I was a heavy heart to carry
Sometimes the thought of moving forward makes him hopeful. More often it makes him want to panic. It feels like actual, literal motion, like something that takes exactly that amount of effort and coordination and twice the faith. Sometimes he doesn't even believe that "forward" exists, not for him. It exists for people with jobs and careers and educations and futures that they care about, not mutilated people with barely half of their mobility.
But the alternative option is... not on the table. He's pretty sure.
So he takes his pills, he lets Neil smear the cream onto his skin and he manages not to panic, he tries to sleep through the night and when the nightmares come, as they inevitably do--churning flesh and heat and sickly crawling things and a sky that looks like a giant, pale, dead eye staring down at him--he tries to moderate the cries that tear him back to waking.
He's alive. But it doesn't feel like life. Except when he manages to quell the terror enough to let Neil in close to him, gentle hands that he can relax into if he closes his eye and pretends that everything is normal. Then it feels a little like life again, a little more than survival.
Neil is why. Neil is the reason for all of it. When he finds himself lacking a reason, he knows where to look.
But that doesn't make moving forward any easier.
It's half a week after they've fucked for the first time in this new half-life, and they haven't done it again since then. Aside from that, in fact, not very much has changed. And now Neil is trying to make it change, and Mike is sitting on the couch with his prosthesis on and his shoes off and trying not to resent him for it.
And failing. Badly.
"I don't see why the fuck you need me to go too, is all," he mutters, staring down at the floorboards. "You're a big boy, you can carry a couple cans of paint by yourself."
But the alternative option is... not on the table. He's pretty sure.
So he takes his pills, he lets Neil smear the cream onto his skin and he manages not to panic, he tries to sleep through the night and when the nightmares come, as they inevitably do--churning flesh and heat and sickly crawling things and a sky that looks like a giant, pale, dead eye staring down at him--he tries to moderate the cries that tear him back to waking.
He's alive. But it doesn't feel like life. Except when he manages to quell the terror enough to let Neil in close to him, gentle hands that he can relax into if he closes his eye and pretends that everything is normal. Then it feels a little like life again, a little more than survival.
Neil is why. Neil is the reason for all of it. When he finds himself lacking a reason, he knows where to look.
But that doesn't make moving forward any easier.
It's half a week after they've fucked for the first time in this new half-life, and they haven't done it again since then. Aside from that, in fact, not very much has changed. And now Neil is trying to make it change, and Mike is sitting on the couch with his prosthesis on and his shoes off and trying not to resent him for it.
And failing. Badly.
"I don't see why the fuck you need me to go too, is all," he mutters, staring down at the floorboards. "You're a big boy, you can carry a couple cans of paint by yourself."