milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Jay wanders in from his door looking comfortingly rough - cut off shorts, no shirt, no shoes and a week's worth of stubble.

He grabs a shaving kit and a straight razor from the bar and vanishes into the bathroom, reemerging a few minutes later looking clean and content.

You can finally him sitting on the back step with a bottle of beer, cleaning and sharpening the razor.

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Ragnar comes by after a while, looking pensive, and sporting something of a sunburn on the shaven sides of his head as well as his nose and cheeks.

"Good evening," he says to Jay.

"Hey Ragnar." Jay eyes the blade critically. "You look like you've been getting to much sun." Not that Jay isn't looking tanned himself.

He nods to the extra couple of beers nearby. "Pull up a seat."

"Sun?" Ragnar says, not having noticed the sunburn himself yet.

He takes a beer, and sits on the back step as well. If anybody wants to get outside, he can still move.

"Thanks."

"Side of your face." He nods. "Got a bit burnt there. D'you fall asleep in the sun?"

Edited 2016-08-03 22:21 (UTC)

"I was in the shade, but the sun may have been glinting off the water," Ragnar says. "I was fishing, but nothing would bite. Fish are too lazy today."

Jay grins. "Should come visit where I am at the moment. You don't wait for the fish to come to you but hunt them down with a spear. And they don't make it easy."

"We do that, in shallow streams," Ragnar says. "But I didn't need fish urgently enough for that. Where are you now, except here?"

"South east Asia. A place called Cambodia. Serious jungle with a tangle of rivers winding through it. The fish are massive, bigger than me so hunting them is no small thing. I've been trading the odd catch with the local village."

"Then hunting and catching one fish would feed many people," Ragnar says. "Not like the little fish here."

"Most of village. And they're considered a delicacy, seeing they're a bitch to catch."

He sips his beer, watching Ragnar out of the corner of his eye. "What's on your mind, mate? Something's clearly bothering you."

"People are complicated, and just love is not enough," Ragnar declares.

"That sounds like a concussion reached over many hours of not catching fish." Jay observes. "I take it you're referring to Athelstan?"

Ragnar nods, a bit glumly.

"I can't help him," he says, "and I feel it's getting worse."

Jay nods. "You okay to talk about it?"

Edited 2016-08-04 08:56 (UTC)

"If you don't mind a Viking griping about love?" Ragnar says

"Not even slightly." Jay assures him, making himself comfortable to listen.

"Where to start?" Ragnar says, taking a swig of his beer. "I love him, but I can't help him. Everything is wrong."

"You don't have to tell me but I'm guessing he went through something terrible? And he's still finding ways to deal?" He guessed as much but has made a point not to ask.

"And he's not healing the way both of you feel like he should."

"We both hoped he would get better when we were together in here again," Ragnar says, in a rather small voice. "And now we think it will happen when we are together again in our world..."

"There's no silver bullet." Jay shakes his head, realising that won't make sense to a Viking. "No magic cure. Not for trauma like that. It takes time and it's not always going to get better all at once. Not even somewhere safe and familiar. Doesn't mean you, or he, are failing each other."

"He seems to think he's failing me by not getting better, and I would be better off without him," Ragnar says, quietly. "But what I want most is him back in my life, at whatever condition."

"I guess all you can do it tell him that. And let him know that you're willing to be there, whatever he needs. Even if he doesn't know what that is."

"It needs a lot of patience," Ragnar agrees. "But he is worth the wait."

"It's hard but you gotta make the most of every day you've get rather than focusing on an outcome. The more pressure either of you put on being better, the harder it is to feel when things are better. You only ever see that things are better in hindsight. Make sense?"

"Yes," Ragnar says. "But how can I keep him from putting that pressure on himself?"