by Luna, David
“It’s exactly the same! It’s exactly the fucking same, Sebastian. Put yourself in my position for a minute. Answer me truthfully. If you were me and I was you, would you walk away from me? If I lost my eyesight and lost use of an arm or a leg, if I had seizures and needed surgery to stop them. Where would you be, Sebastian?”
“Gideon…”
“WHERE WOULD YOU BE?!”
“I’D BE WITH YOU!” A sob escaped and he admitted again, brokenly, “I’d be with you.”
Gideon crushed him in a hug and swayed with him as he whispered, “I know you would, baby. We love each other and that’s what you do for someone that you love. I won’t leave no matter what you say or do and neither will your family downstairs. It’s okay to accept help, Sebastian. It doesn’t make you weak.”
His family. Could it really be as simple as that? He didn’t think so but then again, Gideon wasn’t prone to lying. He couldn’t wrap his mind around it. If his parents could essentially tell him he deserved what he got, how could these strangers accept him and love him so easily? And then he remembered the people he’d met at the New Year’s party and suddenly it didn’t seem so farfetched.
He’d been accepted immediately and most of them didn’t even know he was with Gideon. He’d be willing to bet he met more good people that night than he had the whole of his life so far. It was a pretty shitty thing to have to admit to himself. But he realized if they were going to give him a chance, what kind of man would he be if he didn’t do the same for them?
He took a deep shuddering breath and Gideon lifted him up effortlessly and carried him back to the bed. The ice that had seeped into his bones weeks ago began to melt. He was safe. Safe to be himself. Safe to express his emotions any way he needed to. And safe to be who he was without trying to hide any part of him.
He didn’t know what was to come. He knew they still had so much to talk about, but right then, sitting in Gideon’s lap and holding onto him as tightly as he could felt right. Hearing Gideon tell him over and over again that he loved him went a long way in convincing him he wasn’t being weak accepting the help so freely given. It took strength to admit help was needed, didn’t it?
Gideon was being so persistent and Sebastian was so goddamned tired. So mentally, physically, and emotionally wrecked, he didn’t have the energy to push back any longer. Hell, he didn’t even know for sure if he wanted to push back at all, because, what would it hurt to try? Things couldn’t get much worse than not having Gideon in his life, so what harm could come of him trying to make it work? And if his days were numbered, and it was what Gideon wanted, why not take a little happy for himself? He decided if it came, he’d deal with the fallout later, and jumped off the ledge, grabbing onto Gideon’s lifeline.
He pulled back and gazed at his Dom. Gideon clasped his face and asked, “Will you accept our help?”
Sebastian smiled tiredly. “Yes, I’ll accept your help. Thank you, Sir.”
When he saw the relief and love in Gideon’s eyes, he knew he’d done the right thing. “You’re welcome, baby. I love you so much.”
“I love you, too,” Sebastian said. A tired sigh escaping.
He smiled and buried his face in Gideon’s neck, holding on for dear life. Saying those words to Gideon was life changing, so he said them again, and again. He’d never thought he’d ever be able to say them to someone. He never thought anyone would ever want to hear them. And they felt better and better, every single time he said them.
GIDEON HELD SEBASTIAN IN A tight embrace realizing he had a lot to make up for and he meant to make things right. When Sebastian finally whispered his “I love yous,” Gideon knew he’d never been happier, regardless of the uphill battle they were about to face.
He made a promise to himself that come hell or high water he’d do what needed to be done to see his boy well. They had a long life to live together and he wasn’t going to compromise where the love of his life was concerned. When he went to pull back a bit and look in Sebastian’s eyes, the grip on his neck tightened. He closed his eyes and smiled, loving the feel of the boy in his arms.
When Sebastian finally allowed him to pull back enough to clasp his face gently, he kissed his boy’s cheeks, forehead, nose and lips. “Braden brought over some breakfast. Let’s get some food in you. Are you vomiting?”
Sebastian shook his head. “No. Just feel nauseous and uninterested in eating.”
“I need you to get some calories down. I asked him to bring pastries and your favorite drink.”
Sebastian curled his lips between his teeth trying to keep from laughing, a twinkle in his eyes that Gideon hadn’t seen in a couple months. “You had Braden bring me chocolate milk?”
Gideon smirked. “I did.”
Sebastian let a giggle escape before he could stop it and Gideon couldn’t have been happier. He lifted Sebastian off his lap and put him gently down on the bed beside him. Reaching for the goodies on the nightstand, he placed the box on Sebastian’s lap and handed Sebastian the cold travel mug, keeping the hot one for himself. He leaned back against the headboard and drew his boy into the crook of his arm as he took his first sip of the Americano he’d had Braden bring him.
He watched as Sebastian took a slow drink, as if testing the waters to see how his stomach would take it. Several more sips followed and Sebastian smiled shyly back at him. Gideon rubbed his hand up and down Sebastian’s arm and watched as his boy opened the box and leaned over it for several long drawn-out seconds before he leaned back and sighed. He reached in and pulled out what looked like a lemon ginger scone. He pinched off a little corner of it and again sampled it slowly before making the smallest of whimpers before taking a bit of a bigger bite.
His heart broke just a little bit that a couple sips of chocolate milk and a few bites of scone was akin to success in Sebastian’s book. Every time he thought things couldn’t look worse he got one more reality check of what Sebastian’s current world was like. He took a couple more sips of the milk and another couple bites of the scone before he slumped back into Gideon’s arms.
“That’s all I can do for now. I’ll keep trying though, Sir.”
“I’m just glad you could take a few bites. You’ve lost so much weight and you didn’t have any to spare.”
The fact that his boy was still calling him Sir made him give Sebastian an extra hug before he moved the box from his lap and took the mug. He placed them both on the nightstand, settled down into the pillows, and Sebastian curled into his side, placing his small hand on Gideon’s chest, gliding it up and down in an absentminded way. He’d so missed his boy’s touch.
“Can you talk to me about what’s going on? I only know bits and pieces. Not enough to understand the whole.”
Sebastian nodded and continued to move his hand across Gideon’s chest and stomach. “The port-wine stain, PWS, is a vascular malformation. It’s basically an overabundance of capillaries just under the skin. But for me, it’s part of an underlying disorder. I have what’s called Sturge-Weber Syndrome. It affects lots of people differently and I’m lucky in a lot of ways…”
When Gideon sucked in a breath at that and hugged him tighter, Sebastian looked up and smiled sadly, continuing, “It’s true. My PWS reacts well to laser treatments, which diminishes the dark color, but also helps slow or stop the bleeding that occasionally happens for me.”
“Jesus. It bleeds? Finn said it’s not painful.”
“It’s not, really. Well, I mean, not usually. Um, it’s hard to explain. In cold weather, it sometimes aches and sometimes there’s a tingling numbness when that happens. I don’t really know if that’s normal for everyone, it’s just what happens for me. It’s also extra sensitive and I have to be really gentle with it when I wash my face or if I scrub my hands over my face too hard, to avoid bleeding when my skin is dry. But overall, no, it’s not painful.”
“Do you have to get laser surgery? Why not just leave it alone?”
“Well, I could, but as you get older and don’t
treat it they tend to thicken, darken, and get bumpy. If it’s prone to bleeding, that would get worse as well, so it’s better to treat it fairly often.”
“So, this Sturge-Weber Syndrome causes the PWS?”
“It’s part of it for me, not for everyone. For me, it presents as a PWS, but also as a sort of stain, I guess you could say, on my brain which causes epileptic seizures. It has since I was little. And until recently, my medications worked just fine to keep them mostly at bay. I rarely had them, and then the meds just stopped doing their job.”
Sebastian went on to tell him that for the last several months he’d been trying many new combinations of medications and nothing was working. The side effects were making him sick and tired, which is what he’d been dealing with while Gideon was none the wiser, thinking he just had mono or something. Jesus. It hurt him to know that he’d been no help while his boy had been suffering.
Sebastian explained that he’d been in the hospital and they’d basically found a combo of drugs that kept him from having as many seizures as he’d been plagued with but those side effects were getting worse by the day, which was why it was imperative for him to have the surgery. Eventually they’d stop working too and his quality of life would diminish further.
“So the seizures will stop after the surgery?”
“They probably won’t stop completely for another year or two after the surgery, maybe never. But they will, supposedly, be more manageable with meds so that I don’t have any, or at least as many, seizures. There’s no guarantee and the location of my seizures in the frontal lobe makes it hard to find the seizure foci, which I think is why my insurance won’t pay for the surgery. This type of craniotomy is risky and the success rate isn’t as high as other areas of the brain where seizures may occur.”
The more Sebastian talked, the more he knew he had to convince Sebastian to take Finn’s advice on the doctor he would choose to do the procedure. He didn’t want to broach the subject so early, but he knew he couldn’t wait. They needed to make their move and get the best possible surgeon, which meant possible travel and working to get the money back from the hospital for the surgery if they indeed did need to cancel with his current surgeon.
Not knowing how else to approach it, he simply asked, “Are you open to finding a different doctor?”
Sebastian sat up to look at him, but he didn’t like not having his boy in his arms, so he pulled him back down so that he was lying across his chest so that they could look at each other while they talked. He waited to hear what Sebastian had to say, rather than pushing for an answer.
“I don’t think I have a lot of time. The side effects are pretty hard for me to deal with for any longer than the scheduled date of the procedure. If I had to find another doctor, that could take a long time. I’ve already paid for half of the surgery. I just…I don’t think that’s the best move to make at this point.”
“But if we could find the best possible doctor that performs this procedure, with the highest success rate and they were willing to take you quickly, would you be willing?”
Sebastian buried his face in Gideon’s chest and shook his head, making Gideon nearly panic that he wouldn’t be willing to make the change. “I don’t know. It’s expensive here, I can’t imagine what a better hospital with a better doctor would cost. And my doctor has been great. I don’t know what kind of difference it would really make. I’m getting a pretty good return on the sale of the house, so I can see what another location would do, but if there’s a delay or it’s out of my price range, I just can’t imagine how I’d be able to make it work.”
“That’s where Finn comes in. That’s where our lawyers come in. And that’s where my money comes in.”
Sebastian was sitting up again, putting distance between them at his last comment. “No. Absolutely not. Please don’t make this about money. I have enough for the surgery. I don’t want or need your help.”
The defensive posture was back and Gideon hated that he had to have this discussion with him, but he wasn’t going to bulldoze or try to order Sebastian to do what he said, even if that’s what he wanted to do. No, this was something they had to agree on and something he needed to work at framing just right so that he could sell it.
“I’ve tasked Finn with using his contacts in the medical community to find you the best doctor for the surgery and to get your medical file to the doctor so that a surgery can be scheduled as soon as humanly possible. In addition to that, we’ll have our lawyers working night and day to figure out a way to get your insurance to approve the surgery so that you won’t have to pay more than your out of pocket cap. But if all that fails, we’d use my money to pay for it.”
“No. I’m not okay with that, Gideon. And nothing you say will change that. I won’t allow you to pay for this surgery. I’ll accept the help with my insurance company, because I’ve been fighting them myself, so I’d love help there. And all right, I’m not going to cut off my nose to spite my face. If you find the best doctor and they can take me quickly, I’m in. But I can’t wait much longer. I don’t think my body can take much more.”
Gideon knew the truth of that, so he didn’t argue the point. He took those two wins and decided he’d deal with the money conversation later. He looked at his watch and realized the lawyer and notary would arrive within the next thirty minutes and they needed to get all the paperwork signed as soon as possible. He didn’t want to delay anything, so he explained as much as he could at that point.
“We have some paperwork you’ll need to sign with our lawyers and with Finn so that he can have access to your medical files and have permission to speak with your doctor on your behalf. Are you all right with all of that?”
Sebastian hesitated for a moment before he nodded, but then he said, “Gideon, I love you, but I need you to respect my wishes about the money. I’m willing to learn more about a different doctor, I’d be stupid to turn down the best. And I’m immensely grateful for any help with the insurance, but the money is a sticking point with me.”
“That’s your hard limit.”
Sebastian gave him a sad smile and nodded. “Yeah. That’s my hard limit.”
Gideon figured he had the rest of his life to take care of his boy financially, so he wouldn’t push. “Okay, I’ll work with that. Let’s get you up and I’ll help you shower. Camden will be here soon.”
He stood and helped Sebastian to his feet and helped him get his clothes off. When he got them in the shower, he washed them both quickly, not wanting to keep Sebastian on his feet for long. Everything seemed to be a monumental effort for him at this point and he just wanted to get the paperwork dealt with and get him resting again.
Gideon helped him down the stairs and realized from the smell that bagels and coffee had been made. Braden looked up from the box he was packing and Gideon’s heart clenched when he saw the tears start to fall as he ran across the room and gently clasped Sebastian in a hug.
Zavier was in the middle of removing the flat screen from the wall mount and leaning it against the wall. When his brother turned to see his husband hugging Sebastian he smiled sadly at them and then nodded solemnly at Gideon, sending a clear message that he understood what the moment between their boys meant.
Braden had been a wreck when he’d heard about his friend. He glanced back at Sebastian and saw his boy still caught up in the hug Braden didn’t seem to want to end. Confusion and sorrow etched Sebastian’s features, as if he didn’t understand why Braden was so upset.
Gideon rubbed Sebastian’s back and knew he’d just have to learn for himself that he had friends and family that loved him and were heartbroken that he hadn’t reached out. When Braden pulled back, he wiped his eyes and then scowled. Zavier approached and clasped Braden’s shoulders. Braden crossed his arms over his chest and turned his glare on Gideon. He couldn’t help but smile at Braden’s fierce protective streak.
Braden glanced back at Sebastian and asked, “How could you keep this a secret from me? Why wouldn’t
you lean on your friends? Do you know how hurt I was that you didn’t tell me what was going on?”
Sebastian looked down at the floor and said, “I’m sorry.”
Braden continued as if his friend hadn’t spoken. “I thought you were just avoiding me because this bozo here,” he pointed at Gideon, “was too blind to see how perfect you guys are together. If I’d had any idea you were this sick, I’d have gone with you to every doctor’s appointment. I’d have stayed with you at the hospital. I’d have made sure you were eating okay. That’s what friends do!”
Tears slid down Sebastian’s face at Braden’s words and he shook his head. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know what?”
“I didn’t know that’s what friends do.”
“What are you talking about, you didn’t know?”
“I didn’t know.” Zoe walked in the room and Sebastian glanced over at her as he continued, “You and Zoe are my first real friends. When I needed help when I was little my parents told me I was a burden to them, so I thought if I asked for help that’s what I’d be.”
Braden pulled in a shaky breath and he whispered brokenly, “Well you wouldn’t be. You could never be.”
Sebastian nodded as he replied, “Okay. I’m sorry.”
“You’re forgiven, but don’t do that ever again.”
Sebastian shook his head. “I won’t. I promise.”
Braden hugged him again, rocking back and forth. Finn walked in the room and put his arm around Zoe’s shoulders and handed her a handkerchief from his pocket, which had her laughing as she dabbed her eyes with it. Braden and Sebastian looked at her and held their hands out to her. A little sob escaped her and she fell into their arms, all three of them hugging and crying, the brothers looking on.
Finn rocked back on his heels and cleared his throat. “I don’t want to break up the hugs, I really don’t. But I have some paperwork for you to sign, Sebastian, and our lawyer, Camden Connelly, will arrive shortly.”
The three parted but continued their whispered conversation for another few moments. When they were done, Sebastian clasped his hand and looked up to him. Gideon drew him in and kissed him, walking them towards the dining room. Sebastian stopped in his tracks when he saw Rowan and his parents.