tampered | ☼ log; closed; complete

☼ log; closed; complete

When; Early morning, December 28th, 2010.
Rating; PG-13, for now. Discussion of mental illness and self-harm practices.
Characters; Sage (

gilthart) and Elliot Argento (

schisming)
Summary; Sage is hit by the cluestick curse, leading to some serious discussion.
Log;

The new apartment still doesn't have much in the way of furnishing, although Sage was still surprised to find that included things like a bed with a mattress and adequate chairs and tables in the living room and kitchenette alongside the usual permanent fixtures. He guesses it falls under the same category as free rent, and so he's just as suspicious of it. There's always a catch in these kinds of negotiations, and despite what he told Eden he's still ready to hit someone if that catch turns out to be something he's unwilling to see paid. He can sustain calm and even a surprising amount of amicability in front of other people (he thinks the distance the technology imposes helps, which he might call irony if he thought that far) but the truth is that this whole place bites into his nerves like a tightening net of wire. It's hard enough to live in a world he half-understands; coming to a place where everything is spun out of turn means new rules to learn, new systems to grapple with, new ways to fuck up, and he's already half-homesick and endlessly anxious about what's happening at home. They say time stops, but he doesn't know if he believes that yet: if they're outside time, where is that?

It's these kinds of thoughts that moved him out of bed this morning, along with the weight of everything else he's been worrying about from before they arrived, these thoughts circling and biting at each other's heels to track wet, slippery blood in sweeps through his mind. It's an overcrowded, overfull feeling, like being sick to his stomach except inside his skull, and like nausea the thing he thinks to do about it after a quarter of an hour spent inside Elliot's arms unable to get back to sleep is to get some fresh air. So he got out of bed, kissing Elliot's eyelids in turn among murmured promises to be back back and a garland of little endearments laid on him in part because Sage means them all and in part because if it's bad for him, he knows it's worse for Elliot.

So he got up and got dressed, or mostly dressed, slipping into a thin thermal, the same jeans he's been wearing since they got here, and a pair of shoes as a concession to normality that only vaguely bothers him. With that and a bracelet and necklace he'd seen when they were shopping for the bare minimum of clothing (on credit, a tab to pay back, and he has to make sure they put together an account book and keep it, so there's another thing to worry about) and then rediscovered at the bottom of a bag where he also found out why Elliot had sent him to another store while negotiating their purchases at that one. He should take them back. He means to, just--not right now. In this he set out into the City, hands shoved into his pockets and his head down, and he discovered fresh air didn't do as much as he thought it would, or maybe standing just made him think better--

He's not really sure how the branch chose that moment to snap out of a support of ice and suddenly whip down to hit him across the eyes as he raised his head at the sound of breaking ice too slowly to dodge it, and in the first moments he spent stunned and blinking on his back he was only thinking the usual thing people think at such moments, which is mostly where did that come from? with an occasional dash of the sky is so gray today. It was only when his thoughts started to coalesce that he realized there was only one immediately important one coming to mind; an obvious one, but something he'd misplaced and been unsure of before, although in his new clarity it was how to understand how. So he didn't bother trying, because what mattered was getting up and going home, right then.

Sage still has snow in his hair when he opens the door of their apartment, and even a few ice crystals caught in his eyelashes and eyebrows, which catch the light when he toes out of his sneakers and goes to the bedroom door to stand there, blinking and wide-eyed in the semi-blindness of coming inside from the outdoors so fast.

"Elliot, we need--I want to make you tea."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

In the time that Sage has been gone, Elliot hauled himself out of bed - he can't remember what time he actually slept, just that it was late, but once he turned over into the slight warm hollow left by Sage's weight, that was it; he was up - thought about a shower and disregarded standing up that long as something he could do later.

Because he is a fucking fashion plate, however, he did change his outfit (http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?id=26467610) and refasten his watch; the rings and necklace don't come off. That measure of questionable accomplishment established he'd returned to sitting on the side of the bed, where he judged he could at least sound the depths of the barriers in more detail without moving very much. Eyes closed, thumb running along the geometric insets in light cycling sweeps - it felt foreign, almost, not a wall or a window, but wholly alien.

And impenetrable, as far as he could tell. But then there's always a question of reliability when he's tired, or under stress, the latter manifesting a little differently to the worries Sage has though they run together in the obvious places. He can accept more easily the idea that time conducts itself differently here; there's no such thing as being outside time permanently, but temporary insulation is possible. And time does move here, he can feel that in the ticking of the clock measuring his heartbeats, their wax and wane dropping easily into that rhythm once he's alone, and muted like new snowfall when Sage comes back.

His appearance is not in and of itself a surprise (still a relief, though: Elliot should have gone with him, would that have been so much effort?), but the sudden urgency of it is; Elliot raises his eyebrows and pushes back his hair with both hands, its heavy softness feathering in waves and falling immediately back down.

Then he smiles, because despite all this recent disavowing of poetic imagery it's not hard to imagine the aesthetic marvel that is Sage in the snow, and it doesn't feel as forced as it might, so - there's something. "Hello, Sage. Are we having some kind of kettle-related emergency?"

Edited 2010-12-29 02:01 (UTC)

"Yes." Sage crosses the room and comes around the bed to cradle Elliot's face in both of his hands, kissing his mouth and his forehead with his eyes fluttered shut and slightly difficult to open when he pulls away again, stroking Elliot's cheekbones with his thumbs while he stays bent at the waist. "We can have it in bed. Okay? I'll put the water on."

He kisses Elliot on the mouth again, drops of chilled water falling from his hair to speckle Elliot's face as he does, and he wipes at them with his hand wrapped in his sleeve when he pulls back for the second time with a caring attentiveness that's marked even for him, mostly because of the light speed he does it with. Sage is only ever this self-assured when he's absolutely certain of something he's doing, and that's a rare event, although instances of it tend to cluster around things related to Elliot.

"And then we're going to talk. I'll be right back. I love you." He smiles, his closed hand covered in soft cloth still resting on Elliot's face, and this time he presses a kiss to the tip of Elliot's nose before he serenely glides back into the kitchen--it's not an enormous apartment, so the sounds of him filling the kettle and putting it on the stove are easily audible.

Elliot's first darkly comic thought - which he is at least smart enough not to voice - is that discussions preceded by 'we need to talk' frequently segue into the dissolution of a relationship, and how statistically often the 'best' time for that is immediately after the holidays, on the theoretically benevolent principle that at least that way the season itself isn't ruined. He doesn't legitimately expect that, which is one reason why he doesn't say anything (that and Sage would rightfully not find it funny at all), on the subject, but it wells up just the same in tiny drops of blood from splinters too small to see spattering the underside of his thoughts.

Ordinarily he'd just enjoy all of this attention and wait the few minutes kitchen magic (because that's what it is, even when it's just water and dried leaves) takes; circumstances mean, however, that he's ...clingier than usual, especially when Sage was just gone, so: he pads into the kitchen a few seconds later in his stocking feet to lean against a stretch of counter and watch this process, soothing in its normalcy. "I love you, too, but you are aware you've just delivered proclamation inevitably doomed to raise suspicion, yes? Did some limpid eyed helpless creature fall in love with you on your walk? A rhinoceros, or a Venus flytrap - a vermicious knid?"

They could have those here, Elliot, you don't know.

Sage sets the kettle on a burner and turns it on, laughing quietly as he does--which jogs more mostly melted snow out of his hair, a happenstance with is fortunate for Elliot's shirt when Sage leaves the water to boil itself and steadies his hands on Elliot's hips to lean forward and nuzzle his chest. "None of those. Not even a knid. I just--I was walking? And a tree branch fell on my head."

That's...not an explanation, he realizes, and tilts his head back without parting the rest of his body from Elliot, which is certainly a...view when it bends his back like a bow. "It made me realize I should...tell you about something I've been thinking about. About you. It's nothing bad."

He reaches up to touch Elliot's face again, trailing his fingertips as lightly as waterskimmers over his jawline, and rises up on his toes to kiss him. He pulls back barely any space at all and looks mildly thoughtful, head tilting slightly to the right. "Do you want to wait until the tea is ready?"

"This is why your hair is wet, because a branch fell on you. I assumed you were allowing homeless snow-covered birds to nest there," ...fusses Elliot, combing back the still damp strands in question from this fascinating vantage point. The heaviness he's been operating under since--virtually ever, but more so from behind the gray leaden bars of winter and sluicing with new water-logged weight in the last few days: what that does is make this kind of light, easy discourse difficult enough to be impossible with anyone else, but the act of speaking makes him feel better, if only for Sage's reaction. "And from this you had some kind of Newtonian epiphany?"

On which note he is moved by whatever cells of whimsy are still left alive in there to check for bruises, which will not ....exist. "Are you certain you're not concussed? It's only that I've never seen you quite so emphatic about tea before, and you are, as a matter of course, fairly emphatic about tea."

So: Unconscious Denial for $10,000, Alex! "But since this is your epiphany I'll leave the question of waiting to you."

The tea kettle whistles. Helpfully.

Edited 2010-12-29 06:29 (UTC)

Sage's eyes half-lid as Elliot combs through his hair and does his futile searching for bruises, his mouth tipping into a quiet and gentle smile as he is indeed warmed and cradled in the rhythm of Elliot's speech. It's nothing he demands, but when it's here and it doesn't seem to be drawn out of Elliot like bloody splinters he nestles into it as completely in metaphor as he does the same with Elliot's actual body in the realm of the literal. Nesting is the right word for much of what he does, really, as evidence by how when the tea kettle whistles he kisses Elliot again before going off to collect the boiling water and pour it into the teapot he'd set aside with the teabag ready. (He ties the string of the teabag around the handle of the teapot so he won't lose it, one of those little habits he's had since he was ten and started making tea on his own.)

"I'm not concussed, don't worry. And let's wait." While the tea steeps Sage returns to leaning full-bodied against Elliot, tucking his head under Elliot's chin with the neatness of new practice and resting his cheek against Elliot's collarbones with a soft settling breath. "I always think better after I get hit by a branch. You know that. Makes me focus. And--I've never been this emphatic about tea?"

Within very recent memory, this would have been an unusually long speech for Sage. These days it's not as marked an effort, and Sage has made the jokes that existed to be made about lubricating his tongue in his low key way--but they're not untrue, either. All of this time spent with Elliot where he hasn't had to worry about misspeaking, where his words were, for lack of a more complicated analogy, safe--it's made the words come more easily to him, with Elliot and even other people. It'd be an improbably dramatic shift if it hadn't been primed to happen already, waiting like those crocuses sleeping in snow, but thinking about the reasons it took so long isn't a thing Sage is entirely ready for. What's going on now is what he knows he can focus on, this very important thing that he gets, finally, the feeling of recognizing symbols for the first time as parts of a name.

"I'm sensing 'tea' in this case may serve as metaphor, though given my feelings on those that may sound more insulting than is my intent," mumbles Elliot more or less into Sage's hair, thus bringing narrative full circle into dialog because he has the wherewithal and right kind of background to do that. It may be worth observing - as it's come up repeatedly - that he doesn't really despise using imagery to represent ideas; ideas are slippery, unwieldy creatures and sometimes representational is as good as it gets. Additionally when said representation includes cuddling as well as tea, frankly he can only complain so much.

Or not at all; Elliot opts for the latter and loops his arms around Sage's shoulders, linking his fingers together between his shoulder blades. The fact that Sage's hair is wet fails to bother him much; it's clean and smells like the crystalline sharpness of snow without actually venturing outside and exposing himself to as much or anything - he means to get down to the library today, and more importantly pound on the doors of the Academy until they give him a job based on no visible credentials or references or employment history or any of the other things that usually drive hiring practices, a prospect which currently seems unlikely at best. So there's some irony in the fact that right now he's parsing this conversation as a reprieve from doing those things.

Although in some aspects that's simply true, at least to the parts that involve tightening his arms and further noting what he can currently observe: "Focused and garrulous, at that. But don't stop, listening to you is--pleasant."

Which is more vague than he'd like to be, but he doesn't reach for a better word, that will have to suffice in the moment.

"I don't know what garrulous means," Sage...quite obviously lies, wrinkling his nose like some overgrown variety of rabbit as he leans back in his standing serpent arch again. He's evidently secure enough in the encompassing of Elliot's arms to make the kind of joke he wouldn't anywhere else, where the chances of him not knowing a word are good enough most people (he thinks, and has some evidence to believe) would assume he meant it.

"But the tea isn't a metaphor. It's just tea." Lavender tea, specifically, since while he was choosing staples he thought they could use something calming. So there is something metaphorical about the tea already, this balm of soothing and the reestablishment of a home as it revolves around the two of them together, and if Sage thought about it like that he would recognize the shape of the metaphor even if the mechanism eluded him. He understands signifiers best when he doesn't know they're signifiers: hence, the literal cluestick.

"Do you want honey in yours? It's not the same as the honey from my bees, but it's--good." He turns his attention to kissing the column of Elliot's neck as he speaks, combining language and the tactile like he so often tends to with Elliot.

Evidently Sage can make these jokes and Elliot will always respond to them similarly; a concern he has in that department is that someday he's going to mistake one for the other even if it's usually easy to tell. Occasionally the reading of small cues barely enters the picture when interpreting the same signs writ roughly the size of Wall Drug presents enough trouble on its own. This is one of those occasions, but Elliot trusts the clarity of Sage's responses more than he trusts, say...his, so it's with relative confidence that he harrumphs, "Did I say garrulous," with about the same seriousness and totally undermined by slipping one hand up to cradle the back of Sage's head in support he doesn't actually ....need, at all, to hold that position.

"Clearly a compound slip of the tongue when I meant prevaricatory--lying," he adds helpfully, even though some people in this kitchen require simplified definitions about as much as they require spinal reinforcement. "And no, I'm fine as is--have you considered that if you continue in your present course of action the chances that 'bed' will include 'tea' lessen significantly?"

Which despite his automatic headtilt backwards and working throat is much less consciously untrue than whether or not Sage knows what 'garrulous' means, about the only bed....wards thing he'd currently do is tentacle around Sage like some kindly fetchingly coiffed land octopus and engage in a marathon nap.

"If you want, after we talk." Sage draws his teeth over the working of Elliot's throat with gentle lightness, but that's all the suggestiveness he has--and it's barely suggestive when it's the kind of thing Sage just does, these little touches bestowed as meaningfully as his endearments without an aim to 'escalating' anything. Flirting is an end unto itself, Sage feels, like kissing, not a step any lower or higher than the various things it can bloom from or flow into. These days that's been important especially because of those moments of curling up, and Sage is dedicated to never making Elliot feel like there are obligations he has to him here. Sage is patient, and he has his own hands, and these are things he was aware of even before his Newtonian epiphany.

"Prevari-catory or not--I don't know what I was going to say. Something about how warm you are? You are. And I'm going to pour our tea now." Sage parts from Elliot only far enough to get to the teapot, and even if they aren't touching there's something in his posture that suggests entanglement somehow anyway, the way he aligns with Elliot whenever they're in a room together now. He adds honey to his cup and none to Elliot's, offering it to him on a saucer as he begins to drift back towards the bedroom.

Elliot eyes the saucer with an expression that somehow encompasses both dubious and charmed at the same time; this entire arrangement is one he'd be ellipsing at - eyebrows all hanging out in the stratosphere - if it were proposed by anyone but Sage, who makes tea in bed sound enormously appealing as opposed to a waste of his precious damn time. But then that implies that Sage had tried to sell the idea in some way, and really, all he had to do was gently suggest as much although even Elliot can tell the forthcoming discussion is not in and of itself a suggestion. So he follows with tea unadulterated by honey, which he sets down on the nightstand in favor of pushing back his hair for the ten thousand time and crossing his arms over his knees at the edge of the bed.

"I should get out and attempt to make myself a useful cog in the Rube Goldberg machine to which we currently find ourselves tethered," he acknowledges ruefully, "although that and whatever magnificent monstrosity currently passes as a library are the only plans I've made even tenuously; otherwise I'm yours for the duration." Of foreeeever--never mind. "I have no comment on my own warmth, however, if I am it's directly resultant to you. Nearly six and a half feet of leech, at your disposal."

Other people would just say 'talk to me. In my lap.' Elliot just somehow implies these things with six hundred percent more total verbiage.

Sage sets his tea next to Elliot's, differentiated by the thoughtful leaving in of his spoon, and he takes Elliot's hands to unfold his arms and insinuate himself into straddling Elliot's lap and draping his arms around his waist before Sage echoes the gesture by encircling Elliot's shoulders, tilting his head up so they touch nose to nose.

"But," he says, quietly, nuzzling Elliot from this position which would so often segue neatly into other bed-related activities and here is fairly clearly intended to...not, at least not until whatever Sage is building up to has been brought up, talked about, and somehow begun to be treated, "You're tired. And you're tired...you've been tired for weeks. And you know that, and I know that, I just--"

"Let me start over." He slips his fingers into Elliot's much tousled hair and soaks in its sleek softness, like the winter down of northern birds, his eyelashes shading down as he collects a breath and then looks up again. "This is what I mean, when you...go. It's not a cold. It's not just--working too much. Okay? Please tell me you know that."

Initially Elliot's expression reflects surprise as much as discomfort, although there is that too - compare the experience to having something lanced, for a medical metaphor that's...completely gross, yet accurate - and he shifts his hands to spanning along Sage's sides in wide paired wings that trace the lightly molded lines of his rib cage. What he's preparing as a response is probably at least denial flavored until Sage comes to the end of that and Elliot looks up sharply to reestablish eye contact he was only faintly aware of breaking, the corners of his mouth creased emphatically.

He remembers the previous phrasing used to touch on this in much less depth--that he goes somewhere, and that takes immediate precedence; maybe this is what he should have said the first time the subject came up. But in that instance there was a lake he could have jumped into instead, which ...seemed preferable. "You know I'd never leave you? Not of my own volition, not--if I could help myself."

Which is, he doesn't exactly escape noticing, a large part of the point here. "I know--fuck me Christ, as if I know how to articulate this. You'd think I could, given that I do nearly nothing else with my day, but it doesn't signify, this one thing. I've--I may as well begin with what I do know; it isn't--constant, though, ah--'weeks' is inaccurate, I don't remember a time without it."

'It,' 'this,' 'thing,' etc. His mouth quirks ruefully again. "And I thought I was coping so well."

Sage touches the lowest dip of Elliot's bottom lip as it quirks into that shape like biting into bitter leaves, not a gesture of hushing that would encompass both halves of Elliot's words, but one not unlike staunching a flow of blood--and judging by the quick pain that springs up in Sage's eyes that's about what it's meant to be, sliding into cupping Elliot's cheek and touching their foreheads together with a slight upwards rise in his lap.

"You have been. Don't--you can talk like that, if you want. I won't tell you not to. But it's not fair." He bites his own lip, rubbing the curve of Elliot's cheekbone with the pad of his thumb as he tilts his head and maintains this incredible closeness, breathing in Elliot's breath whenever he speaks. His other hand strokes a resonant rhythm over the back of Elliot's head, in light and scattered bursts.

"It's good, that you know. So this is easier. You're...not going to like it. I think. But have you thought about--seeing a doctor? Because I can try," and here he brushes a kiss over Elliot's jaw, dipping in with a catch in his voice that might very well go unheard in the softness of its hesitance--the sense of apology is much stronger, reinforced when he brings his head back up with all the weight of that borne in the half-shy, half-tremulous brown of his eyes, "I--am trying, but I don't know how to help. And that scares me. I'm scared, and it hurts to see you hurt. That's why I'm asking."

Elliot suffers the faint, fleeting reminder that this is one reason he buried his enormous crush for so long: the volume of what he feels with Sage outside its translucent moonlit luminosity still staggers by sheer size, and although there's no comparison to his Not a Cold and Not Working Too Much, the reflective seizing around his heart is just as uncontrollable. "I am--keenly aware that I'm levying exactly the same kind of stricture you so gently sidestepped with me, but don't think for a moment that you aren't the less Biblically appropriate Balm of Gilead to me and whatever slings and arrows I may encounter."

A joke, or at least the seedling of one; what's notable there is that Elliot knows his text, and like the debate that surrounds John Donne's comma or semicolon, there's a wealth of difference separating 'of' and 'in' - between Genesis and Jeremiah one works and the other doesn't. "That is, for reference, a very good thing; I'm also aware I'm occasionally incomprehensible to most human beings." Which might not have been necessary; Sage doesn't need the specific details to understand what 'balm' means, but despite not actually lessening his tendency to stab at literature all over the place, Elliot is more fumbling for what he wants to say than he has for a month.

He closes his eyes and returns his arms to looping around Sage's waist, spreading his palms flat to feel the rise and fall of breathing in his upper back in all its rhythms (he did hear the little catch, he's just hoping this is the right way to address it). "And to be perfectly frank, no, the last thing I want to do is explain this to some--solicitous health professional when I can barely explain it to you." Moving swiftly on: "But I will."

Because Sage wants him to, it's actually that uncomplicated, and it's not the worst thing in the world. "It means staying, though, or at least accepting that we're here, I assume you won't let me put the idea aside until we get home?"

He's hilarious.

Edited 2010-12-30 08:36 (UTC)

Sage's breathy and muted laughter is more like the startling of small furred things out of tall grass than actual amusement, but it's still a relief of tension, and that's what matters when it's tied to Elliot's easy assent to an idea that Sage realized was important but barely knew how to express even with arboreal assistance. He flattens his hand on Elliot's face and cocks his head with a little false line of disapproval flattened into his mouth, whether Elliot is looking or not.

"You can start here. I didn't think this past...saying it. But you can start, then when we're home you can keep going. If it helps." It's a look that disappears as soon as he starts speaking in favor of ducking his head down to attend gently to the visible edges of Elliot's collarbones, and then the ones he makes visible by pushing cloth aside to draw his mouth softly over them. He breathes a small noise while he's there, drawn from halfway between a sigh and another surprised laugh.

"I thought you'd argue more. But--you're my favorite leech, thank you. For listening to me." He leans back ever so slightly in the circle of Elliot's embrace to give him one of his slender sunlit smiles capped with a kiss that he pulls back from nipping Elliot's lip, as if to underscore something about leeches. "I can find doctors to call, you're busy. Deal?"

"You're quite welcome," Elliot crisps back, adopting a veneer of elaborate bitchiness that is 110% facetious and meant mostly to mask his genuine nettled upset in having this conversation at all - none of which means he won't go to a doctor, but it's probably implied by Elliot's ....everything that said doctor will have had easier patients in the form of rabid bears. "And please, whatever serves as a curative facility in a city which logic would dictate must accept new patients with neither universal identity nor proof of insurance must be quite an affair. Imagine what the discussion of my medical history will entail on our return: yes, I've been previously treated, no, you won't be familiar with the physician--don't say his name aloud, you may summon horrors from the darkest trenches of the sea."

So Elliot is expecting to have....Cthulhu as a doctor? G...ood. "And it's nearly impossible to pronounce unless one's tongue hinges in the middle, in any case."

Such a thing could easily be said of Elliot, at this point, who has apparently adopted the standpoint that if he's ridiculous about this it will alleviate some of his churning embarrassment, a state which is really only indicated by the faintest blooming of blood under his cheekbones, an affect mostly hidden when he tips forward to lean his forehead on Sage's shoulder. After a muffled disgruntled noise there he lifts his head, mostly returned to his usual state of paleness and more straightforwardly serious. "I will listen to you anytime you like; my ears are yours to bend. Which is an advantage of the rest of the leeches, one supposes, but--all the same don't expect miracles from this turn of events. I fully expect to receive instructions regarding increased vitamin C and iron intake."

"The other leeches have less bite," Sage observes, in the quiet that accompanies deep thoughtfulness on his part, but while his words might be taken as censure his tone, in its soft and radiant affection, indicates that this bite is a very good thing, at least from where Sage is sitting. The woes this will incur for his future doctor bother Sage less than perhaps they should, but the last time he saw a doctor for any personal reason he was ten, and his understanding of them is as people whose job it is to take care of you, no matter how hard that is.

"We'll get you more vitamin C and iron, if that's what she says. Even if she's a forbidden monster." Sage brings both of his hands now to the task of stroking Elliot's face with the backs of his knuckles, in an effort to soothe even the slightest residual blushing back to calm. "For now I--prescribe tea. And I'm not a doctor, but it's going to get cold, I know that."

Despite what he says, Sage follows this up with a kiss that adds depth to the qualities its predecessors already possessed like fervency and adoration, stilling his hands on Elliot's cheeks for the duration before he shifts slightly back in Elliot's lap--at least enough to allow for tea reaching, although that would arguably still be easier if Sage was lying next to him. He just expects Elliot will roll him there when Elliot has temporarily soaked in enough of Sage on his lap and wants to exchange it for Sage tucked against his side, and Sage has found that with Elliot he likes those moments of moving pliantly at Elliot's direction, instead of merely tolerating them with tension seizing the pit of his stomach or resisting them in degrees from slight to complete like he did with anyone before. He trusts Elliot to never take him anywhere he doesn't want to be, so he goes with him, and he's never let down.

Elliot remains tealess for the moment, he'll get it when he does inevitably decide to shift around. The issue that currently poses is that he's of the mind - correctly - that he would probably fall asleep within about a minute if he settled into the metronomic soothing of Sage's natural rhythms, and he actually does have to get out and meet the great twisting labyrinth the City presents ~~but not literally, that's for later~~ in pursuit of gainful employment, if nothing else.

Before that, though, he's not just being flattering when he says Sage makes him feel better; the idea that Elliot soaks him in like a plant storing sunlight is not far off - one of Elliot's own metaphors there, a turn for the figurative that for once felt as precise as language could get - and he'll carry that with him under the foreign gray sky. For now he leans back on his hands to make his lap a more feasible place for the time honored ritual of tea ...drinkery, studying Sage with a tilt to his expression as mutually adoring as it is acerbic. "I disagree, you clearly already possess the credentials to hold a doctorate in philematology."

Those may not exist, but Elliot is a doctor, so apparently he can bestow honorary degrees as he sees fit. "But gods spare us the horror of imbibing the tepid; let me see if I can be of use."

If Sage will oblige him for a second Elliot will just borrow his teacup briefly, resettling himself slightly so he can sit back up without jostling his legs too much, which turns out to be for the purposes of wrapping his hands around the teacup and gazing exaggeratedly into it for a few seconds. The laser-like eye contact is not in fact a requirement, he just enjoys trolling his own very serious Tradition, but regardless: when he proffers the cup back to Sage it's notably warmer, and so is the liquid inside.

Elliot sighs lightly, initially belying how relieved he actually is; a few seconds of silence tick by where he seems to be weighing something internally. "I, ah--I wasn't absolutely certain that would work. It's the worst part of it, I--haven't mentioned," ....at all, "firing blanks, as it were."

Your handfast, Sage: incapable of talking about how fucked up he actually is without the accompaniment of hilarious euphemism. Imagine what a time his therapist is going to have.

Sage holds his warmed cup in both hands for a moment while he processes that, the veins and vines that make up his thought processes (nothing so neat or clean as gears) almost visible behind his darkened eyes. Then he unwraps one hand from the cup and presses his heated palm to Elliot's face, certainty supplanting the transitioning of thought.

"It'll get better. We're talking about it. And you'll see people." Maybe he can be excused for not laughing right away, with the weight of what that euphemism coats hitting him before the joke does--his way of communicating is so often like that, especially with people he knows well, paring down to the meaning he sees as most important and setting everything else aside. It's sometimes like he worries there won't be time if he doesn't say the things that matter first and clearly; like he's standing half out the door, or he expects everyone else to be doing the same, or something in between and both. The world shifts faster than he can keep up, and if he's learned anything in the twenty five years he's been alive it's that even the things he loves most won't always stay. He's trying to change that here, but that hasn't yet touched the bedrock fed dark pool of fear that sometimes keeps him awake after nightmares counting Elliot's breaths on the top of his head like a charm against disappearing under the surface of that liquid again. It's not water, but it's cold. He still gets cold; it just never has anything to do with the weather.

But even concerns this heavy don't keep him from realizing that if the mood doesn't get lightened after that kind of announcement Elliot might actually combust in a flurry of sparks and embarrassment, so he smiles with the clarity of a blue and cloudless sky and sips his sweetened tea, leaving his hand where it is. "I'm a doctor of...friends? Or--love? How close am I guessing?"

Elliot's eyes lid as he tilts his head into the warmth on his cheek, the gnarled and battered ancient oak tree growing toward the sun. "You're--distracting me with etymology, that's what you're doing."

The mood: lightened. Or at least shifted slightly, since Elliot does in fact find Sage investigating and making inferences from word roots exactly that distracting. He's a linguist, excuse him. "The second is closer in purpose if not form, though friendship might serve as well even if one supposes the methodology differs by necessity. As to form--well. To demonstrate is the soul of efficiency."

As opposed to brevity, etc etc, but since gods know Elliot applies brevity like other people do wasabi (in short, scorching bursts) his demonstrative intentions are hardly brief either, starting with relieving Sage of his teacup temporarily to set it on the nightstand without looking (so they are just lucky it doesn't end up all over the carpet) and ending with sinking both hands into his hair. If the sunsoaked warmth that wraps around his fingers is just a projection of the qualities his mind ascribes to Sage he doesn't care, it doesn't matter when he can still feel it, and when Elliot kisses him that raw helpless humiliation fades like the easing of a sore muscle wrapped in heat, at least to somewhere he can ignore for now.

He doesn't move much after, except to reach over and retrieve Sage's tea, since--you know, Sage might be wanting that. "Do you want to guess again?"

An uh, educated guess.

Edited 2010-12-31 22:07 (UTC)

When Elliot kisses him like this Sage flows forward and up like water wicked up the neck of a slender reed, murmuring a soft and wordless affirmation, and some of that warmth Elliot feels really is born out of Sage's all but dried hair. He follows Elliot a short distance after Elliot pulls away, his eyes half-lidded and heated as liquid sugar. He holds his returned cup so absently they're...still lucky it's not all over the carpet, as well as Elliot's lap and Sage's front.

"Kissing?" Sage speculates, biting the tip of his tongue between his teeth as he secures his grip on the cup again, sitting back on Elliot's knees as he cocks his head and his eyes gleam with a certain self-satisfied sureness. There's no denial of his distraction, because even with his usual kind of baldfaced deadpan humor that would be a little much to force--but he likes figuring these things out, even if it takes a while most of the time and involves this kind of handholding, so to speak. He doesn't mind it at all when it comes in forms like this.

Edited 2010-12-31 23:08 (UTC)

"The act or study of," Elliot confirms, apparently moved by the little oral manipulation there to run a thumb along Sage's bottom lip before sitting back on his hands again. "A great number of books have been written on the subject, particularly in Western culture." Does he have trivi--of course he does. Could anything on earth stop him from sharing it, short of a meteor crashing through the roof right now?

...well, that and Sage's lack of interest, but one seems as likely as the other, if narrative may assume as much. "Ergo research materials for your doctoral thesis are in great supply, but in the interest of framing: the word itself comes from Old English - cyssan, in the infinitive or for the act thereof, coss in noun form. Generally introduced on a global basis via European settlement, at least as an expression of affection; the ancient Egyptians, for instance, kept no such practice and were the poorer for its lack, or so goes my learned opinion on the subject."

It's questionable how long Sage will let Elliot use trivia as a buffer here, but the topic at hand has at least been...lightly punctured, and if Elliot starts pouring out the clotted mess that is his perception of this problem, they only won't be here for weeks because that issue of combustion via sparks and embarrassment will make itself present within minutes. And there's the issue of how much of this is really Sage's to take on - while he might in fact attempt to shoulder all of it, Elliot's very limited concept of therapy does extend to the idea that the person he shares a home with and the person he pays to listen to him should be separate entities.

So: he continues, talking easily through the process of reconfiguration - he could also carry on a conversation while simultaneously performing an emergency tracheotomy on himself, true fact - involving as it does the brief adjustment of both teacup and bodies, because apparently it is time for holistic cuddling, wherein Elliot stretches out and tucks Sage just a little underneath him, like the most cherished body pillow of all time. (Yes.) "You might consult Christopher Nyrop although one assumes since 1901 there have been further innovations; a classic remains classic." Elliot, you are a million years old. "'A exultant message of the longing of love, love eternally young, born on lovers' lips and rising up to the blue sky from the green plains, like a tender, trembling thank-offering.'"

A beat. "Something about a burning prayer of desire, I think, as well, but--" Elliot ...prepares to troll, "he was talking about kissing a woman."

Sage enhances this tucking of himself underneath Elliot with slight squirming designed to nestle them together like matching puzzle pieces, and of course he's interested in anything Elliot has to say; this is less unconditional love, in his opinion, and more than Elliot just really is always saying interesting things that he loves to listen to. He even does his best to remember them, although he'd probably only average a C if given a quiz, mostly because of an inability to recall names, dates, or quotes very well. One of the better things about Elliot is that he never tests Sage that way.

"Is this the part where we--do that thing of deciding who's butch in this bed? I don't do that thing." Sage laughs, lifting his head to bite Elliot's shoulder with the greatest of fondness and a little return trolling of his own. "I like it. The quote. And I'll...start my thesis research, uh, instantaneously?"

At that point, he kisses the mouth where he certainly learned a word with that many syllables from, looping his outside arm around Elliot's neck and holding him even closer. For now, he's still all right with Elliot sidestepping further discussion, in part because that's Elliot's choice and in part because one push of this size is enough for him to be a little startled by his own decisiveness: he's usually not the one to make these kinds of statements, and he's not sure why today was different. He's just glad it turned out so relatively well, so far, as his worry eases into a more manageable thing.

"A tender, trembling thank you?" He bites at Elliot's lip as he drops his head back to the bedspread, quietly happy in the complicated form so much adult happiness comes in, but it's still good.

Elliot says these things because he enjoys knowing them, and passing on what he knows is a large part of how he communicates anything positive; the questionable relevancy of trivia in any situation aside, testing Sage isn't the point. If Elliot wants him to remember something particularly it doesn't cost him anything to rephrase his syntax for that purpose, nor to repeat himself if necessary - and what he generally wants to impart are the ideas behind things, he only cements them in fact because that's how he fixes them in his own mind. Sage learns differently, and while academics may publish or perish even at the university level they also don't get very far if they assume all of their students are alike.

Which is one reason he just ...made out with Sage to define philematology - that and it's totally awesome. On which note he makes a low, sharply pleased sound at the bite and leans up on an elbow to contemplate Sage's features at this angle, a past time also qualifying as awesome. "You're welcome."

Ah, trolling. "Tremblingly. But your flourishing scholarly pursuits aside, thank you, for that, as--loathe as I am to discuss the matter I know it can't have been easy to express. And I am grateful that you made the effort no matter the outcome, I want to be sure that's clear even if little else can be qualified as much."

In the wake of that seriousness - the strategy Elliot seems to be employing here is the conversational equivalent of leaping from rock to rock over like ...lava - he buries his head in Sage's neck for a second and then tilts up, mouth slanting. "Instantaneously, yes. Also forthwith, or pronto--" pronto, Elliot, "and as to who wears whatever label currently making the rounds I can't say I see the reasoning behind proclamations from Mount Sinai on the subject. But then again, according to the literature those are broken easily."

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LITERARY REFERENCE COUNT: OVER NINE THOUSAND

SATISFACTION COUNT: ALSO OVER NINE THOUSAND

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