— every cowboy sings a sad, sad song
Drink me: I will write a drabble about my character taking shots with yours.
The first time he gets wasted, hammered--really, honestly, regrettably drunk--Raleigh is nineteen years old. He had always thought he never would. And certainly not until his twenty-first birthday--as the legend goes with every young person, coming of age...
And yet, he's basically drunk by the time they walk into the bar amid raucous cheers and pats on the shoulder. There's a part of him that's so addled at the whole thing that he wants to go on the goofy side--slip into a put-on falsetto and ask, 'For me?'
But he won't, because Yancy's handling it so much better than he does. When it's time to get out of bed, Raleigh can call it laziness, but right now whatever that calm is that settles over Yancy makes him look like this successful Jaeger pilot thing fits him like a familiar glove.
So when the tiny glass is set before him, matching his big brother's, he doesn't question it. Down his throat the liquid burns, but he just makes a disgruntled, throaty gasp of a sound and down goes another when he sees the flicker of a challenge in his brother's eyes. Never mind his twenty-first birthday--apparently helping to save the world from a Kaiju has its perks at bars near the Dome. He's heard about that, read about it--how wars change things. But after a third, slightly less offensive tingle down his throat, it's a little bit less important to focus on the details. He really shouldn't be egging this on.
The tingle runs strongest along the undersides of his arms, making him at once feel a bit stronger than he is and utterly heavy and relaxed. He hauls one of them up and drapes it loosely around the shoulders of his older but somehow, unfairly smaller brother's shoulders. He lifts up his emptied shot glass, signalling to the bartender for another with a confident little waggle of the thing. The way it catches light catches his eye for a second.
"So what do you say to me drinking you under the table?" he drawls out, more thickly than usual.
Yancy just lifts his eyebrows and Raleigh focuses very intently on his gaze with a very slight narrowing of his own eyes. A challenge, and he's bristling to take him up on it if only to watch the way he reacts to it--the mixture of pride and bewilderment and worry. He drinks it up--just like the next shot glass that's set before him. He doesn't give Yancy a chance to do it in unison before he's asking for another.
"I wouldn't try it, kid," Yancy warns, and he can tell he's thinking about trying to put a stop to this by the way he looks down at the emptied little glass in front of him. Raleigh guards it with his hand and then takes the next one and holds it gently, careful not to show any signs of loss of coordination. "Rals, think about--"
"Come on," Raleigh implores, pouting just a little bit and ducking his forehead toward Yancy's, not quite butting heads with him before straightening back up. He gently elbows him too and nods down at the little glass in front of his brother's hand. "Yance," he says, but then does one better: "... co-pilot."
And he knows that with their small audience that hovers in and out even now that he's got something to hold his brother to a little bit, but it doesn't matter to him--what other people think. Not right now. Right now all he cares about is the way--in his current state at least--he can almost feel the way they both throw back the drink at the same time. It's never ever occurred to him to ask what it is because it tastes like medicine to him, but he doesn't complain because when he has a sense that he's moving in-time with Yancy without the aid of a machine, he wants to hum with a kind of exquisite pleasure, completion, that he won't express otherwise--not aloud.
It's not long later that his too-empty stomach has helped him further down the road toward the regrettable part of being drunk. But for a little while, it's nice. For a little while, serenading Yancy with 'Every Rose Has Its Thorn' seems completely normal and on-key and quite frankly kind of wonderful.
(Sober Raleigh has never, ever once sang on his own in public.)
When he's back out in the cold outside the bar, Raleigh's not a hundred percent on how he got there--but he's pretty sure it might have had something to do with Yance hauling him out by the scruff of his neck. He has this dizzy feeling that seems to linger in his oddly focused thoughts that seem to be about pretty much nothing. The warmth of his jacket folding him up but not because he'd chosen to put it on. He's sort of glad to be away from all of those people as he rubs at either side of his nose, at his sinuses as they wake up in the night air.
"Come on, Yance," he whines, about nothing in particular.
And he's pretty sure that when his eyes focus Yancy's about half-ready to instate some kind of corporal punishment. He lifts a single hand in slightly wavering, palm-exposed surrender.
"No, I'm getting you home before you're so completely useless you don't get up in the morning," Yancy worries aloud--Raleigh can't even call it talking. It's worrying.
"I'm... good. What... is it you're supposed to do? Lots of water?"
And then he's laughing again and lying down on the ground. Home's good. Los Angeles had been too warm. Staking a sort of claim back on his home turf again, he makes a 6'1'' snow angel all while staring up at Yancy. He can see the waning patience in his brother's crystallizing breath, in the way he shoves his hands down into his jacket's pockets. But then as he slides his legs out in the snow, he edges a foot down and weakly, ineffectually tries to tip Yancy over and he sees the quirk of his lips turn up and he knows he's at least slightly off the hook. He might be making an asshole of himself, but he knows that cute-little-brother-card being accepted as tender when he sees it, getting too old for it or not.
"Get your ass up off the ground," Yancy demands, but Raleigh still hears that curve of a smile and lets Yance help him up, dust him off, tips forward a little against his shoulder before he finds a good footing again.
"Yeah, yeah. You're the bad influence," he accuses dryly and then meanders with Yancy (who's not entirely sober himself but sure seems it in comparison) back toward their quarters. He just hopes Pentecost doesn't know anything about his present state before he's had time to let it wear off. But the way he feels like he's humming and drowning in the Drift with no threat of danger, just together with his big brother whom he trusts more absolutely than he ever has before--it's worth it.
Dampened clothes off and draped around, sweatpants pulled on, Raleigh is glad he's a bottom bunker tonight. Then Yancy's hauling himself up next to the bed frame and Raleigh finds himself a little disgruntled and approximately nine years old in his head for a moment. He reaches out, forgetting his own strength but it's pretty floppy at the moment nonetheless. He grips at Yancy's bottoms, hem almost the outer side of his thigh. He remembers not to tug or pants him--barely.
"C'mhere," he complains, the need for distinct words escaping his attention.
"What, kid?" Yance complains, and Raleigh actually whines at him, deep and low in his throat. Yancy rolls his eyes bur draws back from the bed frame enough to meet his eyes.
"Come 'ere a second," Raleigh repeats.
Yancy sighs, and Raleigh sees the slight difficulty in coordination that nearly leads to Yancy banging his head against the metal. Perceiving it like it were his own body, Raleigh crunches up at the abdomen and gently places his hand against the side of Yancy's head that would have hit, cushioning it and stopping it before any harm's done. Yancy seems alarmed but to all at once understand, and when Raleigh settles back against his pillow, he feels like they both exhale in synch.
"Okay," Yancy says, expectant. "What is it?"
"'m scared of the dark," Raleigh teases. He's not met with anything with a little thing with Yancy's eyebrows he's not sure he likes, so he looks down and back up, becoming slightly more serious. He tastes the back of his teeth, thinking about it. "I just wanted to say--" He trails off.
"Before mornin', Raleigh," Yancy complains, stretching a little. "It comes whether we've got a mission or not. You're gonna find out..." he cautions. Too little, too late, but Raleigh doesn't think for a second he can blame him more than himself. Not at all, because...
"I just wanted to say it's nice."
"What is? Being drunk? We'll see what you say tomorrow... You're a lightweight," Yancy diagnosed.
"... But not that about it. I'm not... drunk. Not what I'm feelin' right now..."
And Raleigh reaches up to punctuate the sentiment, his thumb brushing against the very edge of the seam of his brother's lips, tugging along as if to form his mouth into a smile without actually manhandling him to make it so. Yancy reaches out and catches his wrist and draws back a little, and Raleigh isn't quite hurt because he knows he's being a little weird at that point. Deterred, but only slightly, he turns his hand around and clasps hands with Yancy in a way that is half-broken high five and half-just holding hands. His big brother, he can do that. In the moments that follow, he thinks a lot about puzzle pieces, a lot about tongue and groove, coins... them.
"You're definitely drunk," Yancy informs him, like he's about to begin an educational lecture but is too tired. He sighs in place of the actual lecture.
"Nah, I'm just... drifting..." And Raleigh closes his eyes. So maybe he's not quite to the regretting part yet.
