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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He lets out a harsh sound as he feels Neil spilling over his fingers, hot and sticky against his wrist--he's not there himself but he can feel it coming, building like a steady upward spiral as he drags Neil through it. The scars don't matter. The leg doesn't matter. His body is incidental; it's a means to an end, and the end is convulsing in his arms even as he crests it.

Another harsh sound as he slides down into the slow, shaking explosion of his own orgasm, rougher and lower than the last and somehow more desperate. If it's an end, it's also ending, and he's still afraid of what might be waiting tomorrow.

But Neil had said mine. And Mike still believes him.

It's a long time before I can really breathe. A long time before the rest of the world swims back into focus. I just lay there, pressed against his chest, feeling the last aftershocks shake their way through him, his cock still deep in me and his grip loosening around my dick.

I shift, swallowing down a whine when his dick slips out, every goddamn nerve ending still on overload, and I turn over to face him, my mouth nudging against his, lazy and full of too much goddamn affection for my own good.

He feels beaten inside, tired and bruised, but it's not unpleasant. It's the kind of tired he used to get after hard PT, back before those letters stood for something harder and much more painful, the kind of tired that allows for deep sleep. And he will sleep, he thinks.

Eventually.

He palms Neil's hip, parting his lips into something that isn't quite a kiss. He can feel his brain cycling up again and he tries to find the brake for it. God, just once, he wants to be left alone with this gorgeous boy who, for some reason, feels like he wants to stake some kind of claim here.

His fingers are still sticky. He's kind of sticky everywhere. He couldn't possibly care any less. "You're incredible," he breathes, and he means it in every sense of the word.

"Shut up," I murmur, my lips still brushing against his, and I wanna tell him I think he's incredible, too, but I know he'd be even less likely to accept it.

"No, I'm not." It comes across teasing, but it's not something that's easy to hear. I've heard it enough times from people that didn't mean it, people who didn't know me, that it's instinct to hear the words and think they're bullshit. Even from him.

"Too tired to fucking argue," he mutters. The hand at Neil's hip is moving, sliding around to his back, pulling them clumsily together. Normally he'd shy away at the feel of all that smooth skin pressed against all his scars, but now he can barely feel it.

It feels normal.

He turns his head slightly, mouth moving up over Neil's cheekbone. "Do one thing for me."

"Yeah, what?" I murmur, my arms wrapping around him, tangled up with him on top of the sheets, and it feels normal, the way not much has lately.

He takes a breath. This feels like inviting trouble, like taking this wonderful thing that he can feel fading around him and bringing in a nice acidic dose of real world shit to make it fade faster.

But while he feels like he can, he has to say it. He has to remember that he decided to fight for this.

"Make me call that number tomorrow."

"Yeah, okay. I can do that," I murmur, and I can tell he thinks it's a big thing to ask, but it's an easy promise to make.

I'd already planned to make sure, whether he wanted me to or not.

"Okay." And he feels something that had been clenching relax slightly. It's tomorrow. He can deal with it tomorrow.

Now he can just... be.

"I love you," he adds, even softer, and breathes out a laugh that's entirely directed at himself. "Just... still getting used to that."

"Yeah, me too," I admit with a soft huff of laughter, and I'd tell him that it's nice to hear, no matter how many times he says it, but I figure he already knows.

"We don't use rubbers anymore," I blurt, like it's just now dawned on me, like it suddenly feels more important than before. And maybe it's not something I should bring up right now, but I almost want to know if he's noticed. If it means anything at all, 'cause me? I dunno if I'd know the difference. It was never important to me in the first place, which is probably pretty fucked up.

He almost winces. He manages to catch it at the last minute. There it is again, regardless: the big, mean, nasty, ugly world crashing in through the ceiling like a fucking bomb.

Not tomorrow, then. Now.

"I know." He turns a little away, sinking into the mattress in a way that he now recognizes; he's trying to hide, trying to defend himself from a blast that never stops.

"I don't--" He shakes his head fiercely, honesty coming out like vomit. "I've been trying not to think about it."

It's not like there's anything much to be done now, anyway, if there's been yet another mine waiting under the ground.

"Oh," I murmur, a faint line of confusion settling between my brows and a heaviness settling in the pit of my stomach.

"I just... You stopped askin' for 'em, I just thought..." I don't know what I thought. But it wasn't a sign of trust, 'cause he had no reason to trust that I was clean, and I realize, just now, that it probably had nothing at all to do with me. It wasn't a promise not to be with anyone else. It wasn't anything stupid and fucking romantic like that.

He was just fucked up. He just didn't care, anymore. The same way I never did.

"I figured it didn't matter," he says, hollowly, bloodless. Abruptly he rolls away, onto his back and slightly toward the wall. Everything's tensing as all his careful avoidance mechanisms break down one by one and he imagines white cells broken open and disintegrating. He thought he hadn't cared. Now he's terrified. But in that terror he sees something that might lead the way out of it, and he grabs for it. I don't want to die.

I don't want you to, either.

"I just. I don't." He makes a sound, a harsh moan of frustration, and looks back at Neil again. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, it's fucked up."

"I can get tested or whatever," I offer, trying to shake the feeling guilt looming over me, tight in the pit of my stomach, this feeling like I've done something wrong. Because it was me, I'm the dirty one, I'm the one that could've caught something from any number of strangers I've been with, because I've never been careful. I've always been fuckin' stupid. And for the first time, I get that maybe I've been putting him at risk.

I'm not the only one I have to worry about, anymore.

"I mean, it's not a big deal."

"Yeah," he says, and scrubs a hand down his face, smooth skin with a hint of stubble and twisted, wrinkled stuff that won't ever be stubbled again. He doesn't know what the fuck to say to this. He's not even sure what the fuck he thinks, what the name is for the feeling that's wringing his guts out like an old towel. Except fear.

But fear is such a constant now. It's almost background.

"I kinda... dunno if I even wanna know," he mutters, knowing how stupid--how suicidally stupid it is once it's out. But if he doesn't know what to say, the truth seems like at least a place to start from. And that much is true.

"Okay," I murmur, lifting one shoulder in a shrug and fuckin' kicking myself for bringing it up. I didn't really know what he'd say, but this? I don't really know what to do with it.

So, I turn over onto my back, breathing out a sigh and looking up at the little flaws in the ceiling. Hairline cracks and bubbles in the plaster and a tiny, ancient watermark in the corner.

He waits for a long moment, hand over his eye. His eyes--one well and whole and the other frozen and pale and dead. But they're both there. They're both his. He didn't make it out in one piece but he made it out alive.

And he's already decided that he wants to try to stay that way.

"We should know," he whispers, letting his hand fall away. "We should both know."

Nodding, I scrub a hand over my face, shifting awkwardly on top of the sheets and cutting him a look.

"I should've done it earlier, I just... I'm a fuckin' idiot."

"Yeah, well." He feels the look, though he doesn't meet it it, staring up at the ceiling and feeling, as he has so many times since waking up in the hospital, as though he's seeing the world unfold in front of his eyes like a movie on a screen. Exactly that much depth. Exactly that much involvement.

Like it's helping him pretend that he can't be hurt.

"Guess we have that in common."

"Yeah, only fuckin' thing," I mutter, snorting out a laugh and rolling my eyes, and even though he's not looking, I figure he'll know anyway.

With a sigh, I roll out of bed, my feet hitting the floor with a thud, my steps unsteady on the way to take a piss and find something to clean up with.

He rolls onto his belly after Neil's out of the room, reaching down onto the floor and grabbing a crumpled t-shirt--perhaps from the day or two before--using it to wipe the last of the come and lube from his skin before balling it up and tossing it into the corner. He doesn't want to move, but lying here... it's too easy to start thinking.

He hasn't let himself really think about this until now. And now he can't stop. What if he has it? What if they both do?

At least then they won't have to worry about it anymore.

He sits up, groaning as a twinge shoots through his hip. He could get up, but that involves putting the prosthesis back on, and that feels like almost more than he can deal with.

In the bathroom, I take a piss. I splash some water on my face. I look at myself in the mirror and wonder if I might have some kind of ticking bomb inside me. If maybe I went and fucked up his life even more than it already was, with my carelessness.

It doesn't even occur to me that he could've given me something. I assume he's only worried about what might've come off of me. All those fuckin' strangers. All that time not giving a shit what happened to me.

Coming back into the room, damp washcloth in hand, I stop at the edge of the bed beside him, looking down with a faint, hesitant twitch of a smile.

We're a couple of fuck ups. Might as well accept it, now.

He's still sitting there when Neil comes back in, picking at a loose piece of skin at the corner of one fingertip and thinking about everything and trying so hard to steer his mind in the direction of blessed nothing. It's not that he has no choices, he thinks; it's that he has too many now, and he doesn't know enough about any of them. In his life before, he knew who he was, what was expected of him, what the path ahead was likely to contain. Or he'd thought so.

Maybe that had been a lie. But it had been a comforting one, and now he misses it.

He looks up when Neil stops in front of him, too distracted to duck his head, look away, try to hide any part of himself. He looks up, and he's once again struck by how perfect Neil looks, a kind of perfection that seems to only intensify as he learns more and more about how fucked up the interior of that perfection really is.

Really might be.

And then he realizes: In all of this, all his fear about what might be lurking under that perfection, of what poison might now be entering long preparations for eating its way through his body... he's never once thought of trying to separate them again.

And now he knows that he won't. Whatever the truth ends up being, he wants this. Imperfection and all.

Tossing the washcloth at him, I sit down on the edge of the bed, filling the space where his leg would've been, and rest a hand on his thigh, just above where it abruptly ends. I do it all without thinking, it's not until afterward that I realize any of it might be noticed.

"I can go to the clinic tomorrow, before work. You can come, too. I mean, if you want."

No, is the first answer that comes to mind, hard and instinctive like a kick reflex to a tap on the kneecap. But he bites it back, taking the washcloth and rubbing it absently over his hands, and when Neil touches his leg he doesn't pull away.

It's not that this is really starting anywhere in particular. It's starting everywhere. Every choice is a step in the right direction, or not.

"I don't fucking want, no," he mutters. "But yeah. I'll come."

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

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