Thank you so, so much for this comment! I worried a great deal about that shift -- and then I though 'no, because this IS what happens to emotions in one way or another around that stage of drunkenness, and it means ALL of it can be shown.'

I'm incredibly pleased that you were struck by how that shift changes Richard's silence form one thing to another without him appearing in fact to move at all -- it was one of the things I most wanted to come across.

My obsession with words and meaning. It has ended up in a fic. Why am I not surprised?

*hugs*