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 Posted: Wed May 04, 2016 2:47 pm
Rodney had brought his backpack (by now a familiar sight). It was ragged and thin and looked like it was from the 1990s. Before he came here, he'd had a truck, but now there was a lot less to carry. Rodney knocked before coming in.
Lawrence wasn't allowed to eat anything yet. There was a cup next to him with an awful, lukewarm liquid and sponges on plastic sticks he could use to swab his mouth with.
"A hero, huh?" Rodney asked quietly.
Whenever another guest came in the room, he automatically ceded, making a shy and hasty exit, but for now there wasn't much noise except vague chatter between the life staff in the halls.
The room was bare of any well-wishing gifts. Rodney took off his hat and stowed it in his pocket. Lawrence looked older, more tired and pale.
"I brought you some things." He set the backpack gently on one of the chairs.
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Posted: Wed May 04, 2016 2:52 pm
Lawrence was starting to nod off when Rodney entered but the knock jarred him awake. Still, the look the other man got was woozy, slightly drugged and a little unfocused. He managed a smile anyway.
"I said that didn't I." he looked unimpressed with himself. "A hero would have gotten everyone out alive. I'm just lucky and so was the survivor."
He yawned and paused for a moment as the gesture caused both his body and Butch to protest at the movement.
"What sort of things?" he asked.
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Posted: Wed May 04, 2016 3:07 pm
"Dead," Rodney repeated, looking solemn and grieved at that. "N-no. If I'd have gone, I'd probably be with them. Here."
He answered Lawrence's question. "Just chapstick. And something to put your hair up with," Rodney said, unzipping the pockets and rescuing a plastic tube and a scrunchy. "And some reading. ...Some of mine. Some um. From Richard Sibbes, and C.S. Lewis."
Both were thin paperbooks, The Bruised Reed and Til We Have Faces.
"And yours," The Bible, of course, and Paradise Lost. "I didn't know how long they're keeping you. Is Butch alright?"
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Posted: Wed May 04, 2016 3:18 pm
"I'm glad you weren't there, it was horrible." he said.
The list of offerings was assessed for suitability and found acceptable. He nodded shallowly. "Good." he said. He'd have preferred a white scrunchy but beggars couldn't be choosers it seemed. It would be handy to get his hair out of his face if he was honest, the process involved a lot of unpleasant side effects.
"Turning pages is a problem." he grudgingly admitted, in private he tended to summon one claw to flick the pages but here he had to leave Butch to his work. "But I appreciate it. Butch is fine. Just busy and mercifully quiet for a change."
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Posted: Wed May 04, 2016 4:09 pm
Rodney smiled very little at the good instead of thank you, like he was a cat prince instead of an injured patient.
Well, gee, your majesty's welcome. Sorrow said. We need to pick up his staying alive forever tip book.
"...I wouldn't want it to be forever, Sorrow. I don't mind reading a while."
Rodney arranged the things on the bedside tray.
"You said only half of the island was mad at you. Did you find someone to, um..."
Rodney pinkened a little as he asked (in what was probably in vain), "...marry?"
Lawrence had sworn himself to chastity to find a wife, for about a week. Although he had seemed genuinely disappointed to have fallen off the wagon. Like he had lost something without having the tools to pinpoint what it was. Rodney didn't even know if he was still trying. It had not been Rodney's idea, although he thought it was better. There were different ways to hurt people, besides injuring them.
Sex was filed under that category. Even if both people wanted to. Even if no one was being lied to, or controlled. It had to be for the right reasons. Part of a bond. A commitment. A family.
A bloodline, Sorrow filled in.
"Not always," Rodney replied. "It can't be always."
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Posted: Thu May 05, 2016 4:07 am
Rodney's tendency to talk to his weapon out loud was a reminder that inside the other man's head was a weapon who didn't like him. Just like Melvin. He didn't know what he was responding and he didn't really want to, every guess he could make being something rude or awful. It made it difficult when you could only rely on 70 percent of a person and knew that the part of them that kept them alive and drove their most primal choices wanted nothing more than for you to go away.
They were probably right but that didn't change the fact that it was always there, just out of sight and out of his hearing.
"I wouldn't mind being read to." he said. "Though I cannot always guarantee an attentive audience, these drugs keep sending me to sleep."
Rodney's question got a brow raise.
"No. No marriage." he said. "America is still stubborn as always, relentless. It's not going to happen for a while I'm sure."
He sighed, again uncertain what the man's always comment was about.
"It's been all I can think about though." he said. "I don't know if it is something they are giving me or if it's something else. I can't believe I contacted half of the island looking for sex. I thought that sort of thing was only when I'd been drinking."
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Posted: Thu May 05, 2016 5:42 am
"Sorrow commented that marriage had to do with bloodlines," Rodney filled in, embarrassed. "And I don't think it always does."
He picked up the scrunchie in his hands, and helped gather Lawrence's hair back and out of his face.
"It's gotten longer. I've been cutting mine, myself." He wasn't very skilled at it. "...You can probably tell."
He reddened even more at the discussion.
"When I get hurt, I'm too tired for...well," For him, it was kind of a relief. That was the one thing about being sick or injured. He didn't have to worry about...that.
"Are you still...feeling that way?"
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Posted: Thu May 05, 2016 9:24 am
Lawrence sighed again, as always equal parts endeared and exasperated by Rodney's shyness around the topic of sexuality and marriage and finding today that his tolerance was running slightly shorter than usual. "I think you are right." he said, repressing the desire to comment that he'd tried the bloodline route and it had been no more fulfilling or long lasting than any other.
Still, he submitted to Rodney's attempt to sort his hair out, giving the other man a thoughtful inspection for his statement. "I had wondered..." he said, having previously wondered if the man cut his own hair but fearing to ask in case it was some sort of perceived insult. "It is fine though." He couldn't imagine cutting his own hair unless he was shaving it all off.
"I normally get too tired for ..distractions myself." he said. "But not this time." It had made zoning out and sleeping a lot harder than he had expected and he found himself drifting back towards America's comment with a sense of vague concern. "I can't sit up anyway."
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Posted: Thu May 05, 2016 9:43 am
Rodney's face stayed red.
"I'd ask, then. About your medications."
He finished tying off the scrunchie, and had a seat.
"I know it's been difficult for you. And...I want you to know. With everything. I think you've been doing the right thing. In trying. It's...a narrow and difficult path. It's very easy to just...do what you want, without regard for other people. And I think...every day counts. Even just, a day of doing the right thing, a single moment, a single person...that...helped. It counted. It mattered. And I think...the other way..."
Rodney shuffled the books.
"Is there one you want to read? Anyway, I think it's the difference between...I mean, in your search. For what you're looking for. One step in the right direction is better than a thousand the other way. I'm...I'm so glad you're alive."
That time hadn't run out yet. That Lawrence could still find what he was looking for.
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Posted: Thu May 05, 2016 9:54 am
"I might, if it persists." he didn't feel like asking the Life techs anything was worth it, generally it was giving people who tended to be his co-workers hints about potential vulnerabilities he might have. He probably wouldn't ask.
Rodney got a very very tired look for his speech on doing the right thing. He didn't like doing the right thing at all, it was horrible and right here and now with his strength at its lowest ebb it was very difficult to find the drive or motivation to wheel out the relevant platitudes."If you say so." he said in his standard issue response to things he knew he would gain nothing arguing against.
"Any book you'd prefer." he said. "I don't mind which." Though, there was a strange stir at the idea of Rodney saying Lucifer's lines. "...maybe Paradise Lost." he amended in hindsight.
But it was Rodney's comment about being glad he was alive which lingered, a stark counterpoint to the DM conversation he'd had with America where she'd said she wished he'd died. "Not everyone is glad about that." he said, and it sounded so much like an attempt for self pity that he wanted to take it back. "I am regardless. It is a fact. I am factual."
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Posted: Thu May 05, 2016 10:11 am
"Alright," Rodney said, stacking the others and opening the well-read text. Lawrence's was an illustrated copy. He wouldn't wish death on anyone, except someone that suffered greatly, and that was who God, in his mercy, saw fit to take. But even so, it wasn't the end, or something he was afraid of.
He was not a great orator, better fitted for an ASMR tape or a bedtime story than the fiery indignation of the book's protagonist. He described the setting (as Milton set forth), and began with the opening lines,
OF MAN’S first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat
In Rodney's voice, the speech was softly sad, and there was genuine and wistful regret. This fallen and wrecked Satan was dressed in grey, separated and apart forever from the only thing that mattered.
Said then the lost Archangel, “this the seat
That we must change for Heaven?—this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since He
Who now is sovran can dispose and bid
What shall be right: fardest from Him is best,
Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme
Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy forever dwells!
Rodney himself seemed upset about the hopelessness and resignation to a wrong that could never be righted, and instead of a triumphant turn to spit in the face of God, his
"Hail, horrors, hail,"
Was also whispered and weak, as if he was horrified at himself for saying it.
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Posted: Thu May 05, 2016 10:32 am
Lawrence, despite warning Rodney that he would not be an attentive listener instead was rapt in his focus on the reading of the book. It was his book and one which he was not sure how he felt about even in Rodney's hands, it had become a well trodden solace in its repetition and though he could now write it line for line from memory alone having read it so numerous times there was still a sort of attachment to the time which had been invested in the object itself. It had become a relic of his divinity, imbued with something of himself secreted between the pages. Here and there in the margins there were comments written in impossibly neat hand, sometimes in English, sometimes in Swedish and sometimes in a coded set of symbols.
Listening to Rodney was a delight, the sadness and genuine emotion unexpected and in what Lawrence considered to be all the wrong places. The other man was always so sad and so too was his Satan, aware of what had been lost. He listened with his eyes closed, relaxed and setting aside the pain for the images the words painted even in his imagination starved mind.
When Rodney whispered the hail, Lawrence opened his eyes with a look of mild surprise and concern, looked down for a heartbeat and then set his lips in a concerned line.
"You read very well." he said, interrupting deliberately.
He did not know what was wrong with his libido.
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Posted: Thu May 05, 2016 10:55 am
Rodney continued, although he seemed fairly grieved at the idea of being so lost and so past redemption.
He was not much of a preacher, and hadn't considered it as a career path as a result. He might have managed a monk.
Or a priest, Sorrow put in.
He seemed mostly embarrassed at the descriptions of depravity instead of vitriolic. The bible often described wandering from God in terms of marital infidelity, and it was not surprising that Milton used the same...wavering on graphic...terms.
"Yet thence his lustful..." Rodney paused, "orgies he....enlarged," Rodney paused here too, but soldiered on.
Even to that hill of scandal, by the grove
Of Moloch homicide, lust hard by hate,
Till good Josiah drove them thence....
Rodney finished a bit frightfully, still upset, "to Hell." Straight to hell. He recounted, too, the temptations the Israelites faced that lead them to false gods.
Of Baalim and Ashtaroth—those male,
These feminine. For Spirits, when they please,
Can either sex assume, or both; so soft
And uncompounded is their essence pure,
He knew, of course, they meant...male and female. Not a feminine male. Not...
Not tied or manacled with joint or limb,
That too, only meant they...weren't shackled to one gender.
Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones,
Like cumbrous flesh; but, in what shape they choose,
Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure,
Can execute their aery purposes,
And works of love or enmity fulfil.
Also, of course, these shifting spirits lead the Israelites into sin and temptation and ruin. Satan's speech wound through the history of man by counting his sins. The speech was devoid of grace and mercy, only judgement, horror, consequences, and separation. The speech of someone who had been cast out.
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Posted: Thu May 05, 2016 11:10 am
The comment hadn't managed to stop Rodney or coax him into conversation and it was a fact which Lawr found imminently distressing. Still, he couldn't help but be amused about the hesitation in the comments about orgies.
When it devolved into manacles though he raised a hand and when he finished the verse finally spoke up. "Rodney." he said. "Rodney you'll need to stop." And already he was wracking his brain for an excuse to soften the request. "I .. I am not sure my focus is up to it."
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Posted: Thu May 05, 2016 11:14 am
Rodney seemed a bit startled, but conceded, carefully folding the book closed again.
"Al-alright. Do you want to get some rest?"
Rodney wouldn't have minded reading until Lawrence fell asleep. But in spite of his protest, the other man had seemed more...raptly attentive, than sleepy.
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