[oopfsb / darkest timeline] Millman, Session #1

[stilljustandrew]

"So can you bring me up to speed?" is the first thing Dr. Millman asks him, once they're settled in one of the infirmary's consultation rooms. "Nita didn't give me too much of the context."

Previously on Milliways, he thinks (with what he really wishes were more genuine humor), and takes a deep breath. And plunges in.

The first time he met Matt, trying to read auguries in the fragments of a broken teacup. How quickly he'd warmed to him, talking shop about different magic systems; how he'd offered to show Matt the Council Library sometime.

"And that's not something I should have even considered with a guy I just met, you know?" he adds in an aside. "I mean there's sensitive stuff in there, information that could be seriously dangerous in the wrong hands ... I don't think he took anything but the point is I didn't know, I -- god," he groans, "that was so irresponsible."

Comments

[comm_npc_2]

"So you did bring him there?" Millman asks, getting him back on narrative track.

[stilljustandrew]

"Yeah, the next time we met. A-after ..."

It's hard to talk about that conversation, Matt coming on to him, inviting him upstairs; harder than he expected. He looks down at his hands as he speaks, trying to force the words out blunt and direct, veering aside again and again to talk around it, finally falling silent.

"I don't know what I'm scared of," he says after a moment, muffled. "But I don't want to say it."

[comm_npc_2]

"To me?" asks Millman quietly. "Or to anyone?"

[stilljustandrew]

"I don't know. I, it's not like it's a secret, Nita knows ..."

And so do Tom, X, Curtis ... any number of others, now he thinks of it.

[comm_npc_2]

"Can you skip it and come back to it later?" he suggests.

[stilljustandrew]

"None of the rest of it will make any sense without that part," Andrew says, a touch desperately. "I can't leave it out, it'd be like ..."

No suitable simile presents itself, and he flounders for a moment.

[comm_npc_2]

"How about if I try and guess?"

[stilljustandrew]

"Shouldn't be too hard," he mutters. "Everybody else has."

There's just enough of a pause to make him look up, finding Millman's gaze resting on him. He flushes, and looks away again, and abruptly he's more sick of evading it than he's scared of saying it.

"He asked if I wanted to go upstairs together," he mumbles. "He said he felt like ... like we had chemistry." His face burns again at the memory, at saying it aloud: what a cheap line. What an obvious lure.

[comm_npc_2]

"Did you feel the same?"

[stilljustandrew]

"Yeah, but --" He shrugs helplessly, both hands turning palm up in his lap and then bunching together. "That's where it kind of ... gets complicated. Or, like, got complicated later."

[comm_npc_2]

Millman waits, to see if he's going to say anything else.

[stilljustandrew]

"... Maybe I should just tell this in the order it happened, though. I mean in the order I found things out."

[comm_npc_2]

"Works for me," Millman says, "if that's the way it'll make the most sense to you."

[stilljustandrew]

Andrew breathes out heavily. "Okay. Yeah. I said yes. I mean of course I did, he was ... he's gorgeous, and he asked me, and I thought -- I thought he --" For a moment his voice thins to breaking, with an ache of hopeless yearning. "And I was so happy. For like a week or two, while it was going on. I was really happy."

A long pause.

"And I should have known," he whispers. "I keep thinking that, that I should have known."

[comm_npc_2]

"Should have known what?"

[stilljustandrew]

"That he didn't ... really want me. Not like that. I mean, h-he said ..."

His eyes are screwed shut, though he doesn't remember closing them; his face burns with humiliation.

"He said I was beautiful. And I'm not, I know I'm not. I'm not ... anything anybody would want."

[comm_npc_2]

"Leaving that aside for the moment ... at the time you thought he did."

Millman's tone is gentle, with no judgment in it.

"And that changed?"

[stilljustandrew]

He sniffs, nods. "Later. That was after... a few days later I think? He came into the bar from home, he was all ..." He gestures unconsciously to his chest. "Hurt. Bleeding. He'd been stabbed. And he was in shock, panicking, and ... he sort of set the place on fire."

It's easier to tell this part, somehow: the wound in Matt's chest, the fires starting, Matt collapsing; his own terror as he ran over; Nita stepping up to heal him. Getting him to the infirmary together. Coming back there later to visit Matt, with books -- and he remembers so vividly how much time he spent choosing exactly the right ones, how badly he wanted to hit on a selection that would please him.

Matt asking him for a kiss, there in his hospital bed. Coming to himself with his head resting on the edge of the bed, with no clear idea how long it had been, with Matt stroking his hair and smiling at him.

Staggering upstairs afterward, alone and dizzy with happiness, to fall into bed and sleep for most of a day.

[comm_npc_2]

"Did he drug you?" Millman asks, his voice steady.

[stilljustandrew]

"Not ... exactly."

He's stacking and restacking his fingers in his lap, studying the pattern of shadows they make.

"He's ... he does magic."

[comm_npc_2]

A faint frown. "Like wizardry?"

[stilljustandrew]

Andrew shakes his head vehemently. "Not like wizardry. Something else. He can ... he's got a sort of high-powered charisma. He can draw people. Charm them. Make them like him." He swallows. "And under the, the right physical circumstances, he can ... drain people's life-energy. Which is why I was so tired all the time after we, after we started ..."

For god's sake, why is this still so hard to say --

"Sleeping together."

[comm_npc_2]

Millman looks sober, and a little alarmed. "Are you still? Tired all the time?"

[stilljustandrew]

"I got help," he mumbles. "Nita ... I talked to her a little after that. She's the one who noticed how drained I was. She did a spell to work out what was causing it, and ... it was him."

A long beat.

"So I went to talk to him about it. Because he was out of the infirmary by then, he'd been put in the cells for one day for unintentional arson, and ... I knew while he was in there he wouldn't be able to use his power on me."

[comm_npc_2]

"Makes sense," Millman agrees. "So what happened?"