[If Oscar is being dramatic, Paul's immediate affront at the revelation about what happened to the fern is an audience being drawn into the play. He's halfway to formulating a question about who when Oscar grounds him back in reality.
His mouth shuts with a click in his jaw that he never used to hear, and he thinks about that as he listens. It's a trivial thing to think about, but is it any less so than a fern? Aren't they both small things that point to a larger one? How long can he ignore the way his shoulders ache?]
Is that what this is? That we're friends?
[They could be bitter questions, or edged ones. All it would take is a slight adjustment of inflection, but Paul holds his tone steady and true. He wants to know. He wants to know with a force that surprises him, that lives in the memory-space of the joints of his hands.]
Why would you want that? After everything that happened to you because of knowing me?
no subject
[If Oscar is being dramatic, Paul's immediate affront at the revelation about what happened to the fern is an audience being drawn into the play. He's halfway to formulating a question about who when Oscar grounds him back in reality.
His mouth shuts with a click in his jaw that he never used to hear, and he thinks about that as he listens. It's a trivial thing to think about, but is it any less so than a fern? Aren't they both small things that point to a larger one? How long can he ignore the way his shoulders ache?]
Is that what this is? That we're friends?
[They could be bitter questions, or edged ones. All it would take is a slight adjustment of inflection, but Paul holds his tone steady and true. He wants to know. He wants to know with a force that surprises him, that lives in the memory-space of the joints of his hands.]
Why would you want that? After everything that happened to you because of knowing me?