Chapter 1
The apartment already smelled like cardboard and cheap beer when I got there.
Nick had the door open with his shoulder, four big pizza boxes stacked on one palm, a twelve-pack hanging from the other fingers. He was still in the gray cut-off he’d worn to the gym. Dark-blond hair damp at the roots. Blond beard neat enough to look accidental. He took up the whole frame the way he took up every room.
“Move, Troy. You’re furniture.”
I moved. I always moved for Nick.
Vincent was already on the floor by the TV, laptop open, a Red Bull sweating a ring into the coffee table. Black hair everywhere. Glasses slipping. That ridiculous little mustache the rest of us had been trying to kill since sophomore year. Robotics hoodie two sizes too big. He didn’t look up.
“You’re late,” he said. “I queued the bracket.”
“It’s pizza, Vin. Not a LAN party.”
“Everything is a bracket if you love yourself.”
Nate came out of the kitchen with plates nobody was going to use and a look like he’d rather be at the firm. Six-three. Brown hair. That intellectual mustache he actually pulled off. Sleeves rolled. Hairy forearms. Quiet in the way that made people listen when he finally talked. He set the plates down and cracked a beer with his ring.
“MJ’s parking. Omar’s downstairs arguing with the app.”
“Omar’s always arguing with the app,” I said.
Nate’s mouth twitched. Almost a smile. He sat on the arm of the couch like the couch had asked permission.
I took the corner of the sofa because it let me see the whole room and because if I sat next to Nick I’d spend the night measuring the distance between my knee and his. I’m twenty-one. Closeted. Law school I hated. The official funny friend. The one who knew every Marvel timeline, and all the pop culture gossip and none of the ways to say I want you without blowing up the group chat.
They thought I was straight enough or bi, I dunno. Or they didn’t think about it. That was the deal I had with myself. Laugh. Pass the beer. Don’t stare at the line of Nick’s gym shorts when he dropped onto the other end of the couch and spread his legs like the apartment was a locker room.
MJ kicked the door. Medium height, faded cut, goatee, arms inked, the most built out of all of us and the loudest about it. Football. Sport science. Michael B. Jordan if Michael B. Jordan was a college dude and did keg stands and called you bro in the same breath.
“I brought hot wings because Nick will eat three pizzas and claim it’s macros.”
“It’s protein,” Nick said.
“It’s cheese, you animal.”
Omar came last. Black hair, green eyes, dark beard, the chest hair he kept trimmed like a secret he still wanted people to notice. Not the tallest. Built. The Prince of Persia thing had started as a joke in a lecture hall and stuck because he let it. Engineering master’s. Adopted. American as the rest of us except when he felt like being mysterious for half a sentence. He set a bottle of something amber on the table that was not beer.
“For later. If Vincent makes this night as painful as last time.”
“Last time was Smash Bros,” Vincent said.
“Exactly.”
We ate like we always ate. Hands. Boxes open. The game on mute in the background so Nick could glance at the score and pretend he wasn’t checking. MJ narrated a catch that hadn’t happened yet. Omar stole pepperoni off Nate’s slice and Nate let him, which was how you knew Nate liked you. Vincent talked about a servo motor until Nick told him to eat or get out.
I watched them the way I always watched them — in pieces, so nobody caught the whole look.
Nick’s throat and Adam’s apple when he swallowed beer. The vein in his forearm when he tore crust. The damp patch at the neck of the cut-off. MJ’s laugh, head back, white teeth. Nate’s fingers on the bottle, long, clean, the same fingers that tabbed exhibits at the office. Omar licking sauce off his thumb without thinking about it. Vincent bouncing his knee, already bored of food, already hunting for a system.
I wanted all of it. I wanted it in a way that sat in my stomach under the pepperoni and made me take smaller bites. I laughed when MJ called Nick a golden retriever with a max bench. I threw a crust back. I did the bit. The bit was the only closet that still fit.
“You going out after this?” MJ asked me.
“Depends if Vin puts on a cutscene.”
“I’m sitting right here,” Vincent said.
“We know,” Nick said. “That’s the problem.”
Nate looked at me over the bottle.
“You have that mock thing Monday.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Then don’t stay up until four arguing about which Batman is canon.”
“Every Batman is canon if you believe in yourself,” I said, and Nick snorted, and for a second I was just Troy, the guy who lived here in the jokes, and not the guy cataloguing the sweat in Nick’s collar.
Vincent waited until the second box was a graveyard.
“So. Truth or dare. Shots.”
Nick groaned into his beer.
“We’re not fifteen, Vin.”
“Speak for yourself. Emotionally I peaked at fourteen.”
MJ threw a crust at him.
“No. Absolutely not. Last time you dared Nate to text his professor and Nate almost got a conduct meeting.”
“That was data,” Vincent said. “Also he didn’t get the meeting.”
“Because I have a brain,” Nate said. Quiet. Final.
Omar leaned back, arms along the couch, green eyes half-lidded.
“What’s the buy-in.”
Vincent pushed the bottle Omar had brought into the center, then lined up six shot glasses he’d apparently unpacked from a cabinet I didn’t know we owned.
“One shot if you refuse. Two if you lie. All truths have to be sexual.”
The room did that thing rooms do when somebody puts sex on the table and nobody wants to be the first to flinch.
Nick laughed once.
“There it is. That’s why. You want to know who jerks it to what.”
“I want honesty,” Vincent said. “You animals lie about everything else. Sports. Grades. How many girls. I’m setting a constraint.”
“Constraint,” MJ repeated. “Listen to him. Robotics boy built a kink syllabus.”
Vincent’s ears went red. He cracked another Red Bull instead of answering.
I should have said no. I should have been the one who called it childish and meant it. Instead I heard my own voice, light, the official funny friend.
“If the truths are sexual, Nick’s out in three rounds. He doesn’t have an inner life. He has a squat rack and a rotation.”
Nick looked at me. Not mean. Interested, the way he got interested when somebody poked the bro thing.
“Keep talking, Troy. I’ll remember that.”
Nate set his empty down.
“Rules. Real ones. Nobody leaves the apartment. Nobody films. You can skip one dare a night. Skip two and you drink the rest of the bottle.”
Omar lifted his eyebrows.
“Look at lawyer boy. He wants it.”
“I want it contained,” Nate said. “There’s a difference.”
MJ slapped the table.
“Fuck it. I’m in. If Nick has to say who he thought about in the shower this morning I’m dying happy.”
“Your mom,” Nick said.
“That’s not sexual, that’s slander.”
Vincent poured. We drank the first shot because starting was easier than agreeing. It burned. Omar’s stuff was not beer. My chest went warm. Nick hissed through his teeth and grinned at the ceiling.
“Fine,” Nick said. “But if this gets gay I’m blaming the nerd.”
Vincent smiled with all his teeth.
“Define gay.”
“I’ll know it when I see it.”
We always thought we’d know. Vincent went first because it was his religion. He pointed at MJ.
“Truth or dare.”
“Truth. I’m not doing your anime shit.”
“Last person you got off thinking about who wasn’t a girl you could actually text.”
MJ blinked. Then he laughed, short.
“That’s specific.”
“Constraint,” Vincent said.
MJ rubbed his goatee. Looked at the mute game. Looked at Nick, which was a mistake he tried to cover with another laugh.
“Fine. That TA from kinesiology. The one with the shoulders. I said she. I meant the shoulders. That’s as honest as you get.”
Nick howled.
“You jerk to a dude’s delts. Write that down, Vin.”
“I said shoulders. Could be anyone.”
“Could be me,” Nick said, and flexed on purpose, cut-off riding up, abs showing in a strip. The room threw things at him. I looked at my hands.
Nate got the next one. Omar pointed at him with the neck of a bottle.
“Preppy. Truth or dare.”
Nate didn’t hesitate.
“Truth.”
“When’s the last time you came and it wasn’t neat.”
Nate’s jaw ticked. He took his time. That was Nate. He never gave you the first answer.
“Last week. Shower at the office gym. I thought about a mouth. I didn’t assign it a gender until after. That’s the truth. Drink if you want a name. There isn’t one.”
The room went quieter than it had for MJ.
“Lawyer boy’s nasty,” MJ said, delighted.
“Lawyer boy’s honest,” Vincent murmured, already filing it.
Nick pointed his bottle at me.
“Your boy Troy’s sweating and we haven’t even started on him.”
“I’m hot,” I said. “The radiator’s on.”
“The radiator’s been off since last week.” Omar said.
I drank water like water was a personality.
My turn came in the next rotation. Vincent again. He had that look he got when a hypothesis was forming.
“Troy. Truth or dare.”
The safe play was truth. A truth I could fake. A girl from mock trial. A porn category generic enough to sound straight. Something that kept the closet in the corner where it belonged.
Instead I said: “Dare.”
Because I was warm from the shot and because Nick was watching and because the official funny friend didn’t pick the coward option in front of the football players.
Vincent’s eyes lit up behind the glasses.
“Nick. Stand up.”
“Why me, dude???”
“Because you smell like a locker room and Troy just volunteered. Dare is: Troy licks Nick’s balls. Ten seconds. No hands from Nick. Double Shot if either of you wuss out.”
The apartment went very loud and then very quiet.
Nick stared at Vincent.
“You’re sick.”
“You said you’d know gay when you saw it,” Vincent said. “This is a dare. Dares are stupid. That’s the point. He’s not sucking your dick. He’s not kissing you. It’s balls. You have them. He has a mouth. Ten seconds. We count.”
MJ had both hands on his head.
“I can’t believe this is the night.”
Omar’s mouth was an almost-smile.
“Nick’s been in those shorts since the gym. That’s not a dare, that’s a health code. Troy would die just for smelling it.”
Nate didn’t laugh. He watched Nick. Then he watched me. Lawyer eyes. No, I wouldn’t die. I’d give anything to smell them in real life. But they could never know that, and I could never admit it.
“You can skip,” Nate said to me. “That’s the rule.”
I could have skipped. I could have taken the double shot and stayed the guy who knew which Batman was canon and that Michelle Pfeiffer’s the best Catwoman ever. Nick was looking at me like he was waiting for the joke, the nah bro I’m good, the thing that put the room back in its box.
I shrugged. The official shrug. The one that said I was in on it.
“Ten seconds. Don’t make it weird,” I said, and Vin screamed loudly, deliberately trying to embarrass Nick. They had that classic hate-love bromance—always getting on each other’s nerves, but clearly enjoying every second of it.
Nick laughed, disbelieving.
“Don’t make it weird, he says. Vin just assigned you my nuts.”
He stood anyway. Of course he stood. Nick didn’t lose dares. He hooked his thumbs in the waistband of the gym shorts and shoved them down with the compression shorts underneath in one motion, not shy, not careful, the way he stripped in a locker room where everybody had the same parts.
“If I catch something, Vin pays my deductible.”
“You won’t,” Vincent said. “Troy’s a virgin, probably, he never talks about girls.”
The other guys laughed, and MJ shouted, “Yo, bro, you’re the virgin here. If you’ve ever fucked anything in your life, it was probably some shitty Temu fleshlight.”
I had imagined this. I had not imagined the heat. I had not imagined it in front of the other guys.
He was thick even soft, the weight of him falling forward, veined, cut, heavier than the jokes had room for. Underneath, his balls hung full and low, flushed from the gym, a faint sheen of sweat still on the skin from the squat rack and the walk and the heavy pizza boxes. The smell hit first. It didn’t wait for my mouth. Musk. Heat. Sweat. The animal fact of a guy who had worked out for an hour and decided showering was optional because his boys were waiting for the pizzas.
MJ yelled. Omar covered his mouth laughing hard and said:
“He’s about to black out from the fumes coming off those radioactive balls. Somebody keep 911 on speed dial,” Omar said.
Vincent leaned in like it was a lab. Nate said, “Christ,” very quietly with disapproval.
Nick looked down at himself, then at me, trying to find the joke and hold it.
“You get ten, pretty boy. Don’t catch feelings. Don’t use teeth. Don’t “kiss my nuts and tell.”
“We already know you don’t wash,” I said, and my voice came out thinner than the bit.
Vincent lifted his phone, not to film — Nate’s rule — just to time.
“On three. One. Two. Three.”
MJ started the count because MJ couldn’t help himself.
“One—”
I went to my knees because the couch angle was stupid for my back and because there was no other way to do it that didn’t look like I was afraid.
I was afraid and dying to lick Nick’s balls.
I put my mouth on him.
“Two—”
Sweaty loose skin. The heat of him against my lips. I had told myself I would count with them. A joke in my head. Instead the smell went straight down my spine. It was stronger up close, trapped in the hair, in the crease of his thigh, in the hours since the gym. My hands found his thighs without permission.
“Three—”
I opened my mouth wider and took one into it and then the other, messy, not ten-second-dare messy. Hungry. Nick jerked like he’d been hit with a pad.
“Yo— Troy— that’s— that’s the bit, you can—”
“Four—“
MJ yelled in total disbelief, “Bro, what the hell am I looking at? This dude has completely lost it. It’s like he hasn’t eaten in fifteen days and Nick’s balls are his first meal. This shit is unbelievable!”
“It’s not unbelievable. This shit is just fucking hilarious,” Vin shot back, bouncing up and down on the couch like an overexcited kid.
I didn’t stop. I dragged my tongue along the underside, the seam, the place the sweat had sat all evening, and the sound I made was not a joke. Nick’s cock thickened against my cheek, fast, filling, the veins standing up as the blood arrived like it had been waiting in the hallway. He got hard in my face while I sucked his balls into my mouth and forgot there were four other guys in the room watching me being gay as fuck.
“He’s hard. His dick’s already grown,” Omar said, laughing. “Nick is absolutely loving the ball cleaning.”
Nate stared at me intensely and simply said,
“You guys look like teenagers completely out of control. This is surreal.”
“Shut up, lawboy, I bet you’re hard.” Vin complained, tossing a piece of pizza at the law student.
I wasn’t going to stop. It was impossible. The smell had awakened something animal in me. I’d masturbated countless times imagining something like this; I was going to enjoy it. Without even thinking about what the others might think. Fuck them.
“Five— bro he is not playing—”
Nick’s hand hovered over my hair and didn’t land. His stomach jumped. A noise came out of him — low, punched, the kind he made when a lift locked out — and he bit it off too late.
“Fuck.”
“Six—”
Vincent whispered, “That’s a moan. He’s enjoying teabagging Troy.”
“It is not a—” Nick’s sentence broke when I licked a stripe from the base of his sack up to where his cock had lifted off his thigh, thick and mean and flushed, a wet bead already at the slit. Then I went back down because that was what I had wanted since he’d walked in with the pizzas, and the dare was just the door somebody else had opened.
“Seven—”
“Okay. Okay. Dare’s done,” Nick said. His fingers finally closed in my hair. Not to pull me in. To stop me. They shook anyway.
“Jesus, Troy. Ten. We said ten.”
“Eight—”
I sat back on my heels because his hand made me. My mouth was wet. His cock stood out of the gym shorts he’d only shoved to mid-thigh, obscene, heavier now, a wet spot at the head from how fast he’d gotten there. His balls were shiny with my spit. He looked down at himself like his body had sided with the wrong team.
“Nine— ten. That’s ten. That’s more than ten. That’s a documentary.”
The room exploded.
MJ on the floor. Omar wiping his eyes. Vincent saying “data” like he’d come. Nate had his fist against his mouth and his eyes were darker than they’d been at the start of the night.
Nick yanked the shorts up. They didn’t help. The outline was a problem. A thick, veined problem pointing left, trapped in gray fabric that had not been designed for this argument.
“Not a word,” he said. His voice had gone rough. “Not a fucking word. It’s a reflex. He had his mouth on my shit. That’s biology. “It could be a dog doing it. My reaction would be exactly the same.”
“Biology,” MJ wheezed. “Bro, you moaned on six.”
“I did not—”
“You moaned,” Omar said, almost gentle.
“We all heard it. Vincent timed it.”
Nick pointed at me. His ears were red. The blond beard didn’t hide it.
“You were supposed to count to ten, you freak. What was that. That was not a dare. That was you.”
I wiped my mouth with the back of my wrist. The official funny friend tried to come back. He arrived late and thin.
“You tasted like the gym, man. I got committed to the bit.”
Vincent raised his shot glass.
“He got committed to the balls.”
Nick dropped onto the couch hard enough to move it. He sat with his knees apart because closing them would have made the situation worse. He wouldn’t look at me. He also wouldn’t look away from me for more than a second.
Nate poured the next round without being asked.
“House rule,” he said. “What happens in the living room stays in the living room.”
“Second house rule,” MJ said, still grinning, still wrecked. “Troy does not get to pretend that was a joke.”
I took the shot. It didn’t wash anything off my tongue. Nick’s taste was still there. The smell was still there. The shape of him against my cheek was going to be there when I tried to sleep.
Omar lifted his glass toward Vincent.
“Your game.”
Vincent’s ridiculous mustache twitched.
“My game,” he agreed. “And nobody’s skipping the next one because they’re shy now.”
Nick muttered at the ceiling.
“I hate this friend group.”
He didn’t leave.
Neither did I.
The pizza boxes sat open. The game was still on mute. Six of us in an apartment that suddenly had a new rule nobody had written down, and my secret wasn’t a secret in the same way it had been when I’d walked in.
I could still feel the weight of him on my tongue.
And I already knew I was going to say dare again.
“So, who’s next?” Vin asked with the same chaotic energy.
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