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They weren’t always Andrew’s type.
The boys Roland sent to the back room at Eden’s.
Roland and Andrew had come to a sort of arrangement in the months after Roland started seeing someone seriously. He announced his foray into monogamy by dragging Andrew into the alley, watching him spark a cigarette, and saying, “As much as I’ll miss this,” while giving Andrew a long, transparent once-over that lingered on his mouth. “It wouldn’t be right,” he added.
Andrew’s face twisted with an ashy aftertaste of disgust, unrelated to the cigarette clenched between his teeth. He was annoyed that Roland was still talking.
“I don’t need a treatise on why I can’t suck your dick anymore,” Andrew said, lifting a hand to shut him up.
Roland just grinned. “Right. But Zander has this friend, and he’s single, and—”
Andrew’s disgust deepened as Roland rambled on. Not because of the tedious account of Roland’s boyfriend’s thriving social life, but at the name Zander spoken so brazenly in his vicinity. He briefly considered asking whether it was short for something more dignified, like Alexander, but decided he didn’t care enough to bother.
As it turned out, Roland’s boyfriend did keep buff company. On occasion Andrew found himself entertaining them in Eden’s old office. It was tucked away in a chronically underlit hallway, deep in the building’s underbelly, easily mistaken for a utility closet. The lock on the door was janky but functional; the room itself dust-ridden, barely used, but private. It came with a sagging couch and one of the only windows in the place. The thing was no larger than a prison food port, but it cracked open easily enough to let night air creep in and contest the smoke whenever Andrew needed it.
That was how he usually spent the time waiting for a potential hookup to show: perched on the back of the couch with one boot dangling, the other braced against the armrest, trailing smoke out the window. His only other prop was the bottle of Johnnie Walker stashed in the cushions. If he didn’t like the guy, he poured them a shot and sent them on their way.
Sometimes he decided he didn’t like them later—halfway through the encounter, or right on the cusp of its denouement. He sent them on their way anyway. No one had reacted with real aggression yet, but Andrew knew that could change at any time, or never.
He was under no illusion about the arrangement’s elegance. It relied on Roland’s ability to clock men Andrew might find tolerable and on Roland’s subsequent sales pitch; something along the lines of, Hey, there’s a guy in the back who gives great head.
Crude, but it beat playing the pickup game and risking scrutiny from his attending posse: his twin, his cousin, and his dorm mate. The last, in particular, required constant supervision to keep himself from self-destructing. It was the heavy burden of Andrew’s dull life—to make sure Kevin straddled the line between blissfully drunk and poisoned without tipping over it.
The only bright spot in his night was the loaded thrill of seeing who Roland would pick out this time, and whether Andrew would end up on his knees later or merely unsteadier on his feet from the extra whiskey.
They weren’t always Andrew’s type, but this one definitely was.
He swept into the room like a burst of sandstorm, the slithering scuff of his shoes dying the moment the door shut behind him.
One hand went straight for the knob, twisting the lock into place, while his gaze carved a vicious path over Andrew—lingering on the armbands, then cutting to the couch, raking the uninspiring beige walls, before finally settling on the pocket-sized window near Andrew’s face. His eyes were sharp and bright in the caustic glare of the overhead fixture, which washed everything in a dazed yellow and splashed rusted shadows across the walls.
There was a lamp in the corner, its cord unspooling uselessly from its coil. It would have offered softer light, dictated a slower rhythm. But Andrew preferred a clear assessment of his would-be companions.
He indulged in it now, studying the stranger through errant wisps of smoke. There were details about him that stood out immediately, made it difficult to see the whole of him. It felt like trying to find purchase in a landscape with too many colors—the vivid blue of his eyes, the cooling-lava dark of his hair, the pale slashes of scar tissue across his face.
The riot of color was tempered by his clothes. An oversized black hoodie slumped off one shoulder, cuffs falling too low and brushing the backs of his hands without quite hiding the web of ink there: tattooed words and symbols crowding his skin up to the knuckles. His grey jeans followed the same logic of ill fit, clinging for dear life at his hips, his frame inside them all thin and suggestive; bones Andrew could crush with his bare hands.
Andrew was suddenly seized by the conviction that he could slide a single finger into the waistband and they would surrender immediately, collapsing around his knees.
He drew a slow drag of smoke, stoppering the thought before it ran away with him, then tipped his cigarette in greeting. Ash scattered theatrically over his lap.
The man offered nothing in return. His expression stayed almost blank, barely lifting into something that might have passed for tepid interest.
Still, Andrew noted the twitch of fingers hovering at his waistband, the white-knuckled grip on the doorknob, the way his chest rose as though something feral was thrashing inside it, desperate to escape.
“Is someone chasing you?” Andrew asked, grinding the cigarette out against the wall without taking his eyes off him.
The man’s eyes narrowed to slits. His mouth curled unpleasantly, as if Andrew hadn’t joked but committed some private offense of far greater magnitude.
Andrew didn’t recall spitting in his drink, so he lifted a brow in half-curious challenge.
That gesture, too, went unanswered. Instead, the stranger kept his gaze fixed on Andrew in a silent, discomforting appraisal and edged closer to the door, one ear nearly brushing the wood frame as though he was listening for movement on the other side.
Andrew couldn’t make out any intrusion in the hallway, though the bass from the club upstairs might have been masking it. He swiped the ash from his jeans, smearing faint ghosts across the dark fabric, and idly considered the man’s skittishness. Maybe he was one of the closeted ones. Maybe this was his first time with a man. Andrew wasn’t sure he had the patience for that tonight; he didn’t have much of a stomach for lost boys in general.
He slid off the couch and moved toward the door, unsurprised to find that every one of his movements, however small, drew another twitch from the stranger’s fingers toward his waistband. A concealed weapon wasn’t outside the realm of possibility, but Andrew had learned that, like with any rabid animal, showing fear never improved your odds.
He came shoulder to shoulder with him. The man refused to yield space. But he was short and compact, and Andrew even more so. Andrew turned sideways, fitting himself against the door, and asked in a low, conspiratorial voice,
“Who’s out there? The boogeyman?”
The man tipped his head to the side, leveling Andrew with a blistering stare that relied heavily on the unnatural blue of his eyes.
Andrew met it dispassionately, even as the floor seemed to fissure beneath his feet. His worst suspicion was confirmed—the man was even more his type up close.
Contradictions gathered in the swell of his mouth, soft against the knife-line of his jaw. A dimple split his chin and gave way to the hollows of his cheeks. Long lashes dusted the ice of his irises. His hair burned under the light, the color of used brass knuckles.
A loose wave of hair fell over his cheek. Andrew’s fingers tingled with the urge to tuck it back behind his ear.
Moments slipped past without Andrew’s permission. The tension between them beat slow and painful, like bone knitting itself back into place. It only snapped when the outside world came knocking. Literally.
The man’s eyes flicked to the lock a heartbeat before it jingled.
Andrew watched with a strange sense of detachment, as if the unfolding scene had very little to do with him at all.
The lock rattled under someone’s assault. The door shuddered with knocks. Hesitant at first, then steadily building.
The stranger exhaled shakily, his hand drifting to his waist as the nervous habit finally found an outlet. He lifted his shirt, revealing smooth planes of skin, the dark swirl at his navel, the sharp line of his waist, a strip of plaid boxers peeking shamelessly over the band.
Andrew braced against the door, lightheaded from the tease of it. There was also the small matter of the gun—sleek, black, wedged into the waistband. The knives hidden in his armbands seemed to hiss cold against his skin, their usual comfort evaporating with the knowledge that even reaching for one might earn him a bullet.
The man shot Andrew a quick, searching look, as though he could thread his way through his thoughts. Then he drew the gun free, cocked it, and cradled it in both hands, finger settling on the trigger. He flattened himself to the door, back flush, eyes never leaving Andrew.
“Hello?” came an uncertain voice from the other side.
The knocking stopped. So did the rattling.
Andrew let his head thud lightly against the door. A silent laugh gathered in his chest, climbing up to his throat. That was probably the guy Roland had sent back here. Now he was gone, and Andrew was stuck in a back room with a madman and a gun.
He managed to keep his laugh contained, but something must have shown on his face anyway, because the stranger beside him shifted, tense and alert.
“What’s so funny?” he asked. The crease between his brows matched the barely leashed impatience in his voice.
“Everything,” Andrew replied before he could stop himself.
“Okay, listen. This is how it’s going to go.” The man gestured with the gun, prompting a shiver to bloom down Andrew’s spine, tracing each vertebrae in its path. The shiver had nothing to do at all with the rasp of his voice—pleasant in a way that suggested it hadn’t been used much lately. Or maybe it did, which would explain why Andrew continued to listen to him speak, riveted against his will. “I’m going to stay here a few more minutes. You’re going to be quiet. Then I’ll be gone, and you’ll forget you ever saw me. Understood?”
Andrew made a show of considering, trying to summon annoyance at the cockily commanding tone. He studied his fingernails, found the chip in the polish on his pinky, picked at it thoughtfully. Then at last, he said, “Yes to the first. No to the second. And I’m not so sure about the last. My memory’s pretty good.”
He looked up in time to watch confusion ripple across the man's features, then shortly resolve into action. He lifted the gun and pointed it at Andrew. His grip was loose, one finger brushing the metal almost tenderly, like it was something alive in his hand, something with a pulse.
“What, you’re going to shoot me if I keep talking?” Andrew challenged, hypnotized by the hollow dark of the barrel, so like the dizzying drop beyond the dorm rooftop ledge he was always drawn to.
A grin flirted in the corners of the man’s mouth.
Finally, Andrew wasn’t the only one enjoying himself.
The stranger shook his head.
“Great,” Andrew said, raising his hands in mock surrender as he took a step back. Then another.
The man let him. He even slid the safety back on the gun and tucked it out of sight.
They held each other in wary orbit while Andrew pulled another cigarette from the pack. He didn’t light it yet, just settled it at the corner of his mouth, fastening it near the ring of his lip piercing, while he poured himself two fingers of whiskey. His pulse thudded in his ears, braided with the bass bleeding through the ceiling from the dance floor above.
He leaned against the arm of the couch, legs falling open around it.
“Can I have one?” the stranger asked, eyes tracking Andrew’s mouth, making it clear he wasn’t talking about the whiskey.
“So you make me lose my hookup for the night,” Andrew said, clicking his tongue, “and now you’re bumming cigarettes?” He tipped the glass back in a single, hungry swallow, savoring the burn down his throat.
“Your…hookup?” The man echoed, glancing at the door. Understanding crept into a flush along his cheekbones. “Oh. The guy knocking—he was your—” The words trailed off.
Andrew didn’t bother filling in the blanks. He set the empty glass on the dusty floor, pulled out the pack, and shook it at him in invitation.
The stranger’s mouth thinned, but he crossed the space in a few sharp scuffs of sneakers against the floorboards, rifling through the pack until he freed a cigarette.
Andrew lit his own first. When the man leaned in, Andrew snapped the lighter shut in front of his face.
“Andrew,” he offered mildly, flicking the lid with his thumb.
The man glared, fiery waves tumbling across his eyes. He huffed, then relented. “Neil.”
“Neil,” Andrew repeated around smoke, tasting the name for the lie it probably was.
He lit Neil’s cigarette at last and watched him take cautious drags, keeping it going but barely. His attention kept oscillating between the door and Andrew, those wickedly blue eyes a deathblow to Andrew’s own focus.
“So what do the bad guys look like?” Andrew asked, jerking his chin at the door.
Neil blinked. Andrew rolled his eyes. “The bad guys chasing you.”
Smoke drifted up into Neil’s face, the way he inhaled it almost playful, like it wasn’t shredding his lungs or choking him. “How do you know I’m not the bad guy?”
“You could be.” Andrew shrugged. “Then I’d really be in trouble, wouldn’t I?”
He found himself fixating on the lettered ink across Neil’s knuckles as they held the cigarette—god on one hand, sent on the other. Other symbols mottled his skin like shadow: a sun, a cross, a bone. Everything but a holy ghost.
Oh, Andrew was in so much trouble.
“You’re odd,” Neil said, and when Andrew finally forced his gaze back to his face, the smile waiting there was almost worse—lips curving cruelly, deepening the dimple in his chin, one canine slightly crooked, a faint gap between his front teeth.
Andrew would risk those teeth at his throat.
“You didn’t even flinch when I pulled the gun,” Neil added.
Andrew sucked the smoke into his lungs, contemplating his next words. “Odd? I’ve been called worse.”
“Yeah.” Neil’s smile wavered, but the light in his eyes didn’t. “Me too.”
Silence settled over them with a gentler hand. The rest of the world ebbed away, taking the thump of the music with it. When their cigarettes burned down and the smoke cleared, there was nothing left between them but a few charged inches.
Neil’s chest lifted on a deeper breath. His leg shifted—suddenly, inexplicably closer—his sneaker brushing the leather of Andrew’s boot.
It was nothing. An accident. And yet Andrew couldn’t stop wondering how he might use it, tip the scales in his favor.
“Anyway,” Neil said, stepping back. “Thanks for the cigarette. And…sorry about the—” His eyes closed briefly. “Hookup.”
Andrew nodded, his mouth laden with smoke and whiskey, the right words arriving only when Neil was already at the door.
“You could make up for it,” Andrew said, pleased by how casually it landed, how neatly he buried the audacity beneath it.
The meaning took a moment to reach him. Neil’s hand stilled on the handle. Then he turned, eyes wide. “You mean, you want to—?”
“Strange,” Andrew said mildly. “A minute ago I could’ve sworn you were capable of full sentences.”
Neil let out a disbelieving laugh, raking a hand through his hair. “Fuck you. How’s that for one?”
“It’s a start,” Andrew said, one brow lifting.
Neil drifted forward, then stopped short, like he was bracing himself to walk through fire. Invisible heat seemed to lick at his skin, coaxing a splash of color high across his cheekbones. “And how exactly would I make it up to you?”
Andrew’s jaw ticked at being forced to spell it out. He slipped a mint under his tongue and worked through the irritation with the movement of his mouth before meeting Neil’s eyes. “You could let me get you off,” he said. “Or blow you. If you’re into that.”
“I don’t know what I’m into,” Neil admitted quietly. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Yes or no. There’s no wrong answer.”
Neil studied him for a beat, lashes lowering over darkening eyes.
Andrew convinced himself the answer would be no, just in case, so when it came instead as a fiercely murmured, “Okay. I mean, yes,” and Neil surged forward with the full force of his presence, it took Andrew a second to catch up. By then he was already in the eye of the storm, Neil hovering close, pinning him with that curious stare, an amused smirk dancing across his lips.
This should have been familiar territory: the held breath, the racing pulse before Andrew pressed his mouth to another man’s. But something about Neil knocked Andrew off balance. He slid down into the couch, gesturing to the space beside him.
Neil sat, leaving only a whisper of distance between them.
“I’m going to kiss you,” Andrew said, gaze fixed on Neil’s mouth, his heartbeat skittering wildly in his chest. He leaned closer as Neil nodded, then paused. “No touching,” he added absently, the warning traced on a warm breath, the mint from earlier still stinging his lips.
Neil’s brows drew together. “No touching,” he echoed, meant as a question, maybe, but it dissolved into a sharp inhale as their mouths met.
“Just here,” Andrew remembered to say, catching Neil’s hands and guiding them to the back of his head. But long after—after they erased the last inch between them, after they’d both gone breathless from kissing. Their noses bumped, mouths realigning before the pace turned ruinously rough and necessary, like neither of them could contain it without letting it hurt just a little: teeth grazing, lips scraped, breath traded, their edges slotting together and sharpening into an acute point of pleasure.
“Wow,” Neil breathed, the word breaking loose in a rush against Andrew’s mouth.
“Wow,” Andrew mocked, only to hide how unmoored he felt, something inside him tipping, landmarks crumbling. There should have been a next step. He couldn’t make himself take it, couldn’t stop kissing Neil, breathing him in. There was no cologne, no trace of hair product; just the smell of him, wind-kissed hair and the salt-burn of his skin.
Neil rolled his eyes faintly and kissed the corner of Andrew’s mouth, tugging at his lip ring with his teeth.
Andrew in turn traced the red mark it left, brushing it with his thumb, taking in the color flushing down Neil’s neck, the way his fingers stayed relaxed, tangled in Andrew’s hair. And then he saw it—the heavy-lidded slash of Neil’s gaze darting to the door.
Right. They didn’t have all night, even if time felt like it was unspooling between one stolen breath and the next. Maybe they had minutes. Maybe none. Andrew could be quick if he had to be.
He disentangled himself from Neil’s light grip and dropped to the floor with a dull thud, settling between Neil’s parted legs. One hand braced on Neil’s thigh, the other closing over the hard outline of his cock through his jeans.
Neil hissed, arms jerking forward before he caught himself and forced them back to his sides.
“So when you said no touching,” he said, voice a soft rasp, like the edge of a blade pressed to the hollow of a throat, “you meant you’re the one doing all the touching?”
“Correct,” Andrew replied, rubbing Neil’s cock with the spread of his palm, watching for his reaction. His own pants were painfully tight, his dick twitching at the thought of mouthing Neil’s bulge, of feeling his cock trace the seam of his lips. “Still yes on the blowjob?”
Neil nodded quickly, one hand drifting to the hem of his T-shirt. Andrew joined him, lifting it to reveal the narrow sweep of his waist, the rippling abs, the dark brown trail of hair disappearing downward. Andrew felt himself being watched, held in place by the sight, and by the gun he’d nearly forgotten, still nestled in the confines of Neil’s waistband.
Neil’s palm closed around it, easing it free. His finger brushed the trigger in what had to be pure instinct before he set the gun on the couch beside him, his gaze pouring heat down on Andrew the entire time.
Some distant, rational part of Andrew told him he should feel apprehension at the prospect of sucking off an armed guy, even if the gun wasn’t cocked. That voice was lost in the back of his mind, drowned out by the secret thrill of being spread on his knees, exposed and vulnerable before this man.
Andrew tortured his lip ring between his teeth, twisting it absently as he slid his fingers over Neil’s waistband once in warning before popping the button free. It was Neil who drew the zipper down, Neil who shoved his jeans past his hips, but Andrew who hauled them the rest of the way to his ankles. Then it was Neil again, freeing his cock through the opening in the boxers, and after that it was all Andrew: Andrew mouthing the head, Andrew tasting him in the musky drip of pre-cum, Andrew dragging the cold metal of his piercing along the silky swell of skin, Andrew fighting to take him deeper and only pulling back when the head breached the back of his throat.
“Holy shit,” Neil breathed above him, rocking forward a little, his hips trembling, sending aftershocks to his cock.
Neil had a pretty dick, uncut and smooth and heavy in Andrew’s grip, curving faintly, the tip flushed a soft, frantic pink. Andrew barely used his hand, trusting in the messy eagerness of his mouth, the way saliva slicked his chin as he worked him.
“Fuck, fuck,” Neil hissed, teeth clenched, and it occurred to Andrew too late that he might be pushing him too hard. With almost no warning, Neil went still and then arched, his cock pulsing violently in Andrew’s mouth as he spilled down his throat. Andrew barely managed to swallow before coughing, the reflex overpowering him momentarily.
“Shit, sorry, I—” Neil panted, then broke off, glassy blue eyes locking on Andrew’s mouth, tracing the corner Andrew knew was smeared with spit and cum.
Andrew wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He was so fucking hard, damp in his boxers, aching to palm himself through his jeans just to take the edge off. He shut his eyes and dragged a firm hand over his erection. He didn’t usually do this—not with someone else around—but it felt too good to resist. It felt good to be on his knees, to be watched like this. And Neil was watching.
“You’re beautiful.”
The words hit Andrew like a rush of water, violent enough to upend something in his chest, splinter a crack in his ribcage.
His eyes burst open. “Shut up,” he said hoarsely.
Neil was biting down on his lip so hard, he split it. A bead of blood welled where his teeth had broken skin. He didn’t bother to wipe it away. He just kept staring, devouring Andrew while Andrew fumbled with his buckle, freed his cock, and wrapped his fist around it. A few brutal strokes would have finished him, but he didn’t want it over yet, not before he’d been held over the fire a little longer. He slowed, but it didn’t help, so he squeezed the tip, pleading silently for mercy.
It came in the shape of Neil’s hand lowering down, fingers brushing Andrew’s mouth, his radiant eyes saying things Andrew didn’t want to hear. If he called him beautiful again, Andrew might actually punch him, gun or no gun.
Andrew bit down on Neil’s finger, teeth grazing the ink there. Neil’s brows jumped, a knowing smirk animating his mouth before he pushed his finger in.
“Do you want to talk about your oral fixation?” Neil asked.
Andrew didn’t answer. He bit harder, then sucked on Neil’s fingers, letting them slide deeper into his mouth. He could take more—another finger, then another—until it was Neil’s entire fist. Hot tears pricked his eyes as Neil pressed in further, the stretch sharp and overwhelming, pain dancing at the edges of his vision and melting into a heated pleasure that seemed to fill every part of him, every neglected crevice.
His hand went slack on his cock, another surge of pre-cum pulsing free. Neil’s fingers felt perfect inside his mouth, and Andrew wanted to keep them there forever, marked with the ridges of his teeth.
Too soon they were gone, leaving him bereft.
He glared up at Neil.
But Neil was devious—he’d said he’d never done this before, yet he acted like a natural study, uncannily attuned to every facet of Andrew’s dark desire, coaxing it into the open. His hand returned, this time bearing the gun, brushing Andrew’s cheek in silent permission, the rim of the barrel leaving a chilly kiss on his skin.
“Open,” Neil ordered.
Andrew didn’t have time to examine the command, to find fault or argue with it. His body obeyed, lips stretching around the new, dangerous intrusion. Neil pushed in slowly, withdrew, then pressed in again until Andrew’s senses began to disintegrate. His eyes rolled back, saliva pooling beneath his tongue, the metallic taste flooding him, a broken moan trapped in his throat, useless against a swallow he couldn’t take.
He came like that—with the barrel in his mouth, barely touching himself—the climax cresting in brutal waves, a whimper torn loose and layered over the slick sounds of the gun sliding out.
Andrew stayed rooted to the floor for a moment afterward, panting, his cock softening in his grip.
“Holy fucking Christ, that was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.” Neil’s voice was quiet, almost reverent, struggling to reach through the blood roaring in Andrew’s ears.
Andrew winced as he pushed himself upright. “Do you ever shut up?”
He grabbed the tissue box from the foot of the couch and cleaned himself up, his eyes drawn helplessly back to Neil, still sprawled across the cushions. He hadn’t tucked himself away yet. His cock was hard against his stomach, a grin on his face as he twirled the gun lazily between his fingers.
“You managed to shut me up when you put my dick in your mouth.”
“Did I?” Andrew tilted his head, fishing the cigarette pack from his pocket, doing a terrible job of not looking at Neil’s lap, at the slick stripe of pre-cum tracing his navel. How much time did they really have? How long would it take Andrew to make him come again?
He lit two cigarettes at once and passed one over before collapsing beside him on the couch.
His phone buzzed in his jeans. When he checked it, he found a stack of missed calls and messages from Kevin. He should go. He took a few harsh pulls from the cigarette, head turned to memorize the stark line of Neil’s profile—the impossible shape of a man he would probably never see again.
“You said there were no wrong answers,” Neil said, finally standing, dragging his jeans back up with one hand while the other held the gun and a cigarette. “But this felt like the only right one.”
“A heart-to-heart? Is that what this is?” Andrew said flatly, dropping his cigarette at his feet.
Neil’s mouth twisted with a reply that never came. The door rattled again with violent blows that shook it in the frame.
“Oh shit,” Neil whispered, panic lifting his voice. “Do you think I can fit through that window?”
Neil had told him he was just passing through, that they would not meet again. Andrew had believed him. He didn’t look for him when he came to Eden’s Twilight—not even when his gaze sought out the club’s shadowed corners where the strobes didn’t reach, not even when every pulse of fever-red light reminded him of the way it had felt to hold it in his hand, or when the taste of whiskey in his mouth struck some violent spark of memory he couldn’t banish.
The back room stayed empty, save for Andrew’s shallow breathing.
He’d grown bored of the expressionless walls, their silent judgment—solemn, accusatory, though he wasn’t sure what he’d done to deserve it. Some nights he traded their company for the filthy alley outside, propping the door open with a brick.
He drew the cigarette down to nothing, smoke guttering with the ember, the cottony ghost of the filter clinging to his teeth. He let it fall from his lips, cast the churning black sky—swollen with the promise of a storm—a parting glance, and turned back toward the door. His foot nudged the brick aside.
Before he could slip inside, something whispered against the nape of his neck; too warm to be the breeze.
Then a low voice at his ear, a rasped, “Hi,” and the cold mouth of a gun sliding neatly between his ribs.