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 Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 12:37 pm
It had been a while since he had done this - not just visit someone in the infirmary but Rep in the infirmary. He still felt a twist in his gut when he thought of the times he was too absorbed in his own mess that he probably had missed a few times that Rep was like this.
Hurt. In pain. Alive yes but without him noticing it could have been different. Worse.
A tentative knock came before the door opened and the Lifer came in, a paper bag in one arm.
"Hey."
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Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 1:20 pm
Rep was sat up in bed, looking weak and pale but mostly bored. He was wired up to a drip and a few simple machines and had a bandage around his torso which made wearing a gown a bit pointless. When Melvin came in he looked over from where he'd thoughtfully been looking out of the window and eyed the other man, raising one scarred eyebrow.
"Hey." he said and it was a little more gentle and vulnerable than he had been. with Melvin for a long time.
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Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 1:32 pm
"Heard you got banged up pretty good so... thought I'd see how you were holding up." He said, moving slowly as if unsure if he should bother him or not but deciding that it probably was good to just stay a while. He wanted to stay a while.
Moving a chair over, he set the bag beside him so he didn't have to reach too far. "Just a few things to keep you going." They were mainly sweets but he grabbed a few tech magazines from the labs if he was inclined and some playing cards. "If you want I can go grab something for you."
He sat and glanced out the window before looking back. "How are you doing?" It wasn't clear if he meant physically, mentally, or even just at that moment or even further back.
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Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 2:29 pm
Melvin got a suspicious look from Rep for his kindness. It was hard to believe that he'd just come and visit without any reason to do so. But it didn't take long till Rep remembered that the other man had pretty recently lost his creepy old partner and was probably feeling lonely. Seemed like it was finally time to dredge the barrel of people pathetic enough to take him back as a friend a million times. But right now, Rep was okay with it. He could use him if he wanted for a while. Till something better came along. "Gifts are ******** welcome man. I think I lost most of my blood. s**t was messy."
He gave Melvin a bit of a tired look for his follow up question. "I'm awright. Just me and Ace really, we get by. As much as it's possible to. I hear you've been having it shitty on twitter, I tried keeping out of it. I never did like that slimeball you were with."
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Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 2:44 pm
"Yeah....kinda can't help people from posting that everywhere." He wasn't proud of it, and he didn't like that everyone knew his business. If it wasn't Lawr twisting the entire situation, it was Mik, Malk or America somehow pulling him in as some sort of example and claiming he was a victim. It was such a strong word - victim. It made him feel as if he was stood up at gunpoint and robbed, when he instead had made choices and decisions to lead him to where he was. It robbed him of accountability when he knew he was partially to blame for everything.
"Not a lot of people liked him.....and I turned into bit of a slimeball myself in the end." He left all his friends, he defended Lawr at every turn, and he locked himself away from talking to a lot of people he felt were against Lawr and thus against him by association. "I'm still a slimeball."
But he didn't want to think about that. Rubbing one arm, he looked back at him.
"You two seem to appear okay. I mean the bar still running. I don't hear any drama on Twitter but you guys do a lot better than I do about keeping to yourselves. .........." He debated with saying anything more. ".....been crashing at Jordan's.....don't know if you know. I mean just for now. He offered."
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Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 3:01 pm
Rep was smiling and was on the verge of telling Melvin that he wasn't a slimeball at all, he'd just been in love with the wrong person when he went on to say something that derailed everything and anything nice the other man had been going to say.
"You ******** SLIMEBALL." he spat, utterly vicious and looking very clearly if he wasn't in bed and injured that he would have dragged himself across the room and tried to strangle the other man.
"JORDAN? Is that why you came here? To ******** GLOAT? To ******** rub my nose in it? Are you going to brag? Are you going to get married, do you want my goddamn blessing?"
He coughed, clearly getting worked up with anger.
"What the ******** made you think that was ALL RIGHT?"
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Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 3:24 pm
Melvin went rigid as Rep turned on him, freezing in his chairs with eyes wide. "What?! No. Why would - I'm not here to gloat. I'm here to see how you are doing? What would I be rubbing in your nose?! " MARRIED??!!!
"Rep I'm not WITH him! I'm in NO WAY WITH JORDAN." Oh damn this seemed like what he said implied something completely different.
"I wanted to just say it so you knew and not just didn't but it's not like that at all."
The idea of cheering Rep up was stomped on and he had his dumb mouth to blame.
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Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 3:29 pm
"What the ******** IS WRONG WIHT YOU. Why the ******** would you come here and tell me that you are ******** living at his place unless you had some kind of ******** GUILTY ******** CONSCIENCE. What the ********. I bet it is and now you are back-pedalling. Did you learn how to ******** steal other people's ******** partners from your sleazyass old skeleton? Gonna ******** upgrade?"
He clenched his hands into fists and seemed to genuinely consider trying to get out of bed, testing the side supports thoughtfully without taking his eyes off of Melvin.
"Well ******** you if you think that's remotely okay."
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Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 3:44 pm
He stood up out of alarm for Rep getting anywhere near out of bed. "No! I'm not stealing anyone. I'm not doing ANYTHING with him and I wouldn't. I'm not telling you this for any of those reasons. I just telling you because I'm there now for a few days while I sort my s**t out. Like life status stuff I wouldn't do that to you I was just talking and you mentioned what you were up to and I was just saying where I was and didn't think you'd think I was doing anything like that but I swear to GOD I would never do that. I'm not about to go around ruining peoples lives like that."
But it meant something, and he froze when that hit him at last and stared at him, seeing how far he had went from someone he had been friends with to someone Rep would instantly think would ******** with his ex without a second thought.
Even Rep thought he was the worst person around. There really was no redemption with anyone.
"I ...didn't think you'd think I'd do something like that...." And Rep was right the moment he said it, because the man no doubt felt it. He was a slimeball, and no better than Lawr.
"He was just being nice and took pity on me I guess when he saw the mess at the jungle mission and let me sleep on his couch....but I guess everyone would think I'd just go around ******** people now. Even you." And he lowered his hands, pain and hurt intermingling as he hadn't had time to prepare to take them. Slowly, he took the chair and pulled it back slowly. Rep was going to hurt himself with him here, and he didn't want him here.
He had nothing in his corner to provide any sort of defense or support in how much integrity he had to his name. "I guess I'm just the guy who screwed Lawr now." Who took his side over all else. Now he was just the ex of that guy with even less to his name.
"I just wanted to check on you to see if you were ok." He slid the chair back into it's place, rubbing his hands against the frame before releasing it.
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Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 3:49 pm
"If you were the Melvin I knew you'd ******** know better than bringing up Jordan of all people to me. I have to ******** deal with it every ******** night because of this ******** artifact, I have to deal with it ALL THE TIME. AND IVE NEVER DEALT WITH IT. And yet you ******** come here, as someone who ******** abandoned me for one of the shittiest ******** on this goddamn island and just throw it in my ******** face."
He slammed the side of the bed with a fist. "And then you ******** make it ALL ABOUT YOU. Oh woe is me, you don't know me anymore boo hoo hoo.. ******** YOUR SELF PITY. If it was an actual thing I'd kick it off a cliff. If you didn't ******** Jordan OWN it. If you did, get the ******** out of here for ever because I won't ever goddamn forgive you."
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Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 4:15 pm
Eat.
He stared back at Rep. If he left, it meant something, so he didn't, but that didn't mean he didn't' feel trapped by some expectation Rep had of him either.
"I didn't ******** Jordan." He said, and tried not to look at the door and instead turned his eyes over to Rep.
"Yes. I picked Lawr over you. I picked him over everyone." There was no changing that fact either.
His mind slowed to simple bullet points. Something small to process.
In. Out.
"I don't know you. You don't talk about your personal life, and even if you did, you probably wouldn't trust a person like me either for good reason. You tried to tell me the truth back then and I didn't want to hear it and went so far as to never talk to you again to keep the ideas I wanted safe. You're right. I'm a slimeball. But I'm not the type of person to go ******** around. I don't cheat."
Rep was angry. Here he was, some douche who had talked to Rep and hanged out with him who one day said he was a liar. "You didn't lie to me. You only wanted me to hear the truth." And he didn't take any of it, and because he didn't want to hear it, he didn't listen to Rep since. He shut him out.
"I don't know about you and Jordan as far as you two breaking up. He doesn't talk about it either. I don't know about your artifact, what you have to deal with each day, what you HAD to deal with each day." He didn't know any of that.
He didn't know because he hadn't been there. He stabbed Rep years ago and left.
His eyes looked over to his. If Rep moved, he'd pull his stitches. He'd lunge.
Melvin moved to his bedside to close the distance. "I can kneel if that makes punching easier for you. Just don't pull your stitches please."
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 4:10 am
Rep’s energy couldn’t maintain the level of anger he was trying very hard to aim at Melvin and even as the other man knelt down the desire to hit him was already gone, leaving nothing but a bitter and helpless sort of irritation in its wake. “I used to trust you.” He said quietly, leaning back against the pillows behind him, breathless from the tension that had overtaken him towards the Life hunter. “Back then you were maybe my only friend outside of my partners. I don’t know when or why you changed. Was it because Rin died? I think it was, but maybe it was before that. Maybe I never actually knew you at all.” He closed his eyes, trying not to think about the times he’d spent at bars or just hanging out with Melvin enjoying himself.
“When Rin died I needed someone to talk to about it, to help deal with it and I wanted to talk to you too to help you, but you went crazy, you shut off and collapsed into denial and wouldn’t let anyone in. I think maybe from there I wasn’t part of your life any more and what we had was over. You chose it, no me. I was your friend up till then, I’d have done almost anything for you, but it wisnae good enough.” He shrugged his shoulders. “That Lawr guy was good enough when he came along, but I wasn’t surprised, people only want to talk to people there’s a chance they can sleep with and you knew that you couldn’t ******** me. I assumed that was why I got ditched so hard.” For Rep it had always been a factor in his life that people withdrew from you when you couldn’t offer them all of you, they always wanted the whole cake or none of the cake at all and he’d had to be all right with that because he demanded the same of others. It was the source of so many of his problems, losing friends right and left without any collateral to keep them there and no desire to share what he’d wholeheartedly given to Harrison. He could do nothing but let them go.
“Jordan’s still important to me.” He said “He shouldnae be but he ******** is. I mean. I dunno if I ever explained what happened to you.” He took a deep breath. “Basically like. We were pretty happy but it mostly was because no one really talked about anything. I mean we loved each other, all three of us, but the communication broke down. There's a lot Ace doesn't say and didn't say and he like, saved it up for so long. Eventually we like realised we were all talking different languages and the gestures of one person were being totally ******** missed by another. We tried to get it back together even, but it fell apart all over again. I don't know man. I guess in the end I felt like I still wanted to be something with Jordan.” That all or nothing friends again. "But couldn't give him enough and now he just looks at me like I'm a ******** ghost and talks to me in that kind of distant...." he waved a hand vaguely. "Like he's no there. Like he's only going to say what I want to hear. That he'll just be like Oh. Yes. I find that agreeable also. That is nice. Acceptable. Sort of way he gets when he doesn't trust you. I can feel it and it's ******** worse than if he hated me, it's the worst kind of punishment for something I can't understand.."
Tapping the huge blue gem at his throat he added. “And on top of it all, I have this, this ******** artifact. This makes it more complicated too. It's blue kingdom, sort of. Every night I sleep and I ******** dream about blue kingdom and pull people into it too. There in that place I'm like... Jordan's still with us. And it works. They communicate, they understand, all the unspoken gestures and s**t work out. So every ******** night I dream of a version of me being with him only to wake up and I'm no. It ******** your head up. The idea that you'd ******** rebound to him just... I cannae hack it at all, I can't stand it. I wouldn't be able to look at you.”
Rep sighed. “I tried to tell you the truth and you ignored me, it'll happen again eventually. don’t know what more you want from me.”
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 5:21 am
"I don't know what happened to me, Rep, but I'd it was Rin's death. I can't say, but I did think of you as my best friend, which only makes what I did all the worse. I should have been there for you too. You were there when it happened, and you probably knew her better than I did."
"When she died, I didn't know what to do with myself. I felt responsible." He still did. "It wasn't fair she died and I didn't. She was the one that carried me through that tower. She was the one that was better and stronger. I wanted to fix the mistake. I was just trying to go for any scrap of hope that maybe this wasn't real. Maybe it would turn out as a dream because so many times things wound up as just not being true and you woke up and it was all a lie your brain made up or some weird gas or fog or whatever else. I hoped for it with every fiber of myself, that out of all the times someone could come back, this would be that time. And then when it started to feel like maybe that wasn't it, I had a dream. A really real dream. One that I can still feel. She came and said I had to find a door, and that she needed my help. It was something to latch onto, and it just became a focus point when I didn't know what to do with myself and it blinded me to everything else."
He looked up. "Even reason and good people. Even you."
Reaching up, he took off his glasses to rub his face and set them in his pocket. "Then I met Lawr during duty work, and he told me just what I wanted to hear. He assured me he knew the way to that door, and in the world of all possibilities, when I was low, I took it. And that point on, I just kept taking whatever no matter how little it was."
"What I did was wrong. It was wrong to you. It was wrong to her. I turned my back on everything when you tried so hard to make me see how much of an idiot I was being and how cruel to her memory this all was. I should have been there for everything. Not just for after Rin but all the times after. I'm sure you've gone through a lot more since, but instead i was too wrapped up in my own bullshit. I just wanted a world I could understand again because what I had was gone - when really I still had people there to help me - and I threw that away."
"I didn't choose him for sex. I choose him because what he said sounded like a easier way then just dealing with it all and knowing she was gone. Then after, more and more lies after, that's when the rest happened." And he was too far gone at that point.
"I wasn't your friend to ********. I was your friend becasue you're a good person. You tell the truth even when it hurts, and it was something I always appreciated. Until I was too much of a coward to take it, and when you gave me reality and a wake up call, I just wanted to shove you away - but most of all I wanted you still there with me because I didn't want to loose you. I wanted you to agree too and be there to go with my dellusional ideas......it's good you didn't."
"I didn't know that about you too. On the outside you guys seems happy, but then you guys broke up and it was surprising. Wasn't sure what happened."
"I can get that and if I was, then you'd be free to murder me here and now for coming in here with candies while doing that." Jordan didn't seem into the idea but he didn't want to repeat what Jordan told him. He did feel bad that Tep might hurt anyone who was near Jordan in that way, but it also seemed Jordan was hung up on it too. He wasn't sure.
His attention went to the gem and his mind wandered to his own dreams. "I think I've had a few of those dreams. I just thought my mind was wanderedto a world that was different." Some where he still caught glimpses of Rin while stuck in a basement or playing with a tiger.
"I can imaging seeing a world like that all the time. A nice lie to live in but...those just wind up making things worse." He knew that much, but it was nowhere near the scale of a nightly reminder. "Surprised you're not an insomniac."
At the last statement, he wondered what he wanted. "I want a lot. What I deserve to ask is another story. I guess I just want to be around. To try again. I can't make up for what I did to you. For everything. I really don't have a right to be here hoping the best for you and to get better when I wasn't there all the times before. Just want to be there for all the times after."
"But I'd understand if you said no. I just....really don't want to go."
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 1:22 pm
Rep listened carefully to everything Melvin had to say, his explanations, apologies and recollections of Blue kingdom.
For a while he said nothing, and then sighed. There were a lot of things he felt strongly about, but didn't want to talk about when he felt so weak.
"I don't want you to go either." he said finally.
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 2:05 pm
He tried not to smile too much and pushed it down.
"Mind if I ask what happened to get you near dead?"
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