Owen has been struggling with addiction since he was a teenager, but it takes a DUI involving another vehicle for him to finally face his issues. The road to recovery is a rough one, and for Owen it's a journey made harder by bankruptcy, loneliness, and repressed memories.<br><br>His new apartment doesn't help either. It's small, worn, and hot as hell. The only way to reach it is a tedious stretch of stairs that seems like the final insult on top of a whole pile of misery.<br><br>Thankfully, the mess comes with one bright spot: intense, pretty Sebastian, who seems to have a knack for keeping his head up and finding the beauty in everything.

Forty-Two Stairs

As if the closeness of one body to another, the press of hand and light drag of fingertips where they rested on Owen’s chest, had no weight to the conversation at all. No, surely, Sebastian was just wondering if he’d showered. And the sky was, in fact, green. And the apartment was actually a well-stocked, butler-filled mansion. “Y-yes,” Owen’s tongue stumbled over his reply. “I’m clean.”


Owen licked his lips, coughed. “Um, Baba, this is getting weird—”


His reply must have had some kind of answer in it, though unnoticed by Owen himself, because Sebastian instantly leaned forward, closed the space between them, and pressed their lips together. Weird…Owen’s own voice woke inside his head to remind Owen, as his mouth shifted to accept angle and pressure. Strange, odd, peculiar, unusual; none of those come across as bad things to me.


Chapter 13