The door slams shut so hard behind him the shoe rack rattles against the wall. Neil barely notices over the sound scraping at his eardrums from the inside. The ringing from earlier has evolved into something ominously similar to a blood-curdling scream from a horror game, dragging on until his brain feels like it’s been scrubbed raw.

Air struggles to get into his lungs as he takes deep, gasping breaths, beads of sweat rolling down the side of his face to drip off his chin. Standing still in the entryway, Neil does nothing but stare at the little mat beneath his feet while his entire body trembles. His legs wobble, knees on the verge of buckling.

He goes to lean against the door, misjudging the distance and slamming his upper back against it instead. Following the loud thump, pain explodes from his shoulder blades. Without needing to shift much, he can feel his bones grinding against the surface of the door and he grunts softly at the resulting ache.

Halfway on his way back to Dinah’s apartment, Neil ended up taking off at a dead run. He continued running, bordering on a sprint, until he arrived. It wasn’t until he reached the lobby that he remembered he wasn’t really built for that kind of strenuous workout without proper preparation and is now feeling the consequences.

“Neil, what the heck? Why did you shut the door so- oh.” Neil looks up at the sound of his name, meeting the blue eyes- bright sky not stormy gray- of Dinah who regards him with furrowed brows.

“Hey-” He suppresses a wince at the way his voice cracks. “I’m back.”

“Neil… what’s wrong? Why are you crying?” Her voice is uncharacteristically soft and Neil blinks in surprise.

“What? I’m not-” As he speaks he brings up a hand, fingertips grazing the soft skin under his eye. His expression twists when he registers the wetness rolling down his cheek. “I...I’m not… I…”

Neil looks down at the palms of his hands, eyes blown wide, before looking back up at Dinah. The image of her face gradually becomes more and more blurry, then a hiccup escapes him. His face scrunches up before he’s pulled forward into the girl’s arms. He buries his face into her shoulder, choking out a muffled sob.

For a few minutes, the two of them stay in the entryway, Neil caving in and crying into the scratchy material of her sweater while Dinah simply rubs his back and mutters soft reassurances in his ear. Eventually he’s able to pull away, enough of his senses returning to him to spit out a coherent sentence.

“Sorry, thank you.”

“Sorry for what? Having feelings?” She scoffs but there’s no energy to it. “Come on.”

Neil nods as he’s pulled into the kitchen, dropping him into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. Dinah pulls out a cup from one of the cabinets and fills it with water before sliding it across the table. He takes one sip that turns into three greedy gulps while she nods, satisfied, and turns back around. When it’s emptied he places it back down, sniffling, only to catch a warm scent flooding from the open oven door.

“Wha- I thought I was on cooking duty today?” His voice is scratchy and nasally, but Dinah acts like she doesn’t notice.

“You were, but I got bored and found a cool mac-n-cheese recipe and decided to try it out.” With bright yellow oven mitts wrapped around her hands, she places a glass container on the stove. Even from where he sat a few feet away he can see how incredibly appealing it looks. “And I used the good cheese, so I expect nothing less than five-star reviews.”

She jabs a clawed spoon at him, earning a rough chuckle that’s quickly followed by a wet cough. A grimace passes over her face for a moment, quickly getting replaced by something more concerned. Dinah scoops a heaping portion onto two plates, shoving a fork in the middle of each, and carries them over to the table, sitting beside Neil and placing one of the plates in front of him.

“Are you feeling a little better?” She shovels a fork full of macaroni into her mouth. Neil nods, sniffling once more before beginning to eat as well.

“Yeah… Sorry I came in like that, I didn’t mean to slam the door.”

“It’s fine, even I do it sometimes.”

After that they continue to eat in silence, an unspoken agreement to leave the tension in the room unaddressed for a moment. It’s when Dinah’s on her last bite and Neil’s long since finished his serving that he speaks up again.

“Kash cheated on me.”

Dinah almost chokes on the macaroni. It takes a few seconds to get the food down her throat without coughing or gagging. She drops her fork, metal clattering against ceramic, as she presses a hand to her throat and uses the other to thump at her chest.

“What?” She finally manages to wheeze out.

“Kash-”

“No, you don’t have to repeat that, I heard you- it was rhetorical.” She stops herself and takes a few deep breaths before continuing. “Okay. Okay, alright.”

“Do you need a minute?” Neil asks, laughing lightly. It’s one simple sentence yet, despite Dinah’s reaction, saying it out loud to her like this makes the muscles in his shoulders ease a little.

“No, I don't need a minute! Sorry, I just can’t believe- wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait.” She mumbles, grabbing at the sides of her face with her hands. Neil takes this moment to get up, taking the dishes and putting them in the sink before sitting back down. He’s in the middle of blowing his nose with a paper towel when she comes back to herself.

“Is that why you broke up with him? Ghosting him for his birthday and everything?” Neil nods, smiling weakly as his eyes dart down to the table.

“Cheated…” She gapes into the distance, awestruck.

“With an omega.”

“I’m going to kill him.”

“Maybe not-”

“HE CHEATED ON YOU! THAT GREASY, MUSTY, SLEAZY PIG!” Dinah rams her hands on the table, Neil jolting back in surprise. “Wait no, that’s not even… If you knew about this before your trip to Nevada and that’s why you broke up with him back then, then just now…”

She trailed off, likely asking the question more to herself than to him. Cogs visibly turn in her brain while she works out how this newfound knowledge relates to the fact he came back to the apartment in such a state. Breathing out a helpless sigh through his nose, Neil fiddles with the balled-up paper towel in his hands and tries to speak again.

“Obviously he didn’t know that’s why I broke up with him… because I didn’t tell him. I guess I was too drunk at the time to say anything else, except for some vague words and a statement to break off the relationship. So he just confronted me about it. Just now.” He hears the sharp intake of breath from beside him but continues. “Well, in a way, I confronted him. He tried to make excuses, and I almost believed them.”

A bitter smile overtakes his face as he squeezes the ball in his fist, nails slowly digging through the paper and into the meat of his palm.

“Unfortunately for him, he didn’t think about how stupid it would be to try and deny cheating accusations with a massive hickey and mating bite on his neck.”

The silence that follows is suffocating. His eyes burn from crying and he fights off the sting building at the corners. He doesn't want to have swollen eyes first thing in the morning, but he can’t help the lump rising up his throat. This is the first time he’s cried since he first caught Kash in the act.

Neil blinks when Dinah launches herself into his arms, wrapping around him and holding him tightly, as if she can keep everything in him from falling apart with her two hands alone. Neil’s eyes flutter shut and he hugs back just as fiercely.

“He’s a bastard and he doesn’t deserve you.” She whispers, going from a comfortably tight hold to approaching boa constrictor territory. “He’s not going to get away with this.”

Neil lets out a wet chuckle, rubbing at his eyes with his thumb before he pulls away. She lets go and settles her hands by his biceps, her eyes staring up into his. They're like glaciers piercing into him with cold rage, though none of it is directed at him.

“I’m not really interested in keying his car or anything.” He laughs a bit louder when she clicks her tongue, glancing away and looking displeased. “I don’t… I don’t know what to do at this point. Now that it’s over. But I do know for certain that I don’t want anything else to do with him ever again.”

This much is true. Even now, after he’s finally spilled the truth to Dinah, he feels lighter than he has in weeks. The crushing weight of this secret, this torment, has been taken off his shoulders and thrown to the floor. He’s sharing the burden and is all the better for it. Even though he bawled his eyes out barely an hour ago, he feels strangely free, in his own way. He doesn’t need Kash’s accursed face ruining this.

And moving on may not be in the cards for him anytime soon, but at least now Neil has no reason to drag things out. Any questions he had about who, why, and what went wrong vanished as soon as he met Kash face-to-face. Any answers he could have received wouldn’t be worth it. He doesn’t need to search for reasons to justify being cheated on.

“Okay. I respect that. But it won’t stop me from showing him my blatant disgust at his putrid self.” Dinah finally lets go and leans back in her chair.

“Thanks.” Neil smiles warmly at her, receiving one in turn.

Like this, they bask in each other's company for a few seconds. At least until Dinah nods curtly and stands up so quickly the legs of her chair scrape against the tiled floor. A note of confidence suddenly invades her aura and a wicked smile creeps onto her lips.

“Alright, I’ve decided.”

“Decided? Decided what?”

“I know you don’t have class tomorrow, and my class finishes up at six. Tomorrow night, we’re going drinking.”