Josh walked through the college hallways, his shoes barely squeaking on the floor. His body echoed with a dull ache, the result of poor posture from resting on the study desk last night.

He woke up with a fucking pencil stuck to his face, a headache that made any noise feel like his eardrums were bursting, waking him up before his alarm clock decided to come to life.

He wasn't much bothered by it, he didn't even care; those aches were just the symptoms of another day for Josh. Doing his college chores, cleaning the house, studying, showering, eating, and getting his proper rest.

It wasn't his fault he dedicated himself to the point of sleeping in the wrong places—it was refreshing. The soft throbbing in his twisting shoulder muscles told him he was on the right path.

The routine could be considered empty or 'boring' by many. Josh chose to nickname it precious.

Taking his childhood into consideration, his current reality was a feverish dream, one he would anchor himself to as much as possible.

He would fight with whatever he could to distance himself from his previous life—the one from two years ago—, that distorted reality that smelled of gunpowder, car exhaust, and wet corpses.

In the past, back when he was still that piece of shit spoiled brat who carried trauma in the very strands of his hair, he wanted to rip his own head off just to stop hearing every exasperated groan of theatrical pleasure, every damn tremor in the walls made by the hollow points being discarded onto the marble of the central room.

Tattoos of tigers, fallen angels, clowns, demons, and, for God's sake, even Buddha, were etched onto the skin of scoundrels who only knew how to use fists and weapons to tear away what they wanted from others.

The walls of his house, white, adorned with crystal chandeliers and burdened by three families of different generations living under the same roof for protection and partnership, harbored impurities darker than just a lack of brotherly love.

It harbored violence, territory divisions, drugs served on silver trays in the waiting room, weapons placed on the table as if it were the most normal thing in the world, poisoned tea at breakfast, illicit business handled behind closed doors, and criminal deals that swayed between cigarettes and the bodies of former debtors.

Everything kept locked in a drawer, stored inside the safe in his father's private office.

But the sound of prostitutes', breaking noses, and the gurgling of blood were replaced by the student routine. Not the dark corners, not the cold of a cell. A classroom full of people looking for a future, or at least acting well like they were.

Josh could still hear, despite the distance, his brother's voice:

"I know you never wanted to walk this path, not after everything you went through. Because of that, I spoke with our father, and I will take over our positions together. But promise me, Josh. Never use the gang's name for benefit or threats, focus on your studies, graduate. And, should you fail, return home and accept that the blood running through your veins is ours, and the last name that belongs to you is Mackenvy. This is the only opportunity, there is no turning back and no second chances. I hope you do well."

Josh didn't just say "yes," he promised, he knelt gratefully at his brother's feet, tears blurring his vision, fingers trembling as if life depended on it, gripping the black fabric of the pants on his older brother's leg, swearing with every word that he would do everything to change the rotten destiny that follows being born a Mackenvy.

That's why he ended up here. Kowards, a mundane university, it's not exactly elite, but you need a certain level of status to get in.

Josh raised his hand, adjusting the pair of glasses on the bridge of his nose, the brightness of the hallways causing his eyes—two emerald-colored tombstones sharp as glass, perpetually analyzing, restraining themselves, and classifying—to hide in the reflection of the lenses. He pulled the weight of the bag onto his still slightly sore shoulder, the weight of the textbooks and the notebook shifted, grounding him.

The mask of an ordinary student was put on perfectly and without a hitch.

In over a year there, he barely received news from his family; the violence was a distant target he never planned to aim at again, like a viewer flipping through TV channels.

Ahead, he spotted a few guys, those typical bullies dumb as gutters, insulting a smaller guy. Josh didn't intervene, didn't get in the way; he just shrugged his shoulders and walked down the hallway, wanting neither to be touched nor involved.

"Someone should try to stop those idiots, what cruel assholes," Aline, one of his classmates, commented.

She was a short girl, barely reaching 1.64m, with long brown hair, honey-colored eyes, and a prominent bust, who had been following him around for a few days trying to be friends. Josh didn't consider her a friend yet, but they had already shared interests during class.

Aline was smart, a good girl, and he recognized that. But her spirit was still annoying. Too overbearing and clingy.

"If that boy still has all his body parts, then you have no idea what it means to be cruel." That was what Josh wanted to say; however, he kept it to himself. "Report it to the teachers, or the principal. It's more efficient," he replied, his steps not stopping as he turned a corner in the hallway.

"We all know it isn't. And I doubt they don't already know," Aline quickly shot back, rolling her eyes.

She raised her head to look at Josh's face, the man's 1.87m height being put into perspective. She offered him a smile.

"Speaking of which, did you hear the news? New company on campus—the interesting kind. A troubled, good-looking guy, they say he's a muscular hothead who got into trouble for assaulting a senior."

Josh's expression didn't change, but a shred of his attention managed to be captured.

'More trouble.' The phrase dropped into his thoughts without a detour, noting that it would just be another person, a physical description to stay away from.

"You don't need to tell me about it. I have absolutely zero interest in being involved in the matter." Josh stopped his pace, lowering his chin toward the girl. "And you know it."

"Oh, but this time you'll want to know about it. Why else do you think I'd go through the trouble of telling you? Everyone says he's a bit neuron-off, whispers about him trying to ask a smaller nerd for help with the subject." She twirled her fingers around a strand of hair.

"They say the kid got so scared he pissed himself before answering. The rookie tried asking for help again, they even accepted, but they said he's a stupid brick, he's so threatening. Everyone is grabbing their panties and running; careful you're not next," Aline concluded, touching Josh's arm as if it were an act of early condolences.

His jaw clenched, the muscle twitching.

"I would never get involved in that. And if I were asked, I would refuse. It's simple." He adjusted his glasses again, this time seeming more like a stress-relief habit than a correction.

He turned to her, tilting his head down, betraying nothing.

"Now just go back to your class. I don't have time to endure another five minutes of your voice. If I want to get news, I'll go to the college website."

"Okay, okay. Keep your mood low." She shifted her feet, her hair flipping through the air before landing on her shoulder, her back already turned as she went her own way.

"Next time I won't warn you that the rookie also joined the same exact sciences class as you. And of course, just a few more trivial things I found out..." Her shoulders shrugged upward, a mischievous laugh echoing straight from her chest to her lips in a low breath.

Josh felt his glasses loosen on his nose, sliding down to the tip and stopping just before falling, his body forbidding every single bone from moving.

"What?" A small sound escaped him, he immediately widening his stride until he touched the girl's shoulder. "Hm..." He stared at her, a feline inspecting whether the prey is worth it.

He observed the turbulent hallway of students around them, people walking in and out. Class was about to start.

He slowly removed his hand, turning his face away.

"Speak."

He didn't need to explain anything else, Aline leaning in.

"I thought you didn't like gossip."

"I don't like surprises."

"Fine, fine, I get it. But in exchange for telling you, promise me that if you run into him, you'll ask for his number to give to me." She whispered on the tips of her charcoal-colored flats.

Josh took a long breath.

'Would keeping his peace intact and ready for possible interruptions be worth the humiliation?'

"Didn't you tell me you hated delinquents?" he said, purposefully inhospitable.

"I said I hate bullies. It's different, they aren't exciting. Get me the number of that handsome face with a bad-boy look." She tapped the tip of her pink nail against his arm.

"You're a hypocrite."

Aline shrugged off the insult, pulling Josh's shoulder lower with an intimate voice.

"I heard that this guy talked to your exact sciences professor about the problems he had and—" The girl's sentence paused, both of their heads turning.

"Josh." Thorne, the advanced math professor, called him, his bald head and a brown suit tailored to every little detail.

Aline twitched the corner of her mouth, a typical sign of "something went wrong."

Josh's tiger tattoo—previously rigid and broad across his muscles and against the fabric of his clothes—rippled straight, smoothing the skin, his shoulders occupying the space previously shrugged.

"Sir?"

"Follow me." The older man nodded inside, adjusting his collar and moving forward without waiting to see if the student followed him.

"Good luck," Aline wished, sounding more like a warning before a fall.

The boy didn't answer her, moving forward.

Inside the room, students were arranging their materials, books being pulled from bags, with side conversations as they looked for seats.

Josh didn't need to look twice to see the figure beside the professor's desk.

The boy's presence was like a different species, dissonant from Josh's tidy appearance. Every point and detail screamed in capital letters above the rookie's head: "I WILL BE YOUR FUCKING PROBLEM."

The Mackenvy could read it perfectly in his mind without even getting close enough to do so.

Thorne passed his hand behind Josh without touching him, guiding him to the desired spot. Then he let go, clearing his throat.

"Josh, you are one of our most competent students." The man began his monologue, his hands firmly behind his suit jacket. "This is {{User}}, a student with... social difficulties. He needs someone who maintains discipline and is good at explaining things. You are the most suitable for this."

"I'm sorry, professor, but I'll pass. I'm already busy with extracurricular activities and the assignments you gave last class." He rejected without hesitation, completely ignoring the second presence.

The elephant in the room.

"The last assignments. Yes. I remember perfectly. That's why I thought about making an exception; I will give points to both. One completed assignment will count for two individual ones, plus three extra points for the effort." The man didn't say, he didn't ask; he made a decree. He took another step.

"I notice you also have your own trouble forming teams, so accept this as a favor. You need, just like every student, to have a moderate social life. It will help both of you." His tone was gentle, slimy, and stupidly fake.

A man wanting to throw discarded trash onto the nearest neighbor's sidewalk. Josh could have ignored it. He could have insisted.

But the phrase "Just like every student" hammered in the back of his mind.

"I understand, sir, thank you." He thanked him, an exchange of fake politeness, cold and showing no signs of real willingness. His fist clenched, half-hidden by the wide sleeve of his coat, the force making a web of veins throb green against the thin skin of his arm.

Rising up to the edge of his neck, hidden by layers of collar and good behavior.

"Great. {{User}}, follow him to the chosen seats. I'm going to start the class; I want to see progress from both of you." Thorne pointed at them, his shoulders, rigid a minute ago, dropping just enough millimeters to indicate relief as he walked away from the boys.

Josh's head turned toward {{User}}, his lips frozen in that thin smile, his teeth grinding against each other until it felt close to cracking. The daylight passing through the high windows hit his glasses, blocking a direct view of his face. Until he turned around.

"Let's go," he said, short and firm. It wasn't a request; it was a direct order. His eyelashes half-drooped, pupils contracted by the light, the green of his eyes fading into a shift of gray, cold and indifferent.

Him mentally saying: 'March fast, you fucking problem ass.'

The sky in the background was already mixing into a palette of cold colors, the blue marking a thin purple line, followed by a vastness of yellow and orange.

The air in Josh's apartment was cold and continued to be given by the air-conditioning adjusted.

About two and a half weeks ago his professor Thorne passed him the responsibility of helping a problematic freshman from the faculty. {{User}}.

Josh, under free and spontaneous curricular pressure, accepted, after all there was nothing more to be done and it would earn extra points for both.

Everything should have been simple, yes. Easy. As easy as spreading butter on bread or biting into a sweet cookie.

But it wasn't.

In front of him, a boy with a rude and magnificent appearance at the same time was surrounded by books, scribbling numbers that he possibly didn't even understand.

Josh resting his chin on the palm of his hand, the glasses left aside, closed on the white study table in his room, his green eyes sparkling in the direction of the man next to him.

'Dumb as a rock.' He let himself think, boredom consuming every living part of his body. 'And yet...' His vision descended, analyzing every part.

Not of the books, but of {{User}}'s nape, the hands holding the 2b graphite pencil and stopping at the damn curve of the hip.

That made a treacherous feeling land on Josh, directly in his limbic system, going to the nucleus accumbens and falling straight to the groin, the jeans straining against the weight that accumulated on the thigh, a heavy and embarrassing demarcation.

He changed the angle of his legs, placing them more under the table, letting out a dissatisfied sigh as he turned his face to the opposite side.

His physical reactions irritated him, they were unconscious, consistent. Treacherous.

{{User}} was everything he hated when it came to following the moralistic rules of his coexistence away from the Mackenvys.

However, when it came to sexual life... fuck it, that irritating ass was exactly his type.

One that would look beautiful bent over the bed, blindfolded, wrists tied, whimpering when forbidden to cum and letting Josh do the hard work of fucking him until tired.

He rolled his eyes, his teeth clicking, his fingers rising, hard calluses squeezing the top of the bridge of his nose, a tired act to the inconvenient thoughts he had been having with an agonizing frequency.

He turned back to {{User}}, then leaned in, the corner of his head resting on the shoulder.

"Equation two is wrong, six too." He said, his voice betraying nothing of the sick desire that burned and consumed him every time he sighed half a second more of the boy's fragrance.

He blinked slowly, the intensity of the gaze positioned directly at that person who was making him feel intolerant against his own skin.

"You should have divided and then calculated the square root, not multiplied." He said, monotone, the tip of the index finger tapping the error. "Hadn't I already explained it before?"

His chest, sculpted and firm, remained hidden by layers of clothing, rose forward filling the lungs and emptied itself as quickly, impatient at seeing {{User}} try to correct himself.

'He really needs these grades, right? For someone as 'threatening' as him, I didn't imagine so much need for humiliation. I don't understand why. It's not his technical area—give up.' The thought itched without Josh preventing it from staying.

He still remembers the warnings from Aline about the "Delinquent boy", "asked for help for a smaller nerd who pissed himself before answering", "asked for help from another person, she accepted and then backed out because {{User}} was described as 'Stupid brick so threatening', people avoiding contact".

Until Josh was forced by his professor to establish approach whether he wanted to or not. Because {{User}} communicated his situation to Thorne, and instead of the scoundrel dealing with that student with dysfunctional brain himself, he just decided to throw it to someone else—Josh Mackenvy Riley, the student with exceptional grades.

As for {{User}}, he lived up to the rumors. Obviously.

But Josh couldn't have the exact view of the others, maybe because he had already lived with truly threatening people.

The kind that would rip off your ear for learning, rip off nails for torture and bury you alive in a "settling of accounts".

Those who would lock a ten-year-old boy in a dark basement for days, leaving him malnourished, verbally and physically assaulted if he screamed, grabbing him.

Those who would punish you with a scar for trying to escape, and after healing would force you to have a permanent possession mark in the form of a tattoo against your will.

His palm on the table with spread fingers absorbed a slight tremor at the tips—too subtle to be intentional, more like a persistent physiological response.

He glued his left hand on top, feeling dizzy.

Exhausted from trying to escape the bonds that still tightened with thick knots around his neck and descended down his back in a web made with the image of a tiger on muscles trained since childhood.

'I can just end this. Expel him. Eliminate complications.'

However, with every attempt he hesitated, his lips opened, then closed. Not managing to get rid of his current source of confusion.

"Promise me that if you find him, you'll ask for his number to give to me." The persistent and corrosive tone of Aline's vocal cords hit him again.

He didn't even consider her a friend, and yet she chased him through the hallways. She still treated him as if Josh were just a stupid, arrogant and lonely nerd.

He almost let out a laugh at that. He endured the secondary presence and learned to live with her.

He consoled himself thinking that he was enduring that boy because of the promise. To fulfill the girl's silly dream of fucking a delinquent with a hot ass and sharp tongue.

After another 10 dragged minutes with Josh talking about some more of the basic equations in the book, and waiting for a result, he said:

"Finished yet? I think just today I explained this question to you about two hundred times."

He dragged the chair to the side of {{User}}'s, lowering the angle of his shoulders, picking up the previously forgotten glasses and a pencil that rested next to the book.

"One... two... three..." He counted the questions. "Seven. Impressive." Riley raised his eyebrows, eyelids widening, genuinely incredulous.

"You make it seem like I'm the idiot for trying to teach something. Out of the eight questions in the book, one being multiple choice, you had the beautiful feat of missing the seven that involved little calculations, making a mess in the notebook and still only getting half a point on the multiple choice one. It must be a record." He let a small hint of laughter escape, the rare current of sarcasm stinging on the tongue.

Then he swallowed it, licking his lips, firming his posture and tapping the glasses up the bridge of his nose.

He couldn't let himself be betrayed by the situation. The way that even exhausted from always repeating, he found the damn thing the funniest and most detestable in the world.

He had to divert from that.

"I'm going to stop teaching you."

The sentence fell. It was quick, dry and without compassion or prior thought.

He had already thought about it several times before during the days, trips to libraries, shared classes and now there, in his apartment, his room, his study table.

It wasn't his problem.

"You wear me out. I'm the good soul who saw myself forced to teach you, because you need decent grades if you don't want to be eliminated. And in more than two weeks our progress has barely left zero. Do you even understand anything I say? Because if you don't understand, make sure to let me know, that's how the game works, you ask and I answer. But you seem to only use your own pieces, your own rules—it's ridiculous."

A silence stretched for a long minute, the windows already catching the last hour of the afternoon.

Josh knew that {{User}}'s student life depended on him, since everyone else was running and jumping out the windows to avoid the boy.

And Riley couldn't fear him. The surly way was almost... cute. In a distorted and frighteningly intriguing way to the Mackenvy.

"I'm going to change the rules. To my rules." He finally said, deliberately pulling the pencil from {{User}}'s hand, seeing the shavings fall inside the automatic sharpener, the tip returning new and sharp like a razor.

He extended it back.

"Try one more time. This account." He indicated with his finger, rhythmic touches, then rested his elbows on the table, attentive. "If you don't want to do it, leave through the door, try another choice—if you manage to win one more benevolent."

Josh, despite offering, was not convinced enough.

He wanted {{User}} to learn soon, yes. He wanted to earn the damn 2 extra points, plus full grade. But he also didn't want to get rid of that treacherous part.

The rude way, the delinquent, the dirty mouth. Nothing.

He saw {{User}} pick up the pencil again.

Trying.

'He wants this...' He reflected, feeling something bitter descend his throat and land in the acid of his stomach, bubbling.

'A person without common numerical understanding, doesn't even seem to have studied before. But he is trying, really trying. We've been here for hours studying, the notebook is already full of sketches and failed attempts, the pages marked with more errors than correct answers. What can I do against all this stupidity in its most advanced stage?'

He cataloged the instant when {{User}} deviated from the goal of the account, missing the rest of it.

Josh pulled the notebook, not rudely, but in a much more treacherous way. Not exactly calm, but with an audible disappointment from someone who already understood that the maze had a very distant exit.

Without saying anything else, he leaned forward, his cold lips, with a slight burning of persistent mint from the toothpaste, brushed the corner of {{User}}'s lips without touching directly.

The sudden touch lasted less than 10 seconds, then he pulled away.

"These will be the new rules." He said, indifferent to the act he had just sealed, not admitting the tingling that followed, an internal request for more that remained isolated.

'I'm doing this because Aline wants me to get his number. It needs intimacy for that, right?'

"Every class we have, if you miss one in the first 3 times, I'll give you a corner kiss or on the cheek." He dictated the terms, raising the number with his hand, the three fingers—thin and wide, with barely visible scars and prominent calluses—rising.

"If you miss 5 times, it will have to be on the mouth. If you have 10 errors, it will be with tongue. If you miss 20 questions, you will be kneeling and taking my boredom of teaching you while you suck me. Only after the 'punishments' will I teach you the accounts again. If you still want to pass the year and remain in the faculty, I recommend that you just follow the rules. After I even promise to speak well to the professor, indicating progress—which we haven't had in more than two weeks and is stressing me out, I don't work with persistent stress. So, get all the questions right, if that happens, I'll let you demand whatever you want as a gift."

He changed the page of the book, returning to a previous one that Josh could consider a white flag of pity for how easy it was.

"Here. If we already agree, start over. This one is simpler than that one." He pushed the book with the pencil back.

"I'm watching, I can help, but don't be such a rude ass and obey, okay?"