#phm suggestive

In the eyes of many, you're a saint.

A saint who, for the past twenty-one years of your life, had been dedicating her time and energy into her academic and professional career. A modern-day St. Hildegard of Bingen, as your friends had knighted you with their adoration; brilliant in everything that your hands touched and everything that your mind could reach.

Your mother would fondly recount that day when, at three years old, you told her that you wanted to start studying. You were no longer content at just listening to her read to you your bedtime stories, nor watching educational programs on television in the afternoons. You wanted the real thing; to learn, be inside a classroom, and interact with children your age, so she gave you just that: she enrolled you at the local kindergarten in your hometown, and from there on out you proceeded to prove to her, your father, and the rest of your family, that every penny they invested in your education was going to be worthwhile.

That's not to say that you were a natural-born genius; no, that couldn't be farther from the truth. No saint would ever qualify for canonization just by existing; without undergoing the rigorous criteria that they needed to satisfy in the duration of their life.

In your sphere of excellence, however, you needn't be a corpse that's been deceased for five years to pass the mark. You were very much alive, and so was your growing list of accolades, nurtured precisely by your steadfast commitment to be, well… brilliant.

Behind the curtain constructed from your plentiful medals, plaques, and certificates lay the groundwork of your success: sacrificial hours that you could've spent playing outside with kids your age; nightly study sessions with your mother, conducted under the warm light of the dining table; and an avoidance of entanglements — platonic and romantic — that would have otherwise been a hindrance; a thorn to your side that could have derailed your focus to emerge victorious in the arena of academia.

Your life, insofar concerning the feats that you had accomplished, was eligible to be assessed and venerated as that of a person of exceptional intelligence and unwavering discipline.

The consequent fruits of this academic canonization were as followed: you graduated at the top of your class with the highest honors, and you were recommended and admitted to the doctorate program for microbiology at the same university in which you had made an everlasting mark. Your papers too, somewhat gave you leverage in some circles — you were certainly not yet at the level of a seasoned scientific academic, but for an undergrad, your accomplishments were no drab feats.

Like a saint, you had created a name for yourself. Academic achievement rarely went unrecognized, especially that of someone your age. Rarely did it happen that a fresh graduate like you would gun for a doctorate at twenty-three; but, as had been proven in the past, you were an exception. Brilliance warrants exception at the best of times, and you seized that opportunity. Why would you decline such, when your very generous, very affluent grandmother who's living in South Palo Alto offered to fund your endeavors?

You had moved to live with her since, and you had even inherited her Mercury as your main vehicle to go to and fro the campus, since she wanted you to be taken care of in the cushioned safety and warmth of her home. All of which pointed to the observation that you were, indeed, her favorite grandchild, despite your lack of desire to be proud. Saints weren't self-absorbed assholes, after all.

Your gratitude, then, manifested in your excellence in graduate school — a way to repay the investment so willingly and lovingly bestowed upon you, and to assert that you were worthy of such pampering and privilege. "You deserve it," your grandmother would say, particularly whenever you thanked her profusely for overseeing your well-being.

For over three years, you benefited from residing under her patronage. You were about to enter the fourth and (hopefully) final year of your stay in graduate school this coming fall, and it was during this year that you decided — upon consultation and negotiation with your advisor — to do your teaching assistant-ship in your final year.

You didn't have much on your plate anymore, anyway (compared to the last two years — you really didn't want to think about that again), and you'd put it off for too long. You couldn't imagine being a freshman handling other freshmen classes — that was your main reason for stalling. Even your grandmother — a hardened academic in her field during her days as a young woman — advised you to strengthen first your foundational knowledge before endeavoring to impart such to younger students.

This year was the year to tackle the work before you kissed the institution good-bye and earned the degree that you had so painstakingly plodded towards.

The forms for the "matchmaking" (that was, the courses that you wanted to handle alongside its presiding professor) were sent out a few months before the last first semester of your senior year began. You had to wait sometime for the request to be granted, but eventually, the dust settled, and so served was the verdict: for the fall, you were to handle an introductory class in molecular and cellular biology; and in the spring, a microbiology elective on microbial pathogenesis; both taught by one Dr. Ryland Grace.

You'd known Dr. Grace since undergrad; you were in a class of his in your junior year, a fairly easy course on genetics. "Fairly" being the operational word because the class was actually deceptively easy; another roundabout way to say that it was difficult. If you didn't do your work, Grace can and will fail you.

The m.o. was like a weirder version of a gap moe: a very cheerful, very enthusiastic professor who taught complex concepts effectively, yet his midterms and finals exams were absolutely going to crush you once they arrived.

That was the reputation that Dr. Grace had among the undergraduate population (because some of the upperclassmen were contrasting this with his demeanor in his doctoral courses; he was way more serious when it came to that department), and you had first-hand experience of it. Not that you were tooting your own horn, but you were lucky enough to have passed it with the highest grade possible. Because that's who you were. You didn't fail your classes. That'd be blasphemous.

You didn't think much of him, then. You pretty much just breezed through his class by following his recommended way of tackling the syllabus and preparing for the big exams; you got your grade, did the evaluation for the course, and then moved onto the next academic year — business as usual.

So here you were now: it's the week before the beginning of the fall semester, and you had driven to the university for a short screening with the professor, as per his email to you a few days prior.

He said, in the correspondence, that this wasn't an overly formal ceremony; he just needed to brief you early on about the work that he was going to allocate to you to prevent you from scrambling and fussing when the classes would actually start.

You reread the instructions to verify the room number of Dr. Grace' office. It's on the third floor, so you took the elevator on your way there, preparing yourself to meet the same man who you used to think was going to derail your academic record from seven years ago, all while you stared at your reflection on the steel walls of the car.

He did say "no pressure" in the email.

And speak of the devil: you spotted Dr. Grace en route to his office just as you stepped off the elevator. He's got a steaming mug in hand and a couple of papers in the other. He saw you, too, and upon recognizing your face from the request forms, he flashed his brows at you and beckoned you to follow him.

Fully expecting to handle the entryway situation yourself, you were sort of taken aback to find him standing there, holding the door open so you could pass.

You gave him a quick smile of gratitude and advanced into the room. The woody-citrusy scent (of an air freshener, you assumed) clashed with the caffeinated drink he had brought in; you had to remind yourself to behave and extinguish the scrunching of your nose.

"Sit wherever you like," Ryland said, more out of courtesy than practicality. There weren't many options in terms of seating, at least not the ones who were most accessible to the desk, where you two were most likely going to convene.

No point in settling on the beanbag at the corner by the floor-to-ceiling window — you figured that he put that for himself to use, so you chose one of the twin armchairs by the table, directly in front of his small figurine of… Spock, in a Vulcan salute. You filed that piece of information away in your head. He sat behind his desk.

"Can I get you anything? Coffee, water…" Ryland began.

You shook your head. "I'm good."

A strange stretch of silence followed this exchange. He was staring at you, and upon catching him (which was followed by you, looking away and directing your gaze elsewhere), he broke into a short spell of awkward laughter.

"Sorry, I'm…" he wagged a finger at you, which then rested under his lower lip. You tracked him closely. "I'm trying to place you, you're… You look very familiar…"

"You taught me in undergrad. General genetics — I was a junior when I took it." You filled in the gaps for him.

Ryland "ah"-ed, and nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I remember." He smiled. "And now, you're in your last year of your doctorate. Wow, what a way to make a guy feel ancient."

You chuckled a little at that. "Why, how old are you?" You asked in half-jest.

"I'm not compromising myself like that," he said, guarded but genuinely amused at your underhanded attempt to pry. "Let's just say… that I got my doctorate fifteen years ago. I'll let you do the math," he waved a hand at you as he busied himself with pulling up a file on his tablet.

"I don't get a hint?" You pressed.

He brought his head up to squint at you; those stupidly long lashes of his closed in a tad around his irises. The amusement was beginning to grow more pronounced by way of the corners of his lips curling up. "No," he said, turning to the tablet once more.

Your mind raced to parse the timeline with some quick algebra and a rough estimation using your own birth year as reference. If you're twenty-seven now, then Ryland would be…

You cast your first guess. "Forty?"

Ryland snorted. He didn't look up from the screen just yet. "Close. Forty-two."

He rotated the tablet so it was facing you. You came in close to read the contents of the document better, ignoring the fact that you were nearly touching heads with him. Why was he leaning in?

The typeface of the text was set to Times New Roman, you noticed; twelve points, one-point-five spacing, justified; even if it wasn't a formal or official file. It didn't look like the syllabus, either — from what you could glean, this one was made especially for your eyes.

Ryland did the scrolling for you. "So, for this semester, you'll be having intro to molecular and cellular bio with me and then… the microbio elective for the next." He pursed his lips. "All I'm really gonna have you do is check and grade the quizzes, exams, assignments, that kind of stuff — I'll give you the key beforehand — and the emails, I'll leave those to you, unless you think that it's something better suited for me to answer."

"Like what?" You inquired. It's like he wasn't expecting you to lift your eyes at him to supplement your question, because his brows jumped up upon being subjected to your gaze. Huh. You'd never seen that shade of blue before.

Ryland cleared his throat as he replied. "If they press for extra credit — anything adjacent to that. I have students who are like that sometimes, and I don't want you earning their ire — forward the email to me right away if you get one of that kind. And then…" He scrolled further down the document. "The lab prep. Which, I'm sure you know your way around. I usually come early for the laboratory classes, but it's alright if you get there before I do. That's better, actually. I'll give you a copy of the syllabus and all the experiments we'll be doing so you know what you need to prepare. I'll ask you sometimes about the items I draft for the exams, too," Ryland added. His retraction of the tablet prompted you to pull away. "Best to get feedback from an actual student before I dish it out to the sections."

You nodded. The work sounded manageable enough; standard admin and laboratory work, feasible to be wedged in your relatively free schedule, since you weren't juggling too many classes for this academic year. You could prep the lab at Monday; then Tuesday and Wednesday were just repeats — you'd squeeze in your dissertation writing and office hours after that, and then deal sporadically with the emails as they come.

"Oh, but if at any point you feel a little too burdened by any of this, just tell me. I'll move the workload around in that case. I've done this myself before," Ryland slumped into the backrest and took a leisurely swig of coffee, "and I really wish the professor I TA-ed for back then wasn't such a tyrant. Don't wanna be that kind of guy at all."

"I think I can handle it," you said. "Is that all?"

Ryland stared at you again for the purpose of considering your question. He perked up as soon as the thought returned to his mind.

"Ah, right — I'll call you in here either at the beginning or the end of each week, you know, just so we can plan and negotiate stuff. I want to work with your schedule, too — I know you'd want nothing more than to graduate on time. I've read your file — punctuality is a very good habit to have. Don't be like me," he said, laughing wistfully. His eyes were tacked on you for the fourth time this afternoon. "Yeah, uh… that's it. I'll just email you the rest of what you need to know, maybe tonight or tomorrow morning."

You stood up, hooking your purse over your shoulder. "Can I have them tonight?"

That earned you another smile. "Enthusiastic, I like that. Okay, I'll send them tonight. Does nine work? I eat dinner pretty late."

"Yeah. It's no problem."

Ryland nodded. "Alright," he clapped his hands once. "Anything else?"

You shook your head. "That's all. Thank you."

The two of you bade each other good-bye shortly after that.

On the way back to your car, you realized that there wasn't an air freshener in the room at all. None by the mouth of the AC overhead, nor on his desk littered with the nerdiest trinkets that would put a religious fourteen-year-old Comicon attendee to shame.

Did that scent come from him?

———

Your first two weeks as Dr. Ryland Grace' TA, were, upon shared deliberation with your fellow TAs, evidence to that fact that you had it good.

Relatively, of course. You had the same general list of responsibilities as they did; you shared the same brunt of the work that was to be expected from this undertaking, but the difference lay in the many irksome details and occurrences that were, in your case, virtually absent.

Exhibit A: Linh — your closest friend since freshman year — was under Dr. Salazar, and she was, almost all of the time, lamenting to you about how the professor gave her the responsibility of drafting exam questions for the midterms and finals, as per the syllabus of the course, and that some students of a particular block were so obsessed with proving to her that they were all smarter than her whenever she was tasked to teach.

Exhibit B: Felice — another close friend, but one you met three years ago — was in a perpetual uphill battle a la Sisyphus with this one student who was apparently the son of some "very important rich dude in Palo Alto" (Felice had every pleasure in the world saying this while doing air quotes with her fingers) and questioned the grading rubric for the written outputs all the time, while blithely ignoring her emails that detailed why he wasn't getting the scores that he wanted.

And finally, exhibit C, C for Camden — poor, sweet Camden; younger than you only by a year — a fellow microbiology PhD student with whom you often hung out on your breaks and confided your thoughts, was being inappropriately hit on by a male student who had stumbled upon his profile on a very safe-for-work dating site months before the commencement of the present academic year.

The situation escalated when, a week before the midterm exams, the student threatened to blackmail him for sex, and said that he was going to tell the department head that Camden was simply using his position for sexual extortion.

You actually went with him to report this concerning matter to the department head, which then led to a very awkward (but much needed — you both agreed on that) conversation with the department head, who turned out to be… of a very conservative persuasion when it came to masculinity.

As this was, indeed, a pressing and dangerous affair, it was promptly addressed by the relevant authorities. Camden was assured that he wouldn't have to deal with this student anymore for the rest of his employment and until graduation day.

That didn't mean that it wasn't stressful, though; he and you went out for ramen after that day just to blow off steam and rant about the entire thing. You made a personal promise to keep an eye out for Camden since — you were in the same department anyway, it was the least you could do for a dear friend.

But with you? There was no such thing as exhibit D. If you were put side-by-side with your closest cohorts, it's as if you were a pure, sinless sylph residing in the garden of Eden, and your friends were living the tail-end of the plot of Paradise Lost; banished from the heavenly grace (pun intended) under which you were being cared for and looked after by a magnanimous god.

The good word was made flesh through your TA-ship under Dr. Ryland Grace: his burden was easy; his yoke, light. For a man who taught such rigorous science, you would think that the accompanying work would be just as grueling, but that was not at all the truth that you were living.

For one, Ryland handled most of the classroom lectures, and gave you (mostly) the reins inside the lab. This wasn't because he didn't trust you — no, you couldn't be more wrong with such an evaluation of his decision — he purposefully chose to go with this delegation so you'd have more experience in that area, because you did mention to him that this was the kind of occupation setting in which you aimed to navigate in the near future.

You thought it a great honor to be entrusted the laboratory, mainly because Ryland moved more comfortably inside those four walls. He was, first and foremost, a scientist that was accustomed to the controlled, sterile environment of a lab before he was an educator.

You had read most of his work in his twenties before he settled into a teaching role in university; some of which were even stocked up in a folder on your cloud storage.

Since time immemorial, men in STEM had been notorious for being arrogant, self-absorbed assholes who didn't want the limelight and prestige attached to them (by virtue only of their sex) be directed elsewhere, but fortunately for you, Ryland wasn't woven with the same fiber as these men. He, accomplished as he was, stepped down to allow you access and control in his sanctuary — a privilege that one would never foresee to originate from a tenured man like him.

Though, admittedly, Ryland was known for being cocky in his papers and among his peers. Such was the general impression that you pulled from his laundry list of writings; most of which were designed to piss off purists and worshipers of "traditional" science; those who hated pushback on what they believed to be cold, hard facts about the universe. Ryland Grace was a nightmare to these people.

But to you? Not at all. Jamais. What was the purpose of science being an ever-evolving field if you weren't going to challenge what all those old dudes were saying and remain content with parroting their theories and hypotheses? You made Ryland laugh when you told him that.

You refrained from dropping any hints that you had read his work, however; that would have been too much of a stroke to his ego. You liked him, sure, but you weren't going to be a quick source of satisfaction for the man.

That lack of pretense and adherence to conventional patterns of thinking were some of the reasons why his students loved him. Ryland was a favorite of anyone who was lucky enough to receive his guidance. He was dearly beloved by the classes he handled, evidenced by the tone of their emails which you were eternally happy to receive, and the evaluations that he got by the end of the semester.

You clearly recalled giving him a stellar review on an informal, student-only forum online after you took a course under him as a junior — it's safe to say that he had never broken his pristine streak since then, and even before you attested to his character.

Checking that forum in the present day, you'd find that everyone wanted a chance to experience him as their professor at least once during their stay at the university.

No wonder his classes were large. The smallest was at around forty students, and the biggest had eighty this first semester. Ryland made it look like he was only handling a fourth of that population, though. You did your best to keep up with him, to prove that there was significance to your being a TA — a self-imposed criterion to which you complied, even in the simplest kind of administrative work like answering a student's email.

You knew that your efforts were not in vain because every once in a while, Ryland would check in on you and ask if there's anything you needed to run by him. Truth be told, your plate was quick to be emptied. His students liked you enough to not pester you with unnecessary questions or demands.

The one time you had to consecutively cover for Ryland — when he attended a week-long scientific conference some time in early October — was an experience you'd never forget, either.

That was the first time you ever taught in a giant auditorium. You were nauseous when you came in that morning, despite your diligent studying of the material a three days ago and even when Ryland called you on the actual day to encourage you (he could've just emailed you or sent you a text, but he insisted on calling you at 7 AM because he was "already up anyway").

"You got this," he said; from what you could hear in the background, he sounded like he was having breakfast at the hotel, "it's just an introductory class. I'm sure you can recite the concepts on my deck in your sleep. You'll do great."

And he was right. It was your fault for underestimating your own capabilities. Everything went swimmingly; there was little to no difference in the enthusiasm that they showed you when you were the one breaking down the lesson to them — and when Ryland did come back the following week, he informed you that his students were asking him nonstop when you'll be making a prolonged appearance again.

Yet that wasn't the good news that truly made your month.

Ryland got you a silver-plated Lady Liberty keychain from his trip in New York. He set it down wordlessly next your laptop while you were grading the lab reports, thinking you were too engrossed in the flow to notice, but you did. You caught him red-handed and he froze like a deer in headlights. Not very slick of him.

You stared at the souvenir, then at him.

"What's this for?" You smiled.

Ryland barely met your eyes. He was avoiding them like they were the plague, unlike all the other past instances where you would see him burning holes into your head. Whatever that meant, you decided was none of your business.

He shrugged. "I got everyone else something from New York. Figured you should have one too, since you're technically almost a peer." he said while he was gathering his things for his next class that afternoon. Really, it looked more like he was searching for something with which to busy his (trembling?) hands.

"It's not too cliché for a souvenir, is it?" He pursed his lips.

You chuckled. "A little bit, yeah."

"Dang," he clicked his tongue, feigning regret and playing off that light physiological dusting of rouge on his cheeks. You waited for his act to pass.

"I'm not complaining, though."

You gave him a word of thanks before going back to work, though slightly distracted by the earlier sight of the tips of his ears and his nape turning bright pink.

Once he left, you allowed yourself to pause and (figuratively) scream about that in your group chat with your friends; your fingers were flying across the small keypad on your phone as you alerted them of what just happened.

Dr. Ryland Grace — 42-year-old tenured professor who had quite a reputation in the scientific community — just gave you a Lady Liberty keychain and was blushing the entire time he was explaining himself to you. Like he even needed to explain himself. You couldn't believe your luck.

———

Ryland's handsomeness and charm were definitely not lost on you. Or on anyone, for that matter.

You'd wager that that was the real reason as to why so many students fought for a slot in his class, because let's be honest; there wasn't a lot of dopamine to be derived from the sea of papers and tests and the general humdrum of university life. You were eating cortisol three times a day; you could at least allow an endorphin-filled snack in between those meals.

In a person's most mundane and stressful moments, they would be more inclined to look for immediate sources of happiness; of gratification, so they could ease the hurt inside their soul. And what better way to do that than to scout and apply for a seat in the auditorium in which a ridiculously hot professor like Ryland Grace taught, and stare at that same man for an hour and a half, notwithstanding the risk being called on with a lovelorn expression on your face to match?

It was fun. It's exhilarating. You wouldn't even feel embarrassed if you failed to supply Ryland with an answer because he'll just laugh it off and tell you to listen. Even that gentle reprimand of his sounded like the angels of heaven singing their songs of praise.

You read the (informal and non-admin sanctioned) student forums about him every few nights or so. For entertainment, mostly, but also to silently gloat and lord over the undergrads your privilege of being in such proximity to the revered professor; close enough that he had your number saved in his phone, and that he remembered to buy you something while he was over on the other side of the country.

Normally the site would be utilized to choose or dodge certain professors whenever enlistment season began — you knew how it worked; you were an undergrad student before, and you sure as hell used it to avoid enlisting under classes that were taught by egotistical power-trippers from the frontlines of Satan himself — but among the other pages, there existed the threads where the (mostly female) students gushed about the instructors whom they particularly found pleasing to the eye.

Ryland was a hot topic among the student body (and even the faculty, but you didn't really want to unpack that). Entries about him ranged from how his shirts hugged his torso just right under his favorite gray tweed jacket; his corny but cute science pun t-shirts that he wore whenever he's in the laboratory, up to how his hands looked "so attractive waving around like that" when he's really into what he's yapping about.

One comment, which had so many upvotes, touted their achievement of having made Ryland gush about his obsession with astronomy after they stayed behind class to ask him about some rover on Mars.

You harbored no envy towards these people. Not even a speck. You were the saint; the intercessor to the god to which a multitude of devotees prayed and offered their fervent admiration. Every day you were subjected to the rays of your supervisor's appeal, free to bask in their glory sans the need to experience strain nor strife.

If anything, you were the rightful object of envy.

Ryland often let you camp in his office to work, thus enabling you to gain authority over the beanbag chair that you had once eyed when you met him at the beginning of the semester. Sometimes you even sat at his desk when he'd leave early. He assured you that it was fine as long as you didn't snoop around his drawers. You kept your word. You respected the guy. And you liked him. You liked Ryland, perhaps a bit more than you ought to.

Maybe that was why you rejoiced when you noticed the lack of a ring on his finger or a photo of a partner on his desk. His companions on that meager plane of seventy-five inches were Spock, a miniature model of the USS Enterprise, and other trinkets from (you assumed) his students. The open cubby to the right had two boxes each of sour Skittles and strawberry Twizzlers.

Yeah, that's definitely the diet of an unmarried man.

Your conjectures that Ryland was indeed single were further confirmed when you attended the small admin-sanctioned celebration at a local restaurant after the first semester came to a close, all thanks to Dr. Salazar's tipsy jabs about his coworker being the only bachelor in the department.

You were pretending not to listen by forking at the remnants of the truffle pasta you ordered; cheek resting on your fist as you trained your nearest ear to the ramblings at the other end of the table where the faculty members were. You refused alcohol because you were driving home tonight, and you needed to keep your wits together, lest liquid courage unscrewed the bolts that fastened your mouth and your heart shut.

You were absolutely not going to spill anything tonight.

"I really do consider your conviction to stay single impressive," said Salazar to Ryland as he nursed on his final beer for the night. He turned to the rest of their coworkers. "I've been married for fifteen years now. Turning fifty-three next year. And Ryland here, tenure-track and all, is nowhere near the vicinity of a ring! Or anyone, for that matter!"

At that very moment, amid the roaring laughter of the other faculty members over some quick-witted quip of Ryland, you accidentally locked eyes with Linh. She was grinning at you. You had to kick her under the table to wipe it off her face, which, unfortunately, alerted the rest of the people near you when the furniture jolted.

"Sorry, my phone suddenly vibrated," was your smooth excuse. You wiped your mouth and pushed your chair away from the table without making any noise (not that you could ever dream to overpower the buzzing inside the premises), glaring at Linh who had mouthed an "ouch" at you as she soothed her leg. You made your temporary exit to convince everyone of this extemporaneous ruse. In the corner of your eye, you saw Ryland following your figure as you headed to the door.

The cool, crisp Californian autumn air enveloped you as you went the patio and leaned against the brick facade, laying down a distance between you and the muffled din of the restaurant. Goddamn it, Linh, you thought. You weren't mad at her, but you certainly didn't welcome that kind of teasing when your supervisor slash current complicated fixation was barely a meter away from you and could have certainly seen that look that she gave you.

The last thing you wanted was for things to get awkward while you were still a semester away from leaving the university for good.

You really should have extinguished this before it even snowballed into what it was now. A whole fifteen years stood between you and Ryland, aside from the looming shadow of the university handbook regarding romantic entanglements between students and professors, that was always ready to place a hand behind your neck whenever you indulged in your fantasies too much.

You had to give yourself credit, though; it was a miracle that you were able to keep your composure after four months of coddling this deeply inconvenient crush. This wasn't you, being numb; your self-preservation and respect for both yourself and Ryland were simply too fortified to be tested and swayed.

You weren't anymore a high schooler bursting at the seams from being overrun with juvenile feelings. You'd gained mastery over your more powerful emotions since the proverbial snapping-into-place event happened to your prefrontal cortex two years ago. All of that came with your age. You were strong, sure, and in-control.

That one Anne Murray song suddenly came to mind. Your grandmother had a vinyl of the LP from which that song came, and every Saturday, she'd put that on the turntable like it was some sort of long-established ritual. You'd heard it enough times to know every line in that track, and you had even sung it at karaoke when your friends had pressured you.

You wondered when you'd ever be allowed to fumble, fall, and run into a wall. Probably after graduation, when you were no longer Ryland Grace' TA.

Sighing, you pulled your coat tighter around yourself and dialed the landline of your grandmother's house to at least make your farce believable on the outside. She picked up after a few rings.

You had a reason to call her anyway. You told her that finals were officially wrapped; that you planned on staying with her during the break before the spring semester began — your last run before graduation — and she responded with that familiar, tempered glee as she assured you that she'd have the house attendants fix up your bedroom before you arrived.

The perks of having a rich relative to pamper you after a grueling semester of administrative and academic work.

After another two minute-long exchange, you hung up. Your eyes lingered on the screen as you readied yourself to go back into the warmth of the restaurant and apologize to Linh for bruising her leg, but you stayed rooted where you were when the quiet calm of your solitude was interjected into by the doors swinging open, letting escape bursts of laughter and chattering and the clinking of cutlery against plates before they closed once more.

Ryland stepped onto the paved walkway, spotting you immediately as you slipped your phone back into your pocket. He put on his jacket to combat the night air, but his tie was loosened and his hair was disheveled from all the rubbing he was doing to cope with the less-than-ideal conversations he'd been forced to listen to, like the one you just heard a while ago. He looked like he narrowly missed escaping a hostage situation.

He blinked at you and your phone, then he smiled, shoving his hands into the pockets of his outerwear and approaching you just enough to be within earshot.

By his standards, that was just shy of a meter away from you.

"Boyfriend?" Ryland asked, trying so desperately to sound casual and nonchalant, like a classic, breezy professor who was on strictly friendly terms with his TA, and totally not housing a heart that was flapping like a disgruntled bird in a cage. His voice, however, gave it all away. It was tight; unnatural, and forced. You almost cringed for him.

You put on your most unreadable expression to mask the spark of mischievousness that passed through your eyes. Had it been daytime, Ryland would have seen it.

"Yeah," you replied, like a lady with a plan.

The result was instantaneous, like you had expected, and nothing short of tragic. That humorous glint within Ryland's warm blues disappeared, as if someone — a miniature person dwelling inside a diorama of his mind — flicked off a light switch. You were too eagle-eyed to miss how his shoulders deflated a fraction of an inch when your stoicism gave him absolutely no forgiveness; no allowance to surmise that you were kidding.

"Oh," Ryland said. He wasn't able to fake that unaffected tone. "Y-yeah, good for you. That's, uh… that—"

Okay, maybe you were being a little too cruel.

You smiled, armed with the confirmation that your heart's potential to have been owned by another definitely had some effect on Ryland. Your mercy took pity on the man before you as you prepared his remedy.

"That was my grandma," you backpedaled. "Told her I was going to stay with her in Palo Alto during the break."

Really, you should get an award for how composed you were. Was the Academy watching? You hoped they were. You'd be snickering and laughing if a more open display of reaction was favorable to your situation at present.

Ryland, on the other hand, was a biblical Lazarus before you. Your clarification was like Jesus' command for his deceased friend to rise from the dead: the color on his face returned; a flicker of a grin greeted you, and his posture rebounded. He had even taken a step closer.

"Oh…! Right, haha…" he scratched the back of his neck. "That's good. Like, good, as in… You know, you're staying with family, and it's good that you have family to spend, uh… winter break with, and all that..."

Your dear Lazarus was stumbling and tripping over himself as he walked out of his tomb. Alive once more, but so terribly clumsy. The sight reminded you of a giraffe's newborn calf trying to stand on its spindly legs. That thought nearly brought you to laughter, but you resisted the urge.

You kept that smile plastered on your face to at least offer him some consolation.

"And in Palo Alto, eh?" Ryland continued. "That's a pretty — you gotta be at a certain tax bracket to live there, don't you?"

You shrugged. "It's my grandma who's rich. Not me."

Ryland nodded, muttering another conversational filler to conceal how flustered he was upon your earlier jest.

"Anyway," he shifted from a foot to another and then cleared his throat, as if it was going to make his case any better, "uh, great work this semester, really." He gestured between himself and you. "Everything's much easier with you here. Like, I mean it. For some reason my students have complained less about their grades this year. That counts as a record."

The space between you was suddenly even more loaded and tense. That compliment came across a little too personal; particularly at the significant softening of his eyes and the vanishing of his frantic front when he told you just how "easy" your presence made everything for him.

Perhaps the areas exempted from that general rule were his own heart and sanity, seeing as to how his edges had begun fraying the moment you decided to joke about being in a relationship with someone else.

You didn't dare flinch or blush. You simply accepted his words as though they were an inconsequential utterance.

"Thanks, Dr. Grace. Please put that on my eval."

Ryland chuckled. "Sure thing."

He turned back towards the entrance, but stopped to put his hand on your shoulder to pat you. The warmth and weight of his touch seared through the material of your coat.

"Don't stay out too long," he pat you again, in a quick succession of two, "it's cold tonight."

Your eyes were glued on that hand until it left you. You hummed. "I won't."

———

Ryland never liked the word "jealousy".

It's revealing. It's too sharp. Too cutting. Too… on the nose. Messy, and even childish. Such an adjective didn't agree with his estimation of his personality. It stung. It's like spraying isopropyl alcohol on a paper cut. But the wound was him. He's a laceration and you're the balm that he needed to soothe the pain.

But your focus was somewhere else. On someone else.

The last time he was struck by that sinking, nauseating sensation in his chest was in high school, when he had yet to grow into his features that consequently afforded him his turbulent chain of flings during his undergrad days, all of which did not last for more than three months. Is he proud of that? No. But it makes for an interesting story to tell when he's grabbing drinks with his colleagues.

Jealousy, in Ryland's eyes, was for children who know nothing about the realities of sustaining a long-term relationship; who were completely and blithely unaware that it took more than good looks and a certain kind of charm derived from arrogant intelligence to substantiate an ostensible declaration of love.

Ryland was in his early forties, for goodness' sake. He had since moved past allowing that feeling to overtake his mind and his body.

That's what he wanted to think.

Winter break revealed a lot of things to and about Ryland. Such an epiphany wasn't so great in scale — at least in terms of the degree of shock that it possessed — he had been coddling the insinuation before he confronted himself, so to some extent it was expected, but braving to look the truth straight in its eye remained daunting.

Ryland liked you. A lot. There really was no other way to word it. The admission was so terribly exposing that while in the privacy of his bedroom, he had to smush his face into his hands for a full two minutes, and cross-examine himself over and over again to ascertain if this was really what his heart was whispering to him. Or his hypothalamus. That was more scientifically accurate, and less cheesy. That's how he knew that he was starting to lose his mind.

This wasn't just lust. Ryland knew that much to be true.

He thought highly of you: the traits, the characteristics which he had to industriously inculcate in his personal framework over the past decades, you happened to possess naturally. At first he believed the nature his feelings to be envy. How could it not be? Despite the years gone by having calmed down his frantic and awkward disposition into a more easygoing state, it was, nevertheless quite unpleasant to gaze upon someone whose innate temperament was, in contrast, what he had to toil and strive for in a longitudinal process.

Ryland was aware of his own flaws — a little too painfully aware sometimes, even — and seeing you effortlessly wield those strengths that juxtaposed his shortcomings made him face that metaphorical mirror that most middle-aged adults usually avoided. But instead of letting that envy fester into something inappropriate and destructive, such had morphed into a softer, warmer, and more tender emotion.

You, with your unruffled composure, impeccable work ethic and discipline, and natural authority, created the image and the pinnacle of what Ryland believed a scientist ought to be. He saw in you everything he could have been when he was your age, and he wanted to nurture that potential of yours.

From the very beginning, Ryland had decided to give as much space for you to stretch your wings. That was why he sought to collaborate with you; to work with your schedule and your academic load, rather than be a micromanaging douche who would insensitively pile extra responsibilities upon your already overflowing plate and hover over your shoulder whenever you executed a task.

Even during the break, he had sent you a few emails (a text would have been too pointed, but that idea certainly crossed his mind at least once) about certain publications and post-doctorate opportunities. He had never felt so elated his entire life when you replied a week later, thanking him and saying that you were sure to check those out as soon as you could.

For Dr. Ryland Grace so loved his TA, that he gave her everything she could possibly need to reach places far beyond the four walls of his laboratory and his classroom. That regardless of his own burgeoning attraction, he was ready to perish in agony and choke down his feelings, if it meant that you were going to succeed even after you walk up that stage in a couple of months.

Ryland chose to channel every drop; every ounce of that silent affection for you into becoming the best mentor he could be; to clear your path and even widen it; to launch you towards greater and brighter horizons, because you deserved every single good thing that could come your way in your promising career.

How noble of him. Ryland was a noble man, indeed, but was a liar all the same, because he wanted you for himself.

Deep inside, the distance he had chosen to enforce between you was slowly killing his heart. Try as he might to convince himself that the role he was supposed to play was the unassuming, nurturing mentor who only wanted the best for his mentee, Ryland feared that he was also pushing you farther from his grasp. The more he shoved and crammed his feelings inside a cage and walled them off under the guise of his professorial duty, the more he buckled under the crushing weight of his antithetical desires.

Ryland didn't want to simply admire and support you from afar. He wished to be there by your side, to accompany you in every step of the way; in both your highest highs and your lowest depths, because he knew, too, that the life of an academic was no smooth road. It's grueling and soul-crushing. Oftentimes, you'd feel like the work you were doing didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. No matter how brilliant you were, something or someone was sure to knock you down a peg and make you question if you were even worthy of the position upon which you stood.

Ryland's main conundrum now was that he was hoping to traverse the limitations which he had imposed upon himself. And there's no other greater generator of internal conflict than having to deny that he was craving for more of you, because he, in fact, was. He wanted to be the first you'd tackle into a hug in your moments of great flourishing. He wanted to memorize the exact tone of your sigh when you're tired, and how you take your tea when you're burnt out.

That had become a big problem. A really big, inconvenient, and unsettling problem.

What was his business, yearning for you like this? Ryland had no right to even think about wanting you, because at the end of the day, he was still technically a professor; he's way older than you, and his position, should he forget it, would contaminate his every attempt to get to know you beyond the allowed scope of your interaction as per the contract that bound you to him.

So Ryland washed it all down; akin to how he was taking a swig of his now-lukewarm coffee to fight off the ugly flashes of jealousy as he's stewing in his seat, watching you from across the break room as you mingled with the TA pool — half of which were composed with men your age — and allowed them to behold that smile of yours that he had grown so, so fond of for the last couple of months.

In his most epicurean reveries, your smiles, your attention, and your laughter — you, simply put — were all his.

Oh, how Ryland missed you over the break. As much as he didn't want to admit that he was counting the days leading up to the second semester, he was immediately brought out of the hiemal gloom upon your presence blessing the threshold of his office — all bundled up in a scarf and a coat — greeting him with the same formal yet friendly demeanor that you espoused each time you met up to discuss what this week had in store for the both of you.

He wished he could stay in that paradise forever: just you and him, sitting in his office, talking and working together as directed by the edict of your contract. You understood each other so well that you didn't even need to dwell long on certain matters to smooth out the kinks.

You spoke Ryland's language and he spoke yours. He had to stop himself many times from making a joke about how your relationship was no different from a committed romantic bond. He was barred from making that jest, and even more prohibited to assume the privileges that came with such a relationship.

Ryland caught himself staring at you and glaring at that TA who had "absentmindedly" put his hand on the back of your chair. He willed himself to tear his eyes away from the irksome sight, lest one of his coworkers spotted him burning holes past the table where his attention should remain.

This was torture. Nothing appealed to him more than the hypothetical scenario where he'd get up from his seat and rip that offensive hand away, which was barely a hair's breadth away from touching you (or more accurately, the material of your jacket) and giving him more of a reason to be annoyed.

But Ryland, remembering his place, remained seated, albeit brewing a storm in his mind.

There's nothing interesting about this lukewarm, half-gone beverage in his mug. He wanted, needed to train his concentration on what you're talking about over at your table (he caught a fragment of it; something about your favorite variation of tea returning to the shelves at the local supermarket — oh, you're so adorable, he mused) — and so he mulled the idea of whisking you away and sequestering you in his office under the pretense of reworking that lesson plan because... of what? He was jealous and now he needed to redo a document that he had since submitted?

Ryland berated himself mid-thought. He couldn't believe that he had stooped so low at so early an hour as twelve in the afternoon. This kind of activity should only ever occur in the confines of his apartment, where he was free to be as pathetic as he wanted. Not in the middle of lunch break where his woes would be laid out for everyone — you included — to see.

He had already embarrassed himself earlier when he made that thoughtless comment; when he jokingly encouraged the confession of whoever was wearing that "delicious" (the very word he used), earthy, and velvety fig scent, which had been invading his olfaction since he stepped into the break room; and one of your cohorts identified the culprit — though Ryland preferred the less harsh word "bearer" — to be none other than you.

This disclosure backfired, obviously. Ryland was squirming in his seat in an attempt to play off his blunder and redirect his focus towards his (now consumed) food, so he wouldn't have to endure a second longer of your apologetic and sheepish smile.

Which was his fault, by the way. How he wanted to punch himself. Way to freaking go, Ryland. You just embarrassed her in front of the other faculty and TAs and she's probably going to hold that against you.

Ryland promptly excused himself after that ordeal, and during his Walk of Shame back to his office, he was devising a way to make it up to you and not permanently brand himself as the asshole who's singling you out because of your perfume.

Oh, and he even indirectly described you as "delicious". The devil in his ear made sure to remind him of that. Ryland pinched the bridge of his nose with the hand that wasn't clutching his mug. He wouldn't be surprised if he got a visit from HR a few days from now.

He was like a walking nerve that was hurting all over. At his big age of forty-two. Christ. His frustrations with his self-made misfortunes had him muttering to himself down the hallway and earning some very curious stares from anyone who happened to pass by his current sorry state. Ryland really couldn't care less. He wanted to pout, and so he must.

The opportunity to see you again came when you swung by his office before the end of your shift, as per the email that Ryland sent you a day prior; something about revising the items of a quiz that you were going to administer in two separate classes this week, as well as those of a practical test that was for the laboratory sections.

You made your way there in no time. The door was purposefully left open for you, so after the three customary knocks — a silently agreed-upon signal meant to announce your arrival — you let yourself in and found Ryland behind his desk, furiously typing away on his laptop for what you could only guess to be about the grant that he and his colleagues had been working their ass off to get for the project that they planned to work on this summer.

He was courteous enough to greet you back when you did, and as always, you assumed your place on the chair by the Spock figurine. You wordlessly greeted him, too. As inanimate as he was, you felt like he and you had been well-acquainted with each other, from how frequently you visited his owner's office.

"Sorry for keeping you waiting," Ryland said, taking his eyes off the monitor. "Grab that chair, sit next to me."

Nodding, you took the other armchair opposite you and dragged it over and behind the desk, keeping in mind to place a buffer of a few inches between you and Ryland before sitting down.

"I just finished the draft after my class this afternoon, so it's a bit rough, but," Ryland talked as he connected the wireless mouse to his device, "here, take a look. Tell me what you think."

You let him place the mouse on your palm instead of taking it from him. The steady hum of the AC filled the lull, interspersed only with the faint whirring noise of the scroll that you were controlling. Half your brain power was being allocated to actually reviewing the items and maintaining a safe distance so as not to have the fabric of your clothes brush against Ryland's jacket.

If he was still recovering from the incident in the break room earlier, it was only right that you save him from further suffering by not giving him more reasons to spiral.

You stopped at item number nineteen.

"This is a bit similar to the one you included in the last quiz," you said aloud. "The cell lysis buffer thing. It's pretty recent. They might remember that item from this."

"Really?" Ryland snapped his head towards you. Hesitant, you returned the look and nodded. "Let me see."

You handed him the mouse and watched him pull up the past document to corroborate your observation. Ryland, wearing glasses and all, refused to use them and looked over the rim to read the items instead. You pressed your lips into a tight line to fight off your amusement.

Even after months of being exposed to his habits, you could never get over just how hilarious Ryland could be in his stubborn rejection of using his glasses for his farsightedness. He did everything but use them. He let them dangle off his face. He hung it on the breast pocket of his shirt. Recently, he'd even taken to wearing them on his head.

Thrice within a single day Ryland asked you if you'd seen his glasses because they were apparently "missing". Thrice, you had to tell him — with consistent patience and gentleness — that they were on top of his pretty little head of blond hair. Thrice Ryland blushed and chalked it up to his being forty-two.

You held yourself back from saying that this was from his habits, and not chiefly because of his age.

You ought to be more careful whenever you were in this sort of precarious situation, really — but you allowed yourself the tolerable luxury of laughing in your own mind. You were tired from facilitating classes and holding office hours and writing your dissertation atop it all. You could have this one, surely. Ryland wouldn't see it, and he's guaranteed to be saved from your light-hearted ridicule.

"Oh, you're right," Ryland mumbled as he sought to detect the revision that you suggested. "Okay, let's… change that."

He opened a different file. The document seemed to be a test bank of some sort. He flashed you a smile, but you only caught half of it.

"I listened to you last time. Last semester, I mean. I make item pools ahead now, because of stuff like this." Ryland pointed to an item; he cut, transferred, and then formatted it onto the quiz document. "This one's about the biochemical mechanism of a restriction digest protocol. What do you think?"

You leaned in to read the question better and gave him a nod of approval. "That's better. The last experiment we did last Tuesday was about this. We won't have to worry about practice effect contaminating the scores much."

"I keep on forgetting that you did take that statistics course on test administration. What's the other one again? item dis-something?"

"Discrimination. Item discrimination."

"And how are we holding up there, in terms of the quizzes?"

"Well, it's not really that big of a concern for the subject matter. The predictive validity's more important here, since the students have to show how well they understood the lessons in their performance on this quiz. We can always check the item discrimination on my SPSS, though… if you want extra work, that is." You joked.

"No, thank you," Ryland laughed. "That's like using a sledgehammer to pound a really small nail."

You had a follow-up joke to that, but you decided against sharing it. It was inappropriate.

Sensing that your time together was about to come to an end, Ryland served you another query. "There's nothing else you want to edit, or…?"

You were the one staring at him this time; a quirk of his that you picked up over the previous semester.

You could be doing this on a collaborative working document online from the comfort of your apartment. All Ryland needed to do was give you access to the file. You could highlight and tack down all the corrections and revisions via the comments function. He can work it out on his own afterwards.

But no. Here you were, less than three inches away from Ryland and breathing in every scent molecule of his cologne that was doing all sorts of ungodly things to your heart. The pernicious devil on your shoulder was insinuating that Ryland was manufacturing such a situation in order to spend more time with you, and for a couple of seconds you were almost convinced.

"U-uh, item fifteen. You missed a 'the' inside the paragraph, on the second line. And item twelve was missing a question mark." You blurted out.

Ryland was quick to remedy the changes of which you took note, and within the time he was working on them, you were taking measured breaths to check yourself and recall that you weren't supposed to be behaving like this. You were forgetting yourself. You're in the office of your supervisor. You ought to be carrying out your duties, not spinning stories in your head which you had no way of confirming.

Your rehearsed spiel to make a seamless exit granted you a painless way to depart from Ryland; soon you were putting the chair you'd been sitting on in its original place and were about to leave the room, when you remembered the secondary rationale for your visit in his office. You halted halfway to the door and spun back to him.

"I almost forgot," chuckling sheepishly, you pulled out the stack of lab reports from your bag, which you kept safely and neatly inside a plastic folder that you dedicated for such files. "I've finished grading the previous lab reports from Tuesday. Here."

Ryland took them from you with an outstretched hand. His attention was glued to the laptop again. You tried to glean what he was looking at via the reflection on his glasses, but you dropped the idea, in fear of being accused of ogling at him.

What he said to you in reply was more interesting than whatever was on his screen, anyway.

"Thank you, sweetheart."

Your entire world — his and yours, in mutual interaction — stood still. Ryland, too, was cognizant of his own slip-up. His fingers stopped typing, and you could see his eyes boring holes at some indiscriminate spot on his desk. He made no show of any intention to meet your equally surprised gaze.

"Right," you murmured. "See you."

The second part you said aloud, meaning for such to be some kind of occlusive barrier to dull the blow caused by Ryland's verbal misstep for the two of you.

You scarcely took three seconds to leave his office and advance down the hallway in a hurried flurry of steps; eyes wide and heart hammering inside your chest like it was about to explode. You thanked whatever god there was in the sky that no one else was in the elevator when you stepped in, and you struck down every opportunity to have anyone intrude upon your much needed alone time by pressing the button to close the doors.

Holy fucking shit. Ryland just called you 'sweetheart'. Dr. Ryland Grace, your supervisor, just called you 'sweetheart' like he'd been referring to you as such since forever.

That one's definitely making it to the group chat.

Sure enough, as soon as you shoot the message and begin your drive back to your apartment, Camden wanted to FaceTime stat. He saw your frantic news first.

"Girl." he said as soon as you picked up. He was back at his place from the looks of it. You could recognize the Bonheur print that he had on the wall by the dining area.

"Girl!" You grunted as you pulled out of the parking lot. "Oh my fucking God! Did you—"

"Yes, I did! Holy shit!" Camden was just as freaked out as you were. The video feed crackled a little; he moved to the living room and plopped on the couch.

"Okay, okay, did he say it in like a tired-nonchalant-and-somewhat-patronizing way, or in like a 'we've been married in my head for a long time now' way?"

"It's definitely the second one," you said. "I'm not kidding. It's like it slipped from his lips like fucking honey."

"What are the odds that he calls you that in his head, too?"

"Ugh, stop!" You groaned, smiling despite yourself. "I shouldn't have said that."

"That man is so into you that it's honestly pathetic." Camden brought his phone closer to his face to prove his point. "You're literally living the plot of a Lana del Rey song, do you realize that?"

"Please don't say that," you laughed. "I am trying my best to be professional here, okay?"

"But is he trying? And we're not just gonna let that itsy bitsy comment in the break room slide too, are we?"

"Don't remind me."

"Oh, I will remind you! He called you 'delicious'. Delicious!"

"He was referring to the perfume, Cam."

"Yeah, and I'm a rocket scientist." He rolled his eyes at you. "The point is, that Dr. Grace is definitely in your orbit. He's all wrapped up in you, and he cannot, for the life of him, hide it at all."

You rolled your eyes and conceded. "Fine. Let's just unpack all of that when I get home, 'kay? I'm driving right now. I'll get back to you in a while."

You dropped the call in one swift movement and reunited with the steering wheel. You were thankful that you were alone on this drive home and no one on the road could see you smiling like an idiot behind the windshield, because every part of you was being fried alive by the recollection of Ryland substituting a term of endearment for your name and uttering such in a tone reserved solely for lovers who'd been together for a long time.

A full two months had to pass before Ryland became a natural in his usage of your first name — a privilege that you gave him since you began your TA-ship, but one he declined to enjoy until his own predetermined window of time, one that was appropriate for a professor, passed.

Now, his defenses had been lowered enough to let that little lapse in formality happen. Your cheeks hurt from grinning so hard. Your car felt like it was driving on the fiery orange clouds overhead and not on the grounding asphalt of the road.

How long, you wondered, would it take for Ryland to genuinely call you 'sweetheart'?

———

You spent a good chunk of the afternoon in the faculty room today, alternating between answering emails and editing the current version of your manuscript with Felice, who was grading tests and encoding them next to you on the round table. This was the designated spot for the teaching assistants — you all liked it here because it was the closest to the coffee machine, and whenever one of you needed a caffeine fix, the fountain of life was a mere three steps away.

Had you time this morning, you'd have attended to your admin work; but as luck would have it, you had to teach some of Ryland's earlier classes and then meet up with your advisor about the methodology chapter of your paper.

The tasks, to which you were attending now, thus had to be pushed back to a later block in your schedule. There weren't many emails to answer anyway, so after you had those sorted out, you opened the document containing your dissertation, and on the other portion of the screen, you were watching the 1995 adaptation of Austen's Persuasion.

Felice, who was to your right, piped up just as you were watching Anne Elliot fidgeting behind her sister Mary, because Captain Wentworth was only a few meters away from her. You paused the film just before Louisa could invite the man to look at wild chestnuts in the open field.

"I just read the message you sent," Felice said after you took off one earbud. "I was busy when you texted us yesterday — I was at my daughter's recital."

"Aw, which one, Olive's or Sophie's?" You beamed, abandoning your laptop for a while and giving your full attention to your friend.

"It's Sophie's. Her battement has improved so much, I'll show you the video later — Olive's piano recital is next week Saturday. Anyway," she touched your arm and then looked around to see if there was anyone who's eavesdropping. Satisfied, Felice sported a wicked smile. "He really called you that? Like, as in the actual word?" She whispered.

You plastered your hands on face and slumped into the backrest of your chair. Your neck and ears grew hot upon the recollection of yesterday's event. Felice giggled.

"Yeah, that's confirmation enough. And how about him? How'd he react?"

You straightened up and leaned closer to your friend. "It's like I Medusa-ed him or something. Or he Medusa-ed himself, because he said the word. Like, he just seized up in his chair. Couldn't even look at me after I handed him the lab reports."

"Bless his heart," Felice covered her mouth to suppress her own amused reaction. "But I do have to ask. Do you really like Dr. Grace? You see yourself pursuing him after graduation?"

You bit your lip, and then nodded. Felice gave you a knowing look. She nodded back, signaling that she was in support of your decision.

"Probably better than wading through the dating pool full of men your age, which, I know is pretty bleak," she spoke as she sifted through the papers in her lap. "If stability's what you're looking for, then he's your best bet. He's tenure-track, mature — as per your observation — and likely not living in his mom's basement.

"I do have to raise one thing," Felice squeezed your wrist. "You have to promise me that you won't let him keep you from doing the things that you like. Or like, having you depend on him too much. Though, knowing you… You can hold your own. He just happens to be older than you."

You thanked Felice for her concern and assured her that you heeded her words.

"If anything," you added, "He's very much deadset on allowing me room to grow. He even lessens my workload when he thinks I'm supposed to be working on my dissertation. And that thing I told you about, during the break—"

"Yeah, I remember." Felice smiled. "I do have to give Dr. Grace that. He always looks out for you. Out of everyone in the current TA pool, you really have it easy. You lucky girl, you," she poked your side, and you flinched back, laughing at the physical jest. "I better get an invite to the wedding!"

"Felice! Someone might hear!" You swatted her arm. She only laughed harder.

The conversation was broken up when the door swung open and cut through the silence. It was Ryland. He was whipping his head left and right, scanning over the cubicles like he was looking for someone; that "someone" being you. He pinpointed your location in no time and made his way to where you were seated.

"Speak of the devil," Felice muttered. She was grinning then, but was quick to extinguish such an expression as soon as Ryland came into view. You, however, had made eye contact with the man, and were, therefore, in no place to feign a lack of acknowledgement of his presence.

"Hey," Ryland smiled at you and put up a hand for a short wave. He was wearing his laboratory garb. When he noticed Felice, he greeted her too before stopping a little behind your chair.

"I got off my last class early. We've got an extra hour for lab prep before the next one, you know, for the practical test." He said. His eyes darted to your screen, curious about what you were up to, then back to you.

Shoot. You sort of forgot about having to assist Ryland for the practical test. You gave a start, and then began gathering your stuff.

"Yes, um," you clicked your tongue, somewhat annoyed with your inadequacy to remember something so important as this one responsibility. "I'll just get my things sorted…"

"Here, let me."

Ryland stepped in and took your laptop for you as you hooked you bag over your shoulder. You were supposed to grab that, so you could exit the browser where you were watching Persuasion, but since it was in his arms at present, you had to make do with the current configuration.

"I'll just—" you moved in closer to him and maneuvered the pointer to click off the program. You closed the tab. Ryland slid the laptop in your tote for you.

"All good?" He asked.

"Yeah. Let's go," you said.

Felice had been watching you this entire time with a small smile on her face. Her back was towards the professor, fortunately. You bade her good-bye.

"Bye, Mrs. Lind," said Ryland, pointing at you. "I gotta borrow her first."

"Oh, I don't mind, Dr. Grace. Go have fun," Felice joked. That would've earned her a slap on the shoulder, if you were next to her. You were positive that your ears were burning behind your hair.

As always, Ryland opened the door for you and let you step outside first, and as always, you avoided locking eyes with him. He assumed his place beside you right away as you walked down the hallway.

"I hope I didn't disturb anything important," he said. You shook your head.

"Not at all. We were just working. And chatting."

Ryland smiled. "About…?"

The expression was too contagious. You looked away and settled on giving Ryland half of the truth. "Her daughter's ballet recital."

A look of surprise flashed across his features. "Oh! Sophie's the ballerina, right?"

"Yeah."

"I really admire ballet dancers," Ryland said. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his lab coat. "It's such a grueling, rigorous art form, but they make it look so effortless."

"Have you ever been to a show?"

"Oh, no — I haven't, unfortunately. I do want to. Someday. But I don't know, it makes me feel like a fish out of water. I've never really been an artsy person, y'know? The most I've done is a mobile solar system aaall those years back, when I was starting out as a teacher. Performing arts is not my forte."

"It's good that you no one's asked you to dance, then," you snorted.

Ryland rolled his eyes. "Hey. I meant to say that I fear it'll be lost on me, because I don't have the… the sensibilities, to really appreciate art. I'm not well-versed in analyzing it. That's what I mean."

"Okay, Dr. Grace," you conceded, amused by how flustered he was from your joke. "If it makes you feel better, I don't have the ear for opera. But I like it. Especially 'The Magic Flute'."

"What's that?"

"It's an opera. By Mozart."

"Mmh," Ryland pursed his lips. "Yeah, don't know that one either."

"That bad, huh?"

He pouted at you. "I read Weathering Heights in tenth grade, mind you!"

You couldn't help the burst of laughter that bubbled up from your throat. "It's 'wuthering'! Not 'weathering'!"

The crease between his brows grew deeper and the pout became more pronounced. "'Wuthering' is not a real word."

Your eyes narrowed at him. "It so is."

"I don't believe it," Ryland shook his head. He peered at you, and he smiled. That's when you put two and two together and figured out that he was just riling you up.

"It is," you asserted. Your cheeks were burning again. "I know, because I've read that book too. All of the Brontës' main works, even Gaskell's and Austen's."

"Is that what you were watching earlier? The period film?"

You recalled that he had snooped a bit at your screen when he assisted you back in the faculty room.

"Yeah. Persuasion, 1995."

"You've read the book, too?"

"Yes. I read it every Christmas. It's my favorite."

"Why's that?"

"It's Austen's most romantic work, in my opinion," you said. "Also the most… gut-wrenching, I guess?"

"Mm-hm?"

You glanced at Ryland again. "Basically, Anne Elliot — the heroine — rejected Frederick Wentworth because she was persuaded by a friend to do so."

"Oh, you said the thing," Ryland smiled.

You laughed. "Yeah, so, eight years later, they meet again, and Anne realizes that she still very much loves Wentworth. But the kicker is that he isn't really paying much attention to her, and this time around, he's flirting with her friends. Well, with a friend of Anne's — Louisa — since Henrietta was engaged to someone else… But eventually the reader finds out that Wentworth still loves Anne, too, even after being rejected. He's also hoping that she wants him back, so he waits. He follows her to Bath — that's a name of a place —"

"Another made-up word," teased Ryland, amused yet engrossed by your story-telling.

You gave him a look. "…and he tells her that he wants to marry her."

Ryland hummed, taking in all of what you said. "D'you have a favorite quote from the book?"

"Oh, sure. Quotes, actually. In plural. They're from Wentworth's letter to Anne near the end. And then there's also the 'furniture' one—"

"Furniture?" Ryland laughed.

"Yeah. 'A lady, without a family, was the very best preserver of furniture in the world,' is the line. I laughed so hard when I first read that."

You entered the laboratory and set your things at the desk in the middle of the room. Ryland slipped past you so he could bring the box of nitrile gloves over to where you were.

"Personally, I like Wentworth's letter more. Something about the 'half agony, half hope' thing really gets me." You said, putting your hair up before plucking a pair.

He was smiling as he put on his own. He left you briefly to attend to another matter.

"Why, have you ever been in that kind of situation?" Ryland asked. You couldn't see his face as he was busy at the fume hood, but you read his tone clearly. He was trying to tease you again.

Fair enough, you thought. You'd been taking shots at him since earlier. He could have his fun.

"Not really. I've been on the more hopeful side for a while now, and there's not much to agonize about." You replied, seizing the opportunity to hurl a loaded statement his way.

Ryland returned with a stack of Petri dishes cradled in his hands, all containing different strains of whichever bacteria. He laid them out before you one by one, carefully and neatly; his head bowed and posture somewhat meditative.

You couldn't help but watch. He always assumed so reverent, so cautious an air whenever he was in the lab; treating every instrument and apparatus as though he were depositing a newborn lamb upon a pile of hay.

It's almost hypnotic. He was always in his most attractive state when he's focusing. Each movement of his hands was so precise, so… practiced, and assured. None of that usual clumsiness when he's in his office, classroom, or in the hallways. Not that you were more predisposed to find fault in him — no, that wasn't the case — you were simply thankful and inclined to admire him in this one.

You loved seeing Ryland like this. It's one of those beautiful instances where he embodied the spirit of his last name, and you were a witness favored and chosen by the Lord to gaze upon the brilliance of his creation.

Ryland caught you staring. He resorted to smiling at his work on the table. "And do you mean that in an academic or a personal way?" He asked.

His eyes flickered to you over his glasses. Though you were busying yourself with placing the prepped slides onto each of the microscopes — an attempt to recover and hide from having been found out — you were able to catch the look and hold onto its remnants as you slipped into the same solemn mood, despite your heart threatening to escape from your chest.

"Both," you replied, quiet and sincere, with just the right tinge of seriousness to impress the shape of your affection unto Ryland's heart. "It's partly thanks to you," you added.

"Me?"

"Yeah, I mean… I'm not always swamped with TA work because you don't dump it all on me."

He was closer to you now — he took an empty slide, and with a pipette, dotted it with a droplet of water.

"I'm not spoiling you, am I?" The lilt in Ryland's voice prompted you to smile.

"I don't know, you tell me," you kidded.

He didn't say anything at first. Instead, he pointed to one of the agar cultures. "Pass me another dish, please."

You paused. "Which one?"

"Vibrio vulnificus."

You shuffled over the Petri dishes and placed the glassware onto his opened palm. Ryland thanked you.

"I don't put too much on your plate because I want you to focus on your dissertation," he said as he scraped some of the bacteria off the agar and transferred them to the slide. "You've got a record to maintain, and I respect that. I don't want to impede you in any way."

"But by contract, I am your TA. You should be putting me to work."

Ryland glanced your way. Like he was wishing you hadn't reminded him of that — but he took that back, even if the effort was a mere afterthought.

"Yes, which is why you're here with me, doing lab prep. One more slide, please." He said.

You obliged him.

"I'm grateful for it." You added.

"For what?"

"For your… reasonable leniency."

Ryland smiled at the culture dish. He found your careful choice of words interesting. "It's my pleasure. Y'know, for a moment there, I thought you were going to accuse me of favoritism," he chuckled. He set the slide aside and told you to let it air-dry.

You handed him another dish with a different organism and a new slide. He spoke as he continued his work.

"The way I see it, it's not favoritism if you're the only TA I took. Favoritism requires other equally meritorious options who are overlooked because one is more favored."

You decided to load the Erlenmeyer flasks onto the autoclave so you didn't have to stand there and do nothing. You wanted to argue that your being the only TA was, in itself, a form of favoritism, but you knew better than to step into a trap of your own making.

Technically, though, he was correct. He couldn't have a favorite if there's only you working under him. Maybe the better word was "coddling". Or "Spoiling", like he said earlier. You maintained, however, that Ryland's explanation was such a long-winded way of saying that you couldn't fault him for his treatment towards you. You've got nothing on me, was the spirit of his statement.

You elected to keep your mouth shut.

Ryland cut through your pondering after a while. "Do you think it's a bad thing?"

You almost jumped out of your skin when he appeared on your left. He started taking out the pipettes from the cabinet.

"What is?" You asked.

"In another scenario where I took other TAs and I dubbed you as my favorite." He said, refusing to meet your inquisitive gaze. "Hypothetically, of course."

You shrugged and busied yourself with setting the cycle for the flasks you'd loaded in the autoclave. "If it impairs your judgment, then yes. Hypothetically."

You heard Ryland smile. "Good answer."

———

Your relationship with clichés — in any context and reality — often fluctuated.

Sometimes they were alright. Clichés were predictable. Tolerable. Familiar. They offered comfort and a sense of safety, almost, especially if they operated within the universe of a piece of media that you liked. If well-written, you could gloss over them; appreciate, and even rejoice in their presence.

After all, who didn't love a feel-good show, movie, or book where everything would go well, and every problem thrown in the way of the protagonists or the main couple was resolved before the narrative came to an end?

You'd be lying if you said that you didn't start cheering when the Great Eagles arrived to assist Aragorn and rescue Frodo and Sam, upon your first viewing of The Return of the King. Or when, despite Lady Catherine's threatening and insulting remarks about Elizabeth Bennet's connections and status, the latter ended up marrying Mr. Darcy and becoming mistress of Pemberley by the end of the novel, regardless of the censure she had experienced.

But in other instances, your favor towards such predictable endings flounced when you were, instead, looking for conflict. A dusting of human complexity portrayed in fiction that reminded you of your own flaws, or at least a fresher perspective to an otherwise reliable outcome. You wanted a challenge every now and then. Something that would come out of left field and blindside you.

Because, to you, that was good exercise. Not everything in this world was going to go your way. As much as you hated this lesson when you first became an adult, it was a necessary and indispensable fact about your current position in life.

Conflict was the universe's way of making sure that you'd grow, time and time again, into a better version of yourself. That you'd shed every layer of childish egotism and impatience, like an onion being stripped of its strata. Yes, even if that literally and figuratively made you cry. You had no choice. You stopped having the choice to revert to your jejune ways as soon as you blew the candles on your eighteenth birthday cake.

"No more crying to your mama", as Miss Hayley Williams so famously sang in her song. Suck it up! Take it on the chin. You're on your own now.

But certain kinds of conflict, at times, continued to inconvenience and disturb you, even with your multitudes of fail-safes and hardened maturity. And, like a cherry on top, they were clichés in and of themselves, too.

You wished you weren't one of the main actors in the conflict in which you found yourself this morning. You could easily deal with it, had it been a simple screw-up or misunderstanding. You'd grown mature and knowledgeable enough to worm your way out of such things. People were usually willing to listen and be persuaded to think in a different way, if you were skilled and believable when making your counter-arguments. Not every dispute was going to end in further discord and hostility, if you just talked it out.

How you wished it was that easy.

This one proved to be of a stickier and more problematic nature, because you couldn't possibly go around convincing everyone of a certain mind the contrary to their belief, which they held onto fast, as made obvious by some prying stares that were thrown you way while en route to Ryland's office.

Defensiveness, and excessive and overt denial, too, weren't going to help your case; these would only assert the contrary. You'd only lose. You'd be every bit as guilty of the crime that public opinion had pinned onto your previously sanctified and pristine name.

Really, it's like you stepped onto campus, totally carefree and unaware of your imminent charge, and then a metaphorical officer of the law began reading a twisted version of the Miranda warning to your face before you could make your way to Ryland's office, a week following the practical test that you facilitated with your respective supervising faculty.

"Anything you say about your current relationship with Dr. Ryland Grace can and will be used against you in a court of law. Your only attorney is yourself, and we're all inclined to over-exaggerate the facts, and misconstrue anything that will come out of your mouth and anything that you've done and you'll do. You can't do shit."

You shouldn't have been surprised. Like a cliché, you should have seen this coming. You should have anticipated it. You should've this, you should've that. Ugh. If this was a snake, it would have pounced on you and latched its fangs onto your face this very instant.

Your mother liked using that statement to ridicule your inability to find things in plain sight. But it hardly ever stung then. It was annoying, at best. To a seven-year-old, that snake wasn't real. It couldn't possibly bite you and kill you with its venom.

At twenty-seven, however, the snake was very much real. Now you were writhing in figurative pain on the inside as Linh grilled you by the coffee maker, having just returned from your weekly meet-up with Ryland.

"Even Salazar asked me about it," she said as she poured the dark liquid into her mug. "So is it true? Are you and Grace dating?"

"Jesus, no," you whispered. You massaged your temples. "Why is this coming up now? Seriously, it's like something happened overnight that I don't even know!"

"Have you checked the forum?"

You took your hand away from your face after a comical beat. You hadn't considered that yet. "Which one?"

"The one that the undergrads use more. The more gossip-y one."

Your stare turned severe. You dove for your phone, fishing it out of your tote and quickly navigating your way to the illicit site and scrolling to the latest thread under Ryland's name. Linh was, in an instant, standing by your side and peering into the screen.

Then you found it. There, in untouched pale blue, the title of the post read: DRG and TA dating?

"DRG" was the "anonymous" acronym that the students used for Ryland. And "TA", well… that was a no-brainer. You tapped on the hyperlink as you chewed on your lower lip.

The root cause of the debacle was posted only hours ago. Someone had been awake at the ass crack of dawn just to write this slanderous post about you and Ryland, and now that they had launched it onto the ether, the students were feasting upon it like a bunch of rabid dogs.

The original poster, under the username @ biocrybaby, bemoaned the following in the form of a "confession":

CONFESSION #3987 is it just me, or are DRG and his TA dating?? like. i've seen them get coffee so many times before the 8 am lab on thursdays. even during the lab classes, like they look at each other a lot and he even calls her by her first name. the few times that i went to DRG's office, i even saw his TA sitting at his desk!! she said he "lets her do that when he leaves early" 🙄🙄 yeah girl, as fucking if. she talks to him and about him like she's fucking him outside office hours. probs for extra credit or smth. idk. i swear they're 100% dating and it's so unfair. how is this even allowed? like this is some HR violation, right???

You had an idea about who this could be. Earlier this month, three female students dropped by Ryland's office, saying that they were looking for him to clarify some question on the assignment that you posted the night prior on the LMS.

Their faces literally dropped when they saw you there instead of their professor, who had to leave early since he was planning on meeting a friend at a nearby restaurant —someone from his doctorate days, he told you — and he gave you the green light to use his space to finish any remaining work that you had for the day.

You explained all of this to the girls, and when you kindly offered your own services to enlighten them about the parameters of the assignment, they all made up an excuse to leave and book it out of there right away.

Since then, they'd been looking at you funny every time Grace assigned you to a lecture and whenever you supervised lab sessions. You reckon it was either one of those girls. It had to be.

You read on. The comments, you found, were a mixed bag of pro and contra. And weird. Very weird.

@ ishicrab: what a nothingburger post. so many other profs and tas literally do the whole grabbing coffee shit. ur just jealous of her. @ wishigotpaidpiper: WHATTT NO WAY I THOUGHT HE WAS SINGLEEE 😭😭😭😭😭 @ mickeroo: Seconding @ ishicrab's comment. Are you sure you're also a student of DRG?? I'm in his lec and lab classes too, and anyone with two working eyes and a brain would know that they aren't dating. She barely even looks at him during lab because she's busy making rounds so we don't accidentally inhale or touch toxic and infectious shit. #cope lol get well soon OP this is a literal disease you have @ fuchsiafake: man yall are too focused on DRG here haha his TA is way hotter @ dragonoverlord: yeahh actually i did see them walking along the quadrangle together a few times before, like talking and laughing and shit. they're def dating. @ meesterworm: DRG??? of ALL PEOPLE?? you're fucking insane if you think that man has enough game to bag his TA. bsfr op @ yougogoyubari: yeah, u lost me at the "sleeping with DRG for extra credits part". if u knew anything abt that student and her track record u wouldn't be stupid enough to say that. girlie's literally got her undergrad thesis published and i heard she graduated summa cum laude. ur reaching 😬

A familiar username on the longest comment appended under the post popped up while you were scrolling further down the mess.

@ felicimommae: As a fellow TA from the department, please delete this shitty piece of RPF right now. This isn't the funny and trivial "confession" that you think this is. The TA that you're trying to slander is a respectable student and coworker. I know her personally and I can confidently say that she and DRG aren't dating. You know what I think could be a better use of your time instead of writing your jealousy-fueled RPF at five in the morning? Studying for your finals. But I guess you really can't help it, considering you're basically known on this site for thirstposting about DRG since your freshman year, along with so many others. Zip it if you can't actually provide cold hard proof. You could get expelled or sued for this. Hope you got good a lawyer.

Yeah, that was Felice, alright.

The commenter's identity was proven right away when she sent you a screenshot of the post some time during the day — while you had just finished teaching the morning blocks — and she updated you that one of the moderators had locked the thread due to "targeted harassment" and "unsubstantiated rumors regarding university staff".

When you forgot to reply, Felice took Camden's usual place at your table and touched base with you during lunch.

"I'm honestly just waiting for Cohen to call me in his office," you sighed, sipping on your latte ruefully. "I'm not scared or anything, because the allegations aren't true at all. My conscience is clean. I'm just… I'm so bummed out."

Felice gave an understanding nod. "I knew something like this would happen," she scoffed. "Grace and his rabid fan girls… Christ. I feel for the man. Literally just minding his own business and then something like this happens. Have you talked to each other today at all?"

"Yeah, but not about this. He doesn't seem to know anything about it."

"Yet," Felice added. You sank deeper into your seat.

Okay, so maybe you lied. You were scared.

You were subsequently proven wrong in your aforementioned presumption when, upon your arrival at the door of the department head later that afternoon — Dr. Cohen had sent you an email, like you expected, in which he required your presence in his office regarding the forum post that was published this morning — Ryland came out of the room before you could even twist the knob yourself.

His emergence implied one clear conclusion: he was called for the same reason, and thus was in equal confidence regarding the matter.

The scene was so oddly reminiscent of when Elizabeth was called upon her father's study in the 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. You and Ryland exchanged knowing glances as you passed each other by; however, they were, unfortunately, not of the quietly triumphant kind like those of the aforementioned Austenian characters.

Yours was of apprehension. And Ryland's — resignation.

The resulting gust of air that swished by your person as he slipped past you was unbearably cold. He didn't even deign to speak to you. Did he think it was your fault? Surely not. You knew Ryland well enough to dispel any possibility of his pointing fingers at you. You weren't at fault here. You didn't ask or want for this to happen.

For now, you had to compartmentalize. You had to think of your own good first. Your degree, reputation, and life's work were on the line. This was one of those instances where being selfish was encouraged and considered justified. You were not going to lose all of those to the puerile assertions of an undergrad who was ignorant about the real-life consequences of such slanderous declarations.

You pressed on. You stepped into the office, fully assuming the responsibilities of a sensible adult, so you could be your own counsel and defend yourself.

The following conversation was painless enough, as Dr. Cohen ripped the bandaid from the very beginning. He wasted no time by forgoing to stand on ceremony, informing you right away about the incident — which was reported, you found out, by a junior faculty who was a user on the site — and asking you to corroborate Ryland's statement.

You replied accordingly. "I do not have any romantic relations with Dr. Grace. I'm only performing my duties as a TA under him, and if I had shown any behavior that might have suggested otherwise, I don't intend them to be interpreted that way."

"But you two are on… friendly terms, yes?"

"Yes. I don't deny that."

"Ryland also said that earlier. Don't worry, I believe you both. The claims that were made against you," he pulled out a printed copy of the forum post from underneath a folder, "—were obviously malicious, so I doubt that it actually had any merit outside the whims of a… of an immature undergrad." Dr. Cohen chuckled.

You, on the other, hand, couldn't find anything funny about this. He noticed your lack of reciprocation and cleared his throat. He clasped his hands atop the pile of papers on his desk.

"Anyway, do know that this won't reflect on any of your records. Yours or your supervising faculty's, if that worries you as well. The investigation and the disciplinary action will mostly revolve around the student. We don't take matters like this lightly, especially since it's a clear violation of conduct and policy. That's all. You may go."

You exited the office feeling like you had just gone through a thousand wars. Trudging towards the elevator, you messaged all three of your friends about the entire ordeal. Even the way that Ryland practically brushed you off. Camden was the first to comfort you.

You sighed. Now you knew what he felt like when he had to talk to Cohen last semester.

You were in the clear. That troublesome kid was going to get what's coming to her. You should be relieved, really, that you weren't reprimanded or penalized for this — but as you punched the floor number of the lecture hall where you had to teach next, you couldn't find it in you to rejoice in the outcome of the recent conversation.

Intimate familiarity with Ryland; with his inclinations, and his temperament, was a double-edged sword. You could predict him. You could plan ahead to synchronize with him and exercise safety so as not to offend him. You knew what he liked and what he didn't like. Hell, even his addiction to sour Skittles was no secret to you.

But this incident, according to your most intelligent guess, would have sounded every alarm there was within Ryland, and consequently incited him to begin enforcing a considerable distance between him and you; ultimately demoting you to the rank of nothing more than a mere colleague to which he's temporarily bound by a contract that was to end a week before your dissertation defense.

You rested your head against the cool surface of the elevator car wall. Counting the remaining days of your torture, you had to tough out almost a month before you were home free; unfettered from the code of conduct and made capable of ridding yourself of this nightmare.

———

Had you been in a different situation, you'd have been elated by the thought of being in the right. For being vindicated and assured that you believed and asserted was the truth universally accepted by the world. The classic and most rewarding ego-stroke that a secretly proud individual like you would normally revel in.

But in this case, you were wishing that your conjectures hadn't been proven right.

What ensued for the next three weeks was nothing short of hellish; painful, and unfair — for Ryland began acting according to what you so dreadfully foresaw following the incident regarding the malicious post made about the two of you.

Not once, since the very first day on which you worked as his TA, did you give cause for others — both the student body and the higher-ups — to believe that you liked Ryland as someone more than a boss and a mentor.

Yes, you did like Ryland. But no one needed to know about that. (No one except your friends, that is.) You had accepted this truth since the day you decided to be honest with yourself, and you were ready to do everything it would take to keep your slate free from any moral smudge.

You had even prided yourself in your endeavor to succeed in this area. Every measure, every step which you had to take in order to keep your conscience spotless was consummated with utmost attention to detail and meticulousness. No lingering looks when you two weren't alone. No unnecessary touches. No irrelevant conversations during class hours. You did your work, and you did it well. You were friendly towards Ryland when the situation called for amity.

What little freedom you did have for the subtlest flirtatious remark or act, you enjoyed within the strict limits of the position in which you were stationed.

You were in control. Well, you thought you were in control. Until you weren't.

The knee-jerk reaction that you had espoused was to blame yourself. Maybe you really weren't being careful enough. Maybe you were too caught up in your own proud fortress of adult egotism to see that you'd been fraying at the seams. Maybe it really was foolish to think that you could overcome the forces of love with your conscientious rationality, and the relevant methods which you had developed over the years from the impetus of your personality.

After all, one of the hallmarks of a venerable saint was humility. You were the exact opposite of that. Your latent and unchecked hubris, over the domain of being the "girl who knew just what to say and do", led you to your own fall, or in this case, the ruination of your chances to try your hand at convincing Ryland that taking a risk with you was worth it.

It's pathetic. It's pathetic, embarrassing, and deeply uncharacteristic, but it was true. You were hurt. And it was partly due to your own negligence. You had softened your grip, and now, you were suffering from the consequences of your oversight.

The symptoms of this infection first came in the abrogation of your meet-ups with Ryland in his office. You came to his office, as usual, expecting to find him there to get your instructions for this week, but he was nowhere to be seen. In his wake remained only his yellow raincoat, his messenger bag, and whatever nondescript implements there were on his desk.

You checked your phone, and sure enough, he had sent you an email. Everything he needed to tell you was on the correspondence, down to the minutest detail. None of his previous warmth and humor was to be gleaned from the construction of the message either. It was like reading a damn terms and conditions document. Sterile, unfeeling, and impersonal.

Ryland's temperament around you adopted those attributes too. Telling yourself that you had seen this coming was but a coping mechanism. Every time he reduced his manner of address to your last name and withdrew his formerly enthused greetings whenever you passed each other in the halls or you came to be in the same room, the open laceration in your heart turned rawer and more tender.

You were lucky if his hand was forced, and he'd condescend to dole out a stiff nod; like you hadn't just moved past the milestone of divulging to each other the music you used to listen to in your younger years and your hidden undergraduate woes two weeks ago.

But two could play this game. You weren't going to fall to your knees and beg Ryland to readmit you into his good graces (you were beginning to despise that word—why did his last name need to be a noun?!). You doubled-down; you rebuilt your walls fashioned from pride; you reinforced them with the mounting resentment from this treatment you'd been receiving.

If Ryland wanted to be cold, you'd be colder. If he made himself scarce, you'd be a ghost. And you'd do a good fucking job at it. Because that's who you were. That's what you'd been taught to be. Strong, sure, and in control. Even when everything around you was falling apart and disagreeing with every move you made.

In your most quiet moments, you let yourself craft wishful conjectures about what could be going on in Ryland's head. Beneath that exterior, he was quite a sensitive guy. Though he wasn't too perceptive about the grander ideas that people had about his character, he wasn't that numb within one-on-one relationships. Especially when it came to you.

Ryland, too, had known you enough to expertly read your mood, along with every corresponding shift, should they be present. No matter how hard you tried to keep your emotions under lock and key, they were all laid bare for him to see, like you were just wearing them on your sleeve, regardless of intent or premeditation.

He would've noticed the changes you had also implemented. With the semester coming to a close and the efficiency with which you had always been operating, it left you with less and less work to do as his TA, and more opportunities for you to bury yourself and hide under the safety of your dissertation.

Whenever you weren't teaching the sections assigned to you, you'd spend your time holed up at your desk in the research lab of your PI, or in the library, typing and grinding away to clear the last three chapters of your final manuscript. You spent more time with your friends, too, who were privy to the changes in your disposition these last couple of weeks.

You were all huddled in a booth at one of the in-campus cafes after your respective shifts had concluded, and were giving each other a run-down of your week to catch up, and to share what you were all planning to do post-graduation ceremony. You volunteered to go last. You didn't want to bum everyone out prematurely.

Linh went first. She was going on a European cruise after graduation with her parents, and then it was back to the States for her. Camden was going to teach at another university on the other side of the country — he wanted to start somewhere fresh, and to see some new sights and meet new people after having been in the West coast for literally the entire course of his life.

As for Felice, she'd be one step closer to her childhood dream of becoming a pathologist. The next stage was med school after graduation, but she said that she'd be taking a year off to spend some time with her family first. Grad school sort of took Felice away from her daughters and her wife; they were all due for some bonding before another few years would require her to juggle motherhood and her dreams again.

In your case, you were, once again, gifted by your grandmother the opportunity to work at a research laboratory in the Bay — it was a 'she knew a friend who knew a friend' situation, and upon her hearing that you were soon to finish your doctorate, she wasted no time making calls to inform them of a potential candidate that came in the form of, well… you.

To be sure, you wanted these people to hire you based on merit, and not because of your grandmother's machinations. She did promise to not meddle too much. And you were banking on that. Your CV was impressive, and you weren't lacking in your sources of recommendations, should you need them.

The three, were, however, more honed in on your account that you and Ryland hadn't been on (in-person) speaking terms with each other since that post reached Cohen's — and the entire faculty's — cognizance. You laid down every detail there was to spill, and every accompanying emotional harm that that was causing you as the days went on.

"So… does this mean you've sworn him off? No more planned declarations of love after graduation?" Camden asked you, pouting as he realized that the pairing he'd been rooting for since last semester was disappearing like the last hiemal traces that carried over from the past season.

You shrugged. "I honestly don't know. I've been focusing more on my dissertation nowadays, though, so I'm… sort of indifferent to him. But that's only because I'm drowning myself in work. If I so much as think about how bad it all had become, I'd start feeling miserable."

"Now I know why you archived the photo that you took together before winter break." Camden sighed. "It's my favorite post of yours, too."

Oh, yeah. That. Somebody had suggested that each of the TAs should take a commemorative photo with their supervising faculty before the dinner ended, and so that meant you and Ryland had your shot together, too.

He was so handsome that night that it was literally hurting your feelings. He put on a more structured suit then — owing to the spirit of the occasion and the fact that most of his older colleagues were present — but his hair was, as always his crowning glory. The soft, slightly overgrown tufts framed his ever-fetching face, and were mussed in just the right way that had your stomach doing somersaults, if that was even physically possible.

That was the nearest you'd ever gotten to Ryland — you could smell his shampoo within that measly rift of less than three inches, and despite his prim presentation, he was radiating every imaginable band of nervousness there was on the planet.

But the photo turned out great. You posted it on Instagram, tagged him in the caption that said "with @ r_grace" and went to bed. You woke up that morning to the photo having garnered upwards of a hundred likes and a bunch of comments from your friends teasing you and asking you who Ryland was. Your grandmother even asked you if he was your boyfriend. You wished he was.

Now that memento had been chucked to the depths of your archive. You couldn't bear to look at it, especially after things froze over between you and Ryland.

"I don't get it," Linh leaned forward. She forked at her half-eaten vegetable medley salad. "What, was he suddenly disgusted with himself or something?"

"They're both consenting adults," Camden chimed in. "And it's not like he met her when she wasn't one. It was in junior year, right?"

You nodded. "Yes. Second semester."

Felice weighed in on the conversation this time. "I think that the forum post kinda hit a nerve in him. That's my leading theory. Because let's be honest… based on what our dear friend has been reporting to us since last year, the allegations — or at least the suggestion that Ryland likes her, isn't totally untrue."

"Codenames only! We're in public," interjected Linh.

"Right, sorry. DRG, I mean." Felice snorted, knowing how futile it was to hide his identity. "Anyway, that's how I see it. I think he's trying to, y'know, make a noble sacrifice by distancing himself."

"Yeah, but it's hurting her."

"And himself!" Camden said. "He's shooting himself in the foot, too."

"Knowing him," you began, "Felice is probably right. He definitely won't show up to my dissertation defense next week at this rate." You buried your face in your hands. "And to think that he even promised…"

Linh wrapped her arms around you, and for once, you permitted yourself to be physically comforted by your friend. You let out a sigh that came from deep within your weary heart. Pretending to be frigid and serious was no easy feat, and you could feel the scores that your body had been keeping.

"You think he'll go to the party?" You asked.

Camden and Felice shared a mutually unsure look. That didn't bode too well for you.

———

You should be celebrating.

You defended your dissertation successfully last Monday, after almost two hours of being cloistered in that conference room where you thought you were going to vomit your heart out. Perhaps it may not have been wise to gauge whether or not you'd get your degree from the reactions of the committee — all of their faces were stone-cold and serious; the most you got were approving nods while you were discussing the methodology and the results, but after that, there was nothing else.

They told you to wait outside after you concluded your presentation, and then after maybe ten minutes of deliberation (or what you thought was deliberation; they probably just talked about what they had going on for the upcoming weekend), they ushered you back in, and finally, congratulated you with the title 'doctor' attached to your last name.

Ryland, of course, was no where to be found. You didn't try looking for him either; nor did you shoot him a message to let him know that you were done with the defense. You had no formal ties with him. The contract of your being his teaching assistant ended a week prior, and you'd been mostly on your own or with either of your three friends — all equally successful in their defenses as well.

You met with your grandmother at an izakaya that night to celebrate. Dinner was on her, as you expected, and she let you talk her ear off about your defense, since she was, like you, a woman of the academe herself in her youth. She asked you about any intentions of getting your recent paper published, to which you replied that you were considering that. It's just that your chief concern, as of the moment, was to sleep.

You hadn't been getting much of that lately due to the work you had to put into finishing the manuscript and the nights you laid awake thinking of what could have been between Ryland and you. You wished you could say that you were kept sleepless by the former instead of the latter. But, alas; you were only human. Your heart wasn't made of stone like you hoped it would be after being hardened by the consecutive barrage of challenges of adulthood. Tough body, soft interior. You might have even shed a few tears or so.

Your thoughts kept on drifting back to those nights as you nursed on the peach highball before you — the only drink that was allowed to be served at the year-end party organized by your department — sitting pretty at the bar with Linh and Camden on either side of you. Well, Camden's seat was currently vacant because he was changing the song on the jukebox at the far end of the room.

Felice couldn't make it — she had her own celebration with her girls, and thus only wished the three of you to have fun tonight in the text message she sent earlier.

The event being managed by the department meant that the place you had gone to was, to put it simply, a favorite of older adults. It was a vintage-themed bistro beloved by the more senior faculty members, and apparently they'd been taking the students here whenever they requested a semestral end party.

You appreciated the place. Having been partially raised by your grandmother, you were used to "old people stuff": older music, clothes, books… It's why Melissa Manchester, Anne Murray, and Karen Carpenter (among many others) made common appearances in the rotation of your daily commute. You knew their songs by heart and you'd sing the words out loud whenever you're behind the wheel.

You once spent an entire year just reading classic novels, too, and you were proud to admit that almost half of the clothing you owned were pieces from your aunts that they passed down to you. Fabrics in the '80s and '90s were so much better than the piles of polyester junk that had proliferated the racks of most outlets nowadays — you'd consider it a miracle if you stumbled upon a top made in the current decade that was composed of more cotton than plastic.

A part of you scoffed when you hypothesized that perhaps that's the reason why you were somewhat forgiving of the gap between you and Ryland. You're familiar with what was in vogue when he was your age, and he was similarly literate of the spheres in which you existed.

The thing with familiarity — particularly once it reached a certain point — was its inherent characteristic to breed contempt. You hated how obdurate Ryland was in his conviction to be principled to the point of driving you away from him. And you were pretty sure that he was just as irritated with your retaliation, all so he could feel what he was doing to you, too.

In other words: you were in a stalemate. And both of you were just too proud to admit defeat.

As if the universe was mocking you, Camden happened to put on a Chaka Khan track before he returned to your table. He ordered another glass of chuu-hi as he hopped onto his seat.

Linh was the only one without a drink. She had driven you and Camden here since you were all planning to bounce and transfer to an "unsanctioned" venue once the time hit ten o'clock — you didn't really want to drink here, either, but you got one to appease the faculty, since this was going to be on their tab.

You instead wanted to dance the sadness away; maybe get drunk, and then go home and sleep like a baby. And then cry again, and dread that you were going to have to shake Ryland's hand a week later at the graduation ceremony, mutually sober as a judge, like you two hadn't been flirting near a microscope just last month.

"Sorry about Ryland," Linh said, leaning in close so you were the only one who could hear her words of sympathy. The rest of the students and the department staff were situated around your general vicinity, but at this point, you really didn't care if they overheard.

It's not like they'd ever know the context, anyway.

"Never apologize for a man's behavior, rule number one," you said.

"Right, right." Linh shook her head. "I wish I could sock him in the face."

You scoffed. "Me too."

Camden rested his arms on the counter as he moved into your space. You turned to him.

"I heard from Dr. Kaplan that Grace is still at the laboratory," he said, grinning at you. "Finishing a grant proposal, I think was what he said. I don't know." He nudged you. "You should go check."

You downed your drink out of spite, even if some part of your proud resolve was beginning to crumble. "Hell no."

"Pride will get you nowhere," Camden pushed. "It's now or never."

You turned to Linh. She had on that same wicked smile from way back at the restaurant when you learned that Ryland was single.

"Come on, you bruised my leg for this. And that shit took a week to heal! Here — there's two ways this could go, if you say yes and I drive you back to campus," she plucked two peanuts from the ramekin in front of her to illustrate her narration. "One: Ryland brushes you off, and tells you that you 'shouldn't be engaging in romantic entanglements with a university faculty member'; or, two: you give him hell, make him spill his own beans and tell you that he's got the hots for you too, and… you walk on that stage next week with a stupidly hot boyfriend who will probably treat you better than guys your age."

"Okay, first of all—"

"Ugh, you're not in front of the committee anymore! Stop trying to justify yourself!" Camden groaned.

"This isn't fair," you turned your chin up. "You're coercing me."

Linh rolled her eyes. "We are giving you two outcomes. Just choose which one you want. You either walk out of this mess with tears in your eyes and fall asleep listening to The One That Got Away for the next couple of days, or you get your man and emerge a victorious woman!"

If you were being totally honest, you weren't that strong as to resist Linh's arguments, nor were you willing to stick with the first ending and swallow your Jupiter-sized pride. Besides, it wasn't such a bad idea. You didn't want this thorn lodged in your side to continue torturing you for longer.

Because if you were to be really honest with yourself, you're no saint. That's only an endearing title of appreciation that your friends gave to you, in light of your fastidious dedication to the flourishing of your career. You were a saint for science. But for love? Fuck no.

You're too weak to deserve the appellative in that particular area of life. You're a Jonah afraid of your own Nineveh. You're a mere mortal who sins and does everything wrong every once in a while. There's no use treading that path of martyrdom for a cause that was only making you suffer. You couldn't get swallowed by the biblical fish even if a god willed it. In this episode of utter romantic anguish, you were to obtain neither gold nor glory for your sacrifice.

This was your time to stumble and fall and run into a wall. To stop being the girl who knew just what to say and do all the goddamn time, because frankly, it's tiring. You were sick of it. Sick of your own need for competence and perfection. You ought to direct that effort unto more appropriate things.

And surely, heaven could spare you from judgment if you so decide to err now.

So you mapped out, right there on that rustic bar stool, what you were going to do. You'd give Ryland a piece of your mind, burn off the loose ends of your strained, fading relationship if need be, and… see where things go from there. Either way, you'd be free from the burden of this slog of a problem that wasn't even born out of your own doing.

Good plan. You put your glass down and looked Linh in the eye.

"Fine. Drive me back to campus," you declared.

Linh cheered. "Yes!"

The three of you made your untimely exit under the pretense of an emergency, not anymore caring about what the other attendees were going to think.

You rode shotgun and fastened your seatbelt as Linh turned on the engine. The university wasn't too far from here — only a ten-minute drive and then some to get you to the natural sciences building. That was enough time for you to prepare yourself for what was to come.

You offered every prayer up to the skies when you saw your ID in your purse upon entry. Linh and Camden weren't so lucky; they had to stay put at the parking lot. They weren't allowed into the premises as they didn't bring theirs, so you were left to make the trek to and up the department alone, carrying with you your friends' good wishes; your thumping heart, and your steeled, renewed resolve to figure out where you stood within Ryland's.

Security was surprised to see you when you came into the doors. You told them you forgot something in one of the labs — a bluff that they believed, thus granting you admission to the empty upper floors.

You studied yourself in the gleaming elevator car walls as you waited to get off on the floor you had selected. Tonight, you were no longer the straight-laced, meticulous TA who autoclaved and calibrated laboratory equipment and taught classes in the morning. Earlier, while getting ready, you whipped out the fitted, off-shoulder black top that you inherited from an aunt, and the matching dark plaid skirt which you partnered with thigh-cut boots. Your hair was down, too.

The ensemble was a stark contrast to the image that you had so thoughtfully curated over the past five years of plodding towards the doctorate that you now held in your palms. Or at least after you hand in your revised manuscript, and walk the stage next week Friday.

The clicking of your heels echoed down the halls, and was made more pronounced as your anxiety and impatience waxed. You could hear, too, amid the rhythmic noises, the keychain that dangled from the D-ring of your purse. It's the Lady Liberty one — the souvenir that Ryland bought for you at the New York conference. You couldn't bring yourself to disown the trinket. You couldn't possibly lose that, too.

You were beginning to think that that tip from Kaplan was a hoax after a while of looking for a laboratory was that in current use. Your trip to the last remaining floor on the building was put on hold when your eyes spotted a faintly emitted light from the bio lab at the end of the corridor.

You approached the door and then stopped to peer through the glass. Then you saw him.

So Ryland was here. What were you going to say to him specifically?

You scrapped that thought. No more attempts at being manicured and proper. You're here to exercise and explore the entire spectrum of human imperfection. You could improv your way in and out of this.

As your trembling hands grabbed the door handle, you threw every trace of propriety out of the window and sauntered into the laboratory without knocking and announcing yourself.

Ryland was at the farthest bench. That section was illuminated by his laptop as he had chosen to work there. He looked exhausted: disheveled hair, knitted brows, and that signature curve of his lips that only appeared whenever he was tense. His sleeves were cuffed all the way up his elbows and he wasn't wearing a coat. He probably stayed behind after his last class; running on fumes, most likely, because he wasn't allowed to bring any coffee inside the lab.

Ryland's eyes swept over you once before he did a double-take, obviously and rightfully shocked to see you there. For a fraction of nanosecond, his composure almost broke. Beholding you in this state was tantamount to getting struck by lightning and then getting resuscitated, but to his credit, he was able to discipline his outward reaction.

The wall was immediately put up. You could feel it from the way he was so blatant in his ignorance of you. If you were on better terms, he'd be tripping over his words so he can tell you how pretty you were without overstepping any boundaries.

"I thought you're at the department dinner," was what Ryland said; modulated and perfectly flat, like he wasn't actively fighting off the urge to stare at you.

You crossed your arms. Your skirt swished as you walked towards him. You stopped just a meter away from the bench.

"You weren't," you replied, making sure to add that defiant lilt to let him know that you weren't exactly jovial.

"Grant deadline is today. I had to finish the proposal. I heard your defense went well. Congratulations."

His callous attempt at congratulating you grated your ears and downright insulted you. You didn't even think of thanking him.

"Are we good, Dr. Grace?" You challenged him. "Have I done — have I said something wrong to you? Something you —"

Ryland spoke over you. "Nothing is wrong. You did your job, and you did it well. You saw your eval, didn't you? That should be good enough."

"If nothing's wrong, then why have you been avoiding me like I'm some fucking… parasitic organism this past month?"

You didn't mean to yell, but you did, and now Ryland was inflamed. He let out an exasperated sigh and stepped away from the bench so he could lean the side of his hip against it. He was looking at everywhere except you.

"That post, on the for—"

You rolled your eyes. "Cohen cleared us! We never broke protocol. I didn't, you didn't, and—"

Ryland frowned. "It doesn't matter," his tone dropped at octave, taking on a more stern and authoritarian air. "You have a long, promising career ahead of you, and I've taken upon myself the burden to ensure that no one can ever attach anything less than favorable to your name, especially when you get published and become more known in the field. Trust me. I know what I'm talking about. You do not want to walk the road that I took. This is for your own good."

You stared at Ryland, appalled. A bitter, sarcastic laugh snaked its way out of your chest.

"'For my own good'?" You parroted. Those words burned your throat more than any alcoholic beverage ever could. "You know nothing about what's good for me. I don't need your counsel, and I certainly don't need your help. I made it here on my own. And I can make it on my own."

Ryland flit his eyes at you. Cold. Defensive.

"Then there's nothing more we need to talk about," he said. He went back to his station and resumed his work like you were a mere nuisance he can wave off. "See you next week on stage."

Tears flared in the back of your eyes. They rose until you could feel them welling up along your lash line, but you bit them back. You swallowed the ridiculously large lump in your throat and you threw one last stone at him out of seething, barely controlled rage.

"God," you muttered, plaintive yet resentful, "you're such a fucking coward."

Shooting Ryland one last look of indignation, you turned on your heel, the soles of your boots slamming into the vinyl flooring beneath you to apostrophize your departure.

The fissure was worse than you'd imagined. There's no use imputing its current existence onto either you or Ryland, because what's been made crystal clear to you by your ineffective exchange that this misunderstanding was way beyond repair.

But at least you didn't go down without a fight. You could find comfort in that.

You weren't even anywhere near the door when Ryland caught you by the arm. The force with which he yanked you back towards him garnered a sharp noise of discomfort from you, and you bolstered that with a glare.

He had, to an extent, the courtesy to adjust his grip on you as you twisted to face him, though it was no less imperious than the initial form. You whipped your body to face him; your features were overcome with incredulity and repulsion. You wrenched your arm back, but to no avail.

"I'm a what?" Ryland hissed. The tension in his grip was making white the nitrile material that was covering his knuckles. You cried out in pain, but you were not at all lacking in the vitriol needed to respond to him.

"I said you're fucking coward…!" You spat. "You can't be fucking honest with yourself because you're too terrified to admit that you li—!"

Ryland didn't let you finish.

He wrested you towards him with a single effortless and violent tug. The next sequence came fast: his other hand shot up, tangling unceremoniously into the hair at the base of your neck, tilting your head to receive him so he could kiss you.

Gone was the polite façade of your supervising faculty that you'd grown to love, along with your own self-imposed inhibitions. It was a quick, joint death, but it's one for which you weren't given the chance to mourn, because such a demise marked the collapse of nearly nine months of stifled, overwhelming, and unspoken desire.

Your superficial hatred died on your lips, too; there, where you and Ryland clashed and melted. He loosened his hold around your arm. The formerly punishing sensation was replaced with soothing guidance, so that you'd rest your arm on his shoulder.

You followed through. You hooked it around his neck and partnered it up with your other arm, prompting Ryland to replicate the gesture by resting his anchorage on your hips as he blandished your mouth open with his.

You let loose a sigh as he slipped his tongue inside, promoting the sough into a full-bodied moan as his muscle swiped over your own eager one. He hummed into the kiss, and then he pulled away to speak.

"I wished that rumor was true," Ryland said, coming back in for a peck. You roused his amusement when you whined at the low-level stimulation he was giving you. He pulled you further into the room, obscuring you both with the shadows that swallowed this part of the laboratory. "I wished I was dating you." He kissed you again. "I wished you were mine."

You clutched at his shirt. "Then let's make it official," you whimpered, voice cracking from weeks of hurt and uncertainty. "Let's make that rumor come true."

Ryland uttered a sound of disbelief. He was so terribly scandalized to hear that come from your pretty little mouth — he couldn't stop himself from engulfing you in another battery of kisses. You, though, were simply all too happy to bask in the avalanche.

"What's that… quote… from that book you liked so much?" Ryland inquired amidst the thickening stupor.

"Ah—," you withdrew from him, and a thin string of saliva bridged your lips. "Persuasion? The f-furniture—"

"No, no," he shook his head and reeled you in. "'You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope…'"

"You read it?"

"The whole damn book," he said. "Because I missed you so much, and I know that it's all my fault."

"S-stop that," you groaned. "You're making me love you even more."

Ryland laughed. He cupped your ass with both hands, and squeezed. "That's my objective, baby."

Drawing you to his chest, he backed you into the bench to keep you where he wanted. You'd have been completely wrapped in the dizzying torpor if not for your phone suddenly buzzing in your clutch, which had slid down to your elbow and onto the table top during your messy progression from the door to the interior of the room.

Shit. Linh and Camden were waiting for you outside.

Even when you turned away, Ryland didn't let up. His lips were hot and wet on your jaw and the side of your neck, which had become available to him as you transferred your attention to producing your phone from your bag. You had to text your friends — let them know that the situation had escalated into something more than a conversation, and that they need not wait for your return — you projected that it would instead happen tomorrow morning. You pried the flap of the clutch open, freeing the device. Sure enough, Linh was asking how things had gone.

But oh, how hard such a task was to accomplish. His breath was like a flame fanning over your skin, and every cumbrous letter that you had to tap on the keypad was accompanied by the feel of his teeth lightly scoring down the column of your throat, and his gloved hands that were slowly creeping under your skirt.

"Wait—" you gasped when he reached the hem of your panties. "I need to — I need to text Linh…"

"Couldn't that wait?" He muttered into the shell of your ear before adjusting to suck on a pulse point. His thumb was tracing your gusset with short, tentative strokes.

"No — she's… she's waiting for me downstairs..."

With weakened knees and clumsy fingers, you typed furiously, striving to construct a message succinct and coherent enough to tell Linh that she and Camden should go back to the dinner that they abandoned for your sake. You hit send, said a silent prayer of gratitude to your friends, and let your phone clatter unharmed onto the pile of paperwork to your left.

He pushed your skirt up, revealing you to him. The cool draft from the AC hitting your exposed thighs elicited a sharp intake of breath from you, but you're charged next with his fascination over the discovery of what you were hiding beneath your clothing.

Black lace and cotton, complete with a damn bow in the middle like you were a present to be unwrapped.

"Fuck," Ryland groaned, "you really aren't pulling your punches, huh? You showed up here, wearing all of this?"

You blushed. "They're not for you."

"Liar."

Without any warning, he spun you around so your back was to him. He peeled off the flimsy, now-damp article from you and rid you of it, making sure that he took it off all the way it so he could stuff it into the back pocket of his jeans. Not that you had any visual — it's better if you didn't know that for now.

Ryland grabbed your waist and pulled you backwards so you were properly bent over the bench.

"Open," he said, nudging your thighs apart with a knee. Your wobbling feet struggled to find their foundation at first, but they came through; they had to, because Ryland had reached from behind and was now rubbing your slick folds with two of his gloved fingers.

You protested. "You didn't ta—"

"I didn't use these on any contaminants, don't worry," he rested his upper body on half of your back. He kissed your hair. "I would have taken them off if I did."

You bucked and shied away from his touch, hoping to get more and escape it simultaneously, especially whenever the heel of his palm ground down on your clit. The nitrile was slippery and more forgiving now — all thanks to you — but he was no less skilled in attacking your need to keep your mental clarity unaffected.

"Do you think I'd neglect your safety like that?" He mumbled. "You ought to give me more credit, sweetheart."

You're given no warning as Ryland slid his longest finger past the seam of your entrance. The intrusion, however, lacked any resistance — it's deep; unyielding, and adamant in its goal of wearing down your tenacity to bear the weight of your arousal. You had never been this full — and to think that this wasn't even his cock…

His free hand cupped your cheek so you were facing him. He kissed you as he stated his repentance in between each of them. "That's for ignoring you — for running my mouth — and for your arm…"

"That's not enough," you said. Ryland nosed into your cheek.

"I'm sorry. For everything. I'll make it up to you, yeah?" was his recompense as he worked another finger into you. He began curling them, brushing at your walls and feeling around for that gummy spot until you were bowing your head in defeat. He smiled at the indication that he had found it so quickly. He filed it away in his mind.

You couldn't answer him. You should be put off by the coldness of the gloves, but you're not anymore surprised to find that you weren't — your body was offsetting the chill of the material, commanding it to adapt to your rising temperature the more Ryland fingered you.

You keened into him when he curved his digits as though he were forming a fist — that dealt a direct hit upon that bundle of nerves, he was not ignorant at all to your reaction. Ryland didn't pick up the pace, however. It was the same steady rhythm as before — you thought it rapid simply by the virtue of your own nebulous state.

There wasn't much room to thrash when you came, as he never strayed from your immediate space. He held you through it, accepting each rippling shock that coursed through you and praising you for putting on an unabashed, wanton display meant only for his eyes.

As soon as he retracted his fingers from you, he ripped off the gloves and tossed them swiftly to a nearby bin. He hurriedly unbuckled his belt and undid his jeans. His hands, too, were shaking.

The clinking of metal pulled you out of your reverie, and prompted you to look at him to verbalize your present worry.

"W-what if someone —"

Ryland shook his head. He nodded at the clock, but you didn't follow his gaze. You were too busy being surprised about what your eyes beheld next: as he pulled himself out of his boxer briefs, you saw a fleeting glint of metal beneath the head of his cock. Two, to be accurate. Two surgical, silver barbells at the frenulum. Heavy-looking, and certainly not without consequence.

You ducked your head forward. You should be ashamed of how the mere sight of those piercings made you even more wet, but as it was, all of your want for etiquette had been dissolved the moment you and Ryland kissed.

To hell with decorum and social posturing. You wanted to fuck Ryland and Ryland wanted to fuck you. You could turn the world inside and out and that truth would stand steadfast and inviolable.

"I told security I'd be down by nine forty-five," he paused to fret the length of his cock along your drooling cunt, back and forth, and back and forth, until he was thoroughly lubricated by your own cum, "and it's currently — mmh — nine thirty. We've got fifteen minutes to spare…"

A heavy hand on your upper back pushed you down on the bench, to which you reacted by planting your palms on the surface for some semblance of stability. The head was parting you open now — comparably to a degree higher than what his fingers were capable of, and yet, he wasn't fully pushing himself inside just yet — he bent down and presented to you two choices.

"I saw the look on your face earlier — don't fool yourself into thinking that I didn't," he said. "Do you want me to keep them on or not?"

Hesitantly you faced him, somewhat mortified that you couldn't even escape his notice for a split second. Ryland was making incisions into you with his eyes as he waited for your verdict. The deliberation would've been easier, had he not decided to badger you with his shallow thrusts, which repeatedly sidled his cock into your pussy, leaving you in a worse state of want each time he pulled away.

He was determined to drive you mad before he granted you what your cunt had been weeping for since he upended you on this bench.

"Keep them on," you said. Ryland stopped taunting you and assumed his place with two hands bracketing your waist, finally delving into your expectant heat in one smooth, fluid motion.

You must have made a particularly loud noise from the influx, because his palm came muffling your mouth before he even started rocking his hips. That was a good preemptive measure — more sounds poured forth at each silky drag of his length against your walls as they fluttered and throbbed around him — and he exploited your weakness to deride you further.

"Couldn't even stay quiet, could you?" Ryland said, mocking you. "Did you bite off more than you can chew?"

Some sick and twisted part of him was absolutely enraptured to witness you like this: brazen, insouciant, and loose; free from the assiduous and heavily polished veneer that you regularly wore around him in the past; purely piloted by your own impulse and lust. He loved that he was the only one who could see you like this, and he planned on sequestering that privilege from any other individual who'd be impertinent enough to dare challenge his claim on you.

Because, for the longest time, Ryland had presumed and classified you as his. He just needed the chance to enforce it.

"F-fuck you, Ryland," you rasped, disengaging from his oppressive hand and pinching your eyes shut to brook the pace at which he thrusted into you. You knew that that was going to get you in trouble — defying him and cursing at him like that — but where's the fun in sedating the residual chagrin to which he subjected you for the past three weeks? He ought to know the full force of your irritation somehow.

Ryland gave your ass a sharp smack once; then twice. Three times. You cried out. He clicked his tongue and reinstated the hand on your mouth; it was tighter this time, undeterred in evading any contingent intent of yours to escape.

"That's not what you should be using your mouth for," he said.

Like his gloved handiwork from earlier, he didn't deviate from that fixed rhythm. He knew exactly where to prod, and with utmost obduracy, he abnegated every screaming injunction within him to jackhammer his hips into you. That was not his way. At his age, he knew better than to ruin the moment by being overly eager.

Of course, if you asked nicely — politely, that is — he would appease your wish, but from what he could tell from the way your cunt was spasming around his cock, you were reveling at his current tailored succor, and were, based on how feverishly you were fucking your hips back into him, well on your way to reaching another orgasm.

Ryland couldn't have been more correct. Your muted vocalizations of pleasure were seeping through the muscles of his hand; they're disjointed; segmented with dire breaths and incoherent babbling with which you solidified to him that you were, indeed, about to cum.

"Look at you," Ryland cooed. "Fucking yourself on my cock," he chuckled.

You grabbed at his arm behind you to inform him of your impending fall. That alone was enough to elucidate your state to him.

"I know," he said, kissing the back of your head. You whined; to that, he supplied you with another slew of affirmative praise.

"I know, sweetheart, I can feel it," Ryland picked up the tempo a tad, and when your body seized up, that's when he started pounding into you to help you ride that high and fuck you through it. "There it is, that's my girl…"

The extrusion ripped through you like a roaring tempest; you're unable to reckon how you were able to keep yourself upright like this; gushing and quivering around him in your heels, brought back to Earth by nothing but the rimed surface of the lab bench, and the faint sound of your release dripping onto the vinyl floor directly underneath you.

Further unbeknownst to you, Ryland had brought his palm to his mouth — the one which he used to subdue the auditory byproduct of what he was doing to you — in the name of licking the copious amount of spit that you had deposited unto his skin.

The answer to your doubtful supposition regarding your orientation greeted you as he gently receded from your body. You heaved out a sigh, reawakening your knees to serve their purpose and maintain your stature. Smoothing your skirt down, you turned to him. He had enrobed himself within the time you were convoking your wits, and was now waiting for you to comport yourself.

"Get your things," he said, kissing your damp forehead. "We're leaving."

———

The vestiges of your dignity, or whatever's left of it, were held together by the sheer force of your willpower as you stood in the elevator with Ryland, and until your subsequent, rushed egress from the natural sciences building.

Your body was still thrumming from the effects of your orgasm, hampered solely by your grave necessity for control, so you'd at least be presentable in front of whoever you were going to run into at the lobby — which, to your luck and to Ryland's relief — was temporarily empty when you got off the lift.

Braving the late evening chill was no simple act. Though you were certainly now saved from being forever jilted in love, you had to grapple with the ordeal of walking across the deserted faculty parking lot while wearing nothing underneath your skirt, and this aggravating fate was put into motion by none other than your ex-supervising faculty member, who was pulling you along by the wrist.

Ryland — the secretly debauched bastard that he was — had refused to surrender your panties when you asked for them, and he told you, in the most serious manner, that you were to stay like that until you two arrived at his place.

You tried your hand again at retrieving the lace from him as he drove out past the campus gates.

"Give them back," you snapped.

"Give what back?" Ryland said, lifting not his eyes from the road.

"You know what I mean."

"No, they're staying right where they should be."

You huffed out a dramatic expulsion of air. "I hate you."

"You don't hate me," Ryland retorted. You couldn't stand how infuriatingly relaxed he was on the other side of the vehicle, all while possessing something of your ownership. "You just spent a quarter of an hour on a lab bench showing me how much you don't hate me."

You crossed your arms and turned to take in the dark cityscape beyond the glass of the window, pressing your thighs together on the leather seat to allay the glaring reminder of how bare you were feeling.

"If I gave them back to you now, you'd find a way to regain your composure," Ryland continued, as if it wasn't enough that you were leaving traces of your arousal in his car by being bare,"and frankly, I prefer you discomposed."

You scoffed, casting a sidelong glance at Ryland before his hand on the stick shift rested on your thigh.

And for rest of the drive, there it remained.

Ten long agonizing minutes was what it took before Ryland pulled up into the driveway of his apartment. No one spoke within that window of time. The radio wasn't even turned on. Only the revving hum of the engine and the steady breeze of the AC filled the hushed interior of the car, and at times, the clicking of the turn signal that Ryland toggled whenever he came round a bend.

You cursed from the moon and back every bump in the road that the car encountered. It had you clutching your purse like a lifeline as it sent a sharp tremor through your core; undermining the preservation of your patience, and ceasing only when you, at last, alighted at your destination.

Ryland opened the door for you. Whether it was due to his eagerness to cloister you both in his home or a genuine endeavor to be chivalrous, you didn't care enough to know. Once he caught you by the hand, it's all a blur until the front door of his unit swung open and shut and the lock clicked into place. He was, again, all over you.

Your things — his bag, your purse; his shoes and his keys came raining down in a steady trail as he pushed you further into the penetralium, leading you with memorized expertise to his bedroom as your mouths crashed into each other in a more frantic succession than before.

"Dr. Grace—" you called out to him using that address out of habit when he scooped you up into his arms and expedited your travel time from the hallway to the mattress.

"Don't 'Dr. Grace' me," Ryland growled. Your back hit the bed with a quiet thump as he tossed you like a doll. "We're way past that."

Then he was disrobing himself — though this time more extensively — and you were his next target after he completed his portion of the task. He dragged you towards him by your legs, from which you gasped, but didn't utter a word of dissent. You couldn't. You're too taken aback by the sight of what he'd been hiding under his unassuming Oxford shirts — it's like he'd been carved by Michelangelo himself. Your mouth and your cunt were watering at the revelation.

Ryland tugged your top off your torso and tossed it somewhere on the right-hand side of the bed. The next to go was your skirt; the lastly, your boots.

His own core throbbed at what he'd found. There, under the leather, was a pair of black thigh-high socks, hugging the curve of your calves in every faithful and perfect way — a stark contrast to his pragmatic, white coverlet. The elastic bands dug into the plush flesh of your upper thighs, leaving just some few inches devoid of covering before it led to your aching pussy.

Ryland's breath hitched so hard it nearly choked him. The shot was devastating. So… precise and accurate. Jesus. Right in the fucking fetish.

He quite literally fell to his knees. You watched his descent, propping yourself up with your elbows for a better view of the awestruck look on his face like he was a man languishing from dehydration who had just seen an oasis before him.

His mouth was instantly affixed on the demarcation where cotton ended and skin began. He lifted your legs to rest upon his shoulders, and from there, he inched his way higher and higher up between your body, until he was close enough to kiss your clit and transpose his attention to devouring you whole.

Enfeebled from your earlier activities in the laboratory, you were unable to moderate your bodily responses to a degree considered proper when Ryland thought it fit for him to imbibe mercilessly your cunt — he alternated between sucking on your swollen nub and lapping at your entirety, never letting any of your slick to suffuse and drip elsewhere but on his tongue; he drank every drop, and then goaded you to produce more of it by means of either his lips or teeth.

You were writhing more vigorously by the time Ryland had found it appropriate to nip at your clit with his front teeth — he was careful, of course, but this attention to your well-being paled in comparison to the consecutive bolts of electric pleasure running up from your sacrum to the base of your skull at each calculated swipe of his incisors.

It was too much. Your attempts at expressing pseudo-dissent were fruitless — Ryland loved that you were clamping your thighs on the sides of his head, and such, in fact, provoked him even more. You resorted, then, to pushing him away by stapling your palm on his forehead, but even that couldn't stop him.

"No, no, no," he said, muffled by his incessant need to keep his mouth tacked on your pussy. He drew himself closer to the apex of your thighs in reprisal to your failed eviction of him. As punishment, he riveted your hips to the mattress, parted your thighs and pinned them open, only to commence an even more fervent variation of what he'd been doing to you prior to your short-lived coup, worsened further by his delivering timed spanks unto your already-sensitive pussy every time you tried to close your legs.

"Ah! S-stop…!" you caught his wrist — you'd been reduced to tears then, but Ryland just used his other free hand. Your defiance got you two successive spanks.

"Interrupt me again and you're getting a fourth," he said. That was another one.

You jolted and released his hand. Ryland ran his fingers between your lips— a precursor to a strike, as you'd come to find out. You whined at the overstimulation.

Ryland glowered at you. "Behave."

You nodded, sinking into the mattress in defeat as he recommenced his treatment of you with his mouth.

You came for the third time that night on his tongue, expedited by the addition of his fingers having made a return so he could focus on tonguing your clit with harsh, rapid flicks.

You're liquid from the waist down as you abetted yourself. You approached Ryland on all fours, pawing at his waist so he'd be closer to your mouth. Though shocked, he humored you — he put a leg up on the bed as you settled whits away from his cock, which he had been pumping with his fist as he ate you out.

You'd been dreaming of doing this for so long. You took Ryland in your palm, getting a feel for the weight and the girth and tending closely to the barbells on the frenulum. You looked up at him as you drew circles around the perimeter of the piercings.

"When did you get these?" You asked, giving him a single stroke and a kittenish lick on the head. Fuck. He still tasted of you.

Ryland watched you from above. Now it was his turn to be flustered. He gulped as you began using your fist to get him fully hard; dotting the shaft with coquettish pecks from the base to the tip, obviously partial to spoiling the metal on his glans.

You chuckled at his silence. "Share it to the class, Dr. Grace," you purred.

He rested a hand on your crown. Not pushing or demanding irrumation — but simply a means to ground himself, because what you were doing to him with your hand and mouth — the soft, feathery caresses and licks — was infinitely more ruinous than anything else he'd experienced.

"I got them in sophomore year," he replied.

"Of high school?" You joked.

"In college," Ryland tugged at your hair this time. "Don't get smart with me. Suck."

Despite your pretend-annoyance, you obeyed him. You took what you can into your mouth, and the rest, you attended to with your hand. Gently, you bobbed your head and closed your eyes, satisfied with the sounds that you were hauling out of his chest — airy grunts and sighs of your name, the latter so sorely missed due to your artificial separation from him.

You were raring to taste him on your tongue, but Ryland pulled you away before your wish could take shape. He ordered you to lie back on the bed.

"What, you're gonna fuck me again, old man?" You said, spurring him on as he came over you.

Ryland grabbed your chin with his fingers, dour and stern. His eyes narrowed into slits. "Yes."

He spread your thighs with a knee and took his place inside you like before, this time with you in supine, and one of your legs hooked over his shoulder.

In a snap of a finger (or his hips), you're mewling an amalgam of his name and an expletive, to which Ryland clicked his tongue in fake disappointment.

"You've really got a mouth on you, huh?" He said, bearing his weight down unto you more so he could reach deeper into your pussy. "I ought to shut you up fast."

This configuration of your bodies, which gave Ryland more access into yours, also granted him the opportunity to control how much of his cock you could feel.

Your (dis)advantageous position subjected you to his flawless dexterity over the metal he wore — that was, every inward stroke had you crying out in his arms, because those seemingly inconsequential spheres were so deliciously cosseting your insides, leaving trails of heaven in their wake each time Ryland pulled and pushed back in.

The hand on the back of your neck was unwavering in its support of your head. Ryland, ever caring and sweet on you, didn't want you hurting yourself; not while he was fucking you so good like this, nor ever, so long as he had you in his grasp.

He persisted in this form until he felt you nearing the edge again; and upon the advent of such, he pulled out, flipping you onto your stomach so he can continue railing you in prone, though only after he had lodged a pillow between your head and the mattress.

From here, you could see the two of you in the full-length mirror that was standing a couple of feet from his bed. You almost laughed — even after being thoroughly fingered, fucked, and sucked by Ryland, your makeup hadn't budged at all. It's not like you had put on a lot, but what little you had on was locked onto your skin; the doing no doubt of that setting spray that Linh recommended a year ago.

You had to thank her for that after this.

You're ejected from every unrelated thought you were entertaining when Ryland paused. You whined from the loss — a symptom of greed — but it's not like he left you hanging. He wasn't moving because he was reeling your hips up to meet him halfway. Your planted your knees more firmly on the mattress, and your obedience garnered you a kiss.

Ryland hovered over you. His cock drove deeper inside you as he did. You craned your neck to look up at him, and his hand caught the underside of your chin. A thumb parted your lips. "Open," he said.

Two dollops of his spit beaded and rolled onto your tongue; you swallowed them both times, nary a qualm nor sign of discomfort upon their ingress. Ryland, beyond pleased with your deference, peppered your neck and shoulders with kisses. He took a moment to embrace you from where he was, to which you responded by reaching over and behind you to fondle his hair.

His thrusted into you anew, harder and sharper this time, ramming you further into the mattress like he never wanted you to part from him. And he meant it. He wasn't going to let you slip away from him like that again.

The string of moans that Ryland was forcing out of your throat was cut prematurely when he lifted you off the rumpled sheets. You scrambled to get a hold of him, to ensure that you weren't going to come tumbling forward, and in your moment of desperation, he was right there to attend to you.

He adjusted you in his hold, so you were comfortably flush to his chest. He presented you to the gleaming mirror: glistening, beautifully viscid; yawning with shameless want and hunger; full of him and only him, and yet, it wasn't enough.

Ryland collared your neck with a hand, and the other, he used to lift your knee, letting it loom over the bed to render you fully reliant on him for support. You gripped his arm.

"Eyes on the mirror," he murmured into your ear, ceding no respite for you to ready yourself for what was to come.

Your tears rendered your vision bleary despite adhering to the issued command — the consummation of nearly a year's worth of forbearance and denial, all came rushing onto you and Ryland like ambrosial manna from the Empyrean.

You were a blur of colors; touch on touch, chaste one moment, and then not at all. The pulse of his hand on your neck was connected southward; if he clenched, so did you. Ryland, too, had grown loud. Gradual and luring; lilting between sweet desperation and bliss. You couldn't rip yourself away from his influence even if you tried — but it wasn't like you wanted to, anyway.

You were covetous, and so was he. Each imperative inhale was thick and opaque; you shared each and every one between osculation. You could feel it whenever you pleaded him for a soothing kiss, and he indulged your request over, and over, and over again. You were his, finally; and he, yours.

Ryland's name was perfume poured out, and yours was the same. He professed his love for you through the haze, made coherent only because he was so near. You never yearned for the opposite, though you were confident that you'd hear it even from the most expansive distance.

His fingers dipped down to initiate the culmination of your lovemaking — or of your fucking, whichever was more appropriate — on your most intense cynosure of insatiable ache, and you're receptive to every pearling drop of its consequence; you're opened, teased… And then, you descended.

The final release was no less exquisite than the climb. Ryland kept you on his lips and in his arms. Generously, he spilled himself into you; groaning, whimpering, and satiated at last. He's similarly honeyed in your love, into which he kept on plunging until you were convulsing and utterly empty. Through your intercession, he laid you down, following closely to prevent any loss of warmth.

———

It's his typing that you hear first when you wake.

You fought the drowsy heft of your lids, and behind your lashes, you saw Ryland: he's sitting up, work perched on his lap (where you should be, how dare he) as he brought that mug of his with the world's stupidest science pun — which, admittedly you loved — to his lips to sip his morning coffee. You glanced at the clock on the wall adjacent to the bed. Eight-seventeen.

You refrained from announcing to Ryland that you were awake. You weren't going to evade his notice for too long anyway, so you just lay there, waiting for him to recognize that there were a pair of eyes watching him on his right.

He acknowledged you at the twentieth minute. You smiled and laced your arms around his neck, using the added leverage to mimic his posture and cuddle up to his side. He kissed your bedhead.

"I got a copy of your dissertation," he said, pointing at the screen. It was an email from your advisor. "I just replied to Parsons to say thank you."

"You should've just asked me," your made a moue. Ryland chuckled.

"I would have if I wasn't so busy apologizing to you last night."

"You call that an 'apology'?"

"Are you calling me negligent?"

You pursed your lips. "I think the more appropriate word is 'excessive'."

He shook his head, then set his laptop on the nightstand and planted you in his lap. You were quick to assume and claim your rightful position.

"You seemed to like it, at least." Ryland said, pulling you closer to his chest. You draped yourself over him and sighed.

"I did."

"See."

You both laughed. It's quiet for a while before you decide to speak your mind again.

"What's that smell?" You asked. You sniffed your shoulder. "I've been smelling it since forever."

Ryland cocked his head. "And by 'forever' you mean…?"

"Since I first walked into your office."

"Ah," he nodded. "That's my body wash."

You gaped at him. Ryland blinked.

"What? Do you hate it?"

"No. I like it." You said. "So… That means you cleaned me up."

"Of course I did."

You smirked. "Did you have fun taking off my socks, too?"

Ryland hid his face in your neck. "Stop that. Don't remind me."

"Of what? Your little kink?"

"The politically correct term is 'fetish'." He mumbled into your skin.

"Oh, right. Okay. Fetish, whatever." You giggled.

You stayed like that — cradling Ryland on your shoulder as you kissed his cheek. Eventually he moved off you and had you lay on his chest.

"I'm hosting a dinner party after the graduation ceremony," you said. He was drawing amorphous shapes and lines on your bare back as he listened. You continued. "It's just Linh, Cam, and Felice… And some family. And you. If you'll come."

He pressed his lips on your forehead. "I will."

You cheered — muted, but no less happy — and he enclosed his arms around you tighter than before.

"You wanna hear how my defense went?"

You pulled away this time so you could see his face. Ryland's blue eyes sparkled at your suggestion. He grinned.

"Tell me all about it."

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I hope you’re ready to become a specimen to be studied because that’s exactly what’s gonna happen once Rocky lays his eyes on you. You're no Eridian; he doesn’t know your biology that well, and Rocky being Rocky… he’ll be curious about everything. He'll ask you about every bodily function you have and how it works; he’ll ask permission to touch you maybe during the first few days, but after that, he’ll decide on his own that you’ve become “comfortable” enough with his inquisitive nature that you’ll just be down to answer any query he might have about your body.

Grace tries to mediate between the two of you. He was sort of sore with jealousy at first when he realized that he might have to share you with Rocky, but he really isn’t the type to not budge when Rocky asks for something — what Rocky wants, Rocky gets — well, he should learn how to share, really; but Grace will teach him about that too. He knows he’s got a bit of an advantage here; you’re both human; you’re more comfortable with Grace, and he knows how to navigate situations that you two find yourselves in. Perhaps not as well as when his head is spinning while you two are making out in the lab after you’ve both bared your feelings to each other… He’s like Rocky in this sense; he’s still trying to wrap his head around the fact that you like him back. He'll come around.

The first batch of questions from Rocky is quite tame: “what this body part for, question?”, “why have protruding muscle in feeding orifice, question?” — but you’ll find out right away that Rocky is touchy even in that earlier stage. You once had to spend at least five minutes explaining why he can’t just tug at your tongue so he can get a better look at it, or that he can’t have you sit on his lap so he can study your scalp and find out how your hair is attached to your skin. So Rocky negotiates, and you end up perched on one of the lab benches as he stands between your thighs, parted just enough so he can be as close as possible to you. Rocky is, by no means, rough: he knows through Grace that you’re equally fragile, so he does his best to be gentle. He'll ask you to lean into his palm as he examines your face, knowing you’ll get tired from holding one pose for an extended period of time.

But even with all of that tenderness, he’s still got that glint in his eyes while he explores you. It's a strange, arousing mix of his curiosity and some kind of hunger, because really, Rocky wants to know how you feel against him; how you’d feel on him, around him, especially in this human form he’s taken. he’s so taken yet still so appalled by how much fluid the human body makes for specific reasons and situations, so that’s the experiment that he wants to conduct next. It'll be easy, he’d think. He has Grace to guide him through you.

The set-up goes like this: you’re laying on the mattress that they’ve set out on the dormitory floor — bare from the waist down — with your back resting against Grace’s chest as he holds you from behind, reassuring you that he’ll tell Rocky what to do, and that there’s nothing to worry about. Rocky, ever the eager individual that he is, has his palms spread atop your thighs, already giving the plump flesh little squeezes; even after all this time, he’s unable to fathom how soft you are; so abundant with curves and openings that he could sink into you every day if he wants. So, so warm, and so, so slippery against his own skin.

Rocky begins with your mouth, as always. The Eridian-Human disconnect regarding the attitudes toward eating has long been a favorite source of humor for the three of you; however, in this case, Rocky cares more about understanding why you’re gushing down south as much as you were producing spit around his fingers as he thrusts them into your mouth. he presses on a particular spot on your tongue, and you moan around his digits. Your eyes flutter shut, lips closing in around him as you suck. Grace runs his hands down your trembling arms, traveling up your sides and catching the curve of your breasts. He tells you to relax, and it doesn’t take much of you to do so, as you’ve associated the sound of his voice with comfort already. you don’t miss how his cock twitched against the skin of your lower back at all, though — you have half a mind to reach behind the two of you to stimulate him, but you put that thought aside for now. 

Rocky watches intently as he continues prodding into the wet cavern of your mouth. His other hand steadily creeps down to brush against your folds, and you make that sound again; only louder this time, and this pulls an overjoyed purr of a laugh from Rocky. He withdraws his fingers from your tongue to focus on your pussy. The shame of missing him against your lips washes over you, but that’s replaced by the bolts of pleasure he gives you as he gathers strings of slick that you so generously made for him: glistening nectar from the fruit of his labor. he lays prone on the mattress, all inhibitions and courtesy of asking permission cast aside when Grace verbally tells him it’s okay to lick — he should, actually, because Grace knows you’ll like it. Rocky sings as he gets a taste of you, and you shiver at the feel of his tongue running up from your seam to your clit. 

Grace snakes a hand over you and uses his fingers to spread you open, presenting your clit to Rocky. You gasp at the cool air of the dorm hitting your sensitive skin. “This is called a ‘clitoris’,’ he explains. “it would make [name] feel really good if you touched her here, Rocky.” 

You brace yourself as the Eridian stares at your sex, mulling over whether he should use his fingers or his mouth. he asks Grace this, and he’s told that either would feel nice. So Rocky tries with his fingers first, and your back arches against Grace as he rubs up and down, and up and down your clit, stimulating the nerve endings like he was setting fire to all of them. He looks up at you from between your legs, elbows supporting his upper body as he smiles at you with so much of that innocent wonder he has about human biology, even if what he was making you feel was anything but innocent. He’s even more delighted when your whimpers come out in jagged succession; he’s switched to drawing slow ovals over your clit now, and you’re sure that you’re about to come in the next few moments. When he brings you there, Rocky is quick to catch your release with his mouth, much to your surprise; he laps up everything and tastes it intently on his tongue. He decides that he likes it.

Grace gets the privilege of penetrating you first. He kisses you as a reward for being such a sport for Rocky’s bit of the “experiment”, and also as a way to get his fill of you. He places you in supine, sliding a pillow beneath your lower back to ease you off the flat surface of the dormitory floor, and positions himself between your legs. He has to demonstrate this part to Rocky first, not wanting him to hurt you on his initial inexperienced trial. Having been fingered and eaten out, you accommodate Grace easily. He bows his head as he slips inside of you, the glide only making him feel closer to the edge. He wills himself to hold that back, and starts to thrust, all while telling Rocky that this is what he’s supposed to do: begin with a slow pace, have patience, and ask if he can do more later on. You’re none-the-wiser to Grace and his diligent teaching methods at this point, because all you can really focus on is how good each drag of his cock feels against your walls. Your hands switch between holding onto his arms, sides, and thighs for support, or anchor to reality; it’s hard to think rationally when your dirtiest fantasy is finally happening to you, with the addition of a very, very excited Eridian who wants to experience you in the same way, too.

You have to hold onto the sheets when Grace snaps his hips into you; a result of your own doing, since he asked you if he can go faster. He leans forward, closer to you so he could kiss you, and your legs wrap around his waist to draw him nearer. Rocky whines from the compulsion to be in contact with you again; he’s been stroking himself for the past couple of minutes, so when you briefly snap out of the haze that you and Grace were sharing, you beckon him towards you. He rushes to your side, and lets you wrap your hand around his cock to touch him yourself. His body curves forward; his fingers grip your wrist, steering you so you could stroke him the way he wants you to. Grace finishes at the sight of both of you — his hips pummel into you erratically as he fills you up, sighing as he empties himself within your addicting heat. 

Rocky practically positions you according to his preference like a doll once Grace tells him that it’s his turn. You hold onto Grace as he sits up against the adjacent wall; your body’s bent over while Rocky is on his knees behind you. Rocky is a little bigger than Grace, you find; he’s stretching you more as he slots himself into your cunt, and remnants of Grace’s release drip out from where you’re both connected. Rocky wants to do that too; to give you his own release, to feel it wrap around him and paint you inside with it; and he wants to do it without Grace’s help next time. He’s a fast learner, and he aims to do good. It’ll be his first practical test, and he only needs you to tell him how well he’d do.

You don’t even get to savor the struggle of keeping your jaw from hanging slack at the feeling of being so full of Rocky, because he’s decided on his own that you’re ready to take him in such a brutal rhythm. He dips down to wrap his arms around you as he resumes that same tempo.

“[Name] feel so good; good, good, good,” he trills into your ear. He licks the shell of it, and chuckles brokenly. “Can [name] promise [name] will do it with Rocky only later? Want to get you alone, want you all to myself…”

Grace kisses you, swallowing your noises as Rocky plunges into you over and over again, catching you as your arms begin to give out. He croons, telling you that you’re doing so well while he’s pumping his own cock at the same speed as Rocky who’s fucking you in wild abandon. 

You announce not long after that you’re going to come again, and Rocky is more than happy to be the one to bring you to another exquisite peak. 

“Yes, yes, [name], come for Rocky one more time,” he coos into the damp skin of your nape, “wanna hear you sing again, please, please, please…”

You cry out his name as your second release rips through you, shaking in his embrace as you fuck back into his cock in faltering pulses. Rocky takes it all, and sighs as he does the same, spilling every drop within you like he always wanted. He presses his cheek against your shoulder, panting from exhaustion and satisfaction. You’ve got yours on Grace’s, and he’s dotting your forehead with gentle pecks. You tiredly lift your head, meeting his lips in a sloppy kiss.

Lady Luck, you believed, had favorites. You also believed that you weren’t on that list — at least not the one that guaranteed you consistent strokes of luck, because you hadn’t lived a totally unfortunate life either. You graduated on time, and with honors to boast; you got licensed for the profession that you wanted to practice, and that credential landed you a job that covered your bills and everything that you needed to survive. That sounded quite ridiculous to celebrate sometimes, since you and all the other humans that you shared oxygen with lived on a planet that could literally grow food and provide you with shelter — too bad the corporate overlords of your time were impenetrable to that line of reasoning, thus subjecting all of you to the eight-hour work week hell and the general humdrum of life that was overrun by their propaganda that money is king. 

But, all things considered, you were fine. You had no reason to adopt a ‘woe-is-me’ schtick. You had a roof over your head, you were able to eat three (or even more) times a day, and you had a social life that kept you from spiraling.

That area of your life consisted of your friends from university, who were, like you, also navigating the thick, murky waters of your late twenties. Unlike before, your hangouts could no longer occur when you felt like killing time or skipping a particularly boring and uneventful class — they were, at present, constrained to happen only if everyone’s respective schedules would miraculously sync up, like a rare planetary alignment appearing on Earth’s sky, cherished and anticipated with the same enthusiasm and excitement as any astronomical event.

You loved these people dearly. Witnessing each other’s journey, now that all of you were functional (questionable, at times) and contributing members of society, was a privilege that you treasured in your heart. You’d look out for them, and you know that they’d do the same for you. You’ve come to the rescue of one of them already: he had trouble regarding his employment shortly after finishing graduate school, he said, one night when your group went out for drinks.

It was the usual series of unfortunate events; the stereotypical descent into madness encountered by those who were only just beginning their uphill battle in the job market: despite sending his CV to multiple places, he wasn’t getting accepted anywhere. His parents, too, were pressuring him, and this only exacerbated the weight of the stress under which he was already buckling. “So much for having two degrees,” he bemoaned. If only he could drown his sorrows by drinking, he wouldn’t have to think about it for at least a night.

You felt for him — you knew how hard it was to be a fresh grad and to handle parental expectations of such nature — so the next morning, you called up someone from your previous internship. It wasn't at some big-shot company in San Francisco — you could only dream about having connections that prestigious — but at Grover Cleveland Middle, where you were once an assistant to the former head counselor. You were good friends with your boss, and had stayed in touch with her even after all these years, so after all the formalities and the brief catch-up over the phone, you asked her if there was an opening for a teaching position. You thanked your stars when she confirmed your query; they were planning to hire new teachers for the social sciences department before the coming school year. You wasted no time giving her your friend’s contact information; you even put in a good word about him before you hung up, to top it all off. You really wanted him to get that opportunity.

That one fateful phone call eventually saved your friend from the nightmarish ordeal of unemployment, much to your and his happiness; and he was, in return, eternally grateful to you. 

His chance to repay you for your magnanimous efforts arrived when you had to move into a new apartment — one that was closer to your job, more spacious; and had better management than your old place. You were sick of that sleazy, lazy bastard of a landlord who refused to fix the pipe under the sink and covered in paint everything and anything that he didn’t want the tenants to see. You had saved up enough to leave, and had planned ahead extensively for this big shift. After accounting for every variable — extraneous ones included — and deliberating with much care, you came to the conclusion that this move was only going to be successful and economically feasible if you had a roommate with whom you could share the expenses. 

You didn’t want to share your apartment with just anyone. You’ve heard countless horror stories of people who had less-than-ideal roommates that resided on a spectrum that ranged from “mildly annoying” to “crazy and heinous”. You didn’t want to have to deal with someone whose conduct would only drive you insane after a tiring day at work, so for a while you were quite strict with your vetting process. Every time you had the faintest feeling that the prospect wouldn’t be a good fit for your own idiosyncrasies, you crossed their names off your list of candidates, and proceeded to screen the next one. 

This, however, proved to be quite a tedious and difficult undertaking. Perhaps you were indeed being a little too meticulous. That was what your mother said when she called to check in on you, and you aired out your grievances to her as the topic of your move came up in the conversation.

“I think you’re way in over your head, dear,” she said after you laid everything out for her. “Allow room for at least one flaw. Just one. They’ll have to deal with your own quirks, too. It’s just a simple give-and-take.”

‘Simple give and take, my ass,’ was what you’d have said in reply if you knew then what was in store for future-you.

You often thought about that past conversation, especially since you were in this current predicament. You shouldn’t have softened your grip. You shouldn’t have let your own weakness; your fatigue to override your need for perfection — because it was possible. There was someone out there that would be the most suitable roommate for you. You knew that. You wanted that. But, as established, you weren’t always lucky. Your name, unfortunately, wasn’t on the list for people who were to be blessed by Lady Luck with the perfect roommate and were destined to live a happy, stress-free life. The latter was the stuff of daydreams for working class people like you, and the reality of the assholes up on the social pyramid who leeched off taxpayer money. Sometimes you had visions about slapping a billionaire with Adam Smith’s invisible hand just to make yourself feel better.

You wouldn’t have traded the heavier cost of living over this fuck-up that you were entangled in. It hurt your pocket so damn bad, but at least the apartment was untouched. Orderly. Pristine. God, how you wished you never prayed for a roommate. 

Your supplications came in the form of one Ryland Grace — a teacher at Grover Cleveland Middle, who was a coworker of that friend of yours whom you helped land a job there. Ryland taught science to eighth graders, as per your friend’s initial briefing. He kept to himself; was polite, and wasn’t anything like the kind of man you would fear to leave your drink around unattended. That was what you were told. Your friend showed you a picture of him when you met up one night, since you were curious about the guy that you were supposed to live with. Here lay your first visual impression of Ryland: he was tall, blonde, and blue-eyed; he wore Rimway glasses and seemed to have a preference for incorporating the color gray in his work ensemble. He seemed nice, you concluded. You’d find out not long after that “nice” wasn’t enough of a criterion when judging a roommate.

Within the first few weeks of cohabitation with Ryland, you were convinced that you hit the jackpot when it came to the whole roommate-hunting business… until you weren’t, which was a surprise, because you had always prided yourself with your skills in sniffing out people’s true natures. Your teenage years sharpened this proficiency into a fine blade, one that you (thought you) could wield with much expertise. That’s why you weren’t shocked when — during a coffee date with your beloved best friend of upwards a decade — you learned that a friend group from your high school fell apart because one of them said some unsavory things about the rest of the group during their girls’ trip abroad. You only nodded after your best friend finished laying down the details of this gossip to you, because you had always been right about that girl from school. You never gave her the benefit of the doubt because she didn’t deserve such a thing from you back then. 

But you weren’t in twelfth grade anymore. You weren’t just dealing with uppity rich girls who loved wasting mommy and daddy’s money and had personalities tantamount to a sheet of low-grit sandpaper. As it had been made apparent to you, your skills proved to be ineffective against a thirty-something-year-old blonde who had been hiding a very, very annoying habit underneath the respectable facade of an educator.

You fucked up. You gave Ryland the benefit of the doubt, and now he was under the impression that you're some kind of benevolent god with an infinite supply of mercy. To err is human, to forgive divine, as they would say — but you’re no god, and you were painfully aware of that fact each time you came home and were reminded of just how much of a slob Ryland was. It always did escape you how he ever survived through adulthood with the housekeeping skills of a teenage boy, and the worst part was that you were unwillingly thrusted into some kind of twisted Freudian position of having to clean up after him like you were his mother. Shit. You probably shouldn’t joke about that. He did mention that he didn’t have parents anymore. 

You had no idea what it was like to be in his shoes, and you would rightfully admit to that. Not that you would ever need to wear low white Chuck 70s — your workplace didn’t allow sneakers — but as an adult yourself, you were steadfast in your belief that he should be able to balance his being a teacher and an organized roommate, despite his past or present situation. You had no other problems with him outside of this. Nothing about his punctuality when it came to the bills — he was impeccable in that area — nor his volume and ability to keep an inside voice. In fact, you would never be aware that Ryland was home until he came out of his room to refill his mug with coffee for the nth time that day. He didn’t ever bring anyone over. (So he’s single, you assumed. You couldn’t figure out why that mattered so much to you.) Even when he was in the kitchen, grading his students’ work, he was mindful enough to not hog the entire dining table and cover it with stacks of papers and notebooks in case you were going to sit down and eat or do anything in the same space with him.

Secretly he hoped you did, but you didn’t know about that yet.

What you also didn’t know was how to broach the subject to Ryland. He was always so apologetic on the off-chance that he would stumble upon your rectifying his mistakes. He once saw you rinsing his mug — the one with the atom joke that amused you for a while until it became an eyesore — that he had left out on the counter (the half-finished coffee had become a free-for-all for the ants), and he felt so bad about it that you also felt bad about interfering with the responsibility that should have been his to fulfill. You couldn’t help it. You couldn’t stand clutter, but you were also averse to conflict and difficult conversations. So, the much-needed confrontation never happened, and you were stuck in a loop of cleaning up after Ryland every time he made a mess, and he was never given the push (or shove… or slap, whatever) in the right direction to change his erroneous ways.

———

Living with Ryland was polarizing, to say the least. You absolutely despised his slovenly behavior, yet you found yourself defenseless in the face of his humor and diffidence. He was great with the kids that he handled, too — your friend mentioned that he had quite the reputation of being the cool science teacher, who had the most beautifully decorated classroom that all the eighth graders loved and preferred. No sub could ever compare to him in the children’s eyes. Internally, though, you’re scoffing; huffing and puffing as you called out his inability to apply this diligence to other pressing matters so he may succeed in more areas of his life than just one. ‘He’s good with kids because he has the temperament of one towards cleanliness,’ you thought to yourself. ‘Maybe he should try putting all that brain power he used to make a Jacob’s Ladder into picking his shit up at home, too.’

You loved and hated Ryland. That man and his dreamy, lambent blue eyes; boyish and somewhat-nasal voice, and his stupid science pun t-shirts — slowly ate at your sanity the longer you cohabited with him. You would have been more inclined to adhere to the former disposition if all you were shown were the things about him that drove you crazy. Good-crazy. Not the “why the fuck is this empty pack of Twizzlers wedged behind the TV and the console?”-crazy. The idea of determining just how far you could go if you dared to make a move on him and see if he wouldn’t reject your advances for a moment — deo volente — didn’t seem so absurd. But no. That was unwise, and you knew better than to listen to the impulses of your brain when it hadn’t gotten at least seven hours of shut-eye.

You could never tell Ryland about this. You would rather catch a whiff of surströmming than say out loud that you had developed the habit of staring at his hair every morning while you’re both getting ready for work. It would always happen while Ryland was pouring himself some coffee: his blonde tufts would be sticking up in every direction, looking oh-so fluffy and soft and you could feel your hand just itching to touch it from all the way over where you sat. You could do that, theoretically, but in practice, you wouldn’t. You remained glued to the table, eating your breakfast quietly and lifting your eyes off Ryland’s adorable bedhead right before he’d turn around and head to the shower. 

Speaking of which, you had been subjected to being flashed by his half-naked form a couple of times already whenever you happened upon him emerging from the bathroom, since your bedroom was just right across. You shouted — though clipped, since you hid back inside your room — the first time it happened, and Ryland jumped at the noise. He yelled out an apology and hurried towards his own quarters to get dressed. That wasn’t the last time that it happened. In all the succeeding encounters, you had managed to avert your attention elsewhere and act like you weren’t seeing anything. New skill acquired: find the next most interesting thing in the hallway other than Ryland Grace’s ridiculously toned abdomen. If that had an Olympics event, you’d definitely be placing first. On a good day, that is. You were only human.

You were just glad that the roles were never reversed, and you wanted to keep it that way. You didn’t care if it was a hassle to get dressed in the bathroom. Preventing the same catastrophe from happening to you was your number one priority. You were not going to allow Ryland to participate in that same mental Olympics event that you’ve got going on. 

There was one instance, though, where you caught him staring at you — fully clothed, of course. It was a Saturday and both of you were at home. Ryland was in the living room, checking papers as usual. You left your cave to fix yourself a snack while you were in the middle of watching a movie. You had chosen to wear a pair of shorts that hung a little low on your hips that day, because you’ve yet to do your laundry — tomorrow, you told yourself, and you planned on making good with that promise — along with an old t-shirt that you were soon going to outgrow. 

You padded to the kitchen. You felt Ryland’s eyes leave his work just for a fraction of a second, but you paid it no mind; he was likely just alerted by your presence and would go back to what he was doing right away. Right?

Except Ryland didn’t. Now his attention was divided: not only did he have a full view of your legs as you stood on one of the chairs to rummage through the hanging cabinets to refill the pepper shaker, but he also caught a glimpse of your bare torso when you reached for what you needed. You saw him staring at you as you hopped down from the chair. He snapped his head back to face the notebook that he had on his lap, and when you left, you saw that his hand was gripping the red ballpen a tad tighter than before.

This couldn’t go on any further. You were being distracted by the enemy. No way in hell or on Earth were you going to be swayed by Ryland’s attempts to dissolve the pillar of your dedication in keeping him at arms’ length, and make you forget how much he sucked at keeping the apartment clean. No matter how effortlessly he made you laugh with his corny jokes or how well he filled in a graphic t-shirt (because what the actual fuck was a schoolteacher doing with a body like that?), you were not going to absolve him of his sins so easily.

One day, Ryland Grace was going to face judgment, and by then, you’ll be brave enough to deliver the verdict. It wouldn’t matter that his lashes were long enough to rival yours; how sexy and sweet his consistent greetings of “good morning” and “good night” were; or that he’d intentionally make extra coffee for you in the morning because he knows that you also need that caffeine boost. Enough was enough.

Maybe — in another universe where everything was the same, but one where Ryland didn’t possess that god-awful habit — maybe you would have been totally head-over-heels for him, but you couldn’t possibly fall for a guy who couldn’t perform the most basic chore in human history. You had standards, mind him. That was what you told yourself, and you kept reminding yourself of that each time you felt like you were slipping or wandering off course. So what if you once overheard him touching himself when you passed by his room to go do your laundry? That was a totally normal human phenomenon, and it was none of your business.

———

A miracle happened one Sunday: Ryland cleaned up the apartment that morning, because for once, it looked like somebody had pressed a reset button on its configuration. You could smell the lemon surface cleaner, too. The sun that was streaming through the curtains that you replaced last week was much brighter, now that the interior matched its brilliance. Everything was gleaming — even that fake Monstera plant that you bought to fill in the awkward spot between the side table and the corner near the couch.

You were so happy that you could kiss Ryland. You didn’t, obviously; you did greet him when you happened upon him at the breakfast bar, but that was the extent of the attention that you intended on granting him. You went about cooking your own breakfast and eating in silence as you immersed yourself in a book.

You didn’t expect that this very welcome and joyous change of heart would be nothing but an ephemeral mirage, because come Friday, you were, again, screaming and cursing Ryland’s name as you returned home after a particularly shitty day at work. Somehow you could sense that there was something wrong even before your keys slid into the doorknob — like an evil spirit holding the sliding doors of an abandoned, decrepit house and would not be shaken away unless you had a talisman to ward it off. That was only from a video game, though, because the “evil spirit” in your world manifested in the form of your apartment once more looking like a typhoon had passed through the general penetralium. 

Your patience would have lasted enough for you to employ some semblance of cold civility with which to confront Ryland, had today been bearable, but alas, there was none of that. Aside from missing your alarm and getting to work late because of your own negligence, the head psychologist was livid and irritable because some idiot — that wasn’t you — had left the storage cabinet of the SB-V and Bender-Gestalt kits unlocked overnight. She blamed you first, because she supervised the test battery that you administered to the client who came in yesterday. Anger blinded her for a good few minutes, during which you had to make it very clear to her that you locked the damn cabinet before finishing up with the client, and that you weren’t going to be her punching bag just because she was so quick to point fingers in the clinic. Nobody confessed until the end of that day, and you only found out when the head psychologist awkwardly cleared you of all her earlier accusations of committing an ethical breach, and said that another psychologist had used the SB-V kit after you did. 

You came home pissed, and now, surveying your trashed living room rendered you incensed. 

All the lights were left on — that was the only form of courtesy present at the moment — and the fluorescent bulbs bathed the aftermath of Ryland’s masterpiece. Empty Twizzlers wrappers and pouches of sour Skittles were scattered everywhere; barren water bottles dotted the carpet, some of them uncapped; his quilt was strewn about on the couch, too — you suspected he spent the first few hours of his time at home after work lounging here, basking in his mess. Some of the candy that he didn’t finish were left out on the coffee table, sticking to the glass and being feasted upon by the freeloading pismires in your apartment. They looked like the susuwatari from Spirited Away against the white doily under the vase, except they weren’t cute, and were carrying bits of candy in their miniscule arms. 

You kicked your heels off, making sure that they’d hit some furniture along the way so Ryland could hear your anger. You knew he was home. How could you not? He left his yellow raincoat and bag in a pile by the corridor leading to the bedrooms.

“Ryland Grace, I am going to fucking kill you,” you snarled through your teeth, stomping towards the sorry state of the living room as you rehearsed the tirade that you had been itching to rain down on your roommate. You picked up all the fossilized candy from the table with the wrappers and gathered them into a ball before dumping it into the nearest bin. You didn’t bother picking up the bottles yet; you were contemplating hurling one of them towards Ryland once you saw that asshole’s face. 

Some lone candy packaging had even made their way behind the TV console. You noticed this when you came back from the kitchen after you disposed of the ant fodder. You stopped and stared.

Oh, you were going to murder that man tonight. No amount of guided meditations by Yoga with Adriene was going to make you calm down. You were all violence as you stared at the sneaky pieces of trash, burning them with your eyes along with the mental image of the culprit that put them there. You rushed to pick those up too, lest the ants get attracted to them next. ‘Sorry, Adriene’, you sighed. The light in you could no longer recognize the light in Ryland’s spirit. You were going to punch it out of him instead.

You left your purse on the ottoman by the TV and flew into the corridor, ready to do just that.

“Ryland!” You roared, the side of your fist banging on his door in three, harsh consecutive knocks. You had no patience to wait for him to answer you — you twisted the knob, expecting it to not budge — and then it gave. You should have known to stop yourself there. Rule number one of rooming with a man was that you do not, under any circumstance, enter his room unless absolutely necessary. And what you saw next that had you choking on your own words was not at all “absolutely necessary”.

Your mouth kept on running. “What the fuck happened to the living r—oh my fucking god—!” 

His bedroom was pitch black — well, nearly pitch black, because moonlight had seeped through the opened windows on the left. The silvery, lunar beam revealed who you were looking for; Ryland, no less, but in a state that was less than appropriate for the conversation that you wanted to have. 

You wished you had stayed seeing red instead of seeing this. You wished that you had allowed yourself a moment to simmer in anger and concoct the perfect mix of curses that would scare the living hell out of Ryland’s self-censoring quirk. You wished you had been better than the version of yourself that froze at the threshold of his bedroom. ‘That’s why they called it “wishful thinking”’, you mused. Nothing else followed that thought as you cast your eyes upon the figure that the Moon had presented before you.

Ryland was in bed; dead center, almost like a Greek figurine in the middle of a hedge maze. He was wearing nothing except the knitted fox cardigan that he painstakingly washes by hand every week, and the striped socks that he had multiple pairs of. The operational term “almost” was added because he wasn’t standing in contrapposto like an actual marble statue; he was bent over. Ass up, knees digging into the mattress, and his cheek bearing down on a pillow that he must have used to support himself in this pose. Poor glasses. Always dangling off one of his ears. The pair could barely persist in this angle they were in.

Your mouth hung ajar as your gaze traveled south — you shouldn’t have done that — and past the panel of the cardigan, you could see his arm curled inwards. He had a hand wrapped so tightly around his cock; he was pumping it in harsh strokes, his precum acting like lube due to how much of it he was producing. His other hand, you assumed, was playing with a nipple, as you couldn’t see it rested anywhere.

He hadn’t noticed you yet because his eyes were closed. He probably didn’t even hear you shouting, given how blissed out he was already, touching himself while he’s —

Ryland shamelessly moaned your name as his wrist sped up. You stumbled backwards upon hearing that pass through his lips, and as you did, you collided with the door. That was what had his eyelids fluttering open. 

You had no way of knowing because you’ve covered your eyes with your palm now, but Ryland finally saw you standing at the doorway. He was surprised to find you there; he had only been picturing you in his head a few seconds ago, and now here you were, as if someone had pulled his fantasy right out of his mind and commanded it to materialize in the real world. He didn’t scramble to cover himself up. There was no use hiding now, anyway; you’ve already seen him like this, he might as well lean into the revelation. The tension had boiled over, finally. And Ryland didn’t want it to stop.

You, however, wanted otherwise. (Really?)

“I — I’ll just go,” you spluttered, ordering your body to turn around and leave, your hand still obstructing your view of Ryland. “I want the living room cleaned tomorrow, again.”

It was comical, how you so badly needed your words to take on the commanding tone required by this situation, yet you were failing miserably. Your voice was shaky and shrill, powerless against the sound of Ryland’s panting and the periodic squelch of his hand gliding up and down his length. The white hot anger that had been coursing through you previously, had taken to camping in the blood vessels on your face. The warmth was radiating toward the palm that you were using to shield yourself from the paragon of temptation that was Ryland. 

“No, no, no-o-o,” he protested, wanton and needy. “Don’t leave, [name]. Please — ah… S-stay, please…”

A burst of anxious chuckles erupted from your throat. “No, I’m leaving. Let’s just pretend this never happened,” your hand blindly searched for the cold door knob in an effort to put a barrier between you and the blonde incubus luring you into his lair, but instead of that metallic sphere, you caught the surface of a hand.

Ryland had moved from the bed to where you were. He stood up and plodded towards you — you were merely a few feet from the edge of the bed anyway, so it didn’t take long for him to reach you. He tugged you further inside the darkness of the bedroom. 

“We’ve got to have it out, [name],” Ryland pushed the door shut behind you, bathing you in midnight blue and preventing you from escaping. The warm redeeming light of the corridor was no longer present; no longer able to save you from this madness.

He continued speaking. “I like you so much, and I know you like me, too,” his hand wrapped around your wrist and forced you to reveal your face to him. You clamped your eyes shut. Ryland whined at your stubbornness. His arms encircled your waist, trapping you there. Fuck. You could feel the hard outline of his cock through the thin material of your slacks. You never anticipated the difference in height that you two had. You never stood close enough to find out in the past, nor did you expect the discrepancy to be so hot.

Ryland nosed into your cheek. “[Name], look at me, please…” His plea was velvety and decadent, exactly how you would expect a rakish scion of Satan to beckon you into falling victim to his promises. But Ryland was anything but devilish. He was tenderhearted, dedicated, and passionate about his convictions — he was a man in a thankless job that pulled more out of him that it usually poured back, yet he showed up for it every day. You might even call him angelic sometimes, having seen what lengths he’d go to for his students. 

And right now, you were about to be enlightened with the knowledge of just how far he would go for you.

Your eyes acted against all better judgment. You met Ryland halfway, using the excuse that you weren’t staring right at his dick, which you were already half-tempted to touch. You steeled yourself. The hands that were supposed to push him away stayed suspended upon his chest. His lashes batted at you with inordinate fondness as he saw you heed his prayer. He took that as an invitation to kiss your neck. Oh God, he’s kissing you.

“I know you’re angry, [name],” Ryland murmured, tickling the skin into which he spoke, “and I’m sorry… I promise I won’t do it again.”

That yanked a scoff from your throat. “You really shouldn’t,” you sneered. Your statement lacked the sharpness that would have poked a hole into Ryland’s heart and made him bleed. He only smiled.

“I’ve only been misbehaving ‘cause—” he sucked in a breath, gently tucking your hair behind the curve of your ear; his finger traced the shape like he was savoring it, “—’cause it was the only way I could get you to notice me.”

Your brows pinched in towards each other. What?

Ryland kept on kissing you as he put his case forward. “You were so nice about it, too, whenever you’d tell me to clean up… but I know you were probably killing me in your head,” he peeled off your jacket and unfastened the buttons of your blouse. Your resolve was a pillar of salt, and each heavy exhalation of his that fanned over you was an enormous wave that threatened its integrity. Ryland licked at the slight dip of your collarbone before pressing an open-mouthed kiss on it. “This is the last time that I’ll provoke you, [name]. I just needed you to come to me…” He returned to you, blown blue eyes boring into the gleam of your own under the moonlight. 

You’ve really done it now. You’ve drunk from the waters of Lethe, gulping down every single drop and drowning the screams of your last petering inhibitions as you looped your arms around Ryland’s neck. He let out a happy little sound as soon as his lips latched onto yours, and he hoisted you up into his grasp. Your legs crossed behind him to reinforce your union.

Unlike his hurried endeavors to pleasure himself, you recognized that caring, patient demeanor of his shining through in how his tongue blandished you open. He wanted to take his time with you; he’s got you now, finally, and he wasn’t planning on tearing his way into discovering how you liked to be loved. 

Ryland was surprisingly strong — the muscles weren’t just for show, apparently. He carried you from where you stood and deposited you on his bed, nary a symptom of struggle nor strain. Lying in his tousled sheets was like resting in a field of poppies, only the scent that enveloped you was a mixture of his mild cologne and the fabric conditioner that you two shared, pulling at your heartstrings as though they were fastened to a harp. You were weak for him — you admitted to yourself, at last. 

Ryland hovered over you and bent down to continue kissing you, his tongue once again slipping into the wetness of your mouth and meeting yours in a soft, shy caress. You sighed as you drank your fill of him, reveling in this long-awaited discovery of being wrapped up in everything that was him. The noise that he made when you weaved your fingers through his hair shot straight to your core. You could tell that he had been wanting for you to do that for a very long time. 

Ryland didn’t waste time to confirm your suspicion. “Always… wanted you… to… do that,” he said as he pecked on your lips over and over. He captured your bottom lip as he dove back in. 

You smiled, feeling your heart grow with pride. Your hands found the lapels of his cardigan and sought to rid him of it. He sensed what you were doing, and, in light of no longer wanting for you to be inconvenienced by him, he did the honor of undressing himself. He did the same to you, but you also contributed to the effort. You didn’t let him take off his glasses.

A pained expression crossed Ryland’s face as soon as you were bare beneath him; so overcome with want that he nearly sobbed into the valley of your breasts, which he decided to decorate with kisses first. Greedy hands cupped the plump flesh, kneading and squeezing them to his heart’s content. His peace fingers found their way to your nipples — already pebbled from the cold air filtering into the room — and tweaked and pulled at them. 

“Gosh, [name], you’re so pretty,” he said. He laved his tongue over one of the buds; swirled and then enclosed his mouth on it. “I’ve always thought you’d be pretty like this…”

You released a sigh at that. So he had thought about you naked. This was cause for further exploitation.

“Mhm?” You goaded him on. “And how do I compare…?”

“So much better,” Ryland’s answer came instantaneously. He moved onto the unattended breast. You mewled at the feel of his teeth. “This is so much better than my imagination.”

Now able to gauge just how truthful he could be, you extrapolated that to conclude that he was, indeed, being a slob for the sole purpose of gaining your (negative) attention. Any attention was still attention, in his eyes.

Ryland, you sly, sly tod. 

Ryland separated himself from your chest with an airy sough escaping his lungs. His eyes scanned where he had slobbered all over you, and he smiled. He bowed down again, this time concentrating his efforts from your sternum down to the niche of your navel. Your stomach curved inward as he jutted his tongue out to tease into the shallow cavity, irises momentarily flitting up at you to ensnare the traces of your reaction. He found it cute, thus prompting him to repeat it. He laughed when you reacted the same way, and then carried on with his work until he reached your mons. He pressed his lips upon it, lingering far too long to your liking, before he shimmied down between your legs.

You propped yourself up, this time leaning back into the cushy mount of pillows behind you. Ryland chased after you; he inched forward so he’d be right where he’d long been dreaming of burying his face. You anticipated his next move. 

His hands circled around the junctures where your thighs met your hips; he hooked his arms over it as he leaned into the heat of your sex. Your eyelids could barely stay open when he flattened his tongue over your slit, expertly parting the labia so he could get a better taste. 

Ryland’s initial cadence was maddening. He was lapping at your pussy with drawn out strokes of his tongue, letting the tip linger on your clit and pinning it on the nub as if to nettle you. You didn’t have any visual of him at the moment. Everything you knew was only being communicated to your brain through touch. You sensed the weight of his head anchored on your inner thigh, and from there, he resumed his loving service for you. Every drop of nectar that suffused from your cunt, he devoured like ambrosia from the gods, making sure to tease at the tight seam of your entrance each time he collected it. 

Ryland was enjoying every audible feedback that he was eliciting from you. He had fantasized about this, too; how you’d sound like when he finally ate you out like this. All those days of inferring your symphony solely from the sounds that you’d let out whenever you stretched or yawned — he couldn’t help it; it was a scientist’s instinct — had led him to this very moment. Now he was surrounded by the real deal; by your skin, your taste, your everything… He never wanted to look back. 

You were unable to evade Ryland as he kept you spread open for him. He had attached his mouth onto your dripping cunt, taking hold of everything that you were giving him and drinking it all up. Through your lashes, you watched him gorge upon you like you were the last meal he was ever going to have. The noises he was fashioning from this were just as obscene. Your loins prickled with desire as you selectively listened past the slick imbibing happening at the apex of your thighs. Ryland’s muffled strings of “ah, ah, ah” and the way he had his eyes closed sent your head spinning; leading you closer to that sweet, familiar zenith.

You’re suddenly yanked up that path after Ryland pushed two fingers past your entrance. Your eyes shot open at the sensation.

“Aah — mngh!” You squirmed as he reconfigured himself; he was caressing at your walls with his middle and ring finger, adopting an alternating, undulating motion that had your toes curling and your hand gripping at his hair. He found your spot before you could even tell him about it, and he knew this. He relented not; he partnered this with his teeth and tongue, nibbling and flicking at your clit in time with his digits, dead set on drawing out more delicious reactions.

“R-ryland, fuck…!” You keened, the band in your lower abdomen increasingly tightening and threatening to snap. “More, faster… Ah!”

Ryland obeyed. He fucked you with his hand, lips enclosed on your clit to suction on the nub. The vibrations of his own moans rumbled through your pussy; it rippled into that taut rope within you, prising the cord one last time to break the final strand.

You cried out a garbled version of his name as you let go, your hips quivering according to the intensity of your orgasm. Ryland, ever the bullheaded lovesick fool, attended to every variation of your movements. He refused to stray from you until you had settled back down on the mattress. You had never come that hard before. Perhaps, after this, if you asked Ryland nicely, he’d replicate the results for you.

Tired, you willed to lift your head back up to focus on Ryland. Your cum was clinging onto his lips and chin and coating the stubble that he sported. You made such a mess. Ryland didn’t seem too fazed, though. He used his fingers to collect the remaining fluids around his mouth, then licked them up so that nothing would go to waste.

He advanced towards you for a sloppy kiss, letting you taste yourself on his mouth so you’d know how good you had been to him. A string of your spit connected your lips when you parted for air. 

“Ry,” you breathed out, testing his nickname on your tongue and seeing if he’d like it. You shouldn’t have doubted yourself.

Ryland nuzzled into you in response. He was suppressing a grin. “Yeah?” He said, waiting for what you had to tell him. His hands idly ran up and down the sides of your body. 

“Let me help you finish,” you proposed, casting your words out into the quiet room. You waited for his response. 

Ryland flushed. “You sure…?” He asked timidly. His hands stopped to rest just by your midriff. His blush only deepened when he saw you affirm your objective.

You pushed yourself up for better access to him. He sat up, half-hard cock resting between his thighs. With one last look, you wrapped your hand at the base, slinking your way up until you reached the boundary separating the head and the shaft. Ryland had generously parted his legs for you by then. Upon noticing, you smiled. You rewarded him with a kiss on the tip. He gasped. 

Ryland was pretty, and even prettier was his cock. He was perfect: long enough to reach deep and thick enough to fill — blonde wisps of hair matched what he had up on top, though they were a bit darker here, in contrast. You carefully traced the gentle curve of his length, pulling back just enough so only your fingerpads were touching him. It was driving Ryland crazy, whatever this was that you were doing. Never in his entire life did he think that being toyed with and examined so closely like this, as if he were a specimen under a microscope, would have him rock hard in a snap of a finger. Rock hard and leaking with precum, to add.

You gathered the beading liquid from the tip and dressed his cock in it, taking care to cover everywhere that your hand could reach. He was just as eager as his dick, you chuckled to yourself. It wept and wept the more you touched him, just like he did earlier, when he was convincing you to stay. You couldn’t believe that you ever thought of abandoning this. 

Ryland was wracked with shudders and shaky breaths. Even your hand was better than his. Smaller in span, but softer; silkier and more delicate. He was being taunted and spoiled at the same time. Just like you, he was feasting on the sight before him: the manner in which your hair framed your face, connecting with the visual of your breasts, so supple and yielding; and the crests and dips of your torso as you sat up on your legs. You were once but a dream to him; a dream that had, at last, assumed a bodily form, touching him so tenderly that he felt like he was floating up on a cloud.

Ryland let out a moan when you held him more decisively. He closed his eyes, tongue darting out to wet his lips and cling onto the taste of you. He shifted toward you so he could receive more of your warmth.

Slowly, you circled the head with your entire palm, ghosting over the flesh just enough to map its circumference, but not fully coming into contact. You swept your other hand that was resting on his thigh upwards, passing along the lean ripples of his stomach, the slight curve of his pecs, then resting on his nipple. You tapped on and drew rings using your fingertip around the hardened bud alongside this sequence of actions.

Ryland was crying out again, moaning as the pleasure was torturously building in his body. You cooed at him and quieted him down. He acquiesced. You complemented this by switching back to those feathery light swipes and brushes, and suckled on the untouched nipple.

“Don’t fight it, Ry. Just let it happen…” You told him, and he nodded, directing his gaze down between his legs. He couldn’t fathom how so soft a touch could light him on fire like this. His cock was now at full mast, red at the tip like his lips that were swollen from his own teeth biting down onto them. You were right. There was no use fending this off. Better to just —

Ryland fought for breath when he felt himself cum. He erupted right on his stomach and chest, his hips canting forward as he ran after the feeling; tingly and scorching. You didn’t even need to use your fist for that to happen.

You pulled back and giggled, amused. “Oh? Already?”

Shame took over Ryland and he couldn’t look at you anymore. You leaned in to kiss him. 

“‘s okay, baby,” you whispered. “You were so cute.” 

Ryland colored. The blush bled from his cheeks down to his chest, transuding like red pigment dotting a pool of pristine white. Your words served to mortify him even more — he should be mortified — but they also made his cock twitch back to life. He was helpless. He pulled you in for another kiss, reeling even in the periphery of your teasing, but now a little less sore as you joined him in hungry osculation. 

“I wanna do more,” said Ryland as he pulled away for a sip of oxygen. He rubbed noses with you. “Wanna be inside you next.”

“Yeah? How do you want me?” You asked. You could barely see the blue in his eyes from how dilated they were. Ryland frowned when you responded to him with a question.

“H-however you want… I… don’t c-care, [name], I just… I just want to fuck you, or… or have you fuck me,” he pleaded. “Please, I… I can’t think anymore…”

You silenced him with another kiss. You climbed into his lap, perching yourself there like you owned him. You were probably right. Ryland was quick to grab hold of your waist. You kissed: you’ve been doing that more and more frequently, and it was only right that you did. You’ve both been thinking about it for months now, anyway.

“Didn’t know you could actually swear,” you taunted him with a jab. You painted his heaving chest with your palms. Ryland leaned in for more contact.

“Only when I really can’t help it,” he replied. God, he was so earnest and chaste. 

You reached for his cock, gifting Ryland another batch of those sheer touches that he loved so much, before guiding him to your core, your hips descending to sink down inch by inch onto him. Your own arousal had primed this pleasant intrusion; he slid into you with so minimal a resistance that it had you both swiftly drawing in air to keep your heads in place. 

You could feel Ryland in your stomach like this. He was stretching you out so good, and you could feel every twitch of his cock as he had himself slotted inside you. You rested your cheek on his shoulder, hands gripping either of his arms as you lifted your hips, then let them drop back down.

Ryland groaned at the first drag. His mind already couldn’t handle being enswathed by you; thoughts awash with nothing but the feel of your pussy; so tight and hot and wet, and he needed more. More until he couldn’t think of anything but you. His fingers injected themselves into your waist, but he didn’t dare overrule your will — Ryland wanted you to make use of him. 

You leaned back, hands supporting yourself on his legs behind you as you began to sway your hips back and forth, grinding onto his cock just like you’ve always pictured in your head. 

Staying severed from Ryland was difficult, because it hadn’t even been a while before he was reaching for you in this position, encasing you in his arms, and asking for a kiss like he was imploring to receive your blessing. You tilted your head down to grant the wish of your prodigal devotee. Against his lips, you set forth your word.

“Are you going to be good from now on?” You gripped his chin with your fingers flared along his cheek, your thumb digging into the other side. Ryland nodded.

“Won’t make a m-mess anymore,” he said. All he could stare at were your lips. He pecked on them to see how much you’d let him get away with. When no punishment came, he went in for another. He wasn’t so fortunate this time. A series of moans broke out from his throat when you quickened the pace. 

You hissed, keeping the steady and shallow surges of your lower body to collide into his. “You promise to pick up your shit? Do the dishes on time?”

Ryland clung to you even more. “Y-yes, yes!” He kissed the swell of your breast as he cast his eyes up at you. “[N-name], a-ah… You feel so good…”

“Yeah?”

He nodded, eager to persuade. “Can I… Can I thrust up? Please?”

You gave him another kiss. “No,” you said, denying yourself your own pleasure, cruelly grinning down at him as you watched his fervor melting into desperation. Ryland whined. 

“Why? I’ll be good, I promise. I’ll… I’ll clean every week a-and I’ll only — ah! — I’ll only ask for a kiss…”

“Oh, you’re bargaining with me?”

He pouted. “I want you so bad, [name] — want you so, so much… Don’t you want me?”

For once, Ryland actually sounded hurt. You smirked.

“I don’t like — mmf, aah — s-slobs like you.” You sprawled further into him to rut harder, quicker onto his cock. He threw his head back, mouth agape. 

“I’ll be good — aangh, please, please, please…!” Ryland babbled. “Let me make you f-feel good again, please… Wanna… Wanna apologize…”

You grabbed his chin anew. “Will you mean it this time, Ry Ry?”

He was nodding right away. “Yes, oh — f-fuck — yes!”

Once Ryland felt you pause atop him, he laid you on your back and refused to cleave the connection you had, keeping his aching member buried inside your pussy. He rose up on his knees; his toes curled and dug into the mattress. He lifted your hips off the bed higher than you expected. They were leveled with his own so that your upper body sloped down onto the blanket. 

You’re robbed of all air as Ryland pounded into you, angling himself just right to hit that spot that he teased with his fingers. Whatever he had been holding back was left to run wild, and you’re in no position to unbind yourself from him as he subjected you to every precise plunge of his cock into your cunt. Your hands clawed at the sheets by your sides, hoping, praying for salvation (but do you really want to be saved?) as Ryland was losing himself in you, and you, in him. 

Each slick clap of your skins had you clenching around him like a vice. Ryland groaned at this. He wanted more, more, more of you; you, his deliverance and undoing; his most alluring reverie materialized in lovely flesh and bone, descended before him on that fateful day when he first met you.

That familiar coil was straining in your lower belly all over again, and Ryland, too, was nearing something himself. Nothing else existed except this: the crescendo of your joint ecstasy; a sizzling, cresting frisson that shattered your last abiding restraint. 

Ryland broke apart first, arresting your hips in his grip to keep you tethered to him as he convulsed and toppled over the precipice of euphoria. You fell down with him soon after. You’re wailing his name and the amorous appellative that you had bestowed upon him, mantling his cock with your release while he filled you with copious, molten ribbons of cum. 

Languor dragged you both in its clutches. Ryland collapsed beside you after he relinquished your hips, and you lay limp on the rumpled white coverlet. Even in exhaustion, Ryland welcomed you back into his arms. You fit perfectly into the shape of his body, like you were always meant to be there; bound and tangled in his influence. 

You regained your regular breathing in that cocoon. Ryland stirred, seeking to gaze upon you. He kissed your forehead.

“You still have that mess to clean up,” you mumbled, heavy lidded and teetering between wakefulness and slumber. 

“Tomorrow,” he said, kissing your lips this time. “I’ll cook you breakfast too.”

“You hate cooking,” you laughed. Ryland mimicked your response, then nipped at your bottom lip.

“I’ll make an exception for you, and I’m a fast learner.”

You honored his terms by finding repose in the safety of his chest. Ryland’s heartbeat, slumping into a steady succession of thumps, lulled and ushered you into the comforting cradle of sleep; expectant and well-appeased with his pledge of matutinal favors.

———

End Note: "Tod" is the term for a male fox (wink)

I enjoyed writing this so much, as you can probably tell. Do tell me what you thought about this one! Any guesses as to what Reader's occupation is? Hint: she is not a psychologist!

Lars

he'd be more inclined to do this to himself once he realizes that it's a kind of burn that doesn't "hurt" in the traditional sense, and also when he reaches past what he thought was his threshold in sex. it's like when you've gone without something so good for so long that you wonder why you ever stopped yourself from feeling it. the sensations overwhelm him, but god, does he find himself craving more of it.

Lars still wants to be wrapped up in your warmth; he wants to hear you crying out his name again, needs you clinging onto him like he's the air you breathe; he needs more of you in every sense of the word until he's not able to perceive anything else but you, and you him.

he'll coax you and soothe you with kisses, intentionally adopting a slower pace so the drag wouldn't be so torturous; showering you with praise and pleas of holding on longer for him, because he promises that the next orgasm that you'll both reach would feel even better; so much sweeter and more satisfying. Lars has gotten better at anticipating the rewards of good touch, and more so at stoking the hunger that came from having been deprived of it in so long a time.

Grace

Grace would overstimulate himself as a display of his love for you. his slight inability to be smooth when verbalizing how he feels for you is greatly compensated by his fluency in physical affection even outside the confines of the bedroom. he's always got a hand on your lower back; his arms are wrapped around you whenever he feels like it, and his lips are seemingly hardwired to be planted on your forehead or cheek when you're around his vicinity.

it's no different when he's got himself thrusting in your tight, wet heat. Grace always aims to please and be praised, so he doesn't want sex to end without at least having you writhe in his arms as your release pulses through your body.

he's eating that shit up in bed. the first time you use it on him is only because of some banter going on between you. "yeah, you do kinda follow me around like a puppy," you say to Grace, and he blushes — that's the secret indication — and rolls his eyes. "don't call me that. i'm a respectable human being, i teach the American youth and i have authority," he says — but all that false bravado dissolves into a puddle of his own tears and cum when you've got him shuddering and weeping out of pleasure beneath you. he's begging you to move your hips and grind down onto his aching cock that's still obscured by his jeans; gripping at your waist to try and get you to acquiesce; but why should you rush? you've just found out how much he gets off on just being kissed and bitten and caressed. you're exploiting that first.

Ryland: The Lotus

Ryland likes this mainly because of how intimate it is. He’s got his arms around your body, with your chest pressed up into his face — he can love on you even more like this by dotting your breasts with kisses and licks and nibbles, making sure to leave gentle marks for your perusal tomorrow morning. The thought of giving you free rein to use him for your own pleasure is in itself pleasurable to him. Besides, you’re a sight to behold when you’re riding his cock like this. He watches shamelessly how he disappears into your body; the way your head is tipped back and your mouth is hanging open from all the sounds that you can’t hold back. Ryland gets off on knowing that he’s making you feel good simply by being present. He supplements the swaying of your hips by caressing your sides, fondling you, or kissing you everywhere that he’s able to reach. He is, however, not opposed to providing you with some assistance, should the burn in your thighs turn unbearable. He’ll tell you to lift your hips and anchor yourself with your arms behind you; this way he can have some space to fuck up into your heat and help you reach that sweet, sweet peak. 

Lars: Missionary

Lars is not so much of an experimenter in bed, so it follows that he’ll reach for the option in the book that’s most familiar to him. It’s perfect in many ways: he gets to see you, you get to see him; he can dip down to kiss you or lift you up into his embrace if you feel inclined to cleave to him.  He’ll put a pillow on your lower back, so he can reach into you even more and not have you ache so much when you wake in his arms the next day. Missionary also lets him bury his face into your neck, where he spends most of his time kissing you or breathing in your scent. Sex is overwhelming for Lars in many ways. So many sights and sounds and thoughts… It’s too much, and he needs you to be there to soothe it all. He craves the comfort of being tethered to your body at such an intimate level, and loves that he can hold your hands as they flank either side of your head. Part of the appeal is intertwining your fingers together. It’s probably why Lars is so affected — he loves you so much, and is so thankful that you’re sharing this moment with him. 

Holland: Cowgirl 

Holland is a visual creature. He’s also pretty lax in the bedroom, which leads me to believe that he’ll love watching you ride him while he’s got himself splayed across the pillows or on the couch. He’s handsy, too; his greedy paws are fondling your breasts, caressing your thighs and squeezing the flesh of your ass — he’ll even guide you on his cock just to spur you on, and also to gratify himself. Bounce on it, sway on it, whatever — Holland wants it all. He’ll especially love it if you spell your full name on his dick with your hips; it’s like you’re marking him, but in a less conspicuous but dirtier way. He doesn’t mind the filth; he wants in on it, anyway. He may ask, at some point, if he can fuck up into you, especially on days where he’s a bit friskier than usual. Being a private eye is tough work. Sometimes, having you ride him is a reward; a way to relax. In other instances, though, it’s also an avenue for Holland to blow off some steam. He’ll have you on top of him; he tells you to stay still, keep your palms rested on his arms or shoulders, and begins to fuck up into you so hard that you’re inadvertently bouncing on top of him. You get the best of both worlds with this guy.

Driver: Spooning Position (facing each other)