Young Writers Society

The moment Schadel put her arms around him James shrunk more into the jacket, pulling his head under so only his eyes barely peeked out. His entire body tensed, but his muscles began to ache with weariness at the energy that required. He turned his head away from the shoulder she rested her chin on.

He didn't return the hug, of course. He wouldn't know how to, with her behind him, and his arms were currently occupied holding the jacket tightly around himself.

Her words entered his ears like a soft whisper of reassurance, but he didn't know how to respond. He knew it was "okay to cry" in theory. It's what he would tell anyone else, but hearing it himself felt like trying to let a stone through a cloth pouch. Nearly impossible.

But when she gave him permission to stay silent, the knot developing in his throat caused his breath to catch. Her question caught him by surprise. He'd only expected her to pressure him more, to pry his sadness out of his cold, dead hands so it could be exposed for everyone to see. But instead, she asked what made him happy.

A mournful whimper escaped his throat as he tried to swallow down his emotion. His eyes, barely recovered from his earlier crying, started to tear up again.

His lips trembled as he desperately tried to hold it together.

"I-I dom't know," he said.

Her heart melted.

What was she supposed to say to something like that? Everyone had something that made them happy, even when they were in the darkest parts of their lives. James not knowing what his happiness was made her sad in a way that she had never truly felt before.

"Then we'll find it out," she promised. "We'll figure out what makes out you happy, and then you'll have something to smile about even when we're not together."

James highly doubted the probability of finding any sort of lasting happiness, nevermind something small that would fill the void he existed in. He just wished Schadel would let go of him so he could fall asleep, and forget anything happened. Forget that he'd said things he wouldn't normally say, felt things he wouldn't normally feel, and thrown up already one time too many.

He started to cry as emotion overwhelmed him. He couldn't see through the film of tears over his eyes.

"Mm," was his only reply to Schadel, as he closed his eyes and tucked them under the collar of the jacket.

Damascus stirred once more, this time hard enough to pull himself out of the stupor he was in. A little frown pulled at his lip as he slowly blinked himself awake (or as awake as he could have been, considering).

In his still foggy mind, panic struck him, and he tried to remember where he was. At the moment, it seemed that he was laying on the floor under a bar, his body wrapped snuggly around the leg of a chair. And, perhaps, someone's foot- he couldn't quite tell.

"Ah, paardon me." He mumbled hoarsely to the chair, pulling his arms back to himself.

After adjusting his equilibrium very carefully, and with a fair share of groans when he sat up and hit his head on the bar, Damascus crawled out from underneath it. His curls were in even more disarray than before he dozed off, if that was possible, and, to put it lightly, he looked like death.

"Think. Think, now." He told himself quietly, blinking several times.

What did he remember?

Ah, yes- something about possessions, and brothers, and fighting. He looked around blearily, still in his position at the floor, and noted that no possessions or fights were occuring that he could see. All that remained from what had happened before his sleep was the fact that-

"Brooothes. You are here." He drawled, having no sense whatsoever of his speaking volume. "That wasn't a- a dreamy thing, then, yes?"

No one really answered, but that didn't bother him. He stumbled to his feet, with much help from the chair he had been spooning.

It was then that he saw the person who was occuping the chair; or people, rather.

"Oh, Sch- shh. Schadel. How schweet. You're hugging Jamesh." He patted a heavy hand on one of their heads (which one, he wasn't quite sure of).

James's eye twitched in the midst of tears and a swirl of emotions when Damascus's hand practically stroked his head.

"I bwant to grow home," he muttered, his words barely understandable through his filter of tears and his drunken stupor.

Damascus paused for a long moment, and he frowned at James in confusion before his eyes widened comically. Oh. That's why Schadel was hugging him; he was very very upset- crying, as a matter of fact.

This revelation immensely distressed him. There was only one thing he couldn't figure out: the sense behind what was James trying to say.

Nonetheless, Damascus let out a monsterous coo and let his arm slip down to cradle his brother.

"Jameshhh, pleas, don' cry. You- you can, uh, can grow whatef you want to. I'll help you, too, as soon as I. Can walk. That." He patted James as comfortingly as he could, despite his clumsiness.

Schadel gave Wilson a desperate look. Edward looked just as distressed as Schadel felt about James right now, but he was taking a similar route to Damascus - he was trying to pat James on the shoulder. Schadel had known she was the only sober one besides the bartender, and that being the only sober one would come with responsibilities, but she hadn't anticipated something like this.

(She was also pretty sure James wasn't bawling his eyes out because he couldn't grow what he wanted to, but she didn't have the heart to tell Damascus right now.)

Wilson had been looking on with something of a blank, dazed expression until Schadel met her eyes. At that moment, she realized that things were indeed spiraling downward and that maybe she shouldn't have indulged all of the sad, sad men's desires to drink until their livers might burst. Not that anyone had died, but... Damascus and Boris seemed to be very, very out of it, and James was an absolute mess of emotions.

She gave Schadel a robotic, tense, wide-eyed type of smile before standing up quickly and running across the room, behind the bar, and coming out with a whole 20-pack of plastic water bottles.

She pushed her way past all of the drunkards and slammed it on the table among them with a ceremonious spreading of her arms. The schlap of the table made James jump underneath all of the arms and hands he was being hugged and patted with - all unasked for.

Wilson tore open the plastic over the bottles with both hands and started pulling them out.

"Well, it's been quite a uh, time, hasn't it! I think it's a great moment to call it a day. Ya'll still thirsty? You know, crying has a tendency to dehydrate you, so whether or not you've shed tears tonight let's all do one last round of nice, refreshing, pure and good-for-your-body drinks. How's that sound? You know what, I take that back. This isn't open for dispute. We're all having some water, now, yes. Now uh, let's give our brother James here a bit of space so we can all partake in the festivities."
"

As the other sober person in the room, Schadel took the responsibility of handing out the water bottles to everyone else in the room. Part of her wondered if her brothers would be able to open the bottles, but Edward didn't have any trouble when she handed him his.

James wasn't quite sure what he'd been handed. It was a bottle, but it crackled under his grip, and the top of it was sealed. He tried to open it by prying the lid off, but it wouldn't budge. He let out a sob again, and he couldn't really see what he was doing very well through his tears as he fumbled with the bottle's lid repeatedly with no success.

After a few tries, he grew too frustrated with his failure and just squeezed the bottle as hard as he could. He felt the lid smack him in the face as water spurted out all over his pants.

He started crying again.

Boris had intended to comfort James, that was his primary intent at this moment, but what he was doing with his hands, it took so much focus at this time that he stuck simply, to doing. And what he meant to do was move to sit by James, and open his own water bottle, whereupon he would offer to share it.

He unscrewed it successfully. Then he dropped it a little, caught it a little, and repeated the process, ending up smacking it into his own jaw.

It splashed all over his front, and sprayed just a little on James' shoulder, before Boris caught it for the final time, and pressed it to his chest for safekeeping. By then it was at least half empty.

"I shvear," he said, between fits of unmanly giggling, "I shvear I didn' do tzet on, on purposh."

Oh. His Prussian accent was coming back. Wedged obscenley between distinctly Londoner noises, but it wrestled its way back in nonetheless.

"Shvear." he repeated, just to make sure.

And he started laughing again. But this time, it was manly. It was German.

(One would have to be Prussian to understand.)