“Jesus, you’re fucking high, aren’t you?” Zach chuckled.
“Why would you say that?”
“Your pupils are blown, dude.”
“It’s fading.” He plopped down on Mads’s bed and let his bag thud against the floor, wondering if asking to spend the night with this man had been a good choice.
He was just entering the afterglow phase, already feeling calmer and cozy inside. But he was still hypersensitive, even more so now that he was locked in a room alone with Zach.
Something in the way his friend smelled tickled his nose and traveled straight to his balls whenever their shoulders brushed. He was wearing glasses, his hair in a messy bun, and his jaw was covered in a light stubble that made Noah weak. Like he could actually fall on his knees in front of him and follow any command without hesitation.
“So... just to be sure of your intentions, to what do I owe the honor?”
“Huh?” Noah shook his head to clear out his wayward thoughts and looked at Zach, who was sitting cross-legged on his bed.
“You, in my bedroom.”
“Oh! Val and Theo kicked me out. Sorry.”
Zach shook his head as if to say it was alright. “What are they up to? You’re usually like conjoined triplets, the three of you.”
“They’re probably gonna be fucking all night long.”
“Each other?” His brows raised. “I thought they were straight.”
“They’re bringing Nina and Stephanie back. That’s gonna be a fucking bacchanal, I tell you.”
“And why aren’t we joining them?”
Noah rolled his eyes, suddenly annoyed and a little dizzy. “They’re my friends. I don’t wanna be part of that. You can go when they come back if you want. I’ll just stay here and sleep it off.”
“Okay.” Zach let out a laugh. “Wanna sleep then?”
“Not really.”
“A movie?”
“Sure.”
Zach stood up. “Gonna grab some water and fruit—”
“Fruit?”
“It’ll do you good while you come down from whatever shit you’ve taken.”
“Molly,” Noah blurted.
It was subtle, but his friend’s eyes sparkled with interest for a second. “Well, you need to rehydrate, and the healthy sugar in fruit will also help you feel less shitty tomorrow.”
“Okay, yeah. Whatever.”
“Gonna go get that”—he pointed outside as he opened the door—“you pick the movie.”
Scrolling through the folder where Zach had way too many illegally downloaded movies, Noah stopped at one he hadn’t watched in a while but was definitely a favorite of his—Seven. It was violent, disturbing, and smart. Even the action scenes were compelling and not just some commercial bullshit created solely to shock the audience. Not to mention how magnificent Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt’s acting was. David Fincher was a genius when it came to elevating and twisting the mystery to the level of moral provocation, like he did withFight ClubandZodiac, too.
Once Zach returned, they settled together on his bed, shoulder to shoulder, with their backs against the headboard and his laptop over the folding bed table. After an eerie intro that slid into Detective Lt. William Somerset’s room before diving directly into a crime scene, the movie started.
It wasn’t the first time they’d done this, and maybe it was because he knew every minute of this film like the back of his hand, or because he was restless as fuck, but Noah couldn’t focus on it. Zach’s warmth, the way his jaw moved as he chewed, the way his throat worked as he swallowed... everything about him was too distracting.
