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The stairs were not Mark’s friend when he was drunk. They were always uneven and loud, but every time he came home really truly wasted he found they’d also transformed into a toll bridge, tripping him at least once before letting him make it to the house’s second floor.
Mark kicked his boots off in the entryway and headed up the steps, fumbling with the banister. He was doing pretty well until at the top his foot struck the step and he stumbled backwards, clinging to the railing. “Fuck.”
The house remained silent. It occurred to Mark that he may be the only one home - he was only stopping by for a couple hours to shower and sleep, and every light was off.
Then as he dragged himself up the steps, he noted a dim yellow light under the door of Adam’s bedroom. Either he had left it on, or he was actually home. There hadn’t been a car in the drive but Mark hadn’t looked in the garage.
Usually if Adam was home you could hear it. He’d have music playing or a movie on or he’d be on the phone. Maybe if Mark hadn’t been drunk and sore all over and covered in blood and so tired he couldn’t think in words, he would have knocked on his door. Instead he ignored the light, stumbling down the hall towards his room.
It was more like a guest room. It didn’t feel like his room to him, or to anyone else. He’d forgotten a change of clothes here once and they hung in the closet, but that was the only trace that he’d ever even come here - that and a toothbrush in the bathroom that he’d used maybe twice.
He stripped off his clothes, tossing them into the laundry basket inside the closet. His shirt clung to him in places, sticky and stiff with dried blood. He was sure he hadn’t made it through the house without smearing blood on a wall somewhere but he’d worry about that tomorrow. Before Amanda noticed, but not right now.
In just his boxers he walked out into the hall, heading for the bathroom between his room and Adam’s. He paused, a rhythmic sound like footsteps catching his attention.
Not footsteps. Adam was home, and you could hear him. Based on the soft panting and whining Mark could hear when he stood still and held his breath, that sound was Adam’s bed frame rocking against the wall.
Mark nearly laughed, startled by how easily he made it down the hall in dead silence to linger outside Adam’s bedroom door. That broken fucked-out voice absolutely belonged to Adam, not some pornstar on his laptop. He sounded dizzy, delirious. The heavy tremor in his voice made Mark’s heart thump harder in his ribs. Oh, Adam wasn’t home alone. A second, deeper voice was soothing him. Talking him through it. Mark sneered down at the doorknob.
Adam’s door opened silently. He didn’t even need to see what was happening - just wanted to make words out of the muffled sounds he was hearing through the door. Adam and Lawrence were fucking at the end of the bed, Adam’s head hanging back off the edge. His face was flushed with pleasure, his lip raw and bitten, his hair a mess. His neck and shoulders were blotched with love bites and wine stain hickeys. He panted frantically, clutching Lawrence’s shoulders as Lawrence fucked pretty sounds out of him.
“Hff… ah - fuck, please…”
Lawrence smirked wickedly down at him, holding Adam’s throat. His thumb rubbed circles over a gorgeous bruise under his jaw. “Okay, angel. I’ve got you.”
“Fuck, mommy, it feels so good ,” Adam sobbed, hiding his face in Lawrence’s shoulder. Lawrence pulled Adam to his chest and Mark tried to remember what it was like to have so much of your skin on someone else’s. The thought made him a little uneasy, like he was standing on a boat. The memory that came to him was not the first time, or the last time it had happened, but a time from when he was nineteen. Hidden under blankets and behind a bedroom door left just a couple inches open, just like the one in front of him, the one he was looking into. Hot breath damp on his skin and stifled cries and vicious satisfaction and guilt like acid that he could shut out of his brain long enough to cum, but it reached every knob of his spine, echoing like a scream in every inch of his visceral cavities. Making his hands shake as much as the desire had.
“Shh, my sweet boy.” Lawrence kissed him, muffling his cries. He drew back and Adam kissed his neck, whining and crying, clinging to Lawrence like a drowning man clings to a lifeboat.
Sometimes he hadn’t been able to shut that guilt out. Those were the times that he’d looked like that, the times that he’d clutched at someone else like that, like it would be the last time. Those were the times that he remembered. The rest blurred together like one year-long night.
Somehow Mark wasn’t surprised when Lawrence glanced up at him. Another person’s eyes on his made him feel like he wasn’t really there and not like he was. For an absurd second he was absolutely convinced that this was some sort of drunken dream or hallucination. For a second he just knew in his gut that Lawrence could read his mind, could see all of it. Every secret meeting, every close call that left his stomach inside out and his mouth full of bile, every promise to stop that sounded more hollow than the last just like an echo.
Then Lawrence turned away from him, dismissing him only by kissing Adam’s jaw and murmuring something soothing, and he knew it was real. He was here watching this, it was happening, and Lawrence couldn’t hear his thoughts.
He didn’t bother to close the door. He stumbled back down the hall, dragging his hand over the waxy rosebud wallpaper. He knew it was okay, because as long as it was happening, he wasn’t sitting alone in his bed afterwards during the worst part. The part where his appetite was sated, but he’d had to eat to do it, and he knew he could never possibly be hungry enough again to take the risk. Hungry enough to watch himself sacrifice his reason and his discipline on the altar to it, again, like a lamb that could be killed a thousand fucking times and always come skipping back through the field snowy white and bleating like it had never screamed for its life.
In the bathroom he turned the water up so hot it left his back and shoulders flushed and raw. He watched the water swirl down the drain red and then orange and then pink over the pearly white tiles. By the time it ran clear the mirror was thick with steam, but he kept his eyes down as he scrubbed stubborn blood from under his nails with a fragrant bar of blue soap and brushed his teeth until the peppermint toothpaste had lost its flavor. He felt like the only person in the house, the only person in this dimension. Like if he looked outside he’d find the house floating in a black, silent, temperate abyss. Tomorrow would never come.