I've decided to do a pseudo series revolving around a bar! Yay! And also Keith Urban songs, but I might use some other artists in future. And by future I mean when the writers strike ends and we finally get some more new eppesodes and/or when I get inspired by reruns. Whichever. I've always wanted to do an alcohol based series. This is just basically David and Colby talking about the events of Breaking Point at the same bar as my fic Everybody is set. Reading Everybody is not a prerequisite to this fic, they've got nothing to do with each other, really, except for a couple of vague references and the same setting. I'm rambling (as I always seem to), so I'm going to stop now.
Big thanks to VanishingP2000 for the beta
How in the hell did it take me two years of living in Los Angeles to find this bar? It's not like I don't drive past it on my way to and from work everyday and dozens of other times every week. And when did Keith Urban's music become such an appropriate soundtrack for my life?
And so I wrote this song for you
I think I know just what you're going through
At this point, I doubt that anyone could possibly know what's going on in my head. Half the time I don't even know what the hell is going on inside my head.
Did you believe you'd never change
Nothin' ever stays the same
No kidding everything changes. One day I was just another new recruit at Quantico and the next I was undercover to flush out a Chinese spy in the DOJ. The moment that Dwayne approached me and I turned him in and agreed to the op my life turned into a whirlwind of lies and secrecy. After everything went all to hell and the story came out people-especially David-had trouble separating what was part of my op from who I was. A lot of people thought that I couldn't separate the two, either, but they're wrong. Nothing that any of them ever saw except for my confession was part of my op.
I know it's hard holdin' on
And even harder tryin' to let it go
This op sent me straight to hell. Reality got blurred and it was like it was someone else's life. I couldn't even recognize it as my life anymore. It wasn't my life anymore; it belonged to Kirkland and the US government. And it sucked. But I can't let it go. I can't just move on from it. It was too big a part of my life for too damn long. I don't want to hold onto it, but I can't let it go. It won't let me go.
And so you're frozen like a stone
But you are not alone
"Well, actually I am alone. Unless you count my friend Fosters, here."
"No, you're not."
Shit. Did I say that out loud? No, wait, better question, when exactly did David get here? Or, even better yet, how did he know about this place?
"Megan told me about this place, thought I'd come check it out. And why are you talking to yourself, man?"
"I'm not talking to myself, I'm talking to the music."
"So you're carrying on a conversation with a recording?"
"Yep. Good thing I don't have any psych evaluations coming up." That has got to be the weakest joke that I have ever made, yet David laughed.
Every step I take I get a little less afraid
Of givin' in to love
"Yeah. Colby, what was up with you and that reporter, hunh? I've never seen you get so emotionally invested in a case before."
Damn. Talk about a day that didn't go as planned. I worked my ass off to find her and when I did, she told me to get the hell away from her. Well, I told Charlie that talking it out was the best thing to do, so I might as well take my own advice.
What you hide inside I see
There's a scar and there's always gonna be
"She was all alone. I've been there. She had no one in her personal life, no one to talk to about all the bad crap she was investigating. No one to know what she was working on or why she was being held hostage. She was completely alone. I've been there and it sucks. I mean, it really sucks to know that if you're captured there's no one else to tell the world what you know, what you might well die for knowing." Something like that leaves its mark. There are reminders every where, especially in my business.
There's a past in everyone
You can't undo, you can't outrun
"Anything I say will just be stupid and ignorant, so I'm just going to say that if you want to talk, I'll listen. You're not alone anymore, man."
I drained the last of the beer that was sloshing around the bottom of my bottle before I answered him, staring down into the empty space in the brown bottle in my hands.
"It's funny, really. Earlier today I told Charlie that he couldn't just bottle everything up and go around pretending that everything was fine and that he had to talk about it. Guess that makes me a hypocrite, doesn't it." I need more beer. The bartender seems to agree, because he drops another bottle of Fosters on the bar in front of me almost before I've completed my salute for alcohol with my empty bottle.
"So take your own advice. Talk. I'll listen. But honestly, Colby, next time you need to talk, don't wait so long that it becomes blindingly obvious that you're not dealing as well as you'd like everyone to think that you are. Because I'm not going to lie, you're hard to read, man. You've got the best damn poker face that I've ever seen."
"Ah, so all those years of playing poker with my army buddies to pass time have finally paid off. Or come back to bite me in the ass. Either one." And we're back to my weapon of choice. Sarcasm and dry wit.
"Funny. But that's not gonna work. Not this time."
That's actually kind of a relief.
Every step I take I get a little less afraid
Of givin' in to love
"Alright. Look, you remember when I said that I'd bunked with some of those guys over in Afghanistan? Well, Bonnie's brother was one of them. He was a good guy. Young. Too young, really. But then again, weren't we all?" That was rhetorical and David knew it. "He was always one of the ones, one of the faces that you never do forget. He was just always so damn happy and optimistic and then he was dead. By the time that he had died he wasn't quite so young anymore, but still too young. I hadn't spoken to him in years. Hell, I'd already joined the Bureau by the time he died. I still remember Bonnie at the funeral. I knew that she looked familiar, but until I saw that cup, I couldn't place her. At the funeral she was…well, you can imagine. He was the last family she had."
"So that's why you were so damn attached to this case. Why didn't you say something?"
That actually makes me laugh.
"You remember what happened the last time one of our cases involved one of my old army buddies?" He does. We all do. It was Dwayne. And that one sent us all into a spiral of hell. I'm glad that he resists the obvious temptation of mentioning how well the whole not mentioning things went last time. But this is different and we both know it. "Don would have pulled me. Conflict of interest."
"Okay. Fair point. Even though we all know that there was really no conflict. Your only goal was to get her back alive."
"Yeah. I doubt that she even knew who I was. I never actually met her. I hung out around the back of the funeral in a suit. No uniform."
"Why don't you go talk to her or something?"
"Why? What's the point?"
"I don't know. Someone's going to have to debrief her, you know. Tomorrow. Don thinks it should be you."
"Why?"
"Because you cared so damn much. I think he wants to know if you two know each other."
"Well, when she told me to get my hand off her, don't you think that might have been a clue to him that either she didn't know me or just didn't like me?"
"You'd think. But if she didn't like you, she probably would have just punched you or something."
Yeah, probably. I have kind of made getting my ass kicked a habit lately.
"It's so good to know that you think that women think so highly of me that even a mild dislike would cause them to deck me. Thank you."
"Not what I meant and you know it."
"You know, unless I was, like, an ex who screwed her best friend in her own bed right after her mother's funeral or something, I doubt that she would go as far as punching me right after I rescued her. And since I've never actually done that, I think I'm safe."
"Unless she's just plain crazy or something."
"Well, yeah, there is that."
Believe me when I say it gets better every day
Once you get used to the pain
"So are you drunk enough to talk about it yet, or do we need more beer still?"
Damn. I was really hoping that I had gotten him off the original topic, but apparently not.
"How drunk I am has nothing to do with it. Getting me drunk will achieve nothing except for getting me to tell not funny jokes and really bad karaoke. It doesn't get me to talk." I can tell from his exasperated sigh that he really wants to start banging his head against the table. Not that I blame him. "Alright, alright, jeez. No need to be so impatient."
"Sorry. It's just that sometimes you're so damn…"
"Ridiculously secretive? Emotionally withdrawn? Overly guarded? Completely uncommunicative as far as my feelings are concerned? Unforthcoming about everything going on in my head?"
"Uh, yeah, basically all of the above. Except for being emotionally withdrawn. You're not emotionally withdrawn, you're just better at the whole compartmentalization thing than most."
"Occupational hazard of being a spy."
"Yeah, I'd imagine. And stop trying to change the subject!"
"I am not trying to change the subject! It's called having a conversation! Jeez. I'm offended, man." I'm not, really, and he knows it.
"Yeah, whatever." Yeah, we also both know that I was trying to postpone the inevitable.
Every step I take I get a little less afraid
Of givin' in to love
"Look, David, are you really sure that you want to hear about this? I mean, I lived it and I don't even want to hear about it."
"I think I can take. After seeing you tied to that chair with that needle sticking out of you chest on that boat and realizing that you weren't breathing and then finding out what that bastard gave you, I think I'm traumatized enough by this. Not to mention having to do CPR on my best friend."
Well, okay then. The man makes a damn good point.
"Okay. But first, I'm gonna need a shot of Vodka."
"I thought you said that getting drunk wouldn't make you open up?"
"It won't. It'll just make me feel better about it."
"Well okay then. Bartender! Can I get a shot of vodka for my friend here!"
David called to the bartender, whose name I really need to learn, because I intend on becoming a regular here, or at least, as much of a regular as I can be with my crazy FBI schedule. I threw back the shot as soon as the bartender put it in front of me.
"So, bartender, what's your name, cause calling you bartender is getting old."
"Jake. And what's your name, cause calling you brooding FBI guy is getting old, too."
"Touché. Colby."
"Alright then, Colby." We exchange a quick nod and he knows that he's got himself a new regular.
Believe me when I say it gets better every day
Once you get used to the pain
"When I was on that boat, the only thing that kept me going, kept me fighting was knowing that you guys were coming for me. Or at least, the hope that you were coming. But damned if y'all didn't get there just in time for Lancer to shoot me full of potassium chloride. And honestly, my last thought was that all of you had put in so much work to find me and all you were gonna get was a dead body."
At the end of the night David was right, it really did feel better to just talk about it. Then again, it was my own advice, too, that I had given to Charlie earlier that day and to Megan, in this very bar only a few weeks earlier. So I talked, probably more than I've talked about anything other than a case or sports in far too long. Knowing that I'm not so alone anymore makes the pain that much more bearable.
Once you get used to the pain