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 Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 12:52 pm
The bug was gone, leaving only a raised spiral scar on Jordan's leg. He'd drifted between sleep and hazy, occasional waking for two days, the sedative drip keeping the panic and the nightmares at bay, letting him rest and not think. When he'd been brought back to full consciousness, the hideous sense of squirming and alien, malevolent presence was absent again, as was the vicious, gnawing ache of hunger. He ran his fingers over the scar, caught somewhere between repulsion and relief. This, at least, was proof that the thing was gone. Proof that he was in the real world again, because when he'd been locked into the neverending loop of nightmare and hallucination, he hadn't had this scar. Ferros quietly agreed. That was a good way to look at it.
His scalp wasn't itching, either. Sunny had thrown a bottle of shampoo at him and made him wash before she'd consider him for treatment, and he'd been grateful for that, too. He probably needed to shower again, but that could happen at home. He changed from the infirmary gown back into his own clothes under the bored and faintly disgusted eye of a nurse, ignoring the not-quite-glare as best as he could, and signed out.
Not having had to think for a stretch of time had been nice. The walk back to the dorms left him with too much time for his thoughts to circle back on themselves, repeating whispers of blame. He'd done the wrong thing, hadn't done enough. He'd left Rep to take care of a half-asleep Harrison alone. There was still unfinished business between them, a deep well of hurt that had grown deeper every day it had been left untouched. Jordan didn't know how to begin to address it.
He let himself in, moving quietly, unsure if he hoped that the guys would be here or not.
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 1:23 pm
Rep was at his wits end. The only thing that was and had been keeping him from a catastrophic emotional meltdown was the fact that he had other things to be doing. There wasn't time for him to break down, so he hadn't, the momentum kept him going. But now Harrison was up and about - if still shaken by the ordeal - and had asserted he was all right to do simple duties, Rep was left on his own. Alone there should have been room to melt down, to just lose it, but even alone he still had to worry, still had to concern himself that there might be some relapse, and it would be all his fault.
He didn't care he was a mess, he didn't care even a tiny bit, he'd shivered and shaken like a leaf when the worm had wound itself around his body and had scratched his scalp till it bled, but he'd endured. He hadn't been important, he'd ******** up, it was a problem he'd brought to their home and into their life and all that mattered was that the guys didn't suffer as a result. Harrison had washed his hair when he was able, what was left of it, and it had taken everything he had not to lose it and apologise for letting it fall out, for being unable to even retain that much for his sake.
He felt hollow and scraped out, he hadn't slept in a week without physical toll, thanks to the binoculars, but the exhaustion was deeper, emotional and had been building since he'd faced H in the pod room, maybe even longer.
When Jordan entered, he was sitting on the bed dressed in nothing but a pair of denims he'd put on to hide the unsightly scar on his thigh which was all that remained of the nightmare that had beset him for the last week. He'd hardly eaten since their initial trips to the cafeteria, fearful of fuelling the monster and it showed already in his build, more gaunt round the edges, lacking in fat to begin with.
He didn't look up, but he did speak.
"Decided to come back? Feeling better?"
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 1:32 pm
Jordan stopped, just looking at Rep, taking in the gaunt and exhausted look of him, the shock of half his hair missing. From the lice, it must be. "Your hair," he said stupidly.
He shrugged his coat off and let it fall on the floor, leaving it where it lay, bent to untie his boots and pull them off, and padded across to the bed, where he sat down. His skin felt too tight, dry and confining. After a moment, hesitantly, he moved to lean on Rep's shoulder.
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 1:45 pm
Rep felt the grief tighten in his chest as the first thing Jordan did was mention his hair. It was something he hadn't begun to cope with either, for many people it might have been considered attractive, a new exciting sort of twist to his hair. But it was none of those things for Rep, it was a loss of control and of something he'd taken pride in. His hair had never been long before the island, he'd kept it short, conformed tightly to the standards of his peers. When he looked in the mirror since then, it was at a long shock of vibrant hair, someone new and in defiance of that past self. Now when he passed the mirror he could see part of that old self, the old him with his hair buzzed down to the roots, severe, wild and feral.
When Jordan sat, everything about his posture tensed up, and when he moved to lean on him, he hurriedly stood up, whirling to face the other man, bristling and defensive. He felt disgusting and worthless, he didn't want anyone else near him and didn't have the energy to share to try and prop someone else up when he was so close to toppling.
"No." he said. "No. You don't just ******** walk away and then come back and expect me to look after you too and fix more s**t! It doesn't work that way." He'd been putting off this, putting off addressing the latent discomforts and the words he thought but hadn't had the balls to say or discuss. There was so little of him left, he couldn't stop it at this point. "It's not been working for a while."
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 1:53 pm
When Rep jerked away like he'd been burned, Jordan went stiff and still, everything in his posture and face just freezing, shutting down. His hands rested in his lap, loosely curled. Ferros's ring lit as the weapon responded to his human's distress.
"I couldn't help," he said blankly. "I can't, it's not. I know it's not working. I don't expect you to fix me." Something cracked deep down, and he slumped over slowly, looking down at his feet. "I don't even know how to fix myself. How the ******** did I ever expect to help you. Or anyone. I'm sorry. I'm ... sorry."
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 2:06 pm
It hurt to watch Jordan freeze, hurt to know he was witnessing that wall being dropped in front of him, the wall that he'd first found Jordan behind a long time ago. It was still his coping measure and Rep knew it well, his own pretences that he was fine the only things still holding him together. But pain right now for Rep was at least a feeling, it wasn't the usual recoil and withdraw it typically was. Instead it was pain that felt deserved, he was a terrible person, this was what he did, this was what he excelled at, and in the end it was all he seemed to have.
"You couldn't help. Couldn't or didn't want to? You are always so ready to ******** consign s**t to the pile marked I couldn't. Here's an example. Infirmary visits. You don't like them. You don't like the infirmary but no one does. You could still make yourself do it. But you don't, you show up now and then but there's no desperation or commitment. When something hurts too much you run and you hide. You do it all the time. I just have to stand there in front of the ******** emotional fires and burn, wether I want to or not. And I get tired. I get so ******** tired. You couldn't sleep, nor could I. You were afraid?" his voice raised, sharper, harsher, raw with emotions. "So was I."
He clenched his hands into fists, still refusing to sit. "You don't have to ******** fix yourself. You can't FIX people. You can't. You can guilt them, you can hurt them, you can contort them into little shapes and you can even ******** make them dance to your tune, but you can't change who they are or what they are. You can't fix me and you can't fix you. You just need to ******** suck up what you are. And suck up what the ******** I am."
A shiver ran through his whole body. "And if you can't stand either of those, then maybe that's a real problem."
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 2:27 pm
Jordan flinched. Then his hands curled slowly into fists. "No desperation? No commitment? Somebody's got to make your excuses while you're standing in the fire and burning and making no ******** move to step out. You stay and watch and do nothing while I handle the rest of it. That's how it's been." He took a deep, sharp breath and stood in a quick motion. "You know why I left, why I went down to the infirmary? Because you had enough s**t to handle without looking after me too. Because I was afraid, but you were busy, and you wouldn't even ******** touch me."
His mouth twisted in furious misery. "You shoot yourself in the foot over and over again, pull it all down on yourself, and you expect me to stand by and just watch? I don't - why do you even want me here if there's nothing I can do for you?"
He sat down again, suddenly, loose-limbed, almost a collapse. "What am I, then?" he asked, in a low, scratchy voice. "What are you? What - what do you want from me, if you don't want what I have?"
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 2:46 pm
"No. No one needs to ******** make my excuses. No one needs to ******** placate the ******** mob with what they want to hear, they don't believe it anyway. Anything you tell them they mark it up to you being blinded by me, being my ******** puppet. They only matter to you, their perceptions ultimately only matter to you. I don't care, let them hate so long as they ******** fear. But that gets in your way, it ******** with your plans, not mine." The anger was rising in his tone, each progressive word sharper and colder. "So don't ******** pretend you do me a favour by trying to ******** negotiate with the press outside when you should be facing the music with me. BESIDE ME. No, you just slither outside where its safe, where you can be part of the crowd that hates me while reaping the benefits, what little there ******** are - of being my friend."
He jabbed a finger in the other man's direction. "I heard you talking to Taym, I saw the way he made you squirm, made you ******** writhe by pinning you down and saying that he saw you for what you were. He said you had allegiance, full and total to me and you were too ******** afraid to say that yes you did. You denied me, you denied everything that I am in your ******** hesitance and I watched you wish you could be political as well as on the side of the bad guy, you wanted to play the game more than you wanted to stand up for what you believed in. Or do you even ******** believe in me? Is it just convenient?"
He didn't wait for an answer, storming onwards. "I had s**t to handle? That s**t to handle was OUR ******** FIANCEE. Not MY ******** job, not ME being busy. I was struggling, I was ******** freaking out too when Mark said that s**t on twitter. You met me because of the nightmares in the first ******** place, nightmares from a mission where I watched people die to those ******** bugs. The hoard was BORN after that. That was when I ******** lost control. You suffered in that hellhole but you were never the only ******** person to suffer. I needed your strength to add to what little ******** strength I had left." he picked up the mug he'd been drinking from, now empty and crushed it in his hand, as if the chaos and assertion was enough to give him further strength.
He looked over at Jordan and narrowed his eyes. "I expect you to be there afterwards when my foot is ******** and I want to kill myself, when all there is left is regrets and wishing I was gone from everyone's ******** hair permanently." The rage uncurled further, honed as always for weakness, like a tiger watching a jugular. "I don't ******** expect you to do things for me. I don't ******** want you to do things for me. I'm a ******** adult Jordan. I'm a big boy and though I might ******** up sometimes I don't want a shrink, I don't want to be fixed. And if you think that this relationship was ever about what you could ******** do for me and nothing else then I don't know why we are ******** still here because you are looking at William Reginald ******** Reid. The ********. The scapegoat of the world who is willing to take it, who no one mourns his ******** passing but the people he ********, the guy who by living another day defies all those cunts you value so much."
He crossed his arms. "And its not my ******** job to tell you what you are, I'm not a shrink and I don't pretend to be. I don't have anything I can do for you. I don't offer you anything except the same love and commitment I always offered you expecting that the other side of the bargain was the EXACT same s**t from you. One hundred percent commitment, one hundred percent trust. I didn't sign up for the small print, the fixing, the guilt, the weakness."
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 3:24 pm
Jordan laughed, a sharp, bitter crack of sound. "Accept you for what you are," he said. "All right. I'll stop trying. I'll stop defending you, stop wanting anyone else to see why I love you. I'll forgive you, over and over, every time you hurt me again, even while I wonder if you think of me at all while you do it."
He smiled tightly. "I believe that you are what you are. That you'll stand up again every single ******** time you go down, and not give up, even if it kills you in the process. I always have." His fingers curled into the blankets. "You are what you are. Well, so am I. I don't even ******** know what that is. How can I accept that when I don't know? What do I do with myself if I can't do what I know how to do?"
He looked away, jaw tight. "Did you ever need me? Do you? Or am I just in the way? The guy who keeps failing you, the one who's weak and useless?"
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 4:00 pm
"You might as well stop those things. No c**t else on this island is ever going to see what you are trying to show them, they won't understand why you love me, they just think its some ******** up Stockholm syndrome. Abusive, ******** up, living with a psychopath. It's pointless trying to tell them anything else and always will be. You only ******** hurt yourself when you try. You don't need to answer to them, Ace wouldn't." He frowned irritably at the question about if he thought about Jordan while he ******** up. "Honestly? No. I don't think about you or Ace when I ******** up, if I did I wouldn't do it. All I am thinking in those moments are I am afraid. I need to look scary. I need to hurt this person. That's all. There's no higher brain function. So if you were hoping for me to say I get off on ******** you both over, causing you pain and having you forgive me more times than I deserve, sorry to ******** disappoint. "
Rep looked as tired as he felt at the comment that Jordan had faith in him to get up every single time, Rin had said much the same thing to him, and though it was no doubt intentioned to show his survival instinct and endurance, he found it harrowing, a future of nothing but falling and getting back up until he was just a sliver of himself, until it killed him in the process of trying. "I have to believe if I do it enough times one day I might not go down again. That's all I have, and its not a belief that's ******** easy to endure forever." He wanted to sit, longed to sit, but resisted.
"What you are is what is in your nature. Not what other people ******** expect you to be. In blue kingdom there was a you who exulted in his gifts, in what he had to offer, a you with a ******** mind like an iron bar. That you would never bend the knee, nor would he simper and placate all the cunts who tell him who he should love, what he should want. You can control people, you can make reasoned judgements, you can hold back when others will ******** lose their heads. You are calm and ******** restraint. The you in blue kingdom wasn't you, but he was an example what you could ******** do if you stopped doubting yourself and swithering, thinking you need to be needed to stay somewhere. You sound like me." he shook his head disdainfully. "Why would you ever ******** want to sound like me? Your worth is ******** innate, people don't hate you, they hate me, and the people who hate you to get to me aren't worth your ******** time of day."
He showed no sympathy, not even a single inch of softness or warmth, everything in him was judgement and cold statement.
"I needed you. I needed you when you were true to yourself, when you first realised you weren't just "The Boss" your cronies wanted you to be, when you realised you had infinitely more to offer. I needed that joy and mischief, that ******** sneaky slippery power and cunning. But if you are going to toss all of that away, if you are going to fixate on being servile, on what YOU can offer ME, rather than what this relationship can offer you, then I am going to say no, I don't need someone who wants my pity, because if you knew me, you'd know I had none. You take what is yours, you claim it, earn it and wear it like a ******** crown, or you slink off and be the weak and useless person you've let other people convince you you ******** are."
"And let me make one more thing clear. You said if it came down to it, you would kill me. You said that once before in Blue Kingdom. But in Blue we were the absolute authority. YOU by extension were the absolute authority, you would make that call and you would execute it. Here you answer to the administration, ******** callous idiots who make arbitrary and cruel choices. I want you to look at that ******** statement one more time and decide here and now who you value. If I ******** up again and they told you to kill me, would you do it? Would you ******** obey or would you stand beside me and FIGHT the cunts until the end. Because I know which Blue would have done."
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 4:18 pm
Pity. Jordan exhaled and put his head in his hands as the word slid through all the panicked, sloppy defenses he'd thrown up, sharp and precise as a scalpel and painfully, humiliatingly true. It was what he was begging for, trying to wrench out of Rep, out of anyone, and for what? To let himself roll in shame and guilt over -- over wanting what he wanted, over thinking what he thought? He'd been invisible for so long, blending in; and maybe the self he'd worn like a shield here was one more way of doing the same thing, of fitting himself carefully into a spot that somebody else had carved out, molding himself into a negative shape.
He didn't have to. He turned that thought gingerly over in his mind, shared it with Ferros and found it reflected back in silent support. "I wouldn't do it," he said, his voice steadying. "No. I'd fight." He wasn't that other, but he could learn to draw strength out of the other selves he remembered, the ones who'd declined to let anyone else dictate what he could and couldn't do.
He breathed slowly, lifted his head to look up at Rep, catching his eyes. "I forgot for a while. I don't -- have a whole lot of experience being myself. If you catch me forgetting again, remind me." He swallowed hard, the line of his mouth firming. "Can you ... no, will you do that?"
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 4:33 pm
"That's what I thought. It's what I'd hoped." Rep said, clipped and with an edge of haughtiness. He didn't feel bad talking down to Jordan or being rough with him, he did it only because he firmly believed and had always believed there was more to him than what he tended to slump into. "It's what He would have done and Blue would have expected not one damn thing less. And nor do I."
He held Jordan's gaze. "You know I will, there's nothing I hate in other people, nothing I'll go for more viciously and tear out than weakness. Your strength is what protects you from that side of me, when you slide it starts to blur, you start to look like the enemy. You look like them, like the people who want to ******** tear me down."
"But what you've got to realise is that I can't always be your ******** jelly mould. I can't exist solely to ******** chase you up and test you, to keep snapping at your heels whenever you forget that you have a backbone, that you are ******** proud and strong. The fact I even entertain you as a lover or as more than that besides is a statement of your ******** value. If I thought you were weak or if you were out to stab me in the back, I'd walk. I'd ******** you over like I ******** Rin over when her loyalties weren't absolute. And I have never done any of those ******** things and have no intention to either."
He crossed his arms firmly.
"I don't want someone who can't fight me, who can't ******** stand up to me on the battlefield and off, because every ******** enemy I have, almost every single ******** one, will be after you as much as me till the day I am in the ******** ground. And you know that, you know it as well as I do. I don't enjoy it, I don't encourage it but it is what it is. You can't sit on the fence, you have to take a side, be biased for once in your life, make yourself invincible to them. Otherwise they'll ******** tear you down, to get to me."
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 5:01 pm
Jordan took a deep breath and let it out. "You're right. I haven't been fair to you recently. It wasn't what I intended, but that doesn't change that I did it. I'm sorry." It was said quietly, but with resolve this time, the waver shaken out of his words.
He rubbed his hands over his face, tired and feeling drained and hollow, as though something had emptied out of him. "It's why I'm here in the first place, because I decided to fight. To stop running away." Ferros?
Ferros had been listening all along, but he rumbled quietly in assent.
If I start sliding again ...
I will not let you, the dragon agreed. It is what you want.
It's what I want, Jordan confirmed.
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 5:11 pm
And yet, despite the agreement and the apology. Rep didn't move even one inch closer to the bed, or soften. Jordan had taken on board what he had to say, but somehow it had felt far too easy, he'd resigned himself to everything he was told, accepted that he was in the wrong and ultimately submitted. "I'm used to people assuming I'm able to handle everything because I'm apparently just as good as you at pretending I ******** can."
He looked away at the far wall, his expression unreadable.
"I want a spar. I don't feel all right yet. I feel like that might just be the answer." Because in the end, it was always the answer.
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 5:16 pm
"That's what it always comes down to," Jordan said, somewhere between irritation and relief. "Let me get something to eat, at least. I'm hungry. Normal hungry, not like it's been this week."
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