Xander

WEEKS ONE — FOUR

It started with a TikTok you posted at 1:47 a.m., half-asleep, fueled by cheap iced coffee and the kind of righteous irritation that only comes from scrolling too long.

Some girl — barely twenty, pretty face, maybe 280 pounds in a crop top and jeans that fit her well — was in the comments section of a fitness influencer's page getting absolutely eviscerated. Hundreds of comments. "Put the fork down." "This is what happens when parents don't say no." "Bless her heart but she's killing herself." All variations on the same cruelty. You didn't know her. You didn't need to. You screenshotted the worst comments, posted them with a caption that said something like "y'all are literally proving her point about toxic fitness culture lmfao" and went to bed.

You woke up to two hundred thousand views and a stitched video from some guy you had never heard of in your entire life.

The stitch was ninety seconds of aggressively thumping bass — something dark and electronic, heavy enough to rattle your phone speaker — cut over footage of him in a gym, wearing a black tank top so thin you could see every vein in his arms, silver-blue eyes cutting into the camera like he was personally offended you existed. He didn't speak for the first fifteen seconds. He just flexed. Slow. Shoulders, then biceps, then a shot of his back in a mirror where the lighting made every muscle look like it had been carved out of marble and painted on with black-and-grey ink.

Then the text appeared on screen: "Somebody on my fyp said toxic fitness culture is a thing. Let me explain why that's the dumbest take I've ever seen."

What followed was thirty seconds of him talking directly into the camera, voice low and rough and dripping with the kind of confidence that only comes from someone who genuinely believes the sun rises specifically to highlight their jawline. He argued that "fitness culture" wasn't toxic — that the toxicity came from people being too soft to hear the truth. That being unhealthy wasn't something to celebrate. That "y'all are proving her point" was itself the proof that everyone had gone soft.

The stitch ended with him leaning into the camera, smirking, one eyebrow raised, and the caption: "Stay mad @ me next time. I'll wait."

The comments were insane.

"WHO IS THIS" "i am going to commit a crime" "someone hold me i can feel my knees weakening" "this is the most punchable AND fuckable face i've ever seen" "the way i paused at 0:14 and didn't recover" "he's right though 💀" "NO HE'S NOT BUT I STILL WATCHED 4 TIMES"

You watched it twice. Three times. Then, because you have never in your life backed down from an argument you were right about, you posted a reply video.

---

WEEK TWO

The back-and-forth became a thing.

He stitched you. You stitched him back. He made another one — shirtless this time, lighting dimmer, the bass even louder, tattoos crawling up his neck and jaw like he was auditioning to be the final boss of a metal album. He told his audience, and by extension you, that "wanting to be healthy isn't fatphobic, princess. It's called not dying at forty."

You told your audience, and by extension him, that "wanting to be healthy is fine. Calling a stranger a land whale in their comments is not health, it's cruelty with a gym membership."

He made a video where he was visibly biting back a grin while reading your reply, which made it worse, because the comments immediately became "he's fighting her like they're married" and "this is foreplay right? this is foreplay."

Someone edited the two of you into a ten-minute compilation. The song was "Join Me in Death" by HIM, slowed down and bass-boosted, cutting between his flex shots and your rebuttal clips. It got 1.2 million views.

You hated it.

You also watched it four times.

He never tagged you by name. Neither did you. You were just two strangers with a camera and a grudge, and somehow the internet decided your mutual hostility was the most entertaining content either of you had ever produced.

---

WEEK THREE

His following grew. Yours grew. People in the comments began treating it like a subscription service — "WAIT TILL HE SEES HER NEXT VIDEO" — and the replies under your posts became a mix of genuine support and people just there for the inevitable drama.

He shifted tactics. Stopped flexing. Started making argument videos — sitting in his car, all black interior, black Camaro, one hand on the steering wheel, cigarette smoke curling out the cracked window. He was articulate. That was the worst part. He made points. He cited data. He was an aerospace engineering student with an Air Force scholarship and the vocabulary of someone who had actually read the studies he referenced.

And then he'd punctuate a perfectly good point with something like, "But sure, keep telling yourself that defending obesity is the same thing as defending people. Real hero move."

And you'd stitch him with a roll of your eyes and a point-by-point dismantling.

The fans lost their minds.

"THEY HAVE CHEMISTRY" "please get married i'm begging" "this is the healthiest toxic relationship i've ever witnessed" "i would pay actual money to see them in a room together"

---

WEEK FOUR

You still didn't know his name. He knew yours because you'd commented back and forth enough times that your handle was basically his notification. His was @xmecfs — no real name, just the username, a profile picture that was just his jaw and neck from the side, gauges glinting, and a bio that said: "aeromech. USAF. don't be boring."

You had no idea he was forty-five seconds away from your dorm room.

---

THE MEETING

It's a Tuesday. Late afternoon. The sun is dropping behind the tree line on the west side of Valkyrie Heights University's upperclassman housing complex, casting everything in that warm, golden-orange light that makes even the concrete parking garage look like a movie set.

You're walking back from the library, backpack over one shoulder, earbuds in, half-listening to a podcast, half-thinking about the paper you should be writing instead of the TikTok reply you're mentally drafting.

That's when you hear it.

Boots. Heavy ones. The kind that hit pavement with a deliberate weight, like the person wearing them wanted you to know each step was a decision.

And underneath that — the low, rhythmic bass of a song leaking from someone's phone speaker, not through earbuds but just playing open-air, because apparently some people on this campus had never heard of manners.

You glance up.

And there he is.

It's not immediate recognition. It's slower than that. Worse.

He's coming down the concrete path that cuts between Building C and Building D — your building and the one right above yours, technically, though you didn't know that yet. He's wearing an oversized black band shirt — Type O Negative, you notice before you notice anything else, because the logo is unmistakable — and black athletic shorts that end high on his thighs. His arms are out. Full sleeves, black-and-grey ink, muscles so thick they look like they were rendered in CGI. A black duffel bag hangs from one shoulder, still dusty from whatever bench press had just been pressed in his honor.

His hair is shaggy. Black. Messy around his face in a way that looked effortless and definitely took twenty minutes.

He's got a menthol cigarette between his lips, unlit, and his pale silvery-blue eyes are fixed forward with the kind of bored, lazy confidence that most people spent entire lifetimes trying to manufacture.

He hasn't seen you yet.

He's checking his phone.

And then his thumb stills. He glances up. His gaze sweeps across the path, the parking lot, the cluster of students milling around the bench near the vending machines — and lands on you.

Something shifts.

It's not dramatic. It's not cinematic. It's just — a flicker. A half-second where the lazy confidence cracks and something underneath it blinks. His jaw tightens. His thumb stops moving on the screen. The cigarette between his lips twitches.

His stomach flips.

He feels it — a hot, sour lurch somewhere below his ribs, like he'd eaten something bad or been hit with a sudden wave of vertigo, except he hadn't eaten anything bad and he was standing perfectly still on flat concrete. It was wrong. It was uncomfortable. It was the kind of sensation that didn't belong in his body, because Xander Meadows did not get flustered and he certainly did not get nervous and he absolutely did not get that twisting, tight feeling in his gut at the sight of a stranger he'd never met in person.

It had to be the post-workout adrenaline wearing off.

It had to be the heat.

It had to be anything other than what it was.

He pockets his phone.

The cigarette stays between his lips, unlit. He takes it out with two fingers, slow, and lets his eyes drag over you — openly, shamelessly, the same way he'd look at a car he was thinking about buying. Top to bottom. Unhurried. Like he had time and you were the only thing worth spending it on.

You recognize him before he says a word.

It's the eyes. That pale, almost luminous silver-blue, sharp against the dark hair and the dark ink and the dark everything. You'd seen those eyes in a hundred videos. Staring into a camera, cutting into a stitch, smirking through an argument about toxic fitness culture and body positivity and whether calling a stranger a whale was technically the same as free speech.

The username @xmecfs stares back at you from across fifteen feet of concrete path.

He watches the recognition hit you. Watches your eyes widen. Watches your posture shift. And something about that — about being identified, about being recognized, about being seen — kicks his ego back online so hard it almost overwrites whatever that sick, twisting feeling in his stomach had been.

Almost.

He closes the distance. Doesn't rush. Takes his time. Lets the bass from his phone leak louder into the evening air — some Deftones track, heavy and slow, bass vibrating through the air between you like a challenge.

He's six-four. You knew that from the videos. Knowing it and experiencing it were different things. He blocked out the late afternoon sun entirely when he stopped in front of you. The cigarette rolled lazily between his fingers. His gaze pinned you in place.

And then he smiled.

It was the smile from the TikToks. The one that preceded every devastating point. The one that said I already won, I'm just being polite about it.

He leaned down — not far, but enough that you could smell menthol and cheap soap and something warm underneath — and his voice came out low, rough, and dripping with the exact same smugness you'd heard through your phone speaker a hundred times.

"Well, well."

He pulled the cigarette from between his lips and gestured at you with it, slow, like he was toasting.

"You're shorter in person."

A pause. His eyes dragged down. Back up. That same unhurried, car-buying look, except now there was something else underneath it. Something he didn't like. Something he was going to smother with ego if it killed him.

"Didn't think Valkyrie Heights had room for both of us. Guess the universe has a sense of humor."

He shifted the duffel bag higher on his shoulder, and the movement made his bicep bunch and his sleeve tattoo shift, black ink stretching over flexed muscle like it was alive.

"So. You wanna keep arguing in person, or do you only fight when you've got an edit button?"

His smirk widened. The dying sunlight caught the silver of his gauges, the pale of his eyes, the sharp line of his jaw.

Your stomach did something complicated.

His did too.

He absolutely hated it.