fabian aramais seacaster (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
maximumlegend) wrote2024-04-26 08:23 pm
maximumlegend) wrote2024-04-26 08:23 pmetraya ic inbox.
▶︎၊၊|||||၊၊၊|။||||။၊|။ 0:20
You have reached a MAXIMUM LEGEND!
maximumlegend) wrote2024-04-26 08:23 pm
You have reached a MAXIMUM LEGEND!
action; post october-mission
He can't figure that out. Of all the people Krouse would have called being able to tolerate being around after that clusterfuck of a month, Fabian wouldn't have made the top ten. But here they are, in Krouse's painfully organized apartment, having beers.
It was an impulse decision on Krouse's part. An idea that hit him in the Kwik Trip, standing in front of the beer display, staring at the Spotted Cow label and trying not to think about anything (anyone) it reminded him of. Drinking alone is pathetic. Drinking with someone is a social activity. Krouse doesn't want to do social activities, but he doesn't want to drink alone, working himself up to the kind of dulled out haze he's almost never actually indulged in.
So he grabbed two six packs of beer and a bottle of vodka, because he doesn't actually know how much he needs to drink to get drunk, and sent Fabian a text. And now Krouse is standing in his bedroom, holding the neck of his third bottle, staring at a picture. It's next to another one, of Krouse and his mom, but Krouse is only handling so much at a time.
Gingerly, he takes the dried grass bracelet off the corner and sets it on the nightstand. He picks up the frame, careful not to put his thumb on the glass, and carries it back out to the living room.
"This is Noelle," he says, holding the picture where Fabian can see it, and tips his beer back to down what's left of it, warmth liquid and nauseous in his stomach. But he's good. He's together.
"She's," Krouse says, bouncing his knee, "She was - "
Noelle, all of fifteen, smiles awkwardly up out of the picture. She's sallow and hollow-cheeked, her shoulder-length brown hair frayed at the ends, her brown eyes sunk in shallow purple hollows. Her shoulders are slightly hunched under her large hoodie, her legs poised on the school picture day stool swallowed in baggy jeans. She looks fragile, strained.
But Krouse can see past that. He can see the glint in her eye, watchful and alert. A line of steel along her spine even as it curves unseen by the photographer's lens.
"She was my team captain," Krouse says, quietly. "She had...something kind of like Gorgug had. The anger issues, you know? Not her fault. She got sick."
She was sick in this picture, too. Krouse knows the signs now the way he didn't back then. But that's not up for discussion. His secrets might be everywhere, but he's keeping as many of hers as this place will let him.
"We were..." Krouse clears his throat. He swaps the empty beer bottle in his hand for a new one from the coffee table with a flex of his power, then feels like an idiot, because he doesn't have a hand free to open it. He doesn't want to put the picture down.
"We were together. Probationary. I was the one on probation." Krouse forces a thin, papery laugh, not looking at Fabian, who probably is looking - sympathetic, or worried, or something. "I still don't know why she ever gave me a chance. I was such a fucking prick."
Is a fucking prick.
"I always pissed her off, too," he says, and now he's just rambling, tongue loosened with alcohol and exhaustion, "You'd think all the practice would have counted for something with him, but - no. I guess I'm just good at pissing people off. Trash at making them feel better."
no subject
After that is where the blurriness starts. It's probably because of Gorgug, judging by the hints of the other guy that Krouse is dropping. Did Fabian start about Gorgug? Did Krouse? The half-elf really isn't sure, and he just stares at Krouse and the picture the other is holding, turning over the words in his head.
Maybe if the faint blurriness wasn't present in his mind, Fabian would have the social graces to not say what he's about to say.
But a few beers don't make only Krouse's tongue loose, apparently.
"You're saying were together," he points out.
(There's a lot of past tense going on there, actually.)
no subject
"She died," he says, like lancing a persistently infected wound. It hurts every time, no matter how often he does it. A fresh gush of grief and regret, welling up inside the aching confines of his ribs.
"Fuck. I'm sorry, man, it's - " he sets his beer down and rubs his hand over his face, shaking his head. "That's not why I brought her up. I'm - dealing with it. I've been dealing with it. You know."
Fabian does know. A father isn't like a girlfriend, but the punched out place in the world where a person used to be is something they both understand.
"I just..." he sighs, face still in his hand. "I guess what I'm saying is if you want to talk about what happened with Gorgug with someone who gets it, I get it. And I'll keep it between us. It's just hard seeing someone you care about like that."
no subject
Well, that's.. a lot to think about when it comes to what he wants to say here. Though it's exactly because of the fact that his own father died that Fabian doesn't want to comment too much on Krouse's dead ex-girlfriend. Especially with the way the other is talking about it. It's easier to deal with these things in more vague terms, in Fabian's experience. He doesn't mind talking about the fact his father is dead, but if anyone would push him a little bit too hard on how it happened, then it's likely he might fall into the same stuff Krouse is awkwardly trying to express here. (I've been dealing with it. You know.)
So probably no direct talk here. No 'sorry, man', though Fabian does feel it, because he knows how hard it is to miss someone you care so much about, someone you shaped entire parts of your life for.
Still-- That, coupled with the fact that talking about certain parts of what happened between him and Gorgug is really, really fucking awkward, makes him quiet for a moment or two. He fiddles with his half-empty bottle of beer, just to give his energy some sort of outlet in the meantime. Even if it's just through fidgeting.
"Did she--" He starts, slowly. Trying to cover up the awkward, but not really managing to, while his eyebrows knit together into a frown in the meantime. "Did she ever get that angry at you?"
no subject
"Yeah," Krouse says, thumbing the edge of the picture frame, "Yeah. She did."
If Riz hadn't heard 'her' through the wall, Krouse is aware he might still not be able to really talk about this. There's a part of him that flinches from sharing too much. But mad at him, even as mad as she got, that's almost safe. That's understandable. Getting mad at him is just a thing everyone can nod at.
And Krouse knows Fabian won't talk, is the thing. Fabian doesn't even have to promise. He's a good guy like that.
"It sucked," he says, which is maybe more honest than he's ever been about how he felt about it, "I knew it wasn't her fault - and in my case, I fucking deserved it most of the time, so it was really my fault - and I knew she hated it too. She hating losing control, you know? If she was going to be mad, she wanted to be mad on purpose, not..."
He reaches for his beer and takes another drink, the taste literally bittersweet, which he guesses is what people must like about beer. It's growing on him.
"My point is," he says, like he's got one, "It sucks. Because it's not them, but it's like, parts of them. It gets to you."
no subject
Because Krouse keeps talking, and the more Krouse talks, the more it sounds weirdly familiar in a way Fabian never expected it to. Mostly because it's-- well, Krouse is talking about his girlfriend, for one, and Fabian is just talking about his friend. He's chased around a cruel girl before but that was.. it was different, not like this. And yet this applies very directly to a very recent situation with said friend all the same.
In more ways than Krouse might be imagining, actually. And Fabian isn't sure whether to bring it up. Is it even relevant? Is it going to sound weird? It's definitely going to sound weird, isn't it.
If anything here is proof of the fact that Fabian is way too caught up in his own tangled mess of thoughts right now, it's the fact he doesn't even bother to correct Krouse when the other puts himself down, even though Fabian has almost instinctively done so in the past, like he's allergic to his friend talking shit about themselves around him.
"When that, uh.. happened."
God, he's definitely going to sound weird.
Fabian is just banking on the fact that Krouse isn't going to judge him. Hopefully. Yeah, Krouse has been weird as hell about the whole friendship thing, but he's never been truly judgy of Fabian. If anything, it feels like every single thing he's tried to insult Fabian with has been entirely ineffective, as if Krouse - even while lashing out - tried to avoid the things that might have hurt Fabian for real. And considering his experience, maybe he'll understand. Even though this isn't about Fabian's girlfriend.
"I mean, when she lost control, did she ever--" His mouth is having trouble forming the words, like he's still having second thoughts. Or like he's just a little bit worried about judgement all the same, staring down at his bottle of beer like it's the most interesting thing in the world just to avoid having to look at Krouse. "Did she ever come onto you?"
no subject
The look Krouse gives Fabian is a very obvious, goggle-eyed no, which dissolves into a wincing grimace of brand new, never before experienced confusion as his brain then starts tacking on - not caveats, exactly. Because the answer is no. Noelle didn't even come onto him when she was less frustrated with his entire existence, let alone when she was angry with him.
That's not really the question that tangles Krouse up for a second in his own shit before he wraps his brain around the real thing that's going to slap him upside the head any minute now. The weird thing that gets Krouse for a second is imagining if Noelle had, hypothetically, ever come onto him while she was mad -
It would have been awful. Unbelievably fucking awful. He'd have felt sick about it. But for one half-drunk, supremely teenaged moment, Krouse just - thinks about it a little.
"No," he says, mouth moving right as the implication that really matters side swipes him like a semi and mercifully removes all thoughts involving his own personal life clean out of his skull, "No, she never - hang on - "
Krouse stares at Fabian, his mouth falling open as he blinks, really taking it all in. The hunkered down confusion, the tinge of befuddled confusion, the general air of fuck, dude, and oh, holy shit.
"Gorgug came onto you," Krouse says, not a question, "While he was...huh."
Krouse decides now is a great time for another drink. Out of a respect for someone's privacy, or the concept of privacy in general, he tilts Noelle's picture away from Fabian so she's not looking at him.
"Are you," Krouse says, as certain select images play behind his eyes, "Let me rephrase that. What, ah - exactly did he do? Precisely?"
cw: talk of dubcon
Especially since he was wrong. Apparently Krouse doesn't know what this very specific thing is like. It would have been so much easier if he knew - at this point it's just going to make Fabian look like a huge freak, won't it?
It's tempting to stall. To ask him if he really wants to know. Or maybe to avoid the topic entirely, say he doesn't want to talk about it.
But that's just delaying the inevitable, right? Fabian has been thinking about this so much that the only way to get rid of these thoughts at this point is just to talk about it, even if it makes him feel awful before he's even uttered a single word.
"He--" Fabian swallows hard even after just one word. He's so very, very decidedly still not looking at Krouse. "He told me that he thinks about me at night. And then that-- that, uh, he'd hurt me or fuck me if I wanted him to."
That's propositioning someone, alright. Even though it doesn't seem like Fabian is done even with just that.
"And he held me down, and he started to kiss me, and I.."
.. god, should he say it? Krouse won't get it. Sure, he liked Noelle, but it doesn't sound like it ever had anything to do with a mess like this.
Ugh, wait, okay, hold on, he can still make this--
"I mean, I-- It turned me on, you know?" See, that's the hard part to say, but that's why Fabian immediately launches into the next words. "But it's just.. That was the adrenaline, right? I mean, I'm not gay, so-- you know, I just--"
He's now looking up at Krouse, but mostly because he's lost in the half-panic of his explanation. Like he has to convince the other of something here, and Fabian isn't even sure what specific thing it is that he's trying to convince his friend of.
"I don't know, shit happens!"
cw: talk of dubcon, nsfw
But this time, he's not hoping he can pitch the bomb-baby-convoluted metaphor out the window and replace it with a substitute egg from the grocery store. He's going to be responsible with it. Real fucking responsible.
"I mean," Krouse says, swivelling towards Fabian with an internal experience of somehow doing it in slow motion, at a distance, "It'd be fine. If you were. Or just, you know. Open-minded."
That is, in a revelation that would have startled Krouse at sixteen and doesn't make him do more than blink once at nineteen, the least of what's going on here.
"Or, uh - okay. Fuck. Let me just," Krouse scrubs his face with one hand, making a low humming noise in the back of his throat like a modem trying to dial up a connection to his own brain. "Are you, like, okay, man?"
Krouse pivots properly on the couch, pulling his leg up to tuck his socked foot against his knee as he takes Fabian's posture in. Hesitantly, he reaches out to give Fabian an awkward part on the shoulder, feeling like the multiverse's biggest tool as he does it.
"I mean, though, hey - who among us has not had a weird hard-on at a really fucked up time?" He posits, and yeah, he's going to blow up this imaginary metaphor baby for sure. Fuck.
cw: talk of dubcon, nsfw
Said by a guy who clearly looks like he's not doing fine at all right now. It's not even just looking, but sounding too, considering it's reflected just as much in his voice when he says that.
He doesn't scoot away though when Krouse joins him on the couch. He even allows the awkward pat, though he doesn't really seem to reciprocate it in any way. Maybe it's since he's too busy thinking if he's ever really had a hard-on during an awkward moment before. Maybe. Probably.
Though never at a moment as awkward as when your possessed friend is trying to proposition you, clearly.
"I just-- I need to figure this out, man." Understatement of the century, but Fabian just raises his bottle to chug some more beer after he says it, like that might help him think about this any better.
At least it's helping him be open about this to Krouse at all. Fabian might have hesitated otherwise, even in front of someone who is - clearly - a bro.
"I thought you could relate."
But maybe he was wrong about that. The idea of being wrong about it does make him look a little miserable, even if he's staring right ahead of him, rather than sideways and over at the other guy.