[PRP]Indecision Rep + Mark

[Baneful]

Rep was miserable and it wasn't even for the reasons he'd thought it would be. Oddly, being female for now was something that he was coping with on a level that fell somewhere between denial and a strange sort of acceptance. He swung between one thing and the other periodically as days went on.

The real source of his issues seemed to lie closer to home. After the events of the island during Creation's assault on them something hadn't sat right with him and he wasn't sure quite what it was. Rep found it fairly easy to deal with loss or stress, he pushed both things down, deep into some dark place where he didn't ever need to deal with it again. This worked pretty well, other than when at times like this dissatisfaction and upset bubbled to the surface and he couldn't tell if it was from something older than he could remember or something recent and still hurting.

He felt lonely. Even in spite of everything that had happened he was left feeling like he was missing something, too used in the brief spate of chaos to following Carl around, having someone who listened to him and stood up for him to others. Before that he'd had Mark, sort of. He had been able to hang out with the other guy and conversation had been about whatever bullshit they felt like.

It hadn't been about women, and it especially hadn't been about Caroline.

He went about his daily duties in a quiet sort of haze, his responses often short and gruff, and he had started avoiding the main office entirely, shutting himself in his own archive room turned private office. Let Caroline have it, he thought. Let her have it ******** all, he'd been stupid to covet it, to want somewhere he could fit in or be part of something. It was all a lie and he was goddamn stupid for believing it.

He let these thoughts fester in a way only Rep could, locked away in his pile of junk and convincing himself that every untrue thing he thought was fact and utter reality.

But even a hermit had to come out sometimes, and he had to go pick up more mission reports to add to his project (collating the various legacy related effects people had reported into a searchable database with some basic functions) He was dressed normally now, obviously female and in clothes that didn't look like they were anything he'd have owned before and he slunk into the office like a sullen redheaded thundercloud, avoiding anyone present and beelining for one of the filing stacks.
 

[WE ARE HALLOWEEN]

As Rep tried to leave, Mark just stood barricading the doorway. "Look, I prepared a speech for this and like, I can neither confirm nor deny that it may be because you have avoided the office for days or that we totally had Starship Troopers movie night planned and you didn't show up or that I texted you like so many times," it has been two texts and one of them just said 'Wrong person', "and you didn't respond in that wierdly passive aggressive way that you normally do and and I totally forgot what this point of this speech was, but there was one, and I hesitantly demand a reasonable and very calm explanation from you."

Mark backed up a step or so looking nervous. "An extremely calm and peaceful explanation of perhaps, you know, I know how to respond to."

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

Rep paused and gave Mark a very tired look but listened anyway, his expression softening a little at what the other guy had to say. He ******** loved Starship Troopers.

"A calm explanation." he said. "I figured I wasn't needed here any more. Look, if I'm ******** honest, I'm thinking about maybe even leaving the division since evidently everyone has found Caroline so much ******** better and more useful than I am. It's just highlighted all over again what a complete ******** up I am."

He crossed his arms and looked away huffily, crossing his arms a little harder when he remembered the whole tits thing. "And I'm calm, I'm absolutely deadly calm. I don't mind being useless, I don't mind Cael telling me I'm useless, but there's nothing worse than feeling unwanted. I just used to feel ********, inept and weak, now I feel like, inept, weak, superfluous and ********> ugly."

He sighed. "I would have watched Starship Troopers. But lately you keep talking about HER when I'm around you and its like..it's really getting to me."

 

[Zoobey]

Mark sighed. "Is this about the whole Twitter thing, because I have one rule, and it is while I'm on Twitter, I say what I want and do what I want but it doesn't mean I'll actually like, mean it you know? Look, nobody said Caroline was better and more useful, I mean Oz doesn't even know who she is-"

"Don't care," said Oz, with only one earbud listening to a dubstep autotune remix of his latest poetry slam piece.

-"and neither does the boss-" Mark looked towards the empty desk for about two seconds, not actually registering that Caelius wasn't there since the silence to his banter was about the same, "literally the only person here who has like even talked to Caroline is me so I'm beginning to think it's personal and I just wanted to let you know our Netflix and chill ended up with us just being friends and no boundaries were crossed and and nobody said you were ugly and I am not hitting on you because I'm married." A pause. "I mean you're married."

"Mark went over to Caroline's and he cried for hours." Oz filled in the silence. "And then he momzoned her."

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

Rep listened with a keen attentiveness to Mark, giving him that too starey blue gaze he gave people he was trying to figure out. The other guy didn't actually seem to be lying and some of the tension went out of his shoulders.

He didn't bother to mention that Cael probably only vaguely knew who he was in a meatshield sort of way, before deciding that to him that was still something more than nothing.

He actually seemed reassured by the fact that nothing had come of them hanging out either. Other people's misery was a balm on Rep's own sense of complete worthlessness, it brought them closer to rock bottom where they could obviously then hang out with him.

"So. If I wasn't." he said vaguely. "Just talking in theory."

 

[Zoobey]

"Wasn't what?" Mark was the king of five second attention spans. "Oh, yeah, dude I'd never momzone you. You're like at least a ten you know?" Mark expertly left out how far the rating went. "I mean I like don't actually need much, they just need to not be Sith lords, or way too cool for me, or out of my league, or nice enough to make me cry for hours about my own tragic life you know?"

Too much information, Mark.

"Don't tell Caroline though, we're still LARPing buddies," this last part was in a whisper and then there was about five seconds of him just standing there awkwardly. "Why? Do you need a - a status effect date?"

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

With a finality all of the tension seemed to go out of Rep's posture, the defensiveness beforehand visible in the rigid way he'd held his spine giving way to a more normal slight slouch. "A ten?" he said, and it was pretty obvious that it wasn't something he was used to hearing at all, touched even by such a casual comment. He nodded, steeled by the compliment.

"S'ok bro." he said. "All our lives are tragic, just tragic together and s**t."

"I won't tell Caroline either." He didn't want her to have the chance to argue or take it away from him, guarding that small thing with all of his energy. He paused in his tracks at Mark's follow up suggestion, seeming to weigh up the awful with the potential gain to be had from this.

"What sort of date? Are you paying?"

 

[Zoobey]

"Well, actually, I was thinking of you more like, paying me," Mark almost sounded offended at having to pay Rep, "to like, set it up. And make it romantic. And sexy. And maybe morally ambiguous cuz you're married but still hot I guess? I'll give you a discount."

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

"Well Ace has all my money so no matter how romantic and sexy s**t this date would be, I guess I'll never know."

Rep had a very very rigid no cheating policy when it came to his marriage, but he didn't consider a date with Mark any closer to cheating than pretending to get married as part of a kid's game. It five thousand percent wasn't going to end in sex or anything approaching sexual, if anything he'd come away from the experience down a sexual experience he'd already had it was so far in the negatives. Mark was safe and if anything it'd be an excuse to go get free s**t and maybe see a movie.

"I don't have two dollars to rub together. You are a pricy man to date I guess."

 

[Zoobey]

"Yeah I guess we'll never know," Mark agreed. "I mean even with the discount and everything, like that's just way too bad."

There was a loud scrape as Oz stood up from his desk, gave the two a very frustrated sort of look, and slammed a hundred dollar bill onto Mark's general being before heading out of the room.

"It's actually two hundred with discount!" shouted Mark at Oz's retreating body, the later who flipped Mark two ebony nail polished birds.

The Death Assistant sighed, and then flipped through his own pockets for a series of twenties before collapsing them all together into two hundred and looking satisfied and stuffing it all back into his coat. "There, that's my favour from me to you because bro, you need to go out more, live your life more - what kind of movies do you like? I was thinking like movies, and then maybe a long walk on the beach with ice cream. Or should the walk on the beach come first?"

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

Rep gave Mark a brief critical sort of look for his favour being basically giving himself two hundred dollars, but his grimness couldn't last in the face of getting out for a bit and off island, he grinned instead, immediately brightening right up.

"I ******** love most movies man. I like Fight Club, I like Crank, actiony s**t, horror s**t, sci fi s**t!" And he couldn't help the enthusiasm that bled through. "There's new movies out right? I've no been to a movie since I got to this shitty ******** island. I just watch bootleg s**t."

"I like beaches too. No beaches here though, I'm sick of the beaches here."


 

[Zoobey]

Mark's face fell a bit. "But, the ice cream- I mean - like, not that I care or anything." He totally did. "And yeah bro, it's like 2017 where have you been your life ever."

He checked his phone. "We've got the Lego Batman Movie, John Wick 2, you know the one with Keanu Reeves and the old Matrix crew and it's supposed to be super awesome and cool and really good, and also Fist Fight with Ice Cube and Charlie Day." Mark paused. "Who the heck is Ice Cube?"

"Okay so, movie, and no long walk on the beach, okay, we might have to nix the sexy and romantic and morally ambiguous part because I literally do not know any other options for sexy ice cream. It's still two hundred bucks though."

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

"Woah slow down, I'm no skipping ******** ice cream, you aren't getting out of that s**t. For two hundred dollars I want a really good ******** ice cream at the very least. I'm going to need to go around like, actual people, people who are going to ******** look at me like I'm some kind of ******** scarred up drag queen, I want at least that to take the edge off of the humiliation." He'd realised from leave trips that people tended to look at him like he was an alien, not many people had obvious facial scars, loads of muscles and bizarre coloured hair in the normal off island world.

"If I'm no getting ice cream if I don't I'll totally do a beach walk nae bother."

He looked surprised. "They made a sequel to John Wick? Is that no the one where he goes apeshit about his dog? That sounds pretty awright, and Lego Batman is supposed to be funny." Because he read about some things when he was off island and one of the magazines he'd bought had mentioned it. "I think Ice cube is a rapper??" he shrugged.

"...how do you make ice cream sexy?" he asked, tilting his head and coming up with some really ******** weird scenarios.


 

[Zoobey]

"Well like first you take a lick of your ice cream, and then, you eat some more," Mark made vague hand gestures here, "and then maybe rub some on your man boobs and things happen and then there's an ice cream cone the waffle cone part is great and then-"

He seemed to have run out of ideas. -"And then John Wick 2 it is!" Mark quickly tapped his tablet. "Okay booked for 7:00 pm show, wait, and you are totally like not wearing that for the dramatic beach walk I'll bring something super hot and sexy for you." Wearing something not extremely sexy seemed like an offense for a two hundred dollar date. "Lighthouse in ten?"

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

Rep raised a brow. "I guess." he hazarded, not volunteering his own experiences with ice cream. "And they aren't ******** man boobs." he said, "They are just ******** normal boobs right now."

His expression turned worried at the idea of having to get changed, but if there was 200 dollars in this, he'd consider it. Frankly, with the idea of movies, food and not being snubbed to go by, it was really difficult to bring his mood down.

Nodding, he shrugged off his doubts. "Fine. See you then!"