The sound of footsteps filtered through the stacks. Malik and Lincoln froze, then each bent toward a different row, pretending to scan book spines. The footfalls receded. A voice called out, sing-song, echoing in the hush.
“Closing up in ten, stragglers!”
Malik caught Lincoln’s eye. Lincoln’s lips curled upward, almost a smile, before his gaze flicked to the floor. Then Lincoln did something unexpected. He reached for Malik’s hand, squeezed hard, then let go before either could process it.
They left through different aisles, reconvening at the lobby. Malik’s phone buzzed in his pocket; he fished it out, thumbed the lock screen. A text from Tyrus, his brother.
Tyrus:Details on the job offer attached, call when you’re free.
Malik stared at the screen, felt the aftershock of the evening settle in. He looked up. Lincoln had already reached the doors, holding one open with a steady hand. Malik pocketed the phone, walked brisk to catch up.
Outside, the night air was icy. Malik inhaled deep, lungs aching from the contrast. The cold did nothing to dull the want still firing through his body. He wondered if Lincoln felt the same, or if the man had already built a new compartment for it, filed and locked away.
They started down the path together, silence companionable now. Lincoln’s gait was measured, but every so often his shoulder grazed Malik’s, a contact neither man apologized for. Halfway across the quad, Lincoln stopped. He looked at Malik, searching again. Malik shook his head, barely a movement.Not now, the gesture said.
Lincoln seemed to accept that. He started walking again, more slowly this time. Malik matched his pace. When they reached the edge of the quad, Lincoln’s hand brushed Malik’s. This time, Malik took it, entwining their fingers.
They walked the rest of the way like that. Two men, side by side, no more distance between them. Tomorrow would bring questions, consequences, maybe even regret.
But for tonight, Malik allowed himself this. The heat of Lincoln’s palm, steady and real, the certainty that whatever elsehappened, neither of them would ever be alone in the archives again.
Chapter 3
February 13th | 7:00 AM
Lincoln
Lincoln opened his eyes to a stripe of light slicing across the ceiling. The guest room curtain filtered the sun, turning it gray before it reached the walls of his bedroom. He was alone in his bed, the sheets cold everywhere his body wasn’t touching, but the door to the adjoining room stood slightly ajar. A jagged line of shadow in the gray morning.
Through that narrow gap, he could hear the heavy, rhythmic shift of Malik in the other bed. Malik was only ten feet away, separated by a thin panel of wood.
He was certain Malik would have slept in the same bed with him last night if he’d asked, but they’d already crossed a boundary they shouldn’t have yesterday.
His skin still registered the shape of Malik’s hand. The phantom weight of a wrist, the roughness where Malik’s thumb had rubbed up and down his ribs against the cold metal of the stacks.
He shifted, his own bedsprings complaining in the quiet house. Lincoln pressed his lips together and waited, listening for any change in the breathing from the next room. It remained steady. Malik was still asleep, his presence filling the adjoining space with a gravity Lincoln could feel through the ajar door.
Lincoln’s own body ran tight, not from fear of discovery by the world, but from the fact of being discovered at all. Even by the man in the next room. His cock ached, the tension translating up his spine and out through his stiff neck and shoulders.
He sat up, legs over the side, toes digging into the threadbare carpet, then bare wood. The cold surprised him. For a second, helet his hands dangle between his knees, head bent. He wanted to blame the ache on age, or the desperate friction they’d managed in the stacks, but the truth was deeper. The library hadn’t been an ending. It had been a beginning he wasn’t prepared to manage.
He stood and moved to the dresser. In the second drawer, he found clean underwear folded on top. Proof of how Malik had quietly integrated into the household to keep the ruse of their engagement alive. The movement of pulling them on scraped the fabric over his sensitized skin.
He forced himself to move fast. No lingering, no fantasy replay of the way Malik had looked at him while commanding him to look at him. He buttoned his shirt quick, found his pants, and shoved one leg through before he realized he’d grabbed yesterday’s pair. The waistband cut into his hips in a way he didn’t recognize.
He slipped into the hall, pointedly not looking through the crack of the connecting door. The stairs creaked under his weight. At the bottom, the kitchen greeted him with the burnt smell of coffee from the cheap drip machine.
He poured a cup. Steam smacked his face, a reminder he was still alive and not a figure in a cautionary tale. Lincoln sipped, the bitterness scraping at the soft places inside his mouth. He leaned against the counter and waited for the guilt to arrive, but it was overshadowed by a twisting low in his gut. A hunger that the coffee couldn’t touch.
He managed to avoid Malik all morning. Even snuck out of his childhood home when he finally heard him get up. Lincoln drove to campus with the window cracked an inch, the heater running on high.
He parked in the faculty lot, wiped his hands dry on his slacks, and walked toward the symposium hall. Inside, the air had a wet-wool smell. The name badge station looked like ithad been raided by hungover undergrads, lanyards tangled in a heap.
Lincoln’s badge still hung crooked around his neck. He straightened it as he wove through the atrium, and headed for the main lecture room. Academics clustered in knots, voices raised to compete with the crowd.
The names drifted past, each one a history lesson he’d rather skip. He nodded at Monique, one of Emmy’s colleagues, who smiled back and scanned him up and down.
“Rough morning?”
