Lawrence was getting used to normal life, having a family, having children. It all felt somehow comfortable and reminiscent of the time before Maja had left. He felt settled and the only negative thing about it all was that he found himself worried that - like every other period of contentment in the past - it couldn’t last at all. He knew that even with this comfortable settled feeling and the thought that things were finally looking up that he as a person was fundamentally unchanged. He’d made different decisions this time certainly but the heart of him was as cold as it had always been.


He knew that in all likelihood he was a psychopath and that he met almost every single point on hare’s checklist. He wasn’t stupid after all, it was difficult to miss even for someone who had avoided assessment by “professionals” at every possible turn. But what did knowing change? He couldn’t twist his mind around and fix it, he couldn’t stop the fact that no matter how he tried most sentiment seemed trite at best, stupid at worst. Everyone did everything for a reason, manipulating others and being manipulated in turn, it had to be the way of things, people just called it different things or sugar coated it so hard they believed their own nonsense. It was just a spiralling cycle of the users and the used, predators and prey. He couldn’t relinquish his role as predator because he simply wasn’t born to be prey. In vet school they’d done plenty of discussion of the differentiation in the digestive systems of mammals and how much damage could be done if one tried to suddenly switch diets. Horses died, for instance. So too it was with humans, you were either a hunter or a hunted person and if you were configured that way you’d go through life fixated on those types who were completely unlike you.


He had to assume it was a spectrum of sorts and that some people barely noticed their opposites, going through their lives oblivious to those around them. He wasn’t like that. He was fixated on the vulnerable and weak, especially those who revelled in their status as hunted, they captured him and entranced him with their vulnerability, with the way that they seemed to entice people like him closer, responding most strongly to his charm and lies.


The difficult fact was that Rodney was prey. He was possibly the most wonderfully prey human being he’d ever met. He had a history marked with abuse at the hands of harsh and cruel parents, yet rather than turn that abuse into a blackened bitterness or violence, he had been forged by it into a man who had nothing but tolerance and gentle feelings towards the world. He’d never pushed back, never snapped and become the thing he hated. He’d chosen good and in doing so had wrought only good from evil.


Lawrence remembered the story of the lion from a syrup can of all things. Growing up they’d had Tate and Lyall syrup in the cupboard for the times when his mother might cook or his dad would take it upon himself to make pancakes. He’d noticed the seemingly dead lion on the tin, felt a little uncomfortable with it and asked then what it had meant. in the end it was his father who explained it, though he missed the point entirely, reciting the quote regarding the strong bringing forth sweetness and stating it was because the lion got killed, because someone was strong that they’d all gotten a treat out of it. Lawrence now interpreted it to mean that only the strongest people could bear the pain of being good in a world which often punished those who were. He’d felt it for a split second, that sense of emotion so strong it almost felt it might tear him apart and marvelled at how Rodney even survived his day to day life without lapsing into madness. It had been like Butch, an overwhelming storm but of something different.


Melvin was a more complex conundrum, he swung between predator and prey on an almost daily basis, it was difficult to ascertain if he was ever truly one thing or another. He was difficult to get a bearing on. Ultimately Lawrence felt like Melvin was naturally a person who was prey, someone who wanted to be hunted and kept, to be sheltered from the storm of the world outside but whose constant rejection of this nature and desperation to be a hunter instead left him torn between worlds, straining to part from his real nature and never able to attain the one he sought. It was something Lawrence couldn't be sure of though, as a general rule he was never very good at getting a handle on other human beings outside of the ones it might be helpful to fleece of their money or their dignity.

Lately he'd been in the mood to spar, setting aside his careful avoidance of combat temporarily. He still chose his opponents carefully because he couldn't afford anyone new seeing that he was anything other than a harmless and doddering sort of father figure, but the people who knew what he was, well those were fine. Peyton had been good to fight, the mingled taste of her emotions regarding the fight a delicious cocktail which he thought to himself he might well taste again sometime soon. She hated him and it was lovely, a sensation he'd almost forgotten now that America had lost so much of who she used to be. Real hate was almost as good as love, something to be savoured and enjoyed. The pain was acceptable too, an alternative to the starvation he wasn't permitted to pursue any longer, a lingering and potent reminder that he was present within himself and truly alive.

He really needed to find some more, he though.