Chapter 1 #2
He considered egging him on further, but he was groggy from the booze, and lethargic with fatigue.
Instead, Aberlour switched his focus back to JD, watching as their bear of a brother attempted to sway to the music.
The pretty brunette didn’t seem to mind.
Her smile was wide and charming, and her eyes traced JD’s features hungrily.
“You still coming over tomorrow to help me move?” Oliver asked, after a bit.
Aberlour turned to face his friend, finding an odd expression on Oli’s face. A bitter, almost annoyed one. It was gone a second later.
“’Course,” he assured Oli with a nod. “Doubt any of those idiots will, though.”
Oliver snorted in agreement and pushed Aberlour’s chair again. Abe turned to look at him, one eyebrow cocked.
“You and I’ll get it done in no time,” he said, smiling confidently. “I’ll pay for the pizza and beer.”
Aberlour rolled his eyes. He didn’t need a bribe to help his best friend. He’d volunteer for whatever task Oliver required help with. Whether moving a couch or hiding a body. Besides, he had no other plans and digging graves was good exercise.
“It’s nice to be back,” Oliver said, his voice fainter, like he’d meant for that to remain an inner thought.
“You regretting the move to Recon?” Aberlour dared to ask, one eyebrow raised.
He didn’t think Oliver would ever admit to it, even if that was the case, but Aberlour had to admit he’d been relieved, if not a little bit shocked, when Oliver had agreed to follow him down their nutjob path of a career choice.
They’d just finished their first six-month deployment after finishing their training to become Force Recon Marines.
While they’d all been beaming with pride at the start, the heaviness of the job had been firmly anchored to their shoulders by the time they’d stepped back on American soil.
“No,” Oliver said, with a shake of his head and a determined expression that Aberlour clung to with a hopeful kind of desperation. “But it feels good to be—” he hesitated, “it feels good not to be looking over my shoulder every four seconds.”
“Hmm,” Aberlour agreed because he’d been thinking the same thing just a few minutes earlier. And a part of him was almost sick with relief to know Oliver didn’t regret his choices. He didn’t have any words for that.
“Think it ever gets easier?” Oliver asked, sounding genuinely curious.
The song had changed, and JD was now grinding against the pretty brunette rather than gently swaying. He was no better at that either, but the sight made Aberlour snicker.
“What? Keeping your guard up? Or letting it down again?” Aberlour asked his best friend.
“Both. Either. Take your pick,” Oliver said, crossing his arms over his chest and pushing back against Aberlour’s chair rhythmically so he could tip his own back in a seesaw motion that every one of his old schoolteachers would have scolded him for.
“No,” Aberlour replied, honestly. “To both.”
“You’re a depressing motherfucker, you know that?” Oliver asked him, shaking his head, but clearly amused.
“That’s why you love me,” Aberlour answered with a vague shrug and a yawn. The beer was hitting him. Or maybe it was the six months of sleeping with one eye open. Hard to tell.
“Do I?” Oliver asked doubtfully, but when Aberlour turned to stare at his friend, Oliver’s expression gave him away.
“You’re a terrible liar, Darling,” Aberlour replied, rolling his eyes.
Oliver shrugged off Aberlour’s suddenly intense look and abruptly changed the subject.
“I can’t wait to have my own house,” Oliver said, not for the first time. He was looking at JD again. Their brother and the brunette were now making out on the dance floor, and Aberlour doubted they’d make it back to her place before they devoured each other.
“Tired of sleeping with a pillow on your head to block out the moaning?” Aberlour guessed, because sharing a room with JD had to be hell.
“You have no fucking idea. I just want peace. A place to call my own,” he said, sighing wistfully.
“Come on, Darling. Tell it like it is. You just want privacy so you can bang any chick you want without JD’s boner creeping you out,” Aberlour responded with a snort.
There was a loud cheer as Marcus defeated Carlos, yet again, at arm wrestling, and Carlos downed another tequila shot. Yeah, no, at the pace they were tossing back shots, they’d be in no shape to move anything come morning except their breakfast—right back up.
“You keep thinking that,” Oliver muttered, then polished off Aberlour’s beer. When he looked back towards JD, there was a sad little smile tugging at his lips. One that Aberlour found impossible to reason through in his buzzed condition, so he let it go.
“Am I officially an adult, now?” Oliver asked, sounding bemused. They were sitting on the bottom step of Oliver’s new house.
“Guess so,” Aberlour agreed, leaning back, putting both of his elbows on the third step for support. “Look at you, Darling, all grown up and shit.”
They’d just finished moving all of Oliver’s furniture inside his house.
It was nice stuff, too. Not the mismatched castoffs Aberlour had found at a charity shop that “decorated” his shithole of an apartment.
Instead, Oli had leather couches, oak tables, and antique Chesterfields.
His mother’s housewarming present was her old furniture.
Oliver had bitched about it at first. Not about it being second hand, but about accepting his mother’s help with anything at any time.
In the end, since it was free and too well made to pass up, he’d swallowed his pride and taken it.
“No more living with JD’s farts,” Oliver said, content. There was an edge of sadness there too, though neither of them remarked on it.
“Can’t believe Ghost volunteered to room with him,” Abe replied with a scoff.
“Just wait until taco night,” Oliver replied.
There weren’t too many options for guys like them.
They could live in the barracks, usually with roommates, or they could fork over a nice chunk of change to live in one of the houses on base.
Those places were usually reserved for married couples, but Aberlour had pulled a few strings and found Oli this little gem.
It had become available at just the right time, too.
While Oli and JD got along like a house on fire, living together had gotten to be just a little too much. Oli needed space.
Aberlour had found him space.
“Your folks coming down to see the place?” Abe asked after a minute.
The front door was still open. From here they had a great view of the other houses on the street.
Oli’s house was the last house at the end, perpendicular to the cul-de-sac, which meant he had a clear view of everyone’s front yard. It was a nosy Nelly’s dream.
“Hell no,” Oliver replied, shaking his head.
The furniture had been delivered by a moving company.
Aberlour knew it hadn’t come with a note or a phone call.
Rather, all Louise Darling had bothered to say to her youngest son was delivered through a short text instructing him to give the driver a sizeable tip.
Aberlour would have offered his sympathies, but he knew they wouldn’t be welcomed.
“I was promised pizza,” he said instead.
“And beer,” Oli nodded, clapping his hands together.
“Call the other dimwits while I call in the order? Now that we’re done, they’ll probably be free to hang,” Oliver said, rolling his eyes as he stood up.
They were being dramatic for fun. The truth was, there hadn’t been enough furniture on the truck to justify calling in Team Specter. Oli and Abe had been fine on their own.
He still snorted in approval as he opened their group chat.
“Oli’s buying pizza,” was the only thing he texted to the team before he pocketed the phone and followed Oli back into the house. If that wasn’t enough to get them out here, then nothing would.
He walked into the open floorplan kitchen and Oliver handed him a beer.
“To adulthood,” Oliver said with a smile. Abe took it with a snort but knocked his own bottle against Oli’s.
“To your independence, Darling.”
“Never thought I’d get here,” Oli said, shaking his head before chugging half of his beer.
“What? Living in a two-bedroom, military base house, next to jarheads and idiots wasn’t your childhood dream?” Abe teased.
“No—I meant—I never thought I’d be able to break free of their ironclad control. I used to dream I’d just run away, change my name even,” Oliver said, shaking his head in disbelief. He looked around, seemingly in awe of his little house.
“You’re so fucking dramatic,” Abe said without any real bite.
“Comes with the Darling name.”
Aberlour couldn’t refute that. The little he’d seen of Oliver’s parents gave Abe the impression that they were little more than stereotypical, eccentric aristocrats.
Then again, that had been the first impression he’d gotten from Oliver himself.
Uptight, rich, full of himself. There were still shadows of that impression hovering over him at times, but Aberlour knew them by their proper names now: weapon—armor.
They were shields he put up, nothing more.
“I certainly never thought I’d be friends with the likes of you,” Oliver confessed, his smile making his intent obvious. Abe grunted in agreement. “You were such a cocky motherfucker,” Oliver said, like it was decades ago, rather than barely six years. Aberlour rolled his eyes.
“Right, like I planned to make friends with your scared little rich bitch ass,” Aberlour scoffed, roughly. Oliver rolled his eyes at the taunt.
“Nice to know you haven’t changed, Abe,” Oliver added.
“Amen,” Aberlour muttered, taking a long pull from his beer.