Connor loves to drink. When the whiskey, or vodka, or rum, or better yet, good Irish beer, slides down his throat, sometimes burns its way down his esophagus, there's something in his mind that clicks. It's a simple pleasure, perhaps, but then, Connor is not a complex man. If there is a good drink in his hand, then chances are, he's content.
And to be drunk is a dream, to be free of all the weights that tie him down to worries and obligations. To be mindless and jubilant and just dumb drunk is something he hope's he'll never have to give up.
Somewhere, deep down, he knows that he's destroying his liver, that it's probably shrieking at him at the top of it's metaphorical lungs and literally, it's probably shriveling into a dilapidated, worn out, useless thing, but he never was one to live by thinking ahead. So when now involves a pint of beer or a few good shots, he doesn't exactly care about that.
Connor loves to drink. He loves everything about it. The taste, the smell, the mindlessness. And right now, he couldn't be in a better mood. It's Saint Patrick's Day and he's at his favorite bar and his brother is right beside him. They're both about as drunk as they can get and all around them is good company.
America has treated them nicely, and they've found the perfect Irish neighborhood to live in and everything about the country screams about new opportunities. This is the land of the free, Connor thinks through his drunken haze (just the way he likes it) and so far, they have everything going for them.
He looks at his brother, sways a bit on his bar stool, kicks back the shot that Doc slides towards him, and smiles. He thinks it can't get much better than this.
Murphy loves to smoke. He pulls a drag off his cigarette and feels the way the smoke curls and twists all the way down his throat, right into his lungs and loves even the burn associated with it. He loves the way his lungs protest the lack of oxygen, scream at him and relishes the slow, ritualistic exhale, the tendrils of smoke curling up over his head to hover in the hazy bar light.
He loves to blow smoke rings, let them puff out of his mouth one by one. Better yet, he likes to blow the smoke into his brother's face when he's least expecting it, knowing it pisses Connor off. And if Connor complains, he accuses him of being a pussy and they squabble like they did when they were boys, sneaking out behind the barn with smokes stolen from Ma's pack.
That was back then the cigarettes still make them cough. Murphy remembers coughing hard enough to throw up, on one occasion, but he kept at it, because he didn't want to let his brother show him up, to be able to tell him he was a pussy, and it would have been cheating if he hadn't inhaled.
Now, things are different. They buy their own smokes now, and Murphy relishes each one. America truly is a land of opportunity. They have jobs here, now, not great ones, but enough to get by. There's enough cash stored in the tin box hidden behind the fridge to buy their cigarettes and pay for their trips to the bar.
And he doesn't particularly believe the hype that people have put on cigarettes. He doesn't really care if they're going to blacken his lungs. No one's going to fucking look at his lungs anyways. And he knows they're not going to give him cancer any more than any of the other million things they claim will give you cancer.
Murphy sucks in a lungful of smoke and closes his eyes, listening to his brother laugh with the other people in the bar, listening to the clink of bottles, somewhere, cards are being shuffled, and exhales through his nose, his mouth preoccupied by a lazy smile. His cigarette has almost burnt out, but he knows there's still a full pack waiting for him on the bar.
More than cigarettes, more than drinking, more than anything else that has come to them from this move – their apartment, their job, their entirely new lives – above all, the twins love each other. Neither of them will say it, because it's too fucking sappy and it's something a fucking chick would say, but they both know it.
They both know it down to their very bones. They live, sleep, eat, work, do everything together. They are one unified machine, everything synched. And so it's only natural that they should be lovers too.
What they do in their own apartment is their business, after all, who fucking cares what other people would think? Other people don't know what it's like to stumble back home from the bar, alcohol buzzing pleasantly in their brain and that on top of Murphy's lips, his tongue scraping the inside of Connor's mouth.
And other people don't know what it's like to inhale smoke and to breath out into someone else's mouth. They don't know what it's like to fall in bed with someone they've be connected to since birth, to touch and feel and taste.
They don't know what it's like to fuck or to be fucked until they're raw and screaming and coming harder than they ever possibly imagined. So the twins didn't really care that other people might not approve, because they didn't know.
But they do, and it's like a whirlwind, it's like madness and passion and all that other sappy shit that they won't admit to even thinking about, but they feel it. And that, they think, is the best thing about coming to America, because here they are anonymous, they are nobodies, they are strangers in a crowd and within that, they are free.
And perhaps there is something to the social stigmas set on incest and perhaps they are driving themselves to ruin, but everyone is dying anyways, so who really
cares? If either one of them is afraid that fucking is going to ruin them, going to bring them crashing down into catastrophe, neither of them is willing to admit it.
Not when they are tangled up in dirty sheets and each other, not when all they can smell is sweat and sex and all they can feel is raw sensation of each other. They could crash like an atom bomb and not care. They can't live forever.
They are both drunk and they've both got cigarettes burning quietly in the ash tray beside the bed and a bottle of rum in the fridge, but none of that is important, because both boys have found something they like better.