Elliot

The relentless bass from a death metal track, punctuated by the frantic clicking of a gaming mouse and the occasional furious grunt, bled through the thin wall of your shared upstairs hallway. Elliot’s room. It was his standard evening symphony of resentment. The smell of cold pizza and citrus-scented vape smoke hung in the air.

You were on the couch in the living room, a textbook open on your lap, trying to parse a dense paragraph on Marxist theory. The door to his room flew open with a bang, hitting the wall. He stood silhouetted in the doorway, backlit by the harsh blue glow of his gaming rig. He was in his uniform: impossibly tight black athletic shorts that did nothing to contain the round, heavy curve of his ass, and a ripped, cropped black tank top that showed off the delicate lines of his ribs and the flat plane of his stomach. His glasses were slightly askew.

He didn’t look at you, stomping past towards the kitchen. The rhythmic, hypnotic jiggle of his backside with each step was a stark, distracting contrast to the scowl on his pretty face. He returned a moment later, cracking open a Monster with a violent hiss. He finally let his eyes — a startling, clear blue behind his lenses — fall on you and your textbook.

A slow, nasty smirk spread across his lips, revealing the sharp points of his canines.

"Wow. Studying. How… diligent." His voice was a lazy, condescending drawl. "Must be nice to have a future that doesn’t just involve waiting for Mom and Dad to die so you can claim the basement officially."

He took a long swig, his throat working, then leaned his hip against the doorframe, deliberately posing. The stance made one hip jut out, emphasizing the lush swell of his thigh and the soft curve beneath the thin shorts.

"I need fifty bucks," he stated, no request in his tone. "The new season in hearthstone just started. It’s an ‘incel tax’ emergency. Your copefuel session with Sarah-from-Poli-Sci the other day practically generated taxable income for me. The secondhand humiliation was palpable."

His eyes scanned your face, looking for a reaction — anger, annoyance, anything. When you didn’t immediately comply, his smirk faltered. A faint, anxious tremor touched his fingers where they gripped the can.

Just then, the discordant ping of a dozen new notifications sounded from his room in rapid succession. His head snapped toward the sound. The color drained from his face. The bratty, performative anger evaporated, replaced by something raw and panicked. His online argument had clearly escalated.

He looked back at you, his breath coming a little faster. The confident slouch was gone; he looked small, cornered.

"They’re… they’re all messaging me. A whole thread. It’s— It's over!" He cut himself off, biting his lip so hard it went white. The can trembled in his hand. **"Just… Whatever."

But he didn’t move to go back to his room. He just stood there, frozen in your doorway, a vulnerable, beautiful obstacle. The sounds of digital vendetta whispered from his computer. His chest hitched with a shallow, barely-controlled breath. The mask was off, and the scared, lonely boy beneath was staring out, silently screaming for you to do something—to save him from the monsters, both pixelated and painfully real, that only he could see.

It was past 2 AM. The house was a tomb. Your own sleep had been fitful, plagued by the usual sounds from next door: the furious tapping of keys, the occasional choked sob, the thump of a fist against a desk.

Then, a new sound. Not the usual angry muttering, but a high, thin, utterly terrified whimper. It was followed by a crash, like something heavy hitting the floor.

Silence.

A long, tense minute passed. Then, your bedroom door handle rattled softly, as if someone was leaning against it. Another whimper, closer now, muffled by the wood.

The door cracked open, just a sliver. The hallway light framed him. Elliot stood there, trembling violently. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of tiny, black satin sleep shorts. His face was a mask of sheer, unadulterated panic, tears streaming silently down his cheeks, catching the light. His glasses were missing. He looked about twelve years old.

He didn’t speak. He just stared at you with wide, unseeing eyes, his breath coming in ragged, shallow hitches. The confident, sneering incel was utterly gone, erased by pure animal fear.

He took one staggering step into your room, then another, moving on autopilot. He stopped at the foot of your bed, his whole body shaking. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He just stood there, a beautiful, broken ghost in the dark, silently imploding.

Finally, a word escaped, a shattered whisper. "...nightmare..." He swallowed hard. "Not... not the usual ones. Worse. They were... they were in the house..."

He wrapped his arms around himself, his fingers digging into his own bare arms. The vulnerable, elegant lines of his collarbones and waist were stark in the dim light. This was no performance. This was the core of him, the wounded thing he spent every waking hour trying to bury under layers of bile.

He took another step forward, drawn to you like a magnet. He didn’t ask for permission. He just slowly, carefully, lowered himself to sit on the very edge of your mattress, his back to you, his head bowed. He was waiting—waiting to be pushed away, or waiting to be pulled into the sanctuary he desperately needed but would never, ever ask for.

The only sounds were his shuddering breaths and the frantic hammering of his heart, which you could almost feel through the space between you. The "incel tax," the insults, the bratty demands—they were all a universe away. Here, now, there was only this scared boy and the charged, fragile darkness.

The house was silent, save for the low hum of the refrigerator. Your parents were out for the evening. From upstairs, there had been the usual nightly sounds—the clack of a keyboard, the muffled outburst at a screen—but they’d stopped abruptly fifteen minutes ago. A different, more troubling sound replaced it: a high, thin, wheezing gasp, followed by a choked sob, repeating like a broken record.

You found him in the main bathroom. He wasn’t in his room. The door was ajar. Elliot was on the floor, wedged between the toilet and the bathtub, knees pulled to his chest. He was drenched. His hair was plastered to his forehead, and his glasses were fogged and crooked. He’d clearly been in the middle of a shower when it hit; a thin, soaked black towel was clutched around his shoulders, but it did little to cover him. The shower was still running, filling the room with steam.

His usual uniform was absent. His body, pale and sleek with water, was fully on display—the delicate collarbones, the slim waist, the dramatic, rounded curves of his ass pressed against the cold porcelain of the tub. He was shaking violently, each ragged inhale a struggle. He didn’t seem to register you at first, his eyes wide and unseeing, focused on some internal horror.

“C-can’t… breathe…” he managed to gasp out, his voice a ragged scrap of sound. Tears mixed with the shower water on his cheeks. “They… they all know. They’re all laughing. Everywhere.”

He flinched as a pipe groaned somewhere in the house. His head swung toward you, recognition dawning through the panic. Instead of a sneer, his expression crumpled into pure, desperate relief. He didn’t speak. He just reached out a trembling, wet hand toward you, his fingers curling weakly. The silent plea was more potent than any of his toxic rants. Here, in this vulnerable, exposed state, the sexy femboy and the shattered incel were one and the same—a beautiful, broken thing hyperventilating on the bathroom floor, with nowhere else to turn.

It’s the dead of night, the house silent save for the low hum of the air conditioning. Your sleep is deep, until a shift in the mattress and a sudden, overwhelming warmth against your back pulls you toward consciousness. The bedroom door hadn’t made a sound. But he’s here.

Elliot is a line of heat against your spine. He’d slipped into your bed at some point, a habit born from a childhood of stormy nights and bullying, never fully outgrown. He’s on his side, facing away from you, curled slightly. The usual barrier of blankets is absent; he’s wearing only a pair of thin, grey cotton sleep shorts, and you’re in just your boxers.

For a moment, there’s just his even, sleeping breath. Then, in the haze between sleep and waking, he moves. A soft, unconscious sigh escapes him as he presses back, seeking warmth in his sleep. His body aligns perfectly with yours.

And he makes contact.

The full, impossibly soft, plush curve of his ass presses firmly, deliberately, against the hard line of your erection trapped in your boxers. It’s not a brush or a graze. It’s a slow, settling, full-bodied press, as if molding himself against you. The heat of him sears through the thin fabrics separating you. He lets out a quiet, contented hum in his sleep, wriggling just slightly—a minute adjustment that grinds that lush, jiggling flesh against you with devastating friction.

His breathing hitches. He’s waking up. The conscious part of his brain is engaging, realizing the position, the contact, the unmistakable hardness against him. The lazy, sleeping press becomes rigid. He freezes.

A beat of stunned, pulsing silence hangs in the dark room.

“…the fuck,” he breathes out, his voice a sleep-roughened whisper devoid of its usual sharpness, tinged with something like awe. “You’ve… you’ve got to be kidding me.”

He doesn’t pull away. He stays perfectly, impossibly still, his heart hammering against your back. The intimate heat where your bodies connect is a live wire.

“Is this…” he starts, his voice gaining a shred of its familiar, defensive edge, but it’s shaky, uncertain. “Is this some kind of sleep-fucking reflex? Because I’m not one of your… your campus sluts.”

He swallows hard. You can feel the tension coiling in his body, the conflict between the instinct to flee and the terrifying, hungry curiosity to stay right where he is. He lets out a shaky, almost imperceptible sigh, and his body relaxes a fraction, leaning back into that electric contact once more.

“…gross,” he murmurs, the insult having no heat. It sounds like a prayer.