Todd could feel the bile in his throat and thumping behind his eyes. After months of burying the matter under piles of 'oh this is just a friend thing', he was finally ready to begin picking apart his predicament. He would first chip off the hard exo-skeleton, the layer that told him that he's never had a friend like Neil before and perhaps this was just how good friends make you feel. He knew he couldn't make a cave out of this reasoning and hide away in it anymore. He KNEW that the chugging of his heart ran on rails that travelled further than that.

Next was the smooth, malleable skin that insisted that even if he was having feelings like this, chances were it was a phase and it would pass. It certainly drew parallels with what his parents had always told him. Todd is shy in class? He'll get over it soon. Our son is only in the top five of his year level? That certainly won't last forever. He has no interest in girls? Our boy will soon work through it.

Todd deflated a bit, he was never good at lying to himself. By blaming All This on a phase would be agreeing with his family, and he knew his family wasn't right. His flaws weren't shirts that he would simply grow out of come the time to enter adulthood. Todd Anderson was human and humans have flaws. The revelation made him feel his stomach acid move up his oesophagus. If it wasn't a phase then what in the fucking world was it?

Now he was looking at the gooey red insides of it. The helter-skelter organs that beat as one and oozed distasteful fluids. Covered in angry veins that threatened to burst but never did, the innards pumped through his veins with every thump what he knew was the truth. It resonated with Todd in ways his millions of excuses never could. He had heard the rest of the boys talk about their latest (most definitely fictional) conquests or about that certain girl who made their chest squeeze in on itself or their pants tighten and he understood the feeling much to his dismay. Charlie and Knox especially were fantastic at illustrating the sensations that Todd felt whenever he came into contact with Neil.

The gross vital organs of All This were telling him that he had indeed watched Neil Perry, his best friend and roommate, masturbate in the communal showers and had become painfully erect because of it. During dinner, when the bathroom was supposed to be mercifully empty, he had entered with his towel slung over his shoulder only to hear the soft spray of a shower head. Supposing that this boy had had the same idea as him, Todd had shrugged it off and continued on his journey towards the very end showed, the one that had unofficially become his and, upon his nearing of said shower, was the stranger's for the time being. Todd stopped at the third stall and dropped his belongings on the bench in front of it, there was no point working up a temper because someone had the same taste in shower as you. As soon as his boxers had joined the rest of his clothes on the bench, however, he heard something that froze his being to the very core.

Though he hated to put it to his imagination (see, it would mean that he had a very questionable and decidedly immoral imagination), there was absolutely no way that the noise he had heard just then was Neil. It had been a stifled grunt, cutting through the rhythmic thrum of the water with perfect audibility. If it had been any other sound or come from anyone other than Neil, Todd would not have heard it and he knew this. He had replayed this one sound too many times in his head to not recognise it. The grunt that had escaped his lips not even a month ago that one bitter-cold night during the witching hours, when Todd was too stressed to sleep because of his presentation the next day and Neil had decided he needed a way to let off sexual steam. It had been quiet and strained, but the former heard it and it was all he could think about (and still is). During class, he explored the idea of what his best friend would sound like had he not needed to lower his voice, what expression his face would paint, what he looked like under those bed sheets. It felt wrong to think so deeply about a sound he was not supposed to have heard, but it also made everything all the more erotic. Neil was hiding it from him, pleasuring himself right next to a roommate who was presumably out cold. It was his dirty little secret.

His feet had moved silently across the bathroom floor towards the last stall before he could stop himself. He didn't know what his objective was, nor did he understand the rising sensation in his chest.

That wasn't Neil.

Neil was probably at dinner.

But you don't that. You never saw him leave for the dining hall. Don't you remember thinking how weird it was that he walked down the stairs instead of through the corridor?

Neil was probably visiting Keating to ask him about his essay. Didn't he say he had a few questions?

No he didn't.

Why would he be showering now? He only showered in the evenings.

The excuses he made for himself did not stop the constant process of one foot in front of the other, working their way towards the stall that he knew Neil most definitely wasn't in.

He heard another grunt, louder and fuller this time. His efforts to convince himself that that was not his room

mate were dampened considerably. Still, they arose from the pit of excuses Todd had accumulated over the years even as his hand reached the stall wall. Behind this thin layer of wood was absolutely not Neil Perry masturbating under the running water, Todd told himself. He balled the hand pressed against the wall into a fist hard enough so that his entire arm shook. From here, he could hear the rhythmic wet slap of hand against genital. With each thrust of cock into fist, the blonde could feel the twitching in his pants become more aggressive (is that how a normal teenage boy would describe it? Todd didn't know. He had never felt this aroused before). From the shower stall next door, he could hear the pumping become more drawn out, Neil was slowing down and probably on his way up towards his climax. There was a long sensual moan, guttural and muffled yet so unbelievably hot in Todd's ears. He seemed to have gained selective hearing that picked up on only the sounds Neil made.

Without thinking of the consequences nor the possibility that Neil would probably notice him, the blonde had chanced a peek at his best friend's athletic form. Neil was facing him straight on, wiry frame limp against the bathroom wall and head titled upward to meet the shower's spray. His body looked completely relaxed except for the left arm that worked hard at stroking himself. Todd almost jumped back in shame to have been caught so easily when he realised, with a huge gust of relief, that his eyes were closed. Now this bade the question, who did his roommate think about when pleasuring himself so passionately? That, for some reason, put a familiar weight in Todd's stomach. He knew what that weight meant but why was it there? Why, heaven forbid, was he feeling disappointed at a time like this? He swept it under the rug along with the other Neil Feelings and told himself he would deal with this later.

Soon enough, the taller boy stopped working his palm up and down altogether and moved up to play with the top. He was breathing deeply, pale chest heaving and shoulders rising. With one last unconcealed moan, Todd heard the squirting that told him it was over. Neil Perry had just come into his hand in a communal bathroom and Todd Anderson had just watched. The severity of what he had just witnessed (and the unfortunate effects it had on the poor boy) dawned on him and he backed away. The boy in the shower was going to open his eyes soon and he was going to see who he thought was his best friend standing in front of him and he was going to realise that he was some sick pervert who had just watched him masturbate and was painfully erect because of it and their relationship would be ruined forever and he would never see the soft smiles on Neil's lips or the way his eyes creased and twinkled when he grinned ever again because-

Todd backed away and ran back to their shared room, leaving behind his clothes, toiletries, towel and a piece of his sanity. Never before had he hated himself more...except maybe when he took care of the tenting in his pants straight after.