theotherright | come sail away IC inbox

Arthur twists his hands together for a long moment, then lets out a breath. "No, thank you, I... I think you're all right there."

It's been, to coin a phrase, a helluva few days, and Arthur has uh... done some things, in those days, that he's not proud of. Things that seem, to him, sort of incompatible with accepting any easy affection. On top of which, he... well, he feels like it would be really weird to discuss this while getting all cosy with someone else, you know?

His eyes move nervously, not alighting on anything.

"Did I mean anything by it," he says, just repeating the question to bring it back into focus. "I..."

Yes?

"I don't know, I-I... maybe I thought too much about what you said, about- about that being acceptable here, and I-I got ideas."

You know. Ideas about kissing a guy you like. That thing that happens when you're 100% straight.

"I imagine those are ideas that are pretty hard for you, given the time and place you come from. Like, even if you didn't think it was wrong for others, opening yourself up to that kind of thing might feel shameful? Is any of that resonating with you?"

His tone is coaxing and gentle, no heat to it at all.

"No, I-- well, yes, but--"

aaaaaahhhh

Arthur gestures with his hands, though it's anyone's guess what the gesture is meant to actually communicate. "Well, I-I don't want to hide behind my time as an excuse for anything. But I..."

Further gestures, which encompass some parallel trains of thought that Arthur's having trouble getting past a junction in single file.

"Everybody wants things like that sometimes," he blurts out, assuming that Bash will back him up on this definitely accurate fact. "Most people don't act on it, that's all. I-I misread... I should have known better."

“Wait, what?“ Cue Bash dissolving into laughter as helplessly as the little mermaid dissolving into sea foam.

It takes him several seconds to be able to breathe again, he is whooping and snorting so hard.

"I only thought--" Arthur starts defensively, hit completely out of left field by Bash's reaction. "He said-- I thought-- what's so funny?"

Arthur that's not the part Bash is laughing at. Arthur.

"Sweetheart," he wheezes, struggling to get enough air to speak. "Noooo. No, not everyone does. Some people are, actually, in fact, straight."

If you thought Arthur couldn't get any redder, you were wrong. Is it too late to backtrack and take the 'run away and build another raft' option?

Unfortunately, he's at least a decade too early to be familiar with that slang, and while he could usually figure it out from context, his brain is already running a few too many parallel processes right now, including the other thing Bash just said, and an extra one might crash the whole system.

So his response is to repeat "Straight?" like he's never heard the word before in his life, which is reasonable enough, but probably doesn't make the situation any less funny.

"Sorry, 'strictly heterosexual'. Shit, you're before Kinsey, aren't you? Alright. Gimme a sec." Deep breath, deep breath.

"No, Arthur, not everyone thinks about kissing dudes. Honestly. Girls and guys, there's people who like one, people who like the other, people who like both--some people even just don't like kissing at all. And all of those are absolutely okay. They are."

"All right," Arthur mutters, embarrassed, as Bash audibly works to calm down. "All right, any time you feel like getting that out of your system. I-- I don't know, I always got the impression as a child that practically everyone was at risk of it." You know, the same way school anti-drug programmes make it sound like everyone is smoking weed.

It's really not just a regular thing? Oh christ. Admittedly Arthur's never really been able to get a second opinion on that theory, because he was never quite ready to shoulder the consequences of finding out he was wrong, but uh... compared to what he would have faced back home, laughing is fine. This is fine actually.

"And that's... that's really not frowned on in most worlds?" Arthur didn't mean for that to sound hopeful. But it definitely sounds a little bit hopeful.

"I don't know most worlds. I do know in the world I was born, there was a lot more issue in the past than there is in the time I live. As of two years before I...it's legal in all fifty states of the US for two men or two women to get married. And in the world I came from before here, it was just widely accepted that gender had no bearing on love or sex unless a person brought that bearing with them from their home-world. And here, we're still writing the rules, and there's enough of us men who love men around that you're not doing to be alone, and anyone who gives you shit will need to deal with a bunch of us."

Pause, consider.

"And women who love women, too, pretty sure I know at least one would fuck someone up for being an ass at you."

Holy shit. He doesn't know if his world will have gone the same way as Bash's by the time it reaches the same year, but if it did, that'd be a huge change.

"Married too?" Arthur says, surprised. He's not a teenager any more, so he doesn't say something stupid like 'that's impossible', but he is tripped up a little. He sort of thought homosexuality was mostly about... sex. Flings with strangers and so on. It's the other reason he never really saw himself aligned with it.

The idea of there being a community for him here is... it's inviting. The idea of it being a community based on that is alarming, like he's a cuckoo they're unwittingly welcoming into their nest.

"Listen, I-- I still don't know if I..."

Arthur's fingers are a whole percussion section on the sofa, but he keeps talking.

"I-I-I wasn't lying, you know. When I said to you that I wasn't-- wasn't interested in having sex with, with other men. A-at least I don't think so." Apparently he's been wrong a lot lately! But yeah, he doesn't think so. "I-I don't want to invite assumptions."

God, just talking about this kind of thing out loud feels like sending a risky text. Anyway Arthur is fully rambling at this point, encouraged by the frankness of the conversation so far to say things he usually wouldn't.

"I almost don't know what that would look like, you know?" Rueful, because surely this is another universal experience that Bash will totally relate to right?? "People talk about wanting sex like it's this thing that moves the world, but half the time I think they're all putting it on, a-and nobody's yet had the courage to admit that the emperor's not wearing clothes. Obviously it must be different for some, or else they wouldn't do the things they do, but-- christ, I have to wonder how much of it is pride more than anything else. Not wanting to be the first one to blink." A half-sigh, half-laugh, like they're sharing some great secret. "Really. Hardly worth eating the apple for, isn't it?"

"And I can't even draw you a chart or show you the flags." He sounds wistful, with an undertone of the sound of lightbulb going on. "Have you ever been sexually attracted to a woman? Put everything else aside for the moment--societal roles and expectations, whatever romantic shit you had going on. Do you ever actually...did you ever look at someone, man or woman, and just want to fuck them?"

"What- what flags?" Arthur's starting to get tired of being completely out of the loop here. There are flags??

He starts to scoff at Bash's first question, but then Bash continues, and the scoffing quickly stops. That's, uh, that's a hell of a question.

"Jesus," he mutters at Bash's phrasing, since it's right in front of him and he needs something to be annoyed at. Because, like, what's Bash fishing for here? For Arthur to say he was never attracted to his wife in that way? He'll not always defend their relationship, but he's not about to insult her like that.

"I-- yes, of course," he says, in that tone that bad liars use when they lie badly. "I remind you that I was married. A-and yes, we consummated it, and yes, we-- l-look, I-I don't need to justify this to you."

There's laughter again, but this time a warm, soft chuckle. Lying liars lie poorly, Arthur...

"Oh, darling. I am not saying you didn't love her. That much is obvious. But sex and romance, they're not the same thing. You can hold someone in your heart, want to kiss and cuddle and cherish them and not be sexually attracted to them. That doesn't mean you love them any less. You just love them different."

Unfortunately this is a bit of a sore spot, and despite his best efforts Arthur bristles. He doesn't start yelling or anything, but there's a note in his voice like this is an argument he's ready to revisit at a moment's notice. "I didn't love her different, I just loved her."

You know! The kind of love where neither of you wants to be alone and you care for each other but you fight half the time and divorce isn't an option so you have a baby to fix it instead. Love!

"How do you propose to separate sex and marriage? That's-- I converted to be with her, for god's sake." Weird flex maybe, but it was a pretty big fuck-you to people saying they couldn't get married at the time, so that's what comes to mind.

“Arthur.”

No more arguing, no fighting or logic or appeal to pathos. Just his name, low and firm.

Arthur makes himself stop talking, expelling breath that might have turned itself into angrier words. He feels the need to be careful, with Bash. Bash doesn't fight back, either with anger or with tears, and it gives Arthur the feeling of being on a strike system.

He makes himself say "I'm sorry," before he then says: "A lot of people tried to tell me I didn't love her. But-- all right, that, that's not what you mean."

“No, it’s not what I mean. And I think trying to view all love as having the same…path, the same way to be expressed does a disservice to you as well as whoever you love.”

Arthur is right about Bash not being someone who’ll fight back. Especially not when he can tell the man he’s talking to if confused and defensive. He needs to be even more gentle and open than usual. Like coaxing a stray cat. Pspspspsps…

"Well, all right," says this particular stray cat, whose tail is still a little puffed. "So what exactly are you driving at? Say I have been walking around all this time like the- the one person in a room who doesn't get a joke. Which I-I'm still not convinced of, mind you."

That sentence never finishes, though. In Arthur's mind he loops this back to the original topic, but out loud he just skips three steps to get there. It's sort of delivered like a joke, but his tone is frustrated. "God, I almost hope Crichton isn't interested, I'm not worth this much work."

Arthur used Self-Deprecation! It's super effective. Bash flinched!

Or at least, he's stunned into silence for a moment, staring at the man.

"Do you truly believe that about yourself? That you're not worth whatever amount of effort someone else chooses to put in?"

Arthur blinks. He's never quite managed to stun someone into silence just by disliking himself before.

He himself is surprised into frankness. "I'm a bad-tempered obsessive, thoughtless and irresponsible, and an invalid," he says, like it's obvious. "That's a... that's a..." A low sigh escapes him, as he catches up to the words he's saying. "I can't tell anyone what to do, but that's a, a-a lot of work for a low return."

"That's...that's how you think of yourself? For fuck's sake." What do you say to that? What can you say to that? Bash isn't actually, like. A mental health counselor. He doesn't know how to help with that sort of loathing.

~~If he did, maybe no one would hear him talk about how he's not smart so often.~~

There's a slow, deep breath in and out. "I'm sorry. That isn't what I see, when I look at you."

A scoff, self-conscious and dismissive in equal parts. Arthur already kind of regrets taking this avenue. "You- you're very kind, but I'd like to see you try to tell me none of that is true."

His hands are twisting together again; his mouth is a line.

Snort. That's easy.

"You're hardly an invalid. Yeah, you're fucking blind, but I haven't seen you used that as a reason not to do any-damned-thing. And you've got far too much anxiety to tell me you're thought-less. Got too many thoughts, if anything."

Arthur snorts too, because there's nothing quite like -- to his ears, at least -- damning with faint praise.

His lip draws up, a grimace rather than a smile, and his fingers are once again tapping out an unconscious rhythm on the couch. He could come clean about what he did to Smith in his paranoia. Or about the reason the word irresponsible turns to ashes in his mouth. Too many thoughts indeed, and what good were any of them when he--

He stops that thought, and takes a breath, and says firmly, around the obstruction in his throat: "Anyway. I think we've strayed from the point, a bit."

come sail away IC inbox

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cw: homophobia references

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hands in face ongoing homophobia cw until further notice

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cw ableism AS WELL apparently

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