lord treavor pendleton (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
loyalless) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
kingdomsofrain2019-05-24 05:05 pm
loyalless) wrote in kingdomsofrain2019-05-24 05:05 pmOPEN RP POST
send a prompt, a starter, images, words, music, whatever you like.
loyalless) wrote in kingdomsofrain2019-05-24 05:05 pm
no subject
This is the intern’s (Alice’s) couch.
And that’s (Alice) the man himself over in the kitchen.
(Looking like. He belongs here?) (Fucking of course he does, it’s his home. Probably.) (Is this his blanket? (It smells nice.))
That’s the man himself telling Treavor there’s no. Hurry? Telling him take his time. (And wouldn’t Treavor like to sink back into halfway-sleeping, letting the cushion of this couch and the soft scent of this blanket and the not-too-noxious sound and smell of eggs (is someone cooking? the guy is cooking, but people don’t cook around Treavor) simmer around him, keeping him safe from whatever the day may bring?) (What fuckin. Day is it even? He doesn’t know. Whatever, who gives a shit about days.) Watching and then not watching and it isn’t an invasive look the guy’s giving, and Treavor doesn’t really hate it, or even offer the challenge of a pointed staring back. Treavor watches, bleary and curious, but maybe the guy can look if he wants.
It’s the intern’s home, right? He can do what he wants.
(Okay but why bring Treavor here? Nowhere else to go? Didn’t know where Treavor’s meant to go. That. Could make sense, sure. And he found Treavor and thought he had to take Treavor somewhere? Maybe had to take Treavor somewhere.
Hey, shit. Is that what the internship is? Being paid to take care of Treavor? Fuck, it isn’t unlikely.
Only. If this guy’s being paid for it, he’s… doing an okay job. Actually, too good of a job, because in what world would Custis and Morgan pay anybody to do more than hustle Treavor from one place to another? No way they’d pay someone to… Linger on the docks with him. Take him to an apartment that isn’t Treavor’s own?
(Wrap him soft in blankets. Sing to him?) (Leave him feeling pretty okay, like the night before was gentle, like he’s got no real reason to fear.)
Jesus, he can’t keep. Trying to work this out.)
He can’t think his way into understanding the situation and okay, okay in fairness, he couldn’t think his way out of a wet paper bag right now, and maybe it’s better not to know what’s happened (isn’t it always?) (but he… works with this guy) (is gonna see this guy again and again and again). Maybe the answer’ll present itself, or it won’t. Just. Let it be for now. Take the fallout when it comes, if it comes.
He thinks about getting up. (The guy said there’s aspirin. He could use aspirin.) (Could also use a drink, and that’s a lot more appealing than any little tablet of half-hearted healing.) Ends up drawing the blanket tighter around him (a flickered memory: softness draped around his shoulder, night air muffled suddenly; a blanket from out of nowhere, and a steady, unhostile hand). Looking around the room, clamping his eyes shut (he needs a breath; he needs that aspirin, he needs some scotch, then watching the guy again, the guy who’s busy with eggs or something, the guy who’s got his hair up and right, this guys got lots of hair, and he doesn’t look like a total jag with that bun, huh. ]
You’ve got glasses.
[ He winces against his own voice, tries to focus on those glasses, thinks to himself, ha ha, nerd.
…Ha ha, the guy doesn’t. Look like a nerd. Even if he is one. Who aside from nerds and sharks and shitty younger brothers would hang out in lawyer-land?
Anyway. And okay but, the real question… ]
Got anything to drink?
no subject
[ The answer is automatic, but without either accusation or apology. He doesn't keep hard liquor in the apartment; why would he, when he doesn't drink it, himself, but on the rare occasion? Why, when he doesn't entertain anyone? It would only go to waste, or sit like a condemnation on some shelf - a reminder of all the things he isn't doing, the people he doesn't see. The hours he spends alone.
(Eighty hours or more a week in that basement for the past, oh, month?) (His human contact has been Treavor. The majority of his human contact. Is it any wonder -)
(Is what. Any wonder.)
By now, he's arranging food onto a plate from a set he was given by his stepmother (a housewarming gift, for entertaining, some slate gray stoneware made in Portugal and sold at markup in the mall or something, and it's nice, to her credit, but when is he ever going to have eight fucking people in his apartment? When does he ever have more than one?) and turning back to see that Treavor really hasn't moved.
If anything, he seems to have burrowed down deeper into the blanket. (Alice feels an unfurling, feels the corner of his mouth defy gravity, this mess, this utter mess, look at him.) ]
Yes to the glasses, though.
[ Inane comment, just to show he hasn't ignored Treavor, hasn't let the conversation fall fallow after answering about the alcohol.
He likes his glasses. He spends so much time being someone else in his contacts, with his long sleeves, with his hair in a neat ponytail, with his performative accent. It's nice to be here, and himself, with his admittedly unfashionable glasses, and his soft sweaters with the sleeves rolled up to bare his arms (he spent all that money on the ink and now only ever hides it), and yes, with his man bun.
The last thing he does before crossing the open space between them is dampen a towel with cool water. On reaching the sofa, he sets the food well enough aside that the food's smell won't assault his (Treavor) guest, and crouches near the other man's head.
(And he tries not to think.
Of a smile.
Of eyes he drowned in.
Of the warmth of a body.
Of arms. Of an empty hand under an empty hand. Of Otis Redding. Of water or fish or starlight or a nuzzling against his throat or (perfection of non-celestial bodies) how easily Treavor fit against him.)
He thinks of what he's doing. Of being careful. Of showing the towel and making no sudden movements before pressing it, cool and comforting - if allowed - to the forehead he stroked last night, and then to the neck he wished he could have.
And his voice is earnest, and sure, and full of comfort, the same as the empty hand he rests on Treavor's head. ]
You'll be okay. I'll help. We'll sit you up slowly so you can take these, have a little water, and then see how you feel about eating.
Small steps. But there's no hurry. And - I'm here.
[ That feels like it should mean something.
It does. Mean something. ]
no subject
Who the fuck doesn’t keep some kind of alcohol at home? (And Treavor should have had some. Treavor must have had some? Or did he drain it all.)
Treavor’s gonna protest. Treavor wants to protest, but the guy’s moving toward him (he’s got food? is that? for Treavor, food?) (Treavor only wants booze, thank you very much!) ((it’s a little bit nice though, isn’t it? even if he doesn’t want to think a fuckin thought about food)) and the guy said something else and then the guy’s getting closer and Treavor doesn’t push back into the safety of his blankets, Treavor watches, really only watches, wondering, and—
The guy says some things.
(He works with this guy, right? This guy who’s saying some things? (He knows he works with this intern this Alice, but it doesn’t connect that anyone he works with - anyone at all - would be using this sort of solid, gentle (affirming) (bolstering) (easing) voice with him. No one real ever says things like—
He said…
The guy said…
…
No one is ever ‘here.’ Not in a lasting sense, not in anything beyond a ‘taking you from point a to point b because we have to’ sense.
It’s a ploy. A ruse. The guy is… What does the guy want from him? Or.
…It doesn’t feel right. That the guy wants something. And the guy (Alice) is really close, never mind how unpleasant Treavor is, never mind that no one gets close to Treavor in the morning or anytime outside of drinking hours.
(This guy doesn’t look bad with glasses.)
(Like, yeah, nerd, but doesn’t he pull them off? (And who’s to say Treavor’s got anything against nerds?))
Treavor’s mouth’s dry. Well fucking. of course his mouth’s dry, the way of course his head’s pounding and his thoughts swim, his guts churn when he moves, if he moves.
And there’s a cool cloth at his head and it didn’t surprise him and it feels okay, the guy was slow with it and it feels okay, is Treavor imagining all of this? He. Feels awake, but all of this is. Unlikely? People don’t take care with him. (Or tell him they’ll be ‘here.’)
(This guy. Might not be so bad. In general.)
((Maybe. Maybe he’s just good at hiding it. Maybe the twins’ve been extra careful in choosing someone to mess with Treavor, corral Treavor, trick Treavor into behaving like a good brother an employee.))
((That’s not. This guy’s fault. Maybe?))
(…Treavor’s been a dick to this guy, huh?)
He should say…
He wanted something. Right? (A drink.) (he doesn’t quite recall.)
Half-itches to ask ’Hey did you. Sing to me?’ He’s not going to ask that. Fuck, he’s not gonna ask that. (But he wonders.) (But he’s pretty sure he knows.)
Has he been watching this guy for a while. Letting the cool sink in and slowly thinking over just how blue and close those eyes are.
Maybe he’s been watching, yeah. And not drawing back into the blankets at all. And not fidgeting, or turning away, or closing his eyes so he doesn’t have to see.
(And feeling that pressure at his head.
Hand at his head, unwounding.)
And maybe finally he manages to speak.
(’What’s happening?’ ’What’s this about?’ No, that sounds… (half-damning?) not right.) ]
Do you have a cat?
no subject
(He's never this aware of the world. Of the feel of the rug cushioning his knee. Of dust motes caught in shafts of sunlight filtering in through the windows. Of the varied smells of earth and terra cotta and foliage, laundered clothes, whiskey, lingering harbor water, cigarettes, morning breath, cologne, beard oil, breakfast, coffee. Of his own rising and falling breath and beating heart throughout his body, steady, steady, metronomic. Of the feel of warmth from someone else's skin against his skin as his thumb sweeps a soothing arc, of every strand of hair as his palm smooths over a growing-familiar-head. The cool of the towel raised, pressed again in a new locale. And the quiet. The utter, serene quiet of this space.
It's all held in those eyes.)
The quiet moment breaks - not abruptly, not shattering, but of some kind of necessity. As it should, as quiet moments always do (?), leaving Alice to blink twice, three times as he turns his head under the guise of looking for the cat in question. (Not looking away. Just doing something different now.
Not. Looking away.)
(God, he wants -)
And he raises his chin in a careful indication of the end of the sofa, where Hope has been curled near Treavor's feet like a guardian since Alice left the warmth of embracing to shower, her one-eyed watchfulness equally unimposing. ]
You met last night.
[ With that pronouncement, gives Treavor a little of his regard once more.
Perhaps a little wariness. Treavor was kind, when drunk. But he has known this man on other mornings, and has seen how unpleasant hangovers can be - and how nastily people react to shelter cats with missing body parts.
He doesn't. Think. Treavor will be cruel to his cat.
After seeing them together last night (after seeing that smile, after knowing the feel of him, the rightness of him held near, fuck he has to stop thinking about this, he can't keep spinning all his thoughts from a drunken action and a sober mistake, but -
He was so sweet to her. He talked so reverently to her.) ]
Hope. The shelter was - calling her 'Our Lady of Lost Hope'.
[ He's not looking at either Treavor or the cat now. He's off elsewhere, staring at a spot on the sofa, remembering how he'd gone with some ex-would-be-girlfriend. She had looked for five minutes, stating she wanted a good one, a kitten, a long-haired one, like it was an ice cream shop or a car dealership.
And he had stood in front of the small cages, reading the pamphlets and feeling oppressively despairing. (2 y/o, surrendered. 5 y/o, drop-off, history unknown. Senior, surrendered.) He had wanted to leave. He had wanted to stay. He had wanted to not feel helpless.
Or alone.
God, that one's never getting adopted. Poor thing. She had said 'poor thing' in the way people say 'poor thing' when what they mean is 'it shouldn't be alive'. Or 'how disgusting'. (Or, in distant past, 'god will fix you'.)
Alice had left the girl and taken the cat. Skinny thing, with patchy fur and a healing eyeless socket, no tail and ribs he could count. Now -
Now. Healthy. Plump and purring contentedly, the injury to her eye sutured closed by the best veterinarian he could afford, and long-forgotten. Years ago forgotten. Her fur soft and warm, and brushed whenever she'll endure the attention.
He's looking at her again, smiling a warm smile, loving smile, and a little of that lingers still when he returns his attention to Treavor. ]
Be kind to her?
[ Rather than a demand, an admonition, a warning - he puts it like a request - asking for a favor, as though he's going to step out of the room for a moment, and could Treavor handle this for a moment? ]
no subject
Those eyes aren’t prying and those eyes aren’t closed buildings and those eyes don’t say ‘piss off Treavor, I’m sick off you,’ though fuck knows this guy - this guy who is yeah in fact the same Golden Guy who’s been on the receiving end of endless pelted paper balls - has reason to build barricades.
It’s not often he sees eyes like that. Huh. Huh. They aren’t really so bad.)
The cat, though. Yes, there was a cat, he remembered that right, and oh, she’s… So close!? Treavor hadn’t expected that. Animals don’t come close unless they’re okay with you, right? Especially cats; picky guys, smart guys, got the right idea guys. But she’s right down there by his feet.
He’s. Pleased. Warmed through all over again, and the promise of a nearby cat, a cat he can catch a good glimpse of (a cat he doesn’t really remember meeting last night, and he’s sorry for that), prompts him up onto an elbow, faster than he should have done, he has to shut his eyes a moment, wince, let the spiral pass. But he doesn’t sink back down. And he doesn’t miss a word Alice offers.
(A quiet comprehension: If he looks back at Alice, he’d see those same eyes watching still, not unpleasant.)
Our Lady of Lost Hope’s a fucking mouthful and it’d be funny if it didn’t reek of too-exigent gallows humor and if it hadn’t been given by the people who were supposed to be finding the cat a good fucking home. There’s a lot the guy doesn’t say; there’s a lot the guy doesn’t need to say. And anyway, what matters is he’d given her a home, brought back all the Hope the world had taken from her.
Treavor didn’t need to be told not to be a shit. He could snarl that hey, shit, of course he’ll be kind! He doesn’t need to be told how to behave, thank you very much. Like he needs a lesson in behavior. Like he was gonna be a jerk to a perfectly innocent cat.
But Alice isn’t admonishing. The guy’s not being a dick, and it occurs to Treavor that maybe there’s a reason for his caution Maybe something about what he’s seen with people and animals - some people can be real actual assholes with cats - and probably definitely something about that whole okay yeah maybe Treavor’s been a mega-dick around this guy thing.
So Treavor doesn’t snap, and Treavor only gives the smallest, least jostling nod, then shifts so he can see the cat, shifts so he can reach a hand toward the very comfy-looking soft-looking god-she’s-melted-into-that-couch cat. (Is she purring over there? Holy shit, that's amazing.) (Is there a sensation of someone beside him still? Like maybe the guy who was next to him is still next to him, even though Treavor moved? It's... Huh. Huh. Yeah?) He moves slowly, uncurls his fingers in something like deference, ignoring the pain in the head and the sick in his chest, and speaking softly. ]
Hey, hey there…
[ He knows she might not respond. He expects she won’t respond, and that’s all right; let her do what she wants in her own time. He just wants to try. Wants to get a look at her, and shit, isn’t her orange just the warmest, and don’t her paws curls against gentle air just so, and doesn’t she wear that one eye well and doesn’t she exude a kind of peace?
There’s a thud against his hand, then another, and he finds himself petting her, finds her insisting on attention, feels his heart leap light and suddenly he’s smiling, giving enthusiastic but measured rubs, scratching under her chin, along her cheek, and holy shit, she’s a good cat, a friendly cat, and he feels a kind of acceptance, feels honored. ]
Lady Hope.
[ He doesn’t know how long this continues before he - still watching Hope, still alternating between rubbing her head with the back of his hand and thumbing under her chin, still half-smiling in spite of an increasingly agonizing headache (still dimly aware of someone near him, next to him, he's not at all alone here, is he?) - speaks half to Alice, half to no one at all. ]
She’s perfect.
no subject
(It's nothing.)
(He's just. Being helpful.)
((Helpfully moving in tandem, together, thoughtlessly, oh, it feels -))
He watches tensely this second encounter, because Hope has been known to be wary, herself, and bite without warning (or as warning, he would later find. How those bites were deserved.) And then slowly relaxes. Slowly falls into minor awe, because Hope can be unkind, and Treavor can be a prick, but there's nothing but warmth, nothing but friendliness here.
Not even hesitation. Treavor didn't even pause at the sight of her. No halting hand, no flicker of uncertainty. Just eagerness, just the delight now blooming a smile across his face (and Alice is.)
(Alice is.)
(Not breathing.)
(Alice is.)
(Staring up at that face, haloed in morning sunlight, or it's light from that smile, or it's the grace of Hope's approval.)
(Alice is.)
(Shuddered soul-deep with (fear)(wanting)(horror)(need)(worship) that smile.)
She's perfect.
A sound escapes him. It's barely a breath, an oh, and it's a betrayal, a stricken and wounded and helpless sound that maybe. Maybe he can play off as gratitude.
He has that, too. Gratitude so heavy it's suffocating him, so deep he might drown. He could weep it into those heavy hands currently occupied with the tender act of petting Hope. (After all, who else is there but her? Who else has there been but her for a while now?
And who else has called her perfect, and said it so Alice believed them?)
It's not the cause. Gratitude.
(He's fucked. He's fucked, he's so fucked.)
He has to turn away before Treavor sees his face. (He has to turn away from that smile. From the sight of Treavor petting his cat, and his cat approving of Treavor, and he called her perfect, and Alice is fucked.)
(His chest hurts. Everything hurts.) ]
She likes you.
[ At least he has ways to occupy himself. Excuses for turning away. The glass of water and aspirin, he can reach for those and proffer them while Treavor is upright.
He manages a half smile and - ]
She'll never leave you alone now, of course.
[ Suggesting what.
Suggesting she'll see Treavor again?
(How does he even begin to approach the idea of Treavor being in his apartment again.
How does he consider inviting him back. How can he think about considering it.)
(Can he exist in a world where there's not another morning with messy hair and those eyes and sunlight around a smile.) (The thought of this never happening again forces air from his lungs too quickly.) (The thought of his own sudden, needful desperation terrifies him.)
(But.) (But. Come back. Please, come back.)
Quietly, he offers: ]
Water and aspirin. Small steps.
[ And he'll help. He'll help if it's needed. Wanted. (Allowed.) ]
no subject
He can take the aspirin. Step one, step two, that’s the aspirin and the water both, and he can’t say the water doesn’t feel welcome, though something stronger’d be even better.
Save that thought for a moment. Pin it, because right now he’s pausing between sips of water, looking back at Hope, darting a playful touch and then another rub against her cheek. And he’s smiling again; all this pain in his head, and he keeps fuckin smiling. ]
She’s a good kid.
[ Spoken with all the warmth in the world. Look at her with her easy assurance, the lull of her body and perfect arc of a side-stretch.
He’d like to introduce her to Amaryllis. (He’d like Amaryllis to come home.) Amaryllis doesn’t always get along with other pets, but Treavor things maybe she and Hope’d be a match. They’ve got a sort of shared shimmer. A sort of spirited majesty, capable of love maybe not everyone sees, but love that’s stronger than most of those assholes’ll ever know.
Well. Someday, maybe.
(If. Alice lets him see her again.)
(If Alice doesn’t mind him seeing her again?)
((Why doesn’t Alice seem to mind him here? And how’s it so easy to sit with the guy he’s been haphazardly not-quite-thinkingly grudging against for weeks? And why hasn’t Alice kicked him the fuck out (and why is there something soothing about looking at the guy, like a little, little promise of tranquility)?))
((This is a weird situation, huh?)
(But not a bad one.))
He tries to look around, winces. ]
Jesus, my head.
[ Shit, maybe he shouldn’t curse around Lady? Maybe he shouldn’t take the whatever and savior’s name in vain in front of this little saint.
…Or maybe she’s a saint who knows how to party. Hmm, it’s a thought, right?
There’s the urge again to ask about a drink - is Alice sure there’s nothing in the house, or hey, where’re Treavor’s clothes, did he have something stored away? - but Treavor looks over at the guy and the question dissipates. Fades in an instant, leaving Treavor puzzled, knowing he was about to speak but finding no shape of intended words.
Not like that’s gonna stop him from saying something. ]
Thanks for the. Clothes.
[ Whatever he’s wearing right now. It’s definitely nothing he owns. He feels like a sort of… Pajama businessman right now? This guy’s sure got particular tastes, huh? (And maybe, maybe it’s a little not un-charming.)) ]
Also the— Aspirin. Sleep.
[ Okay that’s definitely decidedly enough talking for now. He clenches his eyes shut, tries not to think, tries to feel something like cool, something like calm. He’ll take another drink in a moment. (Look for stronger drink in a moment.) He’ll come back to the room in a moment. But right at this moment he’s just gonna. Hold steady.
(And maybe take a little strength knowing that nearby there's a real real good cat, and a guy who offered a place to sleep, a drink of water, who hasn't left Treavor scrambling and drowned.) ]
no subject
Ha.)
He has moved to the sofa, taking a careful place beside the other man, his hand resting delicately against Treavor's shoulderblade and his eyes expressing fretfulness now.
(He never did really inquire what inspired last night's binge, did he? But he stopped inquiring a while ago, when he realized Treavor's drinking was less social and more problem.) (Should he have asked? And would it be right to ask now? Is it even his business? Would it be welcome?) Maybe it's better if he just leaves it alone, and helps this man find sobriety for the day. Ease, and sobriety.
It's not his place to ask.
(Whose place is it?) (Anyone's?)
He doesn't like the thought of Treavor, alone. It's never really crossed his mind before as a fully formed thought, independent of last night's awareness of their mutual loneliness. Aside from the distant stewardship of his brothers, does he have anyone?
(Is Alice projecting.)
(Seeing a need, a role he wants to fill.) ]
It's nothing.
[ It's everything. It feels like everything. And last night, he thought - it doesn't have to mean anything, be anything. It doesn't have to be complicated. (Just take care of Treavor, and everything feels so fucking good, doesn't it?) It can just be this.
(This, and how utterly fucked he is. A problem for later.)
He's been watching Treavor a little too intently, and he's starting to fuss. It's a bad habit learned in youth - reaching up thoughtlessly to smooth hair, or hold an elbow to steady an arm, his brow furrowed and mouth set in a frown.
He needs to.
Stop. Touching.
Treavor.
(It's weird.
Treavor will. Think it's weird?) (Is it weird?) (He looks so miserable, though. What if it soothes him? What if there's something Alice neglects to do, and it might have been the one thing that was needed?) (What if it makes him smile?) ]
You'd do the same for me.
[ Like hell. He doubts anyone he knows would drive to the harbor for him (hold him) (sing to him), take him home, change his clothes, let him sleep (nestled in their arms), make him breakfast the next day. Put a cool cloth to his neck. Give him aspirin.
Least of all, the man right here, on the receiving end of that treatment.
(But doesn't it sound.
Nice.
Desirable.
From Treavor, oh, from him, wouldn't that feel so fucking good if he would -
Fuck.) ]
Or your version of it?
[ There's an almost hopeful uptick in his tone, accompanied by a lopsided smile. Neither of these requests Treavor say he would do anything other than piss on fire to put him out, but only this: that his awkward teasing be received with magnanimity. ]
no subject
Shit, he didn’t mean to laugh, and it wasn’t much of a laugh - short and ragged - but it was still a laugh at that ’You’d do the same for me,’ like come on, guy, you’ve gotta know that’s not… A reliable thing to say, like where’s that even coming from? ((Why does it sting a little, sting more than a little, knowing he wouldn’t’ve done any such same thing for this guy? If the intern’d messaged him, though fuck knows why Alice would have, guy’s gotta be smarter than that.) (What would it be like to show up for someone that way? …Not like Treavor’s ever gonna. Fucking find out.))
As soon as he laughs, he looks away, a jarred motion that - predictably, reliably - splashes nausea through his skull, like it could leak out of his goddamn eyes. Eyes shut once more, he pulls a frown, realizes Alice’s said something else, broadened the diea a little bit, and…
Treavor opens his eyes again, looking down. Wanting to reach for Hope but not really wanting to move (maybe if he keeps still he’ll escape detection, won’t have to look at himself). ]
Oh. Uh.
[ He’s scratching the back of his neck. Awkwardly scratching the back of his neck. Wincing at the motion and managing a sideways glance at the guy next to him, then back at nothing. ]
I wouldn’t say I’m much of an… anything, guy.
[ Ha ha, can’t take care of himself, how the fuuuck’s he supposed to give a single care to anyone else. The best Treavor can do is offer a bottle of booze. …Probably a half-empty bottle, at that.
He’s not. Good at helping people. (When has he ever needed to be?) (When has he ever had a chance to be?) (Or, nah, fuck that, probably there’ve been chances, he’s just being a shit, always been a shit, etc. etc. etc. what a worn-out fucking story.) Like what do people need, he doesn’t know. Where would he get what they need? Doesn’t have a fucking clue.
Not like he has a car he could go pick someone up with (not anymore). Not like he’s got a cheery disposition or the patience to take someone through a garbage time. Not like if he tried to walk or take a cab he wouldn’t get lost halfway there and wander off for hours, forget all about the sorry shit who called for help.
Also not like Alice has any reason to think Treavor’d do anything more than like. Kick dirt in his eyes. (But Alice isn’t asking for promises here, or what Treavor’d really do, here. There’s something else going on in the question, and Treavor’s head’s aching, but not aching enough to miss that tone completely.)
He’s gone from scratching his neck to rubbing his jaw, the side of his head. it helps a little; briefly eases the pressure. And he isn’t looking at Alice, but he’s speaking directly, carefully to the guy. ]
Hey, come on, we both know I’ve been a jag.
…But maybe if I wasn’t in prime dickweed mood. Maybe I’d make my way to you, you know, eventually. Not on time, but not a no-show. Bring you a Snickers bar. Uh… Dust you off, if you wanted to be presentable.
[ ...Hm. Hm... ]
Tell you about the pigeon-person I met on the way to find you. Probably that, for sure.
no subject
It is and isn't disappointing.
Alice has an ache within himself for the same care he's giving. Just to experience it in someone's hands, gentle and considerate, conscientious to a fault; it's a foreign awareness he can only craft in his imagination.
(Porn does and doesn't grant a glimpse of the potential for that need's satisfaction. The surreal quality, theatrics and emphasis, the exaggeration of something that isn't a fetish. The stilted and hamfisted approaches. It discomfits him; yes, yes, he can admit there's an appeal to certain acts before and after sex. And during. Attached to.
(Not that his experience with sex-capital-S amounts to much.)
But it's not about sex. (Much.))
(It's just. It's just.)
(Being close. Giving care.) (The way it feels to be of use to, in service of, caring for, loving someone with every thought and action. Surely, receipt of the same must be euphoric.)
(Maybe. It just. Doesn't exist between men. Maybe what he's looking for so desperately in the thing he refuses himself anyway is a heteronormative behavior? He doesn't. Know.)
He's never in straits so dire that he needs this sort of attention, is the truth of the matter. It's a self-perpetuating cycle: in knowing there's no one to call, he does nothing and goes nowhere that would place him in a situation wherein he might need to call someone. And because he goes nowhere and does nothing, he meets no one to call. (Likely, if there was some kind of emergency, he'd call the only name that appears in his phone lately. There's a sad fact he won't dwell on.)
It also isn't disappointing, because Treavor is solemn, and speaking with care. In spite of his hangover, his certain discomfort, the sure-to-be-thorniness of the subject, he's being serious, and careful. And that means something.
Not just because Alice hopes it could, or wishes it would, or wants it to mean something. He knows Treavor well enough for the 'jag' he's been to know he's rarely serious. So Alice gives him the full of his attention, with equal weight in his own manner: I'm listening, and yes, your words are important to me.
A moment of silence passes while he digests this hypothetical (all those maybes built on maybes, and how they sound less like a confluence of good fortune and more like someone uncomfortable with speaking kindness in a more forthright manner.)
He thinks. Treavor will continue to have dickweed moods. But the 'prime' may be lost now, and may not come again.
He thinks. Make my way to you is a strange way of putting it.
He thinks. Treavor's rarely on time for anything. But there's no 'on time' to help someone stranded, or lost, or in need of care. There's only there, or not. And he -
He's veering into joking again, but. Not exactly. Alice inclines his head slightly, scrutinizing the other man.
He thinks. There it is. Treavor's version of care. ]
You'd tell me a story.
[ It's not a question. You'd tell me a story to make me feel better. (Like the night before, the way Treavor kept prompting, asking questions about fish and stars, oh-
Oh.)
He's charmed.
He's charmed, and he can't find any kind of fault with it. It's too innocent, too lovely.
It puts him in an oddly settled mood, bemused and just a little amused, and he leans back, getting comfortable. (The appearance of comfort. Treavor's nearness is not comfort. Treavor's nearness is frisson.) He stretches one leg and crosses the other, ankle to knee. (Foot not yet bouncing, but it'll happen.)
His hand lights on his thigh, fingers fidgeting, and his head rests against the sofa back.
(Of course. Of course. The other hand remains like a steadying presence at Treavor's shoulder. (He hasn't been shrugged off. He hasn't been dismissed, or told to fucking quit. There's something like acceptance, almost like welcome in how he's been permitted to leave his hand there.))
And he watches the other man. ]
What if there's no pigeon-person on your meandering path towards wherever I'm sure to be waiting, hungry and dusty, but with the utmost patience? Or were you planning to spin a story on the spot just to cheer me up? Or maybe as an apology for bringing me a Snickers instead of some Swedish Fish?
[ A light, teasing prod of his finger, and his eyes close, though his whole awareness is on the warmth beside him. His smile curves a little into existence again. ]
Eh. Maybe I'll forgive you.
[ For the hypothetical Snickers.
For being a jag.
As though it was ever a question. As though it mattered for even a moment more after that beatific smile last night. ]
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The way Treavor could feel the guy listening, like maybe he gave half a fuck (that’s wishful thinking, dangerous thinking, and he knows he should bury it in ash; pretending someone gives a fuck is a fast track to devastation). Like through the silence he could feel Alice urging him along, like he could feel the full force of the guy’s eyes, full focus fixed palpably on Treavor, never mind that Treavor was looking toward the ground, the carpet, not seeing much of anything.
…No one listens like that. (This guy can’t have been listening like this. He’s good at faking it? Probably a lot of people are.) (Who the fuck pays that much attention? To anyone; to Treavor, specifically. And why doesn’t it feel like this guy wants something?) (Too many questions for first thing in the morning. Jesus shit, Treavor’s gonna split his head with thinking.)
But something. Treavor felt something.
(Another question, another question he should side-step but it’s galloping toward him all the same: Why did Treavor give this guy an honest kind of answer? Why not tell the guy to fuck off?
(Because the guy’s got a nice cat.) (Because Treavor woke up on the guy’s couch in not-his-own-clothes and the guy isn’t hassling him at all.) (Because he feels not-awful here, not only-stranded.)
(Because he didn’t want to leave that question and that smile - wouldn’t Treavor do something if this guy needed? never mind that Treavor never does anything for anybody; never mind that this guy can’t possibly fuckin believe Treavor’s good for much salvation - with a cold dose of nothing.
(Because it’d be almost nice, one day, maybe, to give something worthwhile, or find he’s possessed of anything to give.))
Treavor’s not great with honesty. Or the truth of any given Treavor-related situation’s usually not something he wants to deal with. For now, he’s just not going to think into this anymore. Just… Never mind. He’ll let whatever he said (he knows what he said) stand for now, and probably it’ll fade away with the morning-afternoon-whatever, and all this wondering’ll have been a waste of time.)
It occurs to Treavor that there’s been a hand on his shoulder for a while now. Alice has been touching him for a while, just leaving a… it feels like a bracing hand there. A not-unwanted hand, there. (It helps to feel someone beside him. Even if Treavor doesn’t really know the other person, a hand extended and a shoulder nudged or a slap on the back can keep his world from breaking, remind him he’s not only always drifting, even if contact’s brief. It’s good to know he can be touched. Good to feel the warmth of another anyone. It’s something to cling to and use for holding on; if he makes it through another day, maybe someone else’ll touch him, and the world’ll light up just a little for a moment.
It doesn’t occur to Treavor to shake off Alice’s hand, or to question its presence. It’s a gift, and he’ll accept it (be glad of it) (register its weight in the background of his feeling) for as long as it remains.
Treavor’s reaching carefully for Hope again - careful not to jostle the hand at his shoulder; half-smiling when the perfectly contented cat scoots toward him in a liquid, lazy motion - and running two fingers over her head when Alice speaks, and he’s…
…Huh.
He’s. (Not wrong.) (Treavor likes to tell stories. Piece together words gleaned from a shitty world and turn them into something other. When he drinks, when he’s around strangers, he’ll tell stories to whoever’ll listen, until someone hushes him quiet or kicks him out or until he runs out of coherent thought.) (He tells Amaryllis stories. Nice stories to remind her of what a good bird she is, and also to keep her imagination sharp.) (He used to tell himself stories; there’s not a lot of cause to, these days. They don’t do him much good.)
Alice isn’t mistaken, and Treavor finds himself looking at the guy, aware of how the guy’s moved nearer and of how that conclusion - ’you’d tell me a story’ - felt like a breath of air in autumn, invigorating at crisp at the edges. How the speaking feels like a recognition, and how Treavor feels exposed (seen) (noticed) in that observation.
He doesn’t dislike it, nor does he dislike the way Alice shifts beside him, as if settling toward something more like comfort. It’s kind of good, being on this couch. ]
Fuck, you’re a… Those half-gummy fish guy?
[ A moment, a tilt of the head. ]
Hmmm. Says a lot about you, Golden Boy. An awful lot about you.
[ That spoken deliberately, as is Treavor knows and everyone should know exactly what he’s suggesting. Never mind that Treavor himself isn’t sure of his meaning’s scope. Never mind that Treavor's head's swimming. Never mind that he isn’t sure he’d ever met a Swedish Fish fan, and hey, there’re worse candies, and maybe Treavor doesn’t like the things, but he does like that they’ve got the fish look down. They’ve got that going for them. ]
Anyway, let’s get one thing straight: there’s always a pigeon-person where I go.
[ If he wants there to be. If he feels like whatever the fuck’s gonna come out of his mouth is gonna be a story about a pigeon-person. And isn’t it nice that Alice seems to be getting into it a little? It’s like he’s… A little or a lot like he’s maybe playing along.
…Weird. That’s weird. Because here Treavor’d been sure the intern was a stick in the mud. (Treavor, who hasn’t bothered to pay a whole lot of attention to the who and what of Alice beyond ‘stranger at the next desk’ and ‘stranger interrupting routine’ and ‘stranger who is maybe a spy sent by Treavor’s brothers and who’s probably a favorite of theirs.’) (Maybe he’s been wrong about some things.) (Treavor’s often wrong about a lot of things.) (And yeah he should be careful, but. But this is kind of fun. Kind of nice. And Alice is (huh, look at those tattoos, huh, hey those’re pretty great, hey, does Alice look actually a little less like he’s wound to some breaking point?) very close. ]
Do you take apology stories?
[ And, another question, tossed out as if casual, his tone barely managing a veneer of unconcern— ]
Hey also are you. Sure there’s nothing to drink around here? Like. My jacket’s a good place to look?
[ You see that helpful hint he’s given? He's also looking away from Alice, looking toward but not quite at Hope, just so he doesn't but excess pressure on anyone.
He could just. Really use a drink right now. ]
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Golden Boy, and his half-gummy fish, now a world away from one avalanche of failure and starting in on another. Basement level. His smile has turned rueful and his eyes sad, having opened now to fix on the ceiling.
And he thinks about answering something about apology stories, or fish, or fish stories - maybe calling back to last night and how he managed to enthrall Treavor with little hand fish (poff) - but there's a new question.
A not-new question. A question that changes the atmosphere of the room, casual though it might be framed, because there's nothing casual about asking for the second time if there's alcohol when one is a frequent partaker of alcohol. His fingers at his knee fidget again, flexing in discomfort. (But the hand at Treavor's shoulder remains, and remains, and remains, an affirmation. No punishment for the question. No withdrawal while he considers his answer. No repulsed relinquishing of touch.)
The quiet stretches as Alice is faced with a choice.
He could go look. He could tell himself it's not his place to refuse a grown man whatever addictions he chooses to feed, and set a precedent: when Treavor wants a drink, and can't find one, he'll know exactly who he can call, won't he? Because Alice will do anything for him, and he'll learn that eventually.
Or he can. Decide not to be party to it.
And Treavor will surely be angry. (Dickweed. Jag. Cunt.) But the more he contemplates it.
Sometimes. Care isn't always giving in to every whim. It isn't being the enabler.
He clears his throat, sits up, both feet now on the floor. Forearms on his knees at first, head hanging, and then one hand reaching up to ease off his glasses and set them carefully on the coffee table. That same hand returns to his face, scrubs, and rests a moment at his mouth, and Alice stares at the blur of nothing across the room.
Finally, he turns his attention - and his head - back to Treavor, dropping his hand once more, and speaks softly, with more candor than he intended. ]
I'm not going to give you alcohol, Treavor.
[ There's no apology. Just a settled assurance; it's not happening today. It's not happening ever. ]
I'll come find you wherever you are, no matter the hour. I'll tell you stories about fish, or sing you songs, or wrap an arm around you, and I'll sit with you as long as you need. I'll bring you home or here, and I'll clean you up again. If it's here, I'll give you blankets, clothes, food - everything I can to make you feel better.
I'll take care of you, if you call me.
[ Slowly, direly, he shakes his head. ]
But I'm not going to cause you the circumstances that make you need that care.
That's. Probably going to piss you off, but I think I can live with it. Knowing I didn't put the bottle in your hand. Knowing you're not ending up alone and lost at the harbor again because I was scared of losing a friend.
Maybe friend.
Something.
I -
[ This is agony. He can't. Look directly at Treavor. (And in some place in the back of his mind, he's not wholly here. He's thirteen, and he's saying things he wished he had said, to someone else who taught him to make an Old Fashioned at ten.
He breathes heavily, and his words are less sure. His words are grieving for something that almost was. ]
I'm not going to help you with that. Please don't ask me again.
[ With that, he reaches for his glasses again, sniffs against the sting in his eyes (condemns himself for the sting in his eyes) and moves to stand. ]
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His head fucking hurts but he barely notices.
The pressure’s closing in, and he feels the world going black at the edges, feels his insides and awareness roiling. He could vomit. He couldn’t do a thing because everything’s tensed and the moment’s too razored for motion. Cuts at his throat with each attempted breath.
He’s fallen through the earth. Fallen past any semblance of solid ground, and its gravel all around, gravel and pressure and oncoming heat.
He wants to be angry.
He is angry; at the refusal, the suggestion that this guy’s got any idea what Treavor could use or any right to talk about, what, taking care of him, like sometimes a drink isn’t all Treavor needs for care, like a drink or two hasn’t gotten him through all the fucking shit in his life. This asshole doesn’t know him. This asshole’s going on some fucking soapbox spiel and fuck off, Treavor didn’t ask for care, he didn’t ask for someone to call, he asked for a fucking drink. And he even tried to ask nicely, and this guy’s talking about well you know it’s just fine if Treavor’s pissed off, what the fuck?
Like this guy’s got any fucking idea. Golden fucking intern, maybe his brothers hired this jag to get Treavor sober, or - better yet - to kick Treavor close to sobriety, just to shove him back under again. Just to teach some fucking lesson, another round of lectures about everything Treavor can’t handle everything he’s not cut out to be, all the ways he’s a goddamn disappointment.
(Hasn’t Treavor heard this shit before? From his his brothers, his former step-mother, his sort-of-sometimes-‘friends,’ from strangers on the street, from Sheldon’s dad and Shaw’s fiancée and from former instructors and the list goes on, a string a rush of condemnations and yeah, fuck all of you, Treavor knows he’s a shit and probably he’s killing himself definitely he’s not doing anyone any favors, but what the fuck ever, he didn’t ask to be born.)
(Okay. …But.
…There was no denouncement in what this guy - intern guy, Alice guy - said. Not in the words, not in the voice, and Treavor hadn’t realized it at first but now… It’s true, isn’t it, or it seems true. (He wants to believe it’s true?) (But why the fuck would he do that. Why would he entertain that kind of thought or hope, when he knows it’s Never A Thing?)
Treavor doesn’t know what to make of that.
Treavor can’t make anything of that, not now, but it gives him pause, suspends him further in this space between moments, space between speaking, this could-be-anger could-be-rejection could-be-marrow-deep-weariness.)
He’s numb. He feels numb or he feels broken open, and what’s he supposed to do with… It’s a lot. Alice said a lot of things and Treavor can hardly take hold of any one of them, can’t tell how they’re meant to piece together or reach to him.
And what did… ’Please don’t ask me again.’
He’s talking like Treavor has a choice in this. Like Alice is offering Treavor a choice.
(This guy. Alice. Called Treavor his. Friend.
And nothing in the word rang false, deadly or metallic.
(Because what does the guy want, calling him that? There’s nothing here the golden guy stands to gain at all. No reason to feign friendship, so. So… What. What is any of this supposed to mean.))
The guy’s moving away. Looks like he’s moving away. Treavor’s still sitting still and doesn’t know that he can speak, doesn’t know he’s going to speak until he hears his own voice, not loud but also not wavered. ]
That’s where you stand.
[ He wants to reach for the cat, Lady Hope. He wants to sink away, just disappear be somewhere else and not have to deal with this. (He wants, almost, to reach for Alice, tell the guy to hold the fuck on, don’t… don’t go anywhere.)
(The guy sang to him last night.) (The guy gave him a place to sleep.) (The guy knows something about the kind of shit Treavor is, and still he came for Treavor, brought him here; still he’s talking to Treavor like, what, he maybe believes Treavor maybe-deserves a little more than a flat refusal.)
(What a fucking. Thing.) ]
…Fuck.
[ He needs a drink. He needs a fucking drink, and it’s shitty for Alice to say no, to give him a goddamn lecture (not a lecture) like it’s just that easy (but that isn’t what the guy said, either).
But it’s also not. Shitty the way Alice said things.
It’s not shitty that Alice didn’t just cold-refuse him, didn’t throw condemnation his way.
(The guy’s telling him something. Wrapped up in all of this, the guy’s maybe telling him a lot of things.)
((Fuck this morning got. Real deep, real fast. Shit.))
He’s looking at Alice now. Starting to register the sight of the guy again. Not giving his full focus to the guy or the sight of the guy (Treavor doesn’t have his own full focus, side-swiped as he’s been), but watching him. Eyes holding him. ]
Guess it’s… Your house, your rules.
[ Slowly, slowly, he’s been pushing back against the couch, shoulders tense his whole goddamn body tense, him driving back as if to disappear into the cushions, eyes still on Alice.
It’s not his business. It’s not any of Alice’s fucking business.
But. ]
Fuck.
[ And Treavor finally manages to move a hand, press his hand against his head, eyes clenching shut again. ]
…All right.
[ …Fuck. ]
no subject
And while he's there. He rewets the towel. Refills the water glass. Watches Treavor from the corner of his eye, noting the nothing and everything that seems to be moving through the expression of the Addict in Chaos. (That is what's happening, he thinks: Treavor is processing what he was told.)
(That's something.)
(An unlikely something. To process, rather than snap defensive. To process, rather than storm out. He has nothing keeping him here, has he? No real reason he has to stay.)
Alice is setting the water carefully on the coffee table in front of the other man when the words come, and he pauses, a momentary hesitation, his eyes raising and brows raising further. Yes, it's where he stands. More processing?
And he straightens, the cloth balled in one hand and arms folded as he drinks his coffee, letting Treavor finish sorting this one through without hurry or imposition.
(Look at him, miserable. He wants to. (Pull him near?) (Stroke his hair.) (Hum some soft melody to him until his shoulders ease his spine eases his whole self against Alice's whole self.)
(He wants to. Comfort him.)
He wants to - and this, importantly. This, substantively more important, than any nestling desire occurring in his ribs. He wants to help Treavor.
Not care, for the sake of that melting, good feeling, that connectedness. He wants to help, because Treavor seems very alone, and not once has Alice ever picked him up from the same place twice.
So he lowers his coffee and considers. And then sets the coffee down entirely, and moves to resume his place on the sofa at Treavor's side where, if it won't be thrown off, he'll offer his hands again.
A cool cloth pressed to an aching forehead and eyes.
An arm around tense shoulders, or whatever comforting touch will be allowed.
His words come soft and with a jesting casualness that veers too close to earnestness to really be casual at all. ]
My house, my rules. Sure.
Rule One is the most important, though: you can come here whenever you want. Any time you need a place to go and feel okay. No strings attached, no matter what you've been doing before you turn up. You're always welcome here.
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Alice came back and there’s a cloth at Treavor’s head and he presses against it, in need of the relief (in need of a drink) (he’s not going to get a drink; made a bad fuckin call there, dumbass) (he needs a new plan, think about, think about, once he’s out of here, his fucking head) ((did he just… agree not to ask Alice for any kind of drink, and did he really mean it?)) and letting his mind sit blank for a moment, letting the cool creep over him, not banishing the nausea but tempering its upset.
Well, hey, small victories: he’s upright, and even though his head’s been working overtime, he’s probably not going to vomit on the couch. That nausea was getting bad, but between the support at his back and the cloth at his head, he might just make it through.
If he can. Keep his head on straight. Not think about how real respite’s a whole journey away; no booze until he makes it home, or at least makes it out of this place, down to the nearest shop. (…He doesn’t like, particularly, having this thought.) (He can’t just not have that fucking thought, for shit’s sake.) ((And he can’t wave away the trickle of guilt through his spine.))
Just. Breathe. Focus on the cloth. How much he’d like to sink into a lake, buoyed in the cool suspension. Just him and the flux and flow of gentle waves. (Just him and the garbled sound of fish.) (((’Poff.’))) (A shower might help. That’d be an okay idea, maybe.)
And there’s another touch (a careful and an unobtrusive touch; not withheld, but waiting, as-if-testing, paying attention) that nearly sends Treavor cold, that he nearly shakes away. There’s a line of thought that no, fuck you, get off and get away, Treavor’s had enough of your intervention and enough of your caring and who do you think you are, telling Treavor what he needs, and Treavor’s got enough fucking problems right now and enough going on in his head without this added factor.
Only Treavor also doesn’t. Really. Want that touch gone.
The touch approaches and fuck, isn’t close contact always Treavor’s weakness (okay, all right, one of many weaknesses) and - maybe more important - doesn’t he want to let it wrap him now? He was glad, maybe (maybe?), that the guy returned; he’d be glad, maybe (probably), to feel that touch again.
So he. Lets himself ease into that touch, just slightly. Not wholly relaxing, but not bristling, not pushing away.
He could use this. (Would like this.) Never mind how prickly he feels or how much some part of him might like to flash teeth. (This is better than biting defensive, maybe?) (And hey, why did Alice come back? Why’s he here again? …Why’s he doing any of this?)
Treavor listens, and Treavor still isn’t sure he’s grasping what Alice means, because it sounds like something unlikely, something even friends don’t really offer, except maybe sometimes-Sheldon, and it sounds like Alice maybe means it? But that doesn’t make sense. But there’s no reason he should, unless. Unless the twins are behind this or unless Alice wants something or unless Alice is… just. Kind? A sort of. Kind guy?
What an impossible fucking idea.
(An idea Treavor would like so believe, and see realized.)
Treavor’s eyes are closed against the cloth and then staring off at nothing, closed and then staring at nothing. And he thinks about… Alice called it ‘Rule One.’ Like a joke and not a joke at all. Again, he doesn’t know he’s going to speak until he hears his own voice— ]
Why?
no subject
So he settles, still and calm, mostly unmoving and forcing himself to remain relaxed. (In case a shoulder is needed. In case his own tension feeds Treavor's. In case a knotted chest or a sharp angle somewhere in his own body might cause further discomfort.
In case something about the way he sits near and anxious speaks of something he doesn't want to discuss now. Or think about.
Because this isn't that. This is absolutely not that.)
He shifts the cloth now and then to soothe away sweat, to cool Treavor's throat and cheeks before turning it over - to the air-exposed side, of course, the cooler side - and returning it to mercifully cover his eyes and forehead.
His own eyes are worried. (How much aspirin does Treavor throw back in a day, a week, a year, and does it work anymore?) (Or is the pain, the nausea - more agony of the mind, more inflictions of his own desire to reach for another drink, and soon?)
The question garners a stillness more than stillness from Alice, and a staring off at some point beyond the other man. There are many reasons.
Your smile in the sick yellow lights at the harbor, when you laid your head on my shoulder and asked me for your song, and I held you like you were mine.
You said my cat was perfect.
You slept in my arms last night and I slept like shit but it's the best I've felt in a long time.
The sunlight hit you from the windows like a halo and I think you might be holy.
And.
No one like you should end up calling someone like me because you're drunk and stranded at the harbor.
And.
There was someone like you, a long time ago. A lot of someones like you, in a lot of ways, like my life was teaching me to be what you need.
He doesn't say any of this.
What he says, first, a means of buying himself time: ]
You know. It takes fifty hours of interaction with a person before you begin to consider them a casual friend. Ninety for a 'real' one, and two hundred hours before they're your best mate. I've spent -
[ A pause. ]
Three hundred hours in that basement, and at least half of them with you. I told you last night, I don't have friends; I have my cat, and I have you in that fucking basement.
That should probably count for something, yeah?
[ He's joking. Mostly. Maybe. He doesn't know if he's joking. Maybe it does count for something. (Treavor feels warm at his side.) (Treavor's safety is important to him.)
Clearly his throat awkwardly, he tries again. And still, his voice is low, an even and honeyed tone. ]
Sorry. I. Candor is a fickle thing, when it comes to what drives us.
[ A breath. ]
Everyone needs a safe place, Treavor. I don't know if you have that somewhere, but it can't hurt to have it here, too. And I can't...
[ He pauses, trying to parse his thoughts, his head back slightly and eyes on the ceiling. His lips purse before he manages to carry on. ]
If something happened to you because you thought you had nowhere to go - because you thought every door was closed to you. I couldn't live with that.
[ Treavor's eyes may be covered, but Alice's sniff betrays him; another awkward clearing of his throat follows. ]
I couldn't live with it if I hated you. So. You know. The old adage. 'You can always come home.'
Or - here. They don't make adages about crashing at your weird mate's apartment.
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.
no subject
Not intern, or jag, or hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. (Or one of the hundred other nicknames he's acquired over the past month due to some animosity he hasn't quite understood.) And not Lord Alice.
Just. Alice.
And it feels -
Complicated.
(His name is a complicated thing. Where it began from a place of ethnicity he can't claim - his mother's interest in some obscure Italian footballer, an Alessandro something - and gravitated to Alex for most of his childhood simply for ease.
And sometime. Before, he thinks. The incident in the car, with the boy. Maybe when his grandfather started seeing something he didn't like? Alice, sneered like an insult across the room. Or when his name became slurred on a drunken tongue, Alex becoming Alice? He was young and not young anymore, he remembers that.
It caught on too fast, he remembers that, too.
And how it felt like a dagger.
And how he became accustomed to the dagger being nestled between his ribs, after a while. It was painful, but it was his. And there might be a dagger and he might be bleeding, but he was surviving the wound, wasn't he? So he healed around it.
For a while, when he introduced himself, it was Alice. Yeah, like Alice Cooper. This, from the mouth of a mop-topped, baby-faced redhead with his hunched shoulders and his awkward smile and his angry eyes: it didn't matter who shared that name. He learned to stop defending it.
Granted, there are a lot of things that are his that he no longer feels the need to defend. His plants. His solitude. His lack of alcohol in his apartment. His fussiness about everything from clothes to coffee. (And there are things in constant need of guardianship from the knowing of the world.)
But his name is a place of hurt and repossession, endlessly wounding and healing. He refuses to change it, and he refuses to let others twist it into mockery.
What kind of name is Alice?
It's my name.
Unwavering. Cold. Complicated.)
(It. Feels so. Complicated to hear Treavor say it.) (It feels so fucking good to hear him say it, and that's the complication.)
His hand has gone still while the other man speaks, and Alice is watching him (listening to that stage whisper, trying not to think of other whispers (in the dark, against his ear)(Alice, if he would whisper that, would it heal the word entirely, would it renew it, would it make it worthy and beautiful -)), his brows raised just a little.
Treavor winks and he doesn't. Know what to make of that.
(Is he.)
(F...lirting?)
(Don't be an idiot.)
Better to redirect. Better to focus his attention on. On something else. On the jokes. On the compliment. On nodding and making a patronizing 'mhmm' noise before flipping the cloth once more and pressing it over Treavor's forehead.
(Would it. Hurt to. Play back, a little?
Since it felt not terrible to hear him say that word. Since he's struggling, and trying so hard? Since he's in pain?
Not flirting! It's not that. That's not what's happening here. But maybe make him smile?
Bantering. It's just bantering, sure.)
His voice isn't a stage whisper. It's simply invitingly low, his mouth half-lifting with a little amusement. ]
Now, Treavor, if I wanted to murder you, why would I bring you back to my immaculate apartment? Clearly, whatever my elaborate plan is for your desk, it doesn't involve getting rid of you.
[ ...Christ. Christ he. Has to look away. That might have pushed his luck. Carefully, he adds with a little self-deprecating huff of a laugh: ]
I'm particular. Let's don't mistake that for social grace.
no subject
Could be your apartment’s immaculate because you just gave it a deep clean. Had to after the last of your heinous deeds, huh?
Hey, guy.
[ He taps at… well, no, near is own temple deliberately, hand a little shaky, voice even, mock-dramatic. ]
Where. Are. The. Bodies?
[ And a grin as he drops his hand.
What Treavor assumes: If Alice isn’t going to kill Treavor for his desk, probably he’s gonna try outfoxing or sweet-talking Treavor into trading. Which, ha, no fuckin chance!
In fact, Treavor’s snorting at the thought, would shake his head if he wasn’t so intent on pressing against the cool damn cloth. ]
I’ve got news for you guy: I’m not switching desks, no matter how nice you ask.
Yours’s got Chauncey all over it.
[ …Wait, though.
Wait wait wait wait, though. Play what Alice said back through his mind. (Play what Alice said back through his mind as if Alice wasn’t a guy Treavor worked with and as if Treavor hasn’t been a mega-pest to Alice for weeks on end (and as if Treavor isn’t very obviously a hot goddamn mess) and as if maybe they’d just met for the first time last night.
Wait was Alice. Making a joke? Like a little bit of a lewd joke? (Or a not-a-joke? (He is pretty close, huh? (Pretty comforting.) (Pretty pretty.) ((Got a pretty nice voice.)) ((Feels pretty good to sit by.)) …Okay, no, not— Probably not not-a-joke. That wouldn’t make sense at all, right? Fuck, Treavor knows better than that.)
Could this guy be lewd if he tried?
(Does this guy know how to flirt? Is he flirt-compatible, even? He’s a guy who works too much and takes his job at the shitfirm way too seriously, work work all day, comes home and cleans his apartment apparently - and, ha ha, picks up drunks by the river, gives them a clean place to sleep - which doesn’t seem to leave a lot of space for flirting.
But also Alice looks like a guy who gets laid plenty. Also Treavor’s pretty sure there’s been some mention of Tindr or one of those let’s-get-fucking apps. Which maybe doesn’t require flirting so much as an open mind and convenience.
..In. Treavor’s experience. Anyway.)
((He doesn’t know the answer. Whether Alice could potentially flirt or not, though what matters is it… Uh. Nothing of that sort is happening here, and anyway, every thought in that direction’s falling into buzzing, into static. Just another question to move on from.))
(Something else. Flip it into something else.)
For a moment or two, Treavor’s been drawn back from the cloth, staring at Alice a little, confusion drawn clear in his expression. Trying to place these thoughts with the image of the Golden Intern, Golden Guy. Now he blinks, hitches a half-grin. ]
Ohhh, I see what’s happening.
[ He doesn't know where he's going with this, but he's absolutely plunging into it. ]
You want to push our desks together. Make a platform out of em. Stage a musical revue for spare coin, right? Hat out, voices strong. Entertainment for the masses.
no subject
Not the grin. The expression that preceded it. It's going to linger with him (another knife to heal around, another reminder), something seared into the channels of his memory. Treavor leaning away, and Treavor perplexed.
Because Alice misconstrued something that was said, and tried to rise to the occasion. Because Alice (flirted) (why did he fucking) (with a man) (he knows better, fuck, he fucking knows, he knows) bantered, and said something weird, and his throat, chest, stomach -
It's all gone tense under the damnation of that confusion. Nauseated. (The feeling of going quickly, moving fast and free and eagerly, and the abrupt crash with calamity. Breath-robbing and sick and shameful.) (Distantly: a feeling like deflation. The emotion that comes after 'no', and before 'oh, okay'. Puncture.) (More distantly: a hollowness, like his head is a drumskin and his throat is the reverb, and he's been struck. (He wanted. He wants.)) He wishes Treavor wouldn't look at him that way, a wild animal in the road and Alice an oncoming car.
He can't quite (doesn't at all) suppress the expression that moves over his face: a rapid blinking as he looks away again. Embarrassment, lips pursing as he bows his head.
Treavor's talking, trying to force the conversation away from the mess that was made by his own bastardized effort to approach something that wasn't his to approach, and that's good of him. Alice is grateful, or will be grateful in time.
And he should. Try and say something back. (He should try not to run away, to press the cloth into Treavor's hands under some pretense of cleaning the kitchen or watering the plants.)
A breath. ]
Caught me. Performance art in a legal firm. Always been my dream.
[ It falls flat with that pall cast over it. (The pall he cast. The awkwardness he caused.
Fuck. Fuck, if it gets out. If Treavor's angry. If he tells someone Alice hit on him -) (He won't do that. That's not the situation, and he won't do that.)
(He could apologize?)
(He.)
(It's not. The worst idea. He is sorry.) ]
I. What I said.
Um.
[ Christ. There's the 'um', the indicator species of his discomfort.
He sighs, and gives the other man the force of his focus once more, lowering the cloth enough to see his face, to let him see his own. To show his effort to be earnest, and contrite.
His arm moves to the back of the sofa. ]
I'm sorry. That wasn't appropriate, if for no other reason than because I didn't bring you here to - to.
[ A distressed cant of his head. Please don't make me say it.
He says it anyway, of course, in a small, wavered voice. ]
Hook up.
[ And barreling along: ]
I don't. I. That's not. A thing I do. I said I do, but it's not. Um. Hooking - up.
[ He's losing the thread here, his breathing beginning to pick up and his distress and shame distilling, pure. ]
It was just. A thing to say. F-felt all right to ff-fl-
[ Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He can't get his "f"s out. ]
- I don't know. It was stupid, and I made you uncomfortable, and I'm sorry.
no subject
…No?
He doesn’t—
He didn’t.
…Treavor hadn’t been making up that other meaning.
He wants to stop this. This tidal-wave confessional, this (pain) (sorrow) panic in the guy’s voice, in his eyes, holy fuck, Alice looks like he’s trying to crawl out of his skin. (And Treavor knows that feeling. And Treavor doesn’t want to see it, feels its panic sinking through him.) (And Treavor doesn’t want to see this guy so stricken. This guy who’s been really actually good to him this morning, last night. (Who told Treavor he could be safe here, any time here.))
(Is this real?)
This is real. This is an actual, true-as-facts falling apart and Treavor doesn’t know what the fuck to fucking do.
(He wants to help?)
He feels pretty fucking helpless. Feels his own expression turning shocked, confused, panicked, and yeah, okay, something like sad or like sorrowed, something like at a loss. Something like guilty. This guy was being good to him and Treavor just skated the fuck on by.
Nice fucking job, Treavor, jesus shit, it’s not like the signs weren’t there.
And yeah on one hand if someone puts an arm around you draws close to you maybe absolutely it makes sense to think you know what, maybe this is a flirt situation, an interested situation, but also if you’re Treavor Pendleton, that doesn’t really happen. Not with guys who’re being kind or careful. Not with anyone who’s being kind or careful.
And he works with this guy. And this guy’s tolerated him but like. Fuck else was Alice gonna do, given the men he works for, the precarious nature of any New York internship. And Treavor hadn’t given the guy much thought as anything beyond an irritant, and Treavor’d figured Alice was taking pretty much the same approach to him, and yeah the guy picked him up last night, brought him here, but the guy’s picked him up before and lots of people’ve picked Treavor up before, scraped him up at his brothers’ command, and.
And. It doesn’t matter, really. Because whatever Treavor thought, this right here is the truth the guy’s giving. And he can’t leave (he doesn’t want to leave) Alice stranded alone in it.
(This isn’t his business.)
(This is definitely his fucking business.
He’s not gonna just. Shake this off.) ]
Hey. Hey, hey, hey. It’s—
[ His hand’s moving to Alice shoulder, will hold there if Alice allows. (It doesn’t occur to Treavor that maybe touching the guy’ll make things worse. Or it doesn’t occur to him until he’s already reached out, and there’s not taking back the gesture, and it’s not like he wants to take it back, anyway.) If the guy doesn’t want his hand, the guy can shrug it off. Treavor’s watching; Treavor’s trying to pay attention, his aching head backgrounded in the face of this… this…
It’s a little catastrophic, is what it feels like.
Alice doesn’t seem a whole lot like he’s here, on solid ground. And if Alice has allowed Treavor to remain at his shoulder, Treavor’ll press his hold a little stronger. ]
Hey. Alice. It’s all right.
[ Treavor doesn’t know what he’s doing. Treavor doesn’t know what he’s doing, so he resorts to rambling, stumbling his way through some words, any words, trying to sort what Alice said and how Alice looks and what Treavor knows (and what Treavor feels, or maybe feels, or maybe that’s just a matter for later, it’s a lot to add to an already overloaded equation), looking for something, an answer to offer a little bit of calm, a little bit of something for Alice to hold onto.
(Shit. Shit, the guy’s worried he’s been caught hitting on a coworker, or… or? Something more to that sentence, that notion, though Treavor can’t find it.)
(…Did the guy say something about not telling the truth about those hookups he supposedly had? That’s a. Probably not a fun fucking thing to share.
Shit.) ]
I didn’t think you were. …Uh, I’m. Kind of. Fucking.
I didn’t catch on. I mean, I thought, maybe, but also. Uh. Insufficient evidence, or something. I’m not…
Like I said. Been a class-A dick to you. Been sitting here hungover on your couch.
[ You know what, you know what. If Treavor can’t get his words together about what he did or didn’t think, if he can’t tell Alice why it all right, he should at least, he can at least try to get the guy to calm down a little.
Because holy fuck, this guy’s gonna pass out if he keeps going like this. Gonna spiral toward a deeper and deeper mess, and it’s a lot like watching Sheldon slip into his own anxieties, and okay, okay, maybe Treavor doesn’t know much about giving people a hand when shit’s rough, but he can try this, at least. ]
Hey, hey, Alice. You’ve gotta breathe, okay?
[ If Alice allows, he’ll move his free hand to take one of Alice’s, an act of imploring, an attempt at calming the guy down. And he’ll press Alice’s hand if he can. ]
Just. In, out, in, out?
It’s all right.
no subject
Wouldn't that just make sense. (He hates it. He hates the kaleidoscopic shift of perspective from one moment to the next, how the world can change from two bodies moving in tandem to one body leashed to another, one body incapable of doing anything but obeying the call of another. One is romantic. It has some shine to it that could be hope, or possibility. Or even just a very pleasant daydream, a memory to be recalled when the space around one body is unutterably lonely.
The other is despairingly inevitable, and damning. Humiliating.
More loneliness.))
His forehead is resting on his wrist, his hand and the cloth dangling, because he is in fact forcing himself to breathe, to stop panicking, to be rational and not put this on a man with a hangover. This is selfish, this is stupid, this is unreasonable. (He crossed a line and made Treavor uncomfortable. He undid all the good he tried to do because of a reckless moment.) (Treavor.)
(Knows.)
A twist in his guts, bile rising, and a wounded animal stare at the floor.
Treavor knows. Treavor knows. Treavor knows. (Fuck. He should have just. Played it off. Kept his fucking mouth shut. Never bantered or flirted or teased or whatever word went with that stupid thing he said. Fuck. Fuck.)
There's a weight on his shoulder and abstractly, he knows what it is. He knows there are words with it. In that moment, his misfiring mind has the temerity to wonder, Is he giving me the 'you're a great guy, but-' speech?
He's never actually heard that one before. It's not you, it's me. That would be new. He should try to tune in to that? Maybe?
He's sitting up, and he's trying to give Treavor his attention, and Treavor's telling him to breathe, but he can't do that anymore, because there's another kaleidoscopic twist. Another weight against a non-celestial body. (He moved, and Treavor moved. Not in tandem - they moved in different trajectories, Alice away and Treavor toward, but isn't that still somehow in tandem?) (He moved away and Treavor touched him, and he moved, meaning to pull further away, and Treavor was touching him more.)
Treavor's hand on his hand.
Alice is staring at it like he's never seen a hand before. (Alice is staring at it like an animal stares at an oncoming car.)
(The way planets don't stare at oncoming meteors, unless the meteors are the kind that will obliterate everything. A change in all life. The end of the dinosaurs, the rise of mankind.)
(His heartbeat feels like it's in his skull. Behind his eyes.)
He doesn't move. (He doesn't want to move. Not one. Muscle. Inch.) ((But if he moves away, just once more, will Treavor still move in tandem, and where and how will he touch then?) (Does he want to risk that?))
Breathe.
He has to. Breathe.
Treavor's hand is. (Paler than his own.) (Thinner than his own.) (The same length, and breadth.) (Heavy.) (Damp with sweat.) (Warm.) (Blue veins under his skin and his knuckles, his fingers are elegant, or would be if he took care of them.) (There's dirt under his nails.) (There's a smudge.) (A scar?) (His nails are ragged, he needs to cut his nails, needs someone to cut his nails.)
(It's so goddamned beautiful.) (It makes his own hand look beautiful.) (He wants to cry. He wants to spread his fingers and see if Treavor will twine his own with them. He wants (to feel that hand's grace for the rest of his life) to cry.)
Alice forces himself to look away, and the act is painful. (How long has he been silent? A few seconds, or a few moments?) He takes a small breath, and manages to offer words that feign calm. ]
You're welcome on my couch, and anywhere else in my home.
It won't happen again.
[ Carefully - painfully. (Horribly. (Like dying. Like ending life support.)) He slides his hand out from under Treavor's.
As though joking, he adds softly: ]
You should feel safe from me, as much as from anything out there, after all. No wondering about meanings.
no subject
He catches that hand again. Palm at Alice’s wrist, his fingers wrapping Alice’s palm, thumb resting at the back of Alice’s hand. Not forceful, not gripping, but with imploring insistence. Just. ’Hey, come on. Stay. You don’t have to go.’
(If he doesn’t think far about what’s happening, he can’t get caught in spiraled questions, in every sign and indication that…
Something’s happening to this guy. A lot of things are happening to this guy (happened to this guy?)
(The weight of the way the guy looked at his hand and all that space between words, all that howling screaming silent behind Alice’s absence and pulling away and stuttered words.
(The way Alice seemed to try gathering himself.)
(The way that gathering fell apart.)
Like watching someone fall through ice, like watching someone plummet through the earth, barraged and burning. Like tapping at a stone, a strong and solid-looking boulder, and the rock-face chips and shatters and there’s magma, suddenly, lava spilling outward.
What’s happening isn’t controllable, precisely. What’s happening with Alice is bigger than this moment, and the guy’s trying to manage it (a managing that feels like closing off, like tamping down) (a managing that feels not-unfamiliar; push something away push something back into order and maybe you can seal a gap (for now) (never mind that you’re still bleeding)), but the guy’s missing some pieces, Treavor reminds himself there are things the guy’s got wrong, or it seems like the guy’s got wrong, and the whole thing feels messy right now and maybe the least Treavor can do is try to offer some amending, because maybe it’ll help, maybe it’ll keep the guy from sealing himself with these mistakes.
(That last thing the guy said. ’You should feel safe from me.’ It’s a weird fucking thing to say. It’s a hollowing thing to hear. Because there’s meaning to those words, maybe history behind them, though Treavor doesn’t know it. Because the words ache with something badly wounded.
And isn’t it strange, to think of feeling unsafe here.
Treavor’s felt - Treavor knows he’s felt - more secure this morning than he’s been in ages. (Knows this guy feels safer than anyone he’s met in years.))
If Alice has allowed Treavor to keep his hand, Treavor’ll brush his thumb against the back of that hand once, twice. Steady while Treavor looks for Alice’s eyes, seeking to fix them with his own, a variation on the usual staring; still persistent, unrelenting, but without coldness, lacking distance. Penetrating, but not hostile, not unkind. ]
Alice. Listen to me, okay?
[ ’I don’t know what’s doing on, but—‘ Not that, no. ]
You’re okay.
I’m okay.
Hey, everything’s all right. You scraped me up and gave me a place to sleep. You did a good guy thing, kept me from sleeping against a dumpster. That makes you pretty much the polar opposite of dickweed, got it?
And uh.
[ He flicks a glance away, wants to scratch his neck. Avoids the urge and fixes Alice in his stare again. ]
You can’t kick yourself for me being dense. I just figured… Like I said, I’m a dick, been a dick, I’m a mess sweating all over your very nice sofa, like I’m the last person in the world I’d bat eyes at, and my standards are pretty nonexistent. And hey, to be fair, I didn’t know you had it in you to make a, uh, suggestive joke.
[ He manages to cock an eyebrow, a little. ]
You’ve got surprises in you, Alice.
[ And, pressing that hand, if he still has that hand— ]
Hey, you didn’t do anything wrong. Look at me: self-inflicted sick aside, I’m a-okay.
You’ve been a good guy. Pretty sure you are a good guy, and you don’t need to worry. I'm not worried. Hey, that’s a Treavor Pendleton promise!
[ And? Fuck it, a minor tilt on the head, and a wink just for Alice. ]
no subject
It's a different touch. It's an alien touch, because hands often touch his hands, and there are a multitude of ways to excuse the genial connection of one palm and another palm. But this is Treavor's hand on his wrist, and his fingertips could trace the lines of Alice's palm and tell his fortune, tell his past, could know the essence of his work ethic from the small knot of muscle at the base of his thumb and the callouses at the heels of his fingers.
(He wants. (He wants, oh god, he wants so much, and yesterday he wanted so little.) He wants Treavor's elegant fingertips with their dirty nails to explore his hand. He wants to be known by the lines and creases on his palm.)
(That thought makes him feel like his lungs are breathing something other than air, dizzying and intoxicating and deadly.)
He thinks if Treavor's fingers do move, he'll tremble, and betray something other than panic. Something other than shame, or something along with shame.
(A strange thought occurs: Alice doesn't hear a resounding 'no' in this refusal to let him remove himself into himself. But he does hear something, is aware of an undercurrent of unvoiced language speaking to him, only to him -
Is he imagining that awareness.)
(Is he imagining that comprehension. In the silence beneath words, a plea. To stay.) (It must be his imagination, because moving away is a deconstruction of himself in ways he never knew were possible. Moving away is fighting gravity.) (...But that hand is there and Alice doesn't delude himself often. Not that way.)
(If Treavor -)
If Treavor. Asked him to stay.
There's no question he can put to that. No doubts, or worries. He's staring at the hand on his wrist and feeling the fingers against his palm and telling his own fortune: Treavor will say stay, and Alice will stay.
It's the movement of Treavor's thumb that catches him off-guard, his attention so fixed on the other side of the situation. However slowly or quickly the reality of that brush, it takes an eternity and a heartbeat, and to his credit.
To his credit, he makes no sound.
To his credit, he doesn't flinch, or close his eyes, or melt back into the sofa.
Even if the brush of that thumb felt like a lit fuse. Even if a moan built in his throat and a quiver began in his stomach, his thighs. Even if the second brush deserved a sigh, and Alice on his knees at this man's feet, and of course he'll stay. Where the fuck could he go? Where would be far enough to forget how that felt?
It could be that he does none of this because Treavor is holding him fixed in this moment, and he's talking, but his eyes are the absolute sum of Alice's comprehension. His eyes, and their certainty of hold. (He stepped into a trap, and he isn't certain how, or when, but there's no extricating himself, oh, and remember, he remembers, (does Treavor recall last night?) looking in his eyes and stroking his cheek his hair his neck, singing to him, one loneliness meeting another.) (Stay, he felt or heard or understood stay.)
How much can he hide under this gaze? How much would he try to hide? Would he bother hiding anything, if Treavor came looking? (The inability to fight the oncoming car-meteor-Treavor.) (The inevitability of their orbit.) (His own direly hard arousal, his dizziness, his climbing confusion, the way his vision seems to hold nothing but the eyes that have managed to pin him through like an insect.)
Treavor's talking and Alice is nodding in agreement, not because there's anything in particular to agree with, but because Treavor is pressing his hand and staring into his eyes, and there's nowhere he needs to go, nothing he needs to do. And maybe. Maybe if he stays absolutely fucking still, he can stay in those eyes for a while.
And then he furrows his brow, like one slowly struggling out of the grip of a daze, and shakes his head. ]
Okay - but -
No.
No, that's -
[ He has to. Not. Look at those beautiful fucking eyes.
He's gripping something.
His hand has turned over and what he's gripping, what he's doing is too much to contemplate, and the grip is soft and utterly right, the way one fits in the other and his fingertips rest against a wrist, but he can't think about that.
(Or stop doing it.) ]
Listen. It's important to me. You don't...come here looking for a place that isn't a dumpster, self-inflicted sick or not, and think it's okay: that I can - 'bat my eyes' at you. Because I'm a good guy?
[ He's shaking his head, more certain of himself now, able to look askance at Treavor. ]
That wasn't the intention. I don't want any repayment. I wouldn't do that to you, and frankly, that's a low fucking bar to set and call me a 'good guy'.
[ He frowns, and then returns the press that was given to him. His voice is soft now, and fretful, and his eyes flick to and away from Treavor's. ]
You shouldn't walk in somewhere, already prepared to foot the bill. Yeah, you're a dick. You're also a lot of other things, and your validity, your absolute value - to me, or to anyone - shouldn't depend on whether you hate being in a basement office, or if you're willing to put up with some suggestive jokes when you've got a hangover.
You're worth -
[ He doesn't have a right to. Speak to Treavor about his worth.
Equally as sure, Alice knows he has every right. That, as much as anything else in these moments of eyes and fingertips and absence and trajectory and not-loss, frightens him. ]
...You're worth more than any of that. And all of it. Okay?
no subject
Alice doesn’t know. How Treavor is. Sure, he’s got an idea, he’s been at the receiving end of half-assed taunts and knows Treavor works (‘works’) for his brothers and presumably knows Treavor’s a liability to his brothers and he’s dealt with Hangover Hours Treavor more than once or twice or, shit, this guy’s come to his rescue a lot.
Okay, all of that’s true. But it’s still only a small slice of the shit pie, and this guy should be careful, this guy doesn’t know Treavor, this guy can’t amend decades of Treavor’s bullshit with a few nice words.
Kind words. This guy is… gracious. Generous. A good fuckin guy, whatever he might say about himself. ((Okay but. Okay and. If Treavor knows this about Alice - and he’s certain he knows this about Alice - isn’t it possible, maybe possible that Alice could know a few things about Treavor?)) Good not just because he brought Treavor here, but because he must’ve gotten Treavor dressed for bed, gave him a nice place on a nice couch, introduced him to his cat, made him eggs (??), gave him the courtesy of explaining why he’s not going to be providing alcohol. And a dozen, four or five dozen other things. Treavor could make a list, if he wanted. If Alice wanted.
He’s looking at Alice’s hand in his own. Looking at the shifted position, feeling the clasp of that hand, the unflinching of that hand. And it occurs to Treavor that Alice is really, really fucking present here, his focus on Treavor, his eyes, his thoughts, his self less as if pulled inward.
Treavor likes that hand in his own. Treavor’s always liked a good dose of human contact, but this. (The perfect press of it, the ease of holding and the way he thinks he can feel Alice’s heartbeat in Alice’s palm, the way it seems to draw into his own hand, steadying him, could-be-guiding him.) This is something other, something more than.
Something in him feels a little like glowing. He doesn’t question it. (He doesn’t dare to look too close, and risk dispersing it or putting out the light.)
Still watching their twined hands, Treavor sighs mildly, would shake his head if he wasn’t studiously keeping still (better not to jostle himself; it doesn’t take much to kick up a plummeting nausea). Then he shifts his eyes back up at the guy, letting Alice hold his eyes, letting himself take in Alice’s. Registering what he sees for later, for thought. (So much of this is going to play itself inside his head again, again, again. He knows it; he doesn’t mind.)
(This guy is good to him.
This guy’s a good guy.
And this guy is specifically being really goddamn good to Treavor.)
(Treavor likes this guy’s hand in his own.)
(This guy should be. Careful.)
Treavor shifts his thumb against Alice’s hand again. Treavor’s watching the guy, not sure how to explain that he knows Alice’s meaning and yeah, Alice is cutting pretty close (real fucking close) to the bone with those observations (always prepared to foot some kind of bill, well yeah of course, that’s what happen when you spend your life accruing debt after debt after debt, when yeah your brothers can pay off actual real monetary problems but you can’t on your own; you get used to prepping yourself for unspecified payback), but also he doesn’t get the sense Alice is a kind of asks-for-return or even wants or accepts much return.
He’s just. Kind of that mythic standup dude.
(Who also happens to possess a bracing touch, a touch that could make a person glow.)
(Who also brushed his fingers over Treavor’s hair, against his forehead. (That happened, didn’t it? And it offered at once depthless tranquility and tingled excitation.))
(Who’s got a way of speaking, a way of weighing over words, a way of lending tenor to words and a way of staring open-eyed (open-souled?) that could make Treavor’s heart stop.) ]
Shit. Alice. …It’s too early in the day for me to explain to you the flaws in your logic. Let’s save the validity talk until you know just how rabid an asshole I am.
[ There’s a minor smile, flickered with an unconscious upset, something akin to forlornness or regret. Something that could have been a wince against his headache or a trick of the eye; there and then vanished. ]
You’re a smart guy, don’t get me wrong. Or I assume you’re smart, or you look like a guy who knows his way around some insight.
…Or maybe that’s the glasses, hm?
[ Not that they’re bad glasses. The guy looks pretty good in glasses.
Then again, the guy’d probably look good in a lot of things. ]
That’s what I mean about you being a good guy, anyway. You’ve got… vision beyond the bullshit level. And patience. Shit. You’ve got the patience of a goddamn saint.
You like to help people, right? That’s not… Hey, Alice, I don’t know if you know? But that’s not a common commodity here.
[ Here in this garbage fucking city. Cold and chock-full of rats.
…Treavor doesn’t mind the rats. Or the thousands of strangers, people he can wonder about, wish about, watch and think maybe they’ve got okay lives, maybe someone here’s found something worth living in (and if they can, maybe someday, somewhere, he’ll meet brighter fortune; it isn’t likely, it’s a thought that grows dimmer each year, but even now it offers sparks of interest on better days).
Those strangers usually turn out to be shit once you get to know em.
But this guy. This Alice. He’s… Somehow better than his first impression. Less noxious, not noxious at all, almost kind of gentle, and yeah, just better by fucking far. ]
I don’t remember a whole lot about last night, but I know I felt all right. Not like I had anything to worry about.
Which also isn't all that common.
[ At all. ]
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