It's a Graves thing (soundofwings) wrote in rooms, @ 2015-05-13 11:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | !marvel comics, *log, death, eddie nigma |
[Marvel Log: Eddie and Muerte]
Who: Eddie and Muerte
What: Nightmares and Comfort - Part 1
Where: Random nice Marvel hotel - NYC
When: The other day? Before acquiring the comic book shop building.
Warnings/Rating: Creepy nightmares into ~adult~ shower times.
It was dark. But it was hot. The sort of hot, radiant heat of sitting far too close to a fire. Too hot for there to be any moisture in the air at all. Turning skin and soul papery with the heat. Only the thinnest shift-slip of a dress kept her covered, already bleached and transparent and torn from her journey.
She could feel the grit of sand everywhere - in her teeth, in her eyes, between her toes, under her fingernails. Every movement was a rasp and chafe. Every breath, ones she needed to take, was full of the same.
Heart racing, as if she'd been running for miles. The sort of running that only came with being chased, but she couldn't remember what was chasing her. She climbed over the next dune of sand on all fours, hands and knees blistered. And before her were a million more dunes.
She wanted to sob, but she couldn't find the breath.
The sand shifted around her, weighted by the feet of those whose eyes she couldn't meet. Destiny and his twin lovers, Dream with Nada, those few others who had done nothing more than love. Those she'd had to take because of it. Beyond that first ring were the others that had been affected - Nada's people, the twins' nascent civilization. The people reached over the next dunes, farther than her sand-scratched eyes could see.
And then the voices started. Languages she could only half-understand, whispered words she could only half hear. But the meaning, the emotion, was clear enough. They blamed her. blamed her for their ends - always awful ends - murmured that she could have changed it, could have refused to take them away. She curled in on herself, trying to block them, but the words continued in her ears no matter how tightly she pressed her hands to them.
--She could have saved them. Could have kept them from their ends. But she didn't. And now there would be another. Another, who would suffer worse than all of them. Because he was hers.--
She tried to cry, but everything was still too hot, too dry.
He didn’t know how long he had been there. Months, years, days? When he awoke there wasn’t a raspy breath, no squint of his eyes to block out the sand covering his body. If it was hot, he didn’t know. Dry? Well, so was he. Clatter, clack and he sat up, watching a mound of black near him curl as if it hoped it’d turn into nothing. There used to be something in him that would find that curious, a part of him that would have wanted to help. But, things were so dry now, weren’t they?
“Hello.” He said and waved a hand that was incidentally made completely of bone. There was no humor in his voice, no hate, no wonder. If she looked up, she’d only see a skeleton in a green suit and stupid little bowler hat staring at her. The bone around his eyes was painted in gold, purple, beautiful colors that meant nothing. Plumes of beauty and life that wasn’t there anymore. The jaw shined with emeralds and rubies. Beauty in death. Festive even if he didn’t act like a man who knew anything about that.
She was Santa Muerte and he was just another soul that didn’t quite make it to the day of the dead. A skull, lost in sand that didn’t care about popping color and bright charm. “Oh. I’m a skeleton.” Eddie looked down at his hand and stared at it until he didn’t care anymore. Which, incidentally, didn’t take very long.
Through all the other whispers, through the press of voices that were in her ears and her mind, one cut through. She cringed away from it at first, painful like ice laid directly on overheated skin, starting at the base of her skull and melting downward, following the ladder of vertebrae and not gravity. It shouldn't have been possible, there was no ice actually there, but she felt the back of that thin dress stick to her spine with the melted ice, clinging to the soft bumps of bone.
The voice cut through again, and she finally listened to the way it filled her mind, the mention of being a skeleton grabbing her attention. She lifted her head, expecting to still see the crowd gathered around her, but they were gone, and with that, so were their voices. Their footprints remained, pockmarking the sand, and she stared out at them until she forced herself to turn her head.
Toward the skeleton. One dressed in mardi gras colors, dressed as if ready for a party, a procession. She began to shiver, the ice-trickle sending out fingers from her spine, wrapping around her, clinging shiver-wet fabric to paper-dry skin like she'd been dipped in a frigid bath. She opened her mouth to speak, but water poured out, enough for her to choke on even though her lungs had been so dry the moment before. The sand around her darkened with the spill of it, moisture sinking downward and firming the shifting grit into something harder beneath her knees. She tried to cough the water out, to pull air back in its place, but she could feel the chill of it all the way into her body.
The skeleton watched because that’s what dead men did. Empty black sockets that looked longer than any deep, galaxy stare she ever gave him. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone do that before.” He said, but again there was no curiosity about it. Matter-of-Fact. He creaked and tilted his head down to watch the water mix with the sand and inch across his body. His suit was getting dirty and that was a bit of a bother, but he didn’t fault her for it. Instead he laid back down in the sand and let the mud tug at his bones.
A rib broke and then another. The wet sand turned a shade of black and tentacles lifted up around him. Like someone twinkling a piano, the rest of his ribs snapped one by one and his chest completely caved in under the blackening quicksand. “Oh, I recognize you.” He lifted a finger that was jeweled like his jaw. Beautiful, especially with mud trying to eat him whole. “Selfish, just like the others. I couldn’t blame you. A good heart is a lovely thing to waste, don’t you think? Ah, well. I should have thrown it out a long time ago.” The sand pounded and pounded on the back of his skull until crack! It opened wide and crawled through his eye sockets and wiggled between teeth.
“Should have done the procedure before.” His voice gagged with the wet crawling out of his mouth and soon the whole skull was swallowed up by the quicksand. Only bony fingers reaching towards really nothing in particular.
She couldn't breathe, the water pouring out of her like air should have, and she choked on it, but the world didn't go dark, didn't close in. She choked, her lungs cramped, but she stayed horribly aware of it all. Enough to watch him lay back, to see the mud crawl over him, crush him, and sobs began to join her choking. Tears leaked from her eyes, the same black color as the tentacles of mud, spilling over her cheeks to stain the tissue-fabric of her dress, pooling at first on her thighs and then crawling back up her body, dirty slug-shine trails until it reached her wrists and wrapped tight. The tension of them jerked her body forward, back onto her hands and knees, and reached out more, pulling her hands with them.
The crawling black guided her forward, a reaching tendril wrapping around those bony sentinel fingers and drawing them together, hand to hand. But when that jeweled finger touched her own, it cut sudden and deep, a spill of red onto the sand for a moment until the searching black took it over, dyeing the carmine into sable like the spread of night, greedy as the color rushed back toward her hand, latching onto the cut and in. From there it was quick, the color under her skin grey at first, rushing up her wrist and her arm, the water still spilling from her mouth doing nothing to wash it away.
It was a flash, wrist, arm, chest. It wrapped around her lungs and squeezed, the water pushed out only to be replaced by that blackness. She closed her eyes, the black tears still spilling out, and tried to scream.
Eddie awoke with an unusual sense of calmness. It reminded him of his time dabbling with tranquility as a solution to his marriage with Stephanie. No keen sense of the world around him, only the simple warmth of his bed could be felt. Well, no not his bed. The hotel room that he and Muerte were hiding in together. Sometimes he wondered if she’d keep him here forever, the little wind-up toy he had been afraid of becoming all those years ago. Sometimes he believed she wanted to start a new life with him. Life. The word bloomed in his mind and made his heart beat faster. The world came into focus. The clean smell of the room, the bright sun sneaking through the blinds. The sound of the street far below.
He used to count down time he had with her because he didn’t believe she’d give up being an Endless for him. It was that simple, an easy equation that played over and over in his head. But, after she chased him into Marvel, he started to hope. He started to believe. And that left this constant dull pain in his chest that hadn’t gone away until he dreamed about being nothing but painted bones in sand. Tranquility would stop the pain, or at least, make him impossible to love again. Still, he chose the pain. He didn’t mind the way it felt if there was something good at the end.
His head turned to look at Muerte laying next to him. She looked awful, sick like someone had fed her the Pit while he was sleeping and he immediately sat up in panic. “Muerte-” He started, about to reach for her when she suddenly let out a scream like he had pushed her in the damn pit himself.
"Muerte-" The voice was the same, but distant, so much farther away, though still she was able to hear it over the rush of whatever it was working through her body. The darkness kept growing thicker, taking over even the water she was choking on, the clear flow of it turning muddy and clinging to the inside of her throat, choking for real, her entire body shaking with it. She tried to scream again, scared and hurting, and the sound of it--
She screamed again, scared and hurting, and the sound of it woke her up, back in the real world where things didn't make sense yet, gasping for breath, the cool conditioned air of the hotel room a relief on her throat and chilled on her cheeks where the tears had spilled. She pushed herself half up on one elbow, struggling against the covers and the tshirt she was wearing to sleep in. Everything felt like it was clinging to her, choking her still, and she shoved at the sheets, still gasping as she did.
It took a long moment of fighting and sitting up before she woke enough to realize that nothing was grabbing at her, and then her panic broke, overwhelming her. Even though she was still trying to catch her breath, she folded over on herself, forehead practically to the mattress, and sobbed. She couldn't even remember all the details of the dream, but it clung to her, the emotions of it awful.
Eddie had been here before. When Stephanie refused to get help for her PTSD, Eddie found himself always waking up to her screaming, choking, crying. Furious at the world, big blue sorry eyes sad at him. He had promised himself that he’d never be here before, but Gotham didn’t make happy people. Every woman he had ever been interested in had their issues, had issues that paired nicely with his and so he had to just accept it. And, besides. Muerte wouldn’t allow herself to keep feeling like this night after night. She’d do something. Which...actually worried him just as much.
“Hey,” His voice was softer than it had been as skeleton man once she was done thrashing. Eddie’s first reaction was to get her some water, some cool towels to rub her face into. But, if she had just experienced the same vivid dream he had, water was probably the last thing she wanted to feel on her skin. Yep shared dreams were something he knew about, too.
A little voice in the back of his head warned him very loudly not to touch her. DO NOT TOUCH. BAD IDEA, NIGMA. Eddie thought he was a goddamned expert at panic attacks, after all, but after experiencing himself with no heart, no tenderness it was hard to stop himself. As much as he threatened people with the idea, it was easily his biggest fear. One he carried around with him because he thought it’d be best for everyone except for him. He paused, hand hovering over her back as she pulled in on herself before it gently lowered to rub between her shoulder blades. “See? Fleshy. So fleshy. Fleshy Eddie is what they call me.” He tried to put as much Eddie in his voice as possible. Good old razzle dazzle.
It was so much - too much, and it had to come out. The tears wouldn't stop, even after she brought her hands up to cover her face, to muffle the sound of them and the way her breath hitched, still struggling in her lungs. She didn't know if this was normal, if she was meant to feel this way - she'd only just started sleeping in general, and dreams - both good and bad - were still new to her. And shared dreams were a complete unknown.
She could feel the bed shift beneath her as Eddie moved, could barely think to focus on what he was doing. She was trying to chase down the bits of her dream, to figure out what it all meant, while doing her best to work past the panic and pain of it. There was a moment of silence and stillness, broken only by her still hitching breath, and then his hand was on her back, right over her spine, where that first slide of ice had trickled in the dream. Her shoulder blades pulled back into something tense, high ridges beneath the soft fabric of her shirt, but then he started talking.
'Fleshy Eddie' made her laugh, a grating, broken, wet sound that was still delivered right into her hands. Her crying started to taper, either from the bright ramble of his words or the easy weight of his hand on her back. She stayed folded over for a few more long, long moments, and then finally, slowly, sat up again, looking over at him. Her face was red, blotchy from crying, damp and uneven, and she just looked at him, studying him, like she expected to see only breaking bones again.
When she sat up, he extended his arms out for her to crawl into. Eddie was shirtless with just his Riddler PJ’s bottoms, his hair a mess as it usually was from sleeping and his jaw dotted with scruff. He tried to smile at her. It took a second, but the edges of his mouth finally wiggled into the right shape. “See? It’s me. The Riddler. In the flesh.” Eddie’s voice dropped comically low, as if he were dramatically introducing himself to a bank full of people or a room full of rogues.
But, then he realized that she probably wasn’t looking for that mask, the one that resembled a skeleton she saw and his voice hovered back to its normal pitch. “Come here. We can talk about it if you want?” He waited to see if she’d cuddle up next to him or keep the distance.
She continued to stare through Eddie finding his smile and that comic introduction, blinking eyes that were still wet enough to blur. Her eyebrows drew together just a little at the clowning tone of his voice, and it took a moment even after he softened again. But then she nodded, once, jerky, and moved closer to him. She was bare legs and a mess of hair and a sweat-damp t-shirt, and she didn't pay much attention to how she was sitting, other than that she was close enough to lean in and wrap her arms around him. It was a tight embrace at first, checking the solidity of him, but then she freed one of her hands and used it to map over his skin, fingers wide and searching. Over his back, along the peak of his shoulder blade, down farther to slot fingers in the space between his ribs, pressing just enough to assure herself that none of them were at all broken.
Through it all, she didn't say anything, only rested her head on his shoulder and tried to keep the even pace of breath that she'd finally found, warm and damp against Eddie's skin with each exhale.
There was a sigh of relief as she eagerly reached for him. He wanted that too tight embrace, that messy jumble of limbs. It was this kind of connection, the way they held each other when things got bad, that made him think they could get through all the shit that the hotel could throw at them. Being distant and cold wasn’t going to do either of them any favors. “Hey, it’s okay.” He told her gently, rubbing her back as she clung to him. He leaned back as she checked to see if he was all there, to make sure nothing was broken. One of his hands took hers and pressed it to his chest so she could feel his heart beat. “See?”
He tilted forward to kiss her forehead and relaxed his shoulders. “If it makes you feel better, I didn’t feel a thing. I wasn’t even afraid.” Eddie tugged her leg so she’d situate more comfortably on top of him and then looked up at her. “All I remember is being a pimped out skeleton hanging out in the sand. And then I got crushed, but it wasn’t so bad. Nothing was bad. Or good. Or anything.” Eddie tried to suppress a chill that ran down his spine, but he couldn’t.
It didn't seem strange to her in the moment to not reply, to rely on her eyes and touch instead of words. Even when Eddie said things, his was the only voice in the room. She wanted to cling to him and check him over for injuries and signs of bone and breaking. Just because she didn't see them at first didn't mean that they wouldn't appear, and she kept her eyes as unblinking as she could to watch for them.
But the way he took up her hand and pressed it to his own chest made her eyes slip closed as she sighed and mapped out the even beats of his heart. Her hand pressed almost (but not quite) too hard, fingertips digging in, but she found that she still couldn't back away. She didn't open her eyes through all of his words, not until he stumbled to a stop, and then, eyes still closed, she shook her head again, not quite ready to hear it. Instead, she readjusted the leg that he tugged on, leaving that one over his lap as she moved closer.
Eddie liked the pressure on his chest, it was like clenching fingers around an open wound. Pain against pain found this comforting middle ground. He let her push and push, his hand gently letting go so it could thread through her messy black hair. She wasn’t talking and that was fine, but he didn’t try to fill the air with more words to make himself feel comfortable. That was an old habit, something that never really did him any good anyway.
He sighed at that shake of her head and sunk farther down in the pillows. There was a long pause and she could practically hear the gears ticking away inside of his head. Okay, so there was actually a lot he needed to say, but he didn’t know how or if it would do any good. He had questions that blinked in his head in the brightest shade of neon green and he had to keep those down, too. For now, at least. Finally, “What happened before you found me? In the dream?”
When she was finally satisfied that Eddie's heart was beating strong and regular, she let her hand ease and slip away from his chest, her arms wrapping around him again as she shifted over into his lap, legs on either side of his hips. She clung, and it was maybe too close, but the nightmare still echoed in her mind, and it seemed so very, very real. Head tucked beneath his chin as well as she could manage, her hands sometimes absently stroked down his back, like they still needed to feel skin and the muscle that was beneath.
He was quiet for a long time, but she knew that the questions would start soon, because that was who he was. She tried to ready herself for them, and when one finally came, she was able to breathe in, a slight tightening of her arms like her finally saying something might make him disappear. "Guilt." Her voice was low and wrecked, like she'd been screaming through the entire nightmare and not just at the end. "All the people…" She trailed off, pressing her face against the front of his shoulder, warm and still damp against his skin.
“People?” Eddie asked in a whisper, his fingers threading through her hair stopped as he tried to guess the meaning. “People that would get hurt if..?” He didn’t think she was having some kind of spirit vision, a look into the future. No, he thought this was her fear folding in on itself, getting stronger and bigger every day they spent together. He didn’t want her to feel like that anymore and he also didn’t want to leave, so he had no idea how to make it better.
Instead, he pulled her closer and sighed. “No one’s hurt.” Eddie told her and gave a jagged, hard sigh. Another pause as he debated between trying to comfort her and being honest. Well, she said no more masks, right? And frankly he didn’t have it in him to keep pushing what he knew was true aside to make someone he cared about feel better. “We’re going to have to decide on...things. Pretty soon, Muerte. There is a chance that dream was a friendly warning. An alarm. We can’t keep sleeping in this hotel room forever. And I-” He sighed and looked toward the door. “I need to go back to Gotham eventually.”
She shook her head just enough for it to be felt with his hand in her hair. "People that have been. That I've had to… When they've fallen in lo--" She stopped, pressed her mouth against his skin to stop herself from finishing the word. "Destiny and Dream. Their lovers. All the other people… Nada's and the twins' and... " Her voice went even softer. "Enough to cover the sand as they stood there and talked to me…" She tipped her head down, curving so that she could press her forehead to the center of his chest.
It lasted until he pulled her closer again, one of her legs bending to move herself closer. And no, she didn't want to hear what he had to say, but she knew it was true. But even though she knew it was true, she couldn't stop the way her arms tightened around him again. "I know." It came out as another whisper. "I know I do. ...we do." She allowed herself to move back just enough to look at him, eyes shuttered with hurt and fear. "Shit…" Swallowing back the word was hard, made her chest ache. "...I know. It's not fair to keep you here. I know it's not." It didn't stop her from wanting to. And maybe she should have been telling him that. She gave a short jerk of a nod. "It doesn't stop me from wanting to. To keep you as safe in this as I can." But in Marvel she was human, and not even a powered human. There were only so many things she could do to keep him safe, and most of them he could do himself.
But she knew that returning to Gotham, to what she was there, didn't hold the pull it once did. She wanted to be something more - or at least something different, and with something else governing life and death in the door, she didn't feel that responsibility she once had. "I think…" Her eyes went a little sad, but it wasn't quite regret in them. "Maybe when I go back, it'll be to… change?" There was hardly any volume to the last, like she didn't want to say it. Like saying it would be too much - for her, for him - and would make everything fall apart. Her fear of it was obvious to see.
Being in love used to be so easy for Eddie. All he had to do was try to make his lady happy. If she said jump, he’d ask how high if she wanted to tie him to railroad tracks, well how could he refuse? That was the Gotham way. That was the echo of Gotham’s greatest love stories of clowns and cats and bats. Love was shown by doing whatever it took to make the other person simply pay attention for one more second before they dashed off to embrace the Gotham night. After the divorce, Eddie changed. His heart didn’t grow cold and black the way he hoped it would (he’d be a lot better hero if he only cared about results and not his personal happiness) but instead, it made him more careful. Each step was taken so carefully so he wouldn’t be blindsided again.
But, really? He needed to find a balance. Jumping in without a care would just result in another failed marriage. Being too careful would leave all the potential love he could find behind. No, he needed to walk that thin, thin line. Something rogues and bats and everyone from his door simply didn’t know how to do.
“I was going to give you a couple more weeks.” Eddie told her and he tugged at her shoulders so she’d look up at him. “That’s pretty fair, right? Then if you decided to stay Endless, we could still partner up on the comic book store and pretend we don’t want to jump each other’s bones. If you wanted to go mortal, then- well you know. Pretty much the same thing, except for bone jumping. Eventual bone jumping. I’m not- I can be patient with that, too.” He stammered with a goofy little smile and touched her face. “I want to be here for you, too. For us, honestly. But, the longer we drag this out, the worse it’s going to be.” That one came out clean and easy like he had thought it so much, saying it out loud was a piece of cake.
Eddie tilted his head to the side as she slowly and quietly told him that the next time she’d go back, it’d be to change. He grinned, an automatic thing he quickly quickly forced back down once he realized how sad she was about it. “Are you sure?” He tried so hard to keep the relief from his voice, the hope they could start something new together. “I’d- is it weird to say I’d like that? It’s weird. I’m sorry.”
In so many ways, even though she knew it was unfair, she was relying on Eddie to help guide them through what a relationship should (or could) be. She'd watched them for her entire existence, but actually trying to navigate one… "I've been thinking about it. A lot." And then, surprising with the way she was already overloaded with all the different thoughts and emotions that the dream had brought on, she blushed. "Not about the… bone jumping." Though her mouth curved just the tiniest bit as she said it, there and gone again in only a second. "I mean… maybe a litt-" A hard shake of her head. That wasn't the point, and it wasn't the time.
But she had to laugh at that so-quick grin, even though the sound came out ragged. She nodded a little as she swallowed hard, searching for her voice, for it to come out the right way. "I'm still…" Right, honesty. Delivered with a slow shake of her head. "I don't know if I'm sure. But I don't know if I'm ever going to be sure. I know that… I'm not what I was once. I'm…" It felt like a bigger confession than it should, and it took her a second of thought, of dropping her gaze and frowning, for her to realize. It was the sense of failure. She'd been able to be what she was for so long - to not get too close or too involved, to be separate from the things that had tugged at her siblings until they misstepped. She had been (moreso, apparently, than even Destiny) steady. Eternal. But now she was different, changed so much even when she was through the door and Endless. "...Done. It's a part of me that I can't…" She stopped. She didn't think she had the words to describe what she was feeling. She didn't know if they'd been created in any language ever spoken.
Eddie smiled at her blush. “There’s nothing wrong with a little bone jumping.” He said all eyebrow waggle and Riddler swagger. This wasn’t the time or the place for kidding around, though and when she shook her head, he quieted down. His arms dropped from her sides and he looked up at her, sinking so far down in the pillows he was laying flat on his back. It felt a little like the black sand from before eating him up and the urge to push a pillow over his face and force himself to take a little nap was overwhelming.
“I feel like I’m taking a part of you.” Eddie told her as she trailed off and his eyes darted away from her. “This was all a bad idea, wasn’t? One of my best bad ideas to be sure...” He shrugged and closed his eyes. Still insisting on not looking at her. “I made you fail. I make people fail. I always think I’m helping or I’m doing something that’ll lead to goodness, but that’s not the case. When I said I’d leave you alone to figure things out, that’s what I should have done.”
She had to shuffle her legs a bit when he laid back, not wanting him to have to lay on her calf, and she ended up perched on his thighs, knees under herself, looking down at him. His confession and that glance away made her frown, made her sad. "Eddie…" She shook her head, reached out for him again, curving enough that she could rest a hand on either side of his neck, thumbs tucked just below his jaw. They stroked up once, over the rough shadow of stubble, and then back down. "No…" It was a careful, gentle sound, even though her hands still shook (just a bit) from that post-dream fear and worry. "I was already failing before you even came back." She tried to make her voice, her eyes, warm - to convince him. "It scares me how lost I feel some days. But never when we're talking about me being here. With the shop and the apartment and... " Her mouth shifted, moved like she was trying to chew her words along with a harsh bite to her own lower lip.
"You're not what the problem is." That had a little more weight behind it, and her hands moved down, fingers along his neck before her palms pressed down against his chest, just below his collarbone. "I'm scared, yeah. How could I not be? About so many things. But I've gotten to this point on my own. You being here... " She smiled - still small, still tentative, still a little bit sad. "I told you, you make me want more. You point out this new direction, and…" She shook her head. "I don't want you to come up with everything. Or to feel like you have to. But you're not giving bad ideas… I promise."
Eddie whined and slowly reached so he could hold her hands as they touched his face. The noise he made from the back of his throat was frustrated and confused and fed up with how complicated this all got. Eventually, he opened his eyes to look at her and the desperate feeling in his chest started to fade. There was warmth there in the darkness that put him at ease. An invisible smile when she said shop and apartment. He turned to kiss her hand before it travelled down his chest and he let himself breathe a little easier.
Another nod and when she smiled he did, too. “I want to make you happy, I don’t want to make things worse.” Eddie whispered back and his voice went rough with bubbling feelings for her he had tried to keep down ever since they started seeing each other. Lately, they were spilling everywhere. She told him she wanted to know and he figured if this was his last chance to be with her, why not?
In any case, Eddie believed her when she said it wasn’t him. That things were falling apart before and it made plenty of sense in his head. True to his word, he only wanted to be there for her. Help her through it. “Okay.” He said with another nod and then let his hands slowly run up the sides of her legs to rest on her hips. “Tell me more. Tell me what you’re worried about. Or why you think you saw those others in the dream. Talk to me.” His dark eyes lifted up expectantly and then he shook his head. “Kiss me first, and then talk?”
The sound out of his throat made something in her chest ache, a reaction to how out of sorts it all seemed. But she stayed there, and she waited for him to open his eyes again. She found that she wanted to see him, to make sure there was the familiar brown gaze instead of the hollow sockets that still haunted from her dream. When he finally looked up again, she offered a smile that was at least growing a little stronger, happy to see him, pleased at the press of his lips to her hand.
"You're not making things worse. It… sucks right now. But it has to get better if I figure out what to do. ...long view." She hoped they could both remember that, to make it through what was to come. She felt like there could be something very good on the horizon, if she could just pull herself together enough to get there. And if she could do that, she hoped that Eddie could do it for himself too, and they could get there together.
And of course he wanted to know more. He always had, even before she'd started telling him much of anything. It was part of who he was, that desire, the need to know more. And while she couldn't tell him all of it (she didn't think she even knew all of it herself), she could tell him more. She thought she was maybe ready to, to at least explain some of it, to say it out loud so that it might make more sense than it did in her head. She paused to think of those others in her dream, her expression distant for a moment and troubled, but then he was redirecting, and she realized that his hands had slid up to her hips and he was asking (not taking, but asking) for a kiss. It made her smile again, and she knew enough about watching nightmares to know that being close to someone after sometimes helped chase them away. It didn't leave much of a question of what to do, and she leaned over, hands still braced lightly against his chest, folded herself almost in half over him and kissed him. Soft at first, something to reassure the both of them. But then her mind fed her another picture of him in the dream, cracked beneath twisting black, and like the cling of her arms earlier, the kiss went deeper to prove to herself that he was still there, as he should be.
Eddie didn’t mind the struggle if it meant there was something good at the end. It wasn’t quite like a puzzle (which was a joy all on its own), or even a trial to prove he was good enough. It was more like cleaning up his house or learning how to sew up tears in his clothing. It was an active mending of his life, with the result being something better than what he started with. Sometimes he worried that he imposed on people, that he made them do what he wanted because he was so eager and persuasive. His fear of being a burden wasn’t something Muerte ever let him wiggle into for very long. She was the only woman who could look him in the eye and tell him what he wanted to hear and have him actually believe it.
He liked that her smile seemed to get easier and easier the farther she got from the dream. This was what he wanted. The soft smiles, the chasing away nightmares with kisses. When she leaned forward to kiss him, he knew that’s what she wanted, too. One hand reached to run through her hair, while the other rubbed against her back gently. Just as he was about to push for more, she did too and he smirked happily against her lips. The hand at her back innocently wandered under her damp shirt to run fingers up her spine and the flat of his palm back down to cross around her waist.
Despite the siren call of Gotham, Eddie needed this. Gotham had a tendency to take from him until there was nothing left. It pulled, it broke apart and then it left him to pick up the pieces. Lately, it was threatening to do the same, especially with the Arkham nonsense and so being here with Muerte kept him from working himself too hard as per usual. The tension she could feel in his body the night she dragged him to Marvel was gone and when he kissed her it was full of want and happiness that was impossible to dig out of his beloved city.
“I like you a lot.” He told her against her lips, stealing a few more kisses. Neither of them were going to admit looovvee, not until things felt more comfortable. Not until they knew it. So, he said like with that rough softness and affection so she knew it was from his heart. “Even when you wake up a mess, you’re still so pretty. I don’t know how you manage it.”
The dream had been absolutely awful, and she knew that she shouldn't ignore what was in it. Especially since it seemed like Eddie had actually been there as well, which made it somehow more than just a simple nightmare. If nightmares were ever simple. But being awake and seeing him in one piece (and fleshy, if she was going to use his words) helped to settle her, made the dream fade a little. Having his hands on her grounded her, the careful press of fingertips into her hips. And when they moved, skin skimming over skin, it shocked at something in her that was very much alive, didn't cut her open like the sharp bones in her - their? - dream. His smirk into the kiss was obvious in the angle of his lips, and she breathed out a chuckle. "Stop being so proud of yourself…" But it didn't stop her from kissing him.
The damp of her shirt made her shiver when it lifted away from her skin, replaced by warm hands, the same cold sweat curling the fine wisps around her hairline. Her skin puckered into goosebumps. She was about to complain about it, to say something about changing her shirt out for something warmer and dry, but then Eddie's fingers were sliding up her spine, and that brought another shiver - though a different kind - a shuddering vibration along her body that, just for a second, lit up everything from her scalp down to her toes. She hummed something soft into the kiss, relaxing more so that instead of being curved over him, she pressed more against him, knees still tucked under her but spread wide over Eddie's hips, and uncertain how long she could stay there without her legs cramping, but she was going to try for a little bit longer.
"I like you too…" She moved just enough to whisper it against his jaw, kissing there too, and maybe they were only saying like, but she could feel the pull of it in his voice. And it made her worry more about Gotham, but she didn't think either of them were going to climb out of bed to head through a door any time in the near future - the worry could wait for just a bit. Waiting in favor of the snort that snuck out of her, undignified and probably too loud for as close as they were, and she kissed him again with a wider smile. "Magic…"
He let his hands roam over her body, slowly feeling the curves that he was starting to know so well. Eddie’s smirk turned into a messy grin at her snort and he turned his head so she kissed his jaw and throat. “See, you say that when you know it’s entirely possible. Who knows what your magic can do here.” He whispered back and then kissed her again. The green man knew that maybe talking things out was a better idea than making out, but it was difficult for him to put the brakes on things anymore. After all, they had gotten used to sleeping in the same bed and barely wearing clothes around each other. They were practically a couple and she was the most intimate person he had been with for a while.
While he had asked (very politely) for a kiss before, now he stealing them. Eddie tilted her chin towards him and pressed his lips against hers, breath hot and body warm to the touch. His fingers snagged hold of the damp t-shirt she was wearing and he tugged at it once before getting an idea. “Can I talk you into taking a shower with me?” He asked gently and leaned back enough to look up at her. “You can say no, I won’t be offended. We’d probably awkward it up too much anyway.” He shrugged, completely indifferent of course.
He may have been getting to know the way her body curved, but at the same time she was learning the way he touched her. It had so far been with a mixture of curiosity and learning, of care and well-banked heat. She gladly obliged the turn of his head and pressed lips and a slightly-open mouth along the side of his neck, never enough to draw color to the surface, never with teeth, but warm and a little bit damp from her breath. "I told you…" The words were delivered at first to the cupped dip at the base of his throat, and then she finally pulled back just enough to angle a softly curving smile at him. "You're more magical than I am in this door." And yes, that was ridiculously cheesy, and her smile hinted that she knew as much.
The shift of the t-shirt made her shiver again, the feeling back to a crawl along her skin. She looked down at him and his gentle question, face almost blank as she processed it. Shower. Shower. She blinked, the swirl of her thoughts beginning to sneak out into her expression - interest, a lingering heat from the last kiss, maybe a little confusion, and something almost shy. "You want to take a shower with me?" She thought about it a bit more - actually picturing the logistics of it - and the traitorous seep of pink on her cheeks betrayed her blush. And after moments that were likely too long since his original question, she finally gave him a tiny nod with an even tinier smile.
He groaned at her cheesy line. “Who have you been hanging out with?” The answer to that riddle was of course him. Eddie was actually relieved she liked how sappy and silly he could get because otherwise they would not last very long. And, the good news was he knew she already had a taste for the goof way before they had ever even met. He pressed for another kiss and as soon as she took the bait, he poked her side to make her wiggle. “If only I could make my magic turn me as good looking as you.” He countered with a raised eyebrow as if to prove she wasn’t anywhere near him on the sappy scale.
But, then she was blushing at his question and his expression went soft and serious. He had all kinds of really good, logical reasons why a shower would make her feel better. But, the inclusion of himself was likely going to be the hardest part to sell. He tried so hard not to stare as her face changed from sweet, to almost dreamy, to embarrassed and he almost was ready to back out of it. Then she smiled and it made his heart beat a little less erratically. “I’ll be on my best behavior. It’ll be relaxing, I promise.” He knew she had already said yes, but he felt the need to assure her anyway.