#logm

“You’re an idiot,” he said up at Alec while others circling the table he’d launched himself onto clapped and cheered at his impression of Mick Jagger. Even Jamie felt a small smile creep up onto his face as he sipped his drink and watched his friend make a fool out of himself. 

He couldn’t remember the last time he felt so relaxed, almost certain that it was because of the top shelf liquor and secret puppy kisses behind marble pillars. It was sickening. 

And he loved it.

He surveyed the party with a sense of nostalgia for all that he’d missed as a teenager. For all the times he spent weekends cleaning grease from air vents and tidying tables. For all the youth that he’d missed. One night of debauchery wasn’t enough to make up for all that he’d lost, but it was something. 

His gaze stopped on a figure through the doorway into the next room, a dark smudge upon the white-gold decor. Jamie watched for a bit as the too-familiar man chortled and lumbered through the small swathe of nymphs that had flocked towards him.

Slugging back the rest of his drink, he placed his glass down on the table before getting up to approach him. He cut through the girls like a lightning bolt in a rainstorm. Nothing good ever lasted too long for him, did it?

“You can show up at a party but you can’t even show up at home?” he said, his stiff stance screaming confrontational. “The fuck is wrong with you? It was Stella’s birthday last month, you jackass.”

Halloween was a fond holiday to him for more than one reason this year, remembering too well how some jackass had decked Alec for no reason at the firehouse and set everything in motion. It started with frozen peas and ended with Alex woven into his life like tapestry. Jamie couldn’t complain. At least, not honestly. 

However, the incessant tugging on his hand reminded him that Alec was a double-edged sword that didn’t discriminate who he cut. Wide pools of scantily clad bodies begged him to gravitate towards them like an excitable dog to a big slab of juicy meat, Jamie the unwilling owner attached to the leash. His heels skidded on the luxury rug as he tried to rip his arm from Alec’s grasp, protesting with increasing panic the closer they got. Finally, he freed himself with a hard shove. 

The immediate regret set in when he was met with big, watery eyes reflecting betrayal back at him like he’d just stepped on his tail. 

“Look, I’m not going in there,” he said, eyes glancing nervously at the rippling blue water as if it’d leap out and swallow him into its watery depths if he got any closer. “I had an accident in junior year. It was traumatic, to say the least.”

Jamie hugged the side of the double doors as if to beckon Alec back inside and away from the treacherous bubbling depths. He frowned at the stench of chlorine that wafted through the whole area. “Can’t we go somewhere else?”

There was nothing like snooping while plied with food and drink. A happy little past time he was most comfortable indulging in as he sat as far away as he could from the double doors leading to the dreaded pool. Weighing his pockets with rocks was the least clever idea he had. (Perhaps it was subconscious, but he didn’t want to test that theory out.)

Jamie held a clear plastic bottle to the light and squinted through it as he watched the strange sediment in what looked like water shift from left to right as he rocked it. He was about to uncap the bottle when a familiar brunette lumbered through his peripheral. He shot up immediately to chase her, upending all the bags he’d opened on the floor.

“What are you doing here?” he snapped, grabbing her wrist. “You’re supposed to be at Marie’s taking my shift.”

He eyed the kid up and down, taking in the cheap Halloween props and half-hearted effort to look canine. As a firm believer that Halloween should be reserved for the weird and freaky, he could appreciate the camp of furry ears and plastic teeth more when he’d obstinately denied assimilating to Morgan’s shitty idea of a Halloween bash by being a mere mortal.

“Though I’m not sure if plaid was part of the Grecian fashion,” he mused. “Doesn’t matter. This whole place is a farce anyway. I doubt any of these people ever read The Odyssey.”

Jamie skulled his glass and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve, peering over his hand to catch the bewildered stare of the kid in front of him.

“You do know who Lyacon is right? Fed his son to Zeus to see if he was all-seeing?” he said, amusement draining from his features when it became clear that he didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Does anyone in this place read?”

He burped in his fist as he reclined to a showing of Beetlejuice on the wide screen TV, eyes glazed over with liquor and the contentment of a full stomach. The dull hum of music and people behind him lulled him into a brief slumber as the exhaustion of the week took over but the gods of Olympus weren’t about to offer him much reprieve. 

The spill of his glass woke him up as muddy jungle juice spilled down the side of his pants and onto the person next to him. Jamie shot up, catching the red-purple liquid blooming into white cotton and silk and moving to blot it with the tail end of his flannel.

“Sorry,” he muttered, wiping a droplet from a pale leg before he caught sight of who had was cleaning. Jamie paused, the shock of red hair an unforgettable core memory during junior year. He furrowed his brow when his gratitude was jerked back by Johnnie’s obnoxious moping after the same red-headed ghost ditched him one summer. 

Far be it that Jamie would ever side with his brother’s exploits, but still. It was the principle of the thing.

“I thought you had left town,” he said, regarding her with caution. “I don’t think this party is great enough to pull anyone back to his shithole.”

Still, free was free and he was too far shameless to not capitalize on contraband. The refreshments table became his home as he picked through the offerings like a fancy connoisseur of fine party junkfood. Deviled eggs, pumpkin crostinis, sugar cookies, he crunched through a full-sized chocolate bar in one hand while sipping jungle juice in a wine glass. 

Reaching for what looked like the last sausage roll dressed up like a mummy, he brushed knuckles with another party-goer who looked to have the same idea as he. 

“Fuck off,” he said, swatting their hand aside and snatching the lone mummydog. Years of fighting with his siblings had taught him the rules of sniping food and he quickly shoved it into his mouth.

He glared at the other, cheeks pillowed with pastry before he realized who it was and swallowed the mouthful whole.

“Fancy seeing you here,” he said, eyeing the elaborate garb donning Leo’s body. If he could’ve been more scorned, he would’ve, but the girl had Brutus outnumbered with how many knives she’d stuck into his back lately. “Don’t parties violate your terms of parole? Or have you licked Daddy’s boots enough to be granted pardon?”

The haunted sight of red bleeding into the blue of the pool and the bobbing corpse only made him think of one person he’d seen encased by the police more often than not. An unlikely party-goer he hadn’t expected to see, but was unsurprised when disaster came soon after like a bad omen on a stormy night.

Jamie massaged his head, the pulsing at his temple having grown unbearable while tempered with mere 7-Up. He grabbed a hear empty bottle of vodka and topped off his drink before throwing it back. A single nightcap wasn’t going to do any worse than knowing his brother most definitely had something to do with a murder.

After pacing another round, Jamie stopped to lean on the door, listening in for sounds of life or retching as he watched people file out of the entrance in a hasty line.

“You alright in there? Everyone’s leaving before the cops get here,” he said, rapping his knuckles on the door. He stopped when the door swung open, knuckles nearly falling upon a messy Alec within.

“You’re shitfaced; give me your keys,” he demanded more than said, holding his hand out expectantly. “It’s a fuckin’ long drive down the mountain and I don’t need you falling asleep at the wheel.”

Clogs, rubber boots, flip-flops. The historical inaccuracy didn’t hurt as much as imagining himself clomping around in six-inch heels for the sake of aesthetics. 

“I don’t think anyone here can appreciate... Valentino,” he said, making a face as he read the label off the strap of someone’s heels, his own dirty converse kicked up upon a gold glided table with a glass surface. 

“I don’t know why anyone wears those things. Not only are they’re exuberantly expensive for less but they’re also safety hazards.” 

His eyes flicked up to the owner, getting a strange feeling of deja vu when confronted with a beautiful blonde he hadn’t shared oxygen with since elementary school. Elle Reynolds had always been a gorgeous girl but that wasn’t the part that struck him. It was the luxurious glint of starlight and gold dust that made him frown in distaste, knowing too well that it had been dirt and sand only a few years before.

“There are easier ways to kill yourself than to fall at a height,” he said with a roll of his eyes cramming clusters of chocolate and nuts into his mouth before he spat more venom.