FIC: That Middle Road (22/?)
Sep. 8th, 2011 03:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nilchanceTitle: That Middle Road (22/?)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nilchance
Pairing: Misha Collins/Jeremy Sisto
Rating: Adult
Disclaimer: This isn't real.
A/N: Set inpoisontaster's A Kept Boy 'verse. This story deals with mental illness, specifically bipolar disorder, and with slavery as used in the AKB 'verse. There's also mention of rape, suicide, institutionalization and self-harm. And polyamory. And kink. And a partridge in a pear tree. Thank you, beanside and poisontaster, for the invaluable notes.
Pain rocks Misha into a thoughtless nirvana entirely unlike sleep, and pain wakes Misha up. Someone is hauling him upright and Misha is helping in his daze, automatically putting weight on his bad knee. “Vincent, don’t, I’m still alive,” he tries to say, but manages only to wheeze.
It isn’t Vincent come to drag him down into the earth. It’s Zach, sweating and rumpled. They’re in Meadow’s trailer. Misha seeks Jeremy just as instinctively as he tried to walk or speak, and doesn’t find him.
“Other leg,” Zach says, but he’s already bending to scoop Misha up and carry him, bride-like, across the threshold. Or maybe over the shoulder like laundry. “I got you--”
Misha hobbles forward on his good leg, catching himself on the trailer wall. His mind swims. Jeremy? he signs, but it feels like his fingers trip on the letters and he starts over as soon as he finishes. Jeremy?
Zach’s expression shutters, but he’s not as furious as if he’d found Misha snuggling a corpse. The dread Misha hadn’t known he was carrying dropped away.
“In my car. I put him in first.”
Left him? Misha feels horrified, as if Jeremy is the Terminator and will shake off heavy sedation to go hitchhike to New York.
Zach snorts, but there’s thick tension lines around his eyes. “He’s out. He won’t be going anywhere. Stop tripping balls and we can get back faster, okay?”
It’s a fair point. Misha slings his arm around Zach’s shoulders and hobbles forward, demonstrating how this whole ‘carrying Misha to safety’ routine is going to happen. It’d probably be easier to do a fireman’s carry, but Zach doesn’t say so.
Up close, Zach is feverishly warm. He smells like days-old cologne and sweat, and also like a child’s bubble-bath. Misha wonders how Zach has slept, knowing Jeremy is out roaming the desert.
They get to Zach’s alleged car, slowly. Misha tries to put weight on his knee again, and then tries to forget what it felt like to do so. His breath pants out like a woman in labor and Zach’s arm tightens on him, bearing him up. It must hurt him to do it after already carrying Jeremy, but Zach doesn’t shake or falter.
Jeremy is in the back seat on the passenger side, where Zach can keep an eye on him. There are probably child locks. At least for a few minutes Zach can keep Jeremy from flinging himself into traffic.
Rationality says that Jeremy ought to be in a hospital somewhere, just for a while, just until he’s back on solid ground. But Misha thinks of Jeremy’s nightmares (don’t no don’t don’t) and his flinching, his story about being released from the hospital and nearly committing suicide, his last words (don’t let them strap me down) and Misha can do the math. The last hospital that Jeremy was in (no, say it as it is, that Morgan put him in) nearly killed him, left deep unhealing scars, and another round would kill him. Even if it was a new hospital. Jeremy would see the old one, seeping through like one film exposure into another, and he would find a way to kill himself there because death was better. Better to die on his own terms.
They have that in common, him and Jeremy.
But then, Misha might have forced Jeremy’s hand because of his trick with the pills. Maybe an overdose. Maybe he’d as good as killed Jeremy himself rather than letting him run.
Misha wishes he wasn’t so much Vincent’s son, seeing too much. He wishes that he might think back on this in the morning and laugh at how wrong he was, imagining that Jeremy was raped in the hospital. Thinking he knows anything about Jeremy and his secrets at all.
They reach the car, and Zach leans Misha against the door. The engine is running, a deep thrumming from inside, and the window is warm. Misha can feel his body starting to shiver as if it belongs to someone else. His body is not this damaged and fallible thing. He has ignored it for years; it could do him the courtesy of returning the favor.
“Guess you’ll want to ride in the back,” Zach says, not quite a question.
Misha manages to glare, though it’s probably pitiful, and nods.
Zach’s laugh is scuffed and worn. He opens the driver’s door, and Misha reluctantly lifts himself off the car to let Zach pop the backseat. Child locks, as Misha thought.
“C’mon,” Zach says; Misha doesn’t realize who Zach’s talking to until Zach nudges him towards the car. “Get in there, you’re freezing.”
Misha goes before Zach tries to herd him into the car, folding down beside Jeremy. The car is deliciously warm, though it smells like heated metal. Carefully, Misha gathers Jeremy up against his side. He tries to leave Jeremy room to wriggle free, to not feel trapped.
Zach closes the door, climbs into the driver seat. Once he’s there, he cranes around to look at them. “So what’d you give him?” he asks, so matter of fact that he could be commenting on the cold.
Misha tries to think fast. Can’t. Signs, he doesn’t want to go to the hospital.
Mouth thinning, Zach rolls up the sleeve of his shirt. There against the inside of his arm are several scars from track marks. “My last owner, he had some bad habits. Got paranoid, tested his drugs on me. Sometimes he’d OD. Sometimes I would. Either way, no. No hospitals. Anyway, this isn’t me and Jer’s first time at the rodeo. I know how he...” Zach sighs and rolls his sleeve down, covering his scars and smiling. “I don’t take him to the hospital no matter how bad it gets. That’s the deal.”
Misha exhales. Then he signs what he gave Jeremy, the names of the drugs and the dosages. Zach writes them on his hand, beside other notes like ‘milk creamer carrots’. When Misha’s finished, Zach glances at Jeremy. The look lingers, gentling, until Misha should feel like an intruder. He doesn’t, but he should.
“You jackass,” Zach mutters, and turns around to start driving. “You’re the most goddamn stubborn hard-headed fucker I ever met in my life. I was on my way to your stupid fucking house in the middle of nowhere, I told you to wait--”
The rant shows no sign of stopping or getting loud enough to startle Jeremy awake. Misha presses his cheek on the top of Jeremy’s head, thick curls trying to smother him. He breathes in the scent of Jeremy, the heat of him, and tries to burn it on his memory. He’ll need it, when Jeremy sends him back to Burton with an apologetic note pinned to his coat along with his mittens. He’ll need it like water to sustain him, because he is the one who gets left behind.
Misha blinks. It must be a long blink, because when his eyes close, Zach is cursing; when his eyes open again, Zach is singing Ring of Fire in a low husked-out voice. It sounds like he’s
been singing for a while. Misha reaches automatically for Jeremy, and relaxes when he finds him still breathing.
For a moment, Misha meets Zach’s eyes in the rearview mirror. Zach gives a rueful smile but doesn’t stop singing to Jeremy, an intimacy almost like seeing them fuck.
So says a virgin, anyway.
Taking one hand off the wheel, Zach signs almost there. Misha waits for the surge of fear, the memory of twisting metal and Vincent’s blood sprayed on the car window, but it only gums at him tonight. Exhaustion mutes everything. Still, Misha tightens his arm around Jeremy until he gets a murmured complaint for his trouble.
No seatbelts. He has to hold Jeremy together. His arm aches from it. Another mile and then another mile and then another mile after that.
Misha blinks.
Someone is trying to lift Misha out of the car. Misha lashes out, pulling Jeremy across the seat against him, and bares his teeth.
Vincent spent 17 years teaching Misha how to use his mind. Two weeks without him and Misha is acting like he was raised by wolves. That bitter realization isn’t enough to make Misha stop snarling.
The car has stopped moving. Light spills from the front door of a small house across the man reaching for him, but Misha doesn’t recognize his face until the man says, “Easy, Cujo. Just trying to help.”
It’s Denis. That eases some of Misha’s first, feral reaction, but not all of it. He knots his fingers in Jeremy’s shirt and shakes his head no, no, he refuses, not yet.
There is a woman. She touches Denis on the shoulder, displacing him, and kneels down to look Misha in the eyes. Her voice is calm, even pleasant. “Misha. My name is Dr. Cate Blanchett. Do you know who I am?”
The prescribing doctor on Jeremy’s medication. Misha nods.
“Okay.” The corners of her eyes squinch up as she smiles. “You should know you’ve done very well for Jeremy. Very well indeed. But I’d like to administer some medications to stabilize him. What I need you to do now is to let go of him for a little while so we can get him inside.”
Misha knows that her approval is just manipulation to get him to release Jeremy. The trouble is, he’s tired enough that it might work.
No hospital, he signs to Cate.
A murmured translation for Cate’s benefit later, she answers, “No. No hospital.”
Ah.Then Misha has no more reasons to object. He takes a last drag of scent from Jeremy’s skin, of the close and secret heat of Jeremy’s body, and then he lets go.
They take Jeremy from him, bear him away into the dark. Misha thinks of Vincent and shudders, and then he can’t stop shuddering. He’s suddenly aware of how tired he is, how cold, how desperately he needs a pain pill after three days without. How mute he is. How alone.
There is a bit of commotion outside the car. Misha hears his name but can’t be bothered to answer, even when Zach shakes him. His job is finished, his road walked. Jeremy is safe.
“You’re adopted now,” says Denis. “You poor bastard.”
The words are nothing but sound-shapes. Misha closes his eyes.
Author:
nilchancePairing: Misha Collins/Jeremy Sisto
Rating: Adult
Disclaimer: This isn't real.
A/N: Set in
poisontaster's A Kept Boy 'verse. This story deals with mental illness, specifically bipolar disorder, and with slavery as used in the AKB 'verse. There's also mention of rape, suicide, institutionalization and self-harm. And polyamory. And kink. And a partridge in a pear tree. Thank you, beanside and poisontaster, for the invaluable notes.Pain rocks Misha into a thoughtless nirvana entirely unlike sleep, and pain wakes Misha up. Someone is hauling him upright and Misha is helping in his daze, automatically putting weight on his bad knee. “Vincent, don’t, I’m still alive,” he tries to say, but manages only to wheeze.
It isn’t Vincent come to drag him down into the earth. It’s Zach, sweating and rumpled. They’re in Meadow’s trailer. Misha seeks Jeremy just as instinctively as he tried to walk or speak, and doesn’t find him.
“Other leg,” Zach says, but he’s already bending to scoop Misha up and carry him, bride-like, across the threshold. Or maybe over the shoulder like laundry. “I got you--”
Misha hobbles forward on his good leg, catching himself on the trailer wall. His mind swims. Jeremy? he signs, but it feels like his fingers trip on the letters and he starts over as soon as he finishes. Jeremy?
Zach’s expression shutters, but he’s not as furious as if he’d found Misha snuggling a corpse. The dread Misha hadn’t known he was carrying dropped away.
“In my car. I put him in first.”
Left him? Misha feels horrified, as if Jeremy is the Terminator and will shake off heavy sedation to go hitchhike to New York.
Zach snorts, but there’s thick tension lines around his eyes. “He’s out. He won’t be going anywhere. Stop tripping balls and we can get back faster, okay?”
It’s a fair point. Misha slings his arm around Zach’s shoulders and hobbles forward, demonstrating how this whole ‘carrying Misha to safety’ routine is going to happen. It’d probably be easier to do a fireman’s carry, but Zach doesn’t say so.
Up close, Zach is feverishly warm. He smells like days-old cologne and sweat, and also like a child’s bubble-bath. Misha wonders how Zach has slept, knowing Jeremy is out roaming the desert.
They get to Zach’s alleged car, slowly. Misha tries to put weight on his knee again, and then tries to forget what it felt like to do so. His breath pants out like a woman in labor and Zach’s arm tightens on him, bearing him up. It must hurt him to do it after already carrying Jeremy, but Zach doesn’t shake or falter.
Jeremy is in the back seat on the passenger side, where Zach can keep an eye on him. There are probably child locks. At least for a few minutes Zach can keep Jeremy from flinging himself into traffic.
Rationality says that Jeremy ought to be in a hospital somewhere, just for a while, just until he’s back on solid ground. But Misha thinks of Jeremy’s nightmares (don’t no don’t don’t) and his flinching, his story about being released from the hospital and nearly committing suicide, his last words (don’t let them strap me down) and Misha can do the math. The last hospital that Jeremy was in (no, say it as it is, that Morgan put him in) nearly killed him, left deep unhealing scars, and another round would kill him. Even if it was a new hospital. Jeremy would see the old one, seeping through like one film exposure into another, and he would find a way to kill himself there because death was better. Better to die on his own terms.
They have that in common, him and Jeremy.
But then, Misha might have forced Jeremy’s hand because of his trick with the pills. Maybe an overdose. Maybe he’d as good as killed Jeremy himself rather than letting him run.
Misha wishes he wasn’t so much Vincent’s son, seeing too much. He wishes that he might think back on this in the morning and laugh at how wrong he was, imagining that Jeremy was raped in the hospital. Thinking he knows anything about Jeremy and his secrets at all.
They reach the car, and Zach leans Misha against the door. The engine is running, a deep thrumming from inside, and the window is warm. Misha can feel his body starting to shiver as if it belongs to someone else. His body is not this damaged and fallible thing. He has ignored it for years; it could do him the courtesy of returning the favor.
“Guess you’ll want to ride in the back,” Zach says, not quite a question.
Misha manages to glare, though it’s probably pitiful, and nods.
Zach’s laugh is scuffed and worn. He opens the driver’s door, and Misha reluctantly lifts himself off the car to let Zach pop the backseat. Child locks, as Misha thought.
“C’mon,” Zach says; Misha doesn’t realize who Zach’s talking to until Zach nudges him towards the car. “Get in there, you’re freezing.”
Misha goes before Zach tries to herd him into the car, folding down beside Jeremy. The car is deliciously warm, though it smells like heated metal. Carefully, Misha gathers Jeremy up against his side. He tries to leave Jeremy room to wriggle free, to not feel trapped.
Zach closes the door, climbs into the driver seat. Once he’s there, he cranes around to look at them. “So what’d you give him?” he asks, so matter of fact that he could be commenting on the cold.
Misha tries to think fast. Can’t. Signs, he doesn’t want to go to the hospital.
Mouth thinning, Zach rolls up the sleeve of his shirt. There against the inside of his arm are several scars from track marks. “My last owner, he had some bad habits. Got paranoid, tested his drugs on me. Sometimes he’d OD. Sometimes I would. Either way, no. No hospitals. Anyway, this isn’t me and Jer’s first time at the rodeo. I know how he...” Zach sighs and rolls his sleeve down, covering his scars and smiling. “I don’t take him to the hospital no matter how bad it gets. That’s the deal.”
Misha exhales. Then he signs what he gave Jeremy, the names of the drugs and the dosages. Zach writes them on his hand, beside other notes like ‘milk creamer carrots’. When Misha’s finished, Zach glances at Jeremy. The look lingers, gentling, until Misha should feel like an intruder. He doesn’t, but he should.
“You jackass,” Zach mutters, and turns around to start driving. “You’re the most goddamn stubborn hard-headed fucker I ever met in my life. I was on my way to your stupid fucking house in the middle of nowhere, I told you to wait--”
The rant shows no sign of stopping or getting loud enough to startle Jeremy awake. Misha presses his cheek on the top of Jeremy’s head, thick curls trying to smother him. He breathes in the scent of Jeremy, the heat of him, and tries to burn it on his memory. He’ll need it, when Jeremy sends him back to Burton with an apologetic note pinned to his coat along with his mittens. He’ll need it like water to sustain him, because he is the one who gets left behind.
Misha blinks. It must be a long blink, because when his eyes close, Zach is cursing; when his eyes open again, Zach is singing Ring of Fire in a low husked-out voice. It sounds like he’s
been singing for a while. Misha reaches automatically for Jeremy, and relaxes when he finds him still breathing.
For a moment, Misha meets Zach’s eyes in the rearview mirror. Zach gives a rueful smile but doesn’t stop singing to Jeremy, an intimacy almost like seeing them fuck.
So says a virgin, anyway.
Taking one hand off the wheel, Zach signs almost there. Misha waits for the surge of fear, the memory of twisting metal and Vincent’s blood sprayed on the car window, but it only gums at him tonight. Exhaustion mutes everything. Still, Misha tightens his arm around Jeremy until he gets a murmured complaint for his trouble.
No seatbelts. He has to hold Jeremy together. His arm aches from it. Another mile and then another mile and then another mile after that.
Misha blinks.
Someone is trying to lift Misha out of the car. Misha lashes out, pulling Jeremy across the seat against him, and bares his teeth.
Vincent spent 17 years teaching Misha how to use his mind. Two weeks without him and Misha is acting like he was raised by wolves. That bitter realization isn’t enough to make Misha stop snarling.
The car has stopped moving. Light spills from the front door of a small house across the man reaching for him, but Misha doesn’t recognize his face until the man says, “Easy, Cujo. Just trying to help.”
It’s Denis. That eases some of Misha’s first, feral reaction, but not all of it. He knots his fingers in Jeremy’s shirt and shakes his head no, no, he refuses, not yet.
There is a woman. She touches Denis on the shoulder, displacing him, and kneels down to look Misha in the eyes. Her voice is calm, even pleasant. “Misha. My name is Dr. Cate Blanchett. Do you know who I am?”
The prescribing doctor on Jeremy’s medication. Misha nods.
“Okay.” The corners of her eyes squinch up as she smiles. “You should know you’ve done very well for Jeremy. Very well indeed. But I’d like to administer some medications to stabilize him. What I need you to do now is to let go of him for a little while so we can get him inside.”
Misha knows that her approval is just manipulation to get him to release Jeremy. The trouble is, he’s tired enough that it might work.
No hospital, he signs to Cate.
A murmured translation for Cate’s benefit later, she answers, “No. No hospital.”
Ah.Then Misha has no more reasons to object. He takes a last drag of scent from Jeremy’s skin, of the close and secret heat of Jeremy’s body, and then he lets go.
They take Jeremy from him, bear him away into the dark. Misha thinks of Vincent and shudders, and then he can’t stop shuddering. He’s suddenly aware of how tired he is, how cold, how desperately he needs a pain pill after three days without. How mute he is. How alone.
There is a bit of commotion outside the car. Misha hears his name but can’t be bothered to answer, even when Zach shakes him. His job is finished, his road walked. Jeremy is safe.
“You’re adopted now,” says Denis. “You poor bastard.”
The words are nothing but sound-shapes. Misha closes his eyes.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 09:46 pm (UTC)If he ever figured out how many people care for him (and how many of them protect him the best they can...)he'd be shocked.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 10:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 12:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 04:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-10 01:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-10 05:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-10 07:16 am (UTC)You do such good work.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-10 03:00 pm (UTC)He’ll need it, when Jeremy sends him back to Burton with an apologetic note pinned to his coat along with his mittens. He’ll need it like water to sustain him, because he is the one who gets left behind.
I love this story so much, it was such a present to see more of it in my in box. It's like comfort food after a long, hard day.
Thank you so much for sharing it with us. :)
*hugs*
no subject
Date: 2011-09-12 01:34 am (UTC)Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2011-09-12 01:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-12 01:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-12 01:37 am (UTC)Also, eeee, icon love.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-12 01:38 am (UTC)That is a mighty fine icon, btw.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-12 01:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-12 01:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-12 01:39 am (UTC)Oh my gosh, your icon. What a lovely baby.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-12 01:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-12 01:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-12 01:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-12 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 01:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-17 03:36 pm (UTC)In sum: Thanks to you I get ridiculously excited everytime I stumble over Law & Order re-runs. And I watched that show for years before CWRPF came into my life. Being a fangirl is awesome.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-25 10:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-25 10:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-28 06:15 am (UTC)The middle way
Date: 2011-09-28 04:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-10 07:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-25 11:49 pm (UTC)I love how each of the characters is broken in their own way, and how you show the hairline fractures in who they are, and how being together either holds those broken places together or rips them apart. I love how Jeremy is at least as much trapped by his mental illness as Misha is by being a slave, and how they both have to deal, on a certain level, with old betrayals.
It makes my heart ache in the most beautiful of ways that Misha had a suicide stash (Jeremy saved him, but in at least one way he was prepared to "save" himself), but he made the choice to use it to save Jeremy, even with the belief that he was going to be cast aside because this too would be seen as a betrayal. And I cannot wait—though I shall, naturally, as long as necessary—to find out what happens next, and whether they can hold each other together, and HOW.
I'm Friending you because every time I start to read one of your universes, I get sucked in so hard I'm breathless, and it would be utterly sad to miss even a single update, or new fic, or just ANYTHING. And, also, friends are good :D
Comments to other universes should be coming (I may just have to re-read a few to remember all the happy things I wanted to say, what a HARDSHIP :DDDD), but I want, for this one and all of them say THANK YOU AWESOME.