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 Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2016 9:59 am
It was difficult to keep moving and keep functioning with so many horrible, horrible things behind him. Lawrence was trying to process ten years of a life lived by someone who felt nothing like himself. He could remember Maja saying she couldn't handle it any more, that he was too distant and that she wasn't in love with him anymore and that she wanted a divorce and then what had felt like a kaleidoscope of wild and brutal choices, faces and selves. It was all so horrible and if he had anything in him to throw up when he got back to the room he would have. Instead the nausea crept into his very bones, into his sense of self and spurred him onwards with the desperate need to be forgiven, to make amends for the awful things which had torn his life apart and the life of so many other people.
The first person he needed to speak to, the person who he had torn apart most pointlessly was Horace and it was him he sought out now, wandering the island and checking out the man's most common haunts.
He was back to being tidy and shaved, clean and fresh but perhaps without the same level of polish and severity as had become customary in recent months. Even his hair seemed softer, less severely gelled back and more loose and free. He was wearing a loose white turtleneck sweater with a pair of white denims, hands in his pockets and looking downright miserable with faint shadows under his eyes as his body slowly began to recover from the ordeals he put it through.
Butch was quiet, possibly asleep after their breakfast which despite the nausea had actually for the first time in a very long time included processed sugars.
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Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2016 12:38 pm
Horace had duty later, something boring - jungle or underwater - he couldn't remember. But for now, he stretched out his legs, ignoring the feel of stones poking into his skin. He busied himself texting people and wondering how he could get more apps on his phone. Not that he'd have time for very many video games, but still, some duty was terribly boring. He sighed and leaned back on one hand. He often came up here, on the roof, to get way from people. People came and went while he was up there, but never really stuck around, so it was a good place, so long as he secreted himself around the corner. People didn't usually take note unless they were looking for him.
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Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2016 12:48 pm
Lawrence showed up to the roof as one of his last resorts, he had been fairly unsuccessful in his search for the other man and was trawling some of the places he personally attended less frequently, the roof only occurred to him as an afterthought and he pushed open the door at the top of the stairs not expecting anything much at all.
And paused when he spotted the other man, getting a strange dizzying vertigo that was wholly unrelated to the roof.
"Horace." he said, and it was different, croaky and emotional, softer than the sharp whipsnap and perfect enunciation his normal voice tended to embody, it was more hesitant, more apologetic and his posture echoed it, seeming to almost lurk back into the door again. "Do you have any time to talk?"
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Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2016 1:06 pm
The door opening had gone ignored; he had been certain enough it was some random hunter looking to smoke a joint or something equally full of smoke and distasteful. However, the soft utterance of his name gave him pause. Horace turned, not expecting Lawrence, but there he was. Glancing back down at his phone (what ******** first rate timing, America), he set it away.
"Hi, Lawrence. I hope you don't need more snacks; I don't have anything on me."
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Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2016 1:11 pm
Lawrence shook his head. "N.. no. No you've already given me too much." he stammered. "So much." he looked away from the other man, distantly rubbing his missing hand. "I had to come find you."
He trailed off. "I feel like I have woken up from a long dream only to realise that it was all just a nightmare. I don't understand why I hurt you at all. I don't know why I did those things. It doesn't matter why, all that matters is that I want to make it up to you or at least to let you know I'm sorry. I don't expect you to forgive me but I needed to... I needed to say it."
Teetering unsteadily he moved closer to Horace, kneeling next to where he sat, looking scarily like he was about to burst into tears.
"I'm so sorry."
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Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2016 1:23 pm
Horace's face shifted from tired curiosity to shock to disbelief, his lips forming a hard line. What was the point of this apology? He didn't let himself believe for a moment it was genuine, and not the show of emotion, either. Even if he did believe it, that would hurt in its own way, too, further reinforcing the notion that it had been senseless violence, which was the one point he still shied away from. It made it worse.
He licked his lips and looked at Lawrence, then looked away, remembering certain conversations they'd had. "Who are you?"
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Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2016 1:49 pm
Lawrence was glad he was kneeling, shivering slightly as he gave Horace an uncomprehending look. "I'm Lawrence?" he said. "Lawrence Weiman." and in case this wasn't definition enough went on to add. "My dad was called Luke and my mum was Ingrid? I dated you for a while? I didn't do enough for you."
He sniffed and wiped his eyes with his hand. "I"m not a clone. I have clones, there's Chantelle. I know these things but I'm not one of them. I'm me and I'm sorry."
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Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2016 2:10 pm
Well, he supposed that answered that. Horace wanted to care, but he quashed that part, reminding himself harshly it wasn't his place. There was Jan, and Chantelle, and this was a different Lawrence than before - maybe. The man was impossible to understand, even though he had tried, before. However, he didn't believe for a minute the Lawrence he knew was sorry. What was the point of this - to hurt him? He took a shaky breath.
"You're sorry?" he sad in a mono-tonal voice. "Didn't I deserve it?"
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Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2016 2:18 pm
"No! No!" he cried out. "No one deserves what I did!" He shook his head "Horace, you deserve love and good things. It was so irresponsible of me to even begin a relationship with you for the reasons I did." he reached out to touch the other man's knee.
"There's something wrong with me, there's something really, really wrong with me. It's like there's some other life for the last ten years and I don't understand it. I don't know why my marriage fell apart or why I seem to have taken that out on you. I'm too old for you, and I've hurt you deeply."
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Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2016 2:35 pm
"I don't deserve those," he laughed. He had done nothing in his life to warrant those things, but plenty of bad, he was sure. "And what were your reasons, then?" He flinched back from Lawrence's touch. Horace was already treading on emotional thin ice; he didn't want to crack it further. The 'I don't know's were maybe worse than the simple expression of lust Horace was used to. His left hand curled into a ball.
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Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2016 2:45 pm
"Control." Lawrence said, closing his eyes and trying to regain his composure but crying instead at the flinch, withdrawing his hand to rest it on his own thigh instead. "I'm so sorry. I liked you, you were bright and young." he shivered again. "And prey. You liked the horrible things, you stayed. You shouldn't have stayed but I made you."
"I think I just wanted everything. I wanted your wages when you ranked up, I wanted ..adultery.. I wanted someone to idolise the monster I was. I wanted to see if I could remake someone. I feel sick Horace, sick to my stomach that I could want any of those things. I remember loving other people, I remember caring."
"I don't know what went wrong but that's not.. " he sniffed "Its not an excuse. It doesn't make what I did ok. You deserve better than me, you deserve so much more. I used you. It was nothing but using you and you are not an object."
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Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 10:46 am
He took off his glasses and absently cleaned them on the edge of his shirt to give his hands something to do. "Adultery? From who?" It was heart-wrenching, even now, to see the man cry, but Horace just had to remember that everything, every facet of Lawrence was a lie. This was just a new flavor of lie, or an old one, dug out of the piles of blank canvases Lawrence kept inside. "You can't love," he said flatly. "This-" he gestured to all of Lawrence. "-is just another lie you're telling - except even you believe it this time." Horace shivered, biting his tongue sharply to keep his emotions at bay. It only half-worked, and the next sentence sounded thick. "So... what was the point? Is the point? Why are you here, now, trying to convince me you care when you don't - you never h-have, and you never will."
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Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 11:03 am
"Everyone." he said weakly with a sniff. "I hurt so many people and I don't even understand why. There was some drive in me, after everything to just do what I wanted, and I did. I just... I just wanted to be loved without being able to do it myself because I didn't know how how."
He shook his head. "No." he said "No I CAN. Love isn't about emotion, it's about doing things! Rodney was right you need to just. If you love someone you support them, you do things, you care for them you are good to them. Those things are all love, its not about some emotion you can lean on like a crutch."
He gulped back a sob again, not used to crying, not used to speaking through tears. "What I did to you wasn't what someone who loves does. I just... I'm sorry.. I wanted to tell you that you are good. You are a good person, just a broken person and I just."
There was a moment when the hand reaching out for Horace again clenched into a fist firmly with a violence that jarred with the softness and hurt and dropped to rest on the floor. "I shouldn't have done the things I did. I care for you, maybe not love, I'd only hurt you with my love, act or no but I care for you now, even if I didn't then and I don't expect you to forgive me for what I did to you, nor should you. I just want you to have nice things from here."
He stayed here, looking at the floor, looking helpless and uncertain, lost in a strange mire or emotions and trying to even understand why he was there and why it seemed so important to apologise to the other man for what had happened.
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Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 11:14 am
"Love is an emotion, it's the ******** reason people do those things!" He sucked in a breath and held it tightly. "I'm not a good person." There was a quiet conviction in his voice. This was the constant he held on to, the words that sounded like a comfort in their familiarity.
"You'd hurt me with your love? Oh, please. Don't p-patronize me! What do you want - some kind of shitty absolution by throwing the pointlessness of everything in my face?" Lawrence wanted him to have nice things? What kind of a ******** joke was this? He swiped angrily at his eyes, hating that even this version of Lawrence, 2 point ******** or whatever, could get under his skin.
"No," he said, voice definitely shaking. "You can't care, you don't love." He stood up and stepped around Lawrence, not looking at the other man. "Maybe you can come talk to me again when you're done pretending." Then, barely able to keep from sprinting, he tried to book it to the rooftop door.
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Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 11:40 am
Horace of course disagreed, and maybe he was right, maybe love was an emotion, something brain deep and glandular that he wasn't at all capable of. Maybe it would always be missing from him and time and time again things would fail, not quite enough for anyone, just an empty shell pretending to be human.
And maybe that was ok, maybe that was what he was supposed to be, maybe if he did it in the right ways, trying to get better and to improve each time, someday he'd actually succeed and understand what it all meant. Practising emotions could only make him better at it and could only make him more acceptable and less uncanny to those who got close enough to see the cracks.
He wanted to say he'd already hurt him with his fraudulent love and that this was all he could do to sever the threads he'd somehow kept tied to him after all this time, but Horace didn't want to listen and he didn't blame him.
Horace's retreating figure got nothing more than an uncomprehending stare. He didn't have the right to go after the other man any longer, he wasn't his and had never actually been his. He simply stated. "This isn't pretending." And it didn't feel like pretending, not like the other personas, there was no distance from this mask, it was tangled up in memories, history and an entire lifetime. This was the self he'd been when he fell in the playground, when he found himself in hospital, when he'd gotten into fights with his brother, but Horace seemed to think that the other him, the blank, cold and nameless frustration and cruelty was him instead.
And that thought alone, the thought he'd become more that than this made him stay on the roof for a long thoughtful time.
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