adarkflash (adarkflash) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-07-17 23:08:00 |
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Entry tags: | flash thompson, gwen stacy |
Who: Adam and Ainslie
When: Sundayish
Where: coffee shop in Vegas
What: Two old friends meeting up
Warnings: None!
The doctor had asked Ainslie to meet him at a cafe in one of the casinos that looked like a poor jumble of what Americans fantasized of Europe. Iron tables and chairs with red cushions, a mural of some countryside painted behind patrons and waiters that dressed in black and white. It acted as if it were very authentic indeed, but the overreaching menu that included anything from German chocolate to English breakfast was just laughable. He thought she’d get a kick out of this Epcot center of strained culture. That was really all Vegas had to offer.
To the place’s credit, the coffee was fantastic in a high brow sort of way with giant cups and little images painted on the foam. It had to be enough to make her feel comfortable, though Adam was sure there were few places in this world that truly made her feel uncomfortable. You’re nervous. A teenage voice taunted Adam, who sulked at the idea that he’d be nervous to see a woman that wasn’t Maddie K. Ainslie was an old friend. One of the few people in Seattle who really understood and accepted him. He couldn’t throw that away again.
Ainslie did not even pretend she was not nervous to see Adam again - or Ada, as she had called him then. Five years, it was a very long time, and there were many changes between eighteen and twenty-three. Adam had already been a man when Ainslie had met him, but she had been in Seattle to annoy her grandmother, and that was something only a child would have done. Today, she was older and wiser, and she was not so very trusting about love and people as she once had been. But all of these things did not mean she was not nervous, for she was. She had still been in love with her dark-haired boy when she met Adam, but it would be a lie to say she did not feel something for the doctor, with his visions and his dreams of a world that was safer and whole. She was half in love with him by the time he left, and she was certain then that it was only her youth that kept him from taking that step from confidant to something more intimate. But then he had left, and she had returned to her isla, and things had changed.
She walked into the cafe, and the setting made her smile. Her hair was still long and red, and she was still taller than most women, but she had lost that waifishness of youth, and she had left behind the micro-minis and the tops that were too tight, no longer feeling a girl's need of them. She found Adam within seconds, and she approached his table in a long, skirt made of varying shades of cream, with a slim white t-shirt. There were flip-flops on her feet, and her hair was in a loose ballerina's bun, and she slid into the chair opposite Adam with a warm and teasing smile. "Ada, you must tell these people that the walls must not be so blue, and the clouds, they should not be so very fluffy, for it rains at all times in Europa, si?"
Adam caught Ainslie’s eye when she walked in and bowed his head in a sort of bashful smile. He wasn’t used to this, he thought as his fingertips tapped the top of the table nervously. The doctor never had time for meeting over coffee to chat and reminisce. He was used to spending all of his time working or caring for others. Taking just a moment to slow down felt impossible. But, seeing her again, so beautiful and graceful like he remembered helped pushed away that guilt over taking time for himself. That’s what this was. Seeing her again was nothing but selfish.
“Don’t ruin the mystery for them, Ain.” He smiled gently at her, eyes finally moving up to meet hers again. “Most people here will never go to Europe. Must let them dream.” Adam folded his hands in front of him on the table. “Is it strange to say you look exactly as I expected? Know I haven’t change significantly, but you have in the way I knew you would.” His lips twitched into a tiny smile. Adam never wasted words if he could manage it and that certainly hadn’t changed.
That bashful smile brought back many memorias, and she just watched him for a few long, drawn out moments before speaking. Her accent was a little quieter than it had been, more time abroad making her English less choppy, easier to understand, but she did not make an effort to sound Americana with him, not when he had seen her when she had to ask what half the words he said when he talked about his vigilantes and his medicines were. "But their dreams are not as good as the real thing, Ada. One of the beautiful things about Europa is the rain, the smell of it, and the way the puddles feel when you splash into them." She leaned forward, elbows on the table and her expression knowing. "Even you could not look serious if I was splashing you with a puddle."
She looked toward the counter, and she inclined her head. "Is this a place where I must order a drink there, or will they come here?" she asked, and then she looked back at him, a warmly mischievous smile on her face. "Si? And how did you expect me to have changed? You are still handsome, Ada, in that very smart way, as you have always been."
His expression brightened a little the way any academic would when they heard something interesting or new. He couldn’t be surprised how easy it was for her to romanticize the rain like she did, but it was still enchanting. “The waiters will come around.” Adam said like his mind was elsewhere in Europe rain before he snapped back to reality. He tilted his head in an act of bashfulness at her comment of him being handsome. “I knew one day you’d realize the world thought you were beautiful no matter what you did.” He shrugged as if he were simply confessing what time it was or what he had for breakfast. “Natural grace is a harder thing to find than natural luck. Lasts a lot longer, too.” Adam didn’t have much of either, but he’d be a much different man if he did.
Eventually the waiter came around and he ordered a cappuccino for himself and allowed her to order whatever she wanted. Once the waiter hurried off, Adam felt his nerves loosen just a little. “What happened to you after Seattle?” He was happy she hadn’t found him before Vegas. He was a mess of bad feelings and drugs that didn’t go anywhere but down.
She remembered this, the way his expression brightened when he found something interesting. These things were usually medical, or involved with his cause, but she did not mind being one of them as well. The bashful tilt of his head made her laugh softly. "Do not do this, look this way when you are complemented, or I will only want to do it more, si? Y who says I have realized I was beautiful?" There was mischief in her eyes when she asked the question, and she followed it up with a shrug of her white-clad shoulders when he spoke of natural grace. "Beauty, grace, none of these things matter in the end, amor. I have not yet learned what does matter, but I do not believe it is these things."
She managed to explain a cafe con leche with enough clarity that she was fairly certain she would get the drink she wished for, and she kept glancing at Adam throughout the ordering process. "Who makes you nervous? The waiter or me?" she asked, astutely perceptive, as she had always been. "Mi abuela died, and I went home to find the boy who she had denied me, but he had not waited for me." She looked up when the coffee came, grateful of the momentary distraction. "So then I went and did what mi abuela had wanted in the first place. I went to Europa, and I learned to be pretty and useless." She smiled as she said the last words, more than a hint of sarcasm in them. "Y tu, Ada? What did you do after?" After the muchacho, the one who had died.
“Grace does matter. Contributes to harmony between people. With yourself. Very important.” Adam nodded wisely. Her next question tripped him up though, proving that Adam himself never possessed very much harmony or grace. “You, of course. Don’t worry, will get used to seeing a ghost from my past eventually.” Right now they were breaking the seal of years apart to get back to how they used to be. Adam believed it was possible, especially with how frank the both of them could be, but it took some time.
“I see.” Adam remembered her telling him about the dark-haired boy. First loves at such young ages tended to be so stupidly strong. It haunted him in a way that only a man who had been alone much of his life would be. “But, you were always pretty. The useless part is very difficult for me to understand.” He didn’t like the sound of it, but he was attracted to women who usually got caught up in things like that. “I went off the rails, as you can imagine. Eventually knew I’d never find the man who killed my friend and did anything from fixing athletes to spending time with war vets. I was lost until I got this urge to be in Las Vegas. The free clinic was the best thing that I could have done to save myself.”
She remembered his way of speaking, always of few words, and she remembered how she liked to make him speak more, as if it was a great challenge. But in time, she had grown to like this about him. It was so different from her own tendency to speak and ramble, and she smiled at his wise nod. "Always so wise, Ada, but I am no ghost, even if I am from your past. I am too warm blooded for this, si?" she smiled as she asked the question, and she sat back and sipped her cafe as she regarded him. "Y you are no ghost either. You have to much passion for your causes and your medicina to be anything like un espiritu, and this has always been the case, even if you hide it beneath a quiet exterior."
She smiled when he said she was always pretty. "You are so understated in your compliments, that I have always had to stop to realize I had been complimented," she said. He had always been different than the muchachos on the isla that was her home, with their heated declarations that did not often live to see the light of morning. "Useless, si? I was meant to inherit money and live in a dusty old castle that tourists come to visit on the first weekend of the month. I am supposed to be in Europa, sponsoring balls, and not here, teaching the waltz to little viejitos, little old tourists." She smiled when she mentioned the studio, but her expression turned somber and worried as he mentioned going off the rails, which she assumed was a very bad thing. She reached across the table, and she squeezed his hand reassuringly. "I am glad you have found this clinic. Can I help?"
Adam looked down at their hands, remembering how gentle and warm her touch could be and how he had worked so hard to stop missing even the slightest gesture of reassurance. Did he have to keep trying, or could he just allow himself to enjoy it? “I need people to help with physical therapy, if you are interested. It’s mostly showing people how to stretch and telling them the body is a lot better at healing itself than they might think. You’d be perfect for it.” He gently squeezed her hand back and then looked up sheepishly when the waiter placed their drinks. Reluctantly, he let her hand go and leaned back in his chair.
“Isn’t doing something so simple much more gratifying than doing what people expect out of you?” He asked after a moment, fingertips judging how hot the sides of the coffee cup were, burning away whatever warmth she left on them. “I could have been a doctor at a very high end hospital. Couldn’t bring myself to it. Too many egos flying around. Not enough concern for patients. Wanted more personal interaction.”
"I have no experience in this, but I can help," she said eagerly. She had no true interest in medicina, no aptitude for this, but she enjoyed people, and she enjoyed being involved in things, and she was concerned for Adam, though she did not come out and say it. It was true, he did not look happy. She had known him before his friend had died, si, and she did not expect that death to have left him unchanged, but there was something more here, and it made it easier for her to offer something she would have eagerly offered without the added incentivo. She waited until he was leaning back in his chair to smile at him. "Bien, you will tell me where to be and where to be there, y if you look too stressed, I will find a puddle to make you splash in, even if this requires me to pour a cup of water on the waiting room floor."
She considered his question as she sipped the cafe. It did not taste like home, but it was warm and sweet, and she closed her eyes with unabashed pleasure at the taste on her tongue. "I love what I am doing. It is not what my family would have wished for me, and in many ways it is not what I wished for myself when I was young, but I like getting up in the mornings, and I like the time I spend there. Si, it is gratifying." His admission that he wanted more interaction made her grin, made her lean forward with a smile that turned teasing. "You have always been more than those medicos in the hospitals, Ada. You are not in it for the wealth and the fast cars and the pretty women." Ah, but there was a subject. "You will tell me of your novia, si?" she asked, though it did make something in her chest twinge a little to ask the question.
He bowed his head a little, smiling into his cappuccino. There was something perfect in the way she effortlessly made him lighten up. More than that though, he was pleased that she was doing what she wanted in Vegas, even if it seemed without much direction or true desire. Ain could be a showgirl if she wanted, more than that even, but she chose to be a teacher. He adored that.
His thoughts changed when she brought up MK and Adam cleared his throat, putting the cup down on the table. “Well,” He looked at her, catching a small glimpse of what she was feeling and let his eyes settle back down at his hand rounding the cup. “We both needed someone to talk to about Seattle. At first it was just friendly, casual. I was plagued with a very angry and guilty man in my head and she needed someone to make her feel better. She’s still caught in the past, somewhere. I see glimmers of hope in her all the time. But, she’s still there.” He found himself lost in the cream colored liquid and finally looked back up at Ainslie. “I spoke to my friend’s sister. I do it every year out of guilt or something like that. She told me I couldn’t blame myself. That I need to go back to what I was doing. To make him proud, you know. Whatever part of me was stuck in Seattle was shaken loose.”
She smiled more warmly when he grinned into his cappuccino, and she pointed at him triumphantly, not caring that this was impolite or that it drew attention to their table. "See. This, this smiling is what I missed. Most people smile very easily, but not you, and it makes me feel as if I have won something when I am the one who makes you smile in this way."
She noticed the seriousness when he cleared his throat and put the cafe down on the table, and she sat back to mirror his demeanor. The mention of the angry man in his head was noted, but she did not wish to interrupt, and she listened through to the end, though she did reach across the table when he said he had chased away this ghost of the past after speaking to his amigo's hermana. She placed a soothing hand on his forearm for a moment, and then her fingers returned to her cafe. "I am glad for you, amor. She is right, his hermana, but it is not easy to move beyond this type of thing." She was worried about the girl, Maddie Kate, si? This was her name. Being stuck like this, it was not healthy, and the things he had said on the journal. combined with the things he said now, let her know this relationship was perhaps not ideal. "I remember her very well. She was, how do you say? Wild? I remember she seemed very much more mature than me at the time, and I thought her maravillosa." She did not add that she could not imagine that girl with him, but perhaps she would see them together here, and it would be perfect. "Does she return your feelings for her?"
Adam shrugged with a sigh, sitting back in his chair as he took another sip of his drink. “No. She can’t. Maybe with my help, but forcing her into feeling something for me is impossible. Never something I was interested in doing.” He tried to smile for her, to make her think it didn’t bother him, but only a fool would believe him. “Not meant for this kind of thing. Meant to keep my head down and work. Never should have let down my guard.” Adam had always believed a life without this kind of complication was a happy one and he had been so good at sticking to that until Vegas. Even in Seattle he had pushed Ainslie away, only that was likely the one time he should have allowed himself to make a mistake.
A moment passed and he looked up at her. “I’ll be fine. The important thing is that she heals and gets back on her feet. Then she can make up her own mind about little old me.”
The look she gave him said she did not believe this lie he told her. "I know what it feels like, Ada, loving someone and not having them love you in the same manner. No es facil. It is not easy." She gave him a smile that was reassuring, though the worry was there behind the blue of her eyes. "I will light my santos for you, in the hopes that this works out. Y if it is too hard, or if you need anything at all, you will come to me? Si. I am here for you. I am staying at the Bellagio, and my studio is across from it. You will agree to this, or I will beg until you promise, and I will do this here, where everyone will see." The way her eyes lit said she would do precisely this thing that she threatened. "Y si, you are meant for this kind of thing. You are the kind of man any mujer would be tan estupida to pass up." There was some old sadness there, the kind of realization that came too late, once someone was already lost to you.
"You are as important as she is. Do not forget this," she added when he looked up, and she pushed aside her cafe. "I have only now realized you have not given me a hug. I deserve one after all this time, si?"
He returned the sad look as if it had unexpectedly bubbled up from inside him. Adam couldn’t tell her he regretted losing contact with her or pushing her away after the death of his friend, but that look had to be enough. If she was the girl he remembered, she’d understand. “Won’t lose contact with you again. Promise. Even if I do miss your public attempts at embarrassing me.” Adam didn’t like dwelling, even if he had been doing quite a bit of that lately. He simply knew that he wouldn’t lose her again. Even if his mind tried to convince him it was the right thing to do.
“A hug, I can do.” Adam set his cup down again and pushed out of his chair, rounding the table with a hand outstretched to her almost as if he were shyly asking her to dance.
She had come to know him well enough all those years ago that she understood the regret in his features for what it was. She had learned then that he often did not say things, and reading his body language was as important as listening to him speak. His assurance that she would not lose contact with him again was enough, because she knew he would keep his word, and she smiled with enough warmth in her eyes so that he could see the pleasure there without trying very hard. "This is good, because I do not want to lose you again for all this time either. I can be stubborn, si, just as I can be embarrassing."
She did not expect him to come around the table to her, but she smiled like the young girl she had once been when he did. When he held out his hand, she readily jumped to her feet in a jingle of saints and a swish of her long skirts. She held his fingers for a moment, and then she hugged him with the same exuberance she had possessed in her youth. Arms tight around his shoulders, and no space between them, and a warm kiss to his cheek as she pulled back a second later. It was the way of her people, the kissing and affection, and she thought nothing of it as she smiled at him a moment later. "You are the best thing that has happened to me in a long while, finding you again," she said truthfully.
Adam’s face turned a light shade of crimson the second she bounded into his arms, his chest tightening as he held her close. After a moment of shock, one hand reached around her waist as the other held her shoulders. He was a tall, gangly sort of man that seemed to be more limbs than anything else. Still, he knew better than to hold back. For one thing she could tell and might even feel slighted by it in a gentle, unspoken way. For another, he might not get another embrace from her in some time. “Missed you. Never forgot how warm you are.” Adam said softly, raising a hand to touch the side of her face as he looked at her. “We’ll watch out for each other, yes?” Not that she had a choice from his side of the bargain. Not like he expected her to let him go on worrying about his own troubles alone.
"Si," she agreed readily, nodding, "we will watch out for each other, and I never forgot how safe you felt. Solid and steady, as if you would not change when I was not looking." In her youth that had felt like something very different from everyone her own age, and very different from the friends of his that she had met then, who all tended to be loud and young and brash in a way she associated with herself then.
She pulled her cellphone out of her pocket, the one that had come with the key to her door, and she held it out to him. "Your telefono, and your address. I will not use the address without permission, but I cannot promise the same about the telefono," she said with a plain, candid grin. "And you will tell me when you wish me to start working, si?"
He took the phone, carefully putting his own number and address along with Ada instead of his full name and then called his own phone with hers so that he could get her number. “Staying with friends for now, but will move back into my place soon.” He handed her the phone back and smiled back at her. “I’ll train you myself once you’ve got a couple hours on your hands. Mostly about knowing what to say to people who are in pain. Something I know you’ll be good at.” Adam check his watch with a turn of his wrist the way doctors do when they have too much work and endless lines of patients.
“Should go. Clinic needs me now more than ever with all the summer tourists.” He took a step away from her, throwing money on the table before putting his hands in his pockets. “Thank you, for meeting with me. Missed having your kind of good in my life.”
"Next week. I will free a few hours on my schedule in the mornings for this training, si?" she asked, looking forward to seeing his clinic, and seeing him with his patients.
She put the phone away as he threw the money on the table, and despite the hands shoved into his pockets she gave him another abrazo, a tight hug, before stepping back again. "You will not be a stranger, and you will not thank me for meeting with you, Ada. We are beyond this, si?" It was a rhetorical question, because she clearly felt that, si, they were beyond this, beyond gracias and asking permission for things such as hugs. "Go and take care of your patients. I have little old people who must learn to tango, and housewives who must learn to belly dance for their esposos." She rubbed his arm, and she nodded toward the door. "Go. I wish to buy a cafe to go, and there is a line."
When she hugged him, Adam didn’t move his arms but leaned his head down so his chin touched the top of her shoulder. “Si- yes.” He nodded. Adam was eager for them to go back to being confidants, fast and natural friends like they were in Seattle. It would take more time, more talks like this, but he wanted it earnestly. At least trying for their friendship and the bond they once had would never be a fruitless endeavor. “Enjoy your afternoon. Don’t work the old women too hard.” He took a couple steps backwards, eyes on hers until he turned and vanished into the Las Vegas crowd.