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[patientman]

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[notleavingquietly]

"You are just going to continue to touch me and be rational and calm no matter what I say, aren't you?" He does lean back, but he doesn't actually--

Okay, no, he wants to. He'd just rather bite something.

[patientman]

"Most likely, yes. If you'd rather something else, I can make the effort to cry or bring on some histrionics, but I can't swear they'll be good enough to pass as genuine."

Bashir hums and just...well, just keeps doing what he's been accused of.

[notleavingquietly]

"How good are at you throwing punches?" he asks, only kind of joking.

At least at some point alcohol will sedate him instead of just disinhibiting him?

[patientman]

"Terrible." He knows a bit in theory, and has practiced enough to get by in a bar fight, but it's not anything he's good at. (Not being instantly good at something irks him.)

"Why? Do you want me to hit you?"

[notleavingquietly]

"No, I want to hit you."

Which... sounds terrible.

"I hit the Doctor by the way. In the face. I have no clear idea why except he was between me and tea."

...Is he doing this on purpose?

Prove it.

[patientman]

"Not when you're drunk." Bashir has no problem with the thought of getting knocked around, but only when they're both fully sober. "And not when I'm drunk, either."

"How do you want to hit me? And is it just the act of hitting or do you want to hurt me?"

[notleavingquietly]

"I don't want to hurt you, I likely don't even actually want to hit you - though I am often tempted to bite you bloody. I want to commit an act of violence and be irrational."

...Bashir, dammit. Stop being successful at calming him down.

[patientman]

"I see. If it's that desperate a need, perhaps we can redirect your impulses towards something less organic." He doesn't bite Crais, but there's a definite gnaw on his shoulder.

"Do you want to take a mug, go down to street level, and find somewhere to break it?"

[notleavingquietly]

"I've bought the mugs here. I am not destroying them and I don't understand why I would need to go down to street level to do it, anyway."

You miserable - Okay the gnawing is nice enough to get a pass.

[patientman]

"Because I like to walk about barefoot and I don't want to risk ceramic shards embedded in anything." Gnaw. A bit of a snuffle, just to get the scent of Crais and Fireball. Not a bad combination.

"Eat a grape." A pause. "Or feed me grapes."

[notleavingquietly]

He rolls his eyes hard, finishes the bottle - yes, all in one go - then sits up enough to grab the plate of grapes and shoves one inelegantly into Bashir's mouth.

"I want my ship back, and why are you responding to me punching the Doctor by not responding?"

[patientman]

Mrpfle. It's a good noise for grapes. He doesn't bite Crais' fingers, but it's a close thing.

"Would it help if I wept at how you've treated my contracted Submissive? Demanded retribution? Had you pilloried in public?" He steals another couple grapes. "I want your ship back as well. I never even met him and, and if I could I would return you to him."

[notleavingquietly]

He has decided he no longer wishes to have a linear conversation - because he is drunk now.

"You would probably hate him. Did you just say you're finally reaching the point of not wanting to go home? Or rather at risk of it?"

[patientman]

"The risk." Bashir huffs and he's going to snag a cushion and rearrange Crais to his liking. Here. Sit. Lean. They can both be comfortable.

"And you can tell me about him."

[notleavingquietly]

"Possessive. Paranoid. Impulsive. Almost entirely emotional. Violent." Look, he loves Talyn. He is not deluded about Talyn. At all. It was part of the reason his options in the end had been to entirely remove Talyn's memory - or die with him.

[patientman]

Bashir makes a thoughtful hum, and continues to listen. He can understand loving someone despite or alongside some of their less than savoury personality traits. "I've heard you say those things before, but tell me, what did you love about him?"

[notleavingquietly]

"I hate that word," he says, sounding more tired than anything. "I understood him, he was mine, and I was his. It really isn't complicated, Bashir."

[patientman]

"Probably not, but it's not a feeling I know or understand." Another quiet sound as he tugs Crais' hair and rubs at his shoulder. "I cannot imagine being in sync with another being. Not feeling like I need a dictionary, a manual, and a lot of luck to piece together what they're really saying."

[notleavingquietly]

He bites just under Bashir's jaw, relatively sharply but nowhere near hard enough to do more than sting a bit. "Why do you think I came to you to complain about people and my continual confusion at them? You love Jadzia. What does that mean to you?"

[patientman]

"I love her as a friend and I was intimate with Dax's next host, but I never understood her, not really." He chuffs at being bitten and rubs his jaw against Crais. "What it means to me is that I tried. That I cared for her, loved her and do love her, but we were never really each others."

"It was optimism or naivete or poor timing."

[notleavingquietly]

"We talked a little about host and symbiont. In some ways." He wriggles his hand between the couch and Bashir's back, then just leaves them there. "I think in some ways that is closer to Talyn and I - though... less and with major differences- than whatever qualifies as the sort of love that happens with two... entirely separate people. Now tell me what you mean by poor timing - and who was Dax's next host?"

[patientman]

"A year or so after her current time, Jadzia meets the man she's going to marry. They only have a couple years together before she is attacked by a pah'wraith, an energy based life form carried by a man named Dukat. I did everything I could but could only save Dax, the symbiont, and even that was touch and go." The hand is good and it just encourages Bashir to ...well, no, he would lean in, but first, he is going to have a very healthy drink from his glass. And maybe another, smaller sip before he resettles.

"And then, shortly after, because we were still in the middle of a war, Ezri Dax came to us. We worked together for a little over a year, we became close, and she left to go find new experiences for herself and Dax."

[notleavingquietly]

"That sounds frustrating, and painful," he says, candidly, though the pain is a bit of a guess. No protest about the healthy drinking, though, or commentary.

Like, oh, how even to him that's a tell that his 'pain' guess isn't much of one.

"Do you remember a post Ana Steele made a while back, asking about plans of what people would do if the City attempted to separate them from their... romantic partners." Stumbling over that because he's still not sure it's the right phrase for what he wants to convey.

[patientman]

Bashir does not speak about any possible frustration or pain. He does not take to losing a patient well and while he might have a bit of a buzz going on, he is nowhere near drunk enough to speak about such a thing in detail.

"Tell me what she said?"

[notleavingquietly]

"It isn't what she said. What she said was that she'd fight, carry a gun, anything, but she was not going to be separated from him." He's forgotten the name of the guy. "Idealistic. Typically human. Unreasonable. What Cyram said to her is what stuck with me and that is that love happens everywhere, all the time - and also that it comes and goes and that you enjoy it when you have it and move on."