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It always happened this way.
Day or night — faded on Jose Cuervo or Natty Light or a deadly mix of both — they always found each other, as if they were two drops of weird oil in a basic water world. It was an odd little dance, if Steve had bothered to examine it. But they’d always been this way, hadn’t they? Even before the acceptance letters and the hazing and the dynamic duo the other boys named them as, Steve was to Tommy as black was to white. They were best friends. They’d always been best friends, even when they weren’t. Even when one of them went after the other’s girl or secured a position the other was gunning for. Their fights never lasted long, sparse as they were, because they didn’t know how to stay mad at each other. They didn’t know how to not be close.
So when things got frisky at the frat house — when the chapter president declared that nothing was off limits and brothers helped each other out — it was easy to write off the heated glances they shared across the thicket of damp bodies and beer bottles as nothing more than a check-in. They were friends, after all, and friends looked out for each other. Friends made sure their friend got off, and friends made sure it felt good. Not that Steve ever touched Tommy, and if he did, it was just to wipe the sweat from his brow, or to steady him as he fucked the treasurer’s face, his freckled back warm and soft against Steve’s chest. And if Steve’s lips found the crest of his shoulder — if he got a little caught up in the sex and the booze and the bodies — then what? It didn’t have to mean anything, even if it did. Even if Steve had been nursing a pathetic little crush for the better part of ten years, and seeing Tommy all sweaty and undone did wild things to his head like make him believe that, just for a few heart-pounding moments, they could be something more than best friends; that they could rise above the bullshit of the social roles and the boxes they’d always lived inside and be something else. Something better.
But it wasn’t like that, and it never would be, so Steve hooked his chin over Tommy’s shoulder, and watched him take the kind of pleasure that Steve would never be able to give him.
It was hard to know how many drinks Steve had had that night things shifted. He’d stopped counting after five, surrendering himself to the tequila shot haze that made touching other men this way feel okay; feel right.
Guys help guys, right?
On this particular Friday night, the frat house was a den of sin, the party having faded into the late night hours, leaving he and his brothers drunk and loose and in the right kind of mood to play their usual game. The president was knee-deep in the couch, head dropped between his shoulders as Steve’s roommate licked deep between his cheeks, and Tommy was rocking his short, thick cock into the eager body of one of the new pledges, his tan ass glowing pink where Tommy had brought his hand down repeatedly — because it was always hard and fast when the guys got involved, even though Steve knew Tommy was anything but. He played tough, sure, and he had an ugly little smirk that could fool most anyone, but Steve still remembered the time Tommy had cried when his goldfish died in third grade. He remembered the little funeral he’d helped Tommy put together, and he remembered how Tommy had stared sad-eyed at the ceiling all night until the wee hours of the morning when they couldn’t keep their eyes open anymore.
So it was strange, seeing him this way: the tight knit of his brow as harsh as the sharp rhythm of his hips; so hard when Steve knew he was nothing but soft.
However counterfeit the vision was, though, Steve was still drunk on the sight of him, pulling himself from the loveseat where he’d been lazily stroking himself to settle in front of Tommy’s conquest, the handsome line of his jaw fitting nicely in Steve’s hand as he tilted his head back and took himself in hand. The boy — Andre, maybe — smiled lazily and stuck his tongue out, his eyes clouded and unfocused by an unknown amount of alcohol and whatever else he’d gotten into that night. His mouth was warm and wet as Steve slipped inside, even if he was too drunk to maintain any kind of technique, never mind that the effort proved uncomfortable until Steve pinched meanly at his jaw and told him to watch the teeth, hot stuff.
Things got better after that, especially when he turned his gaze up toward Tommy, whose freckled face was stained pink as he panted and watched Steve work. Steve couldn’t help showing off, nudging his hips forward so that Andre choked, just a little, the bulge of Steve’s cock bobbing visibly in his throat.
“Fuck, that’s hot,” Steve praised, still looking at Tommy; at the pretty way he bit his bottom lip into his mouth and held Andre down to get a better angle. He fucked like a jackrabbit — like a dog in heat — and Steve would be lying if he said he hadn’t lain awake at night thinking about the pornographic little huffs and whines Tommy made in the throes of sex, the memory of it leaving Steve half-hard and brutally ashamed as he fought his way to sleep.
Flushed and faded, Tommy was nothing short of a wet dream as he pistoned toward his pleasure, his dusky blush creeping down his neck and shoulders to nestle behind the downy hair on his chest. He was as perfectly pink as a gumdrop, and Steve wanted to pinch him between his teeth; chew him up until he melted into sugar. The need consumed him — devoured him — set him aflame as he fucked someone else’s throat and imagined it was Tommy’s.
Below them, Andre groaned, hiking a leg up to encourage Tommy deeper, and Steve saw his chance, reaching out to grab Tommy’s chin before he could talk himself out of it. Sex-addled and drunk, Tommy barely looked surprised, offering nothing more than a soft sound of helplessness through parted lips.
“Is that how you fuck someone?” Steve goaded, grinning at the confused pinch of Tommy’s brow. “Look at him, he wants it deeper.” And it was true, Andre was practically contorting himself to get Tommy deeper, his tan hand working furiously over his half-hard, ruddy cock.
“Slower,” Steve told him, burning and burning and burning inside. “Fuck him so he feels it.”
Tommy nodded weakly in Steve’s grip and leaned forward, slowing in his movements to better control the angle of his hips. Andre pulled off Steve’s cock with a gasp, moaning something encouraging that was totally lost to Steve, his attention drawn entirely to Tommy’s face and the filthy roll of his hips. Deliciously vacant and fucked-out, Tommy closed his eyes, making more of those wet dream sounds as he took his pleasure exactly how Steve told him to, the thrill of control like a slip knot in Steve’s stomach, threatening to come loose and make a mess of their friendship.
“That’s it, baby,” Steve said, pinching Tommy’s jaw so his eyes slid open and his mouth hung slack, the flash of his tongue a color Steve longed to taste. “Make it good for him, don’t be greedy.” Something broken and pathetic choked its way from Tommy’s chest, his tongue working powerlessly behind his teeth, and he shuddered, hips slamming once, twice, then stilling altogether as his stomach muscles tensed. Steve watched him as he came, holding the searing line of his gaze and the trembling jut of his jaw, Andre’s eager mouth suddenly not enough stimulation for the tear of ecstasy Steve felt pulling at his seams. Clumsily, he took himself in hand, stripping his dick at a speed that quickly had his forearm burning in protest, Tommy’s eyes slipping down to watch until Steve said, “Look at me,” and drew his eyes again, their deep brown depths Steve’s only tether as his body shook with release. He was pulled apart by it, the razor’s edge of a forbidden feeling cutting him to ribbons as he made a mess of poor Andre’s face, wishing it were Tommy’s; wishing he was Tommy’s in the way he so desperately wanted to be, the man below him a feeble substitute.
The man, Andre, who Steve sort of forgot existed until he grunted and told them to move it, looking more than a little annoyed as he wriggled his way out from beneath them and toward the couch, dick still in hand. Steve let go of Tommy’s chin, trying and failing not to take in what his eyes were instantly drawn to: the thickness of his dick nestled wet and softening in a thatch of wiry curls. He’d always been good to look at, and he’d never been easier on the eyes than he was right now, breathing heavily in the afterglow. It could have been hours before they moved again, but things happened quickly after that, Tommy moving like he had somewhere to be and Steve following suit.
He stumbled, still drunk, up the stairs, closing himself in the hallway bathroom to shove his boxers back on and wash the stickiness off his hand, grimacing at the grime that always seemed to coat the sink no matter how many times the janitor cleaned it. Boys were gross. He was gross. He’d come while holding Tommy’s face in his hands and it had made the whole thing impossibly hotter, and now he was cleaning the jizz off his hand and watching himself in the mirror and hoping to Christ that Tommy had imbibed enough to make this whole thing disappear, even if Steve himself knew he’d never forget, the memory of Tommy’s flushed face making his heart pound, even now. He’d crossed a line. He’d made a mess.
Hand clean, he splashed water on his face, staring down into the basin as it dripped off his nose and down the drain, wondering how the fuck he was going to get over this stupid crush that was starting to feel like so much more. He was always getting in over his head with people he could never have. His heart didn’t know how to behave. Irritated and terminally glum, he shut the faucet off, moving to leave the bathroom only to come face to face with Tommy pushing through the door. He stopped, startled, and froze. Tommy had slipped back into his boxers — the blue ones with the little sailboats on them — but Steve was still thinking about what he looked like without him, cringing at his own inability to keep it in his damn pants.
“Tommy, listen, I —“ he started, swaying on his feet and floundering for a way back to normalcy. Tommy was his best friend. Tommy was his other half. Tommy was quickly striding toward him and crushing him in a messy kiss, the force of it so clumsy and quick that he had to grapple onto the sink to steady them. Tommy kissed like Steve’s lungs held all the air in the room, and in the span of a second, the world turned on its head, the two of them forever changed. Here in this dirty bathroom, they became something else: soft and desperate and different in a way Steve had never thought he could be; in a way he could only be with Tommy, his best friend, who knew him better than anyone and still stuck around.
Steve shoved his hands into Tommy’s hair, gripping at his closely-cropped locks to keep him close and kiss him, the drunken flight of their lips growing loose and uncoordinated as they started to gasp for breath, Steve’s mouth finding the softness of Tommy’s cheek, every freckle given affection. Tommy’s hands were restless at Steve’s waist, smoothing up his sides and leaving goosebumps in their wake. Steve shivered, huffing a bewildered laugh, and tucked his face into Tommy’s shoulder, holding him gently — gently, like they were never allowed to be.
Boys don’t cry, their dads had told them. Boys don’t kiss other boys and boys certainly don’t cling to one another, but here they were, lips tingling, skin singing, pressed tenderly together beneath the shitty fluorescent light. Sparks of hope swarmed like fireflies in Steve’s stomach until he could no longer hold his tongue. He had to know. Carefully, he drew himself away, taking Tommy’s face in his hands to search his eyes. Tommy blinked at him, the flicker of a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, and hope flared.
“Yeah?” Steve breathed, lighter than air, and Tommy’s smile widened into that shape Steve knew so well, looking nervous and handsome and exactly like home.
“Yeah,” Tommy agreed, tipping forward for another kiss that Steve met in kind, the soft curve of Tommy’s mouth melting against his.
And for once, he allowed himself to wonder if he could have Tommy; if he could be something different.
If it could always happen this way, from now on.