Logs:Ministering Angels

Ministering Angels
cn: brief allusion to violence & sexual assault
Dramatis Personae Dawson, Hive
In Absentia	2020-10-10 "I am home."
Location <NYC> Tessier Residence - Upstairs - Greenwich Village
The upper floor of this apartment holds the bedrooms; one master bedroom and three smaller ones. One has been converted to a lounge, couches and /more/ books and a large desk by its window. The other two smaller bedrooms upstairs, in strange departure from the rest of the house's style, seem decorated more with younger occupants in mind. One of them, styled largely in purples and blues, has a pair of twin beds with matching butterfly-patterned bedspreads and a similar fabric for the window curtains; a wealth of stuffed toys is neatly arranged on both. The other is very green, its bedspread green-and-black striped; the walls are covered with a host of movie posters. Between the two bedrooms stands a bathroom, cheerfully decorated with colourful mosaic fish in its tiles. Their head has been throbbing for most of today, the world still too bright, every noise pounding in at their senses and the cacophony of other minds clattering louder, even, than usual. Hive has not left the Tessiers' guest bedroom, buried under blankets on the pullout couch, the plate of coffee and breakfast set on the desk for him long since grown cold and his own thoughts a little bit obscured in the crowd. It's a crowd that's starting to pare itself down. Erratically, in fits and starts, not quite as smooth a transition as Hive might have handled shedding the psionic bulk himself. Somewhere in the middle of this, the food vanishes from the desk. Somewhere in the middle of this, the chaotic bright clatter of Dawson's mind is becoming more distinct. It's currently occupied with no small measure of worry, flitting in restless agitation among the forest of them and uprooting the weeds with prejudice. The door doesn't open again; one moment the room did not have him in it and the next it simply does, breakfast tray refreshed this time with water, hot coffee, orange juice, potato hash. Dawson has cleaned up and changed since work, khakis and a plain grey polo, now. The worry in his mind isn't mitigated at all by the host of miscellaneous nonsense that keeps clattering up against it, fretting about Hive jostling with an appreciation for the Tessiers' hospitality on top of an out-of-proportion irritation about one lingering wrinkle in his shirt up against a song refrain stuck on loop over an odd disbelief that it's just about to be Coming Out Day again up against -- -- a gentle tug-tug-tug at Hive's mind. There's a shifting underneath the covers, slow and accompanied by a low grumble. The movement, however small, sends another ripple of pain through their mind. Go to sleep, isn't really a coherent thought or a compulsion, just -- some kind of apprehension. Vague, ill-formed. Go home. "Am home." Dawson's answer comes, quiet and sure as he settles on the edge of the mattress. He rests a hand on the part of the blanket lump that is Hive's back, rubbing slowly. New fragments are getting added into the restless dart of thoughts; Polaris on their couch, Hive sitting on the fountain in the garden, Matt's quiet detachment, the smooth feel of tequila rolling down their throat. The sharp cold panic that accompanied it. Some of the panic isn't memory so much as a slow choking feeling that's beginning to climb back into their throat. It makes the next repetition softer, fiercer: "I am home." Hive's breath catches, and when he pulls himself back from Dawson it's sharp and quick, an abrupt untethering of metal roots that cleaves them back in two once more. "You were at work, I didn't -- mean for -- shit." This isn't mirrored externally -- out here, he's pressing into the touch, slowly turning himself under the covers to pull them back, settle his head against Dawson's leg. "I'm a shitty fucking home, man. You deserve --" The pause that follows this is long. Hive curls his arm around the other man's knee. "I'm not getting you to fucking heaven." Dawson does not bother to try and stem the rapid flood of feelings that follow this severance, anger and fear flashing most prominent before they settle down into a quieter anxiety. << Home my home you're my home, >> -- this comes as a steady and determined echo to himself, trying to shove back down the nauseated slick wet floor at his back the smell of sweat and cigarettes in his nose guilty the crunch of bone and flesh crushed as they materialize within a cement floor panic that follows. "I think I'm not getting me to heaven, all by myself. You can't go stealing credit for my work." He curls his fingers through Hive's hair once the other man emerges, rubbing slow and gentle at the back of his neck. "You were freaking out. And drunk. How could I not notice that?" He's trying not to dwell on his own last-night freakout, strongly fighting the urge to drop everything and take off from work. Hive squeezes his eyes shut, his fingers curling tight against Dawson's knee. << Sorry. >> For a while nothing follows. Just the continued slow squeeze of fingers and his face pressing down into the other man's thigh. When he speaks again it's very soft. "Am I wrong?" The question draws an immediate response from Dawson, almost violent in its intensity. Sifting through a week's worth of death threats and people pleading for advice and support in his Twitter messages. Polaris's hand squeezing at his. Straightening a framed Family Proclamation where it's been knocked askew on a wall. The warmth of Hive's sheltering mental touch. The safety of being them. The quiet comforting joy of folding back into each other after too long apart. Watching a former Stake President explain (so gently! so patiently!) in church that there will never be a place for people like him in eternity. His fingers drop to Hive's shoulder. Curl in there, hard. Something inside him continues its unhappy roil. "There was a time in our history that the Church sealed grown men to each other." His voice is quiet; the stab of anger and hurt that accompanies it is not. "My life is never going to be -- what I imagined it would. That's just a fact. But whatever it is, whatever I'm going to make of it, I want to do that with you." Hive sits up -- too abruptly, judging by his swift grimace -- looking up at Dawson for the first time. "See, you say that shit with your mouth but your mind is screaming another fucking tune. I don't want a life where you're -- just. Miserable and afraid all the time. I don't want to be holding you back from something better." Unsurprisingly, this does nothing to stem the churn of Dawson's fear, brighter and stronger now than it was just seconds before. << what if he's right >> after several echoes just morphs into << he's right >>, rattling there over and over and over. His hands fall to his lap, fingers clenching tight around the mechanical ones. << he's right >> is shifting into << go you should go you should GO he's right you're making this worse you're making him worse -- >> and it takes a deliberate force of will not to just dwell in this spiral. He clenches tighter at the mechanical hand. Breathes deeply. "You are my family. Whether the Church is ready to acknowledge that or not. I just -- have to believe that our Heavenly Parents see things a little more clearly." He gets up, going to pick up the glass of juice from the tray and return to the bed with it. A slow sip of the cold sweet liquid is a little bit more helpful in keeping the frantic spiralling -- contained, at least, if not quiet. He offers the glass to Hive afterwards (<< drink >> though they aren't connected anymore, the impulse is still there, a very familiar phantom limb kind of feeling as his brain tries unsuccessfully to move the other man's hand), his eyes shifting back to his friend's. "I don't want any eternity that you aren't part of." "And I don't want a lifetime of feeling that panic and wondering if I could fix it by just --" Hive cradles the glass in both hands, shoulders hunching. Tethered or not, the errant thought from Dawson does pull one hand up, reflexively, taking a long swallow of juice at the prompting. He claps his hand to his mouth to stifle the half-choked laugh that follows. "Fuck. I don't know where this leaves us." Something unclenches inside Dawson when Hive's hand lifts. He scoots closer, leaning up against the other man and curling one arm around his side to draw Hive in against him. << I don't know. Here. Where I want to be. >> The hammering fear in his mind has only been pushed down with a very great effort. It doesn't make the flood of relief any less real as he settles in against Hive. There's another quiet mental reminder << probably dehydrated drink drink >>, a small press of his scarred cheek to the side of Hive's head. "It leaves us. The rest --" He has to swallow down against the hard lump in his throat, the sentence hanging unfinished in the space between them.