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 Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2014 12:25 pm
"Busy?" Jordan leaned on the back of the couch, watching Rep. Things were still weird between them. A different kind of weird, given, but still weird. Harrison has scowled them out of actually sparring immediately after he'd returned; on reflection, that had probably been a good idea, but they hadn't gotten to the spar yet.
They'd fought, but they hadn't fought yet, and the tension was stretching thin and brittle. Something had to give, and sometimes sparring helped with that.
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Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2014 1:58 pm
Rep wasn't busy. He was surrounded by mugs of hot chocolate and various food wrappers and was engaged in sulkily inhabiting his zebra chair which he hadn't managed to drag next door to his self imposed fortress of solitude.
He looked up from the magazine he was not actually reading and glared at Jordan.
"Aye I'm busy."
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Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2014 2:15 pm
Jordan raised an unimpressed eyebrow. "You're full of s**t, is what you are."
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Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2014 2:37 pm
Rep clenched his hands immediately into fists and the snark iced over into something a lot more vicious.
"If I wanted ******** verbal abuse, I'd look for it on twitter, they are better at it."
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Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2014 2:57 pm
"I haven't had as much practice." Jordan's eyes flickered down to Rep's hands, and the corners of his mouth drew down momentarily. He'd been aiming for teasing, but missed entirely, apparently. Talking to Rep was a minefield, and not the minefield for which he knew safe paths. Might as well be direct. "What happened to that spar you wanted? You've been avoiding me."
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Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2014 3:04 pm
"I was told not to fight until I was better. Now I'm healthier I don't want to hit you anymore." He crossed his arms standoffishly. "I don't want to do anything." Somehow it made the twisted up collapse-in-progress more palatable when he spread the misery around. "And I've been avoiding you because the only things I can think of to say are nasty."
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Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2014 3:10 pm
Jordan sat down on the arm of the couch and regarded Rep, the half-mocking defensive expression on his face sliding away into something tired and sad. "May as well say them," he said. "Say it to my face."
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Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2014 3:27 pm
Rep frowned irritably at Jordan as the glimpse of sadness and tiredness only pulled at his heartstrings, making him feel even more like s**t than he had prior. It bothered him because he cared and cared deeply about the other man, but something still felt broken in him. He felt like he was a limping wounded animal trying to pretend he was fine. He rankled. "You know you sound like all those cunts on twitter." And his voice twisted into a breathy dominatrix mockery. "Say it to my face Rep, tear me down, tell me everything that's wrong with me."
"I don't know what you want, when I say the things I want to say are nasty they are just petty and vicious. They won't ******** fix anything, they won't change anything. It's just a negative voice that wants to use pain to drag me out of this hole."
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Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2014 3:32 pm
Jordan's lips thinned in distaste at the idea. He shook his head a little. "You're not talking to me at all. You're hurting, and that hurts to see. It's like you're here, but you're not here." He sighed. "I miss you. It's not that I want you to tell me what's wrong with me. I can do that myself. It's that the silence is worse."
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Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2014 3:52 pm
"I don't know what's wrong with me any more than you do." Rep snapped "I can't stop it or talk it out, I can't just let it all out or whatever. I need to keep functioning, I don't have time to fix it or the ability. " It hurt to even talk about it when he'd been getting so good at keeping it in a stranglehold so long. "I just can't handle it. Between us it can be so. Strong emotionally. Random, wild and unexpected. I can't handle it right now. I just ******** can't."
Just the thought of dropping his walls and letting Jordan in scared him and upset him, and it wasn't Jordan's fault, he realised. It was just him. He didn't want to relinquish the hurt right now because he didn't think he could cope.
"None of it's intentional."
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Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2014 4:04 pm
"That's what it's like. That's what it's always like." Jordan's fingers flexed on the back of the couch, stopping just short of gripping hard enough to damage. "Holding it in. Keeping it controlled, because it's destructive when it gets out." He looked away, then looked back. "It gets out anyway, sometimes. When it's too much."
He blew out a breath and ran a hand through his hair. "I still love you. I want you to know that. That's all."
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Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2014 4:15 pm
"It's not the same." he said, the words inexplicably tight in his chest. Saying them was like pushing them physically under a very heavy door. "This isn't control because its destructive. I don't care if I break things or hurt things, I don't care if there's collateral damage. This is control because -" he broke off, groping for words to even fit around the way he felt. "Because the only alternative is to stop. Stop feeling. Stop caring. Stop existing, one of the three. And I can't stop, I won't stop."
It sounded awkward and wrong, wide of the crux of the feelings, impossible to pinpoint.
Jordan saying he still loved him hurt too, it hurt to be handed that much and to know that right now if he said it back, the swell of emotions would shatter the dam he'd built to keep everything in and would leave him to deal with all of it at once. It was being handed something he was obligated to return verbally and which he could not. It didn't mean he didn't love Jordan, he did. But right now those three words were too much to squeeze under the wall he was locked behind.
"There's no logical reason to feel this way. Nothing changed that wasn't always the case. I guess it had to be a build, something just pushed over a boundary." He wished in a strange illogical instant he was in the hoard, his own territory, as if it would make a difference. "Normally I'll just have a cry, a fight, something and I'll be able to pretend everything is all right, but its just not working, none of the things are working."
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Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2014 4:56 pm
"Don't stop, then." Jordan watched Rep, pushed aside an urge to rub his own chest, as though that might help the tight ache that nested there. "I b***h at you a lot, but I don't want you to not be you."
He rubbed at Ferros's ring. Rep wasn't saying it back, and he'd half expected that, but it was a needle of pain in the center of the ache. Maybe it was just because of the walls. He hoped desperately it was just because of the walls. He would think that, he decided, because if he let himself think otherwise it would shake the tentative footing he'd begun to find, and he didn't know if he could take that right now.
Able to pretend everything is all right. Everything hadn't been all right, then, for longer than he'd known. He should have known. ... How could he have known? Rep had locked that hurt down tight, hidden it with all the desperate strength of an injured animal, the way Jordan had held in the tangle of guilt and pain that had brought him crashing down into a state of mind where he barely knew himself.
"What will you do?" he asked. How can I help? But he didn't voice the second part, the burned edge of rejection too fresh in his mind alongside the awareness that Rep would not react well.
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Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2014 6:02 pm
Rep sighed heavily. "I know you don't want me to change, but it doesn't stop that me being me still causes a lot of ******** trouble for everyone else." No though, he thought. He couldn't focus on that right now, he just couldn't get locked back into that spiral of self loathing without the energy to pull out of it.
"I don't know. Keep moving, keep doing s**t, hope it goes away. Hope things go right for a while. It's all I can do when I don't even know what it is that's making me so ******** hurt. When nothing ******** happened to trigger it."
He rubbed his temples and glared at the table. "Maybe I need some stability, I have my stuff back, that's important." Except it was always and had always been damage control for more than that. "I just need to feel strong again."
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Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2014 6:15 pm
"That's something that -- " Jordan paused, took a deep breath, " -- something that I have to accept. That there's going to be trouble." His hands flexed on the back of the couch again. "But there's always going to be trouble, whether it was you or something else." The statement was as much for his own benefit as for Rep's.
He listened quietly, nodded. "If you want to fight," he said, "you know I will. Not just because I think you want it," he added, a slight edge sneaking into his voice. "Because I like to." Because if you feel better, I'll feel better too, he didn't add. Because you're too far away and I'm not sure you'll let me get close any other way.
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