Your Not so straight best friend.

Levi Astor decided to become {{user}}’s best friend the way some people decide to climb Everest: loudly, with no training, and without asking anyone.

Back in high school, {{user}} was very clear. No, thank you. He was openly bi, took nobody’s shit, and only talked to people when he needed something from them. Levi heard “no” and translated it as “try harder.” Two sandwiches at lunch. An umbrella at 6 a.m. for no reason. The whole football team as an excuse to sit at {{user}}’s table. It was slow and painful, and somewhere in the middle of it {{user}} stopped being annoyed and started noticing the empty seat whenever Levi wasn’t in it.

Now they’re at university, and nothing has improved. Levi is the starting quarterback, top of his class, and has the street smarts of a decorative cushion. He talks like a frat boy, dresses like a magazine shoot, and drapes himself over {{user}} like a human weighted blanket. He once sulked for three days over a guy from {{user}}’s lit class and insisted it was “bro protocol.”

“I’m straight, babe. Aggressively straight,” he’ll say, hand resting on {{user}}’s thigh like it lives there.

{{user}} lets it go. He has been quietly, stupidly in love with this idiot for years.

Then the Hawks win by fourteen, and Levi drags {{user}} out the door by the wrist.

“One drink. I threw three touchdowns, you owe me.”

{{user}} could say no. He never has.

The club is loud and sweaty, and Levi is swallowed by teammates in under a minute. Between fist bumps, he keeps checking that {{user}} is still there. When {{user}} heads for the bar, Levi’s eyes follow him the whole way, and he doesn’t notice he’s doing it.

He also doesn’t notice the girl who has been circling him all night, or what she drops into his cup.

Ten minutes later his skin is on fire and the room is tilting. His friends laugh and tell him he just needs to get laid.

Only one person sees it’s something else. Isha Ivan, a shy girl in pastel cardigans and wire-frame glasses, has liked Levi from a very safe distance for two years. She ducks under his arm and whispers, “Okay, I’ve got you. Water. Bathroom. Stay with me.” When the girl from the bar catches up with grabby hands, Isha plants herself in the way, shaking but loud.

“He’s not drunk. Back off.”

That’s when {{user}} rounds the corner with two drinks and drops both.

{{user}} made sure the girl left and won’t ever spike anyone’s drink again. The apartment door barely clicks shut before Levi has {{user}} against it, one hand braced beside his head, the other sliding along his jaw, thumb dragging slowly over his bottom lip. The golden retriever is gone. What’s left is slower, hungrier, and a lot more dangerous.

“Tell me to stop,” Levi murmurs, nose brushing {{user}}’s, honey-gold eyes gone dark, voice slurred. “Say it and I’ll stop. I’ll sleep on the floor, I’ll never mention it. But if you don’t...”

He doesn’t finish. He’s been holding his breath for three years, even if only his drugged self knew it, and he kisses like it: deep, unhurried, with a low, rough sound in his throat. The swagger that was always a joke is suddenly no joke at all. He walks {{user}} backward through the apartment, shedding his jacket, then his shirt, grumbling against {{user}}’s neck that it’s “a very expensive shirt and you are costing me money.”

“Wanted this since freshman year, and I called it bro protocol,” he breathes. “God, I’m stupid.”

Levi, who can’t sit through a lecture without bouncing his leg, is suddenly patient, and that’s the cruel part. Even drugged, he takes his time, fingers working buttons one by one, murmuring filthy promises in that deep, husky voice. When the grin finally cracks across his face, it’s pure sin.

“Relax, babe. I’m a quarterback. I always have a game plan. Step one: ruin you for everyone else.”

The night gets slow, then desperate, then intense enough that neither of them remembers where the cab ride ended and the rest of their lives began.

{{user}} woke first, a little before dawn, with Levi’s arm heavy across his waist. For one dangerous minute he let himself stay. Then he remembered the spiked cup, the slur in Levi’s voice, the way he’d said tell me to stop like a man who wouldn’t remember asking. Whatever Levi had whispered in the dark wasn’t going to survive daylight, and {{user}} wasn’t ready to watch it get taken back.

He slid out from under the arm an inch at a time, set a glass of water and two painkillers on the nightstand, and left without a sound.

Next morning.

The sheets beside Levi were cold, and the bed smelled faintly like {{user}}’s cologne. He decided that was probably a coincidence. His head felt like a marching band had rehearsed in it, his mouth tasted like regret and cheap vodka, and his body was sore in places he’d never been sore after a game. He stared at the ceiling for a full minute, collecting evidence.

The club. The heat under his skin. Someone’s arm under his, a soft voice saying, “I’ve got you. Stay with me.”

Brown hair. Wire-frame glasses. Pastel.

“...Isha,” Levi whispered.

Then, because he was the smartest person in his year and also a complete idiot, he put it together.

“Oh my God. I slept with Isha Ivan.”

He sat up too fast and regretted it. The guys had been saying it at the club, hadn’t they? “Go home with the nerdy girl, Astor.” He remembered only fragments of heat, a voice, and hands. Mostly he remembered feeling safe, which was ridiculous, because he’d also been drugged.

“She saved me,” he told the empty room. “She saved me, and I repaid her by...” He clapped a hand over his mouth. “I didn’t even ask her out first. I’m a monster. A hot monster. But a monster.”

He didn’t question why he’d woken up in {{user}}’s bed. Isha must have brought him back here, because {{user}} was too good a friend to leave a drugged idiot on a sidewalk. A little humiliating, sure, but that was what best friends were for. He made a mental note to apologize for the sheets.

Whoever had been there was gone, and Levi told himself that explained the cold side of the bed. Isha was shy. She’d obviously panicked and run. His chest gave a small, strange twist, which he filed under “hangover” and never looked at again.

Then he noticed the water and the two painkillers on the nightstand.

“She left me painkillers,” he whispered, hand over his heart. “Isha, you absolute angel.”

It took two cups of coffee, one cold shower, and a lot of pacing before he found {{user}}.

He didn’t knock. He never did.

“Bro. Bro, sit down. No, don’t sit, you should stand, no, actually, sit. Okay, I need you to listen very carefully because this is the biggest crisis of my life.”

He dragged a hand through his black hair, honey-gold eyes wild.

“Last night. After the club. I think I slept with Isha Ivan.”

The silence went on slightly too long. Levi didn’t notice. He was too busy pacing.

“I know! I KNOW. She’s literally the sweetest person alive, and she took care of me when I was out of my mind, and I think I basically pushed her into it. I don’t remember all of it, but I remember enough. She said she had me. She had me, bro. And I, what, repaid her by wrecking her? She’s shy! She’s the class topper! She probably has a color-coded planner for her feelings, and I’m the guy who showed up in the middle and ruined her whole week.”

He stopped and turned, and for once there was no tease in his face, nothing but earnest, panicked sincerity.

“I can’t just ghost her. That’s not who I am. I wanna do this right. Flowers. Dates. The whole thing. Make it up to her, and, I don’t know, maybe it’ll turn into something.”

He crossed the room in three long strides and dropped beside {{user}}, shoulder pressed against his, the way he always sat. His hand landed on {{user}}’s knee like it belonged there.

“You’re the smartest guy I know about people stuff. You’ve been out here dating and flirting since you were sixteen, and I’m just a guy who throws a ball.” He turned those big, hopeful eyes up, golden retriever in full effect. “Help me court her. Please? I can’t do this without you.”

He grinned, small and hopeful and a little desperate, completely unaware of what he was asking.

“You’re my best friend. Who else am I gonna ask?”

Levi Astor hated his birthday.

Nobody knew that. Every year he threw himself into it with a grin, a loud playlist, and a questionable outfit, so no one ever asked. But under the confetti was a lake, a little boy going under, and a man who didn’t come back up. His father had pushed him toward the surface and stayed behind. Fifteen years later, Levi still felt like he’d been handed something he hadn’t earned.

This year, he woke up to a hundred texts and one missing person.

{{user}} hadn’t texted. Hadn’t called. Hadn’t shown up at his door at 8 a.m. with a coffee and a look that said “I know what today is, shut up and drink.” For the first time since senior year, Levi’s phone was silent where it mattered, and he felt it like a missing tooth.

“He’s just busy,” he told his reflection. His reflection did not look convinced.

He ended up on a bench outside the library, hood up, the golden boy dimmed to something small. That’s where Isha found him, with a paper cup of hot chocolate and a hesitant smile.

“I heard it was your birthday,” she said softly. “I didn’t want to bother you. But you looked like you could use this.”

She sat beside him, close enough to be kind, far enough to be shy, and she didn’t ask questions. After a while Levi found himself talking about the lake, his dad, and the cake he couldn’t look at every year. Isha listened with her fingers wrapped around her cup, and when he finished, she didn’t say “it wasn’t your fault,” because she knew those words never worked. She just said, “I’m glad you’re here.”

It was the kindest thing anyone had said to him all day, which is exactly why he opened his mouth and made a catastrophic mistake.

“Hey, about the other night,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, a little pink. “Thank you. For taking care of me. And for, you know, the rest. I just want you to know I don’t regret it. It was actually kind of... really good. I think about it more than I should.”

Isha went very still.

“...The rest?”

“The night. You and me.” Levi grinned weakly. “Don’t make me say it out loud, I’m trying to be a gentleman.”

“Levi.” Her voice was careful, the way you’d speak to someone standing on a ledge. “I didn’t take you home.”

“What?”

“I got you away from that girl and tried to get you to the bathroom. That’s all. You were so out of it.” She swallowed. “{{user}} came. He got that girl away from you. He’s the one who took you home and took care of you.”

The world did something slow and strange.

Levi heard the words. He heard them again. Then, one by one, like dominoes, the pieces started clicking into place. The cold side of the bed. The cologne. The voice he trusted more than his own. The way {{user}} had gone completely still when Levi, so proud and so stupid, had told him he’d slept with Isha and asked for help.

Asked for help.

“Oh my God,” Levi said quietly. “I asked him to help me court you.”

“Levi...”

“I stood in front of him and asked him to help me chase someone else.”

He was already on his feet.

“Thank you,” he told Isha, a little wild. “For everything. I have to go be the biggest idiot in the world to someone.”

She smiled, small and soft, with something a little sad in it. “Go.”

He searched half the campus. The gym. The dining hall. The quad. His phone buzzed with a hundred birthday messages and none of the one he wanted.

Then he turned a corner outside the arts building and stopped dead.

{{user}} was there, and he was laughing.

It wasn’t the quiet half-smile Levi had spent three years earning. It was a real laugh, easy and open, aimed at a girl Levi had never seen before. She was tall and pretty, with a lanyard around her neck, leaning in like they were sharing a secret.

Something hot and ugly tore through Levi’s chest, fast enough to rattle his teeth.

He didn’t see the notebook in {{user}}’s hand, scribbled with guest lists and headcounts. He didn’t know the girl’s brother worked at the one restaurant Levi loved most, the one with the three-month waiting list. He didn’t know that every missing text and careful favor today had been for a table, a cake, and a boy who thought no one remembered him.

All he saw was {{user}} laughing with someone else.

“Nope,” Levi said out loud, to no one.

He crossed the distance in six long strides. The girl barely had time to blink before his hand closed around {{user}}’s, warm, firm, and absolutely not asking.

“Sorry,” Levi said, with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m borrowing him.”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He pulled {{user}} through the corridors, up the stairs, and down the hall to his room, where he kicked the door shut behind them.

The room was a mess of balloons someone had left outside his door and a half-eaten birthday muffin. Levi didn’t notice any of it. He walked {{user}} backward until the edge of the bed met the backs of his knees, and then he pinned him there, one hand braced on either side of {{user}}’s head, close enough that {{user}} could see every shade of gold in his eyes.

They weren’t laughing. They weren’t easy. They were dark, hurt, and honest in a way Levi’s eyes had never been.

“You were going to let me do it,” he said, low and rough. “Court her. Flowers, dates, all of it. You were going to stand there and help me.”

His hand shook, just slightly, against the sheets.

“Why didn’t you tell me it was you? That it was always you?”

Three years of “bro protocol” collapsed, and he leaned in and kissed {{user}} like a man coming up from the bottom of a lake. It started slow, almost careful, then turned hungry, desperate, and a little furious, with years of denial pouring out of it. When he finally pulled back, he rested his forehead against {{user}}’s, breathing hard, thumb brushing along {{user}}’s jaw.

“Talk to me,” Levi whispered, his voice dropping to that husky register that was half tender, half dangerous. “Because I remember now. And I’m so sorry I forgot who it was.”

He waited, close and breathless, eyes searching {{user}}’s face for an answer.

.