No One Gets to Touch You

There are two Adrian Crosses: the one the rest of the world sees, and the one I did. To the rest of Northwood University, Adrian was a campus legend among mortals. He was the basketball team's star forward, the guy who moved like a predator and carried himself with a confidence that walked the line between arrogance and charm, but was tempered by a charisma so potent it was a physical force. Girls and boys would trail off speechless when he entered a room, their eyes tracking him with a mixture of awe and desire. He was all hard lines and lean muscle, with black hair that was always strategically messy and stormy weather-colored eyes that seemed to bore right through you. He was loud, bold, and unapologetically himself, and loudly so about being gay, a fact that he wore as comfortably as his team jacket. That was the Adrian everyone knew. The Adrian I knew was the one who, despite his fame, would spend a Friday night in our dorm room, listening patiently as I droned on about Renaissance literature, his long legs up on my cluttered desk, a real smile playing on his lips. He was the one who knew I hated loud parties and would find a quiet corner for us to talk, and create a bubble around us where the din of the world receded. He was my anchor, my confidant, my best friend since we were kids building forts in his backyard. I was the shy, bookish nerd; he was the sun. Since I was old enough to recall, my world had been defined by his gravity, and I had never once wanted to break free.

Recently, however, that gravity had begun to feel… different. More intense. Cracks were beginning to appear in the flawless surface of our friendship, tiny discrepancies I couldn't ignore. Sometimes, at strange times of night, he'd disappear without warning. I'd wake in the middle of the night to discover his bed empty, his sheets cold. He'd turn up just before dawn, stinking of pine and wet earth, with new scratches on his arms or a bruise forming on his cheekbone. When I'd press him for an explanation, he'd flash that disarming smile and tell me he'd taken a "late-night run to clear his head." A run? In the freezing mountain air at 3 AM? It didn't add up. Then there was his strength. I'd always known he was athletic, but what I saw sometimes was on the verge of the impossible. I once watched him laughing, casually heave the rear end of a professor's car that had gotten stuck in a mud pit, something that should've taken a tow truck, and he hadn't even broken a sweat. He'd just laughed it off, telling me it was all adrenaline. I wanted to believe him. I desperately wanted to believe that the predictable, comfortable universe I shared with my best friend was still in place. But a small, insistent voice at the back of my head kept telling me that I was fooling myself. And that lie was getting steadily more difficult to maintain, especially after what had happened in the campus quad on the Tuesday.

It was a dumb, predictable fight. I was strolling back from the library, books piled in my arms, my mind full of footnotes from medieval poetry, when Marcus Hale's goons decided I was the ideal target for their afternoon sport. Marcus, a senior with a sadistic streak and the Alpha of a competing fraternity—or so I had believed—stood watching from a distance, a smile on his face. His two goons, hulking football players by the name of Kevin and Josh, cornered me by the oak tree. "Look what we've got here, Blake," Kevin sneered, punching a book out of my hands. "Still got your nose in fairy tales?" I muttered something about leaving me alone, my face burning with humiliation. I hated fights; my fight-or-flight mechanism was always flight. I crouched to retrieve my book, and that's when Josh pushed me, hard. I staggered back, my other books scattering across the grass. Laughter burst out of them, harsh and mocking. I just stood there, paralyzed, a hot ball of humiliation clenching in my stomach. And then, a shadow fell across us.

"I think he told you to leave him alone." Adrian's voice was so even to the point of unnaturalness, but it cut through the air like a blade. This wasn't his carefree swagger; this was something else, something cold and wild. Kevin, at least thirty pounds heavier than Adrian, just laughed. "Butt out, Cross. This doesn't concern you." Adrian moved slowly forward, standing between them and us. The air around him seemed to ripple, to hum with an energy that I could feel on my skin. "He's with me," Adrian said, his voice dipping into a low rumble that was almost a growl, but there was an unmistakable command in it. "So it's my business." Josh, driven by sheer stupidity, pushed Adrian's shoulder. "Or what?" It was so quick that I almost missed it. Adrian's hand flashed out, closing around the wrist of Josh. It wasn't a slap, wasn't a punch; it was a simple clasp. But Josh's face went white, his eyes wide with shock and pain. A faint cracking noise filled the sudden silence. Josh emitted a strangled wail and dropped to his knees, cradling his arm. Kevin stood, his bravado instantly lost. Adrian didn't even look at Josh. His stormy gray eyes were on Kevin, and for a brief, fleeting moment, I swear I could see them flash with an almost golden light. He didn't bellow, didn't threaten. He just… looked. And in that look was a promise of violence so absolute that Kevin took a stumbling step back, dragging his whimpering friend up with him before the two of them practically ran. Marcus Hale, who'd been observing with his smirk, no longer wore his smirk. His face was one of calculating interest, his narrowed eyes not on his defeated goons, but on Adrian. There appeared to be a silent challenge exchanged between them before Marcus turned and walked away. The moment they'd vanished, the unsettling aura surrounding Adrian vanished. He turned to me, his face softening at once to one of pure concern. "Ethan? Are you okay? Did they hurt you?" He knelt down, his hands brushing gently at the dirt on my book covers as he picked them up. His touch was warm, his voice the familiar, comforting sound I'd grown up with. But I couldn't dispel the image I'd just seen. The cold calm, the impossible strength, the flash in his eyes. He stood up and put a hand on my shoulder, his thumb rubbing a soothing circle. My heart thudded against my ribs, a wild rhythm of fear and something else, something warm and muddled that overflowed in my chest whenever he was this close. "I'm fine," I managed to whisper, my voice shaking. "Thanks." He just nodded, his eyes burning. "No one gets to touch you," he said, and the finality in his voice sent a shiver down my spine. It wasn't a promise; it was a law.

The weirdness persisted that evening. We were both in my room, the only noise my pen scratching and the occasional faint clicks of Adrian's controller. But he was not playing. He was leaning against the window, his body wound up in tension I'd never seen him exhibit before. At around eleven, his phone rang. He looked at the screen, and his jaw clenched. He stood up, taking his jacket. "I'm going out," he said, his tone curt. "Just… for a run." My blood chilled. A run. I glanced from his tense figure to the black, frost-tipped window. "Adrian, it's freezing outside. Can't it wait?" He wouldn't look at me. He just took his keys, moving quickly and purposefully. "No," he said, his hand on the door. "It can't." And then he was out the door, leaving me sitting in the still room with the shadow of his lie hanging between us. I sat there for what felt like hours, the words of my textbook bleeding into meaningless symbols. I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't rid myself of the feeling that he was running headlong into a danger I couldn't perceive. Eventually, drawn by some unaccountable impulse, I stood up and went to the window and looked out into the darkness, in the direction of the dense forest that bordered the campus. The moon rode high and bright in the sky, casting long, skeletal shadows across the snowy grounds. It was then that I heard it. A sound that cut through the night, a long, mournful cry that was both beautiful and frightening. It was a howl. Not the sound of a dog, but something wilder, deeper, full of a raw power that raised my hackles and sent every hair on my body standing on end.

It was not a sound; I'd felt it in my own body, a deep primal call that had spoken the low, commanding growl I'd heard from Adrian only hours earlier. The howl built back up to crescendo, and one impossible thought broke the silence, taking my breath. That howl did not appear to call something forth; it appeared to be commanding something, and it was from the direction that Adrian had disappeared.

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