maskofhearts | This is my December

This is my December

Hadyn had left the deck to meet with several sellers for various items the theatre had needed for their new productions. It was a routine sort of trip, and not one that had been expected to be overly eventful. After all, The Hearts did not engage in the sort of business that the other Suits seemed to be regularly embroiled in. Drew had let him go with just a promise to see him in a few days, and a promise to try to eat more than a salad while he was gone.

And in truth, Hadyn had expected nothing out of the ordinary with his trip, either. He had even concluded much of his business early, and taken the time to ride to the South of France to look out over the landscape of the French country side. He also found himself standing outside his mother's home, and her prison. She had let him in, and her servants had brought him tea. And for a moment, a brief moment, a weight in Hadyn's chest lifted as his mother congratulated him on his Rank. For that one brief moment in time, she seemed proud of something he had done.

Seemed.

Like the flash of a bulb, her words ripped that brief happiness from him. They aimed at his heart, they cut wounds that no eyes would ever see as she stood and leaned across the table. "You were nothing but a mistake, a tool to be used! I should have killed you the day you left my womb, but I did not. Even a mistake should have had its uses, to support his brother. To be a sacrifice, bleed for a King. You had one job! One purpose! And such a fool was I to ever believe you have potential to fulfill it."

A mistake. Mistake.

From the moment he'd learned that his father was not the man he thought, to this moment now he had always felt that weight on his shoulders. Georgios Kattalakis had never cared to save Hadyn from his prison of ignorance, his mother (as she told him, explicitly) used his need for affection to manipulate him, Dwayne Novak...and used his fist. He was a burden to those around him, he knew. He could often see the weariness in Drew's eyes, the worry as he regarded Hadyn from day to day. Others still came around less, few called in to see that he was fine...but rarely did it last for long. His own brother, Jordan...

Jordan's nightmares haunted him, Hadyn knew as well as any. He could see his brother pulling away from him, the anger and disgust in his features. It wasn't fist that Jordan used any longer to take his anger out on his brother, it was his silence. As if Hadyn's troubles were too much, too dramatic and tiresome for Jordan to deal with any longer. As though, as though he wanted him to just...go away.

So he had, hadn't he? He'd pulled back, resigned himself to fake smiles and distant stares. His heart ached, but he did not wish to burden Jordan with his misery if Jordan did not wish to see it. He could survive without that reassurance, he had thought.

And Zoe? Zoe had her own happiness now, with smiles and joy that came from a distant mountain of a man. Victor Fox had never struck Hadyn as capable of love, but then he witnessed something he doubted few others had- he watched Victor as he watched Zoe. Eyes soft, and lips hinting of a smile as his gaze never faltered. She had become the center of his universe, and Zoe had grown and flourished in that love. His strength became her's, and he gave it willingly.

And it pained him to see. Because he was incapable to capturing that fleeting happiness. His relationships of late were at arms length, hurt and fear driving deep wedges between him and his partners. And why? Because his heart had belonged to another man, a man who did not need him. Did not, perhaps, want him. Elisha had driven a knife deep, deeper than any other ever had. He'd uttered three words, and then ripped them out of his grasp as easily as Laureline's acidic words ripped his heart apart.

'I love you', he had said. He'd said it so easily, so casually. 'I love you'. And then he'd ended it, driving the knife to the hilt and pushing Hadyn away. Proving the one that Hadyn always felt but never spoke to others- he was unlovable. Unwanted. Unneeded. Tarnished and broken. A mistake that should never have been. He was the source of so much misery in others, demanding attentions that were not his to demand. They wouldn't need to be burdened with his misery if he...would simply disappear.

In retrospect, he hardly remembered having left his Mother's house. He barely registered the speed in which is drove his bike, pushing faster and recklessly forward as words kept replaying in his head: Mistake, unwanted, unloved, tarnished and broken. Mistake. He was a mistake. A burden.

A car's horn blaring at him brought him back in time to jerk his bike out of the way of on coming traffic, hitting the dirt on the side of the road and skidding out. His bike flipped, flinging the thin rider off and down the embankment before it too went flying and crashing down, landing on top of his legs after both man and bike bounced and tumbled down to the shore of a frozen lake. He could feel the cold of the ground seeping in past his riding leathers as he laid there, staring out through his shattered visor as people rushed down the embankment toward him.

This, he thought as his eyes dipped shut, was probably a better way to die.

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He wouldn't minimize the effort. It had been hard, and neither of them knew what they were doing, really. Elisha was operating based on the ways his own therapist had told him to deal with himself and a little by doing the opposite of what he'd done when it had been his mother. But it was hard, and sometimes he wanted to snap instead of being so infinitely patient. It was only that he knew that Hadyn was trying too that kept him from doing it really.

Though Hadyn certainly hadn't yet believed him enough to tell Elisha he loved him. Or perhaps he...simply didn't. He wasn't entirely sure.

He sat on the stool, stretching out his legs. "Did you expect me to yell at you?" He asked. It was actually a serious question. He'd been given to jealous rages and just plain rages before.

"Yes, and no." He said, closing his eyes as he let the warmth of the water seep into his bones. "Mostly, I imagined a lecture on going so far alone. On crutches." It hadn't been the most pleasant of walks. At all. Still, he opened his eyes and looked at Elisha with a gentle smile. "It wouldn't have been the first time for a disapproving lecture."

And they were lectures, and then fights. The fact that Hadyn was closer in age to Elisha's adotped daughter than he was to him was likely the cause of that.

"And to be honest, taking over your study to do my work was starting to get very odd looks. At least one person asked if I planned to become a Club, another....if we were sleeping together again." Which, they were. But in a rather platonic manner. It wasn't as if he'd make Elisha sleep on a couch while he slept on the bed, and besides...he liked the warmth of Elisha's body near his own.

"You have made it...very hard not to fall in love your again, do you know that?" He asked, turning his head away as he leaned forward to splash some of the water into his face. Looking back at Elisha, he had a considering expression on his face. "My rooms are much less cozy, though. I think Bond feels betrayed to be back here."

"I've been told I need to chill out." By his teenage daughter, mostly. And Blythe, who just seemed to think that he needed to in general. She probably wasn't wrong, but it was kind of the pot and the kettle there. The Ace of Hearts wasn't exactly calm.

His eyes gleamed with mischief, though. "You should have told them you'd caught me in your web again, to see the faces." And okay, mostly because Elisha found the idea of assorted Clubs hearing that hilarious.

"Well, he's in love with Cordelia, so it only stands to reason," he said of Bond. Q had taken to the closet more often of late, but Elisha was fairly sure he'd relearn how to deal. There was a more serious comment on the table, though, and Elisha's expression sobered and stilled. "Are you so convinced I'll hurt you again?" he asked.

"It is true. I think you tried to ground me two weeks ago." He hadn't really, but it had certainly started to come across that way as they argued about just how much he should be moving about on his own.

"Yes, I should have. And all the rumors that would blossom about the Deck would be unstoppable, you know. We would break hearts, if it were a lie." He said, smiling gently as he leaned back again and looked at Elisha with a considering stare.

"I do," he said, honestly. "I'm more afraid of wanting to let you, I think." It was true, too. He wanted to just fall back into that web, in part because it was so easy. In part because he'd never really untangled himself to begin with. "I missed you, and I never realized just how much I had until you were right there. But I don't want...something built on guilt, or sympathy." Or whatever it was that made Elisha so damned determined.

"And I don't think I could deal with another goodbye," he said, frowning as he looked away. "Maybe you were right all along."

Elisha ducked his head with a slight smile, but then he looked away, across the bathroom into the living room. It was more Spartan than his and Elisha was not sure that it was a sign of style so much as mental state. "I pretended I didn't miss you," he finally said. "It was my idea, after all. And I told myself I was doing it for you, because I was too much of a mess for a twenty-one year old to want to tie himself. So if I missed you, it was my own damn fault."

It wasn't just Hadyn whose soul was damaged, and whose self-worth plummeted with the onset of a depressive episode. It had happened to Elisha too.

"But I was wrong," he said, looking over at Hadyn. "I should never have let you go, no matter how much we were fighting."

For the first time in these long weeks, Hadyn thought, he could believe Elisha when he said that. In part it was because the mood was slowly coming to the end of its course, like an ebbing tide. Reaching out with his left arm, he reached out to touch the King of Clubs' hand.

"Alright then," he said, bringing that hand to his lips before he could stop a smile from blossoming across his lips against his will. "So long as we are in agreement that you are an idiot." He pulled a little at Elisha's hand, dipping his right shoulder a little lower in the water.

"You know, you could just get in. And then...maybe we could discuss what the future holds for us." He suggested, looking back at Elisha. "We should, you know, talk about it. Before...we let this uncertainty get too far out of our hands. Because, I think, I want this. I really want this."

Elisha arched a brow and eyed the tub with an amused smile. "John was a very ambitious man," he said as he pulled off his boots, and then stripped off his clothes. "Somehow I doubt he ever used this to it's capacity. " Looked like it would fit at least six, he thought as he pushed back his hair and stepped inside.

He smirked as he settled in the hot water, casting a look at Hadyn. "So, am I doing the walk of no shame in the morning?" He asked.

Hadyn used the water to help him move to make room for Elisha, mindful of the fact that his leg was not really strong enough to support his weight just yet. Even the smallest of jars made him regret moving his leg. Even if Caleb insisted that he'd have to walk through the pain for it to completely heal.

"He was...different." Hadyn said, shrugging just a little before he smirked and settled back against the tub. "But it is comfortable, and it stays warm. You could practically swim in it." Looking at Elisha, though, he sat up and leaned in to tuck a strand of hair back from his face. It wasn't nearly as long as his own, but for Elisha's standards...it was getting a bit shaggy.

"Is it really a walk of shame if you feel no shame in it?" He asked, his hand moving to cup Elisha's face. His thumb gently brushed over Elisha's lips for a moment, before Hadyn leaned in and caught them in a kiss.

God, how long had he wanted to do that?"

Elisha wouldn't be able to tolerate hair as long as Hadyn's, and not just because of the inevitable curl - which didn't stop Hadyn - as much as because it would just be everywhere, annoying him.

"Oh, it's not," he said as his arm slipped through the water to wrap around Hadyn's waist and ease him closer. "Walk of no shame whatsoever, really." But then Hadyn was kissing him, and Hadyn hadn't kissed him since the day before Elisha had broken up with him months ago. So he kissed back, his hand slipping into Hadyn's hair.

Maybe they'd be alright, he thought. Maybe they were going to make it.

It was just a kiss, he thought, just a kiss. He'd wanted to do that for so long, and these last few weeks had only made that feeling worse in many ways. And when he pulled away, Hadyn's eyes were not looking at Elisha, even was his hand still cupped the man's face.

After a moment, silent and thoughtful, he pulled away and looked at the other man that sat so close to him. "Can we really do this all again?" He asked Elisha, not quite sure what answer he was hoping for. Or which one he would get. "I...don't think I'll get better, Not really. And I don't....I shouldn't. You have too much to worry about."

Too much to add to it a partner who seemed to occasionally lose his mind in one direction or another. It was categorically unfair of him to put the King of Clubs through a relationship with him. He understood it better for the last six weeks than he had when Elisha had effectively broken his heart.

Elisha tilted his head to one side, and while he tried not to manipulate Hadyn, and tried not to issue orders, there was more than a little of the Machiavellian intelligence officer who'd swiped a dozen spies from David in a month's time in his expression. More than a little of the man who let Alexander be king as long as he was useful, and then got rid of him.

"Don't you think I can make that decision?" He asked, trailing his fingers over Hadyn's cheek. "And do you really think you don't deserve to be happy?"

Elisha had, actually, made that decision once before. And a part of Hadyn wanted to say as much, even if he didn't want to deal with that hurt any more. But perhaps the skeptical look on his face was all Elisha needed to know his thought on that, given the slight look that crossed his.

"Sometimes, I don't think I've earned it," he admitted after a moment, shrugging just a little. "Sometimes I don't believe it is possible, either." But that wasn't the heart of the matter, was it?

"There should...be rules," he decided, lifting his hand to Elisha's face as his heart thundered in his chest. The last time they had done this, there hadn't been rules...not between them, at least. Instead, Elisha had twisted him up in a game of cat and mouse- first playing at things, then jealously declaring a desire for more, then hiding it, then not hiding it, more jealousy, more fighting. When he thought about it? Elisha had been right, they had been doomed to fail. Why? Because their relationship had been ridiculous.

"Rules that we can't break, shouldn't." He said, sighing a little. "No more...trying to manipulate me, that isn't fair." It wasn't, after all, as if Hadyn had been exactly blind to the ways Elisha had twisted him around his fingers, after all. Considering Hadyn had been breed for just that purpose himself.

Elisha was really, he thought, not good at being in a relationship. He never had been. He'd never had one that wasn't either a power game or a complete disaster, and his own therapist told him that his relationship with Bastian - which had been Sieben's real name - had colored for him the way relationships worked. He'd manipulated Hadyn because he'd been manipulated himself.

Then, too, his PTSD had been...bad the last time he and Hadyn had been dating. Debilitatingly bad, at times.

"Okay," he said after a long moment of watching Hadyn. "I'll do my best. I might not always succeed. But," he aded. "On your side - you can't shut me out when this happens." And they shouldn't pretend that Hadyn didn't, he thought.

To be fair, Hadyn had let Elisha manipulate him until he wasn't even aware it was happening any more. And then, Joanna told him, there was that unconscious response Hadyn had to the feeling of being loved. He'd not had it from a parent as a child, and so getting it for the first time...in a romantic way? It had become a bit of a drug for him, she was certain.

"Okay," Hadyn said, with a nod. "I'll try. If...you're patient with me." This was, he thought, a good start. "It...scares me to tell you, you know. And sometimes...I just don't know, I don't know why it is happening. Little things, stupid things...said, or done. And, and it just snaps. Like a boulder just shoved suddenly down the mountain, crashing through every rational thought in my head. And...I can't, I can't..."

Find the words, he thought as he closed his eyes and frowned. The worst thing about depression, he thought, was how it ebbed and flowed like water. One sad thought, and then rush of the tide washed the sand out from under you. And it could stay, or wash back out- it was hard to tell. Harder, he thought, to explain.

"But....I'll try."

"I feel like I keep saying this," Elisha said, letting Hadyn lean against him as they talked, "but I'll try." Love had not come easily for him, either. Reina had loved him - and finally, he'd forgiven her - but her love had been complicated and sometimes selfish. Hadyn wasn't selfish, not in the same way, but he was complicated in a very similar way. His moods were very similar. It was, perhaps, what had made him run before. Why would he want to repeat history?

But then, there were just some people in life you were meant to be with.

"We shouldn't stay in here forever," he said, squeezing Hadyn's hand. "If I fall asleep, I don't think your leg is strong enough for you to pick me up just yet."

Try was really all that either of them could do, and right or wrong- they would have to live with the results of starting over. Though this time they could at least start off the way a couple was supposed to, not sneaking off to hide their romance...or lying to partners about who they were really with.

"No, but it is nice in here. My leg aches less in here, and there are worse places to nap." Hadyn said with a sigh. However, Elisha was very correct- his leg would not support him hauling the King of Clubs out of the tub. It barely supported him hobbling about with crutches and a walking boot. And so it was with a heavy sort of sigh that Hadyn sat up and unstopped the drain. "If you are staying," which he hoped Elisha was, "you'll have to convince Bond to share his side of the bed. He barely shares with me on my side."

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This is my December

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