Chapter 24: Hangover Aftermath
The first sound wasn’t an alarm. It was a choked, wet gag, followed by the unmistakable retching splash of vomit hitting water.
Jake’s eyes flew open. The world was a too-bright, nauseating blur. A headache, vicious and precise, was drilling neatly behind his left eye. His mouth tasted like ashtray and spoiled milk. The memory of taste—gin, salt, perfume—flooded back, and his own stomach lurched.
He was tangled in sheets that weren’t his, in a bed that still held the residual heat of another body. Sasha was gone. The sound was coming from down the hall.
A low, pained groan came from the floor. Lexi was curled on the fluffy rug, wrapped in a throw blanket, her face buried. Her curly blonde hair was a matted halo. “Make it stop,” she mumbled into the wool. “Make the sun go away.”
In the armchair, Ethan was a statue. He was already awake, sitting perfectly still, dressed in last night’s t-shirt and sweatpants. He was staring at the blank, dead television screen as if it were broadcasting the end of the world. He held a full glass of water in his hand, the condensation making wet rings on the knee of his pants. He hadn’t taken a sip.
Jake sat up slowly, the movement sending a fresh wave of queasiness through him. His glasses were on the nightstand. The world snapped into a cruel, clear focus: the empty gin bottle by the door, Lexi’s silver clutch abandoned on the coffee table, one of Sasha’s strappy heels lying on its side like a dead insect.
The bathroom door opened. Sasha emerged, her face a ghastly white, her dark bob plastered to her damp forehead. She looked ten years older. She was clutching her stomach, her eyes scanning the room without really seeing it. She found her other shoe, picked it up.
“I have to go,” she said, her voice raspy. “Work.”
No one argued. No one said anything. Lexi just groaned again.
Sasha didn’t look at Jake, didn’t look at Ethan. She just hobbled to the door, her steps unsteady, and let herself out. The click of the lock engaging was the loudest sound in the apartment.
The silence that followed was a living thing, fragile and suffocating. It was broken by the sound of Lexi struggling to sit up. She winced, pressing a hand to her lower back. Her eyes, smudged with yesterday’s mascara, found Ethan. “You got any Advil? Or, like, a new spine?”
Ethan didn’t move. His gaze stayed fixed on the TV. “Medicine cabinet. Top shelf.”
Lexi hauled herself up using the edge of the couch, every movement speaking of deep muscle ache. She shuffled past Jake without a glance. They heard the cabinet door squeak, the rattle of a pill bottle.
Jake swung his legs out of bed. He was still wearing his boxers. He found his own pants in a heap by the bedroom door and pulled them on. The fabric felt strange against his skin. He walked into the living room, the hardwood cold under his feet, and stood near the kitchenette, unsure where to land.
Lexi came back, swallowing two pills dry. She grimaced. “Water’s fucking gross. Tastes like pipes.” She gathered her clutch, her small jacket from the back of the couch. “I’m gonna head out. My friend’s gonna pick me up.” She finally looked at Ethan, then at Jake. There was no warmth in it, no connection. Just a flat, exhausted acknowledgement. “Thanks for the drinks, I guess.”
Ethan gave a single, shallow nod. Still, he didn’t drink his water.
Another exit. Another quiet click. And then there were two.
The apartment seemed to exhale, settling into its new, hollow reality. The coffee maker, the purring center of Ethan’s cozy haven, was silent. The art prints on the walls looked like artifacts from a lost civilization. The plush rug was defiled by the impression of a body and a sour psychic footprint.
Jake’s throat was so dry it hurt. He walked to the sink and filled a glass, drinking greedily. The pipe-taste was there, but it was better than the alternative. He leaned against the counter, the cool laminate a faint relief.
“You should drink that,” Jake said, nodding to the glass in Ethan’s hand.
Ethan looked at it, as if surprised to find it there. He lifted it slowly to his lips and took a small sip. He swallowed with effort.
“I can’t remember her name,” Ethan said. His voice was sandpaper.
“Whose?”
“The blonde. Lexi. I remembered just now when she said it.” He set the glass on the side table with a definitive click. “I couldn’t remember her name while I was… while we were.” He finally turned his head. His eyes were red and raw, the green muted. “What does that say about me, Jake?”
Jake had no answer. He remembered every detail—the feel of Ethan’s back under his hands, the sound, the crushing, anonymous heat of it. He remembered Sasha’s perfume. He remembered it all with a高清 clarity that made his skin crawl. “It says we were drunk,” he offered, the excuse pathetically thin.
“We were something,” Ethan corrected. He pushed himself out of the armchair. He moved stiffly, like an old man. He went to the window and looked out at the brick wall. “We were… filling a hole with dirt. Bad dirt. Poisoned dirt.” He turned around, his expression bleak. “We broke the thing we were trying to fix.”
The words hung there, simple and devastating.
“What thing?” Jake whispered, though he knew.
“This.” Ethan gestured between them, then around the apartment. “Us. This place. It felt like ours. Now it just feels like the scene of the crime.” He wrapped his arms around himself, a self-hug that looked desperate. “I feel like I contaminated it.”
Jake’s heart hammered against his ribs. The kindness, the easy humor, the confident spark—all of it had been scraped away from Ethan, leaving this raw, shamed nerve. Jake had seen his own insecurity reflected for months. He’d never seen Ethan’s, not like this. It was terrifying.
“It wasn’t just you,” Jake said, taking a step forward. “I was right there. I chose it. I wanted…”
“What?” Ethan’s gaze snapped to his, sharp now. “What did you want? Because I thought I wanted to feel powerful. Desired. But I just feel… empty. And used. And I let them use you, too.”
“I’m not a child you ‘let’ do things,” Jake said, a flash of heat cutting through the nausea. “I made a choice. A shitty, self-destructive choice. We made it together. We’re equally fucking stupid.”
A long, tense silence stretched. Ethan’s defiant posture sagged. “Yeah,” he sighed, the fight vanishing as quickly as it came. “We are.”
He walked to the couch and sank into it, burying his face in his hands. His shoulders trembled, just once. “I’m sorry,” he said, the words muffled. “I’m so sorry for all of it. For the club, for them, for… for using us. Using us.”
It was the core of it. They hadn’t just used those women as objects; they had used their own relationship, their own fragile bond, as a tool for self-flagellation. They had turned the thing they were building into a weapon against themselves.
Jake crossed the room. He didn’t sit. He stood in front of Ethan, looking down at the crown of his red curls, at the vulnerable line of his neck. “Ethan.”
Ethan didn’t look up.
“Look at me.”
Slowly, Ethan lowered his hands. His face was drawn, etched with regret and physical misery. Jake knelt on the rug, ignoring the imagined ghost of Lexi’s body. He was eye-level with him now.
“This is bad,” Jake said quietly. “This is a really low point. We took something that was… that was getting good, and we set it on fire because we were scared of how good it was.” He took a shaky breath. “But the apartment isn’t contaminated. We are. And we’re still here.”
Ethan’s eyes searched his, desperately seeking a lie, an easy out. He found none.
“What do we do?” Ethan asked again, the same lost question from the dawn.
Jake looked around. At the bottles. The misplaced shoes. The stillness. A cleaning spiral wouldn’t fix this. A cute breakfast wouldn’t fix this.
“We sit in it,” Jake said, his own voice surprising him with its steadiness. “We feel like shit. We remember the taste of puke and gin and regret. And then, when we can stand it, we take a shower. Separate showers. And we wash it off. Not the memory, just… the physical film of it.”
“And then?”
“And then we order the greasiest, grossest food we can think of. And we eat it on this couch. And we don’t talk about last night. We talk about anything else. Or we don’t talk at all. We just be here. In the contaminated apartment. Together.”
Ethan stared at him. A single, traitorous tear escaped, carving a path through the stubble on his cheek. He didn’t wipe it away. “That sounds awful.”
“It is awful,” Jake agreed. “It’s the awful we earned. Together.”
He reached out then, tentatively, and placed his hand over Ethan’s where it rested on his knee. Not holding, just covering. A point of contact, warm and solid and real amidst the emotional wreckage.
Ethan flipped his hand, lacing their fingers together. His grip was weak, but it was there. He looked down at their joined hands, then back at Jake’s face. The ghost of his old, wry smile flickered at the corner of his mouth. It didn’t reach his eyes, but it was a start.
“Greasy food, huh?” he rasped.
“The greasiest,” Jake said. “And ginger ale. Lots of ginger ale.”
Ethan nodded, a slow, weary movement. He didn’t let go of Jake’s hand. They stayed like that, kneeling and sitting in the silent, sunlit ruins, choosing, for the first time that day, not to run.
The hollowness that followed was absolute, a vacuum that sucked the warmth from his limbs and left him cold inside his own skin. He slipped out of her, the loss of contact immediate and jarring. The bathroom air felt damp and used against his naked body.
Lexi slumped forward over the tub, her breath coming in ragged hitches. Ethan slowly straightened, his hands braced on the sink’s edge, head hanging low. Jake watched his own semen begin to leak from between Ethan’s ass cheeks, a slow, white trickle against his skin.
No one spoke. The only sounds were their uneven breathing and the drip of a faucet. Jake’s mind was a blank, white screen. He stepped back, his foot landing in a damp spot on the bathmat. He turned and walked out, leaving them there.
He dressed in the dark living room, his fingers clumsy on the buttons of his shirt. He could still smell Sasha on his hands. He heard movement in the bathroom, low murmurs, the flush of a toilet. He didn’t wait. He let himself out into the hallway, the apartment door clicking shut behind him with a finality that echoed in his bones.
The silence in Jake’s own apartment the next day was a screaming thing. He moved through the rooms like a ghost, jumping at the buzz of his phone. It was Ethan. A single text, sent at 3 PM.
We need to not be in our heads. Tonight. The Mercury.
It wasn’t a question. Jake stared at the screen, the letters blurring. The rational part of him, the part that felt scraped raw and sick, screamed to say no. To demand they sit in the wreckage and talk it into dust. But the larger part, the part that was terrified of that conversation and the yawning emptiness it might reveal, throbbed with a dull agreement. Numbness was better. Motion was better than stillness. Obliteration was the only cure for what they’d started.
OK, he typed back. The response was immediate.
Good.
The Mercury was a different kind of place, darker, with a pounding industrial beat that felt more like an assault than music. Jake found Ethan already at the bar, a double whiskey neat in front of him, another waiting. Ethan’s eyes were flat, the friendly spark permanently extinguished. He nodded at the stool beside him.
“Drink,” Ethan said, pushing the second glass toward Jake.
Jake drank it in two burning swallows. It didn’t warm him. It just added fuel to a cold, internal fire. They didn’t toast. They didn’t speak. Ethan signaled the bartender for two more. And then two more after that.
The whiskey blended into vodka shots, chased with warm, sour beer. They were not drinking for pleasure. They were drinking for deletion, aiming for a state of total chemical eclipse. The room began to liquefy at the edges, colors smearing into sounds, the bassline a physical thrum in Jake’s chest cavity. He watched Ethan’s profile, the hard set of his jaw, the way he scanned the crowd not with interest, but with a predatory, vacant calculation.
They were on the dance floor, moving without rhythm, just a swaying, jarring collision with other bodies. That’s when Ethan nudged him, hard. “There. Those two.”
His voice was slurry but deliberate. He pointed with his chin. By the pillar. A tall woman with chestnut hair in a severe ponytail, and a shorter one with a riot of neon pink curls. They were dressed in black, looking bored.
“Ethan,” Jake started, his tongue thick.
“What?” Ethan turned, his face inches away. His breath was pure alcohol. “You got a better idea? You wanna go home and think?”
The challenge was a gauntlet thrown in the space between them. Thinking was the enemy. Thinking led to the bathroom, to the hollow ache, to the sight of his own release on Ethan’s skin. Jake shook his head, the movement disorienting.
“Didn’t think so,” Ethan muttered, and plunged into the crowd toward them.
Her name was Anya. The pink-haired one was Mel. The introductions were shouted over the music, brief and meaningless. Ethan bought a round of syrupy, bright green shots that tasted of candy and poison. Anya, the tall one, looked Jake up and down with an appraising coolness that made him feel like a slab of meat. It should have been offensive. Instead, it felt perversely honest.
“You’re quiet,” Anya shouted into his ear later, her body pressing against his side at the bar.
“You’re not,” Jake shouted back, and she laughed, a sharp, short sound.
“I like a challenge.”
Ethan was already deep in conversation with Mel, his head bent low, his hand on her arm. It was a pantomime of his old charm, but the beats were off, the smile not quite reaching his eyes. It was a performance for Jake, and Jake knew it. He was meant to watch. He was meant to follow.
The next round was tequila, the salt licked from between Anya’s knuckles. The burn was familiar, a homecoming to a house that was on fire. Jake felt the last of his reservations dissolve in the acrid aftertaste. His world narrowed to the press of bodies, the glare of lights, the next drink placed in his hand.
Back at Ethan’s apartment, the silence was different. It was heavy with a new kind of intention. Anya walked in first, surveying the living room with a detached air. “Cozy,” she said, the word devoid of warmth.
Mel went straight to the kitchen, opening cabinets. “You got any decent gin or just the paint thinner?”
Ethan produced a bottle. It was half-empty from a previous life. He poured drinks into mismatched mugs. No one sat. They stood in a loose circle in the living room, drinking, the anticipation a thick, ugly tension. This wasn’t desire. It was a collective decision to commit an act of violence against the quiet.
Anya set her mug down with a sharp click. She stepped up to Jake, her movements precise. She took his glasses off, folded them, and placed them on the bookshelf. Her hands were cold. She kissed him, her tongue forcing its way into his mouth immediately, aggressively. She tasted of gin and mint.
Jake heard Ethan move. He opened his eyes, over Anya’s shoulder. Ethan had Mel backed against the wall by the window, one hand hiking her skirt up around her hips. He was kissing her neck, his other hand fumbling with his own belt. There was a ruthless efficiency to it.
Anya broke the kiss, her breath coming fast. “Bedroom,” she said, not asking. She took his hand and pulled him. He followed, a puppet on strings. He glanced back. Ethan’s eyes met his, blazing in the dim light. Then Ethan turned Mel around, bending her over the arm of the couch, and Jake lost sight of them.
In the bedroom, Anya didn’t bother with the lights. She pushed him onto the bed and climbed atop him, straddling his hips. She pulled her tight black top over her head, her small breasts pale in the city-glow from the window. “You just lie there,” she instructed, her voice cool. “Let me do the work.”
From the living room, he heard a low, rhythmic thumping against the wall, the shudder of the couch springs, a muffled cry that might have been Mel. Anya undid his jeans, her fingers deft and impersonal. She pulled his cock out, already half-hard from the alcohol and the sheer, surreal momentum of the night. She stroked him to full, rigid stiffness, her grip firm, almost clinical.
“There,” she said, as if approving of a tool. She positioned herself over him, guided him inside her with one hand, and sank down in one smooth, merciless motion.
She was tight, impossibly so, and dry despite the wet sounds from the other room. Jake gasped at the sudden, biting pressure. Anya began to ride him, a steady, piston-like rhythm, her face a mask of concentration. She wasn’t seeking her own pleasure. She was performing a function. Her eyes were open, watching him watch her.
The sounds from the living room grew louder—the raw, wet slap of skin, Ethan’s ragged grunt, a sharp, pleading fuck from Mel. It was a soundtrack to his own mechanical fucking. Anya leaned forward, her hands on his chest for leverage, driving him deeper into her with each downward stroke. Her breasts swayed near his face.
“You like that?” she breathed, her voice steady despite the motion. “You like being used like a dildo?”
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His hips began to move in time with hers, a reluctant, joining rhythm. His hands found her hips, the bones sharp under his palms. He held on, his fingers pressing into her flesh. He was close, too quickly, the alcohol and the overwhelming sensory overload pushing him to the edge.
“I’m gonna come,” he grunted, the words ripped from him.
“Do it,” she said, her pace not faltering. “Come inside me. Fill me up.”
Her permission, so coldly given, was the trigger. His body arched off the bed, a strangled sound escaping his throat as he erupted inside her, the pulses hot and seemingly endless in the dark, airless room. She kept moving, milking him through the last shuddering waves, until he was completely spent, soft and sensitive inside her.
She climbed off him immediately, the loss of connection a physical shock in the cool air. She didn’t look at him. She walked, naked, to the bedroom door and opened it.
The living room was a tableau. Ethan was on his knees on the floor, his face buried between Mel’s thighs as she lay back on the couch, her legs hooked over his shoulders. Her neon pink hair was a tangled fan against the cushion. Ethan’s broad back was slick with sweat, his shoulders working.
Anya walked over, knelt beside Ethan, and without a word, took his cock in her hand. It was thick and gleaming under the lamplight. She began to stroke him, her movements in time with the rhythm of his tongue on Mel. Ethan groaned, a deep, resonant sound that vibrated through the floorboards Jake could feel through the bed.
Jake lay on the bed, discarded, watching through the open doorway. He felt utterly empty, a vessel drained. He watched as Anya bent her head and took Ethan into her mouth, her ponytail swinging. He watched Ethan’s hands fist in Mel’s hair. He watched the three of them move together in a grunting, wet, interconnected machine of release.
Ethan’s climax, when it came, was a roar. He tore his mouth from Mel and threw his head back, his body bowing as he came in hot, pulsing streaks across Anya’s face and chest. She took it, her expression unchanging, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
It ended. The machine shuddered to a halt. Ethan slumped back onto his heels, breathing heavily. Anya stood, found her clothes, began to dress. Mel sat up, looking dazed, pulling her skirt down.
Jake pulled his own jeans up, the fabric rough against his oversensitive skin. He walked to the bedroom doorway, leaning against the frame. Ethan looked up from the floor, his eyes finding Jake’s across the ruined space. There was no triumph there. No connection. No apology. There was nothing at all. Just a deep, black exhaustion, and a question that hung in the chemically-scented air, louder than any roar.
What was left after this? And what in God’s name would they do tomorrow?