I'm fired up and tired of the way that things have been.

@fortitudina : ❝ what…? what is that look? ❞ ( from Hamon )

‘What look?’

Adrian kept his eyes on him for a moment longer, the expression already softer now that Hamon had spoken. Whatever suspicion had been there gave way to quiet concern, the kind he never quite managed to hide from his husband no matter how much dry composure he wrapped around everything else. He stepped closer, hand settling at Hamon’s side with easy familiarity, gaze moving over him once as if checking for some small hurt Hamon had not mentioned yet. ( Which was always the problem, really. One odd look, one strange pause, and Adrian’s brain immediately started preparing for the worst like an overworked assistant nobody had hired. ) His mouth pulled slightly at one corner, fond and tired all at once.

‘I’m just checking you’re all right, love. Come here.’

@moranormoron : “   okay ,   i  swear  this  is  not  what  it  looks  like .   ”

‘That is not, in any universe, a comforting sentence.’

The dry remark came out on instinct, but the moment Adrian got a proper look at Sebastian, the rest of it died. His eyes went straight to the injury, quick and exact, taking in the blood, the way he was standing, the careful sort of posture people used when they were pretending not to be in pain and doing a very poor job of it. He stepped in without hesitation, one hand finding Sebastian’s side with deliberate care, ready to steady him before pride did something stupid. Adrian’s concern never arrived with Lucien’s flavour of drama or teeth. It came colder, cleaner, like a list assembling itself in real time. How bad, how deep, how long ago, where were they going, who needed calling. ( Sebastian being Lucien’s problem on paper did absolutely nothing to stop Adrian caring now that he was right in front of him like this, pale and wounded and still trying to bluff through it. ) His jaw tightened as he looked him over again, already irritated with Sebastian, but the irritation was thin compared to the worry under it.

‘Come here, and don’t insult both of us by pretending that’s nothing.’

@fiirstnephalem : “   how  long  was  i  out ??   ”

‘A few hours.’

Relief showed before Adrian could cover it, quick and plain and far more honest than he would usually have allowed. He had been sitting close, looking thoroughly worn out by the waiting, and the moment Sima spoke his whole expression changed, tension easing out of him in a way that made it obvious just how worried he had been. He leaned forward at once, hand shifting nearer hers without making a fuss about it, eyes moving over her face to make sure she was truly awake, truly with him, and not about to drift off again. ( There she was. Finally. He could have throttled her for the fright if the sight of her opening her eyes had not taken most of the fight out of him. ) What remained was quiet concern, steady and gentle, stripped of the sharper humour he used with almost everyone else.

His voice stayed low when he answered, careful without turning clinical, and his face softened in that rare, unguarded way reserved for the people who mattered too much. Sima had always had that effect on him, the ability to cut straight through the dry remarks and leave behind the simpler truth underneath. He let out a slow breath, staying exactly where he was so she would see him the second she focused again.

‘You’re okay. Just take a second. I’m here.’

Adrian does not struggle to feel. He struggles to display it in ways that leave him exposed. There is a difference, and it matters more than most people ever realise. He can care with frightening depth, but the moment that care risks becoming visible, obvious, easy to touch, he folds it back under discipline and gives it another name. Practicality. Timing. Obligation. Anything other than affection, anything less dangerous than wanting someone enough to let them see it plainly because once a person sees where the soft places are, they can choose whether to protect them or press harder.

That is why his tenderness so often arrives disguised as competence. A problem is handled before it reaches someone he cares about. Plans change without announcement. A coat appears over a chair, a door is already unlocked, a glass is set down within reach, an unpleasant conversation somehow never makes it as far as them. He rarely frames any of this as gentleness because gentleness, in his mind, invites scrutiny, and scrutiny invites questions he has no interest in answering. It is easier to look controlled. Easier to let people think he is simply efficient, simply observant, simply impossible to unsettle. The truth is far less convenient. Adrian notices too much, remembers too much, and once a person matters to him, he carries them through every decision with the sort of quiet intensity that would look dangerously close to devotion if anyone examined it properly.

The trouble is that he does not know how to be half invested. Once he lets someone in, even by inches, they begin turning up everywhere in him. In his routines. In the backup plans he builds without thinking. In the private calculations he makes about risk, distance, timing, consequence. He starts making space for them in ways that feel almost invisible from the outside, but to Adrian they are enormous concessions. Time given freely. Defences lowered by degrees. A rare, unguarded sentence left standing instead of pulled back. He will act as though none of it is significant, of course. He always does. But that restraint is part of the truth, not the absence of it. He hides tenderness because it matters, because it costs, and because once it is named aloud, it stops belonging entirely to him.

So he keeps it in action. In memory. In presence. In all the things he can still control. And if someone is perceptive enough to recognise it for what it is, then they are already far closer to him than most people ever get.

@fortitudina : “ don’t panic , but i’m pretty sure we’re being followed . ” ( from Hamon )

‘Right, brilliant. That’s exactly the sort of sentence a person wants dropped on them casually.’

Shit.

He looked up at once, attention snapping into place with none of the outward drama people usually expected from panic and all of the sharpness that actually mattered. His eyes moved past Hamon first, quick and deliberate, checking the pavement behind him, the dark glass of the nearest shopfront, the slow drift of anyone hanging back a little too long. Then he stepped in closer, one hand settling against Hamon’s waist like that had been the plan all along, easy enough to look natural from the outside and firm enough to steer him if he needed to. ( Wonderful. Perfect. Maybe next Hamon could announce there was a bomb in the kitchen in the same tone people used to mention they were out of milk. ) His expression did not give much away, only that dry, slightly worn focus he fell into when something turned real. There was concern in it, yes, but it sat under control, under calculation, under the very immediate instinct to get his husband out of the middle of whatever this was before it had the chance to become a problem. He angled his body just enough to put himself between Hamon and the worst of the street without making it obvious, then lowered his voice.

‘Are you sure? Who would follow us?’

Getting Adrian to talk about himself is like pulling teeth !