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Rep gave Melvin a dismal look, not sure how anything could ever really be too sweet. The other hunter was just a complete enigma to him in every possible way. It was frustrating when everyone else felt so straightforward to understand.

"You are a ray of sunshine" he said matter of factly. "I guess it means more cake for me at the end of the day."

He eyed the poor battered box with dismay and sadness. "People should just leave me on the dishes."

Rep as always, took every single comment Melvin made personally "So I'm clumsy, stupid and too dumb to make a cake."

He glared at Melvin irritably and crossed his arms. "Maybe I should just leave then? Cause I'll ******** up making the cake."

Rep gave Melvin a wide eyed stare at his tirade about his passive attitude. He was at a loss, the defensive aggression didn't work on Melvin and dropping it to the more honest, vulnerable emotions behind it only seemed to work even less, to the point he got chewed out. He didn't have any other modes to drop into.

He wanted to simultaneously leave and punch Melvin right in the face. The last thing he wanted to do was make a cake, especially one he no longer felt even slightly prepared to make given it was now an order and a risk.

"What the ******** do you even want me to act like? Should I act like YOU?"

He stood up straighter and mimicked Melvin's posture, tossing his hair out of his face. He dropped his accent and tried to even mimic his accent. "I do not understand why you stubbornly act so childish Melvin Wood, I thought you were better than this defamation of character."

It was really hard not to say man at the end of everything.

Rep resisted the urge to snap and get angry, tightly winding up the rage into stiffness of posture, giving Melvin the most haughty and disdainful look he could muster.

"I don't care about your feelings but can you tell me about them? Yes. All of them. I want to know everything so that if you ever cross me, I can turn them against you. I will be your friend so long as no one better comes along and yet will complain bitterly that no one is loyal to me."

He brushed imaginary dust off his apron.

"Feelings are just a weakness and I am offended when people have them. They make me feel damn awkward and then I have to lecture them before going back to hide in fort clean. I mean my room."

Generally Rep could have laughed off a bare knuckle blow like it was nothing at all, absorbed by his shield without a scratch. But the impact was still felt, and that impact was squarely in his face, his face with its prior nose injuries, only compounded by the injuries Jerry had managed to slap on there too.

He reeled back with a sound of surprise and startled anger, holding his nose as agony blossomed across his nose and cheekbones and brought the world to temporary blackness.

He leaned against the counter heavily, and his initial instincts were to lash out back at him, fury surging into adrenaline, in the instant reliving every other moment in his life when he'd been struck unawares. You had to ******** fight back or people won.

But fighting back here would mean he would lose. He'd found a better weapon. Sniffing, he stood up the exact same way again and narrowed his eyes at the blonde man.

"I can't have friends because I am more suspicious of the people who love me than anyone else and I will hurt them with my doubt. I make fun of Rep's insecurities because I can't cope with my own. I'm scared he'll take Rin away from me by killing her or just being all round better than me and I can't see that he won't."

He rubbed his nose again.

"I hit pretty well but I think I fight like a sissy girl, just like I think like I do everything like one. Rep won't man up and make a cake, I won't man up and do anything at all."

This time Rep was expecting Melvin to lash out and he caught the bucket and what he could retain of its contents out of the air sharply, still maintaining that stern mimic of Melvin in his gestures and mannerisms as he did so.

He tutted disapprovingly.

"Now now, no need to be a barbarian about this, you aren't a child are you?" It was so easy for him to just slip on a mask, losing himself in some other imitation, the way he tended to do when he found himself as a female.

He set it on the counter. "I am Melvin, I only get truly angry when I am forced to hear the truth. I would rather bury my head in the sand and pretend everyone else is simply broken."

He didn't let up, every single painful comment, every twist of the knife would be paid back in kind, and he wouldn't insult him, wouldn't stoop to fighting him back, he'd just do the worst thing he had in his arsenal and hold up a mirror to him, let him see how he looked to everyone else. People on the outside of his front and the walls he'd built up. It meant Rep himself was safe for a change from the sharp comments the life hunter was capable of.

"I think Rep is saying this stuff to hurt me, clearly he's just making it up. When really it's all everyone else sees. He knows its not how I am but its what I want people to think. I want to be a robot because then I could turn friendship into a formula and execute it, I wouldn't have to rely on emotions and other things I'm scared of. Really scared of. I am scared to get near people because I feel like my failure is contagious, that up close they'll see the cracks in my armour, that they'll pry it off. Rep got too close, its easier to drive him off over a silly detail than face he wants to be my friend, he cares about me and always has."

He flattened out his hair a little.

"And now I'm going to run away because that is what I do. It is why I became a hunter, why rep had to send me to rin when I should have been there in the first place and why this whole thing has gone unresolved so long."

"Yes. Rep thinks I'm an a*****e who doesn't give a damn, that's why he's persistently given me access to his innermost emotions and feelings, things no one else gets access to." He was furious, absolutely livid, but at the same time oddly detached, as if he was an observer in his own head. Even the voice was bizzare, like listening to his old therapist. Everyone in Glasgow could put on an accentless voice or close to. He just never used his because he had reasons.

"I am going to tell myself that everyone hates me and everyone doesn't understand me though I give them nothing to go by but questions. I get angry when they think I'm a robot though I show not one single flicker of remorse when I hurt and upset those around me, when I make them feel small. I feel like I should be rewarded for every tiny gesture of friendship I make rather than those gestures being the norm and yet reward nothing like that that is given to me."

He closed his eyes and exhaled in a sigh. "I could hit Rep again if I wanted and he'd let me but it won't fix anything. I could listen, but listening is scary and rep is big and mean and terrible."