He's gotten better about it on the Barge, where feelings matter, but it's still hard for him to face these things head-on. He doesn't want to fight with Jedao, because that's not the kind of friends they are to each other-- and because he knows Jedao would decimate him.
So there's this. Muscling through. And he really does like him, and he wants them to be well again. It doesn't feel strange to walk into the room: it feels cozy, comfortable, like this is really Jedao's space, and not the thing that took his face.
"Uh-- I dunno, I stopped daydrinking a while ago. Tea?"
"Steal a cushion from the bed, sit anywhere," Jedao tells him, grabbing his tea set and setting the self-heating teapot to steep a peppermint based blend; Ray seems like a sweet tooth guy. Tits the calico cat wanders over to demand petting-based tribute.
Ray is definitely a sweet tooth guy: he has no shame about dropping pieces of chocolate into his coffee right in the middle of the dining hall. No cops to impress means Ray gets to have his sweet treat.
He likes Tits, and he pulls her gently into his lap once he's sat down leaning up against a brightly colored wall. While Jedao gets the tea, Ray starts playing with her, holding up his hands and fingers for her to bat at.
He brings the tea set over and puts it down on the floor near them.
“When the flowers bloom, it’s ready,” he says, indicating the inlaid golden chrysanthemums on the black enamel. He grabs a pillow for himself, the lays down, staring at the ceiling.
“I always hated it when my commanding officers asked me to speak frankly. Is it as bad from inmates?”
He stretches his legs out in front of him, looking at Jedao from a little distance. They're not nearly as close as they'd been in his bed, with Ray shivering and lost, and it feels strange to have that-- distance.
"What, do I hate it when inmates ask me to speak frankly?" He isn't sure what he's asking him, and besides:
"I'm attempting to be - pragmatic," he says, which isn't an answer, and also is.
"Maybe you aren't really right for me. But every warden who isn't has to have - some perspective I don't have. It can only be useful to gather those perspectives. I want to graduate, Ray, and I don't just want to wait around for the barge nonsense to grind me down. I have things I need to do. So, if you have - thoughts. On what I need to change. I am asking you to be frank with me."
He chews on the inside of his cheek, then slumps a little further so that he can bump his boots up against Jedao's feet. It's been weird, but it's also been weird not to touch him when they're having conversations like this. Feels like it's par for the course, by now.
"I think of you sometimes, Jedao, as a surgeon, only your scalpel is your own mind, which slices into the minds and souls of others. And you, like me in my own world, operate without an anaesthetic. In my time it was a necessity, and maybe for you it seems the same. But circumstances change, and we learn new tools and new ways of doing things."
He doesn't quite mimic Harry's accent, but he does have his cadence down; it's easy to imagine the rest of him.
He processes that for a little while, eyes half-lidded, fingers tapping on his own stomach. Jedao's mind is a scalpel, sharp and cutting and dangerous and necessary. But that wasn't the only thing.
"He's saying you need to learn how to use anasta-- anti--" He makes a face-- you know what he means.
"Painkillers," he agrees, trying not to linger on that brief moment of aphasia.
"Look-- I don't think he's wrong. But I also think maybe he ain't ever been held by you after something bad happened. I mean- it's there, you got it. Maybe sometimes you just forget to apply it."
Ray doesn't often think about the meaning of touch, but Jedao has made him, somehow, consider it. He's been in bed with Jedao wearing only underwear, and somehow this feels just as intimate as that little touch to the wrist.
"Ah," he says, in full understanding. "Yeah. Yeah, maybe."
He hadn’t meant it to hurt, really. Black humor, pointed, incisive - incisive from the root that means, to cut - but he had meant it to be a reprieve not an attack; he has never bothered much to explain this, not after the way Harry recoiled.
"I can't share the details without revealing things he told me in confidence. Suffice to say I - spoke lightly of something harrowing, which he had not trusted to many people. I meant it for companionable black humor, and misjudged badly. And we were very new with each other, then."
Not exactly monstrous evisceration - but not unrelated, in the end. And the sort of thing that could easily cripple a fledgeling friendship. Harry, clearly, for all that he has been steadfastly excellent to Jedao, has not forgotten.
"I know what it's like to say stupid shit," he says, softly. "I mean-- I do that all the time. Sometimes I don't mean to, sometimes I just-- forget to think before I talk."
"I knew what I was saying. I just....if you joke about your mortal wounds, that's a good way to bluff they aren't mortal. I knew I was poking at a mortal wound. I just didn't expect him to flinch."
He chews on his lip as he mulls that over, leaning against Jedao's bed.
"Sometimes I had that when I did undercover gigs. You think people're gonna react one way, and until you remember they didn't grow up the way you did you're just-- angry that they think some kinda way."
"Yeah?" he asks, voice soft and a little flat with hiding hopefulness and uncertainty. He hadn't really thought it happened to anyone else; he mostly assumed that he and his world were so irreparably poisoned, so warped that there would always be a gap he couldn't close.
But Ray is good, Ray is...not ordinary, but not a legend or a monster either. Ray is just a person, and it happened to him too.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
So there's this. Muscling through. And he really does like him, and he wants them to be well again. It doesn't feel strange to walk into the room: it feels cozy, comfortable, like this is really Jedao's space, and not the thing that took his face.
"Uh-- I dunno, I stopped daydrinking a while ago. Tea?"
no subject
no subject
He likes Tits, and he pulls her gently into his lap once he's sat down leaning up against a brightly colored wall. While Jedao gets the tea, Ray starts playing with her, holding up his hands and fingers for her to bat at.
no subject
“When the flowers bloom, it’s ready,” he says, indicating the inlaid golden chrysanthemums on the black enamel. He grabs a pillow for himself, the lays down, staring at the ceiling.
“I always hated it when my commanding officers asked me to speak frankly. Is it as bad from inmates?”
no subject
"What, do I hate it when inmates ask me to speak frankly?" He isn't sure what he's asking him, and besides:
"You're my first temp, anyway."
no subject
Whom he still thinks of as his real
Momwarden.no subject
"Seven." That's-- a lot. "That's gotta be frustrating."
no subject
"Maybe you aren't really right for me. But every warden who isn't has to have - some perspective I don't have. It can only be useful to gather those perspectives. I want to graduate, Ray, and I don't just want to wait around for the barge nonsense to grind me down. I have things I need to do. So, if you have - thoughts. On what I need to change. I am asking you to be frank with me."
no subject
"What did Harry say when you asked him this?"
no subject
"I think of you sometimes, Jedao, as a surgeon, only your scalpel is your own mind, which slices into the minds and souls of others. And you, like me in my own world, operate without an anaesthetic. In my time it was a necessity, and maybe for you it seems the same. But circumstances change, and we learn new tools and new ways of doing things."
He doesn't quite mimic Harry's accent, but he does have his cadence down; it's easy to imagine the rest of him.
no subject
"He's saying you need to learn how to use anasta-- anti--" He makes a face-- you know what he means.
no subject
no subject
"Look-- I don't think he's wrong. But I also think maybe he ain't ever been held by you after something bad happened. I mean- it's there, you got it. Maybe sometimes you just forget to apply it."
no subject
"Not held. It was this."
This one tiny touch, when Harry was a complete stranger who'd had an awful first flood, stiff in his own victorian propriety.
no subject
"Ah," he says, in full understanding. "Yeah. Yeah, maybe."
no subject
He hadn’t meant it to hurt, really. Black humor, pointed, incisive - incisive from the root that means, to cut - but he had meant it to be a reprieve not an attack; he has never bothered much to explain this, not after the way Harry recoiled.
no subject
no subject
Not exactly monstrous evisceration - but not unrelated, in the end. And the sort of thing that could easily cripple a fledgeling friendship. Harry, clearly, for all that he has been steadfastly excellent to Jedao, has not forgotten.
no subject
no subject
Because Jedao wouldn't have. Maybe.
no subject
"You think other people flinch too quickly?"
no subject
Not that it's bad, or that it's good. Just that he doesn't expect it.
no subject
"Sometimes I had that when I did undercover gigs. You think people're gonna react one way, and until you remember they didn't grow up the way you did you're just-- angry that they think some kinda way."
no subject
But Ray is good, Ray is...not ordinary, but not a legend or a monster either. Ray is just a person, and it happened to him too.
no subject
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)