![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
(no subject)
CHARACTERS: Adrían & Philip
WHAT: Checking in after a hard day of discussing ethics and feeling big feels
WHEN: The night of this
WHERE: Adri’s office
WARNINGS: Talk of dysregulated emotions, but tame overall
WHAT: Checking in after a hard day of discussing ethics and feeling big feels
WHEN: The night of this
WHERE: Adri’s office
WARNINGS: Talk of dysregulated emotions, but tame overall
Philip made sure to splash water on his face before leaving, exiting his room quietly so as to not disturb Carl, who had sought refuge in Jax's abandoned bed. The water didn't do much to ease the strain that held his jaw in a cinch, and while a slap would have been better, it did chase some of the numbness away, for which Philip was grateful.
He waited just long enough to ensure that Eva had departed before pressing a knock against Adrían's office door in the familiar pattern that identified him.
Eva had left a quarter of an hour ago, extracting a promise from him that he would steer clear of the debate until he had cooled off. It had been an easy one to make: the last thing he desired to do at the moment was to talk to anyone, except Philip was on the other side of the door that he was staring at, considering the merits of simply not answering.
It wouldn’t help. He knew that. Knew, even, that more than anything, he wanted to see Philip (and Nikola, but he couldn’t think about that, couldn’t think about him, not without having to swallow down the complicated yet overpowering mixture of anger and betrayal that went with it). The coffee had gone cold, the cup cool against his palm, yet he took another sip before steeling himself and calling out, “It’s open.”
Quietly, Philip stepped in, making sure the door clicked firmly shut before he took the necessary steps forward to close the narrowing space between them. On a ship such as this, Adri was never far away, but the distance these past hours had felt insurmountable in a way that flooded him with unease.
He took the cup from Adri’s hand and set it aside before threading their fingers together. And only then did he brave a look at the other man’s face, meeting his gaze and trying to hold it despite the glassiness in Adri’s eyes twisting something in his gut.
You don’t have to be here died in his throat when he finally let himself focus on the other man, but years of being careful to not ask for too much, of meticulously balancing his criticisms with what softness he would allow himself made it hard to dispel them entirely. Instead, he brought his thumb to Philip’s jaw, gently tracing the line of it.
He was so tired, and because the walls he’d built around himself were temporarily breached, he closed the space between them, forehead resting against Philip’s shoulder.
A close encounter with an actual Architect would have been less astonishing… but Philip had been a close student of the ebb and flow of Adrían's moods and reactions for nigh on ten years now. This vulnerability, the physical surrender of weight and strength, however temporary, made the breath catch in Philip's throat, and as he shored himself against Adrían and his very tangible distress, he found himself closing his eyes as he wrapped his arms around the other man in an embrace that was immediately too tight, too demanding, and not enough.
And Adrían, for once, allowed himself to relax into it, to return the brace as tightly, as selfishly as he wanted because he needed this: the closeness, the tenderness, the care. He clung until his eyes stopped stinging and the adrenaline of the day finally ebbed, leaving him wrung out and empty, and he held on for several breaths after.
The hollowness in his core, carved from implicit and explicit doubts and insinuations lobbed at him, eased slightly in Philip's arms. Distantly, he had the thought that he should be pulling away, or making some sort of snide or sarcastic remark — something that would dispel the intimacy of the moment — but he couldn't.
He didn't want to.
Instead, he murmured a very quiet, feather soft “Thank you.”
Minute movements allowed Philip to slide his fingers over the back of Adrían’s head, finding pressure points in the warmth of his dark hair that would dispel some of the headache he suspected had been building even before the post went up on the network.
No other movements. In this embrace, Philip didn’t dare, as if anything more than a breath would spook Adri.
“Of course I’d come.”
There was a joke there, hovering on the back of his tongue, but he let them fade away. For once, he didn't have it in him to deflect. “You're upset with me,” he said instead, pulling away just enough to look at him. Concern warmed his eyes and Adri bit back the immediacy to push away, retreat. “Usually, we give each other space.”
“This is not a usual day,” Philip offered. He kept his hands where they were, cradling the back of Adri’s head without restraining his movement, the blue of his eyes dark with concern as he studied Adri. He decided not to address the first point — not yet. “Things were said—“ wild understatement; “and with so much focus on you, I just wanted to make sure…” His words trailed, expression faltering slightly.
“...That I’m okay.” A trace of the usual sardonic lilt finished the sentence for him. Resentment at the sentiment fought to surface, but drowned beneath the exhaustion. Philip had requested that he cease and desist with his usual descriptor, so instead he averted his gaze and said: “I’m fine.”
It’s a lie, and they both knew it, but he wasn’t sure how to put it all into words. Not yet.
“All right.” Not acceptance of something that was so obviously untrue, but Philip’s acknowledgment of the statement.
He cradled the back of Adri’s head for a moment longer, then slid his hands down his nape until they settled over the broad sweep of his shoulders. “Got any coffee left for me?”
A nod then, reluctantly, he pulled away. The pot of coffee sat on a small cabinet near his desk, half full. It was his second pot of the night (sleep would be nigh impossible even if he hadn't consumed two days worth of caffeine in less than two hours); he pulled out another mug, filled it with the steaming coffee, adding several sugar cubes to sweeten the sting of bitterness and a dash of caramel that he kept on hand just for Philip, and handed it over before methodically starting another pot.
While his back was turned, the scent of coffee grounds steadying him and his hands busy, he said, “I can't disqualify one group over the other and you know it. I'm sorry.”
Selecting one of the limited number of chairs in the office for himself was a distraction of approximately seven seconds; by the eighth, Philip was sitting down, his (perfectly) sweetened coffee held tightly in both hands as he let his knees fall apart and lower back slump against the (adequate) lumbar padding. "I know," he said, gaze narrowed at the spot just between Adri's shoulder blades. Acknowledgement of the fact as stated by the scientist; less so an acceptance of the apology. "I've said my part. I didn't come here to rehash something that's ultimately out of our hands."
Silence fell as Adrían stared at the pot, futilely willing it to move faster if for no other reason than for something to do that wasn’t having to admit to what depths the events of the day had impacted him. It was yet another thing he knew he did; a therapist had once told him that he reader’s digested his life, parsing himself into small, acceptable pieces so as to not have to allow himself to be fully vulnerable.
The therapist, in his humble, non-professional opinion, was full of shit, but now, as coffee drip drip driped into the waiting pot, maybe they had a point.
“Ask me something,” he said into the quiet. “Anything.” A rarity, allowing an attempt to rip glued pages apart to see what was written within. He wasn’t sure if this was an apology or an offering, but it was made nonetheless.
A therapist might be valuable right now, Philip thought. "I'll give you an option – pick which is easiest for you to answer. Or hardest. Wat je maar wilt." Balancing the mug on his thigh allowed him to free up a hand to press his thumb into the inner corner of his left eye, the dull spread of pressure reassuring him that the numbness that had so plagued him earlier hadn't come creeping back. A soft sigh, then: "What haven't you told me?" Answering this would require Adri to chip away at even more of the protective strata that had solidified over the years. It would require more vulnerability.
"Or." Or. "How do you want me to react to all this?" Answering this would shift the focus from Adrían to Philip's own emotional incompetence.
The coffee maker beeped and he poured himself another cup as he considered the options given him. The second one was fraught with thorns Philip was unaware of, whereas the first simply threw him out to sea, life raft drifting closer but still out of reach. There were too many things he hadn't told him, not purposely but simply because he hadn't been asked.
Not that he made it easy to ask things of him.
The coffee burned his tongue, but he barely noticed. “I got married when I was twenty. I assumed that was it for me.”
Of all the confessions, this one… did not shock Philip as much as it could have. That it was Adri's choice, both as an answer to what haven't you told me and the easier of the two options, absolutely did, but that stab of surprise landed the way injuries in combat did: visceral and real, but so cushioned by the immediacy of the moment that they seemed improbably distant and minor.
"Not to be heteronormative, but I assumed something like that had happened." Philip frowned down into his coffee, wondering if it was worth questioning the value of a fact three decades old that had never really played a part in their relationship. "It was not for you."
Heat seeped into his palms, almost too hot, and he pressed hard enough to burn. “It was.” The admission was soft, reluctant.
His thoughts turned to Alba, the woman that she had been before everything changed. “I failed at being a husband, and I failed at being a father. The separation was something I didn't want.”
Philip resisted the urge to simply let gravity slump him further in his borrowed chair, coffee sloshing treacherously around in the cup as he pushed himself up. "Did you fail? Failing implies you had control over the outcome, and most marriages involve two people and shared responsibility."
“I was too much. Too passionate, too angry, too demanding, too ambitious.” Years and years of fights, of Alba’s tears as she used venomous words to flay him, poison his blood. Make him less than he wanted to be. And he had been as terrible back, flinging her failures in her face, her complacency. What happened to the woman I married? The one who wanted to take on the world with me?
He felt winded suddenly, the air evaporating from his lungs. A physical warning to stop, to reassess. To not let himself reveal too much lest it be too much. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? “It’s why I mediate myself. To not push you away.”
"I don't ask you to," Philip replied, allowing himself no opportunity to second guess the words. Perhaps they were too bold, too sincere, but fuck, after ten years, he was allowed a little rawness. Remaining in the chair was now an intolerable option; he got up, abandoning his coffee on Adri's desk so he could draw closer to the other man with unencumbered hands. Planted himself in front of Adrían, leaving him with only the narrowest of escape routes. "I don't want you to."
“Then what do you want from me?” His hands went to Philip, anchoring himself. Not looking to escape, not yet. The words echo the conversation they had had earlier, the one that had left him unsatisfied by the answer. “A decade and you’ve asked me for the bare minimum. You don’t push. You don’t demand.”
"I don't…" Philip caught his breath sharply, the disagreement he was so ready to drag back out into the open now sitting like a sour note against his teeth.
"I've… learned not to demand too much," came after a long moment. "Yes, you mediate yourself. In every relationship I've observed, you mediate. And I know how you get when people need too much. So I had to mediate myself, because I thought it was a real risk, repulsing you with the worst of my needs, my insecurities." He shook his head. "I could share you, Adrían, but I couldn't lose you. If you phased me out to a random Thursday night fuck, and then nothing at all, I'd have Jax airlock me." He paused for breath, watching Adri closely in those handful of quiet seconds. Then: "I want you to stop mediating with me. I want you to get angry, I want you to get angry with me in the room and not walk out, nor put it on the list. I want you to be too much."
He let the discomfort of the request sit with him rather than pushing it away outright. Every fear, every insecurity that he’d taken time to bury seemed poised to dig their way out of the graves he’d put them in, demanding his attention, but all of it was settled on Philip. On turning the words said over and over in his head.
I’ve learned.
Repulsing you with the worst of my needs.
“You won’t lose me.” His voice is low, words vehement. Certain, more so than he’s felt about anything in hours. “If you want me to be too much, then I will. Fuck, if you want to stop sharing me, that is a conversation we can have, but you do not need to worry about becoming less to me than you are. I want you to be selfish with me. I want to know what you need so I can give it to you, what your insecurities are so I can soothe them.”
To the first: "Good." Philip's fingers closed around Adri's elbows, not to restrain, but to ground. "We don't have to decide anything more than that today. It's been shit." His fingers tightened in a beat of commiseration. "But that's what I needed, I think. To know you weren't going anywhere."
Adrían exhaled, leaning forward to press his forehead to Philip’s shoulder, this time letting his eyes close as he relaxed into him. “I’m not.”
Philip simply pulled Adri into him, encircling his waist with his arms to hold him so tight he could feel the way his chest shifted against Adri's with every breath. "I'm not either."
He waited just long enough to ensure that Eva had departed before pressing a knock against Adrían's office door in the familiar pattern that identified him.
Eva had left a quarter of an hour ago, extracting a promise from him that he would steer clear of the debate until he had cooled off. It had been an easy one to make: the last thing he desired to do at the moment was to talk to anyone, except Philip was on the other side of the door that he was staring at, considering the merits of simply not answering.
It wouldn’t help. He knew that. Knew, even, that more than anything, he wanted to see Philip (and Nikola, but he couldn’t think about that, couldn’t think about him, not without having to swallow down the complicated yet overpowering mixture of anger and betrayal that went with it). The coffee had gone cold, the cup cool against his palm, yet he took another sip before steeling himself and calling out, “It’s open.”
Quietly, Philip stepped in, making sure the door clicked firmly shut before he took the necessary steps forward to close the narrowing space between them. On a ship such as this, Adri was never far away, but the distance these past hours had felt insurmountable in a way that flooded him with unease.
He took the cup from Adri’s hand and set it aside before threading their fingers together. And only then did he brave a look at the other man’s face, meeting his gaze and trying to hold it despite the glassiness in Adri’s eyes twisting something in his gut.
You don’t have to be here died in his throat when he finally let himself focus on the other man, but years of being careful to not ask for too much, of meticulously balancing his criticisms with what softness he would allow himself made it hard to dispel them entirely. Instead, he brought his thumb to Philip’s jaw, gently tracing the line of it.
He was so tired, and because the walls he’d built around himself were temporarily breached, he closed the space between them, forehead resting against Philip’s shoulder.
A close encounter with an actual Architect would have been less astonishing… but Philip had been a close student of the ebb and flow of Adrían's moods and reactions for nigh on ten years now. This vulnerability, the physical surrender of weight and strength, however temporary, made the breath catch in Philip's throat, and as he shored himself against Adrían and his very tangible distress, he found himself closing his eyes as he wrapped his arms around the other man in an embrace that was immediately too tight, too demanding, and not enough.
And Adrían, for once, allowed himself to relax into it, to return the brace as tightly, as selfishly as he wanted because he needed this: the closeness, the tenderness, the care. He clung until his eyes stopped stinging and the adrenaline of the day finally ebbed, leaving him wrung out and empty, and he held on for several breaths after.
The hollowness in his core, carved from implicit and explicit doubts and insinuations lobbed at him, eased slightly in Philip's arms. Distantly, he had the thought that he should be pulling away, or making some sort of snide or sarcastic remark — something that would dispel the intimacy of the moment — but he couldn't.
He didn't want to.
Instead, he murmured a very quiet, feather soft “Thank you.”
Minute movements allowed Philip to slide his fingers over the back of Adrían’s head, finding pressure points in the warmth of his dark hair that would dispel some of the headache he suspected had been building even before the post went up on the network.
No other movements. In this embrace, Philip didn’t dare, as if anything more than a breath would spook Adri.
“Of course I’d come.”
There was a joke there, hovering on the back of his tongue, but he let them fade away. For once, he didn't have it in him to deflect. “You're upset with me,” he said instead, pulling away just enough to look at him. Concern warmed his eyes and Adri bit back the immediacy to push away, retreat. “Usually, we give each other space.”
“This is not a usual day,” Philip offered. He kept his hands where they were, cradling the back of Adri’s head without restraining his movement, the blue of his eyes dark with concern as he studied Adri. He decided not to address the first point — not yet. “Things were said—“ wild understatement; “and with so much focus on you, I just wanted to make sure…” His words trailed, expression faltering slightly.
“...That I’m okay.” A trace of the usual sardonic lilt finished the sentence for him. Resentment at the sentiment fought to surface, but drowned beneath the exhaustion. Philip had requested that he cease and desist with his usual descriptor, so instead he averted his gaze and said: “I’m fine.”
It’s a lie, and they both knew it, but he wasn’t sure how to put it all into words. Not yet.
“All right.” Not acceptance of something that was so obviously untrue, but Philip’s acknowledgment of the statement.
He cradled the back of Adri’s head for a moment longer, then slid his hands down his nape until they settled over the broad sweep of his shoulders. “Got any coffee left for me?”
A nod then, reluctantly, he pulled away. The pot of coffee sat on a small cabinet near his desk, half full. It was his second pot of the night (sleep would be nigh impossible even if he hadn't consumed two days worth of caffeine in less than two hours); he pulled out another mug, filled it with the steaming coffee, adding several sugar cubes to sweeten the sting of bitterness and a dash of caramel that he kept on hand just for Philip, and handed it over before methodically starting another pot.
While his back was turned, the scent of coffee grounds steadying him and his hands busy, he said, “I can't disqualify one group over the other and you know it. I'm sorry.”
Selecting one of the limited number of chairs in the office for himself was a distraction of approximately seven seconds; by the eighth, Philip was sitting down, his (perfectly) sweetened coffee held tightly in both hands as he let his knees fall apart and lower back slump against the (adequate) lumbar padding. "I know," he said, gaze narrowed at the spot just between Adri's shoulder blades. Acknowledgement of the fact as stated by the scientist; less so an acceptance of the apology. "I've said my part. I didn't come here to rehash something that's ultimately out of our hands."
Silence fell as Adrían stared at the pot, futilely willing it to move faster if for no other reason than for something to do that wasn’t having to admit to what depths the events of the day had impacted him. It was yet another thing he knew he did; a therapist had once told him that he reader’s digested his life, parsing himself into small, acceptable pieces so as to not have to allow himself to be fully vulnerable.
The therapist, in his humble, non-professional opinion, was full of shit, but now, as coffee drip drip driped into the waiting pot, maybe they had a point.
“Ask me something,” he said into the quiet. “Anything.” A rarity, allowing an attempt to rip glued pages apart to see what was written within. He wasn’t sure if this was an apology or an offering, but it was made nonetheless.
A therapist might be valuable right now, Philip thought. "I'll give you an option – pick which is easiest for you to answer. Or hardest. Wat je maar wilt." Balancing the mug on his thigh allowed him to free up a hand to press his thumb into the inner corner of his left eye, the dull spread of pressure reassuring him that the numbness that had so plagued him earlier hadn't come creeping back. A soft sigh, then: "What haven't you told me?" Answering this would require Adri to chip away at even more of the protective strata that had solidified over the years. It would require more vulnerability.
"Or." Or. "How do you want me to react to all this?" Answering this would shift the focus from Adrían to Philip's own emotional incompetence.
The coffee maker beeped and he poured himself another cup as he considered the options given him. The second one was fraught with thorns Philip was unaware of, whereas the first simply threw him out to sea, life raft drifting closer but still out of reach. There were too many things he hadn't told him, not purposely but simply because he hadn't been asked.
Not that he made it easy to ask things of him.
The coffee burned his tongue, but he barely noticed. “I got married when I was twenty. I assumed that was it for me.”
Of all the confessions, this one… did not shock Philip as much as it could have. That it was Adri's choice, both as an answer to what haven't you told me and the easier of the two options, absolutely did, but that stab of surprise landed the way injuries in combat did: visceral and real, but so cushioned by the immediacy of the moment that they seemed improbably distant and minor.
"Not to be heteronormative, but I assumed something like that had happened." Philip frowned down into his coffee, wondering if it was worth questioning the value of a fact three decades old that had never really played a part in their relationship. "It was not for you."
Heat seeped into his palms, almost too hot, and he pressed hard enough to burn. “It was.” The admission was soft, reluctant.
His thoughts turned to Alba, the woman that she had been before everything changed. “I failed at being a husband, and I failed at being a father. The separation was something I didn't want.”
Philip resisted the urge to simply let gravity slump him further in his borrowed chair, coffee sloshing treacherously around in the cup as he pushed himself up. "Did you fail? Failing implies you had control over the outcome, and most marriages involve two people and shared responsibility."
“I was too much. Too passionate, too angry, too demanding, too ambitious.” Years and years of fights, of Alba’s tears as she used venomous words to flay him, poison his blood. Make him less than he wanted to be. And he had been as terrible back, flinging her failures in her face, her complacency. What happened to the woman I married? The one who wanted to take on the world with me?
He felt winded suddenly, the air evaporating from his lungs. A physical warning to stop, to reassess. To not let himself reveal too much lest it be too much. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? “It’s why I mediate myself. To not push you away.”
"I don't ask you to," Philip replied, allowing himself no opportunity to second guess the words. Perhaps they were too bold, too sincere, but fuck, after ten years, he was allowed a little rawness. Remaining in the chair was now an intolerable option; he got up, abandoning his coffee on Adri's desk so he could draw closer to the other man with unencumbered hands. Planted himself in front of Adrían, leaving him with only the narrowest of escape routes. "I don't want you to."
“Then what do you want from me?” His hands went to Philip, anchoring himself. Not looking to escape, not yet. The words echo the conversation they had had earlier, the one that had left him unsatisfied by the answer. “A decade and you’ve asked me for the bare minimum. You don’t push. You don’t demand.”
"I don't…" Philip caught his breath sharply, the disagreement he was so ready to drag back out into the open now sitting like a sour note against his teeth.
"I've… learned not to demand too much," came after a long moment. "Yes, you mediate yourself. In every relationship I've observed, you mediate. And I know how you get when people need too much. So I had to mediate myself, because I thought it was a real risk, repulsing you with the worst of my needs, my insecurities." He shook his head. "I could share you, Adrían, but I couldn't lose you. If you phased me out to a random Thursday night fuck, and then nothing at all, I'd have Jax airlock me." He paused for breath, watching Adri closely in those handful of quiet seconds. Then: "I want you to stop mediating with me. I want you to get angry, I want you to get angry with me in the room and not walk out, nor put it on the list. I want you to be too much."
He let the discomfort of the request sit with him rather than pushing it away outright. Every fear, every insecurity that he’d taken time to bury seemed poised to dig their way out of the graves he’d put them in, demanding his attention, but all of it was settled on Philip. On turning the words said over and over in his head.
I’ve learned.
Repulsing you with the worst of my needs.
“You won’t lose me.” His voice is low, words vehement. Certain, more so than he’s felt about anything in hours. “If you want me to be too much, then I will. Fuck, if you want to stop sharing me, that is a conversation we can have, but you do not need to worry about becoming less to me than you are. I want you to be selfish with me. I want to know what you need so I can give it to you, what your insecurities are so I can soothe them.”
To the first: "Good." Philip's fingers closed around Adri's elbows, not to restrain, but to ground. "We don't have to decide anything more than that today. It's been shit." His fingers tightened in a beat of commiseration. "But that's what I needed, I think. To know you weren't going anywhere."
Adrían exhaled, leaning forward to press his forehead to Philip’s shoulder, this time letting his eyes close as he relaxed into him. “I’m not.”
Philip simply pulled Adri into him, encircling his waist with his arms to hold him so tight he could feel the way his chest shifted against Adri's with every breath. "I'm not either."