log: adrian and ren
The dark-haired man in the chair didn't stir, not until the voice spoke over his shoulder. When it did, he started sharply, straightening and turning his head, feeling the sickening lurch of waking at the edge between sleep and wakefulness. "What? Sorry."
He recognized the man standing over him, only after looking for a few good, hard seconds, as the who had made him a cup of peppermint tea several hours ago. The mug was sitting, still and cold, on the table beside the chair. The book Adrian had not bothered to actually read was still splayed in his lap, a thick weight of paper and glue, something hat he had plucked off the shelf without looking at the title. It was a prop, only, to give him a reason for sitting there.
He couldn't go back to the house. That was the trouble. It had been too many nights of quiet. At least he didn't start every night by walking by Newt's closed doorway anymore. He hadn't been able to bring himself to confront the unspoken question of their existent/non-existent relationship until he put himself at a physical distance, an act he was sure had been in everyone's best interest. Newt must feel as awkward as he did, he reasoned, being next door to him, and Connie needed the company. Her presence made the Gunster home a warm place, at least when she was in it.
If that warmth didn't penetrate any further than the skin for him, that was within reason. Nothing did. His shock at being startled awake spiked deep enough to make him flinch for a minute, and then the discomfort of it subsided, lapping away into cool nothing.
He just hadn't wanted to sit in the house alone with his own thoughts tonight. That was all. It was quiet inside him until his environment reflected that quiet back, and then the cacophony, dangerous, as the events in the woods had demonstrated, began to rise up. The constant restraint he kept on himself had to be tightened.
He closed the book in his lap, mostly for something to do with his hands, and found that he'd plucked down a copy of Vanity Fair. Not really his sort of thing. He set the book face-down on the table.
The shape that had unknotted itself from its position while sleeping, legs pulled up and the heels of his shoes braced on the edge of the plush seat, was of average size, not tall or short, perhaps a little too thin these days. The hands that placed the book down had knuckles dotted with faint blue bruises and old pink scar tissue, evidence of boxer's splits, and a kind of lust for the fight he hardly looked capable of. His voice was soft, and his speech deliberate. "I hope this has happened before," he said, with the best smile he could muster. Not his best ever, to be sure.