Room 323 [Saturday, Afternoon]

[comeoutwrong]

Sleep, still not the easiest thing to come by, and when it finally did, the timing was all off, leaving Effy crawling her way to consciousness in the early afternoon. Not that it mattered, really, since it was a weekend anyway.

There was the surfacing of the realisation she should probably get up, get dressed, go out, do something... But not really the inclination. Too many other things spinning around in her head. A brief investigation down the side of her bed revealed the bottle she kept there was empty. Well. There went that solution. Shit.

Eventually, she made the effort to slip out of bed and turn up her music loud enough to almost drown out most of the snippets of conversation in the back of her head making her twitchy, and slid down to sit on the floor, back against her bed and head dropped back against the mattress. Picking up bad, floor-sitting habits. Wonder whose fault that was.

[[Door is closed, post can be open with the warning the girl is extra messy and broken. ETA: aaand I should probably tack on an extra WARNING for delicate subject matters ahead: discussion of alcohol abuse, mental health issues, etc.]]

Comments

[fratboybitch.livejournal.com]

"Oh, it's fine," he said, gritting that out despite how not fine it was. He rotated that shoulder around again and would have passed out if he hadn't been steeling himself against it.

"You haven't been awake since you got back," he added after that had passed. "Wake the fuck up Effy and get out of your head. I know you can so do it now."

[pastmewrong.livejournal.com]

Not fine. That was definitely the look of Not Fucking Fine, and she shook her head. If he wanted to distress her, he was going the right way about that. "Alex, stop it! What the fuck?"

If he wanted reactions, putting himself through great fucking pain was at least one way he'd found that worked.

[fratboybitch.livejournal.com]

Hey, if this is what it took to get through that haze she'd been walking around in since they'd been back, he'd do it. He wasn't going to solve it but he knew she could get out of it.

"Why should I stop it?" he asked, raising his arm again and keeping his eyes on hers. "Because you say so? You don't care. You've got other things to do. You've been gone since we got back. So, I can do this without worry."

[pastmewrong.livejournal.com]

Even with her like this, there was a point that was going too far, and had her pushing herself off the floor. Only slight hesitation as she overcame the wobbliness that came with a week of not really looking after herself, and that wasn't going to stop her getting to him. Not going to stop her reaching out to try and fucking make him put his arms back down either.

"Stop." Apparently this was what it took. "Just stop!" He wanted her yelling at him. There was that.

[fratboybitch.livejournal.com]

"Or what?" he asked, not resisting her hold but getting his voice up to the same levels as hers. "You'll glare at me and then go away? You'll retreat back into that bubble of yours? You'll go drink some more? What do you care?"

[pastmewrong.livejournal.com]

"I care!" Sometimes too much. Didn't really know what to do with that, if she was completely honest. "You know I do." She really wouldn't be getting this worked up if she didn't.

[fratboybitch.livejournal.com]

The pain in his shoulder was making itself really known but he bit down on his lip and stared back at her.

"So, tell me what you're seeing right now," he challenged, lifting his chin. "Get out of your fucking head, Effy, I know you can do it and tell me what you're seeing."

[pastmewrong.livejournal.com]

"You, hurting yourself for no fucking good reason!" If he was trying to teach her a lesson, he was doing it in a really unorthodox, extremely painful way. "Stop it," she repeated.

[fratboybitch.livejournal.com]

"Because me holding still is really going to stop it from hurting?" he asked, looking at her steadily. "No. Of course it's not. I know you're hurting, sitting here in a fucking room that looks like a tomb and telling me that you're fine to my face."

He shook his head and clenched his hand into a fist. "I'm hurting myself for a damn good reason. You are not a prisoner in your goddamn head and if it took something extreme to get some emotion into you, I'll do it again and again and again."

[pastmewrong.livejournal.com]

"Don't." At least on that there a less yelling, her voice cracking a little on the word as she struggled to say whatever it was she needed to say. He was making his pain, her fault, in a very visible way. At least the emotional pain of her little lockout the last week or so, she hadn't seen. "I'm here."

Anything else going on in her head was taking a backseat to him right now. Which was what he wanted, right?

[fratboybitch.livejournal.com]

The attention on him didn't really matter right now. He'd just wanted her to get out of her head and realize that she could do that if she'd tried. He'd just made her try.

"So, tell me what hurts, Effy," he said, lowering his own voice.

[pastmewrong.livejournal.com]

"Everything!" Which was really the main source of the problem. There was only so much she could suppress and crush down, before something else somewhere else would crop up and throw her right off balance again.

[fratboybitch.livejournal.com]

"So, why are you sitting in your fucking room, letting it all eat at you instead of coming to find me?" Alex snapped heatedly. "That's not going to help you."

[Aaaaand I have to work tomorrow so I am about to collapse omg! Night!]

[pastmewrong.livejournal.com]

That... not such an easy one to answer, as might be illustrated by the lack of words that escaped when she opened her mouth. It would involve admitting that she was shit at asking for help, and realising when she actually fucking needed it.

"I don't know," she blurted eventually. "I don't know!"

[fratboybitch.livejournal.com]

"So what, just because you don't know, you're just giving up?" Alex asked, glaring now. "You're just gonna sit in your goddamn room and wait for something to happen? Way to be fucking stagnant, Effy. You want me to stop moving my arm, I want you to stop acting like you're alone!"

[pastmewrong.livejournal.com]

"I'm not giving up!" If she was giving up, she wouldn't be trying so hard to keep her shaky hold on all this in place. Unfortunately, cutting herself off from everything and muting the problem as much as possible was the only way she knew.

"I just... need to make it stop." Few too many feelings flying around, and being around Alex didn't help reduce them any. "I'm trying to make it just stop."

[fratboybitch.livejournal.com]

"It's not going to just stop, Effy," Alex said sharply, shaking his head. He shrugged her hand off his shoulder so he could rub the joint slowly, trying to get some feeling back into it.

"That's not what things like that do. They don't fucking go away because you want them to. Tell me, have your methods worked at all? They haven't, have they? Because you don't have the power to just cure yourself."

He'd watched someone close to him try for years and it had done nothing but make things worse.

[pastmewrong.livejournal.com]

Effy dropped her hand, pressing her lips together to help keep her facade straight.

"Used to be that easy. I could do it." And now she couldn't. Wasn't strong enough, too much letting people in, it made her an easy fucking target. This was what caring got her. Great, wasn't it?

[fratboybitch.livejournal.com]

"I doubt that," Alex said, shaking his head. "If they're back, you didn't stop anything. You might have tempered it or dulled it but you didn't stop anything. Nothing about what is going on is easy. Nothing."

His shoulder gave a sharp throb and he winced for a minute. "You think something that's hurting you this much is easy? I can't fucking understand that."

[pastmewrong.livejournal.com]

Yeah, because this was a cakewalk for her. Easy was kind of relative. Right now? Not easy, no.

"Easier." Was that better? It'd come and gone. More gone than anything else. The last week was an anomaly for her. Figured she'd just ride it out, pull herself back together. Just like she always had.

"Put the fucking sling on," she told him, watching that wince.

[fratboybitch.livejournal.com]

Alex ignored her order. The sling wasn't going to help something that he'd already hurt again. So, he ignored her.

"So, what's made it so hard for you now? What's changed so much that you're acting like it's the end of the fucking world and you can't handle it and everything hurts?"

[pastmewrong.livejournal.com]

"I can't keep it all down, all the time." She'd tried. "It's listen to them, or.. seeing dead fucking skinless things in my head," she said anger nipping in her tone as she tapped her forehead, "Things that don't stop, and don't die. Some kid setting herself on fire." Amongst a number of other lovely memories.

Felt like the time to check back at him. "What'd you choose?" Better the nasties she knew, in her opinion.

[fratboybitch.livejournal.com]

"What good is me answering that question gonna do?" Alex asked her, shaking his head quickly. "I'm not you, I'm not dealing with this. And I'm not asking you to choose either, fucking hell, Effy. I know you can't cure it but you're acting like you're alone and you're not."

The things she'd mentioned though, they made his skin crawl uncomfortably. "Like you can care about me and get upset when I'm hurt but fuck me, if I try to do that with you."

[pastmewrong.livejournal.com]

"Not trying to do that, to make it like that." It was just... so automatic at this point, relying on herself. Never tried to drag anyone else into her problems.

"I'm used to dealing with it alone. It's what I do. Can't change, just like that." Not that simple. It took a little time.

[fratboybitch.livejournal.com]

"You're not trying to make it like that but that's what it's like," he retorted, shaking his head. "You couldn't handle watching me when I was jerking around my shoulder. You think I really wanna watch you when you don't know where you are or I don't see you in days because you're making this room a prison?"