dreamlikenewyork | "Everything is clearly now in hindsight. Twenty-twenty hindsight."

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"Everything is clearly now in hindsight. Twenty-twenty hindsight."

Who: Austin Shaw and Beau Watson
What: Working on Closure
Where: Oncology Unit, Mount Sinai
When: After this

When Liam was giving Austin the pep talk at the party about going to see Beau and why, after enough drinks to nearly trip down the stairs, he had a lot more balls than he did arriving at the hospital about to face the inevitable. In hindsight, he probably shouldn't have gulped down two glasses of water and a large black coffee to try to sober up a bit before he got to the hospital. He had to get the cab to stop a block too soon when none of it wanted to stay down on top of however many New Year's appletinis he had been drowning his sorrows in. But at least that and the walk in the chilly winter air sobered him up a bit more before he got to the hospital.

Liam said that Beau was working the nightshift because he was monitoring Brandon closely with the Graft-versus-Host Disease, something Austin knew about because he researched everything about bone marrow transplants when Beau was sick again during their marriage. Apparently Beau and Brandon had the same type of leukemia but Beau's chance of getting GvHD was less because his brother had donated the marrow. Even still, Beau had been so sick, they nearly lost him. Austin really did know what Merlin was going through. A whole lot of terrifying crap you could barely think about because you thought every time you woke up, your husband wouldn't be breathing or every next conversation with a doctor, they would give a terminal diagnosis.

It was also why Austin knew the Oncology Unit almost as well as they knew their home at the time. As soon as he got there, he was having second, third, fiftieth thoughts. His stomach was churning more with nerves than from the booze he had. The only thing stopping him turning around and getting another cab back to where he was staying was knowing Liam would ask Beau if he came, so he would be sprung anyway.

He expected to have to ask a nurse or a clerk to see Beau when he got to the desk, but the world was going to completely shove him into the deep end. As soon as he walked into the unit, quiet and dim for night, Beau was sitting at the circular nurses station nursing a grande cup and laughing at something the nurse sitting with him was saying. Beau looked up when he realised someone was coming into the unit and Austin saw the exact moment the penny of shock dropped.

"I ran into Liam at the party..." he murmured, clearing his throat, glancing at the nurse with a rush of relief she wasn't male. It wasn't Zander, Beau's boyfriend.

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When Beau saw Austin, he had a few moments where he wasn't sure if he should be angry or not. His horrific hangover was still fresh in his mind. As soon as Austin said that, though, all he could do was take a breath and let it out slowly. Being New Year, it was a bit of a slow night. They got as many of their patients home for New Year, even if just for the night. As much as he wanted to text Liam just to tell him he was a bitch, he knew Liam wouldn't have intercepted like this to piss him off. There was more to it than that. There was going to have to be a point Beau and Austin talked again, learned how to communicate now they were going to be living in the same city with a whole extended group of mutual family and friends. "Few too many?" he guessed, pushing out of the chair to round the desk, the nurse discreetly leaving them to it. He rested his elbow on the top of the desk. "I can't do this if you're pissed. I don't think that'd be fair on either of us. Also, you know it's, like, nearly two am, right?"

Austin held up his hands. "It's okay. I hurled most of it up a block back and walked the rest of the way here. Nothing like nearly freezing one's cock off to sober up a little. But you knew just from looking at me so I must look atrocious..." He took a deep breath, fixing his scarf around his neck and then took his gloves off. "You don't have to do this. Not tonight. Not at all. I just thought I'd try. Liam said you were here and he made some really good points about biting the bullet. I'm not here for anything specific. Not really. I just want to talk. We're overdue that, but I wouldn't blame you if you didn't want to. I'm sorry that me showing up fucked with you so much that you had to write yourself off. I'm sorry I kissed you too."

Beau pressed his lips together, bemused and shaking his head. He couldn't judge Austin for drinking when he was pretty sure he was still hungover from writing himself off at Christmas. "Alright, come on." He picked up his coffee and hooked his hand in Austin's elbow to lead him up the corridor. Before he did, he told the nurse to page him if there was even the slightest change in Brandon's readings, which were coming through to him constantly on an iPad. He paused at the treatment room and found a few supplies, tossing it all onto a tray, and grabbed an IV pole. He pointed to a vacant room across the corridor and he turned the light on when they went in. "Banana bag. Should counteract the hangover setting in. You're here now. May as well kill two birds with one stone. Get on the bed, make yourself at home."

Austin let Beau lead him to wherever the hell he pleased and he damn well wasn't going to verbalise the fact watching Beau do his doctor thing was a turn-on, especially when he was in scrubs with his stethoscope. It wasn't his place for that anymore but he couldn't switch it off. He admitted to Liam he was still in love with Beau, despite it no longer being reciprocated. Beau fell out of love with him because of the cheating and that was fair. Beau had always said cheating was a deal-breaker for him. Knowing the full circumstances now, that Beau was dealing with extreme depression with grief of surviving cancer again, Austin felt rotten about it. It didn't have to happen. He destroyed everything. But he still wanted to try to get to a place where they could be friends, if that was even possible. He sat on the bed, settling back on the pillows. It wasn't lost that Beau was evading him and that was okay. This would have to be a work-in-progress. "You look tired. Liam said you've been throwing yourself into your work. How's Brandon going?"

Beau took a sick bag from the dispenser on the wall and handed it to Austin. "Just in case. If you've been on your usual fruity girly booze, I can't promise even a banana bag will stop feeling sick. It should help, though. Unless it was just nerves making you hurl. In which case..." He just shrugged. He didn't have a medical answer for that, short of listing Austin as a patient and getting someone to chart him Xanax. He took Austin's hand and crouched down beside him, tapping his veins to see which was viable for a cannula. If he kept busy here, it would probably be easier to face and stop him panicking about the whole situation. He nodded to the bottle of orange liquid on the tray. "Hydralyte. Sip it if you can. I am tired. It's been a long week. He's okay. Stable, good vitals. He's on the up at this point, touch wood. I'm not even going to make a boner joke with that. Too close to home."

"Okay, we've talked about this. Fruity drinks don't mess with my complexion as much as hard liquor and considering my career might be about to take off even more, my complexion is vitally important, darling. I woke up the day after I saw you and I had a zit. I haven't had a zit since 2009 when people were still trying to upsell me monthly subscriptions to Proactiv." Austin opened the Hydralye obediently and cleared his throat. "Nerves, two giant glasses of water, and a large very black coffee because I didn't think showing up on an Oncology Ward half-drunk to see you was a fair move at all. I bet it's been a comfort for Brandon having you has his doctor, someone who's been through it. Am I allowed to see him? Or is he locked away behind super secret VIP security? Even though I know he's in an isolation room."

"Oh no, a zit," Beau offered dryly but it was with a faint smirk. He and Austin might be divorced but you don't just stop knowing someone despite a signature on a court document. He knew Austin's penchant for 'girly' drinks. He knew his almost-religious skincare routine for his complexion. He knew Austin would rather die than use shitty skincare products like Proactiv when he was more a luxury organic product type of guy. He was a pretentious sassy bitch and it was all what Beau fell in love with to start with. Austin wasn't going to inherently change who he was just because their marriage fell apart, even if it would've changed a lot of other things. "All that on top of fruity drinks? Yep, there was no way you weren't going to puke. Just saying. I can take you to see him but it'll just be through a glass wall and neither of them will be awake. The thing about cancer is not much brings comfort when you're going through it. It helped him trust me, though, when he didn't trust many people."

Austin gave Beau a Look, hearing the veiled mocking in his tone. "It was a really big zit, darling. It should've had its own coat of arms and national anthem. It's extremely unfair one has to start suffering stress breakouts after years of a glorious milky complexion. Fucking hell, I'm so nervous, I've sunk to a new low... bitching about a zit in an oncology unit. Sorry." He puffed his cheeks out and exhaled heavily, more than ready for these fluids to kick in so he stopped feeling so queasy. Beau made him nervous but he knew it was all down to the fact he still loved him and knew he couldn't tell him. Not directly. But Beau was extremely smart and cluey. Did he know? Was he just trying to purposefully avoid the subject? Austin was trying to remember exactly what Liam had said to convince him to come here. How was this a good idea? "He's sick like you were? I mean, barely functioning, wishing he was dead, losing all his light? Seems so fucking unfair if he and Merlin haven't been together very long."

Beau concentrated on getting the canula inserted on the back of Austin's wrist. "Have they given you on B Vitamins for the HIV?" he asked, carefully securing the tegaderm over the line so it stayed in place. He stood and tossed the remnants into the kidney dish and hung the IV bag, setting the machine to the right dosage. He was definitely avoiding certain subjects but that didn't mean he wouldn't let them come. He just wasn't sure how he was really feeling. It was hard to rationalise emotions on disrupted sleep and, deep down, inevitably feeling upset and confused to be carrying on a conversation with someone he once loved very dearly and thought he would spend the rest of his life with. The fact Austin had been drinking and had a hangover setting in was a distraction he needed right now. "Yeah. He's... well beyond rock bottom. He shouldn't have survived a code and if he kept his DNR, he wouldn't be alive right now. I'm pretty sure Merlin's hit the... the telling him it's okay if he needs to go moment. No matter what happened to our marriage, I will never forget how much you took care of me and did the best you could. We were supposed to be celebrating when I went into remission, I know. I was physically better but I didn't expect to live, okay? Once you hit that point, it feels very much like you did die for some people. For me. It's hard to learn to live again. Hard to... know I could still face it all over again. That just might be my lot. Fighting this over and over until it finally takes me."

"Yeah, they gave me a pile of supplements. Why? Do you think I'm lacking something? You got that in already?" Austin looked at his hand with the IV line. Beau had a rep as being a boss when it came to sticking needles in people but Austin barely felt a thing. He wondered what Beau could tell about his health just from doing that, though. He also didn't want to think too much on how nice it felt that Beau cared if he was okay or not and was helping him. If he did that, it would almost feel like old times. "He had a DNR? Shit, I know how terrified I was when you wanted one of those. I understood why you did it but once you turned a corner and started coming through it, I literally went to a damn church and prayed you hadn't crashed again. Hypocritical cunt, I know, but cancer and nearly losing the love of your life has even the most passionate atheist wondering about higher powers. Have you... how is your health now? I know it's impossible to know if or when it could come back. You've had anxiety about that as long as I've know you. Beau, I'm so fucking sorry I failed you when I made vows we had this for better or worse."

"B6 and B12 can promote acne breakouts in some people. But you need to keep taking them. They help boost the immune and nervous systems. You can deal with a few zits which you can cover with concealer. Your health's more important. Of course I got it in already. Not all my insertion skills are dysfunctioned." Beau smirked and once the IV was running, he dropped into the seat by the bed, going back to his coffee. "He changed the DNR to a Five Wishes Order to give Merlin more agency as his medical proxy. Which sounds valiant and chivalrous, letting your partner make the calls on your medical condition but in reality, there's nothing more terrifying for someone to be shouldered with. He bled out, he was hypovolemic. He was at risk of multiple organ failure. He's got a long way to go but at least he's not in immediate danger. Well... if it's any consolation, that's the been the hardest part for me. You nailed the better or worse. You just skipped out when my cock didn't work. Sex was never a deciding factor of a relationship for me. I feel like it was for you."

Austin looked at Beau with a slow blink. "Are you fucking kidding me? Vitamins are supposed to fix shit, not cause it. But okay, okay. I'll keep taking them. I had to learn really damn quick that if I didn't take care of myself properly, I could make it all worse. I already felt like a fuck up, so I didn't want to screw that up too. Besides, Angel and Rosie were worrying about me. I didn't want them over there stressing so much that I wasn't doing the right thing and drop dead, miserable and alone. You still have problems with sex?" He stopped, holding his hand up. "It's okay. Don't answer that. It's none of my business. But no, I didn't skip out when your cock didn't work. I was with you the whole time it wasn't working. And I still felt like you were falling out of love with me. I know it's my fault I didn't see something was wrong but I really need you to at least understand it wasn't because you couldn't have sex with me. I thought I was losing you. I drank way too much, I was on E, and I fucked up. I would never have done it sober."

Edited 2020-01-18 02:47 (UTC)

This was it. The hard stuff hitting. A large part of Beau wished his pager would go off but that would mean a patient emergency and he wouldn't wish that on anyone. He wanted to be an ostrich about this stuff but that meant old wounds would never heal. It was easier when Austin wasn't here, he would not think about it, focus on work, taking each day as it came. He didn't anticipate Austin would return from LA. He assumed his ex-husband would take to that place like a duck to water, where Beau would rather shoot himself in the eyeball than live in a place like LA. He swirled the remainder of his coffee in the cup but didn't take another drink. "Look, I'm probably going to have problems with sex for the rest of my life. Let's just say it's intermittent and chemically-assisted and leave it at that. I start feeling damaged if I think about it too much." Viagra was a staple for him these days but he couldn't decide if he was okay with using it as a crutch for his lovelife or if he should just leave it at have ED and whoever he dated could take it or leave it. "I was falling out of love with myself. Fell out of love with myself. That was when I needed you to love me enough for both of us. That's all I needed. Could you have even done that? Could you have lived a sexless marriage with an emotionally-fatigued husband who wished he'd died?"

"Sexless, yes. Loveless, no. The latter was where I thought we were heading. I know how horrifically wrong I was about that. You were the one who taught me that intimacy doesn't mean sex. Intimacy without sex is often even better. Way often. If it's any consolation, I think I'd be terrified to have sex with you now anyway. HIV..." Austin pointed at himself and then to Beau. "Immune issues. Not that the option is there but my point is, I can survive without sex, I haven't slept with anyone since all this shit happened. I don't want to. Sex, and lack thereof, has caused me to make more mistakes than I can ever make up for. If I thought the outfits were sexy, I'd become a monk. The other stuff? Yes. I could've done it, if I wasn't such a fuckup and completely misread the signs. Now it's a moot point. How have you been, though? Overall, recently. Not since I rocked up. I know that fucked you up."

Beau closed his eyes and massaged his forehead slowly with his fingertips, as if that would somehow make this conversation easier. He was trying to figure out if he should open up more or still keep deflecting the hardest parts. He really wanted to be able to talk to Austin openly and get some sort of closure, whatever that looked like. "You shouldn't exile yourself like that. You've got no viral loads and there's PrEP. I wouldn't think twice about taking that for someone I loved, so don't let this be an indefinite punishment. Life's... it can be fucking terrible. It takes the 'shit happens' concept and mutates it into a fucking monster. No one's supposed to live a life of misery, because it could be game over at any moment. If there's ways to make it better, just freaking do it. That's what makes things like depression, mental illness, so fucking hard because no one wants to be miserable, you just can't get out of the darkness..." He sighed and put the coffee cup aside. "I'm tired most of the time. If I get sick, it hits me hard. I've had some worthy distractions. Working on Brandon's care team hasn't been easy but it's been rewarding that I can help him and know what he's going through. Other days, I feel like I want to chuck it all in and move away. I've been trying to make a relationship work but it's not. Which is okay. Zan knew he was a test drive."

Austin didn't know what to say when Beau was just putting it out there that he would take PrEP if the situation was any different. It wasn't doing anything to help Austin get beyond this. Of course he knew all about PrEP. His doctors had given him the information for any potential partners but he hadn't planned on needing it. Now all he was thinking about was that Beau would, what that would mean. "That's the thing. Life is terrible and it's hard to find your footing again when you annihilating the world out from under yourself. I don't know how to be happy without you. With anyone but you. And I don't want to be. But that's my cross to bear, not yours." He wanted to reach over and hold Beau's hand but he had pulled his hands into the sleeves of his labcoat. Probably body language, trying to shield himself. Now he was just putting out there that his relationship wasn't working and before Austin could stop his stupid mouth, out was flying, "I'm still in love with you!"

Beau put his hands up over his face and his breath rushed out of him so deeply, his shoulders slumped. "Fuck, I knew you were going to say that. Now I feel like it's my turn to barf," he mumbled from behind his hands. He did. He had known since he ran into Austin that it was coming. He didn't even know how he knew but it was probably a mix of knowing Austin better than he knew himself and the fact their marriage had been really fucking good while it was working. He just tried to drown the worry out, bury his head in the sand and hope he was mistaken. He didn't want to hear it because it was too big and meant too much that he wasn't ready to deal with. But all of that, it didn't stop what Austin felt. Trying to block him saying what he felt was probably about as effective as putting a band-aid to stop the flow of Niagra Falls. His phone started buzzing in his pocket and he fished it out, checking the page. "I've got a stat on Brandon. I need to go check on him. Just stay here. I'll be back."

Austin was hoping for a slightly better reaction but rationally, he knew there wasn't one. Or rather, the reaction was better than it could've been. This was Beau. He could've easily told him to go fuck himself. Laughed at him. Stormed out. Called him a jerk-off cunt and then told him to go fuck himself. It all would have been a valid response. He was shocked Beau knew but once he caught his breath, he wasn't surprised. Not really. Then Beau's pager was going off and - all things considered - it was a welcome relief because Austin didn't know what to say or do in that moment. He just nodded and watched Beau hurry from the room. After a moment of sitting there shellshocked, he shuffled to the edge of the bed and stood up, grabbing the IV pole. He went to stand in the doorway, hoping he didn't see any signs a patient was coding and in serious danger. Austin hoped like hell for Merlin that his husband was as lucky as his had been. He wished he could help. He wanted to offer to but he didn't want to piss Beau off trying to stick his nose in.

It was a little while before Beau exited Brandon's isolation room, peeling of puke-splattered PPE gown and shoving it into a contaminated waste bin, following by his gloves and mask. He went over to the nurses station and grabbed one of the tablets to update Brandon's notes, feeding back to the nightshift nurse allocated to Brandon. "Need a clean-up and bed change. Increase his antiemetics and if he doesn't feel much better and the vomiting persists, add the dolasetron. Take some bloods and get a fast-track from path. If his HG is low, hang a unit of blood and page me if there's any increase in vomiting or passing blood but I don't think there's any active internal bleeding. I think he's just getting used to solid foods again, had a bit too much, too soon. It's okay. All trial and error. I've ordered something to help him relax and sleep too. I think anxiety is exacerbating the nausea." He handed the tablet over to the nurse and when he turned around, he found Austin sitting just up the hall with his IV pole. With a sigh, he pumped some sanitizer into his palm from the dispenser on the desk and went over to sit beside him, rubbing his hands together. "You want to help. I get it. Merlin's been fighting this for many months now but I think he'd probably appreciate talking to someone who's been through what he has."

Edited 2020-01-23 11:33 (UTC)

"Can they get it controlled? The GvHD, I mean." Austin couldn't shed the fact he was nosey. Always had been. He loved gossip. Not that this was gossip. It was more concern than anything else, but curiosity about how Brandon was holding up when Beau got that page. There Beau was doing that thing where he figured out what he was thinking too. It should be unnerving, not comforting. For the first time in a long time, he didn't feel so lonely, even if things between him and Beau were still a complete mess. He was left hanging on his confession and he was terrified to mention it again. "I don't think it's my place. I don't know Merlin too well and I had a working relationship with Brandon. They're going through hell. That up and down shit, not knowing if he'll be okay from one minute to the next. It's lonely sometimes being stuck in that vortex where your other half is so sick, you don't want to lay any of your own emotional shit on them. At the same time, they want you to because they love you as much as you love them and they still want to take care of you, even if they can barely open their eyes without pain. Therapy never helped with any of that. I tried it. I was still terrified you'd die. But I don't want to stick my nose in on their private business. It's too private and he doesn't get near enough privacy in his life."

Beau nodded. "It's stable. He's responded well to the meds. His body just has a lot going on with it. He's been on PEG feeds for weeks now because he couldn't keep anything down but he's been eating a little and we're going to be getting him up to take a shower soon. But there'll be hurdles, figuring out what he can tolerate and what he can't cope with. Compared to what he was, he's doing really well now." He gave Austin a gentle nudge with his shoulder. "How are you feeling? C'mon, let's go back to the room. You've still got a bit to go with the IV. We'll see how you feel after it if you need more." He stood and helped Austin up so they could head back to the vacant room.

"Not quite the boozy trainwreck I was when I got here. Fabulous electrolytes, darling." Austin pulled himself back up onto the bed and gave Beau a faint wry smile. "I remember those days, when you were on PEG feeding because you were so sick. It felt like you were never going to eat again and I could never quite believe the doctors when they said that was enough for you. Now, of course, I know Tara is the best Oncologist basically in the universe and she's married to the best Hematologist, so they helped let you stick around for awhile longer. Hopefully until you're at least, like, ninety-eight, if there's any Powers That Be up there taking requests. All that fear of the unknown and no way to give accurate answers, it takes its toll. You try to stay positive and keep hope, but it's not always possible. The bad days... the worst days, it doesn't even feel like you have the strength to keep breathing yourself. All I wanted to do was take your pain away. All I did was cause you more."

Beau flopped back into the chair and tested if his coffee was still at a palatable temperature, but it was tepid and tasted like burnt feet. He barely avoided gagging on it. "You caused me more pain than cancer?" He huffed, bemused and glanced over at the window where the blinds were open. It wasn't much of a view but it gave him something else to look at while his brain clunked back into gear with all this stuff. "Nothing's more pain than cancer, no matter how fabulous an asshole you can be at times. Austin, I'm the same person I was when you cheated on me. I haven't changed. Cancer ruined me the second time. I don't know if I'm ever going to recover from that or be anything remotely close to who I used to be. So, you can't know if you still love me. You love the idea of me. You love the me I was before. You need to let it go. I can't be what you need anymore and I don't know if I can forgive you for what you did."

"I, um... I... I realise I'm risking being punched in the dick for floating this, but... maybe neither of us are who we used to be because we were better together? Before I fucked up and dropped the ball." Austin was making himself nauseous with anxiety saying these words out loud that had been locked going over and over in his head since he bumped into Beau that day. Beau wasn't stonewalling him. He was still here. He was listening. Maybe it would never be the right time to say these things but he swore he'd be honest with Beau from now on. No more hiding and no more fucking up. "I just... don't feel complete without you. Maybe that's cliche as ever-loving hell but it's the truth. I've felt like I'm just floundering. I miss you. I miss us. Our worst of worse days would be better than no us at all. I know you told me if I ever cheated on you, we'd be game over. I do and I respect that but I can't not tell you this. Which I never planned to tell you. I didn't want to fuck with you more. But you kissed me back that day, B. You kissed back. Fuck, sorry... I feel sick." He rested his head back on the pillow, closing his eyes and putting his hand over them with a slow exhalation.

Edited 2020-01-25 06:10 (UTC)

Beau sat forward and put a bowl in Austin's lap just in case. He didn't say anything at first. He rested his elbow on the side of the bed so he could hold his tired head up and wet his lips. Austin was opening the floodgates of everything Beau hadn't wanted to think about or deal with. It was so cut and dried for him initially. Austin cheated, Beau ended the marriage, no questions asked, just like he warned. That was easy to door-slam the whole thing. He just walked away. Never healed, never got closure, just forced himself to get on with life just holding his head above water so he didn't drown. He felt sick too, but not his stomach. His heart, his soul, his head. "What was the breaking point?" he soon asked in a murmur that was just audible. "What was it that made you think one day that I wasn't in love with you anymore? What was it, what was the proverbial straw?"

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