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Living with other people again was ... different. It wasn't like it had been, but at the same time it was, in some ways. Jordan didn't mind sharing his space, mostly, but the contrast pointed up how much he'd gotten used to the tidiness and quiet of keeping his own company. He'd made space in his dresser and wardrobe without complaint, hidden his shampoo (although that mattered less while the plumbing was still broken), and reinstituted the Mug Rule. His maze notebook was being solved again, and that made something small and quiet and warm light up in his chest.

There were awkwardnesses, but those were being navigated with as much grace as he could manage, and the discussion that hadn't quite been an argument had given him an insight that had simultaneously thrown a new light on a whole lot of things and made him feel very, very stupid. But afterward, he'd felt less displaced and more like there might actually be a chance to renegotiate things. And the closeness had thawed a small icy core of loneliness that he'd carried around with him for months.

He frowned at a diagram in the basic plumbing instructions book he'd gone out and purchased. The island's library had, predictably, been cleared out before he got there, and he'd given in and made a trip out to get his own. No harm in having it on hand, anyway. The mechanics of it seemed fairly simple in theory, but things that seemed simple in theory had a nasty tendency of being more difficult than they looked. Fixing it himself would save him money -- unless he ******** it up worse by trying. But unless there was something arcane and complex going on with the pipes, he thought he might be able to manage it.

Rep treating the room as clothing-optional had not been a surprise. Jordan had decided, after a little consideration, not to argue it, primarily (but not entirely) because he was pretty sure that trying to convince Rep to put something on would have the opposite effect. He looked over his shoulder toward the bed and held up the book with its diagrams. "Gonna try," he said. "Better than paying a grand for it. I'd rather put that toward other things."

The repairs on Rep and Harrison's room were going slowly, mostly because Harrison was absent much of the time when he wasn't sleeping and Rep was either actually useless at repairs or cleverly playing useless at repairs. Jordan had a theory about which of those options it actually was.

"Yeah, I'm going to. Looks useful." Jordan hadn't yet picked up one of the new watches, but he'd put in his down payment on one; the multifunction devices looked endlessly useful, though a small cynical portion of his mind said that that undoubtedly meant that the thing would malfunction just when he needed it. It was worth a try, anyway. He was still unaware of the contraband hidden in his room; it hadn't occurred to him yet that it might be there, so he hadn't gone looking for it.

"I saw you guys when we pulled you out," he pointed out. "I wasn't down there, but I did see the layers." His grimace said what he thought of that, and he looked thoughtfully at the book in his hand. Maybe this was something that was best left to someone with more experience. He could too easily imagine a disgusting mess spilling across his floor, possibly seeping down and into someone else's room. On the other hand, while he wasn't extravagant with his money, the price would put a dent in his bank account that made him wince. He raised an eyebrow at Rep. "You planning on chipping in?" he asked, not expecting agreement.

"Looks cool, and the location and radio s**t is something we could've used a hell of a lot of times." Jordan refrained from commenting on the thought of having Twitter on the watches. He preferred to be able to turn the app off when it got too infuriating.

"Pretty sure you can summon ancient evil on normal toilets if you connect them wrong," he mused, but he looked mildly surprised at the apparently earnest offer of assistance. Then again, it was usually Harrison who was more likely to budget carefully, of the two. The repair was definitely a necessary one, and they were currently living here, but Jordan wasn't entirely sure it was fair to make the request, and had asked the question of Rep primarily because he hadn't expected a yes. The shower was the highest priority, for obvious reasons. While Jordan didn't feel like arguing about the communal showers, the situation was starting to get urgent.

"Wait. A hooker?" The question was accompanied by an inquiring eyebrow.

"Does Dawson know how to fix plumbing? I admit I'd feel better with help that knows what they're doing." The mental image of catastrophic plumbing failures was making a considerable difference in the decision-making process. The diagrams were somewhat more of an abstract concept. Jordan was comfortable enough working on repairing the wall and replacing the cracked pane of the window, but those were neither load-bearing nor likely to cause further problems if he screwed up and had to redo it. The desk had been a total loss, but he hadn't been that attached to it.

He closed the book and put it back down on the coffee table, watching Rep's posture and expression go strange and fixed, his eyes glassy, and regretted having asked immediately. "Not sure anyone's good at fixing their own problems," he said neutrally, "otherwise they wouldn't be problems." He got up from the couch and padded into the kitchen area, out of sightline of the bed, and took two cans out of the tiny refrigerator. The sink wasn't working either, but the fridge hadn't died, thankfully.

Jordan didn't comment on the confirmation that the survivors had not, indeed, made it out of the mall. He'd guessed it then, cued in by the red blood, by the despairing voices in which the monster cried out. Maybe there had been others, too, other times, other places; he thought of what he'd seen of the zombies and what Creation had showed him, and there were people who would say that he was busy justifying the unjustified, but he couldn't say that he wouldn't have made the same decisions, given the same knowledge, the same circumstances. Rep could be vicious, erratic, impulsive, but he was not without a conscience, and none of their hands were truly clean.

Jordan padded into the bedroom area and sat down on the edge of the bed. "Here," he said, and held out a can of beer. "I'm glad you're still around, anyway." He opened his own can, thinking about it. "Sometimes I wish I could be as certain as he is. Having that sense that you're on the right path ... well, I guess that makes other kinds of problems, but the uncertainty, it's a ******** killer."

He looked sideways at Rep, his eyes shuttered and dark. "Maybe I need to give away what's being taken." You still need me, said some part of him, and he felt a slow twist of guilt over the satisfaction that thought brought with it. It was what was wrong with them, or what was right with them, and he still didn't know which.

"He forgets sometimes that I work differently," Jordan said pensively, then amended, "That we work differently. ... To be fair, I forget sometimes too. I think you get it more." He smiled a little. "I like that you figure out the mazes. Makes them feel more like they've got a use."

It had become easy to talk again, slipping right back into the familiar patterns, and it was probably dangerous in some way to have missed this. "I freeze up if I can't decide. Don't know if that's better or worse. Everything just stops, and I lose perspective." He took a slow deep breath, prodding at the memories of his state of mind like he might prod at a sore tooth, testing the spike of pain to see if it was still there, how long it would last. "I lost the why to the what, I think."

He swayed a little into the touch. It wasn't enough, and it was too much. Sleeping in the same bed had soothed that need somewhat, but it had also amplified it, and the tension inherent in the careful awareness of space between himself and both of them was difficult sometimes. He didn't reach out, sipped at his beer instead; he'd developed a tolerance since he'd started drinking, and this wouldn't be enough to make a difference in his state of mind, but it felt like the correct thing to have in his hand right now. He shied away from attempting to define why. "I don't have to," he said, and shrugged one shoulder. "You don't either, but you still do."

"It's kind of comforting that he misses it, when it's not immensely frustrating." Jordan laughed a little. "He's always just who he is. Even when he's being someone else he's just ... who he is. I don't know how that even works." He envied that, sometimes, that solid, stable certainty of self, the way it had baffled Harrison completely that anyone could be unsure of who they were.

"I might've noticed," he said dryly, but quirked a smile to show that he was teasing. Rep was as interested in how people worked as Jordan was, though there were differences in the ways they observed and interpreted. "People got multiple solutions, though. Harder than the simple stuff I draw."

"You're you," he said again, gently, a little melancholy, and lifted his hand to card his fingers into the hair at the nape of Rep's neck, allowing himself that much. "I know," he said after a moment. "You know I love you." Not a question, not quite, and not a promise. Just a statement.