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It was so easy when he was hurting like this, so ******** easy to drag people down, to get them to his level. Jordan bared his throat to a feral, scared and panicking animal and he got the only outcome that there could be from such a thing.

"What if I ******** said no?"

"Yeah, sure, why the ******** not?" he shrugged his shoulders. "Why the ******** not?"

The hurt intensified, but sometimes that hurt was all he had and he could pretend it was guilt, pretend he felt sorry.

"You don't mean that," Harrison said, quiet, sitting back on his ankles. The cave floor was wet, and cold but he kept a hold on Rep's hand, the only place the severity of the need leaked through, so tight it would crush the hand of a normal human.

"Why are you treating him like the enemy? He came out here to get you. He was gonna go by himself out on the beaches."

Jordan heard the question, the response, and slipped out of the hoard with his breath frozen in his chest, feeling as though he were drowning. Harrison still loved him, he thought, but if they were still together, he couldn't stay. He couldn't ask Harrison to choose, wouldn't ask that, and watching them together would destroy him. They'd be okay. They had each other. One harsh, sobbing breath slipped through his control. He steadied himself against the wall and breathed slow and deep and even until he had it suppressed again.

Then he began to pick his way back out, navigating the maze of traps mostly by memory. Ferros twined into his mind, worried, concerned, hurting with him and for him, and hurting too for himself as the dragon began to realize that if it was over, he too had lost everything. If Rep had ceased to love Jordan, he would never touch Traciel again.

They couldn't stay here and wait, listening to the soft murmur of voices talking about him, or not talking about him. They couldn't decide which was worse. They'd have to sleep somewhere else tonight. Harrison and Rep would likely be in the hoard for a long time yet. Jordan would go back -- not back home, because it couldn't be home anymore -- back to the room, pick up a change of clothes and anything he needed for the next day, go find somewhere to crash. Tomorrow he could begin to figure out where he'd go and how he'd make it through the day, through the days ahead.

Rep let himself be pulled over, limp and unresisting without Jordan there to fight. He'd won a war he'd started for no reason other than because his instinct demanded it. He leaned his face against Harrison's shoulder, despair and a need for comfort overcoming how repulsive he felt. "I never said I'd stop protecting him either." But it was redundant. A promise made by the royal "we" always encompassed the other.

And it wasn't Jordan's fault he was there, it was his own fault. His own fault for being a ******** deviant while hating them with everything he had and with no resolution in sight, tangled up with things he spoke about and things he didn't. "It's my own fault." he repeated aloud. "I can't do it Ace, I can't. I can't do it. I can't be all right with it. With me. I can't put myself in the same category as them. I can't be part of the "kind" that Leslie kid talked about. Whenever I think about it I just want to ******** throw up."

When Harrison spoke about the way Rep ran, as if he took the direction as a personal slight it cut him deep and he found himself wondering how much more pain one mind could take without breaking. "I run away - because when I'm in pain - I can't believe that anyone would want me. I manage to hurt you when I don't ******** mean to, I'm walking blind in a minefield, its too easy to feel like I've stepped on one."

Once again he looked in the direction of the door. "And this time I ******** think I have."

And even as he worried about Jordan, if he'd be all right out there, part of him - the part that was incapable of feeling truly guilty - felt like he had set him free.

"I don't either." Rep said, though the doubts were still there, unfounded and baseless but doubts nevertheless. "Just sometimes man, I worry. I worry you will. Because I'll do something so bad without meaning to that you will like.." he trailed off, closing his eyes more tightly. "..walk away." And it was clear he meant one particular sort, one particular moment. "Because every ******** thing I do ends up hurting people. I don't even know why I said that s**t to him short of at the time it made me feel less pain."

He shook his head, curling in closer to Harrison, twisting around him the way he did in bed, and it didn't matter because it was the hoard, this was supposed to be one of his safe places and maybe just maybe Harrison could take some of that self disgust away, share it, halve it. "And maybe, but it wasn't ******** right to do that, to chase him away when he's one of the few ******** people who'd come after me."

Exhaling, it was with an audible shudder. "I'm not okay Ace. I'm not okay. And it's like. Its because of more s**t..more s**t than any c**t knows or needs to know. I have ******** reasons okay. I just. I can't. I can't handle the accusations." he buried his face until he felt like just a mouth in the dark. "I love you and him but I don't want to be one of the kind they all talk about. I'm not like that." and his voice dropped lower still. "I swore I wouldn't be."

As Harrison eased down, Rep snaked further around him, holding him close, still trying to drown out who he was and all his failings with the other man. Harrison was his moon and sometimes he needed to hide behind him and be defended even outside battle. He was silent for a few moments, concentrating on inhaling and exhaling, trying to stop the hurt from spiralling out of control again. "I don't mean to keep bringing it up." he said, swallowing audibly as if it would make it easier to speak. "I was just surprised at the time. I kept comparing it to the clock in the desert, how when I had to watch you die, everything just stopped mattering. I couldn't take revenge. And I don't know if that made me less. Meant I'd failed you."

He sighed heavily and murmured under his breath. "But I love you." At least he hoped so, it felt raw and ragged to think that there was a possibility that, like guilt, he might not be capable of feeling it the "right" way. It didn't matter ultimately, he decided if it was right or wrong, the feeling was there, all encompassing, determined, jealous, consuming and it was true enough he didn't doubt it. With Jordan the feeling was different, more distant and respectful, and that too was confusing.

He exhaled again, slower, rattled with unvoiced sobs.

"I am though. You never met them, but I'm just like them."