That was the operative term for the numbness that has recently buzzed dully in your limbs, the heaviness of your own weight whenever you roll out of bed every day. The term itself is thrown around so flippantly, so easily outside the walls of a hospital, a clinic. General medical common knowledge be damned, everyone knows what shock is.

'Shock' is being betrayed by your child who marries someone of the same gender, rendering you and your paper thin beliefs meaningless. Generations passed down worth of indoctrination gone moot by one, unholy union. It’s coming home and finding your husband in bed with another woman, that blonde bitch at his front desk. The one he told you not to worry about? Yeah, that one. 

It’s the unspeakable, the unimaginable striking. It’s blinding, horrid in how it leaves you.. Empty. You’re compelled to apologize for its effects on your nervous system.

Sorry guys, I promise I’m sad. I know I don’t look it, I’m taking it out on all this- shit lying around. I’ve been meaning to throw this out for ages you know. Guess I finally have a reason now, huh? No, I don’t know how much sleep I’ve gotten the past week, it’s probably fine. I’m fine, don’t worry about me. That’ll make me feel worse. Now, if you would, let me go finish my manic episode in peace, will you-?

Could you blame this too as to why you finally dug out that fake ID your friends coerced you into agreeing to?

This wasn’t like you, not one bit. I mean, really, sitting in the back of some gnarly bar, surrounded with the sorts of people Daddy always warned you about? The sorts of people that only came out after dark, that hung around till dawn when they would then go back to dwell in whatever crevice of the city they called home until dusk? Maybe this was moms genes catching up with you – the predisposed ones you always knew would come to bite you in the ass. Maybe you should go check your eyes, don’t people's pupils dilate when they’re manic? “Crazy eyes'' those people on Tiktok would call them, right? 

“Unwidin’, huh?”

His voice calls through the air between you like he might’ve well been standing yards away. It takes you a moment longer than maybe appropriate to track his distance, his place at your side at the bartop. Glancing over, you first get a look at his hand, gesturing to the drink in front of you, the cigarette dangling between your fingers. The one that was currently beginning to slip in your weakened grip, speaking of. 

They’re long, nimble. Broad hands, worn at the tips, smooth along the meat of his palms. Even under the hazy atmosphere surrounding you, you can make out the glint of the watch up his sleeve – probably expensive, if the quality of the leather of his jacket sleeve has anything to say about it. Look at you. Even buzzed like this, you were spotting the finer details. A daddy’s girl with daddy’s tolerance.

Despite yourself, you nod numbly, head heavy on the bracket of your neck. A sign directly arguing with the idea of your tolerance – or rather, lack thereof – but it can't be as noticeable as your brain is attempting to trick you into believing, right?

Leon settles into the stool next to you, and you don’t so much as cast him a proper glance. Maybe that’s why he finds himself sitting down. You looked out of place, like a damn kicked puppy with your head drowning in a few shots worth in the back of this bar. It was a wonder no one else had approached you up till this point, especially given the time of night. It was hard not to feel like your guardian angel. 

“We both know this ain’t the healthiest way to do it.” He says as he flags the bartender down.

Touche, mystery man. 

Well, alright. Technically you knew the guy. You vaguely recognized him as one of Dad’s colleagues through the haze of your buzz. It was too sweet to interrupt, you find yourself completely unfazed in the face of the inevitable consequences that would come from your fathers colleague finding you here.

If anything, you couldn’t complain.

His voice was nice. Beyond “nice” actually. If you were any more wasted, you’d take him for a certain type of actor. More specifically, the ones you listen to late at night. The ones that speak to you behind pseudonyms and expensive microphones, nestled into crevices of the internet any mentally stable person wouldn’t dream of wandering into.  

You know better than to entertain that thought for more than a few seconds, even despite the dregs of nicotine floating through your blood coaxing you towards such a mental image. 

Finally, you brave a glance over your shoulder at him. He’s pretty. Real pretty. How are you only just noticing how sharp his eyes are? They look darker under this bar's lighting, that typically professional, almost playful glint in his gaze nowhere to be found. It had been a few years since you’d last seen him… maybe it was age finally starting to jade him.

Not that you knew the specifics. He was easily older than you by a decade and some change. And clearly all too happy to bypass all niceties in this situation. Damn. Did you look that bad? He was pretty enough to be an angel, but that didn’t mean he had to act like one. Maybe he felt bad for you. Maybe he had a better head sitting on his shoulders than a better half of the people in here. 

A huff of soft breath leaves through your nose, tendrils of smoke swirling out of your system with the action. Shaking your head, you dip it, taking another long drag from your quickly burning cigarette, an excuse to try and string together some sort of response that won’t make an ass out of you. Or actually, anything that didn’t scream “you’re hot and I don’t know how to conduct myself around good natured, attractive men” would do just fine. Those damn eyes of his… it was a mistake, letting your gazes lock. His eyes alone were enough to make your stomach flip. 

“Well,” you mutter, not daring to look back at him. “This is better than my plan b for the night.” 

You don’t so much as flinch when the bartender comes over, taking an order he murmurs in a tone you want spoken against the shell of your ear from behind. Your periphery catches the actions of the bartender pouring his order into a short glass, bronze in color.

Whiskey. Of course.

Reaching for the middle of the table, you stub your cigarette in a conveniently placed ashtray. Sure, you were a little fucked up in a way you’ve never been before tonight, but you had manners. 

Meanwhile, Leon is doing what he does best. Observing. He tries his best not to make it obvious how he watches your hand wobbles when you lift it. He watched the subtle change in your expression when he called to you, how your head bobbed when he sat down. Anyone else would be paying attention to how quickly you recoiled with the action, as if self conscious of your dragged reaction time. However, he had spotted the tension in your slouched shoulders. A reaction rooted in self preservation, a fear of judgment. It was enough to tell him just how many shots you probably had in your system. 

He was no stranger to girls like you, ‘situations’ such as the one he was currently sitting next to.

It was a familiar, cliche dance – the unspoken, drowning struggles of a near stranger on display, insecurities risen to the surface like hemorrhaged blood under thinned skin. It was written all over you. You were scrappy, worn paper, and he was the storm settling overhead. Baring your weariness and struggle and strife to his blind eye, painting you transparent. He could see right through you. You were running from something. Likely attempting to drown, bury it somewhere deep if not for just a night or so. 

“‘Plan B’?” he questions, tone calm, even almost lighthearted. It betrays his sharp gaze, perceptive and on guard as ever. As if he were approaching an injured doe in the wild. Not that he’s done much hunting lately. He’s found that meat off the streets bleeds more freely than the skin of doe’s and rabbits does in present times. 

A wry smile tugs at your lips, almost as if you figured he’d press the topic. It was already too much to ask that he didn’t mention your connection to his coworker, how Leon knew you were definitely not supposed to be somewhere like this, and he had managed to uphold that silent prayer.

Maybe your otherwise handicapped condition was blurring whatever lines that stood between you right now, the lines that constructed what he should be doing, finding you here without a legitimate ID.  He should be outing you to the bartender, dragging you out of this place by the scruff of your neck with your dad dialed into his phone.

He shouldn’t be… entertaining you, right? Could you go so far as to call his complacent presence.. Encouragement?

Taking a seat beside you, joining you in your mission to drown your ache, your pain. Keeping you calm under his gaze, as if a sedative rolled off him in gentle waves. His throat bobs around his sip of whiskey, and you can’t help how your gaze lingers on the action. 

“Plan B consisted of finding someone to fuck me into next week,” you mutter dryly, as if the admission of your half hearted ‘plans’ for tonight left a sour taste in even your mouth. It wasn’t who you were. This wasn’t what you did. For fucks sake, you weren’t even supposed to have gotten this far, knee deep in an actively self destructive decision. But life sure did have one hell of a way of knocking you one hundred eighty degrees in the other direction, didn’t it?

No. That’s an excuse. A shitty one, at that. It's an excuse you've heard your dad mutter under his breath when he slouches into the couch with a beer in hand.

This is a poor choice, and you knew this was a poor choice. And yet, that didn’t stop you from walking your happy ass into this bar, nose up and full of talked up confidence you poured into yourself in the parking lot. No amount of tugging and pulling and pleading your guilty conscience did on your brain would stop you, not this time. You knew that getting into an Uber to haul you outside the lines of town would seal your fate to the whims of this bar. How classy. 

If Leon was a worse man, he’d take your words at face value. (Or maybe he’s just damned with all that thorough training he’s been rung through. It’s practically impossible not to read people nowadays. Even alcohol has ceased to debilitate him of this begrudgingly equipped set of skills that was all but pummeled into him.) 

His gaze wavers. Flickers, almost with a wash of amusement for a moment. You were trying oh so hard, taking that clipped, short tone with him, all but puffing your chest with this aura of  mental toughness you likely wanted to think you had. It was cute, really. But oh, the lacing of desperation in your tone... The sweet vulnerability in your breath… every hairline fracture your already cracking front is bleeding. 

He doesn’t have to be a bloodhound to want to dig for more. He just can’t help himself.