Daniel

I’ve already had my heart broken once. I’m not signing up for round two.

Senior year is supposed to be simple—play hockey, keep my scholarship, and make sure the one thing I love doesn’t slip through my fingers. Hockey is my future, my focus, the only thing I trust not to leave.

But when my grades start sliding and the threat of losing everything becomes very real, I’m forced to do the one thing I hate most—ask for help. My new roommate, Quinn, is a quiet genius who lives in a world of textbooks and late-night coding sessions. Tutoring me should be nothing more than a practical solution to a problem.

Instead, it becomes something else.

Quinn asks questions no one else ever has. Honest ones. Curious ones. Like how I knew I was gay… and how someone is supposed to know who they are at all. The conversation should end there. It doesn’t.

Somewhere between study sessions and shared late nights, we make a deal. No labels. No expectations. Just exploration.

It’s supposed to stay simple. Temporary. Safe.

But the longer we share a room, a bed, and a secret… the harder it is to pretend this doesn’t feel like something real.

Quinn

I’ve never been kissed. Never dated. Never understood how everyone else seems so certain about who they want.

For most of my life, relationships have felt like a language everyone else speaks fluently while I’m still trying to understand the alphabet. I tell myself it doesn’t matter. I have my studies, my routines, and now my final year of college to focus on.

Then I'm assigned a dorm room with Daniel.

He’s loud where I’m quiet, confident where I hesitate, and completely comfortable in a world that still confuses me. Tutoring him should be easy. Equations make sense. Rules make sense. Daniel doesn’t.

The closer we get, the harder it becomes to ignore the way my world shifts around him. When he offers to help me figure things out—no strings, no feelings—I tell myself it’s just curiosity. An experiment. A way to finally understand what everyone else seems to know.

But every moment with him feels different than anything I expected.

Daniel says this can’t mean anything. That hockey is his future and emotions only complicate things.

The problem is, the more time I spend with him… the more I’m starting to think this means everything.