There’s a myth that the basement at Kappa Delta Lambda is haunted, but tonight, sweat and fear do the haunting for us. I stand wedged between the water heater and the exposed ductwork, my shoulder pressed into cold brick, trying not to breathe too deeply. There’s already enough staleness in the air—beer gone sour, the ripe edge of dirty socks, nervous sweat that cuts through any lingering whiffs of Pine-Sol. The bare bulb overhead doesn’t so much illuminate as interrogate, casting harsh shadows that twitch with every movement.
Ten of us pledges are lined up, back to wall, facing the room’s center like a firing squad awaiting execution. We’ve all been here for less than a semester, but the pecking order has already calcified. A couple of guys—one with a baseball cap, one with the kind of mustache only a mother could love—make jokes under their breath. Most of us stare at the floor or at each other’s shoes, waiting for instructions, waiting for the night to end or for something truly terrible to happen, whichever comes first.
I feel the sweat bead at my hairline, a cold drop sliding into my ear. It’s not even that warm down here, but my body doesn’t get the memo. The itch of impending humiliation thrums through me.
Marcus Hale is tonight’s ringleader, as always. He paces in front of us, back and forth, hands clasped behind his back like a general. His voice is soft but sharp, slicing the silence in neat, perfect ribbons.
“Gentlemen,” he says, “tonight is about tradition. It’s about bonding. It’s about taking your place in the brotherhood.”
He stops, fixes us with his gaze. I meet his eyes for half a second and immediately regret it. They’re not so much blue as arctic, a pale glint that skates over you and makes you wonder what private joke you’re the punchline of. He smiles—a clean, knife-blade smile—and resumes pacing.
Behind him, Elias Rowan—Eli to everyone who isn’t his mother or a disappointed ex—leans against the makeshift bar with his usual indifference. He’s got the looks of a future senator and the attitude of a guy who peaked in junior year, but I can’t look away. Maybe it’s the way he wears confidence like an old hoodie: comfortable, broken in, too familiar to notice the holes. Or maybe it’s the way his eyes flicker to me every so often, as if he’s measuring how much of me will be left at the end of all this.
Tonight, I’ve been paired with him for the drinking game. Lucky me.
Noah Sinclair, in his pressed oxford and khakis, stands near the foot of the stairs, arms folded, monitoring the proceedings with the watchfulness of a substitute teacher at a middle school dance. He’s here to enforce rules, but he looks like he’d rather be anywhere else, maybe practicing calligraphy or drafting bylaws for some other, less feral organization.
And then there’s Omar Bennett. Big O. Alumnus, unofficial enforcer, the guy whose hugs hurt and whose jokes cut even deeper. He looms by the washer-dryer, arms crossed, upper lip twisted in amusement or disgust, it’s hard to tell which.
“Rules are simple,” Marcus intones. “Each team gets a handle, two cups, and a funnel. One guy drinks, the other guy pours. You alternate. First team to finish without puking wins. If you puke, you clean it up. If you lose, you take the consequences.” He pauses. “Any questions?”
Someone in the back mutters something. Marcus ignores it.
“Let’s begin.”
The handles appear, plastic half-gallons of the cheapest, most industrial vodka I’ve ever seen. A brother—some upperclassman I’ve only ever seen during mandatory events—shoves one into my hands. My palms are already slick; the label peels away in strips.
Eli slides up next to me. He grins, lips parted just enough to show off a chip in his right canine. “You ready, Mercer?”
“Not even remotely.”
He laughs. “Don’t psych yourself out. We just have to not die, right?”
His hand lands on my shoulder, friendly but with a squeeze that lingers just a beat too long. It leaves a print of warmth through my shirt, or maybe that’s just my body reacting to him. He leans in, voice lowered, not really a whisper but pitched for me alone.
“Just follow my lead,” he says, “and don’t let them see you sweat.”
I’m already failing at that part.
Marcus claps his hands. “Teams line up at the ping-pong tables!”
Eli and I hustle over. The table’s surface is warped, the net drooping. Cups and funnels are laid out, each gleaming in the anemic light. The other teams size us up; a couple guys look already halfway to blackout. Some of them are first-generation Americans, some straight from rural Nebraska, all of them united in the simple, American desire to humiliate themselves for belonging.
“Begin on my count!” Marcus announces. He raises one arm, lets it fall.
Eli grabs the funnel, jams it into my cup. “Bottoms up, rookie.” I tip the cup back and the vodka slams into my mouth, hits the back of my throat with the subtlety of a head-on collision. It’s so cold it burns. I swallow, cough, feel the heat radiate down my esophagus.
“Shit,” I manage, eyes watering.
He grins and refills. “Your turn.” He lifts the funnel to his own lips and nods. I pour; he barely blinks as he downs the cup in a single, clean motion. The muscle in his jaw jumps, and for a moment the smile fades, replaced by something feral.
Next to us, the other teams are already slipping. Somebody drops their cup, someone else fumbles the handle and sloshes liquor everywhere. Shouting and jeers fill the room. The vodka evaporates from the air almost as fast as from the bottle.
We keep at it, shot after shot, alternating. My tongue goes numb. Eli starts to sweat, beads of moisture appearing at his temples. He keeps wiping his palms on his shorts between rounds. “Lightweight,” he murmurs at me, but there’s a crack in it now, a stutter at the edge of his confidence.
Two teams drop out early, one guy straight up hurling into the slop sink. Cheers erupt; someone starts pounding the wall with a shoe.
Eli and I are still in it. The world narrows to the harsh light, the rubbery taste of the vodka, the sound of Eli’s increasingly ragged breathing next to me. His knuckles whiten on the funnel, the tendons in his arm standing out in sharp relief. Each time we switch off, he sways just a little more. He keeps glancing at me, like he’s expecting me to call it, to bail. I don’t.
I’m not sure what drives me, other than the stubbornness not to be the weak link, not to be the story told about the night Mercer ruined it for everybody.
With each round, the laughter in the room grows louder. At some point, the distinction between brother and pledge dissolves into a kind of collective hysteria, a fever dream of yelling and spilled alcohol and the primal satisfaction of seeing others fail.
“Last round!” Marcus shouts, voice booming. He stands at the head of the table now, arms spread wide like a televangelist. His eyes are on us.
Eli’s hands shake as he fills my cup. “You good?” he asks, softer than before.
“Yeah,” I say. It comes out too eager, too sharp, but it’s all I have left. I tip the cup back, finish it. My stomach threatens mutiny, but I force it down.
I fill Eli’s cup. He hesitates, just for a second. The confident smile is gone now, replaced by something that looks a lot like panic, but he doesn’t let it show to anyone but me. He raises the cup, looks at it, then at me.
He drinks.
He wobbles.
The cup hits the table, clattering.
And then, for one suspended instant, it’s quiet. No one says a thing, the only sound the hum of the light and Eli’s heavy, uneven breathing.
He leans forward, hands on knees, sweat dripping onto the floor.
“I’m good,” he rasps, but his face is sheet-white.
Marcus steps in, claps Eli on the back hard enough to nearly fold him in half. “That’s the spirit! Mercer and Rowan, you’re the winners—of round one.”
A low groan goes up from the pledges. The basement seems to shrink, the air thickening.
“Now, the penalty for not winning,” Marcus continues, “is a little more creative. But first—” He pauses, letting the tension spiral out, winding it tight around the room.
He points to me and Eli.
“You two, step forward.”
I do. Eli straightens up, his face set, jaw tight. His eyes flick to me, and for the first time tonight, he looks unguarded. Not the king of the room, not the legend. Just a guy who’s about to find out what it means to really belong.
Marcus’s smile widens. The game’s not over. In fact, it’s only just started.
The shift happens so fast it almost feels rehearsed. One second Eli and I stand exposed, blinking under the bulb as the brothers size us up; the next, Marcus has us boxed in by a ring of bodies, their faces twisted in anticipation.
Marcus lifts his hand. The room falls quiet, all the drunken bravado replaced by something denser and more electric. “Gentlemen,” he intones, “the next phase is a test of brotherhood—a ritual of trust, loyalty, and endurance.”
He pauses, letting the words float, savoring the way everyone leans in. Even the guys who’ve been through this before can’t help but hunger for the next humiliation. “Mercer and Rowan,” Marcus says, enunciating our names like a judge pronouncing sentence, “will demonstrate, for all present, what it means to submit to the brotherhood.”
Someone in the back whistles, but the joke dies in the air.
Marcus gestures to a battered wooden chair dragged into the center of the room. Its seat is stained with age, legs wobbling with every nudge. “Rowan, take a seat.”
Eli hesitates, and for the first time tonight, I see the hairline fracture running through his confidence. He steps forward, the cocky grin clinging to his face out of habit more than conviction. He settles into the chair, legs splayed, hands gripping the ends of the armrests.
The upperclassmen close ranks around us, their bodies forming a wall of denim and Greek-lettered fleece. I can’t see past their shoulders; it’s just me, Eli, Marcus, and a dozen witnesses hungry for spectacle.
Marcus produces a coil of thick, scratchy rope, the kind they use to secure the keg during tailgates. “Hands out,” he says.
Eli complies, jaw set, gaze unfocused. Marcus knots the rope around his wrists—slowly, deliberately—cinching it so tight that Eli’s skin puckers around the fibers. The ritual is as much about how it looks as what it does; each knot tied is a small performance for the audience.
Once Eli’s bound to the chair, Marcus gives a little flourish, stepping back to admire his handiwork. “Comfortable?” he asks, voice sugar-slick.
Eli manages a shrug, but his eyes dart to me. It’s an SOS, or maybe an apology.
Marcus turns to me. “Mercer, kneel.”
I do. The floor is gritty with spilled booze and God knows what else, the concrete cold against my bare knees. I’m aware of every pair of eyes on me, their breath fogging up the space above my head, the shared anticipation pushing the air temperature up another ten degrees.
“Tonight,” Marcus says, projecting so even the ghosts in the boiler room can hear him, “you’re going to prove your loyalty not just to your brothers, but to the man beside you. By any means necessary.”
A long beat. “You’re going to get him off, right here, right now. No hands. Just your mouth.”
The room holds its breath. It’s a silence so sharp I can hear the ticking of someone’s watch and the faint, arrhythmic thumping of a bass line from the party upstairs. A cough, quickly stifled. The subtle shifting of bodies as the circle tightens, hungry for a better angle.
For a second I think I might actually pass out. My heart’s a drumline in my ears, my palms so wet I could waterboard myself with them. I look at Eli. He’s breathing shallowly, lips parted, the pulse in his neck a frantic strobe.
I could laugh, or cry, or just bail and let the memory become someone else’s fraternity horror story. But I don’t. I swallow, nod, and shuffle forward on my knees.
Eli won’t look at me. His eyes fix on the far wall, mouth set in a tight line. But there’s no hiding the flush that creeps up from his collarbone, staining his neck pink, or the way his hips roll involuntarily as I settle in front of him.
He’s wearing mesh gym shorts, the kind that leave nothing to the imagination. The outline of his cock is immediately, embarrassingly obvious, pressed hard against the thin fabric. I hear a snicker from somewhere to my left, and then the soft, awed “holy shit” of someone realizing this is really happening.
I hesitate. Not because I’m unwilling—at this point, my own shame is background noise—but because I sense, more than see, the silent calculus working behind Eli’s eyes. He doesn’t want this, not here, not like this, but his body is already a step ahead of his brain.
I lean in, stopping just shy of contact.
The heat from his body is palpable, radiating through the polyester. I can smell him: sweat and deodorant, that tang of nervous energy particular to locker rooms and cheap gyms. My breath fogs the fabric, darkening it, making the outline even clearer.
Eli shifts, thighs flexing as he tries to angle himself away or into me, I can’t tell which. His hands grip the chair arms so tightly his knuckles blanch. I glance up at him and catch, for half a second, a look of pure panic—then the mask drops, and he’s back to being Eli, the guy who’s always in on the joke.
Except the joke is on us, and the punchline is coming fast.
I part my lips, bring them to the head of his cock, felt more than seen beneath the mesh. My tongue pushes forward, wetting the fabric, tracing the seam where it stretches the most. The circle erupts with low, gleeful catcalls.
“Shit, Mercer, go for it!”
“Deepthroat that shit, bro!”
The noise fades into a dull roar, punctuated by the occasional clink of bottles or slosh of beer as someone shifts for a better view.
I try to focus, to make it quick, or at least less humiliating for Eli. And then suddenly, applause, shouting, whoops and laughter. The noise is so abrupt that I jerk backward, losing my balance and nearly tipping over.
Marcus basks in the chaos, arms raised like a conductor at the end of a symphony.
“Enough!” he bellows, voice ringing out over the din. “That’s commitment. That’s brotherhood.”
“Mercer, you’ve got balls,” Marcus proclaims, voice slicing through the residual cheers. His hand lands heavy on my back, sending a tremor through my already shot nerves. “You’re the fucking real deal.”
The circle collapses in, bodies crowding, each brother reaching out to touch, to claim a piece of what just happened. Hands pat my shoulders, muss my hair, grip my biceps with a force that’s almost bruising. The voices blur into a single, rolling wave—“legend,” “fucking insane,” “that’s commitment”—as if saying it aloud is what makes it real.
Noah materializes at the edge of the circle, clipboard tucked under one arm like a shield. He steps around the raucous huddle and approaches Eli, whose head is still bowed, wrists still lashed to the chair. Noah’s movements are all precision, no wasted motion: he pulls out a pocketknife, flicks it open with a practiced thumb, and slices through the rope in three clean strokes. The cords fall away, leaving red, angry bands around Eli’s skin. Noah doesn’t say anything; he just moves on, already making notes on his clipboard, his face unreadable.
Freed, Eli flexes his hands, rubs at the indentations. He blinks slowly, like a man surfacing from deep water. For a moment, his gaze flits to mine. In that half-second, I catch a whole weather system: relief, mortification, and—fuck me—something like hunger, simmering just beneath the surface. It’s gone as quickly as it comes. He looks away, rolling his shoulders and sinking into himself, the arrogance gone flat.
The other pledges gather on the fringe, drinking it all in, eyes wide with a cocktail of horror and relief. I can see it on their faces: thank Christ it wasn’t me. One guy, a redhead whose name I never bothered to learn, catches my eye and winks. Another tries to laugh, but it comes out as a hiccup. They cluster together, siphoning comfort from proximity, the boundary between “us” and “them” momentarily erased.
Marcus floats through the aftermath like a victorious captain, distributing high-fives and half hugs. He even offers one to Eli, who takes it, but his grip is limp. For all his bluster, Marcus doesn’t linger on triumph; he’s already scanning for the next ritual, the next pageant of dominance.
I finally peel myself off the floor, legs tingling with pins and needles. The basement spins gently, as if orbiting around the site of our humiliation. My mouth is raw, lips tingling, jaw already aching. I look down at my jeans—miraculously dry—and at my hands, which tremble in the flickering light.
“Mercer, you’re a fucking legend,” someone says, probably half meaning it.
I nod, not trusting my mouth to form the right words.
Eli is still in the chair, head in his hands, elbows braced on knees. When he finally stands, it’s slow, deliberate, as if testing each joint for damage. He adjusts his shorts, discreet but not quite enough. I want to say something—sorry, thank you, anything—but the moment’s window is already closed.
Instead, he looks up and pins me with an expression I can’t parse: defeat, maybe, or the anger of someone whose body betrayed him in front of a crowd. Or maybe the exhausted gratitude of being spared the full ritual, of having someone else carry the brunt. He doesn’t hold the gaze; he just nods, a twitch at the corner of his mouth, then shoulders past me toward the stairs.
Noah watches him go, then turns to me. “You’re good?” he asks, pen poised.
“Yeah,” I say. “Just—yeah.”
He scribbles something, then disappears, clipboard clutched to his chest.
Around us, the scene unravels: empty cups litter the floor, a puddle of vodka glimmers under the ping-pong table, and the smell of sweat and humiliation lingers like an aftershave. One by one, the brothers peel off toward the stairs, shouting over each other about the next round, the next challenge, the after-party upstairs.
I hang back, hovering in the half-light, letting the adrenaline ebb. My hands steady, the room settles, but my brain won’t let go of the image of Eli: flushed, exposed, just out of reach. I wonder if he’ll ever look at me the same way again. If I’ll ever look at myself the same way.
Eli lingers at the bottom of the stairs, one hand on the banister, his silhouette limned by the glow from the first floor. He hesitates, glances over his shoulder. Our eyes meet—just a flicker, just long enough—and then he’s gone, swallowed by the noise above.
I’m alone now, surrounded by the detritus of ritual. I listen to the echo of footsteps, the ghost of applause. I touch my lips, as if confirming they’re still there, still mine.
The party moves on without me, but I stay for a minute, in the hush after the storm, inhaling the residue of what we did and what we almost did.
I make my way up the stairs, two at a time, catching the last strains of laughter as I re-enter the world above.
I can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I’m kneeling again, the whole fucking fraternity packed in around me, waiting to see how far I’d go. My jaw aches with the memory of Eli’s cock pressing against my lips through those gym shorts, the taste of polyester and salt sticking in my mouth like a dare.
I drift through the hallway with bare feet, the floorboards creaking in their private language. The house is quiet, mostly—no laughter or yelling, just the static hum of an old fridge and the distant bass thump from some party that probably ended hours ago. The kitchen light is on, stuttering in that way that makes you feel like you’re in a found-footage horror movie. Half the bulbs are dead, the others flicker, painting long, warped shadows across the cracked linoleum.
Eli’s there. Of course he is.
He stands by the far counter, just beyond the reach of the trembling light, the sharp line of his jaw visible in profile. A can of cheap beer dangles from his fingers, nearly empty. He’s wearing the same mesh shorts, but he’s thrown on a hoodie over his bare chest, the hood down, the drawstrings clutched in one fist like he’s debating whether to pull them tight and disappear into himself. His wrists are still angry with rope burns—two raw, red bands I can see even from across the room.
He glances up when I enter, and the moment our eyes meet, it’s like a trap snapping shut. No one else in the house could see this, but we both do: what happened, what almost happened.
I hover in the doorway, hand on the warped frame, trying to decide if I want to commit to this. The inside of my head is loud, but the room is as silent as the aftermath of a car crash. There’s a weird intimacy to the mess—the empty beer bottles marching in formation along the counter, the half-eaten pizza slowly desiccating atop the stove, the ring of condensation marking where his beer has been resting. It’s all Eli, but it’s also all of us, a microcosm of the house’s collective filth.
He speaks first, voice cracked and quiet: “Couldn’t sleep?”
“No,” I say, “not really.”
He nods like he expected that. He doesn’t move to invite me in, but he doesn’t send me away, either. Instead, he lifts the beer, drains the rest, and slams the can down with a soft, wet thunk.
“You want one?” he asks, pulling open the grimy fridge without waiting for an answer.
“Sure.”
He lobs a can across the room. I catch it, the metal slick with condensation. For a second, I imagine the beer is his pulse, all that latent electricity. I crack it and take a sip, the bitterness knifing through my tongue and lighting up every nerve ending. It tastes like every other beer I’ve had in this house: generic, cold, and instantly necessary.
I move to the counter opposite him, propping myself up on my elbows. For a minute, we just stand there, the silence looping back on itself. I study the burns on his wrists. “That looks brutal,” I say.
He shrugs. “Comes with the territory.”
I want to ask if he’s okay, but it sounds stupid, so I don’t. Instead: “Did you know they were going to do that?” My voice sounds smaller than I want it to.
Eli laughs, a dry rasp. “Which part? The rope, or you on your knees in front of everyone?”
My turn to shrug. “Both, I guess.”
He leans back against the counter, arms crossed tight over his chest. There’s a flush at the base of his throat that wasn’t there during the ritual. His eyes dart to the clock above the stove, then back to me. “They said it was just for show. Some fucked-up tradition. Usually the guy bails out before it gets that far.”
I’m not sure if I’m supposed to feel proud or stupid. “But I didn’t.”
“No, you didn’t,” he says, and for the first time since I walked in, his voice is soft. “You surprised everyone.”
“Did I surprise you?”
He laughs again, louder this time. “I thought you were going to choke on it.”
The memory slaps me in the face: the pressure of his cock against my lips, the way he wouldn’t look at me, the way his whole body went tense, fighting it and wanting it at the same time. “You looked like you were into it,” I say, testing the words for effect.
He stiffens, fingers digging into the counter. “Fuck off.”
“I’m serious,” I press. “You got hard. That wasn’t part of the act.”
He looks away, jaw clenching. “You try sitting there with every asshole in the house watching, see what happens to your body.”
I take a long sip of beer, watching him over the rim. “It’s not like you’ve never had a guy’s mouth on your dick before.”
That gets his attention. His gaze snaps to mine, blue and brittle as winter. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
I hold his stare, let the silence build. The room is freezing, but there’s a bead of sweat breaking along my temple. “I’m just saying, you didn’t seem shocked. Or disgusted.”
He doesn’t answer, but his cheeks color and he scratches at his wrist with the thumb of his opposite hand, raw on raw.
A long pause. The fridge motor kicks in, rattling the empties in the door.
He says, voice barely above a whisper: “I thought they were really going to make you do it. Like, all the way.”
“Would you have let me?” I ask, my own heart hammering.
He takes a long time to answer. “Doesn’t matter, does it?”
I push off the counter, close the gap between us so we’re almost shoulder to shoulder. I can smell the sweat in his hoodie, the sharp spike of his deodorant, something underneath it all that’s just him.
“Have you ever had it done?” I ask, low.
His mouth twitches, eyes skidding away to the linoleum. “By a guy? No.”
“You sure?” I’m so close now that I can see the fine tremor in his hands. His throat works, Adam’s apple bobbing like he’s swallowing a secret.
“I’m completely straight, man.”
He says it too fast, too loud.
We both hear it.
For a second, neither of us moves. The night presses in through the cheap window glass, the kitchen a tiny, lit-up island in a sea of black.
He shakes his head, as if trying to shed the accusation. “It was just the pressure. The fucking humiliation. They wanted to see if I’d break.”
“Did you?” I ask.
He licks his lips, tongue darting out to catch the corner of his mouth. The look he gives me is both pleading and defiant.
“Depends who you ask,” he says, voice barely there.
We stand, unmoving, like two animals circling the same patch of ground, waiting for the other to flinch.
I finish my beer, the can clattering when I set it down. “You want another?”
He laughs, then nods, and for a moment it’s like we’re just two guys stuck in the same fucked-up house, bonded by the weirdest night of our lives.
I grab two more beers from the fridge, toss one to him. This time, he misses the catch and it clatters across the counter, spraying a thin mist that glistens on his hoodie.
“Nice hands,” I say.
“Fuck off,” he says again, but it sounds less like an insult and more like a nervous tic.
He picks up the can, wipes it down, and cracks it open. The silence stretches again, but it’s different now—heavier, but also expectant, like the night itself is holding its breath. I lean back against the opposite counter, mirroring his pose, waiting to see who will push first.
He does.
“You ever been hazed before?” he asks.
“First time for everything.”
“Yeah,” he says, “that’s what I was afraid of.”
He laughs, and I join him, the sound echoing in the hollow kitchen. We drink, not looking at each other, just letting the moment settle. When I finally look up, his eyes are locked on me, and there’s no anger left, just an open, raw hunger.
I know then: the real ritual isn’t the one in the basement. It’s this.
When I wake, it’s mid-afternoon. My head throbs with a tight, metallic ache, but my jaw is the worst of it—a slow, pulsing reminder of last night. I brush my teeth for a full five minutes and the taste still won’t leave.
By evening, the house is vibrating with noise again. Someone’s cranked up the Bluetooth speaker and the bass is a living animal, thumping through the walls. There’s a beer pong tourney in the den, shouts and squeals from the living room, the low drone of some ancient football game on the kitchen TV. I float through it all, invisible, ignored, just another pledge on cleanup detail.
Eli is nowhere to be found.
I wait for hours. He doesn’t show for dinner, doesn’t surface during the first round of shots. At midnight I go looking. Upstairs: empty. Downstairs: nobody. In the backyard, a cluster of brothers is chain-smoking and talking shit, but Eli isn’t among them.
The kitchen is quiet—almost peaceful—when I finally drift in. The only light is the fridge, spilling over the grimy floor in a cold puddle. The clock says 12:16. I’m about to bail when I hear the unmistakable pop of a beer tab from the pantry.
Eli steps out, bare-legged in those same blue shorts, face shadowed and hollow. He’s ditched the hoodie; his torso is cut with lean muscle and a lattice of last summer’s sunburns. The rope marks have faded, but if you know where to look, you can see them—pale lines, fresh memories.
He stops dead when he sees me, but doesn’t move. “You following me?” he asks, trying for a joke.
“Maybe,” I say.
A long silence. He moves to the counter, sets down the beer, and rummages for a glass. When he finds one, he pours out the foam with obsessive care, like he’s stalling for time. I watch his hands, the sinew of his forearm, the slight tremor in his pinky.
“I didn’t think you’d show your face,” he says, eyes fixed on the glass.
I close the distance between us. “I could say the same to you.”
He turns, arms crossed again, shielding his chest with forearms so tight the veins stand out. “So what do you want, Mercer?”
There’s a dare in it, and something else—a faint crackle of fear, or maybe hope.
I step closer, so close I can smell the sweat trapped in his skin, the yeasty ghost of the beer. He flinches, but doesn’t back away.
“I want to know why you lied,” I say.
He shakes his head, trying for a laugh, but nothing comes out. “About what?”
“About being straight.”
He’s silent. His eyes dart up to the cabinets, the sink, the beer glass. Anywhere but my face.
I let the quiet stretch, count the seconds between each breath.
“I saw you last night,” I say. “You were hard before I even touched you.”
He bristles, lips peeling back from his teeth. “It’s a physiological response,” he mutters, but even he doesn’t sound convinced.
“I bet you’re hard now,” I say, and lay my hand, very gently, on the front of his shorts.
He jumps as if shocked. For a second, I think he’s going to hit me, but instead he just stands there, shaking, fists pressed white-knuckle against the counter.
His cock is thick and hot under the mesh, already leaking. There’s no underwear—nothing but the stretched, sweaty fabric separating my hand from his skin.
He doesn’t stop me.
“Everyone’s a little gay,” I whisper.
His face flushes. The tips of his ears go red.
I drop to my knees.
