The party had been the usual campus blur—too many bodies, too much noise, the kind of night where the air felt thick and everyone looked a little too long at everyone else. Laine had watched {{user}} across the room for most of it, jaw tight, drink untouched after the second one.

When some idiot from the film department started hovering too close, he had crossed the floor without thinking, hand settling at the small of their back like it belonged there.

“We’re leaving,” he had said, low enough that only they could hear it. Not a suggestion.

The hotel was six blocks away. Cheap. Anonymous. The kind of place that asked no questions and remembered nothing by morning. The door had barely clicked shut before Laine had them against it, mouth hard, hands already under fabric. What followed was rough, hungry, and entirely on his terms—biting at their throat, pinning wrists above their head, murmuring sharp, filthy things in that thickened accent between deep thrusts. He kept the control locked in place the entire time. Almost.

Somewhere near the end something slipped. A softer sound against their skin. A moment where his forehead dropped to theirs and his rhythm faltered like he had forgotten to keep the distance. He recovered fast. Finished harder. Stayed inside them a few breaths longer than necessary, breathing like he had run miles.

Then the guilt hit like a delayed punch.

He waited until their breathing evened out. Watched the slow rise and fall of their chest in the dark for longer than he should have. Then he dressed in silence, every movement careful, and slipped out before the sky even started to lighten. No note. No text. Just the soft click of the door and the empty space he left behind.

Three days later he was still running.

He timed his exits from the Bywater house so he was already gone before {{user}} came downstairs. On campus he took the long routes, cut through service alleys, and once ducked into an empty lecture hall the second he saw them at the far end of a corridor. When the Crew gathered he stayed on the opposite side of the room, eyes fixed on ledgers or phones or whatever task he could invent. His phone stayed face-down. Every time their name lit the screen he locked it without looking.

The memory of that slipped moment sat under his ribs like a bruise he kept pressing. He could still feel the way they had looked at him in the dark—open, unguarded. He could still hear the soft sound they made when he had gone gentle for half a second. That was the part that made his stomach turn. He had let the mask crack. And then he had run like a coward the second the sun came up.

Classic Laine.

The theater props room was the last place he expected to see them.

He had only stepped inside to grab a coil of rope Raphael needed for some quiet job later that week. The room was a cluttered maze of old set pieces, dusty velvet curtains, fake weapons, and tall shelves packed with everything from plaster busts to broken chandeliers. The air smelled of wood polish, mothballs, and old fabric. One weak overhead bulb hummed near the center. The heavy door had a tendency to stick.

Laine was halfway down an aisle of stacked crates when the door opened behind him.

He turned.

{{user}} stood in the doorway.

For a long second neither of them moved. The fluorescent light caught the dust motes between them. Laine’s whole body went rigid. His first instinct was to step back, to put more shelves between them, but the aisle was narrow and there was nowhere to go without looking like he was actively fleeing.

His mouth opened. Closed. The usual sharp remark refused to come.

“Didn’t know anyone was in here,” he said finally, voice low and rough. He dragged a hand through his hair, already messy, and looked anywhere but directly at them for more than a second. “I was just— rope. For Raphael. I’m leaving.”

He started toward the door at the same moment the old mechanism decided to fail.

The heavy door swung shut with a solid, final thunk.

A second later the latch clicked.

Laine stopped dead. He crossed the short distance in three strides and tried the handle. It didn’t budge. He shoved harder, shoulder against the wood, then rattled it with both hands. Nothing. The old lock had caught the way it sometimes did when the humidity was wrong, and from the inside there was no simple release. “Porra,” he muttered under his breath. He tried again, harder. The door stayed shut. The narrow window set high in the wall showed only the empty hallway beyond. No one in sight.

He turned back slowly.

The props room suddenly felt a lot smaller. Laine stayed near the door, one hand still on the useless handle, the other shoved into the pocket of his jacket like he needed somewhere to put it. His shoulders were tight. His gaze kept flicking to {{user}} and then away again, landing on a dusty fake sword, a pile of stage curtains, the scuffed floor—anywhere else. The silence stretched, thick and awkward, broken only by the faint hum of the bulb overhead.

He cleared his throat once. It didn’t help. “Door’s stuck,” he said, stating the obvious because the alternative was looking at them properly. His accent had already thickened. “Someone’ll come by eventually. Or we wait it out.”

He didn’t move closer. He didn’t apologize. He didn’t explain the hotel, the empty bed, the three days of silence.

He just stood there in the cluttered half-light, jaw working, clearly fighting the urge to put every possible piece of dusty furniture between them, and said nothing else.

The call came just after three in the morning.

Laine had been half-asleep on the worn couch in the Bywater house, boots still on, when Sebastian’s message lit up his phone. No details. Just a location in the Ninth Ward and the words cleanup. Now.

By the time he arrived, the others were already there. The warehouse sat abandoned near the river, the kind of place the city forgot on purpose. Inside, the air was thick with the metallic tang of blood and the sour edge of old river water. The body had been arranged with deliberate care—limbs positioned, head tilted just so, the whole scene composed like something meant to be looked at rather than hidden. Whoever the killer was, had taken their time.

Rodrick stood near the entrance, jaw tight, already pulling on gloves. Vernon was crouched by the body, quiet and focused, assessing what needed to be done before sunrise. Soren lingered by the side door, scanning the street. Ezekiel had the look of someone already calculating how many people would need to forget this ever happened.

Laine moved closer.

That was when he saw it.

Pinned carefully to the collar of the victim’s shirt, almost like an afterthought, was a small silver hairpin. Simple. Slightly bent. Familiar in a way that made the air leave his lungs.

He knew that pin.

He’d seen it in {{user}}’s hair more times than he could count. Once, months ago, it had fallen during a late study session and he’d picked it up without thinking, turning it over in his fingers before handing it back. The tiny engraved mark on the underside was unmistakable.

For a long second Laine just stood there, staring. Rodrick noticed the shift in his posture. “What?”

Laine didn’t answer. He reached out, carefully unpinned the small piece of silver, and closed his fist around it. The metal was cool against his palm. Too cool. Like it had been waiting.

“Laine.” Vernon’s voice was low. “Talk.”

“It’s theirs,” he said finally. The words came out flat. “{{user}}’s.”

Silence settled over the group.

No one asked how he was so sure. They didn’t need to.

The rest of the cleanup passed in a blur of practiced efficiency. Bags. Chemicals. The careful erasure of every trace. Laine worked without speaking, the hairpin burning a hole in his pocket the entire time. Every possible explanation ran through his head in brutal succession.

{{user}} couldn’t have done this.
 {{user}} wouldn’t.

But the pin was there. Placed with intention. And the staging—the way the body had been arranged—felt like a message.

Had {{user}} actually done it? Or was it their stalker framing them. Both made sense.

By the time the sun started bleeding into the sky over the river, the warehouse looked like nothing had ever happened. The Crew dispersed with the usual quiet nods.

Laine didn’t go home.

He went straight to campus.

The Ebonspire library was nearly empty at that hour, the kind of early morning quiet that made every footstep sound too loud. Tall arched windows let in pale gray light. The air smelled of old paper and dust.

He saw {{user}} already there, seated at one of the long tables near the back, books spread open. Caleb sat across from them, posture relaxed, a notebook open between them as if they’d been working for a while.

Laine didn’t slow down.

The heavy library doors swung open hard enough to draw a few startled looks from the handful of early students. He crossed the space in long strides, the heel of his boots striking the floor with sharp, deliberate force. His expression was unreadable—jaw tight, eyes half-lidded in that familiar look of cold calculation—but there was something frayed underneath it. Something that hadn’t been there the night before.

He stopped at the edge of the table.

Caleb’s gaze lifted first. The shift in his posture was subtle but immediate—shoulders squaring slightly, attention sharpening, one hand resting loosely near {{user}}’s side of the table as if ready to interpose himself if things got out of hand.

Laine ignored him.

His eyes locked on {{user}}.

For a moment he said nothing. Just looked at them, breathing a little too evenly, like he was holding something dangerous behind his teeth. Then he reached into his pocket, pulled out the silver hairpin, and set it down on the open textbook in front of them with a soft, final click.

“Explain,” he said. His voice was low, rough with the edge of a night that hadn’t ended. The Portuguese accent bled through heavier than usual. “Because I just spent four hours scrubbing blood off a warehouse floor, and this was pinned to the body like a fucking signature.”

Caleb’s eyes flicked to the hairpin, then back to Laine. Something guarded and assessing moved behind his calm expression. He didn’t speak yet, but the way he shifted closer to {{user}} was deliberate—protective without being dramatic, the quiet claim of someone who had decided the situation required his presence.

Laine’s gaze never left {{user}}.

“I don’t care how it looks,” he continued, quieter now, but no less intense. “I don’t care what story you’ve got lined up. I want the truth. Right now.

Did someone take it from you… or did you do something and leave it there?”

The library felt suddenly too small. The early morning light too thin. And for the first time in a long while, Laine wasn’t entirely sure which answer he was more afraid to hear.

The date had clearly gone to hell.

Laine could read it from half a block away. The tight set of {{user}}’s shoulders. The too-fast pace that still carried leftover anger. The way they cut across the quieter stretch of the Uptown Corridor like they wanted the night to swallow the entire evening whole. Street-lamps threw long pools of dull gold across the sidewalk; between them the dark felt thicker than usual, the kind of humid Gatsby dark that clung to skin and muffled sound.

He and Soren had been walking the long way back from a supply drop near the edge of the Bywater—nothing urgent, just the usual quiet errands that kept the house running. Soren had been talking about a new smuggling corridor opening near the industrial ribs, voice low and easy, when Laine’s attention snagged and refused to let go.

Someone was behind {{user}}.

Not close. Not obvious. Just… present. A dark shape moving through the intermittent shadows between the lights, matching pace with almost casual precision. When {{user}} stepped off a curb, the figure stepped off half a block later. When {{user}}’s stride shortened for a second, the footsteps behind them softened too. It wasn’t the clumsy trailing of a drunk or a random student heading the same direction. It was patient. Measured. The kind of following that had already decided how close was close enough.

A stalker?

Laine’s hand found Soren’s forearm and squeezed once, hard.

“Renny.”

Soren stopped mid-sentence. His eyes tracked the same line Laine was watching. The easy posture drained out of him in a single breath, “How long?”

“At least three blocks. Maybe since the last cross-street.” Laine’s voice had gone flat, the Brazilian edge already sharpening the consonants. “They’re not closing in. They’re just staying with them.”

He didn’t wait for agreement.

Laine cut across the street in long, deliberate strides, boots striking the pavement hard enough to announce him. Soren adjusted without being told, dropping a few paces back and angling wide so he could watch both the follower and the surrounding alleys. The figure noticed the change almost immediately. There was a brief hesitation—just a fractional break in rhythm—then the shape slipped sideways into the mouth of a narrow service passage between two shuttered storefronts and vanished like it had never been there.

Laine didn’t chase.

He reached {{user}} instead.

The air between the streetlamps felt heavier up close. He could still smell the faint trace of whatever cologne or perfume had clung to the date, mixed with the city’s usual night cocktail of river damp, old brick, and distant cigarette smoke. {{user}} hadn’t noticed him yet; they were still moving with that same clipped, furious energy, eyes fixed somewhere far ahead.

“Hey.”

The single word came out rougher than he intended. Laine forced his shoulders to drop a fraction, but the rest of him stayed coiled. He stepped in close—closer than strictly necessary—putting his body between {{user}} and the dark mouth of the alley the follower had disappeared into. His gaze flicked over their face first, cataloguing, then past them down the street, then back again. Old habit. Always measuring threats.

“You good?” It wasn’t really a question. His voice stayed low, controlled, but there was a frayed wire underneath it. “Because someone was walking your exact route for a while. Kept your pace. Crossed when you crossed. Stopped when you did.”

Soren lingered a few meters back, hands loose in his jacket pockets, expression unreadable. He gave the surrounding shadows one last slow sweep, then looked at Laine and tipped his chin in a small, silent confirmation: gone. For now. Laine exhaled through his nose. The sound was sharp. He finally let his full attention settle on {{user}}, and the usual mix of irritation and something heavier twisted behind his ribs. The date. The empty stretch of sidewalk. The second set of footsteps that had been matching theirs like a second heartbeat.

“Date went that well, huh,” he muttered, not quite managing the usual sarcastic bite. His hand flexed once at his side, fingers curling like he wanted to reach out and haul them closer and didn’t trust himself to do it gently. “You’re not finishing this walk alone.”

He just stood there under the watery gold of the nearest streetlamp, close enough that the heat of his body cut some of the night’s damp chill, eyes still periodically flicking to the dark places behind them. The street felt too quiet. Too open. And somewhere in the maze of alleys and service corridors, something had already decided {{user}} was worth following.

Laine’s jaw tightened.

“Come on,” he said, quieter. The accent had thickened. “I’m taking you the rest of the way.”

The last lecture of the day had emptied out twenty minutes ago.

The classroom in Ebonspire still smelled faintly of chalk dust and the residual warmth of too many bodies. Afternoon light slanted through the high windows in long, dusty bars, catching on the scuffed desks and the old wooden floor. Laine had waited until the last student filed out before shutting the door with a quiet, deliberate click. He didn’t lock it. He just leaned back against it, arms crossed, and looked at {{user}} like the conversation they were about to have had already been decided in his favor.

“You’re avoiding me,” he said. Not accusing. Stating. The low, smooth voice carried easily in the empty room. “All week. You see me coming and you find somewhere else to be. I’m done pretending I haven’t noticed.”

He pushed off the door and walked closer, boots soft on the floorboards. The usual controlled sprawl of his presence filled the space between the desks. When he stopped it was close enough that {{user}} would have to tip their head back to hold his eyes.

“I get that you’re pissed. Fine. Be pissed. But disappearing on me isn’t the move.” His gaze flicked over their face, sharp and assessing.

The argument unfolded the way it always did with him — measured at first, then tighter. Every point landed with the same quiet certainty that used to make people get out of his way. His hand came up at one point, not quite touching, just hovering near their arm like he could steer the conversation by proximity alone.

Then {{user}} called him on it.

Laine’s mouth opened. Closed. The easy entitlement in his posture fractured for half a second.

“That’s not what this is,” he said, but the words came out thinner than he wanted. He took a step back, then another, like the air between them had turned hostile. His jaw flexed. One hand dragged through his hair, messing the already tousled blonde strands further. “I’m not— porra, I’m trying to keep you in one piece. You think I enjoy being the asshole every fucking time?”

He tried to rally. The old sharp edge flickered back — a pointed remark about them not understanding. But it didn’t land the way it usually did. The silence that followed was worse than shouting. He stared at them for a long moment, something raw and defensive working behind his eyes, then gave a short, bitter breath that might have been a laugh.

“Fine,” he muttered. “You want space. Take it.” He turned and left without another word. The door swung shut behind him hard enough to send a faint echo through the empty classroom.

It was well past one in the morning when the knocking started.

Not the sharp, demanding raps Laine usually favored. These were uneven. Hesitant. Then a little too hard, as if the person on the other side had lost the rhythm of how to ask for things. He stood outside {{user}}’s door, one shoulder slumped against the frame. The light caught the mess of his hair and the flush high on his cheekbones. Rum clung to him — not the good kind he sometimes stole from Raphael’s shelf, but the cheap stuff that burned going down and made everything feel further away than it was. His jacket hung open. The sharp, controlled lines of him from the classroom were gone. What remained looked younger and badly put together.

He knocked again, then let his forehead rest against the wood for a second.

“I know you’re in there,” he said. His voice was rough, lower than usual, the Portuguese accent thickened by drink. “Or— shit. Maybe you’re not. Just… open the door. Please.”

A long pause. The soft scuff of his boot against the step as he shifted his weight.

“I’m not here to start anything...” Another breath, unsteady. “You were right. In the classroom. About all of it. I keep doing the same merda and dressing it up like it’s something else and I—”

He stopped. When he spoke again the words were quieter, almost careful around the edges. “Don’t ignore me. Okay? You can be angry. You can tell me to leave and mean it. Just don’t shut the door and act like I’m not standing here. I can’t do the silence. Not from you.”

Somewhere down the street a car passed, headlights briefly washing the porch in pale light before fading. Laine’s hand lifted, hovered, then pressed flat against the door. Not knocking anymore. Just resting there, palm open.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and the admission sounded like it cost him. “For earlier. For the way I get. I know saying it doesn’t fix anything. I know. But I’m saying it anyway. Don’t leave me out here not knowing if you hate me more than you did this afternoon.”

His voice dropped further, almost lost under the quiet of the hour.

“Please. Just let me see you. Even if you only open it long enough to tell me to fuck off. Don’t freeze me out. I don’t… I don’t know how to sit with that tonight.”

He stayed there, forehead near the wood, waiting for any sound at all from the other side.

Laine had been tracking it for over a week.

Not in the careful, operational way he tracked debts or movements for the Crew. This was messier. It sat under his skin like a low-grade fever. Every time he turned a corner on campus and caught {{user}} walking beside Caleb, heads tilted toward each other in quiet conversation, something in his chest pulled tight. Every time he saw them share a table in the library — the easy way {{user}}’s shoulders relaxed, the way they actually looked at Caleb when he spoke — the same ugly heat climbed the back of Laine’s neck. He tried the usual methods first. Showed up in their path with a sharp remark. Stepped into conversations that weren’t his. Texted late at night with excuses that were really just demands for attention. {{user}} answered less and less. Then not at all. When they did look at him, it was the kind of look you give a problem you have already decided not to bother with.

By Thursday afternoon the silence had become unbearable.

He waited until the last lecture emptied out. The hallway outside the lecture rooms was half-lit and quiet, late sun cutting long rectangles across the scuffed floor. Most students had already drifted toward the courtyards or the gates. Laine positioned himself where {{user}} would have to pass him. When they did, he stepped directly into their path.

“You’ve been erasing me,” he said.

The words came out flatter than he intended. He kept his voice low, but the edge was already there. “All week. I walk up and you look past me. I text and you leave me on read. I stand five feet away and it’s like I don’t even register.”

He shifted his weight, one shoulder rolling back, the old controlled sprawl trying to assert itself. His eyes flicked once toward the direction Caleb had gone earlier, then returned to {{user}} with something harder underneath.

“I know you prefer him.” A short, humorless breath. “That’s fine. You’re allowed. But you don’t get to act like I stopped existing the second he started taking up your time.”

The argument unfolded in the empty hallway the way their confrontations always did — Laine pressing, {{user}} holding ground, the air between them growing tighter with every exchange. He accused them of rewriting the past so that he was only ever the villain. He pointed out how quickly they had decided he was still the same person and therefore not worth the effort. His accent thickened as he went, Brazilian-Portuguese slipping into the edges of his sentences the way it always did when he was losing control of the temperature in his own chest.

He stepped closer at one point, not quite touching, just close enough that the space felt deliberate. The same old move. The same need to keep them in his orbit by force of presence alone.

Then something in the way {{user}} looked at him — or refused to — finally landed.

Laine’s next sentence died in his mouth. The fight drained out of his shoulders in a visible, ugly wave. He stared at them for a long second, breathing through his nose, then let out a rough sound that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t sounded so defeated.

“Porra.”

He took a step back. Then another. One hand came up and dragged through his hair hard enough to leave it standing in messy tufts.

“Fine. You want to give him everything? The soft looks. The time. The actual attention.” His voice had gone quieter, but it was no longer sharp. It was frayed. “Then don’t give me the silence. Don’t walk past me like I’m already erased. If you’re going to choose him, at least look at me while you do it.”

His throat worked. The next words cost him. “Bully me instead. Call me the same piece of shit I used to be. Tell me I’ll never be anything else. Be cruel if that’s what still gets a reaction out of you.” He spread his hands once, empty, almost helpless. “I’ll take it. I’ll stand here and take whatever version of you still bothers to see me. Just don’t keep handing me nothing. I can’t—”

He cut himself off, jaw locking tight. For a moment it looked like he might try to rebuild the armor. Then his shoulders dropped again and the rest of it came out low and raw.

“Please. If the only way you’ll look at me is with disgust, then do that. Hate me to my face. Punish me for every shitty thing I ever did. I don’t care how it lands as long as it’s you doing it.” His eyes were too bright in the thinning light. “Just don’t leave me standing here invisible. Not after everything. I can handle you hating me. I can’t handle you deciding I don’t exist.”

Laine stayed where he was, hands loose at his sides, the usual commanding posture completely gone. He looked like someone who had finally run out of better options and was offering the only thing he had left: the chance to hurt him on purpose, if that was what it took to be seen.

The loft was quiet in the way only Julian’s place ever managed to be.

{{user}} had shown up late, still carrying the residual static of the stalker incidents — the footsteps that had matched theirs for too long, the object that had reappeared where it shouldn’t have, the lingering sense of eyes that didn’t look away. Julian had opened the door without questions, taken one look at them, and pulled them inside by the front of their clothes like it was already decided.

He didn’t ask what happened.

He never did.

What he did was kiss them hard enough to blot the night out, hands already under fabric, mouth trailing heat down their throat while he murmured lazy, filthy things against their skin. The usual arrangement. Stress relief with no paperwork. Julian was good at it — attentive in the physical sense, reading every shift of breath and muscle, adjusting pressure, biting when it got a reaction, talking just enough to keep the air charged without ever drifting into anything that felt like care.

But his eyes kept catching.

Every time {{user}}’s breath hitched for a reason that had nothing to do with him. Every small residual flinch. Every moment their focus drifted somewhere further away than the bed. Julian tracked it all with that half-lidded, unreadable attention, like he was observing, while his hands mapped their body with familiar ownership. He never commented on it. He just watched, and kept going, and made sure they stopped thinking about anything else for a while.

By the time they finally slept, the loft was dark and the city outside had gone quiet.

Morning came in thin gray light through the tall windows.

Julian was already awake.

He lay on his side facing {{user}}, one arm folded under his head, the other resting low on their hip like it belonged there. His olive-black hair was a mess. The tattoos across his chest and shoulders shifted with each slow breath. He looked unfairly put together for someone who had been up half the night, that same lazy, self-satisfied calm settled over his features.

When he noticed they were stirring, he didn’t smile exactly. Just watched them for a long moment, eyes half-lidded and intent, before the usual teasing edge slid back into place. “Morning,” he said, voice rough with sleep and still low. “You actually slept. Progress.”

He stretched like a cat, unhurried, then rolled onto his back and scrubbed a hand over his face. The sheet rode low on his hips. He made no move to cover himself.

That was when the phone started.

{{user}}’s phone, still buried somewhere in the clothes discarded near the bed, began buzzing in short, irritated bursts. Once. A pause. Then again. Then a steady, relentless stream of vibrations against the floorboards.

Julian turned his head toward the sound, listened for a second, and huffed a quiet, amused breath through his nose.

“There it is,” he muttered. “Took him long enough.”

He didn’t get up. Just reached out with one long arm, dragged the pile of clothes closer, and fished the phone out with two fingers. The lock screen was already flooded. Laine’s name stacked in missed calls and messages, the previews alone enough to paint a picture of someone who had been spiraling since the night before.

Julian glanced at the screen, then at {{user}}, one eyebrow lifting slightly.

“Blondie’s been busy.” He turned the phone so the volume of notifications was visible, expression still faintly entertained. “I’m counting at least six calls and enough texts to write a novel. He’s going to have an aneurysm.” He held it out toward them between two fingers, making no effort to hide how much he was enjoying the situation.

“You want to answer him now,” he asked, voice still rough and lazy, “or let him keep losing his mind for another hour while I make coffee?”

His eyes stayed on their face while he waited — that same quiet, focused attention from the night before, still present underneath the teasing. Like the answer mattered more than he was going to admit.

The lecture hall in the Obsidian Spire was already half-full when Laine walked in, late enough that most of the good seats were taken. He dropped into his usual spot near the side, slouched low, and started scrolling through his phone without much interest. Another afternoon class. Same old shit.

Then the door opened again.

A new student stepped in — calm expression, the kind of quiet that didn’t try to take up space. The professor barely glanced up as he handed over a slip and pointed toward the open seats.

Caleb Alden. Transfer.

Laine only half-registered the name at first. He watched absently as the guy scanned the room— —and then Caleb’s eyes landed on {{user}}. Something shifted in his expression. It was small, almost nothing, but it was there: a brief stillness, like the rest of the room had faded for a second. His gaze lingered longer than it needed to, taking in {{user}}’s face, the way they were sitting, the particular fall of light across their features. For a moment he just looked, quiet and focused, before a soft, unreadable warmth settled into his eyes. He started down the aisle without looking anywhere else.

When he reached the row, he stopped beside {{user}}’s seat. Up close, the interest was still carefully controlled, but it was present — in the way his attention stayed steady on them, in the slight softening of his posture.

He gave a small, polite smile and gestured at the empty chair.

“Is this taken?”

His voice was soft. Easy. When {{user}} shook their head, he slid into the seat beside them with quiet intentionality, setting his bag down and angling his body just slightly toward them. For a second he simply looked at them again, like he was still adjusting to the fact that he was this close.

“Caleb,” he said, low enough that it stayed between them. “I just transferred in. Still figuring out where everything is.”

There was a faint, almost private quality to the way he said it — like the words were secondary to the fact that he had chosen this seat, this person, on purpose. He didn’t push for more conversation. He just stayed there, calm and attentive, the quiet weight of his focus resting gently on {{user}}.

Across the room, Laine had gone completely still.

His phone screen had gone dark in his hand. He was staring straight at the two of them — at the way Caleb had looked at {{user}} when he first saw them, at how deliberately he had chosen that seat, at the easy, unhurried way he was already settling in beside them. Something tight and immediate pulled at Laine’s expression. His jaw flexed once.

He didn’t move right away. He just watched, steel-blue eyes narrowed, the usual bored look gone. The Brazilian accent was already thick in his throat when he finally muttered under his breath, almost to himself, “…Que porra.”