"Learn from this mistake."

[livefortoday]

Who: Hunter Alexander and Cruz Quinlan
What: Moment of truth
Where: Home in New Rochelle
When: Saturday afternoon

When Hunter got home from work, Cruz was asleep, just like he hoped he would be. He told Cruz that what he was going to go through would be like hell on earth, and suggested trying to get a bit of sleep beforehand might be a good idea. With the costume party cancelled, Darius with his big hot date with Kai, and Brody going to Florida, Cruz had sent Hunter a text earlier that morning and told him he wanted to do it that weekend... he wanted to try to detox. He was ready to ditch the addictions so they weren't ruling his life anymore. He wanted to get clean, if Hunter's offer to help him was still on the table.

It was. Of course. Unconditionally. Hunter called him on his break and they chatted a little about it. He ran through what Cruz could expect if he went through with it, and when Cruz didn't change his mind, that was when he suggested trying to get some sleep because he probably wouldn't get much once it all started. Cruz was awake when he came back to the bedroom after his shower, towel wrapped securely around his waist. "Hey, babe. How did you sleep?" he asked, coming over to give Cruz a kiss. He got a tank top and a pair of track pants from his drawer to change into. "When was your last drink? I want to try to get some fluids into you before you start feeling sick."

Comments

[colourmefree]

There was a pile of things left on the armchair near the bed with Hunter's messenger bag the took to work with him. That was how Cruz knew he was home, and then heard the shower running in the distance. He hadn't expected to sleep as long as he had. He had spoken to Hunter around ten am, and followed his advice once they ended the call. Now it was well after five, because Hunter had started work at the crack of dawn. He stretched and rubbed a hand over his face. "Last night before I came to bed. You were already crashed out. What's all this shit?" he asked, gesturing to the stuff on the chair.

"Cheyne and Nick were coming to get Brody. He was just packing his shit up before I went back to bed. He seemed pretty good this morning." He had already let his band mates and management know he was going off the radar for a couple of weeks. Initially when considering all this, he wanted Hunter to take him out in the middle of nowhere or something to get through it, nowhere near where he could get access to booze or drugs. Hunter flat out refused that request. He said if they were doing this, they had to do it here at home, near a hospital and medical facilities in case Cruz had any sort of bad reaction. Cruz had to relent on it. He didn't want to drop dead in the process. "I can still fucking smoke, right?"

[livefortoday]

"Supplies," Hunter explained and the first thing he unloaded from his bag were a few packets of cigarettes for Cruz. "As much as you need. You'll need it through the anxiety." He also had a few IV bags of fluids and what he needed to put a cannula into Cruz's hand for an IV line. He hadn't just raided the supplies at work. He had dropped into Walker on the way home and got what he needed. He had some safe, non-addictive medications to try to conservatively help Cruz with the withdrawal symptoms he was probably going to have, and bought a portable blood pressure machine so he could keep an eye on that too.

He had only just stopped at the store, so the bottles of Gatorade he had were still chilled. "I didn't know what flavour you liked, so I got a couple of each." He got everything he needed to put the IV line in, giving Cruz an apologetic smile when he sat on the beside him. "I apologise now, because you're going to start hating me soon enough. At first, you'll probably start to feel shaky and sick. You might feel a bit sweaty and anxious or irritable. Your heart rate and blood will probably rise too. I just ask one thing. Where you can, keep telling me how you're feeling. Telling me when anything new starts to hit. You won't b e hungry, but I'm going to let you eat anything from now on so you don't choke. Fluids only until we get through the worst of it. You okay? You're ready? If you want to pull out, now's your chance."

[colourmefree]

"Supplies..." Cruz repeated quietly. "Fuck." He was getting cold feet just hearing it, let alone starting to go through it. He scrunched his face up, seriously contemplating backing up, but he wanted to do this. He wanted to get better, and he wanted a clear head to fight this contractual agreement for him to be 'straight'. Most of all, though, he wanted things with Hunter to take a more serious turn. He wanted to try his hand at a committed relationship, so this was the vital first start. This had to happen before anything else, because part of it was contributing to the depression he had been experiencing. He didn't think he would have gotten to the point of trying to end his life if he had been sober that night. He had been completely trashed, and he would have died if Hunter hadn't come to his rescue.

He waved his head. "Fuck, let's just do it, or I'll never start. I'm already starting to feel sick. Though, maybe it's just nerves, I don't fucking know. This is some serious shit, isn't it?" he realised. He knew it could be dangerous, but it was always something someone else did. Go to rehab, come back clean. Standing on the precipice himself, it was full-on. "How sick am I going to feel? Like, seriously, my gut already all churned up like I ate something bad." He held his arm out for Hunter to do whatever he needed to with this nurse stuff. Drinking Gatorade and letting himself be stuck with needles.

[livefortoday]

"I know, babe. Fuck, do I wish I could pop a magical pill in your mouth and you get up tomorrow perfectly fine. There's no easy way to do this, and it's why the first choice is in a rehab facility. But we're going to be okay. It's just going to take brass balls and patience," Hunter murmured, taking Cruz's hand and arm to check what the veins were like there. He clipped the tourniquet around his upper arm. Cruz had pale British skin, but the veins weren't looking as tough as he had hoped. It could hurt getting the cannula in. "You've got track mark scarring. How long since you shot up?" he asked quietly. He didn't ever want Cruz to think he was being judged, or looking down on him. Hunter wasn't like that. All he wanted to do was help Cruz get better, because he knew he was fucking falling in love with him. He wanted this to last.

He settled on a vein in the back of Cruz's hand because he figured the ones higher up his arm would be less viable. "The anxiety's normal. Your body will start to go on high alert and get shitty at you that you're not giving it what it wants. Do you want to try to eat something light before we start? Probably the most sick and most in pain you've ever felt in your life. Than times it by about a hundred. You're detoxing from booze and drugs. It's going to be awful, but I'm here for you. Okay? The whole way, no matter what.

[colourmefree]

Sometimes, it was easy to forget Hunter was a highly qualified nurse. He didn't just do a nursing degree, he got a specialty too. He was a Clinical Nurse Specialist, so he really knew his shit. Probably especially about this stuff, because he worked with mentally ill young people who could have some level of substance issues. "I stopped that shit late last year sometime. Had a bad reaction and ended up in Casualty. Scared the fucking shit out of me. Just went back to pills and lines. Addiction to painkillers. I fell off the stage once and fucked my back up. It got better eventually, but I never stopped taking the pills," he said with a shrug. He was indifferent to it all. Once you accept you're a fuck-up, it all just becomes blase to you. "Don't even know who I am sober. Can't remember the last time I ever fully was. You might hate me. I'll probably hate myself. How the fuck do you deal with that once all this physical shit is done with?"

He watched Hunter inserting the needle into his hand. Sure, it hurt, but he wasn't foreign to needles in his veins. It was that fine line between pleasure and pain for him. He just knew this time, no high would come to dull it out. It was only fluids. He was banking on Hunter to keep his head above water with all this. It couldn't be an easy task for him to sign up for. "Nah, I'm not hungry, love. Kind of want to just knock myself so I don't have to think. I'm going to say sorry now. For all the shit I'm going to say. I don't want to hurt you."

[livefortoday]

Hearing this, Hunter was scratching his forehead lightly with his fingertips and sighed. "Shit, that's going to complicate things," he murmured. "I brought you some painkillers for when the worst of it started to hit, but you'll have a tolerance for them now and they won't do anything for you. It's going to be painful, babe. But we'll just cross that bridge when we come to it. I'm not going to hate you when you're sober. I'm going to still love you and respect you for what you got through, and help you figure out who you are again. You deal with it with ongoing therapy, and finding other things you can do instead of drinking and getting high. Things you enjoy and feel passionate about." He found the bottle of prescription painkillers he just had filled for Cruz and got up, going through to the en-suite bathroom to flush the pills down the toilet. If Cruz knew he still had them, it could get dangerous when he was in the worst phase of the detox. Hunter hadn't planned on telling him he had the at all, he was just going to try to give him a couple when the pain started.

He took out a tube of elasticated bandage and cut a hole in the side for Cruz's thumb, and after making sure the cannula was secured down with enough micropore tape, held it up for Cruz to slip his hand into. "This seems like a bit of overkill, but it will stop you knocking it out of your hand. I'm trying to put in enough reinforcements now because soon enough, you're not going to want me touching you. What do you want to do? Lie down and try to snooze, or we can fuck, if you feel up to it. Watch TV or a movie? You name it, babe. I'm giving you the reigns here now. One step at a time."

[colourmefree]

Cruz could just sit there and watch when Hunter went and flushed the pills. Fuck, was that symbolic for him, on a few different levels. He had been flushing his life down the toilet, to the point he nearly ended it. It was symbolic of flushing the shit away for a fresh start. It was symbolic of Hunter needing to take the control here to help Cruz make it through. But it also made him cringe just a bit, to know all those pills were wasted, and he knew that was only his addicted mind playing tricks on him. "How fucking bad of pain are we talking here?" He had started to do a bit of research on the detox process, but it all sounded so crap, he didn't really want to know beforehand. He trusted Hunter unconditionally to get him through it. If he had to keep thinking how bad it would be, he wouldn't do it... and he would never bother doing it.

He kind of wanted to do it all, but he wasn't sure he could hold up for it. In fact, even as he was sitting there, he was hit with an awful wave of nauseating dizziness. He had been aware he was feeling woozy when he woke up, but this was a rude shock to his system; a warning to batten down the hatches, maybe. A huge warning, because he was suddenly retching and throwing up all over himself when he dizziness gave him an awful sensation of motion sickness. The upset stomach couldn't hold up against it. He tried to put his hand over his mouth, and he went to move to try to run into the bathroom. He didn't get anywhere. Luckily, it missed the bed and only got on him. A choked, "Fuck," was all he got out before he was heaving again.

[livefortoday]

Hunter had actually be pre-planned for this too. He had brought a bucket in, but he hadn't realised Cruz's nausea was already beginning to set in for him. A bit of mess didn't bother him. He was a nurse, for fuck's sake. His patients got sick all the time. Cruz wasn't done, so he snatched the bucket up from where it had been sitting by the chest of drawers and held it up to his mouth for him. His other hand was raking Cruz's hair back to hold it out of his face. He could get to the clean up when Cruz stopped being sick. "It's okay, babe. Just got to ride it out," he murmured. He had an injection to give Cruz if the sickness got too much. It would be a constant battle to try to keep him hydrated. Even then, the injection might ease it a bit, but it was unlikely to take it all away completely like it may with a patient Hunter gave it to.

He stood and waited to see how Cruz was. The retching was already pained, but it was one of the awful affects, unfortunately. Once the body realised it wasn't going to be fed on more toxins, it went into a panicked overdrive trying to scream out for more. It was a nasty thing to go through, but that weekend, it would only be him and Cruz. They had the time and the privacy for him to try to make it through. Hunter only hoped he would. Like any addict, even if Cruz got clean, that didn't mean he would stay clean. There seemed to be at least a lull and he tucked Cruz's hair behind his ear. "You okay? Just hold this, babe. I'll get a cloth to clean you up, and you can get changed." He made sure Cruz had a hold of the bucket before he let it go.

[colourmefree]

Cruz's stomach felt like someone was squeezing him around the middle after he had eaten too much. It was a horrible sensation. It hit him quickly too, and he was pretty sure now it was setting in, he wasn't going to be able to look back. A little bit of relief came after he had thrown up, but it would be short lived. It was like how you felt after you had already woken up with a hangover, hurled your guts up, and then felt shitty for the rest of the day. Crossed with like he was coming down with the flu. "You just said you loved me," he had to point out, exhaling deeply to try to breathe through the nausea. None of this was ideal. It couldn't be less ideal, but he had heard Hunter's slip. He didn't know if it was just that, or he meant it.

He looked down at his shirt, disgusted at himself. He had done far worse than this when he was in his worst moments of being trashed, though. He put the bucket on the floor at his feet, not moving it in case his stomach rebelled abruptly again, and peeled out of the soiled shirt. He put it carefully on the floor by the bucket, trying not to make more of a mess than he already had. By then, Hunter was back with the cloth and some towels. "I'm sorry about this. Shit, if there was an easier way. I know that's impossible, though. I did all this fucking shit for way too long, and now I have to pay the price. I'm sorry you've been dragged into it. I know you'll probably try to say I don't have to apologise, but I want to. Who would choose this? It's not your pile of fuck-ups. You shouldn't have to be cleaning it up."

[livefortoday]

Hunter stilled for a moment, because he hadn't even realised he said it. He could blame being distracted with waiting out Cruz's body to start detoxing, but at the same time, it could have just come out because it felt natural enough. It didn't seem like an appropriate time to talk about. Cruz was getting sick, and while it wouldn't be constant at first, it would get worse and worse and probably quickly once it gained momentum. "I hope that's not why you threw up," he joked quietly with a small smile. It was best to just address it, and give Cruz the opening to flat-out deflect it if that was what he wanted. Hunter wouldn't be offended. It wasn't a small thing, but he also wasn't oversensitive. He didn't expect their feelings to develop on exactly the same par. They had come from very different backgrounds, had dealt with very different things in their life. Hunter was still learning himself in a lot of ways, while Cruz always knew himself, he just had to keep it hidden. They were working on finding an even-keel together.

He started to softly wipe Cruz's face down for him, but it wasn't too much of a mess now he had gotten out of the shirt. It was an easy clean-up, and Hunter could chuck the shirt into the washing machine. It was no big deal. Along the way with this, it would be just keeping Cruz comfortable and relatively cleaned up. He wouldn't necessarily feel clean, but Hunter would do his best. "I don't see this as me being dragged into anything. You wouldn't help me through it if our situations were reversed? I know you would. Please don't apologise. Hopefully if we can stick all this out, there'll be times you have to take care of me too. I get sick too, you know. I'm cleaning it up because you mean the world to me, and that's why I'm here. Let's just get you comfortable on the bed, and I'll hook the first IV bag up. I don't know how long you'll be able to keep things down."

[colourmefree]

Cruz managed a very slight laugh at what Hunter said. No more than that because now he wasn't trusting his body not to betray him. It was a pain in his stomach more than a nausea, he was becoming more conscious that he wasn't feeling good. "No. Even if I've never been in love before, it wasn't that. It's just starting to hit me now. Stomach pain and stuff. How do you even know that, though? How do you know it's not just a pansexual thing? Whatever a pansexual thing is. I've always know I was a fag, so I don't exactly get the workings of anyone else's mind. It's not my job to live for them. Or judge. I'm a closest fucking homo addict. Who am I to judge? But I want to understand your shit. Because that's important to me."

Hunter was being so gentle and tender. It was no different to when they first met and Hunter was trying to save his life. It felt like everything had come a full circle, but he had no confidence in anything. Least of all himself. "I would," he murmured, holding Hunter's gaze. Or trying to. It was in the attempt that he was hit with a wave of dizziness, and he had to lean his head over the bucket on the floor when he wasn't convince he wasn't going to throw up again. "You seem invincible, though. Like, you're immune to getting sucked into a vortex of bad shit. Because you're too good a person. Yeah, I think I need to lie down."

[livefortoday]

Hunter snorted in amusement. "Babe, I'm only just realising the panseuxal thing, so I don't fucking know anymore than you do. But what I am pretty sure about is that love isn't different for a pansexual than it is for anyone else, and I've loved before. I was young, and I didn't recognise back then that love is what it was, but I know now it was. That's how I can identify this. In a lot of ways, you remind me of Charlie. I'm not saying you're the same. You're not. You're so very different, personality-wise. But you're both kind, and had to hide parts of you away, which affected you emotionally. The 'pansexual thing' tells me I can fall for you and be attracted to you because you're a guy, and I'm not straight. Love is a completely separate concept."

He rubbed Cruz's back while he continued again to battle with his stomach. "Here, lie down on your side, babe. We'll get the bucket right up close once I rinse it out, and you don't have to sit up when you're sick. I just want to get this IV started first. I'm really not fucking immune. I promise you that. I found my best friend dead, remember? And not all that long ago, Dar was attacked by a psychotic patient on a job. He could have been killed, or left brain-damaged. Now this with Brodes. Finding you on that ledge. I feel far from fucking immune to that stuff. I'm just starting to feel like I picked my career really well." He attached the IV line and hooked it over the top rung of his wrought iron bedhead, and flicked the line open. "You're staring to sweat. Do you feel hot or chilled?"

[colourmefree]

Cruz laid back down on the bed gingerly, and he couldn't deny he was already regretting the choice to do this. He had to keep reminding himself to take his balls in his hand and just get through it. It was probably going to feel like it lasted forever, but it would eventually be over. "You've got to be wondering the what-ifs now. What if he didn't commit suicide. And I guess, if that's playing on your mind, you've got to be wondering what-if I jumped before you got to me. All the while, your baby brother is getting raped and his world is falling apart, yet you still want to do this for me. You saved my life. I never expected to have feelings for you like this. I became so fucking acclimatised to not feeling anything. Fuck chicks, I had to numb myself with booze and coke to get through it. Fucking blokes was just this desperate need to get off with them. That's what my life has been for as long as I can remember. I didn't expect to feel what I did when you fucked me that night. I really thought I'd just keep going until I OD'ed one day and finally ended the shit."

But he liked having Hunter close. He knew this was love, but he just didn't understand it yet. "Fuck. Both, on and off. Cold right now," he admitted. The chill was running through him, and having the sweat over him was making it worse. When he first woke up, his head felt like it was on fire. He was watching Hunter do his nurse thing, knowing it was all second-nature. Cruz wouldn't have, in a million years, expected to end up in a relationship with a nurse. But that was what this was. It was a relationship. It was far from conventional, and it wasn't following a traditional timeline by any means, but it was what Cruz could cope with, and he knew that was a really fucking powerful thing, considering how messed up he was. He was quiet for a bit longer before, "I love you too."

[livefortoday]

"No. Not really. Probably not in a way people might think I would be. It's more wondering how he would have been as an adult. Or how he would have responded to things that have happened in the world. What sort of life he might have had if he hadn't been ill. I see things that I know he would have liked, and memories come back. Back once someone is gone, they're gone. They don't get a second chance at this. Unless you have some sort of deep spiritual belief to the contrary. But even then, we can't prove it. All we have is the now that we know is for certain, I think we have to cherish is as much as we can. Though, I know that's the simplistic way of looking at it, because then you have to factor in things like mental illness or addictions that affect how we see things, or we how feel about them. Whether want to keep living, or not. I think that's why I do the job that I do. If I can help prolong a life just a little longer before it ends, then it's worth it. This is going to be the harder route, love. I hope you can make it through." Hunter leaned over and kissed the top of Cruz's head and pulled the blankets up over him to get him warm. If he got hot again, he could strip some of them back. It would probably be a constant struggle for a little while.

He had already brought a bowl up with some water and a face cloth in it, so he sat beside Cruz to wring it out, and gently wipe his face with it. "We're going to get through this, you know. I know you're scared, because sober is a foreign prospect for you, but we'll work it out. Take each day at a time. Even if you need space to figure things out for yourself when you start to feel better, you can tell me. This is just the physical. The mental and emotional will take longer for you to heal from. Things will be overwhelming and you probably won't know which way is up."

[colourmefree]

Hunter had such a deep wisdom and intelligence, that even though Cruz was becoming unwell, he found himself hanging on Hunter's every word. The sound of his voice as he mused was soothing, and he definitely had some poignant points to make. "I never stopped to think about stuff like this before. Like, don't get me wrong. I don't think I was quite at a completely numb amoeba levels, but not far off it. I tried to make sense of shit through writing. Lyrics and poetry. I've always done that. I've written all our songs. Not a single fucking one is written by anyone else, so I guess the lyrics say a lot about what goes on in my mind. But at the same time, a lot of those were written fucking drunk or trashed too, so I'm not sure what I feel anymore. I just know that you cockblocked it, and now I'm trying to see shit in other ways. Like, honestly, love, I didn't even know what pansexual was before. We're human, you know? We don't have the energy or time to engage in everything in the whole world. It only becomes relevant to us through our experiences, you know? Now I see it, I'm so fucking glad it exists, or we wouldn't be here right now. You changed my life."

It was the mental and emotional that was the terrifying part. He had a lot of shit locked away inside that he had drowned out rather than facing and processing. He really hoped he didn't morph into a huge arsehole who was bitter, twisted, and felt like a victim that the world owed something to. Those were his worst fucking type of people in the world. Everyone had battles to fight, and for Cruz, he had chosen not to fight them and bury his head in the sand... or in a pile of coke, to be more accurate. He was going to find himself facing it all soon. "What do you think you would have been if you didn't become a nurse?" he asked, because he wanted to learn more about Hunter. That was a good new addiction to focus on instead.