I threw up almost as soon as I woke up. Which, as soon as I realized where I was, made a lot of sense. All I ever did in this fucking place was puke.

I groaned and flipped over, shoving my face into the cushion. How the fuck had I gotten here again?

“You alright?” The sound of his voice made my entire body tense, and I hated that, hated the effect he had on me.

“Fuck off,” I mumbled. I heard him coming over to me anyway. I lifted my head and wished I hadn’t.

He was wearing nothing but boxers again, nothing but boxers and his fucking righteousness. I felt my eyes drag over him, taking in every inch of his sculpted body. When he crouched before me and brought his face into view, I turned away.

“How the fuck did I get here,” I asked, knowing I sounded sullen. Well, I was sullen. I was tired of waking up in my clothes so close to someone I wanted to be naked with.

“You were unconscious in the bathroom.” I heard something in his voice, something more, but I wasn’t interested. Fuck it. Fuck him. Fuck this fucking place. I felt my stomach churning and got to the bucket just in time.

His hand appeared, holding a glass of water that must have been sitting out all night but whatever, I’d drunk worse shit. I took it without thanking him and rinsed out my mouth. “Fuck,” I muttered, feeling the way my body was hating on me, the way all my muscles were bunched into strange positions. I was dangerously close to being empty, to being hollowed out and ready to be filled by all the things I didn’t like thinking about. I needed something, anything…

I sat up. “I should go.”

He was watching me. “Do you want breakfast?”

“No.”

I saw him looking me over. “When’s the last time you ate?”

Fuck. I don’t know. Who gave a shit? “I need to go.”

“Got somewhere to be?”

“No, I just.” I glanced toward the bathroom and his eyes noticed, saw it all, and I thought he would sigh, or look disappointed, but he just shrugged.

“Yeah. If you need to take something, you should get out of here.”

“I don’t need to do anything,” I snapped, knowing full well that my body disagreed. I was jonesing bad; whatever mix I’d taken last night hadn’t been enough to tide me over to this morning. Fuck, even like a bowl...

“Then stay for breakfast.” He said it so simply, like he hadn’t just laid a fucking trap for me, like he wasn’t trying to get me to not leave. Honestly, he probably wasn’t. He didn’t want me. Twice in a row, he’d brought me home and not fucked me. I mean, what, was he straight? But he was just looking at me, and fuck, those fucking lips…

“Yeah,” I heard myself say. What? That was a terrible fucking plan. But his lips, just looking at them, had seemed to calm down my soul, at least for now, and I could wait for my morning fix. It wasn’t like I needed it, anyway.

I pulled myself up to standing and nearly fell, my vision greying and a deep sound filling my ears. When I came back to it I found his hand on my elbow, steadying me, and I pulled away angrily. That wasn’t the touch I wanted. “But I’m fucking making pancakes.”

He blinked for a moment before shrugging and waving a hand toward the kitchen, and I think he even smiled.

***

Watching him bustle around the kitchen, dropping curses and slamming cabinet doors like they’d said some terrible thing to him, I couldn’t keep a smile off my face. I liked watching him like this. I liked watching him. He was fun, in an angry fuck-the-world kind of way.

I honestly was shocked that he’d stayed. He’d looked like he was jonesing bad when he’d first woken up, like he’d really needed something. I remembered those mornings, how you couldn’t think straight, couldn’t think at all, until you got your first hit into you. You just needed something. Anything.

I got that. I wasn’t going to stand between him and the the things he needed to do. But, I gave him an option anyway, because no one had ever given me one, because I wanted him to stay, and fuck me if he hadn’t taken it. I watched him now, mixing batter, and was so fucking glad that he had. He cursed as he splashed a bit of batter on the counter and I lifted my hand to try and hide my grin.

He looked up just in time to catch it and scowled. “What?”

“We have mix, you know.”

“Fuck your mix.” He tasted the batter and I watched his finger disappear into that mouth of his, and tried really hard not to lick my lips.

“There’s two more,” I told him, trying to distract myself from all the things his lips were making me think. He shrugged and went back to the fridge for some more eggs.

“Got any chocolate chips?” he asked from inside the fridge.

We weren’t exactly a sweets household. I shook my head.

“M&M’s?” he tried. “Any fucking candy at all?”

Jesus, I was starting to really like this guy. I turned so that he didn’t see the expression on my face as I pulled down Bren’s secret stash of Hershey’s kisses.

When I turned back to him he was giving me a very strange look. Shit, I thought, but there wasn’t anything to do about it if my - whatever it was that I was feeling - was showing. I hadn’t thought it was, but I never thought what I was thinking showed around him, and he always seemed to pick it up. I was starting to get the very bad feeling that he was just as good at reading people as I was.

But he didn’t mention anything. “Peel those,” he told me, and I started dumping them out.

“How many?”

He shrugged, pulling a pan out and setting it on the stove. “Enough. I don’t know. I’m not your fucking mom.”

I know I smiled again as I started in, and I know he saw it because he scowled and turned away.

The noise and the smell soon brought Bren out from his room. He crossed his arms when he saw the empty Hershey Kiss wrappers.

“Those are mine.”

“You shouldn’t be eating them anyway,” I tried. I had my eyes trained on the man cooking up fluffy, amazing pancakes in front of me. His eyes, in turn, kept darting up to the cabinet that I knew held our liquor - he must have found it when he was slamming around earlier. I rested my chin in my hand and watched.

“But it’s okay to eat it in a pancake?”

“No,” I said, as Orin rumbled out of the room sleepily.

“Did someone say pancakes?” He slipped his arms around the grumpy Bren and smiled at me, then froze when he saw who was cooking.

“Teddy,” he said softly by way of greeting. His voice wasn’t cold, exactly, but there certainly wasn’t any warmth in it.

He didn’t even turn from his task. “You,” he replied. Then he whirled and faced me. “He fucked me in the bathroom, you know. It was good enough for him. Don’t see why it wasn’t good enough for you.” Then he was back to flipping pancakes as if nothing had happened.

I looked over at Orin, and he met my gaze. We stayed that way for a bit, just staring. Silent. He looked away first.

“There should be enough for all of us.” I kept my voice easy, but there was tension in me that hadn’t been there before. I heard Orin shift and saw Bren and him having a whole conversation with just their eyes.

Whatever they said, breakfast seemed to be the order of the moment. Bren moved towards the island, dragging Orin along for the ride. “These smell fucking good.”

“You have a fight tomorrow,” Orin reminded him, resulting in Bren smacking at his hands.

“Fuck you,” he said, pointing at Orin, “and fuck you,” he pointed at me and I raised my hands, “and.” He paused, pointed at the back facing him. I saw it tense slightly. “Thanks for breakfast.”

He spun, a stack of pancakes on the plate in his hands. He all but threw the plate on the island between us. “Dig in,” he said, trying not to sound happy, but there was pride in his voice.

And he had something to be proud about. Fuck, those pancakes were some of the best I’d ever had. Bren told him that over and over again, until he finally told Bren to “shut the fuck up and just fucking eat,” and I laughed which just made him glare at me instead.

Throughout breakfast, his eyes kept tracking up to that cabinet, staying there longer and longer each time. I let my eyes fall to his hands and tried not to wince in understanding.

“You’re shaking,” I said as we cleaned up the dishes. Orin and Bren had retreated back to Bren’s room, leaving us alone. He dunked his hands deep into the suds and turned away from me.

There was something about that motion, something about the way he moved his body towards me even as he turned his head away that had me shifting behind him, my fingers sliding down his arms. He shuddered but didn’t try to move away.

“You okay?” I murmured into his the back of his head, knowing full well that he was jonesing, bad, and that his shakes would only get worse until he got whatever it was that he needed. “You coming down off something?”

He froze beneath me and I planted a kiss where my words had fallen, trying to sooth the abrasion they had made. “No,” he muttered, lying blatantly after clearly being on X the night before. He grabbed another dish from the suds. “I was just thinking about getting a drink, is all.”

I slid the dish from his hand and turned him around to face me. I could feel both of us remembering that I was still in nothing but my boxers, and felt his fingers skim my bare stomach leaving a trail of soap suds. I shivered, pushing my hand into his hair, and met his eyes with mine.

“So go get it,” I told him quietly, watching him react to my touch. His eyes fluttered and I wondered if it was at the idea of a drink or the way my skin pressed up against his. I moved my lips down to his, and I swear I felt him whimper. It was so out of character that I paused for a moment, worried that he wasn’t alright. But then his fingers tightened on my hips, pushing my breath out of me with a hiss, and I figured that he must be at least okay.

“Unless you don’t want to,” I whispered against him, and he shifted.

“You don’t want me to.” I could hear the indecision in his voice. Fuck, he was right there, he was so close.

I lifted away so I could look him in the eyes. “I don’t care what you do,” I lied, because in the end what I wanted didn’t matter and I didn’t want it to color his decision, and besides, I didn’t think he would want me to care. Options don’t care. And I wasn’t even an option to him, really. I was nothing but an easy drink, a cliff to run full tilt off of. Cliffs don’t have feelings. Cliffs don’t try to stop you from jumping.

But the moment I said those words, his face darkened. I felt his hands push off from my chest, trying to get away from me and I let them push me, let him have the space as I watched, confused at the change that was taking place before me.

“Fuck you,” he said, “fuck you to fucking hell, you and your moral bullshit. Your fucking games.” I watched him climb up on the counter and yank open the cabinet, grabbing the first bottle he saw. “If I wanna drink, I’m gonna fucking drink, or take E, or K, or fucking speed you fucking asshole.”

“Hey,” I said, starting forward, but he was moving fast and angry.

“Fuck you,” he said one more time, and then he was out the door, slamming it behind him.

I stared at the space where he had just been, the air he had just been breathing with me, so close to me, so fucking close. Then I let out a quick, wordless shout of frustration and headed into my room.

“Coop?” I’d startled Bren out of his bedroom, his shirt off and his pants unbuttoned. “everything okay?”

“Fucking fine,” I hissed. What the fuck had I missed? Why the fuck did I care?

“Uh.” Bren was watching me closely, so I held up the bag in my hand and shook it.

“I'm going to the gym.”

He nodded and I slammed open the door, only to stop dead at the sight of dark, curly hair at my doorstep.

“I don't need your fuckin’ booze,” he told me, shoving the bottle into my chest. Our eyes met for a moment; his, dark and angry and accusing and mine, confused and angry and, if there were accusations there, they were all for me. Then he turned on his heel and stomped down the hall.