want a better look at this thing now if simply to see what it is and more honestly how to avoid tangling with one. She shifts to stretch her legs in a point of toes, but otherwise doesn't move away from the encircling of Ravn's arm.

A pensive moment or dozen of her own. "So...you do know better now. You didn't know better at the time. There's a better way to go about it, I agree, but all's well that ends well, right? And Jules has learned more about her family's history. I know she's been wanting to know and struggling because of what happened to them. I..." She stops and her brows knit; just for a moment, her gaze drops. A little shrug to herself. Up they rise again, a warm brown-hazel in the dimmer light of the office-bedroom. "I think you're going to need to do that again in the future, Ravn. Open doors. Close them. You told me you suddenly feel like you can do more. I think practicing is wise, but in a more controlled situation, with more than you and me. Others too, just in case. Because you're telling me you got lucky and we both know sometimes lucky isn't good enough. It's just a thing of life."

"I can't just open doors randomly, whenever I feel like it. Every single time, there is a risk of something on the other side slipping through." Ravn sighs. "I tried the other day. I opened a door to the Other Side, at the pond where the Veil is thinnest. And it worked. Brennon, Irving, me, we stepped through to the other Gray Harbor. And we stepped back. It worked just as it should. Except, I'm afraid all I've done is make Brennon want to explore over there even more. And every single time there is a risk of somebody not coming back."

Another thoughtful nod.

"Every time I ride my bike, there's a good chance I could get hit by a car. Or the bike flips and I break my neck. But I'm careful. So are you. Is there a way to practice without fully opening the door? Like...picking the door's lock and then not turning the knob? That way, whatever's on the other side, it's still locked from their side?" Ariadne continues looking between his eyes -- those beautiful eyes. The house settles quietly.

"Yes. I can open -- I call them windows. You could call it scrying. Just looking into whatever random reality happens to be passing by. Usually, nothing on the other side notices." Ravn doesn't stress it but -- 'usually' is not a safe word.

He continues to look at the ceiling. "This is what I am afraid of. It's what I was afraid of this whole time. I understand that now. What the collar meant. It meant if I don't admit to myself that I have this kind of power, then I can't end up endangering somebody else with it. No one gets hurt from me floating a lighter or hiding a hazelnut. Abandoned in another reality? That'll do it."

"Windows," the barista mouths. Hmm. Scrying makes more sense in the long term, given the way the Dane frames it as being able to see rather than directly interact. Her lashes fall briefly closed before opening again as he speaks on. Another shifting about to better sling herself along him.

Sigh. "Ravn. Dearheart." Carefully, Ariadne works her way up onto a tucked elbow. It allows her to look down better into his face. Her faint smile is both proud and empathetic. "Cat's out of the bag. We know you can do this now and whether you like it or not, half of the strength of the hope in this town comes from having each other's backs -- like you did for Jules -- and this means people are going to talk. I'm not saying go out and start solving everyone's problems with it. I'm saying have it ready. Use it wisely, like I know you will. No more collar? It doesn't mean the fear goes away. The fear means you're aware of what can happen. It means you respect the power. That's a fuck-ton better than a lot of other options." A lean-in and she gently kisses his lips. "I trust you to be wise," she murmurs there before pulling back to look into his face again, still wearing her ghost of a smile.

"I hope so." Ravn manages to find a weak smile somewhere. "Because sometimes, no one else is. Do you know Brennon grew a kid in her greenhouse? From mixing the blood of a dead cryptid with God only knows what, and injecting it into some kind of Veil seed that she got from Roen? She has a blue kid who is -- probably a nice kid, just blue."

There, a smile, it counts. His curl of lips intensifies her own in turn until a sliver of teeth show. Another sigh as Ariadne reaches up to comb hair back behind her own ear --

-- and then freezes, looking owlish.

"What...the fuck. No. You're kidding. Wait. An actual kid? A child? No, a baby? Out of the seeds?!" The word twists up into a higher pitch. Her mouth works wordlessly for a moment. "What. Just. You don't. You don't just. That." Bringing her hand down, she continues blinking at Ravn.

"An actual kid. A baby. Who is blue. She named her Nimue. And don't get me wrong -- from what I've seen, Brennon takes perfect care of this kid. She's not negligent or treating it like some kind of experiment. It's just -- it puts it into perspective how dangerous messing with these things is. This time? A baby. Next time? Well, who the fuck knows?" Ravn sighs.

He pulls himself up into a half-reclining position on the elbow. His voice still sounds raspy but colour is rapidly returning to his cheeks as the warmth is taking hold of his flesh. His hands are still shaking lightly -- but odds are that it's anxiety, not cold. "All we can do is try to not tempt fate. To not invoke hubris. And to stand up for one another. But I am terrified. Every time somebody is going to ask me to take them somewhere, it will be their life in my hands. And they will tell me it's on them, but it'll still be me killing them. Just like I almost got Jules killed now, by trying to help her. I know she wanted me to. But it's still on me."

One can still read WHAT THE FUCK as clearly as fresh ink on fresh paper in Ariadne's expression. She blinks and decides to retain the rest of her thoughts on the matter. Who the fuck knows? Who the fuck knows is right. This sentiment surfaces as her free hand dragging down her face as well as diverting knuckles beneath her lower lashlines to clean up any sleep-dampened mascara.

Her eyes seek out his own once more. "Like I mentioned before, it's okay to be scared. The emotion is not invalid. This crazy, crazy shit that maybe makes its way into books because some poor sucker just wants the world to know and the world goes, oh, excellent, the next best seller. But...I guess here's what you have to ask yourself. Someone needs your help. You help them. It's because you respect their right to make their own decisions. You honor that. If something goes wrong, are you going to ignore their right?"

Ravn shakes his head. "No. I don't get to make the decisions for others. But I still get to feel terrible when I put a gun in their hand and they proceed to blow out their own brains with it. And that's what it feels like. Like I'm hanging out loaded firearms to people who don't realise what safety mechanisms are."

"I'm not dismissing your right to feel terrible. I'm not," Ariadne gently insists. "But you're also that guy who makes sure to walk them through the firearm first, how to safety it and not to stick the gun in the front of their pants like all the movies portray because maybe they'll blow a hole in their foot and maybe they blow a hole in something else instead. It's their decision to do something else with the gun. I'm saying that I know you will always try to mitigate the worst of it. You can't control what people do. It's the fucking - worst."

Another lean-in and again, another gentle kiss. "What I'm saying is I know you will do your best," she murmurs, close enough for the gradients of color to be seen in her irises. "And that's all you can do."

Ravn leans into that kiss and then rests his forehead against hers. "I know. And I will. And it is. And I will still feel like I pushed people off a cliff while telling them to flap their arms really fast. And I'm afraid, and I hate it."

He sighs a little. "I have anxiety problems. I feel too responsible, and I run away. Hi, this is me, the bloke you're dating. The guy who nearly drowns because he's asthmatic. The bloke who can't run and breathe at the same time."

"Hey now..." Not even a reprimand, not with how softly it's spoken, and accompanied by more shifting about. Now, perched mostly on the narrow bed still with her legs not quite crisscrossed, her hands rise to cup Ravn's face. "Remember my ankle? Shh. Remember my ankle, right? Ravn." Ariadne looks between his eyes again. "It always hurts. Always. And sometimes, when I'm at home, all I can do is cry about it because it hurts. You have asthma. Remember running from zombies? One bad step and I'm dead. That's it. If I cared so much about your asthma and anxiety, would I be dating you?"

A little tilt of her head. "Hmm?" She doesn't wait for the man to respond. Instead, she kisses between his brows and lets her lips linger.

It pings out in the softest wave -- a cool washcloth against a fevered brow -- warm blanket right out of the dryer against the cold -- the give of a bed after a long day -- the sweetness of skin to skin -- a breath of clean, dew-scented air.

"You've had a rough go of it today, emberem. I would expect you to be anxious. It's alright," she then murmurs, hunting out his eyes again.

Ravn blinks. He knows this feeling. It's been done to him before. People with a specific kind of power, radiating tranquillity. Not erasing his fears, but wrapping them in a warm blanket and going shhh, it'll be all right at them. And somehow, it works.

He breathes out. He lets the tranquillity find its way into his mind. He accepts the help as it is given. That's what he keeps saying, after all: We have each other's backs. Sometimes, that means accepting help.

"I did not know you could do that," he murmurs, with a hint of gratitude and relaxing considerably.

Ariadne blinks.

"Do what." Her face retreats by an inch as if this would better grant her ability to look through his own in turn. Oh, wait: where did those crow's-lines at the corners of his eyes go? The tension in his lips and jawline. "I did something? I just said you had a rough go of it. That it'll be okay? Uh." Her gaze skates to one side as she visibly thinks. "Wait."

Brows arc high. "You mean when I kissed your forehead? That. I just. Um. I...wanted you to feel better...?" It's like trying to describe the fleeting remnants of a dream as reality reasserts itself.

"You projected it. The quiet." Ravn sits quite still; for a moment at least, peace reigns and he's going to make the most of it. "Your compassion. Into my mind. There are people who can do that. Some call it mind Xanax. I've heard worse descriptions."

Blink-blink.

"Mind Xanax," the barista repeats after a musing moment. "Well...could be worse...I guess?" Her hands, soft but for the subtle calluses of her work and hobbies, remain cupping Ravn's face. "I'm guessing it isn't anything permanent? At least, with particular anxieties. How to put this. You dull a wound, it doesn't hurt, you go and accidentally hurt yourself more. Anxiety is there as a warning, even if it makes no sense in modern context sometimes. There's no sabre-toothed tiger lurking outside the window," Ariadne laughs softly, sympathetically.

"It never lasts." Ravn's tone is mixed; on one side, living in a permanent state of artificial calm would probably not be a good thing. On the other, it sometimes sounds very nice. "I tried so hard to learn how to do that. Until somebody took pity on me and told me, we can't do it to ourselves. And I don't have any of that kind of power anyhow."

He braids his fingers into Ariadne's. "Also, my room here? It sucks for romantic stuff. The boat is far better. At least it doesn't look like sitting in some professor's office."

Ariadne nods. A good thing to learn, that one can't use the (apparent!) power to self-soothe. The self-soothe must come from one's own gumption. Still, this newfound ability has her partially distracted enough that when the interlocking of fingers happens, she belatedly looks down as if it were a surprise knocking her out of introspection. In a way, the motion did and she's glad for it.

Ravn's comment entices a soft laugh out of her. "I mean, it doesn't really look like a professor's office. Maybe a TA's office, sure," she allows, glancing over at the Dane again. She'd been considering the piles of books scattered about on surfaces. "Maybe I'll show up in knee-high white socks and a wee little mini-skirt and ask what I can do to better my grade." Yes. She's being deliberately outrageous and further accents this proposition with a flutter of dark lashes before chuckling.

Ravn can't help a small laugh. With his mind's ocean settling, however artificially, he feels less adrift. "I might not yell at you to get out of my office."

Because that's happened. Of course it has. He was the young, handsome TA with the interesting background. And not stupid enough to trust his career or his privates to somebody who'd rather hit on the TA than do her homework. Or in one case, his homework.

He braids his fingers out of and back into hers. "I would not have taken you for the roleplaying sort."

By the empathetic cant of Ariadne's smile, she isn't terribly surprised to hear that her boyfriend's had to yell before. Unfortunate, the carelessness that one is subjected to when their face is taken into account before their honor and dignity. Her eyes fall to their fingers and she takes up mimicking the motion, weaving digits in and out at a slower pace. Must not accidentally zing him.

"I'm open to ideas," she murmurs before glancing up at Ravn again through those lashes she'd fluttered not seconds back. "Nothing like a little spice in the bedroom. It's all in fun anyways. If that sort of roleplaying is too close to home, I definitely respect that. You don't need to indulge me if it's uncomfortable to consider. It's...one of those very real, very stupid risks of being in a position of power in academia. Still." Her grin flickers into being. "I wear a mean set of knee-high socks."

Ravn laughs softly. "There are very few things I won't do to make somebody happy as long as they don't happen at the expense of somebody else."

His hands aren't shaking any longer. He is grateful for this.

He sighs. "We can explore these ideas sometime. Tonight? I think I need to just sleep. And if you don't mind -- I understand we may have to go to your place because of Sam, but -- I'd really like to not be alone. Not tonight. I'll have nothing but dreams of coming back alone, or of drowning in that fucking river."

"Of course, Ravn. Mi casa, su casa. You can stay over as long as you'd like, as long as it takes. Sam's a good snuggler too, if you don't mind a sighthound curled up against your back," Ariadne notes with a fond little smile. "And I don't own a pair of knee-high socks -- er, stockings? Like that anyways, so the idea would have to wait regardless. I'll have to go...find some, I guess." By her lilting, musing tone, this doesn't sound like too much of a hardship nor that she's dismayed at it.

Fingers continue threading. "We can have an easy dinner. I'll do something like...cube up some chicken in the skillet, make some rice and nuke some veggies in the microwave. A little bit of garlic, salt, butter, boom. Protein, veggies, starch, nothing hard on the stomach. Tea before we go to bed. Or we can watch something for a bit, let the brains settle more. You just have to do one thing first for me, okay? Well, two things," the barista amends. "Go shower thoroughly. No more river water on you, period. And maybe lend me some clothing. My stuff is still soaked on the bathroom floor."