Chapter Text
You’ve got issues.
For the life of you, you haven’t figured out what those issues are exactly, or even how to go about “fixing” any of them. That’s for your best friend Curly to figure out. He’s the one constantly going on and on, telling you that you’ve got problems. Telling you that it’s okay, that he’ll help you fix it. Make things better.
Tonight, you’re taking the easy way out. You’re at a bar, drinking your sorrows down to the bottom of the glass, and then doing it all over again. No car keys to revoke, you came here by cab anyway. The bartender glares at you all the same. You’re a shitty tipper.
“What’d she say to you exactly?”
Curly interrupts your vibe, those soft blue eyes piercing through the darkest corners of your soul. You hate the way he looks at you, cautious but hopeful. Believing in the better parts of you than the parts that have hurt him.
“I told you. She said she was sorry about how things ended.”
You’re not talking about an ex-girlfriend of yours. None of them would offer such kind words, if you could even call those real relationships. Instead, you’re talking about Curly’s ex. One of them, though they’re all pretty interchangeable in your mind. This one in particular is a new neighbor in your apartment complex, having moved into the unit across from yours. She thinks you’re a great guy because you’re still friends with Curly. Not because she actually knows you.
“Yeah, but...Anything else?”
Your eyes swim through the seas of inebriation to find those fucking blue irises that keep you up at night. Your jaw hangs slack for a moment before you shut it and take another swig.
“Why do you wanna know so bad? You’re still pining after what she did to you?”
“I don’t know.” Curly answers with his usual brand of pathetic beleaguered sighing. “I know she never meant to hurt me. That’s what matters, isn’t it? Why else would she say she’s sorry?”
“You think I know? I didn’t even recognize her until she asked me about you. Alls I told her was that you’re a sky man now. All you know how to love is the stars and the rumble of an engine beneath your feet. That’s true, ain’t it? You’re not the kind of guy who can be counted on in a relationship. You’re gone more years than you’re here in months. Kind of hard to make that kind of commitment, don’t you think?”
This drunken mouth of yours is still as slick as ever. You watch with satisfaction as the hope in Curly’s face dims. The best part is, you don’t even have to pretend to feel bad about it. This is exactly why Curly keeps you around. A cold splash of truth is the only way to abate those delusional flames away.
“I can’t say you’re wrong there.” Curly takes a swig of his own drink, thumbing the rim as he studies the emptied bottom with a furrowed brow. “...Even so. Maybe acknowledging that is the first step towards making a change.”
You keep your mouth shut. It’s the only way you can stop yourself from screaming at him to shut up.
“I’ve made so much progress with this company. They’re planning on promoting me to captain after my next voyage. It would open up so many more doors, but...I don’t know. There’s a part of me that knows there’s a top to the ladder somewhere. Eventually, I’ll be forced to come back down, whether it’s my choice or not. Why not make the choice myself now, while it’s not too far from the ground?”
Curly blinks a few times, shaking his head.
“Did anything I said just then make any sense?”
“Kinda.”
“Okay...What do you think I should do?”
“Christ, Curly. Why do you need to ask me how to live your life?”
“Because you were there for me when my life fell apart.” Curly grabs your shoulder. His grip is tighter than he probably means for it to be. There’s a desperation in his gaze that has your belly twisting itself in knots. “You were there to watch me fumble and fall, and then tell me to keep going. Maybe I haven’t told you this enough, but...I trust you, Jimmy.”
Do you buy that for even a second? Stop, and feel the way his hand trembles as he comes to realize the way he’s touching you. He doesn’t pull away, just gives you more slack. Widens his smile just a bit more, reassuring your ego. You wish you were still capable of falling for this crap. It would make pretending easier.
“Would you trust me if I said you’re better off without dragging her into your mess?” You answer with what you want. You answer with what’s better for you. “You’ve got enough on your plate as it is. Don’t spoil it trying to fit in pieces that you know won’t bend the way you need them to.”
Your words reach him. He lets go of your shoulder, and stares down at his empty glass again. He pushes it to the edge of the counter, and makes eye contact with the bartender. When it’s full and in his palm again, he nurses it with a wet thumb across the surface.
“You’re right.” Curly rolls his other hand across the surface of the bar. “I...I’m just being selfish again, aren’t I? Thinking I can do anything just because I want things to work out that way.”
“...It’s one of your better qualities, Curly.” You humor him. Not because you think it’ll keep things the way they are, but because you want to. You only ever feel this way around him. “That obnoxious optimism is why you’re doing well in this career of yours. ‘Pave the way for humanity, one smile at a time.’ Some shit like that, yeah?”
“Yeah.” Curly cackles, his cheeks overflowing with the edge of his teeth. It’s as grotesque a sight as it is mesmerizing. “Y’know. It’s not that easy being up there. If not for the lack of company, then for the lack of knowing what to do with myself. What I’m going to be doing in the future. When I’m out there, I think about what I’d rather be doing here. Instead of going to the bar every day with you, we could do this on the weekends instead, because we’d have the whole year to do whatever we wanted. Maybe even catch a movie. Enjoy it all better without a ticking clock on my mind telling me this can only last for so long. Human lives shouldn’t be spent measured in the time you make for others. It should be about the impression you leave on the people in your life.”
He’s looking at you. Sickeningly, cloyingly sweet as he reaches for your shoulder again. You swear, he makes you ill to look at sometimes.
“I want to fix your impression of me, Jimmy. I’m gonna do that, I promise you.”
You’ve got some serious issues, Jim. When I’m done fixing mine up, I’ll fix yours too.
You are blitzed out of your fucking mind. Thankfully for you, unlike some drunks, you don’t get too angry when you’re inebriated. If anything, it mellows you out. Helps you recontextualize your life. Makes you think.
It helps you act when you’re too cowardly to do so otherwise.
You’re standing in the cold of a December night as Curly holds his phone out between the two of you, his fingers shaky as they try to type your address into the search engine. He’s trying to get you home.
“Hang tight, I—I got this.”
He’s going to send you home. Then what will you do?
You could run into her in the hallway. She’ll ask if you talked to Curly, told him about the museum she’s employed at. She’ll ask if you told him she’d like to have him as her plus one to that fundraiser, give them a better chance to reconnect than meeting at a fucking coffee shop.
Better yet, Curly will go behind your fucking back and introduce himself again to her anyway. Say all you said was her apology, excuse it as you being over-protective. He’ll espouse all those good qualities he sees in you but can never put a name to any.
It’ll end the same way. You, getting to see your best friend more than ever, but it won’t fucking matter. You’ll have lost him. She’ll change him. Fix him. Make him the man he wants to be but can’t on his own. He won’t need to worry about you anymore.
You’ll be alone. Just like you fucking deserve.
You slap the phone out of Curly’s hand.
“Hey, what the fuck are you doing?!” Curly snaps as he bends over to grab the device, checking it for scratches. How old and cheap was his last model that he still has that force of habit? “Shit. You know how expensive this was for me! Don’t use the excuse that you’re drunk—”
“Money, money, money. That’s aaaaall it ever comes down to, huh?” You wrap your arm around Curly’s shoulder. He’s an inch taller than you. Bigger too. If he tries to actually push you away, he has to reckon with the violence that entails. That usually keeps him humble.
“Money is damn important. You know this.” Curly rolls his eyes. He accepts your leeching yet again. You tap the screen of his phone, and erase the progress he had made towards typing your address.
“If money’s so important to you, forget about wasting a ride on me. Just take me back to your place.”
Your speech is slurred. You think you got about fifty percent of those words clear, and the rest is up in the air. Your arm wrapped around Curly’s shoulder lifts, until your hand comes into contact with Curly’s cheek.
“Poke~” Your finger presses against the lightly freckled skin. You watch as those freckles disappear behind a veil of bright red.
“Wow, you’re just—you’re incredible tonight, you know that, Jim?”
You’re just another mess for me to clean up, and you’re not even a little sorry about it. I’ll take care of it, though. If I didn’t, you’d suffer, and I wouldn’t be able to live with that.
The smallest of victories. A delaying of the inevitable. It won’t wrestle back control into your hands if all you do is crash on his couch tonight. It’ll only be another reason why he’ll choose to forget about you someday.
You have to do something more. You have to take matters into your own hands.
He’s fully exhausted by the time you make it back to his apartment. He’s only two blocks away from the bar, but also up a whole four flights of stairs. The elevator is always broken. That’s Pony Express residential at its finest.
He mutters something about needing to use the bathroom first, so you wait with the discomfort in your bladder as you hear him piss through the thin walls of his apartment. At least his neighbors are fellow freighters. They don’t have to hear a damn thing.
He’s already half-undressed by the time he comes out of the bathroom, a pair of light blue briefs covering his junk and a dirty white t-shirt covering his chest. You can see his nipples poking through the sweat-clad garment. You rush past him into the bathroom before he can get a word out.
“Sorry!!” Curly shouts through the door. He’s apologizing for not meeting your needs in his own home. You don’t get why he bothers.
You shove everything off of your body, and dangle your legs over the toilet seat. You angle your cock just enough to not spray absolutely everywhere. You’ve got issues. You forget to shower most weeks. That doesn’t mean you like the scent of your own piss.
When you’re emptied out, you can’t seem to let go. You massage the phallus in your hand, knowing damn well you can’t tease it the way it needs on your own. You think about that girl. You think about the key she gave you, entrusting you because you’re the closest thing she knows to a reliable neighbor. You think about the mole above her left ass cheek that you saw when her shirt lifted up as she was grabbing her mail.
It doesn’t do shit for you, but you’re already masturbating. Once your libido starts up, it’s hard to slow down.
You think about Curly fucking her instead. You think about him taking her into his arms, brawny and handsome, with that awful fucking clown smile etched onto his chin. You think about him kissing her, rolling his hands around her waist, laying her down to spread her thighs.
You think about how his tits somehow manage to be more impressive than hers, with perfectly shaped nipples perfect for feeding. You think about him sucking on hers anyway, because he’s a sentimental piece of crap who gives a shit about making his partner feel good. You think about her writhing underneath him, begging him to give it a break, but he doesn’t. He keeps going. He knows she can take more.
Your cock is red hot in your hand.
Imagine Curly’s dick sliding in. She’s disgustingly wet, open wide enough to take him and then some. Pre-cum won’t stop sputtering out of him as he pushes in, forming a well within her. His foreskin brushes at the entrance to her pussy, bunching up as he thrusts hard. She screeches as loud as she can, no neighbors to disturb this time of the year. He kisses her quiet anyway, desperate for the validation that he’s doing a good job. He won’t let a single moan go unappreciated.
You look at him in your mind. The adoration in those blue eyes, the sweat that rolls off his skin and melts onto your tongue. You feel the pounding as it hits you like a donkey kick to the back. You fall into him.
You’ve been the one underneath him this whole time.
Your hand is soaked in hot cum. You couldn’t stop yourself from getting lost in your mind again. This is getting old.
These fantasies of yours are just a bad side effect of the gay domination porn you’ve been getting into lately. You don’t swing that way, but the borderline snuff shit doesn’t hit the same anymore. The only thing hotter than a battered and beaten woman is a man that’s put in the same situation.
You don’t want to do that to Curly though. You sure as shit don’t want that to happen to you, either, but it leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth thinking about Curly wearing a bruise around his eye or bearing a limp in his gait. It doesn’t stop you from thinking about it anyway.
The two of you used to be something. Friends. You used to call him your best friend, and he did the same for you. He probably still regards you that way. That, or he doesn’t have many people back on Earth he can rely upon to keep him grounded. You’re the last lifeline he has on this fucking rock. Without you, he’d start getting ideas of staying lost in space. Or so he’s said before.
You don’t buy it. A guy like him needs someone to need him. Someone who’ll miss him when he’s gone, then give him all the attention in the world when he returns. It doesn’t mean you’re not his friend. You’re just not special. Better a lover than some moody asshole he knows from high school.
The bathroom is spotless of your spunk when you leave it, wearing just your underwear and nothing else. Your face is still wet with the water you splashed on it, and as you rub your chin, you notice the pillow and blankets left out for you on his couch.
Snoring interrupts your thoughts from the other room. Light and soft, the softest of struggle before falling into a deep sleep.
You don’t move for a while. It’s dark in the apartment. Your eyes adjust, and your mind slips. Your feet move of their own accord, until eventually, you part open the door to Curly’s room. He didn’t even close it all the way. I̴t̶’̶s̴ ̵l̷i̵k̸e̸ ̷h̶e̷’̷s̸ ̵j̷u̸s̸t̴ ̸a̷s̷k̷i̶n̸g̶ ̸f̶o̷r̵ ̸i̴t̸.̶
The sheet he’s sleeping under slips off his body with ease. He doesn’t stir. He must be used to sleeping with shitty blankets that fall off constantly. Lucky for you, less so for him.
You’re not even sure what you’re doing here, honestly. You mean it when you say you don’t want to hurt him. Not in a way that would leave him to resent you for it. If you have to scare him into feeling guilty for abandoning you, that’s fine. It’s crossing boundaries you have a problem with.
What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him though, right?
Now, now. Don’t get carried away too fast, old boy. There’s a balance to be had here. Surely you can get away with enough without eating the whole cake.
You start by touching his thigh. You’re surprised by the lack of density. Curly looks hard as a rock on the surface, but when you press down into his flesh, you’re given little resistance. Either space does a damn good job of atrophying the muscle away, or those trucker meals Curly’s told you about have fattened him up.
Looking at him a bit closer, you think the latter might be closer to the truth. His gut is soft and round, though it’s not to the point of sticking out past his pectorals. He’s blessed with a body a Hollywood action star would kill for, always looking the part of a leader from the day he was born.
That’s why he was always picked first, and you were always picked last.
You have an easier time of putting on muscle than Curly, but it doesn’t show in the same way. You’re naturally lean and lanky, a twig blowing through the air. Unremarkable. You used to stand in the middle of a room, waiting to see if anyone would notice you. When they didn’t, you decided that meant you were invisible, which made you superior to everyone else. You felt like a god.
Your hand slips underneath the hem of his shirt, rolling your fingers across his belly and squeezing it slightly. He’s so Goddamn warm. That same tingle of godhood tickles your spine. What else can you get away with?
You roll a thumb across his nipple. Over the fabric, since his shirt collar doesn’t go that low. You bet the friction feels better anyway. Curly’s mouth hitches in his sleep, and though you’re cautious about waking him up, you don’t stop. You just slow down, tracing him gently, watching him carefully.
“Mmm...”
A moan. A fucking moan. He’s moaning because of you.
No turning back now.
You do it with both hands to both nipples, thumbing over and around them in sync. His chest rises and falls with each breath, shortening when you tug. His eyes squint, and it’s only then that you back off. He sighs in his sleep, safely unconscious.
Fuck. Fuck. That lower lip shouldn’t look as Goddamn enticing as it is. The wet of his spit calls out to you, begging to be tasted. You want to know what the hell all those bitches are calling him back for now. They know they missed their chance on a good thing, but you’ve never had a lick in all the years you’ve known him. Why not? Why the fuck not?
You straddle one of his legs, and lean over him carefully. As you do, you feel something hard against your briefs. An erection against your erection. You can scarcely believe it until you look down and see for yourself. Curly’s cock is making a valiant escape effort against the fabric of his briefs. When you move your hips, give even the slightest bit of friction, you can feel him react underneath you.
His breath hitches, and you can taste it. Your lips brush against his, too chickenshit to press down, but even just this modicum of touch has you rethinking your principles. If you get lucky tonight, who’s to say you couldn’t give him an extra dosage in his drink tomorrow?
You’re not lucky tonight, though. In fact, you’re fucking screwed. That’s what you’re thinking as Curly’s eyes fly open, face-to-face with a pair of blue irises staring through your soul. You reflexively jump back, mind drawing a blank.
“Jimmy...? What are you doing here?”
Curly’s voice is quiet. Not a whisper, but airier than you’re used to. Higher pitched, almost childlike. As if you needed more reasons to feel like a predator. Well, besides the obvious.
“I...I’m here because—” Fuck. Say something. Say something stupid, even. Make him think he’s still dreaming, even if it’s a nightmare. “You were pent up. You needed me. You said so.”
Those blue eyes sit vacantly, watching you. You expect anything. Resistance. A sneer. Maybe a gun to the head. Anything at all.
“...But...How’d you get on the ship?”
You expect anything but that.
You wave a hand over his face. His eyes don’t respond. His lips stay perfectly parted, as though he lacks the rigidity to keep them shut.
Holy shit. He’s still asleep.
“You kept saying that there’s always a need for pilots.” You pivot hard. He thinks you’re on the ship? That’s perfect for you. Brilliant even. “Now that you’re manning the helm yourself, you don’t want just anyone sitting in your co-pilot chair. Who else do you really trust, Curly?”
Curly breathes for a few moments, deep and slow. His mind is fighting to wake up, but sleep keeps a steady hand on his heart.
“Yeah...That makes sense.”
Curly makes the wheeziest, most ghoulish noise you’ve ever heard. You think it’s a laugh, but it’s hard to say. It’s not like he’s smiling in this near-catatonic state.
His eyelids droop for a moment, and then re-open halfway.
“You’re pretty pent up too, Jimmy.”
You let out a chuckle in spite of yourself. Fuck. Are you actually going to get away with this?
“Yeah. I am.”
You press down on him with your hips. He lets out something between a grunt and a moan. He spreads his legs slightly.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this.” Curly closes his eyes again, his lips flapping between words. “Instead of settling down...Marrying wives...Having kids...I’m dragging you into my world instead.”
“I followed you here.” You grind on him with more confidence now, watching how he closes his mouth to swallow his own spit. “I don’t know how you’ve done this for so long without going crazy. It’s a wonder you don’t skip out on seeing me altogether. I wouldn’t be offended if you needed a week or two permanently camped in a brothel.”
“Mmnghffhh...But...But I care about getting to see you. You’re my best friend...H-Hah...!”
He’s so damn sensitive. You’re barely doing anything. Just some light over the clothes rubbing of your groins, hardly anything worth getting worked up over. And yet, he still is. Interesting.
“Yeah. Your best friend who’s currently helping you get your rocks off. Bet this isn’t the first time you’ve thought about something like this.”
An overt silence hangs in the air, textured with Curly’s labored breathing and your own nostrils flaring with greed. He opens his eyes again.
“No, it isn’t.”
Shock stops you in your tracks. Curly’s sleep-addled brain picks up on this development quicker than you have the chance to formulate your feelings.
“D-Don’t freak out, please, Jimmy, I...It’s just thoughts, it’s never this, it’s never—I wouldn’t think about you that way. I just miss you. I miss being around you, and sometimes that coincides with my personal time...”
He trails off. There’s no way he can make this sound as bad as it is. That’s perfect for you, though. Finally, an edge. A piece of Curly you can scrape off and keep in your back pocket.
Something you can use to hold over his head when you’re done pretending that you’re his personal space pony.
“Shh...Hey. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t have similar thoughts about you.”
You resume grinding, this time applying more pressure. Curly lets out a staggered moan of relief, his eyeballs rolling back into his skull. Seems like he’s waking up slightly, but not enough to break out of his fantasy.
“Since we’re both uncut, I was thinking about us sharing sleeves. How’s that sound to you, Curly?”
“B-Brilliant...!” Curly gasps, his fingers forming into fists around the bed sheets below. “S-Sounds bloody perfect, Jimmy...!”
Exactly what you want to hear. You slip your dick out of your briefs, and help Curly do the same. You hold the two of them out together, pressed into your palm, measuring them up against one another. You smugly grin to yourself. There’s one area you have an inch over him.
You switch it up, pressing your tip to his. You’re both spurting out precum like crazy, and it only feels better when you massage your heads underneath your thumb.
“Jim...Shit...” Curly tosses his head from side-to-side. “Y-You’re killing me here. Fuck...”
“How else are you going to get everything out if you aren’t being milked for all you’ve been holding back? Let me keep going. You can thank me later.”
“N-No, don’t stop. Please, please, please, Jimmy. I need this, I do.”
He’s saying the words you told him he said. He’s buying into your story wholesale, for no other reason than that you’re absolutely right about everything else. He is pent up, and he would willingly ignore that for the sake of his stupid career.
It doesn’t really matter that it’s you. You just happen to be the one constant in his universe that isn’t himself.
You lift up his foreskin, and slip yourself underneath. At the same time, you fold back your own foreskin, until it’s wide enough to stretch across his. You keep going until you’re both fully docked in each other’s ports, rubbing up against each other, head brushing against head. You twist your palm around the connection point, and let out a harrowed moan.
“Curly...!” You call his name in a sing-song fray of your own neediness. This shouldn’t feel as good as it does.
“K-Keep your voice down, Jimmy.” Curly reminds you what you should be telling yourself. You’re not trying to wake the guy, but he’s the one who thinks he’s sharing walls with his crew. “I can’t let anyone know we’re doing this...God, does it feel amazing, though.”
“It does.” You keep pumping the two of you against each other. It feels less weird by the second, and more like you should have been doing this with him a long time ago. “Masturbating’s always better with a friend, wouldn’t you say so, Curly?”
“Mm―Y-Yeah, certainly feels that way...”
Curly’s sweating hotter than ever. You place your other hand on his chest, and you can feel his heart practically beating out of his chest. He’s fully fucking awake, and yet he doesn’t know it.
“J-Jimmy, I...C-Can we try kissing? It’ll help quiet us both at the very least.”
He’s rationalizing asking you to do more than just masturbate with him. You make note of it, because it’s something you would have suggested if you were as desperate as he is.
“Sure thing, Captain. Pucker up.”
One hand squeezing Curly’s tit, the other hand squeezing your conjoined cocks, you lean down and press your mouth fully onto his. He’s overly receptive, kissing you back with the type of passion usually reserved for long-awaited reunions. Like he’s definitely thought about kissing you before.
You stroke your tongue across his mouth, causing him to shudder and gasp with newfound arousal. It strikes him down below, his cock pulsating against yours. He opens his mouth, sucks on your tongue, then pushes his own past your lips. You exchange spit as freely as you share pre-cum, stroking and sickly sweet sucking past the point that you could justify this as platonic.
“...You taste like gin.”
“Yeah. And you taste like powdered gelatin.”
Curly giggles like a school child, light and wheezy. Totally unlike that strange cackle from before. It’s more of what you’re used to from him anyway. He so easily dismisses the idea that he’s awake with the lightest of jabs. It’s probably easier for him to handle it that way.
No matter how much he’s enjoying himself, he’s not likely to be pleased at the idea of being molested in his sleep. A reminder to keep playing into the fantasy than out yourself for what you are. For what he continuously refuses to see in you.
You’re both looking into each other’s eyes as you roll your tongues over each other, hands on your shoulders gripping you with corpse-like strength. You’re doing a piss-poor job of keeping down each other’s moans, but Curly seems to have forgotten that plot point. You’re both at the edge, ready to fall over together.
He pulls you down when it happens. Buries his mouth into yours, eyes squinting shut. Five fucking years of cum floods your foreskin, and spills back down into his. He’s still pulsating when he lets you pull back to assess the damage.
“...Let me clean this up before I go back to my bunk.”
You reach for the tissue box next to his bed. As your hand returns to wipe, Curly grabs your arm and squeezes hard enough that you can’t move it any further.
“J-Jimmy wait―” Curly fails to sit up, the dizziness of inebriation and sleep-deprivation both lulling him back to sleep in spite of your interruption. “Don’t go. Don’t―Don’t leave me. At least stay the night. Please.”
“...What would our superiors say if they saw you like this, Curly?” A grin twists itself onto your cheeks. “Would they ever have promoted you if they knew you’d have this weak of a constitution?”
“...I’m weaker around you.” Curly responds in a fittingly tired voice. His eyes struggle to stay open, and his grip wanes enough that his arm drops. “You know that.”
You didn’t, truthfully. It makes sense when you think about it though. After all, what’s a model fucking citizen like Curly doing around a guy who can barely afford his rent like you?
You clean the two of you up. You stuff your cocks back into your respective briefs, and then to placate the guy until he falls asleep, you lie down next to him, pulling the sheet over your bodies.
He turns onto his side to face you, grabbing your shoulder. You wait it out, sleepless nights not uncommon for you. You’ll power through this. He won’t. You just have to be patient.
Time passes. He flips onto his other side. You exit his bed cautiously, holding the sheet up slightly so you don’t tug it off of him. You stay on your toes even after you close his bedroom door behind you.
You make your bed to lie on for the night, and throw on the shirt you wore that day to keep warm. You check his wall clock. You’ve got about four hours of sleep at your disposal, and you’ll probably only sleep through half of that.