"It would be within your right to be angry at me," Dominique admitted, though with clear relief that he wasn't, head ducked slightly as he peeked back through a curtain of messy curls. He could only imagine that Caspar faced that question often enough that allowed him to answer it with the same restraint and control he approached everything else. Maybe a lifetime of it had lessened the self-consciousness the monk felt over being so strikingly different and out of place, and he suspected other monks weren't the sort to make much of a fuss of it.
Dominique wasn't sure how he'd handle anyone calling him out on any of his more masculine features, whether under insult or suspicion. He used to have little worry about his face, had been called handsome by a variety of sources enough to believe it. But as a woman, he felt less than delicate- too tall even though he'd been unremarkable for a man, and while he was slight enough in build and able to hide most of his lean muscles under layers of clothing, no amount of makeup was able to distract from the structure of his face. With daily close shaving and constant plucking of his eyebrows, he could pass, but not without constant awareness that he wasn't beautiful. It shouldn't have mattered to him so much, he never had any particular desire before to be a pretty lady. But when he looked in the small cracked mirror that they owned to scrutinize his disguise, it was enough to twist his stomach with shame.
He wondered if Caspar ever felt ugly for being so outside of French standards, if it ever snuck through despite how little it should have mattered in his service of God. Maybe he was the only one so fragile and shallow. Dominique swallowed hard, feeling even more disgusting for allowing it to bother him so much when there were far more important things.
"I can't say... that I know anything about it, but I can't imagine what it would be like to be without my family. Not knowing them." Dominique knew things were tough for a lot of people, knew that the rioting had been a long time coming, But being a foreigner on top of it, one from such distant lands, must have made things that much harder now that Caspar was outside of the sheltered safety of the church. Dominique had witnessed what prejudices being from even a neighboring country could cause. And he couldn't help a protective flare at the thought of anybody giving his husband a hard time for it. "Do you keep contact with your sister?" he asked, thinking the girl lucky to have been able to escape before everything fell apart so spectacularly.
Shaking his head at Caspar's claim, Dominique held his hands up in defeat. "I can't. Sing. It's atrocious," he insisted, hoping no occasion arose where he'd be required to sing, no idea how he'd handle faking it. Speaking wasn't as much of a problem when he could whisper. With so much dedicated practice, he wondered if Caspar was quite good. He wanted to hear sometime, but thought they really weren't close enough to ask. Especially if the songs he knew were sacred, unfit to share outside the church with some crossdressing tramp. Dominique didn't want to ask what the church's opinion of such a thing was, already felt condemned enough.
"Six brothers and and four... three sisters." His voice hitched slightly at correcting himself. Even with the excess of siblings, the loss of one hurt. Evelyne had been the closest to him, the one that knew all his secrets. Not being able to turn to her now was hard.