Daniel Brown Webster (labete) wrote in bellumlogs, @ 2010-05-03 15:08:00 |
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Entry tags: | beast, beauty |
Who: Daniel and Ella
What: 40-year-old Glenfiddich is lovely
Where: R1
When: End of Fables plot/changing back
Warnings: Alcoholic triggers. Arguing. A lot of fuzz.
Beauty barely had time to think on the Witch's words about Vaughn having other trials. In fact, she barely had time to try to edge out from behind the Beast to verify that the Witch had, in fact, left R1 before the sun rose. This change, for Beauty, was not as disorienting as the previous month's. Ella had been so present, with her fears and her worries, throughout the moon that allowing the woman back in had almost been effortless. One moment, Beauty had been trying to edge around the Beast, and the next moment Ella had taken her place.
What was painful was the rush of fear and worry and panic. In Beauty, they had been distant, far off things, as seen through a pane of fogged glass. Now, here, they brought Ella to her knees and she screamed and curled in on herself, arms hugged over her head. She knew, somewhere in her mind, that she needed to help Daniel. That he would be in pain. She expected the screaming to come, and she told herself she would move when she heard his voice. But to go from being safe (because Beauty felt completely safe from outside harm around the Beast) to being petrified was no small thing.
The Beast, too, was distracted, left wondering what it was the Witch meant, because complex thought about motives had definitely not been on the forefront of his mind. The change back seemed faster this time, as if it wasn't quite as endless as before only because he knew there would, in fact, be an end to it. He heard Ella scream, but it was dull and distant, and frustratingly he could do very little about it.
When he was able, however, he pulled himself into a slumped sitting position and reached out to pull her closer.
She tensed for the briefest moment, and then she clung to him, burying her face against his shoulder in the shambles of the bedroom, which was littered with bits of door and bedframe and vines. That she was crying was obvious, unable to control the emotions she'd been fighting to keep in check since the attack. She clung, and she didn't move back even the tiniest bit until she'd managed to get the sobs slightly under control. Then she cupped his cheeks, and she looked into his blue eyes. "Where is it?"
Daniel had absolutely no idea exactly why she was so upset, since God knew there were enough options, so he just held her and stroked her hair and said nothing at all until she moved away. He dropped his chin an inch or so and his brows went down in uncertain puzzlement. "Where is what?"
"The bottle," she said, standing and holding a hand down to him. Her chin barely tipped up, and she looked a mess with tears, but beneath that was a bit of her old determination. There were a million things to worry about, yes, but she wasn't going to let him drink himself back into oblivion because of her. She knew what that was like, knew what it did to people, and even with vampires on the loose, torturers and witches, that what was the thing she remembered first.
Daniel's expression went immediately guilty, then wary, then as blank as he could make it--which was not very, a lot of worry still showed through. Rather than standing up immediately, he fished around under the bed and found a pair of (very wrinkled) pants to put on. If they were going to have an argument about this, he was damn well going to do it with some clothes on. Mostly, he hoped he wouldn't have to argue.
Standing, with the shadows very deep under his eyes and above his collarbone, Daniel sighed. "It's just the one," he said, persuasively. "And it's gone now, so you don't have to worry." He stepped over the mess and took her hand.
"Don't lie to me, Daniel," she said, tugging on his fingers.
Ella knew alcoholics, and she could only blame the state of her mind for not having caught the scent of whiskey on him herself. It just made her angrier with herself, which just made her all the more determined to not let him lie to her or placate her. She pulled her fingers from his, and she stretched up and cupped his cheeks. The look she gave him was earnest and strong. "Where is it?" she asked again. It wasn't an aggressive question, but she wasn't going to back down from it either. And she wasn't afraid of any reaction he might have; that was evident in the lack of vines in the room. "I've been there. I'll tell you about it someday. But for now, we're both too weak to have anything like that in here."
He hesitated. He knew from what Beauty had said and what she was saying now that she viewed the whiskey as something like a threat to herself, and while Daniel certainly had no particular strength of will when it came to damaging himself, hurting Ella was completely counterintuitive to everything he was. "Don't worry," he said instead, putting his arms around her waist and kissing her cheek. "It's almost gone and I won't get any more. Come to bed, we'll clean when we wake up."
She took the comfort he offered, leaning into him and then stretching to press her cheek to his. When she kissed him, it was slow, a lingering, promise-filled thing, and the first kiss of its kind since the attack. Then she slipped back onto her heels and she crossed her arms. "The bottle first," she said softly.
Frown. Cheating. "Ella." Tug.
"No." Just as softly, with a small tilt of her chin and wide, trusting eyes. Then, softer. "Please."
He looked past her to the door, then down at her face. His throat worked. "Can't you leave it alone?" Without accusation, just a question. "It's easier this way." He meant it was easier for him. He meant that it was hard, impossible, without it. "Please?"
She shook her head slowly. It wouldn't have surprised her if he lashed out, and in fact she was starting to tense a little in anticipation of it. (Again, Ella knew alcoholics). "Next time I'm having a nightmare, you wake me," she said determinedly. "You don't drink your way through it." She stretched and kissed the corner of his mouth, his cheek, his jaw, and she pressed her cheek to his. "Please, Daniel?" she whispered.
This time, he put his arms around her shoulders and squeezed. "I'm not supposed to wake you up," he said softly. "It's not your fault," he said, a second later. "It's not a lot, I promise. Not like it was before. It's okay." Another squeeze.
She let herself lean against him for a moment. In fact, she wanted nothing more than to coax him back to that destroyed bed and forget everything that wasn't here and now. But she knew that wasn't an option, knew that ignoring this was a path to worse things down the line.
She stepped back, out of his reach. "I want you to take me to bed and make me forget everything with your body," she told him openly, "but first I want that bottle, Daniel." She took a deep breath, clearly bracing for a fight which she really didn't have the strength to handle. "Where is it?"
When she pulled back so far that he could not retrieve her again, his expression flickered from hurt to stony anger. "Fine." He pulled away too, increasing the distance between them. "If you're so damn set on controlling everything." He looked away so he wouldn't see the hurt he had caused. "It's in the back of that drawer under the sink."
Her lower lip trembled, and her shoulders shook, and she was scared at the anger in a way she wouldn't have been before the attack. She was accustomed to taking her father's bottled away, and she knew how angry an alcoholic could get. But vulnerable as she was, it frightened still. She had it under control within a minute, though, and she turned toward the kitchen without a word, to where he'd indicated the bottle was.
She tugged open the drawer he'd indicated, and she pulled out the bottle. It was almost empty and the remaining amber liquid made her mouth water. It was expensive, and she subconsciously began crossing people off the list that he could have gotten it from. She looked weak, standing there holding it, watching the liquid slosh through the thick glass.
He made a sound from the doorway, the movement of his feet on the border of carpet to tile, intentionally, so she would know he was there. Arms folded, eyes dark, he was watching her, but he didn't say anything.
She didn't hear him approach, and so she uncapped the bottle and she passed it, open, beneath her nose. She closed her eyes as she breathed in the scent, so much more pure and refined than she'd ever smelled in her life. It wasn't Black Velvet or Evan Williams or Jack Daniels, and it smelled smooth in a way those didn't. Her fingers shook as she pulled the bottle down, and she stared at it for a moment longer, very obviously battling with herself.
"Ella." He had no idea what he meant by saying it, but he felt, for some reason, like he should interrupt. "What are you doing?" Cautiously.
His voice jarred her from her reverie, and she put the bottle over the sink and upended it immediately, not thinking before she did it. For good measure, she ran the water and poured cleaner in the empty bottle and set it in the middle of the sink. She stared at it for just a moment, and then she turned and went to him. She knew he was angry with her, but that didn't matter just then. She wound her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek to his chest silently.
He was angry, but not angry enough to push her away. He hesitated for a moment then put his arms around her the way he always did and squeezed, just once. Then he pulled back, trying to do so without actually pushing her away. He didn't really feel all that affectionate at the moment. "Going to get some rest," he mumbled, turning his head to avoid her eyes and choosing his words so the meaning was clear.
She understood the rejection for what it was, and she tried to keep the tears from her eyes as she nodded just once. The fact that this wasn't her apartment hit her hard and fast, and all the insecurity she'd felt with him before Beauty, before they'd slept together came crashing down. She stood there, and she looked toward the door to study. It was open, and it would be so easy to just climb into the dumbwaiter and go down to 905. Kat rubbed against her leg, and Ella picked her up and rubbed her cheek against the kitten's fur, dampening it with her tears.
After a pause, in which he backed away a couple steps and then shifted awkwardly back: "You're not coming?" Apparently, one could be angry and worry at the same time.
"I thought you didn't want me to," she said softly, though she tipped her chin up just a little, with just a touch of defiance.
"I said 'rest'," he said, testily.
She held the squirming kitten, as if holding onto something made her stronger, and she walked past him into the bedroom. It was obvious from the way she was holding her shoulders that the way he was talking to her hurt her, but when she turned to face him she tipped her chin defiantly (the scars from the rope marks and the stitches all the more visible for it). "I know you're angry at me," she said. "But I'm not going to sit by and watch you kill yourself, Daniel. So you can get as cranky as you'd like, it isn't going to change that." Her voice trembled a little. "It's absolutely terrifying right now, and I get that too. But we're not going to do that," she went on, her grasp of properness and grammar dropping as her accent surfaced. "Me or you. And you being angry doesn't mean you can turn into a bear. The Beast can get away with that, but you can't," she finished, her nose red and tears coming unbidden by the time she was done, the words gasping and unattractive through the sobbing.
Daniel didn't really know what to do with a crying and sobbing Ella. He backed away a step just in case she exploded spontaneously, but the prickling anger didn't let him back down much more than that. "I wasn't killing myself," he retorted, remembering to modulate his voice at the very last second. "And I didn't the last time, no matter what you people think, I was fine right until they wouldn't give me anything when I couldn't move." His resentment at this lack of freedom was obvious. Daniel had never decided not to drink. Someone else had made that decision for him, and now she was doing the same thing.
The kitten, sensing impending doom, jumped from Ella's arms. Ella, for her part, closed the space between them and placed her palms on his cheeks. "Yes, you were," she said, though she kept her voice soft enough that he would have had to strain to hear. "You can't blame them for what you did to yourself, Daniel. It's your way to cope; they just tried to take it away in the wrong way. But they were right in wanting to take it away from you."
"Yeah, well, maybe you should let me live my own damn life!" He pushed her hands away at the wrist, not hard enough to make it a blow, but quite seriously enough that said he did not want to be touched, or petted, or made to feel like he didn't know what the hell to do with himself.
"So you can kill yourself up here alone?" she asked, not giving up, though she did back up a little too much when he pushed, fear flaring in her eyes more than it should have, memories of the catacombs and a noose and knife making her fear rise sharply (as did the vines at her back). "No. I won't let you. You matter too much."
Daniel took in a sharp breath, perhaps to yell more, and then he looked over her shoulder at the vines, and then back at her face. He reigned himself in with a very visible struggle. He clenched his back teeth, rotated sharply, and went back into the bedroom.
She let him go, and she looked back at the study once, then back at the shattered bedroom door. She took a deep, deep steadying breath (she needed it), and she walked after him and crawled onto the bed. Instead of staying on her own side, however, she curled against his back, wrapped her arm over his waist and pressed her cheek between his shoulders. She was shaking, crying too softly for him to hear, and she was tense, awaiting rejection. Still, she hugged him stubbornly from behind, wetting his back with tears, fingers trembling against the warm skin of his stomach.
He was stubborn for a few minutes, staring at the back of his eyelids, breathing steady and simmering in his anger, which felt more and more ridiculous as the time passed. Eventually, however, he turned over, and without a word, gathered her very close to his chest, and put his head down next to hers.
She cried harder when he finally turned and pulled her close, as if a dam had broken. There was nothing delicate or dramatic about it; it was raw and naked and painfully open.
He didn't say anything to try to comfort her, mostly because he doubted very much he could come up with anything effective. He just held her against the storm and waited for it to pass.
She clung to him as she cried. It was the sort of cathartic crying that lets you know someone is going to be all right; the sort of crying that means they're not too broken to still feel. She didn't need him to say anything just then; she just needed him to be, and he was. By the time the sobs slowed, she was exhausted from it, so tired that her death grip on him had lessened. She nuzzled against his neck, and she knew she looked a mess. She didn't care. "We're going to be alright," she said voice hoarse from crying, thick from exhaustion, and it was clear in her voice that she believed it enough for the both of them, even if he didn't. At least in that moment.