socialcapital | [ JACKSON HEART ]

"Well. Spiritually. So not the usual way."

This is significantly more intimate than the usual way!

[He's just... he's...! sitting Umbra down!!]

Are you truly all right? Does anything feel strange?

Hee hee hee.

"No, I feel fine. Or like, I did feel weird, but I don't anymore."

When I arrived, in the garden before this, Ms. Harmonious Song said the group's host was "scattered".

[His hands move restlessly from Umbra's shoulders to down his arms, and up to cup his cheeks.]

He leans into Satin's touch comfortably.

"Yeah. I mean... that's a kind of alarming way of putting it, but I guess what happened was like... how I mentally divide my life into eras or whatever, that Producer's influence made that... more? So it got so divided that it was like. If you took a cake and turned it into a pile of sugar, a pile of flour, some eggs and some butter and put those in different corners of the table."

He pauses.

"I guess that's not a less alarming way of putting it? Um, but don't worry, you helped mix them up again."

I have reverted baked goods to their original components before.

[His thumbs trace Umbra's cheekbones.]

I've never put one back together.

He looks like he would be purring if he could.

"You've--? Oh right, your Blessing, huh. Well, now you've put a cake back together except it's a metaphor and I'm the cake."

My perfectly good... cupcake.

[His fingers slide back, mapping the space below Umbra's ears.]

... may I kiss you?

He starts laughing at 'cupcake', and doesn't really stop all the way before nodding. There's still a bit of a laugh in his voice (NOT raspy like the student of a few years ago) when he answers.

"I would like to be kissed please, yes."

[It's a good sound. Healing and whole, familiar and sweet.

He leans close, trading the taste of coffee and cookies for garden air and sunbeams.]

Umbra gives him a kiss back - there's some indistinct but unique quality to what is basically kissing the combined whole of his personality and being, but it's not really different from normal. It's like Kiss+.

[Like he's literally holding the complete personification of Umbra's heart in his hands.

It's not a bad feeling. Not at all.]

I missed you.

"You didn't run into too much trouble, did you?"

None at all, unless you count a very earnest musician asking me to stay through practice or come to a concert.

"Oh, you probably wouldn't have liked the concert, huh? I had fun with them, but they're very loud if you're not used to it."

It would have been very loud. And given the moments captured in such places, I had no guarantee that it would not also include a near-fatal knife injury.

"... The chances were low."

The chances were not zero. And as much self-control as I possess, I could not guarantee my behaviour in a situation like that.

As it was, it's best if I never meet your Estorian family members.

"They don't really feature heavily in that area. At least not directly. Well, I was thinking about it though and I might owe you a bit of an apology for the music trauma. A lot of today's rock music sounds the way it does because of my influence, so..."

Please understand that the nature of the music in question is secondary at best. It could have been any genre -- classical or blues or free-form steel drums. The trauma came for the repeated nights without peace or rest, not from the music itself.

"It's not just that rock is loud?"

It is not.

It's a particular negative association with certain instruments and rhythms, and a lack of exposure to any amount of music in my life before that.

"So if we avoid those instruments and rhythms, and only do it when you'd be awake anyway... you could work your way up to hearing me play?"

Potentially?

Done gradually, even those might be fine. I may never come to enjoy music the way that you do, but I do know that I enjoy you.

"It would be hard for anyone to enjoy it as much as I do. But I like to share things with people when I like them, so... I'll be patient about it though. And if you want you can get one free pass for, I dunno, a growing and learning experience you want me to try. As a trade."

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