He didn’t expect to meet Bastian at the pub that Sunday. It had been… how many? Two days?

Behind the counter, Bastian was cleaning some glasses, keeping his eyes down. His eyes weren’t deeply sad like they were the night he attempted suicide, but Revie could read how much he didn’t want to be there.

Do you feel observed?, he wanted to ask him. Because Bastian was observed and not only by him.

Since he entered the pub, he had heard everyone talking about the guy that tried to kill himself. In a small city like Rainhill, news were spreading fast and could reach everyone. It was depressing and frustrating, he went through that, too. He was sure that Bastian could hear some of them talking about it. A few times someone even walked to the counter to talk to him. Revie hoped they weren’t trying to give him some comfort, ending up being just embarrassing and useless.

“I want to ask him out”, he said, staring at Bastian from his table. Then he turned his head to Tania, who was looking at him raising an eyebrow.

“The blond guy? Isn’t he that guy who… you know?”

“Yep”, he replied, pronouncing the word with a softness almost inadequate. The guy who tried to kill himself, you can tell that aloud. Tania looked at him perplexed for a few seconds, playing with the straw in her glass. “What if he’s hetero?”

“He doesn’t look hetero.”

“I don’t think you can tell that from his face.”

“If you say so”, he smiled.

“What do you like about him?”, Tania asked, with a smirk and raising her eyebrows.

He looked at Tania, then at Bastian. He finished his drink, thinking about an answer to give. He could have said he like everything about him, but it sounded too serious. How could he express that he found Bastian attractive, after he imagined him covered in blood and fantasized about having sex with him, without sounding mentally unstable?

“I like that he’s tall and he has nice hair. Also I bet his dick is huge.” Tania laughed. The penis card always worked.

Actually, it was more than sexual attraction, at that point. Since Revie found out about Bastian’s attempt, something changed inside him. Revie had only one serious relationship, with a guy, when he was in high school. But it ended quickly, after his father surprised them making out half naked in the bed. He didn’t have any more serious relationships since then and he didn’t remember what it meant looking for one, wanting to know a person, hanging out with them and not blocking them on social medias after a few nights of fucking because he had enough of them.

Revie could boast about being an expert of casual fucking and avoiding emotional attachment. But the truth was that he had a sexual trauma and a consequent sex addiction. There were periods in his life in which it was usual for him to have sex with one – or more – new people every day. It wasn’t easy to him living with a voice in his head telling him to fuck with someone in two hours and that all his friends were going to die if he didn’t.

Most of his sexual meetings weren’t really great. Most of the men didn’t like the fact he refused to take off his shirt. He wasn’t surely going to let John XXL;) from Grindr knowing about his cuts. Most of the time he had to settle for what he met online and around gay bars. So he often found himself giving a hand job to a man that could have been his father. They always had to comment anything about him, from a creepy “you have gorgeous eyes”, to the annoying “why do you need all those piercings?”.

Half of the time he didn’t even have an orgasm. The only thing that always happened was him going back home crying and that he was going to do it again and again. It didn’t matter how much it was hurting him, sex was never enough.

But he didn’t want that from Bastian. He didn’t want to give him a few hand jobs and never meeting him again. He wanted to know him, to let him know how similar they were, he wanted Bastian to desire knowing him.

He wanted to take off his shirt to have sex with Bastian.