tushanshu_logs | ( closed )

Maybe it's cheating and maybe it's checkmate, but Jim just looks at him and something clicks. He holds up a hand. "Listen. I need to try and explain this in a way that we can both understand. A captain has to be strong for his crew, we can't show weakness or fear or-- anger or pain or any of that. You have to be one hundred percent, one hundred percent of the time. Do you know why I asked you to stay during the surgery?"

'I understand.' It's simple, and direct. 'I don't begrudge anybody that. You can't show weakness because you can't have your crew think there's something out there you can't face. They'd lose faith.' All people had the stories they told themselves, of their own strength, and Jim had mentioned how much he hated being a nobody, here. He understood that. People told the same stories of Kyle, after all. Last of the Green Lanterns, and his lip nearly twists downwards in disgust. There was nothing to be proud of, acting like that. Not for him.

'No, I don't know why exactly you asked, but--' he hesitates. 'Honestly, if you hadn't explicitly asked me to leave, I'd have stayed there with you.'

"I asked you to stay because I trust you. Because we're friends, and because I know you could take it. That you could deal seeing me in pain, even though I knew it would hurt you, too." Because Kyle seems to think that's what friendship means. Hurting when your people do. Is it all he thinks it is?

"It's not a one-time thing. It was completely selfish of me and I get that. It was a weakness and I dealt with it. But it's always going to be there. I don't want to have to ask you to stay every time, because that--" he wrinkles his nose. "It'd make me feel fucking ridiculous and selfish all the time. You have to meet me half way."

Something clicks. (Yes it had hurt, but he'd been able to deal with it. It was less painful than watching one of his own die.)

'Needing other people isn't a weakness, to me.' He wraps one arm around himself and uses the other to rub his chin, deep in thought. 'It's not selfish, either. It's just part... of overcoming fear.' He'd been alone in the universe. Needing people was a part of facing the fear of that loneliness, again. It was weird, and twisted in its own way, but it worked. Just like yellow weakness.

A long pause as he considers I want you around. It wasn't directly stated, he has to meet Jim halfway and try and read between the lines. Treat him a little like Guy, a little like himself.

'We have very different styles of leading.' The remark is slightly wry. 'I swear, every time I think you're like me, you turn around and act like Gardner.'

But Jim grew up alone. He watched his brother walk away. Needing people is a weakness because it means admitting that you can't do everything by yourself and he-- without his crew, how the hell is he supposed to admit that and live with himself?

He frowns a bit, draws in a breath.

"Yeah, well. Next thing I know you and Spock are going to be inviting me to the wedding, so you can guess how I feel."

He tilts his head, completely incredulous. 'Are you... jealous?'

"What?" Just. A disgruntled expression forever. "No, I'm not jealous." Why are words so hard. "I'm glad he has you. Spock's lost enough people and you're good for him. You're good for each other, trust me, you couldn't have more of my blessing if you asked for it. I meant because you're like-- the perfect mix of him and me."

The confusion stays. Kyle finds himself flexing his fingers, wishing he was holding something so he could play with it. 'Oh. Okay, then.'

Jim rolls his eyes in sheer frustration and tosses a pillow at Kyle. It's not a sudden motion, he makes sure he knows he's about to do it before he follows through. "It took me a year to get through to him." So maybe he's a little jealous. How much weakness does he have to admit before Kyle will just-- not want to take any more?

'And it took me all of five minutes.' He catches the pillow, turns it over as if examining it, before he tosses it back, shifting into play mode. But this is too much like Bruce, coming in and saying Thank you for everything you're doing with Damian. Continue. that Kyle's not sure what to do with it, either.

He looks at Jim. 'I make people feel safe. That's as instinctive to me as your— captainly stuff is to you.' They admitted weaknesses to him that they didn't tell other people. Like Damian, hugging him, asking him not to tell anyone that he'd made a mistake as stupid as not being able to fulfil his mission, or potentially endangering his secret identity. Like Dick, quietly confiding that he missed his father. Or Bean, crying into his shirt.

He looks at the couch, and then he wanders over, and lies down on the floor, putting his feet up, resting both hands on his stomach so that he's close to Jim and looking up at him. Then, he rings up a construct pillow and plays with it, tossing it at Jim after a few minutes.

Jim sets the (real) pillow to one side. "It's not exactly jealousy. It's..." how can he say this without sounding like a total idiot? He ducks his head as he catches the construct. He's surprised at how well it mimics softness. Willpower, huh? He's pensive, trying to think of the right word, the right phrase. "It's awe."

Kyle smiles, teasingly, shifts so that he's a little closer, back flat on the floor. 'I am an angel, y'know.'

Jim cocks his head to one side. And then he just throws the pillow at him.

"You're so much cuter when you leave the ego to me, 'Angel'." But he's joking, too. Do you get it now?

Kyle catches it, and tosses it back. Play comes naturally to him, and his smile is languid.

'I keep saying we're equals, because I know you're a person who makes yourself equal to people no matter what.' A beat. 'What do you hear, when I say it?'

There's a very real part of him that doesn't want to answer that question. But his resolve hardens a little and he tosses the pillow back lightly. "Pity. Because you thought it was something I needed to hear." When it wasn't. When it hasn't ever been, not from people like Kyle.

He hugs the pillow close to his chest, tucking his chin over one edge, looking at Jim curiously.

'Don't stand on ceremony,' he says, and it's clear he's quoting from his intonation, it's not the way he says things. Diana always had a more.. imperious air that intimidated everyone around her. 'We're in the same league.'

A beat.

'Sorry. That wasn't my intention. We're both just not used to... accepting things without fighting tooth and nail.' And this is where he looks away, unable to meet Jim's eyes, because this is him admitting his own weakness. 'I'd have felt better if you'd fought me for it. It... makes more sense, like that, even though we shouldn't have to. Is that bad?'

"No. I'd have felt better if I fought you for it too." Instead, Kyle'd broken his nose and then turned around and said, we're friends and Jim had no idea what to do with that. With the patterned violence/anger that felt like a push, and the inevitable way he'd drawn him in again to lay friendship down on the table. But it always felt like it was part of the game. That's why he's so angry, why he has a hard time believing anything Kyle even says. He doesn't know what's real, it's like living in a house of mirrors.

He tosses the pillow at Jim, with a lot less force, and his smile is more sad as his hands drop back to his stomach.

'Aren't we a pair.'

He snorts wryly, catches the pillow. "Something like that."

Slowly, he moves his legs to put them on Jim's lap, defaulting to his first language when he's not sure what words to use. It's not chess, to him, it's just simple human contact. Kyle's not sure how Jim will deal with it, but the man did hug him and-- all he'd known was sex and violence when people touched him. It made Kyle determined to make touch mean something else. Friendship, and his head tilts to the side as he contemplates.

'I feel like I'm constantly messing up,' he says, quietly. 'I feel like a goddamn rookie in front of you and-- I haven't felt like that in years. I don't know how to fix it. Every time I try, we end up at a dead end. Like right now, I don't even know if this is going anywhere. All I do know is that I won't leave you behind.'

Jim stills at the touch, shifts a little so there's no weight on his bad leg - even across the thigh, it sends sparks of pain up and down the limb - but despite a slight thinning of his lips, he doesn't protest. Kyle's language.

"Okay, let me get this straight. We're constantly on each other's nerves because we're too awesome?"

He chuckles, nearly moves his legs off but then doesn't. There wasn't any verbal request to.

'That's one way of putting it.'

Jim rests one hand lightly against Kyle's ankle. It's like being back in the cell, hurting so bad he couldn't think straight, trying to offer comfort however he understood how. "We're completely different people with completely different lives." I'm not your damned mirror, hadn't he said that to him once already? "We need to... find out how to stop comparing ourselves."

'I'm learning by watching you. Comparison is going to happen either way. We just... need to figure out how to stop fighting.'

He stretches out both arms, and then snaps his fingers. 'Okay. Compliment me.' It sounds light, but he's completely serious.

It's not like being put on the spot, not exactly, but he doesn't have anything to say anyway. He opens his mouth. Closes it.

Holds up a hand and drops it. It's less like trying to think of something and more like trying to think of a specific something. Kyle's so bright Jim could say 'everything' and mean it.

"Well, you've got sexy ankles."

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