wickerpark | [Carlos/Hadyn] Some things, only God can forgive

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[Carlos/Hadyn] Some things, only God can forgive

Hadyn was in his office, nearing lunch and making some vague plans with Jordan to meet for lunch- not that his brother was being particularly helpful in planning. Mostly it was a series of 'yes, lets' and 'sure', 'sounds good'. It was enough to make Hadyn roll his eyes, and if it weren't for the fact that he was probably no better it would have sniped at Jordan for it. He'd even turned his focus to actual work when his phone went off again, and this time he did roll his eyes expecting it to be Jordan- once again. Only, it was not.

Carlos Sanchez might not have legally, or biologically been his child- but Hadyn thought of him as one. He'd been a constant in the house since the boy was 8, and at 18 he had been brought into their home without question or hesitation when his own had tossed him out. Hadyn, in fact, had been there for many of the big moments in Carlos' life. From discussing his sexuality, to his first challenges. Elisha had trained him in krav maga, and taught him to draw. They invited him to celebrate every major holiday with them. Carlos was his child, in so many ways outside of name. And so when Ty mentioned that Carlos had not come to work that day, and someone else had spotted Gael Shaw stumbling through the castle toward Carlos apartments, it was without hesitation that Hadyn was on his feet and out the door.

Moving to the younger man's apartments, he knocked lightly on the door, a look of concern on his features as the other man opened the door. "Well..." He said as Carlos looked at him, "you seem to be in one piece at least. Perhaps you'd care to share lunch with me? Unless, you've a guest you need to worry about?" Jordan, alas, could wait until later for his lunch.

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It had taken him to sometime in his early twenties to realize it, honestly. He'd loved his biological parents, and he knew that...well, his mother had loved him, she'd just been unable to countermand Felipe. But even when everything had been fine, even when he's been the quiet, mostly obedient middle son, he'd been less a member of the Sanchezes than the Kagans. Hadyn and Elisha had listened to his interests more than Felipe had, and they had - honestly - understood him better. Elisha had taught him to draw; Hadyn had picked a fencing and swords master to teach him instead of just tossing him in lessons beside Ty and Sarah.

And at twenty-five, it was still Hadyn Novak he called when he had something he had no idea how to handle. No different than seventeen, he thought with a tight smile as stared at his wall and waited for his real father. Gael was in a dead sleep on his bed, and when Carlos had been sure that he wasn't waking up again, he'd slipped out again to pick up the clothes Gael had left littered in his bathroom. That was when he'd found the baggie of white powder. He hadn't needed to guess what it was.

He gave Hadyn a tired look as he closed the door again. "I don't think Gael's waking up any time soon," he said. He did still have a guest. "But I...don't think I want lunch. Or to go out." He stared a bit at his fingers, watching them fidget with one another in a habit he'd had throughout childhood and he hadn't fallen back into since the day he'd had to come to Club Castle to ask for a place to live.

Worried, Hadyn thought. Carlos was worried about someone that Hadyn honestly didn't know if Carlos could save. And heaven help him- he'd watched the boy watch Gael long enough to know there were complicated feelings tangled into this mess. Ones that he didn't think would survive it all. "Well, we can at least sit and talk." He said, motioning them toward the kitchen table.

Finding a couple of sodas in the fridge, Hadyn opened on and handed it to Carlos before he sat next to him at the table, looking at the younger man with no attempt to hide his concern. It had, after all, been a long time since he'd watched Carlos fidget and avoid looking at someone as he spoke. As a child, it had been because Carlos had been, frankly, so unsure of himself. Elisha and Hadyn had helped change that, he thought, and so to see it return made him almost hate the slumbering mess in Carlos' bedroom. Almost.

He also felt pity for Gael, though.

"What's wrong, Carlos." He said, not asking so much as expecting an answer.

He might have pretended at first that it could just be physical with Gael, but honestly it had probably been a mistake to let Ty convince him to be a 'distraction.' Though, he thought with a wry smile, at least it was working out for Ty.

He glanced at the closed bedroom door as Hadyn went to his refrigerator. He didn't know that he could save Gael, either. He didn't even know how to begin, he thought, other than to be there for the other man - but that, that wasnt going to be enough. Still, he sighed as he wrapped his hands around the can of soda. "I found cocaine after he finally fell asleep," he said. "And I'm sure Elisha knew and told you what hour he showed up here." Gael might have thought coming to him was circumspect - but there was nothing in this castle that Elisha Kagan didn't know about. "It was about three hours, maybe four, after Oliver Byrd texted me to say he was coming this way."

None of that, of course, answered what was wrong. What was wrong was that all of these things made Gael a man Carlos should take a step back from, but he wasn't sure he could do that.

There were a million paths that could end badly for the would be lovers, and Hadyn knew those paths well. He'd been driven down a few himself, and never really recovered from a few. He could not imagine a more positive outcome from what he was hearing than the one he'd managed to carve out for himself.

"Cocaine," he repeated, frowning as he scrubbed a hand through his hair. And then the rest of what Carlos said only made him frown. The truth was...this was not going end well so long as it was on the present course, and for his part Hadyn didn't know what to do to stop it.

"I don't...know that I can blame him for being...unhappy." He said in a careful tone. "And I cannot blame him for his pain, after what happened. Gael Shaw could not walk away from such an event and not have wounds- even if he wants to hide it away. And...."

Hadyn frowned with a sad gleam in his eyes. He did not want to hurt Carlos, he did not want to see Carlos suffer the loss of someone one he held dear. If he could save Gael for Carlos he would have, but that hardly seemed more plausible for him than for Carlos. "Do you care about him?" Hadyn asked quietly, knowing in some manner what Gael's feelings on love where thanks to Sarah. "Because if you do, Carlos, I'm sorry. He is not...well, not right now. And if the cocaine, the drinking, everything in that...style of life is true? It might well only lead you down a dark road."

Carlos shook his head a bit."No, he has every reason," he said softly. Hadyn knew it; he knew Hadyn had been the one who'd gone to deal with the aftermath. Hadyn hadn't been in the thick of it, though. He hadn't seen Gael almost dying on that stage and watching Patrick threaten his friends. They were friends, if nothing else, Carlos thought, lifting his eyes to meet Hadyn's as he took a sip of the soda. As far as Gael was concerned, it could not be anything else. Not ever. That was on Patrick too.

He sighed, scrubbing one hand through his hair. The problem was that he was so good at playing by Gael's rules on the surface, but he didn't have nearly as rigid control over his heart. His heart had picked someone who was bound to hurt him, and bound to run away if he had any inkling that Carlos felt more than friendship. "Yeah," he said after a moment. "I care about him. It would be easier if I didn't." He dropped his hands back to the table and leaned back in his chair. There was a bit of a smile on his face, but like Gael's earlier - it didn't touch his eyes. "He'd much rather I didn't care," he said. "He'd much rather no one cared, I think. He doesn't trust love." It might be the worst thing Patrick Zeitlin did, Carlos reflected as he inclined his head. "I think he'd push away Sarah if she'd let him get away with it. Me? He hardly even knows me. I'm a hookup."

Hadyn didn't think Gael really wanted no one to care. It made for a loneliness that was as much a prison in his life as anything else, and perhaps more importantly- Gael needed people to care. If no one cared, the darkness could- no, would overwhelm him. Hadyn had been down that path, and it would have been a lie if the look he gave the door to Carlos' bedroom was not one of deep, troubled concern. It wasn't just one child that would suffer if that boy couldn't find it in himself to push through the darkness.

"He's afraid," Hadyn said after a moment, looking back at Carlos with a sad look in his eye. "It would be easier for him, yes, for no one to care. In his mind he was hurt by love, and keeping others away means he doesn't have to face his fear."

Sighing, Hadyn leaned back in his chair and gave Carlos a steady look. "I need you to listen to me, Carlos, and listen carefully. You have a choice- and it is neither easy, nor simple nor without it's own heart ache. But you can teach him that love isn't impossible or full of hate; or you can walk away. If he continues down this path, though? He will die. If it is not the cocaine, it will be something else he does to himself to escape whatever pain he hides behind that brilliant smile. If you stay? If you fight to show him another way- you still might lose. And that pain will be so much harder. But there is no third option- you cannot hope to break his fall as it stands now. As it is now you'll still be hurt, but perhaps....worse in a way."

He paused then, looking at the door with a resigned sort of expression on his features before he began to speak again. It was, he thought, about time that he openly told one of the children about his own demons. "My...mother," he said, turning to look Carlos with a tight, sad smile on his face. "My mother...raised me with a lie. She also raised me to be one thing- Ace to my brother. She used to pit us against each other, really. For my brother, she doted on me in his eyes because she wanted him to harbor some dislike or...jealousy of me. For me? She constantly reminded me that Jordan was better than me in every aspect. Except, perhaps, one thing- I was terribly charming. When we moved to the Hearts, it was the same- only then I didn't have to deal with my father beating me for every small mistake I made in training or schooling."

He snorted a little, thinking back on it. He wondered, really, if Dwayne had always known the truth about Hadyn's parentage and had only decided to act in the heat of an argument between him and Laureline. He supposed, really, that he'd never know.

"I excelled at lying with a smile." He said, finally, looking at the door. "As I grew up, I got better at it. And then my mother told me the truth of my father- that he hadn't been the man who'd beat me as a child, but rather the loving father of my best friend. A man who had known me for years by the time he'd died....and never told me the truth. Not even once. After that, my brother and I helped expose a plot my mother had against Tristan's father, and stood by that man as he exiled her from the deck. In the months and years that followed- for the first time other people started to see that smile crack. Until one night, on a bike in the middle of France, after having lost a lover and friend, after having heard my Mother tell me explicitly how I was nothing to her and merely a mistake she never should have let live....I barely missed running head long into a car, and instead skidded off a road and down an embankment. By every right, I should have died. Would have, actually, had the bike landed on my chest and not my leg. If the branch that punched through my shoulder have been 4 inches closer to my heart, or people hadn't seen the accident."

He sighed again, craving a cigarette as he told Carlos something he'd never told his own children, or his brother. In truth, they never discussed that night, even in vague gestures.

"At the time, Elisha and I were not together. We'd broken up almost a year before- he hadn't been able to handle his own emotional demons and mine, and it was unfair to have ever expected it of him. But it still hurt, and I never quite found a way to let that hurt go. My own mind, you see, crafted this idea that I was unwanted. My Mother only made it more obvious when she wished I'd never been born, and indeed my behavior had driven enough of my friends away, even my own brother, that I had precious few left. It was all combined into one idea- one very single idea that I'd written in a note on a folded piece of paper and hidden away in my pocket. And I remember thinking, lying on the cold ground, that this was better- for those that did still care. If it was an accident, they wouldn't feel guilty after all. I could die, and they would be free.

"Only, I did not die. Instead....Elisha showed up hours later, and sat by my bed until I was released. He drove me back to the deck, carried me to his apartments and nursed me back to health. And every day he told me the same thing, 'I love you'. And every day I doubted it, dreaded it, wished he would stop....and in equal measure wanted nothing more than for it to be true. I wanted him to love me for selfish reasons, reasons which I would argue with myself over endlessly. And so it went...for nearly two months. Until, one day, when he told me one more time....I started to believe his words. And I have believed those words every day since, even in my darkest hours."

Edited 2017-07-29 04:26 (UTC)

He was closer to Hadyn than Ty was, for good reason. He knew some of what had happened - he and Ty had already been the best of friends at nine - and he could understand why his friend was closer to Elisha, to his uncles Victor and Jordan, than he was to Hadyn. For Carlos, though, Hadyn had long filled in all the holes Felipe and Bethany Sánchez had left empty. He'd been a quiet boy in the center of a raucous and energetic Latin-Anglo family, and often overlooked. Hadyn had been the one who listened to him, and unlike Felipe, Carlos thought now, there hadn't been conditions or expectations wrapped around Hadyn and Elisha's love for him. Logically, that should have meant that it would have affected him less when his biological father washed his hands of him, but it had put cracks in his psyche that even the Kagans couldn't entirely fix.

Maybe that was why, even with Hadyn's words and even knowing they were true, he wasn't sure that he could ever convince Gael to love him. Even if Gael opened himself up to love again, Carlos thought, what reason did he have to love Carlos - a man whose main appeal seemed to be the fact that he could fuck him the way Patrick had no doubt taught Gael to like? His own family hadn't wanted him, not really. His sisters and brothers, sure, but he'd been easy for his parents to let go of.

Some of his thoughts no doubt showed on his face, and even if they didn't - Hadyn was a perceptive man. And Hadyn understood Carlos, it seemed, far better than either of them would have liked. "I think I might be falling in love with him," he confessed after a moment. It was more than caring, more than simply liking. "And it scares me. Because if he knows, he'll reject it." Reject Carlos, more specifically, and that was...well, he just wasn't sure he could take another rejection from someone he loved like that. Of course, it wasn't just the all too likely rejection that scared him, Carlos thought.

There was also the always present suspicion that he wasn't a man who could be loved at all.

"It could be that he rejects it." Hadyn agreed, watching Carlos with a faint smile. So many hurts, Hadyn thought, that he truly wished he could reach out and smooth away. How often he'd tried to do just that when Carlos had been just a small boy. And then a teenager. And then a young man, lost and alone. It was Elisha that had kept Hadyn from losing his mind and properly reaching out to snap Felipe in two, and rationally it had made sense. But there were moments, moments like now....that he wished he could.

"It is just rejection that scares you?" He asked after a moment, "or is it something more? You'll never convince him to love you, if you never try. And if you aren't willing to try, Carlos, you should let him go now. That man is headed one direction right now, and it is not a direction that ends happily. If the only thing you can do is sit back an watch, I suggest moving out of the way. Otherwise you'll get hurt, or dragged into it. Or both."

Gael was a broken man, Hadyn thought. More so than Carlos, or even himself. In many ways, Gael was like a wounded animal who wanted affection on his terms, and reacted violently when his terms were not met- but he was still always seeking that affection. Because, Hadyn suspected, he craved love as much as the next. Gael had, after all, seen that love could be strong and powerful. His parents had been loving and kind, from what Hadyn recalled. Even after one had died, the other remained strong and loving. So then it was one man that destroyed love for all time? No, Hadyn didn't think Patrick was that strong, even if Gael thought so. Even if Carlos thought so.

"Carlos, letting go of someone you love...is easy. Much easier, that is...than fighting tooth and nail for them to under you aren't leaving or giving up. Patrick is a memory you have to fight, yes. He has likely colored much of that man's life, and will continue to do so- because that is the only way he has felt love. He has nothing to compare it to, nothing to say that all love is not manipulative and violent. And...you, you have no reason to believe love is not filled with rejection. But neither of those are whole truths. For either of you. Love is more, can be more- you just have to fight for it."

He hadn't spoken to Felipe since the day when, at not quite eighteen, he'd been told he wasn't welcome in that house as long as he persisted with boys instead of girls. He'd spoken to his mother, occasionally, and Bethany liked to assure him that his father loved him, but was merely traditional. But he didn't think his mother really understand the effect it had on him. His father had rejected him.

It had made every relationship that subsequently failed feel like a rejection, as well. Some of them had been, truthfully, when it became clear that he was more complicated than the surface version of himself - that he was more than just a quiet guard, that he was hardly what most people thought of as normal. He was tired from it, he thought; not just tired of it, but tired from it. And perhaps that was a little...weak of him, really. He hadn't suffered a Patrick. He hadn't even had parents like the Novaks. The Sánchezes had been benign in their neglect. It hadn't been deliberate, but based on the fact that Carlos had been the least worrisome of their five children, at least until the end.

He didn't quite meet Hadyn's eyes, not wanting him to see the expression on his face. Frankly, not wanting to really see the expression on Hadyn's face, either. Gael was more shattered than he'd ever been; Carlos hadn't been allowed to break at seventeen, not with the Kagans there to catch him. His wounds had always been less...catastrophic, he supposed. Certainly they were healed over and scarred by now. He shouldn't be so afraid of someone ripping them open again. But he was. The answer to Hadyn's question was that yes, Carlos was afraid of the rejection, whether that came in the form of Gael disappearing from his bed and into someone else's - or in the form of Gael deciding it was easier to just get away from the pain completely. It was a thought he'd had, one he'd never shared and never let bubble to the surface - but if he'd had it, how could he blame Gael for feeling the same?

His lips tightened into the ghost of a smile, one devoid of humor or joy as he pushed the soda away from himself. "You make it sound simple," he said. Not easy, no - but simple. Like it was just a matter of fighting for his happiness in order to get it. He knew that wasn't really true. He'd fought tooth and nail for things before in his life and ended up with nothing. He supposed that was his other fear. He could fight tooth and nail for Gael. He could hold on tight, and he could still end up with less than before. It was, frankly, the most likely result. "But I don't think I can walk away, either. So there's not really much of a choice, is there?"

"Simple?" Hadyn raised a brow at that, before chuckling softly as he shook his head. Simple was hardly what he'd meant, though it was fairly straight forward. One could lose no matter what they did- it was only that if he fought for it, he might win as well. But he supposed when someone was used to losing, the only outcome possible to see was- losing. "No, not simple. You'll fail at things, you'll have to pick yourself up and then try again. It is more straight forward, I would think...than simple. Simple implies something akin to uncomplicated. Matters of the heart are rarely anything but complicated."

It was a hard lesson to learn, and maybe Hadyn had done Carlos no favors in trying to catch the boy. But then...his heart had hurt for the boy. He could see so much of himself in Carlos that he'd just wanted to be his shield in a way, the way any parent should have wanted to be for their child. Indeed, he'd wrapped his arms around Carlos and held the boy many times, wanting nothing more than to ease some pain that he'd been helpless to ease. If one Carlos had been his, he wondered, how different things might have been for the boy?

"There is always a choice, Carlos. But just know that doing nothing? That only leads one way. If you try, at least...maybe, maybe you can change something in the outcome. You can't win if you never play." It was something he'd told Ty when the boy was young, and worried about losing face in front of his friends. When they'd been little, Sarah had always seemed to beat her brother out on things. She was taller, she was faster, made better grades- whatever it was, in Tyler's mind Sarah semed to always win. But Hadyn also pointed out that Tyler never tried to win, either. He watched her, resigning himself to a perceived notion that 'of course she'll win'.

Once the boy had learned that lesson well enough, well...Sarah didn't always win. But then, nor did she always lose either.

"I can't...sheild you from this, or I would. I cannot even promise that he'll love you, or that it'll last forever. But, I can tell you that to do nothing will not win his heart any more than trying will."

He wasn't sure what would have happened to him if the Kagans hadn't been there, really. Assuredly he would not be where he was now. Likely he'd be eking out a life in a neighborhood like the Player's Quarter; likely he'd be bitter and brittle and lonely. Gael would have never avoided him thinking that Carlos was a relationship type. He wouldn't even appear that way on the surface. As it was, only Hadyn ever saw through the surface to see that Carlos hadn't had any expectations of almost any relationships since he'd still been a teenager. Carlos didn't think even Ty saw it, not really.

It was almost a little funny though, he thought as Hadyn spoke. He remembered Ty griping about the tough love talk he'd gotten from Hadyn about assuming Sarah would always win at everything - and he thought that he'd taken it to heart as much as Ty had. In everything but love, Carlos knew that he could fall down, he could fail and he could get up again. Next time, he could win. It was how he'd learned to best Ty and Sarah both at swords. It was how he'd risen to Seven with hardly a stumble. But love? There was a reason Carlos had barely bothered to try anything beyond the purely sexual since he was twenty-one. He was tired of losing his heart. It was a hundred times worse than losing a fight.

He pushed his fingers through his hair. "I know that," he said. "I know there aren't any guarantees." He could fight for Gael, he thought. He could take the risk and tell Gael that he cared about him, take the risk that Gael would run fast and far in the other direction. But...he wasn't sure he could really believe that there was any chance in hell that Gael would do something else. He wasn't sure he believed that Gael might care about him, and that he wasn't a stand-in for Patrick, albeit one he could feel safe with.

He could try, but he couldn't force himself to believe that he wasn't about to take a fall.

There were times that Hadyn hated Carlos' parents with every fiber of his being, this was one of those times. To watch confidence drain from a man who had everything in the world to be confident in himself...to diminish and shrink. He wanted to put Felipe five feet under, and perhaps knock some sense into a mother who did as much damage by staying as anything else.

"Well, I suppose the only thing I can do now is ask if you need anything from me." Hadyn said, looking at the table a moment. How much he wanted to just protect Carlos, he thought. Was that normal? Wanting to shield someone else's child? No, the difference was that Carlos was as much his as the Sanchez's right? He'd practically raised that boy after all. "You need only ask if you need anything. We'll always be there for you, you know that right?"

If someone asked him, he'd say his childhood was just fine up until he realized he was gay - and his parents realized the same. But the truth was, Victoria and Cristian had garnered a share of the Sánchezes attention due to being their first two. Ali had gotten the same by being the baby, and Matteo had gotten his share by a combination of acting out - and being Felipe's little helper in the business. Carlos, though, had faded into the background. He'd been quiet, a little shy, and a bit artistic. He hadn't fit, perhaps they hadn't known what to do with him. In any case, all the explicit parental attention he'd ever had growing up had come not from his parents - but from Elisha Kagan and Hadyn Novak.

Who he knew he was worrying now. Just Hadyn right now, maybe, but Elisha would likely hear about it soon enough. He shook his head. "Nothing right now," he said quietly. "But I know. I know you'll always be there if I need something." He glanced back at the door of his bedroom though, before standing up. "For now, I guess I should kick you out," he said with a crooked smile. "The fight's over before it's started if he wakes up to find his boss in the kitchen."

He closed the door behind Hadyn and paused a long moment, staring down the hall before he slipped back out of the shirt he'd tossed on before he'd called Hadyn and moved back into his bedroom. Gael still slept; it was just as well when so many of his insecurities had been exposed like a raw nerve. He unfastened his pants again, tossing the clothes on the chair before he slipped beneath the covers again. "Quédate conmigo, cariño," he murmured as he wrapped his arm around Gael's waist and pressed a kiss to his temple. "Quédate."

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[Carlos/Hadyn] Some things, only God can forgive

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