All The Ways We Touch [MxM]

twenty-eight - the doctor's office

It'd been a week since their date at Waylon Park and since then, Jamison and Elliot had fallen into a steady rhythm. While Jamison was at The House, Elliot focused on his schoolwork, and they spent their evenings watching movies and eating entirely too much candy, Jamison lazily playing with Elliot's hair.

The problems with his stomach had tamed and rarely worsened beyond being clenched. It was such a dramatic improvement that he could almost convince himself that he'd managed to overcome his trauma and conditioning entirely. It wasn't the case but it was nice to pretend.

During that time, Jamison had still only seen Jack because Elliot insisted that he still needed time to adjust and heal before getting too worked up by talking with them.

Katie was right, stress is bad for healing and your health, both of which Jamison needed. Reduced stress and time seemed to be working and the bruises had all cleared up, and his ribs felt mostly back to normal aside from strange motions. The stitches in his hands had almost entirely dissolved and the wound on his forehead was closed and healing nicely. It was hard to see all of his scalp but even that seemed to be doing well from what Elliot could see.

From the progress he'd made with both his wounds and their relationship, Jamison had been in good spirits. With each day that they fell asleep and woke up together, Elliot found it easier to relax and push back on the little voice telling him that it was only a matter of time before Jamison would leave him again. His sleep was still messy and most nights he had nightmares about Jamison or other sadnesses, but there was no more waking up crying, and with Jamison there to perk him up in the mornings, the bad dreams rarely followed him into the day.

All of their secrets were still firmly hidden. They'd yet to make any more progress with opening up with each other but, truthfully, they both felt it was nice to have an emotional reprieve before diving back into the deeper depths of darkness they'd shut themselves off from. While it was great to deepen their connection through sharing, they'd enjoyed a week of pretending to be normal people without their traumas wrapping their claws around their ankles and threatening to drown them.

Now that it had been ten days since his stitches and staples had been put in, Jamison was due to return to the hospital where his wounds would be checked out again to ensure they were healing properly.

After the negative experience during his hospitalization, Jamison was nervous and cracked his knuckles over and over as Elliot drove into the city.

Like Jamison, Elliot was dreading returning to Astoria Hospital for his own reasons—reasons he still hadn't disclosed to Jamison. Hell, he hadn't even explained that his family owned the hospital and a majority of the city of Astoria. It was kind of peculiar that Jamison hadn't put it together based on the name, but he wasn't complaining. Every minute he was able to draw out being some semblance of normal was a minute he wanted to hold onto and stretch out as long as it could last.

"I really hope that everything's healing well so we never have to come back here," Jamison mumbled as Elliot parked.

Unbuckling his seatbelt, Elliot nodded. "I hope so, too," he agreed and with a deep breath, opened the door and got out to face all the bad memories and reminders of his father.

Fortunately, as Jamison wasn't being hospitalized, they were able to skip over the concierge desk and thus Elliot was able to avoid another conversation about his last name. Being that the doctor's office was on the ground floor, they also didn't need to use the elevator and Elliot could avoid his father's welcome message. It seemed that he would be able to skate by without Jamison realizing his connection to the hospital.

After Jamison checked in for his appointment, he and Elliot took a seat, his leg bouncing with nervous energy as he waited to be called back.

"It's gonna be okay, Jam," Elliot said, though he knew that was easy to say when he wasn't the one who was hopefully going to be getting staples removed from his head. "I'm here with you."