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

[forthedog]

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.

Comments

[little_moons]

"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."

[forthedog]

"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.

[little_moons]

"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.

[forthedog]

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."

[little_moons]

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."

[forthedog]

"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."

[little_moons]

"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.

[forthedog]

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.

[little_moons]

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.

[forthedog]

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.

[little_moons]

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."

[forthedog]

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."

[little_moons]

"And I'll make you call that fuckin' number. And we'll be fuckin' adults, for once," I say with a smirk, leaning toward him and pressing a kiss to the down-turned corner of his lips.

[forthedog]

"Yeah," he says, still barely a mutter, but his mouth twitches at the touch of Neil's lips, and he drops the cloth onto the floor, reaches up and catches the back of Neil's neck with damp fingers. "'bout time."

He pauses then, finally meeting Neil's gaze, eye slightly narrowed and his mouth working. He doesn't even know if he wants to say this. He doesn't know if he believes in fate, but either way it might be a bad idea to tempt it.

"What'll we do?" If I'm positive. If you are. If we both are.

[little_moons]

"How the hell should I know?" I laugh weakly, my head dropping down to rest against his shoulder, "Just... fuckin' deal with it. What else are we supposed to do?"

I think about Zeke, I think about how fuckin' pathetic and lonely he was, but I'm not really afraid of ending up like that. Maybe it's stupid, but I'm not really afraid of Mike leaving me. I'm not afraid of ending up alone. It probably just shows how fucking naive I am, but I can't imagine us apart. Not anymore.

[forthedog]

"I guess." It's what he's been doing--dealing with it, trying to navigate through it, trying to build something that vaguely resembles a life to the untrained eye, trying to move on. It wouldn't, he supposes, even be all that much of a change from their lives at present.

Moving without thinking, he slides an arm around Neil's shoulders. "Let's go to bed."

[little_moons]

That's the best fuckin' plan I've heard all night. Pushing gently at his shoulder, I crawl over him toward my side of the bed, but I don't get far. I end up stretched out along his side with one leg thrown over his, my cheek still resting against his shoulder.

I wasn't careful. I was never fucking careful, and it'll be a miracle if I'm not diseased. But I don't wanna talk about it anymore. Talking isn't gonna help shit. I just wanna sleep.

[forthedog]

There's only a little tension when Neil presses against him; most of it bleeds out of him in a sigh. He stretches an arm back and turns out the light by the bed with a couple of failed attempts to get his fingers on the switch, sinking back down into the mattress and closing his eye. A lot of shit could go wrong tomorrow--but a lot of shit could already be wrong.

He slides a hand up into Neil's hair. Clinic. Phone call. Step. Step. As long as he's mostly taking them forward.