The Changing of the Guard? A/N I have used French text to make an abrupt switch to English more obvious, but it should be assumed that the rest of the dialogue is happening in French too.
Part II: A Muddled Brain
“Okay, unwrap his wrist and let’s take a look,” the healer stated, stepping into the small bay with its sound proof curtains that they’d placed Dorian and Jean-Loup in so that he could ramble with a degree of privacy and without disturbing others.
Dorian blinked in surprise as the purple clad witch said this, and Jean-Loup reached out and started pulling bandages off. They’d been chatting. They’d been just chatting about… he wasn’t sure. But they were… here. This was not his house. It was probably not Jean-Loup’s house either because the walls were fluttery and made of cloth. But here they were and they were chatting.
“I’m hurt?” he observed and queried at the same time. He didn’t feel hurt. He felt… He thought he felt fine, but he had to admit that things did not feel normal.
“You broke your wrist,” Jean-Loup reminded him. So far, things weren’t going too badly. Dorian seemed quite happy, although rather hard to follow. He kept talking about places and people that Jean-Loup didn’t know but as if he ought to, constantly picking threads up in the middle. He was managing to more or less stick to speaking French but sometimes he lapsed into other languages. Sometimes he realised when he did it, stumbling to a halt and confirming with Jean-Loup that he did not indeed speak whichever of the three other languages it was, and then apologising. It might have been okay when he did this with English, because they learnt that at school, except there was still the tangential and rambling nature of the narrative to contend with, but if it was Chinese or Russian, Jean-Loup stood no chance - he could just about tell them apart, and that was as good as it got. From time to time, Dorian noticed his own bandaged wrist and seemed slightly alarmed or confused by it, but was easily reassured.
“Oh,” Dorian’s face fell into a frown, “Am I better now? It doesn’t hurt. But I think I might have hit my head. I feel very odd.”
“You’re on painkillers, and they’re making you feel funny. And no your wrist isn’t better yet,” the purple witch told him, even though he was pretty sure he’d been talking to Jean-Loup. He knew Jean-Loup. He didn’t know who this lady was. He scowled at her but she kept on talking anyway. “But the bandages are dry which means you’ve absorbed all the first dose, so let’s get you some more.”
“Can’t you just zap it better?” he asked Jean-Loup, as the healer summoned over a bottle of liquid and began recoating his bandages.
“Not this time,” Jean-Loup shook his head.
“I don’t like my brain feeling fuzzy,” he complained. The healer gave a flick of her wand and the bandages rewound themselves firmly around his arm.
“I’ll come back and check you in an hour,” she stated, “Call if you need me before then,” she added to Jean-Loup, because Dorian had drawn his feet up onto his chair and was plucking at his bandage as if he had never seen one before and looking like he might be about to get difficult about the whole situation.
“Are you okay?” Jean-Loup asked.
“I… I don’t know… Am I?” Dorian asked.
“Yes. You are. I’m looking after you,” Jean-Loup reminded him.
“Right. And you… you’re nice. You protect people. You told me that… before,” Dorian tried to grasp at that fact, and how far in the past that had been, but it was all slippery. Everything kept dissolving in his brain, when he tried to catch onto it directly, and he didn’t like it. He remembered Jean-Loup saying that at some point, and he remembered feeling his arms behind his back, supporting him, helping him up, but he wasn’t sure when either of those things were… He remembered the feeling though. Protective. And strong. And those ideas, fuzzily and slowly, joined up to something else in his brain. “Tu es comme un bowtruckle,” Dorian pointed out, slipping into English as he named the creature.
“Un botruc?” Jean-Loup confirmed. “The little tree bug that gouges people’s eyes out?”
“Yes, but not like that. They’re protective. They’re protecting their trees. And with strong arms. Your people who you care about are like your trees.”
“Ok. Je suis un botruc. I can deal with that,” he laughed.
“Suits you too. Un beau truc. Not that you’re a thing. You’re a person. You’re a very, very nice person. You’re strong but you don’t hurt people,” he added, trying to explain it out loud because it seemed important. Jean-Loup had strong arms, and Dorian had always been so afraid of people who were bigger and stronger than him, but it was so different when those arms were helping you instead of pushing you down. He reached out, his fingertips running down Jean-Loup’s arm in curious exploration. “It’s strange,” he added. “In a nice way. It makes me like you.”
“I think you should have a better reason than that,” Jean-Loup stated. He wasn’t quite sure what to do about Dorian’s hand on his arm, or being called attractive. It didn’t feel quite right to let him get so touchy. But maybe it was just perfectly innocent. He was all doped up and distracted, and it was just stroking his arm… Dorian seemed calmer too. He had had to uncoil from his tensed up position on the chair to reach out.
“I’m not allowed to like you?” Dorian queried, looking confused, his fingers halting in their play but staying where they’d been.
“No, you are. Just… the fact that I would never hurt you isn’t much of a reason.”
“Not being hurt is nice. It’s… very nice. And important,” Dorian stumbled through his words. He knew he wasn’t arguing particularly well - he couldn’t be, because it was a very basic point and yet Jean-Loup wasn’t getting it.
“And it’s a pretty low bar for what you regard as a good person. The fact that I treat you like a human being doesn’t make me exceptionally nice, it should be the basic standard you expect from other people.”
“Then I will end up disappointed,” Dorian muttered.
“I don’t mean you should trust in people who have let you down. But the fact that I’m not like that… It’s not something I deserve you putting me up on a pedestal for. Them being trash doesn’t make me exceptional.”
Dorian tried to process this but it wasn’t making much sense. Sometimes, for a second it did, but then… it was like by the time he’d got to the last step, his brain had forgotten why they were there, so he went back to beginning to look, only by the time he got back there he lost what he’d learnt along the way. Like trying to fill a pond from a well, only your bucket had a hole in it, and they were so far apart…
“Why can’t I like you?” he asked sadly. He wanted to like Jean-Loup. He seemed very worthy of being liked and thanked, and yet when Dorian tried it was just causing arguments.
“You can,” Jean-Loup assured him, “I’m glad you do… But I’m going to come back and explain that when you are sober and make sure you understand because it’s important. You need a better reason to like me.”
Dorian wasn’t really sure what to make of that remark. He couldn’t put what he was trying to say in any simpler terms and it was frustrating that Jean-Loup wouldn’t understand. Dorian mostly looked hurt and confused though. Why couldn’t he follow what was going on? Wasn’t he normally smarter than this? And here was this very nice person who was clearly trying to tell him something important, and they couldn’t get themselves on the same page, and Dorian was pretty sure it was his fault.
“Okay. Sorry,” he reverted to apologising, wondering why his brain was being so unco-operative. “Things… things aren’t going right,” he mumbled, hanging his head, folding back in on himself. “My thoughts don’t make sense. They don’t make sense and I don’t like it. I think something very bad might be happening.”
“Hey, look at me,” Jean-Loup directed, placing a finger under Dorian’s chin and gently lifting his head. “You’re okay. You have no reason to be sorry, and you’re okay,” he assured him. Dorian looked at him, vacant and confused, and definitely somewhat scared, and searched for something tangible that he knew.
“You have nice eyes,” Dorian tried. Those were what he could see right now, and like stroking Jean-Loup’s arm, it just felt sort of comforting. His eyes were a very pretty shade of green. He wasn’t sure why Jean-Loup was so determined to not see the good in himself, when he was just… lovely. Being kind was more important than having nice eyes, of course, but he hadn’t been willing to accept that. They seemed to be touching faces for some reason. He wasn’t sure why that was a thing they were doing, but it was, and it didn’t seem unpleasant. He reached up and stroked Jean-Loup’s cheek lightly. “You’re a very nice person, with very nice eyes,” he smiled. His hand had reached the bottom of Jean-Loup’s cheek, and his thumb brushed his lips. He leaned in a little closer. Except he felt something stopping him. A pressure against his chest.
“And you are very high on painkillers right now,” Jean-Loup pointed out, pushing him back slightly. That had had happened alarmingly fast. Or had it? He’d seen the warning signs in Dorian’s behaviour but it had been so up and down - where, in that conversation, should he have pushed him back, except at the point he just had done? Still, he withdrew his hands now, hoping he could keep Dorian reassured and safe whilst avoiding a repeat of the incident. “And I’m supposed to be looking after you.”