Sweaters & Cigarettes (6 page)

“I honestly don’t think they care much,”
he says. “And even if they did, I wouldn’t care.”

Theo feels absently surprised at the warm
feeling that gives him inside.

“Maybe Beth, though,” Max says, and Theo
frowns.

“Who?” he says, involuntarily jealous.

“Friend of mine,” Max explains, tapping
the cigarette against his knee, ashes falling. “She’s into me.”

Theo hesitates.

“You sound very sure,” he says, and Max
cocks his head, eyebrows raised pointedly.

“She’s made it very clear,” he says, glancing
at Theo suggestively. Theo swallows hard, unsure why he’s asking this.

“And?” he says, and Max exhales, looking
straight ahead again.

“And,” he replies, “I’ve told her I don’t
swing that way. I mean, I’ve tried it, once or twice. But it’s not really my
thing.”

He sighs heavily.

”I like dick,” he says, without flinching.
“Simple as that.”

He turns to Theo, taking a pull on his
cigarette.

“What about you?” he asks, and Theo
glances at him. He shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “No, I...”

Max raises an eyebrow.

“You, what?” he asks pointedly, knowing
full well that Theo is simply too uncomfortable to answer. He’s just being an
asshole. “You like it, too?”

Theo sighs uncomfortably and looks away,
his silence confirmation enough. But Max is unrelenting.

“You can say it, you know,” he says, a
smirk on his face. “Dick.”

Theo shifts in his seat, refusing to look
at Max.

“Just say it.” Max shrugs, clearly amused
at Theo’s uncomfortable reaction. “Or would you prefer cock?”

“Stop it,” Theo mutters, and Max lets out
a chuckle.

“Why?” He takes another slow pull on his
cigarette. “You have one. I have one. And they obviously like each other. So
what’s the big deal?”

He looks over at Theo, who can feel his
face heating up. He can’t
believe
Max is so comfortable talking like
this.

“Are you blushing, Davis?” Max says, using
Theo’s last name, and Theo deliberately doesn’t look at him, annoyed and
embarrassed about the increasing heat creeping up his neck.

“Shut up,” he mutters unnecessarily, and
Max chuckles, a little bit more benevolently, this time.

“It’s fine, I don’t mind,” he says,
tapping away some ash from his cigarette. “Actually, I kinda like it, getting
you all flustered.”

He looks at Theo, eyes him up and down.

“Makes me feel kinda special.”

Theo slowly turns to him, then. Max's dark
blue eyes become fixed on his green ones, and they narrow slightly.

“I like making you blush,” he says, his
voice a bit lower and a bit more gravelly than a moment ago, the tiniest smile
on his lips. “And I like that I get you hard.”

Theo actually gulps, but keeps his eyes on
Max, to his own surprise. Maybe he’s getting used to Max's way of talking,
albeit very,
very
slowly, and it’s just enough to keep him from looking
away. Max seems to like that, too, at least judging from the way his expression
shifts just the tiniest bit. For a split second, he looks almost impressed.
Then he smiles crookedly, eyes skimming over Theo’s face.

“Such a pity,” he says, his voice just a
murmur, as though he didn’t intend to say it out loud.

“What is?” Theo says, his voice slightly
lowered, and Max glances at the cigarette in his hand. The brief look on his
face confirms that he in fact didn’t mean to say those words out loud, but that
he figures it’s too late now.

“The whole virgin deal,” he says, still
eyeing his cigarette, his voice still low. And Theo’s pulse quickens a bit.

“Why?” he gets out, not sure why he’s even
asking. And Max focuses completely on the cigarette now, moving it up to his
mouth with a small smile.

“Because you are one, and that’s
restricting,” he says, fiddling the cigarette between his fingers, not looking
at Theo. “And ‘cause if I could, I’d fuck you senseless.”

And just like that, Theo feels the
weirdest mix of panic and excitement bubble up inside, making him feel restless
and paralyzed, all at once. He swallows hard, heart thumping in his chest. He
has no idea how to react to that. But somehow, he still finds some words.

“Why do you talk like that?” he suddenly
says, sounding oddly breathless, and Max turns to him, frowning slightly. He
pulls on the cigarette.

“What do you mean?” he says, looking
honestly confused as he blows out some smoke. Theo scoffs nervously.

“You say stuff like that,” he says, “so
easily.”

“I’m just being honest,” Max says with a
small shrug, and Theo shakes his head.

“No.” He turns away slightly, unable to
look Max in the eyes right now. “No, that’s not it.”

“You have a problem with me telling you
how I see you?” Max asks, sounding oddly defensive.

“At the moment,” Theo admits, “yeah. A
bit. It’s crass.”

“Crass?” Max actually laughs then.

“Yeah.” Theo doesn’t relent, turning back
to him. “There’s a fine line between being honest, and just being an asshole.”

Max just looks at him for a few seconds,
confused and slightly annoyed surprise on his face.

“Well, I’m sorry,” he says sarcastically.
“Were you under the impression that I
didn’t
want to fuck you?”

Theo doesn’t answer him. Instead, he just
keeps his eyes focused on those dark blue, black-lined ones, for several, silent
moments.

“No,” he finally says. It’s true; he
hasn’t for one second been under the impression that Max
doesn’t
see him
that way. It has been quite the opposite actually, and it has been a bit
confusing to him, seeing as how Max seems to just simply want to hang out with
him, regardless.

He figures, like he has from the very
start, that Max only wants him for sex, if anything at all. And somehow, he’s
been fine with that, even if he does have a crush on him. He never expected it
to go beyond that, for the two of them to actually hang out. He honestly did
think that Max would just toss him aside, as soon as he realized that Theo was
an inexperienced virgin who wasn’t about to put out.

So far, though, he has been proven wrong.
And it’s very confusing, to say the least.

Eventually, Max sighs, looking straight
ahead.

“I’m not gonna lie,” he says. “I think
you’re hot, and if I could, I really
would
fuck you senseless.”

He flicks some ashes off his cigarette.

“Hell, just this morning, I thought about
you in the shower.”

Theo involuntarily groans, mostly from
discomfort, but also from something else. He hates to admit it, but despite how
awkward it makes him feel, he likes hearing Max say things like that. On some
level he has never been quite aware of before, he likes knowing that Max thinks
about him that way, that he thought about him in the shower this morning. It
makes him squirm, but just as much from an awkward hard-on as from discomfort,
and he
likes
it.

Damn
.

“But, like previously mentioned,” Max
says, looking back at him, “you’ve asked me to behave. So I will.”

Theo actually quirks a small smile at
that, which Max seems to notice, because he mirrors it, giving him an unusually
soft expression. It’s gone after only a second, but it’s enough, and for the moment,
Theo is content.

Chapter 5

Wings

Everything is happening so fast. With Max, things have moved so quickly,
that Theo hasn’t even stopped to think about what anyone around him might say
or think. At least, not very consciously.

He knows how his friends feel about Max
and his crowd, though, and that’s something he has been thinking about. But so
far, he hasn’t been with his friends any of the times he has bumped into Max at
school, and therefore hasn’t had to face it.

Until today, that is.

Theo is waiting for Michael to get his
stuff out of his locker, talking to Hannah and Ben, when Max walks by, in the
hallway. It’s pretty crowded, between classes, but he still catches Theo’s eye,
and looks at him deliberately. Theo tries not to look back, but he can’t help
it; those intense eyes, framed by black, are impossible to ignore.

Hannah seems to notice Theo’s distraction,
and frowns, following his gaze. Then she catches sight of Max, who, while
passing them by, actually turns around while keeping his focus on Theo, eyeing
him up and down with a smirk on his face, as he backs away a few steps, through
the crowd. Then he gives Theo a sly smile, full of wicked, sinful promises,
before turning back around and walking away, disappearing among all the
students.

Theo just stares for a moment, tensed up,
heart racing. He’s resisting the urge to hurry after him.

“What was that?” The sound of Hannah’s
voice breaks his trance, and he looks at her, blinking.

“What?” he says dumbly, and Hannah raises
her eyebrows pointedly.

“Why was he looking at you like that?” she
asks.

“Who?” Theo says. “Max?”

The moment he says the name, he knows he's
screwed. Hannah immediately reacts and folds her arms, after absently pulling a
strand of blonde hair out of her soft, pretty face, away from those brown eyes.

"
Max
?" she says, a bit
snidely. "What are you, buddies, now?"

Theo doesn't answer right away. He
honestly doesn't know what he and Max are, and even if he did, he's not
entirely sure that he would answer Hannah truthfully.

"He's bad news, Theo," she says,
before he can reply. "You know that."

"Who is?" Ben interjects, and
Hannah turns to him.

"That goth kid," she says.
"Him and his friends."

"Oh, yeah," Ben says, nodding,
hazel eyes tired and his expression oddly stoned-looking, even though Theo
knows that he never uses any drugs of any kind. And that tangled mess of brown
hair doesn’t exactly help. "That guy."

He looks between Hannah and Theo.

"What about him?"

"Nothing," Theo says, uncomfortable
at the attention. He also finds himself surprisingly annoyed and defensive
about Max, not appreciating his friends talking about him that way. Although,
he's pretty sure Max wouldn't even care. "It's nothing."

Hannah shoots Theo a glare, but Ben
doesn't seem to notice. Either that, or he doesn't care, and he drops the
subject, which would actually be completely typical for him.

"Whatever," he says tiredly,
shaking his head, ruffling through his hair with his hand. "We gotta go,
come on."

Michael closes his locker, and Ben and
Hannah follow behind him as he leaves.

"You coming?" Michael says, and
Theo fidgets a bit on the spot.

"You know what," he says,
"I forgot something in my locker. I'll catch up."

Michael shrugs. He’s tall, conventionally handsome,
with his short, dark hair and dark eyes, and he tends to look oddly regal,
somehow, with his calm, confident posture. He’s clearly the leader of the
little group, and as the three of them leave, Hannah glances at Theo almost
suspiciously, over her shoulder.

Theo really hopes she won't make a big
deal out of this; it's the last thing he needs, and he just needs to settle
down for a few seconds.

"Don't listen to them," a voice
suddenly says behind him, and Theo whips around. "She's just being stupid."

Theo frowns at the newcomer. It's a girl,
with long, red hair and a kind, pretty face, with high cheekbones and big eyes,
at the moment accentuated by black-framed glasses. She's clutching a notepad to
her chest, almost obscuring the print on her red t-shirt; it's the symbol of
the Flash, a yellow bolt of lightning.

"I know," Theo says, a bit
confused, and the girl just stares for a while, before reanimating.

"Oh, sorry," she says, laughing
nervously. "I'm not eavesdropping, or stalking, or anything. I just
overheard your conversation."

She chews her bottom lip for a moment.

"I'm Cassie," she says, and Theo
just looks at her for a moment.

"Theo," he says, and Cassie
smiles.

"Hi," she says, with an awkward
little wave. Then she seems to catch herself, and she looks at the floor.

"What do you mean, by the way?"
Theo asks, and Cassie looks up.

"Well," she says, "Max.
What she said about him. I mean, I don't really know the guy, but I've talked
to him a few times, and he's really not that bad. He's a bit of an asshole,
sure, but he's not mean, or anything."

Theo can't help but quirk the smallest
smile at Cassie's description of Max. It's pretty on the nose, after all, and
he realizes that just thinking about him makes him feel all warm inside.

Cassie reanimates after a moment, and
straightens slightly.

"Right," she says. "Well,
now that I've made a first, stalker-impression on you, I should go."

She smiles.

"It was nice meeting you," she
says, and Theo smiles back.

"You too," he says, and Cassie
starts making her way past him. "And thanks."

She glances back at him and nods, before
walking away, and Theo takes a deep breath, before adjusting the bag over his
shoulder and making his way to class.

♦

"Are you ever gonna stop doing
that?" Max asks, his voice low and rough. Theo glances up at his face.

"Sorry," he says
self-consciously, pulling his hand away from Max's skin, where he's been
tracing his tattoos. But Max snatches up his hand again, to Theo's surprise.

"I didn't say I mind," he
grumbles, and Theo hesitantly resumes what he was doing, relaxing.

The two of them are lying on Max's bed,
sprawled across the sheets, Max on his back and Theo lying right next to him.

This has started to become something of a
routine now, Theo coming over here after school, the two of them hanging out.
Sure, most of the time, hanging out consists of kissing and touching and making
out on various surfaces, but lately, it has become more than that. Lately,
they've actually started talking more, getting to know each other, sharing
their likes and dislikes.

For instance, Theo now knows that Max
loves coffee and thinks that
Bronson
is a thoroughly underrated movie,
and Max now knows that Theo has a crush on a doctor in that stupid hospital
show on TV, and that he can be bribed pretty easily with pie. And Theo knows
that Max is ticklish just above the waist, that he has been smoking since he
was fifteen, and that he feels that Nietzsche "kind of had a point,
although he was mostly a dick".

It feels like they know each other now,
more properly, and as they're lying there, on Max's bed, Theo just can't stop
staring at him, can't stop touching him. They had a pretty intense make-out
session a little while ago (which Theo, as per usual, cut short, due to his own
overwhelming nervousness), and now they're just lying there, next to each
other. They didn't get dressed, this time; they're both shirtless, which Theo
really appreciates. It means that he can look at Max properly, take in the
sight of him and his tattoos, tracing the inked skin with his fingers.

"So, you don't mind?" he says,
in reply to Max's previous comment, and Max grunts.

"Not really," he says, sounding
oddly awkward. "It's... it's kinda nice, actually."

Theo glances up at his face. Max is lying
with his left arm under his head, against the pillows, the other draped over
his stomach, and Theo has rolled over onto his side, to be able to touch Max
more easily.

"I like them," Theo admits,
looking back at the tattoos. They're on Max's upper arms and parts of his
shoulders, some almost reaching down to his elbows, and a few of them flow
together so perfectly that it's hard to tell where one ends and another begins.

"Thanks," Max says.
"They'll probably be full sleeves by the time I'm done. Just give me a few
years."

Max sighs contentedly then, and looks at
Theo.

"Maybe we should get you inked
up," he suggests with a mischievous smirk and cocking of his eyebrows, and
Theo scoffs, smiling.

"I don't think so," he says, trailing
his fingers along a tattoo depicting an intricate image containing poker cards,
covering most of Max's right upper arm. "Even if my parents were okay with
it."

"Again," Max points out,
"it's
your
skin, not theirs."

"Still, though." Theo keeps his eyes
on Max's body, rather than his face, and neither of them says anything for a
few moments.

"You wanna see it?" Max suddenly
asks, sounding just the tiniest bit hesitant, and Theo frowns.

"See what?" he says, and Max
sighs quietly.

"How it's done," he explains.
"The whole tattoo-thing."

Theo looks up at him, looks into those
dark blue eyes.

"What do you mean?" he says, and
Max cocks his head.

"I'm having the wings finished,"
he says. "In a couple of days. You could come along. If you want."

Theo doesn't answer him right away,
surprised.

"You want me to come with you?"
he finally says, disbelieving, and Max glances away for a split second.

"If you feel like spending hours just
sitting there, while I get tortured, then yeah," he says dryly, looking at
Theo. "I guess I could use the company."

Theo swallows, a bit nervously. That's an
odd request. But he immediately feels like saying yes, realizing at the same
time that he just really wants to spend time with Max, even if it does mean
just sitting there for several hours.

"Yeah," he says, nodding.
"Sure."

Max quirks a smile, that trademark
cockiness never really leaving his face, and he plants a quick kiss on Theo’s
mouth.

"Cool."

♦

That Saturday, Max and Theo make their way to the tattoo parlor, for
Max's appointment (which has already been booked about two months in advance).
It's getting colder outside, now, the air crisp with a late autumn chill, and
Theo is glad for his warm jacket. He also weirdly enjoys seeing Max in that
black coat of his, which reaches almost to his knees. It's not a leather coat,
not like what most of Max's friends wear. Instead, it's more of a trenchcoat,
which Theo, personally, thinks looks much better.

The bell above the door jingles slightly
as they step inside the tattoo studio, and Theo looks around. It's a rather
small place, with tattoo designs and artwork plastered all over the walls, and
with a counter that divides the rest of the room from a smaller area, which
houses a tattoo chair. There's no one else there, except for a man, sitting on
a bar stool by the counter. He's sketching something, but Theo can't tell what,
from this distance.

The man looks rather short and stout,
middle-aged, with short, dark hair and scraggly brown stubble bordering on a
beard. He looks up as Max and Theo enter the parlor, and his face breaks into a
smile when he spots Max.

“There he is,” he says. “My favorite
customer.”

His voice is gravelly and low, with a
certain burned whiskey rasp to it, and the British, slightly slurred accent is
hard to miss.

“Kiss-ass,” Max says, making his way over
to the man, who just laughs.

“I’m the one with the needle, boy,” he
says warningly, but with a great deal of affection hidden underneath the
blatant menace. “Don’t test me.”

Max quirks a smile at him, shrugging off
his coat and hanging it over a chair. Then, the man’s eyes wander to Theo,
who’s still standing awkwardly by the door.

“And who’s this, then?” the man asks, and
Max looks over at Theo.

“That’s Theo,” he says simply. “He’s keeping
me company today.”

The tattoo-artist glances at Max
knowingly, before looking back at Theo.

“Really?” he says, getting up from his
stool and beckoning Theo closer. Theo hesitantly obeys, and the man looks at
him.

“Always nice to meet a friend of Max's,”
he says, holding out his hand. “Gavin.”

Theo glances at the outstretched hand,
before shaking it. He doesn’t say anything. Honestly, he’s intimidated by this
man, but then again, who can blame him? Even disregarding the tattoos that seem
to cover pretty much every inch of his arms and neck underneath that shirt, and
the general roughness of him, there’s a certain sharp intelligence about him
that Theo can’t quite put his finger on. He’s sure it’s nothing bad, though;
even Max used to intimidate him like that. He’s just not used to this kind of
people.