take to the streets
undercurrent
for alex
Econ seminar, nine in the morning, three days a week. Carlton’s got his arm slid behind Mulder’s neck, pushing his throat up like a tree root under asphalt. No way in hell are they going to class.
Carlton smiles down at him, his dark hair unwashed and hanging across his forehead. They haven’t left the room in thirty-four hours.
Mulder wanted to stay drunk, but they ran dry sometime before dawn. Now he’s got a sinus headache and wrecked eyes, and he’s thinking about Carlton’s hand on his stomach, hard square corners of his fingers, biting his lip again.
There’s a look of concentration and joy on Carlton’s face. Mulder’s not attracted to him at all, wants him to be disembodied and exist only as a pair of hands, a mouth. He turns his head to the side when Carlton leans down to kiss him, hauling in air, seeing the empty liquor bottles on the desk throw out skinny rainbow spines on the wall, sunlight through the window.
Tired, he thinks. Confused. Syrupy ropes in his mind, like his thoughts are melting a little more every time Carlton moves his hand. They’re naked, have been for days. Mulder is totally lost, Carlton’s smooth shoulders and flat stomach and the stony edges of his hips. There is a string of hickeys running on a diagonal from the base of Carlton’s ribs to just under his belly button. Mulder thinks that they were there when he got here.
Tired. Confused.
“Carlton,” he says, his voice hitching a little bit.
“Hmm?” Carlton’s not too interested, licking Mulder’s collarbone, the weight of his hair resting on Mulder’s cheek.
“Stop. Hey.”
Pushing ineffectually at Carlton’s shoulders, Mulder is cold, sweat dried in a film on his skin. His eyes feel gritty and heavy; he’d lain awake all night while Carlton slept, staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of the arm across his stomach, the young man beside him in the twin bed. Mulder half off the side with his hand flat on the floor, scared to breathe, scared of waking him up.
“I’m trying to be nice to you, man,” Carlton says, grinning. He’s got a weird unappealing grin, Mulder decides, several of his teeth crooked, untrustworthy.
Mulder twists his knee against Carlton’s side, skitter of warmth. “How. How come you knew I would. How’d you. Um.”
Upset, Mulder glares up at the ceiling. He’s not like this, goddamn it. Normal boys don’t fuck around with everyone who offers on the off-chance that it’ll be the person they’re looking for. Normal boys leave their friend’s dorm rooms, like, occasionally.
He wants to say, I don’t even like you that much, but that’s hardly true. Anyway, enmity is no reason not to sleep with someone. I’m sleeping with him, Mulder thinks in astonishment, blinking up at him, near tears. I went down on him. I’m having such a homosexual affair.
Carlton sees right through him, smirking and stroking his thumb across Mulder’s ribs. Carlton probably thinks Mulder is stupid, but maybe Mulder’s beginning to agree with him.
“You need to quit fighting this stuff,” Carlton tells him. His hand closes into a fist and draws knuckles down across the angle of Mulder’s hip. “You stopped being drunk hours ago. And, look.”
He kisses Mulder on the mouth, his arm under Mulder’s neck bending Mulder’s head up. Carlton is clearly trying to make a point, and so Mulder pays attention, opening his mouth, licking Carlton’s suspicious teeth, jerking his hand down Carlton’s bare back, braking on the sticky patches of sweat. He can smell the two of them, taste Jolly Ranchers and city tap water and ink.
They get distracted. Mulder thinks that they were talking about something pretty important, a minute ago. Mulder is twenty and playing hooky, working it out of his system, experimenting. Carlton has a hand around him and his tongue in Mulder’s mouth, his forehead knocking Mulder’s when he pulls away for a breath. Mulder digs his fingers into the bruises on Carlton’s stomach, and Carlton hisses, muttering something about goddamn motherfucking ballplayers.
Mulder grins, teeth hard against Carlton’s face. Carlton does something unconscionable with his thumb and Mulder’s eyes roll back.
The person Mulder’s looking for will be nothing like this, he thinks frantically. They won’t be able to see it in him the way Carlton can. They won’t hold him down, slide their leg between his own, entrap him into a dorm room with no liquor and only a twin bed. The person Mulder’s looking for will have straight teeth, clean hair, look less like an axe murderer when they smile. And they’ll be kind to him when he hasn’t been able to sleep and he won’t have to be scared all the time and they’ll know about baseball.
And Mulder will be in control.
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