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You’re nervous when you go to Directly Acknowledge your candelabra. You knew Scandalabra so well, but now…
Are you going to be starting over? Will you even like Jon Wick? It feels like a mistake to try to talk to him again so soon; it was only yesterday that you found out. You wish you could take the time to process it. More than ever, even before the Dateviators, you feel alone.
But you don’t take time to process it. Ignoring him, or even just talking to his inanimate form and not giving him the chance to respond, seems too cruel. He’s probably feeling vulnerable after being exposed, and you do still care about him.
You put on the Dateviators and focus on the candelabra on your table. Morning light is pouring in through the dining room window and glinting off of his bright, silver-colored finish. The brightness doesn’t seem to suit him the way it used to.
When Jon appears, he looks just as dejected as he did yesterday. His posture is slumped, his expression flat. His wick has the same recently-extinguished look that it took on after his secret was revealed, a wisp of smoke emanating from a dim ember.
“So, you wanna fuck?”
Your stomach drops. “What?”
“Do you want to fuck?” he clarifies, enunciating a little more carefully. There’s no emotion in his voice.
“Oh,” you say. “I, uh… No. No. I don’t.”
Jon’s slight frown remains unchanged. “Fine with me.”
For a moment, you stand together in tense silence.
“What do you want, then?” He sounds like he’s already getting annoyed with you.
You focus on keeping your breathing steady, trying not to choke up. “I just- I just wanted to talk. I want to spend time with you.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Huh. Yeah?”
“And I… I don’t know. I miss you.”
“You miss The Scandalabra.” He waves his hands in a broad, mocking gesture. “I get it. Sorry I’m not entertaining anymore, I guess.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Tears pool in your eyes and you wipe them away with your sleeve.
“Hey, c’mon, don’t… I’m sorry. I didn’t-“ He gives a frustrated sigh. “I didn’t mean to make you upset.”
You can’t bring yourself to tell him it’s fine. It certainly doesn’t feel fine. “What was with that greeting?” you ask instead. “And you brought up sex right away yesterday, too. Why?”
He still looks despondent, but his eyes widen just a little at your bluntness. “Uh. I mean, I thought we had… I dunno, good chemistry?” He grimaces. “I wasn’t trying to make you uncomfortable, I just thought…”
He trails off into uneasy silence. You blink away more tears, tasting salt as they run down to your lips. The cat clock on the wall ticks its steady rhythm, and you hope he isn’t having to bear witness to this.
“I’m sorry,” Jon tries again, gesturing helplessly. His frown doesn’t look as apathetic as it did a moment ago. “What… what can I do?”
“What?”
He straightens up a little. Not posing, but not slouching quite as much as he has been since you and Maggie exposed him. “I know what I did wasn’t right.” There’s a roughness to his voice that wasn’t there before. “I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I am sorry. I didn’t think… Fuck, I didn’t think you’d care this much. If there’s- If you-” He cuts himself off with a frustrated little growl. “Just, tell me if there’s anything I can do to fix this. I could be Scandalabra again, if that’s what you want?”
You’re still upset with him, but mostly for how he was talking to you earlier. It’s a shock to know that the English dandy you’d been friends with is actually just… this guy, but you aren’t angry with him over it. He clearly has something deeper going on and it doesn’t seem like he meant any real harm.
Jon stands there waiting as you take a moment to think of what you want to say to him. His posture is back to being terrible, but it’s not the same lazy slouch. He’s curled in on himself; hunched over, small and defensive.
“I want to get to know you properly,” you say. “That’s all.”
There’s a suspiciously long delay before he scoffs at the idea. “I’m nothing special. You’d be better off spending your time with someone else.”
“I don’t want to. I want to spend time with you.”
He gives a single, sad laugh. “I guess I already knew you were stubborn. Are you sure that’s what you want? There isn’t much to know about me.”
“You don’t have to talk about yourself if you don’t want to.” You pull out a chair at the table and sit down. “Did you hear what happened between Luke and Friar Errol the other day?”
His demeanor softens. “You know you don’t have to humor me anymore.”
“I was never humoring you. So, did you?”
He laughs through his nose and takes a seat in the chair next to you. “Alright, fine. No, I didn’t. Go on.”
Smiling, you start to explain the situation to him, playing up how lurid and salacious it all was, leaning over and lowering your voice. He replies to your first revelation with a mild, “Oh shit, really?”
You don’t know if it’s the gossip itself or the return to a familiar dynamic, but he seems to brighten as you speak. His posture straightens and his eyes aren’t quite as dull. A few secrets in, and his response to your latest item of gossip is a chuckled “oh my!” that soothes the ache in your chest. He’s still Jon, his voice is still lower and his accent more American, but you start to wonder. Was anything about him really fake in any meaningful way? Obviously he’s not a genuine silver antique, but that isn’t what matters to you.
You lean closer and whisper something particularly scandalous about Daisuke in his ear and he blushes up to his forehead. The laugh he gives is awfully close to a giggle.