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hold-him-down · 10 months

Text

Not Ideal

TW: institutionalized slavery, the bladder control failure but it’s really not even like a MAIN part other than in concept, this is really rather wholesome if you ask me.

Notes: Takes place ~4 months in, so somewhere shortly after christmas.

✥ ✥ ✥

Leo sits on the floor in the corner of his room. Was it a good day? His brow pulls tight and he tries to sort out where he stands with things. Luke smiled, a handful of times actually, and Leo takes a moment to both appreciate the objectivity of the observation and the ridiculousness of this more recently adopted coping mechanism.

It was good. Nothing overtly bad had happened. He hadn’t had to grapple with the pangs of uncertainty that most of his days were dominated by. He jogged through the neighborhood (by himself), he sat at a park, he went to the library. He had found a sandwich shop and texted Luke to ask if he wanted to try it, and picked up their dinner.

By all metrics, it was a fine day. And still, long after the sun set and he excused himself to his room, he sits here, undeniably sad but unsure of its source.

Everything is in its place. He fights the urge to go check the kitchen, to make sure there isn’t anything missed.

He doesn’t, though. Instead he changes into pajamas, crawls into his bed, and waits for unconsciousness to lay its claim on him. Sleep doesn’t come easily though. His mind races, cycling through the ways he can do better, be better, survive better. He doesn’t know how much time passes, but his thoughts shift, and memories flood his consciousness. Seattle, his mother, his brother, his sister.

These thoughts rarely plague him, but when they do, their grip on him is unshakable. He isn’t aware of the exact moment that he falls asleep, only that he does, and when the nightmares hit him, they hit him harder than normal.

✥ ✥ ✥

Leo wakes sometime in the early morning hours to blackness, to a racing heart, to sweat covering every inch of him. For a moment, all he can do is gasp at breaths, remind himself where he is, who he is.

Almost instantly, he’s aware that something isn’t right, but his heart still beats wildly and he convinces himself the soaked bed is nothing more than sweat, that it’s okay, that nothing bad has happened. Except something bad has happened, and telling himself otherwise serves no intrinsic purpose.

He swallows, interrupting his inner thought work to grasp at the lion, to make sure it avoided direct damage. The bed, the blankets, his clothes, are soaked.

Leo presses his eyes shut, casting the lion aside, and a new kind of dread settles over him.

This is okay. This is fine. He can fix this, and Luke doesn’t need to know.

He scrambles to pull the bedding off the bed, stone silent except for the ragged breaths his chest still produces, and he thinks something of a prayer, and he knows as he does it it’s futile, but still he thinks, over and over, please let this be okay.

As he pulls the sheets from their place, he recognizes with certainty that there’s no chance it didn’t leak through, and for a single, suspended moment, he allows himself to hate everything that he’s become. He drops on his knees to the floor, pressing his face into the mattress (the clean part), covering his head with his hands. He wants to scream, but even if muffled as it would be, he runs the risk of waking Luke.

So instead, he takes a deep breath. He turns on his bedside lamp, the warm yellow glow stinging his eyes, and as he pulls the mattress pad from the mattress, he gauges the damage. It’s not that bad. He can deal with this. He’ll clean it up and Luke will never know.

“Okay.” His voice is soft, the mere possibility of waking Luke is a constant thrumming in the back of his mind, in direct conflict with his innate need to self-soothe. “This is okay.”

He stands then, stripping off his soiled underwear and t-shirt and throws them into the pile of urine-soaked fabric. He pulls on the first clean pair he can find and then squeezes his eyes shut, laying out the individual steps to make this okay.

The laundry. He gathers up the laundry, distantly aware of his shaking hands, and pads silently down the hall. Luke’s bedroom door is closed, but Leo is careful not to make a sound.

He’s as silent as he can be as he loads the washer, reading the instructions on the too-expensive sheets at least three times to make sure that he doesn’t cause any additional damage.

When he’s certain he’s gotten it right, he presses ‘start’ and straightens his back, bee-lining it for the pantry, where a wide array of cleaning supplies lives, untouched.

He moves deftly through the familiar apartment back to his room and scrubs vigorously at the mattress, bouncing between berating himself and pleading to no-one that it’s going to be okay. He startles at the sound of knocking, his fingers freeze in place and he, against every instinct to sink into the floor and under the area rug for the rest of his life, raises his eyes.

“Luke–” It whooshes out of him like a breath, and he swallows, forcibly dragging his eyes to meet Luke’s.

Luke’s eyebrows raise as he takes in the scene, Leo in his underwear, Leo panicking, Leo holding cleaning supplies at three a.m. Leo knows, above all else, that there’s no explaining it, and he starts to draw the words that he knows he needs to find.

“I… should I ask?” Luke’s mouth forms a half smile and Leo swallows again.

“I’m sorry,” comes Leo’s response. And then, because he can’t form any other words, he says, “I… I can fix this.”

“Leo…” Luke’s face is doing that thing it does, when he’s trying to pluck the perfect words out of the air, to quell Leo’s anxiety or to mitigate the risk of an absolute meltdown. “I’m certain, whatever it is, it is absolutely fixable.” There’s exhaustion in Luke’s voice and in his expression, and Leo, a deer in the headlights, shakes his head, sucks in a breath.

“I–” He swallows, his fists clenching and unclenching almost painfully. Just say it. There’s no easy way, there’s no right way, and it’s best to just lay it out. He huffs out a sound that edges somewhere between a choked off laugh and a sob, his shoulders dropping along with his eyes.

“Leo–”

“–I’m just. I’m just going to say it, okay?” Leo chances a glance at Luke, who regards him so carefully as he nods, encouraging. He feels… scared? In a way that is foreign to him. Not afraid of what Luke might do, but afraid instead of what Luke might think. Afraid that this is another piece of him, broken, that Luke will need to tiptoe around. Afraid, at his core, that this is another broken off chunk, and he’s closer still to being irreparable.

With one more big breath, he whispers, “I had an accident– I–” His eyes squeeze shut, and he can feel the shame rising to his face, and he wants to explain that he used to be able to function, that he could do this and he was fine and he was happy and he was healthy and people made him this way but he isn’t fundamentally broken (at least he doesn’t think so) and he can be fixed (at least he thinks so) but all that comes out is a slightly louder, slightly more solid, “I had a nightmare.” His hands are shaking and he forcefully stills them. “I, uh, I didn’t expect it–”

And since Luke doesn’t immediately interrupt with how okay everything is, the words tumble from Leo’s mouth. “I promise, if I had any– any– indication that it was going to be a bad night, I wouldn’t have let myself sleep that deeply. I just…” He can feel a trembling in his voice, but he doesn’t hear it, and he doesn’t chance a glance at Luke as he continues, “I… I didn’t know… that it was going to be a hard night. I’m so sorry,” he says, over and over.

He feels Luke’s hands on his shoulders, he feels Luke’s fingers in his hair, he lets himself be pulled in for a hug and he lets himself stop speaking, at least long enough to choose the words that will convey to Luke, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that this will not happen again.

“If I told you it was okay, would that mean anything to you?”

Leo nods, but he doesn’t know how much truth there is to it.

“Leo,” Luke says, in that tone that definitely means the big words are coming, and Leo needs to hear them. “This is so beyond ‘okay.’ This doesn’t even scratch the surface of a problem from my perspective, okay?” Luke pulls back enough to see his face, but Leo can’t make himself look. He nods.

“You put the sheets in the washer?”

Nods again.

“How can I help? Is there anything you need?”

Leo forces his eyes over the mattress, damp from, mostly, cleaning products. “I think it’s okay,” he says. “I think… it wasn’t a lot, that got through the mattress pad– I think it’s okay, but I–”

“Hey,” Luke interrupts him. “I’m certain that it’s fine.”

“Okay,” Leo says, although he doesn’t sound convincing, even to himself. “I think I’ll… I’ll move the sheets to the dryer and take a quick shower, if that’s okay?”

Ultimately, Luke convinces him to allow him to finish the laundry, which makes Leo’s heart ache worse, but he thinks he sufficiently camouflages the hurt under the tsunami of other emotions he’s projecting, and he sulks off to the shower, where he can’t stop himself from crying, if only just a little bit.

By the time he’s pulled himself completely together, the water has run cold, the sheets are folded on his dresser as the mattress starts to dry, and Luke sits with a mug of tea and a copy of Animal Farm, which Leo had checked out from the library the day earlier.

For a moment, Leo watches him, before taking a seat beside him, where there’s a second mug waiting for him.

Luke sets the book aside and regards him, expression maybe more guarded now, but also more alert.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, which is Leo’s least favorite and hardest to answer question.

“I’m okay. It was just…” Leo grabs the mug to occupy his hands. “I didn’t expect to have a hard night,” he says, by way of explanation.

“Can I ask you something?” Luke says then, and Leo holds his breath. “If you had known, you wouldn’t have slept?”

“I just… I’d have set alarms, to keep myself from…” He realizes he’s in dangerous territory before Luke’s expression shifts, but it’s too late. A sort of tension takes hold of him, but he only nods. “It’s just a way to get sleep but not sleep hard enough to cause trouble.”

“Okay,” Luke eventually says, after too long a pause. “I’d… rather you didn’t do that, though.” Quickly, he adds, “From a medical perspective, that’s not… ideal.”

He knows his next suggestion will not be taken well, but there’s a part of him that just needs to put it out there, and so he says, “What about if…”

Luke’s mouth is the flattest line, but still, Leo trudges on. “Maybe I could sleep on the floor? Just on the nights that I’m not sure?”

“Mm.” Luke says, taking a sip of his tea. He angles toward the window, his expression unreadable, and then says, “I– I don’t know what to do.” It’s the saddest he’s heard Luke’s voice in a long time.

Leo is preparing a big speech about how it’s easy, and the floor is comfortable, and he can bring blankets to the floor and he might even like it better there, and it’ll certainly help him sleep, knowing that he won’t destroy the mattress, and he could put a towel down too to help protect the wood if that would be better, and–

“I don’t think you should sleep on the floor, Leo.” Luke turns back to him, offering a half-hearted smile.

Before he can speak again, Leo says, “What if it happens again?”

“Then it happens again. I–”

“What if I ruin the mattress?”

Leo startles himself with the interruption, but Luke only says, “You won’t ruin the mattress.”

“What if I do?” he presses. “I can’t… I can’t afford to get a new one, I’m not worth–”

“Stop,” Luke says then. “Please.” Leo freezes momentarily, before taking a sip of his tea. “If the mattress is ruined, we can get a new one. If the mattress isn’t ruined, then it’s a non-issue. Either way, it’s okay. I promise you, it’s okay.”

Leo nods. There’s no way Luke’s going to willingly allow him to sleep on the floor. So he says, “At the sites, the beds were covered in this plasticky material so they could clean them easily… Could we do that?”

“No,” comes Luke’s answer, easily now. It’s frustrating, having an actual argument with him. Luke seldom holds his ground, and Leo seldom pushes back, but he finds himself feeling… somehow different. It’s not entirely unpleasant, but it’s a feeling that he’s not accustomed to. He takes a breath, at the same time that Luke says, “Come here.”

Leo knows that it isn’t an order, but rather a check in. That Luke will maybe do the hair/forehead thing, and even in the midst of a bona-fide disagreement, he feels a little lighter. “Are you okay?” Luke asks then.

Leo nods. “I’m okay. I just… I know I won’t sleep, with this… this might be a thing. I don’t want you to have to deal with another one of my things. I’ll– I can make sure to clean up after myself, but I just… I know it’s going to be hard… for me to sleep… now.”

“Does it happen a lot?” Luke asks. “This is the first time since you’ve been here, right?”

Leo shakes his head. “Right,” he says. “Once in training, a couple of times in my last contract. It’s never been for any reason other than pure negligence though. The conditions were different then.”

Leo can almost see the gears turning in Luke’s head, can almost feel the moment he decides to ask the question, “Different how?”

And Leo, if prepared for nothing else, is always prepared to shake his head and say, “Just… different. I can’t really talk about it.”

“Right,” Luke whispers. “Can you…” Luke takes a breath, sips on his tea, then finishes. “Promise me, Leo, that instead of sleeping on the floor, instead of setting alarms to keep yourself awake… Can you just let me know? If you think you’re going to have a tough night? Even if there’s no reason for it, even if it’s just a feeling in your gut, just let me know you’re not comfortable falling asleep, and we can work through it together?”

Leo nods.

“What about the mattress?” he asks, sipping his own tea.

“I’m not worried about the mattress,” Luke replies. “I’m worried about you. I’m worried about what you do to yourself, what lengths you’ll go to to prevent this from happening again.” He smiles, nudging Leo’s shoulder playfully. “But if you’d like, maybe you can go to the store and get a...” he gestures vaguely, stumbling over the suggestion. It’s endearing, Leo thinks. “A waterproof mattress pad. Would that be okay?”

Leo nods, eager for a change in subject, and Luke lets it go.

✥ ✥ ✥

Leo wasn’t sure which option was scarier– Using Luke’s money explicitly for his own benefit, or risking another accident. He spends the day wandering around the neighborhood, he walks into the stores and finds what he’s looking for each time, but then walks out empty handed. He is aware of how tired he is, but he pushes himself to walk further, to jog, to sit at the park and watch the birds, to read. If he wears himself out, maybe he will sleep.

When he returns home, Luke is in his office. The bed has been made, and Leo doesn’t allow himself to think about Luke doing that. There’s a note on his dresser that reads:

Leo,

I’ll be in a meeting in the office until 9- I picked up a mattr I ordered pizza, should be here around 8. If you’re still awake, I thought maybe we could watch a movie. I picked up I stopped by the store on the way home and picked up a mattress topper for you, I hope that’s okay. It is not plasticky, but if it Please, don’t think any further of this. Unless you want to, or need to, I’m… happy to discuss it further. Just, not on my behalf Whatever you need here,

Sleep well,

Luke

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#i've made the executive decision to post this without rereading it #bladder control issues #mostly wholesome content #light angst #institutionalized slavery #back to regularly scheduled program next

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