There’s pi on the shower head.

A patch of rust so perfectly shaped like the symbol of pi that it’s difficult to imagine it as anything else.

Other little splotches of green and brown circle it in formless blobs. Amusingly enough, it’s like the unique bit in the center is inspiring the ones around it to take shapes of their own, like they’re all looking on in awe. To Neil, who continues to stare at the stain with empty eyes, it conjures up the image of cloud watching.

He’s never been one to ‘stop and smell the roses,’ so he never understood the hype of sitting in the grass and picking out shapes in the clouds. Yet, as he stands here trying to make sense of a meaningless squiggle of rust, he thinks he’s starting to get the appeal. Taking the time to find something silly in something so bland, it’s a pleasant distraction from the world that crumbles around him. Eaten away like rust to metal.

How fitting.

When the water leaking into his eyes makes the pi symbol look more like a blurry, wobbly n, he finally shuts off the water and steps out of the shower. Still dripping and trailing water behind him, Neil leaves the bathroom in a fresh set of pajamas and drifts to his bedroom. A towel hangs from the top of his head like a pair of floppy, pale blue ears, one hand on top of it but making no move to actually use the thing.

With his free hand he reaches for the blankets on the bed, freezing mid motion when the phone laying innocently on the nightstand lights up. He stalls in place for a moment, then changes direction, reaching for the phone instead. As he taps in the pass code and checks the messages, a total of two, the blue light reflects in his eyes and gives the illusion of a pale, hollow center.

The email is the first one he clicks on. It’s a simple reminder from the marketing department about a networking opportunity. A trip to Nevada, or more specifically, to Las Vegas. The city of lights, the city of second chances. His advisor’s been pestering him about this trip since it was first announced, but Neil isn’t keen on the traveling, touring aspect of it.

He’s quick to exit the email in favor of the text notification. And it’s on that one that he lingers. The text reads; ‘I just checked with the prof, same time same place! See you tomorrow~ <3.’ There’s a little kissy face emoji tagged at the end.

The large crack zig-zagging through the screen perfectly splits the emoji’s face in half, making it look like the top part is sliding off. Neil holds the phone in a grip so tight the edges of the case dig into the flesh of his hand. Droplets of water drip from his hair and leave little splashes on the screen which he doesn’t wipe away, eyes locked on the words. It’s when one of the droplets is followed by a sniffle that Neil shuts the phone off, dropping it face down on the nightstand with a clatter.

He clicks off the lamp sitting beside it and returns to his earlier mission of burying into the blankets of his bed. The sheets, soft cotton, wrap around him and it feels like a dirty, old rag scraping against his skin. They were a gift. He shivers violently, reaching up and pulling the towel down off his hair and instead pressing it to his closed eyes.

It was a message that wasn’t all that weird. Less than weird, actually, considering he’d seen variations of the exact same text multiple times from the same number. The emoji is normal as well, sent to be cute. Sent to a loved one. But how much love can be given to someone they were never meant to be with? Why, then, love them at all?

Neil honestly doesn’t know why he’s laying here crying over this. Really, he should have seen it coming. Instead, he had to see it at the wrong place and at the wrong time.

There’s a gas station off campus, far enough away that students rarely went there. Neil, who works part time at said gas station, only sees people who attend his university there on very few occasions. An example of such an occasion being, when someone wants to purchase conspicuous items that aren’t allowed in the dorms.

One of the most common places he finds them is in the alleyway between his workplace and the neighboring apartment complex. Especially the alpha and omega pairs that tend to get a little too caught up in the moment. It didn’t help he always had to wait for the questionable activities to finish up because it was in that alleyway that the gas station’s dumpster was located. And after months of working there and witnessing the same things enough times, he’s learned to turn a blind eye to it all. It’s none of his business anyway. Although he does have his moments of wishing people would take it somewhere else, preferably somewhere out of ear shot.

It was pure chance that he was covering a shift for one of his coworkers that night. And It was also pure chance that he was subject to another one of those alpha, omega couples. Except this time something was different.

Of all times he had to take out the trash, it had to be that day at that time. That day he was unable to walk away and wait it out like he usually did. He couldn’t. Not when he recognized one of the voices coming from the alley.

Soft sounds and hurried breaths from the mouth of a stranger slipping into the mouth Neil kissed in quiet, private moments. The mouth that pecked him on the cheek as a greeting on holidays and trips to the campus cafe. The mouth that serenaded him with sweet words on good days and comforted him on bad ones. The mouth that told him stories of a beautiful future with a house in the countryside and a beagle puppy running around their feet. The mouth of a liar.

Words are always the sweetest when said by someone who knows exactly how to use them.

By the time all of this dawned on Neil, he was tucked out of sight behind the packaged ice machine. The bag of trash dangled limply at his side while his eyes stared blankly out at the street. He wasn’t really trying to hide, and the machine wasn’t big enough to completely cover him. But in the end, it didn’t matter.

After an indiscernible amount of time, the stranger emerged from the shadows. It was a younger man, maybe a year or two younger than Neil, with a thin frame and ruffled black hair. His face was flushed red, lips kiss-bitten and swollen. The stranger made his way toward the street with an exasperated and disheveled expression, his steps less like walking and more like a skip-step. Following after him was the man Neil had been in a loving relationship with for the past three years.

The same dark hair, fit figure, and bright blue eyes. The same shirt he bought him last Christmas, the collar now wrinkled and stretched. His face was equally flushed, lips swollen and pulled into a wide, beaming grin. His boyfriend skipped out to the sidewalk to stand next to the stranger, the pair glowing under the light of the street lamp, and carrying on down the street in cheerful conversation. They hadn’t noticed him.

For a while, Neil just stood there, still as a statue. It took the sound of a car door slamming by one of the gas pumps to snap him out of it. He blankly walked around the corner of the building and hefted the trash into the dumpster, the corner of the bag bumping into the bottom of his phone and knocking it out of his front pocket. The device hit the ground with a resounding crack just as the trash hit the bottom with an echoing bang that rattled his teeth and bones. More than one thing was thrown away that night.

That night still seems like it was so far away, and yet it only happened two days ago. What Neil finds ironic about the whole thing is how it was on that very same day, the two of them made plans for a date. The date they’re supposed to go on tomorrow.

In the darkness of his room, the towel still held against his eyes, Neil lets out a strangled laugh.

If he hadn’t seen everything with his own eyes, it’s likely he would’ve just happily gone to the cafe tomorrow without a single doubt in his mind about their relationship. Because even now, despite what he witnessed, he still can’t pinpoint when this game of deception began.

It’s that time in the school year where everyone scrambles to complete exams and projects, the two of them being no exception to this. Neil is caught up in his own tidal wave of assignments, tests, presentations, and work threatening to drown him. And Kash, his so called ‘boyfriend,’ has been chained to a research project that’s been in the works for almost two months and is only now entering the final stages. He knows how important this project is considering he’s had to hear Kash rant and rave about it for days on end.

They even came to the mutual decision to spend less time together when it became clear that Neil’s presence proved to be more of a distraction than a pillar of support. A pleasant one, according to Kash, but a distraction nonetheless. Which is fair, after all when they were still early in their relationship they discovered how hard it was to focus when they were together. It affected both of them at the time and therefore they agreed not to have their couple’s study sessions anymore.

So with Kash being busier than normal and it already being a period where they’re both otherwise occupied, it makes sense he didn’t catch on sooner. But that isn’t what ate at him. What he wants to know is when the betrayal started.

Did it happen when Kash was in the planning stages of his project? Did it happen somewhere along the way? Was it something that was merely a whim, the effects of pheromones at an inconvenient time? Or has this been going on for much, much longer, kept safely under the radar and away from him?

There’s only so much speculating he can do, and none of it helpful. He can’t conjure up any evidence off the top of his head outside of the one incident, either. Which leaves only one option; directly asking for the truth.

But again, words are always so sweet when coming from a liar. The last thing they give up is the truth.

So he’ll approach this from a different angle. He won’t bail on the date. Rather he’ll go and act as if nothing’s wrong, like he hadn’t had a front row seat to the scandal of the year. Then while he holds out through the whole endeavor, he’ll see for himself how things have changed. If they’ve changed at all.

Neil will pay closer attention this time, now that he knows what to look for. Find out what expressions he’s failed to catch, which ones aren’t directed at him anymore. Take note of how that signature smile looks when directed at him. Then when everything’s said and done, he’ll figure out what to do.

Besides, a liar who knows they're under suspicion only gets more careful. It’s a liar that believes they’re successfully maintaining their carefully crafted image that makes mistakes. The language they’re weakest in is body language. And once Neil knows the shape of something, it’s unlikely for him to mistake it as anything else. He knows what to look for.

He’ll see it coming this time.