[ An incomplete metaphor, perhaps, but this feels indiscreet enough already. He takes a drag from his cigarette, gesturing with it as he continues, ]
Please understand, I don't wish to start gossip -- and I do not go around collecting hearts to break. I left him, the one in my ribs. I thought him dead.
[ At start gossip, Bastien waves a hand, dismissing an outlandish possibility. ]
You were moving on, [ he prompts to check his understanding, with some genuine empathy possibly mixed in with the compassion, ] and thought you had a new way forward?
Yes. [ said with something strangely tremulous and fragile pulling at the corner of his lips. It's hidden swiftly, in the duck and turn of a head, but not elegantly. Not skilled at hiding, only accustomed to it. ]
It sounds quite silly now, but I needed to know if I could. If I could feel anything, really. [ A flourish of the hand, anxious to wave away any more serious consideration of that statement. ] But I could, and I did.
Only he wasn't dead, and now we are here. Three hearts in a knot.
[ He's quiet for a few seconds, head shifting in time with unspoken thoughts, before he settles on: ]
Perhaps.
[ Very helpful. Very based on no actual experience. ]
I have never lost anyone to death. Only to life. Incompatibilities, arguments, other people. Problems that would still be lying in wait for us on a second attempt. But if something outside of us severed a thing that was otherwise good— [ That's what they're talking about here, right. ] —then maybe I would.
[ He tilts his head and smiles a little, prompting. ]
[ The funny sort of stillness in his eyes for a beat, there and gone again, says Yes, definitely, that's what they're talking about. What else could it be.
But it melts away easily at the return to his poet, lost in an uncomplicated smile. ]
I do. It is different-- he is very different, but also it is a newer sort of intimacy. Different fears, different potential.
[ His eyebrows do a sort of twist, like he hadn't considered-- And anyway, ]
It is not a fair thing to compare. Love is not-- [ well. ] Sometimes it is happy, yes, but just as often it is excruciating, and one does not balk from it just for that.
Well—no. [ Conceding, fairly lightly. ] Maybe not just for that. Sometimes you have to work through pain to reach something at the end of it. But there should be an end to it, no?
There was an end because I ended it. [ is how we're describing that event. ] I do not mean to say I did not have happy moments with him, the one in my ribs — some of the happiest in my life, only some of the hardest as well.
But that is the way of it, yes? To love and be loved, one must open one's heart, and what could be easier to wound than that?
[ Prettily put. It makes his smile a little wistful—which is to say, he allows it to make his smile a little wistful—even if put in plainer words it wouldn’t sound nearly so appealing. ]
I am sure some bruising is inevitable.
[ Again: that’s what they're talking about here, right? ]
What do you suppose love should look like? [ A genuine question, not a prelude to an answer of his own. ] Not the feeling. The act. On its own, when it is disentangled from lust and fear. What do you think it should inspire someone to do?
[ Ilias's brows knit, focus bleeding into memory — stars glimpsed through skylights; sunlight through a veil of pine and the season's last flowers; words sparking to life beneath both. Love. ]
To challenge one another, [ he decides, finally. ] To know and accept and protect the other, yes, but more than that, to help each other grow.
[ You know that if you had to, you would break it. (To give it a stronger shape.)
A bare touch sharper, ] In the ways one chooses, I mean to say; not in the ways anyone else might want.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
[ An incomplete metaphor, perhaps, but this feels indiscreet enough already. He takes a drag from his cigarette, gesturing with it as he continues, ]
Please understand, I don't wish to start gossip -- and I do not go around collecting hearts to break. I left him, the one in my ribs. I thought him dead.
no subject
You were moving on, [ he prompts to check his understanding, with some genuine empathy possibly mixed in with the compassion, ] and thought you had a new way forward?
no subject
It sounds quite silly now, but I needed to know if I could. If I could feel anything, really. [ A flourish of the hand, anxious to wave away any more serious consideration of that statement. ] But I could, and I did.
Only he wasn't dead, and now we are here. Three hearts in a knot.
no subject
Had it been a very long time?
no subject
[ His mouth flattens, Ah well, and he spares a glance up to Bastien, grateful for the offered ear. ]
Would you never go back? To someone you had loved and left behind.
no subject
Perhaps.
[ Very helpful. Very based on no actual experience. ]
I have never lost anyone to death. Only to life. Incompatibilities, arguments, other people. Problems that would still be lying in wait for us on a second attempt. But if something outside of us severed a thing that was otherwise good— [ That's what they're talking about here, right. ] —then maybe I would.
[ He tilts his head and smiles a little, prompting. ]
But you love your poet, too.
no subject
But it melts away easily at the return to his poet, lost in an uncomplicated smile. ]
I do. It is different-- he is very different, but also it is a newer sort of intimacy. Different fears, different potential.
no subject
The smile is sweet, though. ]
And neither one makes you happier than the other?
no subject
It is not a fair thing to compare. Love is not-- [ well. ] Sometimes it is happy, yes, but just as often it is excruciating, and one does not balk from it just for that.
no subject
no subject
But that is the way of it, yes? To love and be loved, one must open one's heart, and what could be easier to wound than that?
no subject
I am sure some bruising is inevitable.
[ Again: that’s what they're talking about here, right? ]
What do you suppose love should look like? [ A genuine question, not a prelude to an answer of his own. ] Not the feeling. The act. On its own, when it is disentangled from lust and fear. What do you think it should inspire someone to do?
no subject
To challenge one another, [ he decides, finally. ] To know and accept and protect the other, yes, but more than that, to help each other grow.
[ You know that if you had to, you would break it. (To give it a stronger shape.)
A bare touch sharper, ] In the ways one chooses, I mean to say; not in the ways anyone else might want.