A/N The angst continues...

You are just a picture
And a thousand memories
Is all I take with me
'Cuz your smile
Is just too much to see
You're just a thousand memories
Fantasies, broken dreams

Bad Religion-1000 Memories

"Hey doc." The boy behind the counter said, keying in the familiar price into the battered old cash register.

"Hi." he mumbled, fishing out his wallet.

"How're you doing doc? I heard about Abby-" The boy had a sympathetic look on his face, a small frown with big caring eyes. He frowned in response, both from the memory and from the realization that he was lacking cash. He pulled out his credit card and fought back a groan, he hated having to charge things at the archaic liquor store.

"I'm doing alright." He said, fighting not to tap his foot as the boy swiped the card through and the sound of the machine dialing echoed off damp cement. It wasn't the boy's fault, just how old and archaic the place was.

"She was a nice girl, smart too. Really popular, everyone loved her." He wanted to leave. He didn't want to have to talk about her to the boy. He couldn't quite remember the clerk's name, but he knew that the boy had gone to school with Abby, been a friend of hers. But yet, he didn't want to remember the boy, remember what she had been, remember her at all, it hurt too much.

It was bad enough that this was his second time in here that week. His second bottle of scotch in a week. That couldn't be good, but he wasn't getting drunk, he wasn't out getting wasted, binging. He wasn't going into work with hangovers, once was enough. Just drinking every now and then, here and there. Two or three before bed just to stave off the nightmares.

It was no worse than the way he was drinking when Maggie left him. He wasn't drinking to the point of being drunk, it took too much to do that. He briefly thought that might be a bad thing. A few months ago four glasses would have him drunk, now it was two or three just to get him barely tipsy.

But he wasn't getting drunk. He never drank to the point of waking up with a hangover, with a few rare exceptions on weekends. On work nights he would just stay up if the nightmares bothered him and a glass or two wouldn't work. He wasn't going to turn into a lush.

That was the one thing he was not going to do. He was being very careful about watching his alcohol intake. He was not going to become just another statistic, another alcoholic, no, that was the one thing he wasn't going to do. He kept himself tightly in control, it was one of the things he prided himself on. Abby had lost control, he wasn't going to do the same thing and let liquor take over his life.

He didn't drink to get drunk. He didn't get hangovers, and he didn't drink at work. Not unless Jordan showed up in his office with that lost, hurt look that she had, and he knew that she'd been forced to work a case with Woody that got to her, and all she wanted to do was ease the pain somewhat. Then the two of them would pour a glass each and commiserate together.

He didn't mind that in the least, it helped him take the pain away. But at work, rather than drink, he threw himself into the cases, into the paperwork. Every T was crossed and every I was dotted. What was it Slokum had said about the morgue being so inefficient? Well, it certainly wasn't that way any longer, the efficiency ratings were right back to where they had been when the despicable man was in charge.

Thanks entirely to him. Thanks entirely to his going over everything with a fine tooth comb, leaving no stone unturned, doing whatever it took to make sure that things were right. But he made sure not to be the anal retentive freak that Slokum was, he made sure that everyone else there was happy, taking up all the slack himself. Throwing himself into work gave him something else to focus on, something that wasn't the pain.

But at home he didn't have that. He had the paperwork that he brought home, he did that, threw himself into that, but there was a limit to how much he could bring home. And paperwork didn't help with the nightmares. But he wasn't going to drink at work, just at home. He wasn't using it as a crutch, he wasn't an alcoholic.

The sound of the card being swiped through the carbon snapped him back to reality. He grabbed the pen off the counter and signed the slip, taking the receipt, frowning as he stuck it in his wallet, seeing the others. But it wasn't that bad. He grabbed the paper bag and headed back around the corner up to his apartment.