Work Text:
Five things he can see. A clock. A half cold cup of coffee. Three pens scattered across his desk. A potted plant, gifted by Maru. The pack of cigarettes Harvey saves for when he’s especially stressed.
The whirring of the printer jolts him out of his ritual. He doesn’t dare look at the lab results. Looking at them would somehow make them real. They’d tell him what he already knows: that Shane’s liver is failing, and he will die if he doesn’t stop drinking.
There’s a tinny voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like his mother. It tells him that it doesn’t matter whether or not he looks. He can’t fix Shane’s liver, and he can’t save him. Not when he doesn't want to save himself. Not when he'd rather spend his days slaving away in Jojamart, only to earn enough money to drink his days off away.
Harvey shakes his head to clear it. It isn’t his job to save Shane, but by god can he try. One day his gentle chiding and medical expertise will sway him. It has to.
Four things he can touch. Shane’s lab results, pointedly ignored. He holds the papers limply, as if touching the words on the paper would somehow transmit the ugly truth into his mind. His white coat, draped across his shoulders loosely. He’d sized up thinking the sedentary lifestyle of Pelican Town would fatten him up, but the haggard, sleepless nights of worrying incessantly has only increased the gap. The soles of his shoes, worn but still usable. The dig of his nails into the soft skin of his palm, and the insatiable urge to bite them.
Harvey repeats this mantra in his head, the same way his therapist told him to, all those years ago. It helps, to some degree, to remember that he’s a person. That he is in control of his own body when he feels the furthest thing from.
The walk to the clinic’s hospital beds feels longer than it ever has. The tiles he’s walked a million times before feel like the steps of Mount Everest. Each step feels arduous, laboring. His limbs feel like anchors, dragging across the linoleum until he comes face to face with the object of his anxieties.
Three things he can hear. The slow IV drip of fluids into Shane’s arm, pale and limp in the incandescent lighting. The blood pumping in his ears to the rhythm of his heartbeat. The deafening sound of his footsteps as he approaches, followed by the deafening silence when he stops.
For a moment, Harvey stands still. He wants to shake Shane awake and yell at him. He wants to turn tail and run. He wants to be anywhere but here, about to tell Shane he’s dying and have him not fucking care.
Two things he can smell: Shane’s aftershave and the stench of day old booze emanating from his clothes. Harvey follows the light to Shane’s jaw (because he’s weak, he’s always been weak for him), wants to cluck his tongue at the five o’clock shadow like a disapproving parent. Another part wants to trail his fingers down the stubble reverently because if his hair is growing that means he’s at least alive. That he is still breathing. It means he’s still with Harvey.
“Shane…the results aren’t promising.” Harvey says, swallowing around each word as if they physically pain him to say. “You’ve got the liver of a fifty-five year old lifelong drinker. I can connect you to resources, I can make a plan, but you’ve got to work with me here.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, doc.” Shane says. “Good to know my hard work’s paying off.”
“Shane, I—“
“Save it for someone who cares, doc. I’m sure you trust your psychiatrist friends, but I don’t. I go on my own terms, and I’m sure as hell not going to listen to some shrink tell me it’s all going to be okay.”
Harvey wants to laugh. He wants to cry. He wants to shake Shane until he sees reason and then soothe his handprints.
He settles for pleading.
“I can’t keep doing this, Shane. I can’t keep this—this first class ticket to your own self-ruin.” Harvey says, and he means it. Every time Shane is carted in, drunk beyond recognition, it’s a knife twisting low in his gut. Every lab report that documents his decline, every worried glance his neighbors shoot Shane’s way. It eats at him, grates at him, like termites settling in the pit of his lower intestine, chewing chewing chewing until they reached their goal.
Shane grunts noncommittally. “Then don’t. No one’s asking you to be my knight in shining armor. Next time, when you find me lying on the floor of the forest, do us both a favor. Walk away and let me choke on my own vomit.”
“You’re a selfish prick, you know that?” The words are out of Harvey’s mouth before he can stop them. “You wax poetic about how meaningless your life is, but you can’t see that it doesn’t matter what you’ve done or haven’t done. It matters what you do. Right now, in the present. And all I see is someone who is completely, utterly oblivious to how many people care about him, myself included.”
Out of anything Harvey’s ever said in the tens ( hundreds ) of visits, Shane seems to digest this the most. He goes silent, no witty comeback or self deprecating statement. For a moment, all Harvey can taste is his own rage, sharp and metallic against his tongue.
The rage softens when Shane nods slowly, almost imperceptibly. In that moment, he doesn’t see Shane as he is now, grizzled and despondent over something he can’t truly grasp. He sees Shane, younger, happier. The possibility of returning to that version of him fills Harvey with hope. Irrational, but still there, still twinkling.
“You’ve made your point, Harvey.” Shane says, voice low against the industrial droning of the clinic. “I’ll—I’ll consider it.”
The conversation over, Harvey sets down the lab report for Shane to read. He doesn’t dare breathe until he’s in the confines of his office.
One thing he could taste. His leaden tongue in his mouth, unable to tell Shane he loves him.