Waffles fix everything.

Grace
Grace doesn't always just hole up in her room. Sometimes, she goes to relax in the library, all befitted with its marble lion (Kalen's idea) and its giant book digitizing machine (Grace's idea). It is a place where Grace and Kalen's separate sensibilities met, and then went wild. There are physical books here, plenty of them -- and all of them accessible via a computer in the corner, too. It has indexes and is searchable, and Grace loves that part. Other people like the tactile pleasure of turning pages, or the smells -- she understands that, to a point.

So, she's relaxing in Grace-fashion, her legs hanging off the armrest of a leather couch as she lounges on her back, her Kindle propped up on her chest, and a cat threatening to insert herself between Kindle and face because human bodies are warm.

Samir
As far as houseguests go worse have existed in the history of the world but Sam was less a houseguest the last week and more a patient. Maybe he thought himself a prisoner. They haven't spoken much. What little they did speak no one would blame Grace if she felt as if she were speaking to a lunatic and not to her friend.

He isn't exactly wrapped tight on a good day anyway but Sam has warm amber-brown eyes that tend to have some measure of intelligence in them even when he is anxious. The eyes of a Mage in Quiet are faraway if they are not blank and Sam has been as faraway as a Mage can be without entering into a Mindscape. When he has been lucid he has been scared.

This has not been a fun week. She has not seen much of him since Sera came by the other night. They've passed each other by at least. He has been going to the bathroom and rummaging through the kitchen to feed himself. He has been sleeping a lot. Grace hasn't caught him trying to leave the warehouse again.

This afternoon is a beautiful one and neither of them are outside. Grace is alone with her thoughts for quite some time and then a knock sounds on the door. It's the little red dot.

Grace
"You go get the door," she says, to Pomegranate, who responds by bashing her head into the side of the Kindle. Cats -- what are they good for? Being cute. Okay, maybe that.

She twists her head around and yells at the door: "It's open!"

Grace is dressed the same today as she pretty much always is. Jeans, a faded black t-shirt with a picture of mountains on it in white, socks. Her hair is a mess that she hasn't bothered with fixing.

Samir
This is the first time he's put his own clean clothes back on since Elijah washed them. He's been running around barefoot with his hair an increasingly tangled mess in athletic pants and a t-shirt that don't belong to him since then. He's even laced up his wine-colored boots and climbed back into his jacket.

He must have found a hair tie in the bathroom somewhere. It's a good sign that he's trying to appear presentable. He's showered again and restrained his hair and now here he is opening the library door and leaning half-in.

Sheepish isn't quite the word for how he looks. Embarrassed isn't either. This wasn't his fault but he has no clear recollection of the last week other than bits and flashes. Some memory of screaming and locking himself in a room he had previously torn apart.

"Hey," he says. Voice a bit hoarse. Hovers in the doorway to try and gauge her mood before he comes barging in.

Grace
"Hey! Come in," Grace says. Pomegranate looks up to register the fact that the door is open, and proceeds to walk across Grace's chest to plop down on the floor and peek out. Is the door staying open? If so, there is territory to check on.

"You look better," Grace says, from her upside-down vantage point on the couch. "I was hoping you would, after Sera's visit."

With that, she rights herself, swinging her legs around to sit on the couch like a normal person, so they can have an actual conversation.

Samir
That cat is always trying to escape. Sam sees her land on the floor and if he had been planning on just hovering in the doorway when he knocked he abandons that plan now. Steps sideways across the threshold and pushes the door shut behind him.

Grace was hoping he would look better.

Oh. Sera was here. Sam doesn't remember that. Grace can tell from looking at Sam that he doesn't remember that. He opens his mouth to relay this to her but in the end he decides Grace wouldn't lie to him and doesn't let the question fly out into the air. Progress. A few days ago he was convinced she was brainwashed and trying to poison him.

"Yeah," he says. Tucks his hands into his pockets and leans back against the door. "I, ah..." Frown. He didn't realize he'd felt poorly when he was feeling poorly. It's as if it happened to someone else. As if he was stumbling around in a blackout this whole time. "I don't really..." The frown somehow deepens. "I went into Quiet, after what happened in the park. Didn't I."

Grace
Cats are always trying to escape, until they are trying to come back in. The closed door is an affront to their need to be everywhere. And when it closes again, Pomegranate gives him a look. A squint of the eyes, and then a devoted huffiness as she turns and walks away.

"Quiet?" Grace asks, like that much is news to her. "What's that?"

She honestly doesn't know, thus far she hasn't seen another.

Samir
"I don't..."

He hasn't shaved his face in a week and a half. Samir has a boyish countenance that looks as if it couldn't sprout so much as peach fuzz but it's coming in black and thick along his jaws. Maybe he doesn't trust himself with a razor yet or didn't want to dirty the ones he found in the bathroom. Now that he's stood in front of her he rubs the new growth on his jaw and flinches with the scritching of hair beneath his fingernails.

Alternate possibility: mirrors aren't working for him. Or he still won't look in a mirror. He's better but he isn't free.

"I mean, it happens to me sometimes, but I don't... I don't know what it is or why it happens. Someone explained it to me once, said I'm susceptible to it, but..." Sigh. "Do you know what a Marauder is?"

Grace
"I've heard of them," she says. "Very little."

She's heard of insane Mages, at least. It's partly why she wanted so much to get him off the street.

"You didn't do anything though. You haven't attacked anybody," she says, and hopes it gives him some relief.

Samir
Some relief but the fact that she has to tell him that doesn't bring him anything but chagrin. His mind is so calm that he can't even begin to feel a flicker of terror at his own divorce from reality.

"Grace..." Even tone and pain in his eyes even if he is whole in body and whole enough in mind to even have this conversation. He keeps his hands in his pockets. "I can't remember anything. I don't know what day it is..." His eyes flick around the library for emphasis. He's lucid. "Until this morning I didn't even know where I was. Whatever I have to do to keep this from happening again, I--"

A brief flicker of distraction. He's still in Quiet. He's still hallucinating. He knows they aren't real though. In a few days they'll be gone.

"I'll do it. I'm so sorry."

Grace
"Don't be sorry. You didn't do this. I heard about the thing that attacked you -- if anything needs to be sorry, it's the dipshits who made that thing," Grace says, finality to her voice.

She slips the Kindle onto the coffee table in front of her couch, and pulls one of her legs up into her lap.

"Once, I had this thing... Technocratic virus. It made me hallucinate horrible things. I relied on a lot of people to get me through that -- physically, mentally, you know. Having to do that is hard, you don't want to be a burden. I know. You just have to, until you're well enough to help them back. None of us get through life without scars. The ones who want to help you are all aware of that."

Samir
This is the part where they would hug if either of them were the sort of person to enjoy or even seek out physical contact with another person. Sam has to be stoned in order to tolerate physical contact let alone enjoy it. He gets lonely the same as anyone else does and even if he wasn't aware of it he has to know on some primordial level that Grace was with him the entire time he was shackled by madness.

He stays where he is. He does not want to hug her. He wants to go home as much as he can call home Home and rethink his life.

But he listens as he stays where he is. Listens and does not let his mind wander. Sympathy glints in his eyes. Grace has already told him about the Technocratic virus but it was through email and she was not explicit about the impact that it had on her.

Doesn't matter. Grace helped him because she wanted to.

"Okay," he says. If he sounds choked up it's because he is. He is also exhausted. If he wasn't at his best a few days ago he at least was unaware of it. "Thank you."

Grace
Her eyes crinkle back up into a smile. She is, honestly, very happy to see him being all coherent and cleaned up. "You're very welcome. It's also Sunday afternoon, the 30th."

Just so you know the time, Samir.

"You want some waffles? I got this vegan waffle mix at the store, I don't know how good it is -- but no eggs!"

Waffles without butter and whipped cream sound terrible. Maybe peanut butter? Hmm... It's a thought she chases while her eyes go wandering.

Samir
Samir frowns again. Why the fuck is she buying vegan waffle mix? Does he want to ask? He doesn't want to ask. He kind of wants to ask. He can assume. He had to have said something in the fog of his insanity to make her think he doesn't eat meat.

Then he remembers the smell. The strings of fur and skin hung from a once-woman's mouth. A shiver cuts its way up his spine and Sam stops leaning against the wall.

"Sure," he says. A faux-enthusiastic across-the-chest pump of his fist. There's a reason people mistake him for a Mad Scientist sometimes. "For science!" Heh.

Grace
There was quite a while after her bout with near-fatal illness that she didn't eat anything reminding her of skin, blood, viscera. Waffles are pretty safe, unless you use strawberry preserves.

She gets up off the couch, stretches with a yawn (and her hair is still kind of stuck in the position of 'laying on the couch').

"Waffles it is then. I've got a shitload of things to put on them. And we can have coffee, and it will be great."

Samir
"Oh, shit. You have coffee?"

Yes. He is tired. Coffee will fix just about anything though and now that he's thinking about coffee he gets to thinking about all the other illicit substances his body is screaming for that he can't remember ingesting last:

"If you give me coffee--" Does he have cigarettes? He pats his pockets. Relief. They're where he left them. "--I'm gonna want a cigarette." A beat. He pulls open the door and holds it for her to go ahead of him. "Is it seriously the thirtieth? What the fuck..."

Grace
Grace about snorts at him. "Do we have coffee. Fuck, man," she says, and goes for the door. Pomegranate is suddently interested again, having amused herself by ignoring everybody for their horribleness. She meows, a command. Out of the way. Open doors are my doors.

Grace doesn't bother with the cat's wishes, and walks through the door, sticking her tongue out at the cat once in the hallway. Pomegranate sits there, staring, and then licks her paw.

"We have like, a ridiculous amount of coffee, and a whole array of junk to put in your coffee. Kalen has found out the best French presses to use after careful trial and error. This is like, coffee Heaven."

With that, she makes her way toward the kitchen, with her promises of coffee and waffles.

"Oh, and let the cat out, or I think she'll piss in my shoes to make a point or something."

Samir
After everything Grace is done for him the least he can do is open the door so the fucking cat won't take a leak in her sandals.

Sam startles as if the request has caught him off-guard but he does pause once the other Mercurial Elite has passed over the threshold. Leaves the door ajar so the furry little shit can get out. Coffee and waffles are the best way to come back to normalcy he could think of and he didn't even think of it himself.

He won't be staying here tonight. He knows he's welcome anytime and he may very well stop by again after he's gotten back on an even keel. Though he helps cook the waffles and make the coffee and sticks around enough to get an update on what's been going on in the world eventually the desire for nicotine and solitude win out over anything else.

At the door he does not hug her. He does not even shake her hand. Sam gives Grace a nod and a ghost of a smile and then the little red dot continues on towards its apartment. Grateful and fading at once. She can't keep an eye on him forever.