WHO: Laura Moon & Mad Sweeney WHEN: BACKDATED to 29th June, 3 AM (Thursday). WHERE: #27120 (Laura's room). SUMMARY: Laura takes advantage of Sweeney being unable to lie by asking him a very important question. Some misunderstandings are cleared up. WARNINGS: Swearing. Mild violence. Sweeney briefly entertains sexual thoughts about Laura the zombie...
The leprechaun was sleeping on her bed. She hadn’t said he couldn’t, which was tantamount for permission with him. Laura didn’t really care. She was thinking about him anyway. Sitting cross-legged by the head of the bed and staring at him. Frowning. She realised her back was slightly hunched, remembered what Sweeney’s guy’s guy had said and straightened up, a little self-conscious.
Mad Sweeney had said to someone else that the shit he’d been spouting was the truth. Which, unless he was lying about not being able to lie (unlikely) meant something… confusing. He’d said that he’d been putting the coin back into her chest, and then he’d said it again, and again. He hadn’t seen her injured and unconscious and tried to pluck it like a berry from under her ribs, like she’d thought. That was the big confusion.
Missing her was the little confusion. Her brain tick-tick-ticked trying to frame that in a way that made sense. They’d been in each other’s pockets for weeks. Familiar. Laura once had a bad rash on the tender skin of her elbow that she liked to rub her fingers against when she was anxious. She’d missed that when the cream had made it fade away. It hadn’t meant she’d like it. That could explain that.
But the persistence that he’d put her coin back into her chest, giving her this semblance of life when he could’ve had his luck back? That wasn’t so easy. It had been convincing in its nonchalance. Unnerving as fuck, too.
He’d slept long enough. Laura leaned forward and shoved him, hard enough to make him smack into the bedside table.
Mad Sweeney awoke with a start, hissing with pain. He lifted his head from the pillow with wide eyes, swiping the drool from the corner of his mouth with his forearm and looking at her for any sign that something was amiss. No, he decided after a moment, she appeared to be cool as a cucumber. Obviously, rude awakenings were just the only ones she was capable of. Eyes narrowing, he shoved back at her hard and then buried his face back into the pillow. Who knew riding elevators and spilling your guts over the network could be so exhausting?
“Don’t fucking do that,” he growled, muffled. He was lying on his stomach, his thick, freckled arms folded under the pillow his face was now pressed into. There was a beat and then he turned his head just enough to peer at her with one eye. He could still hardly believe she was really here for one thing and, for another, this dim lighting was really doing his decaying Bonnie some favors.
If that alone wasn’t enough to make him feel like a sick fuck he also realized that he was finding that sickly sweet rot to be something of a comforting smell now. Sure, it was still disgusting, but it meant she was nearby. Why that was a comfort to him he had no fucking idea. Or at least he didn’t want to think he did. Too tired to entertain this annoying train of thought any further, he exhaled heavily and completely turned his face back into the pillowcase, yanking the comforter over his head for good measure. Not that he actually expected that to be the end of it. He braced himself for the second assault.
She wasn’t quick enough to bat his arm away, so her own back slammed up against the bed table behind her. It didn’t hurt like it should have done. It was more like a minor increase of the the dull ache of a teethache she had going all the time these days. “I have questions.” The last time they’d done this, she had a smile on a lips and her boot crushing his hand. This time, there was a frown; she hadn’t meant to shove him hard enough to hurt, not this time.
Under the blankets, his body visibly tensed, waiting for a follow up attack that never happened. The seconds ticked by in tense silence until the breath he was holding came out with a whoosh and he rolled over onto his back, pushing the comforter down from over his head as he turned. She didn’t look happy, he noted, regarding her with equal parts suspicion and sleepiness. Lifting his head, he craned his neck to get a look at the alarm clock atop the endtable behind her. His head fell back heavily onto the pillow and he laughed humorlessly, rolling his eyes before staring up to the ceiling, “It’s three in the morning. You already know almost everything.”
At that, he sat up sharply, eyes wide with bewilderment. Almost? Almost? That wasn’t what he’d wanted to say. Then it dawned on him. It was three in the morning and Laura had questions because she knew he had no choice but to answer them. His jaw ticked and he shot her a warning glare, “Oh, you’re still an asshole, dead wife.” Hurriedly, he threw his legs over the side of the bed and made to stand.
Laura acknowledged the assessment of her personality with a small shrug and the suggestion of a smirk. “I’m going to make you a deal, k?” She went on, uncaring that he looked like he was about to make an escape. It wasn’t like she couldn’t drag him back. “You answer me one question, to my satisfaction, and I won’t ask you anything else. In fact, I will physically stop you from saying anything to me if it looks like you can’t help yourself.”
She pushed some of her curls behind her ear, and smiled at him, said in the same confiding tone she’d used on the guy whose ice cream truck she’d stolen, “It’s a good deal. You should take it.”
He was pulling the first of his suspender straps over his shoulder and shoving his foot into his second boot when she finished outlining her deal. His arm slowed while he stared down at her, letting her words bounce around his head. It wasn’t a deal he wanted to take. Too risky not to be able to choose his words wisely, he thought, but did he really have a choice? She could appear so demure when she wanted to but even now he got more of the sense that she was a rattlesnake readying herself to spring. It suddenly struck him as funny that she could adopt this sort of sweet demeanor, flashing that smile like they didn’t both know she had already solidly snapped his leg into a figurative bear trap and he couldn’t help but laugh ruefully, finally releasing the strap onto his shoulder with a snap and pacing away from her. Mad Sweeney grabbed his jacket from an armchair and fished a flask from it, throwing it back down when he found his prize. With his back still to her, he took a long swig and tried to give himself time to measure his reply but something was urging him very strongly to get on with it.
He spun back to face her, face reddened, and he demanded, “Why now? You don’t think I’d tell you anything you want to know, the fucking very meaning of life itself if I knew it, in thirteen hours when this shit wears off?” The painfully honest words from his own mouth seemed to anger him and he took another swig of his flask like a man who really needed it, eyes flitting near desperately to the door while he drank. This was a most uncomfortable situation for the leprechaun.
Laura felt her own face distort with anger. “Up until a few days ago you failed to mention that you’d fucking killed me, so no, you do yet have my unconditional trust. Who-” She bit her words of, literally bit her tongue to stop herself asking Who the fuck do you think I am?. She didn't want one of his five minute tirades about whatever the fuck he thought of her, anymore than she suspected he'd want to tell her.
“So leave the fucking wounded bunny shit at the door and answer my one fucking question.” Laura tilted her head slightly to the side, looking at him through narrowed eyes. Even though he'd not taken the goddamn deal, she'd still stick to it, for the sake of not having to listen to him be this fucking weird more than was necessary if nothing else. “Yes, or no, you weren't trying to take my-” Her jaw clenched a little, and she readjusted her words. “The coin out of my chest, after I crashed the truck. It came out and you were putting it back.” It felt beyond absurd to even say that, but he'd gone on about it three times in a way that definitely suggested that's how it's been so she needed to be sure. And because she was dealing with a leprechaun who suffered from the verbal shits at the best of times - which this was not - she said again, through gritted teeth. “Yes. Or. No?”
It wasn’t like she’d asked him if he’d killed her or even got near the question, he reasoned feebly to himself. Still, he had put his fucking coin back, given his luck up for her, that should have earned him some goddamned unconditional trust, right? Right? Well, either way, it was a good thing she’d gone on to define a real question because he was just about to start a long, rambling, circular type of argument in defense of himself with putting his coin back as fucking exhibit A of why she should trust him and who knows how that would have actually turned out once he opened his mouth and started talking with this pollen in effect.
As it was, what really killed his tirade before it was born was her question itself. He happened to find her words absurd, too. There was a pause as he, looking absolutely dumbfounded, tried to calculate how it was exactly she could not have known that, as he reanalyzed everything from the moment she’d been re-reanimated onwards. To him it appeared they’d moved forward to Ostara’s with a new understanding defined and knowing now that it’d been quite the opposite had him feeling like a dumb ass. He didn’t like that.
Mad Sweeney moved closer to her almost predatorily, twisting the cap back onto his flask. “Yes,” he said in a voice most might have found dangerous when he finally came to a stop in front of her. He bent a bit and continued, hardened eyes locked on hers, “As well as your spleen and your fucking kidneys and your liver.” With each mention of an organ, he poked her stomach firmly in different spots where he remembered sticking each of them. It would take him a while to wrap his head around the fact that she thought he tried to take it from her while she was still using it, like he had imagined every bit of whatever the fuck he thought was developing on the road well before then. The blood was roaring in his ears and deafening him to the point where he could hardly hear himself think which, really, was the only thing he had going for him right now.
Immediately after pointing out her liver, he shot her a cheeky, petulant smile, straightened up, and sidestepped her for the door, already untwisting the cap of the flask again before he was halfway there. It was a few giant leaps beyond frightening that he’d let himself be asleep near a woman who thought of him what she did. What a shitty, dangerous, and fucking embarrassing misunderstanding that was.
One solidly good thing about being dead was that her lack of tears couldn't be used against her. She'd never been one to cry, even when sad, and that'd come to bite her in the ass more times than guys had actually bitten her on the ass. The way her eyeballs were itching right now, though, that was a bitch. She set her finger against her cheekbone and sorely wished she was still able to give a good blowjob. Situations like this, when she felt distantly bad about a guy, were what they’d been invented for.
“I was… upset.” Laura stared solidly away from his turned away back as she spoke, her words tripping out like they were falling down a cliff, hitting every branch on the way down. She pressed her lips together, gave an aborted little shake of her head and just said it. “Afraid. I thought…” Fuck, she could've killed him for not being clearer before, for not thinking to ask why she'd punched him on the road when he’d been hanging over her. “That… I’d got you wrong, that-” No, she couldn't say that, too fucking embarrassing. Adjust. “-I couldn't trust you like I thought I could.” She couldn't follow him if he left, she couldn't start this over again, so she made herself spit the words out. “It hurt me.”
If this wasn't enough, if none of this was enough, she had no idea what the fuck he even wanted from her.
He stalled in his tracks when she spoke up, rolling his neck to the point of a few satisfying pops in an attempt to loosen the tension in his shoulders. Christ. He abandoned his effort to reach the door and drained the rest of what was in his flask before he turned to face her, offhandedly tossing the now empty container onto the desk nearby where it slid across the surface to a stop against the room phone. Well, there went the last of his working stalling techniques. Now that he couldn't use the flask as a stopper to keep his words from spilling out, spill out they did.
"Trusting a leprechaun, can't think of anyone who wouldn't say that's a hell of a blunder. They ain't wrong except where you're concerned," his face twisted with discomfort, the words jettisoning from a place in his head where he didn't even get a chance to process them as thought first, "I thought you knew I put it back, I thought - well, I fucking killed you, Laura. Wasn't shit you did this whole time I didn't deserve. I'm just trying to do right by you now."
He tightened his lips, thinking this would be a good stopping point because these honeyed words were scraping his insides like glass and he felt himself slipping too far in a direction he hoped to avoid from the minute he realized why she'd woken him up but he was still uncontrollably compelled to tell her why. With a long suffering roll of his eyes and in the way of a spoiled child being prompted to thank a distant relative for a gift he didn't appreciate, he added, "Because I owe you." There was a long pause as he tried to keep it at that but his face began to purple with the effort of holding back whatever words wanted to burst forth. He blurted with a sharp, frustrated edge to his voice, "Because I care about you."
She kept her eyes on him the entire time he spoke. She'd never been one to get uncomfortable at other people’s expense, and this was nothing next her voluntarily expressing her own feelings in actual words. It niggled at her, the question of why he cared about her. It would make sense to assume he cared out of guilt, but assuming had definitely made an ass out of the both of them. Laura knew she looked slightly puzzled; she was hyper-aware of all the way her muscles moved, now she was in her afterlife. He’d called her Laura. That was almost the strangest part.
If she stayed silent, the pollen would (hopefully) have nothing to spark off. That was her theory. She leant over to her end table and took out the thick roll of scotch tape she'd got earlier. If she'd been alive, she wouldn't used her teeth to snap it, but here she was afraid of her teeth falling out. Fingers it was.
For the first time since he’d woken up, Laura moved, slipping off the bed and going straight up to him. “You really should've taken the deal.” She told him, a stone’s throw from sympathy. She leaned up to close the distance between them and press the first strip of scotch tape to his mouth. “Go back to sleep, Sweeney.”
Somehow he managed to avoid squirming too obviously under her unrelenting eye contact. Hell of a feat, all things considered. There was a sour twist to his lips and a sheen of sweat on his forehead. Despite the icebox of a room he stood in he still felt like he was burning up out of sheer embarrassment. Mad Sweeney crossed his arms in a show of supposed nonchalance but the burning red tips of his ears betrayed him. The silence was both terrifying and relieving, he appreciated that she hadn't pressed on that stream of consciousness once it finally came to a stop but he couldn't read her expression. He watched on with silence as she retrieved tape from the endtable.
He just scowled, nodding solemnly at her statement. Yeah, he really should have taken the fucking deal. When she stuck the tape on his mouth his expression quickly lightened after an initial bit of surprise, scowl giving way to a bemused grin. His arms loosened from in front of his chest and he peeled the tape from his lips. Sweeney moved in closer, taking her head by the chin so that he could better angle her face upward. With his grin now faded to the barest hints of it at the corner of his mouth, he slowly smoothed the tape over her own bottom lip with his thumb. The weak adhesive clung just barely, having already been warmed to near total ineffectiveness by his own mouth. "Not another fucking word out of you and I’ll sleep fine, dead wife," he said, a degree of warmth underlying his rough words.
There was a moment of consideration before he released her chin. There were a lot of different things he could think of doing to reclaim his dignity, none of them he'd ever tried on a dead woman before. Who knew if she'd even feel it? Who knew how far gone her insides really were at this point? He sure as hell didn't and he wasn't about to try diving in dick first to find out. Resigning himself to sleep, he eased himself around her and onto the bed. “And don’t think I didn’t notice it’s well past the reaping hour,” he pointed out a little sullenly at having been excluded, getting himself comfortable under a few less blankets than usual. That’s where he was leaving it. For now, at least. Tomorrow he’d have questions when his side of a conversation wouldn’t have a life of its own.