Author: Bedlam's Bard
Summary: "They were just two friends sat in the dark with a bottle of drink between them, which might as well have been a live grenade for all the damage it could do."
Pairing: Jed/Leo friendship fic.
Rating: PG-13
Soilers: Following 'Lord John Marbury', if you know Leo you know this.
Disclaimer: Insert your own sarky disclaimer here. They aren't mine but the things they do are. Especially the downright stupid things.
Feedback: Yes please! Send anything helpful to absurdissimum@aol.com. Feed the plot bunnies!
Notes: This is my first TWW fic that's seen the light of day, a couple of years old now I thought it about time it got dusted off and tossed in the deep end. Though it still remains to be seen if it sinks or swims. Let me know what you think.
'do not touch me'
Strange. How he seemed to have drifted back here, bottle in hand, and not even have known it until now. Strange, that even in his broken state, some small part of his mind had taken over his protesting feet and brought him back here mere hours after he'd left. And the strangest part of it all? He couldn't even say how long he had been sat here, elbows on knees and head in his hands. Head in his hands and unable to take his eyes off the bottle of Scotch he'd had stuck to his hand when he'd come to his senses. He had unstuck his sweaty palm from the cool glass and tried not to imagine the warmth of the liquid sliding down his throat. Instead, he set it down, oh so carefully, on the low table before him and stared at it so hard since, that he was surprised the drink hadn't boiled and the glass melted.
All the while there was just one thought running around his head. Was that all he was? The sum total of his addictions? Ever since...Well, it was ever since ever wasn't it? He couldn't remember a time when the drink or the drugs weren't hanging over him like a dark cloud in some way. Even before it had been his own drink, it had been his fathers. Today though, today, it had been when the staff had come in and told him that the story was going to break and asked did his family know. Did the President know. Daft question that kid, does Jed know. The nights he'd been drunk in some gutter somewhere and the car would roll up and Jed would take him home. Like a guardian angel. And on the nights he'd been really bad, he'd take him to a motel where no one would care and sober him up so that Jenny wouldn't be hurt anymore than she already was.
So, he'd nodded and answered that yes, they knew. They had been the ones to protect him from himself when he hadn't cared enough to try. They knew. Oh God, yes they knew and he owed them everything for it. He owed his Jenny and how had he paid her back? By leaving her. Oh, it was true that she had been the one to leave and to ask for the divorce, but the truth was that he'd left her long before that. Left her for his work. For his new addiction. And that was all he had become. An addict: the sum total of his addictions, hiding from the real world because then he wouldn't be able to survive out there with nothing to cling too. Valium to keep the night terrors away. Drink to make those long dark hours seem a little less frightening and to keep the world at bay. Now. Now the work to keep the drink and the Valium out of mind.
An addict. That's all he was. A weak man who couldn't cope on his own and had to hide behind the façade of business. That was why he was here after all. Why his feet had walked his numb body here to his office where he would be safe from the bottle that filled his hand and thoughts. How easy it would be to allow its contents to fill his belly too. How easy to simply break the seal, unscrew the cap with that oddly satisfying grinding sound and swallow that first taste of firewater. How very, very easy it would be.
"Leo?"
He hadn't heard the door open, hadn't felt the light fall upon the gloomy room or even heard his oldest friend step across the threshold. He heard him now though. Heard the worry, the pain and the concern in his voice. He didn't look up though, couldn't seem to break his gaze in case the bottle somehow got away from him. Or even worse, got him.
"Hmm?" His vocal cords cut in whilst his mind idled in neutral still.
"Leo, you okay? Thought you'd gone home?" Jed's voice was still thick with worry, his gaze following that of his best friend and Chief of Staff to the full bottle sat on the table. Then he looked back to the man sat before it. Leo looked shrunken in on himself somehow. Like a scared child, trying to curl up under the bed blankets so the bogeyman couldn't get him. Because that's exactly what the drink was: Leo's bogeyman.
"Yeh..." his voice betrayed him, gave out on whatever it was he was going to say, letting the word die and hang on the air. He turned his face away, the unshed tears pricking at the corner of his eyes. He had to be strong, he couldn't lay this all on Jed again.
"You should have come to the Residence, old friend." Jed said quietly, one hand gripping Leo's shoulder reassuringly.
"It's like three in the morning," Leo answered with a shake of his downcast head.
"Since when has that mattered?"
"I just...I couldn't."
For a while, neither of them said anything as Jed took a seat next to him. They both found themselves staring at the scourge upon the table some little distance in front of them. Barely an arms length away. Suddenly Leo's frame shook beside him and Jed reached out, one arm sliding around his friend's shoulders and pulling the man into a tight embrace.
"Oh God Jed, what have I done? What have I done?" Leo sobbed, all pretence of 'Mr. President' forgotten. They were just two friends sat in the dark with a bottle of drink between them, which might as well have been a live grenade for all the damage it could do.
"Shhh, shhh Leo. It's gonna be all right, I swear it," Jed said, as they began to rock, he soothed his friend as best he could, trying to hold back his own tears, "I swear I won't let this bring you down. You don't deserve this, you got through it once before and that's more than any man should have to do."
So, they rocked back and forth, Leo crying in Jed's arms. Jed holding back tears of quiet fury that anyone in the world would dare to hurt his friend. The man he held dearer than any other, closer than his own brother. He was angry and afraid. So afraid for his brother in arms, his friend, the best man at his wedding and the Godfather of his little girls. He could see it still, that wretched bottle sat on the table; it was right there at the edge of his vision, making his eyes hurt.
He blinked away the tears and held on tightly, afraid Leo might slip away and disappear into the darkness again.