I hold a key in the dark. Press it into my leg through the pocket until the teeth leave marks. The brass warming against my skin. The marks it leaves: proof that I was here, proof that he wanted me, proof that exists only in the dark where nobody’s allowed to look.
Nobody’s looking. And that’s the whole of it.
Three weeks.
Twenty-one days of the office door staying open, of that focus passing over me in the corridor like I’m furniture.
I know because I’ve been counting. The pen that stops mid-sentence when I walk past his door. How he angles his body towards the window when I’m in the room, as if the car park is suddenly fascinating.
Tuesday. Two forty-five. Half the department is in a seminar downstairs. I checked the timetable on the noticeboard. Casually. The way one casually memorises a building’s schedule for no reason.
The book I’m holding is real. Grimmett and Stirzaker,Probability and Random Processes. I borrowed it from the library three weeks ago when I still thought I’d use it as a prop only once. Turns out props have a longer run than expected.
His door is open. He’s marking—red pen, papers fanned across the desk, glasses on, the posture of a man using admin as a wall. His sleeves are rolled to the elbow. One fold. Two.
My feet stop before I tell them to.
Light from the window catches the line of his forearm.
Move. Walk in, be normal.
‘Dr Haldrey.’ I hold up the book. ‘You recommended it week three.’
He looks up, and the pen stops. He parses the words before speaking, before his expression does the thing, the fractional widening.
‘The convergence section was good.’ I’m already inside. My hip against the doorframe. ‘Chapter seven. The way he handles the contradiction proofs.’
‘Ewan.’
I step in and close the door.
The click.
The pen hits the desk. Not placed, dropped.
He’s out of the chair. Two steps. His fist in my shirt, the fabric bunching, and he kisses me before I can finish. His tongue and his grip and his body pressing me into the bookshelf.
He bites.
A knock.
We freeze.
Warmth still hovers inches from my cock. My hand is on his cheek. The desk is at a different angle than it was five minutes ago, and his glasses are halfway down his nose, and the knock comes again, sharper, and we move faster than I knew either of us could.
He back to his desk. Sitting, glasses straightened, pen ready. I’m zipped, buckled, shirt tucked, leaning against the bookshelf with Grimmett and Stirzaker in my grip like a student asking a question about chapter seven.
Two seconds, maybe three. We’re good. We’re professionals.
He opens the door.
The colleague. Her. She’s holding a folder—the expression of someone formulating theories about why she had to knock twice.
‘Department meeting in ten.’ She looks past him. Sees me. Her eyes do a calculation, and I read it.
‘I’ll be right there.’ His voice is perfect. Steady, even, every bolt tightened.
She nods. Her eyes return to me. Observant, not hostile, not suspicious. Filing.
