savetheearth | Thought I heard them talking in their sleep yesterday [OPEN]

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Thought I heard them talking in their sleep yesterday [OPEN]

Who: L, Tony, Belle and OPEN to anyone who might want to come visit them.
Where: One of Locke City's bigger hospitals.
When: August 18- 19
What: Two idiots get in a fight. Belle is a good listener for Tony and talks L out of a rash decision. Also a catch-all for visitors on the 19th.
Warnings: Profanity, violence, feels, two guys displaying some
symptoms of PTSD.

Sometimes, people could afford to be selective about the hospital they were admitted to. Specialized clinics and treatment programs, top ratings, and individual needs were all carefully considered during the best of times. Specifically, when one had the luxury of time.

This was not such an occasion. With one patient bleeding out in critical condition and the other in a dissociative, violent state of psychological shock, the only things that really mattered about the hospital were that they could be speedily admitted and that the facility had enough departments to reasonably accommodate both physical trauma and fractured mental states. The honor had fallen to Locke City's largest and most complete hospital, where Tony Sparado and Lazarus Lawliet had been sedated, separated, and taken to different wards on different floors.

This was two days ago. Now, some things had improved; Tony's condition had stabilized and they were both keeping down food. Other things remained uncertain; L, grimly committed to not answering the Mafia's questions during their captivity, was still not talking.

Regardless of what the future held, both young men would remember Albero's hospitality for a long, long time.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[For Tony]
He still has no idea what happened to him. It had been a rush of strength and drive enough to have him drunk on it. How many of them had he cut down before he'd gained control of himself?

Richard tries not to think about it while he sits at Tony's bedside, having blown off all idea of working until he knows that the kid is alright. Now and then he takes his hand, fusses at the way his fingers are lying, watches his face for any sign of consciousness with a steadily growing coil of nausea in the pit of his stomach. They could have tried to keep him away from Tony, but it wouldn't have worked.

[For L]
It's after Tony wakes up and they talk that he pays L a visit. It doesn't seem right not to, but it's a different feeling as he quietly opens the door and hopes to at least find him awake.

He has no idea of how much L saw of what he did, but that's not his priority. Approaching the bed, he clasps his hands behind his back and clears his throat. There's really no comfortable way to deal with something like this, is there.

It turned out that removing one's IV, stealing scrubs to impersonate a medical professional and sneak into another patient's room, and getting into a fistfight with said patient were all somewhat frowned-upon. The only people who were really in trouble were the nurses and orderlies who had failed to notice L's little escapade, but they weren't the only ones being disciplined. The restraints pinning the detective's forearms to the bed said so plainly enough, even if they were to "protect" him from wandering off to participate in more heated fights with other patients.

On the bright side, Tony had succeeded in snapping that rigid silence, and then some.

He glanced aside as Richard entered, making brief eye contact with the other man. The last time they'd encountered one another, L had been literally out of his mind; he had doubted much of what he'd seen in hindsight, knowing it to be unreliable at best. Though he'd been a lousy shield for Tony, he'd tried, even if he'd probably made it more difficult to rescue both of them through his unwillingness, and genuine inability, to cooperate. He thought that Richard and Dirk had been monsters, even Tony, the Mafia men, everyone were monsters, and who could blame an overtaxed brain for seeing them that way and reacting the way he had?

"So..." voice cracking, hoarse from silence and then the shouting of the day before. "So Tony's doing better? I'm not... mad. If he's not mad."

Richard made a soft noise that sounded close to helpless, mostly caught in the back of his throat. He pretended it didn't happen as he crossed the rest of the distance to the bed and pulled up a seat beside it. For a few moments, he debated whether or not physical contact was a good idea, but decided very quickly on 'not' and briefly curled his fingers around one of L's broken hands, skimming his thumb across the back of his knuckles.

It was a token gesture, really. What had happened had been taxing on all of them but he'd never seen L like that. He never wanted to see him like that again, either.

"Tony's alright," he said as he drew his hands back into his lap. "He ain't talkin' much, but I figure it'll be a while before he wants to."

Though it went against logic, L craved contact. He had been unable to provide aid or comfort to Tony or Moises, and it had reached the frantic point where every good thought or dream zeroed in on the desire to physically affect and change what was right in front of him, what he should have been able to because it was so close and real and terrible. He stiffened at the brief touch, but not out of revulsion... and when it was withdrawn, his eyes followed Richard's hand, like a parched man allowed one sip of water and then watching as the rest of the glass was taken away.

He knew so well what that was like now, having had that exact experience, and he couldn't unsee it everywhere he looked. Deprivation, with the natural response to clutch and seize and take to excess while he had the chance, before it was taken away. If he hadn't been restrained, he probably would have grabbed Richard's hand to keep that touch present.

Instead, his index finger drummed restlessly against the mattress.

"We kind of got in the habit of not talking. We made ourselves believe we were protecting our friends. We were going to die the way we couldn't live, like heroes..."

Had he been paying more attention he might have read L's body language better, might have understood what he wanted - what he might have needed - but he was running on a few hours of sleep and far too much coffee to really be paying proper attention to anything.

Still, he had seen it, the way L's gaze had followed the path of his hand when he'd let him go. The understanding might come creeping in sooner rather than later.

"You did good," he said then and it felt like a platitude, like ashes in his mouth to say it but they had, hadn't they? "And you got out. That's the important thing, yeah..? You both got out. Anythin' that comes after this... we can deal with it."

If only it was that simply black and white, but more was in shades of grey, now. The sheer number of them was overwhelming. "Good," like "bad," didn't quite fit in with the general set, because it implied that right and wrong were real and not just gilded, mythological ideals.

"Good..." he echoed, tugging at the restraints despite knowing, full well, that they weren't going anywhere. This was also an exercise he'd repeated in endless futility while he'd been in captivity. "I did... this, it's what it is, but... Moises didn't get out. He's dead. That isn't good... Tony being hurt wasn't good, and this..." he tugged again at the restraints; they didn't bite back like the ropes that had twisted and burned in captivity, but the gentle padding almost made it worse.

"I don't know what comes after this."

"Tony's hurt, yeah, but Tony ain't dead."

He watched the fretful movement of L's hands for a few silent moments before he brought his own up and closed his fingers over the one nearest to him. Not quite a hold, he didn't touch L's palm, just curled his fingers over the man's hand and let them rest there.

"Whatever comes after this, you don't need to face it alone. Not if you don't want to. You got it?"

L's breathing quickened for a few tense moments. It couldn't be explained to someone who hadn't been there, but being alone was what it had been. Moises, had been with them, but he'd died alone. Tony had taken the beatings of his life alone, and whatever had happened to L had been while he was crushingly, inescapably alone. Anticipating Tony's death, and eventually even hoping for it to be swift and painless and quiet, had been the worst part of the nightmare.

Richard's hand, again, had a calming effect, and this time it stayed. L didn't have to hold it to keep it there, but it seemed that he didn't have to.

"You protect Tony. If you knew what I made them do to him I don't think you'd say such things."

He caught it this time, the way the contact seemed to calm the man down and he didn't move his hand away but clasped it more firmly around L's slim fingers.

"Anythin' that happened to him in there, you're gonna find it hard to convince me that you made them do it. Unless you were holdin' a gun to their head and telling them to torture my--" A small trip, the softest clearing of his throat. "The kid, you didn't make 'em do shit."

L did have a point, though. He did protect Tony. At least, he was supposed to. The current situation showed how well that had worked out.

"And me... I can't protect him from everything."

"What is he, to you?" L asked, eyes focused forward; faces contained a lot of information and it was, momentarily, overwhelming to think about all those excruciatingly subtle messages and emotions. "I know... I know you live together, and that you protect him, and that he owes you... but what made you want to make him your family?"

"Tony doesn't owe me shit," he responded instantly, vehemently, eyes flashing. "I ain't ever tried to hold anything I've done over his head."

Richard sat back then, brow furrowed, but it was only a moment before he was leaning forwards again. "Listen. When I was Tony's age, I was just like him. Worse off, maybe. It was my fault and no one gave me any help. Not one fuckin' person. I did it all myself and it was the hardest thing I ever did. I couldn't stand by and watch someone else turn out like me."

That quick and brusque answer got a reaction out of L even before Richard sat back. Involuntarily but violently, he yanked sideways at the restraints in a clear flight response. Had they not been there, he would have been out of his bed and clear on the other side of the room in seconds, but as it was he sank back, exhausted and dazed and defeated.

When Richard said to listen, he did, wide-eyed, though looking directly at the other man still proved difficult.

"Your... intentions were never... I never doubted... but if that's all true then it just means that we're..." he swallowed, mouth out of sync with his racing, scattered thoughts.

"If you didn't want to see him turn out like you, it means that we're the same."

His hand twitched from L's as the man moved, but returned when he settled back again, curling in fully this time and grazing over his palm. A moment later and his free hand closed over them both. Anyone looking at Richard might wonder why he wouldn't want a kid like Tony to end up in his place, but there was far more to it than simple success against difficult circumstances.

"We are?" he questioned quietly, passing his thumb slowly back and forth over L's knuckles. "You ain't ever really struck me as the ex-homeless-drug-runner type."

That was a joke, or close enough. Nothing anyone with a passing interest in him couldn't find out. "So, you gonna tell me why?"

The "joke" seems to startle L, if only because it's such a jarringly good description.

"Drinking hand sanitizer is something I learned in rehab, which is where I ended up after... after I OD'd. Cocaine, almost three years ago. My dealer left me outside the ER and drove away, and until recently that was probably the nicest thing anyone ever did for me."

August 19

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Tony's turn

weh

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