He'll Make You See There's Something You'd Die For (Part 2 of 3)

Posted on 13 Mar 2015 @ 5:10pm by Ensign K'os Beaumont & Commander Andreus Kohl

2,278 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Episode 08 - NIMBUS
Location: USS Nautilus - Deck 2, Executive Officer's Quarters / USS Galileo - Deck 6, Compartment 1004 EN
Timeline: MD -03 - 2259 hours

Previously on "He'll Make You See There's Something You'd Die For"...

K'os' head still remained cradled above his folded arms, and he never broke eye contact. He tried to open his mouth to say something else, but hesitated. If K'os was going to ask for help from anyone, this was the time and the person to ask but he he found the words had frozen in his mouth. He took a deep breath, clearing his mind; gently pushing doubt and fear of judgement away. "Andreus, you were a nurse. Can--Do you know what an addiction feels like? Like a drug...addiction, I guess."

"As a nurse, I can recite the symptoms associated with addiction," Kohl said. The answer came easily from him. Kohl liked to be thought of as knowledgeable, and it felt good to help friends find what they needed. But it wasn't the truthiest of answers.

Kohl did it again. He looked off into the distance. Only now did he regret pulling the display so close to his face, but he made no effort to move it. Rather, he turned his gaze over the edge of the screen again, and he tapped his teeth together. He didn't want to see K'os' reaction to what he said next. At the same time, he needed to see it. "As Andreus," Kohl said, "I remember what addiction to chemical narcotics feels like, yes."

And now: the continuation...


[ON]

The hybrid lifted his head up. "Wait, what? You mean..." He was astonished when he heard the words, and almost asked him to repeat it. K'os had never thought he'd ever find someone that might understand what he was going through and it made him reach out and grasp both sides of the monitor as if Kohl would suddenly leave; though it was more to steady his shaking hands. If he were there with Kohl he'd have grabbed him by the shoulders until he had answered all the questions that now swirl around in his head.

His face underwent a mixture of expressions as he did his best to settle the runaway train of emotions and questions in his head. "Tell me." He asked in a small voice. "Did it feel --" K'os stopped to take another deep breath, but his chest rose and fell irregularly while he also worked on calming his beating heart. -- "Did it ever reach a point where all you could think about was what it felt like when you were under it's influence?" K'os licked his lips, not out of nervousness but out of anticipation for the answers. "Did you ever feel like your legs wouldn't stop moving or feeling itchy like insects crawling over you until you had satisfied...that urge?"

At first, Kohl had answered with a series of quick nods, and then he said, "Yes. Yes, it felt like that in the beginning. It was the only thing I could think about... After that, I didn't need to think about it anymore. I was always taking stimulants. Always. Couldn't even sleep without them. If circumstances meant I had to do without, well, that's when it felt like I was dying. I literally thought I was dying one time. I thought I could feel my organs failing; I thought my consciousness was escaping from me. I felt like I was losing myself."

"Losing myself..." K'os echoed back as if testing the words. He took his shaking hands off the monitor and laid them flat on the coffee table. He broke eye contact for the first time to look down at his hands but found it too difficult to think without looking back at Kohl. His head stayed a little tilted downward as he brought his eyes back to the monitor. "I think that's happening to me -- or is happening to me. And not just me, Ellsworth too. It's the link, you see? When we meld together it floods our brains with all sorts of chemicals and feelings that give me pleasure beyond description. Each time is more intense and when it becomes too normal or dull we push the limit for more."

On the other side of the LCARS screen, Kohl nodded to demonstrate he was listening. After a certain point, though, he was miming the movement without really meaning it. He lost track of what K'os was saying, after he mentioned Ellsworth. Was that Ellsworth, the Venetian Noble from the masquerade ball? Ellsworth, who was probably planning an elaborate sex date with Kohl? Ellsworth Hudson? Kohl could only push such thoughts from his mind, because he could see how much K'os needed to get this admission out of his own mind, his own body.

K'os was starting to get antsy as if his sitting position that normally was comfortable suddenly became too confining. He uncrossed his legs and stretched them out under the coffee table. They shook like he'd had too much caffeine. "When I left the ship it was awful, Andreus. You described it like dying?" K'os nodded his head slowly, "I think it felt like that too. My body shook for days. I would vomit up anything I ate. My body ached so badly sometimes all I could do was lie there imagining the pain lasting forever. And ooh I was so angry." K'os' eyes took on a distant look as his last words brought forth a memory cascade in his mind that took his breath away in a small gasp. In a small voice he continued, "I was very angry, Andreus." K'os took another deep breath, lifting his head a little higher. "But I started getting better. After awhile the pain stopped and the fever went away. I didn't shake as hard or as frequently. I could function on my own again."

K'os rubbed his hands over his face as if he could block his emotions physically before scratching his scalp like tiny needles pricked his skin before replacing his hands on the table. "The desire for the connection never went away though. I thought -- I think about it all the time. I thought distractions would work, and it does sometimes. I even tried transferring to the Nimitz but they prefer me here. Everytime I think I've run away from it, it's still there in the back of my mind. 'Just do it one more time. Just a few minutes.' And it repeats in my head over and over again till I feel like I'm crazy...so I gave in. My second night on the ship, I melded with Ellsworth again. I wasn't strong enough and I gave in." K'os' eyes remained fixed on the monitor, but they were a little glazed over as if lost in thought. "I need help, but I can't bring myself to seek it anymore and I don't know why. I can't rationalize why. Did you find a way to stop? Can it ever go away?"

Kohl stared back at K'os with a hunted look in his eyes. The kind of addiction K'os was talking about, it certainly had similarities to Kohl's addiction to stimulants, but the dynamics of K'os' addiction sounded far more complex. Thinking two steps ahead, Kohl didn't know if his own coping mechanisms would apply to K'os at all, and for a moment, he didn't even want to tell K'os what had happened, if it wasn't going to serve anything but revealing one of Kohl's darkest days. All the same, Kohl couldn't raise his walls now, not when K'os was reaching out. Kohl knew what it felt like to be in K'os position.

And so, Kohl answered the question. "The policies regarding narcotics are liberal back home. I probably wouldn't have stopped if I had stayed on Argelius. But my parents, when they found out... They were less forgiving," Kohl said, his timbre communicating the gravity of that situation. "They didn't... take the stimulants from me; they didn't tell me to stop. They knew how much my test scores would impact my application to Starfleet Academy. So I kept taking stimulants to maintain the balance between academic obligations, and my self-imposed social obligations. It was only after I finished my next set of exams, there was a natural break in my education, and my parents shipped me off-world."

"I was sent to a rehabilitation centre on some starbase," Kohl said, the details were fuzzy, because he frankly couldn't remember them now. The subject was still so raw, he began to slip back into nurse-talk, rather than his first hand experience. "I was forcibly given help by a team of medical professionals. They bombarded me with psychological and pharmacological treatment. Those prescriptions lead to some frightening behavioural side-effects, but I was under medical surveillance. I don't... totally understand how or why any of the treatments worked, but they were effective. I wasn't accepted to Starfleet Academy the first time after that, but when I was accepted, I made it through all four years without any stimulants. I don't... I don't think I relapsed until I went back for medical school..."

K'os listened intently as he was speaking, trying to sort out wisdom that could help him. The older man's words were both reassuring, but also frightening. His mind experienced a wide range of emotions as Kohl told part of his story and it showed on his face. There seemed to be no end to the mini expressions that K'os' face produced in such a short time. More than once, a flash of anger appeared, but the Vulcan hybrid was quicker in dealing with that emotion than the others. Memories of the medication trials and psychological testing as a teenager came back vividly in his mind. Normally his tendency to mimic others behaviour and empathize with their situations was something he tried to do discreetly but there was something about the way Kohl looked at him through the monitor that made him feel as though K'os didn't have to hide anything again. If the man on the end of the transmission had the strength to be honest and open, K'os was determined to as well.

"When you relapsed...did you have to go away again?" K'os' voice was quiet but full of solicitude.

Shaking his head in reply, Kohl's movement was slow, like the mere telling of the story was exhausting. "No, my motivation to stop was fear of discovery," Kohl explained. "I thought I had invented a protocol to beat the medical examination, but I knew I couldn't keep a secret in the close quarters of a starship. Not indefinitely. I found help in an Argelian temple on Earth. It had to be off campus -- off my official Federation medical records."

"But you did it. You got help, and you did it." His grey-blue eyes took on a far away look as he processed that. It inspired hope, that he could get better. That all he had to do was ask for help. It wouldn't be easy. It would mean sacrificing a lot of things he desperately held onto and coveted. That realization brought a twinge of doubt that he dashed away, because asking for help also meant letting Ellsworth go. Holding on any longer was just enabling a dangerous game that threatened to take them both down. He lowered his head onto his folded arms and looked at Kohl sideways. He felt thankful that Kohl shared a private part of his life with him. Without having to say it, the gratitude showed on his expressive face.

"K'os, there's also the other thing," Kohl admitted. He shifted his posture, from where he was laying on the sofa. Kohl didn't hesitate, exactly, but his manner was disheartened by what his next admission might mean for the parallels between them. "Arguably, I only traded one addiction for another."

At first K'os had instinctively placed a couple fingers delicately on his lips. The memory that came to mind, was not his however, it was Ellsworth's and it didn't belong in his head. He thought Kohl's admission was going to be related and he even started to interrupt with a "Don't worry about Ell-- ."

Kohl was lifting a heavy mug from the carpet and he waved it in the screen's line of sight. He asked, "Have you ever seen me without a cup of tea in hand?"

"Oh." K'os banished the thought immediately, tucking it deep down until it was just a hazy afterthought. The gesture with the cup however made him throw his head back in a hearty laugh. "Your list of vices is endless, like your insistence on wearing short shorts." His dimpled grin was full of lightheartedness as he relished the much needed break from the maudlin -- yet necessary -- conversation.

A short and silent laugh escaped from Kohl's lips. "I don't have adequate words to tell you how much I hate wearing trousers," Kohl said. "Besides, you remember how warm I keep my quarters," Kohl added with a finality, as if that were all the reasons that mattered. Kohl laughed again, and then he mirrored an action K'os had taken earlier. He gripped the sides of his LCARS display device, and he stared in K'os' eyes until he could feel K'os staring right back.

"K'os, do you need me to be mother?" Kohl asked, twisting a phrase Stace had used with him more than once. "Do you need me to ask for help? For you?"


[OFF]

To Be Continued


Lieutenant Commander Andreus Kohl
Executive Officer
USS Nautilus

&

PO3 K'os Beaumont
Engineer's Mate
USS Galileo

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