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 Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2015 3:42 pm
It had taken some time to locate the bathroom that Rep was actually in, but a systematic search pattern had located the correct one, a familiar sprawl half-visible under the side of one of the stalls. Jordan sighed and rapped on the door. "Hey," he said, "your - " ride's here, except that Rep was very drunk and would undoubtedly take that gleefully wrong, " - drunk a** needs to get some water and some sleep. Come on, I'll aim you at the path to the bar, I know you've got a bed there."
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Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2015 3:56 pm
Rep had drama in his soul, even when his misery was self inflicted, he found a way to feel like the biggest victim in the entire world. Right now he was a victim of his own lack of self-restraint, suffering due to his decision that alcohol was the way to ignore any and all of his problems. The main issue was that this in turn presented its own problems, primarily the fact that huge quantities of liquor and not very much food at all meant that bathrooms had been featuring in his life a lot the last few days, when not pissing like a racehorse he was throwing up. At present he was dealing with the latter and was an utterly sorry state, he had been only minorly indulgent in alcohol of late and his resistance had eroded.
When Jordan spoke he curled up a little more, his legs visibly pulling up to the side of the bowl as if hugging it, he didn't really want anyone to see him like this, especially not after the accusation from Taym that he couldn't hold his drink.
Tracey said clipped and livid. It was the first he'd said in hours, too angry with the weakness of addiction and cowardice to trust himself to speak at all.
Rep spat into the bowl and pulled his hair once again out of his face. Normally he'd have been all over the innuendo, unable to help himself, but this time he didn't seem to react, feeling painfully unsexy and in no place to handle the inevitable rejection. There was another hazy memory, of another time he'd been escorted home and with it came a tangle of emotions he'd dwelt on and used as a means of self flagellation for years and years.
His voice was emotional and either drained, teary or both as he replied. "I'll be ok.", trying his best to avoid embarrassing Jordan, already upset at the fact the other man had felt that he had to come help. Obligation, after all the s**t Rep had done to him. "You..." his voice tangled up. "You don't need to help me any more yo'kno." he said, and rested his chin on cold porcelain.
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Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2015 4:06 pm
Rep was a mess, Jordan observed, and his chest ached in sympathy. A means of escape, but when you were trying to escape yourself, it never lasted. "Maybe I don't," he answered, "but I want to." He hadn't gone drinking with Rep while they were still together, too wrapped up in residual embarrassment and afraid of his masks cracking, and he regretted that, along with a thousand other things. But he could help with this now, the downswing of a bad decision without Harrison around to get Rep home safe.
"Come on," he said, and held out his hand. "Can you stand?"
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Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2015 4:15 pm
There was a bottle of vodka on the floor next to the toilet and after clumsily putting away his phone it was this Rep reached for first, afraid to meet Jordan's gaze, everything about his usually aggressive and confident posture hunched in on itself, seeming a lot smaller than normal. "I cn handle my drink." he said and seemed to be teetering on the edge of tears again. "I can handle it."
He didn't know if he could stand, he'd fallen a few times getting here, the crazy teetering vertigo making the floor feel like a swing and his feet like lead.
Evidently there had been some point in his throwing up where he hadn't quite gotten to the bathroom on time and the results had not been great, especially not with hair as long as his. "You d;nt want to touch me." he murmured, eyeing the hand , feeling as if taking it would somehow sully Jordan with whatever was ********> wrong with him. "I'm disgusting."
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Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2015 4:21 pm
"Didn't say you couldn't." Rep wasn't getting up on his own. Jordan suppressed a sigh and stepped forward to get a careful hold on the redhead's arm to help him up. He didn't attempt to take away the bottle. Rep smelled of alcohol, sweat, desperation, and even less pleasant things, but Jordan wasn't about to leave him here alone.
"If you're really concerned, the showers are next door," he offered dryly.
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Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2015 4:31 pm
Rep stood unsteadily, closing his eyes as he did so as if he could be absent from this situation just by doing so, but when he opened them again he was the same as he'd been before. He wasn't steady on his feet, holding on to Jordan's arm as if it was the only stable thing in a universe where gravity had gone ******** haywire.
"''ve no showered in .." and he tried to remember when he'd started drinking and could not. "..since a while." and this too was ridiculous and shameful, unable to even find the inclination to look after himself and feeling sicker and sicker by the day at the thought of what Harrison would have to come back to. Again his closed his eyes, hating nothing more than asking for help and his voice was low and feeble. He didn't want to do this to Jordan, but Jordan was one of the only people who he could trust, who had seen him a hundred thousand times. "C'n you help me?"
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Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2015 2:46 am
"Uh huh." It was pretty obvious that Rep had been neglecting personal care since the beginning of the bender he'd gone on. Jordan flipped through options in his mind. Rep hated the communal showers, but Jordan didn't think that navigating the stairs to the second floor was a great option at the moment, and Rep had said he didn't want to go back to his own room yet. "I can help," he agreed, steadying Rep carefully and starting to guide him toward the door, one step at a time. "Do you have a shower down there, or you just want to use this one?" He didn't mention privacy concerns; if that hadn't yet occurred to Rep, Jordan wasn't going to be the one to remind him. Rep's pride was already going to be bruised enough by having asked for help, and by accepting it. Being seen helping him was a secondary concern, but it wasn't like that was going to change the gossip much, if at all. Even if it would, it was still secondary. Rep needed to be pried off the floor and steered into a shower and bed, and at the moment Jordan was really the only person to do that, for a number of reasons.
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Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2015 4:06 am
"Just these ones." Rep said defeatedly, he didn't want to go back to the room and was just too drunk to care what anyone else might think about him, they couldn't frankly feel worse about him than they already did. "Th'nk you." he said quietly, in contrast to the flippant and dismissive "Ta" it was deliberate.
He wanted to close his eyes and rest his aching head against the other man, but he refrained for the time being, even while so drunk he couldn't walk on his own, still self conscious.
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Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2015 5:13 am
Jordan nodded to the thanks and steered Rep carefully into the locker room, guiding him to sit down on one of the benches. Much to his relief, nobody else was currently present. One less thing to worry about. He debated with himself briefly; the jeans had probably not been changed over the course of the past few days either and likely needed washing just as badly as Rep did, but wet jeans chafed and took ages to dry. He didn't see any mysterious stains that required immediate sluicing down, he decided, and instructed, "Trousers off, you don't want them going in the shower with you."
He helped with the process, as impersonally as it could be managed, and then shucked his own shirt and jeans, but kept the boxers on. If anyone did walk in, there was probably no way they wouldn't get the wrong idea anyway, but if that could be minimized it'd be good. He glanced around and swiped a bottle of shampoo someone had left inside an otherwise empty locker, then helped Rep up again and toward the showers.
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Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2015 5:22 am
Rep was completely passive for once in his life, too drunk to be bothered with the effort of being obstinate or irritating for the sheer sake of it. He was frankly glad to get out of the denims which had seen better days than the last few and was eventually with a little help - standing on one leg was almost impossible - down to nothing but the jewelry and artifacts he never took off. There was none of the sulky shyness normally typical of him either, other people distressed and irritated him, but Jordan did not. It was with reluctance he didn't bring his bottle with ******** hopeless." he murmured embarrassed as he leaned on Jordan, steps careful and slow on the wet tile. "Ace goes away for like, no time and I just ******** can't." It made it easier to wave the change off as some kind of reaction to Harrison's mission, but the truth was the mission was incidentally timed and his present state was more down to the absence of proper feelings than anything else. Harrison being away had just meant the decline had gone unchecked.
He sighed, voice still low, even alone always paranoid other people would hear him. "I cant even like... ******** after myself."
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Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2015 5:31 am
It took some coaxing to get Rep to leave the bottle behind, but glass and wet tile did not mix well, and Jordan was not entirely convinced that the bottle would not meet a disastrous and painfully splintery fate. Anyway, it wasn't like Rep needed to drink any more right now. Jordan kept that thought to himself, though. He turned on the showerhead in the far corner and adjusted the temperature one-handed, keeping one eye on Rep to make sure he didn't lose the battle with gravity.
"You do better with him around," he agreed. He didn't think that was the only problem. It was the surface problem, but it was not the whole thing; not the explosive in the grenade, but the pin holding it back. "You seemed pretty depressed," he ventured cautiously, and then, "here, the water's all right. Lean on the wall if you need to."
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Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2015 5:40 am
There was an immediate wariness in Rep's demeanor, giving Jordan an uncertain look even as he made his way under the water. It felt good, it always did. People would not have been blamed - given Rep's hygiene inclinations - to think the man was scared of water, a stereotypical ******** soap dodger, but the opposite was true, he loved water, whether it was showers, baths or the ocean. It was certainly no secret to Jordan in any event. Still, he didn't relax all the way under the warmth.
"Was it that obvious?" he asked, slightly bitterly, dread twisting his gut. The thought of everyone ******** being able to see him, to witness all the life and drive go right out of him made him sick, especially since it'd be no ******** doubt a source of satisfaction to many. He closed his eyes. "I don't know whats wrong with me." he said over the hiss of the water which was mercifully even if only a little, clearing his head somewhat. He ran his hands through his hair, pushing it all out of his face entirely and leaned a little heavier on his hand on the wall.
"I need to be ********' strong. For his sake, you know how much ******** trouble he gets in." But the spars had taken it out of him and he'd never really gotten back what they'd taken since that point, just a slow creeping fear that something was off and the spark of rage that powered him was wearing out, that he wanted to take Harrison and retire, a fact that wasn't a ******** option.
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Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2015 5:56 am
"To me, maybe," Jordan replied, and squeezed some shampoo out of the bottle to wash Rep's hair. It was a practical gesture more than an indulgent one, given the state of the hair in question, but he couldn't help feeling a small bittersweet pang. "You've been running yourself ragged." For good reason, maybe, but the manic pained energy couldn't have lasted forever, and Jordan was not surprised that Rep felt raw and exhausted.
He fell silent for a moment, working the soap through Rep's hair. It was vaguely blue-tinted, some generic, unobjectionable scent labeled Mountain Breeze, and was producing a vigorous lather. Probably a good thing. He didn't have an answer to the problem. Hell, he wasn't expected to have an answer to the problem, but he still wanted to help, to take some of the burden of the intensity of things from both of them, redistribute the weight. "You are strong," he said, and kept to himself the tiny, chill edge of worry. Rep wouldn't burn out. Couldn't. Jordan had managed to haul himself back from the edge of the abyss, but he didn't know if Rep would, facing that same exhausted despair. If he got there. It couldn't be allowed to happen.
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Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2015 6:11 am
He tried to console himself with that, that the general population wouldn't read him as well as Jordan could, that they'd just think he was as ******** man PMSy as it got and nothing more than that. As his hair was washed, he leaned into Jordan's ministrations by learned habit, used to having his hair done by someone else and obliging, even closing his eyes in a satisfied sort of way as his scalp enjoyed the attention.
"That's just what I want everyone to think." he said grimly.
And then there was the guilt, the awareness that of all people to help him with this here and now he'd roped in the worst person to do it to, and he was sorry, not for the help but the necessity of dragging Jordan through more emotional turmoil. "It's no true though, just that ******** mask, as always. I fixed Tracey but I'm like... I'm back to that same place I was at before, you know? Running in place, I can't handle stopping." Absently, he took some of the extra lather and rubbed it across his skin, glad to be rid of the grime, hopeful he'd look at least presentable when Harrison got back, that he wouldn't worry him too.
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Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2015 3:43 am
Jordan's almost-silent sigh was mostly lost in the sound of water. He missed this kind of gentle touch sharply, as much as anything else they'd done together. It was probably some kind of grey area to be doing this, even though it was needed. Don't get too comfortable, he warned himself with a pang of quiet guilt. "Stopping's not a good option," he answered, low-voiced. "You've got the appearances kept up pretty well. Be nice if there was a decent way to take a break." Or leave, went unspoken. It was there, the choice, however temporary it might be, and some nights he wondered if they'd take it someday. How long it would last, and where they'd go, and where he'd be; there, wherever there was, or left behind again.
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