Like A Practical Joke (if you take out the punch line)
And from the brilliant dizziness that's suddenly washing over him, Jeremy can tell that Dan was not kidding earlier, when he said he was drunk, and tired, and so hot; but he continues to wonder still if this is just one of those jokes. He wonders what got him into that situation, of being the only thing to entertain Danny and keep him awake long enough to get him home without pissing himself or passing out.
The first kiss felt inevitable. The second was really just left behind, just another part of the first kiss. So were numbers three, four, five; until he stopped counting and began to run his tongue over his own swollen lips. He's twenty-eight years old and has never kissed a man. In fact, things are getting pretty serious between him and his girlfriend.
He attempts to push Danny off, but the latter is already in the process of moving up a level: he pushes Jeremy onto the bed and straddles him. Jeremy makes a vague attempt at remembering when they got to Danny's apartment, and when he began to lead a porn movie lifestyle. One minute, two, three minutes: soon, someone will break in and start beating him on the head with a dildo.
(They fuck, yes, until they both pass out: Danny, drifting into an alcohol-induced haze of sleep, and Jeremy, finding sleep the only way to shut away the intensity and guilt of this act his rabbi would refer to as sodomy. Jeremy's is a restless sleep, and doesn't last long; three hours later he's already falling on the floor as he tries to put his shoes and pants on at the same time. He goes out into the street, which is just now starting to wake up. He lets out a relieved sigh, because he knows the street doesn't care about anything that happened last night.)
Jeremy goes to work, shaved and clean and clad in fresh-smelling clothes, without even having the decency in him to be late. He gets his coffee and muffin and kiss from Natalie, plus a concerned question on why his eyes are red, the answer to which he manages to lie his way through. His manners blasˇ, he doesn't dare look into Danny's equally red eyes as their paths cross later.
He makes his way through standard rundown meetings, with Dana freaking out over mundane things like Chris and Will's tiffs and seemingly mundane things like Danny's red eyes. How, she asks, how do you suppose it would look to our viewers if one of our anchors has his eyes bleeding all over the studio? (She then orders someone to get Dan some eye drops.) And really, by the time of the show, Dan's eyes are considerably decent-looking, Jeremy gathers from Dana's self-satisfied tone as she talks to Natalie.
(He tries to act as though it doesn't bother him that he knows what one half of the show's anchoring team looks like naked).
At night, between Natalie's feminine sheets and Natalie's feminine body, he feels her achingly familiar features and looks at her lovingly comforting eyes. They make love, and he can't help thinking of alcohol and dizziness; of Danny's soft skin, reddening to Jeremy's gentle bite. He tries not to think of what could've happened had he stayed this morning, but he just can't help himself.