Who cares, he thought, and who the hell needed him in the first place?

Theo stalked through the club, right to the middle of the dance floor, and wedged himself between two hard bodies, desperate for the cleansing fire of someone else’s touch. His muscles were sore from crying and trying not to cry, and he felt, for the first time since he’d gotten to Cork, entirely unclean.

He smelled something rotting. The scar on his lip almost burned.

“Hi, gorgeous.” A voice from behind him. Theo reached his arm back and wound his fingers through coarse hair. He felt solid, warm, good to lean on, but his scent wasn’t quite right.

And the man in front of him was attractive enough, but he couldn’t help compare—his hair was too tidy, his leer too obvious, and whatever he was grinding up against Theo’s leg was...unsatisfactory.

Please, please, Theo. Just forget about him. Forget.

He felt a stiffness against his ass—a promise of a fairly respectable size, there—and he arched back, turning his head and shout-whispering, “You wanna get out of here?”

“Fuck yes.”

Theo turned and dragged his eyes over his form. Well-built, dark hair, that blue-cream Irish skin. He looked like—

No, no, don’t do this, you stupid fuck, it’ll only—

It would have to be good enough.

“Name’s Finn.” He grinned. He was rather handsome, more handsome than Jack, if Theo thought about it. He could not care less.

“Hey, Finn.” Theo smiled without warmth. “Mine?”

“Sure.” Finn reached into his pocket and pulled out a small plastic bag. “You want?”

Adderall, the poor college student’s cocaine.

Oh, well, it would keep him awake through his shift in the morning.

They did lines in the toilets. Finn rubbed up against him. “I could have you right now. God, you’re beautiful.”

Theo caught his reflection in the mirror, with the blurred images of dark hair behind him, and he thought, Fuck, I had Jack Gardner, here against the sinks, and he had me on my knees for him, and he went home to Margaret and respectability and he was so far away—away from—

He couldn’t stay in here.

“Come on.” He pushed Finn off. “I want you to fuck me in an actual bed.”

The walk to Theo’s flat went quickly, the Addy coursing through his system like lightning. Finn was not rough, exactly, but careless. Sloppy. He tried to be sweet, maybe, but it came out as clumsy and childish. He’d pinned Theo to the door of his apartment, and Theo let him—he wanted to give in, to yield up the parts of him that had awakened when he’d lived with and loved Jack fucking Gardner. That died when he left.

If he let his vision relax—if he let himself see details like abstract snatches of bad dreams, he could almost pretend that the dark hair under his fingers was blacker, messier, softer. He pulled on Finn’s scalp when he got too close.

“Come on, wanna come when you’re in me.”