Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Late afternoon slid down the walls in long, worn streaks, the way it always did in this house when the sun turned sideways and tired. Jonas’s room caught it gently. The slate-blue paint drank the light instead of throwing it back; the poster corners lifted in the breeze from the cracked window. Everything here had a fringe of softness to it - edges dulled by use, color taken down to calm.

His room sat at the end of the hall, past the scuffed banister and the dip in the floorboards that creaked like a throat clearing. It wasn’t big, but it fit him: a narrow bed with a wool throw tucked too precisely; a desk that had stopped pretending not to be a dining table in a former life; a shelf of books with spines softened from last year’s anxious rereads. On the sill, plants that had not yet dried - two pothos making slow, brave reaches and a stubborn succulent that had learned survival by neglect.

Jonas fit his spaces the way he fit his sweaters: quietly, reliably, without a need to announce. He liked predictable things. Clean lines, lists with squares he could tick off, mugs set down on the same coaster until the ring was half a country. He liked that the house had a rhythm, even when the boys in it didn’t. Someone always hummed in the mornings. Someone always laughed too loudly at midnight. Someone - often Jonas - remembered to pick up milk on the walk back from the station. Nobody ever asked him to tell a story he didn’t want to tell.

He’d worked late for three days straight and felt it in the tired way his eyes tracked the room: desk - phone - door - back again. Emails had made a nest in his head and wouldn’t stop hatching questions. The editor wanted revisions by Thursday. Leo wanted to go over shots before lunch tomorrow. Eli wanted to know if the landlord had texted back about the leaky window. Life came in requests and Jonas nodded, said I’ve got it, and then got it, because he understood that certainty, like rent, was a kind of care you paid for people to feel safe.

He was careful with himself too, in the way that made outsiders mistake him for distant. Careful with how much he spoke, careful with what he admitted, careful with the way his body asked for things at inconvenient times. He didn’t like to be seen asking. He liked to survive the moment and make the surviving invisible.

From his bed he could hear the house, as usual: the bathroom fan already going, a low whirr; water starting up; the faint scrape of a razor or maybe Milo’s theatrical tooth-brushing. Down the hall, a door thudded, then the clear, bell-bright lift of Leo’s laugh. The kitchen offered the soft, domestic percussion of a spoon against a mug. Familiar. A list of sounds that meant the day had not tipped into chaos yet.

Jonas rolled his shoulders back and let the familiar take weight from the unfamiliar. Because there was a pressure under his stomach that had been a suggestion an hour ago and was now a note written in a thicker pen. He set a palm there and pressed lightly, then took it away, like acknowledging the ache out loud would make it louder.

He was good at waiting. Trains. People. Weather that pretended it wasn’t about to rain. He had learned to fold discomfort neatly and put it on a shelf while he got on with whatever needed doing. The bathroom door had been closed when he first thought about getting up; it was still closed now. He told himself fine. He told himself later. He told himself there’s time.

The light shifted down the wall and the room took a breath with it. Jonas counted his own: in for four, out for six. The trick worked on email anxiety and late-night heart tremors. It could work on this. The fan kept purring. Water kept running. The radiator ticked again, as if seconding his vote.

He looked at his desk, at the neat stack of notebooks and the pen laid across the top like punctuation. At the empty plastic water bottle he’d drained a few hours ago and never tossed. He looked away from it just as quickly. He could wait. The door would open. The day would give him the one small mercy he needed. It usually did.

He dug his heels into the rug and straightened. He’d hold.

He always did.

Five minutes stretched. The fan hummed. A new song started on someone’s phone - Milo’s tinny pop through the bathroom door. Jonas watched the clock and pretended he wasn’t checking the time. His body kept forwarding the same memo, marked urgent in red. He filed it. Filed it again.

He tried the small tactics first. Shifted to one hip, then the other. Loosened his jaw. Crossed his right leg over his left and pressed the ankle down hard until the calf trembled and released. Breathed through it. Thought of anything else: the editor’s margin notes, the way Leo always said “one more” and meant six; the grocery list magneted to the fridge in the kitchen he should probably check before he left. His gaze made the loop room - door - room and landed, uninvited, on that empty bottle.

The pressure sharpened the way daylight sharpens edge - sudden, unarguable. He flinched and went absolutely still, muscle locking on muscle in a quiet chain. The spike passed, but it left warning behind. A warm prickle ghosted low. He swallowed and kept his face neutral, though no one could see it.

“Bathroom’s still occupied?” Eli called faintly from down the hall, as if testing a storm from the porch.

Milo sang through a mouthful of toothpaste. “Give me five!”

Five was either nothing or everything.

Jonas stood because sitting felt like compressing a spring, and the spring was beginning to bow. Standing was worse for a second, then better, then worse again - his body renegotiating the terms with each shift. He planted his feet, hip-width, knees loose. He’d watched athletes on the platform before a lift take this shape. It hadn’t looked like prayer then.

He counted tiles on the floor. Twelve to the door, six across. The fan hummed. The song changed. He told himself stories to bridge seconds: about being twelve and deciding that if he could just never be the reason a room had to stop, then nothing bad would happen; about moving into this house and finding that some rooms stopped for you anyway; about the first week, when Milo had left four toothbrushes all at once on the sink and declared it “abundance” like it was a religion.

Another wave rose, steadier than the last. He flexed fingers, then pressed his hand flat against his thigh instead of where instinct wanted it. The urge to hold himself was a drumbeat. He ignored it because ignoring had muscles that were used to the work.

Water shut off. The fan kept on.

“Two minutes,” Milo called. “Sorry!”

Jonas let breath out through his teeth and nodded to no one. He could do two minutes. He’d survived worse on a bus in traffic behind a street parade, on a platform when they announced delays, in a meeting where the boss had forgotten humans had bodies. Two minutes was nothing if you didn’t count it.

He tried not to count it.

Thirty seconds in, he made the mistake of thinking of rivers. The mistake made itself, really - his eyes ticked to the plant on his sill, the pothos trailing toward the floor, the way it liked water on Sunday afternoons when the light was full. The body understands pictures better than orders. The ache became a shout. He rocked once forward on his toes and stopped himself with a hand to the desk, breath seizing for a heartbeat.

“Hey, anyone seen my charger?” Leo’s voice floated past the door, casual, close. Footsteps. The blurred geometry of a shadow moving under Jonas’s door.

Jonas’s face didn’t change. That was a skill too.

The bathroom door did not open. Seconds kept stubbing their toes on themselves and standing back up.

Another surge hit - deeper, lower, with a hint of heat that meant effort’s limits were near. He felt a small, hot give and froze, mortified in an empty room. It was nothing. He checked himself with a firm press of thighs, with breath, with will. The prickle held, then receded.

He stared at the doorknob, willing it to turn. It did not. He pictured Milo blow-drying his hair, narrating his routine to an invisible audience, putting on moisturizer with moral conviction. Jonas’s mouth almost smiled because the world was ridiculous and he loved it anyway. The ache didn’t care about love or humor or timing.

The bottle on the desk sat there and said nothing out loud.

Jonas reached for it.

He didn’t look at himself while he did it. He looked at the desk, at the corner where the veneer had chipped and he had sanded it smooth last fall. He looked at the chipped mug holding his pens upright like soldiers who knew better than to complain. He looked anywhere but at his hand twisting the cap and the tremor in his fingers as he unscrewed plastic from plastic.

The bottle was clean. He told himself that like it was a moral. He positioned himself, hips forward, knees apart just enough, bottle angled, his other hand doing the job pride wouldn’t name. Every muscle above his waist tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. His shoulders stayed square. His jaw kept its line.

Ready , he thought, and then the body let go.

Heat struck the plastic with a noise that was louder than physics should have allowed. The first stream came hard and fast because there was no polite way to do this, no way to trick biology into decorum. Jonas’s breath punched out of him; his hand tightened reflexively. He tried to ride the line between letting go and stopping, a control that felt less like choice and more like gripping a rope that had already been yanked.

He cut it to a trickle. The trickle fought him. He won for now.

The bottle accepted what it was given, warm weight gathering in his palm. He tried not to think about the angle, the way the mouth wasn’t quite wide enough, the way any slip would tip humiliation into a mess too bright to hide. He stared at the wall and counted the tiny imperfections in the paint.

A sound outside - Leo again, or maybe the hallway settling - made his shoulders jump, and the stream answered with a surge. He bit down a curse and reined in, a small grunt leaving despite him. Sweat had started under his hairline. His thighs trembled, trying to be made of something stronger than they were.

He capped the bottle earlier than he wanted to, because he’d hit the limit of what he could hold back. The plastic clicked; the cap sealed. He placed it on the desk with a care that felt ceremonial and wrong.

Relief stroked through him briefly. It was partial, a loosening of the belt without taking it off, a breath that didn’t reach the bottom of the lungs. The pressure remained, less sharp but somehow larger in outline, like the problem had drawn itself in thicker marker.

He sat there for a count of ten, then twenty, willing his body to believe the partial was enough. It wasn’t. A cramp rolled up from the base of his spine and folded him a fraction forward. He breathed through it. Another followed a beat later, and the next didn’t wait at all.

He stood too quickly. The room went soft at the edges for a second. He closed his eyes, then opened them on the laundry basket by the dresser.

It was overflowing with familiar clothes. Old hoodies Leo had given him when he’d misjudged the weather; shirts that had survived three apartments; sweatpants with a tiny hole at the knee and another at the seam, destined for mending. The smell was a lived-in cotton lightness, not clean but not yet truly dirty either. The heap could swallow sound. It could keep secrets.

The plan formed not in words but in motion. Jonas got there in three careful steps, each one negotiated with the animal sense that knew where a body could fail. He crouched; his knees clicked; he didn’t care. Waistband down again, just enough. His hand steadied him on the dresser edge, knuckles pale, head dipping because there were things even he didn’t want to watch himself do.

He tried to aim. There was a moment where control was still something he could claim and then pressure became action.

The stream tore out of him too forceful. It hit cotton with a hungry sound that seemed to absorb everything - noise, shame, the last vestige of needing this to be pretty. Heat spread fast. Layers darkened, a map of relief expanding in widening shapes. The basket drank what it could with the grateful greed of fabric that had spent a week waiting for a machine.

Jonas’s breath left him in a low, rough sound he would later pretend he hadn’t made. His knees went a little weak; he leaned more of his weight onto his braced hand; his eyes closed because seeing would make it harder to remember himself kindly later. The sound shifted - a rush to a pour to a steady, insistent patter. His body unwound in stages, doors unlocking down a hallway he’d kept bolted all day.

He didn’t think words while it happened. Words would have been an insult to the simple, perfect act of relief.

When it began to slow, he stayed where he was. The last heavy drops felt indecently loud in the new quiet. He counted three breaths because that was how you taught your nervous system it wasn’t under attack anymore. His shoulders came down from around his ears. The knot low in his belly unknotted. The world slid back into place, not with a click, but with a soft settling.

He fixed himself quietly, the way you straighten a picture after a tremor. He drew the waistband up. He ghosted a hand over the top layer of the basket and folded a hoodie to cover the darkest patch. Not to deny the moment, just to tuck it into privacy.

He didn’t look for judgment in the room. The room offered none.

He stayed with the basket, hand still on the dresser edge, forehead lowered just enough to feel the cool of the air on his neck. The radiator ticked once. The house exhaled.

He felt lighter in the precise way that makes you aware of how heavy you had been. The absence of pain was not neutral; it was its own presence filling the body with small silences he had missed. He breathed into them. He let his ribs widen. He rolled his shoulders slowly back and waited for the last tremor in his thighs to settle.

He listened to the aftermath like a man listening after a storm: for leaks, for cracks, for new problems. There were none. Only the faint damp smell rising from the laundry, cotton’s particular way of telling you it had done a job. It would be washed tomorrow, turned into clean again by a machine that never asked why any of it happened.

A thought brushed him with the backs of its fingers: if someone had knocked just then, if Leo had come to ask about dinner or Eli to question a bill, he would have frozen, turned his body into a wall and his expression into an empty room. But nobody had. The house had kept its side of the agreement, the one they’d never signed but always honored. Handle your business. We’ll pretend we didn’t hear.

The bathroom fan clicked off. Here came the everyday.

“Bathroom’s free now,” Milo called, honey-bright, passing the door with a satisfaction that said he’d made himself the main character of his morning and enjoyed every minute of it. “Finally. That took forever.”

Jonas stared at the knot in the wood floor by his shoe and let a laugh catch in his throat and stay there. It wasn’t mean. It wasn’t bitter. It was the kind of laugh that recognizes the way the universe swings its timing like a door that misses you by an inch and still makes you flinch.

He sat on the bed—not collapsing, not dramatically, but with the care you use after you’ve been carrying something too far and finally put it down. His pulse slowed. The room came back in: corners, light, the plant on the sill that didn’t need him to be anything but a man who watered it on Sundays.

There was a version of today where he would have spiraled from here. Would have chewed at the thought of it until the flavor was gone and the worry grew teeth. Would have imagined discovery, humiliation, jokes that landed wrong and lived under his skin for a week. He could feel that path like an old groove under his feet.

He checked his phone. A text from Leo blinked: Still on for tomorrow? Need your ruthless eye. Jonas typed back Eleven. Bring coffee. Three dots. Deal.

He put the phone down and realized his shoulders were where they belonged. He breathed and didn’t notice breathing. The sense of surviving, which had been a hum under everything for the last half hour, faded into the general noise of being a person.

He looked once more at the basket. It looked back without opinion. He pictured the washing machine swallowing the whole load, the warm, good smell of shirts pulled from the dryer and piled onto the couch for folding while someone talked about a show he didn’t watch. He pictured dropping the memory of this moment into that smell and having it come out softer.

He sat and let his room be his room again. The blue on the walls calmed instead of accusing. The plant on the sill looked like a plant, not like a sufficiency test. The bottle was just that filled. The laundry basket was a short-term archive with an expiration date and a spin cycle.

He thought, briefly, about telling someone a joke about it later, making it easy for them to meet him where he wanted them to stand - at the edge of the thing with a smile and a nod and then a new topic. He decided against it. Not because it was shame, exactly, but because privacy could be a generosity to yourself when the rest of the world asked for so much visibility you forgot you had edges.

On the way to the kitchen, he passed the bathroom with its door ajar and the fan off, quiet and neutral, a stage between scenes. He didn’t look in. He didn’t need to mark it as won or lost. He went on.

The kitchen light made everything look a little kinder. He poured water and drank it and did not think about cause and effect. He answered Eli’s question about the window with the kind of answer that ends a problem instead of starting three more. He told Leo eleven again, because Leo asked again . He listened to Milo’s story about a pigeon on the windowsill that had looked personally offended by his singing. He smiled because the world was loud and ridiculous and good.

Back in his room, he grabbed his bag and checked it, not because he was leaving now, but because ritual helps, and small readiness makes larger readiness possible. He zipped the bag. He set it by the door.

He looked once more at the basket, at the place where he’d folded a hoodie over a darker patch. He didn’t feel the tug in his chest that meant shame. He felt the mild, practical tug that meant remember to do a wash . He nodded once to the room, a man setting a tiny thing back on its track.

He had not wanted this to be the story of his day. It wasn’t. It was a moment inside a day that kept going. He’d needed help from no one and kindness from himself, and for once he’d given it. That counted.

He opened the door and stepped into the hall. The house took him in like it always did—without fanfare, without pity, with the steady, ordinary promise of rooms that would hold what you couldn’t and still let you walk out standing.

Timing , he thought again, but with a softer mouth this time.

Then he went to see what needed doing next.

Chapter Text

Milo kicked his bedroom door open with a socked foot, hoodie half-zipped, backpack hanging on one shoulder. A granola bar hung from his teeth as he fished for his keys with one hand and balanced a too-full travel mug with the other.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m ten minutes out,” he said into his phone, which was clamped between cheek and shoulder in a way that had ended worse for lesser men. “Don’t start without me or I’ll haunt your coffee. No, like - actively haunt it.”

He thumbed the call away and bounced down the hall. Sunshot dust floated in the air; the old runner rug buckled in its usual place; the house smelled like toast and someone’s shampoo. He grinned at the ceiling for no reason except that mornings were little stages and he liked making them applaud.

The hall was too quiet, though. Suspiciously quiet. He slowed and made a face that, on him, read as delighted rather than alarmed.

“Bathroom,” he announced to no one, and felt his body agree in a way that was not a suggestion. A low, warm weight pressed under his waistband. He’d meant to handle that before the granola, before the hoodie hunt, before the performance of pretending his room wasn’t a tornado. He hadn’t. Classic.

Steam leaked from beneath the bathroom door in a thin, curly ribbon. Milo put a hand to the wood, let the cool damp kiss his palm, and staged a sigh.

“Shower goblin,” he accused affectionately. “I see you.”

He leaned on the wall, took a heroic, unnecessary sip of coffee from his mug, and winced when his bladder registered it as an act of treason. Not urgent. Not yet. But the kind of not-urgent that had a calendar invite for ten minutes from now.

He knocked lazily with his knuckles. “If you drowned, blink twice.”

Muffled laughter. “Just got in! Give me five!”

“Five?” Milo echoed, eyebrows up in theatrical disbelief. “You think I give my bladder that kind of faith?”

He rocked on his heels, the kind of tiny jitter that wasn’t nervousness so much as energy with nowhere to perch. His joggers sat low. He was fine. He was always fine. But the weight pressed a little more, and he shifted his stance like a dancer finding center.

He tried ignoring it by narrating his own life. “All right. We’re chill. We’re zen. We’re absolutely not timing this like a competitive sport.”

He checked his watch anyway and snorted.

Thirty seconds. He could hold it. Easy. He always could. It was his thing - ride the edge, smile through it, do the bit until the bit did him back and he bow-bowed his way out of the scene. Most mornings never even noticed.

This morning did.

The next pulse of urgency rose hot and definite, a wave that made his breath snag for half a beat. He straightened, let the coffee hand drop, and pressed his shoulder blades into the wall. “Okay,” he said calmly to his own lower abdomen. “Noted. We’re in the pre-chorus.”

He knocked again, a little louder. “Status update from the hallway: structural integrity at, like, sixty percent. We are approaching splash zone.”

Water roared cheerfully in response.

“Bold,” he muttered, then pitched his voice for drama. “If you hear peeing , that’s on you, not me.”

He crossed one ankle over the other, uncrossed, rolled his hips in a way that would have looked idiotic on anyone less built for mischief. It helped. Then it didn’t. His body had the audacity to be a person instead of a prop. Rude.

A sharper pang punched through him. The kind that came with heat. He exhaled through his teeth and rocked on the balls of his feet. “And we’re live,” he whispered, as if narrating a heist scene. “This is fine.”

He hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his joggers and tugged down an inch to let air in and pressure out. Relief flickered, then his muscles slipped with the treacherous little yes of a door unlatched.

A hot spurt burst free before he could catch it - fast, sharp, humiliating only in theory. It struck the door with a soft, mortifying tap . Milo went very still, eyes wide, then choked out a laugh that didn’t have much humor in it.

“Aw, c’mon, man,” he told his own body like it was a badly behaved dog. Instinct got his hand down hard, palm pressing through the thin, warmed fabric to clamp off any follow-up. He succeeded - barely. A bloom darkened at the seam, quick and definite.

“Friendly warning!” he called brightly, because the only way out was through. “An installation piece is happening in the hall in, I dunno, thirty seconds? Forty if I start praying.”

Silence on the other side. Water, then nothing. The fan whirred on like an appliance that refused to get involved.

Milo blew out air, cheeks puffed. The humor began to fray around the edges, its scaffolding visible beneath the grin. He pressed his thighs together and bounced once. Sweat gathered at his hairline. The pressure had become heavy and low and insistent, a bass note that didn’t care about his bit.

He tried again. Softer. “Hey. Seriously. I’m gonna baptize your sneakers.”

Another beat of nothing, and the heat inside him flexed again. His jaw clicked. He laughed anyway. He always did. The laugh came out high and silly and a little wild.

He tugged the waistband lower again on instinct, a breath of air, a breath of space. His body mistook space for permission. Another quick, hot leak answered, and this time he folded an arm around his stomach and hissed through his teeth.

Okay. Cool. New plan. No plan. Pure survival.

The handle jerked. The door cracked. “Bathroom’s all-”

He didn’t wait. He slid in sideways with a speed that would have been rude if it weren’t necessary, caught the edge with his shoulder, and used the door like a shield. He clicked the door shut. “—yours.”

Water still clung to the air. The mirrors were fogged with generosity. The room was too wide, too glossy, too full of distance between him and the toilet tucked ten steps back in its alcove. Ten steps is a joke when your body has already filed for emancipation.

He took one step. His muscles gave out like a protest line.

The first surge hit his joggers in a hot, unstoppable flood. His hand snapped down - reflex, habit, prayer - but it was already happening, the warmth spreading, the fabric surrendering in patches. He sucked a breath through his teeth and moved without thinking, back to the door for balance, one staggering step sideways to the thick bath rug by the threshold.

It was plush. Absurdly plush. A cloud on the floor. He could have kissed whoever bought it with house money and called it an investment.

He yanked the waistband down just enough and let it go.

The stream tore free with a hiss that made warmth shoot up the back of his neck. The rug drank like it had been thirsty for years. The sound muffled to a steady, hungry pour. Heat spilled over his skin; the air cooled it; his knees forgot about dignity and remembered about existing. He braced the back of his head against the door and laughed - small, breathy, disbelieving - because the relief was so intense it crossed the border into comedy and stayed there, gasping.

“Okay,” he whispered to nobody, to the mirror fog, to the kind, ridiculous rug. “Okay. Okay.”

The flood didn’t stop quickly. It pulsed out of him in long, searing waves, each one shaving a layer off the panic until the panic had nowhere left to sit. His shoulders slid down the door. His jaw unclenched. The inside of his chest went from rattled to quiet in increments. The hiss softened, turned to a pour, to a patter that tickled the soles of his feet through damp cotton.

He didn’t make a joke for a full five seconds. That was how he knew it had been bad.

When it finally slowed to those last heavy drops, Milo stayed very still. He closed his eyes and counted four slow breaths. The rug was a sponge under his toes. The bathroom smelled faintly like eucalyptus and steam. His heart thumped the way it did after sprinting, and then even that eased.

He set himself right with quick, efficient motions - waistband up, hoodie tugged down, one palm smoothing the front of his joggers like the wetness could be ignored. He looked at the rug, now darkened and put a bare foot on the edge that was still dry. It felt like stepping off a boat back onto land.

“Not the throne I planned,” he said to his reflection, which was returning from fog one cheekbone at a time. “But a throne nonetheless.”

His grin returned properly now, not stretched thin over panic but settled back on the good bones of mischief. His cheeks were pink; his hair looked like a bird had nested in it and declared tenancy. He wiggled his eyebrows at himself and chuckled.

He cracked the door an inch and listened. The hallway was mercifully empty. He shut it again, gently, and leaned his head back. The afterglow was the kind of warm that made the edges of the world line up; his shoulders went heavy in that post-storm way. He could breathe without editing the breath midway. The human miracle of no longer needing filled the room like sunlight.

“Okay,” he told the rug solemnly. “You did good work. Great work. Union benefits for rugs.”

He snorted at himself, because what else do you do when a bath mat has just saved your morning.

He washed his hands at the sink, going through the motions like he hadn’t just rewritten the day nine feet from the toilet. Soap, water, the squeak of clean palms. The mirror gave him back a face that looked exactly like Milo - tired eyes, sharp and kind; mouth made to smile even when it shouldn’t; a person who could wrestle a disaster into a story in under a minute.

He cracked the door again and slid into the hall sideways, keeping his body between the bathroom and the rest of the house. The rug lay behind him like a loyal accomplice. He would absolutely deal with it later. He would absolutely not tell it thanks out loud like a man with a problem.

Leo was in the kitchen by then, talking to the kettle as if the kettle owed him rent. Eli scribbled in his ledger like he was balancing a nation-state. Somewhere down the hall, Jonas’s door was closed, which meant Jonas was being a person privately and Milo should not knock and ask if he wanted a dramatic retelling.

Milo padded in on silent feet and performed normalcy with flair. He filled his travel mug with new coffee as if the last minute hadn’t happened. He opened the cupboard with a flourish, took down nothing useful, shut it again, and winked at the toaster.

“Did you just wink at the toaster?” Leo asked, amused, not looking up from his phone.

“Hey, we have a rapport,” Milo said, stealing a corner of Leo’s toast. He took a bite and made a face like tasting art. “Mm. Notes of bread.”

Eli glanced up. “You’re late.”

“I’m fashionably late,” Milo corrected, checking his watch and doing a quick mental math that included: rug triage, realistic sprint to the bus, margin for storytelling if cornered by Mrs. Halvorsen in the stairwell. “Which is the only socially acceptable late.”

Eli made a mark in the ledger that might have been a tally for nonsense uttered before nine a.m. He didn’t smile with his mouth, but his eyebrows did the thing.

Milo’s heart did a dumb, soft thing and then stopped doing it because he had places to be and chaos to charm into behaving. He slung the backpack, found his keys in exactly the wrong pocket, and did a quick headcount of himself: phone, wallet, dignity (intact enough to pass), sense of humor (refilled).

On the way out, he swung by the bathroom door, cracked it, and assessed the rug with the seriousness of a foreman. “Okay, pal,” he murmured, half a joke and half not. “Cold rinse. Gentle cycle. We’ll pretend this was an oil painting experiment gone wrong.”

He grabbed the corners with two fingers, lifted the least damp edge, and tucked the whole mess into the laundry basket in his room. Nothing to see here but domesticity. He’d run the machine after work. He’d spritz the tile. He’d deny everything under oath and then buy a new rug if this one took early retirement.

He turned back toward the hall, where Leo was complaining to the sink about the water pressure and Eli was composing an email like a spell. The house thrummed along, completely uninterested in what any man had done in any room five minutes ago. Milo felt lighter, smarter, and, in the weirdest way, seen - not because anyone had watched, but because the world had failed to end. It was the kind of tiny, private miracle that kept you fond of mornings even when they misbehaved.

He cupped his hands to his mouth and announced, “All right, gremlins, I’m out. If anyone asks, I was never here. If the rug asks, tell it it’s my favorite coworker.”

Leo groaned. “Please leave.”

“Love you,” Milo sang, and blew a kiss at Eli’s ledger, which somehow caught it and filed it under “assets.”

At the door, he paused just long enough to listen for the sound of a train three streets over and the bell-like shriek of the bus brakes at the corner. He timed the street in his head, the run down the stairs, the sprint, the leap. His body felt weirdly perfect, light, empty in the best way, ready to move.

As he pulled the door open, he muttered to himself with a crooked grin, “Not how I wanted to start the day.” Then, because it was true and because he refused to let the line be the last word, he added, “But hell, the day started.”

He jogged into the brightness, hoodie flaring behind him like a cape, and let the city swallow him. The hallway held his secret like all good hallways do: without ceremony, without gossip, with the quiet practicality of a rug doing overtime and a door that had closed on time, give or take a miracle.

Chapter Text

Leo always said a good room should feel like a hug. His did. Paper lanterns bruised the ceiling with soft yellow, the quilt with hand-stitched stars waited at the bed’s foot, and the beanbag in the corner slouched like a dog who trusted him. Nothing matched; everything belonged. He liked that. It told him the world could be kind on purpose.

He lay half-curled in the covers, hoodie sleeves tugged over his hands, thumb rubbing a worn seam he’d rubbed a thousand mornings before. The day was labeled rest in his planner. He’d promised himself slow. But his body had woken with ideas—first as a nudge, now as a steady weight pressing low under his waistband. He ignored it because ignoring felt easier than getting up and being met by a closed door and someone humming like the bathroom was a spa.

Water hissed somewhere down the hall. Steam? He sighed at the ceiling and tracked the faint reflection of fairy lights in the paint. “Mm. Not ideal,” he told the quiet, because naming things sometimes made them behave.

He bought a few more minutes—phone in hand, thumbing through nothing, lava lamp shouldering soft colors over yesterday’s mug. The pressure nudged again; he pressed his knees together and made a face at no one.

“Okay. Fine. We go,” he murmured, pep-talking his own bladder like it was a skittish cat.

He slid out of bed—barefoot, soft pajama shorts, hoodie he’d loved bald at the elbows—and padded into the hall. Halfway to the bathroom, he heard Milo on the other side of the door announcing, “If you drowned, blink twice!” in a tone that meant performance hours had begun.

Leo stopped. Relief did a sad little wave and slid back. He shifted, hand flat to his stomach. “Nooo,” he breathed, already backing up. “I do not have time for a Milo-moment.”

He hovered in the kitchen doorway, did a tiny, careful lap behind the couch, then the plant, then back again, laughter slipping out at Milo’s increasingly dire threats. The house had turned into a soundboard: water thundering, Milo bargaining, the fan insisting on neutrality. Leo bounced on his toes, hands tucked up into his sleeves like he could hold himself together from the outside.

The first leak was small, a warm startle that stole his breath and froze him mid-step. He slapped both hands down, cheeks flushing even though the room was empty. “Okay. Not good,” he whispered to the lamp. “Very not good.”

He tried the tricks—slow inhale, slow exhale, a list of facts he’d read in an anxiety thread once. “There are eight planets,” he told the coffee table. “Bees communicate by dancing. Sharks don’t have bones.” The ballooning pressure under the words didn’t care about bees.

The bathroom door clicked. Leo’s heart lifted like a bird shot into the air—and then dropped when Milo slipped inside with a chirped “love you mean it” and swung the door shut. Leo stopped too hard, and his body answered with another hot, quick leak he barely caught by crossing his legs and squeezing every muscle that would listen.

“Why are we like this,” he asked the floor, half laugh, half despair.

He sat on the edge of the couch without really sitting—hovering, knees bouncing, eyes on the empty hall. Silence. No Milo commentary now. No triumphant flush. Just the fan and his pulse and the knowledge that waiting had declared bankruptcy.

He made himself stand. He drifted closer to the hall and leaned against the cool wall, eyes closing. Tight everywhere. Hands shaking a little. He could knock. He could say, hey, emergency, and make it a joke. But the words stuck in his throat the way they always did when asking would make him feel like a problem.

Another leak. Longer. Enough to force him to shift his stance to stop it. Panic scraped along his ribs.

“Okay,” he said, out loud. “Sink.”

The thought was ridiculous and perfect—a private corner of the kitchen, deep basin, nobody in the room. No audience. Improvise. He moved fast and careful, half-shuffle, half-prayer, hoodie hem already bunched in one fist. Another spurt, hotter, and he whined before he could stop it, pressing the balled hoodie against himself through the waistband just to get there.

The kitchen was empty, kind with afternoon light. He reached the sink, tugged down just enough, and his body made the decision for him—heat breaking free with a hard, unstoppable rush that hit the inside of the hoodie he still held against himself.

“Ah—” The sound punched out of him. He adjusted, slid the fabric aside, angled forward, and let the stream arc into the deep metal basin. The splash was soft, contained. The warmth surged out in rhythmic waves. He gripped the counter with both hands and folded over a little as relief swept his whole body open.

He didn’t think words. He couldn’t. The drop in pressure was so complete it felt like a noise by itself. Knees weak, thighs aching from hold, breath coming sharp then long. His face burned and it wasn’t shame; it was the relief of stopping a fight you had no business winning.

I didn’t make it to the toilet, he thought, blinking tears away quickly. But I made it.

The stream slowed, then stuttered to those last heavy spurts. The room settled around him: the faucet’s silver line, the cabinet’s nicked edge, the small wet sound turning into silence. He stayed bowed there for a beat, fingers loosening, heart leaving the rafters.

He moved with care. Paper towel, a quick wipe where splash might have been, hot water to wash the rest down clean. He bound the damp hoodie around his waist without drama. It wasn’t much of a mess. In his head it had been a disaster. In the kitchen it looked like problem-solving.

He washed his hands. The soap smelled faintly like lemons and trying your best. The microwave door gave back a reflection that looked like Leo—flushed, curls doing their own chaotic astrology, eyes wide but steady.

He padded out. The bathroom door opened on cue. Milo emerged, toweling his hair, radiating the satisfaction of a man who had prevented a catastrophe by causing a smaller one. Leo smiled a little—I’m fine, you’re fine, we’re all fine—and slid past without telling a story.

Back in his room, he closed the door with the same careful quiet he used for everything he didn’t want to make bigger. Afternoon sun pooled on the quilt. The hoodie weighed warm around his hips. He unknotted it, folded it once, and set it on the hamper like an offering to future him who would run a load and hum through it.

He sat. Elbows on knees, breath out long. Inside was quiet again. Not empty—just not crowded by urgency. He put a palm on his stomach. Sore, the good kind. He laughed once under his breath, small and disbelieving.

I didn’t mess up, he told the room. I adapted.

He changed his pants, tugged on a clean hoodie, ran a hand over his hair and made it worse. The world would require things soon—the kettle whistle, a text from Silas, a joke from Milo thrown like a ball he could catch or not. He could do all that.

He stood, thumbed a quick note in the planner margin—laundry: today—and smiled at the tiny neatness of it. Then he opened the door and stepped back into the house that always, somehow, made room.

On the way to the kitchen he paused and looked toward the hall, listening to the quiet, and felt—light, a little hollowed, steady. The kind of okay you earn.

“Next time,” he told the air, practicing, “I’m just gonna knock louder.”

The house did not answer, which was perfect. He rounded the corner toward the kettle, already building a small, harmless story out of steam and nothing.

Chapter Text

The hallway was empty when Silas stepped through it, the floorboards sighing softly under his weight. He moved like he always moved when he didn’t want to be noticed—no creak, no clatter—just the low shuffle of worn socks on old wood. Light pushed itself through the narrow windows in pale strips and fell into long bars on the runner. He walked through them without breaking stride.

His room, all the way at the end, kept itself apart. Where Milo’s space carried a weather system and Leo’s glowed like a lantern, Silas’s room asked for quiet and gave it back. Deep gray-blue walls. A low bed with a slate blanket folded square. A narrow bookshelf. A dark wooden desk with nothing on it but a lamp, a pencil, and a sketchbook opened to a page that had only the memory of a line on it.

He shut the door without a click and sat, one leg folded under the other, pencil already moving. He didn’t look at what he was drawing; he never did at first. The hand knew before the eyes cared to. A branch arc. A shoulder curve. The way cloth falls when no one’s paying attention to it. He let motion make a map. The room settled around him like a held breath.

The house hummed in faraway pieces: a cupboard in the kitchen; the low thrum of water somewhere; the lofted, bright shape of Milo’s laugh hitting a wall and turning back into sound. Silas heard all of it and none of it. The pencil made ghosts into outlines. The lamp threw a warm circle.

There was a small ache low in his abdomen he had noticed an hour ago and put aside. He was good at setting aside anything that belonged to his body. Needs made ripples. Ripples broke lines. He didn’t like breaking lines.

He drew until the page had the shape of the thing he’d seen without pretending to be the thing itself. Then he stopped. Leaned back. Stretched, long enough to feel the spine take room again. The ache pressed back, dull and patient. He brushed hair from his face with the back of his wrist and listened to the house change key into the late-afternoon lull.

He stood and crossed to the window. The yard below had slipped from gold to a bluer light. Wind teased a chime that barely bothered to answer. He didn’t need sound to feel the rhythm; the rhythm lived in stillness too. The ache reminded itself, not sharp but insistent. He filed it once more with the other minor inconveniences of being alive.

He waited a little longer than he meant to. He always did.

By the time he left the desk, the room had the edged cool of a day turning. He pulled the door closed and paused at the bathroom in the hall. The fan hummed. Water ran. Behind it, a voice he could recognize by its grin even if he’d been deaf—Milo.

Silas did not knock. He stood opposite the door, arms loosely folded, eyes on the grain of wood where the paint had thinned. He had patience for other people’s mornings and other people’s showers. He had less for his body’s insistence that he too belonged among the living.

A door further down opened. Leo slid past, eyes on a kettle that hadn’t boiled yet, humming something under his breath that might have been a song if it had remembered how to be one. Silas lifted his hand a fraction; Leo didn’t see it. That was fine. He wasn’t really waving.

The ache transitioned from suggestion to stone. He adjusted his stance by a degree. Knee bent forward, weight shifted. Breath out, slow. He didn’t sigh. He didn’t make a noise. He measured time by the way his jaw wanted to set and told it not to.

The door didn’t open. He didn’t knock.

He backed away without looking like retreat and returned to his room. Closed the door gently. Turned the lock—not for privacy from anyone else, but to hold the quiet in a shape he could use. The breath he’d kept disciplined on both sides of his ribs went out. He pressed the heel of his hand low against the ache. It helped by a small amount for a small time.

He stood in the middle of the room. Sitting would fold him in half in the wrong way. Standing tugged the ache forward. He was a man good at waiting. He could wait, but not much.

The idea came the way all his solutions did: without ceremony. The park. The little facility near the community garden, tucked under sycamores. Clean enough, at this hour empty. Not ideal. Serviceable. Private. He didn’t need comfort; he needed a door that opened.

Keys. Helmet. Jacket. Motions learned so well they happened without language. He did not check his reflection in the narrow mirror; he didn’t need a face to leave the house.

Outside, evening reached up the brick and cooled the air. The ache sharpened in the temperature shift and made itself bigger. He took the porch steps like they’d grown steeper and swung onto the bike with one small pause he allowed himself and no more. Forward lean, ignition under his thumb, engine an animal he had trained to be tame.

He kept the ride clean and smooth. Even streets, even turns. At each seam in the road, the ache jumped and tried to pull his body into its rhythm; he refused it. He felt his thighs lock around the frame, knees a simple hinge he could lean on, jaw making the smallest concession to pressure before he told it to loosen.

The city peeled back into the low trees and dark grass of the park. Lamps came on one after another like the line of a constellation you’re not sure you believe in until it’s drawn for you. He eased into the gravel lot and killed the engine. The world got larger in the silence.

He sat very still on the bike and felt exactly how close the line was. The difference between not-urgent and urgent had long since passed. He had crossed into the tight space where choice still existed but only in thin slices. He rested a hand on his thigh and waited for the pulse to crest and settle. Then he dismounted, careful. Left boot. Right. Weight. Breath. Stand.

The restroom sat where it always sat: brick box, low roof, a light that flickered without deciding. He walked toward it without looking hurried and with no extra motion wasted.

The handle didn’t turn. He knew before he read the paper taped behind the glass, but he read it anyway because that was the ritual of disappointment.

Closed for Maintenance. Use Facility at East Lot.

Ten minutes if the light at the crossing misbehaved. More if the joggers ignored signals like they didn’t exist. He set his forehead against the cool door for one heartbeat and let himself be a person who had wanted a simple thing and not gotten it. Then he lifted his head.

He could not make it to the east lot.

He stepped back. The park had the blank face of a place that would keep any secret it was told. The bench nearby sat under a dead lamp. The hedge beyond it made a shadow that didn’t need to be large to be useful. The trees weren’t much. The dark, however, did most of the work.

He moved into the hedge shadow and off the path, boots scuffing mulch, keeping the line of the building between himself and the world that remained. His hand hovered at his waistband for a second he didn’t want to count. He pressed his palm low to the ache because it was an old reflex, not because it would do anything now.

He waited too long, and he knew it. He made the motion anyway—zipper, angle, minimal exposure. Privacy can be practical; it doesn’t have to be absolute.

His body made the rest of the decision. The first rush took him by surprise only because he had taught himself to be the last authority and the body has its own rules when pressed.

Heat broke out of him. It hit the dry leaves and the dark soil without splash, sound small and steady, a whispering pour. His breath caught and then went out all at once. The relief was not sweet—it was stark. It cut through everything. Knees learned softness again. His free hand found the thin trunk of a young tree and borrowed its attention.

It went on longer than it should have if he’d been the person he preferred to be about these things. Tension unlatched itself in quiet clicks up his spine, around his hips, through his shoulders, like doors unlocking down a hallway. He didn’t try to control it. Control had made it worse. Control had brought him here. He let it go.

Wind changed. The chime on the far side of the park gave a half-hearted answer to a question no one had asked. The stream softened and then trailed itself to the last reluctant drops. He stood still for three breaths because that was how he told his body it was safe again. The smell of wet bark belonged to the air, not to him.

He kept a handkerchief in his jacket like a man who liked to be ready for small inconveniences. He used it without looking at his hands, the way you might in a dark theater when you don’t want to disturb anyone. Fold. Pocket. Zipper up. Adjust. Presence reclaimed.

He didn’t look down. The ground looked like ground. It would look like ground tomorrow too.

Back at the bike, he took a moment he might have called unnecessary if pressed. Not to feel proud. Not to feel anything complicated. Just to take stock. He was lighter by every measure that mattered. Tirer, too, in the way relief taxes you. He started the engine and let the sound put him back inside a familiar shape.

The ride home took less time. He didn’t notice any seams in the road on the way back.

The house had gone to its low-volume setting. A lamp in the living room hummed; someone’s music leaked thin through a wall and couldn’t be identified as anything but notes. He slipped in through the back like he always did, jacket off, leaves brushed away with two small swipes. He stood in the kitchen a moment to let the inside quiet find him again.

He did not go to the bathroom. There was no point now. He went to his room.

The door closed with the same small sound it always made when handled correctly. He sat on the bed, elbows on knees, fingers laced and hanging. The room offered him nothing but arrangement: books in order, blanket square, lamp ready. He looked at the floor and let the day stop moving.

It had not gone the way he preferred. The timing had been wrong. The locked door had been the wrong door. The choice had been made for him by the limits of an animal body he too often pretended he didn’t live inside. None of that broke him.

The quiet in his chest felt different, like a held chord resolved. Not absence. Pause. He thought of bark under his hand, soil taking what it was given without questions, the moment the body said now and he didn’t argue it into pain.

He opened the window a fraction. Night air walked in, clean and unbothered. He lay back with his hands behind his head and looked at the ceiling until the lines of it blurred.

He had disappeared for a little while. That was true. He had left the house, and the moment, and the image of himself that didn’t need a hedge.

He was here again.

Still himself. A little more honest for the evening.

He reached sideways for the sketchbook without sitting up and pulled it to his stomach. The pencil lifted a line out of memory—nothing dramatic: a hedge, the suggestion of brick, a small lamp that had never decided whether to flicker or hold. He added a thin vertical shape that could have been a tree or a man leaning against one, if you knew what you were looking for. He left it ambiguous. Not everything needed to be named to be true.

He closed the book. The room agreed with him by doing nothing at all.

When he slept, he slept without the dream where he was running toward a door that wouldn’t open. And in the morning, he moved through the hall the same way he always did—quiet, sure, like a man who could appear where he was needed and be gone when he wasn’t. If the others noticed anything different about the way the air felt when he passed, no one said so.

Nobody needed to.

Silas made tea before anyone else woke, left a mug on Leo’s desk with a napkin under it, and propped the back door for Milo because the latch had started to be stubborn again. He didn’t say a word about the night. The night didn’t ask for one.

And when he walked past the monstera by the bathroom, he set two fingers to a broad, glossy leaf in a motion too brief to be called a touch. The leaf shivered anyway, as if it had heard something worth keeping.

Chapter Text

The sky outside Eli’s window was still dark when the alarm began its soft hum. He silenced it before the second note, fingers finding the button without hesitation. One breath in. One out, slower. He sat up with practiced ease, swinging his legs from beneath the neatly folded duvet.

The floor was cool. The air carried that early morning sharpness that made it feel like the day hadn’t quite begun yet - clean, undisturbed.

Wake at 5:00.
Shower by 5:15.
Suit on by 5:30.
Coffee, bag, breakfast if the clock allowed.
Out the door at 6:00 sharp for the 6:35.

Today’s presentation wasn’t a source of nerves, but it was important. Important meant precise. Eli didn’t do imprecise.

His room reflected the same rule: soft grays, clean whites, a minimalist desk in the corner, a glass of water refilled every night before bed. Nothing misplaced. Nothing unaccounted for.

He dressed without hurry, fastening each button in the half-light. The bathroom was technically shared, but at this hour no one else would be up. There was no real pressure to go yet - a mild background awareness, nothing more. Shower first, always shower first.

The house was still. Shadows stretched across the hallway in soft ribbons. He shut his eyes. No rush. No complications. Today would go according to plan. It always did.

By 5:50 - suit fitted perfectly across his shoulders, tie resting in a clean knot, hair smooth. A mild ache low in his abdomen now, but it was minor. Ten minutes to spare before departure, one of them reserved for the bathroom.

Except the bathroom door was closed.

Light under the door. Running water.

He knocked twice. “Almost done in there?”

From inside: “Sorry, just hopped in. Might be a few.”

5:54. He could wait.

In the kitchen, coffee poured into his travel mug, milk added, stirred twice. He kept his free hand in his pocket, thumb pressing against the seam over his thigh.

6:00 came. Still closed. The ache was firmer now, but not urgent.

6:03. Still. He checked his watch twice in the same minute, glanced down the hall again.

At 6:06, the door opened - and someone else stepped in, offering a quick “just need the sink” before closing it again. Eli didn’t speak. He turned, collected his briefcase, and headed for the door.

The station toilets would have to do.

The morning air curled cool under his collar, but it didn’t clear the heat building low in his abdomen. The faint tang of rail metal drifted from somewhere ahead - a scent he’d learned to associate with being almost there. Every step was part of a quiet countdown: get to the station, past the gates, into the side entrance, door shut. Just a few more minutes. The station was waking slowly - a handful of commuters, the hollow call of a whistle - and the restrooms waited exactly where they should be.

Except they didn’t.

A note was taped across the door: Out of Order in thick marker.

He stopped short, the last few minutes of planning collapsing into nothing. Looked once. Looked again, as if the words might rearrange themselves.

His watch read 6:29. The train in six minutes. No time to find another option.

He returned to the platform, waiting by the seats, suitcase planted in front of him, knees angled in just enough to take the edge off. The crowd thickened around him - a murmur of conversation, the shuffle of shoes - and though no one was looking at him, the sense of being visible clung like static.

A distant rumble announced the train before it came into view. He shifted his grip on the suitcase handle, bracing without making it obvious. The screech of brakes hit his ears, and the subtle jolt of anticipation hit lower, in the wrong place.

When the doors slid open, he rose slowly, a single, measured movement that kept his spine straight even as his bladder pressed hard against the change in position. One foot forward, then the other, refusing to quicken his pace even though every step to the carriage felt longer than it should.

He crossed the gap, breathing evenly, and stepped aboard with the same composure he’d practised a hundred times - though this time, it cost him.

Forty minutes.

He chose a seat at the back, away from the busiest stretch of the carriage. His posture was perfect - not a hair out of place - but the muscles deep in his abdomen were drawn tight.

The first ten minutes were bearable. He fixed his eyes on the passing dark outside, fingers resting lightly on his briefcase. Every small sway of the carriage pressed against his bladder in ways that made him more aware than he wanted to be.

By the fifteen-minute mark, a sharper pulse hit. He caught his breath before smoothing it out. His legs pressed a fraction closer together.

The sway of the carriage turned into an irritant. He scanned the aisle - no one was looking.

Twenty-five minutes in, the pressure had gone from steady to insistent. The heat in the carriage felt wrong, coaxing him toward loosening. His heel tapped once against the floor; he stilled it.

At thirty minutes, a bump in the track sent a twitch through his muscles - not a leak, but close enough to prickle heat along the back of his neck.

His palm found his thigh, grounding in the texture of wool. He pictured the steps: office, bathroom door, lock, belt, fly. Just make it there.

The last ten minutes dragged. Every stop felt like it took twice the time.

When the train finally slowed into the city, he rose carefully, like any sudden movement might tip something over.

The bathroom here had a queue spilling out into the concourse. Not an option. The company was closer - if he could just make it there.

The walk through the station felt longer than it should. Every turn past the ticket barriers, every short flight of stairs into the garage seemed to press the weight down harder. He kept his stride even, his jaw set, but his grip on the suitcase handle had gone white-knuckled.

By the time the black car came into sight, relief flickered - not physical, not yet, but in knowing it was there. He unlocked it with a press of his thumb, opened the door, and slid inside.

The air was still, faintly scented with leather and polish. No one to see him here. Privacy. He let out a slow breath, setting the suitcase on the passenger side, and for the first time since the train he let one hand drop between his legs, giving himself a quick, firm adjustment through the fabric. Not a grab born of panic - just enough pressure to steady the muscles that were begging for attention.

You can do this, he told himself, straightening his spine and smoothing his tie with his free hand.

Then he started the engine.

Sliding back in the seat pressed upward in the wrong place. He shifted twice, each adjustment calculated, each one sending a ripple of warning through his middle.

The first leak came at the third red light — sharp, quick, blooming heat. His eyes stayed forward.

The second came halfway to the office, longer, enough to make his fingers twitch on the wheel. “Not here,” he muttered, but the third spasm erased the choice.

The second leak came halfway to the office — longer, hotter, enough to make his fingers spasm against the wheel. “Not here,” he muttered through his teeth, forcing his knees together so tightly his calves ached.

The next spasm hit harder, and he knew — in a flash of cold clarity — that he couldn’t keep driving like this. Not with both hands on the wheel, not with his whole body clenched and screaming for attention.

He flicked the indicator and veered gently toward the shoulder, easing the car to a stop under the shadow of a row of plane trees. The engine hummed, the cabin still pristine and bright in the morning light. He sat there, seatbelt cutting against his ribs, one hand braced between himself through the fabric, gripping hard, the other still on the wheel as if keeping the car straight might keep his body in line too.

Breathe. You can still make it.

The pressure surged again, his hips jerking against his own palm. He shifted forward in the seat, trying to get leverage - but the position was all wrong, the angle pressing everything down instead of giving him relief.

Another wave broke through him, hot and unstoppable, flooding past his clenched hand before he could get it back under control. A sound left him - low, almost a growl - as warmth surged into the layers of fabric and pooled beneath him. His grip loosened, shoulders sagging against the seat as his muscles gave up in uneven bursts.

It wasn’t a relief. It came in pulses - fight, yield, fight again - until the fight simply ran out. The sound was muffled under him, the warmth spreading wide, seeping deep into the padding.

The smell rose faintly - damp wool, leather, and the sharp tang - filling the space between breaths.

When it slowed to a trickle, he stayed there, one hand still resting limply between his legs, the other on the wheel. His breathing evened, but his pulse stayed high, the adrenaline still buzzing in his fingertips.

He got out of the car, peeled the jacket off slowly, folding it into a tight square before setting it on the passenger seat. His dark trousers had taken most of the hit invisibly - from the front, at least - but he knew better than to trust appearances. He angled his knees apart slightly, glancing down at the fabric stretched over his thighs. The seams looked dry, but the inner lining clung unpleasantly to his skin.

Twisting at the waist, he caught a glimpse of himself in the side mirror. Nothing obvious from that angle either. He pictured the walk from the car to the office doors, the angle of the morning light, the possibility of someone stepping out of the lift right as he arrived. All it would take was one glance landing on the wrong shadow.

The seat had taken the worst of it, the damp spread dark against the leather. The glove compartment offered only a few napkins — not enough to fix anything, but he used them anyway, blotting in firm, efficient presses until the surface looked matte again. Each movement was methodical, more about reclaiming control than making a real difference.

The smell lingered faintly, and that was harder to mask. He checked his watch. Still enough time for a detour.

He ran through the options:
- Drive straight in and gamble no one noticed.
- Go home and change, which would shred his timing and his day.
- Or find something now, quick and plain, before the meeting.

The last was the only one that worked for him.

The corner shop opened early. A pair of plain dark trousers, not pressed, not tailored, but clean. Dry. Neutral enough to disappear in. He changed in the back seat with deliberate care, peeling the ruined trousers away without letting them brush against anything else. Boxers stayed — there was nothing to replace them with — and he ignored the clammy cling, telling himself it wouldn’t matter once he was moving again.

The ruined trousers went into the shopping bag with the napkins, folded tight and hidden from view. His hands were steady now, though there was still a hollow space in his chest — the echo of the fight and the loss.

He started the engine again, the low hum of it steadying him. The city streets were busier now, but he drove with the same measured precision he always did, every turn and lane change calculated. The new trousers felt unfamiliar, lighter at the waist, the fabric brushing differently against his skin — a quiet reminder — but his mind was already pulling itself back into the shape of the day ahead.

The office garage swallowed the car in its dim, concrete light. He parked in his usual spot, cut the engine, and took a moment to look at himself in the rearview mirror. Hair in place. Tie straight. No sign of the last hour anywhere above the shoulders. He reached for his briefcase, adjusted his grip, and stepped out.

The walk from the garage to the lift was the same as every morning. A nod to the security guard. The muted chime of the elevator doors. A faint reflection of himself in the brushed metal walls, perfectly composed.

On his floor, the familiar soundscape met him — phones ringing, quiet conversations, the soft whir of the printer. He crossed to his office, set his briefcase down, and slid into his chair. The paper on his desk was cool under his hands, his presentation notes waiting exactly where he’d left them in yesterday’s order.

He smoothed the top page with one palm, opened the file, and began reviewing bullet points, just as he’d planned at 5:00 that morning.

Outside, the city moved on. Inside, Eli was back in rhythm.

As if nothing had happened at all.

Chapter Text

Jonas woke before his alarm, lazily watched the bands of pale gold inch toward his shoes and tried not to notice the other slow creep - the dull, familiar fullness waking him up in the first place.

4:45 a.m. Too early to be a problem. Early enough to pretend it wasn’t one.

He lay still anyway, breathing through the faint pressure until it leveled out into a manageable throb. The house was quiet except for the radiator clicking and the faraway bristle of a street sweeper. He liked these minutes, the pause before the day took his face in its hands and tugged him into motion. He liked being the first one to hear the city yawn.

When he finally swung his legs to the rug, the stretch pulled at the tightness low in his belly. Not bad, he told himself. Not yet. He dressed by habit. There was a rhythm to this life and he had learned it: coffee, emails, train, work, home, dinner, walls that made sense. You could hold anything if your day had edges.

In the hall, the bathroom door was shut. Milo, probably. Morning soundtrack: water running, tooth-brushing theatrics, a podcast played too loud from a cracked phone speaker. Jonas felt the first little tug inside and ignored it; he was good at ignoring things that were technically his body and therefore, by his rules, his problem.

He drifted toward the kitchen. Silas was already there, moving like quiet weather, kettle steaming in his hand.

“Morning,” Silas said, without looking up.

“Morning,” Jonas answered, making his voice light. He poured coffee and wrapped his hands around the mug, letting heat climb into the tendons of his fingers.

Silas glanced over. A tiny crease appeared between his brows and smoothed away. “Early,” he observed.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Jonas said. Not untrue.

Footsteps multiplied. Doors shrugged open. Somewhere near the living room, Leo laughed at something only Leo could hear at 5:10 in the morning. Eli’s soft, methodical clink of cutlery traveled from the drawers. The house’s pulse picked up and with it, Jonas’s; he shifted on the stool, crossed his legs, uncrossed. The ache changed shape, a weight pressing out, asking for acknowledgment.

He took a slower sip and watched the monstera plant by the bathroom door. Big lacquered leaves, absurdly lush in a house that forgot to water anything on time. It had lore here - an emergency, don’t-ask-don’t-tell kind of lore. Once, months ago, Leo had mumbled “the plant” and made an apologetic face at nobody in particular while someone sang from the shower and the hallway did its best to be both narrow and merciful. The story had grown out of that moment the way vines climbed things: quietly, then suddenly everywhere.

Jonas had laughed then. He wasn’t laughing now.

His phone buzzed. A message from Leo: Need your eyes on the new shots before lunch? Jonas thumbed a heart, then set the phone face down. He counted his breaths. The bathroom door stayed closed. Time scratched forward.

The pressure spiked once - sharp enough he had to set the mug down to steady it. He felt himself go very still around the belly, instinct drawing the muscles tight. It passed, and he breathed again, measured, and sipped, pretending coffee could make a body forget itself.

He did not like this version of himself. The one with two hands on a problem and no elegant way to set it down.

Silas rinsed a bowl. “You heading out early?”

“Meeting later,” Jonas said. “Trying to think in advance.”

“Mm.” That was Silas for I hear what you didn’t say.

The bathroom door clicked. Milo’s voice floated down the hall, buoyant and unaware. Jonas stood, relief flashing so close he could taste it like metal. He took a step, but Eli cut in without meaning to, slipping past with an armful of towels and a distracted apology, nudging the door closed again with his elbow.

“Two minutes,” Eli called, already inside.

Two minutes wasn’t bad. Two minutes could be a cliff.

Jonas stood still in the doorway and felt the cliff edge crumble somewhere under his shoes. He leaned a palm on the cool door frame and rolled his hips minutely, pressure moving with him like a heavy, sloshing thing. The plant was three feet away, very green, very present, very not-a-bathroom.

He retreated to the kitchen and sat. Crossing his legs helped until it didn’t. The coffee didn’t help at all. He skimmed his inbox, didn’t read it, stared at his schedule, didn’t see it. The ache climbed from dull to bright. He pressed his heel into the rung of the stool and anchored there, jaw tight. He could wait. He’d waited through worse than this: trains held at signals, photographers who “just needed one more angle,” a forty-minute conference call on budgets where everyone forgot people existed under numbers.

The door did not open. The house did its morning dance around him, and the minute hand did what it always did - made progress without mercy.

He stood again because sitting had begun to feel like compressing a spring. The movement sent a hot warning through him; he froze, teeth bared in a silent grimace, breath locked until the spike ebbed. He waited out the aftershiver and found himself near the plant without intending to be.

Its leaves were ridiculous up close. Jurassic Park Style. It was so alive about everything except discretion.

Don’t be an idiot , he told himself. It’s a plant . The house set this rule for a reason. The bathroom is occupied for a reason. You are a person in a body with limits that are not interested in your dignity. Use the thing. Then he imagined doing it and every muscle in him rebelled at once.

He had a code for small humiliations. He made them private, buried them under action, used humor like an umbrella. But there was no joke big enough to cover the image of himself, here, turned toward soil.

A soft step behind him. The house had creaky boards that told on everyone - except Silas when he decided otherwise. Jonas didn’t turn. He stared at the empty hallway bend that hid half of him from the kitchen, at the plant that hid the rest, and at the closed door that had become the most important rectangle in the world.

“You okay?” Silas asked. The voice was low. Not the kind to draw other ears.

Jonas exhaled a small, unwilling sound that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t hurt. “Define okay.”

Silas didn’t come closer, but Jonas felt him anyway - presence like a warm, solid thing setting itself between Jonas and everything else.

“You need the bathroom.”

Jonas nodded once, jaw gone stubborn. “Been needing it.”

“Yeah.” A beat. “Bad?”

He swallowed. The word stuck. He was thirty-two and some part of him would always be twelve about this. “Yeah.”

Silas let that hang. “Door’s still closed,” he said, as if Jonas couldn’t see. “And you’re on a clock.”

“I know.”

Another beat. No teasing. No “there’s always the plant” said with a grin to make it a joke. Just the room, the problem, and the faint rustle of monstera leaves shifting in the heat from the vent.

Silas moved. Jonas didn’t look, but the change in the air told him Silas had stepped to the angle of the hall where his body became architecture. Without touching a thing, he made a wall.

“Nobody’s gonna know,” Silas said, quiet and matter-of-fact, already looking at his phone.

The relief that line offered and the shame it unearthed crashed into each other in Jonas’s chest. He leaned his forehead to the wall and let the cool paint wake him out of the spiral.

“I don’t want this to be how the day starts,” he said, because if he didn’t say something honest he might fracture into apologies. 

“It won’t be,” Silas said. “It’ll be a thing that happened. You move on. That’s it.”

Jonas stayed at the wall while his body sent up its warnings in hot, urgent pulses he could no longer pretend were optional. Every spike made his toes curl inside his socks. His hands itched to grab himself, but pride glued them still. Behind the bathroom door, Eli hummed, water running. The kettle clicked in the kitchen. The world went on as if his body wasn’t seconds from overruling him.

He moved. Not far, just a step and a turn. The plant loomed large now - broad leaves, generous soil, absurdly alive. He braced one hand against the wall, the other to his waistband. His fingers shook. He told them not to. He told himself a dozen things at once: you are a person; you are allowed; this is the rule we made; this is better than pain; Silas is here; nobody’s going to know.

He hesitated - long enough for the ache to sharpen into a cramp. Then his body made the decision for him, and the rest of him caught up.

Heat surged out of him in a hard, unstoppable rush, loud against soil. His breath left with it, knees threatening to give, eyes closing because there was no surviving the sight. The sound was a hiss at first, fierce, spilling over the edge of his control, then easing into a steady pour. His whole body seemed to unwind, muscles letting go.

Silas didn’t speak. Didn’t shift. The shape of him stayed in Jonas’s peripheral vision, a silent promise of privacy.

When it slowed to the last, heavy drips, Jonas stood very still and counted three breaths because he needed them. The room came back in layers: the faint damp earth smell, the cool line of wall under his brow, the distant clink of a spoon in a mug. His hands were steadier when he set himself right and fixed his waistband with a small, competent motion that felt like dignity’s handhold.

He didn’t turn. He didn’t have to. Silas’s voice found him squared and level. “Better,” he said; not a question. 

Jonas let his head knock once against the wall, a thank-you without words. He angled past Silas, who shifted like a door on its hinges. The move felt practiced, like something they’d never talked about and had somehow rehearsed a hundred times: you pass; I’ll block; we pretend hallways are wider than they are.

The bathroom door opened just then. Eli stepped out, toweling his hands, and walked straight into Silas’s chest. Silas made an easy apology joke about being a large, immovable object. Eli laughed and went toward the kitchen. The moment slid past without catching.

In his room, Jonas closed the door and stood for a moment, letting his shoulders drop. The quiet was steadying. He sat on the edge of the bed, breathing slow until the tightness in his body eased into something he could carry. When he came back down the hall, the plant was only a plant again - glossy and untroubled, sun turning its leaves into stained glass. He paused anyway. Silly to thank a thing. He did it in his head anyways.

The kitchen had shifted into busy life. Leo sliced fruit, singing nonsense harmonies with the kettle. Eli scribbled lines into the little book that ran his mornings. Milo narrated the dishwasher packing like a nature documentary. Jonas hovered just long enough for Milo to notice.

“Houdini returns,” Milo said. “Where’d you vanish to?”

“Just getting ready for the day,” Jonas said, automatic, but without the bite he might have given it another day.

Silas sat on the arm of the couch with a mug, one ankle crossed over his knee, looking like a man who had simply found a comfortable place to exist. Jonas caught his eye and gave the smallest nod. Silas’s mouth tugged at one corner, almost a smile, and he blinked slow like a cat. Agreement. Archive closed.

Jonas ate toast and tasted nothing but quiet. His hands were steady again. His chest had space in it. He answered Leo’s message with a promise to stop by at eleven. He glanced at the plant one more time because part of him couldn’t believe it hadn’t sprouted a flag and announced what it had done.

Nobody’s gonna know, Silas had said. Jonas tried the line on in his head and felt, to his own surprise, that it held.

Outside, the air was bright and cool and nobody cared how any man had begun his day. Jonas’s steps felt strangely light. The train would come. The editor would ask hard questions. Leo would have too many photos and not enough picks. The world would want things from him. He would give what he could.

Jonas let himself replay the hallway in small reels: the angle of Silas’s shoulder, the soft, ridiculous fringe of the monstera’s leaf against his sleeve, the breath that left him when he finally stopped fighting his own body.

It didn’t feel like failure in retrospect. It felt like a series of decisions, some made by him and some made by muscles too tired to lie anymore, wrapped in the simple fact of someone else choosing to protect him without needing to be asked.

He had not wanted today to be the story of that moment. It wasn’t. It was a day that had held a moment in it and kept going.

Maybe that was the real relief - finding out that the house would take his small humiliations and file them under ordinary kindness, and that he could stand inside that kindness without needing to turn it into a joke or a debt.

And if he ever needed the wall of a friend again, he knew exactly where it would appear: not with fanfare, not with pity, but with a simple, steady promise.

Nobody’s gonna know.

Chapter Text

Milos room was chaos, but the kind of chaos Milo loved. Posters slapped on the walls, a guitar leaning in one corner. The desk was full of mugs, snack bags, and sketchbooks he never quite finished. He crawled out of bed after his third alarm, threw on faded joggers, a hoodie and grabbed his phone. 

The kitchen smelled like fresh roast, courtesy of Silas’s ever‑present French press ritual. Jonas sat across the table, perfectly still, pretending to read while glancing at Milo out of the corner of his eye - no critique, just mild exasperation.

“Morning,” Milo announced with a loud voice, full of energy, then groaned, rubbing his lower back. “I slept sideways or something. Feels like my back was hosting a rave.”

Jonas gave him a slow blink.

“It’s been one of those nights,” Milo added, voice dropping just an octave. “But I’m good. Power through.”

Jonas and Silas exchanged a glance - something in that tone said Milo was jittery, not just caffeinated. Milo poured himself a cup and cradled it. He paced near the window, looking out over the mornings calm. He tried to steady the pressure in his abdomen. Only for a moment. He took a sip.

“Fair warning: I might start performing a pee dance soon,” he joked, knowing it was not even that far from the truth.

Jonas smiled faintly. Silas pretending not to notice.

But Milo’s stomach fluttered, and he tapped one foot while reaching for a granola bar - only to pull back without grabbing one. Heat pooled low in his belly - warm and insistent. Not ideal.

He chugged the rest of his coffee, the pressure inside him was real, but he’d set the tone for this morning - bold, fearless, unstoppable.

But he needed the bathroom. Now .

His grip thightend around the mug, chest tight until he let out a sharp breath, placing the mug down carefully. He leaned on the table, both hands spread flat.

Jonas got up without a word, carrying his mug toward the sink. Silas gathered his jacket. They were careful, efficient, moving through the kitchen like it belonged to three people fully aware of each other.

That unsettled Milo slightly. He’d always led with sound and flamboyance - his humor a buffer - but here he was, feeling how invisible someone could become when they’re stuck in discomfort. He wasn’t used to being sidelined in his own space, especially when everything inside him was begging for attention.

Milo looked at his phone. Notifications. A message: “You sure you’re alive? ” That made him blink. Alive. Literally, yes. Emotionally? Debatable.

He took another breath, gaze flicked to the bathroom door at the hall’s end. Still occupied. Not helpful right now.

“Uh … emergency flat‑stays-dry performance coming up.”

Milo leaned into the counter, popped upright, and leaned right back again. His legs wouldn’t quit - crossing, tangling, stepping, like he was trying out dance steps to a song no one else could hear. 

He checked his phone again. No new messages. Nothing to check. Bathroom? Still occupied. Shower sounds through the bathroom door - Leo had definitely beaten him to it. He loved that guy, honestly, but there were times Leo could stretch a five-minute task into a full, luxurious twenty.

Milo huffed. “Okay,” he muttered under his breath, “time to reconsider drinking that cup of coffee. Bold choice. Regretful plot twist.”

He took a deep breath. Humor. His first defense. His best defense. It had gotten him through high school presentations, a two-day festival with no porta-potties, and once, a dentist appointment where he nearly peed mid-cleaning. He could survive this too.

Milo wandered into the living room, jittery steps swinging between pacing and some kind of bad dance routine. Jonas barely looked up from his book - just a quick glance, then back down, like Milo’s antics were nothing out of the ordinary. Milo busied himself at the junk drawer, snapping a rubber band between his fingers, the sharp twang landing like a mirror of his own tension.

He muttered under his breath, “Okay. No panic. Just… strategic urgency.”

He heard footsteps. Silas, coat on, passing through the hallway. Milo considered saying something. Maybe ask… But what? For help? No. Not his style. Not unless things got out of hand. Besides, he didn’t want to worry them. It was just a full bladder. Not exactly a crisis. Push through. Smile wider. Talk louder.

He ducked into the laundry room and bent over to “check” the washer. Really just for the excuse to shift and bounce in privacy. He gritted his teeth as he bent, the waistband of his joggers pressing tight across his abdomen. Heat radiated through his lower body now. Each second stretched longer.

“Okay,” he told the empty washer. “Still gotta pee.”

He crossed the hallway again, considered knocking on the bathroom door, but Leo was singing in there now. Loudly. Enthusiastically. Something theatrical and very off-key. Definitely not leaving anytime soon.

Milo chuckled despite himself, then winced. The laughter made it worse. His legs crossed again, and he leaned on the doorframe, bouncing one heel against the floor. “This is my villain origin story,” he muttered. “Death by bladder. Local man explodes from hubris and coffee.”

The moment was real now. This wasn’t just “gotta go soon.” This was real, intense discomfort, creeping toward torture.

He could still keep the smile up, but it took more effort. His body had stopped caring about jokes. It wanted relief. Now .

A short jog to the gas station down the block? No… what if it was occupied or closed of? He’d have to get back, still full.

His jokes were getting darker now. That was usually sign #3 of Things Getting Serious. Right after step #1: pacing, and step #2: inventing new dance moves designed entirely for pelvic stability.

He stood frozen in the hallway, halfway between the bathroom and the big potted plant beside it, the leafy monster Leo kept naming and forgetting. It was just out of direct view from the kitchen. He eyed it.

“I swear to god,” Milo whispered to the plant, “if this comes to you, you better not judge me.”

He was still smiling. Still bouncing. “Okay, status update,” he whispered to himself. “We’re at Code Yellow. And no, that’s not just a cute joke. That’s a cry for help.”

He huffed a laugh, then immediately winced and clamped his thighs together as the sharp throb of pressure pulsed low and insistent. He was definitely sweating now, but trying to play it off as just… you know. Room temperature vibes.

“This is karma,” he muttered, pacing toward the living room again. “This is what I get for laughing when Leo forgot to pee before that movie marathon last week.”

Milo tugged the hoodie down over his hips, shifting restlessly. His whole body felt tight. Buzzing. He couldn’t sit still, couldn’t be still. And worst of all - he was running out of jokes.

He started to panic, the moment he realized that.

Because if the jokes stopped someone might see the truth. And the truth was: Milo was struggling.

Not just “doing a little dance” struggling. Like, actually struggling. Clenching every muscle he had, cheeks burning, stomach fluttering like he’d stepped off a high ledge. And still no sign of the bathroom opening.

He shuffled to the kitchen, not even sure why. Maybe instinct. Movement. Escape.

“Milo?”

He turned too fast, nearly lost it right there - his knees buckled, a sharp jolt of pressure hit hard, and he grabbed the back of a chair to steady himself.

Eli stood at the kitchen entrance, a brow raised in that maddeningly calm way he always managed to pull off. His "you okay, bud?" face already half-loaded.

Milo forced a grin. “Oh, hey, didn’t see you there. Just… dancing. You know. Grooving. Doing a little hallway hustle.”

Eli didn’t blink. “You alright?”

“Totally! Totally. Just waiting for Leo to finish his one-man Broadway revival in the bathroom. The boy has lungs.”

Eli stepped closer, his gaze sharp. “Milo.”

The sound of his name in that tone - low, serious, kind - hit like a bucket of cold water. Not because it was mean. But because it was genuine .

Milo swallowed.

He wanted to lie. Or joke. Or do literally anything else but admit what was actually going on. But the fight in his body was getting harder. His knees were shaking. His breaths were short. And his voice…

It cracked.

“I really gotta go,” he muttered.

Eli stepped back, like Milo’s admission deserved space. “How bad?”

“I’m fine,” he said automatically.

Then the truth tumbled out in a rush, surprising even himself. “I just… I don’t do this. I don’t have emergencies. I’m the guy who laughs at emergencies, not-” He gestured vaguely to himself, squirming and embarrassed, too restless to be still, too proud to keep pretending. He bent forward slightly, hand pressing hard over the drawstring of his joggers, and let out a weak laugh. “I hate this,” he admitted. “But I think - I don’t know. I need an escape plan. Or a miracle. Whichever’s faster.”

Eli glanced toward the front door, then back at Milo. His voice was calm, but sure. “The side yard.”

Milo blinked. “What?”

“You can cut through the laundry room. There’s the sliding window that opens to the side path. It’s fenced. No view from the kitchen, and the big planter blocks the path. You’d have the space.”

Milo stared at him. “You’re seriously offering me a backyard bailout?”

“I’m offering you peace,” Eli said. “Or at least a semi-private bush and plausible deniability.”

That finally cracked Milo’s composure and his pride. He huffed a real laugh, short and sharp. “You’re the best worst person I’ve ever met.”

“Come on,” Eli said, already heading toward the laundry room. “Before Jonas comes out and wants to talk about things.”

Milo followed, half-hunched, holding himself together with both hands and the sheer power of stubbornness. It still hurt - physically, emotionally - but it was easier, now that he wasn’t pretending to be fine.

The laundry room was dim and narrow, warmed by the hum of the dryer and cluttered with detergent bottles and unfolded towels. Milo stood just inside the door, bouncing on the balls of his feet, hands gripped tight at the waistband of his joggers. He looked like someone seconds from sprinting or imploding - maybe both.

The sliding window next to the dryer was cracked open, a small mercy. Beyond it, the side yard stretched quiet and shaded, shielded by overgrown shrubs and the house’s angle. No eyes. No judgement.

Just one last obstacle.

“I don’t think I’m gonna make it,” Milo said, half-laughing, half-panicked. His voice broke at the end.

Eli turned, surprised. “We’re right here.”

Milo looked at the window - too high and too narrow to climb out without gymnastics. Not that he had the time. His whole body was clenching in waves, muscles locking, toes curling in his socks. A hot flush crept up his neck.

“Eli, I’m serious. I’m - I’m gonna lose it. Like, right now.”

It wasn’t said with his usual grin. No joke. No cover. Just wide eyes and raw panic.

Eli took a step closer, sensing it wasn’t a test of bravery anymore but a final, flickering chance at preserving Milo’s dignity.

“Okay,” Eli said, voice low. “You don’t have to get outside. Just... The window’s enough. We’ll make it work.”

Milo gave a desperate chuckle. “What do you mean, we ?”

“I mean,” Eli said, already moving a basket and grabbing a towel from the shelf, “you focus on not bursting. I’ll make sure you don’t… spray the dryer.”

That pulled a laugh from Milo, high-pitched and helpless. “God. This is so cursed.”

But he didn’t stop Eli.

He fumbled with the drawstring, fingers shaking, urgency crashing down on him like a wave. He was panting now, forehead beaded with sweat. “I can’t - I’m gonna - shit.” And then Milo let go .

Not out of choice. The moment his waistband was low enough, it hit like his whole body sighed in unison, hips jerking forward as his stream shot through the open window and into the leafy tangle beyond. He gasped, part from shock, part from relief.

Eli stayed beside him, quiet. Holding the towel just in case.

Milo sagged against the dryer, braced on one arm, knees slightly bent. The release was so intense it made his eyes sting. The pain vanished first, chased quickly by a tingling wave of lightheadedness. And then the shame trickled in.

“I can’t believe this,” he mumbled, eyes closing. “I just peed out a window like some goddamn feral goblin .”

Eli shrugged, unbothered. “Better out there than on our floor.”

Milo gave a breathy laugh, trying to catch himself with humor again, but it sounded different now. “You’re not even flinching. How are you not weirded out?”

Eli turned to him, finally meeting his gaze. “Because I’ve seen you put duct tape on your busted sneakers instead of buying new ones. I’ve watched you eat cereal with a fork. I’ve heard you snore like a dying goose.”

“That’s… fair.”

Milo looked at the window, then at his hand still clutching his waistband. “This sucks.”

There was a pause and then Milo exhaled, long and deep. “I don’t know how to say thank you without sounding like I’m about to cry, so I’m just gonna pretend I did say it and we’ll move on.”

Eli nodded. “Sounds like you.”

They stood in the soft hum of the dryer for a beat longer, until Milo reached for the towel and cleaned up what little needed. He rolled his eyes as he did it. “You ever tell anyone about this, I will replace your shampoo with mayonnaise.”

Eli grinned. The window was still open, a light breeze like even the air wanted to slip away unnoticed. His breathing had slowed. The immediate pressure was gone, but something else sat full and heavy in his chest. Just a soft pat to Milo’s shoulder and a murmured, “Let me know if you want coffee.” No lectures. No weird looks. Just Eli being… Eli.

Milo stared at the stretch of yard outside, still lit by the early sun. A bird pecked at the edge of the grass. Somewhere, a neighbor’s wind chimes ticked faintly. And in the quiet, Milo let the silence settle without chasing it away with noise.

“Okay,” he muttered aloud, voice dry, “definitely not what I envisioned when I said I wanted to reconnect with nature.”

He smiled at his own joke, but it didn’t land quite the same. Not with no one there to hear it. Not with the last few minutes still replaying in his mind like a scene he didn’t expect to live.

It wasn’t the mishap that shook him, not really. He could laugh that off. Had done worse, honestly. But the need for help , that did something strange inside him.

He wasn’t used to asking. And definitely not used to someone showing up like that. Calm. Unfazed. Willing to help him aim his body like it wasn’t something to be ashamed of.

Milo glanced down at his hands, fiddling with the hem of his hoodie. His fingers twitched, as if they didn’t know what to do now that the panic was over.

“I mean, come on,” he said to the empty room. “Not like I cried or anything. Just… spritzed a little anxiety out the window.”

There was something kind of magic about knowing that the worst happened — and the world didn’t end. That someone saw it happen, and didn’t look away. Didn’t even flinch. Just helped, because that’s what this house was .

It was ridiculous, really. A house of five grown men, all with bodies that didn’t always cooperate and emotions that ran deeper than they let on. A weird little chaos pod of mutual quirks and unspoken understanding. But somehow, it worked.

And maybe that’s what made the difference.

He didn’t have to armor up all the time here. Didn’t have to be the funny one or the tough one or the unbothered one. He could crack a joke, spring a leak, ask for help and it wouldn’t be the punchline.

It would be just Tuesday .

Milo leaned his head back against the wall, eyes closing for a long moment. Not everything needed a snappy comeback.And for once, Milo let the silence hold him, not as a spotlight, but as something softer.

Something safe.

Chapter Text

Eli, Leo and Silas were sprawled on the couch, each finding their usual spot. Some action movie was blasting on the TV, explosions rumbling through their tiny living room.

Eli’s laugh was loud, and he almost dropped his popcorn that perched on his knee. Silas, on the other hand, was still like a statue.

Leo, wedged between them, tried to look the same. Relaxed. Unbothered.

But under the hoodie pulled low around his hands, he was tense. He’d been fine when the movie started. Comfortable, even. But somewhere between the second round of popcorn and Eli’s third dumb joke, a different kind of pressure had crept in.

First a dull heaviness. Then sharper, curling low in his stomach.

He crossed his ankles. Uncrossed them. Shifted until the cushion squeaked. Nothing helped.

He could get up. Slip down the hall. But that meant missing some of the movie or having the others wait for him. Silas would glance over. Eli would probably crack a joke.

Just the thought made Leo’s chest prickle.

He’d rather sit here and hold on.

So he stayed.

Leo tugged his sleeves lower, forced a laugh at the next punchline, too high, too quick. His heart thumped.

Silas turned his head a fraction, and Leo felt the weight of it before he even looked. A glance, brief but unmistakable.

Leo’s bladder gave a twitch.

Every second stretched too long, like the movie had slowed down on purpose.

Leo tried to distract himself with sarcastic commentary in his head. Congratulations, Leo, you’re starring in “The Holdout.” Critics are already raving: tense, sweaty, and increasingly damp around the edges.

But the jokes didn’t land the same way anymore. His body was demanding too much.

Minutes bled on. Eli cackled at some slapstick bit, blissfully oblivious.

Leo leaned forward slightly, pressing his thighs tight, palms flat against his belly. His pride and his body were in open war, and both were losing.

The movie droned on. Leo could hear it, see the bright flicker of scenes, but none of it made sense. All he could think about was his bladder and the iron clamp of his muscles holding back.

His leg bounced. He stopped it.

His heel drummed the rug. He stopped that too.

He wanted to be still, but his body betrayed him in constant tiny bursts of motion.

Eli leaned sideways to grab another fistful of popcorn. The couch jostled and Leo’s breath caught hard in his throat. For a second, he thought he’d lost it.

He hadn’t. But it was close.

God. Get a grip. Just hold. Just a little longer.

Silas shifted again, this time easing the throw blanket from the back of the couch. He spread it across Leo’s lap without looking over, casual as anything.

It wasn’t much, but Leo got it.

He didn’t thank him. Couldn’t.

The first leak came like a spark, sudden and electric. A hot bead spreading wider into his underwear before he could clamp down again.

He jolted, fists pressing into his lap beneath the blanket.

Not much. Barely anything. He could survive this.

He shifted, carefully. No one noticed. Eli was busy laughing, Silas unreadable at his side.

But Leo knew.

His heart pounded so loud it filled his ears.

Another scene passed. His body screamed, every muscle taut.

Another leak slipped. Longer this time. Enough to warm the fabric between his thighs, a heat that lingered accusingly.

Not now. Not here.

The blanket was his shield, his only cover. It would hide the worst of it, maybe. If he was careful.

Silas hadn’t spoken once. But his stillness was heavy, an anchor pressed to Leo’s side. Not accusing, not prying — just there. Watching without looking.

Silas knew.

And somehow that was worse.

And better.

The pressure built higher. His jaw hurt from holding tight. Each breath stayed shallow. Sweat tickled down from his temples.

His sarcasm faltered. He tried for one last thought — 10/10 performance, would recommend — but even in his head, it fell flat.

He was slipping.

The movie reached its big fight scene. Explosions. Shouting. Eli cheering at the screen like it mattered.

Leo didn’t move. Knees pressed, hands buried, his whole body straining just to keep control.

Then it happened — a sudden surge he couldn’t fight. Heat poured in a rush before he managed to choke it off, hissing for half a second against the blanket before stopping.

Panic flared. His whole body tensed, trembling.

Did Eli hear that? Did Silas?

He risked a glance.

Eli was glued to the screen, laughing. Silas hadn’t moved.

But his own face burned with shame. The blanket was damp now. His underwear, wet.

The fight was getting harder.

He rocked forward slightly, pressing his palms down hard. His whole world shrank to that pressure: inside and outside, fighting to keep it in.

When the credits rolled, Leo thought he might cry from relief. If he could just get up now, escape to the bathroom—

Eli stretched, yawning. “Man, that was a good one. I’m out.”

He mumbled a goodnight, and padded off down the hall.

The room got quiet.

Leo stayed hunched on the couch. He was seconds from losing everything. He knew it. His body was already trembling with the effort.

Silas moved then. Not much. His voice was calm, level, almost casual:

“Just wash the blanket tonight. I’ll dry it in the morning.”

And then he stood. No fuss, no lingering glance. Just walked out, leaving Leo alone beneath the blanket, alone with the pressure that had nowhere left to go.

The apartment settled. Eli’s door stayed shut. Silas’s footsteps faded.

For the first time all night, Leo was unobserved.

He held on as long as he could. Both hands shoved down hard between his trembling thighs. Hips moving restless, a low whine escaping him.

A hiss slipped out into the blanket, sharp and undeniable. Then another, longer.

And then the flood, unstoppable.

The warmth spread quick, into his clothes, under his hands, down between his legs. He let out a ragged noise. Leaning back made everything give way at once, the stream forcing out hard, impossible to stop.

His face burned, cheeks hot, ears hotter, shame climbing higher with every second. But his body didn’t care.

The release tore through him, leaving him trembling, muscles giving out all at once.

A steady hiss he couldn’t ignore, muffled by the blanket but still loud in his ears.

He pressed his hands down harder, like he could stop it, but all that did was push the wet further, spreading warmth through his clothes, into the cushion.

It just kept coming. Too much, too long.

It slowed bit by bit, leaving his thighs trembling. He collapsed back, soaked through, breathing hard and uneven.

The room felt too quiet. Only his pulse in his ears.

The blanket sagged against him, hot, wet, heavy in his lap.

Shame lingered, but it wasn’t enough to cut through the relief.

Instead there was a strange peace.

He’d dreaded being noticed. That was why he stayed, why he fought so long. The fear of eyes on him, the fear of judgment.

But Silas had seen enough — and left him space anyway.

And somehow, that wasn’t unbearable.

He closed his eyes. Drew a shaky breath.

The warmth spread under the blanket, a reminder of his defeat.

For once, Leo let himself breathe.

Chapter Text

Silas liked the steadiness of the garage—the cool air, the faint oil smell, the click of a wrench. Out here, no one called for him, no footsteps crossed the threshold. Out here, time moved differently—no clock, no need for one.

He crouched beside a bike, more rust than shine, but solid where it mattered. Honest work. Nothing hidden about it. Every flaw right there where you can see it, fix it, if you've got the patience. And patience he had.

Silas worked slow, the way he always did. Tug a wire, check a joint, tighten what felt loose—then check again, just to be sure. His brow stayed low, tongue caught between his teeth.

A mug sat on the shelf above him, coffee gone cold, half gone at that. He saw it only when he reached for another tool. He drank out of habit these days, not taste.

The radio worked quietly under the noise of the tools, some old station he never bothered to change. A bit of static, a guitar slightly off, a singer who didn’t sound like he cared if anyone listened. That kind of thing suited him.

He’d meant to take a break earlier.
He hadn’t.

There was this dull pressure low in his gut—not really painful, just... there. He shifted his weight and kept going.

Stretch later. Eat later. Bathroom later.

The urgency went from this background thing to something that kept breaking his focus.

Still, he worked.

The wiring was more delicate than he’d expected. Every time he thought he had it, another adjustment presented itself—tiny details that would gnaw at him if left unfinished.

His movements were more abrupt. He found himself standing just to pace a step, stretch, and crouch again. His jaw set tighter. He pressed his palm to his zipper, once, firm enough to hurt, hoping the pressure would quiet things down. It didn’t.

Every tool felt heavier. Every movement tugged at something inside, making him want to stop. But stopping would mean walking away with the job undone. He hated that more than the discomfort itself.
“Almost got it,” he muttered, mostly to fill the air. His voice came out low, steady from habit, not calm. Saying it made something twitch low in his gut. He stopped moving, jaw locked, breath held.

The dull ache sharpened, hot and focused. Patience was running thin, and so was he.

He looked toward the door again. It would take just one minute, maybe two—longer if he tried to act civilized about the boots. But grease covered his hands and the carburetor was open. 

Laughter from inside. Then footsteps. Eli’s voice? Maybe Jonas too. The others were close. If he went in now, he’d have to walk straight through them, act casual, say hi, like nothing was wrong.

So he didn’t. He stayed.

The wrench slipped and hit the concrete.

“Damn it.”

He bent for the wrench, muttering under his breath. Jeans tight, pulse jumping—great combination. 

His body could wait. The metal creaked under his grip. He hadn’t moved in a while. Couldn’t, really. He shifted once, felt something threaten to give, and froze. The carburetor blurred in front of him, pieces swimming together. Concentration gone. He wasn’t thinking about gaskets anymore. Not throttle response. Not anything but the blistering, hot pressure right behind his waistband.

Sweat slid down his temple. He ignored it.

A sharp sting hit low, and he bent forward, one hand braced above his fly. There was no one to see him, but he hated how desperate the motion looked. It wasn’t him. It didn’t feel like him.

But his body didn’t care.

“Just a few more minutes,” he told himself quietly, voice rough and frayed around the edges. “You can do that.”

A sudden surge caught him off guard.

He gasped—soft, but real. A reflex. His knees dipped; Heat bloomed against his thigh. He clenched his jaw till it clicked. Not a warning—the preview of what was coming.

And still he stood there, bent and sweating and pretending his body wasn’t winning.

What broke him wasn’t pain or pressure—he’d handled both before. It was knowing that if he went in now, he might still make it and yet he couldn’t move.

A sound—soft footsteps just outside the garage door.

Silas stiffened.

Then the door creaked open. Not wide. Just a careful push, enough for a familiar face to lean in.

Leo’s gaze swept the room and found him—half-folded over the bench, jaw locked. He didn’t speak right away. Just lingered in the doorway with that quietly observant stillness that had always made Silas uneasy.

“You didn’t hear us calling for dinner?” Leo asked softly.

Silas blinked. “Was busy.”

Leo’s gaze dropped—once, quick, like he wasn’t even doing it on purpose. Then back up, without a word. “Yeah, figured.”

Silas didn’t respond. His whole body had gone rigid with a tension that refused to break. He swallowed with a thick sound.

Leo stepped inside, door still half open. “You’ve got, what, a minute left? Two if you stand real still and pretend you’re fine.”

Silas gave him a flat look. “Not fine,” he said, breath catching halfway. Then quieter, “Can’t make it.”

There. That was it. The words were barely above a whisper, but saying them felt like falling. Like handing over a piece of pride. Silas hated asking for help. But Leo didn’t flinch.

Leo nodded once. “All right. We’ll sort it out.”

Silas’s knees shook, the warmth between his legs now fact, not threat.

Leo crossed to the side bench, grabbing a few of the old rags they kept for greasy hands. He folded them quick.

Silas shifted, heel braced like he could still push the moment back. But it was happening anyway. The dark bloom spreading across his jeans gave it away even if his calm face hadn’t.

Leo came over again, and Silas kept his eyes down. His jaw was tight, hands locked on the bench.

“I’ve got these,” Leo said, showing the rags.

A small nod. That was all the permission Leo needed. He moved with careful hands, slipping the layers of cloth between Silas’s legs, creating a makeshift dam against the splashing that might give everything away later. He didn’t flinch at the puddle already on the floor. Then, he stepped back. Gave Silas space.

And Silas—finally, finally—let go.

Once it started, there was no stopping it—a quiet breath, a hiss through fabric and rags, sound louder than breathing.

Leo turned away, kept to the door, pretending to fuss with tools while the noise eased into silence. But he could hear everything—the change in Silas’s breath as the pressure dropped from agony to almost painful relief, the way the stream finally flowed free.

It was long. Longer than either of them would later admit. Leo didn’t interrupt and Silas didn’t speak—not even when it was done. Just the faint squish of cloth under him and the last drips finding their way into oil-stained layers.

He straightened, body slack, not exhausted but… relaxed. Leo turned back, leaning against the bench. “I’ve seen a worse blanket in the laundry,” he said, voice easy. “I’ll leave you to it, but if you toss the cover and rags in tonight, I’ll run the dryer before anyone notices. Sounds fair?”

Silas finally looked up, and Leo caught the flicker of something real there. Gratitude in its purest form: wordless and deep and grounded in being seen and left intact.

Leo pushed off the workbench with a stretch. “We should probably put up a sign on this door,” he added. “Emergency pit stop. Careful, slippery.”

Silas didn’t laugh. But he didn’t not laugh either.

Leo went back inside, door clicked shut behind him.

It wasn’t shame exactly. For Silas, it was more... dissonance. He caught himself thinking about it—how hard he’d held on, how fast it went to hell.

He paused by the laundry room, dropped the evidence in the washer, went to clean up the grease - and others - in the bathroom and found the most comfortable joggers he owned, before joining the others for dinner.

Leo looked up. No words—just a glance and a small nod.

He considered texting Leo later, but what would he say?
Thanks for letting me pee myself in front of you.

Here, in this odd little house with its creaky pipes and potted plant by the bathroom door, someone always showed up. And somehow, that made Silas feel at home.

Chapter Text

The city outside the train window slid past in streaks of orange and gray, dusk brushing everything into watercolor. Inside its tired rhythm—blue seats, commuters sunk in their own small worlds, phone screens everywhere.

Eli kept his spine stiff, hands still on the briefcase. 7:45 p.m. blinked over the door. He’d left early from work—part strategy, part surrender to the dull weight pressing low behind his belt.

He’d done everything right. No water after lunch. A quick stop before boarding. Slow sips of coffee in the morning. Still, the moment his shoes hit the platform, the first shock hit back—sharp, familiar, unfair.

His fingers twitched once against the leather handle before he locked them still. Every muscle was coiled clean under the suit, but his body kept sending signals he refused to acknowledge. Breathe. In. Out. Again. The train’s steady rhythm tried to match him and failed.

The air smelled of metal, old coffee, fabric too long pressed against strangers. A child fussed somewhere ahead. Life moved, indifferent. He envied people built of calm muscle and easy rhythm, not this constant bracing for the next jolt.

Eyes down. The crease in his trousers stayed perfect—proof of effort, not peace. The ache swelled, then snapped, making him tense again. Forty minutes, he told himself. Just forty. But time on the train never moved like time anywhere else. It stretched, taunting, until every second had edges.

For a man built on control, this was the one thing that refused to obey. The recent accident still lived somewhere in him—a loop that tightened every time he boarded a train. Not pain, exactly. More a surrender he hadn’t consented to.

He breathed out slowly, the collar barely moving. Tomorrow might be better. The thought sounded rehearsed. Tonight the train’s rhythm only stoked the pulse under his belt. The car jolted again, his control slipping for a brief second.

A small shift to ease the pressure backfired—sharp, bright, immediate. His breath caught; then he forced it steady again. The mask slipped and re-set. The warmth at his zipper politely ignored. He pulled his briefcase closer.

Around him, life stayed mercifully ordinary: the hum of voices, metal squeal, someone laughing too loudly three rows up. None of them saw the quiet war he was losing.

He thought of the platform earlier—the “Out of Order” sign, the locked door, the choice to keep walking like it didn’t matter. It always mattered. He’d been balancing on that edge, pretending discipline could rewrite reflex.

It couldn’t. The accident hadn’t just happened; it had redrawn his body’s map. Now the train itself was trigger enough—steel, motion, memory. A phantom command his muscles obeyed before he could argue.

He closed his eyes, willing the pulse to fade. It didn’t. It sharpened. Sweat gathered at his temple though the carriage stayed cool. His thighs pressed tight, legs trembling beneath the briefcase—small tremors he couldn’t quite still.

The next stop brought movement, chatter, new eyes. Noise helped. Exposure didn’t. He clenched his jaw, body held still.

Stand? Stretch? Every tiny shift threatened to spill him. He leaned into the window instead; the glass bit cold against his forehead, the lights outside sliding past like they didn’t care.

Then another spasm hit—sharp. His breath caught, and something gave. Heat bloomed through the fabric, hidden by the case on his lap. Another small leak, but it broke him anyway: the instant, humiliating relief that stole the air from his chest.

For a few seconds, it eased—the ache loosening, breath returning. Then the pressure rebuilt, harder, like punishment for giving in. He bit his lip, eyes on the blurred skyline, fighting the next wave.

The train had stopped being transport; it was trial—steel, memory, endurance. His pulse drummed under the hum of wheels until a soft vibration cut through it. His phone, glowing in his pocket.

Jonas’s voice crackled through the line, easy and familiar.

“Hey, you off soon? I can swing by.”

Eli hesitated. The instinct was to refuse—habit, pride—but the warmth in Jonas’s tone matched the warmth under his briefcase. 

“Already on the train. If I get off at the next stop, could you come by?”

“Consider it done.”

That easy, no-questions promise took the edge off his chest.

The train finally stuttered to a stop, doors parting, cold air hitting his face—real air after hours of the carriage’s stale breath.

Jonas’s car rolled to the curb at the same moment. Eli climbed in; the tension immediately bled out of him.

They didn’t talk much. The hum of the engine, the faint static from the radio—small sounds filling the space where worry used to sit.

“This is better,” Eli murmured. 

Jonas’s glance was brief but warm. “I’ll get you home comfortably.”

Lights blurred by the window, gentle and fast. Each curve in the road let the tightness ease a notch. He caught himself exhaling, the tension easing by a hair.

Jonas smiled sideways. “Long day?”

“Yeah,” Eli said, low. “More than usual.”

Jonas didn’t ask for more. He never did.

Eli’s thoughts drifted - the train, the reflex he couldn’t control, the quiet shame he’d carried alone. He hadn’t told anyone, not even Jonas. Here, the car’s quiet did what nothing else had—it let him breathe. The pressure sat low, steady, but not as urgent anymore.

Maybe this was what peace looked like: a friend who didn’t ask, a road that simply carried them forward. His fingers finally stopped twitching, resting easy on his lap.

“Almost there,” Jonas said, voice soft.

Eli shifted slightly. “Yeah. I know.”

The words came out low, half breath. Jonas’s attention stayed on the road, steady as ever.

Silence again—except now Eli could feel his body starting to betray the calm. The closer they got, the more his body claimed urgency again. Muscles twitching, bladder tightening with every turn. That cruel, stupid instinct of being almost home, the body hearing safety and deciding now was the time. He pressed his knees together, fighting the pulse of urgency that had nothing to do with fear anymore—just pure physiology, impatience.

He forced a slow breath through his teeth. Not yet. Hold it together.

The driveway light came into view. The pressure flared again—sharper, familiar—a leak threatening so insistent, Eli stopped breathing for a moment. Jonas pulled in, neat as always. They didn’t talk on their way in. 

He shuffled down the hall, briefcase held low to cover any possible dark spots. Every step was a deal struck between control and panic. But he made it, reached the bathroom, the door clicked shut.

For a heartbeat he only stood there, breathing. Being this close almost broke him fully. One step, then another—awkwardly bent over. When he finally reached the toilet, his body stopped asking and just took over.

Relief hit him in broken waves—raw, uneven. Air left him in a grunt, not a sigh. Shoulders sagged. Knees bent. A noise escaped that wasn’t meant for anyone to hear. The chase that had followed him from the train drained out slow, leaving heat, shaking, quiet.

He needed a minute before his hands stopped shaking. Washed them twice. Then he wandered out to the living room.

Jonas sat already slouched on the couch, looked up once, then paused—like he couldn’t decide if words were needed.

“Made it?” 

Eli gave a nod. “Yeah.”

Jonas stretched, joints cracking. “Want a lift tomorrow? Skip the train.”

A pause. Then a small smile from Eli, tired but real. “Yes, please.”

“Done.” Jonas clicked the volume up and tossed the remote aside.

Eli took the other end of the couch. Maybe next time the train would still hurt. Maybe the memory would still rise and leave him shaking. But tonight he’d made it home, kind of whole, the body’s defiance softened into trust.

He let the quiet TV show hold him until his thoughts finally stopped turning in circles.

A pause. Then, with a sudden gasp:

“Wait,” Eli said, turning his head. “You knew?”

Jonas’s mouth curved, slow and almost shameless. “You held your briefcase like it was gonna explode. Kinda gave it away.”

Eli groaned, half mortified, half laughing. “You could’ve said something.”

“I asked if you made it.”

“Don’t tell anyone, please.”

“Never, happens to the best of us. Excluding me, of course.”

The laughter that followed was small, tired, but exactly enough to ease the tension again.