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That hollow sort of emptiness feels all-consuming, like Kendall’s soul has come unattached from the rest of him, knocking around his body like a pinball. He sits under the hot stream of the shower – blistering pellets of water, staining his pale skin red, blue veins shining through the pink, skin slick and wrinkled, nails outgrown, flecked with white.
His breaths come jagged. He smokes his way through a pack on his balcony, flicks the butts of his fags over the edge, watches the night swallow them up like a dark, hungry mouth. He turns his phone off. He feels hungry. There’s an apple on the counter, soft from rot, half dented. He throws it in the bin and goes on a run, runs until his vision swims and his blinking comes slowly. He squats on the sidewalk, puts his head between his knees.
He walks into a corner store. He buys a prepackaged bagel and some American Spirits and he pays with his AmEx. The contactless beeps its approval and he tucks it back into his pocket. He gathers his bagel and his cigarettes and sits on the nearest bench he can find. He eats the bagel until he doesn’t feel lightheaded, then smokes more until he does. He swallows smoke and he hacks it up, coughing, grating at his throat, grey ribbons snaking out from the corners of his mouth, a fire extinguished inside him.
Kendall walks back to his apartment. He stands alone among the sweeping, impersonal white: the sofas he’s never relaxed into, the kitchen he’s never used, the fridge he hasn’t looked inside. He looks now. There’s a tub of cream cheese. He puts it on the counter and stares at it. He sniffs it. He eats it with a spoon, and throws the empty packaging in the trash.
He turns his phone on and texts Stewy.
Kendall: Remember when you used to put sriracha on cream cheese and eat it straight
Kendall: In college
Stewy replies within seconds.
Stewy: It’s a good combination.
Stewy: You okay man?
Kendall doesn’t reply.
He walks back out to his balcony, phone in his hand. He looks over the edge, not for the first time today. He texts Stewy again.
Kendall: Long way down
Stewy: ?
Stewy: Don’t freak me out. I’m too high for this
Kendall: Sorry.
Stewy: Where are you?
Kendall: Home
Stewy: Should I come over?
Stewy: Or you can come here.
Kendall stares at the bright blue screen for a few moments, thinking. He looks up at the city skyline, an obscure black-yellow smear against the darkening sky.
Kendall: My dick doesn’t work
The three dots appear and disappear multiple times before Stewy’s messages come up.
Stewy: Okay.
Stewy: I meant more for moral support?
Stewy: But mine does work, by the way
Kendall grins down at his phone, and it feels foreign on his face.
Kendall: I’ll come over
Stewy’s place is warmer: metaphorically and literally. It has Stewy in it, for one, in his old Harvard jumper, in his sweats, bare feet on the wooden floors. The place is spotted with colour, olives and deep reds and navy blues, figure paintings that look like slashes of black to Kendall framed high on the walls. There’s a bar, two glasses, a decanter of whiskey. He looks sidelong at Stewy, Stewy with his glasses and damp hair and smile on his lips, eyes crinkled with mirth.
He drinks. Stewy talks at him, he hums along. He refuses the coke. Stewy does another line in his honour, claps him on the back. He keeps his hand there, massaging at the knot between Kendall’s neck and shoulder, his fingers dipping beneath the collar of his t-shirt. Kendall closes the space between them: lips and teeth and the familiar woody, lavender scent of Stewy, the smell of his skin and his clothes and his cologne and the toothpaste on his breath. He gathers Kendall up. Kendall isn’t turned on but something sinks low and hot in his stomach anyways, he likes it when Stewy holds him, like he’s something small.
Stewy fucks him. Kendall’s dick doesn’t work. Stewy pushes inside him, puts his hand at the back of Kendall’s head, brings their lips together. Kendall kisses him half-heartedly, haphazardly, stuck in his head, and Stewy pulls away, eyes searching, brows knitted together. He whispers, “Where are you?”
Kendall’s floating away, to the ceiling, inside the insulation, nestling into the pink fibreglass until it pricks all the blood out of him, he’ll lay flat against Stewy, then, he’ll lay flat and Stewy will push up into him until he dissolves.
Stewy’s stopped moving now. Kendall’s breaths are slow. Stewy says, “Are you there, man?”
Kendall suddenly feels something terrifying overcome him – it starts from his chest, tears its way up his throat, stings at his eyes. His mouth parts slightly, trying to contain his horror: Stewy is inside him, tears are fighting their way from the corners of his eyes.
“Hey,” Stewy says, softly. He pulls out, adjusting himself, while Kendall stares at the ceiling, his vision getting progressively blurrier. “Ken. Hey. It’s okay.”
Kendall makes an embarrassing sound and Stewy pulls him into his bare chest, face first, curled up against the dark blanket of his chest hair, softened and smoothed by layers of oils and creams, smelling of wood and sweat and skin.
“You smell good,” Kendall sobs.
“Thanks, bro,” Stewy says, patting him on the back, “You big baby. You done getting snot all over me?” His words are mean but his voice is soft, his lips are soft when he presses them to the side of Kendall’s head, smushes his nose against his temple.
Kendall reaches up and pushes him away – looks into those dark, round eyes, gleaming and wet in the dim light. He touches Stewy’s ear, the thin skin of his eyebags, stretched tight around his skull, darker than the rest of his skin. Stewy lets himself be touched. He says, “What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know,” Kendall confesses, running his hand up into the curls spilling over Stewy’s forehead, “I feel weird.”
“Did you eat?” Stewy asks. He allows Kendall to pull at his hair, tilt his head to one side, like a puppet on a string.
“Probably not enough,” Kendall says.
He feels dizzy suddenly. He lays back into the mattress, feels like his limbs are dissolving. He thinks he could sink through, straight into the floor.
“Am I gonna have to do, like, fucking, mama bird? Gotta chew up your shit and spit it in your mouth?” Stewy prods, no malice in his tone. He sounds faraway. Kendall knows he’s still sitting up beside his calf. He reaches out, brushes the hairs on Stewy’s leg, ghosts over the flex of muscle in his thigh.
“Sounds like something you’d be into.”
“Yeah, no. Spit is more your thing.”
Kendall smiles against his will. He feels all in parts; his head floating somewhere high, a ghost, hovering; his legs sinking through the floor, feet poking into the apartment below; his stomach twirling and twirling and spinning across the room, a ditzy ballerina, pirouetting until it falls.
He feels the mattress shift. Stewy is laying down beside him. Kendall hears the small puffs of his breath, feels them on his cheek. He rolls over to his side and seals their mouths together. Stewy reaches for him like it's muscle memory, finds the thick meat of his thigh, the slant of his shoulder, holds him still and kisses up on him again. Kendall doesn’t so much feel good as he feels like something in that half-second, with Stewy’s lips and hands on him, Stewy’s desire tangible and fiery, something to place his finger on and take it away ashen.
“Fuck me,” he breathes, “Just fucking– just…”
“I’m trying,” Stewy says, into his mouth, half a smile in his voice, “You’re making it pretty fucking difficult.”
Kendall pulls away. He rolls away from Stewy, turns his back to him. Stewy kisses the plane of his upper back, the crest of his spine, he runs his hot hands over Kendall’s body, finds the fall of his pelvis and holds him there, pressing against the crease of his ass. He kisses the back of Kendall’s neck, his beard brushing the sensitive skin, a million different needles, a million different reassurances. Kendall grips Stewy’s wrist, pulls his arm tighter around him. He wants to disappear into him, wants to step out of his skin and live inside Stewy’s for a second. Maybe they could swap places, maybe he could stop being for a minute. His breaths come distant and hard, Stewy’s mouth against the shell of his ear.
“Tell me what you want,” Stewy urges.
“Dude,” Kendall says, and doesn’t elaborate.
Stewy sits up beside him, sighing. Kendall rolls over again to look at him. Stewy’s features are a blue-black smudge: the line of his nose, the corner of his eye, the shape of his mouth. His dick is half-hard, condom-covered, standing up in between his legs.
The only real thing is the blood in Kendall's veins and Stewy’s warmth beside him. He sits up. Stewy follows him with his eyes, head moving with his gaze, turning to face Kendall sideways as Kendall pushes himself up. Stewy meets his lips when he presses forward, urgent, calling, called; he answers, he opens himself up, he grabs Kendall when he falls into him. Kendall straddles Stewy’s thighs, Stewy finds his waist, holds him for a second, looking up at him, unsure.
“I don’t know what I’m fucking doing,” Kendall says, quiet, and Stewy smiles.
“I can tell.”
Stewy takes one hand off Kendall’s waist, that burning, branding heat far removed. Kendall’s pulled towards him like there’s a magnet in his chest, Stewy’s eyes their own heat source, their own fire. Kendall reaches down, in between Stewy’s thighs, touches him lightly, hesitatingly, lines himself up over him, looking down, like the king of the castle; sinks like a puppet without strings, whimpers like a lost dog. Stewy closes his eyes too, like he’s losing himself in it. His grip tightens around Kendall’s waist, Kendall contracts around him, gasping, pushing down.
“Yeah?” Stewy breathes, opening his eyes, blown wide.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Kendall says.
“You’re literally on my dick,” Stewy says, “You’re the one looking at me.”
“Fuck you,” Kendall whispers.
“Yeah, I will,” Stewy replies, voice catching.
Stewy takes Kendall’s hands in his own. His hands are bigger, covered in their own patches of dark, crawling hair, neatly trimmed nails, cuticles pushed back. He takes Kendall’s hands in his own, lays them on his chest. Kendall moves his thumb, brushes over Stewy’s nipples, cups his chest. Stewy laughs. Kendall smiles in response, watery and tired.
They stay like that for a moment, Kendall on top of Stewy, not moving. Stewy’s hands are still over Kendall’s, Kendall’s hands on Stewy’s chest, real human flesh under his touch. Real human Stewy, living and breathing, his heartbeat fluttering, pressed close to Kendall, pressed hard inside him. Kendall doesn’t want to move. He doesn’t want to think. He wants to sit here, quiet, in the dark, forever. The sun will come up and bring everything to light: he wants to be a vampire, silent, quiet, live off Stewy’s blood and moonlight and cigarettes.
“Are we just gonna chill here, man? Not that it isn’t thrilling.”
Kendall tugs a little at Stewy’s nipple. His eyes widen, some small noise punched out of him. Kendall says, “Can you just shut the fuck up for a second?”
“Can I fuck you first?”
Kendall screws his eyes shut. Something raw twists up in his chest, clawing.
“Yeah,” he says, “I don’t know.”
“Make up your mind,” Stewy mumbles, “Tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you.”
He leans forward and noses at Kendall’s jaw, a long forgotten intimacy. The brush of cold against his stubble, the tiny exhale of Stewy’s breath stamped on his chin. They haven’t fucked slow in a while. Kendall feels his heart in his throat.
He brings his arms up and wraps them around Stewy’s shoulders, long, snaky, pale limbs. Bones wrapped in meat wrapped in skin. He reaches his hands to the back of Stewy’s hair, adjusts himself, lets Stewy push them forward until his back is pressed into the mattress again. He sighs, something soft, something deep. Stewy kisses him, Kendall lets him.
“I really can’t tell whether you’re into this or not,” Stewy says, pulling back. Kendall teases his fingers further into his hair, runs his nails against Stewy’s scalp, watches a shiver ripple through his shoulders.
“I’m always into it,” Kendall says.
“No, you’re not,” Stewy corrects, looking down at him. “And I don’t feel like fucking a corpse.”
“Don’t mention corpses while your dick is inside me, dude,” Kendall replies, avoiding the topic, avoiding the image at the front of his mind.
“My dick feels like a corpse,” Stewy whines, “My dick is in fucking, liminal space. My dick is lost and confused and searching for a purpose.”
“Just move,” Kendall snaps, suddenly irritated.
Stewy moves. Kendall’s mouth falls open, and Stewy smiles, shark-like. He moves, and Kendall tightens his grip in Stewy’s hair; Stewy leans down closer, over him, presses their mouths together again, wet and insistent. Kendall kisses him back, lets Stewy scoop up his thigh and adjust him so he can push closer, so the heel of Kendall’s foot is pressing against the base of his spine.
Kendall holds on. He closes his eyes, tilts his head back, lets Stewy fill him up and empty him out and wring him out and leave him to dry. Stewy is touching him everywhere, his chest, his stomach, his waist, his thighs. Stewy is breathing heavily, cursing, his mouth at Kendall’s ear, his dick in Kendall’s ass, his smell in Kendall’s nose, his mattress pressing up into Kendall’s back.
Stewy holds him as he comes. He’s always been touchy, seeking out Kendall’s shoulders to punch, his waist to tap, his hair to mess up. He puts his elbows next to Kendall’s ribs and pushes his arms beneath Kendall’s shoulders, feeling the ruts of his shoulder blades poking out from his skin, and then he puts his face against the side of Kendall’s cheek and comes with a long, shuddering moan. Kendall slides his hands up across the sturdy plane of his back, the extra fat that Stewy carries in winter beneath his turtlenecks pliable beneath his touch, he clings onto Stewy’s shoulders like he’s hoisting him up by his armpits. Stewy stays inside him a moment, lets Kendall cling on, head resting against the mattress, stomach twisting itself into knots.
“You good?” Stewy whispers.
Kendall doesn’t dare move. He stretches his fingers out across Stewy’s back. There’s a birthmark there, he knows. He smooths his hand over, tries to see if he can find the different texture beneath his touch.
Stewy kisses him on the cheek.
“Fuck off,” Kendall says, hoarse.
Stewy pulls away. He pulls off the condom, tosses it. Kendall lifts his hands, settles his forearms over his eyes. He feels warm everywhere but the tips of his fingers feel cold. His stomach lets out a yawning, empty noise. He shivers despite himself, presses his arms harder into his eyes to stop them from leaking.
“Wow,” Stewy says, false amusement in his voice, “Fucked you that good? Had you soft the entire time and made you cry twice?”
“Whatever,” Kendall mumbles, voice still deep and unsteady.
He takes his arms away from his eyes, wipes the snot from his nose with shaky hands. Stewy watches him, expression unreadable. He reaches forward, finally, and pinches Kendall’s nose, catches his snot on his fingertips, uses the edge of his thumb to wipe away his tears. Kendall almost laughs at the absurdity.
“Bro,” he says, “That’s disgusting.”
“I am a terrible individual,” Stewy agrees, half-hearted. He wipes his hand on Kendall’s thigh, leaves his fingers resting on the joint of Kendall’s knee. “Do you want something to eat?”
It’s ridiculous, it’s horrible. Stewy is never like this. Stewy fucks Kendall then takes an hour long shower to wash the smell off his skin. He lathers himself in lavender oil and brushes his hair back and takes girls on dates and does cocaine off the fragile, hot skin of the inside of his wrist, the translucent place where the jade coloured veins poke through. He tucks his shirts in tight, has a different belt for each day of the week, owns a steamer to press his clothes himself after they’ve been ironed and before he puts them on. He has a tiny girl razor to line up his beard with. He is the best person Kendall knows, and it makes him feel like crying again.
“Don’t be nice,” Kendall says, hollow, “This feels weird. Call me a prick. Tell me you hate me.”
“Dude,” Stewy replies, incredulous, “I just had the most miserable, vanilla sex ever because you said you wanted it. I don’t fucking hate you. If I hated you I would’ve, I dunno, smoked a joint instead. I would’ve, fucking, slapped you or called you a little bitch.”
“Maybe I want you to,” Kendall mumbles.
“I don’t want to, though.”
“Yeah. Why?”
Stewy moves off the bed. Kendall follows him with his eyes, head lolling to one side, keeping an eye on the shape of his back, his ass, the gleam of the sweaty divot between his shoulder blades. Stewy pulls on a t-shirt, his sweats. The collars of his shirts are never stretched out. His hair bounces out, curly, a mess. He takes a seat next to Kendall, and lays a hand over his abdomen. Kendall wants to buck into the touch, wants to find the place where they’re closest together and push down harder.
Stewy says, “Dude, sometimes. I think I, like, love you so much, it physically hurts.”
Kendall replies, without thinking, “What the fuck.”
Stewy looks at him softly. Dark, dark eyes. Something about drowning. Something about swimming. Brown like earth and dirt and the sweet smell of grass after he came back from college rugby games, muscles aching, bruised, cut up, the sound of boiling water on the stove, the sound of his voice rattling off his best plays. Kendall in their clothes, theirs because there was no Stewy’s and Kendall’s, then, they just picked clothes up and wore them.
“Don’t say that shit,” Kendall says.
“I mean, who’s fucking stopping me? It sure as hell isn’t you,” Stewy laughs, “Am I just supposed to sit on my hands and watch you kill yourself?”
Kendall lifts his hands, scrubs them over his eyes. He feels his body shaking. All his muscles winding around each other, the expansion of his diaphragm, the eye of a needle, the camel plodding slow, slow, slow. Stewy sits, on the camel, on the mattress, eyes endless, mouth curved down, closed parentheses between his eyebrows.
“Do you…” Stewy says, then pauses. “Do you want the soup?”
“The soup?” Kendall repeats.
“The fucking, soup, you know. Dumplings. Salt. Pepper. When you came back from the hospital and I made it and you never stopped asking for it.”
“The soup,” Kendall repeats, again, “Fucking, soup?”
“Yeah, soup. Do you want some soup, Ken.”
“I…” he drifts off, and doesn’t get a chance to finish. Stewy is standing, and moving to the kitchen.
There’s electricity humming. There’s some documentary on in the living room, walls away, volume low, buzzing, filling the apartment with voices. There’s the plop of water as Stewy drops frozen dumplings into the pot. Kendall watches his back, watches the orange light catch the white strands of his hair, fall scattered around the crown of his skull, watches his foreshortened shadow shuffle to and from the spice cupboard, jars filled to the brim with various colours, untouched.
Kendall could cry. He doesn’t. He sits at the table, finger drawing circles, swirls into the wood, scratching into the varnish. Stewy could tell him off but he won’t. Kendall is the child, Stewy is the adult; Stewy is unlike any other adult Kendall has ever known, unlike any person Kendall has ever met. Stewy is everything Kendall has loved in everyone he has ever met, and nothing Kendall has ever accepted.
Kendall’s socked, Stewy isn’t. Bare brown feet on the black tile. Pot sloshing water into an oversized ramen bowl. Stewy owns soup spoons because of course he does. He sits beside Kendall. Kendall stares into the oily water and picks up the spoon and Stewy catches his wrist, says, “It’s too hot. You’ll hurt yourself.”
“I had a bagel today,” Kendall replies, a non-sequitur.
“Congratulations,” Stewy says, sarcastic, “I had a tahini miso salad and it was horrifying.”
Kendall pushes the bowl towards him. “Have some,” he offers, like it’s not Stewy’s apartment, Stewy’s food, Stewy’s spoon.
Stewy takes the spoon, fills it up with broth. He blows at it for several seconds. Kendall watches the purse of his lips, entranced. He takes a bite, closes one eye because of the heat, then stands and goes back to the cupboard. He brings a grinder to the bowl, cracks more black pepper, then stirs it and drops the spoon against the bowl with a clatter. He leans back in the chair and crosses his arms over his chest, studying Kendall.
Kendall scoops the broth, blows on it like Stewy did. He waits. He drinks. Salt and spice and something deep and warming. It burrows its way into the back of Kendall’s throat: a hard kick, score. It heats the path to his stomach. He looks up at Stewy and grins.
“Motherfucker,” Stewy mutters, smiling.
“Yeah,” Kendall says.
He scoops up a dumpling. The skin splits, oozing vegetables and shredded chicken into the broth. He eats it anyway, burns the roof of his mouth, winces. Stewy laughs at him. Stewy checks his phone. Stewy gets up and makes his nightly chamomile tea and settles back down beside Kendall as he lifts the bowl to his mouth to drink the last bit of broth.
Stewy has his long, slender fingers wrapped around the mug. He rolls his shoulders back, then lets go of the mug to extend his arms into the air, joints cracking. He yawns, deep and loud, then slams his palms down on the table exaggeratedly. Kendall doesn’t break eye contact when Stewy stares at him. Overexposed, in the kitchen light, the planes of his face are almost white-yellow: the high slashes of his cheekbones, the soft growth of his beard, teeth hooking over his bottom lip, the crows feet around the edges of his eyes, the dark circles pressed deep into his skin.
“What do you want?” Stewy asks.
“Uh…” Kendall mumbles, almost a breath, it’s so quiet. Stewy looks at him, Kendall looks back. He says, “I just… I won’t kill myself.”
“Uh-huh,” Stewy replies, unconvinced.
He puts his hands back around the mug, fingers slipping through the handle easily, tapping out a rhythm on the ceramic. Piano fingers, music mind, abstract; Kendall could never get the hang of the notes, every boy deserves... Stewy, Stewy has webbed hands, a frog, a reptile, chameleon colour changing, he looked at Kendall over the piano top, looks over the rim of his mug, twenty years and nothing’s changed.
“Can I bet on that?” Stewy mutters. “‘Cause, Ken, you know, I’m getting pretty fucking tired of this whole song and dance. You can’t live like this forever. And if you kill yourself to get out of it I’m gonna be really fucking pissed.”
“I–”
“I’m gonna eulogise your funeral and there will be pictures of your shrivelled up dick for your entire family to see. Take that risk, man. I’ll do it.”
Kendall grins despite himself. He looks down at his hands, pale against the surface of the table. His smile slips away, and he looks up at Stewy, who hasn’t taken his eyes off him.
“I won’t,” he says, earnest. His heart beats thick in his throat, and he adds, “If I do, I’ll warn you, like, uh, three days in advance, minimum, so you can start gathering the dick pics.”
Stewy carries on staring. The corner of his mouth twitches. He takes a sip of his tea, still steaming, and hisses when the hot liquid hits the soft flesh of his mouth.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” Kendall mutters, so quiet it could be nothing. Stewy turns to him, eyes dark, tongue on the raw roof of his mouth. Kendall says, not looking at his eyes, looking at the tea, at the empty bowl of soup, at Stewy’s mouth, “I love you too.”