He would stumble into their room early in the morning, his blue eyes fuzzy from the coke and beer. He would flop down onto his bed, his strangled breathing echoing through the room. He would mumble, “sorry” then roll over and fall into a deep, booze-induced slumber.

And Lance would lie awake, only a few feet away, his fists clenched so hard that he could feel the blood running down his wrist. He would lie awake and he would hate the sleeping brunette who was so close and so far away, he would hate the beautiful man who was drenched in drugs and sex and liquor.

Sometimes Lance would come into the room and there would be like, ten people on the bed, wrapped and tangled and he could never tell where one began and the other ended and once Lance had seen the brunette lingering over a mirror, snorting white powder off the surface, staring into his own eyes like he was trying to inhale himself.

And the hate then would burn in Lance’s stomach, raging furiously and though he tried to drown it with tequila, the liquid just slid along his throat, hot and burning and poisonous and dripped into his heart.

Hate, hate, hate hate hate hatehatehate. The word ran across his mind and scalded his flesh and he wasn’t sure who he wanted to kill more, the brunette or himself.

He sat sometimes in silence, in the shadows, watching the brunette drown himself in booze and hating him, hating every second, watching the brunette drink himself into a stupor and then he’d creep out of the shadows and hiss, “I hate you.” and the words would swing around him and press into his chest and he would say it again and again as if the unconscious man on the bed could hear him.

“You know, man.” Chris once laughed drunkenly, leering at Lance from a safe distance. “Did you ever hear that saying? That one about hate not being the opposite of love?”

Lance had jumped to his feet, knocking over the Jack Daniels bottle in the process, his tongue thickened and heavy in his mouth from all the drinking. “Fuck you,” he hissed and had stumbled away, slamming the door behind him and slumping against the wall outside his door, his eyes blurry and so drunk he couldn’t tell if he was crying or just wishing he could.

And that night he had taken the brunette’s stash and dumped it all into the sink, washing it down the drain and watching the powder swirling around and around and thinking that the brunette would kill him if he found out, there was no doubt the brunette would kill him, would beat him to death because the brunette couldn’t survive without the coke.

And the next day he was slammed into a wall and long fingers encircled his throat. “You did it, I know it was you, where the fuck did you put it?” The brunette had screamed, screamed until his throat was raw and the others did nothing, they just stood and screamed at the brunette until Lonnie burst into the room and pried the brunette away.

Lance had long spidery marks on his neck for a week.

So when he saw the brunette in the hall, he couldn’t stop himself. “Found more coke yet?” He asked sweetly and his bass voice rolled through the hallway.

And he wasn’t sure, afterwards, what had really happened first.

All he knew that the hate had been boiling in his stomach and the brunette had jumped on him and suddenly they were all fists and nails and curse words, tumbling down the hallway, spitting and hissing and punching and flying through the air, hatred seeping from their mouths and their skin, hatred which was red and thick-hot-salty and fell in puddles on the floor.

They blended, they tangled knotted around each other, dripping fury, clinging embracing hating screaming raging loving jealousy coursing through their veins like fire and ice and salt on open wounds.

And when it was over they lay gasping and bleeding, side by side, so close and so far away, and Lance saw the brunette inhaling himself and the brunette saw Lance in the shadows.

“I hate you.” Lance whispered and his voice was raspy and raw and broken and the tears coursed down his face and blended with the blood spilling onto hardwood floors.

“I hate you too.” The brunette said calmly.

And Lance couldn’t breathe because the pain was ripping through his mind, exploding like fairy fireworks behind his eyelids, spinning him out of control.

And the world slowly faded to black.

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