Welcome to Gaia! ::

(ooc: so guilds went wonky for me for a bit, and Roma and I did some RP on AIM! So we've been just posting the few tags we did on AIM, since it's working now. c: )

He felt a little better, but a little worse at the same time, as Elke clung to him in the hallway. His arms came up automatically, too used to returning an embrace when he received one, and he simply frowned a little. She needed him, she said -- it was something that he'd kind of always passively understood, but never really thought about. It hadn't occurred to Grayson that there would ever come a time when Elke would be without him, at least not permanently. She was important to him, of course, but Grayson was used to being the one who clung hardest, who felt deepest, who lost sleep over losing the people he needed, not the other way around.

It was selfish and a bit shameful of him to realize that he hadn't known exactly what he'd meant to Elke. In the tumult of their lives, between living and dying and remembering all that they'd lost, part of him had imagined Elke as a beacon of happiness and cheer. Obviously she couldn't be that all the time -- it wasn't fair -- he just hadn't realized that she needed him. Not really.

He watched her go, lips drawn down a bit at the corners, and trailed behind her. Dad and Tristan ambled by at a slower pace, obviously well-used to Elke's mad rushes for the washroom, and that gave him a moment or two to settle his jumbled thoughts. The solution to this problem was clear, at least to him: he would have to make certain that he never went away again.

He would be strong for Elke, and this time it wouldn't kill him, because he was no use to anyone dead. Coming up behind her in the bathroom, he tugged on her hair and nudged at her with his hip. "Sink hog," he said mildly, grinning to show he was joking.

The need to explain, the need to tell them all that he hadn't meant to hurt them, that he hadn't been awake or able to let them know that he was alive -- it was overpowering, consuming. He bit it back, but at the same time, didn't even want to begin, because he knew that once he started someone was going to cry, and he wasn't exactly certain it wouldn't be him. He wanted to spill everything just to get it off his chest, but Elke didn't want to hear, Pop might not be able to hear yet, and he didn't know exactly how to feel.

So, like usual, he ignored it. His problems, many and varied as they were, all seemed to stem from the fact that he ignored them until they were too big to handle. He knew they were there, knew they were bothering him, but he bottled them up and shoved them to the back of his mind, promising himself that he would take care of them when he could. When it would be easiest, when no one else had to see him, or hear about it, or hurt.

You'd think after nineteen years he would have learned his lesson, that life never worked out that way and people were always hurt, but he hadn't. That was why it was easy to dip his hands under the running water, flick droplets back at Elke. Easier still to fall into the motions of washing, lathering his arms up to the elbows, an absent half-smile on his face.

"How did that movie line go..?" He slanted her a glance, eyes creasing at the corners. "'You're not a lady, you're nothing but a sister?'"

Tristan thought it was, in his words, "pretty gay" that he still liked animated movies, but Grayson didn't care. They were still funny, or sweet, or moving, and why should he be embarrassed about what he loved? Life was too short.

Life was really too short.

"Okay," he agreed, a half-smile on his face as they made they way back to the kitchen.

The meal felt like a million others before, but not; it was a little quieter, a little more strained around the edges. His parents couldn't fully relax, and truth be told, neither could he, but Elke kept up a constant enough stream of conversation that it wasn't completely awkward. Grayson learned that she was officially going to be living with them, and this pleased him: he wasn't quite ready to let go of any of them, really, and he was glad Elke wouldn't be going back to Crystal. He sort of idly wondered who would be rooming with the Princess, but though she was his family of a sort, she wasn't his immediate family; his Zodiac duties could wait for a day.

Plates were cleaned, the table cleared, and a leaden ball settled in his stomach. One by one, all around him, their faces began to show the signs of anticipation and anxiety, confusion and guilt. They went out to the living room, and Van and Arthur sat close together on the loveseat, Tristan threw himself into the recliner. The couch was claimed by Grayson and Elke, and it was an arrangement that was familiar and old; somehow, for family discussions, they always seemed to end up like this.

Elke's hand was tiny in his, but it didn't shake. Her palm fit snugly into his broader, scarred one, fingers laced in reassurance as much as to be reassured, he thought. As he explained the circumstances, how there were two young men who were supposed to be life-flighted and only one of them lived, and how they'd thought it was Grayson who died, Elke's hand tightened around his. Van closed his eyes when Grayson went on to say that the boy, Ryan Dreyer, had been misidentified by Pop, that it was an easy mistake because of the heavy injuries they'd both sustained, and that he'd been taken to another city, to a bigger hospital.

The coma patients were filling up Destiny City's hospital, he couldn't get the care he needed, but he was hurt so badly that they induced a coma. He had injuries everywhere, and while he talked about them his face turned a little red, shame in it; the scars, he mumbled, were everywhere, all on the right side of his body. They didn't think he was going to make it, and the parents didn't realize he wasn't their son because his head was shaved, because he didn't open a pair of strikingly blue eyes for weeks and weeks, and when he did they were violet and --

His voice caught for a moment, and he brought Elke's hand up to his chest, shifted a little bit when she slipped her arms around him for a hug. He talked about Olivia and Len, and how he wanted them to meet his parents but they couldn't, how they took care of him and gave him clothes, drove him back home so that he could be with his family again. When he was done, the room was silent, and he was right: people cried.

It didn't really matter, though, if anyone cried. No one mentioned it when Tristan rubbed his palms fiercely under his eyes, when Grayson brought a sleeve up to carefully blot under his lashes. When all was said and done, when he'd told his story and they all understood that he had never really died, that it was all just a mistake and there was nothing they could have done, it was very quiet in the living room.

Then, into the silence, Van said, "Thank God you're home."

Thank God, Grayson repeated silently, he was home.

Grayson was tired, too. He was exhausted emotionally, both from his dealings with the Dreyers as well as with his own family, and after going through the story again, he was ready for nothing more than sleep. It had been strange to tell the story, and yet easy; it had all been explained to him just a day before, by a beautiful blonde woman through a weak, unsteady smile. It had been weird then, like she was telling him of something that had happened to someone else, but then things fell into place and he realized that this was just another horrible event to tack onto his short life. Nineteen years old, and he'd already died twice, at least -- he was losing count -- had barely survived a car crash, had loved and lost and hurt the people he cared about more than anything, and --

And he was just tired.

"Bed," Arthur agreed, standing. His husband's hand was tight in his own, absently brought up to his lips so that he could brush a kiss over his knuckles. "It's been a long day."

Tristan was up, moving before anyone could say anything else, hurrying up the stairs as though the devil himself were on his heels. Grayson watched, a little bemused, his hand moving in circles on Elke's back. When she'd been crying, they had been more regular, a helpless attempt to make her tears subside, but now the motion was vague. It was contact, something that he'd always craved, normalcy in the face of an extraordinarily strange day.

"Come on, honey," he said, and the two of them rose from the couch as though they were one person. Elke might have been clinging to his side, but he might have been clinging just as tight; it was difficult to tell. "Good night, Dad. Pop."

His parents came over, each took a turn kissing his cheek -- Van kissed the smooth one, then turned to Elke, murmuring a good night to her as well. Arthur pointedly kissed his son's scarred cheek, dark brows slanting over dark eyes, and he also said good night, but with a look in his face that made Grayson feel ashamed for feeling ashamed. They would talk about it later, he knew, but for now, it was bed time, even if it was early. It had been a long day.

They got to his room -- Elke's room? -- his old room, and Grayson didn't even bother to change out of his clothes. He just threw himself on the bed, feeling ease in every bone of his body, sighing deeply at the familiar feel of the mattress, pillows. The smell was different, of course, because his things smelled like him but also Elke, and when he turned his face into the pillow it was her shampoo he smelled and not his, but that was fine, too. It was bed, and he was home, and he lifted one arm, inviting Elke over.

Face-down in the pillow, he mumbled, "I'm not gonna look, so climb in when you're ready." It was probably impossible to understand him.

He figured she'd get the idea, anyway.

Eventually his arm got tired and he lowered it to the bed, but true to his word, he kept his face in the pillow until the bed depressed beside him and Elke slid under the covers with him. In a move so familiar it was almost habit, he slipped an arm over her shoulders, gathered her close to his chest with a small, contented sigh. This was how things should be, something in his heart whispered; this is how things are meant to be, and he knew it was because he was Grayson and this was Elke, but also because they were Leo and Virgo.

Many, many a time they had laid just like this, in both forms, in as many lives and more. It brought him peace like nothing else could, and shifted, nose brushing her short-cropped hair. "I didn't." There was a pause, and he stretched his legs, working his socks off absently as he did.

His eyes drifted half closed and he shifted, his hands curled into loose fists. He pressed a kiss to the back of her head, smiled, and added, "I love you. Good night, Elke." Then, he closed his eyes, fighting to stay away long enough to be sure that she was really going to sleep.

It was a fight he'd always lost before, so it was comforting, in a way, that some things never really changed.