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They were considerably drunker and colder when Jess finally slunk back, mumbling that the party was breaking up and “all the centerpieces are a lot more threatening at night.”
“I'm out too,” Winston announced. “This liquor is not good enough to keep me in a hot air balloon at one in the morning.” He gave Nick and Schmidt unsteady one-armed hugs. “I love you both. It was a good party. The projectile streamers were a nice touch. Peace.”
“Oh sure, just go!” Nick yelled after them. “You know, a real man would have stayed in the balloon regardless of the quality of the liquor!”
“Not a man!” came Jess's voice from across the field.
“Ain't that the truth!” Nick bellowed into the night.
“You really shouldn't say 'ain't',” Schmidt advised him in a confidential tone.
Nick ignored this and regarded Schmidt myopically. “It's just you and me, buddy,” he said. “Just like it was in college.”
“Just like it will be at Ragnarok, the end of days,” Schmidt agreed with a big smile, offering Nick the nearly empty bottle.
“That's weird,” Nick said, but he took the bottle and swigged a big gulp. Half an hour ago this stuff had tasted like gasoline, but now it was starting to have a smooth, fruity aftertaste. Being drunk was awesome. “Hey, what about all the shit we left in the park?” he asked.
Schmidt ostentatiously checked his shiny, expensive watch. “The clean-up crew arrived a half an hour ago,” he said. He waved one arm grandly. “They have their instructions.”
“The clean-up crew?” Nick repeated with a laugh, not sure why he was surprised. “Schmidt, are you going to have any money left after this party?”
“You can't spend too much on real friendship, Nick,” Schmidt said serenely.
“You're right,” Nick declared, not really inclined to care about anything right now, let alone something that played no part in his life, like money. “What a great party. Happy anniversary!” He saluted Schmidt with the bottle.
“Happy anniversary,” Schmidt repeated, beaming, and damn it, Nick had been on vigilant threat watch for most of the night, but he still didn’t see it coming: Schmidt planted his hands on either side of Nick's head and gave him a big, wet, sloppy kiss.
Nick tried to fight him off, but he was encumbered by the bottle and by how ridiculously stupid drunk he was. He ended up just flapping his free hand at Schmidt's chest uselessly, pinned against the side of the wicker basket.
“Aw, come on,” he moaned when Schmidt finally released his face. “We were having such a nice night.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then pulled his sleeve up and wiped his mouth again on the cloth.
Schmidt rolled his eyes and dropped his head onto Nick's shoulder. “Why must you always reject my gestures of affection?” he asked plaintively.
Nick drank the last of the liquor over Schmidt’s head, then dropped the bottle to the floor. He threw one heavy hand onto Schmidt’s back and patted him comfortingly.
“It's not the affection, Schmidt, it's the gesture,” Nick tried to explain. He reconsidered. “No, it's also the affection. You gotta stop kissing me, man.”
“You never kiss me!” Schmidt accused, outrage muffled by Nick's shirt. “I express my friendship for you in myriad ways. Look at this elegant knockout of a party!” He waved a hand vaguely towards the other end of the field. “How do you ever repay me?”
“Repay - what - myriad - I bought you a Port-O-Potty!” Nick sputtered, landing on the first thing that stuck, though he knew as he said it that it wasn’t quite right. Schmidt straightened swiftly, dislodging Nick’s hand from his back with an reproachful shake.
“You didn’t buy it for me. Don’t pretend you bought it for me,” he snapped, brows knit in a scowl.
Nick groped for another out. “What about this hot air balloon, Schmidt? What are you standing in? Did you ever think of that?”
Schmidt was not to be fooled. He crossed his arms. “Oh, I thought of it, Nick. It’s a lovely, inoperable gift. It’s like some beautiful flightless bird that was intended to be a dozen or so tin-colored helium balloons. Why do I kiss you? I’ll tell you why.”
“Oh, boy,” Nick muttered, wishing that Schmidt could be one of those guys who got less talkative when they were drunk.
“I’m a physical guy, Nick. I live in this body.” He gestured down the particularly sharp suit he was wearing tonight. Call Nick crazy, but pastels were really making a comeback. “I have to use my body to express my feelings. It’s how I show love. I have to communicate my affection and my love to the people around me. And isn’t that why we’re all on this little green planet in the first place?”
“Blue planet,” Nick said.
“Blue planet?” Schmidt repeated dubiously.
“They made that movie about the fish,” Nick said.
“That was referring to the ocean,” Schmidt said. “The ocean is the blue planet. Earth is the green planet.”
“Yeah, but Earth is like ninety percent water,” Nick said. “So it looks blue. Like, from space it looks blue.”
“Nick, I don’t care about the Earth,” Schmidt said with a stamp of his foot, halfway to a tantrum. “I care about how I do all the expressing in this relationship and I feel like I get nothing in return!”
Nick spread his arms wide. “What do you want me to do? You want me to be a kissing guy, like you? You want me to get all up in everybody’s space and just kiss their faces off?”
“Yes!” Schmidt said. “Of course I would prefer that! You have the emotional availability of a cactus. It’s our ten-year anniversary, Nick! It’s Tinfinity! The least you could do is kiss me on the mouth. It’s like you don’t even care about our friendship,” he added in a vengeful mutter.
“Hey,” Nick said loudly, not sure which part of that was the most upsetting part. “I care! I don’t have the money to buy a bunch of tin stuff, and I can’t think of cool puns on the word ‘infinity’, but I care at least as much as you do! Probably!”
“Then prove it!” Schmidt said.
“Okay!” Nick said, and then he blinked at himself. He’d really expected to say the other thing. “Okay,” he tried again. Yeah, he was still saying it. All right then. He clapped his hands together, and shook his head in preparation. This was happening. “Okay. Get ready, cause this is only gonna happen once.”
“I was born ready,” Schmidt said in disdain. He lifted his chin and made a ‘come at me bro’ gesture that made Nick really regret his friends and his choices and at least the last ten years of his life.
Nick took a deep breath, took the single step necessary to cross to the other side of the wicker basket, and he kissed Schmidt. Kind of. It was more like he bumped his mouth into Schmidt’s mouth. They bounced off each other, and Nick mentally gave himself a vicious kick, knowing that Schmidt was never going to let him get away with that.
Sure enough, Schmidt yelled, “Oh come on! What is this, the fourth grade? Kiss me like a man, Nick!”
“Damn it!” Nick yelled back, and he seized Schmidt’s face in his hands and he kissed him again.
This time, he pressed his body against Schmidt’s body, full contact. Schmidt’s hands grabbed his elbows. Nick squeezed his eyes shut and thought about all the times that Schmidt had kissed him and tried to remember how he’d done it, and if there had been feelings in it, or whatever. Usually Nick was too busy trying to dive-bomb out of the way to notice. He leaned into Schmidt and tilted his head back and forth a little, trying to line up their mouths in the perfect fit.
Schmidt’s lips parted just slightly under Nick’s, but that was okay, that was cool, because they were just expressing themselves, and also now Nick was thinking about his kiss with Jess, and how sweet and sexy that had been, and how Schmidt’s lips were actually a lot like a girl’s lips, really soft and moisturized and everything, and before Nick knew it his tongue had slipped into Schmidt’s mouth and his hands were in his hair.
For a few minutes after that, Nick didn’t think about much of anything.
It passed like a wave, draining away little by little, until they pulled apart to breathe and stood forehead to forehead, panting. Nick was pleasantly half-hard and distantly aware that he’d made a bad decision somewhere along the line.
“We need to go home,” Nick said.
“Mm huh,” Schmidt agreed. He hadn’t let go of Nick, and Nick could feel that he was half-hard too. That distant alarm bell in his brain was sounding louder.
“I mean it,” Nick said, patting Schmidt’s face half affectionately and half to wake him up. “I love you. We gotta get out of the hot air balloon.”
“I love you too,” Schmidt said. “Carry me home, okay?”
“Absolutely not,” Nick said. “Come on. One foot and then the other.”
They helped each other out of the basket with a minimum of falling. Halfway back to the apartment, Nick said, “Oh and Schmidt, if you tell anybody I kissed you, I’m gonna switch out half your supplements with diuretics.”
“Only half? You diabolical bastard,” Schmidt said, but he sounded pleased. “A gentleman never discusses his conquests, Nick. You wouldn’t understand that, of course.”
“A g-” Nick started to repeat, but he gave up immediately. “God, I wish I could make you put a dollar in the jar right now.”
“I’m not going to say anything,” Schmidt said, whacking Nick’s arm with more force than was probably necessary. “It’s you and me, Nick. Other people don’t understand.”
Nick didn’t say anything for a while. He wanted to disagree with Schmidt and say something like, “I think our relationship is totally normal and easy to understand! Tell whoever you want!” But in the end he just knocked his shoulder into Schmidt’s and said, “Shaddup, you big softie.” Because honestly, it felt true. It really was just him and Schmidt, whether he liked it or not, and it would probably be him and Schmidt until Ragnarok, the end of days.