Hours passed, and slowly James awakened from his slumber, his sleep had been very deep, almost as though he'd been drugged, and at first, he was struggling to remember how he got to this situation- until he remembered all too clearly and felt a massive wave of shame and horror rush over him.
James looked at the sleeping man next to him, breathing softly, and he leant forward, brushed some of his thin brown curls off of his brow and bent down to give him a gentle kiss on the side of the forehead, smiling down at him, "I love you, Gregory House," he murmured in his deep, sleepy voice, although Greg didn't stir, and James happily left it at that.
Walking out to the main living area where Lisa would be sleeping but was currently on the couch resting and flicking through TV channels, "hey, James," she smiled awkwardly.
"Hey," James answered back with an awkward half smile, running his fingers through his hair to self soothe, "do you mind if I sit down?"
"Go for it," Lisa whipped her legs off the end of the couch and James walked over and perched down next to her.
"I'm really sorry for everything that's gone on the past couple of days, Lisa, this… this isn't me. I know that, but for some reason it feels like I just can't control it, control the rage that I feel constantly swirling through my stomach and it just bubbles over like a boiling pot on the stove. I feel all this rage boiling up in me all the time since I learnt about Greg's family, and the idea of meeting them just has all this fury building up inside of me. I know it's not his fault, and I don't know why I'm taking it out on him. Mainly," he made a pointed look at Lisa who simply nodded her acknowledgment.
"I understand how you feel," Lisa continued, "I think I show it differently than you, and that's okay so long as nobody gets hurt. But, you scared us today, James. You really scared Greg, he thought you were going to kill yourself, James. You can't do those things. Imagine if you had jumped onto that road? What Greg would have seen? How he would have felt, and how it would have affected him? It was terrifying, and we didn't know what to expect,"
"I know. I think I need to see a therapist… or something, because I can't continue to be this way, Lisa. Like I try to control Greg, but I know that I shouldn't, and that I can't; but I still unconsciously try. I'm terrified of losing him, Lisa. I'm terrified that this trip is going to uncover some very nasty wounds that he's hidden deep down, and they are about to surface, and I don't know how he's going to react,"
"I think Greg is in need of therapy too, I have no idea how anyone will convince him to go, but that's another issue entirely. Maybe you both need individual therapy, and couple's therapy as well to deal with everything. I know that Greg is hurting, and you are hurting a lot too… hell, even I am hurting, and Greg is only my friend. I can't even begin to imagine how hard it is to know that your partner and the man you love more than anything in the world has endured so much, and that there's nothing you can do to stop it or change anything that happened," Lisa continued.
James began to tear up, "I know. I know he's hurting so much, and I don't want him to hurt anymore than what he already is. I love him so much, Lisa, and yet; I just can't do anything to stop his hurt. I should've listened to him in the first place and not forced him to come on this godforsaken trip! All it's going to do is to traumatise him more!"
"You know James, the other night, when Greg and I were talking out on the balcony… and he said something, and I'm paraphrasing here, but that while he's not looking forward to seeing his family, and the people that hurt him; that he understands that its important to you and it will be important for you to see where he came from, which is why he accepted to go, and that he's mentally prepared now for anything that could possibly, potentially happen in any universe," Lisa's voice dropped a bit as she could hear Greg beginning to stir from his slumber in the next room. Knowing that he needed all the physical, mental and emotional rest and recharge he could get; she pointed to the bedroom door, "try and keep your voice down a bit, James, he's starting to wake up. I want him to be able to get as much rest as he can,"
"Of course," James nodded, "Lisa, I'm not even in a situation to judge his family at this point… while you were in the shower this morning…" James looked out the window to see the sun beginning to set over the horizon, coating everything in a haze of pinks and oranges, as he felt deep shame wash over him; "I… I was mad at him, I was mad that he wasn't listening to me, I was mad that he had left me to sleep alone in bed and was instead talking to you outside all night. I was angry and frustrated that he hadn't been interested in having sex with me earlier that night. I don't know what came over me, Lisa, it was like some kind of demonic force took over. I don't even fully remember it happening; but I argued and started a fight with him over it, I didn't listen when he told me that he wasn't in the mood at the moment. So, I… I basically coerced him into having sex with me while you were in the shower, I was rough and nasty with him, I said horrible things to him, I did horrible things to him, and he just laid there and took it. I even wrapped my hand around his throat; which I know that he hates; but in that moment; it just didn't matter to me. I felt terrible after it all, seeing him bundled up in the sheet on the side of the bed- staring off into space- and how quiet and subdued that he was in the car; and there was nothing that I could do to change anything. I hurt the man that I love, in the most unforgivable way. I wanted him to hurt, because I was hurting… but it didn't even occur to me at the time that what I was doing was, well, rape… even though he tried to pull away and clearly didn't want it… it didn't matter in my head, it just didn't compute. It was almost as if he was playing a game or something… pulling away from it to make it a bit more fun or to spice it up. I didn't even think to imagine that I was essentially forcing myself onto him," James now had tears rolling down his cheeks as he desperately wiped them away.
"I know, James, I know what happened," Lisa whispered, and James turned to her with an expression of shock and horror on his face and Lisa then went on, "I could hear it, James; I was only in the bathroom having a shower. I couldn't hear the exact words of the conversation… but I got the gist. I knew what was happening… I lied to myself thinking that maybe it was some kind of fetish or fantasy that you guys have that you were acting out, but I knew deep down what was really going on. But James, he still loves you just as much as he did last night, as he always has. He would give you the world if you asked for it, James. What happened hasn't changed anything in Greg's eyes; he still loves and adores you just as much as he always will; regardless of what you do or say to him. If there's a couple of things about Greg, it's that he is loyal and protective to a fault for those he cares about- the main one being you, and that he is the most forgiving, understanding man on the planet. I don't appreciate knowing what you did for certain to him, because I love Greg too; just of course in a different way than you do, but he's still one of the people on this Earth that mean the most to me- but so are you, and a single slip up isn't going to change that. He forgave you straight away James. The same way that he immediately forgave you for nearly killing yourself today and nearly scaring him into a heart attack,"
"Yeah, I know," James whispered hanging his head, and Lisa placed her hand out on his upper arm, he turned towards her, tears still streaming down his face, and she smiled soothingly at him. "I really, really love him, Lisa. And that's what's making all of this so hard and confusing. I love him, and yet I can't seem to stop hurting him. He's the man I want to spend eternity with- and I know that he loves me too, and yet, he's not safe with me from the same horrors that he experienced in his childhood,"
"I understand why you feel like that, James, but remember, he's never going to not love you for a single mistake where you misread the situation…" Lisa mumbled, "he loves you. He's always loved you, and he always will,"
"His childhood and the things that happened to him… I just, I can't believe that people could have done that to him, to have hurt him in those ways, at least I couldn't, until I ended up hurting him too. I know that he was in pain after what I did, how rough I was on him, yet he still loves me. He comes running back like a kicked puppy. It's almost kind of twisted, isn't it?" James muttered, sighing deeply and sinking into the couch.
"While I certainly wouldn't be making a habit out of it, James, he loves you so dearly. I don't think that there's really anything you could do to cause him to hate you," Lisa responded quietly, and then Greg appeared, looking tired and ragged in the doorway.
"What's going on?" he questioned, limping over to pick up his cane from the floor to help him walk easier and not be leaning on one surface to the next to easily get around. He came and sat next to James, "baby, what's the matter?" he frowned, "why are you crying? What's happened?"
"Nothing," James forced an unbelieving smile, to which Greg just raised his eyebrows suspiciously, "no, really baby, I'm okay, I promise you. Lisa and I were just talking, she was helping me see things in a slightly different way, that's all. Helping me to understand that it's not about me right now, it's about you, and supporting you through the thick and thin, no matter what. I know that what I did was wrong, and there's no way to undo it or heal it, hopefully time will help,"
"You are a silly, daft man," Greg smiled at him lovingly, "don't you understand that I already fully, completely forgive you?" and James smiled back shyly, while Lisa looked on at the two lovebirds next to her and thought about how absolutely perfect they were for one another.
The rest of the evening passed slowly, dining in yet again, Lisa thinking about how she was surely going to have put on 20 pounds by the end of this trip, and the way that Greg and James were eating for three each it seemed, she would be surprised if they would even be recognisable by the end of this holiday. James in particular was really beginning to fill out from what Lisa was sure was emotional eating on top of the fact that they were essentially surviving off of junk food and takeaway, his stomach was beginning to hang ever so slightly over the waistband of his trousers, and his chest and arms were starting to show signs of his ever increasing weight gain, as well as his ass was beginning to become tighter in his trousers. That last one particularly entertained Greg, who had taken to slapping, pinching, and even leaning over to bite James' ass every chance that he got; Lisa flashed red in second hand embarrassment for James the first time she saw Greg lean over and bite down on his left ass cheek while James was standing up and bending over to grab the TV remote. "What was that for?" he'd cried out, rubbing the bite mark, "now there's a wet mark on my trousers!"
"Special love bite," came the cheeky reply, to which James had sat back down, rolling his eyes.
"You know, you might not be as heavy as I am at the moment, but that doesn't mean that you're not getting a little fluffy yourself," he mumbled, driving a finger into the side of Greg's stomach as he desperately tried to wriggle away, "not so much fun now, is it?" James laughed, as the poking quickly turned to tickling, and the wriggling away turned to tossing, laughing and gasps of "stop," in between laughter.
By the time that everyone went to bed that night, there was only one thing on everyone's mind. An unspoken elephant in the room that loomed over all of them, tomorrow they would be arriving at the ranch; tomorrow, this was going to change from a mostly fun, slightly relaxing road trip- into a complicated, hellish nightmare where they knew they would all be suffering, and where everything was going to be pure ambiguity, and nothing would be simple. Everything would have a double agenda, no one else at this party was completely innocent; either through actions, or through complicity- and only Greg had some idea what they were walking in to, and if his nerves that were clearly radiating off him where anything to go by, this part of the trip was going to make everything so much more complicated.
But, for tonight, they still just had each other, they could still pretend for one more night that everything was going to be okay.