#🌲 ❝ i had a big smile on my face as i burned the bridges to all the things i could not repair ❞ ⸢ wishlist ⸥

[whumpsical]

Secret for @whumpmasinjuly

contents: trafficking/captivity, alcohol, referenced recent amputation, some stockholm syndrome popping up, referenced past drug use

Dickass Lee and Jian get drunk for Valentines Day

February 2020

taglist!!! @yet-another-heathen @much-ado-about-whumping @minerscanary

🌲🌲🌲🌲

Ohhh... Jian hadn't been drunk in ages.

Dickass Lee had opened a bottle of wine from some hidden cabinet -- fancy wine, it looked like, to Jian's old bottom-shelf tendencies -- and between the two of them they'd nearly finished it off already. Silly little nervous shifts in Dickass Lee's mannerisms betrayed the fact that the man hadn't really meant for it to get this far, and Jian laughed again with his own pleasantly warm face in his hands, somehow finding Dickass Lee's helpless surprise charming.

God, he could almost forget the burning emptiness at the end of his right leg.

Dickass Lee was talking about something, giggling quietly -- had Jian ever seen the man giggle? -- when another deep wave of that good feeling of numbness without consequence washed over Jian, and he interrupted Dickass Lee with a playful hand over the man's mouth. Dickass Lee giggled into it, his face soft against Jian's fingertips.

Fuck. Not this.

"I swear I'm not a lightweight," Jian said, sprinting straight past that stupid little tug of fond familiarity and leaving it dejected and ignored in the mud behind his racing thoughts. "You know, I used to be a full blown alc-- And I also did a lot of drugs, before..."

"Oh, I know, Jian."

"Fun drugs, not-- not these," Jian sprang back, running his hands over the old track marks in his inner elbows. They felt like they'd never fully heal. He closed his eyes for a moment, then gasped them open with a giddy expression and continued in a stage whisper, "She-- These aren't mine, she planted them on me, officer."

Dickass Lee leaned back against the couch cushions, laughing, and the poor little heart-eyed muddy creature had been jogging along behind Jian this entire time. It felt so easy to make Dickass Lee laugh, to be his companion. So easy.

"I know, Jian. You were a club kid, of course you--"

"I did do a little-- I did more than a little coke. I did a lot of coke. God, I miss coke.""

That pulled another big laugh from Dickass Lee, and Jian found himself joining in. Dickass Lee drew a hand to his face, massaging the bridge of his nose between his fingers, displacing his glasses up to his forehead. The shadow of his hand softened his smile underneath.

He really was a nice-looking man.

Jian shut his eyes, his stomach rumbling. At the thought, at the alcohol, at the pain. However dampened, it was still present. Always.

"I could go for a woods walk," Jian blurted, reclining into the cushions with his eyes closed, the very image of a man who could not be assed to stand up, let alone go for a hike. "I like the woods. I hate-- I hate your woods. I hate you. I hate your woods. They took my leg. I'd rather have my leg than my-- than your woods. But I could go for a woods walk right now."

It would be terrifying in the dark, even on two legs, but Jian could almost imagine it like those nights spent manically bar-hopping with some group of lovably drunk idiots he'd just met at the last club and would never meet again, no matter how many slurred promises were made in the unbreakably safe arms of a temporary best friend. But now instead of neon signs, he'd have stars.

"No, no woods walk," Dickass Lee said, and the stars went out. "No woods right now, Jian. You would--"

"I would trip and die."

"Exactly."

A morbid thought passed through Jian's airy mind, whizzing through ventilation holes with a high pitched sound like storm gusts between metal street signs.

"Finish the job," he muttered, a brightness in his tone despite the implications of his words, only half joking.

"What job?"

"Your job," Jian said, and he was giggling again, losing focus with his eyes already closed, nestling the back of his head into the couch. "You were gonna-- Dude, I know-- The first thought I had when I got here was jus-- was that you were gonna kill me."

"Pfft, I didn't think it was that obvious."

A quiet moment passed with Jian breathing softly, starting to slip away into plush cushions. Only partially paying attention to the conversation, he could feel no room or invitation to respond, and that was invitation enough to call it done and--

Jian blinked his eyes open. "Wait, what?"

He looked over and saw Dickass Lee blinking in an identical manner, startled out of a darkened waterslide halfway down.

"That I-- That, uhh..." Dickass Lee picked up Jian's half-empty glass from the round coffee table and waved it, like he was going for a distraction. Or hypnosis. "Do you want a refill?"

It worked.

"Yes."