Oh, shit. He manages to keep most of the wince under wraps, but the downturn at the corners of his mouth and furrow between his brows refuses to be smothered altogether. Colour him immediately, overpoweringly grateful that he's not had any opportunities to date since his life slid sideways into sorcery.
"Yeowch." It's out before he really has the chance to vet it, caught off guard by the whiplash of the mood. Not as if it's any lighter, but there's something so absurdly relatable about the miserable situation Jon finds himself in that he can't help but empathise. All it would've taken is one variation in the timeline... With empathy comes a slip away from pragmatism, and with that comes— well. Yeowch.
"Sorry. That's—" Dealing with a death wish is one thing. Dealing with a man who's trying to juggle a good five or six nightmare scenarios at once, one of them being the sudden appearance of a boyfriend who's still a not-yet-boyfriend and another being not having yet managed to let that not-yet-boyfriend know that he's on death row, is something else altogether.
Stephen's bedside manner hasn't had enough practice for this.
"Bad."
He can help with a disembodied voice asking for a rescue, can even help with an out for an impending execution. An acquaintance dealing with a cross-section of the cross-temporal, multiversal and interpersonal, though? He's got nothing, and too many seconds of stretching silence makes that abundantly clear.
no subject
"Yeowch." It's out before he really has the chance to vet it, caught off guard by the whiplash of the mood. Not as if it's any lighter, but there's something so absurdly relatable about the miserable situation Jon finds himself in that he can't help but empathise. All it would've taken is one variation in the timeline... With empathy comes a slip away from pragmatism, and with that comes— well. Yeowch.
"Sorry. That's—" Dealing with a death wish is one thing. Dealing with a man who's trying to juggle a good five or six nightmare scenarios at once, one of them being the sudden appearance of a boyfriend who's still a not-yet-boyfriend and another being not having yet managed to let that not-yet-boyfriend know that he's on death row, is something else altogether.
Stephen's bedside manner hasn't had enough practice for this.
"Bad."
He can help with a disembodied voice asking for a rescue, can even help with an out for an impending execution. An acquaintance dealing with a cross-section of the cross-temporal, multiversal and interpersonal, though? He's got nothing, and too many seconds of stretching silence makes that abundantly clear.