Cade had arrived earlier than he’d meant to, and now he was annoyed with his own punctuality. There was nowhere convenient outside the office building to wait without looking like someone who was waiting.

He bought a takeaway coffee and settled near a little square across the road. There was plenty of time before the end of the workday to invent a few convincing explanations for his presence, but none sounded better than the simple truth: he wanted to talk.

People emerged through the glass doors wearing the same exhausted expressions. Cade caught himself scrutinizing every tall man before he’d even seen his face. He hated behaving like that, but leaving would only push the uncertainty into another evening. He checked his phone and found a message saying Vincent would be running late. Cade replied that he was still busy himself, then felt distinctly unpleasant about telling his first lie in days.

A few minutes later, Vincent appeared near the entrance, wearing yesterday’s coat and carrying his briefcase in his left hand, keeping his right free for his phone.

Cade had just taken a step toward the crossing when another man approached Vincent from the parking lot. At first, all he saw was a back in a black hoodie. The sight stopped him cold, bringing that recent evening crashing back.

The man turned toward Vincent, giving Cade a view of his profile. Then he lifted his head to answer something, and both faces came into view at once.

Cade instinctively stumbled backward against the curb. Coffee splashed across his fingers, but he barely felt the hot liquid running down his trouser leg. He noticed only when the cup became too slippery to hold, and he dropped it. Across the street stood two men with a face that, until a second ago, Cade had believed belonged to one person.

What the actual fuck was going on?

He sat on the edge of a concrete barrier, not entirely trusting his knees. Vincent pocketed his phone and showed the other man a small key. The other man protested, gesturing near his shoulder, then laughed. Cade recognized the laugh before the face. Right now, the identical features were only making things harder.

That was the version of Vincent he’d found so unexpectedly sweet.

Watching them side by side, Cade began noticing differences almost too quickly, as if his brain were trying to make up for its earlier mistake. Vincent stood almost perfectly still. The other man kept shifting his weight. One used only a few restrained gestures as he spoke; the other constantly invaded the space between them.

Their resemblance no longer erased the differences. It made them sharper. Cade felt such a fierce surge of humiliation over his own blindness that he had to remind himself he hadn’t exactly had a reason to go looking for a second person before.

Their conversation ended with a key changing hands. Vincent went back inside, presumably to finish his work, while the man in the hoodie headed along the parking lot. Cade crossed the street, barely noticing the traffic. He wasn’t going to make a scene outside the office. He wanted to hear a name. He wanted something to make that face stop feeling like part of a nightmare. More than anything, he needed to know he wasn’t hallucinating.

“Hey. Stop. We need to talk,” Cade called, catching up near a side passage.

His voice was steadier than he felt. The man turned, and the color drained from his face. That reaction was all the confirmation Cade needed. He stepped closer and planted a hand against the wall beside the man’s shoulder, then almost immediately pulled it away. He hated the way the pose looked.

“C-Cade…”

The man with Vincent’s face knew his name. Clearly, he had no idea what to say next. Cade looked at those familiar lips and forced himself to ask what mattered.

“Does it count as cheating if you spend the night with your boyfriend’s twin without having a fucking clue it’s somebody else?”

A flush rose into the man’s cheeks, but he didn’t try to leave. Cade no longer needed to block his path. The silence said more than any answer could, so he stepped back.

“What’s your name?”

“If you’re going to keep quiet, I’m going to call you by the only name I know,” Cade added, his nerves finally showing.

“Leon.”

Cade repeated the name in his head several times. He hoped the unfamiliar sound would help separate the man standing before him from Vincent. It didn’t help nearly as much as he’d wanted.

“Could we go somewhere quieter?” Leon asked, looking uneasily around.

Cade refused. He wasn’t about to let Leon organize this conversation too. Cars passed nearby, dogs barked somewhere in the distance, and music drifted out of an open service door. The sheer ordinariness of the world around him was oddly grounding.

“So when did you realize I was your brother’s boyfriend?”

Leon looked away as if searching for a way out of answering. Cade’s stare brought him right back.

“Right away. I knew right away.”

“Right away?” Cade repeated. “Back there by the café? You heard me call you Vincent, and it didn’t occur to you to tell a stranger he’d got the wrong man?”

Leon nodded. Cade told him to use his words. Leon confirmed that he’d known, and admitted he’d initially wanted to correct him. He couldn’t explain exactly when that intention had stopped mattering.

Cade had wanted a reason ridiculous enough to make hating him simple. Instead, that plain admission of a choice felt worse. He couldn’t hide behind an accident or misunderstanding anymore.

Leon said Vincent had told him about Cade and shown him photographs. Unexpectedly, that was the part Cade got stuck on. For eight months Vincent had worked so hard to pretend their arrangement meant nothing, all while telling his brother about him. A brief, almost painful rush of satisfaction gave way to anger. Vincent’s affection had become a way for somebody else to fool him.

“He talked to you about me?” Cade asked. “How much? I want to know exactly what you already knew when you saw me.”

Leon said he knew about their previous arrangement and their recent decision to become a couple. He didn’t pretend that a week of being official meant nothing. Cade noticed that, and it only made him angrier. He wanted Leon to be a simpler kind of asshole. But even knowing the right words didn’t change what he’d done, so Cade forced himself back to the point.

The reason was small and ugly. Leon had enjoyed receiving attention meant for someone else. Then he’d become afraid of losing that attention, along with the chance to explain himself without consequences. He didn’t talk about destiny or try to turn Cade’s mistake into some special connection. Cade listened, his desire to scream gradually fading.

So Leon had seen several chances to stop and deliberately passed every one of them.

“You knew who I thought I was bringing home,” Cade said, looking him straight in the eye. “I thought you were Vincent. You heard me say his name and kept quiet. So don’t even think about starting with how I invited you.”

“I-I wasn’t going to…”

Cade didn’t feel relieved. Taking responsibility was better than denying it, but it couldn’t give him back the evening he’d thought he’d had. Suddenly he remembered how secretly proud he’d been that he and Vincent had finally switched roles in bed. That memory hurt more than the others. He’d thought his boyfriend had let him know him more intimately, when in fact somebody had simply withheld the truth.

“You son of a bitch. How the fuck am I supposed to explain to him that I cheated?”

For a while neither spoke. Cade kept his eyes on the seam of the black hood. The face beneath it still stirred too many contradictory feelings.

And there was one thing that frightened him even more.

He was still attracted to the man standing in front of him. But wanting to look at him didn’t mean agreeing to forgive him. Cade clung to that distinction rather than trying to work out which emotion was the right one.

“I could tell him myself…”

Cade’s head snapped up.

“Oh, don’t you fucking dare.”

He didn’t let Leon finish with some offer to disappear from the city or never see them again. Disappearing wouldn’t change the fact that Cade had to explain to his boyfriend a night that hadn’t seemed wrong to Cade until this evening.

“Don’t text Vincent,” Cade said, taking out his phone only to check the time. His fingers were still shaking, which annoyed him more than he cared to admit. “I’ll tell him myself. Until then, stay away from him and stay away from me. The last thing I need right now is you two holding family meetings behind my back.”

Leon nodded slowly. He looked as if he wanted to say something else, but kept stopping himself before the words came out. What was he, an oversized puppy?

Cade watched him another few seconds, then turned sharply away. He’d had enough of this conversation. The longer he stood there, the more he wanted either to start asking questions again or punch Leon in his pretty face. Neither seemed particularly sensible.

He’d taken a few steps toward the exit when he stopped. The thought had arrived at such an inconvenient moment that Cade closed his eyes in irritation. He spent several seconds trying to convince himself he didn’t have to ask. But somehow he couldn’t leave without knowing.

He turned to Leon again.

“Were you in pain afterward?”

Leon frowned, bewildered. “Huh?”

“Oh my God, don’t make me spell it out right now.” Cade rubbed his face and sighed. “That night. Was I too rough? I’d never fucking done that before. I thought it was Vincent’s first time too, except… well, yours. So tell me properly. Did I hurt you?”

Leon looked so startled that Cade immediately wanted to take the question back. Then his expression softened, though thankfully he made no attempt to smile.

“No. You didn’t hurt me.”

Cade kept staring, plainly dissatisfied with the speed of the answer. “Are you telling the truth?”

Leon held his gaze. “Yes. You kept asking whether I was okay. Sometimes a little too often. I actually thought you were more nervous than I was.”

Some of the tightness in Cade’s chest eased. He promptly hated himself for feeling relieved. He hated this man right now. Or at least wanted to hate him enough that he wouldn’t care whether he’d left him hurting. But that face of his…

“Good,” Cade said after a pause. “At least that part’s okay.”

“You were really worried about that?” Leon asked carefully.

Cade looked at him so sharply that whatever he was going to say next died on his lips.

“Don’t get ideas. I wasn’t worried because I’ve suddenly decided I care about you. I thought you were Vincent. If I’d done something wrong, I wouldn’t even have known who to ask until today.”

Leon looked away. “Got it.”

“Good.”

Cade started to leave again, but this time Leon spoke first.

“Cade, I really don’t know what else I can say to you.”

Cade turned his head slowly. “And who said you have to say anything?”

“Nobody. I just don’t want you thinking this was some kind of joke to me.”

Cade stared at him, unable to understand why that irritated him more than an ordinary excuse would.

“I couldn’t care less whether you thought it was funny. You realized you’d been mistaken for your brother, and you chose not to say anything. Everything else is beside the point.”

“I know.”

“No, Leon. You’re standing here still trying to make me understand that you had feelings and reasons. I don’t want those right now.” Cade spoke more quietly, which only made his anger sharper. “Yesterday, I was absolutely certain I was with my boyfriend. It never crossed my mind to check whether it was really him. Normal people don’t do identity checks before getting into bed.”

Leon pressed his lips together without answering.

Cade gave a humorless laugh. “See? You’re doing a great job keeping your mouth shut now. Shame that talent showed up at exactly the wrong time yesterday.”

Leon winced but didn’t argue. “I deserve that.”

“And stop agreeing with every damn thing I say. That’s annoying too.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

The helplessness in the question caught Cade off guard. He hadn’t expected to hear it in that voice. This wasn’t the cheeky man from the café, stealing fries from his plate and answering every joke with another. Leon now looked like someone who’d finally understood just how far he’d gone. Cade had no intention of becoming the person who made him feel better about it.

“Nothing,” he said after a short silence. “Literally nothing. Don’t try to fix it. Don’t get to Vincent before I do. And let’s just forget this ever happened. Forget each other, all right?”

Leon nodded obediently. This time, Cade didn’t get annoyed by his agreement.

He slipped his phone back into his pocket and headed for the street. Behind him, everything stayed quiet, and for once that silence didn’t demand an answer.

Only when Cade was almost out of the passage did Leon call his name again.

Cade stopped without turning around.

“I still have to tell you I’m sorry.”

For several seconds Cade watched the street ahead. Cars passed, people crossed the road, and not one of them cared that his personal life had just split in two along with the face of the man he called his boyfriend.

“Your apology does absolutely nothing for me right now,” he finally replied. “Maybe someday I’ll know what to do with it. But definitely not today.”

He stepped onto the street and didn’t stop again.

At the crossing, his phone buzzed. Vincent wanted to know where Cade would like to have dinner. Cade stared at the message for a long time and almost laughed at the awful absurdity: the person he’d been afraid to approach with questions really hadn’t known anything at all. He replied that he would come to Vincent’s place and that the conversation wasn’t going to be pleasant. A moment later, Vincent offered to meet him at the office, but Cade asked him not to come out.

He walked several blocks before he could breathe properly. Anger gradually separated from shame, although he couldn’t get rid of the latter. Cade kept telling himself he hadn’t been obliged to guess his boyfriend had a twin. Still, his mind circled back to every detail he’d missed.

He stopped in front of a shop window and caught his reflection.

The man staring back was about to explain a mistake so fucked up it sounded unreal. Cade decided that, at the very least, it was a mistake he wouldn’t make twice.