[PRP] Teeth (Jordan/Rep)

[prolixity]

"I've got flaws, you've got flaws, it's working around the both of them that's the tough part." Jordan wasn't quite ready to let go yet; it had been some time since they'd been close, and any touch was welcome, even if it wasn't their own bodies.

"They catch the light nicely," he said, and angled an eyebrow, not backing down from his statement. "Very pretty." He might get whacked for saying so, but he wasn't going to hold back for the sake of avoiding possible offense; he'd been doing that, and it hadn't been working. Don't be afraid. We've been letting fear drive us for too long.

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

Rep exhaled. "You are right. I mean. You are always right but. It's just not worth it fighting over all this s**t. I got arrogant, I wanted to see how far I could push you thinking you'd never snap. But you did. And I really don't like the idea of a life without you there. My own selfishness isn't ******** worth not having you around. I don't want to give up. I want to fix the ******** problems. But you need to meet me half way, you need to not tolerate me saying s**t to you you shouldn't have to tolerate."

He snorted irritably at the wing comments. "At least I'm not a ******** lizard."

 

[prolixity]

"As long as you let me fight back. Remind me you can see me. That it's not all masks." Jordan wound one arm loosely around Rep's waist. "I can meet you halfway, as long as it's me and you." He half-smiled. "I want you in my life. The rest of it, we can work on." A long, slow sigh, and, quieter, "I've missed you. I've missed this. Talking. Touching."

He plucked at the front of the golem's robes, glancing down at it with a small frown and a flicker of the tail. "Trade you," he said dryly.  

[Baneful]

"Half way, I can do that." he said with a hopeful smile. "And aye, I don't want you to leave. I really ******** don't." And he didn't, Tracey had also been irritated by the absence. Ferros was his and not for anyone else to possess, he'd asked Rep a question which had made the other man think quite a bit about his stance. He'd asked if he would be all right with the idea of Jordan with someone else, watching someone else treat him the way people tended to, as someone who could fix their problems with no innate needs of his own. The thought had made him furious but had given him perspective he realised entirely now. "I want you with me and I'm not afraid to work on s**t, as long as you don't shut off, as long as you talk, and as long as you never do that ******** thing where you try to be what you think I, we want rather than who you are. I want you."

As far as the golems went he leaned back to give himself a critical look.

"Would if I could, this golem is super ******** gay." he said grimly, giving the wings an experimental flicker for emphasis.

Tracey concurred.

"I make a better dragon than this."

Prolixity

 

[prolixity]

Jordan nodded. "Yeah," he answered. "I can do that." He'd drawn in on himself, shut down, and Rep had responded by trying to provoke him; he'd closed off further, and it had become a cycle. It hadn't been entirely his fault, but it hadn't been entirely Rep's fault either. They knew what had happened now, understood it. It wouldn't happen again. He smiled back and let himself breathe, let himself start to genuinely believe that it wasn't over, that they could still work things out.

He stretched the golem's wings, then resettled them. "Can't imagine walking around like this all the time. Seems like the wings would get in the way."

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

"I'd love wings." Rep said. "Tracey remembers having them sometimes and like. I dunno. Dreams and s**t."

In his thoughts the fallen angel stirred with a wistful sort of sadness. he said, they shared everything at this point, it was unfortunate, he felt he couldn't share that with him. "I could live with them getting in my way."

He seemed to shift in mood, relaxing, seeming less closed off than he had. "What are you hoping to catch?" he asked, gently brushing his fingertips along Jordan's arm.

 

[prolixity]

"I don't think these are functional," Jordan said, a little wistfully. Titan fights had given him a brief taste of what flight might be like, but the jetpacks were limited and touchy. It couldn't be the same as true, controlled flight. "I guess you'd get used to it if you lived with them." Echoes of grace and pride from the barest fragments of memory in the edges of Ferros's mind, a fluttering touch of longing. They let it slip away again, not wanting to dwell on feelings that could only be bittersweet.

"There should be some winter or frost-type minis in the zone we're headed for," he answered, leaning into the touch for just a moment before moving to pick up the trapping kits again. "I was hoping to catch a rare or two. There's a bonus if we can bring back something new. It'd be nice if I could catch something to train as a battler, whenever they can spare time for that again," he added. He still felt a little twinge of sadness when he thought about the foxfires. They hadn't really been his pets, but he'd been fond of them.  

[Baneful]

"It's a sad ******** state of affairs." Rep said, shaking his head. Tracey agreed.

At the mention of wintery minipets, he brightened up. Wintery meant furry. "I've been trying to train Mass for fighting, he isn't really interested though. It's slow ******** work."

 

[prolixity]

Jordan smiled at the mention of Massacre. He was quietly fond of the fat, affectionate little bull himself. "He's just too confident in his own abilities," he suggested. "I mean, if you already know you're awesome, right? What moves does he know?" There was a small amount of gentle teasing in the statement, but he meant it as well. He was pretty sure that there were some echoes of the slightly neurotic tame tiger left in the little minipet, judging by the way Mass liked to rub his face on human hands and sometimes tried to growl.

He turned to place himself at Rep's side before they started off on the path again, the trapping kits held where Rep could take his if he wanted to. He didn't want to lead or follow this time.  

[Baneful]

Rep finally took his kit as he spoke about Massacre, rhyming his abilities off on his fingers. He was amazed he even remembered them. "I had to read a ******** book to figure out what they were. Lifeblood because for whatever ******** reason, I think his fear type is grass? Sen..Senbonzakura? If that's even ******** right, it's a random thing, can do random s**t. A heal and then some ability that I'm sure does ******** nothing but I'm assured it makes him stronger." He shrugged. "Getting him to use any of them is a ******** fight, he'd rather curl up and nap somewhere warm."

He shook his head but it was with obvious fondness. "Maybe he's just not cut out to be a fighter."

 

[prolixity]

"Kiwi had grass. It's not the best element," Jordan admitted. The corners of his mouth twitched up in a smile. "Ferocious like Killer is ferocious, maybe. He's a good mini, though."

The landscape was frosting over all around them, the path they were walking on starting to go icy under their feet. Jordan flexed the golem's claws curiously against the frozen dirt and found that they dug in easily. He wasn't chilled, either. The golem must indeed be based on an ice dragon. He blew steam into the chilled air. "We could set up by that outcropping," he suggested, and pointed to a rocky bluff not far away.  

[Baneful]

"You are the man with the plan." he conceded. The cold was familiar, though this golem was far far less suited to coping with it than his normal body, the wind cut deep into the slender creature and small narrow feet did not provide much heft or traction. Whatever he was was suited for trees, not for this terrain.

"I always feel so ******** weird in these things." The only golem to date he'd felt any sort of comfortable in had been the strange zombie tiger. Everything else unsettled him and destabilised his very sense of self.

 

[prolixity]

Jordan nodded and turned to make a path through the frosty grass and patches of snow, heading towards the outcropping. A tumble of rocks looked like a promising spot to trap, and when he reached it he crouched down and started setting up a looped snare.

"Yeah. I hate getting female ones. It's just -- weird. Like an itch in my head, or something," he agreed. He stood and smoothed down the short robe the golem wore. "And being a different height. It's disorienting."  

[Baneful]

Rep had to constantly fight the urge to lapse into acting the way his body dictated, his mannerisms had already started to alter just slightly, moving more lightly, moving more instinctually. "I lose myself." he said, noticing this fact even as he spoke. "Like you know the way when you talk in a funny voice long enough you forget what your own voice ******** sounds like. That's what golems feel like they ******** do to me."

Tracey said.

 

[prolixity]

Jordan studied Rep's face thoughtfully, reached up to touch his cheek, suddenly aware as he did so of the delicate tapered fingers of the golem's hand and the narrow, pointed face he was touching, as he hadn't been a moment ago. "You're still you," he said. "It's like a mask. It can hide what's you, underneath, but it can't erase it. Or like putting on clothes, it covers your body, but your body is still there."

It was an understanding he'd come to recently himself, and the knowledge was still fresh and almost raw. Rep wouldn't trace the conclusion back, wouldn't deduce that Jordan's tangled sense of self and the confused scrabbling desperation of his recent actions had crafted this realization, and Jordan wasn't sure if he was disappointed or relieved. If they didn't touch it now, there would be time enough to talk about that later, when the sting and ache of the wounds they'd inflicted on each other in the panicked struggle of mutual pain had faded and begun to heal.