Chapter Text
Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol— that our lives had become unmanageable.
—
Sophie’s smile outshines the midday sun. They took the boys to Martinique for their anniversary, and she watches from their picnic blanket as Ely and Sam take turns carrying J.P. on their shoulders.
«Not too deep!» She calls out. Then, still watching the boys, she says, «They’re too rough with him.»
«They’re brothers,» he says. «Brothers roughhouse.» He can’t take his eyes off of her. In the oceanside breeze, her curly black hair has a life of its own, dancing in the wind and brushing over her cheeks.
«Maybe we should join them?» He asks. Sophie eyes him suspiciously and squeals when he scoops her into his arms. He tries to ignore how thin she’s become— they promised to not think about it, on vacation— and he carries her to the shoreline.
«Sébastien!» She laughs, and it’s the most beautiful sound in the world. «Sébastien, put me down!»
«I cannot, my love, for it is in our vows, I must carry you wherever I go,» he says. He tries to keep a straight face to make her laugh, but it falters as she plants a wet kiss on his cheek.
«You’re a damn romantic,» she says. «You’re going to throw me in, aren’t you?»
«I’m afraid so,» he says in a grave tone.
«If you must,» Sophie says, matching his seriousness, but the corners of her mouth are twitching upwards. «I’m going to look like a drowned poodle.»
«No, my love,» he says, pressing a kiss to the corner of her mouth. «You’ll look stunning, as always.»
And then he tosses her into the water. She’s laughing when she resurfaces, pushing her wet curls back.
«Sébastien!» She yells, her voice ringing out with joy. Her smile is as wide as the Caribbean.
«Papa!» J.P. swims towards his mother, grabbing onto her shoulders. «Papa, come swim!»
Ely and Sam join in, calling for him to come to play in the water. He holds his hands up in acquiescence. «Alright, alright,» he says and then dives in.
He begins a swift breaststroke, swimming under the waves to Sophie, but the undertow keeps pulling him away.
The once-turquoise waves go black as if God has turned off the lights. The warm, tropical water turns to ice, painful against his skin.
Sophie is under the surface now; the boys are gone, her hair floating above her. She gasps, choking, her face turning blue as her air bubbles towards the surface.
«Sophie!» He screams. «Soufia!» But she can’t hear him underwater, he can’t swim fast enough, he keeps getting pulled back, and she’s choking— she can’t breathe.
She’s staring straight ahead, her hair shorn now, her face gaunt, and her lips cracked. «Sébastien,» she says. «Sébastien, please—»
Booker wakes up gasping and soaking wet.
He rubs at his throat and reaches for the bottle of vodka on the coffee table. His hand swipes uselessly through the air a few times before he finally opens his eyes, pushing his sopping wet hair out of the way.
Joe is standing beside the couch. He places a bucket on the coffee table and crosses his arms.
Booker groans, rubbing at his face. “What time is it—”
“3:45.”
“A.M.?”
“P.M.”
That causes him to sit up, but he sits up too quickly, and a wave of nausea washes over him. He takes the bucket from the coffee table and vomits in it.
“The boys—” he gasps once his stomach has settled a bit, and the room stops spinning. “I have to pick the boys up—”
“Ely called me at work,” Joe says. “You never showed, and he used the phone in the school’s office. Nicky picked them up and took them to practice.”
Booker has seen his brother-in-law angry before. He’s seen his brother-in-law pissed off, vicious, and fuming. But he’s never seen this look of barely-suppressed fury in Joe’s eyes that would be sobering if Booker wasn’t so drunk he couldn’t see straight.
“Shit,” he says. “Thank you, I’ll— give me a minute, I’ll shower, and I’ll—”
“What?” Joe asks. “You’ll do what? Go pick them up? You’d get in a car, as fucked up as you are?”
He rubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “No, no— Nicky— Nicky could bring them back—”
“Back here?” Joe laughs, but it sounds cold and doesn’t reach his eyes. “So Sam can clean up your shit while Ely makes J.P. dinner? While you sit on the couch, unshowered and unshaven and drunk?”
“That’s not— fuck off, Joe,” Booker says. He looks around the house now, at the living room that is covered in unfolded laundry, the television that’s playing CBC on mute, the coffee table covered in empty beer bottles, the blinds that are pulled shut. It feels like midnight in the living room, not midafternoon.
“Nicky’s going to pick them up from the rink,” Joe says, and his tone is low and careful, a tone that says I am not fucking around. “Nicky’s picking them up, and he’s taking them back to our place. I’m just here to get their clothes. J.P.’s teddy. Sam’s inhaler.”
Booker looks up sharply. “What the fuck?”
“You’re fucking wasted, Book; you can’t take care of them like this.”
“So you’re taking my sons away?” Booker stands up. It takes a few tries.
“Yes,” Joe says. “They deserve better than seeing their father drink himself to death.”
Booker lunges at him. His right fist misses Joe by a mile as the man easily steps out of the way, and Booker falls into the coffee table, the wood collapsing under his weight and the glass shattering beneath him.
Joe takes a step forward, and his expression is more than outraged— it’s— it’s disgusted.
“Book, look at yourself,” he says. “This is fucking sad. They’ve already lost their mom. Now they’re gonna lose you, too?”
Booker can’t look at Joe. He can’t see those eyes— Sophie’s eyes— so concerned and so sad and so disappointed. “Fuck off,” he says. “Get the fuck out of my house.”
Joe shakes his head. He bends over and saddles a duffel bag on his shoulder. “You want your sons back?” Joe says. “Get sober. Then we’ll talk.”
Joe slams the door shut behind him, and it echoes through the empty house.
Booker rolls over, glass crunching underneath him, and throws up again.
—
It takes Booker an embarrassingly long time to get himself into the bathroom to shower. When he strips off his clothes, he discovers that he isn’t just wet from Joe throwing water on him— he’s pissed himself as well, which means he’ll have to clean the couch.
He throws up again in the shower and watches the vomit clog the drain until he mashes it down with his toe. He allows himself to be miserable until the water stops scalding his back and turns ice cold.
His vision is still swimming from the liquor soaking his brain, and he stumbles over the lip of the shower, tries to correct his balance, but fails. He grabs onto something to stop his fall, but that something is the towel rack, which he rips clean off the wall as he crashes into the floor, his still wet body slapping as he hits the tile.
He groans and thinks not for the first time that if he just lays on the bathroom floor long enough, God will be merciful enough to put him out of his misery.
But this God— the one that Booker doesn’t believe in— he’s a vengeful, petty fuck who has a taste for slapstick comedy and is probably laughing his ass off at Booker right now like he’s a clip on Funniest Home Videos.
He’s probably sharing a bucket of popcorn with Peter and Paul and Mother Theresa, and they’re all plotting about how they can make his life more miserable.
He manages to get his feet under him and pull himself up to the sink. He’s just showered, but he splashes cold water over his face as if it’ll help.
When he looks up at himself, all he sees is red. Whether from grief or inebriation, his eyes have been bloodshot since the funeral.
Sophie loved his eyes. His baby blues, she called them. He can’t see the blue past his dilated pupils and red veins.
He needs to shave, but if he tried to do that in his state, he’d likely bleed out from nicking himself with his razor.
Instead, he stumbles into the bedroom, ignoring the bed he hasn’t slept in for a year and opens the bureau.
He’s out of clean underwear. Fuck.
It’s November in Montreal and freezing outside, and Booker pulls on a pair of Hawaiian-print swim trunks so he can make himself something resembling dinner.
He dumps the last of the frozen chicken nuggets onto a plate and shoves them into the microwave. He eats them standing up at the counter. They’re dinosaur-shaped, infernally hot on the outside and raw and cold in the center.
Hawaiian trunks. Dino nuggets. A burnt tongue.
He looks up at the ceiling. «I suppose you think this is funny?»
There’s no response from the heavens, so Booker finishes his laughable attempt at dinner and collapses back on the couch— only to remember that he pissed himself earlier and that the couch is leather and that he is now sitting in his own urine.
He bets Mother Theresa thinks this is extra funny. She’s probably rolling on the floor with a couple of popes with tears in their eyes. Fucking chortling.
By the time he’s cleaned up his piss and found a pair of sweatpants from the unfolded laundry, it’s almost nine, and his phone is ringing.
It’s Joe, and he almost throws his phone across the room. He swears and answers with a swipe of his thumb. “Yes?”
“Papa?”
It’s J.P., and Booker softens immediately at his youngest’s voice. «Yes, yes, I’m here,» he says, switching to French. J.P. always prefers to speak in French close to bedtime.
«I just wanted to say goodnight,» J.P. says. He’s just turned six, and his voice is soft and edged with sleep. «Uncle Nicky made spaghetti for dinner.»
«Was it good?»
J.P. scoffs. «Duh. And Uncle Joe didn’t even make me finish my broccoli. And he let me watch the Habs game, all the way to the second intermission.»
«Sounds like fun,» Booker says.
«Thank you for letting us sleep over! Uncle Nicky says it’s a special treat, like last summer when we stayed for a bit.»
Booker doesn’t know what to say to that, to his son’s innocence. «I’m glad you’re having fun.»
«Yeah and— oh, Sam wants to talk to you. Night Papa!»
He barely returns the sentiment when Sam’s voice comes through, lit up with excitement.
“Dad, you should’ve seen me in practice today! I saved almost every shot during the shootout, and Coach said I did great!”
“That’s great, Sammy.” Nearing ten, Sam is going through a phase where he refuses to speak French. “Did he say anything about the next tournament?”
“Yeah, that he’ll definitely start me in the first round— oh, I gotta go, Uncle Joe wants to talk to you. Night!”
Sam must hand over the phone at top speed because he hears Joe fondly telling him not to run.
“They’re tyrants, these three,” Joe mutters, but it sounds like he’s smiling.
“Thank you for letting me talk to them,” Booker says, and he blinks, and he’s crying again. Fuck.
“Oh, Book,” Joe says softly. “They love you so much. I love you so much. Even when you’ve got your head so far up your ass, you’re eating shit.”
Booker tries to laugh at that, a miserable gasp that could barely pass. Joe is quiet for a moment, and Booker has to ask, even though he knows the answer. “Ely didn’t—”
Joe sighs. “He’s fourteen, Book. He… he needs time.”
“I know.”
“He loves you.”
Booker isn’t so sure about that. He loves his firstborn more than anything in this world, but since Sophie died, his son has drifted further and further away from him.
“Nicky emailed you a list of resources,” Joe says. “A few groups that meet regularly. A clinic.”
“So you’re serious?” Booker asks. “I can’t see them until—”
“I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life,” Joe says. “Soufia made me promise that I’d take care of you and the boys. This is me taking care of you. You need help.”
“I’m— I’m fine. It’s just been a rough—”
Joe scoffs. “What, a rough week? A rough month? A rough year? It’s been fourteen months since she died, and I can count the number of days you’ve been completely sober on two hands.”
“She was my wife, Joe,” Booker says. “I’m grieving.”
“No, I’m grieving. She was my sister. My twin. We shared everything. Nicky holds me every night as I cry myself to sleep. I’m grieving. You— you’re killing yourself.”
He doesn’t have anything to say to that. So instead, he says, “Sam has tutoring tomorrow. Make sure he brings his flashcards.”
“They’re in his backpack, I checked.” Joe pauses. “Goodnight, Book. I love you. You’re my brother, and I just want to see you well.”
He doesn’t say anything to that, either, and after a few quiet moments, Joe hangs up.
He tries to fall asleep that night without liquor, but by three a.m., he finishes a bottle of whiskey he finds underneath the couch.
Tomorrow, he thinks. I’ll start tomorrow.
—
He wakes the next day with a miserable hangover, which is not unusual, and an email from his boss, which is unusual.
He’s been on an extended sabbatical since Sophie’s death, and the chair of his department wants to talk about his return for the spring semester.
He forces himself to shave and put on work-appropriate clothes, drinks half the carafe of coffee straight from the percolator before dumping the other half into a to-go cup, and spends thirty minutes looking for his keys.
He can’t find them, and he’s going to be late, so he takes the metro. Thirty minutes later, he joins the throngs of students and professors streaming onto McGill’s campus.
He tucks his chin into his scarf and makes his way to Leacock, the building that houses McGill’s humanities and social science departments. It’s a brutalist monstrosity that Booker hates, but he’s spent so much time in it that— begrudgingly— it feels like a second home.
His boss Andy— beloved professor of history, possible immortal being— is waiting outside his office.
“I broke in,” she says by way of greeting. “Your pothos has claimed the computer as its own, and the cactus is dead as dirt.”
“Hello to you too, Boss.”
“Hi. You look like shit. Let’s talk in my office; yours smells like stale Timbits and depression.”
Booker sighs and follows Andy down the hall to her office, which is much nicer than his. It’s covered in maps that she swears are originals, and there’s an actual, honest-to-god Labrys above her window. A few years ago, Booker printed out a drawing of a headless man and scribbled WHAT HAPPENS WHEN STUDENTS DON’T USE CHICAGO STYLE in sharpie and attached to its gleaming blade.
It’s still there, which makes Booker smile in that barely-there way of his, what Joe calls his ‘white person smile.’
“Margaret is due on the 18th of December,” Andy says, crossing her arms and kicking her black boots up on her desk like she’s a miscreant in a biker gang instead of a tenured professor at an elite institution.
“Do you need me to sign a card?” Booker asks. “Is it a boy? Girl? A peer-reviewed journal article?”
Andy doesn’t laugh, even though that joke usually kills amongst academics. “Booker.”
“Andy.”
“She’s going to be off next semester, which means the department won’t have a European history professor.”
“If I recall correctly, you can also teach European history,” Booker says. Andy’s list of specializations is so long they have to link to a separate document on the department’s website.
Andy glares at him. “I’m teaching a full course load, and I’ve got an advisee who is defending in May. It’s time to get back in the saddle.”
Booker rubs his hand over his mouth. He did a shit job shaving, and there’s still a patch of stubble to the right of his mouth. “I don’t know…”
Andy sighs. “Book, I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t necessary. If I could keep you on sabbatical for the rest of your life, I would. But I can’t. And you need routine.”
Booker rolls his eyes. “Christ, I’m fine.”
Andy snorts. “You know what they say in A.A., right? Fine stands for fucked up, insecure, neurotic, emotional.”
Booker doesn’t say anything, so Andy stands and pulls a book down from the top shelf of one of her many overflowing bookshelves, and she tosses it to him. It’s a worn book, obviously well-read. Embossed on the cover is the title ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS in a large, old-fashioned font.
“Fucking—” Booker shakes his head. “First Joe, then Nicky’s emailing me every rehab facility in Quebec, and now you—”
“Yeah, Book,” Andy says. “We love you. We want you to get better. We already lost one member of our family. We can’t lose you, too.”
He takes a shaking breath. “Did Joe tell you he took the boys?”
“We talked about it,” Andy says. “I said it would be a wake-up call. When Quỳnh left me, that’s what got my ass out of the bottle and into meetings.”
Booker closes his eyes. Then, like he can’t control himself— because he can’t control himself— he leans forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, the heels of his hands boring into his eyes, and his fingers pulling at his hair.
“She would be so disappointed in me. She’d be disgusted by me. She would hate me for letting it get this bad,” Booker says, his throat raw like he’s eaten gravel.
“No, she wouldn’t,” Andy says. “She would understand, and love you, and forgive you, and want you to get better. Because she was an infinitely better person than all of us, and her soul was too kind and too good for this shitty fucking world.”
A sound wrenches from Booker’s throat, something raw and pained and miserable. He stands, furious with himself and this whole fucking shit situation, and throws the book against the wall, knocking one of Andy’s many diplomas to the floor.
He looks at Andy. She stares back like she knows his pain— like she would carry him out of hell herself if she could. Booker can’t look at her, so he turns away, rubbing at his eyes until he sees spots floating in his vision.
A moment passes, then Andy’s hand is on his shoulder. She pulls him around gently and presses the book into his hands. “My old group meets on Wednesday evenings. I’ll go with you tonight.”
He can’t say anything, so he just nods and tries to hold it together when Andy pulls him into her arms.
Like with everything else in his life, he fails.