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Antonio’s mouth moved very slightly. “In my own hallway?”

“Yes.”

“That seems localized, then.”

Hakeem stared at him. That Antonio could still do that—still reach for humor with both of them standing there half-undone—felt almost cruel.

“You cannot,” Hakeem said, pointing once at his chest and immediately regretting the childishness of it, “do that and then act normal.”

Antonio’s gaze flicked to the hand Hakeem had lifted, then back to his face. “Do what?”

Hakeem laughed once in disbelief. “Oh, I’m not helping you.”

Something warmer flashed through Antonio’s expression then. Not smugness. He was affected.

By Hakeem.

That idea hit harder than it should have.

Antonio shifted back a fraction, creating room at last. “You wanted to get downstairs.”

Right, he thought. The charger. For my phone, for the list. Back to the ordinary world.

Hakeem nodded too fast. “Yes. Because I live here.”

“I’m aware.”

“That sounded territorial.”

“It was geography.”

Hakeem looked at him for another second because leaving now felt impossible, and staying felt stupid. He could still feel the ghost of Antonio’s hands at his hips. Could still picture the answering tension in Antonio’s body like a burned afterimage.

Antonio moved aside fully.

“Go,” he said.

Hakeem went and was embarrassed by how easily he followed Antonio’s orders.

He brushed past him with far too much awareness of space and heat and fabric. He made it three steps before he had to stop at the top of the stairs and grab the banister, not because he was fainting, which would have been mortifying, but because his body had decided to become one long exposed nerve.

He did not turn around.

He could feel Antonio behind him for one suspended second more, then hear the quiet retreat of bare feet in the opposite direction.

By the time Hakeem came back upstairs with his charger looped around his wrist like proof of some humiliating errand, Antonio’s bedroom door was shut.

Hakeem stood outside his own room for a moment in the dim hallway, breathing through his mouth.

Then he went inside, closed the door, and leaned against it.

His phone was still on his bed. The notes app was still open.

He looked at the list.

— writes down things I say

— too interested in exact wording