Chapter Text
Randy’s twenty one, newly. The party he’s at isn’t for him; he celebrated at the dining room table with a grocery store strawberry cheesecake, his mother, younger sister, and candles which were reused from his twelfth birthday, wax stuck to the melted wicks.
This party is for Donnie, and he’s not really sure how he got invited. That’s not true—Randy knows how he got invited, but he doesn’t know why he showed up. Sometimes he gets an idea in his head that he thinks will go better than it ever does.
Donnie was talking to Chris while they were restocking the walk-in (completely disregarding the first in, first out system) when Randy stumbled in to find a mop. He stood across the industrial grill from them for several awkward moments before Donnie extended the invite to a house warming party at his new place. Chris made his disagreement clear, barking at Randy to fuck off. He’d left without a mop, cleaning up a spilled diet coke with a wad of paper towels. He showed up anyway, because Donnie asked him to.
House warming isn’t exactly the vibe crashing around Randy. Donnie’s new place is the first floor of a rental house and the tenant in the basement suite sells drugs, which Randy tries not to think about. He isn’t sure who lives on the floor upstairs, but maybe it belongs to the dark haired man pulling further shadow over his face as he tugs on the brim of a trucker cap. Randy looks away.
He stands stiffly against the counter in Donnie’s kitchen, tucked out of the way from the rest of the party taking place across the dining room, living room, and front porch. He’s also pretty sure Chris and Jess are having sex in a bedroom which is certainly not either of their own, but really doesn’t want that to be any of his business.
He presses an indent in the wall of a beer can he found in the fridge at someone’s absent minded direction when he arrived. Foam fizzles over the aluminum top as he hasn’t taken a single sip yet. House music with heavy bass thunders throughout the further rooms, beat dulled by the time it reaches Randy in the kitchen. Occasionally it changes to a rap song his mother would be appalled to hear. He’s pretty sure it's wrong of him to listen to the crass lyrics while wearing a striped polo shirt and jeans with no holes in them. The music is just noise.
By the red digital clock above the stove, covered by a cardboard toaster oven box which is actually filled with styrofoam plates, Randy arrived only twenty minutes ago. Surely an hour is more than enough to be polite. Not that anyone has noticed him in those twenty minutes, or will in the next twenty before he leaves.
The man in the trucker cap, leaning in the archway between the kitchen and the living room, glances over his broad shoulder at Randy as if he doesn’t like what he sees.
Which could be for a thousand reasons, if Randy’s being honest with himself. Maybe it’s the fact Randy hasn’t talked to anyone, hasn’t drank a sip of beer, or always has a purse in his thin lips to match the minor crease between his light eyebrows. Sometimes his younger sister will press a thumb to the empty space to smooth out the furrow.
Two girls stumble into the kitchen, aiming for the cheap tequila bottles next to the sink. One of them wears lace fishnet tights like Jess usually does and Randy might have gone to high school with her. It’s good odds—well, bad for Randy—that anyone around his age in town ignored him in English literature and asked him for quiz answers in calculus. The girls continue to ignore him now, pouring tequila into red plastic cups and topping them off with orange juice which warmed, left out, on the counter. The other girl takes a sip only to spill several drops down the front of her croptop, which reads ‘babygirl’ framed by glitter angel wings.
Reaching down her cleavage, she wipes at the wet spill with acrylic tipped fingers. When she pulls her hand out, licking the orange tequila from down the length of her index finger, Randy accidentally makes eye contact. He usually tries to avoid that. Blue mascara rings her equally blue eyes, crinkling as she sneers.
“Perv.”
The girls laugh at him, linking fingers and leading each other in a return to the blasting bass. The music changed back at some point to nothing but pulsing sound. Maybe there’s drums or a keyboard or a guitar, but it doesn’t matter because it all blends into a synthy mess.
Randy creeps closer to the archway out, clutching his untouched can down at his side. If he leaves sooner, maybe no one at work will even remember he showed up. They’re all drunk and probably high.
He weaves through an assortment of half unpacked moving boxes, at least three of which previously held frozen patties from Burgers Burgers Burgers. Randy doesn’t plan to look in any of them as he passes, but the top of one is cracked, the four cardboard folds splayed open. It’s filled with stolen branded barglasses from one of the dives Donnie and Chris frequent after their shifts. They never invite Randy there, even when he hears them. He kind of wishes Donnie didn’t invite him tonight either.
It’s fine. Randy’s fine. He’s definitely leaving and he hasn’t had a sip of alcohol touch his lips so he can drive home in a few minutes.
There’s enough space for him to slip through the archway without bumping the man standing in it, but the living room is crowded and filled with smoke. Three people sink into the stained couch, passing a green bong with alien eyes around. Another few of Donnie’s friends sit on makeshift seats across the floor, lumpy pillows, a folding lawn chair, and an overturned milkcrate. Various drug paraphernalia Randy doesn’t understand the purpose of—small trays with cartoon characters, round metal containers, and something which looks like a taser—cover the coffee table along with a mostly empty bag of Cheetos.
The drunk girl with the crop top sits in the lap of the girl Randy probably went to high school with on a beanbag chair in the corner, peppering maroon kisses over her lips. A further throng of people spread across the entrance hall into the dining room, where no furniture stands, only bodies, writhing and jumping to the pounding surround speakers. It’s nauseating, how close they are to each other, how sweaty they must be.
Randy clambers past a guy with a bleached buzzcut and the coffee table, probably the first piece of actual furniture he’s seen, earning himself a grumble and a smack to the back of the calf. He almost drops his teeming beer can, righting himself before the condensation slips it from his grasp.
As he rounds the corner, free hand grasping his car keys in his jeans pocket, Donnie crashes down the hall, guzzling the last drop from one of those red cups. Until that night, Randy thought they only existed in movies.
Donnie blocks the entire exit from the living room, sloppily wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. He claps Randy on the shoulder, arm laying to rest across it as he steers them both into the living room again.
Randy shrinks in an instant, dropping his gaze to the bare wood floor.
“Bradley,” he shouts over the music, beer and something funkier on his breath, “I can’t believe you showed.”
“You told me to come,” Randy says, either too quietly to be heard over the music, or Donnie doesn’t care.
“Dude, let me get you a drink or something. This new kitchen is fucking dope.”
Randy doesn’t point out the can already in his hand as it seems the quickest way out of the interaction. Donnie trips around the stoners in the living room, fist bumping the guy on the end of the couch, who doesn’t even look up. The green alien bong has rotated around to reach a girl with a tufted black bun sitting sideways on the lawn chair. She exhales a long plume of smoke out of the corner of her mouth, right up into Randy’s face. He’s going to reek when he gets home and his mom probably won’t believe that he didn’t touch anything.
“I bet you’re still living with your mom,” Donnie says, as if he knows what Randy’s thinking. “Gotta get your own place as soon as possible, be a fuckin’ adult. Man’s gotta take care of himself, right?”
He smirks and tries to wink. Even though he doesn’t succeed in it, he succeeds in making Randy flush hot, opening his mouth only to say nothing.
His mom wouldn’t like it if he moved out. She liked when he was home to pick up groceries or drive his sister to school. Besides, it’s not like Randy needs that to take care of himself.
He rejects the thought as soon as it appears in mind, but his cheeks still pink even further, spreading from the tips of his ears to beneath his shirt collar.
“Leave the kid be,” the man in the trucker cap says, something lazy in his tone. He tilts his face up to Donnie and the dim ceiling light reproachfully.
He looks a bit older than Randy would have guessed, with a deepness to his voice. Donnie’s twenty five, old enough that he and Randy never crossed paths as teenagers. The man must be older than that, maybe even thirty.
“Fuckin’ buzzkill.” Donnie’s stubbled face breaks out into a dopey smile again, his arm still wrapped around Randy’s shoulders. Or more like his neck, with the way Randy slips further into the crook of his elbow, Donnie holding on like he doesn’t remember he’s there. “Kid’s got a stick so far up his ass I bet he’s never bent over.”
The girl with the bun giggles, arching backwards to pass the bong back to the sofa. A long black skirt ruffles about her legs like a mourning veil.
“Hey Donnie, take a hit of this,” buzzcut dude calls, waving him over with a joint pinched between his index and middle finger.
Randy swallows sharply. He is, in fact, partially bent over with the angle Donnie holds him at. Not that it matters. He feels a little like a rabbit, alive in the jaw of a wolf and hoping a more interesting prey takes his predator’s interest.
The predator takes the bait.
“Take care of him, Benson. He’s a total wet blanket.”
Donnie chuckles at nothing in particular, then shoves Randy into the chest of the man in the trucker cap—Benson.
Unfortunately, with that push, Randy does spill his beer, dropping the can all over both his sneakers and Benson’s leather boots.
“Shit, I’m so sorry.”
He drops to a crouch to pick the can up, as if that will really do anything after it’s already empty.
A large hand wraps around Randy’s bicep and grabs him a lot differently than when Donnie or Chris manhandle him. It’s steadying.
“Don’t worry about it,” Benson says, voice low, “these boots have been through way worse.”
Randy stays on the floor until he’s pulled to his feet, far closer to Benson than he planned to be to anyone at the party. It’s not as sweaty as he thought, but they are the only two there.
He can’t read Benson’s expression, it’s entirely too neutral for someone standing in a puddle of cheap beer.
“Like what?” he asks.
“C’mon, there’s probably something in the bathroom.” Benson uses that steady hand to guide Randy through the house, somehow knowing the exact route down the hallway and which door is the bathroom and not the bedroom.
Randy spares a glance at the front door as they pass, to the outside where his economical sedan awaits, but decides the least he can do is rinse the sticky alcohol off his skin. Maybe his mom will already be asleep by the time he gets home; it’s half past eleven on a weeknight. Randy doesn’t have a shift the next day, which is how he convinced her to let him go without worry.
Benson shuts the bathroom door behind them both, closing out the trashy music and smell of marijuana. Randy blinks. The towels are a tan brown which he hopes is their original colour. All the towels at home are white with little designs embroidered in the corners. The guest bathroom is floral themed, the one he and sister share is under the sea, and the en suite to his mom’s bedroom is decorated with butterflies.
Donnie’s bathroom is just bathroom themed. It’s far too small for two people at once, unless one of them stands in the shower. Benson doesn’t do that and Randy doesn’t either, so they squish face to face in front of the porcelain toilet with a missing tank cover and a sink with no cupboard door. A spare, and most likely clean, hand towel is stored on one of the shelves beneath the sink, along with a half empty bottle of teal mouthwash.
Randy places the corner of the towel in the sink. The tap won’t turn on, but then Benson reaches over, bats his hand away, and turns it clockwise instead. A stream of cold water rushes over the cloth like the tap filter is missing. It’s more like turning on a fire hose than a tap. Randy twists the clear knob with a blue dot on it in desperate circles before he finally figures out how to shut it off.
He offers the damp towel to Benson first, who doesn’t take it.
“I wasn’t the one who spilled my beer.”
“Right,” Randy stammers, cold water trickling down his fingers. For some reason he thinks about the way that girl lapped tequila off her hand and how he should do that in front of Benson.
He doesn’t.
Instead Randy crouches down, somehow fitting his knees into the space between the bathroom door and Benson’s legs, to wipe down his left boot. It’s sturdy like how Benson’s hands are, steel toed. Black leather, a little dusty where the beer didn’t splash, soaks up clean water in every crease.
After wiping the top of the boot and coming away with a dirty patch on the towel, Randy folds over a new corner to get to work again. Benson shuffles back the cleaned side a little, granting Randy a better angle on the next shoe. He wipes it as clean as the first.
When he finishes, he sets the dirtied rag on the edge of the sink.
Benson runs a thumb over his moustache, the action somehow approving. Randy holds back a smile. Benson’s facial hair is nicely kept, considering he dresses like a trucker fresh off the highway outside of town. A cut off muscle tank meets a grommet studded belt at the waistband of his camo cargo pants, a carabiner of keys hanging from the left side. Randy can’t quite make out the logo on his baseball cap from the floor. His knees ache a little, but not enough where he wants to get up.
A pile of condoms is scattered at the back of the shelf behind the mouthwash, which he doesn’t look at.
“They could still use a polish.” Benson shifts his weight to one side to catch a better angle of Randy’s work in the fluorescent overhead light. While very clean, the boots don’t shine.
“Sorry,” Randy whispers, resting his palms on his thighs. If Donnie barely has towels, it’s unlikely he has boot polish, especially considering he wears the same pair of checkered vans everywhere.
“S’fine.”
Benson reaches his hand out. Randy wants to take it, wants to feel steadied again. He also wants to remain curled on his knees with Benson looking down on him like he’s the most important person at the party. Like he’s just the same as Chris or buzzcut guy or fishnets girl. Like he’s not the Randy Bradley who runs the drive-thru on Saturday evenings because he doesn’t get invited out. So he’s frozen, thumbs digging into the flesh of his thighs, until Benson curls his first two fingers of his outstretched hand like he’s beckoning Randy closer. He can’t help but take it, his soft fingers brushing against callouses.
“My mom probably has some boot polish,” Randy offers as Benson pulls him up for the second time that night. It's a stupid thing to suggest.
Benson chuckles, low and thick in his chest in a way Randy can feel in his own. Even the music outside the closed door doesn't ring through him like that. Benson’s hand travels from his palm to his wrist, encircling it firmly.
“I got a better idea.”