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“C’mon, at least a name~” The guy pinning Dorian up against the wall of a dingy dorm room has a gruff voice. “How about we get to know each other, yeah?”
Maybe Dorian should have thought before he made an alter ego for himself. The mask covering his face and skintight clothes and let-down hair and half-lidded eyes with brown contacts were fun when he was bored and reckless. Long sleeves were necessary when he had to hide what his parents did (what he did, but he can’t bring himself to take the blame). They were practical when the class topper couldn’t be seen having rough, quick sex with people he barely knows on dusty dorm beds.
But there was a certain allure to mystery. Not wanting to give up his name makes it so much more interesting why he gives up his body like he’s a chessboard pawn, playing a strategic game he knows he doesn’t have the finesse for. And people want to know who he is, the boy at every party, the fling they can’t forget.
Which brings him against a dirty wall with some guy’s too-large hand pressing on his chest and his neck and shoulders burning with imprints of too-sharp canines and wondering why he ever gave a fuck at all.
“You don’t need to know my name for a one night stand.” He scoffs. “Just ‘cause I let you kiss me you think you’re special?” He sinks his teeth into the junction of the person’s neck and shoulder, feeling the give of flesh under his tongue. He murmurs, in a practiced sultry tone, “Let’s get this over with now, shall we?”
The hand on Dorian’s chest drops, before coming down on his cheek. When people get slapped in movies, it’s always so dramatic. Really, it’s a dull thud, with no cinema or grace at all - it just kind of happens and Dorian blinks back the tears. Or maybe that’s just because he’s used to it. At least this guy is softer than his father. He vaguely registers the word whore drop out of his mouth. He might laugh - it’s all kind of funny to him - because it’s true. He really is just a desperate little whore.
“You approached me first, asshole,” Dorian spits out.
“I’m not the one who doesn’t even care enough to tell his name to the guy he’s gonna-” He pauses, scrunches his face into an expression so unpleasant that Dorian can’t even fathom how he found him attractive at the start of the night.
“Gonna what? Too much of a prude?” He gets hit again for that, at which he just dully grins. He hooks his fingers into the guy’s belt loops, shoves their hips together. “Want any drinks? I’ll go get us some, and then we can have the time of our lives, yeah?” He does his best not to sound sarcastic; he doesn’t think it really works.
He barely registers what the guy asked for. When he goes to the kitchen, he grabs a bottle of straight vodka and slips out of the door from in between the crowd. He doesn’t open it until he’s alone in his dorm room, slouched at the foot of his bed.
He doesn’t like the taste of alcohol. Which is why pure vodka is nice - it tastes like nothing and hurts in his throat and makes him feel a lot of shame and even more detachment. He likes feeling detached. He downs the whole bottle.
All he can feel right now is glad he’s a class topper and he gets his own room. Nobody can see him like this. He has classes tomorrow, but he doesn’t really care. He’ll get straight A’s anyways. His head spins.
He wakes up (predictably) feeling like shit. He pukes thrice, or maybe four times, he’s too busy feeling like his lungs are about to explode and he’s going to taste his guts to think about counting.
It takes him a while to notice there’s somebody on his bed, in a crisp, ironed, collared shirt and converse that somehow still look new, hair messy in an attractive way. It makes Dorian very aware that he’s wearing a too-tight long-sleeved shirt that doesn’t do anything to cover the marks that span across his collar with hair that’s been pulled on.
“What do you want, Damien?” He wants to cry. “Didn’t see me in class and figured I got wasted again? Came to gloat?”
“You look like shit.” Damien’s expression is blank and casual. “And you forgot to lock your door.”
“Get out.”
“Go change. I didn’t ditch class just for you to tell me to fuck off, now did I?”
Dorian scoffs, but he feels like all the fabric has been seeped through with sweat and shame. Damien’s right there at his bedside, eyes tracing over him as he changes. He wears a short-sleeved shirt with the collar low; it’s fine, Damien’s already seen everything, seen the bite marks and the scars. He used to tell Damien everything. He doesn’t anymore, but now it’s too late; Damein’s seen the worst of him that even he doesn’t see.
They used to be close - the best of friends or whatever. Maybe they grew apart when Dorian started hurting himself and going to parties and stopped talking to anyone except during sex or when Damien started staring at his lips for too long and lashing out when Dorian got drunk and started getting jealous that anyone could touch Dorian but him.
He sits next to Damien and refuses to look him in the eye.
“Everytime I see you you have a new bruise, don’t you?” He touches the side of Dorian’s neck, then leaves the barest of delicate touches on his wrist.
“Nothing you haven’t seen.” He shoves Damien’s hand off. “Why are you here?”
“I love you,” Damien says. And Dorian knows, has heard it over and over and over again.
“Whatever.” He’s heard it so much it’s lost its meaning. Damien says it every time they meet. Dorian thinks it’s selfish of him to say shit like that. “Tell me why you’re here. I don’t need you to give me shit. I know I'm covered in bruises and I know I feel awful and I know you love me. Tell me something new.”
“You know I can’t tell you anything else. I’ve run out of things to say.” He stops, and Dorian pretends not to notice how Damien’s eying the bite marks across his collar. “I just wanted to see you.”
“I didn’t fuck last night,” Dorian says suddenly. “I didn’t. If that makes you feel any better.”
“It does.” They sit in silence for a while after that.
Damien brings Dorian’s arm up to his mouth, leaves gentle, open-mouthed kisses across each scar. Damien always has his mouth on Dorian, and Dorian lets him. He’s used to having people's mouths all over him. But Damien is different. He kisses softer - like it means something. Most people he’s kissed are all teeth, whereas Damien is full of care in each minor movement. But Dorian can’t really keep thinking about things like that. It’s easier being brain–dead.
They don’t talk about this thing they keep doing. Damien is always all over him, and Dorian lets him, and that’s fine. They’re not friends, or lovers, or enemies, but something foggy and undiscernable, and Dorian’s fine with things that are unnamed. When night falls, he himself is unnamed.
Damien kisses over every single one of his bite marks with careful precision and Dorian pretends that it doesn’t burn. He presses Dorian into the bed and kisses just above his knees and at the waistline of his shorts where his shirt rides up and at his hairline and everywhere else he can reach.
Damien can never get enough of him - nobody can.
He’s never had sex with Damien. It’s not like he hasn’t considered it. He just doesn’t want to - every time he thinks about it his head hurts. It’s either too complicated to put sex into, or sex isn’t complicated enough to fit into what they have.
Damien asked him about it once. Said through bitten back tears with his hands on the edge of Dorian’s shorts. “Why can’t you touch me like you can with strangers?”
Dorian didn’t know how to answer. He still doesn’t. “Don’t wanna,” he said coolly and that was that. Maybe, from then on, Damien was too embarrassed to ask.
Damien must’ve felt a little cruel and sad then, because he wasn’t gentle that day. He had shoved Dorian into the bed and pushed his shirt up and bit at the skin of his waist.
He still remembers how Damien’s teeth hurt, rough and sharp, how his tongue had run over every single bruise in apology before he painted another one.
“Damien, what are you- shit,” and Dameien’s teeth find his skin again.
“You’re not fair to me.” Dorian isn’t. But Damien isn’t either, always saying things like ‘I love you,’ when he knows Dorian can’t handle it and when he knows that every time Dorian wants to say it back, it chokes up in his throat.
“Damien, somebody’s going to see this and-”
“Of course someone else will.” Damien’s cold scoff and empty grin still stick in Dorian’s mind. “Everyone already knows you’re…” He trails off. He’s always been a coward.
“I’m what?” He hadn’t let Damien respond, crashed their lips together with a ferocity he reserves for strangers. That was the first and only time they kissed on the lips.
The next day, Damien came back, and they pretended everything was normal, and they didn’t talk at all except Damien saying ‘I love you,’ like always.
When Dorian looked at the bite marks on his waist, he cried as hard as he always did when he was still scared of his dad.
Damien corners him after class. “Bad grade? I could see it in your eyes.”
“Fuck off.” He got a B. It’s getting harder to pretend that his self-destructive tendencies won’t destroy who he is in the classroom along with who he was before he first had alcohol in his system. “You got an A, right?”
“Yeah. I’m glad I finally beat you.” The words come out hollow. Almost everything out of Damien’s mouth is a little bit hollow nowadays. Dorian doesn’t blame him - he’s the same.
Dorian hears footsteps around the hall corner and tenses up at the thought of being seen with Damien before he remembers that to everyone but them, they’re still the best of friends. It’s hard to separate is and should be.
“You gotta start taking care of yourself. You’re better than you treat yourself.”
Dorian subconsciously pulls his sleeves down a little and hangs his head. “I’m not a kid. You don’t need to tell me what to do.”
“You never got to be a kid.” Dorian has the sudden, childish urge to kiss Damien. He shoves it down.
“Whatever.” He feels very self-conscious and very small.
“There’s a party tonight, isn’t there,” Damien says, and it’s not a question. “Are you gonna go?”
Dorian was planning to go. He’s wound up and frustrated and really wants alcohol in his system because he can’t deal with anything sober. So he doesn’t know why he glances at Damien and says, “No.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t feel like it.” He never feels like it, or feels like anything at all, but Damien already knows that.
“Can I come to your room tonight then?”
“Do whatever you want. I don’t control you.” He does. He knows if he told Damien to kneel, Damien would wrap his deft fingers around Dorian’s knees and nose into his thigh like it was prayer. He knows; he’d asked Damien to kneel for him once.
“Okay.” He pauses, and then, tentatively, “I love you.” They don’t say much after that, just going into their next class, but Dorian knows Damien sees his brows furrow up when he gets his English test back.
“Hey.” Damien sits down on the floor, right next to the bed, with Dorian sitting over him, feet brushing Damien’s thigh.
“You can sit up, y’know.”
Damien doesn’t answer, just runs a reverent hand over Dorian’s calf. “It’s bandaged. Did you-“
“Careful,” Dorian says, voice cracking. “New cuts always hurt the most.”
“I tried once,” Damien says suddenly. “I made one cut before I started crying. Guess I kind of liked it though - it was pretty, in a weird way. I’m scared I liked it too much, so I decided not to.” He kisses the outside of Dorian’s knee. “You’re the only thing I like too much that I commit to. Most things I like, I leave, because liking them scares me. I don’t know why I stay with you; you scare me the most.”
“Why did you never tell me,” Dorian breathes.
“Didn’t feel like it.” Dorian realizes that this is the kind of answer he would give, and then realizes how cruel he is.
“Why are you telling me now, then?”
“I’m glad you didn’t go to the party.” And then, “there’s a lot I can’t tell you.”
“I thought you told me everything.” Dorian can’t stop the hurt from creeping into his voice. Damien used to tell him everything, and Dorian can’t tell when he stopped.
“What, did you think my world revolves around you?”
Dorian’s too ashamed to say yes. “My world revolves around you.” He doesn’t know why he’s being so candid.
“Don’t lie to me, Dorian. You know I can’t handle that.”
Suddenly he feels very petulant, like a child, and says, “But it does.”
Damien turns his head and kisses his thigh and rubs his tongue over the skin, and says with Dorian’s flesh between his teeth “then you’d say ‘I love you’ back.”
Dorian says nothing, and Damien sighs and murmurs, “I love you.”