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You prefer Dave’s apartment to your own. No big fucking surprise there, seeing as he lives in an uptown penthouse and your dingy little two-room walk-up barely has enough space for you and the roaches. But it’s not just because Casa del Strider (as he insists on calling it) is bigger and glitzier than yours. It actually feels like a place people are living, instead of just using to park their meat sack overnight.
“FUCK!”
You stub every toe on a blocky chunk of machinery as soon as you walk in the door. You’re a little too tipsy for it to hurt much, but it made a really loud noise.
“Dude, what’s the issue?” Dave takes your arm and leads you around whatever it is on the carpet (it looks like an inside-out toaster). You pass through the living room where the door to the balcony is open, curtains moving in the breeze, letting in the humid night. It’s dark except for a sliver of light beneath Dave’s brother’s door. You aren’t sure that guy actually sleeps. You kind of want to start shouting about leaving shit around on the floor for guests to trip over, but Dave is pushing open the door to his room and fuck it. You’ve got better things to do.
Dave looks…well, you hate to use the word ravishing even in your own head, but it’s accurate. He looks like he is ready to ravish and/or be ravished. He’s sweated off most of his makeup and his hair is in clumpy pieces; turns out even popstars are subject to the entropy of the New York summer. He’s just wearing a t-shirt and jeans, but they fit him so well. He looks fucking amazing. He is fucking amazing. And you really need to get your sappy drunk ass together before you start saying this shit out loud.
He tugs you toward the bed and you half-fall against him, the two of you lying on your backs and just staring up at the ceiling.
“I’m drunk,” you say. Somehow you end up with your head on his chest, letting the world move around you in little swoops.
“Same.” His chest rumbles when he talks. He smells kind of like cherries. “Look, I know my exact words might have been ‘let’s go to my place so we can bone without an audience of cockroaches’ but i think–.” He pauses for effect. “There might be some performance-related issues. Right now.”
You grunt.
“In my pants.”
“Wow, thanks for the clarification.”
“It’s tequila, man. I shouldn’t fuck with tequila. Tequila always creeps up on my ass.”
You snort a laugh into his shirt.
“Dude.” He blinks down at you. “Don’t sneeze on my nipple.”
“I’m not anywhere near your nipple. Unless you’ve got one in your armpit.”
“It’s a spare nipple. For the inevitable nipple-famine.”
How do 80% of your conversations turn into this? At least you’ve got the alcohol-related excused this time.
“Hey,” you say after a couple of nipple-commentary free minutes. “Thanks.”
Dave shifts against you. “For what? Your present isn’t even here yet. Fuck you very much, amazon.com.”
“For–.” You can’t quite bring yourself to say it out loud. You don’t think you’d ever be drunk enough to risk trying to express how much this idiot means to you. “For. You know. Stuff.”
Dave smiles and pats you on the face. His thumb goes right up your nose.
“Fuck! I take it back.”
Dave laughs.
“I hate you and all your parts.”
He just laughs harder. This is the best birthday you’ve ever had.