sizeoflife (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sizeoflife) wrote2012-01-17 06:59 pm
sizeoflife) wrote2012-01-17 06:59 pm
Entry tags:
Try This
Original slash, PG
1,969 words
“We shouldn’t be best friends,” he said, leaning back against the bed frame. “You know that, right? People think it’s weird.”
Theo had pulled all the pillows off the bed, making himself comfortable by piling them behind his back and underneath his outstretched legs on the floor. That was what Theo did. He took your things and cosied himself into them until they didn’t feel like yours anymore. “We shouldn’t be best friends,” he said, leaning back against the bed frame. “You know that, right? People think it’s weird.”
Jake rolled onto his stomach and reached for their shared joint, which was currently held between two of Theo’s fingers like a cigarette.
“Bloody right when you’re throwing the term ‘best friend’ around.”
Theo paused with his fingers halfway to his lips.“What’s wrong with having friends?”
“It’s gay. Lads don’t have—”
“Now it’s gay to have friends.”
“No, it’s gay to call them that. We’re mates, innit? Homies. Bros. Bredren.” Jake clapped Theo hard on the shoulder whilst snapping the fingers of his other hand, signalling that he wanted that joint already. Theo stared at him dismissively, rounding his lips on a perfect smoke ring. “Okay, we’re friends,” Jake said with a grin, as Theo finally passed the joint. “My way’s just as gay.”
Theo’s head dropped back against the bed, dimpling the mattress beside Jake’s elbow. He was wearing his hair kind of long these days, all part of his rock star image. It looked extra blonde spread over the navy blue of the bedspread. Jake wondered if he went so far as to dye it to make it look that way.
“This is really good shit,” Theo said.
“Tony’s the boss. That’s why. I told you. He will hook you up to the end of...whatever.”
“That’s not an expression. That’s not even a sentence.”
“Doesn’t make it untrue.”
Jake choked over his next exhale. Coughing, he passed the joint back. Theo had a stomach for drugs and seemed easily able to hold them inside his slender body by the use of some secret technique which Jake couldn’t master.
He put the joint between his lips and kept the smoke in his lungs for a long time before releasing it. Breathing out, he said, “Are you coming to my gig?”
“Depends,” Jake said. “When’s it at, bitch?”
“Tomorrow.”
Mildly stoned though he was, Jake didn’t have to think before shaking his head. “Can’t. Got a match.”
“You suck dick, dude.”
“Woah. It’s like a semi-final. Okay? I’ll be there to watch you grind your parts in people’s faces next time. Anyway, we’re having a party after if we win. At Tony’s. Come.”
Theo considered this. “Only if you win. I’m only friends with winners.”
“I’ll text you.”
“Okay.” After a final drag Theo passed the joint and stood, dusting at his jeans like he could brush the smell of the weed right off.
“You leaving?” Jake sat up, or meant to. His limbs were feeling rubbery.
Theo kicked the pillows aside and peered into the mirror as he finger-combed his hair back into shape. “Mum’s coming for dinner,” he said. “Dude, can you picture my Dad in the kitchen? No way. This is all down to me.”
“Shit.”
This was one of those things that most people didn’t know about Theo, the come-and-go mess that was his family. As a kid Jake had thought it must be exciting to live in a home where no day was the same. Cooking your own dinners, having the house to yourself, packing bags to spend weekends in London. He’d been jealous of it back then.
Theo turned from the mirror and grinned. “Stay a winner,” he said.
“Sure thing, bestie mcvestie.”
Awkwardly, with the end of the joint held between his teeth, Jake held up his hands and curved them together into the shape of a heart, a symbol Theo returned on his way out the door.
*
They didn’t just win, they triumphed. Named MVP for the second match running, Jake punched his fist hard through the air as the team lifted him high above their heads, crusted with mud and damp with sweat. Held aloft, he basked in the floodlights, listened to the cheers and thought of the taste of weed and Theo.
*
Tony’s house was a fucking age away. It meant a train ride and then a ten-minute walk led by Google maps. By the time Theo made it there, he was completely freezing, hugging his arms tight around his body. To make it worse, the guy from the local paper called right as he was making his way up the frosty drive and Theo ended up standing in the cold for another five minutes while he spelled out the names of each member of the band.
“It’s Vester. No, like a V. Like in...Victoria. That’s right. Theodore Vester.”
The house was warm and loud, filled with the special chaos you got at football parties. It wasn’t hard to find Jake. Theo just headed to the centre, the very eye of the party, where Jake was pouring Red Bull into mugs ready for shots of Jägermeister.
“Vestie,” he cried, throwing his arm around Theo’s neck. “My days. Oh baby.” Clearly long past wasted, his weight made Theo stagger.
“Wowzer,” Theo said, slipping the heavy arm, “I have some catching up to do.”
Jake laughed. “Fact. That’s a fact. Someone get my boy a drink.” He groped for one of the half-prepared jägers, but another guy had already handed Theo a Carlsberg.
“Where’s all your other indie band douchebags?” Rakefield: midfielder, understudy for the role of Jake’s best mate. He was giving Theo evils across the table. This was not unusual. Pretty much every second his eyes were open was spent giving Theo evils.
Theo sipped his lager. “They wouldn’t come.”
“Why?”
“Because they don’t want to waste an evening hanging out with football hooligans.”
Rakefield shook his head, disgusted. “Those hipster twats.”
“Hey.” Jake lurched forwards. “That’s Vestie’s people, Rakes. Don’t disrespect.”
It was a token attempt to ease tension. Job done, Jake left them to it and went in search of his next audience. The crowd around the drinks table had thinned fast, as crowds usually did when Rakefield started shit. He jabbed the neck of his beer bottle in Theo’s direction.
“So what, you’re like a big scab to the cause for being here?”
“Only here for Jake. Not denying my roots.”
Rakefield sneered. “You guys are such bummers,” he said with pleasure, like Theo had walked right into his trap. “I bet you’re bumming all over the place.”
That was the root of the problem, the only reasoning a tiny mind like Rakefield’s could come up with to explain Jake and Theo’s relationship. Well Theo was sick of arguing with tiny minds.
They had stepped closer, facing off as much as they could without things cascading into a full-blown fight. Now Theo said, “You’re just jealous because we’re such a power couple and you and Stella can’t compete because no one likes either of you.”
“He’s not your actual boyfriend. You know that, right? However much you enjoy his dick in your arse.”
Theo took his time swallowing his next mouthful of lager. Then looking up, he said, “What makes you think Jake’s not the one who likes taking it?”
Perhaps alerted by the sound of her name, Stella had just caught his eye from the other side of the room where she was hanging with a couple of the others from their Drama class and, leaving Rakefield’s tiny mind whirling, Theo went to join them.
*
Things got fast out of control. One minute Jake was necking beer like a champion in the kitchen, laughing his arse off at Tony’s Ricky Gervais impressions. Next minute he was clutching the toilet bowl as acidy chunks exploded from his throat. The toilet seemed to flush on its own, and then there was a towel pressed to his mouth and someone’s fingers touching his face.
“Dude, that was the most spectacular tactical,” a voice said.
Vestie, Jake thought, or said, or tried to say. He clung tight to him as they attempted to stand up together.
*
For a while now, Jake had known that Theo liked boys same as he liked girls. They’d never outright talked about it, but he sort of knew anyway.
One time, the band had performed a shitty local festival at a field in Foxton. There, when nobody else was looking Jake had seen the band’s other guitarist put his hand on Theo’s arse, not in a joking way but like he had done it before. There were little things like that. Nothing big, but enough to work it out if you spent a lot of time watching Theo.
After the festival Jake had gone home thinking about that guy’s hand. He had started adding things up and come out with solutions he wasn’t totally ready to face.
The point was he had already sort of worked it out, whether Theo knew it or not. That made it seem perfectly logical for him to grab Theo by the shirt and yank him closer once they’d made their way to a chilly bedroom far above the continuing party.
“I would, you know,” Jake slurred, feeling the swell of a burp rising to his mouth.
Theo sat down on the edge of the bed where Jake had crash-landed and untangled Jake’s fingers from his shirt. “You would what?”
“I'd try it too.”
Theo wasn’t listening. “Go to sleep. Tony says it’s cool if you stay. Give me your phone. I’ll text your Mum.” He held out his hand.
“I know you’ve tried it.”
This was important for Theo to understand, but he wasn’t getting it. He made one of his huffy sounds of exasperation, sounds only he could make, then reached for Jake’s jeans.
“Breathe in. I’m taking the phone.”
The slide of fingers into his front pocket made Jake stiffen unexpectedly. As Theo withdrew the phone Jake grabbed his wrist, the movement so sudden that Theo jumped and looked at him in surprise.
“What?” Theo said.
All Jake’s thoughts felt slippery, too mashed up to make sense. He didn’t know how to articulate that he had seized Theo’s hand both to prevent it from discovering an unfortunate hard-on and to pull it close enough to thrust against. The two impulses felt simultaneous. He stared at Theo’s face, at the jutting cheekbones and strange pale eyes, and then found himself touching the skin of Theo’s cheek with each of his fingers, one after another from little finger to thumb.
“Bestie mcvestie,” he said, trying to communicate everything with the taps of his fingertips. “We should try.”
Theo was silent for a moment. Blinking. Processing. Jake’s fingers kept tapping but slid to the back of Theo’s neck as Theo leant forwards and brushed his nose against Jake’s jaw. When he spoke the voice that came out of him was the sultry one he switched on for the microphone, the one which made people swoon for him.
“If you say so,” he breathed. The words raised goose bumps on Jake’s skin. He wanted Theo to use that voice with him from now on instead of saving it for the groupies, but Theo was leaning away again, getting up and pushing Jake back down when he tried to follow. “You are the lamest drunk,” he said, with a chuckle. “Sleep tight, dickhead. Come see me tomorrow.”
Across the room, the light clicked off and the door closed. Jake didn’t mind. Filled with warmth, he let his head be sucked back into the pillows.
He kept on hearing Theo’s whisper like it was being repeated right next to his ear. If you say so. Jake did say so. Jake said something had been set in motion just now, something which tonight was only the start of.
1,969 words
“We shouldn’t be best friends,” he said, leaning back against the bed frame. “You know that, right? People think it’s weird.”
Theo had pulled all the pillows off the bed, making himself comfortable by piling them behind his back and underneath his outstretched legs on the floor. That was what Theo did. He took your things and cosied himself into them until they didn’t feel like yours anymore. “We shouldn’t be best friends,” he said, leaning back against the bed frame. “You know that, right? People think it’s weird.”
Jake rolled onto his stomach and reached for their shared joint, which was currently held between two of Theo’s fingers like a cigarette.
“Bloody right when you’re throwing the term ‘best friend’ around.”
Theo paused with his fingers halfway to his lips.“What’s wrong with having friends?”
“It’s gay. Lads don’t have—”
“Now it’s gay to have friends.”
“No, it’s gay to call them that. We’re mates, innit? Homies. Bros. Bredren.” Jake clapped Theo hard on the shoulder whilst snapping the fingers of his other hand, signalling that he wanted that joint already. Theo stared at him dismissively, rounding his lips on a perfect smoke ring. “Okay, we’re friends,” Jake said with a grin, as Theo finally passed the joint. “My way’s just as gay.”
Theo’s head dropped back against the bed, dimpling the mattress beside Jake’s elbow. He was wearing his hair kind of long these days, all part of his rock star image. It looked extra blonde spread over the navy blue of the bedspread. Jake wondered if he went so far as to dye it to make it look that way.
“This is really good shit,” Theo said.
“Tony’s the boss. That’s why. I told you. He will hook you up to the end of...whatever.”
“That’s not an expression. That’s not even a sentence.”
“Doesn’t make it untrue.”
Jake choked over his next exhale. Coughing, he passed the joint back. Theo had a stomach for drugs and seemed easily able to hold them inside his slender body by the use of some secret technique which Jake couldn’t master.
He put the joint between his lips and kept the smoke in his lungs for a long time before releasing it. Breathing out, he said, “Are you coming to my gig?”
“Depends,” Jake said. “When’s it at, bitch?”
“Tomorrow.”
Mildly stoned though he was, Jake didn’t have to think before shaking his head. “Can’t. Got a match.”
“You suck dick, dude.”
“Woah. It’s like a semi-final. Okay? I’ll be there to watch you grind your parts in people’s faces next time. Anyway, we’re having a party after if we win. At Tony’s. Come.”
Theo considered this. “Only if you win. I’m only friends with winners.”
“I’ll text you.”
“Okay.” After a final drag Theo passed the joint and stood, dusting at his jeans like he could brush the smell of the weed right off.
“You leaving?” Jake sat up, or meant to. His limbs were feeling rubbery.
Theo kicked the pillows aside and peered into the mirror as he finger-combed his hair back into shape. “Mum’s coming for dinner,” he said. “Dude, can you picture my Dad in the kitchen? No way. This is all down to me.”
“Shit.”
This was one of those things that most people didn’t know about Theo, the come-and-go mess that was his family. As a kid Jake had thought it must be exciting to live in a home where no day was the same. Cooking your own dinners, having the house to yourself, packing bags to spend weekends in London. He’d been jealous of it back then.
Theo turned from the mirror and grinned. “Stay a winner,” he said.
“Sure thing, bestie mcvestie.”
Awkwardly, with the end of the joint held between his teeth, Jake held up his hands and curved them together into the shape of a heart, a symbol Theo returned on his way out the door.
They didn’t just win, they triumphed. Named MVP for the second match running, Jake punched his fist hard through the air as the team lifted him high above their heads, crusted with mud and damp with sweat. Held aloft, he basked in the floodlights, listened to the cheers and thought of the taste of weed and Theo.
Tony’s house was a fucking age away. It meant a train ride and then a ten-minute walk led by Google maps. By the time Theo made it there, he was completely freezing, hugging his arms tight around his body. To make it worse, the guy from the local paper called right as he was making his way up the frosty drive and Theo ended up standing in the cold for another five minutes while he spelled out the names of each member of the band.
“It’s Vester. No, like a V. Like in...Victoria. That’s right. Theodore Vester.”
The house was warm and loud, filled with the special chaos you got at football parties. It wasn’t hard to find Jake. Theo just headed to the centre, the very eye of the party, where Jake was pouring Red Bull into mugs ready for shots of Jägermeister.
“Vestie,” he cried, throwing his arm around Theo’s neck. “My days. Oh baby.” Clearly long past wasted, his weight made Theo stagger.
“Wowzer,” Theo said, slipping the heavy arm, “I have some catching up to do.”
Jake laughed. “Fact. That’s a fact. Someone get my boy a drink.” He groped for one of the half-prepared jägers, but another guy had already handed Theo a Carlsberg.
“Where’s all your other indie band douchebags?” Rakefield: midfielder, understudy for the role of Jake’s best mate. He was giving Theo evils across the table. This was not unusual. Pretty much every second his eyes were open was spent giving Theo evils.
Theo sipped his lager. “They wouldn’t come.”
“Why?”
“Because they don’t want to waste an evening hanging out with football hooligans.”
Rakefield shook his head, disgusted. “Those hipster twats.”
“Hey.” Jake lurched forwards. “That’s Vestie’s people, Rakes. Don’t disrespect.”
It was a token attempt to ease tension. Job done, Jake left them to it and went in search of his next audience. The crowd around the drinks table had thinned fast, as crowds usually did when Rakefield started shit. He jabbed the neck of his beer bottle in Theo’s direction.
“So what, you’re like a big scab to the cause for being here?”
“Only here for Jake. Not denying my roots.”
Rakefield sneered. “You guys are such bummers,” he said with pleasure, like Theo had walked right into his trap. “I bet you’re bumming all over the place.”
That was the root of the problem, the only reasoning a tiny mind like Rakefield’s could come up with to explain Jake and Theo’s relationship. Well Theo was sick of arguing with tiny minds.
They had stepped closer, facing off as much as they could without things cascading into a full-blown fight. Now Theo said, “You’re just jealous because we’re such a power couple and you and Stella can’t compete because no one likes either of you.”
“He’s not your actual boyfriend. You know that, right? However much you enjoy his dick in your arse.”
Theo took his time swallowing his next mouthful of lager. Then looking up, he said, “What makes you think Jake’s not the one who likes taking it?”
Perhaps alerted by the sound of her name, Stella had just caught his eye from the other side of the room where she was hanging with a couple of the others from their Drama class and, leaving Rakefield’s tiny mind whirling, Theo went to join them.
*
Things got fast out of control. One minute Jake was necking beer like a champion in the kitchen, laughing his arse off at Tony’s Ricky Gervais impressions. Next minute he was clutching the toilet bowl as acidy chunks exploded from his throat. The toilet seemed to flush on its own, and then there was a towel pressed to his mouth and someone’s fingers touching his face.
“Dude, that was the most spectacular tactical,” a voice said.
Vestie, Jake thought, or said, or tried to say. He clung tight to him as they attempted to stand up together.
*
For a while now, Jake had known that Theo liked boys same as he liked girls. They’d never outright talked about it, but he sort of knew anyway.
One time, the band had performed a shitty local festival at a field in Foxton. There, when nobody else was looking Jake had seen the band’s other guitarist put his hand on Theo’s arse, not in a joking way but like he had done it before. There were little things like that. Nothing big, but enough to work it out if you spent a lot of time watching Theo.
After the festival Jake had gone home thinking about that guy’s hand. He had started adding things up and come out with solutions he wasn’t totally ready to face.
The point was he had already sort of worked it out, whether Theo knew it or not. That made it seem perfectly logical for him to grab Theo by the shirt and yank him closer once they’d made their way to a chilly bedroom far above the continuing party.
“I would, you know,” Jake slurred, feeling the swell of a burp rising to his mouth.
Theo sat down on the edge of the bed where Jake had crash-landed and untangled Jake’s fingers from his shirt. “You would what?”
“I'd try it too.”
Theo wasn’t listening. “Go to sleep. Tony says it’s cool if you stay. Give me your phone. I’ll text your Mum.” He held out his hand.
“I know you’ve tried it.”
This was important for Theo to understand, but he wasn’t getting it. He made one of his huffy sounds of exasperation, sounds only he could make, then reached for Jake’s jeans.
“Breathe in. I’m taking the phone.”
The slide of fingers into his front pocket made Jake stiffen unexpectedly. As Theo withdrew the phone Jake grabbed his wrist, the movement so sudden that Theo jumped and looked at him in surprise.
“What?” Theo said.
All Jake’s thoughts felt slippery, too mashed up to make sense. He didn’t know how to articulate that he had seized Theo’s hand both to prevent it from discovering an unfortunate hard-on and to pull it close enough to thrust against. The two impulses felt simultaneous. He stared at Theo’s face, at the jutting cheekbones and strange pale eyes, and then found himself touching the skin of Theo’s cheek with each of his fingers, one after another from little finger to thumb.
“Bestie mcvestie,” he said, trying to communicate everything with the taps of his fingertips. “We should try.”
Theo was silent for a moment. Blinking. Processing. Jake’s fingers kept tapping but slid to the back of Theo’s neck as Theo leant forwards and brushed his nose against Jake’s jaw. When he spoke the voice that came out of him was the sultry one he switched on for the microphone, the one which made people swoon for him.
“If you say so,” he breathed. The words raised goose bumps on Jake’s skin. He wanted Theo to use that voice with him from now on instead of saving it for the groupies, but Theo was leaning away again, getting up and pushing Jake back down when he tried to follow. “You are the lamest drunk,” he said, with a chuckle. “Sleep tight, dickhead. Come see me tomorrow.”
Across the room, the light clicked off and the door closed. Jake didn’t mind. Filled with warmth, he let his head be sucked back into the pillows.
He kept on hearing Theo’s whisper like it was being repeated right next to his ear. If you say so. Jake did say so. Jake said something had been set in motion just now, something which tonight was only the start of.