Chapter Text
Lea unlocked the door and stepped inside, her eyes quickly landing on the four empty beer bottles on the coffee table, plus Jake’s abandoned one.
“Okay, Shaun. Park yourself and let’s talk,” Lea said firmly.
“I want another drink,” Shaun said stubbornly.
“Is that the only way you can really be honest with me? Shaun. Come on.”
“I’ll be honest either way, but — ”
“I’ll get you a shot of whiskey. Come on.”
“But I’ve never had whiskey — ” Shaun protested.
“I am not serving you tequila, stat or otherwise, and if it’s not whiskey, it’s either tequila or beer, ‘cause that’s all I’ve got here. So I’d have to give you another four beers, and I neither have the beer left over, nor the patience to wait for that,” Lea pronounced, in a tone that brooked no further argument.
Shaun followed her sullenly to the kitchen, where Lea got out two slightly-taller-than-standard shot glasses - mementos from her twenty-first birthday - and poured them each a generous measure, almost to the brim. Handing one to Shaun, she said, “Down the hatch. Let’s go.”
Reluctantly, sniffing at the Jack as though it was poison, Shaun tossed back the shot and put the empty glass back on the counter.
Lea took hers after him, slamming her glass back down next to Shaun’s. She saw him eyeing the empty glasses, knowing he was itching to wash up, if only to delay the discussion further.
“Uh-uh, Buster, you are not getting near that sink tonight. You’ve had your shot, now let’s go back to the couch. Scoot.”
Shaun made his way to the couch, his expression utterly tortured.
Lea began to wonder if she was pushing him too far. Again. She was good at that, she reflected wryly.
“What if we did this in your room? In the dark? Would that help?” Lea suggested gently.
At first, Shaun shrugged, then nodded, and led the way to his room, turning on the lamp next to his bed so they could see where they were going.
“You comfortable, Shaun?” Lea said, when she was sitting at the foot end of his twin bed.
“I am not comfortable, Lea,” Shaun said bluntly, leaning against his pillows and handing two to her.
“Turn off the light now. Maybe it will help,” Lea suggested, trying to keep her voice soft. As if in a trance, Shaun obeyed. The room went dark.
“So — “ Lea started, then fell silent. She felt Shaun shift at the other end, reconsidered again whether this chat was strictly necessary, then stuck to her guns. It was gonna happen sometime, she reassured herself.
It felt like a long time before Shaun spoke, but once he did, he did not often stop, except when Lea interjected with exclamations of shock or empathy statements.
“I am happy to be living here with you. The last time I was happy living with someone was when my brother Steve set up the bus for us to live in. My parents’ house was not a home with room for me. I was the inconvenience they wished would just disappear. But Steve was... better. Better than they were. Wiser than they were.”
Lea breathed deeply, trying not to cry. Shaun had never gone into so much detail about his childhood with her before.
“Running away with Steve was freedom and it was fear. A lot of times we were hungry or cold or just two lost boys. After Steve died, Dr. Glassman’s library was where I learned to love medicine. But I couldn’t stay there. I went through a lot of foster homes instead.”
“Oh, my God. Shaun...” Lea murmured quietly.
“But now... my home... our apartment... this is my place, Lea. I like coming home. Very much.”
“Why are you still holding back from me, Shaun?” Lea said, her tone almost desperate.
Shaun sighed.
“Because you asked me to. And - and I promised you that I could.”
“Was that a lie?” Lea broke in, her voice sharper than it needed to be. She felt the bed rock a little, and knew Shaun must be shaking his head.
“It wasn’t a lie, Lea. I feel everything. But you asked me to feel nothing. To want nothing. You learn about detachment in medical school. I am good at it. I had a head start. I learned how to do it so long ago. Most of the day I am too busy to think about you. Sometimes I am very grateful for that. It distracts me from my work, when I get caught up thinking about you. That is not good.”
“No, that’s not good,” Lea agreed, finding her equilibrium again somehow. “I - I don’t want that to happen to you.”
She had got so much more than she had bargained for out of an oversized measure of Jack.
“When I saw you... when you came back... Lea, you are so overwhelming to me. No emotion. Every emotion. That’s what ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’ meant.”
“I said I knew why you wanted to drink tonight. Do you want me to say it for you? Will that help you?” Lea asked.
“I don’t know,” Shaun said, almost apologetically. “I - I’m sorry.”
“You wanted to drink because you think that will make you - what? More attractive to me? Remind me of our road trip?” Lea prompted. “Shaun, do you really think that’s how to connect with me?”
“No,” Shaun whispered.
“Try to remember that I have now kissed you not once, not twice, but three times, and you have done nothing about it. Ever. Okay, once it was because you drank too much. It happens. But what the hell am I supposed to do with that, Shaun? What am I supposed to understand from that?”
“Then why would you ask me if I thought we were a couple?” Shaun countered, his voice growing louder. “And why would you tell me that you ‘didn’t want that’? I think you decided we weren’t.”
“I didn’t want that - because we really hurt each other. Even as we discussed moving in together, it didn’t magically stop hurting. And it definitely did not stop me worrying that I might do it again. Look at me. I’m doing it now!”
“Lea, when you asked me if I thought we were together - not once did you ask me what I wanted. You just told me what you wanted. Or didn’t want.”
“Do you wish you had?” Lea asked, her voice full of pain, “Maybe just went ahead and said it yourself?”
“Would it have changed anything?” Shaun replied, the question almost moot.
“I - I don’t know,” Lea admitted, feeling put on the spot.
But you asked him for this, her inner voice hissed. You’re always asking him for things. You tell him what to feel, when to feel it, how to be, what to be, and you never ask the real questions. Why? You’re a coward, Dilallo. And you say you love this guy? You think that counts as love? What the hell is wrong with you?
“I’m a coward,” Lea said aloud. “Why don’t you ever call me out on it?”
“Because I think you are brave. Brave for leaving, brave for coming back, brave to live with me. I know living with me is ‘a lot’.”
“Glassy told you I said that, huh,” Lea commented, “I’m sorry, I was frustrated, I — ”
“Brave to live with someone who couldn’t be more different from you if he tried.”
“Oh my God, Shaun, I don’t deserve the forgiveness...”
“Stop! I need you to be quiet!” Shaun exclaimed suddenly, having arrived at the end of his tether.
Lea felt a full-body flinch from him, and heard his hands slap the mattress in frustration.
Her voice fell silent, but she was breathing hard.
“Stop telling me what to do!” Shaun nearly bellowed, so loud in the small, dark room that Lea nearly toppled off the bed in shock.
He jumped up and switched on the lamp with such force that Lea heard it wobble and then right itself.
She’d seen and heard Shaun in meltdown before. This - this was something brand new. And frightening. Shaun’s anger was too big for the room.
Lea understood instantly that if she uttered even one word before Shaun said it was okay, he would run from her. Possibly forever.
“All you ever say is ‘I’ or ‘me’!” Shaun shouted, almost hysterical at this point.
Lea gathered this was not the start of a discussion, and kept quiet.
“Will you please - just once - ask me what I want?” Shaun’s voice had become almost plaintive. “No-one ever does.”
“Am I allowed to speak now?” Lea asked, tentatively.
Shaun nodded.
“What if what you want isn’t something you can have?” Lea queried. “Sometimes two people each get a say, instead of only one person getting their say. Sometimes, that other person has to want what you want for that something to work. It generally can’t work if they don’t agree or don’t want to compromise. So what will you do?”
“Ask me what I want,” Shaun repeated, although he didn’t seem as infuriated as he had been.
“What are you gonna do if you get it? And what happens if it gets taken away later?” Lea prodded. Surely Shaun had to see that they both had choices to make?
“Ask. Me. What. I. Want,” Shaun said again, this time stressing each word very deliberately.
Lea had to guess she’d taught him how to talk that way - she didn’t think that was a Glassy kind of tone - but she really hadn’t foreseen him using her own methods against her.
Why are you surprised? You made him this way and now you’re upset about it? Get over yourself! Lea’s inner voice piped up spitefully.
“Fine. You asked for this. What do you want, Shaun?” Lea finally questioned him.
Something in Shaun cracked just then, and Lea watched it break. What he says next will change my life, she realised.
“I wish you would let me love you, because I want to,” Shaun whispered to the floor. He tried valiantly to look Lea in the face, but only got about as far as her chin. “But I’m not allowed to.”
Lea was glad she was still sitting, because she was fairly sure her legs would give out if she tried to stand. She wasn’t often speechless, either.
Oh, sure, she had braced for, ‘I want to be more than your friend’, ‘I want to hang out with you’, ‘Let’s go on a date sometime’, something a little lighter, a little more ‘see-how-we-go’. She’d prepared for tentative suggestions, somewhat shallow but full of winking promises and shy glances when one thought the other couldn’t see and just... possibility.
She had never anticipated this.
“Of - of course you’re allowed to, Shaun,” Lea finally got out, “You’ve always been allowed — ”
“No, I am not,” Shaun countered vehemently. “I have never been allowed to love you the way I want to. I have always been allowed to love you just the way you want me to. From a distance. The way that lets you pretend that feelings don’t change.The way that you never have to think too hard about. The way that you can lie to yourself that of course he doesn’t - couldn’t - wouldn’t.”
“But does being allowed to love me like that come with obligations I have to fulfil? Things I would owe you? Things I would be in your debt for?” Lea asked, pain weighing heavy on every word because she was speaking from experience. She’d had a love like that once before. Fortunately, she’d known just in time the moment it became too expensive to keep it. She had also known so many other people, her friends, who kept thinking that kind of expensive love was all they were worthy of. That they’d never be enough and they might as well face it. People who became mere shadows if they were alone.
“I have never once thought that to love someone means that they owe you their love in return,” Shaun said, so earnest, so eager to believe the best of people even when they treated him like he was so inconsequential.
“In my experience, Shaun, a lot of people do. And, forgive me for the misandry, but the majority of those people are men. That debt they try to tell you that you owe gets bigger and bigger, until they have finally convinced you that you need to keep paying it off every day, and you gradually realise that it will never be repaid. The interest grows and grows until you are totally bankrupt - of love, of an identity, of friends, of anything you still had left to give. I absolutely refuse to live like that. I’d rather be alone forever.”
“I used to think that I wanted to be alone forever,” Shaun said, trying to relate.
“I’ve been through love like that, Shaun,” Lea said. “It’s why I’m hard to pin down. It’s why I’m bossy. It’s why I run when it gets serious. I need freedom at any cost. Nearly lost it once.”
Shaun came to sit beside her, and Lea noticed that he still kept his distance. Just like she’d told him to do.
“Shaun, how long have you felt this way about me?” Lea asked.
Shaun looked at her again, his gaze sharp and wise.
“Why are you asking, Lea? So you can wonder how or when you could have treated me differently, so that I would never have started in the first place?”
“Shaun, I — ”
“You came back to San Jose just to find me again. Do you ever ask yourself why? It was a long drive back here. Lots of places to pull over, get out, and start life over again. But, Lea, you kept driving. You wanted to find me at the end of that drive. I am certain about that, at least.”
“Because — ” Lea started, then stopped.
“What was the first thing you wanted to do when you saw me in that hallway?” Shaun asked her, a half-smile on his face and a note of amusement in his voice. Challenging her. Daring her to admit it.
“I — ” Lea trailed off.
“Was it the same thing you did just before you left?” Shaun supplied, no levity in his words now.
“You’re asking me questions you already damn well know the answers to,” Lea choked out, starting to get sort of angry, “What are you trying to achieve? Do you just want to be right about everything? Because that is one of your most unattractive qualities, Shaun.”
“No,” Shaun said, and Lea knew it was the truth. The half-smile retreated, and his shoulders slumped. “I am absolutely terrified that I could be wrong.”
“Well, then, okay. I’ll cave. A little. Does knowing you’re right... help you somehow?” Lea mused aloud.
“Does knowing that I refuse to run again help you?” Shaun shot back. “Because I would not be surprised if you’re scared of what might happen if I stay this time. I think you are relieved when I run. It makes the decisions for you.”
“You - I - ” Lea stammered.
“I want to find out what happens when we both stop running,” Shaun told her.
“And I think I want you to love me the way you want to. I utterly refuse to die without at least knowing something about what that looks like. I have a good feeling that it looks wonderful,” Lea admitted, surprised at how easy it suddenly was to say so. “But what if - what if I never love you back the same way?”
“Do you love me? Start there.” Shaun replied.
“Yes,” Lea replied, “I love you.”
“Then why not try just loving me the way you want to?” Shaun suggested.
“What if I don’t know how?” Lea asked, scared.
“Lea, do you think we both have to be the same? Do things the same way?”
“To be fair, Shaun, you sure do like a lot of things done your way,” Lea teased him gently.
At long last, a brilliant smile lit up his face as he started to laugh. It instantly became Lea’s new favourite sound.
“I know very little about love, but I think I understand that we both have to do it in our own way,” he said.
“Okay, this, I’ve gotta see,” Lea commented, feeling herself grin just as wide.
“I had made up my mind to say something when I got out of the quarantine at Christmas, but you’d brought Dr. Glassman with you, so I couldn’t,” Shaun admitted, all in a rush. “And then we went go-karting and Dr. Glassman came, and then, um... yes, well, uh... then there was tonight.”
“Yeah, I like it more when it’s just you and me,” Lea agreed, “Okay, are we agreed that Glassy’s not invited on our next date? He is a moment ruiner.”
“Kiss me, Lea.”
So she did.