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 Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 1:46 pm
Jordan sat in a booth in the back of the bar, nursing a beer, slouched down with one foot propped on the opposite seat and his phone in his hand. The mouth of the bottle rested against his lip, and his thumb moved slowly on the screen as he scrolled through the Twitter backscroll, rereading the scuffles of the past few days. Rep's fears and insecurities, driving an unpleasant aggression and ancient, unexamined prejudices that alienated many people he talked to, or at. Is it me that's blind? Jordan asked Ferros. Or is it everyone else? Occam's Razor suggested the obvious answer, but ...
Maybe both, the weapon answered, and threads of concept and emotion wove through the thought in a complex tracery, resignation and bittersweet, wistful hope, echoes of something not remembered, sadness that could never be uncomplicated.
Jordan nodded and sipped at his beer, licking the bottle absently to catch a stray drop and feel the cool glass. He'd said once, six months can't reverse twenty-five years, and then apparently forgotten it, or forgotten to mean it. He loved the man he thought he saw under the pain and the defenses. But if he was going to love Rep, he was going to have to accept that Rep wasn't going to voluntarily change, wasn't going to magically become less of an a*****e. Harrison seemed to accept him easily and without struggle, and Jordan envied that sometimes, envied and loved Harrison's solid certainty and self-knowledge, his capacity to pin the world down into the shape he saw and keep it that way.
They didn't have much in common. Not really. And maybe, probably, that was part of what had broken them apart at last. If Jordan wanted to build anything between them again, he would have to accept, consciously and fully, all the things he didn't like, all the ripple-effect consequences that would result, and choose to love and to walk the line of balancing what he needed with what they needed. To choose that consciously and without reservation.
It would be easier if I could hate you. The thought rose out of the deep, cold, analytical places in himself that he didn't like to examine too closely, but it was nevertheless tired and sad. He hadn't chosen to love them, had instead been drawn magnetically and instinctively, powerfully enough that the thought of choosing had made him flinch away from a pain already half-sensed. Both or neither. All or nothing. The revelation that that feeling had been only his after all had been devastating, and if he was honest with himself, he still nurtured a tiny core of resentment over it.
In other selves, in other times and places, he had loved them, something in their souls speaking to one another. Sometimes it had worked. But what he remembered now, looking at a brief exchange of affection and trust (come and get me; I'm on my way), was a life in which he had stepped aside to keep from coming between them, because they missed each other. Had they ever known? He didn't know; the memory was short, dreamlike, unclear. But he would do it again, here and now, if that was what was needed.
He couldn't keep waiting forever. Hunters' life expectancies were short, though he was starting to think he might make it to thirty after all if he was careful. But holding what he felt in suspension for months was exhausting and discouraging, and if he didn't ask, he might not ever know. And maybe that, too, was a sign that he should learn to let go. But he couldn't stop loving, and even if he'd been capable of it he didn't know if he'd want to excise this part of his heart, this part of his life.
It was not his decision alone. He couldn't control what they felt or did, and there was a difference between knowing that and feeling that. Maybe understanding it as he did now would let him obliquely approach some kind of happiness. Maybe not. But if he failed again, it would not be because he hadn't tried, he decided. If he was rejected, he would accept it, and start to figure out how to move on. It was possible that that would happen, and even probable. But if he was still wanted, somehow, he would accept that, too.
He would ask for his ring back, he decided, when he could ask them both. Even if they didn't want him back, he still wanted the ring, the symbol. The relationship had twisted and gone sour toward the end, but it hadn't always been bad. He had been happy, been loved and wanted and needed in a way he'd never felt before, and even if that was gone forever he would still hold the memory.
He closed the Twitter feed on his phone and opened the picture folder, flipped meditatively through the pictures he'd kept as he drank his beer. Maybe he would get drunk tonight. Maybe he would stop at one.
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Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 2:11 pm
Rep had made the mistake of taking a nap. It wasn't normally something which was a mistake, but since retrieving the strange diadem from the casino his dreams had been strange, different from the old nightmares that used to haunt him. Lately he'd been living two lives, one awake, one asleep, from the moment he closed his eyes stepping into the life of the other him, the Queen. He hadn't said a word of it to anyone, because that sort of s**t got you experimented on like Jerry. Besides, it wasn't actually hurting anyone, it was the same as any other dream. He was idly running his fingertips over the large blue gem as he entered the bar. He'd been spending a lot of time there lately, it was a place he was allowed to loiter and there was music, which on the island was more often than not a rarity.
He didn't notice anyone at first, making his way to the jukebox to put on some Chris Rhea for his own benefit and to pour himself a glass of his own personal stash of absinthe. This achieved he made his way towards the kitchen area to grab himself a snack and paused, glass in hand finally noticing Jordan.
"Oh. Hey." he said, in surprise. "Didnae see you. Twitter moving?" Because to Rep the only reason anyone would be so transfixed on their phone would be a good old fashioned twitter argument.
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Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 2:15 pm
Jordan had been lost enough in thought not to notice the motion nearby, and he jumped sharply, the beer sloshing and his phone tipping out of his grasp to land on the floor, screen facing up. He shook his head and leaned over to retrieve it. "Nah, just looking at some stuff and having a beer," he answered, a little embarrassed.
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Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 2:23 pm
Rep out of well trained bullying habits stepped forward as the phone fell almost on reflex, aiming to get a look at the screen. It was only afterwards that he checked himself and stepped back hurriedly, especially when he noticed that it wasn't actually twitter the other man had been looking at. He looked away, feeling like he had invaded someone else's privacy, something he didn't actually enjoy doing when he wasn't trying to make them react.
"Ah right." he said, still resolutely looking out of one of the windows at the towns outside, he wasn't sure if it had been getting tidier out there or if it was just his imagination. He sipped his drink for a moment before taking a deep breath and exhaling.
"Nae harm in having a beer." he glanced back, raising a brow. "I can like..leave you to it?" he said uncertainly, his confidence fractured for a second by the awkwardness of his own actions, and as always when faced with something that made him doubt himself, he found himself wanting to run.
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Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 2:32 pm
Jordan echoed the deep breath and slow sigh. He set the phone face down on the table; there was no real reason to be secretive about what he'd been looking at, but he felt raw, strange, defensive. He looked out the window in the direction Rep was looking, found nothing there.
The awkwardness reared its ugly head again, and his chest contracted with a fierce ache of longing. The contrast between the abrasive, aggressive front Rep presented to the world and this uncertain, almost diffident, vulnerable glimpse made Jordan want to hold him, but that was off limits, still, again. "It's fine," he said, "unless you got stuff to do, I'm not doing anything," because for all the ambiguities and awkwardnesses and hurts that still lay between them, for all the differences, he still wanted Rep's company.
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Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 2:51 pm
"I'm no daein anything." he said. "I've been daein ******** for weeks noo." And for whatever reason, his accent sidled in more when he dropped the hostility, being understood became less important than being relaxed. His accent always varied, seeming to clear when he thought of formal things and cloud when violence slunk in. It was an early warning system in certain situations but so complicated in its to and fro that even a book could not have defined the nuances. The simple fact remained that it was back right now, the way it wandered back in the breathless intimate hours of night. "Ah've been ******** stuck oan this island since I got out ehftir the red eyes thing."
He wandered over and sat down opposite Jordan in the booth but looked at the table. He felt worn down, and it was ridiculous to feel worn down when he'd been doing so little. Being sent on errands for death division, even when it was the usual stupid risky s**t for Mark was one of the highlights of his day in an entertainment sense. He felt useless, as if they'd found the way to make him get rid of himself and spare them the trouble was to lock him down in every way possible.
As always it was hard to see around his own woe and his own problems to the hurt that Jordan seemed to be experiencing, convincing himself the other man had to have deliberately dropped the phone, that he was being emotionally manipulated on top of everything else. Everyone was out to weaken him and pull him down, first America with her insisting that he cared about people and now Jordan out to pull at his heartstrings all over again, the way he did every time, holding him at arm's length with lust and want just by existing.
He wanted Jordan. He did. That was undeniable, the memories of their interactions still visceral and written in his animal memory, raw reflex and instincts twisted and coiled around it. But holding it all at bay was Ace, and his disappointment, in the reminders that if he took again, he would have to be responsible for what he did, that he couldn't just take and break and ruin everything.
He felt like a dog on a chain. Every ******** day of his ******** life. Look but don't touch, look but don't do. If it wasn't for Harrison he knew he would have snapped long ago, with him it just meant that he paced up and down up and down inside his own head and the nightly replays of gang brutality and open indulgence did nothing to help him.
The accent was receded when he spoke again, subdued back to its normal levels. "I think I'm going ******** crazy man. This place is more boring than jail and I've been having ******** dreams. No Clarice ones. But like.." and because he worried that there were cameras everywhere and mics, even in this bar, in his sanctuary, he tapped the gem at his neck as explanation.
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Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 3:04 pm
The accent was a warning and a reminder, tangled up in associations of both violence and need, and Jordan's breath caught for just an instant before he hauled his reactions back under control. "Glad you got out of that, anyway," he answered. He'd stayed away from the infirmary after that single visit, feeling as though he'd intruded, unwelcome. But he'd known what day Rep was released.
"Boring as hell," he agreed, "I've been taking whatever missions and s**t I can, just to keep busy." His eyes went to the jewel, and he nodded once to indicate that he understood. "I have dreams like that sometimes. Not recently."
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Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 3:32 pm
"I get them every night." he said and waved his hand as vaguely, as if waving off the importance and gravity of that fact.
"I'm glad I got out of it. But being the only one to ******** walk away was something.." It had been something different, normally he didn't get attached, he had ways of waving off the importance of other people, but the guys on that base had still been in that perfect period of time where he knew them just enough to like what he thought they were but not long enough to learn to hate what they turned out to be. Now they were perfect and that was hard to take because it meant he'd destroyed perfection. Not only destroyed it but devoured it.
And perhaps the worst thing about it all was that no matter how much time he spent ruminating on it all, on the trauma and shock he should feel, that he should by all rights be crippled by, he felt nothing negative at all, he only remembered the thrill of the hunt and the winning.
It was a realization about himself he found concerning, for a man who constantly insisted that he cared about everyone and everything, he seemed to only care while they were alive, while they were an entity he could correct or affect. The past was detached and so was the future, all there was was now.
He inhaled deeply, opening his mouth to push, to say something to address the unspoken past between him and Jordan that he should feel bad about, that he should feel something about, anything about.
And then he just closed it again.
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Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 3:42 pm
Jordan's eyes sharpened briefly at that admission, but he only nodded again, aware of the possibility of monitoring, even here in the bar that was Rep's personal territory. If that was significant, and it might be, it carried the weight of becoming a potential experiment, or worse, a potential threat. And while in theory such things should be reported and investigated, in practice Jordan was not about to risk the well-being of someone he cared deeply about on half a possibility.
Silence, for long heartbeats. He'd already said glad you got away, glad you're okay, and to repeat it would start to sound false, even as sincere as it actually was. The divide between them yawned wide again. Nothing to say, nothing to do. He looked up to catch Rep's eyes, said nothing, just looked, the way another self would have looked, although without the mesmeric, hypnotic compulsion that other could bring to bear.
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Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 3:56 pm
It took another gathering of his wits, another attempt to make himself speak, and this time he didn't try to find the right words because he didn't think there would ever be the right words.
"There's been a lot we've no been talking about." he said, breaking the eye contact again because here he could, because Jordan couldn't hold him here, couldn't yank on his reins.
"It feels like we just keep extending the problems we had before by doing it." And there was something honest and frank about his tone, without the usual flirtiness or aggression. "I guess I'll lay out s**t as I know it. I still want to ******** you. I find you attractive, I enjoy your company. I just ******** want you in general." He raised his other hand. "But. Ace has said that I have to mean it, that I have to mean I won't hurt you, that I'll give you one hundred percent, that I'll do all this extra s**t. He's hurt too, I don't think he trusts you, but that's for him to explain, no me."
He finally looked back, meeting his eyes. "I just. I don't think I can do those things. Its no the same with you as it is with him. And I don't have a problem with the differences, I'm no afraid to hurt you, because hurting you like. I liked the fight that it'd draw out. I don't like hurting Ace because its like hurting the good part of me. I don't want to kill that part. Just the bad part, the me part."
Another long sip of his drink and he added. "I don't expect you to want a life like what you had. But I don't see me changing either. It's a stalemate, and its no fair asking you to change when I won't. Yet I still. " and he put the drink down on the table. "I still want to ******** you. And fight you. And be around you. This distance is ******** awful."
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Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 4:49 pm
Jordan listened silently, not trying to interrupt, letting Rep say what he wanted to say and taking it in, absorbing it. He drank again after Rep fell silent, trying to marshal his thoughts and form some kind of coherent response from the maelstrom of feeling that what Rep said had evoked. "You'll always hurt me," he said finally, tiredly, "and you hate to hurt him. That's ... the way it is. It's not the same." And it never had been, and he'd known that. Harrison was Rep's conscience and heart, and Jordan had been his conflict and his provocation. In another life, where he'd been harder and stronger and colder, that had been right, been ideal. He rubbed his eyes and set the beer bottle down. "You said once," he said quietly, "that if I wasn't entirely yours, if I wasn't a part of you, then you couldn't love me. Will you ask that of me without giving it back?" He met Rep's eyes steadily. "I still love you," he said, "and I want to be with you. I want you to be happy. But I want to be happy, too. I want to feel safe." He drew a slow breath, thinking of all that he'd thought over, all that he'd decided. "Would I be your partner, or your target? I don't -- we'd fight, because that's how we work. I know that. I accept that." An almost-silent sigh. It's not the same. You love him more. "I want what we had," he said sadly, "when you cared about hurting me. When we fought and then settled it and found some common ground and made up. If you can give me that, then, then maybe we could have something again. If Harrison agrees, too." He turned the phone over again, looked down at it, at the picture of Harrison and Rep smiling brilliantly back at him, the day they'd accepted his rings. The day he'd made his own silent vows. "He chose you, when we made him choose. He loves you. I don't know how he feels about me." He rested his elbows on the table and leaned heavily on them, his head drooping. He loves you more, and you love him more. Is there room left for me? Even if there is, can I live with being less important?
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Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2014 1:18 pm
Rep eyed Jordan as he spoke, and once again found himself sickened by the fact that he no longer felt bad about all of this, his internal narrative had done its job the way it always did. He had smoothed over all the good times, all the times when he'd told himself he'd been wholly in love and that it had been perfectly equal and perfectly the same for both of them. Now he had skewed it all the way only he knew how, in his mind Jordan had begun to create the distance himself and had begun to push his boundaries uncomfortably until Rep had run like a wounded animal away from the relationship and away from him. It didn't matter that didn't match with the man in front of him, the tired weary and loving man in front of him, it had happened because he had decreed it so. They had worked in blue kingdom, that particular Jordan had been something other, molded from harder, sterner stuff and willing to crack the whip at the lion that prowled and tried to seek out his weak spots. This Jordan was milder, softer around the edges and more pliable, but he was still a lion, if anything he was wilder here, rabid and pacing a cage of other people's devising. He was worse than he was in blue kingdom, something more unhinged and starved.
"I give what people deserve." he said with that same dangerous calm. "Ace has earned what he has. You hurt me, I physically hurt you sure, I do that to everyone, but you hurt me deeper than that, and then you left. And you left for ages."
He finished off his glass and set it down. "I love you as much as it's possible for me to love anyone." Anyone who wasn't Ace, because that was different, that was like loving himself, it wasn't maintenance and doting, it was a simple self preservation instinct. "And it wasn't my fault he chose me, I don't control him, I've never controlled him. If he hadn't chose me I'd be dead and gone, if not by my own hand then someone else's. ******** I'd have run off in the arctic if he hadn't saved me. You can exist, you can look after yourself and you proved it time and time again since you left. You get by. You don't really need me."
A fingernail was tapped on the tabletop. "And if you came back, would it just be a ******** millstone around my neck? Would you be sad like you are now? Can you even be happy the same way again? Because I don't know if I want to have to trawl through the emotional ******** harm you did me last time all over again. I mean, I enjoy your company, but I like, I have a ******** of my own problems, you know? Will you make me feel shitty when I beat you? When I push you down expecting you to get up and fight me but you don't?"
He shrugged. "I want the past back too, but it wasn't me who ruined it."
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Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2014 1:58 pm
As Jordan listened, his lips slowly tightened into a thin line, longing and sorrow transmuting slow and inevitable into a bitter and resigned anger. "Yeah," he said. "If you push me down, I will make you feel shitty about it. If you'd rather entertain yourself that way than care about whether or not you're hurting me, why the hell should I put up with it?" He shook his head. "And I'll say it again: if you can't accept how badly you hurt me, if you can't accept that I left because you wanted me gone ... then I can't let you close enough to hurt me again."
He turned the phone off and put it back into his pocket, looked across at Rep with a set, furious frown. "If all you can offer me is more pain, why the hell would you think I'll allow that ever again?" He finished what was left in the beer bottle in a long pull, then set the bottle down and shoved it violently away from himself. It slid, tipped, clattered. "Can I ever be happy the same way again? I don't ******** know, but if I have to be on guard every second of every day and night because otherwise you'll tear me apart, pretty sure the answer is no."
He sat back against the back of the bench. "You don't need me, then," he said, "you only need him. I guess I knew that. If all you want from me is to ******** and fight, you've got one of those things in him and the other in everyone else." His fingers clenched on the edge of the table.
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Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2014 2:32 pm
Rep listened with a cold sort of irritation, right up until Jordan's final comment where something in his expression seemed to break, some stab of hurt slicing through the even flatness like a crack in ice. He withdrew his hands from the table as if it had burned him.
"Wow. Just ******** wow. You think that's what it was? You think I ******** fought you to try and knock you down? I fought with you to make you stronger, to make me stronger. That's what ******** relationships are about, its push and pull, shove and shove back."
"You always did side with everyone else I guess. You pretended your heart was with me, but it wasn't, not really. Sometimes you'd make ******** concessions, as if you were doing me a ******** generous ******** favour. You'd throw your comments supporting me in front of them as if it was something I should get down and grovel in front of you for. But most of the time, when they were at my ******** throat and baying for my blood, you know what you did?" And he pointed, accusatory, his hand shaking. "You did ******** nothing at all. And you know sometimes its the s**t that you don't do that speaks volumes about you. I would have fought every last one of them for you, I would have done anything but you couldn't even be bothered to comment, because you felt like it didn't ******** matter, that they'd think you were only defending me because you were my echo."
He bared his teeth. "You never needed me either, all you needed was your ******** reputation. I did all I could to try and get you to understand your own ******** value, that you were more than the ******** artificial person they made you. But you didn't ******** want to be your own person, you didn't want a backbone because ******** backbones are hard."
"Our fights were different than the people who want me dead, than the people who would celebrate my death and who practically have when I seemed to have died over Shiloh. Or at least I thought they were. I guess I was ******** delusional. I thought you were more than you were. I fell in love with the spark in you that was you, but you don't want to ******** kindle it, you don't want to toughen it up, you want to smother it and put it out."
He stood because he didn't feel safe sitting. "I don't care if I'm hurting people because I expect them to be tough enough to tolerate it, the same was always the way I was expected to be. I don't ******** do buttpatts, I don't ******** do lovey dovey concern, and it was never ******** part of our relationship. You hurt me Jordan, maybe you are just too ********> dead inside to ******** realise it but you hurt me a lot and you ******** hurt me right now and if you think I should just ******** grovel to you, you've got another ******** thing coming."
"And if you want to ******** get in line with your side, the ******** unnamed "everyone else" out there, if you want a ******** piece of me, we can take this to the ******** fields and you can have whatever ******** pound of flesh you are after here."
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Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2014 2:51 pm
"It's not," Jordan shot back, "or you'd be hurting him, fighting him, tearing him down to try and build him up. No, you kept that for me." He stayed sitting, only the white knuckles betraying the tightly coiled tension in him. "I never wanted you to grovel for me. When I stayed silent, I stayed silent because anything I said would make it worse, because nothing I said would satisfy you. And it didn't. You got pissed when I said anything. You got pissed when I didn't. Hell, that's a recurring theme, isn't it. Whatever I do, you find some reason that it's wrong."
He looked up at Rep, not smiling at all. "When I came to you after my nightmares," he said, "when they brought me back from the lair, you didn't hurt me. You took care of me. And I thought that I could be safe with you."
He shrugged one shoulder. "So if you don't care if you're hurting people, if you expect me to be tough enough to tolerate it, why should it matter that I'm hurting you? Aren't you tough enough to take it?" Slowly and deliberately, he stood. "I don't want you to grovel to me. I know that I hurt you. What I want is for you to acknowledge that you're responsible for what you did to me. That you burned me down and drove me away. I don't even ask for a ******** apology, because you don't seem to regret it." He shook his head and looked steadily at Rep. "I don't enjoy hurting you. I don't enjoy when we fight this way, when it's not play and it's all pain." A small, lopsided, bitter smile. "If that's what you want from me, if you want to break shields and see what I'm made of when I'm dying, well, there's places we can do that."
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