trigger_man | (no subject)

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The next morning, Jack doesn't wake easily. Mired in disturbing dreams, he tosses slightly as sleep eases its grip and as the dream fades and reality replaces it, he has a growing realization that he's not alone in the bed.

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He scrubs his free hand over his eyes.

"You feel like you've been hit by a truck too, yeah? It's not just me?"

"Fuck yes. Think it's been a while since I drank that much."

Usually because he didn't have the excuse of being with someone else, and because he still had to get himself up to his room. Not that he hadn't been waking up with a hell of a lot of hangovers since he came into the bar.

"Good."

Carl bows his head and wills the throbbing behind his eyelids to disappear. He doubts it's going to anytime soon, but it's worth a shot.

"Been...long time since I've had to do that. Wanted to do that...drink that much, I mean. Christ. I don't want to know what my tab looks like right now."

He also doesn't give a shit.

"I don't know. How much did we drink?" Jack remembers the first couple shots, and after that things get fuzzy. He's not sure he wants to know if they killed more than one bottle.

"Think we split a bottle between us? I had already started before you got there."

He moves further onto the bed, in an attempt to stretch out and not end up on Jack's lap.

"I have a feeling we ran out and called it a night."

"Hope so. But then if we didn't, we'd probably be in the infirmary with alcohol poisoning right now."

Jack's tempted to lie down again, but he has the feeling if he does, it's going to take him even longer to get back up again. Instead, he leans back against the headboard and tries to will the thumping in his head away.

"Kind of feel like I should be."

Carl winces as he gets comfortable.

"Though I think that's the grenades talking."

"Should be in the infirmary, or should have alcohol poisoning?" Jack asks, looking at Carl carefully.

He has to wonder if there's a little survivor guilt talking in there.

For a long few moments, Carl doesn't answer.

Eventually:

"At the least, in the infirmary."

"You said yourself your injuries weren't that bad," he says, pretty sure that's not what Carl means.

"They're not."

He exhales, and there's a hint of self-frustration in his sigh.

"Jack, I was two men behind point when the grenades went off. Both the boys get blown into pieces and I end up with a busted fuckin' elbow, of all things. Two feet closer and I'd have been another name in a chunk of granite. Two fuckin' feet."

Now he remembers why he came in here to drink in the first place. He wonders if it's too early to get served downstairs.

"If you're trying to make it make some kind of sense, Carl, it's never going to happen. There isn't any rhyme or reason to it."

He sure knows it, considering how many people he knows that have been hurt or died--how many people have been hurt because of him--and how many times he's escaped death.

Not that it doesn't stop the guilt from weighing him down.

Carl opens his eyes to stare up at the ceiling, only because when he keeps them closed, his mind swims with the hangover and the images of the last forty-eight hours blur across the dark.

"It's shite, that's what it is. No sense, no reason, nothing."

He swallows.

"You know, what pisses me off about the whole thing? We didn't get the guy."

Jack nods. He's trying to think of something to say that might help, but there really isn't anything that isn't either incredibly insensitive, smugly patronizing or totally inadequate.

"Yeah, I'd be pissed too," he says, eventually. "To lose your men and not get your target...it fucking sucks, Carl."

He laughs without humor.

"It's not too early to grab another bottle, is it?"

(He's joking. Mostly.)

Jack's smile isn't the least bit merry. "Maybe not to us, but Bar might have another opinion."

Carl shakes his head.

"I think I'll stick to coffee this morning. Don't want to push my luck."

Jack nods; that decision is a little encouraging at least.

"Yeah, though the thought of drinking anything right now isn't exactly helping."

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