“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.”

Finn looked all too delighted. “No objections from me.”

It all went too fast and not fast enough. Finn used a lot of lube, and he slipped in and out of Theo’s body, and he kept trying to cradle Theo’s face in some misplaced nod to tenderness. Theo shoved his hand in the direction of his cock, and he gripped it softly.

“Harder, fuck.”

With the movement over him, in him, and the hollow physical pleasure, and the smell of Finn’s cheap cologne, Theo let his mind wander. Float. He let himself be lost in this, another man’s body, the mechanics of fucking, a numbness.

He came. It was—acceptable. He kicked Finn out with a perfunctory, “Thanks.” He forgot his name five minutes later.

He stayed up all night, playing records, lying in bed, sleepless. Dirty.

The next day, he enrolled in business classes at the university.