Nameless One, 1/18
Jun. 21st, 2011 02:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackofknavesTitle: Nameless One
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tripatch
Rating: R
Pairing: Hannibal/Face
Summary: Kinkmeme prompt, Face secretly takes meds for bipolar disorder. But for whatever reason, Face is no longer on his meds. Then the manic behavior starts, from getting into a mess of fights to needing to have tons of sex with strangers. Then when the emotional roller coaster stuff starts, Face begins cutting himself during the darkest times. His teammates notice, and try to help but Face is stubborn and refuses help, heavily in denial.
Additional Notes: Title taken from James Clarence Mangan's poem, "Nameless One".
His next leave, he finds a psychiatrist two hours away and makes an appointment under a false name. They have psychiatrists on camp, but all of them would have to report him to his commander if they even got a whiff of something bad going down (and there is a lot of bad in whatever this is, he thinks), so screw that.
The bad spell had mostly dissipated, but he feels antsy and jittery and wants to prowl around the tiny room stuffed with bookshelves and generated clutter of Dr. Mahtra’s office. Instead he forces himself to sit and wait for her to come in and reminds himself to answer all her questions honestly. He’s almost forgotten what the truth sounds like; it takes practice to remember how to say it again.
She’s not really what he was expecting; she’s cold and refuses to look up from her little notepad, which he thought he would appreciate until she starts saying “Bipolar I” and “mania” and “life turned upside down”, and okay, she may not actually have said that last one out loud, but she might as well have, and he wishes she would just look at him for once.
“Excuse me?” he chokes out, because he always called them his “spells” and now they’re “episodes” and pretty soon his whole life is going to be a soap opera.
She glances up and her face softens, like she finally noticed that there’s a real, live, currently freaking out human being in front of her.
“It’s manageable,” she says, slipping him a prescription. “Lithium will put a ceiling, so you never feel too good. You do need to start taking medication immediately though. Because you’re so young, it’s just going to get worse if you leave it untreated.”
She reels off some other things, and the entire time he stares at the little slip of paper, he’s just thinking of all the reasons why he can’t take it.
Weight gain—he can’t. His body gets him half the stuff on camp that Hannibal needs, how is he supposed to get it if he’s some fat blob?
Hand tremors—a marksman sniper with hand tremors, right, that’ll work.
Mind fog—because Hannibal’s plans weren’t complicated enough already.
He thanks her and stumbles out, making his way to the car and sitting there for a long time staring at the cement wall of the non-descript building. The prescription he carefully tears up into tiny little pieces and lets them flutter out the window as he drives down the road.
There’s a bookstore, and he stops because contrary to popular opinion on base, he can read, thank you very much. He finds the self-help section, feeling out of place and embarrassed like he hasn’t for a very long time. There’s a row of books on bipolar, all in CAPITAL LETTERS like they want the whole world to see that you’re buying this and he fights down a ridiculous impulse to tell them to shush, other people will hear them. He shakes the thought free, grabs a few of them, and settles into a chair shoved into a forgotten corner of the store.
After two hours, he throws the last one down. From what he skimmed, they all said the same things, nothing that could help. Change your diet, which was impossible unless the mess suddenly decided to start serving healthy fare instead of their usual slop; keep to a routine, which he was, kind of, except for those times he randomly got called out to a mission or Hannibal needed him for something, which was pretty much ninety percent of the time; get a full night’s sleep, yeah, good luck with that one in the Army Rangers, buddy.
In none of them does he find a guide to how to hide a serious mental illness from his superiors and not get shot because he was following the pretty butterflies into a combat zone. He should really write to the authors about that.
He orders a double-espresso drink from the coffee shop at the front of the bookstore; the books all told him that he should avoid caffeine, but fuck that. Something’s got to make this day a little bit better and if the barista won’t respond to his charms, at least espresso has never turned him down.
It occurs to him as he’s sipping at his drink and driving back to base, part of his brain already working on an excuse if the guys ask him where he was (a grin and a wink is more effective than any cover story he’s come up with), that he’s going about this entirely wrong. He’s Face. He’s the consummate con artist. He can sweet-talk his way into any locked room and come out as cool as ice in the middle of the fucking Sahara. If he can’t manage to con a doctor into giving him a few good drugs, then he might as well retire.
He had written some of the drugs they had talked about in the books on a scrap of paper—lithium was out, because there was no way he could get that without someone raising eyebrows, and the blood tests alone would catch him out, but there were some others.
This could work, he tells himself. He would make it work.
Author:
tripatchRating: R
Pairing: Hannibal/Face
Summary: Kinkmeme prompt, Face secretly takes meds for bipolar disorder. But for whatever reason, Face is no longer on his meds. Then the manic behavior starts, from getting into a mess of fights to needing to have tons of sex with strangers. Then when the emotional roller coaster stuff starts, Face begins cutting himself during the darkest times. His teammates notice, and try to help but Face is stubborn and refuses help, heavily in denial.
Additional Notes: Title taken from James Clarence Mangan's poem, "Nameless One".
His next leave, he finds a psychiatrist two hours away and makes an appointment under a false name. They have psychiatrists on camp, but all of them would have to report him to his commander if they even got a whiff of something bad going down (and there is a lot of bad in whatever this is, he thinks), so screw that.
The bad spell had mostly dissipated, but he feels antsy and jittery and wants to prowl around the tiny room stuffed with bookshelves and generated clutter of Dr. Mahtra’s office. Instead he forces himself to sit and wait for her to come in and reminds himself to answer all her questions honestly. He’s almost forgotten what the truth sounds like; it takes practice to remember how to say it again.
She’s not really what he was expecting; she’s cold and refuses to look up from her little notepad, which he thought he would appreciate until she starts saying “Bipolar I” and “mania” and “life turned upside down”, and okay, she may not actually have said that last one out loud, but she might as well have, and he wishes she would just look at him for once.
“Excuse me?” he chokes out, because he always called them his “spells” and now they’re “episodes” and pretty soon his whole life is going to be a soap opera.
She glances up and her face softens, like she finally noticed that there’s a real, live, currently freaking out human being in front of her.
“It’s manageable,” she says, slipping him a prescription. “Lithium will put a ceiling, so you never feel too good. You do need to start taking medication immediately though. Because you’re so young, it’s just going to get worse if you leave it untreated.”
She reels off some other things, and the entire time he stares at the little slip of paper, he’s just thinking of all the reasons why he can’t take it.
Weight gain—he can’t. His body gets him half the stuff on camp that Hannibal needs, how is he supposed to get it if he’s some fat blob?
Hand tremors—a marksman sniper with hand tremors, right, that’ll work.
Mind fog—because Hannibal’s plans weren’t complicated enough already.
He thanks her and stumbles out, making his way to the car and sitting there for a long time staring at the cement wall of the non-descript building. The prescription he carefully tears up into tiny little pieces and lets them flutter out the window as he drives down the road.
There’s a bookstore, and he stops because contrary to popular opinion on base, he can read, thank you very much. He finds the self-help section, feeling out of place and embarrassed like he hasn’t for a very long time. There’s a row of books on bipolar, all in CAPITAL LETTERS like they want the whole world to see that you’re buying this and he fights down a ridiculous impulse to tell them to shush, other people will hear them. He shakes the thought free, grabs a few of them, and settles into a chair shoved into a forgotten corner of the store.
After two hours, he throws the last one down. From what he skimmed, they all said the same things, nothing that could help. Change your diet, which was impossible unless the mess suddenly decided to start serving healthy fare instead of their usual slop; keep to a routine, which he was, kind of, except for those times he randomly got called out to a mission or Hannibal needed him for something, which was pretty much ninety percent of the time; get a full night’s sleep, yeah, good luck with that one in the Army Rangers, buddy.
In none of them does he find a guide to how to hide a serious mental illness from his superiors and not get shot because he was following the pretty butterflies into a combat zone. He should really write to the authors about that.
He orders a double-espresso drink from the coffee shop at the front of the bookstore; the books all told him that he should avoid caffeine, but fuck that. Something’s got to make this day a little bit better and if the barista won’t respond to his charms, at least espresso has never turned him down.
It occurs to him as he’s sipping at his drink and driving back to base, part of his brain already working on an excuse if the guys ask him where he was (a grin and a wink is more effective than any cover story he’s come up with), that he’s going about this entirely wrong. He’s Face. He’s the consummate con artist. He can sweet-talk his way into any locked room and come out as cool as ice in the middle of the fucking Sahara. If he can’t manage to con a doctor into giving him a few good drugs, then he might as well retire.
He had written some of the drugs they had talked about in the books on a scrap of paper—lithium was out, because there was no way he could get that without someone raising eyebrows, and the blood tests alone would catch him out, but there were some others.
This could work, he tells himself. He would make it work.
