Lem Collier (littlelem) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2018-04-07 17:08:00 |
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Entry tags: | #october 2017, lem, lem x vex, vex |
Who: Vex and Lem
When: Sunday, Oct 15, late night
Where: their new house on Ludlow
Warnings: crazytalk
Status: Complete
It had been a long, winding, strange road from where they’d started to where they were going. Lem didn’t mind. It wasn’t like she was in a hurry to get anywhere, ever. So she and Vex went back to Baltimore for a while, to gather some things and talk to some people. He did most of the talking, since they’d been people he used to know. There had been some more visions, the black pegasus leading them toward wherever they were going. Sometimes Lem saw it, and sometimes she didn’t. It always felt like a stronger message when she could. It hadn’t been all business though -- there had been some parties too, and even more of them in New York, where they hung out for a while on their way north.
It had been fun, and if they were going to be devoured in Maine by some giant wolf-monster, Lem wanted to have some of that kind of fun. The kind that made her feel most alive, drunk and dancing as hard as she could, surrounded by sweaty bodies, people tapping into their most primal selves. “There were drums before there were words!” she shouted at Vex over the din at some point. It didn’t even matter if he heard her or not, he understood.
Lem had slept a lot of the way through Vermont and New Hampshire and Maine, only taking over driving when Vex got too tired or too into his own head to pay attention to road signs. They had to backtrack two or three times, but eventually, finally, they crossed the town border and they were in Point Pleasant. Lem rolled her window down and got her knees under her in the passenger seat, sticking her upper body out into the night air. She breathed it in deep, liking the smell of salt from the ocean. Pulling herself back in, she twisted around to look at Vex. “Does this feel like the place?” she asked. It said it was on the map, but sometimes maps lied. And towns lied.
"It feels like the place," Vex replied but it was more than just a feeling. He'd grown up here and he'd done a good job of forgetting about the town until it so rudely reminded him it existed. It hadn't changed much, a few buildings were different but all the important bits were still there, almost like they were taunting him. He hadn't been back in three decades and he was sure his aunt Sarah expected him to sell the house she left him rather than move into it. But here they were, riding their rumbling faithful van into the belly of the beast.
"This place is evil," he told Lem. "We're here for a reason." He wasn't sure what that reason was yet, just that there was a monster there they needed to kill but there was something else too, something shadowy, dancing at the edge of his mind. "You don't go out alone after dark without a gun and those trinkets we got." He didn't know if said trinkets worked but they were supposed to ward off evil and they needed that in a place like Point Pleasant.
It didn’t feel evil to Lem, but Vex knew more than she did. She might have been the conduit, but he was the one with the radar dish in his head. Plus, towns lied. This obviously wasn’t some picturesque little seaside burg. If Vex said it was evil, Lem believed. She put her face back out in the wind for a moment, closing her eyes and trying to feel the darkness, but she didn’t get anything but the lovely feel of cool air against her cheeks. Oh well, it would come. Lem turned again and plunked back down into her seat. “Always armed,” she confirmed belatedly with a hum. “Guns and trinkets.”
"Guns and trinkets," Vex echoed, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. He only wore them while driving because they annoyed him and as a fun side effect, helped him know what was real and what was a vision. Vision's weren't the least bit blurry. Lem was a good shot, he didn't have to worry about that and she was pretty attached to the colorful little pistol he'd gotten her. His contact had loved her, he could tell, highly amused that someone wanted that bright purple thing but it suited Lem and Vex had been happy to buy it for her. Like Vex was happy buying her just about anything. It wouldn't be the smartest weapon to use for a crime as it was highly recognizable but they weren't planning on one so he saw no harm in it. They drove past his old school and he tried to remember the faces of his schoolmates. There were a few that popped up but most of it was a blur. "There are some good people here," he said, in case Lem had thought he hated this town vehemently and that wasn't the case. There was just that random fact that evil lived here too.
Lem loved her new gun. Vex had taught her to shoot months ago, with the weapon he already had, and she was pretty good at it. He’d said a bunch of times that he would get her one of her own one day, and as soon as she’d seen the pistol, she’d known it was meant for her. They’d stopped for some target practice between there and here, and it handled like a dream. She’d started sleeping with it close at hand, so walking around this weird little town with it would only feel natural. “There are some good people everywhere,” she pointed out, glancing out the window as they drove through the dark streets. “Doesn’t make it not a death camp. Hell is still Hell, regardless of population.” She slouched down and put her boots up on the van’s dash, one knee bouncing a bit. Lem was sick of being in the car, she wanted to be there now and exploring.
"One less good person now," Vex muttered. He'd had time to feel sad about his aunt over the last few months but it was something that came and went sporadically. Sometimes he just didn't care about anyone. "Look at all those people walking around blind, how can they not know what's out there?" Sure he saw more than most but his aunt's death had been as violent and strange as his visions had told him. "Maybe it's up to us to open their eyes, lead them through hell and out." He could picture it, an odyssey of lost souls finding their path to salvation. At the forefront, Vex's pegasus, black as the night with shiny eyes and pale gray wings. Vex pulled over. He knew himself well enough to know he was about to get swept up in his own mind and if he wasn't careful he'd drive right into a damn wall. "Can you see it, Lem?" he all but purred, pulling his glasses off and gazing out at the sky. "We will lead them out."
That first question was one that Lem asked herself a lot. And asked Vex, and Vex asked her, and they asked each other, and so on. There was no answer yet. She listened to rest of it with a sublime little smile, sinking into the deep gravel of his voice, the strange cadence he got when he was Seeing. She closed her eyes to tune into him. It wasn’t a thing she did consciously, there was just ... a muscle, in her brain. A thing she could relax when it was warm, and the heat of Vex’s feelings softened it up for her. She could see it in her mind’s eye, blurrier and more faded than his, but still there. Lem hardly noticed that they’d stopped for a moment. “We will lead them out,” she murmured in agreement. She opened her eyes and let out a little laugh. They were stopped in the middle of the road. Lem climbed over the middle console of the van and slipped behind the wheel and onto Vex’s lap. She was small enough to fit, and it wasn’t the first time she had to take over driving. She nudged his foot out of the way and pressed on the gas to get them going again. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know where the house was. They’d get there.
Vex was in no rush to get to the house, he chuckled when she took over the driving, but allowed himself to stay in his mind. There was so much to see and a lot of it defied verbal description but that didn't stop him from trying. "They're trapped in the confines of their own brains, maybe that's why these fields and field and miles and miles of flesh are there, representing our physical meat prisons. We can only know as much as our neurons will let us, without the right spark we're left in darkness, Lem. Darkness can be good, comforting, we don't need to see to feel but without that spark, how will you know?" He wrapped his arms loosely around her waist as he spoke, eyes closed and one fist closed tightly around his glasses. "It's not the flesh that's the enemy but the things that hide just out of sight if you get too stuck in it, defenseless and blind. So many demons, Lem. All just waiting to pounce and devour us whole."
Lem could see it too, the longer Vex talked the more clear it became, but it wasn’t so immediate to her, so she could keep driving with no problem. It was just a movie that ran through the back of her mind, like daydreaming. Only daydreaming through another brain. A brilliant, tangled, beautiful brain that she absolutely loved. Vex was all art on the inside, art and the answers to secret questions. “But we’ll be ready for them,” she said, her words suddenly fierce. “We’re not defenseless and we’re the only ones who can really see.” It was nights like this that made her truly believe they were tapped into something, that they were chosen and on a quest. It had led them here for a reason. “Kill the demons, break down the walls,” she murmured, taking a seemingly random turn. “Through hell and out.”
"Fuck yeah," Vex murmured, rubbing at her stomach with his thumb. She always eased him out of his mind-tripping in a way nobody else could because she'd ride those trips with him and then somehow remind him of his connection to this plane of existence. He opened his eyes, letting the images of visceral landscapes fade from his mind's eye. "Where the fuck are we?" He was back and he didn't recognize this street at first, not in the dark and the fog but then he spotted a familiar fence, just as soon as he'd put his glasses back on. "Take a right up ahead."
Lem felt like she had a foot in two worlds sometimes, straddling an eternal cosmos in between. Vex had the same straddle, only his weight shifted more in one direction than the other, and sometimes she had to rebalance him. But she loved tripping with him, he’d expanded her mind so much, and she was so grateful. They were meant to be together, like puzzle pieces. The prophet and the conduit. She blinked a few times, dragged back fully into this reality as Vex’s mind shifted gears again. Pleased that she hadn’t taken them too far off course, Lem did as he told her and took a right. “Are we close?” she asked.
"Everything is close in Point Pleasant," Vex said and while it could have sounded like a good thing it came off as a little morbid with the way he said it. "Left." he added, ducking down and resting his chin on her shoulder. He could have taken over the driving again but this was nice. Grounding. She didn't weigh much, his little fawn, but she still managed to hold him down sometimes. "Right again and we're on Ludlow Lane."
She followed his directions easily, tilting her head to the side once or twice to nudge their foreheads together. Vex’s lap was one of Lem’s favorite places, in the van or wherever they were bedding down or happened to be sitting. He never complained about her draping all over him all the time, and she liked it, so she just kept doing it. Lem slowed down a bit as they turned onto Ludlow Lane, her gaze darting here and there at the houses as they started to roll past them.
Vex took off his glasses as they drove down the street, mostly because he needed to know if what little he saw of the houses was real or another vision. This neighborhood had been a lot nicer thirty years ago but now... Some of the houses were really run down, obviously abandoned and he slipped his glasses back on to see them better. "Well this is a kick in the teeth," he muttered. Why had his aunt stayed here? Had she just given up like most people did, accepted that her environment was decaying and ignored it? It made him heavily aware that time did not obey any laws and while he didn't feel very old, driving into the neighborhood where he'd felt most at home certainly did make him feel that way.
“What?” Lem asked, peering out through the glass around them at the neighborhood. It looked kind of run down to her, but she had no idea what it used to look like, so it just looked normal to her. Lem kept the van rolling, waiting for Vex to point out which house they were actually going to. Some of them had lights on inside, some didn’t. She assumed theirs would be dark, but who knew, maybe the ghosts liked nightlights.
Vex was trying to remember some of the people who had lived there but he hadn't really cared much back then. He did remember the place though, the yards and the windchimes - all run down and gone now. "This is a dead spot," he said, despite some of the houses there still being occupied. He was trying to decide if he liked it or not because a part of him did, but then there was the clashing with what he could remember. "That's our house over there," he added, pointing at one of the houses that still seemed fairly okay. Sarah had neglected some of the maintenance but compared to some of the other buildings it looked just fine.
‘Dead spot’ sounded like a good description of it. Lem didn’t mind that, there were lots of dead spots in the world, and the two of them seemed good at finding them. Maybe it was appropriate that they should live in one now. She turned the van into the driveway of the house Vex pointed out -- a little nicer than some of the others, obviously occupied more recently even if the yard was kind of grown up -- and put it into park. Lem leaned forward a bit to look up at it through the van window. It was dark, no light-loving ghosts. “I wonder if they cleaned up,” she murmured. Aunt Sarah had died in the house, after all. Violently. She patted Vex’s knees before she opened the door and slipped out. With a groan, Lem stretched her back and went to the side door to pull it open and grab some of their stuff to take inside.
Vex thought about that memory of his aunt, lifeless on the floor with that beast looming over her. There had been a lot of blood so if nobody had bothered to clean up it was going to be a mess in there, wherever she'd been attacked. He'd been to enough crime scenes to know how gritty it could be and after such a long time, the blood stains wouldn't be easy to get rid of. Again, it all depended on where she'd been in the house. He let the thought go - they'd find out soon enough - and got out after Lem, cracking his back and then his knuckles. Sarah had been a bit of a recluse in her old age so Vex couldn't imagine some friend or neighbor coming by to check on her but apparently that was what had happened. Someone had come by to check on her and found her body. At least she hadn't been lying in the house for long, stinking up the place. Small mercy there.
He took some of the heavier bags though he knew Lem would insist on taking heavy stuff too. She was small but she was made of tough stuff and she liked to prove it. He dumped some of it on the step of the house to dig the key out of his pocket, then stepped inside with just a bit of wariness. Memories came flooding back at the familiarity of it all, the smell of the furniture polish Sarah used and a faint whiff of her perfume being the first thing that greeted him when he opened the door. At least it didn't smell bad in there, just a little dusty. He picked up the bags again and tossed them inside the hall. "Welcome home," he muttered when Lem came up behind him. This had been more of a home to him than his parents' house and there it was, that sadness that so often seemed to elude him.
Lem loaded herself down with the remaining bags. Vex had taken most of it up already, but there was still enough to make her feel heavier as she walked up the front steps behind him. They didn’t have a ton of stuff, living on the road, but it looked like that wouldn’t be a problem as they walked into the front hall of the house. She peered around a corner into a living room. It was all furnished, of course, with all of Sarah’s stuff still right where she left it. At least that meant there would be beds to sleep in instead of their sleeping bags on bare floor. Lem hadn’t known what to expect. She let the bags slide off of her arms onto the floor, then wandered away from Vex to start exploring the downstairs -- as well as she could in the dark, since the lightswitch she tried in the living room did absolutely nothing. She had no connection to this house besides Vex, so it felt tomb-like to her, and like she ought to stay quiet inside of it, at least for a while.
Vex had never liked being sentimental and it surprised him to find a picture of him as a gangly teenager sitting on one of the shelves in the living room. Most of the stuff in those shelves was useless junk, trinkets, tacky little statues, some of which he remembered and others that were newer. He walked around in that silence for a bit, allowing the house to be still for a little bit longer. The first noise he made was when he tipped over the photo frame with his picture in it, then the one with Sarah in it. Her cat picture got to stay but Vex didn't like the quiet for long and eventually he rested his arm on the shelf and slowly swept everything off it, letting it fall on the floor. Damn carpet didn't let it break but it was still satisfying and he made up for it by bringing his boot down on the small statues, crushing them under his heel. They didn't mean shit, they weren't his aunt and they didn't represent her. There were things in this house he would never destroy because they meant something but these trinkets were not it and none of them were in her living room. "Let's redecorate," he muttered, glancing over his shoulder at Lem with a crooked little smile despite the hollow in his chest.
Lem had been looking at things in the dining room when she heard stuff starting to fall over. She peered back into the living room to see Vex knocking things slowly off of a shelf. They didn’t seem to be important things, especially when he stomp-broke a few of them. Lem’s gaze lifted from his boot to his face and she took in that smile. She could feel him more now, some yawning darkness rolling over his thoughts and heightening his emotions and making him more visible. It was different than the usual darkness though, like its edges were sharper. He was sad. There was a fireplace in the room, with more pictures and knick-knacks on the mantle, and Lem went there. “She liked cats, didn’t she?” she murmured as she looked over the breakable selection. Lem plucked one ceramic figurine up and nudged the grating in front of the fireplace aside with one boot. She backed up a step or two and hurled the little cat against the stone of the chimney, deeply satisfied with the shattering noise. With a faint smile, she grabbed another one to do the same.
It lifted the darkness a little, the crashing sound cutting through the fog in his mind and bringing him back to life. He grinned at Lem and then grabbed a handful of little statues to join her. His aim was definitely good after meeting her and he appreciated it since he'd felt like he was slowly decaying when he was on his medication and off work. Lem brought that spark back, made him feel strong again, not just a sad old crazy person droning on about broken dreams at a therapist who didn't understand anything. He dropped one of the statues into his right hand, took a position and then threw a fastball at the fireplace. The small ceramic figure shattered completely, pieces bouncing onto the carpet. Vex grinned more brightly, then tossed one at Lem for her to go next.
Lem made room for Vex to take his shot, then grinned at the way it hit home. She gave a little squeak and bounced on her toes. There was some light coming in through the windows from the streetlights outside, but it was still dark in there, and right then the noise of breaking things was more fun than watching it happen. Even in the dark, Lem caught the statue that Vex tossed to her. She wound up and threw it as hard as she could, then laughed as it exploded against the stone. Sure, there would be all kinds of broken shards in the carpet, but whatever. Vex needed this, she just knew it, and Lem was never opposed to breaking shit.
They were both wearing boots and Sarah probably had a vacuum cleaner lying around somewhere for when they got the power back on. Right now Vex wasn't worried about the glass or the noise. He did a curveball next with all the dramatics that came with it and it was funny because he hadn't played baseball in years yet it came easily to him now. The sounds of shattering glass and Lem's delighted laugh was breathing renewed fire into his chest and he stretched his arms up like a victory pose as Lem broke the next small thing. They were making this place theirs and he knew Sarah wouldn't care if she was watching over them. Throw out the old, make room for the new, they had no use for all these things but breaking them was cathartic and therein lay their last ounce of usefulness.
It was all extremely entertaining to Lem. The way Vex pitched his in like a pro, all the crashing, the interesting ways they broke. It was getting her hyped up to be there, waking up her soul from the long-ass car ride. She let Vex throw the last ceramic figure they could find in the living room, and gave a hoot as it crashed into the fireplace. Lem did a little end-zone dance to her own head rhythm, then gave Vex a joyful and loving shove. Part of her wanted to run around and break all the glass in the house now, and kick tables over and tear stuff off of the walls, but they did still have to live there and probably use those things. She really wished the power had been on, she wanted some music. “I wanna see upstairs!” she declared and ran for the staircase.
"Don't break anything in Sarah's room," Vex hollered after her. He had no intention of ever going in there, the guest room was nice - if she hadn't changed it since he left at any rate. That's where they would sleep. He stood alone in the living room for a minute, listening to Lem run around as he looked at the shadows surrounding him, half expecting them to melt together into some hulking black beast. They were going to need guns all over the house, he decided. Just in case.
While Lem explored upstairs he explored the downstairs, rummaging around in the kitchen for candles and matches. He opened the mudroom once he had some more light and frowned when he saw the state of the place. This was where she had died, that much was obvious. Dark stains on the linoleum, cracks in the door frame. The inner door locked which was a good thing since the back door out to the yard was busted pretty badly. Vex backed on out of there and closed the door and locked it. Another place he wouldn't want to go again. He finally followed Lem upstairs, that sadness back and this time it was accompanied with low boiling anger.
The upstairs was darker than the downstairs, but Lem found all of the windows and pulled the curtains open. Except in Sarah’s room. Vex had said not to break anything, but she didn’t even go in; she stopped at the threshold of the master bedroom and just peered inside. It had the look of a room that the owner had just left, would be returning back to. Laundry in a pile, the comforter rumpled up. Lem gazed in there for a long moment or two, thinking about all the kings who lined their tombs with riches and art and all the fine things in life ... when tombs should really look like this. Real. A life cut short without the laundry done. That was how things really were. “Goodbye, Aunt Sarah,” she whispered to the room, and closed the door again.
She explored further, tested the water in the sink. That wasn’t running either. It wasn’t a major inconvenience to them, they had plenty of bottled for when they just stayed in the van, but it was something they would have to figure out how to turn back on. That meant talking to official people, gross. Lem moved on to the guest room, letting her fingertips trail against the walls and door frames. That was the only other bed, but it was a decent size. They weren’t huge people. She bounced on the edge of the bed, then stood up to peer at a multi-picture frame on the wall. The light was coming in just right to illuminate faces, and she found Vex, looking younger and even scrawnier. Lem leaned in close to the glass, peering at him.
Vex's boots were too heavy on the stairs for him to sneak up on her, not that he would have tried, and he stopped in the doorway to the guest room, a small smile tugging on the corner of his lips. "I used to live in here," he said. "As good as. It's changed." Of course it had. Sarah knew he wasn't coming back, now the room seemed to serve as both a guest room and a sewing room. There were little craft projects lying around, a sewing machine sitting on the desk and in the corner, a cat bed. Vex wondered where that cat was, or if it was long dead and she just never threw out its things. That did sound like something his aunt would do. "What you looking at?" he murmured as he stepped inside, then huffed. "I was about your age there. Younger... Fuck I feel old now."
Lem looked over when she felt him in the doorway, and smiled faintly. She felt like she kind of knew he’d lived in this house for a while, even without being specifically told. Sometimes she just knew things without knowing how. She looked at the photo again at his words and gave a doubtful hum. “Nah, that’s not you,” she concluded, backing away from it. “Not anymore.” Lem moved toward the bed, giving a couple of twirls as she did so, and flopped backward onto the mattress. “This one was your room?” she asked up at the ceiling once the bouncing had stopped.
"When I stayed here, yeah," Vex replied, idly rearranging the things on the shelf. He wouldn't break these, they weren't tacky little ceramics like downstairs. There were little glass dolphins and a few crocheted plush animals but mostly there were pictures. Not of family, he noted. There were pictures of him and Sarah and a few of some old friends of hers when she was very young. He traced a line in the dust that had settled on the shelf and then turned around to look at Lem. "I didn't have anything here, my room was in a different house. But this was more home." He walked toward the window and peered outside. "She died in the mudroom. The door's bust, we need to fix shit tomorrow."
Lem lifted her legs up straight above her while Vex puttered, the toes of her boots touching together, examining the shape she was making against the faint light from the window. Was she tired now? She couldn’t really tell. She looked over at Vex at the last part, letting the urge to hop up to go investigate rise and fall again. She didn’t want to see it yet. The kitchen probably smelled really bad unless someone had cleaned out the fridge anyway, and she didn’t want to subject herself to that yet. “We need the power turned on too,” she added, oh so helpfully. “And water. All that stuff.” Vex would have to be the one to do all those things, since the house was in his name now, and he had all the paperwork and everything. Lem was just along for the ride.
"Remind me tomorrow," Vex muttered since he was more likely to forget than she was. Lem liked her showers and luxuries more than he did so she was going to keep better track of those things. He could have put a reminder on his phone but he didn't feel like it just then, too busy staring out into the darkness. Would a beast like that strike twice in the same neighborhood, he wondered. He needed to keep Lem safe. He didn't think the pegasus would lead them into danger without a good reason but they might still die here before they accomplished their goal.
Lem looked from her raised boots to Vex again. He was wandering again, she could see it in his face, but not to beautiful visions. The other direction. She supposed she should probably be worried with him, a woman had died terribly in this house and all, but Lem just ... wasn’t. If the beast came and ate them in their sleep? So be it. She wasn’t going to stop sleeping. Lem spread her legs wide and tilted her hips a bit to nudge the side of Vex’s leg with her foot. “Hey,” she said. “Sure you want to stay in here tonight? We can always sleep in the van.”
"It's fine," Vex said, his voice low. "We'll sleep wherever you want to sleep." He tore his gaze away from the window to look at his shadowy fawn on the bed. "I'm gonna go get the guns." He wondered if she wanted to sleep. It was late but they were used to being up late. He didn't think he'd sleep anytime soon but he'd lie down with her and pretend if that was what she needed. He might not sleep but he could rest.
It wasn’t necessarily the hour, since Lem didn’t keep to anything even remotely resembling a schedule. She was up when she was up, she was asleep when she was asleep. The ups generally happened more at night, sure, but finally being where they’d been going for months had kind of worn her out. Plus it was too dark to find some cards or something to do. She couldn’t even take a shower, and she needed one. Hopefully the water wouldn’t take too long. “Okay,” she told Vex, then let her legs fall to the bed again and bounce limply. Maybe she ought to stay up to keep him company. She pondered it while he went downstairs again.
Vex didn't take long and he dumped the heavy bags on the bedroom floor before closing the door behind him. He didn't feel settled enough to undress and that included his shoes, so he only removed his jacket before flopping down on the bed next to Lem. "It's dark," he said quietly and he didn't mean the nighttime darkness. "It won't be dark for long. It's like waves, some big, some small, some crashing in and others... Others nipping at us lightly." He kissed her temple and then rested his head on his arm. "If the beach can handle it, so can we."
Since Lem hated shoes more than a lot of other things, she’d kicked her boots off while Vex was gone. Her jacket was soft and it was kind of chilly in the house, so that stayed on. No power meant no heat. Or the furnace wasn’t working, or something. Lem didn’t really know how all that worked. She’d made room for Vex, and rolled up onto her side to face him, mirroring his position, her free hand coming up to stroke fingers through his beard. She knew exactly what kind of dark he meant. “The dark sea is all of our mothers,” she murmured back. “We’d be nothing without her, nothing without the waves. Let it be dark.” Knowing he would understand, Lem scooted in closer to butt their foreheads together, settling her hand on the side of his neck.
She understood and she echoed and mirrored his landscape in her fire. Was it any wonder that he loved her. She was right too, he'd let it be dark while it needed to be dark. The darkness wasn't always a bad thing, it just was, a part of a cycle, a cosmic wheel that spun round and round. "My mother was a cunt," he muttered. "I prefer the dark sea." He draped his arm over her side, closing his eyes though it was more for introspection than sleep.
It was strange to think of Vex having a mother. It was strange to think of Vex as being anything except exactly as he was right then. Lem couldn’t picture him young, even though she’d now seen photographic evidence. It felt more to her like he’d just walked out of the dark sea fully formed and bearded and wise and different than anything else. Lem hooked her leg over both of his, liking the closeness no matter what they were doing. She was quiet for a while, watching his eyelashes from very close up. “Just let me dry you off sometimes,” she whispered then.
He opened his eyes at that and watched her face, too close but still comfortably so. "That's what fire is good for," he whispered back. "And you are my fire." He leaned in to kiss her lightly on the lips, then settled back down and closed his eyes again. He wished he could sleep, it was good for passing time when waiting for something and in their case he was waiting for everything to open so he could take care of their mundane physical needs. He would let himself drift instead, slipping into that strange place in between where he could see things he'd connected to before, flickers of shadows and vague faces.
Lem always loved it when he declared her something. The conduit, his fawn, his fire. She had crumbled, and Vex was rebuilding her, piece by piece, into who and what she was meant to be. Lem smiled softly at the kiss, then shifted a little bit to snuggle in closer, keeping her face close to his and closing her eyes. In spite of being in the dead spot of an evil town where a beast roamed and killed poor old ladies, she felt safe. The bed was pretty comfortable, the guns were nearby, and Vex was there. Before too long, Lem’s breathing deepened and evened out and she slipped into sleep.
It took Vex a lot longer to fall asleep. He drifted, sure, but it wasn't very restful. Mostly he stayed awake to watch over Lem and listening to the familiar and yet unfamiliar sounds of the house. He wondered if Sarah's spirit was still there or if she'd moved on despite the violence of her death. Maybe the pegasus could guide her home if she was, Vex didn't know how any of that worked. He was just a cog in a splendid machine, he only needed to follow his own path and influence those near him for the grand scheme to work. He eventually fell asleep after hours of drifting and with it came strange dreams, some nightmares other not, arguments with his parents, Sarah's ghost wandering the house, random little tidbits that made no sense. Still he slept through the night and that morning, barely even stirring when Lem got up.