preston rawlings . {viola} (theviola) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-05-18 19:38:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | lois lane, viola |
Who: Preston and Max
What: Chats.
Where: Outside Bathos.
When: After dreams.
Warnings: None.
Preston, who had heard every word on the commlink as the masks discussed the shared dreams, had spent one sleepless night and then another under the influence of a very effective drug that he was sure meant that he had not dreamed, though really it just meant he didn’t remember what he dreamed. It had not been so difficult getting it, even though he had used some less-than-legal channels to do so, some of Rescue’s contacts to prevent anyone from trying to make a connection to the CEO of Sparke Industries and sleeping problems.
He had set an alarm and come out of the drug-induced sleep with difficulty, fighting his way through what felt like cotton soaked in syrup, and he was on his second cup of coffee by the time 4:30 AM even rolled around. He was never outside Bathos at this time of morning, and there was so much mist he wondered why anyone ever did. Preston turned up the collar of his coat and stared morosely into his coffee.
Max went running every morning at four. Thomas had generally made it in just a little while earlier, and his movements woke her, even if she pretended they didn’t. She’d wait until he climbed into bed, and lie there for an hour before getting up. Today was no different, and by the time Preston made it to the coffee stand, she was rounding the corner in track pants and a tank top, jacket tied around her hips and hair in a ponytail that swung side to side.
“Hey,” she told him, running around behind him and stealing his coffee. “Thanks.” She grinned, dimples and cheeky and proud of herself for actually getting him out of the apartment and into the morning mist. It was still dark, and his features were hard to make out, but she was pretty sure he was miserable. It made her smile wider.
Preston didn’t see why this was funny. Max Main had never struck him as particularly cruel, both before he knew her and after, and her relative ignorance of any relationship the than the heterosexual made him think of her more as sheltered than anything else. He did not grin back, and he couldn’t help but bear her some uncharacteristic ill-will for her cheer. He let her have the coffee and slid back into the bench. He was dressed for work, the shield of expensive suit coat firmly in place, but his tie was askew. “Hello.”
She ordered him a second coffee before joining him at the bench. She handed it to him as she sat, and then she took another sip of the pilfered coffee, before turning to look at him. “I don’t want to give you shit, Rawlings,” she said, still smiling despite the mist and the sour look on his face. “I just want you to get over being embarrassed around me. No big deal, shit moves on,” she said with the easy nonchalance of someone who was raised with more men than women.
He took the coffee and looked down at it. “You think the best method of doing that is reminding me every time you find out something no one else should know?” he asked, trying to stay cool and watching the man behind the cart adjust his scarf against the damp.
She balanced the coffee between her knees, and she slipped her jacket on as her skin cooled, and then she turned her body slightly, so she was facing him. “I think it doesn’t matter,” she told him. “Friends know shit, and they don’t use it against each other, and it’s no big deal. You probably know stuff about me you didn’t know a few days ago, stuff about people in my life. I know stuff about you. Not the end of the world.”
Preston turned to look at her. He didn’t look so great, eyes gritty and red-veined, expression strained even when he was without immediate stress and there was no one to see and nothing in front of him to do. “Maybe not to you.”
“What are you worried about?” she asked, the sun rising just enough to give her a better look at him through the mist. “Not sleeping much, huh?” she asked, and she was starting to wonder if she’d underestimated how big a deal this was to him.
“I don’t like people in my head, Max. There are things I don’t want them to find.” That was what he was worried about. Sideways, to her: “It’s not personal.”
“I know about people finding shit out that tears your world apart,” she told him, assuming he’d heard about the hostaging and the shooting and everything else that resulted from memories ending up where they shouldn’t. “With friends, at least you don’t have to worry about what’s going to end up on the front page.”
“It’s not just the front page. To you, it’s not that big of a deal. You think it’s interesting, foreign enough to be clinical. You don’t understand the--” He took a rather ragged breath there, and lifted the coffee, but a second later he lowered it back down again. “--the people I might lose over this.”
“So, make me understand,” she said, taking another sip of her coffee. She wasn’t asking for herself, despite all indications otherwise. He was beating himself up over something, and she always felt better when she and Gwen talked shit out. She could only assume it’d be the same thing for him. “Are we talking about you liking men?”
“That. And the man.” This time he did drink. He hadn’t looked at her since that first time she turned toward him, and now he was staring off into the mist and thinking about what he needed to do when it burned off. “...Do you think that was him?”
“You’re asking me if you think it was really Sparke,” she said, no upswing of her voice at the end indicating a question. “Just like it was really us.” She looked down at the coffee, warmed her fingers on the thin, paper cup. “Not at the beginning, but toward the end, yeah. Something happen after I woke up?” It would explain a lot.
Preston’s grip on the coffee started to go white, but he stopped himself and put delicate fingers on the rim of the cup and set it aside, balancing it on the endmost rung of the bench. He lifted one hand and touched one brow, and then rubbed it over a tired eye. He didn’t say anything.
That was definitely a fucking yes. She watched his cup, expecting it to teeter and spill at any moment, and then she followed the movement of his finger on his brow. “Alright. Well, whatever happened, he was part of it, right?”
“No. Yes... I don’t know.” The cup didn’t spill. Preston didn’t move, either. The steam curled up past his knee and into his face. He dropped his hand. He wasn’t just worried about this, he was fucking terrified.
She was quiet a few long seconds, trying to think, trying not to give him the piss-poor advice she always followed herself when it came to matters of the heart. “In love with him?” she finally asked, casual, like she was asking him if his coffee had enough sweetener in it.
“Not as much as I was.” He sat back on the bench, pushing his heels out, catching them on the edge of the sidewalk. A cab drove by; he tracked the movement blindly.
“You won’t know if you don’t try. Isn’t that how the saying goes?” she asked, shaking her head and taking a sip of her coffee. “Listen, we’re not teenagers, and it isn’t as easy as it was to just dive headfirst into shit without thinking of consequences, but if you really want this guy, you should let him know while he’s awake.” She smiled. “Not like you have a whole lot to fucking lose, right?”
She was trying, but she was making it worse, not better. “Yes I do.” He picked up the coffee, but not to drink it; he turned the cup around in his hands to keep them warm and give himself something to do that wasn’t smoking. He gave it thirty seconds, possibly a minute, before he gave in. “I’m with someone that cares about me a great deal and I haven’t exactly been the better end of the relationship.” Another quarter turn. “I’ve already thought this through, Max. I’ve been working at this company for ten years, and Anton has never even looked twice at anything that’s not a C cup or better.”
“If you’re not in love with this guy, then it doesn’t matter,” she said, and there was personal opinion there, experience and hurt. “No one wants to be with someone who doesn’t adore the fuck out of them. So, if he’s not it, then he’s better off finding someone who thinks the world spins on its axis because he’s in it.” She paused, and she forced her voice to go calmer, taking a sip of the coffee to make it happen. “As for Sparke, he seemed really willing to go with you in that dream. Maybe he doesn’t know what he wants; he wouldn’t be the first man.” She glanced back at him. “If Sparke said yes, would you have any doubts about leaving the other guy behind?”
“That’s ten years of trust,” Preston said, inadvertently jerking one hand to the side in a gesture of frustration he couldn’t contain. The cup slipped sideways off the bench, splashing hot liquid over his fingers and making him curse, sounding harsh and thoroughly Boston when he did it. He kept speaking as he left the cup where it was and lifted his lapel to find a cigarette in his breast pocket. “I’m not leaving anyone. There isn’t a question for Anton to answer.”
She knew the coffee would fall eventually, and she just watched it without any concern for where it splashed. “And ten years of friendship?” she asked. Because if they had known each other for ten years, she expected Anton to react like a friend, regardless of what the fuck Preston told him. “Listen, I have a friend - a really good friend - who has a thing for me. I don’t have a thing for him. Does it mean we’re not still friends? No. He’ll realize that one day, just like you will, if Anton’s any kind of decent guy.”
Preston gave her a look that was all resentment. “You’re going to try to tell me that if he finds out nothing changes? Because that’s bullshit, and we both know it. You aren’t ever going to look at your friend the same since you found out and he knows that too.” The cigarettes made an appearance, and Preston turned a hip over to find a lighter in his pants pocket.
“That isn’t true,” she said, and it was a calm contradiction, because she didn’t feel she had anything to prove. “I’m not uncomfortable around him, as long as he doesn’t push me, which he does, admittedly. But I don’t think any less of him, and I don’t think of him any differently. I’m hoping he finds a nice woman, one who actually likes poetry, and I can give him shit about his sex life. No big deal.”
Preston made a thick sound of derision in the back of his throat, and then he snapped the lighter to life. He was different, not so calm, selfish in that he paid no attention to how she reacted to anything he said or did. He took a breath of carcinogens and then, shaking the coffee off his hand, he said, "You're going to try to tell me that you looking at him and him looking at you, you knowing he's thinking more than what you are, especially physically, that never crosses your mind?"
“When I’m with him there’s only one thing that makes me uncomfortable, and that’s the fact that I constantly spend my time explaining to him why my current relationship is good enough. My fault, I know, for running my mouth, and this fucking city’s fault for giving him memories he shouldn’t have. But physically? No, and that’s after walking in on a sex dream.” She sat back, crossed her legs and draped an arm along the back of the bench, all in one motion. “And if he does look at you differently? So what. Maybe he needs the wake up call.”
Preston didn’t believe that for a second. Sex, and the knowledge of sex, even the knowledge of desire, changed people, and he’d seen it first hand. People hated him for even having the potential to think things about their precious sexuality, and nothing Max said was going to make him believe that it was all going to be fine. “I don’t want to lose what I have.”
“The guy you don’t love, or Sparke?” Max asked. “Or both?”
“Both, because they’re all I have, except for Shiloh.” He didn’t even care how pathetic that sounded.
Max shook her head, the ponytail brushing over her shoulder with the movement. “That’s not why you stay with someone, Rawlings,” she said, and it was selfish in a way that surprised her coming from him. Her voice wasn’t angry, though, and she reached out and touched his sleeve. “You stay with someone because of them, not because of you.”
“I wouldn’t stay with just anyone,” he said, pulling his arm away from her and obviously defensive at her judgment of his actions--his life. “You wouldn’t understand.”
She didn’t flinch when he pulled his arm away. “I understand what it’s like to be with someone who doesn’t love you. I’ve been doing that all of my fucking life, Rawlings, from my father to my relationships.” She did smile a little, then, just a little. “Even if things are better now, I do get that.”
“It’s one thing if they don’t love you, and you love them. It’s another thing if they hate you for it.” He flicked miserably at the cigarette and watched the ash fall. “Just don’t tell anyone about it, Max, that’s all I care about.”
“Don’t change the subject. We were talking about your reasons for staying, not about your feelings for Sparke,” Max said easily and bluntly, taking another sip of the cooled coffee. “And I’m not going to say anything. Calm the fuck down.”
“I wasn’t talking about Sparke. Anton.” Waving a hand of smoke and ash.
“Who do you think is going to hate you, then, if it isn’t Sparke? Not the other guy,” Max said, trying to make sense of what Preston was saying. She was starting to realize that whatever perfect relationship she’d imagined Preston to be in? It wasn’t real.
“Eli,” Preston supplied. “He’d be hurt and angry. He has been before. There’s a lot between us that isn’t positive, and a lot of years, too.” Nothing, nothing good had ever come of Preston communicating his personal life to anyone. He couldn’t imagine it happening now.
Max tried to balance what she knew of this man with what he seemed to be saying. She tried to come up with something, anything that didn’t indicate he was in love with one man, while dating another because he didn’t want to be alone. She liked Preston, and she believed (firmly and with a sort of stubborn conviction) that he wasn’t the kind of man to intentionally hurt anyone. “Preston,” she said, tone bluntly nonjudgmental. “Do you love this guy you’re with at all? Eli?”
There wasn’t even a pause. “Yes. He... gets in. It is hard to explain.” Preston smiled a little bit. “We fight a lot. Maybe that’s why.” Preston didn’t want to hurt anyone. Quite the opposite, if he thought he was going to seriously hurt anyone around him, it was more likely he’d separate himself rather than wait for it to happen. The impulse backfired more often than not.
She considered that, what he said, over her coffee, and then she nodded, fingers circling the rim of the almost-empty cup. “And if Anton said come here now, would you?” She was pretty sure she knew the answer to that one, but it was worth asking.
“I’d...” Preston trailed off, elbows on his knees, smoke slowly drifting upward. He didn’t know what he’d do. “...He won’t.”
“He might,” Max countered, because that was an important distinction for her. She realized she might be bringing her own shit into it, but this situation wasn’t one she’d ever personally been in, so she hoped that wasn’t the case. “If you want to be with Eli, then it’s fine if you’re not in love with him yet. That shit takes time sometimes.” She smiled a little when she said it. “If you’re only with him because you can’t have someone else that you want? Then that’s shit for both of you. You could find someone you really did feel that way about, and he could too. How long have you been together?”
Preston took a drag off the cigarette. “I’m not sure. A few months now. That’s not the only reason I’m with him...” Rubbing his forehead with a knuckle, he added, “And besides, Anton won’t ask. He needs me, but not that way.”
“Then why?” she asked, looking over at him.
“Why are you with Brandon?” Shrug. “I like him. He wants me. He said he won’t leave this time. ...I don’t know, I just am.”
“I’m with Brandon because I love him. I get the feeling you’d be better off talking to him than me about that particular subject,” she said, but she was smiling when she said it, no ill feelings, at least not just then. “If you asked him why he was with me, you’d probably get an answer closer to yours, along with the family thrown in.”
She stood, grabbing his destroyed coffee cup and tossing it into the nearby garbage can with her own, empty one. She didn’t hurry, giving him a chance to think before she sat down again. “You like him. That’s the only part of what you said that holds water. You shouldn’t be with someone because they won’t leave, or because they want you back. I’m not saying storybook love, Rawlings - that shit, it doesn’t last more than five minutes, and it sure doesn’t last past fucking high school. Relationships, they’re about desire, and respect, and a sort of bone deep friendship, but I think you have to have all three.” She grinned. “And you realize you’re getting advice from someone who completely sucks at this, right?”
He scowled at her. It wasn’t an expression he wore very often, far too bitter and not urbane enough, but he still did it. It worked better because he was tired and there were more lines to use. “I don’t need advice. I didn’t ask for any. Things were fine the way they were.” This was not technically true, but at least they hadn’t been getting worse.
She stayed quiet. It was that kind of quiet that expected something, expected him to fill it and say something else. It was intentional and intense, and she just watched him throughout it. She knew that was bullshit, and she knew that he knew it was bullshit.
“...Getting better, anyway. If it wasn’t for the fucking Creation things we keep getting every few weeks.” Preston aimed a furious look at the sky and whoever was responsible. “I would just leave, work abroad, but...” Eli was here. Shiloh was here. He didn’t want to go.
The Creation things, as annoying as they were, only seemed to bring her family closer together in the long run, and (in her opinion) they had a lot more to lose from them than Preston did, but she didn’t say that. “You’re in love with someone, and you should tell him,” she said, because she couldn’t actually counter anything else he had just said. “You’re never going to get over him otherwise, and you’re never going to be able to move on.” Moving on, Max thought, was important. She was still holding out hope that Jack would, after all, and she thought maybe getting over the unattainable Anton Sparke was a good idea for Preston, as well. “And maybe you won’t have to get over him. Maybe he’ll be into you,” she said with a playful wink.
Preston shook his head stubbornly. “No. Like I said, he needs me. Not the way I... would hope, but he does. I can’t leave him. I just need to put this away, that’s all.” He was talking himself into it. He’d done it before; it had a very familiar ring.
“Staying is bad for you, Rawlings,” she said, because that was obvious. This wasn’t someone Preston was involved with and had problems with. No, this was an entirely different pining thing, unhealthily. It reminded her of Corvus, and she shook her head. “No, you can’t just fucking stay there. It’s just going to make you miserable. Do something about it, or make a change. If he wants you, he’ll come begging, and that might be good for you, too.”
Preston shook his head again. No. “No. It’s my job. It’s important.” She wasn’t going to get him to budge on this, not the job, not Anton. He couldn’t just turn that off, and he wouldn’t even consider it. “He doesn’t... he might not know, but it’s important.” Preston practically ran Sparke Industries, and he didn’t need anyone to know that, not even Anton.
She sighed, standing and moving so that she was in front of him. She looked down at him, and she was quiet a second, making sure she was saying what she wanted to say before she opened her mouth. “You’ll have to choose eventually, Rawlings. You or Sparke, because if you’re in love with him, you’re always going to bring that home. And it’s not fair to whoever you’re with, and they’re going to realize that eventually.”
Preston took the cigarette down again, cradling it between his fingers, watching the backs of his knuckles for a minute. “You’re saying I should tell Eli now.” He looked up, chin sideways, blue eyes serious. He wouldn’t be able to leave his job, not while he was needed, not unless someone made him do it. He’d done the same thing as Rescue, even when he didn’t have enough hours in the day or the equipment to handle it. His expression shadowed again at the thought of what he was meant to say. ‘I don’t want you to get hurt later so you should leave now,’ perhaps. Then what? He went back to being alone again, probably. He didn’t relish the idea.
“I think you should find a new job, one where you aren’t in love with your boss,” she said crossing her arms over her chest. “And give yourself a fucking chance to get over the man, if you don’t intend on pursuing him.” She smiled. “I can put in a good word with Thomas, if you want me to. Or with my sister and Monarch.”
Preston shook his head, but it was slower this time. “Brandon already asked.” Several times, in fact. “You’re not hearing me. They need me where I am.”
“Anton Sparke is a grown man. It might do him some good to have to wipe his own ass for awhile, Rawlings.”
That earned her a glare. It wasn’t just bitter, it was hostile. “I don’t particularly care what your estimation of my job is, Max.”
“I wasn’t referring to your job. I was referring to Anton’s apparent dependence, which has you worried. I’ve seen the man throw a tantrum,” she reminded him, seemingly unconcerned with his hostility. “It would do him good to see what he’s been taking for granted all these years, and some distance would do wonders for you,” she said with certainty, slipping the jacket off and tying it around her waist again, then stretching her legs against the bench beside him in preparation for the run back.
The hostility evaporated. Preston was not naturally an angry person; it took him a while to get there, usually, and a lot to make him stay. “It’s not just him,” he said, reluctantly considering the idea. “It’s the company, too.” Preston could think of several people off the top of his head that might replace him--though Anton would probably need to hire two. He gave himself a little shake. What was he thinking? “I was just on vacation. I just care about what I do, that’s all. I don’t need distance from my job.”
“You need distance from Sparke,” Max corrected, “and unless he’s planning on leaving the company, which I doubt, it means you have to leave. You need enough time away to see if you can get over it or not, and that doesn’t come from a week or two in another place.”
“I can’t do that to him. Just because I have a problem, that doesn’t mean I should just... just leave.” He made a little gesture with the cigarette hand, and it glowed as it passed his face.
“It’s a job you’re leaving, not a relationship, not a friendship. If that’s there, beyond Sparke Industries, you’ll still have it.” She smiled, made an attempt at being reassuring. “Your career shouldn’t be based on feelings about someone.”
It was increasingly obvious to Preston that his career was probably the least of it. He was dedicated, yes, but it was all wrapped up with Anton--and very tightly, at that. “If I can’t do that?”
The question alone indicated how difficult it was going to be for him to walk away, and she knew it. “You won’t get over him, and you’ll always be how you are right now.” She hazarded a guess. “Jealous day in and day out when he looks at someone else, never fully invested in whoever’s at home. You’ll end up with nothing, Rawlings.” She tried to keep her voice kind, soft, but she was more accustomed to bluntness, and it only worked a little. “You’re in your thirties, right?” she asked, knowing he looked older than her. “Maybe it’s time to start living for yourself, instead of for Anton.”
Preston didn’t say anything. It didn’t seem the same. He was more invested in Eli than he’d been in anyone else, aside from Anton. His relationship with Eli was a veritable avalanche in comparison to all his former relationships, and he had been sure Anton would continue to recede into the distance. Preston hardly ever saw him, these days. He was always in the lab, and any day now he would explode out of there in that damn suit and all hell would break loose... Anton caused him a lot of stress, but he didn’t want to lose that trust he’d worked so hard to build, even if he didn’t think it was going to become anything more. He didn’t want to lose Eli, who was closer than a friend and cared about him more than anyone else he knew, aside from his brother. It wasn’t a decision Preston could make. He would just have to find a way to make this work.
She placed a hand on his shoulder, the gesture of affection awkward, but genuine. “Stay his friend, if you want, but find a career that’s about you,” she told him, straightening and looking down at him. He was going to ignore everything she’d just said, and she knew it. But she liked this guy; she wanted some of those fucking frown lines off his forehead.
“Business isn’t like that. There’s not a business I’m interested in going into. I like the one I’m... I like what I’m doing now.” He didn’t really know what to do with the affection, either, but he did at least as well as she did. He patted her arm as she withdrew it. “I know you’re trying to help. Thank you.”
She leaned down, and she kissed his cheek, which she was better at than the patting. “It’ll be good for you,” she said before straightening. She started jogging in place a second later, and she grinned. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
He moved his mouth, but he didn’t smile, it was just the gesture of it. Preston functioned by putting certain things away. Max insisted he face them. He didn’t like her for that. Still, there were some things he did like about his friend, and he was sorry for yelling at her. “Go get fit.” He flipped a hand.
She looked at him a second longer, realization settling in that she might have pushed him too far and lost his friendship because of it. But it was something she knew would be good for him, and at least now the idea was in his mind. Whether or not he did anything with it, that was up to him. She gave him a half-smile, one that didn’t reach her eyes, and then she was off into what remained of the misty morning.