I. one drink too many (only one drink in)

“Y’know, man, I really love you,” Kirk slurs his mumbling as he ungracefully mushes his face against his best friend’s face. AJ can barely register the sensation; it’s like getting flash-banged by an atom bomb. He’s clearly a little buzzed from the gross and bitter yet sweet taste and smell on his lips. The weird, liminal space their relationship occupied drove AJ to madness, and this had to have been his event horizon. What do you mean. What do you mean. What the fuck do you mean, Kirk.

An era passes in between first contact and the release. It doesn’t feel real. AJ wants the moment to last forever, yet from the moment Kirk pulls out from their embrace, it already feels like a lonely, distant memory one week away from being lost forever. It stun-locks AJ hard enough that he almost forgets to say or do anything about it. Kirk is already on his way back to the punch bowl, but unlike AJ, he isn’t so out of it not to notice the sound coming out of AJ’s mouth. The look on Kirk’s face as he turns back around makes AJ wonder which new slurs he’s accidentally just discovered.

AJ stops jogging just short of Kirk’s face. It would’ve been a calculated move to get into Kirk’s personal space had AJ not just realized he was on the move. “What’s up?” Kirk shouts above the music and crowd with a casual tone, as if the CEO of No Homo hadn’t kissed AJ with all the fanfare of your laundromat machine’s buzzer announcing its finish.

Well, fuck. AJ hadn’t been counting on actually getting to do this and not play it off as a joke, but now he’s made his bed and has to lie in it. He fumbles with his pockets, trying to hide his hesitation, before he gives in and hands Kirk a set of photos he took of himself.

Kirk takes the pictures with a blank smile on his face, but his hazy look of celebration fades as his eyes focus on the grainy pin-ups. “Dude... Why’d you put so much effort into a joke like this? This shit’s gay,” he snorts, playfully elbowing AJ to drive the point home.

“... Huh?” There’s a confused, intensely pleading loneliness in AJ’s eyes; his glasses ever-so-slightly slide down his face as he looks up to cautiously monitor Kirk’s expression. “Y... yeah, that’s the point...?”

“Fuck you, man,” Kirk drunkenly giggles as he walks past AJ.

The way AJ snatches Kirk’s arm is almost supernatural, and he makes the mistake of reflexively letting his unfiltered thoughts and feelings speak for him. “Let’s firmly establish something before we get into the weeds of it, okay? So it’s not me making coy jokes with plausible deniability or being a noncommittal, post-ironic dickwad or whatever; I’m actually gay, as in, I suck dick and I like it that way. There is no punchline beyond that, other than the whole ‘I like to think I’m cool and suave when it’s obvious I’m a fucking loser faggot’ thing.” He’s doing it again, where he talks himself up so much to the point where he’s putting himself down, calling himself slurs trying not to seem vulnerable, emotional, any host of qualities he can’t allow himself to have.

“Maybe I do wish you had a boyfriend,” AJ continues to ramble. “I mean, you had me convinced you did have one, ‘cause he took you to prom and all that,” he sighs shakily, “but maybe it’s for the best that you don’t if prom really means that little to you.” Oh, he’s pissed – more at himself than anything, but he’s still frustrated enough with Kirk for him to lash out like this. It’s a kind of emotional self-harm he disguises as an aggressively isolationist distaste for pity.

“Why the fuck did you take my offer? Like, did you actually take me at face value when I was doing everything in my power to convince myself that we were going as just friends? Who the hell goes to prom with someone as ‘just friends’?!” AJ processes the absurdity of his statement only as he says it, but it’s enough to slow him down and stop charging through every thought he’s ever had. “I feel like such a fucking tool now, man.” AJ cups his face in his hands. “That was me asking you out. I was over the moon after you said yes because I thought that was you reciprocating.” He sighs and tries to salvage the situation. “Don’t take this the wrong way or anything, ‘cause I’m not trying to make fun of you, just wanna understand you better, but like... are you autistic or something?” ‘How the hell do you function without me to bail you out of everything you can’t just pay your way out of?’ he wants to continue. ‘It’s cool and all to have the confidence to feel like you’re wanted, but I’d be hard-pressed to think of any reason why someone would wanna date you outside of taking advantage of you and your money. God, how the hell do I help you?’

Kirk just stands there and takes the lecture for the most part. He’s not making eye contact for most of it, electing to stare down at the polished hotel ballroom floor to conceal his face. Once it’s all said and done, Kirk finally looks back up at AJ with a... very sad and very drunk expression. He really does look like a sad dog begging for scraps, tears in his bloodshot eyes from the night’s many vices. “Why do you gotta do the philosopher-izing bullshit every time we take something?” He tries to shrug it off as casually as he can, but it’s clearly gotten to him. “It’s like you think just because you’re a gay stoner, you suddenly know everything. Asshole.” Kirk laughs to break the tension, more as a nervous response than a reaction to any humor. “Also, I’m not autistic, so fuck you too while I’m at it.”

“Man...” The only logical reaction now is, of course, for AJ to deck Kirk square in the shoulder. It’s not enough to break anything, but it’s forceful enough that it isn’t just a light-hearted, friendly jab. “What the fuck is your problem?! ‘Nah, man,’” he jeers in a shitty, mocking impression of Kirk, “‘There’s nothing physically stopping me from respecting you! I just can’t bring myself not to be a jackass, even to the only guy in existence to ever give a shit about me!’ Goddammit, if you did have autism, I could at least sympathize, and I would at least have an idea of how to deal with you, but no!”

He turns away, spinning on his heel in an ineffective attempt to vent his frustration. “You’re fucking insufferable, man! You really think you’re onto something, like all you have to do to be the one with the upper hand is just tease at the fact that I’m gay? That I was fucking desperate for you to fuck me when we were thirteen, and you think that just because you’ve never confirmed anything outright, you get to have that and save face to the zero people who care about you beyond superficiality?”

He’s been struggling to find something to do with his hands, and he decides that there isn’t much else he can do than to face Kirk again and grab him by the upper arm. “We’re fucking men now, so treat me and yourself like we are. Make up your goddamn mind! Do you actually fucking want it? Do you want something meaningful out of the only meaningful relationship in your life? Or are you too scared to admit to yourself that you might actually enjoy it if your male best friend would strong-arm and completely immobilize you against a wall, where your only option is to squirm and pant and whimper and beg in desperate, humiliated arousal while I fuck some manners into you?”

AJ hesitates for a moment, but he’s too incensed to stop. “Because at the end of the day, you can delude yourself into thinking that you’re fine never knowing the touch of a lover, that you can be emotionally fulfilled humping a body pillow to anime ASMR, that there’s nothing you could ever need or want for from another person, whatever — but me? I’m still like this even if you decide you’d rather spend the rest of your life alone, jerking it in the closet to photos of me in Japanese schoolgirl uniforms. I know what I need as a man, and I don’t have time to wait our entire lives for you to decide whether or not you know what you want. Maybe I would still be the most important person in your life, but you wouldn’t be the most important person in my life—and wouldn’t that make you jealous?”

“I don’t...” Kicked dog that he is, Kirk shrinks away from AJ to try to escape whatever further conflict he wasn’t aware he’d apparently warranted.

“If you are so desperate for me to fuck you that you’d get on your knees and beg,” he hisses, grabbing Kirk by the shirt and shaking him around, “then the least you could do is beg for my forgiveness.” He lets go and pushes Kirk away with the last syllable.

“I, uhm.” He stumbles away, nursing his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, uh...” He can’t string together a coherent enough thought in response, and he hobbles away without finishing his sentence.

Well, that went just about as badly as it could have, save for Kirk outright rejecting him on every level. AJ doesn’t fully process what’s going on as it happens, just that it’s humiliating that he had to point out his own cringe-worthy chūnibyō behavior, it’s humiliating that now everyone’s gonna want an explanation, it’s humiliating that he thought he could have such a conversation hiding in the back of a stranger’s van, it’s humiliating that for as much as AJ thought he was overly sensitive to Kirk’s thoughts and feelings, he was so obsessed with his own that he skipped ten, maybe twelve steps in trying to herd Kirk towards basic conclusions. Five years of an emotional egg-relay race with himself, and with a spectacular pratfall right at the finish line, he’s only just realized how completely and utterly cruel he’s consistently been to Kirk over textbook, obvious symptoms, some of them traits that he himself used to display and subsequently had suppressed or bullied out.

It’s so fucking over, bros. Time to move to rural Japan and never speak to anyone ever again! He’ll still have to deal with the fact that he drove off the only person to ever tolerate his repulsive, violent autism, but at least in Japan, no one will recognize him as the autistic idiot who couldn’t keep his cool around the single most important person to him, all because he was too autistic to realize that his object of affection was also autistic.

Cradling his head in one hand, he fishes his phone out from his pocket with the other. His heart sinks when he sees the thinly-veiled flirting he left their last conversation on - more straw on the camel’s back even after it’s already been broken. He has to clench his eyes shut and hold his phone away to mentally draft a message, eventually deciding to send:

>sorry. That was stupid
>we dont have to talk about the unhealthy attachment style and severe untreated mental illness I had at 13 if you dont want. ik I was insufferable

He then sighs deeply and, with the speed and precision of someone who’s done this innumerable times before, opens his notes app—home to thousands of highly-rehearsed, sharply-honed draft responses to social interactions—scrolls a bit through a folder dedicated to Kirk, and settles on prepending to a file titled “does he know he’s gay”: does he know he’s gay? -> no, and its because he doesnt know hes autistic too

II. two drinks too many (what’s his fucking problem)

Tonight he smells the same way he did in the dream.

Well, it wasn’t exactly a dream, but it wasn’t real, or like— he wasn’t there, but he was. It helps for AJ to think of it as a dream, though, so he does. Kirk didn’t go to that party because AJ didn’t talk about it; it was just supposed to be AJ taking care of his own needs the way you’d eat a meal or take a breath. AJ needed to prove it was just a sex thing.

AJ called himself a party animal sometimes, depending on how playful he was feeling. Truthfully, he didn’t enjoy parties all that much; they’re loud and overstimulating and really just a socially acceptable way to get together with your friends and drink and dance shittily to whatever top-40s dance pop nonsense was on the radio last week. At best, they’re imperfect means to an end.

Kirk also called himself a party animal sometimes, but he meant it genuinely and wholeheartedly as opposed to how AJ said it. Kirk has a habit of doing that, see: he will say what would be the most irony-poisoned things from anyone else and then get surprised when people don’t take him literally. It was far from the first sign AJ picked up on, but the two of them were preoccupied with juggling other adolescent mental health pitfalls.

In the dream, AJ avoids drinking, for once, since he still has to make sure he can still drive home. It’s weird and lonely and he hates it. He tries to make small talk to meet people, but it’s awkward as shit and only makes him feel more aware of his situation.

He wouldn’t dare leave without getting what he went for, though. While difficult to see in the dim, colored lights, eventually, a guy whose appearance AJ doesn’t dislike picks up on his cruising, so the two shuffle off to a quiet place in the darkness.

AJ doesn’t like it. He was generally pissed-off and frustrated; he didn’t really know what he wanted from that kind of interaction; he ended up taking risks for no reason. The other guy was a try-hard who already had an idea of the role AJ should take before letting AJ speak. The whole thing was generally unpleasant outside the physical stimulation, but there is one silver lining to it, he supposes in retrospect.

Something reminded AJ of Kirk, although at the time, he wasn’t sure what exactly it had been. “I don’t even remember what it was;” AJ wants to tell Kirk, “I just... I remember blissfully melting into the sensation, letting myself indulge in fantasizing for a moment that I was with you and that you didn’t just love me too, you were exhilarated to touch me and let me touch you.“ He wants to shout and grab the other boy by his shoulders and let loose to cry and be completely fucking honest for once, he wants to trust Kirk with his life, but he just... can’t. It’s not safe to stay like this and it’s not safe to do something different, but it’s scary either way, and at least this way, if nothing changes, he still gets to indulge in daydreams.

Unfortunately for the AJ of that specific moment, he’s an idiot and a hopeless romantic, emphasis on hopeless. He must have said Kirk’s name out loud, because now the other guy’s asking questions, getting too nosy about things, investigating who AJ really is. AJ flees the scene of the crime, ashamed to ever show his face in that part of town again, and he locks himself in his car to cry about it. He stops by a Taco Bell to grab some cheap, trashy food and some napkins to cry into, and sitting there in the parking lot past midnight, he sees his reflection in the mirror.

There he is, bona-fide phytoestrogenized soy boy. A real Asian man would be sexless, he wouldn’t have gone partying and cruising to have weird, queer sex, he wouldn’t be crying over his reflection in his side-view mirror and the smell of his best friend’s shampoo on someone else. A real Asian American would have put up with just the name “Jesse,” would have just taken it and let the surgeons have their way with his prepubescent body. A real man wouldn’t be so frivolously emotional; a real man wouldn’t need to feel like everything he does has to be justified as the most adrenaline-pumping, manly-man’s testosterone festival possible. A real adult wouldn’t be having an autistic shutdown in the hotel bathroom right now and would have fucking known better than to poke the bear and get so pissy over someone else being autistic. A real human being wouldn’t have had to be born wrong like this.

Before he scrapes all his skin off with the long-fiber toilet paper, AJ decides that he’s had enough time crying in whichever bathroom stall he ran into on autopilot, using up all the shitty, scratchy one-ply to dry his face, and decides it’s high time he just faces the music already and walk to meet his death.

III. three drinks too many (what’s my fucking problem)

There’s a light at the end of the tunnel after all: in the distance, the door to Kirk’s 1965 Plymouth Barracuda hangs open, close-but-not-quite-exact reproduction “Medium Turquoise” metallic paint job glistening from the pale interior lights. AJ would always joke about it being a sweet sixteen gift: it was a beautiful car Kirk picked out with AJ’s help, even though Kirk was the one into classic cars, not AJ.

In the months leading up to his sixteenth birthday, Kirk would ramble on about auto maintenance while daydreaming out loud about the kind of car he could have, and he would actively invite AJ’s input on his dream ride. Kirk was dead-set on asking for a car as a birthday present, and with as many extra hours his father was putting into construction work, it felt like that could reasonably happen. The AJ of the time didn’t care all that much about cars, but he patiently sat there and listened to the best of his ability (not much) in lonely, lovesick desperation to be with Kirk. Even so, when Kirk asked AJ for his opinions on his dream car, AJ could still provide useful input: “well, if we’re gunnin’ to spend years n’ years with this thing, we may’s’well get somethin’ with a helluva lotta room. Where was that one with the photo of people fit’n surfboards in it? Maybe with that one, we could go to the beach someday.”

The reality of their situation was that no matter how hard AJ tried convincing himself it was, it wasn’t quite a ‘65 Plymouth Barracuda: Kirk loves its faithful external look, but it’s a hot rod, a parallel hybrid electric vehicle. It wasn’t quite a romantic date because AJ wasn’t quite committed to the reservations and plans he tried to make. No matter how much he wanted to believe otherwise, AJ couldn’t quite tell the truth about going to the beach because AJ couldn’t quite measure up to manhood, diagnosis of exclusion that it is.

“Kirk,” AJ calls out, the name just as bittersweet on his lips as the real thing was earlier tonight. “I came to—”

Kirk sits on the driver’s side’s back seat, hunched over with his body hanging perpendicular out the door as he smokes the last dregs of a joint AJ had to prepare for him last week. The sharp crunch of asphalt under AJ’s shoes makes Kirk smile, but he doesn’t look up until AJ is right next to him. “Well hey there, handsome.” He chuckles flatly as if surprised by his usual drunken boldness. “How’s the man of the hour?”

“... to, uh, apologize.” AJ wants to react to Kirk plainly calling him handsome, flirting in the most open and unambiguous way possible, but it doesn’t feel like it’s properly earned. He scrunches his face with the same resigned anticipation as a new janitor walking into a septic tank explosion. “You’re drunk and high now.”

“Naw, I’m Kirk.” He smiles dopily, and even though he’s looking directly at AJ, his focus is clearly on something in another plane of reality. He extinguishes his roach and pats the flattened seats behind him. “You want in?”

“Uhm,” AJ bites his lip as he tries to think of what to say and how to handle this situation. “In on what?”

“Fuck me, man,” he exhales with exasperation, “don’t play dumb on me now. I know you want a ride.” He was never one to overthink everything he said to avoid innuendos, but he doesn’t seem to be cognizant of what he’s saying at all.

“Well— I mean!” AJ huffs and looks away in embarrassment. “I’m not gonna flirt with you for real when you’re fucked up and I’m not!”

“Even if I really, really wanna flirt with you?” Kirk manages to snake a hand under AJ’s shirt and up his waist. He has a bratty, shit-eating expression on his face that he knows drives AJ up the wall.

Kirk’s touch excites AJ, but it’s wrong, it can’t be like this. It’s not just a sex thing, no matter how hard AJ tried to convince himself it was. AJ does what he can to keep his mind occupied and focused strictly on business. “Fuck off, man. I’m not gonna take advantage of you like this.” He swats Kirk’s hand away and pushes him back.

“Ohhhh, baby,” Kirk outright moans as he lets AJ push him over. That’s where the facade falls apart, however; since AJ never flirted further than this, there’s nothing else for Kirk to copy. “Uhm... please?” Kirk reaches out weakly, looking AJ in the eyes with a sheepish, pleading uncertainty.

AJ considers his options, letting his eyes wander from Kirk’s sad, pathetic begging expression to his outstretched hand. “What do you even want?” He squints, realizing that that probably came off way too aggressively. “Like, you want me to hold your hand, and then what?” Beat, before he cautiously takes Kirk’s hand.

Kirk weakly tugs at AJ’s hand. “Sit with me, please?”

“... How?” AJ cautiously lets Kirk drag him along, but Kirk lies on the flattened back seats with no intention of moving aside. “There’s no room.”

Kirk doesn’t say anything, instead opting to continue pulling at AJ’s hand. He smiles, reaches out halfway with his other hand, hesitates briefly, then pats his crotch. The bashful expression on his face gives away that he’s not actually sure what happens next.

AJ has been doing what he can to avoid looking at that exact spot. “I’m not having sex with you right now.” His two brain cells are on fire losing their shit trying to decide the best course of action. Brain cell A is shrieking, “he’s begging for me; he is actively feeling me up and trying to get into my pants; he has never done this before,” and brain cell J is struggling to unravel a morally correct approach to the logic puzzle, “he is so, so drunk; it wouldn’t be enjoyable to just use him to get off; you are not just a sex toy and neither is he; you don’t know if he’s just horny because he’s drunk or if he’s actually into you.”

“C’mere, c’mere.” Kirk firmly pulls on AJ’s arm again. Between him wanting this sort of thing to happen and the situation lowering his guard, AJ lets himself get dragged into the car. He bristles with guilt over how much he wants this when it’s wrong of him. “I’m only a little buzzed, shut up,” Kirk protests, and he shifts in place to slide his hand under and into AJ’s hand.

IV. four drinks too many (we can stop whenever we want)

“No,” AJ repeats, a little louder this time. “I’m not... You’re not entitled to my affection, okay?” He sounds distinctly hurt, like he’s already decided to set himself up for failure because self-sabotage would hurt less than Kirk independently making the decision to reject AJ.

“Don’t... don’t worry about being a creep or anything, I’m not stupid and you know I’m not actually stupid.” Pause, as he furrows his brow to verify his feelings about that statement. “Least I think you don’t actually think I’m dumb. But I’m... I wouldn’t have gone with unless I was at least a little open to the idea.”

AJ closes his eyes with maybe a little too much force to properly come off as casual as he tries to steady his breath. Kirk is no poet, that much they both know, but AJ’s paranoia still hitches in his throat as he struggles to recite one of the highly-edited scripts he prepares for even the most basic of social interactions. “I’m not... some starter boyfriend for you to casually experiment with. I’m a real human man with needs and feelings, okay? I’m not a sex toy. I deserve to be treated with respect.” He says “respect” like he’s only half-convinced that he should deserve it. “And I mean like, it’s not fair if I box you in with no easy out when you’re not sure about it. I don’t wanna trap you in a relationship neither of us would be happy in.” His gaze floats away and to the floor as he gets self-conscious of how disagreeably, uncontrollably autistic he considers himself, then he winces at his unfiltered, unedited thoughts shitting out a terrible pun at his own expense.

“Aren’t you always saying things can just...” Kirk rotates his hand at the wrist a few times as an invitation to finish his thought while he forms a sentence. “Things can go back to how things were if things don’t work out, or something?” He sighs. “Like you wanna try putting it back anyway, even if things really can’t be the way they were before?” He’s absolutely lost on the emotional front, but he has been listening to AJ, even if he’s not fully sure what it means for them.

“But they just... I feel so selfish because I want this, but it’s so wrong that I do.” AJ sighs deeply in a feeble attempt to ground himself, but the resultant pant is laborious, heated and heavy and weighed down with years’ worth of lovesick pining. “You’re not some collection of fetishes I happen to have; you’re not even my type, plain and simple. What you are is a real person, you’re my best friend, you’re a guy with a dorky smile and an earnest energy I can’t help but swoon over. I’m on the brink of insanity when I’m with you, my heart does backflips and my chest compresses to lead and I’m set on fucking fire over the uncertainty of whether or not I’ve gotten through to you. Sometimes, when you brush up against me, it feels like getting struck by lightning, and I feel like it’s a lost cause and a bad idea when I know the two of us are so emotionally fragile that we can barely handle our own feelings, let alone each other’s feelings!”

Kirk hums in thought, comically scrunching his face to externalize the emotion to an acceptable degree. “I hear you, I just... don’t know how to respond, like, I don’t have the magic ‘right’ things to say. I wanna help if I can, I’m just new to all of this and I don’t... even know what gay guys do, like I guess it could descriptively be whatever we do, if you wanna be labeled that way, but...” Kirk winces and groans. “Argh! I dunno. My head hurts.”

AJ sighs with fond resignation. “You’re probably dehydrated, nerd. You’ve been drinking too much.” He sits up and reaches for the trunk flap to rummage in their cooler.

“Have not!” Kirk whines with all the insulted, demanding righteousness of a pathetic, sopping baby bird crying to be fed. He grabs AJ’s arm while AJ sits up to grab him some water, not entirely convinced that AJ won’t take this as an opportunity to get up and go away and leave him alone now that he’s lost his macho license by being all emotional in such a socially unacceptable way.

AJ can only offer him a knowing, resigned look of apology. With his free hand, he passes Kirk a thermos. “Here, you big baby.”

Kirk stares at the bottle, gaze slowly drifting to AJ’s eyes. “Can you do it for me?” His face flushes and breaks into a guilty smile; the pathetic way his voice crumbles as he asks embarrasses him and makes it worse. “Pleeeeease?”

AJ sighs and accepts his fate, unscrewing the lid and tipping it into Kirk’s mouth. Icarus flies too high: Kirk doesn’t sit up enough, so he sputters and coughs after a few sips.

AJ snorts a laugh, watching Kirk fail so pathetically at simple tasks. “Feeling better?”

“Man, fuck you. I will in a moment, but it won’t be ‘cause of the water.”

AJ snorts with playful indignance. “Fuck, is that what I sound like?” He rolls his eyes. “Sometimes I don’t know how you can put up with me.”

IV. five drinks too many (they played our song)

“I took those photos of myself because I thought I’d finally gotten through to you. I liked planning the shoot, choosing props that felt personal, being a little playful, and for once, getting to look at my body and feel silly and sexy and... and wanted.” He uses the word deliberately, chosen carefully to highlight the rejection and abandonment. “And I can’t keep living like this, man. I don’t wanna keep throwing myself at a brick wall in the hopes I’ll see something different, definitionally insane; that for as much as you’re my whole world, I could be that for you, too; that you’d have the courage and the pride to say it, not just back to me, but to the world at large; that I didn’t just take those photos for everyone to point and laugh, heckle and feel justified how they’ve spent years calling me a retarded trap because I’m me.”

“Well, they’re very pretty photos,” Kirk mumbles with a delirious lilt. He flips the Polaroid in his hand back and forth, savoring AJ on the front and the carefully-penned message on the back. It takes him a moment to process what AJ said. “I wish I hadn’t fucked up and made you think I wouldn’t have appreciated these. I’m so, so sorry.”

AJ sighs. “No, it’s not your fault. I’ve felt like this about myself for as long as I can remember.”

“I’ll kill them,” Kirk responds without hesitation.

“You mean you’d kill society in general?” AJ snorts.

“Yeah, sure,” Kirk exhales dreamily. “They don’t know what they’re missing out on.”

“What, this?” AJ motions to himself, rental tuxedo disheveled and damp with tears. “I think it’s fine if people miss out on one of many ratty stoner wannabe guitarists out there.”

“But there’s something about you specifically,” Kirk hums, running his thumb over AJ’s fingers. “You’re more than just that; you’re my best friend, and I wish...” He trails off as he tries to arrange his thoughts. “I... Come here?”

Kirk pulls AJ into a tighter hug, gingerly stroking AJ’s shoulderblades and back before creeping down into AJ’s pants pocket to fish out his wallet. AJ tenses back and swipes at the air in protest, confused and upset over why Kirk would turn to theft now of all times, but Kirk holds it out of AJ’s reach before planting it on AJ’s back to thumb through its insides. AJ can feel Kirk pulling cards in and out of its many pockets, and he squirms to try to reclaim his wallet until Kirk lights up over finding what he was looking for. He pulls his arm back with enough force to bounce his wrist on the vinyl upholstery, and he starts crinkling the wrapper between his fingers as if trying to pull something apart before AJ can register what he’s even holding.

“Shit, only one?” Kirk looks at AJ expectantly, blankly. “Is that still okay?”

“Yeah? I mean—” Mid-sentence, AJ realizes that Kirk is holding the condom AJ keeps in his wallet. “Wait, no! Fuck, I mean— I wanna, but I can’t!” He inhales sharply before correcting himself. “We shouldn’t.”

Giving up on unwrapping it, Kirk offers the condom to AJ. “If it’s ‘cause I’m drunk, no I’m not and I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t kind of expect something like this anyways.” Oh, so he’s so drunk he won’t even remember this tomorrow.

“No— I mean— I don’t have lube either, like... I never really, actually expected to get to do this with you. I didn’t think you were actually gonna come to prom with me. I couldn’t stop worrying this was a joke at my expense. Please don’t be mad.”

Kirk frowns. “That’s kind of mean of you to assume.” Out of polite consideration for AJ’s denial, he shifts his legs so his crotch isn’t compressed against AJ’s torso. “Suit yourself, but what would I stand to gain from lying to you like that?” He asks the question with such doe-eyed, naive sincerity.

“I-I don’t know!” AJ’s voice rises with panic as he lies on reflex. “I was scared!”

“Of what?” His lower lip quivers. They’re dry, and they would definitely suck to kiss, but AJ’s eyes still flick down to them and linger for just a bit too long.

“I don’t know,” AJ reaches for his first-line excuse the way he does when his brain shuts down from confrontation. “I just was. Scared of it not meaning anything to you, maybe. I—I’m just too high-maintenance. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I made you think I was cool and not a cringey sped kid LARPing as someone who had it together. I can’t be worth the effort, someone like you deserves better than a thing like me.”

“Hang on, wait, stop— I don’t know, maybe you are high-maintenance. I don’t have any experience there. That doesn’t make you fundamentally unlovable.” He’s using that same timid tone of voice he uses when drunkenly sobbing about his parents’ divorce. “Listen man, I don’t ‘deserve’ someone ‘better than you.’ I deserve someone who likes me for who I am,” he pauses to brush AJ’s stray hair away from their eyes, “and so do you.”

Kirk closes his eyes, partly so he can focus and partly so he doesn’t have to keep staring into the interior ceiling light. “Everything about this scares me, too, but it’s also... exciting? I think?” He reopens his eyes to check for AJ’s approval. “I have no idea how to describe it and I have no idea what I’m doing, but I don’t dislike it or want it to end.”

AJ’s mind is running a six-track nuclear trainwreck. He tries to correct himself, but his thoughts catch in his throat and stumble, escaping his mouth as pathetic, gurgling whimpers. If he were sober right now, Kirk would instead be terse and uninformative. In his infinite wisdom, he would be telling AJ to shut up — not because he wouldn’t want to soothe AJ’s fears but because he wouldn’t know what to say over what to do in the moment. He’s a fucking blockhead who has emotional intelligence the way a fish has thumbs and that absolutely melts AJ’s heart.

Kirk, meanwhile, has been petting AJ’s hair. Without his usual beanie, AJ’s ratty mullet looks silly to the point where he was intent on getting a haircut for prom night until Kirk said it was dumb to change himself like that just for one night. Just getting to touch AJ so casually has Kirk putting on the most serene smile AJ has ever seen from him, and although Kirk has been naïve throughout this conversation, he hasn’t exactly been wrong from what AJ knows that Kirk knows.

“It’s because—” AJ sputters midway through his thought, realizes his mistake, and clears his throat in the least awkward way he can manage as he restarts his sentence. “No, I—I’m sorry, I do know why I’m scared. I’m scared because I didn’t wanna make you think I was cooler than I actually am, or at all, I guess. I’m a difficult person, you know that.” For a moment, they are eight years old again, getting into a fistfight because neither of them want to acknowledge their wounded prides; knocked loose from AJ’s punch, Kirk’s overdue baby tooth is the tiebreaker between Kirk starting to outgrow the childish, autistic behaviors his classmates tormented him for or a just suspension for the weirdo transfer adoptee. Kirk chose not to report it, and look at all the trouble that that’s got them in now. “I don’t want to... deceive you, or anything. I don’t want to get naked only for the sight of my body to make you feel like you’ve been cheated.”

Kirk furrows his eyebrows, unsure of what context he’s missing but willing to take AJ’s word on it anyway. “People really do that, huh? I wouldn’t be a very good friend if I felt duped by my best friend over such a trivial non-issue.”

“People die because they don’t measure up to other people’s sexual expectations— no, they don’t just die, they’re killed, murdered for not being ‘what people expect.’ I don’t... I don’t wanna die, and not just that, but I wanna live now. I wanna live because of you, and it’s stupid and cringe, I know, and I’m sorry.”

“Okay, then we’re stupid and cringe together.” Kirk nods emphatically.

“I—My dick is small and weird and I’m sorry about it.” With his last resort topic change, AJ hangs his head in shame so Kirk doesn’t have to see AJ’s pathetic face. “I hate talking about it and the pee comes out weird. Sex is an important part of relationships and I wouldn’t want to just keep disappointing you because I can’t... I can’t do that, I can’t be that guy no matter how much I jelq off or dilate and cry and take dodgy penis enlargement pills and pray to every God and higher power, I just can’t. I’m so, so sorry. Don’t force yourself to be attracted to me when I can’t... I just...” He chokes. “I love you so much and I can’t do this to you, you deserve so much better, you deserve a fulfilling sex life and you shouldn’t have to settle for me when I can’t be the guy in your head you were hoping I was.”

Kirk stares intently into AJ’s eyes, stubbornly focused on trying to word something right. “I don’t... I don’t have the words for this, but I don’t wanna make you feel like I’m just dismissing you. I mean, I didn’t even consider I could’ve been gay until maybe... last week or so? I just kinda lost my mind trying to figure out why I felt so lonely all the time, even when I was with you, but especially when I wasn’t with you. Walked past Dad watching some old movie on TV where there was a guy and a girl our age making out and touching each other all over in the back of their car, and I couldn’t figure out why just seeing that made me feel so upset.” He brushes his fingertips on AJ’s cheek, carefully watching for changes in expression. “I reiterate, I have no idea what I’m doing or what I like, but I’ll get over it. The important part is that it’s you.”

“I...” AJ sniffles and buries his face in Kirk’s shoulder.

“While we’re being embarrassing and cringe and everything, I think you gotta know that the last time I spent the weekend at my mom’s, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I knew I was gonna see you again on Monday, but the idea that I couldn’t just casually ask you to come over was so...” All this emotion all at once is way too much for Kirk to handle, so he starts crying. “I felt like shit, and then I smoked a joint you rolled for me the week before, but then I realized the way I was feeling is the way I always feel when we smoke together.” His face is burning and his heartbeat sprints through his whole body. “I thought it was normal when you jerk off that you imagine it with your best friend, y’know, since you’d already be close with ‘em. I didn’t know what I wanted and I still kinda... don’t, so I thought I was just substituting you in there for whatever it was I wanted. But it was what I wanted, it was you! And I...”

He hesitates, afraid of how sappy and obsessive it might sound to continue. “I still want it. No matter who or what you are, no matter what is or isn’t part of your body or who you are tomorrow, who you wanna be tomorrow, even if you change your mind and wanna be a different person altogether later on — I still want it. I’m obsessed with my best friend and I guess this is love because I see you weathering a storm out there by yourself, minimizing your presence because you don’t wanna burden anyone else, but I want that.”

AJ doesn’t say anything. He hugs Kirk tighter.

“I dunnoooooooo,” Kirk whines, heartily patting AJ’s back. “I love youuuuuuuuuu... AJ, I love youuuuuuuuu...” He sniffles and hiccups trying to take a breath in between sentences. “Aiden Jesse,” he cries with uncharacteristic tenderness, carefully tasting each syllable of his best friend and longtime crush’s name. “I don’t want it to end, I don’t wanna go too, I love you, AJ. I love you.”

“... you’re too nice to me,” AJ eventually whimpers, defeated.

VI. the whole damn six-pack (hangover will be okay if it’s with you)

“Man, I just...” AJ sighs, wiping his face on the last of the spare napkins from the glove compartment. “I’ve been trying to work my way up to this conversation for over five years now. I’ve ran it back in my head tens of thousands of times, trying to find the perfect speech to close every loose end, but I don’t think either of us are really made for that.”

AJ stuffs the used napkin in a bigger wad, their temporary trash bag lined with a clean napkin until they leave. “I remember after I left that shitty party, I sat in my back seat and cried because that felt so cringey and lame and I was convinced that that was the closest I was ever going to come to anything meaningful with you.” That last part isn’t quite right. “I feel awful and dirty, like, we weren’t even a thing, but it made me feel like I was still cheating on you, somehow.”

“It doesn’t matter to me now. I’ve seen you loving me, and I’ve finally realized I want to love you back.”

“N—no, but... you’re still drunk. I can’t take advantage of you like this.” AJ says it with so much fear, in spite of everything.

“Just lie here with me, then. You don’t need to do anything special, just...” Kirk whimpers a sigh. “Please. Make my night by letting me make yours, okay?”

AJ shifts in his seat and sighs deeply, slowly, before finally giving in. He lies down on his side to face Kirk as if they were lovers sharing a bed. “I guess if... when you wake up, if you change your mind after all, I still have tonight as a fantasy I can hold on to.”

“Oh, I see how it is.” Kirk sneers. “‘You’ve always lived your life in fantasy: / no chance to take, / no heart to break.’” His singing is still off-key and out of time, no matter how hard AJ tried to start a band with him, but he relishes in his awful take on AJ’s favorite song to sing — and therefore his own favorite song — from the bootleg Tatsuro Yamashita cassette AJ specifically made for their car. He offers his hand to AJ so AJ can complete their duet.

“‘But now you take my hand, and / you make me understand: the two dreams / can join together.’ Okay, penis.” AJ rolls his eyes and snorts. “Tomorrow morning, I’m driving your cornball ass home, and then we can talk about catching up on lost time. You can practice your banshee shrieking in the shower as long as you use your regular shampoo.”