Jean Wolfe
June 22, 2021 8:35 AM
New Year's Eve by Jean Wolfe
OOC: CW - alcohol use, mature themes BIC:
Jean took a swig of vodka and lemonade, barely even grimacing any more at the frankly weird taste that seemed like it had never met a lemon in real life—a taste which was all but drowned out by the cheap, stinging alcohol mixed in with it. Elliot sat on the sofa. A string of Christmas lights pinned to the back wall bathed him in subtle rainbows and caught the glitter he’d smeared on his cheekbones earlier. He would have looked good, were it not for the other boy, perched on the arm of the couch but with his legs casually draped across Elliot’s lap. They were leaning in, heads close, talking, and he was making Elliot smile.
There were two bits of advice that Elliot had given Jean over the course of their friendship which had kept him at a distance this evening. The first was from the summer, a short time after Killian’s visit. It had been one of the first times Elliot had stopped by the shop, to invite Jean to his birthday which was in August…
“By the way, when’s yours?”
“I don’t know,” Jean hastily shrugged off the question before realizing how ridiculous that sounded. “I mean, it’s not important.”
“Uh, yeah. It is,” Elliot insisted, propping his chin in his hand and scrutinizing Jean across the counter, with a look that said he wasn’t budging until he got an answer.
Jean hesitated. He wasn’t really one for lying, but he didn’t mind keeping a secret either, when it was necessary. Who was going to catch him out in this lie? No one here knew him. He could start over, with a fresh birthday, one without all its past associations… But it was so ingrained as a piece of information. He would most likely catch himself out.
“June,” he answered.
“June? Like, the month we are most of the way through right now? Did I miss it?”
“No… It’s tomorrow- but I don’t want to do anything,” he cut Elliot off before he could make suggestions. He turned away, straightening some already straight items on the shelves so he didn’t have to watch Elliot analyse him, trying to work out whether he was just being modest and not wanting to ‘inconvenience’ people, or whether it was something more. He suspected his unwillingness to make eye contact helped answer that.
“Family stuff?” Elliot guessed.
“A little.” Things tied to his past life weren’t exactly ones he enjoyed sharing or thinking about, and most of his birthday memories were of being forced to stiffly perform a role he didn’t fit into. There was just one, not even a whole birthday, but one moment within it, that had been different. That had seemed shining and perfect, and like the world he wanted to be in opening up… “But more ex-boyfriend stuff,” he admitted, still talking to the boxes. He took a deep breath, and turned back to Elliot. “The first time I kissed Dorian was at my seventeenth birthday. So now…”
“Oh, sweetie,” Elliot groaned. “Never give special occasions away to other people.”
“Good advice, but a little too late.”
“So, all the more reason to do something. It’s your birthday. We need to reclaim it,” Elliot said.
“Well…if you want… you don’t have to…” Jean trailed off. He watched Elliot dial his enthusiasm and his intensity down a notch. He’d been doing that a lot. He tended to leap at things with an ‘omg bro we totally have to!’ Jean assumed he was used to people who said ‘yes’ a lot more easily than Jean did. Except Jean tried to say ‘yes’ to almost everything, even if he didn’t use the word ‘yes,’ because he didn’t want to make people mad.
“Do you want to go streak butt naked through the park?” Elliot asked.
“Pardon me?!”
“Well do you?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“No!”
“Good. Just wanted to be sure you were actually capable of saying that to someone. Do you want to let me take you out for cheesecake tomorrow? You’re allowed to say yes or no.”
Jean really wanted to repeat that he didn’t want to be an inconvenience and that Elliot didn’t have to and his birthday wasn’t a big deal. But that wasn’t one of the options. And it wasn’t that he wanted to say ‘no.’
“Yes,” he agreed.
And Elliot had shown up the next day, singing Hey, it’s your birthday! We’re gonna party like it’s your birthday. And you don’t understand this reference, but we’re still gonna get you cheesecake. He had given Jean plenty of opportunities to practice saying ‘no’ (balloons? Party hat? Singing?) but Jean had let him stick a candle in his slice of cheesecake and had been happy that it was his birthday.
He had tried to follow Elliot’s advice, and be pleased that he had a friend and not start falling for him. It was good advice.
Never give special occasions away to other people.
Like birthdays. Like New Year’s Eve.
If he had been considering forgetting that advice, Elliot had cemented it earlier in the evening. A few of them had been getting ready and pre-drinking at Rachel’s before heading out to this party.
“Want some of this?” Elliot held out a bottle of gin, and Jean took it, taking a swig. “Want some of this?” he asked again, offering something else.
“No.” Jean batted the glittery finger away and Elliot shrugged, smearing it across his own cheekbones instead.
“Is that real glitter? Why the heck are you bringing real glitter into my house when you could just use a charm?” Rachel glared. “No vanishing spell on earth gets rid of fricking glitter! I pity whoever you go home with.”
“You’re looking to hook up with someone?” Jean asked. Years of practice let him keep his voice casual. Friends talked about this stuff. Certainly, Elliot was never shy about discussing it.
“It’s New Year’s Eve,” Elliot shrugged, as if that made the answer obvious. “Everyone wants someone to kiss at midnight, doesn’t really matter who. It’s the hook-up holiday.”
So, the guy draped across Elliot’s lap right now didn’t matter. That should have been some comfort. And yes, having a solid reason not to imagine Elliot finding a happily ever after with someone else was a little bit of a balm. Unfortunately, what he was trying to cure with that was a rapidly growing into a gaping flesh wound.
He wanted Elliot. He could probably have him, or could have if he’d got in there at the start of the evening. They had fooled around once before. It wasn’t like Elliot wasn’t attracted to him. But he thought about Elliot rolling out of bed the next morning (okay, more like afternoon...) like this didn’t matter, of having to navigate whether they were still friends. Of spending every New Year for the rest of his life, thinking about kissing someone who went on to break his heart…
He had two choices right now. Go up and confront Elliot, or get very, very drunk. He wasn’t sure there was a point of drunkenness where he would no longer care about what was happening, but he could certainly look for it.
He ignored everyone else who was in the kitchen. Most of them weren’t his friends anyway. He poured more vodka into the cheap paper cup. He could top it up with horrible lemonade. Or he could just drink the horrible vodka. If the goal was to get wasted, wouldn’t that be faster?
It wasn’t a great goal, he knew that.
It wasn’t like Killian didn’t cross his mind and make him feel guilty when he was drinking. Normally though, it was done with friends, or teammates. Other people were egging him on, and it was ‘just one more’ until he’d had too many. It was a side-effect of fun, or stupidity, or both. He had enjoyed the numbing effects when he’d been hurting from Dorian. He had enjoyed the way it eased him into social interactions when he was feeling awkward.
He took a swig of the neat vodka and pulled a face.
He had ended up drinking the pain of his break up a couple of times, and never felt any the better for it. And even that had been less deliberate and self-destructive than what he was doing now.
Killian would be so disappointed in him.
Killian would tell him he was making the wrong choice here.
He could stand here, drinking something he hated the taste of, to make him feel awful, physically and mentally, or he could be kissing the boy he really, really liked.
Or he could be rejected. Or ruin the best friendship he had.
That was why it wasn’t easy to chuck the rest of the contents of the cup down the sink instead of down his own throat.
*
“Hi.”
Jean watched Elliot’s head loll back to look at him, his cheeks a little red under their glitter. He looked giggly. He was about the same level of drunk as Jean felt, only he was the happy version.
“Hi yourself,” Elliot raised an eyebrow, confused but still happy. Still letting that boy wind his hand playfully through his hair, pawing for his attention back.
“I need to talk to you,” Jean cut across his confusion, his smiles, the moment he was in.
“We’re talking,” the boy pointed out.
“I can speak for myself, thanks,” Elliot said, and Jean tried not to feel too smug at the tiny visible crack he had opened up between them. “What’s up?” Elliot asked, and Jean could still see him hovering between the comfort of his position on the soft sofa with a cute boy, and concern, as his focus tried to sharpen itself on Jean’s face and find it a place in this picture, and found it didn’t fit in.
“I need to talk to you,” he repeated. It was all he was willing to say in front of anyone else, but he didn’t hide his feelings behind a mask, letting all the anguish he was feeling bubble up to the surface for Elliot to read.
“K, move,” Elliot instructed the other boy, poking his legs lightly to shift them from his lap. Though he did leave with “I’ll be back in a bit.”
It was a promise Jean very much hoped he would be getting Elliot to break. He was reassured by how easily the other boy had been dismissed when Elliot saw that Jean needed him. They were great friends. Killian’s line about how the right people would stick around floated through his mind. The person draped across Elliot’s lap meant less to him than Jean did. But he still didn’t want Elliot going home with him.
People cluttered the house. He led Elliot towards the front door. He wanted privacy, but, even if he hoped the upshot of this conversation was him and Elliot in a bedroom together, he didn’t intend to start the conversation by dragging him into one. Outside would be better. There was a stack of blankets imbued with warming charms, ready for people to take out when the fireworks started going off. He took the liberty of grabbing one – only one.
There was a small stone bench next to the front door. It was a convenient seat to sit and remove boots, suitable for one with room to spare, or a squeeze for two. Jean sat on as little of it as possible, holding out the blanket in clear invitation, wrapping it around himself and Elliot when he sat down.
“What’s up?” Elliot asked again.
Jean swallowed, realizing he hadn’t exactly worked out what he was going to say.
“I’m having trouble following the advice you gave me,” he managed eventually.
“Bro, I say a lot of things. Much of it’s probably bull. Be more specific?”
“About not giving special occasions to other people. About just… letting go, and treating stuff like it doesn’t matter tonight.”
“Okay. There’s one bit of advice I’ve given you again and again which trumps all the other crap I say-” he leant in but lost his balance slightly. Jean caught him under the elbow.
“Don’t do things just because you say so, not if they make me uncomfortable,” Jean finished for him.
“You’re learning.” Elliot’s smile was fond. “So.. what do you want to do?”
Jean wasn’t sure if that was a loaded question. If Elliot already knew. Jean had not removed his hand from Elliot’s arm, and in return Elliot had laid his hand on Jean’s shoulder, far after the need to steady himself was over. But they were like this. Elliot was warm and affectionate with a lot of people, including him. Including the guy who was waiting for him upstairs…
“I want to kiss you. And I want to take you home with me. And I want it to mean something.”
“How drunk are you right now?” Elliot asked, scrutinizing him.
“Same or less than you. You?”
“Perfectly capable of knowing what I want,” Elliot smiled, leaning in.
13
Jean Wolfe
New Year's Eve
1506
1
7