#i’m driven insane by people who act like promoting or interacting positively with your own content is some kind of vanity trip

[starlightseraph]

“you like your own posts?”

yes, if i didn’t like something i wouldn’t post it.

[blooblooded]

13th Step

I diagnose backstory CT and Tony with terminal horniness...

This is transparently a way for me to process my interactions with the dirtbag alcoholic who won’t go to AA in my own life. Also CT and Tony are just funny. This sucks because its mostly dialogue. And Cihad is...well. He sucks. 

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“I’m not going to a 12-Steps meeting,” said Tony. “Those things are just circle jerks of misery. You can’t force me to go.”

He had been sober for 10 days and Cihad could already tell that he was slipping. Even though he was doing everything he could to support him, it just seemed like Anthony Delmont was in constant pain. There was nothing to distract him from his depression, his shame, and the memories of where his life had gone wrong. Since he got out of Detox, all he had done was mope around in the motel room Cihad had decided to rent for him.

“Why don’t you want to go?” he asked Tony. “I think it would be very beneficial for you. You would have support from your peers, you would have a sponsor who you’d be able to call whenever you’re struggling, day or night.”

They were sitting next to each other on the motel room’s couch. A little too close. Every time he saw Tony, Cihad tried to control how fast his heart started beating. It was no good. No good at all. Why did he have such terrible taste in men? He was responsible, he had a life. He could not allow himself to have feelings for someone who in turn was so determined to throw his own life away. 

Tony sat with his legs drawn up, still trying to make himself disappear. He was wearing the same thrift store T shirt and sweatpants as he had been the day before. His hair was pulled back in a short ponytail. “I don’t want to be around a bunch of alcoholics, that’s going to make me feel worse than I already do. I don’t want to talk about how shitty my choices were, I don’t want people knowing I ran away and abandoned my kid. That ‘higher power’ stuff they talk about is all bullshit to me, I’m an atheist. I’m not fucking going.”

“I think you’re depressed. I’m worried you’re going to start drinking again.” He was worried about Tony doing something worse than that as well. Cathy had put her foot down on letting him see Cynthia again, not until she was positive that he had cleaned up his act. When Tony heard that, his mood had darkened.

“I’m not going.”

“I think--”

“//I think// you’re trying to push me around, Tariq,” snapped Tony. “Back off.”

Cihad sighed. He was tired. It had been a long day at work, he’d had to fire a couple of nurses who had been caught stealing pills. To make matters worse, Silas had called him to ‘check up’ on him. It always worried him when she did that, like he was doing something wrong. Of course she had him under surveillance, but he did whatever she wanted him to do. He kept the hospital safe. That’s what she needed him for.

So for him to go from that, to trying to help someone who did not want any help was very frustrating.

“Look,’ said Cihad, and Tony hunched his shoulders up to his ears. “I talked with Cathy for a long time last night. We came to an agreement. If you complete 90 meetings in 90 days, if you stick to recovery and if you get a job, you can see Cynthia again. It’s just 3 months. I might even be able to persuade Cathy to let you stay in our guest bedroom after that, until you save up for an apartment. Only 3 months.”

Tony shook his head. “You’re using my daughter to bribe me again.”

“I’m not using her, Anthony. She wants to see you again, she keeps asking about you.”

He watched as Tony deflated and looked even more depressed and self-loathing. It wasn’t a lie. Cynthia did ask about him every day, asked about when she was going to see her ‘other dad’ again. It wasn’t just because she wanted to squeeze extra gifts out of a third parent; she had imprinted upon Tony even though he had tried to squash Billy. She was 5 and wanted to see her dad. It was as simple as that. 

Of course, the way she had started to constantly ask about Tony was grating on Cathy’s nerves. She had not forgiven her ex husband. She did not intend to forgive him; it was not something that came naturally for Cathy. She held onto resentment, even resentment from her childhood. When she had something to hold on to-- good or bad-- she would not let go.

Also Cihad’s...investment in Tony Delmont was increasingly driving a wedge between him and Cathy. 

It was in his nature to want to take care of people. Sometimes overly so. He tended to get overly involved with patients-- another reason why his career path had moved towards hospital administration rather than clinical-- and he had understood that his own boundaries when it came to the people he cared about were poor. What had someone called him back when he was a charge nurse on the psych floor? ‘Meddling’. Well, that was better than ‘controlling’, which he feared he was sometimes. His father had been controlling as well, under the guise of caring for people. That was a path he did not want to go down, but often found himself slipping towards it.

Cihad tried again and kept the pushiness from his voice. “Are you taking your meds?”

“That’s such such normal question for a guy who is not my healthcare provider to ask me,” Tony said in that same snippy tone that made it hard to not want to shake him. He turned his head to look at Cihad; as time passed he seemed to be growing more comfortable with making eye contact, but it never lasted long. Something about it made him avoid it. “Hey, here’s an idea: why don’t you go into my bathroom and count them all out? Why don’t you write it all down to keep me //on track//? Since you were so comfortable letting yourself into my room that you so kindly decided to get for me without me asking you to.”

“Don’t get defensive.”

“I feel like I have a good reason to be defensive since I told you to back off and now you’re not listening to me.”

“I just want to know you’re OK.”

Tony uncurled his arms and legs and stood up to walk across his apartment to his little kitchen. It was hard for Cihad to not let his gaze follow him as he went. The difficulty lay in how attractive he found Tony; his scrappy, flexible body which he covered up with the most sloppy clothing imaginable was precisely Cihad’s type. The quick, furtive way that he moved only magnified this. He liked the way that he kept his shiny black hair a little too long and kept having to restrain himself from pushing it back when it fell into Tony’s face. In 10 days, he had only seen Tony smile once, and he kept thinking about how he could get him to do that again.

None of this was good, it meant that he was so repressed that all his pent up sexual urges were directing themselves onto Cathy’s ex-husband. What was wrong with him? That was definitely a bad thing. It also had a direct correlation to the fact that Cihad had not slept with anyone in over 18 months. 

The last guy he had hooked up with had made an off-hand comment about how he was too rough, and Cihad had gone into a guilt-driven celibacy spiral. He was always too rough. He did not want to be like that, he did not want to hurt people even accidentally.

Tony was also some kind of psychic-- to what extent, was unknown-- and Cihad would have to self-immolate if he picked up on the kinds of things he had been fantasizing about doing to him.

In the kitchen, Tony opened up his mini fridge which was empty save for cans of ginger ale. The leftover nausea from detox prevented him from eating much. He cracked open a can and took a sip, leaning against the fridge in a way that made his shirt ride up just a little. “I don’t want to talk about me anymore. What did Cynthia have for breakfast?”

“Oatmeal-- we don’t give her sugar. Billy’s learning to eat as well.”

Hearing about Billy always made Tony’s mouth twist up in disgust, but Cihad couldn’t help but bring up the little monster. It was like his own child. 

“Learning to eat,” Tony repeated, with a glazed over expression. What had happened to him to make him like that?  “It’s learning to eat? You know those things feed on us, right? They make people go insane.”

Cihad shrugged. “I told you; Billy’s different.”

“That makes me feel worse.”

It was time to try again. “If you do your 90 in 90, you can watch out for Cynthia yourself, if you’re so worried.”

Tony took a long drink of his soda and then put the can down. His hair was falling into his face again and he blew it out of his eyes. “So you’re really trying to force me, huh? Emotional blackmail? The whole ‘you can’t see your daughter unless you recover the way I want you to’ routine? What if I told you I don’t want to recover? That I’m not ready to recover, you just bullied me into detox-- just like you’re trying to bully me into going into meetings? Do you even realize how painful every second of being sober is for me?”

“If you get support you--”

“No. Even-- even if I didn’t have to deal with Seeing things about people, I would want to make myself feel numb. I know Cathy told you all about what happened to me when I was a kid. I don’t want to think about that. I don’t want to feel it.”

Helplessness was not a feeling Cihad wanted to be accustomed to. In every situation, he did his best so that he did not have to feel it. “You’ll die if you relapse.”

A bitter little laugh. Tony looked down at his feet. “Well. You know how I feel about that.”

It was all so frustrating. It would be easier if he could just force him into committing to the program. Back before his promotion, back when he was the charge nurse on the Psych Unit, Cihad had been able to make people go to 12-Steps. Now he had to wheedle and beg a man who was depressed and who had a history of suicide attempts to try and take care of himself. What ammunition did he have apart from using Cynthia as emotional blackmail?

Tony was rubbing his face and looking miserable. Cihad thought about the way he had smiled when he had shocked him.

Why was he trying so hard to help him anyways? Apart from the obvious attraction? It was all Cynthia. Now that she knew about her dad, he did not want her to lose him. It would be too much for her, he tried so hard to protect her from how terrible Eden could be.

“I could go with you,” Cihad offered. “I’ve facilitated groups before. We could go tonight. I could get you dinner afterwards.”

Tony looked up and made rare complete eye contact. The raised eyebrows betrayed his surprise. “I’m still nauseous. I can’t eat much.”

“You can watch me eat then.”

And Tony began to smile.

It was as easy as that.

##

It turned out that Tony hated AA, refused to participate, and claimed that everything they talked about in there (especially the ‘Higher Power’) was beyond useless.

Still, Cihad faithfully went with him to meetings every night. They sat next to each other in complete silence; Cihad with his attentive interest in each person there and Tony with his closed-off indifference. But time progressed and that was what mattered.

Until the 24th night, that is. Tony was in some kind of little mood, acting more recalcitrant than usual. Making excuses. Dragging his feet.

“What’s wrong?” Cihad, who had had another terrible day at work, asked him as they rode the metro. He already knew what was wrong. He had been sitting right there next to him during the 23rd meeting.

At least Tony had cleaned himself up and made an effort to not dress in sweatpants. He wore jeans and a long-sleeve button-up. His hair was down but he had used bobby-pins to keep it out of his face. “What do you think, smart guy? I’m done with this shit. I keep telling you that, but this time I’m serious, I’m done. I don’t want to go tonight.”

“Because that man was talking about his mother’s alcoholism and the awful way she treated him?” The night before had been emotionally heavy, but then again, Cihad didn’t really get triggered when he heard about child abuse. His own experiences with his father attempting to kill him, and then witnessing other teenagers get mistreated in the secret police had really...numbed him to it. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel empathy for other people who had been through things, but well, none of them had it as bad as he had.

The flash of anger that crossed Tony’s face was something that Cihad had not seen before. “It’s not a contest,” he snapped.

“I didn’t say that it was,” said Cihad, lingering on the uncomfortable possibility that Tony had just read his thoughts without permission. “It’s OK if you feel trigg--”

“Just shut up, Tariq.” Tony closed his eyes. “Why can’t you understand why I hate this? I don’t want to go.”

“Then why do you keep going? Why do you keep telling me ‘No, I don’t want to’ and then doing it anyway?”

They rode the rest of the way down to the Lower Levels in silence. AA was always in Churches and Churches were always in the Lower Levels. Cihad didn’t like it but that’s just the way things were. Silas had some kind of personal vendetta against organized religion and tried to suppress it any way she could.

Still wordless, they got off at the appropriate metro-stop and walked up the small flight of stairs to the walkway. The Church was only 4 blocks away. As Tony scurried along like he normally did, his mouth acquired a peculiarly determined set to it, as if he was making his mind up about something.

If the depressed bastard had been using his psychic Abilities on him, Cihad was going to be justifiably upset.

Tony paused in front of the Church, then turned to look up into Cihad’s face. Out of habit, he tucked his hair behind his ears, which came across as earnest. His big brown eyes, with their short curled lashes, were unusually bright. “You wanna know why I keep coming to these stupid things even though I don’t want to?”

If Tony kept stalling, they would end up being late to the meeting. It was so awkward to walk in after something had already begun. Cihad pointedly looked at his comm. “Come on. We need to go inside.”

“It’s you. I like spending time with you. But I’d rather do that literally anywhere else than here, listening to people talk about how miserable they are. I will go anywhere you want, I just don’t want to go to this meeting.”

Blood rose to Cihad’s face as he tried to keep his cool. That was practically an admission of attraction. In his chest, his heart began to pound so hard he could hear it in his ears. Usually he was able to calm himself down by breathing slowly, but now he was unable to. He shook his head. “Stop. That’s manipulative.”

Tony took a step towards Cihad. Cihad took a step back to maintain the distance between them. The way that Tony was smiling was weird, an amalgamation of his usual crooked smile and what his perception of the kind of smile Cihad wanted to see was. “Maybe. But that’s why you’ve been hanging around me all this time, right? I can See you’re attracted to me. I can See you’re pent up and horny. This doesn’t have to be a serious thing-- let’s go mess around in the church bathroom.”

The proposition was something that Cihad wanted so badly that he found himself at a loss for words. All he could do was stare at Tony like he was in a dream. The different parts of himself were once again at odds. It was true: he //was// pent up after 18 months of only sadly jerking off in the guest bathroom. The taboo of sexual behavior on consecrated ground was exhilarating. And of course, Tony was very attractive. But the thing was that he knew this was manipulation; Tony didn’t want to go to AA and didn’t want Cihad’s single-minded attentiveness focused on that anymore. He was an addict and the son of a con-artist; those kinds of people would do anything to get their way-- even someone who seemed as passive as Tony.

He summoned all his willpower to prevent himself from getting a boner. This did not work.

“I’m offering to blow you, man,” said Tony, shrugging. “Right now. Get our minds off everything for a while. We could even go back to my place afterwards-- I mean, you //are// paying for it after all.”

That kind of comment set off warning bells regarding exactly how low Tony’s self-esteem was. It was enough to shake Cihad back into reality. He looked at Tony’s weird smile. “Don’t say that. I’m not paying for your motel because I wanted to get anything out of you.” A couple of clergy people passed by and he went quiet so as not to offend them somehow. Why did he have so much residual guilt when it came to religions he didn’t even belong to? “Are you— what’s wrong with you?”

“Will you calm down, I was making a joke.” Tony glanced down at Cihad’s crotch and then back up at his face. “You know about dopamine, right? My neural pathways were so burned out by the booze that I’m just-- I’m not happy. I mean, I’ve never been happy, but right now I can’t feel anything except misery. I want to feel better, but I don’t want to mess up my future with my daughter by drinking again. Having sex releases dopamine. I like you, you like me, what’s the problem?”

The problem was that Cihad sensed that he was being manipulated, he just didn’t know for what purpose. But did that really matter? Was he overthinking this, like he overthought everything?

In the end, his id had more power over him than his ego. Isn’t that how it always goes? The instinctive seeking of pleasure is driven by the id, and this principle has near omnipotence over all human life.

All of Eden seemed to have gone away, and the only thing left was Tony. Yes, he was a depressed unemployed alcoholic scumbag who had abandoned his infant daughter because of his mental illness, but he drove Cihad crazy. 

“OK,” he said.

“OK,” said Tony.

They didn’t know it at the time, but this was the beginning of everything.