I feel like I'm drowning...

Who: Helen and Sammy
Where: The kitchen
When: While Marek's at Babylon, around 8.

The sun had gone down and had taken with it Sammy’s ability to stay in denial. Hands immersed in soapy water he stared silently out the window, fingers resting on the bottom of the sink, no longer searching for the plug as he remained caught up in his thoughts which spun through his mind like people stuck moving through a revolving door with no way out. Herbert was leaving – had probably already left – because his dad was in the hospital. Corwin was gone – true, he’d left his key, but that wasn’t the same as having someone to talk to – because a hunter had come after him. His parents were dead, and that was the worst part. People were leaving in one way or another left and right, and who knew wh– he wasn’t going to think about it. He could go back into denial without a look over his shoulder. It was safer there. Nothing could brain him over the head with thoughts that bordered on emo there. He pulled the plug.

Helen sat at the kitchen table, working on paperwork. Geo had fled, claiming he had work - a lie, she knew, he had his schedule tacked to the wall behind his couch - but she let him. He was going as stir crazy as Sammy, and two of them all twitchy? In her house? No, thanks. Instead she sat pretending to do paperwork - but really watching Sammy work on the dishes. What's got them so torqued? Things were calming down again. They should be returning to normal...

She finally spoke, tearing a page off of her notepad and setting it on the table across from her. "So, Sam. What's eating you?"

Sammy turned his dark eyes from the water covering his hands over to Helen then he looked out the window again as the water slowly slipped down the drain, pulling his hands out of it and reaching for a towel. He didn’t answer, made no reach for the paper and pen she was offering him. He just stood, shrugging his shoulders, face tight, almost strained. He didn’t have to answer Helen if he didn’t feel like it, and he definitely didn’t feel like it. He didn't even know why she had to be in here with him while there was a perfectly good study on the second floor.

Hell, the kid looked like he'd just lost his best friend. Dark eyes met hers for all of a second - and what she saw there was almost enough to chill her, but only for a moment. Her eyes narrowed. "Sam, come on. Don't ignore me, at least give me an answer. Y'look like you haven't slept for a week." She stood up, snagging the paper as she did, walking over to stand behind him. "Come on. At least tell me what's going on."

He turned and took the paper, slightly damp fingertips leaving behind wet marks on the paper. Sammy looked at it like he didn’t know what to do with it then tore it down the center. Placing both pieces together he tore them again, narrow strips that he let fall to the floor after he’d separated them from the sheet. It looked like a tickertape parade in slow motion and with a low budget that could barely afford anything, and Sammy didn’t stop tearing until there wasn’t anymore paper to rip up. If that didn’t get his point across, nothing could – he hung the used towel on the handle to the oven.

Well. That was a shut up if she'd ever heard - or seen - one. Helen crossed her arms, leaning back against the fridge with a deepened scowl. "Pick it up, I don't need paper crap all over the floor." Seriously, what was the deal with him? She backed off a little, but kept up her constant stare; intent on not shutting up until he finally told her.

Not happening. Sammy looked down at it silently then back up at Helen, shaking his head as the pinched, blank looked turned into a pinched smile that wasn’t remotely happy. He wasn’t going to pick them up they could just stay there on the floor just fine. She didn’t need to know anything, either, so she could quit standing there like she was expecting him to spill everything to her – two could play the stubborn game. Herbert had left, and it was none of her business. Why were bad things continuing to happen to the good guys? Herbert didn’t need his dad to be sick! Sammy picked up a glass, considering it.

Helen just kept watching with pursed lips, remembering not-so-fondly. There had been a time, fairly long ago, when Sammy had been very young and very small and just learning how to express his displeasure...he'd reacted to something she'd said by throwing a plate at her.

He had had a look on his face then that was very similar to the look he had on his face right now.

"Don't you dare."

“Catch,” he mouthed, before dropping the glass towards the floor. He didn’t turn to see if she did – the sound of glass breaking when it made contact was enough to let him know she didn’t – and reached for another glass. There was a wide range of dishes in the drainer, but he was going for glasses first. He grabbed a second and studied it as well before letting it slip from his fingers and hurtle towards the cold tiles of the kitchen floor.

Helen didn't bother to try - that'd be following his rules, and hell if she was going to do that without him playing by her rules. It didn't stop her from flinching away from the exploding glass shards. "What," She kept her voice deadpan, biting back the snarl that threatened to break out, "Reverting to a four year old? That what happens when you can't yell and scream?"

A third glass – one that both Helen and Marek used often – joined the first and second on the floor, shards of deep red glass flying outwards from the point of impact as he calmly watched it shatter. When the pieces had shattered he looked at her again, shrugging as if to say ‘Maybe’. He really had had enough of everything, and this was his particular way of showing it. He couldn’t make his own noises which would have been less damaging, so he made noise the way he could. A plate joined the glasses, white porcelain joining the glass.

Helen did growl at that, glad she'd left her shoes on as she nudged shattered glass out of her way, stomping deliberately towards her younger brother. "Cut it out, y'little bastard." Ok, so, maybe the don't you dare had been a bad move on her part. A really bad move - he seemed to have taken it as a challenge. Well. She was going to win this one.

Two could really play the stubborn game. Sammy – totally aware he was acting like a sulking, bratty four year old, but feeling like he deserved to – picked up a jar and turned his back on Helen. Drawing back his arm and gripping the jar tighter he studied the opposite wall and then let the jar fly. He didn’t wait to see what happened but reached for another dish as the jar shattered.

There had been Herbert’s friends, lost in that mine! There had been Lullaby’s death. There had been vampires; they’d been bitten; mama and dad had been killed; shadow things had come after them and tried to kill them. When did they get to catch a break? Another plate connected to the wall, thrown like a Frisbee, and the pieces flew outwards, shards scattering across the counters.

Helen lunged for her brother, teeth bared in an annoyed snarl. "Stop that." She had to dodge the next discus plate before she was in range to grab his arm - and even that didn't stop him from reaching back to the dishrack, she noted, abstractly.

Sammy’s range of motion wasn’t as good as before, but he could still grab another dish with his other hand, which he did. The blue glass bowl he’d picked up felt cool against the skin of his hand and he held onto it for a second before he let it go – it fell to the floor and shattered at their feet as he jerked his captive arm out of Helen’s grip, turning to glare at her as he found another plate.

Helen grabbed that arm, trying to pin it to the counter. "Look, you little rat, unless you want me to make you pay for every dish you break..." She trailed off, eyes narrowing to dangerous slits. This wasn't fun, this wasn't funny. This was annoying, and now she was going to have to sweep all the glass off the floor. That wasn't how she'd been planning on spending the evening.

He knew he should stop – honestly he did – but he couldn’t bring himself to. This was, at least for this moment, his choice of stress relief, and he had a lot of stress built up inside right now. Sammy flailed his free arm backwards, hoping to catch hold of another glass, but hooking the spice rack instead. He pulled his arm back and knocked a dish of leftovers from dinner onto the floor, food joining the glass shards that glittered on the tiles.

That did it. Helen ground her teeth together and caught his other arm, jerking him off his feet roughly. He'd never been heavy, and she had training to do stuff like that - it wasn't hard to drag him away from the counter, mindful of the glass underfoot. She didn't want to hurt him and have Geo run crying to civil services or some other BS like that..."Get out of my kitchen."

As soon as he was released Sammy spun to face her, tipping his head to the side as he signed excruciatingly slow so that she could understand the simple words he was using. “…can still break things.” He pointed out, waving at the house in general, raising an eyebrow. “Kitchen easily fixed.” He looked at the rest of the room then shook his head, sighing, shoulders sagging as his anger waned in this clean, tidy hallway. “But I won’t. Being a baby. Can deal.” It was like a balloon popping how fast his anger left him leaving behind tired, aching emotions. Sammy closed his eyes tightly as if to will them away. “Sorry.”

It took Helen longer than she truly felt necessary to translate the gestures. "Are you really? It doesn't really seem like you are..." She kept scowling, arms crossed as she stood in the doorway to the kitchen. "Seems to me you owe me a stack of dishes, kid."

Sammy scowled back at her, eyes narrowed to slits and dark. “Won’t pay for them.” He commented, backing up into the hallway table on accident and knocking the hurricane lamp off of it – it fell to the floor and shatter causing him to whirl and stare at it, startled.

"Sammy!" Helen's voice came out twice as loud as she had meant it to, and far more startled. She wasn't sure what he'd said, except that it included the word 'won't.' "T'hell do you think you're doing?"

He looked back at her, the expression on his face saying better than words that he hadn’t meant to knock over that. Sammy leaned down to see the damage lips tightening when he saw that there was no way the lamp could be fixed. “I didn’t mean to.” He signed, looking back at Helen again, pointing his hand at the pieces of the lamp and shaking his head to try and get that point across to her.

That she got alright. Didn't believe it, mind, but she got it. She shook her head with another snarl. "Whatever." She pointed at the floor in an exaggerated motion. "Stay here." She padded her way to the basement door, sliding the latch over, reaching in to snag the broom and pull it out.

“I’m not a dog,” Sammy signed after her, but he did stay where he’d been told to. He didn’t stay standing, though, as he got to his knees to gather the larger pieces of the broken lamp together, hissing under his breath as the sharp edge sliced across three fingers. Of course he’d cut himself while trying to help, not while he was in a rage and tossing dishes about. It was like really awful luck.

Helen returned with the broom seconds later, her dark eyes narrowing again. "Sammy, I told you to stay put." She dropped the broom and grabbed his arm instead, pulling him forcibly to his feet. "Now we gotta clean that before you get it infected or get blood all over my carpet." She dragged him toward the bathroom - at least she had practice with bandaging.

Sammy freed himself but followed after her anyhow resisting the urge to suck on the cuts in hopes of making them feel better or whatever. It would be just like them to get infected, and then his hand would be out of commission, which wasn’t helpful when one wanted to sign something. You needed both hands for a lot of different words. He didn’t try moving his fingers as he slipped into the bathroom behind her, not even to sign another ‘sorry’ which wouldn’t be true anyhow. Today sucked, Sammy decided as he reached to turn on the water and shove his fingers underneath.

Helen grumbled as she pulled the bandages out of the cupboard, followed by the disinfectant. She hadn't been fibbing - the last few years with Marek had given her experience in just about everything that could go wrong with cuts. "Use soap," she ordered, sitting down on the edge of the tub to untangled the roll of cotton bandages. "I dunno what kind of dust was on that lamp, but I don't think you want dust in a cut."

A strong urge – typhoon strong, really – bubbled up inside Sammy to tell Helen that she was stating the obvious but he didn’t, reaching for the soap instead and bending over the sink to shove his hands beneath the water and lather up. The silence in the bathroom was deafening, the only sounds the tick of the clock in the hallway and the water rushing down the drain. Sammy left his hands under the water, watching the red of his blood turn pink as it washed off of his fingers and slid slowly down the drain, feeling exhausted and worn out. The day'd been way too long. Way too long...