Gil didn't think of himself as someone who tended to drown his sorrows in a bottle of hooch. Sure, after Jackie died, he did, admittedly, spend quite a few days slouched in this same spot on the couch and with a glass of whatever in his hand.
Way he saw it, he was allowed that momentary fall from grace. His wife just died, after all. After a few days in an alcoholic haze, he pulled himself up, cleaned himself up, screwed the lid back on the bottle, and did what Jackie expected him to do: take care of business.
Which included putting the kid they informally adopted as their own on a train and shipping him back to Quantico. Against said kid's wishes, he recalled, hoisting his glass for another swallow of the amber liquid. Bright made it clear he wanted to stay and help him. Gil decided the best way for him to help was to go back and do what Bright did best: profile and catch serial killers.
Once Bright was gone, Gil spent one more night in an alcoholic stupor before he pinned on his badge and went back out there to do what he promised Jackie he'd do: make sure no more boys and girls endured what their kid did. He never let Jackie down. Same as he never again resorted to marinating himself in alcohol because he had a bad day.
After tonight, though? Gil needed the warm, soothing benefit that came from a tumbler of bourbon.
Cases involving kids were always the hardest.
They made him feel inadequate, ineffectual, incapable of upholding the promise he made when he graduated the academy.
Tonight's case...
Gil swallowed a sigh along with a mouthful of liquor. His tongue tingled as the smoky liquid slid down his throat and spread warmth and comfort throughout his cold body.
Tonight's case contained similarities to another case. One Gil would never forget. No more than he'd forget this one. Or that boy, he thought, staring down into his glass. Images swam inside that amber liquid.
A ten-year-old boy with dark hair cut in a bowl shape.
Big blue eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.
Slender frame twisted and bent in ways bodies shouldn't be.
A thin trickle of blood seeping from the corner of his lax mouth.
Pooling underneath his battered, broken body.
Staining the Batman pajamas he put on before being pushed from the second floor landing by a megalomaniac.
The thought about how that could have been Bright rolled through Gil's mind before he could squelch it. Icy waves crashed over him as the boy from that evening became the one he met on a night like this some twenty odd years ago.
His breath hitched, his fingers trembled, and his heart stumbled over itself as the realization that he could have ended up at a scene like tonight's had he not listened to what Bright said to him in the foyer of the Whitly home.
"My father, he's going to kill you."
If he hadn't believed the kid, if he ignored his warning, if he simply turned and walked away, his and Bright's fates might have turned out as Jordan Pewett's did.
What father contemplated murdering their own son?
The same one who tried to turn their son into a murder is who.
Anger coursed through him. Mingled with his burning hate for the man who traumatized his son to the point he hadn't been able to speak for months after his arrest.
Who still struggled with his nightmares and his guilt all these years later.
Who needed a cocktail of drugs to keep the demons from tearing his soul apart.
Who couldn't form friendships because his ability to trust had been so badly broken.
Who denied himself happiness because he didn't believe he deserved it.
Gil's fingers clenched on the glass, hard enough his knuckles popped, and the glass itself cracked, but, thankfully, didn't splinter in his hand.
He drained the last of the bourbon in one long swallow and set the glass on the coffee table. He contemplated pouring another but decided three was enough.
Four is drowning my sorrows.
And he wasn't the kind of man who did that.
Not anymore.
He sat back with a sigh and allowed his body and mind to blissfully drift on the slight buzz the alcohol created.
The kid from tonight wasn't his kid, he told himself as rain splashed against the window.
No, his kid was home, safe and sound.
Well, as much as Bright ever could be safe and sound.
Even he was forced to admit that JT was right about one thing.
If Malcolm Bright was a state?
He'd be Florida.
With a California chaser.
A/N: Hello, all, and welcome! I own nothing here but for my own musings. This is for my fifth entry for Bad Things Happen Bingo for the prompt: drowning their sorrows.
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