Ryland had thought of what it’d feel like to close that distance, to feel your lips on his. Deep and ravenous, and holy fuck, he wants to kiss you. He thinks you’d be a good kisser, too, holding him by his shirt, and standing on your tip-toes because he’s taller than you. The thought makes his head hurt, and sends ripples of heat down to where—well, he definitely has a problem now.

He’s going to hell. Ryland Grace is sure that he is going to hell.

Sure, he can keep hiding behind concern, behind habit, behind responsibility, but Someone from Above would know he is nothing but a liar, spewing big fat lies, under the most heinous excuses.

He buries his face in his hands, finally letting lets himself admit that he is in too deep. For a while, he just sits there, staring at nothing. Then he turns toward the window, looking up at the sky like there’s an answer somewhere above him.

There isn’t.

There’s just this ache sitting in his chest, something too deep to explain and too constant to ignore, not to mention his fucking hard on right now as he keeps sipping his drink.

He takes a breath, mulling every wrong thing over, and why they feel so wrong. And it’s because you’re his coworker, and you’re way younger than he is. He should be more professional, more like a role model to you. Not someone who remembers the sound of your laugh when the room goes quiet, or someone who looks at your lips and thinks about kissing you and fucking you, and doing everything to you.

Fuck. Ryland Grace is so fucked.

He’s fucked now as he unzips his denim jeans, pulling it down just enough to let his cock spring out. God, it’s dirty to think about you in the way he is right now, bent over in that room against the table you’d both just used. He wants to unbutton your blouse one button by button, wants to pierce down at your tits through your cleavage.

Ryland strokes himself, all fucked out and tipsy with his head rolled back imagining what pretty sounds you’d make if he fucked you against it. Would you finally call him by his first name or keep calling him ‘Mr. Grace’?

He whimpers, fingers and hands and palms and every bit of his anatomy working to reach his climax, still thinking about how perfect your cunt must feel, how sweet you must taste. He tries not to, has been trying so hard the past few months.

But trying can only substitute for the feeling for so long, and this is the only way to relieve himself.

With heavier breathing, he tightens his grip around himself, picking the pace, and imagines instead your hand instead of his. And there is so much heat. Heat as he fucks himself with his own hand, heat as he curses under his breath, heat as his hips stutter forward and he finally cums with a gasp of your name.

Ryland Grace could not be any more fucked. Because aside from wanting mornings with you (bedheads, steaming mugs of coffee, sleepy smiles), and afternoons of endless conversations, he’s turned greedy, wants more from you. He wants your nights now, too. He wants to know how you feel if he was inside of you, his cock, his fingers, his mouth. He wants to know how you’d sound moaning his name, how you’d whimper, how you’d make pretty little noises. He wants to know how you taste, lips, cunt, neck, skin.

He wants nothing more than to take care of you after, to kiss all over your body—ankles, thighs, stomach, breasts, chest, neck, chin, ear, cheeks, everywhere. He desires to hold you in his arms after, to take care of you, provide for you. He’s selfish and greedy, and wants the entirety of you despite the big fat off-limits in bold peering at him every time he thinks of you.

Ryland Grace is fucked.

And he’s entirely more fucked a week later when he finds himself in a crowded hallway between classes, fucked when he sees you despite his best efforts at distance. Because where greed had been, guilt now currently sits.

For a moment, he lets his mind wander towards the images he’d conjured up of you a week before, lets himself picture pushing your panties aside, the roll of your eyes, the parting of your pink lips, the heat of your tongue—

Ryland feels like he’s going to cry. It’s almost as if every self-control he’d spent years practicing has decided to leave him, to abandon and jump ship and leave him to fend for himself alone with a lust he’s never quite felt before. A sort of sinful desire that he shouldn’t even have in the first place because, again, you are everything sweet, yet everything forbidden.

He’s so wrapped up in his mental scoldings that he doesn’t realize you’re not exactly alone.

You’re talking with the History teacher just outside your classroom, just a few years ahead of your age, and Ryland cannot do anything to prevent the burnt feeling on his sternum. His eyes dart back and forth between you and the boy, and Ryland really doesn’t like how close you two are.

At that moment, he learns the meaning of the word jealousy. Or, he relearns it. Because it’s something he thought he’d felt before in his life, but now the past only seems like a weak and straggling imitation of what real jealousy is like. Which is exactly what he’s feeling right now.

And before he can decide whether to turn around and take another route to maintain professionalism and to shake off the taste of burnt sugar and the overwhelming wrath of jealousy and the pictures of you in his head, you’ve already spotted him, and you’ve spawned beside him faster than his feet could move.

“Hi. You’re also heading to the lounge?”

A torturous sliver of hope in the sickeningly sweet honey that drips down from your tongue as you ask him.

Ryland can only nod in response, and there is a small smile on his face when you had abandoned the man to go to him. You’d willingly brought yourself beside him.

He is soooo going to hell. All feelings foreign have apparently decided to make themselves known at this very moment, the jealousy, the heat, the overwhelming tide of adoration, the fondness, how horny—

The bell rings, and suddenly, there are students everywhere, and voices are overlapping, and lockers are slamming, and there is quite literally movement everywhere all at once. And you’re stepping into the flow of students with him, and there is no space between the moving bodies and the narrow hallway.

And God, he really shouldn’t have done it, but it’s almost instinct the way he reaches out. The way he has a hand at your back to guide you through the rush. He feels dirty doing this, touching with the same hand he’d used to pleasure himself at the thought of you. And you don’t even know, completely unaware that he’d imagined the very same palm in helpful guidance as if it were yours wrapped around him.

Ryland is going to jump off a window. He’s going to lunge forward, head for the nearest exit, because his heart is thumping so hard in his chest, and he thinks he’ll remember the feel of your back against his hand for years to come. Has he touched you before this? Does the light feather-touches count? Does the brush of your fingers equate to this? He doesn’t think so. He’d remember if he’d touched you for this long without repercussions, with an actual reason to.

This is all in good nature, even as guilt overwhelms him. It’s to keep you from getting pushed into the lockers, or against the tide of students, and it was really only for a few seconds, but the moment his palm makes contact, everything in his brain goes unhelpfully quiet.

He guides you forward without thinking, threading through the crowd, and then it’s finally over. Thank Fuck, and he drops his hand like he’s been burned. Like the contact had given him third-degree burns. Like he’s trying to correct yet another mistake.

He’s feeling too much. Jealousy, relief, the touch of his hand on your back, and apparently horny which is definitely not an appropriate thing to feel at a fucking school. He can’t keep up with the rushing emotions, with the way his heart is exploding, with the way his brain is melting, with the way his lungs are filling up. He’s losing control.

Ryland is losing the composure he’d taken years to build. You are the prime example of how losing control feels like, unraveling him and unspooling every bit of sanity he has left, making him feel like a teenager in his grown fucking age.

He should feel embarrassed.

“Thanks.” You say, adjusting your bag strap. “That was kind of scary.”

“Of course.” He cuts his response shorter, trying real hard to keep his voice steady, and then he starts walking before he does something stupid like staying longer than necessary. Like thinking, and imagining, and feeling jealous again without warrant.

Ryland Grace had no right to be jealous. He had no right to think about guys younger than him. Guys who would hold your hand, who might kiss you and keep kissing you. He had no right for the gut-deep jealousy sitting and constricting his diaphragm. You were not his.

The thing he needed from the Faculty Lounge is forgotten, and he’s almost immediately making his way back to his classroom lest he wants to suffer more consequences. Lest he wants to drown in his thoughts any further.

But later, in the evening when it’s only the two of you in the empty hallways, there is nowhere else to hide or run off to when you come to his classroom to ask him for his help. To drop by when he’s free from whatever the hell he’s doing.

You’re asking him. He has half a mind to tell that history teacher that here you were, asking Ryland, not him.

And God, he can’t stop himself. He’s exhausted all his restraint earlier, and now he’s found himself halfway into your classroom before he can regain any form of composure.

“I just need it on that top corner.” You’re saying, standing on a chair with a piece of paper decoration in your hands, and he’s immediately by your side in case you might fall over.

“Careful.”

“I’m not that high up, Mr. Grace.”

He looks at you, and you look back, and God, he really needs to focus. “Still, it’s dangerous standing on a chair like this. Did you know, statistically speaking—“

“I am only two steps away from the floor. Please spare me the lecture.”

“You could still hurt yourself. High chairs actually account for an average of roughly 40,000 department-treated injuries every year in the United States. Which, if you didn’t know, is here. We are in the United States, and you are standing on a high chair.”

You roll your eyes, shaking your head playfully as you balance yourself to try and stick the decoration to the wall.

Ryland steps even closer when you wobble a little. “I said be careful.”

“I am being careful.”

He reaches up slightly, not touching you, just hovering near your elbow like that alone will somehow help. It doesn’t, really, but it’s extra reassurance for him. He’s vying for the benefit of the doubt just this once.

He rids his perverted thoughts, because they don’t really want to make an appearance. There is genuine concern in place of his perversion from earlier in the day.

Tonight, he simply wants to make sure you don’t fall off this fucking chair while you tip-toe and move about without a care in the world. He has half a mind to hold you in place, but he doesn’t think himself capable of doing that.

And you’re leaning forward, and tipping the chair, and moving so carelessly, and he’s moving even closer than he should, and his heart is banging its fists against his ribs, and— and the poster is finally where you need it to be.

Ryland lets out a sigh in relief that you’ve come out of the task unhurt. Or well, something between relief and frustration. Or both, he’s not really sure anymore.

“See?” You say, stepping down carefully from the chair after the minutes of carelessness you’d just displayed. “No injuries.”

Ryland exhales, once more. “Yeah, yeah.”

You laugh, brushing past him to check the decoration from a distance.

And Ryland stays where he was, trying not to think of how close you’d been. Trying not to think of the warmth that had emanated from you. Trying not to think that it’s the closest you two have ever been. Trying not to think of a future he keeps imagining. Trying not to think of tugging you towards him, wrapping his arms around you, laughing about something after a long day of work. Trying not to think of how easy it would’ve been to grab ahold of you and bend you over—

He clears his throat. Fuck, he really thought he had this one.

“Anything else you need help with?” He lifts his face from where he had buried it in shame, looking at you with a sort of hopefulness that there is nothing more, and that you will set him free for the night.

You glance around the room like you’re actually considering it for a second, before, “I think that’s it for today. Unless you suddenly feel like alphabetizing my entire storage cabinet.”

Ryland lets out a short laugh, an amused but barely concealed fond smile. “That sounds like a punishment, not a task.”

“Depends on how much you enjoy organization.”

“I enjoy it just fine.”

You raise an eyebrow, looking at him with mirrored amusement but before he can hold eye contact, he’s already looking away.

He’s shifting his weight, adjusting the strap of his bag like he’s suddenly thought of something, and he’s checking the time on the clock, even though he already knows what it says.

He’s just trying to find an excuse. Like he always does.

“Right.” He says finally. “I should probably get going.”

You nod, that same wave of disappointment washing over you. There is always some place to be with Ryland. “Yeah. Me too.”

Ryland takes the first step back.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow, Mr. Grace.”

And he’s already forcing himself to leave before he does something as unnecessary as looking back. As unnecessary as letting out the whispered goodnight ghosting his lips. As unnecessary as the urge to press his lips to your forehead, and take your hand in his, and bring you home for a quiet night of grading papers together and laughing at the Bright and Creative minds that children have when making up answers.

That night, Ryland has the same recurring dream of a life with you. He dreams of the softness of your touch, of the plumpness of the lips he stares at when you’re alone, at how warm your hand must be against his. He dreams of the smoothness of your skin, of your thighs, and how sweet your lips must be like. How sweet you must taste.

He wakes up hot and guilty, as he resolves himself again with the thought of you.

Some days are harder than others.

For Ryland, the massive, ginormous lump of guilt in his throat for feeling something he hasn’t felt in almost a decade. And, for you, succumbing to the exhaustion behind your eyes and the frustration of trying so hard to prove yourself.

It gets tiring. And mistakes, while normal, can be more reason to doubt yourself.

It’s how you find yourself sitting on the bench outside the school building, where most students sit and wait for the bus or their parents. Theirs in hand-holding of warmth and love and familiarity at the carve of their parents’ hands, and yours with cold, dead hands with your knees pulled to your chest and a tear-stricken face in companion.

It’s late enough that you don’t worry about anyone seeing you like this. Cue the quiver of knees pressed on your chest, tear stains that look like trembling contrite. Like you’re sorry to yourself for existing, unable to forgive yourself all the same.

It’s melancholic, lonely, for almost an entire hour until you hear a set of footprints. Forward and forward and forward, faint, but unmistakably human.

You don’t look up, though. You drown it out in favor of washing out your frustration over yourself. It’ll probably recede, probably keep walking towards the parking lot or wherever the direction was to their home. You certainly don’t expect anyone to sit next to you.

Even more so, for that someone, the particular he, to look at you with an expression you don’t quite recognize. You might have to blame the blur of tears in your eyes.

“Mr. Grace?” You sniffle, laughing a little at how pathetic you must sound like. How you might look like. “I’m not really— in the right… I can’t - I don’t want to talk.”

He only nods, simply sits there and says, like it’s the most obvious thing, “that’s okay.”

Ryland doesn’t push or ask you to explain. He just sits there, staring across. He’d hate to be looked at while crying, so he mirrors what he thinks might bring you comfort. Trained eyes towards the dimming lights of the parking lot, the littering stars, the rough pavement.

You don’t know how long the both of you stay quiet, half an hour or an hour. You can never quite figure out how time works when you’re with him.

Though, through that time, your voice starts to find its pacing. It starts begging to speak, asking you if it was okay to let the thoughts that had been running tirelessly to finally be set free of its place in the hamster-wheel of your mind,

“Just a bad day.” You admit quietly, after a silent debate with yourself.

“I figured.” He finally looks at you, after staring at anything but, and the obvious concern almost makes you vomit. You’re not quite sure why. “You okay? Wanna talk now?”

“Yeah.” It’s a laugh that sounds tired, but a laugh nevertheless. “I just had everything planned for today, and it didn’t… it just didn’t work.”

“Mhm.”

“I just think— I just feel like I’m always running, always trying to catch up to everyone else here who knows exactly what they’re doing. I mean, all of you are just… you’re experienced and I’m… I’m someone who’s just pretending to be. I don’t belong here.”

You look down at your hands, fingers twisting together, playing around itself on your lap to try and satiate the busyness, the scuffle inside your head. “I think that’s why I wanted to come here in the first place.”

Ryland tilts his head slightly. “Here?”

You nod, a small, humorless laugh leaving you again. “San Francisco. I mean… moving here.”

His expression softens when he realizes this is something you haven’t really talked about before, something you’d briefly mentioned in the rain a few months ago when he hadn’t known you like he did now.

“I spent so many years in New York.” You say, volume low. “Studying there, building my whole life, getting used to the fast pace and the competitiveness. And I think I convinced myself that if I just went somewhere completely different, I’d finally feel like I knew what I was doing.”

You shrug, eyes still fixed on the hands on your lap. “Like a fresh start would make me feel more prepared. More like an actual teacher instead of someone trying to convince everyone I belong.”

Ryland stays quiet, letting you finish. Even though he’s fighting every urge to reach out and take your shaking hands in his, to tell you the opposite of your entire spiel, and that you do belong here.

“But then I got here and realized…” You swallow. “A different place doesn’t magically make you stop doubting yourself. The feeling follows you.”

“Hey… I don’t think you’re being fair on yourself.” His voice is quiet, gently coaxing you out of the little bubble of self-hatred in your head. “Do you know what I see every time I pass by your classroom?”

You look at him now, and the eye-contact pushes him to finish his thought.

“I see someone who always stays late because they care, because they want their students to really understand, because they have this great love and passion for this job. So no, you’re not just pretending. I don’t think it’s fair to say that to yourself and the person you were to get here. You have to be nicer to yourself. We’re all just trying our best, aren’t we?”

Your eyes are starting to burn again, and you can’t bring yourself to say anything again because you’re afraid it’ll come out disassembled, in choked sobs. You don’t want to trigger yourself to cry in front of him. So, you stay silent for a while to stabilize yourself.

And when you finally feel like you can talk without crying, you ask. You can’t help but ask. “Why are you always so nice to me?”

Ryland clears his throat. He looks like he’s trying real hard to think of an answer, wrestling over every option. Like he’s writing and erasing a response over and over, even though there is a very obvious answer sitting at the tip of his tongue.

“Because I know what it feels like.” He settles. It’s still a truth, though not in its entirety. There are many things he had chosen to omit from his answer.

You try to return what looks like the trial of a smile even though you’re still trying hard to blink away the tears that are still trying to form.

He still notices the effort. Of course he does. He always notices.

Ryland notices the way your fingers twist together, the way you’re trying to swallow down your disappointment, the way you’re trying to repeat his words in your head like a mantra.

And sitting beside you, watching you, triggers a sudden realization that sits heavily on his chest, that had been writing itself in his mind for a few months now. Because this isn’t just him helping the new teacher adjust, or him simply finding you attractive. He cares, too goddamn much.

More than he should.

He cares about whether you’re okay. He cares about whether you go home still thinking you’re not good enough. He cares about the way you’d tried to smile for him. He cares about being able to alleviate your pain just a little.

And it’s scaring him.

Because this is different. This is sitting beside you in the quiet and realizing that he cares for you in a way he doesn’t exactly mirror to his other coworkers. Sure, he’d have done the same. But there would be no ache in his heart at seeing you so dejected. There would be no intense feeling of wanting to make things better. There would be no urge to hold them in his arms and do anything he possibly could to make them smile.

This isn’t good.

It’s not good that his feelings are taking over. Ryland desperately needs to build a wall between his head and his heart immediately before he complicates anything. He’d already overstepped his boundaries, stepped way beyond the line of whatever label you had. He’d thought of you in ways he shouldn’t, and he feels greatly for you in ways that had been foreign to him for a long time.

There has to be something he can do to lock himself in place, to cage his feelings, to repair the boundaries he’d overstepped.

After that night, Ryland makes… adjustments. Small ones, changes he can implement immediately because they’re necessary.

He takes the longer route through the hallway if it means he doesn’t pass your classroom twice in a row. He stops lingering in your doorway, stops initiating conversation before leaving. It’s perfect in theory, but in practice, it only makes him more aware of when he does see you.

And fuck, he didn’t know it’d be so hard to restrict himself from you.

You notice too. You’d noticed when he’d lingered. And you notice, now, when routines suddenly change. Though, still imperfectly. You might have to thank faculty meetings for that—the worst kind of unavoidable.

As much effort as Ryland does to avoid you, there is nothing more he can do when the only empty chair left is beside yours.

(It had been an unspoken rule. Ryland had always sat next to you in previous faculty meetings. He curses his past self for that.)

He sits next to you, though very carefully. Like he’s afraid to break the menial improvements he’s been making. Like he’s frightened he’d undo his hard work.

“Mr. Grace.” You murmur when he settles, acknowledging him and hoping he’d look at you. The way he hasn’t in a while.

“Hi, kid.”

He doesn’t say more, the nickname burns, and the meeting finally starts.

It’s something about deadlines, about forms, about accreditations. Ryland doesn’t really hear anything properly. And he’s too much of a coward to admit it’s because your elbow is just slightly too close to his.

They’re not even touching. They’re just close, existing in the same narrow space between armrests, but he’s aware of it. He’s aware that it won’t take much to move, won’t take much for your elbows to touch in the way he’s craving.

He ignores it at first. It can’t be that hard.

But, it is. And he shifts his notebook an inch. Shifts his posture a little to move closer, and so do you. And it’s slow-burn inching before your elbows are finally brushing in the smallest contact.

Ryland stops writing. He has stopped for a while, looking down at your elbows. The contact sends electricity jolting inside of him, as if asking him how he could deprive his mind, his heart, his body of you.

The two of you sit there, unmoving, elbows still touching, and pretending not to notice something you are both very aware of.

And as if things couldn’t get worse, the touch of your elbow is suddenly ripped from him when you stand to say something during the meeting.

He doesn’t know what you’re talking about because all he’s been thinking about is his proximity to you, how he misses your skin on his, how he’d missed the smell of your perfume. Just like he had felt when he’d helped you decorate your room. When he’d thought about bending you over—

Your voice cuts through the room and distracts him from progressing his thoughts.

You’re explaining something about scheduling, and Ryland has finally reintegrated himself back into the meeting. Or, at least for a few seconds before his attention pulls down to your eyes and the way they had looked crying, and your mouth, to the way it’s moving as you speak. The way they had trembled that night. The way he’d wanted to kiss it to stop it from quivering.

Your lips are so soft, and so plump, and so inviting. And Fuck, Ryland straightens immediately, forces his gaze away from your lips, fixes it instead in the space between your eyes, or literally anywhere.

Because now he’s in his mind again, thinking about combing his hand through your hair, thinking about pressing his nose into your neck, thinking about breathing you in every single day, thinking about kissing you, thinking about what it would mean to be in a relationship with you. He can’t have you, but fuck, he wants to.

He wants you.

You keep speaking anyway, like he isn’t struggling in his head. Like he isn’t fighting to know a minute’s peace of mind or conscience that he knows he can’t have until you are his.

He is sitting on that chair, one corner of his brain occupied with the thoughts of making you feel so good, making you chant his name like a prayer, and the other thinking, I’m supposed to know better than this.

It’s why Ryland tries to slip past you after the meeting, tries his best to get away because the thoughts that had transpired in his head in real time were not safe. He wasn’t safe around you, but you’ve already called for him and in practice, he stops in his tracks.

He always does, when you call him.

“Mr. Grace.” You murmur, stopping him from leaving. He turns back to you and tries to push away whatever he’d been thinking about earlier, and there is a forced polite smile on his face like he wants to be anywhere but.

You wait until everyone else has exited the room (which feels like a lifetime to Ryland) before continuing, “I feel like I haven’t seen you much recently.”

He looks at you like your sentence pulled him out of something .

“Haven’t you?” He asks, then immediately regrets how that sounds. He can’t really think straight right now. “Sorry, I’ve just been… busy.”

You hum softly, not fully convinced, but not pressing.

There’s a pause before you tilt your head slightly. “You’re not mad, are you?”

The question is so… careful. Almost like you’re testing something.

Ryland stills, repeating your words. “Mad?”

It’s comical how one word manages to push away his guilt-ridden thoughts in favor of soothing you away from the feeling that he was angry at you. Which, he never could be. How could you think he’d possibly feel that towards you?

“Yes.” You say, a little softer now. “Like I’ve been bothering you or something. Is it because of… when I cried? Or… I don’t know. I just feel like you’ve been a bit distant lately.”

He forces a small, almost automatic shake of his head because how could you think that?

“What? No.” He says quickly, firm, hard, accusing. Then shifts his tone to something steadier, more gentle, in-love. “No, I’m not— I’m not mad, and you’re not bothering me. You never bother me.”

You seem to relax slightly at that, shoulders easing as you look back down at your fiddling hands. The same way you’d fiddled them that night you’d cried in front of him.

“Okay.” You say, like you believe him. Or, like you want to believe him.

Ryland nods, and thinks he should leave now. The opportunity has presented itself to him, but his feet don’t follow immediately.

“I’ve just had a lot of grading.” He adds after a moment, like the explanation needs reinforcing. Because he can’t stand the look in your eyes that are accusing him of anger, of running away after having seen you cry. “End of term things.”

You glance up at him again. “Right.”

“How…” He suddenly stutters from the question he’d rehearsed in his head, almost hesitant as his fingers tighten slightly around the strap of his bag. “How are you doing? I never got to ask after…”

“After I cried?” Ryland grimaces at the memory, but you just laugh a little in embarrassment. “I’m okay now.”

And he studies your face when you say it. He just wants to make sure you mean it.

“Good. Well then, I should…” He starts again, but his breath hitches when you look at him like that, like leaving would be the wrong decision. Like you wanted him to stay.

There are thoughts in your head that are too many, too crowded, fighting for space. From earlier during the faculty meeting, from now and trying to soothe you, from trying to make sure you’re okay. Everything is fighting.

“I should head out.” Ryland finally finishes his sentence, firmly, and you nod immediately.

You can already feel a thought starting to form. “Yeah. Of course. Sorry.”

“No.” He interrupts before you can further the thought in your head. And then, just a little softer, he says, “Don’t apologize.”

That earns him a small, hesitant smile from you.

He turns toward the door, with guilt-ridden steps (like he didn’t want to leave either), and he gets about a few steps towards it when he hears your voice again.

“Mr. Grace?”

He stops immediately, not because he wants to, but because he always does when you say his name like that. He turns slightly, just enough to look at you.

You hesitate. Like you want to tell him more. Like you want to tell him you miss him. And you hate that you almost do. Because missing him feels like admitting something that neither of you has ever said. That you’re refusing to say.

Instead, you settle for a “goodnight.”