I always loved the way that he looked t me, as though I were the only person in the room he could even see. I loved that half the people who even tried to talk to him were outright ignored, not even worth note, but I, I was always noticed. He had a way of making someone feel like the only person in the world. He was too smart, and too quiet, and no one knew what to think of him. I loved him at first sight.

We'd met at some boring party or other, where he sat alone in the corner, smoking, drinking, and apparently, doing a bit of homework. People bumped into each other all around us, laughing drunkenly, but there he was, in pristine silence, unbreakable.

Throughout the night, everyone at the party became terribly drunk, and in the early hours of the morning, only he and I remained awake, though well in our cups. He was a genius, with dark questioning eyes. I'd wanted so badly to latch onto him, to drag him home with me, but he seemed… too proper.

We awoke toppled upon each other in a heap, when the campus church bells rang for noon. All around us, on the floor and the couch we lay on, lying open, upside down, pages dog-eared, were books.

We changed our classes around after that, dropping trivial things, and fitting our schedule together. No one else I'd met so far had been able to keep up with me, and the opportunity of a brilliant study partner was incredible, I was able to push for things I'd otherwise have left undone.

Often, one of us would awake at the strangest hour of morning, in the lost and hidden time somewhere between midnight and six a.m. from sleeping at the table where we studied. And regardless where we studied, our roommates hated us for it, so it seemed only reasonable to room together instead.

Time spent with Isaak became a blur, we attended class only as necessary, already challenging everything our professors taught, one step ahead of curriculum. I stayed in to be with him, our philosophies outweighing the value of the rest of society.

Sometimes he would catch me staring at his hands, while he gestured and smoke lazily rose from his cigarette. When our eyes would meet, his would be unreadable, concealed and unwilling to accept me. Late at night, when I'd be tired of the constant studying, he'd look up at me, over the top of his reading glasses, and I would be shocked from a spark deep inside of me. I would always sit back down, closer to him, and pick up the reading again.

In our third year, we found ourselves in the smallest and most advanced classes yet, but nothing was a challenge anymore. Everything was just too simple. We could drink all night, sleep a half hour, and succeed at whatever we did. We were too perfect for each other, too perfect together.

We'd just completed our finals, and Isaak had agreed to take me out to celebrate. The pubs were all too crowded, the streets were raucous with merrymaking. Before we even knew it we were drunk, staggering arm in arm through the streets.

That was the night I realized just how important to me my dear friend really was.

In a pub I'd run into some friends of mine who didn't know Isaak at all, and we'd ended up going to a house party with them. That night remains a haze to me, but the morning after will always stay in my mind.

I woke up sprawled in a bathtub, a mysterious pair of men's undergarments on my head. I slumped out of the tub, and crawled toward the slightly open door, the promise of morning light on the other side. My head spun, and I threw up against the wall. At length I was able to move again. I used a counter to pull myself up, and looked into the mirror. What I saw was like a mockery of me, a vision of myself I couldn't have imagined.

I wore preposterous makeup, and all across my face and chest I was covered in red lipstick kisses. I had a strangers tie around my neck, and boxers on my head, my own shirt and pants missing.

I staggered into the hall, the world spinning around me, and I stumbled room to room until I found Isaak, laying naked in the arms of a man I didn't know.

I was devastated, but I shouldn't have been. I felt betrayed, but knew I wasn't.

I never found my own clothes, so giving up, I merely pilfered a set that fit from the floor. I waited for Isaak to wake up, but it was the other man I saw leave first. I went back to the room, and he still slept there, naked and unknowing, probably as lost the previous evening as I was.

Even while I dressed him and pulled him to and fro, he never said a word, once or twice mumbling some drunken half dead nonsense. In the end, I managed to get us a cab, and escape the scene of our crimes without Isaak ever truly opening his eyes. Once home, I slowly peeled the foreign clothes from his body, afraid that waking in someone else's clothes may be too awkward for him to handle. I threw the strange clothes out, cursing them, but praising the thin body they'd hidden from me.

Isaak didn't even wake when I put him in his own night shirt and pants, and to bed, or while I took out a set of his customary black slacks, and one of his plain button up shirts, and tossed them on the floor as though they'd been drunkenly shed.

I took a bath and thought about Isaak's long fingered hands, fluttering against me. I caressed myself and pictured Isaak's eyes, piercing me, begging me to touch him. I imagined our bodies pressed together, my hands in his hair, but the closer I came to a climax the more enraged I became that some man-who knows who-had held my love last night, had taken what I'd always wanted, when I'd worked so hard, constantly trying to keep up with him, constantly trying to keep his attention on me.

I left the flat in a rage, and found myself in another pub, half the city away.

I staggered home in the rain, to find the flat empty. The clothes I'd planted on Isaak's floor were in the laundry, and everything was orderly as normal. I think I may have slept, but I could be mistaken.

Days passed where we would catch a glimpse of one another, coming or going from our place. I staggered around in a haze, convinced Isaak was seeing the man he'd met that night. I had no way to know what he remembered as I still had no recollection of that particular party.

I drank and drank some more, but it didn't help at all. My emotions became stronger, not weaker. I would think of Isaak, but it would become ruined, the scene burnt into my eyelids, and he would be gone, replaced by the man I'd seen him with.

I had become obsessed without ever knowing it, possessive as a lover, maybe more-so, because I'd never known that side of him. I had nonetheless devoted three years of my young life to him, the way he'd chosen to take me, as an intellectual equal. I had accepted that though, anything to be near him, and now-now he was being fucked by somebody I didn't even know. It was infuriating, and left alone, all I could do was think about it.

It was after about two weeks of barely seeing each other, except when Isaak came home to bathe and change his clothes, that I found myself in a familiar pub, but I couldn't place when I remembered it from.

I drank heavily, throwing my money on the bar, unable to stop, unable to think. I bought drinks for strangers, I tipped the bar-tender twice what she was worth, and all I wanted to do was be completely and irrevocably gone.

I stumbled into the alley, and leaned against the wall until the world stopped spinning so wildly. I pissed against the stone wall, as hundreds of other drunks had before, and stumbled toward the street. I saw him as he was going in. Isaak's lover, as I'd come to think of the man I'd found him with. There was a gorgeous woman on the man's arm, all diamond and gold, with empty eyes. I hated him, I hated them both.

I don't remember how I got home at all, but I remember climbing the stairs to the flat, and I remember seeing that the apartment next to ours was now vacant, garbage bags filling the hallway, and the door left open as if to say "Take whatever is left… Management."

I couldn't get my key in the doorknob, and I fell heavily against the frame. I was fumbling with the lock still when the door opened, and there stood Isaak, a curious look on his face. If he hadn't put his hand out to help me stand, maybe I wouldn't have done what I did.

I kicked the door shut behind me, and as it banged I saw Isaak and his lover, nestled together, two bodies becoming one. I fell into him, pinning him against the wall. His eyes showed alarm, but I kissed him before he could do or say anything. I wrapped my left hand in his hair, and my right arm around his shoulders, trapping him. He raised his hands as much as he could, and pushed at my stomach, squirming.

"What are you" Isaak moaned mid-sentence, "William, stop it," he moaned again, too excited too continue.

"I'll show you, you'll love it. I'm all you're ever going to need again." He clutched the buttons of his shirt, trying to get his hands between us, trying to slip away, so I just ripped it as hard as I could, and heard buttons flying everywhere.

Isaak began to panic. I tried to hold him still, just so I could show him, but he began to fuss immediately. I knew what I had to do.

I kissed him hard on the lips, then grabbed the waist of his trousers, and flipped him around, unintentionally smacking his face in the wall. I pulled his pants from him in a hurry, ripping them, as I awkwardly leaned against his back, smashing him face first into red bricks, trapping his arms like dying doves against his chest.

"Please William please don't please don't what are you doing?" Isaak always played hard to get, I knew that now-he moaned even as he tried to get away. I was rigid in my pants already, and for the first time in weeks I was in the now, I knew what was going on, and it was something that should have been for a long time.

I rubbed the head of my cock between Isaak's ass cheeks, and he started spasming wildly against me. He was so excited he sounded like he was crying. It was too erotic. I spit in my hand, and rubbed it up my length, and I pushed as solidly as I could, forcing myself fully into him.

It was beautiful. Isaak pushed against me for a moment, begging for more, and yelped when I pulled him tightly against me and thrust desperately into him. He pleaded and begged, and I knew he loved it, thrashing against the wall like that, forcing himself harder and harder upon me.

I didn't mean for us to lose our balance though, and slam to the ground. I landed on him with my full weight. He groaned and tried to climb to his knees, insinuating himself upon me, pushing me forward harder and harder. Our breaths came ragged in our throats, and now, I was sure of it, he was crying. Bawling, in fact. He'd given up trying to stay on his knees (or trying to get up), and lay with his face against the floor, both his arms still beneath him, tucking out at odd angles.

Isaak's moaning was so enticing, and so tempting. I gripped his hips and slammed into him, making him squeal in pleasure. I whispered in his ear, telling him what he meant to me, telling him how much I'd wanted to do this, for so long.

Somehow, he wriggled his right hand out from below him, and it was the sight of his long beautiful fingers futilely grasping at the tiled floor, that sent me over the edge. I grabbed his hand, and kissed his digits, while I poured my love into him, filling him.

I slumped upon him, breathing so hard my throat tasted raw. Moments ticked into minutes before I realized that Isaak was a complete wreck below me. He was murmuring, and incoherent, gasping and choking through sobs. I stared at him, uncomprehending. How could he not feel the same about what had just happened as I did?

As I pulled away from him, he shrieked, and I saw the blood.

My gut flipped as I looked at what I'd done, and I felt sick thinking that all along Isaak had been moaning in pain, not pleasure. The world rocked back and forth, and then crashed, smashing me to my knees by my rumpled unwilling lover. I tried to pull him into my arms, and caress his hair, but he whimpered and cowered away like a beaten dog.

In the ungodly aftermath of my crime, I sat appalled. Isaak shuddered and shook from sobs. I didn't know what to do, all I could think, all I could see, was losing him.

I tried to make everything better, but I could feel his hate for me now, his unwillingness to be near me. Even the next morning, when I smiled at him, he turned away coldly. I knew I'd destroyed us, I knew he was going to leave me.

I tried to show him my love, but he refused me, had no use for me. Things became awkward between us, and I knew that I would forever be alone with my love for him, that he hated me now. I couldn't be absolved, and I wouldn't be forgiven, so it was my own action that forced me away from him, that pushed me into the arms of as many lovers as I could find, that landed me with something I wanted to have more meaning than it did.