Adrian spotted Marcus near the library steps two days after the award ceremony. Alone. No Dante shadowing Marcus's movements, no basketball teammates clustering around. Just Marcus, backpack slung over one shoulder, checking his phone.
Adrian could walk past. Pretend not to notice. The library had multiple entrances.
"Adrian!" Marcus waved. "Hey, man."
Too late.
Adrian crossed the brick pathway, manufactured casual. "Hey. What's up?"
"Not much. Heading to study group." Marcus pocketed his phone. "Saw you won that psychology prize. Congrats."
"Thanks."
"Dante mentioned it. Said your paper was about competition dynamics?" Marcus's tone stayed friendly. Conversational. Normal.
"Yeah. Interpersonal rivalry and how it functions as emotional proxy." The academic language felt safer than plain speech.
"Sounds intense." Marcus adjusted his backpack strap. Pause. "Can I ask you something?"
Adrian's shoulders tensed. "Sure."
"What's really going on between you and Dante?"
The question landed like a fist. Direct. Unavoidable.
Adrian's defenses snapped up. "Nothing. We're just roommates who have history."
"That's not what it looks like." Marcus's expression stayed neutral but his eyes—sharp, assessing—said he wasn't buying the deflection. "He talks about you constantly. Knows your schedule better than his own. Gets weird whenever I mention your name."
Adrian's stomach dropped. "We've been competing for eighteen years. It's complicated."
"Competition." Marcus said the word like it meant something else entirely. "Right."
Students flowed past them. Laughing, shouting, absorbed in their own dramas. Normal college life continuing while Adrian's world tilted sideways.
"Look," Marcus said, "I like Dante. A lot. But I'm not stupid. And I'm not going to be someone's placeholder while they figure their shit out."
The word "placeholder" hit like cold water. Marcus knew. Maybe not specifics, maybe not the full eighteen years of accumulated obsession disguised as rivalry, but enough. Enough to recognize he was occupying space meant for someone else.
"Whatever you two have," Marcus continued, voice dropping lower, "it's bigger than what I can compete with. So either figure it out or let him go. Because this limbo is killing him."
Adrian's mouth opened. Closed. No words formed. Brain unable to process the implications—that Dante talked about Adrian constantly, that Dante got weird at Adrian's name, that Dante was suffering visibly enough for Marcus to notice and care and confront.
"Just—think about it." Marcus shifted his backpack again. "I need to get to this study group. See you around, Adrian."
Marcus walked away. Up the library steps. Through the doors. Gone.
Adrian stood on the brick pathway, rooted, while students continued flowing around Adrian like water around stone.
This limbo is killing him.
The phrase echoed. Repeated. Demanded examination.
Adrian had spent months cataloging his own suffering—the jealousy watching Dante kiss Marcus, the hollow victory of the award, the inadequacy of kissing Isabella. Adrian's pain had felt singular, unique, the natural consequence of being in love with someone unavailable.
But Dante—Dante was suffering too?
The thought restructured everything. Made Adrian's victimhood narrative collapse. If Dante hurt, if this limbo killed Dante too, then Adrian wasn't innocent bystander caught in unrequited feelings. Adrian was participant. Co-creator of mutual suffering through continued denial and cowardice.
The real antagonist wasn't Marcus. Wasn't circumstances. Wasn't even Dante.
It was Adrian. Adrian's inability to be honest. Adrian's refusal to examine what eighteen years of rivalry actually meant. Adrian's choice to keep performing good boyfriend for Isabella while tracking Dante's location and learning Dante's tells and knowing Dante better than anyone while claiming it meant nothing.
Adrian pulled out his phone. Opened Find My Friends. Found Dante's dot—still at Marcus's apartment off campus. Had been there all weekend.
Adrian locked the screen. Pocketed the phone. Walked toward Sutton Hall because there was nowhere else to go.
10:47 PM. Adrian lay in bed, fully clothed, staring at water stains on ceiling tiles. Seven plus one shadow. Familiar geography offering no comfort.
The door opened. Keys jangling. Footsteps deliberate and measured.
Dante entered carrying the duffel bag from Friday. Set it down without looking at Adrian's side of the room. Moved with mechanical precision—unzip bag, remove clothes, fold and place in drawer. No wasted motion. No acknowledgment of Adrian's presence.
Different. Dante felt different. Not angry or hurt or tense. Just—resolved. Like someone who'd made a decision and intended to follow through regardless of difficulty.
Adrian watched through barely-open eyes. Pretending sleep but unable to actually stop tracking Dante's movements.
Dante finished unpacking. Brushed teeth in the shared bathroom. Returned wearing sleep clothes. Climbed into bed without a single glance toward Adrian.
Silence settled. Heavy. Complete.
Adrian's eyes stayed open. Staring at darkness. Mind replaying Marcus's words on infinite loop.
He talks about you constantly.
Why? Why would Dante talk about Adrian to his boyfriend? What was there to say? "My roommate who hates me exists and it's complicated"?
Knows your schedule better than his own.
Adrian knew Dante's schedule perfectly too. Basketball practice Monday, Wednesday, Friday 3-5 PM. Study group Tuesday, Thursday evenings. Morning runs at 6 AM except Sundays. The knowledge was automatic, absorbed through eighteen years of proximity plus constant awareness.
But Adrian had assumed—what? That Dante didn't reciprocate that knowledge? That Dante's tracking was one-directional, Adrian the only one caught in gravitational pull?
Gets weird whenever I mention your name.
What did "weird" mean? Tense? Uncomfortable? Something else? And why would Adrian's name affect Dante if Dante had successfully moved on with Marcus?
This limbo is killing him.
That phrase. That specific phrase. Killing.
Not "bothering" or "frustrating" or "making things difficult." Killing. Like the current state—unresolved, unexpressed, liminal—caused active harm. Damage that accumulated with each day of continued avoidance.
Adrian rolled onto his side. Faced Dante's bed across the narrow room. Could see Dante's shape under covers, breathing pattern steady but not quite right for sleep. Too controlled. Too even.
Dante was awake too. Both of them lying in darkness, pretending, avoiding, maintaining the fiction that this was sustainable.
"Are you awake?" Adrian's voice came out hoarse. Hadn't meant to speak. Words escaped without permission.
Pause. Long enough that Adrian thought maybe Dante would ignore the question.
"Yeah." Quiet. Careful.
"How was the weekend?"
"Fine."
"Marcus seems nice."
"He is."
Silence stretched again. Adrian searched for follow-up, for way to continue conversation that didn't immediately explode into confession or confrontation.
"I ran into him today," Adrian said. "Marcus. On campus."
Dante's breathing changed rhythm. Barely perceptible but Adrian noticed. Of course Adrian noticed. Adrian noticed everything about Dante.
"What did he say?"
"Asked about the award. Made conversation." Pause. "Asked what was really going on between us."
Dante didn't respond. The silence felt different now. Charged. Waiting.
"I told him nothing," Adrian continued. "That we're just roommates with history."
"And he believed you?" Dante's voice carried something—not quite sarcasm, not quite bitterness. Something adjacent to both.
"No."
"Good."
"Good?"
"At least someone's not buying the bullshit." Dante shifted positions, blanket rustling. "What else did he say?"
Adrian's throat tightened. Couldn't repeat it. Couldn't say the words out loud—this limbo is killing him—because saying them would make them real, would require acknowledgment and response and action Adrian didn't know how to take.
"That we should figure it out," Adrian said instead. Sanitized version. Truth without teeth.
"He's not wrong."
"Figure what out exactly?"
Long pause. Longer than before. Adrian counted heartbeats. Lost track after ninety.
"Whatever this is," Dante said finally. "Eighteen years of—whatever. Competition. Rivalry. Obsession. Pick your label."
"It's not obsession."
"Adrian." Dante's voice hardened slightly. "I check your location twenty times a day. I know when you have classes, when you eat lunch, when you go to the gym. I structure my entire schedule around avoiding or encountering you depending on whether I can handle seeing you that day. That's not normal roommate behavior. That's not even normal rivalry."
Adrian's lungs forgot how to function. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why do you—" Adrian stopped. Started again. "Marcus said you talk about me constantly. That you get weird when he mentions my name. Why?"
Silence. This one different. Heavier. Loaded with everything unsaid for months, for years, for eighteen years of calling it something other than what it actually was.
"Same reason you do it," Dante said quietly. "Same reason you know my coffee order and my practice schedule and every micro-expression on my face. Same reason you scored eighteen points against me in that exhibition game—only when I was guarding you, nobody else. Same reason your award-winning paper was about how rivalry masks attachment."
Adrian's chest constricted. "Dante—"
"I'm done, Adrian." Not angry. Just tired. "I'm done pretending this is normal. Done pretending Marcus is enough when all I think about is you. Done watching you be with Isabella while I die a little every time you mention her name. I'm just—done."
"So what are you saying?"
"I'm saying Marcus deserves better than a boyfriend who's in love with his roommate." The words hung in darkness. Simple. Devastating. "And you deserve better than a girlfriend you're using as shield against feelings you won't admit."
In love with. Dante had said it. Out loud. Explicitly.
Adrian sat up. Heart hammering. "You—what?"
"Don't make me repeat it." Dante's voice stayed quiet but firm. "You're smart. You wrote a prize-winning paper about exactly this dynamic. Figure it out."
"I—" Adrian's vocabulary failed completely. "I don't know what to say."
"You don't have to say anything tonight." Dante rolled over, facing the wall. "Just stop lying to yourself. It's killing both of us."
Both of us.
Adrian lay back down. Stared at ceiling. Breathed through the panic clawing up Adrian's throat.
Dante was in love with Adrian. Had been—for how long? And Adrian had been so absorbed in his own suffering he'd missed Dante's completely.
Marcus's words made sense now. The limbo. The killing. Not abstract suffering but concrete pain of loving someone who wouldn't acknowledge it, who called it rivalry and competition and history while refusing to examine what those words actually concealed.
Adrian had done this. Had created this suffering—not just for himself but for Dante too. Through cowardice. Through denial. Through eighteen years of calling it hatred when it was always something else.
This limbo is killing him.
Killing them both.
And Adrian still didn't know what to do about it.