maskormenacelogs | Alcohol, alternative to feeling like yourself

Current Mood: drunk
Current Location: Heropa 001

Entry tags:

† brendan frye | n/a

Alcohol, alternative to feeling like yourself

WHO: Brendan Frye + Archie "Broceidon" aka Sea Dad + any other residents of Heropa #001 who want in on it
WHERE: Heropa #001
WHEN: Backdated to July 2nd
WHAT: Intervention for Brendan's budding alcoholism
WARNINGS: Underage drinking, a lot of swearing, discussion of past non-con, possibly more. Warnings will be updated as the post goes on.

Brendan is drunk. This is not news to him, as he has been drunk for the past four days. He made a concentrated effort to stay drunk so he wouldn’t have to deal with nightmares and could just sleep instead, because he’s tired. He can’t even adequately explain through the alcohol haze what he’s tired of, other than vague concepts like people, life, here, home, the future and the past. Trying to think about it only results in him wanting to be sick, so back to the many stolen bottles of alcohol he goes. He’s blown through his entire stash, a stash that under normal circumstances would have lasted months, not mere days.

The lack of alcohol means leaving to get more. He might not have – he locked his door for a reason, he really doesn’t want to deal with people – but Archie’s dog-thing is scratching at his door, and he’s always had a soft spot for animals. He crawls out from under the bed, where he had been laying due to it being the darkest, coolest place in the room, staggers to his feet and stumbles over to the door. He opens the door and is rewarded with a furry bundle of concern nuzzling his side.

And then there’s Archie, who, going off that expression, has noticed Brendan’s been in his room for four days straight and is… concerned? Those sideburns are distracting and Brendan’s glasses are on the floor, it’s hard to see things correctly right now.

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"You're gonna tell me what brought this on," Archie states, softly but firmly.

He's come to understand that locking oneself in one's room is a fairly common coping method. Hell, he's done it himself a few times when he'd been overwhelmed.

Not for four days, though. Two days, maybe, three at the most, but eventually the flesh prison needs sustenance and Archie knows Brendan hasn't bothered to do anything he needs. In response to this, the ex-Aqua leader... may have prepared some simple food, easy to eat. The sort of thing you eat when you don't give a shit about taste and just want the right vitamins in your body.

He doesn't have it with him. The plan is to hopefully lure Brendan out into the kitchen to get it. Not that it's far; probably less than six steps.

Brendan's first reaction is to shrug. Not because he doesn't know what brought this on, it's more an instinctive response. When his actual parents were around, rare as it was, their questions were not genuinely concerned with his wellbeing - they asked things like 'are you okay' out of courtesy and he did them the courtesy of not replying honestly.

So actually formulating an honest response takes a couple of seconds, which he spends scratching behind Mightyena's ears. It's a good dog, even if those eyes will never not be unnerving. "I'll be okay," he manages, as a sort of non-response. He will, he knows he will, he sort of always is, much as he's tried to get dead and failed at it over the course of his life.

The smell of food makes him squint in the direction of the kitchen, but it's too bright and he's too hungover to move towards it just yet.

Mightyena boofs happily, sitting down next to Brendan and leaning gently against his legs.

Archie puts a light, steadying hand on Brendan's shoulder, knowing intimately the struggles of hangovers.

"That's not what I asked," he says, still not moving.

Brendan sighs at Mightyena. Such a good dog. He wishes he could just grab it, go back into his room and pass out on the bed for another four days. On some level the hangover isn't the worst part of this, it's the knowledge that eventually, he has to sober up and live life.

"I..." he struggles for some kind of explanation, but he's too tired to think it through thoroughly, so he settles on, "It's a lot of things, not one thing. It's everything."

Everything and anything is too much to deal with. And he's done trying.

Nodding, Archie's expression is only sympathetic. Nothing accusatory or annoyed, only understanding and sympathy. He's had several conversations like this with his grunts when they fell on bad times and he's not about to back off this time.

"Come into the living room, mate. Get a change of scenery. Let's start there, huh?" he says, holding his hand out. He doesn't expect Brendan to take it, more that it's just the universal 'come with me' gesture.

Brendan doesn't take that hand - he has to lean down and scratch at Mightyena first, there's something immensely comforting about dogs. Then he debates the merits of the living room and his room for a long moment before ducking back into his room to grab his jacket, the jacket he takes everywhere with him, that he sleeps on as a pillow, that Emily gave him, because he can't face this conversation without some kind of comfort.

He makes his way to the living room, sinking down onto the couch tiredly, gracelessly, still without his glasses. Fuck his glasses, he can't see anything clearly anyway.

Behind Brendan's back, Archie and Mightyena exchange glances. Mightyena trots ahead of its owner, jumping up onto the couch next to Brendan - its starting to understand how its presence helps people. Archie's needed it around when he's had a bad day and it seems Brendan has the same pattern.

Archie sits on the opposite couch, crossing one leg under himself.

"Break it down. Tell me what's gettin' to ya the most."

Brendan scratches at Mightyena's fur with one hand, the other clutching his jacket to his chest, not looking at Archie just yet. He tries to come up with words to describe just how profoundly depressed he is, how worthless he feels, but it all sounds stupid and minor, like something he should be able to bounce back up from.

"Trying to rank all the things in my head in terms of worst to least sounds... impossible," he admits, tucking his legs under himself to make himself smaller on the couch, make himself take up less space. "I just. I. I feel like other people can tell how damaged I am when they look at me? And I only make things worse when I'm around people. And my mind replays the same memories every night for nightmare material and I can't deal with that anymore, it's fucking exhausting."

"Can't help with that last one, unfortunately. Unless I get Crobat to use Hypnosis on ya, that's meant to be a dreamless sleep," he comments idly, thinking over what Brendan has said.

"What makes ya think people think you're damaged? Or that you make stuff worse? 'Cause usual teenage bullshit aside, you ain't done anything here to hurt no-one."

He removes the hand that was petting Mightyena in favor of clutching his jacket to him, running his fingers over the fabric as if seeking comfort from it. It's the only thing he has from back when he felt like he was even slightly okay.

"I argue with everyone. I make everyone upset. I can't even get through a usual teenage bullshit party without getting everything mixed up. I don't... I don't have a purpose, here, and I keep looking for somebody to love and nobody wants to touch me 'cause somehow they can all tell without me even saying it that I was raped and they don't want sloppy seconds and - I need a drink. But I ran out of booze. So. Here we are."

His words, which had been picking up speed even as they grew quieter, stop abruptly, as he realizes he's doing it again - dumping too much on someone, putting too much of his bullshit out there for someone else to deal with. He used to be the one who never said anything was wrong, now it's all built up to the point he can't keep a lid on it and he can't drink enough to drown it out. All this darkness has filled him up and he's too pathetic to even keep a lid on it.

"You forget you're goin' through some rough stuff - even without being dragged into this world. Findin' a purpose ain't so simple as just slottin' into something one day. It's the same with findin' someone you love. As much as it would be great to work that out overnight, ya just can't. You're gonna go through people you think are right but turn out to be wrong and maybe even stay with someone ya thought was wrong who turned out to be more right," he says carefully, not watching Brendan the entire time. He doesn't want this to feel like a lecture.

As for the other part... Archie knows that's an extremely sensitive subject and isn't sure if he should even breach it. He tries to be gentle.

"A bunch of it ain't your fault. If you find someone you like who can't take you beyond the person you present to them then... maybe they ain't worth your time."

"It's all my fault. Most of my problems come from pretending it's not. People don't want me around an' I don't blame them. I don't want to be around, either. But there's no off button for life, here."

There's no escape, which is a damning feel, a suffocating one, and he curls up a little tighter, looking young, lost and sad; or in other words looking how he feels for once instead of covering it up with smooth talk and slang. He's past even trying that. He's just done.

"Maybe I'm not worth anyone's time anymore. Have you considered that?"

"No-one's worthless. I know that sounds like some cheap kid's book aesop or whatever, but seriously. No-one is. You're goin' through somethin' fucked up and rough like most people can't even imagine during a time in your life that would've been fucked up anyway."

Archie looks down at his hands for a moment, hoping that he's not getting across the wrong message.

"What happened at that party, exactly?

"I met a guy. He seemed into me. It was the first time I willingly kissed anybody since Emily. I thought - he started opening up to me, I sort of did the same. Then we got way too drunk and stumbled off our seperate ways and I didn't see him again until he was on the network asking for people's help with some art thing, which I stupidly volunteered for.

Turns out that he was already into somebody else but he waited until he was done getting my help to let that slip. Guess I'm just good enough to make out with but not actual boyfriend material, and then he started pointing out what a screw up I am and... he's right. I fuck things up, I don't have an off switch on my intensity, I'm a disaster. And I'm getting worse, not better. An' I don't know how to get better."

He's not sobbing, just crying. It's a quiet defeat, the sort of semi-suicidal darkness he knows so well, the kind he's lived in for months at a time even before coming here. But back then he'd had Emily to live for even when he had no other reason to even get out of bed, let alone go to school. Here, he has nothing.

Nodding towards Brendan at Mightyena, Archie gives it the signal to Engage Cuddles.

"That sounds more like him being a bastard than you, mate. Have you confronted him about what happened? Seems a bit shit to do that to ya."

He wraps his arms around Mightyena, though he keeps his jacket on his lap, like the last shred of security he has. But Archie's attempts to talk it through just make Brendan's mood tank further; it's all a mess, and while it might have been the kind he could have navigated pre-Emily's death, these days, it's not.

"I did. He apologized and then explained how it was pretty much my fault. I kind of suck. Nobody back home ever informed me - guess we all figured some shit's obvious - but apparently I'm too intense an' I should've seen it coming. An' I'd be mad at him except he's right. He's got his damage, too, he's not some villain in all this, I'm the one who's a one-man maelstrom. I don't blame 'im for anything."

"Must've been a shit apology if he just put it all on you instead'a just sayin' he fucked up too," he says, clearly annoyed. What an ass.

"Look, you're not. Ain't no-one here any worse for you living here and findin' your way after the fucking cliff you got pushed off isn't gonna be easy. I mean, for fuck's sake you lost your goddamn daughter! You're honestly doin' a lot better than could be expected from that. No-one's given you any help, just blamed you for shit going wrong when they goddamn shouldn't be and not giving you a chance to recover."

There's a lot of feeling put into that, Archie means it.

"He has a point," Brendan says, which might've been diplomatic or might have just been his self-hatred talking. Either was equally likely at this point. He flinches, visibly, at the word 'daughter'. It's hard to think about. It's hard to admit to, even though he's written down names and thought about where they'd have raised her and made mental lists of things he would have done with her that his parents never made time for doing with him. "Archie, it's been months. I should've laid all this to rest already. I bounce back, normally, I keep going, 'cause I always had to, this shouldn't be any different but... it's fucking up everything. I'm fucking up everything. I don't know how to live anymore. I'm not even sure I want to, t' tell you the truth."

"There's no time limit for this stuff, ya know. Not ta say you're gonna be feelin' this awful about it forever, but trauma like that... you don't just pretend it never happened and it's fine and dandy. I mean, it's been months since I did my shit too, and yesterday I knocked over a glass of water in my room and started crying!"

It's true. He still doesn't even know why.

"You gotta take it slow, alright? Do what ya can when ya can... don't worry about funds and shit, I got five grand outta some stupid bastard so I'll take care of everythin' ya need, okay? An' don't give me that I don't deserve it bullshit. 'Cause ya do. You need to come to terms with what happened and hiding away in your room wishin' you was dead ain't the way to do it."

"That's different. You went toe-to-toe with a god, that's a bit bigger than my baby mama drama." He isn't sure if he's downplaying his own issues or trying to validate Archie's. Brendan's not sure about most of what he does anymore. He used to have a better grip on that when he had some kind of goal in life and people to be angry with that weren't himself. Sitting atop the wall behind the school judging everyone was much easier than this self-reflection, because he's not liking what he's seeing.

"'m not letting you blow your money on me. I'd owe you and I already owe you. Plus, who'd I even go talk to about this? Shrinks are expensive but they're also mostly from this world, they've got no frame of reference for this shit. I'm... I'm not fine, but I'll manage. I always do."

"No, I mean we both fucked up, shit happened outta our control and now we're both fucked up from it. Don't push your own stuff aside, this ain't a contest," he says, watching Mightyena.

"You don't owe me shit, and you won't. It's my money and I'll spent it how I want-- an' I'm just sayin' you don't gotta worry about that for the next few months so you have one thing off your mind. Plus... maybe ya could see a specialist. Grief counselling, someone who can help victims of sexual abuse. That sorta stuff. Ya know I'll always sit to talk to you like this, but I'm probably the furthest thing from qualified to recommend copin' methods or medications."

A brief pause.

"...Y'know, other than Mightyena there."

Brendan's arms tighten around Mightyena and he buries his face in the dog's fur at the words 'sexual abuse'. He's not ready to have that conversation, either, or maybe he's desperate for it. He both wants to plead his case on how it wasn't his fault and argue through all the ways it was. He wants to yell about everything until his voice dies, but he can't make the first words form.

He shuts his eyes tightly. "I dunno how to find a specialist. And - and what if," his voice cracks, and pulls away from Mightyena to swipe angrily at his eyes, because he hates crying, hates being weak, "What if nobody can fix me, Archie? What am I supposed to do then? I'll be worthless."

Which is the one thing he doesn't know how to be. He's still got his head in the survival game, information here, stash of that there, listen-plan-wait, but if he's stuck like this, none of it will be usable. He'll be absolutely worthless as a person and as an investigator and he doesn't know what to do without his old self-imposed job to anchor him in life. This is all he has ever been good at and now he's shit at it, so what does that make him, ultimately?

"I can help you find one. An'... you can't look at yourself as needin' fixing. Yeah, there's something wrong, but it doesn't mean you're hopeless or worthless. It means you're human."

He leans back in the seat, actively trying to think through what he's saying.

"You'd--I'd feel worse about this if you just shrugged all this off and weren't affected by it!"

"Human never hurt like this before," he notes, tiredly, even though he rationally shouldn't be tired with how much sleep he's been getting lately. "I was never useful enough for people to stick around, not really. So now, I don't get... I don't see why you're even trying. Why you think I'm worth it. I can't make you money, you don't want sex or you'd have tried something by now, but there's nothing I can do, for you."

He rubs at his forehead, nursing a growing hangover headache. "You don't make sense to me, Archie. Even my parents gave up on me eventually."

He winces when Brendan brings up the topic of sex again; a similar reaction as the first time. The idea makes him sick.

"You're gonna have to accept that maybe, just maybe... I give a shit about your well-being."

"Sorry, sorry - look, if I'm gonna talk to somebody about... about being - I hate that fucking word, I really do. If I'm going to talk about that then whoever it is, they'll ask about other times I had sex and some of it was pretty pathetic in motives. I am not a good person, Archie. I never have been. That whole incident with Laura using me like a pile of meat may have cemented it, but I've never been the hardest lay in the land."

Yes, he really does think that somehow makes it, if not his fault, then more acceptable, somehow. It gives him a portion of the blame. It turned his past willing-but-regretful moments into things to be used against him, which he was completely ready to embrace as deserving, because he's realized since he got here most guys his age are not like this. They don't have this kind of background, they're worried about asking out crushes or shit like that. He is wrong/filthy/dirty/used and it's getting to him the more people act like he isn't.

He's sure they can tell, somehow. He knows it.

He leans back against the sofa, straightening slightly.

"Motives don't really matter, mate. As you weren't the one taking advantage of someone, then there isn't a problem. It's consenting adults, even if you did it to get information out of someone. Yeah, it's shitty and manipulative, but on the scale of fucked up shit that ya could do to someone it's pretty low in the grand scheme of things."

This is another thing he has to think about his response to.

"What she did... that ain't right. Even if you think you're easy, you've come to see it as her doin' it without your consent. That's not right no matter the circumstances. That's her doin' something wrong. Not you."

"Well, technically speaking, they were adults. I was fifteen. And, in one of my less proud moves, fourteen. Some people are really into that kind of thing." Which was good for leads, information, little favors. It wasn't something he put forth as his Plan A under any circumstances, but he was young and stupid and he has made some remarkably stupid mistakes. But to Archie's point, everybody involved was sober and onboard with it, himself included, even if he was probably too young to really grasp the psychological consequences of the shit he was pulling. He never considered it because Brendan lives entirely in the present when he's not living in the past - the future and what the fallout might be just never factor into his dumbass decisions.

"I was bleeding, internally. I could really move much, and I blacked out, but... fuck, I don't know, it's a blur. I might've given her the greenlight on that, I don't remember. An' I couldn't exactly ask her, Laura never gave me a straight answer on anything to anyone in her life. But maybe I did go along with it. Hell, for all I know I could've started it, Archie."

Which would make it another bad decision on his part, not another in Laura's long list of crimes. He can't take the idea of misblaming even a really genuinely disturbed and depraved human being of something as serious as rape. He doesn't even want to think about what kind of person that would make him. So maybe it was him. Maybe he started it, maybe he led her on, maybe this just falls into that category of bad teenage ideas and he's just regretting it more than usual.

But... "I asked her to stop," he remembers softly, shrinking into the couch a bit and reaching out to put a hand on Mightyena, as if the dog could retroactively protect him. "At least once. I know I did...."

He's actually surprised, someone as smart as Brendan doesn't seem to grasp the basics of how consent works.

"Doesn't matter if you started it. Consent can be withdrawn. Even if you started it then decided you didn't want to continue, you were forced to and that ain't right."

His expression softens some. He hadn't realised he'd tensed up.

"And you withdrew it. If you wanted her to stop, she should've."

Brendan is from 2006, six years before California law even recognized men could be raped at all. He's not from a home where he ever got the standard 'talk', let alone a talk about what constitutes consent and how it works. He educated himself regarding sex by having it when he was probably too young and talking to people just as young and in over their heads.

He used to think he knew enough about this sort of thing. Lately, though, it's become clear he doesn't know nearly anything.

"I'm a guy. I'm supposed to like getting laid," he mutters weakly, wincing at himself. "This is pathetic. I can't believe I'm complaining about this. I need a drink." Or two. Or a dozen.

"No," he says, firmly. "Listen. It doesn't mean shit how your body reacts, it's about your mind. If you're not into it, it means you're not into it. That's that. An' it's not pathetic! Quit tryin' to brush it off, ya fucker."

He grunts.

"You were taken advantage of by her. She broke the law by continuing without your consent."

"I'm not tryin' to brush it off, I'm trying to figure out what the hell happened!" Brendan, exasperated, flops back onto the couch, staring at the ceiling because the ceiling is not Archie. "Under laws in my world, women can't - I still fucking hate this word - women can't rape anyone. That's just how it works."

Which makes this rather confusing, all in all, because people here seem 110% convinced that is, in fact, a thing that can be done.

Edited 2017-07-06 21:34 (UTC)

"Then your world is wrong," he says, simply. "That's not how it works. It goes both ways."

There's no doubt about what happened to him, in Archie's mind.

He bites his lip, hard, trying to keep himself from crying again. He hates crying. His memories of his parents actually being around are few, but they hated it when he cried, and they made that very clear to him. Guys didn't cry. Then again, guys didn't get raped, in theory.

"Why?" he manages after a moment. "Why'd she do it? Why did...?"

Brendan's no stranger to wanting someone who's not interested, but pulling the sort of stunt Laura did never even once crossed his mind. It's so immoral even he, chronic stealer, liar, school skipper and undercover drug dealer he was, never even joked about it. Some things were just wrong the way the sky was blue. It makes no sense to him she not only crossed that line, but did so and then acted like it never happened afterwards. "What did I ever do to her to deserve this shit?"

It's this moment he's reminded how young Brendan is. He acts smart and big, but he's still only sixteen. Archie gets up, padding over to him on the couch and putting his hand on Brendan's shoulder.

"Sometimes people just do bad stuff like that because they... ain't right in the head. Not in the way ya get after a trauma, they just think they can do it because they have the right."

He's barely sixteen, at that. It feels like it's been years sometimes since all this happened, or like maybe the life he lived before things got so bad belongs to somebody else entirely. He feels ancient, he feels like the future is an endless stretch of time where the past could happen again and it's all too much to bear. He's not ready to deal with being awake, with being alive, when he can't even make sense of the past.

"Laura was really good at manipulating people, she could've - it makes me sound easy but she could've had me willingly, it would've taken maybe another week... she didn't have to-" no, he still, still can't use that word. It makes him want to cry and he's fighting that even as tears roll down his cheeks.

"Stop saying easy. Forget that word exists, alright? She didn't have to do what she did, but she did it anyway and she was wrong to."

He squeezes Brendan's shoulder.

"It shouldn't have happened to you."

"Why do I have to stop saying it? I am easy and if I wasn't maybe it wouldn't've been something that crossed her mind but 'cause I am, nobody would ever believe it back home if I told 'em what happened!"

There's a lot of anger in him, but some of it is still directed inward. That way it's not all out of his control. That way some of this is something he can keep from happening again.

"Because that doesn't mean shit. The point of engaging in sexual activity is that it involves two consenting adults. It doesn't fucking matter how easy it is for one of them to be into it, as long as they are."

He sits on the sofa arm, next to Brendan.

"You told her to stop, and she didn't. That moment is what made it-" well, he doesn't want to say wrong, because it sounds like a fucked up situation in general. "illegal. It was her action that did that. Not yours."

"We were never adults. I think I'm startin' to get that, at this point. That - that I was too young, to get wrapped up in that shit, but I just wasn't thinking straight. I knew somebody in Laura's crowd had killed Emily and I needed leads so I couldn't even stop to take a shower, I had to keep moving."

He leans his head against Archie, a hysterical sob-laugh that sounds positively broken tearing out of him. "You know how I figured out who killed Emily? Cigarette at the scene. Laura's brand, pale blue arrow on the side of the cigarettes. Didn't know it until she smoked in the bed beside me, when she was done."

There is nothing remotely funny about that, but soon he's back to crying, not loud sobs, something deeper, his whole body shaking with the force of his tears, his ragged breathing.

He carefully puts his arm around Brendan's shoulders, ready to pull away if he shows discomfort.

"There's never really a right age to get wrapped up in that sorta crap, to be honest," he says, mentally flogging himself for continuing to say 'adult'. "

"Get it out, alright? As much as ya need. Have a good cry."

He doesn't pull away. He curls up closer, as if Archie can shield him from some of this. "I never felt scared or used or wrong when I was with Emily. But everyone else, everything always felt raw and put me on edge, but I never thought for a second - how could Laura do that, how could she set up Emily to get murdered and then do what she did to me and then, then, when I finally got all the evidence and the cops called in, that was when she told me about Emily's kid being mine. I went through Em's stuff afterward, that was when, when I realized she wasn't lying, that little girl was my - my - my daughter, the times synced up, and it was too late..."

Dad Hug: Engage.

"She really fucked you over, huh?" he says, softly and unhelpfully. "Did ya find out why she did it?"

"Money," he mutters softly. "She did a lot of stuff, it was big and complicated, but she wanted the money she could make from taking a brick of heroin from a drug lord, and Emily was just a user, not even a dealer anymore, so pinning it on her, making her look like this desperate ultra-poor girl trying to get money was easy. Laura's family is fucking loaded, she... she didn't need the money. So nobody ever suspected her."

Brendan feels sick, but his stomach is too empty to produce anything. He's pale and clammy, come to think of it, a bit cold to the touch, leaning against Archie weakly, hugging back clumsily.

He's so tired, but no amount of sleep can fix this.

He rubs Brendan's arm briefly, frowning at the story.

"That's fucking sick. I'm... so sorry, mate," he says, noting the coldness. "...You gonna puke?"

He shakes his head to the question, curling closer against Archie, feeling small and exhausted suddenly, as if he'd run a marathon or climbed a mountain. "I don't have enough left in my stomach at this point to be sick. Just, stay, for a while? Please."

"Don't worry, mate. I'll stay here as long as you need, okay?"

"...okay." He's pretty sure he should be putting words to the gratitude he feels, but he doesn't know what to say. People don't do this for him. People don't help him. It's like trying to find words for new colors.

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it," he says, giving Brendan a little squeeze with his arm.

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Alcohol, alternative to feeling like yourself

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