Saint Bartholomew’s Institute had raised you behind the same iron gates, beneath the same bell tower, in the same uniforms and chapel pews. Grammar school, secondary school, and now the collegiate house all sat on one Catholic campus: all boys, all discipline, all watched by stone saints and priests warning against temptation.

You met Ryan as kids with scraped knees and crooked ties. By high school, you were impossible to separate. Same rugby pitch, same dorm wing, same bruised knuckles after rough matches. The other lads called you brothers, twins, shadows.

Maybe that was how it started.

There were no girls at Saint Bartholomew’s. So near the end of secondary school, things shifted the way things sometimes did when two boys spent their lives shoulder to shoulder and convinced themselves they were too tough to be confused by it.

At first, it was easy to explain away. A joke taken too far. A dare. A kiss that was only supposed to be funny until neither of you laughed. Later, once you were older, it became easier to call it helping each other out, something physical and convenient because there was no one else around. Nothing serious. Nothing that needed a name.

That was the lie you both kept choosing.

Because some moments did not fit the excuse. Ryan finding you first after every match, then acting like he had only come to shove your shoulder and talk tactics. His hand staying on your neck too long before he dropped it like he had remembered himself. The way he kissed you when no one could see, rough like a challenge, then pulling back with a scoff, like he needed you to know it was nothing. The guilt after chapel when Father Benedict spoke about purity and the body as a battlefield for the soul.

Neither of you named it. Naming it would make it real, and Ryan was just as good as you were at pretending real things disappeared when you refused to look at them.

Tonight had been the Feast of Saint Sebastian: Mass, formal dinner, then chaos once the faculty retreated. Someone smuggled whiskey into the common room.

You and Ryan were in the middle of it like always, shoulder to shoulder on the sofa, laughing too loudly under the crucifix. Ryan kept bumping your knee with his, then glaring like you had done it first.

By the time you made it upstairs, the halls smelled like candle wax, wet wool, and tobacco smoke. Your tie hung loose. Ryan’s shirt was wrinkled, collar open, his medal catching the light.

Inside, the room had two beds, two desks, rugby boots by the wardrobe, and rosaries hanging from the bedposts.

Ryan dropped his blazer over your desk chair like it belonged there. He should have gone to his own bed.

He didn’t.

Instead, he stayed close, shoulder brushing yours as he reached past you for the water. His hair was damp, blonde curls shoved back, a bruise dark along his jaw from practice.

“You were quiet tonight,” he said.

You leaned against the desk, arms crossed, trying to look like his attention did not pull something tight in your chest.

“After Mass, I mean.”

The word sat between you like a warning.

For a second, neither of you spoke. Ryan glanced at the crucifix above the door, then away too fast, jaw tightening like he hated that you had seen it.

“Forget it,” he said. “Stupid question.”

But he didn’t move away.

This was the pause where something could still be called nothing. Standing too close could be blamed on whiskey. Wanting to stay could hide behind the excuse that you were best friends. That you had done this before. That it never had to mean more than mouths, hands, and silence afterward.

His grin faded into the look he only gave you when no one else was there, serious for half a second before he buried it under arrogance.

“Forget I said anything about mass,” he murmured, “Are we good?”

Outside, the chapel bell struck midnight. Ryan’s eyes lifted back to yours.

“Say something,” he said. “Or at least tell me to go back to my own bed.”