Disclaimer: Don't own the characters, those are NBC's and Tim Kring's. More notes at the end. Spoilers for Jump Push Fall.
He sits in the corner, in a small table far away from the rest of the crowd. You spotted him as you walked in, despite his obvious choice for privacy. The band of the night was some pseudo-punk group that was spending its set screaming and playing the same three chords over and over again with varying levels of distortion. It was far from your type of music, and you knew it wasn't his either, he must have really wanted to hide to wind up in a place like this.
You go and sit down across from him, completely ignoring the glare he sends at you. "What are you doing here?" He asks you, and you shrug. You avoid the question momentarily when the waitress stops by. You order a beer while he downs whats left of his glass and orders another, before looking at you expectantly, wanting an answer.
"I like this place." He just stares at you. "It plays good music."
"Bullshit." He snorts in reply, and you know he's right.
"Hey, I can go for a drink, cant I?" You tell him, and he just glares at you. He's had a rough few weeks, you had to give him that much. Between falling for someone that was being accused of murder, having a john doe remind him of what it felt like to love, and then what happened recently, you know he's close to his snapping point. The fact that you could tell that he's had a few too many already wasn't helping things. "Woody's taken a turn for the worse." you tell him, not wanting to say it, but knowing you had to.
It was then he broke down. The band had long since traded in their power amps, distortion pedals and electrics for acoustic guitars, and the song they were playing was a slow, depressing tune that seemed to magnify his emotions tenfold. He just sat there, staring into the fresh glass of scotch that the waitress had brought, silent tears streaming down his face.
A lonely guitar
Plays a mournful melody
While in a corner
You gently weep
You place a comforting hand on his forearm, signifying how you were there for him, even if no one else was, even though you know, and he knows, that there's more than just you, there's so many others out there who would be willing to be in the same spot you are now.
"Why" You ask him softly, the question that you came here, that you tracked him down to ask him. It was the question everyone wanted to know the answer to, the question that was weighing hard on everyone. It was something so out of character for him to do, there had to have been a reason why he did it, and you wanted to know why. "Why did you do it Garret?"
"Because I had to." he replies, hastily wiping his eyes with his shirtsleeve. You offer him your napkin instead, and he shrugs it away. "I had to, I had no choice, I was told to, and I couldn't say no, I couldn't risk it, not with Abby just being born, and a marriage already sinking fast, I couldn't not do it, I had to do it."
Weep for lovers lost
Weep for good men dead
Weep for those who cry
Weep for those who've bled
The tears that never quite stopped return, and he downs the rest of his scotch in one gulp. You move across the table to rub a soothing hand across his back, letting him cry it all out. He needed this, he needed it more than anything else, he'd had too much, he'd gone through too much recently.
You had never seen him this emotional before though, he was always the stoic, always standing tall, standing strong against everything. Yet, here we was, sobbing. You were sure he'd right it off to too much stress and too much booze later, but you knew it was much more of the former, and while the latter had something to do with it, this was his breakdown.
Finding out that Woody was inches from death was the catalyst, the thing that put him right over the edge. He felt so responsible for everything that happened within the confines of the mourge, and he felt so responsible for everyone inside of it, and everyone who could be dear to those inside of it. He may not have shown it, but he truly believed that these people were his family, the only people he had left, to loose even one of them, or to be forced away from him would kill him. He was the father to this whole clan, he was their patriarch, who loved them all as if they were his own children.
It's a lonely night
And you're a lonely soul
All you want is someone
To help you through it all
But til then you
"C'mon, let's get you home." you tell him, and he relinquishes his car keys to you. You lead him to his car, and he gets inside. You drive him home, and help him inside. He needs someone, and to be perfectly honest, you're afraid to leave him alone. It's not that you don't trust him, but with him being far more drunk than you had ever seen him before, you didn't want to take any unessicary risks.
You know he'd never even think of it, but still, there was a nagging feeling that leaving him alone could lead to him doing something hazardous to his health, such as drink himself into oblivion to wake up choking on his own vomit. It was something that you didn't need, not now, not on top of everything else that had happened recently, you didn't need something to put you over the edge now too.
Weep for lovers lost
Weep for good men dead
Weep for those who cry
Weep for those who've bled
You guide him to his bedroom, where he collapses tiredly onto the bed. It's already rumpled and messy from the previous morning, he had no reason to make the bed, he had no one to come in and tell him that he had to, and he obviously didn't. You wanted to know how much of his day he had spent in the bed in the first place. From the way he looked, you'd bet that it was the majority of it.
He hadn't shaved, and in addition to his goatee there was dark stubble across the rest of his face, and black circles beneath his eyes. A man who had spent most of his day in bed, unable to sleep. You remove his shoes, gently, caringly, lovingly.
He's been like a father to you for as long as you've known him. He's seen your good side, your bad side, and everything in between. And to see him here, lost, alone, and sobbing was just as heart wrenching to you. He was supposed to be your fearless leader, but now he was proving that even fearless leaders are indeed human.
Your past is laid before you You don't need to
Like a threadbare tapestry
Just this one night honey
Let it be you and me
He falls asleep, dead to the world around him, the alcohol haven taken it's hold. You don't know what it is that makes you do it, but you climb into bed next to him, staying to the far side of it, but still there, next to him.
His past had unraveled around him, leaving him dangling precariously by a thread. All the mistakes that he had made were coming back to haunt him now. Slokum wasn't going to let anything rest, the man was out for blood and he was hellbent on getting it. And now, Garret was being forced to relive all the issues of his past, everything that he had done wrong was being dragged up for him to go through again.
Your phone rings, and as you hear what the other person has to say, you break down, you can't handle it anymore. Anything and everything that could have gone wrong had, and all of a sudden it came up and bit you on the ass all at once. Each little thing you could handle, but now, with all of the things coming together at once, it was just too much for you.
Your tears wake him up, and now, the roles are reversed. While you had been the one to comfort him before, he was now comforting you. You hold tightly onto him. "Why now? Why is everything falling apart at the seams?" You question, not specifically to him, but to anyone, to any higher power that could be listening. Now, everything that had been slowly building up and come to a head, and you just couldn't stand it anymore. You had to break down, and now, here you were, doing just that.
Weep for lovers lost
Weep for good men dead
Weep for those who cry
Weep for those who've bled
You lay there for a long time, just relaxing, just thinking about everything that had happened, everything that was going to happen, both of you crying silent tears as you thought about what it was that could possibly come, what could possibly be worse than what you were going through.
Between Woody having just been placed under constant supervision in the ICU with stats dropping fast and Garret being dragged through the mud as he faced possibly loosing his job, his license, possibly even jail time, things had gone from bad to worse in a short matter of time. But for the moment, that was all in an alternate reality. Right now all you had was him, and your mutual tears.
Stop your crying dear
The guitar's cheering up
The sad tunes that it plays
Are coming to a stop
Stop the tears you
Eventually the tears stop, and you lay their, spent, along with him, both of you on the verge of having cried yourselves to sleep. Right now, you're busy ignoring reality, right now you're living in your own minds, hoping for the best. Maybe Woody would be ok, maybe he would snap out of being inches from death and make a full recovery. Maybe Slocum would give up and stop trying to take Garret's job out from underneath him. Maybe things would come out right n the end.
But right now, you weren't concerning yourselves with the what ifs, the maybes. Right now you were too busy in the present, living in the moment, trying to forget the what ifs that you didn't want to happen, trying to ignore what was the probablys, and not the hopefullys, because the probablys were too painful to think of. Right now, you wanted to think of nothing else but each other and of sleep, and of comforting things to come. You just wanted to enjoy the moment.
Weep for lovers lost
Weep for good men dead
Weep for those who cry
Weep for those who've bled
Right now, it was just you and him, and you were happy. Right now, there was nothing out there, nothing weighing down on either of you. He wraps his arms around you, and draws the covers up to your chin, and you fall asleep like that, comforted in each others arms. Right now, you had the moment, and you were content.
A/N: I made a point of keeping the "you" as ambiguous as possible as I happen to be in the process of editing a pseudo-slash fic that involves Garret, and there's something of a catch 22 when it comes to Garret as well-I can't see him WITH any of the characters on the show, but at the same time, I can see him with ALL the characters on the show...and because of that, because Garret is a character that a skilled writer could easily pair with anyone, I kept the "you" completely ambiguous to allow imagination to take its course.
I've been debating doing 3 companion pieces to this as well-For Lovers Lost is the only one that has any definition at the moment though, and it would be Garret contemplating his failed love life, over the same song, and also two others that would be For Good Men Dead, and For Those Who've Bled-I have a rough idea for Good Men Dead, but I cant think of anyone who's death would affect Garret that deeply, and I have no clue on For Those Who've Bled. If you'd like to see another three companions, please, drop me a line and say so, along with what your ideas are. Or if you can come up with an idea, just drop me a line and I'll be glad to loan you the song.
By the way...the song will be on line soon...I promise, I just need to record the guitar track and get my friend to sing it...if there are companion pieces to this, I will DEFINITLY post the song out there...but the companions will only come if people want them (no point in writing a fic when no one will read it, eh?)