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vincess-princess · 8 days

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we, the psychos

ch. 3

ch. 1 ch. 2

Word count: 3421 Warnings: violence A/N: wow, seems this fic is bound to be updated every two years or so... seeing the surge in interest to it after a couple of my reblogs, so hope you enjoy it!

A key turning in the lock woke Tommy up. Through a small window on the door he could see someone’s neck, and the window was located just a little below his eye level. Tommy blinked in confusion – was the guest really that tall? – but the answer came a second later.

Yeah, the guest – a nurse, judging by the white coat - was tall, even taller than Tommy, which was a rarity. The nurse’s long blond hair was tied down into a ponytail, but a few stray locks rested on his neck, moving slightly by the draft from the hall. Tommy was so captivated by them he didn’t notice the awkward pause which the nurse also aptly used to stare back at the new patient. The regular staff that wasn’t informed about Tommy was probably equally mystified by the new guy, Tommy later realised.

The nurse was the one to break the silence.

“Lee, right?” he said, glancing at a piece of paper in his hand. “The newbie?”

Tommy only nodded, examining the nurse’s face. Tiredness hid in the corners of his eyes, in the curves of his lips, in the delicate circles of his nostrils. If he had some good night’s sleep, Tommy would call him handsome. If let down, his hair (dyed very coarsely, with black roots visible; the asylum dress code was sure way laxer than at Bass estate) would probably reach his shoulder blades; his lean body wore a white robe like others would wear gowns.

“Do you have like, a surname or something?” the nurse looked back at the paper, then up at Tommy again, frowning. “There’s only “Lee” here.”

Oh, how clever of his father. Just take away his name, refuse any mentions of Tommy belonging to his family. Just Lee. That’s what was seemingly written in his medical history, or what the nurse was holding there.

“It’s Tommy, actually,” Tommy said. “Tommy Lee”.

“Ah, good,” the nurse smiled friendly, and it was like a whiff of warm wind in the cold air of the room. “Tommy Lee it be, then. Some patients don’t even remember their names,” he explained. “A couple more questions. Who is the king of our kingdom?”

“King?” Tommy blinked in confusion. “I thought we have a queen.”

“Correct. And what year it is now?”

“Eighteen ninety-two?”

“Correct,” the nurse nodded, making a note on the paper, “again. At least you’re aware of your surroundings.” He looked over Tommy and frowned again. “What brought you here? You look and sound normal.”

“Not for long,” Tommy promised glumly. He never knew when exactly it was going to hit him, but it always came back, earlier or later.

“Huh, alright then.” The nurse didn’t look wary at all. On the contrary, he smiled warmly. “We’ll see. Now, I’ve gotta see you off to the canteen. It is said here,” he pointed at the paper, “that you should eat not with patients, but with staff. We’ve never had such requirements before. Also all of this,” he waved his hand around, meaning, probably, the carpet and the curtains, “not something you usually see in a public asylum. I guess whoever put you here wanted to make sure your life is alright, as much as it can be alright in this place.”

“I guess.” Tommy shrugged, trying not to give away the emotion that overcame him. This name would never leave his life completely, hard as he tried to erase it. Basses even here had it better than everyone else.

“You guess,” the nurse confirmed seriously. “Now, Mr. Tommy Lee, I shall see you off to the canteen, so get out of bed. Have you got your hospital robe already?”

“Should I?” Tommy frowned. He hadn’t seen these robes yet, but he suspected they would be far from fashionable. And fashion was probably the only thing in the world Tommy actually cared about.

“I guess?” the nurse said at first seriously, but then couldn’t hold back a laugh at. “Yes, Mr. Tommy Lee. You may be dining with the doctors but you’re still a patient.”

“I’m not like them,” Tommy resented. “I’m not going to wear it. I have enough of my own clothes.”

The nurse raised an eyebrow, suddenly serious. “Listen, Mr. Tommy Lee. Whoever you were in life, here you are just a patient. Like everyone else. Even the curtains in your room don’t change that. You do what the nurses tell you to do, or they’ll do that against your will.” He talked calmly, not a hint of anger on his face or in his voice, but it still sent shivers down Tommy’s spine. He wasn’t used to being ordered around like that. The urge to lower his gaze overcame him, but he pushed it away – he isn’t submitting to some nurse in a public asylum! His father might be a total asshole, but what he did teach Tommy was that Basses had the right to demand respect from anyone anywhere. Even here.

But Thomas Bass Sr. no longer had a son.

The silence in the room got heavier with every second. The nurse kept looking at Tommy with his clear, calm eyes. And Tommy hurriedly tried to come up with a witty answer.

The nurse tilted his head to the side, examining Tommy from head to toes.

“Get up.”

“I told you I’m-“

“Get up, I need to see your measurements,” the nurse interrupted him. “I just wanna see how tall you are. We may not have anything of your size.” He looked critically over Tommy and shook his head. “No. You’re too tall. We’ll have to alter some that we have… Alright. You can wear this to breakfast. But it’s only for this day. Get it?”

Tommy just nodded, not sure how he was supposed to react. He was convinced they would force him into a hospital robe sooner or later – but for now, it was postponed. And tomorrow he’ll come up with something else.

“Now, come with me,” the nurse turned to the door. “I shall see you off to the canteen - finally.”

“Thanks,” Tommy said, and he meant it all the way. “What’s your name, by the way? There’s no one to introduce us to each other, unfortunately, so I have to ask you directly.”

“My goodness,” the nurse smiled, “you surely are different. I like it, though. This place can make you forget about basic manners. I’m Mckagan. Michael Mckagan.” He stretched out his hand.

Tommy shook it. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Mckagan.”

“Oh, come on. No misters here. You can call me Duff, just don’t do it in front of the doctors.”

Duff? What kind of name was that? It sounded more like a sound an animal would make. Though who was Tommy, who just discarded his surname, to judge?

“Sure.”

“You must be thinking now who the fuck would call themselves like that?” the nurse- no, Duff, - laughed. “I get it. It’s just my preference. If you like Michael more, go by it.”

“Why would I? So many Michaels in the world, but I’m pretty sure you’re the first-” and the last– “Duff I’ve ever met.”

***

Tommy’s ward must have been far from other wards, because he only began seeing patients once he and Duff went down the stairs. Tommy thought seeing so many psychos in one place wouldn’t be much of a shock, as he has dealt with one for his whole life, but what he saw… well, it sure was depressing. There were different faces, young and old, some of them still with traces of their past beauty, others – with traces of the owner’s sins. But what scared him the most was the tiredness, the exhaustion ingrained in all the faces. It must be hard to bear the weight of a mental illness in such an unhospitable place like this. Would Tommy’s face look the same after a couple of years here?..

He looked at patients, and they looked back at him. All of them, each and every one. Their gazes were like insects on his skin, crawling and biting, getting into his ears and eyes. Tommy shook his head to shake them off, but it didn’t help. He barely managed to stop himself from grabbing Duff’s robe, but couldn’t help but raise his hands to his face to check if there were bugs there. There weren’t any, of course – they were always faster than him, faster by a tenth of a second.

They separated from the line of psychos near the stairs and climbed up. There it was, the canteen for the staff, on a balcony overseeing the main room where patients dined. Tommy suddenly realized he had absolutely no desire to go there. Among the insane he was a newbie, of course, but at least one of them; the staff was a completely different kind of crowd, and for some reason Tommy knew they wouldn’t be very welcoming to him.

His train of thought was interrupted: Duff opened the door and nudged Tommy inside. Suddenly, all eyes were on him – again.

Duff opened the door to leave, and Tommy began to panic.

“Wait, you aren’t going?” Tommy grabbed the sleeve of the nurse’s robe with all the force he could manage. Duff gently unclenched his fingers.

“Sorry, man, I’ve gotta look after the patients,” hesounded apologetic, but closed the door nevertheless, leaving Tommy inside with all those other doctors and nurses, not a single friendly face among them.

Turning around now felt like a torture. Everyone – every single one of the staff – was looking at him now.

“Hey, you! Wrong door?” a dark-skinned man with an impressive mane of curly hair called out. “This is the staff canteen. Yours is just down the stairs.”

“I was told I am going to eat with the staff.” Tommy felt a sudden urge to grab something and squeeze it, to let go the tension in his body.

“You?” the curly-haired nurse arched his eyebrow. “Who told you that?”

“It’s alright, Hudson,” someone suddenly called out from the back of the canteen. A man rose up from the table in the farthest corner, the only one that had tablecloth on it, and headed towards Tommy. The latter froze on place under an intent gaze of the man who was almost as tall as Tommy and twice as wide in the shoulders. “Mr. Duren talked to me about this. You must be Lee, right?”

“Right.”

“Good. Grab a plate and go get some porridge over there, in the corner.”

Tommy looked around once again, feeling like he was shrinking under all the gazes, looking at him with curious disapproval, like he was a bug under glass with a dozen of scientists looking at him from behind it. He wasn’t a bug. He didn’t want to be under glass every time he ate.

“Thank you, I’m not hungry,” he said quickly, opened the door and rushed down the stairs. There, in a much bigger but dirtier room, the patients were eating. Upon the first glance there wasn’t many of them, about seventy, but for such a number of people the room was strangely quiet. Those who spoke did so in hushed voices, and the bang of the door against the wall that Tommy pushed too hard echoed through the room, attracting their attention. Oh no.

The gazes of seventy psychos were making his skin itch, and a desire to just slam the door shut and retreat to the safe solitude of his ward overwhelmed him. By miraculous effort he forced himself to step into the room. Some gazes were curious, some indifferent, but all of them bore the mark of such weariness Tommy shuddered. Will he turn into something like that, with no desire to live whatsoever, in a few years?

He awkwardly made his way along the wall to the counter where they handed out food, grabbed a plate of porridge and headed to the only free spot he noticed. The patients at the table for some reason didn’t spread evenly along the bench, instead sitting in two clusters by both sides of the spot. When Tommy landed there, someone beside him exhaled loudly. Tommy looked there in confusion, but couldn’t pick out the one who did it. Frowning, he started eating the cold, sticky porridge, but didn’t get past two spoons.

The door opened again, and two people walked in. One was a red-headed nurse, young and handsome, with a grim expression on his face. Tommy’s gaze slid past him and stopped on the second one. The messy-haired blonde man in a straitjacket sauntered in as if he was the head of the place. The nurses at the counter and by the walls exchanged cautionary looks.

The nurse began to untie the knots on the straitjacket of the newcomer, who watched him lazily, with a one-sided grin. He told the nurse something, and the guy’s ears flushed pink while his fingers were fiddling with the knots.

Tommy looked around. Everyone’s eyes were on the guy. And, for some reason, on Tommy.

He blinked in surprise when the blonde gave the nurse a kiss on the lips, no shyness or restraint at all. He always thought such people would be more discreet in places like this, with the general attitude towards them in all-male spaces and the scarcity of women, but maybe that was a part of the man’s illness. The poor nurse stormed off, and the guy headed straight towards Tommy, waving his arms to warm them up.

He leaned at the table right across Tommy, his eyebrows furrowed.

“You must be the newbie.”

“News spread fast, I see,” Tommy said, his voice quieter than he wanted it to be, but at least it wasn’t shaking. The man had a bad atmosphere around him, something sinister in that crooked grin of his. Tommy couldn’t bring himself to look into his eyes, so instead he looked at his hands on the table. His knuckles were red and skinned. Did he get to put his fists to use often?

“No, I just never seen you before,” the man replied. “And with that face, I would have remembered you.” He smirked and curved an eyebrow, but the playful glint in his face went away as quickly as it came. “Now, you might not know that, which is the only reason why I still haven’t decked you in your pretty face, but that’s my spot. Get out.”

The audacity rendered Tommy speechless for a moment.

“But I was here first,” he said, gripping his spoon tighter, rage rising its ugly head inside his chest. He might be one of them now, but that didn’t mean they got to order him around. Especially this one, conceited like a barber’s cat.

“I don’t give a shit. Move your ass somewhere else,” the blonde leaned closer to Tommy, his eyes darkening. Tommy looked around nervously, but no one was willing to take his side, even the nurses talking quietly at the front of the room seemingly paid no mind to what was happening right in front of their eyes. Judging by the straitjacket in which the man arrived to the canteen, he was a dangerous patient. Weren’t they supposed to look after him?

“No,” Tommy said, the spoon in his hands on the verge of snapping in half. “I was here first.”

Someone let out a whistling sigh. The blonde tilted his head to the side, examining Tommy with his cold gaze. The tension between them was so intense the air seemed to warm up with just their gazes.

“Alright. Nobody will say I didn’t give you a chance,” the blonde said, and the next thing Tommy knew, his chair fell down and his head hit the floor from the powerful blow the man dealt him in the eye.

Well, that was fucking it. Holding onto the table, Tommy got up. His vision went black in the corners of his eyes, but he saw his target very well – the smug, content face with a mane of blonde hair around it.

Tommy punched him in the jaw and, miraculously, hit it, hard enough to make the man yelp and recoil. While he was recovering from the hit, Tommy jumped over the table, pushing several plates off it, and stood right in front of his opponent. The guy turned out shorter than him and barely reached his nose with the top of his head. And this shortie was talking shit?

Well, he asked for that. Tommy hit him again, this time in the stomach. The man dodged, but not completely, still stunned from his previous attack, and Tommy’s punch did elicit a groan from him. Tommy’s head was still spinning, blood rumbled in his ears, but it didn’t stop him from trying to kick the man in the shin, which he missed. The man used it to his advantage, grabbed Tommy by the hair and tried to punch him again. Tried, because that was when nurses ran up to them and pulled them apart. It took three nurses to hold the blond man in place – he was screaming bloody murder and kicking like crazy until the nurses pinned him to the floor and handcuffed his wrists behind his back. The hate in his undecipherable screams filled the air, to the point that Tommy could almost grab it with his hand, hate towards him or the nurses, he wasn’t sure. Two nurses were holding Tommy by the arms, but he didn’t try to fight, and they released him once the blonde man was out of sight. His screams could still be heard down the hall.

Everyone’s eyes were on Tommy now. The wide-shouldered nurse approached him.

“Lee! A fight, on the first day? You’re a delight to have in the hospital, I see,” he said. There was something uncanny in his voice, something Tommy didn’t quite get. Maybe it was Tommy’s sick imagination, seeing threat in everyone. “This is a surefire way to the solitary confinement, you know. Michael, take him to his ward. No breakfast for him today.”

“But I didn’t start it,” Tommy said somewhat defiantly. “I did nothing bad. Should I have let him just hit me like that?”

“Doesn’t matter,” the nurse waved his hand. “We allow no fights in this facility. Michael! What are you waiting for?”

Tommy opened his mouth to reply, but Duff’s strong fingers already squeezed his arm and pulled him forward, to the door out of the canteen. After several minutes of wandering along identical corridors and staircases, they arrived at Tommy’s ward.

“Are you alright?” Duff finally spoke. Tommy’s cheek still hurt from the punch, and sparks danced in front of his eyes with every movement of his head, but he only noticed that now, his mind having been replaying the fight scene in front of his eyes all that time. His knees suddenly went slack, and he plopped down onto the bed with a groan.

“Just a bruise,” he winced, carefully touching his cheek. The punch was solid, but didn’t break anything. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know Dr. Duren has ordered to let Wharton out of the padded cell,” Duff said guiltily. “He only spent a night there. Usually they keep him there for at least a day.”

“A day?” Tommy frowned. “And all that time - in the straitjacket?”

“Yeah.” Duff shrugged. “Don’t feel sorry for him, Tommy. He deserves twice more than that. He’s a curse of the whole asylum.”

Tommy remembered the almost inhuman screams and shuddered. “Why… why did he do that? People would have moved to give him some space if he asked.”

“You’re a newbie,” Duff said, “no doubt he wanted to pick at you – to test you, maybe. He’s also… well, let’s say you should never turn his back to him when in the shower. He’s obsessed with sex and violence. A delight to have in the hospital, like nurse Simmons says.” He reached for the doorhandle, but turned back to Tommy to say something again. “Sorry for what happened. I can’t bring you breakfast, but I have some crackers in my locker. You want them?”

“I’d like some,” Tommy nodded. “And what’s next? Am I just sitting here until lunch?”

“The doctor will come see you soon. And then patients usually work in the garden. I doubt they’ll force you to do it, though, so you can just enjoy the fresh air.” Duff stepped out of the door. “Take care, Tommy.”

#we the psychos #asylum au #motley crue #motley crue au #motley crue fanfiction #motley crue asylum au #guns n roses #guns n roses fanfiction #tommy lee #duff mckagan #slash #vince neil #gene simmons #did quite a bit of editing on this... its two years old after all. my style changed #i'd rewrite it if i had the energy. but i don't. so you get this frankenstein of styles #no one will notice this except me lmao

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