Boy Toy

The party is in full swing when Marshall and Sebastian arrive at 9:45.

The music can be heard from the next town over, Marshall is pretty sure, and he can feel his eardrums imploding. He reaches out and grabs Sebastian’s hand with a grin and they wander inside. There’s a cloud of cigarette smoke the two are forced to pass through as soon as they open the door and the music intensifies times ten. People are everywhere, dancing, grinding, standing, sitting, talking, and being social.

Marshall feels just the littlest bit claustrophobic but can’t help but smile when he feels Sebastian’s mouth on his ear, whispering that he’ll be fine and not to freak out. “Let’s get a beer!” he shouts and then the two thread their way into the cramped kitchen. Sebastian gives up trying to keep his death-grip on Marshall’s leading hand, so instead, he reaches for Marshall’s belt loops and smirks when he sees the back of the younger boy’s neck going red.

-

It takes an hour and a half and four red plastic cups of flat, warm keg beer before Marshall absolutely cannot stand it in the packed house. He drags Seb up off the threadbare couch where the older had been attempting to talk to a possible lesbian couple who couldn’t keep their hands off each other, and forces him out into the frigid night filled with crisp November air.

Marshall’s heated cheeks become cool to the touch in a matter of seconds and he lets Sebastian wrap his warm, hoodie-covered arms around his small, shaking frame. “I think I’m claustrophobic,” he murmurs as he lets his head fall back against Sebastian’s shoulder.

“Probably,” the taller boy responds, placing a kiss to the top of Marshall’s mess of brown hair and glancing up into the glittering Maine sky.

“Marshall, how do you feel about me?” Sebastian asks, his voice just over a whisper. He’s feeling a little melancholy and lethargic, something about the night, the beer, and the party just throwing him down. Sebastian goes through these moods sometimes, where he feels worthless and desolate.

Tonight, he’s not sure why because he’s with Marshall and he should be happy, but he just fucking can’t be.

Marshall twists around in Sebastian’s tight grip around his tiny waist and looks the tattooed boy in the eye for a fraction of a second before he loses his nerve and gazes at the night sky, too.

“You render me speechless most of the time, Seb,” he whispers and has to fight the urge to hide his face. Sebastian emits a loud, artificial laugh and lets his eyes drop from the starry sky to land on Marshall’s face.

“Do you mean that in a good way?” he questions quietly with a smile on his face but a slight hopelessness in his voice.

“In the best way possible,” Marshall answers.

Thoughts are flooding his mind at a million times a second, because he’s never, not once, heard any tone except for happiness in Sebastian’s voice.

Sebastian is withdrawn and he’s upset and he feels like crying. Sebastian is fucked up, he didn’t take his medicine, and he missed Benton’s birthday.

He lets his arms fall from Marshall’s waist and falls to the ground gracelessly. Marshall is inwardly freaking out, but Sebastian is outwardly freaking out, so Marshall decides to suck up his awkwardness and help his… whatever it is that Sebastian is to him.

“Seb, what’s wrong?” he murmurs as he bends to sit next to the tanned boy, who is now seconds away from crying.

Sebastian shrugs and falls back into the cold, half-frozen ground and sniffs loudly, resulting in a failed attempt to keep the tears in his eyes and not on his face.

“I’m messed up. I’ve messed up. Everything is so fucked right now. Except you, you’re not fucked up. Nothing is right and all I can do is wrong and I just… I feel so fucking worthless, Marshall.” The words fly out of his mouth like fucking projectile vomit and then he’s just silent, as if afraid of the next cascade of unintelligent and weak words that’ll fly from his dry mouth.

The moment is long enough for Marshall to open and close his mouth a few thousand times without emitting a sound, like a fish on dry land and then Sebastian is spewing again.

He’s telling Marshall everything: the medicine, the depression, the Bipolar disorder, Benton, Benton’s birthday, Benton’s death day, how it was his fault that Benton died.

Sebastian talks until his throat hurts and both he and Marshall are crying. Marshall is still rendered speechless, so instead of saying anything reassuring, he just leans in and presses a kiss –their first—to Sebastian’s dry lips. He mumbles a million and one apologies, then stands and pulls Sebastian up by a hand.

“Let’s go get drunk, Seb,” he whispers because he simply cannot think of anything better to do in this situation.

Marshall wipes at the older boy’s eyes and gives him a soft smile and presses another chaste kiss to the other’s lips then they intertwine their hands tightly before entering the smoke thick house.

Before Marshall can take single sip of the stomach-upsetting alcohol in the keg, his phone vibrates. An alarm, set for 1:55, the time that he needs to be leaving, is ringing and Marshall grimaces before a strike of genius hits.

Quickly, he types up a short message that states: “Mom, Auden is wasted, crying, and heartbroken, Zach’s cheating again. I’m staying the night with her and my phone’s dying. Love you!”

He shuts his phone off and then gulps down half the suds-less beer in a matter of seconds, grinning when he feels Sebastian’s heavy hand hooks itself into Marshall’s front pocket.

The second that the younger boy spots the two full bottles of vodka leaning up against the cabinets, he has an idea. He grabs the two glass bottles and yanks Sebastian’s slow and lazy body up the stairs and into the first unoccupied room he can find.