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prolixity rolled 2 12-sided dice:
8, 8
Total: 16 (2-24)
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 Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2015 1:37 pm
Jordan hissed, throwing up one arm to protect his face. The words hurt just as much as the fists. He got one foot braced against the ground, pushed up and twisted all in one motion in an attempt to throw Rep, to flip the tangle of limbs that they had become; he braced against the ground as he turned, used the momentum to throw another punch to Rep's gut, snapping the force out all the way down from his shoulder.
"Is that what you want?" he panted, his voice cracking. "To hate me so you can let go?"
HP: 12/60
Dmg: 10
Charge: 3/3
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Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2015 2:20 pm
Rep felt his shield crack as Jordan fought back, and would have kept fighting if it hadn't been for Tracey desummoning visibly, leaving behind only a deep gouge in the training fields. He hated it, it gave away his weakness and meant that Jordan would almost certainly stop. He wouldn't keep attacking Rep after his shield went. Had it been the other way around, he just didn't know. Part of him hoped that maybe he wouldn't notice, maybe he'd keep hitting him because some part of him deep down wanted it, knew it was deserved.
He fought back the desire to retch as he was punched in the gut and was left panting, drenched in sweat from the exertion, flopping back onto the field, his voice shaky and exhausted.
"If I could ******** let go of you it wouldn't ******** hurt so much when any ******** cockhungry slut winks at you on twitter. It wouldn't be so ******** complicated. I wouldn't feel so ******** SHITTY."
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Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2015 2:31 pm
Tracey desummoned, and Jordan barely managed to pull the next punch, falling forward to rest on his hands and knees beside Rep, just as shaky and dissatisfied. It was complicated. It was still complicated, and it was always complicated. "It'd make it easier," he agreed. "It'd be easier if I could just ******** forget it, be the a*****e who left, the a*****e who chased some other guy's a**."
He sat back on his heels and pushed hair out of his eyes. "Just ... let you guys get on with your life and hate me." He looked away, swallowing hard. "Live a lie, the rest of my life."
Quietly, Ferros desummoned himself as well.
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Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2015 4:34 pm
Rep sighed, still limp and breathless. Without his shield all of the injuries he'd sustained were able to sink their teeth into him properly and he simply let them. It was earned, warranted, needed. The adrenaline drained away rapidly too, more rapidly than he wanted and he found himself wishing he could hold onto the high. But to do that he'd need coke, and there was ******** none of that here.
"It'd be easier for you too." he said. "I just don't ******** get it. Why leave if you don't... if you don't really want to?"
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Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2015 1:13 am
Jordan looked back at Rep, studied him for a long moment, then turned and settled himself down to lie on the grass beside him, an arm's length away. He laced his fingers over his chest and looked up into the sky. "I left because it'd been coming up on two weeks that you wouldn't even be in the same room with me," he said, "and so every night you camped out at the bar, and every night Harrison left me alone in our bed to go to you. Because it had been months that you'd been resisting having a wedding, and I was starting to understand that that was because of me. Because there was a bug in me and you refused me comfort or support, and so I went to get sedated so I wouldn't tear myself apart with my nails trying to get at it, and then after I woke up you asked me why I'd left you with no support. Because you killed a kid and got yourself killed, with no thought about what that would do to us, to me. Because when our memories were ripped out of us and Clarice died, afterward, there was no time at which I felt safe enough to mourn and rest and heal." He spoke calmly, almost meditatively, a little sadly. "Because when I threw the ring at you, you picked it up and kept it and refused to fight, and I had no way back. Because it was always all or nothing for me, and when I realized that that was just me, that you didn't need me, either of you, something broke inside me. Because I had lost you and I was losing him, and I thought that if I stayed you'd get jealous of the time he spent with me, and if I drove a wedge between you too I wouldn't be able to live with myself." He breathed deeply, once, and went on. "Because on the day I left I had lost all hope that you would ever love me again. Because if I walked out, I could tell myself that it was my own choice, that I hadn't been rejected and abandoned." His voice had roughened as he spoke, and he blinked away the blurring in his eyes. "Because losing you hurt more than having all my skin burned away, and I wanted you to hate me, so that when I killed myself it wouldn't hurt you so much, so there would be no chance left that you might follow me. Because I hurt so much that I couldn't think, and I couldn't see straight, and I couldn't see any other choice left to take." He closed his eyes. "If Harrison left you, how long would you last?" he asked.
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Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2015 6:40 am
Rep didn't interrupt, he just listened to what Jordan had to say, and for once it stuck, lingering like water in a tightly packed pool shaped of sand, staying where otherwise it had seemed it would just ebb away. For all his shifting evasiveness and rewriting his own life, the truth was still there, present but vehemently ignored because it was too much to cope with.
And though he listened and knew it was all his fault right at the core of things, felt it in that deep rooted sick way he always felt the self loathing that was twisted and snarled around all that he was, he didn't know how to respond.
"I didn't refuse to comfort or support you." he argued finally, because arguing was easier than apologizing. "I couldn't ******** do it or handle it. Ace isn't vulnerable often but when he ******** is its usually bugs and it needs as much attention as I'm capable of. And it was my ******** fault. I had to choose so I chose him, because at least you were able enough to go get sedated. He would have ripped himself apart, he'd never have gone to get help." he covered his face with his hands. "I didn't ask for there to be three people, I don't know how to cope with three, there's only so much of me to give. I'm a ******** meager person, I'm small and selfish."
He didn't cry, he felt nothing but the yawning hollow of regret and hurt, the realization once again that he wasn't enough, that something in him was missing and maybe always had been. When Jordan mentioned that he'd considered suicide, there was a sick twist in Rep's gut, a low fearful horror that it would have been his fault. But alongside that revulsion there was something worse, some part of him that felt like it was the right thing, that it would have solved all of this, that it would have selfishly saved him being tempted to break his promises to Harrison. Because even thinking, even being tempted by someone else was as good as a sin. He pushed that despicable thought away, as far as he could. A world without Jordan would be missing something and someone important, someone with something to give back, not to take and take and take the way he did.
"I was testing you at first. To see how important physical s**t was." he said almost robotically. "I was testing you because you stood against so many of the things I did I didn't know if you really loved me. I always test s**t, I always push and want to make sure. I tested you because there used to be people when I was just a wee ******** boy who wanted to touch me and I thought they ******** loved me too. But obviously they didn't. I tested and you didn't get it, or how important it was, you kept trying. You kept trying because you loved me but it just made me ******** scared and sure you didn't. So I ran and once I run its easier to keep running than to stop, easier to do that than look at what's behind me. "
He looked back up at the sky. "It was just easier and its still easier to keep running than to try to ******** fix it."
He had been avoiding the question about Harrison, but he addressed it then. "I wouldn't last a day." he said. "I couldn't go back to how I was before. Not knowing like, not knowing how it felt to be happy, to know what it felt like to be loved and worth it to someone. I'd fight him as much as I could, but if he was certain he wanted me gone then..I'd go." It would be like losing one half of your own body, he thought. There was no reasonable hope of survival. "You were always the more capable one."
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Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2015 7:31 am
"I know now," Jordan said, quietly, keeping his eyes closed. "I understand better. I know I don't understand fully, but I get more of it than I did." His fingers unlaced, his hands separated, but the urge to reach out was stilled before it could become a motion. "You can't be anything but what you are, and if I want to be in your life at all, I have to accept that."
He sighed. "I was like an animal in a trap, chewing my own foot off to try to get away from the pain. And when I finally ran, I left behind something of myself that I will never get back. But I come back anyway, because its absence hurts just as much."
He smiled, just a little, painfully. "You need each other in a way you don't need me. I've lasted longer. But that's the way it is. I was happy for a while. Loved. Worth it. But when I was certain you wanted me gone, I went."
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Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2015 7:49 am
"Because it was different didn't mean it was less." he said. "It demanded less of you, it didn't need to consume you. I tried to give you room that I never give Ace, I tried to back off and respect you. But maybe it was too much, maybe something went wrong. I don't ******** know what happened. It was fine."
He sighed again. "And now Ace has changed his mind and when he makes up his mind I can't do anything about changing it back. I can't control him, I can't alter him, I might as well try and shove a mountain." He frowned. "The path of least resistance has become being apart."
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Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2015 8:03 am
"I've been talking to him, sometimes. Trying to figure out where things went wrong between him and me. I think I found one of the places where trust broke. But I can't push him either. He'll decide what he decides, when he's ready." Jordan opened his eyes and sat up, drawing his knees up and leaning on his hands. "He is what he is too. It's part of why I fell in love with him in the first place." He tipped his head back to look at the sky, some part of him still faintly amazed to see blue visible rather than just fog.
"I won't be chasing anyone," he said after a moment. "It'd make it easier for us to be done forever, maybe. But it would be lying to myself, lying to you guys, lying to whoever I was with. I don't have anything left of me to give to anyone else. If I'm going to be alone and missing that part of myself, I may as well just do it honestly."
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Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2015 7:58 am
Rep found himself frustrated and irritated in equal measure at the situation they'd somehow ended up in. Always one to make brash decisions he'd decided this whole thing just wouldn't do. Despite it being his fault, despite all the problems it had caused, he wanted it to stop. And by the looks of it, it would never stop. "I don't fancy like, ten years down the line like, still having you on your own though. It was a lot easier when we all just lived in the one place, when we could have these ******** arguments and after things could go back to normal."
He sighed audibly. "None of this is ******** easy and I really hate ******** difficult s**t."
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Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2015 10:18 am
"Mm." A short hum of agreement; it was maybe too easy to fall back into the patterns of conversation. After a moment, Jordan added thoughtfully, "If we ended up working something out, I'd still keep the other room for some of my stuff. You've had the hoard to take off to when you need to, but I didn't have anything like that. So I wound up doing dumb s**t like taking extra missions." "It's difficult," he agreed, echoing the sigh. "******** that, seriously."
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