Chase's Book of YT One-Shots

Heartbeat (RoyalChaos)

Drink after drink after drink, until the burn was no more in both his throat and his heart.

The warmth didn't wash over his body as deep as he'd hoped it would be, but it was a start. Nothing, he was sure, that couldn't be fixed with a little more alcohol in his blood and his brain.

People smiled and walked up to him, clapping him on the back and forcing a mechanical similar sound from him to keep up pretenses, and everyone was either too distracted or inebriated to notice. It was, one after another, "Happy birthday Anthony!"'s from every mouth and then nothing much more.

He was fine with that. He really was. He wasn't so sure he could hold a conversation today, sky-high alcohol content or not.

Someone tapped his shoulder and he turned, looking down into brown eyes and thin brows furrowed, looking him over with an odd brightness. He was relieved at the sight of him anyway.

"Adam," he breathed, just barely not a slur.

"Chilled," his friend replied, frowning and seeming almost disappointed. "Are you trying to drown yourself, or should I be staging an intervention?"

A giggle rose in Anthony's throat, but he wasn't quite gone enough to not squash it down. "I... It's my birthday, I figured I should have some fun."

"Drinking alone isn't fun. You don't even like to drink."

Anthony shut his eyes, the lights too bright- or maybe the judgement and concern in Adam's expression. "I'm fine."

"No, you're not," Adam said, stating it more than correcting. "You're not fine, your best friend just broke up with you after two years, and you can't just pretend everything is fine."

Anthony turned his gaze to the cup in his hands determinedly. He looked up to Adam a lot, over anyone else besides perhaps Sark, and hearing this from him was slowly eating away at his walls he'd built over the last day.

"So?" he mumbled, aware he sounded ridiculous.

A flash of anger, or irritation, or something along those lines, it was kind of fuzzy now. "So? So, you needed to talk to people. You still can. We're all friends with Ze, but we're friends with you too."

Ze.

Anthony's hand clenched a little tighter on his cup, crinkling it, and the motion didn't escape Adam's notice.

Funny, how his thoughts could do nothing but circle around the object of his torment, but in the last day he hadn't actually touched on the object itself.

"I-" he started, but his voice cracked and he screwed his eyes shut. A hand took his elbow gently, pulling him somewhere he couldn't find the energy to open his eyes and look for. He was pushed forward and heard a door click shut, and only then did he finally take a shaky breath and open them. It was the patio, and he appreciated the light chill on his face even as his breath came faster.

Adam was upset, he saw that clearly even in his lowered to perception, and the older was watching him closely. "Anthony," he said, and instantly Anthony knew he was serious. "I don't do- this- well, but I'm not going to let you bottle this shit up."

"Have you talked to Ze?" Anthony asked suddenly, nearly accusing, and Adam's eyes narrowed in his direction before he nodded, once, quick. "Did he tell you why?"

"I think you should talk to him," Adam responded, dodging the subject, and even in his inebriation Anthony could easily see it.

"If he wants to talk to me, he knows where to find me," he said in turn, pouty and irritated, and just as he was about to turn back inside Adam's phone rang, making him jump with the way it cut cleanly through the heavy air.