calicoat | 🏴‍☠️ IC contact; Duplicity

Anything, Jack. Everything.

The point is learning how to retain some Control over the Mind, no matter what it is the Body Itself may currently be going through. But you need not worry - I'll not be trying it again.

I would sure as hell hope not. If you feel the need to put yourself through something like that again, call me, won't you?

For what it's worth, though, he seemed to think you'd succeeded.

Jack. You know you can't always protect me from everything.

Nor should you have to. I should be more capable of enduring this on my own.

You are capable. I know that.

Let me do this, please, John. I know no other way to ensure you are taken care of, the circumstances being what they are. No matter what you are capable of enduring on your own, why should you have to? Why would you want to, with someone eager to be at your side?

[ Jack really does have some kind of uncanny knack for always saying exactly the right things to, at least in the moment, cast out any and all doubts from Irving's mind that he's been making some huge mistake in all this, that every choice he's made in Duplicity has been wretchedly, horribly wrong so far, because--

And this is the part he especially isn't sure he could ever convince Jopson of, ever begin to make him understand, that... Jack really, actually, genuinely cares about Irving, to a level which Irving is deeply grateful for. He knows, somehow, how to help soothe Irving's nerves, his temperament, his vacillating and mercurial moods-- how to care for him in ways not even Irving could have possibly known he needed, or wanted.

Irving finds it almost, or even actually frightening at times. Not because of anything Jack's done wrong, but because Irving simply doesn't know how to... do this, really, doesn't know how to even feel worthy of it. ]

It is what I am used to; enduring on my own. Mostly I do not mind it. But here I find that it frightens me greatly.

Are you really sure? Even Jopson finds me tiresome, you know.
I know something is wrong with me, but especially here. Here more than anywhere.

[ It’s probably Jack’s greatest skill, knowing what people need to hear. Whether they, themselves know it or not, if he knows what they want, what they need, then he can find a way to twist it so that it aligns with whatever he wants. It is a power that he can, and has, used to various ignoble means, to manipulate, to seduce, to feed destructive fires and put righteous ones out.

Soothing people, or keeping them happy, purely because he cares about their happiness instead of how it can serve him, is less common, but it’s the same core skill. He extends this side of it to a precious few, a group which Irving is now inescapably apart of. ]

Jopson’s a twat.

You're no more wrong than anyone else. We’ve all got flaws here, surely you know who you’re talking to. Just because you've got the particular misfortune of finding yourself in a place tailor-made to poke at yours, doesn't mean you have to punish yourself. This place will do that to us enough on its own.

I have not been punishing myself. [ Or at least not quite... in the way he's assuming Jack thinks he's punishing himself. ] I am happy when I am with you.

I'm glad to hear it. But what of the rest of the time?

[ ... ]

Sometimes. Yes. I am grateful for many of those who I have met here - and that I can be alive to see even just this one version of how far the World has come since 1848. It is not all bad.

You're alive here. Or close enough to feel as if you are, if we are indeed somewhere in between. You don't have long, back where you were from. I would be happy for it, were I you.

I do not say this to downplay the seriousness of your distress, as I know you have good reason for it. But in your case, this is the only life you've got, really. You'd do well to find that happiness where you can. Not only when I'm with you, as greedy as I can be, you deserve more than that.

Edited 2022-05-27 22:53 (UTC)

I have been trying. Really. But please understand how it has been like one ordeal after the next for me here. I cannot even take comfort in knowing how God will Reward our Suffering, in the end.

I do. And I can relate. Hell, half of our ordeals are overlapping, at this point.

I know that I can not protect you from them all, and that often I am, in fact, the cause of them. It doesn't change that I wish to see you happy.

And I'm not so sure that God will see fit to reward me for much of anything, so, I'm resolved to live in the now and minimize that suffering as much as possible.

[ Irving can't help but smile at his phone, though it's hard to say what about Jack's message in particular is making him do so... maybe just all of it. ]

You do. Very much. I only wish I could know what it is I possibly have to offer you in return, that you would continue to be this kind to me.

[ He lets that sit for a minute or so, before adding: ]

I hope you know that when I speak of Suffering, I am excluding having met you. If anything, perhaps that has been my Reward for enduring this long.

[ Jack's glad to be by himself right now, because he's doing the same thing, smiling down at the phone in his hand the same way he smiled at those letters. Like a damn kid. ]

You've made me happy as well. I would say that's reason enough.

You think that much of me, that I would be a worthy prize for your endurance?

I think very much of you indeed, Jack. Truly I am lacking in words to adequately convey the depths to which you matter to me.

I would ask you to try, but it would be only fair for me to do the same, and in like manner I am at a loss for words to express how much you mean to me. At least not with any succinctness that would allow me to stop tapping at this screen sometime before night's end.

[ Irving can feel it tug at some part of his mind, stir somewhere in his chest, that this moment is... that moment (one of them, anyway), where something else could, maybe even should, get said; not even for the first time, really, but never quite so clearly before as now.

Someone else would, maybe. Say something. Not Irving, though. Irving has all manner of reasons and excuses for why that's wrong, unthinkable, dangerous, humiliating, inappropriate, impossible, and too soon(?) anyway, for him to even think that could be what this feeling is.

So this won't be that moment for him after all. Lacking in words with which to define his feelings, indeed. ]

If we both understand each other. Maybe we don't need a word for it.

[ A word for it. That’s such a specific turn of phrase that can, really, only mean one thing, and John is telling him without telling him. He’s grateful for it. Despite his own talk of everything but this one thing, or even his fervent descriptions of that very thing left unnamed, it can remain that way for a while longer. To name this thing that sits warm and weighty in his chest would be to accept the responsibility that comes with it, and the reasons he cannot are established, agreed on, known too well by them both.

The selfish want remains, but Jack muzzles it, along with the nagging unease in knowing that it could happen again, that his lover could disappear without warning and leave him with nothing but heartache and regrets, so perhaps they really should just worry about the present, as they’ve reassured each other before.

Not quite yet. ]

Give it time, John. To understand one another is a rare enough gift.

I know, Jack. Believe me. There are times where I have felt that I more than anyone know precisely how true that is. Do not think me ungrateful for it.

[ Grateful for Jack, for all that he does, all that he is-- everything that has brought them here together, to this uncertain yet often strangely pleasant place wherein Irving never, ever expected to find himself with someone. Let alone, obviously, especially, a man. Not until arriving in Duplicity did he ever really know what his future might hold for him (certain imminent death, as it turns out), nor had he ever been especially anxious to know it beyond his most immediate concerns at the time (to continue on with the navy even with promotion prospects uncertain, or not? to leave and go farm sheep in Australia instead?), but never many thoughts given to, say, what comes later, what comes after his life at sea.

Which, again, very nearly a moot point now anyway, except that it means he has no life of his own to return to anymore, that this is it: perhaps the one single future he could have least imagined for himself, and even less would he have imagined that he'd be, in any way, even the slightest bit, remotely happy.

(Then again, even more so than back in his old life, what kind of future for himself could he possibly imagine for himself in a place like Duplicity, anyway? No matter what, he was almost guaranteed to be surprised by it.) ]

Or for you. For that matter.

I don't think that you are. Not at all.

I'm grateful for you too, I hope you know.

[ So dumb that this is making him blush... sooooo dumb... and yet, ]

Yes. I know. Of course I do. You more than anyone have repeatedly made that very clear to me.

[ ... ]

And I don't mean...you know. Not only that.

You like me for more than just the way I fuck you, you mean?

Yes, I know, angel. 😈

🏴‍☠️ IC contact; Duplicity

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