[PRP] So let's talk (Finn/Ripley)

[Enoh Love]

Ripley wasn't sure how he had gotten away with his infirmary trip. Wounds aside, he was certain someone would have noticed his new tattoos while they were bandaging him. Why they had let him get in and out without a fuss was beyond him, though once he tried to leave and got the full scope of those in the tents, he understood. They probably were too busy patching and tossing to notice the rest of the details.

Well, whatever worked, really.

On his way out he paused, catching sight of Finn. It seemed, at least from a distance, that he was getting released as well. For a moment Ripley considered leaving. What Finn did not was of no consequence to him, after all. Yet he didn't move. In fact, he waited for the other man to come his way, and even went as far as to watch him do so. He was still studying him, trying to figure things out, and naturally drawing a blank.

"Can we talk?" He asked suddenly, as Finn became within range to hear his quiet question.

Seussi

 

[Seussi]

There was a slight advantage to being a full moon hunter who's specialization revolved around field trauma and emergency medical care, in that Finn felt that he knew what was wrong with him (which wasn't a whole hell of a lot, in his professional opinion) and between forcing this knowledge upon whoever was sent to look after him while also being one incredibly obnoxious pain in the a** patient, he managed to get himself discharged rather quickly from the infirmary. He had, at that point, briefly considered helping out, as they seemed to have their hands full, but one glance around the chaos combined with his dull, throbbing headache had him quickly changing his mind, as he instead popped a couple of aspirin and headed towards the exit.

He caught sight of Ripley right away, able to recognize the other man from a great distance now, as that seemed to be as close as he could, or perhaps was willing to get, the majority of the time. He expected the other man would see him, turn, and walk away as quickly as possible to avoid another encounter. Their last "discussion" hadn't been very amiable, after all.

When Ripley did no such thing, and in fact, appeared to be waiting for Finn, watching him as he walked towards him, the moon hunter began to feel an odd mixture of relief and instant suspicion, his guard rising as he got closer.

He didn't stop when he got near, hearing Ripley's question and reaching out to grab his arm in response to pull him along.

"That depends. Is "talk" code for "********"? Because I'm actually, for once, really not in the mood." His gaze was looking everywhere but directly at Ripley, taking in everyone and everything around them, as if checking if the coast was clear, even while still leading him away from the infirmary.

Finally, he turned his face so that he could see the other man. "But actual talking? Yes, that we can do. Your room or mine?"

enoh lovex

 

[Enoh Love]

Finn wasn't stopping. Ripley frowned, fairly puzzled. Wouldn't he want to talk? Wasn't that the whole reason for the verbal abuse beforehand? His confusion did alleviate considerably when the other man reached out to grab his arm to drag him along. His protest was brief before he followed.

"Did I stutter?" He frowned again, fixing a brief glare at Finn's back as he was pulled along. Not long after that, he did jerk his arm free of his grasp, and followed into step behind him regardless.

"Yours. It's more private." He had neighbors on both sides of his room, and thin walls. Finn's was, for the moment, a solitary room. It worked best for this particular talk.

When they had gotten to their destination, Ripley made sure he was the last of the pair to enter. He gazed casually down the hallway at both ends, seeking someone who wasn't there. The door closed behind him, and was locked with a quick click.

He didn't bother to sit down, nor did he even try to come any closer than the few steps into the room that would make him less audible to passers by.

"Without being an a**, tell me what you think you know about what's been happening." He prompted, not entirely wanting to speak until he knew what Finn thought, and though he knew some of it thanks to the very angry conversation they had prior, he wanted to hear it again, under less agonizing circumstances.

A proper talk. No fog. No monsters. No headaches. Just a conversation between two men.

Seussi

 

[Seussi]

"Now now, don't be a d**k." Finn smirked, releasing his hold on the other mans arm the moment he tugged it away without any fuss, knowing that if he was serious about the talking thing, he would follow.

Finn nodded, having nothing more to say as they traveled towards the full hunter apartments, stopping just long enough to unlock to the door to his room before they both filed inside. Finn didn't turn around, but he heard the click of the lock as he went to find a fresh pack of cigarettes, his previous pack that he had taken on the mission having gone mysteriously, and aggravatingly, missing.

With the new package in hand, he made his way to the small kitchen table, and sat down in one of two chairs, unwrapping the plastic while now, finally, keeping his gaze on Ripley. He noticed that the other man hadn't come very far into the room, and Finn's lips twitched up just subtly, in a dry smile.

"Worried I'm going to kick you again?" He asked, while popping open the top of the cigarette carton. "I think, or at least, I hope I've gotten that all out of my system now." He pulled out one cigarette and set the rest of the carton down on the table, placing it between his lips and fishing in his pockets for the lighter that hadn't gone mysteriously missing.

And then he let out a sigh. "Why do you have to make this harder?" Being an a** was what Finn did best, after all. Frowning, he lit up the cigarette and took a long drag from it, exhaling before beginning.

"I've been doing my research. There are legacies, and some of them have been playing around in people's heads. Take Chel, for instance." He paused, remembering his conversation with Jack. "Revenge. But there are others. Protection, Destruction, Creation." He stopped again, and shook his head.

"But what I actually know about what's going on with you, specifically, is very little. I've just been doing a lot of guessing. So, why don't you enlighten me?"

enoh love

 

[Enoh Love]

From his spot by the door, he watched as Finn crossed the room to the kitchen table.

"No." He scoffed. "You're smarter than that." Was all he said about the whole kicking thing. At the time Finn first kicked him, he supposed it made sense. He could vaguely grasp why. Now, he knew Finn was smarter than to jeopardize this opportunity for information.

"Humor me." He pressed, finally crossing the room to take a seat across from Finn. Hands folded on his lap as he leaned back, giving the other man his attention. Legacies he had heard of. The ones he mentioned were familiar to him, but Creation was one he had never heard outright until recently. Despite it all.

It seemed that Finn had very little to tell him, and so he sighed.

"Before I do, I just want you to know something, in the interest of being up front." He frowned a bit, shifting a little bit in his seat. "I'm not comfortable with this. I've given you a lot of thought over the last while, and I have come up with more questions than answers." A bare hand came up, pinching the bridge of his nose. He really was struggling with this.

"I know I can trust you. I have memories that've proven that you are fairly trustworthy when it comes to me. I'm struggling with the why. Why I even started to trust you, or when that even was. I can't figure that out." He shook his head, sharing hard at the table as though it would give him answers. Not being able to pinpoint something so important was irritating to him. He was never very good at taking things at face value. Especially when the face value was trusting a man who had been known to be cruel and self-serving. When he finally did look up, it was to fix a more than serious stare at Finn.

"I don't like not knowing, and I like less the idea of blind faith...but I'm going to, this time, because I have in the past." Yet he didn't seem happy about it. "I just want to hear you say that you won't let me down."

Seussi

 

[Seussi]

The problem with Ripley, before his mind had been messed with and now even more so, was that Finn often had trouble reading him. He was a very private man, and it was difficult to get him to open up, though they had been making progress. Before. They had been making progress before.

Now Finn didn't really know what to expect. Ripley had become unpredictable, closed off, and practically foreign. He was no longer the same as he'd once been, and to the moon hunter, it was obvious, just as he felt it was obvious what was missing, what had caused such an abrupt change. All it really meant at that moment in time, however, was that Finn wasn't sure whether the other man really did intend to stay and talk, not until he finally moved away from the door to sit down at the table. Once he did that, Finn felt like they might actually be getting somewhere, and was able to relax a little, so he took another long drag of his cigarette and let some of his tension ease.

He let Ripley have his turn to talk, and listened, mulling over everything he had to say. It fit with what Finn had already hypothesized, what he had already discussed with Jack at length. It fit and it made sense and solidified belief. He stayed quiet, ashing his cigarette, taking another drag, exhaling slowly again. He let the words hurt, because he couldn't stop them from doing so and it was better to just accept the pain than to fight against it anymore.

When Ripley was finished, there was another stretch of silence, and then, instead of answering the other man's question right away, he replied instead with, "Would you like to know why? Because this isn't what I think I know, it's what I know, I know. It's what's been ******** eating at me, stripping my insides, leaving me raw and hurt and ******** angry because I didn't want this, not again. Hell, I might have even been able to settle for not so ******** soon.

"So do you want to know? Do you want to know what Creation deemed so ******** unnecessary that he took it away from you? I can tell you, or you can just keep wondering why."

enoh love

 

[Enoh Love]

Finn's rather emotional speech was met with a blank expression. He could see the other man was fired up, and that it was important enough for him to get upset over, but it still managed to baffle him.

The question though, that rather interesting offer, was very intriguing. A chance to figure out what was missing?

"Tell me." The choice was obvious.

Seussi

 

[Seussi]

If Finn could have found it in him to laugh right at that moment, he might have. This wasn't him getting ridiculously emotional or pouring his heart and soul on the table. This was just a brutal honesty that didn't reflect in his single, cold eye. It was, however, more than he would have let anybody else know. It was him reaching for something, for anything, if there was anything left to even reach for.

But there wasn't. There was no reaction from Ripley. There was just that emptiness that Finn couldn't get used to, a blank expression, nothing more.

He wanted to call him an idiot again. He wanted to tell him to leave. He wanted to hurt him, physically or even just with words because how was it fair that only one of them had to suffer the way Finn had to? Even if Ripley found that missing piece to be frustrating, Finn would never believe it could compare to what he had to deal with.

He didn't do any of those things. Ripley had asked him not to be an a**, so he would try not to.

Instead he just sighed, and took one last drag from his cigarette before butting it out in the ashtray. "It's love, Ripley. He....it....whatever. He took it away."

Seemed pretty obvious, given Ripley had confessed it once only to rescind on it after the dream.

enoh love

 

[Enoh Love]

The only thing that changed in his expression was a small press of his lips. Love? That was what he was missing? He supposed that should have been obvious. He did remember telling Finn that he loved him, but somehow, he never really considered the two things being correlated. His gaze shifted a bit, turning his gaze from Finn to an invisible spot in the distance.

"Love, is it?" He murmured slowly, though he didn't sound terribly convinced. "If that's true, then I must have loved you then." He mused, lifting his gaze to the ceiling as he sought for any hint of this elusive emotion. The problem was, with his frame of reference missing, he still managed to come up with nothing.

"I'm sorry, I just…don't remember seeing it that way." He frowned. It seemed like it should be the answer. That would make the most sense, if he could only connect the dots of relation…but he couldn't.

"I can tell you that whatever I'm missing, whether or not it's actually love…I didn't trade it away." That had been one of the accusations, after all. One that should be vaguely cleared up.

seussi

 

[Seussi]

Finn waited for a reaction that he knew probably wouldn't come. It was disappointing, in a way, that even this revelation didn't seem to strike any kind of spark in the other man. Finn chose not to let discordance show, instead just shrugging his shoulders, and muttering. "I guess." Under his breath. What more was there to say about it, really? Ripley could either accept Finn's theory or choose not to.

Suddenly he wished he had grabbed his bottle of whiskey before he'd sat down at the table. He longed for something to numb his feelings away with, anything to make this easier.

"Yes, well, you wouldn't would you?" It wasn't an accusation, simply a statement of fact. If it was gone, then of course he couldn't piece it in and make it work, because it wasn't just what he couldn't feel anymore, it was a concept he could no longer even seem to understand, which meant that it wasn't just his love for Finn (assuming he had meant it when he'd said it) but the emotion itself, in it's entirety, had been snatched away, quite possibly permanently.

No. What was done could be undone. Finn either had to believe that, or he had to move on, and he wasn't quite ready for the latter, yet.

"Good to know." And it was, in a way, though he had to wonder..... "But if the option had been there? I mean, it must be nice. It must make things simpler. I know you always wanted to keep things simple. I know I had, too."

enoh love

 

[Enoh Love]

"Nothing about this is easy for me. I can't imagine choosing this, either." He grimaced, unhappy with this whole idea. "I don't like not knowing things." He repeated, as true now as it was a few minutes prior, and in the forever before that. "I don't like having gaps in my memory. I don't like not being in control." Of himself in his entirety, including his emotions. Love clearly made him reckless in the past, or at least encouraged him to put faith into those who might not otherwise deserve it, but at least with that emotion, he figured he was in control to a degree. He must have known what he was doing, and why.

It was different now, because he didn't have any of those answers.

"All I have to show for it is frustration, this -" Leaning forward, he reached up and started to work into the bandages around his neck, unravelling them to remove them completely. Once it was gone, he was free to pull the neck of his shirt down enough to show the circlet of thrones tattooed around his neck, in all of its glory. "- and more questions than answers."

seussi

 

[Seussi]

Finn stayed silent, because he really didn't know what to say to that. Ripley was unhappy with his current situation, and that was understandable, but to Finn, who had no idea what it actually felt like to be without a particular emotion, or to simply feel like his memories had been tampered with because of it....there was just no way for him to know what that could be like, or how it might weigh against the messiness that was love.

When Ripley began to unwind the bandages on his neck, Finn frowned, and leaned forward, eye narrowing as he waited to see what the other man was trying to reveal. What he saw came as a surprise, and he took in a quick breath. "How long have you...." He started, but then remembered. That first night, the bandages Ripley had worn then. He had been hiding it, all this time, and Finn somehow hadn't even caught a glimpse, even though they'd been together several times since.

That was actually sort of embarrassing.

"Thorns. Hot." He commented, and then raised an eyebrow. "So, does this mean that you're going to trust me? Don't need to hear me say it, first?"

enoh lovex

 

[Enoh Love]

Ripley had been about to answer his question, but it seemed that realization dawned in the other man. So instead he stayed quiet, assuming that he knew what he had figured it out. Yes, all this time, he had kept the bandages on, and worn high-necked things. It was his only choice.

"I can trust you with this." After all, on paper, all he had was that Creation had told him he was infected, and then messed with his memories. So far, Ripley had not given anything further than that. How many Hunters have had their minds tampered with? It was a fairly commonplace thing. "But if I have anything more to say, I probably wouldn't share it until I had your word." He shrugged, and slid that metaphorical ball back into Finn's court.

seussi

 

[Seussi]

"If." Finn repeated, and scoffed. He knew that Ripley wouldn't have come to his room to "talk" if he didn't have more to tell him....or possibly more to show him, as the tattoo's case demonstrated.

"You can trust me, but you're going to have to be a little more specific on what's expected of me. I'm sure there are a lot of ways that I could, unknowingly, let you down. Set the boundaries, and I'll stay within them."

enoh love

 

[Enoh Love]

"If." Ripley repeated in confirmation. Finn was smart. He figured the other man would know there was more to it than that. It was just that he wasn't going to divulge much more until he felt he was safe enough to do so.

"I want you to keep this between the two of us. I don't want anyone else to know any of this, and if you think someone should know, I want you to ask me first." People on the island had been killed for less. Though this life of his didn't seem very worth living, he still didn't quite want it all to end. If it did, fine. If he could help it though, he'd like to keep it. He mulled over what parameter to set next, and it brought a small, bitter smile to his lips. "And if you decide I'm still worthless, and you give up on me, at least give me warning before you send the dogs." Meaning, of course, whomever Caelius would send after him.

seussi