i fought piranhas, and i fought the cold Who: Nish and Chris. What: Nish and Chris both need a drink, but for different reasons. Where:The Friend. When: April 2, evening.
Nish hadn't consciously made the decision to go to a bar. She hadn't woken up that morning with the intention of throwing all of her sound medical advice out the window. But she'd woken up into the same bleak lonely world that she'd been in for days. And there was no hope of it getting better.
She'd been actively avoiding Rafe again. After their...disagreement...she hadn't called. He'd checked on her if course, just like he’d said he would, but he was distant. Something between them had broken, and this time she knew there was no repairing it.
She'd stopped taking her anti-depressants. All they did was make her feel...wrong. They did more harm than good, in her opinion, though it wasn't until the second day off of them that it really hit her how much of a crutch they'd been. The depression hit her all of a sudden Friday evening, but with nothing to alleviate it she ended up crying herself to sleep. A weekend of pure darkness followed, and by Sunday she'd pulled herself out of it just long enough to make the extremely bad decision of picking up her car keys her and driving to the first bar she found.
They didn't know her here, which was perfect. Jay knew she was supposedly on the program, and probably would get all noble and not serve her. So instead she sat at this unfamiliar bar, ordered herself shot after shot from an unfamiliar bartender, and let her old friend alcohol soothe her nerves and burn her throat while tears dampened her cheeks.
If she'd wanted to be alone, Los Angeles was the worst place for that. A million faces, and at least one of them familiar. Chris came around the far side of the bar, surprise clear on his face when he spotted Nish among the other revelers in the bar. He threaded his way through the bodies, taking a seat next to her with some hesitation; he'd come here to drink, as presumably had she, but maybe there was something worth in getting drunk together.
He rapped his knuckles on the countertop, ordering his usual scotch on the rocks, and then sat on the stool next to Nish. He had to jostle a few people with a shoulder to get space, and by then she had to be aware of his presence.
"So...is this a new prescription I've yet to hear about?"
She ignored the jostling bodies, focused instead on the shot of tequila in her hand, but a more insistent bump and and a rap on the table forced her attention away from it for a moment. What she saw there didn’t improve her mood any. “Shit,” she muttered under her breath. “What are you, a bloodhound?” she asked him, her voice making it clear she was already well on her way to full-on drunkenness. She knocked back her shot and let the glass fall to the bar, asking silently for another and doing her best to avoid looking at Chris.
"Hardly," he replied, accepting his scotch with a faint smile, sipping it before turning to Nish. "If I was, I wouldn't have to keep buying socks because I continuously lose their mates. Seriously, though, this is totally against what you're supposed to be doing in your condition. I'm not really drunk enough yet for this, but do you have a death wish?"
She smirked humourlessly. “In my condition,” she echoed with a dark smirk. “I'm not pregnant and I'm not an invalid,” she said, nodding as the bartender poured her another shot. “But you're asking the recently suicidal if they have a death wish? You've got balls,” she said, drinking the new shot as fast as the old one. "So I've been told," he replied. "And you might not be either of those, but you're still on medication, right? And last I read, that generally doesn't tend to mix well with alcohol. Then again, I guess there are worse ways to die." He tipped his own glass into his mouth as he got comfortable. At least he'd have a distraction from his own thoughts and worries, namely the mysterious objects at the apartment and how Daniel had nearly caught onto more that he didn't need to know.
"So is this general moroseness or is there a particular reason you're drinking tonight?"
Nish smirked, watching her next shot being poured by the increasingly attractive bartender. “Do I need a reason?” she deflected, “drunk is my natural state. At least...it used to be. I got tired of sitting in a circle of strangers and telling them what a bad girl I am. It's not nearly as fun as it sounds.” Three weeks and change sober, and all she'd learned from the experience is that you could make bad decisions just as easily without alcohol. So if fucking up her life was a given, she'd rather enjoy herself while doing it.
She turned to squint at him. “What about you? You look like someone else who's preparing to do some heavy lifting,” she said, nodding to his almost empty glass. She drank her current shot and winked suggestively at the bartender, and he smirked back at her, clearly interested. He sauntered over to refill her shot and then drifted away to serve someone else, glancing back at her over his shoulder as he did.
Chris saluted her with the same nearly-empty glass, then finished it off, setting it down. "Work. Isn't that everyone's excuse?"
He couldn't imagine going through some kind of AA meeting, some kind of circlejerk contest about whose problems were worse. But Chris had seen friends attempt to drown their sorrows, and it didn't seem like it worked out better that way, either. He made eye contact with the bartender, nodding for a refill. "I don't feel the need to get trashed, though. And if the therapy isn't working, maybe it's time to try something else? Or, I dunno, get back to work. You been cleared yet?"
She nodded, “Yep,” she said, considering the shot in her hand like it might have answers to some unasked question. “Work is going well, ironically, considering that the rest of my life has gone to shit. And I’m sure about ninety percent of that success is because of Jessica. Best thing I ever did was hire her.” She drank her shot and set the glass down, blinking slowly as her head spun for a moment. Despite the amount of alcohol she’d already had, her heart seemed to be okay with it, quietly beating out its new discordant rhythm, at least for now.
“So what’s got you all grumpy and sulking over your scotch?” she asked him, looking over at him with slightly unfocused eyes, a bright flush painting its way across her cheeks from drink.
"Like I said," he replied, sipping. His hand curled around the drink, setting its bottom on the bartop. "Work. It's a, uh, need to know kind of thing. Believe me, if I could talk about it..." He shrugged. The hand holding the glass swirled it, and he watched the ice float. "Things getting better with Rafe?"
She’d been nodding at his deflection, recognising it for what it was, but then paused her movements at his next question. She took a breath and narrowed her eyes, then flashed him a thin smile. “So you said you were having a problem a few days ago,” she said, completely ignoring the question, her expression saying both that he had hit the nail squarely on the head and that she wasn’t about to talk about it. “What’s that about?” she asked, nodding gratefully as her shot glass was refilled and promptly drinking that one down too. She’d long since lost count of how many she’d had, and was already thinking of what exactly she was going to say in her text to Jessica in the morning as to why she wouldn’t be in until noon.
"Christ," he muttered, a hand rising to wipe at his face. Up until then, he'd completely forgotten about Rodrigo and the little event he and Daniel had survived the other day. There was too much going on for his mind to encompass the total of it. "So that guy," he started, waving at the bartender for another drink, "how effective would you say your 'talking to' usually is? Because either it didn't stick with him, or there's someone higher up on the food chain who's actually calling the shots." It was a theory that didn't wholly surprise him; he'd always thought Rodrigo too stupid to handle the sort of business he was trying to shoehorn in on.
Uncomfortable thoughts came to her, of her going back to that little shop he’d taken her to and lifting more coke off of those guys, each time she told them to forget she’d ever been there. Each time she went they looked at her like she was a stranger. “Pretty good,” she said confidently, chewing on her lip in indecision and then finally deciding there was no point anymore in keeping that from him. “They never recognized me when I went back for more,” she said with a careless shrug as if it wasn’t a big deal, but she guiltily avoided his eyes just then all the same. “There’s gotta be a bigger fish; there always is with this kind of thing,” she said quickly after, as if to distract him from what she’d just said. She took another shot, but this time it didn’t sit right and the burning stayed high in her chest.
Chris all but slammed his drink down, immediately diverted from his own problems by her inadvertent admission. She flinched away from him, backing away just a little in her seat.
"You went back?" His voice rose somewhat over the din, bringing a few glances in their direction. He immediately calmed himself enough to speak in a level tone, but it was a hard won fight. "How many times, Nish? Jesuchristo, I oughta have your fucking skin for--," he lapsed off in Spanish, a clear sign of just how angry he was. He stopped, drank the rest of his scotch in one go, and then pointed a finger at her with the hand still holding the glass.
"We're going outside. Right now. You're done, Nish, if I have to tell them you're an alcoholic and need to be tossed out." He put the glass on the counter, trying to look less pissed off and more concerned. "Just please come with me outside, OK? So we can have a very frank discussion that's seriously not appropriate in a crowded place like this."
She opened her mouth to protest, but the look in his eyes made her close it again. Mutely, she slipped the wad of cash from her back pocket and left it on the bar, not bothering to even attempt to count it. She slipped off the stool, but her legs collapsed under her so that she had to grab hold of Chris or go down; he stumbled, but held her weight.
Three weeks sober, her tolerance had weakened a little. Her head swam, and the noises in the room muddled together in her brain so that she was hearing the din rather than the specific voices of the bartender asking Chris if he needed help, or a nearby patron saying something about calling either a cab or an ambulance, she wasn’t sure which. She brushed them all off, shrugging out of Chris’ hold even though her knees still felt like jelly, forcing her legs to walk her unsteadily to the door and stumbling out of it.
Outside when the cool air hit her it cleared her head just a little, just enough for her to spot a really nice patch of grass where she promptly knelt and emptied the contents of her stomach. She heard footsteps behind her and wiped her mouth on her sleeve, sitting back onto her heels. “Don’t you fucking dare call Rafe,” she croaked, guessing from his earlier question that it would be Chris’ first move. She didn’t want to see him; she wasn’t done sulking yet.
"I'm not," he replied coldly. "So when you went back, did you at least pay them? Or did you just make them forget, so they thought someone was stealing product under their noses? Do you realize how much shit you might've dragged me into? I was almost killed, Nish, do you even give a shit about anyone other than yourself?"
She looked up at him like he was insane. “Of course I paid them, do you think I'm that stupid?” Her tone was sharp, implying that she was offended by his meaning. She settled back on the grass, away from where she’d been sick, leaning her back against the side of the building for support. “I may be a lot of things, but I'm not a thief, Chris.” But then, she was an addict with the ability to tell people what to do. Walking in there and just taking it would have been far too easy.
“I thought you'd notice, if stuff went missing. And I didn't want you to know.” In her guilt over using again, she'd assumed he'd automatically suspect her somehow if drugs started disappearing.
"Are you sure? Because I think you need to get your fucking head checked," he replied, moving in place as best he could. He felt anxious, hyper, all kinds of wrong. He shook his head, either in denial of her statement or in an attempt to clear his mind.
For her part, Nish smiled wryly off into the distance. “So I guess group therapy and psychiatrists don’t count?” she mused to herself, though it was loud enough to carry.
"It's really fucking hard to trust you, Nish, and I don't know if that's what you want. Between the journal thing, now this, and then Rafe asking me if you were worth sticking around for, I'm starting to regret telling him you deserved a second chance. Do you think you could pull your head out of your ass for five seconds to take a look around at how you're fucking affecting the people around you?"
Her eyes snapped to his, sudden tears clouding her vision. “Rafe...talked to you about me?” she asked, focusing on the one thing that had stabbed her right in the heart, confirming aloud what she had already guessed: he wants to leave. She’d fucked up so much that he was done with her, and now he was just...trying to find a way out. Only now because of what Chris had said, he’d stay because he felt he had to. Which was exactly what she didn’t want.
She pushed herself up the wall, using it for support until her world stopped spinning, and then pushing away from it, attempting to walk away, walk home. “Why didn’t you just tell him I can’t be trusted?” she asked him, her words suddenly harsh and biting. “Or are you just trying to keep me happy because you need me?” she added darkly. “Tell me something, Chris...would you give a shit about me or any of this if I wasn’t useful to you?” she asked, then passed him by, not looking back.
If not to her surprise, then at least to his own, Chris laughed. It was a quick guffaw of disbelief, one hand to his belly as though to hold back further laughter.
"You know, for someone who's got such blatant low self-esteem, you've got a high opinion of yourself," he said, stopping and meeting her gaze levelly as though to make each and every word sink in. "I've been running in this game for a long, long time. You aren't needed, Nish. You're a convenience, an opportunity I recognized and took advantage of. And now you're a fucking liability, one who's quickly become a fucking pain in my ass.
"No, I told him to stay with you because I thought I was your friend, and that you needed something to keep from trying to do that whole thing over again, except maybe more successfully this time. Honestly? No, I don't need another OD on my timesheet. I've got plenty of friends and random douche bags who decided the rock was better than anyone else in their lives. I know when it's time to let go because the person is beyond saving, and frankly? That's all I'm seeing here. You OD, I'm guessing you're not taking your meds, and now you're here, getting shitfaced because, what, someone didn't cry enough for you? What the fuck do you want, exactly, Nish? What is all of this supposed to accomplish?" He was breathing hard; a wound had been touched in him, something he didn't like other people seeing. Hands turned into fists, then released, trying to calm himself, but his gaze never broke away from hers, the anger and the frustration with her actions clear in his face.
She met his eyes, her own hard and cold, but disturbingly empty. “Nothing,” she said. “Maybe that's the point. Maybe nothing means anything anymore. It never did. People...all we do is eat and sleep and fuck. Everything else...it's just a distraction from the truth...that none of it matters, for any of us. It just took almost dying for me to see it.
I have a ticking time bomb in my chest, Chris. I could stay on my meds and go to therapy and be a fucking good girl and still die tomorrow. Nothing matters anymore. So I can either play by the rules, or I can do whatever the fuck I want until it's over. Personally, I've never been very good at following rules.” She paused, glancing away from him, down the street towards Pax several blocks away in the far distance.
“I don't have to OD again. I just have to wait. And don't worry,” she added with mock sincerity, “that means I probably won't be a liability for much longer.” She turned away and started walking again, not bothering to look to see if he was following.
He wasn't. Chris shook his head, done. He turned away, instead pulling out his phone and dialing a now very familiar number. He'd brushed Daniel off earlier in the day, but now he felt himself needing some kind of contact, something that would ground him after this ridiculous evening. Of all the places to go for a drink...