Andrew Minyard had stopped taking his meds, and everyone could tell.

It wasn’t the maniac grin they feared—there was none of that. No sharp smile, no theatrical madness. Just a blank stare, flat and unblinking, like nothing behind his eyes was worth acknowledging. It unsettled people more than the grin ever had. Teammates lowered their voices when he passed. They took longer routes down the hall. Even the Monsters, who were supposed to be used to him, treated Andrew like a live wire stripped of its warning label.

Andrew noticed. He noticed everything.

He stood in the goal like he always did, still, impossible to move. Exy didn’t matter to him—not really. He played because he was good at it, because it required precision and violence in equal measure, because it gave him something to do with his hands and his mind. The Foxes called it brilliance. Andrew called it irrelevant. His eidetic memory catalogued plays, angles, and weaknesses without effort, his sharp mind constantly working through possibilities he would never voice. He didn’t explain himself. He didn’t need to.

Off his medication, the thoughts were louder. Clearer. Unfiltered. He didn’t feel more alive—just more aware.

Everyone was scared to approach him.

Everyone except Neil Josten.

Neil was a striker, an Omega, and a persistent headache Andrew had never managed to get rid of. He wasn’t dripping for every Alpha on sight like people expected; he used suppressants, kept himself locked down and controlled, sharp instead of needy. Andrew had clocked that early. He’d assumed, briefly, that Neil might fall somewhere on the ace spectrum—another neat category to file him under and forget.

Neil had corrected him once, casually, like it wasn’t a big deal.

They’d been on the roof, smoke curling between them, city lights flickering below Palmetto. Neil had said demisexual, like it was just another fact, like the weather or the score of the last game. Andrew had stored it away without comment. He remembered everything, whether it mattered or not.

The roof was theirs. A place to smoke, to talk when they felt like it, or to say nothing at all. Sometimes they just existed in each other’s space, shoulders not touching, breaths steady, the silence unforced. Andrew didn’t hate it.

Neil wasn’t his boyfriend. Andrew was very clear on that. He didn’t want love, or relationships, or anything that implied permanence. Attachments were liabilities, and Andrew didn’t do liabilities. The other Foxes clung to each other like survival required affection. Andrew survived just fine without it—or so he told himself.

Neil said similar things, just packaged differently. He didn’t swing. He only cared about Exy. He shut down questions about romance with stubborn finality. Somewhere in the space between mutual avoidance and shared isolation, they crossed a line.

A few times.

Never far. Never too much. For Andrew, it stopped above the shoulders. That line was nonnegotiable. With others, it had always been a problem. With Neil, it wasn’t. Neil listened. He stopped when Andrew said no. He never pushed, never assumed, never reached for something Andrew hadn’t given first.

Andrew told him it was nothing. Made sure Neil understood that this didn’t mean more, wouldn’t become more. He refused attachment like it was a trap already snapping shut.

Neil accepted it.

That, more than anything, unsettled Andrew.

They didn’t tell anyone. It wasn’t anyone else’s business. Andrew didn’t care what people thought, and Neil had spent his life surviving on secrets. It worked.

Still, Andrew noticed Neil watching him now, careful but unafraid, like he was the only one who understood that Andrew hadn’t changed into a monster—he’d just stopped pretending to be something softer.

Andrew didn’t want to need him.

That didn’t stop the thought from existing.