You Never Were a Good Liar
This little blurb is in response to an angst fic request. @sebxvettel here you go!
“Tommy!” Ada knelt on the cold tile floor of the upstairs bathroom in front of the limp body of her brother.
She leaned over his pale, clammy form and grasped his shoulders, shaking him and nearly gagging as she caught a whiff of the vomit on his shirt sleeve— acrid, acidic, whiskey puke was caked on the side of his face as well because he had done a shit job of wiping his mouth. This wasn’t the first time she’d found herself in this position lately, but it was the first time she had felt scared.
She slapped his face and raised her voice, “Damn you, Tommy! You have to talk to me! Wake up you fucking bastard!”
He groaned and his eyes rolled blindly for a moment before he lost consciousness again.
Tears stung her eyes and she grunted desperately as she rolled him over on his side and bent his leg to brace him. She grabbed a towel off of the rack and rolled it to make a bolster behind him. At least he wouldn’t choke to death if he puked again.
Ada slumped against the wall and thought about dragging him into the tub and turning on the cold tap. She could get Mary to help...but Mary had been through enough. “God only knows why Mary stays here,” she thought. Tommy put her through hell with his moods. Besides, if she got him in the tub and couldn’t rouse him, she’d just have to haul him out. Sopping wet. Slippery. Dead weight. Once he was in water, he would probably piss himself too. She shuddered and prayed that he wouldn’t soil himself anyway. No, she couldn’t deal with that.
It was Christmas night and his guilt had caught up with him again. Once Charlie was tucked up safe in bed, Tommy began punishing himself. She could picture it now: he probably sat in his office staring at Grace’s picture and second-guessing every decision he’d made regarding the Italians. Her portrait loomed, beautiful and ethereal in the hall, and her perfume still drifted ghostlike into the drafty rooms of Arrow House—but the small framed photo in his office seemed to have a life of its own. That image, more than any other, tortured his tangled mind.
Tommy drank to numb the pain. He drank to forget. Night after night he fell into a stupor and shuffled off to his cold, empty bed. Most nights he was haunted by the loss of her, but birthdays and holidays were becoming unbearable. He mentally lashed himself for her death, and every holiday that he had to watch Charlie open presents without his mum rubbed salt into those wounds. Arthur and John knew he was in pain, but men didn’t discuss these things. Polly was worried, but she was too caught up in her reunion with Michael to realize the full extent of Tommy’s decline. That left Ada. Ada had become the de facto nursemaid to her alcoholic brother.
Tommy’s chest rose and fell like clockwork. Ada kept watch. She sighed and shifted her weight uncomfortably. She had stopped his drinking and helped him up the stairs countless times in the past year, but he usually stopped long before it came to this. The last time this happened was Charlie’s birthday, and even then she was able to hold him over the toilet to heave up the poison in his gut. That night, she could wake him with a cold cloth and a slap to the face. Now he lay on the floor, lifeless and pallid.
“Oh, Tommy,” she whispered. “We need you. Charlie needs you. Come back to us.”
She thought back to the night of Charlie’s birthday, again. Ada had begged him to pull himself together, to be strong for Charlie’s sake. It was far past midnight. She had cleaned up his mess and had managed to put him to bed. He was propped up on three pillows mumbling to himself, sleepy-eyed and thick tongued. Ada sat cross-legged on the end of his bed. Her hand rested on his calf, just above his ankle, and she patted it in a comforting way as she spoke. He answered her pleas in the affirmative. He promised that she wouldn’t have to rescue him again. She knew it was a promise he wouldn’t keep.
“You never were a good liar, Tom” She said to no one in particular. He was gone...passed out. He’d never remember their talk.
Ada thought her heart was broken that night. If she couldn’t convince him to clean up his act for Charlie then nothing would make him change his ways. All she could do was keep him alive until he saw sense on his own.
Now, on Christmas night, on her brother’s very uncomfortable bathroom floor, Ada made a pillow from a bath towel and lay down. As her eyes slid closed she patted Tommy’s calf. “One day you will be able to keep your promise. I love you, Tommy. Merry Christmas.”
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