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It’s one in the morning and you’re driving home from a party. Your skin is covered in a layer of now drying sweat that earlier was seeping through your shirt and mixing with the alcohol you’d already spilled on yourself. The music was too loud there but that’s how you like it, except now your ears are ringing and the rain pouring on the roof of your car isn’t enough white noise to take your mind to that happy place on the beach.
You should have a girl next to you, drunk off her ass and trying to cop a feel through your too tight jeans that you didn’t even actually find comfortable. She should be gushing about how you’re so hot, how she can’t believe you chose her, kissing up on your neck while you drive. And you should be pushing her off, telling her to be patient and asking if she wants to just pull over. She should be pretty. At least in the moment. You won’t think so the next morning when your head is clear and you think of how she has these green eyes that looked more like vomit when you had nothing in your stomach than evergreens in the forest after a storm like the one tonight, and you still smell her cheap, citrusy body spray that she probably bathed herself in before leaving her house.
Instead, it is quiet. Mostly. Besides the rain, besides the wipers, there is breathing. It’s slow, and it’s even, and it’s making you think. Too much.
Because there isn’t a girl next to you who’s only thinking about getting laid and adding you to her belt. Instead, there’s a boy. And he is so very drunk, and so very asleep . He’s curled into this ball of a human in your passenger seat, his legs pulled up and his temple rested against the window that you know is vibrating his skull. But he sleeps anyway. Despite the amount of liquor that filled his cup, despite the pills that filled his liquor that he didn’t put there, despite the dried blood on his face, he is asleep.
You wore a denim jacket to the party, your favorite one actually (your mom gave it to you, don’t you remember?), and now it’s laid over his body. Whether it’s to keep him warm even though your heater is blasting, keep him safe even though it’s just a bit of denim and you two don’t really like each other that much, or just for your own peace of mind, you don’t know. And he certainly doesn’t know because all he did was slur your name with hope in his big, warm eyes before he was unconscious. From the alcohol they served him, from the pills they slipped him, from the beating they gave him, you don’t know that either. Maybe it’s all of it. You hoped it wasn’t. But then again, why do you care?
You don’t.
(You do.)
You steal glances at him every now and then, and if those glances linger more than a quick second, that is between you and God and the rain on your windshield. You don’t want to keep looking at him. You just do. At the smallest movement, your eyes are drawn to him. At no movement at all, your eyes are drawn to him. In this car. On the court. In the hallway. From another floor in an overcrowded house party. You search for him without even knowing you’re hunting until you’re in his face, staring down your nose at him and he looks at you with those eyes. And they’re so big, so round, so stupid and pretty. The outer corners droop down just slightly and his eyelashes are long and dark and inviting you in. They’re the color of honey, of real, rich honey. The sunlight makes them glow, and instead of that golden, yellow hue that most brown eyes get in the right lighting, this boy’s are red. Amber. Heat. Deep, rich, royal.
You looked away from the road for too long. Look back. Clear your throat. Adjust how you sit. Calm, cool, collected. The wipers aren’t working fast enough to keep up with the rain and you already don’t know where exactly you are. Just driving to the address on his license that you had to dig through his pockets for. You’re turning down a dirt road. Except it isn’t really a road, more like an opening in a crowd of trees and the grass has two thick lines of dirt where a car has driven over it multiple times.
The trees are big, looming over you and they know. They know. You pull up to the gravel patch where his Beamer is already parked. He got a ride from a friend to the party. You should have told them you were bringing him home. It’s fine. You got his key from his pocket at the same time as his license, holding the rusted metal in your palm the whole drive home. It’s indented your skin. It left its mark on you.
You heard stories about his house. Never from him. Talk from the popular crowd about the cathedral ceilings and grand staircase. It’s huge. And from what you can tell from the lack of cars, it’s empty. The lights are off behind all of the drawn curtains. No welcoming front porch light on of a parent waiting for their only son to come home.
You get out of the car and round his side. Open the door and lean in, unbuckle his seatbelt. You stop moving at every little whine he makes. Your breath is shaking. It’s music to your ears. When your arms tuck under his knees and go behind his back, he lets out a sigh his body deflates. He sinks into you, you are comfort, you are safety. Even unconscious, his hand reaches up and rests on your sweaty chest in the gap of your open shirt. His fingers are so cold. And your skin is so warm. His face goes to the crook of your neck. His nose is just as cold as it nuzzles into the junction between nexk and shoulder and you have no choice but to hold him closer.
You’re right about it being empty. Empty, cold. You can hear the walls talking but they speak in a tongue unknown to you. If only you could understand them, listen to the stories they have to tell you about the boy in your arms that you’re walking through the house in search of his room. Up the stairs, take a left, end of the hallway, door on the left (that’s the bathroom, dumbass), turn around, door on the right, bingo.
Don’t look around. Walk in, put him down, go home. Three steps, one, two, three. You walk in and the floorboards creak under your feet. When you look down, there’s a fluffy white rug under the bed and you’re about to step on it. You should take off your boots, they’re covered in the mud from the driveway. They’d stain the rug. You don’t care about him or his stupid white rug and leaving stains.
You toe off your boots.
Step two, you lean over, lay him on to his bed. He’s whining again, in the back of his throat, high pitched and laced with annoyance. His hands are on the back of your neck now, cold fingers lacing together and he won’t. Let. Go. You’re holding yourself up with one hand on the bed, the other still wrapped under his back, holding his waist tighter than you should be.
“You gotta let go, pretty boy,” you whisper next to his ear, your lips ghosting over the shell of his ear. He shivers against you, tensing his biceps and pulling. He pulls and pulls until your elbow gives out and you fall down with him. “Steven Alexander Harrington. Let go.” You use his full name. You learned it on his license. It rolls so wonderfully off your tongue.
“‘illy?” It’s quiet, slurred, getting stuck on the first letter. And you? You’re frozen. You stop breathing. Pull away a few inches, look down your nose, and look into now open, tired, warm, safe brown eyes. He’s squinting, sleep still in the corners of his eyes. You can’t stop yourself from using the pad of your thumb to gently rub over his eyelids. Your fingers comb through his hair and push it out of his face. He hums his appreciation and when he opens his eyes again, you know for a fact you aren’t breathing.
“Drove you home…from…from the party. Go back to sleep. I was just leaving,” you say and your voice rumbles deep in your chest. But his hands don’t move. He doesn’t let go.
“Feel funny.”
“I’ll tell you all about it later.”
“Stay. Tell me in the morning.” It’s supposed to sound like a demand rather than a request but the way his voice lifts up with a note of hope betrays him.
You should say no. You’re about to say no.
You say nothing.
Instead, you look at him. His face is illuminated by the moonlight streaming in through his parted curtains, hitting his eyes in that way that makes them deeper . So dark, so full, so brown. His skin is pale in the cool lighting, the shadow of his eyelashes long and fanned out over his cheekbones. There’s dapples of freckles across the bridge of his nose that you’ve never taken the time to notice before. They almost look like dirt smudges (somehow it’s endearing, because it’s him ). Plush, pink, parted lips are slowly breathing, waiting for you to say something, anything. You’ve stared at them too long. You know it. But you keep staring, and you slowly trail your gaze over his whole face, taking in every tiny little detail along the way.
Until you’re back at his eyes.
And he’s looking at you, so innocent, so curious.
And you’re struck by how beautiful he is.
So you nod, slow and shaky, and you sit yourself on the bed. You ask if he wants to get changed and he does, so you go into his closet to search for comfy clothes. He needs your help getting changed, of course he does, he can’t even sit up on his own. So you grab his ankles, pull him to the edge of the bed so his legs hang off and pull him to sit up. You stand between his legs and he falls into your chest with a heavy sigh, his hands gripping your jeans that you cannot wait to get out of, and you take the hem of his sweatshirt and pull it over his head.
“You’re lucky you’re pretty,” you say softly and he presses his ear against your ribs.
“Pretty,” he mumbles, smiling weakly to himself. You lay him back down, running your calloused hands from his shoulders, down his now bare arms, to his wrists. You stopped before his hands.
“Harrington, I need to get your pants off if I’m gonna help you get changed. Is that alright?” You ask him even though you know he won’t remember. You know he won’t care. He nods anyways and it’s your go ahead. You rest your palms on his stomach, rubbing over to his waist, then trailing to his hips. He lifts his hips when you unbutton and unzip his jeans, helping you to get them over his butt and pull down his long legs. And god, are they long.
Long and pale and like the rest of him, dotted with moles. His thick, milky thighs are squirming on the sheets and he’s whining again, kicking a leg up to rest his ankle on your shoulder.
“Billy,” he whispers like you stole the air from his lungs, heavy and rushed and deflating.
“What’s goin’ on, pretty boy?” Your eyebrows pull together in a look of concern. You don’t know what they drugged him with. You don’t know how much. You don’t know how it will effect him. You don’t know if it already has. You don’t know if it will kill him. He looks up at you. His cheeks are ruddy, bordering on looking sunburnt.
He’s pouting his lower lip and uses his foot on your shoulder to try and get you closer. You look down at him. Lower, lower, oh.
Oh.
“Not right now, Harrington.”
“Billy..”
“I know you’re mad about it now, but you’re not in the right mind space. Wouldn’t be right if I did that while you’re like this.”
“Please.”
Your large hands land on his bony knees, gently pushing his legs back to his chest and spreading his thighs to lean down between his legs until the tip of your nose is brushing against his. You’re breathing the same air, living in the space between each other’s eyes. He has rings of nearly black around his irises. You can feel what he wants against your hip. He’s so drunk but his eyes are so focused . Looking at you like he’s never been so stone cold sober.
“You’ve had a long night. Tomorrow, when you wake up and all the bad stuff is out of your system and you’ve got some water in you, ask me then. If you still wanna, then hell yeah,” you mumble to him, glancing down to those lips.
“Okay,” he whispers and his eyes haven’t left yours. He hasn’t blinked. He stares, he’s reading every little thought in the back of your mind. You think you can read his too. Or at least your subconscious does. That’s what you two are doing as you stare unblinking into the other’s eyes. You are communicating. And you don’t get it, but you get it.
His tongue peeks out, swipes across his lower lip to make it shiny and wet. You feel the way his breath starts to tremble.
“Kiss?”
He says it so quietly. So shy, so soft, you almost miss it. He’s looking at you with big, pleading eyes. He’s begging you. For just an ounce of something like caring for him. You let your eyes fall to his lips again. Back up to his eyes. One breath. Two. Nod.
Let him pull you down.
Meet him halfway.
They’re so plush. God, they slot so perfectly with your own. Keep it light, keep it gentle. He tastes like cigarettes and whatever stupid fruity drink he had. It’s intoxicating.
One kiss. Hold it.
Pull away just a little bit.
One last peck.
You’re smiling at him, adoring and open and just for him . He can’t see you. His eyes are closed, relishing in the affection and he’s glowing like the sun; golden and warm, so, so warm.
You stand back up, finishing with pulling up some sweatpants for him and changing yourself as well (you strip to your boxers and socks). He’s using his last bit of energy to drag himself to the other side of the bed, leaving space big enough for you to climb in. So you do.
You lay next to him, pull the blankets up. You’re staring at the ceiling because you can feel he’s looking at you. Wanna make him wait a little.
One quick side eye glance. He’s smiling. You reach across without looking at him, grab hold of his wrist on the far side of you and pull. He’s draped on your chest. Those stupid eyes finally close.
He sleeps.
You try not to. You want to savor every moment.
Eventually, you sleep too. One arm around his waist. A hand in his hair.
It’s domestic. It’s comfortable.
It’s anything and everything and a little bit more than that.
Maybe it can be even more.
But that’s for morning.
For now, you sleep.