[Hadyn and Elisha] I would have found you....

[maskofhearts]

It was his last shift at Masonic, and they sent him off with a flourish. Cora swapped with another of the nurses to work the graveyard with him, and brought him a cake she'd made for him that morning. She then spent the whole night telling him that if he ever needed her to come knock some smartass over the head at Laurie, he just needed to call. She'd 'come a runnin'. He was going to miss Cora the most.

Pat's send off to him was to ensure that every one of the weirdest cases that night came his way. There was the dildo that, uh, 'accidentally' ended up someone's ass. He didn't really ask, but he got the story about it anyway. Then there were the boys who somehow ended up with split heads. They 'fell', and that was their story. Mom, however, seemed to suspected they'd been daring each other to do stupid flips off the shed behind the house. Hadyn just tried not to judge anyone on the matter. Adam was back, asking about the tumor again. He wanted to know if he'd be allowed into Laurie so that Hadyn could scan his head there.

Hadyn said no.

Most of the night was fairly boring, really, but it was peppered with things at random. And for once, Hadyn was legitimately walking out the door at 6am, smiling and waving at the people who'd given him a happy send off.

"Hey," he said, turning back to Elisha as he walked toward the car. "Don't tell me, you spent the night working?" He grinned though, leaning in to steal a happy kiss. "You know, I should be scolding you if you have been. But I might let it go for coffee..." And sex. He could really go for some hot and steamy morning sex before he passed out. And wine.

Comments

[cipherspeak]

Elisha gave him a crooked smile as he flipped his notebook closed. "We both know if I order a pizza you're going to make faces at it," he said. "But we can get Thai, and we can talk about it while we wait."

Jordan had made an excuse about needing to go to the office a couple of hours ago. And while Elisha was pretty sure that's exactly where Jordan had gone, he had his doubts about it being necessary so much as him giving the two of them some time.

[maskofhearts]

"Thai it is." He said, smirking. He ordered them Thai, some curry and noodles. Settling in the living room, Hadyn handed Elisha a can of pop. Ah well, he thought.

"So..." he said softly, scrubbing his chin for a moment. "So..." he sighed. This had sounded so much easier last night before he went to sleep. Now, though. Now it didn't feel that way.

"My father was....always....aggressive. And he used to take it out on my mother, before she died." He started, leaning back against the couch. "Well, he mostly tried to. He didn't...regulate himself to it, though. He didn't get physical, really, until...."

Well, no. That wasn't entirely true either. "I'm not very good with this," he said after a moment. "I'm sorry."

[cipherspeak]

Elisha toyed with his food more than he ate it, and leaned back against the couch cushions as Hadyn tried to fumble his way into an explanation. If he was fair about it - and he was trying to be - it was a hell of a thing to explain.

"So he's been...like this towards everyone in your family then," he said, fumbling just as much as Hadyn. "For a long time." He let the noodles slip through his chopsticks and back into his bowl.

He might have asked why it was allowed to go on if it hadn't been for the stilted conversation with Jordan while Hadyn had still slept. Dominic Novak was a lawyer, Jordan had explained, and anyone who'd ever been suspicious about what was going on was talked around. They were well-off in New York - which meant, really, that there were less consequences for their actions.

Elisha knew that well enough. He'd never been in a situation that needed to go away, but he had cousins who had.

"Do you never want to make him pay for it?" He asked. "I know - I know that pressing charges might not work. But I...you seemed so resigned to the idea that you don't have options with him."

[maskofhearts]

"Honestly?" Hadyn asked, as he scrubbing his hair as he sighed. "Yeah. When I wasn't scared to death of him, I day dreamed about it. But...the best, best vengeance I can have on him? Is just to be happy. It is the only thing..."

He shrugged a little, before he leaned forward and sat his food down. Turning on the couch he looked at the wall behind Elisha as he started to piece it all together, somewhat.

"I wanted to be a doctor, because some part of me wanted to protect kids from what happened to me. But...then something horrible happens and I don't know how to deal with it. Everything wells up inside, and I feel every anxious memory bubble up. It takes...just everything out of me." Not that that explained things. "So, I don't talk about it. Because pretending it didn't happen just somehow makes it easier. Or just...I don't even know, Elisha. I don't have the words for it."

He even laughed a little, looking down. "I'm not well," he said finally. "Even...with knowing all I know, I'm not well. And I don't know if you want to deal with that, and maybe I've just been too scared to trust....to trust that you wouldn't just leave. And I'm sorry, that I couldn't. I'm sorry that I wasn't, that I can't. I just...need someone with a lot of patience."

Turning he looked at a picture, when he was a teen. Before his weight started to fall away. "Heh, you know. I think need to get help, honestly."

[cipherspeak]

"I'm not going to leave, Hadyn," Elisha said, and shrugged when Hadyn blinked over at him. "I can't pretend I know what this is like. I can't pretend I understand everything about it. But I do love you." He nearly choked on those words, not because he didn't feel them, but because it was a way of putting himself out there that he'd never done before.

"I want to try to be patient for you. I don't know if I'll be good at it. But I want to try." He raised an eyebrow, though, tipping his head. "But...you do need to think about some help. You can't carry the weight of this by yourself forever. I know that much. And as much as I love you, I can't help you that way. You know that."

Dominic, though. Dominic he could do something about, and there was a slightly calculating light in his eyes that made him, for a moment, look a little like his grandfather. The one who'd escaped Russia as a baby at the end of Stalin's reign, and built an empire with a couple of properties in New York and Chicago and the arts of intimidation and manipulation.

[maskofhearts]

"I love you, too." He said softly, leaning in to steal a kiss from Elisha before he smiled a little weakly. "I know. Uh, I found a few doctors to go get help from. And...." He took a deeper breath before looked at Elisha.

"I, uh, might have to go to a rehab." He said after a moment. "For, um...my weight. To help gain it back. But, I don't know. Maybe therapy will be enough for that. So." Something. And he supposed he would figure it out with time.

"Yeah, so....does that help?" He asked, licking his lips a little. "You haven't asked much."

[cipherspeak]

"I thought maybe you were just naturally thin," Elisha said. "And I knew you didn't eat regularly enough, but I thought that was just work." And he had a tendency to be self-involved. He honestly hadn't wanted to worry about it. So he hadn't.

As for questions, he shrugged. "I don't even know what to ask," he said. "But I reserve the right to recall the witness, if that's okay." He gave Hadyn a lopsided smile and leaned in to wrap his arm around his shoulders. "

Does the idea of rehab scare you?" he asked. "Because as the scion of a family with too much money, I have a hell of a lot of cousins with firsthand knowledge I can draw on for you. One thing rich kids are good at is fucking themselves up."

[maskofhearts]

"Well, I like to think I am." He said, a bit of a rye smirk on his face as he settled down with Elisha's arm wrapped around his shoulders. "But...I could go into a lot of detail about certain behaviors I have...engaged in, and it is all complicated."

But whatever. Elisha was not asking to be bored by science. "As or recalling the witness, granted. Or...whatever the fancy lawyer term is. I will allow it." It made him smile, before he laughed a little and shook his head.

"No, but...I can't say going to rehab as a male for an...Eating Disorder is really going to be that exciting." Mm. He knew a 4th year psych student who ran therapy groups for eating disorders. He said most of it was the effects not eating had on the female body, and the pressures for a woman to be thin. Not really something that dealt with his particular issues. "Either way, its a bridge that will be crossed in time."

[cipherspeak]

"Right..." Elisha gave Hadyn a level look. "As long as you remember to cross the bridge," he said. "But I'm not going to push you about it."

Not right now. That didn't mean that he wasn't going to keep more of an eye on him, Elisha thought. He'd been pretty laissez-faire about their relationship so far. He'd gone his way and Hadyn had gone his. He felt a bit like he'd been taking everything being okay for granted, and that felt...foolish.

He'd have to be done with that now.

"You know, I'm pretty sure we were going to have a drink when you got off your shift this morning." He smiled. "Is that allowed?"

[maskofhearts]

"Drinking is allowed," Hadyn said with a smirk. He was even pretty sure they had drinks around. Beer, wine, liquor. Standing up, he went to the kitchen and hunted out a wine glassed before pulling a bottle of red wine out of the wine cabinet. He also grabbed an IPA for Elisha if he wanted it. Just to be safe.

"Jordan say what he was going to do at work?" He asked as he sat back down and flicked on the tv. They still didn't have cable, but they had a smart TV. And Netflix. "Because I a pretty sure there was more than drinks involved in that discussion this morning."

[cipherspeak]

"Something lawyer-y that was beyond my ability to understand," Elisha said. Not entirely true; you had to learn to speak both lawyer and tycoon fluently to make it through holiday dinners in his family. "But it sounded like he was going to be a while, so..."

Well, so just about covered it, really.