hadriel_logs | Don't know what to say, don't know what I said

Entry tags:

Don't know what to say, don't know what I said

Who: Dr. Rosen and Dr. Sweets [Closed]
What: Serious talk must be had
Where: Rosen's apartment
When: 29th, morning after Rosen's drunken misdial to the network
Warnings: None. Will change if needed

It is the persistent and angry burning in his throat that finally stirs Rosen in the late morning and it begins a slow, aching process of waking up, the older man unfolding in the same stiff and sluggish manner as a wrinkled ball of paper easing its way open after being tossed into a waste bin. And that is precisely how he feels: crumpled. Discarded. Before he even dares to open his eyes, Lee is aware of a wrongness to all of this. To the way his head is thudding dully, the manner in which the blanket has become caught up between his legs, and the labored feeling to every drag of breath.

Yes. there is something distinctly wrong to the start of this day.

Finally he dares to crack open his eyes and it is every bit as unpleasant as he had expected. But the band-aid had to be ripped off and utilizing that same resolve he drags his torso upwards, fighting the vertigo and the sharp pain in his side as he sits himself upright. And there he sits for a long moment, head in hands, fingers rubbing roughly at his hairline, the skin damp with a light sweat and hairs catching between his knuckles. When at last he feels with it enough to face it, he shifts, places his feet flat on the floor, and pushes himself up to a standing position. Almost instantly he feels his knees buckle and he stumbles forward, managing to catch himself with both hands splayed against the wall.

"God dammit," he hisses under his breath, leaning forward and pressing his burning forehead against the cool of the wall.

What is going on? What-- There are blurs of it. As if the previous night had been a watercolor painting that someone deliberate spilled a glass of water over so that the colors ran together in a dizzying and garish mess.

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Lance is not a particularly heavy sleeper even when he's at home--whether in Hadriel or back in his world--and is even less so when he's camping on a couch in someone else's place. Therefore the soft thumping is more than enough to wake him up, and although it takes a moment for him to remember where he is and why, he's soon making his way toward Rosen's door.

He knocks, lightly, aware that any noise is probably not going to be pleasant if Rosen has the kind of hangover he thinks he does; still, there's only so much that can be avoided even though he keeps his voice soft when he speaks through the door. "Dr. Rosen?"

There's a faint reverberation around the voice coming through the door, one originating purely in Rosen's own head. As Lance says 'Dr. Rosen', Rosen hears echoes of others with him.

Dr. Rosen, I fixed the tv, so I get to drive

"--No," he whispers to himself. Its almost involuntary. A few more moments and the static clears away. Gary gone. Leaving just himself. Just Lee...and Lance, standing on the other side of the door. He swallows and pushes off of the wall a little bit, arms now hanging at his sides as he braves an answer.

"Yes...?"

It may sound a bit muddled, disoriented. Dr. Rosen has no question as to who exactly is speaking to him, and while his gut tells him that Lance has been there the whole night, his mind is slow in filling in the gaps as to why that would be. But he's grasp into the ether of his hangover haze hoping he'll latch onto something. He tries again, a bit stronger.

"Yes, I'm awake."

Lance is leaning against the door, risking falling in if Rosen happens to open it, but it's easier to hear this way and he can tell Rosen whispers something to himself, just not what it is. Still, he waits patiently for him to actually respond, and is soon rewarded with something that's actually intelligible.

"Can I come in?" He asks, no really planning to take no as an answer but wanting to get permission if he can all the same.

The man's shoulders slump. In truth, Lee feels like crawling into a corner to wither away, but while his reason had been plied with alcohol the night before, it has returned to stand stoic and guard-like in his mind, and it will not tolerate cowering. Thus he ends up nodding vaguely before clearing his throat and agreeing.

"Ah, yes, yes thats fine, Lance."

Alright, well, he at least sounds like he could be doing worse; Lance remembers sometimes overdoing it so badly that he couldn't talk without feeling like he was going to be sick the next morning. Not his best decisions, those nights of drinking, and he's definitely more moderate about his alcohol now.

He opens the door just enough to lean in, hair a mess both from being too long and from sleeping on a couch, and he's wearing the longsleeve teeshirt and loose track pants he usually sleeps in. He's a little hesitant as he gives Rosen a glance over, the whole situation slightly awkward.

"How are you feeling?"

Awkward is perhaps an understatement for this whole situation, but given the situation has not been made entirely clear to him yet, Rosen remains hesitant to jump to any conclusions or take any rash action. Not that he could. Although he is managing to stay on his feet, it is just barely so. He looks unstable, so much so that you might bet that the weight of a small landing on his shoulder could topple him. He is wracked by small tremors in the nerves and muscles which give him the appearance of trembling, and to his dazed annoyance it is entirely involuntary.

"I'm not quite sure how to answer that yet," Lee murmurs. "I've been better. I, um, I don't exactly feel like I'm, well, like I'm here."

His head is spinning and his body is heavy, but Rosen almost feels like that information is being relayed to him through an outside source and that instead he is watching himself in a surreal, sickly daze from the other side of the room.

"Have you slept?"

"You should probably sit down." Lance suggests, stepping more fully into the room and offering a water bottle that he'd thought to bring with him. He's guessing Rosen's feeling a combination of hangover and dehydration, so water should help with both, although he makes a mental note of what Rosen says about not feeling there. Hopefully he's just disoriented from losing time due to drinking too much.

He shrugs and gives a small nod at the question but otherwise doesn't answer it, unwilling to let the conversation be turned back toward him. "What do you remember?"

Once again there is an echoing just beneath Lance's words, the man's 'what do you remember' undermined by Dr. Singh's more biting voice.

Really? You sure it wasn't because you wanted him off your plate? Be honest with yourself, Lee.

Lee shakes his head a bit to try and clear it away, now aware enough to recognize it as a symptom of something that can be easily and physiologically explained. "I remember drinking," he starts. Whatever has been lost in the details, he is certain of the fact that alcohol was involved. He remembers involving it. "And I remember speaking a lot."

Which brings his attention back to the pain in his throat. The burning scratch moves him to reach for the offered water but he fumbles it, accidentally causing it to fall and bounce on the floor.

"A-ah. I'm sorry. It would appear I'm not all together yet..."

Lance nods at the mention of drinking--at least he remembers that much, which is a good sign--and when Rosen drops the bottle just fixes him with a 'no kidding' look; it isn't a mean one, just one that goes with his next statement. "You should sit down."

No 'probably' this time, and he picks up the fortunately unopened bottle with a bit more grace than he's been able to show recently, his ribs only protesting a little at the motion instead of preventing it entirely. He'll wait to hand the bottle over again until Rosen actually listens to him and sits down, though.

"Yeah." The word is barely more than a sigh of resignation as Rosen shuffles back towards the bed, easing himself down to sit on its edge.

"I know I spoke to Sans, to, um, to Asgore, I think to Chara," Lee is rambling a bit as some small pebbles of memories manage to find their way to the forefront of his thoughts. What bits and pieces he is getting are not particularly pleasant however.

"And I know that you've been here since last night."

And its not just the clothes and the bedhead that give that away.

Good, he's sitting, and so Lance hands the bottle over again but doesn't let go until he's sure Rosen actually has it.

He's quiet, nodding along as Rosen speaks, confirming he's correct about everything he's saying so far. At the part about him having stayed since the night before, Lance gives another small shrug. "You don't survive college without learning how to handle someone getting blackout drunk." And rule number one is not to leave them alone to die a usually undignified death.

"I'd guess you have quite the hangover." He'd be really surprised if the answer is anything but yes.

While it is an explanation for why Lance is prepared for such a situation, that doesn't exactly explain why Lance is there though. But Lee leaves it alone for the moment. Where that thread leads is tangled and it will be a painstaking process to unknot it.

Baby steps.

"Tell me, Lance," He asks quietly as he takes the bottle in hand, "Is the hangover going to be the lesser of two evils to whatever I might end up remembering about last night?"

Its confirming Lance's assumption with a roundabout question, dark brows knitted half in question and half in nausea as he lifts the water bottle to his lips.

It's something they'll surely get to in a bit, but for now it's better to give a little more time for Rosen to get himself together.

"I think so." He answers the question as honestly as possible, but it's hard for him to say exactly since it really depends how Rosen feels personally about what he said and about publicly appearing so drunk. But as far as what he said--or at least what Lance knows he said--it could've been a whole lot worse, and he guesses the hangover is pretty bad.

"I can't say you won't be embarrassed, however." He feels like he should warn Rosen of that much.

There's the prolonged burst of a heavy sigh from Rosen's nose as he drinks. The sickly feeling in his stomach intensifies and his heart rate hikes, but it doesn't really show on his face. With dark bags under his bloodshot eyes and his mouth in a heavy frown, he mostly just looks exhausted. And almost resigned to whatever will come.

Because something was bound to happen, wasn't it? In the constant roulette of the gods' challenges he had mostly been spared. Others had killed each other, had horrible secrets cruelly unmasked against their will. Meanwhile he, mostly at his own doing aside from a tiny hint of a nudge from Delight, had simply embarrassed himself--

--Unless there had been something more. Had he said anything more than drunken ramblings?

"Only embarrassed?"

"As far as I'm aware. You talked a lot about a metaphor involving a frog, but it was mostly unintelligible." Lance had gotten the general idea, but again it hadn't been so specific as to be anything more than embarrassing as far as he can tell.

"It also seems you contained your drinking to the apartment." So no drunken shenanigans, he's pretty sure.

There's a mirthless laugh at the comment about his apartment. "I planned ahead." And he managed to even fuck that up. "Clearly that worked out well."

For the moment he'll make no acknowledgement of the frog. He might not remember exactly what he was drunkenly rambling about but Lee can be fairly certain what he had been attempting to reference, and that conversation had been between himself and one other, and well before Lance's time here.

"I'll venture a guess that I was trying to call Sans then."

"Although I hope there isn't a next time, if there is you should probably put your phone somewhere you won't remember it being while in a drunken state." Wise advice here from someone who's used it, although it's partially a joke. There better not be a next time, after all.

He tilts his head slightly and furrows his eyebrows in confusion, not sure how frogs and Sans are connected, but he's not even going to ask. "I believe he did reply to you and you had a conversation, but I wasn't paying close attention to what you said."

Edited 2017-05-28 21:16 (UTC)

Rosen hums distantly. His friendship with Sans is not a subject he wishes to venture into right now. At least not with things as they are. Maybe on another day he will. Maybe on another day he'll need to, for certainly his fondness for the residents of the Underground leaves a heavy weight in his thoughts and only Lance has come close to being someone Rosen would feel comfortable to talk to about it.

But again, not with things as they are. He's found he doesn't like being opened up, having his clockwork looked at where it is rusting.

"Thats good advice," Lee nods, "but no. There is not going to be a next time. Or if there is it will have been against my will."

He adds that caveat given the simple fact that they are in a cave run by careless gods who do enjoy playing games with them. Rosen can make no promises that things may occur involuntarily.

Lance nods, satisfied with that answer, shifting slightly from foot to foot as having nothing else to say leads to an awkward silence. Although to be fair, it's not as though they truly have nothing to say, it's just that the topic is as awkward as the silence is.

Still, Lance is not the type to believe in avoiding things forever, and so finally he speaks up again. "Now that you're sober, I would ask what prompted deciding to overdo it so drastically last night, but I think I already know."

Although he'll give a chance for Rosen to tell him instead, if he wants to.

Lee is almost certain the new wave of sickness that comes over him in this moment is not alcohol related. It is the feeling of having someone directly press against a pulse point and the subsequent sensation of a lump sitting high in the throat as if it has closed off all airways.

"You...think it has to do with our discussion a few days ago?" Its framed as a question, but really its more of a confirmation of what he already knows.

A corner of his upper lip gets caught between his teeth a moment as he chews at it in thought. Part of him would bargain anything to not be here right now. But another, more insistent part of him staunchly refuses to let him flee this time. It knocks angrily at the back of his mind, shouting at him that this is one of those moments where it is worth it to stick it out in the trenches.

"Yes. I would be lying if I said that didn't get the ball rolling," Lee stares forward as he speaks. "It was like when gauze isn't left long enough after an IV is removed. The puncture point doesn't close so everything just, um, it just starts flowing. Unimpeded." His fingers curl into the fabric of his pants.

When Rosen asks the question that really isn't, Lance nods once in similar confirmation, and a part of him feels vaguely amazed that it's only been a few days. Things have been happening so quickly here that they're almost a blur for him at this point, especially since he's been keeping so much in his head.

He gives Rosen the time to think and then continue without being interrupted, crossing his arms subconsciously as he feels a mix of emotions; concern, guilt, frustration, and underneath them a sense of hope and determination to find the best outcome possible for this situation. Once Rosen finishes speaking Lance nods again in understanding, his own gaze shifted off to the side for a few seconds before he brings himself to try to make eye contact again. "What was it specifically that was so difficult for you to deal with?"

Was it explaining things at all, was it thinking about them, was it how Lance had reacted? He doesn't know where to start trying to resolve things just yet, so he's hoping this will give him an idea of how to start the conversation.

That is a question Rosen is not entirely sure what to do with for a moment. In all honesty, Lance's reaction had been the best that Rosen could have realistically hoped for. It was measured and even-keeled. And he can't honestly expect to receive a positive reaction to that species of revelation. What he had done was, after all, deplorable. Even he knows that. So Lance's reaction was valid, and logically Rosen knows that.

But perhaps it was the way it had all played out. Rosen had not really prepared himself to be so open and vulnerable. He had asked Lance a favor, Lance had been concerned and came to his apartment of his own volition, and then somehow things had ended with Rosen feeling like, well, like a frog splayed and dissected in a high school science lab. However he knows that wasn't Lance's doing. At no point had Lance forced his hand. But Lee feels perhaps he made a miscalculation in confiding these things in him, not because Lance wasn't trustworthy, but because Rosen had underestimated how deeply he had buried them inside himself and therefore how gutted it would leave him having laid that all out. Particularly when laying it all out without the time to brace himself for the consequences. For Lance's silent confirmation that yes, that was awful.

And then being left with that. That hard fall. And the feeling like he couldn't stitch himself back up again. He couldn't get the pieces to fit back inside the way they were supposed to.

"All of it," He murmurs, but quickly realizes that is unhelpful. "Replaying everything in my mind. All of it. Every moment again and again. And being reminded of what I was capable of. What I've done. And I, um, I felt afraid. Afraid that everything I had done since then it didn't matter, because that stuff happened. Its inside me. And everything is going to slip away because of it. I am the sum of my parts. And I hate it."

Edited 2017-05-28 22:32 (UTC)

Lance, honestly, hasn't known what to do with the information when he first heard it, and even after having several days to think about it he's still conflicted in a few respects. There are a lot of factors that go into how and why he felt the way he did, and it had--through no fault of Rosen's, who didn't know--come at a time when Lance was already dealing with several other major problems.

But now that he's had a little time, despite his emotions still being mixed he is more than empathetic enough to feel for Rosen as he answers. It all makes sense, although there are a few things Lance immediately feels the need to address; at least his question did serve the purpose of giving him an idea of where to start.

"I won't pretend that I can understand some of what you did." He says that first, evenly, carefully controlling his voice by separating what he's saying from what he's feeling; although much of what Rosen told him is not great but not unreasonable--such as having poor priorities when it comes to family--the part about using Danielle against his wife is something that makes Lance feel some combination of nausea and cold anger. He can't, and won't, pretend it was anything other than wrong in a way that he can't accept.

Still, that leads into the rest of what he wants to address. "But people make mistakes, and how they deal with those mistakes moving forward can be just as important as what they actually did."

And so that Rosen feels the kind of remorse he obviously does is incredibly meaningful here, and so Rosen shouldn't write himself off entirely for having done things he regrets doing. And, honestly, it's not up to Lance to decide if Rosen's actions were unforgivable; it's up to Danielle, and in another way to Rosen himself.

Rosen isn't sure what he had been expecting Lance to say, but clearly he had been expecting something harsher because his eyes noticeably widen in a quiet surprise. He's spent the past several days alone with his own internal voice slicing jagged paths across his heart and mind in whatever way would cut the deepest, and now Lance is seemingly cracking a door open ajar. Letting some light and air in to combat the dust and cobwebs. He breathes in sharply, face unable to conceal the fact that he now feels a swell of emotions.

And among them a very faint ,but still distinct, flicker of hope.

"Lance, I've never told anyone else about...about what I told you. No one. Not here. Not back at home." Lee's gaze now shifts from the spot it had picked on the wall to Dr. Sweets himself, unsure if Lance will pick up what he's trying, and struggling, to convey.

He trusts him. And that alone is frightening because it means that Lance is important.

Lance watches his reaction quietly, looking for a sense that Rosen understands the point he's trying to make, and in that surprise and mix of emotions he thinks he might.

Good, that's a start.

When Rosen speaks again, it isn't what Lance is expecting to hear him say; it's not unexpected in a bad way or anything, just a confusing one. It isn't as though he hasn't heard similar words before from patients, over time, but this is a completely different situation and the very first thing that runs through his head is 'why?'

But, after that, it all clicks together, and Lance crosses his arms a little more tightly against his chest. He's used to this sort of trust being put in him back home, from both patients and friends, but things are so much more complicated here and in this situation and he isn't entirely sure how to handle it. Still, for now he just nods, breaking eye contact to glance off to the side.

"I won't tell anyone." He says, even though he knows that isn't really the issue here, but he's once again very unsure of how to proceed.

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