Need You Now
Title: Need You Now (follow up to For Always, Forever)
Author: Amanda, who goes by the aliasapodiopsys
Pairing: Rilex (Rian and Alex Gaskarth-Dawson)
Rating: R
Summary: Half the bottle is gone. Half the bottle is gone. Half the bottle is gone.
Disclaimer: do not own they're married they belong to each other amen. title and cut belong to Sparks the Rescue/Lady Antebellum
A/N: um. i wasn't going to post this until tomorrow/later today but Gabe talked me into it. I'm honestly shocked and stunned to tears by the amounts of comments i got in such a short period of time for wedding fic. you guys are the best, you're why i write. Uh, I'm sorry about this. I really, really am. And uh. Yeah, I'm sorry. Blame Gabe for this he talked me into posting it via more Holiday fic.
also! alot of this idea came from the book/movie Shutter Island, by Dennis Lehane. so, if it seems a little familiar yeah a lot of this was based off of parts of that book.
tumblr is here, br0.
cum tell me what you think i will not be appreciative if you read it and then make like a tree and leave.
This is the follow up to Saturday Skin and it's sequel For Always, Forever
The big bottle of laudanum is perched, half empty, on the kitchen counter when Rian gets home from work. He puts his bag down on a chair, loosening his tie as he stares uncomprehendingly at the bottle. There were supposed to be six months worth of doses for Alex, and they’d only gotten it a month ago. He calls out, “Alex, baby?” uncertainly, worry underlining his voice.
Half the bottle is gone. Half the bottle is gone. Half the bottle is gone.
Where is Dylan?
Alex is curled on the couch, eyes fixed on what looks like a cold mug of coffee. He’s not looking, but he’s drawing circles slowly on his arm, around and around and around. “Alex?” he asks carefully, not quite touching him as he crouches in front of him. The brunette doesn’t quite look at him, looks vaguely over his shoulder instead, making a quiet ‘hmm?’ noise.
The pen doesn’t stop moving across his arm. Rian makes to stop him, stop drawing those incessant circles but he stops, focusing on what it is he’s doing to his arm. It’s not a sharpie marker, not like any of the ones Rian normally uses on his skin. It’s a blue ballpoint pen, putting as many angry red lines onto his skin as it is ink. “Alex, how many doses did you take today?” Rian asks, fighting to keep his voice steady. He needs to find out where Dylan is, what Alex did with him.
“I don’t know,” Alex answers him, his voice as vague as his gaze. “There’s not enough though. I can’t sleep. I want to sleep,” he says, voice thin and almost see through. “Not enough, not enough, not enough.”
His eyes are listless, not focused on anything that’s visible to Rian. He suppresses the urge to snap his fingers in front of his face, to get Alex to look at him because he needs to get this situation under control. “Alex,” he says. “Alex, look at me.” Rian closes his fingers around Alex’s jaw, thumb pressing into his cheek. He needs his attention. “Alex, did you drink half of the bottle?”
“There wasn’t enough,” he says again, a strange lilt to his voice, making it almost sound like he’s almost singing. Rian stares at him, trying to make him meet his eyes. It doesn’t work.
“Is Jack and Danny watching Dylan?” Rian asks finally, still gripping Alex’s jaw. Alex still won’t look at him.
He says, “No, Dylan is upstairs. Dylan is sleeping. The baby is sleeping.” he smiles wide, showing Rian his teeth. His eyes are finally showing something other then listlessness. He looks crazed.
Rian yells.
The stairs keep tripping him on his way up. Alex doesn’t even blink when he shoves him away, scrambling as his socks slide on the carpet. “Dylan!” he screams, the palm of his hand bleeding where he scraped it against the wall. He’s screaming no, screaming please, screaming not my baby, screaming God, I’m begging you, screaming no no no.
The two and a half month old baby is in it’s cot. His chest is rising and falling, barely. There’s a bruise on the side of his face; it wasn’t there when Rian left for work that morning. Rian picks up his child, so, so carefully. He’s afraid he’ll break. He doesn’t need to turn around to know that Alex is standing in the doorway, eyes distant and smile frightening.
“What did you do?” Rian asks, rocking his son - their son, the baby that they made together. Alex looks guilty, barely, hands pushing his hair out of his face.
“He wouldn’t stop crying,” he whimpered, sliding down the doorframe to the floor, pulling his knees up to his chest. “I couldn’t think and I couldn’t sleep and he wouldn’t stop crying. I needed the quiet. I needed him to stop,” he said, tears streaking down his face. His eyes are almost clear now, but they haven’t been the same, not really, not since Dylan was born. They’ve been permanently behind some sort of haze, and Rian hates himself because he can’t get through it to help him.
The ring he wears on his finger is supposed to be a promise, but he doesn’t know how to keep it, not right now. He looks at Alex and he can see the man he fell in love with, tall and bright and loud, wearing one of his hideous arabian scarves that he later forced him to throw out.
Angry red welts are decorating Alex’s arms, right where he dug the pen in too hard. Not all of them are actually bleeding, but there are drops of blood clinging to his skin in places. It makes Rian feel sick, sicker, he can’t stand the sight of it, knowing that he might be able to do something but can’t. He can’t fight off Alex’s demons because they’re in his head.
“He needed to stop, so I - I - I shook him, it wasn’t that hard, just a tiny little shake, he stopped crying but he fell sideways and hit his head and I didn’t know what to do so I put him to bed, Rian, Ri, baby I’m sorry, I didn’t know what to do.”
Rian stares at him the whole time, cradling Dylan in his arms, right hand cupping the back of his head protectively. He’s afraid of his husband right now, afraid because he doesn’t know what to do or how to help him, afraid because if he’s so capable of hurting himself and hurting Dylan with barely any remorse, afraid because he might hurt him.
(He wouldn’t care if Alex hurt him, wouldn’t care if Alex broke his nose or bruised his ribs. He’d always go back to him because he loves Alex over anything and everything, loves Alex to the sun and back, loves Alex - and it shames him deeply, he would never, ever admit it to anyone - more then he loves his own son.)
He needs help. He needs to take Dylan to the hospital, because his child is not okay, he’s barely breathing and barely moving and Rian is so acutely aware that he is going to die if he doesn’t get him to professional help.
But Alex, Alex.
Alex, his Alex, his husband, his other (better) half is leaning against the wall and rocking back and forth, looking lost and hopeless and exhausted. He says, “Alex,” and Alex lifts his head; he’s gone back to being distant, eyes draped over by the misty veil again, not looking directly at him but over his shoulder. He’s telling him silently that he’s listening. “I need to take Dylan to the hospital. I’m going to call Jack and tell him to come here because I can’t take you with me.”
The phone call is rushed. Jack has barely answered the phone and said, “Sup,” when Rian is saying, ‘I need you to get here as fast as you can. Alex isn’t right and I need to take Dylan to the hospital.’ He hangs up before Jack can even agree to it because he’s got a timebomb on his hands right now, wasting time could ruin everything. Jack is going to come anyway. That’s the kind of person he is, he’ll be there if Alex and Rian need him, no questions asked.
Rian leaves with Dylan before Jack gets to their house. He’s still rocking back and forth on his heels on the floor of Dylan’s nursery when Jack gets there, sitting down next to him and sliding an arm around his shoulder. He’s lost weight since Dylan was born, Jack notices, his shoulders are bonier then they used to be. “Hey,” he whispers, and that’s all it takes, Alex turns and presses his face into his best friends shoulder, shaking as he sobs.
“I didn’t mean to.” His voice comes out in shuddering gasps, shoulders jerking as tears drip down his face, clinging to his chin before falling onto the black fabric of his hoodie. “It was an accident, I couldn’t make him stop crying.”
Jack nods, making quiet soothing noises. “I know, Alex,” he he says, nose pressed into his friends hair. “I know you didn’t mean to.”
Alex takes two tablespoons of laudanum under Jack’s careful eye, watching him to make sure he doesn’t take more then that. He’s not sure it’s a good idea that he takes any more, because Rian called him from the hospital explaining the situation (and also saying that Dylan was going to be okay) but Alex needs to sleep. It takes about twenty minutes, but he passes out on the couch, head in Jack’s lap and the duvet from the bedroom draped across his skinny frame.
Most people gain weight after bringing a child into the world - Alex lost it, lost his weight and a part of his mind. There are dried tears streaking his face, his hair matted and greasy. He doesn’t even look at peace in his sleep, Jack notes, a small muscle in the corner of his eye twitching. He strokes some hair off of his face, finger tips brushing his skin.
Rian calls at midnight. “It’s okay Jack, you can go home now. I’m on my way home,” he says, and he sounds tired. He hears a soft crying noise and he recognizes it as Dylan, and Jack sighs, Dylan is okay, Dylan is going home. “Is Alex sleeping?”
Jack nods, stiffling a yawn behind his hand. “Yeah. He’s been out for a couple hours now.”
From inside his car, Rian turns the steering wheel, glancing in the rear view mirror every second to look at Dylan. “Okay. I’ll be home in about ten minutes, so you can just go whenever.” It’s silent for a moment, and then Rian adds softly, “Thank you, Jack.”
“Of course,” Jack says. “I’ll be here whenever.”
They say their goodbyes and the lines click as they hang up. Jack calls Danny to tell him he’s on his way home and then presses a light kiss to Alex’s cheek. “Love you, bro,” he says to the unconscious man, shrugging his jacket on.
Rian gets back five minutes after Jack leaves. Their cars pass each other as Rian drives into and Jack drives out of the neighborhood. They wave, and stop and talk for a few moments before driving on. He changes Dylan’s diaper up in the nursery, putting clean pajamas on him before lying him down in his cot. The baby monitor is on when he leaves the room, switching off the light and watching the giraffe shaped night light switch on.
His husband is still sleeping on the sofa when he finally gets down there, the beginnings of a headache coming on. He can feel a pressure behind his eyes; Rian needs sleep. Alex is dreaming, they’re dark dreams, he hasn’t slept properly in months. He’s twitching a little, a helpless moan coming out of his lips. Rian sighs.
Alex’s arms are sticking out over the duvet. Rian slides his hands under Alex’s head, curving over his skull as he slides underneath, letting his head rest on his thighs. He’s at his best when he’s sleeping, but even his best isn’t good enough lately. He curves his hands down his arms, slowly, careful not to wake him up. He doesn’t know how long Alex is going to sleep, not with the amounts of laudanum currently in his system.
Angry red circles line the insides of his forearms. It makes Rian’s heart twinge painfully, because this is never what they did, this is never what Rian agreed to do to him. This is what Alex did to himself, a victim of the demons in his head.He traces his thumbs over the raised lines on his skin, red and angry, tears filling his eyes.
“I don’t know what to do,” Rian whispers to him, one hand tracing over the circles, the other brushing his hair back. “I don’t want to do it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
He leaves Alex to sleep on the couch. Rian is strong, but he couldn’t carry Alex up the stairs to their bedroom when he’s a dead weight like this. Alex gets the duvet too. He takes a blanket out of the linen closet in the hallway, falling asleep in his clothes, blanket pulled around him like a cocoon where he’s safe.
It’s seven o’clock in the morning when Rian opens his eyes again. He goes from asleep to awake in a couple of seconds, body tensing as he wakes up. His shoulders crack as he rolls them, sitting up and stretching arms to the ceiling and then standing up, socks sliding on the stairs as he makes his way down.
Alex is awake. He’s on the sofa, sitting upright with the duvet bunched at the end. He’s staring at nothing, tip of the pen digging through the flesh of his forearm once more. He’s destroying himself, from the inside out.
There’s a black sharpie marker in the drawer underneath the phone in the kitchen, next to the pad of paper for writing messages and shopping lists. He picks it up and uncaps it, holding the lid in the palm of his hand. “Alex,” he says, walking back to him, crouching in front of his legs. He rests his hand on his knee for a moment, looking up at him. Alex doesn’t look back, stares blankly over his shoulder as he keeps turning his wrist to the pen twists into his skin.
“Hey,” Rian whispers, gently tugging the pen from his grip. He draws a small black heart on the inside of his wrists, careful not to touch any of the raised lines from where the pen dug into his flesh. He watches Alex’s face as he traces the outline of the hearts, like he’s done so many times before. There’s a flicker in his eyes, Rian sees it, he knows he does. “I’m sorry,” he colors in the hearts, line by line. “I don’t want to have to do this.” One line, one line, one line. “I don’t have a choice. I can’t help you by myself.” Don’t look at Alex’s face, don’t look, don’t look. “I need you to get better so that you can come back and help me take care of Dylan.”
He looks at Alex’s face. It looks broken; he’s pale and his eyes are slightly sunken into his skull, cheekbones prominent.
Alex doesn’t want to understand what he means. “What are you saying, Rian?” he asks, voice as sharp as barbed wire and shards of glass and razors.
“You’re gonna get help,” Rian says as gently as he can, fingertips still touching his knees. “I don’t know how to fix you like this, I can’t do it this time, Alex.”
“I don’t need to go anywhere to get better,” he says, a hint of hysteria in his tone of voice. “I don’t want to go, there’s nothing wrong with me, Ri. Can’t you tell, I’m fine.”
“Alex, the doctor told you this. It’s not your fault, you can’t do anything about it. I can’t help you, I’m scared you’ll hurt yourself more,” his hands close around his wrists again, pulling his arms forward and turning his wrists so that he’s forced too look at his forearms. “You’re hurting yourself, Alex. I can’t stop you from doing this, and I can’t help you to get better.”
He pulls his arms out of his grip, twisting down the sofa and away from his husband. “There’s nothing wrong with my, Rian,” he snaps, eyes lighting fiercely. “Don’t take me away from my son, I can take care of him! I didn’t hurt him, I didn’t it wasn’t me. I wouldn’t hurt Dylan!” Alex’s voice keeps going up, higher and higher in pitch until it’s shrill and almost hurts to listen to.
“Alex, Alex!” Rian shifts over, moving with him. His hands grip at his shoulders, holding tight and not letting go. “I’m doing this for you!” Gives him a shake, trying to get him to pay attention. “Only for you, I don’t know what I’d do without you and you’re a danger to yourself right now, you’re hurting yourself, look at your goddam wrists.”
The smaller man hunches over, trying to get out of Rian’s grip. “No, no, it wasn’t me I wouldn’t do that,” he gasps, shoulders jerking as dry sobs tear through his throat. “I wouldn’t do that to Dylan, I’m better then that, I’m better then that.”
Rian’s heart is shattering into a million pieces, watching Alex fall apart like this. He’s shaking apart, shoulders heaving, dry, painful sobs tearing his throat. His eyes are wet and red, hysterical. “I’m better then that,” he keeps insisting, trying to make something true that he knows isn’t. “I’m better then that,” the worst thing is, he’s deluding himself into believing it, it wasn’t him that put the wounds on his wrists, it wasn’t him that hurt Dylan. He’s perfectly okay, it’s not what’s wrong with him, it’s what’s wrong with everyone else.
A low thudding on the door interrupts both of them. Alex’s head goes wild, twisting in both directions. He can see a white van with the words Baltimore Psychiatric parked next to Rian’s Chevy Cobalt. “No!” he practically screams, and Rian can hear Dylan’s answering scream. “I’m fine there is nothing wrong with me!”
The doorknob twists and swings open, two men in white scrubs and sneakers standing in the doorway. Alex has gone quiet all of a sudden, sitting still on the sofa, Rian’s arms still holding tight to him. Dylan is still crying in the background, but nobody moves to go get the crying baby. Both men standing in the doorway are like, six foot something, one much skinnier than the other. The skinny one is carrying a medical bag.
“Rian Dawson?” the dark one asks, and his accent is lightly hispanic, just a small thing that’s barely noticable. He nods.
“We’re here for your... husband?” the other one says, looking at Alex. It’s clear that he’s the one they’re there for. His eyes are too bright, too shiny, looking way too out of it to be completely sober or right. Rian nods again.
He squeezes Alex’s shoulders, trying his best to be reassuring. It’s hard like this. “You need to sign these papers,” the skinny one says, pulling a clipboard out of the medical bag. He holds it, and a ballpoint pen, out to Rian, who stands up to take it. He barely reads through what he’s agreeing to and signing his name under. He doesn’t really care right now.
Closer to the two men in scrubs, Rian can see name tags. The dark haired hispanic is called Gabe, the skinny one is William. Gabe smiles politely at Rian, side stepping around him and then crouching in front of Alex, arms resting on the sofa next to his legs. If Rian turned his head a little, he’d be able to see Gabe’s lips moving, but not hear what he was saying.
William has just started to say something to Rian about the paperwork and Dylan has started to quiet down because no one has gone up there yet when there’s the unmistakeable sound of someone being slapped resounding through the room. “Fucking no.” Alex snarls, and he doesn’t even look scared, he looks angry. Gabe looks shocked, sitting back on his heels and staring at Alex like that was the last thing he expected out of him. Rian i about to apologize for Alex when William touches his arm and says, “No, it’s okay,” when Alex starts off again.
“I’m not going anywhere with you two. I’m staying here, I don’t need to go anywhere, I belong here, this is my home, this is where my family is at,” he swears up and down, eyes fiery and hard, as crazed as they were earlier. “I’m just fine none of it was me. I don’t need to go anywhere, right, Ri?” he looks in Rian’s direction, and he’s apparently forgotten about the discussion they were having prior to the two wards showing up. “...Ri?” he asks, faltering a little when he doesn’t respond right away.
He freezes when his eyes meet his husbands. Gabe has recovered. He stands up, and he’s taller then Alex is, touching his shoulder carefully. “Alexander,” he says, r’s rolling slightly. “We can do this two ways, and the easiest way is for you to co-operate with us.”
Alex twists his head around, narrowing his eyes at Gabe. His tongue darts out to lick his cracking lips, and Rian thinks for a split second that they might get out of this easily. Of course he’s wrong. “I’m going no where,” Alex snaps, venom dripping down his voice. Gabe and William share a look, and William nods, crouching to the floor and doing something with his medical bag.
Rian doesn’t pay attention to what he’s doing, Alex has started yelling again and that means that Dylan is up and yelling again too. There is so much noise and everything is blurring together. Gabe is trying to get Alex to stand still, has his arms pinned behind his back but Alex keeps squirming, legs kicking out at anything, banging against the walls and furniture.
He’s screaming, incessant screaming from his lips. And then William straightens up and Alex sees what he’s holding in his hand and he goes still, eyes wide. William is holding a syringe. And then he starts kicking and screaming with a vengeance, putting more effort into it than before.
“He’s terrified of needles,” Rian says, stepping between William and the other two men, shielding Alex’s gaze from it because he’s still his husband, he still wants to be his knight in shining armour, even though all of this is practically his fault anyway. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
William arches an eyebrow at him. “He’ll get worse if you try and get any closer to him, you should see him when he’s completely calm and just needs a flu shot,” Rian says, arching an eyebrow right back. The two wards look between each other over Rian’s shoulder, Alex grunts in protest still echoing.
“How do you propose we get him out then?” they ask, and Rian doesn’t turn around because he knows that if he does he’ll see Alex and Alex will look back and he’ll just snap and tell them to go away except Alex really needs to go, he needs to get better so that they can take care of Dylan together.
“I don’t know,” he mutters. “He doesn’t need to be sedated. Not like that,” Rian shakes his head. “Pick him up or carry him out there or whatever, but he’s not an animal, he doesn’t need to be knocked out.” The look that Alex gives him is almost grateful, so damn close, but then William sighs and stoops over to pick up his feet and Alex is kicking and fighting them again, twisting and squirming and kicking his long legs out.
He’s honest to God screaming now, screaming loud and shrill, enough that the neighbors can hear and are starting to peer out of doors and windows and through curtains. “I’m fucking okay!” Alex screams, trying to bite Gabe’s arm. “I don’t need to go away, I’d never hurt my child, I’m a good father, I’m a good father. Tell them Rian, I don’t need this, let me stay!”
Rian wants to cover his ears. Wants to punch the two men for the way they’re handling his husband, even though he’s the one who told them to handle him that way. Alex keeps screaming as they leave the house. He follows them, right behind them, just barely out of the way of Alex’s kicking. “I’m a good parent! I’m a good father!” The neighbors are all staring at the scene unfolding on the Gaskarth-Dawson driveway, not even bothering to be discreet about it. Rian wants to punch them all. “I didn’t do it! It wasn’t me I’d never hurt my baby!”
The neighbors are all out of their houses by now, standing on the edge of their perfectly manicured lawns in dressing gowns and slippers, whispering behind their hands and pointing. Alex keeps kicking, thrashing around. “I don’t want to go, don’t do this to me Rian!” he yells, and his voice is starting to get hoarse from over using it. “I’m fine there is nothing fucking wrong with me!”
Gabe holds Alex’s arms behind his back, feet planted firmly on the ground as Alex struggles against him. “I’d never hurt Dylan, it wasn’t me, let me go,” he screams, hair sticking to his face. William lets go of his feet so he can open the back door of the van, pulling a gurney out of the back. Rian doesn’t want to watch. He wants to go back inside and hide in his bed, cover his eyes and scream until everything goes back to normal, until he can have his husband back.
He grabs his feet again, lifting him up off the ground. Alex’s struggling gets less as they lift him onto the gurney, strapping his arms and legs down. “Please, don’t do this, you do’nt need to do this to me,” Alex begs, eyes boring into Rian’s. He’s pleading now, begging, he’s barely even struggling against the straps keeping him in place. “I’m not crazy I didn’t hurt Dylan, I’d never hurt Dylan, Ri, you have to know that, it wasn’t me, why would you think it was me? I’m a good parent. I’m a good parent, I am.” His voice keeps rising again until he’s practically hysterical, pushing against the straps.
“Rian!” Alex screams as the two wards push the gurney into the back of the van. “Don’t do this, please, I’m fine, I’m okay, I don’t need it, Rian please. I’m a good dad, I am, I never hurt Dylan I swear,”
His head shakes from left to right slowly, tears dripping down his cheeks to his chin, splashing in wet drops on his chin. “I can’t, I can’t,” he murmurs, pressing his palms together. Alex keeps struggling against the bonds, twisting viciously, making the van shake.
“I’m sorry,” William says, grabbing a syringe out of a cupboard in the back of the van, holding it up so he can see what it is and grabbing Alex’s arm. He’s much stronger than his wiry frame gives him credit for, holding Alex’s arm down as he pushes the needle into the blue vein in the crease of his elbow. Alex cries out, tensing even more then he already was. William presses down on the plunger, clear liquid sedative seeping through the syringe into his veins.
There’s about two minutes between the needle leaving his skin and Alex passing out. He struggles for about a minute and a half after the sedatives are in his system, slowing down the more time passes. Rian is standing next to him when he does, stroking his fingertips over his face. He can’t bring himself to apologize again, not even when Alex’s eyes roll back into his head, whites showing through the slits in his closed eyelids.
Gabe and William are moving around him, strapping the gurney to the floor and locking cupboards. “I can’t just.” Rian starts, fingertips grazing Alex’s arm. There’s a drop of blood welling up from where the needle pierced his skin. “Hey, can you?” he asks, looking around and touching Gabe’s shoulder, pointing at the blood.
His elbow is swabbed with an alcoholic wipe, a plain brown band-aid placed over it. Rian touches Alex’s arm again. Part of him wants him to wake up, to start kicking and screaming and putting up a fight. It’s almost too easy when he’s dead to the world. He feels like he’s cheating somehow.
“We need to leave now,” William says quietly from behind him, standing on the road outside the van. Rian nods and touches Alex’s face again. He leans down and presses his lips to his forehead, mouthing I love you against the skin. “Someone will call you when he gets there,” Gabe says from around the front of the van, head sticking out through the passenger seat window.
Rian nods again. When he steps out onto the pavement, people are still milling about in front of their houses, talking in hushed tones to each other. Everyone stops and stares at Rian when he’s out in the sunlight, and he gets that feeling that people have just been talking about him. He can’t be fucked into caring, though. Gabe gives him a friendly wave as William starts the car.
He stares after it for a long, long time after it’s driven off with his husband passed out in the back, arms wrapped around himself.
A/N 2: so uh. i apologize. again. really. comments are still like blowjobs, nothing changes because i don't have a follow up for this yet. i have a few things planned for things that happen in between this and For Always, Forever, but nothing for after this yet. Sorry!
Author: Amanda, who goes by the aliasapodiopsys
Pairing: Rilex (Rian and Alex Gaskarth-Dawson)
Rating: R
Summary: Half the bottle is gone. Half the bottle is gone. Half the bottle is gone.
Disclaimer: do not own they're married they belong to each other amen. title and cut belong to Sparks the Rescue/Lady Antebellum
A/N: um. i wasn't going to post this until tomorrow/later today but Gabe talked me into it. I'm honestly shocked and stunned to tears by the amounts of comments i got in such a short period of time for wedding fic. you guys are the best, you're why i write. Uh, I'm sorry about this. I really, really am. And uh. Yeah, I'm sorry. Blame Gabe for this he talked me into posting it via more Holiday fic.
also! alot of this idea came from the book/movie Shutter Island, by Dennis Lehane. so, if it seems a little familiar yeah a lot of this was based off of parts of that book.
tumblr is here, br0.
cum tell me what you think i will not be appreciative if you read it and then make like a tree and leave.
This is the follow up to Saturday Skin and it's sequel For Always, Forever
The big bottle of laudanum is perched, half empty, on the kitchen counter when Rian gets home from work. He puts his bag down on a chair, loosening his tie as he stares uncomprehendingly at the bottle. There were supposed to be six months worth of doses for Alex, and they’d only gotten it a month ago. He calls out, “Alex, baby?” uncertainly, worry underlining his voice.
Half the bottle is gone. Half the bottle is gone. Half the bottle is gone.
Where is Dylan?
Alex is curled on the couch, eyes fixed on what looks like a cold mug of coffee. He’s not looking, but he’s drawing circles slowly on his arm, around and around and around. “Alex?” he asks carefully, not quite touching him as he crouches in front of him. The brunette doesn’t quite look at him, looks vaguely over his shoulder instead, making a quiet ‘hmm?’ noise.
The pen doesn’t stop moving across his arm. Rian makes to stop him, stop drawing those incessant circles but he stops, focusing on what it is he’s doing to his arm. It’s not a sharpie marker, not like any of the ones Rian normally uses on his skin. It’s a blue ballpoint pen, putting as many angry red lines onto his skin as it is ink. “Alex, how many doses did you take today?” Rian asks, fighting to keep his voice steady. He needs to find out where Dylan is, what Alex did with him.
“I don’t know,” Alex answers him, his voice as vague as his gaze. “There’s not enough though. I can’t sleep. I want to sleep,” he says, voice thin and almost see through. “Not enough, not enough, not enough.”
His eyes are listless, not focused on anything that’s visible to Rian. He suppresses the urge to snap his fingers in front of his face, to get Alex to look at him because he needs to get this situation under control. “Alex,” he says. “Alex, look at me.” Rian closes his fingers around Alex’s jaw, thumb pressing into his cheek. He needs his attention. “Alex, did you drink half of the bottle?”
“There wasn’t enough,” he says again, a strange lilt to his voice, making it almost sound like he’s almost singing. Rian stares at him, trying to make him meet his eyes. It doesn’t work.
“Is Jack and Danny watching Dylan?” Rian asks finally, still gripping Alex’s jaw. Alex still won’t look at him.
He says, “No, Dylan is upstairs. Dylan is sleeping. The baby is sleeping.” he smiles wide, showing Rian his teeth. His eyes are finally showing something other then listlessness. He looks crazed.
Rian yells.
The stairs keep tripping him on his way up. Alex doesn’t even blink when he shoves him away, scrambling as his socks slide on the carpet. “Dylan!” he screams, the palm of his hand bleeding where he scraped it against the wall. He’s screaming no, screaming please, screaming not my baby, screaming God, I’m begging you, screaming no no no.
The two and a half month old baby is in it’s cot. His chest is rising and falling, barely. There’s a bruise on the side of his face; it wasn’t there when Rian left for work that morning. Rian picks up his child, so, so carefully. He’s afraid he’ll break. He doesn’t need to turn around to know that Alex is standing in the doorway, eyes distant and smile frightening.
“What did you do?” Rian asks, rocking his son - their son, the baby that they made together. Alex looks guilty, barely, hands pushing his hair out of his face.
“He wouldn’t stop crying,” he whimpered, sliding down the doorframe to the floor, pulling his knees up to his chest. “I couldn’t think and I couldn’t sleep and he wouldn’t stop crying. I needed the quiet. I needed him to stop,” he said, tears streaking down his face. His eyes are almost clear now, but they haven’t been the same, not really, not since Dylan was born. They’ve been permanently behind some sort of haze, and Rian hates himself because he can’t get through it to help him.
The ring he wears on his finger is supposed to be a promise, but he doesn’t know how to keep it, not right now. He looks at Alex and he can see the man he fell in love with, tall and bright and loud, wearing one of his hideous arabian scarves that he later forced him to throw out.
Angry red welts are decorating Alex’s arms, right where he dug the pen in too hard. Not all of them are actually bleeding, but there are drops of blood clinging to his skin in places. It makes Rian feel sick, sicker, he can’t stand the sight of it, knowing that he might be able to do something but can’t. He can’t fight off Alex’s demons because they’re in his head.
“He needed to stop, so I - I - I shook him, it wasn’t that hard, just a tiny little shake, he stopped crying but he fell sideways and hit his head and I didn’t know what to do so I put him to bed, Rian, Ri, baby I’m sorry, I didn’t know what to do.”
Rian stares at him the whole time, cradling Dylan in his arms, right hand cupping the back of his head protectively. He’s afraid of his husband right now, afraid because he doesn’t know what to do or how to help him, afraid because if he’s so capable of hurting himself and hurting Dylan with barely any remorse, afraid because he might hurt him.
(He wouldn’t care if Alex hurt him, wouldn’t care if Alex broke his nose or bruised his ribs. He’d always go back to him because he loves Alex over anything and everything, loves Alex to the sun and back, loves Alex - and it shames him deeply, he would never, ever admit it to anyone - more then he loves his own son.)
He needs help. He needs to take Dylan to the hospital, because his child is not okay, he’s barely breathing and barely moving and Rian is so acutely aware that he is going to die if he doesn’t get him to professional help.
But Alex, Alex.
Alex, his Alex, his husband, his other (better) half is leaning against the wall and rocking back and forth, looking lost and hopeless and exhausted. He says, “Alex,” and Alex lifts his head; he’s gone back to being distant, eyes draped over by the misty veil again, not looking directly at him but over his shoulder. He’s telling him silently that he’s listening. “I need to take Dylan to the hospital. I’m going to call Jack and tell him to come here because I can’t take you with me.”
The phone call is rushed. Jack has barely answered the phone and said, “Sup,” when Rian is saying, ‘I need you to get here as fast as you can. Alex isn’t right and I need to take Dylan to the hospital.’ He hangs up before Jack can even agree to it because he’s got a timebomb on his hands right now, wasting time could ruin everything. Jack is going to come anyway. That’s the kind of person he is, he’ll be there if Alex and Rian need him, no questions asked.
Rian leaves with Dylan before Jack gets to their house. He’s still rocking back and forth on his heels on the floor of Dylan’s nursery when Jack gets there, sitting down next to him and sliding an arm around his shoulder. He’s lost weight since Dylan was born, Jack notices, his shoulders are bonier then they used to be. “Hey,” he whispers, and that’s all it takes, Alex turns and presses his face into his best friends shoulder, shaking as he sobs.
“I didn’t mean to.” His voice comes out in shuddering gasps, shoulders jerking as tears drip down his face, clinging to his chin before falling onto the black fabric of his hoodie. “It was an accident, I couldn’t make him stop crying.”
Jack nods, making quiet soothing noises. “I know, Alex,” he he says, nose pressed into his friends hair. “I know you didn’t mean to.”
Alex takes two tablespoons of laudanum under Jack’s careful eye, watching him to make sure he doesn’t take more then that. He’s not sure it’s a good idea that he takes any more, because Rian called him from the hospital explaining the situation (and also saying that Dylan was going to be okay) but Alex needs to sleep. It takes about twenty minutes, but he passes out on the couch, head in Jack’s lap and the duvet from the bedroom draped across his skinny frame.
Most people gain weight after bringing a child into the world - Alex lost it, lost his weight and a part of his mind. There are dried tears streaking his face, his hair matted and greasy. He doesn’t even look at peace in his sleep, Jack notes, a small muscle in the corner of his eye twitching. He strokes some hair off of his face, finger tips brushing his skin.
Rian calls at midnight. “It’s okay Jack, you can go home now. I’m on my way home,” he says, and he sounds tired. He hears a soft crying noise and he recognizes it as Dylan, and Jack sighs, Dylan is okay, Dylan is going home. “Is Alex sleeping?”
Jack nods, stiffling a yawn behind his hand. “Yeah. He’s been out for a couple hours now.”
From inside his car, Rian turns the steering wheel, glancing in the rear view mirror every second to look at Dylan. “Okay. I’ll be home in about ten minutes, so you can just go whenever.” It’s silent for a moment, and then Rian adds softly, “Thank you, Jack.”
“Of course,” Jack says. “I’ll be here whenever.”
They say their goodbyes and the lines click as they hang up. Jack calls Danny to tell him he’s on his way home and then presses a light kiss to Alex’s cheek. “Love you, bro,” he says to the unconscious man, shrugging his jacket on.
Rian gets back five minutes after Jack leaves. Their cars pass each other as Rian drives into and Jack drives out of the neighborhood. They wave, and stop and talk for a few moments before driving on. He changes Dylan’s diaper up in the nursery, putting clean pajamas on him before lying him down in his cot. The baby monitor is on when he leaves the room, switching off the light and watching the giraffe shaped night light switch on.
His husband is still sleeping on the sofa when he finally gets down there, the beginnings of a headache coming on. He can feel a pressure behind his eyes; Rian needs sleep. Alex is dreaming, they’re dark dreams, he hasn’t slept properly in months. He’s twitching a little, a helpless moan coming out of his lips. Rian sighs.
Alex’s arms are sticking out over the duvet. Rian slides his hands under Alex’s head, curving over his skull as he slides underneath, letting his head rest on his thighs. He’s at his best when he’s sleeping, but even his best isn’t good enough lately. He curves his hands down his arms, slowly, careful not to wake him up. He doesn’t know how long Alex is going to sleep, not with the amounts of laudanum currently in his system.
Angry red circles line the insides of his forearms. It makes Rian’s heart twinge painfully, because this is never what they did, this is never what Rian agreed to do to him. This is what Alex did to himself, a victim of the demons in his head.He traces his thumbs over the raised lines on his skin, red and angry, tears filling his eyes.
“I don’t know what to do,” Rian whispers to him, one hand tracing over the circles, the other brushing his hair back. “I don’t want to do it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
He leaves Alex to sleep on the couch. Rian is strong, but he couldn’t carry Alex up the stairs to their bedroom when he’s a dead weight like this. Alex gets the duvet too. He takes a blanket out of the linen closet in the hallway, falling asleep in his clothes, blanket pulled around him like a cocoon where he’s safe.
It’s seven o’clock in the morning when Rian opens his eyes again. He goes from asleep to awake in a couple of seconds, body tensing as he wakes up. His shoulders crack as he rolls them, sitting up and stretching arms to the ceiling and then standing up, socks sliding on the stairs as he makes his way down.
Alex is awake. He’s on the sofa, sitting upright with the duvet bunched at the end. He’s staring at nothing, tip of the pen digging through the flesh of his forearm once more. He’s destroying himself, from the inside out.
There’s a black sharpie marker in the drawer underneath the phone in the kitchen, next to the pad of paper for writing messages and shopping lists. He picks it up and uncaps it, holding the lid in the palm of his hand. “Alex,” he says, walking back to him, crouching in front of his legs. He rests his hand on his knee for a moment, looking up at him. Alex doesn’t look back, stares blankly over his shoulder as he keeps turning his wrist to the pen twists into his skin.
“Hey,” Rian whispers, gently tugging the pen from his grip. He draws a small black heart on the inside of his wrists, careful not to touch any of the raised lines from where the pen dug into his flesh. He watches Alex’s face as he traces the outline of the hearts, like he’s done so many times before. There’s a flicker in his eyes, Rian sees it, he knows he does. “I’m sorry,” he colors in the hearts, line by line. “I don’t want to have to do this.” One line, one line, one line. “I don’t have a choice. I can’t help you by myself.” Don’t look at Alex’s face, don’t look, don’t look. “I need you to get better so that you can come back and help me take care of Dylan.”
He looks at Alex’s face. It looks broken; he’s pale and his eyes are slightly sunken into his skull, cheekbones prominent.
Alex doesn’t want to understand what he means. “What are you saying, Rian?” he asks, voice as sharp as barbed wire and shards of glass and razors.
“You’re gonna get help,” Rian says as gently as he can, fingertips still touching his knees. “I don’t know how to fix you like this, I can’t do it this time, Alex.”
“I don’t need to go anywhere to get better,” he says, a hint of hysteria in his tone of voice. “I don’t want to go, there’s nothing wrong with me, Ri. Can’t you tell, I’m fine.”
“Alex, the doctor told you this. It’s not your fault, you can’t do anything about it. I can’t help you, I’m scared you’ll hurt yourself more,” his hands close around his wrists again, pulling his arms forward and turning his wrists so that he’s forced too look at his forearms. “You’re hurting yourself, Alex. I can’t stop you from doing this, and I can’t help you to get better.”
He pulls his arms out of his grip, twisting down the sofa and away from his husband. “There’s nothing wrong with my, Rian,” he snaps, eyes lighting fiercely. “Don’t take me away from my son, I can take care of him! I didn’t hurt him, I didn’t it wasn’t me. I wouldn’t hurt Dylan!” Alex’s voice keeps going up, higher and higher in pitch until it’s shrill and almost hurts to listen to.
“Alex, Alex!” Rian shifts over, moving with him. His hands grip at his shoulders, holding tight and not letting go. “I’m doing this for you!” Gives him a shake, trying to get him to pay attention. “Only for you, I don’t know what I’d do without you and you’re a danger to yourself right now, you’re hurting yourself, look at your goddam wrists.”
The smaller man hunches over, trying to get out of Rian’s grip. “No, no, it wasn’t me I wouldn’t do that,” he gasps, shoulders jerking as dry sobs tear through his throat. “I wouldn’t do that to Dylan, I’m better then that, I’m better then that.”
Rian’s heart is shattering into a million pieces, watching Alex fall apart like this. He’s shaking apart, shoulders heaving, dry, painful sobs tearing his throat. His eyes are wet and red, hysterical. “I’m better then that,” he keeps insisting, trying to make something true that he knows isn’t. “I’m better then that,” the worst thing is, he’s deluding himself into believing it, it wasn’t him that put the wounds on his wrists, it wasn’t him that hurt Dylan. He’s perfectly okay, it’s not what’s wrong with him, it’s what’s wrong with everyone else.
A low thudding on the door interrupts both of them. Alex’s head goes wild, twisting in both directions. He can see a white van with the words Baltimore Psychiatric parked next to Rian’s Chevy Cobalt. “No!” he practically screams, and Rian can hear Dylan’s answering scream. “I’m fine there is nothing wrong with me!”
The doorknob twists and swings open, two men in white scrubs and sneakers standing in the doorway. Alex has gone quiet all of a sudden, sitting still on the sofa, Rian’s arms still holding tight to him. Dylan is still crying in the background, but nobody moves to go get the crying baby. Both men standing in the doorway are like, six foot something, one much skinnier than the other. The skinny one is carrying a medical bag.
“Rian Dawson?” the dark one asks, and his accent is lightly hispanic, just a small thing that’s barely noticable. He nods.
“We’re here for your... husband?” the other one says, looking at Alex. It’s clear that he’s the one they’re there for. His eyes are too bright, too shiny, looking way too out of it to be completely sober or right. Rian nods again.
He squeezes Alex’s shoulders, trying his best to be reassuring. It’s hard like this. “You need to sign these papers,” the skinny one says, pulling a clipboard out of the medical bag. He holds it, and a ballpoint pen, out to Rian, who stands up to take it. He barely reads through what he’s agreeing to and signing his name under. He doesn’t really care right now.
Closer to the two men in scrubs, Rian can see name tags. The dark haired hispanic is called Gabe, the skinny one is William. Gabe smiles politely at Rian, side stepping around him and then crouching in front of Alex, arms resting on the sofa next to his legs. If Rian turned his head a little, he’d be able to see Gabe’s lips moving, but not hear what he was saying.
William has just started to say something to Rian about the paperwork and Dylan has started to quiet down because no one has gone up there yet when there’s the unmistakeable sound of someone being slapped resounding through the room. “Fucking no.” Alex snarls, and he doesn’t even look scared, he looks angry. Gabe looks shocked, sitting back on his heels and staring at Alex like that was the last thing he expected out of him. Rian i about to apologize for Alex when William touches his arm and says, “No, it’s okay,” when Alex starts off again.
“I’m not going anywhere with you two. I’m staying here, I don’t need to go anywhere, I belong here, this is my home, this is where my family is at,” he swears up and down, eyes fiery and hard, as crazed as they were earlier. “I’m just fine none of it was me. I don’t need to go anywhere, right, Ri?” he looks in Rian’s direction, and he’s apparently forgotten about the discussion they were having prior to the two wards showing up. “...Ri?” he asks, faltering a little when he doesn’t respond right away.
He freezes when his eyes meet his husbands. Gabe has recovered. He stands up, and he’s taller then Alex is, touching his shoulder carefully. “Alexander,” he says, r’s rolling slightly. “We can do this two ways, and the easiest way is for you to co-operate with us.”
Alex twists his head around, narrowing his eyes at Gabe. His tongue darts out to lick his cracking lips, and Rian thinks for a split second that they might get out of this easily. Of course he’s wrong. “I’m going no where,” Alex snaps, venom dripping down his voice. Gabe and William share a look, and William nods, crouching to the floor and doing something with his medical bag.
Rian doesn’t pay attention to what he’s doing, Alex has started yelling again and that means that Dylan is up and yelling again too. There is so much noise and everything is blurring together. Gabe is trying to get Alex to stand still, has his arms pinned behind his back but Alex keeps squirming, legs kicking out at anything, banging against the walls and furniture.
He’s screaming, incessant screaming from his lips. And then William straightens up and Alex sees what he’s holding in his hand and he goes still, eyes wide. William is holding a syringe. And then he starts kicking and screaming with a vengeance, putting more effort into it than before.
“He’s terrified of needles,” Rian says, stepping between William and the other two men, shielding Alex’s gaze from it because he’s still his husband, he still wants to be his knight in shining armour, even though all of this is practically his fault anyway. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
William arches an eyebrow at him. “He’ll get worse if you try and get any closer to him, you should see him when he’s completely calm and just needs a flu shot,” Rian says, arching an eyebrow right back. The two wards look between each other over Rian’s shoulder, Alex grunts in protest still echoing.
“How do you propose we get him out then?” they ask, and Rian doesn’t turn around because he knows that if he does he’ll see Alex and Alex will look back and he’ll just snap and tell them to go away except Alex really needs to go, he needs to get better so that they can take care of Dylan together.
“I don’t know,” he mutters. “He doesn’t need to be sedated. Not like that,” Rian shakes his head. “Pick him up or carry him out there or whatever, but he’s not an animal, he doesn’t need to be knocked out.” The look that Alex gives him is almost grateful, so damn close, but then William sighs and stoops over to pick up his feet and Alex is kicking and fighting them again, twisting and squirming and kicking his long legs out.
He’s honest to God screaming now, screaming loud and shrill, enough that the neighbors can hear and are starting to peer out of doors and windows and through curtains. “I’m fucking okay!” Alex screams, trying to bite Gabe’s arm. “I don’t need to go away, I’d never hurt my child, I’m a good father, I’m a good father. Tell them Rian, I don’t need this, let me stay!”
Rian wants to cover his ears. Wants to punch the two men for the way they’re handling his husband, even though he’s the one who told them to handle him that way. Alex keeps screaming as they leave the house. He follows them, right behind them, just barely out of the way of Alex’s kicking. “I’m a good parent! I’m a good father!” The neighbors are all staring at the scene unfolding on the Gaskarth-Dawson driveway, not even bothering to be discreet about it. Rian wants to punch them all. “I didn’t do it! It wasn’t me I’d never hurt my baby!”
The neighbors are all out of their houses by now, standing on the edge of their perfectly manicured lawns in dressing gowns and slippers, whispering behind their hands and pointing. Alex keeps kicking, thrashing around. “I don’t want to go, don’t do this to me Rian!” he yells, and his voice is starting to get hoarse from over using it. “I’m fine there is nothing fucking wrong with me!”
Gabe holds Alex’s arms behind his back, feet planted firmly on the ground as Alex struggles against him. “I’d never hurt Dylan, it wasn’t me, let me go,” he screams, hair sticking to his face. William lets go of his feet so he can open the back door of the van, pulling a gurney out of the back. Rian doesn’t want to watch. He wants to go back inside and hide in his bed, cover his eyes and scream until everything goes back to normal, until he can have his husband back.
He grabs his feet again, lifting him up off the ground. Alex’s struggling gets less as they lift him onto the gurney, strapping his arms and legs down. “Please, don’t do this, you do’nt need to do this to me,” Alex begs, eyes boring into Rian’s. He’s pleading now, begging, he’s barely even struggling against the straps keeping him in place. “I’m not crazy I didn’t hurt Dylan, I’d never hurt Dylan, Ri, you have to know that, it wasn’t me, why would you think it was me? I’m a good parent. I’m a good parent, I am.” His voice keeps rising again until he’s practically hysterical, pushing against the straps.
“Rian!” Alex screams as the two wards push the gurney into the back of the van. “Don’t do this, please, I’m fine, I’m okay, I don’t need it, Rian please. I’m a good dad, I am, I never hurt Dylan I swear,”
His head shakes from left to right slowly, tears dripping down his cheeks to his chin, splashing in wet drops on his chin. “I can’t, I can’t,” he murmurs, pressing his palms together. Alex keeps struggling against the bonds, twisting viciously, making the van shake.
“I’m sorry,” William says, grabbing a syringe out of a cupboard in the back of the van, holding it up so he can see what it is and grabbing Alex’s arm. He’s much stronger than his wiry frame gives him credit for, holding Alex’s arm down as he pushes the needle into the blue vein in the crease of his elbow. Alex cries out, tensing even more then he already was. William presses down on the plunger, clear liquid sedative seeping through the syringe into his veins.
There’s about two minutes between the needle leaving his skin and Alex passing out. He struggles for about a minute and a half after the sedatives are in his system, slowing down the more time passes. Rian is standing next to him when he does, stroking his fingertips over his face. He can’t bring himself to apologize again, not even when Alex’s eyes roll back into his head, whites showing through the slits in his closed eyelids.
Gabe and William are moving around him, strapping the gurney to the floor and locking cupboards. “I can’t just.” Rian starts, fingertips grazing Alex’s arm. There’s a drop of blood welling up from where the needle pierced his skin. “Hey, can you?” he asks, looking around and touching Gabe’s shoulder, pointing at the blood.
His elbow is swabbed with an alcoholic wipe, a plain brown band-aid placed over it. Rian touches Alex’s arm again. Part of him wants him to wake up, to start kicking and screaming and putting up a fight. It’s almost too easy when he’s dead to the world. He feels like he’s cheating somehow.
“We need to leave now,” William says quietly from behind him, standing on the road outside the van. Rian nods and touches Alex’s face again. He leans down and presses his lips to his forehead, mouthing I love you against the skin. “Someone will call you when he gets there,” Gabe says from around the front of the van, head sticking out through the passenger seat window.
Rian nods again. When he steps out onto the pavement, people are still milling about in front of their houses, talking in hushed tones to each other. Everyone stops and stares at Rian when he’s out in the sunlight, and he gets that feeling that people have just been talking about him. He can’t be fucked into caring, though. Gabe gives him a friendly wave as William starts the car.
He stares after it for a long, long time after it’s driven off with his husband passed out in the back, arms wrapped around himself.
A/N 2: so uh. i apologize. again. really. comments are still like blowjobs, nothing changes because i don't have a follow up for this yet. i have a few things planned for things that happen in between this and For Always, Forever, but nothing for after this yet. Sorry!