Jack’s hauling all six feet of Davey’s deadweight back to his car, trying to shove his lanky, drunken, noodle limbs into the passenger seat—Jesus Christ, he really is all leg, ain’t he?—when Davey kisses him.
Jack freezes. Goes perfectly still, frozen in place, as panic pierces his chest like a shot to the heart.
Because Davey is drunk, drunker than drunk, really, his mouth warm and soft and a little sloppy against his own. He tastes like salt and tequila and that last round of fireball shots Racetrack ordered for the table, tastes like everything Jack’s ever wanted and nothing he’s allowed to have.
Davey makes soft, unhappy noise in the back of his throat, then loops clumsy arms around Jack’s neck and tugs him closer: stubborn, insistent, and drunk, so fucking drunk, because Jack knows better than to think he’d ever do this sober.
But he smells so good—like coconut conditioner and the fancy fabric softener he insists on and Davey—and he fits so perfectly in Jack’s arms and he’s kissing Jack like he wants him. Right here in the parking lot, half in and half out of the passenger seat of Jack’s car, with nothing but the buzzing street lamps overhead to notice Jack’s heart cracking into tiny little pieces.
Davey sighs against his lips, his fingers curling gently around the nape of his neck, and Jack knows.
Knows he shouldn’t. Knows it’s a mistake. Knows that Davey—clever, gorgeous, wonderful Davey—won’t remember this in the morning, and Jack will never, not ever forget.
But he’s only human. He’s just a man, hopelessly in love with his best friend.
And for just a moment, he kisses him back.
Jack forces himself to pull away. Davey looks up at him with big, blue pleading eyes, his mouth wet and red and perfect, his cheeks pink from the rasp of Jack’s stubble.
“Why’d you stop?” Davey mumbles, a swirly curl of hair falling over his forehead. Jack’s heart skips in his chest. “You don’t want to kiss me?”
“Dave, I—“ What can he say? What can he possibly say?
He needs to apologize, needs to beg for forgiveness because Davey might be drunk off his ass but Jack absolutely is not, had a half a beer and a single shot, so there’s no excuse to fall back on. There’s no excuse for this.
Davey pats him on the shoulder with all the coordination of a wet mop head.
“‘S okay,” he says. “I don’t want to kiss you either.”
Jack’s pretty sure a baseball bat to the back of the head would hurt less.
He wants to stumble away as quickly as he can, wants to see if Kath and Sarah are still out front waiting for their Uber and if they’d take Davey home instead if he asked really, really nicely and walked away before they could ask him any questions.
Instead he sucks in a steadying breath. Carefully reaches around Davey to buckle in his seatbelt.
“There’s this guy,” Davey says, hushed like he’s sharing a secret. “I wanna kiss him all— all the time. He’s handsome and funny and way smarter than he gives himself credit for and— and he’s just the best, you know?”
Jack does not know. Jack would rather be force-fed his own liver than know any of this.
He starts manually lifting Davey’s legs into the footwells. Tucks his feet in so they don’t block the car door.
Jack stops. Wonders, for just a second, if maybe someone did hit him over the head, actually, because—
Because the last ten minutes have been a fucking rollercoaster and he might have the world’s first genuine case of emotional whiplash, but—
