Rafael Atala (freyr) wrote in paxletalelogs, @ 2017-04-15 20:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | freyr, uke mochi |
what a life I lead when the sun breaks free
Who: Alice and Rafael
What: Rafael needs a comforting shoulder to lean on
Where: Alice’s apartment
When: Early evening, April 12th
It had been a productive afternoon, at the very least. Alice had come home from the bakery and, first, took a nap. She found sleeping during the day to be a little less unnerving than sleeping at night, at least that was the case ever since she woke up with the wheat growing from her head, and particularly since she had another dream of Uke Mochi. It wasn’t as odd as the previous one; the man who visited the woman was kind and nice. But in Alice’s waking day she kept finding herself giving side eye to every man in the apartment complex, wondering if they happened to be the person she had dreamt of.
But that was beside the point, the afternoon had been productive. She got her sleep and then as a bonus woke up at a decent hour and did some cooking. Hot and gooey turtle cookies sat on top of the stove. At the table, Alice gently pushed around a plate of the cookies as she tried to set them up for the best available angle for a photo. Two for a base, one on the top that was split open to reveal the melted caramel inside. The cookies showed merrily on a blue and green plate, which she felt was appropriate since the cookies were called turtles after all. They looked and tasted great, but Alice was trying to convey all of that in the perfect picture for her blog--and possibly her book.
Stepping back, she picked up her camera and stepping up onto a chair. Bending over the table, she focused the camera, steadying it in her hand to take an overview shot when a knock was heard at the door. “Coming!” She called clearly, carefully stepping down from the chair.
Rafael waited patiently on the other side, holding a small pot in his hands. He raised it a bit higher when she opened the door. "I brought dinner," he said, a sheepish smile on his face. Faint shadows lay beneath his eyes, and though his gaze retained its typical brightness, it seemed to dart about more often than was usual for him. "Chilled black bean soup with cotija cheese. If you don't mind, I mean. If you're busy I can just leave it with you…"
Alice’s eyes went wide, both by the surprise of her visitor, and the sudden growl of her stomach. “Oh… no, don’t you dare leave.” She grinned and held the door open, ushering him inside. “I was just doing pictures of some cookies. We can have them as dessert but I didn’t even think of making dinner.”
Her eyes followed Rafael’s movements and despite her happy demeanor, there was a hint of concern. He seemed… tired? Exhausted? But not necessarily physically. “Let me get bowls out! How are you?”
"Good," he lied. The truth was evident in the soft slope of his shoulders, in the small twitch at one corner of his mouth just before he spoke again. "I'm good. Um, where should I put this? Just on the counter somewhere?"
He set the pot down, opening it to give her both a view and a quick scent of the freshly-made soup. Atop its thick, creamy consistency was a dollop of melting cotija cheese and a sprinkle of freshly-cut cilantro. It made an impressive picture, and Rafael hoped it tasted half as good as it looked. He moved to help prepare for their little meal, finding utensils and napkins in short order.
"Those cookies smell amazing," he said. "What kind are they?"
“Chocolate turtles! Like the candy? But, you know, cookie.” She placed two colorful bowls side by side with the pot of soup and went to retrieved a soup ladle that looked like a dinosaur. “We’ll eat them after we have dinner.” She ladled out the soup, pouring it into each bowl, but kept glancing at Rafael. “So… remember how you were scolding me about working too much? And like, granted, I still am working too much, but you know how you did that, right? You called me out on being tired? Well, I hate to admit it, but you look sort of exhausted yourself.”
She bit at her bottom lip and paused in retrieving the soup. She thought of Freyr suddenly, the man in her dreams, and his sweet personality. Perhaps it was Rafael… perhaps he was exhausted due to that dream. Maybe he had others as well, or maybe it was something else entirely. Not wanting to sound insane, Alice felt it was best to deal with real-life issues. “You seem not quite as bright as usual. Are you sure everything is ‘good’?”
He hummed a non-answer, focusing firmly on helping her prepare their dinner. He took first one bowl, then the other, padding barefoot to her table. That done, and their utensils retrieved and properly placed, there remained little else to serve as a distraction for either of them. "I, um. I haven't been sleeping well," he admitted, with a small, apologetic shrug. Then a thought occurred to him, and he latched readily onto it. "Aside from the other night. I had a very pleasant dream, and I… I want to say you were in it? But it wasn't you, exactly..." He chuckled. "I'm sorry. That's a very odd thing to say, I know."
Alice’s brows rose. She wanted to press, intended to press, but the dream…
Shaking her head, a small smile on her lips, she trailed after Rafael to her table and moved her camera to the windowsill and the cookies off to the side. “It’s not that odd,” she replied as she took her seat. “I understand what you mean about it being hard to sleep though. I’ve… I haven’t been sleeping very well either. Lots of naps during the day help a little, when I can swing it.”
She lifted her spoon and gently slipped it into the soup but paused. “Now, don’t get me wrong, I really want to hear about this dream.” She smiled at him, trying to be comforting as much as she could. “But I really feel like you’re keeping stuff from me and I’m kind of worried. You know you can tell me anything, right? Like, I’m here, and I can just listen and be sympathetic, or I can give you advice. Your choice. But it’s what friends are for.”
She reached out and touched his arm with the tips of her fingers, a smile still on her lips. His eyes seemed tired, his shoulders were slouched, he wasn’t sitting up straight with the confidence he normally possessed, and she fought the urge to just grab him for a hug.
Just that one, small touch was all it took. Rafael brought his elbows to rest atop the table, setting down the spoon he had been holding. His back bowed as he slouched still further over his bowl. He leaned slightly, unconsciously drifting further toward her hand. "I know," he said, already shaking his head. His free hand moved to cover hers, patting it where it rested on his warm, tan skin. "But I really didn't come here to dump all my problems on you, or even to vent. I just… I wanted…" He sucked at his lower lip, staring down into his soup. "I don't know. I didn't want to be alone." He laughed: a soft, wounded sound. "Mr. Fishy doesn't always do the trick, you know?"
His hand remained on hers, gentle, not pressing at all. It seemed as if he only wanted to reassure himself that it was, indeed, still there. He pushed himself to continue, though he desperately wanted to do otherwise. He glanced up at her, something of the boy he had been in that briefly gleaming gaze. "I know you don't really like talking about my work," he said, "so I'll just say that's been… tough, lately. So I know I'm stressed out about that, probably not making the best decisions elsewhere… but there's things going on outside of that that are sort of getting to me. With Nish, and Gabe, and--" He interrupted himself with a dismissive wave of his hand; faint color dusted his cheeks.
“Hey, it’s okay!” Alice replied, squeezing his arm with her hand. She pulled it away, but only briefly to scooch her chair closer to him and bring her bowl of soup with it. Leaning close to Rafe, she touched his shoulder and searched his face with interested eyes. “Tell me. It’s okay. Let’s get over the heavy stuff, then we’ll talk dreams, promise. So what’s up with Nish and Gabe. Is Nish...ah…” She frowned, searching for the appropriate words with a roll of her eyes. “Is she feeling unwell again?”
"She…" Rafael paused to swallow around a lump in his throat. He searched for words that seemed honest but not harsh; truth without the sharp sting the knowledge held for him. Alice, in her kindness and hospitality, did not deserve to bear that with him. "Yes. She's only going to therapy because of me. Because I asked her to." His left hand tugged through his hair; his right lay over hers, patting the back of her hand. "She didn't tell me she'd had a heart attack. A heart attack. I found the medications in her cabinet. That's the only reason she told me, and even then…" He shook his head, tanned fingers pinching the bridge of his nose.
Alice rubbed at Rafael’s shoulder with small, circular motions. A frown was displayed prominently on her face, not daring to move away anytime soon. “Well, if people are… troubled… sometimes it’s easier for them to take action in the name of someone else. Like her going to therapy for you. She might not realize she needs to go there for herself yet.” She dropped her hand away from Rafael’s shoulder, moving it back to his arm. “Although, I’m not really sure of the explanation about keeping medications and all that from you. Maybe it was an attempt to keep you safe. But… that doesn’t really ever work out with this type of medical stuff.”
She pulled away and sat up straight, her gaze turning to look out the window of her apartment to the ocean. Tapping her foot lightly, she seemed to consider for a moment before being upfront with what she had to say. “It might be worth being sort of selfish for a moment and think of yourself. It’s okay if you’re upset, it’s okay if the pros outweigh the cons, but if what’s going on with her is beginning to weigh you down, there’s nothing wrong with stepping away.”
Rafael was shaking his head before she even finished speaking. He knew she was right; he felt the truth of it to his very core, had known it since the moment he had opened Nish's cabinet and realized the gravity of her state and her handling of it.
"How could I?" He sounded genuinely lost. For a moment words eluded him completely. He took a bracing sip of ice water from the glass before him, sucking droplets from his lower lip upon setting the glass down. "She tried to kill herself before. What happens if I leave? What if she stops therapy? Stops taking her meds? What then?"
Alice looked at Rafael with a frown and reached for his arm again. “First, if she did any of that it would not be your fault,” she began, her voice stern and serious. “She’s a grown woman and has to make her own choices. What she does or does not do is not on you. Second…” And this made Alice pause as she considered what she could say. She never knew someone like Nish, not personally at least. There were always people who were addicts or suicidal, people she knew of, but they were on the outside. Students in college back in New York who jumped from roofs during finals, classmates who became alcoholics, but they were always acquaintances at most.
“Second,” she tried again. “This doesn’t mean you just dump her and vanish from her life. I think it might be best for the both of you if maybe… you just stepped back. Gave each other room. Stopped the romantic side of your relationship. That doesn’t mean you aren’t available to help her if she asks, it doesn’t mean you can’t go check in on her or offer her a ride to therapy. But maybe if you just stop the romantic stuff, it’ll help.” She gave a gentle shrug and squeezed Rafael’s arm.
“I mean, you’re a porn star,” she said with a little smile. “Just the same as I’m a baker. We both have professions that are not therapist or psychologist. Don’t tell yourself that the weight of all of this, all of Nish, falls squarely on you.”
Rafael twitched a small, quick smile in response. He wanted to believe that; he knew Gabriel would have said much the same. It was the healthiest option for him, after all, but how successful he could be in such an effort, he could not begin to guess. He could, however, guess easily enough the guilt that would eat away at him were anything to happen to her following his withdrawal. His hand covered hers again, squeezing tight.
"I know." He sounded as tired as he looked. "And I do think…" His free hand raked through his hair. "I do think it's a good idea. She needs to focus on healing and taking care of herself. For herself." He drew a slow, deep breath, exhaling on an unsteady laugh. "This is not going to be easy. If I call you after and demand cupcakes, I'm sure you'll understand why."
Alice grinned and gave his arm a squeeze. “The moment you call, I’ll whip up some cupcakes for you. You can even pick the flavor. Maybe even some for Mr. Fishy,” she teased, but sobered slightly, a softer smile on her lips. “But seriously, I’m just a call away. We’ll get through it all, okay?
“Now.” she announced, sitting back in her seat and returning to her spoon and soup. “Tell me about this dream you had.”
Rafael was as grateful for the swift change in subject as he had been for a listening ear. He switched gears quickly and easily, his easy, familiar smile returning. "I'd been traveling," he said, "and there was a little hut with a fire going. I thought I was alone at first, but then…" He rolled his eyes, laughing at himself. "You were there, but not really you? All…" He gestured with his left hand, his right still on the soup-laden spoon. "Grasses, and seeds. It looked very cool. I've never seen anything like it.
"And we talked for a while… you asked me about someone, but I can't remember the name now." He shook his head, glancing down to his bowl. "It's bizarre, I know. But it felt very real."
Alice’s cheeks grew pink and she smiled, shyly, and looked at her bowl as Rafael described the dream. But there was suddenly a nervous energy about her that hadn’t been present before. Finding her voice, she began to recount it all. “I made you fish and tea. You talked about your land and the coast and how it was different from where we were then. I was nervous about having a man there, because I was afraid of another one. One that hurt me before. But you were nice and you were safe.” She smiled at that, a genuine smile, and looked at her hands. “But it was my little home, or had been my little home. I guess… I guess calling it mine isn’t quite accurate though.”
She stirred her soup thoughtfully before looking at Rafael. “We shared a dream. I thought it might be you, the man in the dream. It felt like you. But I wasn’t sure and it’s sort of a weird thing to ask… ‘oh hey, did you and I share a dream last night?’ but, you know, it’s not the first shared dream I had so… I wasn’t sure if you had one before.”
Rafael chuckled, nodding understanding as he did. "I felt exactly the same," he admitted. "I've never had anything happen like this. Well… not where I recognized someone. But it felt so familiar, you know? Even when I woke up I didn't even question it. Not for a while. Then even when I tried to write it off, I kept thinking about it." He raised another spoonful of soup, blowing lightly over it. "So when you've had those before… were they always like that? In the same place? And…" His brow furrowed, a number of ideas occurring to him at once. Some were more comfortable and welcome than others; a faint flush rose to his cheeks, then faded in the next instant. "Um. Can I ask who else you've shared them with? Someone here?"
“Um, just Brittany so far,” Alice admitted with a smile. She let out a laugh and rolled her eyes, missing the blush on Rafael’s cheeks. “I am so relieved you’re taking this so well. When I had my dream I was in a complete and utter panic. Just crashed right into Brittany’s apartment in tears and then she told me that the dream I had, she had. But it was all the same as with us, like we were playing characters or something and not entirely part of the dream. But in my first one, I wasn’t at that little house. I was in this big room and it was after a wedding and Britt was this weird woman creature that changed shapes, but I was still the grass… wheat… woman that could fall apart and come back together.”
And that brought Alice to a stop, the cheerfulness draining from her face little by little. She looked at Rafael seriously and wrinkled her nose briefly as she battled whether or not to go there, but there she went. “When you woke from the dream, was there anything… strange? Anything that happened to you? I mean, you were a man in your dream, like fully. But you were sort of glowy… you weren’t glowing, were you?”
In light of all else they had discussed, it seemed foolish to treat this question with anything other than serious thought. He finished another bite of the soup as he thought, then shook his head, setting down his spoon once more. "I don't think so," he said, "but honestly I didn't think to look. I just…" He shrugged, smiling softly. "I felt very good and very calm and I just lay there enjoying that."
After another few bites of soup, he seemed finished with his meal. He pushed the bowl slightly away from him and brought his elbows to rest atop the table. "So why do you think this is happening now? And why us? Do you know of anyone else experiencing this kind of thing?"
Alice shook her head and frowned. “I don’t know why it’s happening to us or why it’s happening now. I mean, I guess it’s all happened since we all moved here, but otherwise I don’t know.” She finished her soup and placed the spoon gently into the bowl before reaching across the table and pulling forward the plate with her cookies on it. She sat it between her and Rafael, urging him to eat. “Daniel--do you know him? He and Brittany had a shared dream as well, and he said he had a dream with someone else as well who lives here. It’s all the same though, every time we have shared dreams it’s of the person whose assigned to us or whatever and the other person always remembers the dream they shared with you.”
She lifted a cookie and held it to her lips, ready to take a bite, but paused to look at Rafael. With him, in the quiet of her apartment, she didn’t feel as panicked to bring up the wheat. He made her calm and since it hadn’t happened after they shared the dream… “I have to show you something that happened to me. Eat some cookies; you want milk with them?” She got to her feet and moved towards the kitchen.
"I'm all right," he said, "but thank you." He plucked one cookie from the plate; it would be all he would have of them, and so he intended to savor it. He held it as he watched her move away from him. "I think I've seen Daniel around, but I don't really know him. I pass him when I'm leaving the gym sometimes. I wonder what he dreams about?" He chuckled. "Related to this, I mean. Not in general."
Alice laughed as she reached for a thin vase. “I think the god of war, you know, Ares? I think that’s who Brittany said he dreamt he was.” She plucked the strand of wheat from the vase and returned to the table, taking her seat as well as a deep breath. “Okay, so…” Alice paused and licked her lips nervously. “I know what happened that night I had my first weird dream, I remember it, but after we shared our dream and nothing like this happened, I’m wondering if it was some kind of a joke.”
She placed the wheat on the table between them as she had done for Daniel and leaned back. “When I had my first dream with Brit, I woke up and found that in my hair, like, growing from my head. It was stuck to my scalp and it hurt when I pulled it out as if it was a part of my scalp and… well, you remember the woman in the dream, you know how she looked, what she was made of…
“Brit and Daniel said it might be some asshole who broke into the apartment or something. Like it’s a joke, someone putting that in my hair. But that seems like such a stretch and yet the alternative isn’t much better…” Alice frowned, her cheeks colored with both frustration and embarrassment. “Don’t think I’m crazy, okay?”
Rafael twirled the narrow sprig between his index finger and thumb. It felt real enough. Between his own dreams and the trust he had in Alice, he saw no reason to disbelieve her. "I don't," he said. "Too many of us have experienced something like this, even if we don't have anything to show for it." He set the small thing down, pushing it back toward her with the tips of his fingers. "I'll let you know if anything like it does happen to me. I promise."
Alice stared at Rafael with a brief expression of wonderment that softened into a smile. “Thank you,” she whispered, smiling softly as she retrieved the bit of wheat and sat it aside. Rafael nodded in reply. She couldn’t quite express how much of a relief it was that he seemed to so readily accept the insanity of it all. His acceptance of it, his lack of questioning it, comforted Alice in a way that made her realize it was what she needed. She just needed this comfort, the lack of panic and questions, and a weight that had been on her shoulders slipped off.
“So, onto other topics before I forget again,” Alice began, her voice soft, relaxed, and her hand finding her cookie once more. She crossed her legs and looked at Rafael with another smile. “I met your friend Gabe! I didn’t realize he just moved here but we talked a bit; I invited him to our next little dinner party.” She bit into her cookie and smiled with closed lips, obviously expecting the news to be something Rafael would be happy about.
Rafael paused in taking his bite of cookie; a crumb fell to the table and skittered off to one side. He carefully swept it up and popped it into his subtly smiling mouth. "That's great," he said, sincerely. "It'll be fun. I think you'll like Gabe very much." He drummed his fingers against the countertop as he finished off his cookie. "We'll have to make sure that dinner turns out really well…"