I Don't Want To Talk About It

Writers: Dana, Shelly
Date Posted: 22nd November 2005

Characters: Syntara, Ar'lis
Description: When Syntara comes to check up on Ar'lis, she finds him drunk, and things don't go so well...
Location: River Bluff Weyr
Date: month 9, day 6 of Turn 3

Syntara found herself wandering down the hall to Ar'lis's weyr after her evening meal. Lately she had been catching wind of some rather unusual rumors about the bronzerider and his last flight and something inside of her needed to know if the rumors were true; she needed to check on him; she needed him to be all right - too much had been changing too quickly lately. He had to be all right.

"Ar'lis?" She didn't know what she's find inside his weyr but she prepared for the worst.

The bronzerider looked up as she came in. He had an ale bottle in his hand, and four others were scattered by his bare feet. He wore pants, but no tunic. It was too sharding _hot_ in here to wear one. Ar'lis took another swig before baring his teeth in an almost feral smile. "Hey, beautiful." Surprisingly, his words didn't slur, despite how drunk he was.

The breath was pulled from her chest. This could only mean that the rumors were true - the reality behind the rumors might even be worse than what was getting around the weyrs. "What are you doing, Ar'lis?" The tenderness that leapt into her voice surprised her.

"Drinking." He held out the bottle to her. "I can share. It's good.
Strong, but good." Moving over, he patted the cushion beside him. "Sit down, love, and have a swig."

"Oh I think you've had about enough, love." She took the bottle from him and put it quite out of his reach. "It's about time you sobered up. You just do this to yourself all the time."

He frowned at her, and once she came within reach, he grabbed her hips and pulled her down onto his lap. "I do what to myself all the time?" Shards, but she felt _good_ against him... Ar'lis lowered his lips to suckle at her earlobe.

Syntara gently made sure her earlobe was out of the way, too, although she stayed in his lap. "I've been hearing things, Ar'lis." She was rather serious, but fairly sure that he would be too drunk to notice.

"Have you?" He moved his lips across her hairline. "This is a Weyr, darling, lots of people hear lots of things..."

"But are they true things?"

It was then when what she was hinting at pierced through the drunken fog.
Slowly, he pulled back from her and stared down into her face. "What have you heard?" His voice was too quiet.

Syntara took a moment to consider her wording before speaking. "... That the flight you had with Lenala went... wrong." She searched his eyes for his reaction.

He stiffened against her, and his eyes went hard. "Who told you that?" he growled, his hands on her tightening.

Syntara gently took his hands from her waist. "Everyone in a weyr talks, Ar'lis. But I'm here as a friend - a lover - asking for the truth and making sure that you're coming through all this all right."

Suddenly, the easy-going, amorous bronzerider was replaced by someone else. His eyes flashed with anger as he looked down at her, the memories welling in him - the reality that he thought he had accepted coming back to stare, unforgiving, at him in the face. "The _truth_?" His laugh was harsh. "What would you like to know, Syntara? It seems as though you've heard everything already!" He wondered how the sharding people of this sharding Weyr were screwing with the facts, twisting what had happened into something even more horrible.

"Fine!" The greenrider shoved off his lap. "Be angry at me for not believing everything I hear and for coming to you before I judged! I guess you want me to be like everybody else and do it behind your back!"

Her sudden flare of temper made him angrier. "I didn't _say_ that," he growled. He _knew_ that his anger directed towards her was irrational.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, beneath all the fog of alcohol, he _knew_ it, but right now, all he could sharding think about was what had happened.

"You might as well have." She moodily crossed her arms and decided to hope it was only the alcohol that made him speak that way to her.

"I don't want to talk about it." It was hard enough trying to sharding talk with U'val. And he couldn't forget the way Gaiya had reacted when he'd told her.

"You can't just shut me out like this! I'm in - I'm going to-" She couldn't even finish her sentences anymore. Shards those bottles of his looked good. "Why do you have to be such a sharding ass?!"

"_How_ am _I_ being a sharding ass, Syntara? You're sharding not making any sharding sense!" Or was that because of the ale? Angrily, he raked a hand through his hair. "You can't just expect me to sharding pour my heart out about this. Damn it, Syntara, I can barely talk to _U'val_ -
and he's a sharding mindhealer!" Shards, his temples were pounding. He was hardly making any sense to _himself_!

"And I care about you more than anyone else in this weyr! I'm not trying to make you tell me about what happened, I'm trying to get you to tell me what's happened since - or do you even know?"

He stared at her in irritated incomprehension. "Quit talking in sharding circles and _tell_ me what you're talking about!"

"Nothing! I'm not talking about anything!" She quieted herself. "I should go."

"Fine."

Syntara looked at him curiously. "Did I really think that I could be in love with you?" She mumbled it more to herself than to him. "I was fool to have thought so."

Ar'lis covered his shock by letting out a bark of drunk, harsh laughter.
"Maybe." Even as the word left his lips, he felt something inside him snap.

The greenrider nodded slightly and worried her lower lip. She wanted to be _angry_, she wanted to storm out on him, to _leave_ him, but instead she just looked down at the floor. "Maybe..." And with that, she left.

Last updated on the November 22nd 2005

Welcome to Triad Weyrs!

I Don't Want To Talk About It