Work Text:
Eric leans his head back against the brick wall and sucks the end of his cigarette with his eyes closed while Vince whimpers and sucks his cock. Eric doesn't look down. If he looks down he knows he'll see Vince jerking off frantically with his mouth full of Eric's dick, desperate, almost pained look on his face. Instead he looks up at the old school tv areal on the roof of the shop building, exhales a thick stream of smoke, watches it rise in the cold air. He flicks the ash off the end of his cigarette with one hand and buries the other hand in the black of Vince's curls. Vince pulls off and moans wantonly at the contact, spatters the asphalt with cum.
Eric takes one last drag, drops the butt of his cigarette, stubs it out with his toe and starts stuffing his stiff dick back in his pants. It's always a crap-shoot letting Vince blow him if he'll actually get to come or not. It's way too fucking cold and Vince is way too fucking useless way too fucking long after he shoots his load for Eric to keep standing in a service alley with his dick hanging out in the middle of January in New York, waiting on him. This was never about Eric anyway.
He leaves Vince on his knees in a puddle and heads back inside. They've got a biology test sixth period and he's gotta hit the little boy's room before the bell rings. He rubs one out in the stall thinking about Marcia Mancini's tits so he can piss. Fucking Vince. He gets distracted half way through the exam when Vince still hasn't bothered to show up. It'll be a miracle if the fucker graduates.
Turtle's absent, too, so Eric figures the two of them are smoking up behind the art building like always. Eric probably would have let Turtle talk him into it, too, New Year's resolution be damned, if it weren't for the test today—it's not like he hasn't broken all the rest of his resolutions by now—but Turtle hadn't asked him. Turtle learned a long time ago not to even bother asking before an exam, but Vince has never given a fuck what else E has on his plate when he wants something from E. Which is pretty much always, but Vince only whines enough to break Eric's resolve when he gets a bug up his ass, or when Marcia Mancini won't let Vince fuck her under the bleachers at lunch. Marcia's been a frigid little bitch lately.
Still, Eric has rules. With Vince, you have to have to stick firm to your boundaries or lose yourself entirely. So Eric only lets Vince suck him for the length of time it takes him to smoke one cigarette, whether either of them gets off or not, and only if he happens to have one left in his pack. (Vince bought him a whole carton for his birthday and Eric let Vince do whatever he wanted to him while he chain smoked for over an hour. Despite Vince shooting off like a bottle rocket all over Eric's face without even being touched when Eric licked his lips and blew hot smoke on Vince's dick, Eric had actually gotten off that time. Twice. Fuck, Eric wants a smoke.) He finishes his exam twenty minutes early, turns in his scantron and asks Mr. Petersen for the hall pass. He hangs out the window in the last stall in the boy's room on the second floor with a cigarette in one hand and his dick in the other, just like he did fifth period before lunch and manages to be only a little disgusted with himself.
Vince has Drama seventh period, so Eric doesn't see him until he's pulling books out of his locker after the last bell and Vince drapes himself warm over Eric's back, ostensibly looking over Eric's shoulder at the Bio textbook Eric has open to chapter ten, checking an answer that's been bugging him for the last two hours. Vince breathes wetly against Eric's throat, breath spicy like the skank weed Johnny sold them last week under the overwhelming scent of Altoids. Eric wants to drop to his knees and suck Vince off right there, but aside from the fact that the whole school would see, Eric doesn't do that. He doesn't make out with Vince, either, and tries to touch him as little as fucking possible, because Eric knows he can't stop himself from falling in love with anyone he's actively fucking around with, and he isn't going there with Vince.
Because, he reminds himself as he takes a steadying breath, Vince is his best friend.
And an asshole.
Eric's watched Vince use girls and forget them ten minutes later since the third grade when Vince had his first kiss with Angie Fiorelli at recess the same day as his second with Jenny Malinowski just to outdo Eric who'd kissed Jenny the day before. And sure, Eric loves the guy, but he's not in love with the cocksucker any more than he was before Vince jerked him off at a sleepover when they were 13, just horny and easy. He's not gonna let it change how he feels about jack shit just because Vince has a higher sex drive than any three desperate, horny 17-year-old guys put together.
“I'm gonna stop smoking,” E says without really thinking about it, snaps the book shut and shoves it in his backpack.
Vince backs off like E jabbed him in the ribs with his elbow, says, “Yeah?” and, for a second, looks just like he did right before he spewed chunks three feet from the can at Dom's kegger last week—white as a sheet and shaky—before he pulls himself together and shrugs.
E shakes his head, but says, “Yeah—filthy fucking habit—” anyway.
He lasts two days before he's so jittery out of his mind that he steals his mom's pack from her purse and smokes the whole damn thing on the fire escape, even though they're menthols and the last one makes him cough so hard he throws up over the railing. His mom finds him an hour later shivering and flushed with puke down the front of his PJs and lets him stay home. The second he's sure she's gone, twelve minutes after she leaves for work, he runs down the block and buys three soft packs of Lucky Strikes from the vending machine in the pool hall at the corner. Vince shows up tapping at his window ten minutes after second period would be start if they were at school. Eric leaves the window open and sprays airfreshner in the room so thick they can barely breathe after he spends the day smoking, naked in his bed while Vince blows him three times in three hours and gets jizz all over Eric's Matchbox sheets. He's not sure whether the smell of spunk or smoke is thicker under the harsh fake flowery chemical scent of the Lysol.
He smokes almost an entire pack that day—he's a dumb fuck sometimes and has never really learned from his mistakes, at least not when it comes to cigarettes, or Vince—hides a pack under the loose floorboard behind his dresser, and gives one to Vince for safe-keeping, which he knows is a mistake, but does anyway. He smokes his last cigarette waiting for the bus and quits again the next day. He lasts until lunch before he needs something, but instead of asking Vince for his smokes, he asks Turtle, who smokes him out on Special-K instead. He spends a week in a dizzy haze, until even Turtle thinks he's had enough.
Marcia Mancini smokes like a chimney. She's on the outs with Vince, not that Vince has really noticed, now that he's fucking Carla Fererra, and looking to get a little of her own back. E's high and a little drunk, so he goes ahead and makes out with her on a ratty couch for an hour at a party that weekend just to taste her mouth after he pops wood watching her teach Tracy Piccone how to blow smoke rings. Later, she lets him fuck her in the back room. It's nothing special, she's a little bossy and keeps her eyes closed the whole time, but they both get off and share a cigarette afterwards and E's pretty sure he loves her. When he gets home he shoves his dresser off the loose floor board and jerks off twice thinking about it with a cigarette in his mouth.
Vince wraps himself around Eric's back, whispers filthy things to him about how good Marcia's pussy tastes, asks if she let him rub himself off between her truly magnificent breasts, if E fucked her from behind or if he just let her bounce on his cock with those heavy, white tits dangling down in his face while he's jerking E off in the last stall of second floor boy's room during third period. Vince grinds his dick into E's ass and groans when E grunts and splutters thick strings of cum into the toilet. Ten seconds later, when Vince comes, E remembers all he'd really wanted was a halfsie and five minutes in a room without Vince in it. He invites Marcia over and fucks her in his bed with the curtains open and doesn't think about whether or not the curtains in Gina and Maria's bedroom are open, too, because he knows Vince's little sisters have swimming class at the Y on Tuesdays.
E has a new plan for quitting. He only smokes when he's with Marcia, who smokes his brand and likes to share. They smoke while they're fucking. He's never tasted her mouth when it wasn't full of smoke. She holds up her breasts in her hands while Eric fucks her. She says, “What do you think of my tits?” looking down at them, squeezes them, cigarette dangling precariously from her lip, bouncing in time with Eric's hips. “They're nice, right? Better than nice, even. My tits are fucking spectacular. Vinnie can go fuck himself and whoever it is he's hung up on today. Who fucking needs him? Useless fucking pretty boy. Come on, E, fuck me like you mean it.”
Two weeks after he fucked her at the party he decides to tell her he's in love with her. They've fucked twice a day every day since then, and Eric thinks she might be the one. He buys her a used, gold Claddagh ring from the pawn shop around the block, a little scraped on the face of the heart, but he'll polish that out before he gives it to her, he tells the boys before he goes to see her. Dom whistles and asks if that goes around Eric's cock. Turtle looks at him and says, “You really do just fucking fall in love with whoever you can get to let you stick your dick in,” like it's new information or something, like they haven't been teasing Eric about falling in love since the third grade. Vince is uncharacteristically silent on the matter, right up until Eric gets up to leave, at which point Vince pulls him aside, claps him on the shoulder, whispers, “Good luck,” thickly so close his lips touch Eric's ear and shoves him out the door.
Marcia laughs so hard she almost chokes on her cigarette.
Eric cries and refuses to get out of bed for two days, curled in on himself and his misery. His mother stays home with him for three days, and even though he knows they need the tips she's not making while she takes off work, he doesn't tell her he's fine, that she should leave him. She doesn't even bother asking him if he wants to talk when the phone rings, just turns his friends away like she did when he got chicken pox. She makes popcorn on the range with olive oil and sprinkles salt and M&Ms on top. They eat it watching her favorite old black and white movies, but also Scarface and the Godfather and Alien, because his mom is awesome. He curls up next to her on the couch with his head on her lap, lets his mother stroke his hair and tell him one day he'll find the right girl, that one day he'll fall in love someone who loves him back and it'll be magical, just like it was for her and his dad. He almost believes her.
He tells the guys he was out sick because he had bronchitis; his chest still hurts when he even thinks about smoking for a month after that. The guys don't believe a word of his lame excuse and give him epic levels of shit about how broken up he is over the break up, all of them but Vince. Vince doesn't say a fucking thing. He's pretty sure Vince is pretending he doesn't exist, when he's not rolling his eyes so hard Eric wants to smack him one, your typical Vincent Chase passive-aggressive bullshit. The guys don't notice, though, because Vince spends most of his time fucking some freshman at PS 32 named Cassie and a senior called Madge from the Saint Agnes Academy who wears a lacy, red thong and skirts just a little too short to be regulation. Eric doesn't like either of them, but it's not like the girls hang out with the him and the boys any longer than it takes to drag Vince off to his bedroom while Eric and Turtle and Dom play Mortal Kombat in Johnny's room, so it's not like he really knows them, either, beyond the fact that they're both fucking screamers.
Eric is so hard up by the time he finds Vince lighting up and taking a long drag on a cigarette that he trips and practically blows his wad right then. He doesn't, thank Christ, though behind the auditorium after school wouldn't be the worst place Vince has ever made him come. Instead, he holds off long enough to press Vince against the wall and lick the smoke out of his mouth with his tongue. Somehow he completely forgets that Vince doesn't smoke. But that day Vince does, sucks on the filter with lips that Eric's seen wrapped around his cock, presses his lips to Eric's and breathes smoke directly into Eric's lungs. Eric eats it up, creams his jeans with Vince's left hand cupping his crotch, right holding a cigarette like a joint, and then E drops to his knees and puts Vince's dick in his mouth and smokes it.
He jerks Vince off behind the deli on the way home, sucking the taste of nicotine off Vince's fingers, Vince panting hotly into E's neck and mewling like a kitten. E gets his mom to let Vince stay over so they can study for their history midterm and sucks Vince's dick until he's just about to come, stops a dozen times until Vince is practically crying and then Vince just fucking comes the second Eric's lips touch him. Eric sucks him dry anyways, then jerks off onto Vince's chest and passes out. He sucks Vince off quick and dirty in the morning, then tells him it can't happen again.
Just as Vince reaches for the tarnished brass doorknob, Eric grabs Vince by the shoulder, says fuck, and presses Vince back into the door, fumbling Vince's belt open and shaking. “Just ... fuck, just need to suck you one more time.”
Vince thumps his head back against the door and moans as Eric drops to his knees. Once his mouth is full of Vince's cum, he whips out his dick, intending to jerk off again, but Vince tackles him to the floor, pins him down and sucks him raw and that's when Eric wants a cigarette so bad he can't see straight. He has one while they walk to school (they missed the bus), offers Vince a drag and thinks about letting Vince fuck him. Vince smiles and shakes his head. Eric feels like an idiot, a stupid, slutty, cheap idiot. He doesn't offer to let Vince fuck him, just goes home that night and jerks off thinking about it with two fingers up his ass, face pressed into the pillow Vince used the night before.
His decision to quit smoking doesn't last, but his decision to stop fucking around with Vince does. It's easier to stay strong on that point now that he's a stupid love sick jerkoff than when he was just a stupid, horny retard. He doesn't want to stand out in the alley smoking while Vince sucks him off like it's all a game anymore. He wants to make love, but he knows Vince doesn't do that.
Sure, he still smokes and thinks about Vince, but now instead of just being overwhelmed with a rush of hormones, jerking off has taken on an edge of wistful, achy, longing. He thinks about Vince kissing him and touches himself softly, reverently, the way he wants to touch Vince. He thinks about making love with Vince and traces his finger around the shape of the hole in his chest, just goes ahead and lets himself pine over Vince as pitifully as he's always been afraid he would. The thing is, being in love with Vince hurts a lot more than even he'd thought it would, especially when Vince gets the message that Eric doesn't want to fuck around like they've been doing for years and moves on.
Vince still touches Eric as much as always, drapes himself all over Eric at every opportunity and Eric lets him, needy for it like he never was before. Vince is his best friend. Vince wants him to fall in love with some girl and be happy, so Eric does. For the most part, he even believes it. To a point. He stops comparing every girl to Vince, stops dating girls Vince has fucked, or who might want to fuck Vince. He starts dating smart girls: girls from the debate club, FBLA, and the school's chapter of NOW (who Turtle says are frigid dykes, but put out for sweet, earnest boys with soulful blue eyes and broken hearts who want to be their boyfriend.) He lets them all break his heart a little, because he needs a reason for the crushing, wistful sadness he feels when he looks at them, needs a reason Vince will accept, no matter how much shit Turtle and the other guys give him.
When they grow up, or more to the point, when their birth certificates say they're really adults, E quits smoking once and for all. He still falls in love with every girl he sleeps with—he has to keep some bad habits, after all—not that there are that many of them. He keeps them around as long as Vince can stand them, and then he lets them dump him, because it's easier that way, and it lets him tell himself he really is serious about this one or that one. It's not like he doesn't know it's a lie when he's not lying to himself, but it's such an established fact that no one else ever questions it. E loves to fall in love, and though it makes him a total pussy, he's incapable of having unemotional sex. Everyone who knows him knows it. Everyone but Vince, who isn't saying what he thinks one way or another, but clearly, E thinks as Vince gleefully bets Johnny Five Gs that E can have totally unemotional sex, Vince remembers E letting him blow him in cold alleys for the length of a single cigarette with less heartache than E does.