tramitem_net | (no subject)

[Bail has a small smile for Ben when the door opens and he sees the man is again in skater pants.

He didn't mind whatever state Ben was in - at least sartorially. He cared that his friend was clearly in distress.

He stepped in.

He didn't presume that they were familiar enough to go straight for a hug.

"You can take a seat and I can get you something to drink?"

Ben pushed the door closed behind Bail, while he stared at Bail in complete confusion. Not in a bad way but that was... incredibly kind and entirely unexpected.

"Uh."

Eloquent, Ben.

Elsa appeared, leaving her food to investigate Bail's shoes, while Ben tried to scrape together his brain.

"No, that's all right. Why don't we both have a drink and sit down."

"Alright," Bail said, knowing that arguing would be counter productive.

He paused to let the cat smell him- certainly she smelled Franklin on him. As a dog owner, no matter how often he lint rolled, he knew some dog hair must remain. The cat... and the apartment, Bail realized at the same time, suited Ben. He'd ask about the cat's name later.

"What do you want to drink?"

There was something about Bail just sort of... walking in and taking over that was, after Ben's moment of complete bafflement, kind of... nice. Almost relieving?

He shook his head slightly to clear it before he answered: "Naked. Any flavor. They're in the refrigerator and help yourself to anything you want. There's coffee, tea, bottled water, and rootbeer as well as the smoothies."

Bail moved to the refrigerator and pulled out the first smoothie he could reach. He opened it and handed it to Ben. He made sure Ben had a good hold on it before grabbing a bottled water for himself.

"Do you want to talk?"

He broke the seal on the bottle and moved to take a seat on the sofa and hoping Bail would join him.

"Not professionally."

That's... kind of a joke. Mostly a joke.

"I'm really rattled and slowly working toward mad, but I'm okay."

"Not professionally," he said, gently, not at all chastising. "I'm just here as your friend."

Bail followed him and took a seat. He just held the water bottle in his hands for the moment, not opening it.

"That all sounds like a reasonable reaction."

Elsa was continuing to follow Bail around, though she was now perched on the arm of the couch beside him in order to obsessively sniff at his arm.

"It probably is. Apparently at some point I got whipped."

"Is that what you remember? From those memories?" Memories of laser swords and aliens. And being whipped?

"No. That's what the evidence suggests I'm going to remember, eventually."

He took a drink of his smoothie, and watched as Elsa crept up the back of the couch to get into a position to allow her to stretch out and sniff Bail's eye.

"That's..." Bail didn't know what to say, to be quite honest. He had no framework for dealing with magically appearing scars. It made him wish the Bureau did more for them.

"I'm sorry," he finally decided on.

And with the cat trying to get into his face, he decided to address it. "Your cat is very curious."

Bail didn't need to be sorry. It wasn't his fault, and no one knows what to do with this. "It's okay. I'm pretty rattled, but it could be so much worse."

Then he cracked a crooked grin. "She's a snot and I suspect if you stay still you're going to be wearing her like a stole in the next few minutes." Elsa was, truly, continuing to sniff around Bail in a really intrusive way, but slowly putting a paw on him.

Bail held up a hand to divert the cat's attention for now.

"In your opinion... what would be worse?"

Elsa may or may not have been offended but she did divert her attention and leap over Bail to land on Ben.

"Waking up with active injuries. Waking up with powers. Waking up with some more extreme modification than scars. ...In some regards possibly even memories could arguably be worse."

Except he really did feel more violated by this, even if he didn't understand and couldn't rationalize exactly why.

Bail wasn't at all offended that Ben's cat had given up on him. That was the nature of cats.

He nodded. "I can see how all of that would be worse," he said. "... None of us asked for these experiences."

"No, and I think that in a lot of ways the memories may actually be the worst of it. How are you doing by the way? No more intrusive memories?" He's not awkward or uncomfortable, he's just moving on.

He has what he needs here. He has someone here, that he likes and is willing to stick around with him.

Besides the cat who is now settled on Ben's lap and all, but it just isn't the same.

"Memories dictate so much about ourselves," Bail agreed.

Just getting Ben talking was good enough for Bail.

"Honestly, I am doing fine. I still only have the one memory- I know so many details about that memory now, there are so many aliens, the shape of the room I was in. Room? More like an auditorium. Are all memories like that? They just repeat over and over until you know all the details?"

He gently moved the cat off his lap to the sofa beside him and tucked his legs under himself on the sofa, turned slightly toward Bail and rest his fingers on Bail's upper arm. It's light, but it is definitely physical contact. "When I got the initial memory it was really brief and it repeated over and over and over like that. I heard similar accounts from a couple of other people. With the next set there was a lot more... content, and it hasn't been nearly as obnoxiously repetitive. The memories still show up in my dreams a lot, but not like some endlessly playing loop."

Ben's hand on Bail's arm was not lost on him. In fact, he was keenly aware of it in a way that made him selfishly wish circumstances where different. That he was in Ben's apartment for a different reason.

He used the excuse of finally opening his water bottle as way to cover.

"That's good to know I have that to look forward to." Did his future also hold lurking scars ready to pop up without context.

"I haven't asked about your cat yet. What's its name?"

He wasn't exactly thinking sex, or anything even sexual, but he was definitely seeking out contact as a source of grounding himself and of both trying to reassure and be reassured.

"None of it's easy, but none of it's impossible, either. And it does get easier to sleep."

The lack of response made him a little uncertain about it, but he wasn't being pulled away from and if he pulled away immediately it would be strange, so he let it stay and tried not to overthink that-

or anything else about scars and memories and the context and the future.

"Her name's Elsa. I should probably offer you a lint roller now. Your pants are going to be terrible."

Bail did finally look at Ben's hand and... realized he might be coming off as cold. Which he didn't want to do. He just didn't want to come off as taking advantage of Ben.

And he didn't want Ben to move to get a lint roller, because it was unnecessary.

He placed a hand over Ben's for so many reasons.

"You don't have to do that. I have a lint roller in my car. At my office. Every room of my house almost... she's a lovely cat."

The second he was touched he relaxed. His expression lightened, his eyebrows weren't just on the edge of being pulled down, the set of his jaw loosened up, his shoulders dropped, his spine curved and became less upright. Just pure, immediate response to having the touch returned and, in truth, just being touched.

He curled his fingers a bit into Bail's arm and, while not quite leaning into him the overall level of being more relaxed decreased distance some. Not with intent but just for feeling... overall better.

He even laughed, albeit very softly. "That's right - golden retriever. I wonder what Elsa would make of him."

Bail noticed how Ben relaxed in every way and made the decision to just give in more with the touch if it had that much of an affect on him.

He grabbed Ben's hand, to move it, to hold it with his.

"Franklin?" Bail said. "Oh, he's a big baby. She would walk all over him."

He was perplexed a little when Bail moved his hand but when he realized what was happening, he simply folded his fingers around Bail's, pivoted a little and sprawled down against his side with a sigh of relief.

"She walks all over everyone." Literally - she was currently padding softly up along Ben to get to the back of the sofa. "She's a benevolent dictator, most of the time. I don't think she's seen a dog since she left her breeder, though."

It was just natural from there to move his arm to wrap around Ben's shoulders and then lean back against the couch for support- it was more comfortable that way.

Bail tried not to think too hard about all that contact. Just all at once.

"Franklin is just happy to have attention. And that he gets to go to the park. How old is Elsa?"