Title: Love Until This Dream is Gone
Fandom: Code Black
Content notes: N/A
Fanmixer notes: This leans heavily on Jaymes Young because when I first found his music I associated it with the two dorks mentioned within. In fandom's past, I used to see fanmixes with ficlets like this. I hope it's okay. Just youtube links for now, sorry.
Summary: Love was something Mario never expected to find and of course it doesn't last.


ECHO - JASON WALKER | LINK
Sometimes when I close my eyes I pretend I'm alright
But it's never enough

Leaving wasn’t going to be enough. Not by a long shot. Not even though his grandma had been so proud of him for getting out and making something of himself. It wasn’t going to erase his past and the expectations. That Mario Savetti, that one from the wrong side of the tracks, with the tattoos, and the attitude and the bright mind and drive. Winkwink, nudgenudge. Nah, who was he kidding? Just a matter of time before he ends up right back here.


I FOUND - AMBER RUN | LINK
And I found love where it wasn't supposed to be
Right in front of me

This wasn’t supposed to happen. They weren’t supposed to end up here. If you’d asked either of them, this was the last thing that would’ve crossed either of their minds. And yet here they are. Mario sprawled across Angus’ bed, covers rucked down to his waist, and contemplating the warm body next to him. All that tension had turned into a friendship he never expected much less the rest of it. They weren’t supposed to work. They weren’t supposed to be here. Angus deserves so much better and Mario still doesn’t know what he sees in him.


DARK STAR - JAYMES YOUNG | LINK
But there's things about me that you just don't know
If I told you where I've been
Would you still call me baby?
And if I told you everything
Would you call me crazy?

They talk, really talk, about everything and Mario isn’t used to someone wanting to hear his side of the story, completely and utterly. He isn’t used to someone actually valuing his opinions as something to be trusted rather than used for ridicule. It makes him want to tell Angus things. Stuff he doesn’t tell anyone unless he absolutely has to. The heroin addiction’s easy enough to drop into a conversation and watch it explode the carefully constructed opinion people have of him in a certain direction. It’s everything else, his relationship with his dad, his fear of still ending up as a nothing, that’s harder to talk about. But looking into Angus’ eyes, falling asleep with his arm wrapped around him, waking up to him still there, still willing to try, makes his walls crumble.


I'LL BE GOOD - JAYMES YOUNG | LINK
With the warning to help me see myself clearer
I never meant to start a fire,
I never meant to make you bleed

Old habits are easy to fall back into. The insecurity about his place here among these people, among these doctors, with picket fence backgrounds and promising futures to look forward to. It makes his skin itch. It makes him want to bare all his rough edges and make them all bleed again. And it’s Angus that takes the brunt of it. A part of him, walled off and screaming behind glass, watches everything with dawning horror. The biting words, the fighting, it’s like the last year never happened. They’re right back where they started. Mario’s envious of his name, of his family, of the expectations, of everything laid out on a silver plater.

The devastating part is that it works. It makes them who they were at the beginning again and Mario doesn’t know how to reach out to fix it. He knows it’s his fault. He knows he’s the cause of it. He’s dying inside for Angus to be the better man because Mario will never be that man. There’s a selfish, malnourished, part of him that’ll always be seeking to hold onto everything it gets as tight as it can and the moment there’s a threat the defenses go up.


SET FIRE TO THE THIRD BARD - SNOW PATROL | LINK
I'm miles from where you are,
I lay down on the cold ground
I, I pray that something picks me up
And sets me down in your warm arms

And just like that it’s over. He knew it’d never last. It was too good to be true. Angus would never end up with someone like him. It wasn’t going to last. It was a dream. Just like everything else.

He still has being a doctor for what little that’s worth right now. It’s everything, right? It should be everything. Rorish gives him looks and pairs him with Angus more than either of them like. Mama pulls them both aside, separately, and together, tells them to sort their shit and fix it. He and Angus exchange looks and know that’s not happening.


AU REVOIR - ONEREPUBLIC | LINK
Today I'm not myself
And you, you're someone else
And all these rules don't fit
And all that starts can quit

Life doesn’t stand still. No matter how much it feels like it does. You’re all graduating and the thought isn’t as warming as it should be. Mario’s been numb for a long time now. Because it hadn’t let up. He and Angus had been assigned together for the rest of their residency it felt like. They’d developed a stilted but functional working relationship. Pair them with anyone else and they were still good, but together they were the best each of them could be. They’d fought it once and Rorish had silenced them with a look.

New beginnings, new starts. He has no idea where the rest of them are going. Probably somewhere fancy and expensive and suited to each of them. Mario? Well, he’s going to a hospital that’s glad to have him. He didn’t really care where as long as it paid him enough to live on. He’ll be packed up and moved on a week after they’re done at Angels’.


WHAT IS LOVE - JAYMES YOUNG | LINK
Oh, I don't know, what can I do?
What else can I say? it's up to you
I know we're one, just me and you
I can't go on

If it was easy enough to say goodbye, close the book on this, then he wouldn’t be standing here outside Angus’ door wondering how the hell he got here. The last thing he remembers is the ache inside his chest getting to be too much and he’d needed out of the stifling stillness of his apartment. He’d driven and driven until he’d finally pulled into Angus’ complex. His feet had carried him here and now he was frozen on the spot.

Laughter. He hasn’t heard Angus laugh in so long and that decides him. He turns to leave, making it around the corner just as the door opens.

“Hey, I had a good time.”

“Me, too.”

“Let’s do this again.”

Mario doesn’t look back. He can’t.


EVERYBODY LIES - JASON WALKER | LINK
Everybody lies, lies, lies.
It's the only truth sometimes.
Doesn't matter if it's out there somewhere waiting for the world to find.
Or buried deep inside. Everybody lies.

“I love him” pulses through Mario with every beat of his heart. He’d buried it so deep inside him for so long and fought it for so long that he didn’t know what it was like to simply acknowledge it like this. His skin felt too raw. His senses were scraped too thin. All he wanted was to go back and undo the last several months. But second chances don’t come for people like him.


ALL I ASK - ADELE | LINK
It matters how this ends
'Cause what if I never love again?

It ended a long time ago and his heart has never forgiven him. He’s focused on his work, treating his patients. The good ones, the smart ones, tell him he’s so sad around the eyes and that he should fix it. But what is there to fix? He’s the one that ruined it. He’s the one that can’t go back.


MOONDUST (STRIPPED) - JAYMES YOUNG | LINK
And there's nothing that I can do
Except bury my love for you

It’s his burden. This love he carries that there’s no doing anything about. That ship sailed a long time ago and Mario? Mario’s a pragmatist. He doesn’t believe in miracles. He believes in hard work and surviving and making something of himself. Everything soft about him was locked up and hidden a long time ago.


HELLO - ADELE | LINK
At least I can say that I've tried
To tell you I'm sorry for breaking your heart
But it don't matter. It clearly doesn't tear you apart anymore

He looks up Angus one day and because he’s pathetic he goes to the coffee shop he frequents just to catch a glimpse. What he sees stops him in his tracks. Angus sits at a table with a guy that could be Mario’s twin. Differences are obvious on closer inspection, but that’s not the point. He’s blocking the door and he needs to leave before someone notices him. It takes another moment, another person shoving their way past him, before he comes back to himself. Angus looks up then eyes widening when he sees him across the room and Mario can’t deal with this. He hurries from the coffee shop, praying to a god he doesn’t believe in that Angus doesn’t come after him.


BURNING HOUSE - CAM | LINK
Wish that we could go back in time
I'd be the one you thought you'd find
Love isn't all that it seems I did you wrong

Angus is certain down to his bones that it was Mario in the coffee shop the other day. He hadn’t caught him before he disappeared. He’d lied to Chris about who he’d gone charging after. He couldn’t bring himself to open up that part of himself. Things had been complicated with him and Mario and they hadn’t ended the way either of them had wanted. He didn’t lie to himself about just how similar Chris looked to Mario. He’d tried to go 180 in the opposite direction but Mario had left an impression. It’s why Angus is here. It’s why he’s standing at Mario’s door after some careful digging. It’s why he’s hoping for all the things he shouldn’t be hoping for. Because, when he’s honest with himself, when he makes himself think about it, the last bit of years he’s been hiding from himself. He’d buried everything that he was and who he was with Mario under a layer of denial. Neither of them had come out looking the hero out at the end. And obviously, neither had come out of it having stopped loving the other.

Angus knows Mario was never one to believe in himself or the good things that came his way. Life had beat the pessimism into him and he supposes he’d done nothing to make that feeling go away. He’d taken a chance the last time. Maybe it was long overdue he took a chance again.