[CLOSED] got a feeling in my gut there's more than this

[paladingus]

WHO: Simon Ashlock, Luwenna Coupe
WHAT: MO-OM DON'T YOU KNOW HOW TO KNOCK?
WHEN: After the kraken castaways return from Rivain.
WHERE: Simon's quarters.
NOTES: Rated R for full-frontal male nudity.

The first order of business, when he finally gets back to his still-solitary quarters in the Gallows, is a good scrubdown. The sea is well and good, and he's quietly humming one of the shanties Araceli taught him as he goes about stuffing all his clothing into a laundry hamper, but it's better to feel an autumn chill in the air and wash off all the accumulated salt-crust with water that doesn't feel brackish. Maybe he'll hit the baths later, but it's just common courtesy to scrub the worst of it all off before you dunk yourself in a public pool.

There are people to see--perhaps Wren is around; he hopes she is--and training sessions to resume, and a couple of promised souvenirs to deliver, but all of that can wait.

Comments

[paladingus]

Holding the corner of the blanket across his hips seems, at the moment, almost preferable to the indignity of having to struggle naked into a pair of trousers with her gaze still unswervingly fixed on him. That flush of dismay hasn't faded, and he cringes visibly, like a dog avoiding a blow, when she calls him by his given name. It triggers that knee-jerk urge to capitulate, to apologize, even when he's still at least half certain he was right.

"It's not lying to decide that you don't need to be a part of something!" Even if she's not raising her voice, he will, listeners be damned. "It isn't dishonesty to think that when you delegate something to me, you want me to handle it on my own! He didn't want you to know. And I chose to respect that. Even when it's not about him--" He mirrors that wordless gesture of hers, unconsciously, with the hand that isn't keeping him decent.

"What's the point of keeping me around, if I'm not to do anything of my own accord? Am I really just here to be the muscle for your chores, then? I might as well be anyone else at all, if I'm good for nothing but hanging off your apron strings and saying yes-ser-no-ser."

It could sound petulant and self-pitying, if it were only about her. It isn't.

When u roll a metaphorical 1 on your "being a reasonable adult" skill: the coupe story

[limier]

There's so much she might say --

Kind things, reassurances, the truth she's been battering about his own shoulders.

(You're the only one of them I do,)

There are so many right things to say, things that he ought to hear. She can't make them fit her mouth.

"Perhaps you might be," Anyone else. "If you want to go it alone so badly, then try."

Something hitches briefly in her expression. She swallows, turns for the door.

"Best of fucking luck with it."

She's cocked this up. If she doesn't leave soon, it'll only get worse. Distance. Distance to listen to what he's said, to,

To what? If he wants to make his own decisions, let him reap his own bloody consequences. They're all in the cold now, and no reason to try and warm his hands.

This isn't only about her. Just now, it's all she can see.

two giant people who when combined make like 1/4 of a grownup

[paladingus]

Simon's habit of taking things at face value is not always an entirely honest one, not when it can be passive-aggressively weaponized. You said you didn't want me around, you said, you said, how was I to know, punishing without any benefit of doubt. But when the you said is spitting things his mind has already been whispering on a treacherous loop for months, the line is finer there, the belief sincere and uncalculated.

Perhaps you might be. That flicker across her face is lost on him, even when he's looking right at her. The way his own crumples is harder to miss.

But it, too, is transient, and it takes only a moment for his expression to harden again as he grips the blanket with whitened knuckles. "If I'm no longer subject to your command," he says, his accent near-unrecognizable in its sudden tight formality, "you've no business in my quarters. Leave them."

like the power rangers but it's just a disconnected foot and hand

[limier]

The door slams behind her; the Parilla sisters jump, and hasten the sudden business of retreat. Wren slumps in place, back pressed to the wall, wills the stone into her skin.

Let him try it,

It's not working. It doesn't work.