Sugar Trip[Driam]

1. Belly-full

Through bent-up blinds is a world power-washed in an opportunistic auburn orange and all it says to Liam is hide.

The limp, listless sort of stillness within a wordless conversation corrodes his mind in tiny, teasing little bites. Life has been pirouetting like a spinning top that can't seem to stop or slow down and Liam doesn't know whether he's dead or if the devil himself is in his bedroom, plastered as can be.

A wilting summer's sky-high fever and all its ruby-red wrath writhes on Drew's flesh; molten, golden, and greedy. It burns and bruises, spit-roasts his skull and boils it just so the season can die without so much as a greeting or a goodbye.

What remains of him after the sinking of summer's teeth is suspended over the foot of Liam's bed, clacking away at a glow-in-the-dark keyboard in white gold.

Drew, with his downy, sugary, soft hair and his bleach-white designer kicks and his Cartier watch in Liam's bed at, like, five in the morning. Drew, with the bad ideas and the fake IDs in his pullover pocket.

Yeah, Drew. He was about as much a jinx as he was a blessing.

The garish glare of an early rising sun, hungry and hellish, bakes Liam through and through as sweat scrapes his skin, cooks him alive. He's in a crowding cauldron of intensifying heat, nothing short of feeling it, and has been spiraling from the second Drew set foot in his house.

He was fresh out of parting ways with Jake and had nothing but a heightened temper to show from it. Otherwise, Drew was as impartial as ever; big money and everyone knew it, with a trust in his trust-fund in every step and a dozen crystalline-colored credit cards in his wallet wherever he went. He sped in sports cars he didn't have the will to withstand driving school for, wouldn't look before he walked, and had an affinity for splurging his time talking to the equivalent ticking clocks.

Liam is wired, staring blankly at the rivets of his popcorn ceiling. He's a fly caught in a cobweb, just stuck there wondering if his spider's dead or simply waiting, watching, knowing.

Fraying, straying floral wallpaper, the smell of those cheap Pall Mall cigarettes his sister smokes sticking on the sofa- that's how his house is. It's more of a state of being than a lifestyle, really. Liam's parents were surgeons- busy ones. They could probably afford a better, newer house, but didn't have the time on them to move with. On the occasion his parents were home while Liam was awake, they were out like a light on the old faux-leather divan.

The sky was fool's gold and auburn-orange out the window when the world was just about to end- or the school year was about to start, pick your poison. Drew insisted on 'living' it through with a bottle or twelve of white wine at his side at all times and a week's worth of all-nighters on his laptop playing FPS games.

His parents have him kicked out while they polish their house spotless- some rich people potluck thing, Liam doesn't know. He doesn't give it any more mind than it is worth; Drew's parents didn't really like him anyways. His estate was something pretty, though; almost palatial in a way, with marble-white pillars and an overgrown mimosa copse a little further on north where the lawn gave way to a brush. The land was kind, save for the superficial look of it all, but Liam wouldn't be missing it.

Sluggishly, listlessly, aimlessly, he eyes the streamer casting flickering fractions of colors on his phone, a little out of sorts or maybe just short of bored. He'd been active in her chats for a couple months now, but still feels like a face in the crowd. Sucks, but whatever. She was nothing shy of a comely face and seemed pretty seasoned at the whole entertainment deal- could talk to herself for, like, hours without a splinter of silence. She was something like a gamer, too, just engaging enough to serve as fodder for Liam's empty brain.

She was still far from the prettiest face he's seen, though. Almost like nature needed to apologize for his downright repulsive personality, Drew's appearance contested only the work of gods. His eyes were intricately crafted, deathly dull against his tanner pallor, with dark, thick eyelashes that always seem to be sullenly squinted in a judgemental, venomous scowl.

He had this grungy sort of appeal, you know; messy, overgrown hair, dull doll-like eyes, tan, pacific skin subdued by staying inside for years on end. He used to do that like a rite, and still does when he's not out on the town shopping it up. Drew's a fabled measure of feminine and masculine, with rosy lips, and paper-white teeth and right now he's chewing grapefruit gum really loudly. So absurdly pretty.

"Liam," Drew starts, slurring, and Liam levelly thinks in passing that he's about to be admonished for his thoughts. Drew just strikes as the mind-reading type.

"Hm?" Replies Liam.

"What's wrong with your fuckin' air conditioning?" He's not trying to be rude. Probably.

"Oh, that? Yeah, my parents haven't been home long enough to fix it. Been out since May," Liam murmured, lamely studying the streaming funnel of flickering colors from his phone. Just a bone to chew on while trying to keep his mind away from Drew.

"Well, fix it. I'm fucking melting."

"If I could, I would," Liam hums.

"For fuck's sake."

And now Drew's shirt's off.

Liam wonders since when did all his sentences include profanities? Maybe it's a new phase of his. Liam passingly glances down at Drew, shirtless and shooting up strangers in his game with a drunken slur in his speech.

Liam'd be mistaken to say he didn't feel a good degree of guilty about it, how Drew was so lax and lackadaisical around him in complete oblivion. Oblivion to his crush. Well, okay. Crush is a strong word.

He liked Drew only fleetingly- in passing glances and the lukewarm appreciation for a pretty face. To be fair, Drew was prettier than any girl he'd seen. Liam liked twitch streamers in the same manner; carefree, non-committal, superficial. But something about Drew and Drew specifically prevents him from finding someone new and sticking with them. But, you know, it was beginning to become quite the problem.

No matter what he did with his interest, it would never douse- burning it, writing it in a letter, punching it into his wall. Sometimes it even went away just for it to show up on his doorstep again like a building, festering disease. It constricts his heart, pierces his veins, and now he's bleeding on the inside without a single symptom to show for it. And now every moment in which Drew is nearby has the ammo to shoot Liam dead with, but he sort of looks like the look of war scars.

It was inexorable, he justifies, reclining to watch Drew before him, not-so-silently tapping away at his keyboard. Liam looks over his shoulder, following the 'argument' Drew was having with other players fly through the chat. (Argument is a strong word since Drew was only saying 'L,' 'ratio,' and a mixture of other drunken, trite remarks in relation to obscenities and the word 'bitch')
Liam shuffles in the summer furnace, dragging his attention back to the twitch streamer on his phone, already a couple hours in and draining his battery like no tomorrow. He doesn't even notice it's fading til it drops on him. The screen dies, dark and idle, and who he sees staring back in its reflection is someone he's not. Someone he doesn't agree with, someone evasive and cowardly. Someone dishonest.

"Drew." The word escapes like some intrusive thought; one that probably would've been better off dead and buried. Liam's mouth says everything it knows his brain wouldn't allow.

"The fuck you want?" It isn't personal. He's just drunk out of his mind. It's what a bender does to you.

"I like you."

"So does everyone. What's your point?" Drew says and he's slurring.

"Nevermind," Liam murmurs casually and he's really starting to see why underage drinking is illegal. Drew's something close to tolerable otherwise, but drunk Drew is just an overdose of ill-will. Liam exhales, resolves that today's not the day to let the friendship explode. If Drew were anything more than a jerk headed for the floor, he was straight. Liam didn't really know what he was expecting. Maybe it was just the curiosity of what Drew would say if he found out. A little bit of intrusive thinking, Liam guesses.

And Liam starts to think he's better off breaking all his bones punching any signs of life out of his bedroom wall.