"No, Lucy," Shaun spat. "I know that I'm complaining, but—"

"But what, Shaun? You're the one who wanted to take him off medications."

"He was a bloody zombie! I had to walk into the bathroom with him!"

"You do that now anyway. Where is he?"

"He's asleep. And at least now I can watch him from the bedroom, and not have to stand right beside him! That medication bloody well should've just killed him."

"Then what are you—"

"Look, I'm just complaining. Don't get your knickers in a twist. We are healing Desmond my way, and that's final."

"My way was more fun," Rebecca said, her head appearing in the small video window next to Lucy's.

Shaun rubbed his eyes. "Look, I'm going to keep him inside and around modern technology. Going outside might prove to be too much stimulation for him."

"Shaun," Lucy said, her voice reprimanding, "Desmond can handle—"

"This is not Desmond!" he roared, standing and forcing the laptop screen back to hunch over it. "This is the shell of that man that we forced to undergo hell for our own selfish gains! He's a bloody nutter thanks to us! I can't leave the man alone for more than an hour before he has a complete mental breakdown! He's nothing more than a child, Lucy! He's bloody terrified of this shit! I don't know how, but he broke! He's broken! Medications can't help him, and neither can a psychologist, no matter what you say! You haven't been living with the man for the past four years!"

"Then what are you suggesting we do?" she replied in a calm voice.

"I'm suggesting you get your asses over here and help me—"

"I'm sorry."

He wheeled around to see Desmond standing in the doorway, one hand fisted over his heart and tears welling up. It was quiet enough no one normal would have heard it, but he had gotten good over the past four years to pick up any little noise he could've made. Shaun sighed, exasperated, and looked at the man.

"I'm sorry."

Shaun motioned him over, and he scrambled over, wrapping his arms around Shaun's chest and pressing against him.

"I'm sorry."

Shaun shushed him, wrapping one arm around his shoulders and the other combing through Desmond's shaggy hair.

"There's no reason for you to be sorry, Desmond. This isn't your fault."

He lifted his foot up behind him and shut the laptop lid, despite Lucy's and Rebecca's protests, and shushed Desmond again. It wasn't fair that they had dumped Desmond on him to watch over after the world was saved and they put him through more of the Animus to find the other Pieces of Eden. They had completely and thoroughly broken the man, and now they—Desmond—were suffering the consequences. It wasn't Desmond that he was holding, but a demented individual prone to seeing things that weren't actually there. It was a terrified child he held in his arms, one that was constantly plagued by nightmares and night terrors because of the foolish decisions the adults made.

The man was quiet, flighty, and always near him. He was prone to crying spells, to fits of terror, and it was all their fault. The first two years they had kept him on different drugs, different shrinks, and different methods of healing, and eventually, Shaun got fed up with it, calling him off all the medications, cancelling the appointment with the psychologist, and deciding he would fix Desmond the old-fashioned way: by common sense.

He kept the poor man in the high-rise apartment in Manhattan. The background noise of the city he had lived in seemed to register somewhere inside him, and he had started sleeping more peacefully because of that. He had moved in all of his things from Britain and sent a nurse out to do the shopping. At first, she had been confused, but when she had seen just how messed-up Desmond had been, she stopped trying to figure things out, content with the pay from the Order and being given an easy job. He didn't let him outside, knowing that all the people and all the light would trigger some sort of breakdown, the stimulation too much for him to handle at that moment, but he was getting better.

He would find Desmond reading books aloud to himself. It started out as children's books, simple language almost too hard for him to understand. After six months, he had moved up to teen books and anything not-too-complex (he had eaten up the Twilight series because of its third-grade language and simple plotline, up until the forth book, which Shaun refused to let him read, all ready disgusted that the books were even in his house). He was beginning to find the man's voice a comfort, compared to before where all he wanted Desmond to do was shut up.

Then came the computer games and movies. He bought the Freddie Fish and Putt-Putt games. The Vegetales' movies were a hit, and so was any of the decillion or so no-plot B-rated 1980s movies that America had seemed to pump out like breeding rabbits during that time period. The man was a trundle of contradictions, but as long as he was recovering, Shaun would be okay. Once the man got frustrated, he would turn off whatever he was doing and tell him to come back to it. (He had all ready lost one computer to Altair when he couldn't figure out how to solve the puzzle in the Freddie Fish game.)

"Whatever happened to your My Side of the Mountain book?" Shaun mumbled.

"I'm done," came the too-soft, too-cautious, too-non-Desmond response.

"And when did this happen?"

"Last night."

He hummed. He'd have to have the nurse go shopping, again, for more books. This was getting tiring. They had an entire library building up in the tiny apartment, books always coming and going, a small stash of books Desmond had thoroughly enjoyed on a set of shelves in Shaun's office space. He wondered if he could amuse him with those until the nurse came tomorrow.

"How about we pick out a book from my office, hm?"

Desmond perked up a little bit, and Shaun couldn't help but smile. Desmond let go of him, reaching down and twining their fingers together as they walked the short distance to the office. As the broken man sat down in the spinning office chair, Shaun browsed the shelves of old books he had.

"I had a dream last night."

Shaun paused, turning to look at him. Dreams were rare in Desmond's slumber, and any that he had were worth listening to, memories of happier days that floated in from his past. "Is that so?"

Desmond nodded and still just as quiet, "You were in it."

"Really now? What happened?"

"We were in a big room, filled with mold and giant stone people frozen among a bunch of glowing things."

Monteriggioni, Shaun surmised.

"And I was sitting on a bit red chair, and you came over with a can of soup."

"Did I now?" He had done that before. His cheeks flushed slightly as he remembered what happened after he brought him food.

"And you sat there and talked with me about lots of things, and once I was done eating, you kissed me."

"I kiss you all the time, Desmond—"

"On the cheek or on the head. This time you kissed me on the lips."

"I've done that before, too," Shaun said, hoping he hadn't remembered all of it.

"No, you kissed me," Desmond insisted, his brow furrowing as he twisted in the spinning chair. "You kissed me."

"I have done that," Shaun said.

"No!" Desmond shouted, and Shaun jumped from the volume behind it. He hadn't heard Desmond that loud in four years.

Shaun walked over and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Desmond…"

"Like this!"

That was all the warning he got before Desmond's lips were on his again, warm and full and so damn familiar, and he found himself melting into the kiss, quickly overtaking Desmond to push his tongue into his mouth. It felt so wrong to be kissing him because this wasn't the man he had fallen in love with, but the recovering man he was in charge of. He grabbed Desmond's chin and forced it back a little bit to give him a better angle, and he felt Desmond's fingers curl at the back of his neck. When he finally pulled away, flushed and out of breath, Desmond looked sheepish.

"Like that," the man mumbled, and Shaun immediately felt guilty.

"I'm—"

"And I really liked that dream. It seemed so familiar."

Shaun looked at him, only to find that Desmond wouldn't meet his eyes, and he smiled softly, tucking a finger under his chin and guiding those embarrassed hazel eyes back to meet his gaze.

"Did you really like it, Desmond?"

Desmond nodded minutely, and Shaun gave him another kiss, gentle and caring. He could feel the man smile against his lips, and he thought, briefly, that perhaps that all of this struggle would be worth it in the end. He pulled back and cupped his cheek before turning to the shelves of books. After just a few seconds, he pulled an old, brown book out and turned to hand it to him. Desmond took it cautiously.

"I'll help you read this book," Shaun said, "since the nurse won't be here till tomorrow."

Desmond nodded.

"But you must be gentle with it. It's one-hundred and fifty years old."

Desmond's eyes widened. "What is it?"

"It's an extremely old book on physiology. I think you may enjoy it. It has small words and lots of interesting things inside."

Desmond nodded. "Okay."

Shaun took his hand and led him out to the couch. They curled up, a blanket across their laps as he listened to Desmond read the old college textbook. He explained what some of the things meant, and he laughed when Desmond perked up at the "Whiskey drank freely is also an excellent remedy" for the antidote for a snakebite.

There were occasional kisses scattered throughout the text, as if the man couldn't get enough of that memory, and Shaun certainly wasn't going to complain, because he had missed his lover. Sure it felt wrong to be kissing such a broken man, but this Desmond was still his old Desmond. This Desmond was his Desmond, and he wouldn't trade the world for it.

Okay, okay. I know that I just said I wasn't writing anything else, but as I was browsing through my documents to find something to cheer me up, I found this... I don't even know when I wrote it.