He had seen his retreating back and had known that back as intimately as if he had clung to it before, and he watched him as he ran into the toilets, looking like he might be sick. It was familiar; he remembered those brittle and blinding moments at Pride, the opening of his mouth, the look on Gardner’s face before he ran away then.

He had never considered the possibility that Gardner might want him back. And even if he did—even if he were reading him correctly, the tortured frame, the wide eyes—Gardner might be too scared to do anything about it. That golden image corrupted.

Theo had stopped being scared of so many things. He had chosen to fly and he had already fallen.

He was slid up between two bodies, had considered pulling one of them into the toilets, and he was nearly fully aroused, and he wanted neither of them. He knew, had known, what he wanted, and he thrilled with the possibility that he might—and that Gardner might—

And he wanted to follow him, and press him up against the sinks, an echo of that day in the locker room, a heavy breathing and a hatred and a want. His lip burned.

Two selves struggled in him. The protective, the cautious and cruel, and the self which couldn’t care at all, anymore, about his own safety. The self that flung him into a fire, disregarding the burn, heedless of the consequences of this mania, this need. He knew that if he followed Gardner into the toilets, he wouldn’t come out the same person; he had never liked himself that much, anyway.

This was just one more way to burn.

He smiled, filthy, at the man in front of him, and reached back to run his fingers, final and regretful, through the other man’s hair. He detached himself. His whole body was buzzing as if there were some electric connection through space, through bodies and colored light and the toilet door, between him and Gardner, that boy, that man.

He had stopped at the bar, savoring this moment before he would be so epically stupid, took a shot.

And now, in front of Gardner, the smell of citrus and coconut on his lips, and whiskey in his own mouth, he breathed out, daring him. Daring him to look. This is what you did to me, he thought.

This is what you do to me.