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It’s past three, or maybe four, Opie had lost track of time about four beers ago, and has been pleasantly floating in liminal space since. The concrete was cold under his ass, beer warm in his hand from nerves, or the broken icebox, or whatever the fuck. Just him, his stupid sweaty hands and a few stragglers in leather mini skirts, and Jax Teller.
Opie doesn’t dare look to the side, not while the girls are still making moon eyes at Jax. He’s not sure why, but some disembodied part of his mind that always sounds meanly like Donna pipes up, you don’t wanna see him making moon eyes back. He narrows his eyes at the patch of concrete between his boots, head hanging heavy on his neck as he listens to Jax bid the girls goodnight.
“Goddamn,” he mutters, wry, and Opie just grunts. It’s that haze of drunkenness when words are a little difficult to get up past the voicebox. Perfect. Jax can make moon eyes at whoever the hell he wants, it’s no skin off Opie’s ass if Jax wants to pick up some skinny blonde whatshername to pass the time.
He takes a long swig from his lukewarm beer, and finally risks that glance to the side. “Hey,” he murmurs, and when Jax turns his face he’s lit suddenly angelic by the sketchy fluorescent nearby. Too pretty for a biker, too pretty to be a bad boy, Prince Charming indeed. Whatever Opie had meant to say has died on his lips. He swallows once, mouth dry and brain weaving for sense. Jax smiles, real slow like he knows exactly what caught Opie speechless.
“Hey,” Jax echoes, the same voice he used on those girls just now. Pitched low and inviting and just bad boy enough to make Opie want to scoff. Jax usually knew better to try that schtick with him, so he must be drunk as well. His eyes are half lidded, lazy and glazed, and he snorts before turning away. “You just noticed me here?” he asks, knocking his cap down over his eyes as he settles back against the wall they’re sitting against.
“I ain’t that drunk,” Opie snaps, affronted, and doesn’t miss the slow curl of Jax’s smile from beneath his cap. “Ain’t nobody drunk enough to not notice you turning up.” Jax’s presence is like a ripple, a sonic bite of energy through a crowd. Lights seemed brighter, beer less shitty, the weight of everything a little lighter.
Fuck, maybe he is that drunk. He hasn’t caught himself rhapsodising about Jax like this for years, not since he grew up and out of old habits. He drops his gaze to the concrete again, away from the distracting curl of the ends of Jax’s hair, the worn softness of his t-shirt and his gold summer tan. He glows through the dark, through the uneasy, sickly fluorescent light, like something unnatural. Then again, there had always been something magic about him. Opie finishes his beer, sends the bottle flying in a high arc to smash a few feet away.
“Nice,” Jax comments, a grin in his voice, and suddenly they’re fifteen again. Rowdy, drunk, smoking Gemma’s stolen cigarettes and smashing bottles because they had shit-all else to do. Opie grins at the floor, digs in the pocket of his cut for his smokes to avoid the itch for another beer. Definitely not a good idea.
“Good night?” Opie offers, mumbled around the cigarette in his mouth. Jax shrugs expansively, chin tipped to his chest, his face obscured by that hat.
“Could’ve been better,” Jax says, and Opie doesn’t know how to interpret that so he doesn’t try. Just exhales a lungful of smoke heavenward and settles himself more comfortably against the concrete.
“What,” he mumbles, “No tail?”
The noise Jax makes at that is caught midway between a laugh and a cough. He thumps his chest, his plastic cup of liquor spilling over his other hand. “Nah,” He manages, and tips his head to the side, grimaces. “Nothin’ good.”
“Too bad,” Opie says, and silence falls between them. Jax takes a sip of his drink, clears his throat a couple times. Opie smokes his cigarette down to the filter, flicks it away and lights another. “Still hung up on Wendy?”
“Sure,” Jax says, and he sounds tired down to his bones with it. Opie steals a glance his way, catches the twist of his mouth. It’s not sad, just a little bitter, ugly. Opie can understand that better than sadness. Silently, he knocks his knee against Jax’s and watches the bitter set of his mouth curl into something softer, more private. The prickle of heat that follows feels like a rash all over him, and there’s something juvenile and daring about letting his knee rest against Jax’s.
The fluorescent above the door buzzes insistently, and it’s so quiet in the lot that Opie wonders absently if everyone cleared out, or passed out. “‘S everyone gone?” he asks, barely above a whisper, and Jax laughs at that. A short, amused bark.
“Why?” he asks, that lethargic bad boy drawl again. “You got any plans?”
“Do you?” Opie asks, crushing his cigarette out on the concrete next to him. Jax is still wearing that black cap pulled down low over his eyes. It’s nighttime, there’s no need for it beyond being obnoxious, or childish, or both. Opie knocks it back with his knuckle, just so he can see the blue of Jax’s eyes in the tired strip light. Jax laughs again, those eyes wrinkle and Opie feels something warm settle into his chest, reaching where the beer couldn’t.
“We gotta stop doin’ this,” Jax murmurs, that half-lit grin still strung crooked across his face. Then he pulls his cap off the rest of the way, and lets Opie tug him close by the collar of his cut.
The leather is worn butter-soft in Opie’s hand, the patches rasping against the calluses on his thumbs. Jax is pliant in his grip, and it’s only when they come together like this that Opie remembers how smaller Jax is than he seems. He can puff himself up pretty big, like an angry cat, but when Opie’s hands are on him he realises just how small he can be. Or maybe it’s Opie, as oversized as ever. Jax’s mouth is insistent, sloppy and drunk, and Opie tugs him closer and closer until he can feel the heat of him pressed against his chest. He can imagine that Jax can feel the pounding of his heart against him, kicking up a notch when Jax’s hand comes to grip his jaw. Opie clutches at his hair, a fistful, not too tight to pull but enough to make Jax grin into the kiss.
“This ain’t a fight,” he murmurs, and presses a kiss to Opie’s jaw, his throat, teeth skimming over his adam’s apple, enough to make Opie melt. “You always forget that, Ope.”
Jax tastes like American Spirits and whiskey, and it’s only because he knows him that Opie doesn’t push him away. Prick cigarettes, and Opie could never stand whiskey. “And I ain’t one of your girls.” Opie growls, and their teeth click together as Jax grins. He pulls away enough to give Opie a quick once over, and in the low light his hair is a halo around his face. Opie touches his cheek, and Jax smirks.
“Could never mistake you for anything pretty, Ope,” he says, and slings his knee over one of Opie’s, settles in to kiss him stupid.
It’s almost too easy to settle into the familiar press of Jax’s mouth, the way he likes to stroke down the column of Opie’s neck, just behind his ears to make him shiver. Still the same as he’s ever been, comfortingly, solidly Jax. Opie’s hands slide up over his cut, under his worn thin t-shirt to grip hold of his waist. Jax huffs out what could have been a moan, or a laugh, a noise of encouragement, but it’s lost to the slide of their lips and their tongues. It’s the drunkenness that’s familiar, the thread of alcohol in his blood letting him open up his mouth under Jax’s for him to do whatever he likes. Jax’s fingers dip to his jaw, curl at his nape, gripping, pressing, hard enough like Opie’s grip on Jax’s hair was hard enough. That’s familiar too.
Eventually, a crash from inside the clubhouse startles them apart, and they hold each other’s drunk, surprised gaze for a second before dissolving into stupid, boyish laughter. Opie feels light inside, for once. The cut doesn’t weigh as heavy as it normally does, not with the smell of Jax still heavy in his nose. He felt drunk on more than just the beer, and Jax looked like he could feel it too. Blue eyes near grey in the steadily lightening dawn, hazy like he’d gotten more than a rough, fumbling make out session.
“Something about this always reminds me of being eighteen,” Jax says, voice shot, and Opie has to laugh at that. He settles back against the wall, tugs the front of his shirt straight where Jax had pulled it askew. Jax settles in next to him, grabs his hat from the ground before settling it back on his head, brim pulled around to the back.
“Begging Gemma to let us borrow the Cadillac so we could fool around in the back.”
Jax’s eyes are fond when they settle on him, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You think she ever caught on?”
Opie scratches a hand through his beard, grimacing at the thought. “Can’t get anything past her.”
“True,” Jax says, and laughs, shakes his head. He looks brighter, happier in the watery dawn light, his hair mussed at the back from where Opie’s hand had been. “Man, she never gave me shit for it if she did know.”
“Yeah,” Opie says, and taps his pack of smokes against his palm. His lips feel kiss-heavy, and he wishes he wasn’t so pleased about that. Jax always managed to reduce him to the too-tall, awkward fifteen year old he’d been when they had first met. “I missed out on the treatment your girlfriends got.”
Jax’s smile widens, and his casts a furtive little glance Opie’s way. He looks decidedly impish in the low light, with his golden hair and lips kissed red. “Maybe she was tryna scare them away so I wouldn’t move on from you.”
“As if you ever could, Jax Teller,” Opie murmurs, and coaxes Jax forward for another kiss, heart burning up under his ribcage when he shakes his pretty blond head and goes willingly.