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It’s 2:00 in the morning.
Steve stands in the middle of Tommy Hagan’s darkened living room. People are sleeping—darkened figures entangled—the aftermath of a party. Steve is some uneven combination of drunk and high, his body still buzzing from the lines he did earlier.
It’s not exactly a habit. He only does coke on nights that feel like they were made for him.
Nights that feel like the clink and thud of an ice cube hitting a glass, nights where he looks at his own reflection and falls in love with the bags underneath his eyes and the moles on his cheeks. Nights that feel like teetering on the edge of a cliff, knowing a net will appear if he falls. Nights where he’s a king, an angel and a god. Nights where he feels the burn of lust and bedroom eyes from every person he passes, and he knows without a doubt that they’re all in love with him.
Steve doesn’t yet have the words for what’s really going on—the animal that sits in his stomach. Always hungry, always awake, always out for blood. But the more he feeds it, the more he starts to become the creature—an endless cycle of anxiety fueled recklessness. Parties start to feel comforting in a way they never have before.
Like tonight—a typical Saturday night rager, full of his classmates. Now that the party has died down, the animal inside him screams for attention. It isn’t satisfied.
Steve knows he should go to sleep. Knows he should find an empty bed or couch cushion to curl up on. But he can’t. He looks around him and everything looks a bit off, as though he’s just gone through the looking glass. His eyes land on the kitchen door, a warm light coming from within. He swears he can see someone behind the door.
He walks over, slipping inside the kitchen and closing the door behind him. Eddie Munson is sitting on the counter, glass of water in hand. He looks…disheveled.
Well-fucked, if Steve’s being honest—hair a tangled mess, eyes smudged in black eyeliner, lips red and slightly shiny, as though someone has just kissed him. A good kiss—one that leaves you gasping for air and aching for more.
He looks unsurprised by Steve’s sudden entrance, setting the glass down next to him and breathing out, “How goes the night?”
Steve huffs out a laugh and says, “What’s it to you, Munson?”
Eddie smiles, eyes narrowed. “Isn’t it past your bedtime, sweetheart?”
Steve’s stomach lurches, and the animal inside him scratches at the walls of his stomach. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say Eddie was flirting with him. Which, really, he doesn’t know any better. Not right now.
Not when Eddie stares at him like he’s something to behold, not when Eddie is hopping off the counter and dragging him to the kitchen floor. They sit facing each other, cross legged. Steve has never really sat on the kitchen floor—not since he was a kid and used to bang on pots and pans with a wooden spoon.
For a while, they stare at each other. Steve studies Eddie’s face like a painting—he imagines the sweeping brush strokes and careful artistry that went into the making of a face like his.
The thought feels out of place. Almost too romantic for what this really is—two intoxicated boys finding each other in the night. It feels as though they’ve both entered a mystical alternate universe, a less spooky twilight zone. One where they’ve been more than just acquaintances.
Steve isn’t sure what it is that’s making him feel brave, but he doesn’t care.
Eddie places a hand on Steve’s cheek and it feels like a handprint in wet cement—like it’s going to leave a mark, forever pressed into Steve’s skin. Like a mattress that starts to learn the shape of a body.
They inch closer, sitting in this strange shape, molded to each other. Steve finds himself practically in Eddie’s lap, legs on either side of his waist, staring down at Eddie, practically nose to nose.
“What the fuck is happening?” he whispers, knowing that there is no answer.
Eddie shakes his head and says, “Fuck if I know.”
Steve allows their noses to brush before pulling back again to ask, “What do you want?”
Eddie sighs and says, “Just wanna feel good. You feel good.”
Steve lets out a breathy laugh, “I’m like a dog.”
Eddie looks confused, tilting his head at Steve.
Steve continues, “I’m like a dog. Some kind of animal. I want things and I dig for them. I’m obedient when I want to be. I come when I’m called. Can’t help it. I think there’s something wrong with me.”
He can’t stop the words tumbling from his mouth. He knows he must sound nuts, and hopes Eddie can hear past the clear slur in his words.
Eddie looks at him thoughtfully and says, “There’s this thing I started saying, something my uncle always says to me. It’s like. A mantra or something like it. But I hear it so clearly when I look at you. “Be good, or be good at it.”
Steve isn’t totally sure what it means. Maybe it means you should try to be good, and if you can’t be, then be good at whatever else you are. Be ok with it. Be good at being bad.
All he knows is he wants to kiss Eddie. So he does.
He leans in and presses his lips to Eddie’s. Eddie seems surprised at first but then he fists his hands in Steve’s shirt, pulling him foreword and crushing their lips together in a bruising kiss. It’s as slow as it is messy, as burning as it is gentle. Eddie’s making these sweet little whiny sounds and Steve swallows them, licking tentatively into Eddie’s mouth. Eddie’s tongue is hot and wet against his, and he tastes like peaches and alcohol.
If Steve thought his high was wearing off before, it sure as fuck isn’t now. He’s convinced nothing has ever felt this good. He can feel Eddie beneath him, cock hard in his jeans. He should stop. They should stop.
“I know, you’re right,” he hears Eddie moan between kisses, and Steve realizes he must have said that out loud.
They break apart, but neither of them makes any move to free themselves from their intertwined position. Eddie rests his cheek against Steve’s neck, chin on his shoulder. Steve does the same on the opposite side. They fit together nicely.
They stay like that for a while, breathing with each other, Steve’s arms wrapped around Eddie’s shoulders, Eddie’s arms around Steve’s waist, a palm resting flat against the small of his back. The beast in Steve’s belly has quieted to a soft purr. Now, Steve listens to Eddie’s heartbeat.
It’s the kind of night that feels like a fever dream, but a kind one. A sigh of relief. A break in the everyday. The kind of closeness he craves, but never quite receives.
When they do part ways, the sun has started to rise. Steve and Eddie leave together, tiptoeing over their sleeping classmates and out the door. It’s barely day outside, and the sky starts to blush. The first rays of sun peak out from the clouds, casting light on Eddie’s face.
Steve smiles and says, “Little butter dishes full of honey.”
Eddie laughs, a beautiful full-bellied thing. “What the fuck, Harrington?” He grins, pulling Steve into a hug.
Steve murmurs against the shell of his ear, “Your eyes. When the sun hits them. Little butter dishes full of honey.”
Eddie goes quiet and steps out of their embrace. Steve’s worried he said something stupid. What kind of bullshit nonsense was that?
Little butter dishes full of honey. Makes no fucking sense.
He shuts his eyes, doesn’t want to watch Eddie walk away. But suddenly Eddie kisses him—first on the cheek, then each of his eyelids, then his neck, then the corner of his mouth, and finally his lips. It’s so tender, it knocks the wind out of him.
Eddie reaches out to hold one of Steve’s hands in his, and stares into his eyes, “Yours are like. Little jars of moss covered pennies.”
Now it’s Steve’s turn to laugh. The sun is higher in the sky now, and the world is waking up.
There’s more Steve wants—he wants to kiss Eddie again. Wants to peel the clothes from his body and fuck him like he means it. Wants to suck water droplets from his skin in the shower. Wants to see Eddie in one of his shirts, sleeping in his bed next to him. But it’s too much to say. Too much for now.
They kiss one more time, Steve’s hands cupping Eddie’s face. And then they start their separate journeys home, walking in opposite directions.
Steve looks back and yells, “Be good, Eddie!”
Eddie turns around and smiles, wide and gorgeous and yells back, “Or be good at it, Steve.”