Chapter Text
It’s the pounding in his head that wakes him. A steady, constant throbbing behind his eyes and against his skull, that grows into a full body ache. His limbs feel like they’re made of brittle straw, and just the thought of moving a muscle makes him want to curl into a ball and sob. This might be the worst he’s ever felt in his young life. Oliver rolls over and suddenly gets a face full of t-shirt. He blinks rapidly, trying to clear the haze out of his eyes, and throws the offending item out of his face.
Two things suddenly dawn on him: the first, is that he’s staring at the back of a mussed, dark head of hair, and the other, is that there are a pair of legs entangled in his own. Naked legs.
“What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck,” he whispers frantically to himself. The other man still has yet to move. But he doesn’t have to, because Oliver would recognize that dark head of hair anywhere, and from any angle. He’s certainly spent enough time staring at it in his lifetime. It’s Connor, his best friend since grade school. Who at the current moment, is fast asleep, dead to the world, and from what he can feel under the sheets, 100% naked.
Oliver squeezes his eyes shut, hoping to bring back memories of the previous night. There was drinking. A lot of drinking. Asher’s parents were out of town, so naturally, he decided to throw a party. He convinced his older sister to get a keg for it. Combine that, a bunch of unchaperoned teenagers, and the entirety of the Millstone’s liquor cabinet, and the disastrous night and subsequent hungover morning after is really no surprise at all.
Oliver groans as he tries to remember the events of last night. He’d started the evening with a few beers. He remembers playing beer pong, him and Connor vs Wes and Laurel. Connor smacked the ball out of the air and ended up knocking over half the cups, drenching himself in shitty beer. It was hilarious at the time. He remembers talking to Michaela for what seemed like hours, giggling and laughing at her crush on the hot new student, Caleb. Then she asked him about Connor… and how he was managing his own crush. Then he remembers the bottle of tequila. And how it was passed continuously between himself and Connor. They laughed and laughed and stumbled around the Millstone’s mansion, arms touching each other, both trying to hold the other up. He remembers gazing at the long column of Connor’s throat every time he drank from that bottle.
Shit.
His eyes fly open and he fights the urge to grab his clothes and run out of the room. But the rational side of his barely functioning brain knows that he can’t avoid Connor forever, not to mention, he’s really in no conditioning to be running at all at the moment.
And now he’s being bombarded with other memories from last night. Memories of hands gripping the insides of his thighs, soft stubble brushing down his stomach, against his hips, the warmest, wettest mouth around his cock, and then–
Oh fuck fuck fuck…
“Wake up!” He winces from the sound of his own voice, and how his head throbs, and the world suddenly shifts sideways.
Connor still doesn’t move.
“WAKE UP!” He reinforces it by grabbing Connor’s upper arm and giving him a hard shake.
“Mmmm,” the other man groans. Connor’s arm half heartedly swipes at him, but he makes no effort to open his eyes. He mutters something into the pillow, incomprehensible.
“What?” Oliver leans closer to hear–
“Just let yourself out…”
His jaw drops from the horror of realizing Connor thinks he’s one of his one-night stands. Just another of the many, many young men that the notorious playboy has bedded and never called again.
He’s furious.
“WAKE UP! WAKE THE FUCK UP RIGHT NOW!”
Connor flails and jumps so high he nearly falls off the bed. Instinctively, Oliver grabs his arms to steady him. Then, almost immediately pulls his hands back to grab the covers and pull them up, covering himself.
“What the fuck?” Connor mumbles, and drops back onto the bed. He rubs his eyes and then his head, wincing, probably from the hangover and the soreness of his body. “Ow ow ow…” he whispers. “So loud…”
He finally opens his eyes again to get a good look at Oliver, who’s trying his best to not freak out more than he already is.
Connor blinks. “What are you doing in my bed?”
Oliver smacks his arm angrily. “We’re not in your bed, you idiot!”
Connor suddenly looks around, taking in their surroundings. “Where–what–oh my god.”
Oliver nods frantically.
“Oh my god oh my god oh my god…” Connor whispers as he realizes they’re in one of the guest bedrooms at the Millstone mansion. Memories of last night filter back into this head. He looks down at himself, lifts the sheet–yup, naked–and rubs at an itch on his belly, which is covered in–holy fuck–it’s covered in dried semen.
“We had sex last night,” Oliver hisses.
Connor swallows and nods.
“WE had SEX last night.”
“Yeah, I got that, Ollie,” Connor whispers.
“HOW ARE YOU NOT FREAKING THE FUCK OUT??!”
Connor groans and grabs his head in both hands again.
“Holy shit, holy shit, we had sex last night.”
“I know we had sex last night,” Connor says through gritted teeth. “You can stop saying it. You want to know how I know? Because I can feel it in my ass!”
Oliver blanches.
“Oh god, my head,” Connor groans and slowly rolls over onto his side. Oliver really, really tries not to notice how the motion causes the sheets to slip just low enough to reveal everything. Including a dark red mark just below his hip bone. An image of himself sucking on the tender flesh and the sound of delicious, filthy moans escaping from Connor’s lips flash into his head.
“And my ass,” Connor adds for good measure. “Oh god, this is why I never fucking bottom,” he grumbles.
“I can’t believe that’s what you’re focusing on,” Oliver hisses. “We had sex. And maybe you’re not freaking out because you have sex all the time! With random guys that you meet on Grindr and never speak to again. But this is me! This is us! We don’t do this, Connor!”
Connor sighs and slowly sits up in the bed, still looking miserable from his hangover. He grabs the sheet and tugs it up to properly cover himself. “Look, it’s not a big deal, Oliver,” he says softly. “We had sex. We were clearly drunk out of our minds. We can just… pretend it never happened. I barely remember it anyway,” he says with a small laugh. “This doesn’t have to be a big deal.”
Oliver slowly drops the tension in his shoulders and he sags a bit as he watches his best friend. His best friend, whom he’s been in love with for as long as he can remember. The guy he grew up down the street from, and has known practically his whole life. The guy that he watched grow more and more beautiful every single day, as his own feelings grew from a childish infatuation, to a schoolboy crush, to something much, much more. And the guy that breaks his heart every time he has another one night stand with a random guy of the week.
It’s Connor. He had sex with Connor.
And it is a big deal.
But he’ll never say that. Because Connor doesn’t feel the same way, and the truth of Oliver’s feelings, if it got out, it would ruin them. Their friendship would never be the same, and Oliver would lose the most precious thing he has. So he keeps it to himself.
Oliver clears his throat awkwardly. “Okay,” he says softly. “Um… I’m going to go home, I guess. Sleep off this hangover.”
Connor nods. “Yeah, me too.”
“Can you uh…” The other man looks at him expectantly. “Can you turn around, while I get dressed,” Oliver mumbles.
“Oh, yeah.” Connor looks away embarrassedly.
Oliver quickly gathers his clothes from the floor. Half paying attention, he doesn’t realize he grabbed Connor’s shirt until it’s already on, and just a bit too small on him. He doesn’t bother changing it, he just needs to get the hell out of here. He looks for his shoes, and finds one in the corner of the room. With a bit of difficulty, he finds the other under the bed. He doesn’t bother putting them on. He just gathers them in his hands, along with his phone and jacket. He looks around the room, at anywhere but Connor, looking for anything else he might have forgotten.
Oliver avoids all eye contact and mumbles a quick goodbye. He steps over the empty tequila bottle, stumbles out of the room, without looking back, and completely misses the way Connor wistfully watches him as he runs out the door.