Boss
Disclaimer: I don't own Shutter Island, only the amazing DVD of the movie and the book.
Pairing: Teddy/Chuck or, really, Andrew/Lester. Because even crazy men get lonely.
Warnings: Slash, m/m—not too heavy though
AU in the idea that Andrew was never lobotomized at the end and they continued to try to treat him as his relapses seemed less severe, especially in the presence of Lester. I wonder why… ;p
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Lester knows very well that Andrew Laeddis is insane. Although he did have his moments of clarity, like all patients, they were quickly crushed by the delusions, the thoughts and, in Andrew's special case, the despair. Oh God the despair. It ate away at the young man's brain until it was broken into parts, pieces that dug into it like glass shards and covered it like the ash of his destroyed existence and cemented him in places of darkness and records always playing spinning round and round—
Sometimes Lester almost fears that he is going to lose his mind as well. The more he tries to think like the broken man, the more of himself he feels he is losing. Insanity almost seems like a big gaping hole to him, and one misstep can send a man spiraling over the edge. He already feels like, as he sits in the same room as Andrew, that he is at the edge. How much more of those pain filled, red rimmed heavy blue eyes can he take?
Standard questions begin. Unemotional, almost cold in the way they must be asked. "Have you had any relapses lately?"
Lester never really knows what the word "relapses" means, especially concerning this patient. Wouldn't it be better to ask who he is today? There can only be two answers to that question, and Lester knows them both intimately.
Too intimately.
Andrew just sinks farther down in his seat, dazed eyes flickering for just a moment before they are dead again. He is silent. Lester tries not to let his concern show but damn it all if the defeated stance doesn't start to get to him, especially after all they've been through. They were partners, for God's sake. They survived a storm together and Andrew—no Teddy—had told him all of his secrets.
But they weren't really secrets at all, were they, not when they were written down in medical terms and emotionless details on the paper in front of him. Yes Andrew had killed his wife; yes Andrew had liberated a concentration camp. Facts are not what he needs, as Lester quickly understands; emotions and the fire in Andrew's eyes are all he needs and all he wants.
This is his patient and God help him if he was not his friend too.
"Andrew…" he tries to begin, ignoring, to the best of his ability, the flinch the blonde man gives at the sound of his given name. His real name. "How have the delusions been? I mean…how have you been feeling?"
He means to be sincere, and he is, he truly is, but that does not stop the insane man from throwing back his head and letting out a hoarse cackle of laughter. It is not the type of laughter that instills fear—at least not for Lester, not anymore. It is the type of laughter that shoots pity through one's gut, the type of laughter that rings with the final note of desperation and the final note of sanity. It is a dying man, a drowning man's, laughter.
"How am I feeling?" Andrew repeats, and the smile he gives Lester is crooked, more of a grimace. "How do ya think I'm feeling doc?"
Lester hates it when he calls him doc; he absolutely hates it. It reminds him of his station, of what he is considered to Andrew. A doctor and that was all. But who could blame Andrew for not seeing him as his friend? Some days, it is like they are acquaintances and they are meeting for the first time; other days, Andrew can only resent him for bringing him back and shattering the wayward delusion that is so perfectly ingrained in his head.
Lester breathes in deeply and reaches into his pocket for a cigarette. It is against protocol to smoke around a patient but with Andrew he always seems to just ignore the rules. Not when he knows the man sitting across from him almost as well as he knows himself.
"I think you're feeling confused," Lester inhales the smoke. Inhales certain death. "I think that you don't know what to talk about after everything that has happened. I think that you're afraid."
When Andrew slams his hands down on the table between them Lester doesn't flinch. He just takes another drag of his cigarette.
"Is that what you think Chuck?" Andrew hisses out his fake name like a snake, face contorting into a brutal mask of anger and suffering. On Andrew's face it is hard to tell where the anger ends and the suffering starts. "Do you think I'm goddamn afraid?"
"Well yeah," Lester shrugs, and almost subconsciously falls into the role of Chuck as he leans forward and takes another drag of his cigarette, exhaling it into the spaces between them. "That's what I'm thinkin' boss."
It is the breaking word. There is always one, when around Andrew. Some days it is Dolores; others it is Rachel, lake, children, drown, fire, Laeddis. But never has it been 'boss'. Most of the time Andrew barely notices when he says it, so trapped in his own mind and trying to escape from the other self Lester has fostered.
Now at the sound of the key word Andrew is standing from his seat and the orderlies start to rush in, slowly, until like usual Lester stops them with a single raised hand. This is his patient and he will handle him; Andrew is his just like Teddy is Chuck's and they are partners till the end.
Like always he does not fight back as he is slammed back against the wall, the cigarette falling from his mouth the smolder somewhere on the dirty floor as Andrew presses against him, all barely contained shaking anger and passion and pain. Passion and pain—always with Andrew they are stuck together, partners in crime, advances in his madness.
"Andrew," Lester begins quietly, moving slowly to reach up and grab hold of the other man's shoulder. Beneath his hand he can feel all the muscles twitching under Andrew's uniform, like a skittish racehorse about to go wild, untamed. Lester just keeps his hand there lightly, his eyes peering into the madman's feral ones as calmly as he is able. It does not help that in his chest his heart is beating an insane staccato at Andrew's proximity. He can see each tear stained eyelash, each sore and piece of grim smeared on Andrew's pale face from his cell and his own self inflicted pain. But more than anything, he can clearly see himself reflected in Andrew's stained glass gaze.
For a moment everything turns startling still. Even the heartbeat that had for too long been racing inside of Lester's chest sounds muffled. He should be worried, but he isn't. This is a criminal that is pinning him to a wall, a criminal who shot his own wife and beat countless inmates and orderlies of the hospital, but he isn't. How can he be afraid when the man holding him has been through so much? How can he when they've both been through too much together?
He is his boss, and he is Chuck and Chuck always looks out for his partner, even when it puts his own life in danger. The life of Chuck is all just a dream anyway.
And so he moves closer to his friend, his dear patient who is trembling, breathing so heavily that it is like he has run a mile and is about to collapse. Chuck will be there when he collapses to catch him and Lester will heal all of his wounds. Together they will help him, always together and never apart.
"Chuck…" he hears the traumatized man whisper desperately, passionately. The hands pinning him against the wall start to loosen into a light caress, a whisper of a touch against the lapels of his coat. It is when Andrew, still Andrew in these final moments looks him dead in the eye again with that fractured and wild and passionate and frenzied gaze that Lester feels something inside of him start to erupt.
Later he blames his actions on everything and anything he can think of. The air in the room, the weeks of frustration of not getting through, the exhaustion from countless sleepless nights, and he even almost goes so far as to blame Andrew.
But he's only lying to himself and he'll always know that. The truth is that there was no reason for Doctor Lester Sheehan to kiss his patient Andrew Laeddis; no reason at all and that is precisely the entire point.
Andrew's mouth is rough and jagged like the rocks that surround the hospital, cuts lining his cheeks and the copper tang of blood from too many cuts from teeth and internal agony. Blood and cigarettes and ashes and something bittersweet is all Lester can taste and it is absolutely perfect, this blend of insanity that he finally tastes for himself.
He is tasting insanity and he finds, to his complete dismay, his horror, his life, that he only wants more. This realization, paired with the scrape of sharp teeth against his mouth that announced Andrew is starting to kiss him back, pulls him back to the sharpness of reality, where it digs like a scalpel into his brain.
Pushing Andrew off of himself Lester finds that he is shaking and his eyes are wet and his mouth, his mouth is swollen and tingling. It burns God it burns so much that his lips feel like they have been branded and he can never talk again. He is still in a state of shock until he hears it—the hoarse and familiar scream of Andrew from across the room.
He looks over blindly to see that the orderlies have Andrew up against the wall as he screams and tears and thrashes at them as they try to stick the familiar needle into his arm. His lips are swollen, his face is an unnatural shade of red, and his eyes, oh his eyes, are staring right into Lester's own. They are so grey that they appear transparent, so empty and hollow that for a moment Lester wonders if he is staring at a person until the screams register and the thrashing and clawing limbs.
The sedative sinks into its familiar hole in Andrew's arm just as Lester stumbles closer, hands so wrung dry stretching out to the patient, the friend, the devil in his heart and the voice inside of his head. He is the one that holds Andrew as he slumps to the ground, a mass of nerves and soundless screams and eyes drained of everything life and love and passion and pain and suffering and delusions. For a single moment, as Andrew stares up at him from the floor he is no one and he is fine, a blank slate—tabula rosa. It lasts for only a moment before it is not a drugged Andrews staring up at him but a sleepy Teddy Daniels and he is looking into a face that he has never seen before.
"You must be Chuck," he manages to slur as the orderlies move in to grab him and take him away, back to his cell where he will think he is at home or in his office and still always and ever the hero, the Marshall who will liberate. Lester swallows the bile in his throat. He can still taste Andrew Laeddis in his mouth as they take Teddy Daniels away.
"Yes Boss," he softly replies into the empty room. His cigarette is extinguished on the floor. "That's who I am, Boss."
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