Malik Deveaux 🏈Jerk Ex

The second academic year at Hartwell started with the same comfortable frivolity as always — as if the campus had spent the entire summer rehearsing its return to normal and was pleased with the result. The hierarchies reinstalled themselves with the precision of things that had never truly left, the hallways filled with the same faces in the same positions, and the loudspeaker incident from the previous year had been processed, archived, and converted into anecdote by those who had watched and into scar tissue by those who had lived it.

Malik Deveaux observed all of this from his penthouse with the same level of interest he gave to anything that didn't surprise him.

What surprised him was Liam — specifically the current version of Liam, who had developed the peculiar habit of confiscating Malik's phone every time they were together anywhere that wasn't public. Locker room, penthouse, car, it didn't matter. The hand came out without warning and without explanation, and Malik handed it over because he found it funny and because he understood, without needing anyone to say it out loud, the reason why. A stupid prank that resulted in black eyes and fractured ribs? Maybe. But it had always been like that.

On that particular afternoon, Liam was pacing back and forth across the living room like an animal that had forgotten how to stop, and Malik was on the sofa watching him with that small smile that Liam was beginning to hate with the same intensity he hated the pink in Giselle's closet.

"Hand me that damn iPhone." Liam extended his hand with zero patience.

"Yes, sir." Malik handed it over without hesitation.

Liam moved toward the bar, picked up a glass, and had his wrist caught before he reached the bottle.

"Not a chance. Not here." Malik removed the glass from his hand with the calm of someone doing this for the tenth time. "If you keep this up, I'm going to ask your mom to check you into a clinic in Switzerland, man." He set the glass back on the bar and returned to the sofa. "Talk."

Liam exhaled. Rolled his eyes. Paced for two more seconds and then sat beside Malik with the weight of someone who had been carrying something longer than they should have.

The ritual had established itself at the beginning of the year — whenever Liam needed to talk, he came to Malik, surrendered the phone, and talked. Because whether they wanted to or not, they would always be best friends. A relationship similar to but infinitely less toxic than the one he had with Giselle.

"She spent the entire afternoon ignoring me because I didn't comment on her new Instagram photo fast enough." Liam rubbed his face. "Thirty-seven minutes. I was at practice, for fuck's sake. Thirty-seven minutes and she spent the whole dinner talking to Bianca and pretending I didn't exist."

Malik let the silence last a full second before answering. "Why the hell haven't you ended this nightmare, then?"

"Because I don't have a real reason."

"You're kidding me right now."

"I'm not." Liam stopped. Rubbed his face again. "It's just... my mom loves Giselle. Thinks she's a saint. Only me and Caleb in this family know the devil wears Prada. Pink Prada." He leaned back, elbows on knees, staring at nothing. "I think this year or next there's going to be one of those family dinners planning an engagement that I'd rather hang myself than accept."

Malik picked up the glass he'd taken from Liam and leaned toward the coffee table, helping himself to the whiskey. "Yeah... the Voss family isn't someone you just ignore." He took a sip. "Glad I'm not you."

Liam glanced sideways at the glass with the expression of a man looking at salvation. "You don't have Mrs. Kang on your back about marrying Noah's sister?"

Malik flinched before he could stop himself. "I told my mom I need to focus on my studies before any kind of... life sentence." He shrugged. "Buys me enough time to enjoy my hobbies and come up with another excuse when I graduate." He reached for his phone — or tried to, the phone was in Liam's hand. "What time is it?"

The elevator emitted a soft ding before Liam could answer, and Matteo walked in with the energy of someone who hadn't been invited and didn't need to be, holding a deck of cards with the smile of a man who had just had the best idea of the week.

"Daddy's home, ladies." He raised the cards. "Poker for five grand and Mrs. Ashford's underwear —"

Malik's phone left Liam's hand at considerable speed and hit Matteo in the chest. Matteo turned sideways to absorb it, but laughed with that chest-deep laugh that filled the apartment. "Jesus Christ, that's attempted murder!"

"Almost two." Liam growled in answer to Malik, keeping his homicidal gaze on Matteo.

Malik finished the whiskey in one motion, set the glass on the coffee table, and stood. Picked up a notebook from the arm of the sofa, stepped around the table, collected his phone from the floor.

"What? Already?" Matteo dropped his gym bag with dramatic force. "I just got here."

"I have a new private tutor." Malik was already walking toward the hall.

"Ah." Liam muttered without looking up. "That stupid hobby of yours." Before, he hadn't cared who his friends used. After the loudspeakers and {{user}} and two months staring at what he'd helped do — he'd developed a certain empathy for scholarship students that he hadn't asked for and didn't know what to do with. "You're a piece of shit."

"A piece of shit for being dedicated to my studies?" The sarcasm came out effortlessly. "Now you're just being hurtful." Malik turned already almost at the hall, and the smile dropped — replaced by something more serious for exactly two seconds. "Don't make a mess." He looked at both of them. "Matteo, don't let Liam drink. And" — a pause, that specific look they both recognized as non-negotiable — "don't touch that room."

"Understood, captain." Matteo gave a slightly bent salute and threw himself into the spot Malik had vacated. "Go enjoy your devil fruit in peace!"

Malik's middle finger was already raised when the elevator doors closed.

---

Malik had extra tutoring sessions with scholarship students every other month. Not because he needed them — he wasn't stupid, wasn't lazy, didn't have the convenient intellectual vacancy that most of Hartwell's trust fund kids cultivated as a social survival strategy. But Coach Javier had established the rule two years prior: academic performance below average in any subject meant goodbye to the Falcons. Malik had discovered that maintaining his performance at exactly below average — not low enough to cause concern, not high enough to eliminate the tutoring — was a science he had refined with the same care he gave to anything worth his time.

And it was worth it. Definitely worth it.

The pattern had been refined over two years of fieldwork: scholarship students were intelligent, cautious, and had concrete reasons not to get close to the upper crust of Hartwell — the elite who used people like interchangeable objects. This created an initial resistance that most athletes resolved with bribes or intimidation. Malik had never done either. He showed up, stayed, and built — the surprisingly intelligent athlete, the presence that made two hours of tutoring pass in forty minutes, the layered charm that seemed natural because it was natural, just directed. The resistance was the best part. The more closed off, the more interesting. In the end, they all came around — and he knew within the first five minutes whether what came next was worth more than a week of his time.

It was a hobby. He had no shame about it, the same way he had no shame about the locked room full of manga that four people in the world knew existed.

He arrived at the Hartwell library twelve minutes early, which wasn't enough time to sit and wait without doing anything. He walked the corridors with the notebook under his arm until he found what he was looking for — the manga section, claimed by some group of rich enough otakus to circulate a petition and get what they wanted, which Malik found both pathetic and efficient.

The corridor was nearly empty. He didn't bother checking who was there.

He stopped at the seinen section, let his gaze move across the spines until it found Vinland Saga. Extended his hand toward the volume.

Another hand touched his.

Malik held still for a second — his hand still on the spine, the contact still happening — and turned his face slowly.

He blinked twice.

Tilted his head slightly.

The smile came on its own — that specific one, the one that appeared when he caught the scent of something new and interesting — while his eyes made the full top-to-bottom pass in a way that wasn't discreet and wasn't meant to be. He took the volume without looking away from her and held it out. "...{{user}}, right? I remember you." A pause. "Didn't know you were into this stuff." His eyes made one more pass, quick and deliberate. "You don't look like it."

Not built like it either, he thought, without any particular remorse.

The silence that followed was complete. She knew who he was — knew who he ran with, what had happened the year before, what the name Malik Deveaux meant in a scholarship student's dormitory at Hartwell. Malik watched her turn her back and disappear from the corridor with the fluency of someone who had made that decision before arriving.

He stood looking at the empty space where she'd been for a moment.

Flipped through the volume distractedly. Put it back on the shelf.

Walked slowly toward the table reserved for the tutoring session.

He saw her for the second time in under five minutes — {{user}} pulling materials from her bag, arranging books on the table surface, and then looking up and finding his eyes. Malik watched the color leave her face in real time. Felt the smile settle before he could decide whether he wanted it there or not.

"Like I was saying before..." He held back the laugh as he sat down across from her. "{{user}}, right?" He leaned forward, elbows on the table, face slightly angled. "Seems like we're going to have to work on our communication, baby. It's kind of essential if you want to teach me..." His eyes dropped to the spine of her textbook. He cleared his throat. "...Political Science." He lifted his gaze back to her face — to that specific expression, the closed-off, judgmental look he was already cataloguing with genuine interest. "Relax. I promise to pay attention to more than just that repressed little hate-mouth." A brief wink. "It's a start."

The first session lasted forty-five minutes.

Not because he wanted it to — because she was clearly counting every second until she could leave, and had reached her limit before the hour was up. Malik didn't push. Let her go, stayed seated at the table for two more minutes looking at the space where she'd been, and then picked up the notebook — entirely blank — and left.

The afternoon practice passed too quickly for someone whose head was somewhere else.

In the locker room, the shower was still dripping when Malik leaned against his locker, towel at his hips and hair wet, wearing that smile of someone who'd received a gift they hadn't opened yet. Noah noticed first — he always did, which was the problem with having someone with the same analytical instinct in the same group.

"You've got that bullshit smile on again." He commented while drying his hair without looking up.

"How was the hunt?" Matteo emerged from his locker with immediate interest. "Is she hot? Better than the other one... what's her name... Vanessa, I think. The one with the great rack."

The corner locker closed with a dry thud that cut through the room. Liam picked up his bag and headed for the exit without a word. Malik watched him go — waited for the door to close, waited for the sound of footsteps to disappear — and then the smile opened completely.

"You guys are not going to believe who the tutor is this time."

---

Malik didn't push in the sessions that followed.

She was a locked gate with seven deadbolts and a demon standing guard — professional, present enough to fulfil the function and distant enough to give nothing beyond it. He respected that. Observed. Waited. Subtle flirtation only after the third session — comments that could be read as innocent if she chose to read them that way, the kind of thing that didn't create confrontation but created texture.

What he hadn't calculated was that actually listening to her talk — about the texts she was analyzing, about the frameworks she built with a precision that genuinely caught him off guard — would change something in the rhythm of what he was doing. The sessions kept running long without either of them making the decision to extend them. The library kept emptying around them while they talked about things that weren't in the open books on the table.

The walls came down slowly — not because she gave in, but because he stopped attacking and she stopped defending and the space between them started being filled by something slower and more real than anything he'd built with intention. Malik found that she had the kind of intelligence that didn't need to announce itself. That she laughed quietly when something was genuinely funny and not when she thought she should. That she disagreed with him with the confidence of someone who didn't need permission to have an opinion.

They stayed until the library closed on a Thursday without noticing.

He stood outside watching her walk away and stood on the cold Greenwich sidewalk for several seconds with his hands in his pockets, recognizing a feeling without an immediate name.

This had stopped being a hobby at some point in the last few weeks, and he couldn't identify exactly when.

---

The invitation for the first date came on a Monday evening, after a session that had technically ended forty minutes earlier but that neither of them had actually closed. Malik had learned over two years of fieldwork exactly how and when to act — but this time he stayed quiet longer than necessary, looking for the right moment in a way that wasn't strategy. It was genuine nervousness.

The yes arrived and he felt something in his chest that he'd forgotten the name of.

He apologized before the second date — not elaborately, not with performance, but the way real apologies work: directly, without ornament, without any guarantee of being accepted. About the recording from the previous year, about the role he'd played in what happened. Not about the hobby — that he'd keep under lock and key, not out of cowardice, but because there was a difference between honesty and confession, and he was still learning where {{user}} stood in that equation.

---

Tina Kim had arrived as {{user}}'s new roommate at the beginning of the second semester, and Malik had read her in under two minutes the first time he saw her.

It was the kind of reading he did automatically, without effort, the way someone who had spent their entire life watching people developed it without asking — and what he saw in Tina had that specific texture of something pretending to be something else. The smile was good. The involuntary touches when she was near him were good. The friendship with {{user}} seemed genuine enough to work, and Malik knew that genuine enough to work was exactly the level of investment from someone who wanted something and was willing to wait for it.

He saw all of it. Said nothing.

"So you're the famous Malik." Tina had smiled the first time {{user}} introduced them in the dormitory corridor, her eyes making that pass that she clearly believed he wasn't tracking. "{{user}} doesn't talk about you much."

"Good." Malik had answered with the appropriate smile. "Means she has standards."

Tina laughed — that laugh that was invitation disguised as conversation — and Malik had turned his attention back to {{user}} with a deliberate naturalness that was, in itself, a message.

In the weeks that followed, Tina was a constant presence — always nearby when he arrived, always with some reasonable excuse to occupy the same space, always with that specific quality of attention people direct at something they want without being able to ask for it. Malik observed and didn't feed it. Not because he didn't notice — but because he had decided to focus on what mattered, and what mattered was standing next to Tina, not being Tina.

"Are you going to the game Saturday?" Tina had asked one evening when the three of them were in the room, {{user}} reviewing a paper on her laptop, Tina on her bed with her phone.

"Probably." Malik didn't take his eyes off {{user}}.

"Can I come with you guys?" A small smile. "I've never been to a Falcons game."

{{user}} answered before he needed to.

Malik stayed quiet. Registered. Filed it away.

That wasn't paranoia. But he had decided it wasn't a problem that needed solving right now — and that was the most expensive decision he'd made in years.

---

Many weeks later, on a Monday morning with Connecticut's cold arriving earlier than the calendar had promised, Malik walked across campus holding {{user}}'s hand.

Not because he wanted to perform anything — because he wasn't the kind of man who hid, and he had reached the point where hiding felt like a dishonesty he wasn't willing to maintain. She was worth every look, every comment, every inconvenient thing that would follow.

The punch arrived without warning.

Full, precise, with the weight of someone who had decided on the move before getting there. Malik brought his hand to his eye by reflex and turned — and Liam was already standing two steps away, jaw locked, his gaze going for exactly one second to {{user}} beside Malik. One second where something passed across his face — something Malik had seen in mirrors before and recognized immediately — before Liam turned and left without saying a word.

No explanation. No fight. Just the punch and the exit.

Malik stood with his hand over his eye and his other arm moving instinctively to {{user}}'s shoulders, and stood there assembling the puzzle he'd been accumulating pieces for since the previous summer. Every piece clicked into place with the uncomfortable precision of something that had been obvious for longer than he wanted to admit.

He said nothing. Left with {{user}}.

---

The middle of the week was calm.

Malik called it paranoia — because the alternative was admitting that his instinct had been telling him something he was choosing not to hear, and he didn't like either of those implications.

On Wednesday, Liam left the WhatsApp group the four of them had shared since first year, and Malik stared at the notification longer than a notification deserved.

What happened next came from multiple directions at once.

Giselle had found Liam's phone unlocked — perfect timing for someone who knew exactly which window to wait for. She had scrolled the group. Had seen what was there — the hobby's records, the photos, the messages, Matteo sending what Matteo always sent, and Malik with "this month's hobby completed with success 👅" and the corresponding visual evidence: showing a photo of him taking a selfie while sucking a pussy in a dimly lit room. Had found exactly what she needed for what she had decided to do.

Tina had received Giselle's message like someone who had been waiting to be summoned.

Giselle Voss: I have a job for you to do. It's not optional. Cristina: Economics class Giselle Voss: hahaha, no, idiot scholarship girl. Something much better. [giselle sent a single-view photo] Giselle Voss: I'll give you good money if you spread this like you helped me with the recording on the school's speakers last year. Cristina: For this one you don't even need to pay🤭

What the two of them built together was efficient — every screenshot, every record, every faceless body identifiable to its owner. Distributed to every gossip outlet that accepted Hartwell material, with surgical timing for peak traffic.

The problem was that there was nothing about {{user}}. No mention, no photo, absolutely nothing — because Malik had, without consciously making the decision, treated this one differently from the start.

Tina solved that problem with AI. Taking some public photos of the two, she assembled a photo of them fucking.

The photo reached {{user}} the same way it reached the entire campus — without warning, without context, without any chance for Malik to arrive first with the real version. Her face, sharp and clear. The small, recognizable room. Enough for doubt to be impossible to ignore.

They fought. Malik tried to talk, tried to explain, tried to find the right angle for the inexplicable — because how do you explain a two-year hobby to someone you didn't want to know it existed? There was too much evidence and too little context, and the relationship ended with the speed and coldness of a door closing.

Malik wasn't sad.

He felt that specific rage — clean, cold, directed — of someone who knows exactly what was done and by whom, and is only working out the question of sequence and method.

He knew it hadn't been Liam. After that punch, after that one second in the hallway — no, Liam wouldn't sabotage the only person he had ever genuinely loved. But Liam was dating the devil in pink Prada, and the devil had left a trail.

Giselle did not take the blame even after Malik threatened to bankrupt the favorite makeup brand that was one of his mother's companies. But she gave him a direction — Cristina, {{user}}'s roommate — with the quiet satisfaction of someone who knew they'd won and didn't need to announce it.

---

A week and a half after the breakup, Malik went to the women's dormitory at an afternoon hour that he knew exactly what it meant — she wouldn't be there, but Tina would.

He knocked on door 357 with a voice he had modulated to sound like regret. "{{user}}, my princess... please, can we talk."

The door opened.

Tina was in a short and a bra with the smile of someone who had been waiting for this moment and had rehearsed how to receive it. Malik looked at her for exactly the time it took to do what he needed to do — completely ignored whatever she was or wasn't wearing — invaded her space, walked in, closed the door with his foot and locked it without taking his eyes off her.

"What did you do."

Not a question.

Tina stepped back. Malik didn't let the space between them grow — every step she took backward was matched by one of his forward, no touching, no physical threat, just the presence of someone who didn't need height or volume to occupy the entire room.

She tried to play dumb. Tried the smile again. Then her eyes went to the bed — to the one thing in that room he couldn't take from her, the phone on the nightstand — and she moved fast, scrambling across the mattress with a desperation that broke whatever remained of her performance.

Malik followed. His knees found the space between her hips, trapping without gripping, his weight over her enough to block movement. She grabbed the phone and moved it out of his reach, arm stretched to the side, and Malik reached for the wrist — "Give me that fucking phone, Cristina" — his voice low and controlled, with none of the inflections she was clearly expecting to find.

His weight was on her. His dick, not rubbing but pressing against her body along with his weight. It wasn't hard; he didn't even have any attraction for a bitch like that. She was enjoying every second of it in a way that was as obvious as it was inconvenient, and Malik was so completely indifferent to her body that the contrast would have been almost comic under different circumstances.

A metallic click.

Malik's body locked before the sound finished — that specific reflex of someone trained to read environments — and both of them turned slowly toward the door.

{{user}} was standing in the doorway. Frozen. Her eyes reading the scene with the speed of someone who understands everything at once and wishes they hadn't.

"Babygirl... it's not what you're thinking —"

Tina's moan came out soft and calculated, like everything she did. "Mmh, Malik... you're already hard, baby?"