deuceoftears | TLV IC Inbox

"Like an engagement is less of a spring," he returns dryly. "John cares about your emotions, even the ones you think are ugly - certainly he'll care if you're jealous and not telling him. You keep saying you want to be the person he deserves, so- be the person you are with him. Be jealous, and bitter, and messy so he can show you those are just as lovable as your charm."

He tilts down a little so he can kiss Jedao's temple. "You think he doesn't know that you showing him those parts of you means you trust him? Pulling back and smiling it away feels like he's lost that."

"Well according to you both it won't change anything, so it damn well is less of a spring," Jedao growls, but something of the awful wound-tight constriction of the way he was holding himself erodes away, a little more of Jedao's weight slumping against Arthur, one of his hands clutching a handful of Arthur's shirt instead of being clenched into a fist against his own chest, nails digging into his palm.

He's been so careful not to say the world jealous, no matter how obvious it might be, and it feels strange for Arthur to have done it, like the lack of tension after your ears finally pop in a depressurization chamber.

"Isn't anybody allowed to just be ashamed without it meaning I don't trust him?" Jedao mumbles, now just sounding...lost, and sad. "I don't have any right to be jealous. I don't want to be. He doesn't have to deal with every single awful thing to love me."

Edited 2025-07-17 02:20 (UTC)

"Yeah, well. Would that our emotions fucking worked like that," he hums, stroking gently up and down Jedao's neck now. "You and John have both spent more of your lives on the Barge than off it. You're both learning how to get through these sorts of messes on the fly, without the blessing of a longer life of first-hand experience. And honestly, even the best of us get it wrong."

But feeling Jedao finally lose some of that tension in his arms feels like a fucking victory, all the same. Like they're finally working together instead of hammering against Jedao's aggressively stubborn guilt.

"But he doesn't think loving you is awful, in any capacity. You care about him strongly enough to be jealous, Jedao, how is that not incredible?"

"Um, it's greedy and also stupid," Jedao counters, grouchily, but exasperation is at least a step up from bewildered sorrow or true blue self-loathing.

"And I am learning fine, probably." A slightly more dubious proposition, but -

"I get that you two were stuck together for an extremely formative period and he had to learn to love through conflict with no breaks at all but I think it's actually good and normal to step away and deal with your shit instead of lashing out at someone who doesn't deserve it."

That gets a chuckle out of Arthur, as much a puff of released tension as it is genuine amusement.

"No, no- I agree with you, actually. The way we learned to handle our arguments, it's... well. Not ideal for handling them with other people. I got so used to it with John that it took some remembering after we separated that it's not, er. The wisest method."

A lot of credit due to Sheehan for accidentally sitting with them during one and pointing that out for them to recognise again.

"But bottling all of your shit up and pretending it doesn't exist because you think that will make someone else happy isn't ideal, either. And I do have personal experience with that one," he adds dryly, "seeing as it's how I spent my entire first marriage."

"Pretending it doesn't exist and acknowledging that it exists but slating it for private extermination are different things," Jedao says primly. It's honestly kind of impressive he even can sound that prim while still slightly waterlogged, and he wriggles a little to wipe the water off his face.

"How are you supposed to learn from it if you exterminate it?"

He lets go of Jedao a little, just so he can reach inside his jacket and pull out a handkerchief for him. His jacket's a write-off, he doesn't care about that, but the silky cotton square will be far nicer against Jedao's raw face.

"Pain exists to teach us something. That includes heartbreak, unfortunately."

Jedao doesn't pull away, but he does stiffen a little, something hard and flinty coming into his face as he meets Arthur's eyes.

"That's wolfshit. Sometimes pain is just pain."

"...probably," he admits readily. There's no bite to it, just a steady patience, meeting Jedao's eye without flinching. "Maybe I'm just choosing to make it matter, then. I won't pretend the lessons I picked up are always accurate - the pain from losing Faroe told me that I didn't deserve to be alive, and sometimes it's still louder than the good I've received to counter it." He shrugs one shoulder. "And sometimes a broken ankle is just a broken ankle."

"...and you're kneeling on rocks, fire and ash," Jedao suddenly realizes; Arthur starts floating, weightless, as Jedao shoves gravity off him, and tugs on him in midair to get him to sit back down next to him.

There's a yip of surprise from Arthur when he's suddenly hovered - and then immediately a hoarse grunt of surprised pain as he's seated again, sensation suddenly flooding back to his frozen knees.

"Agh, God-" It takes a moment to actually stretch his legs out, and there's definitely a few unhappy cricks there but mostly it's just stiff from weight and bruised from rocks, but he massages both knees with his hands and a wry "Fuck, I'd stopped noticing it."

So, lost sensation. Which means there's unpleasant pins and needles running down his calves, and he gives an exasperated laugh at himself. "Ow."

"May I?" Jedao asks, hovering a hand over Arthur's shin. "I promise to be a gentleman about it," he adds dryly.

He gives another laugh, and waves a hand in a sort of resigned acceptance. "By all means," he says warmly.

Most of the skills he has in procedural knowledge and muscle memory from Jedao One involve killing people, so being actually quite good at therapeutic massage in particular makes for a nice change. He knows the muscle groups without ever having had to learn them; he knows how to ease out knots, when to use a light touch and when to go heavy. And he can feel those old fractures, the knots and tears and scar tissue, little traceries of uneven density as plain to his senses as though they were illuminated from within.

He works gently, restoring warmth and blood flow to where it ought to be. It's soothing for him, too, something to concentrate on, to be able to touch and also feel useful, to be doing somebody some good, even if Arthur only ended up in this situation from trying to help him in the first place.

His right leg's the worse for it, being the one almost completely dismembered by the King and blithely reset by Kayne, but both of them are a mess of knots regardless; Arthur's not one to let many people touch him at the best of times, and that thorough a massage is normally entirely out of the question.

Which means more often than not the sounds coming out of Arthur about it are more quiet huffs, or surprised hisses through his teeth when Jedao hits spots that Arthur didn't even realise are tender, but he's also melting a little as his legs actually relax without the unpleasant prickling twinges he's accustomed to.

It's tricky, but that just means being patient, observant, meticulous, and Jedao sinks into it, into the physical grounding of the motions and the intellectual challenge of judging how to work out each knot filling up his mind, occupying him so that he can't focus on his own messy emotions anymore; it's almost as much of a relief for him as it is for Arthur.

There's an abstract pride, in being comfortable enough in himself and his body, and his relationship with Jedao, that there's no awkwardness in accepting the hand, so he can actually relax into it. And when Jedao's finished with one he pulls it up curiously, just rolling his ankle to examine how loose it feels.

"Jesus," he huffs warmly. "I can't remember the last time I felt this- flexible." Not that it was ever something he pursued, but he did have some small fitness.

"Well. Anytime," Jedao promises him. He sits quietly for a little while; his hands feel empty now. He finds a smooth stone and tries to skip it over the river, but gets the angle wrong and just sort of throws it in instead.

He makes sure to bunch his coat under his ass some more so he doesn't have the same problem later on, but he lets himself relax next to Jedao again. Even spots a few more flat rocks, and picks one up to pass to Jedao while he takes his own shot - though he's well out of practice, and only gets two skips before it flips over with a satisfying plop into the deep.

He's decent at skipping rocks standing up; trying to do it sitting down is an unexpected challenge. The way he would use his whole body for angular momentum is off.

He gets one skip on his next one, and then cheats and uses mothpowers to make Arthur's next one go all the way across.

"So what do you love about her?"

If he wants to be better, he has to be better. That's all.

Well he definitely didn't throw that one as well as it went, but the show-off gets a slight chuckle.

The question catches him off-guard, and he looks back at Jedao with a blink. "Her-- Faroe, or- oh, um. You mean Sokie?"

The spins were quite tricky to manage; he's rather proud of himself.

"Sokie, yes."

"Of course."

Give him a moment, he's been put on the spot, and he rolls his next stone in his hand as he thinks.

"She's a ferocious guardian, of whoever she decides needs defending, and cares about her people with mad fervour. She's not afraid to acknowledge the darker parts of herself, not in shame but recognition of their necessity." The rock ends up in both hands, tracing the rough shape with his blunt nails. "She's compassionate, and empathetic- when she lets herself be," he admits. "She's wickedly intelligent and won't stand down if she has a point she wants to make, but she'll suffer fools gladly if she thinks she'll get through to them."

He whiffs the stone, getting a few wild skips in. "I don't love that she refuses to acknowledge her shortcomings, though I recognise where that denial comes from. Or that she sees me as akin to the Cap'n by virtue of existing in a position of power over her, but we're working on that."

He doesn't like her. Worse, he doesn't want to like her, for reasons he can admit are at least half his own petty bullshit.

"I hate it when immortals don't have their shit together. It always feels like a bad omen."

"Well, there's a reason she's an inmate," he says wryly. "We're working on her, uh. Ominous-ness."

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