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Baz is on the farthest settee, half-propped, head back against the brown leather. He’s wearing his coat buttoned up to his neck since the only shirt he has has been compromised. At least the coat doesn’t show the blood anymore after I wiped it off.

His skin is the color of fog. Not as bad as when I pulled him out of the Midnight Classroom but grey enough that I know he felt my absence in a terrible way.

I walk over to him, trying not to hurry, and sit beside him on the settee. Not touching.

Slowly the color comes back into his face, his cheeks going pink.

He opens his eyes and he looks at me in a daze that slowly fades. He doesn’t smile, perhaps he’s too tired, but his hand finds the edge of the settee between us and his smallest finger touches my smallest finger and stays there.

“Well, hello,” he says quietly.

“Well, hello.”

Then he looks over at Hetch who is eyeing us both over his drink as he talks to the other professor in hushed tones. I straighten up and pull my hand away, suddenly aware that it’s not usual to have a student in this lounge.

“I wanted to talk to you about the grade you gave me in Bone Work,” I say, loud enough so that Hetch can hear.

“Yes,” Baz says, clearing his throat and shifting into professor mode. “Of course. Like I told you, Greythorn, there isn’t anything you can do but try harder next time.”

“Regardless, I still feel you are overlooking the effort I put into it.”

We talk like that for a while, playing the part, until the green glows around us and his vitality seems fully restored, and Hetch and the others have stopped paying any attention to us.

Eventually we get up under the pretense of me showing him my work in the crypts (though I suppose that alone might seem suspicious) and we exit the lounge, walking side by side down the long corridor back toward my wing, the tether buzzing between us.

The door of my room closes behind us and we both exhale loudly in unison.

He goes to the bed and sits down while I lock the door then take my place beside him.

Neither of us speaks for a while.

“You can’t go back to your teachers quarters tonight,” I say.

“I know. But I’m not sleeping in your bed either.”

“If you say something about not wanting to put me in a position, I am going to lose what little composure I have left.”

He looks at me, opens his mouth and then closes it, deciding the argument isn’t worth it.

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

“I’ll sleep in the bed.” He pauses. “And I won’t touch you.”

I swallow. You can touch me if you want.

But no, no I’m still mad at him deep down and besides, I’m the one in the power position here. He’ll literally die again without me and frankly I don’t know if I have what it takes to retrieve him again.

“We will be very civilized about this and we’ll have to pretend this is not the strangest situation two people have ever been in, agreed?”

“Agreed.”

The agreement lasts until roughly the middle of the night.

I don’t know when I turn, nor do I know when he turns. I just know the room is dark and the quilt that I had placed between us like a makeshift wall is somehow no longer between us, and that when I wake up I’m lying on my side with my back pressed to his chest, and his arm is slack and heavy across my waist, and his breath is warm at the back of my neck. The chartreuse tether between our chests is bright and steady.

I close my eyes again, letting myself enjoy the feel of him there, the warmth as he holds me in sleep, and the last thing I notice before I’m under again is that the chartreuse at my chest is pulsing in time with his breath, not mine.