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 Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2017 5:50 pm
"You are taking the easy way out. You always think you will fail or other people will fail. You have no faith. We can do this."
"I'm really trying to be good for you. For us to still be near each other without......things being ruined for you."
"We can just....have a little restraint. I don't want to be the reason you loose someone else."
Because he wasn't sure he could go back to being what he was.
He just wasn't going to tell Lawr that right now.
Slowly, he moved the buzzer beside him and leaned forward. "Don't....move." He warned, and reached behind Lawr's neck to start working the latch free.
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Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 12:19 am
This was the situation with the demon all over again, he was being rejected, told a soft no but a no anyway. Melvin said it was to avoid losing him someone else, but in the moment all it felt like was that the blonde man didn't want him any longer.
It wasn't something he was really ready to handle, and two attempts at reaching out to Melvin was about all his pride could handle.
He didn't move, but the stiffness of his posture certainly gave away how annoyed he was. "Just take it off and I'll get out of your hair." he said.
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Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 4:32 am
He sighed and decided to take a little longer with the collar. It was the one thing keeping Lawr here, and he didn't want him leaving angry at him.
"You're upset."
"I don't want you out of my hair. I want to stay by you, and to do that I'm doing just as you asked so I can stay."
He was only one tug of the clasp away but he didn't remove it just yet.
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Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 5:32 am
Yes, I am upset.” He said icily, in that tone he only ever used when he’d been sorely slighted. He felt demeaned, on his knees like a worshipper in front of a man who wanted to control him and yet in the same breath wanted to reject him. He had been feeling undermined recently, restrained and restricted by his situation. He loved Rodney but he didn’t love a life where he couldn’t even speak to his friends without jumping through hoops. It was a constant cycle of resentment which only softened when he was in Rodney’s company, reminded by the other man why he’d chosen to do this to himself. Right now, he wasn’t in Rodney’s company and could only deal with what he wanted and what was in front of him. Melvin infuriated him and comforted him in equal amounts and yet he’d relied on his loyalty to be absolute, for him to always be there, even if everything else fell through.
Everything was drawn into question by the fact that Melvin hadn’t just rejected him but hurt him to keep him away. He wouldn’t be rejected a third time, because he wouldn’t put himself forward a third time.
“I’m certainly used to rejection. But not from you.” He’d gone from cat-like affectionate contact to apparently trying to touch as little of the other man as possible, as if touching him would somehow sully Melvin. “The floor is dirty.” He said.
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Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 5:50 am
The collar came off and Melvin set it on his lap, one hand brushing through Lawr's hair.
"I love you, Lawr. I think all parts of me make that clear, but you told me that you want to trust around me, to ever see me again, we can't do this. You are married. You will loose that. I want you to be happy."
He leaned down to try and bring Lawr to stand.
Then he worked the collar on himself and held out the buzzer. "I hurt you. You are entitled to the same."
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Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 5:58 am
Lawrence stood, looking for the most part indifferent and cold, but there was an intentness in his eyes which to those who knew him implied more distress than that.
"He doesn't need to know." he said, remembering the demon. "Everyone can be happy."
He looked at the remote control and then at the collar, clearly thinking.
"Kiss me." he said, flatly.
If Melvin defied him, he pressed the button.
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Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 6:05 am
"Lawr, that's lying. I thought you wanted to be honest." He said back with a flat tone. Lawr was being frustrating in his contradictions and he didn't get why he would reject him and then want him now? Did something happen with Rodney?
At the command, he stared back up at Lawr. "What's gotten into you?"
And then he felt the seizing sting of the buzz grip him and making him gasp before it released. His eyes looked back at Lawr sharply. "You want to cheat on your husband after you shunned me the last time? Are you gonna blame me then? What do you even want from me anymore?"
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Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 6:14 am
"I'm a bad person." he said. "I'm not able to do honest. I'm not able to do anything right."
He set his jaw.
"I miss you." he said. "Now kiss me or I'll shock you again."
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Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 6:29 am
He could take off the collar, but if he expected Lawr to ever wear it, he had to show he could endure it too. But this wasn't what it should be used for. Was this what Lawr would do with power?
The words were hard to decipher. Was it defeat? Was it acceptance?
He wanted to help Lawr, but was he wrong again? Was he still in denial? Ignoring who Lawr was after all these years of making excuses?
"I'm a bad person." He repeated, looking up at Lawr.
Was he kidding himself to out himself as a moral compass when he was just as bad?
Slowly, he reached up to kiss him. "I'm no good either." And admitting it twisted and crushed something inside him.
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Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 8:09 am
There was a laziness bound up in Lawrence that had always run through everything he’d ever done. Effort was meaningless when you could choose the path that was simple. In the end he’d always choose that path and walk it, even if his heart wanted to take the difficult one. He loved Rodney, loved him dearly insomuch as it was possible for him to love anything. He’d sacrifice himself for him and would give him everything he owned, it just happened that in the end the one thing he was incapable of giving was the thing that was most important of all. He loved Melvin too, loyal to the last and willing to accept him whatever way he was, however he turned out. He wanted both, he wanted a life where he could experience love in all its forms and agree to a compromise, a relationship limited but limited only to two.
It came down to this in the end, a choice between redemption - a life where he could have everything a normal person had, where he could be as close to human as he’d ever be and avoid that path he’d seen where he descended into nothing at all – and acceptance, a life where he’d be nothing other than what he was, who he was, and be tolerated for that much. In the end, he deserved nothing more than the second outcome, he wasn’t cut out for the first. He was a creature fallen from grace and perhaps it was time to accept it, if Melvin would even forgive him.
“We are both the same.” He said, breaking the kiss momentarily. “In the end perhaps the truth is we deserve one another. I wish everything could have worked out, but I can’t be away from you. I just can’t do it.”
And he pushed the other man back gently on the table. “Tis better to rule in hell than serve in heaven.”
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Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 8:40 am
He tried. Countless times he readdressed his life and ever-morphing relationship with Lawr. When Lawr made his decision final that night when he arrived drunk at his doorstep, he had laid his heart bare and open fir the millionth time to have it tossed into the dirt once more, and like the other times Lawr came back to apologize. The ever constant twist and pulls if Lawr's words and decisions torn his heart thinner and thinner to paper-thin shreds and each time he tried to piece the puzzle back together to resemble something. Each time it became harder to make out what he had aside from some bleeding mass. Yet it still beated painfully and he took it back again.
With Lawr gone, he started to try and finally mend. Maybe he could firm it back but whatever that mass became, it was pristine anymore. Was it recognizable? Would anyone want something that damaged and frayed with no promise of it working normally?
But Lawr wanted to be happy and he wanted to accept that things were over, and he tried to steel himself to the snip of the tether he had gripped for so long to keep him with Lawr and away from the bleak absolution of going down a road that might not offer any rehabilitation that he felt he didn't deserve. It had been too long after all and that path was only darker and longer.
Why was Lawr even grabbing him now right after he cut that final chord?
He was nothing to him. He was something.
He was the worst tied to a monster.
He was in hell.
"Don't you forget this. You can never leave me now. Not ever. You either do this as a promise or kill me right now. I won't have this happen again."
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Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 10:19 am
Lawrence wanted to ask what his promises meant, to say that promises were nothing but a pained hope that he would do what he said, a hopeless aspiration and a future that might never come to pass. He wanted a lot of things but whether those things ever happened was anyone’s guess.
“All right.” He said, because what was another promise? It was easier to lie, it was easier to just surrender to his nature. "I'll never leave you." But not monogamy, he didn't mean that, he meant what he had always meant, devotion, death if needed, but never all of his body, not when a body was almost all that he was.
And there was some part of him that he expectantly turned to, some dark and hollow place around which his memories of Rodney resided, fondness, admiration, that sense of partnership. It felt like looking down a hallway that should have led somewhere but he couldn't make out anything but the still quiet. Why had there been rules? Why? Why couldn't he compromise?
He pushed the dizzy nauseous feeling away and pulled Melvin nearer. "Please don't ever ask me to change." He said "Only that."
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Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 10:54 am
Never change.
It was pointless to ask now. It was clear that despite the disguises and personalities, Lawr himself did not change. He was fickle, bored, curious, jealous, a trashing beast, a devoid abyss, a childish tantrum, a deep, somber surrender. Assured of himself and in one breath unsure of everything. He was ever changing and that itself never changed.
He had hoped and stepped back when Rodney and Lawr seemed final after that night crying to be taken back. Lawr's tone had been firm and final. He was focused and seemed determined to change, and Melvin was jealous he was in the put alone while Lawr got to start anew. But he hoped that in the end that Lawr could change and attain a happiness that someone as delusional and forgiving could give him. If there was proof and a chance that Lawr could change, that was it then. A golden ticket out of the cell, a pardon to his crimes, while Melvin watched imprisoned.
But it was not that. Salvation offered and if Lawr had a chance, an example that things could be different with an a good person, not a mess like Melvin, that was it.
Sympathetic, he wondered how easily a trusting heart could be torn. Rodney would feel those broken promises like he had and he knew it wasn't Rodney's fault.
Rodney offered a chance to help and Lawr tested that offer.
Nothing with Lawr was solid. It was reaching into soft clay - one moment a warm hand from the kiln and and the next a dripping hook slicing through your palm.
But it wasn't a promise he wanted Lawr to hear. It was a contract written within himself to warn Lawr. Too much change would change Melvin more than ever before.
He held to Lawr and what in his arms because, for now, it kept its shape.
"I promise."
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