Primavera, Botticelli, 1477
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"Harley?"
"Don't wear it out."
"What are you doing all the way out here?"
"The same as you?" Isaac made a face as if the answer was obvious. "I'm here to get wasted."
"Why?"
"Because Beckett, I don't particularly like feelings. I don't know about you, but I don't enjoy when my chest feels tight and restricts my breathing, or my stomach churns, or my heart beats faster than a butterfly's flittering wings. It's uncomfortable."
"As straightforward as ever, I see."
Isaac smirked.
"Please be sure to take your disliked feelings with you and sit on the opposite side of the room."
"But what if I feel like sitting next to you, Mr. Prefect?" Isaac asked with plead in his voice, but it was clear to Josiah that he didn't care for his answer, for he proceeded to pull out the stool next to his without hesitation.
Josiah was going to need a few more drinks.
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"You're not fibbing at all?" Josiah asked, glassy eyed and hazy minded.
"Nope!" Isaac replied. "Not one bit."
"You met The Rolling Stones?"
"You bloke! Are you so drunk that it's clogged your ears? I said I met a makeup artist of theirs for God's sake."
"Oh."
"Geez, look a bit more disappointed will you?" Isaac said sarcastically as he watched Josiah's excitement morph into devastation. "This is why we can never converse normally. I'm never telling you a story again; I was just trying to lighten the mood yet you've somehow managed to look more depressed than before."
"It's not the story, I swear. It's getting late and I just realized," Josiah hesitated, unsure about revealing the messy situation he was in to the boy he disliked, "I kind of don't have anywhere to sleep tonight."
"Bloody hell Beckett, I don't either! I was being amicable towards you for the past few hours because I was intending to ask you for a place to stay. Amazing."
Apparently both boys had barely fifty pounds on them.
"Do you think we could maybe..." Josiah proceeded to draw out the end of his question. Sure, they were drunk and less angry towards each other at the moment, but that didn't mean they were now best friends.
"Share a hotel room?" Isaac finished the question. "Please, I'm desperate."
Thus, their drinking at the pub had ended with their mutual agreement, and they headed out to find the nearest place to stay.
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Turns out, although they were finished getting drunk in public, they wanted to continue wasting away in the privacy of their own room as well. They drank until their bodies were unfeeling and their minds unthinking. When they desired a break, they found themselves lying on the tile floor together, because it provided easier access to the drinks on the counter than the bed or the sofa did.
Josiah sprawled his limbs across the small floor and sighed. If Isaac were to mimic him, their arms would brush against each other, so instead he made a pillow of his hands and rested his head.
"How in the world did we end up like this?" the dark haired boy asked, dazed and confused.
"I have no idea." the golden haired boy answered.
"Why are we like this?"
"I...have no idea."
"Why did God make us this way?"
"I-"
"What the hell is wrong with us?"
At this, they both fell silent, partially because they each had their own personal answers, but mainly because they both had so many answers to the dark question that it was too depressing to address. They laid together on the floor while what felt like hoursâin reality only a few minutesâof silence passed before it was broken by the boy who hated it.
"I must confess, if it will remove this awkwardness and fill the quiet void," Isaac turned his eyes to examine the boy lying beside him who stared at the ceiling, "On my first day at Eton, when everyone's eyes were focused on me, I didn't spare them more than a glance." He let out a dry laugh. "I found that I couldn't even if I tried, because in that moment I was incapable of noticing anybody but you, who sat in the front row and paid me no mind. I was completely mesmerized like some fool."
"You lie."
Isaac flushed beside him. "I hate to admit it, but I-I wanted to do so many things to you that day."
Isaac's gaze shot away when Josiah turned his from the ceiling to his face.
"What kind of things?"
"You know, just some unspeakable things." Lacking any control of his words and actions, Isaac giggled like a twelve year old boy at his innuendo.
"Oh really?"
"Oh yeah."
"Then why didn't you?"
Isaac snapped his head back, making eye contact with the prefect as they laid together on the motel floor.
"Are you being serious right now? Do you not remember the first day we met?" Isaac brought his face closer, eager to reveal what he's kept pent up for almost two years. "You were the biggest bastard I ever met!"
Josiah hesitated. "I suppose that might be true." Isaac rolled his eyes. "But if we're confessing secrets, it might make you feel better to hear that from time to time, I do like to imagine what my life would be like if we met under different circumstances."
"Well, if you were nicer back then, right now I'd probably be sucking yoâ"
"That's not what I meant, dimwit." Josiah broke their eye contact. "I meant if we met and I wasn't the way that I was."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means..."
The awkward silence returned once again, except this time the tension had tripled. The heavy atmosphere made it difficult to breathe.
Once again, Isaac interjected the quiet. "Since, in our drunken states we've become more familiar, can I ask a more intimate question?"
"I've never seen you as a person to care about personal boundaries."
"What made you seek a pub tonight?"
"Seek a pub? Harley, nobody wants to drink their entire night away, spend what little they have left on bourbon and scotch. But we're human, and we're weak. When something goes wrong, we don't bother to find solutions; we take the easiest way out. In my case, I was pitifully wandering the streets in the freezing cold of Oxford's night and came across an attractive neon sign and a heated store, and I was lucky it had alcohol for sale. If you meant to ask about why I'm utterly wasted right now, my answer would be...family issues."
"I see."
"What about you then?"
"Me?" Isaac paused. "...relationship issues," he settled with.
"I see."
"Technically, I guess it wasn't even a relationship issue if we weren't together that way in the first place. Think of it more as a failure of seduction then."
"That I don't see."
"Now I'm the one confused by your words. Explain."
"I don't know. It's just...you're Isaac Harley. I thought everyone fell to your 'seductive genius' or whatever."
"Clearly not everyone does, as proven by the fact that I'm here right now and not in the arms of another. Also, I find that statement extremely ironic coming from you, seeing as you, yourself, have never fallen in the past, nor do I think you ever will based on our current standing. Beckett, I am no master in the art of seduction, I'm merely good at recognizing the vulnerable."
"Then you can likely tell that I'm incredibly vulnerable right now."
"So what? I am too."
"You think I'll never fall to you?"
"I don't 'think', I know."
"You sure?"
"Positive."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Try me."
Josiah regret his challenge the minute he heard the suggestive tone of his voiceâit must've been the unusual atmosphere, or the alcohol, or the adrenaline pumping through his veins triggered by Isaac's assurance. His challenge. He raised himself on his elbows in an attempt to get up.
"Sorry, I think I'm going to call it a
niâ"
He couldn't finish his sentence, because Isaac grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and crashed their lips together into a kiss. It was sloppy and not romantic in the least, but the warmth of another person, another boy, felt so good and he'd been so desperate for release after his dinner with the Fitzgerald family, that he found himself pushing back and opening his mouth to accept Isaac's rough tongue with no reluctance. It wasn't long before their kiss grew hot with intensity as they devoured each other.
"Mmph, Jo-"
"W-wait," Josiah said breathlessly as he forced their separation. "We're going to regret this."
Isaac, panting, bit his bottom lip. "I know."
It was blatant that Josiah didn't mean a single word he said. Although Isaac originally initiated the kiss, it was Josiah that had straddled on top of him and started grinding his excited lower half against the other's as if this contact wasn't enough.
"But I don't care anymore."
The way Isaac practically whimpered his last words, desperate for the reconnection of their mouths, was enough for Josiah to abandon all of his rational thoughts. The glass walls that had held both of their deepest and most hidden desires back had shattered.
Josiah was completely and utterly intoxicated, but he'd reached the point where he couldn't tell if it was the alcohol or Isaac's soft lips that had made him lose his control of his senses. Thinking about it, they were kind of the same: poisonous and burning, yet ever so addicting.
"If we're going to do this," Isaac pushed Josiah off this time, "I need you to be rough with me."
He raised a brow at the boy's peculiar request.
"Bite me, bruise me, pull my hair and hurt me; make me moan from both pleasure and pain. Do everything in your power to make me forget why I came here, why I wanted to numb my entire mind and body. But for the love of God, if we're doing this tonight, do not treat me gently Josiah Beckett."
"Don't worry."
Josiah, never more turned on by words in his entire life, grazed his teeth along the boy's smooth, tender neck.
"I wasn't going to."
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