Addicted To Love

Posted on 21 Feb 2015 @ 5:59pm by Petty Officer 3rd Class Ellsworth Hudson & Lieutenant Prudence Devin Ph.D.

2,898 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Episode 08 - NIMBUS
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 3, Counselor's Office
Timeline: MD -03: 1400 hrs

[ ON ]

Ellsworth poured into the counselor's office without much invitation and began speaking immediately, pacing the floor while wringing his hands. "Pru, I don't know what to do. I just don't know what to do. I want to airlock myself, it's so bad. I don't know what I've done. I'm flipping out. It's just crazy, everything's gotten out of control. I've gotten out of control, and I can't stop myself. He just drives me insane, every time he looks at me or touches me, I just lose myself... But then, when Oren smiles and his eyes light up..." He stopped and turned to look at her, wide-eyed with revelation. "Oh my Goddess, I'm a horrible person." His voice raised an octave or two, hysterical. "I'm a horrible person! I'm... I'm a horrible person, Pru! What kind of man am I?"

Prudence stood the moment he entered and watched him rant. She frowned and walked to him, with determination, taking a firm hold of his shoulder. "Ellsworth, calm down," she said, meeting his eyes. "Look at me and breathe, slowly." She didn't quite want to cross the line and slap him out of it; somehow the Victorian way of dealing with a hysteric woman wouldn't be appreciated. She touched his cheek, to make him watch her face as she spoke, calmly and firmly, more an order than a suggestion. "You need to calm down your breathing, Ellsworth. Then we can talk. Easy now...easy."

At first, the young Betazoid just watched her with rapid eye movement. The room was thick with anxiety and panic, emotions thrown off the Betazoid in nauseating waves. But eventually he settled down a little bit and regained control of his breathing, though he still shook his head and mumbled. "I'm a horrible person. You don't understand. You can't know. You don't know. You don't know what it's like when I touch him." His face twisted up pitifully as he struggled to hold back tears. "He never should have come back. I was supposed to be happy."

A long plaintive whimper heralded the breaking of the dam, and he slumped down into the couch with his head in his hands, crying.

She moved to sit next to him, her hand on his back. "Come now, that is no way to go about this," she said firmly, patting his back for a moment. "Be a good lad and sit back. And tell me, properly..." she stood and moved to get him a glass of water, sitting down with him again. "Have a few sips and start from the beginning. I won't know until you tell me, Ells."

He took the glass and drank from it, cutting his eyes to look at her as he did so. He hated Betazoid counselors, but for the first time he wished she was one. How did you explain the intensity of a telepathic bond to a human, who'd never experienced it? She was probably trained to understand, but training and experiencing were two different things. With a sigh, he closed his eyes to shut out all the distractions of visual stimuli and reached back to the beginning.

"I met a man named K'os, a half-Vulcan, half-Human hybrid with touch telepathy so strong that he was afraid to touch people sometimes." Ellsworth smiled instinctively. "We fell in love and spent time together and our minds melded. I could withstand his touch, and it was perfect. Like feeling every single raw emotion, all that Vulcan passion... He was a little unstable, but so am I." He opened his eyes and looked at her, frowning. "And then he left me without a word. He was just gone. And I tried to act like I hadn't called him imzadi and tried to act like I hadn't found myself in him and tried to act like he didn't set every nerve in my body on fire with just the touch of his hand."

Prudence watched him, her eyes serious as she listened to him talk, explain it. Because truth was, she was slowly starting to see the whole picture of the man beside her.

"So I cried a little bit, and I just...pushed him down and away. I met another man, and I fell in love with him...I think." He frowned, shaking his head. He did love Oren, so much. But it was so different from K'os that it made him pause and reflect on whether or not it was something else he felt for the El Aurian. "But now K'os is back, transferred back on the ship. I tried to avoid him, and he tried to avoid me. But we saw each other; we bonded again. There's a terrible thing inside him, but..." His eyes squinted and grew wet again, so he shut them tight. "He drives me crazy, Pru. Literally insane. I feel like nothin' I do is gonna be right."

Prudence nodded weakly, to show she had listened to all he had said. "Ellsworth, maybe what you need to do is to take a step back from the situation. To make your feeling clear. You had a bond, but just because K'os is back does not mean things should fall back the way you were. There is no right or wrong actions here, but you owe it to them all to be sure before a decision is make. And honest about it to those it affects," she gave him a gentle, reassuring smile. "Does that make sense to you?"

Ellsworth blew a puff of air through his lips, like she'd just asked him to move a planet. "You just... I don't even..." He chuffed and threw his hands up in the air, frustrated with himself and the conversation. "I can't take a step back. Like, it's impossible. I don't know if we were ever supposed to touch. I think... I don't know, I thought I was doing okay but now he's back and it's like... It's like an addiction, Pru. A real addiction. It's literally all I ever think about now. Even right now. Do you know where he is? Deck 6, Section 27-Alpha, Upper Level of Main Engineering. Do you know what he's doing?" Ellsworth closed his eyes for a minute then opened them, looking a little confused. "Checking the safety locks on the isomagnetic EPS conduits in the plasma distribution manifold, whatever the hell that means. And now he knows that I know, we can feel each other."

Prudence watched him with a frown, touching his arm before standing. She went over to the replicator, using her access codes. She was a psychiatrist. She could administer medication. This was a mild sedative as well as a blocker of empathic and telepathic abilities. Wouldn't last long, not with the dose she ordered. Half an hour, maximum. She took the hypo and moved to him, sitting down. "Ellsworth, I have here something that will calm you and briefly block that. If you need to use it, please do. Nothing flagged up on your medical file as I got it, meaning you are not allergic to anything in it," she placed it down, within reach. "You need to focus away from him. Addictions can be fought. Not easily, not at all. But they can. I need you to focus away from him, because you know this isn't healthy. Entwining minds like that..." she stopped before touching his cheek, a gentle and even caring gesture. "Ellsworth, you are so strong. And I know this is a deep bond, a meld...but you can block it, even for a second. I know you can. Because you are strong. Because you are a survivor."

Ellsworth eyed the hypospray and spoke in a quiet voice, refusing to look at her. "I don't want to block it. I like it."

Prudence watched him for a long moment, raising an eyebrow. "Of course you do. That's why it is an addiction," she said bluntly, shaking her head. "You are an intelligent man. You know that this connection isn't healthy. Do you think you can work like this, because I do not. And I do not wish to remove you from duty if all you do is fixate on one man. Who, by the way, just left you without a word."

He stared hard at the hypospray and thought about being placed on leave. He knew he would just sit in his quarters and think about K'os, probably do dangerous things. His telepathic abilities were largely untapped and unexplored, so he wasn't even sure what he was capable of. He knew he could sense K'os wherever he was on the ship with just the slightest bit of concentration. Days left alone in his bunk with nothing better to do could lead places that were desirable in the short-term but damaging in the long-term. Worse, all his restraint would wear away eventually. He would forget about Oren, leave his quarters, and find him in the night, and that seemed like the most dangerous alternative of them all.

"I'm sure he had a good reason," Ellsworth said, though he felt the words were hollow. Why did he feel compelled to defend K'os? Wasn't he the one who was supposed to be furious with him? He reached for the hypospray quickly, impulsively, and depressed it to his carotid artery before he could change his mind. He closed his eyes, squeezing out a tear, and waited. It was so slow that he almost didn't notice, but when he did he found himself fighting against it. His mind lashed out in one terrible last ditch effort to grab the thin rope as it retreated, but it was gone. "It's gone."

She watched him closely before shaking her head. "Not for long and you are not getting more either. Ellsworth...you know it is not healthy, becoming obsessive," she said as she held his eyes. "I believe you have the control within you to look at it objectively. What of the connections you have built with other people here? Regardless whether or not he had a good reason, one does not simply leave another without a word. You deserve an explanation."

Ellsworth had a look that was a mixture of confusion and disgust. "Is this how you people feel all the time? It's so empty... I think I lost part of my insides." He looked down at his abdomen and felt around his own torso, as if some internal organs had fallen out on to the couch. "What am I supposed to do now? Think?"

"It would be a start," Prudence said before shaking her head. "Do not worry, it fades quickly. But I wanted you to have a moment of...clarity. Is it truly this man you want? And forsake others for?" she touched his hand, giving a physical touch as he could not feel a mental one.

"Yes," Ellsworth said, answering too quickly. By instinct he moved to reach out for K'os but his paracortex was missing. His face twisted in the shock and disbelief of a self-inflicted wound as he slowly shook his head. Eventually he just looked down at his hands in his lap, picking at a hangnail and doing nothing but making it worse. "Or no... I don't know. I don't want to hurt Oren. I love him, too. It's just different with him than with K'os. I want to keep both of them; I want them to be mine. I want to keep lying to Oren so that he doesn't find out about K'os, so he'll still spend time with me and say nice things to me and love me with his big dumb heart." He frowned and refused to look at Prudence. "I know, you don't have to say it. It's wrong."

She watched him, patiently, before nodding. She did not need to tell him. "You owe it to Oren to tell him. Because or else, you will hurt him deeper in the long run. I want you to go to sickbay, get examined to see how the...bond is affection you. I also want your assurance that you can keep it under control on duty. One slip up, and I will remove you from duty until control has been regained. Understood?"

Ellsworth looked at her quickly. "Sickbay? What? C'mon... It's, not that bad. I don't think. It's not a physical addiction... But, okay. I'll go." The words were quiet and uncertain; was it an addiction? Sometimes it felt like it. He'd been doing okay with K'os off the ship but now that he was back it did feel like an addiction, though he thought it was only because of their separation and inability to mate. "I don't know what to tell Oren, Pru. I can't work it out in my head. I don't think there's anything I can say that won't hurt him and I don't want to hurt him, so shouldn't I just say nothing at all? I could probably just see them separately... You know, like, maybe until I can transfer or Oren transfers or..."

Prudence let out a breath, shaking her head. "I will not justify that with an answer. It is your life, not mine," she said softly, watching him for a long moment. She knew he was struggling, but she couldn't help him because he was currently too busy finding solutions that suited him. Sometimes, you had to consider others more. "You know what you need to do. I can't spoon feed it to you either, Ellsworth."

Ellsworth looked particularly displeased by that answer. Life was always easier when someone smarter and more qualified was telling you what to do. You could argue with them and fight it and then just end up doing what they told you in the beginning. But if they didn't tell you what to do then you had to figure it out on your own, and that meant a lot of unpleasant thinking and soul-searching. He wasn't very good at either of them.

"What if Oren hates me, and he never wants to speak to me again? I can't take that. I'll kill myself," Ellsworth said, ever the dramatic persona but sounding a little more serious than usual. "And he has every right to hate me. I would hate me if I was him. And I don't see how to make him not hate me. I love him, but..." He cut his eyes off to the side. "I think I'm supposed to be with K'os. I never should have pursued Oren. Never. He's... I just shouldn't have. He is better than me." He looked up quickly and half-raised a hand, feeling like she was probably professionally obligated to argue with him on that point. "He is, Pru. Some people are just better than others."

Prudence watched her, something more calculated in her eyes the moment he mentioned ending his life. She had dealt with it for years, suicidal people...and now she was analysing Ellsworth, her brain risk assessing him. Because if she thought him truly serious, she would remove him from duty and put him on suicide watch.

But...she also recognised the angst in him. The youthful desperation. "Ellsworth," she finally said, after the silence stretched. "You need to seriously think about what you need. And I do not want you to physically harm yourself either. Saying you'll kill yourself is very serious. By all right, I should take you off duty. Now, I am sure that right in this moment, you said it in desperation without truly meaning it. But that is how serious this is. You need to talk to Oren and you need to go to sickbay. And just as importantly, I need to see you often. Twice a week, to talk so that you can feel more secure and stable with your emotions."

Ellsworth grumbled and sank into the couch; he'd folded so much into himself that it looked like his petite body was going to implode. As much as he liked Prudence, she was still a counselor, and, therefore, in some ways, the enemy. He didn't relish seeing her twice a week, but he would willingly see her every day if it meant somehow being relieved of the necessity of speaking to Oren. Oren, Oren, Oren. The name made him want to start crying all over again. He didn't deserve to be hurt by anyone, Ellsworth least of all. Is that how he should open the conversation? 'You don't deserve to be hurt, but sit down because I'm about to step all over your heart anyway.'

"Okay. Talk to Oren. Go to Sickbay. See you twice a week."

Prudence watched him, her features firm as she watched him. "And I will make sure you have gone to sickbay. And if I have to go and find Oren and ask him how he is, I will...miss one of our appointments and we two are going to have some words," she said before giving a nod, now that it was all said and done.

Ellsworth eyed her for a moment, feeling his latent rebelliousness bristle at the instructions. Eventually, he nodded. "Yes, ma'am."

[OFF]

Lt. Prudence Devin
Chief Counsellor
USS Galileo

&

PO3 Ellsworth Hudson
Quartermaster
USS Galileo
[ PNPC - Mott ]

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