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 Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2016 6:36 pm
"I learned plenty." he said, with no intention to embellish on this fact any further.
"And I don't know what to expect from you lately, there is no rhyme or reason to most of what you do. Perhaps it would simply be a whim, a power trip or simply not understanding how drowning even works. It could look like an accident."
He shook his head.
"As far as jumping in after me, that could simply have been adrenaline from the chase and nothing more. I can't answer why you didn't let me drown, perhaps torture is more interesting?"
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Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2016 6:54 pm
He dropped him then, looking out at him as he did. "Then what did you learn when you can't even make out my intentions? What did you learn when you aren't even able to explain. You haven't learned anything!"
"You want to learn something? Then ask. You could have asked me too! Or you could look back at all the times I was there for you. Why would you want someone like me then around if you think I'd murder you after chasing after you? After wanting you? After wanting nothing more than to hold you in my arms as if that was the only thing that mattered?! To me my prize for even a moment! For some stupid pictu-" He gripped his neck strap to hold the dripping camera up, and seeing it, broken and useless, paused as he stared at it. Gritting his teeth, he tore it off and threw it into the water.
He moved on him, wanting to hold him to bank. "You ******** thing I'm SO stupid that I don't understand how drowning works? Like I don't feel it when I dive? Like how I debate in the water and let my lungs stretch just to test it?"
"Is it a whim for YOU to kill? Was it a whim back with those people in the pod? Was it a whim for the moths? Did you debate? Do you as much as I do? Is that how you think I am? That at any moment I could wrap my arms around you until you breaks into pieces?!"
"Why would you think all that of me? Was everything erased from before? Does nothing I do ever matter to you? Just a etch and sketch you just ...just.." He shook his hands quickly in front of him. "...shake each day and start over?!"
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Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2016 7:09 pm
Lawrence just gave Melvin a very nonplussed expression for his rant.
"Ask you? Ask you if you want to murder me? You've said that you want to sometimes and I assumed it was flippant and a joke but when you prove to me that you are capricious and unreliable and will use what is probably the only real thing I can't deal with against me just out of sheer curiosity that is where I draw a line." The comments about wanting to hold him didn't hold any traction because he couldn't ever imagine a scenario where that was the only motivation to do something.
He didn't bother answering if it was a whim for him to kill people or to do things, because it was and he figured that was a given, all he could do was to apply it to other people and it was what he should have been doing all along. Instead he'd tried to build up a picture of Melvin as a person different from him, less cold and brutal and more driven by emotions and care. It had been a mistake, he saw now, a mistake because he was just the same as him. "I think that you possibly could, yes. I think that almost everyone is capable of it, and many of them feel more justified when I have wronged them."
"And each day is a new day, each day is it's own entity. You can't save up 50 instances of casual affection and trade them in for a get out of attempted murder free card, if you make me fear for my life when I am around you then certainly, I will not put my life in your hands ever again. It will just be something that is withheld from you indefinitely."
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Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2016 7:33 pm
He moved now, throwing his weight on top of him and holding him down.
"You draw the line? You expect so much of people when you hold nothing to yourself. Your interest. Your preferences. You're own testing of this and that. You make up lessons when you don't know. You are so SURE of yourself when you get it all wrong but I can't? I can't be forgiven? I can ******** up in your great and glorious presence? You think I have everything figured out? Myself figured out? I don't! All I can do is try. All I do is take everything by the small day to day and try despite how much I want to to just hope it all works out. But you keep making me hope and I want to believe that too. Because I've done that. I've hoped for such great happy ******** lives. And twice now those were lies to me. Twice now those died. And you want to take again. Aren't you being torturous? Aren't you unreliable?! WHERE CAN I DRAW THE LINE?!"
He held him now, fingers gripping about that slender, pale throat. "Was my love only casual? Was all that time casual? Do I not too fear for my life? Could you not kill me whenever you wanted? Yet still I put it in yours? Am I withheld now? If now, then what do I do now, Lawr? WHAT IS THE POINT IN BEING ALIVE NOW IF NOTHING I DO EVEN MATTERS TO YOU AND NEVER WILL?!"
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Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2016 7:44 pm
Lawrence didn't fight back. He could have, but he didn't see the point, if he was going to get Melvin to stop it wasn't going to be in fighting him, it was going to be in submission and guilt.
He shook his head at Melvin but when he tried to speak the words were also strangled, each word laboured. "They'll kill you." he said, barely a whisper, already starting to see stars in his vision.
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Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2016 7:59 pm
"Let them. I don't care about them. What life would I have?" Nothing of it mattered. What future would there be? It would always be uncertainty.
"Its so easy to erase me from your life. That's what kills me the most. How do I feel this much for you when you seem so unaffected by any of it? What about loyalty? What about desire? What about protection? Are all concepts at their very definition and by example not suitable for you? Not able to be registered? If you don't have eyes to see it, should they be ripped out so you can at least hear me better when I say it?! Would strangling you even matter? Does any of this even matter? Would it be better for everyone if we were erased?" His grip tightened as he felt the muscles about Lawr's throat.
"When you said I could go in the Infirmary - I didn't want to go. When you offered me a future .....a home - I took it. When you left - I chased you. Would it be different if it was the other way around?"
He could barely keep his eyes open through the tears. "When I let your hand go in the water, did you ever think of calling out for me or did you always think I'd never be there to hold you up?"
"If you want to be a god, you should know the limits of the rest of us before you set your bar so high."
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Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2016 8:05 pm
All he could do was listen to Melvin as he talked and his air ran out more and more. He would have argued if he could but there were so many things he couldn't have argued against either. He had tried to express what he was to everyone so many times but over and over they expected him to be more than what he was capable of and it came down to this.
He didn't fight him, all he did was gently place his hand on Melvin's as he held onto his throat. In the end all the other man was doing was proving him right and it was getting more and more difficult to stay concious.
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Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2016 8:20 pm
When the hand came, he looked down at him, a teardrop shaking at the tip of his nose before it dropped. The grip eased and relaxed before Melvin leaned down to place his brow against his chest.
"How can I help when you can't even trust me to protect you?"
Moving off, he collapsed against the bank, looking down at his trembling hands.
What am I even doing anymore?
"I don't know............I don't know..........I just don't know....
It was done now. It was all gone now. He looked over at Lawr, at what he had done, and stared back at his hands once again.
It was gone.
All of it.
He covered his mouth as he leaned back, not sure if he wanted to scream or cry or throw up.
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Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2016 8:31 pm
He genuinely didn't know if the other man was going to let go, so when he did it was with a few very grateful gasps he made up the oxygen deficit in his body, rubbing his slightly bruised - but already fading - throat as he looked to Melvin, already moving away.
He didn't look all that upset, just confused.
"I did." he said. "And then you did that. And this. Logic dictates I behave with caution. I have always behaved with caution. Just not today. There will simply not be a repeat of today."
Shivering he got out of the water and sat down gratefully on the solid and dry earth, catching his breath. "I told you Melvin. I tried to tell you so many times that I can do some things but not others. I can build a home, I can love through actions but I won't be affected by the same things as you. Loyalty doesn't mean anything when it can stop, protection has ulterior motives. I'm sorry if that's not good enough."
He exhaled. "The world would be better if I was erased. But not you. And I did think of calling out for you, that was what I did in so many words when I asked you honestly and truly not to let me go."
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Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2016 8:48 pm
He expected him to leave, and wasn't sure if it was better or worse that he stayed now, but was somehow glad that even for a moment, he stayed.
Staring at the water about his shoes which soaked cold into his socks and raw around his feet, he focused on the small pebbles in the water.
For a while he didn't trust his voice, his hands still cupping about his mouth as he swallows hard, still feelings his fingers shivering and wishing it was just from the cold from the nearby shade of the trees.
But he slowly nodded at Lawr's decision to be wary now. He should be now. Everyone should be. He wasn't good for any of it. Not protection. Not help. Not anything he upheld.
"I thought....whe-when you were looking back then....so afraid of me....like you did in the jungle tower......I thought after everything....you at least knew I was there for you......that at the heart of everything you could rely on me..." He felt his hands shaking again as he talked behind them, voice muffled as he felt everything in his body clench. ".....I never meant that............I didn't know...."
He should have never let go, and now he had let it all slip away.
A third time it was gone....
His hands slipped into his wet hair as he knelt over, clenching his teeth as he let it all wash over him, and the noise was that of a muffled cry and a strangled scream.
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Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2016 3:00 am
Lawrence watched Melvin with a look of bafflement, not able to really understand why the other man was so deeply, deeply upset. Eventually he decided that it wasn't ok and that Melvin should not be so distressed, that it would potentially make him more dangerous and would impact his plans for a home. He wasn't upset about the setback but had simply revised how he felt about the other man, Melvin didn't need to understand that as he couldn't.
He sighed, getting up, still rubbing his throat to make his way over to the younger man. He reached out to stroke his hair.
"Look." he said, patting his head like a favourite pet. "Look, Melvin. You can try again. Just as it was straightforward to push away my estimation of you you can prove to me again that I can trust you where it counts. It is not complicated. I don't mind attempts on my life when it's simply in good fun." Like being strangled, that hadn't bothered him at all.
"But if I ask something of you and I mean it, I want you to listen to me. There will be other times on this basis and I expect you to heed them. Everything else, do what you want. I need to know I can rely on you if I'm supposed to do it."
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Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2016 8:03 am
The touch only had him flinching from shock, absorbed in staring at his fixed location in the water, before looking up at told. His hands slowly slid away from his hair to rest in his lap as he was petted, eyes wet but wide as he looked at him. Sometime during their swim, possibly when he was dunked under water, he had lost his glasses, leaving his wet hair sticking to his brow and the bridge of his nose.
"I thought it was permanent." He thought he had lost all chance. If Lawr was so day to day, it seemed that maybe nothing was. It was a strange kind of upside, to be so temporary in someone's life, in their memory, and yet always have a chance with a new morning. Whatever kind of monster he was now, he could work hard to be a saint the next day.
His eyes dropped when he was told to listen, like a dog who had been told to pay attention after it tore the furniture, and he glanced about before looking back up at him. "I will. I will try and be more aware of that." He would try his hardest not to fail again.
Reaching out, he touched Lawr's hand and pressed his brow against it, thinking back to how they were talking, right before he had screwed up. "I don't know why you tolerate me."
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Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2016 8:25 am
The flinch was better than anything else he might have expected from Melvin, used to getting roughed up a bit when it came to reaching out at the wrong moments to the other man. It was strange seeing him without his glasses, it made him look younger and more helpless though he wasn't sure why that was the effect it had.
"If it kept happening time and time again, maybe one day it would be. But right now I'm just very clearly expressing to you that I have very definite feelings about my own prolonged survival, asking for help and trust. If I ask you for help and I obviously mean it I expect to receive it, and putting my life in danger in a very real way, particularly one involving water or damage to my face is not acceptable. Beyond that it is fine. Just don't kill me, I enjoy living."
He was not an overly picky individual when it came to things other people considered all important.
Reaching down it was his turn to take hold of Melvin's jaw and to lean in and kiss him on the lips lingeringly, like sampling a fine treat. "Because I want to."
"For the record, if you ever do feel pent up, I am certainly not made of glass and I'm sure that there are things we can find, like this to help you deal with it, along with other more confined ways to deal with an excess of energy to help. I get...tetchy too."
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Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2016 8:46 am
He leaned into the kiss as best he could, rising up from where he sat to follow after it before settling back down. "..okay."
Reaching for the bank, he heaved himself up, wiping his face with the back of his wet arm and feeling colder now but not as bad as before. Everything in his body felt rattled and weak, both from the chase and from the rollercoaster his mind decided to take.
"I think...that would be a good idea. I've been ..flying off the handle a lot lately. It's even scaring me."
Rubbing his arms, he looked back to the blonde. "I guess I can't have that picture now."
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Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2016 9:02 am
Lawrence was cold enough to shiver a bit but mostly paid it no heed, able to detach himself from the demands of his body if there was need to do so. It simply didn't matter enough to do anything about it.
"It happens to me too." he said. "More now than ever with whatever this illness is. Throwing a short fused libido into an already fairly short fuse has an impact. But I do rather enjoy a bit of venting in private when the opportunity arises. I'm sure we can find out what sort of things you find that help."
He moved to wrap his arms around Melvin's waist, pulling them hip to hip. "I'll get you a new camera." he said. "A waterproof one, with an instruction manual and a damage resistant case. You are a field photographer whether you like it or not in our line of work."
He ran his good hand through his hair before returning it to Melvin's hip. "I am soaked." he said, leaning in close and playful. "And it's all your fault."
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