Chapter 11
Reid
Something is going on in this house.
Something’s seriously off.
I’ve been here fourteen days, and I can’t shake the feeling that I moved into a house with an inside joke I haven’t been told yet.
And I don’t like being the only one without knowing the joke.
I light a cigarette on the back porch, and open the case file in my head. My criminal law professor calls it prosecutorial thinking; my high school counselor called it a “persistent social deficit.”
Tomato, tomato.
Exhibit A: Grant Holloway (22, Construction Management)
He runs the house. Everyone naturally defers to him, and he’s self-aware enough not to abuse the leverage.
He cooks on Sundays, which I did not expect, and the food is actually edible.
He’s got the protective streak of an older brother, extending it to everyone whether they asked for it or not.
I don’t love it, but I don’t exactly hate it either.
Note of Interest: I caught him alone on the couch at 11 PM, two days after I moved in. Laughing. No, more like chuckling—actually giggling, which on a guy Grant’s size is a very unexpected sound.
I figured sports highlights or some viral idiocy.
It was a book app.
I stood there for probably thirty seconds watching Grant Holloway, football scholarship, highlighting dirty talk in what appeared to be a porny romance novel with considerable focus.
My read on him shifted two degrees that night. It was my first time seeing someone study dirty talk.
Exhibit B: Miles Thorne-Leung (22, Computer Science/Cybersecurity)
He didn’t like me from the first second we met. I could tell because Miles is the kind of person who doesn’t bother simulating social niceties. He’s not rude; he just doesn’t perform warmth he doesn’t feel. I find it significantly more comfortable than small talk.
I don’t like him either, so we’re even. His code is great, though. I respect the work even if I don’t respect the man.
Field Note: Found him passed out on the hallway floor three nights ago. I checked for a pulse, then I liberated a joint from his hoodie pocket because it was visibly sticking out, and I wasn’t going to leave that on the floor.
It was, for the record, decent weed.
Exhibit C: Finn Gallagher (21, Digital Media)
Finn produces content for a degree, but he’s funny enough that I don’t hold it against him.
Actually, Finn is low-maintenance. He is the exact type of guy I had three of in high school—the ones who talk constantly, don’t care if I’m paying attention, and manage to make an entire conversation about a TV show I’ve never seen actually tolerable.
He’s the reason I’ve watched two episodes of four different anime series since moving in. He doesn’t register my silences as unfriendliness. I appreciate it more than I’ve articulated out loud.
The Pattern: I caught him jerking it to porn twice, and anime once. Not my business, but noted.
Exhibit D: Walker Brooks (21, Kinesiology/Sports Med)
This one hurts.
It’s painful to say this because Walker is loud, and a jock, and leaves pizza boxes literally everywhere, and once woke the whole house up at 4 AM because he was doing jumping jacks in the kitchen for some reason—but Walker is, against all odds, the most normal person in this house.
Yes, that’s a frustrating conclusion to reach, but I’ve sat with it for two weeks and it keeps coming back true.
He’s healthy, socially adjusted, and annoyingly nice.
He works at the campus clinic, which I didn’t know about until he showed up in my doorway four days ago, looked at me massaging the side of my neck, and said “That’s your levator scapulae.
You’re sleeping on your side with shit pillow support.
” Then he handed me a tube of gel and left.
I used it. My neck feels better.
Kit Adler (22, Mechatronics Engineering)
My roommate.
Kit works on robotics. That’s something you’d never guess because he looks exactly like those guys in high school—you know the ones.
Easy smile, comfortable in his body, popular in that effortless way, where they’re not trying to be liked, but everyone likes them anyway.
Handsome as hell, too. I bet anything he was a prom king.
I was ready to hate him on principle, but the silence between us is actually comfortable. He’s quiet, organized, and actually really nice.
And he’s always covered in hickeys.
Like, always.
Rotating sets of marks on his throat and chest in various stages of fading, which means they’re being regularly replenished. Which means he’s frequently hooking up with someone. Or someones. Fine, cool, none of my business. He’s clearly attractive enough that this isn’t shocking.
Except he spends all his free time in the house, and he never brings anyone home.
The house has a system for that. Grant’s girlfriend is over constantly, and I’ve heard Walker use the signal twice. Kit has used it zero times. No one comes over, no one calls, and he never shows the psychological signs of being in a relationship.
The marks keep appearing, though.
He’s handsome. Obviously people want him. Obviously he’s getting it somewhere. But where?
Then there’s the way he takes up space. Last week he was on the couch in just those old man boxers he likes to wear at home, legs sprawled, totally relaxed. Walker was on the other end with a front-row seat to whatever Kit had going on under the hem.
I came around the corner and got my own eyeful before Kit noticed me and adjusted. He wasn’t embarrassed; it was more of a “this view isn’t for you” barrier.
To be honest, I don’t think Kit’s gay. I usually detect that—it’s an involuntary skill I’ve had since I was fourteen. He’s not bi in any obvious way either, or if he is he’s not going to tell me.
The other guys are definitively straight.
Walker has Chloe, who shows up every Thursday afternoon.
Grant has Alice. Finn won’t shut up about some girl in his seminar, and I’ve passed his door enough times to know his porn preferences lean strictly heterosexual.
As for Miles, I don’t care enough to even wonder.
So the house is straight. Kit reads as straight. And yet something is vibrating under the surface.
I tried to poke at it yesterday—casual talk about dating and preferences. Kit answered every question fully and managed to say absolutely nothing. That’s a specific and intentional skill. The fact that he has it is more interesting than the answers he omitted.
So I genuinely don’t know what I’m looking at.
Actually, that’s a lie. I know exactly what I’m looking at.
The clues have been stacking up like evidence—individually ignorable, collectively damning.
Naturally, I organized them.
EXHIBIT A: The tablet.
I noticed it in the first week—a tablet mounted by the fridge. I figured it was for a digital grocery list or some communal chore chart. Then I actually read the display. There was a status display on it along with the rest of the things: ONLINE. OFFLINE. MAINTENANCE. STANDBY.
I stood there for a full minute, just staring at it. That isn’t for dishes or trash day. The categories are all wrong for that.
Someone in this house has a status board for… something that isn’t chores.
EXHIBIT B: The lube.
There’s a bottle in the shared bathroom. It isn’t on display, but it isn’t tucked away either. On its own, it’s a non-starter. Five guys—statistically, someone’s beating off.
EXHIBIT C: The looks.
The guys look at Kit.
Not constantly, and not in a way that triggers a creep alarm. It’s more subtle. When Kit is across the room, one of them will glance over and there’s a specific weight to it.
Grant does it. Walker does it more. Finn is the most casual about it, which means he’s either the least subtle or the most comfortable with whatever the “deal” is.
EXHIBIT D: 2 AM.
I got back from the library late. The house was a tomb, except for one light bleeding from Finn and Miles’ room. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but the walls here are basically decorative. Finn’s solo activities aren’t new information, but the sounds were different this time.
There was a steady sound coming through the door that definitely didn’t belong to a video game.
It was a very specific sound, and it didn’t help that it was layered under Finn’s whines and pants.
Sure, he could’ve been using a cocksleeve, but I’m too familiar with the sound of balls slapping against an ass.
It was a ridiculously quick rhythm, too.
I went to my room. Kit’s bed was empty.
By morning, he was back under the covers like he’d been there all night. If I hadn’t seen the empty mattress at 2 AM, I’d have zero proof.
The math is starting to add up, and the total is wild.
EXHIBIT E: Walker’s hand.
Walker wandered into the kitchen post-shower, wearing nothing but low-slung sweats.
He stopped next to Kit at the counter, and patted his shoulder—normal bro behavior, right? But then I watched his hand slide down Kit’s back, slipping beneath the waistband of Kit’s shorts to squeeze his ass firmly before reaching past him for a protein shake.
Kit didn’t even flinch. He didn’t even break his stride while stirring his coffee.
A normal reaction would have been a laugh, a shove, a “bro, what the hell?” But Kit just kept drinking his coffee like it didn’t happen. Actually, he did more than nothing—he leaned back into Walker’s space for a split second, an almost imperceptible tilt of the hips that looked like a reflex.
Like this kind of thing has been happening so long, it doesn’t even register as an event anymore.
I filed that evidence away in under three seconds, initially trying to tell my brain that that was just the way jocks communicate, or some weird “guys being dudes” locker room ritual.
But what the hell?
EXHIBIT F: The 3 AM Incident (AKA, The Most Important Evidence)
Two nights ago, I was on my bed, fully awake, my head full of Kit. Kit! Kit? Kit?!
The door to our room was pushed open. It wasn’t a quiet entrance. It was heavy and stumbling.