The place on Seventh isn't much - just a couple of beds, an old couch, table and chairs. Nothing special and that's fine. Mick doesn't need much. Lenny wanted him away and as much as that makes him ache, he does what is asked of him.
Every time anymore, every single time he reaches out to him he gets shoved away with the promise "it's not you, it's me" and it doesn't.. it doesn't make sense. Mick can't figure out why. So when he gets confused and lost and Leonard isn't there to help ground and stabalize him, he reaches for his lighter. He can watch the flame flicker and dance and let the rest of the world fall away.
Lisa will find him with a beer largely untouched in one hand and his lighter damn near out of fuel in the other.
He's done something wrong,but he doesn't know what or how to fix it.
Lisa arrives at the place on 7th and lets herself in. She gives a relieved and yet tired sigh when she sees Mick sitting on the couch staring at the flame from his lighter. She's brought him some food she picked up at a drive thru knowing like Len, he hasn't eaten either.
"Micky?" She asks softly as she sits beside him on the other end of the couch, setting the food down in front of him.
"Yes, physically he's fine. He was on the couch when I got home. I manged to get half a sandwich and some hot cocoa in him. He was sleeping when I left...hopefully he still is.
Now, can you tell me what happened? I couldn't get much out of him conversation wise."
An exasperated sound as he scrubs at his face. "The same damn thing every time. He keeps pulling back like he's afraid I'm gonna hit him." There's anger and shock and upset because Mick would never ever raise a hand against him. Ever.
Lisa shifts on the couch, moving so her back is against the arm rest and her legs are folded in front of her. She places her hands in her lap and thinks for a long moment before speaking.
"He's not afraid of you, Micky." She says softly and is quiet again for a moment. "I'll tell you what I know...will you eat some of that please? For me?" She nods towards the food.
"It's...not good. And looking back on it I think it's worse than I thought it might have been at the time. Lenny doesn't think you're going to hurt him, he's afraid he's going to hurt you...that he will...taint you. He thinks that you'll see how damaged he is and not want him anymore. And it's subconscious..he's not even aware it's happening. It's like how I flinch when people come at me with raised hands...it's not because I think they specifically will hit me...it's because well..when I was growing up that was what it meant.
I was 11...I remember hearing a lot of talking, different voices. I snuck to the top of the stairs and there was a lady downstairs on the couch with Lenny. Dad was there and he was making nasty comments about how no son of his was gonna be a fag...he had to make sure he knew what he was doing. So he...brought a gift.
I think...I think he was forced to have sex with that lady....he was essentially raped...God...if Lewis ever gets out of prison I'm going to kill him." A few tears fall down her cheek. "He wants you Mick...he does. So bad...he just. He doesn't...think he's good enough. He thinks he's damaged goods...spoiled."
Mick isn't hungry. Not even close. He doesn't even make an attempt to pick at the food she was nodding towards.
Taint him? There's a genuine shock to his expression as his eyes snap towards Lisa. Jesus. He'd been his first. Loved him best over everything in the world. And Lenny thought he would somehow taint him? The monster that burned his whole family?
"He's my whole world. You know that Lise," he chokes.
Then she finishes the story and Mick feels physically sick. Recoils in utter horror. A hand raising to his mouth. "Jesus. Jesus Christ Lisa. How could he think that I'd.."
A sob tears free from his chest.
"I love him Lise. Christ. I fucking love him and if it weren't for you and and Lenny you know I'd have burned his ass into nothing by now for all the times he hurt you two."
Mick buries his face in his hands. "You two are all I got."
Lisa's crying too, her eyes are red and her cheeks wet and she shuffles across the couch to press close to Mick's side. Both of them need it...and she can handle it. She trusts Mick in a way she trusts no one but Lenny and she knows she can touch him.
Mick's smart enough to guess that Len probably is afraid of being pitied or treated differently...so she doesn't speak for a bit.
"I don't think he knows that I know what happened. He's been carrying this for so long and not talking about it...but that's not going to work anymore. You two belong together...and as hard as it is. You two need to talk about this."
And for once in a very long time, Lisa is the one to shelter Mick. Her presence is warm and steady and offers the stability be so very badly needs.
"I'm not the smartest," he allows after a long moment of simply soaking in the contact. "I'll probably fuck it up. But I'll try."
He'll try. He'll swear to Lenny that he won't touch if he doesn't want it. He'll at least swear that he'll try. He'll try and God help anyone else who tries to touch him because Mick will step between them. Break bones if he has to.
"I miss him too...and I know I'm not Lenny...but if you need something...something like this, I don't mind sitting with you like this. I can't do it with him anymore...he gets tense still...it's not as bad as it was a couple years ago...but...I just....I don't know what to do either Mick. I think it's just going to take time..." Lisa sniffles slightly and wipes her cheek. "I think talking to him might help though...I can...be there if you want. So you don't have to face it alone." She would do anything for either of them. Absolutely. Anything.
Mick shakes his head slowly. No, no this was going to be something they were going to have to talk about alone. They don't talk about feelings under the best of circumstances and this? This was about as far from best as they'd ever been.
"I'll talk to him Princess," a strained smile, a nickname harkening back to a time when things were so much better for the three of them. When Mick let himself believe they could be a family, that they could always be close.
"I promise."
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Mick doesn't sleep a wink that night, or what's left of it after Lisa had found him. Torn between concern for his partner and helpless rage directed (yet again) at Lewis for hurting someone he cares so much about, he can't find any sense of peace and looking at his lighter isn't helping.
He needs his partner. So shortly after dawn, just as the sun is rising, he sends him a text, letting him know that he's coming home. Mick is also giving him the opportunity to tell him to stay away if that's what he needs, but he doesn't expect him to.
Exhausted and haggard, Mick opens the door to their place, closing it quietly behind him. This is going to hurt. It's going to be terrible and awful but it's high goddamn time that they clear the air between them so he's going to suck it up no matter what comes.
Leonard doesn't sleep, either, any more than the few spurts of random dozing when Lisa was next to him. He noticed when she left and could assume as much over her whereabouts. Finding Mick, talking to him, trying to smooth things over like she tended to do when they were fighting. He couldn't blame her for it, didn't exactly hate that she was that invested, if he was honest. They were all she's known her whole life, he can understand her needing things not to completely break apart when they get like that.
He gets the text from Mick, but he doesn't respond. Mostly because he doesn't know what to say. Everything feels a little hazy and clouded after last night and no sleep on top of it. He doesn't want to deter him from coming home, though, so he just leaves it as it is.
He hasn't moved from the bed in their room, except that he's curled up on Mick's side of the bed instead of his own when Mick wanders inside at dawn. He sits up slowly, dragging his knees up toward his chest. "Hey..." he says quietly, voice hoarse from not using it.
God, it's a wonder that Leonard can't hear Mick's heart hammering in his chest as he stands in the doorway of their room. This is heartbreaking and a little terrifying as well. Mick has never been what you'd call good with words or good with talking about how he feels. He steps inside, closing the door behind him and leans back against the door.
"I got some things I gotta say. I may not be as pretty with words as you are, but you gotta let me get this out first, just this one time." So no interrupting him. The closed door also means that neither of them are leaving until he says his peace, no matter what happens.
Mick swallows. "I know that you trust me, Lenny." A quiet huff. "Sometimes I don't know why but I know you do. What I didn't get was why you didn't want me close all of a sudden."
The words taste like ash on his tongue and his chest feels like it's full of lead. "Lise told me why. Lenny you're the best guy I know, best thing that ever happened to me, ever. Okay? You gotta know that too." He folds his arms across his stomach to keep himself from reaching out. "Nothing's ever gonna change that."
A hard swallow. "I love you. That'll never change."
Leonard frowns at the preface Mick gives him, leaning a little too heavily against the door that he no shut behind him. There's a heavy tension in the space between them, and added with instruction for interruptions, Leonard's mind is already kicking into overdrive. What was this about? Last night, obviously, but in what way? It doesn't sound good. In fact, it sounds downright final. For a second, while Mick tries to pull his words together, all he hears is the pounding of his heart in his own ears, fear, anxiety creeping across his skin and settling in his chest.
This is it. You pushed too far and he reached his limit. He's leaving.
That thought alone is like feet pounding pavement in his head. Steady, hard, fast, over and over and over and over again. This is it... He's leaving. He's leaving. He's leaving. He's leaving me. And if he wasn't having this conversation with him face-to-face, if Mick wasn't planted right there a few feet away from him in front of the door, he'd have lost himself to the swelling panic in his chest. But his voice is enough to ground him.
Except the words Mick is saying don't add up to that and the confusion swirls like smoke in his head. This doesn't make sense. None of this makes sense.
"Lise told me why."
No. She told him what she thought, what she always told him. That it was Lewis. And the way things just kept getting worse as they years went on. It was a shift in the dynamic resulted entirely from growing up in an abusive home.
Because Lisa didn't know the real reason. She couldn't. Could she?
"I love you ... I'll try and be better." No. No, this doesn't add up, this doesn't make sense.
He sits in silence for a long several minutes, trying to piece together what he's thinking and feeling to what Mick is saying, but it feels like he's missing something. Some vital piece of this puzzle that's been left out.
"What'd- what d'you mean? Lise told you why... what did she..." his words trail off as he frowns again, still trying to figure out where all this was coming from, what he was really saying. His tongue darts out over his lips as he tries to think this through.
But it isn't a well-thought out response that comes out of his mouth, it's a distracted, stream-of-consciousness instead. "I'm not... I'm not the best thing for anyone, I'm a fucking mess."
The silence is agony while he struggles to process and it takes everything Mick has not to fidget, not to shift in his agitation after confessing something so goddamn big.
His smile is mournful. "Maybe you are Lenny. But you're my mess and you're still the best thing I ever had in my whole fucked up life."
"Lise told me about that night, when he bought a hooker cause he didn't want you being a fag. Lenny.. jesus christ you could have told me. It wasn't your fault, none of that shit is on you."
He has a ton of things he could say against that, a hundred reasons why he doesn't believe it, and a hundred more for why he's actually not any good for Mick at all. But none of it comes out, because Leonard Snart is too selfish to admit too many things that might make him lose the one person who mattered more than anything.
Any piece of it that might have been still been debated to leave his tongue was gone with Mick's next words.
"Lise told me ... he bought a hooker..."
Leonard's world is tilted off its axis at that declaration, ears ringing, stomach queasy, vision swimming.
No. No no no no no no no. This isn't happening. This can't be happening. She didn't know. She couldn't. She was too young. She was in bed by then. Wasn't she? How did she find out? Shit. Shit.
If there has ever been a story being played out across his face, it's in this moment. Every switch from confusion to realization to panic. And all of that completely crumbling.
"I-I know, I just--" but the words aren't coming. He doesn't even really know where to go with it, what to say. "I'm sorry," he chokes out, "I should have been the one to tell you, I-I should have explained it, I just-- I didn't know how." It could have saved them both a lot of fights and a lot of grief, if he'd just explained himself to Mick, but can't even do it now, and damn sure now before.
And it's killing Mick, killing him that he has to watch he confusion and panic and despair unfold across his features and not be able to reach out and draw him into his arms and comfort him. He sucks in a breath and keeps his arms folded around his middle to keep from doing just that.
It would have saved them a lot of fights and so much heartache but that doesn't matter now. The point is Mick knows and there's no way on this earth that he's gonna run from his partner.
"Shh," he soothes. "Lenny you got nothing to be sorry for. Okay? I'm right here. Not going anywhere."
"I know," he manages, barely a whisper as he folds his legs one under the other, trying desperately to figure out what to say. But there's nothing, or at least nothing that feels like it matters.
But Mick feels like he's miles away and that's not something he's okay with right now. He reaches, uselessly, for him, a wordless request for him to come closer. And when he moves, which Leonard has absolutely no doubt in him doing, he grips the edge of his jacket and tugs him down onto the bed, shifting enough so there's room for him in his rightful place on the bed.
"I just...didn't know how to talk about it. But it was- it was never you...you never did anything wrong." Blind, pointless assurances in the aftermath of the bomb that had been dropped in Mick's lap, but it's the only thing he can make it mouth work to say.
Relief all but swami's him as Leonard reaches out for him and he goes without a moment's hesitation. His hand rests flat on the bed just behind him, an attempt to shelter his partner without really touching, giving him the distance he needs.
"Lenny I know," he promises. He doesn't blame him, would never blame him.
A swallow as he looks at his hands.."can I hold you? I want.. I mean.. if that's what you want."
Because Mick may not be perfect but he'll try for Leonard. Always for him.
Except, the thing about it is, right now? Distance is the last thing he needs. Which is probably obvious in the way he's already shifting and moving to fit into the space Mick has made at his side before the words even finish coming out of his mouth.
He doesn't say anything, because words don't feel like the right thing yet, but as the comfort offered from the only person he's ever really found it in sinks in, a soft sob escapes him. He hates it, and he feels weak for it, but he's carried this thing on his own for nearly eight years and it's such a relief to have someone help him shoulder it that he can't stop it. This isn't the hysterical breakdown of reliving something he'd rather forget, just the quiet release--and relief--of something he's held onto too tightly for too long on his own.
He stays curled against Mick's side, quiet and tense, but in a way that's more comfortable than not, for a long time. Even with his head not quite in the right place against him, he can still hear the soft, rhythmic thud of Mick's heartbeat and it helps; it keeps him out of his head, trying instead, to count seconds between the sounds of the beats.
It's a long time until he speaks again, but he's calmer, if not really relaxed. He licks his lips, preparing to say something for the first time in a silence that has gone too long. "I guess..." His voice is a little hoarse, between not talking and the crying earlier, and he clears his throat. "it gives you...some perspective, at least, now." And that has to be a good thing, right? He wanted to understand, didn't he? And he doesn't seem to be going anywhere because of it, or looking at him like he's a thing to be pitied now.
Mick wraps steady arms around him as the sobs shake his frame, a hand moving in sure and slow circles along his back until the tears have abated and he's just resting quietly against him.
No one will ever touch him without permission again. Ever. Mick will make damn sure of that. His smile is quiet as he kisses his hair. "Yeah Lenny. It does. And I won't ever let anyone touch you without your ok. Not ever." Mick Rory will stand between Leonard and the world and nothing will get past him.
"And I'll be better. I will." He'll try his damndest. Learn to telegraph his movements and not argue when he pulls away. He can do that for him.
"Okay," is all he can manage; it comes out quiet, and tired, but it's not really dismissive. He trusts that promise, more than just about anything. Mick has never been one to break a promise he's made to a Snart.
"I know you will," he sighs softly and pillows his head against Mick's chest. He hasn't slept like this is years, but right now he feels like he could fall out pretty fast.
"Did you sleep last night?" he asks quietly, already fairly certain of the answer before he even asks the question.
Mick misses moments like this, being able to just hold him. This time he wishes the moment had been because of something good. But he keeps his hand moving, keeps stroking along his back because for now Leonard will allow it and Mick will offer whatever comfort he needs.
A weary chuckle, "Naw. Couldn't sleep."
"Let's go back to bed. I'll make a big ass breakfast later."
He smiles, soft and reverent, when Mick confirms what he already assumed. "Me either," there's a half-hearted chuckle to match the smile attached to the words, making them a little more breathy than if they'd just been spoken. Somehow, it's not surprising at all that neither of them slept. Leonard, for certain, always sleeps better when Mick is beside him.
He lets himself sink heavily against Mick, soaking up the comfort he finds in him, and it isn't long before he falls into probably the most relaxed sleep he's had in awhile.
Lisa smiles, she's been awake too since leaving Mick. It's pretty safe to say that none of them slept that night but she is glad to know they are finally okay. Well...okay enough to sleep anyway. She hadn't listened in to all of their conversation, just the end bit....and once she knew they were asleep she creeps silently into the room and snaps a few pictures. Proof. Blackmail perhaps if need be, but mostly just photo evidence for herself that they are a family...that they love each other.
She smiles again and leaves for her own room to get some sleep. She'll get up when Mick makes breakfast.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Drowning
Date: 2018-03-19 06:25 pm (UTC)Every time anymore, every single time he reaches out to him he gets shoved away with the promise "it's not you, it's me" and it doesn't.. it doesn't make sense. Mick can't figure out why. So when he gets confused and lost and Leonard isn't there to help ground and stabalize him, he reaches for his lighter. He can watch the flame flicker and dance and let the rest of the world fall away.
Lisa will find him with a beer largely untouched in one hand and his lighter damn near out of fuel in the other.
He's done something wrong,but he doesn't know what or how to fix it.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-19 11:30 pm (UTC)"Micky?" She asks softly as she sits beside him on the other end of the couch, setting the food down in front of him.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-19 11:38 pm (UTC)"Is he okay?" Because even now his thoughts are for Leonard first. Is he okay? Did he come out of his attack all right? Has he eaten? Slept?
Why did he send him away?
no subject
Date: 2018-03-19 11:40 pm (UTC)Now, can you tell me what happened? I couldn't get much out of him conversation wise."
no subject
Date: 2018-03-20 12:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-20 12:28 am (UTC)"He's not afraid of you, Micky." She says softly and is quiet again for a moment. "I'll tell you what I know...will you eat some of that please? For me?" She nods towards the food.
"It's...not good. And looking back on it I think it's worse than I thought it might have been at the time. Lenny doesn't think you're going to hurt him, he's afraid he's going to hurt you...that he will...taint you. He thinks that you'll see how damaged he is and not want him anymore. And it's subconscious..he's not even aware it's happening. It's like how I flinch when people come at me with raised hands...it's not because I think they specifically will hit me...it's because well..when I was growing up that was what it meant.
I was 11...I remember hearing a lot of talking, different voices. I snuck to the top of the stairs and there was a lady downstairs on the couch with Lenny. Dad was there and he was making nasty comments about how no son of his was gonna be a fag...he had to make sure he knew what he was doing. So he...brought a gift.
I think...I think he was forced to have sex with that lady....he was essentially raped...God...if Lewis ever gets out of prison I'm going to kill him." A few tears fall down her cheek. "He wants you Mick...he does. So bad...he just. He doesn't...think he's good enough. He thinks he's damaged goods...spoiled."
no subject
Date: 2018-03-20 01:20 am (UTC)Taint him? There's a genuine shock to his expression as his eyes snap towards Lisa. Jesus. He'd been his first. Loved him best over everything in the world. And Lenny thought he would somehow taint him? The monster that burned his whole family?
"He's my whole world. You know that Lise," he chokes.
Then she finishes the story and Mick feels physically sick. Recoils in utter horror. A hand raising to his mouth. "Jesus. Jesus Christ Lisa. How could he think that I'd.."
A sob tears free from his chest.
"I love him Lise. Christ. I fucking love him and if it weren't for you and and Lenny you know I'd have burned his ass into nothing by now for all the times he hurt you two."
Mick buries his face in his hands. "You two are all I got."
no subject
Date: 2018-03-20 01:28 am (UTC)Mick's smart enough to guess that Len probably is afraid of being pitied or treated differently...so she doesn't speak for a bit.
"I don't think he knows that I know what happened. He's been carrying this for so long and not talking about it...but that's not going to work anymore. You two belong together...and as hard as it is. You two need to talk about this."
no subject
Date: 2018-03-20 01:55 am (UTC)"I'm not the smartest," he allows after a long moment of simply soaking in the contact. "I'll probably fuck it up. But I'll try."
He'll try.
He'll swear to Lenny that he won't touch if he doesn't want it. He'll at least swear that he'll try. He'll try and God help anyone else who tries to touch him because Mick will step between them. Break bones if he has to.
He'll try because he loves him.
"I miss him."
no subject
Date: 2018-03-20 02:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-20 01:51 pm (UTC)"I'll talk to him Princess," a strained smile, a nickname harkening back to a time when things were so much better for the three of them. When Mick let himself believe they could be a family, that they could always be close.
"I promise."
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Mick doesn't sleep a wink that night, or what's left of it after Lisa had found him. Torn between concern for his partner and helpless rage directed (yet again) at Lewis for hurting someone he cares so much about, he can't find any sense of peace and looking at his lighter isn't helping.
He needs his partner.
So shortly after dawn, just as the sun is rising, he sends him a text, letting him know that he's coming home. Mick is also giving him the opportunity to tell him to stay away if that's what he needs, but he doesn't expect him to.
Exhausted and haggard, Mick opens the door to their place, closing it quietly behind him. This is going to hurt. It's going to be terrible and awful but it's high goddamn time that they clear the air between them so he's going to suck it up no matter what comes.
"Lenny?"
no subject
Date: 2018-03-20 03:32 pm (UTC)He gets the text from Mick, but he doesn't respond. Mostly because he doesn't know what to say. Everything feels a little hazy and clouded after last night and no sleep on top of it. He doesn't want to deter him from coming home, though, so he just leaves it as it is.
He hasn't moved from the bed in their room, except that he's curled up on Mick's side of the bed instead of his own when Mick wanders inside at dawn. He sits up slowly, dragging his knees up toward his chest. "Hey..." he says quietly, voice hoarse from not using it.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-20 04:57 pm (UTC)"I got some things I gotta say. I may not be as pretty with words as you are, but you gotta let me get this out first, just this one time." So no interrupting him. The closed door also means that neither of them are leaving until he says his peace, no matter what happens.
Mick swallows. "I know that you trust me, Lenny." A quiet huff. "Sometimes I don't know why but I know you do. What I didn't get was why you didn't want me close all of a sudden."
The words taste like ash on his tongue and his chest feels like it's full of lead. "Lise told me why. Lenny you're the best guy I know, best thing that ever happened to me, ever. Okay? You gotta know that too." He folds his arms across his stomach to keep himself from reaching out. "Nothing's ever gonna change that."
A hard swallow. "I love you. That'll never change."
"I'll try and be better Lenny. For you."
no subject
Date: 2018-03-20 05:34 pm (UTC)This is it. You pushed too far and he reached his limit. He's leaving.
That thought alone is like feet pounding pavement in his head. Steady, hard, fast, over and over and over and over again. This is it... He's leaving. He's leaving. He's leaving. He's leaving me. And if he wasn't having this conversation with him face-to-face, if Mick wasn't planted right there a few feet away from him in front of the door, he'd have lost himself to the swelling panic in his chest. But his voice is enough to ground him.
Except the words Mick is saying don't add up to that and the confusion swirls like smoke in his head. This doesn't make sense. None of this makes sense.
"Lise told me why."
No.
She told him what she thought, what she always told him. That it was Lewis. And the way things just kept getting worse as they years went on.
It was a shift in the dynamic resulted entirely from growing up in an abusive home.
Because Lisa didn't know the real reason.
She couldn't.
Could she?
"I love you ... I'll try and be better."
No. No, this doesn't add up, this doesn't make sense.
He sits in silence for a long several minutes, trying to piece together what he's thinking and feeling to what Mick is saying, but it feels like he's missing something. Some vital piece of this puzzle that's been left out.
"What'd- what d'you mean? Lise told you why... what did she..." his words trail off as he frowns again, still trying to figure out where all this was coming from, what he was really saying. His tongue darts out over his lips as he tries to think this through.
But it isn't a well-thought out response that comes out of his mouth, it's a distracted, stream-of-consciousness instead. "I'm not... I'm not the best thing for anyone, I'm a fucking mess."
no subject
Date: 2018-03-20 05:42 pm (UTC)His smile is mournful. "Maybe you are Lenny. But you're my mess and you're still the best thing I ever had in my whole fucked up life."
"Lise told me about that night, when he bought a hooker cause he didn't want you being a fag. Lenny.. jesus christ you could have told me. It wasn't your fault, none of that shit is on you."
no subject
Date: 2018-03-20 11:20 pm (UTC)Any piece of it that might have been still been debated to leave his tongue was gone with Mick's next words.
"Lise told me ... he bought a hooker..."
Leonard's world is tilted off its axis at that declaration, ears ringing, stomach queasy, vision swimming.
No.
No no no no no no no.
This isn't happening.
This can't be happening.
She didn't know. She couldn't. She was too young. She was in bed by then. Wasn't she? How did she find out?
Shit. Shit.
If there has ever been a story being played out across his face, it's in this moment. Every switch from confusion to realization to panic. And all of that completely crumbling.
"I-I know, I just--" but the words aren't coming. He doesn't even really know where to go with it, what to say. "I'm sorry," he chokes out, "I should have been the one to tell you, I-I should have explained it, I just-- I didn't know how." It could have saved them both a lot of fights and a lot of grief, if he'd just explained himself to Mick, but can't even do it now, and damn sure now before.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-21 12:15 am (UTC)It would have saved them a lot of fights and so much heartache but that doesn't matter now. The point is Mick knows and there's no way on this earth that he's gonna run from his partner.
"Shh," he soothes. "Lenny you got nothing to be sorry for. Okay? I'm right here. Not going anywhere."
"I love you Lenny. Nothing's gonna change that."
no subject
Date: 2018-03-21 01:48 am (UTC)But Mick feels like he's miles away and that's not something he's okay with right now. He reaches, uselessly, for him, a wordless request for him to come closer. And when he moves, which Leonard has absolutely no doubt in him doing, he grips the edge of his jacket and tugs him down onto the bed, shifting enough so there's room for him in his rightful place on the bed.
"I just...didn't know how to talk about it. But it was- it was never you...you never did anything wrong." Blind, pointless assurances in the aftermath of the bomb that had been dropped in Mick's lap, but it's the only thing he can make it mouth work to say.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-21 02:16 am (UTC)"Lenny I know," he promises. He doesn't blame him, would never blame him.
A swallow as he looks at his hands.."can I hold you? I want.. I mean.. if that's what you want."
Because Mick may not be perfect but he'll try for Leonard. Always for him.
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Date: 2018-03-21 03:50 am (UTC)He doesn't say anything, because words don't feel like the right thing yet, but as the comfort offered from the only person he's ever really found it in sinks in, a soft sob escapes him. He hates it, and he feels weak for it, but he's carried this thing on his own for nearly eight years and it's such a relief to have someone help him shoulder it that he can't stop it. This isn't the hysterical breakdown of reliving something he'd rather forget, just the quiet release--and relief--of something he's held onto too tightly for too long on his own.
He stays curled against Mick's side, quiet and tense, but in a way that's more comfortable than not, for a long time. Even with his head not quite in the right place against him, he can still hear the soft, rhythmic thud of Mick's heartbeat and it helps; it keeps him out of his head, trying instead, to count seconds between the sounds of the beats.
It's a long time until he speaks again, but he's calmer, if not really relaxed. He licks his lips, preparing to say something for the first time in a silence that has gone too long. "I guess..." His voice is a little hoarse, between not talking and the crying earlier, and he clears his throat. "it gives you...some perspective, at least, now." And that has to be a good thing, right? He wanted to understand, didn't he? And he doesn't seem to be going anywhere because of it, or looking at him like he's a thing to be pitied now.
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Date: 2018-03-21 02:18 pm (UTC)No one will ever touch him without permission again. Ever. Mick will make damn sure of that. His smile is quiet as he kisses his hair. "Yeah Lenny. It does. And I won't ever let anyone touch you without your ok. Not ever." Mick Rory will stand between Leonard and the world and nothing will get past him.
"And I'll be better. I will." He'll try his damndest. Learn to telegraph his movements and not argue when he pulls away. He can do that for him.
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Date: 2018-03-22 12:04 am (UTC)"I know you will," he sighs softly and pillows his head against Mick's chest. He hasn't slept like this is years, but right now he feels like he could fall out pretty fast.
"Did you sleep last night?" he asks quietly, already fairly certain of the answer before he even asks the question.
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Date: 2018-03-22 01:06 pm (UTC)This time he wishes the moment had been because of something good. But he keeps his hand moving, keeps stroking along his back because for now Leonard will allow it and Mick will offer whatever comfort he needs.
A weary chuckle, "Naw. Couldn't sleep."
"Let's go back to bed. I'll make a big ass breakfast later."
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Date: 2018-03-23 01:13 am (UTC)He lets himself sink heavily against Mick, soaking up the comfort he finds in him, and it isn't long before he falls into probably the most relaxed sleep he's had in awhile.
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Date: 2018-03-23 02:16 am (UTC)She smiles again and leaves for her own room to get some sleep. She'll get up when Mick makes breakfast.
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From:ahhh I thought I tagged thiiiiis earlierrrr <3
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