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 Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 2:38 pm
In the Weiman household things were still tense, more tense than they had been before if he was honest. With the addition of the infection into the mix it was difficult to keep away from the other man too long while at the same time he consistently felt further and further away from him every day.
He'd stopped making dinner all the time, of the opinion that there was no point in making a fool of himself in striving for some perfect domesticity when no one else was willing to play the roles any longer.
He hadn't told Melvin about the house yet despite the fact he'd even started to paint some of the rooms, carefully painting the siding white bit by bit.
Taking a long sniff of his wine he took a sip of it and set the glass down on the table next to the couch. "You know." he said. "I still don't know why you haven't thrown me out, and I'm thinking that maybe I need to leave, for your sake."
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 3:06 pm
He turned in his desk chair, removing his glasses to run at his eye strain from reading off his tablet.
"What are you talking about now?" It wasn't hard to see Lawr had given up playing the kind, caring lover. Without the lie that let him be used, everything else just went away with it. The sex couldn't even be used as an excuse either, and it only seemed to cement a sort of truth that Lawr only wanted him for sex. Melvin simply started to do the same, justifying that he wouldn't be able to go to anyone else without infecting then too.
There were far less conversations as Melcin frankly couldn't bring himself to talk about much outside of the everyday, and constantly asking if any of it mattered. The dinners stopped and he found himself feeling colder each time his stomach aches about dinner time and he was back to trying to make something (which was usually some sad attempt at an omelette.)
"Do you really hate it so much here? Or are you off to better, warmer thighs?" He asked, feeling his heart pick up a little despite his joke.
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 3:49 pm
Exhaling in a heavy sigh, Lawr looked over at Melvin. "No. Not better nor warmer thighs. I like yours just fine. But I don't know why I am still here when it is evidently simply to satisfy whatever urges you have, which - though I appreciate that I owe you no less than that after what happened and what I brought back to you - perhaps might be a little damaging for you in the long term. "
He closed his eyes. "I paid to have a house refurbished and made liveable in Peach Tree, near America. I had intended to do it all along. But mostly before I decided to be a good person. Rather ironic isn't it that deciding to be a good person and to come clean with you undid everything I had planned for the future and for us. It became your choice. It is still your choice whether I stay or I leave or if you come with me. I would however, prefer you didn't if you are simply going to take advantage of the fact I am one of the few infected on the island without treating me like I am actually a human being. Even if I am not one, I do prefer it when people play along."
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 4:06 pm
Melvin felt colder still when Lawrence seemed to have made plans all along, not only just to move out, but to move to a house. The mention of America brought back a almost comical idea of him being as close to his demanded wife as he could, and the fact his target was so clear only made him even more uncertain as to what his place was in any of it.
"Saying you planned anything before is kind of a pointless idea when you were only faking something you didn't like or want. Plans and people change after all." This time the change in the person had changed all his plans.
He was quiet a moment as he regarded Lawr sitting on his couch, and picture a thought of him not being there at all. He doubted Rodney would stay if Lawrence had a house. It would just be him again, and while it was terrifying to be alone, part of him wondered if it wouldn't be better for him in the long run.
The game of pros and cons didn't work here.
"It's so nice you had plans, Lawr. Of a nice home, company, and a future. I had just as many of those plans with you too, but I can't say I know what my plans even are now after what has happened. Those plans I made were to share a future with a person I was so sure I knew and could trust. I imagined a lot for us even when I told myself how things could change, but I always thought it would be something like a tragedy of a mission for either you or me."
"I hoped it would be me."
He went quiet again to take that in before continuing. "What would you even want from me, Lawr. Wasn't I just to be used? To pay a tab and ********. Isn't that what you are getting now?"
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 4:17 pm
"I can and do get sex from almost anyone Melvin. It wasn't just about sex with you." he said. "But I owed it to you when I explained to you what I did to you to explain what my prime motivations were at that time. They were indeed both sex and money. But it became more than that, it became home and stability, once I realised I could not run any longer. I made plans because I wanted us to have more room, because I wanted a garden, because I simply thought I could have what I wanted, as always."
"I understand why you don't want to be part of any of that any longer. You couldn't trust me and even though I was finally honest with you and don't hold any more secrets from you, you still can't. And that's fine."
He got a long slow look, the blue eyes as cold as always. "What I want hasn't changed, nor has who I am. The face I wear simply got friendlier."
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 4:31 pm
He rested the side of his head on his fist as he listed to Lawr, eyes moving around Lawr's features as if he could make out where all the layers were stitched.
He turned away to look at the wall his desk faced and rubbed his face a moment. Looking at the other many only made everything inside him bubble and fall like a lava lamp without really being able to make out what they were all trying to form.
The wall hurt less.
"I don't know what I want from this. I knew what I wanted from Jan. I was sure of it then, but so much has changed that I don't know if my feelings for you, all the tender ones I had and still have for you, are even real now. You made a person I could fall in love with and I did. But what do those feeling mean now when the person I loved wasn't the real you. That it was someone you couldn't stand to keep. Living a lie and falling in love with the lie only makes those feelings a lie by extension. I don't know who you are and yet I have all these intense feelings still left with no place to go."
He cupped his hands over his face as he stared out through the wall. "So where would any new feelings go now? When you've already made plans." It meant Lawr could easily move on without feeling anything from departing.
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2016 3:54 am
He didn’t really have the right to ask anything of the other man after the amount of manipulation and control he’d exerted over him so long. He should also feel guilty probably he found himself thinking, only he didn’t. Guilt happened to other people and made them weaker. All there was in Lawrence was a very strong desire to get back what he’d had and to claw back the domesticity which had not so long ago been almost in his grasp. It was probably too late though and - as he’d considered – probably inappropriate to want.
“I admit I still don’t understand the very clear divide you have made between me and Jan," he said, "separating one from the other as though we were different personalities. It is not some sort of dissociative identity disorder, I do not simply forget the things I have done and the decisions I have made, it is simply like a very serious sort of method acting with strict rules I abide by. I respond to challenges by trying to craft responses to them in how I behave. The things I said and the things I did as Jan were all underpinned by me. This is just a more honest version of me who is more openly trying to be a good person and to make good decisions.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t that I couldn’t stand to keep Jan, he’s still around, I could put on the accent right now and pretend to be him, but it wasn’t honest and dishonesty isn’t part of being a good person I thought. I thought taking that away would make you feel better and help you start to grieve what was done to you by me and move on. Everything I did I did out of self interest first and foremost, I do not deny that, but I also thought you looked like you needed someone, that there was something broken in you that needed fixed, something that maybe I could help with. It felt good to help someone help with an emotion like grief even though I couldn’t understand it. I can’t fix myself but I could do that small thing, and that was important to me.” He shook his head. “I can’t help you with love though, I only understand love in the context that Rodney gave me for it, something that can be expressed through duty and effort, an action more than anything else. That I could give you, I wanted to make a home and I thought that in itself could be an expression of love, that maybe it could be enough for you.”
He took another deep sip of the wine. “But of course as evidenced by conversations with other people, that is not the generally accepted definition of love and I should have known better. I should have learned my lesson with Horace. What I can offer is not good enough, not significant enough and if that is the case you should find what you need somewhere you can get it rather than staying trapped with me. I wanted to fix you or help, but I know that frankly no one can “fix” me. You shouldn’t feel responsible for that, nor for supervising me. But you are free to do as you will, whatever you want from me you can have, but I won’t keep trying to force family and domesticity on you when evidently you only wanted those things with Jan, who was a specific way I acted and person I pretended to be.” He smiled slightly sadly. “And you know I realise, sitting here that I should feel insulted or sad that you could only love something I created for your sake and that the truth of me is repulsive to you, but I don’t actually feel anything. Do what you want with me, it makes no difference to me.”
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2016 4:24 am
"How am I supposed to know how this all works. I only found out about certain things from you, what you allowed or maybe just let slip, but you always got upset when I tried to understand. I can see where Jan's construction had you at it's base. You still act like him, but there are times when you say or do something that stands apart and it's like I can see where the stitching was and had always been. I was in a terrible place after Rin left, and then I started having these.....visions of her and a woman I never saw. They were real to me, and if I was left on my own, maybe I would have just kept thinking I should be finding this damn door she wanted or maybe I would have given up and finally moved past it. But you didn't understand how to fix me, Lawr, because you didn't know what the ******** I was going through. You kept her for me, and at the time I wanted that so much..."
"...so ******** much..."
"....but what I wanted was that life too. Not just domestically, but that routine. That love and to share our lives again and ask her all the things I didn't do before. It was like a second chance for me to set things right, and most of all, I wanted to fix the mistake. I wanted to bring her back and be the one that died because I was the one that ******** up on that tower."
"But in trying to fix it, you did give me time to fall for someone else and give me that. You did help, but the way you did it in the end, god damn what you did to fake her like that, I ******** hate you for that."
He picked up one of the runic stones at the end of his table, the blue glow reminding him of the haunting visions of her.
"...but I also get where it came from and it did help to hear her say what I wanted her to hear. But that's just it. It was never her words. None of it was."
Rubbing the stone, he glanced at the fuzzy vision of their room.
"I still feel for you. I still feel a whole hell of a lot for you. I just don't know what parts you did lie about. What you said as a lie to fix me, to make me feel better just because it was easy and not because it was honest. You might have been underneath all that, but I don't know what parts were a lie. I want to know you - the real you. I don't have to love all of it. There are parts I'm sure you hate about me, but no one loves every aspect of someone."
"I don't want to me fixed, Lawr. Mia tried to fix me, and it destroyed us. It destroyed me. It's why I never dated until Rin demanded it, and I grew happy from it. To hear you wanted to fix me hurt. I don't want to fix you. I just want to understand you."
"But, if it makes no difference one way or another, it comes off as if you don't care if I'm there or not."
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2016 7:07 am
(post for bane while at work)
“You aren’t meant to know how it works, I wouldn’t ask you to just flat out know these things, I know I don’t discuss much about what is going on inside my head, it’s a habit which is hard to break when most people get very very upset about what I say when I’m frank about what’s in there. I have tried harder with you to answer any questions you might have but there is a lot I don’t understand myself or am too proud to even begin to address.” He sighed, a little glad of the wine in his system loosening up what little inhibition he possessed. “Pride has a lot to do with it.” He said. “I get irate when people dig for my fallacies and weaknesses, I am aiming one day for perfection, a perfection I feel I deserve and embody. You’ve been quick to mock both it and me of late which has of course made me even more likely to shut down on discussion. It is why I don’t discuss my issues with metaphor or other things I find difficult to read, because to the average person my problems seem laughable and absurd.”
“I would say I was sorry for what I did pretending to be Rin but that would not be strictly true and would imply that I understood what the things I have done to you and how they feel. I don’t. To me it made sense, I felt like I was helping you cope with something which seemed to be killing you like an illness. Your grief seemed to have overtaken you. I know it offends you to think that I wanted to fix you but I didn’t want to fix you as a person, just the emotional sickness I thought was going to strangle you.” He ran his fingertips over the stump of his missing hand “It was like dealing with the animals.” He said. “I thought I could help you, I thought it was something within my power to do. I know you aren’t an animal either. I just. I wanted to see if closure would help you to cope with your feelings for her and maybe in the process I could come to understand more about grief and what it means as I have never grieved over anything, not properly. I lose things but I am left without emotions to tie myself to those things, just the hollows and spaces of where they were and the habits I formed around their shape. Sometimes the personalities I built for them are all that remain, like the answer to a question which no longer exists and which I cannot infer from the spaces.”
“I feel the spaces she left behind.” He said. “Rin, I mean. I molded myself into them as best I could, to be what you remembered her as and to try and fit the wounds in you. It wasn’t her words, no. It was just me paying as much attention to you as I possibly could.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry if you thought it meant I wanted to change you, that I do regret as it was not my intention. I wanted simply to understand and find ways to keep both of us happy. I don’t hate anything about you, I don’t really hate anything. I just find you interesting and always have.”
He looked a little stricken. “And no, I’m afraid I can’t /care/ if you are here or not. I never did learn that grief thing. But I’d feel the spaces of where you were each and every day.”
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2016 7:39 am
He got up slowly and moved over to the couch, flopping into the cushions as he sat beside him, looking up at the ceiling still but holding the stone in one hand. "I was obsessed. Yes. I had that dream and I fixated on it when everyone else said to move on because I didn't want to think of the finality of her being gone. That I hadn't been there for her as much as I should have been and questioned if I was ever good enough for the love she put into our relationship each day. I didn't think someone like her deserved that, and I felt I did. When you gave me what I wanted, to say what I was looking for was true - maybe part of me knew all along that I was lying to myself. But I kept saying, "Look at the world you are in. Anything is possible. Someone is on your side." When it felt I was alone, having that felt like the world to me. It still does. It's why just leaving scares me. If you left."
"But it's not just that. Like I said, besides you fitting to be Rin, I feel for you and when I made that decision between you and her, I did feel relief. That I had permission to move on and I wasn't as horrible as I thought. That I was forgiven for what I did to her. But now that you lied for so long, I wonder if O made you do it. That if I was stronger and realized what was going on, that if I didn't run away every time someone told me the truth, you wouldn't have had to do all this."
"I'm sorry if I pry but asking questions is how I figure something out. If it's something or someone I truely feel is worth it, I want to absorb everything about it. I get curious and want to explore all of it. I might never know the answer but figuring it out is fun to me."
"I am just hurting. I didn't know what to make of us. Can you blame me for wanting to hurt your feelings back? Even as a joke? Maybe it's just hurting you would have felt justified and given me distance and using you would still let me stay close. I still want what we had, but I don't want to be lied to like that again. I can't handle that again."
"I don't want to fix you, but I do want to learn who you are. You may not understand what you did and you have been open as to why. I don't fault you for that and that has been why you did what you did. I think that you always wanted to try and be a good person in some way or another. And you did help in a odd way. And for that - thank you."
"Rin left a space in me that you filled. I'd be empty if you left."
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2016 9:44 am
Lawr almost tentatively moved over to lean against the other man, resting his head against his shoulder. "I don't know anything about your relationship with her other than what happened after the fact, but if you want my honest opinion, I feel like you made her far more than any person could have been. Her death deified her in a way nothing else ever could. You will never really break up with her, because she's dead, death seems to erase all the negatives, the misunderstandings and the awkwardness like it never happened. You remade her as something perfect and flawless, and for me that was easy to step into because its where I always wanted to be and what I am seeking to reach. I don't think anyone else would have even tried to face up to it. It's well known it is impossible to live up to the empty shoes of a dead girlfriend or boyfriend, to deal with all those perfect projected futures and expectations."
He shrugged. "It didn't bother me because I don't doubt myself, but if I did it would have been rather awful. Either way I think you have come a long way since then, your sense of self worth has returned, you have decided more on the things you do deserve and I don't mind all that much if you want to deem me something so lowly and broken that I am fit to be yours, it won't change my opinion of myself one iota."
Thoughtfully he added "Prying is only offensive to me when people make leaps of assumption and decide that they know me better than I know myself or that they know how I feel about them. That is the thing which bothers me most of all and Horace used to do it relentlessly. He'd tell me he meant nothing to me and I of course would not argue. People make and fulfil their own prophecies."
The other man got a very wicked sort of smile and a kiss on his shoulder. "And you can never hurt my feelings Melvin. You can hurt me perhaps but no matter how much you try and use me or lash out at me you won't find many feelings to hurt. You don't need to thank me either, like I said, the intentions weren't all pure, none of my intentions ever are, it's always complicated, it's always mixed."
He placed his hand on Melvin's thigh gently and didn't drop his smile. "I'm told I'm rather good at filling spaces."
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2016 10:00 am
"There were things between us we argued about. Things we didn't like about each other, but thinking thise now after what happened makes it seem like I'm being ungrateful and nitpicking. I question why I was upset over so many stupid things at that place and time when I should have just let it go and treasured us just being there. It makes it hard to think badly about it when looking back."
He reached up, oukking off his gloves to then stroke Lawr's hair as he rested against him. The warmth between him bad him ache for more and yet he didn't want to disturb such a gentle, tender comfort.
"I don't think you are broken. I think you don't understand and you do things that seem correct to you without seeing the consequences that others might see. That isn't your fault. I can only make my own observations but again, I've only started learning more things about you so it's probably skewed. I think you need friends who can point out what you're not seeing and let you make your decisions from there. To help. If you want to strive to be perfect, then reach for it, but it's not all bad just being human."
"I will try not to assume but feel free to tell me when I am. I have my own faults with that. I just like running with my own theories."
His fingers moved through his thicker hair and down to his neck. "I still feel moments where I want to punch you but I know I couldn't ever go further than a temporary sting and even that would only physically hurt you and not solve the pain I felt that day you told me the truth, but I think I can move on from that too."
"So..... This house..."
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2016 10:38 am
Lawrence listened to what Melvin had to say but didn't argue any further. Even listening to Melvin talk about how he felt ungrateful thinking about bad things and how he should have just treasured things that happened felt like something beyond his understanding in a lot of ways. He couldn't imagine what it was like to find your own mind skewed guiltily in favour of one sensation or emotion over the other and discarding or suppressing old emotions and experiences as a result. For him good things and bad things were both even in his thoughts, of equal value and satisfaction to recall.
Being touched without gloves by Melvin was a very pleasing experience for Lawrence, hands which didn't touch much else running through his hair. He enjoyed being essentially petted.
"I can't be human until I'm perfect." he said and shivered at the contact on his neck.
"And I don't mind pain, I don't mind being dragged around, just if you are going to punch me, at least don't strike my face. I need it." he put an arm around Melvin's waist.
"It's very nice, an old Victorian one, I've had it made livable, I've been painting it when I get time, it has a garden, that was the main thing that brought me to it. I miss gardening."
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2016 12:10 pm
His fingers moved aro for his throat, a light hold as if experimenting how it would feel in his hand. He gave it a squeeze and then released, moving his hand down through the collar of Lawr's shirt to feel the his back. It was nice to feel skin without a care. The infection and confession had left him without any further excuses, as they were both infected and couldn't be more diseased any more than what they had. It was unfortunate but it this blessing.
"It sounds nice. You sound like you have been working hard to make it something."
But it still left him wondering.
"Would we still be sharing a room or would that be out to make way for your new wife?"
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2016 12:34 pm
The pale skin under Melvin's hands always felt impeccably smooth and well-cared for, on occasion betraying subtle hints of friction where hair should have been. His breath hitched ever so slightly at the contact about his throat, the swell of his pulse under the hold betraying where his carotid artery was. Every touch elicited some subtle or less subtle reaction from the slender blonde man.
"Oh not very long." he said idly, he had after all been thinking about it far longer than he had been working on it.
"As far as sharing a room went, that would be up to you. I get cold, you know that, and I don't see any wives crawling out of the woodwork any time soon, as much as it would be ideal." he smirked. "I am probably less likely even than Rodney to end up with a wife."
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