[his poise falters when he reaches out; it is taking everything he has to keep the frayed ends of his composure from unraveling completely.]
Grady is gone. [soft, to the point, and he doesn't linger over it. he can't; if he focuses on his grief now, it will swallow him. instead, after drawing in a steadying breath, he says:]
I am going to stay with Iggy for a few days. [a moment's hesitation, as though abruptly uncertain he has the right to ask--] Would you be able to feed the chickens while I am away? [quickly adding,] I will understand if it is too much of an imposition--please don't burden yourself unnecessarily.
The news plunges like a stone into the pit of his stomach, the clatter of it echoing loud in his head. With his own strange grief interrupted by a fresher batch of the same, Stephen is momentarily rendered silent. But there's no uncertainty when he does answer: it's not an imposition. ]
I'll make sure they're fed.
[ He doesn't promise I'll feed them. He doesn't know that he will. But the chickens will eat. After that, stuck between the rock of empathy and the hard place of knowing how little he himself could tolerate a sorry in this moment, a heavy, awkward kind of nothing is left to hang between them. It's colored with the loosest flecks of unmoored feeling: sorrow, hatred, anger, guilt. ]
[a strange combination of emotions to feel on the heels of this news, though Jin Guangyao can understand... at least a little of it. Stephen and Grady had both been under the Slender's influence together; whatever else they had shared, Grady never discussed it with him, and Jin Guangyao never asked.
now Grady is gone, and awareness of Stephen's pain burrows itself into Jin Guangyao's heart like a thorn. he hurts, because Stephen hurts.]
Forgive me, [he begins again after a pause, sincerely remorseful as he would not be for many others in this place.] I shouldn't have told you in such a way.
No. [ Immediate. There's nothing to apologise for. ] Thank you. For telling me. I'm sorry.
[ That last part slips out on the tail of the rest, and it's too late to catch it once it's already gone. But he is. Sorry. For Jin Guangyao's loss, for Grady's absence, for his own awkward inability to know how to broach the subject. He was never any good in the family room: he'd spent his career making damn sure he never had to learn how to be around somebody else's pain. ]
[that makes two of them. the last time Jin Guangyao experienced a loss like this one, he was barely more than a boy himself, and there was no one else around him to notice his pain, let alone care about it. at least he'd been able to sit at his mother's bedside and hold her hand while she passed. perhaps that is what makes this pain so untenable: where Grady has gone, there is nothing waiting for him but his own death, wretched and awful and alone.
that's the worst trick that loss and grief play on the living: convincing them that they, too, are as alone as the dead that they mourn for. Jin Guangyao considers his instinct to withdraw, to disappear into his own grief. then he chooses to sidestep it.]
Perhaps, [he begins after a moment's hesitation, broaching the subject cautiously,] when I am sure Iggy is all right, I could visit you.
[ Would he? Will he know what to do with him, raw from his own dual loss, reeling with the complicated knot of sentiments cast up by the absence of one Tony Stark, never mind the constant daily onslaught of focus and fury and work to do?
He'll figure it out. It's easier to be honest here - you don't always have to talk to be heard. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
voice;
Grady is gone. [soft, to the point, and he doesn't linger over it. he can't; if he focuses on his grief now, it will swallow him. instead, after drawing in a steadying breath, he says:]
I am going to stay with Iggy for a few days. [a moment's hesitation, as though abruptly uncertain he has the right to ask--] Would you be able to feed the chickens while I am away? [quickly adding,] I will understand if it is too much of an imposition--please don't burden yourself unnecessarily.
no subject
The news plunges like a stone into the pit of his stomach, the clatter of it echoing loud in his head. With his own strange grief interrupted by a fresher batch of the same, Stephen is momentarily rendered silent. But there's no uncertainty when he does answer: it's not an imposition. ]
I'll make sure they're fed.
[ He doesn't promise I'll feed them. He doesn't know that he will. But the chickens will eat. After that, stuck between the rock of empathy and the hard place of knowing how little he himself could tolerate a sorry in this moment, a heavy, awkward kind of nothing is left to hang between them. It's colored with the loosest flecks of unmoored feeling: sorrow, hatred, anger, guilt. ]
no subject
[a strange combination of emotions to feel on the heels of this news, though Jin Guangyao can understand... at least a little of it. Stephen and Grady had both been under the Slender's influence together; whatever else they had shared, Grady never discussed it with him, and Jin Guangyao never asked.
now Grady is gone, and awareness of Stephen's pain burrows itself into Jin Guangyao's heart like a thorn. he hurts, because Stephen hurts.]
Forgive me, [he begins again after a pause, sincerely remorseful as he would not be for many others in this place.] I shouldn't have told you in such a way.
no subject
[ That last part slips out on the tail of the rest, and it's too late to catch it once it's already gone. But he is. Sorry. For Jin Guangyao's loss, for Grady's absence, for his own awkward inability to know how to broach the subject. He was never any good in the family room: he'd spent his career making damn sure he never had to learn how to be around somebody else's pain. ]
no subject
that's the worst trick that loss and grief play on the living: convincing them that they, too, are as alone as the dead that they mourn for. Jin Guangyao considers his instinct to withdraw, to disappear into his own grief. then he chooses to sidestep it.]
Perhaps, [he begins after a moment's hesitation, broaching the subject cautiously,] when I am sure Iggy is all right, I could visit you.
no subject
[ Would he? Will he know what to do with him, raw from his own dual loss, reeling with the complicated knot of sentiments cast up by the absence of one Tony Stark, never mind the constant daily onslaught of focus and fury and work to do?
He'll figure it out. It's easier to be honest here - you don't always have to talk to be heard. ]