Archive of Our Own ^beta

Andrew wakes to an earthquake.

No, not an earthquake. Just the dorm door slamming hard enough to rattle the dead, and there’s only one culprit for that unholy disturbance: his roommate Neil. Neil, who keeps leaving their window open now that the weather’s finally softened, then promptly forgetting about it. The result is always the same: a draft that lies in wait until someone dares close the door. Then it whips through the dorm, gleeful and malicious, and finishes the job with a bang.

Right on cue comes Neil’s groan at his recurring blunder, followed by the thud of his bag hitting the floor, the double percussion of sneakers kicked off, then the quick pitter-patter of his feet.

Andrew stifles his own groan. His jaw aches where he’d face-planted into the mattress, too tired to bother with the wiles of his pillow. His body feels like it’s been twisted into one long, knotted muscle.

This was supposed to be a power nap between classes, a quick reset after pulling an all-nighter cramming for his morning exam. He’d stumbled back after finishing it, the last dregs of Red Bull deserting him, saw his bed, and collapsed.

Now he’s vaguely sticky, still swaddled in his hoodie, boots stiff on his feet. He rolls over with a yawn, squinting into the black so absolute, it could only be the deepest, darkest reaches of the night. Except his phone says otherwise: not even 7 p.m.

He was going to meet Aaron for dinner after their evening classes let out. Which means Neil probably doesn’t know Andrew’s here. He can hear Neil sprawl out on the couch, muttering softly into his phone.

Andrew pushes himself upright, but makes it only halfway, hanging off the edge of the bed. Light bleeds in from the cracked door, and his eyes begin to adjust, assembling the scene piece by piece: Neil in sweats and a t-shirt, campus hoodie discarded in his wake. One leg slung over the back of the couch. The glow of his phone screen painting a neon halo across his face.

Andrew notices, too, the tiny betrayals of his body: the exasperated sighs punctuated by teeth on his lip, the idle hand tugging at the hem of his shirt, flashing his stomach in careless increments.

It’s nothing. Ordinary and chaste. And yet, intimate too. Easy to watch. 

He should look away. 

Still, he watches. He watches as the trajectory of Neil’s hand transforms from absent-minded to purposeful, playful—tugging at the waistband of his sweats, palm slipping out of sight, finding a place to rest that’s warm and snug.

Andrew swallows around the dryness in his throat, around the knowledge that if he doesn’t announce himself now, there will be no going back from this.

He doesn’t know what this is, only that he wants it. Wants it in a way he’s been trying not to unearth, not uproot from sinking soil. 

Neil’s teeth finally release his lip, his mouth parting around a soft sigh, his eyes fixed to the screen in his hand. His hidden hand jerks free for a moment to grip the phone tighter, thumbs typing something quickly before it drifts back down again.

In the silence, Andrew can hear the quick, vicious thud of his own heart, ribs turned to concrete around it. He doesn’t dare move in case the sheets give him away with a rustle. Then another sound layers over the quiet: moans and soft gasps escaping faintly from Neil’s phone. The volume must be turned almost all the way down.

Is Neil watching porn?

The thought feels absurd even as the evidence unfolds right in front of him, carrying the quality of a lucid dream for all the free will it leaves him with. 

Andrew regrets not undressing earlier. His skin is too hot beneath his hoodie, damp against him, his cheeks burning in what can only be the most unflattering shade of pink against his pale skin. Still, he lies there, transfixed, his spirit and body disjointed, at war with each other. He won’t intrude, but he will watch as Neil takes this further. 

Neil drops the phone onto his chest while shoving his sweats down past his ass, the band catching just below the curve of his cheeks. Grey boxers cling to him, tented by a noticeable bulge. He palms himself casually once before tugging his cock free through the front hole. Andrew doesn’t even get the full view, but what he does see—a long, elegant length, flushed dark at the tip—is enough to make his own cock twitch against the mattress, straining at the confines of his jeans.

Then, in the breath Andrew forgets to take, one that nearly leaves him suffocating, Neil curls a hand around himself. His other hand falls away, abandoning the phone where the video still plays, its explicit content made clear by the increasingly indulgent moans pouring from it.

Something about those sounds pricks the back of Andrew’s neck, a tingle of half-recognition—like a word once whispered to him in secret and then forgotten. He is suddenly, violently seized by the need to rip the phone from Neil’s chest and see for himself. 

Whatever it is, it holds Neil in thrall. His gaze drifts between the screen and the hard line of his cock. His palm squeezes the tip, coaxing a bead of pre-come that gleams under the light. His thumb smears it across the slit, presses down, then pulls away, leaving a strand suspended for a single, devastating beat.

Andrew’s chest nearly caves with the sight. His ribs heave, rocking the bed, hastening the possibility of discovery closer than he can bear. And still there is no reprieve—not from the thrill of watching Neil like this, not from the ache clawing at him as his own cock swells, leaks, pleads against the sheets.

Neil’s eyes flutter shut in boneless surrender, his back arching as he spreads the pre-come across his palm. Then he takes himself properly, stroking from root to tip in languid, wet pulls. The slick rhythm is faint but undeniable, woven into the push of his uneven breathing. The helpless moans escaping as soft pants Andrew swears he can taste against his own mouth. They join the sounds from the phone in a subtle symphony so tantalizing it wraps Andrew in a choking embrace, pinning him harder to the bed. 

It doesn’t take long for Neil to reach the dangerous ledge of orgasm, and Andrew is perilously close himself. It takes all the shredded remnants of his restraint not to rut against the mattress and spill into his jeans. 

His fists clutch at the sheets, cock pulsing, vision narrowing to the only thing that matters: Neil, his movements quickening into a blur, a strangled moan breaking through his teeth as he pumps himself faster. His hips tremble, and he shudders apart, spilling with a force that makes Andrew’s body lurch in sympathy—an arc of cum so heavy, so decadent in its excess, that Andrew bites his fist to silence the moan tearing through him. 

The release seems endless, streaks landing across Neil’s stomach, chest, shirt, dripping down his knuckles as he milks himself through the aftershocks. He collapses into the couch cushions, panting, legs falling open around his spent body, vulnerable.

What would Andrew give to end up between those legs, to taste Neil for himself? Sacrifice and kill, but nothing else. He still can’t move. Bound to the bed by some unseen force, legs weak, cock aching, so sensitive that even the thought of shifting his hips feels like enough to undo him.

He is held there by torment—self-inflicted and Neil-shaped—for a minute or more before Neil finally decides to collect himself. He shuts off his phone, pushes upright, and shrugs out of his ruined shirt. He wipes his hands on the fabric, tucks himself back into his boxers, and slides off the couch. His movements are brisk, almost mechanical, as he crosses the living room toward the bedroom.

Of course. Where else. He’d need a change of clothes now.

Andrew’s addled brain had failed to think past the inevitability of this. And now it’s too late. Neil’s figure halts in the doorway, a soft gasp slicing the silence.

Andrew’s heart, already straining against adrenaline, nearly tears itself from his chest. He closes his eyes, feigning sleep, but it’s an unconvincing show: sprawled sideways on the bed, fully dressed, his shoulders locked tight with tension.

“Andrew?” Neil’s voice is rough, rasping, like he’s only just remembered how to speak. He clears his throat and tries again. “I thought you were out.”

Andrew rolls over slowly, gaze dragging up to Neil. What he finds there unsettles him more than discovery. Neil’s posture is loose, unguarded despite his near-nakedness. His mouth curves strangely, almost like a smile, though the shadows obscure it. And Andrew realizes, with dawning unease, that the performance he’s just witnessed—his own, Neil’s—might have been pre-meditated. 

Neil knew. 

“Did you?” Andrew asks with disbelief, only mildly disturbed by the off-kilter rhythm of his own breath. He sits up too, shifting shamelessly to adjust his cock, relieving some of the pressure.

Neil’s eyes widen at the gesture. His teeth catch his lip, previous bravado faltering in the wake. He pushes away from the frame as if to cross the threshold, then stops short, leaning back again. “I didn’t. Not at first. Then I sort of figured it out,” he admits. His gaze drops, lingers on Andrew’s lap. His head tilts. “Did you enjoy listening to me? Or did you watch too?” 

Any lie Andrew could tell would crumble instantly, irrefutable in the thick outline of his hard cock. So he doesn’t bother. And besides—there’s something different about Neil tonight. A side of him Andrew has felt pulsing beneath the surface, behind caution and recklessness both. Andrew will not lose to him here: not in provocation, not in the stripping away of masks.

So he holds Neil’s gaze. Then slides his hand deliberately to the button of his jeans, pops it, waits for the gunshot of the sound to fade into silence, then drags the zipper down. Neil watches with rapt attention, his mouth falling open, but no sound escaping.

Andrew frees himself, his cock flushed and hard in his hand. He tips his head back slightly, eyes half-lidded, and challenges: 

“What do you think?”

“Fuck,” Neil breathes. He surges forward, stopping just short of touching, leaving a meaningful sliver of space between them. 

They both watch as Andrew wraps his hand around himself and begins to stroke; slow and lazy, with no goal in sight. Only the sweet-scented pleasure of dragging it out, playing with fire, dangling at the edge of the fall. Every breath feels like a rush of air sucked into his lungs, flame licking at his feet.

“Can I watch?” Neil asks, voice rough, a blush blooming wanton across his cheeks and spreading down his neck.

It’s only fair, Andrew reasons, and nods. The knowledge that Neil wants this—that watching is enough to daze him, to glaze his eyes—sends a shiver through Andrew’s blood, down into his hand. The touch on his cock sharpens, electric against sensitive skin, so good he can’t stay quiet. Groans and ragged breaths tumble out of him.

“I fucking love that sound you make,” Neil murmurs, and it strikes Andrew as the oddest confession. When has Neil ever heard him make sounds like these before?

He doesn’t have time to dwell on it. The look on Neil’s face, the slick noise of his fist working his cock, wet with pre-come—veer into unbearable. Neil watches him, teeth fastened to his lip, and Andrew feels strung tighter than he’s ever been. 

He takes a deep breath and squeezes the tip of his cock, staving off the inevitable descent. 

In that same breath, Neil moves. He sinks to his knees, as though gravity itself has claimed him, resistance drained out of him, leaving only want in its place. He crawls closer, the distance between them shrinking until it feels impossible: too wide, too narrow, all at once.

His eyes—dark, turbulent seas pulling storm clouds into their depths—drag slowly from Andrew’s cock up to his face. The hunger there is so stark, so unguarded, that Andrew swears it might devour them both if neither one breaks first.

So Andrew does. He cups Neil’s chin with his free hand, fingers grazing like a countdown—one, two, three—before pulling him into a kiss.

It’s messy and desperate, dizzying as another wave of arousal razes through Andrew. He squeezes his cock harder, but it does nothing to stall his orgasm. Their mouths bruise together, a tangle of spit and moans and chaotic breaths.

“Andrew—fuck—so good,” Neil pants against him, like he’s been waiting for this all along. Like he’s the one with a fist around his cock, not Andrew. The words shoot straight to Andrew’s cock, his name wrecked in Neil’s mouth, consonants blurred into something sin-drunk and beautiful.

“Neil,” Andrew warn, but Neil keeps saying it, again and again, with the force of a bruise meant to linger, stain like burns kissed into flesh. 

Andrew gasps, tearing their mouths apart. Bracing one hand on Neil’s shoulder, he bows forward, hips trembling violently as his cock pulses. He comes in long, hot ribbons down Neil’s lap, streaking his stomach, soaking his boxers until the grey fabric turns dark and wet.

Even through the shuddering aftershocks, Andrew notices: Neil is hard again. Twitching against the material. 

“Fuck, that was so hot,” Neil says, chest heaving, his hand drifting back to palm his cock, smearing it through the sticky mess. “You make me insane.”

And there it is again—that odd confession that strikes Andrew wrong. Like they’ve done this before; like Andrew’s missing some vital piece of information. It should set alarms blaring. But even the most vexing mysteries feel small against the haze of release still crackling in his veins, with Neil still beneath him, painted in his cum.

Andrew is about to haul Neil closer, maybe put his mouth on his cock, when a ringtone splits the moment, shatters it before it can run its course. Neil jumps, scrambling for his phone among the heap of clothes on the floor. He frowns at the screen before answering curtly, “Aaron.”

Right. Andrew remembers belatedly that he silenced his phone sometime during his voyeuristic descent. He never told Aaron he wasn’t coming to dinner.

Neil’s frown eases into that familiar, casual expression. “Yeah, Andrew’s here. Mostly in one piece, yes.”

The receiver hisses with static before Aaron’s voice erupts, furious: “What do you mean mostly?”

Andrew rolls his eyes and plucks the phone from Neil. “I fell asleep,” he tells him flatly.

“At seven p.m.?” Aaron demands.

“Next time I’ll ask for your permission before I nap,” Andrew replies, deadpan and dripping sarcasm.

“Next time, text me so I know you’re not dead,” Aaron snaps back.

“And if I am dead?” Andrew muses. “What do I do then?”

Aaron huffs, audible even through the static. “You better come back to haunt me so I can make your afterlife miserable too.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Andrew clicks off the call and stares at the darkened screen.

The video Neil had been watching is running, brightness dimmed low, making it difficult to make out the full scene. Still, Andrew catches enough of a glimpse to warrant a double take—before Neil lunges, snatching the phone from his hands.

It takes him a precious moment to kill the video. A moment in which Andrew hears another moan—the same kind that struck him earlier with its strange, unshakable recognition. Now it slams into him full force, disorienting and uncanny, like stepping into a liminal space both familiar and foreign at once.

While Andrew had been talking to Aaron, Neil managed to find a t-shirt, though not pants. Now he stands in the doorway clutching the phone to his chest, eyes squeezed shut, like he already knows what’s coming. Knows there’s no escape.

“Neil,” Andrew says, his monotone edged with steel. “What were you watching?”

Neil’s eyes open slowly, slower than the breath he draws in. “I will show you, but promise me you won’t freak out.” 

Andrew favors him with a long, unreadable glare. There are very few things that could make Andrew “freak out,” and Neil is very well aware of that. Which means the warning itself is enough to stoke Andrew’s interest. And he won’t pretend otherwise. Not when Neil is acting this brazen and bizarre. Not when the whiplash of tonight has already shredded the floor from beneath them.

“Show me,” Andrew says, the words precise, aimed at Neil’s chest, and the phone he guards there.

“Okay,” Neil answers carefully, maybe realizing Andrew won’t give him the promise he asked for. He throws in one last attempt at softening the blow: “I wanted to tell you earlier. I swear. It’s just that—” He stumbles, raking a hand through the curls mussed from his activities on the couch. “I couldn’t.”

“Cool,” Andrew replies, dispassionate, refusing to dole out even a sliver of judgment before he knows what the fuck is actually going on.

He extends his hand and waits. 

Neil grimaces, glances at the video still paused on his screen, then unlocks the phone with a resigned swipe. His fingers linger as he passes it over, warm skin brushing the cradle of Andrew’s palm.

Andrew lets him have that beat of hesitation. Then he wrenches the phone away.

He hits play.

Then stumbles backwards, knees knocking the edge of the bed. They give out under him.

Andrew stares and stares, but the longer he looks the less sense it makes. That same liminal feeling returns, stronger now; like wandering through half-abandoned corridors, spinning in nauseating circles, only to be spat out into some empty lot under a vacant sky.

His mind blanks.

He sees himself in the video, but it isn’t him. Not really.

The same gaze he finds in the mirror—brown washed out to hazel smoke, fractured and fierce, too much for what he always tries to conceal. The same metal eyebrow piercing. The same earrings. Pale skin freckled like careless smudges of ink.

But this Andrew is different. There are tattoos wrapping his exposed forearms, another along his ribs. A choker around his throat, jewelry flashing at his wrists. Legs clad in stockings, spread wide in a chair. And he’s loud too—moaning, gasping as he pleasures himself.

Andrew doesn’t remember filming this. Can’t summon a single detail of where or when. Which means it isn’t him.

The other possibility sears through him like wildfire, sickening and hot. He flings the phone away, disgusted.

Why the fuck would Neil show him this—

His hands tremble. He wants to grab Neil, shake answers out of him. But Neil gets to him first, pressing a steady palm over Andrew’s heart, still hammering brutally fast, still unsteady from one jolt to the next.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Neil says quietly. “But it isn’t Aaron.”

“Oh.” Andrew’s mouth twists. “Well, it isn’t me. So that leaves only one possibility.”

Neil sighs, his fingers pressing firmer, rising and falling with Andrew’s chest. “It isn’t. I could hinge my life on that.”

“It isn’t me,” Andrew snarls.

“I know that too,” Neil says, softer still, syllables dissolving into silence, indistinguishable from the thud of their hearts.

“What are you talking about?” Andrew presses. His head feels light, vertigo-sick. He’d fall back into the bed if not for Neil’s hand steady on him.

“It’s easier if I show you.” Neil retrieves the phone, thumbing through the screen, face washed by its glow. Then at last he finds what he’s after, turns the phone sideways, and thrusts it into Andrew’s vision.

Andrew doesn’t want to look. He’s terrified of what fresh cruelty the night still holds. But he can’t help himself. He does. 

And there he is again—not him—on his knees on a bed lit in lurid neon glow. A sign strung above reads Andrew M.yard in hot pink. Not-Andrew’s ass is spread wide, gripped by unseen hands. A voice slides through the speakers, low and sultry:

“Yes, baby. Just like that. Fuck yourself on my fingers.”

Andrew knows that voice.

His head jerks up at Neil, still hovering over him, fingers tapping a nervous rhythm against his chest, perfectly in time with his heart.

“Keep watching,” Neil urges.

Andrew’s shock is a live thing devouring him from the inside. Still, he obeys. Watches this version of himself taken apart slowly, coaxed into spilling sounds he swears have never crossed his lips, rutting shamelessly against another man’s fingers.

His face burns. It feels obscene to witness—it’s too private—and yet he can’t drag his eyes away.

The unseen man pulls his fingers free, brings something into frame, orders Not-Andrew to fuck it.

“What is that?” Andrew mutters. “A lacrosse stick?”

“The description says it’s an Exy racquet,” Neil replies evenly. 

Andrew looks up at him, baffled. Neil only shrugs. “Yeah, I have no idea either. Sounds made up. I haven’t found a single mention of it online.”

Neil’s voice, the words they shape, take the moment’s edge off, drawing Andrew back toward sense. He checks the video length. Thirty minutes. Christ. He scrubs forward, hunting for the proof he knows must be there.

He finds it.

The camera’s closer to the man behind Andrew, though his face is still deliberately hidden. Not-Andrew is braced forward, fucking himself back onto his cock with lusty abandon. Skin slaps obscenely against skin, Andrew’s—no, not Andrew’s—moans spilling loud and wrecked, profane and impossibly erotic.

Andrew’s cock twitches, traitorous, and heat surges up his throat. He looks away, but not before the details imprint themselves into him: the trail of dark brown hair, the familiar lines of abs flexing, the hands that hold strong and tender, erratic and steady. 

And he knows.

The other man is Neil.

“What the fuck,” Andrew bites out, snapping the phone shut, resisting the urge to smash it through the window just to hear glass explode.

“Yeah,” Neil agrees, sliding down to sit beside him. “But now do you believe me that it isn’t Aaron?”

Andrew gives him a flat, blank stare.

“Come on,” Neil pushes, exasperation roughening his tone. “There is no version of the universe where I would fuck Aaron. Also, did you see the sign with your name?”

“Neil.” Andrew swallows, throat still raw and burning. “Explain.”

“I don’t have an explanation,” Neil admits. “I found the video by accident. Of you—not you, but the other Andrew. And I know I shouldn’t have watched…” His gaze drops to the floor, his voice pitched low with what looks like shame. But Andrew is learning things tonight. And one of them is that Neil doesn’t feel a whole lot of it. 

“I was curious,” Neil continues, “because of the tattoos.”

His hand hovers over Andrew’s bare forearm, ghosting the faint outline where scars knot pale skin. After rooming together this long, Andrew doesn’t bother hiding them anymore. But tattoos? Never. Not yet.

“I thought maybe you drew them on before filming,” Neil says, hands wringing restlessly against his knees. “But that didn’t make sense. Besides…” His eyes lift up, quick and searching. “That Andrew is different in other ways. He looks older than you, don’t you think?”

Neil’s mouth quirks faintly, softening the question.

Andrew doesn’t know what to think. It’s surreal, improbable. If someone told him he’d been drugged and was hallucinating all this, he’d believe it without protest.

“And then,” Neil adds carefully, “there’s the version of me. Different too. You never see my—his—face. But it’s definitely me. Just…more confident.” His mouth pulls wider, almost a smile, though shy at the edges.

“Confident,” Andrew repeats, like the word itself isn’t quite right. 

Neil nods once. “More in control, I guess.”

“When were you going to tell me?” Andrew asks, the question burning at the back of his throat.

“I tried,” Neil insists, frustration sparking in his eyes. “Every day. Remember that time on the roof? I asked you, can I tell you something?”

Andrew remembers. Of course he does. Every detail. The hazy amber moonlight bathing them head to toe, the breathless thread in Neil’s voice that trapped smoke in Andrew’s lungs, made his stomach lurch in ways that had nothing to do with the ledge beneath his feet.

He remembers what he said back: People who have something to tell, just do it.

“Just like that?” Neil had pressed. “Without prelude?”

“Yup,” Andrew replied. “Without foreplay.”

“Wordplay?” Neil asked, as though he hadn’t heard him right. And he’d stared into Andrew’s eyes so intently Andrew blew smoke in his face just to make him stop. Something in Neil had broken then; he’d looked away, dropped the subject.

Now Andrew realizes what had broken was Neil’s courage.

“I just couldn’t,” Neil finishes, shifting back on the bed, putting space between them as though that distance could absolve him.

“Why?” Andrew demands, anger flaring hot. Not at the thought of Neil watching, getting off to these videos. What enrages him is that Neil knew. That he carried this secret while looking Andrew in the eye every day. That maybe, when he looked at him, he saw someone else—this other Andrew.

“Because,” Neil snaps, his eyes flashing, a storm bursting loose and lashing across Andrew’s skin. “I never thought of you this way before watching those videos. And then I did. And it’s all I’ve wanted since. So how could I tell you?”

Just like that, Andrew thinks. But he doesn’t say it. It doesn’t land like the punchline it should—not when Neil’s conviction rings true, not when Andrew knows silence has concealed his own secrets. He’s wanted things he hasn’t dared voice, has done nothing about them for far too long. 

So instead, he stands. Paces the length of the room. Pettily punishing Neil with refusal to acknowledge his confession. Finally he says, “If it’s not us, then who? Someone impersonating us?”

Neil follows his pacing with his eyes, the storm quieting, biding its time. “Too good of an impersonation. And whatever explanation you could think of—I already did, and threw it out. Like: someone abducted us, drugged us with memory-altering meds, and made us film the videos.”

Andrew stops in his tracks. Stares at him. “That’s the best you came up with?” He deadpans. “Really?”

Neil’s mouth tilts, provocatively. “Got any better ones?”

“We got into a car accident. Amnesia,” Andrew offers blandly.

“Yeah, because that’s so much better,” Neil scoffs.

“Then what?” Andrew presses. He needs to know, needs to pin this down, make it make sense.

“Have you considered,” Neil says, voice quiet, “that some things just are? That they don’t come with explanations—plausible or otherwise?”

Andrew has, in fact, considered that. He’s lived with the knowledge that some mysteries will never be solved, that they’ll torment him until his last breath. Like the way Neil’s eyes seem to hold whole dimensions of color—a shifting mood ring of blues and greens and lilacs that tilt and transform under the light. Or the way it’s always been too easy to be near him: a common ground stumbled into and reinforced over time, nights spent on the roof melting under the moon; elbows pressed close over textbooks like key teeth sliding into place; the gravity that draws them back into the same orbit even as they drift among their friends.

Those aren’t mysteries Andrew hopes to solve. They’re layers he drapes across his shoulders and keeps moving.

But the videos—those, he’s determined to unravel.

He asks Neil for the link to the site, prefacing it with a neutral, “Going to investigate.”

“Have at it,” Neil replies, dropping a wink emoji that earns him a middle finger in return.

After that night, the air between them feels…charged. The easy companionship they’ve built suspended; replaced by curt words, lingering stares, a wound stoppered with gauze but never properly treated.

Andrew knows it will be, eventually. There are only so many cigarettes he can smoke alone on the roof before the silence turns maddening.

But for now, he takes his time. He presses the blade of memory to his pulse: the way Neil sounded when he took himself apart; the sharp, desperate way his own name broke on Neil’s tongue—night-kissed and desperate, like something Andrew isn’t sure he can coax out of him again. 

He wonders if those are the same sounds the other him draws from the alternate Neil.

There are too many videos to sift through, and Andrew doesn’t. Not yet. He only skims the thumbnails, the captions: some bizarrely tied to Exy—a sport that doesn’t exist outside this warped archive. One freeze-frame shows him in a black jersey, his name stretched across the back and nothing else on his body, straddling Neil, his face hidden with painstaking care every single time. Andrew finds himself wondering if it takes more effort to keep it concealed than to show it.

He doesn’t press play. He tears himself away, moving deeper into the site instead, though there is nowhere else to go. The social links are dead, every one of them leading to broken pages. No clues outside the front page and the videos themselves.

It feels less like a site and more like an oversight. A fracture in the fabric of reality. A parallel universe bleeding through.

Has Neil considered that?

Probably.

Andrew closes his laptop, keeps himself intact, and moves through the day. He’s late for his language exchange at the campus café. His partner is a surly French student whose manner hovers somewhere between unimpressed and misanthropic. Jean’s relentless critique has driven nearly every other volunteer away. Except Andrew, who has thick skin and doesn’t care. Besides, he never praises Jean’s English, which seems to keep them even.

Out of the corner of his eye, Andrew catches a spark of color. Instinct drags his head around. The dark flame of Neil’s hair. 

He knew Neil also participated in the exchange program, but not at this time.

Andrew tunes out Jean’s dissection of his pronunciation of “décourageant” to watch Neil cross the café. He doesn’t look Andrew’s way, sliding instead across from someone Andrew’s never seen: the sun in his bleached blond, in his golden tan, in his blinding white smile. Hollywood would kill for him.

“Pay attention,” Jean snaps.

“How do you say ‘fuck off’ in French,” Andrew asks flatly, still watching Neil and his sunshine companion.

Jean cranes his neck, following Andrew’s gaze. “Oh. Jeremy.”

“Jeremy,” Andrew echoes tonelessly.

“Ceramics class,” Jean explains. 

“Well, that’s fucking gay,” Andrew mutters.

The corners of Jean’s mouth curve slightly, like he wants to smile but won’t allow it. “You would know.”

“Is that supposed to be a jab?” Andrew nearly rolls his eyes.

“Jab?” Jean repeats carefully, tasting the word. After a pause, he shakes his head. “No. But a straight man wouldn’t dress the way you do.” His gaze rakes over Andrew, lingering on the tight black sweater stretched across his chest, on the chain at his collar.

Andrew’s hand goes to it, fingers twisting the links, uncharacteristically self-conscious. Because the image that unspools in his mind is all wrong: not-him, the reckless version, in his collars and chokers, wearing them unabashedly.

He’s still caught there when two shadows fall over their table.

“Switch with me?” Neil’s voice pulls Andrew out of the trenches of his mind. The image shatters.

Andrew looks up, but Neil isn’t looking at him. His eyes are on Jean, who glances between Neil, Jeremy, then finally settles on the blond boy.

“Oui,” Jean replies, and stands.

Neil drops into the seat, body angled sideways, head tipped against the wall. He studies Andrew at a slant, eyes half-sunk under the harsh overhead light.

“What topic were you on with Jean?” he asks eventually.

“I believe he was in the middle of publicly outing me,” Andrew replies evenly.

Neil straightens. “By publicly you mean…it was just the two of you?”

“Semantics,” Andrew counters. 

“Uh huh.” Neil slips into French, rattling off a long, flawless sentence. Andrew catches only a single name: Jeremy.

“Show-off,” Andrew retorts, refusing to give him the satisfaction of asking for a translation. He can almost piece it together anyway: something, something, Jeremy, Jean, homoerotic squelching wet vase-making.

“I can also say that in German, Russian, and Spanish,” Neil adds, smiling in a way that makes Andrew’s stomach somersault like he’s back on the ledge of the rooftop all over again.

“Is ‘idiot’ the same in all of them?” Andrew asks.

Neil pauses, runs through the languages in his head, then hums. “Yeah, actually. Shit, I gotta pick up a non-European language next. Maybe Japanese.” His tone is earnest, absurdly so. “Andrew, where are you going?”

Andrew is already at the café door when Neil catches up. “Back to the dorm,” he throws over his shoulder. “Where you can blabber at me in French and the coffee isn’t mid and doesn’t cost nine dollars.”

“Okay, baby, let me talk to you in French,” Neil jokes, and freezes, as if the word escaped unbidden, a feral thing not of his own making. 

Andrew’s step falters. The memory of the other Neil in the video saying baby spikes through him, hot as whiskey burning down his throat. “Do you think the other you knows that many languages?” he asks, to cover the uneven cadence of his boots on the pavement.

“I try not to think about it,” Neil replies, his own steps falling out of rhythm. “I mean—I’m not gonna lie and pretend I haven’t watched a lot of those videos. But I try not to think about what that other me is like. What’s the point? He’s not really me. Maybe a version of me I could be, but that feels like a moot point too.”

Andrew stops abruptly. So does Neil. The campus brims around them—students, professors, visitors streaming by, parting like currents around smooth stone. Above them, dusk stretches the sky in gentle fractures.

“You watched a lot of them,” Andrew repeats, secure in the knowledge that they stand in a crowd that does not care for them. “Which ones are your favorites?”

“Seriously?” Neil frowns, as if Andrew is fucking with him.

Andrew isn’t. “I’m serious. Show me.”

Neil’s frown deepens. “Why?”

“Why do you think, Neil?” Andrew tilts his head, voice low and coaxing. “Why did you watch them?”

“Because it’s fucking hot, okay?” Neil blurts. The honesty burns, fortified by the way his hand shoves through his curls—his tell when he tries to keep the nervousness at bay. 

But it isn’t until hours later that they do. After dinner, after they’ve sat at their desks catching up on homework, side by side. An echo of normalcy. A routine they forged long ago that makes Andrew’s chest ache with the pressure of his heart swelling to a size it was never meant to accommodate. 

He tells himself he’ll get used to it one day.

His foot nudges along Neil’s ankle, seeking his attention. He doesn’t know how much longer he can wait—the illicit idea of what they’re about to do has taunted him all evening. 

Neil’s mouth stills around the marker between his teeth. He spits it out. “Done with your poli sci homework?”

Andrew nods. He finished an hour ago, but spent that time doodling in the margins, watching Neil wrestle with aerodynamic formulas, observing the way calculation sharpened his eyes, the way the breeze from the open window lifted his curls, and teased a faint pink blush on his cheekbones. 

Neil nods back, stretches with unthinking grace, then pushes away from the desk.

Wordless, he carries his laptop to the bedroom. The light flickers on, dispelling the darkness inside. Andrew follows—follows the light, follows Neil’s barefoot steps—into the bed where space has already been left for him against the wall.

Neil’s hand glides over the keyboard, opening the browser. 

Andrew’s hands quiver as he balls them into fists. He doesn’t know why he feels this way—unsettled, nerves fraying, fingers twitching for a cigarette.

“Um. Well, I have a lot of favorites,” Neil says carefully. “You tell me what you want to see—blow job with whipped cream, shower sex, Andrew in a collar and chain, outdoor sex…”

“Outdoor sex,” Andrew repeats flatly. He forgets the question mark that should follow. Naturally, Neil takes it as his choice.

By the time Andrew’s eyes skim the description, he doesn’t object. He needs to see more, to understand what these words mean in practice:

Blowing my boyfriend on a hike. Getting fucked until he hits the spot and makes me cum.

“Boyfriend?” Andrew’s eyebrow arches, stuck on the concept. 

The mouse pointer hovers over the play button as Neil answers, uncertain. “So…that one, yes?”

“Go on,” Andrew replies, waving a careless hand toward the screen.

The video opens on Neil sprawled in the leather passenger seat, his face blurred, but his body offered in full: tight tank, indecently small shorts, Nikes and crew socks. Andrew’s gaze hooks on the dashboard markers. Of course it’s a fucking Maserati. His dream car. His teeth ache from how hard his jaw clamps shut.

Too good of an impersonation, Neil had said.

Onscreen, Andrew slides into frame, his athleisure matching Neil’s, hair pulled into a messy bun that bares his ears, newly adorned with black earrings. Andrew doesn’t get the chance to study his own face—to measure the differences, to guess how much older this Andrew is—before not-him drops to his knees between Neil’s spread legs.

The camera frames them parked off a dirt road, oak trees towering overhead, dappling Andrew’s back with gasping light. He tilts his head up toward Neil, who, without bothering to strip, drags his cock out, resting it along Andrew’s cheek as though admiring the view.

Andrew sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth. 

Neil glances at him, eyes keen. It makes Andrew want to drag him through a meat grinder, or maybe throw himself in after; anything to end this. To end being known, being seen.

Because holy fuck—Neil’s cock looks divine against his face.

Then the Neil on screen presses it along Andrew’s cheek again, slaps him lightly, then fits the head flush to his parted lips.

It’s only by the second round of this ritual, Neil’s cock dragging across Andrew’s face, teasing his mouth, slipping the tip just to withdraw, that Andrew realizes how hard he’s gotten. A glance sideways confirms Neil is too, shifting intermittently against the sheets, the bulge blatant through his shorts.

“I told you it’s hot,” Neil mutters. 

Andrew jabs a finger at him to shut him up.

It works, for a moment. Until the video Neil starts fucking Andrew’s mouth in earnest. Wet, relentless thrusts that take him right to the hilt. The alter-Andrew takes it with ease, throat working, lips stretched wide, eyes blurred with tears that Neil wipes away, murmuring praise lost to the rustle of branches overhead.

Then Andrew pulls back, his eyes shining, mouth swollen, and says Neil’s name like it’s a question, a demand. And Neil, as if wired to him, understands: his thumb presses to Andrew’s lip, his body leans close, his eyes fixed on him. The pixels hide his expression, but Andrew doesn’t need to see it. He can conjure it from memory, the exact look Neil wears sitting right here beside him: dazed adoration laced through with hunger.

Andrew should look away, should cut this off before it digs deeper under his skin. But he doesn’t. He watches as Neil spits into his mouth and other-Andrew swallows eagerly, wipes his lips, and asks for Neil’s cock again.

Andrew gasps aloud. The sound is mercifully drowned in the groan Neil lets out beside him, burying his face in his hands.

“You like that,” Andrew says. He tries for neutral, for flat, but it scrapes out rough, betraying how terribly thin his composure really is. 

“Tell me you don’t,” Neil fires back, the rasp in his voice amplifying the challenge. 

Andrew doesn’t bother confirming or denying. What use are words when he’s obviously aroused—rock hard, leaking into his boxers, clinging to the last shreds of sanity. He can’t even tell anymore if it’s the video, or Neil beside him: real, solid, just as turned on. Breath quickening. Lips flushed and glossy, so lush Andrew aches to kiss them.

Onscreen, Neil spills down Andrew’s throat. Then, with obscene care, he smears the cum across his lips and leans in to kiss it out of him.

Andrew’s seen plenty of porn, but never anything like this.

Threaded with raw intimacy. With more than affection, more than obsession. Need—naked, mutual, reflected in spades, multiplied and traded, devoured and made incomplete again as the cycle repeats. An irreverent vow in every breath and moan and kiss.

Andrew thinks he’s seen enough.

But then the scene dissolves, rearranges, and without warning he’s staring at another shot, more compromising than the last. Now it’s Andrew with his shirt shoved up, shorts dragged low over his ass. Neil behind him, pinning his arms flat against his back. For a beat there’s only the hungry scrape of teeth at Andrew’s neck. Then Neil drives forward, fucking Andrew with hard, decadent thrusts that send Andrew’s cock bouncing helplessly, his abs flexing. Andrew’s back is arched, eyes rolling back in sheer hedonistic pleasure. A wanton unmaking, vicious and exquisite.

Andrew dares a glance at Neil, whose eyes burn blue against the screen’s glow, blush spreading hot down his throat. Neil meets his gaze with a bitten lip. “Watch,” he breathes, voice low, nudging Andrew into compliance. The sound sends another sharp wave of arousal coursing through him, and fuck—he’s never been closer to coming untouched, like he’s trapped in the most erotic, ecstasy-drenched wet dream.

He tries to wrest back control, forces his breathing steady through his nose, but the vision of it is relentless: his unraveling performed by the only man he would ever let do this to him. The thought jolts him, stark and merciless. It isn’t just that he loves watching himself get fucked. He wants it. Wants Neil pinning his arms, bruising his mouth, stretching and filling him—

The fantasy fades as the video demands his attention again: Andrew makes a low, guttural sound that rumbles from his throat, his hips seizing, thighs straining, every leg muscle taut. He comes untouched, cock pulsing, splattering arcs of cum onto the dirt. His head tips back against Neil’s shoulder with a boneless cry. Then Neil’s hand slides around, stroking him through the last spasms, holding him firm until he softens. “Keep fucking me,” Andrew rasps, and only then does Neil resume, slamming into his ass again. 

“Holy shit,” Andrew murmurs.

Beside him, Neil’s hand trembles as he fumbles to stop the video. Andrew isn’t sure if he’ll combust from seeing more, or being deprived of it; or if he’ll die if Neil doesn’t put his hands on him now, or ever. 

“Andrew,” Neil says, breathless, eyes wide and wild when they find him.

And Andrew understands, at last, why Neil has been altered by this—why he’s wanted nothing else since. Why he couldn’t shake it. Because Andrew won’t be able to either. Not until they recreate some version of it. Not until Neil fucks him: pins his arms, holds him up and tears him down, buries himself deep and makes him come apart.

“Fuck me,” Andrew orders, the words torn raw from his throat.

Neil blinks, the blue of his eyes dimming then brightening again. “Fuck me as in ‘fuck me, that was hot’…or fuck me as in, actually fuck you?”

“The latter,” Andrew replies, and his own voice sounds like it doesn’t belong to him anymore. 

“Andrew—” Neil begins, but Andrew cuts him off.

“I want you to fuck me, Neil.”

“I—” Neil takes a labored breath. “I want to. More than anything. But we don’t have to now. Not just because—”

“Okay. Not now,” Andrew agrees. Sensible. They can take their time, find their own rhythm, shape vows into a cadence that belongs only to them.

“But…do you want to—” Neil starts, reaching for him.

“Yes,” Andrew interrupts again. Yes to anything tonight, and the night after, his mouth parted, claimed before it even collides with Neil’s.