50 Shades of James

Sorrow and Beer

“Here, here, lemme help—“

“I’m good, man, I’m good—can we jus’ sit here? ‘S good enough for me…”

“Alright, James, but if you puke on my carpet I swear t’ god…”

“I won’t, I won’t!” James clumsily batted away Seamus’s outstretched hand and collapsed heavily onto the floor by Seamus’s headboard. He felt Seamus sit next to him (though on his first try his friend was almost on top of him) as he leaned back on the cool, smooth wood.

For a couple of minutes, they just sat there in the dark, taking deep breaths. The combined stench of beer and liquor was so thick James could taste it, could take big gulps of air and feel like he was still at bar after ratty bar, drinking with Seamus, until they could only barely manage to call Dan to drive them home. He couldn’t have told you if the smell came from Seamus or himself; even Seamus was badly slurring his words by the time Dan pulled up, and James had been on the verge of passing out, with black spots ringing his vision, for the past half-hour.  Their sullen silences had slowly turned into tipsy shouting, then to drunk laughter, then…whatever this quiet moment was, on the floor in Seamus’s room.

Seamus made frozen time move forward again when he giggled. He nudged James playfully with his shoulder. “You are so. Fuckin’. Wasted.”

James laughed too, louder than he had expected, almost startling himself. “An’ you aren’t?”

Seamus puffed out his chest with pride. “I’m Irish. We c’n hold our fuckin’ liquor. If I asked y’t’ walk in a straight line right now, you’d go inna fuckin’ circle.”

James laughed again, a booming noise that echoed throughout the micromansion.

“Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” Seamus tried to put a finger to James’s lips but missed in the darkness and accidentally poked him in the chin. “Dan said he was gonna go t’ sleep, remember?” The blonde grinned and cupped his hands around his mouth to shout. “Hey Dan! We’re still up, motherfucker!”

There was no reply, but the two giggled like teenage boys watching porn.

“Mannnnnn.” James groaned. “Y’might be right, Seamus. I don’ usually get so fucked up. Fuckin’ Aleks.”

James sucked in a breath after the name fell from his lips, as though he could breathe the words back in, but it was too late. Silence smothered even the stench of alcohol as they relived the evening preceding their bar hopping      adventure. Aleks and Ashh had both been gone when they returned home; James was too drunk to read the tiny print on his phone (which had been vibrating all night with calls and texts) and Seamus had ignored everything except for the number seven, which was Dan’s speed dial. The anger had blurred with the rest of their senses during the night, but neither had chanced bringing it up.

“Th’ fuck—“ Seamus was pushing at him, nearly knocking him over, but after a second a heavy arm settled comfortably around his shoulders.

“If y’wanna talk about it, y’can.” His friends’ speech was still slurred to hell, but the amiable tone shone through. James rolled his eyes anyway.

“An’ be like teenage girls, all drunk an’ talkin’ about boy problems?” He scoffed and shook his head, but continued on anyway. “’S just, y’know, everything was goin’ so badly already, with hiding an’ Eddie fuckin’ spying and Jordan and the weed thing…’nd I finally thought we were getting somewhere good, an’ it was the first real thing I’ve had inna while, yunno? An’ it was a good thing, and then he fucking…he fucking…”

He sniffed (in anger) and wiped at his eyes (tearing from the strain of staying awake). After all, James was a grown man, and didn’t fucking cry over assholes. And if he did, well, it was just because he was so blindingly smashed.

Seamus’s coarse hand reached over and swiped away the tears from the eye closest to him with his thumb. His touch was as soft and gentle as a feather, and remarkably stable and deliberate for someone with so much whiskey in their system. James leaned into the warm touch with a sigh. He pressed his own hand up against Seamus’s, holding it against him. He could almost fall asleep here, like this…but suddenly he started and looked back towards Seamus.

“You got hurt too.”

Brown eyes watched baby blues cloud over with emotion, and guilt at not remembering sooner washed James like an icy bath, and suddenly he was wide awake again, and pulling Seamus in for a hug. They clung to each other for a moment, but Seamus pulled his arms away and turned his head from James.

“’S fine, I guess. We weren’t working out anyway. Before…it…we argued, an’ I was gonna apologize but…I wasn’ really sorry. Jus’ being nice. I wasn’ that serious ‘bout it, t’be honest.”

Seamus turned back to James, looking him straight in the eye, and James opened his mouth to reply but found he couldn’t say a word. There was something in those dilated pupils, some thought Seamus wasn’t saying, but James couldn’t read it, could only watch as those blue, blue eyes got bigger and bigger and threatened to keep him captive like this forever.

Seamus kissed him.

He tasted like sorrow and beer. He tasted familiar and comfortable, like their conversations, like their friendship, like the way they’d been there for each other for so many years.

            The kiss was sweet, despite the lingering sour alcohol and the salt from the mingling tears occasionally falling from both brown and blue eyes.

            Earlier, time had seemed to stop, but Seamus had restarted it. Now, it felt like Seamus had reached out to stop time in its’ tracks. Being with Aleks felt like jumping off a cliff, but something had gone wrong along the way and the excitement was replaced with fear and apprehension; Seamus was the rope James grabbed onto, and for the first time since this whole thing had started, James felt safe.

            Seamus pulled back, just a bit. “When you’re ready, kay? This shit hit y’ hard…”

            James pulled him back. “I’m ready now. I promise.”

            They fell asleep like that, huddled together on the floor, breathing in the others’ breathe and fingers tangled together even in their drunken slumber.

AN: Can I just write a story where everyone's drunk the whole time? It's fun as dicks.  

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