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

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?"

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.

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."

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.

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?"

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."

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.

"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."

Edited 2014-12-11 13:37 (UTC)

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?"

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."

"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."

Edited 2014-12-20 06:50 (UTC)

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.

"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."

"Hm." He thinks on that. Lucky. To have come to this place.

Hm.

"Water if god wills it," he murmurs to himself, and focuses again. "Moiraillegiance is..." His words are slow, and he takes care not to say best friends or anything like it. That's a human term, not Signless's. "An- an-t-" He huffs, shakes his head. "I always forget, can't use my own tongue. It's... connection. Improvement. Knowledge, and change. Of the mind, rather than the heart. Is that right? And your... mate spirits? They're for the heart. Acceptance." It's not really a statement. More a question, and he watches Signless carefully afterward, listening for corrections.

Well. More lucky for the good he's been able to find in it, for the people he's come to know and the things he's learned, for the chance to live a life other than the failure he was doomed to by fate. He has the find the good in this because what else can he do?

When Roland speaks he nods, clearly pleased with this phrasing.

"That's a good way of thinking of it. You could arrange troll relationships on that axis easily, I think -- change against acceptance, heart against mind. A matesprit especially is someone who accepts you, who sees the bad parts of you along with the good and loves you for all of them. They may try to correct flaws that are causing real problems for them specifically, but nothing more than that."

"I ought to learn about the others too. Two more, weren't there? And then..." Roland takes a breath. He doesn't dread this next thing, but that doesn't mean it's easy to move the topic toward it. Not easy, but worth it. "Then we need to decide what role you need from me. The sooner that's settled, the more smoothly the rest of this will go."

"Two more..."

He looks down at his hands, twisting them together. He knows as well as Roland that they do need to eventually settle on what it is they are to each other, but he worries about reconciling the two very different ways their species approach romance. It was easier with Guy, but Guy was far more open and their relationship had been far less complicated up to that point. With Guy there was never the question of blurring quadrants.

"Let's see. An auspistice, which is what I up until recently had with Terezi and the Initiate, is a three-person romance where one troll mediates between two others. If moirails enact change in your mind, then an auspistice is the flipside of that -- they help you both accept that your current relationship isn't viable and mediate you away from more negative interaction. It's a hard quadrant to describe and it's usually temporary, used only to get a relationship onto stable ground and then dissolved. Most often it's used to break up unhealthy kismessitudes, which is the fourth quadrant."

He knows blackrom is one of the hardest for humans to understand, but he can at least try to convey the basics.

"A kismesis is a troll that you hate. You hate them passionately because you perceive all of their shortcomings, all of their failures, and the fact that they aren't a better person is annoying to you. A way I've heard it explained in more human terms is a rivalry, but with trolls you don't want to harm your kismesis or triumph over them and remove them from your life -- rather, you want to make them stronger and better, more worthy as a person and more worthy of your care. A kismesis fosters growth as a moirail might, but through much more volatile means. Despite it often being described as a romance based on hate, that way of putting it is deceptive. A kismesis still ultimately cares about their partner, they just express it in a way I don't believe humans can easily conceptualize or reconcile with a romantic and sexual relationship."

Blackrom is one of the quadrants he's least experienced with. All of his black feelings turn to pale eventually, or at least they always did with the Disciple -- their more black-tinged times were always short-lived. He's certainly been frustrated enough with palemates to want to try a more black approach to bettering them, but patience has usually stopped him from flipping.

"You don't need to worry about it, if it's any help. The way I feel for you is not at all the way one might feel for a kismesis. I'd say it's neatly between red and pale, between moirails and matesprits. This isn't unusual for me, to feel a mix more than one quadrant in particular. I'm sorry that it complicates things."

Roland nods, filing the explanation away anyway. He goes over it in his head, and finds he has no questions. Almost certainly there's more to all this than he knows, maybe more than he ever will, but for the moment he feels like he does understand the basics. "You're very good at this. Translating your culture into the words of another."

It's an absent observation, though, and he continues without really waiting for a reply. "You've 'mixed quadrants' before, so that must not be the problem." He looks down at their linked hands and readjusts them, slipping his callused palm over the back of Signless' hand. "It sounds like you understand human romance pretty well, but maybe we'd better make sure. Maybe even human friendship, because what I feel for you..." He thinks on it a moment, then gives a quick shrug and a frustrated grunt. "Do you have any questions? I don't know what you've learned from others already."

"I know that humans only have one kind of love they consider romantic, and I know that from what I've observed it has qualities of all the quadrants to it -- though it's closest to matesprits. I also know that sometimes humans who are romantically involved will become 'marrieds' to affirm their relationship -- I've seen a few of the ceremonies now, enough to understand the basic idea."

Most of what he's learned he's learned through watching the human couples around him. No one has ever taken the time to sit him down and actively explain how humans approach romance to him, but it seems both simpler (because there's less to remember) and more complicated (because everything is all smashed together into one place). At least he has more than enough experience navigating that sort of thing to feel as though he of all trolls should be able to understand it.

"And I know that human friends -- at least close human friends -- are sometimes analogous to troll moirails. Humans simply don't consider it a committed relationship the way they might consider themselves committed to a married. Is that right?"

He thinks about it, nods. "More or less." The word confusion isn't an issue to Roland, because it's clear Signless understands the concept behind it. May be best not to confuse matters with a language lesson anyway. "Less formal, certainly. There's something binding in setting out to have a child with a woman that isn't there between friends, even very close ones. Maybe that explains some of our differences - trolls have children a little differently, don't they?"

"Anyway, if two are walking the same path - linked by their shared goals or by something larger - they might become a- an-" And here his tongue trips over itself, just for a moment. "A together-group."

Excuse Roland while he makes a noise of deep disgust, and takes an expression to match. "There's a word for it, and that's not it." He waves his hand, dismissive. "It's recognized in a very different way than marriage is, a very different power behind it, but it isn't odd for moirails to be linked in the bonds of the same t-te- group. Cuthbert and I ever were, since we were in clouts. Sometimes one will bring another into their family, call them brother or sister, but only if that other has no family line of their own."

He pauses, pulls a brief face. "I'd ask if any of this is useful to you, but I think we need to define just what we want from the other before that becomes clear."

"I think that may be best, yes."

This is probably going to be the hard part of this. Quadrant-blurring he can do. Navigating a relationship that is at once everything a troll can feel and something beyond that entirely is not new to him. It's putting it into concrete terms, and furthermore concrete terms accessible to someone who isn't even a troll, that might be tricky.

"I came to care for you in the first place because out of everyone you were always there when I needed you and you always knew how to help, even if I didn't necessarily want to talk. That's what I want. I want someone I can depend on for comfort and support, in all the different ways a person can give it. It's not even a quadranted feeling so much as just... being around you keeps me steady."

Roland nods, tightening his fingers over Signless' hand. He'd been prepared to change his behavior some, suit it to something more like what a troll would be used to. He wouldn't have regretted doing it, but hearing that it's not what Signless needs is some small kind of relief. What Signless wants is something he knows how to do, something he'd be trying to do anyway.

"And I..." He takes a moment to sort through first his heart, and then his mind. What to say, then how to say it. "After a loss it can be easy to close your heart away, and nearly impossible to open it again. I was lucky enough to escape that once, but this place being what it is... I need to remember how to care for someone. I need you to make sure I don't forget. Can you do that, Signless? Will you?"

Edited 2015-01-01 15:13 (UTC)

A particular ache starts up in Signless's chest at that, one he can't entirely put a name to. At the very least he knows it's a good ache. That was just... that was very romantic, perhaps one of the most romantic things he's heard in a while (and after his recent conversation with the Initiate, that's saying a lot).

"Of course," he murmurs. What was it that Roland had said after he'd lost Susannah? Something like not wanting to be numbed to things, not wanting to no longer feel.

"We'll care for each other. I think that may be the best way to describe what we have -- to not put too fine a word to it when it isn't really exactly like any relationship available in either of our cultures."

Roland just hums briefly, the question of whether there's a set name or pattern for what they have of no particular concern to him. Not now. "I keep you steady," he murmurs, sliding a hand on the back of Signless' neck. "And you keep my heart. We're agreed."

He moves their faces close, foreheads barely an inch apart, and touches his own lips to those dark ones in a soft, passionless kiss. They're agreed, and now it's set. "Whether there's a name to it is nothing to either of us."

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

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

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