Hello, it is Wednesday and I am back with a new story! It was Jorginho's birthday yesterday so in celebration, I am uploading this chapter. Not a very happy one though :D We saw in last week's chapter how suspicious Jordan is regarding Jorginho and, well, this one goes a lot further into all of that. We see that he is not alone in his suspicions either. This chapter was meant to serve as a slight introduction to things we will learn regarding Jorginho over the coming months but this also feels like diving into the deep end! We see that things aren't always happy for the characters and their lives. Sometimes there is conflict. In this chapter, there is major conflict. I hope you enjoy anyway :P
Disclaimer: I own the story and the OCs mentioned! Also, warning: there is indeed conflict in this chapter and a physical altercation towards the end with hinted violence during the first half!
From the second that Lynne bustled into the kitchen with a brown paper shopping back in each hand, she caught her husband curling his spine in front of the open fridge. Her bag carrying responsibility became a thing of the past. Paper greeting the wood of the floor, her hand graced the center of her chest, lines kissing against the corners of her eyes in an expression of fondness.
How majestic he was doing the simplest of things. She loved him. With every beating part of her heart, she loved Jordan and she always had done. Come to think about it, she at that point could scarcely remember a time that she did not feel this way.
And with that notion carrying her movements across the kitchen, she decided to speak to him, her voice uttering nothing but the sound of a love that had been present for more than a single lifetime.
"Are you hungry, my darling?" she questioned even though she believed that that was indeed the case. Why else would a man like him be hunched towards the refrigerator and drawers of the freezer section tugged open? The truth would suddenly hit her far more than the breeze of the chill. "What's the matter?"
You see, Jordan hadn't answered her as if he couldn't hear her but somehow she could tell that he had. That was one of the advantages of loving each other throughout more than the one lifetime. When Lynne could tell that his spine had curved all the more in spite of the fact that it had tried to straighten, it had caused her hand to break the distance with her heart for a different reason.
It had also prompted to ask him a second question. A question that she would soon receive the answer from. Or rather, she would hear a noise that would begin to paint quite a picture.
"Nggh…" Jordan groaned, reaching for a second packet of frozen peas from the freezer before bringing them to his abdomen, his left hand cupping the base of his own spine even though that part of his body wasn't bringing him pain.
And for a man of his size, he was surprisingly agile and didn't require the balance.
If Lynne had still been holding the bags of shopping then they would have surely tumbled with a crash down to the ground when she realized that her husband was the opposite of hungry. And he had tried to conceal things from her. But he had tried and failed.
Not a lot could be hidden from her when it came to him and certainly not from the way that he had tucked his t-shirt up underneath himself so he could press the freezing pack of vegetables against his bare skin.
Jordan may have two packets of peas pressed against him but the pain was swollen and visible all the same, not to mention spreading. Lynne allowed an audible gasp to break free. She didn't hesitate to cower in her own way in order to inspect the bruise that was deepening on her husband's stomach.
"Oh my goodness, are you hurt?" these words escaped from her after the gasp. She didn't know why it came out like that. Of course, he was hurt. Lynne's gaze flickered to the wound that was changing from blush to scarlet in front of her eyes and her husband who felt like her presence was a solar eclipse. "Did something happen to you while you were working out?"
"Mmph…" Jordan's own response allowed itself to be known rather quickly after Lynne asked him a couple more questions but it was his actions in which revealed the most.
Although his neck with a noticeable twinge in it was tilted down towards his wife attempting to encourage the corner of a packet of peas away from the wound to get a better look at it, he could not look her in the eye. Did not want to look at her in the eye. He wanted to forget everything.
Lynne could not forget. Rising to her full height as it dawned on her what kind of state he was in; she may have been described as the kind of person with her head always in the clouds, but she was not foolish. When it came to her husband, she was even less foolish. Her day was exceptionally clear to her in her mind's eye.
She had mentioned popping to the shops about an hour before and although Jordan had given her an answer when she had asked if he wanted anything while she was there, he hadn't mentioned that he was heading to the gym while she was gone. Nor did he mention that he was going for a swim.
And as much as he threw himself into everything that he did and as much as he reveled in the fact that he had a body that had survived more than one lifetime, she knew that he was hardly likely to get injured in the pool in that way. Much less in between lifting weights and seeing if he could outdo his performance from the day prior.
Jordan wasn't foolish either. He knew his way around most things.
Lynne's breakfast threatened to stir in her stomach. She wanted to know how he had been hurt. Needed to know. Needed to know who had done this to him.
"Did someone do this to you…?" she questioned, her tone of voice escaping like a whisper in the wind because not only did she long for this obvious thing to not be the truth but she couldn't imagine how it could have happened in the house that they all lived in.
The Morgan Household with the additional Williams Annex was a house full of love and song. Sure, they had their difficulties and their disagreements like anybody else. But there were no raised voices. Violence scarcely existed. Emotions were shared by talking, not fists.
Lynne threatened to wonder if there had been an intruder when Jordan found proper words at long last. His features of his face screwed up as his head shook, his lemon hued curtain-like locks swaying in a dismissive way.
"I'd rather not talk about it." Jordan said swiftly. He said firmly. But he did not bark harshly. He didn't have it in him at the best of times. But certainly not with an abdomen that felt like it was eating itself from the inside out, let alone dealing with thoughts in his mind that didn't seem to shut up.
Somehow, he had found the strength to speak through it all and Lynne needed to respect that. She did respect that. Because, to tell you the truth, she didn't know if she could speak about it either. Her mind had begun to chatter away to itself like her husband's often did. Her thoughts had been clear as day. And she suddenly remembered – not a peculiar sight – but a different sight than usual when she entered back home through the front door.
Their home was filled with love. If hatred had been brought into the environment, then no doubt was it from an outside source. An intruder.
Lynne's hand feebly traced the base of her own neck when it washed over her that the cause of her husband's pain was not exactly an intruder but certainly someone who had interjected a lot of things, a lot of moments.
Jordan hadn't been the only one who had been hurt. Lynne realized this now when she had seen her partner, James, leading someone down the other end of the hall, holding a frozen packet of another description against the side of a swollen jaw.
The name rang through her head like a prophecy. Only one person and one person alone who would have turned on someone that she held dear.
Jorginho.
Lynne was suddenly glad that Jordan didn't wish to talk. She didn't want his name to dance over her lips if he was back to his old, despicable ways. She knew that she wished to do only what she did best. And that was to nurture, not to destroy.
More than respecting her husband's wishes, she made moves towards him and not only rested a steadying hand on his shoulder but reached her other hand down to help him hold the frozen peas against him. She then nudged her hip against his as an act of encouragement. She began to lead him away from the kitchen.
"Let me take care of you…" her voice appeared like a whisper in the wind once again. Except this time, she uttered words that she really wanted to speak. And as well as this, they were words that Jordan was rather content to hear.
He may still be unable to let his slightly glossy and bloodshot eyes from meeting hers but he was quite capable in being able to allow himself to relinquish himself into her care. He had always done that. He had always felt that that was – not always easy – but certainly natural. And even during times that he wanted to close his eyes and block the world out, he found himself reaching for her, discovering solace in her time and time again.
Lynne led him over towards the sofa area of the household's breakfast bar room and intended to allow him to be silent as much as his heart required him to be.
She would keep a watchful eye over him. She would never be too far away. She would keep the frozen peas held gently against his throbbing injury and move her hand from his shoulder into the back of his hair when he was ready for a further touch, soothing him with fingertips buried in locks the hue of a dawning summer's day.
Funnily enough, as the shadows altered their dance throughout the room and frozen peas slowly thawed inside their packet and the aching of a stomach wound continued to throb only more rather than less, Jordan discovered some of the notions that had been racing inside of his mind to be longing to escape from the tip of his tongue.
He tried to hold it back by still no longer looking across at his wife but nudging his shoulder against hers in an act of companionship, but as minutes passed even further, he just had to say something. He just had to say anything. Jordan could no longer deal with it alone. And even though his wife was right there, one person – actually two – had made him feel quite isolated.
"I don't trust Jorginho…" Jordan began, causing Lynne's chin to momentarily lift up off the ball of his shoulder from being parked there while her hand remained securing the peas against her husband's abdomen. Her hand must've felt frozen. "Nobody knows what kind of man he truly is."
In comparison to the way that frozen nausea edged itself from the very pits of Lynne's stomach and towards the lining of her throat, her cold hand was the last thing to worry about. Out of far more than just defeat, her chin found solace back down against her husband's muscular, round shoulder once again.
Lynne's eyelid twitched so much that she momentarily closed them both.
It had been exactly as she had feared. That name. That intruder. That other.
She couldn't believe that she still felt that way. Or rather, she couldn't believe that those feelings were back again. How foolish she had been that time. How foolish to think that he was different now. He was still the same charlatan that had swept her Jim Dear off his feet a summer or two ago and rekindled a friendship that she secretly believed had been more beneficial when it was down the drain.
Jorginho had hurt her with his fake charm and his conjured-up ease and affinity for James and that had been bad enough. Now he had hurt her husband. Physically.
But for some reason, she did not see the bigger picture straight away.
Her head swung from side to side, her chin making contact with Jordan's t-shirt material hugging his shoulder and together it made a noise like sweeping dust from a carpet.
"We know, Jordan." She began, rethinking her movement against her husband's shoulder when she could have sworn that he was trying to turn towards her, making the effort to look at her, but the swishing was standing in his way. "I hate to admit it, but I am surprised that he resorted to this, though."
If Lynne had believed that it was her gestures that had prevented Jordan from meeting her eyes moments before then she was taking a risk with her actions next. She didn't know why she felt the need to peel the peas back away from her husband's skin, looking at him all the while in case he stopped her even if he didn't look at her.
He did not. So, she proceeded.
She did not know why she wanted to look at that wound all over again. To see exactly what Jorginho had done to her husband. It made more than her heart to shatter inside her chest. Any coldness of her hands was certainly not in her stomach as it ignited with such passionate anger that the only way to mellow it was by portraying a face full of nonchalance.
All the same, her cheeks stung from the inside when she saw the red chill thanks to the packet of frozen peas blending with the bruise that in some areas was still rosy but in others was deepening to the hue of rage.
How funny it was that Jorginho had hit her husband with a bruise almost made out of James as in the next few days the shades of red would change to purple. How telling too. But she did not dare speak of this. She did not want to put this out there. Certainly not to her beloved Jordan.
As if she had spoken words of this sentiment, however, Jordan suddenly set a scoff free from her throat. It was a noise that encouraged Lynne to hide his wound once again, for the benefit of them both and, perversely, the benefit of Jorginho.
"Daisy has no idea what kind of man that she married." Jordan formed these words before he could stop them. He had fixed his loosely watering eye on Lynne before he could overthink it. And, as for Lynne, well, the chill of her hand had rushed to the center of her heart before she could prepare for it.
Daisy.
This was a name that she spoke often with delight. If that name popped into her mind then she never dreamed of dispelling it. What did it mean that she hadn't thought of her from the second that she had seen her husband cowering thanks to the actions of Jorginho?
Oh, my goodness, what did it mean?
Lynne's hand trembling like a leaf shot over her equally twitching lips and initially, Jordan had to give his wife a second glance to wonder what had overcome her.
"Do we need to tell her?" she asked and in that single second, Jordan's face twisted up all over again, his curtains falling over his eyes as he looked down. If he hadn't wanted to clue Lynne in at first then he certainly did not wish for the information to spread. "We need to tell her." Lynne suddenly made her own mind up. "She needs to realize what kind of man she has married."
Lynne put these words out into the air, and it was lost on her that she had once given Jorginho her blessing to marry her daughter. During that frustrating summer when emotions ran hotter than the weather, she would have laughed at this notion!
But that was indeed the truth. Jorginho had been different to how she remembered him back then from the moment that his heart offered Daisy a home there. That Jorginho was different to the one on that day.
It seemed that there were many incarnations of him. But for as many as there were, she didn't feel she had the slightest clue who he really was. Like Jordan had always suspected but not strictly expressed, Jorginho possessed a shadow. One that wasn't likely to wish to reveal itself. And yet, cropped up like a breeze making the hairs at the back of your neck stand up.
After Lynne said these fateful words, Jordan's face screwed up some more, clearly up against a number of thoughts racing through his mind. Nobody could know which one would be the victor. Which one could bring him to his knees. Or which singular thought he would express.
To offer himself some comfort or even to buy himself some time, Jordan's palm went to his own forehead, and he swayed his head from side to side to it brushed against his hand rather than the other way around.
A different coldness made a home inside Lynne's stomach. It was not out of guilt from the words that she had uttered. It couldn't have been further from that. It didn't matter how much merry laughter he brought her partner or kindness her offered her youngest daughter or even how much of a life he longed to provide for her eldest one. Now all she could see in her mind's eye was his shadow once more, looming, and obvious.
And yet, she had another shadow to contend with when her husband opened his mouth. She never would have dreamt that he would begin to take back his words. Lynne certainly didn't wish to!
"It's not Daisy that needs to see." This thought must've been one of the ones buzzing through Jordan's mind and one of the few that escaped. How funny of him to express that when he must've known full well what he was doing when he decided to speak their daughter's name. Even so, his voice hushed down as if it had been his neck that had taken a pummeling. "If there's any good in him then I do believe she brings it out of him."
Lynne didn't speak. Or rather, the gust that tumbled out of her mostly pressed together lips did the talking rather than words. How certain she was regarding what kind of man Jorginho was. She believed that her husband did as well. But how magical he was to be able to see the good in someone in spite of it all.
She only wished that Jordan could see it of himself. But that would be another story.
It was Lynne's turn to look down at her lap, the packet of peas against Jordan's abdomen blurring at the corner of her eyes. Still, she noticed that Jordan didn't speak who needed to see Jorginho's ways most of all. It wasn't the two of them.
She had no qualms speaking words she believed that not only did her husband think but had been meaning to say.
"James sees what he wants to see. He's blinded by loyalty funnily enough. Nostalgia." Lynne didn't know which was the word that caused her husband to carry Jorginho off and tend to his wounds, but she knew that it was a frustratingly tough old thing binding him to the other man.
Jordan's eyes had been bloodshot and threatening to prick out of pain from the moment she saw him, but they were doing that more and more as each second passed, even though his head went back to moving from side to side, his face screwing up like a crumpled piece of paper to conceal it all.
Jordan couldn't conceal everything. He never could. He too didn't understand what James saw in Jorginho. He thought that they were the two friends against the world. He thought that they were the two together against everything.
For a rare occasion, he did not wish to speak his friend's name. He wished to speak it even less than the name of his enemy. This is a notion that would surely wound him as much as the blow to the belly in due course.
Instead, Jordan offered his own point of view. And his own words.
"He has a shadow." He began, causing Lynne's ears to prick up as he for the first time used the words nailing the imagery that usually cropped into her own mind when she thought of the man with many different sides. He never usually assigned a word. More gestures. More a feeling. "There's something from his past he doesn't want people to know. Maybe they shouldn't have to." His head tilted side to side in a different manner. "But it's there. He has a secret, and it could weigh down more than just other people."
It was not unusual for Lynne to go through many different emotions when it came to Jorginho and she was not naïve to this. While her husband's range of feelings was best described under the umbrella of skepticism, she seemed to go through a whole range of them.
How frustrated she had been that summer that was long behind them all. How refreshed she had felt when Jorginho and Daisy had found each other and he had even said himself to Lynne that everything was water under the bridge. A new start.
It was hard to think that things were entirely new when he had decided to start on her husband for no reason. Still, it didn't cause her stomach to flip that much to have a blast from the past.
When her stomach flipped upon hearing Jordan's words, it somersaulted there and then for a different reason entirely. Hearing him describe things so accurately filled her with… glee? She was so proud of him. But was it just that? One has to wonder in hindsight. I admit that I do.
And she certainly gives my musings validity with her next words.
"The shadow has revealed itself quite obviously with his behavior today and even he will be unable to run in the way he has become quite accustomed in doing." Her hand, now that it had thawed out and it was just Jordan who was securing the peas against his stomach with his left hand, entwined with her husband's. "It's just such a shame that you had to be on the receiving end."
Lynne's other hand seized its purpose and reached forward, wanting to tuck a tendril of Jordan's curtain-like locks behind his ear before settling with brushing it backwards seeing as it didn't quite have the same length of her partner's hair.
Jordan didn't feel as if his wife was asking him to tell her what had happened with her gestures but, in spite of the fact he had once not wanted to share it with anybody out of the intensity of it all, he decided that there wasn't a better person than her to get things off his chest to. It had always been that way.
And, furthermore, he didn't feel like it was a decision at all. It was just something that happened. He was finally able to relinquish fully in her support, his palm pressing as much against hers as hers was doing to him. He even met her gaze with his own like a flickering candle.
"He just suddenly went for me." He began to explain, his head shimmying from side to side in a new way before that flickering gaze of his hid behind eyelashes as he conjured up what had happened. "He just… I don't know. Lost it." Although his eyelids parted like the sea in which he adored so much, his gaze was back to his knees that had walked him through every life. "He cannot square up to the truth."
Again, Jordan's head swung from side to side. This time, it greeted the addition of a perverse chuckle that escaped from parted lips that did not smirk. Even so, dismay existed. Dismay regarding what had happened. Dismay at what he had done to deserve something like that. Part of him felt that he should have been able to stand up to Jorginho more. He felt he could stand up to him more.
But did he want to? Not really. He had been shown things on that day. He had been shown things beyond what he had just expressed.
Lynne's expression tightened even if her hand intwining her husband's own, larger one did not falter. She was his mirror as he shook his head but gone was the fire in her belly that so often fueled her when they sat down, and the subject of their son-in-law arose. Her eyes watered. They watered with sympathy.
Her fingertips brushed over her husband's forehead by way of a kiss.
"That must have been hard for you." she said. For the first time, she focused on how Jordan felt about it all rather than what Jorginho had done. Or rather, unbeknownst to her, what he hadn't done.
Or, more accurately, I have to point out, what both of the men had done to get themselves to a place of combat. They weren't really all that different. Different sides, assuredly. But most definitely of the same coin.
Jordan didn't know what it was, but I certainly know what it was, that made him buckle when Lynne spoke these words to him. For a single second, his eyes were able to meet hers all over again before falling away once more. His forehead was back to seeking the companion of the palm of his hand.
Inside his stomach and deep beneath the wound on the outside, his intestines were trembling. They twitched when they heard the words of his wife. And deciding that he did not wish to be like Jorginho who could not handle the truth, he decided to conjure up rare words he felt he could say.
His chin did everything in its power to not wobble as he began to process it all.
"That's not even the part that hurts most of all." He managed to speak out without stumbling. Immediately, Lynne's arm was tucked against his bicep as well as her left hand tucked inside his bigger one. Jordan's eyes fluttered shut like the closing wings of a butterfly. He did that when he really reached inside of himself. "What hurt the most is that James got in the middle of it all and stopped him from hurting me rather than the other way around…"
Lynne's throat bobbed along with the rest of her, but she listened. You would have thought that it would have occurred to her that Jordan should have been pleased that he had technically been protected. But then again, big help that was. He still had a bruise on his stomach that would take its time to fade, didn't he?
And still, she knew the perverse minds of men. She knew the twisted mind of her husband. How wrong James was to think that Jorginho could damage Jordan more than Jordan could damage Jorginho. It would have been an equal fight. But one Jordan knew he was unwilling to truly have.
"Did he…?" she posed to her husband after they sat in silence, but it was more of an act of comfort than it was a question. It certainly seemed that way as her arm hooked away from rubbing his arm and brushed over his forehead for a second time.
In the end, Jorginho did not nod. He did not shake his head either. Instead, as his jaw contorted on his face and his eyes fluttered shut for another occasion, he reached down into himself for his own bit of truth.
He found words there. Not everything he wished to say. But a good chunk of it.
Jordan murmured. And he reaffirmed the vision of the situation that they both shared.
"James has no idea the kind of man he is protecting…" he said, his hand reaching towards his closed eyes and his forefinger and his thumb of the same hand massaging his closed lids before any tears got the idea to form. "And that hurts even more."
And with that, Lynne knew that none of the words that she could drag up from the pits of her own stomach would do any good so she instead merely embraced her husband, encouraging him to relinquish against her chest and succumb to the solace there, whether he would allow all of the emotions to come or not.
Would he allow all of the truth to come or not as well? That would be an entirely different story. And that would not only require standing up to his own shadow that was not lost on others but would make it clear that things are never really that simple.
There is never only one side to things. There is never only just love and hate. There is everything in between as well. And I believe, truly, that those most passionate emotions are not that far from each other. And, in the same way, Lynne and Jordan aren't that different from Jorginho.
They too have pasts that they haven't always enjoyed embracing.
Sometimes they need reminding of that. Even now. But that's what I'm here to do, along with all of these tales.
Something else I remind myself of as I prepare to crack on with what lead to this story is this: in the same way that a person can have many sides to them, there is always more than just the one side to a particular tale.
I'm not sure why Jorginho did what he chose to do on one particular day. I am even less sure regarding Jordan. I suppose, many different reasons and emotions all lending themselves to a finale, as it were.
But alas, as much as judgement does occasionally arise in my belly, there isn't room for just that. It is my duty to recap.
So, I will try to do just that.
Jorginho could see what was written all over Jordan's face from the second that he came close to entering the breakfast bar room of the Morgan Household, but he went on to try and breeze past it. It was his nature to make the best out of potential unease so he offered the other male a smile, remaining for a couple of seconds behind the threshold of the room.
"Hi Jordan." He went with formalities but still, lingered from behind the metallic line, the hand of his with the tiny etching of a tattoo on it smoothing down his beard to pass the time. "I was meant to be taking James out today but he's running late and told me to wait here until he gets here." A sharp intake of breath. Jorginho couldn't tell if it came from him or Jordan. "That cool with you?"
If the breath like a pointed edge of a sword had come from Jordan, then it indicated that it was the opposite of cool. This paired with the expression that washed over his face from the second that the other male made his presence known made it all the more undeniable.
However, despite the pause that Jordan encouraged between them both, in the end, while using the coffee table of the living area a workbench for him to continue his wood whittling, his head bobbed just once, and his curtains unraveled.
Jorginho was given the go ahead.
"Okay." He replied. He looked away from surveying the other male with two lines in between each eyebrow as if he had used his knife to form slits there.
Making it quite obvious that Jorginho had not been the culprit from the previous breath, he nodded his head and stretched his mouth into a wide smile that was quite natural for him. While he brought himself into the room and made a beeline for the kitchen area, he repeated Jordan's word of okay.
Jordan looked back up from his woodwork towards the door but, in spite of his broad and looming stature as well as presence, Jorginho had with graceful swiftness already made it towards the fridge.
Before the truth could be taken in, one could wonder that, when Jordan took note of a voice again, perhaps Jorginho was talking to himself.
"Gosh, I am starving." He alluded, this time not asking the other male for permission before raiding the fridge of a household that was not his own. But why would he? It was not his house either. Soon enough, bread, butter and fillings for a sandwich were piled onto the countertop. "Would you like a sandwich as well?"
Jordan had been watching every move from over a thumb sized wood carving beginning to take shape. For half a second as Jorginho asked him this question out of politeness, he thought about swiftly looking back down to what he was doing in order to pretend that he was so engrossed that he didn't hear him.
Even Jordan didn't know why that notion washed over him like a gradual tidal wave.
Be that as it may, Jorginho looked across the kitchen area to the living room area of the same room almost as soon as the words had tumbled out from his own mouth so he would've been able to tell if he was purposely being ignored.
Jordan was encouraged to not only interact with him by shaking his head but by pressing his mouth into a line in which offered a single dimple after he had proffered his own sentence.
"I'm good." He declined before going back to his whittling for sincere reasons that time.
For a second time in a short space of time, Jorginho muttered Jordan's word of okay to himself before revealing his own dimple that was partially hidden by the hair growing on his face and was becoming more flecked with hues other than brown as he got closer and closer to his fiftieth year.
In spite of the attitude that he could sense omitting from the other male, he figured that any person who regarded him high enough would plainly speak of any issue, so, because of this, he decided that he wouldn't worry about it and would fret even less about being a mind reader.
Loading slices of bread up with butter before piling filling onto it with a spoon before using the back of that same spoon to even it out, Jorginho also knew to never take Jordan's occasional air about him entirely personally.
He had been through a lot in his life – both lives. And it probably wasn't his happiest moment when Jorginho had shown up to disrupt his peace. Even though he was trying to be as quiet as possible.
You, however, wouldn't have been able to know this when a few motions of the clock hand later and once a few bites of the sandwich had already been engulfed, Jorginho decided to stop lingering in the kitchen and begin loitering a little nearer to Jordan.
At least he had the sense to know that he was interrupting him.
"Pardon me." He began. But from Jordan's point of few, he was pardoning himself from speaking through a chunk of sandwich with which he wasn't quite done. "What are you making?"
Jorginho peered down at Jordan sitting cross legged in front of the coffee table from his height that was not particularly tall but thanks to good posture and furthermore, confidence, gave him a limitless air about him. His thick rimmed black glasses bobbed up and down on his face thanks to a hand that adjusted them, wanting to admire the other male's work even clearer.
Fortunately, Jordan managed to restrain his sigh, jagged or otherwise, and put his knife down against the wood of the coffee table. He rolled the tiny wooden creation in between his thumb and forefinger as if he himself didn't quite know.
But then, a shrug rolled off a pair of shoulders that were even broader than Jorginho's. Jordan looked at his own work rather than someone else.
"It was meant to be a little Tentacruel." He said, continually rolling the wooden creature in his hold before, as much as he would have liked to remain stoic – indifferent – he swung his head from side to side. "I think I looks more like a Tentacool."
The remainder of the sandwich stuffed between his surprisingly youthful cheeks, Jorginho forgot all manners and politeness and spoke promptly, rubbing his hands together as if that cleaned them properly.
"I think it looks wonderful." Jorginho complimented and his eyes focused even harder behind his glasses, bending his spine to get a closer look before he decided he knew better at his age, his hand moving to the base of his own back when he felt a twinge there. "Hey, did you see the documentary about those Pokémon on television last night?" his arms moved to hug over his chest as he prepared to touch on something that could encourage a lot of talk between them both if he played his cards right. "Apparently, during the winter months-"
Initially, it was a scoff from Jordan that cut Jorginho off midsentence as he picked his knife back up and prepared to continue whittling. But then, from the second that Jorginho's brown eyes appeared very big and round from behind his magnified lenses, it was words from Jordan that stopped him from going any further.
The handle of the knife tapped against the wood of the coffee table.
"You don't have to do this, dude. Seriously." Jordan told him and this encouraged a swift slant in Jorginho's neck, adjusting his glasses on his face all over again as if this made his hearing any better. "I can just about tolerate you being here while you wait for James but please don't bother with faking any small talk."
Jordan's dimples appeared on both of his cheeks, but they were the opposite of a blossoming segment of fruit. He showed a demeanor possessing no qualms about not holding back as his head shook to back himself up, slicing a few layers away from the Tentacool – or Tentacruel – whatever it was – as if it were a mere block of cheese.
Jorginho was dumbfounded. More than that, he was enlightened. He knew he hadn't misread Jordan's expression from the second that he walked in the room. But still, he had wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. he still wanted to do that.
This is why he gave him another chance to rethink his words.
"I don't understand?" Jorginho said, his arms folding back over his chest now that his glasses were resting on the bridge of his broadly sculpted nose and couldn't be adjusted any more to see any better. Or hear any better. Whatever was the reason he kept touching them.
That noise escaped from Jordan again. Jorginho couldn't help but notice how twisted he could look when he wasn't being that jovial self of him that would run and pick his wife up off the floor no matter how many years their lives and hearts had been entwined.
"We're not in the company of my daughter. Daisy isn't here." He spelled it out, his dimple sullying before disappearing entirely as his head jerked one more time, really allowing his feelings to be known as the knife dropped down to the table once more. "You don't have to force yourself to talk to me. And I don't have to pretend to like you."
Even though Jorginho could tell that the knife was back against the coffee table, he knew that if it had clattered and made a noise then it wouldn't have been nearly as deafening as the silence that wedged itself between them both after these words were set free.
Jorginho wasn't unused to conflict. In Team Rocket and especially in his field of work, it was almost a given on each day and he had certainly grown accustomed to not only tolerating it but dissipating it as well.
But when the tension arises because of your father-in-law? Between you and your father-in-law? Well, that was the kind of unease that Jorginho wasn't comfortable tolerating. No matter the dynamic between them, he wanted to feel at least respected even if he wasn't particularly liked.
"Oh my, Mr Williams, you are certainly in a bad mood today." Jorginho snatched part of Jordan's no regrets attitude from him as he decided to formulate these words. But then, with a weary sigh, he prepared to spin around and head back to the kitchen.
Perhaps he was going to comfort the awkwardness with another sandwich. Or would at least pass the time by making another one.
Contradicting the fact that Jordan had made it clear how little he wished to speak, no tension was in his own cheeks before he inadvertently called Jorginho back to the scene, gripping his wooden creation with four fingers as if it was going to slip away from him.
"I am not in a bad mood." Jordan retorted, encouraging Jordan's lips to pout together at the side of his cheek where his dimple usually displayed itself and a singular eyebrow to quirk upwards. Again, Jordan's head swung from side to side. Did he have any other moves when it came to the other male? "I just don't see why you have to stick around and wait for James in here out of all of the rooms."
Jorginho's retrained pout remained on his face as he considered a great deal of potential responses to the other man. He considered pointing out that he could say the same for Jordan, since he was doing his woodwork in the house of Jessie and James rather than his annex with Lynne that adjoined the building by a single door.
But what would that achieve, really? Jordan was hardly likely to be delighted that they shared more in common than just a person that they both loved.
Jorginho decided that he wanted to sort things. He was not going to merely be the bigger man and let Jordan spit whatever he wanted at him with no real repercussions. To tell you the truth, he was greatly wounded because things had been going well between them all recently.
He had only just joined Daisy and her parents for dinner the other day!
"Why don't you dust your knees off and come over here and let's talk about whatever problem you have with me." Jorginho suggested, just one of his hands ushering to encourage him to stand with him. Jordan remained sour. "I'm sure James will forgive the lunch postponement if it's for a worthy reason which I think this is."
If circumstances could have been different then Jordan could've burst out laughing that, not too unlike his own behavior, Jorginho had been seemingly eating ahead of a lunch date with his friend, James! But Jordan didn't find this funny. He wouldn't have found any part of it funny.
Curling his lip towards his own nose which was far smaller and more snub in presentation, Jordan tried to go back to his woodwork as if he hadn't been the one to bring their interaction towards a difficult place.
"I don't have anything to say to you." Jordan said, holding his whittling knife in his right hand and preparing to cut a few more slices off the block to make it resemble more the creature that he had been trying to capture.
Once again, in spite his size and his looming firm energy, Jorginho was quick and graceful in his movements. He was suddenly looming right over Jordan with his arms folded over his chest.
"Oh, but you clearly do." Jorginho retorted, that pout re-forming on his lips as he thought to himself before his mouth evened out to a straight and firm line. His jaw, however, did an uncomfortable sort of dance before he verbalized what was in his mind. "You need to take that stick out of your own ass and accept the fact that James has more than enough room for the both of us in his life." It was then Jorginho's time to let out a jagged sigh. "Si?"
It wasn't Jorginho uttering out a word from a language that Jordan did not speak that caused him to begin to get up off his feet, as he realized that the man who he was dealing with had more tools in his arsenal than he could have comprehended.
Not that Jordan readily wanted to show it, but it had brushed him the wrong way that Jorginho had implied that he needed to dust off his knees before speaking with him. And if that wasn't bad enough, he was now mentioning some sort of twig up his behind!
Who did he think he was talking to?!
Not a father-in-law, that's for sure!
Jordan ignored the fact that he shouldn't have been speaking to his son-in-law in such a way either, instead scrambling to his feet. He lost any air of vulnerability, however, when he was standing toe to toe with Jorginho as he had asked of him and not only did, he tower above him but the breadth of every part of him was far wider.
Nevertheless, Jordan felt like he had the upper hand with words – with his point of view – rather than needing to call upon his strength that he usually used for swimming and for himself rather than combat.
"You have no idea what you're talking about." Jordan's own arms folded over his chest and his bicep popped way further out of his sleeve than Jorginho's did. Jorginho didn't care. From where he was standing, he seemed pretty bitter – pretty pathetic – from where he was standing. "I couldn't care less if you and James are close!"
Jordan's arm raised but it was to go into his hair, pushing his curtain-like locks back so they stuck back with the rest of the gel part. The way that his mouth contorted like a joker on a pack of cards and his voice inclined as he said these words told Jorginho everything that he needed to know and even more.
Jordan was a terrible liar, he noted.
But rather than point this out as well as insisting on that subject which could be uncomfortable for them both, Jorginho decided to tackle what really mattered. Because, truthfully, no matter what kind of emotions that arose between him and Jordan and Lynne in the past, he had wholly meant it when he said he would like to be friends from the second he began courting Daisy.
He really did want everybody to get along. From where he was standing, there weren't very many reasons not to.
"Then you distrust me as the partner to your daughter? Her husband?" he inquired, his arms not faltering away from his chest in order to remain an equal but his nose scrunching up on his face to bring his glasses to a comfortable level again. Jorginho's eyes blinked seriously from behind thick rims. "I don't get it, man." His voice lowered and rumbled like a forlorn oncoming thunder. "You gave me your blessing to ask for Daisy's hand."
If Jordan's curtained fringe had been loitering across his forehead still then no doubt would strands have been puffed away from the sigh that escaped his parted lips there and then. Sea green orbs in which he shared with that same daughter who connected them both revolved in very white sockets.
Even Jordan couldn't go along with the possibility of making Jorginho think that he was a poor husband. He was an exceptional one. He just felt like he was the opposite of an exceptional person. Especially given the drama that he had brought to everyone from the second that he reunited with his younger brother, Sammy.
"As I said back then, she is a grown woman who has made many decisions without me, so she doesn't need permission from me to do a single thing." Jordan said. This was hardly complimentary towards Jorginho or even towards Daisy and it made Jorginho's cheeks redden behind his beard for them both. "Same goes for James." He hesitantly muttered, speaking as if he was the one to have a seed from a sandwich slice in his teeth. "They can both interact with any kind of person they like."
Jorginho was used to Jordan's behavior towards him. He was used to him being cold with him for no reason that he could fathom out and he had noticed that he went more silent on him more when James was concerned rather than Daisy.
Jorginho was, as much as he didn't follow the same teachings as Sammy did, used to turning the other cheek.
But on this day, he had had enough. Perhaps it was because he had tried. Perhaps it was because he had tried to jeer him along and make the best out of a not ideal situation. Jorginho didn't want to take it anymore. And he showed this by removing his glasses and throwing them gently onto the nearest armchair to them both.
He squinted over at Jordan as they remained toe to toe, just as he had wanted.
"What kind of person am I?" Jorginho wondered, equal measures curious and wary what kind of response he would gain from Jordan as his head tilted on the one side and eyes that were big and brown shrunk down to slits. Before he could get hurt in whichever way he was anticipating, he added: "What have I done to make you think that I'm bad news?"
As much as Jorginho was trying to get it all out there while Jordan was seemingly content with being vague, he still couldn't utter the words you and your wife. Jordan didn't need reminding – or comforting – that he wasn't alone in his suspicion.
Jorginho thought that the suspicion had no basis in reality and he wasn't the only one.
Be that as it may, Jordan felt that he had a reason. And try as he might to shake his head and break the eye contact and look down at his feet, he suddenly absorbed some of Jorginho's fearlessness and he squared up to reality and he squared up to the other man.
He looked at him dead in the eye, his chin tauter and more certain than it had ever been before.
Jordan's answer was faultless, not a stammer in sight.
"I don't trust you one little bit." He said, surprising himself by enjoying how naked Jorginho looked without his glasses. How gratifying it was that his gaze without protection made him look so weak. "I know you've got secrets that you hide from everybody. Secrets that you don't want anybody to know."
Jorginho's head tilted as he took this in but his own gaze, as naked as he too felt that it was, didn't falter. Like had occurred before, a dozen possibilities floated through his mind, and he wondered which he was going to act on.
For the longest fragment of time, which was still barely a second, he considered laughing right in Jordan's face at how bizarre and even cliché all of this sounded.
But he knew better. And he swallowed when he realized why he knew better.
Jordan couldn't know the truth. Nobody could.
"And what secrets are these?" Jorginho posed in spite of it all. He needed to study Jordan as much as he was being studied in order to make sure that he didn't let anything slip in the face of a bluff.
There and then, the only thing that slipped was the eye contact from Jordan towards Jorginho. But seconds after it dipped, it was back up again. And Jordan was seemingly getting more confident in his ability to speak the truth.
I supposed, if it gained something from Jorginho – some traction – it was worth giving a bit of himself up.
"I don't know." Jordan said, running the risk of not only losing credibility but appearing quite vulnerable. Not for long. The corner of his mouth was edging up as, from their close proximity, he could tell that Jorginho's breath was growing ragged. "But they're secrets that you don't want to come out. They could ruin you if they come out." Eyelashes twitched. Jordan as he blinked and Jorginho as he winced. "They cast a shadow on you."
Jorginho had been the one to encourage Jordan to come up and stand with him, man to man, and sort everything out. But now the subject had moved in such a way, his broad nose was scrunching on his face and he was beginning to turn away from Jordan.
It was his turn to shake his head from side to side.
Jordan knew why. He went on to witness him, in his mind, seem like a decent person in spite of it all.
"There is nothing about James in my past that I'm ashamed of, and certainly nothing that he doesn't know about or even not lived with me through." Jorginho began to make clear, his head shaking and his eyes locking back onto Jordan even though his hands were slipping into his pockets and his torso was turned as if he was going to make a break for the kitchen. "And as for Daisy," he took a swallow to moisten his mouth. "There's nothing she doesn't know either. And nothing from my past to stop her building a future with me. A forever."
Jordan's mouth stretched wider like a true maniacal jester. Jorginho was really phoning it in! Jordan grinned condescendingly at him in spite of the fact that no specific part of his words made him want to twist his face in another direction and forget the conversation entirely.
But it was going to be worth it in the end, Jordan reminded himself. It had to be worth it. He had to get Jorginho to admit to the shadow of his character that both he and Lynne saw even if everybody else was blind to.
Jordan's arms tightened around his own torso.
"You talk such a good talk, but you are a liar." Jordan continued to grin, and he continued to shake his head. He had been prepared for Jorginho to be stubborn, for he had evidently kept those secrets of his for a great many years so what was a few extra minutes? But he thought he would have gotten him to cave by now. He needed to keep trying. "I guess I should expect nothing less from a guy that had no real home apart from a criminal organization, huh?" Jorginho's eye flickered. Jordan's glinted. He had taken the bait. "Your kind of person can mold themselves to fit in anywhere. To lie with no remorse."
Jorginho had taken the bait. And now like a vengeful turtle that was the opposite of it's slow dwelling friends, he was snapping.
Jorginho snapped far more than he usually did. And even then, it was hardly anything against Jordan's tactics. His finger extended and he pointed, warning the other man.
"Secrets? I have no secrets. I don't hide who I am like you do. I don't hide in the shadows, nor do I have one." he began, his voice sounding like that low thunder rumbling all over again as his finger continued to extend, not touching Jordan, but certainly by means of a loose threat. "You don't know a thing about me, you hear me?"
His finger reached and poked Jordan for a single second on the chest. He recoiled it very quickly because he did not wish to touch him anymore, not because he was deterred when Jordan's natural physique under his shirt felt like the metal chest plates Jorginho used to wear when he was still in Team Rocket.
In spite of the fact that Jorginho's finger was already beginning to resume threatening rather than making contact, Jordan made sure it was no longer near him by a feeble shoving motion of his own hand. He could do far more. But at that time, he wanted to do more with his words.
He knew he could fathom what kind of man Jorginho truly was with his words.
Jordan laughed after pushing his hand away as he felt that the other man had proved his point perfectly. The spoke of such.
"Nobody knows anything about you, that's my point!" Jordan laughed in his face and Jorginho continued to turn his body away from him. He was shaking his head in a far different manner than the man with a smile painted across his face. He knew that it would be worse for Jordan if he snapped. He couldn't snap. He just couldn't. "You play such a good game but you're full of secrets and shit."
Jordan had pushed Jorginho's touch away from him. But there and then, all of a sudden, he was reaching out to him instead with his hand patting him on the shoulder.
As expected, the gesture paired with the continual stare and the maniacal mouth made Jorginho's shoulder not only jerk and for him to shove his hand away but from his torso to turn to him rather than bailing towards the kitchen.
That pointer finger was back. This time, it was a true warning. And it would be Jordan's decision how things were going to proceed.
"I'm going to give you one chance…" Jorginho murmured, looking down at the arm that had faltered away from his own shoulder before joining the other one in a cross across Jordan's chest as if it carried disease. Jordan's eye twinkled like a perfectly healthy human. "I'm going to give you one chance to stop berating me and for me to walk out this room and pretend none of this happened."
It wasn't lost on Jorginho that he was wishing they had played by Jordan's rules after all. How easy would it have been for him to keep his mouth shut and keep chomping on sandwich silently until James arrived to meet him!
But that wasn't the way he had been raised. While it was true that he had been raised by a number of people, one thing that connected them both was the wisdom to sort a problem by addressing it. Well, Jorginho believed that was the right thing to do for most things bar one or two.
And whether or not Jordan was savvy to this or not, he of course didn't let Jorginho go so easily. Not only did he begin to draw that hand back towards his shoulder all over again, but he stared at him dead in the eye all over again and proved that he wasn't relenting until he got what he wanted.
He just wanted for people to see what he saw. That shadow bugged him. And he wouldn't be cool with Jorginho until it went.
"Walk out of the room. Go on. Turn your back on me like you turn your back on everything that you don't want other people to know." Jordan set these words free and believed that he wouldn't regret them.
Maybe he did regret them in the end. Interestingly, he didn't straight away, not even when what happened next occurred.
It could have been hard to know who made the first move but the fact that Jorginho had offered a warning, it made it perfectly clear. But rather than naming names – which I think is beside the point – I'm just going to describe how things continued to go down.
All of a sudden, the smile was wiped off of Jordan's face and a searing pain spread from his stomach below his belly button right upwards towards his lungs, winding him. He doubled over immediately. And from blurring vision and through pain he had hardly ever experienced before, he didn't know whether it had been a fist or a knee or a foot that had done it.
All he knew was that he hated Jorginho. He still did not know why he felt that exactly because this wasn't the shadow that he had been talking about. But he hated him, that was certain.
Why did he hate him so much? He didn't know. Why did James like him so much? He knew that even less. Daisy? He was dumbfounded.
Between all of these questions, he didn't know how he felt at all. This was hardly new. And yet, he couldn't rest in the excitement of new possibilities or even the tingle of adrenaline. Jordan felt only a fire. The fire of disgust. Certainly, no fire of warmth.
Even so, his knuckles felt pretty on fire when he decided to make contact with Jorginho in response. And a couple of seconds later – or minutes – nobody really knows – James felt the opposite of warmth in his body when he poked his head around the door and wondered what all the noise and swearing was regarding.
Any fraction of heat disappeared from him, and he felt like somebody had walked over his grave in the second that he had gasped. But still, he somehow managed to get up between these bodies that were tussling in between standing up and he even managed to do what he deemed to be the right thing.
Of course, in due course, it would be deemed the very wrong thing.
"Oh my god, what the hell are you two doing?!" he exclaimed, squeezing his eyes shut and bravely wedging his body between them both, feeling the brunt of Jordan's shoulders as it didn't matter to him. He wanted to get Jorginho and he wanted to get him good. After addressing them both, James followed his mind as well as his heart by addressing Jorginho and Jorginho alone. "Hey. Hey. Hey! Look at me. Look at me!" he was trying to stop Jorginho. But out of the dismay at what he was hearing, he stopped Jordan in his tracks far more. "Stop."
Jordan saw it. Jordan had witnessed everything in Jorginho's eyes on that particular day. The happy go lucky air that made him want to heave. The desire to please. To connect with him in spite of it all. The maturity. Then the dismay. The guilt. The restrained rage.
It had all been there for even someone like him to be able to read. But nothing was as stomach churning as what he saw next.
From the second that James' hand brushed over Jorginho's swollen jaw, it was like a spell had been broken and he stopped caring about shutting Jordan up at all. With a friend like this, he didn't need to pretend to be anything he wasn't, let alone hide parts of him that were.
Jorginho's swollen jaw opened and closed.
"We…" he tried to say. It was James to cut him off. It wasn't even Jordan spurting hatred that Jorginho was trying to act like the bigger man by saying we rather than him.
Unlike Jordan, he knew they were both to blame.
"I'm getting you away from each other and sorting you out…" James said. And with that, that hand of his moved from Jorginho's face to his shoulder and spun him around, intending to usher him out of the room.
They both got a few paces together before James decided to stop for a packet of frozen peas in the freezer. And, in Jordan's mind, he was very much the after thought as James reached to press a comforting hand against his shoulder before continuing on his way.
James' touch was long gone but Jordan shrugged it off, dismayed and disgusted, all the same. And he just had to watch as he traipsed his enemy off and comforted him rather than offering him any sort of comfort at all.
Jordan had believed this all along, but he reminded himself of this and reminded himself that it had always been true, throughout all of his lives:
Everybody was alone. You could only count on yourself.
Jordan grimaced, fiercely wiping the liquid that trickled down from his face before trudging over to the freezer for his own peas.
In that moment, he couldn't care less about Jorginho and his shadow and his secrets and whatever else made up the parts of who he was. Jordan only cared about his friend. And how lonely he was going to be when he realized Jorginho wasn't the man that he thought. And how painful that was going to be.
You see, what Jordan didn't know that other people don't live by the same ideology as him. Not everything is black and white. Not everything is great or terrible. No person is wonderful or horrendous. Not all secrets are bad. Jorginho's were life changing, he was right about that.
But there were so many skeletons in his own closet that were as well. Of course, it didn't dawn on Jordan how similar they were on that day or even in the near future.
Jordan didn't want to think about it at all.
Jordan slammed his mouth shut. And he reached for the frozen peas.
The End.
There you go! Thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed :) Part of me was really uncomfortable with the first half because of how Jorginho was being described by both Lynne and Jordan but he had a chance to be redeemed almost in the second half funnily enough! Luckily Pikachu's narration intercepted some of the bias :D It is, however, not easy to come to the conclusion of who is the person in the wrong in this tale. As you can see, Jordan twisted the truth AND initiated the conflict with Jorginho. Jorginho, however, should have just left the room. I wonder what secrets Jordan thinks he has? What secrets DOES Jorginho have? No, it's not the fact that he is Sammy's half brother rather than cousin because that is out in the open at this point! Do these secrets involve James? It's clear the two of them are close. Jordan and Lynne probably feel they are too close - especially during that summer that kept being hinted at. Ah, all will be revealed soon enough! :P Thanks again for reading and I will be back again on Wednesday so see you then!
Amy signing out :)