[Henry]
So last night wasn’t one of the better nights in the history of good nights in these two’s history.
They’d gotten into the shorter of the two fights they’ve had, it ending in an explosion from the typically quieter of them and the younger of them just standing on the sidewalk letting him go, and several hours later Tristan had received a phone call from (312) 926-2000.
(“Tristan Stern? This is Tara from Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Our records show that you’re the emergency contact for a Mister Henry Allard?”)
Someone had beaten the shit out of him, and they hadn’t had to try very hard. Henry was blowing a 0.05 BAC in the emergency department–he was hardly drunk but considering the fact that he takes ten milligrams of escitalopram a day to control an anxiety disorder, that is 0.05 too much. Between the alcohol in his system and the fact that he had a massive concussion and a dislocated shoulder, he didn’t know what was going on when they wheeled him in, and Tristan had been there to hear him scream when the doctor, a petite curly-haired woman in her 40s, executed a closed reduction to his left shoulder with the help of a burly ED technician named Lance because they couldn’t even give him ibuprofen to help with the pain.
Neither of them spoke on the way home.
Neither of them spoke in the morning.
Henry isn’t anticipating speaking tonight, either.
He had gone to work with the intention of filing for a leave of absence. He hadn’t told Tristan this, and when he lets himself into the apartment this morning, his arm out of the sling and his uniform ill-fitting, he doesn’t call out or go to find Tristan. He just drops his jump bag, hangs up his keys, and goes into the bedroom to change out of his clothes.
[Tristan Stern]
They didn’t speak last night.
They didn’t speak this morning.
And Henry, likely, doesn’t plan on speaking today, either.
This. Is not. OK.
Tristan had spent the night waiting for Henry to come home pacing, worried, and then simply… sad. He’d not slept in the bed he’d dumped Henry into after bringing him home from the hospital (the HOSPITAL – where he wasn’t. wearing. his. ring.). In fact, he didn’t sleep at all, staying on the couch watching bad reality tv ala VH1 until Henry got up to go to work. He didn’t tell Henry that he called in sick for the first time in 2 years, either, or that he stayed home all day, waiting for a call that never came.
Part of him expects Henry to start packing when he gets home. Part of him expects Henry to act like nothing happened and all is Light and Rainbows. Part of him fears this might the beginning of the end. All of him is afraid.
Henry comes home, and doesn’t say a word, simply goes to the bedroom. There’s a flash of pain in Tristan’s eyes, and he simply clicks the television off, suddenly unable to bear anything but complete silence. Maybe if the silence is so complete, so think, maybe then Henry will notice what he’s putting Tristan through. Or even acknowledge his existence. Something. Anything. After all they’ve been through together – it really shouldn’t be that much to ask…
[Henry]
There is no explanation for the way this man, this quiet and thoughtful and generous and sweet man, is acting lately. These two haven’t made love since before the attack, have just been sleeping next to each other with arms outstretched with one of them finding that the other has been a million miles away.
Maybe he has been.
All day long he has been off, and people have noticed. He didn’t wear the sling that the doctor told him he ought to consider wearing for the next several weeks while his shoulder recovers from what happened to it, and he refused to take a doctor’s note to take the rest of the month off to let the tissue recover.
His job is physically and mentally draining. All day long he is lifting backboards and reaching over his head, performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation and applying EKG leads to people’s bare lifeless chests and injecting atropine directly into people’s hearts and shocking them back to life. There is a reason he’s so goddamn skinny and it has nothing to do with his diet or the fact that he has cut beer and other alcoholic beverages out of his diet since Dr. Wentz put him on the Lexapro.
He has an appointment with the man on Friday. All McMahon had had to tell the psychiatrist was that Allard came into his office this morning saying that he had a dislocated arm and presenting with deep under-eye bruises. Something’s wrong, and Henry isn’t talking to anyone.
Talk to him, Aidan had said, and Henry sits himself down on the edge of Tristan’s side of the bed, his back to the doorway, still in his uniform and all but curling into himself as he raises his right hand to his eyes.
He put his ring back on when the staff gave him back his coat. They had had to cut off his shirt, so he’d left the hospital wearing a scrub top in place of the orange henley he’d left the house wearing. He’d gotten right in the shower to wash the blood off of his face: his nose had exploded when whoever had attacked him had either punched him or driven his head into a solid object but somehow miraculously had not broken.
It doesn’t sound like he’s crying, but aside from last night when he screamed it has been years since Tristan heard him make any sort of noise to indicate anguish.
[Tristan Stern]
Part of him wants to outlast him, to make his husband come to HIM, to make the first move, to say something, anything, to explain what the fuck is going on. A very large part of him, even, though it kills him to admit it, though it kills him to want to punish Henry the way it seems he’s decided to punish Tristan.
It wouldn’t hurt so fucking bad, if he didn’t love him so fucking much.
It’s when movement stops in the other room, when he hears the bedsprings creak the sound of a groan man’s frame sitting down, but not with the relief of one standing up again, that’s what makes him finally stand. That’s what makes him go to the kitchen to drop off the empty bottle of beer in the sink, to join the collection that’s been growing since last night. He’s not drunk though – he’s not even buzzed. He drinks it because its there and it tastes good and he’s hoping that maybe it will work and he’ll get drunk enough to pass out. Too bad he’s been taking over two hours to drink each portion.
He wraps his hands around the edge of the sink, gripping so tightly his knuckles whiten, his ring standing out in stark relief against the paleness of his hand. Henry doesn’t sound like he’s crying – but Henry never does. Until last night, until he actually yelled, until he yelled in the face of the one man who’d die for him, hoping to be resuscitated just so that he can do it again. Finally, he moves to the door of the bedroom, a lean shoulder finding home against the door frame, his arms folded across his chest.
Yet, he still says nothing.
[Henry]
Tristan says nothing.
Henry finally does.
It doesn’t happen all at once. It seems for a moment as though he doesn’t even realize that Tristan’s there, as if he can’t hear his body moving through their small yet warm apartment, their home for over a year and a half, nestled within the Eagles’ territory. Something has invaded that home, or at least one of the men who lives within it.
Even though the light isn’t on in the bedroom, Tristan can see the outline of his husband’s spine as he leans forward to pull himself together. He’s exhausted. He had four hours between when they got home last night and when his alarm went off, and he should have called in sick to work but he hasn’t taken a day off since Ben Watts came to find him last summer and told him he had over three weeks of paid leave stored up and he’d better use it now because they weren’t going to approve six weeks of vacation in one lump sum when it snowballed at the end of the year.
It’s piling up again.
He had lain in bed for three hours last night listening to the late night and early morning television in the living room, and had not come out into the kitchen for anything. Now they’re in the same room as each other for the first time in over twelve hours and it hurts to not have Tristan in his arms but he doesn’t deserve him right now. He doesn’t deserve him at all.
A shaky breath, and Henry drops both of his hands to the bedspread beside him.
“I’m losing it, Tris,” he says in a voice hoarse from eight hours of work and god knows how many cigarettes.
[Tristan Stern]
He wants to move. He wants to move farther into that room so badly, but if he does, he’ll just end up pushing it aside, saying it’s ok, saying that nothing’s wrong and just moving on and dammit, something is wrong when it hurts this badly.
Something’s very wrong indeed.
Henry finally breaks the silence, shattering it like a fragile piece of glass. The words crash around him, and settle at his feet and it’s all Tristan can do not to scoop them up, let them slice through his skin and settle into his bloodstream, to race to his side and say it’s ok, none of it matters. It matters. A lot.
“Losin’ what?” is what he finally settles on as a reply, and it’s not enough and maybe too much all at once. What he means is, let me help you. What he means is, why can’t you trust me. What he means is, why shut me out, haven’t I always been there always? What he says is just two words, that are a subtle pry for more info before he completely breaks apart.
[Henry]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[WP: Pull It Together, Allard. -3 (sleep dep and other stuff from last night).]
[Henry]
Another one of those shaky breaths that sounds as though he’s keeping himself from completely breaking down. He doesn’t start crying though, he doesn’t yell like he did when Tristan was holding his arm and touching his face and he doesn’t scream like he did when Tristan was holding his hand during the closed reduction, when Henry was in so much pain he had had to be physically restrained to keep from bucking off the gurney.
Both times, Tristan had been reaching out to Henry to try and lend him some comfort when it was clear that he was hurting, and the older man was too far gone to even realize it was there. He had squeezed Tristan’s hand so hard the bones had ground together, though, and he doesn’t remember doing it.
But he doesn’t break down this time, doesn’t do so much as leak from his lacrimal gland, and neither does he turn around to face his husband. This is the man who he had taken a blow to the head for, who he would have willingly traded places for when they were attacked by that Gorehound. They are right back where they were when Mama Grace died, and no one is even physically ill or in trouble.
Their lives were going just fine. He doesn’t know what he’s losing, but it hurts.
A deep breath, and Henry says, “I feel like I’m going insane.”
[Tristan Stern]
Henry doesn’t break down, holds it together, and Tristan is barely clinging to what’s left of his sanity as well. It’s been said that he has the patience of a saint, simply because he is Eagle Kin, because he and Decker have over the years managed to find some equal footing, some place where they’re not enemies, even if they’re not exactly friends either. To deal with all the eagles that have come and gone over the years? It certainly teaches one patience, and how to think before you speak.
Or it should.
Tristan doesn’t always catch the memo on that last part – but tonight he does. Tonight he’s carefully choosing and rejecting words that may have a lasting effect, a serious damage to something that already feels fragile in a way it never has before. Even when he withdrew, when Mama Grace died, even then he always made sure Henry knew he loved him he appreciated that he was there. Even then he was more open than his husband has ever been…
Even now, he’s there, and willing and ready for whatever Henry needs to say.
He lifts his hand, hand that’s still sore from the grip Henry had on it last night at the hospital, and shoves fingers through his hair, tangled curls catching on slender digits as he pulls his hand free again and resumes his stance, his arms folding once more. “What happened?”
Take two.
[Henry]
He wants to go to him so badly, and not even to seek out comfort or be assured that there is nothing wrong because he knows he doesn’t deserve comfort and he knows that there most definitely is something wrong. It’s shaking him to admit that he can’t control what is going on with his mind, that looking in the mirror just reminds him of all the things in his life and the world around him, in the Nation, that he has to worry about.
The running isn’t helping. His electrolyte balance was off, according to the blood work he had done last night–he’s dehydrated, he’s working himself too hard, and he doesn’t recognize himself anymore.
Even through the haze of his mental detachment last night, he had recognized Tristan. He hadn’t spoken, he hadn’t even been mentally all there because of the concussion but he had lifted his ringless left hand to wave without mirth when Tristan all but blew into the room he was sharing with a drugged-up migraine patient. The light was off because both of them were complaining that the fluorescence hurt their eyes.
There is no light on in the room right now, either.
What happened, Tristan wants to know, and Henry swallows again before scrubbing his face with his right hand. It hurts to use any part of his left arm. Even bending his wrist drives currents of electricity into his shoulder. Tristan had seen Henry put Marissa’s shoulder back in the socket one time. It had gone back in easier for the Garou than it had for the kinsman, and the Garou had had hydrocodone to help with the pain.
“I’m having trouble sleeping,” he says. “I’m just… I’m worried, all the time, about the stupidest things, like whether I remembered to lock the door or whether you’re going to get burnt at work like you always used to when you first started, you know how you’d always come home with bandages on your fingers and just laugh like it wasn’t a big deal? And… Deon says I’m snapping at people, and I look tense all the time, and I keep blanking out when I’m… when I’m trying to work… I’m on medication and I don’t know why this is happening and I went for a run Saturday night, Sunday morning, I don’t remember what time, because I couldn’t sleep. You know?”
He’s rambling. All this has been stored up for days and it’s just coming out now.
“And I was running, and I ran into that attorney who came by the station house when you were there and she… there was something in an alleyway, like, I don’t remember what it was but it was bad, and she was moving towards it and I tried to stop her, and I don’t remember this happening but she told me someone jumped out and hit me over the head with a baseball bat and it…”
He stops himself there. Tristan saw what it did. It split his goddamn head open.
“There was a Trueborn there. I guess he healed me. And ever since that happened I’ve been…”
He’s breathing heavy now. He’s breathing heavy and he’s trembling and he’s got his off right hand up against his sternum as if to calm his heart down. Tristan hasn’t seen him like this in years but it looks like a panic attack brewing.
“I’m so sorry…”
[Tristan Stern]
The dam breaks, as it always does eventually. It HAS too, else they’d explode with everything bottled up inside. There has to be a release valve somewhere, and Henry’s has been locked up for days. Weeks. And he’s kept it all inside, pulling into his own head, until it explodes, while Tristan…
…waited.
He’s seen the signs, and felt the hopelessness of knowing that there is nothing he can do but wait, nothing he can do but be ready when that damn breaks, when it all breaks free and Henry breaks down, so that they can finally start to pick up the pieces. It ain’t easy, and it hurts like hell. But finally, the damn breaks. And so does Henry.
When he says he doesn’t remember what time, Tristan supplies, “2am.” because he’d known. he’d waken up and Henry was gone and he’d known. And fretted – because as that baseball bat proved? Henry IS a paperdoll sometimes, and a fuckin’ faggot too. Decker only had it partially right, after all.
Tristan sighs, softly, as he stumbles to a stop, as he says he’s sorry, as the words suddenly come to a halt, and then pushes away from the wall, to move around the bed, an sink to a crouch in front of his husband, his life. He lifts his hands to rest on Henry’s knees, keeping his balance, as he looks up at his husband. He doesn’t say it’s ok – it’s not. He doesn’t say to forget about it, because that won’t help. What he does say is this. “Make an appointment with the doc. Sounds like your meds need adjusted, first. The rest may have followed from that.”
May have. He isn’t letting him off the hook that easily. Because something? In knowing for sure what all that blood meant? Something inside him has broken, and is quivering in a terrified realization of just how close Henry came to dying – all because he was running at 2 fucking AM.
[Henry]
When Tristan gets to Henry he is sweating, has his fingers hooked into the gate of his shirt. His name tag still reads ‘ALLARD’ and his breast pocket is still filled with pens and a penlight and his field guide and his pants are still too loose, are still belted around his waist and he still looks solid and reliable and strong but right now he isn’t, and he can’t pretend any longer by the time the younger man gets to him.
He wants to touch him but he isn’t entirely sure that the man won’t vanish if his heretic fingers do so much as brush a curl.
Tristan says all the right things, encourages his husband to seek help in a direct and appropriate way and explains what might be causing this. He is still hyperventilating, swallowing thickly as if he can’t get something out of his throat, his mouth drying out even further from the air rushing in and out of his parted, chapped lips.
“I hate this,” he coughs, refusing to break down after what he did to Tristan last night, after what he’s been doing to him. “I’ve been fine, why am I…”
He can’t catch his breath. There is Ativan in the bathroom, it’s been sitting untouched next to his daily antidepressant for a long time but he hasn’t been taking it except on those days where his job has him so frustrated and close to burn out that he has to make love to his husband to remind him that if nothing else is they are still okay. Those are the days that he gets out of bed to take a lorazepam before climbing back into bed and kissing his husband until sleep claims him.
It’s been days since they’ve touched each other in any way that could be considered purposeful. Henry’s eyes are a vivid, painful green now, and they fall shut as he tries to calm himself down.
[Tristan Stern]
He watches, he says all the right things, but it’s not going to calm him down – not now, not without help. Tristan stands, resting his hands on Henry’s head, lightly, before pressing a kiss atop his head. “Hold on.”
And then he, and his touch is gone. He moves on silent bare feet to the bathroom, refusing to look at himself in the mirror, to see the haunted look in his eyes as he paws through the medication for the Ativan. He had taken care to read every bit of info when they’d first gotten the prescriptions, to know what to expect with each of them, to know what bottle to grab in whatever situation they find themselves in. It’s important to be informed, and it’s important to know, to understand, to be proactive in the care and keeping of his husband.
Even if what he wants right now is answers.
What he wants right now is assurance.
What he wants right now is the ability to make everything ok.
And another beer.
He fills the nearby glass with water from the tap, after getting the Ativan from the bottle, and capping it again. Then, mere seconds that feel a lifetime later, he returns to Henry, to the side of the bed where Henry sits trying to calm himself down. He sinks to a crouch again, his forearms on Henry’s thighs, the glass of water and pill offered in his hands. “Here.”
He doesn’t tell him to take it. He’ll have to make that choice on his own.
[Henry]
The sound of his husband struggling to breathe fills the room and follows Tristan into the bathroom. He has seen him pull himself together before, but he has also seen him completely melt down and get so bad that he has expressed feeling as though he were having a heart attack or on the verge of dying of asphyxiation before.
It has been weeks that this has been building up, this feeling as though his brakes have been shorn and his ability to stop himself from careening over the edge that he had just barely pulled himself up with Tristan’s help the last time is completely nonexistent. For someone like Henry who is compelled to project an air of normalcy and control to the rest of the world when he is out in it, who likes Tristan to think that he has his shit together and is the reliable one in the relationship, he certainly has a great deal of difficulty remembering the times that he has been the reliable one, when he has been there for Tristan when he has been in need.
The man grew up in Garou society, knows his place within the Nation and he knows his place within the world of firefighters and paramedics, but he still has trouble in relationships. He still has trouble with stability, with his life not being a perpetual whirlwind of chaos, and they have been happy and devoted for so long that it is making him completely fucking nerve-wracked that something is going to come along and take it away.
So he was trying to hasten the process so that he would see it coming this time. He won’t realize this until he goes in to see Wentz, at the earliest.
When Tristan comes back with a small white pill and a glass of water, Henry is shaking so hard it’s a wonder it isn’t about twenty below in the bedroom. He manages to take the pill and the glass, the water threatening to slosh over the side, and he follows the acceptance with an “I love you” as if he is taking a cyanide capsule instead of an anxiolytic.
He tosses it back but he can’t bring himself to swallow the rest of the water. His eyes fall shut, and he forces himself to breathe slower.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, choked.
[Tristan Stern]
“I know.”
He’s sorry, and Tristan knows. That doesn’t mean this is any easier, that it should be easier, better, that it’s ok with just those two words that people tend to let wash over a multitude of sins, while never truly working to fix what’s wrong, what’s broken. Even if they’re not sure what is.
They’ve been happy – they’ve been together an strong and leading a simple life that every married couple longs for, yet somehow this affects Henry in a way that Tristan can never quite understand. But it certainly never pushes him away. The only one who can do that is Henry himself.
He takes the water glass before it can be completely spilled, setting it on the bedside table before he returns to rest his forearms on Henry’s thighs, his hands resting on his own arms, his eyes reflecting the worry deep inside. “Just breathe, Henry.”
Anything can be fixed as long as they’re still breathing. Right?
[Henry]
He’s managing. With Tristan here with him he’s pulling himself together while he waits for the lorazepam to get through his stomach and into his blood stream. It’ll be okay. It has to be. That’s what he’s been clinging to this entire time he’s been shaking in the shower in the morning and losing his appetite at meals during the day and laying awake at night tracing his husband’s spine with his fingertip and simultaneously wishing that he would wake up and join him in his restlessness and praying that he would stay asleep and take care of himself.
Henry is tired of not touching Tristan now. He doesn’t remember squeezing the man’s hand last night, grabbing it as hard as he could, so when he reaches down with his good right hand to take Tristan’s he doesn’t realize that he’s likely causing the other man as much pain as is lancing through his shoulder when he does this.
It barely touches him.
His eyes fall shut, and all he does is breathe. And squeeze Tristan’s hand.
[Tristan Stern]
He doesn’t wince. There’s a clench of the muscle along his jaw, but he doesn’t flinch away, he doesn’t wince, he just lets his husband hang on, as tight as he needs too. He’s watching Henry’s face, watching as he breathes, as he does his best to keep calm until the medication takes effect, until they can talk without worrying that one of them is going to snap, and one of the other stomps out. He just… waits.
After a minute, two, watching the way Henry fights for his breath, to keep it calm, still, even. Soon that headfull of curls falls to rest his forehead on their clenched hands, doing his best to do the same thing he begs Henry to do.
Breathe.
[Henry]
[Wrap!]