[PRP] In The Midst Of The Garden (Lawr + Rodney)

[Baneful]

He looked thoughtful. "In an ideal world, no one would ever have to go away." Sighing he considered them. "Maja I loved, she didn't mind how strange I was and liked me regardless, I thought she'd stay for ever but she didn't. I wouldn't want her back now, it would be too hard, even if things had been different. Susan was never someone I liked really. America I ...I wish things had been different with her, she's something I've never seen and likely will never see again. I wasn't good enough for her though in the end, she wanted something else than me. Horace was always too wild for me, he wanted more than I could give him and I could only hold him so long."

He shook his head. "All I could imagine ever keeping was you and Melvin. Everyone else was too different. The three of us worked for a while. Why are you even asking me this? Is this just some means of you hurting yourself? I don't want to talk about this if it's just you trying to upset yourself."

 

[Toshihiko Two]

"Melvin didn't leave until...I asked, and you left," Rodney said. "He stayed through...the lies, and the truth. Even if he was angry. It's...no, I'm alright, but...even if I was upset, it's okay, I'd...rather talk about it.."

He fiddled a little sadly with Lawr's buttons.

"...It wouldn't be the last either though, would it? If...ideally. You'd still, want to be with other people too, sometimes. Just- to know them."  

[Baneful]

Lawrence felt the resentment spike again. He felt stupid and inadequate, his desire to understand other people hauled out like a flaw, reminding him that it wasn't acceptable, that sleeping around wasn't allowed and wasn't okay. It was an insult to his ears and made him tense up physically. "In an ideal world, yes."

He closed his eyes. "I love the world." he said. "I enjoy it, I feel like a predator in it, with all the world as my prey. I want to hunt it, I want to conquer it. Not hurting people, I won't hurt people any more, but I still like to play the game, to understand people, to parley with people who use sex as a currency." he shook his head.

"I can't do anything any more. I love you, I love doing things with you but it feels like only half my life. I feel like there is another half of me that you don't like or want and that would make you leave for ever. You don't have that other half to indulge, you are just good all the way down. Melvin was able to be selfish, to hunt, to help me, that's something that I liked about him too. I love you though, and I meant what I said when I said I'd try and do this for as long as I can."

"I just don't know how I'm supposed to keep it up every day when I know in the end I will mess it up."

 

[Toshihiko Two]

Rodney touched Lawr's chest gently as he spoke, not shying from the words.

He waited before he spoke.

"I always thought," he said, "When I married, that person...would be the same as me. Someone, who had waited for one person. And who wouldn't want anyone else. But....wanting, everyone- wants."

Rodney looked up at Lawrence.

"If I slept with someone else, would...you forgive me? Or...would it be over."  

[Baneful]

"If you still loved me, if you didn't leave, it wouldn't matter. It wouldn't hurt my ego, very little can. I'd wonder if I needed to do more to meet your needs but if it wasn't that, if there was some other reason I couldn't fulfil, I wouldn't mind. I just wouldn't want to see it for the most part."

He brought his bad arm to his chest, pressing on his own ribs in a gesture of tension. "I'm not normal. I wish I was. I constantly just disappoint everyone I've ever been with. I'm not what they want. It was why I wanted to stop."

 

[Toshihiko Two]

"What I've asked from you," Rodney said, "It's not...Biblical. I've- thought about it a long time, since we've started. There's...two sides to it. Marriage then, it was- a man could have a thousand wives, as easily as he could have cups, or sheep. He could marry a girl one night if he was wealthy, and...never see her again. If she...was with another man, she lost her value, and- he didn't have an obligation to....feed and clothe and house her, or maybe, she'd be killed, along with the man, for....for stealing, from her wealthier husband. That...was the way it was. But...there was always room for forgiveness. Hosea the prophet, God commanded that he marry a, um, a prostitute. And she...went out, and...time and time again, he- forgave her. But, it was understandable. To not be forgiving. To not want a girl who had traded her value. Now it's all...something different. It's not what it was."

He tried to express it all, the technical side of it, but also...

"In the beginning," he said, "It was different from all that too. All there was, all it was....was it wasn't good for Adam to be alone. And it was good for him to have a partner. God said that, and created one for him. Even if...they both left the garden. Maybe...God knew. Maybe he would have been the one tempted, and the snake would have spoken to him first. Maybe he would have left alone, outside the garden, in....a rougher world, to work alone, to die alone. God...must have known, the troubles that waited ahead for him. The marriages that happened later, they had all...forgotten that, somehow."

Rodney took a breath.

"When I think of you with someone else, it's...fear. It's how I feel. As if you...change, depending who you're with. Like a mirror. And sometimes...you get twisted up. Sometimes you both...become cruel. And it has never been cruel between us, but I worry. It's...more than sex, it's- as you said, a connection. But that way you can connect to...anything, anyone, like an electric current, and once you do you're open to them. To whatever they have, pouring into you, good, evil, kind, selfish. It- yes. Opens you to the world. To the things in it. Sometimes, good, but sometimes..."  

[Baneful]

Lawrence listened to Rodney but closed his eyes when he talked about the garden, still listening but just rendered restless by the whole conversation. He wanted to run the way he always did, to avoid talking about things which went nowhere and didn't change a thing.

"But it's a connection." he said. It might have been dangerous, it might lead to bad things or good things but the fact of the matter was that it led forward.

"I get to feel things and experience things beyond myself."

He didn't know what else to say about it, even that much feeling like plaintive whining about how unfair it was that he couldn't have everything he'd ever wanted, that there would be no extended domesticity and bustling house.

He wanted to be content with the absolute blessing he had but there was something in him that just relentlessly yearned for more.

Slumping back onto the pillow he exhaled. "There is no point in discussing this. I gave you my word that I'd try, what more do you want from me?"

 

[Toshihiko Two]

"But, you don't think you can," Rodney said, "and you worry that when you don't, I'll leave. And maybe you worry that...there's no point, to trying in the first place. If...if it'll end up. Like that."  

[Baneful]

"What if I do?" he said, a little standoffishly. "What if those things are the case? You made it clear there are conditions, just like everything else."

And he felt a black and bitter hatred for rules, for things that were defined and you couldn't cross the lines. It was his whole life, stumbling over lines he didn't understand and suffering for it right up until he decided he'd cross the lines if he damn well pleased and he would do it with style. This was more lines, and though he tolerated it, being reminded of it made him angry.

"Do you just want to force me to admit I am imperfect? Is that what you are trying to wring out of me here?"

 

[Toshihiko Two]

"N-no. You...were worried about it. And I was worried about you. That's...that's all," Rodney said, shying at the anger and feeling the other things he was going to say dry up.

 

[Baneful]

Lawrence seemed to wilt again at the brief way Rodney answered him, not understanding anything about what he had wanted or been saying. "I appreciate you being worried, but ultimately there is nothing I can do to change any of it."

 

[Toshihiko Two]

Rodney felt much the same, that he hadn't been understood at all.

"Listen, I...I only meant- it's about more than a rule about- l-losing property. And that I'd...."

He struggled, but pressed through in a whisper.

"Forgive you too."  

[Baneful]

Lawrence gave Rodney a very blank pale blue stare that was about as close as he got to genuine sadness. He felt like the other man had closed off a bit to him and he wasn't even sure why.

He reached out to touch him, gently rubbing his shoulder between his thumb and forefinger "Look, I love you. I want to discuss things if you want to. I just. I'm so used to destroying things completely with a few well placed words."

The thought of forgiveness nevertheless wasn't reassuring.

"You might forgive me but you would still leave." It didn't matter to him if the other man archly forgave him if everything was still over. It just became a way to sugar coat it. "That's the part I can't deal with."

His grip tightened a little, not painfully, in subconscious response to his desire to keep the other man.

"I'm trying to understand." he said. "I just keep resenting the fact that I can't change myself. Wanting to change in itself undermines a lot of the things I rely on to keep going, it is uncomfortable. I do not enjoy feeling inadequate to any task or anyone."
 

[Toshihiko Two]

"I...do want to discuss...everything. Whether it's important or not. I wouldn't leave because...I was unhappy, or...even if you said something that upset me. I told you before, love isn't about a mood, or...a feeling. It's...an action, and a commitment. And it's one I've made."

He smiled a little.

"You've...been working so hard. And...it's always going to be work, but it's...to me it's worthwhile, even...when it's difficult."

He found Lawrence's hand with his.

"Th-that's what I was trying to say. That I've been thinking about everything. That...even if....that happened. I'd- want to work on things. N-not leave."  

[Baneful]

Lawrence gave Rodney a dubious look, still not sure if what he was saying was serious or just a statement thrown around idly. It was easy to say you'd be committed and that you'd never leave, it was quite another to do it. "I'm not good at discussing things." he said, as if this wasn't already bleedingly obvious.

He did look a little heartened at the reassuring edge to Rodney's tone, tilting his head just a little as he said that it was worthwhile to make the effort.

He squeezed his hand back and went from a look of uncertainty to one of shock.

"You mean that?" he said. "You aren't just saying it?"