( There were aspects of the situation with his mom that he didn't understand — still doesn't understand. He may never, given his penchant for ignoring things that hurt. If he spent some time reflecting on it, he might realize her perspective.
She was never going to be able to afford treatment. She would never have been able to make it through chemo at cost alone, even if they ignore the fact that she was the sole breadwinner and the money stopped coming in when she stopped working. If she'd tried, if she'd fought, Ian would've fought with her. Would've probably dropped out of grad school to get a job, to pay for it all.
He'd have given up himself for her, just to lose her in the end anyway.
It's not the same situation, but maybe he is his mother's son after all.
Also, selfishly, if it wasn't Nate losing him it would have been him losing Nate. That's a much harder outcome for him to fathom. )
Maybe.
( He acknowledges placidly. )
You're probably right. But I know how I feel about it and you're not gonna change my mind any more than I'm gonna change yours. You can keep yelling at me though, if you want. If you think it'll make you feel better.
[ It's even more frustrating that Ian's voice is so ridiculously calm. Unrepentant and unfazed, as with most of his firmer opinions, and Nate can't even blame him for being so steadfast - Hell, it's why he likes him. Conviction in his actions, utterly certain he's justified. ]
I'm not yelling at you, I'm-
[ Nate's jaw snaps shut, because okay, all right, he was starting to raise his voice a little, and to that end he immediately remedies the situation by shutting up. Shutting off.
He sits back against the bench with a sharp exhale from his nose, lips pressed in a thin line, brow furrowed at nothing in the middle distance. It's not like him to lose his temper unless something critical is on the line and snapping so quickly, with such vehemence, is something the asshole he used to be would do.
I had to protect you!
That is bullshit, Nate.
He takes a steadying breath, pulling himself under control again. It wasn't a real loss, he knows that, but it felt like one. It felt the way every other great loss has felt, and in that world there was no time to be angry, no target to use for his grief. A good percentage of this is just misplaced anger at Ian and Nate knows it. ]
I'm sorry. You're right.
[ He finally breaks the silence, because the scared kid with the gun deserves as much criticism as Ian, who doesn't deserve any at all. Nate would have made the same call in the same situation. ]
...I didn't just fall off a cliff. I got knocked off, I was about to be shot. The last time someone stepped between me and a bullet, I still died.
( He starts to feel a little guilty around the time Nate cuts himself off. He's being too cavalier about this, or he's at least not doing a great job demonstrating empathy. He's being stubborn, more interested in an unfaltering display of sticking with his choice rather than doing anything to help with the more important facet of this conversation -- that Nate is hurting. Or, was hurting. Might still be hurting. Whatever the case, that perspective starts to filter in before he even gets that deeper explanation.
It's on the tip of his tongue to take over, to start steering the conversation. Getting the backstory cuts the legs out from under him, leaves him momentarily stuck. )
Shit.
( He manages finally, a quiet murmur. One of his hands peels away from the bottle on instinct like he means to reach out, just to kindly check himself midway through the movement. He steers his palm toward his thigh instead, passing the flat of it down over denim. Super fucking smooth. )
I'm sorry, I didn't--
( Know, obviously. No wonder he didn't want to share that memory back then.
He still would've done it, but he'd have been less of an asshole about it now. )
[ He says too quickly, in a way that conveys he is the polar opposite of fine. Didn't want this crap to turn into a pity party when Ian is the one whose body cooled on concrete and Nate doesn't know how he ended up, some broken corpse at the bottom of a cliff, drifting downriver. Another one of Libertalia's many casualties.
He catches the aborted gesture in the periphery, something he suddenly wishes Ian had followed through on, and looks up at the vines spreading across the face of the building opposite them. ]
It's not like I told you. It's not like I've really told anyone.
[ He put it into words for Stephen once before, but there was anger then, a livid edge to his voice for the sibling who pretended it didn't happen. Who still pretends that it didn't happen, that he didn't nudge his baby brother over a sheer drop trying to save his life.
Nate can't change the circumstances - they are what they are - but he's starting to forgive Sam for what happened. He lied, he twisted the situation, he counted on Nate trusting him, and that was just Sam doing what he thought was best. Doesn't mean Nate has to agree with it, now or ever. ]
Sam took the bullet in the shoulder. It was an accident.
( Yeah, it's definitely not fine. Ian twists a little on the bench, just enough to better study Nate's expression. His posture. It's killing him a little to be hands-off; in the aerie he'd be plastered around the guy like a fucking octopus basically. Holding his hand at the very least.
Sam knocking him off a cliff to try and save him from a bullet. )
Sounds like him.
( Mused quietly. Maybe it's not fair to pretend he knows Sam given he only knows a version, but everyone else he knows had been a close enough version of themselves that he's counting it.
Thrusting Nate into quarry after quarry to give him a better life. Somehow.
Of course, this leads to the natural next question-- )
[ Sounds like him earns a bitter little laugh, humorless for the assessment that isn't altogether off-base. It does sound like Sam, doesn't it? But just about everything he's ever done has been for the brothers Drake, every sacrifice, every night gone hungry. He thought he was doing what was best.
He always thought that.
In all his time since he woke up in New Amsterdam, Nate doesn't know that he's ever felt this lonely while sitting next to another person. Wanting contact and trying to respect boundaries, thinking he's found a job and a purpose and having it unceremoniously ripped from him, being dead and being here. It's an empty, nauseating sensation, being immediately adjacent to someone you knew for nearly two decades, conscious of the fact that the terms are different.
Ian knows him and doesn't know him at the same time: knows to identify when Nate is uncomfortable, but doesn't know how many goddamn people have tried to blow Nate's head off in his lifetime, and how funny the question is in the grand scheme of things. Of course he would ask it one of the few occasions Nate could actually name the person who wanted him dead. ]
Rafe Adler. His family's chin-deep in big-box store stocks, the guy fancies himself an archaeologist. He also hates my guts.
[ It's not flavor text when it's true. Nate finally picks up his beer again, largely to give his hands something to do. ]
Hired a whole private army just to blow my head off.
( That's one of the harder points Kyna made for him. How well do you really know him? He could rattle off a list of facts, things ranging from Nate's early childhood to his death, to the couple of places he'd been after. On the surface it sounds like a lot, but he still feels like there's an immense gap there that he can't see. It feels like he's missing something, and that's part of what makes this scary.
There's fear in not knowing. He's never been good at it. He obsesses over the things he's interested in until he learns enough that he feels confident, and he doesn't feel confident in what he knows about Nate.
There's a lot he doesn't feel confident about when it comes to Nate. He can probably put his finger on the exact moment that started — that's just what I do, not who I am.
Deeper and deeper still.
He's used to taking things apart and putting them back together. He's used to seeing the inner workings of something and how all the pieces fit, what makes something tick, what drives it. Once upon a time he lost a piece to an alarm clock and it never worked again. Maybe that's the moment his problems started. Not sure how he's going to deal with it if he does that here.
Hired a whole private army just to blow my head off.
Jesus Christ. )
Well, all he managed to do was knock you off a cliff, so I guess he royally fucked that one up.
( It comes out before he can filter it, meant as gentle humor and consolation and apology all at the same time — and it only takes about half a second after saying it for him to backpedal. )
Sorry. I'm sorry. That's not funny. That's... big. Fucked up. Terrifying. I get why— what happened— would upset you. I'm open to suggestions on how to... make you feel better, how to help.
( Fix it — both things — because that's always his impulse.
Especially, it seems, when that's impossible to do. )
[ He knows that Ian is never going to feel sorry for taking that bullet, because to him, it was worth it. Dying was worth saving someone else's - his - life, it was worth the pain and the fear and Nate is conscious of the unfortunate reality that he would do the very same in a heartbeat, without having to think about it. He wouldn't even feel guilty.
There isn't a lot to remedy that, nor is there a way to fix something so irrevocably broken. Some repairs are impossible to make without replacing a good portion of the original, and at what point does he become Theseus' ship? Is he the same person, with all his parts manufactured a second time around?
Does it matter? Does it matter? ]
I know you are.
[ Nate looks at Ian with a soft fondness and a sad smile. He got the same impression in that dream, months and months ago. A lifetime ago. A desire to fix what was wrong, as though people are made up of clockwork that can be dismantled, cleaned, put back together with a new gear in the empty space between teeth and turning. ]
( That fond look and the sentiment around it earns Nate a soft, subdued little smile. It's a little melancholy, because this is another in the ever growing list of moments where he'd have reached out. If they were still back there, he'd be threading their fingers together. Thumbing at Nate's knuckle.
They should probably get through the death part before they get to the what the fuck is this part. )
Hey, but this means I'm officially part of the club now.
( Mildly, lightly. Can somebody 'too soon' you over your own death? )
Do I get like a sash, or a pin, or... I've always wanted one of those varsity jackets.
[ Nate wants to touch him more than he can possibly express, because a decade of consistency in contact - in having those small, simple comforts - casts in sharp relief the sudden lack thereof. He can't remember the last time he held someone's hand here. Was it months ago? A seedy diner not far from the casino, after acquiring his second job from the goddamn mob. Midge sat in the booth seat next to him, dipping her handkerchief in a glass of water and cleaning the blood from his split lip, and he reached out without thinking to hold onto something solid.
It's eaten at him since he arrived, that need for casual touch. Even with the contact he's volunteered for he's held a death grip on the emotions that threaten to push through, the way he has since he was very young. It's a reflex difficult to shake, having spent years building walls and sitting in quiet vigil stop them. ]
It's a motorcycle jacket, actually. Like Hell's Angels.
[ Ian is coping in his own way, and that's fine. He doesn't have to get into the nitty-gritty, doesn't have to explain himself, because Nate already knows. The easy diversion allows him to avoid addressing the elephant a little longer. ]
I would say "congratulations" but somehow that feels more morbid?
( It's a fucked up dynamic, that he'd been so motivated to comfort Nate physically he'd locked lips with him without a second thought in a dream. Now after a ten year stretch of memory really doing it, he feels less certain it's allowed now than he's ever been.
It feels like asking for something.
Which precedes the terrifying notion that -- one way or the other -- Nate will answer. Insert a Schrodinger quip.
He shrugs one loose shoulder, tipping his eyes back down to his beer to absently scratch at it again. )
Nah, you know, I'm thinking about making it an annual thing. Like birthday parties, except instead of singing the song you just read a eulogy.
[ Nate knows it's a joke but it still feels too soon. What has it been, now, a week or so since he got back? Time drags in the hours since, having absorbed a lifetime in the blink of an eye.
Without intending for it the conversation sobers and the lull that follows is really, really noticeable. It isn't for awkwardness so much as it is for not knowing where to start, because where to start? The beginning of their time in the Aerie, or the beginning of their time here? Is it wise to dig and press knowing the way Ian has shut himself off in the past, or should he leave well enough alone?
Or is it better still, to just be honest about his relief? ]
...look, um. This is weird. I know it's weird. And we can talk about it, or not talk about, whichever makes you more comfortable, but either way, I'd really like it if we could go back to speaking to each other. Because it's kind of sucked to not do that.
( It's practically more a breath than a word, half relief and half apology. He nods at the ground, and it's almost more shoulders than anything. )
No, yeah, that's-- I just didn't wanna...
( Well, he already thinks he sounds stupid, but he started the sentence. Might as well... )
Come on...
( End it nice and cringe-like, hating himself a little all the while. )
...too strong.
( It sounds so fucking dumb in hindsight, like he's back in high school again and it's senior year, and Dusty got a girlfriend and shit's suddenly awkward. A sigh, and he scratches absently at his scalp more for the need to be doing something with his hands than anything else. )
But, I mean, I guess if you wanna go back to being grown adults in our thirties that's probably a good idea.
[ He knew how to read Ian for ten years and change, and that experience is failing him now. Picking apart the expression on his face Nate genuinely can't tell whether he's somehow put off by that, or apathetic, or just tired. There's the obvious relief - huge, to know it's mutual - but the rest feels stilted and defeatist, somehow. Or maybe he's just content to take the out that Nate gave him, so really talking about it is off the table.
In another life he would have been happy for the chance to avoid a conversation like that. Now he isn't so sure. ]
...I don't really know what I wanna go back to, Ian. I just hate not talking to you.
[ It's a different sort of offer, the one he makes when he rests his hand between them, palm up and open. With no expectations the worst that can happen is that he just looks like a presumptuous moron. ]
And I should also probably tell you that I spent two years in Hadriel without physically aging, so I'm technically forty-one.
( That's definitely putting at least one foot into the conversation -- what they want to go back to. That it's up in the air, instead of decisive on one side or the other. It sets some muscles a little too tight around his ribs, but he's not focusing on it too hard.
Kind of distracted by the open hand, and the want to take it, and the immediate reminder of the empathy bond that very much did not exist in the Aerie. That's the only thing that has him hesitating, but it isn't for very long.
It's worth the connection, that ache outweighs the flickering discomfort over the notion of being wide open.
Honestly, maybe it's easier than talking about it. He doesn't have to struggle through the exact right way to phrase how he feels without fucking up the words, or the context, or leaving too much open for interpretation.
So, yeah. Okay. Sure, he can do this.
Dry skin over dry skin, carefully threading fingers, blue glow kicking into action. )
Forty-one? I don't even know who you are anymore.
( Dry humor, a muted and half-hearted approximation of scandalized but without enough energy devoted to it to make it anything other than deadpan.
Hope you're ready for this absolute cacophony of conflicting emotion, Nate. He's quadruple-thinking himself into a stress hole over trying to prioritize hope over fear over happiness about the connection over relief over insecurity and a whole rainbow of other bullshit all mashed into one vibrating analytical something. )
[ It is difficult to effectively compartmentalize the lived experiences of what, for Nate, is now four different worlds: home, here, Hadriel, the Aerie. He knows what Elena would say, has said, that the time and the actions taken have influence and sway, which makes them valid in their own right. Conflict is inevitable. It's like art, intended to elicit a response, and that's what makes it what it is. What the observer makes of it.
Interpretation is always subjective and everybody's got an opinion, so it doesn't mean they're wrong - it doesn't mean they're right, either. Like so many clashes in perspective among the people unceremoniously brought here, there's a significant lack of actual communication at the center of it all.
Nate has never been spectacularly good at that either. But he's trying to be, even on borrowed time.
He's held Ian's hand God only knows how many occasions over the course of a decade, but they never had this place's empathy bond clawing open the gestures with vivid scrutiny. Any relief Nate may have been entertaining with the physical contact is swiftly overwhelmed by the emotional cyclone that hits him like a truck.
It would be easy to get swept up in its fervor and for a long moment he struggles not to do so, trying to pick it apart and look at it piece by piece, as if that will somehow make it easier to digest. It's like listening to half a dozen orchestras tuning their instruments all at once and instead of wading too far into it he tries to do the opposite of what he's done for the last seven months: Nate gives him something in return.
It's an equally muddled deluge of fear and affection, a weighty undercurrent of guilt, a pervasive string of loneliness. Unsurety and anxiety at its core and a dense, unmistakable and immeasurable love for someone he left behind that runs parallel to the same feeling left over from the Aerie. Complicated, with a solution he can't yet see.
Somehow, inexplicably, getting back this absolute tangle of feelings actually helps quiet his down slowly but surely. It gives him something to focus on, first of all, and for a guy who uses work to soothe himself that's an invaluable thing. He gets to start out identifying like pairs, matching up parts of himself that resemble parts of Nate, the places where they align.
As match after match pairs off and straightens out from the rest of the tangle, what it leaves behind seems smaller and less overwhelming. It's easier to focus on the ways that they're on the same page -- fear and affection, loneliness, anxiety and a sizable strand of love, singular for himself, strange and slightly unorthodox though it may be.
Feelings aren't articulated thought, he can't know the context for a lot of it. He can't suddenly read Nate's mind and know his history, or the precise source of his conflict.
But he gets enough to slow himself down a little, take himself off of 2.5 times speed, and it has a new kind of relief layering itself onto the rest. It's accompanied by a slow and quiet exhale, and a clearer, more direct look at Nate than he's given for most of this conversation.
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She was never going to be able to afford treatment. She would never have been able to make it through chemo at cost alone, even if they ignore the fact that she was the sole breadwinner and the money stopped coming in when she stopped working. If she'd tried, if she'd fought, Ian would've fought with her. Would've probably dropped out of grad school to get a job, to pay for it all.
He'd have given up himself for her, just to lose her in the end anyway.
It's not the same situation, but maybe he is his mother's son after all.
Also, selfishly, if it wasn't Nate losing him it would have been him losing Nate. That's a much harder outcome for him to fathom. )
Maybe.
( He acknowledges placidly. )
You're probably right. But I know how I feel about it and you're not gonna change my mind any more than I'm gonna change yours. You can keep yelling at me though, if you want. If you think it'll make you feel better.
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I'm not yelling at you, I'm-
[ Nate's jaw snaps shut, because okay, all right, he was starting to raise his voice a little, and to that end he immediately remedies the situation by shutting up. Shutting off.
He sits back against the bench with a sharp exhale from his nose, lips pressed in a thin line, brow furrowed at nothing in the middle distance. It's not like him to lose his temper unless something critical is on the line and snapping so quickly, with such vehemence, is something the asshole he used to be would do.
That is bullshit, Nate.
He takes a steadying breath, pulling himself under control again. It wasn't a real loss, he knows that, but it felt like one. It felt the way every other great loss has felt, and in that world there was no time to be angry, no target to use for his grief. A good percentage of this is just misplaced anger at Ian and Nate knows it. ]
I'm sorry. You're right.
[ He finally breaks the silence, because the scared kid with the gun deserves as much criticism as Ian, who doesn't deserve any at all. Nate would have made the same call in the same situation. ]
...I didn't just fall off a cliff. I got knocked off, I was about to be shot. The last time someone stepped between me and a bullet, I still died.
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It's on the tip of his tongue to take over, to start steering the conversation. Getting the backstory cuts the legs out from under him, leaves him momentarily stuck. )
Shit.
( He manages finally, a quiet murmur. One of his hands peels away from the bottle on instinct like he means to reach out, just to kindly check himself midway through the movement. He steers his palm toward his thigh instead, passing the flat of it down over denim. Super fucking smooth. )
I'm sorry, I didn't--
( Know, obviously. No wonder he didn't want to share that memory back then.
He still would've done it, but he'd have been less of an asshole about it now. )
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[ He says too quickly, in a way that conveys he is the polar opposite of fine. Didn't want this crap to turn into a pity party when Ian is the one whose body cooled on concrete and Nate doesn't know how he ended up, some broken corpse at the bottom of a cliff, drifting downriver. Another one of Libertalia's many casualties.
He catches the aborted gesture in the periphery, something he suddenly wishes Ian had followed through on, and looks up at the vines spreading across the face of the building opposite them. ]
It's not like I told you. It's not like I've really told anyone.
[ He put it into words for Stephen once before, but there was anger then, a livid edge to his voice for the sibling who pretended it didn't happen. Who still pretends that it didn't happen, that he didn't nudge his baby brother over a sheer drop trying to save his life.
Nate can't change the circumstances - they are what they are - but he's starting to forgive Sam for what happened. He lied, he twisted the situation, he counted on Nate trusting him, and that was just Sam doing what he thought was best. Doesn't mean Nate has to agree with it, now or ever. ]
Sam took the bullet in the shoulder. It was an accident.
no subject
Sam knocking him off a cliff to try and save him from a bullet. )
Sounds like him.
( Mused quietly. Maybe it's not fair to pretend he knows Sam given he only knows a version, but everyone else he knows had been a close enough version of themselves that he's counting it.
Thrusting Nate into quarry after quarry to give him a better life. Somehow.
Of course, this leads to the natural next question-- )
Who was trying to shoot you?
no subject
He always thought that.
In all his time since he woke up in New Amsterdam, Nate doesn't know that he's ever felt this lonely while sitting next to another person. Wanting contact and trying to respect boundaries, thinking he's found a job and a purpose and having it unceremoniously ripped from him, being dead and being here. It's an empty, nauseating sensation, being immediately adjacent to someone you knew for nearly two decades, conscious of the fact that the terms are different.
Ian knows him and doesn't know him at the same time: knows to identify when Nate is uncomfortable, but doesn't know how many goddamn people have tried to blow Nate's head off in his lifetime, and how funny the question is in the grand scheme of things. Of course he would ask it one of the few occasions Nate could actually name the person who wanted him dead. ]
Rafe Adler. His family's chin-deep in big-box store stocks, the guy fancies himself an archaeologist. He also hates my guts.
[ It's not flavor text when it's true. Nate finally picks up his beer again, largely to give his hands something to do. ]
Hired a whole private army just to blow my head off.
no subject
There's fear in not knowing. He's never been good at it. He obsesses over the things he's interested in until he learns enough that he feels confident, and he doesn't feel confident in what he knows about Nate.
There's a lot he doesn't feel confident about when it comes to Nate. He can probably put his finger on the exact moment that started — that's just what I do, not who I am.
Deeper and deeper still.
He's used to taking things apart and putting them back together. He's used to seeing the inner workings of something and how all the pieces fit, what makes something tick, what drives it. Once upon a time he lost a piece to an alarm clock and it never worked again. Maybe that's the moment his problems started. Not sure how he's going to deal with it if he does that here.
Hired a whole private army just to blow my head off.
Jesus Christ. )
Well, all he managed to do was knock you off a cliff, so I guess he royally fucked that one up.
( It comes out before he can filter it, meant as gentle humor and consolation and apology all at the same time — and it only takes about half a second after saying it for him to backpedal. )
Sorry. I'm sorry. That's not funny. That's... big. Fucked up. Terrifying. I get why— what happened— would upset you. I'm open to suggestions on how to... make you feel better, how to help.
( Fix it — both things — because that's always his impulse.
Especially, it seems, when that's impossible to do. )
no subject
There isn't a lot to remedy that, nor is there a way to fix something so irrevocably broken. Some repairs are impossible to make without replacing a good portion of the original, and at what point does he become Theseus' ship? Is he the same person, with all his parts manufactured a second time around?
Does it matter? Does it matter? ]
I know you are.
[ Nate looks at Ian with a soft fondness and a sad smile. He got the same impression in that dream, months and months ago. A lifetime ago. A desire to fix what was wrong, as though people are made up of clockwork that can be dismantled, cleaned, put back together with a new gear in the empty space between teeth and turning. ]
Honestly, just...being here's enough. Knowing you're okay.
no subject
They should probably get through the death part before they get to the what the fuck is this part. )
Hey, but this means I'm officially part of the club now.
( Mildly, lightly. Can somebody 'too soon' you over your own death? )
Do I get like a sash, or a pin, or... I've always wanted one of those varsity jackets.
no subject
It's eaten at him since he arrived, that need for casual touch. Even with the contact he's volunteered for he's held a death grip on the emotions that threaten to push through, the way he has since he was very young. It's a reflex difficult to shake, having spent years building walls and sitting in quiet vigil stop them. ]
It's a motorcycle jacket, actually. Like Hell's Angels.
[ Ian is coping in his own way, and that's fine. He doesn't have to get into the nitty-gritty, doesn't have to explain himself, because Nate already knows. The easy diversion allows him to avoid addressing the elephant a little longer. ]
I would say "congratulations" but somehow that feels more morbid?
no subject
It feels like asking for something.
Which precedes the terrifying notion that -- one way or the other -- Nate will answer. Insert a Schrodinger quip.
He shrugs one loose shoulder, tipping his eyes back down to his beer to absently scratch at it again. )
Nah, you know, I'm thinking about making it an annual thing. Like birthday parties, except instead of singing the song you just read a eulogy.
no subject
[ Nate knows it's a joke but it still feels too soon. What has it been, now, a week or so since he got back? Time drags in the hours since, having absorbed a lifetime in the blink of an eye.
Without intending for it the conversation sobers and the lull that follows is really, really noticeable. It isn't for awkwardness so much as it is for not knowing where to start, because where to start? The beginning of their time in the Aerie, or the beginning of their time here? Is it wise to dig and press knowing the way Ian has shut himself off in the past, or should he leave well enough alone?
Or is it better still, to just be honest about his relief? ]
...look, um. This is weird. I know it's weird. And we can talk about it, or not talk about, whichever makes you more comfortable, but either way, I'd really like it if we could go back to speaking to each other. Because it's kind of sucked to not do that.
no subject
( It's practically more a breath than a word, half relief and half apology. He nods at the ground, and it's almost more shoulders than anything. )
No, yeah, that's-- I just didn't wanna...
( Well, he already thinks he sounds stupid, but he started the sentence. Might as well... )
Come on...
( End it nice and cringe-like, hating himself a little all the while. )
...too strong.
( It sounds so fucking dumb in hindsight, like he's back in high school again and it's senior year, and Dusty got a girlfriend and shit's suddenly awkward. A sigh, and he scratches absently at his scalp more for the need to be doing something with his hands than anything else. )
But, I mean, I guess if you wanna go back to being grown adults in our thirties that's probably a good idea.
no subject
In another life he would have been happy for the chance to avoid a conversation like that. Now he isn't so sure. ]
...I don't really know what I wanna go back to, Ian. I just hate not talking to you.
[ It's a different sort of offer, the one he makes when he rests his hand between them, palm up and open. With no expectations the worst that can happen is that he just looks like a presumptuous moron. ]
And I should also probably tell you that I spent two years in Hadriel without physically aging, so I'm technically forty-one.
no subject
Kind of distracted by the open hand, and the want to take it, and the immediate reminder of the empathy bond that very much did not exist in the Aerie. That's the only thing that has him hesitating, but it isn't for very long.
It's worth the connection, that ache outweighs the flickering discomfort over the notion of being wide open.
Honestly, maybe it's easier than talking about it. He doesn't have to struggle through the exact right way to phrase how he feels without fucking up the words, or the context, or leaving too much open for interpretation.
So, yeah. Okay. Sure, he can do this.
Dry skin over dry skin, carefully threading fingers, blue glow kicking into action. )
Forty-one? I don't even know who you are anymore.
( Dry humor, a muted and half-hearted approximation of scandalized but without enough energy devoted to it to make it anything other than deadpan.
Hope you're ready for this absolute cacophony of conflicting emotion, Nate. He's quadruple-thinking himself into a stress hole over trying to prioritize hope over fear over happiness about the connection over relief over insecurity and a whole rainbow of other bullshit all mashed into one vibrating analytical something. )
no subject
Interpretation is always subjective and everybody's got an opinion, so it doesn't mean they're wrong - it doesn't mean they're right, either. Like so many clashes in perspective among the people unceremoniously brought here, there's a significant lack of actual communication at the center of it all.
Nate has never been spectacularly good at that either. But he's trying to be, even on borrowed time.
He's held Ian's hand God only knows how many occasions over the course of a decade, but they never had this place's empathy bond clawing open the gestures with vivid scrutiny. Any relief Nate may have been entertaining with the physical contact is swiftly overwhelmed by the emotional cyclone that hits him like a truck.
It would be easy to get swept up in its fervor and for a long moment he struggles not to do so, trying to pick it apart and look at it piece by piece, as if that will somehow make it easier to digest. It's like listening to half a dozen orchestras tuning their instruments all at once and instead of wading too far into it he tries to do the opposite of what he's done for the last seven months: Nate gives him something in return.
It's an equally muddled deluge of fear and affection, a weighty undercurrent of guilt, a pervasive string of loneliness. Unsurety and anxiety at its core and a dense, unmistakable and immeasurable love for someone he left behind that runs parallel to the same feeling left over from the Aerie. Complicated, with a solution he can't yet see.
The Gordian Knot of sentiment. ]
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Somehow, inexplicably, getting back this absolute tangle of feelings actually helps quiet his down slowly but surely. It gives him something to focus on, first of all, and for a guy who uses work to soothe himself that's an invaluable thing. He gets to start out identifying like pairs, matching up parts of himself that resemble parts of Nate, the places where they align.
As match after match pairs off and straightens out from the rest of the tangle, what it leaves behind seems smaller and less overwhelming. It's easier to focus on the ways that they're on the same page -- fear and affection, loneliness, anxiety and a sizable strand of love, singular for himself, strange and slightly unorthodox though it may be.
Feelings aren't articulated thought, he can't know the context for a lot of it. He can't suddenly read Nate's mind and know his history, or the precise source of his conflict.
But he gets enough to slow himself down a little, take himself off of 2.5 times speed, and it has a new kind of relief layering itself onto the rest. It's accompanied by a slow and quiet exhale, and a clearer, more direct look at Nate than he's given for most of this conversation.
Hey, man. Nice to meet you again. )
Dude, you should see a therapist.
( It's funny because-- ah whatever, you get it. )