i don't know what's wrong with me, i keep writing happy
token freakshow prodigies
for jen and suzie (it is suzie, right?)
Huston Street is mostly okay with it. Rich Harden’s been trying to reconcile the space between them. Street likes him and that’s clear enough. Street wants them to be in the same room all the time, wants to drive into the ballpark with Harden and make him breakfast. He wants to kiss Harden goodnight like every night is a fucking first date. Nothing below the belt, and Harden’s hands on his hips make Street jerk.
Harden can wait. Street believes in the whole world, but Harden just believes in a few things. The difference is what makes them perfect for each other. Or so Harden has decided, anyway.
Street lets the scruff on his face grow for a day or two, until he looks like a missionary, and Harden pulls him off to the side, his face against Street’s neck and the cold of the chain pressing into the line of Harden’s jaw. Street kisses his cheek and says his name, shifting with Harden’s arms around his waist.
Tonight, tonight, Harden wants to say, but the surety in Huston Street is not to be trifled with. So they break apart and they keep a buffer between them when they walk out into the living room where the guys are. Lying about it is going to be harder for Street than the act itself.
Harden just wants him around. Wants to see him with his mouth swollen and his eyes black, debauched doll-faced boy with the crucifix around his neck torn loose and tangled in Harden’s fingers. Street is perfectly corruptible, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
A chance.
They live like a movie from the 1950s. Kisses with mostly-closed mouths and hands on shoulders, hooked around the backs of necks. Harden has gotten under Street’s shirt and maybe twice Street has returned the favor, broad flat palms mapping his back, and sometimes Street lets Harden hold them tightly together, moving slowly against Street’s hip so as not to scare him off, but that’s it. A fucking PG rating on their existence.
Harden doesn’t mind. Street’s got a long way to go. He makes Harden want to hang on like a kid, forfeit everything for two more minutes against Street’s bedroom door, two more minutes before Street pulls away blushing and says unsteadily, “’kay, night, man, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Goddamned Huston Street sending him off with a woozy drunk-happy smile on his face, content enough to have been promised tomorrow.
Every day is another day that Rich Harden has not gotten Huston Street naked. It should be more irritating than it is.
Harden doesn’t bring it up. He knows better than to push his luck.
Back home, Crosby glues quarters to the deck and sets up dental floss tripwires in the hallways. After suffering particularly bad carpet burn on his elbows, Harden lies on the floor and screams, “April Fools’ was FOUR FUCKING MONTHS AGO.” He can hear Crosby laughing his head off from behind his locked door. Huston Street comes floating above him, looking worried.
“Are you okay?”
Harden holds out his hand to be pulled up, and takes Street into his room, enlisting him to get his revenge. Street goes willingly, sits on Harden’s bed and watches him pace. Harden’s elbows hurt and none of his ideas are legal, never mind reasonable. Street nods along, though, and says, sure, he needs to be punished.
Then, somehow, Harden’s arm is in Street’s hands and Street is inspecting the burn, tracing his fingers around it and making little spurs of heat go shooting through Harden. Street’s hair is starting to curl as it grows out, brushing over the tops of his ears. Harden makes some dumb joke about kissing it better, and Street half-grins at him, a snagged piece of cotton and Street tells him, “I’ll kiss more than your elbow.”
Harden has to push Street down to get to his mouth, wrapping his hand around Street’s shoulder and guiding him onto the bed. Street kisses him as promised and he’s licking Harden’s mouth, and Harden forgets that he’s not supposed to and opens up, and Street, Street lets him.
Harden would spend forever right here, running his tongue over Street’s teeth and the top of his mouth, his knee up on the bed and pressed into Street’s side. The world is frozen around them and his arms flare with dull, bearable pain when they scrape Street’s chest. Almost a month since he kissed Street in a hotel room in Boston, and Rich Harden is deliriously grateful, life ahead of him made up of nothing but Sundays.
He jams his hand under Street’s head and tilts Street’s chin up, biting his throat, sucking hard on the jerk of his pulse and Street groans, mumbling low from deep in his chest. Harden lowers himself onto Street’s body and presses his hips down. Street gasps and his eyes fly wide open. “Wait,” he says, panicked.
Harden cannot stop now; it’d kill him. He shakes his head, digging his teeth into the inside of his lip. “I’m not touching you,” he says desperately. He finds Street’s hands and pins them over his head. “You’re not touching me. Nobody’s doing anything.”
He kisses Street again and rocks against him. Street half-yells and arcs up. There’s a rhythm here, a push-pull type of thing that makes white stars go off behind Harden’s eyes. They’re fully-clothed; it’s like middle school again. Street shifts and his legs close around Harden’s body, locking him in with knees so tight Harden can feel his ribs creak. Street is panting damply into the crook of his neck, his arms hung like a noose around Harden’s neck. Their fingers wind together above Street’s head, palms slick and breaking.
Harden keeps thinking, ‘faster, faster, it’s okay, little bit more this time, okay okay,’ and Street goes all tense beneath him, his mouth open in surprise. Harden tries to kiss him but Street is suddenly slack, crashing back onto the bed. Street’s head rolls and there’s a foggy careless shine in his eyes, blinking up at Harden like, who the fuck are you? Harden sets his teeth in Street’s shoulder and comes without shame, shaking like hell.
Nothing happens for awhile. Harden’s ears buzz. Street breathes shortly, his chest crushed. Eventually, Street’s hands slide free of Harden’s grip and trail up the lengths of his arms, meeting and weaving together at the back of Harden’s neck.
Street says softly, his breath warm under Harden’s chin, “thank god.”
Harden figures they’ll be all right. Street is good at giving his heart up. And Harden’s halfway there.
*
ahahahaha. frottage!