Rep couldn't understand his own emotions, he had never been able to, sometimes he just felt one way or the other and it made sense to him but everyone else acted like he'd just shoved their baby. He couldn't make head nor tail of it, all that mattered to him in the moment was the fact that he hurt.

And right now he hurt a whole ******** lot.

It had been a fine ******** game, a bit of playful banter, a bit of push and shove and snark, it had been a way to pay compliments and receive them himself. He had been able to flirt because it was Otto and the other man was straight. He could pretend that in some other world where Otto wasn't actually straight that he'd of course be absolutely up for some, it had allowed Rep to feel attractive and powerful and because it was simultaneously impossible no one had been able to prove otherwise. It had made him smile and he'd enjoyed things exactly the way they were.

Until they weren't. The realization that Otto actually might not have been straight at all hit him like a blow to the chest, in one fell moment he went from comfortable in his artificial knowledge that he was number one, even his sexual insults edging in that lewd direction to absolutely devastated. He wasn't wanted, he had never been wanted. The only way he knew how to pay genuine compliments to people was to say that they were ********, and if they were dear enough to him, to lay out that offer on the table for them. Most people were repulsed by it, and it didn't bother him too much, he pretended that was the point, that he was out for their disgusted reactions, it kept the game impossible and put the complimenting power in his hands. If they accepted, it got much, much more complicated and it relied on someone else to bail him out. No one ever accepted, he didn't ask the people who he thought would accept anyway.

But with Otto he'd assumed there was no way the other man would accept, but in his heart of hearts had felt that if he could have - if he wasn't inclined towards women - that he would have. He'd felt it so surely and had been certain there was some manner of (surly) attraction there. But he'd been wrong, he'd been absolutely wrong about everything. The playful game he'd been maintaining was a sham and he had to redefine his perspective on it, realising that Otto hadn't seen him as a friend offering compliments the only way he could, but as some sort of disgusting and skeezy old ******** out to chase what he couldn't get. He'd been raised with the awareness that people would pay for sex with even the most disgusting clapped out individuals, if you couldn't even give it away then what ultimately did that make you?

He'd been a ******** fool and looked a ******** fool and systematically found himself going through all the fond and friendly memories he'd had with Otto and slanting them in what he felt was their true direction, his gut twisting with embarrassment and shame at each. He'd been stupid and oblivious, a complete ******** tool and every c**t on the island had been privy to it.

Now who's the oblivious one Maebe had said, and she'd been right, he'd been ******** oblivious and they'd all been ******** laughing at him. It made him feel sick, right to the very heart of him, it climbed up into his throat and twisted there like a knot. He didn't trust people often, but when he did it was always too much, more than they deserved. Otto had no reason to invest in him, he didn't even know the other man that much, not in terms of facts, not where he grew up, not who his parents were, nothing other than that feeling he had that he'd known who he was. He'd felt like they were the same, but even that had to have just been hopeful delusion. He wasn't young, he wasn't part of the world that Otto came from any longer, but he'd never grown up either, he was just stuck pretending that he knew what the ******** he was doing and that he had friends he didn't sleep with.

He shouldn't have been upset, he had no claim on Otto, he had nothing to do with him, no threads that bound him. He didn't know the man's friends well and they likely would not want to know him either. He was a mangy stray dog sniffing around the gate of their yard which inexplicably for a while Otto had fed. In the end it had just been to look and mock, to measure up how much loyalty the dumb animal would muster up before it was kicked and driven off.

Swallowing, the lump in his throat endured and he almost wished he could cry to alleviate what felt like pressure that had nestled in his chest, raw anxiety settling down about his throat. He'd ******** up and that was all there was to it, he couldn't stop, he couldn't let it derail his life, he couldn't give them the ******** satisfaction of knowing that they'd managed to hurt him, that he was emotionally limping. He couldn't even tell Harrison, he wouldn't understand, he'd be irritable and feel threatened and inadequate when this wasn't about wanting to marry or even wanting to date, it was something else, something that was part of his mind that didn't make sense to everyone else but was everything to him. He considered Jordan, but he couldn't even be sure of Jordan's response, he had understood the need for minions, but he wasn't sure he'd understand the nuances of this and he couldn't bear to hear anyone tell him "it didn't matter" or that he was "being silly". He didn't want to be thought of as greedy or selfish or any of the things people would think this was about.

This was about him being wrong, this was about him being stupid, this was about him wanting to see in people what wasn't there.This was him always making the mistake of offering sex when it was so so easy to be nailed in the confidence when you did so. All you could do was cut people off.

In the end, he didn't manage to tell anyone, just forced himself to take one breath after another around the suffocating weight of upset and hurt that had for the time being become yet another part of who he was.