Just as she has to fight down that first instinctive apology, he has to battle that kneejerk panicky feeling that he doesn’t deserve this sentiment either. How can she do any better, when she’s already —
“You’re good as you are,” Stephen says, forehead against hers, mouth ghosting across her cheek.
It’s a purposeful, careful selection of words. It’s not you’re perfect because nobody’s perfect and he has, after all, learned a little about placing women on pedestals to gaze at longingly from afar and build idealised distant ideas of them, and how he probably shouldn’t do that anymore. So instead it’s this: Gwenaëlle in her ugly moods, her raging temper and rotten depression, he’ll take it all.
And the condolences come stilted, he is still awkward at this, but they do come:
“The words are inadequate, but… I’m sorry about your friends. It sounds like they already knew; you didn’t have to prove anything to them.” A beat. He doesn’t know how to handle this. He’d bricked up his own familial grief and never talked about it, and even the funerals after Thanos had been held at an aloof remove; he’d been a polite colleague attending rather than a friend, a loved one.
“Would it help to— I don’t know, talk about them?”
no subject
“You’re good as you are,” Stephen says, forehead against hers, mouth ghosting across her cheek.
It’s a purposeful, careful selection of words. It’s not you’re perfect because nobody’s perfect and he has, after all, learned a little about placing women on pedestals to gaze at longingly from afar and build idealised distant ideas of them, and how he probably shouldn’t do that anymore. So instead it’s this: Gwenaëlle in her ugly moods, her raging temper and rotten depression, he’ll take it all.
And the condolences come stilted, he is still awkward at this, but they do come:
“The words are inadequate, but… I’m sorry about your friends. It sounds like they already knew; you didn’t have to prove anything to them.” A beat. He doesn’t know how to handle this. He’d bricked up his own familial grief and never talked about it, and even the funerals after Thanos had been held at an aloof remove; he’d been a polite colleague attending rather than a friend, a loved one.
“Would it help to— I don’t know, talk about them?”