Sabrina felt a little lighter, the intensity of the last few days not feeling as heavy on her shoulders as she teleported into Dorian’s. She’d had another session with her therapist and been able to relay what had happened over the weekend, discuss her own fears and worries, and that had helped a great deal. Starting lucid dreaming techniques with Dan had added another method to work through her trauma as well, giving Sabrina some hope that this latest setback wouldn’t be as rough as it had been for too much longer. It wouldn’t go away completely, nothing ever did, but not waking up every night from nightmares and not having a panic attack every day would be a step forward.
She walked down the stairs, glancing around for her boyfriend. The necklace had brought her there when she’d gone looking for him and it didn’t surprise her that he’d headed to the club after school. She knew he was working on his plans for opening it up.
“Nick?” she called out, wondering where exactly he was inside of the building.
"Spellman," Nick replied, looking up toward the sound of her voice, from where he sat behind the bar, bottle in hand. Great idea on making himself trackable, he thought, wondering just how disheveled he looked.
That was definitely not good.
Sabrina headed over to him and sat down on the other side of the bar. This exact same scenario had happened before a few times for them. Though usually Dorian was behind the bar and pouring Nick drinks.
She didn't want it to go the same way it had those other times though. "Do you…want to talk about it?"
"What's there to talk about?" Nick asked. "I died. Pretty uselessly it seems. You saved the world, like you do, and yet here we are..."
He refilled his glass just so he could drain half of it in one go. "I'm having nightmares about something I don't even remember. Which isn't fair, Spellman. I already have plenty involving actual memories."
Sabrina leaned forward, reaching behind the bar and picked up a glass, holding it out for him to fill for her. “It’s not fair, you’re right. None of this is fair.”
She had no idea what to say or do here. Last time she’d tried to push him to do normal things, to go to a stupid carnival and so many other things that hadn’t been the right way to go about it. “I don’t...I don’t know how to help. Is there anything I can do? I can just sit here with you if you want? You sitting with me helped me in the forest and most nights. But maybe that’s not what you need?”
Nick shrugged at that, because he didn't know what to tell her, and didn't know what would help. How did you solve a problem you didn't actually have?
He was appreciative of this new approach. She wasn't even yelling at him for attempting to drink it away. Which somehow made him feel more guilty that that was what he was doing, but he filled her glass to alleviate some of that guilt. "I was so focused on you and Roz and now that it's been a few days? I guess it all caught up."
Sabrina held out her hand for him, not sure if he wanted to be touched or not in that moment, but giving him the option if he wanted to take it. “I think it was bound to happen. Knowing that you…” She took a deep breath before making herself say the word. “Died. It was going to throw you for a loop.”
She nodded around the bar. “Ambrose and I...well, when he was first here. We did a lot of drinking in this place after he remembered it too. It helped a little, but not really. Him and I talking didn’t either because it was just...so raw I guess? And we didn’t want to make each other sad.”
Sabrina leaned forward, swirling around the amber liquid in her glass. “My therapist helped though. Still does. Going to talk to him helped me today. Maybe...I don’t know if that would help you?”
Smiling softly as he took Sabrina's hand, Nick was grateful that she was here. That neither of them was pushing the other away anymore. But she was right. They couldn't just talk about it. The party had shown that. Maybe one day, but that wasn't happening anytime soon.
And he'd talked to her about therapy back in the snowglobe, when he was surrounded in literal darkness and it had seemed like a good idea. Anything could have seemed like a good idea in those circumstances, but he'd not really thought of it since.
"Yeah, I want to try that," he said. There was a part of him fighting through the idea that he wasn't strong enough to handle this on his own, and of sharing his life with a complete stranger when he had just started learning how to open up to Sabrina.
But just trying to deal with everything wasn't going to cut it. And it had helped Sabrina, he could see that now compared to earlier in the week. He'd noticed the difference after previous sessions too.
"Not that I'm completely sure it will work but…"
“I wasn’t sure it was going to work at first either, but I was a mess.” Sabrina squeezed his hand, relaxing a bit when he’d said he wanted to try therapy. “Barely sleeping, diving into a million things, thinking...not so great things. Dan just wanted me to try one session and I kept going. And it kept helping.”
Before she had gone to therapy she would have thought she wasn’t trying hard enough to not be able to be the one to help Nick handle what he was going through. But she’d learned there were different ways to help and sometimes she couldn’t be the one to fix things. Especially not when it came to the people she loved and their own demons.
“And if it doesn’t work for you then we’ll find something else that does, Nick, because you deserve to live your life without that baggage on your shoulder. You deserve to be happy.”
Nick looked down at his drink, wanting to believe Sabrina but the mixture of alcohol, sleep deprivation, and overall frustration made it difficult at the moment. "Yeah, I hope so," he agreed with a sigh.
He finished off his glass and set the bottle off to the side, though there were plenty more to choose from if he really wanted. "I love this place, but it's like we can't escape home."
“I don’t think you can ever really escape home. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make this our home now too.” And maybe one day being in Vallo would begin to outweigh all of the crap that Greendale had doled out to them.
Sabrina set her own glass down and headed around the bar so she could pull him into a hug and then pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Do you want to go lay down with me? Or curl up on a couch together and just laze about? Or something? You can wake me up if you have a nightmare, too.”
"Let's go curl up on the couch and fall asleep watching a movie?" Nick asked. That sounded pretty ideal. And normal.
Normal sounded nice. He was tired, the kind of worn out a nap wouldn't fix but he would take what he could get.
"How'd I get so lucky, Spellman?"
“I dunno. I think I’m the lucky one,” she told him, running her fingers through his hair.
She understood that type of tired all too well and hated that it was something they both had experienced before and had to endure again. This was better than the last time though when they had both lashed out in pain and anger, neither knowing what to do or how to handle the situation.
“We can watch the Little Mermaid.”
"Okay?" he questioned, but didn't argue. It didn't seem like a horror movie, and that was fine with him for now. He needed something different.
"I may need you to get me home though," he admitted, resting his forehead against hers. Honesty, in this case, would keep him from trying something stupid like teleporting while exhausted and under the influence. Though he'd have been far worse off if Sabrina hadn't shown up.
"I've got you," she promised, tightening her grip on him. The fact he was able to admit that he needed help was a lot. She knew how much it took to be able to say that.
Sabrina murmured the spell, keeping hold of him and worked to steady him just in case he needed it. They arrived in the living area that had the television in the mortuary.
"You lay down and I'll get a blanket and get the movie started."
Sabrina could say otherwise, but right now Nick was feeling rather fortunate as he sprawled out on the couch. That even when he couldn't deal with his own life, she could at least deal with him. Which only added his motivation to seek out help. He wanted this to last.
She settled down on the couch with him moments later, wrapping the blanket around the two of them as the movie started playing on the screen. They needed moments like these, never having gotten enough of them in the continuous craziness back home, and she meant to make sure they had more of them going forward. It couldn’t be fighting monsters and saving the world all the time. They needed movies and milkshakes, dances and stargazes, all of the little things that made life worth living.