Cory wishes later he could say that he pushed Tom off right away. He wishes he could say that, as soon as he realized what was going on, he put a stop to it. That, yes, Tom kissed him, but it was only a second before Cory broke it off. Five seconds. Ten seconds. Half a minute. Less than a minute. A minute, just a minute.
He wishes he could say that it was all Tom's doing and that Cory didn't kiss back.
He wishes he could say that he didn't like it.
Cory wishes later that he could say a lot of things were different about tonight than are actually the case.
"All right, kiddo, get dressed. We're going to the doctor," Shawn says when he's finally worried enough about Sadie's wheezing.
"No! I don't wanna go."
"Yes. Come on, out of your pajamas. Scoot." He ushers her into her bedroom to change her clothes and then returns to his laptop to double-check the location of the twenty-four hour immediate care clinic he's looked up online. It's a short cab ride away. He's not crazy about taking Sadie to what will likely be a skeevy clinic, particularly on a Saturday night, but her wheezing just doesn't sound right to him and it seems like it's getting more frequent.
He toys with whether or not he should call Anna and tell her what he's doing, but he ultimately decides to nix that idea. It'd probably just open another can of worms of an argument about something stupid, and it's not that big a deal anyway. Shawn's hope is that they get in, get a diagnosis, get a prescription of something helpful and get home in time for a not-too-late bedtime.
While he's thinking about this, Shawn takes another dose of Dayquil. His own cold has gotten pretty miserable over the course of the day. To his surprise, though, he's managed to not let it get in the way too much. Normally, Shawn's a complete baby when he gets sick, he'd freely admit. When a cold or a flu hits, he's under the covers with his whiskey and his horror movies and not coming out for days. This time, though, Sadie's care has taken precedence, and he's amazed at how little the fact that he's sick too has mattered to him. It's an annoying distraction, not an opportunity for wallowing in self-pity as it's always been before. He's not exactly displeased about this development. As un-fun as it is taking care of a sick kid, this weekend has done a lot for making Shawn feel like he's maybe on the right track in at least one aspect of his life.
"What's the hold-up?" he asks, popping into her bedroom to check on her. Immediately, his heart breaks at the sight of her, flushed and unhappy, half-dressed and laying with her face pressed to the bedspread.
"Oh, Babe," he says, sitting beside her and picking her gently back up into a sit, "I'm sorry you feel so lousy. I promise you'll feel better soon."
As he helps her finish dressing her little body, he idly considers if she's tall for her age or short or average; he has no idea, but he feels like this is something he should know. He's also curious to see how she ends up. Anna's tall and Shawn's pretty sure he remembers her saying she was tall as a kid. Shawn was tall for a while, one of the tallest boys in middle school, then he'd somehow ended up shorter than most of the other guys by the end of high school, as if biology had played a big joke on him. It was a great disappointment to his teenage self. He wonders what Anna thinks about the fact that her kid has a short father, if that's one of the many things she finds annoying about him. It mattered to Anna back when they were dating-he remembers her specifically telling him that he wasn't her usual type, that she preferred guys who were taller than her, but that she'd made an exception because Shawn always had access to good drugs. Jesus. How did a beautiful thing like Sadie come out of such a fucked-up relationship? A biological joke indeed.
Once she's dressed, Shawn has a look at her and knows he ought to at least comb her hair, but decides it's better not to push it. Let his sick kid have messy hair. If the folks at the clinic want to judge his parenting by it, fuck 'em.
"All right," he says, "Let's go."
"Daddy, I don't wanna," Sadie protests in a half-hearted whine, "Please don't make me go."
"Shhh, shhh," he says, attempting to soothe her because she's wheezing again as she says this. There's a panicky quality to it that he really doesn't like.
"No, Daddy, no..." She's laboring to breathe now, taking in short, sharp whistling wheezes.
He continues to shush her, growing more alarmed. Then something changes and he realizes, with blood-chilling horror, that she's having an attack of some sort. She can't breathe. She starts panicking and gasping, waving her arms around, her face going completely white.
"Sadie, Sadie, Sadie, breathe honey, it's okay, it's okay, Daddy's here," he babbles in a voice that sounds shockingly neutral to his ears, trying to help her calm down and get air into her lungs.
Oh dear God. Oh fucking shit...
He puts his left hand to her chest and tries to get her to meet his eyes and hold them there as something reassuring for her to focus on, to distract her from whatever this attack is so she isn't so scared and can maybe more easily get some oxygen. With his right hand, he dials 911.
The hissing sound of Sadie struggling for breath and not being able to take it in is the most horrible thing Shawn's ever heard. It haunts his dreams for years after.
Tom is a really good kisser. This is the thought that occurs to Cory just after he gets over his momentary confusion and realizes what's going on. It is very nice kissing Tom. It is always nice being kissed when you are this sleepily, dreamily drunk and you were, just prior to being kissed, feeling like the biggest, dopiest loser in the world.
Cory kisses back hungrily, letting his body's instincts run the show, because it feels so fucking good. He's getting hard thinking about the fact that this is Tom who is kissing him so perfectly, Tom who is incredibly hot and whom Cory has been repressing a crush on for months. Tom wants Cory. And, at this second in time, Cory wants him back. Cory is painfully hard as Tom forces him back into the sofa and thrusts his tongue deeper into Cory's mouth.
Tom had said he wanted Cory more than he wanted Shawn. No one has ever picked Cory over Shawn, as a date, as a party invitee, as a gym class basketball team member, as a desired sexual conquest. There's something intoxicating about finally being in that position, for once being the first choice. Tom doesn't think Cory's boring or uncool or just average. He doesn't see Cory as second fiddle to Shawn or Topanga or Eric or anyone. He thinks Cory's awesome and wants him. None of these thoughts are articulated consciously in Cory's mind at this moment, the sum of them is just a rush of feeling more potent than Cory ever would have expected. He feels helpless to deny it; it just feels too good.
And then he thinks of Shawn. And what this means. And what Cory has just done.
Oh, no.
No, no, no, no.
All of the life drains out of Cory and he goes limp underneath Tom's advances. Tom continues moving in on him for a moment more before he realizes that Cory is no longer responding.
"Hey," Tom says, sitting back, "What's the matter?"
Cory can't even summon the energy to speak. He's just a dumb pile of skin on the sofa.
"I thought you wanted this," Tom says, seeming genuinely confused, "The way you're always looking at me..."
Cory says nothing. He can't even move his head to look over at him.
Tom looks incredulous and now a bit angry. "You liked it! You were just kissing me back." He gestures down at Cory's crotch, "You're fucking hard as a rock. I could feel it. I can see it right now."
Slowly, Cory starts to shake his head and struggles to summon a voice to speak with.
"I don't get you, Matthews," Tom says.
"I quit," Cory says in a voice so weak it's almost inaudible.
"What?"
"I quit, Tom," Cory says, "Being around you is ruining my life."
Tom just stares at him, mouth agape.
Somehow Cory finds that he is moving, that he is climbing to his feet and stepping over Tom. "I gotta go," Cory mutters, walking away, "I gotta go home."
They got lucky. The paramedics were just leaving a call two buildings over from Shawn's apartment when the dispatch came through. They were able to get Sadie right into the ambulance and breathing again before they even made it to the emergency room. It was a very serious asthma attack, Shawn was told when they finally got to St. Luke's and saw the doctor. Confused, Shawn replied that Sadie didn't have asthma and the doctor explained that unfortunately sometimes it's not until a kid has an attack that they get a diagnosis. The wheezing all day had probably been the first signs Sadie had ever shown of being asthmatic, the cold having likely helped bring the attack on.
Although Sadie was breathing normally again, the doctor wanted to hold her for observation for a bit and to get a second opinion when another doctor was available. It was so late, though, and Sadie in such a panicked state (understandably so), that they decided to sedate her and try to avoid triggering another bad attack.
Shawn had held tight to her throughout everything, but once she drifted off into a heavily medicated sleep, they said they needed him out of the way. So here he is now, banished to a plastic chair in the waiting room. With two seconds to breathe and think, the enormity of it all has finally started to hit him. His heart has been racing for at least two hours with no sign of letting up and now he's finding that he can't stop himself from shaking. He closes his eyes and tries to will his heart to slow and his body to stop trembling, but all the force of what little will he has left inside him doesn't help a bit. He would give just about anything for a stiff drink.
"Shawn?"
He opens his eyes and sees Anna, freshly arrived from Jersey, standing just inside the waiting room doors. He'd called her when they first got to the hospital. He doesn't even remember what he said. Shawn opens his mouth to say something, anything to her, but he can't find any words and closes it quickly, feeling like if he leaves it open any longer, he's going to throw up.
"Where is she?" Anna asks.
"She's...she's fine," he hears himself saying, "She's sleeping. They won't let anyone in there right now. They'll let us know, I guess, when she's up and we can see her."
"I need to speak to someone." Anna marches off down the hall and apparently does find someone to give her some information because he doesn't see her again for a while.
When Anna finally returns, she collapses into the seat next to him. Shawn can't bring himself to turn and look at her. He's still shaking like a lunatic and he squeezes his hands together in a vain attempt to cover it up. Some part of his brain tells him that she's going to assume he's on drugs if she sees him trembling like that and he knows that will only make things worse, if that's even possible.
To his surprise, she reaches over and puts a hand over his wrist to try and help him stop shaking.
"Sorry," he says, "I don't know why I can't stop it."
"You're in shock," she replies, matter-of-factly. "I had a car accident once. I was shaking just like that for hours afterwards."
"I'm not on anything," he blurts out, "I want you to know that. I'm not on anything."
"I believe you."
He takes a deep, shuddery breath. She's still holding onto his arm. He realizes now she's doing it as much because she needs something to hold onto. He bows his head in shame and says, "If you never want her to come see me again, I'm not gonna stop you."
"Huh?"
"You were right. I shouldn't be trusted with anyone. Definitely not Sadie. I am not fit to take care of anybody. I'm so stupid. So stupid. The first time she started wheezing, I should've had her at the hospital. I can't believe how dumb I was. I just thought she had bronchitis. I was going to take her to the fucking walk-in clinic. I'm such an idiot..."
He looks up at her finally, but she is not looking at him. Her gaze is fixed on the floor in front of them and, if possible, she looks as sick as he feels.
"You didn't know she had asthma," she says quietly but clearly. "You wouldn't have any reason to think that."
"I should've figured it out. I should've had her in that ambulance at the first sign."
"Shawn." She turns to face him, her dark eyes impossibly large on her pale face. "The doctor told me you did exactly what you were supposed to do. You kept her calm and kept the attack from being even worse. She could have died..."
At that word and that thought, Anna's voice cracks and she bursts into tears. Shawn puts his arms around her instinctively, forgetting everything that has ever passed between them. Anna folds her head into his shoulder and sobs. He finds himself soothing her and petting the back of her head exactly as he has done with Sadie. He doesn't notice that with this distraction, he has stopped trembling.
Eventually, Anna gets herself to a point of some composure and sits back, and wipes her sleeve across her face. Shawn hands her the package of Kleenex he's been carrying around all day in his breast pocket. She accepts it and runs through about six of them, wiping her face and blowing her nose. "Oh, god," she mutters, "Oh, god..."
Shawn slumps back in his chair, feeling incredibly exhausted. "I'm so sorry," he says.
Anna continues blowing her nose, then crosses the room to toss the used tissues in a waste basket. When she returns, she faces him and he could swear she looks nervous.
"I have to tell you something," she says.
He looks at her expectantly, but it takes her a minute to gather herself and find her voice. When she does finally speak, she averts her eyes and looks at the floor again. "I was told about two weeks ago," she says in a carefully measured, but shaky tone, "That I should have Sadie tested for asthma."
"What?"
"Her teacher said that she was wheezing a little when they were running around on the playground. I...I made an appointment to see the doctor, but, you know, my insurance is so shitty, and the earliest appointment I could get was next week..."
Anna trails off as Shawn processes this information. When he speaks his voice is very low because he is doing everything in his power not to raise it.
"Why the hell didn't you tell me?"
Anna swallows hard. "I didn't think it was any of your business."
Then Shawn loses all ability to keep his voice low. "She almost died!"
"I know," Anna cries, "I know. I...I'm so stupid. I never thought, never ever thought anything would happen..."
Shawn is speechless. He is on his feet now, pacing as he struggles to put all of the rage and shock he is suddenly feeling into coherent words. He opens his mouth several times to speak, but nothing comes out until finally he throws his hands in the air. "You risked Sadie's safety just because it was more important to you that I be kept out of her life?"
"I didn't think about it that way," Anna says, tearing up again now, "It never even occurred to me to tell you."
"Because it never fucking occurred to you that I'm her parent too? That I'm responsible for her too? That I need to know these things? That maybe, I dunno, it might be important to tell me that my kid might have a disease that could fucking kill her? What is the matter with you?"
"I'm sorry! I am so sorry..."
"Arrgh!" Shawn growls inarticulately as he makes fists with his hands and continues pacing in frustration. Then he stops and jabs his finger in the air at her. "This is not happening anymore. No more. You are not keeping me out of her life in any way, shape, or form. If I have to get a fucking court order to have every last medical, dental, and school record copied and faxed to me on a daily basis, I will fucking do it."
Anna nods helplessly, which is only mildly satisfying to Shawn's rage. He scowls and throws one more declaration at her. "And we're putting her on my insurance. I have fucking great insurance!"
He realizes after he has said this last bit that, while it is a fairly factual and reasonable point for discussion, phrasing it this way sounds just slightly comical. Anna, in tears just a minute ago, cracks a smile.
"It's not funny," Shawn argues unconvincingly, exhaustion creeping back into him, "I'm serious."
"No," Anna says, "Please do it. I've been trying to get better insurance for her for years. Honestly? It would be a relief. Thank you for wanting to do that."
Shawn lowers himself wearily back into his chair. "I just want what's best for her," he says.
"I know. I appreciate that."
"Can we talk about the school thing again?" He asks.
Anna sighs. "We can, but not tonight, okay?"
Shawn sighs too. "Okay."
Then a nurse appears and tells them Sadie is awake. Before they go in to see her, though, the doctor comes out and speaks with both of them. She discusses briefly the things they need to do now and look out for and hands them a pile of literature and a boxed inhaler. Then they are handed off to an admin of some sort to fill out the stacks of paperwork necessary to bill the insurance and give Sadie the okay for release. Finally, they are allowed into the little curtained off room where Sadie looks absolutely tiny and frightened, sitting cross-legged atop the hospital bed.
Shawn stands back to let Anna go to her first, but Sadie climbs down from the bed, completely ignoring her mother and says, "Daddy, I wanna go home."
To Shawn's shock, Sadie walks past Anna and throws herself into his arms.
"Okay," he says and scoops her up. She buries her face against his shoulder and closes her eyes. He rests his chin on the top of her head and rubs her back. "Let's go home."
Anna looks at him uncertainly.
"Come on," Shawn tells her, "Just stay over."
And so they leave the hospital that night looking like any other family of mom, dad, and kid, grateful to be getting off so lightly.
Cory manages to get checked out of the hotel, into a cab, and negotiated (quite expensively) onto the last flight for the East coast leaving Seattle that night. With the difference in time zones and a layover in Pittsburgh, it won't be until morning that Cory will get back to New York, maybe twelve hours earlier than he otherwise would've gotten back had he stuck with his original ticket. But Cory doesn't care. He just needs to get home and needs to get as far away from Tom right now as he possibly can.
The flight is nearly empty and Cory's glad for this. He's in no mood to make small talk with strangers or to even just try to pretend that he's not feeling like he's coming apart inside. In the darkened cabin, he sits in an empty row, listening to other folks snoring or quietly tapping away on laptops. Cory has brought nothing to occupy himself-no computer or book or magazine. Instead he sits in his own self-assigned purgatory, alone with his thoughts.
He has quit his job. Absurdly, perhaps, this is the one thought Cory keeps grabbing onto to make him feel better, a buoy in the dark ocean of his guilt tonight. As bad as this is, it is not the worst of what he has done. And so he clings to it.
It's still plenty upsetting to think about. Cory has never just upped and quit a job like that. It goes entirely against his nature. Cory is reliable and predictable. Cory enjoys his life being reliable and predictable. While he's had a number of jobs he wasn't crazy about-boring jobs, irritating jobs, humiliating jobs-he's always either just seen them through like the born worker ant that he is or, in extreme cases, given his proper two weeks notice each time, wrapped in layers of apologies and deference.
Cory has never burned a bridge in his life. Now he's gone and walked out on a job he actually liked-a job he really, really, really liked more than any other job he'd ever had, and did so in the middle of the conference his company just paid a lot of money to send him to. Tom and everyone else invested time and money and trust in Cory and, with two seconds of thought, he threw it back in their faces and walked away. That bridge has been torched. He feels sick even thinking about trying to get another job again and having to explain this.
He holds onto the fact that he has quit his dream job in this terrible fashion as long as he can throughout his late night flight. Eventually, though, thoughts of the more egregious transgression he's committed this evening pull him under.
Yes, he kissed Tom. Yes, he allowed it to go on for too long. Yes, he enjoyed it and, for a brief moment in time, was an equal and eager participant, pushing for things to go further. But none of these facts are the worst part. The worst part, he knows, is yet to come. The worst part is that Cory is going to have to tell Shawn what happened. Cory's stomach turns over at the thought of what the news of these events is going to do to Shawn's trust in him.
Shawn Hunter's trust is rare as a goddamn unicorn and fragile as the threads of a cobweb. And when Cory comes clean to Shawn about what has happened, he might as well be sucking that trust up with an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner and dumping the remains in the trash. And then doing a Mexican hat dance around it. Cory's just about the only person who's never betrayed Shawn's trust. He can't even imagine what the fall-out of this is going to be like.
Cory wishes he didn't have to do this. He wishes he didn't have to hurt Shawn like this. He so wishes his own stupidity wasn't going to result in this decimation of all those years of hard-earned trust, putting Cory back at square one with the busload of others who hurt and betrayed Shawn all through his life. Tonight Cory's driving that fucking bus.
There is some tiny comfort in the back of Cory's mind, however. This is his knowledge that this transgression will not destroy their love. It's going to maim it, brutalize it, stomp on it, crush it, pour gasoline on it and set it alight, but it will not kill it. For all of the anxieties that have haunted Cory's mind this past almost-year and made him a mess of insecurities, the one thing Cory has never doubted is that he and Shawn's love for each other is indestructible. Shawn may not trust him, but Shawn will always love him. Cory knows this with absolute certainty, just as he knows that there is nothing, nothing that Shawn could do that would make Cory stop loving him.
But just because Shawn isn't going to stop loving him, Cory's not sure their relationship is going to make it through. Shawn has never been able to have the kind of blind faith that comes to Cory so naturally. For Shawn, trust is the same as love is the same as being together. If Shawn calls it quits on trusting Cory, Shawn's going to see it as quitting all of it. It's going to take incredible effort on Cory's part to convince him that all is not lost, that Shawn will eventually be able to trust Cory again, that he should even want to trust him again. Cory's not certain he's capable of convincing Shawn of this.
Cory's also not certain he should even be trying. The one thing he could always offer Shawn that no one else did was his boring reliability and predictability. Trustworthiness. Now he's shown that he can fail on these counts as well. If Cory can't be counted on and can't be trusted, what good is he? Doesn't Shawn deserve better than that?
Grimly, Cory puts his face to the oval window, feels its coolness against his hot skin. Everything had been going so well, and somehow he's managed to screw up every last bit of it. As he watches the light blinking on the far tip of the airplane's wing, he begins composing what he is going to say, how to phrase it to minimize the damage. Maybe Shawn does deserve better than Cory. The least Cory can do is try to make this realization as painless as possible for him.
Cory closes his eyes and despises himself to a degree he hadn't even realized was possible.
Sadie insisted, to Shawn and Anna's mutual discomfort, that she wanted to sleep in the big bed with both of her parents. They gave in because there was no way they were not going to give in to anything Sadie asked for tonight. But now that she's sound asleep between them and they're both still awake and keyed-up from the terror of the evening's events, it's more than a little bit awkward.
"I don't want her to get the wrong idea about this," Anna whispers.
"I know," Shawn replies, "We'll have to make sure she's straightened out about it in the morning. Can't let her think she's Parent-Trapped us."
Anna exhales a deep sigh and lays back. It's clear she's not any closer to being able to fall asleep yet than Shawn is. "Where's your boyfriend, anyway?" she asks.
"At a work conference."
"Is he...is he a good person? I mean, for Sadie to be around? She talks about him a lot and it makes me nervous...I don't even know him."
Shawn smiles in the dark at the idea that anyone would be worried about their kid spending time with Cory. "Cory's the best person I've ever known. Squeaky-clean and responsible. He's never done a damn thing wrong in his entire life. I tell you, none of this tonight would've happened if he was here. He'd have had her to the doctor at the first breath that didn't sound right. He was, like, born to be good parent."
Anna is quiet for a few minutes. Then she says softly, "We don't deserve her."
"I know." Shawn says. He thinks again about what he can remember of his time being with Anna all those years back, how their self-destructive tendencies seemed to bring them together. If ever there was a union of two very unhealthy people, it was theirs. It scares him to think about how he might have reacted (or, worse, not reacted) had he known back then that Anna had gotten pregnant. He's also wondered how long it took Anna to clean up her act once she found out, how much of Anna's bad habits and lifestyle Sadie had been exposed to. He's never felt right asking, though. Partially this is because his and Anna's current relationship has been so tense, but it's also because Shawn almost doesn't want to know.
As if Anna has been reading his mind, she starts telling him now about that time in quiet, halting sentences. She'd found out she was pregnant by random chance. She'd gone in for a drug test for a new job-she'd stayed clean for a week in anticipation of the hiring requirement-and when the lab results came back, it was noted in the "additional comments" box almost off-hand.
"I'll never forget that moment," Anna whispers, the wonder still evident in her voice, "It changed my entire life."
She'd been planning to go out and party that night in celebration of a clean drug test getting her into a better paying job. She almost certainly would've gotten coked up and trashed...Instead she took the train out to her mother's house in New Jersey, told her everything. She never took the job or moved back to the city. She stayed in Jersey and entered rehab, started life over as someone completely different, all because of a couple of words on a lab work form.
"I'm making it sound so much easier than it was," she muses, "But it all happened so fast. It had to happen fast...Sadie was the best thing that ever happened to me. She saved my life."
Shawn is quiet as he considers all this. He wonders if, had he known at the time, Sadie might've saved his life too. But there's no way to know and, if he's bitterly truthful about it, he thinks probably not. It very well might have even had the opposite effect. Finding that out at the point in his life...it's not so far-fetched to believe that Shawn might've decided that was a good reason to walk off the Brooklyn Bridge, thinking he was saving another person from the mess that was his life then.
"I tried to tell you once," she says, startling him. "When Sadie was a baby, I had to go into the city to pick up some stuff for the job I had back then. I went up to where you and Tom had been living. You were still there, but you were pretty...out of it at that point. Do you remember that day?"
Shawn is sitting up on his elbows now, alert to this new information, desperately racking his memory. "No," he has to admit.
"You were leaving on an assignment the next day, you said. Maybe Bangkok or Beijing, or something? I don't remember now. But you were in such bad shape, it scared me. I got out of there really quickly."
Shawn has a general sense of the time period she must be talking about, but he has no memory of seeing Anna then, or talking to her. God, that's terrible.
"To be honest," Anna continues, "It sounds awful, but I thought you'd be dead soon anyway. So, I told myself it was okay I didn't tell you. And I didn't want you anywhere near her after that."
Shawn takes his time putting his words together before he responds. "I'm sorry you saw me like that then. I'm sorry that's who I was. But you have to trust that I'm not that person anymore."
"I don't have much choice, do I?"
"No."
"Then I guess I'll have to try."
And Shawn uses the same phrase Anna had earlier, sounding as much like a civil adult as he can manage. "I appreciate that."
It's almost eight a.m. when Cory finally makes it back to the apartment. He's had two airplane flights, one layover, and two cab rides, hasn't slept, is wildly hungover, and has spent the last ten hours mentally drafting apology after apology to everybody in his life he has let down through his own stupidity and selfishness. He is ready to crawl into bed with his Shawn, maybe for the last time ever, and at least soak up a few hours of comfort before everything will officially have to go to hell.
In the doorway of their bedroom, though, Cory stops. There are three people in his bed: Shawn to the left, Sadie in the middle, and a woman Cory doesn't recognize but surmises must be Anna to the right. As if it had been planned for maximum symbolic impact, Shawn and Anna are both sleeping in a similarly curved position so that together they form a cartoon heart shape around their daughter. A more painful image could not be engineered for Cory to see right now, at his most vulnerable and self-loathing.
He stands there and continues to stare. They look for all the world like the most perfect happy little family and, though some tiny bit of logic in his brain tells Cory they are anything but, the sight cuts through him viciously.
"Ah, screw it all," Cory mutters and finally turns away.
He stumbles back to the living room, too exhausted to go anywhere else and, really, where the hell else does he even have to go to right now? He kicks off his shoes and crawls onto the sofa. He buries his face in the cushion and prepares himself for a great pitiful sob, equal parts furious with himself and sorry for himself. He falls asleep, though, before he even makes it that far. And when he finally dreams, he dreams of everybody being mad at him, accusing him of countless crimes. Dream Cory can't find the ability to speak a single word in his own defense.
"Cory!"
Cory bolts awake as Sadie leaps on top of him, pleased to have discovered him sleeping on the sofa.
"Hi," he replies weakly as she squeezes him in a bear hug of a greeting and takes a seat atop his chest.
"I went to the hospital!" She announces proudly. "We rode in an ambulance!"
Cory looks to where Shawn is standing across the room for confirmation that Sadie is possibly confusing something she saw on TV with reality, but the fact that Shawn looks like a walking corpse this morning tells Cory this is most definitely not the case. That would explain Anna's presence, he supposes. But did they go to the hospital because of something that happened to Sadie or to Shawn? As Cory's stomach seizes up uncomfortably at the thought of either of these scenarios, he decides he can live with not knowing the answer just yet.
"Sadie, sweetie, get off him please," Anna says nonchalantly as she passes through the room on her way to the kitchen, "Come have your breakfast."
Cory looks again to Shawn for some explanation, but he just shakes his head and indicates that Cory should join them for breakfast. There they end up having what is one of the the most awkward meals Cory can remember. Anna and Shawn, while civil to each other, don't really interact, each talking only to Sadie. It occurs to Cory that perhaps they slept together last night, which gives him the brief (and ridiculous) hope that maybe this could cancel out Cory's own transgression. He quickly decides, however, that this is quite unlikely to have happened; there is nothing sexual about their tension. They strike him as more exhausted and terrified than anything else.
All three of the adults pick over their breakfasts with disinterest, though Sadie's abundant cheer easily fills the enthusiasm vacuum. As she eats her eggs, she babbles happily about her dreams, her fish tank, and a field trip they're taking at school this week. Cory, for his part, enjoys the distraction. It makes the conversation he's going to inevitably have to have with Shawn feel much farther off. He'll take listening to Sadie over having potentially relationship-ending conversations any day.
Feeling like a man on death row, Cory takes the opportunity to admire Shawn one last time before Shawn starts to hate him. He looks like hell, actually. There are dark circles under his eyes, a couple days worth of scruff on his face, nose red and raw from what looks to be a cold. This last detail immediately sends Cory into caretaker mode and it takes everything in his power not to insist Shawn replace his coffee with orange juice and then head right back to bed. As Cory holds his tongue, he feels depressed anew. Who's going to take care of Shawn when he sends Cory away?
Then he watches the way Shawn is watching Sadie so intently, and Cory thinks about the scene he witnessed in the bedroom this morning, and he realizes that Shawn would be just fine without him. Shawn has an entire life that doesn't involve Cory. What Cory brings to the table suddenly feels like very little. But if Shawn leaves Cory, then Cory has truly lost everything. As Cory pushes his eggs around his plate, he notes that this thought is just as frightening around the sunny breakfast table as it was last night in a half-empty airplane cabin.
Later, as Anna gets Sadie's things together and they prepare to leave, Sadie to turns to Shawn and asks, "Are you coming home too?"
There is an uncomfortable beat, then Shawn says, "No. This is my home."
"Okay," Sadie replies easily, "I love you!"
And Shawn lifts her up into a very tight, full-body hug, finally revealing all the emotion he's been so carefully keeping in check this morning. "I love you so much," he says, squeezing her hard. Cory feels a lump in his throat, watching this scene.
After Anna and Sadie have gone, Shawn turns to Cory and collapses against him. "Oh, my god," he murmurs, "Oh, my god, Cor. I'm so glad you're home."
Cory leads Shawn over to the sofa and they both sit down. Immediately, Shawn shifts so that he is laying with his head in Cory's lap. He closes his eyes and takes a deep, shuddering breath. As Shawn begins recounting the events of the previous day, Cory runs his hands through Shawn's hair, listening in horror, then amazement. Everything that happened back in Seattle is temporarily pushed to the far reaches of Cory's consciousness, as he loses himself in Shawn's story, feeling his terror and anxiety vicariously.
Then Shawn stops abruptly and sits up. "I'm sorry," he says, scooting away and waving his hand dismissively, "I know you don't want to hear about all of this. Everything turned out okay. It's all...it's all okay now. Happy ending."
Cory just stares at him.
"What?" Shawn asks.
"What do you mean, I don't want to hear about this? Of course I want to hear about it. Sadie almost died. Jesus, Shawnie."
"I know, I know," Shawn says, looking away and pushing his hair out of his face, "I just...I don't want to..." Shawn trails off, then turns back to him. "Hey. I haven't even asked why you're home so early. Did something happen?"
Cory's heart immediately starts to race and he finds that he can't speak. He's been preparing for this conversation all night and now that it's happening, his brain has stopped functioning. Then, to Cory's surprise, Shawn's expression changes completely, all the tight weariness and tension dropping off it, replaced with that beautiful grin.
"You know what?" Shawn says, "Forget it. Whatever it is, it can wait."
Then he kisses Cory deeply, holding the sides of his face so tightly between his hands that it's painful. "I really need a fuck," Shawn whispers huskily, "I really," he kisses him again, "really need you."
"Sure," Cory mumbles, half wondering if this is some miraculous Get Out of Jail Free card that has just landed in his lap.
But then Shawn launches onto him again and there's something about the desperate, aggressive way that he is kissing and pressing Cory's body back into the sofa that reminds him of Tom last night. Cory chokes and shoves Shawn off.
The hurt and shock on Shawn's face is so awful, Cory has to look away.
"What's the matter, Babe?" Shawn asks.
Cory cringes at the endearment. This is going to be even harder than he thought. "Listen," he says, "There's something I need to tell you."