run on gasoline — angel. & reece.

They had to drag him out tonight.

Spencer and Cash, the two boys he's closest with now, and only because he has to see them every day when he shows up to work. Reece has never been one to make friends, never given a real opportunity to do so, not with all his energy drained on just trying to survive. His youth was spent moving from place to place, abandoned house to back alley, time passing slowly, only measured by how long it had been since his last meal. Six hours? Six days? It became harder and harder to keep track the hungrier he grew. 

Now time is simply measured by how long it's been since his sister was killed. Fourteen months, eleven days, nineteen hours, thirty-seven minutes...

He still counts, despite the drink pushed into his hand and the music that threatens to distract him. "I don't really drink," he says cooly, and they just laugh. Spencer clasps him on the shoulder with a grunt, fingers tipping the bottom of the mug up to Reece's mouth. 

"Just drink, Jackson. Trust me, you'll love it." 

Trust is a funny thing, as is love—and for over a year Reece has felt incapable of both. He drinks it anyway, for the sake of friendship. Something he hasn't been lucky enough to find until now. He lets Cash buy him another, allows Spencer to buy the third. It tastes like piss, but the feeling is incomparable. Incredible in its ability to numb the most scarred parts of him; no wonder people turn to this stuff when the world gets to be too much. But it feels dangerous, too. Like he could drink gallons upon gallons, enough to drown himself until there's nothing left. No more thoughts, no more pain or suffering or hunger, no more time left to count. 

He starts to panic, starts to think he's crossed a line he'll never be able to uncross. "I feel... weird," he slurs out against Cash's ear, leaning in to shout over the thumping bass. "Am I supposed to feel like this?" It takes what feels like an eternity to even get the question out, the faces around him slowing down to match the pace of his words. 

"You're drunk, Jackson. Enjoy it!" The boy shouts back, "if it doesn't feel good yet—" and shoves yet another drink in his hand, "—it will." He takes it willingly this time, wanting anything to make this peculiar loss of control fade away. "And if that doesn't work, just dance." 

Reece laughs, a throaty boyish chuckle escaping from deep within his throat, and it almost feels like a betrayal. Like such joy shouldn't be something he's allowed to experience, not anymore. Not after everything he's done, the lives—the only life that mattered—his foolish actions have taken. But there's nothing like a fourth drink to make your problems feel obsolete, and it does just that. Fades into the darkness, into the writhing crowd atop the dance floor.

Spencer grabs his hand and leads him to the center. "I don't know how to dance," Reece calls after him, trying to squeeze his hand to get him to listen, but there's no use. 

"Everyone drunk knows how to dance," Cash smiles and places a hand to his shoulder, spinning Reece about to face him. "Just listen and move." 

He does as he's told, trying his best to not feel a bi claustrophobic in the sea of bodies, sweating and grinding on one another. There's something intimate about it all, getting so close to a stranger just because you share the same passion for liquid courage. It seems so feckless, yet so... something; he can't quite put his finger on it. And then his eyes land on him and the word is on the tip of Reece's tongue.

Irresistible.

Arms float up to wrap around his fame, delicate and determined. A shiver runs up his spine, even as sweat makes his shirt stick to his torso in an uncomfortable way. His touch is like ice, like the coldest of winters, and Reece has been left out in the heat for years, desperate for a way to tamp down the inferno he's grown so accustomed to.

Touch me and bleed, he says, lips almost touching.

"Is that a threat?" Grin half-cocked, he leans in closer, fingertips brushing along the forearms wrapped around his neck, a barely-there touch just in case. "Or a promise?"