victory_road | This road is going nowhere [Closed]

Entry tags:

This road is going nowhere [Closed]

Who: Dirk Strider and Hythlodaeus.... Emet-Selch shows up around comment #80
Where: Goldenrod, XIVhaus Garden
When: August 15th shhh this is forward dated
Summary: Can't believe Dirk is the one cornering someone else for acting weird for once tbh
Rating: PG except for swears? [EDIT] ....convo got nsfw around comment #70

Hours after Dirk finally slept (and then woke up again) while Emet did not, Emet himself falls asleep (the natural way) and Dirk is left... free. Free to wander the house on his own. Free to track down some answers. Or rather, to lie in wait for the source of his questions and then ambush him for said answers.

Hythlodaeus has generously yielded all the clues he needs to establish the location; a sad, dead excuse for a withered 'garden,' comprised though it is of a single dead tree and an open sky, with sunlight streaming from overhead and soft, gently buzzing fuzzbugs by the dozens. No special preparations are required for this--though he does take the time to let Salome out of her Pokeball to circle the sky overhead, it's for his convenience and not out of any desire to threaten the eight-foot neurotic with a jealous magical bird. (In fact, it's for the lack of that desire that he sends her spiralling up and out of human line of sight.)

Then, he just has to wait.

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“My trouble, I think, has laid merely in the troubling uncertainty that I have felt as of late. Had I had words or understanding sooner, I might not have acted as I did.”

He glances at the clock.

“Soon we will knead the bread again,” he reaches past Dirk to pluck a pair of disposable gloves from his work station. He sets them in front of him.

His eyes move from the book to Dirk’s face. He had a lot to consider, but his priorities are in reaching some equilibrium again.

“...This book, while it is not... fully useful according to my background, it has given me some insights into that which may alleviate my general unease. And Steven, for all of his shortcomings, was able to recommend some helpful activities... or, perhaps it is more accurate to say a lack of activity. You want honesty, and I will give it as I find appropriate. I prefer not to lose too much control, after all.”

He crosses his arms. “I was advised to carve out space where I could just be myself. So. Here, in my own home— and as Hades’ lover you have the right to be here. But I will no longer be... curating my facial expressions, let us say.”

....right. Hythlodaeus had suggested those. More than once, Dirk's pretty sure. It was just... far too late to be helpful. Both practically and semantically. Dirk had other, bigger proverbial fish to fry. Now, though...

Well. Dirk doesn't take up the disposable gloves until Hythlodaeus is actually finished talking, though he sees them. He doesn't pick them up after, either--not right away. He studies Hythlodaeus instead, his flat, "blank" expression set to neutral for a few seconds.

"Okay."

He begins to remove his fingerless gloves with an air of stoic resignation, placing the book on the table and his gloves on top of it, layered neatly on top of each other.

"Should I be concerned about that?"

"No. I'm simply... tired of pretending to emote all the time. Everyone seems to think I'm strange anyway."

He gazes at him, his expression still flat, neutral, and kind of sleepy. Without his smile to offset his natural appearance, he looks sort of ambiently judging.

"I simply did not wish for you to believe that I was cross with you," he says, standing. "This is, in fact, an honor."

"You are strange." Dirk's tone is frank as he picks up the disposable gloves. He already hates the texture.

But he's not going to get disposable glove under his fingernails--short and blunt as they already are, he can't fucking stand how easy it is to get dough and flour under what little is there to begin with. He restrains the grimace, setting his jaw grimly.

"Get used to it. I'm no better. That's just the truth. What we are is incomprehensible, at base level. If I can't fake it and Emet won't, then 'strange' is your best case scenario."

He tilts his head and shrugs, the corner of mouth twitching slightly in what seems to be how his smile expresses naturally. The nickname "Emet" is still hysterical.

"I've always been strange, it just never mattered as much... And I prefer not to be too transparent. It is impossible to get much done that way." His laugh comes soft, only a bit more than shaped air, a curled finger coming up to cover his mouth in a familiar gesture.

He pads back over to the bread, turning it out and coating it with oil.

"...I wonder if Hades will rise soon. Did you tire him out before eight or so? I could bake these right away..." He turns, blinking down at Dirk for a moment before he steps over to the sink, stooping to wash the oil from his hands.

"... no clue. I wasn't exactly watching the clock."

The walk back to the 'bread station' is short, but Dirk spends it spreading his fingers, closing and opening his fists first separately and then together while he adjusts to the tacky feeling of the disposable gloves.

"I don't think he fell asleep when I did, either."

Useless observations, thanks.

“How thin did his sleep seem when you came out here?”

C’mon, give him something to work with! Oh well. May as well make the bread.

“It will only need two minutes of kneading. You did well before,” he encourages lightly as he kneels to spectate.

“If his sleep is thin enough, he should rise if I brew coffee.”

"Don't patronise me," Dirk warns him, but there's no real bite to it, and he's less hesitant about the kneading this time; he doesn't know if there's an inappropriate level of force to use, but his understanding is that there isn't.

The subject of coffee is a different matter.

"Just because I haven't thrown that thing out yet doesn't mean I won't."

The threat is conversational enough to pass as casual, and in most company it might even sound like a joke. The message itself is twelve words shorter than the delivery: 'don't.'

"Oh, I'm not patronizing you. You are doing well, especially with the claim that you don't bake. You must have seen the proper technique before," he says with a smile to his tone.

He considers that threat to the briki. Does he even know what to look for to throw it away? Not that it'd matter. He can make coffee in nearly anything in the house.

"Making coffee is less about the instruments than it is the science around it, but nevermind that. I understand your quarrel with coffee itself, even if I don't agree, but I can't imagine why you would want to cut off such a useful stem of insight into his emotions and physical well-being." There is genuine surprise in his voice, like he thought that Dirk should have already accounted for that.

"Oh, I've watched with the baroness of baking herself, the premier pâtissière of Paradox Space, and eaten of her finest cookies. The very first baked anything I ever put in my unworthy mouth was hand-mixed by hers truly." He doesn't stop kneading as he talks--in fact, he talks in rhythm with the work, which is probably less obvious for his affected drawl than it would otherwise be.

The fact that a scaled-down replica of the luminous figure he's talking up here is present in this world is purposefully excluded. His reasons are selfish, and he won't be apologising for or explaining them to her or anyone.

"Anyway, I don't care how you make it, I'll pour it down the kitchen sink if I catch you at it. Why is that so hard to understand? Trust me. His emotions and physical well being will be all the better without it."

"How lucky for you," he says with a small laugh. "My own parents usually overcooked our food, so enraptured they would become in their own discussions." He rests his cheek against his knuckles, eyes drifting skyward as he let himself reminisce for a moment.

"You would conspire with me in order to decide what's best for him? Perhaps we have more in common than you think." This isn't a wild accusation, but Hythlodaeus doesn't even have all the context.

"However, if you want to do that in a truly clever way, you will allow Hades to do as he pleases. Whether or not I provide him with the coffee, he will seek out the comfort of its bitterness and short-lived vigor. You may banish him from that activity, but it will merely press him to another. But this coffee-seeking is only an expression of feelings and desires that he will not otherwise admit."

Edited 2020-08-21 23:45 (UTC)

"I didn't even appreciate how fucking incredible her baking was until months later, when I had a chance to try others'. Not unrelatedly, most people don't appreciate what I do for them, and yes I'm talking about the coffee thing when I say that. Maybe they get it later, but a lot of the time they don't think it's worth it. I disagree."

It doesn't take a supergenius to know he's thinking of Dave when he says this, but he's also thinking about Jake, about Jane and Roxy and even Rose.

Well. Rose appreciated it. But he's willing to concede the extensuating circumstances in that case mean it may not "count."

Even his other selves never appreciate it from him, or vice versa. And yet he's almost always right. Why is that?

He can answer that one.

No one likes the truth.

No one likes the truth because it's hard, because it sucks and it's painful and it's difficult.

It takes an awful lot of work, too. And god fucking forbid he do the hard part for them. But he does. He does the understanding and the knowing so they don't have to.

All anyone has to do--

All he ever asks--

Is that they trust him.

And is that really so hard?

"Ahh, it is the burden to be underappreciated by those who cannot see the full picture, is it not?" Hythlodaeus watches him do the good, hard work of all that kneading while he sits back on his heels.

"That may be so, that he might not appreciate it and might not understand... And surely you understand that there is a ceratin amount of exchange in every act, every bit of information. What you tolerate may have a tenfold boon if you step back a bit further," he prods softly, feeling rather left out of this conversation that Dirk is having inside of his own head.

"To have insight into what a man like Hades is thinking or feeling is an indescribably useful tool. He won't always say what he thinks, nor will he indicate such. But he does keep score and he does ever so carefully weigh costs and benefits."

"...And that will be enough kneading."

"I'm not worried about his math skills," Dirk drawls back, though he stops kneading the second Hythlodaeus tells him he's done enough. He carries that efficiency and momentum into the task of removing his gloves and moving his ass to the sink to wash his hands. Yes, again.

He silently notes the additional handwashing and contextualizes the multiple showers in the back of his mind.

"No, perhaps not his math skills... But you should be aware of the rules to the scoring. You must choose carefully how you will press him, control him, and collect your information to be sure that you aren't accidentally adding pebbles to the scale."

He stands, moving in to cut and roll the bread, his eyes on his hands.

"Perhaps I am approaching this too abstractly. Do you know how much coffee he drinks?"

"Quantitatively? No. I wouldn't put it past me, and I'm considering it as a future issue, but no."

Dirk is already itching to put his fingerless gloves back on, but he refrains, instead hovering by the entrance of the kitchen.

The corner of his mouth jerks up briefly, a questionable half-smile pulled by strings.

"If you want an estimate based on how often his mouth tastes like the stuff, on the other hand--"

Edited 2020-08-24 03:33 (UTC)

“Still so eager to cut your own flow of information, I see. There’s only so much you can learn from his mouth— by his words or his taste. Yet if you are determined, you are quite on the right track with taste.”

He turns to look at him, unable to help the smug smile that pulls at his lips.

“But I somehow doubt you do this, or you would be privy to every objectionable substance that he ingests. You don’t swallow his seed often, do you?”

Hythlodaeus should not be surprised that the brief smile is gone; that is the way of smiles, with Dirk. Nanoscopic and fleeting, usually lasting less than a single second, if they ever existed in the first polace.

If he was expecting actual upset, however, he gets none of that, either. Maybe some contempt, or perhaps disgust... but from the two-syllables that comprise his answer, it sounds mostly like Dirk thinks he's fucking stupid.

"Never."

“Never? ...Not even the pre-seminal fluid by chance while pleasuring him with your mouth?”

His own smile fades as he puts the truth of this together before even hearing Dirk’s reply.

Dirk doesn't answer.

He just stands in the doorway, staring and waiting for Hythlodaeus to catch up and put one and one together.

Edited 2020-08-24 04:13 (UTC)

"...Hm. I see." He raises his eyebrows and looks away from him before blinking and shaking his head, wordlessly continuing to prepare the breads.

Cool.

Awesome. Fantastic.

Now that that's over...

Dirk turns and leaves the kitchen to retrieve his gloves, pulling them back on along the way to Emet's bedroom--if, that is, Hythlodaeus doesn't move to stop him.

"Hades is not the only one who keeps score."

He wraps up the breads and places them in the refrigerator before he walks back out to the cutiefly holding zone.

As Dirk walks into the room, he will be greeted with the sight of Hades laying in the same spot he had left him. However, he is decidedly less asleep. His hands are resting upon his chest, fingers laced together as he's staring at the ceiling with a tired and withered expression. His gaze shifting to Dirk as he enters, looking no less worn.

"...Am I to assume the two of you are quite done exchanging that which you believe to be the best means to control me?" He doesn't sound angry, yet he doesn't sound entirely ecstatic, either. Just drained, and by more than what he endured during his week long nap. Really, he did not wish to be woken up by the two men he cares deeply for having some sort of...whatever that was, like he somehow wouldn't hear them discussing it through these thin walls?

He's not even mad. He's just tired.

Dirk walked away from Hythlodaeus with the impression that the conversation was simply over; whatever reason(s) or sentiment(s) Hythlodaeus was harbouring had not been communicated to him in tone, action, or word, and he had no reason hgimself to assume there was anything more complicated to that.

The parting shot isn't even especially threatening, but it does suggest that Hythlodaeus wants him to keep in mind..... something. What kind of something that would be is left completely ambiguous to him. All right.

No doubt he'll find out what that means later.

In Emet's doorway, his expression doesn't change one iota.

"Yup," is all he has to say on that topic.

"Unless you had something to add to it. In which case the floor is all yours."

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THIS GOT NSFW AND I FORGOT THIS IS THE MAIN COMMS I'M SORRY EVERYONE

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