Chapter Text
He’s at the bar again. He never thought he had a problem with drinking, but if anything is going to turn him into a drunk it’s these dreams (and there’s another thing he’s heard about his parents, drunk like they were going for a medal, drunk like that made everything else alright in the world. And well, he’s nothing if not the product of his parents). Of course, he’s not drinking alone, which saves him from becoming the sort of sad drunk that makes people spit the word like they’re carving an effigy from all the things they won’t say. Although, Jessie is doing her best to make him wish he was drinking alone, whispers and hard stares be damned.
“So,”Jessie eggs him on as he tries to swallow down his sorrows. “What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing more than usual.”
“Really?’ She drums her fingers on the table. “Are you sure?”
“Of course.” He speaks around the rim of the beer bottle. The two of them sequestered away in the corner of the bar, him next to the wall and Jessie with her back to a man who keeps attempting to talk to her no matter how diligently she ignores him.
“You know you can tell me anything.”
He rolls his eyes, she’s not saying it to be kind, she’s saying it in the light and pushy way that indicates she’s looking for gossip.
“Biggs,” She keeps pressing and he knows he can’t get out, it’s inevitable that he will cave in to her demands. “Come on.”
He sighs around his drink, “Jessie.”
“Please?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Boo!”
“I can’t sleep.” He admits, even if it’s only half of the truth.
“Like, usual can’t sleep, or like, I’m so tired but I just can’t sleep, kind of can’t sleep?”
He’s not sure he understands the distinction between the two. “Bad dreams.”
“Really?” She says, far too excited. “You know, they say dreams are a window into your innermost self.”
“I hope not.”
She ‘oos’ hands clasped together. “Do I sense that you dislike your innermost self?”
“I don’t know, it’s a lot of blood. What’s that mean?”
“Your blood?”
“Sometimes.”
She bites her lip, actually considering it. “Sounds like you.”
“Wow. Insightful.”
“Well, you clearly don’t have any better thoughts on it.” She throws back, unfortunately correct. “Do you?”
“It wakes me up.”
It does. Sends him shooting out of bed and tangling himself with fear so intimately that he’s starting to feel he won’t be able to separate himself from it anymore. It sets him on edge. It’s making him nervous. It’s staining his thoughts red. Until all he can taste is blood.
“Well, I can’t tell you what it means, but I do have the perfect solution.” She grins, once again mischievous as she waves Tifa over. “Give us your strongest and worst tasting liquor madame!”
She looks at Jessie, a frown already starting on her face.
“Not for me,” Jessie says, misinterpreting Tifa’s concern. “We’re looking for a cure to insomnia.”
“Of course.” Tifa sounds sad, he wonders how many people she’s seen drink themselves to death. Too many for her to not say no when someone asks for another, he thinks.
Biggs, like a coward, cannot look at her as she hands over the drink.
But, true to Jessie’s request, the liquor is strong and bitter. It encourages him to drink faster, although he gets the feeling that it’s the kind of drink that’s meant to go down slow. Jessie cheers, it feels hollow to both of them.
After the first drink, it’s easier to forget the feeling of blood soaking his hands. After the third, it’s easier to forget the dreams altogether.
They drink, and he gets drunk slowly. Jessie keeps up with him drink for drink, and he knows it should concern him but he’s never been the type to press. She needs this as badly as he does. Bad dreams or bad luck dragging her town right alongside him. Some point after the fourth or fifth drink his memory and the sensation of forming active memory begins to fade out. Hazy, broken. It’s nice. It feels like his mind is melting, disappearing into the drink and the fear along with it. But they’re both drunk, yelling at one another in a very full bar in order to be heard. Tifa keeps shooting them worried glances, her eyes wide and lips pulled into a delicate pout, but she doesn’t cut them off, so neither of them can be asked to care when she keeps on frowning at them.
“So,” Jessie says, her words drawn out and verging on messy. “So, this is just about not sleeping, right?”
“Yes?” His words are surer than hers, but he’s definitely far more drunk.
“And not about how badly you miss Wedge.”
“No.”
She narrows her eyes, sliding in closer to him. “Liar.”
“You wouldn’t get it.” He says instead.
“Why not?”
“It’s guy shit.”
She hits him on the back of his head, hard. When he tries to swat her hand away she pulls him into a headlock.
“Explain.”
He taps her arm, fuck, he forgot how strong she is. “I would if you stopped choking me.”
She keeps him in the headlock for another moment, reminding him that she is not one to be fucked with, especially when drunk, and lets go slowly, like a snake, before sitting back down. The man that’s been staring at her seems to have lost interest at Jessie’s display of violence. He rubs at his throat even if there’s no need, it’s not like she’s ever actually hurt him.
“Explain,” She slaps his arm, grin wild and eager. “Go!”
“Wedge,” He hums, refusing to sigh like some wishful lover missing their spouse. He’s not that bad, he refuses to be. “I don’t know. We’ve known each other so long-”
“You’ve known me for so long!”
“- and he just, I don’t know. He gets me.” It feels like an understatement, but he’s too drunk for poetry. “Like how Nellie gets you.”
“Seriously? That’s it?” She looks disappointed, like she was waiting for a confession or something worse (like an admission) but he doesn’t understand why.
He knows how he feels about Wedge, he knows his wants sometimes drift far away from friendship and touch a tentative and feather-light glancing of fingertips on the waters of romance. But he knows this and he knows there’s no point chasing down a possibility that doesn’t exist. He’s weighed the facts. He’s tested the probability of a confession turning into something more. And he knows that it’s useless to hope. No point entertaining the impossible.
So Jessie can feel all the disappointment she wants, she can look at him like he’s a liar and convey with her sad eyes that she doesn’t believe him, he’s not acknowledging a lost cause like it could be anything more than a sunken ship.
“So,” She puts on her best motherly voice, high falsetto and over-enunciated vowels. “When are you going to suck it up and settle down with a nice woman?”
“Oh, shut up.”
He can’t help but laugh, egged on by her peels of laughter, her fingers flicking his earring again. They both keep drinking, and soon enough he’s well and truly drunk. He slips over before she does, but they’re both loud and happy and arguing over every topic that Jessie can think of.
“So, as we’ve established, I’m the better shot-”
“In your dreams-”
“-and I’m better at fixing weapons-”
“-since when? You’re never around to fix anything-”
“-but I think you’re smarter.” She raises her glass triumphantly, somehow it feels like an insult.
“Why?”
“I’m too pretty to be the smartest.”
“What?”
“You wouldn’t get it, you’re not, it’s a pretty person thing.”
“I thought you said I was ‘easy on the eyes"?” He’s smiling, but Jessie nods like he’s just posed a very impertinent point.
“It’s not the same, you’re like, hot in a sad kind of way. I’m pretty because I’ve got great tits and a stunning personality.”
He laughs in earnest at this. Not because she’s wrong, although he’s not exactly the expert on breasts, but because of how honest she sounds.
“You don"t think my tits are great?” She taps the metal plating on her armour, pouting.
“I’m not answering that, you think I’m sad?”
“I don’t think you’re sad, I know you are.” She looked around the bar, neither of them had noticed the way the crowd had been thinning in the last few hours, leaving them alone in their corner. It doesn’t matter to Jessie, she was looking for Tifa. “Tifa!”
Tifa looks up from the table she’d been clearing, brow furrowed. Biggs feels bad, and like he should offer to help, but he doesn’t feel like he could stand without falling right now so it’s not much of an option. He tries to smile at her, but he’s not sure where she is in the room. She makes her way over, clearly concerned as Jessie stumbles towards her.
“Tifa,” Jessie slings an arm around her back, her hand placed on Tifa’s shoulder. “What do you think about my boobs?”
“What?” Tifa’s beet red, Biggs feels even worse for her and decides that, nausea be damned, he really needs to get Jessie home.
“Ignore her.” He manages to stand up without falling over, a hand on Jessie’s waist has her abandoning Tifa in favour of clinging to his arm, eyes wide and nearing tears. He almost falls over when she grabs his arm. They’re both way drunker than the previous assessment had determined. “She’s drunk.”
“Do you need help getting home?” Tifa asks, massaging her palm and looking so worried.
“Home?” Jessie tries to pull away from Biggs but he keeps her by his side with an arm around her waist. “Tifa, no! Please, let’s stay a while.” She directs this at Biggs, eyes watering with faux sorrow. “You never drink with us.”
“Jessie, you’re drunk-” Tifa’s words are measured and far kinder than either of them deserve right now.
“Tifa,” She whines, hand out and slapping uselessly at her arm. “Please?”
“No more drinks for either of you tonight.” She glares at Biggs, which he feels is a bit undeserved.
Jessie looks between them like she’s going to cry.
“We’ll be okay.” Biggs says, voice steadier than he feels. “Thanks for the offer but we’ll get home fine”
Tifa bites her lip, looking between the two of them. “Are you sure?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Biggs gives her his best reassuring look. “We’ll be fine.”
If he was less drunk he would be far more embarrassed about having to be looked after by someone.
“Okay. I think you should both get some sleep. Get home safe.” She directs this mostly at Biggs, and not at the pouting Jessie slung around his shoulder. He nods but nearly cracks his head open trying to get him and Jessie down the stairs. Luckily, they’re drunk enough that it’s funny and keep going without pause.
The two of them stumble home, her clinging to his arm, him leaning over her. It’s a far walk when he’s so concerned over falling over or tripping Jessie by accident. She stops by his house, both of them leaning against the wall, laughing because, holy shit they are really fucking drunk.
“Let me stay the night.” She bats her eyelashes at him, nearly slipping on the slight step by his door as she tries to lean against it.
“No can do.”
“What, why? My house is so far away.” She whines, leaning her head against his shoulder. “So mean.”
“No women allowed.” He taps the door, stumbling into her, setting her off into a fit of laughter.
She’s clutching her sides, trying to muster up a glare between the escaping fits of laughter. “No women? Never?”
“Go to bed.” He shoves at her, missing her form and stumbling against her instead.
“Never? Not once? Don’t you live alone? Is that why Wedge stops by so often?”
“I’ll leave you outside.” He threatens, only half meaning it.
She laughs. But he walks her home anyway.
“Alright, you’ve done your duty, I know you’re a gentleman.” She pushes him away as she tries to open the door.
“You’re going to hate me in the morning.”
“I could never.” She finally gets the door open. “Go home, Romeo.”
He doesn’t leave until he sees her go inside. Content that her roommates will handle her from there on out, he returns to his own home. Beneath the drunken haze he finds, pleasantly, that he doesn’t feel awake enough to think, let alone dream.
And yet.
He dreams of swimming, of trying to push through a veil and of being blind. He turns around. He hears sound, screaming gunshots. Someone yells at him to shoot. He does. Mindless, a soldier. He knows that he has shot Wedge by the sudden burst of air escaping next to his ear. By the soft sob. By feeling like he’s ten years old again watching Wedge trip over himself, watching him get hurt and pretend that he is not. Watching him cry through a big grin, offering a thumbs up as he tried to clean the scratch. He’d given Wedge more scars than any monster could dare to. He’d patched him up too. And when he’d gotten back from his first mission, scared and feeling so much younger than he had ever admitted, Wedge had patched him up too. Offered him comfort. Offered to follow him down into the dark, said he’d want nothing more in life, said he felt the same about the world and the need to save it.
He wakes, his face wet, and promptly throws up. The taste of bile wakes him up more than the act does, and he has to scrub his mouth out well into the double digits before the taste leaves him. It’s part dream, part hangover that has him swaying on his feet. And seeing as he can’t stand well enough to fight anything (something the dream has him itching to do) he decides that he can mess around with his gun’s configuration instead. It’ll get his mind off of the nightmare and the phantom twinge of bile, and it’ll give him the opportunity to stretch his hands, to see what he can do with it, maybe extend something, make it fire faster. Increase damage as well. He doesn’t know, he just knows his mind needs something different to cling to.
He has all the things he needs in his home, clearing off his desk and arranging it into a makeshift workshop, tools laid out in neat clusters of threes and fives. His gun in the center. The actual process of taking the machinery apart and testing the springs is busy work, the kind of crap he could do in his sleep, so naturally, as he tends to do more and more often while in the high hours of sunlight, his thoughts drift full force to Wedge.
He’s not sure what started it, one moment he’s brushing the inside magazine clean the next he’s thinking about Wedge. Maybe something to do with cats led him here? Whatever, he’s here now, caught on the way that Wedge’s kindness clutched so tightly to those he graced with it that it was damn near impossible to ignore him. The way he could make friends with anyone. The way he was just nice. Not slum nice either, real good, genuine person sorta nice. And this, he knows, is from the dream. The way his brain is attached to the way Wedge had looked after him. Had talked to him in low tones until he’d been able to breathe again. How he’d cared for him with a tenderness no one had ever shown him before.How when Wedge left, how he always left, he looked at Biggs with all the softness in the world. The trust was more than he had ever given anyone and yet Wedge gave it so freely and still managed to make it feel like a sacred gift. And he mostly thinks of how he wanted to be looked at like that again. How it would kill him to lose Wedge. How he’d never forgive himself of Wedge didn’t get to see the world he built in his head come to fruition.
It’s in the whirlwind of thoughts that his hand slips. And the gun part he’s working on blows up.
“Shit!”
He walks to the clinic with his hand wrapped loosely in a scrap cloth, keeping the blood at bay and the wound clean. Or as clean as a grease stained mechanics hand can be when covered in an equally grease stained cloth.
According to the woman at the clinic, Ash, he has “Minor burns on your hands. Nothing too bad but that cut is nasty. You’re damn lucky, you know, it could have needed stitches if it was any deeper.”
“That"s it?” Not too bad, he had expected far worse from this.
“Well, you’ve got more burns on your face, but nothing I would be concerned about. Here,” She hands him a slave that promises to reduce itching and increase the rate of healing. “Use this until you run out. Oh, and how about not blowing yourself up again, yeah?”
“I make no promises.” He tells her, she rolls her eyes and shoos him from the clinic.
Unfortunately, because luck is as elusive as a good night"s sleep, on the way back he runs into Barret.
“What the hell happened to you?” Barret stops in his tracks, taking in the soot and dirt on Biggs’ face and arms.
“Minor gear issue.”
“Minor my ass! You smell like burnt hair.”
“That’d be the burnt hair.” He says, wry.
“Don’t you go giving me that kinda attitude. You gotta be more careful, man. We’re a team, one of us goes down, and we all go down.” Biggs nods but Barret isn’t done. “If you get hurt, we’re all screwed. We’re one unit, we move together, we live together, we die together. Ain’t no other way about it. Means if you’re hurt, we all are. You got me?”
“I know.” He agrees, trying to maintain eye contact.
“I know you know!”
“Won’t happen again.” He offers instead alongside a half salut, dodging when Barret tries to clap him on the back.
As he retreats Barret calls after him:
“And get some goddamn sleep!”
If only he could.