[ How does this guy even manage it? Talking like he means every word he says, speaking a kind of candor that hushes Treavor’s habitual suspicions and leaves him… Wanting to believe. Ready to trust. Listening, listening closely.
Listening in spite of a gnashing hangover. Listening without promise of a drink, with certainty of not having a drink so long as he’s here, and still he doesn’t want, really, to leave.
It’s… good here. He feels something like safe. Like he’s less hounded by absences, by himself. Like he can breathe a little. ’Everyone needs a safe place,’ Alice said, and how the guy managed to make his home that place and how the guy knew Treavor maybe needed that place is a mystery, but doesn’t it feel nice to be here? Like cares have been ebbed distant even without a drink. Like the blankets around him and the cat curled nearby and the man next to him (the man who can hold him int hose blue, blue eyes; the man whose presence shifts the room) all barricade the day’s fears and troubles.
(It’s a little like having a home. Maybe.)
The guy can’t know that for Treavor, yeah there was always a so-called home to return to, a so-called home he was compelled, is still compelled to return to. The locus of his family, to which he owes his loyalties, his life, his livelihood. Less ‘you can always come home,’ more ‘you can never leave.’
It’d be nice. To have a place that didn’t feel like that. Haunted by specters of his family, his fuck-ups.
And though this guy’s got no cause for being gentle with Treavor, here he is, offering something like sanctuary, a place Treavor isn’t scrambling to flee, a place that doesn’t leave Treavor scrambling from himself.
This guy’s. Not so bad. (Treavor’s starting to believe that doesn’t speak the half of it.)
This guy’s had plenty of reason to snap at Treavor, to dislike Treavor, to wish Treavor would shut the hell up and disappear. But he’s never bitten needlessly. (But he’s answered Treavor’s texts.) But he bats back almost playful. (’Eh,’ he said; ’eh, maybe I’ll forgive you,’ casual and slung back against the couch; not everyone can pull of both casual and businesslike; not everyone - hardly anyone - plays along with Treavor’s hypotheticals and storytelling.
(’You’d tell me a story,’ he said. There’s something this guy maybe understands, or guesses. Something Treavor maybe doesn’t think on much about himself.))
Alice is a guy who maybe doesn’t like to do harm, or see harm done. (Holy fuck, is this guy an actual, genuine, got-into-law-to-help-people kind of guy? A question that makes Treavor blink, a thought for another time.)
He’s a nice guy. A good guy, or he wants to be, or tries to be. Treavor’s mostly assumed people like this were a myth. Or at least were forever outside his sphere, which make sense given the way his world is populated by jags and he killed his one chance at another world and he’s always been bad at making lasting friends and by this point he’s fucking hopeless.
(…But then. This guy said. About the time thing. The hours thing. The maybe… having grounds to be a kind of friends thing, and it hurts how much that bites at Treavor’s heart, the idea of a friend, the could-be-reality of a friend. (Fucking pathetic.) (Yeah, but, whatever. It gets lonely, this shitty world. Isn’t he always looking for could-be friends? Strangers he can feign are friends if he drinks enough and they’re in an okay mood? What would it be to have a stable someone in his life, outside of his family and their shitty friends, outside of Sheldon who, admittedly, isn’t a total fuck-up, but gets on Treavor’s fucking nerves.)
There’s grounding in the way this guy talks, the way he is.
There’s something like lightness in hearing him.
And there’s a lot here in word, in motion, in proximity that Treavor’ll come back to later that night, the next day, for weeks to come. Considering what any of it means, what Alice is - intentionally and otherwise - telling.
For now, Treavor nods slowly once, twice, pressing his head into the cloth (it’s cool still, or cool because Alice switched sides; guy knows a thing or two about this, huh?), flicking a look at the guy as he speaks. ]
Careful, Alice. Someone might get the idea you’re an okay guy.
…That or this is some kind of elaborate plan to… murder me and steal my desk?
Is that it?
[ His voice not loud, but exaggerated in a faux whisper, and here he manages to move his head a little, to offer an exaggerated wink before pressed his head back against the cloth. ]
Hey! Kidding.
Both desks are shit.
[ But maybe. Maybe the guy working at the other desk isn’t shit. And maybe the next time Treavor heads into work, it won’t be at the ready to bristle, to snarl, to ward off someone he’d rather never deal with.
Maybe. Maybe going into work won’t look quite so miserable, anymore. ]
Anyway, hate to break it to you, but I’m not sure you qualify as ‘weird.’ Your place's too clean and you've got too much of that casual social grace thing going.
no subject
Listening in spite of a gnashing hangover. Listening without promise of a drink, with certainty of not having a drink so long as he’s here, and still he doesn’t want, really, to leave.
It’s… good here. He feels something like safe. Like he’s less hounded by absences, by himself. Like he can breathe a little. ’Everyone needs a safe place,’ Alice said, and how the guy managed to make his home that place and how the guy knew Treavor maybe needed that place is a mystery, but doesn’t it feel nice to be here? Like cares have been ebbed distant even without a drink. Like the blankets around him and the cat curled nearby and the man next to him (the man who can hold him int hose blue, blue eyes; the man whose presence shifts the room) all barricade the day’s fears and troubles.
(It’s a little like having a home. Maybe.)
The guy can’t know that for Treavor, yeah there was always a so-called home to return to, a so-called home he was compelled, is still compelled to return to. The locus of his family, to which he owes his loyalties, his life, his livelihood. Less ‘you can always come home,’ more ‘you can never leave.’
It’d be nice. To have a place that didn’t feel like that. Haunted by specters of his family, his fuck-ups.
And though this guy’s got no cause for being gentle with Treavor, here he is, offering something like sanctuary, a place Treavor isn’t scrambling to flee, a place that doesn’t leave Treavor scrambling from himself.
This guy’s. Not so bad. (Treavor’s starting to believe that doesn’t speak the half of it.)
This guy’s had plenty of reason to snap at Treavor, to dislike Treavor, to wish Treavor would shut the hell up and disappear. But he’s never bitten needlessly. (But he’s answered Treavor’s texts.) But he bats back almost playful. (’Eh,’ he said; ’eh, maybe I’ll forgive you,’ casual and slung back against the couch; not everyone can pull of both casual and businesslike; not everyone - hardly anyone - plays along with Treavor’s hypotheticals and storytelling.
(’You’d tell me a story,’ he said. There’s something this guy maybe understands, or guesses. Something Treavor maybe doesn’t think on much about himself.))
Alice is a guy who maybe doesn’t like to do harm, or see harm done. (Holy fuck, is this guy an actual, genuine, got-into-law-to-help-people kind of guy? A question that makes Treavor blink, a thought for another time.)
He’s a nice guy. A good guy, or he wants to be, or tries to be. Treavor’s mostly assumed people like this were a myth. Or at least were forever outside his sphere, which make sense given the way his world is populated by jags and he killed his one chance at another world and he’s always been bad at making lasting friends and by this point he’s fucking hopeless.
(…But then. This guy said. About the time thing. The hours thing. The maybe… having grounds to be a kind of friends thing, and it hurts how much that bites at Treavor’s heart, the idea of a friend, the could-be-reality of a friend. (Fucking pathetic.) (Yeah, but, whatever. It gets lonely, this shitty world. Isn’t he always looking for could-be friends? Strangers he can feign are friends if he drinks enough and they’re in an okay mood? What would it be to have a stable someone in his life, outside of his family and their shitty friends, outside of Sheldon who, admittedly, isn’t a total fuck-up, but gets on Treavor’s fucking nerves.)
There’s grounding in the way this guy talks, the way he is.
There’s something like lightness in hearing him.
And there’s a lot here in word, in motion, in proximity that Treavor’ll come back to later that night, the next day, for weeks to come. Considering what any of it means, what Alice is - intentionally and otherwise - telling.
For now, Treavor nods slowly once, twice, pressing his head into the cloth (it’s cool still, or cool because Alice switched sides; guy knows a thing or two about this, huh?), flicking a look at the guy as he speaks. ]
Careful, Alice. Someone might get the idea you’re an okay guy.
…That or this is some kind of elaborate plan to… murder me and steal my desk?
Is that it?
[ His voice not loud, but exaggerated in a faux whisper, and here he manages to move his head a little, to offer an exaggerated wink before pressed his head back against the cloth. ]
Hey! Kidding.
Both desks are shit.
[ But maybe. Maybe the guy working at the other desk isn’t shit. And maybe the next time Treavor heads into work, it won’t be at the ready to bristle, to snarl, to ward off someone he’d rather never deal with.
Maybe. Maybe going into work won’t look quite so miserable, anymore. ]
Anyway, hate to break it to you, but I’m not sure you qualify as ‘weird.’ Your place's too clean and you've got too much of that casual social grace thing going.