With someone else, it's the kind of thing you take their hand for, give a squeeze, go through some normal motions of comfort. But it's Bodhi, and--and Jude doesn't even really know what those are. Parker wasn't any more normal than this, and Charlie--
Charlie just took a beer when handed one and let Jude sit beside him, drinking one of his own, pretending he was old enough. Pretending they were something like drinking buddies at the end of a long day, instead of father and son, and stretched so thin apart from what those were supposed to be. Bodhi doesn't even exist between the gulf of Charlie's absence and Parker's sometimes hideous, suffocating presence. Bodhi's entirely his own question, and Jude doesn't know the answer.
He just wants to, in a way he usually gave up on at the first sign of a struggle. This is bigger than most of those old struggles combined: how does he do anything, when it's a matter of no control? All he can think of is something like the first time they really sat down to talk, after he came back from the cave-in. Staring at his hands in the dark, he doesn't have any reason to look up when he speaks: they can barely see each other. "You can tell that something happened to him," he says. "So we'd--someone like me. I'd know if that happened to you. I think I'd know." His voice fades a bit on the last bit, uncertainty eating at him. Would he know? Does he know Bodhi very well at all, for all the attention he pays? He doesn't know what the right thing to do or say right now is. "We just have to--keep an eye on each other. Like we already promised."
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Charlie just took a beer when handed one and let Jude sit beside him, drinking one of his own, pretending he was old enough. Pretending they were something like drinking buddies at the end of a long day, instead of father and son, and stretched so thin apart from what those were supposed to be. Bodhi doesn't even exist between the gulf of Charlie's absence and Parker's sometimes hideous, suffocating presence. Bodhi's entirely his own question, and Jude doesn't know the answer.
He just wants to, in a way he usually gave up on at the first sign of a struggle. This is bigger than most of those old struggles combined: how does he do anything, when it's a matter of no control? All he can think of is something like the first time they really sat down to talk, after he came back from the cave-in. Staring at his hands in the dark, he doesn't have any reason to look up when he speaks: they can barely see each other. "You can tell that something happened to him," he says. "So we'd--someone like me. I'd know if that happened to you. I think I'd know." His voice fades a bit on the last bit, uncertainty eating at him. Would he know? Does he know Bodhi very well at all, for all the attention he pays? He doesn't know what the right thing to do or say right now is. "We just have to--keep an eye on each other. Like we already promised."