Chapter Text
Tonight was nothing special compared to any other in which they played games into the morning, but it felt different. More tense, but lighter, like a breeze in an open field, lost, but calm. A quieter panic than Albert was accustomed to.
The butterflies in Albert’s stomach were new and unwelcome. A strange phrase, anyways—the wings must be itchy. Not something Albert wants. He’ll vomit them up and spit on them when he’s alone.
But, the breathier Jake’s voice got throughout the night, the more that seemed to come. They must be flying in through the mouth he keeps opening to bite back with.
“Dude,” Jake spits out through his teeth, whatever anger born from his throat evaporating on his tongue, as he giggled like a candle in the dark, “you can’t keep killing me, we’re both gonna lose.”
“Urh, duh. We’re gonna lose ‘cause you keep doing stupid shit, I’m just disciplining you.” Albert laughs through the knots forming in his stomach.
Silence from Jake.
The seconds of quiet keep adding up, time slowing with each passing one, until a million years go by in Albert’s mind—a million cold, silent years.
That is, until Jake returns after his 30 seconds of running to find Albert from where he respawned, just to kill him and laugh at his body.
“You—motherfucker! God, I can’t play anything with you anymore.” Albert squeaks out in genuine frustration, despite being spoonfed his own medicine. Consequences weren’t something he was very fond of, especially when they were for things he already knew he was wrong for doing.
Jake’s head falls as he lets out another giggle brighter than the sun, and Albert considers that maybe he could understand Icarus—those seconds before plummeting must’ve been nice.
“You’re so funny when you’re mad,” Jake inhales sharply through his nose, catching his breath, “you squeal like a girl. It’s cute.”
Albert swallows, and blinks, like he can feel his eyes glazing over. You can’t just say that.
Albert considers, if Jake thinks he’s cute when he squeals like a girl, maybe he could be a girl. He’d do that, for Jake.
Get your shit together, Albert.
“Shut up, man, it was an accident.” Albert pouts, knowing that those words would be looping in the back of his mind for days.
“Yeah, okay, femmy.” Jake teases.
“Call me that again and I’ll kill you.”
He could hear Jake laughing under his breath, and he could tell his head was turned from the microphone. The sound is nice. Clean, like a razor straight through cotton.
He wished Jake would fly back to Florida. He wants to feel Jake’s breath hit his face again after sitting a little too close together on the couch, a little too drunk, a little too happy. He didn’t take advantage of that enough when he had him.
He picks at his cuticles, sighing through pink, bitten lips. This isn’t real. These feelings aren’t real. He must be having some kind of hormonal flare-up.
Oh, right, the game.
“You still there, dude?” Jake asks, in mild panic.
Albert runs a hand through his hair, and attempts to shake off the goosebumps covering his entire body like thorns.
“Yeah, sorry, I… there was a fly. On my desk. I killed it.”
“Whatever you say, man.”
A couple more seconds of awkward silence that made Albert want to die.
“Hey, Albert? Pick up that gun for me?” Jake asks, a little too excited for this to be a normal request.
“Why can’t you pick it up? I’m trying to—“
“Come onnn…”
God, fine.
Albert abandons his objective to go pick up the gun that was closer to Jake in the first place anyway.
“Good boy.”
Albert’s breath catches in his throat, despite the already-present prediction. “Urgh! I fucking knew it.”
“If you knew it, why’d you pick it up, then?” Jake inquires, audibly leaning closer to the microphone.
“Wh—was I not supposed to help you?!” Albert squeaks out again, swallowing the lump in his throat he gets for knowing the way Jake feels about it.
Jake steps away from the desk and cackles, leaving Albert to pout on the other side. Which, of course, he did, as he always does. You would, too, if you were teased this relentlessly for an entire game.
When Jake returns with an ‘ah,’ he sighs into another, softer chuckle, a much more fond one.
“I’m sorry, it was just too good to pass up.”
Albert huffs.
“It’s fine, I’m not mad.”
And he was, a little, but he could never stay mad. Not at Jake. Never at the boy whose name was written all along the cracks of his palms, never at the boy whose empty threats trickled down Albert’s thighs in the dark of his room.
After a few more minutes of subliminally-perverted teasing, Jake lets out a yawn. Albert thanks what ever god seems nearest for Jake’s mic quality, as the wetness of an opening mouth graces his ears.
But then, the reality settles. It’s 3 in the morning, and Jake is exhausted. Albert feels a black hole open up in his gut.
“I think I’m gonna go to bed, I didn’t realize how late it was,” Jake half-mumbles like it’s nothing, like he wasn’t kicking his feet against the heart he sat upon in-between Albert’s ribs, “love you, loser.”
‘Love you, loser.’
“Yeah—goodnight, man. See you tomorrow.” Albert avoids returning the sentiment, worried he’ll sound too smitten.
Albert clicks the disconnect button over Discord, and then immediately closes out his Roblox tab.
What the fuck does he mean by ‘love you, loser’?
Albert rips his headphones off, smacks his hands over his face and falls back against his bed, groaning.
He thinks I’m cute when I’m mad.
He sits up, eyeing in his cluttered dresser drawer a sweater Jake lent him last November because he got cold in a parking lot that he’d been neglecting to return for months. A soft, blue sweater, that he threw in his drawer without washing.
He anxiously looks around his room like someone could be watching him. A guilty conscience, sure, but it was overpowered and outnumbered by the sweet sounds replaying over and over in his mind from the soft mouth of his favorite boy.
He stands up with unsure legs, leaning down and picking up the sweater by the shoulders. He stands up and holds it out in front of him, examining the loose threads, the expansion from Jake’s muscles. It was so undoubtably his.
He bunches it up in his hands and walks over to his bed, swallowing thick. He’s sure his lungs are spasming, what with how heavy he’s breathing all of a sudden.
He rolls the softness around between his fingers, for a moment, before lifting it to his nose.
Smells like Jake.
He strips himself down in the cold air near his bed, bare and aching, loveless and wanting, before throwing on the sweater and pouncing on his mattress.
He looks down and examines his legs, stretching them out, running his hands along the length of his thighs, before he makes himself comfortable against the mattress he’d be putting a show on for through the next hour.
He pulls the neck of the sweater just up to his nose, and those sweet nothings echo back against the corners of his brain again;
‘mmgh,’
and, suddenly, he’s so hard he’s nauseous.
He spits on his hand and wraps his fingers around his cock, cold and unforgiving—and he wonders, what would Jake think? What would Jake think about me jerking off to the smell of him woven under the threads of a sweater I was supposed to give back months ago, after misconstruing an ‘I love you’?
The thrill of the secret was enough to get off on alone.
He slowly begins to stroke up and down, his left hand resting against the soft skin of his abdomen underneath the warmth of the sweater. The sounds of spit being spread over skin fill his ears, and he imagines with softly shut eyes the hand were Jake’s. His presence was a ghost in the room. The smell filling his nose was enough to kill Albert. Albert wants to sink his teeth into Jake in the dead of night and then show him off come morning, watercolor throat on display.
Jake was always beautiful, even in the butterflies’ absence. A slow dance with Jake, to Albert, was always something that would have turned a corner whether or not he felt the romance. The curve of his shoulders, the ripples in his back, the fluff of his hair, the softness of his eyes. The softness of his lips, really—Jake could speak no ill without slipping on his own guilt. Albert wanted Jake in the dirt, pleading.
A sharp inhale through his nose and a stuttered whimper, the nick of his nail against his skin. His pace quickened, heat pooling in his gut. The ticking of the clock struck by the almost-tangible electricity in the air, sweat beading along Albert’s hairline. He could just imagine it—Jake’s hand running along his thigh, kiss-swollen lips, all teary-eyed and glistening.
He rose to his knees before keeling over, forehead against the mattress, sweater falling with gravity against his face. He bit down on the neckline, whining out ‘Jake, Jake, Jake,’ growing louder the deeper the moon sunk into the sky.
His thighs begun to shake, mouth watering over chewed fabric, tongue worn numb from Albert’s perverse prayers to the sky he knew had stopped listening the second he touched himself.
With one last stroke, Albert came, like waves crashing against the beach under the sunset—loud and pretty. Moans fell from his mouth like honey as he relished in his orgasm, one he’d been chasing around in circles since Jake opened his mouth, caught by its tail.
He comes to realize he’s found religion between the teeth of a boy he hasn’t kissed. Sin in his pupils, prayer in the part of his hair.
The most beautiful boy in the world, of course, but Albert would take him ugly and disgusting. Albert wants Jake like cocaine, spread all into the creases of his skin, like a filthy kitchen floor. Wants to smoke his voice like weed, swallow his eyes like a pill, snort his mannerisms like coke. Wants to consume him like a quiet ocean sacrifice, wind whispering a cannibalistic sermon over bare skin and toes in the sand, glass on the beach like a bleeding bouquet of roses.
He lets the sweater fall from his ever-violent teeth as he sniffles against the fabric, coming down from his high, exhausted. He rises again, with quivering legs, and falls back against the pillow, sighing as the room fell quiet again, flame gone blue to red to dark.
He curls up against the blanket, knees to his chest, letting the sweat run down, sweater clinging against his skin.
He needs Jake to make him mad again.
The breeze blowing in through the crack in the window was all too lonely.