[PRP] Not in my House (Melvin/Lawr)

[Baneful]

Friends. For Lawrence the word was about as intimate as he was used to getting with people. It didn't preclude sex normally, nothing ever really had for him and yet from now on he was somehow supposed to avoid all sexual encounters completely other than those with Rodney or lose him forever the way he was losing Melvin. It was all too much to handle and even the statement that forever felt like a lie drove itself home. Forever was a lie. It always had been, nothing lasted except the self, the only thing constant in his life had been him.

He kept his fragile weight propped against the other man. "I'm not allowed physical any longer anyway." he said quietly and just a little bitterly. It would be easier when he was someone else, easier when it was someone who liked having their avenues of sexual experience cut off. He just needed to invent a solution to everything for himself and then maybe nothing would be missing any longer.

"But yes. Even an attempt would be better than nothing, for however long you can stand it."

 

[MoonKitsune]

"Then maybe we should talk more regularly so we don't get surprised again by what is and isn't. My heart can't take it. I hate these surprises. I always feel like the last one to know. We should at least be able to talk to each other, and seeing you in that tent......I just didn't know.....how you felt. I guess even how I still felt."

He let Lawr stay there, glad he hadn't turned away in disgust.

"I'll talk to Rodney later. My head is a little cooler now where I don't want to throw him off a cliff. I imagine his face is going to fall off with all his frowning." He sighed against Lawr, not looking forward to it.

"I'm going to clear my head for a few days after this mission. Don't take it personally. I need to collect myself. Everything feels too raw to me these days."

He continued to comb his hair slowly. "Hey, I can still physically hold you though. That doesn't breakup any vows."

 

[Baneful]

"Yes." he said. "Though I never was very good at communicating." And he still wasn't, forgetting to voice things which were important and saying the things which were irrelevant and offensive instead. "I made too many assumptions about you and about us." He looked rather grey, drawn with an uncharacteristic degree of worry. "The tent wasn't something I planned, it was something I had not planned on and which surprised me." He felt he owed Melvin at least some attempt at explaining. "I'd been pursuing Rodney for a long time, but I hadn't thought of excluding you in doing it, you were you, he was him. I wanted to love both of you and for both of you to get along."

He closed his eyes. "But every time I reached out to him he drew back, reminding me commitment was the most important thing, that it needed to be for ever and needed to be with intention. There would be no sex unless that happened." Opening them again he drew Melvin a little nearer as if seeking some sort of comfort. "That was fine with me and I left him alone. I even found a compromise where I'd simply..fantasise outside of rooms if you get what I mean and sometimes the odd kiss because friends kissed and that was fine. We wouldn't be together because I knew what I wanted and he knew what he wanted. I knew I couldn't give it." It went on that way for months and months.

"The tent was just..it was a thrill of survival, of luck against the odds and I acted without my restraint, without control. Now he's trapped, because he takes sex as a be all and end all, tantamount to marriage, and I in turn need to make good on what I said." He wanted to say that it had overwhelmed him, that what he'd been handed was too pure and fragile for something like him and that he didn't want to lose the self he'd made with all of them because of what had happened, but he couldn't find those words. "I know you don't want to hear any of this, but this wasn't what I planned. You say everything was falling apart for ever, but to me these last few months and years have been some of the happiest times of my life insofar as I can be happy at all. Perhaps satisfied and content is more accurate."

The fact he couldn't have everything he wanted and have it all work out was one of the great injustices of his life, he felt.

"And no, it doesn't break anything. " he said, burying his face against Melvin's shoulder and inhaling. "You smell clean." he said, muffled, trying not to think about what it would be like to find himself in a house without Melvin in it, without the sparkling cleanliness he seemed to radiate and all the subtle and muted hints of who he was here and there.  

[MoonKitsune]

"I wasn't thinking that was it. When you were with him, it was startling. When we last talked about us, you said you were going to mess around with other people and I dealt with that because....strangely they were temporary and not serious. It didn't feel all that threatening. I was still there, involved, and wanted at the end of the day. I was here for when you returned. But then..."

He brought his chin against the side of Lawr's head, moving his cheek slowly against him as he thought. "I felt like you shut the door and left me out. You cut me off and didn't even want me touching you anymore. You talked like it was a long time coming and I thought you had grown bored of my company all this time without me noticing. It wouldn't have been the first time I was slow to notice something. I didn't want to hear that....see that. I wanted and you didn't and it felt like the worst."

He breathed him in too. The expensive smells of high standards and yet the smell of the detergent they all used back home.

"....Thad why I thought it must have been bad ages ago because you must have been unhappy with me. I feared you were lying to me again to keep me happy."

And yet it didn't even seem like Lawr was happy now.

"I was happy too." Maybe. He always wondered if his memories were lies.

Even his mind manipulated him.

He squeezed him a little more.

"Why does it feel like no one is happy about this?"
 

[Baneful]

“It wasn’t meant to go this way.” He confessed quietly. It was strange to have lost so much control of the relationship and for his plans to all have done so awry. He was tired of people, tired of being invested in things outside himself. The way he’d always lived his life was selfish and self-contained, pent up in himself and caring only for his own wellbeing. He wished he could go back to it, and maybe he would, with the single exception of Rodney. That way he couldn’t be stressed like this ever again. But for now that was impossible, all there was was the fear of the loss of routine and stability which had defined him for two years. “I didn’t want to shut the door on you, nor for you to feel that way. I still care about you as much as I always have, no different than when I woke up next to you before this mission. Everything has just gone strange since then. It wasn’t a long time coming, I wasn’t bored of you and I don’t ever want you to think that. I was happy with you, I was happy with everything the way it was, I just wanted a little bit more.”

Greed was probably his downfall in this instance he realised with a twist of irritation. “It certainly wasn’t from a lack of /want/.”

Lawrence had had a lot of homes in his life and none of them had been tied to a location, all of them had depended on people. There had been his mother and brother who had tied him to a place where everything had been hostile to him, Maja and Mikael where he’d managed to live an almost normal life for longer than anywhere else. Susan and Melody, too young and naïve to truly be considered his equals, Horace who had wanted more from him than he could give, and finally Melvin who had asked nothing but deserved so much more. So many homes and so many companions, all of them now moving beyond his reach. Melvin in his arms smelled like home and there was a twist of nostalgia and the desire to stay here forever, to have things go back to the way they were.

“I never really lied to you, there was no reason to. If you’d asked me about Rodney I would have told you, I wasn’t sneaking around or trying to be covert about it, I wasn’t trying to get rid of you.” Though he wondered if Melvin believing that would make it easier or more difficult for him, still confused about how emotions worked.

“I don’t know.” He said quietly “I should be happy, I got one thing I wanted. But I wasn’t expecting to lose so much in exchange. ”  

[MoonKitsune]

"Thank you...for telling me. I didn't want to thibkbthe worstbof you two. Jealousy doesn't suit me and frankly I'm not too fond of being the angry ex. I tend to make a spectacle." He tried to joke about the tent but knew it was a mess.

The situation still didn't help them. "The deed's done. Bill is up. Just gotta work with it now." Just had to shuffle his entire life into something that worked around Lawr's actions. He wasn't so much a puzzle piece anymore when the picture Lawr had always changed but just a blob of play dough that chipped and cracked from being overworked.

Saliva whispered to him, and he shook his head before look at Lawr, pulling away now. "We'll talk more when we get home with everyone. Being in a horsemen jungle isn't exactly the best. Just....don't go rushing off without me, ok?"