drowning our sorrows

If Jack's eyes had been open, his eyebrows would have raised. "I'm over here, oh best friend of mine," he said. But Hadley's words made him think...yeah, Hadley was probably his best friend too. How weird. But Jack still didn't think Hadley had 'moved on'.

"Ya know," he said slowly. "I feel like if you'd moved on you wouldn't talk about her so much." Spin, spin, spinnnnnn.

Hadley immediately reached for the source of Jack's voice and ended up touching his face instead of his shoulder. "Huh," he said casually, as if there was nothing weird whatsoever about what he was doing. "Your face feels different from how I pictured you."

"I feel like if you'd moved on you wouldn't talk about her so much."

"What? You asked about her, didn't you?" he asked, because he honestly couldn't remember. He was pretty sure Jack was the one who brought up Remy first.

"I'm more handsome up close, huh?" Jack asked. "And I'm pretty sure I remember asking about her," he said, thinking really hard. "But, like, forever ago." Even drunk, Jackson could tell Hadley wasn't over her.

"That's...that's what I thought," Hadley replied, even though he couldn't even remember what point he'd been trying to make about Jack asking about Remy first. He moved his hand away from Jackson's face and rested it on his shoulder. "You're a good friend." He laid his head back on the couch armrest and let his hand fall.

Jack barked out a laugh. Him, a good friend? "Tell that to my asshole bandmates," he said bitterly. He closed his eyes again, letting the world swing around. "Been months since I've seen a one of them." He paused, waiting for him stomach to settle down, and then continued. "As if this chair somehow meant I couldn't...couldn't...oh, I don't know. Like it made me someone different," he finally finished, unable to put his finger on the thought he'd been trying to convey.

Hadley didn't reply for a moment, trying to think about what he knew about Jack through his haze of drunkenness. He knew Jack had been in a band...popular in Cuir...stage collapsed...paralyzed. Was Jack telling him that the other guys in the band hadn't stuck around after that? Because of that?

"That...that's shitty," Hadley mumbled. Maybe it was the alcohol, but thinking about it actually made him feel sort of...angry. On behalf of someone else. How unusual. "They sound like shitty clio."

"Definitely shitty clio," Jackson agreed. He wished he had something else to drink. "But ah well. I think the band tanked after I left, anyway." Karma, Jack liked to believe, though he felt sad about that, despite himself. The band's name was something he'd worked hard on gaining fame. Now it was a sad, dusty thing, playing smaller shows than when he'd left it.

"Gods, I sure am dizzy."

"Ugh, me too," Hadley said. His usually perfect mental map of the estate was a jumbled mess in his head. He couldn't even remember which way his own bedroom was from where he was. "Maybe I'll just...sleep here..."

"Well I sure as hell am not sleeping in this chair," Jack protested, remembering Hadley's promises of a spare room. He rolled over and punched Hadley in the arm, much lighter than he actually meant to.

"Hmm? Oh, right," Hadley muttered, his brow furrowing as he felt Jack nudge him. Ugh, great, now he had to figure out where the bedrooms were. Why couldn't Jack just sleep on the floor? The floor could be comfortable. He reluctantly pushed himself up into a sitting position. "Bedrooms aaaaare that way."

He slowly pointed to where he thought the hallway was. Opposite of the kitchen, he remembered. Left. "Just look for one without a clio in it." His work done, he collapsed back onto the couch.

So Jack wheeled his chair to the first available room, floated himself and his non-working legs into bed, and drifted off peacefully, surrounded by lots of giant, fluffy pillows.