[ 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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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. ]
no subject
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. )