Kennedy called Friday evening with news. "Okay, you're never gonna believe this."

"Just a minute."

Alistair was up and leaving the living room where Benny and Hunter were snuggling on one half of the couch with Alistair on the other. With Samantha Jones making a dramatic speech about sexuality in the background, Alistair shut himself up in Micah's room and said, "Okay, tell me."

"After the dinner party at Lennon's, Rory and Micah were in the elevator with Uncle Cass and Ezra," Kennedy said. "He offered to buy Micah an apartment."

It was the last possible option on Alistair's mind and therefore, impossible to predict. A white-hot lash of anger cut through his chest as he leant a hand against the doorframe and said, "Your godfather bought him an apartment? When?"

"I don't know. I literally just left dinner with Rory. You're the first person I called."

"I already asked Cassian. He said he hadn't heard from Micah," Alistair said.

"Maybe he lied?"

"Then he isn't going to tell the truth now," Alistair said.

It was infuriating to know that something Alistair would have easily done if asked—rent a spare apartment—was instead entrusted to Cassian Presley. He knew it wasn't entirely personal. Micah was just working with the resources he had and, at the moment, despised Alistair.

He pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Rory said Ezra seemed against the idea. Do you see him at work at all?"

"No, but I could ask him anyway," Alistair said. He sighed. "Fuck. And now it's the weekend. I don't have his number."

"What's two more days at this point," Kennedy said. "He wants space anyway. Let me know what you hear on Monday."

Alistair assured her he would and hung up.

Sleeping in Micah's room was an oddly uncanny experience. He hoped Micah wouldn't mind, as twice now, he'd been woken by Benny slipping into the room to lie beside him. This was usually near four in the morning.

"If I'm not here, do you usually do this?" Alistair asked.

"Yeah," Benny confessed. He cleared his throat. "I mean, not when Micah's here. When he's not here, either. I just... like it in here. No windows. It's kind of insulated."

The mood lighting under Micah's bed doused the room in a faint, purple glow. When Alistair couldn't sleep, he determined that the lights were on a color cycle and soon, they'd turn red with the warming dawn.

He watched from the ceiling mirror as Benny curled into his side to sleep some more.

Hunter stayed over the next night, so Alistair debated leaving. He'd been cooking breakfast in the mornings, though, and preferred Benny and Erika starting the day on a full stomach. Even at the cost of Alistair's nerves that were fraying the longer he spent there.

In the bathroom, brushing his teeth, Hunter entered with a startled jump.

"Oh, sorry," Hunter mumbled, sleepily.

"It's fine," Alistair said around the foam. He spat his toothpaste out.

"Are you... staying the night again?"

"Yeah. Breakfast's at 7:30. You good with french toast?" Alistair said, stepping past to leave.

"Uh, sure. Yeah, that'd be great. Goodnight."

Alistair locked Micah's door behind him and, exhausted, collapsed onto the freshly-cleaned sheets. The tension of living with three other people dissipated then, until the intrusive thoughts dragged him up from the bed. He needed to change his clothes again, though he'd just done so.

He thought he might have brushed Hunter's shoulder when he passed and knew from the muffled sounds in Benny's room that they might have been screwing. Alistair's skin crawled, tearing his shirt off and stuffing it in Micah's emptied hamper. He'd done a load of laundry for Micah at the start of the week.

In his boxers, Alistair returned to the bed to strip the comforter off. He tossed it near the hamper to be cleaned tomorrow, but now the germs were no doubt co-mingling with the floor and crawling towards him and God, dammit, that's not even how germs work—!

Irritated, Alistair dragged the hamper and comforter out to the laundry room to be dealt with in the morning. Unfortunately, this was all exacerbated by the fact that he'd just undressed and was still in the boxers he'd worn when he'd brushed Hunter's shoulder. And, having carried all the contaminated shit to the laundry room, those germs were now all over him.

Shower it is, he decided, and returned to the bathroom where Hunter was finishing up.

"Didn't you just take a shower?" Hunter asked as Alistair leaned into the shower to turn the water on.

"Yeah, well," Alistair sighed.

"Waste of water," Hunter said, and left. He shut the door behind him so he didn't see Alistair flip him off.

Clean at last, Alistair shed the towel and fell, naked, into Micah's clean bed. And now, in theory, he could sleep.

If he'd stop thinking about Micah, that is.

He turned onto his back, staring at his reflection on the ceiling. The room was doused in blue—it was still early in the evening color cycle and, in the dim light, Alistair's tattoos darkened his arms and shed swirls of texture over his torso. He ran a hand down his neck and rubbed it over his collarbone.

It'd been weeks since Alistair had sex, and that timeframe was marked by his last time being with Micah. A tingling sensation pitched down to his gut, blood pumping.

He reached for his phone to open their texts and find not only the voice memos they'd exchanged, but also the only dick pic Micah had ever sent him.

The moment opened their texts, though, he discovered a Read receipt on his last message. The message about Benny's engagement. His hidden photo had also been viewed.

Alistair sat up, leaning back on one hand while the other hovered over the receipt timestamp. It was just under an hour ago.

Pulse quickening, Alistair tapped out a message just to see—just to confirm. He needed to know—

He erased his message three different times. All three of them had been invasive—Where was he? Was he safe? Did he need anything?

He landed on something both true and unobtrusive: "Thinking about your dick right now."

It was instantly marked Read.

Alistair bit his bottom lip, pulling it into his mouth as he waited.

The thought bubble appeared where Micah began to type. The bubbles disappeared. Alistair watched with baited breath as the message was written, deleted, and written again no less than five times. It took nearly ten minutes for Micah to reply.

"Horny too huh."

Alistair scoffed. He'd gotten so worked up that his erection had risen to full hardness and he hadn't even touched it. "Hope you don't mind if I jerk off in your bedroom."

"You're in my bedroom? Freak." And then another. "Do it. I dare you."

"I don't think I can come if you don't make that a triple dog dare."

He snorted, laughing when Micah sent back three dog emojis, which were then followed by 🥵🍆💦🫵📸.

Alistair held his finger down for a voice memo, breathing, "Woof, sir," into the mic.

Several seconds later, an voice memo was returned to him in the form of Micah saying, "Alistair Don't Be Cringe Challenge: Difficulty Impossible."

In the midst of stifling his laughter, Alistair watched the new voice memo appear in the mirror overhead. He brought his phone back up to listen, and it played automatically.

"Can we FaceTime? I won't be on camera. I just want to watch you get off."

Alistair agreed in a heartbeat. As it rang, Alistair set his phone on the sheets beside him. On the ceiling, Alistair watched himself shrink to the corner of the screen where the rest was taken over by Micah's blank camera.

Suddenly speechless, all Alistair wanted to say involved everything Micah didn't want to do—to talk about what Micah was doing, where he was, if Alistair could see him again sometime soon.

Instead, when he took a deep breath for the basics—How was Micah? A simple hello?—Micah interrupted.

"Lube and lotion is in the nightstand," Micah said.

Alistair rolled his eyes, tipped onto his side, and knew his ass looked good doing so. He grabbed the lotion from the table and uncapped it, drawing one leg up. He lathered his hands together before sinking his thumbs down his shins, fingers kneading his calves. His hands climbed to his thighs.

"What are you doing in my bedroom?" Micah asked. "Does Benny know you're there?"

"He knows," Alistair answered, dragging his fingers along his inner thigh. The skin tingled. He moved on to his other leg. "I've been staying here this week."

"Any particular reason? Or are you just in your pervert era."

"You know, now that you mention it..." Alistair said, fingers kneading the soft skin where his inner thigh met his taint. He dragged his fingers up, thumb hooking over the base of himself. His wrist rotated, lotion slicking up the length of him.

"Tighter." Micah's voice was an urgent, coarse groan over the speaker. "Squeeze the tip."

Alistair raised himself up onto one elbow, hand squeezing the base of himself, slackening, and clutching the head of his cock with such force he groaned. He kneaded his palm into it, lotion squelching between his fingers.

His head tipped against his raised shoulder, breath thin. "You got anymore direction for me, or am I gonna have to do this myself?"

"You just wanna hear my voice," Micah said. There was a hitch in Micah's voice. "I think... you're doing a pretty good job."

Micah's voice was low and lazy and reminded Alistair of the weeks Micah had spent high and blissed out in his apartment alone, monitored by the cameras.

"You're supposed to berate me and tell me I'm doing an awful job. And wish you could do it yourself," Alistair coaxed, a grin on his lips. He abandoned his cock in favor of palming the discomfort rising and tightening his balls. His knee pulled up on its own, falling to the side.

"If I was there," Micah reminisced, perky with the idea, "I wouldn't touch you at all. Why should I? You can take care of yourself just fine. Just look at you. I bet you do this all the fucking time—it's all you're good for."

Alistair laughed. "So, what, you think I just laze around jerking off to the thought of you?"

"Yeah, I do."

"Well, I don't."

"No, I think you do. Which is why you're so eager to get off on just my cock when we fuck. You need to pay more attention to your prostate, you know. It's so neglected without me there."

Alistair relaxed back on the pillows, stroking himself. He glanced about the room, the nightstand, and leaned over to it again. "I don't suppose you have any toys."

"If I did, you'd never use them," Micah said.

"Touché," Alistair agreed, about to roll back.

"No, stay there. On your stomach."

Alistair complied, one hand being the only thing between his dick and the sheets. He shifted his phone to get a view of himself in the corner of the screen. He amplified the window, rocking his hips to and fro in the name of getting comfortable.

Alistair knew his waist looked hot as fuck and that Micah could rarely keep his hands off it during sex. And now, pushing his hips up, the heart shape of his ass dipped his tapered waist even lower, muscled shoulders emphasized by sweeps of ink.

Over the line, Micah let out a pained breath. "Put a pillow under your hips."

"Why, you aren't here to fuck me," Alistair said, but reached for a pillow anyway.

Once settled, his cock was cushioned by the light, down feather pillow. More instructions were in order. "Fold the pillow in half and put your dick in the fold—open side down."

"You want me to fuck a pillow for you?" Alistair realized aloud as he pushed one half of the pillow over and, wedging it beneath him and the bed, slotted his dick inside.

It wasn't warm like a human or squishy like a fleshlight.

"Pretend it's me," Micah said. When Alistair's brain short-circuited, he had one hand holding the pillow in formation and the other propping himself up. Micah's voice was sin to his ears, "Go on."

"You don't bottom," Alistair reminded him, dumbly.

"Show me what you'd do if I did," Micah said. "I want to watch you hump my pillow imagining something that'll never happen. So. Go on."

Alistair's head hung, a smile Micah couldn't see on his lips. He shook his head, an impressed huff on his lips as he said, "Again, you say you'd never dom..."

"This isn't domming. This is me fulfilling a fucking fantasy, alright? Now put your back into it."

Whatever you say, Alistair thought, grinning as he rocked his hips forward, pillow squishing against his hips.

It took a few rounds of thrusts for him to mangle the pillow to his will and for the friction to make a difference. In the midst of rutting into the pillow, lost in a frantic pace chasing the friction, he was met with a sharp gasp from the phone.

Alistair paused, listening. Quiet, partially muffled by the sheets, Micah rasped, "Don't stop. Harder."

"And you say I'm the freak," Alistair said, turning up the volume. "Moan for me. It'll help with the illusion."

"Grab the pillow with both hands."

Doing so required Alistair raise up on his knees, just a touch, and angle his hips up to each thrust.

The mic picked up on a rhythmic, fap-fap-fap where each punch of Alistair's hips to the pillow was met with the sound of Micah's fist working on his lubed-up cock. The squelching nearly put Alistair on the brink, head to the pillows as he humped against the bed, the pillow, the illusion of Micah underneath him.

He groaned, saliva on his slips. "It's not—enough. I need you—Micah."

"Tough fucking shit," Micah said. "I gotta go."

"Wha—Wait—" Alistair started, reaching for the phone. Micah had already cut the call.

_____

At work the next day, Alistair was more desperate than ever to get ahold of Micah, and so Ezra Lee's desk was the first he approached. It was empty, and so he took a seat and spun around the chair, toiling away at his phone, until Lee arrived near 9:30.

Lee paused at the end of the row. Alistair lowered his phone, staring at him.

With a sigh, Lee asked, "What is it?"

"I'm wondering if you know anything about Cassian buying Micah an apartment," Alistair said.

Lee blinked. His brow pinched uncomfortably as he set his bag down and said, "Couldn't this wait until after work?"

"Do you know anything about that?"

"No, I don't," Lee said. "I convinced him not to."

"When?"

Lee rolled his eyes. "Does it matter?"

Alistair assessed the question with the dawning realization that Lee wasn't aware Micah was missing, which meant his call to Presley hadn't been relayed. Obviously, Micah's recent disappearance would pertain to the possibility of Presley buying an apartment.

So of course it mattered.

"Micah's gone AWOL," Alistair said, rising. Lee's eyes followed him, terse. "Let me know if you hear anything from Cassian about it, alright?"

"He would have told me," Lee said, "and he hasn't. So I doubt it."

"Okay." Alistair clapped him on the shoulder and returned to his own office.

It would take a week before Alistair heard back regarding Lee's conversation with Presley, but less time since a Micah sighting was reported on campus by one of Kennedy's friends. She'd turned up at his lecture hall too late to catch him, though.

He was in class with James the next day, though, which Kennedy took as a good sign. On Wednesday, she showed up at Alistair's workplace with takeout and a smile and said, "It's a good thing he's back in class, though! Exams are coming up."

"Seems like exams are always coming up."

"Yeah, but it's like... crunch time. Graduation... You know." She kicked up her heels on the chair next to her.

Alistair glanced at the windows of his office. The bottom half was frosted, but two people tall enough to see in had already passed and done double-takes on Kennedy. Alistair didn't blame them—she was dressed like a billionaire's wife with legs for days. He imagined none of them would believe him (or think risqué thoughts) if he told them she was his little brother's college friend and that he hadn't slept with her.

(Which he had.)

He cleared his throat. "I don't think we should harass him at class."

"Me neither." She sighed. "Benny's tried talking to him a couple times but James distracts him. James is a friend of ours. He's in a couple of Micah's classes."

Alistair blinked. He hadn't thought of James as a suspect. He straightened in his chair, reaching for a pad of paper. "Can you give me James' number?"

"Why?" Kennedy said, scoffing. With her mouthful, she said, "Micah's not with him."

"We don't know that," Alistair said, only to look up from his pen to find Kennedy choking on her food. "You don't know that."

"J-James is a horrible liar. I don't think he's lied a day in his life," Kennedy insisted, cheeks pink.

Alistair couldn't believe what he was hearing, what he was seeing. "You're lying. You found out where he is, didn't you?"

"N-No!"

"I guess it takes a bad liar to know a bad liar. What did you hear?"

"Nothing!" She balled up her takeout bag and capped the container. With a huff, she stood. "Don't harass James. He doesn't know anything."

Alistair's heart was pumping through his ribcage as he watched Kennedy turn to leave. "I have information on James and Benny."

It was a gamble. Benny was open about a lot of things, but he imagined a kiss in the days leading up to meeting Hunter again would feel like cheating to him. And, given Benny's history with Hunter, he needed to put the right foot forward.

So he might not have mentioned the kiss at all.

Slowly, Kennedy turned. She put a hand to the doorframe, eyes narrowed. "What about them. I know a lot about them."

"So do I," Alistair said.

"Are you saying Benny cheated on Hunter?" she said. "It can't be relevant now otherwise."

Alistair said nothing. He waited in silence, hands clasped together on his desk.

"I'm not telling you shit," she said.

"Okay," Alistair said. He relaxed back in his chair, pulled his keyboard forward, and continued on with work.

Two of his coworkers out in the main area leaned over their desks to get a better look at Kennedy's backside when she cocked her hip in annoyance. Everything she did tended to be a runway pose.

After listening to Alistair tap-tap-tap away in silence, Kennedy flipped him off. "I'll find out for myself!" she said.

"Good luck," he said. "I imagine asking Benny about it now would sabotage his engagement..."

Kennedy was nearly out of view when she circled back, huffing. "You can't just say something like that and not tell me."

He looked up from his computer. "Then tell me what you know about Micah. First. I'm not giving you this information first."

His coworkers were enthralled, staring.

Kennedy stomped in and, before shutting the door, gave Alistair's coworkers a cheeky, cheery little wave. She turned a scowl onto Alistair in an instant. "Alright. Fine. But I'm not telling you the address."

"Okay. That's fine."

Kennedy took a deep breath and sat down again. Frazzled, she said, "I promised him I wouldn't tell you..."

"I'm not going to hunt him down if I know he's all right," Alistair said. "You know I'm not that kind of person."

"Then can't you just take my word for it? He's fine."

"No, I can't. Who is he dealing with?"

Kennedy inhaled sharply and when she spoke, Alistair's hope for relief turned to guilt-ridden anguish.