It might have been a mess, [Julius allows Marcus, of that.] But I don't think it needs to be. We're already ...
[He breaks of and smiles, absent and brief, as something else occurs to him.]
I am more in the habit of being discreet than otherwise, even after years of not needing to be. And I realize that it can make me easy to misread, at times. But none of us were trained to navigate the world we now inhabit. It occurred to me, when Petrana suggested it, that if we're fashioning something new for ourselves, we may as well build it to suit.
[He pauses, as if he might leave it there. But as he looks at the other two of them, he decides to take a bit more of a chance on being frank than he might.]
If we'd spoken of this before, I might have suspected that you'd take me on as something you didn't mind, for Petrana's sake. I don't know if I could have borne that for long, though I might have tried for her happiness that way. But if you think it wouldn't be that. If it would be all three of us together ... that wouldn't come between anything. It would be something new.
no subject
[He breaks of and smiles, absent and brief, as something else occurs to him.]
I am more in the habit of being discreet than otherwise, even after years of not needing to be. And I realize that it can make me easy to misread, at times. But none of us were trained to navigate the world we now inhabit. It occurred to me, when Petrana suggested it, that if we're fashioning something new for ourselves, we may as well build it to suit.
[He pauses, as if he might leave it there. But as he looks at the other two of them, he decides to take a bit more of a chance on being frank than he might.]
If we'd spoken of this before, I might have suspected that you'd take me on as something you didn't mind, for Petrana's sake. I don't know if I could have borne that for long, though I might have tried for her happiness that way. But if you think it wouldn't be that. If it would be all three of us together ... that wouldn't come between anything. It would be something new.