adarkflash (adarkflash) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-11-09 01:12:00 |
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Entry tags: | flash thompson, rose red |
Who: Olive and Adam
When: Recently!
Where: Olive's place
What: Pre-game talk about feels!
Warnings: None
Olive was dreadfully worried, but she'd little experience in being worried about someone, at least where anyone could see. With Vicente, she had followed him about like a lovesick child, and she'd been a puppy whose head he would pat, and whose chin he would scratch. But she was a mere servant, and he was the landed estate holder she worked for, and showing concern for him was not permitted. Even when she saw his dead body, she'd not even considered dropping to her knees beside him. She'd carried on, and she'd not looked back.
Worrying about Adam, like everything else in this new world, was strange for her, and the feelings were hard for her to reconcile. The first day he'd not shown up for tea, she blamed his cold. But, as the days passed, even she couldn't ignore that he'd simply stopped. Maybe people stopped on a regular basis. Perhaps life was more transitory than she'd envisioned during her imprisonment. She'd no idea, and she'd likely have left it at that, had she not seen the gossip article about Adam breaking up with his girlfriend. She'd not been looking for him precisely, but she didn't leave the studio (save for that one harrowing visit to the clinic), and she spent quite a lot of her time online. There it had been, and she couldn't keep herself from reaching out.
And so here she was - front door unlocked, Dragon Age ready to play, the last dance class letting out for the evening. She waved farewell to the last little girl in a tutu, and she slid up onto the desk at the rear of the studio, amazingly graceful, thanks largely to the fact that no one was about to see her do it. She'd denim on, and an old, faded, too-small shirt that pondered the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow, along with a brown jumper with sleeves that went well past her fingertips.
Adam was recovering from something he didn’t understand. His relationship with MK was doomed, had always been on the edge of failing miserably, but when it finally ended he felt empty. He couldn’t bear to look at his patients anymore, knowing full-well that trying to help them when he couldn’t even help MK was pointless. Adam didn’t even want to be a doctor anymore if it meant going back to a world of white walls, white coats, white paper that kept everything so perfectly in line. He wanted to escape. So, like most nerds with the same inclination, he lost himself in worlds that weren’t his. And, for the most part, it felt good.
It would have seemed like a natural thing to spend more time with Olive because of this decisive life change, but it felt dishonest. She didn’t know much about him besides the interests he wore on his shirts, and he thought it could stay that way. Getting into actual friendship territory, where they unveiled truths about themselves was dangerous. There was a good chance she wouldn’t want to talk to him anymore, either. And, what if he found out why she barely left the treehouse and didn’t know how to act sympathetic? All he needed was one more person calling him a robot to really drive him off the edge.
He tried not to think about all that. Instead, he pushed through the front door with a pizza and a 2-liter of orange soda. “Olive.” Adam called, making his way down the always narrow feeling hallway into the treehouse den. “Got pepperoni and bacon. Sounds boring, but actually delicious.” He said with certainty. At first, it didn’t seem like he had changed much, but when she found him setting up the pizza and drinks, Adam seemed so much looser. Like a college student after the last day of exams.
She heard him come in, but she didn't move right away. It was odd, perhaps, but she sat there, jumper sleeves tugged over her fingertips, and she listened to him make his way down the hall, and she listened to the sounds carry as he set out the food. It was peculiar, but then she was quite peculiar and, in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't quite as odd as it could be. She'd just missed the sound of him in the place, and she fancied his footsteps sounded different than the others that came and went, especially the men with boxes and guns that she would rather not think about at present, thank you kindly.
When he spoke, she jumped down, landing quite soundly on her converse, and she scuffed her way back without calling out to him. It was rather intentional, the slow approach, as if time would stretch if she simply refused to hurry. It was something she'd done quite often when she was small, and she found herself falling back on it in her encroaching old age. Thirty was, after, just round the bend.
She stopped in the open doorway of the treehouse (she didn't think of the loft in any other way now), and she watched him as he finished setting up. She noticed the looseness, and she recalled the things she'd read about his outings. "It sounds quite like a heart attack," she said of the pizza, finally stepping into the space, the front of her shoe catching on the carpet as she moved, all prior grace entirely absenting itself as she came to stand beside him. "I approve entirely. I've not experienced a heart attack," she joked, and she looked over at him a moment later. She was unaware of his concerns about taking this from acquaintance to friendship, because she'd no real definitions for either, and she'd no idea where that line was drawn. "When I lost someone I cared about, I drank every drop of alcohol I could find. Even the cough syrup," she admitted. "It tasted entirely horrid."
“Former doctor. Good person to have a heart attack around.” He smiled, but it was flimsy and without the confidence he used to have when he talked about his own talents. He used to be downright arrogant about his ability as a healer, but that was all gone. He moved around her, grabbing cups from the kitchen, setting them on his pizza box along with a couple plates and napkins. Adam was in the middle of his dinner balancing act when she just got down to the matter of it all. In surprise, he fumbled the napkins, setting the pizza down and grabbed the plates before they could slip through his fingers. It was likely one of the least graceful things he had done since they knew each other, but there was still a certainty in his movements that no amount of drugs and booze could cloud.
“I-” He put down everything and smiled sheepishly at her, running his hand through his short blonde hair as his eyes avoided her. “Don’t think you were at fault for losing someone, were you? Likely deserved all the cough syrup you could find.” Adam finally looked at her, guilt all over his face with a mouth pulled straight and heavy brows. He seemed naturally serious, naturally guilty. “Not the first time I caused someone to vanish from my life. I’m a hazard to be around, yes?” A false smile, though his acceptance of this kind of fault seemed alarmingly well realized as if he knew it this whole time.
"I don't think one becomes un-doctored," she reasoned. "Once a doctor, always a doctor. If a doctor falls in the forest and no one hears him, is he still a doctor?" She grinned. "Oh, that was quite terrible, wasn't it?" she asked of her own very flat joke. But there was a fair amount of worry in her brown eyes, brought about by that evident lack of confidence. She'd not known him long, but it was entirely wrong for what she'd known of him thus far. But she left it at that for then, and she watched as he balanced everything in a way she'd never be able to manage, all until that fumble, and wasn't today just a day for new things? People might say nerds were entirely ungraceful, but he'd always been quite the opposite, and she chalked it up to an inherent grace required to work in medicine, but that wasn't evident just then, was it?
She didn't watch his hands as he put down the food items; she watched his face instead. It was, likely, a social faux pas, the very deliberate regard, but Olive knew nothing of such things. She only knew he was avoiding her eyes in a way he'd never done before, and she didn't like that sheepishness from him, not one tiny bit. "I think people are lost rather frequently, sadly, and I'm not convinced blaming anyone is the thing. Blame fixes nothing, and it brings no one back from where they've gone. We're, none of us, Time Lords, and we've no blue box that will take us back in time and mend things," she said, rather than answering his direct question about blame. Oh, yes, and she quite disliked that guilt on his features. "Bring that to the couch," she said, motioning to the items he'd put down, "and set them on the coffee table. They'd never arrive should I do it," she coaxed, and she intentionally didn't answer his question about being a hazard yet either - quite intentionally.
Adam somehow found his balance again, picking up all the needed dinner accessories along with the pizza and setting them down dutifully where she instructed. He put his hands on his hips, fists balled in a way that made him look like an actor in some 1950’s comedy where the male lead gets frustrated at women the whole time and sighed. “Don’t get it, Olive.” Adam’s mouth moved to the side of his face in worrying thought. “If I’m the catalyst of every problem, then I should be hard on myself. Should blame myself. Best thing I could do for everyone else is to stay as far away as possible.”
And, yet, even as he finished his sentence, he took a seat next to her. She would have been relentless because she did not know him well enough to stay away. Adam folded his hands together, leaning his elbows on his knees as he looked down and then over at her legs. It was as close to eye contact as she was going to get right now. “Believe there’s good in people like me that will prevail through mistakes.” He said of her, fondness in his voice, though it darkened quickly. “Think once you spend enough time with me, that’ll go right out the window.”
He was rather the blondish, American version of Ricky Ricardo, and perhaps that was all her time in Cuba talking, but the image made her smile. Perhaps she could be quite Lucille Ball. She'd not the red hair working in her favor, but she'd all the rest, perhaps. Lucille had been the opposite of glamorous, hadn't she? Olive still remembered the black and white serial showing on the telly of the estate, the small one the servants watched before dinner, and she had to shake the memory off. It was a deceptively harmless memory, and that wouldn't do.
"How can you be certain you're the catalyst?" she asked as he sat beside her, taking a slice of pizza and tearing a pepperoni off. "I daresay some of us are simply attracted to bad situations," she added, giving a little more of herself than she'd previously done. But then her past was dangerous, and it was dangerous to share it. "Being there when bad things happen, it hardly means we cause them. I walk into that table every single morning," she said, pointing at the culprit with her pepperoni, before popping said pepperoni into her mouth. "Is it the table's fault, or is my own clumsiness to blame?" She looked at him a moment longer, at his downcast gaze, and she rested a jumper-sleeve covered hand on his knee in an attempt to get his attention, "We all make mistakes, Adam, and some of us make terrible choices because we care about someone who has skeletons in the closet that we intentionally ignore because we care. I know what that's like. I'd like to think we're not cursed for caring too much when we ought not to."
“Should consider moving table so you don’t run into it very often.” Adam looked up at her and sighed. “But, you like having the table around, so you put up with the pain until one of the sharp corners somehow gets you in the eye.” He reached for the soda, pouring them both cup fulls and then got himself a piece of pizza. “At least this time you’ve been accurately warned of my own destructive powers. If I manage to ruin things, you won’t be surprised.” He said dryly, with a smile because it really couldn’t be helped. He wasn’t going to just stop talking to her and she wasn’t going to push him away, so what could he do?
“Not fair.” He murmured, picking the crust off like someone slowly pulling apart a zipper. “Feel comfortable around you. Even Ainslie used to make me nervous. Miss the treehouse when I’m away from it for too long.”
She grinned at his description of the table. "Quite. I am dreadfully fond of that table. I'm rather determined to keep it about, even if I've to buy bandages in bulk." She took the cup of soda, and she turned it in her hands before taking a sip, an odd quirk that had driven her mother quite batty in childhood. "I've destructive powers of my own, you know. I rather have the opposite of the midas touch. You've been warned as well," she told him, pointing the cup of soda, then stealing one of the pepperonis off his pizza and popping it into her mouth, before sucking her fingers clean.
As for Ainslie. "Ainslie made everyone nervous. Lovely people generally do, I find. There's more pressure to please them. Olives, for example, aren't going anywhere, regardless of how you bollocks it up around them. It's the nature of fruit," she explained, some seriousness seeping into her expression when he said he missed the treehouse. "The forks and I miss you greatly when you're not about," she said, with a lingering swirl of warmth in her features. She paused, and she tipped her head, brown hair tumbling over her shoulder. "Do you want to tell me about it? I'm quite horrid at romance, but I'm rather good at understanding being head over feet," she promised him.
He tilted his head a little, enjoying the little analogies she trotted out. Olives were spectacularly ordinary, but added a certain amount of character to other spectacularly ordinary things. “Well.” Adam’s voice trailed a little and he took a bite of his dissected crust, pondering about whether or not he really did want to talk about it. His current course of keeping it all inside wasn’t working too well, was it? And, while he normally wasn’t much to talk about himself, this would be a good opportunity to try something different. “MK was always a friend of a friend. We kept in touch after the friend between us passed away.” A delicate way of saying murdered. “And, after we both ended up in Vegas we were naturally attracted to each other. Something to do with sharing a past with someone and understanding what the other had been through. She’s a bit of a socialite, though and while I was working at the clinic I liked to keep to myself. Happier that way. Cleaner. Less messy relationships.” Adam became acutely aware this was the most talking he had done in a row, so he gave an awkward laugh as if to apologize for it.
“Couldn’t keep up with it. Then something terrible happened to her. Kidnapped. Hurt. Tried to put the pieces back together, but it couldn’t be done. Just kept hurting each other.” Adam’s gaze went past Olive for a moment and then looked down at his pizza and picked at a small piece of bacon. “Wasn’t enough for her. Emotionally drained. Had to end it.”
She'd no idea if she actually expected him to tell her anything at all, but she was pleased when he began speaking, though she knew it wouldn't be a happy tale, but then very few tales were in the end. Those things were reserved for comics and games and movies. She set her cup aside as she listened, because the thing was likely to end up in someone's lap if she kept it in her grip.
"You'd trouble even before this terrible thing happened? How was she prior?" And she spoke of the terrible thing like it was terrible, indeed, but without the shock or outrage that was expected of a sheltered shut-in. But to her it seemed rather important, whether things had been good before the kidnapping. Her loyalty was very much to the man beside her on the couch, but with that loyalty came a true desire to see him happy, and she'd only Ainslie's side of the story for how happy he'd been prior. "She's lovely. I saw her photographs of her online," she said truthfully of MK, no judgement in her tone, "but there was something sad behind her eyes. I've a bit of experience with that," she said, even as she reached out and touched a scratchy sleeve-covered hand to his cheek for a moment. "You look terribly sad too, Adam. Like when Jack Skellington realizes that the citizens of Halloween Town can never understand him." She drew her hand back. "I can't imagine you not being enough for someone," she added with truthful candor.
“Before, she was still lovesick for the friend we both lost.” Adam shrugged, taking a good gulp of his soda. “Couldn’t compete with a ghost. Didn’t even try. And, why should I? He was a better person than I could ever be. Strong, funny, caring, smart. Better looking. Easier to settle down with. Less-” Adam made a gesture towards himself. “Robotic.” His old friend was the boy next door and what was Adam? A strange, barely human doctor that put all of his compassion into helping patients that needed it the most.
Adam’s bone white skin turned a slight shade of light pink when she touched his face. For a hermit, she was particularly good at warming him up. “Feel sad. Found ways to ignore it, but I’m so disappointed with myself.” And, that what it really came down to. When he had his final fight with MK, he couldn’t keep accusing her of ruining things, even after she asked for it. Even when he was angry at her. More angry than he’d been at anyone else in a long time. “Wasn’t there when she needed me the most. Didn’t know how to get her help. Not enough.” He said seriously, knowing that truth was enough to let him carry around the blame for a little longer. “Even knowing that now, don’t think I could go back and make it right. Not equipped for that kind of thing. Can heal wounds, but not emotional breaks.”
"There's no competing in love. You could stand the most beautiful girl beside the plainest one, and if someone loves the plain one, then the other one might as well be covered in a pox." She grinned. "And there's no saying that the way you see yourself is the way the people that care about you see you. "You see someone robotic when you look at yourself in the mirror, someone less attractive and utterly not enough. I see someone who's caring enough to befriend a woefully awkward woman, with no gain for himself at all. I see someone who helps without profit, and without needing to. I see someone who is unbloodyrobotic enough to be terribly broken up over what's happened in his relationship. I see someone who's funny, and entertaining, and who's quite missed when he's not about. Who's to say your vision of yourself is any more right than mine?"
She liked that pink that overtook his cheek, and she watched with the kind of wonderment of a curious bird that hadn't seen anything like that in all of its days. "We can't patch others up all the time, Adam. Some things are out of our hands. From what I can tell, MK needs to fix herself, if you've any chance at all. You say you weren't about much, and that you couldn't keep up, that you didn't know how to help. That all sounds like you've been in a relationship with an addict, and you're a doctor, you know addicts have to want help first, and they'll destroy everyone they love in the meantime." She reached for his hand, and she squeezed his fingers. "You're equipped for more than you know. I've it on good authority. The spoons and the forks can even agree this one time."
Adam flustered, clearing his throat as he hung from her words despite trying not to believe in them the way she did. It wasn’t fair to his sulking to have someone that believed in him, that saw the good he was trying so desperately to do and actually appreciated it. That was something most people outside of the clinic couldn’t afford him. Especially MK. It didn’t matter how many grateful parents hugged him out of relief, he needed someone close to him to really understand why he was doing it. Maybe he’d go back, that fire would reignite again, but for now he needed this. To spend time with someone like Olive. To work at a comic book store. To make things better with Flash.
He opened his mouth to respond and then shrugged with a smirk. “Don’t know what to say.” Adam looked at her like she had just thrown him a life raft. “Except thank you. Can’t argue with something like that.”
She grinned when he flustered, and she sat back and reclaimed her cup. "It's quite lovely to see someone else flustered for a change. I think I could rather grow accustomed to it," she said, taking a sip and watching him over the edge of the cup. "No arguing permitted. In future, no hiding either. I don't care if you've been drinking, if you've been more than drinking, if you're in an utter and absolute bear of a mood. I'd rather have your company as you sit silently on the couch and sulk morosely, than not see your face. Plus, I can handle Slenderman. I can certainly handle you," she insisted. "You're rather skinnier," she teased, crinkling her freckled nose and tugging her feet up on the couch cushion. "If you resist, I'll turn this entire studio into a Slenderman map, and make you play the part," she teased, and the warmth in her brown eyes said she might do precisely that. "Or worse yet, I'll hug you, and you'll have no idea where to put your hands. You seem the sort to lack coordination in such events," she teased.
“Ahah! Do think I’m a robot. Think they’ve left out hugging protocol. Might surprise you.” He brightened a little, taking a bite out of the pizza and eyed her suspiciously. “Besides. You wouldn’t be able to clean this place up enough to make it a proper Slenderman map. Would have to put most of your stuff on the lawn. People will think it’s a garage sale.” He leaned back into the cushions of the couch, finding a place to prop his long legs up on her coffee table as he visibly relaxed. “Don’t want to play that game with me. Will wait for you to go on a rare trip outside of your home and redecorate it into a Portal test chamber. Might be an undoctor, but not afraid to play dirty.”
For once in the past week since MK had left, he actually felt normal. Being comfortable was one thing, but to feel like himself and not being ashamed of that was something he wasn’t going to grasp in a long time. There were still secrets between them, on both sides, but for now Olive had to be someone he could lean on. A force of stability in his life. “Now, let’s cause absolute chaos in the land of Ferelden.”