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

[fabulousfashionista]

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.

Comments

[halfwaytoheaven]

"I was on autopilot. I didn't feel alone, I felt detached. Which is probably worse in a lot of ways because it means you can't always recognise something was wrong. I knew a lot wasn't right, and I knew I felt empty, but I put it down to fatigue. When I wasn't working, I just wanted to be in bed. The problem with cancer and chemo is that it can make someone recovering fatigued, so that's what we all put it down to. That's why I'm not laying everything on you. Don't get me wrong, I was so hurt and angry when you did it. I felt betrayed and defective. I thought you went out looking for sex because I couldn't give it to you. That's genuinely what I've been thinking. You thought I was falling out of love with you and didn't want you near. So, fucking what? It's fucking impossible right now for me not to be thinking if we could've saved our marriage, that it didn't have to end like that." Beau stopped, taking a deep breath once he let those feelings fall out of him in black and white, no holds barred. "But I don't know. I'm tired. I'm tired of fighting. I've got no fight left, for anything. I just come to work, go home, go through the motions. Do the family thing, the friends thing but even that's autopilot. Brandon and Merlin coming to us for treatment once Merlin drew Brandon into our fold, it's woken up a lot of my own issues and I've been very much feeling my own unpredictable mortality. So, yeah... my feelings have shifted."

[fabulousfashionista]

Austin watched Beau closely as he spoke, took in the weary tone of his voice and could hear how he was mapping out his feelings the best he could. But there was a detachment there, something he had seen in Beau before he fucked up and destroyed everything, but that he didn't recognise was as deep as it was. It was almost like Beau was talking to a therapist here. He was narrating his feelings but Austin felt he was being deflected at the same time. Should he try to dig deeper? Was it even his right to want to? "You're not okay," he said softly. "I'd want to fight for you, now I know you can't. I'd want to take care of you how I should have, be there for all your bad days. Is there any chance for us to start over or should I check into therapy and ask for intensive strategies to completely close that chapter of my life?"

[halfwaytoheaven]

"Can anyone just be okay when they lose the soul mate they thought they'd be with until they literally drop dead, though? When they nearly died from cancer a second time and actually not only had a plan for death but a funeral mapped out? What even is 'okay'?" Beau had slipped down in the chair, hands folded across his chest, feet up on the side of the bed while he gazed up at the ceiling. "We can't solve this tonight. It's not the right time or place. I have to go to a conference for a week in Seattle but... where are you staying? Have you found an apartment yet? We need to keep going with this but not when you're hungover and not when I'm at the end of an on-call shift."

[fabulousfashionista]

Austin shook his head slowly, drawing his hand into his sleeve so he didn't reach to take Beau's hand. He swallowed, trying to clear the lump in his throat. "No. No, they can't. But I should've been taking care of you when you weren't okay, for as long as you're not. Even if that's forever. And I still want to. It's all still there in my heart, just like before I messed up. I remember every moment of your cancer fight, even the worst of the worst. But I didn't forget our best either. I went clubbing that night because it reminded me of the day we met and I wanted to feel it again. I never needed you to be okay. You know that, right? Or is that how I made you feel? That you had to live up to 'okay' when you weren't?" He offered a sheepish shrug at Beau's question. "No apartment. I'm still at a hotel, living out of a suitcase with all my crap in storage. But you can come see me at the hotel if you want. I'd like that. You think we can solve this somehow?"

[halfwaytoheaven]

Beau remained quiet at first, picking up his coffee and taking a large mouthful. He put the cup back down and pulled himself up in the chair. "I'm going to ask you a question now, but I don't want you to answer it until we meet up again. I want you to think about the most honest answer you can give to it. So much that it makes your brain ache from how much you keep going over and over it. It's going to be the difference between whether we can solve this somehow or not. And when you think about it, I want you to try to think about how I would feel about the answer you need to give. I don't care if you lie to me about everything else you ever say to me, I want this to be the truth and coming from a place where all these memories you're talking about are kept inside you..." It should be easy to ask but it wasn't. He closed his eyes and heaved a heavy sigh. Then he opened them and met Austin's gaze. "Would you ever cheat on me again? And on that note, I need to go prep for my morning rounds."

[fabulousfashionista]

The question came like a kick in the guts. All Austin wanted to do was answer it right away, insist how truthful it was and that he didn't need to think about it. But he just nodded, accepting Beau's request. Suddenly it hit him how hard it was going to be waiting to see Beau again. This whole thing felt loaded. Beau was saying a lot but he was giving nothing away on what he was feeling trying to move forward - solve what went wrong - if they even could. The question was direct but what did it really mean? Was Beau actually contemplating a reunion ala Liam and Damien? Or was just slotting missing pieces of the puzzle together to give himself peace and closure to move on and not look back. He could see Beau was weary and it was best to stop here and take a breather. A lot had been covered in a short space of time; things they would both need time to process. "Okay. I'll wait until this IV finishes and head back to the hotel to crash. Will you text me when you get back? I mean, I might luck out on finding the perfect apartment between now and then but I doubt it. You know what a picky bitch I am. Are you going to be okay?"

[halfwaytoheaven]

"I'll text you. Just don't bank on a day. Conferences wipe me out so I'll probably crash for a bit when I get home. Saying that, if Brandon takes a turn for the worst again, I'll be back early but touch-wood that won't be the case. I made a promise to him and Merlin that I'd be here if that happens, if the end might seem near again." Beau checked his phone and already had some reminders coming through for his patients he'd see on rounds and messages notifying him some results for investigations were coming through. Good, he was going to need to keep busy the next couple of hours until he could go home and crash. The rest of this stuff would take a lot more than a day for him to process and come to terms with, let alone figure out how he felt about any of it. "I'll be busy, which is the next best thing. I'm going to check with the nurses to make sure you stayed until the end. Don't be a bitch, these walls have eyes and ears." He gave Austin a faint smile and exited the room, leaving him alone.