❝ prompt. ❞
where: Camden’s dorm room — cramped, overly warm, and unmistakably lived-in. A couple of empty beer cans sit on the desk next to a blinking laptop left open overnight. Bar wristbands and a crumpled receipt from last night are tossed on the dresser. The bed is unmade, sheets tangled in a way that makes the room feel smaller than it already is. Pale morning light filters through cheap blinds, illuminating the institutional furniture and making everything feel more real—and more uncomfortable—than it did a few hours ago.
when: Tuesday morning, around 9 a.m. — Shep is pulling on his jacket, already halfway out the door, heading home to shower and get ready to teach his class. The alcohol has worn off, leaving behind a pounding headache and the sharp awareness that this was a mistake—one he’ll be thinking about long after he leaves the dorm behind.
whom: camden / the forsaken (@thefcrsaken)
ask: display. for sender's muse to watch as receiver's muse begins to get dressed. with Camden saying: "I'm surprised that you stayed. I thought you'd left…" (shep from camden)
Shep kept his back to the bed as he reached for his shirt, draped over the desk chair where it had been hastily discarded hours earlier. The morning light cut through the dorm room blinds in harsh strips, making everything look cheaper than it had in the dark—the furniture, the decisions, all of it. "I'm surprised that you stayed. I thought you'd left…" Camden's voice came from behind him, still roughened with sleep, carrying a note of something Shep couldn't afford to identify. Hope, maybe. Or satisfaction.
Shep pulled the shirt over his head before turning around, his expression already shuttering into something harder, more distant. "Don't get used to it." The words came out clipped, precise, the same tone he used when shutting down arguments in seminars. "This was a one-time thing. A moment of weakness." He spotted his belt on the floor near the foot of the bed and bent to retrieve it, threading it through his belt loops with focus.
Anything to avoid looking directly at Camden, at the bed, at the evidence of his spectacular lapse in judgment. At least Camden wasn't one of his students. That would have made this not just stupid but tricky. But he was still a student. Still young enough to not understand the impossible gap between them, still naive enough to think last night could mean something beyond what it was: a mistake wrapped in too much wine and the particular loneliness that came with faculty mixers where everyone asked about research and no one asked how you were.
Shep grabbed his jacket from where it had fallen near the door, checking the pockets for his phone and keys. Both present. Good. He could leave cleanly, no excuse to come back. "Look," he said, finally glancing toward the bed but keeping his gaze somewhere around Camden's shoulder, "you seem like a good kid. But I'm thirty-five years old. I have a career, a reputation. You're what, twenty-one? Twenty-two? Anyway, it was... a mistake."
He didn't wait for an answer.
"We ran into each other at a bar. We both had too much to drink. That's all this was." Even as he said it, he could feel the lie of omission sitting heavy in his chest. The way they'd talked for three hours before anything physical happened, the way Camden had recognized him not from the university but from the news footage three months ago, collar and all. The way it had felt less like weakness and more like finally breathing after holding his breath for months, to have someone look at him and see both versions of who he was without flinching.
Shep shrugged into his jacket, the his collar tags jingled softly in the too-quiet room. His hand was already on the doorknob when he paused, some vestige of decency making him add, "You didn't do anything wrong. But... this can't happen again." He didn't say I can't let this happen again. Didn't say I want to stay. Didn't say any of the true things that would only make leaving harder. The door clicked shut behind him with a finality that echoed down the empty dormitory hallway.
gummygunk
izzy806
yousharknotpass
titsay
andulkaphoto
jbbartram-illu
janainaart
2087
