Page 31 of Thrown

Toby blinked and flinched back so quickly he knocked the guy behind him. “I never said any such thing.”

“But you think it, I’m sure,” Robbie said. “You and everyone else. You think I’m the dark horse in an otherwise outstanding family.”

Toby could have laughed if he wasn’t so alarmed. “When have I ever?—”

He was cut off as the barman presented them with a small tray filled with pints of the local favorite ale. Robbie turned away from Toby to pick the tray up and didn’t glance back at him as he carried it away from the bar toward the stairs that led to the production crew’s room.

“Unbelievable,” Toby muttered, shaking his head as he followed.

As soon as they reached the private room, Robbie was back to his old, charming self, if that self had ever been charming to begin with. Toby put on an act as well, chatting with anyone who approached him and laughing along with the fun that the crew was clearly having.

“How long have the two of you been together?” one of the sound guys who Toby hadn’t talked to yet asked.

Toby laughed. He’d lost track of how many people had mistakenly though they were together at this point. “It feels like ages,” he said, not caring that it was a lie.

He needed another drink.

Robbie apparently needed one as well. Toby noted that they were both on their second pint by the time the meal was finished and dessert was served.

By the time dessert was done, they were each on their third. Toby was drinking to have fun. That and to cool the frustration that wouldn’t leave him where Robbie was concerned. He had no fucking idea why Robbie was drinking, but knowing his sort, it was probably because he was trying to bury or hide from something.

Of course, the net effect of so much strong ale was that Toby wasn’t as sober as he wanted to be by the time the party broke up and everyone went their separate ways.

“Come on, mate. The hotel is this way,” he told Robbie with a bit of a loose tongue as they started down the street for the hotel.

“I think I embarrassed myself,” Robbie said as they tried to walk a straight line.

“No, you didn’t,” Toby said, slinging his arm around Robbie to keep him from slipping off the curb. “You just had a good time. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I didn’t have a good time,” Robbie insisted, a little too loudly.

“Sure, you did,” Toby said, picking up their pace a little. He had a feeling it would be a good idea to get the two of them off the street before the regret sunk in or the vomiting started.

Not that he was really that drunk. He felt warm and happy and like the armor he usually put on to keep him contained as he fought against the world was gone, but not completely gone.

Robbie, on the other hand, clearly wasn’t as good at holding his drink.

“I would have come last, you know,” he said as Toby bundled him into the lift in their hotel.

“Last in what?” Toby asked.

“In everything,” Robbie said, slumping against the wall as the tight lift car swooped up a little too fast for Toby’s liking. “In the competition today, in the joust, in my family. I come last in everything.”

“I doubt that’s true,” Toby said, trying not to belch until they were out of the lift and walking down the hall. “You won the joust.”

“No, I didn’t,” Robbie said. “I only kissed you because Keith was watching us. I wanted to make him jealous, and that’s just pathetic.”

They reached the door, and Robbie fumbled in his pocket for the key card. Toby took it from him and unlocked the door, pushing it open. All Robbie could do was scowl.

“You might have kissed me to make that wanker jealous,” Toby said, shrugging out of his suit jacket as soon as the door was shut behind them, “but A, it didn’t work, and B, I liked it and kissed you back.”

“You did, didn’t you,” Robbie said with a lopsided smile.

As they slumped their way into the center of the room, both sitting on the bed, Robbie’s mood changed abruptly again.

“Why does everything have to be so hard?” he lamented, droopy and definitely more drunk than Toby.

“Mate, you’re far too drunk to get hard right now,” Toby teased him in return, snorting with laughter at his own joke.

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