Chapter Text
Someone’s knocking on the bathroom door.
Connor looks at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.
It’s the same as it was yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that.
His reflection hasn’t magically changed just because he’s turned twenty-seven.
It’s all still there. Same mismatched eyes, same nose, same ears. Maybe a little sharper in the chin, maybe a little hollower in the cheeks, but still…
The same.
It’s always the fucking same.
He washes his hands, slowly and deliberately, because fuck hurrying for some drunken asshole who wants to piss. He doesn’t know even half the people at this party, and he doesn’t like even half of the people he does know.
Andi’s done something weird to the bathroom wall again. Perils of living with an artist, Connor supposes. He’s heard plenty of her rants about it over the years.
Art is meant to be tangibly experienced! The whole world is a canvas! I am a richly creative being and I cannot be chained down!
Andi pays two-thirds of the rent on this dump so as far as Connor’s concerned, she can do whatever the fuck she wants with the place. He just wishes sometimes that there weren’t quite so many vulvas involved.
Vulvas are not so his area.
He opens the bathroom door and a girl with pink hair brushes past him, slamming the door behind her almost before he’s even out of the room.
Whatever.
He walks through the crowd of people, as people whose names he can’t remember wish him a happy birthday, and heads toward the kitchen. Connor can see Andi at the kitchen island, kneading bread, which would be weird in the middle of a party if it were literally anybody else.
Her eyes light up as she sees him.
“Welcome to the 27 Club!”
Connor rolls his eyes. “Thanks for the reminder of my own mortality.”
Andi laughs. “We all gotta go sometime.” She pulls a joint out of her bra and hands it to him with a flourish. “Happy birthday.”
Connor inspects it. It’s kind of sweaty and smells a little bit like patchouli. “What’s in it?”
“Laced with cocaine,” she informs him, grinning wolfishly. “Thought you could use something nice for the big day.”
“Thanks.” Connor reaches into his pocket and pulls out a lighter. He’s about to light the joint when Andi’s eyes widen and she swats the lighter out of his hand. “Hey, what the fuck?”
“I’m not letting you use a white lighter on your twenty-seventh birthday, Jesus fucking Christ, Connor!”
Connor rolls his eyes. Of fucking course. Andi hasn’t shut up about the fucking 27 club and all its related superstitions for the past month. “Well then, give me another lighter.”
Andi rolls her eyes straight back at Connor, puts the lighter down on the counter then goes looking through one of the drawers, muttering to herself.
Before she turns around again, Connor takes the lighter and puts back in his pocket.
Fuck superstition.
He likes this lighter.
“Aha!” Andi presents him a box of matches. Connor takes it from her, pulls out a match and strikes it against the side of the box.
It takes more than a few tries to catch. The box is kind of damp.
Once he finally gets the match sorted, he lights the joint and takes a long inhale.
He immediately feels slightly better about this party.
The thing is, he doesn’t want or need a fucking birthday party. He’s not six. But Andi’s never been one to pass up an opportunity to celebrate.
Connor’s pretty sure this party is more about her than it is about him. Especially if the guest list is anything to go by.
He takes another hit and looks around the room with a critical eye, trying to pick out people he actually knows. He can see some of his work colleagues, some of his acquaintances from college, and…
“What the fuck?”
Andi must have followed Connor’s gaze. “Oh good, she made it.”
“You invited her, what the fuck?”
“Maybe it’s finally time,” Andi replies, her tone way too delighted for Connor to fully process right now. “Maybe tonight’s the night I finally bang your sister.”
“Gross,” says Connor, shaking his head and hoping it’ll shake out the discomfort he’s feeling at the sight of his sister, in his dining room talking to some guy who’s talking animatedly with his hands that Connor vaguely recognizes from the bookstore.
“Hey, Blossom wants what she wants,” says Andi, who is now very obviously looking Zoe up and down.
Connor lets out a disgusted noise and promptly heads out of the kitchen and down the hallway. As he makes a beeline toward his room, there are two thoughts battling for dominance in his brain.
The first is that there better not be anyone fucking in his room.
The second is that it is so not fair that the universe has cursed him with the knowledge that his roommate calls her vagina Blossom.
The door to his room is open, which is probably a good sign, and he can see Margot and Eddie sitting cross-legged on his bed. Margot is crushing up pills on what looks like a photo frame.
As he gets closer, Connor realizes that it’s his framed bachelor’s degree.
It’s probably as good a use as any, to be fair.
He sits next to Eddie, who’s rolling up a dollar bill and grins at him widely. “Happy birthday, man.”
“Thanks,” Connor replies. He stubs out his joint on the frame, puts it behind his ear for safekeeping. Before too long he, Margot and Eddie are all pleasantly buzzed from whatever it is they just snorted off Connor’s degree.
It’s only once the frame is clean that Margot seems to realize exactly what it is. Her face breaks into a smile and she picks it up and holds it toward Connor with a slightly mocking smile.
“Well, lookie here at Mr. Fancy Pants and his fancy diploma,” she drawls.
“Higher education is a sham,” says Eddie with a roll of their eyes. “You’re thousands of dollars in debt, and for what? A piece of paper you can put in a frame?”
“And a frame to snort drugs off,” Margot chimes in. “Don’t forget the drugs.”
Connor decides not to mention that his parents paid for college. It’s not something he likes to talk about - his overall lack of crippling student debt - when he knows it’s something hanging over the head of a decent chunk of people his age.
“Didn’t you do your Masters?” Connor asks Margot pointedly.
“Still doing it,” she confesses. She’s put the diploma back down on the bed and is now rolling a joint on it. “Think there’s a spot for me at Leather Bird when I graduate?”
“I’m not the boss,” he says honestly, even though the whole damn point of Leather Bird Publishing is that no one is. “But yeah. Maybe. If things take off a bit more, maybe we can hire another editor.”
“Speaking of which, when are you finishing your book?” Eddie asks. “Wasn’t the whole point of this publishing company so that you could publish your own shit?”
“You can’t rush genius,” Connor replies easily, taking the joint Andi had given him out from behind his ear and relighting it with the lighter from his pocket.
He turns the lighter around in his hands a few times.
There’s a knock on the door, even though he knows he left it open. Connor turns around to see Richard standing in the doorway in his expensive lawyer coat with his expensive lawyer haircut and internally starts screaming.
“Hey,” he says, for lack of anything else.
“Happy birthday,” says Richard, walking into the room. “Can we talk?” He looks pointedly at Margot and Eddie, who both turn to Connor. Connor sighs, then nods, and his friends leave the room and shut the door behind them.
Then it’s just him and his (maybe) ex… whatever in his room.
“Did Andi invite you, too?” Connor asks, barely able to cover his irritation.
Richard shakes his head. “I knew she’d throw a party,” he says. “And I knew it was your birthday, so… I took a chance.” He sits down on the edge of Connor’s bed. “You weren’t answering my calls, what the hell was I supposed to do?”
Connor rolls his eyes. “Take a fucking hint?”
Richard sighs. Smooths down his expensive coat. “I thought we could talk this out like adults.”
Connor closes his eyes in irritation and opens them again. “So,” he begins matter-of-factly. “The last time we fucked, you told me you loved me.”
Richard nods. “I did.”
“Right. So if you could, like, not do that again, that would be great.”
Richard just looks at him for a moment. Then takes his hand. “I’m going to leave him.”
Connor shakes his head. “Nope.”
“I’ll leave him for you, Connor.”
“That is… no, that isn’t what I want,” Connor says firmly. “If you’re not happy or you want some kind of excuse to fuck off or whatever, that’s not on me. It’s not fair that you put that on me.”
Connor pulls away from his hand. Richard sighs in frustration, which Connor thinks is pretty fucking hypocritical of him because it’s not like he’s the one being unreasonable right now.
“I’ve never felt about anyone the way I-”
“This is bullshit,” Connor announces, standing up and getting his jacket from its spot on an armchair next to his bed. “I’m not having this conversation with you right now.”
“So when are we going to have this conversation?” Richard demands. “We’ve been together for a year.”
“We’ve been fucking for a year,” Connor corrects him. “We’re not together. We’re not… we’re not anything.”
“That’s not how I see it.”
“Well, that’s your problem.”
“I love you.”
“Seriously, what the fuck did I just say?”
Connor puts on his jacket and hightails it out of the room as fast as he can. He slams the door of his room behind him, hoping like fuck Richard’s not going to follow him.
He’s pretty sure he won’t. The fact that Richard cornered Connor in his room rather than waiting for him to head to the main party makes him think that he doesn’t want some kind of public scene.
Richard’s got a reputation to uphold, after all.
Connor’s pushing his way through the crowd of people in the living room to get to the door when he feels someone grab his arm.
He turns quickly to yell at them and finds himself face to face with his sister.
“Connor.”
“Zoe.”
Zoe looks him up and down. “Bailing on your own party?” she asks, her tone more than a little caustic.
Connor shrugs. “It’s not my party.”
“It’s your birthday.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s my party. Or that I want you here.”
Zoe recoils a little, but recovers quickly. “Wow. Okay. Asshole.”
“Enjoy Andi’s garlic bread,” Connor says with a roll of his eyes. “I’m going to get more booze.”
With that, he pushes past his sister and leaves the apartment. It’s not a long walk to the local liquor store, and the fact that it’s a bitterly cold day in February means he’s going as fast as he can so he doesn’t freeze on the spot.
He sees Andre behind the counter when he arrives, who smiles when he sees him.
“Hey man, how’s it going?”
“Slow night,” Andre says, nodding. “Guess it’s too cold for booze or whatever.”
“Never too cold for booze,” Connor shoots back with a wry smile.
Andre rolls his eyes. “At least you keep me in business,” he replies with a tone that could almost be considered fond. “The only other customer I’ve had in the last hour is that guy over there.” Connor follows Andre’s glance to see a figure in a warm looking jacket, a hat and a scarf, standing still and staring at a bottle of rum on the shelf.
“Huh,” says Connor. He turns back to Andre. “Did it arrive?”
Andre nods again, then reaches under the counter and produces a bottle of Chivas whisky. Connor smiles at the sight, then pulls out his wallet.
“This is pretentious asshole whisky, you do realize that?” says Andre matter-of-factly.
“Yeah, well, I’ve been told I’m a pretentious asshole.”
“I could have gotten the twelve-year-old without a problem,” Andre says with a sigh. “But no, you had to go for the old shit.”
“Your efforts are appreciated,” Connor says with a grin. “How much do I owe you?”
Andre tells him the price and Connor’s glad he made the liquor store run by himself because if Andi knew how much he was spending on alcohol she’d fucking lose her shit. He pulls out his wallet and hands Andre a thick wad of cash.
As Connor reaches for the bottle, Andre pulls it away with a smirk. “ID, please.”
Connor sighs. “We’ve known each other for eight fucking years, Andre.”
“Rules are rules, man. ID.”
Connor swears under his breath, then pulls his ID from his wallet and slams it on the counter. Andre makes a show of picking it up and inspecting it.
“Oh hey, happy birthday.” Andre laughs. “You’re only two years older than your pretentious asshole whisky.”
There’s a loud crash and the sound of shattering glass.
Andre swears loudly. Connor looks over to see the guy who’d been staring at the rum now staring at the mess of rum and glass on the floor, a flood of apologies coming from his mouth.
Connor’s got this weird feeling in his head, like he’s just taken a bite of aluminium foil.
The bell over the door chimes and a pile of people stream in. Connor can tell from the smell and their lack of warm weather attire that they’re probably drunk, they’re probably students and they’re probably underage.
He picks up his whisky and leaves the store, shooting Andre an apologetic shrug as he goes.
The walk back to his apartment feels longer.
Connor still feels on edge and he can’t quite figure out why. Maybe whatever was in the joint Andi gave him is making him paranoid.
It wouldn’t be the first time he’d ended up on a bad trip thanks to his roommate. Andi’s approach to pharmaceuticals was what one might call ‘experimental’.
Connor’s not ready to go back to the party yet. Not really.
He sits down at the bus stop, opens his bottle of fancy aged whisky and takes a swig right from the bottle.
It’s pretty fucking good. There’s something to be said for quality whisky.
Now that he’s not moving, the cold is catching up with him. He’s wearing a jacket but the wind is going right through him.
It’s been a cold winter and the assholes on the radio keep talking about how global warming can’t possibly be real if it’s this fucking cold, which is complete and utter bullshit. Connor doesn’t really know a whole lot about climate change, but he knows the planet is fucked and it’s got more to do with corporations than whether or not he uses a fucking plastic straw.
He keeps drinking.
He thinks it’s probably too late for a bus to show up and it’s cold enough that the streets are pretty much deserted.
Pretty much.
He can hear music.
It takes him a while to figure out where it’s coming from.
There’s a guy across the road, playing the guitar under a streetlamp. It’s a song Connor doesn’t recognize, but he likes it. It’s kind of sad and mournful but hopeful at the same time, and Connor’s always been a sucker for those kinds of mixed emotions.
He’s got some cash in his wallet, still.
May as well start twenty-seven with some fucking philanthropy.
Connor takes another swig of his whisky, enjoying the slight burn as it goes down, then steps out into the street.
He barely has time to notice that he recognizes the face on the side of the bus before it slams right into him and sends him flying into the air.
There’s pain and sharp heat and his vision is rapidly dimming and everything is wet and he’s not sure if it’s his fucking expensive whisky or blood and-
Someone’s knocking on the bathroom door.
Connor looks at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.
“What the fuck?”