to new beginnings

Tae laughed as he watched the dog’s demeanor change. That happened a lot when dogs saw their owners, and he loved how happy they got. This little one did a full body wriggle when she wagged her tail. Some of the dogs at the shelter do the same thing, so Tae laughed a little harder. “Well last time I checked, I’m not a squirrel, but I did see one climb up this tree earlier. She probably saw it in the branches or something.”

“I should hope you aren’t a squirrel,” Nic said with a smile. “I don’t need to be labelled as that crazy guy who talks to squirrels. I’d have to move, again, and I finally got the last of my boxes unpacked.”

“Simply because we can, mostly,” Charlie said, shrugging. “Does one need a reason to drink in the middle of the day?” Usually, he thought, answering his own question. But he didn’t bother saying that out-loud. Instead, he made himself as comfortable as one could be on a bar stool. 

“Do you have a reason to be drinking today, Danvers?” he questioned.

Nic chuckled slightly at Charlie’s question. “I guess you don’t need one, but I reckon people usually have one.” 

He wasn’t quite sure how to respond to the second question Charlie asked.  True he just said that most people had a reason to drink in the middle of the day, but he didn’t quite have one. “It’s my day off,” he said with a shrug. “And it’s not like I was planning on getting drunk.”

“You say that like you’ve been a meme before,” Hart remarked. Though the remark was rhetorical he wouldn’t be surprised if Nic had in fact had that happened to him before and had a story to go along with it.

Hart glanced in the direction Nic was looking and answered immediately, “Alligator. Definitely. I’ll get cool dad points with Zach for the gator. The LA one would give me lame dad points.” Hart would rather have the cool dad points. Even if that meant he’d more than likely need to buy Zach the shirt too. But he liked being his son’s hero. Someone the boy looked up to and admired. At least someone looked at him that way.

“I’ll go grab the coffee while you buy those.” He turned around, but stopped short. “Nic, how do you like your coffee? Or espresso?” He realized that he didn’t know and figured it was best to get it right. Plus it was information that could come in handy.

“Not on the internet thankfully. If we define meme as a running joke within a population, then yeah I’ve been a meme before. I hear they still use the phrase, ‘don’t pull a Danvers’ at the college newspaper office.” Nic chuckled, mostly to himself there.

Nic nodded and began to walk to the little t-shirt kisok when Hart called his name. He turned back around at the other’s question. “Coffee with sugar, please. Unless of course you want to see bounce off the walls and into outerspace. If you do, then by all means get me an expresso.”

At the t-shirt vendor, Nic had difficulty deciding on a shirt for himself. He did like the design of the one he was getting for Hart, but they couldn’t match shirts. That was something that families did, all wearing matching T-shirts. So Nic decided on a different one, with a little alligator embroidered on the side.  After paying, he walked back to the table they had been sitting at, and placed the bag of t-shirts on the table.  There wasn’t really a place around them to change, so Nic just decided to change there. It was just his shirt, and he wasn’t shy.

Tae blinked a bit, not sure what to do with the barking dog. He knew better than to try to approach an unfamiliar dog, so he just sat, trying to remain still until its owner came up from across the park.

“It’s okay!” Tae said, setting his stuff aside. “Dogs can be unpredictable. She’s cute, though, isn’t she?” he said as he smiled at the dog. He couldn’t resist, though he still didn’t come any closer.

“Sadie,” Nic reprimanded, and the barking stopped when the dog realised her owner was standing next to her. Instead, she switched to wagging her tail, making her whole body shake. He rolled his eyes at her, but couldn’t resist scratching her head. “She is, a pain in my side she is though. She’s friendly though, and usually well-behaved unless you’re a squirrel. Or sitting under a squirrel tree I guess.”

“See, you do get the point,” Charlie said, as if speaking to a toddler. “It’s all the same in the end.” He downed his own glass of whiskey, and reached for more. 

Nic quirked his eyebrow at the condescension but was honestly used to it by now. He watched Charlie drain his glass and honestly considered doing the same with his glass. He didn’t need to be getting that drunk though.

“So, is there a reason we’re drinking? Or simply because we can?”

Was it possible to forget why he felt so terrible? Being obscenely drunk last night would explain why this whole body ached and why his head felt like a time bomb. Guilt crawled its way up, and he almost rolled over to see who was speaking. But he didn’t. Levon knew himself well enough to know that the movement might set off another earthquake in his cranium. So he just laid there and made a small noise when the room brightened. “Okay,” Levon mumbled weakly. He pulled the blanket up a bit more so he could be covered up to the bridge of his nose. 

Nic was not gone very long.  The apartment was a small one-bedroom studio, all he really needed, so it didn’t take long to get from one side to the other.  The longest thing would have been making the actual coffee, but even then he had one of those fancy one-cup-at-a-time machines, so that didn’t take very long either.  In fact, what took Nic the longest was tracking down his bottle of OTC painkillers that he threw at Levon once he returned to the bedroom.

“Here, Sleeping Beauty. Take a few of these. Should help that killer headache that’s affected your memory.” 

Slowly, he pull in a deep breath while he listened. Levon took inventory over the poor state his body was in currently. Headache and general morning aches aside, he didn’t feel nauseous- which he viewed as a substantial victory so far. He should’ve recognized the voice that spoke up, but he was left grasping for straws from how hazy he was. “Whose?” He croaked back while he worked on opening his eyes a bit more.

Nic just chuckled instead of really answering the question. “You must have been even drunker than I thought.” Nic rose from the bed gently, trying not to disturnLevon too much.  “How about I go get the coffee started while you try to remember who I am..”  As he passed by his window on the way to the kitchen, he pulled open the curtains to allow the light into the room.  He wasn’t mad or anything like that, but he had to get some small revenge on Levon.   

“The devil’s in the details, Danvers,” Charlie said, raising an eyebrow. He watched as Danvers made his selection. It was favorable, at least. “Scotch and bourbon are cousins, after all.”

“They may be related, but that doesn’t make them the same.” Nic took a drink and the characteristic, familiar, almost comforting burn greeted him. “Though they both get you drunk just the same.”

“The Little Door,” he commented when seeing the address and knowing exactly where it was. “Excellent place with a great atmosphere and food. You’ll love it.” Beau added. “Okay, that’s in Lillie. It’s quite a walk there. I need to run some errands if you would like a ride?”

“Lille?” Nic shook his head at himself. That was complete across town, why had he thought that ti was around here. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, as the newspaper office wasn’t far from here and he had managed to walk to and find the other restaurant he was writing about. Nic had just been calculating how long it would take to walk to the office and then hunt down his car and drive over there when he was offered a ride. “Uhm, well actually that would be great. I just don’t want to make you have to drive too far out of your way...”

His everything hurt the second he regained consciousness. It felt like a gathering of semis and tractors were steamrolling through his skull. A low, cracked groan voiced his rousing as he opened his eyes a tiny bit. Oh, good, everything was also blurry. Levon rolled over and was about to pull the covers over his face, but was stopped when he saw another figure next to him.

Hold on.

He carefully rubbed his eyes and squinted to get a clearer picture. “This isn’t.. my bed.” Unless he had magically changed it in his stupor last night- bed frame, mattress, blankets, covers and all.. this wasn’t his bed. Which only meant that this wasn’t his place.

Nic stirred when he felt his bed partner move beside him. His eyes shot open, forgetting why it was that there was even someone beside him, but the quick shot of adrenaline faded as he remembered his friend drunker than a skunk. Nic’s apartment had been closer. He’d have sent Levon home in a taxi, but he was drunk enough not to remember where the other lived, and Levon hadn’t been the most helpful last night.

“That’s cuz it’s mine.” Nic chuckled nervously. Hopefully, Levon wouldn’t be too shocked.  On the rare occasion that he did more than sleep with someone, he liked that other person to actually have a memory of it. All they had done was sleep anyways, Nic just only had one bed in his small apartment and it hadn’t occurred to him until just now to sleep on his couch.

Emory lowered the weights so they were now laying on his legs. He gave the man a bemused smile. It was amusing to have someone flustered over nothing. Well at least what Emory felt to be nothing. “Do you really want to know? Or do you have something else on your mind you need help getting through?”

“I have lots of things going on in my head,” Nic mumbled, almost defensively. He was usually better about just blatantly staring at people like that and he was more than a bit embarrassed. “I am actually curious though. You-, it looks impressive.”

“Its a lot of funny. I’m sure if someone was filming us it would have been social media gold.” Hart finally managed to get ahold of his laughter. “Tell you what. How about you get us new shirts and I’ll get the coffee this time? Seems safer to me,” he teased.

Nic shook his head, horrified at the thought of someone recording it.  “I do not want to be the next meme. Dumb Coffee Guy.” Nic nodded at Hart’s suggestion, wanting to stick his tongue out at the teasing tone, but new he didn’t have a leg to stand on there.  He had just spilt coffee over the both of them.

He glanced around the Promenade and spied a tourist T-shirt vendor. “Do you want...” He squinted trying to read the kitschy logos, “’I left my heart in LA’ with the outline of Louisiana or the one with the alligator eating the tourist boat?”