Gonou hesitates, a pin-scratch frown flickering into view between his eyebrows for a moment as his gaze grows abstracted. There's... something about that idea.
He finds his thumb skimming the edge of Jedao's hand in short little strokes as if he's holding a worry-stone when he looks down, and forces it to still.
"...But it would be over now," he says, and doesn't add, right?
"I feel a little... wrong," Gonou admits in turn. "But it might just be that I'm disoriented."
He sighs and settles in against Jedao, tucking his head in under Jedao's chin. It probably is just disorientation: waking up from a month's coma is leaving his mind unsettled and unanchored. He doesn't need to worry about it.
"I'm not sure how I would even know. They felt like your own. Like dreaming - the way you don't question anything. It wouldn't be until I said things out loud I realized they didn't fit, and that didn't even feel any different from me reacting with Jedao One's skills or instincts and then realizing, oh shit, I guess I know how to do that."
If he thinks about it too much, he makes himself crazy. So he just...has not been letting himself think about it too much.
"I tried - something I've been researching, from the Hexarchate. And I could see memories, but they were - they just blended in. I could try it again, though. Maybe it'd be different now that the flood is over?"
"Maybe. If there is something... how does your method work?"
Not that he knows how the Barge works, when it's affecting their minds. But knowing how one of the methods works is better than not understanding either of them.
Gonou might be the only person on board Jedao would be willing to give a more illuminating description of Calendrical Mechanics than "it's a lot of math," but he also doesn't particularly want to get into it.
"There's a lot of math, but in the end I just...look. The Admiral gave me a Calendrical amplifier lens a while ago, and I can use it to see someone's soul, if I set up the effect right."
Gonou considers it, for a long moment, head tucked under Jedao's chin.
"...So, you'd be able to see any pieces that don't fit where they've been put."
Seeing someone's soul sounds -- deeply intimate to him, but not something he'd be afraid of as long as it was Jedao looking. But if he's also worried about not having all his pieces put back correctly--
"Can anyone else use it to see you? You said you didn't know how you'd be sure they were all gone."
It didn't work before, but it should have. He knows it should have. He checked his math so many times. He knows he didn't make a stupid sign error this time.
"I'm more worried about things that are missing. If it's not mine, I'll notice eventually. My experiences are...pretty out of the ordinary, here."
"Yes," Gonou murmurs. "I -- imagine they would be. I don't..."
He pulls a face, deliberately lightening his voice.
"There's a lot of things I don't remember, or only remember parts of, already. I don't think I'd notice something missing, but I'd probably notice if something were too out of place with my other memories."
There is... something, now that he's focusing on the question. A room that's like Jedao's, but the decoration isn't right. Jedao's room is all greens, all pastels: the other he remembers has bright and clashing decor--
He's fallen silent for several heartbeats too long. Quietly, he murmurs, "I might have one of yours."
"It was -- the rooms looked like this one. Were built like this one, but the furnishings were all different." The emotions, as he focuses on the memory, are overwhelming. Unlike his own: he grasps for precision and detail, floundering.
"Someone had an appointment. When," I, he stops himself from saying, "--you went in, he grabbed you and kissed you..."
Was that Dhanneth? The name fits the memory, and he's still for a long moment against Jedao's shoulder. He remembers the surge of hot desire, of temptation and distress, that goes with the memory of hands closing on his arms and a taller man bending to kiss him.
It is upsetting all out of proportion to its contents.
"Only Dhanneth ever did that," Jedao whispers, in a hot rush of shame and sorrow, largely untempered by Norton's agreement with Gonou's initial insistence that Jedao, too, had been wronged. It doesn't fit, because he has that memory back, fresh and sore -
"- unless he wasn't?" Jedao adds, in a twisted-off squeak as panic starts to coil inside him.
"No-- it was him," Gonou says, sure. "I remember thinking, what was Dhanneth's emblem--"
He's turning even as he speaks, sitting up further so he can pull Jedao into an embrace.
"I shouldn't have that." It's wrong. If the idea of seeing someone else's soul is intimate, having such an inside perspective on their worst memories is-- obscene. Unfair. Softly, he adds, "I'm sorry."
"Well he didn't do it twice," Jedao protests, because if nothing else, he wouldn't have needed to be ambushed a second time. Jedao remembers how that went - how little resistance he offered once he let himself be convinced.
He swallows, wraps his arms around Gonou's waist and squeezes him tight for a moment. He doesn't mind Gonou knowing it, in ways he could never have brought himself to explain clearly. He wonders if horror will hit him later, when his brain can't fend off repulsion by focusing on the puzzle of it.
"Someone else had it. I already got it back." It doesn't make sense but then, it's a flood. They'd only ever been guessing at how it worked. "I'm sorry you have to - feel that one."
"More than one person can get--" Gonou swallows in turn, shaking his head, and keeps his arms around Jedao, settling their foreheads together. "I'm glad I'm not stealing from you, then." Only sharing. It's still wrong, but-- less wrong, that way.
He takes a deep breath.
"I just won't think about it," he murmurs, half-wry, half sincere. "I don't..." Mind isn't right. Care is entirely wrong. "I don't like seeing so much, without you having any choice about it. I'm not going to be upset about the contents. You've told me about them, already. I still--"
More now, more acutely, thinking of the strength in Dhanneth's hands--
Jedao lets out one quick rush of breath, body sagging only a tiny bit in relief.
"That's okay, then. I mean. It's okay with me." There's something a little brain-meltingly much about it; there's no air left, no shadows to hide in, no desperate clawing possibility scratching at his brain stem that Jedao just didn't explain it right, that he's been tricking Gonou in spite of himself.
He doesn't know how to respond; doubling down on his own guilt feels melodramatic and self-sabotaging. But even if he accepts that it's not his fault, not his greatest crime - then instead of monstrous he just feels sort of pathetic, that he'd been so lonely and needy that he was so easily swayed.
"We could probably take the memory away, if it bothers you to have. But we'd have to tell someone else, enough for them to help."
Nita, probably; he already has an idea of how her wizardry might mesh with the Glass Cannon schematics he's worked out so far. But he doesn't want to.
"You keep it, then," Jedao says in a soft rush. "I don't want to tell anyone else." He leans a little more into Gonou's arms, tension draining out of him. "It's okay if it's you. I want you to know me. And I couldn't ever tell it right even when I was trying to."
"All right." His arms tighten. After a moment, with a hint of wryness, he adds, "I can't even describe it right, and it's not my memory to begin with. So I understand why that would be hard."
He gives the silence space for another breath, then adds, "Would you like tea? I think I want tea...."
Gonou returns the kiss, letting his eye slip closed: they're here now. They're together. The memories, difficult as they might be, are all in the past.
He makes a rueful little noise at Jedao's reinterpretation.
"I won't insist you have some," he says. "But I want to make tea. I think I've spent long enough in bed, and without even doing anything fun there--"
He brushes his knuckles along Jedao's jawline, then cups a hand over his cheek in turn, smiling.
"I need to get up and do something. But I don't want to be too far away from you while I do it. So, tea."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: [after the coma ends]
Gonou hesitates, a pin-scratch frown flickering into view between his eyebrows for a moment as his gaze grows abstracted. There's... something about that idea.
He finds his thumb skimming the edge of Jedao's hand in short little strokes as if he's holding a worry-stone when he looks down, and forces it to still.
"...But it would be over now," he says, and doesn't add, right?
Re: [after the coma ends]
Re: [after the coma ends]
He sighs and settles in against Jedao, tucking his head in under Jedao's chin. It probably is just disorientation: waking up from a month's coma is leaving his mind unsettled and unanchored. He doesn't need to worry about it.
Re: [after the coma ends]
If he thinks about it too much, he makes himself crazy. So he just...has not been letting himself think about it too much.
Re: [after the coma ends]
For peace of mind, if nothing more.
"Asking one of the mind-readers here, or..." Jon's powers are gone now, which is too bad, in situations like this. Even if he's happier that way.
Re: [after the coma ends]
"I tried - something I've been researching, from the Hexarchate. And I could see memories, but they were - they just blended in. I could try it again, though. Maybe it'd be different now that the flood is over?"
Something has to be different. Right?
Re: [after the coma ends]
Not that he knows how the Barge works, when it's affecting their minds. But knowing how one of the methods works is better than not understanding either of them.
Re: [after the coma ends]
"There's a lot of math, but in the end I just...look. The Admiral gave me a Calendrical amplifier lens a while ago, and I can use it to see someone's soul, if I set up the effect right."
Re: [after the coma ends]
"...So, you'd be able to see any pieces that don't fit where they've been put."
Seeing someone's soul sounds -- deeply intimate to him, but not something he'd be afraid of as long as it was Jedao looking. But if he's also worried about not having all his pieces put back correctly--
"Can anyone else use it to see you? You said you didn't know how you'd be sure they were all gone."
Re: [after the coma ends]
It didn't work before, but it should have. He knows it should have. He checked his math so many times. He knows he didn't make a stupid sign error this time.
"I'm more worried about things that are missing. If it's not mine, I'll notice eventually. My experiences are...pretty out of the ordinary, here."
Re: [after the coma ends]
He pulls a face, deliberately lightening his voice.
"There's a lot of things I don't remember, or only remember parts of, already. I don't think I'd notice something missing, but I'd probably notice if something were too out of place with my other memories."
There is... something, now that he's focusing on the question. A room that's like Jedao's, but the decoration isn't right. Jedao's room is all greens, all pastels: the other he remembers has bright and clashing decor--
He's fallen silent for several heartbeats too long. Quietly, he murmurs, "I might have one of yours."
Re: [after the coma ends]
It's not that he's scared of Gonou seeing them - Gonou knows the worst of the worst. But none of them have been pleasant.
"What happened?"
Re: [after the coma ends]
"Someone had an appointment. When," I, he stops himself from saying, "--you went in, he grabbed you and kissed you..."
Was that Dhanneth? The name fits the memory, and he's still for a long moment against Jedao's shoulder. He remembers the surge of hot desire, of temptation and distress, that goes with the memory of hands closing on his arms and a taller man bending to kiss him.
It is upsetting all out of proportion to its contents.
Re: [after the coma ends]
"- unless he wasn't?" Jedao adds, in a twisted-off squeak as panic starts to coil inside him.
Re: [after the coma ends]
He's turning even as he speaks, sitting up further so he can pull Jedao into an embrace.
"I shouldn't have that." It's wrong. If the idea of seeing someone else's soul is intimate, having such an inside perspective on their worst memories is-- obscene. Unfair. Softly, he adds, "I'm sorry."
Re: [after the coma ends]
He swallows, wraps his arms around Gonou's waist and squeezes him tight for a moment. He doesn't mind Gonou knowing it, in ways he could never have brought himself to explain clearly. He wonders if horror will hit him later, when his brain can't fend off repulsion by focusing on the puzzle of it.
"Someone else had it. I already got it back." It doesn't make sense but then, it's a flood. They'd only ever been guessing at how it worked. "I'm sorry you have to - feel that one."
Re: [after the coma ends]
He takes a deep breath.
"I just won't think about it," he murmurs, half-wry, half sincere. "I don't..." Mind isn't right. Care is entirely wrong. "I don't like seeing so much, without you having any choice about it. I'm not going to be upset about the contents. You've told me about them, already. I still--"
More now, more acutely, thinking of the strength in Dhanneth's hands--
"-- think the same as I did before."
no subject
"That's okay, then. I mean. It's okay with me." There's something a little brain-meltingly much about it; there's no air left, no shadows to hide in, no desperate clawing possibility scratching at his brain stem that Jedao just didn't explain it right, that he's been tricking Gonou in spite of himself.
no subject
no subject
"We could probably take the memory away, if it bothers you to have. But we'd have to tell someone else, enough for them to help."
Nita, probably; he already has an idea of how her wizardry might mesh with the Glass Cannon schematics he's worked out so far. But he doesn't want to.
no subject
He falls silent for a moment, taking a breath, pulling himself back to practicalities.
"So it's your choice. It's your memory." And if they have to tell someone, he knows exactly how sensitive that memory is for Jedao.
no subject
no subject
He gives the silence space for another breath, then adds, "Would you like tea? I think I want tea...."
(He isn't, though, actually letting go.)
no subject
"I think you want to make me tea," Jedao interprets.
no subject
He makes a rueful little noise at Jedao's reinterpretation.
"I won't insist you have some," he says. "But I want to make tea. I think I've spent long enough in bed, and without even doing anything fun there--"
He brushes his knuckles along Jedao's jawline, then cups a hand over his cheek in turn, smiling.
"I need to get up and do something. But I don't want to be too far away from you while I do it. So, tea."
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
going from artistic PG-13 cropped nudity to CW sex happen around here
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)