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Jack’s woken up in all kinds of places; backstage bathrooms, front lawns, stranger’s beds, floors sticky with whiskey and vomit, back rooms with powder remnants still scattered across a table. This, with the steady beeping noises, the chemical scent invading his nostrils, and the restraints on his wrists might be the worst of them all.
He’s fucked up enough to realise how fucked up that is.
Turning his head as much as he can, he looks at Ally, asleep in a chair, her hand limply holding onto his, and that’s more than he deserves. He knows that.
Clearing his throat hurts and he doesn’t want to try to speak, so Jack concentrates on trying to move his hand, on trying to get some kind of movement going in his fingers through the haze in his brain. It must work, because Ally jolts awake, her eyes wide as she looks at him, bottom lip trembling in a way that Jack wishes he didn’t recognise.
“Jack,” she breathes out, her fingers tightening around his. She clenches her jaw as she looks him over, and Jack just looks at her, taking her in because every fibre of his being says that this is the last time he’s ever going to see her. “Never again,” she says quietly, leaning forward and pressing a kiss against his hand.
All he can see is her hair piled on top of her head, and he’s just waiting, waiting for her to get up and go, to have Rez deliver papers for him to sign.
He’d do it. Give her everything, not take anything from her, let her go ahead and live her life without him.
But.
She’s not leaving.
Ally’s holding onto his hand, even as people in scrubs come rushing into his room and then her fingers are on his face, brushing over his cheek, and Jack’s not sure when he started crying.
*
They’re trying to keep the coverage away from him, but a nurse leaves the television on one night and he wakes up to E! talking about—about his suicide attempt. There’s footage of Ally at the Forum, footage of her pushing past photographers to get into hospital, footage of every single time he’s embarrassed her over the years. He wants to close his eyes, hide away from everything he’s done, but then, he’s been doing that for too goddamn long.
There’s a knock at his room door and Jack turns his head to see Bobby walk in. Bobby’s eyes flick to the television before reaching up and switching it off.
“They tell you what happened?” Bobby asks, arms folded over his chest, not sitting down.
“No,” Jack whispers, the best he can do right now.
“You remember what happened?”
Jack closes his eyes and shakes his head. It’s not a lie, not really; he remembers Rez telling him—and then it was almost easy to do—but he doesn’t know why he ended up here. How he ended up still alive.
“Liar,” Bobby says as Jack hears him sit down, feet swinging up and resting on the bed. “You’re one stupid son of a bitch, you know that?”
A smile creeps across Jack’s face as he opens his eyes, looking at his brother and wishing his voice was working right enough to thank him. It’s familiar, all of this, Bobby’s voice scolding him like he’s a dumbass teenager again. Lets him forget what’s waiting for him outside. “After,” he croaks out. “I don’t—”
“That’s always been your problem,” Bobby says, smile almost fond as he talks. “They found you just in time. Ally—she’s stubborn, wouldn’t go onstage until Rez sent someone out to the house to check on you. Cut you down and—” Bobby presses his lips together and shakes his head.
There isn’t anything for Jack to say and he knows it, Bobby knows it too.
Bobby swings his legs down from the bed and sighs heavily. “That girl loves you, Jack. She’s not going anywhere. Don’t you go anywhere, either.”
*
“I fired Rez,” Ally says while she’s washing Jack’s hair, her fingers tugging slightly on the ends. “After—when we didn’t know if you’d wake up.”
“You didn’t have—”
“No,” she says, grabbing a cup and tilting Jack’s head back against the cold porcelain of the sink. “I did.”
Jack’s able to talk a little more now, the docs tell him he’s lucky, that he should be back to normal with time. He guesses they think he should be grateful, because what’s Jackson Maine without his voice, but Jack can’t bring himself to even think about that. “Why?” he asks as the water splashes against his scalp, drops running down the back of his neck.
“I fucking hate this industry,” Ally says as she rinses the shampoo out of Jack’s hair. “Music, I love, you know I do. Writing, singing, performing, I love that. The industry...” she drifts off, reaching over and grabbing a towel. “Sit up,” she says, a slight smile on her face as Jack obeys. Ally ruffles his hair with the towel before letting him take over. She sits on the bed, legs crossed, fingers tapping against her thigh in an unconscious rhythm.
“Don’t do this because of me,” Jack finally gets out, draping the towel over his bare shoulder.
“I didn’t,” Ally says, fiddling with her wedding ring. “It was—I don’t want to be that kind of artist.”
“The kind that makes money?”
“The kind that doesn’t recognise when their husband needs help.”
Jack pauses and looks down at his hands, the air in the room feeling heavy. “None of this was your fault,” he says quietly.
“I know that.”
Looking up, Jack stands up and joins her on the bed, brushing against her side as he takes her hand in his. “You’re the best thing that—” he breaks off, coughing harshly, and gratefully takes the cup of ice chips that Ally offers him. Sucking on a few, he sits there, raising his eyebrows at Ally when she reaches a hand out and touches the fading marks around his throat. “I’m an alcoholic,” he says after a moment, the ghost of her touch still on his skin. “An addict. I got more issues than I do years on this planet, and the one good thing I got is you.”
“And Charlie.”
“And Charlie,” he allows, huffing out a laugh. “You really want to do this?”
“I already bought out his contract,” Ally says. “No going back.”
“Well, okay then. Never liked that guy, anyway.”
“No, really?” Ally says, teasingly. “Couldn’t tell.”
“Charlie hated him,” Jack tells her, leaning against her a little. “Gotta trust a dog’s instincts.”
“You need to talk to someone,” Ally says after a beat. “Someone who isn’t me.”
Jack nods, turning his head and kissing her shoulder. “Am I going back to rehab?” he asks against the fabric of her hoodie.
“That’s your choice.”
“I think—” Jack cuts himself off and sighs heavily, stomach churning as he contemplates the idea. “I think I want to. I’m not ready—I wasn’t ready to leave, before. Didn’t want to think about how I ended up there. How I—what I did—”
“Jack, hey, Jack.” Ally’s hands are on his face, fingers soft against his skin as she pulls his face up to meet hers. “If you want to go back, then you can go back, but don’t do it to punish yourself, okay? It’s not a punishment, I just—I want you to be okay.”
“I know. I know that you do.”
“I’ll call Carl,” Ally says, her fingertips tracing the lines on his face. “See when they can take you?”
“Yeah,” Jack says, hoarsely. “I think that would be good.”
*
He goes straight from the hospital to rehab; when he gets in the car, Charlie’s there, throwing himself across the seat to land in his lap, and Jack hugs him, lets him lick his face, smiling even as he’s covered in dog spit.
“Thought you’d like to see him,” Ally says, running her fingers over Charlie’s back. “He missed you.”
“I missed him,” Jack says, covering her hand with his own. “Hey, get rid of the garage. At the house, just—rebuild it. Destroy it. Turn it into a fuckin’ walk in wardrobe, I don’t care, but—”
“It’ll be gone,” Ally says. “I haven’t—I’ve been staying at a hotel, Bobby’s been looking after the house.”
“I love that house,” Jack says absently, fingers entwined with Ally’s, Charlie dozing in his lap. “If you want to sell it, I mean, I understand if you—”
“No, Jack, no. That’s our home.”
“Some bad things happened there.”
“Good ones, too,” Ally says, nudging his leg with her foot. “I’m not selling the house, Jack.”
“Get Bobby to help you with the garage.”
“I will.”
Staring out the car window, Jack watches the gates appear and he grips Ally’s hand just that little bit tighter.
*
It’s the same routine as before; therapy, meetings, exercise. The difference is, this time Jack wants to talk, he’s like a fuckin’ faucet that won’t turn off, and he goes to bed every night exhausted from the effort.
Carl tells him he’s doing well, that he can see a difference in the way Jack comes into sessions. He warns Jack not to feel overconfident about his recovery, and Jack can’t think of anything less likely to happen.
“So, it didn’t work when you were twelve and you decided to give it another go?”
“Something like that,” Jack says, fiddling with his notebook. “You know why I was in here first time, right? You saw?”
“I did.”
Jack ducks his head under Carl’s gaze. “When I got out, I thought—I thought if I had her, if we loved each other, then that would be enough. That we could make it. But I guess I forgot, or didn’t think about the world we live in.”
“The attention.”
“The pressure, man. Everyone always wanting you to be something or someone, not getting time to—” Jack breaks off. “Anyway, her manager—ex manager now—he said I was. That I—” Jack swallows around the sudden lump in his throat. “That I was ruining her life. Her career. That it was only a matter of time before I gave in and started drinkin’ again.” Jack offers Carl a tight smile. “Guess he was right about that.”
There’s no reaction from Carl, and Jack hates that a little, silence is a goddamn killer, and he picks at a loose thread on his pants.
“Do you think you’re bad for her?” Carl asks, eventually. “Your wife, do you think you’re ruining her life?”
“I love her.”
“We all do terrible things to people we love.”
“I—” Jack pauses, the vision of Ally by his hospital bed floating into his mind. “I think I can,” he says. “Ruin her life. If I wanted to, I could. If I carry on like this, then—yeah. I could ruin her fuckin’ life and no one out there would be surprised.”
“But you don’t want to,” Carl says, like it’s a fact. “If you wanted to ruin her life, you wouldn’t be here.”
*
They’ve let him have a guitar in his room. It sits there, in the corner, and Jack falls asleep staring at it. Wakes up in the same position, the guitar staring right back at him. He doesn’t know why he let Ally talk him into bringing it; it had been in the trunk of the car and she’d handed it over to him, saying Carl was going to let him have it. Jack had taken it because he didn’t want to see Ally’s face do that crumpling thing she does when he fucks up.
So it sits there, and Jack stares.
*
“You know what they say about addicts?”
Jack looks up from his lunch to see Troy, a sometime actor with a coke problem, leaning over him, coffee in hand. “What?”
“That we have to learn to sit in silence,” Troy says, taking a seat. “That we’re too used to constantly being stimulated by drugs, alcohol. We need to sit still and learn to be with ourselves.”
“Is that so?”
“S’what Cassie keeps telling me,” Troy says, fingers tapping against his mug. “No one seems to get that there’s no quiet in the entertainment industry.”
“That’s your problem,” Jack says as he gets up, collecting his tray. “You think of it as an industry.”
“It’s not?”
“No, it is. But you shouldn’t think about it like that.”
“What does that mean? Jack?”
Placing his tray on the pile, Jack scrapes the crusts of his toast into the garbage and puts his plate in the tub to be washed by the group on kitchen duty this week. Checking the time, he walks outside, sitting on the ground and looking up at the sky. It’s sunny, always sunny, and he can feel the heat sinking into his skin as he sits there, trying to get his head around the idea of sitting in silence.
His earliest memories are of noise; of his dad playing music so loud that his bedroom reverberated with the sound; of his brother picking at a guitar, showing him how to play; of sticking his head in that damn victrola. Then, older, on tour and playing every show he could get, losing himself in the sound of his own music, and after—.
After the show, when it’s easy to have a party and have a drink, or twenty. Or before a show, soundcheck happening and a doc with the right kind of pills to hand over because Jack knows how the game is played.
It’s not that Jack was drunk or high the whole time he was with Ally, but it’s that he’s never known what to do without those crutches. Never known what to do with someone who looks at him the way she does.
*
“What do you want from this?” Carl asks when they’re sitting by the pool. “When you leave, what do you think is going to happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“And that scares you?”
“The not knowing? No. That’s regular. Doin’ it sober?” Jack sighs, shaking his head. “Fell down on that last time, didn’t I?”
“From what you’ve told me, you didn’t have any support when you came out last time.”
“Ally—”
“Is not a trained counsellor,” Carl interrupts. “And she’s your wife. She loves you.”
“You sayin’ you don’t love me?”
“I’m saying you’re going to need help in the outside world, Jack,” Carl says with a small smile. “Are you willing to go to meetings? Tell your people that they can’t be drinking around you? Tell your band that you need to stay sober?”
“I—”
“You don’t have to have the answers now, but you need to think about what you want your life to look like when you leave here. Ally’s wonderful, but you can’t put your sobriety on her shoulders, Jack. It’s not fair to her, or you.”
Jack ducks his head, tears prickling his eyes. “Yeah,” he says, letting out a cough, his voice rough. “I—I know.”
*
There’s a plan for him, post rehab. He’s going to go to meetings, he’s going to see a therapist, he’s going to take time off.
Out of everything, that last one scares him the most.
Jack’s always been a musician, it’s the only thing that’s ever spoken to him, the only thing he’s ever been halfway decent at, and he—.
The road has been his home for decades, has been the place he’s been able to get lost and forget everything. Where he’s been able to start drinking in Nevada and end up in Texas without knowing how he got there. Strappin’ on a guitar and falling into the noise, feeling the strength of a crowd night after night, letting him believe that for those few hours, he’s the person that crowd thinks he is. That he’s not just a drunk picking at a guitar in between partying and passing out in hotel rooms.
*
Ally comes to visit him four weeks into his stay, and he holds her tight when she hugs him, breathing in her scent as they stand there, not wanting to let her go.
“I’m sorry,” he says, when they sit down outside by the pool. “You—I shouldn’t have done that to you. Shouldn’t have made you be the one to deal with me.”
“I want to deal with you,” Ally says quietly, rubbing her finger across his wedding band. “That’s what this means.”
Jack winces. “I didn’t give you much of a choice in that.”
“You think I didn’t know who you were when I married you? That day you sent Phil to get me, after we met, you know what I said to my dad about you? That you were a drunk. I always knew, Jack. I just wish—”
“What?”
“I wish I’d known to get you help earlier.”
“That’s not on you.”
“Maybe.”
Jack sighs, looking out across the pool, Ally’s hand still in his. “I’m not meant to go back to it,” he says. “Performing. They said—they think I should take time off. Away from all of that.”
“Just performing, or—”
“I can still write,” Jack says. “Don’t know how I’d stop myself doing that, but being around people who are—”
“I get it,” Ally says, gripping his hand tight. “We can stay home, just us. Charlie will love it.”
Jack offers her a smile, they come so easy around her, in a way Jack’s never known. “You shouldn’t stop, though,” he says. “You need to tour, keep your name out—”
“No,” Ally interrupts firmly, leaning in and kissing him, her hand tangling in in the back of his hair. “I don’t have Rez pushing me, Interscope know the score. I’m staying with you. We’ve got the studio, if I want to record, I can record. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You don’t—”
“I do.” Ally rests her forehead against his and Jack meets her gaze, corners of his eyes crinkling as he matches her smile. “There we go,” she says, softly. “That’s my Jack.”
“Your Jack, huh?”
“Yep,” Ally says, pressing a soft kiss against his mouth, her lips brushing against his dry ones. “Still my Jack.”