Fic: Waking Up In Port Charles

[csi_sanders1129]

Title: The Morning After
Chapters: 1/1
Author: csi_sanders1129
Genre: Drama. Romance. Angst.
Ratings: M (for language)
Word Count: 2,900
Pairings/Characters: Johnny Zacharra/Ethan Lovett
Synopsis: Ethan stumbles out of an unfamiliar hotel bed and into an equally unfamiliar hotel bathroom where he reacquaints himself with what must have been a truly impressive amount of alcohol. “Ugh,” he groans, “what the hell happened to me?”
Comments: Written for the gh_unwrapped prompt ’91: the morning after’ and finished during amnesty week. Characters not mine. I have no idea what’s happening on GH at present, aside from sketchy outlines of whatever my mom bitches to me about - so this is set back in like... 2010 or so? Enjoy!

Ethan wakes up with a splitting headache and the feeling that his stomach is not going to remain a neutral party for very much longer. He stumbles out of an unfamiliar hotel bed and into an equally unfamiliar hotel bathroom where he reacquaints himself with what must have been a truly impressive amount of alcohol.  “Ugh,” he groans, when the nausea finally ceases its assault and he flushes the contents of his traitorous stomach away. He leans back against the wall and the cool tile feels amazing on his too warm skin. “What the hell happened to me?”

Slowly, he gets to his feet and moves to the sink. He is quick to wash the acrid taste of alcohol-tinged vomit from his mouth and is more than happy to find a hotel-sized sample of mouthwash on the edge of the counter. He splashes some cool water on his face and then faces the daunting task of turning on the lights.

He hisses when the bright fluorescent lights register in his head, making his hangover headache pulse in pronounced protest. It had to be done, though, no avoiding it.

With that, he starts in on a quick physical inventory. There’s a gauze covered section of his right forearm that he vaguely remembers required a trip to the ER. There are telling marks on his neck that descend along one of his shoulders and down his chest that suggest some interesting activities had gone on at some point in the evening. Lastly, a perhaps most shockingly, there’s a simple white gold band on his ring finger and he has absolutely no semblance of an explanation for that.

“What the hell happened to me?” He asks himself again.

He is wary of exiting the imagined sanctity of the bathroom. Chances are good that someone else was in bed with him and whoever it is will probably have questions he doesn’t know the answers to. Panic and terror overwhelm his senses as he runs through possible bedmates. Oh God, he thinks, what if it’s Kristina? Please, please don’t be Kristina. No, can’t be. Kritsina’s out of town with her Mom and Molly, phew. Maxie? No way. Who, then? Maybe some random stranger from the bar? He was in a bar last night, wasn’t he?

Reluctantly and only after his stomach threatens to stage another violent revolt, he steps back into the bedroom. The covers fall low over the facedown figure of his mysterious bedmate and that right there is enough of a shock to rival the ring. The wide expanses of a very well defined, but also very male, back are visible and the messy bed-head of his bedmate is familiar in a way that does not suggest an amicable end to whatever went on here.

He is shock still and dead silent as he surveys the room for clues as to how he ended up here. Curtains still wide open means they’d been too drunk to bother thinking of the blinding morning sunlight, which is streaming into the windows but having no impact on his bedmate’s present state of consciousness. Whatever went on was no match for the hotel bed sheets – half of them are on the floor and the mattress is impressively visible. A couple of condom wrappers and a bottle of lotion are strewn about haphazardly on the bedside table. Clothes lay in a scattered path from the door to the bed.

And speaking of clothes, he grabs up the pair of jeans just in front of him, tugs them on over boxers that are mysteriously on backwards – he’ll fix that later, for now he needs to get the hell out of here. A quick check of his pocket turns up a hotel key, his wallet, phone and keys, a hefty receipt for rings that’s charged to a card that isn’t his, and… And, oh god, a New York State Marriage Certificate? This is coupled with a Judicial Waiver that permitted the bypassing of the typical 24 hour waiting period that was customarily required. How the hell had they gotten that in the middle of the night?

There it is, though, their signatures, hastily scrawled and a testimony to just how intoxicated they were, but still legible and probably still legally binding. His sits beside the unfortunately familiar handwriting that reads ‘John Anthony Zacharra.’

Johnny is going to kill him.

Quietly, he returns these items to his pockets – aside from the room key which he leaves behind - finds his hastily discarded t-shirt and jacket, along with his shoes and socks and ducks into the hallway to take his leave. He sneaks away with the distant hope that maybe, possibly, Johnny won’t remember what happened.

 ***

Johnny wakes slowly, blinking against the harsh light of the sun leeching in through curtains that haven’t been drawn. His mouth is dry in the way it always is the morning after a night of too much drinking, but aside from a dull ache behind his eyes, he’s mostly clear headed.

“Hey, morning, guy,” he mumbles quietly, a sated and content smile crossing his face as one arm stretches out to his side where he expects to find his bedmate still sleeping soundly. He comes up empty, and is perplexed when he realizes the sheets are cold beside him, indicating that no one’s been there for a while now. “Ethan?” He calls out, slowly getting to his feet. He finds Ethan’s clothes gone, and no sign of his presence anywhere in the hotel room. He slams his fist against the cold, hard tile in the bathroom and at least that hurts more than waking up alone.

Tense and angry, he cranks the shower to considerably hot and hopes the water will sober him up a little, clear his mind of the lingering cobwebs that make some of his memories of last night hazy and unfocused. He spends a good while under the intensely warm spray trying to figure out what went wrong and he’s come up with nothing by the time he’s out, dry, and dressed.

A cursory search of the hotel room turns up nothing more than evidence for what he already knows to be true. So, without any leads as to why Ethan took off on him, he takes the key card he does find, checks out, grabs a giant cup of coffee in the hotel lobby and heads home.

His bank records mirror what he remembers of the evening’s events. He bought two identical rings at a jewelry store downtown that his family frequents. There’s a charge to the courthouse of a simple $60 for the marriage license and ceremony, and then a much larger withdrawal from an ATM just around the corner from the courthouse that paid off a judge so they didn’t have to wait the requisite 24 hours to do it.  Then there’s the charge for the hotel. But, none of that answers the question of why Ethan left. 

He tries calling, but hits voicemail on each attempt. Either the phone is dead or Ethan is ignoring him and he’s betting it’s the latter option. Maybe Ethan just needs some time, he eventually decides, after he spends a good deal of time pacing back and forth across his living room.

***

Ethan hates that he has to work after his apparently hellish night out. His arm is sore as hell from whatever it was that landed him in the ER – at least he recalls most of that part, now.  It involved working a job with Johnny and then gunfire and stitches and then a bar and mixing pain meds with way too much alcohol and at least that explains how he ended up how he did this morning. It does not, however, explain why Johnny agreed to anything. But he needs the work, especially if Johnny doesn’t react well to what went down.

He spends a long, long night dealing and bartending and he doesn’t get to start closing until something like half past three and since this follows a night of hardly any sleep courtesy whatever it was, he’s pretty exhausted by the time the last customer heads out.

He’s clearing off the bar when he hears the sound of footsteps in the hall leading into the main room. “Closed!” He shouts out, and he really should just go and lock up now.

“Even for me?” Johnny’s voice counters, as he strolls down the steps like he owns the place.

Ethan’s eyes narrow, “Especially for you.”

“I guess your arm still hurts then?” Johnny asks, shrugging out of his jacket and settling it on the back of a nearby chair before he leans across the bar. Ethan notes the easy avoidance of the subject that he’s similarly hoping to ignore.

“I’m sorry, have you tried working an eight hour shift with a six inch gash in your arm? It’s not particularly enjoyable, mate. Especially with bartending and dealing. Also, thank you, so much, for getting me shot.”

“In all fairness, I told you to move and you didn’t listen.”

Ethan doesn’t even know how to respond to that. Especially considering he’d taken the bullet to keep Johnny from getting nailed in the head. “Next time, I’m letting you get shot.”

Johnny laughs and reaches over the bar to grab a deck of cards. He shuffles them automatically, nodding his head in the direction of one of the nearby tables. “Come on, let’s play. I’ll be nice and deal.”

For whatever reason – it certainly isn’t a logical one – Ethan follows.

***

This is going better than Johnny expected. Yeah, they’re completely ignoring the giant elephant in the room, but it’s a start and he isn’t quite willing to push too far on this subject yet. At least not until he knows where Ethan stands.

They’re in the middle of their third game of poker when it finally comes up. “So, ugh,” Johnny starts, tossing down his hand of cards. “I’ll make you a bet. If I win,” he says, eyeing his hand of cards carefully, “I get to ask you a question and you answer it. No bullshit.”

“And if I win?”

“What do you want?”

“I’ll let you know when I win,” Ethan answers with a smirk.

“Fine,” Johnny agrees, and watches anxiously as he calls Ethan’s hand and he lays down a full house, kings over nines. Not a bad hand, but not as good as Johnny’s royal flush. “Nice try.”

Ethan glares at him, eyes narrow and clearly suspicious. “What do you wanna know?”

He moves in closer, leaning over the table, and now he’s really playing his hand, laying his cards on the table because he can’t pretend to not remember after he asks this question. He can’t brush it off anymore, can’t blame the alcohol or anything else because he’d wanted it, damn it. He’d wanted Ethan and last night Ethan had wanted him, too. Johnny takes a deep breath, levels his gaze on Ethan’s jittery and anxious form and asks. “Why did you leave this morning?”

This question clearly throws Ethan, who’s opening and closing his mouth in vain attempts to form words that are not at all successful. “I...” he starts, but stops. “What, you...” and then, finally, some semblance of coherency with, “I thought you’d be pissed if...”

“If I woke up with you?” He finishes for the other man. Okay, he can understand that. Last night had pretty much been the first time he’d let himself act on his long-standing feelings for Ethan, almost getting shot and then dealing with the injury he’d caused Ethan had been enough a push and the alcohol they’d both imbibed had cemented his decision to act.

Ethan stands, walks back to the bar and goes straight for the whiskey that Johnny tends to favor. He grabs two glasses and pours a more than generous amount into each of them, but Johnny follows after him and catches Ethan’s wrist before he gets the glass up to his mouth because he needs him to be sober this time.

“Did you want to stay?” Johnny asks now, even though he expects a sarcastic quip about only winning one honest answer with his stupid royal flush. “If you knew I wouldn’t have flipped out, would you have?”

Ethan hesitates, a long long long moment passes and Johnny worries that Ethan might just take off on him rather than actually answer the question. “Are you saying you weren’t mad when you figured it out?” That’s not an answer to his question, but it’s a start.

Johnny sighs, contemplates downing some of the whiskey himself but he needs to be sober for this, too. “I was far more surprised at waking up alone than I would have been to find you there.”

“You’re saying that you wanted this.” It’s not a question, but his voice is dripping with disbelief.

“You did, too. At least you did last night. I know we were both drunk, but I... I didn’t think you were that drunk. Fuck, do you remember any of it?” Johnny drops his head into his hands because of course Ethan doesn’t want this. Why the hell would he?

“Gets fuzzy pretty early on, I think. I remember the job, and the ER. And then a bar. Only bits and pieces after that.” Ethan admits, though he does so reluctantly because he can see guilt and anger flickering on Johnny’s face as he factors in the effects of the pain meds in combination with the alcohol.

Johnny knocks the whiskey glasses off the edge of the bar with a violent swing of his arm. The glass shatters on the floor on the other side and he’s mumbling out a streak of “Fuck, fuck, fucking fuck,” that makes Ethan regret his admission. “Fuck, Eth’. I’m sorry, fuck. I’ll... the Judge I bribed to get the Waiver last night - I’ll call him. The paperwork probably hasn’t gone through yet, I’ll get him to lose it or...Fuck.” He drops his head into his hands, leaning over the counter and feeling like he might possibly be sick. “And last night. We didn’t - nothing much happened, really. Too drunk. You passed out before we could and... I’ll fix it, okay?”

“Whoa, whoa,” Ethan says, hands landing on Johnny’s tension filled shoulders as he tries to get the other man to stand up and look at him. “Wait. Hold on. I might not remember anything, but I don’t remember saying I didn’t want it, either. So slow down. You’re a little overwhelming on surprising revelations tonight, is all.”

“What?” Johnny asks, voice kind of broken and confused as he watches Ethan carefully, maybe looking for some sign that this is all a big joke.

“I left because I was scared you’d figure out that I wanted to stay with you. And, yeah, the Vegas style wedding was a bit much to take in, but leaving was never about not wanting to be with you, just about avoiding your wrath when you figured it out. But then I didn’t know that you didn’t need to figure it out or that you wanted me, too, and... I’m sorry I left, okay?”

Johnny still looks worried, but some of the tension has left him, leaving him slumped against the counter in utter relief. “Okay,” he breathes, “Okay. Alright, but if you don’t want this and all the shit that’s going to come with it, then tell me now so I can-”  

 Ethan cuts him off by moving forward. There wasn’t much space between them to begin with and he ends up pressed against Johnny’s chest when he stops and by then Johnny’s already kissing him back. One hand settles on Johnny’s hip - there’s a gun there, which Ethan quickly unholsters and sets under the counter - and the other he uses to brace himself on the bar.

“Mm,” Johnny mumbles as he pulls back for air a moment later, teeth nipping lightly at Ethan’s lips. He drags a hand up into the other man’s hair, tugging at the small ponytail affixed low on his head, pulling the elastic band free so he can curl his fingers into Ethan’s hair. He tugs tightly and his free hand slides up under Ethan’s shirt, moving over warm, well-toned skin, where muscles aren’t quite as built as his own but are still noticeably there.

“I’m glad we didn’t do anything last night,” Ethan says, when they break apart again. “I’d hate to have forgotten it.”

“I think you would have remembered that part,” Johnny grins back at him. He flips them around, pinning Ethan against the bar now. “I can still get the Judge to lose the paperwork, if you want me to. Being married to me won’t be a walk in the park - for one, Anthony’s going to flip when he finds out, but I’m in if you are.”

Ethan thinks for a moment - dealing with Johnny’s father (and his own family, for that matter) won’t be easy, but this will have its upsides, too. “I’m in,” he says, pushing Johnny back enough so that he can drag him out of the casino and down to the few bedrooms aboard the Haunted Star. “And I’ll be here in the morning when you wake up this time.”

“Good to know, guy.”

Comments

Perfect

[kittycrackers.livejournal.com]

I like how you approached this particular challenge. I especially enjoyed Johnny's vulnerability and Ethan's confused misunderstanding of the situation as well as how it was eventually resolved. I like how you write this pairing, they just seem to fit together.