a few missteps along the way but I'm really pretty happy to be here [closed]

[69problems]

Who| The Signless and Roland Deschain
What| Getting their clusterfuck of a relationship to a place where they actually have a vague idea of what's going on with it
Where| Various places
When| Various times
Warnings/Notes| Nothing serious as of yet; will add if anything comes up

[Threads are in the comments below for organization's sake.]

Comments

A little bit after the mini-arena; Roland's room

[69problems]

A lot of the uncertainty that's been hanging over the Signless and his relationships since the crowning has finally cleared away. After speaking with the Initiate all that's left is tying up the loose end that is one Roland Deschain and the question of what kind of relationship, if any, they have.

He doesn't waste time waiting. Once everything is in order with Fraysong he takes the next available opportunity to visit Roland's room, knocking on the door now more out of a courtesy than because he honestly thinks he might be turned away.

"Roland? May I speak with you?"

[ka_sera_sera]

Roland hesitates.

He can't stand that, though, especially in himself. If the last person who really matters in this place is here to tell him - god knows how it works for trolls, here to tell him they can have all the sex they want but can't actually speak, at least not about anything that matters -

Well, he'll deal with it, won't he? He's certainly not going to avoid matters by hiding in here like a child, pretending he didn't hear. Or worse, refusing outright to talk with the man. If Signless has been brave enough to come and have this talk, Roland isn't going to turn him away. He opens the door, frowning, and studies Signless a moment before jerking his head toward the bed and backing away. There's only that one place to sit in here so Roland is going to stand; may be best if they don't sit so close for this as they did last time.

[69problems]

Signless enters the room but he doesn't sit; he's too full of nervous energy. That frown isn't exactly encouraging but then, he knows Roland and he knows it's reasonable to expect the worst. Human (and troll) ideas of monogamy dictate that he should be saying the complete opposite of what he's about to.

"I spoke to the Initiate," he says, toying absently with the cuff on his right wrist as he often does when he needs something to do with his hands. "He and I are more or less officially moirails. But -- but he knows how I am. He doesn't care."

He pauses to let that sink in, a smile dawning cautiously on his face and then settling in when it finds no reason to immediately leave.

"We don't have to..." He waves a hand descriptively. "Do this anymore."

[ka_sera_sera]

Roland waits his way through the explanation, controlled and terribly patient. Listens to the lead-in, watches the gesture. Then he hears moirails and, at least in part, relaxes. The harsh lines in which Roland is holding his body curve a little, the weight of his expression lightens. Still knows less than nothing about what the word means, of course, but it signals a change for the two. He knows that change is important, and he knows that it is good. He doesn't congratulate, but only because he doesn't want to interrupt.

That's driven from his mind a moment later. For a moment he just studies Signless' smile, the feel of it, then takes a slow, deliberate step forward. Someone else might find it strange to do this, after all this avoidance. Might take a few tries to shake off the habit. Roland leaves it behind easily, raises a slow, deliberate hand to brush the bangs from Signless' face.

"Does this mean I can finally ask how you're feeling?" His hand stays there, settled near the crown of Signless' head. "And expect an answer?" His smile is more around his eyes than lips but it's there, gentle and pleased.

[69problems]

It's a great weight from Signless's shoulders to find the awkwardness hanging over them so easily dissolved. He'd worried that it would take them time to fall back into being comfortable with each other, that they'd have to really work to get that easy affection back, but as it turns out he shouldn't have worried at all.

"You can, yes, as often as you like. Right now I feel relieved." He leans subtly into that hand. "I didn't want to lose this and now I don't have to worry about that anymore. And you? How do you feel?"

[ka_sera_sera]

Roland watches him while he thinks on it, his hand moving down over Signless' head and settling again between his shoulders. He finds himself leaning forward, marveling a little. Close as they were at their last meeting, he much prefers this. "The same, I think. Grateful."

Hopefully, Signless is ready. Is he ready? Because it is hug time, and Roland is coming in for a hug. He squeezes for a few seconds and leans back, expression warm and hands lingering. "How is it between the two of you? You and the Initiate? Sit, and tell me."

[69problems]

Oh, please, Signless is always ready for hugs. He circles his arms around Roland's waist, tight for just a few moments and then loose as the other man leans back. This is a very different kind of closeness -- physical intimacy is nice but without that emotional connection it's not nearly as satisfying.

"Better. Truly good, I think, for the first time since we were young." They can speak now without it feeling stilted, use each others' given names without it feeling like an insult or a violation. It feels very much like being barely six sweeps old again.

[ka_sera_sera]

"Good," Roland says. "I'm glad to hear it." It isn't just pleasantry, either. He means it. He steps backward, trying to lead Signless toward the bed without letting go of him. Very doable even if he isn't followed, since the room as a whole doesn't take more than a few steps to cross.

"You're moirails now." Though the concept itself is still one he has to feel out carefully, Roland makes the effort to make the word sound easy in his mouth, casual. Enough hesitating about this. He sits on the edge of his bed, one knee folded up to his chest, and lets his hand slide from Signless' arm to his wrist. "I may need another explanation of what that means. I should have asked when we spoke at the crowning, but I'm afraid I didn't react so well as I should have."

[69problems]

Signless takes it one step further and twines their fingers loosely together, leaning his cheek against Roland's shoulder. Little steadying gestures like this are things he's monumentally happy that he's allowed now that things have settled.

"It's alright. You were understandably a little distracted." It's easy to not listen to the specifics of an alien cultural tradition when one's focusing on the big things like 'we may never be able to talk openly with each other again'.

"I'll try to explain in terms that will more likely make sense to you, I've found that often works better." His voice slips into the voice he would use during his Discussions on Alternia, clearer and better-enunciated. It's his 'explaining something complicated to someone unfamiliar with the concept' voice.

"A moirail is like... a moirail is like a best friend who has formally agreed to be specifically your best friend for the rest of your lives. While a matesprit-- what a human might call a lover or a married-- primarily looks after your heart, a moirail primarily looks after your mind.

"Your moirail is who you go to when you're hurting or confused and need support and advice, because a moirail is someone who has promised to be there for you when you need them no matter the time or place or reason. They know all of your most closely-guarded secrets, the deepest darkest most shameful parts of you, everything that frightens you, everything you hope for. You place everything that you are entirely in their hands with the knowledge that they will keep you safe. If you ever feel as though there's nowhere else in the world you can go, even inside your own mind, you can go to them and be protected."

It should be abundantly clear if it wasn't already that pale romance is his favorite variety. It's the kind he feels the most strongly and the most often, and it's the kind he feels is most vital to a troll's wellbeing.

"They aren't there simply to coddle you or enable your issues, though. While a matesprit loves you for the person that you are, a moirail loves you for the person they know that you could be. Because they know you so intimately they know all of your flaws and faults and it's their duty to help you overcome them with firmness and patience. They soothe your hurt but if part of the blame lies with you they won't let you comfortably ignore it. They regulate you and keep you in check until you're comfortable enough with the issue to do it on your own, and in that way you improve and they grow to love you even more."

He pauses, realizing he's been speaking for quite some time and it may not exactly be getting across like he hopes it is. It's hard to condense down something so deeply important and intimate into simple words.

"Is this making sense so far?"

[ka_sera_sera]

Roland straightens a little, thinking on it. He'd paid almost as much attention to Signless' voice as to his words, because he'd caught that shift of tone at the beginning of the explanation. That's the tone of someone who's well used to explaining elaborate concepts, maybe even formally, and he'd spent a moment storing that idea in the proper section of his mind before paying conscious attention to the words he'd been hearing.

Which doesn't mean he hadn't been listening. A good gunslinger never stops.

It's bit strange, shifting into the mindset needed to learn about a completely alien custom when the alien who practices it is leaning against him with his head against Roland's shoulder. Strange, but not impossible, and certainly not unwelcome. "Yes, which probably means I don't understand it well enough."

He takes a moment, gaze distant, to feel around the edges of the concept for any weak spots, anything he might have missed. There's a question about that other one, mate spirits, but that concept can wait until this one is covered. "What do you do on a day to day basis? Together?" He rubs his thumb absently along their linked hands, feeling the hard edge of one yellow claw. "Unless that's private."

[69problems]

"It depends a lot on the moirails in question. Often they share interests, or encourage each others' -- when my Disciple and I swung toward pale I'd often help her paint by organizing her hues and tools, and she would provide a sounding board as I planned my next discussion topic."

It doesn't quite occur to him that Roland doesn't even know about those. He's so used to them being such a vital part of his identity for so long that he forgets some people he's met in Panem won't automatically know, even though since coming to Panem he's by necessity stopped giving them. It's hard to organize open heretical discussions of radical philosophy here.

"It can be anything, so long as it's engineered to convey closeness and comfort. Some moirails express their affection by holding hands. Some moirails brush each others' hair, bathe together, go on pale dates where the intention is simply for both of them to have some time where all they're doing is something nice for themselves. And often, they have feelings jams -- make a pile of something soft and sit in it together and talk to each other about anything and everything that's on their mind at the moment. It helps to sound out one's emotions with someone you trust, and it keeps something that might become a crisis if ignored from getting that bad."

He should probably clarify-- just because it's been a point of confusion with humans in the past, both in the Capitol and in the tower.

"Moirails don't have sex. They don't kiss either, save maybe the cheek or the forehead or the base of the horn. Chaste places. Of course," he adds after a moment, "I don't think of quadrants as so rigid. I find that often my feelings will encompass more than one and so long as everyone involved is comfortable with it I see no reason not to combine them."

[ka_sera_sera]

He nods, expression still a little distant. He's still processing. "Best explain it as if they're separate first. Then we can speak on the rest." Lots of questions here, and if he asks after any of them there'll probably be more. How much he doesn't know about Signless, how wrongly he's going about all this, does not always occur to Roland, but with every new island he has to steer the topic around - his disciple? The base of his horn? No, not yet, it's moirails they're speaking of now - that becomes more and more clear.

Roland takes a moment to look at Signless, feeling the warmth of his skin and the weight of his body. Well. Perhaps he isn't doing so badly.

All a sudden he wants very much to ask what they are to each other, to work out exactly where he fits by the system Signless uses, but he wouldn't understand it yet. That's why they're doing this at all. He crosses his legs, scooting back a little on the mattress. It's a more businesslike posture, and one he can keep a while. Which he may need to.

"No sex at all. And all your quadrants are romances, aren't they? Each with differing roles and duties. Like your, ah..." He searches for a form of the word that'll fit here, then shakes his head. "Your relationship with the Initiate, since you were children." And if he looks particularly interested here, well, that's because he is. Deep love such as that, and all its attendant journeys, will always be of at least some interest to Roland no matter how long he travels.

[69problems]

"Exactly, yes. All four of them are romances, and each of them is designed to fulfill a specific physical or emotional need, or provide a different kind of growth and healing. Humans I've met here often say that four is excessive but when you realize that each one is providing a troll with something fundamentally different, it becomes less strange."

At the mention of the Initiate, he smiles just a little sheepishly.

"We never... when we were young, we never called it a moiraillegiance. Both of us were too young and too cautious for that. It could have been one, though, if given time. I'm very lucky that I was given that time here."

A little bit before the start of Arena 12; Roland's room

[69problems]

It's been a little over half a sweep now and the Signless has seen many of his loved ones come and go. Around his neck hangs the evidence of a few of them: a ring for Karkat that he won't get rid of even if the new Karkat is not and never will be close to him in that way, a charm of three interlocking rings for the ashen relationship he carried through to its successful close. He has nothing for his darling Disciple, his first and deepest love, and he has nothing for Guy, who he had for so short a time.

He knows very well the feeling of losing someone and having nothing of them left, and he also knows very well that by the standards of how long tributes usually stay in Panem he's outstayed his welcome. That and it feels right to somehow solidify whatever it is they have, even if it doesn't fit easily into the confines of any sort of relationship one could put a name to.

To that end he's procured what for a troll would be a quadrant token. Not a ring -- he knows that rings for humans carry certain connotations that he doesn't think would be appropriate here.

"It's a necklace," he says. "I thought it best that it be simple, but I can always exchange it if it's not to your taste."

It really is simple -- a flat teardrop-shaped stone, marbled red and white and attached to a thin silver chain. Like all quadrant tokens it's meant to be representative of him in some way, and as he doesn't have a sign (that he's comfortable using, anyway), his blood and all it means for him was the next obvious choice.

setting it on the balcony instead just because

[ka_sera_sera]

Roland sets his cigarette on the ashtray, stepping around the little table to study the necklace. It's worth noting that he doesn't reach for it, hands staying pretty steadily at his sides. If it were purely a matter of this being to his taste, no, he probably wouldn't have given it a second glance. Jewelry generally isn't, although the pattern of that stone is pleasing enough.

Hopefully it's clear that he's curious, though, interested, because in all his years very rarely has Roland ever been given jewelry simply for style's sake. When he was, all those gifts were from diplomats blindly trying to curry favor, which couldn't be further from any situation involving the Signless. Memories of that time are dim, maybe ought to stay that way, and not particularly relevant, besides. He dismisses them.

Back to the point, chances are this has some meaning. He certainly can't risk taking part in some custom without understanding it - or worse, answering some question a troll would consider self-evident enough that they didn't need to explain. He leans over the necklace a second more, then looks up from it to study Signless' expression. "What is this?" He shakes his head. "I mean to say, what would it be, in your world? Does it mean something for you to give it?"

hell ye

[69problems]

He nods. Most likely he should have explained this before, but with marrieds expressing their affections through tokens he reasonably thought it might be a custom humans had as well. At least he recovers from the initial blunder quickly -- they've already been through so much that such an easily-corrected lack of foresight isn't all that daunting.

"It's customary to give one's quadrantmate a token, some small mark of the relationship that they can carry with them. Often it's representative of the one giving it -- usually their sign or their color, for trolls. I chose a stone in the color of my blood, as I have no sign for you to wear."

Still holding the necklace in one hand, he reaches up into the collar of his shirt and pulls out the charms on the necklace he wears.

"So you see I have Karkat's sign here, and three rings in our respective colors for my ashen relationship with Terezi and the Initiate."

[ka_sera_sera]

He nods, eyes moving over Signless' own necklace. It's a familiar sight. He's seen Signless' before, and from what he remembers the one other he's seen was the same. "It's mutual, isn't it? Initiate's tokens looked like they match some of yours."

He doesn't take his own necklace yet, but he's clearly thinking about it. "Human love tokens usually aren't, at least not in the same way. But those don't really apply to us anyway."

[69problems]

"They don't always match perfectly. The ring I gave to Karkat didn't look anything like this one. It's more the having of it than what it looks like that matters. That tie to someone you care about, even if they may not be near you, is the important part."

From his tone of voice it's clear he's not really speaking hypothetically.

"Especially here where it's so easy to feel alone and you can never rule out suddenly losing someone. Or leaving someone alone without you."

[ka_sera_sera]

Roland's gaze snaps to Signless' face, his expression more piercing than it had been a moment ago. "I'd be honored to wear your token." He reaches out and gently takes it, unclasping the chain and pausing. This isn't familiar territory to Roland, at least not exactly, but what he's about to say feels right. "You ought to fasten it, I think."

He casts a glance at those horns, nearly a full foot below the top of Roland's own head, then pulls out one of the chairs and sits. He settles himself in profile to Signless, giving better access to the back of his neck, and holds the necklace out toward the other man again. "Don't mistake my hesitation, Signless. Only wanted to be sure I understood."

[69problems]

He wasn't going to say anything but privately he's grateful that Roland sits without being prompted. He's used to those he's close to being significantly taller than him but it does make some practical things difficult.

"It's alright. I'd much rather you ask, and I'm always willing to explain." He stands behind the chair, looping the chain around Roland's neck, fastening it and then pulling his hair through the loop. For a moment he hesitates, and then he leans forward and rests his chin atop the other man's head, arms loosely looped around his shoulders.

"There."

[ka_sera_sera]

Roland's looking down at the stone, getting used to the look of it hanging there, when Signless leans against him. He shifts back, clasping one of those grey hands in his own. "Troll tokens represent the one giving them," he says, thoughtful. Signless knows this, but as always, it's best to summarize. Make sure he's got it. "Usually with a sign, but not always. Tell me about that, if you would."

[69problems]

"Mm, well. All trolls have a sign associated with their name, one that is theirs alone, like a personal mark. It's given to them based on the color of their blood; every caste has its own registry of signs, and so a sign communicates first the wide category of blood color and then the individual within that category."

How strange that he's been giving his title since he arrived here and yet for most humans it means nothing beyond being a strange choice of name. In over a year in Panem he's almost never had cause to go through this explanation.

"My blood is unnatural and fits no caste, and so when I hatched there was no sign for me to take. Hence 'Signless'. Giving you a stone in the color of my blood when my blood has defined so much of my life seemed fitting beyond it being the usual practice."

[ka_sera_sera]

That was not really the explanation Roland had expected. He wishes he could have seen Signless' face when he'd said it, but maybe that was the point - quite a bit of meaning can be missed when you can't see the speaker's face, and some things are easiest said that way.

"Come," he says, shifting to get out from under Signless' chin, tugging at their clasped hands, and pushing the chair beside him a little ways out with his feet. "Sit, I want to see you. What do you mean by unnatural?"

[69problems]

Signless sits, doing his level best to not let go of Roland's hands for very long if at all. He knew they'd have to have this conversation eventually -- there's too much of him that's tangled up in blood and signs and politics and philosophy. Even in Panem where his life's work means almost nothing it's still an integral part of him, and that means it's something anyone he's close to is going to have to know about.

"I mean what I say. My species is arranged in social castes based on blood color. There are twelve that occur naturally, ranging from maroon to royal fuchsia. I am a mutant with blood in a thirteenth color -- the bright red you see in my eyes, much brighter than natural maroon -- which puts me so far at the bottom of the social hierarchy that I'm off it entirely. I should have been culled at hatching for my defect, but an attendant in the brooding caverns took pity on me and smuggled me away into the desert."

It's clear from the way he speaks that he's both used to telling this story and a little uncertain how to tell it now. Usually those that hear it have some frame of reference but Roland, as a human, has next to nothing. Signless is well-aware that he may never be able to properly communicate the injustices of troll culture to someone who will never experience them, but that doesn't mean he won't try.

"Blood is everything in troll culture. Your blood caste defines you, from the maroons and browns and yellows marked at birth for slavery to the fuchsia heirs and heiresses to the throne. Anything that challenges or breaks that strict hierarchy is stamped out as quickly as possible. As a mutant, my very existence constituted a danger to the established order of things."

[ka_sera_sera]

Now, mutant, that's a word familiar to Roland. The problem of mutants, of how to breed bloodlines completely free of them, it's one his world'd been working over even before Roland's home had been a twinkle in its founder's eye. He does not say this.

He'd looked Signless over once he'd heard the word mutant - an automatic, head-to-toe check for visible abnormalities - and decided that, so far as his world's muties go, if blood coloring was the only difference Signless would probably be considered a solid success. He does not say this either. It's true, but it is not remotely the point.

The point, perhaps, is how much of this Signless wants to tell him. He doesn't seem reluctant to tell it so much as a little uncertain, but it has not escaped Roland that Signless has not yet let go of his hand. "So you hid in the desert," he says, because interested as he is in the culture that created Signless, those distant, ingrained injustices are of less interest to him than the man sitting in front of him here and now. "The others weren't used to mutants going there for protection?"