He’s drunk. Somehow, Hunter’s let himself get drunk and everything is tunneling around his head and sounds have become so overwhelming that they’re no longer intelligible and he’s telling this girl about the colonial history of Tatooine and now she’s kissing him.
Oh.
She’s kissing him and leaning back so he follows her down to hover on all fours over her. They’re on her bed (when did they get on her bed) and he can’t feel his body so it’s nice when she runs her hands down his sides. It’s good pressure like when Wrecker lies on top of him after a hard day and Hunter pushes into it and she laughs and takes him by the front of his shirt and pulls him into another kiss.
Hunter nearly goes cross eyed before remembering that oh he’s supposed to close his eyes. She’s licking him and then their teeth clack together and she’s laughing. She tastes sweet like cough syrup—it must be the drink she’d had earlier—and Hunter’s almost fond of the way her tongue pulls at his.
He moves his mouth down her neck when she pushes him that way and he does something that makes her make a sound and yeah, that’s nice, that sounds good, that makes him push his hips down into her with animalistic intent and she pushes back and finds a way to press herself against his thigh.
His head spins. He’s so drunk. This isn’t good.
"Wait-"
She kisses him again, shoving her thigh between his legs and rubbing.
Sparks fly through his head and it feels good. She grinds up into him and tries to kiss him again, but nothing feels like anything and he wants to feel like something so he says, “bite,” and she nibbles at his collarbone and it feels like wet nothing and he says, “ hard,” and she laughs.
She says something, but sound is still sound and then there’s a sudden reorientation and she takes his shirt off and doesn’t comment, doesn’t say anything about how badly the Kamis fucked him up but then she reaches for his chest–
“No. Here, bite hard.” He climbs back on top of her and wonders when this starts feeling good like it does in the holos.
This doesn’t feel good.
He’s drunk.
He’s drunk and this doesn’t feel good and he doesn’t ever want her to kiss him on the mouth again.
He wants to say stop, but his tongue won’t move right and he can’t hear himself. She pulls back, frowning.
“No, stay, it’s alright, we’re not that drunk.”
Hunter has never been drunk before.
“Stay the night,” she says. “Just to sleep in my bed. We don’t have to keep making out.” She pulls him down into another toothy-tonguey-numb kiss, drags him down into her lap and rubs herself against him.
He laughs because it’s funny and because maybe, sober, he would like this. He’s supposed to like this. “No, I have to go. We’re drunk.” He wrestles his shirt back on. That was the one nice part, he reflects. Being able to take it off without feeling… anything.
“Stay. I want you to stay.”
Hunter doesn’t want to stay.
He leaves.
The next few days are oddly blurry. He sobers up quick enough, wakes with a dry mouth and the edges of a headache, but it’s not the alcohol that’s bothering him. It’s the way he keeps thinking of that night: her mouth on his, the wet slide of her tongue where it felt like it didn’t belong, the press of her hips to his thighs, the noises she’d made. The noises he’d made, remembered in blurry clips and far-off snippets as though it was someone else’s life.
He brushes his teeth four times that first day. He’s too nauseous to eat.
Oddly enough, it doesn’t occur to him to bring it up until nearly a year later. He hadn’t been thinking much about it, but then Echo had been telling stories of Torrent’s escapades at 79’s and the bottle had gone to him and Wrecker had asked, teasing, “How about you, Sarge? Got any stories with any ladies?”
Hunter hesitates for just a moment, hiding it behind a mouthful of whiskey. Then, “Well, there was this one time a while back…”
They’re all staring at him, silent, when he finishes. Tech’s eyes are the widest, but Echo’s are the most intense, boring into his own with the kind of kinship he’d learned not to expect from anyone but the odd civvie, the odd eye he could catch in the street. Suddenly, Hunter understands that Echo understands.
It’s not the time to mention it, though, because Crosshair says, “You never told us about that, Hunter,” like it was something worth mentioning.
“Cross,” Tech begins, but Echo cuts them all off.
“Hunter,” he says. “You know that’s assault, right?”
Hunter sighs and takes another drink. It tastes like her and he swallows quickly. “Yeah, I know, I know, but we were both drunk and it wasn’t that bad, not really.”
“No, that’s pretty bad,” Echo says. “Anything like that is pretty bad.”
Yeah, well, it’s not like Hunter’s ever going to try anything like it again. He’s done with it, with the whole thing. Girls, that is, and the romancing thereof.
He should have known he was never made for it from the start.