forthedog | Let's not try to figure out everything at once...

Entry tags:

hutchinson au,
neil

Let's not try to figure out everything at once...

It's better. For the first time, it's better and he's sure it's not just wishful thinking, or adjusting to a situation that's just as shitty as it was before.

He's still not good. The morning he and Neil had spent in bed and curled around each other, he hadn't dreamed, but that night he had, and badly. And the night after. Neil touches him, and he still flinches instinctively away most of the time. The thought of going outside for anything--even the smallest task--feels like an exhausting ordeal. At times even getting up to bathe or eat is difficult.

But a few days later, and he's sure it's still better. As he makes his way up the stairs to he apartment, he's sure he feels less tired. Less battered inside.

Again, he's coming back from therapy, but he's feeling cautiously hopeful in addition to sore and tired. Donna had seemed entirely unsurprised when he had broached the subject--sidling around to it with an awkwardness that made him cringe and yet that he couldn't really stop--nodding and moving over to a desk and scribbling a name and a number down on a scrap of paper.

"There," she had said, tossing her long blond ponytail back over her shoulder and handing the paper to him. "Call that number. They'll take good care of you. Promise."

And he had thought that might actually be all she said about it, but as she pointed him back to the mat and his stretches, she had smiled, and it had been faint and warm. "I'm glad you said something," she said quietly. "'Cause I was about to."

Under the embarrassment, he was--and is--grateful. Because people care. They care without prying, without making themselves a nuisance.

Unless they have to. He thinks of Johnny and doesn't quite smile.

He turns the key in the lock, pushes the door open. Maybe it's better, but he's still tired and everything still hurts, and all he wants to do is curl up on the couch and doze.

Once it would have been with a drink. But now part of him--a louder part--is wondering if that might be the best idea.

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His breath catches at the kiss, just a moment but it's there, a confusing and weirdly exhilarating mix of clench and release. It shouldn't do that to him, something so casual as that kiss, and yet its casualness might be exactly why it does what it does.

"Yeah," he mutters, reaching out and stealing one of the egg rolls. "I mean..." He falls silent again, part of him not wanting to even broach this subject--part of him wanting to run screaming away from it. But that's not going to work anymore, and though he practically has to clench his teeth to get the words out, he presses on.

"How do you think she's gonna react?"

"Hell if I know," I shrug, taking another bite, maybe just so I have an excuse to go quiet for a minute.

"It's not... It's not about you. Or us. I mean, that's not why I haven't told her," I admit, staring down into my food like it's the most interesting fuckin' thing ever, "I... I don't want her to start askin' questions. About me. How we met, or whatever. I mean, I know it'd be easy to make shit up, I just... I dunno."

I'm not used to telling her things. I dunno if I'd know where to start.

For a long moment he doesn't say anything. He just chews, though he stopped tasting the egg roll a few minutes ago. It's something for his body to do while his mind works through that, through what it means.

He'd never had to tell his own mother that he was queer--and by the time he'd been sure, his father had fucked off and died wrapped around a tree. He can't even imagine saying what Neil has to say.

"You don't really have to make shit up," he says finally, once he's swallowed and worked some moisture back into his mouth. "You could... I mean, you could just say we met at a bar. That's not lying. It's just not telling her all of it."

"Yeah, I know," I shrug, going quiet again, because I know all that, but actually getting on the phone and talking to her... It feels like this huge deal. Bigger than maybe it really needs to be.

"Does Donna know? About me?" I ask curiously, 'cause it's not like she's really a friend or anything, but I know part of her job is to ask him questions about how things are going at home, so I just kind of... wonder.

He goes quiet again for a moment or two, thinking. Does she? He'd thought the answer would come immediately, the way everything that he knows without having to consider it does, but now that he does consider it...

"I'm not sure," he says slowly. "It's not like... I mean, it's not like I've been hiding it or anything." Not on purpose. "But I don't know if I actually ever said anything about you. I think she knows I live with someone."

Questions about his body, his diet, his activity level and his sleeping patterns--and how much he fucking hates every second with her--these are all regular topics of conversation where Donna is concerned. But other things... Yes, but not in detail.

He's not sure how to even talk about those things with someone he hasn't already let in beyond that point. He's not sure what the words are, what vocabulary is involved.

I shrug, 'cause it's not really that big a deal. It's not like we've sent out fuckin' announcements or whatever. He hardly goes out of the house, and when he does, I'm not usually with him. We don't go and do things, we don't go out to bars or to restaurants or the movies or out with friends or on vacations, or any of the other things that I think maybe most couples do.

"Whatever," I say, sucking grease from the pad of my thumb and getting to my feet, "You want a drink?"

Yeah, he almost says, almost immediately--and then something checks him, something like a flash of blond hair and a knowing, slightly pointed smirk.

You sure about that, Mike?

"I... shouldn't," he says, looking away again, feeling something tight settle into his chest. "I been doing too much of that the last few weeks. With the pills. I gotta cut back."

"I can get you a Coke," I point out, arching a brow at him, 'cause I know he's right, whether either of us have mentioned it or even admitted it, I know he's been drinking too fucking much, and I've been letting him.

"Water. Whatever."

"Coke's fine," he says, flashing Neil a smile that's slightly tight, slightly uncomfortable--it's an uncomfortable thing to admit, even to himself. It feels like yet more weakness.

A thing he must get more comfortable with. Since it's so true.

He pops the last of the egg roll into his mouth, relieved that the taste of it has returned and there's room to like what he's tasting. He's sitting naked on the bed--on their bed--and eating Chinese food and he's actually been able to mostly relax while he does those things, and he's going to be damned if he lets go of what they had barely half an hour ago.

"Thanks."

"Welcome," I shrug, heading into the kitchen to grab a Coke, and then, after a moment of consideration, grabbing one for me, too.

It's not gonna hurt me not to have a beer tonight.

When I come back into the bedroom, I've lost my sweats somewhere along the way, and I hand him a can and sprawl out on the bed on the bed beside him, naked, head propped against the headboard and reaching for one of the food containers.

He's thirstier than he'd realized, and he takes the can when it's offered and tips it back, wincing when the carbonation burns pleasantly in his sinuses. Setting it down on the table by his side of the bed, he turns and lets himself just look at Neil, sprawled and languid and totally relaxed, and the warm thing that settles in his chest only has the most peripheral relationship to lust.

This could be life. This could be a thing that he has, if he lets himself.

"When did you talk to her last?" he asks, leaning down on one arm, pulling his fork out of the rice container and spearing a piece of chicken. "Your mom, I mean."

"Couple weeks ago, I guess," I shrug, feeling a distant twinge of guilt. It's not that I've been avoiding her or anything, I've just never been real great at returning calls.

Taking a sip of my own drink, I put the can aside, taking a few more mouthfuls of food and then putting the container down, too. Leaning up, I kiss him again, and it's off-center and closed-mouthed, but I do it 'cause I want to. For no other reason than that.

He makes a quiet sound of surprise at the kiss and then a quieter sound as he makes himself relax against it, lifting a hand to the side of Neil's face, fingertips against his cheekbone.

"What've you told her?" he asks when he breaks the kiss. It's something he almost doesn't ask, something that he's afraid might be a reach too far in this direction, but he realizes--fucking tunnel vision--doesn't know and all at once he wants to. "What does she know?"

"What do you mean? About you? Or..."

About me?

The answer to both is practically nothing. And it doesn't seem worth interrupting a perfectly great kiss.

"About me," he says, cocking his head a little to one side and feeling freshly and bitingly exposed. And trying not to show it, even as he feels the urge to draw back. he doesn't want to know, Neil doesn't want to tell him, he shouldn't have even asked--

God, just shut the fuck UP.

"I just realized, I don't... I don't even know." Like so many other things, he'd lost the energy or the interest in caring about them, back when he'd been content to let his own pain be the bright, brittle center of the world.

"Realized what?" I ask, feeling like a fucking idiot, because a part of me's convinced I should just... understand.

"I... I told you. Nothing. I mean, I haven't told her anything." Didn't we already talk about this?

"Jesus Christ," he blurts out in a sudden wave of exasperation, directed more at himself than at Neil and wishing so hard that he could just curl into the sheets and disappear forever, "where does she even think you're fucking living?"

And he still doesn't even know why he gives a shit.

"You didn't want me to fucking tell her anything. What difference does it make?" I ask, equally exasperate and not really knowing why everything's changed all the sudden.

"I told her I gotta job outside the city. I told her the money's good, which it is. Things were... I wasn't even sure you wanted me here, half the fuckin' time, 'til a couple weeks ago. Hell, not until a couple fuckin' days ago. What the hell was I supposed to tell her?"

"I dunno," he murmurs, dropping onto his back and closing his eye, covering good and bad with his hands and letting out a sigh. He still feels like he's lurching from thing to thing, little control over his movements, clumsy and destructive and breaking things before he even realizes they're there. "I just wondered."

And then, before he has time to think about what exactly it means and whether or not it even makes any fucking sense, "I'm not used to feeling real."

Breathing out a shuddering sigh, I gather up the food containers, shoving trash into the bag and getting up off the bed so I can carry it into the kitchen. I put the leftovers in the fridge. Throw away the trash. And when I come back, I slide back into the space I vacated. My side of the bed.

"I wanted to tell her. I wanted... When you first showed me the apartment, I wanted to tell like, everybody. I mean, I thought about how it would be, if we were like, actually together, you know? If we didn't have to fuckin' hide. I know it's my own fuckin' fault, but I don't like always bein' this fuckin' secret. And I don't want you to be one either, I just didn't know what to say to her when I wasn't really sure you were gonna let me stick around. But you're real. This has always been real."

"I know I am," he says softly, half turning, the burned side of his face still covered by his hand in an unconscious move back toward hiding. With his good eye pressed against the sheets, the whole world is dark--darker than with eyes closed. A total absence of light.

"I've just been... gone. Like you said." And more than that. This didn't just start with the mine, with the scars.

He's been moving through life like a ghost for years.

"I don't want this to be a secret. I just... I don't know how to... do that."

"Hey," I murmur, reaching for him, my hand curling loosely around his wrist, wanting to keep him from hiding. Wanting him not to feel like he has to hide, but I know we're a long fuckin' way from that.

"Don't. It's... I don't know what the fuck I'm doin', either. You got shit you gotta work through, first. Then we'll, you know... Deal with us, or whatever."

"I'm fucking tired of working through my stuff." It comes out low and heavy, as tired as he says he is--even though he's hardly started working through it, he knows, and he knows that's part of the problem.

It's still going to get worse before it gets better.

He lets his hand fall away, though the world stays black. "I wanted to get back here and be with you. All my fucking attention, on you. And I know... I know you say we're still gonna have that. I guess maybe I even believe it sometimes now. But I still feel like... like we're starting from nothing. Scratch."

He lets out a quiet laugh. "Maybe we were always gonna have to do that anyway."

"It's not like we started out fuckin' perfect or anything," I remind him, my hand falling away from his wrist, only to settle there on the side of his neck, and by now, the feeling of his scars under my palm is expected. Normal.

"What the hell am I supposed to call you, anyway? That guy I'm living with? My fuckin' boyfriend?" I say with a snort of laughter.

"I got no fucking idea," he says, breathing out a laugh and pressing up into Neil's hand, though the dull touch still feels almost painful. It's a pain he wants.

He reaches up through the blackness and finds the back of Neil's neck by touch, pulling him closer. This might be more running away--but he might also not give a fuck. "I don't wanna think about this anymore."

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