"Dear agony, just let go of me..."

[nickthewarbler]

Who: nickthewarbler and couturejourno
What: Facing demons
Where: Dani and Benny's apartment
When & Time: A little over a week after THIS
Rating: Adult and triggery themes

Dani hadn't sugar-coated anything, so Nick's choice to meet his sister-in-law was well-informed. That didn't make it any easier to face. Really, the only reason he agreed was so she didn't have to go into

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[couturejourno]

If Leslie were honest with herself, she understood Nick's apprehension about the whole situation of meeting her. Getting down to the nitty-gritty, deep down feelings about the whole thing, it wasn't the easiest thing for her either to go and meet someone whose only link with her was the person she had loved, trusted, and then been physically harmed and threatened by. She couldn't imagine it from Nick's perspective. It had gone on far longer with Nick, and there was sexual assault in the mix, too. All from the person who'd promised to love him.

"Hi, Nick," Leslie replied, seeing the flicker of recognition in his eyes. She and Neil were by no means identical, but they were very clearly related, and she moved to sit down across from Nick, wanting to put them on the same level quickly so he wouldn't feel threatened. "I'm Leslie. I..."

Suddenly, she felt quite stupid. Nice to meet you was weak. It was also a lie. Not that meeting Nick himself wasn't nice, because she was sure that somewhere behind the walls he'd been forced to build for

[nickthewarbler]

And then there was just silence. Nick's arms curled up to hug himself and he realised that under normal circumstances, it would be polite to offer his hand. He didn't want to be touched, though. About the only people who got away with it were Jeff, Dani, Tab and Benny, and even then he still had freak-outs on Jeff when he first woke up occasionally. He hadn't even managed to figure out what he and Jeff were meant to be. Just... something beyond friends, but what yet was still too much for Nick to wrap his head around. There was comfort and closeness, but intimacy wasn't anywhere near on the cards and Nick wouldn't confirm or deny any dating status until he knew what the outcome of his trial would be. Even then, he wasn't sure he even wanted another relationship, but more time was needed to sort out where his head was, and for now, Jeff understood that, which was something Nick was eternally grateful for. All he needed to do was make it through the trial, and then look at where the shattered pieces of his life had fallen after

[couturejourno]

It was uncanny, really. Nick's behavior was so similar to the way Sean had acted when he dated Neil. She hadn't seen him in the years since their breakup, but she could only wonder if he'd ever managed to find happiness after what had happened to him. Her eyes took in the frightened form of the man in front of her, and she tried to smile, but the gesture was swallowed up in the pain of seeing what her brother had turned someone else into

[nickthewarbler]

Nick folded his arms across him and rested them on the table, using the leverage to stretch the muscles in his back. Last night had been a bad one, with nightmares that had the whole house up, including Benny. It was probably knowing the meeting with Leslie was coming, and Nick's mind wanted to slot into overdrive. He made himself sick, and remembered how Jeff sat with him on the bathroom floor just holding him while he bawled his eyes out as that feeling of helplessness settled over him once again

[couturejourno]

Leslie recognized the self-preserving gesture immediately, and in any other situation, she would've reached out to comfort Nick with a gentle touch on the arm, but she knew that would be entirely counterproductive, and probably would freak Nick out to no end.

So she kept to her side of the table, quietly listening as Nick shared some of the godawful things Neil had done to him. It was hard to stomach. The physical assault was bad enough, but purposefully putting his husband in a diabetic coma, and, from what Dani had already told her, had forced himself on him sexually in the past. It broke her heart to know that Nick had suffered like that. "No," she said softly, holding her hands up, palms out. "We don't have to talk about him anymore." She paused, giving him a sad smile. "You don't need to thank me, though, Nick... I should've spoken up sooner, but... I was afraid to. I guess that doesn't really help anything, but... It's true."

[nickthewarbler]

"Thank you," Nick murmured and then cleared his throat. "Which I realise probably makes it feel like we have nothing to talk about anymore, so why the hell are we here? But I... if you want to know, I can tell you about things that happened, or about me, if I can. I just don't want to talk about him directly. Who he was, how he got to where he did... it's just still taking a lot for me to realise I'm not locked under him. We keep on that track and I'll probably start defending him and singing his praises..."

That took a hell of a lot to admit. A couple of months ago, he hadn't been able to. He still shouldered a lot of the blame for what happened, that maybe he was flawed as a husband that Neil couldn't tolerate. Some days, he still fell into that trap. "It's good for me to talk about stuff, so they tell me." He pointed over to the kitchen counter where Dani had discreetly lined up three boxes of tissues. "Preparation of an attorney, she's relentless. She should have been a Boy Scout."

[couturejourno]

"Okay," Leslie said softly, nodding at Nick. "You can tell me whatever you want to tell me... Whatever you feel comfortable with. I'm not going anywhere. I cleared my schedule for today." She'd also cleared it for the other times they'd planned to meet and Nick had changed his mind, but that was beside the point, and a fact she couldn't be angry with him for. She had been physically abused by her brother exactly once, and Nick had spent his entire marriage in fear of the man who was supposed to love him. He was diabetic, and instead of holding him and loving him when he was feeling bad from the diabetes, her brother had aggravated his condition.

She had to smile at the tissues on the counter. "Agreed," she replied, going to take one box from the counter and put it between them on the table. "Might as well be ready from the start, huh?" she asked, making sure the box was open and ready to go before she turned her eyes back to Nick. "Okay," she said gently. "I'm listening."

[nickthewarbler]

And that was where Nick hit a roadblock and clammed up. He fell silent and looked at her briefly before his gaze averted again, and this time just to some random spot on the kitchen tile off to his side. Just because people kept telling him he should and it would help didn't mean that he wanted to or that he knew what to say just because he should. He wet his lips, and did attempt to find some sort of launching pad, but for some reason, all his brain wanted to do was run the chorus of the old Warblers rendition of Teenage Dream over and over and over in his head. It was like if his brain had ears and fingers, they would be shoving one into the other right now and singing Teenage Dream at the top of its voice.

"It's okay, I don't have anything to say." It was an abrupt turnaround from his previous comment, but he couldn't profess to be consistent with anything right now. "Maybe this was just a stupid idea anyway. I just pissed him off a lot. I don't think he ever meant to hurt me as bad as he did. He always said he loved me..."

[couturejourno]

Dani had told Leslie to expect this, but expecting and seeing were two very different things, and she wasn't entirely sure what to do or say. Watching him for a moment, tilting her head to one side in thought, she let him speak. But she didn't come here to hear how this was all Nick's fault, and she wouldn't let it happen this way.

"No," she said softly, shaking her head. "No, Nick, because if that's true? Then I deserved to be hit, too... So did the guy he was dating when I left home, and who knows how many other guys. No matter how much you piss someone off, they don't have the right to hit you." With a deep breath, she reached out for a tissue and started to twist it in her hand. "Neil was a sick, heartless bastard, Nick, and I'm not going to make you talk about him, but you need to know that. I saw him hurt other people... He punched me in the face... Me. His own sister. That's not something that normal, well adjusted people do, and it's certainly not love." She paused, crossing one leg over the other under the table. "When you

[nickthewarbler]

Nick shook his head, his eyes welling up with tears. He pressed his lips together while he tried to fight it off, but it was a fruitless attempt and they spilled down over his cheeks. He pushed then away with the tips of his fingers, even if more just fell. "No, you don't understand," he whispered, and the words came out choked in a fight to keep talking and now shut down totally. "I was in love with someone else. I always have been. I was a horrible husband and I deserved it all. Marriage should be a committed unity, and I didn't give him what he deserved with that. He kept accusing me of cheating, and I was. He knew. He knew things. He knew I was a bad husband, and he knew when I was thinking bad things about him. He looked into my eyes, and he could see it. And he was right. It wasn't fair that I married him, I deserve all of this."

He hunched over, hugging his arms tighter around himself. His head lowered so much the tears started to drip onto the table top, and it was like all his injuries started to ache right down deep,

[couturejourno]

"Honey, no... Stop," Leslie interrupted, putting her hands down on the table in front of her, with one fist gripping a tissue so tight she wasn't convinced it wouldn't turn to powder in her hand, and her own tears surfaced, beginning to fall a few at a time. She dabbed them away with the tissue as she watched Nick struggle with himself. "Nick, I don't know you... But I know Dani, and she wouldn't lie to me about the person you are... And I know Neil, and the kind of horrible things he did to people he was supposed to love, and..." She sniffled, dabbing at her eyes. "Nick, no matter what you did or who you loved, this was wrong. What he did to you was wrong."

God, he was so hurt... So broken, and even without knowing him before Neil, Leslie knew that. And she knew that this was Neil's doing, and Neil's fault, whether or not Nick would admit to that. "Nick... Honey, it's not right, and you know that deep down. Neil may have beat the self-esteem out of you, but deep down, I know you know right from wrong. And you have to know somewhere

[nickthewarbler]

Nick shook his head a little as he felt the faint stirrings of nausea coiling in his stomach. He was doing it again. He could see it when it happened now, even if it was after the fact. It was still the ability to recognise it that was the positive thing apparently. The whole subject of Neil and his months and months on end of abuse felt like someone had his brain twisted up like a pretzel and kept squeezing it a regular intervals, and when they did, his thoughts and feelings got all mashed up and he failed to recognise what was real and what wasn't. He pushed the dampness from his cheeks away with heels of his hands and then went right back to hugging himself

[couturejourno]

Leslie went silent, her eyes falling to her hands as she tried to gather her thoughts. "I'm sorry," she said finally. "I'm... a journalist. It's kind of my job to make things up that sound good a lot of the time..."

Another moment passed before she spoke up again. "You're right. I don't know what you went through, and I don't have a right to tell you what's write or wrong about it. For a journo, I kind of suck at conversation... Guess that's why writers have the option to edit." Her heart ached as Nick poured his out, and she wondered if even he realized now what all he was saying. When he stopped talking again, she turned her eyes up to watch his face. She wondered how much of this had come out before, if any, and the tissue in her hand instantly found itself in good use, keeping her mascara from streaking her face. "I'm so sorry those things happened, Nick..." she murmured. "So sorry."

[nickthewarbler]

Nick chewed on his lip and watched her over the table before he just closed his eyes tiredly and turned his head away with a sigh. He was still trying to figure out what good this was going to do, but he didn't want to be rude. She didn't have to stand up for him in court to testify. Well, she sort of did now after Dani had her under verbal contract. If she backed out, Dani could slap an injunction on her for obstructing justice. She came forward in the first place, though, so Nick knew he owed it to her to at least try not to drown here

[couturejourno]

"He threatened to kill me, too," Leslie said softly. "I didn't have it as badly as you did, but he threatened to kill me if I ever told anyone what I know about him." It was perhaps one of the hardest parts of this whole thing for her that Neil did these things to people he was supposed to love. To know that Nick was diabetic, and if anything, needed someone who was there for him on the bad days, and instead he'd had Neil actually cause the bad days? It was horrifying to even begin to think about.

"It blows my mind sometimes how anyone could do something like that to another person," she admitted, hand wadding up the first tissue she'd been holding, and using the next to dab at her eyes. "Nick... Thank you for telling me these things," she said, wiping away the tears. "My... My parents and my other family members aren't going to be very happy with me for this, and I was really starting to question myself, but... I needed to hear what he did to you to remember that testifying against him is something I need to do."

[nickthewarbler]

Nick looked down at his hands again and was quiet for a long time before he spoke again. He was just praying for the day this trial would be over and he just had resolution one way or anything, whether it was inside a jail cell or he was set free. He knew he would never really be free from what he had suffered with, but the stress and fear of facing something like having your soul ripped to shreds in a court room wouldn't be hanging over him. "He stole away my ability to have children, when that was one thing I always yearned for. Now I'll never be able to, and to know that something like that was the lesser of two evils to him killing me is... something just makes me feel sick every single day. I don't regret what I did, because it means I saved my family from the horror of having a cop knock on their door and tell them I was dead