It's been the worst day since yesterday [closed]

[peacefulexplorer]

The knotted mass of guilt in Daniel's chest hasn't gone away by the time he's on his way to Seth's apartment building, again, hands clenching and unclenching and wandering and ducking into his pockets and back out again a minute later.

Daniel feels like an idiot.

He feels like an idiot, because what good could an ordinary library in Manhattan possibly be for this kind of thing? Yesterday had passed in sporadic bursts of anxiety, horror over what the hell might be happening, creeping dread that this might not be reversible and then finally today Daniel's traitorous phone had buzzed to deliver several texts in rapid succession. Texts he should have received a full day ago. Short bursts of words and questions that should read as neutral and impersonal like any other text but don't because Seth had clearly, clearly not been in a good place by the time he'd faded from Daniel's range of vision and he must not have heard or processed any of the prior warnings because the texts all make it bleakly obvious he'd had no idea what was happening. Seth must have assumed the worse.

That would not be atypical for Seth to have assumed the worse.

The idea that Daniel had most assuredly been the cause of that makes him faintly, mildly nauseous.

He has to halt outside the building for a tight minute, his lungs a paradoxical mess of relief and jittering apprehension and no small amount of the always-persistent guilt until at last he makes an unerring line for the figure in front. The visible figure. Daniel's eyes don't slide right past and he doesn't need to constantly refocus and the gradually mounting panic tentatively starts to give way.

Comments

[powerdealer]

Seth smiles a little, albeit weakly, at the gesture.

He stays quiet, mulling it over. Part of him feels like he should return the favour, share the details of his own experience with losing a loved one, but... He sort of feels like they've been through enough of an emotional grinder, and he doesn't need to burden Daniel with more pain.

And he's not sure he's quite ready to talk about what happened at the community centre. He's sure Daniel would pity him rather than blame him, but... there's just no way around that what had happened had been his fault, a direct result of his actions, even if he didn't intend for it to happen. It's hard to face up to that guilt. A guilt which he never really properly coped with, just buried and pretended it didn't exist, because it was just easier. Unlike the first time, when he had been left to wallow in it.

"Maybe later," he answers finally, and means it. Perhaps some other time. Right now he feels a bit like a wet rag that's been wrung one too many times.

"Anyway, I kind of feel like I'm keeping you up, here. The offer of my bed still stands," he adds.

And then immediately thinks how wrong that sounds, and barely manages to stop himself from clarifying that of course he won't be in it at the same time. Of course he wouldn't be. And then he feels guilty and like a terrible person for thinking about that right after Daniel opened up about his past traumatic relationship. Seth's just going to sit here mentally scolding himself for a while.

[peacefulexplorer]

Daniel nods his understanding in silent agreement. He's starting to feel the emotional fatigue of having to dust off the old personal traumas and bring them into the light after...aggressively not talking about many of them for so long. That intermingled with the sleep debt is having a truly lethal effect on his neurophysiology. Caffeine can only stave off the weariness for so long, it seems.

He studies the dregs of his coffee and swirls them around with a shrug.

"Ehh, I've stayed up much longer over way less. Pretty sure my circadian rhythms have always been a wreck." The shrug turns into a fortifying roll of one shoulder partway through, testing the soreness of perpetual vigilance. "Won't mind taking you up on that, though. Ah, if it's not, not too much trouble."

[powerdealer]

"Go ahead," he answers with a gesture towards the bed. "I won't be using it for several hours, at least. Knocked myself out with sleeping medication last night, so I've actually had some sleep." Only a white lie, really. It was medication (at least of a sort) and it did help him sleep.

"Just at least take your shoes off this time," he adds with a small smile, referring back to the dream they were discussing earlier. "I'll order us some food when you wake up."

[peacefulexplorer]

"Ahah," says Daniel, and drops his gaze to his feet with an apologetic, uneven smile. "Yeah, um. Old habits."

The shoes obediently come off and, as an afterthought, so does his jacket. He deposits both articles of clothing at the foot of the bed in a polite stack, worrying for a moment that his recent caffeine-stimulated system reboot might impede an optimistic sleep attempt. When the simple act of sitting on the bed's edge immediately drops a heaviness to his eyelids, Daniel decides that probably won't be an issue.

"Thanks," he adds, one hand rising to run itself tiredly over his eyes before scrubbing through his hair. When his biology has been running on fumes for this long it doesn't take much to knock him out, as evidenced when Daniel simply lies on top of the indicated surface and has drifted off in minutes. He doesn't bother with sheets or covers - for various reasons, he's grown too accustomed to years of doing without them.