Mark Thomas Campbell, esq. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aussielawyer) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dreamlikenewyork2017-11-12 03:17 pm
aussielawyer) wrote in dreamlikenewyork2017-11-12 03:17 pm
"If you want, you can marry. Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy."
Who: Mark and Justin Campbell
What: Pre-Wedding Father-and-Son Time
Where: Hamilton Island, Australia
When: Saturday morning
Mark was more convinced than ever that some higher power was watching over his kid. Justin’s bipolar had been unstable for a few weeks now. It left him on close suicide watch and everyone on high alert. Mark feared as they drew closer and closer to the wedding, needing to pack and fly out to Australia for it, Justin’s condition might not stabilise. It was a distinct possibility. Even if it was his wedding, he wouldn’t just stop worrying about his mentally ill son. Especially not when they were going to be staying at a resort on the beach. Justin’s track record with beaches left Mark terrified, yet as always, he was faced with that ever-present juggling act of giving Justin independence and placing trust in Sasha, or trying to wrap him up in cotton wool. Justin never did well with cotton wool. Cotton wool could sometimes make everything worse.
The morning came when they had to finish packing and get ready to go to the airport. This time, it was by charter on the FABULOUS private jet. Both sides of the wedding party and respective partners were flying that way. It gave them more freedom with Justin and Dory. When Justin was this ill, Dory was pretty much always with him, save for if someone else took her for a quick bathroom walk. Even then, it was limited who she would go with when Justin was sick. Sasha, Mark, Gen, possibly Mark’s parents or brothers, Amarlie at a push. Everyone else, Dory would put up a growling, barking fight. She would bite whoever tried to intercept her from her job caring for Justin. Although an airline could clear her to fly in the cabin with him, it still came with restrictions for health reasons. With the private flight, Dory had the freedom to be at Justin’s side the entire flight.
The flight wasn’t the best. At least at first. Justin’s anxiety was through the roof. He hated flying at the best of times because it fucked with his brain chemistry and made him motion sick. Something about being on a smaller plane, but Mark suspected that was only part of it. Actually getting on the flight, travelling to Australia this time, meant the wedding really was here and no one was pulling out. Justin spent so long waiting for the axe to fall and the plug to be pulled that he blindsided himself. He was more convinced something would happen to prevent than he was of the chance everything was going to go smoothly.
Luckily, Alec was on this flight with them and he had come prepared for possible worst case scenarios with Justin. Mark was endlessly grateful to have his adopted brother back in his life when he needed him the most. Since Alec returned from service, he had been treating Justin. Not just with some special forms of behavioural therapies, but closely monitoring his medication regime. It was Alec who orchestrated Justin being able to be prescribed a new non-serotonin medication available in Australia and the UK, but not approved by the FDA in America. Even if Justin was experiencing a bipolar episode (they would never just cease, no matter how medicated he was), there were significant noticeable improvements in the severity of his symptoms.
While everyone else was buzzing around trying to gain some semblance of normal to board the flight, Alec sat down with Justin in a quiet corner and talked him through the anxiety and convinced him to have a shot of valium to help him cope with it. Mark hated his kid needing valium, but not out of principal. He wasn’t one of those obnoxious parents who joined the anti-vax revolution, stopped them eaten sugar and believed being paleo or vegan with kale enemas would mean they lived forever. If his kids were sick and medication helped them feel better, he was all for it. But valium was a harsh drug and it knocked Justin around. It turned him zombie-like, which was unnerving when he was already in the midst of episodic dissociation. Bottom line? A shot of valium meant Justin would sleep through the flight. Which is exactly what he did. He crashed out before everyone was even seated, ready for take-off. Dory settled in on his shoulder, her head resting down on his chest and her tail curled around the nape of his neck.
The trip had been timed so that everyone had a couple of days to settle in, relax, recover from the jetlag, and there was no crazy last minute rush for everything. Justin slept most of the time. Sasha reported that he had only woken to shower a few times, stuff something in his face so he could take his medication, and go to the bathroom. Then Friday night dinner, the last supper before the big day, Justin and Sasha came down to the dining room holding hands and Mark could see immediately that Justin looked… better. He was smiling, he had some colour back in his face, his stylish clothing was back (it had been trackpants and baggy t-shirts for days now). Like someone up there had intervened and giving him the positive energy he needed to feel better for this.
Now it was the morning of the wedding. Mark and his wedding party were in Justin and Sasha’s suite, while Gen and hers were in the honeymoon suite they were booked in one the whole put-a-ring-on-it was done. Paris was adamant, putting his fabulous foot down hard, that Mark couldn’t see Gen before the wedding. Mark woke up expecting everything that could possible go wrong to go wrong, so he was pleasantly surprised when everything was relaxed and running smoothly. So far, he was getting his Aussie on like a boss, in board shorts, a singlet and thongs. It was probably all glitz, glamour and fabulousless over in Gen’s neck of the woods. Here, it was led by a bunch of Aussie blokes who would probably be banned from being anywhere near anything fabulous. Sitting on the end of the bed sipping a Bundaberg Ginger Beer, Mark watched Justin laughing with Sasha, and found himself wondering how Gen was getting on. No doubt she was looking stunning. Today was the day they finally put all their fuck ups right, for them, and for the kid they had together.
Justin caught his dad watching him so he gave Sasha a kiss and came over, flopping down beside him. He gazed at his dad for a few moments and then threw his arms around him in a squeezing hug. “I love you, Dad.”
Mark hugged him back. He let his eyes close, reassuring himself again that Justin was still here. He was still breathing, still had a pulse. Not just all that, but his son was by his side on his wedding day, as his Best Man. “I love you more. Starting to feel real now, buddy?” he asked, smiling.
Justin laughed and shook his head. “Nope. Not really. But I kinda realised that maybe that’s not necessarily a bad thing for me. I’ve been sick for so long. That’s why. It’s not really that I didn’t believe it. I just couldn’t feel it, I guess.” He caught his lips between his teeth, giving his dad a nose-scrunched smile. “Deep, huh? Blame one am chats with my guardian angel conduit over there. He hasn’t had a full night’s sleep since I started getting manic again. I can just ramble about anything in my head at any time of day, and he’s there to listen. But he helped me see it. Not believing this wasn’t me not believing your’s and mom’s word or promises. It was just a symptom, you know? Still is. Maybe like all my other therapy, I have to see it working before I know it actually is. Does that make sense?”
“Jus, there isn’t a single thing about you or your illness that doesn’t make sense to me. I know how badly sick you’ve been, and Mom and I haven’t thought you’re doubting our word. Nothing like that. We just know that all of this, you were going to need time to be able to adjust to it in your own way. A way you can cope with. It didn’t matter to us if that took you days, weeks, months. Maybe even years. Or how you needed to process it and work through it. All we’ve been glad of is that you have had Sash through the whole process. None of this is about the wedding. Not really. It’s about making our family official, putting shit right that should’ve been right all along, and doing that with you there with us, and everyone else we love. We just wanted you to be able to enjoy it.” Mark knew just from the way Justin was phrasing things that he was in a better headspace. Manic or depressed, wherever his bipolar was hovering, it would always be with negative self-talk, inability to see the positive, often shrouded in fear and insecurity. He felt like someone was watching him and he glanced over, seeing Sam nursing a glass of Diet Coke, watching to make sure his twin and his nephew were doing okay. Mark smiled, winking at him. It was an unspoken gesture to reassure Sam that Justin was in a better place now and with that, things had the green light to go forward.
Justin reached into his pocket and took out a silver ring box. He snapped it open with his thumb, and nestled inside were his mom and dad’s wedding rings. “I just need to know that you’re doing this as much for you as you are for me. Dad, I know you. All you want is to do whatever it is that keeps me safe. I want to promise you I always will be, but I don’t know how to pull it off. I want to see you happy. Not happy because I’m happy, or because Sunshine’s happy. Happy because you’re happy.”
Mark and Gen had decided to leave their prior wedding rings as a thing of the past. They sold them and donated the money to Shades of Violet. This was a new start in every sense, so they went and got new matching rings designed. The last ones, they couldn’t even remember buying. Gen remembered slightly more about Vegas than Mark ever did, but nothing of clarity. It was a mistake of their past and the only thing they wanted it to have bearing on was the fact it had brought them to a place where they didn’t just want to get the bloody thing annulled. They should have. No doubt about that. But then what would life look like now? How would it have all played out when Justin showed up? It took him a few sessions of therapy to learn to give himself permission to let all that go. None of this was a do-over, it was a whole different new beginning. “I’m happy, kiddo. I’m happy that everyone I love is here. I’m happy I get the chance to marry the love of my life and make memories of that I never had before. I’m happy my kids get to be part of it. But I’m with you, kiddo. I don’t know if I’ll quite believe it until it’s happening. Because when you’re a parent and your kid’s sick, it’s really hard to pause and think about anything else until you know they’re feeling better.”
“And can’t just, like, slap Vaporub all over it and hope fluids and rest helps, huh?” Sasha came back through from the other room then in just his Superman boxer-briefs and an unbuttoned midnight blue shirt hanging open, declaring that he couldn’t figure out which waistcoat was his. Justin laughed because Sash had turned out to be the least organised of the lot of them. He had never been involved in a wedding before and he hadn’t been quite sure he belonged in the wedding party. Until Justin’s parents sat him down and told him belonged there just as much as everyone else because he was like a son to them, just on-loan from his own parents. Justin laughed. “I guess we should try to get this show on the road then, huh? I don’t think we’ll get away with letting Sash stand up there in his undies with Uncle Paris in charge. Are you nervous? I’m nervous.”
Mark watched Justin’s focus be pulled briefly by Sasha. That laugh. Mark had missed it. You couldn’t put a price on it. Sasha had come into their lives right when they all did need some guardian angel intervention. Justin had been so rock bottom before, he literally killed himself. He died on Bondi that day and it was only the expertise of the lifesavers that brought him back. Kade had said a mere 30 seconds more in that water, they wouldn’t have been able to do anything. Then little by little, Justin began to smile again. He began to laugh. He began to enjoy things in life and resume the things that made him so unique and beautiful. James told Sasha that he was the skinniest of the lot of them, so the waistcoat that looked like it could fit Dory was his. Then Sash and Mark’s brothers all started to joke around, laughing together. Mark had no words for how amazing it was to see his the kid his son loved just fitting in so easily with their family. He had become part of it now. Mark wasn’t just nervous, he was emotional on all levels. “I’m really fucking nervous, buddy. But also excited, and happy, and awed that this is even happening. Most of all, I just really love your mum and I’m glad that no matter how much we managed to fuck up as a team, we could still eventually realise where we went wrong and knew the only option was to put it right.”
“I don’t blame you for any of it, you know,” Justin murmured, smiling when he heard his dad confess everything he was feeling. “Maybe at the time, I did. Because I was so scared and I don’t always know how to deal with things when everything goes wrong. And since I met Sash, I can talk more about what I’m feeling. He helps me talk. He has this knack for being a few steps ahead of me, lighting up the way for me, you know? But he never pushes me to talk. He knows when I can’t, but he also reminds me he’s there if I need to. I talk to him differently than I do anyone else, even my therapists. And I just think if you have that with Mum, Dad, that everything’ll just eventually figure itself out somehow, even on the bad days.”
Mark studied his kid’s face, listening to the wise words come out with such a clarity usually couldn’t grasp when he was manic. It didn’t just prove that Justin’s brain chemicals seemed to have rebalanced from the racing mess they had been, but they made Mark pause and think about what Justin was saying. “You think that’s what love is, son? Real love, that’s going to last out all the shit?”
Justin smiled and nodded. “I really do. And I think when we forget that, that’s when everything goes to shit. I think you and Mum forgot it. Forgot you could have it together. You stopped being awesome together. I think a big mistake a lot of people in this world make is trying to force awesome that will never just be there, and the people who have it forget how it works. They give up. I don’t think you ever really gave up, Dad. I just think you thought Mum had. I know you’ve never given up on me and I know that Sash has that same quality. Why do you think I could connect to him so easily back in the start? Because he made me feel loved and protected, just like you do. I knew he wasn’t going to hurt me. You’ve never hurt me, Dad. Not like you think you have. You just let that little torch of light go out a few times so I stopped being able to see where I was going. You never forgot how to relight it, though.”
That was it. Mark was done. He had been holding his emotions together by a mere thread for weeks now and in these few simple breathings of his son’s heart, he lost it and started to cry. He wrapped his arms around Justin in a protective hug and kissed his head. “I love you, kiddo. In a way that a dad will never have enough words to tell you how much. The day you found me and came into my life was the best plot twist I could ever hope for. And I’m so fucking proud of you.”
Justin couldn’t stop himself bursting into tears too. He would probably do that a lot today and in the coming few weeks. He had been doing it for days, but this wasn’t in the same way. It was relief and a surreal sense of happiness that he could be here for his dad marrying his mum in a way he hoped for all along. But more than that, the one thing that would never got trigger Justin’s emotions was hearing his dad say he loved him and was proud of him. He spent his horrible childhood years wishing for that, wishing his dad would be everything he turned out to be. Sometimes, he needed to hear it out loud to remember it was real and not his imagination. The tears prevented him being able to talk, so instead, he just clung to his dad and had a good happy cry against his shoulder, the one thing any good dad worth their weight could offer no matter how good or bad life was.
LOG, COMPLETE
What: Pre-Wedding Father-and-Son Time
Where: Hamilton Island, Australia
When: Saturday morning
Mark was more convinced than ever that some higher power was watching over his kid. Justin’s bipolar had been unstable for a few weeks now. It left him on close suicide watch and everyone on high alert. Mark feared as they drew closer and closer to the wedding, needing to pack and fly out to Australia for it, Justin’s condition might not stabilise. It was a distinct possibility. Even if it was his wedding, he wouldn’t just stop worrying about his mentally ill son. Especially not when they were going to be staying at a resort on the beach. Justin’s track record with beaches left Mark terrified, yet as always, he was faced with that ever-present juggling act of giving Justin independence and placing trust in Sasha, or trying to wrap him up in cotton wool. Justin never did well with cotton wool. Cotton wool could sometimes make everything worse.
The morning came when they had to finish packing and get ready to go to the airport. This time, it was by charter on the FABULOUS private jet. Both sides of the wedding party and respective partners were flying that way. It gave them more freedom with Justin and Dory. When Justin was this ill, Dory was pretty much always with him, save for if someone else took her for a quick bathroom walk. Even then, it was limited who she would go with when Justin was sick. Sasha, Mark, Gen, possibly Mark’s parents or brothers, Amarlie at a push. Everyone else, Dory would put up a growling, barking fight. She would bite whoever tried to intercept her from her job caring for Justin. Although an airline could clear her to fly in the cabin with him, it still came with restrictions for health reasons. With the private flight, Dory had the freedom to be at Justin’s side the entire flight.
The flight wasn’t the best. At least at first. Justin’s anxiety was through the roof. He hated flying at the best of times because it fucked with his brain chemistry and made him motion sick. Something about being on a smaller plane, but Mark suspected that was only part of it. Actually getting on the flight, travelling to Australia this time, meant the wedding really was here and no one was pulling out. Justin spent so long waiting for the axe to fall and the plug to be pulled that he blindsided himself. He was more convinced something would happen to prevent than he was of the chance everything was going to go smoothly.
Luckily, Alec was on this flight with them and he had come prepared for possible worst case scenarios with Justin. Mark was endlessly grateful to have his adopted brother back in his life when he needed him the most. Since Alec returned from service, he had been treating Justin. Not just with some special forms of behavioural therapies, but closely monitoring his medication regime. It was Alec who orchestrated Justin being able to be prescribed a new non-serotonin medication available in Australia and the UK, but not approved by the FDA in America. Even if Justin was experiencing a bipolar episode (they would never just cease, no matter how medicated he was), there were significant noticeable improvements in the severity of his symptoms.
While everyone else was buzzing around trying to gain some semblance of normal to board the flight, Alec sat down with Justin in a quiet corner and talked him through the anxiety and convinced him to have a shot of valium to help him cope with it. Mark hated his kid needing valium, but not out of principal. He wasn’t one of those obnoxious parents who joined the anti-vax revolution, stopped them eaten sugar and believed being paleo or vegan with kale enemas would mean they lived forever. If his kids were sick and medication helped them feel better, he was all for it. But valium was a harsh drug and it knocked Justin around. It turned him zombie-like, which was unnerving when he was already in the midst of episodic dissociation. Bottom line? A shot of valium meant Justin would sleep through the flight. Which is exactly what he did. He crashed out before everyone was even seated, ready for take-off. Dory settled in on his shoulder, her head resting down on his chest and her tail curled around the nape of his neck.
The trip had been timed so that everyone had a couple of days to settle in, relax, recover from the jetlag, and there was no crazy last minute rush for everything. Justin slept most of the time. Sasha reported that he had only woken to shower a few times, stuff something in his face so he could take his medication, and go to the bathroom. Then Friday night dinner, the last supper before the big day, Justin and Sasha came down to the dining room holding hands and Mark could see immediately that Justin looked… better. He was smiling, he had some colour back in his face, his stylish clothing was back (it had been trackpants and baggy t-shirts for days now). Like someone up there had intervened and giving him the positive energy he needed to feel better for this.
Now it was the morning of the wedding. Mark and his wedding party were in Justin and Sasha’s suite, while Gen and hers were in the honeymoon suite they were booked in one the whole put-a-ring-on-it was done. Paris was adamant, putting his fabulous foot down hard, that Mark couldn’t see Gen before the wedding. Mark woke up expecting everything that could possible go wrong to go wrong, so he was pleasantly surprised when everything was relaxed and running smoothly. So far, he was getting his Aussie on like a boss, in board shorts, a singlet and thongs. It was probably all glitz, glamour and fabulousless over in Gen’s neck of the woods. Here, it was led by a bunch of Aussie blokes who would probably be banned from being anywhere near anything fabulous. Sitting on the end of the bed sipping a Bundaberg Ginger Beer, Mark watched Justin laughing with Sasha, and found himself wondering how Gen was getting on. No doubt she was looking stunning. Today was the day they finally put all their fuck ups right, for them, and for the kid they had together.
Justin caught his dad watching him so he gave Sasha a kiss and came over, flopping down beside him. He gazed at his dad for a few moments and then threw his arms around him in a squeezing hug. “I love you, Dad.”
Mark hugged him back. He let his eyes close, reassuring himself again that Justin was still here. He was still breathing, still had a pulse. Not just all that, but his son was by his side on his wedding day, as his Best Man. “I love you more. Starting to feel real now, buddy?” he asked, smiling.
Justin laughed and shook his head. “Nope. Not really. But I kinda realised that maybe that’s not necessarily a bad thing for me. I’ve been sick for so long. That’s why. It’s not really that I didn’t believe it. I just couldn’t feel it, I guess.” He caught his lips between his teeth, giving his dad a nose-scrunched smile. “Deep, huh? Blame one am chats with my guardian angel conduit over there. He hasn’t had a full night’s sleep since I started getting manic again. I can just ramble about anything in my head at any time of day, and he’s there to listen. But he helped me see it. Not believing this wasn’t me not believing your’s and mom’s word or promises. It was just a symptom, you know? Still is. Maybe like all my other therapy, I have to see it working before I know it actually is. Does that make sense?”
“Jus, there isn’t a single thing about you or your illness that doesn’t make sense to me. I know how badly sick you’ve been, and Mom and I haven’t thought you’re doubting our word. Nothing like that. We just know that all of this, you were going to need time to be able to adjust to it in your own way. A way you can cope with. It didn’t matter to us if that took you days, weeks, months. Maybe even years. Or how you needed to process it and work through it. All we’ve been glad of is that you have had Sash through the whole process. None of this is about the wedding. Not really. It’s about making our family official, putting shit right that should’ve been right all along, and doing that with you there with us, and everyone else we love. We just wanted you to be able to enjoy it.” Mark knew just from the way Justin was phrasing things that he was in a better headspace. Manic or depressed, wherever his bipolar was hovering, it would always be with negative self-talk, inability to see the positive, often shrouded in fear and insecurity. He felt like someone was watching him and he glanced over, seeing Sam nursing a glass of Diet Coke, watching to make sure his twin and his nephew were doing okay. Mark smiled, winking at him. It was an unspoken gesture to reassure Sam that Justin was in a better place now and with that, things had the green light to go forward.
Justin reached into his pocket and took out a silver ring box. He snapped it open with his thumb, and nestled inside were his mom and dad’s wedding rings. “I just need to know that you’re doing this as much for you as you are for me. Dad, I know you. All you want is to do whatever it is that keeps me safe. I want to promise you I always will be, but I don’t know how to pull it off. I want to see you happy. Not happy because I’m happy, or because Sunshine’s happy. Happy because you’re happy.”
Mark and Gen had decided to leave their prior wedding rings as a thing of the past. They sold them and donated the money to Shades of Violet. This was a new start in every sense, so they went and got new matching rings designed. The last ones, they couldn’t even remember buying. Gen remembered slightly more about Vegas than Mark ever did, but nothing of clarity. It was a mistake of their past and the only thing they wanted it to have bearing on was the fact it had brought them to a place where they didn’t just want to get the bloody thing annulled. They should have. No doubt about that. But then what would life look like now? How would it have all played out when Justin showed up? It took him a few sessions of therapy to learn to give himself permission to let all that go. None of this was a do-over, it was a whole different new beginning. “I’m happy, kiddo. I’m happy that everyone I love is here. I’m happy I get the chance to marry the love of my life and make memories of that I never had before. I’m happy my kids get to be part of it. But I’m with you, kiddo. I don’t know if I’ll quite believe it until it’s happening. Because when you’re a parent and your kid’s sick, it’s really hard to pause and think about anything else until you know they’re feeling better.”
“And can’t just, like, slap Vaporub all over it and hope fluids and rest helps, huh?” Sasha came back through from the other room then in just his Superman boxer-briefs and an unbuttoned midnight blue shirt hanging open, declaring that he couldn’t figure out which waistcoat was his. Justin laughed because Sash had turned out to be the least organised of the lot of them. He had never been involved in a wedding before and he hadn’t been quite sure he belonged in the wedding party. Until Justin’s parents sat him down and told him belonged there just as much as everyone else because he was like a son to them, just on-loan from his own parents. Justin laughed. “I guess we should try to get this show on the road then, huh? I don’t think we’ll get away with letting Sash stand up there in his undies with Uncle Paris in charge. Are you nervous? I’m nervous.”
Mark watched Justin’s focus be pulled briefly by Sasha. That laugh. Mark had missed it. You couldn’t put a price on it. Sasha had come into their lives right when they all did need some guardian angel intervention. Justin had been so rock bottom before, he literally killed himself. He died on Bondi that day and it was only the expertise of the lifesavers that brought him back. Kade had said a mere 30 seconds more in that water, they wouldn’t have been able to do anything. Then little by little, Justin began to smile again. He began to laugh. He began to enjoy things in life and resume the things that made him so unique and beautiful. James told Sasha that he was the skinniest of the lot of them, so the waistcoat that looked like it could fit Dory was his. Then Sash and Mark’s brothers all started to joke around, laughing together. Mark had no words for how amazing it was to see his the kid his son loved just fitting in so easily with their family. He had become part of it now. Mark wasn’t just nervous, he was emotional on all levels. “I’m really fucking nervous, buddy. But also excited, and happy, and awed that this is even happening. Most of all, I just really love your mum and I’m glad that no matter how much we managed to fuck up as a team, we could still eventually realise where we went wrong and knew the only option was to put it right.”
“I don’t blame you for any of it, you know,” Justin murmured, smiling when he heard his dad confess everything he was feeling. “Maybe at the time, I did. Because I was so scared and I don’t always know how to deal with things when everything goes wrong. And since I met Sash, I can talk more about what I’m feeling. He helps me talk. He has this knack for being a few steps ahead of me, lighting up the way for me, you know? But he never pushes me to talk. He knows when I can’t, but he also reminds me he’s there if I need to. I talk to him differently than I do anyone else, even my therapists. And I just think if you have that with Mum, Dad, that everything’ll just eventually figure itself out somehow, even on the bad days.”
Mark studied his kid’s face, listening to the wise words come out with such a clarity usually couldn’t grasp when he was manic. It didn’t just prove that Justin’s brain chemicals seemed to have rebalanced from the racing mess they had been, but they made Mark pause and think about what Justin was saying. “You think that’s what love is, son? Real love, that’s going to last out all the shit?”
Justin smiled and nodded. “I really do. And I think when we forget that, that’s when everything goes to shit. I think you and Mum forgot it. Forgot you could have it together. You stopped being awesome together. I think a big mistake a lot of people in this world make is trying to force awesome that will never just be there, and the people who have it forget how it works. They give up. I don’t think you ever really gave up, Dad. I just think you thought Mum had. I know you’ve never given up on me and I know that Sash has that same quality. Why do you think I could connect to him so easily back in the start? Because he made me feel loved and protected, just like you do. I knew he wasn’t going to hurt me. You’ve never hurt me, Dad. Not like you think you have. You just let that little torch of light go out a few times so I stopped being able to see where I was going. You never forgot how to relight it, though.”
That was it. Mark was done. He had been holding his emotions together by a mere thread for weeks now and in these few simple breathings of his son’s heart, he lost it and started to cry. He wrapped his arms around Justin in a protective hug and kissed his head. “I love you, kiddo. In a way that a dad will never have enough words to tell you how much. The day you found me and came into my life was the best plot twist I could ever hope for. And I’m so fucking proud of you.”
Justin couldn’t stop himself bursting into tears too. He would probably do that a lot today and in the coming few weeks. He had been doing it for days, but this wasn’t in the same way. It was relief and a surreal sense of happiness that he could be here for his dad marrying his mum in a way he hoped for all along. But more than that, the one thing that would never got trigger Justin’s emotions was hearing his dad say he loved him and was proud of him. He spent his horrible childhood years wishing for that, wishing his dad would be everything he turned out to be. Sometimes, he needed to hear it out loud to remember it was real and not his imagination. The tears prevented him being able to talk, so instead, he just clung to his dad and had a good happy cry against his shoulder, the one thing any good dad worth their weight could offer no matter how good or bad life was.
LOG, COMPLETE