[ A bubble swells and bursts somewhere in his chest, leaving behind it a churning miasma of dread. Having avoided feeling much of anything until now, it doesn't come as too much of a surprise to find himself faintly nauseous. This was not a conversation he'd wanted to do wrong.
New habits born of really, really old ones kick in. He replies as the rest of him is still busy reeling, and there's a whole paragraph of justification blinking in his messaging box before he catches up with himself and has just enough wherewithal to delete it before it's sent. All that's left is one line: ]
I'm sorry. I made the wrong call.
[ Apologizing for what happened in the Aerie with his message had never been the intention - you can't apologize for what he'd done to Nate with a text. But he'd clearly made a misjudgement in choosing allowing him space over reaching out. Or perhaps just in the way he'd done it. The frantic, reawakened part of him races in circles of thought, searching for the moment he should've come to a different conclusion and made a different choice, desperately seeking out a resolution that can't retroactively be made.
The rest, disconnected, watches impassively on, content in the deed having been done and its consequences having already come to pass. A thin strain of indignation, perhaps, at his giving so much ground without a fight. ]
[ Nate gets that tickling, tingling sensation that suggests he just managed to narrowly dodge an essay's worth of material. ]
yeah, probably. i'm sorry for being a dick, but i'm trying to compensate for the 2 decades where i was doormat, so we're all screwing up in some form or another.
i can't say i'm not going to instinctively seize up the next time i see you, but i figure it's like exposure therapy. pretending it's not a thing doesn't make it go away. trust me, i've tried that.
i've also done the whole 'feel really crappy about awful things you did that affected other people' thing before and it doesn't help anybody, so don't feel like you have to do social parkour for my sake. we can't move forward if we keep feeling bad about what we can't take back.
I'm not going to apologize to you about this over text. You're owed better than that, unless that's how you'd prefer it. Better than this, too, I know. But I didn't want to you to bump into me at work if you weren't ready and I didn't know how to broach that without implying an obligation for you to talk about it.
[ It sounds coarse, as academic as everything else he says these days, words forming points forming paragraphs. He can see it happening. He has no idea how to stop it, how to get on the level Nate's on now.
The problem is with feeling bad, but only insofar as knowing that he feels bad had informed his decision not to engage with those feelings. Remorse as he's manifested it in the past has consequences he can't afford now— the need for recovery and, more to the point here, a lack of emotional control. The danger in feeling and the expression of it is that words spoken with emotion influence people in ways you can't predict. Emotion manipulates without meaning to.
Manipulating people in very direct, abjectly horrible ways is fresh enough in his memory that he'd rather never do it again, to any extent, if he can knowingly avoid it. But if this is the result, maybe he's going to have to reconsider his options.
Should've just fucking asked him if he wanted to talk about it in the first place. In hindsight that might not have been such a big, bad, terrible thing to do.
We can't move forward if we keep feeling bad about what we can't take back. Forward it is then. Or if not forward, then at least adjacent. Somewhere other than stuck in the same spot, a river flowing around a rock. ]
[ Nate thinks Stephen might need to take a leaf out of the same book he peddled on Nate back when Sam arrived, but he knows he's in no state to say so without coming across like a total asshole. There's just the need for space, critical to recovery. Until he can at least get the right thoughts in his head without the kneejerk desire to immediately delete Stephen's messages from his inbox.
But that's Nate's problem. ]
i think the only thing i need right now is time.
[ And a really good disguise he can wear out of doors. ]
[ It's a fair request, and all he'd been intending to give. The state of his attempt is a fairly sure sign that, in spite of all his determined assertions otherwise, Nate might not be the only one who needs more time.
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no subject
New habits born of really, really old ones kick in. He replies as the rest of him is still busy reeling, and there's a whole paragraph of justification blinking in his messaging box before he catches up with himself and has just enough wherewithal to delete it before it's sent. All that's left is one line: ]
I'm sorry. I made the wrong call.
[ Apologizing for what happened in the Aerie with his message had never been the intention - you can't apologize for what he'd done to Nate with a text. But he'd clearly made a misjudgement in choosing allowing him space over reaching out. Or perhaps just in the way he'd done it. The frantic, reawakened part of him races in circles of thought, searching for the moment he should've come to a different conclusion and made a different choice, desperately seeking out a resolution that can't retroactively be made.
The rest, disconnected, watches impassively on, content in the deed having been done and its consequences having already come to pass. A thin strain of indignation, perhaps, at his giving so much ground without a fight. ]
no subject
yeah, probably. i'm sorry for being a dick, but i'm trying to compensate for the 2 decades where i was doormat, so we're all screwing up in some form or another.
i can't say i'm not going to instinctively seize up the next time i see you, but i figure it's like exposure therapy. pretending it's not a thing doesn't make it go away. trust me, i've tried that.
i've also done the whole 'feel really crappy about awful things you did that affected other people' thing before and it doesn't help anybody, so don't feel like you have to do social parkour for my sake. we can't move forward if we keep feeling bad about what we can't take back.
no subject
I'm not going to apologize to you about this over text. You're owed better than that, unless that's how you'd prefer it. Better than this, too, I know. But I didn't want to you to bump into me at work if you weren't ready and I didn't know how to broach that without implying an obligation for you to talk about it.
[ It sounds coarse, as academic as everything else he says these days, words forming points forming paragraphs. He can see it happening. He has no idea how to stop it, how to get on the level Nate's on now.
The problem is with feeling bad, but only insofar as knowing that he feels bad had informed his decision not to engage with those feelings. Remorse as he's manifested it in the past has consequences he can't afford now— the need for recovery and, more to the point here, a lack of emotional control. The danger in feeling and the expression of it is that words spoken with emotion influence people in ways you can't predict. Emotion manipulates without meaning to.
Manipulating people in very direct, abjectly horrible ways is fresh enough in his memory that he'd rather never do it again, to any extent, if he can knowingly avoid it. But if this is the result, maybe he's going to have to reconsider his options.
Should've just fucking asked him if he wanted to talk about it in the first place. In hindsight that might not have been such a big, bad, terrible thing to do.
We can't move forward if we keep feeling bad about what we can't take back. Forward it is then. Or if not forward, then at least adjacent. Somewhere other than stuck in the same spot, a river flowing around a rock. ]
If you need anything. Anything, Nate.
And I'm sorry again. For this conversation.
no subject
But that's Nate's problem. ]
i think the only thing i need right now is time.
[ And a really good disguise he can wear out of doors. ]
but i'll let you know. thanks.
no subject
In respect of it there's no answer for now. ]