Talking with Ami hadn’t helped as much as he would have liked – though he shouldn’t have expected much in the first place with her. Lex loved Ami, but there were many things she wasn’t good at, and he should have known that before even voicing his concerns to her. She was terrible at being compassionate, absolutely awful at listening or offering any sympathy. She did, however, give practical solutions and tell Lex what he really needed to hear, assuming she wasn’t distracted by work or some ancient text about God knows what (though sometimes Lex doubted even an omniscient being could find out some of the things the woman did.)

‘Do something, and do it well.” She’d said. That was all he had to do, find something to do and then excel at it. Lex had been good at something once, but that had no use on the island. A business degree was more useless than teats on a lizard on Deus Ex, and being able to sleep around was just about the most useless talent – no, that wasn’t even a talent. His charm worked about as well as a bum foot on a rabbit being chased by a fox, and he’d quickly discovered his manipulation tactics were more akin to a toddler playing Battleship. A clink of a bottle barely brought him out of his thoughts, realizing he’d walked himself to their fridge and pulled out a bottle of Merlot. Shrugging, he grabbed a wine glass and poured a full glass.

At least, Lex thought as he slumped into a chair at the kitchen table, he’d been able to get clearance for online courses. Courses he hadn’t taken yet, because he was both ‘lazy and incompetent’ and ‘a poor man’s imitation of the madman.’ They were marginally correct. The thought slipped into his heart as the wine slipped down his throat. He had so many resources that he didn’t use, so much potential he didn’t reach for.

But why would he? Another glug of the red stuff, not even tasting it. He was nobody, after all. An intermediate trainee for two years with little more than a minor project to show for his time. No big missions, little involvement in important goings on. Lex’s relevance was about as nonexistent as the buzz he had yet to feel. Wine wouldn’t get him there quickly enough. Tall legs carried the man back to his room, their room, and his hands poured a triple shot of the bourbon he kept on display. The decanter had been decreasing by the day.

“D is that you speak to everyone in a condescending tone.” The glass clinked as ice was dropped into it, then swirled around it. How else was Lex to keep himself from feeling like s**t? Draw little flowers and make heart emojis on twitter? My personal favorite is G, that you can't have a conversation on your mobile discussion site without throwing a temper tantrum which ironically both destroys your self-preserved attitude and confirms whatever asinine comments I'm certain has brought upon this conversation that has now wasted more than ten minutes of time." He gulped, again not tasting anything but sharp glass and fire. How else was he supposed to react? Lex couldn’t even get a word in edge wise without the idiots – no. They weren’t idiots; he just called them that to make himself feel less terrible. Self-preserved, she’d said. Everything Lex did, every key he typed and every snide comment was to preserve himself.

But from what?
Himself, the bourbon said as the glass hit the table. The wall was crumbling, brick by brick cascading and chipping away as they tumbled down onto his head. It would always happen, he knew the day would come when the Berlin wall of Alexei would be cast down and he’d have to face what lay behind it – but he never wanted to. s**t, he still didn’t want to.

He just wanted more bourbon. He couldn’t, lest he puke and have Ami start calling him a drunk and add another tally to his scoreboard of being a terrible person. And she couldn’t know about the cigarette – another point. God help him, he was going to Hell.

Back to the kitchen, this time a glass filled with water.