A/N This has been beta-ed by the lovely and very helpful Amilyn. Thank you for the fabulous feedback, and any idiocy or typos are all mine!
CASSIDY
As the door closes behind her, I can barely hold back the pleas for her to stay... It takes almost more than I have left in me, to stay quiet.
She needs to leave. She doesn't need to see this...
I know I'm not the most self aware of men…..but even I know I can't hold back the incoming tidal wave of emotions.
And I am not her problem anymore.
My chest hurts...like my insides are pulling apart...the 'secret' that has festered for so much of my life is growing, developing with every gasping breath until it feels like my body can no longer hold it in. It doesn't seem possible that mere hours ago, this 'secret' was contained in this human shell, semi-successfully restricted to a seldom-visited, but never opened box.
It was never forgotten, always there, hovering in the background. A silent hand, guiding my life. Likely changing events, I can't even begin to pinpoint.
I wonder how it changed me? How different would I be, if this hadn't happened to me?
I hate the weakness that is spilling out…..a fucking pity party never helps anyone.
There doesn't seem to be much escape as my very next thought is the conversation that will undoubtedly soon be had, between my ex and my soon-to-be ex-boss. It's almost funny... like the set up to some lame comedy-drama movie. But there's nothing funny about child abuse.
Is that what it was? Really?
I've spent so many years dodging words like that... dodging thinking about it...
There is safety in not naming it...
Yeah but look how that has worked out for me...
I'm way too old to be curled up on the floor, sobbing like a fucking snotty nosed kid... I need to get up and man up!
Yeah cos men don't get raped!
It's hard to believe there is anything left to lose, but the final threads of control snap.
I must look like some wild animal...thrashing about on the floor...
But all the years of dammed-up feelings, all the denial...it's gone...there's nothing left to protect, nothing left to hide...just nothing...
I let a guy do...that...to me... and everyone knows...
It has been a long time since I've had clear memories of... it...
That's not to say that I don't remember...but it's been ...different...for so long... time has softened the images I, at first, could never close my eyes-hell, even imagine closing them-without seeing...
I've felt that squirming, twisting helplessness...that frozen inability to act...
I've woken to sweat-soaked sheets, sure that my body was being stolen again...more times than I wish to concede...
I hate to admit, I've cried until I could hardly breathe through my blocked nose... not even, all that long ago...
But it hasn't felt like this...
This...this has a rawness, a brutality, an intensity I'm not familiar with...
As time as gone by, the details that were once sharp...have blurred...they're not forgotten, not by any means, but it's the feelings, the perceptions that are stronger...
I don't remember the shirt I grabbed as I tried to push him away; was it green?...or was that the uniform shirt that I could never separate from the memories that haunted me?
His face isn't clear, it's like a partly-loaded image, or a badly drawn monster-ish caricature...but the way his mouth 'twisted'...that is high definition...
The competing, fragile bubbles of terror and disbelief inflating inside me, even now, are still all too easily revisited...but I'm not sure if I screamed? Or actually pleaded...did I even plead? Did I even do that much?
I remember being pinned down, his hands, his body, caging me into place...but I can't remember how we got there? Did I try to run, even before I really understood what was happening? Or did I always know...from his first harmless 'attention'...
In recent years I've become very familiar with the haunting, incomplete snatches of memory...the sickeningly intense feelings, without the corresponding visuals, like a corrupted file, or a movie being watched with closed eyes...were my eyes closed then?
But now it's like an avalanche of ...everything...I can almost feel hands...and things... touching me...and I'm trying to escape, even though I know they're not there...not anymore...but I can almost see his massively hulking frame lurking over me...
I'm vaguely aware I must be hyper ventilating...but completely incapable of doing anything useful, except sobbing and curling into myself... knowing it didn't save me then...
I have no clue how much time has passed...but I'm cold, and cramped...and so incredibly tender...
My face is tight from all the tears that have dried on my skin...
I wish Liv was still here...even though I would hate for her to see me like this...I wish I didn't always push everyone away...maybe if I could actually feel warm arms wrapping carefully around me without feeling exposed and at risk?...
But I can't...I can't let anyone in. It's not that I don't try... I try to do the things that other people take for granted. And when I'm hiding behind my full defenses, when I feel safe, I can do a reasonable imitation of normal... I can charm, and flirt...but it feels wrong. I feel so ashamed. I can't help wondering if that is how I drew his attention...
I wonder if that is something else I lost because of him? That easy flirting... It wasn't something I had really practiced. Hell I was a kid! And maybe I'm remembering it wrong...but I'm sure it felt different.
That list of things I lost, seems to be never-ending... or were they things I never had?
Why am I still blaming him for things he took from my 12 year old self?
Why am I letting a few bad experiences rule my life?
I've had plenty of sex, plenty of sexual experience…why the fuck can I not forget that…..
My ass hurts, and for a second, I actually believe I've been through it again...but it's just the complaints of a middle aged man's body after hours on a hard floor...
A rough gurgle, that may have intended to be a laugh, hitches into more tears...
"I didn't want it..." I whisper, over and over...until the words are barely recognizable... I'm not like that... "I'm not gay..."
I hate that, at moments like this, whispering the words "I'm not gay" brings me comfort...
The internal 'Liv' voices her displeasure and I could imagine the pursed lips, and disapproving look that would greet such a statement...
When I think about the words myself, I'm ashamed...it makes me sound like...well, like what so many people think I am: an absolute asshole!
I really don't have any negative feelings about gay men...why would I?
Yet I can't deny the comfort I get from the statement...
My SVU training kicks in at the oddest times. It was so long ago, but for some reason I can always remember "there is no sexuality in rape...it's not about sexual attraction or desire, for the perp or the vic...and any arousal of the vic is not evidence of consent...".
And I have never believed otherwise.
But... I spent so long, terrified that I was gay, after...
I didn't...work the same...after...
The things that had me fascinated...the things that made me... hard...in seconds, didn't have the same effect...but yet my body had responded then...
When I was terrified, crying, in pain...when I had no control...then my body worked...
I heard my father shouting at the TV, using words not acceptable today...to belittle men, and I didn't want to be a disappointment...
I'm a grown ass man now...I don't care who another adult choses to bring to his bedroom...or to share his life with...so why the fuck does whispering "I'm not gay" bring comfort even now...?
I feel like the caveman I've so often been accused of being.
Not for the first time, I wonder how much of this Reggie is suffering with now?
To the outsider, he seemed to be doing ok...until his brother was hurt...and he felt pushed into murder, in an attempt to protect him...
But hey, I seemed ok all this time too...
Now that I'm alone, I can't help wondering what Barba thinks of me.
"I don't care! He's a flashy bastard! Walking around in his showy suits, as if he is better than all of us..."
I do care though...he may hold my career in his hand.
I've tried to accept that I'm done, in any type of law enforcement after fucking up the case...I deserve it! But I can't help the tiny hope...
And, as much as I hate to admit it, I care what he thinks of me... he didn't seem completely disgusted, a little uneasy perhaps, like he didn't know what to do…
He did send Liv to me... but I'm not sure I could ever look him in the eye again...he knows...
I'm so desperate for some sort of comfort, I curl into a little ball on the cold, hard floor, and try to imagine Liv here. What would she say?
I'm mentally sorting through some of what she said earlier, and find myself stuck on the secrets she shared with me...
I hadn't known she'd been assaulted before Lewis... and from what little she told me, how could she, for one instant, think it wasn't serious?
She told me before I even told her why Barba had sent her over!
Or had she known all along, and just wanted me to say it?
No...I saw her reactions...she didn't know... She really didn't know!
I guess I owe Barba for that. He didn't tell her...I think she would have felt more betrayed if she had heard it from him instead of me...
I've never seen her so open...she tried to use her own experiences to help me...
Fuck!
When I think about what she went through...handcuffed, UC as a prisoner...fighting a prison guard...who beat her...and she worried she was weak?
That realization sickens me...I can't imagine what Fin walked into...or how close it must have been for her to admit her partner saved her from rape...
Fuck! My stomach heaves and I barely swallow back the rising nausea.
I wish I had actually processed some of this while she was still here...she deserved so much more than whatever half-sympathies I was able to spit out...
But no, she was right...they weren't "sympathies", like in the early days after Lewis, I spent so long just looking at her, almost afraid to lose her from my sight, in case it was a dream, and we didn't have her back.
I would look at every scrape, every bruise, every lump of another bandage or dressing under her clothing , the heavy cast on her wrist...I would try to read her story from the wounds left behind...I would watch her eyes because they told the truth when her lips tried to hide it...I was so desperate to help her, to hold her, because for those long days she was gone I was terrified I would never be able to hold her again...
When she caught me looking, she would see something other than the pain I felt at how badly she was hurt; I would struggle to not keep touching her, pulling her into my arms, because I was afraid of what memories I would trigger, but she felt it was that I didn't want to touch her…and she felt I was trying to show sympathy...but it wasn't sympathy. Just like she said she wanted me to see in her face, it was compassion...
I don't deserve compassion the same way she did...what happened to me isn't the same as what she went through...
What that woman has suffered is almost unbelievable.
She would hate to hear me say it, but she's been so close to being raped TWICE.
And maybe what Lewis did was worse than rape.
I don't know the details...hell, today she gave me more information than ever before, but what she suffered at his hands was continued, depraved, sexual torture. She was violated in every way that sicko could think of.
I just wish I had a hint of her strength.
I was no innocent. Liv was right. ...Me and a couple of my buddies had been ogling playboys, and then we got our hands on some beaten up porn mags...I cringe as I remember my younger self...
It seems so tame in comparison to the 24-hour on-demand smorgasbord of porn available now, at the click of a button, on any device...but it's not normal for a 12 year old to be so enthralled by...such filth...is it?
I can't help looking down at my crotch... the irony is that sometimes it seems as though it is the only part of me capable of feeling...
For too long, it let me be a 'man'...it proved I wasn't gay...it proved I was ok, living a 'normal' life...
It that ruined my life...also let me show how much of a man I am...
As long as I could get hard, as long as I could satisfy a woman, I knew I was ok. I wasn't 'damaged' when I wasn't flinching away from sex...
I'm just not great at relationships...
But now that softness reminds me how broken I truly am...
My dick doesn't work anymore...
I know it seems like such a stupid thing to worry about... and maybe worrying about it would be terribly premature...
I chuckle juvenilely, at my own choice of words...hey, you can't go off prematurely when you can't even get it up, to start with...
My life is falling apart, my secret is out, I'm about to lose my job, and here I'm worried about how my junk isn't jumping to attention...
Fuck!
I'm not seeing anyone, it's not like there is any expectation, any need to perform...but that doesn't relieve the pressure. What kind of guy can't do the most basic male thing?
Somewhere in the back of my head, my training is whispering that it's not uncommon to experience...this...in the wake of an assault or disclosure of an assault...but it feels like such a massive blow to my masculinity...
Even the thoughts of my own, oh too familiar hand, reaching for my dick for anything more than basic bodily demands makes me flinch...
I've felt like this before though, like sex may actually make me sick,….in the immediate wake of Lewis' torture of Liv.
The heavily-splinted hand cradled protectively against her torso, the bandages and dressings she battled to change herself to prevent me seeing what they hid, the fear-filled eyes, the flinches when she felt any unexpected contact... I paired them with what I knew of Lewis' previous crimes and my imagination spewed out horrific scenarios, even more so when I slept... For a while, my entire libido went into hibernation. Every trace of arousal seemed to vanish, and when morning found me hard, my stomach turned queasily, until my flesh softened.
I'm a middle-aged man...it's not even like it's really a problem...I was pretty wasted last night and very emotional, I wasn't even really horny, I suppose it was more 'a familiar comfort'...but that one instance was more than enough to confirm my hopeless failure.
When I've slept...when I don't feel like I'm gonna puke any minute...I'll settle down with some of my favorite porn and just refuse to quit until it works...
I look down at my lap and try to swallow back the nausea accompanying another betrayal of my own flesh.
I also try not to allow the realization that I may have a lot more 'free time' in the near future, to take root.
I let a guy do...that...to me.
It happened.
My brain seems unable to let that recognition go...even though it is not exactly news.
It was so long ago. Another lifetime. Why the fuck am I still so stuck on it?
My 'secret' has just been pulled out into the light...something I've fought so hard, for so long to avoid...
And I just told Liv...
I'm a fucking coward.
I want to be more like Liv, to deal with my demons, but instead I sit here, a useless, cowardly lump...watching life pass me by.