deuceoftears | TLV IC Inbox

There's a lot he could say to that. Something to assuage, to push, to coax anything more out of him.

Instead he shifts so he can wrap the other arm around Jedao's shoulders and pull his young friend into a full embrace, his own back to the railing of the bridge so Jedao can still see the sky and the languidly flowing river.

Jedao clings to him, hard, and hides his face against Arthur's shoulder so that all his thoughtfulness about the view is wasted. Jedao doesn't really need to see it, though; he can feel the water there, pouring down.

"And it's just been a lot," he mutters after a long pause, full of slow breaths, less about letting his feelings out than still trying to wrestle control over them.

"It can be hard knowing who you can talk to, too," he hums. Which he's not certain is the problem but at least gives him something to murmur reassuringly. "Given how volatile everyone is in this place sometimes."

After a few more long, clinging seconds, he lets go, and then starts moving toward the river.

"Do you know Sha Gojyo at all?"

"Only in passing. I don't think we've ever really spoken." He falls in step with Jedao easily, hands idly back in his pockets. He's certainly seen the man around, but he couldn't say if they've spoken much. "He's from Hakkai's world, right?"

"Gojyo took him in when he didn't have anywhere else to go. They lived together for five years."

Stars forbid anyone say friends out loud, though.

"We wanted him to come with us, after the barge, but. He said no. And we've just...we don't get along at all."

He hums thoughtfully. He can't help that a part of him gets that, though. Perhaps being in the same boat as Gojyo in that small way made it click a little better, but being rescued was a difficult place to start a friendship from.

"What sort of person is he? At a glance he seems quite brusque." He looked rugged, from what he can remember, in the way that suggested not necessarily looking for a fight, but ready for an explosion regardless.

"He's..." Jedao huffs. "I don't understand him most of the time. But he's the kind of person who'd bring a dangerous, bloody stranger into his home just because they needed a place to stay. He's...the kind of Earth man who can't handle it at all when a man flirts with him. He's got a huge soft spot for kids. I wanted to love him so bad, Arthur," he admits, voice cracking a little.

"But I can't ever get anything right with him."

"I think I'm familiar with the type," he muses, glancing sidelong at Jedao sympathetically. "Simple- not, er, not stupid, I mean. Just-- the most earnestly, painfully straightforward sort of man."

Jedao hums in agreement.

"We got very drunk a few weeks ago. Hakkai thought it might help us work things out. I insulted him and then ran away sobbing, so. It was splendidly humiliating and counterproductive."

"Christ knows they're probably not the type you might have see much in the Hexarchate before, either," he hums. "Maybe in the Kel, but that's a bit unflattering."

"Most Kel are straightforward. But it's just...similar enough to be disorienting. So that's all been wretched. Anyway."

They've finally gotten to the edge of the river; Jedao sits down beside it with his knees drawn up to his chest.

The river cuts deep quickly past the bank of rocks and mud, a sudden drop with a quick-moving undercurrent, but it's not choked with weeds this close to the bridge, so there's a clear view of the raised, deceptively blue water.

And Arthur doesn't hesitate to sit down next to him, coat tails tucked under his ass and a leg out straight and pressing against Jedao's. "It's fucking awful, not being able to- to get someone," he agrees, leaning back on his gloved hands. "That despite your best efforts you can't- make it make sense."

Edited 2025-07-11 07:25 (UTC)

"I'm not even allowed to try. Anytime I think anything, he's furious that I'm being a condescending prick who's making assumptions without knowing anything about him!"

Jedao laughs, horribly, for the too-familiar irony.

"Like he hasn't been here over a year already. So I'm constantly second-guessing myself and over-analyzing even more trying not to assume, and of course then he's mad about being picked apart. I'm not allowed to guess and I'm not allowed to try to figure it out, and I just feel absolutely insane around him, and he just -"

Jedao huffs out a rueful breath, shoulders sinking back in on him.

"It's not that he hates me. It's just that he doesn't like me, no matter what, even when he's trying to give me a chance for Hakkai's sake. I can't even...I can't even try to be nice, I can't even ask what he'd like, without pissing him off. And...he doesn't owe it to me to like me. I'm trying to be a fucking grown-up about it. But he broke my heart a little, and it hurts."

Edited 2025-07-11 07:37 (UTC)

"At least if he hated you it'd feel... earned, I suppose, quantifiable- or at least fitting, all else being the same." Which isn't a judgement, just... recognition. "But- just not liking you feels like a personal fucking failing."

He scuffs his heel, dislodging a rock to kick into the river. "Is he the kind of prick to say it to your face, or he's just obvious about it?"

"Oh, he will very much say it to my face."

With his fist, once or twice, although usually when Jedao was trying to provoke him on purpose.

"I was an asshole too, for a while. I was so mad at him, and it wasn't fair. But now I'm just..." He shrugs a shoulder. Sad, and humiliated.

"I don't think it's unreasonable to be mad at someone who's not giving you a goddamn chance, but I won't pretend I'm not biased."

He scoots over a little so he can press hip to hip with Jedao and wrap an arm around him again. "I'm sorry. That it's been so fucking frustrating. Not being seen or heard fairly by someone who means so much to Hakkai."

"I was mad at him because he hurt Hakkai's feelings," Jedao says, with a little rueful huff of air. "And mine, too. I wanted a future where he was part of our home, our family - and it was okay he hadn't come around on me yet, but he would eventually, I'm charming. And I never imaged he wouldn't - he loves Hakkai too. I thought he just needed to know he was welcome, that he was wanted. We asked a little before the Narrenschiff. Only he didn't want that future. And I sort of lost my shit about it."

He hums, as a little more of the picture falls into place.

"It's cruel when being charming is the part people object to," he comments quietly, with a wry, tired little self-aware smile. "No matter how genuinely sincere you are, it'll never get through right. So they just reject your entire self wholesale."

"To be fair, I don't think he finds me charming at all," Jedao muses dryly. "And he wasn't trying to be cruel. I was trying very hard not to let him see what a rabid loon I was about it all, so he can't be blamed for not noticing."

But it did feel cruel, that trying his best kept being treated as fake and manipulative, instead of the honest desperation it was.

"And it's hard to know when being a rabid loon about something is the right play," he muses. "Even harder to actually act on it. And being the thorn in the side of someone's existing expectations is..."

He takes a breath and sighs. "Well, I can certainly understand why people hated it when I did it."

"Anyway. That's how I've been."

And maybe if he never brings it up again, Arthur will carry on in his existing impression that the marriage only bothered him because he was upset about unrelated things, and carry that lie back to John for him with perfect sincerity.

Edited 2025-07-11 15:52 (UTC)

He hums again, and tightens his hug so he can press another light kiss to Jedao's hair.

"I'm sorry," he says, plain and simple. "I know you go out of your way to hide things, but... still. I should know you well enough to check occasionally."

"I wasn't hiding it exactly," he mumbles, sighing a little as he leans more into Arthur's side. "But it's not something I can dump on Hakkai because this is hard enough for him already. And I don't want to...deprive my warden friends of being friends with him and I don't want my inmate friends to stab him."

Simplified, but accurate to a first approximation.

"And I just feel..." A breath shudders out of him. "If feels very stupid and juvenile, you know? Being so upset that someone doesn't like me, like I'm not a notorious interplanetary bogeyman back where I came from. Nobody is obligated to like me. I'm an adult, I can deal with that. Only he's family, so I feel obligated to try. And I'm a competitive bitch and I hate failing this much."

He gives a soft scoff despite himself. "Trust me, you don't have to love your family. The very first crime in the whole fucking Bible is fratricide, it's practically built in to Earth society." He takes a breath, and lets it out in a long sigh. "We tell ourselves we're supposed to, certainly. Family is meant to stick together. But-- you know, just- sometimes..."

He shrugs, making a face. "Fuck that for a laugh."

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