Work Text:
"I have a headache," Stephen says quietly.
It's true, but it takes effort to make it sound it. He always has a headache these days, for one thing — frankly, he always aches everywhere. A soreness settled into his very bones that descended there that night that Molly's phone rang and calcified the night he tried to kill himself several months later. The general pain is familiar, and deserved, and he's used to bearing it without anything to soothe it. He isn't allowed pills anymore, after all — and, usually, he knows better than to ask.
But the pain is especially keen today. It's squeezing his skull, a throbbing sear at the base of it, behind his eyes, crushing his temples, and he has work to do. Morris has trusted him with work for the first time in so long, and Stephen needs to prove that he is still capable of handling it. The headache is making it feel impossible.
And Six is giving him that godforsaken look.
Stephen hasn't even asked yet. He hates that he has to ask, has to humiliate himself for a couple Tylenol like a child, but he supposes that that's deserved too. It has always been Morris' rule that, if Stephen proves he cannot be trusted, he loses the privileges that Morris allows him.
Freedom was a privilege. Pills were a privilege. Death was a privilege. He fights not to dig his nails into his thigh. He knows that will not help his case here.
"Can I have a Tylenol, please?" he asks Six, as firmly as he can. He looks at his babysitter, stood like a statue by the suite's bathroom door where he has a full view of the space. A full view of Stephen. His hands are clasped in front of him, his broad shoulders squared, his face carefully impassive.
But Stephen knows better. He can see the Look beneath it. The weight in Six's dark eyes, something reluctant and worried and restrained. He lets his tone sharpen.
"Actually," he says, "get me two."
Six shifts minutely. His gaze darts briefly to the door between them and the hallway of Secret Service agents, and then lands back on Stephen like he doesn't dare look away from him for too long.
"I'll have to clear it with President Morris," he says evenly.
"You're gonna bother the President of the United States of America to ask if I can have two Tylenol?"
"Those are my orders."
Stephen grits his teeth hard so he doesn't do something insane like throw his laptop across the room.
"So clear it," he says sharply, edging on an order. As if he can still give those. As if he's still the man he killed — the best of the best, right hand of the most important man in the country — and not what's left, the broken toy locked up under the constant supervision of a CIA agent or whatever Six really is these days. Just one of Morris' pawns, really. Just like Stephen.
Stephen drags his hands through his hair and pulls until his eyes sting, waiting for Six to leave. He doesn't.
"Why aren't you moving?" Stephen asks him. He means for it to come out sharp, demanding. It comes out wet and whining, the wrong end of pleading.
Six hesitates. Stephen can feel the weight of his gaze. "I don't want to leave you on your own," he says quietly.
Stephen looks up at him and stares back at him, the edges of his eyes burning.
"You think I'm gonna kill myself because I asked you for two Tylenol?" he asks.
"I think the file I was given when I got this assignment said pills are a trigger for you," Six says evenly. "And that they were a part of your employed method for your—attempt."
"I didn't use Tylenol," Stephen scoffs, breathing an incredulous little laugh that's only slightly hysterical. Tylenol. Maybe everything would be better if all Molly had was Tylenol, and not multiple bottles of pills strong enough to kill someone three times her size. Or maybe it would be exactly the same. Stephen knows better than anyone that you can't really stop someone determined to die. "You can ask Morris what I used, actually," he says hoarsely, "when you go and ask him for my fucking pills. And then you can add that to your file."
He can't hurt himself anymore. He's wrapped in bubble wrap here, and any attempt to harm himself only results in the wrap tightening. It's already suffocating. Lashing out is all that's left, and Six is so easy to lash out at. Stephen's head is hurting so bad it's dizzying, and his eyes are searing with brimming tears, and Six only nods wordlessly. He heads to the door, and Stephen uses the few unobserved seconds to rake his fingernails as hard as he can up his arms, biting his tongue until he tastes iron to hold back the brimming tears.
A Secret Service agent promptly takes Six's guard spot, and only then does Six leave, casting one look back at Stephen.
"I'll be back in a few minutes," he says gently, as if assuring Stephen that he isn't truly leaving him. The new agent says nothing. Stephen stares emptily out of the windows, dragging his nails repeatedly over the insides of his wrists. The new guard is much worse at this than Six is, and doesn't even notice. When the door opens some length of time later with Six's return, Stephen only pulls the cuffs of his sleeves neatly back into place, and watches the Secret Service agent leave.
Six doesn't speak until the door is shut and locked again.
"Two Tylenol," he says. "With a Presidential seal of approval."
He wasn't exaggerating. He has exactly two, clasped in his palm like they're precious. Or perhaps like they're dangerous. Stephen watches him fetch a bottle of water from the refrigerator, remove the cap — as if Stephen is too frail to do even that for himself — and bring it over to hold it out for Stephen.
"Take a drink," Six tells him, too gentle to be an order.
"You think I don't know how to take pills?" Stephen asks him scratchily, taking the bottle. "The whole reason we're here is that I'm too good."
Six smiles, very slightly. "President Morris told me to monitor you taking them," he says softly. "Allegedly there was a stockpiling incident."
There was. Fresh out of the hospital, Stephen was on a repertoire of meds for the pain of the stitches up his wrists. It was all too easy to only pretend to swallow them, and store them in a hidden little stash, ready for another attempt. Right up until Morris had figured him out. He'd shouted his voice hoarse at Stephen, so furiously angry — eyes wet with it — that Stephen had wondered hollowly if Morris was going to kill him himself. It had been that which lost him pill privileges.
And earned him Six.
Now, he takes a dutiful sip of water, and Six hands him one of the pills. Sephen swallows it with another sip, trying very hard not to think about it or Molly or the hospital bed he'd been in for a week. He opens his mouth to show Six it's empty, looking up at him from under his lashes, and watches Six swallow dryly.
"Good," Six tells him, only slightly rough-edged, and hands him the other.
It's worse, to swallow the second one. Too easy to think about swallowing another, and another, and another, and how the world had gone hazy-edged and blindingly painful and so, so scary when he had. He'd been so cold. It's terrifying to die.
Molly must've been terrified.
"Stephen," Six says softly. It washes through him, crackling in his ears. "Stephen. Hey. Can you look at me?"
"I'm sorry."
"It's okay. You're okay. Look at me."
Six crouches in front of him, the great broad, muscular size of him folding neatly to his knees. His calloused hands find Stephen's wrists to hold them gently, and Stephen flinches in pain. He comes hazily back to himself just in time to see Six's gaze lower, see his face shutter when he sees the beads of blood soaked dark through Stephen's sleeves.
"I'm sorry," Stephen breathes, feeling guilty and small like a child. Dizzy and disoriented like a drunk. "I'm really sorry, sir—"
Six squeezes his hand. "It's okay, Stephen." His voice is rough but utterly sincere. His rough hands are so gentle, thumbs brushing back and forth indulgently where he's holding Stephen. "Do you…do you have something sharp on you, or—?"
"No. No, it was just my—my nails. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I promise. Really, I—"
"I believe you. It's okay."
It's enough to wrench a sob out of Stephen. Hoarse and pathetic, the only warning before he's falling to pieces the way he seems to do so often nowadays. Before Molly, before the election, he can't remember the last time he'd cried. Now he seems to do nothing but. Pathetic, some dark part of his mind crows, pathetic and broken and ruined. He wonders if it's true. If he's broken now, ruined, and this is all he'll be forever. Never getting better, never getting fixed. It was that belief that had driven him to those pills. To the razor blade. He wonders why Morris won't let him die if he's so useless now. He so rarely even comes to visit.
"Stephen," Six's voice says, very gently. "You with me?"
Stephen blinks slowly back to reality again, dizzier now. Hazier. His sleeves have been pushed up to his elbows, and the raw scrapes up his arms have been wiped and cleaned and dressed. He can't imagine any of them were severe enough to warrant the neat adhesive bandages stuck there now, but Six is nothing if not thorough. Maybe it's just to stop Stephen picking at them.
He can't help but notice that the bandages cover his still-healing scars too, the ugly red-purple stitched slashes that bely his weakness the loudest, and wonders if that too was intentional. Stephen despises them. They're so easy to pick at and scrape at and hurt.
"Yeah," Stephen murmurs. "Sorry."
"'S'okay. You went away for a bit there."
"I'm—"
"It's okay." Six's hand takes his and squeezes. "You tired?"
Stephen is. He always is, but right now it's even keener than usual. "I have work to do," he says quietly.
"You can rest your eyes for a minute. Those pills'll need a while to kick in. Your head still hurting?"
"Everything's always hurting."
It's more honest than Stephen intended, hoarse and exhausted. He ducks his gaze so he doesn't have to see what sort of face Six makes, and when he dares to raise it Six only smiles softly, sadly, at him.
"Lie down," he tells Stephen, and Stephen does, because it's easiest to obey. He curls sideways on the luxurious hotel couch where he whittles away his waking hours and Six folds his laptop for him, places it carefully on the coffee table beside the bottle of water, and then reaches out to brush calloused finertips over the height of Stephen's cheek. It's more comforting than it should be. Stephen's eyelids flutter, even as Six's hand flinches promptly away.
"Sorry," Six mutters. "I shouldn't—"
"'S'okay," Stephen whispers, already most of the way to sleep. "'S'nice."
He's used to hurting, and used to the bone-deep exhaustion. He should be used to the loneliness too, but that one still hurts like a stitched wound. Like something he'd need too many pills to fix.
Very slowly, Six's hand settles against his hair. He begins carding his fingers through the strands, gentler than any touch Stephen deserves. Gentler than any he's had before, despite Six's calloused hand and all the violence they've enacted. The violence they were meant to enact on Stephen, the only way of teaching him that's ever worked.
"You'll feel better when you wake up," Six tells him quietly, soft like a promise.
"Liar," Stephen whispers back, and falls asleep.