He should go home, he knows that. It was unconscionably late and the chemistry class was nowhere near the appropriate place to have a complete mental breakdown. But, going home meant going back to the dismal box of an apartment, sandwiched between the arguing couple and the screaming baby. The school, at least, would be quiet.
So, Adrian Harris sat curled under his desk, a bottle of vodka clutched in one hand and his face buried in the other.
He was certainly doing a good job making up for lost time, five years of misspent sobriety. The four days since his confession to Sheriff Stilinski had been one long, grinding bender. He slept a few hours at his apartment, but otherwise sat at his old seat in his old bar, silently and mechanically pouring liquor down his gullet. He would still be there right now, if the bar hadn't closed. At the moment, he wished that he could just sit in that same seat drinking until his liver burst.
Harris uncovered his face enough to wrap his lips around the neck of the bottle and chug. The rotgut scoured his mouth like borax. He could feel it burning all the way down his esophagus.
He wondered if that was something like how it felt to swallow fire.
A loud, strangled sound escaped from Harris' throat. After a moment of confusion, he identified it as a sob. He realized then that his face was wet. Before that line of thought could go any further, he drowned it in vodka.
His stomach lurched, and he desperately wanted to vomit. He imagined that if he could just empty his stomach, he would purge all of the dark, crawling things lodged deep inside of him—all of the fear and loneliness and hatred for himself and everyone else and the bitter guilt that stuck to him like a knife between the ribs and refused to ebb for even a second and…
The burn had faded. A quick swig took care of that. He relished the momentary distraction of pain, and the growing fog of intoxication that made thinking all but impossible.
Adrian Harris curled even closer in on himself, hugging his legs to his chest, pressing his eyes into his knees, wondering how much he would have to drink to forget about the sweet blue eyes of the murderer who made him believe, just for a second, that someone actually cared about him.
Bobby Finstock loved coaching. The Beacon Hills High School lacrosse team was the only reason he got up most mornings. Friends couldn't understand why he got so worked up about high school sports – about lacrosse— but Bobby couldn't help getting a genuine thrill out of helping talented kids achieve everything they were capable of.
He would rather stab himself in the eye with a sharpened pencil than give up coaching. Teaching economics, on the other hand, was a duty he would be all too glad to be done with. Especially when he had a mountain of tests to grade. He was sure that he must have used up enough red ink to paint the school several times over.
Still, now he was done. He was done with everything vaguely school related, and now there was nothing to do but go home, dig into a massive bowl of microwaved nachos, and fall asleep in front of iJeopardy/i.
He walked down the darkened hall with an extra spring in his step just thinking about it. He was almost to the lobby, when a sharp sound reached his ears, almost a bark, like a wounded animal. He froze midstep, as a dozen grisly news stories leapt to mind. He was contemplating running, when he heard another sound, a low, pained moan, coming from the chemistry classroom.
Hesitantly, he walked over and cracked the door open an inch. No deadly monsters leapt out at him from the darkened classroom. Ashamed of his earlier fear, he opened the door wide and called out, "Hey, anyone there?"
No one answered. "Anyone?" he repeated, stepping into the classroom and letting the door shut behind him.
There was still no answer, but now he could make out a kind of weak sniffling, coming from under the desk.
"Listen, I can hear you," Bobby said irritably, crossing his arms. If this turned out to be a student, that little brat would be mowing the field with his teeth, no matter what clever excuse he produced. "Who is it?"
"G'way."
Bobby paused. Even hoarse and slurred, there was something familiar about that voice. Something that he heard every day.
He hurried over to the front of the class and leaned around to look under the desk. His stomach lurched at the sight of the man curled into a fetal position underneath the desk, suit rumpled, dark hair mussed, face buried in his hands, clutching a nearly empty bottle of clear liquor. He immediately identified who he thought it was, but he couldn't make himself believe it.
"Harris?"
Professor Harris grumbled and pulled up his arms over his face, spilling vodka in his hair. "Lea'me 'lone," he growled.
"Harris, it's me, Bobby Finstock." He dropped down onto the balls of his feet. "What the hell is wrong, man?"
The younger man swiped at him weakly, not looking up from his arm. "Jus' get away frumme."
"Jesus, Harris, you're supposed to be under, I don't know, police surveillance or something, or—not here." He raised and lowered his arms hopelessly.
Harris muttered inaudibly. He untangled his arms enough to raise the bottle to his lips.
"Hey!" Bobby reached out and grabbed Harris' wrist before he could take a sip. Harris whined inarticulately and struggled weakly to free himself. Bobby took the opportunity to study Harris' exposed face and felt a jolt of surprise at the state of the other man. The usual dark-rimmed glasses were gone. His face was extremely pale, with a few days worth of stubble decorating his jaw. In the hollows of his cheeks and around his mouth, the skin was nearly blue. His eyes were red and bloodshot. The skin beneath Bobby's hand was cold and clammy. He could feel Harris shivering faintly.
"Christ on a bike, Harris, what've you—what're you doing here?"
Harris seemed to have given up the struggle for the bottle, though he still gripped the neck tightly. He relaxed, letting his legs stretch out in front of him. "N'where else t'go," he slurred. His cheeks were damp, whether with sweat or liquor or tears, Bobby couldn't tell.
"You, uh, you don't look so good buddy, uh… About how much've you been drinking tonight?"
Harris' head lolled back and he appeared to attempt a shrug. Judging by the smell that was seeping out of the man's pores, Bobby was going to guess "a lot," and he was also going to guess that this binge hadn't just begun this night.
"Listen, uh…" It hit him that he didn't know Harris' first name. How had he worked with this man for nearly seven years and never learned his first name? He pushed on anyway. "Listen, Harris, I think I better take this."
He reached for the bottle. Harris let out a strangled noise of protest, but Bobby managed to extricate the liquor easily with a bit of simple misdirection. He wondered for a moment, what to do with it, then Harris gave a pained cough, and he decided to go with the simplest option. He tossed the bottle across the room, where it hit a chart of the periodic table and shattered, throwing vodka and glass onto the wall and floor. Harris cried out again and Bobby was sure that it was more out of concern for the liquor than his classroom.
Bobby kept a hold of Harris' arm. "Okay, listen, just stay still, okay. Don't talk, don't…" Harris didn't seem to be listening to him, instead staring up at the underside of the desk as if something fascinating were written there in words only he could read. Bobby sighed and crawled under the desk with him.
Harris whined and slapped at him ineffectively as Bobby held of his face and pulled him forward. He coughed, and Bobby stopped. "Don't puke on me either."
"Screw you," Harris grumbled.
"Yeah, yeah." The other man put up no resistance as Bobby pulled him in, so that he could press his ear close to Harris mouth. One eye on his watch, he counted breaths. Harris continued to shiver beside him. He was very skinny, Bobby observed. The ridge of his spine jutted out sharply. The suit fit loosely on his lank form. He couldn't remember if the other teacher had always been such a stick or if this was a recent result of starving himself of anything but liquor.
His breathing was shallow and slower than Bobby would have liked, but nothing he needed to call 911 about. Harris had clearly spent the last few days doing horrible damage to his body, but had apparently managed to stop just short of acute alcohol poisoning.
Small favors.
"Okay, buddy, you've definitely had enough for tonight. C'mon, let's get you home." He held Harris by his bony shoulders and awkwardly tried to pull him out from under the desk.
"No." Harris tried to squirm away, but Bobby held him tightly. "I… I don' need… Don' bother…" He seemeod to lose track of his thought and just grimaced and shook his head. Bobby felt the thin body starting to go slack in his arms.
"Hey! Hey!" He shook him, probably harder than he needed to. Harris looked up at him, eyes wide, confused, desperate. Bobby was struck by the vulnerability in those wide, gray-green eyes. Normally, the younger teacher was the picture of professionalism, cold and detached, absent from office parties and birthdays. His relations with other teachers were usually limited to a curt nod or two in the hallway. When Bobby asked Harris to cover the economics midterm for him, his only response had been to brusquely accept, not asking for reasons, only returning wordlessly to the lesson plan he had been working on.
Now, every trace of that icy veneer had been wiped away. He looked so much younger, just a frightened, shivering boy.
"What's your name?" he asked.
Harris swallowed, struggling to speak. "Adrian," he muttered finally.
"Great, Adrian." Absently, he pushed a stray lock of damp hair off of Harris'—Adrian's—forehead. "Well, I'm Bobby. And, I don't know what's going on with you, but I know that I'm not going to let you choke to death on your own vomit underneath your desk, okay, so just let me take you home. Okay?"
He realized his hand was still pressed to the side of Adrian's face. The other man looked at him a long moment with the same lost, hopeless expression, and then nodded.
"Great, awesome, okay." He took hold of the lapels of Adrian's suit and half-led, half-dragged him out from under the desk. He had the teacher onto his knees, about to haul him up to his feet, when Adrian pulled away slightly. He ducked his head and tried to cover his mouth, before he threw up, with a weak, choking noise deep in his throat.
Bobby jumped back sharply, but needn't have bothered. Adrian only managed to vomit down his own front, dark yellow bile that spoke to his empty stomach. Bobby moved quickly to pat the other man's back as he shuddered and coughed. After a minute or so, Adrian was finished, only shaking as he cried.
Throughout, Bobby had been murmuring whatever comforting nonsense came to mind. "All right, all right. You're okay. All done. It's all out. You're okay. No big deal. No problem, no—"
"I'm sorry," Adrian choked around a sob. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."
"I told you, don't—"
"I'm sorry." Adrian's fingers were tangled in his hair and he was bent nearly in half. "I didn't know, I didn't… I'm sorry. God, I'm sorry. I'm so…"
"Jesus, calm down, Adrian. It's not that big of a deal. It's awesome that you're not dead, that's all."
Bobby wasn't sure Adrian had heard him. He kept apologizing, slurring in and out of intelligibility. For a moment, Bobby toyed with the idea of just turning the other man over onto his side so he didn't choke, and then letting him sleep it off by himself. Let the sloppy drunk be somebody else's problem.
But, he wasn't about to do that. Bobby Finstock didn't let things be other people's problems. He was the coach. When something was his problem, it stayed his until he fixed it. Right now, Adrian Harris was his problem.
"C'mon." Before Adrian could protest, Bobby hauled him up by his armpits. Once they were on their feet, he looped his arm around Adrian's back and put out his hip to support him. Together, they started towards the door.
Faintly, Harris could hear Coach Finstock babbling as they made their awkward, shambling way to the door. If he concentrated hard, he could pick out individual words
"All right, man, let's start walking. One-two, one-two. Keep it up. Doing good. Hup-to, soldier."
He wanted to keep apologizing, wanted to make it clear to Finstock how sorry he was for being sick, for making him take care of him, for being a no-good drunk, for everything. His mouth wasn't cooperating with his brain, though. As it was, putting one foot in front of the other was enough of a challenge.
Finstock talked as if it were breathing. "You know, I don't know all that much about you, Adrian. Or anything at all really. Not where you're from or where's the first place you taught or where you went to college. Well, I guess you probably have a diploma up in your office, but you know. We really oughtta hang out more. You and me. Watch a game or something. Or, I dunno, go to a science fair. Whatever you're into."
Harris' head swam, and he felt like was going to be sick again. He was agonizingly tired; he wanted to fall down where he stood and sleep for at least a month. More than that, he wanted to get away, somewhere dark and secret, where he wouldn't be shaming himself in front of his colleagues. Coach Finstock probably thought he was a weak, pathetic, little child. He was probably begging for the chance to get rid of him.
And when exactly did he start caring what the lacrosse coach thought?
Finstock gave his shoulder an insistent shake. Harris realized that he had been close to unconsciousness. He forced himself to concentrate on the other man's voice.
"You have any family, Adrian?"
With an effort to keep his stomach in check, Harris shook his head. Finstock jostled his shoulder again, and Harris forced himself to answer, "No." His mouth tasted disgusting. He missed the purifying burn of vodka down his throat. He wondered what happened to the bottle he had before. He vaguely remembered a crash, but that was all.
"That's a shame. We really should hang out sometime. Okay, here we go." Finstock unhooked his arm from around Harris' shoulder to pull open a door. When Harris concentrated for a moment, he could identify it as the door to the boy's locker room. Then, Finstock was pulling him forward again. He stumbled over his feet, until he felt Finstock leaning him against smooth tile and urging him downward. He slumped in a corner of the shower, focusing on breathing in and out and not throwing up again
He could hear Finstock moving around the echoing room. He wondered if the other teacher was going to leave him here, out of sight, until he sobered up. That would decidedly be for the best; at the very least, he would be alone, unable to embarrass himself any further.
However, in another moment, Finstock was kneeling by his side, holding a water bottle out to him.
"So, here, um, you probably need this about now. It's a student's, but I'm sure they won't mind. Or, if they do, whatever. Here." He pushed the bottle forward with unnecessary force, the nozzle cracking against his teeth. With what little motor control he still had left, Harris took the bottle from him and started gulping down the water he hadn't realized until now he desperately needed.
"See, that's better right? Doing good, right as rain. Well, not exactly, but we're doing better, way better. No vomiting blood, not having seizures, everything's going awesome. Fantastic. Everyone should be so lucky."
Harris' lip twitched, and he had to catch himself as it hit him that he was about to laugh. Everything was crashing in around him, and he was laughing? Like he deserved to laugh, like he deserved to forget.
Finstock continued rambling, completely oblivious. "Okay, awesome. You keep drinking, keep hydrating, I'll just help you get cleaned up there. Here." He grabbed the lapels of his jacket, and for a moment Harris was flummoxed, until he realized that Finstock was trying to remove it. After a few moments of awkward fumbling, he succeeded in pulling off the jacket.
"What're you…?" Harris struggled to speak clearly. Before he could pull the words out of his jumbled brain, warm water sluiced over his head. "Hwah…?"
Finstock dropped his arm from the shower tap. "Take it easy. Just cleaning you up. Get some of the sweat off, clear your head, you know. That okay? Not too hot, too cold?"
Harris shook his head. The water felt wonderful. As it flattened his hair to his head and soaked through his clothes, he could feel some of the four days' binge sloughing off him. He wanted to fall asleep under the comfortable patter of the shower, warm and safe and clean.
He felt a hand on his cheek. Struggling to focus without his glasses—where had he lost them?—he saw Finstock still kneeling in front of him, with his jacket peeled off and laying beside him.
"That's good, right? Awesome."
Harris wanted to tell him not to bother getting wet. He didn't need to do this on Harris' account. He didn't need to waste any time or energy on a useless, self-centered, pathetic drunk.
All that he managed to get out was a weak, "M'sorry."
"Hey!" Finstock placed a hand on the other side of his face and pulled him forward, staring into his eyes. "Hey, hey, hey, hey! What kinda attitude's that? Where's that gonna get us, huh? Negativity breeds negativity, and we don't need negativity, right?"
"'S'all my fault…"
"Aw, c'mon. This isn't time for a pity party. We'll just get you cleaned up, and everything'll be just peachy."
Harris shook his head. He needed to make it clear to Finstock just how guilty he was. Finstock needed to know that he was covered in dirt that couldn't be washed off. He needed to know that Harris wasn't worth any of his good will. "My fault… they all died."
"Whatta you… they…?" Finstock fell silent. His hands didn't leave Harris' cheeks, idly stoking with one thumb. "It's okay," he said after a long moment. "Don't say anything else. Not a word, not a single word, all right? You just let me talk. I'll do all the talking. You breathe. Deep breaths. In, out, in, out. Okay?" He gave him a little shake. "You're okay, right?" he whispered. Harris didn't think that he'd ever heard the coach whisper. "You're okay."
Harris forced himself to nod. He didn't have the energy make Finstock understand. Instead, he just leaned into the hand on his cheek and let the warm water drench him. If he could forget, just for a moment, who he was and what he had done, he could admit that this felt nice.
Bobby wondered if Adrian was a spy. Assassin, former Green Beret—he went through the possibilities, most of them ridiculous and cartoonish. He searched for anything that would explain the other man's slurred insistence that he was responsible for multiple deaths.
Or maybe it didn't mean anything, and he was just drunk beyond the point of coherence. And Adrian was very drunk.
Once the shower had washed away as much of the grime as possible and Adrian's skin was no longer quite as chill to the touch, Bobby reached over and shut off the tap. Adrian started shivering almost immediately. As gently as he could, he hauled Adrian up to his feet, struggling to stand the lax body up on its feet.
"Alright, sleeping beauty, we're walking now. One foot in front of the other, come on. Forward march. That's right. Good man, good, good, good, good…"
In truth, Adrian's clumsy attempts at walking were more a hindrance than a help, and Bobby ended up mostly dragging him out of the shower and across the locker room. He paused to grab an oversized sweatshirt off of one of the benches and wrapped it around Adrian's thin, shaking shoulders. He figured whatever student it belonged to wouldn't mind. And if they did, well, tough. Bobby Finstock had bigger things to deal with.
They were halfway across the parking lot, before Adrian seemed to become aware of his surroundings. He stopped, and weakly tried to push Bobby away. "I lef' my car…"
"No, no, not worrying about that." He continued guiding Adrian across the nearly empty lot. "Not worrying about anything. You're not worrying about anything. Just leave it to me. Bobby Finstock's got your back."
Through some skillful maneuvering, he managed to unlock the door and then slide Adrian into the passenger's seat of his Kia. The other man immediately curled into a ball, his eyes shut and mouth lax. It took Bobby an effort to get the seatbelt clicked around him.
After he had settled down into the driver's seat and shut the door behind him, Bobby hesitated. He wondered a moment if he should ask Adrian his address. However, he quickly discarded the idea. Adrian wasn't in any shape, physically or mentally, to be on his own. And Bobby's job wasn't over until the young teacher was safe and sound.
Adrian slept the entire ride back, seemingly oblivious to his wet clothes and the rumbling of the car. After a few minutes, a spike of panic shot through Bobby, and he reached over and gave Adrian's shoulder a firm shake, to make sure he hadn't slipped into unconsciousness. Adrian stretched clumsily, and then turned to Bobby, pale eyes wide and unfocused. Bobby grinned at him, smoothed back a stray lock of damp hair, and gently pushed him back into the seat. He was asleep again in seconds.
Once he reached home, he managed to rouse Adrian enough to walk him inside and into the bedroom.
"Home again, home again, jiggety jog," Bobby mumbled, kicking aside a pile of dirty clothes. "Something, something, something… Okay, here we go." He dropped Adrian onto the unmade bed. He tried to roll over onto his stomach, but Bobby pulled him back. "Hold on there, Tiger."
Adrian mumbled something that Bobby hoped wasn't another sorry. He moved to the foot of the bed and set to tugging off Adrian's shoes and socks. "Now," he muttered as he shuffled further up the side of the bed. "don't take this the wrong way. I mean, not that that's necessarily wrong, but this is medically necessary, you know? Don't want you sleeping in wet clothes or anything, right? So, don't get excited or anything."
Adrian didn't respond. Bobby sighed and undid the other man's belt, before pulling off his soaked pants. His legs were very thin and dotted with ugly purple bruises that stood out particularly against his pale skin. Bobby paused a moment, looking from the injuries to Adrian's blank, sleeping face. He wondered what sort of guilt could make a man do this kind of damage to himself. What could Adrian Harris possibly have to be that sorry for?
Trying not to pursue that thought, he quickly took care of Adrian's shirt, and then tossed the bundle of wet clothes and shoes onto his desk. He thought for a second about trying to get him into pajamas, but then Adrian curled in on himself in a tight ball, and Bobby gave up on the idea. Instead he pulled the blankets up and over the bruised and skinny body. Adrian let out a sigh and burrowed his nose into the pillows.
Bobby knew enough about alcohol poisoning to know they weren't out of the woods yet. Adrian still might slip into unconsciousness during the night, or choke on his own vomit, or any of a whole host of other things Bobby wasn't going to let happen. He pulled up a chair and sat by the bed with a newspaper and pen in hand.
Every quarter hour or so, he shook Adrian awake, just enough for the other man to make eye contact with him, to make sure he was still with the land of the living. The only time he left the room was to make a cup of instant coffee and throw Adrian's clothes in the dryer. That he did with an unexpected sense of urgency, as if every second he spent outside of that room was one wasted.
He meant to work on the crossword puzzle, but never got further than a few clues. Instead, he found himself just sitting back and watching Adrian sleep. He wondered again about what the other man had said back at the school. My fault they all died. Of course, Adrian was just rambling, just beating himself up over something unimportant. Maybe the same thing that had pulled him to the bottom of a bottle in the first place; maybe the same thing that still creased his forehead and twisted his lips in a frown even as he slept.
Bobby had known that he was going to help Adrian the moment he found the young teacher curled up under his desk. He could say that he was helping him because that was the right thing to do, and Bobby liked to the right thing, but that wasn't it entirely. Adrian was a little bit special. Maybe it was because they were colleagues, or because Adrian cut just such a pathetic figure.
Or it was the eyes. When he looked into Adrian's eyes, he could see just a hint of the dark, awful thing that made him beg for forgiveness. Bobby wanted to wipe it away, whatever it was, and leave the eyes clean.
Bobby wasn't going to analyze anything: he liked Adrian's eyes and he wanted to see them clear and he wasn't going to give up until they were.
He reached over and shook Adrian's shoulder. The dark eyelashes fluttered apart and Adrian looked over at him in hazy confusion.
Bobby smiled. "Go back to sleep, beautiful."
Adrian sighed and buried his face in the pillows. Bobby leaned back in his chair and smiled at the thought of fetching water and aspirin in the morning when Adrian woke up, head aching and cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
Outside, the moon blazed bright white.