There's blood on his hands. It isn't his.
The ripped bleeding flesh underneath his fingertips quivers in the half-sharp light of the precinct and he forces his hands steady. There's shouting. Disjointed commands and cops needing to hear themselves to be assured that they are, in fact, alive.
It's too much. The ringing in his ears, the migraine floating at the base of his skull, the bile and reluctant hope coating his tongue. Neither leaves his mouth.
The voices. He can't identify them. It is a mix of hysteria and panic that cops are trained not to feel but do.
He only focuses on the rapidly cooling near-cadaver and his eyes. Too white. Too wild. His ears are ringing. Too many gunshots not enough warning.
The shooter was mentally ill.
Mentally ill. Wires unplugged and put in the wrong sockets.
Mentally ill. Thoughts circling and cycling.
Mentally ill.Bringing a loaded gun into a loaded precinct and expecting not to get shot.
The shooter is dead not six feet away. Skin pale and clammy, already turning the color of dead displayed so proudly on one of Warner's shiny tables. His eyes are open. Green. The gun is near his thigh. Silver.
There's more controlled shouts now. People come out from under shelter-turned desks. Someone calls for a medic. Huang keeps his hands on the boy he knows he can't save. There's too much blood, sharp, metallic, not coagulating at the rate that it should. Slipping between the crevices of his stiff fingers as he holds his hands to two bullet holes piercing the boy's side like red, angry eyes.
His mind immediately goes to infection, shock, exsanguination, what he can do to stop it but it isn't until wet, cold fingers wrap around his wrist that he realizes. He meets the wild eyes and realizes that the boy is resigned.
He knows.
And Huang nearly chokes on bile, vomit, the acute pain of sudden grief and loss and loathing, all before the life finally drains from the kid's eyes. He doesn't let go.
There's a hand on his shoulder. He can feel it through the thin material of his well-worn sweater. Too hot on his cold skin. He doesn't look up. His fingertips tremble as exhaust and adrenaline leaves him lonely.
He exhales, the sound barely there, whisper quiet like a child's.
"Doc."
He's forgotten what another voice sounds like. His mouth is dry, tastes of stomach acid. He can't believe its over this quickly.
"Come on, Doc. There's nothing more you can do."
There's a lot he can do: Breathe. Scream. Be alive. Everything the kid on the floor can't.
"We have to move the body." Different set of vocal cords. Huang wants to rip them out. He hears the tugging zip as the shooter's body gets placed in a bag.
He misses the blistering stillness that came with the first shot. Sees Warner's motherly curls in his peripheral. Rises.
It's far too controlled for the burning flashes of electricity and awareness rushing to his numb limbs as they begin to circulate with blood. His fingers ring with a dull ache. The blood is already drying, chipping, like finger paint.
He doesn't register that he's running until he hears the voices calling after him, heart pounding, air somehow sickly and thick as it enters his lungs.
He's on his knees, pale hands gripping porcelain as the sparse contents of his stomach leave his lips in a continuous swill. He hears knocking on the bathroom door as if he has somehow commandeered the public space, as if he has a say.
He rises, hands pushing off the cracked tile floor. There's dust on them. His hands are silver and red. He gags. Dry-heaves. Nothing comes up but stale almost-prayers and filmy spit. Huang deposits both in the toilet and doesn't look back.
This isn't about him.
It's a week later and he wonders what he could be a synonym for. A few jump to mind. Pitiful. Fading. Weak.
The shooting at the precinct is everywhere. The irony is lost on no one.
Headlines are stapled to the normally white-walled room that holds his dreams and he's halfway through his second Long Island Iced Tea when a hand lands on his shoulder.
He tenses; fingers' flexing to reach for his gun that he knows isn't there. He can't stomach the feeling of it in his hands anymore. Warm breath floats over his ear carrying familiar scents: coffee, peppermint, worries.
"George."
He nearly groans, cries, laughs, cries again. A slow exhale is all he can manage. He doesn't turn around. Doesn't want to see his profile, blurred and undefined by his wet eyes, the hybrid look of nervous concern and exasperated happiness, his uneasy smile.
But he does turn. He can't help himself.
He's displayed exactly how the psychiatrist imagined. Ruffled suit. Top button undone. Tie loosened.
He sits down next to him, orders a scotch, frowns when the bartender pats Huang's hand as he walks away.
"You getting screwed by bartenders now?" Barba asks, voice floating and sharp in the nearly intimate space.
"I thought you knew," George replies, flashes a strained smile, takes another sip of his drink. "I've moved on to assistant district attorneys. How was your case?"
The attorney chuckles around his glass. "Funny you'd ask about that with you being 'out sick' and all."
"I—" The words die in his throat. Vowels and consonants coat his tongue like lies, choking him.
"I know." And the sincerity in the words doesn't surprise either of them. His scotch arrives and he takes a grateful sip, then says in a low voice as if embarrassed: "I missed you."
"I'm sorry," Huang says. He's been saying those words a lot lately but not to others. It's both familiar and foreign on his tongue. He sighs but isn't tired. He's too alert for that, a raised edge tonight. "Take me home," he says glancing at the attorney, then adds. "And you better make me feel."
In his opinion, they don't make love. Love is like matter. It can't be created or destroyed. It's just there.
In his opinion, they fuck.
George watches Rafael's hands as they touch him, thrums across his nipples before his mouth latches on and suckles. He whimpers, grinds into him, says please but doesn't have a damn clue what he wants and hasn't for some time now.
Rafael seems to know anyway because he strips him like he's taking off the robes of a god, whispers how beautiful he is. And when he's finally met with the bare, heated skin of his lover he kisses everywhere he can reach.
He has him perched on the kitchen counter, legs between the doctor's own spread thighs when he finally cradles George's sex, stroking him.
And when Rafael fucks him he whispers, "You're mine, okay? You're mine. No one else can have you. Death can't have you."
George thinks it's a lie. Pieces of him are scattered everywhere and are owned by nearly everyone he's encountered. Parents. Past Lovers. The FBI. The NYPD. All tiny sharp fragments that he can never hope to get back.
But then Rafael snaps his hips, hands digging into his waist and he hits that spot inside of him and George has a hard time keeping his train of thought on its track. He moans lowly, hands scrambling for purchase as they brace against the cool tile.
"Please, Rafael," he says, breathless, begging, the closest thing to whole he can ever remember himself being. "I'm yours. Please don't stop."
A feral growl sounds behind him sending fresh arousal tingling his thighs. His knees buckle.
He's close.
They're close.
Another thrust. An eager hand on his cock and he's pushed over the edge. Screaming and crying, laughing and swearing the whole way down.
Huang's car is a 1983 240 Volvo. It's old and he can afford to get a new one but he's never bothered. He likes the small nugget of nostalgia that comes when he pushes a mix-tape into the tape deck and hears R.E.M, Sex Gang Children, or Descendants float over the speakers.
"Are you sure you're ready?"
He's driving just a hair's breath over the speed limit. When he's alone he drives faster. He doesn't hear the question at first, mind running through patients he hasn't seen in a week. Those that may not be taking it well. One patient jumps to mind.
Daniel. A 10 year old with severe and conflicting abandonment/trust issues and memories of sexual abuse that haven't been easily resolved.
Barba regards the man in the driver's seat as he stares, mind pre-occupied, out the windshield. His hair is falling into his eyes. Hasn't been cut in weeks. Makes him look innocently juvenile.
"George," he says over the continuous motion of traffic and whatever pop swill is playing on the radio.
"Yes?" He changes the radio station for the hell of it, fiddling with dials. Changing it from FM to AM then back again.
Barba adjusts himself in his chair, straightens his tie. "Did you hear me? I asked if you were ready."
"It doesn't matter if I'm ready," he says, suddenly, and, unexplainably angry. "My patients are ready. My patients are all ready with fresh wounds and wet eyes. They're raw and shaking and the only constant in their lives are the voices in their heads and me. They need me and—" he breaks off into a blunt, brittle snort. "People think people become shrinks to be godlike figures with all the answers. But really, it's because we want to know we're not the only screwed up people in the world. It makes you feel less lonely." He suddenly looks self-conscious and unsure, boyish. "Do you know what I mean?"
Barba for a moment wonders if he does know what George means. Wonders if he can ever begin to understand the inner workings of the mind before him, the horrors he willingly submits himself to and the criminals he's often forced to fight for by some morally strong but slightly unsure code by which he holds himself accountable. It doesn't make sense to his brain, but it does in some hazy ambiguous part of him that only George sees capable of conjuring.
"I don't think so, no," Barba says, slowly, catching George's gaze and holding it. "But on the other hand I think I do. Do you know what I mean?"
His lips quirk in an amused sort of smirk and he turns into the precinct's parking lot. They're silent as he parks. "I think I'm ready," he says. "But I can't be sure until I try right?"
It isn't a question that can be easily answered. Barba wants to say that only time will tell but he almost laughs at himself.
Time. A notion as abstract and incompletely defined as his love for the man in the driver's seat. He's silent. The car hums as the engine whines down and they sit in the encroaching damp and cold.
"Right," he finally says when the silence gets too thick too fast. The word is choppy and forced. But he still kisses George's cheek and tells him to have a good day even when his throat threatens to clench around the words and kill him.
Because this isn't about him either.
A/N: I know it's so close to Christmas but I haven't been able to do happy fics lately. I dedicate this to Bucken-Berry because I love her G/E fics. Happy Holidays everyone! Requests and reviews are heavily appreciated.