InsaneJournal

Funny Thing About Addiction
Who: Annette, Jasmin, and briefly Fayina (NPC)
Where: Jasmin's old apartment
When: In the not-so-distant past (circa 2002/2003)

Fay was asleep. Jasmin stepped out into the living room rubbing his eyes. "Alright, she's down." He hadn't been able to pay Annette much mind. Fay had a cold and was very, very crabby lately, especially about going to bed. He'd just about read himself hoarse. Another adult just riled her up, made her feel up to demanding more treats and attention and concessions. He wished he could do more for her. It was very lucky that Annette had come tonight. He could really use someone to talk to. Just to speak with an adult he didn't want to slap, to keep his mind off the cravings that always hit the hardest as he got ready to head to bed. He was getting better, but he was very tired from tending to his crabby little girl and keeping up his extra shifts at work. This would be a night of shakes and anxiety and nausea. Annette could always distract him. Some stupid story about work would probably do it. Though he refused most of her help, he did need her to just be there. She was oddly knowledgeable about what he ought to be doing. She must have helped someone else through this. Sounded like 'Nette. She probably just collected strays. "Do you want anything? Tea?" It helped him to have something hot to drink. Something to focus on instead of the comforting burn and oblivion that had been his life until so recently.

"Sure." Annette had stayed out of Jasmin's way when he put the girl to bed exactly because Fay was already over-excited. Her presence would only have distracted the child more, and Jas really seemed to need a break. Besides, Fay would simply not go to sleep for her. She'd tried. "That mint, if you still have it around. Want to pop in a movie?" The night was still young, and Jas would probably be wanting some sort of distraction. "Or we could just see what's on. Whatever you feel like." She set her book aside and got up, following the tiny Frenchman into the kitchen. "Did you consider calling the therapist I gave you the number of?" As much as she liked to think she helped her new friend, Annette was no professional. And the kind of hell he was going through wasn't easy to handle on your own, cold turkey, with a new child to care for.

"I only own about six movies that aren't for preschool children," he said softly, ignoring a headache the best he could. "Mint, sure. I'll make a pot." He'd drink it if she wouldn't. "We've seen them all." He shook his head in the hopes of becoming a little more lucid. He looked over his shoulder at her, holding back a sigh. He didn't want to talk. The AA meetings were bad enough. He hated talking, though he could see it did some people a world of good. "Annette, you know perfectly well that I do not enjoy... sharing one's feelings. It is simply not... like me." The therapist was probably a perfectly competent doctor, but he couldn't see how it would help to blather on about... His mother? That probably wasn't something a real therapist would ask, but the mere idea was disheartening. "Why do you know so much about this?" If he could start that conversation, he might avoid the one she wanted to have.

"It's good background noise, either way, unless you really don't want to." The movies were more about having something to do than the actual stories. "And I've told you, Jas. He won't just talk about your feelings. He'd help you come up with strategies to keep yourself going and take the edge off, thinking exercises and exercise and shit. It really is practical..." She sighed, knowing that she wouldn't win this fight. "But it's no good if you go in resisting, so I'll drop it." As it was, she was pretty much his personal therapist; a situation she wasn't exactly sure she enjoyed.

"Me?" She looked over sharply at his question, then turned away. "Does it really matter? I know how it goes..." The last thing she wanted to do was to dwell on those wretched months of withdrawal and rehab. She'd only bring him down more.

Resisting. As though he were a whiny kid being stubborn. And that wasn't exactly an unfair estimation, was it? He didn't always like it when Annette was right. And all he had to justify his stubbornness was general misanthropy. It wasn't as though the circumstances that had led him to hide in a bottle were particularly unique. He had no reason to be so hostile. There was no harm he knew in all the rehab stuff, and he was completely willing to admit he had a problem. he didn't even think he had anything that could be called pride anymore. He was just being plain, unadulterated implacable for no good reason. For Fay's sake, if not his own, maybe he should... Annette's blunt reaction distracted him from that line of thought. She was strangely defensive. "I'm not the first soft-skulled moron you've dragged out like this?" He leaned against the counter, eyes up on Annette's face instead of, as usual, intent on the floor.

Annette let out a soft, dry laugh. One with very little humor in it at all. With Jasmin in this state she very often felt like she was back in the middle of it all herself; though without the nasty withdrawal symptoms. "You could say it like that, I suppose. But that'd probably be taking credit for something I don't deserve. If it weren't for Alexei, I..." What? Would never have gotten help? Would've been fired and living in the streets by now? Would be lying in a hospital bed, comatose from an overdose? Any one of those was likely, given the way she'd been going. "We don't need to go into that, Jasmin." She tried to keep her voice soft, but it was hard to keep it from shaking a little. Those had been hard months.

He was silent for a long time. At first he was trying to find a way to spin what she'd said so he didn't have to face her clear meaning. How could he believe Annette had been where he was? He gave her a hard time, but the woman had saved him in every possible way. She was a hero in his eyes, and a lot of thing he wished he could be. Confident, charming, cute, and clever, among others. She'd pulled him out of the depths and helped him become someone Fay wouldn't be ashamed of (well, someday, if he kept working at it). It wouldn't have been so bad to believe she'd wormed her way free of shaking hands and nausea, though it was horrid to think how young she'd have had to be. Annette might act like a big sister, but Jasmin had two years on her. Still, it would really only add to his picture of Annette as a knight on a white horse. The trouble was all the times he'd run into her on her supposed prescription... He returned to staring at the floor, unable to say anything to that.

"Jas..." Annette put a hand gently on his shoulder. "Don't worry about it, okay? It's history, and it lets me help you. I certainly don't regret that." It was her own, secret little shame that she hadn't managed to completely kick the habit, even after all the time and money Alexei put into pulling her ass out of the hole she'd dug herself. Those little pills she'd crawl back to, once or twice a week, on bad nights were the sleeplessness drove her out of her skull. Or it had been secret. It used to be that she had no one to see her at nights; she lived alone with no family, and no lover. No one to check on her. But now Jasmin needed her, and she wasn't about to abandon him to a hellish night alone just because she gave into her cravings, so he'd seen her. And he wasn't dumb. "Come on, we could set up a board game or something. You got a chess set?" She had to get both their minds off this train of thought - it simply wouldn't do.

"Might want to get that prescription adjusted..." That didn't even make any sense. His voice was very small and the words a bit garbled, barely intelligible. He couldn't bring himself to directly accuse her. After all, he'd needed a real reason to stop drinking. Fay coming into his life had been enough. Maybe he and his little girl weren't that for Annette. He couldn't really insist that he was important without sounding terrible even to himself, without admitting what a disappointment he certainly was, and when she was looking after him purely out of the goodness of her heart. But if she could care for him enough to police him, badger him, and sooth him by turns, didn't he owe her the same? Yes, he had a chess set, but it wasn't coming out. Jasmin hadn't had a close friend before her, but he knew enough to know his duty. He knew he'd never seen Annette drunk. She was playing with hotter fire than he ever had.

That made her wince. Fuck, she hadn't wanted to go there. In her mind, her struggles were entirely internal and personal; they didn't reflect at all on her newfound friend and his toddling daughter, the same way they didn't reflect on her beloved boss. The addiction haunted her like a ghost, and every time she ran from it, something pulled her right back in. But for now, she was functional and relatively healthy, which was the most important thing for the moment. At least in her mind. "Let me deal with my own demons, Jasmin. I'm not... perfect, but I'm doing okay." She poured the tea with trembling hands that had nothing to do with withdrawal, feeling her heart twist. It was obvious how deeply she'd just disappointed him; it practically oozed off of him in waves. But she was determined to not let it get to her. "I'm doing okay..."

"If you were okay, I'd be okay. And I am not." He wanted a reaction from her, to see something like what he was feeling. Annette didn't exactly do well under pressure, but compared to him, she was so perfectly calm. Everything was always written on Jasmin's face, and he really wished the rest of the world could be so open in return. It would only be fair. He didn't know if he was being dismissed or reached out to. It wasn't as though he could do something to help, but didn't he have to try? If he was her friend as much as she was his, and he hoped he was. "You hardly need to be... perfect. But tell me not to concern myself, and where would that leave..." Us? Everything? "You cannot seriously believe that's alright." He wasn't sure if he meant Annette or himself, or what accusation he was making.

"Jasmin!" She set down the kettle very quickly, before she got hot tea everywhere. "You need to get better for yourself without worry about my shit!" She took a shaky breath and paused for a gulp of tea. It burned her tongue. She didn't care. "I've been struggling with this for years, okay? It... it's not going to get better overnight, no matter what you do. You can't fix me. I got myself in deep when I was a stupid kid, and I'm still paying for it." A stupid, heartbroken kid. But she didn't want to admit how afraid she was to let go of that part of herself. "I know it's not okay. But I'm dealing with it. And I need..." She needed to see Jasmin get better. To see that someone could do it. "I need you to trust me, Jas." She was focusing hard on the tea, staring at the way it moved in the cup, but there was no mistaking the hurt and shame in her posture. She'd just wanted to help him.

"Well, I do." He didn't quite know it until he said it, but yes, he did trust Annette, peculiar woman that she was. Just as he felt an odd weight of responsibility for her, buried somewhere under his own brand of hero worship. "I am trusting you. I am getting better. And I'm doing it..." For Fay much more than for himself, but there wasn't much difference anymore. The child had given him a reason to care. "For us." He meant that "us" to mean him and his daughter. It was the closest thing to the truth that he knew how to say. He was quiet for another long moment, searching for the right way to say what he didn't even know how to think. "I'm talking about you now." That was hardly the forceful, problem-solving, perceptive statement he'd been hoping for. He wasn't a one for saying just the right thing, or remotely the right thing. But shouldn't he be trying?

"If we're talking about me..." Annette sighed. "There's a lot going on there. And I don't want to get into it, not tonight. Another time, when we're both in a better state of mind, okay?" She didn't want to talk about it at all, ever. But he didn't look like he was about to give up, and she didn't have the heart to walk out on the only friend she's had in years. "When you're better. Concentrate on your own problems for now, and we can tackle mine when you're feeling better." Eventually. Annette knew very well that there was little that could stop her from going back to those pills. They'd trapped her quite well, between her sleep disorder, her history, and the emotions they could protect her from for a short time. But perhaps Jasmin could find some way to help that she had never discovered alone.

"I hardly think that... that focusing on my problems is the thing to do. That aside? How could I not want to help, if you'll be helped? To put it simply, mon petit chou, you saved my life. In several senses." He didn't think she had a leg to stand on, rebuffing him like this. He'd been doing well. Every time he thought of sneaking a drink, he thought of both Fay and Annette, and that solved the problem for him. He had bad nights. Nights when he was sick as a dog or when nightmares that really had nothing to do with his boozing made the whole thing worse. But he wasn't backsliding or cheating. He had things pretty well under control. "I have gotten about as well as I will get, for the time being, and you are stalling, Annette Reynolds."

"Jas, not tonight. Like I said, I am doing okay. They were prescription, originally, and if it weren't for my... history, the way I use them now wouldn't be considered abuse. I..." She sighed. "It means a lot that you want to help me, Jasmin. It really does. But now's not the time or the place." She finished off her tea quickly. "I'm a severe insomniac. I have emotional issues that I really would rather not burden you with. I don't want to bring you down with me." It seemed natural, to her, that her own distress would automatically make Jasmin worse. After all, that was the way emotions affected her, and she didn't have any reason to believe she wasn't normal. "So let's just continue tonight like we planned, and pick this up another time."

"Oh, but there I have you. There was no plan. There was a vague intention to support Jasmin through an ongoing crisis, but I'm simply feeling ill this night." Jasmin had English vocabulary down by this point, but hadn't quite mastered the art of the vernacular. "I can be ill. I felt sick half the time when I was drinking, too, just a different sort. You've certainly sat through enough of my... Nonsense." He owed her this. He also owed himself this, the return of an act of friendship. "And you're the one who gets something of value from speaking." Jasmin didn't find that conversation addressed his problems at all, but Annette was much better at that facing one's demons and talking through issues and blah blah blah.

She was better about it, yes. When it wasn't her doing the talking. Annette swore softly under her breath, staring at something invisible on the ceiling for a moment. "You want to know? Fine. It's not pretty. My mother's delusional, suicidal, and locked up in a psych ward. Her husband hates me because my father raped her. And my brother, who's the only sane person who ever cared about me growing up, was killed in a mob shooting. Happy? That's my life." In very, very brief, but she would rather avoid going into details. "It fucked me up and now I'm dealing with it one problem at a time." And trying to stay out of the same ward they kept her mother, which was far easier said than done.

None of that was especially shocking to Jasmin. Annette knew his history. He wasn't going to get in a tragedy-off, but he didn't really feel as though he and she were on different planes and he could no longer converse fairly on such a subject. He raised an eyebrow at her instead. "No, not happy, but that was... rhetorical. You had a terrible time and wound up chemically altering yourself to get by. Why would you think I'd have trouble relating?" That wasn't exactly logical thinking. He knew she wasn't being logical, but maybe if he tried he could manage. Reasoning in the abstract was a strong suit of his. "And I thought it was strange that we have come to tolerate one another so very well."

"You never thought you were going mad..." She muttered it under her breath, but Jas had too sharp hearing for his own good. "Anyway," that she spoke in a normal tone, "this isn't about you relating. I don't want to talk about it, I just want to move on. If I dwell too much on the past... I don't want to fall back there again, all right? So just... let's talk about something more pleasant." She wish he'd never asked. But he had every reason to - she did know an awful lot about all this. "Or anything that's not me."

He sighed and gave up, but he'd come back to it. He could hardly let Annette destroy herself while he had all her support fixing the hundreds of things wrong with him. "Fine. A stupid movie it is." He sent one last glare at her before he poured himself a cup of tea and walked over to the couch. He hadn't the sense for people that would tell him if he'd done good or ill in this, but he had to do something, regardless.