tw: aftermath of assault, aftermath of sexual assault, medication mention, hospitalization mention.
notes: approximately 4 years in, following scenes that do not yet exist, so let's call it a prologue of sorts
✥ ✥ ✥
Leo’s eyes are filled with unshed tears, but his expression is, at this point, more exhausted than anything else. He sits on the closed toilet seat, the cup of water in his hand shaking as he brings it to his lips. Luke, minutes earlier, collapsed to his knees in front of him, and now watches his chest rise and fall with every breath. He can’t be sick, because Leo is sitting on the toilet, but, god, he needs to be.
After a mostly failed attempt to drink, Leo sets the cup on the counter and lets his hands fall onto his thighs. Everything moves in slow motion; the car ride home, the hospital, the phone call before that. Nothing feels right. Until Luke covers Leo’s hands with his.
“I thought I lost you.”
The words tumble out of him, and Leo, expression tight, nods once, swallowing. His eyes close as he fights to keep control of himself. He nods again, as Luke lifts himself, pressing his lips to Leo’s forehead.
“I can smell him,” Leo whispers, shaking. “His c–” Luke can feel Leo’s hands clutching at the back of his shirt. Can feel every tremor that runs through him. “His cologne,” Leo says. “His…” He starts shaking in earnest. “His s-s-sweat,” he continues.
Luke nods.
The drugs will wear off in a few hours, the nurse had said, as Luke signed his name over and over and over again. He may be disoriented, nauseous. He’ll be exhausted for the next few days at least. Make sure he rests.
“Did they say if I’m a-allowed to sh-shower?” Leo asks, as Luke pulls back enough to see his face.
Luke nods, his words catching in his throat. Letting Leo out of his sight right now, for even the time it would take for him to run the water, is unfathomable.
He takes a breath. “We just need to be careful,” he says softly. As Leo breaks contact to pull off the oversized t-shirt, Luke urges, “Your shoulder–”
He was found tied to a pipe in one of the vacant buildings downtown. We estimate he’d been there for two or three days, but he doesn’t have a good grasp on how long it was. We’ll know more once we review the security footage.
The image that the officer showed him is burned into Luke’s memory. It will live there for as long as Luke lives, a suspended moment in time that he will never be able to undo.
At the same time, Leo winces, his opposite hand clutching the damaged muscle in his shoulder.
Luke is quite sure that he’s seconds away from the edge, and grabs the cup to distract himself. If he falls apart here, Leo will be on his own. He takes a breath and gulps down Leo’s water, then refills it from the sink.
“Just take it slow, okay?” he says, each word as casual as he can make them, his tone at odds with the war inside of him. He offers Leo some approximation of a smile and helps pull the sleeves out so that Leo can slide his arms through them. He lifts Leo’s shirt gently over his head, careful of his back, where the injuries lie deep below his skin, his shoulder, the joint pulverized by the position that he was kept, his neck, covered in finger-shaped bruises. He tries not to look too closely, but instead, focuses on Leo’s eyes. I thought I lost you, he thinks, over and over.
“Can you stand?” Luke asks, drowning out the noise inside his head as much as he can. Leo tries. He clutches Luke’s outstretched hand weakly while the other works to loosen, and eventually lower, his pants. There’s blood on them, too, and a wave of rage rolls through Luke, as violent as the moment the police had called him.
“You can’t soak,” Luke says gently, as he helps Leo lower himself into the tub. He runs the warm water over Leo’s hair, careful of the injuries that lie there, too. “But we will get him off of you.”
Leo nods. He’s the saddest version of Leo that Luke can remember seeing, even with the medicine tempering his reactions. “Okay,” Leo whispers, and lets his eyes close.
Luke works in silence, starting first with Leo’s hair. They tried to clean him up at the hospital, but didn’t get far. Luke works his fingers through the slightly outgrown waves, gentle in his movements, and so completely, relentlessly aware of the faint tremors that steadily roll through Leo.
With Leo’s back, Luke lightens his touch, just ghosting over the skin there with water and soap. At the first contact, Leo’s muscles tighten, his body jerking for a split second as he wraps his arms tighter around his knees. Luke watches all of this helplessly. He whispers a reminder for Leo to let him know if it hurts, but he knows Leo won’t.
He cleans Leo everywhere he can reach, everywhere Leo will allow him to clean him, as Leo adjusts his positioning to give him access to his body. Luke aims for a sort of clinical detachment as he rinses days of filth off of him, but he fails miserably. Every flinch ignites a fire inside of him. Every whimper, every tear that eventually rolls down Leo’s cheeks. With the most gentle touch Luke is capable of, he cleans the final remnants of crusted blood, the sweat, and everything else from Leo's body, and the fire inside of him builds and builds and builds and builds.
When it’s done, or as done as it can be for the time being, Leo is half-lifted out of the tub, wrapped in a towel, and practically carried back to his bedroom. He takes the medicine that Luke hands him without a word. Then, in a broken, devastating moment, Leo whispers, “Did they catch him?”
Luke pulls the blanket up to his shoulders and sits on the edge of the bed. “Not yet,” he replies. But they will. It’s only a matter of time. Leo nods, his eyes red and fighting to stay open, fighting against the drugs that will soon pull him under. He rolls to his side, and, as Luke runs his hands through his drying hair, he finally lets his eyes slide shut. Exhaustion runs through every line of his body, but as the minutes pass, as his breathing evens out, as the tremors recede, the tension begins to loosen in Leo’s body.
Luke turns off the light and eases himself down next to Leo. “I’ve got you,” Luke whispers, and wraps his arms around Leo, the same as he’s done every single night, with the exception of the last three, for the past year. “I’ve got you,” he says again, as he closes his eyes.
He doesn’t sleep that night, and instead, can think only of Leo, and his world fractured once more by Parker Destin.
It's May Miniseries time!! Presenting CATEGORY IS...! We're in a moment of the Academy Awards introducing new categories for the first time in many years, and we'll be spending the whole month discussing the categories already announced and a few we think should be! First up: Best Casting! This episode, we discuss the Oscar's newest category and how we felt about the nominees for 2025, how we would like to see the category evolve in the years to come, what shortlisted films we think might have deserved the nomination, and we close the episode with the most important part: we name 10 films in movie history that we would retroactively award with a Casting Oscar.
The Academy Award for Best Casting
THR's Casting Society Poll for What Would Have Won
