Time frame: After rescue
Rating: T/M for language, a short piece of sex, mentions of rape, and "substance" use
Established relationships: Nellis, Frochelle
Description: Confessions, medical conditions, and unrequited love (if you squint).
"It smells funny in here." Ellis noted as he came home from work, sniffing the air and crinkling his nose.
Nick was already home, sprawled out on the couch watching TV. His eyes were glassy and it was likely that he wasn't paying attention completely, probably just gazing at the screen and blocking out the noise.
"How was your day?" Ellis said, plopping down beside Nick, jarring the man from his daydream.
"Had better days, that's for sure." He answered honestly.
He'd been forced to go back to the clinic today for more testing and was not at all happy with his results. He hated doctor's offices. He especially hated being a patient at a doctor's office.
"What's wrong? Got into it with someone at work? You pull someone's hair again?"
"No, kid. It wasn't work. I had to leave work early and go to the doc again. These fuckers are so pushy." He complained.
"What do ya mean? What'd they say?" Ellis placed a hand on Nick's leg, scooting closer. "You're okay, right?"
"It depends on your definition of okay. I'm pissed the fuck off, want to punch something."
"I mean, about your health. Are you okay?" Ellis was growing worried.
"They said I had a heart condition. Some shit I can't pronounce. Before you get scared, don't. It isn't typically deadly, but it can be when it gets mixed up with other things, like ulcers and anxiety...both of which I was diagnosed with in the past."
His explanation didn't help the mechanic feel any more calm. There was something wrong with Nick, something that he couldn't fix. Ellis was no scientist and when something was wrong with a person's heart, that was bad. He leaned in again, pulling the older man into his arms and held tight.
"Relax, El. I'm gonna be fine. They said if I lower my blood pressure, a lot of the risks will go away. I mean, honestly the cure sounds worse than the disease. They told me I need to cut back on my drinking, they want me to quit smoking, and not get stressed out. Since I have an anxiety diagnosis and ulcers that will bleed when I'm stressed, the doc wants me to take these damn heart pills."
"Well you need to take your heart pills, then. I want you to be around for a long time." Ellis insisted.
"I hate this shit. I feel so goddamn old. To top it off, they want me to see a shrink."
"I want you to do whatever they say."
"Goddamn it, Ellis. I'm not a crazy person. Why the hell should I sit in a doctor's office and explain my damn problems to him?" Nick wasn't stressed at this point, but he was annoyed.
"Not only crazy people go to a head doctor. I went when I was a little boy, because my daddy died when I was four and my mom said I didn't take it well and would cry and say I miss him all the time." Ellis assured, loosening his arms from around Nick's waist but not letting go.
"That...was something I didn't know. I'm sorry I said that. I...um, don't remember you telling me you lost your dad." Nick felt like he'd stepped over a line somehow.
"No, I don't talk about him much. I really don't remember a lot about him. This right here is really all I got to remember him by." Ellis explained, shifting his right hip upward and pulling an incredibly worn wallet out of his pocket. It might have been leather at one time. He pulled a picture out of it and showed it to Nick.
Pictured was a man that looked almost identical to Ellis. The photo was obviously old but it had been laminated so it was well preserved. The man in the picture was young, leaning back on a recliner, wearing a white t-shirt and toasting a can of beer toward the camera, goofy smirk on his face.
"He looks just like you." Nick commented.
"Yeah, that's one of the last pictures taken of him. He was home on leave. When he shipped back out, he died four months later in some kinda friendly fire incident."
"Kind of makes me feel like an asshole for bitching about my dad to you." Nick said blankly.
"Nah, I like when you tell me stuff. Makes me feel wanted. What in the name of Jesus is that smell?" Ellis was sniffing intermittently throughout the conversation.
"That would be weed."
"Aww Nick, really?" Ellis sighed.
"I figured it would help chill me out. I don't want to take antipsychotics. No idea what's in that shit." He explained. "I went over to Keith's house to talk to John after the appointment. So far I feel calm as hell. Very slightly snackish, but calm." He explained.
"Well, I guess if that helps you, just open the window." Ellis smiled. "I wanna do anything I can to help you, kay? Like anything you need from me. Please talk to me."
"Easy, tiger. I will. Promise."
"Cause I know a lot of your stress comes from me. I know I drive you crazy." Ellis was starting to feel helpless again.
"In a good way." Nick said, shooshing his partner with a kiss, "And don't worry. I'm not that fragile."
"Shit, I can't get this damn thing onto the lift." Ellis complained after trying to get a van pulled in straight several times.
"Hold my beer, I'll do it. Jesus." Keith scooted his friend out of the front seat and put the van in first gear.
"You can't drink at work."
"Can too, I asked Cesar." Keith argued, pulling forward onto the lift, making it look easy as pie.
"Cesar? Why didn't you ask Doug?" Doug was their boss. Cesar was just above Keith and Ellis, holding a supervisory position.
"Because Doug went home early. Got that same flu you had. Plus, you need to relax, grandad. It's just one beer. You know I need at least six before I start on my journey." Keith smiled, stepping out of the driver's seat and taking his beer back from his friend.
"Canned beer tastes like pee." Ellis jabbed.
"Well maybe I like pee. You know my tastebuds aint what they used to be. What the hell's the matter with you today?" Keith asked, taking a swig.
Ellis wasn't trying to be short, but he wasn't his usual friendly self. On any other day he would smile and joke and the two of them would screw around when they weren't busy. Just yesterday they were playing Jenga when no one came in for an hour, and today was feeling like the opposite of a Jenga day.
"I'm sorry, man. I'm a little bummed out. Nick told me that his test results at the clinic yesterday said that he had somethin wrong with his heart. Its been weighing pretty heavy. I didn't sleep well last night." He tried to explain.
"Yeah? He was over last night talkin to John for a few. I didn't know nothin about him having anything goin on with his heart. I thought he just wanted a bag of jays for no reason."
"He says its gonna help keep him from getting stressed out." Ellis offered, reasoning that whatever Nick did to stay healthy was okay.
"Well, that oughta help."
"It better. This shit is really driving me nuts. Like what if its real bad?" The younger mechanic was now shifting about on his feet.
"What if it aint? I mean, this stuff happens. He's quite a bit older than you and the more wore out organs get, the quicker they take a shit."
"He's only 36." Ellis defended.
"And you're just about to turn 24. It doesn't seem like a big difference, but a guy his age is goin through some shit you're too young to grasp. The harder you over-work an organ, the quicker it takes a shit. Especially if you lived hard like I'm sure he has." Keith pointed out.
It was true. Nick burned through his 20s with alcohol, failed marriages, crime, prison, drugs, and struggles with keeping himself above water. It was no surprise that his heart wasn't firing right or that his brain was always a mile a minute, or that his stomach lining had holes in it from constantly being on edge. He'd never been a happy guy, even now and misery had a way of breaking a person down.
"According to the doctor, he is gonna be okay if he follows what he's supposed to do and makes some lifestyle changes, but damn. 36 and already in danger of having a heart attack. Don't seem right." Ellis noted.
"Life has a way like that, not bein too fair." The redhead replied, not at all wrong.
"It doesn't have to be, not for him. I mean he has really been through enough and I don't wanna think about him not bein around."
"El...how long do you think this thing is gonna last?" Keith asked, keeping his words very well checked.
"Me and him?"
"Uh huh. I mean, you aren't a moron. I'm around you two a lot and I have never once heard him tell you that he loves you. Even when you say it first he'll just stare at you like yer from another world. I have never seen him hug you or even touch you unless he's wantin sex. I don't see love in his eyes at all when he looks at you. I mean, that's up to you right now but can you for real say that you could spend say...10 years with him like that?"
"Man, you listen up and listen good. I. Love. Nick. I don't give a damn what people think and he don't need to change for me. I don't need to be coddled like a spoiled little kid and if he wanted to, I'd marry that man right this goddamn second. Okay?" Ellis was becoming frustrated and overwhelmed. Nick was such a hard man to defend, to explain. But why did he have to explain him to anyone?
"Hey, I didn't mean..." Keith started, seeing sadness and confusion in his best friend's expression. He approached the man in front of him, pulling him into an embrace, the same way he'd done every time Ellis was sad.
"El, I'm sorry. I just want you to be happy, like all the way happy. With someone that loves ya."
"Nick loves me." He whispered back, tired and unable to make any other point.
"Hey, what's your deal? You look...tired." Nick said, coming through the kitchen to the front door where Ellis just arrived from work.
The younger man didn't reply. Instead he pulled the man in front of him into a long kiss, breaking when the two ran out of air. The look in his eyes was as simple to read as could be imagined.
Without another word, the two connected again, fumbling their way to the bedroom they shared, discarding clothes in the hallway. They made love just as always, tangled together in a fevered pitch of ecstasy. Ellis was posted on Nick's lap, trembling legs wrapped tight around the older man's waist, hands gripping flexed shoulders as Nick's hands held his hips, guiding thrusts deep into him. They called out each other's names, the sounds ridden out in sighs and moans as Nick tipped over the edge, filling his lover and continuing to stab at his prostate while finishing him by touch.
"Feel better?" Nick asked after several minutes of basking in after glow.
"Yep." Ellis replied, taking Nick's hand into his.
"Good, cause I'm baked and starving to death." Nick asserted, pulling Ellis to his feet and into the shower where they quickly cleaned up and then destroyed the kitchen making nachos to the best of their ability with the ingredients at hand.
"Nah, you keep the cheese. I don't want the diarrhea associated with it." Nick complained, pushing the can of nacho cheese across the countertop.
"You don't eat cheese? How the hell do you plan on eatin nachos with no cheese?"
"I'm lactose intolerant. One mouthful of cheese and I have the BGs for the rest of the day." The gambler ignored the obvious laugh about to break out in Ellis' expression.
"That's pretty damn funny." Ellis giggled.
"Uh huh. Laugh it up you little shit."
Rochelle dropped in a short time later, paying a quick visit to her survival companions after a busy week in the communications 'tower'. With her degrees in communication and journalism, she was trained to use radio transmission and was given a job monitoring the broadcasts between individual zones. There were 40 of these so Ro was supervising only one channel or two.
"I wanted to get a man's perspective on my clothes. I would ask Coach but the two of you are closer to the age range I'm trying to appeal to. With these damn Red Cross clothes, it gets pretty hard to find something nice to where and it's kind of a special occasion." Ro explained.
"Really? What's that?" Ellis asked, clueless.
"Well, Francis and I have been seeing each other for...a while I guess. I don't even know how long it has been. A month, right? Since they got here? Anyway, things have been slow and relaxed but..."
"Oh." Nick understood right away.
"Oh? What am I missin?" Ellis looked from Nick and back to Rochelle.
"In that case, you look way too damn good for that greasy pig." Nick confirmed. Rochelle did look pretty spectacular, being that she had to search through second hand junk to find what she wanted to wear; a nice gold keyhole shirt and a clingy pair of skinnies.
"Yep, you look pretty damn- wait, I get it. Stuff is gonna happen, huh?" Ellis smirked, feeling smart.
"Hopefully. Hopefully stuff is gonna happen. If I don't break my 7 month dry spell, I'm probably gonna kill somebody." Rochelle smiled, trying to ignore the slight blush in Ellis' cheeks.
"After a month, damn that's practically Mormon. I don't think I've ever gone with anyone and waited a whole month. Shit, I was taking Ellis to Pound Town for over a month before we decided to pursue things." Nick noted in disbelief.
"Jesus..." Ellis groaned, embarrassed.
Even though Rochelle knew about the two of them, one of only three people that knew, Nick discussing their sex life was odd. He didn't even like talking to Keith about it, someone he trusted with everything and had been with through everything in his past.
"Sweetie, I knew you had the biggest crush on him before even you did." Rochelle explained to her young companion, "After you got over the initial shock of meeting Zoey, you started talking to and about Nick just as obsessively."
"I did?"
"Yeah, all the time. You were always looking up to him and you'd walk around with a spring in your step whenever he said something nice about you." Rochelle recalled.
"I thought I was keepin it under wraps pretty well." Ellis replied, confused at how his defenses didn't cloak him.
"Now Nick, he acted like a great big dick all the time, so I didn't suspect a thing."
"That's me. Cool as a goddamn cucumber." Nick smirked.
The two wound down with a movie at the end of the night. It was one of those overly-shitty action flicks that Ellis seemed to feed into. Nick was always unimpressed, but would at least laugh at how corny all the dialog was.
"What the- who in the hell just stands there when a guy is about to shoot a flaming arrow into your face?" He pointed out, which didn't bother Ellis at all. He liked when Nick would pick apart the flaws he saw in the predictability of people on screen, until...
"Wow, that guy's dead after getting choked out for like five seconds? It takes longer than that to kill a person...otherwise they just pass out and regain consciousness later. Confused but otherwise fine." Nick scoffed at the strangling portrayal on the screen.
"How you know that one?" The southerner asked.
"Um..." Nick froze, "I just know."
Goddamn it, Ellis. Don't speak. Don't ask me anymore questions. Don't-
"Nick. How do you know that? Don't lie."
"Let's not do this, kid." Nick encouraged, hoping Ellis would just drop it upon seeing that he wasn't comfortable with this conversation.
"You said you'd tell me the truth whenever I wanted to know. Well, I wanna know now. Did you kill someone before?" Ellis muted the TV, now staring holes into his partner.
This is it. This is where I make a mistake. I'm gonna trust him. I'm gonna tell him and then he is going to stand up, walk out the front door and never come back."
"...yes..." Nick answered, voice flat.
"Why? What happened to make you do somethin like that? Please tell me it was self-defense." Ellis knew the answer before he even finished his sentence.
"Do you want me to tell you it was self-defense or do you want me to tell you the truth? The first one was definitely not self-defense-"
"The first one?! Good lord, Nick. How many were there?" Ellis was trying to hide the shock in his voice and it did not mask well.
"Two. There were two."
"You killed two people? At the same time?" Ellis was talking quickly now.
"Calm down, Ellis. No I didn't kill two people at the same time. One was when I was 23. Let me just try to explain to you because you just had to goddamn ask me."
He took a deep breath.
"I was 23, and I don't remember if I ever told you about my sister Marie. She was four years older than me, but she was stuck being 17 forever. Never got her shit together, that one. I mean, usually she was in trouble for petty shit like being drunk in public. But one day I get a call from the hospital wanting me to pick her up. Our parents were both dead by then and I was her next of kin. I lived with Shae only 30 minutes from Marie's apartment.
"So I go to the hospital. Keep in mind I'm thnking that she got into a fight at a bar or something like that. The desk people didn't tell me anything. But I go wait for her and she comes out and she is banged the fuck up. Her face and arms are one big bruise and she's walkin like it hurts to stand. Me and Marie never really got along and we weren't close but seeing her like that made me so angry. I was trying to talk to her the whole ride home and she starts crying. She tells me this guy she was friends with, this fucking asshole she trusted raped her. Marie didn't really have any defense. She was a skinny little hipster chick. She didn't like fighting or weapons.
"I decided fuck him, fuck the cops. I told Marie to keep a friend with her for the next couple of days. I found out from her that the hospital had his DNA, but she gave me his name. I knew who he was, but he didn't know me. It was so easy, El. I lured him into the alley, offering him drugs that I didn't have. When we were back in the dark, I pulled a 6" knife out of my waistband and threatened him just to get him scared and I started stabbing him. He was trying to get away but I got on top of him. I made him look at me when the light went out of his eyes.
"I left him there, took his wallet to make it look like a robbery, ditched the knife, and went to a friend's house to clean up. Then I went home, made sure I had an airtight alabi from an Atlantic City casino owner that owed me a favor. The guy got 16 of his buddies to say that I was attending a gambling event with them. I was only ever questioned about it once and that was that."
He waited, and waited, and waited. Ellis was silent, for maybe the first time ever. His eyes were wide and he sat still as a block of wood.
"Ellis, please say something."
"I can't say what you did was wrong, because I would want to do the same thing if I was in that position. I don't know if I would actually do it, but you did and I can't really hold judgment over you for it. I'm glad you told me, and this don't make me feel different about you. You're still my Nick and you don't scare me. No matter what you tell me, you aint a bad guy. Now, what happened with number 2?"
"There isn't a lot to tell about that. Number two was a guy I strangled with a belt when he broke into my house and went after Carla."
"Carla?"
"Ex-wife number two. It just happened. We were fighting and I got the upperhand, got too ahead of myself and he didn't wake up. End of story." Nick explained, still in shock that these words ever came out of him. He swore he would never trust anybody with this and here he was, spilling his past to Ellis.
"I don't know what to say about all of this. I guess this is one of those things where there aint much to say. But now I know you, the real you and nobody can tell me how blind I am anymore. This is incredibly unsettling but its not something either of us can change. I love ya anyway."
"I can't believe I just told you. I just told you one of the darkest things about me. Nobody but me knew about Rob. I didn't tell a soul and I just told you. Holy shit..." Nick was talking fast, trying to pedal away from the immense trust and intimacy it took to admit everything to Ellis.
"Relax, kay? I won't tell no one, I swear. Not as long as I live." Ellis assured, taking the gambler's hand into his.