Hell yeah.
This was the reason that Logan ended up in this line of work--the loud music, the shrieking girls, the energy that spilled onto the stage, the way his body moved instinctively to the rhythm. All of it. He loved all of it.
Closing his eyes, he let it soak in. The lights danced in his face and he could see them through his eyelids. When he opened his eyes, he smiled at the nearest girl and she let out a squeak and let her much bolder friend slip him a few dollars. Logan winked at them and accepted the cash.
His parents still had no idea what he did for a living. They thought he had some job with a radio station or something. Logan sort of maybe a little bit bullshitted them because he loved them dearly but... he also loved his job. There was no shame in it but he could imagine the color his mom would turn if she knew. And his father would probably give him a good punch. Not that the guy was abusive but it might be a bit much to know what his son did for a living.
But his parents, they weren't here. Just a nice group of ladies who came to this club for the all male line of strippers. Some guys, too. Logan grinned at one of the guys, who had come in with a girlfriend. The discomfort on his face was palpable. Poor fella. When Logan passed the pair, he gave the guy a nice pat on the head before moving on.
When the song came to its end and he was in nothing but his fancy black skivvies, Logan took a bow with a flourish and then kissed his hand and waved it out at the crowd before heading toward the back. The guys who came in after him passed him on the way and Logan exchanged a high five with two of them.
After he was cleaned up and dressed, he left the dressing area and suppressed a yawn. There was a small line for the bathroom and he nodded as he passed the girls waiting in line. Then he rounded the corner and into the main club floor.
"Give me one of those neon drinks!" he called to the bartender as he approached the bar.
"Sure you don't want a pretty pink parasol to go with that girly blue drink of yours?"
Sean waltzed up laughing, sliding easily onto the barstool next to Logan's. He braced an elbow on the bartop and rested his chin in his palm with the sort of shit-eating grin that everybody at the club knew pretty well by now. Nodding to the bartender, he ordered himself a beer and put it on his tab--to be deducted out of his paycheck at the end of the month.
"Guess who's coming to Club 9 with us on Saturday?" The beer slid his way on a coaster; he grabbed it and tilted his head back to take a long drink. It was hard work, dancing up on that stage, with all the lights on him! Physical demands aside, those lights had to rival the intensity of the sun with how much heat they put out. Sean had been on one of the other stages, dancing and gyrating and generally thrusting his hips in every woman's--and man's--direction. He was still a little warm, and a little sweaty, but a nice, cold beer was just the thing to help him cool down.
Got some nice tips out of the show, too--he had the wad of cash in his back pocket.
Turning his head as he drew his neon blue drink closer, he arched a brow and then stared Sean down for a moment. No, he didn't want a parasol. Personally, he didn't care if his drink DID count as girly because damn it, it was both refreshing and oh so tasty. It was a little tart, too, so he licked his lips and twiddled the straw for fun. He was trying Very Hard not to look over at Sean now because he was wearing That Grin and That Grin always meant trouble of some kind.
"...who?" he asked, despite himself. He had to look up. He was curious now and he was hoping to catch some kind of hint in the glimmer of Sean's eyes. Why was he smiling like that, though, seriously? Over a person who was coming with them out to the club?
Oh god. Was it an ex? Fuck. If it was an ex, he was ditching the whole thing! Abort! Abort!
"It's somebody speciaaal~" Sean replied in sing-song, wiggling his shoulders forward and backward in a display of playful excitement. How long had it been since they'd hung out with Tori? Since forever ago! When Tori quit the strip club, Sean was personally devastated. He showed that by carrying on as usual, but a little part of him always missed Tori's gentle charm. There was just something about him that one couldn't help but like.
Of course... he liked Tori like a brother. In no way, shape or form did Sean ever harbor any other feelings for him. Purely platonic was the name of the game. He sipped his beer a little pensively, however, side-eyeing Logan and trying to keep his gaze from sliding down to where his lower back was. Did he really have a beauty mark there?
Why do I care?
Logan was right--it was a weird thing to get fixated on. Even Sean didn't know exactly why it lingered in his mind, it just did. He cleared his throat a little conspicuously and took another longer gulp of his drink. "It's Tori man! I finally got hold of him!"
"No, god," he said under his breath at the mention of somebody special. "Please not Sherry."
Crazy Sherry, as they liked to call her. Logan met her here but she was one of those people who misunderstood the whole stripper profession. Logan thought she was asking him on a date but she was literally propositioning him for sex. It was totally weird and totally awkward and Logan still managed to get tangled in a relationship with her for three months before taking a flying leap off the crazy train.
Logan nursed his drink, eyes skeptically roving over Sean. He was about to tell him to spit it out already when he finally came out with it. Tori! That took Logan aback and he sat up straighter in shock.
"Tori?" He couldn't even begin to disguise the surprise in his voice. Damn, Tori. It had been a while. He was one of their tight little group for a while. Hell, Logan remembered when he joined. He seemed so shy and reserved... until he got up on the stage. Then he was... whew. He was something else, that was for sure. He left, though, some time ago. After he graduated and paid off most of his school loans, he seemed to just disappear from their lives. He stopped hanging out, going out with them... He became super responsible.
"Really? He's really going out with us, then?" He lifted a fist for a bro-fist. "How the hell'd you manage that one?"
Heh heh heh... Sherry.
That was what Logan got for putting his dick in crazy though.
Sean was not sympathetic in the least, possibly because he was way too amused by all of Logan's stories. The stalking was the best part. That or the lube and condoms that she threw all over his car when he broke up with her. That amused Sean for a whole damn week and he couldn't stop laughing for at least two or three days.
But no. It wasn't Crazy Sherry. It was far more pleasant company and Sean grinned in the face of Logan's delighted surprise. "Yeah man!" He bumped fists--couldn't let a bro hang, after all. "I have my ways," Sean continued in a mock-lofty tone of voice, sipping on his beer--which probably ruined that whole image.
"He's gonna meet up with us at my place for the... ahem." He twinkled. "Pre-drink."
"So we're really doing the ladies' pre-drink thing then?" He grinned at the thought of the group of them, sitting around with beers in hand while they prepped to go out to a club. Good thing it was a bunch of dudes or they'd just drink, get wasted, and have a good time at home. The thought of that sent a weird little... itch down Logan's spine. Ever since that weird conversation with Sean, he felt a tiny bit judged and self conscious about his confession. So what if he was competitive? Now he felt like all the dudes knew and they were uncomfortable around him.
He wasn't even gay but honestly, that probably just made it worse. After all, Tori was gay and nobody felt uncomfortable dancing and stripping in front of him. It was probably because he never once dated a fellow stripper. Also didn't hurt that most of them were straight as the poles they sometimes danced on.
"Is he bringing along that weird boyfriend of his?"
Sean laughed out loud and reached over to playfully punch Logan on the arm. "Never! It's a manly get-together, sorta like a barbecue, just without the grilling!" Or however Logan put it last time that had him in stitches. Honestly, beers were pretty tame for them at this point. Sean didn't think he could even get drunk off them anymore, not without downing a whole 12-pack or something. It was just a way to kick back and relax with the guys, to have something to sip on while they talked about random shit.
"Nah. They broke up apparently."
Which totally wasn't even a bad thing because that guy was weird. He almost seemed emotionless out in public and any friendly attempts made by Sean went completely ignored. Yet, according to Tori, he 'wasn't as bad as he seemed,' which could be said of anybody, really. Tori might have had a knack for seeing the good in people but fuck if Sean was gonna sit there and be judged by some lawyer-wannabe.
Okay, he was kinda bitter about some guy hurting Tori. Even if the split was amicable, knowing Tori...
Clearing his throat--and his thoughts--he tilted the bottle toward his lips.
"I told him he should try to pick somebody up at the club." Which Sean and presumably Logan would also be doing, unless Logan was too busy competitively checking out other guys' asses.
"Okay then, call it that! Pre-drink is just so..."
He shuddered. So girly, even for a guy who was drinking a "girly" neon blue drink. Like, there was nothing wrong with being girly and all but he wasn't and he didn't really think Sean was either. They were like two of the manliest dudes he knew!
Logan downed the rest of his drink. Broke up, huh? Sean had always been closer to Tori than Logan was but he was still surprised he hadn't been informed of this development. When? How? Was that why he was inviting Tori out with them? Maybe it was recent. Tori sort of fell off Logan's radar when he left the strip club because they didn't stay in touch. They didn't really call or text each other and Tori seemed to have immersed himself in his new work. Logan had no reason to go to the pharmacy either, although he did see Tori in passing once or twice through the window.
So he was no longer with that robot guy, huh? Tori was too good for that guy anyway. Like Sean, Logan always had a hard time getting that guy to open up and have a good time. It always seemed like he was merely tolerating their presence and his silence made it look like he was sitting there, judging the shit out of them while the rest of them had a good time.
Good riddance. At least they could all loosen up and have a good time without Judgey McJudgerstein sitting there like a lump the whole time. Logan let out a snort.
"Good luck getting him to just hook up with somebody." He gave Sean a sidelong look. "He's Mr. Boyfriend Material. Hard to see him just having one night stands and shit."
"Man, you got no faith in me," Sean sighed, slumping forward like he was genuinely upset by Logan's skepticism. It was true, though. Tori was the "in for the long haul" type. Then again, if he and that emotionless robot broke up, chances were good that he was open to a one-night stand just to... get some of the misery out. Nothing like a good fuck to get over somebody! Or something like that. Sean wouldn't know; he couldn't remember being devastated over a break-up. It helped that he wasn't that "in for the long haul" type though.
"He said he'd give it a shot though! And if anybody can get him to loosen up, it's gonna be me!" He tapped his chest proudly with a fist. Yeah, Sean was a great wing-man! Although... he generally went out with Logan and it was easier to wing-man for him with the chicks, but hey, how hard could it be to... wrangle in a couple of guys for Tori? The guy was handsome! He moved like liquid sex on stage and on the dance floor. Hell, Sean probably didn't even have to do anything; guys would be flocking to Tori all night.
Pausing to motion for another beer, he let a thoughtful silence fall. "Even if he doesn't..." He eyed the girly blue drink that Logan was holding. "We'll just get him super drunk and he'll end up having a good time anyway!"
"Good point. You always help me get laid by the end of the night." Logan grinned, smacking Sean on the arm for emphasis. Well, it was true. They played wingman for one another all the time. Logan was pretty sure the two of them had this whole getting a woman for the night business under lock by now. His gaze dropped to the remains of his drink as Sean eyed it. Ignoring the way he looked at it, Logan pointedly ordered a second one. He wasn't looking to get drunk tonight--just wanted a couple of night caps, that was all.
"Isn't he like a super light weight, though? Pump him up with a couple of those pre-drinks and he'll probably already be good to go!"
"I thought you didn't need help, you're so smooth and handsome and tall, you big chick magnet, you," Sean said facetiously, with a wide amused grin. Half the time, they were boasting about their ability to pull chicks but Sean liked to think that there was a good system going. If he saw a couple of hot girls, he tried to maneuver them over to Logan and vice versa. They were thoughtful like that--not womanizing, like that one woman said when he didn't want to take her home at the end of the night.
"I'll definitely get Tori laid, you wait and see."
He did, though, raise his brows at a second order of the girly drink. While sipping on his second beer, Sean shook his head. "You're embarrassing me, man." Sean put up a hand to cover the side of his face, like he was trying to obscure it from the other people at the bar. Not that he really cared, though; his skin was so thick, not even ridicule and scorn could puncture it. ...most of the time, anyway.
"You don't need it, either," Logan said with a sweeping gaze over his bro-friend. Seriously, Sean didn't need the help. Any guy as good-looking as he was had his pick of women. They were just better at charming girls when they were together, cracking jokes to show their senses of humor and goading one another into dancing. Oh, that one drove a lot of the women absolutely wild. Technically, they shouldn't do it for free but it wasn't like a full blown routine. Just a little... strategic lower body thrusting and some bedroom eyes.
Got them every time.
Or most of the time.
"He probably needs it. You think him and that robot dude ever actually did anything together?" It was hard to imagine. Sure, he could see an impassioned Tori--he was basically sex on legs when he danced anyway. But the other guy... he was like stone. Maybe he wasn't, though. Behind closed doors, maybe even he succumbed to Tori's good looks. Who knew?
Logan looked over at Sean's hand and he pushed it against Sean's face.
"Oh shut up or next one I order is for you."
Sean was delicately flattered but tried not to show it. It did matter to him, what Logan thought of him. They were best friends, after all, so Logan's opinion held more weight in serious matters like Sean's ability to attract women in his 'advanced age.' Hey, these were his glory days but he was rapidly headed towards Over-The-Hillsville. In a few years he'd hit the big 3-0 and that was a pretty frightening thought!
He made a disgusted face and swatted Logan on the shoulder. "I think I don't wanna talk about Tori gettin' it on with a robot!" Sean protested heatedly, shaking his head like a dog as though he thought it could also shake away the disturbing mental images. Don't get him wrong, Tori was a looker all right. It was just... No. Nope. Sean didn't even want to head down that path.
His palm slapped against his own cheek and Sean let out a squawk of surprise at the smack. "You're buying me drinks?? I'm so flattered~" He fluttered his lashes over at Logan in a gross parody of what women did. The come-hither look in his eyes as he attempted to be coy probably made him look stupid but he went with it anyway, leaning closer the way he saw chicks do and squeezing his arms together as though he was trying to show off his chest.
Hey, it worked for them--not so much for Sean. No breasts, for one thing.
"Oh Logan~ You're so generous~"
"Yeahhhhh..." Now that Sean put it that way, Logan didn't either. He shouldn't have blurted that out; it was weird and Sean had already been eyeballing him all weird since their last discussion via text. Logan hated it when people looked at him like that; he was just a normal dude, all right?!
"No." His voice was flat as Sean fluttered his eyelashes at him like some girl from one of those old westerns. Even worse was the way he squeezed his chest together. Logan screwed up his brows and looked down at the not-boobs. Definitely not boobs and they were a poor parody of them! (He still half wanted to reach out and give one a honk for the hell of it but damn it, he would not!)
"You look ridiculous. I'll only buy Sean a drink, not Seana!"
"Oh you're breaking my heart, Looogan~" Sean upped his voice to a crackly falsetto, leaning against Logan heavily with an exaggerated pout and sad face. God, how did chicks do this? He was almost cracking up here! His lips twitched visibly for a moment as he struggled to keep himself from bursting out laughing. "I'm just dying of thirst~ Buy Seana a drink before she withers up and floats away~"
Okay, okay, he was pushing it a little bit here. Sean was so close that the tip of his nose was almost touching Logan's and finally the smile broke through. Then he couldn't stop the mirth from exploding out of him and ended up falling against Logan, muffling raucous laughter into his shoulder.
The bartender muttered something about "crazy bastards" and stalked off to serve another customer while Sean straightened, wiping a tear from his eye. "Guess I'm not your type!" He declared in his normal voice as he gave Logan a hearty slap on the back. "And I saw where your eyes were headed, bro. My eyes are up here," he gestured to his own eyes, "not down there, perv!"
Uh-huh. Logan rolled his eyes. He bet he was breaking poor Sean's little heart. Sean, who was pretty much never serious whenever Logan saw him. (He was pretty sure the same could be said for himself, though.) The roll of the eyes turned into a slight narrowing of the eyes instead as Logan leaned on him with a lot of his body weight. Since they were both tall lugs, it wasn't the same as when a woman did it at all.
"I," he said slowly, because Sean had leaned in so close that he could feel his breath on his lips, "don't think so, lady."
That was too weird. That whole moment. When Sean leaned in and their noses nearly touched. It was like that moment in a silly little romantic comedy where the hero and the heroine fell into one another or leaned in too close for the first time. It was that moment in the film when they realized they saw each other in a new and different light. Logan thought that shit was stupid but right now, he was really feeling it. It was like electricity ran along his skin and every place where they were oh-so-close to touching. Magnetic.
But it was just a few seconds, despite how it felt like a lifetime.
Sean smiled like nothing happened, which only made Logan's head spin. Or maybe that was two neon blue drinks settling in his liver. While Sean cracked himself up so hard that he cried, Logan mustered a confused half smile and a softer, bemused laugh. Oh man, he could go for a third drink at this point.
"You don't even have boobs," he retorted--although it was also meant to guide himself back on track.
"You're calling me flat-chested?!" Sean raised a hand over his chest in a mock-offended display. It was true... he didn't have boobs. The most he could ever have would probably be moobs, and that would happen never because Sean couldn't see himself ballooning up to a size and weight where he developed breasts like a chick. He liked working out--he enjoyed the attention and the perks that being an attractive, physically fit man earned.
Why mess with a good thing?
Unaware of the Moment that Logan had--which Sean didn't have, being too preoccupied with his fake-girl act--he reached for the glass and took a quick sip from what little remained at the bottom. Just to see how it tasted. It tasted like a girly drink all right but there was technically nothing wrong with that. Girls had to drink too!
"It's really sweet isn't it?" he commented a little more seriously, nudging the glass back towards Logan. There was a weird Look on Logan's face, though, a sorta half-dazed expression that Sean didn't exactly understand. He knew Logan pretty well by now to know when something was up--and something was up. Sean nudged Logan gently with an elbow, in the side. "You free after work today? Wanna grab a bite with me? Promise I won't go girly on you if you promise to order something manly."
"Uh yeah."
He said it like it was obvious. He even rolled his eyes slightly again before tapping his hand on the bar to call the bartender over. Then he glanced over as Sean took his glass instead.
"Yep. But I like it sweet."
And he wasn't ashamed to admit it! Who said a man couldn't enjoy sweet things? There were a lot of different things to enjoy and when it came to alcohol, yeah. He preferred the sweet shit. So what? The hard stuff made him sick. Just trying to get it down was a feat unto itself. Even working in a place like this, where the alcohol ran freely all night and he had time to grab one before or after a show, Logan had never been much for the whole whiskey or rum kind of thing.
"What the hell is something manly?" he asked warily. "In your eyes? A slab of steak?"
Sean just smiled and didn't comment. So Logan liked sweet things, huh? That sorta ran into his taste in women too, come to think of it. Of course she had to have a pretty face and a slammin' body but some of the ladies that Logan brought home were also pretty sweet. Sean, on the other hand, liked them feisty. He supposed he was a masochist in some ways--he liked the challenge. Even when he was shot down by a haughty woman, he was still having fun... er... in his own way.
Tapping on the side of his beer bottle absently, he gave it some thought. "Anything still moving," Sean replied cheekily, with another shit-eating grin. Ultra ultra rare steak? Manly! Chasing a piece of meat across the table with a knife and fork? Manly! Also hilarious--he laughed and didn't even care that nobody else was in on the joke.
"If you get like a salad or something, I'm out bro." Not just out of the restaurant, but out of this friendship!
Logan made a slight face. Anything still moving, eh? Now all he could imagine was going straight for the cow, chompers ready to just bite into the poor thing while it was still alive. His slight face became a full on grimace and he smacked Sean hard on the shoulder. Not that Logan was any kind of a vegan or vegetarian or anything but the thought of eating something with a heartbeat was pretty gross.
"What if it's dead but still moving?" he asked, rising to the challenge. "Like those squid dishes?"
He moved his fingers around to mock the movement of the squid. Or was it an octopus? He couldn't remember but they were a pretty famous delicacy... and not exactly common around Hazleton.
"Ow!" Sean rubbed the abused shoulder, looking highly offended. Well sheesh, if Logan couldn't even polish off a live pig, what was their friendship worth anyway?!
He made a show of contemplating the moving dead squid, though inwardly he was already hurling. "You mean those ones they pour soy sauce over and it like..." He reached over, poking, prodding and massaging Logan in the side with all of his fingertips much in the same way that Logan had wiggled his own fingers. "Jiggles around?"
Gross. But not to be outdone, Sean put on his man pants and added, "If you can find any around here, hell yeah! Nothing scares me man!"
"Those very ones," he said, all cocky like he wasn't squirming on the inside at the thought of trying to swallow something wriggling. Yech! But he was adventurous enough to try it anyway. There were a lot of stupid things he ended up goaded into because he didn't want to back down in front of friends--especially Sean. And if Sean thought he was cooler because he ate a wriggling squid, he was totally gonna do it!
"Not around here," he said, shaking his head slowly, as if in defeat. But then he grinned widely and grasped Sean's shoulder. "Bet you anything Portland's got 'em though!"
"Yeah dude! We should go find some!"
In no way, shape or form was Sean looking forward to eating one himself, but he'd pay good money to see Logan swallowing one of those still-moving squids or octopuses or whatever the hell people slapped on a plate and called food. He flashed a devilish grin at Logan as an even better idea occurred to him.
"OR," he said, taking a hold of Logan's arm and leaning in a little closer, "we make Tim eat one. And film it." It had to be more hilarious than either of them doing it! Plus it effectively got rid of that whole... Sean eating a disgusting piece of almost-live seafood bit. Two birds, one stone, really.
"Yeah!" he said, as if he happened to be enthusiastically on board (with his own idea). However, relief washed over him when Sean gave him the perfect out in the form of their favorite kid to tease: Tim. Immediately, Logan sat up straighter and grinned for real, no longer falsely covering up for his own real disgust. Watching Tim eat something like that would be priceless. Filming it was even more... er, priceless!
"Duuuude!" He leaned close, too, completely ignoring that he had a weird Moment with Sean earlier. "We've gotta do it."
"That's what I'm saying man!" Sean slapped Logan on the back. "Next weekend. We're packing up and going to Portland! Don't tell Tim, we'll just... kidnap him at his parents' cafe." The grin Sean shot Logan was purely mischievous. Okay, okay, Tori might've had a point about being nicer to the kid but it wasn't like they were going to dangle him by his ankles off a bridge.
If anything they were treating Tim to a delicacy! He should've been honored!
"Ah crap. Almost time to get back up there." Sean checked his watch; five minutes to his next shift. But it was the last number, and then he would be free! Slipping off the bar stool, he patted Logan on the shoulder. "Hey wait for me all right? You wanna get some takeout? Chinese?" Their food options in this podunk little town were, sadly, limited and Sean wasn't the type of person to get in the kitchen to cook for himself. He didn't have the patience (or the skills).
Yesss, they had plans for the weekend! Or next weekend, whatever. Didn't matter. Plans. Logan grinned, too. It was almost impossible not to when they were planning nefarious deeds against poor Tim. It was just too easy, though. Logan almost rubbed his hands together like an evil villain but that would've been giving away too much, especially if Tim was around. Then he'd know something was amiss.
"Yeah, yeah, I'll wait," he said. And he wouldn't drink anything else because if he did, they were going to end up having a night Logan didn't want to remember. He was a stupid, foolish drunk. The kind that yelled insults at birds and tried to do parkour and shit. Yeah, he was in no mood to deal with the aftermath of that, conked heads and bruises galore. He was sure Sean didn't want to deal with it, either. Just food.
"Chinese sounds good." There were only a few good places to eat in town and he had to admit that the Chinese food was hella better than the shit they served at Happy Burger. "Now hurry up and get back to work, you!" He slapped Sean on the upper back in lieu of his ass. After all that weird homo talk, he didn't want to go there right now.
"All right, all right, slave driver!" Sean protested, pretending to stumble away at the slap on the back. Good thing it wasn't a swat on the ass--he wasn't equipped to deal with a move like that after their disturbing conversation over the phone.
Afterwards, he just felt... weird. Not grossed out or anything, though, which he supposed meant that he was more open-minded than people gave him credit for, but... Definitely weird. For as long as Sean had known him, Logan was, well, Logan. He was the big man--not only in height--about town, the one all the ladies swooned over. And Logan was all for the ladies, too. Maybe Sean was looking too hard into that comment about checking out other guys' asses but it did come as quite a shock!
He walked back to the changing rooms--just a big open area in the back where they parked their crap--and got dressed. Nothing fancy, just some hokey costume that was easy to rip off on-stage. Sean inspected himself in the mirror and grinned at his reflection--also at John, who passed by and playfully wolf-whistled at him. Stuff like this happened all the time with the other guys--they were guys and their senses of humor ran more crude than refined. It didn't bother Sean much when somebody else did stuff like this. Maybe because he wasn't best friends with any of them, though.
At the entrance to the stage, he peeked briefly out from behind the curtain. A good smattering of ladies were already lined up, some who usually came just for his shows. They all had 'fans,' though, so it wasn't anything special. Besides, Sean's side-job was doing well enough that he didn't mind having a small audience. Grinning to pump himself up, he burst out from behind the curtain as his musical cue played. A voice on loudspeaker introduced him--Officer Sean.
Yeah. The cop costume was one of the ladies' favorites. Sean strutted forward, with his cockiest smile, as the lights swung onto him and then it was Show Time. Approaching the front of the stage, he did a tour of it, making eye-contact with every single woman. Some giggled; others hooted and a few made eyes right back at him. Most of them looked pretty drunk already but he could see Cindy bearing down with more drinks on a huge tray. Sean grinned at her briefly and then went into his routine.
It involved a lot of hip-thrusting and body rolls, highlighting the length and tone of his body. Sean was only too happy to show off. Nobody wanted to see some fat-ass with a beer belly up there after all! Funnily enough people seemed more accepting of a curvy female stripper but for the men? It had to be a perfect figure or nothing! That double-standard seemed distinctly unfair but since it didn't really harm his income, Sean wasn't vocal about it. Hey, his body was amazing and it got him paid. Why complain?
Nothing else gave him quite as much of an ego boost or as much of a rush as dancing on stage. He wasn't clumsy, he wasn't all left feet; couldn't be a klutz and a stripper, those two didn't mix. Maybe he wasn't sex on legs like Tori could be but Sean was no slouch, either. He dropped, rocked his hips against the stage, and reveled in the attention and the screams... and the bills being flung left and right at him. Once most of the costume came off, he had more freedom of movement and invited the ladies to get right up and personal--to tuck their money under the elastic of his underwear. Never once did that cocky, self-assured grin leave his lips. Sean was attractive and he knew it--and he knew that the ladies knew it, too. \
The routine didn't last more than twenty minutes but by the end, he was breathing a little harder. Sweat beaded on his skin, making his hair damp, creating a sheen of moisture along his neck and chest. As the music faded, Sean took a bow to the appreciative hoots and screams from the ladies, did another little round to gather up their remaining tips and slid gracefully behind the curtain again, to hastily change. He was freaking hungry after that workout and Logan had better be there at the bar, ready to leave!
At the bar, Logan ordered himself a water. Better to sober up now--at least a little bit--before he went out with Sean and inevitably drank too much cheap beer. He smiled to himself as he pulled the chilled glass close and up to his lips. Where would he be if it weren't for Sean? He was the one good friend he made while he worked here. Sure, there were some others, like Tori or Tim, but Sean was the best friend he'd made. The one he could talk about most anything with.
Except that weird niggling... weirdness.
He could tell it had weirded Sean out and he felt like he'd said way too much when he admitted that he judged--er... looked at other dude's asses. When he said it, it had been an innocent enough statement. Didn't all guys do that? Weren't they all competitive? Apparently not, judging by the way Sean reacted. It hadn't been brought up since but it still weighed on Logan's mind. There was no way he was bringing it up again, though. He didn't want to end up losing a friend over this shit.
As the women drew closer to the stage area, anticipating the next act, Logan watched the women. He looked at their asses, too. There were a lot of nice ones. Lots of girls in short skirts and short shorts. Long legs, long hair. They were pretty. Maybe he should hit on one. Get one to go home with him tonight. But you promised Sean you'd be here. Glumly, he finished off his glass of water and nudged it aside as he rested his arms on the bar.
Sean came out in a burst of energy and the mood of the club immediately changed. Everybody was sexually charged, excited, screaming and waving their arms and trying to get closer to Sean. Half of those women had to want to be up there with him, with his body against theirs. Okay, more than half. They were going wild for him. Feeling an unsettling sensation in his lower groin area, Logan situated himself differently on his stool and called the bartender over for another glass of water. He downed it pretty quickly.
Afterward, he looked around, knowing exactly where the bathrooms were. He could just make a quick getaway. He drank a lot; he had to go anyway. But he had a feeling that his excursion to the bathroom wouldn't end that way. So he turned his gaze away from the stage. What was with him lately, anyway? It wasn't like he'd never seen Sean dance before. Pft.
Still, before the show was over, Logan got up and left, heading outside for some fresh air. Sure, he wasn't at the bar but once Sean didn't find him, he'd come out. The cool air would do him some good. He leaned against the wall where the smokers usually took their breaks. Nope. Things weren't getting awkward at all.
Well, that lying jackass! He wasn't at the bar!
Sean leaned against the counter moodily, tapping his fingers against the bartop. He tried to get the bartender over but he was serving some drinks to a large group of women, and in the meantime Sean waited around. Maybe Logan was in the bathroom. Or maybe he found a chick and took her home with him, although Sean would have liked to think that a Logan promise meant something.
He swept aside the easy feeling of irritation, unsure as to why he minded Logan leaving so much. Honestly it wasn't a big deal if Logan left with some girl. Sean would've done the same, probably, if she was hot enough. Besides, they did it at the club, too, leaving with their respective partners when the time was right to slip away from the main party. It was sorta unspoken, an unwritten rule--a bro had the right to vanish for the night with a hot chick without reporting to his fellow bros.
Just... hm. Nope. He didn't want to be That Guy so he tried not to frown, as the bartender finally meandered over. One simple question to him revealed that Logan was seen heading out and Sean raised his brows. "What?" he asked incredulously. "With a chick?"
"Nah alone."
Sean turned on his heel and made for the door, just about to get on the phone to yell at Logan when he spotted him outside, leaning up against the wall. Sean threw him a Look. He was inexplicably relieved, even pleased. Why? Eh. Who knew? Who cared?
"I thought you were gonna wait for me at the bar!"
This was all so weird. It was stepping into foreign territory. What he wouldn't give to just find the nearest pretty girl and take her home. Except that he'd made a bro promise to his bro and while he was pretty sure Sean would have made allowances for him if he managed to pull a hot girl... Logan sort of wanted the bro time. Just not weird bro time. Just not... that weird stuff back in the club.
Why was this even happening now, of all the time for it happen? It wasn't like they were new to this scenery or to one another's moves. So why now? Why now was it making him into some flustered middle school kid? Shit. Running a hand through his hair, he jolted at the sudden sound of Sean's voice. Turning his head, he saw that Sean had come out and looked like he was about to do... something. Probably give him a headlock or something.
"I was!" he said, almost defensively. "But then I..."
A list of ideas flitted through his head, none of them sounding particularly like Logan. Too hot in there? It was hotter on stage. Too loud? He practically lived in this type of environment even before picking up the job. Too many people? Yeah right. Everybody who knew Logan knew he loved people, the attention, the feel of them around him.
"I started to feel a little dizzy. Probably had one drink too many."
...Even that one sounded lame falling from his mouth. God damnit.
"One drink too many," Sean repeated incredulously, raising his brows. Uhhh... yeah... That wasn't a good explanation at all. If two girly blue drinks made Logan Go dizzy, Sean was a virgin. And he was definitely not one, therefore, Logan was a big fat liar.
Approaching him, Sean reached out and casually punched Logan on the side of the arm. "I think those drinks turned you into a chick," he added with a quick grin, trying not to read too much into the falsehood or the fact that Logan had something to hide. Whatever it was... Sean probably didn't want to know.
He and Logan weren't the secretive types; usually not even a lot of thinking was involved between them. If Logan felt the need to cover up, then fine, let him. Sean was hungry, tired, in need of a beer and slightly disturbed by his earlier relief at finding Logan outside. He needed food, not secrets.
"C'mon, girly man, let's go. I'm starving!"
God, he wished he'd come up with something better! Now it was too late; he'd already made up a shitty excuse and he could tell that Sean could see right through it. Sighing, he ran his hand through his hair again. There were better excuses. Even I just needed some air would have been a better one. Sure, it wasn't everyday that he needed to get away from people but it was vague enough to... probably prompt more questions from Sean. He let out a long breath and shot Sean a look.
"Hey, for all you know, somebody could've slipped something into it!" he declared, which wasn't funny and he hoped to hell it was nothing like that. Now that he thought about it, though... What if somebody did? Logan heard about those people who drank something funny and then ended up doing some crazy weird shit for the person they'd suddenly fallen in love with. Oh god, what if he drank what was the equivalent of a love potion? It would explain so much!
Except...
It wouldn't. Unless he drank it a while ago.
As in, not tonight.
Shrugging off the thought and the horror of the other thought, he headed out to the car, yawning as he did.
"Maybe I'm just hungry or coming down with something. You don't know."
Sean snorted through his nose. "Yeah, cause they need to slip you a roofie to get you naked, right?" Not like Logan wasn't stripping anyway! Not like he took off clothes for a living or anything!
Sighing at the new level of weirdness that was beginning to settle over them, Sean grabbed Logan in an affectionate headlock and maneuvered them both towards his car. "Okay whatever! Let's just get some Chinese takeout and a twelve-pack and... not talk about why you're being all weird tonight." He shot a clearly meaningful look at Logan before releasing him, so that he could unlock the Mustang and get into the driver's seat.
"I think Wing's is the only place open right now," Sean mused as he glanced at the time. Oh yeah--it was close to one in the morning. Most places that were open were either sketchy or not Chinese and Sean had a bad craving for orange chicken at the moment. He pulled smoothly out of the parking lot, remembering only half-way out onto the street that he hadn't put on his seatbelt yet.
"Shuuut up!" he said with a mock scowl. Although he saw the headlock coming miles away, he still didn't quite make it away from Sean before it came. This was what happened when he made friends with people as tall as he was! They could give as good as they got. None of that happened with the shorties! Logan jerked his head aside and lifted his hands to Sean's arms... like two seconds before Sean went ahead and let him go. Logan shook his head and ran a hand through his hair to fix it, shooting a look in Sean's direction.
He couldn't exactly argue with Sean's accusation. He was being weird tonight, although he was sure it was some temporary spazz thing. Nothing to fret over or anything like that.
"I can agree to that," he said, glad to just drop the subject. He even raised a bro fist to show that they were still cool after he slid into the vehicle along with Sean. See? Nothing too out of the ordinary. Everything was normal again. Logan followed Sean's gaze to the time and half grinned. Yeah, Wing's was the only place worth eating at this hour. The other choices were poor and would end up with them hugging toilets in a few hours. Logan sat back and strapped himself in before noticing that Sean was still decidedly unstrapped in. Logan raised a brow and patted Sean on the chest with the back of his hand.
"Living on the wild side now or what?"
"Dude, I'm a total wild man! Some days I mix two different kinds of protein powder in my protein shakes!"
And that was just too wild.
Sean laughed as he swatted Logan back on the chest, and then used the same hand to pull on the seatbelt. It didn't really go on right and he had to adjust it at the next red light but it was no big deal. No cops around the corner singling him out, he was golden. He did also turn to Logan and batted his big old lashes at him. "But thanks for worrying about me~"
Luckily Wing's wasn't far. Nothing was 'far' in a tiny place like Hazleton, for which Sean was thankful because he might have died of hunger otherwise. "I'm getting the orange chicken," he said as they pulled up a few blocks later. "And... spring rolls or no spring rolls?"
Two different kinds of protein at once! Logan only laughed at the thought of that being wild. Truthfully, he had done it before, but normally when he was running out of one and needed more but had no time to rush to the store. So yeah, right. If that was wild, they were the wild twins right here. Logan slightly rolled his eyes but he was grinning at the same time.
"Oh shut up."
He wasn't worried. He just didn't want Sean getting pulled over. Or sent off to jail. Not that they would. For a seatbelt violation, they'd probably just fine him but then there would be the whole court date BS if he decided to fight it and... Ugh, it was just annoying to deal with. Not... not that Logan knew from personal experience. (He did.)
"Definitely spring rolls, bro!" Logan said, as if it was a given. All the food, all the time. That was practically his motto. "And you better just make it a double on that orange chicken because now you got me craving it. Don't forget dumplings, too!"
"Hell yeah!" Sean Approved--with a capital A--of spring rolls. The more food, the better! There was no such thing as 'too much food' for Sean anyway.
As he slid his car up to park curbside in front of Wing's, he nodded more approval at the suggestion of dumplings. "I would NEVER forget dumplings, man," he said as though disappointed in Logan--in the fact that Logan thought he'd leave out the best side-dish at Wing's. "Okay I'll be back soon. Anybody tries to drive off with my car, you know what to do."
With a grin, he slid out of the driver's seat and dog-trotted into the restaurant. The storefront was a little dingy and the interior was probably worse, but the food was the real deal. Sean gave his order to the pretty waitress and hung out while they prepared his order. It took a surprisingly short amount of time, and then he was heading out with a bag bulging with takeout boxes, extra fortune cookies and a slip of paper with the waitress' number on it, which he flapped in Logan's face as he got back into the car.
"Yeah, yeah."
Bite them. Chase them down. Whatever it took. Logan smirked to himself at the thought of doing it. He could only imagine the surprise on the face of some hapless passerby. Or idiot that tried to steal Sean's car. They were kinda in the worse part of town. Not that Hazleton really had good parts these days. Logan wondered sometimes why he was still here, what he was trying to accomplish. Then he remembered Sean.
Tapping on the window in time to the music on the car radio, he stared out the window, watching for his friend. It didn't take as long as he was expecting and he jolted back to reality when he saw a familiar form leaving the dingy restaurant. He's got long legs. Duh. He was tall. I have long legs, too, he thought, almost defensively as he sat up straighter and then stared as a paper was wagged in his face.
"What now?" Logan reached for the slip of paper, which was conspicuously written in girly handwriting with a phone number on it and the name Hannah on it. Logan snorted and flicked it back in Sean's direction. "Can you go anywhere without grabbing a number?"
"...hmm..." Sean actually gave that serious thought. Then he grinned irreverently and pocketed the slip of paper. "Nope. I'm a total chick magnet."
Which was true of both himself and Logan, so the title wasn't all that impressive. It was amazing what a big smile and a little confidence could do for a guy. Well, that and height... and muscles... and not looking like a complete troll. Okay, so a lot more than a smile and confidence was needed but they helped!
He settled the bag of food in the rear of the car and then turned the key in the ignition, remembering this time to pull on his seatbelt--with a pointed look at Logan--before swerving out of the spot. Good thing about it being so late was that there were hardly any cars on the road. "Let's go to your place," he suggested as they zipped off down the street. "Mine's... messy."
More like a war zone, since he'd just moved in and was 'unpacking' by taking everything out of boxes and assuming that they'd find their right place... eventually.
"You're not the only one, okay?"
No way was he letting Sean think he was the only one around here who could nab a pretty girl's digits! Logan could get plenty of girls, with or without a wingman. In fact, he'd pulled a really pretty girl the other day. Had fun with her a couple of times, as a matter of fact. Nothing serious seemed to come of it, which suited Logan just fine. The idea of being in a serious relationship while also stripping just sounded like a train wreck waiting to happen.
Logan raised a brow at Sean's Very Obvious Stare as he buckled up. What? So he was about that safety shit. Sue him. As if he'd been buckled back home driving around the wilds, though. Not something he was going to share, though. Then he'd look like a downright hypocrite. (Because he sort of was? But also because he had experience in crashes, okay!)
"Fine, fine. But mine's not a lot better, I bet." At least it wasn't a sea of boxes, though.
Sean smirked and withheld comment, mostly because he knew it was true. He wasn't the only chick magnet around town. That was fine, though. Not like they were actually in competition with one another. Their friendship was stronger than some chick at a club. From practically the first second that they met, they were friends. Sean couldn't remember a time when Logan wasn't by his side, pulling stupid stunts alongside him or helping him pick up a chick. They were... bros. Almost brothers, really, just from different mothers.
"Gotta be better than mine, I'm swimming through boxes just to get to the bedroom man," he sighed, veering left to the liquor store to pick up some beer. That done, it was a short ride to Logan's apartment, bag of takeout in one hand and the 12-pack of beer in the other. Sean leaned up against the wall to wait for Logan to open the door and then stepped inside to familiar surroundings. He'd been here more times than he could count and immediately plonked the food and beer down onto the dining table, after shifting aside some fliers and papers.
"I. Am. Starving!" Sean ripped open the bag--without bothering to untie the knot made by the handles--and grabbed a spring roll from one of the boxes. He crammed it into his mouth as he reached for a beer. Plates? Utensils? What the hell were those? Sean was a manly man. He ate with his bare hands!
"Meeeeee, too!" Logan drew the word out as he dragged a chair out and dropped into it. Sean was already tearing into the food like a wild animal and Logan grinned as he pulled a can of beer closer to himself and cracked it open. Even if his excuse was that he had a little too much to drink earlier, he knew it wasn't really the case. Two "girly" drinks weren't enough to make a guy his height tipsy. A couple of beers wouldn't be able to do him in, either.
The beer was considerably less flavorful than the drink back at the strip club but it was better than the super cheap shit he had been drinking and sneaking as a teenager. Logan always thought it was funny that everybody hated beer at first and then it became a thing once they hit their twenties. Like every social gathering ever had to have beer or it was a dud.
Unlike Sean, Logan actually used utensils to bring his food to his mouth. Maybe he wasn't as starving as Sean after all.
"So, you gonna call her?"
"What?"
Preoccupied with food and beer, Sean looked up with a dumpling half-way to his mouth. He raised his brows quizzically, then as realization dawned on him, his expression grew thoughtful.
Should he? She was pretty cute, although she had a babyface and Sean was more into the mature (and sexy) type of lady. Still, it wasn't like he was adverse to cute girls. With his free hand, he pulled out her number and looked at the slip of paper. "Maybe?" He pocketed it. "But not right now!" Sheesh, he was eating here! Eating with his best friend! It wasn't the time to be calling up chicks for a hookup.
Chopsticks finally came into play once he reached the orange chicken, and by then he wasn't so ravenous that he needed to eat with his hands. Sean cracked open his... nth beer--he lost count after a while--and nibbled on the flavorful chicken bites. Under the table, he nudged Logan gently with his foot. "You okay now?" That weirdness earlier was unusual and despite his breezy declaration that they'd ignore it, Sean was worried. It wasn't like Logan to be so... off.
Logan laughed.
"I didn't mean right now, you doof!"
Like he was going to tell his starving friend who was wolfing down dinner to call some girl right now. He was just curious. Logan hadn't gotten a look at her so he didn't know if she was even Sean's type. What was her name again? Heather? Hannah? Something like that. Somehow, Logan pictured her being very stereotypical because of it, which was hardly fair. The name Logan sounded like it was made for the big bully at school, built like a lumberjack. (Until it became associated with Wolverine... but it was still a brutish sounding name because of it!)
But people associated names differently. Like Sean would always be this Sean to Logan. He liked to think when Sean thought of Logans, he thought of him first, rather than the shit Logan himself thought of.
He began to eat in earnest as well, having forgotten just how hungry he was. They burned a lot of calories up on that stage. It was warm up there and all those moves took a lot out of a man. He took a swig of his beer and then nudged Sean back with his foot.
"Yeah, I'm fine. I probably just needed something to eat."
"Awww... Does baby get cwanky widdout his widdle dinner?"
That was probably grounds for assault, using baby-talk on Logan. But c'mon. It was just... a Sean thing to do. He did it all the time, to all the guys he knew hated being spoken to like that. Sean even put a fist in front of his mouth and shrugged his shoulders, trying to pull off some kind of cutesy look, before grinning and nudging Logan under the table again, this time not as gently as before. "Weirdo."
At least he was over that weirdness now! Relieved--and willing to buy into the excuse--Sean poked at some more chicken, noting that Logan's appetite seemed to have returned, too. Probably because the tension between them was gone and now the air was clear. Sean's smile softened, just briefly, and he hid it with a spring roll. There was nobody who could ever replace Logan, that was for damn sure. Sean didn't want anybody to try, either.
"Hey, you got anything harder than... this?" Sean wiggled the can of beer in his hand. It wasn't really doing it for him. Sometimes beer was okay but this wasn't even enough to get him buzzed, and he wanted something to help him relax after a tiring night of shedding clothes and humping the stage.
Logan sent a flat look Sean's way, then gave him a harder nudge against the shin. Gross! Baby talk was the biggest turn off in the world--for which he should be eternally grateful. They seemed to be playing some rough form of footsy under the table. Logan shot a brow upward and then shook his head before making a face at the attempt at being cute that Sean tried to pull off.
"Which of us is the baby now?"
At least he wasn't making the baby faces! He continued to eat sporadically, despite having filled up. Now that he was full and in goo company and away from the weirdness, it was like none of it had ever existed. It was a relief to just sit back in his kitchen and have a meal together, just like the good old days. Finishing off the beer he'd been nursing, he let out a manly belch and got off his ass to go check the cupboards. Anything hard wouldn't be in the fridge.
"Pretty sure I got something."
He had grown something of a collection at this point. Between his place of work and his desire to try his hand at mixing drinks at home, he'd invested in a number of different liquors. It probably made him look like a damn alcoholic but at least he had his pick whenever he wanted something more than beer.
"What do you feel like? Mixed drinks or straight from the bottle?"
Sean only laughed hilariously at Logan's Look, completely unrepentant. He'd do it again--and they both knew it. But man, it was good to fool around with Logan. This was what they used to do most nights after work: pick up some food, grab some drinks, laze around, crack jokes. Talk about chicks.
He eased back in his chair and let out a low sigh, patting his stomach. Full... but not so full that he couldn't attempt to eat a fortune cookie. Sean read the little slip of paper that came inside and raised his brows at the generic 'fortune.' Did these things really come true? He half-smiled as he tossed the slip of paper onto the table and glanced up at Logan, who was hovering by the cupboards.
"No mixed drinks dude!" Sean leaned forward, grinning. "Straight from the bottle. We're men!" Men who didn't value their liver particularly, but who needed a liver anyway?
"Straight from the bottle it is," he said. Then he had to choose which one. Eh, to hell with it. He grabbed a couple of different bottles and hugged them to his chest, bringing them over to Sean and dumping them next to the empty food containers.
Oh jeez, the fortune cookies. Logan eyed them and then reluctantly leaned forward to grab one, too. Cracking it open, he ignored the cookie itself in favor of the fortune. They were normally pretty vague, so they could apply to as many people as possible. Stuff about coming into money or whatever they thought people wanted to hear. The worst were the ones that weren't even fortunes--just stupid sayings and axioms and shit. He laughed aloud when he saw his.
"It's ok to talk to strangers?" he scoffed, tossing his onto the table with Sean's. "These things get dumber every time I check them."
"My mom always told me not to talk to strangers," Sean laughed, picking up a second fortune cookie and breaking it open. He nibbled in a fragment of it with raised brows, then turned the slip of paper around so that Logan could see it too.
You will find love in an unexpected place.
Yeah, right. Sean wasn't sure he was looking for love anyway and even if he was, he wouldn't find it in an 'unexpected place.' Shaking his head, he tossed it back onto the table and reached for one of the bottles that Logan had lugged over. "Got a pretty nice collection now huh?" He unscrewed the cap and took a manly gulp. Didn't even cough, though the tequila burned a little on the way down. It was the good kind of burn, though; the warming kind.
While not exactly a collector, Sean was something of a connoisseur. He knew the good stuff from the dirt-cheap stuff, at least, although like any normal guy, he started off on beer and moved on to more potent stuff. He wasn't an alcoholic, though; Sean didn't drink to forget or to escape his life or anything. Life was just a little better through the lens of inebriation some nights. Being sober was over-rated, anyway.
The beer didn't do much for him earlier but the harder alcohol sure did. It wasn't long before Sean was smiling and laughing more freely, making the kinds of ribald jokes that came so naturally to him when he was tipsy. At some point, he got off his chair and went around to the other side and flung an arm around Logan, shoving bottles at him and daring him to drink more. Sean didn't know, it seemed like a good idea at the time, to just keep drinking.
"Bet you can't finish this off!" he taunted, leaning heavily into Logan while wiggling an almost-empty bottle around.
"Mine too."
Any parent worth their salt probably did. Maybe the stupid fortune cookie wanted to get him killed. Or maybe he needed to talk to a stranger like Sean did so he could get her digits. At the sight of Sean's second slip of paper, Logan let out a laugh and picked it up after it had been tossed onto the table. Love in an unexpected place, huh? Logan grinned a lopsided grin and leaned back.
"Maybe it's that girl."
Not that she was from an unexpected place. He dropped the paper back on the table and reached for a bottle of amber liquid. Rum. It was better with a little coke but he choked it down as it was, not wanting to look like a big girl in front of Sean. After the first couple of swigs, it went down a hell of a lot smoother. He didn't even know how much he'd drunk before the jokes were flying and the dares were coming fast and hard. Who was Logan to say no? He grabbed the offered bottle and eyed its contents. A sober Logan would have known it was a stupid and foolish thing to do, to try and down the rest of that bottle. But a drunken one? A drunken one grinned knowingly, making eye contact with Sean before he went for it.
It was almost empty anyhow, but damn, did he feel it after he basically chugged it. He couldn't help coughing afterward, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth as he brandished the now empty bottle before Sean.
"That all you got?" he asked, not even aware of the way his words were now slurring together.
"AHAHAHAHA!"
Sean roared with laughter at the top of his voice, all because Logan coughed.
Because that shit was HILARIOUS. Everything was HILARIOUS in the moment, from the way Logan brandished the bottle to the way his words ran into each other. Sean wasn't much better with his words, though, muttering something about "Challenge accepted!" before reaching for a bottle. A mostly full bottle.
He tried.
Lord, did he ever try to chug that thing down in one go, but ended up spilling a good portion of it onto himself as some of it went down the wrong way. Coughing violently, he slammed the bottle down onto the table and smacked his own chest hard enough to hurt. "Fuck!" Sean hacked and wheezed as his lungs burned. He used Logan as a prop to keep himself from falling on his ass, except he was falling before he realized he was falling... and taking his poor friend with him.
Somehow he ended up on his back, the back of his head a mass of throbbing pain. "Owww..." Sean groaned, then laughed again--still HILARIOUS, drunkenly pulling Logan up against him for a bro hug to celebrate his spectacular failure. Except in his current position it was kinda just him latching onto Logan, but... whatever.
"Sssh-shut up! S'not funny!"
He tried to whack Sean somewhere in the vicinity of his chest but his hand just sort of... glanced off an arm somewhere and landed floppily on the table before he let out a laugh of his own at how ridiculous that must have looked. He leaned forward to watch Sean drink greedily from a new bottle. Noticing the amount of liquor in the bottle, Logan smacked his own knee. Then he tapped Sean's knee too, just for good measure.
"No way can you... you can do it!" Then Sean was coughing and the stink of liquor was everywhere. Logan pointed at Sean and laughed right back at him. "Payback!" he crowed, as if he somehow had something to do with what just happened.
Stupidly, he was grabbed by that very same arm before he could take it back and the next thing he knew, in the blink of an eye, they were a tangle of limbs on the floor of the kitchen. The hard, cold floor. Logan let his head slide off Sean's chest so that his cheek could press against the floor. Felt kinda good actually, against his warm, warm face.
"You are so drunk," he accused.
"So are you," Sean retorted in his sassiest drunk voice, prodding... something. Felt like a liver. Maybe kidney. Hard to tell, with Logan sprawled all over him like that, and his own long limbs tangled with Logan's long limbs. They were like a couple of clumsy drunk jellyfish, laying there on the kitchen floor. Or a couple of really stupid drunk dudes. Or both.
He raised a hand and encountered the back of a head, and soft hair. Hmm. Felt nice. His fingers slid through Logan's hair, toying a little with the strands. Why? Drunk. Sean turned his head. Smelled something nice, so he lowered his head and nuzzled it. Why? Drunk.
Sean was a pretty affectionate drunk, though. Like the kind of affectionate drunk who wrapped his arms around everybody--whether they liked it or not--and called everyone his bro (man or woman). He was also quite the spectacle, and did things he regretted. He did that a lot, and usually there was photographic or videographic evidence that people gleefully played back for him when he had sobered up. As per his sense of humor, Sean laughed everything off. He had that gift of being able to not take himself seriously; life was much better that way.
"Hey. Logan." Sean's silly drunk grin was plastered all over his silly drunk face. "You smell good." Kinda like a chick, but more manly and less... er... chick-y.
"Mmmmnot." But he so was. He was so drunk and he knew it, which resulted in a bubbling laugh that shook his whole body. He closed his eyes and stopped laughing when his hair was played with though. Ah yeah. When girls did that, he was pretty much putty in their hands. He just liked the feel of fingers running through his hair. It sent pleasurable tingles all up and down his body and he made a soft humming sound.
"Yeah..."
He liked that. His eyes remained closed as he asked, "Hmwhat?" in response to his name. He could just lie there on the hard floor atop Sean for all eternity if he kept playing with his hair. And whatever he was doing with his head. Felt pretty nice. His eyes half opened as he lifted his head. Dark eyes stared at Sean and his strange announcement. Then Logan grinned back, silly and sloppy as Sean's.
"What the hell, man?" He laughed, though. Smelled good? That was probably aftershave. Deodorant. Soap. Clean clothes. Hell, he didn't know. Could just be him and his natural man smell, although he didn't think of that as a good one so much as a... well, a natural one. He leaned in to sniff Sean and then wrinkled his nose and laughed again.
"You... you smell like booze, m'friend."
"Haha!" Sean laughed. It wasn't HILARIOUS but it was Pretty Funny, that he smelled like booze. Why? Drunk.
"Oh yeah? Well you." He shut his eyes tight, squeezed his eyelids, and then opened them again. When the hell did Logan get this close? Like they could've been nose-to-nose, if Logan scooted up a little bit, or if Sean scooted down. Or if he sorta lowered his head and Logan angled his up. Sean didn't remember getting this close to him!
He did remember falling down, though. He smiled, a goofy and not altogether lucid smile, at the recollection of him smacking his head onto the kitchen tiles. It was sorta funny. He laughed, a low sound that mostly rumbled in the back of his throat. For some reason his fingers were still moving, still threading their way through Logan's hair. Man, he had soft hair, like he conditioned the hell out of it or something.
"Well you." There was a thought in there, it was just hard to get it out. Sean closed his eyes again and shook his head as if to say, forget it. "You smell good," he mumbled, mostly to himself and under the impression that he was thinking it instead of voicing his thoughts out loud.
"Yeah, me."
He said it like it was a given, despite having no clue what Sean meant when he kept saying you. Whatever it was, he didn't care if it was an accusation or a compliment. He'd take it because he didn't care. Admitting to his faults, whatever. He'd do it. He felt another laugh bubbling up. Everything felt pretty amusing in the moment. Everything was spinning and it was all one hilarious blur.
Felt good, too. The fingers were still in his hair. He let out another soft hum, eyes starting to close again. He breathed in deeply, trying to find out what Sean thought smelled so good. His hands wandered a moment, just because they could. He felt a leg, a thigh. A nice thigh. He felt something between those thighs, too. And hipbones under jeans. And abs. He felt a lot of things.
"You feel good," he said, as if in argument. Were they arguing compliments at one another now? Was that where they'd ended up?
"Oh yeah?" A note of belligerence crept into Sean's tone, although it ended on a low groan as a hand grazed a sensitive area. Unconsciously he bucked into the hand. Sean didn't know what they were getting competitive about but he wanted to win the whatever-argument that they were having, about... whatever.
As if not to be outdone, his fingers flexed in Logan's hair, clenching around a handful of the soft strands. His other hand moved too, down a shoulder, along an arm, tracing the outline of firm muscles. Sean uttered an appreciative sound. Felt pretty good, the warmth under his palm, like Logan said--except he wasn't repeating it because that was... losing?
Aside from smelling good and feeling good, though, there wasn't much else to add to the conversation. Or argument, whatever it was that they were drunkenly doing. Sean frowned, perplexed. Logan smelled and felt good. And he was touching Sean in all the wrong places--wrong because it felt so right. Felt good.
His body was heating up a little and he began to shift in a somewhat suggestive and encouraging manner, the way he might have if a chick was on top, touching him with soft hands. His free hand also went to an obvious place, as muscle memory took over.
Heh. He got Sean to respond to his hand. Why that was some kind of victory was a mystery to his drunkenly hazed mind but he was really feeling it too. The magic of the moment. The way Sean's body felt under his wandering hands. His head turned more toward Sean and he could see the outline of his jaw and his adam's apple. A soft groan escaped his lips as the fingers in his hair took another turn--grasping rather than sifting.
Everything felt heavy but light at the same time. It was strange but it was pleasant. When he tilted his head, he could feel Sean's chin and then his throat. For some inexplicable reason, his tongue darted out, tasting the salt of Sean's skin. Why he expected to taste alcohol, he had no idea. No, he knew. It was because Sean smelled like it. His shirt seemed to be dappled in it but his throat didn't taste like alcohol. Not this side of it, anyway.
It was one thing when his hands wandered. It was another when Sean's did. Not expecting it, he actually let out a gasp and his body seemed to answer the gesture on its own. Whatever victory he'd tasted before was stolen from him when Sean elicited as much of a reaction from him as Logan had from Sean.
"You little..." Little wasn't even the word for it. "...bastard," he said but there was amusement in his tone and possibly something approaching arousal.
"Big bastard," Sean laughed, flexing his groping fingers in response to the warm, slick glide of a tongue at his throat. He knew what to do down there. Did it a million times with chicks as they climbed on top of him, swaying their hips in a sultry manner, taunting him with their warmth and sweetness and softness. Logan wasn't soft though, no sir. He was firm, muscular. Manly.
It should have turned Sean off but it didn't.
The newness was interesting--exciting. He always had been the kind of man who needed new and fresh stimuli to stay interested; part of the reason he never settled down was because he couldn't keep to one woman for too long. Sean didn't think there was anything wrong with that, though. It was how he was, plain and simple. It was probably how they all were, the ones at the club who weren't in relationships. Part of the thrill was seeing new faces, luring them in, teasing the money out of their hands.
As he let his hand loosen from Logan's hair and slide down to join the other, Sean angled his hips up to meet Logan's. He was operating purely on auto-pilot now. His body seemed to understand that there was the possibility of sex happening, and it was all for it. His mind... With enough alcohol, anything was possible. As the gentle friction sent a spike of delicious heat through him, Sean moaned against the side of Logan's head. He nuzzled him again, breathless and pleased, and thrust up to get another dark taste of pleasure.
Everything was different. Different. Weird. Not bad weird, though. If his body had any say in it, everything felt pretty warm. Pleasant. Hot. Everything felt hot. Like his face felt flushed with heat. His lower body. His everything. Even his heart felt hot. Not heartburn. Something else. Maybe it beat too quickly. Was that a thing? Idly, he wondered if that was the real cause of spontaneous human combustion. But he knew it wasn't. It was magic. It was witches. It was... tales that he heard whispered in the corners of the parties he went to. It was in the news, too. Not always outright saying it but...
This place was weird. Maybe it made him weird too. He still felt too light and too heavy. His head felt like it was floating away but his limbs felt so heavy as they dragged over Sean's body. His fingers were light, though. They were careful. They were curious. And there was no way to disguise the sound that came out of him when Sean angled his body against Logan's in a distinctly sexual way. Not unlike the way his body moved when he danced, when he stripped. The sound felt like it came from deep inside, like he'd been holding it in for too long. Maybe since the club. Maybe since the weird feeling stole over him.
It was so something in that drink. That bartender...
total
witch.
His body pressed against Sean's too eagerly and then a hand was slipping between them, fingers clumsily going for buttons. His buttons, Sean's buttons, didn't matter. He just needed to free all that trapped heat... and he needed to feel it from Sean, too--in order to know he wasn't alone in this.
"Ey... ey!" There was a hand doing things to his buttons that confused Sean. It was all good when he was grinding up against Logan but the hand pawing at his crotch sorta struck a weird note with him. He didn't even know why; just a minute ago, his body was all for the shenanigans.
Maybe it was just the fact that things were getting serious, that startled some sense into him. A little slowly, he reached down to halt Logan's hand. He was slow because his reaction time was waaaay off but some tiny voice of reason in the back of his head was trying to make itself known. Sean frowned, perplexedly. His body was still all warm, and certain parts of him were aching and throbbing, but... This wasn't normal for them.
Their interactions didn't usually consist of grinding and touching below the belt. Logan certainly never tried to get Sean's pants off and Sean didn't grope Logan's ass like he wanted it. "Hey... Logan..." His voice was thick and slurred, uncertainty punctuating each word. Sean wiggled a little bit, trying to get away. "Logan. Yo."
Now what? His frustrated little brain fell onto pause as he stopped moving his hands. Really, only because somebody was stopping him and when he looked up, it was because Sean was stopping him. They were Sean's hands stopping him, although it had been Sean's body only moments ago pressing up against him. Blinking sluggishly, Logan moved his hands away. It was weird hearing his name in a voice like that. It only made that ache inside of him burn all the more.
"What?" he asked, feeling somewhat put out now that he'd been rejected. Surely that was what this was. Slowly, he rolled off Sean, banging his head against a chair leg in the process. And then banging his head on the chair again as he tried to sit up. Damn, his head would not stop spinning like son of a bitch. It made him feel sick to his stomach and he pulled a leg toward himself as he swallowed hard.
Sweeping a hand over his face and through his hair, he turned away from Sean. "Fuck," he muttered under his breath.
Groggily, Sean sat up too but did so without concussing himself on a chair. He rubbed a hand up and down his face, feeling haggard and confused. What... just happened? Lazily his gaze shifted down to his own crotch, with the zipper of his jeans down and the top button undone. Almost absently, Sean reached down to zip up his pants.
It still sorta didn't fully connect, what he and Logan were about to do. Pants being unbuttoned didn't necessarily correlate with Logan doing the unbuttoning. Sean just stupidly sat there for some long moments, looking at Logan's back, trying to make sense of their evening. There was food. There was beer. Then there was hard liquor and they were just starting to have fun when...
"How'd we end up on the floor?" he asked, totally confused. At some point they ended up on the kitchen floor instead of staying in their chairs. Sean rubbed the back of his neck where a tense crick was beginning to form. Some sort of muffled horror was beginning to dawn on him and he was trying his damned hardest to not let it fully take control.
Because he just remembered hands, all over him. Hands making him feel hot from head to toe. Hands at his pants, trying to reach underneath them.
"...I gotta... go." He struggled to get up.
"Drinking," he said, because that was how it happened. "Laughing," he added, as if to validate it. As if drinking and laughing were good enough reasons for what transpired afterward. It's not like we did anything. But the way Sean was looking, it was like they did and suddenly, all the laughter and alcohol seemed... not so great anymore.
"What?"
The world spun but it was not for a good reason. Why was Sean leaving?
"You know my couch is your couch," he said, but the words were distracted as he suddenly stumbled up to his feet, barely making it to the sink before he was sick into it. Drinking and churning stomach? Did not equal good times. And he knew he had way too much too drink, even just from a glance at the bottles on the table and the handful that had fallen to the ground.
Watching Logan gunning it for the sink and hearing the sounds of him throwing up made Sean want to hurl--and he had a pretty tough stomach. Feeling queasy, he slowly got up and used the table to brace himself. Admittedly, he wanted to drop somewhere and sleep off the booze and the weirdness. But sleeping here? Where the weirdness happened only a few minutes ago?
"Uh." He took a few unsteady steps towards Logan, frowning. "I'll take a cab home." Sobriety had returned in some small measure--enough for him to realize that he needed to not be here. Here as in alone. With Logan. All alone.
"I'll call you tomorrow man," was his exit line, as he took advantage of Logan's disadvantaged state and slid out. The whole world spun with the first step, but he forced himself to keep taking them, slithering out the door before Logan could grab him or... whatever. Cause the last thing Sean wanted, or needed, or desired, was to be all alone with Logan, after what happened--that his brain was trying its best to repress, to spare him the horror of it all.