theotherright | come sail away IC inbox

"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."

"Depends on which point you're talking about. Anyway. At the risk of coming off like I'm telling you what to do, I think a lot of what you're trying to figure up is knotted up in what you're supposed to do. You're not going to be able to figure yourself out, what you want, if you keep a death grip on that 'supposed'."

He makes it sound so easy, doesn't he?

He sure makes it sound like he thinks it's easy!

Arthur's posture has shifted over the last several bars of conversation. Where before he was leaning forward, hands active and forearms on his knees, he's now drawn upright with his cane across his chest. There's a generalised resentment in him that he couldn't place the source of even if he was conscious of it, and while the foundations were already laid, this conversation is building it brick by brick.

"You want me to throw out what I'm supposed to do? That- that's your advice? I'm not like some people; I can't just decide that rules don't apply to me."

On one level, this is hilariously untrue. On another, deeper level, it's the most core truth he could put into words.

"Right. So how do you decide the rules that apply to you in a situation?"

There's a path he'd love to lead Arthur down, a little light logic play. Like one of Shakespeare's fools, though that's hardly a comparison he knows to draw for himself.

IDK, vibes?

Arthur can see where he at least thinks Bash is going with this, but if Bash's end goal here is 'follow your conscience', then he might have trouble selling that to the guy who does not like or trust himself.

All the same, he goes stiffly along with the thought experiment. "Alright. I-I... assess the situation. What will help, what will stop somebody getting hurt." His instinct is to think about dangerous situations here rather than like. Kissing.

That's totally detailed his planned angle of attack, but not necessarily in a bad way.

"Well, that seems a lot more situational than just following rules. That sounds like some sort of a personal judgment call you're making, now doesn't it?"

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theotherright - 2022-11-13 14:04 (UTC) - Expand

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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