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 Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 6:25 pm
Otto walked through the portal. Slow, shaky and unsteady. He looked pale. He looked sick. The hunters on duty must have assumed it was a mission gone wrong.
It sort of was.
The warm air of the tropical Deus was a stark contrast to the cold wilderness he'd been in. Yet he somehow still felt that he couldn't stop shaking. The path to Deus was long and agonizing. He began to do what he was dreading; he texted Cami. She needed to know. Above all else, he refused to keep such a thing a secret from her. She'd know something was wrong right away, even if she was barely home lately.
The texts helped a bit. Even if she did scare him with her silence during an important reveal. Through it all, Cami wasn't mad. She was concerned, but not mad.
He didn't deserve such a friend.
But it would be hours before she made it back to Deus, and he needed a friend. Tenya was the one who insisted he see Ripley. Otto wanted to be left alone to wallow in his bad feelings, but he respected Tenya's insistence enough to try.
Ripley's door was knocked on softly, before he tested the doorknob out of curiosity. It opened right up. Otto slowly made his way inside, one arm wrapped tightly around his uneasy stomach.
"...hello?" He called uncertainly. "Ripley?"
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 6:43 pm
At first, Ripley didn't look up at the sound of his door opening; he remained where he was on his bed, reading while leaning against the wall. It wasn't unusual for his door to open, but what was unusual was the voice that followed. Now that had him looking up, setting amber eyes on someone he hadn't expected to visit. Though as he saw how pale and sick the younger man looked, it did somehow make sense.
"You look like s**t." It was a charming greeting, and he meant every word. Yet he did put his book down, and moved forward to sit on the edge, patting the spot next to him. "Come on, sit." He ordered, somehow exactly like he'd talk to a dog, but with a somewhat softer edge. "What happened?"
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 6:53 pm
He closed the door. His stomach did a somersault at Ripley's charming greeting. Otto chose not to sit on the bed beside Ripley. Rather, he gingerly set himself down on the ground in front of where he might have sat on the bed.
What happened, he asked...
"Stuff..." Otto said with a tremble. "Weird....bad....awful..." It made him sick and dizzy. He couldn't tell Ripley such a thing. No way. It... it was just a bad idea to be alone, right? Who would ever understand his situation without judgement?
"I ******** up."
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 7:03 pm
"That sounds like a regular thursday." And on Deus, it probably was. Ripley's voice dropped softly, and he shifted to sit on the floor beside his younger friend. He understood that this was clearly more than that, which was why he sat to be on level with him.
"What happened?" He asked again.
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 7:11 pm
He didn't want to say. It had been hard enough working the courage to say it via text to Cami. This? This was Ripley. A man from his past. A guy that was almost family. Otto seemed to keep the pale and sickly complexion he came in with, his posture curling in on himself. His eyes concentrated on one spot of the floor and nowhere else.
"I..." Words caught hard in his throat. Hard to swallow, and difficult to breathe. "I-I... got drunk.. last night.." Just like all good stories, this one started with booze. "This morning... I woke up.. to um..."
This wasn't helping. He wanted to beat around the bush somehow. Some easy way to answer Ripley aside from the usual dismissive denials that never worked with him. However, the more he put it off, the harder it got.
"Last.. night.." He started again, trying to breathe. Control over breathing was near impossible. "I did.... something.. with um. With a.." Flashes of memories again snickered in the back of his mind. <********>." He slammed his fist down beside him, his fears and guilt having built up a pressure of emotion inside him. "I can't even say it.."
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 7:39 pm
Of course he had been drinking.
No good story ever started with someone eating a salad.
He listened as Otto stumbled along, trying to spit out this seemingly horrible event, and he waited patiently for him to just get it out. He had an idea of what happened, but he wasn't certain. After all, this was Otto here, and he was fairly certain that the blond fell into a specific category. There was a big chance that he was wrong, but it really did sound like a very familiar mistake...
"s**t or get off the pot, Otto." He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, even if it meant pushing up his glasses. "Words won't kill you. Out with it."
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 7:48 pm
Words wouldn't kill him. Sure. But they could humiliate him easily.
"I had sex..." That was easy to say. He often had sex. Just.... "With a... guy." It tasted horrible coming off his tongue. He was now officially one of the scuzzy and deplorably immoral hunters this island had. Otto had always tried so hard to stick to a certain code. A set of rules. What was normal, and what was wrong.
Cheating was wrong. Polyamorous behaviour was wrong, Now he'd done both.
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 8:04 pm
His eyebrows raised, but it really only made him look more unimpressed than usual. Otto had sex...with a man? That was...wow, okay. That was a surprise. So he had been right? How about that. But the show that was being put on from the clearly distraught man kept him quiet. There was a small part of him that thought perhaps he was being messed with, that Otto was being an a** after finding out about his own apparently deviant behaviour. But still...
"Oh no," Ripley deadpanned. "How terrible." He levelled a stare that screamed 'so what?', before offering a small sigh. "Seriously, you little s**t. What's wrong?"
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 8:11 pm
Otto's brows knit together. He braved a glance at Ripley, who didn't seem surprised.
"...huh?" He was baffled. Did Ripley think Otto had always been.... that way? Or wait... maybe he thought he was joking. Either way, Otto was confused enough to forget his own problem for a short moment.
"But... That is what's wrong." He clarified with a quivering voice. "N-not only accidentally cheating on my girlfriend....s.... but..." Plural.
Plural.
"Why do I have two.... ******** my life, I really am depraved." He held his head into his hands with a mournful groan.
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Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 8:48 pm
"...Really?" Ripley blinked, surprise flitting across his sharp features. So...Otto wasn't messing with him? He really did ******** a guy? Huh. That was...fascinating. And it brought up so many questions - but all of them fled in the presence of one important fact: Otto had cheated, it seemed, on two women in the process.
"Ah. Yes. Them." Maebe and...Cami, right? That part was a problem, he supposed. "You told me you had one girlfriend, and a best friend." Ripley hadn't meant to sneer at the idea, but it was important; if he only had one girlfriend, he technically only cheated on the one.
"Relax. Mountains out of ant hills." He reached out, putting his arm around Otto's shoulder, pulling him in for a half hug. "And...'but' what?" Otto had cut himself off, and he had caught it; sorry, Otto.
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Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 4:26 am
"Is that what you're gunna focus on? Technicalities?" Otto grouched miserably. The half hug should have made him feel better. But somehow, it just made him feel worse. Not to mention Ripley had in fact caught Otto's hesitation. "Not only cheating.." He continued, "But... only scuzzy sex crazed weirdos ******** dudes." There, he said it. He'd always imagined himself to be open minded about 'other people', but the fact of the matter was he'd been raised in a very conservative community. Any sort of promiscuous urges had been squashed deep down with that long ago. "I was so sure I was normal."
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Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 7:06 am
Ripley frowned at Otto as he spewed the homophobia he had been expecting.
"Excuse you." He snorted, clearly finding the whole thing a little more than rude. "You can be normal and sleep with men, dumbass." His hand retracted from its perch on his shoulder, and instead came up for a sharp smack upside Otto's head. "It's just sex. Sex is natural. Who you have your bed is nobody's business but yours and those you share it with. So yes, that technicality is the only thing I'm going to focus on here." He rested his elbow on his knee, and his cheek on his gloved knuckles, observing Otto with the same stoic look he watched the world with.
"I'm guessing you haven't told them yet?" It was a fair assumption, considering his reactions
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Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 4:27 pm
Otto flinched as he was smacked over the head. He gave the man a sidelong grumpy pout, but otherwise remained quiet and listened. This was why Otto came to Ripley, of all those he knew. He wasn't scary, but he wasn't going to sugar coat anything either. Otto was no saint, and Ripley knew that very well.
"It's just sex?" Otto furrowed his brows. How could Ripley say it like that? Sex was natural, he said. Sure, but giving in to temptation was.. well it was sinful. And Otto wasn't even religious, even if his family had been. Or maybe that was the root of it after all.
He scratched his head where Ripley had given him a smack. He tried to let the man's advice on the matter sink in properly, rather than allow it to bounce off his bullet proof shield he'd built around himself.
"I texted Cami.... she wasn't even mad at me." He murmured almost in disbelief. "I was scared she'd want to leave. But.. she said she'll come home from her mission early to come talk to me."
He seemed to deflate, his shoulders slumping. "She's way too good for me."
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Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 9:00 pm
"Yes. Just sex." Ripley confirmed seriously. "You were drunk, it meant nothing and was for nothing, other than the need to let go and feel good." He shrugged lightly. "There were no feelings involved. It was just sex." Probably. He hoped, otherwise he'd be sounding like an a** right about now.
"Cami?" He repeated. "Isn't Maebe your girlfriend?" Which meant, shouldn't she be the one you panic over, instead of a friend (with benefits, he suspected)? Either way he watched Otto speak about her, and deflate as his thoughts turned negatively, just as he predicted they would. Instead he set aside that thought, and focused on another:
"If given the chance, would you do it again?"
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Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2015 1:51 am
Ripley was actually saying it. That really, none of this was malicious betrayal of trust. Or a deviancy. Otto supposed he should feel better about it, and let the act of over indulging speak for itself. It was hard to allow the blame to fall from his own dirtied hands though. "I'm scared to tell Maebe." Otto admitted, "She's a lot more vindictive than Cami is." Her trust had been hard to earn. And it would be easy to lose. Ripley's question was met with a short period of silence, as Otto gave it serious thought. "Cheat? No way.. " He really wondered if the girls had at least crossed his mind that night. If they had, surely he'd not have gone through with it, right? Then again, maybe Ripley meant the other thing.
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