You Be the Alcohol, I’ll Be the Hangover



“Nice of you to join us, Mr. Colligan.” And Mr. Barton is looking particularly unimpressed today, which is funny because Alex figures he’d have had a week to regain his patience with them having both been suspended. “I believe the class has been missing the ignorance-driven distractions in your absence.”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t miss me, Mr. Barton,” Cash says, and he drops into the seat beside Alex. “I know better.”

Mr. Barton makes a noise that falls somewhere between intense annoyance and growing amusement. “Clearly, Mr. Colligan. Now, what can people tell me about Betty Friedan?”

A few hands creep into the air, but Alex can’t even pay attention to that when Cash is fumbling through his backpack, pulling out a notebook and a pen, scribbling something on the first clean page and sliding it across the desk to Alex.

Pussy.

Awesome, Alex thinks. He’s totally glad he didn’t hook up with someone who was a total asshole or anything, because how stupid would that have been? He picks up the pen, writes, Cash Colligan is before Cash’s note and slides it back.

Cash just grins, writes, My mom says I’m sensitive, like gentle and shit. Total gentleman.

Alex quirks a brow. You’re not sensitive. You’re like a heartless asshole.

This is correct. My asshole has no heart. Sorry.

Alex totally draws a picture of Cash dead with like, a million knives sticking out of his belly and he doesn’t even feel bad about it or anything, especially when Cash doesn’t let him finish, slides the notebook out from underneath Alex’s pen.

Cash stares at the picture for a minute, before quirking a brow, writing, …You don’t do art, huh? I have no idea what that is.

It’s you. Dead. Dead from douchebag-itis. It’s a very serious condition where teenage boys are consumed by asshattery until somebody kills them.

Is that you standing over me then? Cackling?

Yes.

Cash laughs loud enough that Mr. Barton sends him outside and Alex is left feeling ridiculous. He draws Cash with massive boils instead, writes I AM COVERED IN STDS in big, dark letters over the body and leaves it for Cash to find after class.

*

Here’s the thing about being sixteen: it sucks. Seriously, Alex isn’t even kidding. If he made a graph on the levels of sucktacular-ism prevalent in adolescence, he thinks it would end up off the chart. Y’know, sixteen is all zits and limbs and voices and worse, worse, it’s the ‘Sexual Awakening’. That’s what his biology teacher called it.

Alex doesn’t think it’s an awakening; he doesn’t think anyone’s discovering sex at sixteen, thinks everyone knows about this shit way early. He thinks it’s totally more of an obsession, more of a migration where the brain gets up, shakes off and moves house from head to crotch.

This is kind of hilarious, because when you’re sixteen, nothing about sex is sexy. Alex thinks about this too much, mostly after he’s jerked off in the shower and he’s left watching the way the water washes all the gross stuff off down between his scrawny thighs.

When you’re sixteen, you’re generally lanky and stupid-looking and pimply and Alex totally has braces and okay, he’s man enough to say that his voice cracks when he comes and like, he’s still waiting to get underarm hair. He’s not a twenty-five-year-old playing sixteen like they do in the movies; he’s real sixteen, wet dreams, hormones and all and that right there is why being real sixteen sucks ass.

Real sixteen sucks because your hormones totally try to like, eat your soul. Also ruin your life and head and friendships and not-friendships and it makes everything shit-tacular in general. Alex knows this, he watched those videos in biology where they spend an hour talking about it using words like normal and everyone (even if he doesn’t always believe it) so he totally tries to cut himself slack. Tells him it’s natural to dream about screwing Catwoman or being the only dude who can touch Rogue and watching her go wild about it because yeah, sixteen. He even cuts himself slack when he dreams about Christine swooning over him -- a him that’s suddenly six-foot-three and has the body of Brad Pitt.

Just he doesn’t think he can really cut his hormones any slack at all when Christine is replaced with Cash and the Brad Pitt-him is replaced with him-him. He maybe can’t forgive himself when he dreams of Cash’s party and what could’ve happened if he’d gone to Cash’s room and Cash had pushed him down onto a bed and they’d fucked like teenagers. Alex actually sort of hates himself for it when he wakes up with sticky thighs and a sweaty everything else and he hates it even more when he ends up in the shower, forehead pressed against the tiles and a hand between his legs. He thinks it’s pretty stupid, even as he comes all over himself.

He washes off though, brushes his teeth and pulls on clean boxers and straight-legged jeans and a Fall Out Boy is for Lovers t-shirt and staggers back into his bedroom, still towel-drying his hair.

He wonders if he’s still dreaming when he sees Cash sitting on his bed, flicking through an old issue of Rolling Stone. “Your room smells like jizz, dude. Just so you know.”

Alex flushes because duh and also because he really hopes Cash isn’t sitting in the wet patch. He pulls the towel down enough to cover his face, scrub at the top of his head some more. “How’d you get in?”

He can totally hear the grin in Cash’s voice, “I’m pretty sure your mom thinks we’re BFF’s now, dude.”

Alex groans, drops the towel to the floor. “I’m pretty sure I hate you.”

“Not what you were saying when my tongue was down your throat.” Cash shrugs. “Just saying, dude.”

It’s too hot suddenly; like sunburn, stovetops, summer, and he knows he’s got to be flushed red, blood bright in his cheeks. He growls a little, that stupid, baby one that makes his cousin Amanda use words like precious and kitten-face. He hates Amanda.

“Whatever, dude,” Cash says, and he’s moved to Alex’s desk chair, is sifting through folders on Alex’s computer and fuck, fuck, fuck, because he has the Spice Girls on there, also porn, but seriously, the Spice Girls and what the fuck is Cash even doing anyway?

“Where’s your history assignment?”

Alex blinks. “What?”

Cash pauses, turns to stare at Alex and says very slowly, “Where is your history paper? The one on that feminist chick.”

Alex isn’t totally sure, but he’s pretty sure Cash is like, an asshole. “You came to copy my assignment?”

Cash grins, and turns back to the computer quickly. “Nah, I came to piss you off. It’s way too easy, dude.” And he leans back again to look at Alex. “But your assignment too, if you’ve got it.”

Alex kinda wants to rip his hair out, which would totally save him the energy of flat-ironing it every day, but would also look weird so he kinda doesn’t want to. “Why do you do this?”

“What?”

“This,” Alex says and he gestures around the room, and he feels himself getting more frustrated, feels bitter and stupid and he rubs his knuckles against closed eyes. “You act like we’re friends and you make out with me at parties and you try to get me to go to your bedroom to like, I don’t even know-”

“Fuck you,” Cash says helpfully. “Or, y’know, get you to blow me. I was pretty trashed; I probably would’ve even taken just like, a hand job.”

Alex growls a little again, folds his arms over his chest and shoots like, his best death-stare at him. Cash doesn’t look particularly scared. “Thought you only boned chicks.”

Cash shrugs. “I guess, I mean, I’ve never done a dude before but it can’t be that different.” He purses his lips, looks at Alex almost appraisingly for a minute and Alex rolls his eyes. “You’ve got sort of a chick body anyway, y’know, no tits, but you’ve got the hour glass thing going for you, that and the long hair.”

“Just because I have long hair doesn’t mean I have a vagina, dickface.”

It’s around this point that Cash bursts out laughing and Alex sorta clicks that Cash was joking for most of this conversation. Alex groans, drops onto his bed and puts his face in his hands. He doesn’t even look up at Cash to say, “You’re such a douchebag.”

“Yeah,” Cash agrees. “I try.”

Alex bites his lip, pauses and he doesn’t know why, not really, but he asks, “Did you fuck Christine?” without thinking.

Cash pauses, looks at Alex and Alex isn’t sure if he wants the lie or the truth. He figures he knows either way, but his chest is clenching anyway, stomach tightening and Cash looks almost hesitant, but he says, “Yeah.”

Alex can’t even pinpoint where, but something hurts, somewhere between his eyelashes and toenails something aches, throbs and burns in a way Alex isn’t used to, doesn’t like at all and doesn’t think his mom can come in and fix for him.

“Why?”

Cash bites his lip and he just, he doesn’t look comfortable, like he regrets it almost, and that’s not right, not right at all because Alex doesn’t think he can hate him properly when he’s looking at him like that.

“She’s really hot, dude.”

“We were-”

“She could’ve said no, man,” Cash says, and it’s quick now, biting almost. “So don’t think it’s just me being a jackass.”

Alex sighs, stares at his hands again and Cash rolls his eyes dramatically, moves to sit beside him on the bed and presses his lips to the side of Alex’s neck. Alex can’t decide whether to shy away or bear it. “What are you doing?”

“You like me more if I’m not talking,” Cash says, “and I like you more when you’re sorta flushed and sweaty. It’s awesome.” Alex feels the heat rise to his chest, neck, face. “This is win-win.”

Cash is still mouthing at Alex’s neck, hot and humid and Alex’s chest just feels heavier, tighter, until the air he’s breathing out is coarse and tense and he feels strung up, out. “There’s no one here to watch you be bi-curious,” he mumbles. “You don’t need to prove that you’ve made-out with our entire grade.”

Maybe it was the right thing to say (the wrong), because Cash leans back and away, his forehead furrowed and his lips parted. “What?”

And Alex doesn’t even know, but maybe it makes more sense now than it ever did before. “That’s why you keep kissing me right? At parties? You’ve gotta have like a checklist or something, who you’ve boned? Am I, like, the last? If you do me, do you win a trip for two to Hawaii? A seat for you and one for your dick?” Alex hasn’t moved, but Cash almost looks a little taken-aback, a little hurt and what?

“That’s what you think?”

Alex doesn’t say anything when Cash stands up, and he doesn’t try to stop him when he leaves.

*

Alex totally wonders if he imagined the last three weeks of his life, because Cash stops talking to him. Cash stops pulling his hair and trying to feel him up at parties and Christine stops talking to either of them at all and it isn’t a loss or a gain or anything. Alex isn’t sure what it is, but it’s enough to leave him feeling off-balanced and ridiculous and also like he’s in the middle of a teen soap-opera.

“My life is like The OC, bro,” he says. “Only, y’know, all the leads are sixteen or seventeen instead of thirty and are generally less attractive.”

“I know that feeling,” Johnson says, half-way through one of the schools ‘gourmet’ burgers. He pauses mid-chew, amends, “No, I don’t. I don’t watch that show.”

Alex just sighs and drops his head into his hands. His life sucks.

*

Their music teacher is pretty much on crack. She’s kinda awesome and sometimes she comes in on such a downer she passes out at her desk and everyone leaves and today, today it only took her ten minutes to faceplant straight onto the sheet music and most of the class has pissed off. Alex always feels like, mega bad if he leaves, so he wanders over to the instrument cupboard and pulls out a guitar. He ends up sitting cross-legged in the corner of the room and strumming out the opening lines of What’s My Age Again?, Mrs. Clarke’s snores filtering over the chords like crappy experimental prose and Alex smiles a little to himself and feels normal for the first time in a while.

“Wow,” comes a voice from the hall. “You’re not shit.”

Alex’s eyes dart up and it’s Cash in the doorway, head tilted and eyebrows high and it‘s not half the surprise it should be, even if it’s been a week since Alex’s bedroom.

Alex doesn’t even say anything, but Cash wanders over, drops his bag beside Alex and forcibly takes the guitar from his lap. “So you like Blink, what else?”

“Uh,” Alex mumbles, because this sounds a lot like a normal conversation and that’s - that’s like, bizarre. “Maroon 5, Justin Timberlake, I don’t even know, dude. I like Beyoncé.”

“Cool, because that’s not gay at all,” and Alex flushes because hey, like Cash can talk, but Cash is talking, saying, “I’m more into Something Corporate, Midtown, y’know? Fall Out Boy’s pretty awesome though.” Alex doesn’t mean to wonder if that’s because he saw Alex in that t-shirt.

“Yeah,” Alex says, and Cash thrums out the opening chords of Where Is Your Boy Tonight? And Alex hums along because Cash? He’s not shit either, well, at least until he starts singing.

*

Somehow, somehow Alex ends up in Cash’s garage. He doesn’t even know, because one minute he’s in school playing Blink covers as Mrs. Clarke snores at her desk, and the next he’s listening to Cash’s demos on Garage Band.

It shouldn’t even be anything because they’re not friends, not anything, but Cash’s music is good, slurring guitars and rapid drum-lines that beat and rumble their way into Alex’s skull until he thinks maybe he could sing along, play along. Cash won’t stop looking at him, eyes wide and lips curved up and it’s not his normal, stupidly smug smile. It’s something nicer, softer and Alex grins back.

“These are pretty rough,” Cash says. “So don’t go thinking they’re done. I dunno, I want to add vocals, but I’m not even good like, at all. Lyrics would probably be useful in that case too, huh?”

Alex laughs, shakes his head so his hair bounces around his neck. “Probably.”

“Maybe you could write something,” Cash says and he shrugs. “If you wanted. Whatever, dude. You play guitar.”

“Yeah,” Alex says, because he does.

*

Alex shouldn’t be surprised that Cash is still a stupid dickface at school and he isn’t, not really, but Cash pulls his hair and knocks his books to the floor and laughs when Alex falls over and generally does shit that’s ridiculous and mean. Alex totally tries to vent, tells Johnson, but he just looks at Alex like he’s the dumbest person in the world ever, which, okay, isn’t that different from when he normally looks at him but, still. It’s mean.

“Hey, loser.” And Cash shoves Alex hard enough that his forehead crashes into the door of his locker. Cash is a douchebag so, y’know, he laughs. “Come skip class with me.”

“Yeah, sure,” Alex says. “Just give me a second to finish designing my fake ID and sorting through the money I earned from dealing ecstasy.”

Cash just rolls his eyes a little and folds his arms over his chest. “You’re such a square, dude.”

“Square? Who even says that anymore?”

But Cash is totally halfway down the hall already and that sort of stuff doesn’t even work on Alex at all. He’s not a sheep, he’s a thinking, breathing, intelligent guy and, and, fuck it. He slams his locker shut, and dashes down the hall to follow Cash. They end up out the back of the school, behind the basketball courts and there’s two seniors making out beside the dumpster, a freshman girl crying on the grass and Cash totally grabs Alex’s wrist before he can go over.

“She’s-”

“None of our business? Dude, I don’t think she wants some scrawny junior trying to be her knight in shining armor.”

Alex pouts, because she might.

They stop outside the home economics rooms and Cash leans against the wall, pulls a cigarette from his pocket, lights it, props it between his lips to inhale and sighs blissfully. Alex just crinkles his nose. “Ew, dude.”

Cash glances at the cigarette, then back at Alex. “You’ve seen me smoke before.”

“Yeah, but…” Alex grabs it from Cash’s lips, drops it to the ground and stubs it out with the toe of his sneakers. “It’s still gross.”

Cash quirks a brow, and pulls another cigarette out, lights it and props it between his lips. He sucks over dramatically and Alex feels his face go hot, because hormones are crap and Cash must catch on, because he grins, rolls his eyes back and moans deep enough that Alex totally kicks him in the shin.

“Fuck.”

“Serves you right,” Alex sniffs, and he’s about to turn around when Cash grabs him by the back of his head, blows smoke in his face and Alex is only half morally outraged.

“One day you’re gonna start coughing up tar and I’m gonna laugh in your face, dude.”

“Awesome,” Cash says, and he wraps an arm around Alex’s neck and smothers his face into his chest.

*

They totally alternate between Cash’s garage and Alex’s bedroom because there’s really only so much sound their respective parents can stand. Cash likes practicing at Alex’s more anyway, because Alex’s mom brings them juice and marshmallow squares and Cash says her smile’s the same sort of ridiculous as Alex’s.

Alex isn’t sure if that’s a compliment or not.

“I was thinking,” Cash says, “like, this.” And he strums out some jittery little thing on the acoustic and Alex kinda, Alex likes it.

“It’s good,” he says. “But maybe…” And he grabs his guitar back from Cash, tries out a similar thing in a different key, and Cash just half grins. Alex isn’t sure when this stopped being a Cash and Alex thing and started being a CashandAlexthing but he’s sort of glad it did. Maybe.

“Do you know what else is awesome?” Cash has grabbed the guitar again, thrums out the opening of When I Come Around and Alex only does it as a joke, but when he opens his mouth to sing along, dance ridiculously on the spot, Cash is looking at him with half-lidded eyes and something pulling at his lips that Alex can’t quite place. When Alex pulls in to the end of the song, all Cash says is, “Huh.”

Alex laughs, says, “I’m not that bad, am I?” and Cash shakes his head.

“I’ve heard worse, dude,” he says and then, beat, “How about you do that again?”

*

Cash must be having like, a mega, super bad influence on him, because Alex is running late for class and Alex is never running late for class. He dashes to his locker, fumbles with the lock and pulls his Calculus books into his bag, slams the door shut and, “Fuck!”

Christine widens her eyes, bites her lip but totally like, she giggles, which is kinda rude. “Hi,” she says. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Alex mumbles, and he fumbles with the zip of his backpack, chews on the inside of his cheek when Christine looks at her feet.

“So, we haven’t talked in a while,” she says, and Alex blinks, says, “Not my fault.”

Christine just quirks a brow. “Hey, you told me to leave you alone.”

“Yeah,” Alex says. “Because you fucked Cash.”

She blinks and maybe, maybe she didn’t know he knew, even though the whole school talked about it for like, a week. She flushes bright crimson and looks suitably embarrassed and it satisfies Alex more than he’d care to admit.

“Yeah,” she says. “I did.”

And okay, that was blunt. Alex fidgets on the spot, toys with the straps on his backpack and it takes him a minute, but the silence is painfully awkward and he just, he can’t. “I should probably go, y’know, like, class and shit.”

Christine nods, but she’s looking at him differently, her big, green eyes bright in the dim hallway and Alex turns to move away. He only makes it a few paces when Christine calls out, “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

Alex stops, turns back, and waits a beat, says, “That is worth something,” because it is.

Christine grins, that glamorous, full-bodied thing that leaves Alex light-headed and giggly only, not really right now, not anymore and Alex isn’t sure which one of them blew it.

*

Cash’s garage is actually really, insanely dirty and Alex notices every time he comes in. He always gets the crazy urge to clean only like, he won’t because that would be both creepy and gross. He doesn’t want to clean Cash’s shit.

Cash is fucking around on his guitar and they’ve been down here for like, two hours already when Cash says, “C’mon, I have stuff in my room.” It feels like a bigger deal than maybe it should, because they’ve been fucking around with music for almost two months now and Alex has never been in Cash’s room before.

He’s not sure what he’s expecting, but Cash’s bedroom doesn’t really fit the bill at all – there’s no dartboard with Alex’s face on it for one, but it’s actually just sort of dark and dusty. His bedcovers totally have Spiderman on them, though, and the posters on his walls are all of bands, most that Alex has never heard of, instead of half-naked women.

Alex sits on Spiderman’s face on Cash’s bed and Cash opens his closet, ends up rifling through the mess on the floor of it. There are at least six issues of Playboy and two boxes of condoms and Alex almost feels like he’s imposing, feels like this is new water, new territory, which is the stupidest thing ever because Cash has been in his room a million times.

“Huh,” Cash says, and he hasn’t pulled anything out of the closet at all, but he’s looking at Alex with a furrowed brow and parted lips and it’s enough that Alex blinks, purses his lips a little in response. Cash, he just gets up, moves to sit next to Alex on the bed.

“Cozy,” Cash mumbles, and he smoothes out the blankets with his fingers and when he looks back up at Alex, his eyes are wide, lips parted and Alex isn’t even sure why he does it, but suddenly he has Cash’s hand in his hair and Cash’s mouth on his and this feels, this feels so familiar, only there isn’t any alcohol and Alex doesn’t really think they feel like the same people they were at Cash’s birthday party. He doesn’t really feel the same, which is like, it’s stupid, but there’s something pooling in his belly, catching up his intestines and he bites on Cash’s lip until Cash pushes him onto his back.

The look on Cash’s face isn’t regular or maybe it is, maybe it’s the way Cash looks at him when he sings, only more and bigger and more intense, so intense and it makes Alex catch his breath, makes his head feel too big for his skull and his heart too big for his chest, makes it fight his ribcage. Cash’s eyes close, and when he opens them they’re darker than normal, his cheeks flushed and he says, “Seriously?” and Alex sits up again, is like, “No,” because that’s what he meant to say first last time, only this is different so, so, “Okay, yes? Yes.”

Cash mumbles something that sounds a lot like fuck yeah, and pulls his shirt off, which just kinda makes Alex mind blank, drowns the color and voices and when he says, “Huh,” Cash rolls his eyes, puts a hand in Alex’s hair and kisses him again.

They fall back onto the bed like planes from the sky, clothes off a line and Alex thinks that this is so, so much better than jerking off in the shower, especially when Cash grinds his hips down hard enough to bruise, hard enough to make friction and tension and to make Alex’s tight jeans have to strain that much harder.

Suddenly there’s air between them, space and all Alex can do is shake his head, choke out a, “No,” and try to follow Cash up and away, but Cash just grins, bastard, and pushes Alex back down a little. Cash’s fingers end up at Alex’s waist and they play with the hem of his t-shirt before way too quickly and in a manner way too practiced, pulling it up and off from around his head.

Alex looks at his chest, says, “Huh,” and then glances back up at Cash, who just grins and crashes back down on top of Alex, slamming their mouths back together hard enough to hurt. Cash’s tongue is in his mouth and all Alex can taste is smoke and homemade lasagna and that thing that he can never pinpoint, is just Cash and not anything else. All he can feel is heat, cotton, denim, skin and his fingers are clutching at Cash’s bare back, digging in hard enough to bruise every time Cash rolls his hips and it doesn’t take him (either of them) long to get hard. To be breathing so deep and heavy that the air between them feels stale, desperate and fuck, just hot.

Maybe it’s not a big deal though, because Cash is popping the button on Alex’s jeans like it’s nothing, moving the fly down enough to get his fingers down the front of Alex’s pants and fuckfuckfuck, because his fingers are ridiculously cold and Alex is ridiculously hard. He’s writhing like he doesn’t care, though, which, okay, he doesn’t, but still, he’s gonna have like, frostbite on his dick, and that’s a little worrying, only he forgets that pretty quickly when Cash starts sucking on Alex’s collarbone.

“Fuck,” and that was probably a lot more manly in Alex’s head but, fuck, he spreads his legs a little more, writhes further down into Cash’s stupid Spiderman bed sheets and Cash just keeps sucking and fuck, it’s gonna bruise so bad but suddenly Cash’s hand is anything but cold and it only takes a few tugs to spill Alex over the edge.

“Fuck,” Alex mumbles and Cash’s breath is hot against his neck still as he pulls his hand out of Alex’s pants and wipes it on Alex’s belly. Alex feels a lot more boneless than he should, sprawled over Spiderman with Cash still hard and solid on top of him and it takes him a few seconds to remember to be embarrassed that it took him like, two seconds to come all over himself.

Cash grins, but he grabs Alex’s hand, rubs it across his own still-hard dick through the denim of his jeans and Alex thinks, he can do this, he can do better. He rolls them over, pulls Cash up and to the edge of the bed and sinks to his knees on the floor. Tugs down Cash’s jeans and boxers and hey, wow, dick.

Alex bites his lip, breathes and Cash says, “Are you-” but it’s cut off with a gasp when Alex, yeah, when Alex goes down on him and huh. Huh, this is what cock tastes like.

Huh. Alex tries not to dry-heave.

He coughs a little, and might try and pull back and he really hopes he’s not gonna get like, pubes in his braces, because that would basically be the grossest thing ever. Cash’s hands in his hair stop him though, pull him in closer and Alex reckons that that right there is the worst part of long hair. He should totally shave his head after this only - only Cash is sorta squirming a lot, moaning and the way his hands tighten, curl in his hair, it’s sorta, okay, a turn-on. Yeah.

Alex sucks hard and it can’t be that good – he has no idea what he’s doing, but Cash gasps, writhes and it’s not long before Cash says, “Alex-”. He’s not sure whether to preen that he got Cash to growl out his name like that, or to move off and really, Alex has never been that quick, so he ends up with something hot and salty filling his mouth and he tries his hardest to swallow but ends up flinching away and spitting most of Cash’s come down the front of his chest. Cash is heavy breathing, slack and boneless but he looks down at Alex who can’t look any better and says, “Wow.” Says between heavy breaths, “You look like you’ve bathed in come.”

Alex flips him off, but he sort of feels like he has too and that’s, yeah, that’s gross. Cash leans over, throws him his shirt, and says, “Go shower. I’ll get you a towel.”

Alex feels sort of ridiculous and blank and there’s totally something in his chest and stomach that’s moving too fast and bubbling and making him feel really, really stupid. Cash sits up, pulls his pants back up and says, “You’re not having a crisis of sexuality are you, dude? Because like, that was awesome and I kinda think we should do that again sometime but if you’re gonna fucking cry or something, I can totally live without.”

Alex grumbles something that sounds a lot like “douchebag,” and goes to shower.

The water’s hot against his legs, back, head and he can feel his hair curling up against his neck, which is crap, because it took him like, an hour to flat-iron it this morning. He feels a little achy and not a little stupid and he climbs out of the shower to a way-too-big vanity mirror and then he just feels debauched.

Fuck, his lips are like, super swollen, more so than that time he and Kristy made out for half an hour. They’re all red and blotchy and he can’t help it when he runs a finger across them and pouts dramatically. He shakes his head, leans closer to the mirror and his hair is all curly and crap now and there’s a massive hickey on his collarbone that looks like Cash fucking tried to eat him or something and Alex feels stupid still, even without being covered in semen. He hopes he doesn’t get herpes or something, because that would be totally gross.

He leans back again, glowers at the mirror, grins, pouts, before picking up his still wet boxers and tugging them on. He’s so super glad he and Cash are the only ones home because the stain is obvious and he ends up sneaking back to Cash’s room without any other clothes on, opens up Cash’s closet and grabs a clean pair of underwear, jeans and a t-shirt.

“Oh, sure, feel free,” Cash says. He’s lying on his back on the bed and totally rolls his eyes when Alex sticks out his tongue, but he doesn’t even pretend to turn away when Alex pulls off his boxers and changes into Cash’s clothes.

The whole room smells like come which - okay, which isn’t that different from before they, fuck, before Alex blew the guy. Which actually explains a lot, but it also smells like both of them, smells like Cash and now Alex too and that sort of, it makes something in Alex’s head use words like mine and his, which is fucking ridiculous. Obviously. He bites his lip, stares at Cash through his wet hair.

“If I wanted to witness stupid, long-winded internal monologues I would go borrow my mom’s Shakespeare films,” Cash says, but then adds, “or bone that chick from English Lit again. The one with the nose ring.”

“Debbie Morn,” Alex says, and he looks at his bare feet, toes the carpet and he grins, blinks, shakes his head a little. “Should we be talking about this?”

Cash just gives him a weird look before saying, “You’re hilarious, Singer-boy.”

Alex grins a little, rolls his eyes. “And you’re a douchebag, Cash Money,” Alex says, because he is.