[ He just. He doesn't know what to do with that. She's right, he wouldn't, but it wasn't as though it was out of a sense of expectant reciprocation. In all honesty if you'd asked him all the way from before this moment, actually up to and slightly beyond it, he would say that he preferred it so, that she indeed leave him to it, and that if him helping her handle her own demons meant that she would appear to aid him with his own in return, well, he would be somewhat less likely to show himself in the first place.
(Utter lies, but Athos does know how to wield words when he cares to. The simple matter is that more often than not he just can't be bothered to. He finds them base on his tongue and acidic in his thoughts, and while normally he can quite appreciate things that balance both - because alcohol and water are so vital for a healthy mind and body - the circumstance just doesn't always translate.)
It's still Alpha, barely - or is, again, right now it's hard to tell the order - who observes her come towards him as he stands next to the counter. He's thinking, over-thinking, and it is in that state that he notices her own; the lack of any pretense, any cover or disguise is... almost jarring, if he hadn't already felt somehow that he understood, improbably, the person beneath. By this point she's taken on so many facets, so many veneers and colours and shapes that she is so many layers and layers of paint over an original canvas, the initial work impossible to discern through the thick and hardened shells. Possible to get to, with a sharp knife and a lot of time, but then what? All you have is a different picture, and what's more a sudden strong disinclination to mar what you've found. Who knows if the picture even remembers what it used to be of, sometimes, or wants to?
It's less and less Alpha that is listening to her as she comes closer still though, her words sharp and cutting into the relative silence and settling like stones in the pit of his stomach. He's not sure that's helping, actually - true though it all may be, sometimes it's easier to think that some of it was real. It certainly makes some of it make more sense - and he's never really understood the whole thing anyway. There have been too many versions of the same story now, and he was too close to it at the time, he barely even remembers what his own original thoughts were on the matter. So much else has happened since then. But it's just as helpful other times to take that distance, to pull himself out of the equation. Things make less sense, sure, but the cut of them immediately feels so much less.
Limbo's never a comfortable state to be in. It isn't often you find a man who is willing to accept the grey mists and silver shadows as his emotional and intellectual homestead and stay there.
It's Athos, definitely, by the time she has her fist in his shirt, and it might have been Olivier actually if he hadn't definitively gone with Anne and Thomas so long ago. It's Athos and the mantle that brings with it the way it's Juliett and her own conveniences pulling his hand up to her own heart in turn. He looks down at it as she says her final two words, feels the warmth and rhythm of her even while her own hand's pressure against himself makes him more aware of his own.
(He's never been very good at this kind of speech. He doesn't know how to act with words, just frame his actions for those who needed their introduction to follow the plot.)
She's a bit warm from her exertion on the way here - through the window, every time - and he's the same from a combination of his own and alcohol - and both of their hearts are going too quickly, and neither of them is who they started as or ever truly set out to be, and both of them are being haunted by a former lover, and neither of them knows how to handle it.
And Athos has no idea what to say. Instead he focuses on the heartbeats, tries to see if he can match his own to hers somehow, because that makes perfect sense and it's not about romance, it's about feeling level. Nothing about his face is particularly soft when he glances up at her eyes - just for a moment - but in that moment there's at least a lack of anything harsh. ] Different forms of possession, mind, body, and soul. I suppose it's not always a bad thing. [ He tilts his head a bit, looking at her hand where it's still for the moment helping to keep his own in place. ] Couldn't be.
it's a cowour if yowre elmur fwudd thoow
(Utter lies, but Athos does know how to wield words when he cares to. The simple matter is that more often than not he just can't be bothered to. He finds them base on his tongue and acidic in his thoughts, and while normally he can quite appreciate things that balance both - because alcohol and water are so vital for a healthy mind and body - the circumstance just doesn't always translate.)
It's still Alpha, barely - or is, again, right now it's hard to tell the order - who observes her come towards him as he stands next to the counter. He's thinking, over-thinking, and it is in that state that he notices her own; the lack of any pretense, any cover or disguise is... almost jarring, if he hadn't already felt somehow that he understood, improbably, the person beneath. By this point she's taken on so many facets, so many veneers and colours and shapes that she is so many layers and layers of paint over an original canvas, the initial work impossible to discern through the thick and hardened shells. Possible to get to, with a sharp knife and a lot of time, but then what? All you have is a different picture, and what's more a sudden strong disinclination to mar what you've found. Who knows if the picture even remembers what it used to be of, sometimes, or wants to?
It's less and less Alpha that is listening to her as she comes closer still though, her words sharp and cutting into the relative silence and settling like stones in the pit of his stomach. He's not sure that's helping, actually - true though it all may be, sometimes it's easier to think that some of it was real. It certainly makes some of it make more sense - and he's never really understood the whole thing anyway. There have been too many versions of the same story now, and he was too close to it at the time, he barely even remembers what his own original thoughts were on the matter. So much else has happened since then. But it's just as helpful other times to take that distance, to pull himself out of the equation. Things make less sense, sure, but the cut of them immediately feels so much less.
Limbo's never a comfortable state to be in. It isn't often you find a man who is willing to accept the grey mists and silver shadows as his emotional and intellectual homestead and stay there.
It's Athos, definitely, by the time she has her fist in his shirt, and it might have been Olivier actually if he hadn't definitively gone with Anne and Thomas so long ago. It's Athos and the mantle that brings with it the way it's Juliett and her own conveniences pulling his hand up to her own heart in turn. He looks down at it as she says her final two words, feels the warmth and rhythm of her even while her own hand's pressure against himself makes him more aware of his own.
(He's never been very good at this kind of speech. He doesn't know how to act with words, just frame his actions for those who needed their introduction to follow the plot.)
She's a bit warm from her exertion on the way here - through the window, every time - and he's the same from a combination of his own and alcohol - and both of their hearts are going too quickly, and neither of them is who they started as or ever truly set out to be, and both of them are being haunted by a former lover, and neither of them knows how to handle it.
And Athos has no idea what to say. Instead he focuses on the heartbeats, tries to see if he can match his own to hers somehow, because that makes perfect sense and it's not about romance, it's about feeling level. Nothing about his face is particularly soft when he glances up at her eyes - just for a moment - but in that moment there's at least a lack of anything harsh. ] Different forms of possession, mind, body, and soul. I suppose it's not always a bad thing. [ He tilts his head a bit, looking at her hand where it's still for the moment helping to keep his own in place. ] Couldn't be.