A/N This became an angst fest, it started as just the fight, I don't own the characters, they belong to tailwind and NBC, I do however own all the harsh words exchanged. I like this fight, I thought the fight itself came off very well, the angsty bits are the worse parts...the Jordan in my head just went "Oh Em Gee!" and kinda refused to do anything except, well, what she's doing here, but ah well. Enjoy. And I do love reviews, hint hint hint.
She sighed as she looked up. This was not what she wanted to see. She could see his hand reaching down to open the bottom desk drawer and decided that she had enough. She had watched him do the same thing every day for a week. The first time she wrote it off as a bad day. The second time she said the same thing. The third she convinced herself that he was off in ten minutes. The fourth fifth and sixth had her debating what to do.
But now she knew that she had to go in there and say something about it. She got up and walked across the hall, catching him as he poured a generous measure in with his coffee. "What are you doing?" She asked and he offered the bottle to her.
"Want some?" She frowned.
"Why?" She asked him and he quirked any eyebrow. "Why all the drinking?" He shrugged.
"Something to do." She blinked. That wasn't the answer she had wanted or expected.
"Don't you think you're going a little overboard? At work?" He glared at her.
"I'm fine." He hissed and she met his glare with one of her own.
"Fine? You call having to spike your drinks just to make it through the day fine? I call it having a problem." He turned his gaze away from her, this was not a fight he wanted to be having, not with her.
"I don't have a problem." He said simply. He didn't. He didn't need it, he could give it up.
"Garret, you're drinking at work. You've always been a heavy drinker, but never at work-" Her voice held more than the slightest tinge of fear. Of hurt. "You're in denial-" He shook his head.
"I told you, I'm fine." He wanted her to leave him alone. He wanted her to just go and forget about things. He didn't want to go through this fight. He was fine, he really was.
"You're not fine, not from what I can tell. I've spent the past week watching you add some of that damned scotch to nearly every cup of coffee-" He glared at her. "-I don't know about you, but I'd call that pretty not fine to me." He stood up, he could feel his fists clenching. HE didn't have a problem. He didn't like her telling him he had a problem.
"I'm fine. Maybe your fucked mind can't comprehend that-" It was only after the words were out did he realize what he had said. But the words were already out, he couldn't take them back. They felt good to say. She deserved it for wanting to try and change him. It still didn't stop how badly he felt at the stunned look on her face, even if he wouldn't admit to it.
She just stood there for a long minute shocked that he would dare throw her deepest fear back at her. The one that she had confided in him over, she ahd confided in him that the one thing she was afraid of most was winding up like her mother had been, and he had just gone and thrown that back at her. "I don't know what the hell happened to you since you left, but you came back a changed man. You came back cold and heartless, what little bit of a heart you had before dissapeared, leaving behind nothing more than a dirty old alcoholic who's too weak to make it through a day on his own without the aid of alcohol" He glared at her.
He was ready to hit her. He was ready to punch her. It was the last trace of self control he had left that stopped him. "I think you just kept this side of you hidden. Maggie left you because she knew that deep down inside you were nothing but a little weakling-" Things had started, they couldn't be stopped. She couldn't stop herself. She wanted to bait him into finally breaking down. But that didn't mean that she had to be so downright vicious about it. "No wonder Abby hates you, who wants a father like-"
"Get out." The words were hissed quietly. He was gripping the desk with white knuckles, the only thing stopping his hand from connecting with her face. If she wasn't Jordan, if she wasn't his best friend, a woman, he'd have punched her by now. But he could never knock around Jordan. It was one thing for her to bring up Maggie, but another entirely for her to bring up Abby.
"They both saw-" He laughed bitterly, cutting her off.
"They both got what they saw, and nothing else. At least I don't pretend to be alright. At least I don't pretned to be sweet and innocent. I don't hide the fact that my life is horrible enough to need a drink sometimes. At least I'm honest. It's no wonder Woody left you, he got tired of it all too." The sound of flesh on flesh resounded through the room and he laughed the same bitter laugh as he rubbed the red spot across his cheek.
He had brought up the taboo subject. He had brought up Woody. After she told him the way that the boy had left her brokenhearted. After he spent a long night comforting her. And he threw it back in her face. He was digging for anything and everything that he could find to throw back at her, he just wanted to force her out of his life. "You know, I respected you, I thought you were a friend, but you know what? The person that I thought I knew is nothing more than a coward's facade. Titleman was right, you are the cowardly lion, too afraid to do anything. I bet you wouldn't have cared if he killed you, would you? You're nothing more than a cocky, arrogant coward. You're so afraid of having a bad name, it's the only thing keeping you from killing yourself, isn't it? That it would smear your reputation."
He stepped forward and she gave an involuntary step backwards. She was more than a little afraid at the red blaze in his eyes. This wasn't the Garret she knew and loved. This wasn't her best friend. This was something else. Not even a someone, a something, whatever he was, he wasn't acting like the man she had known, he had changed too much since he had come back.
He wanted to punch her, he wanted to send her flying. But he wouldn't. He couldn't. He backed her against the wall though, glaring at her. He wasn't going to give her the knowledge that she was right. He wasn't going to let her know that she had it right on when she mentioned Titleman, he'd given up caring. He didn't care if he got caught drinking. He smirked wickedly as his mind spun off away from his control. "At least I would have been murdered. It wouldn't have been my fault. Not like you-you know, I think my life would have been better without you-I should have just left you to kill yourself." The words are cold, even for him, but couldn't stop.
She stood there, feeling as if time had stopped. She tried to tell herself that this wasn't her Garret, but it was. There was the same low growl, the same dark brown eyes, the same wicked smirk, this was the man she had known. Or thought she hadn known. This was the man who had played her for a fool, pulled her strings just like a marionette. She tried to tell herself that this was just he booze talking, but his eyes were cold and clear.
"Right, saved you all the trouble in your life, if it wasn't for me, you wouldn't be an alcoholic-"
"I wouldn't be, I wouldn't have had to worry about you, either risking your and my careers or risking your life. You'd have been just another dead body to roll through the morgue, another statistic, another one of the nine million suicides, and I'd still be happy with Maggie, and my life would be better than it's been since I've met you." He wanted to blame his problems on her.
He wanted to blame his own shortcomings with Maggie on her. He wanted to blame it all on her, it would be better than the booze. The booze wasn't the problem, it was the solution. She stood there, unable to answer. "You, Garret, are nothing more than a sanctimonious bastard, you care about no one but yourself, and you don't care about the way that you walk all over people, you're willing to use and manipulate anyone, aren't you? Well I've had enough. You can go on and kill yourself if I want to for all I care. Go on, you want to die? Jump off the roof, I dare you to." He took a stride towards the office door and she froze.
He was ready to do it, he really was. He didn't care. It would serve her right for daring him to. "You want me to, move away from the door." She shook her head. She didn't want him to die. She didn't want him to be this man that he had become.
"Garret, please-" She begged and he glared at her.
"If you don't care, then stop caring, let me drink myself to death if I want to, let me jump off the roof if I want to, because honestly, I don't care either. And I don't need some holier than though manipulative bitch telling me that I shouldn't kill myself a breath after she tells me I should." He shoved his way past her and stalked up the stairs towards the roof with her following close behind.
"Garret you can't-"
"I can and I will." He stood up in the cold Boston air, staring out and the street below.
"Please, it's not that bad, please-" She was begging now, and he turned to see the tears in her eyes as he took a step up onto the short wall that was there, facing her.
"You dared me to?" She shook her head.
"Garret-" She starts again and he looks at her moving further back, his heels dangling off the edge. "Come back, please."
"You're the one that said you didn't care." He had no clue what was controlling him anymore, just that he had given up all rational thought, all control of himself.
"I didn't mean it, come back, get sober, please, come back-" He shakes he his head.
"I told you I don't care either." She reached her hand out to him and he could see the tears streaking down her face. "What happened to my bestest girlfriend?" He laughed again. The bitter laugh was starting to scare her.
"He died long before I lost my job. I did a lot of thinking over those eight weeks and I came to one thought. Life sucks. So you know what, you're right, I am a cocky arrogant bastard, but it doesn't care if my reputation gets slaughtered, it's not like I'm going to be alive to hear all the whispers, now am I?" He swayed backwards and held her breath.
"Please-come back. You can't do this-you-I need you Garret-" He looked at her. She needed him?
"What do you need with an arrogant, cocky, manipulative bastard?" She glared at him.
"Don't do this." She told him again and he met her eyes. He could see the fear there, the pain.
"What else is there for me to do?"
"You're still in there Garret, you haven't completely turned in on yourself. You're not beyond salvageable. Every now and then there's a trace of the man I remember-you're not a lost cause." I laugh.
"I am Jordan, I am. Screw St. Peter, give me St. Jude." The patron saint of lost causes. That's who he wanted to meet at the pearly gates. If the pearly gates even existed.
"No. You're not gone, not yet." He shook his head again and let one foot dangle over the edge.
"Do it!" Someone from the street called and he laughed. He could. He would. He didn't care anymore.
"Don't-" She called at him, reaching, grasping for him. "Please." Her voice cracked and he could see the pure fear on her face. She was hurt over this, upset, she was afraid that he was going to leave her all alone. "You're the only thing I have anymore-" Max was gone. She had screwed things up with Woody, she had no one.
He looked at her and put his foot back on the ledge before looking down. It was just enough to kill him. "And what good does a miserably dirty old alcoholic do?" He asked her and she looked at him.
She didn't know what to say. There was nothing else she could do. "You can't." She said simply, and he looked at her. "You can't leave me alone. If you go, I go." He looked at her. He couldn't do that to her. It was one thing to ruin his own life, but another to drag her down with him, he couldn't drag her down with him, she had done nothing. He wanted to blame his problems on her, but he couldn't, the only one he had to blame was himself.
He looked at her outstretched arm. He rocked back again and her breath hitched again. She took a step closer. "You jump and I'm following you down." He looked at her, her eyes weren't joking, she meant it. He was the last thing she had left. If he was gone, she would have nothing left to live for. He frowned and took her hand, allowing her to pull him off of the ledge.
She pulled him tightly into her arms, sobbing against him. He couldn't help the tears that slowly formed as he let them leak out against her neck. "You're still good inside, you're still the Garret that I love." He looked at her, for a long minute, before pulling her close again. She loved him, she wanted to help him, she wanted to make him better. And maybe she just might be able to help him. Maybe he wasn't quite as lost as he thought he was, maybe he wasn't so far gone.