Chapter 1: The nerd and the jock
The bass from Adam’s shitty Bluetooth speaker rattled against the apartment walls, some indie rock playlist that Nick had heard a dozen times before. He didn’t mind. Familiarity was the point of these gatherings—the same faces, the same cheap beer, the same couch that had swallowed too many drunk conversations to count.
The bass from Adam’s shitty Bluetooth speaker rattled against the apartment walls, some indie rock playlist that Nick had heard a dozen times before. He didn’t mind. Familiarity was the point of these gatherings—the same faces, the same cheap beer, the same couch that had swallowed too many drunk conversations to count.
Stella was already three drinks deep, her laugh cutting through the music as she draped an arm lazily over Charlotte’s shoulder. Charlotte leaned into her easily, grinning as James refilled her glass with a playful toast. “Don’t let her drink all the good stuff, James,” Édouard called from the window, raising his cider in a mock salute. James laughed and clinked his bottle against Édouard’s. They were all easy with each other, the kind of warmth that came from months of shared hangovers, late-night study sessions, and lazy Sundays on this very couch. Even Charlotte’s debate with James was good-natured, her hand resting on his knee as she argued, their bickering just another form of affection. Adam moved between them all like a conductor, refilling glasses, touching shoulders, his glasses slipping down his nose whenever he smiled too wide. He paused to ruffle Stella’s hair, earning a mock scowl, then nudged Nick with an elbow. “You good?” he asked, his voice low and fond. Nick nodded, letting the group’s easy rhythm settle the last of his tension.That first day of third year, Nick had walked into the biology lecture hall expecting the usual—anonymous rows of faces, the crush of students he’d never learn the names of. Instead, Adam had slid into the seat beside him, offered a half-eaten bag of pretzels, and said, “You look like you’re planning your escape route.”
Nick had laughed. That wasn’t something people usually noticed.
A few months later, and Nick still wasn’t sure how it had happened. The way Adam just fit into his life. They ran together on Tuesday mornings, even when Nick groaned about it. They studied together in the library basement, where the lighting was terrible but no one ever bothered them. They drank cheap coffee from the vending machine and complained about the same professors, the same deadlines, the same exhaustion that came with chasing a degree that demanded everything.
They thought the same way. Not always—Adam was louder, quicker to laugh, more likely to drag Nick to a party he didn’t want to attend—but on the things that mattered, they aligned. The quiet frustration of getting a B+ on a paper you’d poured your soul into. The particular satisfaction of a hypothesis that proved correct. The way they both looked at the world and asked why when everyone else just accepted.
Adam had introduced him to his friends slowly, carefully, like he was curating something precious. Charlotte first, then Édouard, then Stella and James. And Nick had watched Adam’s face light up when they got along, had felt something settle in his chest that he didn’t have a name for yet.
It was good. It was easy
And then the door swung open.
“Marc! Finally, man.”
Adam’s voice pitched higher with genuine delight, and Nick turned from the kitchen counter where he’d been cracking open a beer.
The guy filling the doorway wasn’t just tall—he was constructed. Broad shoulders that pulled the fabric of his navy henley taut across the chest, biceps that strained the sleeves in a way that seemed almost deliberate. Nick’s gaze caught, snagged on the thick curve of muscle before he could stop it, and he felt a flicker of something—annoyance, maybe, or fascination—as his eyes lingered a beat too long on the way the cotton stretched over his frame. Blond hair cropped short, jaw sharp enough to cut glass, and eyes so pale blue they looked like chips of winter sky—pale and cold and startling, the kind of blue that seemed to see right through you before you even spoke. Nick recognized him immediately. University baseball team. Right fielder. The kind of guy who got applause just for walking into a lecture hall.
Nick’s thumb pressed against the bottle cap he’d just removed.
“Marc! Finally, man.”
Adam’s voice pitched higher with genuine delight, and he crossed the room before Marc had even fully cleared the doorway. They clasped hands and pulled into that half-hug thing athletes did, Adam’s free hand slapping Marc’s shoulder blade with a solid thump.
“Happy birthday,” Marc said, his grin easy, practiced—the kind of grin that had never been rejected in its life. “Sorry I’m late. Practice ran long.”
“Don’t worry about it. Beer’s in the kitchen.” Adam stepped back, already gesturing toward the group. James was on his feet before the words left Adam’s mouth.
“Marc! How’s the arm?” James crossed the room, hand extended, his grin wide and familiar. They clasped palms and pulled into a quick, one-armed embrace that spoke of gym sessions and shared sweat.
“Still throws heat,” Marc said, returning the grip. “You should come to practice sometime. Coach always asks about you.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll think about it.” James clapped him on the shoulder, then jerked his chin toward the cooler. “I’ve got a fresh IPA if you want something better than Adam’s warm piss-water.”
Marc laughed—a low, genuine sound—and let James steer him toward the kitchen. On the way, he passed Édouard, who looked up from his phone with a lazy salute.
“Marc.” Édouard’s tone was flat, but his eyes crinkled with something like approval.
“Édouard. Still reading Proust in the original French?”
“Someone has to.”
Marc snorted and bumped his fist. It was a gesture so casual, so natural, that Nick felt a strange pinch in his chest—the way Marc seemed to slot into this group like he’d always been here.
Stella glanced up from her drink, raised two fingers in a vague wave. “Hey, Marc.” Her voice was relaxed, disinterested.
Charlotte just tilted her head, offering a polite, closed-lip smile before turning back to whatever story she was telling Stella. Their attention slid away from him easily, like they’d seen him a dozen times before and didn’t need to mark his arrival.
Nick’s thumb pressed harder against the bottle cap he’d just cracked open.
Adam’s hand landed on Nick’s shoulder. “And this is Nick. Biology. The guy I’m always telling you about—runs with me three times a week even though he complains the whole time.”
Nick opened his mouth to say something standard, something friendly, something he’d said a hundred times at a hundred introductions—
“Biology, huh?” Marc’s blue eyes swept over him with an expression Nick couldn’t quite read. “Guess that explains the specimen collection. You must spend a lot of time with the frogs.” He paused. “Wait, do they still do the frogs? Or is that just movies?”
The laugh that followed was too loud, too confident, the kind of laugh that expected everyone else to join in.
Nick didn’t join.
His jaw tightened. The words landed wrong—not cruel, exactly, but careless. The kind of joke made at someone rather than with them. Nick had spent three years watching people’s eyes glaze over when he mentioned his major, had fielded enough “nerd” comments to develop a reflex.
“We do the frogs,” Nick said, his voice flat. “Turns out you need more than a batting average to understand vertebrate anatomy.”
The room’s temperature dropped a degree. Maybe two.
Charlotte’s conversation with Stella stalled mid-sentence. Édouard’s thumb stopped scrolling.
Marc’s grin flickered—just for a second, just enough for Nick to notice—before resettling into place. “Fair enough.” He scratched the back of his neck, and something in the gesture looked almost sheepish. “Didn’t mean anything by it. Sometimes I say dumb shit.”
An apology. Sort of. The shape of one, anyway.
“Marc does that,” Adam cut in quickly, his voice carrying that particular brightness people used to fill awkward silences. “He’s actually a decent guy once you get past the… you know.” He gestured vaguely at Marc’s entire physical being. “The whole package.”
Stella snorted into her drink.
Nick looked at Marc again. Really looked this time. The guy wasn’t smirking anymore. His posture had shifted—shoulders less squared, hands shoved into his pockets. He was still absurdly attractive, still every inch the jock stereotype Nick had mentally filed him under, but there was something else now. A crack in the facade. The way his eyes kept flicking back to Nick’s face like he was waiting for something.
He actually cares that I’m pissed, Nick realized. He actually noticed.
“Look.” Marc stepped closer, and Nick caught the scent of him—grass, sweat, something clean underneath. “Adam talks about you all the time. Biology this, Nick that. I was trying to give you shit the way guys do. Obviously it landed wrong.” He held up both hands. “I’m an idiot. Official statement.”
Adam was watching them with an expression Nick couldn’t decipher—something between amusement and anticipation.
Nick exhaled through his nose. The irritation was still there, a small hot coal in his chest, but it felt petty to hold onto it. Marc wasn’t sneering. Wasn’t looking down at him. He was just… waiting. Those pale blue eyes steady on Nick’s face, patient in a way that didn’t match the rest of him.
“Shots,” Nick said.
Marc blinked. “What?”
“Shots.” Nick pushed off the counter and reached for the bottle of tequila someone had brought. “If you’re going to insult my entire field of study, you’re going to drink with me. That’s the rule.”
The grin that broke across Marc’s face was different from before. Less polished. More real. “I can do shots.”
“Obviously you can.” Nick lined up two glasses and poured with more confidence than he felt. “That’s not the question. The question is whether you can keep up.”
Stella let out a low whistle. “Oh, I like this.”
Marc accepted his glass and held it up, and Nick found himself staring at the way his fingers wrapped around the cheap glass—thick knuckles, a silver ring on his index finger, the faint tan line of a watch that wasn’t there. His forearm was corded with muscle, tendons shifting under skin as he adjusted his grip.
Nick forced his eyes back to his own glass.
“To Adam,” Marc said, and his voice had dropped slightly, less performative now. “And to me being less of a dick.”
“Ambitious toast,” Nick muttered, but he clinked his glass against Marc’s anyway.
The tequila burned down his throat, hot and familiar. Marc knocked his back without flinching, then set the glass down with a solid thunk.
He was looking at Nick again.
Not the way he’d looked at Stella or Charlotte or anyone else in the room. Something sharper. Something more focused. His gaze traced the line of Nick’s jaw, lingered on the blond hair that Nick had let grow a little too long over his ears, dropped to the collar of his shirt and stayed there a beat too long.
Nick felt it like a physical weight.
“So,” Marc said, and his voice was lower now, meant only for the space between them, “you run with Adam?”
“Three times a week.”
“What’s your pace?”
The question was so unexpectedly genuine that Nick almost laughed. “Why? You want to join?”
“Maybe.” Marc leaned one hip against the counter, and the movement brought him closer. Not close enough to be obvious. Just close enough that Nick could feel the heat radiating off him. “Depends. You fast?”
Nick’s mouth went dry.
It was a simple question. About running. About pace times and routes and all the mundane details of a shared hobby. But the way Marc said it, the way his eyes held steady and his lips curved just slightly at the corner—it didn’t feel like they were talking about running anymore.
“Fast enough,” Nick managed.
“Good.” Marc held his gaze for three full seconds. Then four. Then he reached past Nick—close enough that his arm brushed Nick’s shoulder, close enough that Nick caught the clean scent of his soap again—and grabbed the tequila bottle. “Your turn to pour. I’m not doing this alone.”
Nick poured.
His hand wasn’t quite steady.
Across the room, Adam was watching them with an expression that Nick couldn’t read at all. When their eyes met, Adam’s eyebrows lifted slightly, a question he didn’t voice.
Nick looked away.
Marc’s shoulder pressed against his for half a second as he reached for his glass. Casual. Incidental. But the contact sent something electric skittering down Nick’s spine, a spark he hadn’t asked for and didn’t want and couldn’t stop thinking about.
He was still an idiot, Nick told himself. Still a jock. Still exactly the type of person Nick had spent his whole life rolling his eyes at.
But those blue eyes were watching him over the rim of the glass, and Nick’s pulse was hammering in his throat, and the tequila was warm in his stomach, and the party was loud around them but somehow the whole world had narrowed to this one square foot of Adam’s kitchen.
“So,” Marc said, setting his glass down again, “tell me about the frogs.”
A challenge. A peace offering. Something in between. The intense gaze fixed on him.
