Liliana Castle | Sunna (![]() ![]() @ 2011-11-10 20:49:00 |
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Entry tags: | jormungandr, sunna |
What’s a kid like me even got to lose?
Who: Lily & Adam.
What: Adam drags himself up a floor for some first aid.
Where: 605.
When: 28 October, after this.
Warnings: None.
Notes:
It took Adam nearly twenty minutes to lumber to the end of the hall, slowly mount the stairs, and place his beaten body squarely in front of the door to 605. There he stopped, swaying for a moment on his feet, considering whether this was the good idea he hoped it would be or just another desperately wrong turn on a downward spiralling path. His clouded mind provided no ready answers. After an indeterminate amount of time he finally raised his hand, the bloody heel of his hand rapping out a feeble rhythm.
Max had been keeping odd hours for a few weeks and Lily was trying, desperately, not to butt into his life and bother him too much with questions. Still, it weighed on Lily’s mind, but she had found a distraction in Idris who lived only a few floors away.
When there was a knock on the door Lily had hoped it was him. Crawling out of her bed and casting a book aside, Lily threw on an over sized sweater as she padded to the apartment door and pulled it open. Finding Adam on the other side, obviously beaten and worn, came as a great surprise.
“Adam?” She whispered, her hands quickly reaching out to him and touching his shoulders. “Oh my god, Adam, what happened?”
Though he fought not to do so Adam winced at her touch, starting as his shoulder twitched from beneath her hand. How to frame what had occurred was a difficult thing; he did not want to alarm her, but could hardly have her calling the authorities on a friend. ‘Friend’ - now there, he thought, was an interesting word, still more so in the context of the night’s events. He had no idea how to begin to explain. He looked down, suddenly embarrassed at his state of undress, and at having disturbed her at all.
“Long story,” he said, exhaling on a heavy sigh. “I was hoping... you could help with all this. I forgot my first aid kit at home, but if you could just...” A faint flush dusted his cheeks. “Just help me clean up a little. I can take care of the rest.”
“Of course!” Lily exclaimed, ignoring his start when she touched him and wrapping her arm gently around his shoulders to lead him into her apartment. “I have a ton of stuff that can help with the cuts and bruises. Come in, come in, please, take a seat on my couch. Do you want a shirt? I can grab one of my brother’s. I’ll go and get some stuff to help you clean up. Would you like a drink too? I can get you water or juice? We have wine too if that would be better...”
Lily frowned hard and had the worried look of a mother as she looked over Adam’s body and assessed the damage. She’d clean off the blood that formed, that would be first and foremost, and make sure the wounds were clean before she got some black tea for the swelling on his face, that would be her game plan. Despite her sleepiness with it being so late in the evening (and Lily’s tendency to sleep straight through the night) having her friend standing at her door in this condition had been a certain jolt to wake her up.
“Water’s fine,” he said. “I’m afraid wine doesn’t do much for me.” Would that it did, he thought. He would have given much to numb the many and varied pains he struggled with now. How easy it would be to drink himself into a stupor, falling into dreamless sleep and waking only when the worst of the initial pangs had passed. But her careful attentions would help, and for now, that would have to be enough.
He sat as she directed him, careful not to give in to childish temptation and nestle too snugly against the armrest. He would give her plenty of room to work, would be an obedient and willing patient, and then he would leave her to enjoy what rest she could still find in the night. “Don’t worry about the shirt,” he said. “I’m just going back upstairs once we’re done. Nobody will see me.” He looked up to her, smiling weakly as he did. “I’d hate to get blood or ointment or something on your brother’s clothes. I’d feel bad if I ruined them. Thanks, though.”
Lily paused, looking at Adam and considered getting a shirt for him anyway. Instead, she opted to grab a blanket as she came back from the bathroom with wipes, antibiotic creams, and band-aids. Placing the items on the coffee table, Lily gathered her hair and tied it back in a messy pony tail before turning to Adam and sitting beside him. “All right, now are you going to tell me this long story of what happened to your face?” She raised an eyebrow and stared at Adam long and hard. Often times this would get Max to fess up to anything he had gotten himself into and she hoped her best mom-like expression worked this time.
As she waited for his answer, she began to gently dab at the bloody spots on Adam’s face and wipe them clean to expose just where the blood was coming from.
For a time he was quiet, concentrating on little more than collecting his thoughts, on easing the tattered unease of his every breath. It was difficult to understand how best to frame a situation such as this, particularly when he himself was unsure of how it had all come to this. Things had been on track for so long, his relationship with Alexandria progressing in a slow but somewhat steady fashion. Things had begun to make sense. And then James had reappeared in their lives, and everything had gone all to hell.
Adam sighed. Ultimately it all boiled down to a few salient points. Luckily brevity was one of Adam’s strengths.
“I’m in love with my best friend,” he said. A mirthless laugh escaped him, directed at his own obvious stupidity, his awkwardly open manner of phrasing. “She stopped by tonight and... something was off.” He shook his head, feeling the pounding of his headache exacerbated by the motion. “If I didn’t know better I’d say she was drunk. I just didn’t feel right...” He trailed off, uncomfortable with bluntness when it came to this. “I really upset her. I didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t... well.” He cleared his throat. “Her brother showed up later. After she got to sleep, I guess. He’s... pretty protective of her, you could say.”
Lily remained quiet while Adam briefly reviewed the facts of his evening and only responded by a steady raise of her strawberry blonde eyebrows. Placing the bloodied tissues onto the coffee table she let out a small sigh. “Let me get you some Tylenol. You can take it with your water and I’m going to start the water to get some tea bags ready.” She got to her feet and paused. “Sorry, I like doing the herbal remedies and the likes, remember? Tea bags...they’ll take away the swelling from your face.”
Before he could answer she began to drift to the kitchen and continued to talk, raising her voice so that he could hear her but not loud enough to make his head hurt, which she was sure it did. “So, her brother did that to you? She went to him after you...turned her down?”
He nodded, realizing too late she would not see. “Yes,” he called. He lowered his voice when he spoke again, fighting the rising pulse of his headache. “We’d argued about her before. He told me not to hurt her. I guess I can see where he’d think this fit the bill.” He smirked, pressing his fingertips against his throbbing temple. “He’s got some... anger issues.”
“I’d say so,” Lily said with a smile that went unseen by Adam. She took the steaming water off of the stove and poured it into a bowl where she dropped a few black tea bags. Getting a glass of cold water and Tylenol she returned to the couch and offered both items to Adam. He gladly took the pills from her, downing them with a swallow of water, burning its way down his dry throat. “Then again, I’d probably beat up someone if they hurt my brother. I can kind of understand if he thought you hurt her that he would try and avenge her.”
She kept her voice at a gentle pitch, no need for noisiness while Adam was hurt. Soothing, calming voices worked best for a situation like this. Gathering the ointment and a cotton ball, Lily began to gently dab at the torn flesh on Adam’s face with a frown still playing on her lips. “He didn’t know that you were trying not to take advantage of her? I mean...that’s commendable. I suppose if someone did that to my brother I would still be angry but I wouldn’t beat them.”
“I tried to explain.” Adam drew a deep breath, forcing himself to exhale slow and deliberate. “When he gets like that, though...” He shook his head. “He just doesn’t listen. Especially not to me.” His black gaze fell, studying the pale lines of his fingers where they curled around the glass. “She’s always meant a lot to him. He’s a dick to everyone else, but the sun rises and sets on her. Which is good, don’t get me wrong...” His tongue toyed with his piercing, flicking it restlessly. “But when she showed up pissed off and loud and hurt, which isn’t like her...” He shrugged. “I’m sure it looked pretty bad to him.” Another humorless laugh slipped free. “Definitely like more happened than me just trying to do the right thing.”
Lily followed with a small laugh of her own as she cleaned off the excess ointment. “Yeah, that probably would have looked really bad. But I’m sure once she calms herself down she’ll realize what good you did. Hopefully she’ll explain it to her brother and he’ll apologize to you.”
Lily leaned back and inspected her handy work before getting to her feet and drifting back to the kitchen to retrieve the black tea bags. Patting them dry so that there was only a warm moistness in the tea, she returned to the couch and tapped the bottom of Adam’s chin as she raised the teabags in her hand. “Tip your head back so I can put these on the side of your face.” Seeing how he was quickly growing bruised and swollen, Lily frowned again. “Oh, Adam. He really got you good, didn’t he? I’m sorry this happened to you.”
A shallow frown curved his lips, thinning out to something more neutral the moment he felt its presence. He canted his head back as Lily motioned. The moment they touched his skin he felt their soothing warmth; he caught himself praying, oddly, that the remedy might work, that he might more quickly get back into his routine.
“I don’t need an apology,” he admitted. So much the better, he thought: He would sooner get an apology straight from God himself. “I’d be fine with things just being calm again.” His shoulders rolled, nuzzling deeper back into her couch, as if he might sink into its softness and disappear completely. Calm, yes - but he wanted her, too, and now had less of an idea how to go about that than he had before.
“Well, maybe things will calm down,” Lily said with a gentle touch to Adam’s arm. She continued to try and reassure Adam, “You said she wasn’t acting herself, maybe she’ll calm down and see what it is you were doing. Once she realizes that you weren’t trying to be rude, but trying to protect her, maybe she’ll approach you. But you did do the right thing, I think, by not taking advantage of the situation when she didn’t seem to be herself. It just may take time until things return to normal.
“So, just so that I know I’m following this correctly. You love her-” This caused Lily to smile a little. “-but you didn’t take advantage of her. Does she know your feelings for her? That they’re so strong? Or does she just suspect?”
Adam did not see her smile, his eyes carefully averted to avoid seeing the reaction his embarrassment might have caused. He could not bear to be twice humiliated. Her question forced upon him the realization that he had no idea what Alex knew or believed about their relationship. They had barely spoken of it in such overt terms since Christmas; nearly a year had passed now, and it seemed everything and nothing had changed. His inaction in that time embarrassed him now. He found himself loath to even speak it. But Lily had been nothing if not helpful, and it seemed wrong to come to her for aid and withhold this from her now.
“I don’t know if she knows,” he said. “We’ve...” He shifted uncomfortably on the couch, his black-lacquered nails grasping loosely at the cushions. “We’ve never said we love each other, but I think she knows. I...” He nipped at his tongue, feeling more foolish with each passing second. “I never wanted to scare her off. She’s so deliberate, so practical... I worried if I asked too much I’d end up with nothing.”
“Well that’s something you two can discuss in the future,” Lily said quietly as she gently lifted the tea bags from Adam’s face and tipped her head to one side to look. “Well your eye hasn’t gotten any worse. I’ll give you some of this tea, just steep them in hot water, pat them dry, then rest them on your eye. It will help to get rid of the swelling and bruising.”
She got to her feet and went to the kitchen to retrieve more teabags. Putting them into a biodegradable plastic bag she returned to her living room and handed the bag to Adam. “Give it some time, let her lick her wounds and allow yourself to do the same. Then, maybe sit her down and explain all that had happened and admit your feelings to her. Be honest. Girls appreciate honesty and if she was throwing herself at you I bet she feels the same way. And for gods sake, don’t open your door to her brother in the future. Use the peep hole and tell him to go away.” She placed her thin hands onto her lap and smiled at Adam.
That, at least, earned her an earnest laugh. He rose from the couch, her little gift in hand. “Thanks for all your help, Lily,” he said. “It means a lot.” His voice was hushed, his eyes downcast, but at least now he could meet her gaze. Somehow she helped him feel as if this task was not entirely insurmountable; difficult, yes, but not beyond the scope of his humble abilities. He took her advice to heart, nodding again as he moved toward the door. “Thanks again,” he said, quirking a smile as he waved his goodbyes, and slipped out into the solitude of the hall beyond.
Lily watched Adam move down the hall before closing the apartment door. She paused, smiling and content that Adam had felt safe enough to approach Lily with his delicate issue, then headed back to her bed and book.