Work Text:
LaFontaine slumped into their chair and began to type. “J.P, I think the others laugh at me sometimes.”
“...Is this undesired laughter?” His words flash up onto the screen. “You do have a certain charm and wit, my friend.” Helpfully, an article on the history of comedy appeared at the corner of their screen.
Their brow furrowed, and they continued typing. “I’m not trying to make a joke, if that’s what you mean.”
“...”, then a blank pause, then “...” again. LaF felt themself sigh. That typing pattern, in her empirical study, nearly always lead to Jeep saying something with the tact that only someone raised in the 1860s could possess. And that meant that it was something that would be difficult for them to hear. And that meant that--despite their best efforts--they’d been an idiot. “Consider,” he typed at last, “modern chewing gum.”
“Oookay,” they typed back.
“Its inventor was attempting to create a rubber substitute. But chicle wasn’t useable as such. However, it could readily be flavored and chewed.” LaF waited; obviously J.P. wasn’t inviting her to discourse on the chemical properties of various rubbery compounds. “Now: consider this. You have a certain propensity for making statements which the average person would consider...outlandish, or even startling.”
“Thereby provoking nervous laughter,” they typed back. “But that isn’t much better.”
“Might I suggest,” J.P. began typing again, “that your friends--myself among them--value you in part because of the unusual firings of your brain that so often lead you to say exactly what you are thinking, and that what you are thinking is so brilliant, yet untraditional.”
They typed and deleted a half-dozen things before settling on “well, that’s a very diplomatic way of putting it.”
Their screen shone that much brighter for a moment, as if J.P. were beaming proudly. “In that case, I would advise you to, if necessary, raise the matter with your friends. Ms. Hollis in particular, I expect, would react sympathetically.”
LaF let out a deep breath. Laura was good that way. “Thanks, J.P. I’ll think about it. So, how was your day?” And the pair settled back into the comfortable rhythm of the end of the day.