[Paul looks up, the pencil held lightly in his hand, tip just above the page. He looks at Lazarus the way he might look at a shell, or a leaf, an incisive, memorizing observation.]
That's how it starts. Injuries into inconveniences, self-dismissal. [He straightens himself, draws his shoulders back into socket, his voice firm.] People aren't means. They're ends. I'm not going to treat you as anything less, no matter what you tell me, and you're not going to make me try.
[It's a directness that comes more naturally than he expects it to, with someone who, for all his help, is still so much an unknown. It's a commitment to a position that Paul knows as a vulnerability that could be exploited: that there is a limit to what he's willing to do to people.
no subject
[Paul looks up, the pencil held lightly in his hand, tip just above the page. He looks at Lazarus the way he might look at a shell, or a leaf, an incisive, memorizing observation.]
That's how it starts. Injuries into inconveniences, self-dismissal. [He straightens himself, draws his shoulders back into socket, his voice firm.] People aren't means. They're ends. I'm not going to treat you as anything less, no matter what you tell me, and you're not going to make me try.
[It's a directness that comes more naturally than he expects it to, with someone who, for all his help, is still so much an unknown. It's a commitment to a position that Paul knows as a vulnerability that could be exploited: that there is a limit to what he's willing to do to people.
(Or, at least, he wants there to be.)]