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Lance never meant for it to start. He didn’t really know what changed, but things had shifted between him and Todd. They went from being two college roommates who got high and did stupid things together—to fucking all over their shared apartment. He just knew that he couldn’t stop, no matter how much the guilt ate at him inside. Because, well, it didn’t count if he was high, right?
That was the rule, the loophole. If his head was fuzzy and his muscles loose and Todd was already half in his lap, panting like he couldn’t wait to get ruined—then it didn’t mean anything. Couldn’t mean anything. Because being sober meant responsibility, meant intent, and Lance had never meant to do this. Not the first time, not the fourth, and definitely not last Thursday when he’d pressed Todd up against the hallway wall with one hand still wrapped around a bag of chips.
He had a girlfriend, for god’s sake. He’d been with Kitty for over a year, and things were—good. Comfortable. Predictable. She smiled at him like he was someone worth dating. She said things like we’re building something together, like they were adults trying to figure out a future instead of two mutants clinging to the idea of normalcy with bloody nails.
He shouldn’t have been fooling around. He knew that he just couldn’t stop. There was something so intoxicating about how pathetic Todd got when he fell apart for him. Not just the sex—though the sex was fucking deranged—but the way Todd would say please like he meant it, like Lance was the only thing standing between him and complete meltdown.
It felt good, being wanted like that. Desperately. Shamefully. Todd wasn’t subtle—he never had been—and it was that kind of full-throttle need that kept Lance coming back to ruin all over again. So he did. Over and over again.
Sometimes it was the couch. Sometimes the shower. Once, it had been the dryer, half-full of warm clothes Todd had no intention of folding. There’d been no plan, no seduction—just the sharp spike of tension, the lopsided grin, the flicker of Todd’s eyes to Lance’s mouth like he was daring him. And then Lance had shoved him back, kissed him so hard he’d nearly chipped a tooth, and let everything go blurry again.
He thought he kept the whole thing hidden pretty well.
Kitty would never guess that Lance, of all people, would get with Todd. His best friend since Brotherhood days, back when they were fifteen and borderline feral. They used to scream at each other for sport, tackle each other over the remote, fall asleep in the back of a stolen van like it was all just a game.
So it was easy to hide. Easier than it should’ve been.
It wasn’t like Todd was dying to confess. He could barely hold a conversation with Kitty without twitching. That wasn’t new. Todd had never liked Kitty much—never thought she was good enough for Lance. He thought she was soft in all the wrong ways, too careful, too suburban. Todd didn’t trust people who didn’t know how to get dirty.
He’d said it once. High as hell and folded over Lance’s chest, voice muffled against his skin: She’s from a world that was never gonna let you in, man. You keep knocking on that door, and it’s bolted shut every time. You think if you smile right they’ll stop seeing you like trash?
Lance had laughed it off. Told him to shut the fuck up. Told him he was just jealous. But maybe, deep down, Todd wasn’t wrong.
Kitty had always wanted the best version of him—the version with clean jeans and straight A’s, the one who said thank you to her professors and drank oat milk lattes without making a face. She wanted the reformed Lance. A respectable boyfriend. No matter how often he tried to change himself for her—for them—it never quite stuck.
He would always be Brotherhood. Trash in the eyes of people like her parents, like the people she called friends. No matter how hard he scrubbed, there were parts of him that wouldn’t come clean. But with Todd, he didn’t have to. Todd wanted the worst of him. The mess. The snap. The fuck-ups and all.
Lance hated how good that felt.
It wasn’t until Kitty saw the scratches on Lance’s back that she got the first inkling of suspicion. They weren’t subtle. Red and raised and clearly dragged in by someone either very horny or very pissed off—Kitty had stared at them for a full five seconds, blinked, then looked back like maybe the lighting had lied to her.
Lance had frozen mid-shirt pull, eyes going wide, brain clearly scrambling behind them.
“Uh—those’re… yours?” he said, with all the confidence of a man who hadn’t been laid by his girlfriend in over a week and clearly forgot how her nails actually worked.
Kitty raised one perfectly skeptical brow.
“I don’t have claws, Lance.”
For a moment, she almost believed him anyway. Almost. She wanted to but the doubt itched somewhere she couldn’t scratch. It didn’t matter how many times he insisted. Something didn’t line up and once the idea lodged in her brain, it didn’t let go.
Lance, meanwhile, thought he’d dodged a bullet. A close one. He even lit a joint that night like it was a victory cigar. Until he found Todd shirtless on the couch, one arm slung behind his head like he hadn’t just nearly wrecked Lance's relationship, sucking on a popsicle like his mouth was made for it.
“You have to stop scratching,” Lance hissed.
Todd didn’t even look at him. “You gotta stop sounding like you’re into it when I do.”
Lance threw a couch pillow at his face. “I’m serious!”
Todd pulled it down with a dramatic sigh, popsicle still in hand. “Dude, if you wanna start policing how I ride your dick, we can stop. It’s not my relationship you’re tanking.”
That should’ve been a wake-up call.
It wasn’t.
Lance knew he was walking a knife’s edge but that was the problem—he didn’t want to pick. He wanted both. Kitty’s smile. Todd’s mouth. The quiet comfort of a steady girlfriend and the loud, deranged chaos of his best friend choking on cock in the laundry room. He was selfish, he was stupid, and he was too far gone to stop now.
So no, banging Todd didn’t stop. If anything, they started getting worse.
The kitchen counter. The sofa. The shower, twice in the same day. One time Lance caught himself mid-thrust staring at a cereal bowl and thinking, I should be smarter than this . But then Todd moaned in his ear and it all left his head.
Because when had Lance Alvers ever not been a stubborn, reckless asshole?
Exactly.
Which is how it all came crashing down, naturally, on a Wednesday.
They had been going to shower together—honest. That was the plan. Get in, get clean, maybe mess around a little. Nothing too crazy.
They never made it past the tile. Somewhere between Lance stepping in behind him and Todd smirking over his shoulder, things spiraled. Clothes hit the floor. So did Todd. Now he was flat on his back, knees hitched up, mouth open, the heel of one foot pressed uselessly against the vanity for leverage.
Lance’s hands were clamped hard on Todd’s hips, dragging him down onto every brutal thrust, his rhythm mechanical and punishing, like he was trying to fuck his regrets into nonexistence. Todd’s back arched with each hit, breathless and wild, head tipping back against the floor as he moaned like someone being filleted in the best possible way.
Neither of them heard the front door open. They definitely didn’t hear Kitty’s keys drop into the ceramic dish by the entry. “Lance?” she called, sweet and unsuspecting. “You home? I thought you had practice—”
Then she heard it.
Moaning.
She stopped mid-step. Okay. Chill. Guys watch porn. It was probably porn. Hell, maybe Lance forgot to close a tab on his laptop again. She tried to laugh it off, tried to breathe.
Then she heard it again.
“Right there—fuck—don’t stop—”
Her blood ran cold. She knew that voice. It wasn’t porn. It wasn’t even straight porn.
That was Todd.
Frozen to the tile in her Keds, Kitty stared at the bathroom door, wide open just a sliver. Her feet moved before her brain caught up. The moaning only got louder. Lance groaned Todd’s name, low and desperate.
Then she saw them. Lance— her boyfriend —was balls deep in his roommate. On the fucking bathroom floor.
Todd looked wrecked . Legs spread wide, hair a sweaty halo on the tiles, mouth open around these high, broken gasps. Lance was over him, moving hard, face flushed and strained, back glistening with sweat. Kitty just stood there like her soul had detached from her body. She didn’t even blink. Her eyes locked on Lance—on the red scratch marks clawed down his back, fresh . The same kind she’d asked about last week.
Everything she needed to know was right there.
Lance saw her first. Froze. His entire body jolted as he whipped around, panic slamming into his expression. He scrambled to cover himself, arms jerking to shield Todd, his mouth fumbling for a word—any word.
Too late.
Kitty blinked once. The spell snapped. “Fuck you,” she hissed, voice low and tight, and turned on her heel. She didn’t even grab the bag she’d set down—just snatched it mid-stride like it offended her. The front door slammed behind her with a ferocity that made the walls shudder.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Todd, left alone on the floor, let his head thump back against the tub.
He stared at the ceiling, still catching his breath.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Real fuckin’ romantic.”
He sat up slowly, peeled the towel out from under him, and forced himself onto shaky legs. Nobody was gonna clean that mess but him. He stepped into the actual shower like that had been the plan all along. Because hey—at the end of the day, it wasn’t his relationship falling apart.
He’d just been the hole.
Lance threw his clothes on in a rush, fingers fumbling over his phone as he tried calling, texting— anything . But Kitty wasn’t answering. Not a single read receipt. Not even the little dots.
He hadn’t even looked at Todd. Hadn’t thought about him since the second he locked eyes with Kitty.
Everything else had disappeared.
—------
It was around 9 p.m. when the knock came at the door. Pietro let out the longest, most put upon sigh known to man and dragged himself off the couch.
Normally, when Kurt was home, he answered the door by sheer instinct— “You’re not exactly a first impression kind of guy,” he’d say with a look that was equal parts judgment and fondness. Which was so unfair. Pietro was great at first impressions. He got across exactly what he wanted: hot, fast, unbothered. Perfect.
He swung the door open with zero enthusiasm.
Lance was standing there. Hair a mess. Face pale. Stress clinging to him like smoke.
Pietro blinked once. “What do you want, Alvers?”
Lance exhaled hard, like the words had been stuck in his throat for an hour. “Kitty caught me.”
Pietro raised an unimpressed brow. “Caught you what ?”
“With Todd,” Lance muttered, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “I have no idea what to do.”
Pietro stared for a full beat, then let out a low whistle. “You let her catch you with your roommate?”
“You think I wanted her to catch us?! It just—it happened so fast!” Lance snapped.
“Damn.” He tilted his head, mouth twitching. “Like, what—she found your texts or some shit?”
Lance’s face twitched.
“Or your Snap history?” Pietro continued, warming up. “Or, wait, oh my god—was it the butt dial? You didn’t accidentally call her while—”
“She walked in on us.”
Pietro stopped.
“Fucking.”
“Oh fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
Lance’s voice dropped like it physically hurt him to say it. “…The bathroom floor.”
Pietro burst out laughing. Full-body, wheezing, delighted laughter. He staggered back a step and clutched his side like he’d just heard the best joke of his life. “No. Noooo. No, that’s fucking insane.” He slapped the doorframe. “You got caught balls deep on the bathroom floor?!”
Lance groaned. “You’re a dick.”
“You’re a public health crisis!” Pietro howled, nearly crying. “That’s tile, bro. You were raw-dogging on tile.”
“I know!” Lance shouted, dragging both hands down his face. “Just—help me. What the hell do I do?”
Pietro finally straightened, smirking like the devil. “I dunno, man. Tell her it wasn’t you.”
Lance stared at him, dead inside.
Pietro just shrugged, smug. “Worked for Shaggy.”