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Matt blinks lazily at the ceiling, arm thrown over his head on the pillow and sheets tangled around his legs. It rained a few hours ago, and the breeze that comes in through the crack in the window smells like wet asphalt and garbage. The fire escape right outside is rusted through in places, and it rattles almost inaudibly every time the subway passes under the road below. He's got work in a couple hours, and Peter's bed is a piece of shit that belongs in a landfill, but he stays right where he is, sated and warm and listening to Peter muttering to himself where he kneels by the foot of the bed.
Now and then he picks up one of his cameras—there are five of them; most are digital cameras, but Matt can smell the bitter chemical stink of film on some of them—and pokes at it, pressing buttons and opening it up.
He leaves in six hour. He hasn't been a photojournalist in years, but an old friend from when he worked in the Bugle called him, and Peter's many things, and one of them is a sucker. He's vaguely anxious about the whole thing, but most of his complaining is for fun and for show: Matt's been letting the words wash right over him for the last forty minutes or so.
It's fine. His participation isn't needed, it's barely wanted. Matt yawns. His toes are just brushing the edge of the bed, and when he carefully stretches out his legs they go over. Peter snorts softly. His long fingers pull on Matt toe, and then he's shifting, starts putting some of the cameras away in one of the boxes under his bed.
The train rumbles north underground. It happens every three minutes or so, a faraway echo that Matt can feel all over his body if he focuses.
Click.
Matt opens his eyes and sits up on the bed. Peter's standing across from him, right in front of the bed. He lowers his hands.
"I think that was the last one," he says. He's not talking to Matt but to himself. He checks something in the camera. "Yeah. It was."
Matt's always liked the clicking and clacking of older machinery. Old cars, old trains. Old heating water pumps and old TVs and transistors and record players. He's never been able to quite make up his mind about why exactly he likes them: nostalgia? sheer aesthetic enjoyment? the fact that they talk louder and clearer than most modern technology?
"Did you take a picture of me?" Matt half-smiles. Peter's pulse picks up: he's vaguely embarrassed.
"Maybe?" Matt raises his eyebrows, unimpressed; Peter clears his throat. "Sorry." He isn't, not really.
"You know you can never have that film developed, right?"
"I've always done that myself," Peter replies distractedly. He's still looking down at the camera in his hands. He steps on bare feet over last night's clothes and takes a seat on the edge of the bed, close enough Matt can feel his warmth like a caress all along his thigh. "I taught myself."
Matt reaches for the camera with his right hand, and after an instant of hesitation Peter lets him have it. It's heavier than he expected.
"Wait. Let me—" Peter takes the camera back. Another click. Something being winded up—rustling plastic. The back of the camera pops up, and Peter fishes out the roll of film, places it on the bedside table. "Here. All yours."
"You don't trust me to not—mess up the film?" Matt asks, mostly joking.
"I don't not trust you." That's fair.
Matt's fingers feel clumsy in a way he's no longer used to, but not for long. His father used to have an old camera. He vaguely remembers it from back when he was in middle school, before the accident. They took it with them every time they went to the beach on Coney Island in the summer, and it came out during Christmas and at birthdays. It stopped for a while after the accident, but soon enough it made its come back. High school graduation, first day of university.
It was—newer, smaller. It felt cheaper. Matt still remembers the feeling of its smooth plastic casing under his fingers, the almost oily texture of the shutter. He thinks he sold it along with everything else when his father died and he moved out. He doesn't know what happened to the pictures, or to the albums his father kept them in.
"It used to be my uncle's," Peter says suddenly. "First camera I ever used. I had to teach myself how it worked."
Matt hands it back. Peter places it on the rickety bedside table, next to the film, to their phones and the bottle of lube and Peter's shitty bedside lamp, all of it warring for space on the narrow table the same way everything seems to be in conflict with itself in Peter's shithole of a Manhattan studio. For what he's paying he'd be able to afford a relatively nicer place in any of the outer boroughs, but he's always lived in the city, and he refuses to move out.
"I dropped it from a rooftop when I was—I don't know. Eighteen, nineteen." Peter sounds vaguely fond, in that way he sounds every time he talks about his younger self. Like he's talking about someone else.
"But it still works?"
"Yeah, because I fixed it. Almost had a heart attack—it was the only camera I owned for a very long time. I found the pieces I needed on Ebay and then I had to beg some guy in Wisconsin to post them to me, it fucking sucked."
Long fingers on Matt's ankle. Peter's thumb rubs distracted circles on his ankle joint, and Matt finds himself relaxing into the touch. He listens to the tick-ticking of the city right outside the window.
"You looked—good. The light's weird today, but I think got it."
"The clouds?"
"Yeah. Everything's gray and heavy and humid, and the sun's still very low, and it's pretty dark in here. You were lying right in the only spot of light in the whole place. And you looked good in it."
He says it so matter-of-factly.
"I forgot about that roll. I wonder what's in it." That's a lie. He knows: he just doesn't want to talk about it. Not at all, or maybe just not with Matt.
"Why did you stop?"
"Why did I stop what? Taking pictures? Working for the Bugle?"
Matt nods. Peter doesn't respond at first. He sighs and pushes at him until he rolls over, leaves him room to lie down on the bed as well. Peter's hair is still wet from his shower, and he smells clean and warm and good. He places his head on Matt's shoulder, damp curls tickling the sensitive skin under his arm, bare arm against Matt's ribcage.
"It was never supposed to be a—a career. Back when I started I figured out I'd do it for a while until I found a better, proper job," Peter begins. "I wasn't very good at it, and for a while I didn't see the point of getting better, because I knew Jameson would buy my pictures anyway."
"Do you like it?"
"I guess." Matt scoffs, and he feels Peter shrug in response. "I don't know if I like it or if I like being good at it. And believe me, Matty: by now, I am pretty damn good."
"And humble, too."
"Buddy, it's too bad no one's ever gonna see that picture I took of you." Matt can hear the smile in his voice.
He tugs on his hair, and Peter turns his head, bites him softly in the bicep. Wet, soft mouth; and then, his teeth, not quite straight, the sharp point of a fang. His breath smells like coffee and sleep.
He needs to leave. The clock's ticking; he should have never stayed the night. Matt feels daring, reckless. It's stupid, but he can't help it, and he loves it.
"Because you made me look so good?"
A soft laugh. Peter shifts in the bed, his mattress creaking threateningly under their combined weight.
"Sure," he lies. His mouth on Matt's throat, under his jaw. Matt closes his eyes and breathes through it. Peter is on him, over him. Want is a tide, and it makes him stupid. It always has. He loathes it and loves it and Peter is greedy for it, dragging it out of him with his long fingers and his soft mouth and the terrible strength in his hands. "Fucked out in my bed is a good look."