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There was something about parties that created some kind of weird, pocket universe. A different kind of atmosphere. An unspoken truce of
what happens here, stays here.
Maybe that’s why Damien agreed to play. Or maybe it was the smiling boy with shaggy hair across from him. Or the sweating beer bottle in his own right hand. Or the rancid stench of weed stuck to his hoodie. Maybe a bit of all of it.
He expected to get picked
eventually
, it was just a matter of probability. What he didn’t expect was to get picked first to spin by the host.
He shouldn’t have fucking agreed to come to this shithole party, anyway.
Chloe had been trying to get him to participate in the fun all night long and it hadn’t taken long to catch on that she was trying to make him friends. He
had
friends, fuck her very much.
“C’mon, Damien! Going first just means you have a bigger chance at getting someone good!” She was taunting him, picking at his brain to find the right things to say.
“It also means I have a bigger chance at getting someone
bad
; ever thought of that?” He snatched the empty bottle from her hand and set it to motion on the hardwood before she had a chance to retort. It was silent aside from the telltale sound of glass rolling and the soft thumping of music outside the door. The circle was watching with bated breath, eyes tracking it around and around and around until it slowly came to a stop.
It landed on the boy from earlier, with the shaggy hair and the big brown eyes. He looked at the bottle in shock for a moment before turning his attention to Damien and smiling crookedly. Damien winked at him as he sat up straighter and stretched.
“Alright, Mark! I’ve got a timer on my phone set for 7 minutes. The closet is in the hallway so you guys have a little privacy, but it’s going to be locked, so don’t try getting out early or I’ll know,” Chloe scolded.
“Wouldn’t dream of it, princess,” Damien smiled back at her glare and dropped from his stretch. He put his drink onto the ground and stood, walking out the door backwards and sending a mock salute her way. The other boy- Mark- scrambled to his feet and followed after him.
After a bit more shuffling, they were both locked in a coat closet barely big enough for one person to stand in comfortably, counting down the seconds. Damien was leaning against the back wall with his foot propped up, bending his knee. Mark was standing against the left wall, hands in his pockets and shifting his weight from foot to foot.
Damien traced the contours of his face in the dark. The slats in the door cast yellow lines against the bridge of his nose and cheeks, creating a mock topographic map across his features. It was too dark to see colors, too dark to see much of anything, but when Mark turned and caught the light with his eye, Damien could see his pupils blown wide.
He could feel Mark’s eyes staring back at him now, and belatedly realized how this game was played. Each cornered back against a wall counting down the seconds. Mark giving him as much space as he could, and Damien taking up more than half the closet with his legs and crossed arms. Every second passed audibly. The promise of the game, the view from the other side of the door, couldn’t prepare them for this. For the terrifying stretch of silence.
“It’s Damien, right?” 6 minutes, 34 seconds. Damien grunted noncommittally in return. He kept tracing the plane of Mark’s chest, the fold of his arms.
“Regarding your comment earlier, am I someone good or someone bad?” Of course he’s talkative. Damien wished he would shut up.
“Someone hot, which is good enough for me.” The tiny space between them wavers, and he swallows loudly. Mark shuffles again, and the air shifts back against Damien. 6 minutes, 17 seconds. 16 seconds.
Damien drops his foot from the wall behind him and Mark smiles nervously before pushing off his own wall and stepping into Damien’s space. Maybe this feeling, this sweating, viscous air, locked in the closet with them, was what got people together. The desperation to break down every layer of the person with you, with nothing but buzzing brains and your own, god-given, hands. The need to feel something other than the pounding of your own heart. Maybe 6 minutes and 11 seconds was enough time to feel just that.
Mark was close enough that when they inhaled- breaths mixing between their mouths- their chests pressed together. He was taller than Damien, enough so that he felt trapped against the back wall when he rested his forearm there.
“Do you want to do something?” Mark’s voice was soft but deep, dripping with an emotion Damien couldn’t place in the dark empty of the room.
Something
was a vague concept, but one that enticed him nonetheless. 6 minutes, 2 seconds.
Damien hooked his thumbs into the belt loops of Mark’s jeans and tugged him forward, pulling their bodies entirely flush together. He jutted out his chin in defiance. “Are you coming onto me? I thought you’d be smoother than that.”
Mark’s breath was hot against his ear as he chuckled breathlessly. “First mistake.”
The shorter boy tensed the muscles in his jaw as Mark left a dry kiss there. And another. And another. And another. Until he had mapped the entire left side of Damien’s cheek with his mouth. He was showing off; he didn’t need to trail across his jaw just to find his mouth, but Damien found himself enjoying it nonetheless.
Then they were kissing, and Damien wished he had prepared for the slickness of the other boy’s mouth against his own, for the insistent pressing warmth across his front, or the hand chasing the movements of his jaw, fingers digging in to the short hair at the base of his neck. He was
entirely
unprepared for that gnawing pit of
need
in his stomach, or the
scent
of Mark washing over him. He was swimming in it.
He hadn’t realized his eyes had closed until he felt Mark’s hand gripping his waist, sliding just a bit underneath his shirt, and they snapped open. The other boy seemed undeterred at Damien’s sudden tension, and bit at his lip slightly. It was all he could do to not let out more than a stuttered gasp into Mark’s mouth when he felt a thigh shift between his legs.
5 minutes, 16 seconds.
Damien was suddenly hyper-aware of how he felt in the space, blocked in at all sides. Yet, he couldn’t find it in himself to be uncomfortable. When he felt Mark’s hand graze the edge of his binder, he had a thought of shoving him back by his shoulders, slamming him into the adjacent wall. He would look shocked, then worried, then angry. Maybe.
But he didn’t.
He had known Mark for all of 10 minutes and was already certain he wasn’t… That he wouldn't
hurt
Damien. That he was a
good guy
, and the thought alone nearly brought the taste of bile to his tongue.
Damien was going to
ruin him.
He dug his fingertips into Mark’s waist, and lifted his other hand to cradle his chin. He could tell Mark was running low on air, from the way he was pulling himself back in an aborted effort to remove his mouth, but kept going back in for more.
Damien breathed steadily through his nose, almost knocking his teeth into Mark’s when he smiled into the kiss at his clearly
amateur
making-out tactics. He had to take matters into his own hands. 4 minutes, 53 seconds. It was going too fast.
He patted Mark’s shoulders to push him back and their mouths split with a wet
pop.
Mark tried to lean in again, but Damien dodged his mouth and nudged him backwards. His back hit the door and the slats of light cast a sort-of-halo around his hair, lighting up his edges softly like an angel. It was fitting, Damien thought. It paired nicely with Damien’s black hoodie and bagged eyes. If you squinted, you could even see a pair of horns through the curls of his hair.
“Relax, Boyscout. Breathe through your nose.” Damien had to lean up to kiss Mark like this, cramping his neck at the angle, but feeling Mark’s lips slide against his, longer and smoother now, was
more
than worth it.
Mark was more than a little taken back at the power change, and Damien could feel his heartbeat beneath his fingertips, thrumming with life. His mouth was nearly hanging open, spine curling in on itself to lower himself to the shorter boy's lips. Neither could tell how long it had been now, seconds ticking down of their own accord as their tongues tangled.
Mark's throat gurgled as he swallowed, still trying to keep his mouth open and tongue underneath Damien's and he felt his face flush. Damien’s teeth knocked into his, then, and it took him just a moment too long to realize that he was laughing at him. It was a breathy, shaking laughter and Mark desperately tried to kiss it away, to make it stop because that's not fair.
Damien put a hand on his chest and laid his head against his shoulder, body still wracking with laughter. It was wheezy and, honestly, kind of ugly, but paired with his smile, all crooked lines and squished eyes, Mark thought it was
gorgeous.
The tension that had built up in the room popped like a bubble and settled at their feet.
He felt like he was missing out on an inside joke as Damien settled his weight on him, laughter now silent but present nonetheless. And as much as Mark wanted to protest, it was
contagious.
Every second that had ticked by, every kiss exchanged and word left unsaid, lifted off their shoulders and it wasn’t long before Mark felt himself laughing, too.
Later, still, they were on the ground, backs pressed against the wall, side-by-side. The ring of laughter still floated through the air, but it had been long enough that they had forgotten what was so funny in the first place. It had been ages now, lifetimes had passed in that closet. It hadn’t been 7 minutes, it
couldn’t
have been, and more time had certainly passed than was regimented, but soon enough they found the door opening on them.
The light from the hallway nearly blinded them, now, after so long in the dark, and the backlighting just barely illuminated Chloe’s face. She looked disappointed.
“You guys are absolutely
no fun,
you know that, right?” She crossed her arms, shaking her head in shame.
“Were you seriously expecting anything to happen?,” Mark stood up, dusting off his jeans, and Damien followed.
“Hate to let you down, Princess, but this boyscout just can’t be corrupted. There was nothing I could do,” Damien smirked at her and shrugged as he slipped past the door, now with Mark trailing shortly behind.
There was a dark spot blooming just below Damien’s ear, following a red flush down his neck.
Chloe noticed, she always noticed.