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The day is perfect aside from the weather, the blazing Louisiana summer blending into a muggy Galloway fall that makes Rolan's leather jacket more than a little uncomfortable. Even here, in the attic that Rand finally convinced his parents to empty out so he could make it into his bedroom, the heat creeps down through the ceiling and up through the floorboards, unfazed by the fan on the desk doing its best to keep them cool.
It's just the three of them here as the sun starts to set. Rolan's gone ahead and ditched the jacket, draped artfully carelessly over the back of Rand's desk chair. His tanktop sticks to his back where he's leaned against the headboard of Rand's bed, lounging atop the pillows with his legs splayed out like he owns the place. Kian has folded himself into the space between Rolan's knee and the attic wall, rolling a blunt with singular intensity; Rand is watching him like a hawk from the foot of the bed, making sure no crumbs of weed end up in his blankets.
"Where'd you get this stuff again?" Rolan asks, playing with the lip of his beer bottle. A bead of condensation rolls onto his fingers.
"Aunt Jennifer's second boyfriend's cousin," Kian replies distractedly, bringing up the blunt to lick along the paper and stick the end down. "Says it gets you high fast, but not too far. Should be pretty chill."
Across the bed, Rand takes a swig of his beer, the yellow label warped under its own sheen of dampness. Everyone and everything is sweating in this goddamn heat, and Rolan shifts, trying to unglue himself and his shirt from the wooden headboard. Kian runs his tongue over the paper a second time, and Rand, watching, scowls and says, "Still gonna make my room fucking reek, though."
"We'll open a window, you goddamn princess," Rolan drawls out, flicking the beer bottle condensation in his friend's general direction. "Wouldn't do to give you a secondhand high, milady."
"Fuck you, man." Rand flips him off. Rolan returns it with a lazy grin. "I don't want Rachel askin' me what it is, is all. She found my cigs last week and grabbed the lighter from the kitchen to try one, Ma threw a fucking fit."
"Yeah?" Rolan takes a sip of his beer, locking eyes with Rand's yellowy sunglasses. "Always knew she was less of a bitch than you."
Rand half stands, but before he do more than snarl out a "you—" Kian is leaning forwards, messy blond hair obscuring Rolan's vision. "Guys," he complains, waving the finished blunt in front of them, "can you stop measuring dicks and light this already? I need to be crossfaded, like, yesterday."
"Where's yours?" Rolan asks, not even bothering to reach for his jacket. Rand leans down to his, discarded on the floor, and has his lighter fished out in a few seconds; as Kian starts fighting the janky mechanism, Rand pushes him aside to shove open the window. It lets in a wave of heat the poor little fan can't even begin to compete with, and Rolan shifts subtly closer to the desk.
Kian lets out a happy noise as the blunt catches. "Becky needed my jacket for her shoot, I forgot to take it before I gave it to her."
"You're never gonna see that jacket again, you know," Rand mutters as he heaves the window open wider. "That chick's stolen, like, half your clothes."
"She looks fuckin' good in them, that's why."
After a massive drag, Kian passes the blunt to Rolan, and they all fall into silence for a few minutes. The smoke is hotter in his mouth than the air he sucks in between hits, and while he's still sweating all over Rand's pillow, Rolan feels himself start relaxing into it as the weed and the alcohol start to mix. It doesn't really feel that different from being just high or drunk; it's simply both at the same time, the loose-limbedness of the beer buzzing nicely against the calm haze of the weed.
"That's soooo fucking nice," Kian sighs after another hit, and passes the blunt to Rolan again. Out of the corner of his eye, Rolan catches how Rand's fingers tighter around his beer bottle, a tension that travels up his arm, through his shoulder, onto his face.
"What…" Rand shifts, leaning towards them and then back, then forward again as he realizes there's no bedframe to support him. "What's it like, being crossfaded?"
"S'suuuuuuuper chill," Kian slurs out. Rolan laughs a mouthful of smoke at him and the way he's slowly tilting to one side. The hippie's a fucking lightweight, and he likes to play it up too. "Like… y'know how you get floppy?"
"Floppy?"
"Mhm. With your mind." Kian nods seriously, sending his hair flying all over. "My brain's all floppy, man, it's awesome."
"…weird."
Rand doesn't say it like it's weird. Rolan watches, his own eyes half-lidded in relaxation, as Rand continues to shift around. "Doesn't sound that bad, I guess."
"You wanna try?" Kian straightens up to snatch the blunt out of Rolan's hand, offering it to Rand, who jerks back as if he pressed the lit end to his skin.
"What?! No, I didn't say that!" Rand keeps leaning back as Kian waggles the blunt towards him like he's trying to get Barc excited with a treat. "Fuck off with that already!"
"Pussy," calls out Rolan. The word feels funny in his mouth, not wrong but kind of silly, and he nearly giggles when Rand turns his glare on him and wobbles on the edge of the mattress. He covers it up with another sip of beer. "It's just smoke, dude."
"Just smoke," Kian echoes. "Seriously, it's not that bad. Just a hit, man, c'mon."
"C'moooooooonnn." Rolan grins. Rand twists his head back and forth between them like he can't decide who's the bigger threat, a muscle in his jaw twitching. If Rolan weren't so relaxed he would push himself up to lean closer to them both, to shove Kian and the blunt at Rand. But he's comfortable, and the weed's building up in him, pressing him down into the pillowcases and the blankets.
Still, he wants to.
"I'm not fucking smoking that," Rand declares, and chucks his bottle cap in Kian's face. Kian squeals and flinches back, knocking over his beer in the process—mostly empty, thankfully for Rand's inability to do laundry—and letting out a mournful noise as he realizes his mistake.
Rolan cocks his head, picking apart Rand's words, his tone. He's loud and deep and Rolan's gotten in enough fights with him to recognize what it sounds like when Rand's overly defensive. "Why not?"
"Because—" Rand falters, then takes a massive gulp of beer. A full third of the bottle vanishes down his throat. "Fuck you, that's why, and what if I, I fucking cough or some shit. You two assholes would bring it up forever, so yeah, because fuck you."
Rolan deliberately does not bring up the fact that when he first smoked weed, he coughed so hard he started gagging. He wonders, briefly, how to get Rand to try it anyways; he would goddamn love the stuff, and maybe it would get him to calm the fuck down as finals approach. Rolan's been smoking more just to deal with Rand's stress, and he's getting a bit too much of a tolerance. Unfortunately none of them can bake, and a bong would go over worse than smoke—but for a moment, he lands on a memory just a few months old: a party and a girl and a blunt, and she hadn't wanted to ruin her lipstick, so she'd hovered her open mouth over Rolan's and sucked the smoke from his throat. Shotgunning, she'd called it as she crawled into his lap.
The rest of the memory fades as Rolan dismisses the idea of doing that with Rand. Kian's uncle's boyfriend or whoever the fuck was right; this stuff works fast.
"Hm," Kian wonders, tilting back until he falls onto the bedspread. His hair splays out around his face, damp with sweat and catching the sunlight through the window. One hand is just barely brushing against Rolan's calf, tickling through his jeans the way he thinks a livewire would. "You could always try shotgunning."
Rolan's brain comes to a screeching halt. He splutters around the smoke he was halfway through exhaling. "What?"
"Yeah, what?" Rand echoes, confused. "And what is that?"
"Shotgunning!" Kian throws his hands up, reaching blindly for the blunt. Rolan keeps it well out of reach and hacks out another cough. "One person breathes in some smoke and holds it, the other person gets up close and breathes it in as the first person exhales. Easy hit, easy high, no smoke in your eyes." Kian giggles. "Hey, that kinda rhymed."
Rand shakes his head disbelievingly. "Why the fuck do you know this, exactly?"
"Becky taught me."
"Shoulda fuckin' guessed," Rand mutters. "Well, too bad Becky ain't here to teach me, huh? I'm stuck with you two losers."
You could try with—, Rolan thinks, and starts coughing harder. Kian grabs again for the blunt, and when Rolan holds it above his own head, shrugs and says, "Well, since he won't give me the blunt, you could always try with Rolan."
Rolan sucks in a breath, chokes on his own spit, and wheezes, "Dude."
"What?" Kian props himself up on his elbows; behind him, Rand looks as dumbfounded as Rolan feels, mouth hanging open as he listens to Kian continue to spew insanity. "Gimme the blunt, then, I'll do it."
"You—" Rand hefts his beer like he's grabbing a lifeline. "I'm not fucking shotgunning you, Kian, what the hell. Or Rolan! The fuck's wrong with you—"
"Hey, I'm just trying to provide a solution—"
"—faggiest shit you've ever said—"
"—since, y'know, you actually wanted to try something fun for once." Kian doesn't yell, exactly, but his voice raises until he's steamrolling over Rand's insults. He tilts his head back to stare Rand in the eye, and it raises the line of his throat; in the sunlight, Rolan can just make out the edge of an old hickey, presumably from Becky. "Besides, you don't actually touch or anything. It's just smoke. Take a puff, pass the puff instead of the cig… you're the one saying it's gay, dude, that's what makes it gay."
Rolan, to his own astonishment, finds himself nodding along. Not that he's going to—to do this, to do it with Rand, but even the girl at the party hadn't pressed their lips together. Because of her makeup. She'd offered to mess it up for him later, but he's pretty sure he turned her down. And Rand doesn't have lipstick to mess up, so.
God, this weed is strong.
"Other option is Kian blowin' it up your ass, if that's not too faggy for you," he says, mostly to distract himself back to reality. Rand immediately turns beet red, and Rolan would be right on his heels if the crossfade hadn't already brought a flush to his cheeks. Kian, on the other hand, absolutely howls with laughter, letting his arms collapse to lay flat on the bed.
"Fuck you both," Rand hisses, standing up from the bed. For a moment Rolan thinks he's about to kick them out, but then he stomps towards the headboard where Rolan is sprawled, glaring down through his sunglasses as he stands directly between Rolan and the fan. "Move the fuck over already."
"Uh." It takes Rolan's weed-and-alcohol soaked brain a moment to understand, but when Rand's fists tighten, Rolan pushes himself up and over. Some of the ash from the blunt drops onto Rand's sheets, and he glares at it as he perches himself on the sliver of mattress Rolan gave him.
Rand glances from the blunt to Kian. "The fuck you looking at, bitch?"
When Rolan follows his gaze, Kian is sitting with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hand, half-haloed behind by the light with wide-blown eyes. He's smiling like a dope. "Just excited to see you witness the second-greatest wonder of the world," he mumbles.
"First being Becky, I'm guessing."
"Mhm."
"I hate you so much," Rand sighs, and turns back to Rolan. This close, it's easy to see him roll his eyes behind his glasses, to see the bob of his throat as he swallows. "Let's get this over with."
"Uh-huh." Rolan swallows, his mouth suddenly incredibly dry. He has to kind of juggle the blunt between his hands as he shifts on the bed to face Rand properly, and when they're finally face-to-face, it's much closer than Rolan expected. He can see the acne scars on Rand's chin, barely covered by the thin wisps of beard that accompany Rand's latest attempt at a mustache. There's a sweat trail coming down from his temple.
Rolan looks away and takes a hit off the blunt, exhaling it towards the window. He needs to compose himself, to relax, get his fuckin' heart to stop beating so fast. Kian, in the corner of his vision, opens his mouth, and Rolan takes another hit to shut him up, sooner than he should, bigger than he normally would so he can give Rand a proper taste. When he turns back towards Rand, his friend moves about half an inch closer and opens his mouth hesitantly.
"Nah, dudes, you gotta be closer than that! You're just gonna waste the smoke otherwise," Kian butts in. Rand turns to scowl at him, and Rolan is suddenly looking at his jawline, soft above the tendons of his neck. Kian pipes up again: "Stop staring at me, bro, I know I'm beautiful but he can't hold that in forever."
Rolan blinks, and when he opens his eyes Rand is in front of him again, closer, staring down at Rolan's mouth. Rolan leans in, heart pounding and chest tight. From how long he's been holding this mouthful of smoke, surely, and nothing else; the way it squeezes more when Rand leans in as well is simply coincidence.
"Closer," Kian says, drawling out the word. Cloooooooserrrrrr. He can smell Rand now, tobacco-sweat-dirt, from when a car'd gone screaming past them earlier on an unpaved road and kicked up dust in all their faces. Rolan starts to open his mouth, and he thinks Rand does as well, but he can't bring his eyes to look that far down. His vision is taken up by the bridge of Rand's nose, his cheekbones, the hair curling over his forehead and around his ears. His eyes, dimmed behind the sunglasses and not meeting his own.
"Closer, dudes, come on."
Rolan complies. He has to tilt his head a bit to do it, and he can feel the smoke starting to trickle out and up from his mouth now. Rand is radiating warmth, enough to make the air around them feel cool. His head tilts as well, opposite Rolan just a fraction.
Rolan's fingers are digging into the mattress by Rand's thigh, and they twitch with the thought of lifting and feeling Rand's jeans, or maybe going higher to curl around his bare arm. It's so rare that Rand foregoes his jacket, but the heat, the solitude of the three of them—it's maybe driving Rolan a little insane now that they're this close, and he wonders, as he tilts further forward, if—
"There you go!" Kian cheers, and startles Rolan into jerking forward, bumping his lips directly against Rand's.
For a second, a second to stark and strong to be called blissful or stunned, there is the sensation of Rand's lips: chapped, sticky with beer, pressed off-kilter over Rolan's mouth and chin. There is the sensation of damp heat, differnt from the summer air or the weed smoke or even the warmth coming from Rand's skin, as Rand breathes out in shock, and Rolan's fingers twitch again; searching for contact, searching to brace himself against something stronger than the mattress as the feeling creeps out from his mouth, up to his ears and down his spine, tingling and warm.
Then Rand wrenches himself back with such force that Rolan instinctively blows out the smoke he was holding. His eyes open—when had they closed? His eyes open, just in time to see Rand accidentally suck in a smoke-tinged breath, the rest of it going up his nose and under his glasses. He starts coughing, his whole face tinged dull red with embarrassment, and tilts his head so the light reflects off his glasses and blinds Rolan.
Kian, down by Rolan's knee, shifts and calls, "Boooo! You guys wasted all the good stuff!"
Rolan's body stiffens. The warmth that had crept over his body turns into a sort of uncomfortable prickling as Rand turns slowly to look at Kian, a snarl painting its way across his face. "I'm gonna fucking kill you, man."
"You're both idiots," Kian complains like nothing's wrong aside from the fact that he just watched a bunch of smoke go out the window. He reaches for the blunt, plucks it from Rolan's loose grasp; Rolan's fingers twitch as Kian brushes the back of his knuckles. He doesn't know if it's to pull away or to reach back, so he picks, leaning his whole body back towards the fan as the room suddenly becomes stifling.
Kian raises the blunt and says, "Let me show you how it's done."
The next few seconds happen like a slideshow. Rolan sees Rand, snarl fading into apprehension as Kian takes a drag off the blunt. Then there's a knee pressing hard against his thigh as Kian leans across Rolan's lap, and suddenly he and Rand are face-to-face, Rand yelping from behind the messy shag of Kian's hair. Rolan flinches as Rand grabs frantically for stability and ends up on Rolan's calf, fingers digging in deeper than could ever be comfortable as Kian pulls his face closer, the two of them balanced by and over Rolan's legs.
Rolan barely notices the pain beneath the simple fact of contact. He's even more distracted—entranced—by the sight in front of him.
He can't see their faces at all from this angle. He can just barely make out Kian's chest falling as he exhales, the motion subtle through the sweaty film of his half-buttoned shirt, and he feels Rand's grip tighten even more as he takes in the smoke, but he can't actually tell how close they are. If they're as close as Rolan and the girl at the party, or closer still like Kian and Becky, or—
Or—
It's an image he's dreamt of before, in his more shameful moments: Rand, and Kian, kissing each other. But he's never this close in the fantasy. He's always separated, watching from across the room or through a window, because otherwise the shame of imagining such a thing turns into furious guilt over indulging himself yet again, so strong he usually ends up going and finding something to punch until he feels better. But this isn't a fantasy, and it's happening less than two feet from his face, trapping him in place on the bed. It's…
And then it's over. Rand pulls back, spluttering a little. Rolan tracks the redness in his cheeks, the spasm in his fingers before he lifts his hand off Rolan's leg and leaves a burning afterimage in his skin. "The hell was that?"
"Shotgunning." Kian laughs, mellow and rich from the smoke. "Wanna go again?"
"Fuck no!"
Giggling, Kian collapses over Rolan's legs to reach for Rand as the other teenager frantically scoots away from him. He's not fast enough; Kian's head lands on Rand's thigh, the rest of his upper body across Rolan's knees. It can't be comfortable. It certainly isn't for Rolan, the warm weight terrifying over his joints, and yet somehow Kian relaxes into them both, still giggling.
"Your face, dude," he crows, reaching up to slap at Rand's arm. "You shoulda seen your face, it was priceless."
"You should see your face in about five minutes," Rand snaps, but his attempt to shove Kian off his leg is half-hearted. "Pull that shit on me again and we'll see how hard it is for you to smoke with a broken fucking nose."
"You seem stressed, man, you suuuure you don't wanna try again?"
Rand's face contorts, and Rolan shifts beneath Kian's weight to grab his beer bottle. He drinks desperately as Rand finally shoves Kian off them both, and when he puts the bottle down he lets the weightlessness of the alcohol pull him forward, off the headboard and the pillows.
"I wanna try."
Silence falls over the bedroom, and Rolan can't even find it in himself to be disgusted. He wants to try, God help him, he wants, because he always wants, he just never says anything about it. Maybe it's that he doesn't want to see Rand beat the shit out of Kian, though he and Rand beat the shit out of each other all the time. Maybe it's that he wants control over the situation. Maybe it's just that he is constantly, endlessly wanting, a locked-up urge that has snuck through barriers loosened by the crossfade to bloom in the setting summer sun.
Rand cocks his head a bit, eyebrows raised as he stares back at Rolan. Rolan holds his gaze, and holds out one hand toward Kian, who slowly passes the blunt back to Rolan.
Rolan takes a hit, his eyes fluttering closed as the smoke cuts through the anxiety he hadn't realized was rising. He stares at Rand as he breathes the smoke back out. Something about his expression, the focus and the aggression, the way Rand's eyes are flicking all over his face, feels right. Feels familiar. Rolan leans back against the headboard and Rand's pillows, settles himself, and says, "You gonna chicken out, or you gonna man the fuck up?"
For a long second, Rand just stares. It's so intense Rolan forgets about everything else, even Kian; and then Rand moves, back up the bed, turning until he's got one knee braced on the bed by Rolan's hip, the other stretched out to stand on the floor.
"Bet you're worse at this than Kian," Rand mutters, but there's no real heat behind it. The capitulation thrills something in Rolan's chest, and he grabs at Rand's neck, letting his fingers curve into muscle and ligaments. Rand freezes beneath his touch, watching almost helplessly as Rolan brings up the blunt for another hit. His hand is steady, somehow, despite Rolan feeling like every fiber of his body is thrumming with anticipation.
Kian, blessedly, remains silent as he takes the blunt out of Rolan's hand. Rolan holds the smoke in his mouth, taking a second to simply admire Rand. The sweat has clumped at his hairline, darkening the strands to a rich deep brown, and he licks at his chapped lips as Rolan takes in his fill. Beneath Rolan's hand, the muscle of his shoulder twitches, like he wants to fight back and is restraining himself, or like he wants to submit and is trying to not give in. It's thrilling.
Rolan brings his free hand up to the corner of Rand's jaw, pulling him forward and encouraging his mouth open in one gesture. Rand follows slowly, shakily; and Rolan meets him halfway, stopping when their noses brush, and gently exhaling into Rand's mouth.
It makes him dizzy, the things he suddenly feels. The slight movement of Rand's neck and shoulder beneath his hand as Rand inhales the smoke, the shifting of his jaw as he opens his mouth wider to catch it all, the slight breeze across Rolan's skin as he pulls in air from beyond them as well. It's intoxicating, a hundred times more addictive than the beer or the weed or anything else Rolan has ever tried. The proximity, the heat burning off of Rand and boiling under Rolan's skin, the places they touch—he leans closer, just a millimeter, just enough to bump his nose against Rand's again. It sends sparks dancing across his skin, ratchets up the tightness in his chest.
Rand, too, leans closer. Or maybe it's Rolan's hand on his jaw, tugging him in as it shifts to cradle his cheek, the skin rough and beautiful beneath his palm and he shivers with the feeling of it. It doesn't matter who, in the end, brings them close enough that their lips find each other once more, sealing the last of the smoke between them.
For one moment, blissful as anything, Rolan has everything he wants.
The smoke fades out, and when Rolan can no longer taste the weed on his tongue he backs away slowly, his hands slipping from Rand and landing limply on the blankets beneath them. The cold chases back in, and he shivers again when Rand backs away and lets the fan's breeze come between them. Rolan grabs his beer bottle, fixing his gaze on the soaked label; out of the corner of his eye, he can see that Rand isn't looking at him, either. The silence echoes between them like a gunshot, like a slammed door, like a pounding fist.
Until Kian breaks it, leaning forward and whooping. "Now that's how you shotgun, my dudes! Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of smoke transferred cleanly, that's gotta be a record."
Rand waves him away and starts coughing into his fist. Guilt floods Rolan, that he somehow did it wrong if Rand's coughing despite the whole point of shotgunning being that he wouldn't cough—and then he feels angry that he's guilty about that, because what the fuck did he just do? What the fuck did he just let himself get talked into doing, the fucking desires he can't ever stamp out—what does it say about him, that you get a little weed and a little alcohol in Rolan Deep and he turns into—into—? His grip tightens on the beer bottle, ripping the paper, and he feels tension ripple up his arms and shoulders, into his suddenly-clenched jaw.
He ignores Kian completely and hands the blunt out to Rand, lit end first. "Alright, you're all grown up now. You wanna smoke, do it like a man, not a fairy."
"Whoa," Kian blurts. When Rolan cuts his glare over to him, he looks startled and upset, leaning back from where he'd been still pressed up against Rolan's calf. "Watch your fucking language, man, that's not cool."
"Says the guy whose family is a bunch of fucking queers." He can't stop the words. He doesn't want to stop the words; they replace whatever is draining out of him, make the tension something bearable. "Which gayass uncle of yours grew that shit again?"
"Not one you're ever getting weed from again," Kian snaps. Any hint of his intoxication is gone, his voice cold as he stares balefully at Rolan, his anger almost tangible as he tries to set Rolan on fire with his eyes alone. The sun tints his hair orange, low in the sky and still so fucking warm, Rolan's overheating in this goddamn room. "Say what you want about me, Rolan, but don't you go for my family."
"Yeah, lay off him, dude, what the fuck?" Rand chimes in, a bit of nervous laughter in his voice. It's wrong; it's all wrong, Kian being cold and angry and Rand trying to play mediator, Rolan himself outcast and riling them up. It's all gone so fucking wrong, and everything he does digs the hole deeper, makes the air colder.
"Whatever," Rolan scoffs. He pushes himself off the bed, tanktop peeling from the headboard and leaving a damp impression behind. He tosses the beer bottle back on the bed and starts for the door without so much as a glance over his shoulder. He doesn't want to see; if he looks he'll want to apologize, and if he apologizes he'll burst into flame right then and there, something already cracked in him broken forever. "I'm going home. Enjoy your shit beer and shittier weed."
"Fuck you too," Rand yells back as the door swings shut between them, genuine anger in his voice. Rolan takes a deep breath, pulling the smell of cooked okra into his throat, leftover from the Rands' dinner, and catches a bit of conversation between Rand and Kian. "—sorry, man, he was way outta fuckin' line."
He leaves before he can hear Kian's response. The house is empty—Rachel's got a ballet thing the next town over, and Rand begged off to "study"—so he lets his footfalls stay heavy down the stairs, across the hall, out the front door into the sticky Galloway night.
It's still warm, though not the unbearable heat of late afternoon. Around him, the crickets chirp and all manner of insects fill the gaps in their song with their own buzzing; just across the street, in the bayou, something splashes loudly into the water. The air smells damp and clean and brushes across his skin in cool waves, and he suddenly realizes he forgot his jacket up in Rand's bedroom.
Scowling, Rolan crosses his arms over his chest, tucking hands that for some reason ache again against his sides, and starts walking home, thinking carefully of nothing but whether or not his own parents will be home yet.