Nicholas Rowland (amending) wrote in nevermore_logs, @ 2015-10-06 00:14:00 |
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Entry tags: | adrian delacroix, nicholas rowland |
WHO: Nicholas and Adrian
WHAT: Nightmares and chatting
WHEN: Early Monday morning
WHERE: Their place
WARNINGS: Talk of sexual assault
Nicholas jerked awake, his skin clammy and his heart racing. It took several seconds before he was aware enough to realise he was in his bedroom, sleeping beside his girlfriend and boyfriend, and not straddling Lust, forcing her to submit to him.
As quietly as possible, Nicholas bundled out of the bed and padded away from Jesse and JJ, hoping he didn't wake either of them. He now knew the nightmares he had repeatedly were of Lust and not some poor girl he had raped, but that didn't really offer him much solace. Sure, Lust had played him and made him do something he didn't believe he was capable of, but Nicholas still hated himself for it. To him it didn't really matter that he had been manipulated and twisted into hurting someone else; he had still been capable of hurt. He would always remember the way she pushed against him and screamed for help and even if it was all an act, the nightmares were relentless.
He took himself down to the living room where he was quite surprised to find Adrian playing on his computer in the dark. The other man looked up and Nicholas decided it would probably be rude to just walk back out again now that Adrian had seen him. Adrian was probably the last person Nicholas wanted to see right now though. He'd just been dreaming about the worst thing he'd ever done, and now he was in the same room with someone who had been repeatedly raped when he was younger. Fucking perfect. To add insult to injury, Nicholas tended to avoid being in the room alone with Adrian and now here they were, alone together, for the first time. "Heh. Hi, Adrian."
Adrian reached up to flick on a lamp beside him and both men winced at the sudden light. "Hello," Adrian said, clicking his laptop shut. He seemed just as uncomfortable with the situation as Nicholas did, but he wasn't rude enough to just go back to his internet. "Uhm...you okay?"
"Dreams," Nicholas explained. "You're up late."
"Insomnia."
The two men stared at each other for a moment, and then looked away in synch. "Wow, we're awesome at this," Nicholas said, chuckling a little.
"We should write a self-help manual about it," joked Adrian. "How to be awkward as fuck. You want to talk about the dreams?"
Nicholas sank into a chair opposite Adrian and he sighed heavily. "I don't think it's a good idea," he explained. "It's just...memories. Memories I wish I didn't have."
Nodding sagely, Adrian said, "I know how that feels. You can tell me. I know you hardly know me, but I was a missionary for years. I'm a good listener."
Guilt twisted at Nicholas' gut and for a moment, he actually thought he might puke. But Adrian was looking at him so earnestly and Nicholas couldn't just run away. "I- It's not- Lust. I mean...fuck. Fucking Lust messed with me a few years ago, but I didn't know it was her for about a year and so I thought I'd done this horrible thing, which...I mean, I did, but Lust made me, but sometimes I think about it and I know I don't deserve JJ or your brother-" He bit his lip then, because Adrian was staring at him, his eyebrows practically meeting his hairline. "Sorry."
"No. No, don't be sorry," Adrian said, but he shifted uncomfortably and Nicholas felt like punching himself right in the face. "So Lust is a...person? That's great. I was creeped out enough knowing about demons, but I hadn't even thought about sins. And this Lust-sin-person-thing...she made you uhm...hurt her?"
"In a manner of speaking," Nicholas admitted, miserably.
"Okay, well...well that must have been terrible," Adrian managed to get out.
Sure it had been terrible, but Nicholas had assumed he was the terrible one for so long, that was all he could see himself as. "You don't have to do this," he said quickly.
"I'm not fragile," Adrian shot back, more harshly than he meant. "Look. If Jesse and JJ know about this and they are okay with it, then I don't think 'deserve' really comes into it. They know, right?" Nicholas nodded and Adrian continued. "You don't seem like a horrible person to me. I'm not afraid of you. At least not now that I know you. I don't know what to say to you a lot of the time, but that's not because I'm afraid, it's because I'm awkward as all hell."
The corners of Nicholas' lips lifted then and he managed a small smile. "It's pretty endearing."
"Oh shut up," Adrian laughed. "You should see me trying to flirt, it's disastrous. Anyway, if you're moping around and expecting me to contribute, I'm not going to."
"That's pretty much what Clio said," Nicholas added, amused. It did help, actually, to know Adrian didn't fear him. "It just catches up with me sometimes."
"Yeah, well. I know how that goes too. You want to watch some crap tv to get your mind off of it?"
If Adrian was offering to spend time with him, then Nicholas couldn't see himself as some terrible predator. At least not for the next hour or so. "Sure," he said with a smile. "That would be really nice, actually."