what an impolite fellow

"Fuck," said Billy, dispassionately.

"Fuck?" repeated Minoth, a query something like a ping between otherwise reticent farmwork partners.

Billy isn't afflicted by most of the usual curses of his generation - that is to say, he's perfectly conversant with an actual phone call, as opposed to needing to hide behind the security of a text message bubble, and Minoth has even been able to convince him that he can call, whenever necessary, instead of consistently worrying that he'd be a nuisance, thus reducing himself back to a text for its other key utility of asynchrony.

He speaks very well with people twice or three times his age, while also maintaining the ability to communicate with his peers, few as those are, and younger children. Obviously, Minoth knows why this is, and he doesn't love it, but he loves Billy for it.

It's very rare that maturity in a young person doesn't inspire pride. How else would Minoth ever be proud of himself?

But, he's got more than his fair share of immaturity now. Such immaturity that would lead him to 1) swear around the kid and 2) double down on it.

"Sorry about that," he says, to the silence in the stable uncut by the shifting of hay. "I must be ruining you."

"Beg pardon?" It takes a lot to get Billy to stop what he's doing, if you're speaking in the tone he knows is the conversational one. So Minoth makes a point of staying his hands with the currycomb until the boy is paying attention.

"You swore."

"Oh, yes. I did."

"And I know that's always been very important to you, never saying a cuss word."

This one is a point that might not, so much, inspire pride, depending on how alternately off- and/or upbeat the kid in question is about it. Sort of like refusing to pierce your ears, so your lobes'll stay pure, whatever that means.

"But that's no fault of yours, Minoth."

"No? You must have gotten it from me."

(Not to imply that Billy has been so overwhelmingly sheltered that he doesn't even know the fuck word.)

Billy blinks. Once, twice.

"Oh, no. I heard it from Bart."

"The electrician?"

(Not like Minoth's surprised.)

"When he saw my moped. I believe his words were, 'Fuck, little man, that's a sweet ride!'"

"Couldn't be cornier if he tried," Minoth says, shaking his head.

Billy tilts his own to one side. "To a certain definition of corny."

"I suppose you're right. Where would we be if he said the same of Dove?"

Lost among Billy's awkwardly enigmatic half-quirked smile is the real question: what had he even been swearing at?