Seattle, Wednesday
Nov. 24th, 2021 12:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
designateddadfriend"I just think if you heard my side. . . ." Vic said.
Travis sighed, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. This was the trouble with renting your house to your best friend. (Former best friend? Was he really going to reject Vic forever over this?
Maybe.
No.)
"Okay," he said, yanking up his pant leg. "You see this scar? This one, right here? Yeah. Pretty nasty." Vic grimaced. Travis kept going, opening his shirt. "How about this one? How about this one? You see this one?"
"No," Vic said, sounding annoyed.
"Exactly. No scar." Travis fixed his shirt. "When I had stitches on my ankle, I picked at it and I picked at it and I picked at it, and every time it would start to heal and scab over, I'd pick at it again."
"That's gross."
"And now look. Dark scar there forever. Nasty. But when I had my chest punctured by a piece of glass?"
"I was there," Vic said. Travis nodded. He didn't really remember much about that night, but he knew she'd dragged him out of the skyscraper. She never let him forget that she had.
He kept right on talking. He wasn't traumatized by that, he'd healed up from it ages ago. Which just furthered his point, really. "I didn't mess with it. I just, you know, kind of let my body do its thing. And then the blood clotted, and then it scabbed over, and then the red blood cells brought oxygen to the wound, and then the white blood cells fought off infection and then created new collagen and tissue, and I-I didn't interfere with that process, even though it hurt."
Vic sighed. Travis ignored her.
"Not only did it heal quicker. . . ?" He spread his hands. "Basically no scar."
"So you don't want to talk about it?" Vic asked.
"Nope."
"Okay."
It was amazing. Travis had been in Fandom for nearly a year, and gotten called in on maybe a handful of situations around town. And here in Seattle, he and Vic could barely walk down the street arguing without happening across an emergency.
"Why do we even bother?" Travis asked, watching the ambulance pull away with the OD'd kid inside. The same one he'd been called in on at least once before he'd left. More than a year of ODing, and the kid's so-called best friend honestly thought he'd just shoot up 'one more time' and then get clean? "I mean, they're just gonna do it again, you know? We revive 'em, they get fluids, they shoot up again. The same, stupid thing, over and over and over."
"You need to keep your opinions to yourself," Vic said, turning to head down the street again.
"How does wanting people to do the right thing always seem to make me the unreasonable one?" Travis asked, heading after her.
"It doesn't, but thinking you're the only arbiter of the 'right thing' does."
This seemed like a pretty cut and dry situation to Travis, honestly. Don't enable your best friend's addiction. Don't date the guy who got your best friend's husband murdered.
But that would mean talking about Ruiz. And Travis wasn't doing that. So he let it drop.
Their Thanksgiving shopping trip didn't go much better. It was their own fault, Travis figured. You never went grocery shopping the day before the holiday.
'We were saying goodbye, and he was upset," Vic said, storming back down the street from the store.
Travis scoffed. "Sorry losing you was so hard on him, but he cost me my husband!"
"Michael!" Vic yelled. "He was upset about losing Michael."
Travis didn't want to hear about that. "Well, I said I was done talking about this, so I don't even know what I'm doing."
"For the record, that is exactly why we are in this situation," Vic said.
"In what situation?!"
"Your whole 'let it scab over' pseudo-science crap. I mean, that's what you did with Michael's death --"
"You have no idea what I did with Michael's death!"
"And you're doing it with your dad, and it's what you're doing right now!"
Travis rolled his eyes. "Oh, my God."
"You think it's the mature way of doing things, but it's actually the opposite because it's ostrich theory and it's bull."
"Oh, excuse me. You want to talk about ostrich theory?" Travis asked. "Right. Let's talk about you, for a second in all that!"
"I don't know what you —"
"Help!" someone screamed. "Oh god, someone help!"
A black woman was standing in the street over a blond woman, passed out on the sidewalk. A blonde Travis recognized.
"Isn't that the same house where —"
"It's Libby," Travis said. The supposed best friend of the OD victim they'd helped on the way to the store.
"Call 911," Vic told the black woman, who nodded quickly, pulling out her phone.
"I didn't know what to do," she was saying. "I don't know CPR and she just came over and passed out —"
"Looks like another OD," Travis said, kneeling over Libby. Apparently these two had that in common along with whatever their 'phone ritual' was that was supposed to help the guy, Charlie, get off drugs.
Travis couldn't even be surprised.
They managed to revive Libby by the time the aid car arrived. She was babbling over worrying about losing Charlie, sobbing "he's my best friend" over and over.
He tried not to think too hard about how that hit him in the chest.
"Shit," Vic said, as they started unpacking groceries in the kitchen. "I forgot to grab the eggs."
"Seriously?" Travis asked. "The — they go in everything."
"I'll go get them!"
"Great," Travis said, watching her go. "I'm going to . . . go for a walk."
He had to put this angry energy somewhere. Before he went nuts and became the next OD someone stumbled across.
How was Emmett everywhere?
"Oh goody," Travis grumbled as he saw the man jogging up from the other direction. "More judgment."
"Hey," Emmett greeted. Like he hadn't run off the day before. "I heard about, uh." He waved his hand vaguely back in the direction of Travis's house. Travis sighed, closing his eyes, and Emmett grimaced and shrugged. "Seattle emergency services. Gossipy bunch."
"Yeah. Might as well be squirrels."
". . . What?"
"Nothing. Yeah. Vic and I are — having a rough time."
"You want to talk about it?"
Travis nearly said no. But Emmett — he was a neutral third party. One who had, once upon a time, claimed to love Travis. It'd be nice to get someone on his side. So he told him.
"I don't know," Emmett said, when Travis finished. "Maybe you should give her a break. Is she even still dating the guy?"
"That's not the point," Travis said. This wasn't going how he'd hoped.
"What is the point?" Emmett asked. He was being far too reasonable.
"The point is — even after she found out that he was the guy that took everything from me, she still heard his side. She still heard him out. I mean, what is that?"
Emmett frowned. "Um. . . . That's being a person, I guess?"
"You are not on her side."
"What side? You know, you're really sounding like. . . ." Emmett trailed off. Travis's gut went cold. There were a lot of terrible people in Emmett's life he could be mentally comparing Travis to.
"Sounding like what?"
"Like . . . not Travis." Emmett shook his head. "Trav, it's gonna be a lonely life if you don't start to . . . I don't know . . . if you don't start to let it go."
Well. That was a problem, then. Because Travis never let go of anything.
Emmett walked back to the house with Travis, proving once again how he was somehow both not good enough and yet also too good for Travis to be with. How could a guy with that kind of empathy have been raised by the kind of trash his police chief father was?
How could a guy with that kind of empathy have led his fiancee beard along for as long as he had?
Shit. It was possible people were a lot more complicated that Travis wanted to believe they could be.
"You have a crush on Emmett," Vic said when Travis came in. She'd come back with eggs, apparently, and was starting to prep their contributions to Station 19's Thanksgiving dinner. Travis gave her a look, and she shrugged. "You said you didn't want to talk about 'it,' so we're gonna talk about something else."
And just like that, any anger that had faded talking to Emmett reared back up. "Do you think that I can just go back to the Travis and Vic comedy hour after seeing you with him?"
"How long, then?"
"What?"
"How long until we can go back?"
"I don't know." Travis rolled his eyes. "There's not a timeline, Vic. I just. . . ."
His heart needed to stop spasming every time he looked at her. His lungs needed to stop collapsing. He'd literally had his heard pierced by a shard of glass, necessitating emergency bypass surgery, and it hadn't hurt this much.
"Travis, just stop, please." Vic threw her dishtowel down into the sink. "You know me. You were the first non-blood person to become my family. So you don't actually get to treat me like some kind of scab you somehow don't pick. So, I am ripping it off!"
"Ripping what off?"
"The scab!"
"Oh, my God." Travis couldn't do this. He turned and headed for the door.
"The scab!" Vic yelled, following after.
"I cannot take what a brat you're being right now," Travis told her, stomping out the door and down the porch.
"Me? You are literally storming out of a — out of the house — god!"
Travis let out a deep, frustrated groan as he made it to the sidewalk. On which he'd managed to run into two ODs and an ex, today. This . . . was not his best plan.
"Alright." Vic was right behind him. Travis started in the other direction. "So, what's the plan here? We're not gonna try to fix this? We're just done 'cause of this Theo stuff? Years and years of friendship in the garbage 'cause of some guy?"
Travis stopped and spun on her. "Ah! Nope! Nope! Not some guy! Not some guy! The guy who killed my husband! How are you not getting this?"
"Travis." Vic held up her hands soothingly. Like he was some victim having a panic attack or something. "I didn't know."
"And then you did. A-And now, here we are! Look! Look at us!" Travis threw his arms wide, staring around at the neighborhood. "Hey, we're screaming on the side of the street!"
"Uh, no! You're the only one screaming. I am just trying to talk."
Fuck. That just — "Well, I'm the only one that has something to scream about, Vic!" Travis stormed past her, scooping up a stick and hurling it at a nearby tree. He couldn't do this.
"Oh, my. . . ." Vic actually looked amused by his outburst. Travis grabbed another stick and started smashing it against the tree. "My God. I could scream about how —" Travis kept smashing. Vic kept talking. "-- inappropriate and unprofessional you were with those kids today."
Travis rolled his eyes. "Whatever."
Vic raised her voice, talking over him. "I could scream about the fact you seem to have lost the ability to care about anyone's feelings but your own. I could scream about you giving me the silent treatment all day when you could have just talked to me."
Travis's hand clenched around his stick. Silent treatment. Why hadn't he just stuck with that?
"I could scream about you basically calling me a liar!"
"Fine!" Travis pointed at her with the stick. "You're not a liar!"
Vic leaned back, glaring at the stick. "What is that?"
Travis scowled at the stick and threw it aside. That was — not what he was doing here. He aimed his finger at her instead. "You're not a liar." He stormed past her again, needing an outlet for this angry energy that didn't involve beating up a tree. "You're just reckless and selfish and inconsiderate and void of boundaries to the point of, I mean, I don't even know."
"Oh, okay. Yeah. Cool list, dude." Vic just kept coming. "Okay, here's mine: you are judgmental, and you're controlling, and you just . . . you just expect everyone to do things in exactly the way you imagine them to be in your brain. Then when they don't, not only is that person an idiot, they're a monster, right?"
Emmett had said the same thing yesterday — God, how was that only yesterday? "That's — not even a little true —" Travis tried.
"Well, you did it with your dad." Vic said.
"Oh, my God." Maybe Vic was the squirrel of 19. She and Emmett had been talking behind his back. "This has nothing to do with my dad. I don't appreciate that. At all."
Vic threw up her hands. "Okay. Okay, look, look, Travis, I'm trying to tell you I get it. I get it. I get that your dad screwed you up, and I get that Michael's death screwed you up, but you need to understand we are all screwed up. We are all just trying to figure it out, okay?"
"Okay." Fuck, what was she even talking about now? "Me not wanting you to date the guy that's responsible for my husband's death is not the same —"
"-- oh, my God. Travis, we are not dating! —"
"-- As some will-they-or-won't-they crap!"
"Stop it!" Vic yelled. "We are not dating! I have told you that four thousand times, and you refuse to even . . . even hear it. It's like you're addicted to being furious. Can you see that?"
Travis was barely listening. He'd found it. He'd found exactly what he needed to say to get her to stop. To see this from his perspective. "When Ripley died — you remember him? You spent weeks fixated on . . . on the owner of that coffee plant. Do you remember that?"
"-- I don't —" Vic started, but she had nothing to counter this with.
"You tried to get him thrown in jail for code violations!"
"-- Okay. Look —"
"Do you remember that? Now imagine. . . ."
"Wait. Trav —"
"Imagine if I came to you and I said, 'Hey, Vic, remember that guy that killed your fiancé?'"
"-- Okay —"
"'I think he's pretty hot.'"
"Travis."
"'Do you mind if we bang?'"
"Stop it!" Vic got up in his face. "I don't actually need some kind of sloppy paint-by-numbers example to understand, because I lost someone, too, remember?"
Travis scoffed and started pacing again. "Right."
"Oh, wait, no. I'm sorry. You're the only one who gets to nurse their pain!"
Travis spun to face her. "You don't seem to need to nurse anything! Because you're a magic person who just moves on from a loss!"
"Magic person?"
Travis would reflect on that phrasing later and feel bad about it. Right now? Right now he wasn't reflecting on much of anything. "Out of sight, out of mind, right?"
"Oh, okay, there it is! Okay."
"Well, we're not all that elastic, and you know what? I wouldn't want to be even if it was an option!"
"At least it's better than being a sad, angry man frozen in time, right?" Vic shot back. "Because you know what, Travis? I tried to find a shelf, just one shelf in your apartment to keep my grandma's tea cups, and every single space was taken, and not with your stuff. Never with your stuff. Only with Michael's. Travis, it's been four years."
Another hit. Right to the chest. Travis's voice dropped as he felt himself start to tear up. "Yeah, you're right. You're right."
"I know."
"Yeah. I'm... I'm not over him. I'm not over Michael. Not even a little." He swallowed against the familiar rock in his throat. "And I hate it. I hate that four years on and every morning still feels just as painful and awful and confusing as the day he died."
Vic watched him, something weird in her expression. She said something, but Travis didn't know what. He'd started and now he couldn't stop.
"I hate that I have to find a place to hide that mess every single day to even be a person. And I hate knowing that no matter how well I hide it, the very next morning, it's just gonna be there waiting for me full force."
"Okay," Vic said. Like he was doing anything here. Like he was fixing anything by letting all of this out.
"I don't get how you do that," he told her. "I don't get how you just —"
"What?"
He hated this. He hated feeling this way. And for a moment, one sharp, blinding moment, he kind of hated her too, for making him feel it. "I mean, did you even care about Ripley?"
The hope in her eyes died. "Okay." She turned away.
"Did you?" Travis asked again. Hurrying around her, watching her face. Looking for even a hint of the kind of agony he'd spent the last four years dealing with.
"Naturally, that was next," Vic grumbled. Trying to shove the conversation back around to him. Travis wouldn't let her this time. If he had to feel this, so did she.
"No, no, no. Because if you did... If you did, honestly —"
"-- Why would you —"
"-- If you did care about him, I mean —"
"-- Travis, I cared —" Oh. Oh, there it was. There was that ache. "-- I care about him so much . . . that I am scared I'm never gonna care about anyone like that again, and — and just hoping that there's someday gonna be another him is the only thing that's kept me from being entirely consumed by the loss of him."
"So, what?" Travis asked. Anger blending now into a dread, into needing to know if this was true. "Theo is another him?"
"I-I don't know. I . . . Maybe. Maybe, I hoped. But you know what? As soon as I found out who he was, it was done. Because you were more important. I thought about your feelings immediately. I thought about your feelings exclusively. And the most painful part about all of this is you haven't thought about mine at all."
Oh.
Fuck.
Travis <>was the monster.
"Do you realize that?" Vic asked.
Before Travis could answer, they heard scared shouting from down the road, and long-held professional instincts kicked in. They both broke into a run.
It was Libby. She'd left the hospital and OD'd again in the park.
And this time, no one had found her in time.
"'It's not that bad', she said." Vic led the way slowly up the stairs onto the front porch, visibly exhausted. It was supposed to be her day off. "'I don't need rehab,' she said."
"I think you're right," Travis said, voice low. Vic glanced back at him. "I think I'm addicted to being furious. To feeling the rage of his loss. And it feels . . . tied to him. It feels like if I let it go, I let him go." Vic watched him silently. Like she was waiting for something.
He knew what she was waiting for. And she deserved it. And more.
"I shouldn't have accused you of not caring about Ripley. That was low."
Vic sighed, leaning against the porch railing. "I learned how to self-soothe when I was like years old. It's the only bright spot to parental neglect. Lucas is gone. And that sucks. And I have done a lot of things to try to make it suck less, and yeah, maybe it hasn't always worked, but I am trying, Travis. I'm always trying. And, you. . . . You know, I don't know. Maybe . . . maybe you're right. It is always gonna suck a little. But . . . I think that's okay, 'cause I think it just speaks to how good we got to have it for a second there, you know?"
Travis nodded, staring out down the street. "Look," he said, at the same time she said "Sorry —" and then Travis held up a hand.
Someone was staggering down the street. Someone who looked not at all okay.
"Jesus, we might as well be working the Aid Car today," Vic muttered, pulling out her phone as Travis jogged down the steps to go check on the guy.
It was Charlie. Of course it was. He'd just found out about Libby, and he'd gone right back down to rock bottom.
He was high as a kite, and Travis helped him sit down on the curb while they waited for an ambulance. He urged him to keep talking, not to pass out, eyes flicking over to Vic kneeling across from him, her phone still pressed to her head as she listened to the 911 operator.
"I just wanted to say goodbye," Charlie said. He flailed one arm out, as though Libby was right there in the street in front of him. Travis caught it and held on instead.
"Hey. Why don't you say goodbye right now?" he asked. "Your — your phone thing. She told us about the phone thing. About — saying goodbye to things or people over the phone so you can do it for real."
Charlie shook his head. "It doesn't work. It's just some stupid thing we used to do."
"It's not stupid," Travis said, looking at Vic again. "It's not stupid at all. Because it was yours and hers. It was your thing. And she was your best friend, right?" He gave Charlie what felt like a slightly shaky smile. "And that's the most important thing in the world. So just sit here. Say what you need to say. Tell her . . . tell her that you're sorry and that you'll do better and that you'll get well."
Vic put her hand on Charlie's other arm. "Her life has to mean something, Charlie. And her death has to mean something. It has to change you, you know? And maybe if you let it, it can change you for the better." She bit her lip. "But — it won't until you say goodbye."
Charlie nodded through drunken sobs, and held the old flip phone clenched in his hand up to his ear. "Libs," he said. "I gotta be done. I'm gonna be done, like . . . like you said. I don't really know how to do that, but I'm . . . yeah, I'm gonna try. I'm gonna go to the detox place tonight, and. . . ." His voice broke, and the metaphorical wound in Travis's heart ached empathetically. "How do I do this without you? You're my best friend. Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you're gone. . . ."
Once the ambulance had come and gone, Vic and Travis finally made their way back into the house. They didn't make it far, just sat down on the stairs, shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow.
"Theo was Michael's you."
Vic sniffed, rubbing at her face. Travis leaned a little more heavily against her.
"Him and Michael," he said. "They went through academy together. They were probies together. Roommates. Theo was a legacy kid, so he rose up the ladder faster than Michael or I, but . . . we were best friends. The three of us. And then suddenly . . . Michael died. And it was Theo's fault."
The words hung there in silence for a long moment. Travis wondered how much it would hurt to just spend the night right here, on the stairs. If the pain might be worth it, just not to have to stand up again.
"Must have sucked to go through that without your best friend," Vic said.
Travis thought about lying on the engine with her after Ripley died. Talking her into going to the funeral, letting her yell at him and rail against him and get her anger and grief out.
He nodded, just a little. She leaned back into him. Just a little.
"You know," he said after a moment. "I hate this weird part after a friendship fight. . . . You know, after it's done, when you still both feel kind of icky and awkward and not back to normal with each other."
Please tell him the fight could be done, Vic. He really needed the fight to be done.
"Yeah," she said, after a long moment. "In a relationship, you just have sex."
Travis's lips twitched. Yeah. The fight was totally done.
"Vic, for the millionth time, I'm not gonna have sex with you." He looked over at her, but couldn't keep a straight face. She held hers a moment longer.
"Why not?"
They both burst into slightly pained, slightly relieved laughter.
It wasn't the whole night on the stairs.
But it was a good chunk of it.
Once they'd managed to drag themselves up the stairs and into bed, Travis lay staring at the ceiling. Thinking about Charlie and Libby and their phone. About being addicted to fury, and hanging on too hard to his grief.
"Hey, um. Michael," he said. And felt like an ass. He reached for his phone and brought it to his ear, wondering if it would really work any better. "Hey."
It did help. A little.
"You remember when we won that trip to the Maldives, and I was a disaster for the first two days, obsessing over how much time we had left, and, uh, making myself sick and sad about how we only had a week? You said that I should try to enjoy the this of this, instead of worrying about the end of this. And, of course, you were right. But I couldn't shake it." He let out a wet laugh. Travis the drama queen, at it again. "And then you got pissed . . . and you said, 'Travis, yes, this week is going to end, but it is already ours. It is in our head and belly and bones. It is already ours forever.' Man . . . that was, like, the best advice in the world." His throat tried to choke him down, but he forced himself to keep going. "I can't believe I forgot it. I'm sorry."
He took a deep breath, staring up at the ceiling. "You're, uh . . . you're not here anymore. And the Maldives are literally sinking into the sea." And it hurt. It still hurt so much.
But maybe just. In a way he could eventually deal with.
"But you were right. I will always have both in my head, belly, and bones. So I should probably stop fixating on the end of them."
He lowered the phone. And stared up at the ceiling.
And breathed.
[NFI, NFB, OOC welcome. Adapted from ep 4x09, "No One Is Alone". Content note: references to drug addiction and ODs, and lots and lots of angry grieving and self-righteous yelling. But, you know, for catharsis reasons!]
Travis sighed, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. This was the trouble with renting your house to your best friend. (Former best friend? Was he really going to reject Vic forever over this?
Maybe.
No.)
"Okay," he said, yanking up his pant leg. "You see this scar? This one, right here? Yeah. Pretty nasty." Vic grimaced. Travis kept going, opening his shirt. "How about this one? How about this one? You see this one?"
"No," Vic said, sounding annoyed.
"Exactly. No scar." Travis fixed his shirt. "When I had stitches on my ankle, I picked at it and I picked at it and I picked at it, and every time it would start to heal and scab over, I'd pick at it again."
"That's gross."
"And now look. Dark scar there forever. Nasty. But when I had my chest punctured by a piece of glass?"
"I was there," Vic said. Travis nodded. He didn't really remember much about that night, but he knew she'd dragged him out of the skyscraper. She never let him forget that she had.
He kept right on talking. He wasn't traumatized by that, he'd healed up from it ages ago. Which just furthered his point, really. "I didn't mess with it. I just, you know, kind of let my body do its thing. And then the blood clotted, and then it scabbed over, and then the red blood cells brought oxygen to the wound, and then the white blood cells fought off infection and then created new collagen and tissue, and I-I didn't interfere with that process, even though it hurt."
Vic sighed. Travis ignored her.
"Not only did it heal quicker. . . ?" He spread his hands. "Basically no scar."
"So you don't want to talk about it?" Vic asked.
"Nope."
"Okay."
It was amazing. Travis had been in Fandom for nearly a year, and gotten called in on maybe a handful of situations around town. And here in Seattle, he and Vic could barely walk down the street arguing without happening across an emergency.
"Why do we even bother?" Travis asked, watching the ambulance pull away with the OD'd kid inside. The same one he'd been called in on at least once before he'd left. More than a year of ODing, and the kid's so-called best friend honestly thought he'd just shoot up 'one more time' and then get clean? "I mean, they're just gonna do it again, you know? We revive 'em, they get fluids, they shoot up again. The same, stupid thing, over and over and over."
"You need to keep your opinions to yourself," Vic said, turning to head down the street again.
"How does wanting people to do the right thing always seem to make me the unreasonable one?" Travis asked, heading after her.
"It doesn't, but thinking you're the only arbiter of the 'right thing' does."
This seemed like a pretty cut and dry situation to Travis, honestly. Don't enable your best friend's addiction. Don't date the guy who got your best friend's husband murdered.
But that would mean talking about Ruiz. And Travis wasn't doing that. So he let it drop.
Their Thanksgiving shopping trip didn't go much better. It was their own fault, Travis figured. You never went grocery shopping the day before the holiday.
'We were saying goodbye, and he was upset," Vic said, storming back down the street from the store.
Travis scoffed. "Sorry losing you was so hard on him, but he cost me my husband!"
"Michael!" Vic yelled. "He was upset about losing Michael."
Travis didn't want to hear about that. "Well, I said I was done talking about this, so I don't even know what I'm doing."
"For the record, that is exactly why we are in this situation," Vic said.
"In what situation?!"
"Your whole 'let it scab over' pseudo-science crap. I mean, that's what you did with Michael's death --"
"You have no idea what I did with Michael's death!"
"And you're doing it with your dad, and it's what you're doing right now!"
Travis rolled his eyes. "Oh, my God."
"You think it's the mature way of doing things, but it's actually the opposite because it's ostrich theory and it's bull."
"Oh, excuse me. You want to talk about ostrich theory?" Travis asked. "Right. Let's talk about you, for a second in all that!"
"I don't know what you —"
"Help!" someone screamed. "Oh god, someone help!"
A black woman was standing in the street over a blond woman, passed out on the sidewalk. A blonde Travis recognized.
"Isn't that the same house where —"
"It's Libby," Travis said. The supposed best friend of the OD victim they'd helped on the way to the store.
"Call 911," Vic told the black woman, who nodded quickly, pulling out her phone.
"I didn't know what to do," she was saying. "I don't know CPR and she just came over and passed out —"
"Looks like another OD," Travis said, kneeling over Libby. Apparently these two had that in common along with whatever their 'phone ritual' was that was supposed to help the guy, Charlie, get off drugs.
Travis couldn't even be surprised.
They managed to revive Libby by the time the aid car arrived. She was babbling over worrying about losing Charlie, sobbing "he's my best friend" over and over.
He tried not to think too hard about how that hit him in the chest.
"Shit," Vic said, as they started unpacking groceries in the kitchen. "I forgot to grab the eggs."
"Seriously?" Travis asked. "The — they go in everything."
"I'll go get them!"
"Great," Travis said, watching her go. "I'm going to . . . go for a walk."
He had to put this angry energy somewhere. Before he went nuts and became the next OD someone stumbled across.
How was Emmett everywhere?
"Oh goody," Travis grumbled as he saw the man jogging up from the other direction. "More judgment."
"Hey," Emmett greeted. Like he hadn't run off the day before. "I heard about, uh." He waved his hand vaguely back in the direction of Travis's house. Travis sighed, closing his eyes, and Emmett grimaced and shrugged. "Seattle emergency services. Gossipy bunch."
"Yeah. Might as well be squirrels."
". . . What?"
"Nothing. Yeah. Vic and I are — having a rough time."
"You want to talk about it?"
Travis nearly said no. But Emmett — he was a neutral third party. One who had, once upon a time, claimed to love Travis. It'd be nice to get someone on his side. So he told him.
"I don't know," Emmett said, when Travis finished. "Maybe you should give her a break. Is she even still dating the guy?"
"That's not the point," Travis said. This wasn't going how he'd hoped.
"What is the point?" Emmett asked. He was being far too reasonable.
"The point is — even after she found out that he was the guy that took everything from me, she still heard his side. She still heard him out. I mean, what is that?"
Emmett frowned. "Um. . . . That's being a person, I guess?"
"You are not on her side."
"What side? You know, you're really sounding like. . . ." Emmett trailed off. Travis's gut went cold. There were a lot of terrible people in Emmett's life he could be mentally comparing Travis to.
"Sounding like what?"
"Like . . . not Travis." Emmett shook his head. "Trav, it's gonna be a lonely life if you don't start to . . . I don't know . . . if you don't start to let it go."
Well. That was a problem, then. Because Travis never let go of anything.
Emmett walked back to the house with Travis, proving once again how he was somehow both not good enough and yet also too good for Travis to be with. How could a guy with that kind of empathy have been raised by the kind of trash his police chief father was?
How could a guy with that kind of empathy have led his fiancee beard along for as long as he had?
Shit. It was possible people were a lot more complicated that Travis wanted to believe they could be.
"You have a crush on Emmett," Vic said when Travis came in. She'd come back with eggs, apparently, and was starting to prep their contributions to Station 19's Thanksgiving dinner. Travis gave her a look, and she shrugged. "You said you didn't want to talk about 'it,' so we're gonna talk about something else."
And just like that, any anger that had faded talking to Emmett reared back up. "Do you think that I can just go back to the Travis and Vic comedy hour after seeing you with him?"
"How long, then?"
"What?"
"How long until we can go back?"
"I don't know." Travis rolled his eyes. "There's not a timeline, Vic. I just. . . ."
His heart needed to stop spasming every time he looked at her. His lungs needed to stop collapsing. He'd literally had his heard pierced by a shard of glass, necessitating emergency bypass surgery, and it hadn't hurt this much.
"Travis, just stop, please." Vic threw her dishtowel down into the sink. "You know me. You were the first non-blood person to become my family. So you don't actually get to treat me like some kind of scab you somehow don't pick. So, I am ripping it off!"
"Ripping what off?"
"The scab!"
"Oh, my God." Travis couldn't do this. He turned and headed for the door.
"The scab!" Vic yelled, following after.
"I cannot take what a brat you're being right now," Travis told her, stomping out the door and down the porch.
"Me? You are literally storming out of a — out of the house — god!"
Travis let out a deep, frustrated groan as he made it to the sidewalk. On which he'd managed to run into two ODs and an ex, today. This . . . was not his best plan.
"Alright." Vic was right behind him. Travis started in the other direction. "So, what's the plan here? We're not gonna try to fix this? We're just done 'cause of this Theo stuff? Years and years of friendship in the garbage 'cause of some guy?"
Travis stopped and spun on her. "Ah! Nope! Nope! Not some guy! Not some guy! The guy who killed my husband! How are you not getting this?"
"Travis." Vic held up her hands soothingly. Like he was some victim having a panic attack or something. "I didn't know."
"And then you did. A-And now, here we are! Look! Look at us!" Travis threw his arms wide, staring around at the neighborhood. "Hey, we're screaming on the side of the street!"
"Uh, no! You're the only one screaming. I am just trying to talk."
Fuck. That just — "Well, I'm the only one that has something to scream about, Vic!" Travis stormed past her, scooping up a stick and hurling it at a nearby tree. He couldn't do this.
"Oh, my. . . ." Vic actually looked amused by his outburst. Travis grabbed another stick and started smashing it against the tree. "My God. I could scream about how —" Travis kept smashing. Vic kept talking. "-- inappropriate and unprofessional you were with those kids today."
Travis rolled his eyes. "Whatever."
Vic raised her voice, talking over him. "I could scream about the fact you seem to have lost the ability to care about anyone's feelings but your own. I could scream about you giving me the silent treatment all day when you could have just talked to me."
Travis's hand clenched around his stick. Silent treatment. Why hadn't he just stuck with that?
"I could scream about you basically calling me a liar!"
"Fine!" Travis pointed at her with the stick. "You're not a liar!"
Vic leaned back, glaring at the stick. "What is that?"
Travis scowled at the stick and threw it aside. That was — not what he was doing here. He aimed his finger at her instead. "You're not a liar." He stormed past her again, needing an outlet for this angry energy that didn't involve beating up a tree. "You're just reckless and selfish and inconsiderate and void of boundaries to the point of, I mean, I don't even know."
"Oh, okay. Yeah. Cool list, dude." Vic just kept coming. "Okay, here's mine: you are judgmental, and you're controlling, and you just . . . you just expect everyone to do things in exactly the way you imagine them to be in your brain. Then when they don't, not only is that person an idiot, they're a monster, right?"
Emmett had said the same thing yesterday — God, how was that only yesterday? "That's — not even a little true —" Travis tried.
"Well, you did it with your dad." Vic said.
"Oh, my God." Maybe Vic was the squirrel of 19. She and Emmett had been talking behind his back. "This has nothing to do with my dad. I don't appreciate that. At all."
Vic threw up her hands. "Okay. Okay, look, look, Travis, I'm trying to tell you I get it. I get it. I get that your dad screwed you up, and I get that Michael's death screwed you up, but you need to understand we are all screwed up. We are all just trying to figure it out, okay?"
"Okay." Fuck, what was she even talking about now? "Me not wanting you to date the guy that's responsible for my husband's death is not the same —"
"-- oh, my God. Travis, we are not dating! —"
"-- As some will-they-or-won't-they crap!"
"Stop it!" Vic yelled. "We are not dating! I have told you that four thousand times, and you refuse to even . . . even hear it. It's like you're addicted to being furious. Can you see that?"
Travis was barely listening. He'd found it. He'd found exactly what he needed to say to get her to stop. To see this from his perspective. "When Ripley died — you remember him? You spent weeks fixated on . . . on the owner of that coffee plant. Do you remember that?"
"-- I don't —" Vic started, but she had nothing to counter this with.
"You tried to get him thrown in jail for code violations!"
"-- Okay. Look —"
"Do you remember that? Now imagine. . . ."
"Wait. Trav —"
"Imagine if I came to you and I said, 'Hey, Vic, remember that guy that killed your fiancé?'"
"-- Okay —"
"'I think he's pretty hot.'"
"Travis."
"'Do you mind if we bang?'"
"Stop it!" Vic got up in his face. "I don't actually need some kind of sloppy paint-by-numbers example to understand, because I lost someone, too, remember?"
Travis scoffed and started pacing again. "Right."
"Oh, wait, no. I'm sorry. You're the only one who gets to nurse their pain!"
Travis spun to face her. "You don't seem to need to nurse anything! Because you're a magic person who just moves on from a loss!"
"Magic person?"
Travis would reflect on that phrasing later and feel bad about it. Right now? Right now he wasn't reflecting on much of anything. "Out of sight, out of mind, right?"
"Oh, okay, there it is! Okay."
"Well, we're not all that elastic, and you know what? I wouldn't want to be even if it was an option!"
"At least it's better than being a sad, angry man frozen in time, right?" Vic shot back. "Because you know what, Travis? I tried to find a shelf, just one shelf in your apartment to keep my grandma's tea cups, and every single space was taken, and not with your stuff. Never with your stuff. Only with Michael's. Travis, it's been four years."
Another hit. Right to the chest. Travis's voice dropped as he felt himself start to tear up. "Yeah, you're right. You're right."
"I know."
"Yeah. I'm... I'm not over him. I'm not over Michael. Not even a little." He swallowed against the familiar rock in his throat. "And I hate it. I hate that four years on and every morning still feels just as painful and awful and confusing as the day he died."
Vic watched him, something weird in her expression. She said something, but Travis didn't know what. He'd started and now he couldn't stop.
"I hate that I have to find a place to hide that mess every single day to even be a person. And I hate knowing that no matter how well I hide it, the very next morning, it's just gonna be there waiting for me full force."
"Okay," Vic said. Like he was doing anything here. Like he was fixing anything by letting all of this out.
"I don't get how you do that," he told her. "I don't get how you just —"
"What?"
He hated this. He hated feeling this way. And for a moment, one sharp, blinding moment, he kind of hated her too, for making him feel it. "I mean, did you even care about Ripley?"
The hope in her eyes died. "Okay." She turned away.
"Did you?" Travis asked again. Hurrying around her, watching her face. Looking for even a hint of the kind of agony he'd spent the last four years dealing with.
"Naturally, that was next," Vic grumbled. Trying to shove the conversation back around to him. Travis wouldn't let her this time. If he had to feel this, so did she.
"No, no, no. Because if you did... If you did, honestly —"
"-- Why would you —"
"-- If you did care about him, I mean —"
"-- Travis, I cared —" Oh. Oh, there it was. There was that ache. "-- I care about him so much . . . that I am scared I'm never gonna care about anyone like that again, and — and just hoping that there's someday gonna be another him is the only thing that's kept me from being entirely consumed by the loss of him."
"So, what?" Travis asked. Anger blending now into a dread, into needing to know if this was true. "Theo is another him?"
"I-I don't know. I . . . Maybe. Maybe, I hoped. But you know what? As soon as I found out who he was, it was done. Because you were more important. I thought about your feelings immediately. I thought about your feelings exclusively. And the most painful part about all of this is you haven't thought about mine at all."
Oh.
Fuck.
Travis <>was the monster.
"Do you realize that?" Vic asked.
Before Travis could answer, they heard scared shouting from down the road, and long-held professional instincts kicked in. They both broke into a run.
It was Libby. She'd left the hospital and OD'd again in the park.
And this time, no one had found her in time.
"'It's not that bad', she said." Vic led the way slowly up the stairs onto the front porch, visibly exhausted. It was supposed to be her day off. "'I don't need rehab,' she said."
"I think you're right," Travis said, voice low. Vic glanced back at him. "I think I'm addicted to being furious. To feeling the rage of his loss. And it feels . . . tied to him. It feels like if I let it go, I let him go." Vic watched him silently. Like she was waiting for something.
He knew what she was waiting for. And she deserved it. And more.
"I shouldn't have accused you of not caring about Ripley. That was low."
Vic sighed, leaning against the porch railing. "I learned how to self-soothe when I was like years old. It's the only bright spot to parental neglect. Lucas is gone. And that sucks. And I have done a lot of things to try to make it suck less, and yeah, maybe it hasn't always worked, but I am trying, Travis. I'm always trying. And, you. . . . You know, I don't know. Maybe . . . maybe you're right. It is always gonna suck a little. But . . . I think that's okay, 'cause I think it just speaks to how good we got to have it for a second there, you know?"
Travis nodded, staring out down the street. "Look," he said, at the same time she said "Sorry —" and then Travis held up a hand.
Someone was staggering down the street. Someone who looked not at all okay.
"Jesus, we might as well be working the Aid Car today," Vic muttered, pulling out her phone as Travis jogged down the steps to go check on the guy.
It was Charlie. Of course it was. He'd just found out about Libby, and he'd gone right back down to rock bottom.
He was high as a kite, and Travis helped him sit down on the curb while they waited for an ambulance. He urged him to keep talking, not to pass out, eyes flicking over to Vic kneeling across from him, her phone still pressed to her head as she listened to the 911 operator.
"I just wanted to say goodbye," Charlie said. He flailed one arm out, as though Libby was right there in the street in front of him. Travis caught it and held on instead.
"Hey. Why don't you say goodbye right now?" he asked. "Your — your phone thing. She told us about the phone thing. About — saying goodbye to things or people over the phone so you can do it for real."
Charlie shook his head. "It doesn't work. It's just some stupid thing we used to do."
"It's not stupid," Travis said, looking at Vic again. "It's not stupid at all. Because it was yours and hers. It was your thing. And she was your best friend, right?" He gave Charlie what felt like a slightly shaky smile. "And that's the most important thing in the world. So just sit here. Say what you need to say. Tell her . . . tell her that you're sorry and that you'll do better and that you'll get well."
Vic put her hand on Charlie's other arm. "Her life has to mean something, Charlie. And her death has to mean something. It has to change you, you know? And maybe if you let it, it can change you for the better." She bit her lip. "But — it won't until you say goodbye."
Charlie nodded through drunken sobs, and held the old flip phone clenched in his hand up to his ear. "Libs," he said. "I gotta be done. I'm gonna be done, like . . . like you said. I don't really know how to do that, but I'm . . . yeah, I'm gonna try. I'm gonna go to the detox place tonight, and. . . ." His voice broke, and the metaphorical wound in Travis's heart ached empathetically. "How do I do this without you? You're my best friend. Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you're gone. . . ."
Once the ambulance had come and gone, Vic and Travis finally made their way back into the house. They didn't make it far, just sat down on the stairs, shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow.
"Theo was Michael's you."
Vic sniffed, rubbing at her face. Travis leaned a little more heavily against her.
"Him and Michael," he said. "They went through academy together. They were probies together. Roommates. Theo was a legacy kid, so he rose up the ladder faster than Michael or I, but . . . we were best friends. The three of us. And then suddenly . . . Michael died. And it was Theo's fault."
The words hung there in silence for a long moment. Travis wondered how much it would hurt to just spend the night right here, on the stairs. If the pain might be worth it, just not to have to stand up again.
"Must have sucked to go through that without your best friend," Vic said.
Travis thought about lying on the engine with her after Ripley died. Talking her into going to the funeral, letting her yell at him and rail against him and get her anger and grief out.
He nodded, just a little. She leaned back into him. Just a little.
"You know," he said after a moment. "I hate this weird part after a friendship fight. . . . You know, after it's done, when you still both feel kind of icky and awkward and not back to normal with each other."
Please tell him the fight could be done, Vic. He really needed the fight to be done.
"Yeah," she said, after a long moment. "In a relationship, you just have sex."
Travis's lips twitched. Yeah. The fight was totally done.
"Vic, for the millionth time, I'm not gonna have sex with you." He looked over at her, but couldn't keep a straight face. She held hers a moment longer.
"Why not?"
They both burst into slightly pained, slightly relieved laughter.
It wasn't the whole night on the stairs.
But it was a good chunk of it.
Once they'd managed to drag themselves up the stairs and into bed, Travis lay staring at the ceiling. Thinking about Charlie and Libby and their phone. About being addicted to fury, and hanging on too hard to his grief.
"Hey, um. Michael," he said. And felt like an ass. He reached for his phone and brought it to his ear, wondering if it would really work any better. "Hey."
It did help. A little.
"You remember when we won that trip to the Maldives, and I was a disaster for the first two days, obsessing over how much time we had left, and, uh, making myself sick and sad about how we only had a week? You said that I should try to enjoy the this of this, instead of worrying about the end of this. And, of course, you were right. But I couldn't shake it." He let out a wet laugh. Travis the drama queen, at it again. "And then you got pissed . . . and you said, 'Travis, yes, this week is going to end, but it is already ours. It is in our head and belly and bones. It is already ours forever.' Man . . . that was, like, the best advice in the world." His throat tried to choke him down, but he forced himself to keep going. "I can't believe I forgot it. I'm sorry."
He took a deep breath, staring up at the ceiling. "You're, uh . . . you're not here anymore. And the Maldives are literally sinking into the sea." And it hurt. It still hurt so much.
But maybe just. In a way he could eventually deal with.
"But you were right. I will always have both in my head, belly, and bones. So I should probably stop fixating on the end of them."
He lowered the phone. And stared up at the ceiling.
And breathed.
[NFI, NFB, OOC welcome. Adapted from ep 4x09, "No One Is Alone". Content note: references to drug addiction and ODs, and lots and lots of angry grieving and self-righteous yelling. But, you know, for catharsis reasons!]