Title: On The Page
Characters/pairing: Dan/Adrian
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Um, second-person? I hear people not liking that is a thing.
Notes: Thanks to keevacaereni for the beta. :)
Desire is a thing you learn in the abstract. In the androgyne geometry of the locker room, the conjunctions of teenage limbs (seen always, it seems, through the promise-thick sunlight of late June) or in a line of poetry, stirring something brief and unknown that trails immediately into nothingness, a half-remembered sense-impression.
And if the notion of touching occurs, or the idea that poetry should, perhaps, be spoken aloud, it feels odd and alien, clumsy, and you put it out of your mind. You do not actually like your classmates, however familiarly you have learned to greet them, however convincingly you have learned their jokes and gestures and how to play at being one of them. The words appear more dignified on the page.
You do touch, eventually, of course. It's easier than not doing so. So many questions, each a potential hazard. Perhaps you are even prevailed upon to read poetry to a few of them, the young men and women whose names and ardent mouths blur quickly and inevitably into one.
You tire of each -- and of the whole thing -- soon enough.
It's only natural. It doesn't touch you, all this skin-friction and sweat and shuddering breath. There's no fulfilment, here, no communion of souls. (A relief. You never expected anything like that, never wanted it; the idea seems unbecoming and faintly wretched.)
The fallout is worse. Being at the center of other people's emotional messes is time consuming -- all those polite rejections and sympathetic noises -- and after the first few times, you decide it's more than you can afford..
After all, there are more important things on your mind.
He is among the last of them. You are already growing weary of it when he strides into the meeting-room, all earnestness and optimism, and steps up in front of you, holding out his hand. But his chuckle as he introduces himself as Nite Owl ("Uh, not the original one. Obviously.") falls undecided between pride and self-deprecation, and even though you cannot see them, you know that his smile reaches his eyes.
When you do get around to seeing them, months later, they're wide beneath you, focused wonderingly on your face and utterly unafraid of being seen.
You don't envy him that fearlessness, though the honesty might be disarming if you were someone else. Even as things are, it isn't without its charms. The sensation of holding another human creature so completely within your power is not thrilling, as one might expect to be, not frightening or dizzily unfamiliar. Your heart does not race; you feel no answering wonder; you are not humbled. It's as natural as walking.
He talks to you, too. In the ironed-flat moments before sleep or after a patrol, sharing all the banal dreams and disappointments of childhood (the usual: there are no knights in shining armor; girls don't like fat boys with glasses) and the naive future hopes of a man who really seems to believe that the world can be made better one drug dealer, one nest of knot-tops at a time.
You realize that he is beginning to trust you. You acknowledge each confidence with a murmured expression of polite interest or a kiss pressed to the spot behind his ear that never fails to distract, and always with silence. It's enough, at first.
*
"You never talk about yourself," he says suddenly, into the thin, blueing darkness of a 5am. The apartment, as usual, is yours, his presence in bed beside you beginning to become... not an irritant, exactly, but an intrusion, something of which you cannot fail to be aware. "I've told you everything. About my parents, college, how I got into all of this. I mean, you don't have to, or anything, but sometimes I feel like I don't know you at all."
And then the curious brush of his thumb against your cheek, asking permission to ask. You look aside and away, denying it.
"It's okay," he says, gently. "I understand."
He doesn't, of course. He never will. Perhaps he will never forgive you that, either.
*
The crack of your skull against glass is solid. Loud in the windy vastness of the Arctic that is pouring in now, wild and entirely outside; invading your sanctuary. A righteous sound. Satisfying.
And you know that there is a connection, between the sound and the look of betrayal in his eyes and the hoarse, rising register of his voice. (And the gentle hand on your face, fifteen years ago, and I don't know you at all.) It exists. It makes sense, in the abstract.
(You hardly feel a thing.)
He leaves, and you wait a while. Your dizziness subsides and your bruises begin to ache. The encroaching elements are no longer unsettling, no longer an invading force. If anything, they're comforting in their inhumanity.
So you stand in the wind and the snow and the broken glass, and they reflect your secrets back at you in fragments. These are the only things that will ever face you with them, now. They're written on each surface, each splintered piece, each mark on the marble floor.
You read them in silence.