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“Don’t lose it, don’t lose it!”
“Shut up,” Miller growled at Jasper, trying his hardest to keep the coin balanced on his nose.
“We gotta beat them!” Jasper screeched back.
“I’m going to punch you after this round.”
Monty laughed at the way Jasper gulped and scooted away from his teammate.
With a smirk, Miller angled his head over his cup, dropping his face down sharply, his mouth curving into a triumphant grin when the coin pinged loudly into the cup. Jasper launched upwards unsteadily, arms raised and flailing in victory.
“Smell my socks, losers!” He yelled. “No laundry duty for a month for this fellow.”
“Monroe, I thought you said you were good at this game,” Harper complained, scrunching her nose up in disgust as Jasper started taking his boots off and kicking his grungy, sock-covered feet around in taunting celebration.
“Fucking moonshine,” Monroe mumbled, hiccuping a bit.
“Fucking moonshine,” Miller agreed happily, draining his cup and reaching for another round. “Wanna go again? I’ll let you try and regain your losses.”
“No!” Harper groaned at the same time Monroe yelled, “Hell yes!”
“How about we play a different game?” Monty offered in his dad-voice.
“Can I play?”
Everyone fell quiet as Murphy’s shadow fell on their table. He had been different since coming back to camp, quieter, less hostile–still just as sassy though–because whatever he had encountered out there had change him quite a bit.
Miller frowned, Harper averted her gaze, and Jasper looked at Monty.
“Sure,” Monty said slowly, kicking Monroe under the table when she huffed.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m a dick. I know,” Murphy drawled, plunking down onto the ground between Harper and Monty. “But I’m a dick who wants to get drunk. Sue me.”
There was a long silence before Harper said, “If you drink the share that always ends up pushing Jasper over the edge into karaoke, then by all means, pull up a cup.”
Even Miller snorted in laughter at that, and Monroe slow-clapped in approval at the disgruntled look on Jasper’s face.
“I hate you all,” Jasper muttered as he curled in on himself.
“Why aren’t you getting drunk with our fearless leaders?” Miller probed as Monty pulled out a salvaged deck of cards and began dealing them to everyone for a round of Bullshit.
Murphy rolled his eyes. “Please.”
“What? You’re like ‘important’ now,” Monroe commented. She wasn’t wrong, because Murphy had been the one to warn them about ALIE, and also had played an instrumental part in talking Jaha down to sanity again, saving them all in the process.
“You think I want to deal with their fucked-up company?”
Harper looked up from arranging her cards. “They’re not that bad anymore. Bellamy and Clarke haven’t had a nightmare in months, Raven can move around better than ever, and practically everyone has accepted Lincoln.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he grumbled.
After receiving curious looks, he continued scathingly, “I like getting drunk without having to worry about getting nailed in the head by a wrench Raven meant to aim at Wick, because her precision tanks when she’s more than a few cups under, and how he usually never ducks because then she feels bad and gets all gooey while she looks at his wound. Or having to listen to Bellamy and Clarke yell about whatever-the-fuck boring political, cultural, theoretical, stupidtopic they’re ‘discussing’ while eye-fucking each other the entire time. And don’t get me started on the way Octavia starts feeling up Lincoln while the other two couples are engaging in their weird-ass foreplay. I wish I could burn that image from my brain.”
Dead silence fell over the group again. Harper stared with wide eyes, Jasper looked way too excited, Miller appeared to be in great pain, Monty was trying to keep a straight face, and Monroe–well, Monroe was in a daze right before she started laughing uncontrollably.
“Oh my god,” she wheezed. “Oh my god.”
It set them all off, and even Murphy managed a wry smile.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s the crack team leading us around like they know what the fuck their doing.”
“What the fuck,” Miller gasped, tears starting to leak from the corner of his eyes.
“So I’ll take anything, even you losers, over that insanity any night,” Murphy added.
Monroe shoved her drink across the table, causing it to slosh a bit. “You deserve that way more than me.”
Murphy took the cup and drained it, wincing as the biting liquor went down. “Now are we going to play, or what?”
Later that night, when Camp Jaha’s young leaders exited the Ark–Lincoln with his arms wrapped around Octavia, Wick poking Raven’s side, and Clarke playing with Bellamy’s fingers interlocked with her own–they saw a peculiar sight:
Jasper standing with his arms wrapped around Murphy’s waist, Murphy with an arm slung over Harper’s shoulders, the three of them swaying and belting out off-key lyrics to an old rock song while Monroe, Miller, and Monty yelled out slurred cheers of encouragement from their slouched positions on the ground.
“What the fuck,” Bellamy muttered in confusion and a little bit of horror.
Raven let out a deep belly laugh. “Oh god, why do I not have a camera working yet?”
“Shh, they’re having a good time,” Octavia admonished.
“Should we join them?” Clarke asked.
Lincoln shook his head with a small, wistful smile. “No. Leave them be.”
“I’m down for another round of Scrabble,” Wick offered.
And so to the painful but also wonderful tune of their friends’ happy, inebriated voices, the six leaders turned back into the Ark, content to let them have their fun.
They deserved it, after all.