Copyright © 2025 Finn Reynolds. All Rights Reserved.
Pride Weekend had erupted, painting the gayborhood in a dizzying palette of neon and glitter. The air crackled with a primal energy, a heady cocktail of sweat, expensive cologne, and the electric hum of bodies pressed close.
I moved through the pulsing crowd with Asa and Javi, our laughter echoing above the relentless bass. Hands brushed my sides, some accidental, some lingering with intent.
I didn't flinch.
I welcomed them.
Javi, a vision in a mesh top that showed off his swimmer's build, grabbed my hand and spun me under a flashing rainbow strobe. His pouty lips curled into a wicked grin. “Look at you, Elliot. A total dick magnet!”
“I’m not complaining” I said, running a hand through my own hair, feeling the gazes that followed the movement. The attention was a drug, and I was high on it. This was a world away from the locker rooms and hallways of high school, a place where the things they used as weapons against me were now my armor.
“I'm worried about Perrin,” Asa said and shuffled closer. He was our designated buzzkill. “He said he was on his way almost six hours ago. He hasn’t responded to any of my texts.”
“Then stop texting him,” Javi said.
Asa’s hazel eyes darted around, taking in the spectacle with a familiar caution. “Jesus… some of these guys look like they bite.”
“Let them,” I shot back, my voice dripping with a confidence I’d only just discovered. I caught Javi’s eye, a silent challenge passing between us. He tugged me forward, deeper into the throng, his infamous bubble butt practically a metronome for the beat of the music. We were a trinity of motion and desire, and for the first time, I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
Javi’s hand was a firm anchor at my waist as he spun me again. The world dissolved into a smear of neon and writhing silhouettes. My shorts, a whisper of denim clinging to my hips, rode high, the hem a tease against the curve of my ass.
I didn’t pull them down.
I wanted the friction.
I wanted the eyes.
Strobe lights shattered the darkness, freezing the scene in frantic, ecstatic snapshots—a man’s jaw, slick with sweat, the glint of a piercing, Asa’s wide, worried eyes. The bass hammered up from the ground, a physical force that vibrated in my teeth. It was a violent, beautiful rhythm, and it was wiping my slate clean.
Each thud of the kick drum pounded a memory into dust.
A locker door slammed shut.
Gone.
A jeering voice in the gym showers.
Vanished.
The lonely walk home, keys clutched in my fist.
Obliterated.
I was shedding a dead skin. The boy who flinched at shadows was a ghost, a story I no longer told myself. Here, under the club's roof, my body wasn't a liability.
It was a weapon.
It was an invitation.
Men watched me move. The gazes were a physical touch, hot and heavy. They slid over my exposed skin, traced the curve of my ass, and lingered on my lips.
A hand, not Javi’s, skimmed my waist.
I didn’t turn.
I arched my back into it.
A voice, low and gravelly, slid into my ear as a broad chest pressed against my back for a moment too long.
“I’d wreck that pretty little body.”
Another set of fingers brushed my thigh, a fleeting shock of heat.
I let out a laugh.
“Jesus, Elliot,” Asa mumbled, his blue-dyed hair a soft halo in the chaos.
Javi just pulled me closer, his grin a slash of white in the dark. His mesh shirt scraped against my back. “He’s a fucking star.”
I was.
I was a constellation of want, a lure for wandering hands and hungry eyes. The air was thick with the feral scent of men, a potent brew that made my head swim and my blood hum.
I breathed it in.
This wasn’t just freedom.
It was a coronation.
A shot boy materialized from the throng, his body lean and slick with a sheen of sweat. He wore nothing but a green jockstrap and a devilish smirk, a tray of glowing green shots balanced perfectly on his palm.
“Green tea shot for the pretty boy?”
Javi laughed, grabbing one for himself.
Asa just shook his head.
I snatched a plastic cup from the tray, my painted nails a flash of black against the lurid green. I met the shot boy’s eyes, a silent thank you, and tossed it back.
The vodka was a trail of fire down my throat, a liquid heat that incinerated the last flimsy walls of my caution. It hit my stomach and radiated outward, a blooming warmth that settled deep in my bones. My limbs felt weightless, my hips swayed with an instinct I didn't know I possessed.
Tonight, I was pure sensation, a body untethered from fear, gloriously and recklessly alive.
Javi’s hand clamped around my wrist. He pulled me from the epicenter of the dance floor. “Outside.”
We pushed through a wall of sweating bodies, a human tide that resisted our exit. Asa followed close behind. The heavy bass thumped against my back until we passed through a doorway onto a patio.
The air shifted. Cooler. Sharper.
The music was muffled out here, the city’s ambient noise weaving through it. Javi led us past clusters of men vaping and laughing, their faces illuminated by the glow of their phones, until we reached a dark corner shielded by a massive potted palm.
“Alright,” Javi said, his back against the rough brick wall. “I was waiting for Perrin—”
Asa’s mouth flew open. “Javi, we should call him again, what if—”
Javi’s voice sliced through Asa’s worry, loud and final. “—but the bitch obviously found dick before he found a parking spot, so it’s just us.”
He grinned and dug two fingers into the tiny coin pocket of his leather shorts and pulled out a small, clear plastic baggie.
Inside, four small, pale blue pills.
Asa recoiled as if Javi had produced a scorpion. “Jesus. Where did you get those?” His voice was tight, the opening salvo of a lecture on fentanyl and black-market chemistry.
Javi waved the baggie dismissively. “Relax.” He leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “My brother’s army buddy. His brother’s a scientist. Cooked them up fresh in some lab in Arizona.”
“Javi, no,” Asa said. “We don’t know what that is. It could be anything.”
Before the lecture could gain momentum, Javi’s fingers dug into the baggie. He pinched one of the pills between his thumb and forefinger. He seized Asa’s wrist and jammed the pill into his palm, closing his hand into a fist around it. “You’re taking it.”
His gaze flicked to me. He shook another pill into his own hand, then extended it. I took it without hesitation. He popped his own pill into his mouth and swallowed it dry, a slight grimace tightening his lips.
I looked down at the little blue circle resting in my palm.
A key to some new door.
“Why not?” I said. “It’s Pride.”
“That’s the spirit,” Javi said.
I tossed it onto my tongue and swallowed.
The pill scraped down my throat, a tiny, bitter promise.
We turned to Asa. He stared at the pill in his hand as if it were a live grenade. “I don’t know, guys.”
Javi let out an exasperated sigh. “Do it.”
I echoed him. “Do it.”
“Do it,” Javi said, louder this time, a smirk playing on his lips.
“Do it,” I matched his volume.
The chant grew, a two-man chorus of friendly coercion.
“Do it. Do it. DO IT.”
Asa flinched, his shoulders hunching. He threw his hands up in surrender, a theatrical sigh escaping his lips. “Fine! Jesus.”
He brought his hand to his mouth in a quick, jerky motion, miming the toss and swallow.
But I saw it.
The flick of his wrist.
The way his hand dropped too quickly to his pocket, the pill palmed and hidden in a blink.
I said nothing. The last thing I wanted was for the night to curdle into one of their stupid, circular arguments. Let Asa have his sober paranoia. The night was too perfect to ruin.
A dozen songs melted into one long, shimmering ribbon of sound. The little blue pill had cracked open my skull and poured in pure light. The strobes didn’t just flash, they painted sizzling trails across my vision. The bass wasn’t just a sound, it was a physical presence, a giant thumb pressing rhythmically against my sternum. Each accidental brush from a stranger sent a cascade of goosebumps across my skin, a delightful electric shock. I was liquid, flowing through the cracks in the crowd, my body a conduit for the club’s ecstatic energy.
It started, as it always did, over nothing.
A guy with shoulders and a chest like a linebacker had been watching me. I met his gaze, letting a slow smile curve my lips. He started to move toward me, finally closing in, but Javi slid between us. He threw an arm around my shoulders and grinned at the guy, a flash of teeth that wasn't friendly. The linebacker turned away, disappearing back into the human sea.
Javi leaned in, his breath hot and smelling of vodka against my ear. The music dipped for a beat, leaving his voice exposed. “Wow, you really do attract all kinds, don’t you?”
His eyes, when I met them, glinted with a familiar amusement.
“Didn’t realize you were taking charity cases tonight.”
The words landed like stones in a still pond, shattering the perfect, shimmering surface of my high. The light in my head flickered, replaced by a hot, ugly spark. The heat of the club was suddenly oppressive, a wet blanket trying to smother me. The music was just noise.
Every insecurity he’d just unearthed with that one casual, cutting remark writhed to the surface. The euphoria of the last hour evaporated and something inside me fractured.
“Fuck you,” I spat.
My hand shot out.
I shoved his shoulder.
Hard.
The impact sent him stumbling back a step, his eyes wide with genuine surprise.
“Like you’re any better?” The accusation ripped from my throat. “You’ll fuck anything that breathes, anyone that gives you the time of day.”
I saw the flicker in his eyes. The playful glint vanished, replaced by a storm cloud. The muscles in his jaw tightened. He righted himself.
“At least I don’t pretend I’m not a slut," he said. "At least I own what I am. Unlike some people.”
The words were a calculated strike, aimed at the softest, most vulnerable part of me.
The part I thought I’d finally armored.
“You’re not even out to your family,” I shot back.
The words left my mouth before I could stop them, cold and precise. They hung in the air between us, a toxic cloud in the humid, sweat-soaked atmosphere.
The change in Javi was instantaneous. The fury vanished from his face, draining away to leave a hollow, slack-jawed shock. His lips parted, but no sound came out. The deep brown of his eyes, moments ago blazing with indignation, now looked like two dark, empty holes.
He looked… hurt.
Without another word, he turned.
He didn't storm away. He just moved, a mechanical shove through the pulsating mass of bodies, his shoulders slumped.
Asa stared at me, his hazel eyes wide with a horrified disbelief. The music swelled, but his voice cut through it, sharp and condemning. “You know how his brother is. How could you say that?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He shook his head once, a gesture of profound disappointment, and then plunged into the crowd after Javi.
Suddenly, I was alone.
The bodies that had felt like a warm, anonymous embrace now felt like obstacles.
“Fine,” I muttered to the empty space where my friends had been. “Fuck you both.”
I turned my back on the dance floor and shoved my way toward the glowing red EXIT sign.
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