Title: One for the road

Jack's boot tapped incessantly against the concrete wall as he lay on the cot in his cell. Tap, tap, tap, tap. There was no tune to it, just an endless drumming beat of monotony. Tap, tap, tap, tap.

'Are you going to do that all night?' a guard asked him. He had a youthful face and a look that said he couldn't take much more. Like Jack was torturing him one tap at a time.

'Don't let him get to you, Avanaren,' the other guard said.

'What else am I gonna do?' Jack argued. 'Not exactly stimulating being in here.'

Jack's second guard, older than the first, leaned closer to the bars, studying Jack. 'You could think about what you want for breakfast and let us know. It'll be the last thing you get before we take you to the wall to be shot.'

Jack sat his head up at that, arms still clutched behind it. 'Breakfast? I'm sentenced to be executed and the last meal you're gonna offer me is breakfast?' This world was even more backward than he thought. He'd at least been looking forward to tucking into something more substantial than a short stack. They probably didn't even know what maple syrup was, let alone bacon. He mentally groaned. Bacon. He was going to die never having had bacon ever again.

You bit off more than you could chew, he told himself. It hadn't even really been worth the payout, but he'd done it anyway. He'd probably gotten sloppy on account of it. That's what had gotten him busted.

He'd only been in this little jail cell for forty eight hours. Still, it was long enough for someone to have passed judgement on him. For what he'd been caught doing he expected a few years breaking rocks on some remote outpost. Instead they'd thrown the book at him, and pretty much everything else, including the kitchen sink. What was a little bit of illegal importation between friends, anyway? Certainly not the death penalty. These crazy little backwater planets were so damn uptight!

The older guard, Connit, leaned closer to the bars. 'So? Thoughts? You don't put in your request now, we can't promise you'll get anything.'

Avanaren, his younger accomplice and on duty buddy, looked apologetic. 'It's not our fault. Really. We get told we have to shoot someone in the morning and… well, it's a job.'

'Yeah,' Connit agreed. 'I mean, who are we to say whether you deserve it or not. You seem like a decent enough guy, but maybe you like to kill people for fun.'

'Never for fun,' Jack replied. He couldn't say the same of his last partner. 'Like you say, it's a job. In some jobs you gotta kill people.'

'Well, just think about it and let us know.'

Jack leaned back on his cot and sighed. He'd been in a lot of scrapes and been close to death plenty of times, but he'd never had time to stop and think about it. He'd certainly never had to contemplate a final meal.

If he was going to die out there in the middle of nowhere, he wasn't going to face up to it sober. Death felt like an inglorious end now when he looked back on his life. Thirty five was not a life fully lived. It was a life barely started and he still felt like his best years were ahead of him. Or should have been but for his current predicament. Sweet goddesses, he needed a drink. His montage of greatest hits flashing before his eyes shouldn't be reviewed in the harsh light of sobriety. Breakfast could take a hike. Booze was what he needed. He was going to at least be floating on cloud nine when the bullets came for him.

'Hypervodka,' he said. He turned his head to look at his two minders. 'That's what I want for my final meal. Three of them. No. Wait. Make it four.' Four was a good number to really take the edge off. It would probably take more than that, like his sense of awareness. That was for the best. He didn't want to find himself in front of the firing squad crying for his mother when the end came.

Connit nodded and walked off, leaving Jack alone with Avanaren.

'So… you two been working together long?' Jack asked.

'Two years.'

Jack nodded thoughtfully. 'Two years. Just work? Nothing else?'

There was a youthful look of innocent confusion. 'What do you mean?'

'Partners at work, partners in bed…'

Avanaren's eyes went wide like saucers. 'No! Nothing like that!'

Jack felt disappointed. 'Oh. Really? My gut usually isn't wrong about these things.'

'Well, it is. Completely wrong.'

Jack rolled his eyes. There it was. Denial. The great revealer. He shrugged and leaned by the wall, just waiting for something to happen; anything to happen. Being down here was just so damn boring if his babysitters weren't going to entertain him.

Connit's footfalls preceded his return. Jack assumed he'd gone off to tell someone Jack's final wishes for the morning. Instead he came back carrying a large silvery bottle and a glass. 'I don't think you should wait until morning, if this is all you want,' Connit said, passing bottle and glass both through the gap in the bars.

Jack's eyebrows raised at the offer. So far his experience here had been largely unfriendly. 'Just had this kicking around in the back of the cupboard, huh?'

'You complaining?'

'Hell, no.'

'You've only got one night left to enjoy it. Why not have the whole bottle?'

Touche. Jack snapped the cap off and poured a generous glass, lifting it to his nose to smell it. It curled the hairs inside his nose just as he expected it to. At first it was a sip, letting it gently warm his mouth and then the back of his throat. A good bottle by all accounts. The rest of the glass went down easily and he pursed himself a second, throwing that back quickly and refilling again.

The next one he'd make last a little longer as he wandered slowly around the small cell, taking in his cot and a small toilet in the far corner. The place wasn't made for a long term stay, that much was clear. Not that he needed to worry about things like that. He had booze now and that made everything just that little bit less worrisome. Still, he didn't like to drink alone and he had two other people here who could surely provide him some entertainment for the evening.

Jack moved across the narrow space and swayed voluptuously in front of the bars, feeling the tingling, happy effects of the first two drinks rapidly making themselves known. He was a good drunk - even a great drunk - but hypervodka could send even the most seasoned drinker into a speedy spiral of carefree joy, or comatose. One or the other. For Jack it was usually the former.

'C'mon fellas. Dance with me,' he said, swinging his hips against the bars. When they didn't bite he turned serious again, still able to control himself if he really needed to. 'I'm gonna die tomorrow and you brought the whole bottle,' Jack said, swirling it around in his hand. 'C'mon. One drink. You wouldn't deny the final wishes of the condemned man, would you? I'm not as drunk as I make out. Yet. It just makes it feel like we're having more fun.' He waggled the bottle again, tipping a generous shot into a glass and sliding it across the floor and under the door. 'Go on. My treat, for being such good sports. Half each. Not even a full glass. Who's gonna tell?'

Reluctantly, Avanaren picked up the glass and sipped as if maybe it was poisoned and he wasn’t sure. Jack could tell from the slight unclenching of his jaw that he enjoyed it. Which was good, because Jack found him a lot more handsome when he wasn't frowning. He passes the glass to Connit who tossed the remainder back like a pro.

'Well deserved,' Jack said, congratulating them as he took a sip straight from the bottle before pushing it through the bars to top the glass back up. 'Never drink alone,' he told them in a serious tone. 'Always a mistake to drink alone.' He knew himself to be a maudlin drunk when he was on his own. People made the experience more enjoyable. You needed someone to laugh with, to share stories with, to… well, maybe not with these two given his current situation.

'We shouldn't,' Avanaren said, even as Connit took the second glass on offer and down the whole of it before Jack refilled it.

'He's right. Who's going to know? It's just one drink. No one said it was part of that job description to make the prisoners miserable. Death's bad enough isn't it?'

'He's right you know,' Jack said, coaching Avanaren to drink from the refilled glass. Eventually he did drink and Jack topped him up again whilst the first was still settling in his stomach. One of the nice things about it was how quickly it made the world go hazy at the edges, suffusing everything in a lovely peach coloured glow. At least that's how it felt to Jack.

Jack tipped the bottle back and took a few deep swallows. There was still more than half a bottle left yet so he was generous about it. It burned down the back of his throat in a good way. Maybe he should have gone slower but he was feeling more relaxed now and getting drunk was almost never a bad thing.

'I'm ready for that dance now,' he said, 'but you're gonna have to come in here for it.' Jack moved around on his own for a bit, like he had an invisible partner.

Connit moved his hand to his belt and wrapped a hand around his keys.

Avanaren was getting tipsy but still lucid enough to stumble forward and stop Connit. 'Shouldn't,' he said, already slurring a little.

'He's not gonna do anything. He's off his head. It's just a little party.'

Jack grinned. 'I've got half a bottle of that world's best drink and two lovely sexy boys,' he sing-songed. 'I'm not going anywhere. Drink with me, dance with me. Some of us only have one night left to enjoy it!'

Jack's hand shot through the bars and grabbed a fistful of Connit's shirt, pulling him forward for an unsolicited kiss. Connit resisted only a second before letting Jack have his way. 'More where that came from,' Jack promised him, spilling a little of the booze over the top of the glass as he hung loosely from his left hand. 'But you'll have to step into my parlour.'

At first he'd considered this a cunning escape plan, getting his captors drunk enough to slip their keys in his direction, but perhaps he'd had a little too much. All his brain wanted now was to strip those boys of their uniforms and have his way with them. And remarkably, both were giving each other the eye and Connit's keys were sliding into the lock. Jack might be dead tomorrow, but tonight he was going out with a bang.

When Jack woke up he felt the confused haze that came with having drunk far more than even he could cope with. Most of his recollections were a blur, and when he cracked open an eye to try and figure out what the heavy thing lying across his chest was, he knew for certain he'd lost a lot more than just an hour or two. He was lying naked on the small prison cot, which in and of itself wasn't necessarily unusual. What was unusual was the handsome, very slovenly hungover, and still asleep prison guard draped across his body. Also gloriously naked. Avanaren. Couched up against Jack's side and back, between him and the concrete wall, was yet another warm body. He could already feel how close it was pressed, getting that first teasing bodily reaction of the morning pushing against his buttocks. Connit, he assumed, though his head was turned too far the other way to be entirely certain on that. Jack couldn't be sure what had happened last night, but he knew enough to know he was hungover in a very big way, and sore in many other places that he could attribute to one thing and one thing only. It was almost a shame he'd missed most of it, though he'd clearly been there for it if the ache was anything to go by. What a pair those two made, he thought. What a threesome they all made. A shame he had to die today, but then again, if he could have had his choice of ways to spend his final hours, he guessed this was very much at the top of his list. Horrendously drunk, well fucked and waking up in a fabulous pile of nakedness. The only downside was that he could see the empty bottle lying on its side on the floor. Nothing left to take the edge off the hangover that would hit him like a tonne of bricks in a few hours. A bullet to that head wasn't a bad solution to fix that, albeit it was a one time only solution.

Avanaren squirmed on top of him, waking from his drunken stupor, even as Connit was also stirring. 'Morning gorgeous,' Jack said, wondering what kind of reception he'd get.

'God,' Connit moaned, resting his sore head against Jack's ear. 'I need a drink.'

'All gone,' Jack apologised. 'Sorry.' Connit merely groaned and slumped back against him.

Avanaren lifted his own head so that he was looking directly at Jack. His eyes were glazed with sleep and other things. 'Some party.'

Jack let his hand rest on Avanaren's bare buttock. 'It sure was.' Then he sighed. 'Time to die now though, huh?' He felt bad for them. He was pretty sure they didn't want to kill him. It was just a job. And after last night it was a real come down. The morning after so often was.

Avanaren ran a hand slowly across his chest, lips trailing behind it and settling on teasing Jack's exposed nipple. 'Just a little bit longer?'

'Hey, I never said we had to do this straight away.'

'Or ever,' Connit added, pressing in close from the side. 'We could always just say we did it. Once there's no body, they just assume it's done.'

Jack felt surprised by this turn of events. 'You can do that?'

'We can do anything,' Avanaren purred, still riding the tail end of his drunken high. He was the younger, more pliable of the two, but he was going to be hard to kick out of bed. They both would be. He remembered enough to know that he'd enjoyed them both, separately and together.

'Of course, you couldn't be seen around here ever again,' Connit warned him.

Jack accepted that. Pretty hard for a convicted criminal sentenced to death to be seen wandering the streets. 'Pity. I was hoping to see where this might lead.' If nothing else he was enjoying watching the pair of them enjoying themselves and each other. Getting to be part of it was just a bonus. 'At least the party doesn't have to end for you two.'

It was Avanaren's turn to look surprised. 'Us?'

Jack's smile was coy. 'Oh, don't tell me you're gonna treat this as a one night stand. You two are so cute together. You should definitely carry on without me.'

Connit wrapped arms around Jack, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. Jack could feel his growing interest. 'But maybe for now we could make sure we tie things off neatly before I go.' Waste not want not, after all.