"I don't believe that the way we feel about things can be... that that is the mistake we make."
His hand doesn't stop its gentle circuits of Jedao's back.
"When I was with my wife, Bella, I- I didn't love her. Not- romantically, I suppose, not the way you're supposed to love your partner. But the mistake I made, in all that, was... not realising that our arrangement was wrong soon enough, that it- it wasn't something I could just try harder to feel differently about her. She was brilliant, a-and I adored her as a friend, but... but loving her was..."
He sighs, and his hand stills for a moment. "My mistake was not telling her sooner. Or- at all, really. To give her the ability to do something with that for herself."
"It's going to hurt him," Jedao says, low in his chest, deep and quiet and awful, even as he leans into the touch a little.
"I know not telling him will too. I just. I just hate it. I wish I could take a big knife and crack my sternum like a walnut and cut all the rotten bits out of my heart. Like a piece of moldy fruit."
"If you cut off everything that you think is rotten, how much of what's left over is still you without it?" he asks, his tone deceptively casual for the way his eyes are laser-focused on the river. "What happens when the only darkness left is a bruise and you can't stop cutting?"
He closes his eyes for a moment, before he looks back at Jedao, and while he can try to keep the intensity off his face, he can't hide how the golden scars in his irises burn like stars. "Where does that person go, that you evicted from yourself?"
He pulls himself in again, mantling up, knees in closer to his chest, arms tight around them, shoulders hunched. When he speaks, his voice is small, defeated.
"This isn't like, a cool and effective proof that I'm being silly. You're just reminding me of all the reasons I used to be suicidal."
What happens is he peels everything away and drowns in the dark and doesn't have to be here anymore.
"I never thought you were being silly," he replies immediately, with a shake of his head. "I thought you were in pain. I just... couldn't see how badly."
He tips his face down, pressing it against his knees, making himself a little closed ball for long seconds.
"It's like I have - that pit inside me. And I can cover it over and leave it alone for a long time. But if I get a little lost and trip over a little rock and I'm scrabbling around trying to find my way back to level ground and instead I just....slide right back there. I was just - just a little bit tripped. But I try to get back up and somehow I dig myself here instead. I don't know how to stop."
Arthur's silent, for a minute, but Jedao will notice the way he tenses at the turn of phrase for a few moments.
Turns out it's impossible to leave the fucking pits behind him.
But he still tugs the little ball of Jedao against his side and gives him another squeeze. "You let someone help you climb out. Someone who can see the edge."
He shrugs. "What's left in there to work on? You've hit bedrock, my friend, and the only thing left there is suffering. So you can either bury yourself in it, or let someone help you try and make the pit a little less overwhelming."
He thinks of Thalarion, maybe the closest he's ever truly come to death, the mad thing he became there, the raw nerve, the wordless cacophany, the crawling equations, the contents of his mind inverted and splayed out like an axolotl's gill fringes, fractal and red with blood, utterly and deliberately exposed along an infinite ragged edge. He hadn't been himself anymore, in Thalarion. It had hurt every moment, but sometimes he misses it.
"There's two problems," he says slowly. "On the basic level. There's the problem of how much I hate myself, and how - I get stuck on it, how I go back to it. How I was maybe programmed to feel that way. Or maybe it's just natural talent."
Bone dry.
"And there's the much smaller but more pertinent problem of not liking Sokie and not -" His voice cracks a little, wavers. "And being selfish about it. And then there's the third, higher-order problem that I can't seem to deal with the second problem without getting completely fucking sidetracked by the first one. It's not wholly intractable but it's been the work of my whole fucking life so far, I'm not going to fix it in time to reassure John. So if I want to deal with the actual - situation - I can't be indulging that."
He hums softly. Thoughtfully, even if he's trying to wrangle his brain in from making this more problem-solving.
"Luckily, how much you hate yourself has no bearing on how much John loves you," he comments. "It just changes how he expresses it to make sure you feel it. And he's not going to be upset with you or reject you if you don't like Sokie - I imagine he'll be a little confused as to how when you haven't spoken to her much, but I promise that you're having an entirely human reaction."
"She's spoken in public enough for an impression."
If not an impression of who exactly she is, then certainly an impression of how she deflects from revealing who she is. And he's seen how she speaks to Justine privately, thanks to snooping on Justine's private filters, which he won't be admitting to anyone, but rubbed him the wrong way a time or two.
"And what reaction is that?" He isn't sure Arthur even knows what his reaction is; he's not sure he has it all the way figured out.
"I suppose I can't rightly whether you wanted to marry John or not yourself, but being upset and jealous because you were the one who didn't get picked - especially over someone you don't have a positive impression of - Christ, half of the entire romantic genre on Earth is made of it."
"Well I'm not from Earth," Jedao huffs. "And of course I never had more than idle daydreams of John marrying us, because he was already basically married to you. I know, I know-" he waves away the protests he's sure are coming.
"Your partnership isn't romantic, but it damn well is domestic. Your future is his future, your plan is his plan, your family is his family."
He can't quite sustain the exasperated tone all the way through it; his voice wobbles into hurt.
"I'm not coming with you," Jedao answers, aching and frustrated. He throws out a wide arm. "I'm not coming here, I'm not - maybe it's selfish but I am not doing that."
He's not locking himself down on one planet where no one who wasn't on the barge will understand him, not for John, not for Hakkai and Gojyo, not even for Edwin. He can feel the gravity of the pit reaching for him, how easy it would be be to careen right back into the ditch of hating himself about it. But that's stupid and childish in itself: he made this choice, and he gets to live with it.
"You can't just say you're family because you love someone. You build your lives around each other or you don't. That's why it's so - stupid and greedy of me, I already made that choice, I already gave it up. Only -"
He can't help the way he's smiling, now, some relief at what a simple problem the core of it all turned out to be.
"Look, family always expands, that's the beauty of it. People marry in, or get adopted, a-and they're not always stuck in one place - usually they're spread out across all sorts of cities, even countries. It's actually rare that people keep in touch with more than their immediate family, siblings and parents and children, often cousins or grandparents, but- still."
He squeezes Jedao, rubbing his shoulders with both hands. "Family can absolutely just be because you love someone. Because you want being with them to be the place you can call home. Fuck, d'you know how many people just call themselves brothers and everyone treats it the same, even on Earth?"
He shivers, feeling strange and off-balance and cold, hollow, flimsy.
The only brothers I ever had disappeared into the dark with my murderous ship without ever seeing my face, he thinks, the old ache of never even speaking to the other human-shaped moths. And then he remembers it's not true with a little jolt, as he thinks of Jetaan, his chubby fists and Jedao's promise to bring him ice cream someday: the brothers Shuos Jedao and Fives and Quentin have held out to him.
The first person he ever called his brother, of course, was Nathaniel.
"No," he says shakily. "No, I don't know." The only family he started with was Kujen.
He swallows as the gravity of that hits him again.
"Sorry. It's just..." He lifts a hand to rub his jaw down, trying to find newer, better words.
"...look, labels only have the power that we give them. And John is... he understands that, a-and he respects it, so he's not going to give anyone labels if he can help it. So the way he decides which ones he wants to use is... by letting people come to him with them. So he can understand how they want to define it."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: A few days after John's announcement
His hand doesn't stop its gentle circuits of Jedao's back.
"When I was with my wife, Bella, I- I didn't love her. Not- romantically, I suppose, not the way you're supposed to love your partner. But the mistake I made, in all that, was... not realising that our arrangement was wrong soon enough, that it- it wasn't something I could just try harder to feel differently about her. She was brilliant, a-and I adored her as a friend, but... but loving her was..."
He sighs, and his hand stills for a moment. "My mistake was not telling her sooner. Or- at all, really. To give her the ability to do something with that for herself."
self harm imagery
"I know not telling him will too. I just. I just hate it. I wish I could take a big knife and crack my sternum like a walnut and cut all the rotten bits out of my heart. Like a piece of moldy fruit."
Re: self harm imagery
Re: self harm imagery
Of course they're parts of him; it'd be easier to throw them away if they weren't. That's the whole problem.
Re: self harm imagery
"Well if you want to make it sound like psych surgery, then."
Re: self harm imagery
"That's not - I mean - uhgh."
Re: self harm imagery
He closes his eyes for a moment, before he looks back at Jedao, and while he can try to keep the intensity off his face, he can't hide how the golden scars in his irises burn like stars. "Where does that person go, that you evicted from yourself?"
Re: self harm imagery
"This isn't like, a cool and effective proof that I'm being silly. You're just reminding me of all the reasons I used to be suicidal."
What happens is he peels everything away and drowns in the dark and doesn't have to be here anymore.
Re: self harm imagery
Re: self harm imagery
He tips his face down, pressing it against his knees, making himself a little closed ball for long seconds.
"It's like I have - that pit inside me. And I can cover it over and leave it alone for a long time. But if I get a little lost and trip over a little rock and I'm scrabbling around trying to find my way back to level ground and instead I just....slide right back there. I was just - just a little bit tripped. But I try to get back up and somehow I dig myself here instead. I don't know how to stop."
Re: self harm imagery
Turns out it's impossible to leave the fucking pits behind him.
But he still tugs the little ball of Jedao against his side and gives him another squeeze. "You let someone help you climb out. Someone who can see the edge."
Re: self harm imagery
Re: self harm imagery
Re: self harm imagery
"There's two problems," he says slowly. "On the basic level. There's the problem of how much I hate myself, and how - I get stuck on it, how I go back to it. How I was maybe programmed to feel that way. Or maybe it's just natural talent."
Bone dry.
"And there's the much smaller but more pertinent problem of not liking Sokie and not -" His voice cracks a little, wavers. "And being selfish about it. And then there's the third, higher-order problem that I can't seem to deal with the second problem without getting completely fucking sidetracked by the first one. It's not wholly intractable but it's been the work of my whole fucking life so far, I'm not going to fix it in time to reassure John. So if I want to deal with the actual - situation - I can't be indulging that."
Re: self harm imagery
"Luckily, how much you hate yourself has no bearing on how much John loves you," he comments. "It just changes how he expresses it to make sure you feel it. And he's not going to be upset with you or reject you if you don't like Sokie - I imagine he'll be a little confused as to how when you haven't spoken to her much, but I promise that you're having an entirely human reaction."
Re: self harm imagery
If not an impression of who exactly she is, then certainly an impression of how she deflects from revealing who she is. And he's seen how she speaks to Justine privately, thanks to snooping on Justine's private filters, which he won't be admitting to anyone, but rubbed him the wrong way a time or two.
"And what reaction is that?" He isn't sure Arthur even knows what his reaction is; he's not sure he has it all the way figured out.
Re: self harm imagery
Re: self harm imagery
"Your partnership isn't romantic, but it damn well is domestic. Your future is his future, your plan is his plan, your family is his family."
He can't quite sustain the exasperated tone all the way through it; his voice wobbles into hurt.
Re: self harm imagery
"Is- that's what marriage means to you? Drawing someone into your family?"
Re: self harm imagery
Nothing about John's feelings has changed; he already had the rings when she asked.
no subject
Sorry Jedao he kind of just sounds baffled now.
no subject
He's not locking himself down on one planet where no one who wasn't on the barge will understand him, not for John, not for Hakkai and Gojyo, not even for Edwin. He can feel the gravity of the pit reaching for him, how easy it would be be to careen right back into the ditch of hating himself about it. But that's stupid and childish in itself: he made this choice, and he gets to live with it.
"You can't just say you're family because you love someone. You build your lives around each other or you don't. That's why it's so - stupid and greedy of me, I already made that choice, I already gave it up. Only -"
no subject
He can't help the way he's smiling, now, some relief at what a simple problem the core of it all turned out to be.
"Look, family always expands, that's the beauty of it. People marry in, or get adopted, a-and they're not always stuck in one place - usually they're spread out across all sorts of cities, even countries. It's actually rare that people keep in touch with more than their immediate family, siblings and parents and children, often cousins or grandparents, but- still."
He squeezes Jedao, rubbing his shoulders with both hands. "Family can absolutely just be because you love someone. Because you want being with them to be the place you can call home. Fuck, d'you know how many people just call themselves brothers and everyone treats it the same, even on Earth?"
no subject
The only brothers I ever had disappeared into the dark with my murderous ship without ever seeing my face, he thinks, the old ache of never even speaking to the other human-shaped moths. And then he remembers it's not true with a little jolt, as he thinks of Jetaan, his chubby fists and Jedao's promise to bring him ice cream someday: the brothers Shuos Jedao and Fives and Quentin have held out to him.
The first person he ever called his brother, of course, was Nathaniel.
"No," he says shakily. "No, I don't know." The only family he started with was Kujen.
no subject
He swallows as the gravity of that hits him again.
"Sorry. It's just..." He lifts a hand to rub his jaw down, trying to find newer, better words.
"...look, labels only have the power that we give them. And John is... he understands that, a-and he respects it, so he's not going to give anyone labels if he can help it. So the way he decides which ones he wants to use is... by letting people come to him with them. So he can understand how they want to define it."
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