"There's always the piano in Bellona," he offers. "I don't play there very often because it feels a bit isolating to me personally, but it's not man-eating, and way more private."
He warms his hands around the coffee as he thinks about Ossie's question for a moment, then reaches for the food. He ought to eat while it's warm, it's polite, but right now he's speaking.
"... Honest answer? Nobody has a good time around here, and I'm not an exception. I've been dealing with it, the same as we all have to, but it's... I mean, September has been mostly fine, weirdly enough. But. Stressed. Very stressed."
"Ah- that's the theatre, isn't it?" he doesn't leave the cottage over-much these days, his memory of any of the little places outside his usual haunts tends to fog a little.
Ossie tilts his head in sympathy, tapping his thumb on the saucer gently while he considers his words.
"Worse than usual? Or just... a build-up? We are all in the same boat, er, so to speak, here. But the same cargo on smooth seas may sink on rougher waters, and not all ships are built equal."
"... Both, maybe?" He forks the omelette a couple times. "It's kind of hard to judge whether one incident is worse than the other without some kind of recency bias, but it's pretty... not good. It's a lot." A dry chuckle. "When is it ever not, though? As if I needed to be on the ship for that."
He pauses for half a moment, huffs for another, and then silences himself with brunch.
He chews, swallows, makes a face. “Of course I do.” That moment with Darcy sits like a star in his memory, something to revolve the rest of his world around. “That doesn’t stop the rest of everything happening.”
But. Anyway.
“Well. There’s still the whole. Widower thing. Then I’m pretty sure basically all of my closest loved ones despise someone else who is a friend of mine, like, one of them shot them and another murdered them on an excursion. Another two of them hate each other. Which is, I mean, pretty normal if occasionally frustrating, but it’s so much more of a migraine in close quarters like this.”
He does some kind of waving-off gesture and sighs. “Then my eye is permanent? For some reason? And I kind of messed up talking to one of my kids a few months ago and I’m still thinking about it. And then Jade's gone, and then those flowers, and there are these evil doors that seriously set me off, and then Demona…”
"You've... spoken to people prior to me about all of these too, I hope?"
Not because he can't handle the weight of discussing this, of course not, that little tin brooch burns a hole in his bloody pocket at all times. But...
"Anyone would buckle under the weight of just one of these. I mean it, it isn't unreasonable to be struggling under the circs."
... Ruddy little thing. He'll never be rid of it. Ossie removes the brooch from his inside jacket pocket and fastens it to his lapel, folding freshly entaloned hands in front of himself.
“Yes. Darcy knows more or less all of it.” Some he’s spoken about more than… others. “Security knows most of the older stuff. Erin’s heard of a few from me.”
He sighs, shuts his eyes as he pinches the bridge of his nose.
… And then Ossie pins something to his jacket, and his hands have talons.
“… Those weren’t there before,” he mutters as if to convince himself. (As though he needs convincing.) He blinks himself out of that brief stun, shakes his head, sighs a little too forcefully. “I’m sorry, what are we doing?”
"No, these weren't," he tap-taps the talons on his cup to demonstrate.
"I am offering my services in my capacity as a Blackbird Bishop. Which is to say, someone who is here to listen. You must talk to someone about these things aside from your children and... Erin. Charming as her company is."
He tilts his head, "no pressure to accept, of course. I understand we aren't as close as you undoubtedly are with them. But perhaps a little professional distance may be of use too, wot? I would like to be here for you in any case."
He thinks about protesting that he has spoken to more than just them, he's been working on building a support network since the day he got here, but when his mind goes to drum up examples, it... well, better he look stupid than open his mouth and prove it.
He gives a dry, single laugh. "It'll be nice to complain to someone who isn't so tangled up in the circles I usually run in. Mm. Where do we start?"
God, it's a fucking laundry list. Well, the widower thing surely doesn't need saying; that's just the sort of thing he needs to quietly cradle close to his heart until he can grow around it. The disaster that is the relationships between his company? That feels like gossip, and he still needs to talk with Helena anyway.
If Phil had told someone more responsible, he would've likely lead with that. Instead of the world's most irritable French teenager, someone still getting its head around being a person, and Erin.
"That was from... the Daisy incident, yes?" he remembers it, even if only vaguely, from Dimitri's recounting of it.
"I'm all ears, Mr Connors," he indicates with a tilt of his head. Has Phil noticed that Ossie has elf-like ears? He does. The Gentry aren't terribly inventive.
Of course he has. There’s little he doesn’t notice, especially physically.
“… Okay. Well.”
He takes a breath, poking at his food while he tries to think of how to even begin on that one.
“Yeah, it was the Daisy thing. Honestly, it’s. We both expected it to go away. Everyone did. That’s what happens, right? So I didn’t really pursue her on it specifically. I didn’t have to. I sort of caught her and talked with her about the, uh, rest of… what she did, but the eye, even though it got in the way every day it was supposed to disappear the next time I died. And then it just. Didn’t.
He hasn’t looked up from his plate. “I don’t know. I thought maybe it was because it was there for so long, but people have had tattoos disappear. I guess it’s just some kind of… whoops in the process that time. I got Daisy to apologize. That was… complicated. She’s complicated. And she’s really trying, and I appreciate that so much from her. But I still. Have this.”
Ossie nods along. And maybe it's the same warp and weft of story that runs through him, the places in which he feels the rhyme, or maybe it's just ego and the assumption that he knows how Phil feels, but as if pulled from him on a cord he continues-
"A disfigurement. A change in your ability, to boot. The man you see in the mirror is not the same man you got used to seeing. And I cannot imagine knowing that the condition is permanent when other things aren't would help, wot? You poor thing."
He hopes it comes across as sympathy for his position, and not condescension.
Phil is not only a man with the most powerful good faith on the planet, he is also desperately grasping for anything that makes him feel validated in being angry and bitter. He forks a piece of omelette and is off from center by one prong too many.
“Yeah. And…” I haven’t had a scar in— “… I know life is unfair, but geez. I worried for a while about being able to broadcast again, but I could probably just wear a contact. Which, that’s the other thing, I—I should probably have a patch because it gives me headaches sometimes, but I would honestly rather drown than draw more attention to it than I already have.
“And I… know it’s still bad and no one’s running a damn competition, and any one of them would cut my head off for thinking this, but there are… I mean, with all the crazy dramatic histories of people here, it. Some part of me feels like it just doesn’t matter. Not here.”
"It isn't a competition, no. But... there's others ahead of you in the soup queue, so to speak. Aren't there? Even if it's a constant inconvenience, one you are still adapting to, one that impacts your every waking moment, one you are unsure of how to manage, how to even complain about the ruddy thing in the right way. Rather like moving into a new apartment and struggling to sort the annoyances from the issues."
Funny, isn't it. He used to talk to so many entirely average people back in London, and how many of them shimmered with the same colours as he weaves here. Not just Changelings- they don't have a monopoly on pain- but people working out how to welcome in arthritis for the first time, accepting the change in their dreams that comes from injury.
"I used to be a gambling man, Phil, and I don't think I ever placed a surer bet than that the very people who would decapitate you for thinking so... are feeling precisely the same thing, at times."
It's like magic. Well, it probably is magic, but he just marvels at the way Ossie so deftly untangles the briar of his thoughts, this frayed snarl of frustration and stress and split ends. Because yeah. Yeah.
There is really something about it, when you realize you are just never going to be someone going through life with ease now. And he doesn't even know how to complain about it. Which sucks, because complaining is how he copes. Frankly he also doesn't even know if he has forty years left of this or two hundred.
"Yeah... yeah," he nods, sighing. And then puts his face in his hands and just, breathes a very long-suffering groan.
Phil just kind of waves a hand at him without looking up. “I’m fine, I just need to be dramatic for sec.”
He luxuriates in the abject misery of being a guy in a chair with his face in his hands for a little bit, then sits up again with a sigh, straightening out his shirt.
“Sorry about that. It’s just… relieving to hear that, someone who’s getting where I’m coming from. Putting stuff to words that I couldn’t figure out myself. And that I’m not just being, I don’t know, prissy or something.” It’s always been tricky to sift his petty and unsympathetic grievances from the justified ones, even if the success rate is higher these days.
“It’s also nice to have someone telling me this is something I can be upset about without also sliding in the message that I need to learn to be more mad more often in general.”
"Take your time," he offers, being someone who knows the virtue of being a bit dramatic from time to time.
"Please, no need. Just as long as I'm wearing this brooch, you can say what you like. If I need a break, I can always take it off again, wot? Nothing wrong with a little prissiness from time to time, especially when you need it."
He leans back over to his side of the table.
"To be perfectly blunt, who on earth am I to be telling you what to feel? Just as irksome as telling someone they ought to be happier more often. One can't force these things."
He glances at that brooch. He wonders, vaguely, what it really does beside give the man talons and a title, but… Ossie is responsible enough to handle himself, surely. He shouldn’t worry.
“No, but it was more like… allowing myself to be upset with people when stuff happens even if it’s understandable why they might not have… ugh, nevermind.” He’s doing it again.
"I want to be kind," he not-growls. "I want to understand. I want--to, to be a guy who maybe you don't want to piss off but you're not afraid of pissing off, right? But I also don't want to get angry. I won't think right when I'm angry. But Demona--"
And then a real growl as the freshest anger bubbles up again, "--god, I wish I could just be mad at her! But no, not only does she have all this damage, one of my close friends who I like much better is in kind of the same boat as her and is really sympathetic to her situation, and I can't just..."
"We all have damage. Many of it rhymes with each other's. If you want my permission to be angry, in here, where it can't hurt her or anyone else, you have it. Throw a teacup or two if you like. While I'm at it, have every permission- I'm not going to tell you to be angry or not to be angry, but if you want to be conflicted about it, if you want to feel one way and act another, you may."
That expression doesn't waver, even when he growls.
"What outcome do you want from this whole mess? With Demona, I mean."
Oh, he wants to do more than throw a teacup. But he won't do that to Ossie's nice place.
"I'm not gonna be wanting the same thing I got with Daisy. I want us to be able to live on this ship without her attacking one of mine at the bare minimum. She can hang around my friends if she behaves, but unless we're being forced to cooperate, she stays away from me and my family."
He angrily forks at his food and eats some. Maybe that will make him feel better.
"I was saying to Johnny this very issue. That if someone were to behave in a truly antisocial manner, we have little recourse for them. Still- you've sounded the horn, so to speak, and I've no doubt that if you or yours were in need again, people would come to your defense."
Ossie leans back in his chair again, "and what of what you can control, in this situation? How do you want to move forward?"
“The only thing you can control is yourself, right?” he scoffs. “I don’t know. I really don’t know. Like you said, I already put out the word, and I’m not in the mood for planning apologies.”
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2023-10-09 06:21 am (UTC)He warms his hands around the coffee as he thinks about Ossie's question for a moment, then reaches for the food. He ought to eat while it's warm, it's polite, but right now he's speaking.
"... Honest answer? Nobody has a good time around here, and I'm not an exception. I've been dealing with it, the same as we all have to, but it's... I mean, September has been mostly fine, weirdly enough. But. Stressed. Very stressed."
no subject
Date: 2023-10-09 07:05 am (UTC)Ossie tilts his head in sympathy, tapping his thumb on the saucer gently while he considers his words.
"Worse than usual? Or just... a build-up? We are all in the same boat, er, so to speak, here. But the same cargo on smooth seas may sink on rougher waters, and not all ships are built equal."
no subject
Date: 2023-10-11 02:19 pm (UTC)He pauses for half a moment, huffs for another, and then silences himself with brunch.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-12 08:40 am (UTC)It's important to him that Phil knows that.
"What else has happened, if you don't mind me asking?"
no subject
Date: 2023-10-12 03:33 pm (UTC)But. Anyway.
“Well. There’s still the whole. Widower thing. Then I’m pretty sure basically all of my closest loved ones despise someone else who is a friend of mine, like, one of them shot them and another murdered them on an excursion. Another two of them hate each other. Which is, I mean, pretty normal if occasionally frustrating, but it’s so much more of a migraine in close quarters like this.”
He does some kind of waving-off gesture and sighs. “Then my eye is permanent? For some reason? And I kind of messed up talking to one of my kids a few months ago and I’m still thinking about it. And then Jade's gone, and then those flowers, and there are these evil doors that seriously set me off, and then Demona…”
no subject
Date: 2023-10-21 11:47 am (UTC)"You've... spoken to people prior to me about all of these too, I hope?"
Not because he can't handle the weight of discussing this, of course not, that little tin brooch burns a hole in his bloody pocket at all times. But...
"Anyone would buckle under the weight of just one of these. I mean it, it isn't unreasonable to be struggling under the circs."
... Ruddy little thing. He'll never be rid of it. Ossie removes the brooch from his inside jacket pocket and fastens it to his lapel, folding freshly entaloned hands in front of himself.
"Where should we start?"
no subject
Date: 2023-10-21 04:36 pm (UTC)He sighs, shuts his eyes as he pinches the bridge of his nose.
… And then Ossie pins something to his jacket, and his hands have talons.
“… Those weren’t there before,” he mutters as if to convince himself. (As though he needs convincing.) He blinks himself out of that brief stun, shakes his head, sighs a little too forcefully. “I’m sorry, what are we doing?”
no subject
Date: 2023-10-22 01:00 am (UTC)"I am offering my services in my capacity as a Blackbird Bishop. Which is to say, someone who is here to listen. You must talk to someone about these things aside from your children and... Erin. Charming as her company is."
He tilts his head, "no pressure to accept, of course. I understand we aren't as close as you undoubtedly are with them. But perhaps a little professional distance may be of use too, wot? I would like to be here for you in any case."
no subject
Date: 2023-10-22 02:42 am (UTC)He gives a dry, single laugh. "It'll be nice to complain to someone who isn't so tangled up in the circles I usually run in. Mm. Where do we start?"
God, it's a fucking laundry list. Well, the widower thing surely doesn't need saying; that's just the sort of thing he needs to quietly cradle close to his heart until he can grow around it. The disaster that is the relationships between his company? That feels like gossip, and he still needs to talk with Helena anyway.
"I. Guess we could talk about my eye."
no subject
Date: 2023-10-22 06:18 am (UTC)"That was from... the Daisy incident, yes?" he remembers it, even if only vaguely, from Dimitri's recounting of it.
"I'm all ears, Mr Connors," he indicates with a tilt of his head. Has Phil noticed that Ossie has elf-like ears? He does. The Gentry aren't terribly inventive.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-22 06:55 am (UTC)“… Okay. Well.”
He takes a breath, poking at his food while he tries to think of how to even begin on that one.
“Yeah, it was the Daisy thing. Honestly, it’s. We both expected it to go away. Everyone did. That’s what happens, right? So I didn’t really pursue her on it specifically. I didn’t have to. I sort of caught her and talked with her about the, uh, rest of… what she did, but the eye, even though it got in the way every day it was supposed to disappear the next time I died. And then it just. Didn’t.
He hasn’t looked up from his plate. “I don’t know. I thought maybe it was because it was there for so long, but people have had tattoos disappear. I guess it’s just some kind of… whoops in the process that time. I got Daisy to apologize. That was… complicated. She’s complicated. And she’s really trying, and I appreciate that so much from her. But I still. Have this.”
Gestures at his face.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-22 07:13 am (UTC)"A disfigurement. A change in your ability, to boot. The man you see in the mirror is not the same man you got used to seeing. And I cannot imagine knowing that the condition is permanent when other things aren't would help, wot? You poor thing."
He hopes it comes across as sympathy for his position, and not condescension.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-22 08:54 am (UTC)“Yeah. And…” I haven’t had a scar in— “… I know life is unfair, but geez. I worried for a while about being able to broadcast again, but I could probably just wear a contact. Which, that’s the other thing, I—I should probably have a patch because it gives me headaches sometimes, but I would honestly rather drown than draw more attention to it than I already have.
“And I… know it’s still bad and no one’s running a damn competition, and any one of them would cut my head off for thinking this, but there are… I mean, with all the crazy dramatic histories of people here, it. Some part of me feels like it just doesn’t matter. Not here.”
no subject
Date: 2023-10-22 09:20 am (UTC)Funny, isn't it. He used to talk to so many entirely average people back in London, and how many of them shimmered with the same colours as he weaves here. Not just Changelings- they don't have a monopoly on pain- but people working out how to welcome in arthritis for the first time, accepting the change in their dreams that comes from injury.
"I used to be a gambling man, Phil, and I don't think I ever placed a surer bet than that the very people who would decapitate you for thinking so... are feeling precisely the same thing, at times."
no subject
Date: 2023-10-23 07:18 am (UTC)There is really something about it, when you realize you are just never going to be someone going through life with ease now. And he doesn't even know how to complain about it. Which sucks, because complaining is how he copes. Frankly he also doesn't even know if he has forty years left of this or two hundred.
"Yeah... yeah," he nods, sighing. And then puts his face in his hands and just, breathes a very long-suffering groan.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-23 08:29 am (UTC)"Glad I wasn't overreaching. Are you alright? Do you need a moment?"
no subject
Date: 2023-10-23 09:05 am (UTC)He luxuriates in the abject misery of being a guy in a chair with his face in his hands for a little bit, then sits up again with a sigh, straightening out his shirt.
“Sorry about that. It’s just… relieving to hear that, someone who’s getting where I’m coming from. Putting stuff to words that I couldn’t figure out myself. And that I’m not just being, I don’t know, prissy or something.” It’s always been tricky to sift his petty and unsympathetic grievances from the justified ones, even if the success rate is higher these days.
“It’s also nice to have someone telling me this is something I can be upset about without also sliding in the message that I need to learn to be more mad more often in general.”
no subject
Date: 2023-10-23 09:13 am (UTC)"Please, no need. Just as long as I'm wearing this brooch, you can say what you like. If I need a break, I can always take it off again, wot? Nothing wrong with a little prissiness from time to time, especially when you need it."
He leans back over to his side of the table.
"To be perfectly blunt, who on earth am I to be telling you what to feel? Just as irksome as telling someone they ought to be happier more often. One can't force these things."
no subject
Date: 2023-10-23 05:39 pm (UTC)“No, but it was more like… allowing myself to be upset with people when stuff happens even if it’s understandable why they might not have… ugh, nevermind.” He’s doing it again.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-25 02:31 am (UTC)He leans his cheek on his hand, eyeing him with warmth and some mild amusement.
"Do you want to be upset?"
no subject
Date: 2023-10-25 05:12 am (UTC)And then a real growl as the freshest anger bubbles up again, "--god, I wish I could just be mad at her! But no, not only does she have all this damage, one of my close friends who I like much better is in kind of the same boat as her and is really sympathetic to her situation, and I can't just..."
no subject
Date: 2023-10-25 05:30 am (UTC)That expression doesn't waver, even when he growls.
"What outcome do you want from this whole mess? With Demona, I mean."
no subject
Date: 2023-10-25 05:48 am (UTC)"I'm not gonna be wanting the same thing I got with Daisy. I want us to be able to live on this ship without her attacking one of mine at the bare minimum. She can hang around my friends if she behaves, but unless we're being forced to cooperate, she stays away from me and my family."
He angrily forks at his food and eats some. Maybe that will make him feel better.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-25 06:04 am (UTC)"I was saying to Johnny this very issue. That if someone were to behave in a truly antisocial manner, we have little recourse for them. Still- you've sounded the horn, so to speak, and I've no doubt that if you or yours were in need again, people would come to your defense."
Ossie leans back in his chair again, "and what of what you can control, in this situation? How do you want to move forward?"
no subject
Date: 2023-10-25 06:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
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