Chapter 2

The seminar room smelled like damp paper and expensive cologne.

Noah took the same seat he always did — second row from the back, nearest the window, where the morning light fell in slanted bars across the wooden desks. The discussion today was already in motion when he arrived, and he was grateful for it. He could fade in, invisible as breath on glass.

Professor Marek was talking about obsession in literature — again. Or maybe it was longing. Or rot. With him, it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began.

"Desire doesn't always announce itself," he was saying. "Sometimes it just waits. Watches. Finds the smallest crack and waits for the weather to do the rest."

Noah let the words blur.

He was flipping through the assigned novel — a thin, creased paperback with an unsettling cover — when the door opened.

The room didn't go silent. Not quite. But it shifted, like something under the surface had realigned.

They walked in without speaking. Elián first this time, head bowed slightly, notebook already in hand. Adrian followed — expression flat, gaze straight ahead, movements unnervingly smooth.

They weren't late enough to be disruptive. Just late enough to be noticed.

Noah didn't look at them. Not directly.

But he felt it — the pull.

They took their usual seats near the window. Elián leaned forward, elbow on the desk, eyes flicking to the board and back to his paper. Adrian didn't open a book. He just sat. Still. Like the room would orbit him if he waited long enough.

Professor Marek continued as if nothing had happened.

"The difference between want and need," he said, "is how much it hurts when it's denied."

Noah wrote the words down, though he wasn't sure why.

Twenty minutes later, the professor called for a group breakout — clusters of three or four to discuss a passage. Chairs scraped. Pages shuffled.

Noah's group was three girls he didn't know and a boy who kept checking his phone. He said nothing. They didn't ask him to. The voices around him blurred into white noise.

Until something changed.

A pause in the air. A breath misaligned.

Noah looked up, instinctively.

Elián was watching him.

Not obviously. Not directly. Just... from beneath his lashes, head tilted slightly, eyes dark and unreadable. A glance that felt like a finger sliding beneath his collar.

Noah looked away. Pretended to focus on the passage in front of him.

When class ended, everyone rose at once. Coats, backpacks, laughter. The usual rhythm.

Noah stayed seated a moment longer, letting the room clear. When he finally stood and stepped into the aisle, Adrian passed behind him.

Close.

Too close.

The barest brush of fabric against his shoulder.

No words.

Just heat, and stillness, and the feeling of being clocked — not by someone who had noticed him, but by someone who had chosen him.

He didn't turn around.

He just left.

The hallway outside the seminar room exhaled bodies in all directions.

Students poured out in clusters — coats flung over shoulders, boots wet with melted snow, voices too loud for the enclosed stone corridor. The walls, yellowed with age and cracked in places, seemed to bend slightly under the weight of everyone needing to be somewhere else.

Noah drifted sideways, letting himself get carried by the current rather than pushing through it. His hands were in his pockets, shoulders hunched, eyes half-fixed on the scuffed tiles beneath him.

He hated this part. The after-class theatre of pretending to belong somewhere.

Someone bumped his arm without apology. Another student's bag clipped his hip. He winced but said nothing.

He ducked into a small alcove at the end of the hall — a recess between a trophy case and a darkened classroom door. There, he paused. Just for a breath. Just for space.

He pulled out his phone. Checked it. Nothing.

He didn't know whether he wanted a message or silence. Both felt like traps.

The crowd began to thin. Voices faded.

And then—

A figure passed near the edge of his vision. Too close. Close enough to feel the movement in the air.

A hand brushed against his coat, not enough to jolt — just enough to be noticed. Followed by a voice, smooth and strangely intimate:

"You have a way of disappearing in plain sight."

Noah turned, throat tight.

Elián was already a few steps ahead, walking slowly down the corridor like nothing had happened. He didn't glance back, didn't smile, didn't break stride. His scarf hung loose around his neck, one end caught in the breeze from the open stairwell window.

Noah's mouth parted slightly, as if to speak, but nothing came out.

Behind Elián — a few paces back — Adrian followed.

His expression was unreadable, but his eyes flicked toward Noah with an intensity that felt like being marked. Not acknowledged. Not greeted. Just marked.

Then both were gone, swallowed by the bend in the corridor and the weight of moving feet.

Noah stood where he was, phone still in his hand, as the silence closed in again.

He replayed the line once in his mind. Then twice.

Not what he said — but how he'd said it.

Casual. Certain.

Like it had been decided long before Elián spoke it aloud.

Like Noah had already been noticed — long before he realized.

**************

The kitchen smelled like garlic and something vaguely citrus — not quite lemon, not quite lime. Something sharper. Something that didn't belong in a kitchen but worked anyway.

Noah leaned against the counter, arms crossed loosely, half-listening to the rain tap at the windows like someone too polite to knock hard. The pane was fogged with condensation. Streetlights outside glowed gold and dull, their reflections swimming in the puddles below.

Behind him, Emrys stood at the stove wielding a wooden spoon like a scepter. They were barefoot, again, in pajama pants covered in tiny knives and a cropped band tee so faded the lettering looked ancient.

"You cook," Noah said, because it was the kind of sentence that didn't require emotional investment.

"Unfortunately," Emrys replied, stirring the pot like it owed them money. "It's a compulsion. A trauma response. Also a seductive art form, though I'm not using it on you, so don't panic. You radiate sexual panic."

Noah blinked.

Emrys turned around dramatically, spoon in hand. "That look. Right there. That's why I didn't offer wine. You'd either cry or commit to an existential spiral mid-sip. I'm not built for either."

Noah shook his head faintly and looked back at the window.

It was fogged. He wiped the corner with his sleeve and saw only the dark curve of the street. A lone bike chained to a wrought iron fence. A woman walking her dog, coat pulled tight.

"Big day?" Emrys asked, spoon clicking against the edge of the pot.

"Class," Noah said.

"Sexy."

"No."

Emrys snorted and turned the heat off. "Well. Sit. Eat. Hate yourself later."

They plated the food with a flourish — two bowls of something steaming and vaguely expensive-smelling. Noah took his without thanks, but with just enough eye contact to suggest he wasn't ungrateful. Emrys accepted it like a victory.

They sat at the chipped kitchen table, which wobbled slightly unless you pressed your knee against the right leg — which Noah did.

"I saw the look," Emrys said after a few bites. "After class. You looked like someone had slipped a knife behind your ribs and whispered something about poetry."

Noah said nothing.

"They spoke to you."

Noah didn't nod. Didn't blink. Just kept eating, slowly.

Emrys smiled without warmth. "I'm right."

"He said something weird," Noah admitted, quietly.

"Let me guess: poetic and emotionally invasive."

"He said... I disappear in plain sight."

Emrys whistled. "That's very Elián."

"You say that like it's a type of weather."

"It is. Brief, atmospheric, and likely to ruin someone's weekend."

Noah pushed a noodle around his bowl.

Emrys leaned forward, serious now. "Let me tell you a story. Or two."

Noah didn't stop them.

"Third year — girl named Callie. Quiet. Studied sculpture. One day, she starts seeing Adrian. Or maybe Elián. It was never clear. No one saw them together, but she changed. She stopped going to critiques. Started using darker materials. Her final piece was a full-size marble sculpture of two bodies melting into one. She vanished before the exhibit opened. Left a note that said 'I remember too much.' That's all."

Noah's stomach tightened.

"Second year," Emrys went on, voice softer now. "Boy named Jules. He lived in this building. You'd have liked him — tragic, poetic, always dressed like a funeral guest. He used to write these devastating little sonnets. Then one day, he stopped. Claimed the twins made him 'too visible.' Said he couldn't bear the sound of his own name after Elián said it in bed."

Noah looked up, sharply.

"Oh, yeah. It got that far," Emrys said lightly, but their eyes were watchful now. "He still calls Elián's name when he gets drunk. Once I found him reciting Baudelaire into a puddle."

Noah swallowed.

"They don't date," Emrys added. "They devour. That's the rumor, anyway."

Noah leaned back in his chair. "And you're telling me this because?"

Emrys tilted their head. "Because you're quiet, and quiet people are the easiest to open. You're already halfway peeled."

Noah's voice dropped. "I didn't ask them to notice me."

"They didn't," Emrys said, just as quiet. "They picked you. That's different."

The kitchen filled with the soft clink of fork against porcelain. The speaker on the counter fizzed and died. Emrys didn't move to fix it.

After a long silence, they stood and took both bowls to the sink.

"You think I'm being dramatic," Emrys said, rinsing the dishes.

"I think you enjoy making things sound like horror stories."

"They are horror stories," Emrys said. "They're just wearing cashmere now."

Water gurgled down the drain. Garlic lingered in the air like a warning.

Emrys turned and gave him one last look — something strangely tender behind the sarcasm.

"They're not in love with people," they said. "They're in love with patterns. And you're already part of one."

Then they disappeared down the hall.

Noah stayed at the table, watching the rain streak down the window like claw marks.

**************

The library was too quiet.

Not the comforting kind of quiet, but the pressed-down hush of a cathedral — reverent, watchful, a little suspicious. The kind of silence that made you check your own breathing. The space smelled like old paper and dry stone, warmed slightly by radiator heat that clicked and hissed at irregular intervals.

Noah wandered the stacks without purpose.

He hadn't intended to come here. But his lecture had ended early, and his flat felt too small, and his head too loud. The rain had let up just long enough to tempt him across the square.

Now he stood in the narrowest aisle, surrounded by dusty journals and anthologies too niche for anyone to bother stealing.

He ran his fingers along the spines, mostly unread. Something about the weight of knowledge in here felt comforting — or at least distracting. Books didn't demand things. They waited. Quiet. Unmoving. Unlike people.

His hand paused over a faded publication bound in cloth. Éther – Student Literary & Visual Arts Review: Volume XXVI. The cover had no art, just hand-stamped gold letters on charcoal-grey linen. He pulled it from the shelf.

It opened somewhere in the middle, pages soft and yellowing, thick with the scent of time.

A photograph stopped him.

Black and white. Grainy. Shot from behind. Two boys seated on a windowsill, backs leaning toward one another. One head tilted slightly, just enough for a cheekbone to catch the light. Shoulders almost touching.

He didn't have to see their faces to know who they were.

Adrian and Elián.

There was something disturbing about the symmetry of the image. Something too balanced. Like the photographer hadn't caught them off guard — but rather, they had posed without needing to be asked. Without moving. As if they'd always been that way.

Beneath the photo, someone had written a caption by hand:

Never apart. Not even in sleep.

Noah stared at it for a long time.

The caption was in a feminine script — delicate, careful, with a curl to the f's that looked vaguely performative. As if someone had tried to write something intimate and failed. Or succeeded too well.

He didn't realize he was tearing the page out until it was already in his coat pocket.

The book went back on the shelf.

He left the aisle and made his way down the long hall, passing oil portraits of long-dead deans and scholars with names no one said aloud anymore. His footsteps echoed despite the carpet.

As he pushed through the heavy doors into the cold afternoon, he touched the paper again — still folded in his pocket.

Still warm.

The city after dark wasn't silent. Just still in a way that felt... calculated.

Noah walked slowly, the collar of his coat turned up, breath misting faintly in front of him. The sky above was colorless — not black, not gray, just blank, like it had been erased. Fog clung to the lower parts of the street, hugging lamp posts and curling under benches like it was hiding something.

His boots echoed over the stones — not loudly, but just enough that the sound didn't feel like his alone.

He paused at a narrow crossing, a lightless intersection between two alleys. Glanced behind him.

Nothing.

Just the long throat of the road disappearing into shadow, a single bike locked to a railing, its frame dripping from the earlier rain.

He moved on, hand slipping into the pocket of his coat. His fingers found the folded page — the photo he'd torn from the archive — and pressed it flat against his palm. The paper felt fragile. Still warm. He told himself that was absurd.

Half a block from his flat, the quiet began to change.

Not noise. Not exactly.

But presence.

That sick little intuition that someone was behind him. Not directly behind, not close enough to touch — but there. Like the moment in a dream when you realize you're being watched but can't turn fast enough to prove it.

Noah stopped walking.

The air tightened.

He turned his head slowly.

The street was empty.

But the light — the way it bent — the shadows—

He told himself it was nothing. Just nerves. A story Emrys had told too vividly. Too late at night.

He crossed the street toward his building, keeping to the edge of the curb where the stones were more even. His key was already in his hand. The door came into view — ivy curling up the sides, paint peeling at the frame. A streetlamp buzzed overhead, flickering in and out like it was breathing through its teeth.

Then—

Movement.

Not close.

Far enough to doubt.

Two figures stood at the bend in the street. Down the hill. Where the fog gathered thickest. Just beneath the flicker of a dying lamp.

Noah didn't need their faces to know who they were.

They didn't move.

They didn't speak.

They didn't look at him.

But they stood too close. Not touching — but close enough that their outlines bled together in the mist.

One slightly taller. One slightly slouched. Perfect in their symmetry. The photo in his pocket felt suddenly heavier.

Noah stood at the door, one hand on the key, the other still in his coat.

He didn't breathe.

Didn't blink.

Just stood there, spine straightening against some instinct that told him not to show fear. Not to run. Not to acknowledge something until it acknowledges you first.

But they didn't need to speak to be loud.

Didn't need to move to chase him.

The key turned in the lock with a dull click.

He slipped inside, shut the door behind him, and pressed his back to it for a second longer than necessary.

The hallway was quiet. A single light buzzed above. From the far end, Emrys's voice drifted faintly — humming something half-forgotten. Water ran from a faucet. A kettle clicked.

The apartment was warm.

But Noah's skin wasn't.