preston rawlings . {viola} (theviola) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-01-12 19:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | elizabeth bennet, viola |
Who: Preston and Eli
What: Some really adorable snuggling, and then some equally hilarious fighting.
Where: Bathos 501, inside, and then outside. Loudly outside.
When: Twenty-four hours after their last conversation.
Warnings: Oh, let’s see. Some mature topics, what with the snuggling--though not NC-17 material. A lot of bad language because Eli brings it out of Preston and they both have bad manners when they’re shouting at each other.
Preston spent another twenty-four hours in Anton’s strange little tower above the city. The new facility was already stocked with enough equipment to support Iron Man’s conception, testing and repairs, and the entire week (or longer, he lost track of time), Preston felt like he was being haunted by metallic ghosts, staring at him expectantly.
He did what he could as Rescue, using some limited communication and company resources to guide people to safety and distribute some privileged information, and he now had the leisure (as he forced himself down the hall toward his apartment) to wonder what kind of punishment they’d think up if they found out about it. (“They” probably being the government, they were touchy about their privileged information and public safety.) He supposed it depended entirely on whether or not Creations were being hunted down at that point.
He was all the way to his own apartment until he remembered Eli’s offer, and he stared blearily at the dark line of carpet under the other man’s door before finally shifting a few more lead-footed steps and brushing his knuckles gently across the surface.
Eli had woken early that morning, before the sun had even come up, and it wasn’t (he told himself repeatedly) because he was hoping Preston would show up. He’d showered, made coffee, and then he’d fallen asleep on the couch and almost missed opening the coffee shop, because Preston had never showed.
To say Eli’d been in a grouchy mood all day would be an understatement of epic proportions. The workers had come to measure the backyard for the tent, and he’d watched them from the backdoor and vacillated between a certainty that no, he would absolutely not invite Preston, to an adolescent sort of feeling in the pit of his stomach whenever the bloody phone rang and it might be him.
All this meant that by the time Eli returned home that evening, he was even grouchier, tired and generally tense. He’d washed away the smell of coffee, changed into a pair of striped pajama pants and no shirt, and drank the better part of a bottle of red wine. By the time he’d given up on any communication from Preston, he was comfortably buzzed and sitting on the couch with a cigarette. And when he’d finished that, he’d stubbed the cigarette out and fallen asleep.
Eli’d been deep in a dream when the sound at the door woke him, and he almost rolled over and ignored it at first, but it might be someone needing help, and so he rubbed at the back of his head, black hair a mess, and he padded over to the door and opened it, eyes still half closed.
Preston was absolutely bone-exhausted. He had been afraid to look away from the cameras or stop listening to the radio, sure that some bit of information would miss him and he wouldn’t know what happened to someone he cared about in the city-limits. A week of catnaps and dozing off in front of computer screens, walled up in metal and the grim radio announcer, watched by resentful sentinels, Preston was stripped bare.
Preston looked, at least, relatively healthy and uninjured. The white shirt was clean, rumpled slacks laundered, and the rough chin could have been a lot rougher. “Hey,” he said haggardly, and he didn’t think that perhaps he not be welcome. He just stepped in and put his arms around Eli’s waist to make sure he was real, and sighed into the base of his neck without saying anything else.
The heater was on in the apartment, and Eli’s bare skin was sleep warm, the pajama pants low on thin hips, and there was something about the embrace that made him feel awkward and uncertain about where to put his hands and what was appropriate. But the awkwardness was replaced almost instantly, as soon as Preston sighed, and Eli just tugged on the waistband of his pants and pulled him inside. “You sound exhausted,” he said, unnecessarily, the kind of stupid nothing people said when they were trying to fill space, and he groaned immediately after, because he sounded like a daft pillock, and well he knew it..
Preston easily loosed the embrace, which had been for unthinking support and nothing else. He wandered in, looking around at the apartment vaguely. “I haven’t slept much. I was going to go home but I didn’t want you to think I was ignoring you. Can I lie down?” It was all in a long stream of words strung together, even more drunken than when he actually had alcohol. His fingers brushed over Eli’s stomach in familiar affection that was unthinking, and then he kept going toward the first still padded furniture he saw.
Eli stopped him with hands on Preston’s hips that moved up to white fabric and undid buttons and pushed fabric off broad, golden shoulders. There was something about how almost incoherently tired Preston sounded that gave Eli power in the situation, and that always made him less uncertain, and he pressed a kiss to one of Preston’s shoulders and turned him toward the bedroom. “That way, love.”
Preston didn’t feel that the removal of his shirt was immediately important, but he didn’t protest. “I’m glad you didn’t get hurt.” He reeled around somewhat unsteadily and gave Eli a sloppy open-mouthed kiss hard enough to hurt, and then stumbled off into his bed, where he literally fell face first and curled around a pillow.
Eli hadn’t gotten hurt, not beyond some bruises and scrapes, and he chuckled at the hard, sloppy kiss. He followed at a distance while Preston walked to the bed, and he watched him fall face first onto the pillow, and he lingered in the door. There was a man in his bed. Said man was not there for sex, so he couldn’t even blame hormones or chalk this up to one of those things that was merely physical. He recalled a friend in college who had claimed to fuck men, but date women. No, he couldn’t even pretend that, not in the stark light of the worry he’d felt for the man hogging up the majority of his mattress.
He was too buzzed to think about it, Eli decided, and he kicked at Preston’s feet as he walked past him, refraining from what he considered a completely, unacceptably female temptation to remove his shoes. He doused the light, and he crawled under the blankets, turning on his side, watching the blond in the light filtering in from the street lamps outside. He touched Preston’s temple once. “Bloody bed hog.”
Preston didn’t reply. He didn’t even wake up entirely. He just shifted, shoving closer to Eli’s side, ignoring the lack of blankets. Over the next several hours he only got worse, rolling even farther into Eli’s side every time he moved. He didn’t put his arms around him or restrain him, he just kept moving so that it was impossible to be in bed without some point of contact, even if it was just a knee in the small of Eli’s back. The only upside was that he didn’t snore, not even a little.
Eli fell asleep, but not for a few hours, the unfamiliar sleeping arrangement keeping him awake, despite his exhaustion with the events of the week. Once he fell asleep, he stayed that way for hours, and by the time he opened his eyes, the sky was beginning to lighten and the alarm clock on the desk beside the bed said it was five in the morning. His arm had, sometime during the night, ended up across Preston’s bare stomach, and when his eyes opened, he didn’t immediately move. He was sleepy, still, exhausted, still, and he blamed that for the fact that he dragged his gun-calloused palm along Preston’s stomach, raised callouses catching fine, blond hair.
Preston didn’t want to wake up. His phone was in his pants pocket and he had gone to sleep knowing that if there was an urgent matter or another death notification that someone would get hold of him. It was the first worry-free sleep he’d had all week and he wasn’t going to wake up, dammit. “It’s not morning,” he said, muttering into the pillow and turning his face into it.
Eli stopped all movement when Preston stirred, resembling a very blue eyed deer caught in headlights for a moment, but when the other man muttered and turned his head into the pillow, he relaxed again. “It’s almost morning,” he assured the other man, voice low and thick with sleep, and his hand resumed its movement, fingertips dipping just below the waistband of the pants and stilling again. “Mind telling me what you’ve been doing for the better part of a week?”
“Working,” Preston mumbled, not opening his eyes but making a peculiar pleased sound of sleep. “It’s not morning, Go back to sleep.” He now took up the vast majority of the bed, lying flat on his back in the center, and he turned his head with a long tired sigh to lean into Eli’s chest.
Eli smiled at the pleased sound, and he closed his eyes and slid his hand a little further, stilling again and waiting for Preston’s breath to even out as he leaned against him. “You may go to sleep if you like,” he said, same low, rumbly morning voice. “It strikes me,” he added, “that your job is not all about books and ledgers.”
“Keyboards and numbers,” Preston corrected, sniffing a little and enjoying the heavy coffee-gunpowder-skin smell that was unique to Eli and pretty much anything within arms’ reach of him.
“I am fairly certain it isn’t about that either, not any more than mine is about coffee,” Eli said, eyes still comfortably closed, fingers starting to move just barely through fine, golden curls that he couldn’t see. He cleared his throat, shifted slightly. “Weren’t you going back to sleep?”
Preston opened his eyes. All the sleep felt good, but he was still lazy and definitely didn’t want to move. He stared at the unfamiliar ceiling for a moment, then shifted his hips comfortably. “When did you get into the arms business and out of the coffee business?” Apparently sleep could wait.
“EIT came before the coffee business,” Eli replied. He had been watching Preston’s face, staring, really, but when Preston opened his eyes, he looked away, as if he’d been caught looking. He slid his hand back, too, from where it had strayed, and he cleared his throat as he tried to find somewhere to drape his arm, the awkwardness pronounced and obvious. “Kenna came into town one evening, when I was feeling particularly unfriendly toward Creations, and the rest is history, as they say.”
Preston got his eyes all the way open then, and he carefully didn’t change expression when he met Eli’s eyes. He took steps to ease the awkwardness, however, and rolled gently onto his side to face the other man, giving him a little distance with a faint smile. “I’m about to shove you off the bed,” he said, a little proudly. Then a second later, his brows twitched. “Why were you unfriendly toward Creations?”
“I have opinions about us,” Eli said, watching the movement and the rolling, his gaze dropping to Preston’s bare hip. “About Creations,” he corrected quickly, realizing what that sounded like, realizing (at the same time) that he was lying in bed, talking with a shirtless man. He groaned, flopping onto his back and draping his forearm over his eyes. “You’re a bed hog,” he agreed, because that was easy enough, as long as he didn’t think on it too much. “The things we chase down at EIT, they’re not at all things meriting friendliness, Preston.”
This was dangerous territory, and Preston decided to keep his hands to himself while they were having it. He did decide (a moment later), that he was a little cold, however, so he brought his knees up and wriggled comfortably down into Eli’s bedding. He stretched his arms out over the covers, rolled again onto his stomach, and turned his cheek to watch him. “What are your opinions about us Creations?” he asked.
“I spent most of my teenage years insisting I was human,” Eli said, listening to the movement on the other side of the bed, while keeping his eyes closed and his forearm over his face. “As an adult, I began to realize the things Creations did. They ruin lives, Preston, every bloody day. This world, it has no natural defense against our kind. Given time, we’ll destroy it,” he said with certainty. “Our human nature, it is not made to resist the temptations of this kind of power,” he said, voice becoming more sure the longer he went on. “The vigilantes, they’re focusing on the wrong threat. The common thieves aren’t going to ruin this world. We are.”
There was a little silence after this. Preston turned away, onto his back as well, and watched the ceiling. "I don't ruin any lives," he said, after a while. "I don't know anyone personally who does." He hesitated, wet his lips and then ventured, "I think we're just like--we're all the same. Some of us are bad and some of us are good."
“We don’t belong here,” Eli said with conviction, looking out at Preston from under his arm. “I’m not saying you, individually, cause harm. But we don’t belong here as a whole. You can’t possibly think we do? Think on it. Do we know what happens to children, should we have them here? Do they share our abilities? If so, are we not changing the entire DNA fabric of this world my merely existing?”
"Maybe it needs to be changed," Preston said. "You can't reverse it." Abruptly, he sat up, spilling covers, and rubbed his forearms to get the ache of the keyboard out of them. "You were the first one up. You make the coffee." He didn't want to talk about the potential damage and influence Creations had on this world. Five of the richest and most powerful people Preston knew were also Creations. Conversely, five of the lowest, most disturbed people he'd ever seen were Creations, too. He didn't see a correlation between ability and power.
“It isn’t our world,” Eli said, pushing the blankets aside, but not getting to his feet yet. “We’re genetically superior to the native fauna of this planet, Preston. It’s the same as introducing an exotic pet into an ecosystem that destroys the existing wildlife. We’re exotic pets, and we’ve been dumped here, are being dumped here every day. Do you think situations like the Reavers are to be one-time occurrences?” he asked, shaking his head. “Hardly,” he added, walking toward the kitchen. “Toast as well?” he called back.
Preston didn't stay there alone for long. He followed after, looking around briefly for a shirt but shrugging when it didn't immediately meet the eye. His expression was troubled as he considered this, and he was just coming through the doorway when he answered, "Sure," to the offer of toast. Then more seriously he said, "So what exactly is EIT's purpose, then?" He tried to sound calm while he said it.
There was something serious in the question, and Eli stopped mid-coffee and -toast preparation to turn and look at the other man, forcing himself not to be distracted like a teenager by bare, sleep warm skin. “We aren’t attempting to annihilate Creations, Ash. Do calm down. If we have reports of Creations unknowingly using their abilities for harm, we attempt to reason with them or assist them, as the case may be. Kenna has contacts in the police department, should it be someone non-Creation intentionally committing a crime.” He left off what happened when neither of those options fit, but his expressive eyes filled in the remaining information.
Preston leaned heavy into the counter, crossed his arms, and watched Eli with a steady blue-eyed stare. He looked for guilt, enjoyment, anything that would tip him off to what exactly what these people did. "What happens if it's just someone with abilities that are dangerous?"
"What are they using them for?" Eli asked plainly.
"Eli, you can't tell me that there's not someone out there that has abilities they don't mean to use and they end up screwing things up. What if it's self-defense? What if they're just trying to help?"
Eli stared a moment. "You really think so poorly of me?" he finally asked, turning his back to Preston and making a show of making coffee for another minute, letting a spoon clatter loudly on the counter as he turned back. "I told you, we try to assist first."
Preston wasn't giving this up. He wouldn't be distracted by the coffee and he wasn't just going to abandon the conversation because Eli tried to turn it. "It's not about you. You just said 'try.' What happens when it doesn't work?"
"We only use force with people intentionally using their powers to harm others, Preston. That is what you want to know, isn't it?" Eli asked, eyes intense as he defended himself. "Or are you worried that I run around killing Creations on sight?"
Preston looked away. "I don't know what you run around doing, Eli." He stood slowly up from the lean on the counter, however, taking advantage of his full height unconsciously. Abruptly he felt cold and thin, and he rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously and turned. "Where's my shirt?"
“If you think I spend my time killing innocent men and women, if you truly believe that of me,” Eli said, walking toward where Preston’s shirt had fallen the night before and picking it up. He walked back, and he held it out to Preston. “Then perhaps you should go.” There was more hurt there than anger, raw and vivid.
Preston took his shirt back, and as he spoke he turned the sleeves out the right way and folded the collar over under his fingers. “I didn’t say that.” The blue eyes were steady and, to all appearances, immune to the accusation. They got pissed off at each other quite a lot over various misunderstandings.
“They what were you saying?” Eli asked, taking one step forward, almost encroaching on Preston’s space without even realizing he was doing it.
Preston didn’t move. He pulled the shirt out in front of him, enforcing space without seeming to, and put one arm in. “I’m saying that it’s a lot to assume about an entire race of people, some of whom have been here our whole lives.”
“It doesn’t matter how long we’ve been here,” Eli insisted, pushing the shirt aside. “It matters that we don’t belong here. We’re not native to this place. We’re not meant to have superpowers,” he said, no doubt whatsoever in his voice. “Someone has to ensure we don’t take over this world and make it our own. Have you any idea how many of us hold office at present?”
“Who’s to say we’re not just as good at holding office as they are? We certainly have a better grip on our mortality.” Trapped with one arm in the shirt, Preston shrugged a couple times to get it on, eyes still on Eli’s face.
“It isn’t our world,” Eli insisted. “It isn’t a matter of who does a better job. It’s a matter of the playing field not being even. Given the opportunity, you don’t think we’ll use our abilities to take over control of this world? Honestly, Preston. I have no intention of stopping it, but it isn’t fair either.”
“It’s as much our world as theirs. It’s ours too now. We live here. I’ve always lived here.” Preston didn’t seem to hear the change of pronoun, and his arms dropped so he was just standing there with his shirt open and his eyes hard.
“Your ability, what is it, precisely?” Eli asked, blunt and point blank.
Angrily. “None of your damn business.”
“Are you embarrassed? Is that why you won’t say?” Eli demanded, pushing.
“No!” Now pulling back, physically and visibly. “I mean it’s none of your business.”
“Oh, I see. You’ll suck my cock, but you won’t tell me what your bloody ability is?” Eli asked, calm and quirk of brow.
Preston was visibly stunned by this new line of attack, and he went still and silent for a moment before the defensive anger and (faint, very faint) undertone of concern, perhaps even fear, came back. “Fuck you, Eli.”
Eli recognized the fear for what it was, and he moved a step closer, definitely encroaching on Preston’s space now, chest to chest with the other man. “Now you’re frightened of me? First, you think I kill innocent men and women, they you don’t trust me with your bloody ability, and now you’re frightened of me?” He took a step back. “So glad to know what you truly think about me. If you felt this way, why become involved with me at all, Ash?”
Preston wasn’t an aggressive person by nature, but he shoved back, buttons scraping. “I’m not afraid of you, you arrogant asshole. I never said you killed innocent people, we were having a conversation about this job that involves killing, though, and I’m sorry if I’m defensive about what I can do. And don’t fucking call me Ash.” He shoved a palm between them now, pushing.
Eli shoved back, harder, pushing Preston toward the back of the coach with the force of the gesture. “You are afraid. I heard it in your fucking voice. Don’t lie to me. And you implied I went around half cocked, and well you know it. I trusted you with what I did, what my ability is and with the fact that whatever we’re bloody doing scares me to near death. And you act as if I’m a bomb about to go off in your face.” One more shove and a closing “Ash” for good measure.
“I’m not, you’re just starting shit because I’m not enthusiastic about you being a damned armed hero. You think I don’t know what powder burns look like, Eli?!” Preston’s eyes fired at the sound of his old name, and instead of hauling back and attempting to break Eli’s jaw, or maybe just bloody his lip, Preston turned around and stalked toward the door.
“I’m no hero. Leaving now, are we? Frightened that much?” Eli asked, voice entirely calm, and he was pushing, and he knew it at this point. It still didn’t keep him from doing it.
“We can talk about this when you know my goddamn name.” Preston hauled open the door and was through it, throwing one furious glance back before he slammed it behind him.
Oh, no. No, no, no. Eli had been pushing to get him back inside the apartment, and he didn’t think before cursing and storming after him, yanking the door open so quickly that it slammed back against the wall behind it. One hand found Preston’s shoulder, and it pulled the other man back with well-concealed strength for someone as thin as he was. “Your goddamn name is Ash, you daft pillock.” And, yeah, he yelled that. So fucking what?
Fine, if Eli wanted to have it out in the hallway, they’d have it out in the hallway. Forced back around, Preston shoved angrily at the hand on his shoulder and got right back into Eli’s space, belying the fact that he was the one that just did the retreating. “It’s not my name anymore! I am not that person, and just because you can’t handle fucking anyone that isn’t ASH is not my problem!”
“You complete tit,” Eli muttered, shoving Preston hard into the opposite wall. “As far as I know, it was YOU that had your hands down my pants, regardless of what you think your fucking name is. And it was YOU that just assumed the absolute bloody worst about me in there, so don’t make this about your own identity crisis, because it isn’t about that at all.” He was yelling louder now, neighbors be damned.
“Yeah, make it all about me, Eli,” Preston snapped back, forgetting he was trying to be sensitive about this particular aspect of their relationship. “Get the hell off me!” He started shoving back, and fortunately he had the height to get leverage and throw a hip into Eli’s. He elbowed him back at the same time, and he was out of breath by the time he was shouting again. “You’re probably going to make this about me, just like it always is. It’s never you that wants it, it’s got to be me, or maybe I’m causing it so it’s my fault. You want to talk to me about a fucking identity crisis?!”
“What in the fucking hell are you on about?” Eli demanded, and damn all these words. He ran at Preston, full weight, full force, as if Preston was a tackle dummy. It was a hard hit to Preston’s shoulder and upper chest, hard enough to knock the wind out of him and knock him back, Eli going with him. “I never said,” Eli continued, as if he hadn’t done anything at all and wasn’t scrambling up from the fall, “anything about us fucking one another. Don’t you make this about that, you defensive bastard.”
Preston didn’t have a clue how to fight, much less fall, and he landed hard on his back and side. It must not have been too hard, because as soon as he got his breath back he was getting an elbow underneath him and trying to rise. “You’re the one that made it about that. I’m not going to fucking talk to anyone that doesn’t respect my decisions.” He got up into sitting and pulled a knee in.
“WHAT FUCKING DECISIONS?” Louder.
“WHAT’S MY NAME, ELI?!” Preston shouted back, at the same volume, coming up out of the ground like Lazarus and threatening him with one fist.
Eli walked up to him, from where he’d managed to stumble to his feet. He leaned over, and he whispered in Preston’s ear. “Ash fucking Preston.”
Preston hit him. He was aiming for the cheek, but he probably missed.
He did miss. Preston’s fist caught Eli’s jaw, which made him see stars for a minute, but not long enough to knock him out or knock him back. Eli pulled his own arm back, and he swung for Preston’s nose, a hard round punch that had more force than precision.
That one missed too, fortunately, or Preston would have ended up in the hospital, but he got him hard on the mouth and Preston’s mouth filled with blood as he reeled back. He caught his balance two steps down the hall, the back of his hand against the side of his jaw, and glared daggers at Eli. They were well down past Preston’s door now, but he was fucking done with this conversation. Dropping his hand (pride), he pushed back around Eli to get past.
“You made this about something it isn’t,” Eli said as Preston pushed around him, but he didn’t turn. “You always fucking do that.”
Preston’s shirt had definitely seen better days, but he pulled it back up over his shoulder anyway, hiding rug burns down his back and arm. “What I can do is who I am, and so is my fucking name.” Preston pushed blood off his chin, and then he slammed the door of his apartment. The lock clicked into place a second later.
Eli made it all the way to his apartment door before reacting, and he didn’t hit anything until he was inside, door locked and bolted. He slammed his fist into the space beside the door, breaking through the drywall with a curse. Fucking impossible man. “Fucking impossible man!” he yelled, loudly enough to be heard, and then he stormed off to take a shower. Lovely beginning to the damned day.