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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"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."

"So don't," I say, a faint smirk hidden in my voice, and when he pulls me closer, I decide not to let it stop there. I lean into him, tipping my lips against his, and it's a little off-center, and oddly chaste, but it feels good anyway.

Lucky for him, I don't wanna fucking think about it either.

So this might be more running away from a problem, he thinks, as he pushes himself to the point of relaxing into the kiss, lips parting just slightly and the smell of warm Chinese food in his nose.

But even if it is, at least he's running to something.

"C'mere," he breathes, hooking his good leg over the back of Neil's. "Think we had some shit on a to-do list." While I still can.

"Yeah," I murmur, sliding closer to him without even a hint of hesitation, even though I know he's trying to distract me. It's a kind of distraction I'm more than willing to participate in.

"'Cept I don't remember makin' any fuckin' list."

"Details." The word comes out with a casualness that he almost believes, but for the nervous twinge in his gut. But there's a lot more dancing up and down through his nerves besides that, and he thinks he could ignore it. Neil is warm, loose, and for once his physical perfection doesn't feel like a kind of taunt.

It just feels... amazing. He slides a hand down over Neil's shoulder, feeling the slender muscles, angles of bone.

"Make one now?"

"Was kinda hoping you'd fuck me," I breathe, my arm sliding around him, pulling him close, being as forceful about it as I dare to be. "Or I could work you open with my tongue, and fuck you. Or we could just keep fuckin' talkin' about it. Your call."

"Fuck," he manages, and it comes out in something close to a sob as he's overwhelmed all at once. He can't play at this level. He can be here and he can function, but it can't be play. Not yet. Neil says something like that and it's all he can do to hold himself together. It's like G-forces under his skin.

Fuck me.

Part of him is aching for that, ripped open and raw for it. But it's too much. It's giving up too much control.

Soon.

"I could fuck you," he mutters, scraping his nails down Neil's spine. Their legs are almost hopelessly tangled. He remembers this. He remembers how to do this. At the very least, he can fake it. "Think I could probably make that happen."

It was too much, and I know it was, but I think acknowledging at could be worse, so I pretend like I don't notice. I move on to the next thing. We'll get there, eventually, or we won't. Whatever.

"Probably," I smirk, pressing up against him as much as I possibly can, my hand sliding down the length of his back, curving over one ass cheek and hauling him closer.

"Don't wanna promise more than I can deliver," he murmurs, hips rocking forward into the cradle of Neil's. There's very little line between talking and kissing right now, and really he thinks there won't be any issue at all with doing this... but joking, serious, either way...

He's learned to hedge his bets.

He feels the duller movement of his prosthesis and hisses in a light breath. "Should get that thing off."

The weight of his prosthesis was unmistakable, cold and hard and a little uncomfortable, tangled up together with our legs, but I hadn't really thought about it, past an initial wince of pain when I knocked the bone of my ankle against the shaft that's replaced his shin.

But then he mentions it and I pull back, shifting to sit up a little and reaching for it, my hand connecting with the top joint that fits the stump of his thigh, before I even realize that I've never actually touched it like this while he was wearing it.

My eyes flicker up toward his face, apology or asking permission, I'm not sure.

He hisses in breath, starting up, though the touch isn't even on his skin, isn't even on anything that he considers part of himself--except maybe that's not so true anymore.

Because if it were, why would it feel like this to be touched there?

It feels like something more than fucking. It feels like being stripped and flayed open, and he feels himself being pulled back and slammed into a memory as it rises up from the depths of his head: Neil spreading the medicated cream on his scars, and Mike shuddering under the touch, trying to bear up under it like withstanding a beating.

It shouldn't be this hard. But it is.

Breathing hard, he meets Neil's gaze and then, trying to swallow past the ache in his throat, he nods. Once.

It shouldn't be this hard, and he's going to shove his way through it until it isn't anymore.

I almost ask, almost stop to make sure it's really okay, but that barely there nod is gonna have to be enough. I can't start questioning these things. I've gotta just let it happen, or we'll never get anywhere.

It's awkward, 'cause I've never taken it off of him before, but I've watched him do it enough times that I slide it off without too much fumbling, turning to put the prosthesis down on the floor by the bed. I turn back to him, hurrying before he can take the liner off himself, and I reach down to slide that off, too, touching that part of his leg for the first time in months.

He doesn't really feel it, at least not at first. Sensation in that part of his leg has been strange and patchy, seeming to come and go according to some logic of its own that he hasn't yet worked out. He feels that the touch is there but the finer elements of its texture escape him. But that might be for the best, because what doesn't hurt his actual nerves is like a spike through his gut all the same, and he almost twists away, fear tearing at the edges of his brain.

And now he understands: some of it is about shame. But not all of it is, or ever was.

He's so afraid of being hurt again.

He pushes through it, closing his eye, his head tilted slightly back as he leans up on his arms, and he keeps the stump of his thigh still.

He's afraid of being hurt again, yes. But this is Neil. And he has to learn to trust.

Rolling the liner off, I let my fingertips brush over his scars, the place where the doctors sewed up all that ruined flesh over the broken stub of bone, and it's horrifying, if you think about the details, the pain of it and the sense of loss he must've felt... must still be feeling, but there's nothing disgusting about it. I don't feel revolted, or even slightly turned off by it.

But I can tell he's barely keeping it together, so I pull my hand away, stretching out beside him again and reaching for his face. "It's okay," I murmur, sliding in close to him, my lips just barely brushing against his.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject