Page 8 of A Cure for Recovery

Tommy frowns. “What?”

Lawson turns to him, then, and the hurt from before has been carefully screened with something wry and shielding; the sort of look Lawson gave him before the shooting. Before he learned every truth there was to know about Tommy. “‘What are you upset about?’” Lawson parrots. “Baby,you’vebeen upset for months. I’m just trying not to rock the boat.”

“I haven’t–” he starts, and then frowns again, and Lawson’s look saysgotcha. Unhappily.

“Look, I get that you want to be independent, and do things for yourself. You were this, like, Big Bad Cop or whatever – or, well,LittleBad Cop, y’know – and I know you don’t like it when I’m always helping you, or touching you, or–”

Horror floods across Tommy’s tongue like bile. “Stop,” he snaps, harsher than he means to.

Lawson does stop, mouth half-open.

“Don’t say that. I always want you to touch me. I don’t ever want you to stop touching me.”

Lawson’s mouth slowly closes. His brow furrows. “Last week, when I tried to hold your arm when we stepped up onto the curb at Walmart, you slapped my hand away.” His voice is flat, tamping his hurt down even deeper, and Tommy hates himself, he really does.

“But that wasn’t – it wasn’t that I – it wasn’t because you weretouchingme. I–” His next breath hitches, and his chest squeezes tight, and the long-healed wounds in his gut tweak and pull as though fresh, because this – the consequences of every dismissal and brush-off – are far worse than he first suspected. His husband thinks he doesn’t want him to touch him, and he doesn’t – hecan’t–

An image of the mental health booklet fills his mind, and Dr. Wilson is damn smart, because she picked up on something Tommy has never admitted: he’s not doing well with his recovery. Mentally. Emotionally. He’s nothandlingit, and in the process, he’s punished the person he loves most in the world.

His breath comes in choppy little gasps.

“It’s okay,” Lawson says, his tone still terribly flat.

“No, it’s not!” He’s loud, too loud, loud enough that Lawson’s brows fly up, but he doesn’t care. This is important, and he’s too emotionally stunted by his current physical state to express it properly.

The booklet. He needs the booklet. He’s not opened it yet, stuffed it on the bottom of the stack and left it on top of the dressing table that’s become his since moving in, but there must be something useful in it. If nothing else, he can give it to Lawson, and maybe he can page through it, and, with its help, decipher what Tommy’s trying to convey.

He swings his legs over the side of the bed. Stands. And his left leg buckles.

He collapses.

Or, he would have, had Lawson’s arm not caught him around the waist, and spun him, and lifted him. Lawson sweeps him up effortlessly, with a quick, “Oh, shit,” an automatic reaction, and pulls him up to sit sideways across his lap, locked securely in both arms.

Tommy flings his arms around Lawson’s neck in his own automatic gesture, and winds up with his face jammed up under Lawson’s chin, gasping and panting and flooding with hot embarrassment and shame…and regret. The regret is worst of all, knowing how much damage he’s done each time he’s rejected Lawson’s help.

“You’re alright,” Lawson murmurs quietly against the top of his head, his heart racing under Tommy’s palm where it rests on his chest. “I’ve got you. You’re okay.”

And that’s true, isn’t it? Even when he was being a prickly asshole, Lawson’s always had him, since the moment he woke in the hospital, fuzzy with drugs and helpless with pain, Lawson’s wet-eyed face swimming above him like something from a dream.

Since before that. Since he knelt in the gravel at Tommy’s side, head haloed by the sun, and pressed his hands to Tommy’s middle to staunch the flow of blood.I’m sorry, baby, I’m so sorry.

Tommy’s sorry, too.

The hot, spiked ball of emotion in his chest lurches up his throat, and his eyes fill with tears, and his next exhale is a rattling sob against the quick-throbbing pulse in Lawson’s throat.

“No. No, no, it’s not okay,” he gasps. Once the tears start, he can’t blink them back, and then he’s just crying into the collar of Lawson’s shirt. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Law. I never meant – I don’t want–” He hiccups, mortified, but unable to stop.

“Oh, baby.” Lawson sounds heartbroken. He rubs up and down his back, the way slick with massage oil. “It’s okay.”

Tommy grips tight handfuls of his t-shirt and cries. “No, it’s not, Lawson! It’s not okay. I can’t–”

Lawson stiffens, and, belatedly, he realizes why.I can’t. Lawson has admitted – haltingly, in the dark, only vulnerable enough to say so in a moment of post-coital looseness – that the last thing Tommy said to him twenty years ago wasI can’t, and that it had fucked him up for a long time. That Tommy’s bitten backI can’t risk telling you why I’m leaving for your own safetysounded likeI can’t be with you. I can’t love you. I can’t keep doing this.

Fresh panic floods Tommy’s veins. His heart beats wildly, trying to punch through his chest, and his wrists, and his eardrums. Forget breathing, he’s not sure he can.

He shoves back – he feels Lawson’s arms start to loosen, prepared to turn him loose if that’s what he wants, and Lawson’s expression is shuttered and closed-off and every kind of wrong – and grabs Lawson ungently by the face, a hand on either side of his jaw. It probably hurts, but Lawson doesn’t pull away; his eyes widen, and he goes still, thighs tensed under Tommy’s.

Tommy knows he’s still crying openly, tears hot and slick down his cheeks, nose running, and he must look disgusting, but this is too important. He has to get it out, even if he chokes and hiccups and sobs his way through it.

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