Who: Olive and Adam When: Recently! Where: The Olive hideyhouse What: Nerds being cute, mostly Warnings: None!
Somewhere between hour two and three of their Slenderman marathon, Adam started to relax. It was strange, sitting in the clutter of Olive’s place focusing on what was likely one of the scariest myths to come out of their time, but it felt like his world. Out there in the smoky casinos and lit up dancefloors, he couldn’t even begin to belong. But, here was his comfort zone, even in her whirlwind of clumsy chaos. Most of the time he came over for tea looking rather professional, but not this time. Adam had the ability to dress down so significantly that people wouldn’t even believe he was a doctor. For the marathon, he wore a black striped Jack Skellington sweatshirt and old jeans that looked like they had lasted him since high school. It hid the stress from working at the clinic rather well and made it easier for him to distance himself. Even if it was just for a couple hours.
As they started to run out of tea, he wobbled to his feet and swept up the teacups. “Strangest thing about Slenderman is that if you just put a funny hat on him or called him anything else, he wouldn’t seem so bad.” Adam observed, feeling a sort of kinship with the monster. They were both deathly tall, skinny and pale, after all.
Olive, abysmally awkward as she was, had settled into bumping into things (rather than breaking them) about three good screams into Slenderman. She'd changed maps twice so far, gotten only five bloody notes on the most recent asylum map they'd been working through, and gotten up to pee more times than she could count. It was, when it was all said and done, the most comfortable she'd been with a penis-owning member of the male sex in the entirety of her life. She'd never been entirely comfortable with the man she'd loved so terribly much, and being around Adam felt good in an entirely different way.
She watched him scoop up the teacups, and she leaned over the edge of the couch and grabbed a pair of Monty Python killer rabbit slippers and slipped them on her feet. She was dressed casually in outdated denim and a t-shirt that pronounced her a Trekkie, and her hair was a mess of brown that had escaped from a braid around the fifth time she'd hid her face into Adam's sleeve. "You are entirely mistaken," she insisted, tugging her homicidally slippered feet on the couch cushion on front of her, knees hugged to her chest as she watched him. "He'd be terrifying no matter what he looked like. He's unexpected, and that's what makes him such an utter twat. Plus, he's had no prom dates. You know he hasn't. It's made him terribly cranky about things. If he'd only had one dance beneath the disco ball in his teens none of this would have ever happened."
“Traveling down a dangerous road, Olive.” Adam warned, setting the teacups down on the counter next to him before testing the warmth of the kettle with the back of his hand. Luke-warm. He poured the water out and filled it back up in some weird need to sterilize sitting water and turned on the burner. “Wasn’t asked to prom myself. Also, tall and very pale. How do you know you weren’t...” He turned to look at her slowly, face completely grave. “Playing the game with Slenderman sitting right next to you?” All he needed was a flashlight and maybe the sound of wind beating against the windows to complete the spooky effect. “And, he doesn’t like being called a twat.”
"Always the medical professional, love? Sterilize, sterilize, sterilize." She didn't say sterilize as a normal person ought. No, she said it like a Dalek, replacing exterminate with sterilize with great accuracy. She was quite the Whovian, thank you kindly. She was surprised about his prom confession, because she'd already decided he was rather brilliant, and she couldn't see why he wouldn't have been surrounded by fellow geeks and the occasional cheerleader, the one who liked the amazing nerd. "As a fellow prom reject, I salute you," she said, saluting him with a laptop mouse, as there was nothing else readily available. She laughed at his grave face, and then she pretended to be quite terrified. "No, Slenderman. Don't sneak up on me. I shan't ever call you a twat again," she begged, lifting the laptop and hiding behind it.
“Can’t be too careful. Had a friend who caught a virus in her brain by flushing her nose out with water.” He smirked down at the kettle and then walked over to where she was and took a seat. While they played this game of an otherwise black and white monster, Adam started to feel sorry for him. He must have been lonely, out there in the woods. Searching for something until he got fed up and snapped. “That’s the problem I have with this whole Passages thing. Used to be able to look at a bad guy in a story or a comic book and never think twice about it. Maybe they’d be tragic, yes, but always incredibly evil or stupid.” He sighed with a small shrug. “Now sympathizing with high school bullies and wife beaters. Count yourself lucky. Don’t have to stretch boundaries.”
"You entirely made that up so that I'd set aside my netipot for eternity," Olive teased. She'd no netipot, but it hardly mattered, and she liked saying the silly word. Netipot. She managed to get two good screams in at the tall, pale thing on the screen in before he spoke, and she nudged his shoulder with her own to get his attention once he was done and sitting beside her again. "Mine's changed again. I've a chatty girl now. She's very red hair, and that's about all I know. But it's never black and white. Even before this I knew that. I'd always rather empathized with the villains. Not the psychotic ones, but the others." She hopped up and set the laptop on his lap, and there was a fond touch of fingers to his cheek before she stubbed her be-rabbited foot against the coffee table like an utter dork. "I've been hobbled. You must go on alone," she said dramatically, as she made her way to the whistling tea kettle.
Adam’s expression softened when she touched his cheek and he could hear his resident teenage scumbag scoff in the back of his head. Get the fuck out of there before you do something stupid. Flash warned, always the voice of reason. But, Adam was good at ignoring him. He was good at ignoring most things that managed to disrupt the little pieces of happiness he could afford. Still, Flash stomped around, threatened to find a way to get Venom through the door before huffing to a silence. Adam teetered to his feet, awkwardly swaying back and forth as she rushed and tumbled into another inevitable clumsy accident.
“If you let me organize your things, you’d have a large, clear exit path.” Adam said in his doctor’s voice unintentionally, lifting his eyebrows as he passed by her. “Could make room for more stuff. Or have a garage sale. Would be less prone to accidents.” He gently grabbed a hot pad and delicately poured them tea like he was trained in some Japanese tea house. “Can’t imagine you living past the age of 40. Would fall down and then be crushed by a tower of falling comic books.”
She laughed as she settled down on the couch again, completely oblivious to the war being waged in his head. She'd no real sense of boundaries, and she didn't realize she'd done anything worth fussing over. She just tugged her slipper off and rubbed her toes, looking up as he chided. "I've all my worldly possessions in a room with a loft. Even you couldn't organize this lot, doctor," she teased. "By all means, I'd love to watch you try it. It'd be even more entertaining than watching you scream when you get frightened by your taller and skinnier twin." Once she was done with her toe ministrations, she opened Spotify and set the Vitamin String Quartet's version of Nightmare Before Christmas on, which his sweatshirt had reminded her of. "You'll mourn me terribly. Who'll have tea and discuss everything geek beneath the sun with you. It will be great loss." Which she said very seriously, of course, save for the dimples in her cheeks as she reach for the tea he'd just poured out.
He handed her the cup of tea and then shook his finger at her. “Tell anyone about my screaming and I will make sure every doctor in Vegas makes you sit in the waiting room for a good hour before your appointment.” A seemingly serious threat that he learnt back when he worked for a more illustrious private hospital. There the doctors seemed more like salesman who treated their favorite clients like kings and their least favorites like serfs. One of the many reasons why he ended up leaving.
After his fake threat, he sat next to her on the couch, closer than they had been when they first met and this all looked to be just pleasantries between two acquaintances. He took a sip of his tea and visibly relaxed into the couch. “Think you’re going to kill me first. Nervous breakdown from all the mess and random acts of stubbed toe and tripping.” A playful, judgemental sip of tea. “Never seen someone trip as often as you. Should see if there’s a Steam achievement for it.”
"That would be rather entirely pointless, seeing as it would be your waiting room I'd be waiting in, and I'd simply keep walking into things until you deigned to see me. You'd be amazed at how many things I can knock over in a waiting room," she teased, flicking his finger away when he pointed at her, then cupping both of her hands around the teacup and breathing in the scent. "You've gotten better at tea," she complimented. It was her opinion, or had been, that only a Brit could make a proper cuppa.
"It's good for you," she said of the anxiety her awkwardness brought with it. "It keeps your reflexes sharp, as you're always poised to pick up whatever comes crashing." She used his shoulder for a pillow, holding the tea in her lap, and canting her head back to get an upside-down look at his chin. "You're a decent bloke, and I trip much less around you than around most. I'm glad we met. It's a rather scary and large city without a friend, and I've never even had one of those before. I beat you when it comes to sad, promlessness stories, just as I beat you when it comes to gaming and Steam achievements."
“Practiced. Watched a couple terribly slow British films where they make tea. Learned from the best.” He nodded sternly as if he was going to school for tea making purposes. Adam looked down at her, not bothering to hide any kind of smile she could tease out of him. In everything else he worked so hard to keep his mannerisms and emotions in check, but they were fast friends and he wasn’t afraid of her. “Glad we met, too. Need this. Too involved with Flash’s life. Too obsessed with clinic and taking care of people. Need a tree house.”
He took a sip of his tea and leaned his head on hers, blocking out any kind of tantrum throwing from Flash. It wasn’t that the teenager didn’t like Olive, he just had a stronger morality code than Adam did. He wanted the doc to man up, to do the honorable thing and dote on his fucked up woman (or just dump her) instead of hide away with Miss Awkward of the Universe. But, Adam needed to be selfish to make up for all the giving he did everywhere else. “And,” Adam whispered after a moment. “Only reason why you have more achievements is that I actually have a job.”
"You shouldn't judge all our films by Gosford Park," she chided. "Dreadfully slow, but very much true to life when it comes to service." Despite not choosing that life for herself, she was still terribly fond of those stuffy dowagers with their tiaras perched atop their purple-white hair. "Four Weddings and a Funeral is a much better culture statement. We're wickedly sarcastic, if you've not noticed." She smiled back up at him. "It's entirely your job to clean the tree house then, as I've no aptitude for it," she commanded, her lopsided grin making it clear that she was perfectly willing to let him hide away in this loft in the back of the dance studio whenever required.
She tapped her feet along to the strings from This is Halloween, and she shoved at him when he whispered his criticism. Tea sloshed, which she hardly cared about; there were tea stains on nearly everything she owned, and she gave him a look that was all mock outrage. "Why, I never! I work dreadfully hard to cook and clean and make this a nice tree house for you, and don't acknowledge that at all. I'll have you know that I work as hard as you, and my Steam achievements still trounce yours. And if you became the tree-wife and I went and cured terminal diseases before breakfast, I'd still kick your wretched arse."
He laughed, the teacup in his hand wavering a threat to spill over, but he quickly steadied it like a man who spent his whole life spinning plates. He calmly raised his eyebrows at her domestic raging, eyes heavy with a judgmental gaze. “You couldn’t cook a piece of toast and if this is what you call cleaning then I need to have a word with your broom.” The truth was, the more he hung out with her the more he felt like he was on the edge of Wonderland. She was the March Hare frantically throwing mustard in tea pots while he was playing a more reserved, though equally insane Hatter. Maybe that’d change one day, too. Maybe the chaos and silliness would just eat him whole.
“Shouldn’t anger the tree-wife. Don’t know what you’ll put in my tea the next time I visit.” With a smile Adam relented, expression softening naturally as Jack’s Lament started, which was likely his favorite song from the entire movie. He clearly felt a kinship with the strange outsider who over thought and wanted so much more than what he was capable of. It wasn’t fair that he was given these minor, second hand characters. No matter what Adam did, he’d never be the real hero of any story. He pushed the thought away before Flash could snag onto it and sipped at his tea.
"Some people like their toast quite well done," she assured him, and she looked for the broom without moving from his side, as if to chastise it. "It seems the broom has absented itself," she said finally, sitting back against the cushions. She finished her tea, and she set it aside with a grace that only showed its face every so often, and she managed it without moving away from her comfortable spot against his shoulder, which she'd reclaimed after the fruitless broom hunt. "I'd never poison you. I watch too much Investigation Discovery, and you'd be horribly difficult to kill, and even harder to dispose of with all those long limbs," she informed him, smiling at how his face softened during the song, then plucking at the version of Jack on the front of his sweatshirt. "I do love Sally. She's created for one thing, but she's quite another, and yet she has so much trouble getting free of what's expected of her. Yet she's unfailingly selfless through it all." She hummed and, unlike her movements, that was rather on-key. "I'm glad you came to visit, even if you're utterly terrible at Slenderman."
“And, reasonable. I always liked that she was reasonable.” Adam added, quieting to the sound of her humming as he drank his tea. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Flash was digging in. He had a way of casting doubt over everything, that kind of judgmental stare or faint laugh that was designed with the simple intent of putting him on edge. Pym was bad, too smart for his own good, but nothing compared to a high school bully. The two were like step-brothers who liked each other, but didn’t mind telling the truth in the most terrible ways they could manage. Adam pushed Flash farther away, thinking about Slenderman intently instead. “Sanity gameplay is an unfair and honestly jarring way of going about things. Game doesn’t know how sane I am. Can’t turn it into a health meter.” Adam said in true late night forum reviewer fashion.
He finished his tea, regrettably glancing down at the empty cup and then turning his wrist over to check his watch. Adam was content cuddling in his new treehouse, but the clinic called and any extended time away from either there or home would alarm MK. “Should go.” Adam said softly and unhappy about the whole being an adult thing.
"She was reasonable, but rather romantic. Bottles with hearts sent up windows and the like. But she was tough too, and you don't see that very often. My little feminist heart approves. Assuming I'm permitted a feminist heart, as I've never done a feminist thing in my entire life, save insisting you clean the treehouse and make tea." She gave him a fake scowl when he turned on the reviewer voice. "I can turn anything I like into a health meter. I'm told it's a woman's prerogative. Did you see what I did there? Went from feminism to pre-vote in a blink, which is also my prerogative. And you simply suck at Slenderman, Adam, and there's no shame to be found in being a loser," she teased, watching him put down the tea cup.
"Be gone," she told him, a tug to the front of his shirt accompanying the words. She knew he had places to be, and she'd never been one to beg; she'd learned that lesson years back, and it had stayed with her. Her eyes did go a touch sad, but only a hint in the brown, and she nudged his thigh with a Monty Python rabbit. "Go on then. Next time, I'd rather like to try curry, if you've a recommendation," she ventured, and maybe she kicked the leg of the coffee table with the nervousness of the suggestion. "I've never had."
“What sort of closet did Ainslie keep you in?” Adam asked, face flushed for just a moment when she tugged at his shirt. He stood up slowly, something he learnt from years of being tall and easy to push over. One false move and he’d be a pile of limbs on the floor. “Know a good place. One of my patients works there. Will ask for recommendations and bring you back the best stuff. Next time should watch movie. Coraline maybe. In the mood for stop animation.” He was rambling, almost nervously, but that seemed like a typical thing for a nerdy guy like him to do. Before he could say anything stupid, Adam did a Slenderman wave and navigated his way out the front door.