NICKY AND SAM RETURNED TO THE LOFT TO FIND RHETT LEANED AGAINST THE SOFA. The moment the laughing pair stepped into the room, they knew something was off. The entire room was filled with a tension that easily pointed towards the man who was staring at them, his jaw set and eyes hard. Whatever mirth that had existed had been snuffed out in an instant, leaving nothing but a looming fear.

"Sam," Rhett said, his tone low and careful, jaw still set, "I need to talk to him. Alone."

Sam paused for a moment, gauging his reaction, but when he found nothing to be truly wary of, he nodded, squeezing Nicky's shoulder before leaving. Despite being welcomed by the two men with open arms, he knew when there was a line and would never dare to cross it.

With Sam gone, Nicky was left to stare at Rhett with a sinking feeling in his stomach, because Rhett had never looked at him like that before. Never in his life had he ever seen that look directed at him, and it made him sick.

His skin crawled and he shivered underneath his jacket, the hairs on the back of his neck and along his arms rising, his stomach churning and chest constricting. This was the epitome of fear, not because he feared for his life, but because he feared of what was directed at him.

It seemed like years until Rhett spoke, his whisper filling the large room. "I can't believe you."

Nicky's heart stopped, but he wasn't quite sure why. "What-what do you mean?"

That seemed to break the ice and Rhett surged forward, and Nicky jumped back, but he didn't think the man would ever hurt him. "How long?"

"How long, what?" Nicky asked, taking a tentative step forward to meet the man, because he knew he wouldn't hurt him.

Rhett grabbed Nicky by the shoulders, not harsh, but with enough force to show that Rhett was incredibly hurt. "You said you'd tell me everything. You told me you were okay, then I find this shit?"

He screamed the last word, shoving himself back—Nicky stayed in place, but Rhett skidded backwards, using Nicky to push himself, because he would never push him—turning around and running his hands through his hair, and Nicky could feel the anger radiating off of him.

He didn't say anything, partly because he didn't know what to say, but also because he knew that he had no right to speak. Not now, not when he had just been found out.

Rhett turned back around, rubbing his mouth, and Nicky's heart broke when he saw the tears pooling in his bright blue eyes. The blond shook his head, sighing and running his hand through his hair, his voice cracking as he spoke.

"I've been here for you for nine. Fucking. Years. Nine years, and I'm not mad about it! You know why? Because I love you! You're my best friend, you're more than my best friend, you're everything to me, and you couldn't trust me enough to let me know about this?"

He had started out softly, but by the end he was shouting, pointing sharply at Nicky's room, his words slurring and, as he had been talking, he had curled inwards, then thrown his arms out, all his movements were centered around every thought, emotion, and feeling he had.

Gone were his worries of saying the right thing. He couldn't do anything except feel.

"It's been years since Terran disappeared," Rhett seethed, "And all this time, I thought you were okay with it. All this time, but you were just fucking with me? I ask you all the time if you're okay, you didn't think maybe I actually meant it?"

"I know you meant it," Nicky sighed, unable to help himself from speaking, "That was kind of the problem."

That wasn't the right thing to say.

Rhett slammed his palm against the top of the couch, the sound reverberating through the room as he shook with a kind of rage that could only stem from the purest form of pain.

"Would you rather I didn't care?" he demanded, "I could leave right now, but I'm not, 'cause I know you can't take it, but you don't have the decency to think about me? Once? You ever thought about anyone else?"

"Of course I did!" Nicky cried, Rhett's words cutting him like a knife, because he had promised never to use that against him, he promised, "All I ever do is think about other people! I was thinking about you, about Terran, about everyone else!"

"No, you weren't!" Rhett scoffed, "You weren't. 'Cause if you were really thinking of me, you would've told me, but you were thinking of me 'cause you were worried about you. You want them back for you, not for them, if they're fine—and you know they're fine!—you wouldn't be looking for them!"

"I don't know that they're fine!" Nicky shouted, surging forward, and he knew he shouldn't be getting angry, but he was, "I don't know anything! And I didn't want you to worry about me!"

"Because you knew I wouldn't let you look, because this isn't healthy!" Rhett screamed, and that had Nicky floored, feeling like he'd been shot in the stomach.

"It's not, Nick," Rhett went on, shaking his head, his voice small, "Shit, I went into your room to bring your laundry, then I see that shit? It's terrifying. You've got security footage and pictures and—Nick, what you have on there is not okay. Those people, you've invaded their privacy, you can't do this shit. Think about the complex, would they want you doing that?"

"They'd want me to find them," he snapped, grasping desperately at the straws he never knew he had been holding.

"They'd want you to be smart!" Rhett cried, "They'd want you to be okay."

"Well, I'm not fucking okay!" Nicky screamed, his body convulsing with the weight of his words, "I need to find them!"

Rhett laughed a bitter, shocked laugh, shaking his head. "I get you miss them, I miss them, I get that they're your family, but Jesus Christ, look at yourself! Think for a second, if you had a patient like this, you know they're not okay! You're not sleeping, you're obsessed with this!

"Finding them isn't going to fix you. I know you think it will, but it's not! You need to let them go."

Nicky shook his head furiously, tears flowing down his cheeks. "I don't want to! They just left me!"

There it was. He never wanted to say it, never wanted to admit that, deep down, that's what he believed, but that was it. They had left him.

"They didn't leave, they disappeared," Rhett said, grabbing his shoulders, "And I know you have to find them, but you can't place everything you are on this. It's not right. You have to heal on your own."

That bothered Nicky in a way that made him feel like a petty teenager again, but the fact of the matter was that he should be saying that, Rhett shouldn't. "The shit—since when do you care?"

Rhett laughed, shaking his head. "Since when do I care? Since—Since when do I fucking care? Nicky, it's me! Holy shit, do you—Nicky! Do you hear yourself right now? 'Since when do I care?' Since when did you stop caring about me? Huh? Since when did you stop?"

Nicky grit his teeth, feeling a flare of indignation. "I never stopped—!"

"I don't see how lying your ass off to me every single day is caring, Nicholas, I really don't!" Rhett screamed, "Why would you hide this shit from me? I would have helped you!"

"You sure as hell don't sound like you would!" Nicky cried.

"Yeah," Rhett breathed, "Yeah, I don't want to help you, because this is unhealthy! I would've helped you look if you just told me you weren't over them being gone, we could've worked through this, but you didn't tell me, and I sure as hell don't want to help you because you lied!"

"What do you want me to say?" he demanded, "It's not like I liked doing it, but I had to!"

"How did you have to?" Rhett countered, "Look me in the eyes and give me one good reason why you couldn't just tell me that you were hurting. You told me over and over again that you were over it, but you were lying to my face. How is that okay?"

"Because you were gonna just freak out about it, like you are right now," Nicky pointed out, sighing heavily.

That only made Rhett more upset and he raising his hand, clenching his fist and shaking his head. "God! For a genius, you really don't get it, do you? I wouldn't be mad if you just talked to me! You preach about communication and how other people can't cure your depression, but you don't listen to yourself—do you even believe what you're saying?"

"Hey!" Nicky snapped, shocking Rhett into silence, "I've worked too hard for you to talk shit about my career, okay? You know that."

"You're right," Rhett said, nodding roughly, "I do know that. You know why? Because I've known you for nine years! Nine years, you promised never to lie to me if I never lied to you, and I never did! Because I trusted you—you're a psychologist, you know why this hurt me!"

"But you know why I didn't tell you!" Nicky countered, "I get why you're hurt, I lied, I get it, but I had a good reason."

"No, you didn't!" Rhett screamed, "Get it through your head, you didn't! Obsessing yourself sick over these people is not a good reason. Even people who lost their families, they search forever, but they try to move on. The ones that obsess over it to the point where their health is depleting and they can't think of anything else? They've crossed a line from understandable to unhealthy."

"How is this unhealthy?" Nicky demanded, grasping at the last straws he had, hoping and praying that Rhett wouldn't be able to answer him.

The blond took a deep breath. "I spent months obsessing over trying to get home, and at first it made sense to you. Then you found out that I wanted to go home so I could save Steve, 'cause I heard what happened, I was obsessed with keeping everyone alive, and it was the only thing that was keeping me going and okay. You said that it wasn't healthy to base my entire existence on this one singular thing, I needed to heal on my own and saving people wasn't going to fix me. It's like relying on a person to always be there for you. The minute they're not, you explode, because you've warped your mind into thinking that they're the only thing that's keeping you alive. It's fucked up, Nicky!"

"Why are you yelling at me if you're worried about me?" Nicky shouted, wiping furiously at his cheeks, "If you actually cared, you wouldn't be yelling at me!"

"If you actually cared, you wouldn't have lied to me!" Rhett countered, "I've done everything for you, and all I fucking asked was that you tell me if you need help. That's all I've ever asked, but you couldn't even do that! And now look at you. That's why I'm fucking pissed."

Nicky bit his lip, his shoulders shaking as he continued to cry. He understood why Rhett was upset, he truly understood, but he hated it. He hated it with every fiber of his being, because he wanted Terran back. He had tried to convince himself that he didn't want the rest of the complex back, but he did. He wanted everyone back, he needed it.

He was nothing without other people.

His entire person was just bits of pieces of the people around him, the complex made him who he was, Terran made him who he was. If it wasn't for Terran, he would be unrecognizable. He needed him back, he didn't feel whole without him.

His body shook furiously as the thought rose to his mind, because there it was. There was the proof that this wasn't okay, that this wasn't healthy, but if he was being completely honest, he didn't care anymore. He just wanted to be okay.

Nicky's body wracked with sobs so hard that his knees buckled and he expected to fall to the ground on his own, but then there was Rhett, holding him to his chest, and he cried harder because only he could hurt the one person who, no matter how furious he was, would still be there to catch him.

"I'm sorry," Nicky breathed through gritted teeth, gripping his shirt, "Please don't leave."

"I'm not gonna leave, you dumbass," Rhett sighed, but he was still crying, resting his chin against the top of Nicky's head, "I told you I wasn't gonna leave."

Nicky cried, fisting his hands in Rhett's shirt as he moved them to sit on the floor of the loft they had lived in for so long that he knew nothing else, his entire body shaking as everything began to surface, the full truth finally coming out.

It wasn't like how he told Harry. With Harry, everything was coming out, but there was only history for one of them. With Rhett, there was history for both. Nicky often forgot—always forgot—that Rhett had known them too. That Rhett had loved them almost as much as he did. He always forgot that Rhett missed them too.

"I just want them back," Nicky cried, "It hurts."

"I know," Rhett whispered, and of course he knew; all the family and friends he had ever had died long before he turned twenty-three. Decades before. "I know. I'm sorry."

Gone was the need to say the right thing. Rhett just wanted him to know he felt.

"I just wanna be okay," he went on, shaking, "I hate it so much, I need them here."

"No, you don't," Rhett whispered, "You need to be okay for them. You need to be so okay that when we find them, you don't need them to fix you, because they can't. Just be okay for you."

"I'm nothing without anyone," he sobbed, "I don't know anything about myself, because I'm not anyone."

Rhett shushed him softly, rubbing his back. "You'll figure it out. You always do. And I'll help you. I can't fix you, but I can help. I promise, it'll get better."

Nicky sniffed, and it took him a few minutes before he was finally able to get the words out. "I'm sorry for lying to you."

Rhett sighed softly, kissing the top of his head. "We're okay." He sighed again, rubbing his back.

"You're gonna be okay."

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Something I had wanted to solidify throughout the entire chapter was that no matter how angry Rhett was, Nicky knew the man would never hurt him, I wanted to make it incredibly clear of the trust and love the two held that still had power over even the most painful feelings.

Also, this was more dialogue heavy, but I think that's just what happens in scenes where it's confrontational and emotion based, but doesn't leave much room for reactions aside from speaking, if that makes sense?

That's all I really have to say, this is probably a catalyst point, though maybe not the climax? But it's a catalyst.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed!