06-25-2023, 05:25 PM
Jude's inability to spin up an answer to a single largely hypothetical question is baffling. It is frustrating. There is something wrong with him -- a lack of imagination, a lack of nerve, god knows -- but Near was already well aware there is something wrong with Jude and has, spitting in the face of good sense, caused this meeting to precipitate despite that, so if he's frustrated with anyone, it should be himself.
Knowing this does nothing to keep the aggravation from building in him, bit by bit, a little more with each of Jude's hems and haws and speaks and pauses until, by the time he has reached the end of something like a noncommittal but full thought, it has expanded beyond Near's capacity to support it. As it *pops* into something floppy and disappointed, he rises up from his chair with an old man's sigh.
Dinner.
Poor, poor Guthrie, who has been lured into the belief that his boyfriend is normal.
Normal on the scale that West Coasters measure it by, anyway.
Near has been known to ask himself, usually very early in the morning before the sun comes up, if Guthrie is a person he will be happy to be with at the end of the world. Because it is still supposed to be ending, isn't it? And that's one of the questions someone with inside knowledge of the impending apocalypse should ask himself: who do you want to be with when it happens: anyone, no one, Guthrie? And if someone cornered him and forced him to answer, he would waffle for fifteen minutes like Jude just had until coming to some noncommittal conclusion.
"Fine," he says. "I had plans, but that's fine. I'll order dinner. If you answer one thing: do you think you can keep the world from ending without dealing with them?" Saving the world, Jude's original, vague raison d'etre, which Near had guessed ran in conjunction with, if not quite parallel, to his own.
Knowing this does nothing to keep the aggravation from building in him, bit by bit, a little more with each of Jude's hems and haws and speaks and pauses until, by the time he has reached the end of something like a noncommittal but full thought, it has expanded beyond Near's capacity to support it. As it *pops* into something floppy and disappointed, he rises up from his chair with an old man's sigh.
Dinner.
Poor, poor Guthrie, who has been lured into the belief that his boyfriend is normal.
Normal on the scale that West Coasters measure it by, anyway.
Near has been known to ask himself, usually very early in the morning before the sun comes up, if Guthrie is a person he will be happy to be with at the end of the world. Because it is still supposed to be ending, isn't it? And that's one of the questions someone with inside knowledge of the impending apocalypse should ask himself: who do you want to be with when it happens: anyone, no one, Guthrie? And if someone cornered him and forced him to answer, he would waffle for fifteen minutes like Jude just had until coming to some noncommittal conclusion.
"Fine," he says. "I had plans, but that's fine. I'll order dinner. If you answer one thing: do you think you can keep the world from ending without dealing with them?" Saving the world, Jude's original, vague raison d'etre, which Near had guessed ran in conjunction with, if not quite parallel, to his own.