#hubert oswell

Silent Words

Most people wouldn’t be able to guess it from first meeting her, but Pascal is a pretty observant person. Exceptionally observant, though of the little things. Certain things like dates and exact names are big things she tends to forget, but the little, almost inconsequential details of a situation or a person rarely escape her notice.

This observational quality tends to manifest most with people she likes, mostly her friends but namely Hubert.

It wasn’t apparently well-known (or, at least, no one else in their little motley crew had ever seemed to pick it up), but Hubert never really spoke. Or…he did, quite often and loudly in fact, but that wasn’t really talking, most of the time. Hubert was, by nature, a reserved and quiet person and the majority of anything he ever really said wasn’t spoken in words, but in actions. It had, admittedly, taken her the many months of travel and the time since their more personal relationship began to really start noticing them. But, when she found one, she soon found another and another until she could probably name off a whole list of wordless vocabulary. It was, frankly, quite fascinating, and just one of the many things that made Hubert, well…Hubert.

The first thing she’d noticed had actually taken two occasions to understand. They both worked regularly at home and away and sometimes there was stuff that came up at the Enclave or somewhere in Fendel that required her to zip on over there to try and fix it. Hubert generally had to stay behind because of his own work, but when she did arrive home after days or a week-and-a-half, he always greeted her with a long kiss at the door before running off back to his work. It had surprised her the first time, but the second time she began to hear it, and each subsequent time the message became clearer. When Hubert did that, he was effectively saying “Welcome home, I missed you,” without actually saying it. It wasn’t long after she understood the message that she began returning it for those times when he came home after a long while away on business. He seemed to understand.

After that, she noticed there were actually multiple different kisses he gave her, each with their own meaning. A kiss to her forehead when they woke up was his “Good morning,” and a peck on the lips before bed was “Good night.” Though she wasn’t sure how he knew, whenever she felt upset about something he would generally wrap his arms around her mid-section as a way of asking “Are you okay?” An affirmative answer usually got a quick kiss on her shoulder before he went back to whatever he was doing.

Normally, when they slept, his arms were a natural weight around her waist. But there were times when he’d fully wrap both arms around her and hold her closer to him. This wasn’t that abnormal, but when he held her like that she could always tell when something was upsetting him because of how tightly he was holding her. When that happened she usually tried to coax him into actually talking. Sometimes he would, sometimes he’d deny anything was wrong. Typical Hubert.

These words and messages weren’t just in kisses, though. Most of them weren’t even in physical messages. Hubert was never really a touch-y kind of guy, and that fact barely changed when they began this relationship (though she considers him actively communicating through little touches like kisses to be some progress. Very nice progress). Most of Hubert’s clearest messages, she found, came from the little things he did.

Like on those long nights, sometimes, where research kept her up way past the point where she would’ve normally gone to bed, Hubert would bring hot cocoa up to her office area. It didn’t mean anything in particular, but it was his way of showing concern and a suggestion to take a break. She wasn’t one for taking breaks, though, but answering this gesture with an update of her progress seemed to satisfy him before he’d leave her to her work. Perhaps the gesture doubled as encouragement, because he recognized the importance of her research and work. Concern or encouragement, she appreciated it nonetheless (and, hey, chocolate was really the best cure for research-related exhaustion).

There were other things too. She could always tell when he was over-thinking something because the deepness of the furrow of his eyebrows was directly proportional to how much he was worried or concerned over some internal matter. Talking or giving him a quick peck on the lips generally snapped him out of it.

When he read, he always read sitting up. A book in his lap meant he was open to being interrupted, but if he was clenching a book in both hands interrupting was the furthest from a good idea you could get.

He crossed his arms when he was angry (or being serious, depending on who he was talking to and the set of his shoulders), laced or steepled his fingers when he was brooding on something important, and he pushed his glasses up much more frequently when he was nervous.

If there was a night where she’d fallen asleep at her desk, she normally awoke to find whatever she’d been working on moved slightly out of her way and a blanket tucked around her shoulders.

When they were away from each other, they always kept in touch with the communicator. Even there, where they actually had to use words, these unspoken messages existed, mainly in the length of his messages. One word answers meant something was bothering him or otherwise wrong, two to ten words was normal and long, lengthy messages generally meant he was worried about her. She responded accordingly when she could.

He compulsively cleaned when he was anxious (like when he was waiting to hear back from the President for word on a promotion), sat close to her when relaxed (and conversely would sit far away when not) and would sometimes, unexpectedly, fix her with a certain look that effectively said “Come to bed,” with the inference that it was more a suggestion and not a command (unless he was in a particularly bossy mood that day).

Hubert didn’t normally smile. At least, if he did, he almost always did so outside of her view (he seemed to like keeping up the Stoicface McStoicer expression even when at home). However, the very few smiles he did display, even if only for a few seconds, held small messages too. A smile where both ends of his mouth were slightly upturned was the general happy smile that gave away that he was, to some kind of degree, happy and at ease with whatever made him smile. The left side of his lip curling up meant he felt smug about something; the right side doing the same was reserved for moments of amusement where he might’ve said “You dork,” or some other kind of chide remark of affection. There were smiles made only when he was looking at her, smiles for his brother, small and impartial smiles for official people, and there was a very special smile that usually accompanied the sparkle of his eyes when he spotted something Sunscreen Rangers related. It became something of a game to her to see how often she could get his more happy smiles to appear.

It had taken a lot of time and trial and error, yet there were many other words in this strange language that utilized his whole body that she was still trying to learn. But she found, with the ones she had learned, that he was a lot easier to understand than he had been before, like when they were all traveling together.

Some things, though, she just couldn’t quite figure out the meaning behind, no matter how often they happened. Like why he would randomly decide to hold her hand when they were out of the house somewhere, but would object to any other displays of public affection (well, unless they were 99.9% alone in public, then he would accept small kisses). Maybe it had no real meaning and was just something unique to Hubert.

Most other people would probably have been annoyed or driven crazy by all the silent talking he did, and normally Pascal would’ve been. However, this silent language of his was part of what made him interesting and, to her, made him seem like that much more of a puzzle to solve.

And she likedpuzzles.