[for rian]

[fairywren]

Wren is kind of a teenager when it comes to processing emotions sometimes, complete with flopping on the couch. Where it comes to exes (The Ex, there's only really the one and he's an ex-everything, as Wren tried to explain in spelled out sign language once to Hana), there's no exception there, just more dancing around the subject. He fights it, hides himself in music, makes faces at Hana who gives him a look like he's being a little stupid that doesn't make him feel like it. (Apologizes to Hana for talking about his ex. Gets looked at like he's being a little stupid.)

But after the - whole mummy thing - the gut reaction to Rian in danger, in maybe danger, it's running in his veins. They've got to talk. There's got to be some middle ground. They're not the naive children they were once upon a time, they know better than to expect fantasies about each other, and that means acting like it.

So he leaves a terse message on Rian's machine, and a weird text conversation later he's sitting at Quill watching the colors of coffee and milk swirl into each other and waiting, and thinking.

Comments

[wastelandflower]

It takes Rian a little longer to get there, a consequence of having to arrange a baby-sitter. He's not entirely sure that that Audrey girl is exactly fond of kids, but he'd promised her new guitar strings and a repaired case and she'd taken Sophie on with the dubious look of someone handling a bomb.

They'd be fine.

He makes eye contact with Wren but goes to the counter first. Whatever the conversation they're about to have, Rian already knows he needs coffee.

A quadruple espresso over ice with milk later, he sits down across from Wren. "So..."

[fairywren]

"So," Wren says, and really wants a cigarette, already. Instead he takes a long sip of latte and looks up at Rian questioningly. "We need to talk," he says, which is what he'd already said, twice now in message and text.

"That other day, at the museum," he starts. "I guess it threw me for a loop." He rests both hands on the cup and laughs at that. "Not the mummy," he adds. "Worrying about you. Look, there are things we've said to each other we can't take back. Assumed. But there's gotta be a way we can --" He looks up. "Just talk." God, he's bad at words when they're not set to music.

With Rian just sitting across the table, an over-caffeinated coffee in hand, he wants to reach across. He misses viscerally the ability to just be them, but if they skip figuring out who and what the hell that is now it's gonna be fucked up all over.

[wastelandflower]

"No, of course not the mummy. That's the perfectly normal bit," Rian agrees. Then he winces; this is supposed to be them trying to fix shit, not trading sarcastic comments like everything's okay until one of them trips over a proverbial land mine.

Rian sighs and backtracks, searching for a better start. "We always looked out for each other." And needled out the worst in one another too.

He should just say it. Just get over his pride and apologize like he meant to before getting intimate with a decorative urn.

"I was out of line, before that. I wouldn't have blamed you for leaving me there on my own."

[fairywren]

"Welcome to Siren Cove," Wren says, wryly, but he shuts himself up too, looking back up at Rian.

They did. Even at the worst of things, they had each other's back when it came down to it. Wren likes to think they inspired the best in each other, too sometimes, but it's hard to remember what of his memory is accurate.

The admission means more than Wren can say - Rian's always been stubborn. "Thank you," he says. "I'm not going to tell you it's all right," he says, raising an eyebrow. "Because it's not okay, what got said. But I'm not angry." He rubs his neck. "You'd have had plenty of reason to not accept my help, there, too. And I'm sorry for that."

[wastelandflower]

"It's not all right," he agrees. Even at his most resentful, his most selfish, he knows that he doesn't even know the girl. He's jealous, always has been, and recognizing that it why he's the one at fault is a bitter pill indeed. "It was a shit thing to say about someone who had no part in our fuck up."

He wasn't altruistic enough to say that everything with Enfants was all on him; they'd both thrown meat into that pot.

"Would've been like you going after Sophie." And there are things to say there. Rian tells the. To himself regularly; he'd been a fool for trying to play house and marrying Robin, but to that end Sophie was the result, not the cause.

"I never liked fighting with you..." No that was a lie. He'd taken plenty of sick satisfaction in those last years, finding just the right cruel words to hurt him, but he hadn't liked it. Sought it, wanted it, but never liked it. "These days it seems like the only thing I know how to do."

[fairywren]

"Well, Hana could fight back a little better than Sophie," Wren says with a small smile. "If she wanted to." He squints at his coffee. She wouldn't, though; Hana is, in this regard, a little endlessly patient about Rian.

He gets it, though. God, he'd hated Robin. One of the only times he'd felt pure jealousy, and not even of her being with Rian: Rian and Robin together was like a neon sign broadcasting everything he couldn't be. It only made it worse that she was industry. Respectable.

He has to bite back his initial response, which is to question how good Rian is at it for something he doesn't like. "Me either." He looks up. "What if we just -- didn't?" It's childish. Naive. It's so the same part of Wren that always stupidly thought that everything would be okay because he wanted it to be so badly.

He shakes his head, recognizing that. "I know it's not that easy. You know? I hurt you, and I just kept doing it. I don't know if there was a way we could have made things work, gotten what we both wanted, back then, but I didn't try."

[wastelandflower]

He allows himself a small laugh at that. From what little he knows of her, Hana is sweet and well-liked in town, but with a core of industrial steel. In a way, it almost makes sense that Wren's drawn to her.

It's easier, too, to be cruel, to learn how to fire back viciously. It's why they'd both been so good at it; the better they knew each other, the easier it was to jab into to soft spots that hurt the most.

"What, just shook hands, called a truce, and started over?" Rian smiles thinly. In theory, the idea sounds lovely but they know each other too well to just drop everything and make up. That's what had ruined them with Enfants: always making up by pretending they didn't have any problems.

"I'd like to start over. This town's no that big...but God, Ren," it's a subtle difference in pronunciation, lacking the rolled 'r' that indicates his nickname. It's as nuanced and intimate as Ri instead of Rian. "We're assholes sometimes."

[fairywren]

It is too easy to be cruel. Rian's passionate, he holds his opinions, he's strong and a fighter and electric at times. Wren loves that about him, did before he even knew who he was, probably always will: but it means picking a fight with him is a little like standing in a field holding keys in a thunderstorm.

And Wren -- he's never bothered to psycho analyze himself because he doesn't have to. He's always been too much or not enough, left behind. He doesn't try because he knows what happens next: someone walks away. It just takes the right amount of pushing.

Neither of them has ever managed to swallow their anger and just talked through it completely, worked on it. Not more than a little, anyway. If Wren knew what was at stake, how he'd feel -- well, he's not sure.

When Rian says it that way, he almost laughs at how stupid it sounds. It'd be nice, but it's impossible.

The more personal nickname is a punch in the gut and he bites his lip at the painful, lost familiarity of it. "Yeah, we fucking are." He looks down, thinking about all the things he thinks about himself that are directly from Rian. The things he's kind of learning to let go, slowly. It makes him wonder how much in Rian's head is scar tissue from him, and he hates that idea.

"I don't want to start over, exactly," he says, slowly, trying the words out and their meanings. "Not as if nothing happened. We need our past and I don't want to forget that. But I want to start fresh, with you. I want to get to know you the way you are now. We lost a lot of time being horrible. Or not knowing each other at all."

He takes a sip of coffee, edgy. "If you want that."

[wastelandflower]

"Why the hell did we meet over caffeine? I need to be drunk for this conversation," Rian says. He smiles ruefully and shakes his head because they both know this is a conversation that needs to be had while sober, serious.

"I don't want to go from you being everything to you and then be nothing at all. I don't imagine you want to do that either." He hopes so at least. "But I don't know how to not look at you and burn. I mean...we always did that, you know? Burned bright and fast." And then burned out.

They need to figure out how to do things evenly, moderately. They've always been shit at that.

"But I do want to figure this out."

And say it. God he needs to just say it.

"And apologize for what I said. That's what I should say first."

[fairywren]

Wren raises a wry eyebrow; he wouldn't mind being a little intoxicated either, but that would just lead to one of a limited number of endings, none of which are talking things out the way they need to be. Or even talking about talking things out.

He takes a breath. That strikes right to his heart, and Wren isn't sure how he'd react if he was someone other than he is. Who he is is relatively impassive, through nature or adaptation, and the hard swallow and stare at Rian and the way his hands tighten on the cup he's holding feel like he's broadcasting his emotions on a giant billboard.

They did, whether angry or enraptured or creating. Kindling. He doesn't know how to stop it either. But he's tired of being all light and no warmth.

"Yeah," he says and nods. He just takes it in; it's a lot to take. "I -- That's why I called you." Because he wants to figure it out.

"Are you going to?" he asks after a second, because he's an asshole, but it's gentle, and smiling a little, and a little overwhelmed.

[wastelandflower]

Rian raises an eyebrow right back, silently reminding Wren of why they aren't drinking now. He takes in the way that Wren's hands tighten, the threat of a frown on his face, and Rian takes a deep breath. The first part needs to come first. "I'm sorry I was a shithead and called your gi--Hana--I'm sorry I said what I said about Hana. I'd no right and it was a shitty thing to do."

Swallowing his pride has never looked good on Rian, but for Wren, for who they were, he's got to try.

"And if you teach me the sign language to say I'm sorry, I'll pass the message on to her as well."

So, hopefully, that's step one.

[fairywren]

It's almost still a surprise, despite the tease and despite Rian saying he needed to say it. Some part of Wren just isn't expecting it and it feels like a kit.

"It's all right. I mean." What the hell do you say to apologies. "Thank you." He gives Rian a look like never promised to be good at this .

That second part, though, means more almost, after the way Rian had reacted to him signing. After the way Wren had used it against him. "Like this," he says. He makes a loose fist and circles it over his chest, lets his eyes relax into real apology as he glances across at Rian. "I'm sorry."

[wastelandflower]

"It's not all right," he says, because he knows Wren that well, at least. "But thanks."

Rian closes a fist over his heart to replicate the gesture. It's a good one, he thinks. Like rubbing your heart in sympathy or trying to send something back to make up for what's going on. It's tactile and visceral; he likes it.

"I'm sorry too."

[fairywren]

Wren shrugs one shoulder at him. Rian knows him well enough to know it's not, and also to know that he doesn't know how to be formal and polite, and he knows Rian well enough to know that if he's apologizing he means it. "Well, I forgive you, then," he says.

Wren chews on the inside of his lip and smiles a little, uncertain. "So what do we do now?"

[wastelandflower]

It feels a lot better than he expects it to when Wren forgives him. It's not forgiveness for everything, but it's a start. The door it leaves wide open is a bit harder though.

"I guess we try and live in this town and be neighborly and do our very best not to kill each other," Rian suggests, somewhere in the middle between humor and sincerity.