"Is this an actual drinking game?"
Peter glanced at the Jenga box in Max's hands, and she arched an eyebrow, hopping down the last two steps to the next landing.
"Are you telling me that all the work I did today making this," she shook the box and the pieces rattled, "was for nothing?"
"No, I just..." He shrugged and adjusted his glasses. "I think Johnny wanted to play poker."
"Ugh," she groaned, rolling her eyes. "Poker and drinking is boring."
"And you don't know how to play—"
"And I don't know how to play," she agreed with a grin. "This will be more fun, I promise."
"I don't really care, to be honest," he told her as they rounded the corner, tackling the next stairwell in unison. "As long as I'm drinking, I'm happy."
"That's a bad mentality."
"Okay, Mom."
He laughed when she swatted at his arm, and then hurdled over the railing, waiting for her at the bottom of the next staircase. She grinned and hurried to catch up, stumbling a little when she moved too quickly on her socked feet.
It had been two days since she asked Loki to help Franklin with whatever the kid was stuck with, and thus far, he hadn't complied with her request. For the most part, Loki seemed keen on two things: reading Reed's textbooks and having sex with her. She didn't mind the latter—their sex life, now that they were careful about her bruising, had been fantastic these days. However, she still would have liked to see him do something, anything, with the other people in the tower. Having a two minute conversation with Reed about medical literature and looking surly at meal-times just didn't cut it in her books anymore.
She wasn't going to pester him about it. He was a big boy—she hated to think about their actual age difference now—and he could decide for himself how social he wanted to be. Still, when Johnny invited Peter and Max to join him for the evening in his suite, an invitation extended in hushed tones as they cleaned up after lunch, she could only assume Loki was left out because he refused to show the rest of the tower that he had a personality.
Still. She wasn't his mother. She wasn't anyone's mother, and she wasn't going to act like one. There was only so much throat clearing and pointed sighing she could do to make her opinion known, and after that, he was on his own.
He barely batted an eye when she spent the afternoon in their living room converting regular Jenga into Drinking Jenga (which merely involved taking a black marker and writing a variety of drinking-related dares on each block), nor did he ask where she was going when she shuffled down the hall toward the door with her box in hand. He was so absorbed in his latest tome from Reed that she hadn't wanted to interrupt him, just as she hadn't earlier in the day, and she assumed he would come to a point—probably when he was finished—that he realized Max was no longer hovering somewhere nearby.
"So, is it just the three of us then?" Max asked when they arrived at the fourth floor. From what she understood, Ben's man-cave could be found two floors down, and he liked to complain about Johnny's incessant racket—and poor music choices.
"I guess," Peter said, shrugging again. "I doubt Ben warranted an invite."
"And I doubt Sue and Reed would want an invite," she added with a chuckle.
Neither mentioned Loki, though Max intended to make a point to Johnny sometime this evening that it would have been nice to at least ask other people. When the man initially dropped the suggestion, she worried that he was asking her and only her. However, Peter approached her soon after and told her that he'd go if she went, and that set her worries to rest.
Johnny's floor was easy to find. As soon as they neared the door, they could hear music humming from the other side, and when Max leaned in to peer through the little window, she could see a strobe light flickering down the hall.
"Oh my god," she muttered, rolling her eyes and laughing. Peter pushed her out of the way gently, and then let out a snort.
"Awesome."
"No wonder Ben seems perpetually annoyed," Max mused. Peter pushed the door open and she filed in after him—it sounded (and felt) like they were stepping into a club. In that moment, she had a sobering thought about Johnny Storm: wasn't he in his late thirties? She never wanted to tell people they were too old for something, but the strobe light seemed to be a little much.
The hallway was short, and the rest of the floor itself would have reminded her of a combination of her and Loki's floor and the main kitchen area if it hadn't been for all the nude portraits everywhere. It seemed that Johnny had taken a sledgehammer and knocked down just about every wall available, save for what she assumed was a bedroom-bathroom combination on the far side of the space. All of the windows were cloaked in heavy fabric—the lighting bill for this floor must have been astronomical.
As Peter jogged over to the small table to help himself to a handful of chips, Max studied the place, her hands planted on her hips. It was definitely a bachelor pad, though she couldn't imagine too many women would be pleased to see the tasteful—and some not-so-tasteful—nude portraits of other women scattered across the walls. Most of them appeared to be black and white photography, and she wondered if Johnny had taken them himself.
Opposite the bedroom door was the kitchen area, though it was so cluttered with dishes (clean and dirty), bags of chips, and a sea of alcoholic beverages that it was immediately apparent why Johnny ate all his meals upstairs. There was no kitchen island here, though there was a round table with some shot glasses and a bowl of chips that Peter hovered over. The tile changed to pristine hardwood, and the rest of the apartment's layout consisted of a couch set facing a giant flat-screen TV, a bar cabinet, and a pin-ball machine. To his credit, there was no dirty laundry anywhere—no socks sticking out of couch cushions—but she hadn't seen his bedroom yet.
A pair of hands clamped down on her shoulders suddenly, and Max let out an embarrassing squeak. She shimmied out of the grasp and whirled around, glaring when she saw Johnny laughing. Once he was finished, he fished a small remote out of his pocket and lowered the music's volume. The TV screen flickered to life for a moment, and she watched the numbers drop, only then realizing where the sound was coming from.
"Welcome, children," he greeted, extending his arms and twirling around her, "to Johnny's play-place."
"There's less nudity than I expected," Peter commented, nodding toward the nearest naked photograph. "Way less, actually."
"Yeah, I figured there'd be a girl dancing in a cage somewhere," Max added, visibly pleased when he turned off the strobe light.
"I gave her the night off." Johnny snatched a deck of cards from the kitchen counter. "I figured we could find a way to drink heavily over a game of poker."
"Actually, Max has been working on something," Peter told him, gesturing back to her. He shoved a few chips into his mouth, and before he could send half-chewed crumbs everywhere, Max spoke up.
"It's Jenga, but with dares," she explained, hurrying forward and setting the box on the table. "I made to today... Sue said the kids never liked the game anyway."
"Yeah," Johnny said as he cracked the box lid off and pulled out a piece, "but she's going to be pissed that you wrote stuff like... take a shot on the pieces."
"She doesn't need to know," she said nervously, snatching the piece out of his hand and setting it on the table. "And... And that's definitely not the worst of them."
"Come on," Johnny groaned. He waved the deck of cards in front of them, as if to entice them. "Poker is a classic—"
"Two votes to one," Max said with a shrug, smirking at him. "It's Jenga."
Peter crunched noisily on chips behind her, and Johnny rolled his eyes.
"Fine," he sighed, tossing the deck back somewhere onto a couch. "As long as we can get suitably drunk, I guess I don't care what we play."
"Oh, if we play right, we'll get drunk," Max told him. She patted the top of the box. "If you knock the tower over, you have to finish your whole drink. There's a bunch of blocks that let you give drinks to people, and rules you can make up so that when someone breaks them, they have to drink."
"This feels very college to me—"
"Probably because you're in your sixties," she teased, grabbing a handful of chips and popping them into her mouth one at a time. Johnny's eyes narrowed, but his lips curved upward into a large grin.
"Okay, go pick your poison, children."
She wiggled her eyebrows at him, pleased to have matched wits and won without collapsing in on herself due to her school-girl crush. Peter was at the kitchen counter first, his eyes widening as he surveyed the dozens of different bottles of alcohol. It seemed excessive for one person to have this much booze to themselves, but as Max studied the various labels, she assumed Johnny was the sort of guy who actually enjoyed hosting parties.
"I need to downsize," he told them, appearing at her side suddenly and grabbing a bottle of vodka and Goldschläger—both of which were fairly full. "Pick as many as you want to tide you over."
"Why the sudden need to get blindingly drunk?" Max asked absently. She tucked a bottle of rum under her arm and searched for a second one: this one had maybe three shots left in it. Peter stood to her left, his hands in his pockets and eyebrows furrowed, scrutinizing everything with what she assumed was an untrained eye.
"I think we've all had a tough couple of weeks," Johnny said, his voice quiet. "Nothing helps you forget that like seeing the bottom of a bottle."
She looked at him, and instead of throwing out a flippant or judgemental remark, Max nodded. She could have used a bottle of something the night Nolan died. Hell, she would have happily sat in a drunken bliss for days if it meant she didn't need to think about him—or the way his face looked when they shot it off.
Or the pool of blood, dark on the tile floor of the museum.
Blinking back the emotion those thoughts brought her, Max wiped under her nose and grabbed an unopened bottle of raspberry vodka.
"Will you help me with this?" She turned to see what Peter had in his hands, and her eyebrows shot up when she saw the name: Tequila Bonita.
Max let out a chuckle. "I'll have a shot or two…" She then nudged Johnny and pointed at the bottle in Peter's hands. "Lemon wedges?"
"But of course." He set his drinks on the table and flitted over to the fridge, rustling around for a moment. Max placed a hand on Peter's when he reached for another bottle.
"If you're drinking tequila, that's all you'll need," she insisted. No need for anyone to die from alcohol poisoning. He looked down at the bottle.
"I normally just drink beer."
"Beer is for frat boys and truckers," Johnny insisted. He straightened up and held a plastic ziplock bag full of lemon slices. "Let's get this night rolling, shall we?"
Peter and Max exchanged a look as they followed Johnny back to the table. Once settled, she noticed there were three shot glasses next to the bowl of chips, but nothing else.
"Cups?"
"Drink from the bottle, princess," Johnny snickered, untwisting the cap on his vodka and taking a chug. Her mouth watered at the thought of doing any of these drinks without something to water them down with.
"What are we… animals?" She stood up and sauntered over the fridge. "I need something to mellow these out."
"What is this? Your first time?"
She let out a sarcastic laugh, hearing Peter crunch on some more chips, and then grabbed a few cold cans of cola from the back, behind the moldy cheese and bread. They were playing a dangerous game tonight if Johnny intended to simply sit them down and chug back straight spirits, and it wasn't something Max could do anymore.
She had no idea how Johnny could handle it. Once back at the table, she placed two cans of cola in front of Peter, looking at them pointedly, and then popped the tab on one of hers. In the meantime, Johnny unloaded the Jenga tower, pushing in any loose or out of place pieces with surprising care.
"How do we decide who goes first?" Peter asked as Max uncapped her bottle of rum.
"Ceremonial shots to begin," Johnny insisted, setting a shot glass in front of each of them and grabbing Peter's tequila. "Last one to recover goes first."
Max wrinkled her nose as she watched her shot glass fill to the brim with tequila, and then reached over the tower and dragged the bag of lemons to her. After setting one beside each of their little glasses, she took a deep breath and picked hers up.
"Here's to one day murdering every single alien asshole outside," she toasted, raising her glass with a sigh. Both men agreed, and the trio clinked their glasses together. Max hesitated before tipping the glass back against her lip, and when she did, she choked—not literally, but she held the liquid in her mouth briefly before swallowing it. Naturally, it burned the whole way down, and her face puckered as she stuffed a lemon wedge between her lips. Johnny barely had a reaction, though Peter seemed worse than she did. Unfortunately, Max also inhaled a seed from the lemon, and she ended up coughing and sputtering until it was out of her windpipe.
"Last to recover," Johnny told her, pointing at the tower of little blocks. "Start us off."
"The rules are pretty basic," she told them, searching for the perfect first tile to take. "You have to do whatever is written on the block, and if you knock the tower down, you finish your drink."
Max glanced at Peter's full bottle of tequila, and then licked her lips.
"Unless you're Peter," she said suddenly, feeling the need to protect him. "You're not drinking an entire bottle of tequila in one go."
"Spoilsport—"
"You can pump his stomach then," she said as she shot Johnny a serious look. He rolled his eyes and Peter cleared his throat.
"I know how to pace myself," he assured her, to which she nodded. She poked out a center tile from a row in the middle, and then carefully pulled it out the other side—the tower didn't even wobble. Flipping it over between her fingers, she groaned when she read her chicken-scratch writing on the other side.
"Lose a layer," she grumbled.
"I like this game," she heard Johnny state as she dragged her sweater over her head. She tossed it over to the nearby couch, and then took a small swig of her rum. It was bitter for a moment, and then pleasant as it trailed down her throat. She then placed her tile back on the top of the tower—carefully—and gestured for Peter to take a turn.
"So, why couldn't I tell Loki about tonight?" she asked. She could already feel the alcohol warming her stomach, and she leaned back in the chair to get comfortable. Johnny shrugged. "Why was it a big secret if we were just drinking?"
"Buzzkills really put a dampener on the mood," Johnny told her.
"I get to give three shots," Peter interjected brightly. He set his tile back on top. "Two for Max and one for Johnny."
She shot him a glare as she filled her shot glass with rum, and then forced down two shots followed by several large gulps of cola. Johnny did his without a chaser, and once she had recovered, she pressed on.
"Buzzkill?" she repeated as Johnny scoped the tower for the right tile. "Loki isn't… He's not a buzzkill."
Johnny arched an eyebrow at her as he removed a block. "I'm sorry… Have you ever met the guy?"
She frowned and looked at Peter, who shrugged and shoved his hand into the bowl of chips.
"I have."
"Then you know buzzkill is a fairly accurate assessment," he told her. "Huh. Make a rule… Okay. For every shot someone gives me, Max also has to take two."
"What?!"
"This is a fun game," he said again, placing his tile on the top of the tower. She stared at him for a moment, and then took another swig of her rum, effectively finishing the bottle.
"Loki isn't a buzzkill," she snapped. "I mean… Sometimes he can… It just takes him a while to warm up to people."
"Right."
"He's great, okay?"
"I bet he had more fun blowing up Manhattan than he's ever had here," Johnny stated, and she felt her cheeks flush. "Look, I know you like the guy, but you can't just blindly ignore who he is."
"I'm not," she said stiffly. She then focused her attention on pulling out another center block, and the writing instructed her to swap an item of clothing with someone. Wrinkling her nose, she took another sip of her cola and turned to Peter. "We're swapping shirts."
He stopped chewing and glanced down at her chest, probably without realizing, and then nodded. "Oh, yeah, sure."
To his credit, Johnny didn't leer or ogle when Max tugged her t-shirt off, though she did notice Peter's cheeks tint somewhat beneath his glasses when her bra was exposed. Her shirt—her borrowed shirt—was a little tight on him, which seemed to surprise everyone, and she felt instantly more comfortable in baggy attire than she did tight. Though, if she wanted supreme comfort, she could have swapped with Johnny—Sue would have killed him for stretching out her t-shirt.
"What's the deal with you guys anyway?" Johnny asked, pouring himself another shot and slugging it back. He sucked in his cheeks this time, seeming more affected than he was earlier. "I mean, are you guys like… a thing? How did you get stuck with him?"
"I'm not stuck with him," she mumbled. Clearing her throat, she sat up a little straighter and watched Peter go for another block—the tower wobbled a little. "We… It's a long story."
"Long and complicated?"
"Aren't they always?"
He winked at her when she looked at him, and Peter held up his block questioningly.
"What?"
Max quickly read the tile. "Pick a colour, and whoever is wearing it has to take a shot."
"Grey."
"That isn't a… Whatever."
All three of them were wearing the shade in one way or another, and after this shot of vodka, Max actually started to feel it. Her body felt warm—warm and relaxed—and she was beginning to lose the feeling on the inside of her cheeks. She touched them both tentatively, and then grinned when Johnny made a dramatic pull from one of the side blocks.
As the game wore on, Max wished Loki was sitting across from her. Instead, whenever she looked up and over the increasingly wobbly Jenga tower, the bowl of chips stared back. She should have defended him more. Her drunken mind drifted between the now and her thoughts, and she wondered if she should have left when Johnny made fun of Loki and Peter said nothing to counteract it.
She wasn't having any less fun with Loki absent: she didn't need a man to enjoy herself in the company of others.
For the most part, Max's drunken conscience felt guilty for not including Loki in something that turned out to be a lot of fun. Max and Peter teased Johnny mercilessly as the tower collapsed on his turn, but instead of forcing him to chug down the remainder of one of his bottles, they split the liquid between the three and downed it after clinking their shot glasses together—three times over.
The room beyond the table was starting to spin at that point, and Max stumbled to her feet and wandered toward the fridge. She clamped her hand down on the handle, but it wouldn't open.
"What—"
"Pull the door, you idiot," Johnny snorted, and she whirled back to glare at him, sliding on her socked feet across the tile. He slumped back in his chair, grinning. "Who pushes a fridge?"
"I… You… Fuck off," she slurred, wrenching it open and retrieving his bag of bread. The expiry date was a little blurry when she tried to read the tiny font, but it was clearly after said date—the loaf felt more solid than it should. Still, even in her intoxicated state, she knew she needed something else in her system. Before she returned to the table, she also filled two glasses of water, which sloshed everywhere as she shuffled back.
"Where's mine?"
"You're a t-tank," she giggled, sliding the glass in front of Peter. "Drink up, young one."
"S'fine," Peter mumbled. He seemed to require immense concentration to rebuild the Jenga tower. "M'fine."
She stared, blinking each eye out of sync; he was only on the second tier.
This could take a while.
Johnny stood and, with a bottle in hand, changed the music to something a little less distracting. After taking another small sip of her vodka—which had almost no effect on her tastebuds at this point—and chasing it with cola, Max downed half of her glass of water. Some logical, sober part of her brain insisted she drink it, or her hangover would be brutal in the morning. Johnny's would undoubtedly be the worst, and fucking Peter Parker would probably be up and active as though nothing had happened.
"Come on," she groaned, grabbing three discarded blocks and setting them on the slowly growing tower. "S'not difficult to put… to put blocks on blocks."
"It's a work of art!" Peter snapped, arms flailing dramatically as she continued to stack tiles. "You're ruining it! You're ruining everything!"
"God," she giggled, though it came out as snort rather than the word itself.
Once they had the tower resurrected, Johnny slid back into his chair and they started the game anew, though Max wondered if she'd be able to make it through another round. Shots slid down like water now, and her actual water tasted unpleasant.
Concerning.
Sort of.
They were two rounds into the second game when Peter drew the tile she had been hesitant to make earlier in the day, and she leaned in when he held it out to her.
"Secret secrets," she told him, squinting at the letters—which flickered on the tile. "We all share a s-secret. Never leaves this room."
Max looked between both men, who seemed to be staring sheepishly at their drinks. She then nudged Peter.
"Go!"
There was a drawn-out moment of silence, until he finally cleared his throat and took a swig of his tequila.
"Okay, okay," he stammered, holding up his hands. His eyes appeared impossibly small, and Max held in a giggle. "I… I took credit for my dad's work. His… stuff. His formulas. His work. It got me a job and it g-got me a scholarships."
Johnny's eyebrows shot up when she looked at him, and she whispered. "Secret secrets."
"Someone else go," Peter demanded. He then reached around in the empty bowl of chips for a moment, and upon undoubtedly realizing he had finished everything inside, reached for her loaf of bread and pulled off a chunk.
"I tell people I fucked every single woman in my pictures," Johnny told them, pointing in a circle around his head. "I tell them… I tell them I did, but I didn't. I jus' like photography."
"M'impressed," Max mumbled. Johnny frowned for a moment, and then swiveled back in his chair and pointed to the picture of the woman above the sink. Legs and arms splayed, it was a long photo that showed her luscious curves.
"No, I… I did it with that one," he said, as though it were an afterthought. "But none of the other ones. And no one since last year. I just… I… Don't tell."
"Secret secrets," she reminded him, tapping her nose when he glanced back at her. Peter nudged her arm and gestured for her to speak, and she took a deep breath. There were plenty of silly, meaningless things she could have said.
Instead, she said the one secret she wanted to keep hidden, blurting it out like her life depended on it.
"I watched my brother die," she said, each word distinctly pronounced, etched on her tongue with painful clarity. "They shot him in the face."
Her head was spinning—spinning and swirling and empty.
"Jesus Christ, Max." It was Johnny who spoke up first.
"M'sorry," she said, breaking off a piece of bread and popping it on her mouth. "Am I being buzzkill?"
She thought she'd feel something when she said it—sadness, happiness, relief. But Max felt absolutely nothing in that moment, and she assumed the half-empty bottle of vodka had, in fact, numbed everything.
"Secret secrets," she said again, placing a finger to her lips—and missing by an inch. "Tell no one… I don't want… I…"
She swallowed down whatever words tried to climb up her throat, and then took another drink.
"Max?"
At first, she thought she was imagining Loki's voice. However, when she heard her name again, she spun around in her chair, a grin spreading across her lips. Sure enough, Loki lumbered out of the hallway and into the apartment, a scowl on his face.
"Hi," she trilled, drunkenly waving at him as she jiggled her legs—positively bouncing with excitement, her omission forgotten. "M'game's a success!"
He looked between Johnny and Peter, and when she glanced back at them, she noticed both men were busily fixing themselves more drinks.
"Is this what you've been doing?" he demanded softly, eyebrows furrowing. He then placed a hand on her arm, and he felt cooler than usual. "Come along… It's getting late."
"We're not done," Max protested, shaking her head. She shook it too much—it felt fun to do so—and when she stopped, the room kept going. "The tower'still up."
"How much have you had to drink?"
Max felt his fingers on her cheek before she saw them, and she reeled back, swatting him away.
"I dunno."
"Well, it's more than enough." His grip was now on her arm again. "Come to bed."
"No."
"Max." He started to pull her upward. "Come along to—"
"No!" She clamped her hands down on the seat of her chair and held strong, glaring at him. "No, m'staying here!"
He stepped back with a huff. "Max, enough… Get up and—"
"We're goin' t'keep drinking," she rambled, "because I want to."
"Honestly, Max, you're being childish—"
"You're not my dad!" The words tumbled from her mouth before she could stop them. "You don' tell me what to do and where to be and go and do." She blinked a few times, her eyes staying closed longer than necessary. "You're not my boyfriend either, apparently, so you def-definitely can't tell me what t'do!"
"Max!"
"And you don' get t'jus' swoop in here and pick me up either!" Her fingernails dug into the wood of the chair. "You're not some doll!"
His mouth opened and closed several times. "What—"
"I'm not your doll," she clarified, looking both up and down her nose at him. "You can't just… You can play if you want, but I'm gonna stay till we finish."
Satisfied for one reason or another, Max turned in her chair and stared pointedly at the tower. No one said anything in the lull that followed, and she realized she was shaking as she listened to Loki storm off. When the door slammed down the hall, she set her forehead down on the table, sighing noisily. Dizzy.
Sitting up slowly, she noticed the three shot glasses placed in front of her. Peter was chewing on a slice of bread, and Johnny appeared to be mixing his two bottles of alcohol together. Without another thought, she downed all three—and that last thing she remembered of the evening was reaching for a block and putting her hand through the tower, knocking it over and collapsing in on herself in a fit of giggles.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
BLEGH. For those of you that follow my tumblr, you'll understand why my update was so late. My laptop up and died last week, and I had to get my hard-drive replaced, and it was this whole ordeal. I didn't lose any of my work, thankfully, but I lost time working on my writing project in the meantime, and once I got it back, I spent an entire day catching up on my work.
And now my wrists are literally oozing in pain. My ghostwriting job is due in two weeks, and a part of me sort of wants to put this on hold until I finish it. I doubt I'll do it… I can't turn off the muse for this story, but I think for my health and sanity, I need to plug away at it slowly. Once this specific job is done, I'm not taking any more writing gigs for the rest of the year—so this baby will be the only writing I'm working on for the rest of 2013! But, for the next two weeks, maaaybe lower your expectations for updates.
ANYWAY. I had fun writing a drunk Max again… It's been a while since I've had her totally inebriated. She makes some bad decisions relationship-wise when she drinks, but there you have it.
I was having some thinkie thoughts about her, as I do most of the time, and Loki in this story, and I came to the conclusion that Max is a brave person when it comes to the social sphere. She doesn't rely on anyone to go to parties or outings, and if Loki won't go with her somewhere, she shrugs it off and goes alone. Loki, on the other hand, feels like her opposite these days, and I think that's where a lot of their issues are starting to spring up from.
Also, drinking Jenga is one of the few drinking games I happily partake in. So. There's a bit of me for you.
I have the next seven or eight chapters planned—I've been writing outlines at work on really slow days, which has been fun.
Righto, no more wrist capacity to write tonight. I love all my darlings out there! Thank you for reviewing and following and favouriting and adding me on tumblr! YOU'RE THE BESTEST!