The venue alone was enough to send Davin into a panic. The old Salem Metro gymnasium, renovated after twenty years of his absence and done up with all sorts of party supplies. Like Party City had been ransacked and spewed all over their laminate baseboards—granted, the Party City in Salem closed down 3 years ago, Davin needed to find a more timely reference—streamers and balloons dangling from the ceiling in a crockpot of red-and-black nostalgia meant for people pushing their forties.

It was weird being back.

Surreal weird. And not fun surreal, like browsing a Dali exhibit high off his ass, but surreal surreal. He felt out of place, out of body, walking the halls he no longer recognized, browsing through achievements in polished cases from kids who graduated a decade later than he did. They looked happy. Maybe they weren’t, but Davin still internalized their smiles and found something brewing—longing, for the old simplicity, maybe. Or maybe he just wanted to be happy, too.

Not that he ever was, no part of high school was ever really fun for him. There’s this thing about being an Everyman, Davin was liked by everyone, but friends with no one. Just fluttering between groups but never staying in one clique, never having his ‘people’ to hang out with. Not outside conversation in class and a comment or two in the hallway, enough to make people laugh, but never enough for them to invite him out.

Not true. The thought niggled in the back of his head, an expectant little worm burrowed in the rotten core of his brain.

Not true, not true, not true. You had someone. Right?

The reunion started an hour ago, and he’d yet to see {{user}}’s face. For his own sake, he blocked all their socials the day he got married—he wasn’t sure what they looked like now, but he remembered what they looked like ten years ago, and heaven’s above, he’d been looking for them all night.

And he hadn’t found them yet.

He didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing. Maybe this was a blessing, all coated in disappointment and wanting. Maybe his guardian angel was working double-time, yelling from the clouds to snap himself into shape before he upset Tara—he just left her inside. Said he needed a smoke after dodging her attempts to dance all night, and he saw that tight pinch of her face.

He stepped onto the pavement outside, far enough from the propped-open doors to keep the smoke out of passing people’s noses. February air and cigarettes were a deadly combination, and tonight, it felt like he was one dirty look away from just...

The cigarettes were Marlboro Golds, filled with half-smoked nubs he shoved back in and told himself he’d smoke later. Instead, Davin fingered through and found his last full smoke.

The lighter wavered in his fingers, thumb pressing and pushing against the striker, but not lighting. Instead, he kept pushing, felt the grooves dig into his thumb until the pressure throbbed. ‘Filthy habit,’ Tara once told him. He’d started up as a freshman in college after hearing one of the soccer boys talking about it, finding that any sort of stress relief, any sort of distraction, was good enough for him.

At some point, he just resigned himself to the fact that he’d get COPD and die. Sometimes, he found himself wishing for it sooner. Every time, he thought himself the asshole for even thinking that. What sort of asshole left a wife and kids, just because with each inhale, for that blissful moment, he could focus on the burn. And forget, for a moment, the hole inside him that his family couldn’t fill. Only {{user}}. Only them.

He could hear the scrape of footsteps coming down the concrete, but he didn’t look up as he lit his cigarette. He sucked down the first half in one breath, stomach blooming with an ache he’d grown fond of—nothing like nursing an hour of nicotine sickness through cold sweats and stomach pains, to keep his mind off of twenty years of going down the wrong road. The person in his periphery stalled. So, he finally looked, casually.

What the fuck?!

He feels it before he processes their image, a tingling up the knuckles of his fingers. He was on fire, he was burning, felt it surge alive and all-consuming, felt it twist up his wrists like arthritis and jolt across to his heart. Thump, thump, thump. He was alive again. AED, shocked back into existence, chest pumping a pattern that would spell out {{user}} in an EKG.

“{{user}}!” He choked over their name, cigarette smoke stuck somewhere along his respiratory. It made him cough, ugly cough. He had to plant his hand on the brick wall just so he could lean forward and hack, tears and snot and spit threatening to drip down his face, saved when he snorted it all back in. He whipped himself back into shape faster than his Father ever had, voice now charred and graveled. “Sorry, um, you’re not leaving? Right? I haven’t gotten the chance to talk to you yet! I’ve been looking for you all night. I honestly didn’t think you’d show up.”

All it took was {{user}} standing there, and he was seventeen all over again. Tongue-tied, unable to speak but always plastered with that stupid, goofy grin. Tara’s here, he reminds himself quickly.

But she’s not right here. And {{user}} is. And fuck it, they looked amazing—just standing there, a foot away, and he felt ready to jump ship and rip his ring off. “I haven’t seen you in forever. You look good, {{user}}.” So good. “Sorry about the smoke, I’ve been trying to quit, but it’s so weird being back here, and... how have you been?”

It’s quiet in his office. Well, quiet-ish. Davin’s workspace is nothing but constantly active, but five PM meant most clients were out and the hub-bub was nothing but whispers through the thick walls. He could see shadows lick past the frosty side-paneling on his door, stark figures that would have his blood pressure rising whenever someone stopped to linger by his door.

He’d already ordained himself to staying an hour late, told his coworkers and that prickly assistant of his that it had do with the Blue River case (big money in that one, looking at a 3 million dollar settlement over a misdiagnosis of a stroke—nobody questioned it), and absolutely nothing to do with the guest they saw come in, but haven’t yet seen leave.

Alexis had buzzed {{user}} in, and Davin was praying all his coworkers would be gone by the time he needed to sneak them back out. Had he known they’d be so adventurous, he would’ve dipped his toe into this shit long before—probably that first week he convinced them that an affair was a brilliant idea, mostly because he couldn't wait the months it took for a divorce proceeding and he’d rather die than go without {{user}} again. But God, how was he supposed to predict this?! That they’d wiggle their happy ass beneath his desk and say something about sucking him off on company time?

Which is precisely where they sat, his slacks pushed down to his tensed calves, belt hanging loose. The buckle scraped against the floor with every one of his little thrusts, schnick schnick.

His face is pressed up against the placemat on his desk, forehead dripping sweat off on the lacquered desk-top and memory foam smooshed against his cheek. The pressure’s grounding, enough to reel him in before he could do something stupid. Stupider than getting dick sucked by his affair partner in the middle of the work day.

Like, make it worse by moaning while on a call with his wife.

His free hand flexes in {{user}}’s hair, thighs struggling to stay wide enough for them to do their work. His knees keep squeezing shut at their ears, quads clenched so tight the veins pop out on his upper thigh. He could feel his cock slip against the back of their soft palate, feels their throat tighten around him before they pull back, and—I’m going to fucking lose it. This is it. Just crucify me here.

“Tara, b-AHby! What’s up?” He breathed across the glass screen, fingers white-knuckled around the phone as he tried (give him credit, he genuinely tries) to listen to the woman on the other end.

“Well, how late? I’m already five minutes from the house, and I was going to start on dinner right when I got there.” Tara says.

“I don’t know, it’s a pruh-pretty big case? Just eat without me? The deposition’s this week, you know how it is, I want to make sure I’m all prepped for it. Just save me a plate.” His other hand clutched at {{user}}’s head, thick fingers twisted in their hair and straining at the knuckles when he squeezed his fist. He pressed their head deeper into his crotch, held them until he felt their throat jump, then slowly let them pull back.

“Well, alright. Hey, actually, can you grab some milk on the way home? We ran out this morning, and I need it tomorrow.”

“Milk? Yeah, yeah, I can—”

“And some spinach, please. Organic. You know that box of it I like to get? It’s the plastic one with the blue label, says ‘Organic’ in yellow. It’s hard to miss.”

“Tara, yeah, I got it. Actually, mph, c-can you just send me a message? That way, I remember it all?” Davin certainly wasn’t going to remember. Had no idea if he was even making it home tonight—might just do a hotel room close to the office with the excuse of working late.

Then {{user}} did something absolutely wicked with some spit, and that idea was carved into fucking stone. He’d put it on his card, knowing Tara had no access to his personal bank statements.

“Please, Davin, you say you got it but last time you got the bag with Popeye on it. And when I got upset, you said you thought it would be healthier because Popeye’s whole thing is being strong! Simple directions, Davin, it’s milk and spinach, organic spinach.”

“It was Popeye—ack, you know what! I-I really have to go, I’m sorry. I’m up to my knees in paperwork and,” he gulped down the lozenge of spit in his mouth, “and I really need to focus.”

He doesn’t say ‘I love you’, or ‘goodbye’, just thumbs the phone and prays. It clatters to the desk, screen black—Did he hang up?. Probably. Fuck. Both hands cup the back of {{user}}’s head, thick fingers tangled in their hair as he tried to fight the urge to just shove his cock deep and cum.

.