THUD. Ameen startled, losing his page within his textbook, and looked up to see a familiar slouching figure now sitting across from him, leaning back in the library chair like he was instead leaning up against a counter in a very cool bar.

“Gaveston,” Ameen said.

He quickly looked back down at his textbook, as prolonged eye contact could mysteriously make him blush.

“What’s new, sweetheart?”

He blushed.

“N-nothing of interest. Just preparing for the next class.”

A hand with far too many rings and tattoos deftly swirled around his textbook to study the page.

“Ah, Greek?”

“Discrete mathematics!”

“Same thing.”

Ameen huffed and turned the book back towards himself. Gaveston laughed, the kind of laugh that made Ameen hot all over. Oh, how he hated it.

“Sorry, sweetheart. Once you get past algebra, math becomes just another foreign language to me.”

“I thought you said you took my class last year?”

That’s how Gaveston had introduced himself; just plopped himself down across from Ameen a few months ago and said, “Loved your class. Took it last year. You have a nice voice. Mind if I sit here?”

Ameen had said, rather dumbly, “I don’t remember you.”

“Well, we don’t all have memorable faces like yours.”

This had come from the man who had lip and nose piercings, not mention a lime green mohawk. Ameen would have accused him of being the type to skip class, but the truth was, Ameen was more the sort who was so shy he hadn’t once looked up from his lecture notes all semester. So, Gaveston could very well have been in his class. It’s not like Ameen ever actually did roll call (this was college, thank you very much, he firmly believed they had moved beyond such things. More importantly, roll call would require him to actually interact with students. He wasn’t quite ready for that yet).

“I did take your class,” Gaveston of the now said, “doesn’t mean I understood a word.”

“You and everyone else,” Ameen sank lower in his seat, “the grades were awful. The reviews online were even worse.”

“You’re a grad student,” Gaveston said, the ‘meh’ very much apparent, “you’re here to earn a degree. You’re only teaching because you needed the stipend. It’s the university’s fault, really, the cost of education these days is outrageous. And for what? A new stadium? Bullshit.”

Ameen relaxed and flipped his textbook closed.

“That’s true. But I still feel…like I should do better. Even though I don’t care about teaching at all.”

He clamped his mouth shut and curled his fingers over the textbook, tense, as if a professor was going to swoop down and smite him in that very instant.

Gaveston’s hand crept across the table and gently rested over Ameen’s death-grip on the book.

“Well, I can think of one tiny improvement: eye contact.”

Ameen swallowed, and briefly looked upwards, to see Graveston smiling at him, crooked and sweet. It was too much. Ameen looked back down at the book, a very safe place to look.

“Course, I like it when you’re all shy and blushing. Makes me wonder how else I could make you blush.”

Ameen very quickly ducked underneath the table. He couldn’t handle it when Gaveston flirted with him like that!

“Whatchu gonna do under there, sweetheart?”

Gaveston spread his legs, very obscenely and very lewdly and very, very, attractively. He had long legs, spider-like legs, just sprawled all over the place. He wore leather every day, all part of his aesthetic, and it did things to Ameen, made his stomach feel all knotted and his head a bit fuzzy.

Like he said, obscene.

“Are you going to come up any time this century?” Gaveston asked.

“No,” Ameen said, shakily. He could stay down here for eternity, that’s how long it would take for his blush to recede.

Gaveston’s hand blindly reached out and patted Ameen on the ear.

“Should I bring your textbook down for you?”

“No!” Ameen squeaked.

The hand patting his ear moved towards his hair and began to pet his curls. Ameen’s face flushed again, but at least there was no one here to see. It was dark and stuffy under the table, and the floor was uncomfortable, but there was no one looking at him and he wouldn’t have to look back.

Very gently, like guiding a needle through thread, Gaveston guided Ameen’s head to his knee. It was terribly awkward for a full minute, before Ameen relaxed and let Gaveston stroke his hair.

“Don’t do anything naughty down there,” Gaveston said, “we’re in a library.”

“I wasn’t! I wouldn’t!”

“I know,” Gaveston laughed, “that would be way too fast, anyhow. Haven’t even kissed you yet.”

Ameen dug his forehead into Gaveston’s bony knee, not sure what to do beyond ache with terror and excitement.

“You-you-you’ve thought about that?”

“All the time. I think it’s going to have to be dark, when I kiss you. At night or something. Not in a movie theater, too many people. Just somewhere dark and quiet.”

“Oh,” Ameen said, not quite believing what he was hearing.

“I’d wear a blindfold too, you know, in case it’s too awkward. The eye contact while kissing thing.”

This was just too much far too much how could anyone even be so—

Ameen dropped a very light and brief kiss on Gaveston’s knee, and then settled his head back down.

“I’d like that,” he said quietly.

“Gotcha. Kissing in the dark with a blindfold, whenever you’re ready.”

“I think I’ll sit down here a while longer.”

“No rush.”

Three weeks later, they had their first kiss, and it was thankfully not under a table.