[For Ray]

[shareofdevils]

There were a lot of reasons why waking up that morning should have been strange for Marissa. As if being back in Newport wasn't weird enough, there was the fact that she'd apparently gone back in time -- The bed she woke up in wasn't at Caleb's or tucked into the lovingly-decorated room at her dad's, it was in her old room, the one in the house

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[whiskytango_rto]

Instead of answering outright, if he even really heard the question, Ray stretched an arm to better smash his face into the pile of stuffed animals, knowing his girlfriend was the type to ask legitimate questions but wondering what the hell could possibly be important this early.

Well, the fact that his pillow had buttons was kind of pressing, especially the part where they were pressing into his eye and cheek. "Why does my pillow hurt," he asked muzzily, finally lifting his head to squint at the sea of pink and fluff. "Did I forget to separate the whites again?"

[shareofdevils]

That was about the time that Julie Cooper's unmistakable voice came echoing down the hall in a sing-song of Marissa's name. It was also about the time that Marissa had a stroke.

"Oh my God," she blurted, momentarily frozen in place. "Oh my- Crap. Oh crap." She whirled on Ray, who was still staring groggily up from where he'd been molesting her teddy bear. "Hide!" she hissed, frantically waving her hands. "Under the bed! Go!" she added, and swearing she could hear her mother's footsteps drawing closer, gave Ray a shove that sent him falling out of the bed with a thump.

Wide-eyed, Marissa peered over the edge of the mattress. "Are you okay?"

[whiskytango_rto]

"No," he groaned, laying on a strange floor in nothing but the shorts he'd gone to sleep in--in a different bed, he recalled--and a nasty blow to his tailbone first thing in the morning.

He really, really, really wanted to go back to sleep, and hey, if he had to hide to get his girlfriend to stop assaulting him, by all means. Rolling over onto his front, he crawled over the sudden expanse of carpet to hide under the bed, planning to just close his eyes and wait until whatever the hell this was to slow down or be over before he came out.

That's weird, he thinks, hiding his face in his elbow and curling up by the wall--was he really hearing the click of heels outside?

[shareofdevils]

"Under the bed!" Marissa hissed, pointing emphatically. "Under! Now! Before my mom-" The doorknob jiggled, and before she could finish, Marissa flopped back onto the mattress in a flurry of pink sheets.

"Marissa, honey," Julie began as she pushed the door open, "You're going to be late for school. I'm not writing you another note just because you're lazy." She paused to inspect her manicure and then glanced to the closet, where a blue sun dress was hanging from the door. "I hope you're not thinking of wearing that," she continued, and swung her gaze back to where Marissa was staring wide-eyed from the bed. "It's not very flattering, sweetheart, makes you look flat as a board- What?" Julie blinked at her daughter and then down at herself. "Do I have something in my teeth?"

"No!" Marissa blurted, and then after Julie's startled reaction tried again. "No. I just- I don't know, weird dreams, you know. I'll be down in a minute."

[whiskytango_rto]

Ray only just managed to wait until Julie swept back out of Marissa's room before he called, "That was your mom," in a voice gone reedy from surprise and disuse. "She is not as nice as her ankles," he decided, having only experienced Julie from the knees down, but that seemed to be about enough.

Pulling himself just out from under the bed, he stared up at Marissa from the floor, frowning at her in something between concern and just plain confusion. "I'll write you a note," he offered, mockingly serious; "I know you're not lazy."

"I'll need a pen, probably. And some pants, unless you just want me to stay under here and you can feed me every once in awhile. I'd prefer sometime in the next hour, but it's your ridiculously pink room, so I guess you're in charge."

[shareofdevils]

"I'm not going to school," Marissa insisted in a terse whisper, motioning for Ray to keep his voice down. "What is happening? This..." she trailed off as she pushed herself from her bed and paced across the room. "This is not a dream. Oh my God, this is not a dream and you don't have any pants on and my mother is downstairs."

[whiskytango_rto]

Still on his back, Ray watched her pacing upside down, finding more worth in the question of living on the ceiling and like, would everyone's boobs and cheeks sag up instead of down than how the fuck he ended up under his girlfriend's childhood bed.

"It's not like you have pants on either," he argued, switching his focus to her legs as she moved. "If I'd been a boy scout instead of a Marine maybe I would've put some on just in case we magically ran into your mom in the morning."