Henry Townshend is a ghost magnet (room_302) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-11-19 11:47:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, chloe saunders, henry townshend |
Who: Team Monster Movie
What: A fight
When: Monday, Oct. 14, after this happened.
Where: Chloe's apartment
Rating/Warnings: Lowish with some heated language
Status: Complete!
Today was probably one of the worst days that Chloe had ever had. First there was the incident at the cemetery that pushed her powers to the brink and she ended up collapsing and poor Caleb was stuck taking her home. Then came Derek, all angry werewolf 6footsomething of him, and he was practically breaking down her door for the chance to yell at her. She had learned from the Dreams to not even try and make sense with him, but eventually they were able to get things settled between the two of them. It had left her even more exhausted, which lead her back to the couch with Craven for a quick nap.
The nap had other plans though and she was going through yet another set of Dreams. Derek had a partial change once they got off the bus. Not to mention the repeat murder that she happened to stumble upon. Then it was damn near impossible for them to get another bus to catch back up to Simon and Tori. They take a cab and have to run after the guy tried to help them out and they didn’t want to involve more people. Then there was the fact that she started speaking to a woman at a restaurant and then came to find out that the woman was a ghost and Chloe looked insane.
There was barely any sleep gleamed from this because soon enough there was another knock at her door. It wasn’t as persistent as Derek’s, but it wasn’t going away when Chloe tried to put a pillow over her face and ignore it. She had to remove Craven from her lap as she went to the door and opened it. And behind door number one was Henry. And judging by that expression on his face this wasn’t going to be a happy conversation. A sigh escaped her lips, “Hi.”
Henry had probably broken about a dozen different traffic laws on the way from the studio to Chloe’s apartment. He would have gotten there around the same time as Derek if it wasn’t for traffic. Goddamn fucking traffic! Where the hell were all these people coming from? Where the fuck were they going?!
Once he reached the apartment building Henry left his car parked in the lot as though a crazy person had been driving it, with it’s front end in one space and it’s rear in the other, but if anyone complained, Henry honestly didn’t care. Something...something had happened to Chloe. From what he had gathered from Caleb’s texts it had something to do with her powers. Well of course it fucking did. It always did! Henry understood that dating a necromancer came with a price and that both he and Chloe would be surrounded by death. It went with the territory. Henry accepted that. What he didn’t accept was receiving a text stating that the woman he loved had collapsed after using her powers!
All the way from the studio to the apartment building, Henry’s imagination tortured him with every possible scenario that could have happened. Did she need a doctor? Was she in a coma? Could the overuse of her powers drain her so much that she could possibly die herself?! Henry was in a frantic state by the time he reached the floor Chloe lived on. He raced down to her apartment and knocked. He continued knocking while fumbling with his keys. Why did he have so many goddamn keys? Where did half of these stupid things even go to-
The search was abandoned the moment the door opened and there was Chloe looking haggard and exhausted, but definitely upright. The relief that flooded through Henry nearly caused him to fall himself.
“Are you alright?” He asked as he grasped her by the shoulders. He was still a bit frantic, not having any blessed clue as to what had happened “I got a text from Caleb and I got here as soon as I could? You collapsed at a cemetery.” Brows furrowed together tightly and his next question was a bit more biting than he intended it to be, “What the hell were you doing at a cemetery?!”
Oh sweet Jesus. He was grabbing her shoulders, and not very gently either, and Chloe’s eyes went wide in surprise as he frantically asked her what in the world had happened. His voice had a bite to it and she knew that he was upset. This was the first time something like this had happened between the two of them and she was just not in the mood for it. It was probably due to Derek coming over earlier and yelling, but she was a little raw around the edges from that. The lack of sleep wasn’t helping either.
A hand reached up to grab his hands and removed them from her shoulders. The question hung between them and she resisted the urge to roll her eyes because it wasn’t like she went there just for fun and games. Another sigh escaped her lips, “Derek just came by and already yelled at me for being stupid. I didn’t go there on purpose. Caleb and I were out for a walk and I heard a voice. It was dumb to follow it, but we did. And then things went sideways.” This wasn’t completely her fault either, Caleb had been there, but it was her powers that had caused everything to go haywire.
Henry let his hands fall from her shoulders. There was something in Chloe’s voice that rubbed at Henry’s also frayed nerves. The way she sighed at his question. It was as if she wasn’t taking his concern seriously. If anything it sounded as though his concern was annoying her. It reminded Henry a little of how his mother used to brush off his father’s urgings for her to meet people in their new home and it touched on a nerve Henry thought was buried deep. Apparently not quite deep enough. Anger bubbled up quickly and overtook - but not quite replaced - his initial worry and concern.
Anger was not an emotion he handled particularly well and was an emotion he tended to fight down and bury. Unfortunately it had surged up much too quickly for him to either. “Sideways.” He deadpanned. “That’s how you want to describe the fact that Caleb texted me that you passed fucking out? That you summoned zombies? How the fuck does that even happen?!”
It was almost as if Chloe could sense the anger coming off him and she took a step back from him once his voice started to raise as he spoke to her. Oh yeah, he was angry and they were about to get into this. The rational part of Chloe tried to keep herself calm, but the tired part of her was completely on edge was ready to lash out at him. It wasn’t often that something set her over the edge to fight, but she really didn’t want to have her boyfriend so upset with her.
“Yes, that’s exactly how I describe it. And it was one zombie, not zombies. And you know how the fuck that happens? You put a necromancer without much training into a situation and she did the best she could. I was trying to get rid of the spirit and it brought about more and apparently a zombie. The zombie only cracked the surface. The effort of putting everything to right made me collapse,” okay, so maybe she wasn’t completely calm through the whole conversation, but she wasn’t yelling yet, so that was a bonus.
Henry wasn’t exactly yelling either. His normally low voice had raised an octave, but the angrier he got, the calmer his voice seemed to get. It was a strange contradiction and Henry didn’t like it. He didn’t like the tight suffocating feeling in his head and chest both of which were making it very hard for him to think straight. Things were coming out of his mouth without so much as a pause for thought or consideration. Things he normally would have kept to himself.
“Fine,” he said. “One zombie. Still you can’t just use your powers like that, Chloe. Especially if they’re still out of control like this. You need that training before you can pull stunts like sending off a spirit or trying to put a zombie away! Why would you do that knowing you don’t have full control yet? Do you know how fucking scared I was that something had happened to you? That you could be hurt or worse?”
“Stunts? God, Henry, it’s not like I’m doing this for kicks. I have absolutely no way to train, who is going to train me? You? There are very few people here that could possibly understand what’s going on. This is how it went in the Dreams and it’ll come with time to be able to figure things out. I did what I thought was best - it’s going to backfire every once and awhile,” Chloe scoffed at him calling it a stunt. She honestly thought she would be fine and in regards to training, she wasn’t even sure that she would want that.
Henry’s fear though struck something else and she frowned just slightly, “I’m sorry, Henry, the last thing I would want to do is to scare you. You know that, but since we’re talking about that you’re the one that runs off into that creepy hole and has no idea what’s going to happen when you go in there. One of those monsters could kill you. Both of our Dreams are awful and things could happen to either of us. If the risk is too high for you then maybe we need to rethink this, but you can’t yell at me over things I can’t always control.”
The way Chloe scoffed at him hit that nerve again like a hammer against a nail. Henry would have liked to be the one to be able to train Chloe to use her powers effectively and without causing harm to herself. But, of course he couldn’t. He had no powers, no unique skills and no special abilities. His world - the world he had come to find himself in - was full of all kinds of supernatural things and people with supernatural powers and magic. And there he was: the squishy mundane human who was forced to sit on the sidelines and watch, or occasionally become collateral damage. There was nothing he could do. It hurt and it hurt a lot. The fact that he could do absolutely nothing to help the woman he loved hurt most of all.
The lump that had formed deep in his throat ached when he forced his voice around it, in the very least it made him calm down a little. “You’re right,” he said. “I can’t yell at you and I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry. I was scared and I’m upset that I can’t do anything useful to help you. I can read every single book ever written on necromancy or mediumship, but at the end of the day, I still have to sit back and watch you struggle through this on your own and I hate it. The reason why I’ve gone back into the Hole is so I can be proactive for a change, so I’m not just waiting for the next crises to happen. Is it the smartest thing to do? No, it’s not.” He reached out to her again, his hands resting on her arms far more gently than the way he had grasped her earlier, “but it’s the only way I can think of to be able to figure out my own shit so that I can give you at least a little bit of normalcy. I love you, Chloe. There isn’t any risk high enough that would drive me away from you.”
The anger and annoyance in Chloe’s body seemed to leave her as she watched Henry’s expression change and he apologized. Once he admitted that he was scared and upset she couldn’t help but frown because that wasn’t something she ever wanted to make him feel. When his hands came to her arms she stepped forward and placed her hands on his hips. Eyes were contemplative as she listened to him, “I love you too, Henry, and I want to be with you for a long time. But this is how things might be occasionally. I don’t want you to feel useless because you’re not and I understand why you were so upset. You don’t think I was upset that I completely fucked things up and could have caused an even larger issue? But I’m happy to hear that it won’t drive you away from me.”
“All I want is for us to be as normal as we can. That’s why I don’t want Craven down there nor do I want to be down in your apartment. The hauntings - they’re not going to help what I’ve got going on. I’m afraid of drawing in more ghosts and I don’t think Craven needs to go through the tension of random hauntings,” and as if almost summoned by his name the gangly cat made his way out of wherever he had been napping and came into the room to stare at his parents.
“Unfortunately I can’t control what goes on my apartment either,” Henry sighed. It was disheartening. He had no more control over when his apartment decided to go all Haunted House than Chloe did about what her Dreams decided to throw at her, or what ghost decided to rudely interrupt her day. “I’m doing what I can, but, just like you said, it’s the way things might be occasionally. I understand you don’t want to be down there or let Craven come down because of it and honestly? I don’t blame you.”
He put his arms around her and drew her in for a hug. After the day Chloe had had, it seemed as though that was what she had needed, not Henry snapping at her. He rested his head against hers gently. “I know you were upset too. I can’t promise that I won’t get scared when things like this happen, but I can promise not to overreact next time. Whatever comes, we’ll take it on together.” He glanced down at the kitten who was seated a few feet away staring at them in a very cat-like manner, “right, Craven?”
There had to be some way that what he did could affect the apartment. There had to be some sort of solution and he knew she was willing to help him out with things in his dream environment. But when he said he understood she truly hoped that he meant it because it was a big rock in the middle of their path. She wanted to be with him and someday live with him, but the apartment was a bit of a hinderance right now. “Are you sure you don’t?” her blue eyes searched for his to make sure that they were going to be alright. He was the most important in her life right now.
The hug was exactly what she needed and she felt all the tension leave her body as she sighed. She held him tightly and could feel herself want to cry in exhaustion because the day had left her in a complete wreck. “And that’s all I want from you. I’ve got Derek to overreact on me. I want you to be there for me when all I want to do is break down. And we’re both going to get upset about things, which is totally normal,” she explained to him before turning her head to smile at the sight of Craven watching them, “You know this means we have to have make-up sex, right? And he’s going to have to stay out of the room.”
“Of course I’m sure,” Henry said. He adjusted his arms around her to hold her tighter and closer. He knew no matter what Chloe was with him, willing to help him any way she could. “I’ll always be there you,” he promised. Then he laughed a little, his chest rumbling against Chloe. “Yeah, we don’t need the kitten watching us make-up.” He kissed her forehead gently.
He released her, but took her hand as he made his way into the apartment proper and towards the bedroom. Make-up sex sounded good and something they needed. But Chloe looked as though she needed some much deserved sleep too. “Do you think you’ll want dinner afterwards? I’ll make us both some comfort food and you can get some rest.”
Henry was the brightness that she needed in her life. She felt like she could do anything with him by her side and she was so thankful that he was in her life and they had handled their first real argument quite well. She would hold him to his promises and she wouldn’t be leaving him anytime soon. “I might fall asleep after but you can wake me for food. I should probably eat,” she commented with a tired smile as she squeezed his hand. Right now all she wanted was to remind herself that she and Henry were alive and well.