wickerpark | Somethings are unavoidable

Ollie wasn't easily annoyed, really, which was something of a blessing when it came to dating Ty. His moods were....up and down, he thought, and pretty quickly up and down. He'd done some Googling once - that was Heather's fault - and he'd had to admit that Ty fit...certain symptoms. And since those symptoms would get Ty kicked out of the Navy, he'd deliberately put it out of mind.

Today, though, it had been hard to do that. Today had been a little bit like he'd been hauling a pissed off three year old around, and his head was starting to pound. "I wouldn't dream of it, princess," he said sardonically as he headed towards the bed. "Maybe you'll come out acting like a twenty-three year old."

Ty stared at Ollie, almost as if he'd been slapped as the door closed behind him. He wasn't sure if it was the way Ollie said it, or what he'd said exactly- but the wave of irritation rose quick enough.

"Sorry," he snapped, "I forgot to bring my happy face today and ruin your day. I'll try very hard to find where I buried it before I come out." Ty huffed, pulling the bathroom door open before slamming it shut behind him.

This was why he didn't date, he thought as he leaned heavily against the door. He scrubbed a hand through his hair before let out a deep, slow breath. Maybe he should just get his own room for the night, he thought, looking at the mirror image of himself. "You're just a fucking piece of work," he muttered, suddenly kicking the door and barely resisting pulling his hand through the wall. Instead he tried to focus on actually taking the shower.

Ollie made a face at the door and gave it the finger when Ty slammed it shut. He probably should apologize when Ty finally got out, he thought as he heard the water turn on, but he just flopped back against the bed and stared up at the ceiling. There was still a pinched expression on his face when he heard the door open again.

"If you didn't want to come, we didn't have to," he said. "I wouldn't have cared. You didn't need to agree to come to Disney if it was going to make you fucking miserable. It's not like I had my heart set on it."

"I didn't say I didn't want to come," Ty said as he stepped out of the bathroom, scrubbing his hair dry. "If I really hadn't wanted to come, I sure as fucking hell wouldn't have been talked into it. It....."

He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. He was annoyed, and angry. And he couldn't even focus on a single train of thought long enough to work out why any of it upset him so much. It all just irritated him more to think about how pathetic it was to not be able to control his own emotions, and worse with knowing this mood could last....

It could be weeks or a month, maybe more, until he found the center he needed to bring everything back in line. "I'm sorry, okay. I just...."

Ollie turned his head, lines bracketing his lips. It was hard to be pissed off when Ty looked that miserable, he thought, but it was even harder to shake his....frustration, he decided. This wasn't the first time Ty's moods had caused some friction, but somehow he could deal with his up moods better. Up wasn't the right word, but he knew what the right word was and it felt dangerous to even think it.

"You're not happy," he finished for Ty when it became clear that he wasn't going on, and he looked back at the ceiling. "I'm not stupid," he said after a moment. "I can tell that everything's not fine."

"I don't know what you want me to say. I'm sorry, I am sorry that I'm ruining your vacation to fun time and fairy tales, and I...I never called you stupid." He said with a sigh, before reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose. He felt like he was fourteen again, and trying to explain to his girlfriend why he hadn't wanted to fool around.

"I'll do better," he decided on, wanting to not crash and burn through the one good thing he had going for him at the moment.

"See, this is a great way to convince me that you really, really wanted to come on this trip," Ollie said, pushing his hands through his hair. It stuck out in all directions, and for once he didn't care.

"Look, Ty," he said. "I...Heather told me about your sister when we were in New York that time. And honestly...there's some similarities between the two of you, other than your pretty faces."

"...You think there are similarities, huh?" Ty asked, his defenses going up suddenly, as his jaw tightened. "That's great. I'm glad you can tell my sister and I are related." He said, scrubbing a hand through his hair as he turned away from the bed.

He almost would have called it reflex, more than anything, when he let out a strangled scream and hauling off to kick the dresser. It wasn't such a strangled shout when he fell back onto the floor and grabbed at his bleeding foot. At least, he thought, it was something else to focus on.

Ollie stared at Ty a bit before he rolled to his feet and moved over to where Ty was curled up on the floor. There wasn't anything remotely rational about that, but he just crouched down. "Let me look at it," he said, and bit his tongue before he said something about Ty acting like a wounded bear.

"I don't care, you know," he said. "If it's...depression, or bipolar, or if you're just a moody bitch. I just wish you'd let me in a little bit sometimes."

He let Ollie look at his foot, scowling a little bit at it as if he felt betrayed somehow. He also didn't know what 'letting' Ollie in was supposed to accomplish. "You're not worried I'll go on a mad killing spree on base after I finally snap?" He asked, snorting a little.

But he leaned back, looking at Ollie carefully. "I'm not very good," he said looking down, "I'm not very good at letting people in. It just seems pointless, and it never changes the outcome."

"Well, now that you mention it..." Ollie said, and then shrugged, the corner of his mouth lifting in a half smile. "You're not going on a rampage, babe," he said. "But I don't know. I don't want you to make it harder on yourself than it has to be. I know you can't see anyone."

The Navy didn't much care for sailors with psychiatric issues as a general rule, after all. Ollie knew there were good reasons for it, too. "I think you broke your toe," he said, before he looked up. "I don't know what good it does, exactly," he added. "But if you want us to be part of each other's life, you've...got to let me be a part of your life, Tyler."

"Oh, I don't know. Sometimes I contemplate mass murder of the Brats." He said in a strangely even tone as he winced, licking his lips just a little. "Seeing anyone would just lead to medication. It isn't like I have danced around this for years."

But he wasn't sure, as he looked at his broke toe. Well, at least there wasn't much he could do about that other than suffer. "I don't want to, I don't want to burden you with my....whatever the fuck is wrong with me. Frankly.....its why I don't date. Keeping up with me is a lot to ask of anyone."

"I could be wrong, but I think that's a pretty normal reaction. It's why we call them the Brats." Ollie straightened to load ice from the champagne bucket into a baggie. Neither of them were celebrating tonight anyway, he thought. And tomorrow wasn't looking good for more Magic Kingdom.

His lips twisted a little. Maybe medicine would make it easier. Maybe dancing around this was part of the problem. Maybe he didn't know what the fuck he was even thinking about here, which was probably accurate, he thought as he sat down again.

"So let's look at it another way," he said. "Let's say I come back from my next tour fucked up. Seriously fucked up. Do you want me to keep it to myself except when I can't help but wake you up at night?"

"Pretty sure the Navy wouldn't approve, no matter what." He said, before taking the bag of ice from Ollie and gently pressing it against his bloodied toes. "I don't know how you'd feel about dating someone doing 30 to life."

Probably not very favorably, though. Still he looked up at Ollie, "no, but at least we'd know why your fucked up." He said, sighing a little. "I don't want a pity party, or fuck...I don't know what the fucking hell I want half the time Ollie. I don't know what I'm supposed to say, or how I'm supposed to deal with any of this bullshit. I just know that most of the time I don't consider putting a bullet in my head, and most of the time I've just got too much energy to burn. But I live to the idea that any second now I'm being handed my papers and told 'see you later'."

It's not something on his bucket list, Ollie's got to admit. Still, it's something they all joke about, and maybe a part of him wants to lighten things - even though he's the one who brought it up.

"I don't think it really matters if there's a reason or not," he said. "It's there. It's probably not just going to disappear, and maybe you don't think talking about it does any good, but it doesn't look like shoving it under the rug is helping right now either." He exhaled on a sigh, leaned back on his heels. "I know you've got to hide it. I'm not telling you to fuck the Navy and find a doctor." Though maybe he should, but he could easily imagine his reaction if it was him.

"You know what's funny?" Ty asked looking at his toes again as he pulled the ice away from his foot. "I don't think talking helps. It doesn't change that I feel like shit, and when...when I swing the other way you couldn't convince me the world was ending even if it was."

He closed his eyes as he dropped his head against the wall, breathing slowly. "Joining the Navy felt like the...best thing I'd ever done in a long time."

He didn't know what he was supposed to say to any of this, Ollie thought, and leaned heavily against the bed, scrubbing a hand over his face. He hated this, though, as selfish as that felt to think. Talking didn't help, not talking didn't help. Probably nothing helped, and he didn't know what to do with that.

He didn't answer Ty at first. "What do you want me to say?" He finally said. "That it wasn't? That you should quit?"

"That's the thing, I don't want you to say anything, I'm not looking for you to say anything!" Ty snapped suddenly, barely resisting the urge to slam his head into the wall. He didn't want to feel like it was a burden to deal with him- Sarah, for all she hadn't meant to make their teenage years feel that well had done a bang up job of it. Even Izak and his fathers had had that look of 'this again?' at times. He didn't know what the right words were any more than anyone else did.

"Don't ask me to let you in, and then...." Fuck it, he thought, clamping down on his words as he pushed himself up. He tossed the ice to the side before limping his way to the door. "I need air." He declared, without even looking back.

Ollie opened his mouth to say something - what, he wasn't entirely sure - and then snapped it shut again as the door slammed shut behind Ty. "Well, fuck you very much," he muttered as he got to his feet and stomped towards the bathroom, his hands fisted at his side. He paused by the doorway and raised one hand, slamming his fist nto the wall.

No, that didn't make him feel any better, he thought as he hissed under his breath and then went into the bathroom to check out the damage.

It was going to bruise, he thought, but it didn't look like anything more than that. He wrapped it up in gauze and sighed as he sat heavily down on the toilet, pushing the fingers of his uninjured hand through his hair. He wasn't dealing with this well, but...he didn't know how he was supposed to handle it, and Ty was never one to make anything easy.

Ollie tipped his head back and looked up at the ceiling. He could really use someone to talk to right about now, but typically - there wasn't really anyone.

Ty wasn't sure he could do anything but limp out of the hotel and down by the water to pull out a cigarette and puff at it angrily. He didn't even know who he was angry with anymore, either. "Fuck you," he muttered, before sighing and scrubbing a hand through his hair.

Pulling out his phone, his fingers hovered over the screen as he stared at Sarah's number...and then Izak's. His siblings were not, honestly, any better equipped to deal with him than Ollie. Sometimes less so. Instead he scrolled down to a number he should have deleted years ago and hit call.

"Hi...Is Dr. O'Neill in?" He asked when the other side picked up. "This is Tyler Kagan. I am...was a patient of her's."

Sometimes he just needed to talk to someone who knew him better than he knew himself.

He waited several minutes before he realized that....Ty wasn't coming back yet, and there was less than no reason to stay in the bathroom for the rest of the night. He paused by the bar and dug out a bottle of whiskey, pouring himself a short glass before he carried it and his phone out to the balcony.

He stared at his contact list for a while before he took a deep drink of whiskey and dialed an old, familiar number. It took three rings before a surprised voice answered on the other end.

"Hey, Mase," he said as he leaned against the railing. "Yeah, I'm still on the East Coast. Look, I know this is weird, but can I talk to you?"

It was an hour long conversation, one in which Dr. O'Neill legitimately sounded concerned about Ty's mental health. She might have even physically shaken him if they'd been in the same room, but instead they were hundreds of miles apart. Over a phone.

She made him promise to call, though, when he needed to talk. Gave him her cellphone number, even, which he mentally repeated to himself a hundred times before tapping it into his phone. Honestly, he didn't know if he'd call again- he had predicted her advice to him. Obviously knowing what was sound advice was different from taking it.

But what was he supposed to do when the only thing he did want was growing increasingly unlikely to happen. The USNA was already trying to convince him to pursue a new branch in the Navy- they wanted him to put his mind to intelligence work. It was a far cry from his SEAL team, and to him the Pentagon seemed like a prison that was just waiting for his parole to end.

He smoked a few more cigarettes, before glancing back at the hotel. It was getting dark, and the first cracks of fireworks from the Magic Kingdom was starting. He flinched a little with each loud bang as he stood and headed back into the hotel, back up the elevator, and back to the door he'd slammed shut behind himself hours ago. Pulling out the key, he slid it into the lock and pushed the door open slowly; not even sure he was welcome back into the room.

His own conversation had ended long before Ty came back upstairs, but Ollie had stayed on the balcony, looking a bit blindly out at the exploding fireworks. They didn't usually bother him, but they weren't helping the slightly sick feeling in his stomach.

Of course, neither was the whiskey.

Mason had told him he'd lost his mind, which he could have predicted. Probably because it was somewhat accurate, he thought. He didn't have the best track record when it came to relationships; Mason and Ella were probably the only ones who'd actually been pretty good. Lara...was a different kind of unstable than Ty, but that hadn't exactly impressed Mason much.

Ollie glanced back when the door opened, but he didn't come inside just yet. Instead he tossed back the rest of his drink, the lights on the balcony catching the stark white bandage wrapped around his hand before he set it aside and leaned against the balcony. "So, you're back," he called through the door.

"You sound like you didn't expect me to come back," Ty said with a sigh, his eyes going first to Ollie's hand before up to the man's face. He tried to remember what Dr. O'Neill had said- 'not everyone knows how to deal with depression. You have to teach him as much as he is willing to learn. If he isn't willing? Then perhaps that is another conversation to have later.'

Teach him how to deal with it? Ty almost laughed at the memory of the words. It seemed so absurd to have to teach someone how to handle his own mental illness. He reached up and scrubbed his hair before letting out a slow breath.

"I had a call to make," he said, after a moment. She'd encouraged him to be honest, to try just...talking. Not apologizing, he didn't have to apologize for a mental illness- even if he felt like he should. "Dr. O'Neill, she uh....she was my therapist in high school. Back when my parents were trying to convince Sarah and I to get along. And, um....I don't need you to say anything, okay? I don't need you to make it better, because you can't. It isn't that, it isn't that I don't appreciate the thought- just that you can't. There is literally nothing you can do, because it is all in my head. I can't control it, I can't hide it that well, apparently. I can't just flip a goddamned switch and turn it off- because God, if I could? I would. But the only off button is putting a fucking bullet through my head, and I don't...I can't....because I think if I can just make it one more hour, one more second that just maybe the switch will flip and everything will go back to normal." He said in a strained voice, before holding up his hand to forestall comment from Ollie. His fingers in his hair tightened a little, as he took a breath, trying to steady himself.

"I'm fucked up, I know that. And you tell me to open up, and that....that fucking...I'm fucked up, okay? Going to war terrified me, but it gave me something to focus on that wasn't just how fucked up I was, or how irrationally angry I was with the whole fucking world. Because I'm a goddamned Kagan, and what damned right do I have to be miserable and feel like shit? Because everyone else has it worse off than me, and being over there gave me the freedom to feel like I'd earned the right to be a little fucked up. Because it sure as hell wasn't my parents that did this, it wasn't my siblings, I wasn't bullied at school, or some short, fat kid who had no reason to feel good about himself. I wasn't begging for food, or hoping my dad didn't come home and beat the shit out of me. Hadyn has every reason to be miserable- his father, the one that raised him? Used to abuse him every day, would beat the shit out of him, would tell him how worthless he was- how he'd never amount to anything. Hadyn? Is fucking happy, my father had a fucking miserable childhood but is happy. I had a goddamned fairy tale of a childhood, and I can't stand to look at myself in the mirror half the time."

He took a ragged breath, blinking away the moisture in his eyes as he forced his fingers to loosen their grip on his hair. "So I don't need you to make it better. I have every reason for things to be fine, and none of that makes it better. Because if I had stayed there- I don't know what I'd be doing right now. I don't even know if I'd be alive. Okay? So...is that letting you in enough?" He asked, suddenly feeling exhausted.

Anything Ollie had planned to say was silenced by the wall of words from his Ty. It wasn't like Ty was the strong, silent type, but usually when he talked there wasn't so much of it. Ollie's hands tightened on the balcony railing, but he listened until Ty wound down. Then he lifted his hand to rub at his eye.

"Yeah," he finally said. Ty wasn't the only one who'd had a long conversation, though Ollie wasn't about to tell him that he'd called his ex-boyfriend. But Mason had given him some good advice - namely that this wasn't something you could slap a bandaid on. Ollie had gotten himself involved with a lifetime kind of mess, and he had to decide if that was something he could handle. He wasn't sure, yet.

"I'm not trying to fix you," he said evenly as he moved to pick up the glass and the bottle. It was something to do while he talked, especially since he still wasn't sure what the fuck he was going to say. "Honest. But I don't know anything about this, really, and...we have to be patient with each other if we want to have a snowball's chance in hell of surviving."

If he wanted it to survive, Ty thought. He wouldn't haven blamed Ollie for looking him straight in the eye right then, and there and saying he couldn't handle it- he couldn't handle the ups and downs, or everything in between. In truth, he felt like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop and almost regretted ever opening himself to this whole idea of dating.

Of being emotionally...vulnerable.

"Okay," was the only thing Ty could think to say as he lowered his hand and looked away from Ollie. A part of him wondered what he was supposed to say now, or if he could even say anything at all.

Ollie gave him an odd look, his brows furrowing a bit as he looked at Ty. He was, he realized, going to have to be the one to try to get them back on something like an even keel. He smirked a bit and tapped Ty on the cheek with his bandaged hand. "I punched a wall over you," he said, "and you haven't kissed it better yet."

He slipped back into the hotel room and set aside the alcohol before he looked back at Ty. "That's me, by the way, not the wall."

Being tapped on the face brought him around, and Ty stared at Ollie for a moment. There was a worry that slipped over his eyes for a moment, before a faint smile. "What did the wall ever do to you?" He asked, before moving closer to Ollie. There was still a dourness to him, but he wanted to keep trying.

Maybe morning would be better.

"It won't...be like this, you know. All the time." He said, catching Ollie's hand and lifting it to his lips to kiss it 'better'. As he lowered the man's hand again, he chewed on his bottom lip. "I don't even notice it, you know. When...when the 'mania' hits. Its just this rush, and everything gets done faster than normal, and I'm happy...But that's what happens most of the time."

And the mania could be just as dangerous, if not more.

"Oh, you know, it was there. In my way." It was there, and Ty had just stalked out, he thought, and there hadn't been any better ideas at the time. He was lucky he hadn't broken it.

Ollie tilted his head to one side and lifted his shoulders in a slight shrug. "I'm not completely unfamiliar with that side of things," he said. "I've seen you....way up a few times now." Thanksgiving had been the most prominent, though Ollie had mostly been right there with him. But it hadn't been the only time.

It was kind of like being caught up in a whirlwind.

There wasn't any real point on focusing what was probably going to come in the future, though and Oliie reached out to grab Ty's shirt in his fist, pulling him in for a firm kiss. "We'll take it as it comes," he said. "Just like everything else. Okay?"

He wasn't sure if Ollie was really okay with things, or just bluffing. But he wasn't going to argue as his lips met Ollie's and his shoulders relaxed, he relented to the idea that things could be okay.

Things could really just be okay.

Somethings are unavoidable

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