AN: Just a little nothing story I wrote fairly quickly tonight just to write :) I've already written 9 pgs though for the next chap of But Sons Do It Better, so I'm going to try to have that up by mid-week to the end of the week depending on how much homework I have (college is a bitch). So enjoy :) If you guys like it I'll write the other side of this too.
P.S. I think we all know I don't own SP.
There was a glass with his name on it.
He lifted it up to his mouth and saw the world through an amber haze as he let the harsh liquid fill his mouth. A comforting fire filled him as it slid down his throat to his belly. Ice rested against his lips as he took his slow swallow.
He placed the half-empty glass back down on the bar, but did not relinquish his hold on it. Slumped over the counter he looked through his glass and watched the ice shift in the remnants of whiskey. He pushed himself up just enough to comfortably finish his drink and put it back down with a hard thunk against the counter. No sooner had it touched the wood than he had signaled the bartender. Then, and only then, did he finally take his hand off the glass.
It was filled again and placed back before him. His hand grasped to it like a lost appendage. He held it up to his face with an elbow rested against the bar top and studied the dark liquid gold.
There it was again. A nice and full glass that looked new and tidy; it hid the evidence of its previous tenant, just like the beer bottles that had been their predecessors. Each glass could have been his first to an outsider, just a beginning. A clean slate.
Oh, but only if it were. No, instead he was sitting in his bar, the same bar that had once been his father's and his father's father and so on. Someday his son would probably sit on a stool just like this one. Maybe he would sit on this very stool.
God. That was kind of depressing.
What was more depressing though was wondering if what he was doing now was what his father and father's father had done before. He had always thought of them as being a little pathetic: coming home stumbling and smelling like cheap beer; when they woke their sleeping children and tearfully told them "I love you. Don't forget that." Had they spent their nights away like this? Had they sat for long lonely hours at the nameless local bar wondering "what-if"s and "might've been"s? Had they felt guilty knowing their wife was home with their baby? Did they spend their time thinking about redheads who got away instead?
Redheads like his auburn beverage; all spicy fire and heady earth. The kind of auburn that sent the blood rushing to your head, to your heart, so fast you nearly passed out every time. It was the kind of auburn you spent the rest of your life looking around corners for. The kind of auburn you'd never find in a glass in your local bar in a million years.
Just like at the end of fall the auburn and the past had been blown away with the leaves. Gone were the days of carefree youth and happy romance. Oh well, that was to be expected, wasn't it? Hadn't it been like that for his dad and so-on and so-forth? Now he was a family man just like they had been. Now he had a wife just like they had had and a child of his own. That was enough for him, just like it had been for the men who came before him. So what if her hair wasn't red enough? So what if she didn't make the blood rush to his head? She was here and real and his redhead had left so long ago that it was more like a distant dream than a memory.
He swallowed.
He stood and pulled money from his pocket. He placed several bills under his empty glass and grabbed his coat. The noise fell silent when the door swung shut behind him. He pulled his coat on clumsily and stumbled bit as he walked home. He never drove to the bar anymore. He had more freedom this way.
The cold air turned his breath into puffy white clouds.
Now he would go home and creep in quietly. He would sneak into his son's room and kiss the child on the forehead and tell him to never forget just how much he loved him. Then he would slip into bed next to his sleeping wife and hold her when she melted into his body heat. When she was close he would shut his eyes when they began to sting and blur with brine. And he would convince himself again, for one more day, that this was best, that flames only burned and died with time.
And then he would sleep and dream only of redheads and amber liquids.