32 - Drastic Measures

Richie’s ass hit the bed with a muffled yelp, giving Jon a sadistic twinge of satisfaction. 

Dumbass.  What the hell is he thinking?

“Wahtch what’cha doin’ there, bro,” Richie grumbled, kicking off his loafers and painfully sucking air through his teeth when he pulled off his shirt.  When it fell to the floor from his lax grasp, he groaned noisily and fell back to the bed with another string of colorful swears.

“Count yourself lucky I don’t kick your alcoholic ass up between your shoulder blades…  Bro.”

He could only let himself feel sorry for the pathetic mess of a man so long before he just got pissed.  Richie knew what he was doing.  Richie didn’t want to deal with problems head-on; nowadays he just wanted to hide from them. 

“Hey, now.  Thass not nice!”

“Knock, knock,” Sheridan’s soft voice kept him from giving Richie an explicit example of something not nice.  She stuck her head in the room, holding a small bottle aloft.  “Okay to come in?  I found my lotion.”

 “Yeah.  C’mon in, Baby.”

Jon huffed softly and folded his arms over his chest.   Pacing away from the bed, he paused when she rested a gentle hand on his shoulder. 

“Being mad at him now isn’t going to help him, or you.  Maybe you should save it for when the alcohol fog clears.”

The advice was sound, but he couldn’t do it.  Saving it meant Richie got a good night’s sleep while he was awake and battling with the bottled-up anger.   He was at least going to get it off his chest.  If it wasn’t going to make an impact one way or the other, what difference did it make?

Offering a non-committal grunt, he jerked his chin to the man propped at an uncomfortable angle on the bed.  Richie’s eyes had drooped and so had his mouth.  He was almost asleep.

“Can you do this on the bed?”

A knowing look darkened her eyes, but she didn’t call him on his lack of response.  “Sure, his jeans are low-waisted enough.  He just needs to turn over on his stomach.”

“Rich.”  Jon tapped him one good time on the bottom of the foot.  “Turn your ass over so Sheridan can get at your back.”

“My back?  How come?”  Muzzily, he tried to sit up, his hair sticking out every which way, and then grunted.  “Oh.  Yeah, thass why.” 

“Scoot toward the middle of the bed, please.”

At Sheridan’s polite request, sleepy brown eyes struggled to focus and he plastered on the goofy, lopsided grin that women found cute.  Why, Jon had no idea, but they’d been deafened by the squeals often enough to know it was true. 

“Shtormy Rain,” he crooned, gingerly doing as he was bid.  “You gonna make mah back better?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” was her even reply , settling onto the edge of the bed and squirting some of her homemade concoction into one palm.  Jon winked his thanks at her as some sort of ‘green’ smell hit his nostrils.  “Where does it hurt?”

Mumbling something so unintelligible that it wasn’t worth trying to interpret, Richie at least was able to point in the general direction of his injury.  It was enough to get Sheridan started.  She smoothed therapeutic hands across his lower back.

Initially, it pulled more pained moanings from Jon’s guitarist, but  those moans evened out into more appreciative noises. 

“Thass good, Shtormy.  Shmells good too, but it cuhvers up the shmell of sehx.  You don’ shmell like sehx anymore.  Prolly did that on puhrpus, huh?  Sorry.”

Jon didn’t think it was his imagination that Sheridan gouged him a little too hard with her thumb.  Especially when Richie yelped.

“Excuse me?”  He directed his question to Sheridan first and, when she didn’t respond, he went back to his friend.  “What are you ramblin’ about, Sambora?”

“You two were doin’ the nahsty in mah guest room.  I shmelled it on her.”

Her mouth flattened out in stark displeasure and, while roughing him up a little more with her thumbs, Sheridan commented casually, “Your friend has no filter between his brain and his mouth when he’s been drinking, it seems.  I’m sure that when he’s sober he wouldn’t be so crass and disgusting to a woman he barely knows.”

“Ohnly if they ask for it,” Richie piped up.

“Richie, shut the hell up.” 

It had been a while since Jon had seen his friend this way.  Not only did it make him sick, it embarrassed him both for himself and Richie.  There really was no nicer guy in all the world, but he was gonna have to learn to battle his demons another way.  There would come a day when one of these bouts wouldn’t end well.

“You’ve gotta get your shit together.  This can’t go on.”

“I jus’ need to unwind sometimes, maahn.” 

Trying to catch Sheridan’s eye, he shot her an apologetic look.  Taking advantage of her massage training was one thing, but being stuck in the middle of this perpetually rehashed ‘conversation’ was a lot to ask of a new girlfriend.  Now Rich had stuck his big Prada sneaker not just in his mouth, but halfway down his throat.  Jon would be surprised if his new relationship lasted until morning.

Truthfully, he didn’t think she was that shallow, but if that was the case, so be it.  Richie needed smacked between the eyes with a two by four like a stubborn mule, and Jon was the only one who had the balls to do it.

“No, you need to step away from the damn bottle and sober up.  You’re a fuckin’ mess, and if you let this bleed over into work you’re just the same as shittin’ where you eat.”

“Fuck you, Mr. Perfect!” 

He tried to lever himself up to look at Jon, but Sheridan planted a firm palm between his shoulders and ‘urged’ him to stay flat so she could continue her ministrations.  Expression neutral, it almost seemed to Jon that she was tuning them out as she intently studied the path and movement of her hands over Richie’s strained muscles.

“I’m not fucking perfect and I damn-well know it!  But I’ve got enough goddamn sense not to expect them to wash away in a bottle of eighty-proof bourbon.”

Richie twisted his head to snarl sarcastically, “Ahren’t you the lucky bahstahrd?  You cahn overcome ahnything with the pow’rr of your hair ‘n’ ass.  Not all of us have buns of khryptonhite!”

“I think that’s all I can do for you.” Sheridan’s evenly moderated voice was a distinct contrast to the heated pitches of the two men.  “Other than get you an ice pack.  Do you actually have an ice pack or should I bring peas this time?”

“Bottom of the freezer,” the guitarist grumbled, still glaring at Jon through bleary eyes the same shade of whiskey as that in which he was trying to drown himself.

“I’ll go get it for you.”  She eased lithely from the bed and patted Jon’s arm as she left the room.

Mere seconds after she had disappeared through the door, Richie demanded, “You gotta be all bad-ahss in front of her, so you throw me uhnder the buhss? ”  

“Oh for fuck’s sake! This has nothing to do with Sheridan!  Well, other than the fact you were too drunk to mind your damn manners.”

“I wahs jus’ a l’il too honest is all.”

It was like talking to a brick wall when booze brain was in effect.  Whatever wingnut point of view Rich came up with seemed like the pillar of logic and propriety to him.  Jon knew from experience that the morning was going to bring a different story.  They would wake to a remorseful and repentant Richie, swearing that it would never happen again.  What was it going to take before that was true?

Call him a glutton for punishment, but Jon couldn’t resist beating his head against that brick wall just one more time. 

“Do you remember that you have a daughter to raise?  Who’s gonna be her daddy if you can’t stay sober long enough to do it?”

“Shuht your fuckin’ mouth!  I dohn’t drihnk like this when Ava’s home.  Ever!”

Richie was absolutely vehement, and Jon wanted to believe him.  He really did.  The point remained that, even if it was true, it wasn’t enough.  Not the way Richie was going at it.

“What about when she’s not here?  When the phone rings and Ava needs you, but you’re flat on your face?  What then?”

“Found the icepack.”  Sheridan’s return saved Richie from answering and spurred both men into a tense silence.  The soft look of concern she swept over Jon was a welcome balm to his frayed nerves.   “Here you go, Richie.”

He accepted the proffered pack, carefully flopping over onto it with a grudging, “Thanks.”

“If you don’t need me for anything else, I’m going on to bed.”  She paused to brush a kiss over Jon’s cheek and gave his shoulder an encouraging squeeze.  “Wake me when you come in, okay?”

He gave her a terse nod and sullenly returned the kiss, calmer, but still annoyed as all hell with his friend.   “I won’t be long.”

After offering a muted goodnight to Richie, she soundlessly retreated to the guest room at the far-end of the hall.  That left Jon to take his third and final, hoping that he wasn’t going to strike out.  He could – and probably would – do all this again in the morning, but he wanted to leave his friend with something that would be enough to haunt his dreams.

“Rich, you know I love ya.  If I didn’t, I’d pick your ass up and let you sleep it off without a word.  I’m worried about you, man.  Everybody who loves you is worried.  Tell me you can put it down and walk away without looking back and I’ll step off.  Otherwise…”

The unspoken threat hung in the air with an unpleasant stench.  Nobody wanted to force the rehab card, but Jon would do it – and recruit Richie’s mother and the other band members, as needed. 

“I can,” Richie guaranteed him in a flat tone that was finally free of the slight slur of inebriation.  “I just prefer not to sometimes.  This isn’t out of control.”

“Then I’ll let it alone.”  

He didn’t necessarily believe it, but they came from a time and place where your word and a handshake meant more than legal contracts.  Richie wouldn’t pile insult on top of injury by lying.  He hoped he wouldn’t.

“G’night, Rich.”

“G’night.  Tell Sheridan I’m sorry, would ya?”

❧❧❧

“Everything okay?” 

Sheridan despised the haunted look Jon’s cloudy blue eyes.  Did Richie realize what he was doing to the people around him? 

“I hope so,” he sighed, crawling between the sheets and pulling her near.  “I said everything I know to say.”

She rolled into his embrace and snuggled close, heartbroken for him.  It had to be devastating to see your best friend in that kind of shape and be forced to wonder how many more times it had happened, without anyone knowing. 

“Have you done that a lot?  Talk?”

“More times than I wish I had to,” he confided, an absent hand stroking over the honey-blonde waves that tickled her shoulder blades.  “He thinks he’s only affecting himself, so it’s not a problem.”

But he wasn’t.  She could feel the tension in Jon’s back as proof he was being affected, and touched her lips to his throat.  “You’re worried about him.”

“Of course I am.  The band aside, he’s my friend.  Who knows when he’s gonna stagger around here, fall and break his neck?  I can’t look his little girl in the face knowing that I turned my head the other way and let it happen.”

That comment about Richie’s daughter had particularly hit a chord with her.  The girl was only a young teen, if she recalled correctly.  These were years that would form the most lasting memories and opinions of her father.  Why would he want these to be the memories she had?

“I dunno.”  Burrowing down further in the bed, Jon tucked a seeking palm under her shirt and brought it to rest in the small of her back.  “I’ll talk to him again in the morning.  Maybe things will look different in the morning.  Especially with you here.”

Sheridan was secretly afraid that Jon’s talking was going in one ear and out the other.  Rehab hadn’t done much good, obviously, and she had to believe numerous lectures had been delivered before the situation escalated to that point. 

What was going to get his attention?

It wasn’t her area to meddle, but she couldn’t stand seeing Jon so torn over this.  She mused over the different possibilities, discarding first one idea and then the next until something sparked.  Was it too much?  Or just enough?

Twisting around to peer up in his somber face, Sheridan cupped Jon’s cheek and told him gently, “I know this is hard for you to hear, but maybe the time for talking has passed.  It might be time to take more drastic measures.”