[PRP] Hello Again (Melvin/Jordan)

[MoonKitsune]

He was keeping himself busy and with the other runic techs or helping with the fencing. It was a good way to feel useful and give a small sense of security and purpose when you felt on edge and paranoid about horsemen attacks. Added to this was the energy that came from always wanting to jump someone, a outlet usually supplied by Lawr, and Melvin looked for anything to keep his body and mind occupied. It's why he took up meal duty of peeling vegetables.

Walking over to the mess tent, he found one hunter already in the middle of working and felt tense as he regarded him. Easing down beside him, he picked up a peeler and a potato. It had been a very long time since they talked.

"Hello Jordan."
 

[prolixity]

Everyone had to take a turn at mess tent duty, and it was something to do in between patrolling and fighting what came out of the jungle. Jordan sat on a camp stool, his hands moving automatically at the task of peeling a pile of potatoes, and let his mind wander, thinking about nothing in particular. He was a million miles away, and so when someone sat down nearby, he barely noticed until Melvin spoke.

He jumped slightly, refocusing. "Hey," he said, a little cautiously. Last time he and Melvin had spoken, they hadn't parted on particularly comfortable terms, and Jordan wasn't totally sure where they stood now.  

[MoonKitsune]

Melvin jumped when Jordan jerked to attention and instantly felt bad gen pulled him from whatever deep thoughts he was having.

"Sorry! I didn't mean to startle you." He looked back down and worked in his potato, lost in what would make a safe conversation starter. After all this time secluding himself to just Lawr's company and breaking everything off so badly with everyone, he often felt like he was longing for a second chance he didn't deserve. And yet he missed everyone terribly. He missed a lot that Lawr didn't provide, didn't understand, or just didn't see as important.

He missed sanity.

"How you been?" He tentatively asked.

 

[prolixity]

"No problem, I was just kind of zoning out," Jordan answered. He put the potato he'd been working on into the bowl of peeled potatoes and picked up the next one. He wasn't really sure why Melvin was starting a conversation now, after months of silence; he'd been pretty sure Melvin didn't want to hear from him. Maybe he'd been wrong about that, though.

"I'm all right," he said. "Keeping busy." It was a cliched answer, but it was true, also. He'd fallen into a habit of working more than he was required to so that he didn't have too many empty hours to himself. "How about you?"  

[MoonKitsune]

"Oh....That's good....keeping busy and also looks." He finished a potato and took off a brown spot before placing it into the bowl with a thud.

He reached over for another and started peeling again.

"Just been working. Don't really get out much. Kinda was.....tied up in things. But, seems like I'm free now." A grim smile twitched at the corners of his lips as he went quiet again.

"I've..... been pretty shitty to a lot of people."
 

[prolixity]

"I've been working a lot too," Jordan said, and shot a sideways look at Melvin, thoughtful, assessing. He pried an eye out of the potato, one that had started sprouting. It sounded like something had happened to Melvin, and he was immediately curious as to what, but things were awkward. He wouldn't ask. Melvin would talk about it if he felt like talking about it.

"Didn't think you were going to talk to me again," he said in response to the last comment, carefully neutral. Yeah, he might have said, but that ran the risk of shutting down the conversation, and at the very least he didn't want the remainder of this task to be performed in cold, unpleasant silence.  

[MoonKitsune]

He was surprised the conversation was going this long and yet he still prepared himself to be s**t down at any moment or called out for what he had done.

"I don't feel I have much of a right to talk to anyone again after the choices I made. After all the bridges I burned down. I guess this would be groveling...I just don't like crawling on the floor to show it." He scrapped the top of a potato a s tossed it in the bucket, moving for another.

"Doesn't mean you can't tell me to ******** off."
He could and Melvin would understand.

 

[prolixity]

Jordan was quiet for long moments, watching his hands as he peeled, thinking it over. What had happened to Melvin? Something had shaken the other man up, shaken him out of the willful blindness he'd been losing himself in, and maybe he'd realized he was mostly alone. Maybe Jordan could empathize with that.

"I'm not going to tell you to ******** off," he said finally. "We were friends longer than that." He shrugged one shoulder, kept his eyes on his task. "You made some bad choices, yeah, but hell. I've made some bad choices." He'd been isolating himself, and maybe he wasn't as okay with that as he might have been thinking, and Melvin was reaching out, looking for a connection again, starting an apology.  

[MoonKitsune]

"Yeah, we were friends for a long time and you were looking out to me as a friend. Lots of people were, and Instead if holding onto that, I reached out to something else I didn't want to loose. I made a choice. I haven't even tried talking to anyone since. Not even tried to appologize really."

He dropped another potato in and grabbed another, working to rip out spots and sprouts. "I left everyone alone to deal with their own s**t and dangers."

 

[prolixity]

Jordan dropped a strip of peeling into the garbage and paused to study Melvin's expression. "I'm not going to just say it's okay," he said after a moment, "because you wouldn't believe me and it wasn't anyway; I've ... resented it, some. But ... you're here, apologizing. That counts for something."

Thinking it over alone, he'd imagined being harsher, clinging onto the grudge. But he was finding that he couldn't do that, not in the face of subdued guilt and what felt like an honest attempt to reach out and rebuild a burnt bridge. And he was lonely, too.  

[MoonKitsune]

He was quiet as he let his thoughts and feelings move through him, quiet and there waiting for intensity.

"I honestly thought that everyone would be better off without me. That I had no right. That I made a choice. That I was being selfish. It wasn't like I was trying to ...fix things even when I wanted it. But that was it. I wanted it. Didn't know if anyone else wanted it and kinda...felt I knew the answer."

He peeled for a few moments.

"I've played how this would go in my head more than a few times. Actually expected a good punch." He touched his jaw and glanced at Jordan before peeling again.

"I haven't been here to even ask how things have been. How life has adjusted, changed, and what you've had to deal with. I don't even know who you run with now."

He hadn't been there.

But none of this talk meant anything if he didn't try asking.

"Do you...mind I feel I ask now?"
 

[prolixity]

"I don't particularly like to lose people I think of as friends. Even if they're the ones who chose to walk away." There was a dull ache to the thought, a pain that never left. Choice and circumstance had taken people away sometimes, and it was maybe part of why he'd withdrawn into himself again, reverting to a pattern set before the island, before friendships that he'd let mean something. Ferros rumbled softly and curled close around Jordan's thoughts; Jordan let their thoughts intertwine, grateful for the dragon's constant, reassuring presence. That was one relationship that could never be taken away.

Another half-shrug. "I don't think punching would solve anything. I mean, unless it'd make you feel better." The statement was delivered with a slight wry undertone, a sideways glance.

"I've gotten used to having my own space again. I've been keeping an eye out for a decent house, when I go down into the town, but I haven't seen anything I like enough to do the work on yet, really. Maybe sometime." He tossed the idea around from time to time, but much of its momentum was stalled. "I've been hanging out with Suns and Moons, mostly," he said, and named a few people he'd been working with regularly, names that Melvin might be half-familiar with from missions, or might not, people Jordan had dropped into working friendships with, nothing much deeper than drinking buddies.  

[MoonKitsune]

"There are a few nice houses I've seen around. It sounds like you are getting along just fine. Not that I didn't think that. You always came off as strong to me."

He peeled the same spot if the same potato slowly. "Did...that space not terrify you? After so long with being together?"

Jordan had gone through something Melvin wasn't sure he would and wasn't sure if his circumstances exactly matched. But Jordan had been with Rep and Harrison, in what seemed like such a strong and everlasting relationship and it had ended with them leaving him alone. While Melvin in no way had the type of relationship with Lawr, he still had fears. He still wondered what kind of person he would be alone. It wasn't the same alone he had before the island. The more confident and sure alone. It was a crippled alone that wanted to cling onto something that continued to get slipperier and slipperier. He was so tired of holding on. So hurt. He wasn't sure what he expected all this time and yet he knew better.

 

[prolixity]

"It's an impression I like to give people, anyway." It was said lightly, half a joke that might or might not have touched on something deeper.

The question made him fall quiet again, moving the peeler slowly over the potato as he thought of what to say, touching a hurt that was no longer fresh enough to feel like a bruise but that wasn't by any means finished healing. "I don't know if I'd say terrified," he replied after a moment. "It's ... it was too empty. But I guess I've gotten used to that again. Keeping my own company, not sharing my space. It's, it was colder, I guess." Poking gingerly at a sore tooth, finding it less painful than before; it was a relief, but a cold relief, tinged faintly with disappointment, even still. He wasn't over it. He didn't know if he wished he was. He looked thoughtfully at Melvin, sensing some personal stake to the question. "I got a second chance, but I always sort of knew that it might not work out, after all. So I was braced for it this time, in a way."  

[MoonKitsune]

Despite where Jordan was now, it didn't sound his road was easy or was a pristine paradise now. But what was left for a person who was forced out from what's you wanted and something you always knew could happen?

"It's better than some impressions." But from the way it sounded, not a truthful one.

"Kinda expected the same. It gives me some faith that it's not all over." He resumed peeling and plunked the potato into the bucket.

"If you...ever want to share space or just talk, I'll try and be better. I don't want to keep making these mistakes."