play crack the sky [2/3]
Over the next month, Matt’s hatred for the rich little prick gets significantly less volatile. This is mostly Jack’s doing; Jack Barakat will fucking nag anyone to get what he wants and he doesn’t give up easily. He suspects, actually, that that’s how he convinced Alex to go out with him in the first place. No one really knows for sure. Jack and Alex have been together for so long no one can remember what it was like for them to be apart. They just turned up to school one day and there were the two of them, sucking face in front of Alex’s locker, and that was that. No drama, no angst, only two idiots stupidly in love with each other that somehow got lucky and got it right the first time. He doesn’t so much as bat an eyelash anymore when they start making out in the middle of a conversation. It must be nice, having someone that completely in love with you.
Part of the reason he’s come to hate Danny less than usual is because, well, dude has a car and it’s kind of nice being able to mooch rides instead of taking the bus everywhere. He doesn’t even mind having to be in the car with the kid since - much to his surprise - Danny has a pretty decent CD collection and actually lets him borrow them so he can rip them to his laptop. It smells like fake pine air freshener in the car, which he hates, but it’s also warm and dry and uncrowded. Most of the time he sits in the passenger seat with his hands in his lap, bag by his feet, and watches the little pine tree sway back and forth slightly. They listen to The Smiths a lot and, all things considered, there are worse places he could be.
“So my parents are going away,” Danny says to him one Friday. “I’m thinking we should throw a house party tonight. That’s what people do when they want to piss their parents off, right?”
“You say ‘we’ like you think I’m actually going to help you with this.” He does and undoes the pin of the Rancid pin on his backpack listlessly. Matt doesn’t like parties. For one thing, he doesn’t drink, and for another, it’s a little sickening watching everyone he knows get shit-faced and have one-night stands which they will later regret. Plus, he has to watch out for Grieco, make sure no one does anything untoward to him. He doesn’t like Danny for that reason, too; he’s a little too chummy with Grieco for his own good. “As amusing as your little act of teenage rebellion is to me, watching your friends smash Mommy and Daddy’s designer lamps is not high on my list of things to do. I work as a bouncer; I don’t want to have to do that shit when I’m not getting paid.”
Danny scowls and says, “Fine, then don’t come. I wouldn’t want you to be in my house anyway. You’re mean. You’re a fucking jerk. But,” he continues, pulling over and parallel parking between a Hummer and a Smart Car on one of the downtown side-streets, “since you decided to be a dick, you can walk the rest of the way to work.” The automatic locks spring open.
Matt gets out of the car, shrugging into the straps of his backpack, and stands there watching while Danny drives away. He just got fucking stranded in the middle of downtown, and now he’s going to be late for work. Shit. So he stands there digging around in his pockets, feeling in the bottom seams of his bag for loose change, and comes up with a grand total of seven dollars and eighty-three cents, which he was planning to use to buy himself dinner on his break. Now he gets to make the fantastically fun decision of whether he gets to work on time or gets to eat dinner. He wonders if the prick knows what he fucking did or if he’s just naturally a huge dickweed. If he only gets a cab halfway, then he can make it to work on time if he jogs and still afford a small coffee later. The sad thing is that he’s actually considering going to the party. It’s on the bus route home and it’s a better idea than leaving it to chance that Evan will be sober enough to drive himself back to the apartment. He twists the lanyard his keys are on around his fingers thoughtfully. His Mickey Mouse keychain dangles between the key to the lobby of the building and the key to the apartment cheerfully.
Before he’s keyed in the final digit of his favourite cab company, the car pulls back into the same parking space sloppily. The passenger-side window rolls down and Danny pokes his head out. “Get in,” he sighs. “I’m not that heartless.”
“What’d you do, drive around the block to punish me? Not cool, man.” He climbs back into the passenger seat, silently grateful. “If you ever decide to get a better wardrobe, don’t give any of your Ed Hardy shit to Alex. You look like a dick.” Then he reaches over to eject the CD playing -
“- don’t fucking touch my CD player,” Danny groans.
- and switches it out for the new Jimmy Eat World album. “If you’re going to have a party,” he says solemnly, “you need really good beer. People love trashing houses if there’s good beer.” He purposely doesn’t ask why, exactly, they’re trying to piss Danny’s parents off. Because if he asks why, that implies that he cares, and soon enough he could find himself sucked into caring about the little bastard the way the rest of his friends have. It’s just a little bit difficult for him to sympathize with poor, rich, privileged Kurily, whose biggest problem in life is being unable to count to a high enough number to count the endless stacks of hundred dollar bills at his disposal. He’s probably going to be handing out briefcases full of money at the party, or something. That would really piss anyone’s parents off.
Okay, so he’s being slightly miserable about the whole thing. It’s frustrating for him. Danny looks at him with huge, pleading blue eyes and asks, quietly, “If I gave you like twenty bucks extra, would you buy the beer for me?”
Matt wants to say no. He can find someone else to buy him shitty imported beer. But then... twenty bucks. That’s enough for a cab ride home instead of a damp, smelly bus full of drunk frat boys who will undoubtedly harass him, call him a fag, and skulk along behind him while he walks from the bus stop to his apartment. It’s the cab ride; that’s why he does it. It’s not because of anything else. “You make it really fuckin’ hard to hate you, you know that?” he says when Danny drops him at work - it’s only two blocks from Danny’s house to Matt’s work, interesting factoid - and Danny fucking smirks at him.
He hates that smirk. What it does to him, on a visceral level. It feels like - it makes him feel like he’s in high school again. That first day when he met Grieco and they didn’t speak a word to each other until, at the end of the only class they ever shared together, Jack marched up to him and said, “If you don’t go talk to that kid I’m going to punch you in the face,” so he did it. And he didn’t like Grieco at first because it made him feel all these uncomfortable things; then he really liked Grieco way too much, and that’s another story entirely. He recognizes the potential for that, again, and he’s trying to avoid it. Because falling in love with the rich kid one of his friends has adopted into their group is only going to mean bad things. It’s tragically, unfortunately cliché. Matt knows he’s from the wrong side of the tracks, knows that if anything were to ever happen, it would be because Danny’s trying to piss off his parents and not out of any sort of caring. They hate each other.
But on the up side, he’s got twenty dollars in his wallet. “You seem surprisingly chipper for someone who had to accept a ride from his sworn enemy,” Jeff says when he walks in to the back room. “Or is he actually turning out to be human after all?”
“The only reason he drives me around is because Jack makes him,” he reminds the bartender gruffly. “He’s still a rich hipster scumbag. I mean, even if he does have good taste in music.” He strips out of his t-shirt and pulls on the ugly, thick polo with the word SECURITY printed on the back, careful not to let the fabric catch on his lip ring.
Jeff punches him in the arm playfully. “C’mon, Mickey,” Jeff says, grinning. “The world won’t come to a screeching halt if you admit to liking the guy a little bit.”
His cheeks grow hot almost instantly. “I do not fucking like him! He called me mean, man. Then he kicked me out of the car.”
Jeff’s grin only seems to grow. “Yeah, but he came back.”
“Only so I’d buy him beer so he can have this stupid house party tonight to piss his parents off. Fucking kids,” he grumbles. He clips his radio to the front of his shirt and presses the button to make sure it actually works and doesn’t need new batteries or anything. He should never have said anything about it to Jeff, who seems utterly convinced that Matt is harbouring a secret lust for the little rat bastard. It’s not true. He pulls the Sharpie from behind his ear and draws big X’s on the backs of both hands.
“Well, are you going to the party?”
He groans internally. “To pick Evan up and drive him home, yeah, but I’m not actually going to the party to be at the party. Also to check on Grieco, you know...”
Jeff pats him on the top of his head in a patronizing manner. “Mmm,” the other man hums. “And you’re telling me that if Danny just happens to come onto you and you haven’t gotten laid in over a year, you’d say no? Like, if he wouldn’t remember any of it the next day and you could leave before he even got up?”
“This isn’t some creepy gay version of Cinderella,” he sighs. “I can’t believe you’d even ask me that question.” Before Jeff can ask him any more annoying questions about Danny - and seriously, what the fuck? - it’s time to start. Nothing like a night of stamping hands and checking fake Arizona drivers’ licenses to keep his mind off things. It’s a rather uneventful evening. The bands playing that night are mediocre screamo bands whose vocalists couldn’t do a clean vocal live if the world depended on it. Some kid throws up in the men’s room. That’s about it. When two a.m. rolls around and the staff finally closes up shop, he walks the two blocks over to the party instead of taking the bus. That’s a small coffee and a donut in the morning.
When he arrives, the party is pretty much over. Evan’s car is gone. He finds Jack and Alex passed out in one of the bedrooms, curled up so closely together they may as well be one person. Grieco is still there, as is Alex-and-Jack’s other roommate, Rian. Matt eyes Rian warily and says, “What’s up,” eyeing him suspiciously. He’s got his arm around Grieco. That doesn’t sit well with him. But the look Rian is giving his best friend is so pathetically earnest.
“He’s just drunk,” Rian explains. “Right, buddy?” Grieco grins very drunkenly, giggles, and tucks his head under Rian’s chin. “I’m waiting for him to sober up and then I’m going to walk him home. Kara drove Evan and Vinny home, so you don’t need to worry about those two lugs.” For the first time, Matt feels like maybe he’s not going to need to break the guy’s kneecaps. Or any other part of his visage. He walks through the rest of the house, surveying the damage done, and comes to the conclusion that his friends do some fucking nice work trashing stuff. Now that he’s seen the inside of Danny’s house, he kind of wishes he’d been here to see it all unfold. It is a really nice house. The Kurily family are matching-sofas people. He fucking hates matching-sofas people.
As he wanders through the rest of the house, he finds the one room that doesn’t go with the rest of them, and he has to admit that he’s suitably impressed. Posters of Morrisey and the Sex Pistols, the Clash, blink-182 and Green Day. Danny’s sitting in the middle of his bedroom floor with a guitar in his hands, and damned if it isn’t the most beautiful thing Matt has ever seen. The guitar, that is. Not the boy. It feels creepy to be lurking in the doorway, though, so he clears his throat and rolls his eyes when Danny looks surprised to see him.
“Good party?” he asks.
He can tell Danny’s drunk by the slightly glazed look of his eyes - not that he spends any prolonged amount of time thinking about the dude’s eyes, seriously, even if they are kind of an awesome colour - and the way he slurs his words. “You were right about the beer. It was awesome and somebody brought shooters and it was - we all basked in each other’s awesomeness all night.” The thing is, right now Matt actually doesn’t hate the kid. Watching him play guitar, moving his fingers over the frets without so much as looking at them when he’s this intoxicated, is fucking fascinating. He’s practically glowing.
Abruptly, he says, “Why the fuck are you a poli-sci major? You should be in music.” It’s the truth. Danny Kurily is not going to become a politician. He’s not going to become an activist. Even sitting shirtless in the middle of his bedroom playing his acoustic while drunk, it’s clear that he needs to do this for the rest of his life. Kurily must be playing some kind of fairy song or something; suddenly Matt’s thoughts are cloudy and unclear, swirling around half-formed like smoke before dissolving. He kneels down on the carpet in front of Danny, ignoring the roughness of the carpet on his exposed knees. “If you really want to piss your parents off, you should switch your major.”
“I can think of other things I could do that would piss my parents off,” Danny remarks. “Like drop out. Or join a cult.”
Suddenly Matt remembers what Jeff had said to him earlier. “I bet your parents would really hate me,” he says. He drags his knuckles over the carpet. He sucks his lip ring into his mouth and holds it between his teeth. They look at each other awkwardly, but surprisingly he can’t find anything cutting to say. It’s not the end of the world. He doesn’t know what to do. The single thought that occurs to him - over and over and over again - is that if they kissed right now, the only person who would remember it is him. Before he can do anything he regrets he stands up and leaves. Fuck waiting for the bus; he walks the whole way home, an hour’s worth of sleep lost, but with each footfall he comes up with another reason he hates Danny Kurily and another reason he doesn’t like the guy. He meant what he said.
&
Vinny wakes up amidst a tangle of blankets and sweaty limbs, still feeling the ache low in his back. It shoots up his spine every time he moves. He doesn’t remember, but he knows what must have happened. Evan’s sound asleep next to him, snoring loudly. And Evan’s iPhone in its docking station informs him that Evan has missed three calls this morning, all from his girlfriend. Which, shit. Because his best friend’s arm is slung across his waist, keeping him close, and his entire body aches straight through to the bone. He really doesn’t want to deal with consequences at this point in time. It smells like sex in Evan’s bed.
They smell like sex.
He thinks there’s no point in pussyfooting around the issue, so he shakes Evan gently and whispers, “Hey. Hey. Wake the fuck up.” The roughness of his own voice catches him off-guard, just a little bit. Evan groans and rolls over, shielding his eyes from the sunlight beginning to stream in through the window and taking most of the blankets with him in the process.
“Hnnnnnf.”
“Ev, wake up,” he insists, attempting half-assedly to steal some of the covers back because it is fucking cold in the apartment this morning. He ends up with his chest pressed to Evan’s back. It’s surprisingly more comfortable than he thought it’d be; almost feels natural, like he belongs there. “Kirkendall, if you don’t wake your ass up right now I’m leaving. It’s too cold for this shit.”
Evan grunts, rolls back over and holds the blankets up long enough for him to slip under them. “Are we okay?” he asks quietly. “After last night?” But they’re not okay, not really; this is kind of one of those things that either makes or breaks a friendship, and Vinny knows the dude well enough to know that he’s probably got some crazy inner turmoil about this particular turn of events.
He doesn’t want it to be weird between them, so Vinny says, “Yeah. Yeah, we’re fine. You’re still a fuckin’ pain in the ass, ‘s not gonna change any time soon.” This, at least, makes Evan laugh and relax a little bit. They lie in bed for at least another half hour, not talking, when Evan’s phone rings again. “You should answer that,” he sighs. “It’s probably Ashley.”
For the first time since they started dating - Evan and Ashley, not Evan and Vinny; they’re not dating and that would be really fucking weird if they did - Evan rolls his eyes and groans. But he takes the call, reaching over Vinny to grab his phone from the bedside table. “Hey, babe,” he yawns. “Party was good... No, Rian and Grieco did not declare their love for each other and - no, no, Matt didn’t show up. He’d rather drive rusty nails into his retinas. How was class...?”
Vinny leans over and says into the phone, brightly, “Hi Ashley, I love you! When ya gonna dump Kirkendall for me so we can go on our date? I’m still waiting...” Evan rolls his eyes, obviously trying to contain his laughter. They can both hear her laughing on the other end of the line. In a lower tone of voice he says, “Okay, I’m gonna go, but text me later.” He’s not even surprised when Evan shifts the phone away from his face for long enough to press their lips together quickly. Evan watches him get dressed, too, sitting with his phone in one hand and playing with the corner of his sheet with the other. It’s unnerving how cavalier they’re being about this, this... thing. Once he’s found all of his clothes - and his hoodie is in the living room draped over the lamp, what the fuck...? - Evan is up and about, although he’s only wearing a pair of boxers and is moving with the sluggishness of being really, really hung over.
“Call you later,” Evan mumbles at him as he’s walking out the door. It’s not nearly a long enough walk back to his dorm. At least Grieco won’t ask him any awkward questions. He was lucky to get such a cool roommate.
&
It’s honestly a bit surprising when Danny gets invited to Evan’s apartment to cram for their Anthro midterm. Considering the way Matt has been acting toward him lately - less than volatile, but certainly not friendly - he half-expects there to be a bucket of pig’s blood hanging over the door waiting to be dumped on him. He’s been reading a lot of Stephen King for his English Lit class and it’s kind of going to his head a little more than it should. The worst thing that happens when he walks in is Matt giving him this very pissed off yet very sexy look; from that point on he gets ignored. It’s terribly distracting sitting there trying to concentrate on his notes - which are about as interesting as wet paint to him, seriously - when less than six feet away, Matt is sprawled out on the couch reading some beat-up book from the library in nothing but a pair of baggy pajama pants sitting low on his hips. They’re only up to the fifth chapter they’re supposed to know and he can barely pay attention.
“Dude, don’t punk out on me now,” Evan sighs. “If you don’t help me with this we are so going to fail this midterm tomorrow.” He pops the tab on his fifth Red Bull in about as many hours; he’s completely wired so Danny has no idea whether he’s absorbing any of the information or not. Come to think of it, he’s been acting weird lately anyway, so it’s anyone’s guess whether he’ll actually make it through the actual test without crashing. He’s been spending most of their study time texting someone - probably his girlfriend, if the stupid grin that he has every time his phone vibrates is any indication - and he’s been oddly reclusive lately, guarded.
When the phone vibrates again, Matt grabs it before Evan can get to it, glares at him, and says, “I’m going to lock this in my room and you can’t have it back until you actually study. You’re going to fucking fail this test if you don’t start concentrating on what you’re doing. No more energy drinks, either. That shit fucks with your head too much.”
Danny absolutely does not stare at Matt’s ass when he goes to throw Evan’s phone in his room. Because he’s supposed to be studying, right. Not checking out his not-friend’s body. Even if, y’know, he kind of wants to lick Matt’s abs and do a lot of other questionable stuff to him. “Please just kill me now,” he groans, flicking through the pages of his text miserably.
“If you’re going to die, do it in Evan’s room,” Matt says. The smirk that accompanies this statement isn’t quite friendly, but it’s lacking a lot of the maliciousness that he’s become used to. Their eyes lock for a minute; he feels all fluttery and looks back at his notebook quickly. He silently thanks Matt for cutting Evan off with the energy drinks. Seriously, he can barely finish one without feeling like he’s having a mini-heart attack so he doesn’t understand how Evan has had five. “I’m serious, Ev, no more Red Bull tonight. Danny isn’t going to drive you to the emergency room when you start puking and freaking out if you have another.”
“What the fuck, don’t volunteer me to - oh.” It takes him a minute to realize. “Yeah, no, Matt’s right. If you start puking we’re going to laugh.” That has happened a couple of times now. Evan drinks too many of the stupid things, gets over-excited and makes himself sick because it’s not healthy to drink that many energy drinks in one sitting. He’s not sure why Matt has chosen now to start siding with him. He’s not complaining. They spend the next hour sitting in silence - except for Evan, who’s so jumpy he can’t sit still for five minutes at a time - and it’s less tense than he thought it would be. Every once in a while, he swears he can feel Matt looking at him, but when he looks up Matt’s still completely absorbed in his book. It’s... slightly unsettling and he can’t shake the feeling that he’s being watched. The next time he looks up, Matt is actually looking at him. Not in a mean, condescending way or anything, just... looking. “What?” he asks self-consciously.
“You’re not half bad, Kurily. ‘m just trying to figure out who the fuck you are,” Matt replies.
“He’s the man who’s going to help me pass this midterm,” Evan says. “I think we should order pizza. If we’re going to pull an all-nighter, we need pizza.” He looks hopefully at Danny, who then sighs and pulls his phone out to dial the number of the pizza place. Then he looks at Matt with the same expression. “And beer. We should totally get a case of beer, ‘cept that the only person here who’s old enough to buy it won’t do it because he’s a douchebag.”
Matt rolls his eyes. “Buying you beer requires putting shoes and a shirt on and I don’t feel much like doing that right now.” To be honest, Danny is perfectly okay with that idea. Shirtless Matt is something he is a big fan of. Not that he’s showing that outwardly, since they’ve just made some semblance of peace between the two of them and he is not about to mess with the very delicate balance between being civil to each other and being hated for the rest of his sorry life. They make Evan go to pick up the pizza - he’s being really annoying since he’s still hyped up - which leaves Danny alone in the apartment with Matt. He remains where he is, sitting on the floor very quietly.
“... Who’s he been texting all night?” he asks finally.
“Fuck if I know,” Matt says. The look that he has in his eyes is positively devious. “Wanna find out? I don’t think he’s changed his lock code in a while so I should be able to get into his phone... But only because we’re looking out for our friend. It’s not snooping if we’re trying to help. That thing is a fucking distraction. Right?”
He nods his head, and less than a minute later he’s standing in the middle of Matt’s bedroom. Which should be kind of thrilling and sexy, but feels a lot more like a weird nightmare. “Uh... Did you lose a bet or something?” he laughs uncomfortably. There’s Disney memorabilia everywhere. It’s... it’s a total boner-killer, to be honest. The guy has fucking Mickey Mouse everything. So he keeps laughing uncomfortably because he doesn’t know what else to do. Not exactly the end result he’d been hoping for, being invited into the bedroom in the first place. His version of it was a lot sexier and more naked, less... frightening. “Your room kind of gives me the creeps, man. It’s like... a weird pedophile den. Did someone wearing Mickey Mouse gloves touch you as a child or something...?”
“No, I just like Disney.” Matt gets the lock code right on the first try; Danny sits down on the bed a respectable distance away from him and plays with the sleeves of his hoodie. “Hey. Come here and take a look at this. Kirkendall’s a sneaky motherfucker, who’d have thought?” When they open up Evan’s text messages, the most recent ones are from someone whose name in his address book is simply <3. Less than three. Heart. Love? But then they scroll through his contacts list and his girlfriend’s name is still right where it should be. They go through the rest of his messages - and some of them are fucking raunchy as hell, he feels uncomfortable reading them without even understanding the context of some of them - and it’s only once they’ve gotten to the end of the messages that he realizes two things. He’s resting his chin on Matt’s shoulder, and Matt hasn’t shoved him away or anything. They haven’t even argued the whole time Evan’s been gone.
He asks, “Seriously, what’s with the Mickey Mouse obsession? Doesn’t that one guy you work with tease you about it all the time, what’s his - Jeff, that’s the guy.” Matt makes a little sound of annoyance and shrugs him off. “What, is that like a sore point for you? Did your parents not take you to Disney as a child or something?”
“Fuck off,” Matt groans. He doesn’t move away, though. Instead - when Danny goes to nudge him and annoy him - he grins devilishly and lunges for Danny’s shoulders, pinning him to the mattress playfully. “You can’t just fucking charm your way into my life, man. It doesn’t work that way.”
Danny presses his fingers into Matt’s ribs, causing him to flinch momentarily and giving him just long enough to take control back and get himself on top again. “How does it work, then,” he grunts, pushing his elbow into the older man’s stomach. They’re fucking wrestling on Matt’s bed in the middle of this Disneyfied nightmare, Evan’s phone totally forgotten. He over-balances on his elbows and Matt takes advantage of it, driving his knee up hard.
“You’ve got to stop fucking trying to please other people all the time. You can’t make everybody happy. And I meant what I said when I told you to switch your major.”
He winds up on his back with Matt literally breathing down his neck. “I think the price is too high,” he sighs. “Not the money, I mean. The personal price. Everyone has one, and as much as I hate my parents I don’t really feel like being disowned by them to make myself happy. Money means shit to me, you know. It’s all worthless in the end.”
Matt scowls. “Then why are you fighting so hard?” Matt has his wrists pinned above his head, which isn’t fair. He can’t fight back. They’re staring each other directly in the eye; his heart is racing so fast it’s not even beating but practically vibrating non-stop, and without thinking he licks his lips. He lifts his foot helplessly and then realizes there’s really no place for him to put it to get himself free. “Look, if you don’t do it then you’re always going to regret that decision.”
“You say that like you know the first thing about me,” he mutters. “I barely know who I am anymore, so you’re not in a position to fucking judge.” Even though they’re kind of fighting - and he’s not putting up much of a fight by this point - the only thing he’s focused on is the perspiration running down Matt’s neck and how he would very much like to lick it. It’s a miracle he hasn’t popped a stiffy by now. Apparently he has more self-restraint than he’d thought. But if Matt doesn’t stop sitting on his thighs sometime in the next thirty seconds or so, they’re going to have a bigger problem than the normal tension between them.
“I know enough to be able to tell when someone is being a stupid shit.” Fuck, he can feel the words against his skin. It would be such a small thing to connect their lips, mere inches. Much against his better judgment, his eyes slip shut. The tip of Matt’s nose brushes his; he’s almost sure they’re going to kiss but then Matt hesitates when the latch of the apartment door clicks suddenly. He feels Matt flinch, stiffen, and growl slightly. When he opens his eyes finally, Evan’s standing in the doorway with an incredibly amused, shit-eating grin on his face.
“Whatcha doin’, guys,” he chuckles. The smell of warm pizza wafts in from the kitchen. His hands are still pinned above his head. “Kinda looks like you two were about to make out. I’m not interrupting, am I?” He wouldn’t be wearing that particular expression if he knew that they’d been reading his naughty texts from Less-Than-Three who’s not his girlfriend.
Too quickly, he shoves Matt away and says, “No!” forcefully. Matt says, “Oh, fuck no.” Neither of them mention the text messages. But every time Evan’s phone vibrates the rest of the night, they exchange a knowing look and - holy shit, he can’t even believe it - once, Matt actually smiles at him.
&
It’s Vinny’s fault that it happens. Everyone is hanging out at Jack, Alex and Rian’s house after they’ve all come back from the Christmas break; most of them have been drinking. Matt is still sober, as are Grieco and Rian - though they’re involved in an intense Mario Kart tournament which is really just a poorly disguised stab at spending more time with Grieco. He very politely turns a blind eye to the number of poorly executed attempts by Rian to cop a feel on his best friend. The girls have already left to get away from the levels of testosterone in the house and do their own thing. It’s pretty obvious that it’s just an excuse on Kara and Lisa’s part to hang out as part of their weirdly sublimated flirtation. He has to wonder, a little bit, when they’re finally going to admit their feelings for each other and get together already. It seems like everyone else in the place is fuckin’ in denial. Even Jack and Alex are acting out of sorts. They’re not pawing at each other the way they normally do. Actually, they’ve kissed maybe once or twice the entire time. On the other hand, Alex is really fuckin’ drunk and Jack is basically holding him up at this point in the evening.
There’s enough alcohol in everyone’s systems, in other words, when Vinny says, “Hey. We should play gay chicken!” and falls back against the couch cushions laughing. Evan snorts and starts laughing, too. Matt folds his arms over his chest and sighs. The rest of the group thinks it’s a hilarious idea, so they sit there watching with rapt attention as Evan and Vinny look at each other, grinning wildly. It will be maybe thirty seconds until one of them starts giggling hysterically. He drums his fingers against the plastic of his water bottle impatiently. Surprisingly, neither of the two calls chicken right away and their lips actually make solid contact for about, oh, fifteen seconds or so before Vinny pulls away howling with laughter and winds up doubled over on the floor. Kirkendall sits there smiling stupidly.
Then fucking Kurily comes back from the garage with another beer in his hand and Evan’s eyes light up. “Okay,” he says, glancing in Matt’s direction. “Your turn.” He feels everyone’s eyes on him and the more they look at him the more preposterous it seems. Easy enough, though. Matt Flyzik is the fucking champion of gay chicken. Nothing can freak him out, even being talked into playing with the one person he dislikes more than almost anyone he knows. They’re expecting him to freak out and say no. Instead, he cracks his jaw, sits up a little straighter.
“Fine,” he mutters. Danny sits down on the arm of the couch, making consistent eye contact with the floor. He sighs. “Well, c’mere, I don’t have all night.”
The first step of the game is to get the other guy to look at him. He reaches up and rests his hand tentatively on the back of Danny’s neck. So far, so good. Then he starts moving in, inching closer incrementally until their breath starts merging and he can practically taste the alcohol on the other man’s lips. “Y’not gonna freak me out,” Danny slurs, wrinkling his nose slightly. Which, no. The object of gay chicken is to creep the opponent out and get him to declare the situation ‘too gay’. He winces slightly - but doesn’t pull away, he’s not calling fucking chicken - when Kurily seizes the front of his shirt roughly and pulls him closer. And if he feels maybe a little bit apprehensive, it’s the taste of the alcohol when their lips collide and absolutely nothing to do with the rich brat he’s suddenly kissing. Damned if he’s going to be the one to pull away first, though. He whines when Kurily’s teeth clamp down on his lower lip and drag across it slowly, but then the teeth are replaced by Danny’s tongue flicking out and running across his lip teasingly. Without hesitation - fuck if he’s going to balk now - he parts his lips and allows Danny’s tongue to slide fluidly into his mouth.
When he slides his free hand up under the soft cotton American Apparel shirt - he kind of hates himself for being able to identify that with his eyes closed - and scrapes his nails along the skin there, Kurily moans wantonly into his mouth and arches up into the touch. That sound - that fucking sound - leads to Kurily straddling him on the couch, grinding down into his hips roughly enough that his body starts to react to it in a way he really fucking does not appreciate. He doesn’t call chicken when it becomes less of a kiss and more making out on the couch he helped carry from Vinny’s to the house last summer. He doesn’t call chicken when Danny’s hands end up in his shirt and one of the kid’s thumbs grazes his nipple suddenly. This is so gay. Seriously, it’s so fuckin’ gay.
“Fuck, too much, too much,” Evan groans, hauling Danny away from him by the scruff of the neck. “Let’s just call this a draw and never speak of it again.”
Matt straightens out his shirt slowly, keeping his arms crossed tightly over his chest afterward and sits in his corner of the couch with his head back, staring at the ceiling. Eventually - once the Mario Kart tournament ends with Grieco coming out slightly ahead, funny how that works out - he feels a tug at the bottom of his shirt. “Hey,” Grieco murmurs, slipping under his arm and curling into his side. “He’s not that bad, you know.”
“Whatever,” he responds, rubbing his palm over his best friend’s hair affectionately. The bristly parts tickle his hand but he doesn’t mind too much.
“Stop being such an asshole,” Grieco scolds him. “You never give people a chance.” He doesn’t fucking want to give anyone a chance. He wants to go home and shower and go to bed and forget that this ever happened. Fucking Kurily and his stupid purple shirt and his stupid hipster scarf and glasses and his whole fucking existence.
Part Three
Part of the reason he’s come to hate Danny less than usual is because, well, dude has a car and it’s kind of nice being able to mooch rides instead of taking the bus everywhere. He doesn’t even mind having to be in the car with the kid since - much to his surprise - Danny has a pretty decent CD collection and actually lets him borrow them so he can rip them to his laptop. It smells like fake pine air freshener in the car, which he hates, but it’s also warm and dry and uncrowded. Most of the time he sits in the passenger seat with his hands in his lap, bag by his feet, and watches the little pine tree sway back and forth slightly. They listen to The Smiths a lot and, all things considered, there are worse places he could be.
“So my parents are going away,” Danny says to him one Friday. “I’m thinking we should throw a house party tonight. That’s what people do when they want to piss their parents off, right?”
“You say ‘we’ like you think I’m actually going to help you with this.” He does and undoes the pin of the Rancid pin on his backpack listlessly. Matt doesn’t like parties. For one thing, he doesn’t drink, and for another, it’s a little sickening watching everyone he knows get shit-faced and have one-night stands which they will later regret. Plus, he has to watch out for Grieco, make sure no one does anything untoward to him. He doesn’t like Danny for that reason, too; he’s a little too chummy with Grieco for his own good. “As amusing as your little act of teenage rebellion is to me, watching your friends smash Mommy and Daddy’s designer lamps is not high on my list of things to do. I work as a bouncer; I don’t want to have to do that shit when I’m not getting paid.”
Danny scowls and says, “Fine, then don’t come. I wouldn’t want you to be in my house anyway. You’re mean. You’re a fucking jerk. But,” he continues, pulling over and parallel parking between a Hummer and a Smart Car on one of the downtown side-streets, “since you decided to be a dick, you can walk the rest of the way to work.” The automatic locks spring open.
Matt gets out of the car, shrugging into the straps of his backpack, and stands there watching while Danny drives away. He just got fucking stranded in the middle of downtown, and now he’s going to be late for work. Shit. So he stands there digging around in his pockets, feeling in the bottom seams of his bag for loose change, and comes up with a grand total of seven dollars and eighty-three cents, which he was planning to use to buy himself dinner on his break. Now he gets to make the fantastically fun decision of whether he gets to work on time or gets to eat dinner. He wonders if the prick knows what he fucking did or if he’s just naturally a huge dickweed. If he only gets a cab halfway, then he can make it to work on time if he jogs and still afford a small coffee later. The sad thing is that he’s actually considering going to the party. It’s on the bus route home and it’s a better idea than leaving it to chance that Evan will be sober enough to drive himself back to the apartment. He twists the lanyard his keys are on around his fingers thoughtfully. His Mickey Mouse keychain dangles between the key to the lobby of the building and the key to the apartment cheerfully.
Before he’s keyed in the final digit of his favourite cab company, the car pulls back into the same parking space sloppily. The passenger-side window rolls down and Danny pokes his head out. “Get in,” he sighs. “I’m not that heartless.”
“What’d you do, drive around the block to punish me? Not cool, man.” He climbs back into the passenger seat, silently grateful. “If you ever decide to get a better wardrobe, don’t give any of your Ed Hardy shit to Alex. You look like a dick.” Then he reaches over to eject the CD playing -
“- don’t fucking touch my CD player,” Danny groans.
- and switches it out for the new Jimmy Eat World album. “If you’re going to have a party,” he says solemnly, “you need really good beer. People love trashing houses if there’s good beer.” He purposely doesn’t ask why, exactly, they’re trying to piss Danny’s parents off. Because if he asks why, that implies that he cares, and soon enough he could find himself sucked into caring about the little bastard the way the rest of his friends have. It’s just a little bit difficult for him to sympathize with poor, rich, privileged Kurily, whose biggest problem in life is being unable to count to a high enough number to count the endless stacks of hundred dollar bills at his disposal. He’s probably going to be handing out briefcases full of money at the party, or something. That would really piss anyone’s parents off.
Okay, so he’s being slightly miserable about the whole thing. It’s frustrating for him. Danny looks at him with huge, pleading blue eyes and asks, quietly, “If I gave you like twenty bucks extra, would you buy the beer for me?”
Matt wants to say no. He can find someone else to buy him shitty imported beer. But then... twenty bucks. That’s enough for a cab ride home instead of a damp, smelly bus full of drunk frat boys who will undoubtedly harass him, call him a fag, and skulk along behind him while he walks from the bus stop to his apartment. It’s the cab ride; that’s why he does it. It’s not because of anything else. “You make it really fuckin’ hard to hate you, you know that?” he says when Danny drops him at work - it’s only two blocks from Danny’s house to Matt’s work, interesting factoid - and Danny fucking smirks at him.
He hates that smirk. What it does to him, on a visceral level. It feels like - it makes him feel like he’s in high school again. That first day when he met Grieco and they didn’t speak a word to each other until, at the end of the only class they ever shared together, Jack marched up to him and said, “If you don’t go talk to that kid I’m going to punch you in the face,” so he did it. And he didn’t like Grieco at first because it made him feel all these uncomfortable things; then he really liked Grieco way too much, and that’s another story entirely. He recognizes the potential for that, again, and he’s trying to avoid it. Because falling in love with the rich kid one of his friends has adopted into their group is only going to mean bad things. It’s tragically, unfortunately cliché. Matt knows he’s from the wrong side of the tracks, knows that if anything were to ever happen, it would be because Danny’s trying to piss off his parents and not out of any sort of caring. They hate each other.
But on the up side, he’s got twenty dollars in his wallet. “You seem surprisingly chipper for someone who had to accept a ride from his sworn enemy,” Jeff says when he walks in to the back room. “Or is he actually turning out to be human after all?”
“The only reason he drives me around is because Jack makes him,” he reminds the bartender gruffly. “He’s still a rich hipster scumbag. I mean, even if he does have good taste in music.” He strips out of his t-shirt and pulls on the ugly, thick polo with the word SECURITY printed on the back, careful not to let the fabric catch on his lip ring.
Jeff punches him in the arm playfully. “C’mon, Mickey,” Jeff says, grinning. “The world won’t come to a screeching halt if you admit to liking the guy a little bit.”
His cheeks grow hot almost instantly. “I do not fucking like him! He called me mean, man. Then he kicked me out of the car.”
Jeff’s grin only seems to grow. “Yeah, but he came back.”
“Only so I’d buy him beer so he can have this stupid house party tonight to piss his parents off. Fucking kids,” he grumbles. He clips his radio to the front of his shirt and presses the button to make sure it actually works and doesn’t need new batteries or anything. He should never have said anything about it to Jeff, who seems utterly convinced that Matt is harbouring a secret lust for the little rat bastard. It’s not true. He pulls the Sharpie from behind his ear and draws big X’s on the backs of both hands.
“Well, are you going to the party?”
He groans internally. “To pick Evan up and drive him home, yeah, but I’m not actually going to the party to be at the party. Also to check on Grieco, you know...”
Jeff pats him on the top of his head in a patronizing manner. “Mmm,” the other man hums. “And you’re telling me that if Danny just happens to come onto you and you haven’t gotten laid in over a year, you’d say no? Like, if he wouldn’t remember any of it the next day and you could leave before he even got up?”
“This isn’t some creepy gay version of Cinderella,” he sighs. “I can’t believe you’d even ask me that question.” Before Jeff can ask him any more annoying questions about Danny - and seriously, what the fuck? - it’s time to start. Nothing like a night of stamping hands and checking fake Arizona drivers’ licenses to keep his mind off things. It’s a rather uneventful evening. The bands playing that night are mediocre screamo bands whose vocalists couldn’t do a clean vocal live if the world depended on it. Some kid throws up in the men’s room. That’s about it. When two a.m. rolls around and the staff finally closes up shop, he walks the two blocks over to the party instead of taking the bus. That’s a small coffee and a donut in the morning.
When he arrives, the party is pretty much over. Evan’s car is gone. He finds Jack and Alex passed out in one of the bedrooms, curled up so closely together they may as well be one person. Grieco is still there, as is Alex-and-Jack’s other roommate, Rian. Matt eyes Rian warily and says, “What’s up,” eyeing him suspiciously. He’s got his arm around Grieco. That doesn’t sit well with him. But the look Rian is giving his best friend is so pathetically earnest.
“He’s just drunk,” Rian explains. “Right, buddy?” Grieco grins very drunkenly, giggles, and tucks his head under Rian’s chin. “I’m waiting for him to sober up and then I’m going to walk him home. Kara drove Evan and Vinny home, so you don’t need to worry about those two lugs.” For the first time, Matt feels like maybe he’s not going to need to break the guy’s kneecaps. Or any other part of his visage. He walks through the rest of the house, surveying the damage done, and comes to the conclusion that his friends do some fucking nice work trashing stuff. Now that he’s seen the inside of Danny’s house, he kind of wishes he’d been here to see it all unfold. It is a really nice house. The Kurily family are matching-sofas people. He fucking hates matching-sofas people.
As he wanders through the rest of the house, he finds the one room that doesn’t go with the rest of them, and he has to admit that he’s suitably impressed. Posters of Morrisey and the Sex Pistols, the Clash, blink-182 and Green Day. Danny’s sitting in the middle of his bedroom floor with a guitar in his hands, and damned if it isn’t the most beautiful thing Matt has ever seen. The guitar, that is. Not the boy. It feels creepy to be lurking in the doorway, though, so he clears his throat and rolls his eyes when Danny looks surprised to see him.
“Good party?” he asks.
He can tell Danny’s drunk by the slightly glazed look of his eyes - not that he spends any prolonged amount of time thinking about the dude’s eyes, seriously, even if they are kind of an awesome colour - and the way he slurs his words. “You were right about the beer. It was awesome and somebody brought shooters and it was - we all basked in each other’s awesomeness all night.” The thing is, right now Matt actually doesn’t hate the kid. Watching him play guitar, moving his fingers over the frets without so much as looking at them when he’s this intoxicated, is fucking fascinating. He’s practically glowing.
Abruptly, he says, “Why the fuck are you a poli-sci major? You should be in music.” It’s the truth. Danny Kurily is not going to become a politician. He’s not going to become an activist. Even sitting shirtless in the middle of his bedroom playing his acoustic while drunk, it’s clear that he needs to do this for the rest of his life. Kurily must be playing some kind of fairy song or something; suddenly Matt’s thoughts are cloudy and unclear, swirling around half-formed like smoke before dissolving. He kneels down on the carpet in front of Danny, ignoring the roughness of the carpet on his exposed knees. “If you really want to piss your parents off, you should switch your major.”
“I can think of other things I could do that would piss my parents off,” Danny remarks. “Like drop out. Or join a cult.”
Suddenly Matt remembers what Jeff had said to him earlier. “I bet your parents would really hate me,” he says. He drags his knuckles over the carpet. He sucks his lip ring into his mouth and holds it between his teeth. They look at each other awkwardly, but surprisingly he can’t find anything cutting to say. It’s not the end of the world. He doesn’t know what to do. The single thought that occurs to him - over and over and over again - is that if they kissed right now, the only person who would remember it is him. Before he can do anything he regrets he stands up and leaves. Fuck waiting for the bus; he walks the whole way home, an hour’s worth of sleep lost, but with each footfall he comes up with another reason he hates Danny Kurily and another reason he doesn’t like the guy. He meant what he said.
&
Vinny wakes up amidst a tangle of blankets and sweaty limbs, still feeling the ache low in his back. It shoots up his spine every time he moves. He doesn’t remember, but he knows what must have happened. Evan’s sound asleep next to him, snoring loudly. And Evan’s iPhone in its docking station informs him that Evan has missed three calls this morning, all from his girlfriend. Which, shit. Because his best friend’s arm is slung across his waist, keeping him close, and his entire body aches straight through to the bone. He really doesn’t want to deal with consequences at this point in time. It smells like sex in Evan’s bed.
They smell like sex.
He thinks there’s no point in pussyfooting around the issue, so he shakes Evan gently and whispers, “Hey. Hey. Wake the fuck up.” The roughness of his own voice catches him off-guard, just a little bit. Evan groans and rolls over, shielding his eyes from the sunlight beginning to stream in through the window and taking most of the blankets with him in the process.
“Hnnnnnf.”
“Ev, wake up,” he insists, attempting half-assedly to steal some of the covers back because it is fucking cold in the apartment this morning. He ends up with his chest pressed to Evan’s back. It’s surprisingly more comfortable than he thought it’d be; almost feels natural, like he belongs there. “Kirkendall, if you don’t wake your ass up right now I’m leaving. It’s too cold for this shit.”
Evan grunts, rolls back over and holds the blankets up long enough for him to slip under them. “Are we okay?” he asks quietly. “After last night?” But they’re not okay, not really; this is kind of one of those things that either makes or breaks a friendship, and Vinny knows the dude well enough to know that he’s probably got some crazy inner turmoil about this particular turn of events.
He doesn’t want it to be weird between them, so Vinny says, “Yeah. Yeah, we’re fine. You’re still a fuckin’ pain in the ass, ‘s not gonna change any time soon.” This, at least, makes Evan laugh and relax a little bit. They lie in bed for at least another half hour, not talking, when Evan’s phone rings again. “You should answer that,” he sighs. “It’s probably Ashley.”
For the first time since they started dating - Evan and Ashley, not Evan and Vinny; they’re not dating and that would be really fucking weird if they did - Evan rolls his eyes and groans. But he takes the call, reaching over Vinny to grab his phone from the bedside table. “Hey, babe,” he yawns. “Party was good... No, Rian and Grieco did not declare their love for each other and - no, no, Matt didn’t show up. He’d rather drive rusty nails into his retinas. How was class...?”
Vinny leans over and says into the phone, brightly, “Hi Ashley, I love you! When ya gonna dump Kirkendall for me so we can go on our date? I’m still waiting...” Evan rolls his eyes, obviously trying to contain his laughter. They can both hear her laughing on the other end of the line. In a lower tone of voice he says, “Okay, I’m gonna go, but text me later.” He’s not even surprised when Evan shifts the phone away from his face for long enough to press their lips together quickly. Evan watches him get dressed, too, sitting with his phone in one hand and playing with the corner of his sheet with the other. It’s unnerving how cavalier they’re being about this, this... thing. Once he’s found all of his clothes - and his hoodie is in the living room draped over the lamp, what the fuck...? - Evan is up and about, although he’s only wearing a pair of boxers and is moving with the sluggishness of being really, really hung over.
“Call you later,” Evan mumbles at him as he’s walking out the door. It’s not nearly a long enough walk back to his dorm. At least Grieco won’t ask him any awkward questions. He was lucky to get such a cool roommate.
&
It’s honestly a bit surprising when Danny gets invited to Evan’s apartment to cram for their Anthro midterm. Considering the way Matt has been acting toward him lately - less than volatile, but certainly not friendly - he half-expects there to be a bucket of pig’s blood hanging over the door waiting to be dumped on him. He’s been reading a lot of Stephen King for his English Lit class and it’s kind of going to his head a little more than it should. The worst thing that happens when he walks in is Matt giving him this very pissed off yet very sexy look; from that point on he gets ignored. It’s terribly distracting sitting there trying to concentrate on his notes - which are about as interesting as wet paint to him, seriously - when less than six feet away, Matt is sprawled out on the couch reading some beat-up book from the library in nothing but a pair of baggy pajama pants sitting low on his hips. They’re only up to the fifth chapter they’re supposed to know and he can barely pay attention.
“Dude, don’t punk out on me now,” Evan sighs. “If you don’t help me with this we are so going to fail this midterm tomorrow.” He pops the tab on his fifth Red Bull in about as many hours; he’s completely wired so Danny has no idea whether he’s absorbing any of the information or not. Come to think of it, he’s been acting weird lately anyway, so it’s anyone’s guess whether he’ll actually make it through the actual test without crashing. He’s been spending most of their study time texting someone - probably his girlfriend, if the stupid grin that he has every time his phone vibrates is any indication - and he’s been oddly reclusive lately, guarded.
When the phone vibrates again, Matt grabs it before Evan can get to it, glares at him, and says, “I’m going to lock this in my room and you can’t have it back until you actually study. You’re going to fucking fail this test if you don’t start concentrating on what you’re doing. No more energy drinks, either. That shit fucks with your head too much.”
Danny absolutely does not stare at Matt’s ass when he goes to throw Evan’s phone in his room. Because he’s supposed to be studying, right. Not checking out his not-friend’s body. Even if, y’know, he kind of wants to lick Matt’s abs and do a lot of other questionable stuff to him. “Please just kill me now,” he groans, flicking through the pages of his text miserably.
“If you’re going to die, do it in Evan’s room,” Matt says. The smirk that accompanies this statement isn’t quite friendly, but it’s lacking a lot of the maliciousness that he’s become used to. Their eyes lock for a minute; he feels all fluttery and looks back at his notebook quickly. He silently thanks Matt for cutting Evan off with the energy drinks. Seriously, he can barely finish one without feeling like he’s having a mini-heart attack so he doesn’t understand how Evan has had five. “I’m serious, Ev, no more Red Bull tonight. Danny isn’t going to drive you to the emergency room when you start puking and freaking out if you have another.”
“What the fuck, don’t volunteer me to - oh.” It takes him a minute to realize. “Yeah, no, Matt’s right. If you start puking we’re going to laugh.” That has happened a couple of times now. Evan drinks too many of the stupid things, gets over-excited and makes himself sick because it’s not healthy to drink that many energy drinks in one sitting. He’s not sure why Matt has chosen now to start siding with him. He’s not complaining. They spend the next hour sitting in silence - except for Evan, who’s so jumpy he can’t sit still for five minutes at a time - and it’s less tense than he thought it would be. Every once in a while, he swears he can feel Matt looking at him, but when he looks up Matt’s still completely absorbed in his book. It’s... slightly unsettling and he can’t shake the feeling that he’s being watched. The next time he looks up, Matt is actually looking at him. Not in a mean, condescending way or anything, just... looking. “What?” he asks self-consciously.
“You’re not half bad, Kurily. ‘m just trying to figure out who the fuck you are,” Matt replies.
“He’s the man who’s going to help me pass this midterm,” Evan says. “I think we should order pizza. If we’re going to pull an all-nighter, we need pizza.” He looks hopefully at Danny, who then sighs and pulls his phone out to dial the number of the pizza place. Then he looks at Matt with the same expression. “And beer. We should totally get a case of beer, ‘cept that the only person here who’s old enough to buy it won’t do it because he’s a douchebag.”
Matt rolls his eyes. “Buying you beer requires putting shoes and a shirt on and I don’t feel much like doing that right now.” To be honest, Danny is perfectly okay with that idea. Shirtless Matt is something he is a big fan of. Not that he’s showing that outwardly, since they’ve just made some semblance of peace between the two of them and he is not about to mess with the very delicate balance between being civil to each other and being hated for the rest of his sorry life. They make Evan go to pick up the pizza - he’s being really annoying since he’s still hyped up - which leaves Danny alone in the apartment with Matt. He remains where he is, sitting on the floor very quietly.
“... Who’s he been texting all night?” he asks finally.
“Fuck if I know,” Matt says. The look that he has in his eyes is positively devious. “Wanna find out? I don’t think he’s changed his lock code in a while so I should be able to get into his phone... But only because we’re looking out for our friend. It’s not snooping if we’re trying to help. That thing is a fucking distraction. Right?”
He nods his head, and less than a minute later he’s standing in the middle of Matt’s bedroom. Which should be kind of thrilling and sexy, but feels a lot more like a weird nightmare. “Uh... Did you lose a bet or something?” he laughs uncomfortably. There’s Disney memorabilia everywhere. It’s... it’s a total boner-killer, to be honest. The guy has fucking Mickey Mouse everything. So he keeps laughing uncomfortably because he doesn’t know what else to do. Not exactly the end result he’d been hoping for, being invited into the bedroom in the first place. His version of it was a lot sexier and more naked, less... frightening. “Your room kind of gives me the creeps, man. It’s like... a weird pedophile den. Did someone wearing Mickey Mouse gloves touch you as a child or something...?”
“No, I just like Disney.” Matt gets the lock code right on the first try; Danny sits down on the bed a respectable distance away from him and plays with the sleeves of his hoodie. “Hey. Come here and take a look at this. Kirkendall’s a sneaky motherfucker, who’d have thought?” When they open up Evan’s text messages, the most recent ones are from someone whose name in his address book is simply <3. Less than three. Heart. Love? But then they scroll through his contacts list and his girlfriend’s name is still right where it should be. They go through the rest of his messages - and some of them are fucking raunchy as hell, he feels uncomfortable reading them without even understanding the context of some of them - and it’s only once they’ve gotten to the end of the messages that he realizes two things. He’s resting his chin on Matt’s shoulder, and Matt hasn’t shoved him away or anything. They haven’t even argued the whole time Evan’s been gone.
He asks, “Seriously, what’s with the Mickey Mouse obsession? Doesn’t that one guy you work with tease you about it all the time, what’s his - Jeff, that’s the guy.” Matt makes a little sound of annoyance and shrugs him off. “What, is that like a sore point for you? Did your parents not take you to Disney as a child or something?”
“Fuck off,” Matt groans. He doesn’t move away, though. Instead - when Danny goes to nudge him and annoy him - he grins devilishly and lunges for Danny’s shoulders, pinning him to the mattress playfully. “You can’t just fucking charm your way into my life, man. It doesn’t work that way.”
Danny presses his fingers into Matt’s ribs, causing him to flinch momentarily and giving him just long enough to take control back and get himself on top again. “How does it work, then,” he grunts, pushing his elbow into the older man’s stomach. They’re fucking wrestling on Matt’s bed in the middle of this Disneyfied nightmare, Evan’s phone totally forgotten. He over-balances on his elbows and Matt takes advantage of it, driving his knee up hard.
“You’ve got to stop fucking trying to please other people all the time. You can’t make everybody happy. And I meant what I said when I told you to switch your major.”
He winds up on his back with Matt literally breathing down his neck. “I think the price is too high,” he sighs. “Not the money, I mean. The personal price. Everyone has one, and as much as I hate my parents I don’t really feel like being disowned by them to make myself happy. Money means shit to me, you know. It’s all worthless in the end.”
Matt scowls. “Then why are you fighting so hard?” Matt has his wrists pinned above his head, which isn’t fair. He can’t fight back. They’re staring each other directly in the eye; his heart is racing so fast it’s not even beating but practically vibrating non-stop, and without thinking he licks his lips. He lifts his foot helplessly and then realizes there’s really no place for him to put it to get himself free. “Look, if you don’t do it then you’re always going to regret that decision.”
“You say that like you know the first thing about me,” he mutters. “I barely know who I am anymore, so you’re not in a position to fucking judge.” Even though they’re kind of fighting - and he’s not putting up much of a fight by this point - the only thing he’s focused on is the perspiration running down Matt’s neck and how he would very much like to lick it. It’s a miracle he hasn’t popped a stiffy by now. Apparently he has more self-restraint than he’d thought. But if Matt doesn’t stop sitting on his thighs sometime in the next thirty seconds or so, they’re going to have a bigger problem than the normal tension between them.
“I know enough to be able to tell when someone is being a stupid shit.” Fuck, he can feel the words against his skin. It would be such a small thing to connect their lips, mere inches. Much against his better judgment, his eyes slip shut. The tip of Matt’s nose brushes his; he’s almost sure they’re going to kiss but then Matt hesitates when the latch of the apartment door clicks suddenly. He feels Matt flinch, stiffen, and growl slightly. When he opens his eyes finally, Evan’s standing in the doorway with an incredibly amused, shit-eating grin on his face.
“Whatcha doin’, guys,” he chuckles. The smell of warm pizza wafts in from the kitchen. His hands are still pinned above his head. “Kinda looks like you two were about to make out. I’m not interrupting, am I?” He wouldn’t be wearing that particular expression if he knew that they’d been reading his naughty texts from Less-Than-Three who’s not his girlfriend.
Too quickly, he shoves Matt away and says, “No!” forcefully. Matt says, “Oh, fuck no.” Neither of them mention the text messages. But every time Evan’s phone vibrates the rest of the night, they exchange a knowing look and - holy shit, he can’t even believe it - once, Matt actually smiles at him.
&
It’s Vinny’s fault that it happens. Everyone is hanging out at Jack, Alex and Rian’s house after they’ve all come back from the Christmas break; most of them have been drinking. Matt is still sober, as are Grieco and Rian - though they’re involved in an intense Mario Kart tournament which is really just a poorly disguised stab at spending more time with Grieco. He very politely turns a blind eye to the number of poorly executed attempts by Rian to cop a feel on his best friend. The girls have already left to get away from the levels of testosterone in the house and do their own thing. It’s pretty obvious that it’s just an excuse on Kara and Lisa’s part to hang out as part of their weirdly sublimated flirtation. He has to wonder, a little bit, when they’re finally going to admit their feelings for each other and get together already. It seems like everyone else in the place is fuckin’ in denial. Even Jack and Alex are acting out of sorts. They’re not pawing at each other the way they normally do. Actually, they’ve kissed maybe once or twice the entire time. On the other hand, Alex is really fuckin’ drunk and Jack is basically holding him up at this point in the evening.
There’s enough alcohol in everyone’s systems, in other words, when Vinny says, “Hey. We should play gay chicken!” and falls back against the couch cushions laughing. Evan snorts and starts laughing, too. Matt folds his arms over his chest and sighs. The rest of the group thinks it’s a hilarious idea, so they sit there watching with rapt attention as Evan and Vinny look at each other, grinning wildly. It will be maybe thirty seconds until one of them starts giggling hysterically. He drums his fingers against the plastic of his water bottle impatiently. Surprisingly, neither of the two calls chicken right away and their lips actually make solid contact for about, oh, fifteen seconds or so before Vinny pulls away howling with laughter and winds up doubled over on the floor. Kirkendall sits there smiling stupidly.
Then fucking Kurily comes back from the garage with another beer in his hand and Evan’s eyes light up. “Okay,” he says, glancing in Matt’s direction. “Your turn.” He feels everyone’s eyes on him and the more they look at him the more preposterous it seems. Easy enough, though. Matt Flyzik is the fucking champion of gay chicken. Nothing can freak him out, even being talked into playing with the one person he dislikes more than almost anyone he knows. They’re expecting him to freak out and say no. Instead, he cracks his jaw, sits up a little straighter.
“Fine,” he mutters. Danny sits down on the arm of the couch, making consistent eye contact with the floor. He sighs. “Well, c’mere, I don’t have all night.”
The first step of the game is to get the other guy to look at him. He reaches up and rests his hand tentatively on the back of Danny’s neck. So far, so good. Then he starts moving in, inching closer incrementally until their breath starts merging and he can practically taste the alcohol on the other man’s lips. “Y’not gonna freak me out,” Danny slurs, wrinkling his nose slightly. Which, no. The object of gay chicken is to creep the opponent out and get him to declare the situation ‘too gay’. He winces slightly - but doesn’t pull away, he’s not calling fucking chicken - when Kurily seizes the front of his shirt roughly and pulls him closer. And if he feels maybe a little bit apprehensive, it’s the taste of the alcohol when their lips collide and absolutely nothing to do with the rich brat he’s suddenly kissing. Damned if he’s going to be the one to pull away first, though. He whines when Kurily’s teeth clamp down on his lower lip and drag across it slowly, but then the teeth are replaced by Danny’s tongue flicking out and running across his lip teasingly. Without hesitation - fuck if he’s going to balk now - he parts his lips and allows Danny’s tongue to slide fluidly into his mouth.
When he slides his free hand up under the soft cotton American Apparel shirt - he kind of hates himself for being able to identify that with his eyes closed - and scrapes his nails along the skin there, Kurily moans wantonly into his mouth and arches up into the touch. That sound - that fucking sound - leads to Kurily straddling him on the couch, grinding down into his hips roughly enough that his body starts to react to it in a way he really fucking does not appreciate. He doesn’t call chicken when it becomes less of a kiss and more making out on the couch he helped carry from Vinny’s to the house last summer. He doesn’t call chicken when Danny’s hands end up in his shirt and one of the kid’s thumbs grazes his nipple suddenly. This is so gay. Seriously, it’s so fuckin’ gay.
“Fuck, too much, too much,” Evan groans, hauling Danny away from him by the scruff of the neck. “Let’s just call this a draw and never speak of it again.”
Matt straightens out his shirt slowly, keeping his arms crossed tightly over his chest afterward and sits in his corner of the couch with his head back, staring at the ceiling. Eventually - once the Mario Kart tournament ends with Grieco coming out slightly ahead, funny how that works out - he feels a tug at the bottom of his shirt. “Hey,” Grieco murmurs, slipping under his arm and curling into his side. “He’s not that bad, you know.”
“Whatever,” he responds, rubbing his palm over his best friend’s hair affectionately. The bristly parts tickle his hand but he doesn’t mind too much.
“Stop being such an asshole,” Grieco scolds him. “You never give people a chance.” He doesn’t fucking want to give anyone a chance. He wants to go home and shower and go to bed and forget that this ever happened. Fucking Kurily and his stupid purple shirt and his stupid hipster scarf and glasses and his whole fucking existence.
Part Three