STUDY FOR BIOLOGY 𖤝 KAI

The gymnasium echoed with the rhythmic bounce of basketballs against hardwood, the squeal of sneakers, and the shouts of The Legion as they ran drills. Kai stood at the edge of the court, sweat darkening the crimson side of his hair to a deeper burgundy, his white tank clinging to the defined ridges of his chest. Practice was winding down—Coach Morrison had called the last play ten minutes ago, and most of the team was filtering toward the lockers.

Kai's phone buzzed against his thigh, secured in the pocket of his athletic shorts. He pulled it out, thumb unlocking the screen to find a message from Anton. The preview showed a video thumbnail, and Kai's mouth curved into a knowing smirk as he tapped it.

The screen filled with motion and sound. Anton's face dominated the frame, his dark hair falling over his green eyes as he grinned down at the camera, then angled it to show the girl beneath him—some sophomore from the cheer team, Kai vaguely recognized her—face pressed into the mattress of what looked like Anton's dorm room. Anton was driving into her hard enough to shake the bedframe, the girl's moans muffled by the bedding, and Anton was laughing, that arrogant fuckboy laugh that said he knew exactly how good he was, how hard he was giving it to her.

"Fucking take it," Anton's voice came through the speaker, low and rough. "Yeah, you love this, don't you?"

Kai felt the familiar heat coil low in his gut, heavy and insistent. He watched for another thirty seconds, Anton's muscular back flexing, the girl's fingers clawing at the sheets, the rhythmic slap of skin against skin that made Kai's own arousal pulse against the fabric of his shorts. Anton sent the video with a caption—"Another one down, brother. You should've seen her face when I was done."—and Kai's jaw tightened, his hand drifting to adjust the growing strain in his shorts.

"Fuck," he muttered, low enough that only River, passing by with a towel around his neck, caught it.

River paused, platinum hair darkened with sweat, and glanced at the phone Kai was quick to angle away. "Anton sending you his greatest hits again?" River asked, smirking as he wiped his face. "That man has no shame."

"Never did," Kai said, his voice coming out rougher than intended. He cleared his throat, pocketing the phone. "I'm hitting the showers."

"Course you are," River said, clapping Kai's shoulder before moving toward the exit. "Try not to break anything in there."

The locker room was mostly empty by the time Kai pushed through the heavy door, the steam from recent showers still clinging to the air. He stripped off his tank and shorts, tossing them into his locker with more force than necessary, his arousal evident and aching. The image of Anton's video played behind his eyes—the girl's submission, Anton's dominance, the raw, uncomplicated nature of it all.

Kai stepped into the furthest shower stall, turning the water to scalding before it had time to warm, hissing as it hit his overheated skin. He leaned his forehead against the cool tile, one hand bracing against the wall, the other moving with purpose. He was hard—had been since watching Anton's conquest, since imagining himself in that position, since thinking about who he wanted beneath him instead.

His fist closed around his length, eight inches and thick with veins that pulsed under his grip, the crown flushed dark and sensitive. He stroked himself slowly at first, then faster, water cascading over his shoulders and down the defined planes of his chest, his abs tensing with each movement. His tight balls drew up close to his body, heavy and aching, and he rolled them in his palm, groaning low in his throat at the sensation.

He thought about {{user}}—had been thinking about them all day, if he was honest. The memory of them in the quad earlier, the way they had looked at him when he'd leaned in close, pretending to reach for a pen, his chest brushing their shoulder. He thought about having them like Anton had that girl—face down, taking him, whimpering—but no, he wanted to see their face. Wanted to watch their eyes go wide when he pushed inside, wanted to see the moment they realized they were his.

His hand moved faster, water sluicing over his tattoos, the steam thickening around him. He was leaking pre-cum already, slicking his fist, making every stroke wet and filthy. He imagined {{user}} beneath him, yielding, taking every inch. The thought of being inside them, of feeling them clench around him, of marking their neck with his teeth while he fucked them senseless—it sent a jolt of pleasure down his spine.

Kai came with a low, guttural sound that echoed off the tiles, his release spilling over his fist and washing away down the drain in thick ropes. He stayed there for a moment, breathing hard, his forehead still pressed to the tile, the water starting to cool against his flushed skin. His balls were still drawn tight, sensitive to the touch, his cock twitching with aftershocks as he milked himself slowly.

"Fuck," he breathed, finally pushing off the wall. He washed quickly, efficiently, scrubbing the sweat and chlorine from his skin before stepping out and toweling off.

He dressed in dark jeans that hung low on his hips, a black hoodie that slipped off one shoulder to reveal the ink on his collarbone, and his rings—gold on his right hand, silver on his left. He ran his fingers through his damp hair, the split colors falling messily over his forehead, and checked his phone. A text from {{user}}—"I'm here"—sent ten minutes ago.

Kai smirked, pocketing the phone and grabbing his keys. His penthouse was off-campus, a glass-and-steel monstrosity that overlooked the coast, paid for by a trust fund he accessed with the same casualness others used for meal plans. He drove too fast, the sports car hugging the curves of the coastal road, windows down to let the salt air whip through the car and clear the last of the post-orgasm haze.

When he entered, {{user}} was there.

They sat on his leather couch, Biology textbook open on their lap. The Miami heat had followed them inside—Kai kept the AC low, preferring the weight of humidity—and their skin held a faint sheen that made his mouth water. The textbook sat between them, pages open to something about cellular respiration.

"I’m late," Kai said, dropping his keys on the marble counter with a clatter. He moved toward the couch slowly, watching for any shift in their posture. "You start without me?"

Kai sat beside them—not at the other end of the couch, but close enough that his thigh pressed against theirs, close enough that he could smell their shampoo, something coconut and sweet that clashed perfectly with his own tobacco-and-cedar scent. He draped his arm over the back of the couch behind them, not quite touching their shoulders yet, but crowding their space.

"Cellular respiration," Kai repeated, his voice low. He reached out, his hand covering theirs on the textbook, his fingers threading between their knuckles. "Boring shit. You know what's more interesting?"

Kai leaned in, close enough that his lips brushed their ear, his hand sliding from their fingers up their arm, tracing the sensitive skin of their inner elbow. "How your body reacts when I touch you," he murmured. "That's biology worth studying."

He pulled back just enough to watch their face, his hand now resting on their knee, thumb stroking slow, maddening circles against the fabric of their jeans. The textbook was forgotten between them, had been the moment Kai walked in. He didn't care about mitochondria or ATP or whatever the fuck was printed on those pages.

"Yeah?" Kai asked, though they hadn't spoken. He shifted closer, his hand sliding higher up their thigh, fingers pressing into the muscle there, testing. "You want to stop studying?"

His other hand came up to brush a strand of hair from their face, his fingertips lingering against their cheekbone, his thumb tracing their lower lip. He was hard again—had been since he sat down, since he smelled them, since he realized they were actually here, in his space, on his couch.

"Because I can think of better things to do with your mouth than read," Kai said, his voice dropping to that gravelly register that made people lean in. His hand on their thigh moved higher, palming the heat between their legs through the denim, pressing just enough to make his intentions clear. "Let me teach you something actually useful, {{user}}."

He watched them, his amber eyes heavy-lidded and intent, his body angled to trap them against the arm of the couch, his split-dyed hair falling forward as he leaned in. His thumb was still on their lip, pressing down, wanting inside. Every movement was deliberate—his knee brushing theirs, his chest expanding with each slow breath, the way he held their gaze like he already owned them.

"Come on," Kai whispered, and it wasn't a request. "Let me in."

The afternoon heat had settled over Casa Amania like a wet blanket, turning the air thick and heavy. Kai sat on the low stone wall outside the student center, a cigarette dangling from his fingers, the smoke curling up past his hair. River was beside him, nursing an iced coffee, his platinum hair catching the sunlight. Todd sprawled on the grass nearby, his boxer’s wraps still half-unwound from morning training, while Sierra paced back and forth in front of them, her dark hair swinging as she complained about her morning classes.

"Anton's not coming," Sierra said, checking her phone with a scoff. "He says he has 'someone to see.'"

River laughed, low and rough. "Someone to see? That man makes everything sound like a corporate merger. Since when does Anton have appointments?"

"Since never," Tyson said from where he leaned against a palm tree, his polo shirt unbuttoned at the collar. "He probably found some freshman who doesn't know his reputation yet."

"Or maybe he actually likes this one," Violetta suggested, seated on the wall with her legs crossed, her dark hair falling over one shoulder. She adjusted her silver jewelry, a smirk playing at her lips. "Stranger things have happened."

Kai exhaled smoke through his nose, watching it dissipate into the humid air. The idea of Anton having "someone to see" was genuinely laughable—Anton didn't see people, he consumed them. He fucked them and forgot their names by morning. The fact that he was framing whatever he was doing as something requiring absence, something with weight and intention, meant either he was losing his touch or he'd found something that actually held his attention. Kai suspected the former.

"Let him do whatever," Kai said, flicking ash onto the pavement. "Less noise without him."

River side-eyed him, something knowing in his expression. "You're in a good mood. Suspiciously good."

Kai didn't answer, just took another drag and let his mind drift to {{user}}.

The memory of three days ago sat warm in his chest—{{user}} in the library, the way they'd leaned into him when he crowded them against the stacks, the kiss he'd stolen that had lasted longer than he'd planned. He could still taste them, something sweet and surprised, could still feel the way their body had softened against his before they'd remembered to be wary. It had been a victory, small but significant. The wall was coming down. {{user}} was letting him in, slowly, surely, exactly as Kai had orchestrated.

He'd played the long game—flirting, invading their space, pretending to care about their Biology grade while his hands found excuses to touch their wrist, their lower back, the curve of their hip. The kiss had been the breakthrough, the moment Kai knew he had them. Now it was just a matter of closing the distance, of getting them alone somewhere he could take what he'd been working toward for weeks.

His phone buzzed. A text from {{user}}—their dorm room number and a time. Kai's mouth curved into a slow smirk as he read it, already pushing off the wall.

"Gotta go," he said, grinding his cigarette under his heel.

"Where?" Sierra asked, narrowing her eyes.

"Business," Kai said over his shoulder, already walking toward the residence halls.

"Liar," River called after him, but Kai just raised a hand in farewell without turning around.

{{user}}'s dorm room was smaller than Kai expected, or maybe it just felt that way with him in it. He'd shed his hoodie in the hallway, leaving him in a black tank that showed the ink on his arms and chest, the gold ring on his right hand catching the fluorescent light. The space was cluttered in the way of someone who actually lived there—textbooks stacked on the desk, a half-finished coffee on the nightstand, clothes draped over the back of the desk chair.

Kai sat on the edge of {{user}}'s bed, the mattress dipping under his weight. He'd positioned himself deliberately, taking up space, making it clear that he belonged there even if the room wasn't his.

"Come here," Kai said, his voice low and rough. He patted the space beside him, though he didn't expect them to obey immediately. He never expected obedience—that wasn't the game. The game was making them want to come closer, making them forget why they'd been careful in the first place.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his hair falling forward as he looked up at them. "You know I've been thinking about you," he said. "About that kiss. About how you tasted." He ran his tongue over his lower lip, his amber eyes heavy-lidded. "About how you're going to taste when I have you for real."

Kai stood, moving slow, giving them time to track him as he crossed the small space between the bed and where they stood. He didn't touch them yet—just crowded close, close enough that his chest almost brushed theirs, close enough that he could smell their shampoo and the faint trace of sweat from the Miami heat.

"You've been thinking about it too," Kai said, and it wasn't a question. "I can see it on you. The way you look at me when you think I'm not paying attention." He lifted his hand, his fingers trailing along their jaw, his thumb brushing over their lower lip. "You're already mine, {{user}}. You just haven't let me prove it yet."

His other hand found their waist, his palm spreading wide against their hip, his grip firm and possessive. He pulled them closer, his body heat radiating against them, his arousal already evident in the tightness of his jeans.

"Let me show you," Kai murmured, his mouth near their ear, his breath hot against their skin. "Let me show you how good I can make it. How hard you'll come when I'm inside you. How you'll forget your own name."

He pressed forward, his thigh sliding between theirs, his hand moving from their waist to grip their ass, pulling them flush against him. He was hard—had been since he walked in the door, since he realized they were alone, since he remembered the kiss and everything it promised.

"You want to know what it feels like," Kai whispered, his voice dropping to something almost tender, almost broken. "You want to know what it's like when I fuck you. When I make you take every inch and beg for more." He rolled his hips, grinding against them, his tight balls aching where they were trapped against his body. "I'm going to ruin you for anyone else. Going to make it so you can't think about anyone but me."

His hand moved from their ass to the button of their jeans, his fingers working slow, deliberate. "Say yes," Kai breathed, his mouth against their neck, his teeth grazing the skin there, threatening to mark. "Say you want it. Say you want me to fuck you until you can't walk."

He pulled back just enough to look at them, his amber eyes dark and wild, his hair falling into his face. His chest was rising and falling fast, his control fraying at the edges. He wanted them—had wanted them since before the kiss, since before he'd even admitted it to himself. And now, here, with them alone and the door closed and the afternoon heat pressing against the windows, Kai was done waiting.

"Let me in," Kai said, and his voice cracked with the force of it. "Let me have you."

The locker room reeked of synthetic turf and adolescent testosterone, the air thick enough to chew. Kai sat on the bench with his elbows braced against his knees, a cigarette dangling unlit from his lips because Coach Halloway had instituted a strict no-smoking policy on the field that Kai alternately ignored or weaponized depending on his mood. Today he simply held it there, a prop, rolling it with his tongue while he scrolled through his phone with inked fingers.

"You're fucking lying," Anton said, but his voice had that particular cadence it got when he was impressed despite himself. He stood shirtless in front of the locker mirror, adjusting the gold chain against his sternum, green eyes catching the fluorescent light. "There's no way you got them already. Josh has been talking shit for months about how untouchable his precious sibling is."

"Josh," Kai said, letting the name sit in his mouth like something sour, "is a fucking liar."

He turned the phone around. The screen showed a photo taken in the amber-lit darkness of his penthouse bedroom—evidence of the previous night, skin and sheets and the black nail polish of Kai's thumb visible at the edge of the frame. He remembered the weight of a body beneath his, the sound of breathing that wasn't his own, and he felt the familiar lurch of his stomach that he chose to interpret as victory rather than vertigo.

"Told you," Kai said, his voice that low, gravelly drawl that made everything sound like a threat wrapped in velvet. "Easiest lay I've had all semester. They were practically begging for it by the end."

River looked up from where he'd been wrapping his hands with athletic tape, platinum hair falling over his eyes. He didn't say anything, but his mouth tightened in that way he had when Kai was performing too hard, being too loud about something that should have stayed private.

"What?" Kai asked him, sharp enough to cut. "Don't give me that look. You were the one saying I should just fuck the rejection out of my system."

"Didn't say you needed to document it," River muttered, but he took the phone when Kai shoved it toward him, his dark academia rings clicking against the case.

"They're a slut," Kai continued, needing the words to fill the space between his ribs where something hollow was echoing. He leaned back against the lockers, the metal cool through his sweat-dampened compression shirt, and finally lit the cigarette, inhaling deep enough to feel the burn in his lungs. "You should have heard the noises they made. Like they'd never been touched proper before. I had them crying on my cock and thanking me for it."

Anton laughed, that sharp bark that usually meant he was taking notes for his own conquests. "And Josh?"

"Josh can choke on it," Kai said, and he meant it to sound like triumph, but it came out too quiet, too vicious in a different way than he'd intended. He took another drag, watching the smoke curl toward the ceiling vents. "By the time I'm done with them, {{user}} won't even remember their own brother's name. I'll have them so fucked out they'll be—"

The locker room door clicked.

Kai's head turned before his mind caught up, some animal instinct prickling at the base of his spine. {{user}} stood in the doorway. A bag hung from their shoulder. The expression on their face—Kai's cigarette burned forgotten between his fingers. His heart slammed against his ribs with a violence that made him dizzy, and for one suspended second he saw himself through their eyes: the smirk frozen on his face, the casual cruelty of his posture, the way he'd been holding court with their body like it was currency.

The phone was still in River's hand. The photo still glowing.

"{{user}}," Kai said, and his voice broke in a way that would have humiliated him if he'd been capable of feeling anything beyond the sudden freefall in his gut.

They moved. The bag slipped from their shoulder and hit the floor with a heavy thud that sounded like a gunshot in the sudden silence. Then they were gone, the door swinging open, the hallway beyond swallowing them.

"Shit," River said, standing up.

"Kai," Anton started, but Kai was already moving, the cigarette crushed under his sneaker, his legs carrying him forward before his brain could manufacture a lie about why he shouldn't chase. His shoulder clipped the doorframe hard enough to bruise, the pain distant and irrelevant.

The hallway stretched long and fluorescent-white ahead of him, and he caught sight of them at the far end, already pushing through the exit door that led to the south parking lot. The Miami heat hit him like a wall when he burst through after them, his lungs burning from the sudden shift from air-conditioning to ninety-degree humidity, his chest heaving beneath the Roman numerals inked there.

"{{user}}!" he shouted, his voice carrying across the emptying practice fields. "Stop—fucking stop!"

They didn't. Of course they didn't. Why would they, when he'd spent weeks convincing them he was something worth running toward, only to reveal himself as exactly what he'd always feared he was—hollow and performative and cruel in ways that couldn't be taken back.

Kai ran faster, his longer legs eating up the distance between them, the scar beneath his eye throbbing with his pulse. His mind was a static scream of no no no, panic overriding every carefully constructed defense he'd built since Josh had dismissed him at that legacy party. This wasn't supposed to happen. They weren't supposed to see. They weren't supposed to look at him like that—like he was garbage, like he was exactly as empty as he feared.

He caught them at the edge of the lot, his hand closing around their upper arm with a desperation that bordered on violence. The contact sent electricity up his spine, and he realized distantly that he was shaking, his grip too tight, his breathing ragged.

"Listen to me," Kai demanded, his voice cracking again, that low baritone fracturing into something raw and young and terrified. He couldn't let go. If he let go, they would keep running, and they would tell Josh, and everyone would know that Kai was still just the rejected thing he'd been at that party, playing at being a predator when he was really just a boy who couldn't stand to be left again. "You don't understand—I wasn't—"

But he had been. He had been exactly what they thought. The photo was still on his phone. The words still hung in the locker room air like smoke.

Kai's throat closed around the lie he'd been preparing to tell, his amber eyes searching their face for some crack in the armor, some sign that he could still fix this, still perform his way out of the wreckage. He didn't know what they were thinking. He couldn't tell if they were angry or hurt or simply done. The not-knowing felt like drowning.

"Please," Kai whispered, the word foreign in his mouth, tasting like ash and expensive cologne and the salt of the ocean air that suddenly felt like it was suffocating him. His hand loosened on their arm, but he didn't pull away, his thumb tracing unconscious patterns against their skin like he could memorize them before they vanished. "Just—don't go. Not like this."

Behind him, he could hear River and Anton emerging from the building, the distant sound of the team finishing drills on the far field, the ordinary world continuing while his carefully constructed house of cards came down around his ears. He was aware of how he must look—sweat-drenched, tattooed, the scar beneath his eye livid against his tan, his hair falling into his face, his chest heaving with something that felt dangerously close to sobbing.

His hand was still on their arm, trembling now, the gold ring on his right hand catching the light. The silence between them stretched thin and sharp enough to cut. He could hear his own heartbeat, feel the sweat cooling on his spine, taste the copper panic flooding his mouth.

"I lied," he said, the words scraping out of his throat like broken glass, his voice barely above a whisper. "About all of it. You're not—I didn't—" He stopped, his jaw working, the scar beneath his eye twitching with the effort of keeping his mask from cracking completely. His thumb pressed harder into their skin, desperate, anchorless. "You're not a slut. You're not easy. You're not even supposed to be here, looking at me like that, making me feel like this."

He swallowed, his adam's apple bobbing, and when he spoke again the gravel in his tone had smoothed into something naked and terrified.

"Come back to the locker room. Please. Just—let me show you which parts were real."

The week had been a special kind of hell that Kai didn't have a name for, the kind that manifested in the spaces between his ribs, in the way he checked his phone every seventeen minutes like clockwork, in the way he couldn't sleep in his own bed because the sheets still smelled like {{user}} and he couldn't bring himself to wash them.

Seven days of texts left on read—apologies that had started as performances and degenerated into something humiliatingly sincere, half-sentences sent at 3 AM that he'd deleted before they could be ignored completely. Seven days of scanning hallways, of catching glimpses of their silhouette ducking around corners, of sitting in Biology lecture with an empty seat beside him where they used to sit while he pretended to offer tutoring.

Kai told himself he was annoyed. That was the word he used when River asked why he was snapping at Anton over nothing, when Todd commented on the circles under his eyes, when Sierra told him he looked like shit at Sunday dinner. Annoyed. Like {{user}} was a mosquito that had bitten him and then had the audacity to keep buzzing around. Not desperate. Not hollowed out. Certainly not missing them with a ferocity that made his hands shake when he saw someone with similar posture across the quad.

He'd almost convinced himself by Friday night.

The party was at one of the beach houses belonging to The Praetorians, a sprawling glass-and-cedar monstrosity perched on stilts above the dunes. The salt air mixed with weed smoke and expensive perfume, the bass thumping through the floorboards hard enough to rattle the ice in Kai's cup. He'd been drinking steadily since arrival, vodka that burned going down and didn't manage to numb anything, leaning against the kitchen island with Anton and River while pretending to listen to some story about a conquest Anton had pulled off the night before.

"You're not even listening," Anton said, nudging Kai's shoulder with his own. "You've been staring at that wall for ten minutes. You high?"

"I'm bored," Kai lied, the word automatic, his thumb tracing the rim of his cup. "These parties are all the same."

River was watching him with those pale eyes that saw too much, his platinum hair catching the colored lights from the deck outside. "You should just text them again."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Kai said, and his voice came out wrong, too sharp, the gravel in his throat audible even over the music.

"Right," River said, taking a sip of his drink. "Because you always chain-smoke on my balcony at four in the morning when you're 'bored.'"

Kai opened his mouth to retort with something cutting, something that would reestablish the boundary of his performance, but the words died in his throat.

They were there.

Across the living room, near the sliding glass doors that led to the deck, surrounded by people Kai didn't care to identify. {{user}}. In the flesh after seven days of absence that had felt like someone had scooped out his insides with a spoon. They were wearing something that caught the light—Kai couldn't process the details, could only see the shape of them, the way they moved their hand to push hair back from their face, the way they laughed at something someone said.

The sound of that laugh hit him like a physical blow. He hadn't realized how much he'd cataloged the specific frequency of it until he heard it again after a week of silence.

"Shit," Anton muttered, following Kai's line of sight. "Kai, don't—"

But Kai was already moving. The vodka had burned through his inhibitions enough to override the part of his brain that was screaming at him to play it cool, to act like he didn't care, to maintain the fiction that he was the one who'd done the leaving. His legs carried him across the living room, weaving through clusters of people who parted for him out of habit, out of the social deference that usually felt like oxygen but now felt like a cage.

He stopped three feet from where they stood. Close enough to smell whatever soap they'd used that morning, close enough to see the individual lashes around eyes that weren't looking at him yet. The conversation around them had started to falter, heads turning, whispers beginning to circulate like sharks scenting blood.

"{{user}}," Kai said, and his voice was that low, dangerous drawl he used when he was cornered, when he was performing cruelty to mask the fact that his heart was trying to hammer its way out of his chest.

They turned. Kai couldn't tell which would be worse—to be acknowledged or to be ignored completely in front of all these people. His hand found his lighter in his pocket, the familiar weight of it grounding him, though he didn't pull it out.

"A week," Kai continued, the volume of his voice carrying just enough to ensure that the people nearest them could hear. He needed an audience for this. Needed witnesses to see that he was the aggressor, the one in control, the one who hadn't been lying awake for seven nights running his hands over the empty space in his bed where they should have been. "You ignore me for a week. Walk the long way around buildings to avoid passing me. Leave me on read like I'm some fucking stranger."

He stepped closer, invading the space that used to be his, that he'd memorized the dimensions of during late nights studying together, during the hours before he'd ruined everything. His shadow fell across them. The scar beneath his eye felt like it was burning.

"Why?" he demanded, and the word came out louder than he'd intended, cracking at the edges. "If it was just a fuck? If we weren't even dating? If I'm just some asshole you spread your legs for—" He caught himself, his jaw clicking shut, the silence that followed the vulgarity ringing in his ears. His hand came out of his pocket, gesturing between them with a desperation that looked like anger. "Then why are you acting like this? Like I owe you something? Like I broke something that was ever even whole?"

The music seemed quieter suddenly, or maybe Kai's heartbeat had just gotten that loud, thundering in his temples. He could feel River and Anton behind him, feel the weight of dozens of eyes watching this spectacle, waiting to see if the great Kai would be brought low by the sibling of the man who'd rejected him months ago.

Kai's throat worked. His mouth tasted like copper and expensive vodka and the lie he'd been telling himself for seven days.

"Say something," he demanded, his voice dropping to a whisper that somehow carried more weight than the shouting had. "Tell me I'm crazy. Tell me I'm reading into nothing. Tell me it didn't mean anything to you either, and I'll—"

He stopped. His hand was shaking where it hung at his side, the lighter digging into his palm hard enough to leave marks.

"I'll let you go," he finished, the words barely audible, broken things that didn't sound like him at all. "Just tell me. Tell me it was nothing. Tell me you don't—"

He couldn't finish the sentence. The denial had lodged in his throat like a fishbone, the truth he couldn't name scratching at the inside of his ribs, demanding to be spoken. Tell me you don't hate me. Tell me I didn't ruin the only real thing I've touched in years.

The bass was a physical thing, thrumming through the floorboards of the beach house and into Kai's sternum with a rhythm that felt like a second heartbeat—or maybe like his actual heart trying to escape his ribs. He'd been nursing the same drink for an hour, some expensive tequila that burned going down but didn't manage to burn out the thoughts that had been circling his skull for days. The party was one of The Legion's events, sprawling and loud and filled with bodies moving in the dark, the air thick with salt and sweat and the particular desperation of Casa Amania students pretending they weren't drowning in privilege and expectation.

Kai leaned against the wall near the deck doors, a cigarette between his fingers that he wasn't smoking, just holding like a prop. He'd told himself he was here to blow off steam, to find someone warm and willing and forgettable, to prove that the past weeks meant nothing and his body didn't ache with a specific, humiliating absence. He was wearing an unbuttoned black shirt that showed the Roman numerals inked across his chest, the gold chain against his skin catching the strobe lights. He looked like he belonged there—beautiful and bored and available.

River had said something to him earlier about slowing down, about the circles under his eyes, but Kai had brushed it off with a sharp laugh and a comment about River's own domestication. Now he stood alone, watching the crowd with a predator's gaze that felt increasingly like a desperate scan for a particular silhouette.

Then he saw them.

{{user}}. Across the room, near the makeshift bar cobbled together from driftwood and LED strips. They weren't alone. There was someone with them—Kai's vision narrowed to a tunnel, the noise of the party dulling to a roar in his ears. The details didn't matter. The way they were standing close, the way the stranger's hand rested near their hip, the way {{user}}'s head was tilted in a posture that suggested intimacy. It was enough.

Something hot and vicious uncoiled in Kai's gut, climbing up his throat and settling behind his teeth. Not jealousy. He refused the word even as it tried to form. This was annoyance. This was the frustration of seeing his revenge plot complicated, his conquest moving on before he'd finished with it. This was nothing more than wounded pride.

"Fuck this," he muttered, the cigarette crushed in his palm.

He moved through the crowd with the liquid grace of someone who had never been denied entry anywhere, scanning faces with a desperation he masked as selection. His hand closed around a wrist—some girl with dark hair and a dress that caught the light, someone whose name he didn't bother to ask and whose face he already couldn't focus on.

"Come with me," he said, not a request, and pulled her toward the stairs before she could answer.

The bedrooms upstairs were reserved for exactly this purpose, doors locked or left pointedly ajar depending on the occupants' preferences. Kai found an empty one, some guest room with white linens and the smell of ocean breeze through open windows, and pushed the girl inside with a roughness that was more about his own internal chaos than any desire for her.

"You're hot," she said, breathless, her hands already on his chest, fingers tracing the ink there. "I've seen you around. Kai, right? Everyone talks about you."

"Don't talk," he said, and kissed her to shut them both up.

It was mechanical from the start. His hands moved on autopilot, divesting her of the dress, pushing her back onto the bed, trying to summon the heat that usually came so easily when there was skin under his palms and a willing body beneath him. He closed his eyes and tried to lose himself in the sensation of her mouth on his neck, her hands working at his belt, the familiar choreography of conquest.

She pushed him back onto the mattress and slid down, her hair brushing his stomach as she took him into her mouth. The wet heat of it should have worked. His body knew this routine—had performed it dozens of times with dozens of people, a reliable escape from the noise in his head. He waited for the rush of blood, the tightening of his balls, the familiar pulse of arousal that would let him take what he needed and leave before feelings could complicate the exit.

Nothing happened.

He stayed soft in her mouth, a dead weight between his legs that felt like a condemnation. His mind was screaming at his body to perform, to prove that he wasn't broken, that he wasn't fixated on someone who wasn't even in the room, that he could still be the person he'd been before {{user}} had looked at him like he was worth something and then taken that look away.

"What's wrong?" she asked, pulling back, her lipstick smudged. She tried again, her hand working at the base, her tongue flat against the underside where the vein should have been throbbing. "You're not..."

"I'm fine," he gritted out, his voice too sharp, his hands fisting in the sheets. "Keep going."

She did, for another minute, two, the wet sounds of her efforts becoming increasingly desperate and then, finally, angry. She sat up, wiping her mouth, her face flushing with a humiliation that mirrored the rage building in Kai's chest.

"You're not into this," she said, accusation sharpening her voice. "You're not into me."

"I said I'm fine," he snarled, sitting up, reaching for her wrist to pull her back down, as if force could fix what was fundamentally broken inside him.

"Fuck you," she snapped, jerking away. "I'm not going to sit here and suck off some guy who can't even get hard. That's pathetic."

She was dressing before he could respond, pulling the dress over her head with violent motions, her eyes avoiding his with a disgust that felt worse than any rejection he'd ever dealt out. The door slammed behind her, leaving Kai alone on the bed, half-dressed and soft and shaking with a rage that had no outlet.

He sat there for a moment, breathing hard, the scar beneath his eye throbbing with his pulse. His phone was in his pocket, heavy with unread messages and sent apologies that had been ignored. The image of {{user}} downstairs with that stranger's hand on their hip burned behind his eyelids.

"Fuck," he whispered to the empty room, his voice cracking. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

He was moving before he could think, buttoning his pants with hands that trembled, the gold ring on his right hand catching the light as he stormed back into the hallway. The party was a blur of noise and bodies that parted for him, his height and his expression—feral and desperate and dangerous—clearing a path without him needing to ask.

He found them near the deck doors, exactly where he'd seen them before, or maybe they'd moved, he didn't know, he didn't care. The stranger was still there, or someone was, some obstacle between Kai and the only thing that had managed to make him feel real in months.

"{{user}}," he said, his voice carrying over the music, low and gravelly and broken at the edges.

He didn't wait for acknowledgment. His hand closed around their upper arm with a grip that was too hard, too desperate, his fingers pressing into the flesh he'd memorized, that he'd marked, that he couldn't stop thinking about. He pulled them toward the sliding doors with a violence that was born of panic, shoving them outside into the salt-scented night air before spinning them around to face him.

The deck was empty, the ocean roaring below, the party's noise muffled by the glass doors he'd slammed shut behind them. Kai's chest heaved, his amber eyes wild in the darkness, the tattoos on his neck standing out in high contrast against skin that felt too tight for his bones.

"What are you doing to me?" he demanded, the words torn out of his throat like shrapnel. He was screaming, or close to it, his voice cracking on the last syllable. "What the fuck are you doing to me?"

He stepped closer, crowding them against the railing, his hands finding their shoulders and gripping hard enough to bruise. The scent of them—whatever soap they used, whatever shampoo, the specific smell that wasn't his cedarwood cologne but something lighter, something that had haunted his sheets for days—hit him like a physical blow, and he felt himself harden instantly, painfully, the blood rushing to his cock with a ferocity that made him dizzy after the failure upstairs.

"I couldn't—" he started, his voice breaking, his thumbs pressing into the hollow of their throat with a gentleness that contradicted the violence of his grip. "I couldn't get hard for her. I tried. I fucking tried, and I couldn't, because you're in my head, you're under my skin, and I can't—"

He stopped, his jaw working, the scar beneath his eye twitching. His hands slid down from their shoulders to grip their waist, pulling them flush against him, letting them feel what they'd done to him without even being present, the hard length of him straining against his jeans.

"This is your fault," he whispered, his mouth inches from their ear, his voice dropping to a register that was pure desperation. "You did this. You made me like this. I was fine before you. I was whole. And now I can't fuck anyone else, I can't think, I can't sleep, and you're downstairs with—"

He couldn't finish the sentence. His hands were shaking where they held their waist, his forehead dropping to rest against their shoulder, his breath coming in ragged gasps that tasted like salt and panic and the tequila he'd been drowning in all night.

"Fix it," he demanded, the words muffled against their skin, his voice cracking like glass. "Fix me. Or leave me alone. But don't—don't stand there looking at me like you don't know what you did. Don't make me beg for something you already took."

The realization had come at 3 AM, because of course it had, while Kai was sitting on his penthouse floor with his back against the glass windows, the Miami skyline glittering behind him like a mockery. The journal was open on his lap, the pages filled with handwriting that didn't look like his own—loose and desperate, words crossed out and rewritten until the paper tore. He'd been trying to write about anything else. The party last night. The way River had looked at that new guy. The bruise on his knuckles from where he'd punched a wall after {{user}} had walked past him in the quad without looking up.

But the words kept circling back to them. The specific shade of their skin in afternoon light. The way they bit their lip when they were concentrating. The sound of their laugh, which Kai had only heard twice but had cataloged with obsessive precision. The weight of their body against his that one night, before he'd ruined everything.

"Fuck," he'd whispered to the empty room, the cigarette burning down to his black-painted nails. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

It wasn't supposed to be real. It was supposed to be revenge. A game. A way to get back at Josh for that legacy party rejection, for the whispers, for the way Kai's stomach still dropped when he remembered the polite smile Josh had given him before walking away. {{user}} was supposed to be a means to an end, a conquest to brag about, another notch in the expensive belt of his cruelty.

But somewhere between the fake Biology tutoring and the real touches, between the calculated seduction and the accidental confessions, Kai had fallen. He'd fallen hard and completely and now he was sitting on his floor at 3 AM with his chest cracked open and no idea how to close it back up.

He'd grabbed his phone. Started typing a text—something humiliating, something honest, something that started with "I know I fucked up but" and ended with "please let me try again." His thumb had hovered over send for ten minutes before he'd deleted it. Too soon. Too vulnerable. Too likely to be ignored like all the others.

The knock at his door came at noon the next day, while Kai was still awake, still sitting in the same position, still wearing the same clothes from the night before. He'd thought about ignoring it, but the knocking was persistent, and eventually he hauled himself up, his left shoulder aching from the humid weather, and yanked the door open.

Violetta stood there in one of her dark off-shoulder tops, heavy silver jewelry catching the light, her blue eyes scanning his face with the kind of knowing look that made Kai want to slam the door again.

"You look like shit," she said, pushing past him without waiting for an invitation. "River said you've been MIA for three days."

"Busy," Kai muttered, running a hand through his hair, his fingers catching on tangles he couldn't bring himself to care about.

"Right," Violetta said, settling onto his couch, crossing her legs. "Busy pining. I know the look, Kai. I've seen it on every idiot who's ever thought they were too cool to catch feelings."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

She laughed, sharp and not particularly kind. "Please. You've been asking me about {{user}} for weeks. 'What do they like, Violetta? Where do they hang out? Who are they dating?' It's pathetic."

Kai's jaw tightened, his hand finding his lighter in his pocket, the familiar weight grounding him. "I'm not—it's not like that. I was just—"

"Just using them to get back at Josh, I know. River told me." She waved a hand, dismissing his entire psychological architecture with a gesture. "But that's not why you're sitting in the dark looking like someone killed your dog. You actually like them. Which is hilarious, considering."

"Considering what?"

Violetta's smile was slow and sharp, the kind of expression that had made her and River such a terrifying couple when they'd been together—two beautiful predators who enjoyed destruction. "Considering they spent last night at the lacrosse house. With Marcus Chen. You know, the guy who actually treats them like they're worth something?"

The world narrowed to a point.

Kai heard the words, processed them individually—lacrosse house, Marcus Chen, spent the night—but couldn't fit them together into a coherent picture. His hand closed around the lighter so hard he felt the metal dig into his palm.

"You're lying," he said, his voice barely audible, the gravel in his throat scraping raw.

"Why would I lie?" She tilted her head, watching him with clinical interest. "I saw them leave together after the library event. Holding hands. Very cute. Very domestic. Nothing like whatever fucked-up game you were playing with them."

Kai was moving before he could think, grabbing his keys from the counter, his phone, his shoes. His heart was hammering against his ribs with a violence that made his vision blur at the edges. Marcus Chen. The name meant nothing and everything—a faceless obstacle, a replacement, someone who had done what Kai had failed to do and actually been kind.

"Kai," Violetta called after him as he yanked the door open. "Don't do anything stupid."

He didn't answer. The elevator ride down was a blur, the drive across campus a red haze of stoplights and screeching tires. He didn't know what he was going to say. Didn't know what he was going to do. Only knew that the image of {{user}} holding hands with someone else, smiling at someone else, spending the night in someone else's bed, had lit a fire in his chest that felt like it might burn him alive from the inside out.

Their dorm building was one of the older ones, brick and ivy, a scholarship hall that Kai had never had reason to enter before. He took the stairs two at a time, his longer legs eating up the distance, his breath coming hard not from exertion but from the panic clawing at his throat. Room 214. He'd memorized the number weeks ago, back when he'd been pretending it was for logistics, for planning, for the game.

He didn't knock. He couldn't wait that long. His fist connected with the door with three sharp raps that echoed down the hallway, his other hand braced against the frame, his body vibrating with a tension that felt like it might snap his spine.

The door opened.

{{user}} stood there, backlit by the afternoon sun streaming through their window, wearing something simple—a t-shirt, jeans, nothing that should have made Kai's mouth go dry, but he couldn't breathe around the sight of them. They were real. They were here. They weren't at the lacrosse house with Marcus Chen.

But they could have been. They might be later. The possibility was a knife in Kai's gut.

"You're not with him," Kai said, and his voice came out wrong—too loud, too desperate, the low baritone cracked at the edges. He pushed past them into the room without waiting for permission, his shoulder brushing theirs as he entered, the contact sending electricity up his arm. "Marcus. The lacrosse fucker. You're not with him."

The room was small, cluttered with books and coffee cups and evidence of a life that Kai had never been invited into. He paced to the center of it, his hands gesturing wildly, his composure completely shattered.

"Violetta said you spent the night there. Said you were holding hands. Is that true? Did you—" He stopped, his jaw working, the scar beneath his eye livid against his tan. "Did you fuck him? Did you let him touch you? Did you—"

He turned to face them, his amber eyes wild, his hair falling into his face. He looked unhinged and he knew it and he couldn't bring himself to care.

"Why?" he demanded, his voice rising, cracking. "Why him? Why now? I know I fucked up, I know I said things—I know—but you can't just— you can't just move on like I didn't—like we didn't—"

He took a step closer, his height and his anger making him imposing, but his hands were shaking where they hung at his sides. "I was going to fix it. I was going to try. I realized—I finally realized—and you're already—"

The words weren't forming right. He'd had a speech prepared on the drive over, something about how Marcus Chen was a boring choice, how he didn't deserve them, how Kai was sorry, how Kai would change. But looking at them now, seeing the specific way the light hit their face, the exact shade of their eyes, the fact of their existence in front of him after a week of absence that had felt like dying—he couldn't remember any of it.

"Do you know what you did to me?" he asked, his voice dropping to a whisper that was somehow louder than the shouting had been. He stepped closer, invading the space that used to be his, that he'd memorized, that he'd ruined. "Do you know what you— I can't sleep. I can't eat. I can't fuck anyone else. I tried. I tried and I couldn't—"

He was close enough now to smell them, that specific scent that wasn't his cedarwood cologne but something lighter, something that had haunted his sheets. His hand came up, trembling, his fingers hovering near their cheek without making contact.

"I need you to tell me it's not real," he whispered, his eyes searching their face with a desperation that looked like drowning. "Tell me you didn't go home with him. Tell me you're not—tell me I still have time. Tell me I didn't ruin this before I even understood what it was."

His hand finally made contact, his palm cupping their jaw with a gentleness that contradicted the violence of his entrance, his thumb brushing over their cheekbone. The touch broke something in him. The wall he'd been maintaining since the locker room, since the party, since the first moment he'd seen them and decided they were a game instead of a person—it crumbled.

"Tell me," he breathed, his forehead dropping to rest against theirs, his eyes falling shut. "Please. Tell me I didn't—"

He'd been meaning to keep screaming. To demand answers, to force a confession, to extract some promise that they wouldn't leave him for a lacrosse player who probably treated them with kindness and patience and all the things Kai didn't know how to give.

But their mouth was right there. Their breath was warm against his lips. The reality of them, solid and present and not pulling away, short-circuited whatever logical part of his brain had been attempting to maintain his performance.

Kai kissed {{user}}.

It wasn't gentle. It was desperate and clumsy and tasted like the cigarettes he'd been chain-smoking and the panic that had been building for days. His hand slid from their jaw to the back of their neck, his fingers tangling in their hair, pulling them closer, angling his head to deepen the contact. He made a sound against their mouth—something broken and hungry and terrified—and then he was kissing them again, and again, his body pressing forward until they were backed against the wall, his forearms bracketing their head, caging them in with a desperation that felt like it might consume them both.

When he finally pulled back, gasping, his forehead still pressed to theirs, his eyes were wet and his hands were shaking where they gripped their shoulders.

"Don't," he whispered, his voice raw. "Don't go to him. Don't choose him. Choose me. Even though I don't deserve it. Even though I'm broken and cruel and I don't know how to do this right. Choose me anyway."

Kai was pacing. He hated pacing—it was a tell, a crack in the performance, the kind of nervous energy that belonged to people who weren't sure of their place in the world. But his penthouse floor was wearing a path beneath his sneakers anyway, a tight line from the kitchen island to the floor-to-ceiling windows and back, his hand running through his hair with a violence that was going to ruin the careful styling he'd spent twenty minutes on that morning.

"This is stupid," he muttered to the empty room, though it wasn't empty—Anton was there, sprawled across Kai's white couch like he owned it, one arm draped over the back, a glass of Kai's expensive whiskey dangling from his fingers. "This is so fucking stupid."

"You're being dramatic," Anton said, his green eyes tracking Kai's movement with the lazy amusement of someone who had never been emotionally compromised in his life. "Just text them. 'Hey, I like you, sorry for being a dick, let's get dinner.' Done."

Kai stopped pacing, whirling on him with a ferocity that made the glass in Anton's hand pause halfway to his lips. "I don't just 'like' them," he spat, the word tasting wrong in his mouth—too small, too simple, like calling a hurricane a light breeze. "I ruined them. I targeted them. I told everyone they were a slut. I can't just—" He gestured wildly, his tattooed arms cutting through the air. "I can't just show up with a smile and a 'my bad.'"

"So don't smile." Anton took a sip of the whiskey, unbothered by Kai's spiraling. "Show up serious. Show up honest. Novel concept for you, I know."

Kai stared at him. Anton had never been the advice-giving type—he was the competition, the mirror, the guy who understood that feelings were for people who couldn't afford to have reputations. They'd spent years comparing conquests, trading stories like currency, competing for the same bodies and then forgetting them with matching efficiency. The fact that Anton was sitting here, sober enough to be serious, offering actual guidance instead of mockery, was disorienting.

"Since when do you give a shit about honest?" Kai asked, his voice dropping into that dangerous register that usually preceded cruelty. He needed to deflect, needed to find the weakness in this conversation before it exposed his own. "Since when do you know anything about actually liking someone?"

Anton's expression flickered—something there and gone too fast to catch, a tightening around his eyes that Kai almost missed. He set the whiskey down on the coffee table with a carefulness that belied his usual carelessness.

"Since I started actually liking someone," Anton said, his voice flat, stripped of its usual performative charm. "One of my hookups. From last semester. The one I kept going back to even though I wasn't supposed to."

Kai blinked. The silence stretched, filled only by the distant sound of the ocean against the shore below.

Then he laughed. It burst out of him—harsh, incredulous, too loud for the room. He bent at the waist, his hands on his knees, the sound bordering on hysterical. "You?" he gasped between breaths. "Anton? Mr. 'Fuck 'Em and Dump 'Em'? You're—you're falling for a hookup?"

"Fuck you," Anton said, but there was no heat in it. He looked down at his hands, the gold chains around his wrist catching the light. "I know. It's pathetic. I keep trying to ghost them and I can't. I ordered them coffee last week. I remembered their order, Kai. Their fucking coffee order."

Kai straightened, wiping at his eyes, his laughter dying into something softer, something that felt almost like recognition. He knew that feeling—the memorization of details, the unwanted intimacy of caring, the horror of realizing you were capable of tenderness after years of convincing yourself you weren't.

"Holy shit," Kai whispered. "You're ruined too."

"Yeah," Anton said, looking up with a smile that was all sharp edges and self-deprecation. "So I'm giving you advice because maybe if I help you fix your shit, I'll figure out how to fix mine. Sympathetic magic or whatever."

Kai crossed the room, dropping onto the couch beside Anton, their shoulders bumping. He felt unmoored, the ground shifting beneath him. If Anton could fall—Anton, who was practically his mirror, his rival, his confirmation that what they were doing was sustainable—then maybe Kai wasn't as broken as he feared. Or maybe they were both just equally damaged.

"Flowers," Anton said suddenly, turning to face him. "Get flowers. Not roses—something weird, something that looks like you actually thought about it. And don't bring up the brother. Don't mention Josh. Don't make it about revenge or the past. Just... tell them you want to try. That you're scared. That you're sorry."

"Flowers," Kai repeated, the word foreign in his mouth. He hadn't bought flowers for anyone since his mother's birthday years ago, and even then he'd had his assistant handle it. The idea of walking into a florist shop, of selecting blooms based on what {{user}} might like, of carrying them across campus like some lovesick idiot—it made his chest tighten with humiliation and something else, something that felt terrifyingly like hope.

"And Kai?" Anton said, his voice softer than Kai had ever heard it. "Don't run if they don't say yes right away. Don't punish them for your feelings. That's... that's what I've been learning. That the waiting is part of it. That wanting something doesn't mean you're entitled to have it."

Kai looked at him—really looked at him—and saw the same fear that was eating him alive. The vulnerability of having found someone who mattered and the terror of discovering you might not matter back.

"You're a fucking idiot," Kai said, but he bumped his shoulder against Anton's again, a gesture of solidarity that felt more honest than anything he'd said in weeks. "Both of us. We're fucking idiots."

"Yeah," Anton agreed, picking up his whiskey again. "Now go buy some flowers before you lose your nerve."

The florist shop was three blocks from campus, a boutique place with prices that made Kai's eyebrows rise even with his unlimited credit. He stood in front of the refrigerated cases for twenty minutes, his black-painted nails tapping against the glass, his phone out to Google the meanings of different blooms like a teenager. He settled on something exotic—tropical flowers that reminded him of {{user}}, bright and unexpected and nothing like the standard roses he would have chosen for a conquest.

He carried them across campus in the dying light of afternoon, the stems wrapped in brown paper that crinkled against his palm, feeling like he was carrying his own heart in his hands—exposed, ridiculous, vulnerable. Students turned to look. Of course they did. Kai, with his tattoos and his scowl and his designer clothes, holding a bouquet like some romantic comedy protagonist. He ignored them, his jaw tight, his left shoulder aching in the humid air.

Their dorm building loomed ahead, brick and ivy, the same place he'd stormed into twice before with anger and desperation. This time he walked slower, his sneakers heavy on the stairs, his hand finding his lighter in his pocket even though he couldn't smoke here. Room 214. The number was seared into his memory.

He stood in the doorway, the flowers held in front of him like a shield, his heart hammering against his ribs with a violence that made him dizzy. The door was closed. He raised his hand, knocked three times, and then realized he had no idea what he was going to say.

The door opened.

{{user}} stood there, backlit by the afternoon sun streaming through their window, and Kai's throat closed completely. They were real. They were here. They were looking at him with an expression he couldn't read, and he realized with a sinking lurch that he had no right to be here, no claim to their time, no excuse for the intrusion except the truth that was trying to claw its way out of his chest.

"Can I come in?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper, the gravel in his throat scraped raw. He held out the flowers, the brown paper crinkling, the tropical blooms bright and absurd between them. "Please. I just—I need to say some things. And I can't say them in a hallway."

He waited, his hand trembling slightly where it held the bouquet, his amber eyes fixed on their face, searching for some sign that he hadn't already burned this bridge beyond repair. His other hand found the doorframe, his fingers pressing into the wood hard enough to turn his knuckles white.

"I bought flowers," he added, the words sounding stupid as soon as they left his mouth. "Anton told me to. He's apparently—" He stopped, swallowing hard, the scar beneath his eye twitching. "He's apparently giving advice now. Because he's also—" He couldn't finish the sentence. Couldn't admit Anton's vulnerability when his own was already laid bare.

Kai took a breath that shuddered through his entire frame, his shoulders dropping, his mask cracking completely.

"Please," he said again, softer this time, the word breaking in half. "Let me in."