souffle_girlek | (no subject)

"Yes, I do," Autor insists, pressing against the door. "I don't want to go back to any life that doesn't include you. Yes, I'm feeling sorry, and no, I'm not decent--er... I mean... I'm dressed, and I'm decent that way, but, uh, I'm not a decent person, really, but... but that's beside the point, and uh, if you come out you'll see that I'm fully clothed..."

She can probably see through her monitors haw badly he's blushing, and how upset his expression is. "Anyway, I'm feeling sorry because I love you, and I don't want to see you hurt, not because I'm--you know what I mean."

"I'm not hurt." She lies, fairly convincingly.

She shouldn't be, so she feels that's truth enough.

'Did you know? You do this strange little thing with your bottom lip when you lie,' he'd told her once, and he has no doubt she's doing it now. If she wasn't hurt, she wouldn't have fled to her room.

He sinks down to a crouch, and wraps an arm around his knees. "Oswin," he murmurs, pressing his forehead and free palm against the door. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. And it's not because I'm decent, but because I did hurt you. I don't know how to tell you that I still want to be your friend, if you'll have me, and that I don't care if you spy on me or not."

She follows his voice down, cravenly seeking the thing she's trying to push away - contact.

"Why?"

"Because you're funny, and brave, and smart, and my life is better with you in it," he says immediately, brushing the door with his thumb. "Because you make ballerina cookies with whippet-thin waists, and smell like rose-oil, and took care of me when I was a kitten, and baked me croissants, and you speak French, and made me a Safe S-Sex on the Beach, and put up with me when I was a snot, and you're resilient, and make spiderbots, and give great embraces, and hate winter, and you're never afraid to tell me what you're thinking and most times I need to hear it, and I'm just so comfortable around you that when I thought you were dead I sat up and cried for hours."

Edited 2015-01-15 05:42 (UTC)

Oswin blinks owlishly at the wood.

"You thought I was dead?"

Autor goes quiet. He doesn't know if telling her this will upset her. "Yeah," he says eventually, softly. He sniffles a little. "You know how you have conversations with the dead around Halloween? Mine was with you--the you from the far, far future, which I didn't realize until halfway through."

"..... Well. That's not creepy at all."

Oswin has not heard of this particular holiday ritual. She's rather glad she didn't get that experience.

Autor shifts his position on the floor so that he's leaning his back against the door and wrapping his arms around his knees. "Yeah, sorry, I... I probably shouldn't have told you," he says, feeling that might be too little, too late. "My point is, my life is better with you in it, and I like having you as a friend."

"Yeah, but I scare you. And for good reason, and you know it." She points out. "You are allowed to have a sense of self preservation."

That's a tiny bit rich, coming from her.

Autor's tempted to beat his head against the door. They're back to square one. He could tell her plenty of scary things about him, but that wouldn't serve any purpose except to scare her.

Besides, she knows pretty much everything there is to know.

"I am allowed to have a sense of self-preservation," he admits. "And I have weighed the costs and benefits of this and decided I don't care about being scared; I'd rather have your friendship, if... if you still want to give it to me. That scares me more than the spying you're not doing, truthfully."

"I'm... I'm trying to be your friend." She grumbles. "You're the one being stubborn about it."

"You're trying to shove me away in the hopes that it'll protect me from you, whom I don't need protection from," Autor retorts, stubbornly. "Is that right?"

".... Yes." Well, it sounds kind of daft when said like that, but it's still true.

"I know you want to protect me, as my friend," Autor starts, knowing he has to phrase his words very carefully, "but that's acting out of fear for me, and the hurt that I've given you. As your friend, I don't want you to live like that, and I want you to trust me to protect myself. I wouldn't be as insistent to see you if I didn't think you were worth seeing."

Well.

Oswin... doesn't know what to say to that.

She actually really doesn't, which is an abnormality for her, and... disconcerting, to say the least.

She eyes the door for a long time.

Then she stands, and unlocks the door.

Then, she heads into the living room, because that's quite enough bravery for right now.

Autor jumps when he hears the sound of the door unlocking, and stands. The boy scoops up his tray if tea--now cold--and cookies up off the floor and opens the door.

He only pops his head in. "Oswin? Can I come in, please?"

"You do seem determined to." Oswin points out from her couch as she scans through the files on the master computer. It's distracting, and distracting is good.

Autor swallows nervously. Now that he's here, he has no idea what to do. And that's not an answer that gives him anything definitive.

He takes it as a good sign that she's opened the door for him, and enters the room fully. By habit, he glances around for the kitten first.

"I brought tea and cookies."

The kitten, who is a bit confused by All Of The Emotion that's been going on around here recently, skitters by on full flail mode on his way towards the bedrooms.

"The cookies have been good."

No, there isn't a pile of cookies slowly going stale on the counter.

"Thanks," Autor says, setting the lebkuchen tray on the counter next to the non-existent pile. He picks up two cookies, and carries one to her. "They're my mother's recipe."

He nibbles on his own cookie, holding hers out to her when he reaches the couch. "Oswin, do you want to do something? Some sort of... bonding activity... together?"

It's a good thing Oswin's already accepted the cookie, because his request is getting an odd look.

"You want to... bond?" She isn't sure what that means, but she's pretty sure it's not what she would first assume it means. "Is this a... verb or a... something else?"

"What? W-What? No, it's not--it's n-nothing like that," he stammers, holding his hands up. He retreats to his natural pedantry. "A bond, noun, is a debt investment in which an investor loans money to a government or entity for a set period of time. A bond, noun, is a physical restraint intended to hold someone prisoner, like a chain. A bond, noun, is a strong feeling of attraction between chemicals. And to bond, verb is to join securely to something else, usually by means of adhesive."

He draws a quick breath, and then flails. "To bond, verb, and the one I mean, is a common force uniting people. So, um, all that said... do you want to play a game or something?"

It's really hard not to snicker at that. She has to duck her head away to keep from grinning like a loon, because she still feels she ought not be encouraging him.

"I can do a game. Um. Since you liked the sheep..." She supposes the sheep is gone now, along with everything else - there's plenty of tech-focused people in the bar, he must have gotten someone to erase everything by now.

She pulls up a positively ancient version of 'Oregon Trail' anyway.

"Oh, I love my sheep," Autor says, still pleased with it. "And I'm getting better with the Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing game, too. That stupid lobster almost gets me every time, though. Also, the guides you've brought up have really helped."

He curls up on the floor near the couch, wrapping his arms around his knees. "What is Oregon Trail?"