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Post by ActuallyFace on Sept 28, 2014 21:22:11 GMT -8
(This is the third section of the RP The Hand of the Artificium, strictly between myself and empyreamVisionary. Sorry!
This will go from the end of the last plot climax to the beginning of the next one.)
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Post by ActuallyFace on Sept 29, 2014 17:04:45 GMT -8
After Wess and mint managed to get Bern and Angie away from the military, it was time to settle down again.
Angie and Bern both returned to their dorm rooms, and were placed in their beds. Wess and Mint decided that until they were strong enough and well enough, they would remain there, where they could rest, be watched, and be cared for. Wess wanted to get them both looked at by a medical professional, but after all that had gone on, he really wasn't sure who he could trust anymore... or if he could trust anyone at all outside of the little group they'd formed. The military was an extension of, and in most cases what controlled the government, and most hospitals were connected to either or both. There were private doctors as well, but they were more expensive... he would look around for one, though, and in the meantime save up some money to have them look at Bern and Angie. For now, he would just have to hope that they both would be alright.
For the next few weeks, Wess was Bern's caretaker. He still worked, and while he dropped a few classes and often skipped others, he was usually gone for a few hours a day, three or four days a week. But the rest of his time, he spent with Bern; he wanted to monitor him and make sure he was stable and had what he needed, and he wanted to provide him with as much support as he could. He was there constantly, unless he had to be somewhere else, and even brought a cot over from the hotel and pub he worked at so he could sleep in Bern's room. It was hard on his back, but it was better than the floor, and he wasn't willing to sleep with Bern unless Bern needed it; he was too afraid he would end up hurting him, if Bern wasn't as fine as he seemed.
When they weren't sleeping, Wess was either studying, running errands, or just spending time in the room with Bern; he wanted to be there with him all the time, every day... he wanted to wrap Bern up in his arms and kiss him like he used to, because god, how long had it been since he'd had Bern like this for so long? Since Bern had been all his? But he was careful, still; he would stop doing whatever it was he was doing if Bern ever showed signs of being hurt, and he would back off entirely if he told Wess, verbally or nonverbally, that he wanted space. He would even leave to run more errands if Bern's reaction was strong enough. But he did keep trying.
Part of that, perhaps, was his guilt. He had cheated on Bern, and he knew he had. He knew he had done wrong, and been incredibly, amazingly selfish... but he wasn't ready to tell Bern yet. He was expecting a negative reaction, and he was expecting Bern to... well, to break up with him, most likely. He knew that reaction was coming, and would come the moment he told Bern. He knew what he had done, and he knew that he had tossed years upon years of trust and love right out the window, and he wasn't ready for that. And what better way to justify not telling Bern than by telling himself that Bern wasn't ready? That Bern wasn't well yet, and that Bern needed him there to make sure he was okay? And what better way to steal a few more weeks of undeserved love from Bern, without feeling guilt for that theft?
So it was a long, long time yet before he would breathe even a syllable of it to Bern. It weeks, actually... several days after he knew Bern was well again, and ready to enroll in the school and start taking classes. And honestly, he was readying himself to wait longer, until Bern had settle into the school and adjusted, and his life had calmed down... but he couldn't. Wess was selfish, but he could only blind himself to how selfish he really was for so long, and he could't deny how much harm it was doing for much longer.
Finally, he decided it was time.
It was just after he got back from his classes, and the guilt had been eating at him all day. He'd thought about it through every class, turned the idea over and over, fought against himself... and at last made a decision. It was on his way to the dorm that he practiced the words, struggling to find the right ones, and searching desperately for the right combination that might soften the blow for Bern, maybe make him hate Wess less... by the time he got to the door, he was filled with emotion, almost on the verge of tears, and he couldn't remember half of the things he'd picked out for this moment. He just knew it was time.
He raised his fist and knocked on the door, then cursed his stupidity and just opened it. He stood there in the doorway for a moment, before taking a hesitant step into the room and swinging the door shut behind him. He looked small and terrified, and cast large eyes about the room for Bern, in his nervousness and reluctance looking at the bed only when he's searched the rest of the room first. Then he steadied himself a bit, straightened his posture, and sat down on the bed beside Bern.
Hopefully, Bern hadn't noticed all of that with his eyes on the pages of a book. Wess didn't want to start this moment with a thick fog of anxiety muffling his words... though if Bern had even a scrap of empathy, he would pick up on how anxious Wess was regardless of his straightened posture.
Wess cleared his throat, and took his glasses off to clean them.
"Bern, I was hoping to tell you something..." he started, then paused, before plowing on regardless of how much Bern was actually paying attention. "I have been wanting to tell you for some time now, but it... wasn't the right time yet. You were sick, and weak, and I... I suppose I was selfish. There is no better word for it." he faltered, then, and guilt leaked into his expression.
"Bern..." he whispered, and then swallowed and sighed. His eyes were downcast, and finally he covered them with his glasses and looked Bern in the eye. Surprisingly enough, his were dry. "I cheated... on you. I slept with Mint. I told him I loved him." His words sounded far away to Wess, suddenly, like he wasn't even speaking them anymore. They were just coming out on their own, falling off his lips, as much as he didn't want them to. But there they were, laid out in front of Bern for him and all the world to see. Horrified, he began to cry; quietly, of course, but there were tears on his cheeks, and they were beginning to drip down into his scarf, and he stubbornly held Bern's gaze. "You are going to break up with me, now, aren't you?"
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Post by empyreanVisionary on Oct 5, 2014 21:21:18 GMT -8
It had been a nightmare. An absolute nightmare, and Bern had lived through it. But “lived” probably seemed like an overstatement through part of it, as Bern hadn’t come out of this mess very well, and neither had Angie, though it was debatable that Bern was the worst off of the two. He’d been unable to wake up for a long, long time after the influence of the energy-sapping machinery that had been his prison for a very long time. The good news, at least, was that aside from the fact that he was really quite unconscious, he didn’t seem to be having any problems. His breathing was fine, his heartbeat never faltered. He just couldn’t wake up. And if Wess wasn’t able to find enough money in time (and it was doubtful that he would), the two of them ended up just fine.
Meanwhile, when Angie was able to be moved into her room, it was Amintore who spent a lot of his time looking after her. Unlike Bern, she didn’t have anyone to watch over her, and he knew it was what he needed to do. She was, thankfully, not as badly off thanks to having spent much less time in her set of equipment — not to mention that hers was, in fact, different. The drain on her body had been far less taxing, so she was awake within the day. Bern, on the other hand, hadn’t been so lucky, but it was still only a few days before he woke up on his own.
And when he could wake up, that was probably when Wess felt like he was able to leave his side for even a moment. It probably would have upset Bern to know that he’d dropped classes just to take care of him. Either way it was, Bern didn’t mind the moments that Wess left him alone. He still found himself passing the time by resting most of it, oftentimes spending eighteen or more hours a day asleep for the first week. It was only by the second week that his sleep patterns started to seem more normal, and he was able to move around without any difficulty. Meanwhile, Angie had recovered fully in just a few days.
As soon as Bern was spending any amount of time awake, but unable to summon the energy to leave his bed, he started reading again, though he couldn’t do much to concentrate some of the time. Wess probably started to notice that he wasn’t able to get through the books he’d brought him, anticipating that he would want to read, and that was probably an uncomfortable reality. However, he’d realize that this was because Bern was clearly also dealing with withdrawal symptoms, since he hadn’t smoked in a very long time. He complained of headache, and he was clearly irritable and anxious. He slept a lot, but this wasn’t noticeable through the effects of the mental drain. He occasionally looked kind of sick. But all of these things were definitely withdrawal symptoms, and surely Wess realized this, so he didn’t have need to worry. Still, as soon as Bern was back to normal, he was begging Wess for cigarettes, and he didn’t understand why he was being refused. Sure, he’d tried to quit for him before, but being in the military had done nothing but encouraged him to start up again. It had gotten stressful. Far too stressful for what he should have been going through, at that.
Once he recovered fully, he was going to be enrolled into school. Thanks to the mess that had unfolded, he’d been able to procure everything he needed to enroll without a problem, and he’d be starting classes soon. Now that he’d come to this point, Bern was starting to feel strange about it. He’d prepared for this for a long time. Mentally prepared himself, physically prepared himself. Wess had been teaching him handwriting for what seemed ages, now. He wondered if he could still do it, after having spent so much time in the military where he didn’t need to. He honestly didn’t know, and school was going to start for him very soon. It was terrifying in some ways, and liberating in others. He’d always wanted to go to school, but he couldn’t help but wonder if all he’d already gone through had been worth it.
It was a Thursday, and the next Monday he’d begin school. Until then, he was doing a lot of reading, and he’d even tried writing a little. He was just as bad as always, unfortunately, but at least he was able to write legible characters. Wess had told him it would be incredibly important to be able to write in school, and he had taken him seriously, but it didn’t really make him good at it. But he was reading when Wess knocked, and this wasn’t a particularly normal situation … so he found himself looking toward the door, even though he had previously been rather engrossed in the words on the page.
Wess opened the door, and my god, he looked pale as a ghost.
Though it wasn’t long after Bern had woken up and started… well, being conscious, that Wess had surely noticed a change in his behavior. Whether it was something permanent, caused by the mental stress, or just a temporary change, he probably didn’t know… but that on top of Bern’s irritability had probably not made him a particularly pleasant person to be around the last few days… He had a tendency to look at Wess with an unpleasant gaze, much more unfavorably than he’d seen from him. Ever, really. He never looked at him that way. But perhaps Wess just hadn’t thought of why this was. After all, Bern didn’t know what he was about to tell him yet. Right?…
When he cast his fear aside for the moment and moved to him, sitting down on the bed, Bern watched him, every moment of his approach, and given that Wess had worried he’d be watching, he’d have reason to worry. Plenty of it, given that Bern’s eyes had moved from the book, but the book hadn’t moved at all. Bern was practically staring at him, and the fog of anxiety was probably rolling right in.
The anxiety was… pretty much stifling, really.
He didn’t have to worry about Bern paying attention. He most certainly had all of his attention on the very tense, very nervous Wess sitting at his bedside, and trying to speak, but not doing a very good job. Though whatever this was, Wess didn’t need to tell him that it was important. And as soon as the guilt flooded Wess’s face, he knew. It was like he didn’t even need Wess to say it.
The reason why he didn’t need Wess to say it was because he’d already been told, and not by Wess… clearly, Wess was telling him he was sorry he hadn’t told him yet. No, it had been a while back, while Wess was away. Mint had come by. Amintore, anyway. Wess’s friend. Bern had never met him, but it had become pretty obvious that he was who he said he was, and despite the fact that Bern was still a bit weak when he came, he trusted him not to be a dangerous person. He’d come in and sat with him for a while, introduced himself, told him about how he and Wess were friends. Then he told him that he had something important to say, and not to be upset. ‘Please, don’t be upset,’ he’d insisted, ‘and if you’re going to be upset with anyone, be upset with me.’
Bern wished he could have been able to listen to him, then. He really did. But as the other explained what had happened — that he hadn’t been aware of their relationship, that everything about Wess had seemed to say that he was lonely, that he needed something, that it was his own fault for assuming… That Wess was clearly not in his right mind, that he should have asked him first to be sure… It had been made very clear, by him, that both of them were very, very sorry. And finally, Mint told him that he was the one to tell him now because he thought Wess would be too afraid to do it. Or that he’d wait too long. He begged and pleaded with him even more; begged Bern to forgive Wess. He told him that he knew that he must have loved him. That he must have loved him more than anything; that it was made clear the moment Wess had started speaking about him.
And all the while, Bern had listened to this with a stoicism that was unusual. Partially because it was the kind of stoicism exhibited by a weakened man, but partially because he was afraid to show any emotion when hearing all of this. And Mint had left him with a lot of questions. He hadn’t been able to say much. He had nodded, he’d accepted his words, his apologies. He’d told him he could leave. But that was about all he was able to say in that moment. All this was hard for him to believe. But there was no reason that the other would come to him like this if he was lying. And still, it made him sick to think about it being true. Which, given the circumstances, it probably was.
And he didn’t think that, if it was true, he could accept an apology. Even if it had been a mistake, it was a mistake that hurt, that hurt more than he knew he could hurt. He didn’t find himself hating either of them. Or really even being angry or upset. He felt a certain stagnant neutrality toward both of them, and that was unheard of when he considered Wess. That had to be the culprit behind the irritable way he was looking at Wess lately. And it had to be the reason why, when Wess was away, Bern found tears in his eyes.
But hearing all this from Wess’s own mouth… well, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. There was no rationalizing it when he was hearing it straight from him. He couldn’t pretend that it wasn’t true anymore. He was hearing him say it. He was hearing him say he told Mint that he loved him.
Mint had never told him that.
He must have been afraid to say that much. Why was Wess saying it now? It made Bern’s insides twist in a way that caught him breathless. For a moment, he was sure that he must have done something wrong. He didn’t know what. He didn’t know how to right this wrong, how to change Wess’s mind, how to reverse all this. No, there was no reversing this; it was done, it was over, Wess was staring out into an abyss he couldn’t fathom, with tears rolling down his pale face, and Bern was the abyss, lost within his own mind as he tried to determine everything. Who was at fault, whether or not he knew how to react at all.
But perhaps all that had happened had really just occurred in a fraction of a second. He had no way of knowing. He wasn’t sure he’d missed anything, not a second in which the tears slid unhindered down the other’s cheeks. No, there was one last question, and he’d heard it, but it was just now reaching his mind. 'You’re going to break up with me now, aren’t you?' It echoed in his mind, and for a while, he was completely unsure of what to say.
He didn’t want to break up with him. He really didn’t. He wanted to pretend this didn’t happen and move right on, with someone who cared about him by his side, someone who had just made a mistake that didn’t need to define their future. He had been honest with him and… and that was exactly what a healthy relationship needed. He’d been honest, he’d taken care of him. He’d helped him after all this mess. He’d given him everything he asked for… except cigarettes. …No, this wasn’t about that. That didn’t matter.
But, did he really love him? He’d told Mint he loved him. He’d said this right to his face…
Bern suddenly realized that he was unsure. Had it only been that he’d cheated on him, perhaps he would have been able to forgive him. Perhaps it was really just a mistake. But he’d told him that he loved him. He’d forgotten about Bern long enough to love someone else, if only for a moment. He’d forgotten him long enough to tell him.
Bern finally broke down, bowing his head, covering his face with his hands. The other’s gaze was too much. He shook his head softly, practically unable to face the reality of this… but he had to speak. “…Wess…” his voice hissed softly, “…I must do this. I have to. I can’t…” His words didn’t make much sense. But it was still pretty clear what he meant. ’I must break up with you. I have to break up with you. I can’t… stay with you.’.
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Post by ActuallyFace on Oct 5, 2014 21:55:41 GMT -8
Wess stared at Bern for a long time. He wasn't really sure why, but he couldn't look away from him. He couldn't look anywhere else, even when the tears welled up and blocked Bern from his vision except as a greenish, blondish blob. This was the last time he was going to look at Bern like this, wasn't it? The last time they would really be together, though maybe he had broken that promise of togetherness a long time ago, when he had slept with Mint. But he had gotten some time in since then.... he had been by Bern's side at least, he hadn't been hated... maybe disliked at times, a little, because he wouldn't give Bern his wretched cigarettes, or those strange times when Bern looked at him like Wess maybe wasn't quite as great as he'd been before all this. But never hated. Never lost, like he would be now. Disconnected. A fully separate entity.
If he could just pause this moment, stretch it on for now... forever, even. Just look at Bern and remember him and... and know this time before years, actual years of love and trust and support vanished, he would be a little bit happier. Maybe if he could hug him again, or kiss him... remind him that he loved him now before Bern told him to leave.
But he didn't deserve that, did he? He'd messed it all up, he'd destroyed everything... he deserved all of this. The pile of shit he was getting now. That was the stupid little medal he'd won for himself when he had decided to fuck all of this up with Bern, and when he had decided to throw every good thing he had, every good thing Bern had given him, right out the window. This was what cheaters got.
Seeing Bern break down like that was the worst part. Bern was usually so strong, even when he was weak... it took a lot to break him, and it took more to patch him back up. And who was going to do that this time? Wess had hurt him, and enough to break him down, make him curl in on himself like that, enough to be left speechless and staring and now unable to even look at someone who had once been there to give him everything in the world. He had hurt Bern. He was hurting Bern, and who the hell was going to fix him back up again? It was even worse than hearing him tell Wess that yes, yes he was going to break up with him. That he... fuck, he had to.
It was like Bern had found just the right combination of words to rip Wess's heart right out of his chest, but... Wess had been expecting that. He knew it was coming, and he knew he deserved it.
He wiped the tears from his eyes, clearing a path for more, and then nodded. "I know." He mumbled, and after a pause, he slowly stood back up again. "I left... some of my things here. I will send Mint to pick them up, I... suppose you would rather not see me." Suddenly, he couldn't look at Bern anymore. Bern hurt too much. Bern didn't want him anymore. Instead, he looked down at the carpet and moved to the door, where he stood awkwardly for a very, very long moment, staring at the handle of the door. "Bern, I..." He started, and his voice sounded for a second like he had something that might fix things, but it was just hollow hope instead. He let the words die, and searched around for new ones. The ones he came up with were hardly and better, and he said them quietly and timidly. "I love you. They sounded genuine, but maybe it was just because he wished they were. Would that be what Bern decided? Wess sort of hoped not. Maybe Bern would believe him, and there would be a chance, and... he scratched at the back of his neck under his scarf, and then he drew in a breath and left.
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