Chapter Text
“How come you always sleep half dressed?”
Ian never thinks he’s asked a serious question until he hears Trevor’s answering sigh.
They’re in bed in Lip’s room on an increasingly-often night that Lip’s with Sierra. The fan swings threateningly from the ceiling on its highest setting, making the light bounce just enough that it’s starting to give Ian a headache.
He gets headaches easily, now. It’s worse in the summers. When he’s sweaty all the time. The lady at the clinic keeps reminding him he’s probably dehydrated from his lithium. If he drinks water, ups his salt intake a little, the headaches will go away. He pinches the bridge of his nose instead, starts towards shutting off the light, but Trevor is laying on his chest and doesn’t seem to notice the aborted gesture.
He’s got a far-away look in his eye. Lip gets that same stare. When shit’s really hitting the fan. As he works out what to do. Ian has to consciously stop himself from saying, “oh,” when he notices it.
“Trev?”
“I, uh. I don’t like the scars.”
This time, Ian gives in to his stupidity. He reaches out and traces one of the thick bands of scar tissue across Trevor's chest. "Oh."
“I mean, don’t get me wrong, they’re better than the tits were.” He smiles a little, playing at his usual controlled teasing.
“I’ll bet,” Ian says, sheepish, but serious.
Trevor lets out a shaky breath, almost like a laugh. His fingers swirl idly around Ian’s chest. “I don’t hate them, or anything. The scars. I sometimes wish I’d been born looking like a dude to begin with, and other times I don’t.”
Ian just listens. Trevor is always teaching and explaining things for him, but this isn’t that. It’s not definitions and politics. It’s just Trevor.
“What I mean is, I don’t hate my body anymore. And that’s really nice. It’s not something I was sure I was ever gonna have. Like, I have a very obviously trans body, and I like it. It’s a good body.“
“It is,” Ian says, not to interrupt, but to echo.
Trevor’s not upset, but the conversation is sobering. Sounds like he’s thinking out loud, like these thoughts might be new, or, at least, unvoiced until tonight. He doesn’t look up at Ian, just alternately at his hand on Ian’s chest, and off into the middle distance.
He does smile, a little, at Ian's interjection, but almost reflexively, more than out of genuine amusement. The silence wears on.
“Sorry.”
“No,” Trevor says, "I’m- yeah. Sorry. I’m trying to figure out what I’m trying to say.”
While he gathers his thoughts, Ian lets his eyes slip closed. The light is really bothering him. He lays quietly. And he really, really doesn’t mean to, but he falls asleep.
In the morning, he forgets that this is where their conversation dropped off, but it’s okay. Trevor never quite found the right words to say anyway.
Boystown tonight??
?i’m down. hopping? or a bar in particular
Was thinking the fairy tale? We haven’t been there yet.
p:
Why do you text like a forty year old man?
had a flip-phone for too long. never got the hang of emojis
So… no fairy tale?
rather not. used to work there, not all that tempted to go back
Oooh? Do tell???
later. meet at my place? i’m off at 10
There’s blue glitter in Trevor’s hair and he’s gorgeous.
It sparkles in the sheen of sweat across his forehead. They’re both drunk, having accepted shots from some older men who’d been hoping for a wild night. And they’d both flirted, expertly, every sentence drenched in expectations and desire, even if it was only for the sport of it.
Trevor had hung all over Ian on the dance floor, arm wrapped around the back of his neck to hold his balance against Ian’s sturdy form. Which was new for Ian. He’s not used to being the buoy, always too messy and turbulent himself, the one a little too frantic and lit up and high.
Tonight, he got a turn at managing. Corralling. Keeping Trevor out of trouble as best as he can, because he seems to have needed tonight to be about letting loose. Letting his hair down. He laughed near manically while they danced together, hands grasping and tugging at every inch of one another they could reach, leaning back into the other men on the crowded dance floor.
Back when they’d first met, Trevor had made a toast, “to guys who like to be watched.”
I like to be watched.
Then this one’s for you, baby.
And, god, tonight had been so full of “baby”’s. Trevor couldn’t stop, his eyes undressed Ian all night, words complimentary, hands constantly roving. His desire is raw and urgent and he’s gorgeous.
They slip out of the club when they find a moment alone, running out the front door and into the night, hysterical. It's freezing outside, and they both hadn’t bothered with jackets, not wanting to be weighed down all night.
Their heaving breaths come out in thick clouds of steam. Trevor can’t run as fast as Ian. Sober, he'd have worried that it's always going to be a fight, to try to keep up with Ian. He'd always risk getting left behind. But, tonight, wasted, he doesn't worry. They keep a firm grip on each other’s hand and sprint down the block.
They don't slow down until they make it to the next district, Ian’s feet mindlessly bringing them back towards the Loop, back home to the South Side, letting the few downtown taxis pass by; he blew all his pocket money on drinks and the dancers. The L ride back is a blur of Trevor's murmured filth and indecent hands, of Ian trying to keep up some sense of decorum.
They’re near frozen, but still sparkling with sweat when they barrel into the living room, limbs tangled as Trevor grabs him, mid-fall, to kiss him.
It’s fucking primal, Trevor’s need tonight. Demanding. Hot. Gorgeous.
“Upstairs,” Ian suggests, voice low against Trevor’s mouth.
He whines, almost petulant, his body a hard line against Ian’s. “I want you.”
“Upstairs,” he insists, backing up towards the stairs.
He trips up the second one and they tumble down in a mix of mouths and hands and Trevor’s packer against Ian’s thigh. He laughs at Trevor’s impatience, at their drunken balance.
Trevor collapses down against Ian’s chest, his ear just over his thumping heart. He sighs affectionately, hips working slow but determined circles. “Want you,” he mutters.
Ian bucks his own hips up to motivate Trevor off of him. They won’t get anywhere laying on the stairs like this, and Ian’s never been modest, but he’s not really interested in getting caught by one of his siblings.
“Oh, you wanna fuck me?”
Trevor practically growls, teeth nipping and lips searching against Ian’s jaw, his ear.
Ian shudders. “Get up,” he demands.
Trevor presses his weight harder against Ian, all angry want and defiance. He grinds down one more time against Ian’s thigh, then jumps up and bounds up the stairs. Ian scrabbles to his feet and darts after him.
Ian catches him by his belt loop just before he banks right into Ian’s room. “Lip’s out.”
Trevor whips around and throws himself against Ian again.
Ian’s hands yank at Trevor’s shirt, not to pull it off, but just to have hands on him. He lowers his hands, gripping hard against Trevor's ass, slipping down to bruise at his thighs, and Trevor leaps, legs wrapping around Ian’s waist, holding firm. The weight of him is easy to bear, feels natural, even as Trevor squirms and paws uninhibited and drunk and
He's gorgeous.
Ian holds the banister to get them up the last two steps, teeters down the hallway with his fingertips brushing the walls. Trevor’s arms loosen from around his neck, and Ian throws him back onto the bed.
Trevor looks desperate, hungry, and Ian knows he can’t look much more decent himself. He feels the prickling shape of Trevor’s mouth drying against his neck, his collar bone. He pulls out of his shirt fluidly. Trevor sits up and throws his shirt off, leans back, bites his lips, eyes roving.
“Fuck,” Ian can’t help but say. Then, he changes course. “Fuck me.”
Trevor beckons him forward with a teasing finger, and Ian goes. Hands find belts, buttons, zippers. Trevor shoves him onto his back and gets up to flick off the lights, fumbles around in the dark for a long, agonizing and anticipation-building moment, then flops back onto the bed already naked but for a harness. Ian is quick to join him, pulling out of his socks and boxers.
“How do you want me?”
“On your knees.”
Ian clambers onto all fours. Trevor claws and kisses at his back and shoulders, right hand working his dick slick with lube. He leans close to Ian.
“Lower,” he says, lips grazing the shell of his ear.
Ian knocks himself down to his elbows and Trevor gives him an appreciative, hard bite in the muscle of his shoulder. He cries out, letting his head hang down, trying to stifle his surprise. Trevor laughs, an edge of mocking in his voice.
Trevor fucks him hard, if a little unevenly, pace slipping in his drunken haste. Ian surprised himself, with how much he likes to be manhandled by Trevor. Something quick and bruising, roughness bordering on the impersonal. There's something freeing in giving yourself over entirely to an unrestrained fuck, because, that's just it. It isn't careless or painful just for the sake. It's something strangely trusting that Ian hadn't even known he wanted all along.
Trevor reaches around to jerk Ian off, his other hand against Ian's hip, pulling him back with every thrust, unrelentingly rough and bruising until Ian is biting into his own forearm to keep from shouting, letting a low moans escape as he comes. Then he relaxes, letting the carefully held slope of his back collapse, rising back up onto his hands as Trevor pulls out.
He doesn’t allow himself a single moment to breathe, has to be touching Trevor again. He throws the damp sheet to the floor, turns and sucks at Trevor's jaw and chin and mouth, hands automatically finding themselves tugging at the closures on the harness. It loosens enough to slip to the floor.
He pulls Trevor properly into the bed, underneath him, dying to kiss his way down his chest, nudge suggestively at Trevor’s junk, asking, begging him to let him use his mouth.
But, suddenly, Trevor seems less focused. His movements slow, hands fumble, eyes dart around.
He places his hand on Ian's chest like an unspoken ask to pause. He reaches towards the edge of the bed as if to scoop up the soiled sheets, as if to cover himself, but ultimately he gives up and lies back.
Ian isn't sure what to make of it.
He kisses Trevor again, but Trevor just takes it, passively.
“Don’t you want me to-” he tries.
“I’m okay,” Trevor says. He smiles, as if to reassure Ian, but it looks kinda sad.
“Something wrong?” Ian kisses just below Trevor’s ear. Trevor squirms away, but he’s smiling properly again, a little ticklish and bashful.
“I’m good with what we did,” he says.
Ian’s above him, arms braced on either side of Trevor’s shoulders, one knee dug into the bed while his other leg lingers lamely between Trevor’s, lost in its pursuit of balance.
“You sure? I can grab the strap. The other one, I mean." Ian keeps a neon purple dick in his bedside drawer in his room. Trevor is rarely without his backpack, but they'd bought it together in an overpriced sex shop downtown. Just in case. "I could blow you? I know you like that.”
Ian’s smirking again, not trying to force anything, the back of his mind is searching desperately for the possible cause of the hesitation while his words try to save face.
He doesn’t get what happened. Trevor seemed maddeningly horny not twenty minutes ago. What did he do wrong?
Ian leans down and kisses him. It’s soft. Loving. His own lips are sore from Trevor’s abuse of them, probably bright and swollen.
He shifts his weight, trying to find a place to rest his other leg, accepting Trevor’s fingers swirling idly along his shoulders, his tender kisses. But as his knee shifts over Trevor’s thigh, he feels his skin catch, as if against sandpaper.
He rests his knee just next to Trevor’s thigh, shifting his weight to the right and he feels the sensation again, as his skin scrapes against Trevor’s.
Every muscle in Ian’s body grinds to a halt. He hovers over him. “Trev?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he says, breath hot against Ian’s mouth before he goes back to kissing him, as if suddenly renewed in energy.
This time, though, it's Ian who barely reacts. Trevor cycles rapidly through expressions, almost scared, then wildly vulnerable, then pissed. He stops kissing Ian, pushes at Ian's waist in an attempt to push him off, but Ian is frozen in place.
Trevor slumps back with a petulant huff, seeming like someone who's accepted their fate.
Ian shifts himself lower on the bed with a tentative but clear movement, so his mouth is about level with Trevor’s collarbone. He slips a hand between their bodies, reaching blindly for Trevor's thigh.
At his touch, his suspicions are confirmed. His fingers lock around Trevor’s leg.
Ian processes quietly, thinking over all the times he and Trevor have had sex, have lounged naked (or, he realizes, mostly naked) in bed together.
But, he's touched here before, surely? As he learned how to give Trevor head, touch his junk? It’d been dark, sure. Lights off, under covers, his focus pulled to learning how sex can be so different and still good. But he can’t have missed this, can he?
He stays frozen, grip tightening to cover the scabs he can feel— too afraid to look— then softening, his fingertips flitting against the lines. Some are definitive scars, healed and raised and puckered skin. Some are the rough feeling of skinned knees, picked-at and bumpy.
He tries to catch Trevor’s gaze, sure that his own face is open and pleading, but Trevor’s shut his eyes, sunk back into the pillow in defeat.
Ian’s afraid to let go. To move. His arm supporting his weight starts to tremble.
Trevor’s eyes open, but he stares blankly up at the ceiling, unseeing. His breath comes hard through his nose, making his nostrils flare like when he’s really pissed off. It’s endearing, usually, to see Trevor so passionate, but not now. Ian lets his hip fall so he’s half-hovering, half-laying on top of Trevor. He can’t pull his hand away, leaves it, not grasping, but covering the cuts. He won’t look down. He won’t.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Trevor says, his monotonous, clever cadence somehow even flatter than usual.
“Okay.”
Trevor closes his eyes again. Shakily, Ian tries to pry his hand from Trevor’s thigh, but it’s like it won’t cooperate. Instead, his fingers twitch slightly, counting. He’s not subtle. Trevor pulls skin off the inside of his lip with his teeth, but lets Ian count.
It doesn’t matter how many, Ian knows that. He knows more about this than he’s been ready to admit. Between the psych ward and the kids at the center and that one year when Carl was fifteen and was burning himself with lighters. Ian knows, but just like when he caught Carl one night on the back porch, he doesn’t know what to do.
He stops looking at his hand, though. Lets his eyes wander up Trevor’s torso, almost scanning it, in case he missed something else, and rests his gaze on Trevor’s fluttering eyelids.
“Hey,” Ian whispers.
Trevor flinches slightly, but otherwise does not react. Ian moves his hand up to touch Trevor’s face, thumb sliding against his cheek, expecting tears, but coming back dry.
“Hey,” he says, just as soft and undemanding as the first.
“I didn’t know how to tell you,” Trevor says back, finally opening his eyes and turning to look at Ian. He searches Ian’s face, looking nervous himself, but Ian has no idea what to offer.
“That’s okay,” he ventures.
Trevor laughs sardonically. “It’s really not.”
Ian nods, shifting his thumb to catch a finally fallen tear, shaken loose from Trevor’s eyelashes by the vibration of his laugh. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
“I should go,” Trevor says, looking away from Ian’s face and sitting up. He finds his boxers on the floor and pulls them on, determinedly facing away from Ian as he does so.
Ian kisses Trevor’s shoulder but gets shrugged off. “You don’t have to,” he says weakly.
“No, I’ve gotta be at work early tomorrow, I gotta go.” He steels himself and climbs out of the bed, Ian not far behind him.
“Trev, stay. Please.”
A kick of something flares up inside of Trevor. He throws Ian a cold look, inhales deep like trying to puff himself up. “I'm not looking for pity.” He pulls his jeans on in a huff.
Ian raises his hands in mock surrender. “And I’m not offerin’ it. Please, it’s late and you’re tired-“
“Don’t tell me what I am,” Trevor snaps.
“Okay, I’m sorry." Ian slows his words down, careful. "I’m tired. And I just got some kinda fucked up news,” Ian reaches out and hooks his fingers in the waistband of Trevor’s jeans, “About someone I really care about.” He smiles, somehow both shit-eating and encouraging, and so goddamned sickeningly charming. “And I want to go to sleep with my boyfriend, huh? Can we do that? For me?”
Trevor swats, reluctantly playful, at Ian’s arm with the crumpled shirt he’d just retrieved from the ground, smiling despite himself. He makes a show of rolling his eyes and thinking about it, looking down, almost shy, while Ian just smiles softly up at him.
“Alright,” he says. “Alright, but you owe me one.”
A triumphant grin bursts out on Ian’s face. He pulls Trevor back into bed, saying, “Thank you, thank you,” while tugging Trevor’s jeans back off.
They situate themselves back in bed, this time with Trevor still in his boxers, and lay quietly for a while.
The silence is loud, though. Every click and shift of the house sounds enormous, the soft rumble of Debbie talking to Franny from down the hall. It’s uncomfortable, almost itchy, to lie there pretending to be asleep.
Ian cracks open his eyes every few minutes, but Trevor is resolutely keeping his own eyes closed.
“Hang on a second,” Ian says, reaching over Trevor to the bedside table. He grabs his phone and earbuds, offering the left one to Trevor, and puts on some music. It’s club music, meant for dancing, but Ian’s never been particular about genres.
“Is this one of the songs I gave you from that yard party?”
“Shh,” Ian stage whispers. “‘m sleeping.”
Trevor leans over and kisses Ian’s forehead. Ian hates himself because, for a minute, it makes him think of Mickey. But this isn’t like that.
He’s better now. And he really, really likes Trevor.
By the third song, they’ve both fallen asleep.