parasympathic:
✦
The man wasn’t hard to find. The town wasn’t that big, there were only so many salons, and there were only so many people who might be sitting out on the curb at some strange hour of the morning looking quite so miserable. Monty pulled the car up to the sidewalk before he got out, but there was no indication Brody even knew he was there until he was crouching down next to him, a hand settling gently on his shoulder to try and rouse him.
The answer he got had a smile flicker across his face for a moment, even if it was a pained thing. It was just familiar. Everything except the thought that it was taking place in Asphodel, but right now that felt like an unimportant detail compared to the state of the man in front of him.
“Oh, that’s too bad. That’s the only reason I came.” He offered quiet humor in return, even if he wasn’t sure after he said it just how well the joke might go over. If it was the kind of thing he could usually get away with, he didn’t know if that was still true when he thought this had turned into what was effectively a bad trip. A rarity, because the man was usually the happiest of drunks, bright and carefree in all the ways Monty was not. It was what had drawn him to Brody in the first place, because he’d found quickly that it wasn’t something that faded when the sun came up and they were forced back to sobriety. He was still both of those things, and there was a distant ache just seeing him like this now.
He thought the last time he’d looked this bad, they’d gotten in a fight. One of a hundred like it, all circling back to the same problems that had been accumulating over months. Monty didn’t tell him anything. He didn’t tell him where he went or who he was with, the name of his friends or his family. All of those things Brody would’ve shared with him easily, if he’d just let him, and he felt a familiar wave of guilt on the heels of that thought. He’d told him he didn’t hate him, but Monty still couldn’t shake the thought that he absolutely should.
He just didn’t want him to. He didn’t want to be the reason he kept getting hurt, and crouched next to him felt like the bare minimum of what he should be doing to try and make up for the past. It quieted those attempts at humor, one hand settling under his elbow and the other still against his shoulder. A light squeeze before he tugged at him, trying to draw him up off the curb. “Come on. It’s time to go. I know you don’t want to sleep on the sidewalk.”
***
The joke had him frowning slightly, but it was forgotten as soon as his head lifted. As soon as his head tipped back and a familiar, albeit blurry, man crouched down next to him, a smile spread across his face. Something bright and nothing held back in it. Like the months they’d been apart hadn’t meant anything and he honestly forgot he was supposed to be broken up with the man, or angry with him, or careful because neither of them knew where this was headed. All of those thoughts were gone leaving in it’s place just a raw happiness on seeing him there.
“Monty,” he breathed the man’s name, leaning into him and if it weren’t for the hand on his shoulder, the other under his elbow, he might have toppled over right then and there, losing his balance and content with just tucking himself into the man’s shoulder, using him for support. His head finds his shoulder and he can’t help but tip it back to look up at him. “Hi,” he tells him.
It fades in the next moment, but not completely. He’s just barely able to hold a thought in his head, let alone an emotion in his heart when this is threatening to be a blackout drunk type of night. It had been a while. Drunk, he enjoyed. Tipsy, he enjoyed. Blackout, was a different story. Especially when he was out in public like this. But he didn’t even have the wits about him to worry about it right now, thoughts stuttering in his head, slowing down and speeding up and nothing that stuck in place except for his head against Monty’s shoulder.
Even as the man tries to lift him up to his feet, telling him it’s time to go and that he doesn’t want to sleep on the sidewalk, he whines in his throat, hand curling in Monty’s shirt.
“I do if you’re here,” he slurs to him, laughing at his own words before that fades too. And for a moment, his gaze wanders over Monty. He tries to pull away, tries to straighten himself up because if one thing made it through his foggy brain, it was that he was very clearly drunk off his ass and Monty was not. He was shameless, certainly, but he didn’t want to be obnoxious.
“I’m okay,” he tells him, like he has something to prove. “I’m okay, Monty,” he tells the man, forgetting that he was the one who called him in the first place and he repeats the words several more times, even with Monty’s hand lingering on his elbow, unaware how badly he was swaying and just how dangerously close he was getting to sitting his ass back down on the ground against his will.
His head tips back, face towards the sky and his eyes closed, just breathing in the night air. “I’m okay,” he gives another time, only this one sounds pained, his wincing like the words are more for himself than for the man next to him.















