Work Text:
Love Languages
Paris, 2383
It was cold outside, and raining. They’d given up on the day before it started, and long since retreated to the bedroom, where a stack of heated blankets and the proximity of the other provided everything needed.
Parmak was propped up comfortably against the headboard, reading a book the other man had pressed on him. Truth be told, he found the style rather arch, something he would not say when they talked. The ambassador, meanwhile, had his head on Parmak’s chest and was holding a padd on which the Federation’s most popular satirical news programme was showing. The ambassador claimed his interest was purely professional although Parmak strongly suspected other factors at play. He was snacking on a bag of something savoury. Parmak sometimes caught him eating the most terrible trash, not entirely wise for a man his age. He was now in the habit of performing multiple quiet interventions, in much the same way the ambassador wouldn’t let him go out wearing unironed clothes.
Someone cracked a joke onscreen about the President. The ambassador laughed out loud. Parmak bent and kissed him on the top of his head. “I love you,” he murmured, unaffectedly.
The ambassador froze. Oh, thought Parmak, now what? He reviewed his use of that phrase over the period of their acquaintanceship, and, realising that for some reason it hadn’t yet been said, settled in for another talk. “Something the matter, Elim?”
“Not in the slightest.”
Only you’ve gone rigid, thought Parmak. “You don’t seem very comfortable all of a sudden. Was it what I said?”
“I didn’t hear what you said.” He tapped the screen. “I was watching this.”
Parmak had long since decided that the more blatant lies signalled a man in defensive mode. Apart from the ones said simply to cause trouble or entertain. Either way, he’d found it was best just to breeze past them.
“Didn’t you?” said Parmak. “I said, ‘I love you’.”
There was a pause. Parmak ruffled the other man’s hair. “It’s common,” he explained – gently, and, yes, a little impishly, “for the other party to respond in some way. They might return the sentiment, for example, or they might offer thanks, or they might simply smile…”
“I… you… yes, well, it was unexpected,” said the ambassador. “It’s not the kind of thing one says lightly.”
“No,” agreed Parmak. “It’s not.” And yet, somehow, Parmak had said it many times over the course of his life. Less so, admittedly, in recent years. “When was the last time someone said it to you?”
“When was the last time someone said it to you?” the ambassador parried.
Parmak, being a fair-minded man, took a moment to think. “Well, it’s hard to say—”
“I thought it might be.” The ambassador made a show of returning his attention to the padd. “There you are—”
“Everyone said it so often. Memi said it at the end of every conversation we had.”
Now that surprised him. He lowered the padd and looked up. “I don’t believe you.”
“Yes, from when I was small. Whenever we spoke. That was how she ended her calls. My sisters – well, less so of course, siblings don’t do that kind of thing, do they—” Oh, he thought, tread carefully here… “Well, we didn’t, and I don’t think we were unusual in that respect. But, still, I was in no doubt how they felt, and I should certainly hope they felt the same way.” He thought of the last conversation he’d had with Elani, the middle of his three older sisters. She’d lived in Lakarian City with her spouse and her two children.
Take care of yourself, isi…. Keep your head down… We’ll speak at the end of the week… Had they said explicitly that they loved each other, in those exact words? It had always been completely clear. Still, he wished, now, that he’d made a point of saying it. But then nobody could have guessed what was going to happen next, could they? Absently, he picked up the bag from which the ambassador had been eating and put it on the table by his side, out of reach. Not wise for a man his age.
“Kelas?” said the other man, softly. “Are you all right?”
“Oh, yes, I was just trying to think back. I was trying to give you an honest answer.”
“You disappeared for a moment, that’s all.”
“Just remembering. Did your…” Parmak paused. He had been about to say ‘parents’, but there was an unspoken agreement that the subject of fathers was best avoided if at all possible, and particularly in this room. “Did your mother not say it?”
The ambassador gave a small laugh. “Not one of her more commonly used phrases, no.”
“Did she have many commonly used phrases, then?”
“A fair few, yes.”
“Tell me some of them. Please.”
The ambassador was looking at him thoughtfully. He could see, of course, that this was deflection. A way to not remember. Was it fair, Parmak wondered, to push the burden of memory back onto him? Make him carry the weight of this conversation? He decided to let the ambassador decide.
“Oh, well…” said his companion, “I suppose the most popular one was, ‘Make yourself useful’. That functioned as, ‘Hello, it’s good to see you again after so long’. What else? ‘Will finds a way’—”
“You say that, Elim. You say that all the time.”
“Do I? Well, thank you, memi, it’s been very helpful over the years. I mustn’t forget, ‘You’re too clever for your own good’, that was popular—”
“You are too clever for your own good.”
“I know, I know… Let me think, what else… ‘Don’t be cheeky’, she liked that one, obviously.”
Parmak laughed.
“And an honourable mention to, ‘You’re too thin’. I think that was the closest she would come to an outright declaration of affection. Food generally followed.”
“Good food?”
“Always.”
“Anything else?”
“There were some dialect phrases she used sometimes. I didn’t know what they meant.”
“She didn’t speak it with you?”
“No. There was a song she sang when I was small, when I wasn’t well… I don’t remember the words, though. Just her singing. Oh, there was one thing she used to say that stuck.”
“Go on. Let’s hear it.”
“Must I?” He pressed his face into Parmak’s shoulder, looking for cover.
“Please.”
“Oh, very well…” He pushed himself up onto his elbow, so they were more or less face-to-face. “Wait a moment, I have to get into part if I’m going to speak dialect. I can’t speak dialect without getting into part and it’s been a while since I’ve done it.”
In front of Parmak’s eyes, a subtle transformation took place. The ambassador – that man of sharp and effortless poise and grace and polish – slipped away, and another man appeared, someone blunted, hardened, formed entirely of dust and desert and drought. The whole shape of his upper body changed, becoming weighted down; his face sagged and aged. His eyes, startingly, were no different; they still looked at you as if they knew everything about you. From his mouth came harsh sounds that Parmak recognised as cognate but could not parse as separate words.
“What does that mean? What did you say?”
In the blink of an eye, the ambassador was back. How unsettling when he did this. It made you wonder how much of the current persona was performance. Whether it was all just a shimmering array of performances…
“Elim, did you ever work out what it meant?”
“It took me a while, but I did, eventually. It means, ‘You are my sun, my warmth, my world’. On reflection—” He gave Parmak a very steady look that surely was free of artifice. “—I think that was saying, ‘I love you.’” He stretched, twisting his head away, perhaps to release the last of whoever that other man might have been, perhaps so that they were no longer at risk of looking directly at each other. “Maybe,” he said, “when you’re ready, you’ll tell me more about your sisters.”
“What?”
The ambassador sat up. He picked up his padd and, opening a little space between them, reached over to put it down on the table by the bed. “You know, when I was young, I used to spend hours walking round Ses’erakh. I loved walking through Paldar. All those big families. They looked so happy. I suppose some of them weren’t, but it’s nice to think that you at least were. So I hope you’ll tell me more about your sisters. When you’re ready.”
I am entirely bested, thought Parmak, by no means unhappily. He placed his palm flat upon the ambassador’s back. The other man turned round to face him, and gave him a look that was so transparent, so open, that Parmak had to remind himself to breath. The ambassador bent his head to place upon him a line of kisses, starting just by his ear, and moving steadily south, down his face, his throat, his neck, his chest. When he reached his heart, the ambassador paused.
“Je t’aime aussi,” he whispered, before continuing on his way.
***
2nd April 2026