In Dreary Times

Two days. It was two days after he broke his mirror and bloodied his hand, two days after he called her a tyrant and she kicked him out of her car in front of the emergency room. Two days, and he kept trying to call her, but she didn't want to talk to him. At that point, she opted to simply turn her phone off, laying around in bed all day crying like a huge baby. This is ridiculous, Astrid was what she kept telling herself - but even more ridiculous than her crying was the way he snapped on her. Thinking about it broke her heart all over again, and she felt a fresh wave of emotion and tears and snot welling up inside her. "Goddamnit," she sniffled, climbing out of her bed and crossing the room for more tissue. Her phone had been off for two hours at this point, and she didn't even want to think of how many text messages and voicemails awaited her.

"You have reached the voice mail box of..." He pressed the End button and took another swig from the bottle with his good hand. He had ended up needing a total of twenty-two stitches. The doctors had told him he was lucky it hadn't gotten infected, since he had waited so long to get medical attention.

"Well if my girlfriend had gotten me a shot," he had slurred. They had encouraged him to take one of their beds in the Behavioral Health section of the ER, but he had refused. Once he had gotten some stitches and a nice dose of painkillers, Dante had spent the next two days cruising bars and repeatedly dialing Astrid's phone number. It was no use, though; he was pretty sure she hated him.

"Only one thing to do," he said. He slowly got up from the living room floor and stumbled into the kitchen, looking for his keys. "Gotta go get my girl." He got into the car and tucked the bottle of whiskey beside him, and twenty minutes later he stood at Astrid's front door. He used his bandaged hand to ring the doorbell, cradling the bottle with his good hand and tapping one foot impatiently.

Astrid was in the middle of blowing her nose when the doorbell rang. Fuck. She was pretty certain she knew who it was, but you never knew. Wiping her nose and tossing the tissue away, she went downstairs and to the front door, getting up on tiptoe to peek out the window - and saw Dante. With a bottle of booze. Straightening herself up, she felt her stomach lurch, her eyes stinging all over again. This was not going to be pretty. She steeled herself, made sure her composure and her will was firm, and then unlocked, opened the front door. "Dante, what are you doing here?"

"I think your phone is off," he said, rocking on his heels a little. Each time he moved forward, gravity threatened to forget about him. "Can I come in?"

He was shitfaced. Astrid bit down on her bottom lip to keep from screaming, especially after she caught sight of his car haphazardly parked in the driveway next to hers. Her initial reaction was to slam the door in his face - but then he'd just get back in the car and God knows what would happen. "You can come in, but you have to give me the whiskey. No more drinking while you're here, you're plenty drunk already." She stood her ground, her body pressed between the door frame and door.

"Oh-kay," he said, nearly singing. He put the bottle to his lips and took another swig, then handed it to her. "All yours." He grinned and moved toward the door. "Can I come in now?"

This was a mistake, a huge mistake and Astrid could feel it. But she couldn't turn him away if not for the simple fact that she did not want him out on the road driving around drunk. Accepting the bottle, she took a step back, letting him inside - thankful that nothing valuable or breakable was really nearby. "Sit down on the couch and don't move," she commanded sternly, glaring at him. She backed up, before disappearing in the kitchen, presumably hiding the bottle. She was gone for only a minute before she came back out into the living room, folding her arms. "You're not leaving here until you're sober," she said with a sigh, sitting down on the opposite end of the couch from him.

"Is that an order? You gonna tie me up, too?" He wiggled his eyebrows at her and then lay his head in her lap. Looking up at her, his intentions clear in his eyes, he brushed her cheek with his finger. "Hi," he whispered.

"Stop it," she said, pushing his hand away. "I'm really pissed at you, you know." Not that you're sober enough to care, she wanted to add - but she didn't feel like fanning the flames anymore than she already might of. "This is ridiculous, Dante. I don't like you behaving like this."

"Ridiculous?" He sat up as if she had caught on fire. "What would you like me to be, then? Hmn? Want me to be 'straight-edge' and wear tight pants?" He slumped back into the couch on the opposite end and dug through his pockets, looking for the pack of cigarettes he had bought -- if he had even bought any. His fingers found a single cigarette tucked behind his ear. It broke in half when he tried to grab it. He stuck the wrong end of one half in his mouth and lit the filter end, inhaling deeply.

"You know what your problem is?" He inhaled again and grimaced. The cigarette tasted like crap, but he couldn't figure out why. "You need to relax. Just, what, a week ago, we got a hotel room and," he said, inhaling again, "did all kinds of coke and shit, and you're telling me I have a drinking problem? Come on, babe. Seriously?" He held the cigarette out in front of him and made a face. "Fuck, I lit the wrong end."

"You don't need to remind me what we did a week ago." Astrid remembered the hotel - it had been fun, yes, but that had been more of a one time kind of thing. With the exception of that night, Astrid was fairly 'straight edged': she smoked cigarettes, sure, and smoke some pot here and there, and even drank a little bit. But the difference between her and Dante was self-control, and it was becoming rapidly apparent to her that he lacked it.

Leaning over to the coffee table, grabbing her pack of smokes and lit two up - handing him one, then keeping one for herself. "The fact that we did what we did last week should show you that I'm not closed minded about this. At all. But when this shit starts to affect our relationship? That's different." She jabbed her cigarette in the air, as if punctuating her statements. "I'm telling you that I think you have a drinking problem because I have every reason to believe that. You drove here drunk, for fuck's sake!" Her anger was rising, and her voice had taken on a sharper edge. She was trying to calm herself, but the thought of him driving, swerving across the road to get here almost made her blood pressure shoot through the roof. "I cannot think of a more despicable, disgusting thing for you to do -- and you're telling me to relax?!" She wasn't yelling, not yet, but she was damn near close.

"Fine," Dante said, and jumped up. He tripped over his own feet and almost fell into the coffee table. He managed to steady himself at the last second and fell back into the couch. "Fine, I'll go." He stood up again, cigarette clenched between his teeth. "Next time, pick up your fucking phone." He headed toward the door.

Astrid shook her head back and forth quickly, getting up after him. "Are you kidding me? I chew you out for driving drunk, and you're going to go do it?" She was incredulous, but then again, he was drunk, and therefore, not rational. She was also quicker than him: beating him to the door and pressing her back against it, effectively blocking him off. "You're not leaving here until you're sober."

"Then I guess I'm not leaving!" He folded his arms across his chest and stood, swaying a little. He took a few puffs on his cigarette, perched on his lower lip and threatening to fall at any second. "So bossy," he said.

"God, how old are you?" Astrid rolled her eyes, folded her arms across her chest. She narrowed her eyes at him through the haze of smoke that separated them. They had been together for so long ... had this been happening the whole time and she missed it? Was she really that oblivious? Or had this crept up on him slowly, like a cancer before putting him in a stranglehold? She knew one thing was for sure, and that was that this wasn't the Dante she had fallen in love with. Dante before had been so full of life, dreams, and ambition. And now, he looked like the ghost of a man she barely knew. "Go on, sit down." If she kept thinking about it anymore, she knew she'd start to cry again. And she did not feel like dealing with the fallout from that.

"'Go on, sit down,'" he said, sitting down. "So freaking bossy."

He looked down at his hands. Two nights ago, he had called her a tyrant. Obviously, those words had gouged in deep. He felt like he had no control over his mouth anymore. He sighed and took one more drag before dying the cigarette out. "So," he said, letting the words hang. He didn't know what to say, and couldn't organize his thoughts long enough to figure out what he should be saying. "I'm pretty fucking tanked," he said, laughing.

It took every ounce of inner strength she possessed not to scream or to hit him. She remained leaning up against the door for several long beats before coming to take a seat in the chair across from him. Her cigarette lay smoldering in the ash tray, but she picked it up and started to smoke it again. When that one was done, she lit up another one. "I know," she said finally, exhaling a lungful of smoke. "Why?"

"Uh." He checked his pockets again for the pack of Marlboros he had bought earlier. "Dammit." He lifted his ass off the seat just enough so that he could fish the now crushed pack from the back pocket of his jeans. There were still a couple good cigarettes left, but most of them had been destroyed.

He lit one up and tapped ash obliviously onto his knee. "Why am I drunk...?" His eyes drooped and his chin sank forward.

In spite of herself, Astrid lunged forwards, snatching the cigarette away from him. "Jesus Christ - you know what? This is bullshit." She ground the cigarette out in the ashtray and stood up. "Listen, just give me your keys, okay? Give me your keys and just ... sleep it off. I can't deal with this right now."

He slowly lifted his head. "Huh?" He squeezed his eyes closed and then opened them. They felt as if they had been freezer burnt. "Why? Where're you going?"

"Nowhere. I'm not going anywhere." It took a few tries, but Astrid managed to soften her tone, just a bit. "I just want your keys just to be on the safe side. You can have them back once you're feeling better, okay?" If she could take his keys, she'd feel a lot better: at least he could pass out on her couch for awhile and let her do her own thing.

He tossed his keys onto the coffee table and turned onto his side. His eyes were already getting heavy. "Come here?" He scooted back on the couch a little. He knew she was mad, but couldn't remember why.

At first Astrid said nothing, watching him through the haze of smoke coming from her cigarette. Grinding the butt out, she slowly got up and moved over onto the couch in front of him. "Better?"

"Mmn-hmn," he said, and his eyes slid shut. He wouldn't be awake again for a while.

At least her couch was big enough. She looked at him for several long moments, before exhaling a big, gusty sign and laying down next to him. He may have been drunk, but he was still Dante. And besides, it was exhausting being do angry. She'd sleep for now; maybe things would be better once they both woke up.