A/N: Hi everyone! It's my first time writing a Scorpion fic, so comments/suggestions are welcome! This fic was inspired by DramaticTendency's amazing one-shot, Wrap Me Up In Your Addiction, which, if you haven't already seen, I would highly recommend.
As someone who has been affected by addiction (and has noticed a lot of, perhaps, less-than-realistic portrayals of addiction in media), I thought it would be interesting to write about Toby from that point of view. So that's where I'm starting from here. Hope you all enjoy it!
It had been exactly thirteen hours since he had promised Happy that he would never gamble again. He meant it, he really meant it, but he'd read enough about twelve-step programs to know that promises like that were rarely kept, especially when the promiser had his kind of background.
He'd gone thirteen hours without gambling before, sure. On missions, movie marathons, car trips. It wasn't really that long of a time, honestly. The problem was the never again part. The rest of his life stretched out in front of him like an eternally long desert road, the kind where, if you ran out of gas, you were as good as vulture food.
As soon as he and Happy left their rooftop powwow, he had said goodbye to the team and gone straight to his apartment, which he promptly ridded of all traces of gambling. He burned every scratch-off card he could find, threw out all his bookies' contact info, withdrew from all his fantasy leagues. He acted quickly, in a fit of enthusiasm. It took him less time than he would have guessed, purging his life of all physical trace of his addiction.
When it was all finished, he sat on the sofa in his living room. His apartment was completely silent. It was around this time on Friday evenings when he would normally hike over to a casino, whichever one struck his fancy at the moment. There was the Horseshoe, across the street from the diner where Paige used to work; the liquor was cheap but the competition easy. Or the Ocean Downs, closer to Sylvester's apartment, with the extra-cute dealers. Or Casino Magic, a favorite for nights when he was too tired to think; they only had slot machines.
He loved everything about casinos: the pervasive smell of cigar smoke, the women sporting low-cut dresses, even the guards staring daggers around the room. Of course, he especially loved the rush of every move, the adrenaline flooding his blood, a vestigial reaction from the time of hunting mammoths and outrunning saber-tooth tigers.
Toby wasn't an idiot, despite what Happy would say on occasion; he knew their game. Casino owners pumped oxygen in to make the crowd feel more alive, blocked out the windows so you lost track of time, rang random, meaningless bells perpetually to make you feel like someone was winning at all times. But, even knowing this, casinos comforted him.
Now, he was left alone in the silence. He glanced around at his apartment, at the stacks of medical journals he didn't have the energy to read, the TV he almost never watched unless one of his teams were playing. His eyes came to rest on his old landline. It was a relic, deep maroon with an old vinyl cord. Happy always made fun of him for it; he didn't really know why he kept it around.
He picked up the handset and moved his thumb to hover over the numbers. He could call his mother, but there wasn't a great chance the treatment center's receptionist would patch him through to her unless he made up a family emergency. He didn't even have the latest number for his dad; occasionally the old man would call from one hellhole motel or another, but if Toby ever tried to call back a few days later, he'd be gone.
He wanted so badly to talk to Happy, but he couldn't bear to burden her with this. It occurred to him that there was really only one person he could call right now. His hand dialed the number shakily. Paige picked up on the third ring.
After momentary confusion, Paige had agreed to drop Ralph off with the woman across the hall and meet Toby for coffee. Now, she gazed at him with concern from across a pseudo-rustic table in a café neither of them particularly liked. Toby was staring intently into his cup. He took his coffee plain, unadulterated by cream or sugar. The lighting made his drink look almost purple.
"What's on your mind?" Paige asks, after several minutes of silence.
"I promised Happy I'd never gamble again."
Paige knits her brows. "And that's… bad?"
"Not the promise. It's just…"
"Keeping the promise," Paige concludes, nodding.
Toby looks up at her.
"My dad was an alcoholic. I know the twelve steps by heart."
The admission comes as a surprise, but it made sense. It was really a wonder Toby hadn't suspected something sooner. The signs were all there: the overdeveloped sense of responsibility to others, the fear of emotional attachment, the difficulties with intimacy. Toby had written all of it off as a product of her broken relationship with Drew.
"Paige, I'm sorry."
She waves her hand dismissively. "It's been a long time since I lived with him. I still go to Al-Anon meetings every once in a while, though. I'm sure we could find a Gambler's Anonymous meeting around here."
Toby shakes his head. "I'm not really a twelve-step kind of guy."
"I bet, a couple hours ago, you weren't really an up-and-quit-gambling type of guy, either."
Toby smiles slightly. It's off-putting to Paige, seeing him this way. He was probably the most sociable – most normal – of the whole team, barring herself, but he kept up his chipper front almost all the time. She'd almost never even heard him raise his voice in anger. And now here he was, sitting in front of her, looking lost and gloomy and small.
"Come on," Paige says, standing up. "I think you need a change of scenery."
Toby looks at her dubiously, but follows her out of the café.
The night is warm, like almost every other in southern California. Toby liked the heat, liked walking around without the need to bundle up in a million layers. But every so often he felt just slightly nostalgic for the bitter chill of New York winters that marked his childhood. There was something about sleeping with the windows open in the middle of February, underneath a pile of blankets, wrapped in an envelope of warmth, that he loved. Here, you open in the windows in the middle of a winter night and see half-naked teenagers meandering home.
He and Paige walk for about an hour, just wandering around the neighborhood. They talk about nothing, really, work and the weather and Ralph's latest project. But after they make their way back to the parking lot, say their goodbyes, and Toby climbs in his car to go home, he realizes he didn't think about gambling the entire time.
He checks the clock and does some quick addition. Sixteen hours clean. The rest of my life to go.