Mark wakes up at two in the morning having to pee, half asleep and out of it. He isn't really awake until after he's washed his hands and is on his way back to bed, and as he walks past the head of the stairs, he can hear some faint music, like the TV's on with the sound turned down low. He rubs at one eye and goes halfway down, until he can lean over the banister and see into the living room, where the light from the TV is flickering dimly.
Jim's sitting on the couch in pajama pants and no shirt, slumped back working at a Playstation controller as though it isn't 2:09 on a work night. Mark trudges down the last of the steps and through the hallway, leans against the doorway between the hall and the living room. Jim looks up listlessly, his eyes red.
"You okay, Jimmy?" Mark asks, scratching at his chest.
Jim shrugs and goes back to pushing buttons and staring at the screen, where he's playing a pretty terrible game of John Madden Football.
"Don't you have work tomorrow?" Mark says.
"Yeah," Jim says, and his team loses another fourth down. "Fuck," Jim mutters, which is odd. Normally he hardly ever swears.
Something is clearly wrong, but whatever, if he doesn't want to talk about it. Mark goes to the kitchen and opens two beers.
"Here," he says when he comes back into the living room, handing one to Jim. "You look like you need it." Then he picks up the other controller and flops onto the couch and they start a new game. Jim's quiet and he drinks his beer fast, adam's apple moving smoothly in his throat.
Mark's team intercepts the ball -- Jim is playing really shitty, and it's not like him. He finally tackles Mark's guy at the twenty yard line, and as play stops momentarily, Jim picks up Mark's beer and takes a long sip to finish it off, his mouth where Mark's had just been. When Jim puts the bottle down, he licks his lips.
"You're out of beer," Jim says, his speech already a little careless, like he'd been drinking for awhile before Mark got there. Mark looks at him, sprawled out on the couch, gauging how drunk he is, then shrugs and goes to get more beer from the fridge.
They've finished a six pack by halftime, and Mark's feeling pretty buzzed, and Jim's still playing like shit and hardly talking.
"So what happened?" Mark says, focusing on the TV, and out of the corner of his eye he sees Jim go very still.
Jim takes another sip of beer, and the game starts playing again, and as Jim's quarterback starts to run the ball downfield, Jim says, "I told Pam I'm in love with her."
Mark blinks, caught off guard enough that he misses a tackle and Jim's player gets all the way to the thirty yard line before Mark's defense takes him out. "Shit, man," Mark says. "Shit."
"Yeah," Jim says, and sets up his first down play. "That's about how well it went." His mouth is set in a tight line, and he looks old and tired and sad.
Jim totally blows his next play and loses a few yards - he's playing like he's barely paying attention, which is probably exactly true. He keeps getting worse and worse, and when he loses his fourth down, he throws the controller down in disgust and goes into the kitchen, and when he comes back, he's got orange juice and vodka.
**
By the time they finish the game, they're completely wasted. Final score: Mark, 71, Jim, 6. When Mark glances over, moving his head carefully and smoothly so he doesn't get too dizzy, Jim's crying without making any sounds, tears bright on his cheeks. He's always been a morose drunk.
"Man, it's only football," Mark says, and Jim almost laughs. They're sitting so close their bare shoulders are touching, the length of their arms, Jim's hip sharp against Mark's, and Mark can feel him breathing. Mark's a touchy drunk -- he leans into Jim, likes feeling the warm weight of Jim's body against him.
"You know what," Mark says. "Screw her. You are going to find someone so much better."
Jim takes a shuddering breath, and he's shaking, and it's four in the morning and Mark wonders if Jim is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
"I don't want someone better," Jim mumbles, so quietly Mark almost doesn't hear him.
He turns toward Jim and takes him by the shoulders and holds onto him, tries to keep him still. Jim's got his eyes closed, and his skin is hot and smooth under Mark's hands, and Mark can feel the shape of his collarbone, the muscles of his chest. Jim's still shaking.
"It's okay," Mark says, and holds onto Jim tighter, squeezing his shoulder, moving one hand to the base of Jim's neck, his thumb against Jim's pulse. He is so fucking drunk, it's amazing he can still form words, and Jim's skin looks sort of luminescent in this light, sort of warm. "I love you, man. It's okay. Fuck her, right, it's all right, man. It's okay."
Jim opens his eyes again and they're wet and miserable, and the music that plays at the end of Madden is repeating itself, over and over. Jim puts one hand up and rests it on Mark's forearm, and his eyes flick down to Mark's mouth, and Mark should know better than to get this drunk and miserable with Jim. He has a girlfriend. The last time they got this ridiculously drunk and sad, it was in college when Jim found out his parents were getting divorced, and even though they never talk about it, Mark knows they both remember how that night ended. And seriously, Mark has a girlfriend. But Jim's shaking and he smells like cedar and sweat and orange juice and beer, and his eyes are red and unhappy.
Jim's mouth is hot and wet, all tongue and teeth, just like Mark remembers it, and their bodies are positioned awkwardly, so their legs and arms are all tangled together, Mark's knees in the way, and Jim grabs the back of Mark's neck, pulls him in harder. His stubble scrapes at Mark's chin, and he bites Mark's tongue gently, desperate and bleak, and Mark lets him do it. He feels dizzy and breathless, the alcohol fuzzing his head, Jim's body taut and trembling under his hands, and he can't think what they're doing. When he presses the heel of his hand against Jim's erection, through his pajamas, Jim arches his hips into the touch and groans into Mark's mouth, and Mark pushes him back against the couch, drops to his knees on the floor without thinking about it too much.
From the floor Mark slides his hand into the waistband of Jim's pajamas, skin to skin, along the line of Jim's hip, and when he takes hold of Jim's cock, Jim mutters, "Fuck," under his breath. Mark strokes him firmly, carefully, runs his thumb over the head, and Jim takes a sharp breath in, and when Mark looks at him he's very pale, his eyes wide, mouth half open, alarmed.
"Okay?" Mark says, quiet.
Jim nods, a quick up and down, his breath stuttering, but when Mark starts jerking him off, he makes an quiet sound that's one of the saddest noises Mark's ever heard. They are so fucked. Mark can't watch his face anymore, focuses on Jim's hips, the line of hair running down from his navel to his groin, the heavy thickness of his dick.
"Fuck," Jim says. "I'm going to...." He comes, over Mark's hand, and Mark keeps jerking him off until he's done, collapsing back against the couch. Mark grabs a tissue, starts to clean up, and when he finally looks up again, Jim's slumped back, breathing hard, his eyes closed, his pants around his knees. His face is still wet with tears, and his dick's softening, and Mark feels dizzy from the alcohol and the bad decisions, and fuck. He moves off his knees, sits with his back leaning against the couch, shoulder against Jim's left leg, his own legs stretching out under the coffee table, and tries to catch his breath. The video game music's still playing, and after a second he fumbles for the remote and turns off the TV. The silence is abrupt, just Jim's heavy breathing and the hum of the refrigerator and his own blood rushing in his ears.
Jim stands up, pulling up his pajama pants in one embarrassed movement. "Night," he says, not looking at Mark, and heads for the door, listing slightly to the right so that he smashes his shoulder into the doorframe as he tries to go through it. Mark leans his head back against the couch and closes his eyes. He doesn't quite feel up to moving, and he must fall asleep on the floor, because he wakes up the next morning under the coffee table with a vodka bottle next to his head, like he's 20 years old and doesn't know any better.
**
Jim's in the kitchen when Mark staggers in, looking worse than Mark's ever seen him. Hung over and lovesick is not a combination that's going to put him on the cover of GQ - his tie is crooked and his shirt is wrinkled, and he looks like death.
"Hey," Mark says. "You look terrible."
Jim doesn't quite make eye contact. "I feel terrible," he says, putting bread in the toaster. "Exactly how drunk did we get last night? I don't remember anything after you beat me at Madden."
Mark looks at him. Jim shifts his weight from one foot to the other and watches the toaster.
Mark sits at the table and rests his forehead in his hands and presses against it, tries to relieve the pounding in his temples. "Yeah," he says, after awhile, then lies, "We must've been pretty drunk. I don't remember anything either."
Jim looks indecently relieved, and when his toast pops up he starts to butter it. Mark presses harder against his forehead, then reaches for Jim's coffee and takes a sip, and Jim pretends not to notice.
"I gotta take a shower," Mark says. "I feel disgusting."
Jim closes his eyes for just a second and swallows, and Mark goes upstairs and runs the shower as hot as it can go.
**
END
Author's Chapter Notes:
These characters don't belong to me.
This story's for LiberryLady, who really wanted some Jim/Mark. Thanks to Swmbo and Kyra Cullinan for betaing and suggestions. (And for those of you who maybe don't obsessively catalogue every detail of this show, Mark is Jim's roommate.)
This story's for LiberryLady, who really wanted some Jim/Mark. Thanks to Swmbo and Kyra Cullinan for betaing and suggestions. (And for those of you who maybe don't obsessively catalogue every detail of this show, Mark is Jim's roommate.)
Annakovsky is the author of 6 other stories.
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