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likeshipsonthesea · 5 years

Text

the story

so a quick ficlet-y headcanon thing of whiskey that i thought i’d share when i have a final in *checks watch* fifteen minutes because as we all surely know by now, i make horrible decisions

my new belief of Lax Bro Guy, whose name I decided will be Jamie (it’s really Chad James but 1. too many chads on the lax team so he goes by his middle name, and 2. there were also two chads in his kindergarten class and he didn’t mind being jamie, which leads me to -->) Jamie grew up with Whiskey in Arizona

best friends since before they even really knew what best friends were. they were in the same sunday school class and would spend the whole lesson every week passing crayons back and forth and bouncing in their seats, waiting until they could go outside and play

they both played hockey and lacrosse together all through elementary school and middle school (let me tell you please about their working-class parents make all the dropping off easier by coordinating carpool schedules and they somehow feel more comfortable leaving the boys home alone when they know jamie and whiskey are together, at least) (oh and fuck i want the latchkey kids whiskey and jamie getting up to shit together and swearing each other to secrecy, insides jokes inside of inside jokes, all this communication that no one else can hope to understand, omg)

in high school they both chose their respective sports-- lacrosse for jamie and hockey for whiskey, obviously-- and this is when they came up with The Plan.

The Plan is their respective but also mutual plan to go pro with their sports, become the new Wayne Gretzky and the new whoever-the-fuck-is-the-best-lacrosse-player (sorry i do not know LAX at all) and be best bros and the best players and have matching mansions side-by-side where they’ll spend the off-season hanging out forever

(... it’s a lil intense, but then again, jamie and whiskey are a lil intense)

The Plan doesn’t have much specifics in regards to families/wives, but they both agree that they will spend their first paychecks on nice houses and cars for their parents and siblings, because these boys love their families okay, fiercely, and it’s sometimes limiting

(jamie, imo, knew he could be ~not straight~ earlier than whiskey ever thought about it, and he’d notice the things his parents would say off-hand, unthinking, and he goes to church every sunday and wonders what can be true, what it means to be a good christian, when does love become bad? is it when that love comes with conditions? when it can only hold the parts it understands?)

but going back to The Plan one major part of it is going to Samwell. we don’t have much in the way of canon as far as the LAX team goes, but we know that Samwell is impressive hockey-wise, and in their freshman year of high school jack would have just signed on (right?? idk i can’t do math rn) and so Samwell becomes the way to get into the big leagues, and they both spend their high school careers fighting for the best grades, best spots on their team, dedicated to getting in and fulfilling their dream

then... Alyssa happens.

Alyssa is the assistant sunday school teacher at their church, they grew up with her as much as they grew up with each other, if with more distance because girls had cooties back then, and Alyssa is, like, the perfect girl in every way that appears to matter-- straight-A student, beautiful and always smiling, soccer player, student body president and head of every club imaginable. she’s a perfectionist and she’s ambitious and driven and, one day, she decides seemingly out of the blue that whiskey is something that she wants.

whiskey, a year younger, happily eats up the attention, trails behind Alyssa at school functions and goes along on dates she plans (and pays for, as the wealthier of the two) and he-- he likes her, loves her, whatever, he really does... at least, he thinks he does? that must be what the tight feeling is in his chest, right? love?

Alyssa leaves for Yale the year before whiskey and jamie graduate, and for that year they do long-distance (”it’ll be easier when you’re at samwell,” alyssa says, offhand, a lot, “then i can pop in and see you any time i want.” whiskey tells himself that the pressure in his temples, the way his hand clenches, instinctive, is because he misses her so much, and who knows, it could be true) and by all rights whiskey should miss her, should hate being away from her, but...

senior year is the best year he’s had since he and alyssa started dating in his sophomore year. he spends more time with jamie, with the team, with his family now that he’s not away all nights of the week at school functions or public dinner dates, and it’s... nice. he didn’t realize how much he missed just being a person instead of being part of a couple.

The Plan is still on, though, and he gets in to Samwell the same day Jamie does and they celebrate by getting bombed in an abandoned house near the edge of town, and, drunk, whiskey lists into jamie and tells him it’s going to be great and jamie smiles, says, “of course it is, it’s us, bro,” and something about it-- the smile, the words, the hazy sunset filtering through the boarded up windows-- it makes whiskey’s chest flutter in a way he knows without a doubt is... love.

he spends the summer trying to convince himself that it’s friendly, platonic love. then they get to samwell and jamie is the only familiar thing and he grabs on even tighter and-- he ignores the love thing. whatever it is, it feels nice, and in this foreign place where so many of the things he knows are gone or-- wrong, well. it’s just nice to have jamie.

and things go on like normal, or this new samwell normal, until the season ends. both the lax team and the hockey team don’t make the playoffs, and it-- it itches, because they’re here for The Plan, they’re here to go pro, and how are they supposed to do that when the can’t even make the playoffs? they got here, the fought to be here, and it’s still not good enough--

whiskey turns up at jamie’s dorm drunk on tub juice and melancholy and jamie opens the door with the most-- he’s in this big blue warm soft sweater and his hair is slightly damp from the shower and he’s got this understanding, sympathetic, loving expression on his face, and whiskey doesn’t know what he does exactly but in the next second they’re kissing and jamie is licking the tub juice from whiskey’s mouth and it’s just so good--

he feels so fucking guilty in the morning that he almost leaves before jamie wakes up. he doesn’t, but only mostly because it’s jamie, and avoiding this problem will never work. this is the guy that spent the entirety of their second grade needling whiskey until he agreed to go down to the river with the big kids and jump from the Big Tree (also the guy that swore, even all through the trip to the hospital, that it was worth any number of broken bones, which were 2 in his arm and meant that whiskey wrote out all of his summer homework for him)

jamie is.. removed, but understanding. he is visibly disappointed when he asks whiskey what he wants to do and whiskey says he has to talk to alyssa, but he doesn’t get mad (whiskey hates it when jamie gets mad. he does it so infrequently and he never yells he just gets-- quiet. whiskey, on the other hand, is irritated by the most minor of things, and jamie is amused every time, and fuck, if whiskey fucked up this friendship he doesn’t know what he’ll do)

so whiskey does go and talk to alyssa... on the phone.. and vaguely. “are there ever times where you don’t like the long distance?” he starts, in a very roundabout kind of way

“of course. i’d rather have you with me here.” alyssa is studying for something-- said so when she answered the phone, “why are you calling me now? we’re not scheduled until wednesday. i’m studying”-- and not that invested in the conversation, apparently.

“no, like, do you ever miss... being close to someone? like, physically?” whiskey winces at his own awkwardness and then panics in the ensuing silence.

“...you mean sex?”

whiskey says nothing.

alyssa clears her throat. “well, if you do mean sex, then yes, i do... miss that, sometimes. but i see nothing wrong with...” she pauses again. whiskey holds his breath. “our relationship, being long-distance, is mostly in our minds and hearts,” she continues, slowly, “so as long as we don’t give our... hearts to other people, i see no problem with...” she coughs.

whiskey then goes through a very quick, very complicated process of emotions. does this mean alyssa has--? why isn’t whiskey mad about that? does this mean what happened with jamie is okay?? can he keep doing it??? ...if the heart is the problem, does that mean whiskey cheated a long time ago?

alyssa moves the conversation along, swiftly changing subjects to something banal and easy to tune out. whiskey continues swaying in this new, weird confusion until alyssa eventually hangs up to give her full attention to her coursework.

...

so whiskey tells jamie that he talked to alyssa. which he did. and he tells jamie that they decided their relationship is less romantic than friendly. which is kind of what happened. and jamie beams and kisses whiskey and it feels so nice that he doesn’t want to talk about alyssa anymore, and that becomes the status quo.

whiskey tells no one about jamie and him-- half because jamie doesn’t want to be out to his teammates, half because he still calls alyssa his girlfriend when he talks about her. maybe, possibly, there are moments when he wants to talk to someone outside of it, someone who (hopefully) won’t judge him, someone who will help him detangle himself from the confusion.

but every time he goes to ask, start talking about it, he stops. where does he start? does he start in sunday school, passing notes back and forth, or in sophomore year when alyssa decided that he was hers, or college, or when they created The Plan, or that first night, or after his captain kissed a guy on national TV and now every time he left to hang out with jamie his parents suddenly got these expressions on their face like he wasn’t trustworthy, like he was doing something bad, like he was wrong--

the problem with explaining the story is that whiskey isn’t quite sure what the story is, yet. it’s easier to enjoy the parts he can, ignore the parts that can be muffled, and deal with the hard bits when they come. trying to make sense of it all... it hurts in a distinct way, an unforeseen, unavoidable, earth-shattering kind of way.

is it so wrong that he doesn’t want to feel that?

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