Adam, Ilad
I spoke those words once, or words very like.
I spoke them, and it must have been a like pain that brought them to your tongue.
I am sorry, Adam. I think I understand now.
It balms a hurt that cut deeper than I realized, that I am no longer ... ah, exiled. I do not know when I began to let myself grow so -- unsolitary, but I cannot regret it. The pain I caused, though; that I can regret.
As to Alden -- it is frustrating, but I recognize that I cannot be Adam's advocate in this. Unfair though I find the mistrust, it does not go only one way. They will have to find their own peace.
I mislike that, too. G-d, but I would not stand by while a wedge drives hard and deep between them. They both have so little to spare of what they would cast aside.
Given the time and direction Adam comes from, a recent dinner in the cafeteria seems as likely a recent prospect as anything else. He stops off at a picnic table to set his briefcase down and remove his suit jacket to inspect something or other along the interior. There is probably a /loose thread/ or something. He is like the Princess and the Minor, Unnoticeable Defect in his Brooks Brothers.
In contrast, Ilad appears to be coming from the garage. His leather jacket is slung over his shoulder, two fingers hooked into its collar such that he looks like a gentleman carrying a more gentlemanly jacket. His shirt is a dark green, his jeans blue and bearing flecks of -- mud. Where did you find mud, Ilad? His step slow as he paces up the street, he gives Adam a surveying look and greets him with his name.
Adam glances up, drawn more by the sound of his name than the more common sounds of movement among a populous base. His expression stills, hesitates, and then he replies, "Ilad." There's a longer hesitation before he adds quieter, "I'm glad you're back safe."
Inclination of his head slight, Ilad comes to a halt a few feet from Adam, maintaining a courteous and wary distance between them. He says, "As field missions go, practically without mishap."
"So it would seem." The flicker of Adam's smile is faint. "At least it goes smoothly when it really counts, hm?" His body is held still and tall, his awkwardness a whisper of tension along his upright carriage.
"We get the job done," Ilad agrees, mildly. He makes little secret of his study of Adam, dark eyes steady in contemplation of his features, of the straight-drawn spine. He finally lets his gaze fall away, relieving the idle intensity of his scrutiny. "Are you well, my friend?"
"Well enough." And -- for the most part, he looks it. There are the hints of distance clear to Ilad's discerning gaze, a sense of purposeful remove, but he lacks overt signs of stress, fatigue, or anger. "And you?"
"Fine," Ilad says. To the familiar reader of his expression, there are signs of wear to be gleaned, a muting of his energy that bespeaks some of that fatigue, some of that stress. By this hour of the day, he is surely recovered from his hangover, at least. The courtesies thus exchanged, he hesitates a beat, drawing a breath through his nose.
"You must be--" Adam hesitates over his wording. "I understand that you were down there quite a while. With Hendrickson."
Pause before his reply extending past a beat as he considers, Ilad finally nods once and says, "It was long and grueling work."
"I imagine so." Adam glances down at the jacket in his hands as if he's forgotten what he was looking for in it in the first place. "You seem to have done well with it, even so."
"As well as I could do, at any rate," Ilad answers, a trifle dry in his acknowledgment. "We have grown accustomed to the convenience of simply taking whatever information is to hand in people's minds, I think."
"It is certainly a shortcut," Adam admits with a dry exhale of breath.
"Mm." The noise Ilad makes is neutral and quiet. He looks over at Adam, contemplating him again. After a beat, he makes another quiet, more personal offering. "Madmen unsettle me," he says. "The break came for Hendrickson well before I took my chisel to him, so to speak."
"He did not sound quite so mad in the first reports from Colorado," Adam says quietly. "Angry, yes. Vindictive. But not -- insane."
"Well," Ilad says. His mouth tightens a little, and he opens his free hand. "At some point, he broke."
"Yes." Gaze lighting on the tightening of Ilad's mouth, Adam lets the subject drift away. He does not choose one particularly lighter, though, when he says, "I am sorry. For -- losing my temper. The way I spoke to you."
Ilad is silent for a moment, his gaze fallen to the ground between them with a faint frown turning down his mouth at the corners. "Accepted," he says finally. "Of course." Head canted slightly to one side, he does not quite lift his gaze to find Adam's again. "I am sorry, too," he says. "It was ill done of me."
"You will not lose my friendship from an attempt to preserve it," Adam says, quiet but firm. "I -- want you to know that. Losing you--" He swallows. "Losing your friendship is the last thing I want, Ilad."
Something about Adam's words seems to strike home. Ilad closes his eyes, lashes fanning dark and thick over his warm-hued skin. He tips his head in a single nod, breath drawn through his nose, and opens his eyes again with the lift of his gaze. "You will not," he says, firm and certain, but soft as sand.
Adam exhales soft and slow through his nose, the silence settling still between them. He pulls his suit jacket back on, its crisp lines falling neat along his shoulders, and then, after a hesitation, he steps slowly to close the distance between them. His embrace is a touch stiff, a little awkward, too conscious of itself and the contact to really relax into touch, but it is firm.
Ilad enfolds Adam readily in the clasp of a hug, his arm a strong and solid bar across the other man's back. He is a contained blaze, fever heat plain through the layers of his clothing that separate skin from skin, and the scent he carries suggests the road and the dirt even as it still carries a distant suggestion of the more usual spicy warmth of his soap. He says nothing that his arms do not say, though one of his hands is still occupied by the jacket and that leather flaps against Adam's back but oh well. Props.
He pulls back a little suddenly, as if with a force of will, but his smile flickers small and subtle as his gaze slides back. Adam takes a step back, resuming a less intimate distance. "I was thinking we could go -- you know. Out. Be social. Or -- normal." He hesitates. "I might bring Eshana or -- someone."
Fingers sliding over Adam's shoulder and arm as he pulls back, Ilad takes a half-step back as well, giving him more room to breathe -- so to speak. "I don't object," he says, swinging his jacket back up over his shoulder again, "provided the lady agrees not to pelt me with vegetables. Let me know when."
Adam squints a little at this proviso. "Ah--" Uhm. "Does she have a habit of that?"
Ilad smiles, just a little. "Once does not make a habit, I suppose," he says, humor low and dry in its brush over the words.
"Well." Adam eyes him a bit askance. "I'll remind her to behave herself, I suppose." He hesitates a significant amount of time before saying, "I did not tell her any -- details. But I did -- need to talk. And if I ask her to come with us, she might -- draw conclusions."
"Oh, Adam," Ilad sighs out, and lifts his free hand to rub at his eyes. "You do me such courtesies. The secret is well fled, I think. -- I told Alden he could speak. The silence chafed him so."
"Oh." For a moment, there is a quicksilver flash of frustration in Adam's expression before he sighs it away. "I wish I had known at the time. I would not have been worrying about it in the midst of everything else. I was -- not proud of how close I came to speaking of it outright."
"I laid such burdens on you both." Ilad glances away, his jaw tight. He closes his hand into a fist, held close to his side. "The secret held such value to me, such dire importance. I wanted no one to know." There is a great weight of breath in his voice, layered over a thin note of strain that does not evaporate. "I still mislike it deeply, when I think about it, how -- far afield it goes. But it seems like such a nonevent to so many who have found me out. At times, I wonder whether we even speak the same language."
Adam watches him, his brow cinching with regret as his gaze lands on the curl of Ilad's fist. "I did not mean to--" He looks away. "If there is anyone who can understand the closeness of this particular secret, it is me, Ilad. I do not fault you for wanting to keep it. I would. I do."
"Yes," Ilad says, glancing back at him beneath the quirk together of his eyebrows. "I suppose that you do."
Adam rubs at the corner of his eye under his glasses and then drops his hand away with a slow exhale. A little suddenly, he asks, "Does Charles know that you spoke to me?"
Ilad frowns a little, and the shake of his head is slow. "I don't believe so," he says. Blinking at Adam as his faint frown lingers, he says, "I thought it between you and I." (In other words, he is the least communicative boyfriend ever.)
Adam nods. His reaction is not terribly communicative as to whether he approves of this or not. "I just -- wondered," he says. "Charles has a way of -- asking questions in a pointedly casual manner."
"It appears to be his style," Ilad says. His eyebrows twitch up, the silent query in his gaze indicative of his own.
"He does not trust me," Adam says quieter.
Ilad's mouth twists in a grimace, fading after a beat. He says, "I believe he finds it hard to trust at all. But I trust you, my friend. And if he insists on being wrong, he will have to learn."
"Yes, well." Adam swallows and moves on quickly, gathering up his briefcase. "I got a cat," he adds in conversational jump as he does so. "It's Eshana's fault."
"A cat," Ilad repeats. His eyebrows swept up, he gives Adam a slight, bemused smile. "A cat?"
"We never had any pets growing up," Adam says, a touch defensive as he stands there with his briefcase. "And she got caught in my jacket."
"We had animals on the kibbutz," Ilad answers, humor lingering in the slant of his gaze as he watches Adam. "Cats, even, though they were not very charming cats."
"Yes, well." Adam adjusts her glasses. "She is unreasonably affectionate. I don't know why I brought her home."
"Well," Ilad answers him, and there is a wry warmth in the single syllable. He shakes his head. "Mazel tov on your new addition, hm?" he says, and finally shifts, ducking his head and readjusting the fall of his leather jacket over his shoulder as he prepares to move on.
"Not quite what my parents were hoping for," Adam says with sudden, rare humor. He shakes his head. "I'll -- see you around, Ilad."
"I will see you later," Ilad answers him in confirmation, smile lingering to answer his humor. Then he turns and walks onwards on long strides.
I think they are probably going in the same direction, but for the sake of the scene, they have parted.
lol. right.
(:
I spoke them, and it must have been a like pain that brought them to your tongue.
I am sorry, Adam. I think I understand now.
It balms a hurt that cut deeper than I realized, that I am no longer ... ah, exiled. I do not know when I began to let myself grow so -- unsolitary, but I cannot regret it. The pain I caused, though; that I can regret.
As to Alden -- it is frustrating, but I recognize that I cannot be Adam's advocate in this. Unfair though I find the mistrust, it does not go only one way. They will have to find their own peace.
I mislike that, too. G-d, but I would not stand by while a wedge drives hard and deep between them. They both have so little to spare of what they would cast aside.
Given the time and direction Adam comes from, a recent dinner in the cafeteria seems as likely a recent prospect as anything else. He stops off at a picnic table to set his briefcase down and remove his suit jacket to inspect something or other along the interior. There is probably a /loose thread/ or something. He is like the Princess and the Minor, Unnoticeable Defect in his Brooks Brothers.
In contrast, Ilad appears to be coming from the garage. His leather jacket is slung over his shoulder, two fingers hooked into its collar such that he looks like a gentleman carrying a more gentlemanly jacket. His shirt is a dark green, his jeans blue and bearing flecks of -- mud. Where did you find mud, Ilad? His step slow as he paces up the street, he gives Adam a surveying look and greets him with his name.
Adam glances up, drawn more by the sound of his name than the more common sounds of movement among a populous base. His expression stills, hesitates, and then he replies, "Ilad." There's a longer hesitation before he adds quieter, "I'm glad you're back safe."
Inclination of his head slight, Ilad comes to a halt a few feet from Adam, maintaining a courteous and wary distance between them. He says, "As field missions go, practically without mishap."
"So it would seem." The flicker of Adam's smile is faint. "At least it goes smoothly when it really counts, hm?" His body is held still and tall, his awkwardness a whisper of tension along his upright carriage.
"We get the job done," Ilad agrees, mildly. He makes little secret of his study of Adam, dark eyes steady in contemplation of his features, of the straight-drawn spine. He finally lets his gaze fall away, relieving the idle intensity of his scrutiny. "Are you well, my friend?"
"Well enough." And -- for the most part, he looks it. There are the hints of distance clear to Ilad's discerning gaze, a sense of purposeful remove, but he lacks overt signs of stress, fatigue, or anger. "And you?"
"Fine," Ilad says. To the familiar reader of his expression, there are signs of wear to be gleaned, a muting of his energy that bespeaks some of that fatigue, some of that stress. By this hour of the day, he is surely recovered from his hangover, at least. The courtesies thus exchanged, he hesitates a beat, drawing a breath through his nose.
"You must be--" Adam hesitates over his wording. "I understand that you were down there quite a while. With Hendrickson."
Pause before his reply extending past a beat as he considers, Ilad finally nods once and says, "It was long and grueling work."
"I imagine so." Adam glances down at the jacket in his hands as if he's forgotten what he was looking for in it in the first place. "You seem to have done well with it, even so."
"As well as I could do, at any rate," Ilad answers, a trifle dry in his acknowledgment. "We have grown accustomed to the convenience of simply taking whatever information is to hand in people's minds, I think."
"It is certainly a shortcut," Adam admits with a dry exhale of breath.
"Mm." The noise Ilad makes is neutral and quiet. He looks over at Adam, contemplating him again. After a beat, he makes another quiet, more personal offering. "Madmen unsettle me," he says. "The break came for Hendrickson well before I took my chisel to him, so to speak."
"He did not sound quite so mad in the first reports from Colorado," Adam says quietly. "Angry, yes. Vindictive. But not -- insane."
"Well," Ilad says. His mouth tightens a little, and he opens his free hand. "At some point, he broke."
"Yes." Gaze lighting on the tightening of Ilad's mouth, Adam lets the subject drift away. He does not choose one particularly lighter, though, when he says, "I am sorry. For -- losing my temper. The way I spoke to you."
Ilad is silent for a moment, his gaze fallen to the ground between them with a faint frown turning down his mouth at the corners. "Accepted," he says finally. "Of course." Head canted slightly to one side, he does not quite lift his gaze to find Adam's again. "I am sorry, too," he says. "It was ill done of me."
"You will not lose my friendship from an attempt to preserve it," Adam says, quiet but firm. "I -- want you to know that. Losing you--" He swallows. "Losing your friendship is the last thing I want, Ilad."
Something about Adam's words seems to strike home. Ilad closes his eyes, lashes fanning dark and thick over his warm-hued skin. He tips his head in a single nod, breath drawn through his nose, and opens his eyes again with the lift of his gaze. "You will not," he says, firm and certain, but soft as sand.
Adam exhales soft and slow through his nose, the silence settling still between them. He pulls his suit jacket back on, its crisp lines falling neat along his shoulders, and then, after a hesitation, he steps slowly to close the distance between them. His embrace is a touch stiff, a little awkward, too conscious of itself and the contact to really relax into touch, but it is firm.
Ilad enfolds Adam readily in the clasp of a hug, his arm a strong and solid bar across the other man's back. He is a contained blaze, fever heat plain through the layers of his clothing that separate skin from skin, and the scent he carries suggests the road and the dirt even as it still carries a distant suggestion of the more usual spicy warmth of his soap. He says nothing that his arms do not say, though one of his hands is still occupied by the jacket and that leather flaps against Adam's back but oh well. Props.
He pulls back a little suddenly, as if with a force of will, but his smile flickers small and subtle as his gaze slides back. Adam takes a step back, resuming a less intimate distance. "I was thinking we could go -- you know. Out. Be social. Or -- normal." He hesitates. "I might bring Eshana or -- someone."
Fingers sliding over Adam's shoulder and arm as he pulls back, Ilad takes a half-step back as well, giving him more room to breathe -- so to speak. "I don't object," he says, swinging his jacket back up over his shoulder again, "provided the lady agrees not to pelt me with vegetables. Let me know when."
Adam squints a little at this proviso. "Ah--" Uhm. "Does she have a habit of that?"
Ilad smiles, just a little. "Once does not make a habit, I suppose," he says, humor low and dry in its brush over the words.
"Well." Adam eyes him a bit askance. "I'll remind her to behave herself, I suppose." He hesitates a significant amount of time before saying, "I did not tell her any -- details. But I did -- need to talk. And if I ask her to come with us, she might -- draw conclusions."
"Oh, Adam," Ilad sighs out, and lifts his free hand to rub at his eyes. "You do me such courtesies. The secret is well fled, I think. -- I told Alden he could speak. The silence chafed him so."
"Oh." For a moment, there is a quicksilver flash of frustration in Adam's expression before he sighs it away. "I wish I had known at the time. I would not have been worrying about it in the midst of everything else. I was -- not proud of how close I came to speaking of it outright."
"I laid such burdens on you both." Ilad glances away, his jaw tight. He closes his hand into a fist, held close to his side. "The secret held such value to me, such dire importance. I wanted no one to know." There is a great weight of breath in his voice, layered over a thin note of strain that does not evaporate. "I still mislike it deeply, when I think about it, how -- far afield it goes. But it seems like such a nonevent to so many who have found me out. At times, I wonder whether we even speak the same language."
Adam watches him, his brow cinching with regret as his gaze lands on the curl of Ilad's fist. "I did not mean to--" He looks away. "If there is anyone who can understand the closeness of this particular secret, it is me, Ilad. I do not fault you for wanting to keep it. I would. I do."
"Yes," Ilad says, glancing back at him beneath the quirk together of his eyebrows. "I suppose that you do."
Adam rubs at the corner of his eye under his glasses and then drops his hand away with a slow exhale. A little suddenly, he asks, "Does Charles know that you spoke to me?"
Ilad frowns a little, and the shake of his head is slow. "I don't believe so," he says. Blinking at Adam as his faint frown lingers, he says, "I thought it between you and I." (In other words, he is the least communicative boyfriend ever.)
Adam nods. His reaction is not terribly communicative as to whether he approves of this or not. "I just -- wondered," he says. "Charles has a way of -- asking questions in a pointedly casual manner."
"It appears to be his style," Ilad says. His eyebrows twitch up, the silent query in his gaze indicative of his own.
"He does not trust me," Adam says quieter.
Ilad's mouth twists in a grimace, fading after a beat. He says, "I believe he finds it hard to trust at all. But I trust you, my friend. And if he insists on being wrong, he will have to learn."
"Yes, well." Adam swallows and moves on quickly, gathering up his briefcase. "I got a cat," he adds in conversational jump as he does so. "It's Eshana's fault."
"A cat," Ilad repeats. His eyebrows swept up, he gives Adam a slight, bemused smile. "A cat?"
"We never had any pets growing up," Adam says, a touch defensive as he stands there with his briefcase. "And she got caught in my jacket."
"We had animals on the kibbutz," Ilad answers, humor lingering in the slant of his gaze as he watches Adam. "Cats, even, though they were not very charming cats."
"Yes, well." Adam adjusts her glasses. "She is unreasonably affectionate. I don't know why I brought her home."
"Well," Ilad answers him, and there is a wry warmth in the single syllable. He shakes his head. "Mazel tov on your new addition, hm?" he says, and finally shifts, ducking his head and readjusting the fall of his leather jacket over his shoulder as he prepares to move on.
"Not quite what my parents were hoping for," Adam says with sudden, rare humor. He shakes his head. "I'll -- see you around, Ilad."
"I will see you later," Ilad answers him in confirmation, smile lingering to answer his humor. Then he turns and walks onwards on long strides.
I think they are probably going in the same direction, but for the sake of the scene, they have parted.
lol. right.
(: