Today (Mid-morning)

“Theo?”

He hummed and looked away from the golden field sweeping by the car to find Abel watching him expectantly with one eye still on the road. “Sorry, what?”

“I asked what you were going to school for?” He repeated. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about stuff though. I’m just curious about you.”

Abel was so sweet to be curious about something like that. Some part of Theo that was in the far distant past before he became a shell of a person, a shadow himself. It didn’t really matter what he had gone to school for. And he could not even remember himself. A type of business major because his mom wanted him to get a better job than the one his father had.

“Doesn’t matter,” he shrugged, “because I failed out anyway.”

“Oh,” Abel shifted in the seat, dropping his hands so that only his thumbs rested on the bottom curve of the steering wheel to hold it steady. “I guess you aren’t interested in going back then?”

“No, not really,” Theo said honestly. Maybe Abel would like that. He was probably trying to think of what the hell he was going to do with Theo once they got his ID. His mother certainly had been adamant about getting answers about what the plan was for after this trip. Abel said he was going to move out of her place and figure it out from there. What did figuring it out mean?

Would Abel want him to get a job? He’d never had a real one of those. He was not sure if he wanted one. But he knew better than to think Abel would want him around just to be a waste of space. He had to make himself useful somehow. Bring money in somehow. But the only thing he was good at was sex.

He fiddled with the paper wristband, suspended in a state of indecision for a few moments before leaning across the center console and shoving his head under Abel’s forearm.

“Hey, what are you…” Abel protested but did not try to shove Theo away as he popped the button of his fly and eased down the zipper. Instead, he lifted his arms so that his hands were resting on top of the steering wheel, giving Theo plenty of space. His head thumped back against the seat, and he let out a sigh. “Fuck, Theo.”

He hummed and shoved Abel’s boxers out of the way, pressing a sloppy kiss to the warm skin of his navel, then taking him into his mouth to lick him to hardness.

“Guess you don’t want to talk about it.” Abel blew out a long, shaky breath, then threaded his fingers through the brittle, faded-blue tufts of Theo’s hair. “That’s alright.”

Five years ago

Ken had an entire apartment to himself, which Theo, who lived in the dorms or in his childhood bedroom thus far in life, thought was the epitome of attractiveness. He had a beautiful wooden headboard above his large queen-sized mattress, steel gray blackout curtains, a neat, organized little bathroom without any clutter, and his own single-serve coffee pot with a whole different assortment of little cup flavors to choose from. He seemed like a real adult who had his life together.

Theo brought two cups of coffee from the kitchen into the living room, where Ken was folding up the blankets he had used to sleep on the couch with. It had been disconcerting to wake up a few minutes ago, alone in a strange bed with few memories of the night before. Theo hardly ever got blackout drunk, so it was terrifying that he barely remembered Ken taking him from the party, let alone how they ended up in the apartment.

This was more like what he expected college to be like, although there had not been an awkward sequence where he woke up in bed, saw the hottie sleeping next to him, and tiptoed out to avoid the morning-after conversation. Instead, he stumbled out of the strange, empty bedroom in a mild panic and flipped on the overhead lights in the living room, which woke Ken up suddenly. He’d sat up fully dressed from a dead sleep on the couch, hair sticking in every direction and pillow creases on his cheek, mumbling about where the fire was.

This led to Theo stammering through an apology about how he could not really remember the night before, to which Ken had responded by telling him to relax, pointing out the coffee machine, and inviting him to stay for breakfast. But Theo had been too nervous about not remembering anything from the night before to eat, so while he fetched the coffee, Ken cleared off the couch so they could sit and have the morning-after conversation.

“Let me guess,” Ken said, twisting his coffee mug to fit his fingers through the handle. “You never do this.”

Theo chuckled at himself and curled over his own coffee cup, one leg up on the couch cushion so that he could face Ken. “No, I don’t.”

“Some guy was trying to haul you up the stairs at that frat house even though you said you wanted to go home, so I stepped in and tried to walk you home. But you flipped your lid about the RA potentially finding out that you had drunk so much or something, and so I just brought you here.”

“The RA?” Theo frowned, looking up at him. “I honestly don’t think I’ve ever even interacted with my RA.”

Ken shrugged. “I have no idea what you were on about. All I know is that you suddenly did not want to go to the dorms.”

“Oh,” Theo nodded and looked down, then in a small voice, “Thank you for bringing me here. I’m so sorry for the inconvenience.”

“No inconvenience.” Ken dismissed.

“You slept on the couch!” Theo insisted. “I kicked you out of your bed.”

“Well, then…” Ken put a hand over Theo’s where they were cupped around his mug. Theo’s heart thumped in his chest, and his face warmed at the warm touch. He had not actually touched anyone since coming to college. He did not know anyone well enough to hug or anything else, not that he had ever been a big hugger in the first place.

The guy last night had been the first person he had physical contact with in ages. And then Ken, after that. It felt good, but almost too good. The zing of pleasure it sent through him was immediately followed by a wave of guilt that he should not be so desperate for attention like that.

Ken still had not finished his sentence, leaving a moment of silence hanging in the air while they both stared at his hand on Theo. Then he continued, “Promise me you won’t be the idiot freshman who goes to frat parties alone anymore. I know you’re a guy, but…”

“I didn’t go alone!” Theo protested, looking up to meet his eyes. “I was with friends.”

“Where were they?” Ken’s eyes hardened. “I didn’t see anybody with you the whole night, and they weren’t there when you literally needed someone to support you back home.”

“Well, I…I just don’t know them very well.” Theo stumbled over his words to defend them because it had not been their fault he was a stick in the mud. But he did not really want to explain to Ken that last night, he was so far out of his depth because he had been desperate to connect with those people by going out with them. He just wasn’t meant to do that, though. He attracted trouble. “They wanted to go out and play beer pong and stuff, and I just wanted to stay inside, so we kind of did our own thing.”

“Uh-huh.” Ken pressed his lips together and said nothing else, so Theo slid one of his hands from beneath his hold and gently smacked him on the arm in response– emboldened by the casual way that Ken touched him. For a second, he thought Ken was going to get mad, but he just lifted his brows and said, “I still think they were shitty friends for inviting you out and then ditching you.”

“Who said they invited me out?” Theo grumbled. Ken once again did not answer verbally, instead looking him up and down with raised eyebrows, which made his cheeks burn. “Whatever.”

“If you want to go to a real party with people who are having actual fun, not just showing off their pasty asses and sticking their tongues down each other’s throats in dark corners, I could take you to one.”

“Oh, um.” Theo ducked his head again. Then Ken would find out exactly why his friends had ditched him. And then he would ditch him, just like everyone else always did in the end. Plus, Theo did not really know him. Ken was obviously older than most college kids and had his own apartment, which meant this would probably be a grown-up party. And Theo was just a little nineteen-year-old kid. “I don’t know.”

“Come on.” The hand on his moved to brush a lock of hair out of his face so that Ken could duck down and make eye contact. “I won’t leave you hanging like they did. It’s tonight, so you could hang out here until it’s time to go. I wouldn’t mind getting to know you a little better.”

Theo dissolved into a flushing, stammering mess while his brain lagged. He stared at Ken, frozen, while the man cupped the side of his head and brushed his thumb back and forth across his temple. And the way he was looking at him was like something out of a movie: a child looking at their parent like they hung the moon, an awe-struck lover looking at their partner, a parent looking at their child like they are the whole world. Like maybe he really was interested in Theo and maybe really did want to get to know him.

All his flustered little brain could come up with was, “Do you like boys?”

He really did not want to misunderstand.

Ken grinned. “I like you.”

It was horrible. Butterflies exploded in Theo’s belly, and he twisted to the side to press his face into the back of the couch so he could hide his mirroring smile from Ken, who just kept stroking his hair. He chuckled a little.

“Did I break you?”

“No,” Theo mumbled into the couch, his words muffled, “I’m just feeling a little dizzy and sick from last night.”

“Aw.” Ken scratched his nails at the base of Theo’s skull, which made shivers tumble down his spine. “I’ve been a bad host. Let me get you some pain meds and make some breakfast so you aren’t drinking that coffee on an empty stomach.”

Theo kept his face pressed into the couch until the cushions in front of him lifted as Ken stood up. He listened to him putter around in the kitchen and turned his face to the side to look around. A big TV was sitting on a long, thin table, with a couple of gaming consoles and cases of games and movies on the shelves below it. On the coffee table between the couch and the TV was a stack of plain corkboard coasters. Theo picked one up and set his coffee cup on it. He wondered what an adult who had coffee coasters had been doing at a frat party last night.

Ken came back into the room, shaking a white bottle of pills. He dumped two of them, regular little red ibuprofens, into Theo’s hand and gave him a glass of water.

“Best to hydrate lots after you drank too much,” he advised.

“What were you doing at the party last night?” Theo asked as he walked back into the kitchen. Then realized it might be rude to ask like that and tacked on, “Were you there with friends?”

Ken chuckled and looked over at him as he lifted the pan to spread a pat of butter around it. The rich aroma and satisfying sizzle of melting butter joined the mellow scent of coffee in the air.

“I wasn’t there for the party, kid,” he said. “I was there selling to the people going to the party.”

“Selling?” Theo furrowed his brow. Then, it smoothed out in realization. “Oh! Drugs?”

“Yeah.” Ken sent him an amused smile. He cracked a couple of eggs into the pan. Theo bobbed his head, trying to seem cool even though he was internally shaking apart. He should definitely not go to the grown-up party tonight with a drug dealer that he met last night while blackout drunk. His mother would be furious.

But then Ken brought him a plate of scrambled eggs with a piece of buttered toast and a handful of blueberries on the side. Not only could he cook, but he was apparently health-conscious enough to include fruit in his breakfast—like a real adult.

“Here you go, kid.”

Theo pouted, “I’m not a kid.”

“Oh, you don’t like it when I call you that?” Ken sat down beside him with his own plate and grabbed a coaster to put his coffee mug on. Then he leaned across the space between them and murmured very close to Theo’s ear and murmured, “What would you prefer? Sweetheart, babydoll, cutie pie?”

Theo flushed from his head to his toes. “I just…I meant I don’t have much experience with drugs or anything, but I’m not just some kid.”

There were a lot of things he did not have experience with, actually, but if he was ever going to learn about them and become suave and confident like Ken, he would have to start somewhere. So, when Ken leaned back and asked if he wanted to smoke, he said yes.

“It’ll help if you are feeling nauseous from last night, too,” Ken told him as he brought out a bong and began packing it. “Have you ever used a bubbler?”

Theo had never smoked marijuana. He mutely shook his head. Theo shifted to face him and put his lips to the mouth at the end of the long glass neck. “You are going to inhale just like this,” he demonstrated, and the sound of gently rolling bubbles filled the air, “and then when I tell you to inhale the smoke. Do it. Then hold your breath until I tell you, okay?”

Theo nodded. When Ken held the bong out toward him, he steadied it and put his lips where Ken’s had just been. Another thrill coursed through him as he watched Ken's fingers strike the lighter. The smoke burned as he inhaled it, but he held it in with determination until Ken told him to exhale. He gave into the urge to cough, which had simmered in his lungs the whole time. Ken patted his back, then turned and took his own hit.

Heaviness spread through Theo’s limbs. It was not like the heaviness last night that made the room spin and his thoughts sink into a black muck as though the shadows had oozed into his brain. This was accompanied by a strange lightness that made his heart flutter and his thoughts feel like butterflies flitting around his head. He giggled at the breakfast that Ken made him.

“I cannot believe you made me, like, a real breakfast,” he gasped.

“No?” Ken chuckled. “You surprised a guy like me can cook? Just wait until you taste it.”

Theo did. “Yummy. Thank you.”

Ken was still laughing at him, but he did not mind because it was not mean. Or at least, Theo did not think it seemed mean. He thought about the man’s hands smoothly handling the lighter and the bowl, his deep voice guiding him when and how to breathe. He took another bite of the eggs and chewed thoughtfully. Thinking tickled his brain while he was high like this, a sensation that he decided he greatly enjoyed.

“So, what is the party tonight going to be like?” he asked.