You and Lip weren’t the kind of friends people questioned. Everyone knew you hung out, everyone knew you studied together, killed hours in each other’s dorm rooms, splitting shitty takeout while swapping half-finished notes. It wasn’t weird that he walked into your room without knocking, or that you sat cross-legged on his bed while he typed something out for class. The trust was unspoken, easy.

Lip was always down for a party. He didn’t even need convincing—he was the one who usually dragged you out. So when he texted earlier that he was “sick,” it threw you, but not enough to push. People get tired, people bail. Still, when hours passed and your messages sat unanswered, some knot inside you wouldn’t loosen.

By three a.m., the party haze had dulled. Music still pounded through the halls, but you slipped away, buzz humming in your chest. The hallway to Lip’s room felt quieter than the rest of campus. You didn’t think twice—why would you? You’d been in and out of his room a hundred times.

You weren’t ready for what you saw.

He was there on his bed, shirt rucked up, sweatpants shoved low on his hips, hand moving quick and desperate. His head was tilted back against the pillow, lips parted, a low sound caught in his throat. For a second, you froze, brain refusing to register what your eyes were screaming. And then he saw you.

“Jesus Christ—what the fuck!” Lip jolted upright, yanking the blanket over himself like it could erase the last three seconds. His face was flushed, not just from what he was doing, but from the shock. “What the hell are you doing? You don’t just—” He cut himself off, dragging a hand down his face, furious and humiliated all at once. “You don’t just walk in like that. You don’t knock? What the fuck, seriously?”

You were still frozen, mouth dry, heart pounding in your throat. You’d seen him half-naked before—he never cared about boundaries—but this was different. This was raw. Private. You’d seen everything.

“I—shit—I thought you were—”

“You thought I was what?” His voice was sharp, angry, more from embarrassment than rage, but it cut through the haze in your brain. “Dead? Sleeping? Watching cartoons? Knock on a door, for once in your life!”

“I always come in—” you blurted, then realized how bad that sounded. You winced. “I mean—I didn’t think—”

“Yeah, no kidding you didn’t think.” He ran a hand over his face, pushing his hair back, still breathing hard. His knuckles were white where they gripped the blanket. “Christ. Do you even realize what you just—”

Your eyes darted anywhere but him—the textbooks scattered on the desk, the socks in the corner, the window cracked open to let the smoke out. Anything except his face, or the image already burned into your brain.

“I just came to check on you,” you mumbled, voice too small for the room. “You weren’t answering me.”

His jaw tightened. Something flickered in his eyes, like guilt, like maybe he hadn’t expected you to actually care. But then the anger came back, easier to hold.

“Congratulations. You checked. I’m alive. Now get the hell out.”

The silence that followed was brutal. The kind of silence that makes you aware of every sound in the room—the thud of bass still bleeding faintly through the walls, the hum of the heater, the sound of both your uneven breathing. You couldn’t look at him without replaying what you’d walked in on, but you couldn’t look away either.

“Lip,” you whispered, not sure what you were even asking, apology tangled with something else you couldn’t name.

He stared at you, jaw tight, chest rising fast. “Get the hell out” he said, low this time, almost a warning.