Archive of Our Own ^beta

Aaron turns his head and sees the red glow of another sunk goal light up Janie like a Christmas tree. His knuckles have split underneath the fabric of his gloves, and his knee has been giving out since he fell two plays ago. He glances at Wymack as he goes back to starting position and sees nothing but grim determination in the man’s eyes. Not calling it off, then. This fucking drill is going to kill him, and where will the Foxes be then? 

“Do you want to keep your backliners?” Aaron hollers, slamming his racquet into the floor. He’s out of breath, run ragged by the offensive line. Every muscle on his body has a previously undiscovered tendon that he’s somehow strained. Jesus, his feet—  

“Suck it up,” Wymack says, which Aaron expected, “and catch the ball every once in a while.” Then he blows the whistle, and they’re back to it. 

The drill they’re running today is brutal, and worse for the backliners on purpose: two strikers, one backliner, one goalie, all hinged around the idea that a single backliner needs to be good enough to defend three out of every six balls thrown between two strikers working together to bear down on him. Every sunk goal is another mark on the backliner who let it happen. Even if Janie isn’t their best goalie (she isn’t; they have Renee), Aaron is still meant to hold the line. It would be fine—it would probably be mostly fine—if he wasn’t fighting to clear passes thrown by Kevin and Neil. Kevin and Seth would have been bad enough, but Kevin hasn’t run a single practice without Neil by his side since they found him sleeping in the locker room of some country high school a year ago. Aaron should have known. 

When the drill was first suggested, he’d wondered if it was a Raven exercise Kevin had brought with him when he’d flown the Nest. Insider secrets, the only leg up they’d get with the Ravens coming into their bracket after the year of convincing it took to make it happen. (Petitions, signs. Fake posters with Kevin and Riko’s faces plastered on either side of a VERSUS.) They’d never run a drill that specific before, picking a number of shots to defend and then demanding a player defend that many before they were let off the court. Watching Kevin’s mouth form a crease when Aaron’s racquet skims past the ball again, he knows this is Raven work. 

“Sorry, fuck,” he mumbles, stumbling to a stop as he watches the ball land in Janie’s net. If they don’t quit soon, his knee is going to do more than bruise: it’s going to take him off the starting line-up. 

“Don’t apologize,” Kevin snaps across the court. “Do better.” 

Aaron flips him off with his free hand, and Kevin scowls as he gets ready to restart the play. Aaron turns back around in time to see Neil’s shit-eating grin as he backs up across the court, orange bandana fluttering in his hair. Wymack blows the whistle. 

Aaron starts running for Neil the second he sees the ball leave Kevin’s racquet. Fuck waiting for the ball; Aaron knows Kevin, and Kevin shoots it against the court wall so that Neil is in the perfect spot to receive it on the other side, the same trick he’s been using all day. Neil smashes the ball the second it touches his net, and Aaron gets there just in time to block it with his own, thank God, earning a wolf-whistle from the other side of the court and a chipper, “There we go, baby!” that can only have come from Allison. 

“Focus on your own drill, Reynolds!” Kevin shouts as the ball bounces towards him, and Aaron doesn’t need to see Allison to know that she’s flipping him off too. He hears Kevin’s grumbled, “Why is that everyone’s reaction?” and decides he’ll buy Allison’s food as a thank you the next time Dan forces the team into another group dinner. 

“Nice,” he hears behind him. When he looks at Neil, his blue eyes are shining bright, and Aaron wants to smack him for it. How can he still be so on? All he’s done is run around the court like a goddamn maniac for hours. They’ve been doing this drill for so long now that Aaron can feel the blisters on his ankles forming, and he’s not even a fucking striker. Where does Neil have the energy to still be annoying? “Kevin telegraphed that play a little bit, didn’t he?” 

“Fuck off,” Aaron hisses, tossing the ball onto Neil’s chest plate, which is as much an answer as any. Neil grabs it and runs back to his side of the court with a laugh that sticks in Aaron’s ears. 

A whistle. Again. Aaron misses the next shot, slamming his shoulder into the court wall; he misses the one after that, and Janie isn’t ready to guard it, scoring Neil another point; he does grab the third one by some miracle, and the fourth after that, earning him a swift pat on the shoulder from Kevin before they fall back in line; the fifth he fumbles, racquet at the wrong angle, and the ball bounces out of the cup before he can catch his footing, allowing Neil to shoot it into the upper right corner of the goal; the sixth is the same as the first. Two out of six. Not good enough. They go again. 

At the start of the next play, Kevin shares a look with Neil across the court. Someone who hasn’t played with them for a year probably wouldn’t even catch it—but Aaron’s spent more time with them than he has with anyone else. When Kevin snatches the ball and sends it Neil’s way, Aaron is there, legs burning, arms shaking as their racquets make contact. Neil tries to step around him, feinting right, but Aaron doesn’t fall for it. He slams into Neil again, knocking the ball loose. 

They grapple for a moment, and Aaron’s shoulder gives; he twists away, but he uses the momentum to reach down and pick the ball up from the floor, and he flings it up-court, out of their half. 

“Good!” Wymack says as Neil runs to grab the ball. “Now do that six more times.” 

He blocks the next pass; loses the third, and the fourth, and the fifth; the sixth, he manages to snake out from under Kevin, slamming into him and sending the ball careening into the wall on Nicky’s side of the court. When he’s reliably able to do that—three out of six, the way the Ravens apparently do it—eighteen more plays have been run, and he lands on his palms on the floor and ducks his head between his arms, breathing hard. 

“Alright,” Wymack shouts, clapping his hands once. “Let’s call it here!” 

Aaron has no clue what anyone else around him has been doing, but he imagines that it can’t be worse than the practice he just had. Nicky’s wheeze as he passes by is as much of a reassurance as anything, and he feels a set of warm hands squeeze his shoulders before they’re gone. 

“You did good,” Dan assures with a small smile when Aaron looks up at her. “Thanks for being a good sport about it.” Aaron doesn’t have it in him to say anything, so he just nods at her and bends his head back down, still trying to catch his breath. If he has to do another practice like this, he’ll die. He will die, on this court, and they will have to carve his name onto the floor where he fell. What the fuck do the Ravens even do in the Nest? 

Before long, Kevin arrives to stand in front of Aaron. He knows that it’s Kevin because of the annoyed exhale. 

“Your Raven drill can suck it,” Aaron mutters, gasping, looking up at him. “I did it. Fuck you.” 

Kevin’s unobstructed gaze is cool as he stares down at Aaron. “A Raven would have blocked all six shots.” 

With that, Kevin walks off the court. Aaron’s eyes follow him until they can’t. 

“Don’t worry about him,” Neil says. Aaron looks over at him, sweat plastering loose tendrils of auburn hair to the sides of his face. Aaron wonders where his bandana went and finds it clutched in his hands, dripping and discolored. Neil’s mouth angles up into a smile when he realizes he has Aaron’s attention. “He’s just pissed that you blocked his last shot on goal.” 

“Is it true?” Aaron asks, then continues when Neil just stares at him expectantly. “That the actual drill is six out of six?” He tries to imagine it: Ravens lined up on the court, going and going and going. 

Neil shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t know. I’m a Fox.” 

Before Aaron can say anything, Neil pokes his racquet with the toe of his shoe. “Come on. He’ll be even more pissed if we don’t hurry up.” 

Aaron picks himself up off the ground and heads to the locker room. 

🦊

Aaron waits for Neil on the bench between the lockers. He pulls out his phone while he sits, thumbing through his messages. One from a girl in his microbiology class asking if he wants to study together. Two from an unknown number trying to recruit him to the ROTC on campus, which he promptly deletes. His last message to Katelyn stares up at him, gray and untouched: Can we talk? And his thread with Andrew is more of the same, a wall of texts from Aaron uninterrupted by replies. Something in him deflates, and he closes his phone again, slipping it into his pocket. 

He’d hoped... he wasn’t sure what he’d hoped for. That Katelyn had messaged him back. That Andrew had seen the desperation Aaron hadn’t been very good at hiding and decided to bridge the gap himself. Andrew not replying to him wasn’t new, though. 

Katelyn not replying was. 

The sound of the shower cutting off pulls Aaron out of his head with enough time that he can get to his feet and tug impatiently on the strap of his duffel bag before Neil rounds the corner fully dressed. His hair isn’t dry, but that’s par for the course, too. 

Neil had never asked Aaron to stick around in the locker room while he took his lonely showers. It had simply made sense for Aaron to wait that first time since he was the one showing Neil the ropes, and it had become a habit. It kept Neil on time to know that someone was waiting on him, and it gave Aaron breathing room to recoup without being worried about holding conversations with people he didn’t really want to talk to. Kevin and Nicky couldn’t leave them behind: Aaron was the one with the car and the keys. That was another benefit—there really wasn’t any other time Aaron could make Kevin wait. 

Neil rubs a towel over his hair quickly before tossing it into the dirty bin. His own bag is already on him. “Ready?” 

Aaron nods and follows him out. Katelyn’s lack of a response lingers in the back of his mind, pressing in at all sides, and he’s suddenly glad for the company when he finds Nicky and Kevin leaning against the car. It’s not the nicest thing, but it is paid for, thanks to his mother’s life insurance payout. Thinking about her on top of everything else is too much—Aaron refuses, pushing her memory away. 

“Finally,” Nicky sighs, pretending to faint as Aaron unlocks the vehicle. “If I have to hold a racquet ever again, it will be too soon.” 

“We’re back tomorrow,” Kevin says, slipping into the passenger seat. 

“I know.” Nicky groans then, long and drawn out and dramatic, holding onto the w. Aaron glances into the rearview mirror and finds him draped across Neil’s lap, flailing like a man drowning. “I think my arm’s going to fall off.” 

Neil pushes at Nicky’s shoulders, shifting him up the back of the empty middle seat. “You didn’t even do as much as Aaron.” 

“How would you know?” Nicky says, pouting. He pulls himself the rest of the way and buckles. Aaron finally presses his foot on the gas, easing them out of the parking spot at the front row of the stadium lot. “You were busy murdering my cousin on the court.” 

“Two out of six,” Kevin supplies, and Aaron has to suppress the surge of pride that rises up his throat. He’d been so focused. It was nice, to know that it meant something. 

Nicky sighs, defeated. “Rude.” Aaron glances up in time to catch Neil’s wink in the mirror. 

The drive back to the dorm isn’t long, but Kevin manages to make it feel that way when he begins to recite the litany of mistakes he witnessed Aaron and Nicky make while they were on the court. Footwork, racquet work, falls, slip ups, balls that they should have protected their goalies from. And Aaron can’t be mad at him, not really, because he’s right: Aaron played sloppy. Between the break after his grueling finals, his internship over the summer, all the shit with Katelyn, all the other shit with Andrew, and the start of fall classes, he hasn’t been practicing like he should. Something had to fall through the cracks—Aaron hadn’t wanted it to be Exy, but he hadn’t wanted it to be anything else, either. 

It hadn’t mattered either way. 

Aaron pulls the car into the first empty parking spot he can find. “Out,” he says, taking his keys from the ignition as soon as he can raise the bar for the parking brake. “I’m tired of talking about Exy.” 

“Blasphemy,” he hears Neil say behind him, and he smiles to himself, dropping it before Neil can see him doing it. It’s been a long day, and Neil can be funny when he isn’t stumbling after Kevin. Kevin scowls, and Aaron holds the door open for everyone to enter the dorm before him. 

When they make it to their floor, Nicky turns early, following Kevin into his room with Matt and Seth. There are two rooms for the guys, each split into three; Nicky’s room is with Aaron and Neil. Aaron shoots him a look and is met with, “What, Matt got a new video game. I want to see if I can con him into letting me play it.” 

Aaron shrugs and feels Neil brush past him to open the door. “Whatever,” he says, following after Neil. “I’ve got homework anyway.” 

Nicky gives Aaron a mock salute, something that makes him think of Andrew, a vision swift and harsh, that first time they’d ever met. Aaron shuts the door a little harder than he strictly needs to. It reminds him of his wall of messages, and that reminds him of Katelyn’s message thread, which reminds him of the reason she won’t answer his calls, and—and he’s not doing this right now. He’s not. He has a microbiology test on Friday that he wants to ace. He’s keeping his 4.0 GPA, whatever it takes. 

Except. Well. He hasn’t quite figured out how he’s going to do that without Katelyn, is the thing. 

He passes by Neil rummaging in the drawers of their kitchen for something, and he doesn’t wait to see if he needs any help. He’s never been any good in a kitchen anyway; when Tilda couldn’t cook for him anymore, he simply lived off drive-thru bags and food deliveries and the offerings of strangers. Before Andrew found him overdosing next to his mother’s swollen corpse, it had been almost two years since he’d entered an actual grocery store. 

Besides, they have an agreement. 

His microbiology textbook is waiting open on his desk for him when he enters the bedroom. He grabs the yellow highlighter from the crease between the pages and picks up where he left off, throwing himself back into his work. The symptoms of rocky mountain spotted fever include but are not limited to... 

Katelyn would have cracked a joke by now; Aaron can hear her laughter in his head like a song. As she is not here, there is no laughter, and there is no joke to precede it. There is only this: Aaron with a too-new highlighter in his hand and a stack of half-finished index cards nearby with handwriting that isn’t his. 

Aaron doesn’t know how long he sits there, highlighter poised over a list of symptoms that sound just like every set of symptoms, before a knock on his open door startles him into blinking. 

It’s just Neil. “Hungry?” he asks, bowl in hand. Aaron almost tells him no until the smell hits him. 

“Won’t Kevin freak out about the calories?” Aaron asks even as he takes the chicken mac and cheese from Neil. Kevin sent everyone an email before the semester started of vices they were allowed to have and how they were allowed to have them. (Leave it to the Raven’s lost bird to bring a certain amount of whimsy to cheats in a diet.) Alcohol was fine, but only if you halved your carbs that day. Sweets were okay, but only in a certain amount of moderation, and you had to do something stupid like increase your veggie intake for two days to make up for it. Mac and cheese, with no greenery in sight, was out of the question unless Aaron wanted to run an extra mile at tomorrow’s practice. 

Neil doesn’t look impressed. “I don’t see Kevin around.” 

“Fair.” Aaron turns, then throws out a quiet, “Thank you,” as Neil walks away. 

The food is good. It always is. Aaron doesn’t know where Neil learned how to cook, but he evidently learned it from someone who cared a lot about the craft. Aaron is never disappointed with a meal from him. It’s why, when he’s done, he gets up and takes his dishes to the sink. Neil’s are already there waiting for him, along with the tools Neil used to make it, and Aaron gets to work washing them clean. This is how they’ve split the work since Neil first moved in. Half the time, Nicky doesn’t eat with them, so Aaron and Neil have a small routine worked out. 

It’s nice: to take a moment, to put his hands on things. Microbes twirl in his mind, gram stains and shapes and smells, and it still feels like too much. He focuses instead on the squeeze of dish soap onto a knife, on the feel of a sponge in his fingers, on the crinkle of a paper towel as he lays utensils out to dry. 

When Neil comes up behind him, he’s almost expecting it. Neil always catches on before everyone else. He keeps himself busy in the sink, so Neil hops up onto the counter next to it and crosses his arms over his chest, auburn hair glistening in Aaron’s periphery under the shitty kitchen light. 

“Do you want to talk about it yet?” 

Aaron considers it for a long moment, setting the sponge down into the holder. His gut instinct is to say no, to keep Neil as far away from this as he can. To keep everyone as far away from it as he can. If he doesn’t tell anyone they broke up, then maybe they didn’t. Maybe he can still fix it. Or find the want to fix it. 

But it’s Neil. And even though Aaron wouldn’t call them friends, and even though he wanted to kick him in the shins all practice, he’s the only person that Aaron knows will listen to him without any real judgment. He won’t ask for details Aaron doesn’t want to give. He never really got close to Katelyn, which makes him the only neutral party Aaron is going to find on the entire campus. There’s Bee, of course, but she doesn’t count. It’s Neil, or nobody. 

Weighing all this in his head, he grips the edge of the sink and lets out a breath. “Yeah,” he says softly, flicking his eyes up to Neil’s face. Neil is staring dead ahead, eyes focused on something on the opposite wall. Aaron is grateful: there was still the chance that he would back out if he saw something he didn’t like. “Sure.” 

Neil nods and waits. 

“Katelyn and I broke up,” Aaron says quickly after a lingering beat of silence, the words falling out of his mouth in a tangled rush. It doesn’t lessen the blow of saying the words out loud for the first time. It doesn’t keep it from being real. There it is. Last week, Aaron had a girlfriend. Two days ago, he stopped. 

Their final night together flares like a beacon: Katelyn’s hands in his, their knees stained with red dirt, Aaron being forced to hear her cry and knowing he was the reason—

If Neil said he was sorry for him, Aaron would push him off the counter. He waits for it, ready to take his frustration out on something. Neil doesn’t look over at him or say anything for a few moments. Aaron’s knuckles tighten against the sink, stinging where they’ve opened back up. 

Finally, Neil blinks and turns to Aaron. Aaron is still considering his next move when Neil asks, “Does that mean you don’t have anyone to study with?” 

Aaron stares. He doesn’t remember ever telling Neil about his study sessions with Katelyn. Something in his chest burns. “Yeah.” 

Neil nods almost to himself and goes back to looking off into the distance. Aaron walks across to the couch in the open living room and picks up the TV remote to skip between channels. The urge to flee to his bedroom is strong, a stiff pressure at the base of his neck, and that’s why he stays out here. 

See? he thinks to that memory of Katelyn kneeling in the grass. I can talk to people about you. I can do it without freaking out. 

He hears Neil push himself to his feet and scoots over so Neil has room to plop down onto the couch beside him. Another minute of moving between channels passes, and then Neil pokes Aaron’s knee with his foot. Aaron looks at him and thinks about buying Neil brown contacts. 

“I can help,” Neil says, leaning back against the cushions. 

Aaron’s eyebrows smash down low over his eyes. “Yeah, right.” 

“I mean it.” 

“Why would you do that?” 

Neil shrugs with the shoulder not tucked against Aaron’s. Aaron shifts, creating space; he hadn’t realized they’d been sitting that close. “Maybe I want to change majors. Learn how to help people or something. Do whatever it is that you do.” 

“I don’t do anything,” Aaron replies. “I’m premed. Haven’t started anything resembling a residency yet.” And he won’t, not for a while, not until he’s through with this bachelor’s degree and done with Exy and been accepted into an actual medical school. 

“Maybe I’d like that.” 

The idea of Neil switching concentrations for him is too much. Aaron grabs onto the only piece of driftwood he can. “You’d have to quit Exy before you could go pro.” 

That puts a stop to the gleam in his eyes. “You’re right,” he says almost sooner than Aaron thought he would. “Okay, not changing majors.” 

Aaron sighs in something resembling relief. “Good—” 

“But I’m still going to help you study.” 

Aaron brings a hand up to his head and runs the nails along his scalp, poking between the roots of his hair. Katelyn always wanted to get him a fidget toy to help when he was stressed but couldn’t find one that felt like this. “Why?” he asks through gritted teeth, trying to ignore the urge to twist his fingers in his hair and pull until he can think straight. 

Neil licks his lips. Aaron considers slamming his nose into the coffee table. 

“Because,” Neil finally says, shrugging again. His smirk is back, small and indecipherable. 

“That’s not an answer.” 

“It is to me.” Before Aaron can argue again, Neil continues talking. “So when are we doing this?” 

Aaron stares him down for what feels like an hour but is probably more like ten seconds. He weighs the energy of an argument against the fights he’s seen Neil win among the Foxes. Decides it isn’t worth it. “Meet me in one of the study rooms at the library tomorrow at eleven.” 

Better to try it once and fail, he thinks. Better to let Neil have this now so Aaron can find somebody to actually help him study after. Maybe he’ll text that girl from micro back, take her up on her offer. What was her name? Emily? Emma? With Katelyn gone, he has no reason to say no. 

When Aaron goes back to his room, he finishes the stack of flashcards so that Neil won’t ask about it. 

🦊

At 2:10 AM, Andrew texts back. 

At 2:13 AM, Aaron replies. 

🦊

When Aaron’s phone vibrates on the table of Study Room 4C, he already knows who it will be. 

Andrew: Fine. 

It’s a response. A one-word response, but a response nonetheless. After years of not knowing he existed and months of messages left to a void with the same number as his brother, Aaron still gets excited if Andrew reaches out to him at all. A “How are you?” getting a “Fine” instead of nothing is something to be mildly celebrated. 

Another buzz. Andrew: How are you? 

Aaron feels like a middle schooler again, getting excited over a text back. Maybe this time, he’ll come to the birthday party; maybe this time, he’ll admit that he’s missed him, too. 

Aaron: Fine, about to study with a teammate. We;ll see how it goes 

Andrew: Ok. Best of luck. 

Aaron: Do you want to meet up for lunch or dinner or smthin next week? 

He’s been wanting to ask for weeks now. The last time they saw each other in person, Nicky had to pull them off each other when Andrew called Tilda “a crippled drug addict too pathetic to take care of her son.” Everyone at the hearing, Aaron thought, caught the lack of an “s” on the end of that statement. Aaron was the only one who reacted as if he had. Aaron walked out of the courthouse with a bruised fist and half a million dollars. Andrew walked out with a black eye and all of Aaron’s dignity. 

Aaron wanted Andrew to take some of the money. Andrew refused. A years-long legal battle, and it was solved fifteen minutes after Aaron threw a punch. 

That was six months ago. The texting hadn’t picked up until July was over, and Aaron still isn’t sure where they stand. He thinks he’s probably supposed to thank Andrew—that’s what normal people would do—but he hadn’t wanted the money for himself. When a sick Tilda died Aaron’s junior year of high school, Aaron tried to go with her. He’d only been saved because Nicky had sent Andrew his address when the news had gradually broken along the family line. So, in a very real way, Andrew was the reason Aaron had managed to stay alive. Nicky had told him as much. 

Aaron didn’t like debts. $250,000 seemed enough to repay him for that. 

Aaron looks at the text in his phone, marked with a timestamp, and wishes he could take it back. 

A knock on the door sends Aaron’s phone into his backpack, and he wipes his hands on his pants as Neil shoulders it open. 

“Hey,” Neil says, throwing his thin backpack onto the tabletop before sitting in the chair opposite Aaron. Aaron wonders what class he must have had before this and finds the answer there for him in some corner of his brain: History from the 1800s on. He doesn’t know when he figured that out. 

“Hey,” he says, clearing his throat. He focuses on laying out the pile of index cards in the space between them. Half of them are written in Katelyn’s handwriting, and it hurts a little bit to see the loop of an E or the curl of an L as he pulls them out of his backpack—but having Neil here is more helpful than he thought it would be. Neil is a new component to Aaron’s study time; he’s never been around for it before, and the newness of that companionship extending to the library is still shining in his head. 

Neil waits until Aaron sets his bag back onto the floor before he asks, “What are those for?” 

“Studying.” 

“No shit.” 

Aaron can’t help it. He laughs. “This is how Katelyn and I always studied together.” He sees her there in his mind: red hair glistening, laughing at Aaron’s intentional mispronunciation of a word. He gathers the cards together, straightening the pile out, then hands it to Neil. 

Neil glances between Aaron and the cards. “What do you want me to do with this?” 

“Read the part on the unlined side,” Aaron says, reaching out to flip the top one over, “then I’ll give you the answer that’s on the lined side.” 

Neil seems to consider this for a moment, turning over that first card in his hand. When he looks back at Aaron, what he says is, “I’m not Katelyn.” 

“Obviously.” 

Neil smiles, and it’s toothy. “So we’re not studying how you did with Katelyn.” And he tosses the stack of cards across the room, littering the floor with them. He stands up, circles around to Aaron’s side of the table, and picks up his backpack to pull out Aaron’s worn microbiology textbook. He’s renting it, but he’s afraid they might not let him give it back—the amount of highlighter he’s used on these pages that wasn’t there before is enough to warrant having to pay the full cost. 

“What chapter?” Neil asks once he’s back in his seat, staring at Aaron patiently. 

“What are you doing?” Aaron feels his head tilt and thinks of Andrew, ages ago: You look like a labrador when you do that. 

Neil’s blue eyes gleam. “Helping you study. Now what chapter?” 

“One through three,” Aaron answers quietly. 

Neil nods his head, then opens the textbook to a random page before he starts flipping backwards. He finds whatever he’s looking for and stills his hand; Aaron can’t tell what it says, but he sees the faded yellow streak of a dying highlighter and knows it was placed there by him last night. 

“Brucellosis is transmitted how?” 

Aaron hardly has to think about it; they just went over this last week. “Zoonosis transmission is the main one because of, uh, infected animal meat, but you can also get it from cuts. Or by inhaling it.” 

Neil flips to another page without saying anything. Aaron can’t follow what he’s doing, and after the third question pulled randomly from the book, he stops trying. Neil darts back and forth between chapters with no rhyme or rhythm to the movements. Sometimes he asks about things Aaron highlighted, and Aaron has to remember when he held the highlighter and marked it; other times, he reads a question from one of the practice quizzes at the end of each chapter without giving him the multiple-choice answers. 

“You have to tell me what the choices are,” Aaron argues once. 

“I do not. Now answer the question.” 

“I can’t. I need the options.” 

Neil shrugs that infernal shoulder. “Should have studied harder.” 

Something loosens in Aaron’s gut: a thing released, the start of a letting go. 

🦊

“What are you doing?” Nicky asks, leaning back on Aaron’s bedspread. 

Aaron unbuttons the fifth button-up he’s tried on and flicks it into the ever-growing pile of clothes on the floor in front of his bed. Nicky walked by at the third and made himself at home to watch the next two be rejected. It was fine when Nicky was keeping his thoughts to himself—Nicky is not known to do that, and Aaron could almost forget that he was there. Aaron knows he seems insane, freaking out over an outfit to lunch in a diner that regularly serves truckers, but nothing feels right. He runs a hand through his hair slowly, attempting to center himself. 

“I’m trying,” Aaron says, heading to the closet again, “to get dressed.” 

“You know you’ve met him before, right? Like, you understand that?” 

“You can always fuck off.” 

Aaron cuts his eyes at Nicky in time to see him throw his hands up in surrender. He turns back to his closet and picks out another shirt, baby blue and only mildly wrinkled. 

“I’m just saying,” Nicky continues as Aaron grabs a different pair of pants. Navy, to go with the blue. It’ll probably look better than the khaki he has on. “He’s seen you before. You know? He kind of has to look at you every time he looks into a mirror.” 

“That’s not the same thing at all.” 

It isn’t. Not really. Andrew has a cut above his eyebrow that Aaron doesn’t have. (Tells a different story every time anyone asks about it. Aaron got him drunk one night and asked; was told the name Roland and “a dare, I guess.”) Aaron has thicker arms. Andrew is wider around the middle—stocky, perfect for defense if he ever wanted to join a team like the Foxes. Aaron wears his hair shorter. Andrew would fit right in with the goth kids back at Aaron’s high school, and Aaron doesn’t even own anything gray. 

Sometimes, though, if Aaron catches a glimpse of himself in a car window—if it’s gloomy, and if he’s wearing his darkest maroon, and if he’s not entirely sober—well, in those moments, it’s almost the same. He can imagine being Andrew: being the twin left behind, going through things he never had to, finding out from a handwritten letter that his life had been stolen from him by a lucky pick from the cradle. 

Aaron walks into the shared bathroom and closes the door and tries not to think about it. 

When he comes back out draped in blue, khaki pants shoved under his arm, the people in his room have multiplied. 

“Lots of blue,” Neil provides, sitting cross-legged on Aaron’s bed next to Nicky. He raises an eyebrow and looks Aaron up and down, once, slowly, like he’s marking all the places Aaron’s feelings shine through. It takes real effort for Aaron not to shove him. 

“As if your opinion on fashion matters at all,” Nicky says. He looks over Aaron the same way Neil did, then sucks in a breath through his teeth. “Lots of blue, though. Try it with the khaki instead.” 

Aaron glares at him. “You realize you’re a stereotype, right?” 

Nicky mimes stabbing a dagger into his heart. “My own cousin. Who can you trust these days?” 

🦊

Aaron tries the blue shirt with the khaki pants. 

“Perfect,” Nicky says. “Look at you. Ready for your school pictures.” 

Neil looks him over again before he nods. “Do you want me to wait up for you?” 

“No.” Aaron shakes his head. “I’m good.” 

🦊

The door to Lucille’s Diner makes a pleasant chime when Aaron pushes it open. 

“Welcome in!” a harried waitress says from behind the counter, smile pleasant and meant to disarm. Aaron scowls. People with smiles like that are people that Aaron doesn’t trust. “Sit anywhere you like, and I’ll be with you shortly.” 

Aaron makes a cursory glance around the diner, searching for a familiar head of blond hair, and finds it off to the side, shoved into a corner. Aaron nearly startles: that’s where he would have chosen to sit, too. Perfect view of the door, tucked away from other people, and close enough to the emergency exit at the back of the restaurant that he could make a quick getaway if he had to. He meets Andrew’s eyes—hazel like his, framed by eyelashes that girls always rave about—and raises a hand. Andrew doesn’t wave back. 

“Hi,” he says when he pulls out the chair opposite Andrew. The metal scrapes against the floor as he shifts. 

Andrew inclines his head. “Beautiful place you chose.” 

Aaron had wanted...neutral ground. Something that said I know our relationship is fraught and broken and bad, but I want it to be less like that while also appearing casual. A truck stop diner seemed the marriage of the two. With its unswept floors, yellow lights, and vague 50s theme, it was unassuming. Didn’t ask for anything. Kept Aaron from renting a suit with tails to meet his brother. 

Aaron pulls at the blue shirt where it has bunched around his hips beneath the pants. If Andrew wants to be an ass, that’s his prerogative. “It’s fine.” 

Both fall silent after that. Andrew busies himself with the menu, and Aaron calls the waitress over to request one for himself. Her light hair is in a frizzy ponytail at the back of her head, and her apron is stained with what Aaron hopes to be coffee. She scurries off with a frantic, “Oh, I knew I was missing something!” and comes back nearly out of breath. Aaron thanks her. 

“Know what you’re getting?” he asks Andrew when the silence becomes too much. 

Andrew meets his gaze over the menu for a second before he looks back down, bored. “Number seven.” 

“Cool,” Aaron says just as the waitress walks back up. “I’ll have one, too.” 

A number seven, as it turns out, is coffee, hashbrowns, two waffles, two eggs, and a side of bacon (Andrew) or sausage (Aaron). Aaron wishes he’d had enough balls to actually look at the menu and pick something out for himself. Or that he’d chosen a place that didn’t specialize in all-day breakfasts. 

Andrew seems happy enough, pouring an absurd amount of syrup over the waffles. They don’t really say much during the meal. Andrew’s gaze is unfocused—but he isn’t walking out the door or saying things that make Aaron want to black his eyes, so it’s miles better than last time. 

The waitress (Cindy, her chipped nametag reads, dangling loosely from one strap of her apron) refills Aaron’s coffee and replaces Andrew’s still full mug with an apple juice upon request. She clears their plates. Aaron thanks her when Andrew doesn’t. 

Silence builds between the brothers again until Aaron can’t stand it anymore. He flails for something they have in common and finds himself saying, “Have you talked to Nicky lately?” 

Andrew’s face barely changes. “Yeah. He texts me every day.” 

A flurry of something too hurt to be anger rages through him. So it’s just Aaron, then. Just Aaron who doesn’t get the effort. Aaron’s hand chafes with the remembrance of Andrew’s face under it. It hadn’t felt nice, to swing on him. Andrew hadn’t put up a fight. 

It is all of this—the stilted meal, this new knowledge of how miniscule he is to his own twin’s life, the frazzled waitress, everything that Aaron has fought through these past few weeks and the long years before—that makes Aaron snap, “That faggot talks a lot about Erik, doesn’t he.” 

Andrew’s head turns, just slightly. Someone who isn’t Aaron probably wouldn’t have noticed. Aaron does: because Andrew is another version of him, and Andrew called Aaron a labrador once when he was thinking too hard. “A normal amount, I think.” 

Aaron scoffs. But Andrew’s talking now, so something spurs him on. If this is what it takes to have a conversation with him, sure. Fine. “No way. He verbally sucks his dick whenever he talks about him, and Erik isn’t even in the states.” 

Andrew’s gaze sharpens. “Is that right?” 

“Yeah. You don’t think so?” 

Andrew shrugs. “It doesn’t really matter what I think.” 

“Why not?” 

“Because I’m a faggot like him.” Andrew smiles at him, and it’s sharp. Aaron has to take a deep breath around it. “So maybe I’m biased.” 

Aaron’s mouth doesn’t work around anything but, “Oh.” He tries to say more, but the words die on his tongue, behind his teeth. 

“Oh,” Andrew mimics with another smile. 

When Andrew leaves, Aaron doesn’t stop him, and he doesn’t say anything, but Andrew tosses over his shoulder, “You’re the one who got the five hundred thousand, you can pay,” and doesn’t wait around to watch Aaron seethe and run his nails over his scalp. 

🦊

Aaron grabs the neck of Kevin’s bottle of alcohol and brings it up to his mouth for a long sip. Thirty minutes after Andrew left, Aaron found himself here, knocking on the prince of Exy’s door. Kevin was always good for this; of all the vices he didn’t allow himself, the top-shelf vodka was the one he did. 

“Use a glass,” Kevin snaps, pulling on the bottle until Aaron unlatches his mouth. 

“Or what?” he asks, picking up the video game console controller again. His words aren’t slurring, and his vision isn’t blurring, which means he is not nearly drunk enough. 

Kevin narrows his eyes. Aaron thinks of birds and nests and something with clipped wings trying to fly the coop. “Or I’ll kick you out, that’s what.” 

“You won’t.” Aaron watches as his character dies on the screen, then reaches over and snatches the bottle back. “Pussy.” 

“Mature,” Kevin says, glaring as Aaron takes another draw. “Hope you planned this out, Minyard. I’m not going easy on you in practice just because you’re too hungover to catch a ball.” 

“I’ll catch the ball,” Aaron says, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. He hands the vodka back and cherishes the burn it leaves down his throat. “Will you?” 

Kevin opens his mouth to say something else, but his phone rings where it sits on the side table, keeping Aaron from whatever lecture he was about to receive. Kevin turns and snatches it up, presumably to shout at whoever’s on the line about Exy’s top ten strikers, but Aaron watches him flip it open to stare at the name that hangs there in the pixels. Aaron doesn’t even need to lean in and look at it; he already knows what name waits there. Kevin does too. 

“Hit the end button,” Aaron says swiftly, pausing the game. 

Kevin doesn’t. He keeps staring at the phone in silence until it stops ringing. Aaron reaches across his arm to grab it, but Kevin holds it out of reach, raising his hand into the air above their heads. Aaron would kill for another couple inches right now. 

“Don’t do this,” Aaron continues, leaning back out of his space. “I’m not picking up the pieces.” 

“I—” Kevin starts, but the phone rings again, and Kevin drops it into his lap. 

Aaron moves for it again, but Kevin snags it and stands up, walking to the kitchen counter. Aaron hears him set the phone down; hears the vibrations and the ringing on the counter after, echoing through the dorm. 

“If you answer that, I’m leaving.” 

“Okay,” Kevin says absently. Aaron isn’t even sure Kevin hears him anymore. 

The vibrations stop as the second call ends. Aaron picks himself off the couch and walks towards Kevin, but the phone rings a third time, and Aaron knows they’re screwed. Kevin doesn’t wait. He brings it to his ear with a small, “Hey,” just like Aaron knew he would. 

Riko Moriyama was a lot of things to Kevin Day before he became the man who broke his hand. When Kevin showed up on Coach Wymack’s doorstep cradling a bleeding mosaic of an appendage, Aaron and Nicky were the first people to receive a message in the middle of the night asking for assistance. Kevin didn’t say much at first. It took eighteen missed calls on Kevin’s phone from Riko for Nicky to piece it together; Aaron figured it out in four. He asked Kevin if he wanted to go back, and he believed him when Kevin said no. But the transfer paperwork didn’t stop Riko’s calls. Kevin changing his number didn’t either. 

Aaron refuses to stick around for whatever shit show Kevin is going to become when this phone call is over. While Kevin is distracted, Aaron nabs the bottle of vodka and tucks it into his side. If Kevin wants it when he’s done, he’ll have to come get it himself. 

“Fine,” he hears Kevin say as he watches him slowly walk to his bedroom. The shellshocked expression on his face makes Aaron’s stomach swoop. “My classes are fine. Yours?” 

Aaron leaves before he can hear the answer, and Kevin closes the bedroom door anyway. Aaron uses his free hand to pull his key out of his pocket, and he slips inside his own dorm room as quietly as he can. 

“Hey,” Neil says as soon as Aaron’s face fills the doorway. When the rest of him follows, Neil’s eyes catch on the bottle. Aaron can’t see him very well in the dim light of the television (playing an Exy game, he realizes, when he glances at it), but he knows those eyes; he knows the way they’re trying to pin him against the wall. “Riko called.” 

“Yeah.” Aaron closes the door behind him and doesn’t bother to flip the lock. Kevin will come over when this is done, and Aaron doesn’t want to make the effort to unlock it when he does. He plops down on the couch, throwing himself into the empty spot next to Neil. He brings the bottle up and takes another long sip as he examines the TV. It only takes him a second or two to place the game: Wolves versus Trojans, late last year. The Trojans won, of course; the Wolves played that game like they’d never played before. 

“Who’s winning?” he asks anyway. 

“Trojans,” Neil answers immediately. He shifts next to Aaron, dipping the edge of Aaron’s cushion down. Aaron is wondering if he can get away with not talking about himself when Neil says, “How did your dinner go?” 

Aaron doesn’t answer. If it was anyone except Neil, he would walk away right now. Stand and go to his own bed and lock the door and get plastered on his bedspread while he waits Kevin out. But Aaron’s already told him about Katelyn; telling him about Andrew can’t be any worse, and it will come out anyway, probably from Nicky, with no small degree of hurt. He should be the one to tell him who he was so stressed about seeing. 

Aaron takes another sip of the bottle. Then he hands it off to Neil. 

“Not great,” he says softly, eyes focusing in on the Exy game as Neil turns in his periphery to set the bottle down. He sees the white flash of Knox on the back of a jersey. “I was kind of a dick.” 

“What else is new?” Neil says as he straightens back up. Aaron flips him off. 

“I’m serious.” The meal plays in his brain, spinning on an axis. 

“So am I. You’re always a dick. This shouldn’t be news to you or Andrew.” 

Aaron doesn’t remember telling Neil he was meeting Andrew. A knife, perhaps, or a dagger, buries itself under his ribcage. Either Neil has been paying attention more than he’s let on, or Andrew’s already reached Nicky. Guilt dances through his chest. 

Aaron glances at him. “Who told you I was with Andrew?” 

Neil looks at Aaron like he’s genuinely considering the question. A referee blows a whistle; a play resets in the background as Aaron lets Neil stare him down. “I figured it out,” Neil finally says as the red and gold of the Trojans washes over his face. “He’s your brother, right?” 

Aaron’s gaze snaps back to the TV. “Yeah,” he nearly whispers. “Twin.” 

Neil doesn’t say anything for some time. Aaron watches the game proceed. The Wolves take a point from the Trojans, but the Trojans take another four from them afterwards. Aaron focuses on one of the backliners: Nguyen, number 14, shining in green and white. He misses a shot that Aaron would have seen coming ten seconds before it happened. 

Finally, after the Trojans have scored another six points, Neil says, “You go to sleep. I’ve got Kevin.” 

Something keeps Aaron from looking Neil in the face. He settles for looking at Neil’s socked feet on the cold floor. The socks don’t even match: one bright orange, the other deep black. “Are you sure?” 

“Yes. Go.” 

“Thank you,” Aaron mumbles, then rises to his feet. Someone on the television screen mentions the end of a match. There is screaming as it cuts to a clip of the Trojan crowd. 

When Aaron collapses into his bed, he feels for a moment like he is falling. Then he is asleep. 

🦊

Something startles him awake. He flails, reaches out— 

“Hey,” Kevin whispers, catching Aaron as he falls forward. Aaron isn’t sure how; he can smell the alcohol on Kevin’s breath from here, undiluted. “Hey. Aaron. Hey.” 

“What the fuck do you want, Day?” Aaron thinks about flipping the lamp on, drenching them both in light so he can get a good look at him. Check his pupils. Scan him for marks—he knows that Riko isn’t actually here, but still. Kevin’s fingers around his wrists stop him. 

“Neil told me I needed to apologize.” 

“Not in the dead of fucking night, he didn’t.” 

Kevin hums. “I’ll forget in the morning. So. I’m sorry.” Aaron doesn’t need to be told who Kevin is talking about when he continues, “He only wanted to discuss our major. Nothing else. It’s hard for him to know what to take when I’m not there...” 

“Good,” Aaron says, and just manages to get himself out of Kevin’s grip so he can shove him away. “Give me your phone and go the fuck to bed.” 

Aaron can’t see it, but he knows Kevin slips the phone out of his pocket when it lands haphazardly against Aaron’s knee. 

“Okay,” Kevin says, and Aaron waits until his door clicks shut again to turn the phone off and bury it under his pillow. 

🦊

On Monday, Aaron goes to his microbiology class. He tries not to look at Katelyn, but it’s hard. After she skipped the two classes immediately following their breakup, it hurt to sit in that first class she came back to—her seat was still next to his. Aaron had let himself hope that she’d dropped the course. They barely looked at each other when Katelyn asked someone to trade seats. It was fine. It was going to be fine. 

Aaron watches her flip her hair over her shoulder and is struck once again by the sight of her in a hoodie that used to be his. He knows he won’t ask for it back. He never wore it anyway; it always looked better on her. And he liked to see his name printed on her back. Reminded him that he was hers. 

He’s not sure what it reminds him of now. That he doesn’t know how to be a normal person in a relationship. That last month, he was standing in a park at dusk, hoping his voice was low enough. That he doesn’t like being hers enough to fight for it. 

He sits, and he takes his notes, and he tries not to look at her. He knows she looks back at him twice—can feel the weight of her blue-eyed stare on the divot in his chin. It takes him until the professor dismisses the class to realize that the hoodie is a calculated move, meant to draw his attention exactly like it did. It takes him longer than that, if he’s being honest. It takes a text to Allison Reynolds and a picture taken with Katelyn’s back turned. 

Aaron: What does this mean? 

Allison: ??? what do you MEAN what does that mean. that’s your name 

Aaron: We broke up. 

It feels weird, to tell somebody else about this. Neil almost doesn’t count. But if Allison knows, then the team is likely to find out inside a week. It is a testament to Aaron’s lack of female friends that he texts her and expects a helpful response. It is a testament to Allison that she replies, oh buddy she’s def doing it to get u to look and I’m sorry. 

Aaron: Please dont tell anyone else yet 

Allison: obvi 

Aaron backs out of the message thread and finds Neil’s. 

🦊

Aaron walks to the same study room they used the last time and is surprised to find Neil already sitting down inside of it. 

“Hey,” he says as he pushes the door open. 

“Hey,” Neil replies, smiling up at him. 

Aaron feels something cold drop into his stomach, looking at that smile again. He doesn’t think about it. He deposits his bag onto the floor and pulls out the index cards they didn’t use the last time they did this. Neil opens his mouth, but Aaron beats him to it. “No, we’re not doing that thing where you ask me random shit again. I’m teaching you how to make a fucking index card.” 

“Why?” 

Aaron looks at him and at his new backpack; he bets it hasn’t held a single thing besides a crisp textbook and a single notepad since someone bought it for him. He looks at the way Neil’s auburn hair is long enough now to curl over his ears. He looks at Neil’s shirt, two sizes too big, and at the bright orange streak of a bandana tucked into his collar for practice later. And he thinks about Andrew. And about Nicky. And about Neil sitting on the couch and telling Aaron to go to sleep. 

Aaron isn’t gay. He’s not. Katelyn Mackenzie, exhibit one. Other girls, exhibit two through a thousand. But, you know, if he looks at Neil in the right light—in the midday sunlight streaming through the windows—and if he sees how blue Neil’s eyes are, blue enough to need an entirely different color named after them...well, if he stares at Neil then, he can almost see the appeal. Aaron is straight, but he isn’t blind. 

He only realizes he hasn’t answered the question when he watches one of Neil’s dark eyebrows rise up towards his hairline. 

“Er,” he says, coughing, shaking his head. He clears his throat and makes a pass through his hair with a finger. “Because I’m sure you haven’t been studying for your classes like you should be.” 

“I study,” Neil says, but he’s got that lilt in his voice that tells Aaron he’s being messed with on purpose. “I make good grades.” 

“I don’t care.” Aaron leans down and picks up an unopened pack of index cards, nice and colorful and clean, and throws them onto the table. “We’re doing it.” 

Neil peels the plastic wrap off, then digs a pencil out of his bag and picks up a card, hands poised over it like it’s a bug he’s too scared to squash. 

“What the hell are you doing?” 

Neil glances back up at him. “Getting ready to write.” 

Aaron feels his own eyes narrow. “Getting ready to write what? We haven’t looked at anything.” 

“Are you not just going to tell me what to do?” 

The laugh bubbles out of Aaron’s mouth before he can stop it. “What?” 

Something crosses Neil’s face, but it’s gone before Aaron can decipher it. Neil gently places the pencil down onto the tabletop. “Okay.” 

Aaron sighs and feels it pour out of him. “Get out your notes, and we’ll go from there.” 

It turns out that Neil’s “notes” encompass a single black notebook (Ha!, Aaron thinks to himself), a random list of page numbers that do not lead to any highlighted areas in any of his textbooks, and words that seem to have stuck out to him while listening to his professors talk. The word potatoes takes up almost a third of an otherwise empty page. 

“Who the fuck taught you how to do this?” Aaron asks as he flips through again, searching for a key or a rubric or something that will make what he’s looking at make sense. “Potatoes?” 

“Famine,” Neil answers. “That’s a thing, I think.” 

“Okay,” Aaron tries. “Do you know literally anything else about it? Years? What country it affected?” 

Neil’s nose scrunches up when he pretends to think. Aaron finds this out in the seconds that lapse before Neil says, “Do you think the professor wants me to know those things off the top of my head?” 

“Yes. Absolutely he does.” 

“She,” Neil corrects. 

“Shut the fuck up,” Aaron says, but he feels his mouth lift in a smile despite it. 

🦊 

It takes two more study sessions with Neil for Aaron to realize that he likes spending time with him. It takes one more after that for the vague notion of a feeling to spark inside Aaron’s chest. 

He doesn’t know what the feeling is: what to name it, how to handle it. When Neil smiles at him as they pass each other in the hallway of their dorm the next day, Aaron swears he has an arrhythmia. Practice is more of the same: every time Neil checks him on the court, something hot tears through Aaron, and it doesn’t go away until he’s in his bed, alone. 

So after class one day, Aaron searches for the first girl who isn’t Katelyn and finds one standing right outside the science building: Emma, the girl from his text messages.

She’s cute, Aaron guesses. Straight black hair that cuts off just below her chin, pink rectangle glasses that make her brown eyes glitter in the sunshine. If he’d met her before he met Katelyn, he might have considered asking her out on a date and meant it when he did. 

He isn’t sure why he doesn’t mean it now. She is cute. She’s the very definition of the word. Aaron looks at the way her long skirt billows in the breeze, and it hurts somewhere deep and true that his first thought is Katelyn would never wear something like that. His second thought begins with Neil, and he stops it where it starts, refusing to engage. 

Heat creeps up the back of his neck, but it doesn’t feel like a blush. Aaron doesn’t know what it is—it makes him take a step forward and tap Emma on the shoulder. Doing it feels like a mistake, but when she turns to look at him, her eyes light up, and she says, “Aaron!” almost like she’s happy to see him. 

“Um,” he says. “Hi.” 

“What’s up?” 

Aaron looks at her face again. She smiles prettily at him, all cheeks. Aaron notices the gap between her left canine and the tooth next to it and almost thinks about saying something about it. Did you ever get braces as a kid? 

He doesn’t mention it. What he says instead is, “Are you busy tomorrow night? I know a good restaurant downtown and, uh. Want to take you there.” 

Emma blinks like she’s been splashed with water before that cheeky smile expands further, nearly reaching her ears. “Sure,” she says, nearly giggling, and writes her number on the back of his hand with a pen that has her name monogrammed on the side. 

“I’ll call you,” Aaron promises, and it stings somewhere beneath his lungs to know that he’s telling the truth and that he wishes he wasn’t. 

🦊

When he meets up in the study room with Neil later, it almost comes out of him involuntarily. 

Neil is busy working on a new set of index cards when Aaron interrupts. “Emma,” he blurts out into the quiet with zero prompting. He stares as Neil’s pencil stills and isn’t ready when Neil’s eyes meet his. There is a mark on Neil’s left eyebrow that he’s never noticed before. A jagged line, straight across, scarred over.

“I asked out a girl in my class,” he continues, eyes still focused on that scar. “Emma. We’re going out tomorrow.” 

Aaron expects—something. Anything. A reaction, a twitch of an eyebrow, a tensed jaw. He isn’t sure why. 

He is less sure why it hurts when there is none. 

“Do you want me to wait up for you?” Neil asks, shuffling the cards. Not even in a hitch in the way his fingers move. 

“No,” Aaron decides, breathing out. “Don’t.” 

🦊

Aaron takes less time getting dressed for his date with Emma than he did choosing an outfit to meet his brother in Lucille’s Diner that first time. It isn’t as nice: a plain tee shirt and his least wrinkled jeans. When he pulls up to Emma’s dorm building, he’s glad to see that it isn’t Katelyn’s. He can see the shadow of Katelyn’s building when he turns into Emma’s lot, but it’s offset enough that Katelyn won’t even see him pulling up to pick up another girl. He tries to think about another guy picking up Katelyn and knows that if he told her how small the feeling of jealousy is in his chest, they would have that same fight that ended everything. 

Emma didn’t give him a room number, so Aaron shoots her a text saying he’s here and idles at the front entrance with his hazards on. 

When she comes out in a pale green dress that reaches her knees, Aaron tries to make himself feel like he did on that first date with Katelyn. Ecstatic. Enthusiastic. So nervous that his fingers shook as he opened the passenger side door for her. 

Aaron doesn’t open the door for Emma. Emma takes it in stride, not so much as blinking an eye when she opens the door herself and slides into the front seat. Must be used to guys who are as inattentive as Aaron, and the thought makes him feel like a maggot, though it doesn’t make him do anything about it. 

“Hi,” she says, beaming at him. 

“Hey,” Aaron answers, and then they’re on the road. He doesn’t say anything about her dress, and he takes them the long way around campus; he doesn’t want to drive past the sports dormitory tonight. 

The date is good. Fine. Emma does most of the talking, and Aaron does most of the listening, and when she directs a question his way, he always makes himself swing it back around to her. She orders chicken alfredo and smears a bit of white sauce on her chin. Aaron doesn’t say anything about that either. 

As they walk outside, the night air hits, and Aaron knows that when Emma turns and closes her eyes, she is waiting for a kiss. Aaron counts to three and kisses her long and hard and slow, like he means it, like he used to kiss Katelyn. Emma breathes against him, hands reaching up to clutch at his collar, and Aaron tries not to care that her hands are too soft and her lips are too small and her eyes are too brown. He isn’t sure who she makes him crave more— 

That’s a lie. He does know. 

When they part, Aaron looks around in a feverish rush and spots the neon sign of a bar on the horizon. He tugs on Emma’s hands, begs her to come along, says that the night is young. Eventually, Emma laughs, a melody Aaron never wants to learn the notes to, and Aaron orders five drinks for every one that Emma buys herself. The night blurs. Someone asks him if he wants a line, and Aaron says yes, and his nose burns for hours. 

“Come on,” Emma groans, hoisting Aaron into the elevator as he comes back into himself. He doesn’t know where he is, but he leans his forehead on the cool metal of the elevator as it rises. It takes Emma shaking his shoulder four times for him to realize he needs to stumble out, and he is half-pulled to what he finds to be his dorm room. 

“No,” he mumbles, tripping back a step as Emma knocks. Emma’s hand around his arm tightens, keeping him where he is. Something courses through Aaron, frantic and dark, and he doesn’t know a lot of things anymore, but he does know one thing, and that is that he does not want to see what waits for him behind this door. “No,” he says again, shaking his head harder. “I don’t want to go inside.” 

“Too fucking bad,” Emma hisses, digging her nails into his bicep. With her other hand, she knocks on the door again, this time with more force. Aaron goes to tell her not to bother, that no one is waiting up for him, that the key is probably in his back pocket somewhere—but he is stopped by the door swinging in, and there Neil stands, face carefully blank. 

Aaron’s chest caves in on itself. 

“Ah,” Neil says as he reaches to take Aaron’s weight off Emma’s shoulders. Aaron thinks about flailing, about falling to the floor, but the effort it would take makes the decision for him. “I’ve got him.” 

“Thank you,” Emma breathes out, huffing. Aaron thinks she glares at him, but he doesn’t pick his gaze up from the ground to face it. “I think we shouldn’t do this again.” 

“Yeah,” Aaron says softly, and Emma vanishes in a blur of green and brown as Neil closes the door after her. 

Neil pulls on him, walks him all the way to his room down the hall. “What happened?” he asks as he pushes Aaron towards the bed. 

Aaron doesn’t know how to answer that question. She reminded me of Katelyn. She kissed me and I couldn’t like it. She got alfredo sauce on her chin, and it nearly killed me that it wasn’t... 

It nearly killed me that it wasn’t you. 

The truth settles over Aaron like a too-heavy blanket. He can’t hide from it here: with Neil an arm’s width apart, hands on his hips, staring at Aaron like he isn’t going to leave until Aaron explains himself. His hair is loose around his temples, and his eyes are droopy, drowsy—Aaron doesn’t know what time it is, but he does know that Neil stayed up for him without being asked. He told him no; he did it anyway. 

Aaron gulps past the lump in his throat and meets Neil’s electric blue eyes, and it’s over for him. It’s done. It’s decided. 

Aaron leans forward. 

Anything Neil was going to say dissolves in the space between their lips. Aaron thinks, Finally figured out how to shut you up. 

This. This is what he’s wanted all night. Not Emma; not Katelyn; not anyone else. This, with Neil: Aaron sliding his hand up Neil’s chest and bringing him down by the back of his neck. He feels a dip in the mattress—Neil catching himself. The kiss deepens as Neil presses closer. 

And then he’s gone, shoving Aaron’s shoulders into the bedspread. 

Aaron’s hand falls away from his neck, and he tries to lunge for his mouth again. Neil turns his head; Aaron winds up kissing his cheek. 

“Since when is this a thing?” Neil asks, and even his voice is too much. Scratchy with the late hour and Aaron’s mouth. 

“Dunno.” Why did they stop kissing? Aaron shifts again, and Neil cuts him a look as he leans over his body. 

“I’m not doing this with you.” 

“Why the fuck not?” 

“You’re drunk.” 

“And high,” Aaron admits with what he thinks is a shrug. 

“You’re not helping your case.” 

Aaron nearly whines. “I just figured this out. Come on.” 

Neil rises, leaning away. Aaron watches him walk to the door and thinks of a girl wearing a hoodie with his name plastered on the back. I’d let you wear my hoodie, Aaron thinks, and is overcome by the thought, even if it isn’t true. I’d never want it back. 

“Goodnight,” Neil says, and closes the door behind him. 

Aaron’s mouth is still warm from the kiss. When he pulls off his jeans, he finds himself half-hard, pressing against the fabric of his boxers, and he very nearly cries. Fingers dig into his scalp, trying to center himself, trying to get him back. It takes another hour for Aaron to calm down enough to finally fall asleep, and when he does, he dreams of nothing at all. 

🦊

Aaron wakes up to a screaming headache and the vague recollection of warmth on his mouth. He feels around on his bedside table for his phone but doesn’t find it. A thought appears, tells him to check his jeans, and he sits up, bleary-eyed, to look around the room. 

The sight of them balled up at the foot of his bed brings his memories back. 

He kissed Neil. 

Just the thought of it brings a tingle to his lips that he wipes unsuccessfully at with the pads of his fingers. The date with Emma comes to him in flurries of hazy memory: chicken alfredo, a crowded bar, a grubby bathroom. Being led—pulled—up to his dorm by a girl who had every right to leave him at the front steps and go. 

And then there was Neil. 

Aaron’s heart skitters around in his chest, one of those small birds that dances in ocean sand. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Since when has he wanted to kiss Neil? No, that’s not the right question; there’s nothing to do about it now. 

Since when has he stopped ignoring the urge? 

A shower. A shower makes sense. A shower would be nice. Wash off the staleness of last night’s ill-advised adventure. Afterwards, he can deal with—with whatever he’s going to have to deal with when he sees Neil again. 

He walks to the bathroom as quietly as he can manage in case Neil is asleep, slipping a towel out of the bathroom cabinet only after he shuts and locks the door. The water is too cold when he gets in. He lathers himself in soap and reaches a hand past the shower curtain to snag his toothbrush from the bathroom counter; finds a spare tube of toothpaste waiting in the caddy that hangs from the shower head. He brushes his teeth, scrubs his tongue, and hopes it will take the feeling of kissing Neil away from him. (It doesn’t. He doesn’t think anything will, now.) The water is too hot when he gets out. 

The day-old boxers and wrinkled shirt come back on, and he runs a hand through his hair so that it isn’t lying flat to his scalp. He can change in a minute. He just needs to do something about this first. Get the conversation over with, have it out, whatever he has to do so he doesn’t have to think about this moment ever again. 

He kissed Neil, and Neil pushed him off. Aaron will make this rejected feeling disappear. He will make it cower. He will be okay, and he will not let this jeopardize any of the good things that have come into his life since finding the Foxes. 

He sucks in a deep breath and feels it open his lungs. Then he walks to the kitchen to the sight of Neil grabbing a bottle of milk from the fridge. His steps abruptly stop. Neil is wearing a shirt (of course he is, he rarely takes one off), but Aaron sees a sliver of pale skin at his back where he’s bent down to reach the third shelf, and it makes him feel like that guy in that movie Katelyn really liked who did the hand thing that she always freaked out about. He thinks he finally gets it. 

“Hungover?” Neil asks when he looks over his shoulder and finds Aaron standing there in the hallway, open-mouthed. 

“Kind of,” says the miniscule part of Aaron’s brain that still works. The rest is busy trying to figure out if Neil has a mole on the left side of his L5 or if it was a trick of the light as Neil straightens and his shirt falls back down over the waistband of his shorts. 

Neil makes a noise that Aaron takes as an affirmative, then pulls two cups out of the cabinet over the sink. Aaron looks down as he walks around the island, and it’s a mistake: because there’s Neil’s mismatched socks again, fire engine red and a pale navy that almost matches the shirt Aaron wore to meet up with Andrew. It triggers a thought of Katelyn wearing different colored boots as she dances down a hallway. 

Cut it out, he thinks as he drags a hand through his hair. There’s no point in continuing to compare Katelyn and Neil. Nothing good can come of tracking the ways Katelyn and Neil are the same. 

Neil pours them both a glass of milk. Aaron drinks it because it is placed into his hand. 

Aaron only realizes that it’s bubbling up in him, just like yesterday when he couldn’t keep his mouth shut about Emma, after Neil licks his lips, pink tongue darting out. He hears Neil’s lips touch the cup, watches him swallow, hears the sound it makes when his mouth parts from the rim, and he can’t stop himself. “Did we kiss last night?” 

He might be breaking something here, but he needs to know where he stands. Neil takes in a slow breath before setting the cup down on the coffee table. He watches Aaron lower himself to the couch, blue eyes burning a hole in Aaron’s face, right across the bridge of his nose. Aaron feels on the precipice of a steep drop, nearly toppling, risking it all. 

Neil says, “Yeah, we did.” And something in Aaron rips. 

“Oh,” he says like an idiot and thinks of his dinner with Andrew. I’m a faggot like him. He isn’t sure if he hears Andrew saying it or himself. 

“We don’t have to talk about it.” 

But they do, they do, because this is going to kill Aaron if he doesn’t understand it. Maybe being gay runs in the family. Three men linked by genetics on one Exy team, and every one of them a fairy. How did Nicky figure it out? How did Andrew? The thought of texting Andrew and asking makes him choke on his own spit. I know I called Nicky a fag, but it’s okay, because I think I might be one too. 

It’s only ever been Katelyn, is the thing. No one else has ever mattered to him in that way. He was sucked into the rightness of it. Katelyn was from a bit of the world that Aaron never got to live in, and it was the greatest compliment to find out that she wanted to grab his hand and pull him into it. Cheerleader and backliner: they’d make a great cover for a romance novel. And girls like Emma, girls he can’t see any sort of life with, they’ve always been there, too. He likes looking at them. Likes when a girl twirls in a skirt that flares at the ends as it wraps around her legs. Likes holding their hands. 

There’s never been anything like that before with a dude, right? But even as he thinks it, something tugs on the frayed edges of his mind—practice, shoving Neil off and feeling his skin hum, watching Kevin’s brutal, vicious smile when he perfects a play that he knows the Ravens would throw a riot over. Maybe that’s the same thing, in the end. 

“I want to talk about it,” Aaron says, and digs his nails into his temples. 

Neil’s eyes sharpen, tracking the junctures of Aaron’s wrists. “No. Not when it’s stressing you out.” 

Aaron groans; it comes out high and sharp. Neil can’t know everything about him. He can’t. He can’t know this. Aaron never said anything. It’s too much. How much of himself has Aaron left bare to anyone who bothers to look? 

“Stop doing that,” he nearly yells. “Stop knowing things about me.” 

Neil’s gaze is unimpressed. “Get better at keeping your secrets.” 

Aaron hisses, “Didn’t know I was gay, did you?” And the words pull on Aaron’s insides so sharply that he presses his nails into his skin until he knows he’ll have half-moon marks until the end of the day.

“You didn’t know you were gay either,” Neil says. Aaron could punch him. 

It’s there, waiting for him—the denial, the bitter words—and his tongue takes it. “I’m not.” 

Neil rolls his eyes before taking another slow sip of his cup. “See,” he says, milk mustache somehow not dimming the effect his eyes have on Aaron. “This is why we’re not talking about it.” 

Enough, Aaron thinks, mostly at himself. Enough. He’s had it. When he moves to sit next to Neil, he doesn’t know what he’s going to do until he does it. 

Neil’s shoulder presses into his like a reflex, like muscle memory, like a movement done a thousand times over. 

This. This is what Aaron can’t handle. Any...of this. The smell of his morning breath; the warmth of his body against Aaron’s side; the stretch of his throat, reddened by the lazy morning sun. Kissing him last night broke some sort of wall, and behind it are all these things Aaron can’t help but notice. 

He tugs on his hair one more time, both sides, then brings his hands down into his lap slowly. He focuses on locking his wrists, on feeling each finger fold against itself. Neil’s eyes follow the movement, pinning his elbows where they are. 

“We have to talk about it,” Aaron tries again. “I’m losing my fucking mind.” 

Neil considers him for a moment. Aaron has never been more exposed than he is now, an x-ray done at the wrong setting. Everything burning white, white, white, too bright for air movement to shine through. Neil wipes at his mouth, and Aaron follows the movement like a man cursed. 

Finally, after an age, Neil says simply, “You kissed me. I kissed you back.” 

The words tumble out of Aaron in a rush he can’t control. “Did you like it?” 

Neil doesn’t even hesitate: “Yeah. Did you?” It’s like he was designed in a lab specifically to push all of Aaron’s buttons. Neil reaches for his hands, and Aaron lets him have them. His thumbs are warm where they swipe over Aaron’s skin. 

“Yes,” he breathes, whispers, pants, and Aaron waits, impatient, as Neil leans in. 

When they kiss this time, Aaron tries to pay attention. He wasn’t able to last night—he isn’t going to forget anything about it now, not when his faculties are back. Neil tastes like dairy and yesterday’s toothpaste. His lips are chapped, and they drag across Aaron’s, skin catching on skin. His fingers tighten around Neil’s, and Neil squeezes back as he presses forward to deepen the kiss. Aaron lets him until he can’t stand it anymore and brings a hand up to grip the back of Neil’s neck. Neil’s tongue is warm where it dips into Aaron’s mouth—Aaron finds Katelyn there, waiting in the wings, but he shoves her away and kisses Neil hard enough to bruise. 

Neil leans back after a minute of this, but it’s not to stop the kiss, not really. Aaron slams his nose into Neil’s forehead and looks down between them, desperate for something he doesn’t know how to name, and can just make out the shape of Neil’s cock through the fabric of his shorts as Neil presses a hand to the base and stifles a moan. 

“Yeah,” Aaron says, “okay.” 

“What are you saying ‘okay’ to?” Neil huffs, pushing down with the heel of his hand, and Aaron realizes, with a shiver, that Neil is trying to cover up to keep Aaron from seeing it. 

“I can’t believe you’re already hard,” Aaron nearly wheezes. “Jesus Christ, Neil, we’ve made out for two seconds.” 

“Don’t pay attention to it,” Neil grumbles, and slams their mouths back together. Aaron kisses back, practically working the plaque out of Neil’s gums. When he finds himself hovering over Neil, pressing him onto the arm of the couch, it’s only kind of an accident. He lets the hand not tangled in the neck of Neil’s shirt fall, skimming his knuckles over the bulge, and the noise Neil makes goes straight to his cock even as Neil’s hand circles his wrist to keep him still. 

“I want to,” Aaron pants. 

“And yesterday,” Neil starts, just as breathless, and Aaron feels kind of proud of that fact, “you wanted to go on a date with a girl you’ve never talked about.” 

“That didn’t mean anything.” It didn’t. Neil has to know that. He has to. He was there to catch Aaron as he fell through the door, out of his mind and forced into a reckoning. 

“Does this?” 

Aaron pulls back as if stung. He tries to meet Neil’s eyes, but Neil looks somewhere lower and more to the left than Aaron’s nose. How can he not see it? How can he not—not listen to Aaron’s ragged breathing and know? 

Yes, he almost says. 

But something seizes in his chest, a message, a warning. This is the one thing Neil does not know about him. The one thing Aaron gets to keep to himself. The first time in the past two days that Aaron has felt like he has any kind of upper hand, and it’s on a couch that was already in the dorm when he moved in. The last time he sat on this couch, he was playing video games with Kevin and trying not to pout when he lost. 

The last time he sat on this couch, he wasn’t winning. 

And maybe Neil was right when he said that they didn’t need to talk about it, when he looked at Aaron’s fingers digging into the roots and tried to stop, because the next thing out of Aaron’s mouth is, “I mean, we can just be friends.” 

Neil scoffs, and Aaron takes a thumb and presses it to the corner of Neil’s mouth until Neil finally looks up. He doesn’t know why he does it. That mouth, he thinks, and almost has a seizure imagining what it would look like stretched around him. 

“I’m just figuring this stuff out,” Aaron says, ignoring the urge to spill his guts again. The part of me that liked Katelyn flares up when I’m around you. I kissed Emma, and all it did was remind me how much I wanted you. I can’t believe that out of everyone in this entire fucking world, my brain decided on you. “I’m not ready for...boyfriends, or whatever.” 

“No one ever said anything about boyfriends.” 

It’s enough, though, because Neil looks Aaron dead in the eyes as he inches a hand into Aaron’s lap to feel Aaron’s own hard cock. It’s enough, because when Aaron nods his head, Neil dips that sinful hand beneath Aaron’s waistband and wraps his fingers around him. 

“Friends,” Neil starts, eyes heavy-lidded and still no less bright for it, “don’t really do this.” 

“Get better friends,” Aaron exhales, as if he has any experience, and feels like he’s been punched in the solar plexus as Neil pulls on him with a desperate flick of the wrist. 

Aaron’s eyes shutter closed as Neil gets him closer and closer. When he risks opening them again at the cusp of everything, the sight of Neil’s cock free against the top of his pants with Neil’s other hand wrapped around it sends Aaron’s orgasm careening through him. He moans like it’s his first time. 

“Jesus,” he curses, and presses his mouth against Neil’s just to feel him gasp against his teeth when he comes. 

In the aftermath, Aaron’s brain turns back on, and he looks down at the mess they’ve made of each other. An anxious trill rushes against his shoulders, and he shoots up to his feet, tucking himself back into his trousers. What did they just do? What did they just do? Aaron’s fingers itch with the urge to climb into his hair, but he looks down and finds evidence of his own completion slick in his palm. 

“Friends,” Neil says almost like he’s telling a joke, and Aaron doesn’t look at him. He can’t. 

“I’m not gay,” Aaron says again, insistent, even though he just came from looking at another dude’s hand masturbating in front of him. “Okay?” 

Neil catches his breath, and Aaron realizes with a start that what Neil just came to is kissing him. The realization tumbles through his brain, a rock falling down a hill, and Aaron wipes his hand on his shirt, hoping he’ll be able to get out the stains. 

“Okay,” Neil says, and that’s that. 

🦊

The next meal with Andrew starts off the same way as the first, and Aaron finds himself flailing about for something to say. When Aaron asked if he wanted to eat together again, Andrew sent him a dry, Sure, and Aaron didn’t have the confidence to choose a different restaurant. When Cindy comes over, she tries to exchange pleasantries, but Aaron can’t respond in kind while his brother stares dead-eyed into the table. 

 She doesn’t seem to recognize them, but Aaron doesn’t fault her for it. He doesn’t want to become a regular, but when Andrew orders the same thing as last time, he finds himself following in his footsteps. Andrew selects the bacon again, and Aaron takes a risk in ordering it too. “Oh, come on,” Andrew says after Cindy walks back to the counter, “we’re going to be those twins?” 

Aaron doesn’t necessarily want to tell Andrew that he’s found some pretty big similarities aside from a side of bacon, but his mouth moves faster than his brain. “I fucked a guy.” 

Saying it out loud brings a hand up to his hair, and Andrew tracks the movement with hazel eyes suddenly focused. Aaron almost lowers it just to get him to cut it out, but he needs the pressure and the pain to center himself in a world where he has told someone about the other night with Neil. I fucked a guy. As if it’s that easy, just a string of four words, to turn his life inside out. 

After a beat of silence, Andrew asks, face carefully neutral, “Did you want to?” 

“Yes,” Aaron whispers, that shameful secret. He did. He’s played the incident over and over in his mind since it happened, and every time, he is left with the same conclusion: that he wanted to fuck Neil, and Neil wanted to fuck him, and they almost came at the same time to Neil’s hands on them both. He still wants to. His brain hasn’t stopped imagining other, dirtier things—the red mark of a paddle against an ass, putting his mouth to good use over Neil’s shorts when he gets back from a run, pushing his cock past Neil’s lips and seeing tears prick at his eyes. 

It was never like this Katelyn. Or, it was, but it was...different. Having sex with Katelyn was a surprise every time it happened. Aaron would be sitting on her bed, cradling her against his chest, and would hear her moan as she pressed herself back against his cock, and that got him going just about every time. She would kiss him, and if she kept kissing him, he would fold her over the mattress and get to work. But it was never something that Aaron wanted like he wanted breath in his lungs. Every time Neil talks to him, looks at him, brushes past him, Aaron is back to that morning, wondering what else Neil would have let him get away with if Aaron hadn’t chickened out. If that fear hadn’t spiked through his heart and made them the kind of friends who have sex once and never again. 

“Good,” Andrew says after a moment, bringing Aaron back to Earth. 

After the initial confession, it’s like a hurricane cleaves through him. “I don’t know why,” Aaron says to the geometric design on the table, nails pressing into his scalp. “I’ve never wanted to before.” 

Andrew stays silent until their food arrives, forcing Aaron to sit with the truth laid so bare. It isn’t until Andrew has finished his waffles that he finally says, “What made you want to now?” 

“I went on a date,” he replies, and Emma burns up in his mind like flash paper, “and realized I didn’t like it.” 

“With a girl, I’m assuming.” 

Aaron nods. Alfredo sauce. A green dress. Someone pulling on his arm so he didn’t pass out in a bar he’d never been to before. 

Andrew makes it through the hashbrowns and the bacon before he says, “Do you want to fuck him again?” 

Aaron stuffs his mouth with a bite of egg, waffle, and bacon before he shrugs halfheartedly. God, does he want to. He’s going to fail his classes because he’s so bent out of shape thinking about cornering Neil and just taking him there, against the wall, until Neil can’t say anything but his name. There haven’t been any study sessions with Neil in the library since their tryst, but Aaron thinks of the texts waiting for him on his phone and nearly flinches. If he says any of this out loud, though, if he acknowledges it in a place where someone else can see— 

Aaron is halfway through his meal when Andrew, plate empty, graces him with another response. “Seems pretty simple to me,” he says, wiping at his mouth with a napkin. “Fuck him again if you want. Call yourself gay if you want.” Something must cross over Aaron’s face because Andrew’s eyebrow arches up. “Or don’t. It’s up to you.” 

Aaron can’t help it. “How did you know you were gay?” he asks, reaching for a lifeboat. 

Andrew’s gaze doesn’t change as he says, “I’m not going to teach you how to spot the signs. Ask Nicky if you want lessons.” 

“Gross,” Aaron says, and Andrew walks out of the diner. 

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and stares at Neil’s message thread shining with three new messages. 

Neil: hey 

Neil: you have a test soon right 

Neil: we meeting up? 

Aaron takes a deep breath, sends back an affirmative, and pays for the meal. 

🦊

Aaron’s mouth is on Neil’s jaw when Neil hums, “We’re supposed to be studying.” 

“Mhm,” Aaron mumbles against him, biting gently at the skin of his mandible. “Sure.” 

He made it through a dozen flashcards before he pushed Neil’s hands down and started tracing a path up to Neil’s mouth with his own. He knows most of the information anyway; it’s just a review this week before the second test of the semester. He wants to fill his head with this knowledge instead: that Neil, squirming in his seat, likes it when Aaron rolls his tongue over his cheek. Neil’s mouth catches Aaron’s before Aaron makes it all the way up, and he nearly laughs as Neil pulls on him with a hand on his chin. 

“We’re in the library,” Neil mumbles into Aaron’s mouth. His hand slides around the back of Aaron’s chair, and he shuffles Aaron closer, close enough that Aaron can slot a leg between his thighs and feel it when Neil tenses. 

“The door is locked.” He thinks of someone finding them, of being exposed like this, on top of each other, and it sends a thrill through him that he doesn’t understand how to name. There’s fear there, too, of course there is, but something else pokes around at the edges, something warm and brave and too much for Aaron to focus on. 

Neil pulls back, and Aaron follows him, chasing his mouth. Neil weaves away from it and brings both hands to Aaron’s face, holding him still, centimeters away. Aaron feels Neil’s breath when he whispers, “Still just friends, right?” 

Aaron thinks of a lot of things in quick succession. Then he says quietly, “Yes. Just friends.” 

That’s the wrong answer—because Neil shoves his chair back and scoops up the index cards that fell on the floor during Aaron’s attack of his trachea. Aaron almost whimpers, and it’s like Neil knows anyway even though it catches in Aaron’s throat, because his blue eyes shine with mischief. “A friend would want you to pass your test.” 

“I have enough friends like that,” Aaron says, even though he doesn’t. He snags a finger in the collar of Neil’s shirt and brings him down, but Neil turns his head at the last moment, and Aaron finds his cheek. He is reminded of that first kiss, and he shoves it into his stomach, refusing to engage. Every kiss after that has been better, miles and miles surer and truer than that blind fumbling kiss in the dark of Aaron’s bedroom. That kiss hardly matters now. 

Something flickers on Neil’s face as Aaron bends away to stare at him more fully. His deft fingers shuffle the colored index cards together, blue and purple and yellow. Katelyn’s choice. “Fine,” Neil says, smirking. 

Before Aaron can suck on his lips again, Neil places a hand on Aaron’s chest to keep him at bay as he asks, “Where is vibrio vulnificus found?” 

Aaron tumbles through the rolodex of information in his lust-addled brain, fumbling for the right answer. The question feels loaded, tense. He isn’t sure how. 

“Brackish water,” Aaron supplies when the words emerge from the dark of his mind. “And saltwater. Um, some foods. Oysters?” 

A smile cuts across Neil’s lips. Aaron’s heart buckles in his chest, stops, restarts in the time it takes him to realize that Neil has reached up into his hair and pulled his bandana off. 

“What are you doing?” Aaron asks, licking his lips. Neil’s auburn hair curls just over his ears like this, and he likes the look of it on him. Guard down. 

“You’ll see. How does vibrio vulnificus get into the body if someone is in saltwater?” 

“Cuts,” Aaron answers immediately. “Open wounds.” 

Another tug on Neil’s mouth. Neil reaches down beneath the table, and Aaron leans back to watch, rapt, as he tugs off his right shoe. He doesn’t have a sock on underneath, the terror, and Aaron’s response to seeing that dies on his teeth as he watches Neil flex the foot. 

Stripping. He’s stripping every time Aaron gets an answer right. Oh, God, he thinks, electricity already shooting down into his cock. Jesus, fuck. 

“Oh,” he says intelligently, lips parting. 

“Oh,” Neil mimics, and Andrew flashes through his mind before Aaron shakes him out. “Leading cause of non-traumatic blindness?” 

It’s one of the STDs, isn’t it? Aaron bumbles through it. Not HPV, not AIDS, but— “Trachoma,” he says, stumbling over the word. “Caused by chlamydia.” 

“Two for one, great job,” Neil says, and Aaron pretends it does nothing to him to be praised like this. He watches as Neil tugs off his other shoe, then follows his hands up as he peels off his shirt to reveal a ratty tank top underneath. It would hardly count, and Aaron would probably say something, if the sight of Neil’s bare shoulders didn’t make him want to hump him like a dog. 

“Do we really have to do STDs right now?” he asks, breathless already. 

Neil shrugs, then continues on. “Bacterium that causes Lyme disease.” 

“Borrelia burgdorferi.” 

Neil plays with the waistband of his shorts for long enough that Aaron growls, “Please.” He holds his breath as he watches Neil pull the shorts down low enough that he can palm himself through his boxers. He’s half-hard already, Aaron realizes; the hand doesn’t hide a lot.

“Jesus.” Aaron bucks up into empty air, desperate, hungry. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.” 

Neil’s next breath is jumpy. Aaron focuses on the dart of his pink tongue over his bottom lip and thinks about pulling it into his mouth. Then Aaron looks down again, and his eyes zero in on a dark spot of gray, darker than the surrounding fabric, splashed where Aaron can all but guarantee the tip of Neil’s cock rests. 

“Focus,” Neil says. 

“I am.” 

“On the question, dummy.” 

Aaron forgets how to be human.

“Hey,” Neil whispers, stroking himself through the thin material. Aaron swears he can hear it shifting. Aaron can’t take his eyes off of it. “Bacterium that causes cat scratch fever.” 

“Bartonella quintana,” Aaron all but snaps, pressing his hand down hard onto his own cock. 

Neil’s waistband snaps shut. 

“What?” Aaron says, bewildered, as his eyes flick up to Neil’s flushed face. He tries to breathe around the feeling in his stomach that seeing his pink cheeks causes. “Why did you stop?” 

“You got it wrong,” Neil says with another infernal shrug. “It’s not Bartonella quintana.” 

Aaron thinks through the question again, running it through the murk in his head, spits out, “Bartonella henselae, fuck, please, I’m sorry—” 

This time, almost as if he can’t stand it any longer either, Neil moves his shorts down his hips, pushing them to his knees. Like this, Aaron can see him better: laid out, cock straining, leaking so much that Aaron can practically taste it when he licks his lips. He has had about enough of this game as he can take. 

“Rocky mountain spotted fever—” Neil starts, but Aaron doesn’t let him finish the sentence, interrupting with a quick, “Rickettsia ricketsii,” before he lunges forward, snagging Neil’s bottom lip between his teeth as he pushes his crotch against Neil’s knee. 

“You don’t even know if that was the question,” Neil mumbles against Aaron’s mouth, but he brings a hand up to the back of Aaron’s head and holds him there, making sure he can’t go anywhere else. Aaron chases his tongue as he feels Neil shift beneath him. The snap of elastic tells him that Neil has finally taken himself out fully, and it is only by the grace of whatever entity is up there watching that he manages to keep from moaning down Neil’s throat. 

“Can I,” he huffs, but Neil is already nodding. 

Aaron moves his hand down slowly. He knows that Neil is—different from Katelyn. That the same things that worked on Katelyn might not work on him. But this is new territory, so Aaron sticks with what is familiar as long as he can. He trails a hand down Neil’s neck, fingertips skimming over his chest so he can thumb at a nipple. Neil doesn’t have much of a reaction, but that’s okay; he doesn’t stop kissing him. What sends Neil wriggling in his seat is actually something that Katelyn hated, and Aaron implants this information in the well he’s starting to keep of his knowledge of Neil Josten. When Aaron’s fingers press into Neil’s waist, Neil kisses him harder, and it is a wonder to Aaron. Whenever he did that to Katelyn, she’d move his hand further down herself, not comfortable with his touch on her stomach. Aaron takes his time working his way down the trail of hair that leads to Neil’s cock, and when he does find it, he follows the shape of Neil’s fingers and pushes them away so he can have control. 

Holding Neil’s cock in his hand is vastly different than watching Neil hold it. Its weight is different than his own, and the nuances of its size are things that Aaron refuses to think about. All of his fantasies over the past two days blaze through him, igniting, blown away like ash in the wind. He hesitates, hand wrapped around Neil, and thinks about the words I fucked a guy as if they are a poison he does not have the antidote for. 

It was one thing, in their dorm, to hold each other and deal with the aftermath of a drunk kiss. This is something else entirely. Aaron isn’t reeling after a date with a girl he doesn’t care about. He isn’t trying to make sense of something he didn’t know he could feel. He’s the one who started kissing Neil; he’s the one who called them friends as he did it. 

“You don’t have to,” Neil whispers between their bodies, but Aaron shakes his head. 

He can’t think. He can’t think. He hasn’t been able to since he saw Neil and kissed him that early morning. He hasn’t been able to think since before that, even, since that first study session that left him speechless and breathless with the knowledge that there were people in the world who were not Katelyn Mackenzie who could care about him enough to follow him into a study room. 

I’m not Katelyn, he’d said, and he wasn’t. He wasn’t anything close. 

Aaron feels Neil tense underneath him, and Neil’s fingers wrap around his wrist, urging him off. “Aaron,” he says, and Aaron dares a glance up at him. It’s worse than he thought it would be: Neil’s brows furrowed, worry etched into the lines of his forehead. He’s doing that to him. Aaron is the one putting that worry there. He didn’t come in here to do that. He was—what was he doing? He was kissing Neil. Right. Why can’t he remember how to do that? “Let go. It’s fine.” 

Aaron shakes his head and looks back down where his hand rests, curled around Neil. He’s leaking, just like Aaron thought he was. Aaron’s own skin is slick with it. He knows how to do this. Doesn’t he? Not on someone else, but he’s done it enough times on himself to know the movements. He shifts, moving his hand up and down once, and Neil shudders. 

“Aaron,” Neil says again, a warning. His grip on Aaron’s wrist tightens, but Aaron moves his hand again, and the bite of Neil’s gasp tells him what he needs to know. 

Neil wants him. Aaron wants to— 

He wants to want him back, but the thought alone makes his skin crawl and his stomach tremble. He’s not...capable. Not right now. That’s okay. If he can’t want him back yet, then he can at least do this. He can make him feel good. He wanted to do that earlier. He’s getting the chance now. 

Aaron moves his hand again, thinking about the way he touches himself in the quiet of his dorm room, and tries to mimic it, firming up his grip and twisting his fingers at the end of each stroke. It’s not that different. The noises are, though—Neil is full of sound when he’s being touched, and he keeps biting his lip whenever he thinks he’s being too loud. He probably is: they’re in public. They’re in a library. But Aaron can’t get himself to tell Neil to quiet down. He likes to hear him like this, enjoying Aaron’s hands on him. Aaron’s own cock stirs, but he ignores it, focusing solely on Neil. 

The next time Neil moans, Aaron slams their mouths together, and the groan Neil lets out echoes down Aaron’s throat as Neil’s hand curls at the nape of Aaron’s neck. A surge of strange pride emerges in his chest. How many other people have seen Neil like this? How many other people have gotten the chance and blown it? Aaron doesn’t want to be one of those people. 

Neil gasps for air and bites Aaron’s lip. Aaron scoots forward to get a better angle and finds Neil’s thigh between his knees, pressing into his groin. He hadn’t realized he was so close to him already. A tremor of pleasure spirals down his spine, and he must do something to make Neil notice because Neil adjusts beneath him, shoving them impossibly closer. 

Aaron ruts against the pressure, and his hard cock throbs behind the zipper of his jeans. Neil moves his hand from Aaron’s wrist and puts it on his thigh.

“Do you want me to?” Neil murmurs, nails digging into Aaron’s neck. 

Aaron nods furiously against his mouth, and Neil moves so slowly that Aaron hisses out a tight, “Just go ahead and do it, fuck,” that has Neil rubbing his hand over Aaron’s bulge. He doesn’t take him out of his pants, but that’s fine with Aaron—this is enough. He pulls on Neil’s cock faster and thrusts up into nothing, rapidly approaching his orgasm. He can’t believe this is all it takes, Neil’s hand over his clothed cock. Jesus, how did he survive the first pull of Neil’s hand when they were on the couch? 

Neil whispers, “I’m close,” and Aaron sets up a brutal pace that has Neil crying out and burying his head into his shoulder when he comes. 

Aaron can’t say anything about it, because when Neil hums, “Good boy,” into his skin as he keeps moving his hand, Aaron comes in his pants with a vicious gasp. 

Neil’s breathing slowly brings Aaron back down. He shifts to look down at him, and his chin hits the top of Neil’s head. He’s never usually on this side of the height difference, and he finds himself laying a kiss to Neil’s scalp. 

Then reality floods back in. 

I just fucked him again, he thinks, the anxiety a palpable thing ghosting over his organs. I came in my fucking pants because of him. 

“I need to go,” he says as quickly as he can manage, and if Neil had asked him why, he would have thrown something out the window at the end of the study room. Neil doesn’t say anything. He simply nods his head, scoots back, and pulls his shorts up. Aaron rushes out with his bag hastily slung over one shoulder and takes out his phone as he all but runs for the exit. 

Aaron: Can we meet somewhere . Emergency 

🦊 

It must be some heinous joke that when Aaron pulls up to the same park in which he and Katelyn broke up, Andrew immediately says, “You fucked him again.” 

Aaron drops Andrew’s stare and slowly sits down beside him, hands tucked into his front pockets. “I’m not gay,” he says to the grass. 

“Your jeans have another guy’s cum on them.” 

Aaron narrows his eyes but doesn’t look back at his brother, or at the stain on his right thigh. He knows exactly where it is; he found it ten minutes ago and hasn’t been able to focus on anything else since then. It’s why he’s in this park—because if he’d listened to Andrew give him the address and realized it was this park, he wouldn’t have come. “I’m not gay.” 

Andrew shakes out a cigarette and offers one to Aaron. Aaron thinks about refusing it, but the stress has him reaching it before he’s even made up his mind. Andrew lights it up with his lighter, then uses Aaron’s lit cigarette to light his own. 

Another minute passes as they smoke. Aaron coughs once, then twice: his vices have always been harder things. Andrew doesn’t even make a sound. Aaron is lost to his thoughts and almost caught off guard when Andrew says, “Does this guy know you’re not gay?” 

“Yeah.” When Andrew doesn’t respond, Aaron quietly adds, “We agreed that we’re only friends.” 

Something unexpected happens then: Andrew laughs with his whole body, bending at the waist, before he sits up and takes another drag. 

“What?” Aaron asks, annoyed and overwhelmed. 

Andrew blows his smoke in Aaron’s face. “Do you make him sign a pact before you fuck?” 

“I’m serious.” 

“So am I.” 

Aaron coughs on another inhale. “No,” he says softly, eyes closing as what he just did with Neil rotates in his brain. “I don’t make him sign a pact.” 

He touched Neil, and Neil touched him. He hopes he hasn’t ruined whatever the fuck this thing is between them. He freaked out, didn’t he—froze up. Couldn’t tell his ass from his elbow when his brain buckled around the flood of information that kissing Neil led to. He still hears Neil gasp, still feels the pull of teeth on his lip. 

He looks over at Andrew and is met with a stare that mirrors his own. If he asked Andrew now, would he tell him about the first time he had sex with a guy and knew it wasn’t a fluke? Would he tell him how many times he had to look at himself and force his body to reconcile with his mind? 

Would he tell him that it’s okay? That the years of gay jokes and anger at Nicky’s happiness don’t matter when slammed into the face of this insurmountable peak? He isn’t gay, but he’s fucked a guy twice. He isn’t gay, but time spent with Neil makes him feel lighter than time with anyone else. He isn’t gay, but he—but he— 

Aaron isn’t sure what he’s more scared of: that Andrew would talk to him about it, or that he wouldn’t. 

“What?” Andrew asks, looking nearly bored. 

He can’t do this. Not with Andrew, at least. That will make it real. That will make it into something that he tells his brother, and if he tells Andrew, then what’s to stop the dam from bursting? They don’t tell each other things; that’s never how any of this has been. 

“Nothing,” Aaron says, thinking of someone he used to share everything with. “I’ve got to go.” 

🦊

Aaron drives to Katelyn’s dorm and parks in the spot furthest from the door. It probably isn’t good for him to be here; maybe he’ll come to his senses in the walk from his car to the front steps. He doesn’t. 

He could text her, but that feels almost rude. When he glances at the time on his phone, it shines up at him. 8:34. It’s the middle of the week, so Katelyn will probably get back from cheerleading practice around nine. That’s fine. He can sit here in the beam of the streetlight and try to come up with a reason for being here that will make any bit of sense. 

I’ve missed you. I mean, as a friend, mostly. I think. 

Hey, do you remember a time that I freaked out while we had sex? No? 

Even though we’re not together anymore, I still want what’s best for you. How are you doing in micro? Need help studying? 

No, none of these are good enough, and besides, she knows him. She always knew how to spot a lie before he finished saying it. It was part of the breakup. You’re lying to me, again! she said, and cried. 

Aaron hates himself a little bit more every time he remembers it. 

Aaron doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting on the steps before he hears a familiar laugh echo in the parking lot. Small blue car—definitely Ambrosia’s, he can picture the COEXIST sticker on the back without having to look. Even though he’s in the most direct light he can be in, none of the girls seem to notice him until he says, “Katelyn,” as they pass him for the doors. 

Katelyn stops in her tracks and stares at Aaron like he’s a snake she’s too scared to step on. Aaron can’t blame her. Per Allison’s suggestion, he didn’t respond to the hoodie. Didn’t stop to look at her, didn’t find her after class. He’d seen the garish orange shine of it in the sunlight—and he’d asked out another girl within earshot of her. Seeing him now is probably surprising. Aaron’s surprised; he didn’t think he’d ever come to this dorm again. 

Ambrosia glares at him, but she always did that even before the breakup, so Aaron is nonplussed. It’s Sid laying a hand on Katelyn’s shoulder and leaning in to whisper, “Do you want to talk to him?” that makes everything suddenly more real. Aaron wouldn’t have ever called Sid his friend, but she always smiled at him when he came to pick Katelyn up. Seeing her try to comfort Katelyn because of Aaron makes the world fall in a little bit. 

He shouldn’t be here. 

“It’s okay,” he says quickly, standing up to wipe his sweaty hands on his pants. “Uh, I can go. Sorry.” 

Aaron is already on the third step down when a small voice behind him says, “Wait.” 

Aaron looks at Katelyn over his shoulder and sees her bite her lip like she does when she’s thinking too hard about something. He used to be able to take his thumbs and smooth her mouth out, turn that bitten frown into something bright and sweet. He doesn’t reach out even though his fingers itch with the muscle memory of it. 

“It won’t be long,” he tries. 

Ambrosia and Sid both seem to give this thought, Ambrosia with no small amount of disdain on her face and Sid with her lips pursed. Finally, after what feels like an eternity, Katelyn looks at the other cheerleaders. “I’ve got it,” she assures, and waves them on towards the door. When they don’t move, she insists, “I mean it. Go. I’ll be up soon.” 

Sid frowns but grabs Ambrosia’s hand and pulls her along. They don’t head upstairs; Aaron can see their faces peeking out of the door to the dorm building. That’s fine. Whatever. This is as close to being alone with Katelyn as he is going to get, and he is going to take it. 

Katelyn’s eyes focus on him again, and her features tense up. They’re past the winning each other back stage, then. Good. Aaron was never good at winning people back. 

“What do you want, Aaron?” 

He doesn’t even know how he’s supposed to broach this subject. He’s never needed to before. It was just—Katelyn, and that was it, that was what he knew. He went along with whatever she wanted, and she let him, and it was good until it wasn’t. The night they broke up thuds against the sides of his brain, and he finds himself saying, “How did you know that it was time to call it quits?” 

Well. Fuck. Not at all how he was supposed to do this. Not how it was supposed to happen at all. 

Katelyn’s eyes widen, and Aaron thinks about another set of blue eyes digging into his. “What?” she asks, eyebrows furrowing. She shakes her head like she’s clearing an Etch-a-Sketch. “What are you asking me?” 

“I,” he starts. And nothing else. He’s not gay. He isn’t. He can’t be. But he’s, you know, something. Maybe he’s different than he was when he was with Katelyn. Maybe it was Katelyn, and now it’s Neil, and none of it has to do with his sexuality at all. Maybe he was lying to her their whole relationship, or maybe he wasn’t. Either way, he needs to know. 

Katelyn’s shoulders scrunch under her uniform. “Aaron, either explain yourself or get the fuck away from me.” 

He takes a deep breath, tries again. He’s going to need Kevin’s newest bottle of vodka after this conversation. Here Katelyn is, standing under the streetlight, draped in her gear, and even now, Aaron can’t think only of her. It makes his voice come out sharp when he asks, “Did you ever want to break up with me before it happened?” 

Katelyn wraps her arms around herself. Aaron doesn’t move to hold her. 

“I figured I was going to marry you,” she admits, staring at the ground. “But yeah. I thought about it before it happened.” 

The vision tumbles through him on unsteady feet: a white dress, a rented tux. Andrew, Neil, Nicky, and Kevin on one side of the aisle; Katelyn’s baby sister, Nadine, tossing flowers out of a basket. Dresses the color of Katelyn’s eyes on every bridesmaid. Table settings, party favors. A speech. A ring. 

Katelyn interrupts the daydream with a curt, “Is that,” and doesn’t finish the sentence. 

Aaron follows her gaze and finds that damned stain streaked across his jeans. He’d almost forgotten. He coughs once into his fist and looks anywhere that isn’t at her as the fear pulses through his body, unmooring him. Stupid. He’s so stupid. “Yeah. Uh. Yeah.” 

“Oh,” she whispers, and Aaron pretends like he doesn’t hear the catch in it. “That’s, um. Interesting.” 

Aaron’s solar plexus stings with the knowledge that he just can’t stop hurting her. It isn’t enough to keep him from breathing out and saying to the concrete stairs, “I’m not gay.” It’s almost a running joke now. He’s a wind-up toy with a voice box on a pull string. Part of him wants to laugh about it; the other part wants to run headlong into traffic, wants to dive off the nearest overpass and smear himself across the interstate. He settles for doing neither. 

Katelyn chokes on her spit. “I didn’t say you were,” she manages after a moment, catching her breath. She sounds like she’s about to cry. “I didn’t even—” She shakes her head hard enough that hair falls out of her ponytail. “Aaron, why are you here?” 

“I don’t know,” he says honestly, and risks looking at her face again. It hurts more than he thought it would to see the red splotches start to form over her cheeks. He’s stressing her out. Pretty soon, she’s going to start picking at her skin, and he won’t be able to grab her hands and stop her. “I was just driving and wound up here. Thought we could...talk, or something.” 

“Talk about what?” Katelyn snaps. Aaron’s eyes follow her as she moves away from him; his body does not. More strands of red hair fall from her ponytail as she begins to pace, and he thinks of the last time he saw her and wanted to push it behind her ear. He didn’t do it then; he isn’t doing it now. “There’s nothing to talk about. You didn’t want me to be a noticeable part of your life, and I was tired of arguing for space.” 

Aaron feels his gaze sharpen. This is nothing like the day they broke up. “You never said—” 

“I shouldn’t have had to!” she shouts, and now she’s throwing her hands around, gesticulating wildly. Aaron glances at the door and sees Sid wrap a hand around Ambrosia’s bicep, holding her back, then looks back at Katelyn. “It was obvious to everyone but you.” Her eyes find his in the gloom, and Aaron has to suck in his next breath through his teeth. “You’re not very good at letting people in.” 

Memories of their relationship threaten to rise like the wave of a tsunami, but Aaron isn’t ready for them. He manages to hold them at bay by raising a hand to his scalp and raking a line from temple to ear. He isn’t sure what he’s supposed to say, and it doesn’t matter anyway. Before Aaron can even think of anything, Katelyn whispers harshly, “I think you should leave.” 

Aaron nods his head and turns on his heels. He hears the dorm door open behind him and the sound of footsteps quickly moving to Katelyn’s side. “Are you okay?” Sid asks, and Katelyn lets out a sob. Aaron floors it the whole drive home. 

🦊

When Aaron steps into his dorm, Neil and Nicky are already there, playing a video game in the living room. 

“Hey,” Neil says, glancing at him once before turning his eyes back to whatever is happening on the screen. Nicky raises his chin at him, and Aaron does it back before he walks to his own bedroom and hooks the straps of his bag around his chair. He considers staying here for the rest of the night, but it’s only a thought, formless and dull; he goes and sits on the couch. 

Neil is already on the floor, back pressed into the couch and legs crossed in front of him; Nicky is almost down too, half on a cushion and half not. Aaron puts his hand under his cheek and tries to figure out who’s winning. He does not think about the last time he and Neil were on this couch. 

Neil’s character stands, wobbly and bloody, as Nicky hits a series of buttons on his controller that result in the word FATALITY cutting across the screen. Aaron watches as Nicky cuts Neil in half. “Man, come on,” Neil says, but Aaron can hear the hint of a smile in his voice and knows he’s having a good enough time. 

He doesn’t think about it often, but it comes to his mind now, pulled from the recesses: that first year Neil signed on as a Fox, he showed up to practice with a black eye and a sprained finger after a weekend with his father, and no one got to hear the full story but Aaron in the dim quiet of a late night. They played a video game then to get his mind off it, and Neil sucked at it because of the sprain. But that wasn’t the important part. The important part was that, when Neil was finally sleepy, he put his mouth on Aaron’s shoulder and mumbled, “I don’t know why he likes to hurt me.” Aaron swore he had never seen red before then. Neil didn’t remember it in the morning, or he pretended like he didn’t. But Aaron never forgot. 

He isn’t sure why he thinks of this now. They were playing a different game.. Neil’s hair was darker, shorter. Neil doesn’t visit his father anymore, and the last time one of the Foxes asked, Neil told them that his mom was figuring it out. There’s really nothing about this moment that should remind Aaron of that night. 

Aaron nudges Neil’s back with his covered foot. “Hey.” 

Neil looks over his shoulder. “What?” 

“Let me play.” 

“Bring it!” Nicky shouts, almost giggly, as he sends it back to the character screen. “Ask Neil, I’ve been beating his ass for hours.” 

“We started playing thirty minutes ago,” Neil says, and scoots over so Aaron can sink to the floor next to him. Aaron leans closer than he needs to, bumps his arm against Neil’s, knocks knees with him, and is met with an easy smile as Neil places the controller in his hands. Good. They’re still good. Aaron didn’t fuck things up. The relief pours through him, tingly and sweet. 

“Still,” Nicky says, selecting his character. This time, he’s a girl with blue fans. Aaron hops around, looks at all the other choices, and selects a guy with sunglasses and dog tags around his neck. 

“Should have known that’s who you’d choose,” Neil whispers. Aaron elbows Neil in the side and is rewarded with a peal of laughter. 

Aaron wins the first fight; Nicky wins the second; Aaron takes the third. They’re selecting different characters when Nicky’s phone rings on the coffee table, and he smiles when he sees the contact before answering with a cheery, “Hello!” 

“Erik,” Aaron whispers when Neil raises an eyebrow. Aaron knows where this is going and eases the controller away from Nicky, tossing it towards Neil. 

Sure enough, without so much as a backwards glance, Nicky walks off to his bedroom with a light, “Oh, nothing really, just waiting on you to...” Aaron isn’t even sure he realizes that Aaron took the controller away from him. 

Aaron hits the random character selector and winds up with a lady in green. Neil glances at him, mirth shining in his eyes, and does the same thing. He gets the guy with the sharp hat. Words push at Aaron’s throat, begging for some sort of reassurance, but he breathes them down into his gut. Neil is playing a game with him. This is what he’s used to. 

Friends, Aaron thinks, and lets Neil get in the first hit. 

🦊

Aaron texts Andrew, asks if he wants to come to the first Exy game of the season. 

Andrew doesn’t reply. 

🦊

The first game always makes campus feel like a different place. The air changes, the stadium fills; there are no wins or losses yet, so everything is lovely and new, bent around the possibility of this season being something great. It’s easy to get lost to it, even years into his college Exy career. It’s easy to feel like someone great. 

Aaron busies himself with putting on his gear and doesn’t notice when Neil sits down on the bench next to him until he turns. 

“Hi,” Neil says, grinning as he pulls his hair back with that same ratty bandana. His eyes gleam in the harsh light of the locker room, but it does nothing to rid them of their intensity. 

“Hey,” Aaron says back, pulling his gloves on and strapping them with his teeth. When he’s done, he settles down and looks at Neil again. “Nervous?” 

Neil laughs, once. “No. It’s Breckenridge. We beat them last year, we can beat them this year.” 

Aaron hmms. “Confident.” 

They did beat Breckenridge last year. Tripped over themselves to do it, but they did it. Aaron remembers having to pull Seth off some poor striker and shoving him towards a seething Allison with a curt, “Control your fucking dog, Reynolds.” She hit him on the side of his head with her racquet for that. It was a good thing that Exy required helmets; Aaron would have been concussed otherwise. 

When Coach calls everybody in for the pep talk, Aaron follows Neil and leans over him, chest plate touching Neil’s back. Neil doesn’t move or say anything, so Aaron stays where he is. Nicky sees it as an invitation and wraps an arm around Aaron’s shoulders, jostling Aaron further into Neil. 

“Aww,” Nicky says into Aaron’s ear, holding him tight. “I knew you loved us.” 

Aaron huffs. “Shut the fuck up.” 

Aaron half pays attention to the talk, only really coming back into focus when everyone starts to walk out of the locker room towards the stadium. The roar of the crowd is nearly deafening, a sea of orange bearing down on them from above. The marching band plays something pompous that has half the team whooping; the cheerleaders do a routine to match it. Aaron finds himself searching for Katelyn out of habit, and there she is, up at the top of a pyramid. When their eyes meet, she looks away. Aaron looks to the stands instead, at the area reserved for the families of the players, searching for a crop of blond hair as familiar to him as his own. 

He searches for it, again and again, and he doesn’t find it. Dan’s stripper friends are there, crowding in a corner, shouting for her. Matt’s mom, too. Someone Aaron barely recognizes who might be Renee’s mom. No Andrew. 

Somewhere, a whistle sounds, a shoulder touches his, but Aaron is gone. One game. He asked him to one stupid fucking game. Mailed him a ticket after bothering Nicky into giving up Andrew’s address. (An apartment about fifteen minutes from Palmetto. Nice neighborhood. Katelyn had talked about moving there before.) Aaron is his brother. A fucking text every once in a while, an address sent to him on its own, attendance at the first goddamn game. He isn’t asking for much. He’s not asking for a kidney. He’s asking for a fucking presence. 

“What’s going on?” Neil asks, knocking racquets with Aaron. Aaron isn’t sure how long he’s been standing in front of him. 

“Hm?” he says, dazed, before he realizes what Neil asked. “Nothing. Just nervous.” 

How is he even supposed to begin to explain what’s going on inside his head? How is he meant to do it without embarrassing himself? I asked my brother if he’d come to the game, and he didn’t answer me, and I still thought he’d show up. I’m so fucking tired of being the one who reaches out. I can’t imagine a world in which I don’t reach out. No, no, it’s all ridiculous. He can’t speak any of that out loud. Not today. Not ever. He shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up; that’s on him. He knows how Andrew is. Has always known it, even when he didn’t want to. Of course he didn’t show up. Why would he? Aaron isn’t worth the time. 

“Hey,” Neil says with more intent. “Aaron, get your head on straight.” 

Aaron fumbles, looks at him. “Okay,” he says, shaking his head. “Okay, I’m good, it’s fine.” 

It isn’t fine. If Kevin was mad at him for barely catching three out of six shots on goal during practice, he’s going to be fucking livid when they get off the court now. Aaron misses balls he shouldn’t, stumbles over his own two feet, gets a yellow card five minutes into the game. Breckenridge has eight points by the time the first half is over solely due to Matt and Nicky defending the line, and Palmetto has seven. 

True to form, as soon as they’re off court, Kevin comes for him. 

He grinds his finger into Aaron’s chest plate. “Get it the fuck together,” he hisses, towering over him. Aaron can just make out the 2 tattoo scribbled into his cheek behind the grate of the helmet. “What the hell is your problem?” 

Aaron considers saying a lot of things, of doing a lot of things. He glances around, searching for something to ground him, and finds Neil at the fringes, eyes darting between Aaron and Kevin. Cold washes through his chest, and he takes a deep breath to feel the chill seep into his lungs as he looks back up at Kevin. 

He can do this. It’s just a game. He can be upset later, he can do whatever the fuck this is later. Spin, bend, dissolve. What did Katelyn call it? Spiral. (Aaron, you’re spiraling again. Breathe.) He can spiral when he’s back in his dorm. 

“Sorry,” he says, practically grinding the word between his teeth. “I’ve got it.” 

Kevin grunts, then spins on his heel to rail on someone else. Neil walks over, holding his racquet out, and Aaron clacks his against it before he bangs his helmet against Neil’s. They’re not doing anything that will expose them—the only way to hear somebody out here is to get this close. Everyone knows that. 

“I’m fine,” he says. 

Neil bites his lip. “Uh-huh.” 

“It’s nothing.” 

“Sure.” 

The next half is better. Aaron puts all of his energy and emotion into protecting Renee, and it only takes two blocked passes from someone with the name Ferdinand written on the back for him to start taking Aaron seriously. Aaron dives for the ball several times, and he swings his racquet as hard as he can when he catches it, aiming for Neil or Kevin or Seth, whoever’s on the court and closest to him. He makes the space he takes up worth something. They score one point, then two, then four, and Breckenridge swaps out players when they finally realize they aren’t going to win this game if they don’t get control back. 

They don’t get control back. Aaron slams into his opposing players, all legal checks, all done with precision hits that cut into the gear protecting them. Aaron trains with Seth and Janie; he knows where to slam a shoulder into someone to make them hurt. Ferdinand has to be led off the court limping and curses something fierce and angry at Aaron, but Kevin’s smile is so bright when Aaron turns to him that Aaron is sure everyone in the stadium can see it. 

Neil scores the winning goal off a pass Aaron sends him. 

The Foxes pile on top of each other on the way to Neil, and Aaron is added to the crush, slammed into Neil’s side by Matt scooping his arms around them both. Everyone is panting and covered in sweat, but it’s still the best Aaron has felt all night, caught in the middle of his team’s cheer. It doesn’t make the thoughts of Andrew go away, but it does make them more manageable, if only for a moment. 

“Good fucking game!” Dan shrieks over them all, and claps Aaron on the shoulder. 

When they make it back to the locker room after a lineup of stiff handshakes, Aaron retreats to the shower as soon as possible. Kevin and Matt were picked for press duty; Aaron’s glad it wasn’t him. It almost was, he thinks—Coach had looked right at him when he was choosing. But something must have shown on Aaron’s face, because all he did was say, “Nice comeback,” and pick someone else. 

Aaron’s limbs feel heavy, heavier than they usually do after a game. He takes twice as long in the shower, and he digs his fingernails into the fat of his cheeks as the water beats down on his head. He’ll have red marks when he gets out, but they’ll fade quickly, and if they don’t, then he always has the game to thank for them. His emotions fizzle and skate around him, pressing against the walls of the locker room. He tries to get a handle on the feelings—thinks of Bee, and of that stupid sense thing she wanted to teach him—but they’re too slippery, too loose. He breathes in, and he breathes out, and he thinks: I taste sweat, I feel water, I hear footsteps, I see a shit ton of orange, I smell this dirty fucking locker room. 

It doesn’t help, not in a way that matters. Everything is still so big, so insurmountable. Andrew was supposed to be here, and he wasn’t, and Aaron’s whole body hurts with the knowledge of that. It’s going to keep hurting with that. 

Aaron changes into his extra set of clothes and sits on the bench between the lockers, waiting for Neil like he always does. Everyone who passes by him is a blur of color and sound. If he drags his awareness up to the surface, it sinks back down in an instant, so he stops trying. People enter. People leave. Someone says something about the game that Aaron doesn’t understand. Someone shakes him. He doesn’t know if it’s congratulatory. 

He realizes it’s only him and Neil in the locker room when the last shower turns off. 

He considers rising to his feet, but his legs still weigh more than they ought. He needs time. He needs a minute just to gather himself together. He’ll be okay. He’ll manage. 

“Aaron,” Neil says, bringing his attention back. When Aaron looks over, he finds Neil standing nearly naked, towel wrapped loosely around his waist. His hair is wet and slick to his head, and he’s making a mess, dripping water all over the locker room floor. Someone has to clean that up, Aaron thinks absently. But the thing that makes the breath stop in Aaron’s throat is that Neil isn’t wearing a shirt. 

He always wears a shirt. Aaron cannot think of a single moment he has seen Neil’s bare chest. 

Aaron tries not to look, but his eyes catch on a long scar scraping across Neil’s chest, starting under his right arm and cutting across his belly button. He looks away quickly once he realizes what he’s doing and tries to focus on the wall in front of him. 

“What?” Aaron murmurs, lost. Who cut you there? How did they do it? What did they use, and why did you let them? “Get dressed.” 

“Look at me.” 

“No.” No, he’s not doing that. Neil has never shown those to anybody. The long showers, the duffel bag in the stall with him—no. Whatever Neil thinks Aaron has done to deserve this, it isn’t enough. 

Neil’s footsteps across the floor are slow and steady, a warning for Aaron, and Aaron squeezes his eyes shut before Neil can come into view in front of him. He hears rather than sees it when Neil squats to get to his level, a creaking of the knees, and when Neil’s callused hands cup his face, a tremor runs through his body. 

“Look at me,” Neil says again, a whisper, breath like smoke across Aaron’s lips. 

“I can’t.” Aaron tries to focus on keeping his breathing even, but it’s hard when he knows that Neil is right there in front of him, begging. This isn’t how this was supposed to happen. This wasn’t in the cards Aaron has been dealt. He’s never deserved this. He didn’t deserve this before, and he shouldn’t get it now. 

Neil presses forward, and Aaron feels his hands wrap around Neil’s back as he kisses him. The movement exhausts him, tugs on muscles already tight and tired from the game and from the aftermath. The space between Neil’s shoulder blades is cold and damp, but Aaron doesn’t care; he loses himself to the sensation of it, to the touch of his fingers on Neil’s bare skin. God, he hadn’t known how badly he still wanted this, how intoxicating the taste of Neil was once he’d gotten accustomed to it. Two fucks, and he’s already desperate for more. A bad game, and he’s practically licking into his mouth, keening over it, embarrassing himself. 

When Neil deepens the kiss, Aaron lets him, and he pulls at the towel to urge Neil into his lap. He doesn’t see it happen, but he hears it—he feels it—when Neil undoes the towel and lets it fall to the floor so he can straddle Aaron on the bench. It can’t be comfortable; it’s hardly comfortable for Aaron, and he’s sitting down. If Aaron were to open his eyes right now, he would see Neil completely bare, and the thought of that makes him feel like his chest is about to be cut in half.

Neil takes one of Aaron’s hands and moves it over his chest, pressing Aaron’s fingers into the different marks and scars. Divots and deviations, places where someone carved something out of him. Aaron doesn’t realize he’s crying until a tear falls across his chin, and then it’s just—it’s done. It’s over.  

“I don’t deserve,” he starts, but the rest of his words are quashed between their mouths as Neil kisses him harder. Here, like this, Aaron feels their height difference with his chin bent up to catch Neil’s. It’s a strange thing, he thinks, to realize now. Neil has always been taller than him. Three inches. He likes it. 

Neil pulls on the hem of Aaron’s shirt, and Aaron lifts his arms up to let him guide it off. 

“Open your eyes.” 

Aaron shakes his head. 

“Open them.” 

Aaron tastes the salt of his own tears on his mouth. He shakes his head again. “I can’t,” he all but sobs. “I won’t.” 

“I want you to.” 

“You’re just doing this because I—” 

“Because you’re upset,” Neil finishes. Aaron nods, once, ashamed of how loud he’s being with his emotions. Neil knows. Neil has seen into him. “That’s not why.” 

“Then why,” Aaron hisses, desperate, brain folding over itself to figure out what Neil wants from him that he can’t provide. 

Neil shrugs against him. Aaron feels the movement in his own shoulders. “I don’t want to hide them from you anymore, I guess.” 

“You can’t mean that.” Emotion swallows him, envelops him. What is he meant to do with this? There’s nowhere to put it. He can’t handle the standard fucking set of human emotion—what does Neil want him to do with this horrible, viscous thing that pokes at Aaron’s heart? 

“I do,” Neil says, wrapping his fingers around Aaron’s wrists. “Open your eyes, please.” 

Aaron’s next breath shudders through his lungs. 

He opens his eyes. He only knows he’s still crying when Neil blurs in front of him. 

“Aaron.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Aaron.” 

“Yeah,” he says, sniffling, “what is it?” 

Neil looks down at him. Aaron is suddenly, acutely aware of the lack of clothes separating them. Just his shorts and his boxers, and then they’d be—there. Naked, together. The intimacy of it sends a shock through Aaron’s brain stem and down into his spine, and his eyes burn again. 

“You still haven’t actually looked at me.” 

Aaron blinks at him. “I’m looking at you right now.” 

Neil shakes his head, and it sends wet tendrils of auburn curling over his eyes. Aaron thinks about pushing them back with his fingers, looping them around an ear. “No. You’re not. You’re still stuck.” 

A beat. Neil brings Aaron’s hand up to his chest and presses Aaron’s palm down onto damp skin. “Look at me here.” 

Aaron does. There’s a mole on Neil’s chest, right in the middle of his sternum. It’s about the only mark on him Aaron can see that wasn’t caused by someone else. A patch of skin, roughly healed, slants across his left side, over the ribs. Aaron feels it under his touch, distinct. That scar from before is nastier up close—the shadows of spikes follow the outline of it, and Aaron realizes with a deep breath that Neil must have been hit with barbed wire or something eerily similar. There are other, smaller marks burrowed into his skin: a jagged cut at his hip, a divot under his stomach. 

“Jesus Christ,” Aaron whispers, puffing out his cheeks. “What the fuck?” 

Neil laughs: short and chaotic, more feeling than sound. “You’re acting like you don’t have the same shit.” 

“My shit,” Aaron immediately insists, grip tightening around Neil’s body, “is nothing like yours. I consented to mine.” Aaron knows what he’s talking about. Track marks. Beads of unhealed skin. Other marks, too, hidden between his joints and the bends of his knees. 

The look Neil gives him is unrelenting, and Aaron knows he’s been had. “Not all of them.” 

Aaron shuts him up by kissing him again. It isn’t long before Neil bucks into Aaron’s stomach. Aaron is reminded once again of their degrees of separation, which means he is reminded once again that there are not nearly enough to keep him from knowing exactly when Neil’s hard cock presses into his abdominal muscles. He knows he’s almost exposed here, too—hard and aching, his gym shorts leaving nothing to the imagination. 

Neil’s fingers find their way to Aaron’s waistband, toying with it. 

“No,” Aaron finds himself breathing out, and Neil’s touch is gone. Neil pulls his mouth back, moving away, but Aaron catches his lips again before he mumbles out, “No to my pants coming off. Yes to everything else.” 

“Okay,” Neil hums into his teeth. “Yes to everything else.” 

Aaron doesn’t know how they wind up the way they do, Neil slammed against a locker, Aaron on his knees below him, but the noise Neil makes when Aaron slides his mouth around him is nothing short of incredible. Aaron isn’t used to it, and he knows he isn’t very good at it—he’s never been great at his first tries. The first time he went down on Katelyn, she laughed at him and pulled him back up to her mouth by his hair. You’ve never done this, have you? she’d asked, and Aaron had burned with shame until she’d pulled up a how-to video. 

Aaron doesn’t get a how-to video now. But he doesn’t need one: Neil does most of the work. He warns Aaron when he’s about to come, urging him away, but Aaron stays where he is, hands locked around Neil’s hips, even when he has to pull off to cough cum out of his airway. 

“Sorry,” Neil whispers, chest heaving. “I did warn you.” 

After that, it’s quick work of Aaron. Neil’s mouth is on him for maybe a minute before he comes with a gasp, and Neil handles it better than Aaron did, swallowing like a champ. 

Aaron kisses him, even though they both taste like cock. He prepares himself for the upcoming storm of shame and embarrassment, but to his surprise, he’s maxed out. No more left to go around; he’s too exhausted. It will come later, Aaron knows, when he is half-awake in the morning and lying in a bed too empty to hide his scars. But it does not come now, and that is a good thing. 

When they step onto the bus, they take up seats with other people, and Aaron is careful not to stare at him. The only indication Aaron gets that anything they just did was real is a small squeeze of his hand when Neil boards the elevator with him, a thing easily brushed off in the cramped space with the rest of their team. It sends a shock through Aaron, and he pretends to sneeze to make up for it. 

Everyone goes to the girls’ room, even Neil. Aaron knows he’s doing it for his sake and wants to punch him in the jaw for it when Neil grabs Nicky by the wrist and pulls him along with him. He walks into the dorm, alone, and collapses onto his bedspread with a momentous sigh. 

He pulls out his phone to stare at Andrew’s message thread, but three seconds of that is too much. He clicks over to Katelyn’s. His latest message sits there, untouched: I’m sorry if me coming over made you feel bad. He wants to send her something else, something she’ll have to deal with, but she doesn’t deserve that. 

In the end, Aaron goes to sleep. 

🦊

“I can’t believe you didn’t show up.” 

The accusation doesn’t change the disconnected, cool look in Andrew’s eyes. He pushes at the last soggy bit of a waffle with his fork, swirling it in the pool of syrup that covers the plate, and Aaron thinks of that day in the courthouse with a terrible clarity. I could punch you again, he thinks, sitting up straighter. A tingle rolls over the knuckles of his clenched fist. I could do it, and you’d probably let me, and it wouldn’t do a thing to make me feel better. 

When Andrew doesn’t waste air replying, Aaron makes a noise low in his throat. He clenches and unclenches his fist, trying to move the feeling out of it. “I get that you don’t want to hang out with me or whatever, but the least you could fucking do is come to a game. It was important to me, asshole.” 

Cindy comes and refills Aaron’s coffee. He thanks her. “No problem, hun,” she says, and Aaron thinks she means it. Andrew’s expression still does not shift. 

“Well?” Aaron asks, feeling like a little kid again. Tilda in his brain too many times for him to count: Baby, Mama’s sick, you know? I can’t show up to everything. I’m sure you did a great job, but I—I need some time to myself. You understand? 

He didn’t then. He doesn’t now. Maybe that’s his problem. 

The only time Aaron missed one of Katelyn’s cheerleading competitions, he was bent over a toilet, puking his guts out, and he hadn’t been the one to decide he wouldn’t be going—that had been Nicky and Neil. One of them called Katelyn to tell her what was going on while Aaron groaned a protest in the background (Nicky), and the other held the back of Aaron’s head over the toilet bowl so he wouldn’t throw up on the floor when he tried to get up (Neil). It hadn’t mattered that he had gone to every other competition. This was an event for someone he cared about, and he wanted to be there. It meant nothing to him that Katelyn wanted him to stay home if he was sick; she was his person, and he was almost able to stand on his feet. It took Katelyn getting her father to record the competition and a week spent in Katelyn’s bed for Aaron to feel better about missing it. 

If Andrew was a Fox and Aaron was not, Aaron would go to his games. He knows this with a certainty that almost shocks him. Life spent away from each other or not—that’s his twin. They’re brothers. The fact that it doesn’t leave a streak of guilt on Andrew’s face makes their differences stand out to Aaron more than anything else ever has. 

“Anything to say?” Aaron says, voice clipped and wounded. He wishes he knew how to make it stop broadcasting his emotions. He doesn’t look Andrew in the eye, focusing instead on a splotchy mark on the wall to the right of Andrew’s head. He should stop talking now. It’s not going to lead to anything good. The only way this will end is by Andrew hurting his feelings, and that’s just stupid. He scoots his chair back, legs scraping against the floor. 

“Left side,” Andrew says. 

Aaron stills, fingers wrapped around the bottom of the seat. “What?” 

“You’re not good at watching your left side,” Andrew continues with a half-hearted shrug. When Aaron just stares, he says, “You let Ferdinand get past you too many times, and it was always on your left.” 

Aaron’s mouth breaks into a grin. Andrew rolls his eyes. 

“Don’t know why you’re smiling,” Andrew says. “It was boring. They didn’t even have popcorn.” 

🦊

Before practice the next day, Matt asks Dan to go to the Exy banquet with him. It’s cute, and insipidly stupid: wipe-off paint on his car forming the words EXY PROM? across the back window. Aaron knows this because no one will shut the fuck up about it. He wasn’t even there to see it, and he can almost picture it himself in perfect technicolor. 

Aaron is busy strapping on his gear when Renee taps him on the shoulder. Her rainbow-tipped hair is pale and pulled out of her face. She smiles at him, soft and lovely, and Aaron tries to prepare himself for whatever bombshell she’s about to throw his way. 

“Are you bringing anyone to the banquet?” she asks, eyes shining with knowledge she shouldn’t have. 

She fucking knows. Okay. Cool. Last time he tells Allison anything. Before he can respond, though, Matt bends down to sling an arm around his neck and says, “Of course he is, he’s got that cheerleader. Katie. Kenzie. Katherine?” 

“Katelyn,” Aaron corrects quietly. 

Matt smiles with his whole face. “Katelyn! Lovely. I was almost there.” 

“Oh!” Renee says. “My bad.” 

Aaron finds his eyes searching the room for Neil, and he only breathes again when he finds him staring a couple lockers away, blue eyes bright in his face. Neil fiddles with his bandana, taking time to push it through his hair, and something settles in Aaron’s stomach. He takes a deep breath, shakes his shoulders out, and says, “We actually broke up.” 

Neil nods at him once and looks away. Aaron feels—he isn’t sure what he feels, but a weight rises from his body, a knot releasing from a shoulder. 

Nicky is the first one to respond. He peers out from behind another row of lockers and looks at Aaron with an expression best described as belonging to a kicked puppy. “I’m sorry, man,” he says, frowning with every muscle in his face. “You never said.” 

Aaron shrugs with a nonchalance he doesn’t feel. His skin is tingling every place his uniform touches. “I didn’t want to talk about it. I still don’t really want to. We broke up, I’m going stag, it’s fine.” 

“Still,” says Dan, coming over to bring Aaron into a hug he doesn’t particularly want. She smells like lilac, Aaron thinks. Probably her detergent. “That sucks.” 

Kevin, from somewhere Aaron can’t see with his face buried in Dan’s shirt: “Why are we talking about this? Focus. We have practice.” 

“Shut the fuck up, Kevin.” Allison. Aaron lifts his head to find her sidling up next to Renee and watches her lean an arm across Renee’s shoulder. Renee’s demure expression doesn’t change. “Sorry about your girl, Minyard.” 

Aaron smiles, pinched. “Thanks.” He clears his throat and laces up his shoes. “Kevin’s right, though. Let’s go.” 

Even Seth, once practice starts, finds him during a play to click racquets together. “Sorry to hear about it,” he says gruffly, and Aaron just shakes his head. 

🦊

“Wait,” Dan says when Aaron’s group begins to disperse back to their rooms once they’ve made it back to the dorms. Aaron turns his head. Kevin is already leaning in the doorway of the room he shares with Matt and Seth, but he stands with his back against it and stares, arms crossed. 

“What is it?” Nicky asks, eyebrow dancing next to his hairline. 

Dan looks between everybody. “We should do something together. As a team.” At the resulting silence, Dan continues, “I mean, we only ever hang out during practice, right? It’d be good for us, I think, to see each other in a different context.” 

“You want us to be friends,” Kevin says, foot pressed into the doorjamb.

“I have enough friends,” Aaron contributes, and contemplates kicking Neil in the knee when he hears him snicker. 

Dan doesn’t scowl, but it’s close. “I’m serious. Captain’s orders, we’re going out tonight.” 

“Not the captain’s orders,” Allison grumbles, and Seth laughs into her cheek. 

“I mean...” Nicky starts, and Aaron lunges across the hallway to shove his shoulder. Nicky looks at him and purses his lips, but it’s too late; Dan’s eyes are sharp when Aaron glances at her, and he knows they’ve been had. 

“What do you mean?” she asks, crossing the space that separates them. “What is it?” 

Nicky gulps. Aaron rolls his eyes and sighs. 

“Columbia,” Kevin murmurs, staring at the floor. His shoulders slump with Aaron’s. 

“What,” Allison starts, “is in Columbia?” 

🦊

“Andrew?” the bartender asks when Aaron walks up to the bar. 

He’s tall and clean-shaven, hair kept close to his scalp. His smile is toothy—Aaron thinks of Emma and wonders if he should introduce them. 

“Uh,” Aaron says, vision narrowing. “No. Aaron.” 

The bartender’s eyes widen for just a second, and his mouth forms a soft O before he speaks again. “Ah, gotcha. Sorry. You’re the twin he’s told me about.” 

Andrew talks about me? Aaron thinks, heart hammering against his sternum. God, he’s a fucking schoolgirl. He moves both shoulders up and down, then leans against the bar. His ears are already burning with the heat of close contact within the club. He thinks of Neil in his stupid fucking jorts and Nicky’s borrowed shirt and has to close his eyes. There’s too much going on in here now—too much to focus on, too much to get a handle over. Andrew, Neil, his team. He doesn’t understand how he’s supposed to get a grip around it all. 

“Yeah,” he says from somewhere faraway. “I’m the twin.” 

When he opens his eyes, the other man is smiling at him again. “Tight. I’m Roland. Nice to meet you. What can I get started for you?” 

Aaron orders for himself, Kevin, and Nicky before he pulls out his phone. 

Aaron: You come to Eden’s???? 

It isn’t long before he gets a response. 

Andrew: Roland 

Aaron: Yeah man. Roland. He thought I was you 

Aaron: Do you come here often? 

A minute passes, then two, before the next reply comes in. Aaron’s skin burns all over. He peels a hand through his hair, nails sharp on his scalp. 

Andrew: Don’t worry about it 

Okay. Sure. His brother comes to the same club he does, and he isn’t supposed to worry about it. Drinks from the same bar, dances on the same floor. Aaron’s neck itches. He rubs a hand over it. 

“Here you go,” Roland says, and Aaron snatches his drink from the bunch and downs it. His throat hurts with it, but that’s okay, that’s fine—that’s what he’d wanted. 

Roland’s wide eyes come back. “Hey, man, you good?” 

“Perfect,” Aaron hisses before he grabs the other two drinks and brings them to the table. 

Three beers and two shots later, Aaron has Neil by the belt loops out on the dance floor. Bodies surround them, pressing in, and Aaron uses it as an excuse to be as close to Neil as he can get. Neil doesn’t really know how to dance, which Aaron could have guessed, but he’s good at following a lead. When Aaron moves, Neil mimics him, and when Aaron pulls him close enough to smell Nicky’s cologne on his neck, Neil leans in, circling a hand around Aaron’s back. 

Some song Aaron has never heard before plays around them, something with a deep, echoing bass and words shoved through a grinder. It doesn’t matter, and Aaron doesn’t care. His vision swims, just barely, the start of all his bad decisions, and he listens to it. Listens to the growing part of him that wants to mouth at Neil’s Adam’s apple until he moans, the part that wants to take him apart in front of their friends with hundreds of other eyes watching. 

“Aaron,” Neil says, hoarse, as Aaron digs his cock into his hip. Neil’s fingers twist in his shirt, and Aaron smirks against the exposed skin of his shoulder where the borrowed top has slipped down. “Aaron.” 

Aaron mmms into him. He tastes like salt on his mouth. 

“Do you really want,” he gruffly continues, sounding breathless again, and Aaron wants to palm him through his jorts, “to do this?” 

Aaron’s first reaction is to say yes. To bring a hand up and grab Neil by the chin and show their friends who he belongs to. To give him a mark on his neck so dark and obvious that someone will have to ask. To claim him, just as he’d claimed Katelyn that first time they had sex. I have to go home this weekend, she’d said when she looked at herself in the mirror the next day, sighing in frustration. Jesus Christ, Aaron, they’re going to think I’ve joined the roller derby. 

He’s not drunk enough to forget how bad an idea that would be. They’re friends, teammates, roommates; they’re not dating. Not like he and Katelyn were. Not like—not like he’s ever dated anyone before. He has no rights to...to any kind of claim. They’re friends, and they have sex, and that’s it. That’s that. 

Thanks to Aaron, that’s that. 

He lets go of Neil’s belt loops and stumbles to the bathroom, alone. 

“Have to pee,” he slurs over his shoulder, just in case Neil is behind him. 

Once he’s done, he splashes water on his face and tries to breathe. Tries to ignore the part of him that reared up when he had Neil chest to chest, that old want in his body, that old urge. He is here, and his team is here, because his captain decided they needed a group bonding activity. He isn’t here with Neil; he’s here alongside him, just like he’s here alongside Kevin and Nicky and the rest of them. It would be different, maybe, if it was just the two of them. 

It would be different, maybe, if Neil had found the other twin. 

Aaron pulls the door open with more strength than he needs, and it bangs against the wall as he slips out. True to fucking form, Neil is there, waiting for him. He knew he would be. He knew it like he knew Neil would somehow still look hot in fucking jorts which just wasn’t fucking fair. 

“Hey,” Neil says, and Aaron has had—enough. 

“Go to the banquet with me,” he blurts, urging Neil back into the wall. He doesn’t touch him, but Neil goes where he wants, almost like he knows. Aaron’s hands bracket his head, and he stares into Neil’s blue, blue eyes and tries not to collapse onto the floor. Neil’s eyebrows shoot up, disappearing into the crop of auburn hair that slid in front of his face about an hour ago. 

“Are you high again?” Neil asks. Aaron can’t tell if he’s joking or not. 

“No,” he answers honestly. “Just drunk.” His scalp tingles, but he keeps his hands where they are, curling his fingers. “Go to the banquet with me.” 

“Okay,” Neil says, laughing, and Aaron almost kisses it out of his mouth. 

They walk back out into the club, Aaron on Neil’s heels, and when they see their friends gathered at a table, they join the group, inches apart. Aaron watches the flush on Neil’s cheeks blossom and change shape until it’s time to leave. 

🦊

“I didn’t know you were a regular at Eden’s,” Aaron says in the middle of their meal, the courage finally worked up. 

“You weren’t supposed to know,” Andrew says, sipping at his chocolate milk. Before Aaron can respond, he continues. “I didn’t know you actually liked this guy you’re fucking.” 

Aaron reels back as if hit. “What?” 

An eyebrow goes up. “How do you not know this?” 

“I don’t like him like that,” he argues, but images flash in his mind: hanging onto Neil in a club so he couldn’t leave, being given the terrible permission to look at all the places he had been hurt, Aaron’s eyes trailing him every time he crossed the court in front of Aaron at practice. Wishing he hadn’t called them friends every time they’d fucked. Feeling winded and kicked in the chest every time Neil smiled at another person, which was—stupid, so stupid, Neil had friends who weren’t Aaron. 

That didn’t have to mean anything, though, did it? All of those things...all of that spent time... 

“I don’t like him like that,” he tries again, voice small. 

“Maybe I’m wrong,” Andrew says with a shrug. “Maybe I should start asking all the guys I fuck if they want to go to prom with me. My bad.” 

Aaron scoots his chair back and stands up. “You pay this time,” he hisses before he practically sprints to his car, hand already pulling on his hair. 

When he makes it to the dorm, he’s almost glad Neil isn’t there. He shoots him a text, one-handed: Can we meet at the library to study? Neil’s affirmative reply is almost instantaneous, and Aaron blows out a breath over his bottom lip. Okay. This is okay. He can salvage this. He can—fix this. 

Drunk. He was drunk. He was drunk, and he wasn’t thinking straight, and—and—and it’s fine, they can go as friends, but they can’t go as anything else. Yeah. That’s fine. That’ll work. If they don’t want people to ask questions, if they don’t want people to catch on, then they can’t be dates. Going stag, but going stag together. That can be a thing, can’t it? Going together, but going together single. 

By the time he makes it to their regular study room, his fingers are twisted with pulled strands of hair, and his chest hurts with his breathing. He plops down into a seat and slings his backpack onto the table, and he counts to thirty in his head with his eyes closed as he clenches the edge of the desk for support. 

Bee would say— 

Fuck what Bee would say. 

Andrew would say that he’s being stupid, and he’d say it in a way that would make Aaron want to reach across the divide and deck him again. Hearing his brother’s voice in his head starts his body on the process of calming down. He sucks in a breath, holds it, lets it out, repeats. He’s being dumb. It’s okay. He just needs to talk to Neil, and they’ll be on the same page again. 

He’s almost calm when Neil walks in. Having a plan helps, even if it’s as shit as this one is. They’re friends. Aaron has made that clear every single time, hasn’t he? So what if a part of him wants something more? It’s drowned out by what the rest of him wants, and the rest of him wants to go back to a time when he didn’t know that kissing Neil would feel better than all of Katelyn’s kisses combined. He asked him to the banquet, yes, okay, that happened, but he doesn’t have to stick to it. He didn’t sign a contract. He didn’t give Neil a ring. It’s nothing more than a fancy dinner. Friends can go to fancy dinners together. 

Neil sits down across from Aaron. Aaron is grateful and angry about it in equal measure, and he doesn’t know how to reconcile the two. Neil reaches for Aaron’s bag and begins to sift through it for the index cards Aaron keeps in the small pocket at the bottom. He doesn’t know when Neil figured that out, but he goes for it immediately, and something inside of Aaron shoots itself in the face. 

“What are we stu—” Neil starts, but Aaron cuts him off. 

“We shouldn’t go to the banquet together.” 

Neil’s blue eyes flash with hurt, but it’s gone with a blink and a barely-there shake of the head. If Aaron didn’t know him so well, he could almost convince himself that he’d imagined it. Silence settles over them, anxious and taut. Aaron digs his nails into his palms, curling his fingers. A little pain to get him through. 

“Okay,” Neil says slowly, like he’s testing the word out. Aaron watches. Neil’s tongue prods at his bottom lip from the inside, pushing it out. “So it was because you were drunk.” 

Anger burns through Aaron faster than he can react to it. He deflates. There’s no point arguing about it. “Yeah. It was because I was drunk.” 

“Okay,” Neil says again. As if it’s the only word he’s sure of. “Sure. We don’t have to go together.” 

“We can still go,” Aaron gushes quickly. “Just, I don’t know. Stag. Like, we’re both single, but we’re going as friends.” 

Neil’s eyebrows crease in the middle. Aaron is hit with the strange urge to rub them out. He doesn’t. “I thought you had enough friends to do things like that with.” 

Aaron flinches, remembering both times those words had fallen from his mouth. “Fuck off.” 

Neil holds his hands up in surrender. “Just pointing it out.” 

A memory of Andrew rushes towards him. Sitting in a car that wasn’t his, holding his head in his hands, listening to his brother say, She’s dead, you know. Just making sure you got that. 

“If we don’t want people to find out about us,” Aaron says, trying to shake Andrew out of his brain, “then we can’t be each other’s dates. Okay? That would—that would be like holding up a big fucking sign that said, Faggots right here.” 

“You’re a prick.” 

“What?” He didn’t expect this—this push-back. 

Neil huffs out a laugh, almost to himself. His gaze has shifted from Aaron, instead focused on some point far off. “Fine. We’ll go stag together.” He spits out the word together like Aaron poisoned it himself. 

“Neil,” Aaron says, even though he has nothing else to say. Even though nothing would make this feel any better. “Neil.” 

He doesn’t know what to do, how he’s supposed to hold onto this. Everything with Neil makes him feel fucking crazy, like a different fucking person than the one he knows himself to be. If they go together-together, who will Aaron be then? 

Aaron parts his lips to say—something, anything—but Neil leans across the table and pushes their mouths together, effectively silencing him. There’s something in this kiss that hasn’t been in any of the others. Something dark and sad and haunting, and Aaron bites Neil’s lip to keep it from spilling out. 

When Neil pulls back, he stays close enough that Aaron can see every line of the bags under his eyes. Possibilities pound through his head, things he could have if he asked for them. If he leaned a little closer. If he brought a hand up. If he wasn’t a fucking coward. 

Go to the banquet with me, he thinks. Wear a hoodie with my name on it. 

“Friends,” Neil says bitterly. “I’m more than your fucking friend.” And he leaves Aaron in the study room, alone, index cards neatly stacked next to Aaron’s backpack. 

🦊

Aaron plays Exy. He kisses Neil. He practices with him, and he doesn’t hug him when he scores impossible goals. He bumps racquets with him when he runs good plays. He shoves him against the wall of their study room, onto the couch cushions of their dorm, over the backseat of his car. He has at least one meal with Andrew every week. They don’t talk about Neil. He washes the jeans that Neil stained, and he doesn’t get sad when the mark comes out. 

He calls Neil his friend, and Neil doesn’t tell him to call him anything else. 

🦊

The bus ride to the banquet is quiet, quieter than Aaron expected. Everyone is too busy worrying about Kevin to worry about anything else. Wymack gave him an unopened bottle of vodka when they boarded the bus and told Kevin he had until they arrived to drink through it. “I’m not dealing with the shitstorm if someone sees you drinking off-label vodka inside the stadium,” he said, and Kevin let out something like a laugh. 

Usually, Aaron, Kevin, Nicky, and Neil would sit towards the back of the bus, away from everyone else. With Riko on the horizon, they’ve all crowded forward, a ring of people around Kevin. This is fine enough: it puts Aaron and Neil with their girls, playing up the image. Upon finding out that Aaron and Neil would be going stag, Renee had asked Aaron if she could be his date to the banquet, and Aaron had said yes out of some sort of unhinged desperation. Janie had done the same with Neil, and after a very awkward conversation that Aaron only half-heard while changing in the locker room, he’d agreed, too. 

Aaron looks over his shoulder and finds Neil’s eyes already there. Neil smiles at him, small and closed-off, before he turns his head to stare at someone else. 

Things haven’t been as carefree since Aaron’s rescinding of the invitation, but they’ve still hooked up—still kissed, still fucked, still held each other in the come down until Aaron’s realized what they’re doing and let him go. And it’s fine, it’s good, so good, still, but Aaron can’t help but feel like their hinges are rusting. One good kick to the door, and—pfft, no more. 

Maybe that’s why he sticks by Neil all night, attached at the hip. Renee and Janie wander off at some point during the banquet, content to spend the evening with themselves, or content enough to it that they let Neil and Aaron get away with only paying attention to each other. Neil laughs at a joke Aaron makes and leans into him; Aaron skirts past a table with a hand wrapped in Neil’s elbow and doesn’t let it go once they’re through. It’s almost a good night—Riko makes a pass at Kevin, and Allison is there to receive it, urging Kevin away with a pinch to the side. Riko makes another pass, later, and Renee is there for that one, pulling Kevin away with a laugh and a stomp of her heels. 

“Hey, Minyard,” someone says behind Aaron towards the end of the night.

Aaron turns, pulling his hand out of Neil’s arm to face Seth. Seth’s eyes are droopy and dark, but Aaron watches something like realization dawn in them, slow and pliant, as Seth takes them in. He’s drunk, and he’s probably high, and if he lays a hand on Aaron, Aaron’s going to punch him. He blinks, one eye after the other, and Aaron knows that whatever he says next is not going to be good. 

“Quick question,” he slurs, even as Allison scrambles to hold him up by his lapel. Seth is on one, though; even Allison isn’t enough to stop him when he’s like this. Aaron knows. He’s watched him self-destruct and explode outward for years, a nuclear bomb when he gets too much in his system. 

“Quick answer,” Aaron says. “You need to get better at holding your liquor.” 

“Ha-ha,” Seth says. And, “Fuck you.” 

Aaron’s eyes flick to Allison’s. “Your dog is barking. Hold onto his leash better.” 

“You’re not helping,” Allison hisses with a glare, pushing at Seth’s chest. She directs her next statement to Seth, eyes hardening. “Seth, come the fuck on.” 

“Why have you been hanging around Josten all night?” Seth asks, and Aaron sees it in his head clear as day, that kaleidoscope of violent possibility: Seth dropping to the floor, Aaron’s knuckles wet with the blood it took to get him down. 

“Probably because they’re friends,” Allison answers, shoving him again, but Seth doesn’t move, feet planted to the floor. Aaron watches his eyes find Neil’s elbow again, and the truth of the night pours over him, exposing his insides. He sees what it looks like from the outside with sudden clarity.

They left their dates, or their dates left them, whatever—point is, they don’t have dates anymore, and they haven’t for a while. Neil has been more comfortable here among the crowd; so has Aaron. Smoother hands to shake, more interesting people than them to pay attention to... He’d thought it was something they were owed with how quickly everything else about their friendship has gone to shit. One night. Not kissing, not fucking, not even dating. Just a night, spent together, enjoying each other’s company. Friends, just like he’d said. Friends who went to a banquet together and didn’t take their hands off each other.

He should have fucking kept the invite out there if he’d wanted this. But he didn’t. He took it back, because—because— 

He’s not doing this here. Not here, not now, and Jesus Christ, he isn’t, he isn’t. He’s not prepared. He’s not ready. Maybe if it wasn’t here, maybe if he was the better twin, maybe maybe maybe. 

Seth guffaws. “Uh-uh, no. Me and Neil are friends.” 

“Are we?” Neil asks somewhere behind Aaron. 

Seth ignores him. “Neil and Aaron are fag—” 

Aaron’s fist connects with the cartilage of a nose, and Seth goes down. Instead of hitting the floor after the punch lands, Seth’s knees buckle, and he begins to crumple on top of Allison. Allison drops him with the sudden shift in weight; if she didn’t, she’d fall with him. Seth’s nose leaves a red streak down the front of her pink dress as he slinks to the floor.

A collective gasp rises from those around them, and Aaron bends over Seth to get in another hit. Someone pulls on his arm; someone else throws themselves over his back, keeping him from going anywhere fast. 

“Aaron,” Renee says in his ear, rushed and determined. That’s who’s wrapped around him, then. He could buck her off if he tried hard enough. “Aaron, drop it.” 

“You didn’t hear him,” Aaron replies, unsure who he’s speaking to. “You didn’t fucking hear him. He said—” Aaron’s voice breaks off into a gasp, the words locked in his throat. He swallows, tries to move the syllables out, but they won’t budge. If she heard him, if Allison heard him, if anyone heard him—

“You didn’t hear him,” he keens, a plea as much an accusation. His heart hammers against his chest, trying to break through the bone that holds it in. “Tell me you didn’t hear him.”

“I heard him,” Neil says on his other side, tugging on his sleeve. Aaron wants to look at him, but he can’t. He can’t. His gaze is stuck on Seth. He feels as if he’s just lost something. 

“I heard him,” Neil says again, quieter. Contemplative, and Aaron’s anxiety ratchets up into his skull. He shakes Neil off, stands up, brings his fingers up to his scalp; rubs them, back and forth and back and forth, until he’s worn grooves against his temples. 

Wymack urges everyone out of the building and back onto the bus. Aaron realizes only in half-conscious segments that Kevin is holding a stuffed raven toy tight to his chest. Another of Riko’s stupid fucking attempts at an apology. If Aaron wasn’t lost in his own head, he would reach across the aisle and snatch the stuffed animal up and throw it out the nearest open window. If Aaron wasn’t lost in his own head, he would do a lot of things. 

A hand settles between his shoulder blades. He looks up, dragging his gaze, and is disappointed to find that it’s Janie next to him. He doesn’t have the energy to fake a smile at her, so he just stares, silent. She’ll have to talk if she wants a conversation to start. 

“So,” she says after a beat, running her hand in lazy circles down his spine. “Do you want to talk about it?” 

“Not with you.” 

Janie shrugs one shoulder, unfazed. “Fair enough. But Neil’s not going to talk to you about it, and Renee’s over with him, and I’m pretty sure Allison wants to push you into traffic.” 

At the mention of Neil, Aaron’s eyes move about the cabin, searching. He finds that familiar swish of auburn hair in the back of the bus next to Renee’s pale bob. Neil isn’t looking at him; neither is Renee. Both of their heads are lowered, a conversation in secret. Aaron starts to stand, but Janie’s hand moves to his arm, keeping him planted in the seat. 

“No,” she says, and her tone leaves no room for argument. “You’re not going back there right now. Sit.” 

“I don’t want to talk about it with you,” he insists again, trying to throw her off. Janie has to hold the heaviest racquet, though—had to train with it, built calluses for it. There are many things Aaron can critique her for, but her grip is not one of them. She doesn’t even tense up. 

“That’s fine.” She tugs on him, pulling him back where he’s moved to the edge of the seat. “But you’re not talking about it with him.” 

The anxiety rises up again, dancing on his stomach. If he can’t get it under control, he’s going to vomit on the floor of this bus, and then everyone will be mad at him, even the ones who aren’t right now. He can’t throw up. He can’t. This night has already been so shitty. 

“Why not?” he asks, trying to control the wobble in his voice. 

“Because you’re not.” 

Aaron stays with Janie the entire bus ride home. He sends Neil litany after litany of texts: explanations, apologies, pleas. He catches Neil looking at his phone once, and he watches as Neil turns the device off. When they make it back to the dorm and unload, Aaron starts off after Neil, but this time, it’s Renee who shoves at his shoulders to keep him back. 

He stares at her, seething. In her heels, she’s taller than he is. It’s already close when they’re both in sneakers, but Aaron has to look up at her like this. It won’t stop him from smashing her face in if he needs to. Why would it? He hit Seth in the face, and that man has seven inches on him. He’s not scared of Renee. 

“Let me pass,” he hisses. 

Renee shakes her head before he’s even done speaking. “No. Neil’s going to stay with us for the night. You’re not bothering him.” 

“What? Let me see him.” 

Renee follows him, step for step, as he tries to maneuver around her. He lets out a noise of frustration and clenches his fists at his sides. Renee doesn’t seem to care. She’s not very large, but she can be a nasty wall when she wants to be. Aaron would know; Aaron’s practiced with her in goal. She looms when she wants to, and right now, she wants to. 

“Aaron,” she says slowly, softly, like she’s talking to a deer trapped in a fence. “He doesn’t want to talk to you. Just drop it for tonight, okay?” 

Aaron doesn’t realize he’s picking at his hair again until he notices Renee’s sharp eyes on his wrist. He doesn’t stop; he can’t. If he stops, he’ll lose whatever focus he has. “I need to talk to him, though.” 

“And you can,” Renee reassures, digging a hand into the space between Aaron’s neck and shoulder. “Just not now.” 

“Is he mad at me?” Aaron blurts out. He hadn’t known he would say it. He hadn’t known he’d even thought it. The question stands there, unobstructed, on its own. Renee sighs like he’s eaten all her patience. 

“Get some sleep, Aaron,” she says, turning around. “You’ll talk in the morning.” 

🦊

When the next day comes, Neil walks into the dorm. Aaron blinks awake from his spot on the couch and sits up when he realizes who it is. “Hey,” he says, groggy, rubbing sleep from his eyes. 

Neil raises his chin, then looks back down to the floor. “Hey.” 

Aaron takes a moment to survey the damage. Neil’s hair is frizzy and crushed against one side of his head. The bags under his eyes are the same as they always are. He has a dark mark on his jawline that Aaron has to stare at for a moment to figure out it’s a bruise. 

He’s up on his feet then, hand already reaching. “What happened?” 

Neil shakes his head and moves back a step, out of Aaron’s range. Aaron stills, hand poised between them. Neil doesn’t look him in the face when he says, “Nothing.” 

“Neil,” Aaron says, when what he wants to say—oh, there’s too many things he wants to say. None of them make it past his lips. He looks at the divide that separates them and wonders when he stopped knowing how to bridge the gap. 

Neil shoulders past him, and Aaron catches the differences even in that. Last night, Neil touched him like he couldn’t withstand not doing it. They hung off each other, dragged each other around. There was hardly a moment they weren’t touching, until the end.

Neil brushes past him now like Aaron has the fucking plague, and Aaron’s heart splinters off.

“We have to talk about it,” he nearly whispers, staring at the back of Neil’s head where his hair tapers into his neck. He’s never kissed him there, he realizes. What a terrible, terrible oversight. What a terrible thing, to realize it now when he wants nothing to do with him. What a terrible place to figure it out, looking at the couch where he begged him to talk about a kiss that broke Aaron’s whole world.

“No,” Neil says, walking away from him. “We don’t.” 

Something in Aaron gives way. “You don’t get to be mad at me,” he spits. All the running around in secret, fucking away from their teammates and their roommates, kissing each other when no one else was around to see it—all of that was done for a reason. It wasn’t like Aaron had broken up with him; there wasn’t anything to break up. They had always been friends first, hadn’t they? Aaron had tried to keep the boundaries clear, he’d really fucking tried. Hadn’t he? 

But. But, but, but. Telling his brother about him. Going to Katelyn for advice about him. Asking him out in the dark hallway of a bar bathroom. Aaron had never done that for any of his other friends. He’d never done that for anyone else, period. 

Neil in his head, harsh and angry: I’m more than your fucking friend. 

Neil scoffs. It hurts Aaron’s head to have two of him in his brain. “Fine. I’m not mad at you.” 

“Okay?” Aaron shakes himself out, confused. “Then—” 

“I’m just done with you,” Neil says, and continues to his room, slamming the door. 

🦊

They don’t talk. Neil passes him in the hallway and doesn’t look him in the eye. He says he has night practice with Kevin every night, and Aaron lets him get away with the lie, even on nights when he sits with Kevin in the other dorm room and drinks until his insides burn. 

“So you and Neil,” Kevin asks one night, and Aaron yanks the bottle of vodka out of his hands to take a swallow. 

“What about it?” he says, the words a grumbled collection in his mouth. 

“Is this going to mess us up?” 

“Huh?” 

“The team,” Kevin clarifies, and Aaron digs his fingers into his empty palm. 

“I cannot fucking believe you.” 

Kevin shrugs. Aaron considers kicking him in the knees for it. “I need to know if you two can play together.” 

“Fuck off.” 

🦊

The next game is worse than the first. Aaron is forced to reckon with the fact that Kevin’s concerns were warranted: because no, they cannot play together, not against the Hornets. 

Aaron is distracted. He sends every ball he catches to Neil, even when Neil isn’t in a spot to receive it. Kevin slams into him once, shouts, “Me, idiot, pass the ball to me.” Aaron nods like he understands, then sends a ball towards Kevin that should have gone towards Neil anyway. At halftime, he looks to the stands, and he finds that shock of blond hair, longer than his but the exact same color. He finds it climbing the stairs to get out of the stadium with no such thing as a backwards glance.

After that, it’s over. The Hornets win 14-9. 

Aaron rushes past everyone off the court. He doesn’t stay for the debrief or to see if he’s on press duty. He barrels on through, tugs his gear off in the locker room, throws it into a corner without care. His fingers scrape against his scalp, combing through hair slick with sweat, and he tries to remember how to breathe without puking. 

The door bangs open seconds later. Even with the warning, Aaron isn’t prepared for it to be Neil who rounds the corner after him. 

“What the fuck?” Neil shouts, tossing his own gear onto the nearest bench. His blue eyes are searing, singing Aaron’s skin raw. Aaron only has a second before Neil staggers forward, burying his fingers in the front of Aaron’s damp jersey. This close, Aaron can smell him without even trying. He smells like something burnt out. Wax left too long on the heat. 

“You cost us the game,” Neil says, shoving Aaron back and forth. Aaron watches a bead of sweat roll down Neil’s nose and thinks about a time when he could have licked it off. “You get that, right?” 

“Sorry,” he says, even though he’s only really sorry about the thing Neil won’t let him talk about. 

That’s the issue. That’s the whole damn problem. If he could just talk about it, if he could just get it out of him, it would be fine, it could be dealt with. But Neil walks away from any mention of that night or the awful dinner that went with it, so Aaron is left with this. With scraps as he tries not to die on the court. 

The agitation he missed out on feeling earlier hits him with a force. He pulls his hand out of his hair and pushes Neil back, ignoring the bolt of electricity that runs up his wrists at the contact. They’ve been this close since that banquet, haven’t they? Been in each other’s space? They must have touched since then. They must have. On the court. In the bus. 

Right? 

He tangles his own fingers in the sweaty collar of Neil’s jersey. “Sorry that I give a shit about something that isn’t Exy,” he snaps, thinking of a fist connecting with a jaw, and something inside of him lights itself on fire when Neil scoffs. 

“Sorry that you give a shit?” A laugh rings out in the locker room, mean and horrendous. Aaron tries to remember the last time he heard Neil laugh like that and can’t. “About what? Not us, so what is it?” 

“Fuck you, not us!” Aaron’s anger emerges from his eyes, crawls down his face and over his skin like a bug he can’t kill. That night tumbles over him in a blur of light and sound: a body hitting the floor, and someone holding onto him until they couldn’t anymore. “You wanted Seth to be the one to tell everybody? Seth?” Aaron’s knuckles burn. Aaron and Neil are f— 

Neil lets him go and swings his arms out wide. Aaron stumbles forward, keeping his grip tight on Neil’s shirt. He’s not letting go of him. He’s not. If he has to hold him until they both starve to death, he will. “I never gave a shit about any of that!” 

Aaron curls his other hand so his nails can dig into the flesh of his palm. He is losing something here. He’s losing Neil. He’s been without him for a week, and it’s been hell, but this...this is a line snapping. This is the phone going dead, this is the serial killer winning. 

“Why not?” he shouts back, even though it’s wrong, even though he knows it isn’t going to help. “Why doesn’t it matter?” 

Neil’s eyes flash. “Because I wanted someone to know!” 

Aaron thinks then, strangely, of Katelyn. They were yelling at each other, too, weren’t they? So loud, and there were people walking their dogs in the park. Aaron was embarrassed. Katelyn was on the ground, pleading with him, and all Aaron could do was stand there until she walked away. What would it have felt like to get on his knees and meet Katelyn in the dirt? To let her know that he cared about them just as much as she did? 

What would it have felt like to let Seth finish his sentence in front of all their teammates and stand in the aftermath? 

Oh, Aaron thinks, too late on the uptake to do anything but watch as it all falls apart. Oh, I am the stupidest person alive to let this happen twice. 

Even still, he finds himself unraveling, whispering to Neil’s chest, “I told you I wasn’t gay.” He blinks, then looks up, mapping the lines of Neil’s chin and nose. Neil smiles, and it’s full of teeth. Aaron feels the scissors cut the string in his chest and knows he’s lost. 

When Neil backs up, Aaron lets him go. 

“I guess that’s on me,” Neil says. Aaron can’t look him in the eyes when he says it. A coward to the end. Neil puts his hands on his hips and stares into the far wall. “We never should have started this.” 

Don’t say that, Aaron thinks. Don’t make me regret this one little thing. 

“See you at practice,” Neil spits. “Get better at handling the fucking ball.” Then he turns and walks away. 

The silence afterwards is short-lived. Aaron’s whole body trembles, and every breath is a struggle. His limbs are heavy again, too heavy for him to wrestle control back over them. He bangs a hand into a locker and hardly notices. He stumbles towards the door, not sure what he’s trying to do, when a crop of dark curly hair peeks through. 

“We heard,” Dan says, wincing. Aaron cuts off anything else she was going to say with a laugh, high and drenched in salt. 

Of course. Of course they heard. Of course this is how the team finds out, from someone yelling about it where others can hear. If Dan is here, so is everyone else—she was probably tapped for press duty. She’s the reason he and Neil got to be alone. He should have just let Seth say it. Would have saved him time and heartache and an immeasurable amount of pain. 

Aaron sits down on the floor, shoves his face into his knees, and cries. 

🦊

Midterms arrive with the wind. Aaron tries to study in the library, but every minute in the study room feels like an eternity spent watching Neil come undone against him. He hears his voice moving around the word Bartonella and almost strokes out. It doesn’t matter what study room he chooses; it’s all more of the same. Neil, Neil, Neil, sitting there, laughing, moaning in all of them. 

Aaron takes the microbiology midterm and guesses at nearly half of it. He is the first to finish the test, and he is the first to leave the classroom. He doesn’t look at Katelyn or at Emma when he leaves.

Before he’s even out of the building, he has his phone up to his ear, dialing out. 

Andrew doesn’t pick up. Aaron debates not leaving a voicemail but waits too long. The tone sounds, and he rambles a bit, asks if Andrew will call him back. Hangs up with a pathetic, “This is Aaron, by the way.” He sits on the front steps of the science building and busies himself picking at a loose strand of blue on his jeans. He almost has it worked out by the time the doors open again. 

Katelyn pauses when she sees him, just like she did at her dorm, a deer caught in headlights. The door bangs shut behind her. 

“Hi,” Aaron says, lifting up a hand. 

“Hi?” Katelyn replies, a question. She looks around with her eyebrows scrunched, as if searching for somebody. “Were you...were you waiting for me?” 

“I think so.” 

“Okay.” Katelyn holds onto the Oh. After a moment, she slowly sits down next to him, keeping her hands held tight to the straps of her backpack. (Blue, with yellow bananas on it. Aaron picked it out.) She doesn’t look at him. “What do you want?” 

They sit in silence for a little while. The door swings open and shut behind them five times that Aaron counts before he says, “I guess I just want to know what you wanted me to do when we were together.” 

Katelyn does something Aaron doesn’t expect: she snorts. “You’re gonna have to be more specific.” 

“I mean...” He brings a hand up and runs it through his hair. Katelyn watches it happen, and Aaron hates the way her face changes. She knows him just as well as Neil does. She knows what Aaron’s hand in his hair means. He had hoped—he had hoped that she would have forgotten. “I guess I don’t know what I mean.” 

Katelyn purses her lips before she looks away. “Is this a continuation of our last conversation?” 

“Probably.” 

“Are you still pushing people away?” 

Aaron breathes through his teeth. “Yeah.” 

Katelyn nods her head like this isn’t news. “Then I guess I wanted you to put yourself out there just because you wanted to. Not because I asked for it or because you thought I needed it.” 

Their relationship rolls through his brain like a rockslide. Kissing her in the anatomy lab late in the afternoon, feeling her laugh tickle his neck when he pulled away; holding her as she cried that night her dad coded in a hospital bed on the other side of the country; fighting with her in the park where they had their first real date, begging her not to tear them apart and letting her do it anyway because saying he loved her, out loud and in front of people, was more terrifying than losing her. 

The rockslide erodes. Trees are knocked loose of their roots. Aaron is reminded of: keeping two inches between them in the hallways, afraid of crowding and afraid of being crowded; taking her to the airport so she could board a plane to Oregon by herself with a black dress tucked into a carry-on bag; blocking her number in the middle of his hardest spirals because seeing her name come up on his phone would have sent him running for the hills. 

“I think I get it,” he whispers. 

“Great,” Katelyn says, pushing herself up to her feet. “I’m so glad you get it.” 

“I loved you,” Aaron blurts as she walks away from him. He watches her red hair curl around her face when her head snaps back, and it almost feels like looking at someone else. “I never said it, but I did.” 

Katelyn prods the inside of her lip and blows out a shaky breath. “Dick.” 

“Yeah.” 

Katelyn gives him an awkward salute, then stalks off to her next class. Greek history, he remembers. An elective she’d decided to take instead of double stacking her premed classes. He wonders what sort of tests one takes in Greek history. 

Right as he stands up, his phone buzzes with a phone call. Andrew, the contact reads. Aaron picks up with fumbling hands. 

“Hey.” 

“What do you need?” 

Aaron scoffs. “You know, you could have picked up earlier.” 

Andrew makes a noise on the other end of the line. “Busy. What do you need? What’s wrong?” 

For the first time, Aaron pays attention to his brother’s voice. The strain in it. The nervous blow of air into the receiver. They’re twins. Decades apart didn’t stop them from having the same tells. 

“Nothing’s wrong,” Aaron assures him, trying to shove more lightness into his words than he feels. He thinks of the first time Andrew got a phone call about Aaron and feels his neck get warm. “Nothing you can fix, anyway.” 

Silence. Then: “Do you need to come over?” 

Aaron nearly sighs into the phone. Hadn’t he asked for this? Hadn’t he begged for it? “Not if you’re busy.” 

“Come over.” 

Andrew hangs up after that. Aaron’s phone dings with a text message. 

Aaron: I already have your address. I sent you the ticket 

Andrew: Whatever 

🦊

Andrew waves Aaron in when he knocks on the door. “Leave any orange shit at the door,” he says, gesturing towards Aaron’s backpack. “I’m done with orange shit.” 

Aaron does as instructed, dropping his bag and his shoes on the rug in the entryway.  

“Thanks,” he says. Andrew ignores him in favor of throwing himself down on his plush black sofa. Aaron takes position on the green ottoman in the corner, the only sparse bit of color in the entire living room. Everything else is dark or gray, glistening. 

“So what happened?” Andrew asks, eyebrows pulled down low over his eyes. 

Aaron isn’t used to this. To having an Andrew who asks how he’s doing and means it. To having an Andrew who invites him in. It’s strange, but Aaron won’t ask why now—he isn’t going to ruin this. Not this. 

He focuses on the intake of breath, on the steady exhalation. He can do this without freaking out. He can—he can say what he did without the world dissolving into acid and glass. “I fucked things up,” he whispers, cautiously. “With the guy.” 

“The one you were fucking.” 

Aaron feels winded. “Yes.” 

At Andrew’s gesture, Aaron tells him all the things he didn’t tell him before, all the things he kept to himself. The rest of that night at Eden’s. That moment with Neil in the locker room, away from prying eyes; the second moment, worse. Every stupid, twisted feeling he’s had since he first kissed Neil. When he is done, he is exhausted, and his voice shuffles along his throat. 

Andrew looks at him with that same bored expression as always. “Are you stupid?” 

Aaron shakes his hair out of his eyes. “Um,” he says. “No?” 

“Then what the fuck,” Andrew says, leaning forward, and Aaron has never seen him this invested in anything Aaron’s ever done, he’s too caught up in the novelty of it to interrupt him, “are you doing here?” 

Aaron feels his head cocking to the side. He corrects it before Andrew notices. “I wanted to see you,” he answers, which isn’t quite a lie but isn’t quite the truth. 

Andrew makes another noise Aaron doesn’t know how to decipher. “You should go find Neil and fucking apologize.” He leans further back into the sofa, sinking. “Jesus, am I Oprah? Am I Judge Judy?” 

Weirdly, Aaron finds himself laughing. “Dramatic.” 

“You’re being stupid,” Andrew says, throwing his hand over the arm of the couch. “Go.” 

“Andrew—” Aaron starts. 

“What?” 

Aaron goes to the door and slips his shoes back on. Andrew’s eyes follow him all the way. Aaron thinks, We really do look alike. “Thank you.” 

Andrew’s mouth doesn’t move. Aaron already has his hand on the doorknob by the time he hears the soft, “You’re welcome” behind him, and he smiles, just a little, as he closes the door. 

🦊

Aaron doesn’t know the first thing about putting himself out there. About fighting against the tide inside of him that says he’ll be signing his own death warrant if he so much as indicates to another human being that he’s in love with them. He dated Katelyn for a year and never said it. That fear hasn’t gone away just because it’s Neil. 

He knocks on a door. 

Allison answers. “Oh,” she says, leaning into the doorway with her arms crossed over her chest. “Hi.” 

He sees a vision in his head—he asks her for help, and she provides it, pulling Neil into the backseat of her Barbie pink car and driving them around until they’ve argued themselves hoarse. She gives Aaron a makeover so he can show up at the door a changed man. He isn’t sure what help from Allison Reynolds actually looks like. The only time he’s ever seen it is in the instances when she wrangles Seth away from him, and that’s only successful about ten percent of the time. 

“Would you help me?” he asks, the words crowding around themselves so that they come out as one long string of sound. 

Allison narrows her eyes. “Run that by me again.” 

Aaron thinks about his senses and about punching that lip gloss off her mouth. “Would you help me with Neil?” 

Allison smiles, slow and sure and brilliant, and Aaron nearly regrets asking. “I’ve been waiting for this. Yes.” 

Aaron follows her inside, trailing her all the way to her bedroom. When she opens the door, Aaron is hit with a wave of warmth. The room is covered in pictures of Allison and Seth. In picture frames. Tacked up to the wall. She even has his poster on her ceiling like a girl with a celebrity crush. 

Allison walks over to her desk, but Aaron stands in the doorway, surveying. 

“You’re really in love with him,” he says stupidly. The evidence is all over the room. He could have guessed, before, but this is something else. He steps forward and pulls a picture down to stare at it. Allison is dressed in something purple and fuzzy, and Seth is behind her, arms wrapped around her waist. They’re both smiling into the camera, but Allison’s eyes are closed. Allison holds a giant stuffed panda to her chest. 

Allison glances back over. “Obviously. Why else would I put up with his shit?” Her gaze slides down to the photograph, and something shifts in her face. “Our second anniversary. He took me to the fair.” 

“The fair?” 

Allison shrugs, like Allison Reynolds at the fair isn’t as surprising as finding the winning lotto ticket in a storm drain. “He won me a bear.” 

Before Aaron can say anything else, she continues. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry that he’s a dick.” 

Aaron’s face gets hot. He puts the picture back. “Thanks.”

As if thinking about it for the first time, Allison asks, “Do you love him?” Aaron knows she isn’t talking about Seth. 

Aaron thinks of so many things, things that had slipped away from him, things that he’d let slip. Neil throwing his flashcards, only picking them up once his point was made. Neil’s hands on his skin, touching him with purpose, with want, with intent. Neil in a nice suit, and Aaron’s arm curled around it. Katelyn saying, You’re not very good at letting people in, and Neil figuring him out anyway. 

“Yeah,” he admits quietly. He doesn’t look at her; if he looks at her and sees her looking at him, he’ll throw himself out the window. “I do.” 

“Then let’s show him.”

They bring the whole team in on it. Allison texts Renee, Janie, and Dan, and they get the word out to everyone else. Soon enough, the room is bursting with Foxes, lousy with them. The only two missing are Seth and Neil. “We don’t need him,” Allison told Aaron about Seth when he asked. “I’m tired of running blocker.” 

“For the record,” Kevin says before they get started, “I think this is a waste of time and will only make your life harder in the long run.” 

Janie rolls her eyes. “Okay, buzzkill, we get it. Please shut up.” 

Kevin scowls, but he does shut up. They brainstorm together until it comes time for Kevin to head out for night practice with Neil. Kevin leaves, rolling his eyes when he does, and Aaron’s head tingles when he hears Neil’s footsteps emerge from the other dorm to follow Kevin downstairs. 

“You sure about this?” Renee asks Aaron, placing a hand on his knee. “We can always do something more lowkey.” 

“No,” Aaron says, even though every bone in his body wants him to call it off. “No, this is how it needs to happen.” If he doesn’t go big now, he’s never going to do it. He’s going to waste away until graduation, pining for a man he knows probably loves him back, and it’s going to be for nothing. He wanted them to know. Aaron hadn’t allowed anyone else to know, and it had cost him.

He’s tired of not letting people in, of never being the one to shout from the rooftops. Katelyn deserved someone who would have screamed for her in a park. Neil deserved someone like that, too. There was only one of those that he wanted to fix.

Renee grins, and Aaron feels lighter than he has all day. 

🦊

It’s too late to go shopping, but they use some of Matt’s leftover paint and an old posterboard of Janie’s to write out: AARON <3 NEIL. It’s dumb and ridiculous, but Aaron needs dumb and ridiculous right now. It doesn’t feel real to be doing this; he wants to ride that feeling as far as it will take him. 

They shove the sign into the cab of Matt’s truck, and everyone piles into the back. Aaron’s car is gone; Kevin snakes the key from him every night to go to the stadium. It still feels like a dream on the way there, wind blowing through his hair while his teammates laugh into it. As soon as they arrive at the court, though, the weight of what Aaron is about to do hits him in the throat, and his knees wobble. 

There’s no taking this back. No pretending it doesn’t mean anything. No relegating Neil to friend, not when he’s always been more. Aaron can see it now, the shape of this thing he feels for Neil. At least six months of it slowly brewing inside of him, afraid to show its face. At least that. 

Allison comes up behind him and pushes into his lower back.. “Lover boy,” she stage whispers. “Don’t get cold feet now, you’ll have to pay for gas.” 

Aaron coughs out a laugh. “This is insane,” he says, sweaty hands on his thighs. “This is fucking batshit.” 

“Yeah,” Allison agrees. “It is. Too bad you didn’t realize that sooner. Time to go.” 

When he enters the court, Kevin and Neil are running a Raven drill even Aaron recognizes, a precision shot drill. Kevin points to a part of the goal, and Neil attempts to shoot it in exactly the same spot. Neil is so focused that he doesn’t even notice Aaron come in. It isn’t until Aaron has been standing in the inner court for a good minute that Neil glances over and sees him. His next shot is just off the mark; Kevin cuffs him on the back of the head for it. 

“Focus,” Kevin snaps, and Neil flips him off before he jogs over. 

“What are you doing here?” Neil asks when he gets to Aaron. He doesn’t get close enough for Aaron to touch him—just out of reach, just far enough away. That’s fine. That’s what he gets for all the bullshit he’s put him through. Neil pulls his bandana off and scrubs it over his face before he slips it back on, and Aaron is overcome, just like he was that first night after the date and the bar and the drugs.

Even done with him, even over all of his shit, Neil’s first thought is to see what Aaron wants. That, more than anything, gives him the boost that he needs. He points to the section of the stands that he knows Allison and the others are in. Someone hollers, “Neil Josten, you lucky bastard!” Aaron doesn’t listen to it. He closes his eyes. And he begins. 

“Neil,” he whispers to his eyelids, voice wavering. He can’t look at him. He can’t. He can’t watch Neil’s face while he says this. It’s too much. But he can say it. He can say it. It’s almost like he’s reciting it in the dark, to no one at all. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I...that I freaked out at the banquet.”

Neil’s breath hitches. Aaron ignores it, barrels on.

“I love you. I should have realized it sooner.” His whole body quivers. “And I’m sorry that I didn’t—” 

“Can I kiss you?” 

Aaron sputters, tongue caught on the next word as his eyes fly open. Neil stares at him, expectant. Aaron doesn’t know when he moved, but he’s closer now. Touchable. Kissable. Aaron’s hands burn with the need to reach out and hold him. 

“Can you kiss me?” Aaron copies, like the words are gibberish in his mouth. 

Neil nods. His hair bounces with it. “Is it going to mess up your whole speech if I do?” 

“No,” Aaron says, voice low. “It won’t mess up my whole speech.” 

“Good,” Neil whispers, and leans down.