[Ugh how gutting. That is miserable. Nothing feels quite so bad as losing photos you can't replace. The financial part of it blows too. Hopefully the new phone will have a long and healthy life with no suicidal sink-dives.]
Aurus was, for the most part, a good person. But there were places where (as certain people would be quick to say) he was also a sly bastard. There was no maliciousness to any of what he did, but there was a certain degree of dissimulation. And there was also a masterful poker face.
So the moment that the surprise registered on Hank's face was the moment when, to Aurus's mind, the two of them started playing an oblique kind of game around meanings said and unsaid, suspicions provoked but unconfirmed. For Aurus, the game was this: just how far could he stretch playing innocent before Hank really started to catch on? And if he started to catch on (Aurus genuinely planned to avoid that) just what shape would his suspicions take?
It was all a sort of misdirection, a way of hiding a topic of discussion in plain sight.
"Fewer than you might expect," he answered honestly. "And fewer among my race than among humans in my world. That, I suppose, is why I ask: I'm used to the idea that humans find sylvari a little strange--too blunt, a little indelicate about topics humans tend to treat quite sensitively, matters like sex and death.
"I have learned the norms of human culture in my own world, but I don't know them here. I don't even know if it makes sense to speak of a mutant culture, per se--whether you have different norms of your own." He paused here and then amended, "Well, I know that mutants prefer not to be asked prying questions about themselves and their abilities. Charles told me that much."
He wasn't lying when he said any of this, but he was deflecting attention away from the underlying questions he hoped to suss out answers to--things like whether casual sex was permissible here, whether there was social censure against particular sorts of couples--the sorts of questions that he didn't think he ought to ask Charles, but that he did think he ought to know the answers to to understand the man better.
no subject
Aurus was, for the most part, a good person. But there were places where (as certain people would be quick to say) he was also a sly bastard. There was no maliciousness to any of what he did, but there was a certain degree of dissimulation. And there was also a masterful poker face.
So the moment that the surprise registered on Hank's face was the moment when, to Aurus's mind, the two of them started playing an oblique kind of game around meanings said and unsaid, suspicions provoked but unconfirmed. For Aurus, the game was this: just how far could he stretch playing innocent before Hank really started to catch on? And if he started to catch on (Aurus genuinely planned to avoid that) just what shape would his suspicions take?
It was all a sort of misdirection, a way of hiding a topic of discussion in plain sight.
"Fewer than you might expect," he answered honestly. "And fewer among my race than among humans in my world. That, I suppose, is why I ask: I'm used to the idea that humans find sylvari a little strange--too blunt, a little indelicate about topics humans tend to treat quite sensitively, matters like sex and death.
"I have learned the norms of human culture in my own world, but I don't know them here. I don't even know if it makes sense to speak of a mutant culture, per se--whether you have different norms of your own." He paused here and then amended, "Well, I know that mutants prefer not to be asked prying questions about themselves and their abilities. Charles told me that much."
He wasn't lying when he said any of this, but he was deflecting attention away from the underlying questions he hoped to suss out answers to--things like whether casual sex was permissible here, whether there was social censure against particular sorts of couples--the sorts of questions that he didn't think he ought to ask Charles, but that he did think he ought to know the answers to to understand the man better.