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iheartlexihoward · 2 years

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winter in paris // fez

*･゜ﾟ･* summary: after ash's death and his life going up in flames, fez is struggling to cope after finally getting out. when he meets you, you remind him vaguely of someone in his past; and for a little bit, it seems like it could all be going uphill. he doesn't realize how bad you might be for each other until later, but even then he wants to ignore it. (loosely based on rehab (winter in paris) by brent faiyaz)

*･゜ﾟ･* pairing: fez x reader / lexi x fez (sad backstory lol)

*･゜ﾟ･* cws: PLSSS seriously listen this could be v triggering. substance abuse, alcohol abuse, mental illness, sad broken fez, death, suicide ideation, codependency/unhealthy relationship, mentions of sex

playlist for this fic / masterlist

this isn't based on a req i'm sooo sorry ik i have a few right now but i promise i'm working on them! (i'm 10k deep in one bc i went nuts on it) but i was listening to this song earlier and started imagining a fez scenario based on it and ended up doing this in like one sitting. it ended up wayyy sadder and heavier than i thought it was gonna, bc after some delibaration i couldn't really imagine fez before the s2 finale in any kind of situation like this so the whole thing ended up playing a part in the story. anyway !!please!! listen to the tws bc i don't normally write stuff like this and some of it is lowkey based on my own experiences. i feel that it could be very triggering to anyone who's dealt with any of this kinda stuff so please take care <3

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Fez knew about your substance issues. You thought you hid it well, but he wasn’t an idiot, and for years he was around the stuff all day. He just didn’t say anything, knowing if he dropped a single sentence pertaining to the idea maybe you needed to cool off, you’d shut down. He knew you. Although things had been feeling a little sour as of late, he still knew you. Probably better than anyone.

And that meant he knew for a fact you’d convinced yourself you were fooling everyone; maybe a good few, you were. But not him. Never him.

You weren’t shy with him about the fact you fucked around — but you were oh so clearly trying to make out it was just a weekend thing, something to heighten the enjoyment of a party or loosen you up when you went out clubbing. What you weren’t aware of was that he knew about the stashes. The empty bottles you hid. The fact that when you came over to his on a Thursday, Wednesday, hell, sometimes on a fucking Monday, he could tell you were on shit.

It was also the way you pounded drinks back like no tomorrow. At parties, yeah, but also during what was supposed to be a relaxed night in. Every time you were together during the evening, he noticed that one drink started becoming two, becoming four, becoming you near blacking yourself out on a work night.

And on an actual night out, it was a whole other story. It was scary, because you never actually became utterly out of control. You weren’t sloppy, or falling over yourself, or spewing up. He knew it was your build-up of tolerance coupled with the need to seem collected in front of your inebriated friends, to always look like the most sober person in the room.

In actuality, you were completely and utterly fucked up. Even if anyone else couldn’t tell, he could. While to the untrained eye you might have seemed four or five drinks in, he could sense the slightest differences in your behavior, knowledge of just how much was most likely in your system making his stomach feel odd.

He never once judged you for it, though. Not only because of the sheer amount of addicts he’d been around in his life (although, he didn’t want to admit that’s what you were. What you were heading towards, at the very least), but because after Ash, after being locked up, for the first time he truly understood. He understood because he almost went that way himself.

Despite the fact he’d seen the effect substances could have when abused, the fact they could ruin lives, the fact he’d watched people die, all of a sudden it was becoming impossible to care. His life was already ruined. His brother was gone forever, Grandma being looked after by strangers in a care facility miles away, and it felt like any prospects of a happy future had disappeared in smoke.

He didn’t care what happened to him. He wanted to die.

And for a while, he carried on in a hedonistic, self destructive cycle. During the week, he’d smoke until he didn’t know where he was on planet Earth, then drink himself to sleep. It wasn’t a good combination, making him damn near ill sometimes, but he didn’t care. At least he was numb.

He’d go out Friday through Sunday, always ending up gone out of his mind with no clue how he got home. He might have fucked with some heavy shit, and on occasion, he’d wake up with a girl in his bed — Lexi was ancient history, off at college somewhere on the East coast. Part of him felt upset, and abandoned, but mostly he was pleased for her. If she’d have stayed just for him, the guilt would have outweighed any happiness at having her around. She was brilliant, more brilliant than anyone he’d met, and he couldn’t have coped with knowing she held herself back because of him.

She’d visited for a while, written letters. He’d written back, doodling on the page and signing off with a messy heart. At first, he was stupidly hopeful, thinking there was a chance she’d be waiting for him on the other side. He needed something to cling onto, something to hold out for. But being inside has a way of stomping out any of that, each day that went by making it harder and harder to imagine a life where anything was better. Where anything was worth living for.

It started to seem more off as the months went by. Her letters became slightly more lackluster, visits became less frequent, and the air felt thick during them. It was like the weight of the entire situation had finally started to set in. The dreams about Fez getting out, two of them moving far away somewhere and living an idyllic life now seemed childish. They were in a dark place, and it was as if it was past the point of no return.

Then one day, Lexi turned up looking extra somber. They’d made conversation, him trying to coax a small smile, before she looked up and he realized she was crying. He’d reached out to gently take her hand, squeezing once and running a thumb over the back of it. She was quiet for a while before telling him.

She was leaving. She’d been accepted to a school in New York (he’d asked which one, but she was adamant it didn’t matter), and it wasn’t going to be possible for her to visit anymore. She wanted to write letters when she got there, but it would hurt too much. She was sorry, but it had been her dream ever since she was a little girl and she couldn’t give it up.

She also said that day had to be the last time they saw each other. That seeing him, knowing it would be a matter of time before it had to be the last, would be too painful. She thought it was best for the both of them to just get it out of the way.

When he heard that, Fez could have sworn he felt his heart drop through the floor. He knew deep down it was always going to happen, but he didn’t ever want to admit it to himself. In spite of his brain yelling out for him to protest, he didn’t. He didn’t say much at all. Just looked down and quietly held her hand. Processing.

And when time was up, as much as he wanted to hold her, wrap his arms around around her to feel her sink into his body, to kiss her for the first and last time, he couldn’t. All he could muster was to press his forehead against hers, allow a few tears to roll, and shakily breathe out a, “Goodbye, Lexi. Good luck.”

She was his first love. Even though it hadn’t been a normal relationship; she was never even really his. They’d never been given chance to explore it all properly, never had sex, never even kissed. It didn’t make a damn second of difference. He was going to be mourning it for the rest of his life.

In the back of his mind, he was always looking for her in those other girls. His head was incoherent whenever he spied them across a dancefloor or heard them talking next to him at the bar. Maybe it was a flash of brown hair that did it, or the way they held themselves. Maybe it was the fact their inflection ever so slightly reminded him of her, and if he got them home and heard them whisper his name he could pretend just for a second.

When he met you, he was right in the middle of it. You reminded him of her, but you didn’t. He couldn’t put his finger on it.

Really, when he looked back on the snippets of the night he could actually place, it was the fact you’d seemed so put together by the side of your messy friends. The only one able to hold an interesting conversation with him. It was akin to her. Except with her, it had always been genuine.

You’d given him eyes that night, more than a few times. He’d followed you out to the smoker’s area, shared a cigarette, and kissed you hard. As if you both weren’t already bad enough, you were drunk on each other. And when you’d ensured your friends were shuttled off safely, taken him back to yours and fucked him absolutely filthily, he was hooked.

For reasons other than the ones his intoxicated brain had mustered, he felt drawn to you. It wasn’t like it was all fake, far from it — you were supposed to be together, in some way, at some time. You enjoyed each other’s company. You had things in common, and it wasn’t just the fact you were both incredibly troubled people.

In fact, you tried to steer clear of the subject. You were aware of his past, the issues he still faced, but he never truly opened up to you and you understood why. You didn’t like to talk either, and you felt like your shit wasn’t nearly as bad as his.

Maybe the relationship wasn’t healthy. At the beginning, it almost seemed like it was, for him at least. He slowly stopped messing with anything that wasn’t weed and a few drinks here and there. He didn’t want to chase serotonin in one night stands anymore, knowing you’d be there with a text, and you were damn well better than any girl in the bar. He loved you, and you loved him. But when two people who are so deeply unhappy become intertwined with each other, it’s doomed from the start.

For a while, it was okay. Amazing, even. For a while, you were both fooling yourselves that it could work. You never explicitly said you wanted to be exclusive, but it all just fell into place regardless. It felt like what you’d both been searching for, the way you’d text all day and see each other whenever you could; you’d hold each other while falling asleep after you’d fucked senseless, kissing softly and murmuring sweet nothings. You’d spend time at each other’s places, making dinner together and sharing it over a movie before laying on his chest as he stroked at your skin.

It felt good. But it was codependent, and when you started getting bad again, it was a ticking time bomb before the whole thing went up in flames.

He knew the way he’d feel his heart beat faster if you didn’t call him back quick enough, or the way some guy asking to buy you a drink made him want to get violent, wasn’t normal. He knew it wasn’t healthy that at the same time, he was constantly scared about what you were doing when he wasn’t around you because he didn’t fucking trust you to keep yourself safe, that he knew you wouldn’t reach out for help no matter what state you were in.

And Fez was intuitive — it was something he picked up naturally as a child. He could always tell the slightest changes in situations, or feel his skin prickling when someone said something a certain way. Even before he had confirmation about how much you were drinking, how many drugs you were doing, how ill you were, things felt off. He didn’t know exactly what it was, but suddenly when he was around you he felt anxious. Hell, sometimes even just when he thought about you.

He could sense something bad was coming, but he’d cross that bridge when he got to it. Maybe it was selfish, maybe it was self destructive, maybe it was a fucked-up combination of the two. He needed you, and he didn’t give a shit about anything else.

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