Content Note: This piece contains frank discussion of sexuality and sexual assault, please exercise care in reading

Kieran leaned his elbow on the red press for entrance doorbell a third time, backpack dangling from the crest of his shoulder. Bringing his laptop to work gave him bad nerves, but with assignments coming due, he’d run short of options. A gas station iced coffee and boxed pizza slice occupied his hands. In steady, vicious monologue he cussed the bus that ran late after class, the old guy holding up the Speedway checkout with scratch-offs, and the morning clerk leaving him loitering outside. Four cars squatted in the pothole-riddled side lot, which was four too many customers for 2:07 p.m. on a Thursday.

No one parked in front of The Station. A windowless barn painted lavender with green trim, the façade’s posters proclaimed 24/7 Adult Novelty, Peepshows & Theaters!!, and Kieran’s favorite, the specious Couples Welcome 🖤 blazoned over silhouetted tits. Finally, an eardrum-pulvering entry buzzer sounded as the safety locks cleared. He elbowed past the metal door and trotted between magazine racks to the clerk’s dais. Barricaded on three sides by a glass case housing fancier toys and easily pocketed items—condoms, poppers, lube sachets—the arena served as observation deck for their retail panopticon. John, the first-shift guy, stood by the register with an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth and a bandana tied over his bald head.

“What the fuck, dude,” Kieran groused.

“Sorry, little man.” He gestured to the floor. “UPS came late and I had to drag all these boxes up. Figured the bell was a customer and let it ride.”

Kieran hip-checked the dais gate. As promised, five stock boxes awaited. He deposited his lunch on the island worktop, original homework plan disintegrating, and ducked into the equipment room to stow his backpack. Theater noise filtered into the stifling, dimly lit closet: soundtrack reverb and pitchy, frantic moaning that could’ve come from either the straight or the gay movie. Kieran dug thumbs into the knotty clench of his jaw muscles. Two red lights glowed on the peeps switchboard. Habituated by the last eighteen months, he glanced over the industrial shelf stacked with whirring DVD players and tapped play for the only one idling on its menu.

If his patience was a cup of water, he’d already sipped down to the dregs.

When he emerged, John said, “We’ve got two in the booths and two in the theater, all good so far. I’ll mop while you eat?”

“Sounds great, chief,” Kieran said as he settled onto the clerk’s stool.

Most of the veteran staff at The Station were like John, an ex-con due to youthful dumbassery turned nineteen-year employee. Reliable and even-tempered, neither of which Kieran identified with, the crew also had to be comfortable amongst the cheerful sleaze—and there lay his strengths. He checked his phone, chowing down gelid pizza. Sean, his roommate, had texted making fried rice 10pm. He tapped k and the woozy emoji back. The routine of going straight home for their domestic little dinners offered his nights some stability. If, an if bulging within his guts like a fast-flowering tumor, he stayed. Kieran flipped the monitoring TV away from the straight theater’s lesbian orgy.

The afternoon gay offering starred a muscular clone getting spitroasted over a weight bench. He watched, mechanically chewing. Without audio the ripple of the bottom’s asscheeks as he took a pounding was hypnotic, elevated to performance art. For the first time Kieran’s life made sense. He’d nailed down a good gig, a good apartment, a good pair of friends, and a perfectly good offer for his university’s graduate program. Except, folded in quarters and stuffed to the bottom of his backpack, he also had a letter of admissions with stipend for UCLA—an offer he’d never considered an actual possibility, its three week response deadline lurching toward him. He licked grease from his fingers and tossed the pizza crust in the garbage.

John knocked on the wall for the peeps, hollering amiably, “Cleaning round, close the doors!”

The two guys haunting the corridor dispersed instead. Kieran slid from his stool to buzz them out. The largest of the product boxes, he discovered after slitting the tape, contained a selection of big fat silicone objects. To the soothing slosh of mop water he arrayed them across the countertop: two sizes of bottle, a disembodied boot tread, a realistic yam. The yam he took out of its display bag for a curious grope of the fake potato-eye texturing. When he balled his fist alongside to judge circumference, it won. The only thing funnier to Kieran than the design of the toy was imagining the flat, unamused line of Sean’s mouth if he were to bring a silicone ass-yam back from his shift. Grinning fondly, he stood the dildo upright on its wide base.

“I hear you’re about to graduate, huh,” John called from the booths.

Kieran’s jaw tensed on reflex, but he pried his mouth open to say, “Sure am, against all odds!”

“Hell yeah, brother. You itching to get out of here once the degree is in hand?”

The question was reasonable, his tone jovial, but Kieran froze stiff as a startled possum. Two weeks ago his answer would’ve been “of course not,” but then the admissions offer slashed new depths to his greedy imagination. The security he had built over the last two years stung sweetly between his teeth. Cozy living arrangements with fresh food and a wad of cash stuffed behind the attic access panel in his room; easy closeness grown between himself, Sean, and their mutual best friend Xander. He hadn’t told either of them, yet, about the letter.

Silence hung as the mopping stopped and he failed to answer.

“Well, it’s all right if you don’t know now,” John said without an ounce of bluster as he rolled the bucket back onto the main floor. “You’re young, you’re going places, you’re getting out of here sometime along the way. Just keep steady.”

The drained glass feeling returned, emptier than before. Kieran slit another box.

“Need anything before I go?” John asked.

“Nah,” he grunted.

Once his coworker left, Kieran ducked back into the equipment room. Xander had nudged him to register for the queer film course as a pair—“it’ll be fun,” he said, “we’ll watch movies together”—but if he had to listen to straight girl Julie argue that onscreen cocksucking constituted bad representation ever again, he wouldn’t be responsible for his actions. He knelt beside his bag, worrying at the thought that sticking around for the safe-bet program would guarantee him more of the same. Guilty resentment wormed around under his skin. The week’s assigned film was The Living End, and he’d never felt so ready to indulge his nastiest self. He scooped his charger and laptop free.

Just outside the closet door a heavy thud rattled the floorboards. Kieran jolted, losing his balance and toppling onto his ass in practiced, total silence.

Aside from the whispering chorus of DVD players, the store stood quiet. His pulse hammered at his temples. A metal shelf dug between his ribs. The adrenaline ebbed, though, as no immediate danger presented itself. Kieran peeled to standing one joint at a time, coated in an irritating flop-sweat. He emerged from the storage room, sat his laptop aside, and grabbed the offending yam dildo resting at his feet. He was sure he’d sat the stupid thing upright. A quick, three-sixty spin confirmed he was alone.

“Well, fuck,” he muttered.

On the monitoring TV, the bottom gave a beatific smile as his partners jacked off over his upturned face. To ease his pulsating nerves Kieran bolted a mouthful of watery, cold coffee. Theater two’s door hinges squealed as it swung open. He leaned across the counter on his elbows. A pair of regulars emerged, guys he thought of as Jerry and Gerald.

Seeing them knocked another fraction of his jittery energy loose. Gerald’s short afro glistened at the hairline, damp from exertion, and Jerry’s broad smile emphasized his swollen lips. Both men sported mid-sixties round bellies and gold wedding bands. Whether the rings were a matched set, Kieran didn’t know, but the couple were always unfailingly polite. He liked to pretend they’d met in the booths when the place opened in the ‘80s and kept returning for their date nights ever since—reliable as clockwork, surviving through the worst of things. He waited for the moment they noticed him bent over the countertop, drank down the appreciation as their eyes roamed over his body.

Jerry asked, “Are we your only customers tonight? No one showed our whole visit.”

“Guess the rain kept people home,” Kieran said, shrugging.

“Well, thanks as always for your services.”

Jerry proffered a $20 folded along the centerline from his first two fingers. Kieran leaned forward another inch to snag the tip, then rolled backwards off the counter into a stretch that flashed his pale belly.

Gerald snorted, good-natured. “Don’t tease, kid.”

Kieran tucked the cash in his front pocket. A solid flirt with guys who didn’t assume anything else was forthcoming made him feel steadier on his feet. He buzzed the couple out, calling “Stay safe!” before collapsing into a real, spine-crackling stretch over the counter once the door latched.

No customers meant doing the cleaning without needing to watch his back, maybe even finishing his film uninterrupted. He snagged the duster-wand and entered the equipment room for his one mandatory sweep per shift. On the peeps switchboard, booth number six’s bulb glowed red. Kieran frowned. The light shut back off. After another moment of staring, knowing he hadn’t let any customers inside, he carried on wiping down the electronics. The weirdness with the falling dildo had set him on edge and the stuffy room felt almost unbearably enclosed. He strained his ears listening for approaching footsteps, for a stranger breathing, but heard only the recorded echoes of flesh on flesh from the theaters. Except when he rose from dusting the lowest DVD racks, booth six was glowing again. Kieran flung the wand aside and shoved past the swinging clerk’s gate.

Linoleum squeaked under his sneakers as he marched into the peeps. Plywood doors yawned on emptied cloisters; the bleachy redolence of cum, sweat, and cleaning product clung to the air. Kieran stopped before door number six—no customer and no film running, despite the switchboard light. No incriminating tissues or rubbers in the trash can. Technical glitch, he told himself, but to satisfy his prey instincts he paced the circuit hall four more times. All twelve switchboard lights sat dormant for the rest of his shift.

The long route to Kieran’s domestication began with accidental off-roading.

On the last night of September, early sophomore year, Kieran huddled over his duffle bag on a city bus. The bones of his jaw throbbed to the beat of the air brakes. As a freshman the university had pity-granted his request for a single. He’d covered costs with half foster scholarship cash and half government loans, earning a respectable swath of Bs. Come the second year housing assignments, though, they stuck him with a roommate—and no amount of protest, if he wasn’t willing to spill his guts explaining his “legitimate needs for accommodation,” could get him the single back. He dangled his phone between his knees, staring at the cursor in his text thread with Xander.

He hadn’t drafted, let alone sent, a message. The bus rolled ever nearer to Xander’s apartment, which Kieran had refused to go inside before, despite the increasing frequency of their hangouts after meeting in comp class. Catching a movie, sharing lunches between coursework, studying at the library in companionable silence: those were casual activities, and casual stayed within Kieran’s comfort zone. Xander’s enthusiastic invitations to do shit like cook dinner together at his place felt threateningly euphemistic, an unfordable boundary between safe friendship and touching, fucking, dating. But now Kieran found himself raftless, clinging to a stone in the rapids. The stop approached; he pulled the yellow wire.

Down the block loomed the converted yellow house. Its second-floor windows were unlit. With his shredded dignity cinched around his larynx, Kieran stumped across the street. Muffled snatches of podcast wafted from the first floor apartment’s cracked window as he mounted the back staircase. The worst thing was, he genuinely liked Xander. His taste in music was fine and he ardently believed in the Bigfoot, but otherwise seemed to float with a warmly disinterested strangeness past the rules of college socialization. Plus, he’d once casually dropped that at fifteen his parents had abandoned him in a private apartment to “recover their freedom,” which was just fucked up enough to put Kieran on easier footing.

Then the boy himself was coming up the stairs, campus café apron draped over his shoulder and keys jingling. Porchlight cast flecks of gold in his deep brown eyes, sloshed glossy over the loose-wound knot of his long, black hair.

“Oh!” he blurted, seeing Kieran crouched by his door. “What happened, are you okay?”

Kieran stood and Xander hurried to tuck a helping hand beneath his elbow. His gaze flitted across the bruised face, the split knuckles. His thin mouth pursed. Kieran reminded himself that his friend was clinically handsome, as good to stare at as museum art. Offering fair—remuneration—for his assistance wouldn’t be the worst, in the grand scheme.

“I got kicked out of the dorms,” he admitted.

“God, okay. Let’s get you inside. Watch for the cat,” Xander said.

As he unlocked the door, Kieran added allergy meds to the list of necessities if he was going through with this instead of staking claim on a park bench. Crossing the threshold made his toes curl. He dropped his duffle next to the door and left his shoes on, though Xander immediately traded his for tatty white house slippers. On its tower near the front window, a black ball of fluff with yellow eyes yawned at them.

Xander gestured to the couch. “Here, sit down, what happened?”

Kieran parked himself on the corner cushion as instructed, watching Xander paw through the fridge and stack snacks on an honest to god wooden board: grapes, cheese cubes, crackers, two sparkling waters.

“I knocked Tad’s front teeth in,” he said, unable to shake the frosted note of warning from his tone. “He grabbed me. I didn’t appreciate being grabbed. He didn’t let go fast enough.”

“Then of course you’ll stay here,” Xander said.

He placed the cheeseboard on the coffee table and slanted a glance over at Kieran. After a moment of stiff, awkward sitting, Xander relaxed into a lounge against the armrest with his legs tucked between them. The cat thumped from its perch, trotted over, and leapt onto his lap. He sank both hands into its dense fur. A flush colored his ears, maroon beneath light brown skin.

“I mean, unless you had other plans. That’s fine too. Don’t let me be weird at you, I just thought since we’re friends maybe you had come here first—”

“It’s cool, I uh—I did though,” Kieran said, ending his embarrassed ramble.

Xander nodded with zero eye contact, still nervously scrubbing his fingers through the cat’s ruff. He said, “I wish I had a second bedroom to offer, but there’s only one? I promise I’ll make the space fit.”

The perpetual hollow behind Kieran’s sternum reverberated with warning. Over the past year with Xander, discounting his general clinginess, nothing bad had ever even come close to happening—but now the balance of power had shifted. He stuffed a mound of cheese cubes into his mouth, chewing loud and gross. The chafed skin of his forearm still itched, and the impact of his assigned dorm partner crushing him against a wall lingered on the backs of his ribs. Xander was sweet and sort of neurotic, at least. Easier to manage than some meathead stranger bearing an awful resemblance to his last system-provided stepbrother.

Approaching his personal gallows, he asked, “And what will I owe you for staying?”

Xander blinked rapidly, chin drawing back in reflex. “For sleeping on my couch and keeping me company? Of course we can hang sheets or something later, but—why would I charge you?”

Kieran glanced around the pleasant, compact apartment. Framed art on the walls and three full bookshelves, with brand name La Croix in the fridge and matching furniture. Adding the splotched stain of himself to the center of the otherwise charming picture was unsettling.

“There has to be something you want from me,” he said.

“Your company,” Xander answered, slouching into the path of Kieran’s distant stare. “I’ve never had a roommate before. When I started college I thought maybe my friend—you haven’t met him, he moved away—would finally come live with me. But he said no.”

The no wobbled, incredulous and audibly wounded. Across the months they’d been settling into orbit, Kieran realized, he’d never seen Xander with any other friends. 

“You’re telling me you don’t want to…” He struggled to find the words, then just swept a crude gesture down his own body. “Isn’t that the goal?”

“Oh, no. No,” Xander stuttered.

Two separate sets of assumptions ran headlong into one another. Kieran planted his head in his hands. After a freighted pause, Xander scooted sideways until their shoulders touched, contact blunted through fabric. Mismatched sleeve edges caught.

“Then just pick something else for me to do,” Kieran demanded, brittle with relief.

“Um—okay, wash all the dishes and change the cat litter?” he offered.

“Deal,” Kieran said.

One week later, Xander ordered folding privacy screens and a double-bed for the living room, waving off the cost with the fact that his absent parents paid his rent. With the patience of a saint, an alien, or a horribly neglected child, Xander seemed to experience nothing but pleasure in sharing his limited space. Weeks burgeoned into months. Kieran acquired a plastic bin of drawers for his growing number of possessions, a personal coffee mug, and a full scholarship for his final two years. The sound of another man’s footsteps creaking on the hardwood at night stopped turning his whole spine into a rigid bar of iron. To his own consternation, he got comfortable with the affection and the lack of solitude. They made a single fleshy creature of themselves, through coursework and communal take-out and overhearing the muffled buzzing of Xander’s vibrator from the other room—until nearly a year had passed.

Then one otherwise unremarkable summer evening, Xander came home with a big grin on his mouth and said, “Guess what? My best friend Sean is moving back next month, and he’s getting a two-bedroom. I’ll introduce you.”

The twinned punches of my best friend and the implication that he would be willing to let go of the home they’d built together left Kieran speechlessly insulted. From his stomach-down sprawl on the couch he grunted, stupidly, “Mn.” But, despite his best efforts to avoid the conversation through territorial-cat levels of bitchy misbehavior, Xander arranged a “family night” videochat to introduce them. He’d spent two entire weeks dropping hopeful tidbits over breakfast like, “You’re both so finicky, I think you’ll mesh well,” or “You know he’s a couple years older than us,” or “He was my only friend for so long, I just want you to like each other!”

It was the last one that sealed his fate, the final coffin nail. Kieran ended up perching on the edge of their couch, hunched into the camera frame to investigate the guy about to come seriously disrupt his life. He sported a neat fashion haircut—buzzed on the sides, tousled long on top—and black wire-framed glasses, with a green Henley shrink-wrapped onto his defined chest and biceps. The digital distance let Kieran ogle freely. Xander chattered with visible nerves into their mutual silence: asking Sean if his new remote job was going well, if Kieran wanted to share his favorite movies with Sean, if he’d told them about last week when he caught a couple making out in the café bathroom—and, of course, if Sean had finalized his new apartment yet.

Sean’s gaze darted to the side—finally looking at him, Kieran figured. Knowing he’d been staring at Xander the whole time, and ignoring him, kindled a jealous spark in his belly. Sean’s expression flattened in response to whatever he saw cross Kieran’s face. He fought the urge to frown back, painting on a slick, toothy grin instead.

“It’d benefit you both so much,” Xander continued, feigning obliviousness to the charged atmosphere. “Living with Kieran has been a delight, but I’m sure he’d appreciate more space than he’s got here and my parents won’t pay for a two-bedroom. Plus, I’d hate to imagine a stranger living with you, given your—well, you know.”

“Xander, he is a stranger,” Sean said, nearly sighing.

With a false joviality, Kieran said, “Got me there.”

“Behave yourselves,” Xander scolded.

After real phone numbers were traded and their call finished, Kieran laid on the couch listening to his friend putter around the kitchen. He scrolled an app, perusing men he wouldn’t respond to just for the serotonin-bursts of their dick pics and slobbering messages. Nothing else was quite as reassuring as being wanted. From the other room, Xander said quietly, “Do you remember when I told you I asked Sean to move here with me, after high school? He said we’d be too codependent. That’s why I didn’t just offer for us all to find a place together. He’d turn me down again, but if the both of you live together, I can…I can keep an eye on you, but I won’t be too much.”

The undertone of vulnerable, humiliated resignation startled all the meanness right out of Kieran. As he struggled for an appropriate response, a double-text from Sean flashed across the screen.

Just so you know, I’m mysophobic

Also, unlike Xander, I expect a roommate to pay rent. Do you even have a job?

Incensed, he typed fuck you, then immediately deleted it and tossed his phone on the floor.

“You aren’t the problem,” he muttered before stuffing his face into the cushions.

Coffee smell permeated the apartment. Kieran groaned into his spit-soaked pillow and kicked the sheets off. His ankles and knees felt swollen after pulling six shifts in a row, plus the ongoing spook factor had him jumping at shadows, which made the nights drag on even longer. Within the prior evening alone he’d gotten two customer complaints about “cold spots”—which their busted aircon definitely hadn’t created—then, while he was disinfecting one of the booths, the plywood door had swung shut on him with no one else in the building. So if he’d gotten snappish with the next poor fuck who buzzed inside to fumble through the DVDs, that wasn’t his fault. The vibes were uncontrollably off. He’d assumed through the first couple weird nights that he was fooling himself, overworked and underslept, but evidence was evidence: the shop was being messed with by a ghost. As if he needed anything else to worry about. Sprawling onto his back, he swiped past his phone’s overnight alert bubbles—minus his student inbox, where the UCLA email squatted. After the usual morning chub deflated, he shimmied into joggers, t-shirt, and socks in deference to his roommate’s “no naked skin on the communal furniture” rule before emerging from his den.

“Good morning,” he said, rounding the corner to the kitchen.

Xander smiled over a pint of iced coffee, his laptop and notes already spread across their table. Kieran checked the microwave, 9:13 a.m. His favorite mug waited beside a mostly full Chemex pitcher. He poured a serving, dumped sugar in, and took a seat. Sunlight poured through the balcony doors. Sean’s white-noise machine whirred down the hall. To abandon this thing they’d built, the nicest his life had ever been—to disarticulate the joints himself—

Thickly, he muttered, “Why’d we give you that key, anyway?”

Xander said, “Because I’m your favorite person and you enjoy seeing me first thing in the morning. And Sean told me you’ve been tense after work all week. What’s going on?”

“Oh, so it’s an inquisition,” he said.

Xander flicked his arm. “Go on and tell me.”

I got into UCLA, rattled inside his chest. He crushed the words between his teeth as an irritable aish. Xander raised one eyebrow. With chin propped on his hand, his head jutted forward, like a turtle sporting a messy topknot. For the first month after his boys had moved in together he’d ghosted around mournfully, not crossing their threshold until Kieran stuffed a glitter nail-polish painted key into his pocket and told him to act normal. By which he meant “strange as usual,” and for his troubles received breakfast interrogations.

“The porn theater is totally haunted,” he said.

An unholy excitement lit Xander’s face. Kieran grinned. From the outside Xander might’ve appeared to be the most well-adjusted of the trio, given his lack of trauma response to doorknobs or handjobs—but the right conversational track revealed otherwise. Kieran’s simplest joy came from watching handsome, posh Xander twirl his ponytail while nattering on about the eros of cannibalism or his new favorite alien abduction podcast. And all the good monster porn he found, he shared.

Xander asked, “Was there an inciting event? Like, did someone get into a fight and leave a psychic residue, or did one of your regulars die, or—”

“Babe, please. Hush for five minutes and we’ll get there,” he said.

Xander demonstratively clapped a hand over his mouth. In return, Kieran narrated the escalating happenings: objects falling from their shelves, or appearing in strange places; the flickering peeps switchboard lights; the sensation of being watched during cleaning rounds; the mysteriously swinging doors; and also he swore an invisible hand brushed the small of his back once. None of his colleagues would admit to any strange experiences when he asked, though.

Xander mused, “It doesn’t sound malicious. And isn’t that all the living customers do, fiddle around while they wait for some action? What’s more liminal than a windowless building where the same people do the same things on loop, twenty-four-seven, for decades? Of course he’d keep his routine in the afterlife.”

“Does freak me out, feeling like someone’s standing right behind me while I’m mopping, though. Also, being stuck inside The Station forever seems kind of depressing,” Kieran admitted.

The noise machine hum ceased. Kieran craned backward far enough to tip the chair as Sean entered the kitchen, stubble shadow on his pressure-pinked jaw. He squinted at them—hot, tall, and cozy in his sweatpants-hoodie combo.

“There’s coffee,” Xander offered.

“I’m aware, because I bought the coffee,” Sean grumbled blearily.

Passing by the table, he tilted Kieran’s head to regular position again with a cupped palm, fingertips sinking through tousled hair to glance scalp. Chair legs thumped back onto tile. Heat tipped Kieran’s ears and nose. Xander saluted him with his glass, smirking, while Sean stuck his hands under the faucet for a scrub. Kieran flipped Xander off for refusing to ignore their blossoming intimacies—or how often his eyeballs got uselessly stuck on Sean’s tits. Maybe his porno ghost just couldn’t be at peace without pacing the same familiar loops, repeating its settled routines. He understood the draw. If he never told his friends about the UCLA letter, if he allowed it to pass silently between his fingers, they’d never know. Routines meant safety.

“So, had you heard about the horny ghost?” Xander asked.

Sean claimed the remaining chair. “No?”

“Theater’s super haunted,” Kieran said.

Xander tapped his fingers on his lips. “If you’re getting bothered, maybe do something to calm the spirit. What sort of offerings would a cruising ghost prefer?”

“Flash him your ass,” Sean said.

Kieran snorted. “Been there, done that, big guy. I bend over to dust all the time.”

“Be serious,” Xander said, the silliness flying over his head as his friends exchanged amused glances. “You should make him a shrine, wouldn’t that be nice? Maybe no one else has.”

“Fucking—an altar of poppers and the good lube. Holy shit.” Helplessly, Kieran began to giggle.

“You’re making fun of me, but I’m right,” Xander said.

“What brings you over so early today, anyway?” Sean asked.

“It’s the first day we’re all off in like, a week, and I forgot I’d made a date tonight,” he said with a dimpled pout. Then his hands balled nervously on the tabletop. “Also, I’ve got some good news?”

Kieran gulped a mouthful of sweet-bitter coffee. Sean gestured to go ahead.

Xander announced, “I’m officially on the waitlist for Rutgers.”

“Congrats,” Sean said—subdued but obviously, warmly proud.

Kieran gripped his mug in both hands, staring into its depths. An awkward silence descended. He couldn’t bring himself to look at either of them. Contentment had quietly grown its tendrils through his guts; he tasted blood, like someone had yanked those roots loose a centimeter.

Xander continued, softer, “It’s just the waitlist. For now, I’ve only heard a yes back from our program.”

“Uh, yeah, that’s cool. New Jersey,” he muttered.

A slight tension edged Sean’s husky morning drawl, “And what about you, Kieran, any news? I sure would like to know if your housing plans are going to change.”

Their direct attention weighed his silence down. You greedy pitiful bitch, his back-brain crooned to him. He hooked the corners of his lips into a smile, eyes flicking from one friend to the other. His body felt light, dissolved into floating component atoms.

“No, that’s the only acceptance I’ve gotten so far,” he said, easy.

Back when Xander first nudged about moving out of his living room, the scorching embarrassment of rejection kicked Kieran’s understanding of their friendship on its ass. His horrible new awareness of the presumption he’d made about being a welcome companion fed into his existing certainty that a good job was beyond his reach. There was no reason for the precious best friend Sean to give him the time of day. But, despite the awfulness of knowing Xander had finally gotten tired of him, Kieran intended to stay grateful—to keep from demanding more of his friend than he’d already given, more than he could ever deserve.

With an afternoon class mercifully cancelled, he headed home craving sweetness from the same boy who’d dosed him with vinegar. He reminded himself to be glad Xander wasn’t treating him any different, his clingy gentleness unabated, while his key turned in the lock. The door swung open onto the rhythmic slam of a bedframe against a wall. Unmistakable, fucked-stupid yelps slapped his eardrums. Cold nausea wrenched his belly as half the blood in his brain redirected to an instant, regrettable erection. He stood rooted to the spot, consciousness flung onto the ceiling, until the distant realization hit that it would be both polite and appropriate to dip. He snagged the doorknob, backing onto the porch.

Bringing home hook-ups was either new for Xander, or a habit he’d hidden exceptionally well. Kieran’s keys dangled from the lock. He glowered at the black cat charm Xander had gifted him. Phantom emptiness thrummed low in his pelvis. He flipped the deadbolt and crept down the stairs, afraid to be somehow overheard. Barbs of missing penetration while being categorically unable to allow himself to be fucked dragged backwards through his brain, scoring pissed-off humiliation in their wake. He wondered if the desire for dick appointments, or god forbid a real boyfriend, had inspired Xander’s pawning him off on Sean—if his friend had somehow guessed the extent of his brokenness and aimed to let him down gently. He set off for the bus stop with directions to the nearest porn store and spite in his step.

Absent a cheap therapist, he could buy a cheap dildo. As the bus chuffed away from the corner, Kieran allowed himself some bitter amusement that the first thing to trigger him in months was Xander getting it so good he needed to shout the roof down. Counting backwards from fifty, over and over again, managed his anxiety through the course of the ride—but on arrival, The Station’s ostentatious hideousness charmed him. Passing through the imposing metal door, he resisted gawking at the theater marquis or the cavernous hall labelled Peep*Show. A couple of middle-aged guys paced the floor, fiddling with DVDs. Kieran marched over to a row of fake cocks hanging on the wall, grabbed a vinyl six-incher marked $15, and went straight to the register.

The clerk towered above on a raised platform, a Black man in his forties sporting a cut-off Metallica shirt. His lit cigarette wafted smoke to the ceiling. “ID, kid?” he prompted.

“Sure, yeah.” As he fumbled his license from his pocket, he spotted a flyer on the glass countertop: HELP WANTED, $17 AN HOUR, FULL OR PART TIME. While the clerk checked his age he blurted out, “Hey, you still hiring?”

“We sure are,” the man said.

Kieran raised his chin. “Then I want the job.”

Metallica-dude puffed a smoke ring and gave him the once over, cheap dildo in his off hand. Kieran refused to be self-conscious about his messy ponytail or the holey jeans he’d worn to class that morning. He stood straight, offering serious eye contact, though on the inside he was nearly vibrating.

“You’re kidding me. It’s all mopping jizz and yelling at guys who pace around on their lunch break without paying,” the man said.

“I truly do not care,” Kieran replied.

“If I call the owner now, he’ll do a phone interview. You in?”

“Hit me,” he said.

Adrenaline propelled the sweaty, frantic urge to do something. If he needed some kind of sexual immersion therapy, and Xander needed his apartment back, and the other guy needed him to get a job, then this would satisfy them all. The clerk dialed a cordless phone, intro’d him, and passed it over.

Kieran answered, “Hello?”

“James said you’re nineteen and decent to look at. Three questions: are you clean, are you a felon, and are you going to sell ass on the side at my theater?”

“Uh,” Kieran sputtered, caught off-guard. “Yeah, no, and no? I’m in college. I need to do second shift, I have class in the mornings.”

“Our afternoon guy quit last week and we’re over a barrel, so congrats, you’re hired. When can you start?”

“…next Monday?” he offered faintly.

“James’ll give you the new hire paperwork, fill it out and show up next Monday at 2 p.m. Pass him the phone.”

Kieran handed the cordless back. James said sounds good to me before he hung up. Both of them stared at his selected cock on the counter. “Did you pick that because you like it, or because it’s cheap?”

“Cheap,” Kieran admitted.

The clerk shook his head and slid the case door aside, selecting a much nicer dildo of similar size. The package proclaimed, real-feel double density silicone! He rang it up alongside a fliptop bottle of good lube, and after a few clicks, the price dropped from $95 to $20. Kieran handed over his card. His receipt came stapled to a W-2 form and an available hours/emergency contacts questionnaire.

“Consider that your first employee discount. Practice your upselling; you see someone trying to buy the low-price shit, always talk them around,” he advised. “See you Monday, kid.”

Kieran nodded, grabbed his bag, and left the store dazed. He was sure getting hired shouldn’t have been that simple, but nonetheless opened his texts with Sean and wrote, job acquired. your move

Keep it for four weeks and we’ll talk.

Though he’d almost busted a gut laughing at Xander’s suggestion, the following Monday Kiernan constructed an altar at the crux of the display case and the storage-closet wall. Condoms in each size, because who knew if the haunting was hung, a bottle of poppers, two sachets of Gun Oil lube, his favorite gangbang DVD, and a scribbled drawing of a cartoon ghost that said “rest in peace you horny fuck.” Unfortunately, aside from building the shrine, the day sucked so bad it reminded him why people weren’t kicking down the door begging for jobs.

The five men pacing the peeps hall kept failing to feed dollars into the slots, necessitating regular aggrieved shouts of “light ‘em up!” Some dude in his seventies wouldn’t stop drifting between the two theaters and the squealing door-hinges were driving Kieran nuts. A straight couple argued with him about paying full ticket price because they weren’t going to watch the gay movies. His film professor emailed him to be nicer to the other students after the Gregg Araki debacle. And, the pinnacle, his least favorite customer buzzed through the door mid-shift: the owner’s Rolex-sporting lawmaker friend who always offered $300 to blow him in the booths, got grabby if Kieran emerged from behind the counter, and generally made him feel hunted enough that he kept his knife palmed. Once the bastard disappeared into the peeps, Kieran sent Xander a message, need picking up from work tonight thx. Panic sweat dampened his hairline; he scrubbed it away. Across the room a magazine flutter-thumped to the floor without a customer near it.

“Some help you are,” he muttered at the ghost.

By the time his night-shift replacement arrived the lawmaker had left, but Kieran assumed the motherfucker would be waiting in his car. Thankfully, Xander idled right out front; he ducked into the passenger seat, dumping his backpack between his knees. Streetlight flashed like cat-gleam off Xander’s eyes. Pajama pants printed with cartoon sushi rolls and an oversized university sweater, the dense fall of his hair wound to a loop at the base of his skull, turned him full boyfriend-experience. The urge to climb onto his lap washed over Kieran, a physical manifestation of his relief.

“Rough night?” Xander asked, reversing from the lot.

Kieran grunted and lolled his head against the cool, hard window. Words lodged on top of one another inside him. Like, he’d built the shrine, how cute—how harmless. The ghost hadn’t bothered him much after, maybe satisfied enough to do its eternal cruising without a fuss. And when the rich creep had leered at him across the countertop, he’d indulged a graphic fantasy of skinning the guy’s face with his pocketknife—how perfectly normal. Their nighttime drive passed in easy closeness. However, when Xander turned onto their street, he cleared his throat. Kieran mumbled a tiny mn?, eyes closed.

“Do you remember the fight we had, when you moved out?”

Kieran stiffly rolled his face further against the window.

Xander continued, rhythmic and low, “I cried because you thought I was trying to get rid of you, when I thought I was giving you a gift of your own space without me bothering you all the time.”

Single-family homes coasted by outside, glowing windows throwing golden light.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“No apologies, just remember that. I know—change is bad, for you. I know. But you can trust me, ah?” His thin fingers wrung the steering wheel. Kieran considered flinging himself from the car. “Even if one of us has to move, for a year or two, it doesn’t change what we are to each other. We’re going to be fine. No one is leaving anyone else.”

“Sure does seem like leaving” dragged itself out.

Xander parked in front of their apartment building. “Don’t make me say the big l-word, you know you’ll be mad if I do.”

Kieran glowered at his own hands, reflexively clutched together in his lap. The engine idled. Xander heaved a gusty sigh, telegraphing his reach before he cupped a palm over the crown of Kieran’s skull. It oozed steady weighted warmth.

“I’ve said my piece. Go on in, tell Sean I said hello.”

He slipped from the passenger seat and trudged up the stairs to his home. Fry-crackle greeted him. In their vestibule, he followed the usual routine: spritz of hand sanitizer, backpack on the hook, shoes on the rack. He stripped his shirt and jeans inside-out to toss in the hamper beside their short bench. A folded t-shirt, joggers, and socks waited for him. As he dragged the elastic up his legs, Sean rounded the corner in matching loungewear—though his sweats clung to the meat of his quads and his t-shirt sleeves rolled into the divot of his biceps. The call-center phone headset had left an imprint around his ear.

“Dinner’s almost done, go wash your hands.”

“Sure thing, boss,” he said on automatic.

Wash your hands after he’d already done the post-work rigmarole meant “brainworms are doing 78% the most tonight,” so he followed Sean into the kitchen and soaped up at the sink. His own fun-time worms continued to wriggle and scream. With determination, he massaged sudsy film into the beds of his fingernails.

Sean said, “He texted me that he had to grab you from work again.”

Steaming water sluiced soap-foam from his forearms. Kieran inhaled the scent of garlic and tomatoes, pork-fat and eggs. Despite the grim, bass tone pricking his overworked anxiety, Sean meant him no harm. Plates thumped onto the table. Silverware clinked. Sean flipped the burner off. Kieran kept scrubbing his clean, reddening skin under the tap.

“Come eat something.”

Being commanded made it easier for him to shut off the sink and sit at the table. Nothing had necessarily happened all night, but his nervous system disagreed. The first savory bite of fried rice loosened the clench of his neck muscles. Sean watched him eat; he ignored Sean watching him eat. Ten o’clock dinners were their thing, and at some point over the past twenty months, he’d started counting on returning home for a shared meal. Even if one of us has to move, Xander had said so casually, like the domesticity itself was meaningless—a reminder that being roommates with Sean wasn’t intended to be the permanent arrangement Kieran, against his will, had become so terribly enamored with.

“When are you going to quit that fucking job?” Sean asked abruptly.

Kieran froze with fork mid-air, rice plopping onto his plate.

Agitated, he continued, “I can’t see why you’re so insistent on staying at that hellhole. Did you know Xander got another couple of acceptances, but he’s keeping them to himself so he doesn’t freak you out?”

“No,” he said. His fork clattered onto the plate, scattering grains across the table. The gloss of fat coating his tongue tasted, suddenly, rancid. “Of course I didn’t.”

Sean tilted his chin to stare at the ceiling, chest raising and lowering in a modulated breath. After calming himself slightly, he said, “What’re your plans for the future, Kieran, what do you want? If it isn’t being stuck here forever, that’s great, that’s fine, but you need to tell me what’s going on.”

Roommates implied transience to most people, Kieran understood. But the thought that Sean might be waiting for him to go—same as Xander, his attachment looser than Kieran’s own starving, clinging greed—collapsed on his head. He shoved his chair back, wood screeching across tile, and stalked away. Sean allowed him his space, familiarity that made his directionless anger burn all the more frantic. Other people got their needs met just fine, but other people were also normal. Feeling halfway to a hungry ghost himself, emotions scratching under his skin, Kieran grabbed a dildo from his bedside drawer and locked himself in the bathroom.

He ran the shower steam-hot. Under the spray, he propped one foot on the tub ledge, scalding water stinging the backs of his legs. Prep he passed through with perfunctory speed, disconnected from the slick grip of his insides around his knuckles. Gasps rocked his chest. The fantasy of a spacious, sun-dappled apartment on the West Coast spun out, hot sugar: an apartment he could return to and find Sean cooking him dinner under rose-tinted lights, saying shit like, “Xander should be here soon.” Stuffing himself with the silicone dick knocked loose a grunt that echoed in the bathroom, louder than intended. The stretching, bodily discomfort satisfied the hollow ache his—friends, whatever else he needed them to be—had gouged into him.

Once upon a time, Xander had invited Sean to move in with him and been rejected for codependency. Kieran’s freshly unearthed neediness, a sucking desperate void, ran so much deeper than his must’ve back then. As he fucked himself his fantasies melted and blurred. He imagined being slit open by a kind, inevitable dismissal if he said he required Sean’s presence—or worse, by disgust if he admitted to his less polite thoughts. Whining, pitchy groans scoured his throat. While his desires almost never involved the actual dick he saw outlined by Sean’s sweatpants, the image of Sean’s gloved fingers prying their way inside him drew his balls tense. Kieran almost ripped the shower curtain from the rod as he pictured one of those big hands buried in his viscera, a slippery barrier of lube and latex protecting them from each other, as much of Sean as he could possibly hold in a space already cored open without his knowing. Orgasm pulsed sweet and guilty from the base of his stomach, abs clenched, cum dribbling between his feet. He stayed in the shower, eyes streaming, until the water cooled.

A purple sticky-note on his bedroom door said, I’m Sorry.

A month after Kieran moved into Sean’s two-bedroom walkup, Xander texted him before his shift ended: When you get back, could you go straight to the shower & toss your work clothes in the laundry? Sean’s being difficult about asking for accommodations. The basic care and keeping of his new pal was simple enough: shoes left in the foyer, consistent hand-washing, a housewife-tier cleaning regimen, and zero physical contact without permission. Since he and Sean mostly kept their distance outside of spending mutual time with Xander, the rules were easy. Also, he generally tried not to be a bastard about other people’s weird shit.

sure he typed back.

On returning home, he stood barefoot in the vestibule and asked, “Should I strip here, or is that worse?”

“Yes, if you’re comfortable,” Xander called from the living room.

Jeans and t-shirt bundled in his hands, he crossed through main area. A bedsheet had been laid over the couch, and Sean was hunched into a ball glowering at the television. Xander sprawled in their guest chair. Scream played muted on the television. Hopping right into the shower wasn’t a hardship, considering he’d spent his evening bleaching old cum off linoleum. Freshly pajama’d, he returned to their living room and pointed at the other end of the couch. Sean nodded.

Seemingly as soon as Kieran sat down, Xander rose and said, “Now that you’re back, I’m going to head home. I’m behind on reading since I went on that dumb date last night.”

“I didn’t need babysitting,” Sean muttered.

“Fuck off,” Xander replied, affectionate.

Awkwardness settled as soon as the front door closed. Kieran unmuted the movie. Left alone with Sean in a strange mood, his nerves started to fluff and prickle. If the rules were different for this sort of night no one had told him. He wasn’t sure if he should expect any unpleasantness from the big guy, or how to manage him. On screen, Billy balled his fist in Randy’s shirt while Stu crossed arms over his back, trapping him between their bodies. The tiniest spark of sympathetic fear-horny pinged.

From nowhere, Sean blurted, “If you’re going to bring home dates, that’s fine, but make them follow the rules. It’s your house too.”

The words came out bloodied, like he’d dragged them from his lung tissue.

“First off, no need to parrot Xander at me,” Kieran’s mouth said on his behalf. He scrambled to understand what on earth had initiated this line of conversation. Sean straightened a fraction from his huddle. Kieran couldn’t figure out a socially appropriate amount of confession; blunter than intended, he said, “Second, that won’t be a problem. Because I don’t let people fuck me.”

Sean’s stare laid hot on the side of his face. With audible reluctance he replied, “Me neither.”

Good kid, Billy whispered on-screen, oozing eagerness. Kieran gulped past the constriction of his throat. Billy smacked Randy’s cheek, too mean to be just a pat, before drifting out of frame with come-hither eyes. Nothing more should be said, but Kieran was now ravenous with curiosity about where their preferences diverged—if Sean felt it as hard as he did, always stupidly craving, or if he had no draw at all. Chewing his tongue to keep his mouth occupied, he tucked knees under chin and watched the gore-fest carry on. Sean eventually finished unfurling from his huddle, planting both feet on the ground and an arm across the backrest. His fingers tapped an arrhythmic beat.

Following Sydney’s triumphant stab, Kieran asked, “If I cook dinner, will you eat it?”

Standing in front of the apartment and sipping breath through his nose, Kieran debated how to not send Sean into a spiral. He’d safely made it through eight entire months of cohabitation. The plastic bags he wore for shoes crinkled when he shifted his weight, actual Converse dangling from his wrist in a triple-bagged bundle. He thumped his free fist against the doorframe, brain starting in on a record-scratch shriek the moment he stopped counting his own breaths. From inside he heard, “What the fuck are you doing out there?”

“Biohazard containment,” he snapped.

The door swung inward. Sean took three immediate steps back.

“Some asshole, fucking,” Kieran heaved an inhale and whooshed it through his teeth. “Waited in his booth ‘til I came to shout at him for nonpayment and jizzed on my fucking shoes.”

The spectacle of Sean’s horrified grimace doused some of the humiliation burning his pale cheeks red. Nothing about the aftermath—from slamming the butt of his wrist into the guy’s nose to stomping his dick and balls while he laid yowling on the ground to banning him for life while he limped outside sniveling—had made Kieran feel better. No big deal, he’d repeated as a mantra, waiting for the replacement shift to arrive.

“Did you call the cops?” Sean asked.

“I beat his ass, so no.” Kieran snorted. “What do you want me to do with this shit?”

Sean’s throat bobbed. He said, “I’ll be right back.”

Kieran kicked off his bag slippers. Sean returned with a jug of hand sanitizer and the metal bathroom trash can. He scooted it across the floor with his foot; Kieran stuffed the ruined shoes inside. No amount of scrubbing was going to make him feel comfortable wearing the soiled fabric hi-tops again—let alone his germophobe roommate. Next he slathered his hands and feet with sanitizer, glancing at Sean for further directions. Easier to prioritize the other guy’s bullshit instead of his own.

“Would you like to burn the shoes?” Sean asked.

Kieran blinked down at the trash can and said, “Actually, yeah?”

“Then let’s.” Sean nodded to the balcony.

While he carried the trashcan outside, Sean grabbed the lighter fluid and two beers. Kieran expected questions about how he was feeling, or some commentary on sexual assault, because his roommate actually still attended therapy—but none came. He cracked his beer open. Sean squirted accelerant all over the bags. Kieran click the lighter and sat ablaze the sacrificial pyre. His voice warbled threateningly as he said, “I liked those goddamn shoes.”

Four afternoons later he accepted a surprise package from the mailman: a replacement pair of fresh black Converse.

Kieran woke feeling sludgy, an ashamed misery-hangover. He crept from the apartment. On the front sidewalk he texted Xander, sean said you got other acceptances. Xander’s typing bubble appeared, disappeared, and appeared again. His response was, only a couple so far, come over before class & we’ll talk about it? The carefully woven fantasies of never confessing his UCLA offer and staying together exactly as they were began to fray. Xander had tugged one hanging thread; if he left, the weft unraveled with him. Kieran had less than a week left to send in his decision. When his rideshare arrived, Kieran asked to be dropped off at the mall. His Station shift wasn’t for another five hours, but in this mood he couldn’t bear to see Xander or listen to his classmates be wrong about movies. Ghosting through clothing stores and wasting his cash on coffee and cinnamon-sugar pretzels, Kieran ignored his continually buzzing phone. Another ride-share dropped him off at work right before clock-in. Walking through the metal door felt the same as cinching a belt around his throat.

James took one look at him and asked, “Bad morning, chief?”

Kieran shrugged, painting a smile on his face. James whistled through gapped teeth and left him to stew behind the counter. Mop-water sloshed in the background. He slung theater tickets and sold an intrepid twink a set of trainer buttplugs instead of the large one he’d brought to the register. Alerts vibrated his phone at regular intervals. Even if Xander left for a while, maybe he and Sean could reconstruct their habits around his absence. With a separate apartment, his fuckbuddies and his bar-nights, Xander ranged on a longer leash anyway. Kieran could be the one to stay grounded in his good-enough life, to keep his job and his program—ignoring the traitorous gravity of what else, what more.

On the monitoring screen, the gay movie ended and its menu popped up, offering him four hours of barely legal college hunks. His nose wrinkled. Though it wouldn’t ever happen, he imagined Sean riffling through his backpack and finding the admissions letter. In the fantasy, he’d get taken to task for being dishonest—for failing to trust his friends—and then Sean would melodramatically insist he accept the offer. If his roommate told him he should go better himself in California then come back smarter and more employable, or at least less of a fuck-up, then he wouldn’t be the one forced to choose between his people and the barely nurtured seeds of his hope.

From under the counter, he grabbed the disc binder and flipped to his favorite section: kink, gangbangs, and bondage. As he hovered indecisively between leather-daddies or a spooky medical themed video, a shout from the peeps jolted him. The binder thudded onto the countertop.

“Fuck you!” someone spat from inside the obscured hall.

“Ah, Christ.” He grabbed his water bottle and smacked past the swinging gate. Raising his voice, he said, “If you’re going to fight take it the fuck outside!”

Shoes scuffled. A body thumped against the plywood wall. Kieran hesitated. If the fight kept to the claustrophobic darkness of the booths, he wasn’t going to wade in there. Theater doors squealed as people emerged to gawk. One harried-looking middle-aged man ducked from the far side of the peeps, shaking his head. The shouting had ceased—reduced to clothes rustling, hard breathing, and impact grunts. Kieran braced himself.

At the precise moment the tussling duo tumbled from the hall, he flung his bottle of cold water onto them. And, with just the luck he’d sported all week, he immediately got clocked in the face by a gentleman wearing an orange Hawaiian shirt. Sparks popped in front of his eyes; blood gushed from his bottom lip. Kieran staggered backwards against the counter. His elbow crashed through the ghost’s altar goods. A bottle of poppers bounced off the toe of his boot. He bent double, clutching his throbbing mouth and nose. The sparse customer audience separated the brawling couple, who had stopped resisting the second he caught their errant punch.

Once his vision cleared, Kieran squinted at the perpetrators. Blood plopped between his fingers onto the tile. Instead of the expected rage, the pain radiating from his facial bones left a coolness behind. Dampness streaked from his lashlines. Clotted and nasal, he said, “Congrats, you’re banned for life. Get the fuck out.”

“Are you all right, hon?” asked one of the old queens as he stumbled behind the counter to press the door release. “Should we call someone?”

Kieran wadded up paper towels to hold on his face, muttered “nah,” and watched the men slink out with their tails between their legs. Summoned from their theaters and booths, the remaining regulars eyed each other uneasily beneath the fluorescent lights. Their pattern and purpose had been rudely disrupted. Kieran sat down hidden on the floor behind his countertop. The dedication he’d written for his ghost friend, along with a condom, lay discarded on the carpet.

If he were directing the film of his life, the haunting would’ve knocked the lights out and spooked the customers to stop the fight. Ghosts couldn’t really do anything, though—glued onto their comfortable circuits, fading to echoes while the world left them behind. The paper scrap fluttered, apologetic or simply caught in the equipment room exhaust. He dialed the owner on the cordless.

“Send someone to finish my shift, a motherfucker punched me in the nose,” he said.

It was late October, graduate school application deadlines looming, and Kieran was ensconced with Xander at the campus café. His friend returned to their table with two hideously pink slushies. The student-employee discount meant their time, treats, and seats were free-flowing.

“Sugar keeps the mind sharp. How many apps do you have left?” he asked.

“You’re a monster,” Kieran grunted. He sipped the smoothie, which tasted like a strawberry slathered in corn syrup and plopped on top of a vanilla ice-cream cone. “Five finished, two to go. I can’t believe you’re forcing me to spend actual money on these. Who’s going to want someone like me in their fine-ass program?”

Xander kicked his foot under the table. “Negative self-talk is forbidden.”

“I’m doing this for you,” he said.

“And I’m bullying you because you should be doing it for yourself. The theater is okay for now, but you absolutely deserve better,” he replied. “Plus, wouldn’t it be nice to get paid to lecture people on their class privilege instead of doing it for free?”

Kieran gnawed on his straw. The cursor blinked on the application page for the Cinema and Media Studies program at UCLA. Not applying meant not being rejected. Completing his bachelor’s felt like shimmying in beneath the wire—scratch the surface and his apparent legitimacy would dissolve. The future loomed, stretching impossibly past the unexpected joy of his present. On the first day of freshman year all he’d dared to dream of was graduation. But along the way he’d gained a whole life, grown from being a feral cat hissing under a porch to a fuzzy domestic thing getting regular chin scritches. Darting out the door to chase after bird-shadows, only to end up freezing and alone again, held little appeal.

“Say we get in together somewhere else, what about Sean?” Kieran asked.

The stream of click-clack typing ceased. He stared resolutely at his un-submitted application. A blush bridged his nose. Xander pointedly cleared his throat, and when he ignored that, snapped his fingers twice. Glancing up, he wilted further into his chair under Xander’s fond, exasperated look.

“At long last, are we going to talk about the feelings?” he asked, the mildest of ribbing.

“What feelings,” Kieran muttered.

“You’re both hopeless,” Xander said. Gesturing with a straw paper, he continued, “It’s obviously questionable for me act as counselor, since there are—ah, aspects of involvement? Like, we all know I’m holding down a cozy corner of the triangle. But I think you two need to do some real conversation vis-à-vis the nature of your relationship. Especially if you’re aiming to…evolve that relationship further?”

Xander’s gentle torrent of speech, peaking at the nature of your relationship, made Kieran want to drown himself in his smoothie. It was hateful, being so transparent in his longing—which had flowered well beyond his ability to label it, or understand it, or offer it as anything more than a burden. He wished he had the right kind of shears to craft a mediated bonsai from the unruly bush of himself.

“Evolve, what does that even mean? Neither of us is—I’m not capable of further, what would that even look like,” Kieran hiss-whispered.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Xander said. The smile he cast over the tabletop crinkled the corners of his eyes. “That’s the easiest part. It looks like whatever you ask for, and whatever he agrees to. Since when have any of us done the usual thing?”

Whatever he agrees to, therein lay the problem. Kieran knew he’d gotten too far ahead of himself with his sticky wants—but being reminded of the fast-approaching consequences of his overreach still nettled. He mashed the submit button on the UCLA application and kicked Xander’s foot.

Seated on the curb, Kieran fiddled with his phone. Flecks of blood splattered his shirt and crusted under his fingernails. The comforts of The Station lay in knowing what to expect from people, but his coworkers seemed eager for him to emerge from their predictable cocoon—for him to escape becoming another ghost drifting in aimless, endless circuits around the floor. Graduate students presumably encountered fewer fistfights, and for sure weren’t accustomed to scraping dried semen from projection screens. Xander’s most recent message, in the thread he’d been ignoring, said we’re doing this together, and even if we have to be apart for a minute, I believe we’re always going to come back. Kieran breathed deep, tapped Sean’s contact, and lifted the phone to his ear.

Sean answered on the second ring. “You all right?”

“Uh,” Kieran stalled at his obvious concern. “Come get me?”

The silence fell so flat that he almost worried the call had dropped. Backtracking, he said, “Sorry, I’ll call Xander, I’m all fucking gross from the shop—”

“No,” Sean cut him off. “I’ll be there soon.”

Kieran hung up and pressed the phone to his forehead. Sitting on a concrete block reminded him with some immediacy of how he’d handled himself in the shower the night before, a panic-fuck loud enough for Sean to write him an apology. A marrow-deep cringe crawled through his bones. Sean’s black sedan coasted into the parking lot soon after, trash bags taped around the passenger seat. Kieran slithered inside, tucking into the least obtrusive huddle possible.

“What happened?” Sean asked, knuckles pale on the steering wheel.

“Got knocked in the jaw breaking up a fight,” he admitted.

In the side mirror reflection, Kieran inspected his fat, purpling lip and mauve cheekbone. Without radio noise, their breathing carried the drive’s rhythm on its back. The instant Sean parked in front of their building, Kieran leapt out of his car.

“I’ll clean it right away,” he promised.

Sean frowned at him over the hood, and said, “I wasn’t thinking about that. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

Kieran ducked his chin, flustered, to head for the stairs. Each step reverberated through his teeth. It had been a long time since someone hit him square in the face. He fished his keys out, but his wobbling hands threw his aim. Metal skidded off metal. Exhaustion rippled from toes to scalp, presaging either a crying jag or a fainting spell. Sean bumped him aside, hipbone to hipbone, and unlocked the deadbolt.

“I’m going to quit,” he said as Sean bent to unlace his own shoes.

“Good,” he replied.

On autopilot Kieran followed him, stripping his bloodied shirt off beside the hamper. Shoes and jeans came next. Standing there in briefs and socks, Sean’s inspection raking from his head to his feet, he prayed not to pop a truly inappropriate boner.

“Go clean up, I’ll make a cold compress,” Sean said.

Grateful for direction, Kieran escaped to the bathroom. The shower at full blast steamed the confines into a sauna. He leaned against the edge of the counter and wiped the mirror clean. Blood filmed his teeth, bright red in the gaps. He spread his split lip between two fingers and pressed on the bones of his face. Dull throb, as opposed to something lancing, meant nothing had been broken. Settling into the routine of a private injury-check made him feel both nauseous and competent.

From beyond the door Sean asked, “How’s your face?”

“I’ve had worse,” he replied, unthinking.

No response. He winced, hurrying to brush his teeth and rinse clean in the shower. Wrapped in a towel, he emerged to find his loungewear left in a neat pile by the door. Pastel blue briefs and matching socks sat on top. Knowing Sean had gone into his bedroom, opened his drawers, and selected underthings from beside his sex toys—taking the extra time to color match them like an absolute alien—drove him to distraction. Kieran dropped his towel to dress in the hall.

Sean waited for him on their couch, a dishcloth-wrapped bag of ice clutched in his hands. The muscles of his jaw flexed as he glanced over at Kiernan, who sat beside him. He handed over the compress. Kieran pressed the cloth against his cheek until the pressure ached.

“If it sounded like I was judging you last night, I wasn’t. I just get worried—and that job fucking sucks,” Sean said in a frustrated rush.

Tenderness ballooned within Kieran’s chest, huge enough to burst his sternum and dump his organs on the floor. Sean’s laptop, mouse, and headset lay scattered across the coffee table, abandoned in media res. If their relationship had already transcended his understanding of normal platonic roommates—plausible, if Xander was to be listened to—then Kieran owed him an explanation.

Sucking his split lip for a boost of painful courage, he admitted, “I got into UCLA.”

“I guessed so. I saw the letter in the mailbox,” Sean said.

Kieran dropped the compress onto his lap, shockingly cold, and spun to face him with mouth agape. “What in the fuck?”

“Look, I know I’m not easy to live with.” Sean gripped his own thighs, gaze skittering onto and away from Kieran. “I didn’t want there to be any…pressure on you, from me, in one direction or another. I thought you should be free to decide on your own what you wanted to do.”

“Wow, I’m really mad right now,” Kieran announced to the ceiling.

“Then you lied about it, to my face,” Sean continued.

The bubble of emotion behind his ribs wobbled, expanding again. He said, “Yeah, you dumb asshole, because I didn’t want to move out!”

Sean’s answering glower, resonating with the lingering adrenaline from his otherwise surreal night, drew Kieran forward—almost crossing their safe boundary line. He dug his fingernails into the upholstery and forced himself to scoot further away instead. He didn’t know how to say what he wanted; he was furious, embarrassed, and brimming full of possibilities just beyond reach. The scant inches between their bodies seemed magnetized.

He blurted out, “You know I’m constantly jerking off to you, right?”

Sean’s expression flattened, a startle response—before he snorted into a gale of laughter.

Kieran smacked the couch and hissed over his fading chuckles, “Oh, shut up, are you kidding me?”

“I’m fully aware you’re a horned-up little monster,” he said. “Why is that what you lead with? Why not, hey Sean do you want to move to California with me, you goddamn weirdo?”

Nervous affection quavered through the slantwise offer, scaring him quiet again. They stared at one another. Kieran took his split lip between his teeth for a good, steady bite. A scrubby bouquet of wants nestled in his chest cavity, pricking his ribs at the nadir of each breath. Whatever was agreed to, Xander had assured him months before, could be his—but first he had to bridge the gap between his fantasies and his real, fragile life. He didn’t know where to start.

“If I asked you to lie down with me, would you be able to?” he tried.

“Yes,” Sean said.

As easy as that?

“I don’t want to fuck,” he clarified.

“Once again, I’m perfectly aware,” Sean said.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

Sean stood first. The height of him, which Kiernan had become otherwise accustomed to, loomed imposingly; he leapt to his feet, quashing the uneasy sensation of smallness. A gulf of inches yawned uncrossed between their bodies. Closing the distance meant risking error, and failure, and mutual hurt even with best intentions. Kieran swallowed his nerves, lifted his hand, and snagged Sean’s hoodie sleeve between index finger and thumb. One tug reeled the other man nearer, but he held on, drawing a willing arm toward his waistline. What would physical contact on the other side of their conversation feel like? Experience told Kieran to anticipate a stab, but when Sean settled careful fingers atop the small of his back, there was only soft pressure guiding him toward the hallway. Tingles swept along his sacrum.

They shuffled awkwardly to his room. Facing down the bed itself, however, Kieran hesitated. The dove-grey quilt and sheet set had been a gift from his friends last winter. Asking if Xander could referee their first attempted cuddle was suddenly appealing. Sean leaned shoulder against shoulder, steady and present.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” he said.

Kieran strangled his nerves and flopped belly-first onto the mattress. If he didn’t break through his fear before it paralyzed him, he would get stuck again. Sean walked around the opposite side and laid down straight as a board. Kieran mashed his face into the pillows to muffle the quick, wheezy tightness of his breathing. By degrees, his pulse calmed. The rigid tension of the man beside him melted also. Once he had himself under control, he rolled over onto his back, pressing their arms together and bumping knees. Sean followed his lead, angled closer, then paused; wormed an arm under Kieran’s shoulders, then paused; and ultimately scooped him sideways onto his chest.

Kieran grabbed two fistfuls of hoodie. The heartbeat under his cheek raced disconcertingly fast, but he ignored it. If Sean had a problem, he’d say so, instead of just sighing onto the crown of Kieran’s head. The final dregs of his anxiety bled away; in their place blossomed a sultry and tender aliveness. He kneaded curious fingertips into the dense meat of Sean’s pec. The answering squeeze on his shoulder prompted him to politely shift his hips backward and cease mashing his junk against Sean’s thigh. Are we dating? he wondered. Should we make new touching rules, is Xander going to be jealous, do you think you’d ever want to watch me do sex stuff? Before his thoughts got away from him, Sean nudged a trembling hand against his and—bare skin almost unbearably intimate on bare skin—laced their fingers. Kieran felt a pang for his theater ghost and its unsatisfiable longings, the distance between its dead perpetual present and his animate changeable future.

“Are you going to ask me?” Sean prompted.

He buried his face in Sean’s armpit, the musky warmth as soothing as he’d always imagined. Safe and muffled, he said, “Want to come to California with me?”

(Editors’ Note: Lee Mandelo is interviewed by Caroline M. Yoachim in this issue.)

© 2023 Lee Mandelo