lol, i don't own anything.
James isn't sure when he signed up for a chance to win a free hot air balloon ride, but staring at the small piece of cardboard with far too many bright colors even for him is making his head hurt a little. Him and one friend are, apparently, going to go hundreds of feet in the air with only a balloon and a wicker basket keeping them from a horrible, horrible death. Awesome. Great. This is the best thing ever.
Kind of, sort of, not really.
Carlos comes screaming out of his room asking for the mail, and James is immediately suspicious. Screeching to a halt, Carlos looks from James to the postcard that's proclaiming, "YOU HAVE WON!" At least, James thinks, he has the good graces to look a mostly sheepish. Shuffling his feet, Carlos mumbles some sort of excuse, but James isn't really all that angry. Just confused, mostly.
"Why not use your own name?" He asks, furrowing his eyebrows in a not-entirely, but mostly, unattractive manner. Carlos flushes and mumbles again, rapping on the top of his helmet nervously. James doesn't blame him; he can be kind of terrifying when he's mad.
"I couldn't hear you. You mumbled." James says.
"I said," Carlos begins, "they banned me for signing up too much. So I used your name. I was gonna take you with me if I won." By the end, Carlos is almost-nearly mumbling.
"You have to take me; it's my damn name!" James says, his voice raising a bit. Carlos looks indignant and comes back with,
"Well, why's it such a big deal? It's just a free trip in a hot air balloon. And it's not too far away."
It's James who mumbles this time.
"Maybe I don't like untrustworthy things carrying me…high." Carlos grins a sort of twisted grin that James has seen only a few times before.
It always means trouble.
"Excuse me, I didn't quite hear that." James knows that Carlos heard him, but he still answers.
"What if, theoretically, I didn't want to go in a hot air…balloon." James is squirming, dancing a little like he has to take a piss.
"Are you scared of heights?"
"No. Just…rickety things in high places."
"So you're scared of a balloon?" Carlos is just teasing him now, and James is a little irked. So he cracks a little.
"It's a perfectly rational fear! Anything could go wrong, and you're high in the air, and it's not uncommon!" Sticking his tongue out is childish, James decides, but it's hard to fight the urge. Instead he stamps his foot a little. Carlos gives him a look that seems to be saying, "How am I the man in this fight?"
James only pouts a little more.
Somehow, Carlos has convinced him that this is a good plan. James thinks it happened sometime before the…persuasion, but after Carlos smiled like the youngest daughter and batted his eyes in the manliest way possible. Which, for Carlos, wasn't very.
So now they're sitting in a small room that smells suspiciously like tuna and something else that James isn't entirely sure isn't some kind urine – hopefully, he thinks, not human – with a man in an entirely not-ironic mountain man beard, a flannel shirt and another smell that suggests that he's showered maybe once this week telling them the safety procedures.
It's almost entirely unpleasant, but Carlos is so excited that James can't help being a little happy. Or maybe a lot. He can't tell, really.
The safety procedures are relatively simple: don't touch anything except the basket, keep all limbs in the basket, and don't try to parachute from the basket. James has to resist making a sarcastic comment at the last one. And then they're in the balloon, Carlos on the balls of his feet and James trying to sulk quietly, but failing because a tiny smile keeps tugging at his lips whenever Carlos looks at him with that dopey grin. James is pretty sure that when he grins back, it's 100-percent more dopey.
They're in the air for an hour, and despite his original fear and anger, James is staring at the clouds in awe after the first ten minutes. If the Mountain Man (Jimmy-Jake-John) weren't there, he's relatively sure he'd be all over Carlos right now. Carlos has a self-satisfied smile on his face as he watches James look at the clouds and the blue and squint from the sun. It's almost like a victory, really. Being this close to the sky, without metal and protective barriers around you, James thinks, is too amazing. Entirely too amazing, and he also thinks he may have to invest in a hot air balloon.
Even after all this, James is still kissing the ground when they touch down. To prove a point, sort of. Kind of. But not really. Really, he's just a drama queen, and he has to do something to protect his initial hatred of hot air balloons. Carlos, the sneaky bastard, has somehow managed to be directly where James is about to kiss. Not that it stops him, because he's not really looking. But the feel of lip-on-lip is very unexpected.
James just goes with it.
Carlos thinks that if James tackles him to the ground and kisses him every time they go ballooning, a hot air balloon may be a good investment.