#unporchunately

[deathduty]

Un-Porch-unately || Deirdre & Morgan

Morgan and Deirdre, sitting on a porch, T-A-L-K-I-N-G

Finding herself driving up to Morgan and Cece’s house wasn’t exactly how Deirdre planned her Valentine’s night to go. Her little cemetery dalliance with Josephine had gone well, had gone exactly like she hoped it would and then some. It served its purpose as a distraction from Morgan, and the solidifying in her mind that she’d simply never speak to or see the human ever again, as she should have from the start. And then she was here, stepping on to creaky porch wood and staring at Morgan’s slumped body. “You weren’t joking about the porch,” the banshee blinked. She had, in her infinite wisdom, thought to pull the blanket she kept in her car out and draped it over her arm. She was still dressed from her date night, if not a little disheveled. Morgan on the other hand had definitely seen better days. She stood awkwardly, half on the steps and half on the porch. “Morgan?”

Morgan had gained enough brain cells from her douse of tub water to make it to the porch with an oversize jar of water. What she didn’t gain was the coordination to drink it without spilling half the contents on herself. Just that kind of night, I guess. She set the jar somewhere nearby and curled on the cold wood, half propped by the deck chair. She almost missed Deirdre’s voice as some boozy concoction from her brain until she saw her stood on the steps. “Shit,” she groaned. “You’re here. Um…” She began to laugh and cry at the same time, voice rasping, “How’s it going?”

“You know,” Deirdre began, slowly ascending the steps and crouching beside Morgan. She unfolded the blanket and with motions far too gentle for a murderer, draped it across the human’s shoulders. “You’re terrible at taking care of yourself.” There was more to be said, more to be done between them---but Deirdre ignored it in favor of focusing on what was. She fell beside the human with a short huff, toeing off her heels as she stretched. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” She turned her head, gentle concern sat behind her brown eyes. “Shit is a very reassuring response to seeing me. Should I go? I can go?” She gestured to her car, parked haphazardly on the curb. Her voice betrayed her teasing just as much as it did her worry. “How are you?”

“That’s me,” Morgan deadpanned. “Miss Disaster Queen. And I didn’t mean it like--” She paused, almost certain she had to have again, but it was only a dry spasm. She deflated with relief. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she said. “And I’m sitting on my porch, with more alcohol in my body than a frat boy on rush week, alone. My heart’s been broken and I just found out my mom had a whole life here I never knew about.” She shivered, stiff and uncomfortable with her own honesty. It took too many brain cells to lie, to even avoid. And Deirdre was right here, close enough for Morgan to fold herself into ten times over. “Please don’t disappear right now,” she said. “You just got here.”

So she’d really meant it when she said she wasn’t talking about Harry Potter. Though Deirdre could hardly decipher a drunk and discordant message. She’d ask, eventually. She figured Morgan wanted to talk about it and she knew that they should. For now, she decided comfort was paramount. “Your heart’s not broken,” she smiled, shifting closer to Morgan until she could pull her into a half hug. The view from their porch was nothing to write home about, something about staring at a dead street at night wasn’t particularly appealing, but she kept her eyes forward. “If it beats, it’s not broken.” She glanced at the human finally, finding her hand and squeezing it. “Do you want to talk about your mother?”

Morgan made a laugh that hurt her chest like a sob. “Leave it to a banshee to lay down the perspective,” she rasped. “But you have to know what I mean, right? How else was I supposed to feel this morning?” She leaned into Deirdre’s side anyway and forced her lungs to breathe deep. Any minute now, she’d feel like she stopped running. Any minute now. “I don’t even know what to say. I...I mean what else don’t I know now? I thought after my dad, we had a clean slate. That I had...that she changed and gave me everything she could. But she babysat for this family, these witches. This big, happy family that...sits down at a dinner table. Maybe they say grace. Maybe...I don’t know! I can’t even imagine. And they want to meet me, this family--but I---” She shook her head and burrowed in more. “I just don’t--I feel the floor coming out from under me even thinking about it.”

Deirdre smiled, finding she was doing a lot more of it than she anticipated. She wasn’t a kind person, and nowhere near a comforting one, and humans were like specks of dust and yet, here she was. Holding Morgan tighter, both cursing and thanking the blanket between them. Don’t talk about the other thing, she breathed. She’d avoid that can of worms for as long as she could. So, instead, she simply listened, a rumble of a hum as indication that she was following along. “Then don’t think about it,” and for Deirdre, it was as simple as that. It could be as simple as that. “I’m assuming your mother lied to you, about something rather large. Now there’s a nice family that wants you over and there sits a life you never had. So, don’t think about it. You’re not there right now. You’re on a porch with someone who is, very easily, the most attractive person in this town. You’ve got,” she paused, glancing over, “what I hope is a jar of water. And this very nice blanket that costs more than I’d like to admit.” She reached her other arm out, holding Morgan against her in a proper embrace. “Don’t think about it. Take it in pieces and…” Deirdre freed an arm just long enough to knock against the porch. “The floor stays right where it is.” She moved her arm back. “What bothers you about the big, happy family of witches?”

Morgan worked her arms around Deirdre and held onto her as tight as she could, shaking her head. “They do not need me on their hands, Deirdre. Whatever it is that’s going to happen to me next. Or if...if they’re going to be what happens to me next, I couldn’t…” She clamped her jaw and whimpered, holding back more definite, ugly cries. Breathed again. Any minute now. Any minute now the running would stop. “I can’t believe I never told you what my mom lied to me about. I feel like you know everything else there is about me,” she mumbled. “You get three guesses, about the biggest life-screwer in my tragic past. The thing that...god, that I lost sleep over from at least--twelve? Thinking it was my fault. Or that I was crazy. She let me grow up thinking it was me, Deirdre. And it’s not, I know, but it also kind of is.”

“But you’re not on their hands, it’s just…” Deirdre trailed off. Fates, she wasn’t good at doing this. She shouldn’t even have been doing this in the first place. She should leave, she shouldn’t have come. She shouldn’t have said anything and yet---”Hey…” Her hand found its way to Morgan’s hair, working her way through strands the way someone who cared might--if Deirdre knew anything about that. “Three guesses, huh? Not the most alluring of guessing games but…” she breathed out, trying to hold Morgan tighter, if that were somehow possible. “I’m assuming your father died before your mother, and you’ve told me you found out about your curse later in life so...do those events relate to each other?” What was it with families and lying to their children?   

“Yeah,” Morgan whispered. “I was eighteen. We were on the highway together and his hand just fell. Off the wheel. We hopped over three lanes of traffic and into a palm tree. And I called an ambulance, ran around this whole shopping strip screaming for the address of this place. But he was gone. And the car was totaled, again. And after all the, the stupid formal stuff with the burial and the people, I--presented this case to my mom, every disaster since I was born, everything I’d been around that set us back. I asked her if… if I was born wrong. And that’s how I came out to my mom. And that’s how she finally told me some troublemaking asshole from White Crest got us cursed. I just didn’t realize it was because she’d been to look.” She let out another breath, body sagging. If she could sigh enough, wear out her voice enough, breathe in Deirdre’s scent enough, maybe it could all stop. 

What did you say about that? What were you supposed to say to make things better? Questions Deirdre thought she’d never ask herself bounced around her mind. The answer sat somewhere far beyond her reach and she’d never ached to chase something as much as she did the solution. Emotions never suited her. “I’m sorry,” she said, a weak and worthless thing to say, but the only thing she could think of. She pressed her lips to the top of Morgan’s head, hopping instead that it might do something. Anything. “Your mother shouldn’t have---and she’s not here to answer your questions and I don’t---” she gulped. “I-I’m sorry, Morgan.” The trauma was starting to form a picture, the death and its burden. How did you begin to take pain like that away? And why exactly did she want to? Human concerns weren’t hers, Morgan’s problems weren’t hers. “...and I’m sorry I don’t know what to say.” And yet, somehow, she was here.

Deirdre’s lips sent a beam of stillness down through Morgan’s head, down to her heart, her bones, and all the little fractured pieces deep inside her. They didn’t mend themselves like some cheesy Harry Potter magic, they just stopped trembling long enough for Morgan to remember what stillness even was. “Hey,” she whispered, straining up to press her head against the banshee’s. “Sometimes that’s all there is to say. Okay? That’s all.” She breathed deep and pressed her lips to Deirdre’s cheek. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

Then what was the point? Deirdre held her tongue. What was the point of sharing truth and spilling trauma if it couldn’t be fixed? Why was she here at all? She hated feeling useless and there was nothing she felt more then. Even so, she turned her head, catching Morgan’s lips with hers in a kiss that she prayed to gods she knew didn’t exist, would say all it needed to. She cared. More than she wanted to and more than she should and one day she’d find a way to wrench those feelings from her chest but for now she’d let them live, let them ache to carry burdens that weren’t hers. Her shoulders were heavy enough, part of her wanted to scream, she didn’t need this too. And yet--- “I am here,” she pulled away, leaning into Morgan. She wouldn’t be staying here, obviously, but she was there for the moment and maybe that would be enough. Deirdre couldn’t think of a thing to say, so she settled on the one thing that had stuck out in her mind. “I missed talking to you,” she confessed, imagining Morgan had already worried herself sick about the rest of her problems. They’d circle back to the thing with the family of witches; Deirdre also imagined that conversation was healthy---not that she’d know, really. “Weirdly, it’s only been two days, but there was a lot of Grey’s Anatomy in those two days and…” and she imagined she was doing a really poor job of trying to help here. Maybe distraction was a bad angle.  

Morgan gasped when Deirdre shifted and took her lips. She went still—had she somehow been the one to manifest this the terrible force of missing her? Was this alright? Did she taste too much like sick?—but Deirdre persisted with an earnestness that made Morgan’s eyes well anew. Soon she was pressing back with her own silent pleading gestures. “I missed you too,” she murmured after. “A-all of it. But talking the most. Do you know how many words I’m used to reading from you every day?” She laughed, a wet, tired sound. “I can guess how many. There’ve been times when a Grey’s watch was all I was capable of doing.” She nuzzled her cool cheek, gulping the air to fuel more stillness. “You um, you could tell me where you’re at? You could tell me anything right now and I’d be interested.”

"We...do use a lot of words," Deirdre chuckled lightly into the night air. Maybe there was something to be said about shifting from dead parents to Grey's Anatomy but Deirdre considered it the grand steps in her plan to shift out of here. "I'm on the third season; I've noticed a habit of speeches in that show. Do humans enjoy monologue that much?" Now if only she could get her body to move away. Morgan sounded tired. She could sleep, Deirdre could be gone, this night could be forgotten and distance could be dutifully maintained. "Oh? Anything? That's great because there's these indexed annuity rates that I'd love to discuss and…" Deirdre tried to peel herself away, though it turned more into awkwardly leaning back. As much as it pained her to move away, and it did, she figured there wasn't a discussion to be had about it—some things simply had to be done. "You sound tired." Maybe they wouldn't circle back to the witches, but it was all the better for it anyway. 

“Maybe not actually enjoy, but wish we could. I might follow that better than—” Morgan felt Deirdre shift herself under her. She pressed in closer, almost making dead weight out of herself. It was too soon, way too soon. She didn’t respond right away, just hung on like a desperate child. “...I am, yeah,” she admitted feebly. It was true, and no matter what she wanted, staying on the porch all night was probably a bad idea. “If you um...you...you could…” But Morgan couldn’t make the polite words come. Some idea of being easy and accommodating about this, their whole mess, floated at the edge of her consciousness, but it was just a blur in the night. She set her head on her shoulder, exhausted by the effort, and asked simply, “Do you really want to go? Right now?”

There were no rules about this. Dozens on how to slit a throat, hundreds about how fate should be obeyed and a handful of rules against this sort of thing, really. But nothing that told Deirdre what to do and how. Morgan didn't seem to want her to leave, or perhaps she was simply desperate for the company, and it wouldn't have mattered at all who came. Instead she had, and it seemed only one of them was willing to do what had to be done. Sorry about your dead family and a childhood of being lied to, bye now, was certainly not the kindest thing but then again, she'd never claimed to be kind. "I should go," she said instead, her favored dance of avoiding the responsibility of choice—claiming for as long as she could that there was some higher power that ruled her heart. "I should go. You should go back inside and sleep. In the morning, you should tell a friend about this. Remmy, or...anyone, really. And you tell them about the witches too and I…" she trailed off, Morgan was a lump against her and despite her supposed willingness to do what was necessary, Deirdre couldn't find the heart to push her away. "You're tired."

“Please don’t,” Morgan said. She didn’t have an elaborate argument or a three story thesis about why this should go her way. She only had her want, the only thing in her that ever grew hungrier than her sadness. “I know...off the porch is a good idea. We...should definitely do that. But please don’t. I can’t add saying bye to you and hearing you go and thinking if this is going to be the only way I get to see you from now on to my night. If you could just wait til I’m asleep and not make me do that—please, okay, Deirdre?” She peeled herself off just enough for Deirdre to look at her, sticky, water damp, tired, desperate. “I think you know you matter too much to be interchangeable in my day. And maybe you don’t know that I don’t want you to choose between me and your gods, because that’s not fair, and then you wouldn’t be you, but you do now. And I just want a spot on the plate too, or a turn, I just—” There was a speech tangled in her head somewhere. Something good and charming and wonderful that even Shonda Rhimes would approve of, but the tide of alcohol in her mind was pulling it apart with so many cold, slippery fingers. Morgan grimaced. “Um. Back to...first thing. Can you stay. Can it be my turn, until I fall asleep?”

Deirdre wasn't listening, not really. Her heart thrummed too loud in her ears, unused to beating with that intensity, and her mind raged with trying to reconcile desire and duty into one again. She hadn't been listening to what Morgan was saying, mostly because she'd already decided it wasn't anything she should be hearing. The sight of Morgan's sunken face cut her thoughts into silence for a moment and the banshee waited, hoping her mother might come and rip them apart and she could avoid, again, any liability for acting out of heart instead of mind. Deirdre breathed shakily, "I—" she hadn't been listening, but she did catch the tail end of Morgan's words. "Do you want to go inside then?" She turned her head to look at the door in an obvious attempt to avoid looking at Morgan, and then turned her head to look at her car, a relic of a time she'd barreled down empty roads fraught with worry. "Or we could go to my house if you—" and then she looked at Morgan again, a mistake she chided herself for instantly. She hadn't confessed the truth; that those speeches Grey's Anatomy were largely skipped through, the fae unable to stomach observing that kind of unabashed display of emotion. They didn't suit her and most of all, she simply didn't know what to do with them. "I feel sick," an emotion foreign to her bubbled over. Her heart, once slow, pounded against her cold chest. And whatever this was, it made her legs itch to run. "I don't—I want to stay. I want to take care of you, even though I don't know how or why or if I should. And I want to be here, and I want to stay until you fall asleep and when you wake but I just—I don't think I can. I'm not—this isn't—I feel sick." She gulped, itching to move but unable to find the strength to do anything more than squirm. "Please don't ask me to stay, Morgan. I don't—I can't—I don't want to talk about this." She couldn't remember the last time she felt panicked. 

There was more happening with Deirdre than Morgan knew how to process. But she understood the part where Deirdre wanted to be with her, and she understood that she was maybe having an anxiety attack about it. “Hey. Shhh…” she whispered. “Hey. You have to breathe, okay?” She put her hand over Deirdre’s heart. It thundered under her palm like the chariot. Her poor banshee, usually so still. So together. “Breathe with me?” She inhaled, deep and exaggerated. Held. Released. Slow and steady. Again. In. Held. Out. “Together. Like this.” In. Hold. Out. “Sometimes, pressure helps. Physically. It keeps you closer to here, instead of that place, where this happens.” In. Hold. Out. “Will that help?”

The last time someone tried to steady Deirdre's breathing, it was her great-great-grandmother and there was a stack of jars she needed to scream at. It was embarrassing then, it was embarrassing now. "Don't. I'm not—" her heart hammered against Morgan's hand, as if aching to be held, to escape from its prison of ribs and flesh and into Morgan's hands. She knew these techniques, they were the basics to controlling a scream. But there wasn't a death she was trying to swallow back or aim. In. Out. "H-hold on. I'm not—I came here to help you, not the other way around—" In. Hold. Out. What was she doing? "I—hey, stop it." She'd burned with the desire to take pain away from Morgan, this wasn't her idea of doing that. "Your father died, your mother's a liar, there's a family of witches and I don't know how they factor into this and you—stop it! What are you doing to me?" Magic? It felt like magic. "I don't want to breathe, Morgan!" In. Out. In. Out. Was she supposed to be holding the breath in? "I want to you to be happy. Pressure does not help! Nothing helps! I had sex in a cemetery and still I'd rather be here and how does that help and what are you doing? Stop it." Deirdre tried to swat Morgan's hand away. "I'm trying to help you, stop helping me! It's past your bedtime!"

“You’re not breathing,” Morgan chided. She let go of Deirdre’s heart and took up her hands instead, scooting back to give her more space. She’d lost the pace for their breathing somewhere in there, but she could find it again. In. Hold. Out. “You have to. Just do it, okay?” In. Hold. Out. “We take turns,” she said. In. Hold. Out. “You came. And now--” In. Hold. Out. “I’m gonna make you breathe. Until it’s over. And then, we’ll go somewhere I can sleep. And you’ll be there, until I do. We help each other. It’s not either-or. That’s how it works. Concentrate, okay?” In. Hold. Out. “If not for you, then for me?”

"It is either-or! We can't be happy together that's not—it's zero-sum and—" Deirdre gulped. In. Out. In. Hold. Out. She knew the theory, it had simply never been applied in this way and it never should have been. This breathing preceded a scream, a goal in the end—not calmness, destruction. "Stop it." She did settle, finding no alternative to the problem at hand than following Morgan's lead. In. Hold. Out. "Stop it. We're not—I came here to help and I can't so I'm going to leave and you're going to speak to someone who knows how to do anything other than shattering glass and rupturing lungs and—" pain, something Morgan didn't need more of. In. Hold. Out. "This isn't—Stop helping me. That's not what I came here for and that's not what you wanted in having me here so we're not doing this. I'm not breathing." In. Out. Deirdre huffed, simply to show she wouldn't listen. It was childish, but she couldn't think of what she should be doing anymore. "Don't say that—that's not fair—" she croaked out, "If not for you, then for me—that's not fair. I'd do just about anything for y—" she sighed, cutting herself off. "I hate this."

“You really don’t get it, huh?” Morgan asked. Maybe the fully sober, smarter version of herself had the idea tucked away, that no one had ever loved Deirdre the way she should have been. No one explained what ‘no matter what’ and ‘together’ meant, and so she, poor wandering girl, knew even less than Morgan about what to do with this. But it fell like an air drop from the sky on Morgan now. She fumbled for the jar of water and chugged. Her eyes were burning to cry again, but she didn’t have anything left. She was hoarse and tired and warm and cold and sad and alive and she needed something to stay upright in the middle of it all. “Holding me helps,” she said, shifting again and tucking herself into Deirdre’s side. If she wasn’t going to let her manage her body through this, she may as well get more comfortable riding it out. “And telling me what you think. Even if it doesn’t make sense to me. Or something to distract me with Your voice is nice, so it helps. Like...if the hurt was a giant block I’m carrying, when you do that, it’s like you’re carrying some of it too. And it’s not as hard to carry anymore. And I can almost rest.” She pressed her lips to her shoulder. “And you already gave that to me, so.” She was quiet awhile, listening to the night and half floating off into a vodka soaked cloud in her mind. “I’d do most anything for you too, you know. I think it’s like alchemy. it goes back and forth. And sometimes, together, two ingredients fuse into one thing, with their separate parts still visible. Together and apart at the same time. And you never asked what I wanted or needed out of you coming here. How can you know what I’m asking for isn’t it?”

Deirdre felt like a child; sat on the floor like one, useless like one, groping around in the dark. No, she didn't get it. And she opened her mouth to ask but was cut off by the sheer oddity of watching Morgan down water as if she was dying from thirst. If she'd been that desperate for it, why didn't she just drink it sooner? Deirdre let that question sit unspoken on her tongue too. When Morgan's speech came this time, the banshee listened. None of it made sense. Of course Morgan had that in common with Grey's Anatomy; with humans and their words and so much of it was lost to the fae. But Morgan said being held helped and so Deirdre reached out, forgetting why she let go in the first place. Together and apart at the same time—it didn't make sense either. She'd been good with working humans when she knew what to say, when compassion could be faked and simple logic could be applied. This was so far from something she was capable of that she was left to wonder at all what Morgan could possibly gain. Deirdre had come here to help. And she couldn't. So therefore, she needed to leave. Deirdre came here to make sure Morgan drank some water, and the human had done that by herself. So therefore, she was useless and her staying was no longer necessary. Morgan needed to sleep. She couldn't do that on a porch and Deirdre had no desire to potentially face Morgan's housemate. So therefore, there existed one solution: leave. "What do you want or need from me then, Morgan?" 

Morgan sighed with relief as Deirdre put her arms around her at last. “For tonight? I already said,” she told Deirdre. “And you already told me you want to. But if going inside is too much, I guess it’ll just have to happen out here.” She nuzzled Deirdre’s neck. It was not ideal, but she wanted this more than she wanted her bed. If she had to choose, and, apparently, she did, Morgan considered it an easy call. “I want to fall asleep in Deirdre Dolan’s arms. It’s been a shitty few days, and I feel the most better when I’m with her, and I don’t think I have more than an hour of consciousness left in me anyways. I know it’s a little hard, but I really want this. And I’ll find a way to give you something back later, if you want me to.”

"No, I know what you said, I just don't understand it." Deirdre sighed. "You've given me enough, I don't—" but logically, falling asleep on a porch didn't sound particularly generous to either of them. She couldn't understand what was pleasing about falling asleep in the arms of someone who felt effectively like a corpse, but she figured Morgan and her one hour of consciousness didn't need to worry about answering that question for now. And so, Deirdre groaned; once set in trying to leave, now working around another solution. "You're not falling asleep on a porch, Morgan. It's cold and I'm cold and you're human so it's just…" Deirdre sighed again, the feeling of Morgan cozied into her was nice. "I can carry you to my car, which I understand is unnecessary but it's a symbolic gesture. And then I can drive us to my house. And then you can sleep on a bed, not a porch, still in my arms, if you'd like. And in the morning, someone makes you breakfast and that, I think, makes more sense than this." The banshee let out another breath, then took one in slowly. In. Hold. Out. "If you'd like, but I'm not letting you sleep outside." 

Morgan lifted her head enough to look at Deirdre. “I very much like,” she said, and slipped her arms about her neck. “Symbolic gesture and everything. All of it.” She kissed the tip of her nose, chaste and sweet, and shifted her legs around to make it easier for Deirdre. She would’ve been okay with being cuddled on the couch, or melting in her regular bedsheets, badly in need of a wash. And maybe she would have had to wonder if she made any of it up, but it would have been a familiar feeling. But stars and sky, it was so nice to have more than just okay. “Take me away, McBanshee.”

The mortification wasn’t lost on Deirdre, neither was the sudden realization that she lacked the exact degree of strength it took to effortlessly lift a body. She’d been trained in how to carry plenty of dead ones, but not a living and breathing human she truly cared enough to want to strain herself carrying. The symbolism had better have been worth it. Scrunching her face up as Morgan pressed her lips to her nose in a fleeting action told her that it was. And for a moment, brief as a peck on the nose, nothing else mattered. “Call me McBanshee again and I’m throwing you into a lake.” And even though a threat like that out of her cold lips was usually as serious as it could be, her tone betrayed her heart’s fondness--and her lips quirked into a smile as she carried Morgan. “But a nice lake, Madame Morgan.” It wasn’t how she planned her Valentine’s to end and yet, the night, cold and uncaring, remained changed. Her bed would be just a little smaller, and they were both all the better for it.