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Dec. 4th, 2009 04:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
titusnowlCrusoe is real people, of course, and Ponce likes it that way; he'd rather like to know as much as he possibly can about the man, but as a general rule he does not ask. What he knows about Jack is what has come up in conversation or been volunteered, and what Jack knows about Terry is mostly what Jack has specifically asked for. (Therefore the precise limits of what they know about each other at this juncture are not mine to determine. <:Vc)
Oh, Terry might ask for further details, or clarification, or confirmation of assumptions - much like he did with Cuddles when he accidentally became Tim Who Is A People, and before the implications of that caught up to Ponce and made him feel all weird and this, yeah: "Those two would be your niece and nephew?" and such-like. But outright requests for information - even reciprocating queries when he's been asked something himself: "Oh, no, not a sibling in the world and my parents must be torn between gratitude lest it be another just like me me and disappointment that they didn't get a chance for an improvement; how about yourself?" - are right out. It's not a lack of interest, it's just a Thing. You know how Things are.
---
He sucks at disguising.
The little things that many people miss - mannerisms, carriage, gestures, how Americans and Europeans count on their fingers differently - he can keep track of and execute flawlessly. He can slip on a character like a clean shirt, change his personality and behaviour to fit the mask he's wearing (whether it's literal or figurative). He was an actor, and he still is one.
But all the little details in the world won't help once he has to open his mouth, and there's not a thing in the world he can do about it.
---
Roderick... well, Roderick was his fault. He done wrong by that boy, even though he didn't mean to. He hadn't even started chasing after Miranda yet; he had a devastating crush on her nearly instantly, but he hadn't yet done a thing to act upon it. Roderick was perceptive enough to notice the blindingly obvious, and he knew what was coming before Terry did; and so he took evasive action. Roderick was always hot-headed - Miranda had a temper herself, of course, as can be seen by the fact that she ended up literally winging a coffee-pot at her husband, but it took time to wind her up, whereas Roddie was quite entirely temperamental. Red-headed and Irish and given to flaring up, and Terry the calm cool one making sarcastic quips by his side (or perched behind him on the scooter) while he cursed people out or straight-up got into fights. The temper had never been turned against Terry before that last painful period, and it proved devastating (in fact, it's possible that he latched even more firmly onto that silly crush on Miranda than he otherwise might have, because of the rebound effect). At first Terry wasn't even sure what he'd properly done, but he knew he'd done something - no sense of the Wrongfully Wounded or the Martyr, just a terribly unfocussed and nonspecific sense of guilt for some crime he had yet to commit. He was paying too much attention to that American girl, and not enough to the boy he had been with for oh ages, and he done him wrong.
Roderick wasn't his first, though he was the first one that ended in an actual breakup. All the others just sort of stopped, or went away; boys a couple of years older at school leaving when they graduated, so-long-I'll-write-or-something only of course neither of them did, that sort of thing, and the one he was with right before Roddie just utterly stopped talking to him one day, as if he didn't exist or something, which was off-putting and disappointing but not entirely surprising somehow; besides, it wasn't like they had been really serious, had they, or the fellow wouldn't have done like that. Then he met Roddie and they got on like a couple of bandits and went drifting about and riding scooters and not finishing degrees and being absolutely happy and not abandoning each other and all this, which was something like a miracle, and then Terry went and fucked it up without even intending to and was left with a bite-mark that took two weeks to heal and a hissed (and ultimately truthful) warning that she would never be as good to him as Roddie had and one of Roddie's shirts that had gotten mixed up in his washing and which he tossed out on the rubbish heap on the third day.
And it really was his own fault, because he had done him wrong and gotten all moon-eyed over some girl that he could never make fall in love with him anyway.
He got ragingly drunk on Nights One and Two, and then Stiff-Upper-Lipped and Pack-Up-Your-Troublesed his way merrily on and began tossing himself at Miranda like there was no tomorrow. And we know how well that ended up going for them both. (Although at least in that there was no blame for either, or at worst blame equally shared, both of them being a bit stupid and not paying sufficient attention to one another's thoughts and intentions. And at least when they broke up they found that Not Living Together made it possible to get back to being rather good friends just as they had been when they first started spending time together.)
[Lessons learned and internalized, tacitly and without conscious realization, because conscious realization of these assumptions would make everything really emo and he doesn't knowingly think that way:
From his parents, from the pre-Roderick relationships, and from everyone else: Everybody leaves.
From Roderick: Don't be the one that gets left.
From Miranda: Don't wait around and drag it out. The quickest cut is the kindest.
"Don't let them be People" is a later addition to these rules, and was learned from life as a Spy.]
Oh, Terry might ask for further details, or clarification, or confirmation of assumptions - much like he did with Cuddles when he accidentally became Tim Who Is A People, and before the implications of that caught up to Ponce and made him feel all weird and this, yeah: "Those two would be your niece and nephew?" and such-like. But outright requests for information - even reciprocating queries when he's been asked something himself: "Oh, no, not a sibling in the world and my parents must be torn between gratitude lest it be another just like me me and disappointment that they didn't get a chance for an improvement; how about yourself?" - are right out. It's not a lack of interest, it's just a Thing. You know how Things are.
---
He sucks at disguising.
The little things that many people miss - mannerisms, carriage, gestures, how Americans and Europeans count on their fingers differently - he can keep track of and execute flawlessly. He can slip on a character like a clean shirt, change his personality and behaviour to fit the mask he's wearing (whether it's literal or figurative). He was an actor, and he still is one.
But all the little details in the world won't help once he has to open his mouth, and there's not a thing in the world he can do about it.
---
Roderick... well, Roderick was his fault. He done wrong by that boy, even though he didn't mean to. He hadn't even started chasing after Miranda yet; he had a devastating crush on her nearly instantly, but he hadn't yet done a thing to act upon it. Roderick was perceptive enough to notice the blindingly obvious, and he knew what was coming before Terry did; and so he took evasive action. Roderick was always hot-headed - Miranda had a temper herself, of course, as can be seen by the fact that she ended up literally winging a coffee-pot at her husband, but it took time to wind her up, whereas Roddie was quite entirely temperamental. Red-headed and Irish and given to flaring up, and Terry the calm cool one making sarcastic quips by his side (or perched behind him on the scooter) while he cursed people out or straight-up got into fights. The temper had never been turned against Terry before that last painful period, and it proved devastating (in fact, it's possible that he latched even more firmly onto that silly crush on Miranda than he otherwise might have, because of the rebound effect). At first Terry wasn't even sure what he'd properly done, but he knew he'd done something - no sense of the Wrongfully Wounded or the Martyr, just a terribly unfocussed and nonspecific sense of guilt for some crime he had yet to commit. He was paying too much attention to that American girl, and not enough to the boy he had been with for oh ages, and he done him wrong.
Roderick wasn't his first, though he was the first one that ended in an actual breakup. All the others just sort of stopped, or went away; boys a couple of years older at school leaving when they graduated, so-long-I'll-write-or-something only of course neither of them did, that sort of thing, and the one he was with right before Roddie just utterly stopped talking to him one day, as if he didn't exist or something, which was off-putting and disappointing but not entirely surprising somehow; besides, it wasn't like they had been really serious, had they, or the fellow wouldn't have done like that. Then he met Roddie and they got on like a couple of bandits and went drifting about and riding scooters and not finishing degrees and being absolutely happy and not abandoning each other and all this, which was something like a miracle, and then Terry went and fucked it up without even intending to and was left with a bite-mark that took two weeks to heal and a hissed (and ultimately truthful) warning that she would never be as good to him as Roddie had and one of Roddie's shirts that had gotten mixed up in his washing and which he tossed out on the rubbish heap on the third day.
And it really was his own fault, because he had done him wrong and gotten all moon-eyed over some girl that he could never make fall in love with him anyway.
He got ragingly drunk on Nights One and Two, and then Stiff-Upper-Lipped and Pack-Up-Your-Troublesed his way merrily on and began tossing himself at Miranda like there was no tomorrow. And we know how well that ended up going for them both. (Although at least in that there was no blame for either, or at worst blame equally shared, both of them being a bit stupid and not paying sufficient attention to one another's thoughts and intentions. And at least when they broke up they found that Not Living Together made it possible to get back to being rather good friends just as they had been when they first started spending time together.)
[Lessons learned and internalized, tacitly and without conscious realization, because conscious realization of these assumptions would make everything really emo and he doesn't knowingly think that way:
From his parents, from the pre-Roderick relationships, and from everyone else: Everybody leaves.
From Roderick: Don't be the one that gets left.
From Miranda: Don't wait around and drag it out. The quickest cut is the kindest.
"Don't let them be People" is a later addition to these rules, and was learned from life as a Spy.]
