orphic; (adj.) mysterious and entrancing, beyond ordinary understanding.
─── 013. the aftermath.
-> summary: when you, a final-year student at the grove, get assigned to study under anaxagoras—one of the legendary seven sages—you know things are about to get interesting. but as the weeks go by, the line between correlation and causation starts to blur, and the more time you spend with professor anaxagoras, the more drawn to him you become in ways you never expected. the rules of the academy are clear, and the risks are an unfortunate possibility, but curiosity is a dangerous thing. and maybe, just maybe, some risks are worth taking. after all, isn’t every great discovery just a leap of faith?
-> pairing: anaxa x gn!reader.
-> tropes: professor x student, slow burn, forbidden romance.
-> wc: 5k.
-> warnings: potential hsr spoilers from TB mission: "Light Slips the Gate, Shadow Greets the Throne" (3.1 update). main character is written to be 21+ years of age, at the very least. (anaxa is written to be around 26-27 years of age.) swearing, mature themes, suggestive content.
-> a/n: hi. im sorry.
-> prev. || next.
-> orphic; the masterlist.
The dinner unraveled slowly, with the peculiar reluctance of academic gatherings that had long since exhausted their official purpose yet continued to sustain themselves through smaller conversations, each unwilling to concede that the evening had reached its natural conclusion. Candles had burned low in their brass holders. Empty wine glasses lingered between abandoned notebooks, and the old refectory, so animated only an hour before, had begun to recover something of the quiet it must have known long before conferences and symposia had claimed it for themselves.
You had spoken when courtesy required it.
No more than that.
Several people had attempted, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, to revisit the afternoon's discussion. They congratulated you on the presentation, praised the elegance of your formalism, confessed that they had never considered identity from quite that perspective before. Others spoke only of Anaxagoras' lecture, still caught somewhere between admiration and disbelief, attempting to decide whether they had witnessed a breakthrough or the beginning of another academic schism.
You answered where politeness demanded an answer.
You smiled where silence would have been conspicuous.
Nothing in your replies was dishonest.
None of them were complete.
It became increasingly easy to disappear as the evening progressed. Conversations folded naturally around those with stronger opinions or louder voices, and eventually your presence ceased to attract notice altogether. There was a strange relief in that. After spending the afternoon beneath the attention of an auditorium, anonymity felt almost medicinal.
When the first groups finally began to disperse, you reached for your satchel with something approaching gratitude.
Kira appeared beside you before you had managed more than a single step away from the table.
"There you are."
The words were quiet enough not to disturb those still talking nearby. She glanced briefly across the room — not searching for anyone in particular, merely confirming that departures had become acceptable — before settling her attention back upon you.
You nodded.
There was very little else to say.
She had watched the symposium. She had watched the dinner. Whatever questions had occupied her throughout the evening possessed the rare good sense to wait until they belonged somewhere other than a room full of colleagues.
"Ready?"
Together, you drifted toward the doorway, joining the slow current of scholars filtering beneath the cloister arches. Rain had fallen while you were inside. Not heavily, but with enough patience to darken the stone and fill the courtyard with fractured reflections of lantern light.
For the first time since the symposium, you allowed yourself to believe the day was over.
That illusion lasted only until a familiar voice carried quietly across the room.
"If I may."
It was neither loud nor commanding.
Indeed, had anyone else spoken with the same restraint, the words might have disappeared beneath the surrounding conversation altogether. Yet there was something about Anaxagoras that had always rendered volume unnecessary. His voice possessed the peculiar quality of inviting attention rather than demanding it, and before you had consciously decided to stop, your footsteps had already slowed.
Kira turned first.
Anaxagoras had left the conversation in which he had been engaged with such unobtrusive courtesy that it was difficult to identify the precise moment he had excused himself. One of the senior philosophers continued speaking, only gradually realizing that the audience he intended had quietly withdrawn. Anaxagoras, meanwhile, crossed the room without haste, his expression composed, though not with the effortless certainty that had accompanied him throughout the symposium. Whatever occupied his thoughts now belonged to a different order entirely, one less suited to lecture halls than to unanswered questions.
When he reached the two of you, his attention settled first upon Kira.
"I hope you'll forgive the interruption."
There was nothing perfunctory about the apology. He offered it with the same careful precision he afforded every unnecessary courtesy, acknowledging without embellishment that he was asking for something which, under ordinary circumstances, would have been unreasonable.
"I wished to speak with them."
He did not look at you until the sentence had ended.
Not because he hesitated, but because the request was never Kira's to answer.
Silence settled between the three of you, lasting only a few seconds before Kira's gaze shifted almost imperceptibly in your direction. She had known you long enough to recognize that this decision could not be made for you. Whatever had transpired between the symposium and the dinner had left its mark plainly enough that even she, who knew almost none of its particulars, understood instinctively that refusing was as legitimate an answer as accepting.
"I'll head on up," she said at last, adjusting the strap of her bag against her shoulder. "Take your time."
There was no encouragement in the words, nor any attempt to reassure either of you that this conversation ought to happen. They acknowledged only what was already true: that it belonged to the two of you alone.
You watched her disappear beneath the archway, the rain swallowing first her footsteps and then her silhouette until only the courtyard remained, silvered beneath the evening light.
The quiet she left behind felt different from the silence that had accompanied the symposium.
There, silence belonged to an audience.
Lanternlight fractured across the wet stone, each ripple dissolving almost as soon as it formed, and Anaxagoras found himself watching them with an attention that was entirely artificial. Ordinarily, the two of you had never required a beginning. Conversations possessed a curious tendency to resume wherever they had last been abandoned, as though weeks of interruption amounted to nothing more than a comma misplaced within the same sentence.
Tonight, he could not determine where the sentence had ended.
"I've been considering your presentation."
His voice entered the quiet without disturbing it. It carried none of the ease with which he had addressed the symposium that afternoon, stripped instead to the careful precision of someone attempting to identify the premise from which an error had propagated unnoticed.
"There is something I don't believe I understood."
You regarded him without speaking.
"When you concluded..." He paused, not searching for words so much as arranging them into the least misleading order. "It occurred to me that your objections were no longer confined to the theory itself."
The observation lingered between you.
"I wondered whether I had misunderstood your argument."
For several moments, you offered no reply.
Not because the question was difficult, but because it arrived from a direction you had not anticipated. Throughout dinner you had rehearsed versions of this conversation in increasingly futile cycles, each beginning with an apology that would never be spoken or a justification you suspected you would never accept. None had begun with him asking whether he had misunderstood you.
A quiet breath escaped you.
"...Misunderstood."
The word rested uneasily on your tongue before you allowed yourself a faint, humourless smile.
"I suppose that's one way of putting it."
He waited.
It had always been one of the qualities you admired most in him. Once Anaxagoras asked a genuine question, he rarely interrupted its answer. He listened with the same intensity other people reserved for speaking, as though every sentence possessed the potential to overturn the ones that had preceded it.
"You've spent the evening trying to determine whether you misunderstood my presentation."
You nodded absently, more to yourself than to him.
"I've spent it trying to determine whether I understood yours."
The remark settled softly between you, almost conversational in its delivery, yet something in its construction caused him to look more closely.
"I thought I understood the argument," you continued. "At least, I thought I did while you were giving it. The mathematics followed. The logic was... characteristically difficult to argue with. Every conclusion emerged exactly where it ought to have emerged, provided one accepted the premise."
A small laugh escaped you.
"I simply hadn't appreciated that the premise was going to erase half of my own work."
You spoke the sentence with detachment, as though discussing the consequences of someone else's research rather than your own.
"It was remarkably efficient, really."
Your attention drifted towards the rain.
"I've been trying to reconstruct the framework ever since."
"The strange thing is... the more I did, the less I understood yours."
Anaxagoras remained silent.
Not out of discomfort.
Because there was nothing yet requiring correction.
"I keep arriving at the same conclusion."
You smiled again, though it possessed none of the lightness ordinarily attached to the expression.
"It didn’t survive."
Another pause.
"The continuity assumption is untenable if identity is treated as historical rather than state-dependent. Once you demonstrated that, everything downstream collapsed with it. The recursive model no longer closes. The developmental proofs become circular. The copy problem ceases to be a paradox because there was never a stable identity to preserve in the first place."
Your shoulders lifted almost imperceptibly before settling again.
"It was beautifully done."
There was no accusation in the compliment.
If anything, that seemed to trouble him more.
"I had not intended—"
"I know."
You spared him the completion of the sentence.
"I know you weren't trying to dismantle my work."
"I know that wasn't the point."
The certainty with which you answered left no room for misunderstanding.
"I don't believe you walked into that auditorium intending to humiliate me."
Your gaze lowered briefly, following the rain as it threaded through the worn channels carved into the stone centuries before either of you had existed.
"The strange thing is..."
You considered the words for a moment.
"...I'm not even sure 'humiliated' is the right word."
Silence settled once more.
"I've been trying to find the correct one all evening."
Your brow furrowed thoughtfully.
"'Destroyed' feels melodramatic."
"'Refuted' is too ordinary."
"'Disproved' misses the point entirely."
A quiet breath.
"'Disrupted'..."
You repeated the word almost experimentally before shaking your head.
"No."
Your eyes met his again.
"...That's much too gentle."
For a time, neither of you spoke. Somewhere beyond the arcade, another group of scholars departed with the easy laughter of people still occupied by arguments that would comfortably survive until breakfast. It occurred to you, with no particular satisfaction, that only a few hours earlier you would almost certainly have been among them. Had the symposium ended differently, the two of you would already have been halfway through dismantling each other's conclusions over coffee that had long since gone cold, covering the margins of conference programmes with diagrams neither of you intended to keep.
Instead, there was this.
Anaxagoras regarded the courtyard for some time before speaking again, not because he sought refuge in silence, but because he had always believed words ought to arrive only after thought had exhausted itself. When they finally came, they possessed the same careful certainty with which he approached every proposition that mattered.
"I hadn't intended to leave the discussion unresolved."
You looked at him without answering.
"I believed," he continued, "that further conversation immediately afterwards would have been... inappropriate."
The word settled strangely between you.
He seemed to notice it himself.
"I had challenged your theory’s central premise before that same audience. Whatever intellectual value the exchange would have possessed, I did not think pursuing it privately while the symposium was still unfolding would have been welcome."
He paused, considering the thought as though testing it for weaknesses before offering the conclusion that had followed.
"I assumed you would prefer time. Some things are difficult to hear before you're ready to reach them yourself."
For a moment, you simply watched him.
It was an oddly familiar sensation, the one that accompanied discovering an unnoticed flaw in a proof you had considered complete. The conclusion itself was not impossible. Every step that produced it could be followed without difficulty. Yet the final result remained so profoundly incompatible with reality that your mind refused, almost on instinct, to accept it.
"...Time."
The word emerged quietly enough that it scarcely resembled a reply.
"...To reach it myself."
You repeated the phrase beneath your breath, not because you doubted you'd heard him correctly, but because you were trying to understand how those words could possibly describe the day you had lived.
A laugh escaped you before you could prevent it.
"You thought..."
The sentence dissolved almost as soon as it had begun.
You tried again.
"You genuinely believed I wanted to be left alone to figure it out for myself."
"I believed some conclusions become yours only if no one hands them to you."
There it was again.
Not apology.
Not indifference.
Instruction.
Or rather, the peculiar restraint that had always governed the way he taught.
Simply the most reasonable conclusion available to someone reasoning from premises entirely different from your own.
For reasons you could not immediately explain, that hurt more than anything he had said during the symposium.
You had prepared yourself for defensiveness. For an insistence that the lecture had been necessary, or that truth carried obligations beyond personal sentiment, or even for the detached assurance with which he occasionally defended conclusions that admitted no compromise.
Instead, he had treated your pain the way he treated every difficult idea: something he believed could not simply be explained, only reached.
Just consideration directed toward a person you scarcely recognised.
"I don't understand," you said, almost to yourself.
"I spent the entire afternoon assuming..."
The thought refused to complete itself.
No.
Not assuming.
Expecting.
You had expected him.
"I kept thinking I'd find you."
Your voice had grown quieter without your noticing.
The places surfaced one after another, not as evidence assembled for an argument but as memories that had spent hours looking for somewhere to belong.
"I walked between buildings telling myself you must have been caught by someone else. That one conversation had become another, and another after that. Every time I reached somewhere you weren't, it seemed perfectly reasonable to think I'd simply missed you."
You smiled faintly.
It disappeared almost before it had formed.
"It never once occurred to me that you weren't there because you thought I wanted you not to be."
Until that moment, the disagreement had remained comfortably philosophical. Premises. Structures. Consequences. Ideas could survive contradiction. They always had.
This, somehow, could not.
Anaxagoras' expression altered almost imperceptibly.
"I believed," he said slowly, "that seeking you out would have imposed further."
You closed your eyes for a brief moment.
When you spoke again, the sarcasm had almost entirely vanished, leaving behind something quieter, worn smooth by repetition.
"You keep saying what you thought."
The words no longer carried the quiet irony with which the conversation had begun. Somewhere between the symposium and the rain-soaked cloister, sarcasm had exhausted itself. What remained was something more difficult to sustain because it no longer possessed the comfortable distance of philosophy. Every attempt to return the discussion to premises and proofs found itself drawn instead toward the months that had preceded them, toward evenings spent arguing over questions neither of you had believed would one day matter for reasons entirely unrelated to mathematics.
"I've been trying to understand why today felt so... disproportionate."
Your attention remained fixed upon the courtyard, following the rain as it disappeared into channels carved centuries before either of you had begun debating the persistence of identity. It would have been simpler, perhaps, had the afternoon merely disproved your work. Academic life was built upon such moments. Frameworks failed. Assumptions collapsed. Entire fields occasionally reorganised themselves around a better question.
You had known all of that before you submitted your abstract.
"I kept telling myself it was because you dismantled the continuity assumption." A faint smile appeared, almost apologetically. "That would have been a respectable reason."
The smile vanished.
Silence lingered long enough that the thought continued unfolding almost without your permission.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
The answer came without hesitation.
You found, unexpectedly, that the question itself resisted being spoken. It had seemed straightforward only moments earlier. Now, standing before him, it appeared capable of reaching backwards through months of conversations and quietly rearranging all of them.
"Do you remember the recursion problem?"
"I do."
"We never solved it."
"No."
"We kept reaching the same contradiction."
"Yes."
You nodded absently, not because he had confirmed anything you did not already know, but because each answer seemed to carry you one step closer to something you had spent the entire evening circling without recognising.
"I always assumed..." You stopped, dissatisfied with the sentence before it had fully formed. "No. I never assumed. I simply never questioned it."
Another quiet breath.
"I thought we were trying to save it."
The words settled between you with surprising gentleness.
"The framework. Every time we argued over recursion, every time you asked me whether I'd considered another consequence or pointed out another inconsistency... I thought we were trying to find a way through it. I thought that was the question we were both asking."
For the first time since the conversation had begun, Anaxagoras did not answer immediately.
He had begun to recognise that the question before him was not the one he had heard.
When he finally spoke, his voice retained its habitual precision, but something quieter had entered it, as though he had become acutely aware that each word now possessed consequences beyond its literal meaning.
"I was trying to determine whether it could be saved."
Nothing in the sentence was defensive.
Nothing apologetic.
It was offered with the same sincerity that governed every other conclusion he reached.
You stared at him.
The answer possessed a peculiar clarity. Every part of it made sense. It was, in retrospect, entirely consistent with the questions he had asked, the objections he had raised, the peculiar insistence with which he had returned to certain premises while leaving others untouched. He had never tried to persuade you that your framework was correct. Neither had he tried to persuade you it was wrong.
He had treated it as something deserving to be tested until it revealed, by its own internal logic, whether it deserved to survive.
It was exactly what Anaxagoras would do.
And somehow, that understanding only deepened the fracture.
"So you weren't..." You searched for the thought that had abruptly become impossible to articulate. "You weren't trying to prove it."
"I was trying to understand it."
"And if understanding it meant it failed..."
"It should fail."
Your eyes drifted somewhere beyond the courtyard, though you no longer saw it. Instead came a procession of remembered evenings: notebooks spread across his desk, arguments resumed without preamble, pages exchanged and returned covered in observations so familiar you had ceased noticing whose handwriting occupied which margin. You had mistaken the intimacy of the process for agreement about its destination. Somewhere along the way, without either of you ever saying so aloud, you had begun believing that you were travelling toward the same horizon.
The answer he'd given was neither evasive nor cruel. It possessed the same unwavering coherence as every argument he had ever made, fitting so cleanly within the architecture of his thinking that, once spoken aloud, it became almost impossible to imagine any other response. Of course he had been testing the framework rather than trying to preserve it. Of course he had helped refine an argument he suspected would ultimately fail. He had always believed that ideas deserved honesty more than protection. To do otherwise would have been to interfere with the very process he had spent his career teaching others to trust.
It was, you realised with a strange hollowness, precisely the answer you would have expected from Professor Anaxagoras.
That recognition should have brought relief.
Instead it left behind a more unsettling question.
"I don't think..."
The words arrived quietly, more to yourself than to him.
"I'm not upset about the symposium."
You let the thought linger, testing it as carefully as you had once tested premises on a whiteboard. It felt absurd even as you spoke it. You had spent the better part of the day convinced that everything stemmed from that lecture — that carefully argued demolition of your central assumption before a room filled with scholars. Yet now, standing here with the argument laid bare between you, the lecture itself seemed almost incidental. An inevitable consequence rather than the source of the wound.
"You were doing your job."
Your gaze remained fixed somewhere beyond him.
"You were presenting your research. You believed it. You defended it. You answered questions about it." A faint, weary laugh escaped you, devoid of humour. "I'd probably think less of you if you hadn't."
The irony settled heavily between you.
"I've spent hours trying to convince myself that what bothered me was academic. It would've been easier if it were." Your voice grew quieter, no longer directed outward so much as following a thought you had only just begun to understand. "Then I'd know how to fix it. I'd revise the framework. Start again. That's what we do."
Another silence unfolded, and this one seemed to demand nothing from either of you. It simply allowed the implications to arrive in their own time.
"But every time I replay today..." You paused, not because the memory eluded you, but because it had become impossible to separate one image from another. The lecture hall gave way to evenings spent in your office, to notebooks passed wordlessly across desks, to arguments abandoned only because the building had closed around you. None of those memories had changed. Only their meaning had. "I keep coming back to the same thing."
At last your eyes found his.
It was not an accusation.
That was what made it impossible for Anaxagoras to answer immediately.
Anaxagoras did not interrupt. There was nothing to correct. Nothing, in fact, that he recognised as incorrect. His questions had always belonged to the same philosophy they always had. He had never concealed that from you because it had never occurred to him that you believed they belonged to yours.
It was you who spoke again.
"I didn't know."
There was an extraordinary simplicity to the admission, and precisely because of that simplicity it seemed to contain everything the previous hour had struggled to express.
"I knew how you argued. I knew which assumptions you distrusted instinctively and which ones you were willing to entertain for the sake of an idea. I knew the cadence of your criticism so well that I could usually hear your objections before I brought you a draft."
A quiet laugh escaped you, thin with disbelief.
"I thought that meant I knew how you thought."
Your eyes remained on him now, not with accusation but with the dawning awareness of how much had been built upon an assumption neither of you had ever thought to examine.
"I've been describing today as though it began in that lecture hall."
A quiet breath escaped you.
Your mind wandered, almost involuntarily, through months of conversations whose details remained astonishingly vivid. Pages spread across his desk until neither of you remembered whose notes occupied which margin. Office hours that quietly dissolved into evenings because one contradiction inevitably invited another. Arguments resumed in corridors, over coffee, outside seminar rooms, with the peculiar ease of two people who had long ago stopped needing formal beginnings. Looking back, nothing in those memories had changed. The questions were the same. His observations were the same. Even the moments of disagreement remained exactly where you remembered leaving them.
"You already believed it."
The words emerged almost as an observation rather than an accusation.
"Not the conclusion you presented yesterday afternoon."
You shook your head faintly.
"The entire way of seeing the question."
Anaxagoras did not answer. There was little to dispute. His philosophy had not been conceived in preparation for the symposium, nor assembled in opposition to yours. It had existed long before your own framework began taking shape. The lecture had simply been the first occasion on which he considered it complete enough to withstand public examination.
"I don't know why that never occurred to me."
You had never asked him what ontology he ultimately subscribed to. Somehow, over the past few months, you had grown so familiar with his questions that you stopped wondering what made him ask them.
"But yesterday was the first time I saw you explain what you actually believe."
The sentence settled between you with an almost frightening simplicity.
"I sat in that auditorium and listened to you construct an entire philosophy from the ground up." Your voice had lost whatever remained of its earlier sharpness, replaced by the quiet bewilderment of someone reordering years of memory around a single new fact. "Not fragments. Not questions. Not objections."
The image returned with startling clarity: the lecture theatre holding its collective breath, the ease with which he moved from premise to premise, every transition carrying the quiet confidence of someone inhabiting ideas that had been lived with for years rather than prepared for an afternoon. There had been no hesitation, no exploratory uncertainty, only the peculiar fluency of genuine conviction.
It was then that another thought, one you had resisted naming all evening, finally made itself known.
"They knew."
Anaxagoras regarded you quietly.
"Everyone in that room knew where you were standing."
"I didn't."
"I don't think you owed me any of it."
The admission sounded almost clinical. "You didn't owe me your conclusions before anyone else. You didn't owe me a private draft. You didn't owe me the opportunity to argue with you before the symposium." As you spoke, each expectation seemed increasingly difficult to defend. Any scholar of his standing would have done precisely what he had done. Once a theory had become coherent enough to withstand criticism, it belonged before an audience capable of challenging it. That was how knowledge moved forward. It was how he had taught you to think.
A quiet laugh escaped you, though there was remarkably little amusement in it.
"I've spent all evening trying to convince myself you'd done something wrong."
Your head shook almost imperceptibly.
"But you didn't."
Anaxagoras did not answer immediately. He had listened throughout the conversation with the peculiar attentiveness that had always made discussing ideas with him feel unlike discussing them with anyone else. He never interrupted in order to correct. He waited until another person's reasoning had revealed its full shape before testing it. It was the same patience that had sustained months of conversations which neither of you had ever thought of as ending.
You had never imagined he believed they had ended at all.
"... You expected me to understand before you had to explain."
The question arrived without defensiveness. If anything, it possessed the tentative precision of someone attempting to verify an implication before allowing it to alter everything that preceded it.
For a long while, you said nothing.
The answer itself had never been difficult. What proved unexpectedly difficult was hearing it spoken aloud.
"I never expected you to choose my theory," you said at last. "I knew you disagreed with it. I think... part of me always knew.”
"I expected you to come to me first."
The words sounded quieter than everything that had preceded them.
Another silence gathered before you continued. You remembered evenings in his office stretching long after the building had emptied, arguments abandoned only because the hour had grown unreasonable.
"I thought I was one of the people you wanted to argue with."
The rain seemed louder after that.
Anaxagoras lowered his gaze in concentration. Every conversation that had led here acquired a different implication. He had always understood your persistence as devotion to the work itself. It had never occurred to him that, from your perspective, the work had become inseparable from the person beside it.
"If I had come to you," he said carefully, "...what would have been different?"
You hesitated.
"Your theory would not have changed."
"No."
"And mine would not have."
"No."
He considered that for several moments, the logic refusing to reconcile itself. If neither conclusion would have altered, then the missing conversation could not have been about persuasion. It had served some other purpose entirely, one he found himself unable to identify.
"Then what would have been different?"
You closed your eyes briefly.
It was such an unmistakably Anaxagoras question. Not dismissive. Not rhetorical. He truly did not know.
"I would've known."
Nothing more.
No elaborate justification presented itself afterwards because none existed. You would've known the wall had finally given way. You would've known he no longer believed your framework could be sustained because he had trusted you to arrive there with him, before he spoke it aloud. You would have known that the months spent returning to the same contradiction had reached their conclusion before an audience of scholars watched him build something entirely different upon its ruins.
Anaxagoras remained silent.
He revisited those same months from an unfamiliar angle. He had always interpreted your persistence as devotion to the question itself. It had never occurred to him that, from your perspective, the question had become inseparable from the person asking it.
"You believed those conversations belonged to us."
Again, it was a question rather than a conclusion.
You looked at him with quiet bewilderment.
"Didn't you?"
The simplicity of it unsettled him more than any accusation could have.
He searched his memory for an answer that satisfied both honesty and comprehension, discovering only that the distinction had never previously existed for him.
He had never before been required to distinguish between the work and the person beside it.
"I believed," he said slowly, "that what mattered most was that you reached your own conclusions."
No resentment remained. Only the peculiar grief of finally understanding the shape of a misunderstanding that neither of you had possessed the language to name.
Anaxagoras remained silent for a long while.
"I thought," he said at last, "that you kept returning because the contradiction remained."
His gaze drifted towards the rain.
"It never occurred to me that you were returning because the conversation had."
Rain drifted beyond the shelter in thin silver lines, steady enough now that the courtyard had become a single sheet of darkened stone reflecting the lanterns beneath the cloister. Somewhere beyond the arches, footsteps crossed the gravel path before disappearing again into the night. The conference continued to empty itself around them, indifferent to the private collapse of a relationship no programme had ever acknowledged.
"I didn't know."
The words were spoken so quietly that, had the rain been any heavier, they might have disappeared into it.
You looked at him.
It was not the sentence itself that held your attention. It was the fact that Anaxagoras had chosen it at all.
Over the years you had watched him revise conclusions that entire departments considered untouchable. You had seen him retract arguments when presented with better evidence, abandon elegant proofs that failed under sufficient pressure, concede errors with a composure that made intellectual pride seem almost childish. Yet even then, he never spoke of ignorance. His language was always one of structure rather than certainty. I overlooked. I failed to account for. The assumption was incomplete.
I didn't know.
It sounded almost foreign in his voice.
His gaze had drifted beyond you, though not into the rain. It rested somewhere inaccessible, among memories that had begun quietly reorganising themselves. Conversations that had once appeared self-contained no longer ended where he remembered them ending. Office hours extended into evenings. Evenings became habitual rather than incidental. Drafts returned covered in observations that exceeded the obligations of a supervisor. The recursion problem resurfaced week after week, not because it resisted solution—that alone would never have distinguished it—but because you kept bringing it back to him, and he had always assumed the persistence belonged to the question itself.
Now, for the first time, another interpretation demanded consideration.
He had believed the purpose of those conversations was to help another mind reach its own conclusions.
You had believed the conversations themselves belonged to the two of you.
"Had I known..."
Had he known that the symposium would be experienced not merely as an academic challenge, but as the discovery that the two of you understood your relationship differently...
Would he have acted differently?
The question resisted him.
He had always believed ideas belonged before anyone capable of challenging them.
Yet tonight he found himself confronting another obligation he had never realised existed.
You had never expected him to protect your ideas.
You had expected him to let you reach the end of the road beside him.
For the first time in years, two beliefs he considered equally honest refused to coexist.
"Would it have changed anything?"
The question escaped before you had fully decided to ask it.
"If you'd known."
He remained silent.
Not evasively.
You had known Anaxagoras long enough to recognise the difference. He had always refused conclusions unsupported by evidence, even when the evidence concerned himself. To answer quickly would have been easier. Kinder, perhaps. He could have offered reassurance neither of you entirely believed.
Instead he considered the question with the same seriousness he had once reserved for impossible proofs.
When he finally spoke, the answer was almost unbearably plain.
"I don't know."
It was the first answer he had given all evening that did not emerge from certainty.
You believed him immediately.
Because for the first time since the symposium, he was no longer standing opposite you.
He was standing beside you before a contradiction neither of you knew how to resolve.
Neither of you noticed the porter until the rattle of keys echoed beneath the arches.
"I'm terribly sorry," he said with the practiced hesitation of someone accustomed to interrupting conversations that refused to notice the hour. "We’re closing for the evening."
For a moment, neither of you answered.
It took an oddly long time to remember where you were.
"We should go."
Anaxagoras inclined his head.
There was nothing else to add.
Not because everything had been said, but because the questions that remained no longer admitted immediate answers.
Neither of you spoke.
The rain continued its patient descent beyond the arches, each drop dissolving into the reflections already gathered across the courtyard.
For several moments, there was nothing left except the quiet recognition that understanding did not always produce resolution.
You stepped out into the rain without looking back.
Only after your footsteps had disappeared beyond the cloister did Anaxagoras allow his attention to return to the evening behind him.
The dinner itself had already begun to recede.
He found himself remembering conversations he had not thought about in months. An afternoon that had stretched unexpectedly into dusk. A notebook left open on his desk because you had been certain another objection would occur before morning. The recursion problem returning with such regularity that he had stopped noticing it was always accompanied by another hour of conversation.
He had believed those memories recorded the history of an idea. Tonight, for the first time, he wondered whether they had also been recording the history of a relationship he had never realised the two of you were building.
Summary: Estinien discovers desire as experienced by dragonkind, and has trouble defining where Nidhogg’s influence (and the amount of blame he can throw at it) begins, and where his own tastes end.
Rating: Explicit (Minors do NOT interact).
Word Count: ~2700.
Tags/Warnings:Masturbation, Scent Kink, Spit as Lube, Mating Bites, Pining, Emotional Constipation, Caught, (I say scent kink but it's more like stink kink), General warning for kind of squeamish language?
Glaring down at the straining twitch in his breeches, Estinien concedes that he’s in a bit of a predicament.
— ݁₊ SUMMARY / xavier seems to have a mental rule for being your work-FWB: no kissing. he pushes his luck, because you pushed him.
WC: 4k
RATING: mature 18+
TAGS: workplace sex, repressed feelings + bitterness + sexual frustration, marking/biting, j e a l o u s y, possibly unrequited love and possible infidelity (it's up to you whether mc is dating any other guy), petulant mc due to petulant xavier (surprising nobody), fingering
A/N: title is from 'my mind now' by paris paloma. this can be read by itself but it takes place after this oneshot! (also for a plot point: FYI the deepspace trials canonically are AR simulations.)
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Monday morning at the Association is the best white noise generator. The open-plan office is a soundscape of muted haptic feedback (boop boop bleep), paper rustling, murmuring from desk-to-desk... and when sat, sitting, #seated in air-conditioned places... you… yawn, a lot... you know... that… and…
Chin grazes chest. You jerk upright. You blink blearily, then rapidly. Awake awake awake.
Your desk's hologram monitor is split-screened. On one side: the recording of yesterday's Deepspace trial attempt, circular data transmission field flickering green-red-green-red-red-red. On the other: what your brain keeps turning to static; one of the Association’s spreadsheets for ‘Hunter self-improvement', tracking how you did and at which millisecond you became inadequate.
You’ve gotten to 2:10, transmission 20%, and that cell, like every cell on the spreadsheet so far, features a sad chibi OTTO appended by the spreadsheet’s formula: “BELOW AVG! (◞‸◟；)”
A Caleb-sized shadow falls across your desk. “Sun must get in your eyes like craaaaazy.”
Broad shoulders kindly shield you from the wretched burden of the honeyed afternoon sun diffused through the side window; now the glow serves to trim Hunter Grant’s charcoal-grey jacket. The less flattering fluorescents above bounce down and off his laminate badge:
赵俊 ZHAO JUN
⸻ (GRANT)
(He asks women to call him Grant. His introduction goes, “‘Jun’? Please, call me Grant. My mother calls me Grant.” Cue: thoughtful look, amusement, teehee ha ha.)
“Not really,” you murmur, pausing the Trial playback. “Kind of a permanent golden hour; it’s nice.”
“Golden hour?” Grant asks, and sits on the edge of your desk?!
Somehow, you resist shoving him off. “You know when the sun’s about to set and everything’s lit softer because the sun’s, like, lower in the sky?” you ask, eyeing how Grant's drumming his fingers on the edge of your desk. “That’s golden hour.”
“Huh, I think so...” Grant glances at the widescreen in the middle of the room. “Good view, too.” The week’s weather report’s slowly fading in, one day at a time: MON, TUE…
You look back at your monitor and enlarge the paused Trial recording. Maybe Grant’ll see it and say ‘unrelated to you having another m a n in your vicinity, I just remembered I gotta go.’ Maybe he just needs to know if it’ll rain on ‘SAT’ and can’t see the screen from his own desk. Maybe in Grant’s experience, women prefer instant congeniality; being attractive can mean being accidentally and permanently intimidating.
For you, Grant’s good looks are a footnote. They’re in your mental appendix of Grant’s traits, like the fact he’s allergic to peanuts.
(IS THE WEATHER REPORT NOT DONE?)
Paper flaps loudly from across the office. You look up to see Xavier, sat sidelong at his desk, fanning himself with a stack of… blank paper. His eyes slide to you, then Grant, then you again. On his face is his classic non-expression. His hand slows, he tilts his head, and for a moment, there's something there; a sparkle in those wide blue eyes, sort of, 'gosh, bummer!' Like you're dealing with a printer jam.
You look back at Grant; he meets your eyes with a grin. “Sunset’s at six on Friday,” he says, nodding toward the TV, “evening shift will get golden hour!”
“Cool, uh, I really need to finish this, so…” You gesture toward the paused Trial recording. The pixellated version of you is in the middle of calling for resonance. Since Grant's not the guy in the footage, looking at it when paused is a (tiny) breach of confidentiality. It’d be a major breach if you hit Play. Grant surely knows he's keeping you from your work.
“Gotcha.” Grant stands—and lingers. WHERE IS THIS GOING, GRANT? “Want me to review you guys’ protocores?”
NO! “No,” you reply coolly.
Having gotten the hint a full minute ago, the guy finally takes it. “Gotcha gotcha. See you around.”
You force yourself to say it back. If you’d actually slept last night, you wouldn’t be so irritable. Courtesy or ‘hey, please leave’ might’ve come naturally then... maybe.
You shrink the Trial recording again so you're back to split-screen, and start to tap out the time entry on the spreadsheet. Boop boop boop bleep DONG (“BELOW AVG ╥﹏╥”) boop boop SKKRRCH.
The scrape came from a few desks ahead; you know, without looking, that Xavier’s pushed his chair back. Nobody else scrapes their chair.
You let your eyes creep up anyway. Xavier’s stood behind his chair, posture perfect, brow furrowed. A marble statue in a marble-pale uniform, looking down at something on his desk. He starts to tap at the top of his chair, frowning. The illusion of refinement breaks; your partner is but a man who never trusts a device is actually shut down unless he sees it happen.
No need to spectate.
You pull out your phone. You rest your elbows on your desk and open your most recent text conversation.
You hold the phone right up to your face.
Obviously, you're occupied. Xavier can’t try to catch your eye, and you can’t, won't, and shouldn't let him, because he’s a dick. When he came into work today (fifteen minutes late), he went straight to his desk without saying hi (after two weeks of sudden PTO) and now he's...
You know what he's doing. About to do. Will try to do. Whatever. He’s objectively being a presumptive dick.
Unless he texted you... ?
Banished is the indulgent fantasy of your partner sneaking a few texts instead of doing his work. (And the pathetic, bar-in-hell fantasy of him reading your text.)
Focusing on your phone unfortunately doesn’t spare you from having peripheral vision; there’s a 6'1 white-and-silver figure striding down the boulevard between everyone’s desks. You fight back a frown.
To your right comes a muffled tap-tap. You peek at the outer corner of your desk. Two grey-gloved fingers trail overtop, tap-tap, then slip into a white trouser pocket. You turn around fully as Xavier passes you by. Next to the ‘golden hour’ window, the back of his head's almost blonde. Then it’s star-bright under the ceiling fluorescents. Then he steps into the outer hall, and disappears around the corner.
Anticipatory arousal coiled between your legs the whole time. It is ten in the morning! You squeeze your thighs together, cringing. If you don’t follow him, you can finish this Trial review and maybe get a full solo patrol in. Xavier won't care. If you do follow him, it'll be awesome, until it sucks.
Last time you let Xavier at you, dirt got all over your shirt, you stained your trousers, and he glared at you when you came. (Or you hallucinated mid-orgasm.) The blurry memory of his narrowed eyes worsens the pulsing between your legs. The bit of your brain warmed by arousal whines, that was in the No-Hunt Zone, though... the stairwell is nice.
The office's internal stairwell has muted warm lighting and a window every couple of floors; burgundy carpet on the landings which doesn’t smell like damp; metal railings it’s evidently someone’s job to polish; soft-grey walls. Concrete, not painted. The fire stairs are nice, for what they are, but last time you let Xavier at you in that stairwell…
⸺
... his hand open-palmed at the back of your neck, brushing the base of your skull. Your cheek smushed against the wall. You, behaving. Gripped and pressed and hurting and moaning about it. Arching your back to deepen the other hurt, the other hand, Xavier's three plunging fingers. Xavier, working your own wetness inside you over and over and over and over.
Anyone would hear it, right away, if they came in. One flight of stairs would be between them and the sight of you, trousers around your ankles. You, pinned to the wall and pistoned into from behind by Hunter of the Month Xavier Shen. You, too fucked-out to care about him keeping the rest of his body well away from you. Your pussy can't be heard from outside, but your moaning might be, you drag your head up right before you truly drown. You kiss the wall.
Xavier's so-so-soft cheek slides over yours. “That's really unhygienic.”
You are on the edge and could not give a fuck. You want to kiss him, anyway—he jerks his mouth out of reach. You whine right into his breathy laughter. He turns you around, grazes the side of your clit with the rough pad of his thumb, smothers your mouth. “Now my palm is contaminated. Will you clean it?"
Xavier's tender and teasing and you're boneless, anchored to awareness by his hands on you, in you. You kiss and lick until the world refocuses and you can breathe. There's a pinprick of pain on your cheekbone.
⸺
You cup your face, tracing the teensy scar with your thumb. A glance around the office proves everyone engrossed in work or conversation. Quiet as can be, you push your chair back.
⸺
You close the stairwell's door behind you just in time.
Renovating upstairs' meeting rooms apparently includes switching on a lawnmower and then chainsawing into it.
Halfway down the flight of stairs below you, Xavier’s stood with his back on the railing, facing the wall. He plucks his gloves off, one two. Again, he looks at you sidelong; ooh, so aloof! “Hey.”
You join him on the stairs, one step above. “Any good constellations in the little paint cracks?”
“I think you mean, 'any stars',” Xavier says, balling up his gloves. He pockets them. “Each crack in the paint... would be its own constellation. Because of the shape.”
“'Paint cracks' is the collective. Technically I asked if there's any good constellations in the constellations.”
“Technically,” he agrees, “there aren’t any ‘good’ constellations.”
“An—” Wait a sec. “Nevermind,” you mutter. He hadn't agreed with you, he’d been starting a sentence. God forbid About-to-Fuck-You Xavier not taunt you first.
“You came really fast.”
“I'm super eager to procrastinate.”
Xavier turns so you're faced front-on with ugh self-assured hot ugh, and the genuinely interested look on his face.
“Trial debrief,” you continue, which you shouldn't have. It was a bad idea. So was assuming he was interested. Coming in here at all? AWFUL idea. “Literally any spreadsheet melts my brain lately," you continue-continue, changing gears with a quick laugh. “Like, remember how they asked us if the dust physics looked realistic, so we have to like, memorise... it's so stupid. The survey spreadsheet things. With the chibis.”
“You were watching a recording, though,” Xavier points out, figuratively pointing out the fissure you'd tried to cover.
Awesome! Time to crack it open and jump into the abyssal, dread-filled core!
“You looked at my screen?”
“I looked at you.” Xavier raises his eyebrows, all innocence. “Your screen was in the…” He mimes quotation marks. “‘Frame.’ When I walked by.”
When I was looking at his texts. Did he notice I was looking at his texts did he notice I was looking at his texts did he notice... Deep breaths! “Yeah, right," you say, stepping down to stand beside him. You fold your hands behind you and lean on the wall opposite him; the leather vambraces protect your butt and hands from the grit. "Trial debrief. It's boring, though, and hanging out with my partner isn't, sooo. What've you been doing today?"
A smirk swipes across Xavier's mouth. “Are you actually asking me that?” He steps forward and you’re crowded against the wall with his chest pressed to yours and he’s looking down at you and his jawline’s sharp even from this angle?!
“Wait,” you whisper, to which Xavier rolls his eyes. Fuck this guy! You frustratedly gesture to the door you came in from. On the landing a few steps away. Sub-10 feet away. Outer hallway! The office you both work at! Risk! "We need to go upstairs!”
Xavier looks at the door to the office, the stairs above, the stairs below. He scratches his cheek. “Wouldn't you get a heada—”
The machines’ roar returns to a low-ish buzz of drill sounds.
“Good point,” you concede, and start down the stairs.
A hand on your hip shoves you, pins you to the wall; another lands on your waist and saves you from tumbling. Xavier dips his head close; your chin tilts up reflexively, your hips do the same; idiotic optimism slams up your throat. Kiss him kiss him kiss him.
This close, Xavier's blue eyes look deep as indigo. You let yourself fall into the abyss of his irises, anchoring yourself to the sinking sensation of being smitten.
“I guess you forgot,” he drawls, and you're pulled out of the abyss by the stale-sweet smell on his breath. Cherry mineral water? Soda he drank hours ago? You can't imagine the poised Deepspace Hunter Xavier Shen drinking flavoured soda. Your neighbour Xav who lives in a hoodie and rubs his eyes and unabashedly has a specified 'Naptime,' him, sure. He probably drinks soda while snuggled up with Animal Crossing or some shit.
Once his Hunter uniform's on, Xavier's a seperate entity as far as you're concerned. Neighbour Xavier's near-friendly nature vanishes; now, he'd never glare at you...
You push the maybe-false memory away. “Forgot what?”
... He did too glare at you that one time, because he's doing it now! Forehead-to-forehead, you can't make out most of Xavier's expression, but you can look him in the eye, and he's fucking glaring at you!
“The floor below has all the Training Rooms. And the armory. So there's cameras outside, on the landing. Actually...” The disdain in his eyes melts to gooey, poisonous faux-sweetness. “We could go train. Is it the Fluctuant track you're stuck on?”
Heat creeps up your neck. “You know I don't want to go train, Xavier.”
“But you're stuck. The last one we did was easy, I thought.”
“Maybe don't leave again.”
“I won't." Xavier’s hands squeeze your hips and your brain resets to factory settings. You can't think of a response, or smell his breath, or even consider his narrowing eyes. You're His Partner in Autopilot. Perfectly conditioned; comfortably familiar with the impending fuck.
He’ll lean close enough to kiss and then shift to the side. You'll press your face against his shoulder. He doesn't turn you to face the wall anymore, so he can't squash your moans between his palm and the wall. So you’ll mouth needily at the fabric of his jacket instead, muffling yourself there. Xavier, who never makes a fucking sound, will rest his head on the wall, tuck his hand between you and circle your clit ‘til you come. Sometimes he slips a finger inside just as your knees buckle, like you're a fucking fingerfuck-puppet.
God. Damn. It. Shame tries to tug thoughts back into your head while Xavier's fingers trace your belt. I know what you’re doing, you think weakly. As he leans closer, his eyes soften, as if he's affected by the closeness; it's part of the shtick. Getting close enough to kiss.
He shifts to the side, ducks his head, and tells your pulse, “That guy looked seven feet tall.”
You stare at the white shoulder ahead. “Uh…”
“On your desk. Earlier.”
“Oh. Gra-aah," you stammer, voice faltering when Xavier’s mouth brushes the curve of your neck. Like, the skin, like, nearly a kiss. Shivers weave up your back and bloom around your scalp. The hand on your hip slides to mirror its twin at your waist; palms press and smooth up your shirt, tugging it out from where you'd tucked it into your trousers. You take a deep breath and repeat, “Grant.”
“Is that the new 'bet'?”
“What?”
“'Grant.' Is it similar to the slang? 'Bet?'” The warmth of Xavier’s breath moves right under your ear, then over it. "I am super out of the loop.”
You're going to pass out. “W-what? No, the—the guy’s name is Grant, Grant Zhao. You know Grant.”
“Huh, maybe,” replies Xavier, who is insane! He's speaking conversationally, light and breezy while tucking his hands under your shirt to grip your bare waist. Who gives a fuck about Grant Zhao right now! He’s insane! You feel insane; when Xavier trails his mouth back down your nape, his tongue ever-so-slightly grazes your skin, and your nipples stiffen, wanting. Needy.
You need Xavier to lick your tits. You need to warm his cock while he does it. Sat on him sat on the sofa, suckling and smirking and no, nope, I don't. You press your thighs together and don't need anything.
There's a quiet metallic click by your clavicle. Your collar opening? Teeth latch onto the side of your neck ow.
Your brain barely processes ow-ow before a tongue presses to your pulse, hard, trying to taste your heartbeat. Pain lances through the muscle there. Your knees buckle, but Xavier keeps you upright by pinning you even harder to the wall. Your ass squashes your wrists, the wall scrapes your palms. A loud sucking sound breaks over the hum of drilling upstairs, and ow, ow, “o-ow.”
Xavier loops an arm around your lower back so you can arch off the wall, crotch brushing his. The thick weave of his jacket is comfy as a cushion; you let him take your weight. His other arm winds up your back, all the way to your head, where his hand splays between your scalp and the wall.
“Thanks,” says your mouth, gasping, while your brain whines ow, ow, ow. Your hands, now freed, tremble. You put them on his shoulders and tug ‘til he sinks forward, close enough for you to gather the pristine fabric into your mouth, and bite. The dryness reaches the back of your tongue. You barely resist gagging.
Xavier's sucking on the tender skin of your neck, pinched between his teeth. The arousal long-coiled between your legs starts to clench and spasm. You barely stop your hips mid-buck. At best, Xavier ignores acknowledgement of his cock, even when he’s hard as a sword-hilt (which he seems to constantly be.) This is already bafflingly different; you won't push it. Your body is good, obedient. Most of your body is stone, in fact; the place where Xavier's mouth meets your skin is the only bit of you that’s real, ha ha!
“Haaa.” You need to sink and be a puddle because your lower half isn’t a marble statue, it’s melting. “Xav-i-er.”
‘Krtchhhh.' Drilling. Construction. Miles away to a head emptied by arousal, but it probably drowned you out, because Xavier doesn't react. Before you can repeat the plea, fear surges forth from the limbic deep.
What if you’d said ‘stop’?
What if he did hear you? You've never said stop, not even as a 'just give me a sec.' Knowing what a person would do if you said stop is probably important!
You consider giving ‘stop’ a go. Tugging his head up by his hair. He's tucked so close that the most you can see of him, if you strain your eyes, is his hair. Fluffier than ever, in this light; soft shadows shade the strands. You consider what he'd look like if you pulled his head up; if his eyes would be half-lidded, if he'd be mad with focus. His lips would be wet, for sure, and... maybe you’d get away with a kiss. A little thank you, for his hard-working mouth.
Your fingers curl until they ache. That grip becomes leverage when your stupid slut of a pussy presses up to Xavier’s crotch without your permission, needy and traitorous and seeking his cock. It finds his gloves instead, squishes them closer to his thigh, and you get bitten. Then the heat of Xavier’s mouth is gone. The nape of your neck in general is still hot as a volcanic Protofield, though, ow, ow ow ow. You hold back a wince as he steps away.
Xavier's lips look rubbed-raw; there’s a tiny smile there, quickly wiped away with the back of his hand. He lifts his elbows behind him and rests them on the railing, leaning back.
“Hickey, that's new,” you manage, sagging against the wall. “What was that for?”
He tilts his head. “What do you think it was for?”
I can barely think at all, so write that down. “Um, you just missed me sooo much th—”
“So much, yeah,” Xavier mutters. He tucks one hand into his pocket and plucks out his gloves. You watch as he puts them on. And he ignores you.
“Um... Please don't finger me while wearing those. Sincerely.”
Xavier folds his arms and stares at you blankly. “I'm not going to.”
“O-oh. Uh.”
“Anybody could come in,” he says flatly, transferring his blank stare toward the door.
WOW, REALLY? “Yeah, I know that, but... we were already… Is this because I almost touched your dick? I’m sorry.”
His eyes slide back to you. Two cubes of hate-filled ice. “Almost?”
“Um.” You're frozen in place. “Did… I? I mean, not like, not like it's sm—”
“Stop talking about it.”
“Yep.” You fumble with your collar clasp while your mind races. Xavier was flaccid?! Is that even medically possible?! “I really am sorry.”
A small huff. “And I’m sorry you got stuck with Jun.”
“Stuck... where with who? June?”
“Jun Zhao. I assumed, but... that could’ve been Andrew, or… almost anybody, huh. Here.” Xavier steps forward. Click. Your collar's secured; you press along the aching skin to check it's covered. “How many Trials did you pass while I was gone, anyway?”
Owch, owch, no-owch... Absentminded, you reply, "Like, six.” Once confident the hickey's mostly underneath fabric, you return your full focus to Xavier. He's crossed his arms again, and ho-ly shit. Eye contact's just a way for that sapphire gaze to sharpen itself on your eyes. There’s a nerve-deep wince in you, worsening.
“With who?”
“Why do you care?” you ask, and for a split second, he looks genuinely hurt.
“I don't.” Xavier's eyes flash. He furrows his brow, and the intensity in his eyes has that limbic fear returning. You’re alone with an angered man. Who is fucking FTL-fast. “Are you going to tell me?”
“I would," you lie. Deep breaths. "But you literally don’t know her”—one truth and a lie—“sooo her name wouldn't really do a lot for you?”
He lowers his eyes and uncrosses his arms. “Yeah. Sorry I hurt your neck.”
“Um, you'd kind of have to, for... a hickey, and... oh.”
Xavier's chin bobs towards his chest. His anger and sex appeal evaporate simultaneously; he's about to float into the ethereal in-between of Soft Neighbour and Enigmatic Hunter. Sleepy Xavier.
You consider letting him be, but the drop behind him would be Very Fatal, so you step away from the wall and wave your hand in front of his face. “Hey. Come nap in the break room. Xav.”
When he doesn't stir, you squeeze his shoulder. Your hand’s instantly knocked away. “Mmnope.” After a damp exhale, Xavier steps up to the landing and sinks down on the burgundy carpet. He pulls his knees to his chest, arms forming a cradle atop. “You go. M’gonna stay here,” he says, tucking his head down. “For a bit.”
⸺
⸺
— A/N: MC do be lying while xavier do be aware ദ്ദി(ㅠ﹏ㅠ) tysm for reading! if you enjoyed, pls consider leaving a like/reply/reblog; my fave thing to write is what i know y'all like to read!
i can't take it, i'm impatient . ݁ xavier/f!mc · 18+ oneshot
— ݁₊ SUMMARY / xavier's bitter about the love of his life remaining clueless to his feelings (which... he hasn't expressed), so he fingerfucks her all the time. instead of being normal about anything.
WC: 2.7k
TAGS: smut!! PWP!!! (but with a LOTTA Repressed Feelings oop) + outdoor sex, fingering, sexual frustration, panty kink, jealousy, possibly unrequited love (up to you), orgasm edging, banter, colleagues-with-benefits, onesided bitterness, mild objectification, dom!xavier (surprising nobody)
A/N: inspired by this NSFW fanart rewiring my synapses → [x link] alsooo i know canonically xavier never Confessed His Feelings to philos!MC, but there's enough grey area for my mind to frolic. hence we get "gosh i wish i could be with her romantically, anyway time to Just Fuck Her like before!"
✦ my masterlist | read this fic on ao3 OR read it here ↓
“X-Xavier, Xa—ah—aaaaah—” You surrender to incoherency, and let your mouth sag open, drooling on his sleeve.
Excruciatingly gentle, right by your ear: “You can’t be messy and noisy. You have to pick one.”
Shlick-shlick-shlick.
You don’t know how long Xavier’s kept you here. 'Here' being both the mossy rock he dragged you behind, and on the fucking edge. If his hand slips out from under your panties to strip your lower half entirely, the breeze might set you off. The image of you coming untouched, twisting around in Xavier’s grip...
Shlick-shlick-shlick-shlick-shlick.
Breath ragged, head spinning, you loll back and mouth weakly at his pulse. It's so slow, you're not even sure you truly find it. If not for the steel-hard length pressed to your lower back, you’d think him entirely unaffected.
“You keep saying my name.” His fingers withdraw for what feels like the millionth time, and splay the folds of your pussy, blooming them outward. Your clit, neglected, twitches.
“Because... I... What, what, you don’t like that?”
Xavier sighs as if mildly inconvenienced. Elastic snaps at your lower stomach; he cups you outside your underwear, and starts to knead at you. “If we get ambushed, I won’t like it as much anymore.”
“Shut me up with something,” you manage. “I can offer suggestions.”
“Why not shut up all by yourself? Since it’s for your own good.”
Your pussy throbs toward his palm. You could listen to this weird half-mean shit he does all night.
“I’ll be quiet,” you lie.
Seeming to ignore you, Xavier presses your panties right up to your dribbling hole and digs his fingers in. The cotton meets your insides with exquisite friction; briefly, you’re terrified you’ll orgasm over chafe. Mercifully, he draws them out quickly—and starts to pull them off, lifting your legs as he goes. You shift to cooperate.
Dirt scrapes your ass, and you try to keep it away from the parts of your body that he touches other than your pussy. It’s a short list: the delicate skin between your holes, and the fine-haired thatch on your mound, where he likes to massage awhile before dipping to check if you’re wet.
Once your feet are facing the sky, Xavier pulls your panties off your ankles, and lets your legs drop. You only just manage to flex them in time to orchestrate a more graceful descent. A ‘thud’ followed by a dirt cloud would absolutely earn you a scolding. So of course he set you up for one.
You understand Xavier… relatively well.
Whilst he’s balling up your panties, you squeeze the forearm around your clavicle. Please touch me. See how quiet I’m being? Exposed to the cool still of the night, your clit aches. If you touch it, he’ll get pissy. You gaze at his side profile, impassive alabaster, and squeeze him again. Please touch me again.
Xavier understands you better than he ought to, and mutters, “After this. Here.”
“Wha—mmphh—”
Cotton meets your tongue and the scent of your own cunt wafts up to your brain. The driest section is at the back of your mouth, you cough, gag—
Shlick.
You arch, neck curving around his muscled shoulder. “Gghh.”
“Shut up,” Xavier whispers, singularly focused on watching his fingers sink home. “Right?”
Once hilted to the knuckles, he pulls out, meets your bleary eyes, and strikes. Over and over and over. He never misses his mark; your G-spot probably has Xavier's fingerprint on it by now. Blazing heat trembles up your legs, the desperate skid of your feet along the ground does nothing to displace the sensation. If it wasn’t for his arm pinned around you, you’d have thrashed across the clearing.
How many girls has he done this with, to be so intuitive?
Overtop of the warmth building in your stomach, envy stirs. Or… greed, maybe. Jealousy would be senseless. You’re not dating him. You’re coworkers. Separately, you’re neighbours—at the apartments, swordmaster Xavier is all slow blinks and yawns and “do you have spare AAs?”
Your awareness drifts between his eyes. The two neat contexts in which Xavier Shen exists: hunter and neighbour.
The hunter context happens to also involve being sort-of-fuckbuddies. ‘Buddy’ implies reciprocity, you’re the colleague Xavier fingerfucks on shift. The couple of times you tried to start reciprocating, he seemed disappointed—disgusted, even, that you’d even think to do something like that. He’s never allowed it. Never come in his trousers, never excused himself afterward to jerk off. If nobody is getting him off, it's a cosmic injustice.
So he must do this with other girls. Maybe he does more with other girls, gets kissed and ridden and oh, envy returns. At least it’s only with you that he gets perfect mission reviews, meaning you’re seen as inseperable. Only with you can he exchange heated, knowing looks in HQ… like, a month ago. Only with you can he do it when there’s Wanderers around-ish. Surely?
… You’d like to be the favourite. (No way does he have a girlfriend. There’s zero trace of one in his apartment. Unless she never visits. Kinda neglectful—no, Xavier would be the P.O.S. in that scenario. Jesus, girl.)
The chemicals in your brain bounce erratically, distracting you away from the warmth rising in your body. Xavier’s cheek grazes yours, bringing you back to reality. It’s almost a nuzzle. He edges with affection, your frustratingly hot kind-of-fuckbuddy coworker; in another world, he’d be a sublime cuddler. (Does he want a girlfriend?)
“Hello,” he murmurs. “You’re quiet.”
You roll your head to the side to see those baby blues are black as pitch, and on you. “Mmphm.”
“What’re you thinking about?”
Nestling up to the nape of his neck, you nose at his pulse. His jaw trembles infinitesimally. Gotcha.
A third finger nudges the thin, stretched skin at the edge of your cunt until it gives way. You yelp and slump your head forward, bracing the panties upon his sleeve while you try to gather them more securely on your tongue.
Xavier leans forward. “You’re making me messy now,” he breathes; he's so close to your ear, it feels like he wants to make his way inside it too.
“Mmh!”
Tingles ripple down your neck as Xavier’s voice floats into your brain, insisting you can take even more; right now, he insists, he’s being nice. His fingertips pull out, catch the drool from your cunt, and push it back in. Again, and again. While you whine and writhe, he breathes evenly by your ear. It’s infuriating. It hurts. It’s so hot.
“Why were you saying my name, anyway?” he asks, conversational. “Were you begging me for something?”
“Mhm.”
“Huh. You want this to be over that badly?”
No! “Nn,” is all you can get out around the gag. Xavier pulls out again, and your cunt clenches in the night air. Please unzip your trousers and just fuck me raw.
“Maybe I’m waiting to find a good reason to let you come. I wonder what one could be. Maybe… if you let me confiscate these,” he muses, tugging the panties out of your mouth. They go somewhere. You can’t care.
(Again, that hopeful greed—maybe yours are the only pair he’s ever taken?)
(Hopefully, yes! If he had several pairs of soiled panties, he’d be a pervert!)
… You're a pervert, at this point. You’ve let Xavier finger you in the woods, public bathroom stalls, the bathrooms at work, the fire escape at work. You’d happily have your face smushed against the wall somewhere nice, but unless you’re out hunting, he never bites. Xavier makes you perverted, a pleading whore that needs him to use you like one.
And he never does.
You stopped begging him to properly fuck you weeks ago, but your body didn’t. It betrays you once more as Xavier starts to circle your hole; the muscle pulses and flutters at his touch. He tucks his chin over your shoulder and nudges his hips to angle you for him to better watch.
“If I start again, are you just going to say my name? Or use other words?”
“Xa-vi-er, I need to come. You have to…” Your words dissolve into incoherent noises of frustration. Your body’s starting to feel like a single pulled-taut line, all your coherency and thoughts are dribbling out of your pussy. Fuck me, you think, and your pussy clenches again.
“Hm? Sorry, what do I ‘have’ to do?”
“Ugh. Nothing. Just. Please? It’s been ages—isn’t your wrist sore?!”
"An hour isn’t ages. I could do this for way longer.”
“I couldn’t,” you pant. Stamina aside, there’s absolutely going to be a bruise shaped like his arm over your clavicle tomorrow.
He hums, side-eyeing you. “I bet you’re wrong.”
“Okay.” Okay. Sure. Yes. You’re right, I’m wrong, please put them back inside me. The temptation to nudge your hips until he slips in is dizzying.
“How long would you want me for?”
“What? When?”
Xavier hooks a finger inside of you and pulls to the side, gaping you. “I asked first.”
You wince, squeezing your eyes shut. “Ow, Xavier.”
“Please?” he breathes, cool air ghosting your skin. He gentles his touch, then removes his finger entirely. “I’m sorry.”
He… sounds it. Your heart twinges. Then comes a lewd, wet pop. As soon as you register the sound, you feel Xavier’s long fingers creeping down your mound, damp, practically shy. Sweetness sparks between your hips the second he makes contact with your clit.
“Tell me.” His voice, flung back down to its lowest register, husky and threatening; you shiver and flinch away, but it follows you, hot on your ear. “How long do you want me for?”
You swallow, rocking your hips. The dirt scrapes your bare ass again and you don’t care, you’re close, you’re close. Chills dance down your neck.
“Forever? Asterisk: I get to come every hour?” You let out a shaky laugh. Double asterisk: please let me get my hands on you.
Xavier moves his hips again, the brief contact with his erection fills your mouth with anticipatory saliva, (You’re disgusting, but) he’s big. You open your eyes to catch the starry sky mid-swing as he tilts you back.
Your shirt pinches and slides revealing more of your abdomen; you don't mind the discomfort, it’s slight. Goosebumps rise on your exposed skin, but Xavier ignores your shivering in favour of leaning forward to keep the right angle on your clit. You don’t mind. Your shirt might be filthy at the back, which is fine, because Xavier’s ash-blonde hair turns silver in the moonlight, he’s very pretty, and he’s looking in your eyes.
With an unimpressed expression, but you don’t mind that either. “'Forever' is imprecise. I need a number.” Two fingers, or three, or four or fuck, he slams a galaxy over your eyes. For a few sweat-soaked seconds, the only thoughts you have are dedicated to counting the stars.
It takes some time for your garbled brain to remember the original question, let alone to find a response. “I could,” you gasp, barely able to get words out, “I c-could, a hundr-hundred years?” It’s nonsense, but you'll say anything right now. Flattery might work.
“Huh. That is a pretty long time.” He presses his brow to the top of your head, hard. “Why a hundred?”
“'Cause I love this. I really, really, ah, I love this.”
Quiet, even for him, Xavier murmurs, “Yes. You do.”
You’re yanked up to sit atop him, hips bracketed by his legs. Completely wrapped around you, Xavier drops the bruising grip across your chest in favour of using both hands to work your pussy. One circles your clit, the other drives inside and splays you wide, as if to prepare you. God, please, please, please, please.
He hooks his chin over your shoulder again, and this time, in silence. You could cry with relief. He always likes to watch himself fuck you, but when it’s the last time, he spectates. The most he’ll acknowledge you is muttering to himself how pretty ‘it’ looks. Croons about how much your suckling pussy must’ve missed him; vile and tender whispers, ‘does it want a kiss, too?’
Just the memory of the few times he suddenly went sweet on you has it spasming. You try to behave. The bright, relentless tickle between your legs feels like it'll burst into the best orgasm you’ve ever fucking had. You try to behave, you really do. The hard wall of muscle behind you is immovable, but the section by your ass twitches when you wriggle and that’s Xavier’s cock, right there.
Wet and slack, delirious and desperate, you lean your head, panting at his cheek. “It wants you, Xav, please, let me show you, we’ll be—”
“Shh.” Like you didn’t say a goddamn thing, Xavier’s breathing stays steady, small hot puffs by your ear as he works, fucking your wetness back into you, working working working—
The stars at the back of your mind expand. Sparks tingle up your legs, clenching close by your greedy, pulsing cunt; right before your orgasm hits, you tip your head to gaze at him.
He’s glaring at you.
No, you imagined it; he looked miserable for a second, too, but Xavier’s actually smirking—smiling? Smirking. Blurring, at the edges—you’re about to—mouthing nonsense at the air—so good, s’good Xavier—scrabbling at his collar, lips tilted toward him in a silent, humiliating bid—
As always, Xavier ignores it, and nudges you sideways to rest his forehead on yours. He watches you collapse.
—
The two of you get to your feet as soon as the afterglow fades. Literally, ‘as soon as’. You’d just parted your lips to say something adjacent to ‘gosh, that was fun’ before Xavier withdrew his fingers, mussed his hair to clean them off because he’s a crazy person, and slid you off his lap.
“You really like my uniform,” he says, back to aloof indifference. When he bends to grab your satchel from where he’d tossed it, the outline of his erection is perfectly visible; yeah you like his uniform. Duh.
“I dunno,” you drawl, yanking your leggings on. “You never hit on me outside of work; maybe I like your hoodies, too.”
“I never hit on you,” he says, with a disdainful look on his face? Fuck this guy?!
He straightens up with your satchel looped over his shoulder, and you stop checking him out. He won’t notice, but it’s the principle of it. “By the way,” you say airily, “you got mud on my uniform.”
“I got dirt on the hem of your shirt. You did this.” Xavier wiggles the arm he’d clamped around you the entire hour. There’s a damp patch on the sleeve, from where you’d pressed the panties on him. He tilts his head to the side, faux-pondering. “Dirt iiis… occupationally acceptable.”
“Don’t act scandalised after taking my used panties as a keepsake.”
Wordlessly, Xavier pats your satchel. There’s a small, soft lump in it.
When will you die? Is it soon? Soon would be good. “Why di—I put—so now I walk around with no underwear on all night? Are you actually trying to embarrass me? Xavier. Genuinely? Like, not as a kink.”
“No,” he says, eyes widening. “I don’t want you to be embarrassed. It’d be uncomfortable to wear them now… You get really wet.”
“Compared to?”
Xavier smiles punchably. “You’re hinting about ‘other girls again.’”
“Satchel and shut up.”
“Sure,” he says, tossing it over. “To the lady’s second demand: no. I have to talk because you’d want to know that it buzzed. A lot.”
You loop your satchel around your hips and click it into place. “Thanks. It’s probably—nevermind.” Now is not the time to start divulging, connecting, chatting and/or anything except doing your job. (It is an alright time to stare at the ground while you brush at your filthy back.)
“Probably texts from ‘other guys’?”
“Pff.” You glance up, rolling your eyes, and find Xavier staring through you. Head empty no-thoughts sort of staring. “Er. Are… are you okay, Xavier?”
He blinks woozily. “If we keep walking this way, we… won’t have reception for a while. So.”
‘Check phone’ was literally the fourth thing on your mental to-do after ‘glance at him’; number five was ‘text back’.
But.
Xavier fucked with you for an hour. (Several months.) Returning that in any way sounds great.
You feign cluelessness. “So. Don’t take advantage of that by murdering me, I guess? Or anyone, ideally. Unless we agree about it.”
“Sure,” he says, and shrugs humourlessly. He offers a small, empty smile. “I’ll follow your lead.”
— A/N: ty for reading! i hope you enjoyed my odd-yet-favourite flavour of xavier. (need him self-fulfillingly toxic on it!!!) if you did, please consider leaving a kudos or comment on ao3 (you don’t need an acc to do so) or a like/reply/reblog here; the more i know what y'all like the more i can write it! and tysm again <3
for sinners ✶ king of darknight x a very bitter kod!mc
— ݁₊ SUMMARY / kod!xavier intends to lay with his queen, now that she's recalled she even was a queen at all; she does not recall everything... and is VERY jealous about a certain trinket.
WC: 9.7k
RATING: explicit
TAGS: p i n i n g, mc being jealous of her dang self, star pommel my beloved, one-sided resentment from misunderstanding, a bit of a propriety fixation from MC, cunnilingus, fingering, p-in-v, xavier being very smitten (likely thing for him to be)
A/N: i wrote this to help myself submerge from our old mate Brain Fog, so i'm not 100% sure it's canon compliant; her memories of lightseeker onwards get returned but her memory of anecdote 3 doesn't, basically!
✦ my masterlist | read this fic on ao3 OR read it here ↓
From the foyer to your bedchamber, Xavier’s kisses can’t be nudged away; not for a moment, not for an inch. He settles for your cheek when you need to see where you’re going, but he “needs to kiss you.” So you let him.
The door to your bedchamber swings shut behind you, you’re pressed against it, and Xavier’s hands are fast as ever. The squeak of the latch and lock register in your mind when he's already cupping your jaw again, tilting your head to deepen the kiss. Your heart skips up your throat, in the hope of meeting his reverent tongue. When you feel your chest is seconds from hollowing out, Xavier—finally—pulls away. Enough that you can see his face, even, such self-possession!
A few breaths prove your heart as it ought to be, though thudding fervently. Its pace worsens as you meet Xavier’s eyes. They are… bafflingly pretty. Other words would suit just as well, words more masculine or empowering, but ‘pretty’ is the most articulate thought as you can presently manage.
Is he flushing? The moon is not yet risen, it’s too dark to see, if you lit a candle—you are not going to push past him to light a candle!
Perhaps it is the dim light that makes his skin seem so smooth. Perhaps it is weariness softening his expression. Or… that he no longer wears a mask of disinterest; pure affection fills the pretty blue eyes raking over your face.
… Perhaps Xavier doesn’t mind you staring.
He must find you pleasing enough to look at, you suppose, smoothing your skirts down and smile at him. (He smiles back.) Granted the lucidity offered by awkward silence… he’s… remaining. Scuppered is the chance of this being some mindless, lustful impulse; you’re not being pawed at, yet he remains. Your king, right in front of you. Watching you watch him, breath coming arduously through those petal-pink lips…
Your king is too pretty.
“You can kiss me again,” you say, “if you’d like.”
He answers with a smirk, which breaks into a laugh. “I’d like nothing more. But…” He taps the black armour on his shoulder. “I realised the risk of putting out one of my lady’s eyes. I was just thinking of how fond I am of them.”
“Right, I can… um…” You feel along Xavier’s shoulder as he turns, until you find the thick leather strap where pauldron joins to breastplate.
“Did that sound strange?” he asks quietly. He glances at you. “About your eyes.”
“No, no. I appreciate your concern for my, um…” You furrow your brow as you try to yank the metal buckle loose. Leather is tough. Well, of course it is, it’s leather, you simply hadn’t thought it’d be this taut—
“It was the compliment I believe I worded poorly. You have beautiful eyes. I should’ve said.”
His voice is the gentlest you’ve ever heard it. What of the look on his face, you wonder, is it the same?
You resist indulging yourself with a peek. “Thank you,” you say, focused on unbuckling the pauldrons. (As if it’s dutiful work and not a prelude to further indulgences.) At his insistence, it’s onto the floor they go (then kicked, by him, beneath the bed.) The two of you work off the cape, the armour; Xavier tore his gauntlets off at some point to assist you, (likely kicked them, as well.)
Once he’s in his undershirt, you crumple your mental catalogue of ‘what he’s kicked where.’ The very heart in your chest flutters, weak as paper. Over the thin cotton undershirt, dangling from a black cord, around his neck, is, the…
You drag your eyes up. His catch the candlelight as they narrow. Playfully. Mischievously. Briefly, briefly, you’ve half a mind to leave.
Xavier reaches behind his neck and unclasps the cord; with twinkling eyes, he lies right to your face.
“No one's ever meant as much to me as you do.”
The ancient lump of once-yellow fabric goes in the dresser, by the window, middle of the top drawer; he places it atop your linens—
—turns, crushes you to his chest, latches his mouth to yours, drags you onto the velvet sheets.
The slide of his tongue works every thought from your head; the slide of his hands along your waist is all that keeps you conscious of your body. The satin ripples under his attentions. One of your simpler dresses. Xavier need not fiddle around faceted garnets or topaz cabochons. (You're thinking again.) He’s tracing the embroidery… Wherever you’re quite sure his fingers would meet gilded thread, they press firmer.
… What are your hands doing? … Nothing—nothing?!
You reach up to dig them into his hair. Instead, they graze cold metal, sharp. His crown. Of course, you didn’t remove that, it could tumble and break, or cause injury… You yank your face away, to get a proper look. Around his head it firm sits, even as he turns his head, lips brushing against your neck, then kissing, then trailing…
You focus. Carefully, you untwine a few ashen strands caught in the crown’s black spires, and begin to lift the crown free.
“Hurry up.” Xavier nips your pulse. “Please?”
“Your ma—mmf.”
His tongue strokes down your throat. You shake your head to break the kiss; he allows it, thankfully, and pulls back. Bracing his hands on either side of your head, he mutters, “Your Xavier is listening.”
You waggle the crown demonstratively. “My Xavier should place this on my bedside.”
Those too-blue eyes fill with tenderness. What a darling sight; less so, the smirk below them.
“You’re always so assiduous,” he says, taking the crown in hand.
It meets the wall with a clatter, and you’re set upon once more.
Silver spills through the window, drenching the room. Sat at the end of the bed, you find each small hair upon your arm turned to stardust by the moon’s light.
Such inspections are to avoid taking a proper look at the sight before you.
Framed by the weathered fireplace and its neglected hearth, more cinders than flame, Xavier kneels. What little firelight remains dances along his jaw. Beneath his smoky fringe, his lashes lie so low that you’re only sure of where he intends to look thanks to him telling you. Inside your ‘cunt’, an odd tension begins to coil.
Your skirt brushes your ankles as Xavier tucks his hands under the hem. He splays a hand on either shin.
You try to keep your voice steady. “And I am to, what? It cannot kiss back.”
Xavier’s eyelashes flutter, then he clears his throat and replies, “Indeed. I suppose you’ll have to satisfy yourself with doing nothing for me in return.”
His hands move up and up, as determined as the man himself. And as calloused, you think faintly, yet there is softness beneath; his fingertips trail delicately up your shins until they rest on the sides of your knees. Xavier presses his forehead to your knees, and exhales.
This is not the ravishing you’d expected when he first yanked you onto the bed. Nor the sort detailed in…
While working through the castle library, you would often and accidentally encounter a novella within which consummation was depicted midway, most often as a matter of course after a wedding, but sometimes for reasons utterly separate from any sort of development within the story, and the general impression given by the words as you skimmed them was never of such a… contemplative nature.
Xavier lifts his head. His eyes roam your face again, and yours roam his. Though his hair is now more ash than blonde, he ‘hasn’t aged a day’ in the hundred thousand or so you’ve spent apart. (That he spent without you. How many did you spend without him? Did you count? Surely you did.)
Your eyes slip to his collarbone, pale skin and paler cloth. After whatever this is, will he fetch that stupid star? Did he wear it every day, is briefly removing it meant to flatter you?
“You’ll enjoy it,” he whispers. “If you don’t, the fault is mine.”
“Mhm.”
“Just tell me if it bores you.” To leave your periphery, Xavier ducks his head and offers you a smile; you meet his eyes, you are not so rude as to deny that. “My lady?”
“I understand.”
His smile falters. “Would you rather do something else—?”
You cup his face. Xavier’s eyes strain trying to watch your thumb’s path over his cheek. A boyishly full curve, unweathered by the years, yet the stress of such starvation… Unspoken, but immense, beneath everything he said earlier, there growled a weakened longing. Was it for you?
You swallow your own need. “Even if I enjoy it, I would see you satisfied.” By me.
Xavier tilts into your touch, rests his chin on your knee, and gazes up at you… coquettishly. “Your enjoyment will satisfy me. I promise.”
“How?”
One of his hands moves an inch or so further up, passing back and forth over your thigh, seemingly absentminded. Desire fills his eyes as he speaks; shadows over forget-me-nots. “For a long time, I’ve wanted to make you feel a certain way.”
“I don’t know how you’ve even heard of such a method,” you mutter.
His smile widens. “That’s alright.”
You fold yourself forward and squint at him faux-accusatorily. “How often did you think of me in such a position?”
“Often.” Xavier nudges your nose with his. “But I thought of you always; most of my thoughts were appropriate.”
“When thinking upon this, you… decided it’d be best if I laid back and did nothing. Truly?”
“There is one thing I hope you’ll do.”
“Oh?”
“Mhm.”
It is with comical swiftness that Xavier butts his head to your chest. The world tilts, momentum has its way, you fall back. Thump.
“I dislike you again,” you declare.
Xavier’s hands slide down to your hem. He starts rucking your skirts up. “Then I’ll make amends through action. We’ve talked enough, for now.”
Nerves bounce upon your chest, then find their way inside your chest. Little foolish words and impulses. With great determination, you swallow them. You pull down a pillow from further up the bed and set it beneath your head, arranging your hair neatly, then fold your hands atop your stomach. Tucking the nerves in for the night.
They wake immediately when you hear leather rasp on stone; all the air leaves your lungs as your legs tilt up and, carefully, are pulled forward. They hook over Xavier’s shoulders—he’ll see beneath your skirt, easily, well, obviously, such is his intent—
Hands, flat on your inner thighs, kneading the flesh there, massaging. A kiss to your left knee. Another, to the right. Another, further up your left thigh. The peculiar sweetness between your legs stirs, as if moving?!
The nerves burst free. “It cannot have been always.”
Another kiss, right thigh. Buzzed upon your skin: “hm?”
“You said you thought of me always,” you clarify, staring at the oaken bedpost as if it could serve as a decent distraction.
“I did.” Xavier’s words dampen your inner thigh, and the other bedpost, in fact, is not a match; the wood is less evenly polished.
“But even revenants must sleep. Everyone sleeps.”
“Yes. Some dream of the person they most care for.” There’s a slight weight on your folded hands—your dress, folded up yet further. “I did.”
You must be bare from the hips down, but the due embarrassment has yet to reach you. Too focused are you on the hoarse yearning voice below, the slight tremble between each word; the bedposts are no comfort, nor the canopy. You shut your eyes and bite your lower lip and listen.
Xavier’s hands splay over the top of your thighs, high enough that his fingertips brush your hips. “I’d wake longing for her warmth. Then endure each day, ‘til came the night, and with it came more longing.”
You laugh breathily. “Forgive my disrespect, then.”
“Disrespect me. I don’t mind.”
A wet pressure parts you.
“Your h—ah!”
On your inner thigh, just barely, you feel the curve of Xavier’s smile. “Try again.”
“Xa—” You choke as moisture is laved up your crease. By Xavier’s tongue, while two of his fingers hold you open; then comes a deeper pressure, ardent as a kiss. Your hands fly out to fist the sheets; those stupid nerves are loose while your lower half is pinned beneath his forearm. Your ankles drive into the back of his shoulders. Xavier’s muscles tense beneath the cotton shirt as he moans into you.
“Xavier!”
“Yes,” he pants, “what?”
“I can’t lie still!” you insist. Mortified, you close your eyes. “It’s… sensitive.”
Xavier rubs his cheek on your inner thigh. “I know. That should pass. Move if you must, it’s fine. Do anything you like.”
His nose nudges at your crease. You’d never considered how that part of you tasted, but now you can think of nothing else. Xavier doesn’t inquire after your silence, instead spreading you further and pressing his face up to your cunt. So, it must taste… good.
Your face heats as Xavier licks at you. He does so with… animalistic focus, as if grooming or devouring—no, as if it is instinct, what he does to you, not a vulgar thing, and… and the sounds…
You feel used.
… It is not wholly unwelcome.
Heat prickles down your body. How hollow a vessel it is, as from your head to your cunt, Xavier drains you. Eventually you cannot hear a thing but the desperate gasps, leaving your mouth parched; it misses his, you want a kiss, but you do not want him to stop ‘kissing’ you.
You smother yourself with a hand so that you’re at least breathing warmer air, and… can pretend it is his hand…
At some point, your eyes open? Foolish, as they just loll about uselessly. The stone ceiling falls in and out of focus as you imagine it being blocked by his body, over you. There’s more done in the bedroom between a man and woman. He could do worse to you.
That sweet sensitivity yanks at you from the inside.
You bite the side of your hand to keep from moaning aloud, but your legs spasm; instantly, Xavier pins them, and despite your perfect silence, he pulls his mouth away. You let out a muffled growl. How attractive.
“So.” Xavier exhales. “You dislike me?”
Bastard. You try to find your voice somewhere in the canopy above you. Considering your reaction thus far, if you look at him, you’ll faint. “Mm-mm.”
“Yes or no?” he asks softly. Before you can reply, a true pressure coaxes your hole. His finger, probing, curious.
“No.” Your reply is more a whine than anything else.
“I’m relieved to hear it.”
Oh, damn you, you bite back the words. “Xavier.”
“Yes? Does my lady desire something?”
With sore fingers, you grip the sheets, blood stirred from arousal to agitation. “Ugh! I won’t say it.”
It is more than a matter of modesty, it is uncharacteristic; the girl he knew at the Academy would be horrified by such vulgarity. (Although she shared the want for it. After you fixed his brooch he could’ve fucked you and you would’ve allowed it; door unlocked, appointment looming, you would’ve done whatever Prince Xavier wanted, whenever, if he’d just told you he wanted it.)
Half feeling as if you are that naive, desirous girl again, you mutter, “Do you just want me lowly? Squirming about for you?”
“A little,” comes the reply, heart-achingly tender. “I want you however you are.” As he speaks so sweetly, his finger coaxes at your entrance. He’s vile, you’re vile, it feels wonderful, it’s vile.
“You are a terror of a king,” you laugh. “Defiling a lady’s dignity.”
“Your dignity?” Xavier widens his eyes, and penetrates your pulsing hole.
You gag on nothing, tipping your head back, clenching your fists; velvet sheets shift, a hundred miles away. The weight along your hips vanishes, freeing you to arch, though it barely alleviates the pressure. A splayed hand meets your sweat-slick backside.
Suddenly close, hushed by your ear, his voice: “Speak if it hurts.”
It does hurt; it doesn’t? Your fingers hurt. Your eyes, squeezed shut, are fine… Your cunt, invaded and insisted upon, aches. Fumbling, you press your hand back to your mouth, and moan into it. The pressure in your lower half continues until Xavier’s palm is pressed flush to you. Then, his fingertip starts to drag against your insides. Second-by-second, an even pace of press-and-drag-and-turn-and-press-and-probe—
“I like your dignity as it is,” he says, miles away.
“M’sorry.”
“It’s alright. You were joking.”
Lightning arcs up your shins, searing your lower stomach. “Ah!”
Again, Xavier strikes upon something inside you, like flint to a fire, water to a drunkard; you’re overheated and dripping, you’re blinded—
“I want to defile this.” Right underneath where Xavier’s finger is driving inside you, you receive a long, messy kiss.
“Xa—y’h—” You slap your hand over your mouth as the wet slip of his tongue ventures lower, toward an entrance far filthier; from the skin between, Xavier laps at your cunt’s dribbling. You go limp, and let him.
Goosebumps ripple all over your skin—yet if there is a chill in the air, you cannot feel it. Relaxation spills over your body, as delicious and tempting as a hot bath in winter. Your hand slips from your mouth to grasp something, somewhere, and your hips buck reflexively. Xavier’s unwavering mouth follows. Even if you wanted to stop the sounds escaping you, you can no longer anticipate them.
The dark behind your eyes. Xavier on you. Those are the only things you’re sure of. Gradually, you cannot tell where exactly his mouth is, or what your body is doing; your body is his concern, not yours.
Squelching and hums, sucking-licking-penetrating, rhythmic, deep…
Pleasure is a wave, swelling below you, bidding you to float. Each pass of Xavier’s tongue fills you, now, until warmth drenches your insides, softening your bones, your muscles, and his hand slides up your neck. It is no grip at all, just a caress, yet breath flees. After one long exhale, anchored to only Xavier’s palm, you drown. Washed over all at once, a fierce current and Xavier, Xavier, Xavier—
“I’m here.” A susurrus of wind over water. A breeze on your cheek. “You’re so perfect.” The loveliest voice in the galaxy is right over you. “I… I’ve…”
Then a kiss coaxes you open, as the world clenches inward.
Xavier's here.
Xavier is kissing you. Your knight, your prince, he came back and called you perfect and kissed you, just like you wanted him to, that afternoon on the rooftop, and always…
Giddy, weak, you fumble at air before Xavier takes your hand and presses it to his cheek. You can feel his jaw working as he kisses you. Death and stale sorrow and clumsiness are inconsequential; Xavier's kissing you like he loves you.
He does, you decide, delirious. He came home to me. Across the starry sea and back again.
The sound of your name floats down to you like a feather, tickling your face. Blearily, you open your eyes. The moon lights Xavier’s hair to pure silver—how did you ever think it ashen?—and his shirt is pristine white. Your star, shining over you again.
… Concern lines his brow, for whatever silly reason. You squint, disapproving.
Instantly, his face smooths to contentment. Xavier braces himself on one elbow, rests his head on his hand, and smiles down at you. “Good evening.”
“Shush. Hush-shush-shush.”
Mock-somber, he nods, then smiles again. Gazing at you as you… lie back. Doing nothing.
“This feels right,” you say, still in a daze.
He cups your face. “So it does.” Calloused fingertips brush your cheekbone, then turn. With the softer part of his hand, Xavier traces the curve of your cheek with delicacy befitting a relic. “l missed this,” he whispers.
A confession amid catharsis; admission made after blessings bestowed; ‘I prayed for this,’ said in gratitude; it is gratitude, and after so long, melancholy’s weight would feel minute, and Xavier couldn’t have anticipated—
Hasty kisses land below your eyes, back and forth, as if to shoo back tears. Oh! There are tears—
“Pain?” he asks, panicked. “Or I—”
“It’s fi—snf—fine.”
Xavier presses his forehead to yours. “You’re crying.”
“Because I’m sad! Saddened. You made me sad!”
“Oh,” he sighs the word, “I’d meant to make my queen happy.”
“You do!”
This time, he laughs: “Oh. But… if she’d have me not speak of the past, I won’t, it doesn’t matter.”
You wrap your arms around his shoulders, beneath the blanket of his hair. You wind your fingers through some of the strands and slowly, carefully, clench your fist. “It does matter.”
“Th—”
“I missed you.”
Xavier tucks his face to the curve of your neck.
Of course. Any honest response would be chivalrous demurring. Or inadequate reciprocity. You’d begrudge him for it. You’ve no right to, you’ve every right to, he left for a good reason, he abandoned you; your knight wanted to save his lady love, or the planet, or both, he had to follow his guiding starlight, wherever she is or was or may be.
You loosen your grip on Xavier’s hair, in case the bitterness in you reaches that far. It certainly seems capable of it. Washed clean as you are by newfound bliss, this ancient resentment remains.
After you’re distracted from the discontent by kisses and pretty words and his pretty face, lit by infatuation, Xavier rolls off the bed. To go clean his face, and fetch water; five minutes, he promises, no more.
He returns on time, presumably; there’s no clock for you to brood at. You take the glass from your bedside and hold it out. Even how carefully he tilts the flagon bothers you. It is kind, he is kind, you want… all of his kindness. Are you greedy, now? Covetous? You suppose you are, and were.
“You don’t need to do this,” you mutter.
Xavier sets the flagon onto the floor. You let yourself forget its location immediately; let him clong his foot against it later.
“What do you mean?” he asks, sitting beside you.
The urge to kiss him rattles your ribs like prison bars. You drown it and place the glass back on the bedside. As if from a long distance, you watch him take your hand, and splay your hand open. His fingers start to lace through yours, and you cannot bear to watch, for some unfathomable reason. You stare at the bedsheets.
“You can go,” you say, “since… it's done.”
Your joined hands meet his lips. Upon each of your knuckles, a kiss. One, two, three, four, five. “But you don't want me to go.”
“No.”
A smile against the back of your hand. Then, Xavier rolls to lean over you, ever-so-gently pressing your hands down. He dips his head to whisper by your ear. “Let's stay here forever, then.”
Too much. It’s too much, it’s not real. Staring at the canopy keeps his hair in the periphery—you strain your eyes away, and they land in the worst possible part of the room.
“Xavier.”
“Mhm?”
“Where is the star I gave you?” One, two, three seconds pass. “Where is it?” you ask, sick.
“Welded to my breastplate. Where the flowers sit. I can—”
“Nevermind.” Stupid idea. Shown any speck of silver metal upon it, you’d believe him. Another two seconds pass. Three more. Another three! That makes five; more and more, ah, this is humiliating!
“When you gifted it to me,” Xavier murmurs, “I came perilously close to a confession.”
Your head spins.
Xavier's is anchored upon the nape of your neck. Breaths shudder free, and words, too, oh, no. “I love you,” he lies, “I won’t leave you again.”
“W—”
“Do you believe me?” he asks, pulling his head up. His hands grip the sides of your face with none of his earlier reverence, and force you to look at him. Such is the intensity in his eyes that it can only be described as a glare.
“Upon your face is not a loving look.”
Xavier pokes the sides of your frown with his thumbs. “Love doesn’t grant one a pleasant countenance. And you don’t believe me.”
“What does it matter?” you croak. (Whatever moisture the water left on your innards seems to have evaporated. Marvellous.) “Any of it.”
His eyes widen. “What?”
You grasp the front of his shirt. Had you the strength, you’d tear the cotton crumpled in your fist, to palm at the skin beneath and know him truly bared, even in a small way. Some small recompense. (He only bared you to pleasure you. Which he then did. And now, he’s giving you what you always wanted. Or… what is left of it, considering the ruin you’ve both found yourselves in…)
He placed another woman’s favour amongst your belongings and violated you because he wanted to, and now demands faith from you; next, you’re quite sure, he’ll seek forgiveness. “If you want to finish having me,” you say, tugging until that baffled face fills your vision, “you can just… you can. I’ll enjoy it. You don't need to do this.”
For a moment, that pretty, bewildered face is horrified. The hands on your face gentle, and for a moment, you hate Xavier.
It passes. It always passes. You hate that too. Once more, his forehead touches yours. Somehow you find the courage to shove your head to the side.
You stare at that ghastly dresser.
What sits in the very middle of its top drawer is so small! Smaller than a stone in your shoe or sleepsand in your eyes of a morning or the very lump in your throat as you think upon it.
Xavier’s hand folds over the one you’ve fisted in his shirt. “Please let go.”
You tighten your grip.
You ought to obey. King or prince or man stronger than you; it is unwise, being petulant to him. Certainly not a trait of a lady well-loved. Though it may be best, for him to see up close the shrew you are. (“Yes, ‘tis your Queen; you’ll prefer her upon the pedestal where complaints cannot be heard.”)
He doesn’t love you. He doesn’t know you. Nor you him; Xavier seems to be the same, divested of raiment, but what seems to be a star is no more than a lumpy circle of linen. It is only a star if viewed with sentimentality. This was no true reunion. He doesn’t love you. (Meaning he didn’t make love to you, although you knew that, for it was just his mouth—meaning he is more likely to have used you.)
Xavier speaks so softly. “Tell me what you want.” You want to strangle his temper free.
“For you to have your way with me then go.”
“Don’t…” Fingertips calloused at the edges trace overtop your aching knuckles. Roughened skin, gentle touch. “Please look at me?”
As you turn your head, your throat thickens. Swallowing hurts. The bitterness is less like bile, more... sand within an hourglass. You are not a woman, you are an object Xavier tipped carelessly. Now the object itself must adjust. Right itself. Endure the scrapes.
The look upon Xavier’s face is a loving look. (You hope there are portraits of him, somewhere, painted with caring hand.) You hate him.
“I want,” you rasp, “to be of a mind with my closest friend, but he is gone; I want to trust my…” … Xavier was your knight in title alone. A knight, yes. Yours? No.
“Your Xavier?”
“Mm.” You loosen your grip to avoid his touch, but Xavier takes your hand. Entwines his fingers with yours again. Again, again, again. Such persistence. Such constancy—“You said you’d come back when I missed you. You did not."
"I shouldn't have promised that. I failed you. I’m sorry." Xavier gathers you into his arms; you close your eyes to hide from shame, and sink into the abyss. A kiss is pressed to the top of your head. "If I could've returned sooner, I would’ve.”
“I don’t forgive you.”
His chuckle rumbles against your cheek. (You nuzzle into the sound. Shame hasn’t found you yet.) “Good. It is not pardon I seek.” One broad hand strokes up your neck, and cups the back of your head. “I daresay... I missed you as much as you missed me. The difference lies in my being at fault for it, but... Once I'd learned the fate I abandoned you to, it weighed on my every hour. I was in anguish, and... I truly hope that brings you some relief, because... I think it might.”
It does. Horrible as it is, it... Because... you missed him. Because you missed him and you did precisely as he asked and—
You sob. Fossilised hopes made a cairn over missing him, having him in any way feels... wrong, odd, strange... it does not alleviate the weight... you want desperately to believe him, and you cannot bear to have him lie to you again. You sob, and sob, and try your very best to imagine it is not his shirt you cling to, but... that you've found some part of him that is just for you, that you can keep close, that... won't leave again...
Your prince doesn't hush you or comment upon your state; when you squeeze him, he squeezes back; when you blather miserable nonsense, he shifts so you may breathe and babble easier. Though coherency remains out of reach—you always cut yourself off after a syllable or two—your mind begins to clear.
… You feel compelled to apologise.
Prince Xavier must’ve seen a seed of perseverance in you, else he wouldn’t have named you queen. Perhaps you wilted easily, perhaps you didn’t. So many memories remain unexcavated… you dislike sifting through them already. Flecked upon your whole life is an inexplicable, stagnant rage.
As beloved queen you had a servant (Maisie? Mary?) who always lay in your empty bed of an evening, while you undressed and chattered about literature. She was lovely to you. Yet were she Maisie or Mary or a heated brick magically capable of conversation, it’d make no difference; what you recall most, flecked throughout the memory, is how angry you were. Like ash, your anger soils without seeming to, and cannot be removed without soiling something else. You knew, upon bidding your bedwarmer goodnight, the bed wouldn’t feel warm at all.
Luxuriant and overlarge, the sheets were burdensome, you wanted Xavier beneath them with you. You couldn’t quash the hope of waking in Xavier’s arms, briefly frightened, scandalised; warmed by his whisper, melting into his arms. 'I needed to see you right away. Forgive your indecorous knight.'
Every fantasy had Xavier desperate to hold you. (He was not always doing so; imagining him sorrowful and alone brought pleasure. You were alone!) To fall asleep, you’d oft imagine kissing him—as you kissed tonight!—or comfort alike what's seemingly offered now, or merely hearing his voice from another room. These wishes seem granted. The space between your bodies is warm, and you've dribbled and melted upon him like leftover candle wax. Hurrah.
Xavier kisses your temple. “I’m here.”
As I am aware, yes, you think dimly. Your heart and lungs are less obdurate: at each soft breath upon your skin, foolish affection prances around your innards and unsteadies your breath. Even when he kissed your gloved hand, the night you met, your heart was ‘aflutter.’ He could’ve kissed you properly, explained himself to you, and explained you to you, and Sindersfell’s past; all of this could’ve happened earlier, you could’ve had more time. Instead, your spirit is broken and bloodied from clawing free of the grave.
You no longer feel compelled to apologise.
Whines thin to sniffles, sorrow dries up. Finally, you pull away from the pretense of Xavier’s embrace. "Thank you," you say, then scold yourself for such meekness. You smooth your hand over his drenched sleeve, rearrange your face, and grant him a glance. “Apologies. I believe I’m all right, now.”
Xavier’s staring at you as if you’re speaking in a foreign tongue. "May I hold you again?"
"I don’t require comfort, thank you."
"I know. I'd still like to hold you."
"My trousers will ruin the bedsheets," Xavier tells the wall. “The inner-most. They’re silk; gentler than the coverlet.”
You know what your own bed feels lik—what are his trousers made of, then?! You peer at the fabric through the hands he’s clasped behind himself. Then you quickly look away, drawing your shoulders back. It’s of no concern to you.
Perhaps he speaks of stains, not texture... It’s of no concern. Having emptied yourself of lust and melancholy, you work on emptying yourself of wondering. As a queen you will soon reunite with your imperious dignity. You resolved so before Xavier could catch your mouth mid-embrace.
(Not that he had the chance to try. But he would’ve, if allowed to 'hold you.')
Whatever Xavier would like to happen could wait, you decided, as you’d like to go to bed. He can hold you in bed if he likes. Thus you shooed him into turning ‘round so you could undress, and refused when he asked to take his leave for a moment.
(Not that you desire for him to stay, necessarily; you were ensuring you were capable of refusing him something.)
Stood by the chest of drawers, your eyes linger on the window. There’s hairline cracks on the panes; the thick-wrought latticing looks silly, pointless. "If by ruin the sheets, you mean stain them," you say, pulling open the second drawer, “or otherwise leave them inadequate for sleep, then you can sit atop the coverlet. Or simply remove your trousers.”
“... Remove them.”
“Yes.” Eyes fixed on the window, you pull open the second drawer, and feel your way to silk-muslin-linen-cotton—your shifts. You pluck one up. “I’ve seen men bared before.”
“Oh?” threads the air, light and sharp as a needle.
Peculiar trend between sparring sword-brothers. Started… in the second century of your absence? Or the third? You wonder if the history books recorded it. “Haven’t you seen a naked woman before?”
“Are statues included in our measures?”
“We aren’t doing anything beyond conversing. I asked you a question. You need not answer.” You close the drawer. As you strip, you force your eyes down, and watch your day-dress pool at your feet. You step free and kick it behind you. Soon the underside of your bed will host the stock of a haberdashery, tailor, and armory.
A glance over your shoulder proves Xavier standing just as you left him, eyes fixed on the wall; too-snug trousers and all. You slide the cotton nightdress on and are grateful for your luck. It’s one of your favourites. Lavender, but for two small blue flowers you’d embroidered over moth-bitten holes. The fabric is breathable, without being so thin to show your figure beneath; if you’d blindly plucked up a see-through white shift…
It’d be of no concern. Queens wear whatever they like. "You may turn," you announce.
As soon as Xavier’s eyes are upon you, they begin to roam. "That's a lovely dress,” he says, “lavender flat—"
“It’s lilac. Now…” You rap one knuckle upon the topmost drawer. "The furniture in my room is for my belongings, not another's. I'd like you to remove what you put in here, and… put it with your crown, or pauldrons, wherever any of that went."
Xavier's brow furrows in confusion. Confusion! The cheek of the man!
"It belongs to the girl you 'liked.'" You pause in case of correction. (In the event of which you shall scream.)
Silent, Xavier walks around the four-poster and to your side. He slides the top drawer open. Just as delicately as he'd traced your face earlier, he scoops up the small, stuffed lump. Washed milk-pale in the moonlight. Most vibrant is the threading down one side: richer brown than the rest and exceptionally tight. Most noticeable is the dark strap the old thing is hung on, a poisonous vine around Xavier’s open palm.
"I should’ve asked permission?" he asks quietly. "The woman I love stores her ribbons and kerchiefs here. Is that not the best place for... ? Other than with me?"
As you stare at the star, his words buzz to insignificance. Rich brown is the colour of its smile, too. Mismatched to its gleeful eyes. Your hazy memories of the Academy swirl, with the star at their center. Its face was always light brown. Thus Xavier repaired it, at some point, while away from you.
Had it been damaged in combat, and he panicked at its ruin? You thought he'd replaced it with your star because he preferred you! Juvenile, foolish, cruel silly idea that should’ve brought no comfort in the first place! The fabric star was too precious to wear upon his pommel, that's all!
The idea of him stooped over this tiny star, delicately pricking a needle through—
The idea of him caring for something you had no hand in. That's what it is. That sickens you. No queen feels so unless she is a tyrant, no tyrant trembles when faced with a childish trinket, thus you are naught by a silly, smitten girl. You are so selfish.
Xavier’s hand closes around the star. "I'm realising a mistake of mine."
"You shall have to be more specific," you say flatly.
"I will be,” he lies, voice as sorrowful as when he spoke of Uluru; when did you stop hating him? It passed, you suppose, foolishly, for you feel its return. You drag your head up. Past that frowning face is a future of this. Watching a great secret wear Xavier’s skin, retreat inward, and take the rest of him with it. Xavier steps closer to you, and dips his head. He takes your hand. "Can you resonate with me?”
“I can, yes. Of course.”
He smiles ruefully. “My queen, may I resonate with you, please?”
Your heart is made of dough. You imagine yourself punching it like a hardy baker, free of girlish fantasies. “Go on.”
Searing pain meets your palm—you flinch so far back into yourself, you do not feel the heat. Xavier’s voice passes over you. “The ‘person I liked’ is the person I care for now, and love. You.” Your mind judders at the words and falls, and falls, and falls, shuddering; a clock hand struggling to meet each hour.
“Only one person has given me … she can die and be reborn … how many times, no matter where … can you help me—”
Clocks and time are equally unreliable. Paint upon a clock's face, sand in an hour glass, so on, so forth, specks on specks in the grand cosmic landscape...
Stars scatter behind your eyes and burst, one at a time, until the final star is revealed to be a pat of butter, melted. Velvet snuck from textiles class. The little curved eyes of the star were asymmetrical, so you had to unpick one and try again; then, the smile kept puckering too much on the left… on the day, you regretted adding the little face at all; it looked childish, as well as ugly…
“It looks good. Can you help me put it on?”
Xavier's arms close around you while the world ends. No, you merely… are off-balance, or... you were. Or the world tilts. Doesn’t matter, Xavier has you. One of his broad hands is splayed on your back—quickly joined by another, though curled in a fist.
Through the abyss you scrabble, trying to catch hold of what already steadies you. Your hands land around his face. He gasps as you drag him close. One of his sleeves brushes over your shoulder, followed by a wooden thud, then with both arms, Xavier pulls your trembling body flush to his.
Hands splayed at your waist, he lets you kiss at him like a madwoman. You understand, now, how he felt earlier: the alleged need to kiss. How much it overwhelms. Once you can bring yourself to part from him for anything more than a quick breath, you’ll apologise. For now, you can only pant and whine whenever he pulls away to breathe.
Xavier’s tongue slides deeper into your mouth upon each return, hot and slick and demanding; you match his fervour, nudging and shoving him back. Eventually he falls back upon the bed, laughing, pulling you along with him. You straddle him and sink down so you’re sat eye-to-eye. There will be no more worship of you, pedestaled or prone.
... Xavier’s disobedient gaze is already ardent and worshipful. You'll allow it, as he is so handsome. The fire is long-dead, so it is by moonlight alone you admire him; features both shadowed and over-bright...
He admires you admiring him awhile, then says, "I had hoped... further memories needed to be baited out."
"Like fish? Tch."
"Did it not work? You kiss me vigorously as a punishment?"
"No, it... I... I remember. I understand. The star being mine, at least."
"As the one before you now is, too. No one had ever given me anything handmade," he says wistfully, "unless it was an heirloom—"
"Might we reflect upon my childhood infatuation of you another time?"
Xavier cocks his head to the side. "Mhm. I'll make sure of it."
You fist his shirt and tug it toward his neck. Xavier yanks it over his head. (Tosses it over the bed's edge. Breaks the brick wall with the force of flinging the thing for all you care.)
The musculature of his chest is as pale as marble; hands splayed, you find it near as cool and firm. There's a thin scar just below his collarbone, on the left side. From his clavicle down to his navel… Too thin and light to have meant true risk. You trace its path, down, down. The muscles of his stomach, impossibly, harden.
When the tips of your fingers reach the top of his trousers (which are not leather!), Xavier shifts away, propping himself on his elbows. "Such intimacies are usually shared by those in love,” he breathes. He widens his eyes facetiously. "Though I am not averse to breaking with custom. As I am a virgin…"
You scoff. "Who are you to claim such a thing?"
"I made several claims.” Xavier smiles. “You shall have to be more specif—ah."
Your palm doesn't cover the entirety of the swell in his trousers, but brings the desired effect. Xavier tips his head back, wincing, and the swell throbs under your hand. "You thoroughly ravished me earlier,” you remark. “Hardly virginal."
"’Ravished’?” Xavier laughs. “I did not r—nngh.”
You continue pressing your palm down, and rub at the bulge as you would a muscle, in need of gentle massage. “Plenty of girls liked you at the academy,” you muse, watching your hand work over him. "I'd understand dalliance, curiosity..."
“None but you ever crossed my mind, not a single other person please please please please stop.”
Immediately you lift your hand. If he denied you completely, right now, you'd not resent him, or insist. Absurd as it is, you take a moment to be grateful; your emotions are steadying. “Would you like me to continue at all?” you ask, and trail your eyes up to meet his.
The muscles of his stomach are pinkening, working furiously, and true flush is smeared from his throat to his ears. Those pretty blue eyes are wide, sincere, pupils making stars out of moonlight. "Did you love me?"
"W-when?"
Xavier’s brows curve close. "During Philos, before I left. Either of the times I left you, for which I am so sorry. Did you love me then?"
Again comes the absurd, selfish gratitude, trimming your compassion. The ancient wound of missing him or loving him 'more' doesn't bother you at all; he is the most soothing balm, and you want to treat him gently. You cup his cheeks, and smile. “I forgive you. We’re together now. I love you, Xa—”
“Did you love me. Then.”
You can’t find it in yourself to be offended. Xavier’s eyes shine as if they are glass, or sapphires. A dim, distant memory comes of a lake just like his eyes, and how breakable you both seemed at its shore. “I don’t think I knew exactly what it was I was feeling,” you say, and watch his face collapse. “I wanted to embrace you every day, and be your betrothed, and, when I was feeling especially imaginative, I wanted to live with you on Uluru.”
A horrible frown pulls at Xavier’s mouth. When he speaks, it is so quiet you must watch his mouth to be sure of the words. “I wanted you.”
“And you were loved by me. I felt then as I feel now, but I did not know what it was for… a long time.”
He clears his throat, blinking rapidly. “I loved you, and never ceased." He pushes off his elbows to sit upright and gaze up at you. "Do you believe me now?”
“Of course I do." (Though with even more incredulity, submerged from a shy schoolgirl's mid-class daydreaming.) "I merely... This strange planet of ours did strange things to my mind.”
Xavier slowly reaches forward to pinch the front of your cotton shift, and tug. “Mm-mm. This isn’t our planet.”
A pang of longing fills you. You smile weakly. “No, yet here is where we are.”
“In love.”
“Oh! So we are.” You tap his nose, and squeak when his hands encircle you to pull you into his lap.
“I’ve loved you for so long; I can scarcely remember when I didn’t.” The sweet words come in great contrast to the insistent throbbing pressed to your thigh. Xavier’s hard as a stone. “Let me show you how much. Please.”
Removing his trousers while sat on his lap is a more difficult task than the pauldrons; you end up standing once more so Xavier can bare himself. Immediately, he pulls you back. Your shift catches on his erection, pressing it to his stomach. By your navel, the cloth grows damp, rubbed by a pink nub, half a palm’s width, and glistening.
You shift back to see the full length of him. The shaft of his cock is paler than the head, though flushed towards the base, nestled in a thatch of thin, silver hair. You resist the temptation to measure it with your hands.
“It’s lovely,” you remark.
Xavier looks set to burst into laughter. “Thank… you… my lady.”
You huff, and cradle the head of his cock with one hand. Xavier’s hands turn to fists at your waist. “Books make a man’s manhood sound rather intimidating, that’s all.”
“You’ve, read—?”
In a queenly manner you insist he pull back the coverlet, so embracing may be done comfortably.
It is indeed thanks to books you supposed lovemaking would be less overwhelming, if done under the covers. You wouldn’t be faced with the full sight. Nor would he. Before slipping under the coverlet (and his body) you took off the nightgown you’d just put on, so you could both be naked. Equals!
Terrible idea.
When Xavier brackets your face with his arms, the small space you share becomes an entire world. Within which you are overheated and helpless. “While I always knew you favoured literature,” he breathes, nose brushing yours. “I did not consid—”
“Consider nothing now, either, um.” Memories flit over your loosened mind like shooting stars, one after the other; you choose not to linger on them, or seek them out. Let them be dust, lint. You’re in Xavier’s arms. “Lovemaking comes up. In all sorts of stories.”
Xavier lowers his hips. His ‘manhood’ drags up your thigh, dampening the skin. “You don’t need to be demure with me, anymore.”
“Then stop talking,” you order, heart thudding, “and… show me, as you said.”
Obediently silent, Xavier nuzzles the nape of your neck, then drags his head down until breath meets nipple—
“O-oh—!”
Your breast is enveloped in warm, wet suction. Moans spill freely from you as Xavier suckles. One arm curled underneath you to keep you close, the other slides between you, cupping your mound. Your head spins. His mouth is too strong. The coverlet is too heavy. You kick a leg free. Blessedly cool air meets your calf, your hip, before a heavy thigh cages your leg.
“Nnnh.” You thread your fingers through his hair and tug his head back up—before you can glimpse his face, you bury your face into the curve of his neck. There, in the heat and the darkness and the scent of his sweat, you feel safe. This is a hug, nothing more. Jostled in the darkness as he removes his arm from between you, no doubt to embrace you even tighter.
Xavier spits.
You furrow your brow right against his skin so he may feel it. “Xavier. What was that.”
He laughs, then wordlessly drags his bare arm down your stomach once more, touch returning to your mound. Two fingers slide lower, and part you.
“Again?!" you ask, aghast. He's obsessive. "The same as—?!”
After a few breaths, Xavier laughs. “Mm-mm.”
“... Oh for goodness' sake. You didn't need to stop talking altogether.”
Xavier kisses your shoulder. “You always forget how easily you command me. To answer: no, it is not going to be the same. Trust me.”
Slow, tender circles to the apex of your cunt until the sensations within swirl and pinch like a whirlpool, though the muscles themselves relax under such gentle attention... You let yourself be carried through the abyss behind your eyes. This time, you barely notice the entrance of his finger, until he curls it as if beckoning. Intoxicating pleasure ripples over you again.
“S’good,” you murmur, and kiss his neck.
He shivers. “I’m glad.” Virginal indeed; Xavier works you lovingly, dextrously. So well did you take one, he whispers, and shortly adds a second, curling them, stretching, coaxing… A fuzz-like warmth begins in your hands and feet…
Then you are empty, and he is upright, leaving the coverlet to rest against his waist—and your naked body exposed. You cover your breasts with your arms.
Xavier quirks a brow. “What my mouth has known, my eyes cannot?”
“Your mouth knew only one,” you mutter, and let your left arm fall to the side.
With an exaggerated sigh, Xavier takes hold of your hip in his free hand. "We have time aplenty for introductions." His thumb rubs a circle on your skin. "Spread your legs for me."
One determined inhale doesn't grant you much courage, so you do not bother with another. You slide your legs open. Slightly the same as before, he raises your legs, though only to his hips; you keep them there when asked to. Xavier wraps one hand around the base of his length as the other spreads you. Against the muscle of your entrance, you feel the head of his cock. Your body's awareness of itself is reduced to that small space. Surely it will not fit.
"Xavier..."
He leans down over you, and kisses you so feather-soft that it is almost aggravating; how tender a man he is, and can only be so now... Xavier whispers your name in return and the settling woe is brushed away. Dust. It is all dust, now.
Blunt pressure nudges your entrance. You flinch; Xavier soothes you with a kiss. As his lips part yours, the pressure breaches you. The girth is startling, stretching you open, hard as the hilt of a sword. You whine, he hums a comfort, hips rocking shallowly until the discomfort ebbs. Then he nudges forward, and sweetness coats the ache.
Your body forgets itself, the arm covering your breast falls to the side as all of you goes slack, wanton moans spilling from your mouth. Your cunt loses its strength steadily, forced open again, and again, and again, it relaxes and lets Xavier offer more, and more, until he is fully seated.
Vaguely, you're aware of him leaning over you. His voice is a hot rasp over you. “A dream. This must be a dream. You are… mmh."
"S'real," you murmur, and find yourself smiling, giddy. You came back. There is some strange, mad accomplishment felt in finally being with him this way. You press a hand between you both, flat on over his heart. Just barely, you can feel it beating.
"It's yours," he croaks. "If you'll have it."
"It's your heart, Xavier, I'd quite like it to stay right where it is," you jest. His hips knock a gasp free from you; punishment for such cheek, perhaps.
"Then stay it shall. Whatever your desire. F… ah... I am yours." Your mouth parts in surprise as he begins to move in earnest. The friction is... you’d thought the initial breach would be the true shock of intercourse. The fullness is startling, yes, but coupled with this dragging, pulsing heat, it's almost too much. Xavier seems equally overwhelmed. His breath hitches with every inward thrust, and sweat quickly slicks his broad chest. "Everything I've… it's for you, everything I am, everything I did. I begged the stars like a… I couldn’t…”
Xavier’s head droops as he fucks into you harder, breath shallowing. “I waited for you. I waited. For you. For this. I stayed. Couldn't leave you. I'll never leave you.”
You seize him by the jaw and pull him close; his kisses fall upon you open-mouthed, sloppy. His cock drives in and out, in and out; a storm over your sea, waves of sensation cresting with each drag of his length. Lightning sparking up your limbs. You loop your ankles around Xavier’s muscled hips, and cling.
The fullness of him within you is constant; even when he withdraws, it is for a second before he returns, and you're too overwhelmed by the smell and feel of him to notice the lack. Eventually he breaks away, panting, and buries his face in your neck. You nuzzle his ear, delighted by the flush, and stroke the side of his neck. Xavier bites you—though lightly—and a whine breaks over the skin in his teeth.
His hips begin to stutter.
Aha! (When skimming… books… that came up. Quite often.)
You kiss the curve of Xavier’s ear and whisper, "I love you. I love you so much.”
Xavier’s arms loop around you and crush you close as he rolls onto his side. Your thigh's squashed between his body and the bed, jostled as his hips snap into you fervently; it takes great effort to keep your ankles from falling. He sounds almost in pain: "Please, my name, please please."
"I love you, Xavier; you’ve always been my only love. My star.”
“F… Y-y-yes. Yours. Yours.”
Thrust by thrust, the air is knocked out of you. “My, love, my, Xavier."
The shudder that wracks him is so great, the bedframe shudders alongside; Xavier drives himself within you once more and remains, shivering. Heat blooms low in you, where your bodies are joined; you can feel him spending, twitching, filling you with all he has. You're stunned to silence by how warm it is... how must it taste? Excitement dances along your ribs and out your every breath. He'd let you... find out. There is much more you can do together. (You're becoming quite the deviant.)
As you fantasise, Xavier's shivers ebb, and his arms relax, though they still tremble.
Your trapped thigh screeches at you. “Xavier... Roll me onto my back again?”
He obeys immediately, a hoist and a roll, then turns boneless too. Xavier weighs heavily upon you, but the weight is an unexpected comfort. The coverlet is a twisted mess somewhere low on the mattress, and there is an expanse of mattress on either side, yet you cannot imagine ever being bothered by the cold or loneliness again.
You wrap your arms around him. Over the salt and musk of your shared slick wafts an ever-so-slight floral fragrance, from his hair. You breathe it in, nuzzling close. This shall be all there is, please; this shall be eternity.
However much time passes with the two of you laid so is not time enough. There is a shlick from Xavier's chest rising from yours, as he props himself up on a hand. A drop of moisture falls from his jaw and lands on your breast. He wipes it away with a quick yet clumsy thumb. "I’ve coated you in sweat more than I would my sword in oil. Forgive me.”
“You favour me more than you do your sword, I’d think.”
“Much more than anything else.”
“You also…” Rather than continuing, you squeeze his hips and tilt your own. He remains inside you—adjusting the angle to match you. “Elsewhere is... coated thoroughly. Do I forgive that too?”
“Sin I intend to commit again, and so cannot honestly repent.” Xavier braces himself on one arm; with the other, he reaches between you. His fingers trace where you’re parted around him, and he eases out but a few inches, before pressing back in. You savour how complete you feel; you'd be empty, lacking, without him. “I found myself at a peak too soon. I wanted to feel you reach yours, but…”
He finds that peak of sensitivity again, now made slick by his release. Already filled with him, your cunt twitches for more. Under his skilled hand you’re unspooled yet again, twitching and shivering, and he caresses you until you’ve gathered yourself. Skill acquired by reading a great deal, he confesses, while you were gone. The confession is amongst many sweet words pulled from his heart and whispered cheek-to-cheek; through the long night Xavier shares all he did for you while you were gone. You tell him what you can, of what shameful little you recall. (Even then, Xavier believes it to be more than he deserves.)
Just as individual memories coalesce into one’s memory, entire, these acts of commitment to one another converge into a silent promise. The dust left by so many lonely hours gathers into something beautiful. Grandiose. Yet just for you and Xavier. The most precious, safest place to land amongst a chaotic cosmos: you’ll always be together.
— A/N: ty for reading! if you enjoyed it, pls consider leaving a like/reply/reblog here; they mean so much to me and i love knowing what y'all like. <3
content: fwb!xavier, jealous!xavier, dom vibes, reader and xav are kind of idiots, angry sex, soft sex, idiots in love
It had started with too much whiskey. A late night when the walls between your apartments felt thinner than usual, music and laughter slipping through until you both gave up pretending you weren’t listening to the other. One knock at your door, a bottle shared between neighbors, and suddenly you were leaning into him on the couch, laughing too loud at some story that only half made sense in the haze.
The kiss had come like a misstep — quick, clumsy, so unexpected you almost laughed it off. But then his hand slid behind your neck, and the second kiss landed hotter, hungrier, like he’d been waiting for an excuse. Clothes scattered quicker than the whiskey buzz faded, and by the time the night blurred into sheets and gasping breaths, you weren’t sure who had pulled who down first.
In the morning, Xavier didn’t say a word about it. He passed you coffee with that same cool detachment he wore to work, eyes half-lidded and unreadable, and walked out your door like nothing had happened. You took the silence for what it was — an answer. Casual. A release. Maybe even a mistake.
But it didn’t stop.
It slipped into a rhythm, quiet and unspoken, until it almost felt inevitable. Long days that ended in exhaustion, nights when liquor softened sharp edges — somehow, they always ended with you in his bed or him in yours. Sometimes it was his knock at your door, a crooked half-smile that never reached his eyes. Sometimes it was you finding his light still burning at midnight, stepping inside without needing to ask. You didn’t talk about it. You didn’t define it. You just let it happen.
And yet, sometimes, in the stillness after, you found yourself staring at the ceiling, aching in ways the sex didn’t fix. You missed the way it used to be — before that first kiss had redrawn the lines between you. Late night talks stretched across his couch until dawn, impromptu rounds of video games that ended in laughter and insults, knocking on each other’s doors just to share snacks or trade complaints about work. Back then, you never had to wonder where you stood with him. Back then, it had been easy.
Now, every time his hands closed around your waist or his mouth crushed yours, you couldn’t help but think about the morning after. About the way he’d roll out of bed, slip back into that guarded silence, and leave you with nothing more than the memory of how tightly he’d held you just hours before. It made you wonder if he was just lonely. If you were just convenient.
And worst of all was knowing you didn’t have the courage to ask. Because if you asked, he might answer. And if he answered, it might mean losing him entirely.
─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──
The office smelled faintly of burnt coffee and paper toner, that sharp tang of recycled air clinging to the late afternoon. Your computer screen glowed with endless reports, but your attention kept sliding to the man sitting at the desk beside yours — James — the new recruit.
“Hey,” he said, leaning closer so his voice carried under the low hum of conversation. “You’ve been staring at that same paragraph for five minutes. Want me to read it out loud to you?”
You snorted despite yourself, heat creeping into your cheeks. “I’m fine, thanks. Just… zoning out.”
“Sure,” he said, grinning, and the easy confidence in his tone made it clear he wasn’t discouraged. “Guess I’ll just have to keep you entertained, then.”
He wasn’t subtle. He didn’t even try to be. The little asides, the jokes tossed your way when no one else was listening, the way he made sure to ask for help with tasks you already knew he knew how to do — it was obvious he liked the excuse to hover close. And maybe, in another life, you would’ve leaned into it without hesitation. He was handsome, charming, the kind of man who wore his intentions on his sleeve.
It was… nice. Nice to feel wanted openly instead of in shadows and silence.
But every time you laughed at something he said, your chest tightened with unease. You couldn’t stop thinking about Xavier. About what it would mean if you let this thing with the new recruit turn into something more. Would it cut the thin thread you and Xavier balanced on? Could you stop the midnight knocks, the heated nights tangled in his sheets, and still expect him to look at you the same way? Would he even care?
You didn’t know. And the not knowing gnawed at you.
Across the room, Xavier shifted in his chair, the leather squeaking as he leaned back, jaw tight. You didn’t notice the way his eyes tracked every glance you shared with the recruit, every quiet laugh. To him, it was unbearable.
He had put up with a lot. Your hesitance. Your silence. The way you carried on like what you had meant nothing when the sun was up. The way you never reached for him as he made his way out. But watching you lean close to another man, seeing someone else claim the easy smiles he’d fought for in private — his patience frayed by the hour.
By the time noon rolled around, Xavier couldn’t take it anymore. He strode over, casual on the surface but every movement wired tight. He leaned against your desk, folder in hand.
“I have a coupon for that hotpot place you mentioned,” he said, tone deceptively soft. “Do you want to go together?”
Your head snapped up. Heat rose to your cheeks, but before you could answer, James perked up beside you. You glanced between them, then smiled faintly. “I actually promised James I’d take him out for lunch today. Show him around.”
The pause stretched too long. Xavier’s jaw ticked before he forced a nonchalant shrug. “I see.”
You tried to soften the sting, tilting your head. “Maybe James could come with us?”
Xavier’s eyes slid to the recruit — sharp, cutting — then back to you. “I only have two coupons,” he said flatly. “Another time, then.”
You blinked at the edge in his voice, but before you could press further he pushed off your desk and walked away, folder snapping shut in his hand.
James cleared his throat. “Was that… your partner?”
You nodded, trying not to let your expression slip. “Yeah. Don’t mind him. He’s just… intense sometimes.”
James smiled like he didn’t mind at all.
Lunch passed in an easy haze — James kept you laughing, kept pointing out little shops and cafés as if cataloging future dates. But under the warmth of his attention, something nagged. You kept thinking of Xavier’s clipped tone, the way he hadn’t looked back when he left.
By the time training rolled around, James was already at your side, easygoing as ever, matching his stride to yours as you crossed the wide practice field. The late sun threw long shadows over the dummies and sparring rings, the air buzzing faintly with other recruits already mid-drill.
“Ready?” he asked, grinning, staff balanced against his shoulder like it weighed nothing.
You matched his smile, if only faintly. “Ready.”
But when you looked up, your usual place at the far edge of the grounds wasn’t empty. Xavier was already there, stretching, blade at his side, the sun catching against the damp skin at his temple. The sight made your chest hitch, like missing a step on the stairs. This was your rhythm — your spot. Him and you. Always.
Xavier’s gaze lifted, finding you instantly. Then it slid to James, and something in his expression hardened. He pushed up from his stretch and strode over, calm on the surface but sharp underneath, like the quiet before a storm.
“I’ll take it from here,” he said, his tone even but directed squarely at James. “She’s my partner.”
James blinked, thrown off. “Oh…uh. Captain Jenna asked her to train with me until I get an assignment.”
“She did,” you cut in quickly, brushing a stray hair back, suddenly aware Xavier hadn’t heard. “She asked me this morning. I thought she’d told you already.”
For a moment, Xavier just looked at you, unreadable. Then his shoulders eased a fraction, voice soft when he finally replied, “She must have forgotten.”
James gave an awkward half-shrug, shifting his grip on the staff. “Guess we’ll, uh… get started then?”
Xavier didn’t move, lingering a heartbeat longer before his mouth curved in a faint, too-casual smile. “Sure. No worries. I’ll see you when you get home.”
James blinked, caught off guard. “Wait—you two live together?”
Your laugh was quick, maybe too quick. “No! He’s just my neighbor. Same building.”
James’s shoulders loosened, though the flicker in Xavier’s eyes said that had been the point all along.
The silence between you and Xavier sharpened. His eyes darkened, lips parting like he might argue, might finally let the weight of his frustration loose—
But before he could, Tara jogged up, bright and oblivious. “Xavier! You’re with me today.”
He turned his head slowly, expression unreadable. “What?”
“Orders,” she chirped, tossing him a practice baton. “C’mon, don’t keep me waiting.”
For a second, Xavier didn’t move. His jaw clenched, muscles straining as though every instinct in his body screamed to refuse. Then, with a curt nod, he turned back to you. His gaze lingered — dark, cutting, and almost wounded — before he forced himself to step away.
You watched him go, stomach sinking as James nudged your arm with a grin, oblivious. “Looks like it’s just us, then.”
And just like that, the thin thread you and Xavier balanced on frayed further.
Xavier walked off stiffly, Tara jogging to keep pace beside him, but his eyes didn’t leave you. Even as you and James took up position on the far side of the training grounds, he tracked every movement, every exchange.
You adjusted James’s stance with a light touch at his elbow, guiding his arm until his aim straightened. The sight of your hand lingering on another man’s skin made Xavier’s chest seize. Then you stepped behind James, voice low as you demonstrated the motion yourself — your body aligning with his, movements seamless, easy in a way that should have been reserved for him.
It made him sick.
You were supposed to be by his side. Training with him. Trusting him to guard your blind spots, to fight shoulder to shoulder until there was no question where you belonged. Did James even know how to protect you? Would he know what to do if an S-class wanderer bore down on you, if the world cracked open under your feet? Xavier knew the answer — no. James was raw, green, too eager for his own good. He wasn’t ready. And yet there you were, laughing at some joke in between shots, your smile wide and easy.
Xavier’s knuckles whitened around the practice baton Tara had given him.
“You’re sooo jealous,” Tara drawled, snapping him out of his spiral.
His head whipped toward her, eyes flashing. “I’m not jealous. I’m concerned.”
Tara arched a brow, lips curling into a sly smile. “Uh-huh. Concerned. Sure. That’s what we’re calling it now.”
He glared at her, but she only laughed, twirling her own baton like she was playing a game.
“Xavier,” she said lightly, “maybe she’d notice how much you like her if you actually said something. You know, instead of acting like you don’t care in front of everyone else and then brooding like this when she so much as breathes near another guy.”
His chest tightened, but he kept his voice flat. “She doesn’t see me that way.”
“Please.” Tara’s laugh was sharp and knowing. “I’ve seen the way she looks at you when she thinks you’re not watching. You two are impossible.” She sighed, rolling her eyes as though the weight of both your stubbornness sat on her shoulders. “What am I going to do with you?”
Xavier didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His gaze had already drifted back across the training field.
You corrected James’s grip again, stepping close, your voice carrying faintly with another laugh. James turned toward you with that grin he wore too easily, too openly, and Xavier’s chest burned.
The pressure inside him needed somewhere to go. He summoned the light blade with a flick, its energy flaring sharp in his grip. The nearest training dummy fell to pieces in two strikes, the air hissing with each cut. Then another. And another. His movements grew harsher, faster, until the crash of splintering dummies echoed across the grounds.
It didn’t help.
Because no matter how cleanly he carved through the targets, no matter how sharp his blade, it couldn’t slice through the sound of your laughter drifting from across the field. It followed him, relentless, every note cutting deeper.
By the time training ended, his jaw ached from clenching. He hadn’t spoken another word, not to Tara, not to anyone. He only stalked back to the lockers, peeled off his gloves, and left before he had to see you and James walk out together.
The sky outside had gone dusky purple by the time you finished up, the office windows glowing with the last scraps of daylight. You were too focused on wrapping up for the evening to notice him watching from across the room, arms crossed, expression carved from stone.
Your phone buzzed against the desk.
You glanced down.
xavi: Come to my place after work.
No explanation. No teasing. Just the clipped demand of a man who couldn’t stand another second of restraint.
James leaned over, catching the flicker of tension in your face as you typed a quick reply. “Good news?” he asked lightly.
“Something like that,” you said, locking your screen before he could read too much in your expression.
But the truth pressed sharp against your ribs as you gathered your things. You couldn’t keep pretending this fragile thing between you and Xavier could last forever — not when someone else was looking at you with clear intentions, not when your own heart was caught somewhere in between.
─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──
The hallway was quiet, dimly lit by the flicker of a bulb overhead. You’d barely lifted your hand to knock when the door swung open.
Xavier stood there, dark eyes burning like he’d been pacing behind the door, waiting for you. Before you could even draw breath, his hand closed around your wrist and he hauled you inside. The door slammed shut with a sharp crack, and then his mouth was on yours — hot, urgent, devouring.
You staggered back against the wall, your protest swallowed in the force of his kiss. It was rough, frantic, all teeth and tongue, like he’d been starving for you all day and finally snapped. His palms framed your face, thumbs pressing into your cheeks before sliding down to grip your waist as though he could hold you there forever.
“I needed you,” he muttered against your mouth, voice gravelly, words punctuated with another searing kiss. “All day—fuck—I couldn’t think of anything else.”
Your back hit the wall harder when he pressed closer, one knee forcing between your thighs. His hand caught yours, dragging it down, pressing your palm to the thick strain in his jeans. The heat there, the hard throb beneath denim, made your head spin. His breath hitched sharply, forehead falling against yours.
“Feel that?” His voice was hoarse, almost a growl. “Ah—feel what you do to me, star?”
Heat surged through your veins, but panic cut through just as quickly. You twisted slightly, breaking his mouth from yours long enough to gasp for air.
“Xavier—” His name tore out of you, uneven, desperate for space. You turned your face away, chest heaving. “Maybe we shouldn’t… do this anymore.”
The shift was instant. His expression darkened, hunger sharpening into something colder, angrier. His jaw flexed, the muscle jumping as his eyes narrowed in on you.
“Do you like him?” The question landed like a slap.
Your lips parted, stunned. “What? Who—”
“The new recruit,” Xavier bit out, low and sharp. He stepped closer, his chest nearly brushing yours, presence heavy enough to crush the air from your lungs.
“James?” The name slipped from you before you could stop it.
The shift in him was instant. His jaw clenched, his eyes flashing darker, and his fingers dug harder into your waist. “Don’t say his name,” he hissed, the words trembling with anger.
You froze, heart hammering. “I didn’t—”
“Didn’t what?” His mouth twisted in a humorless curve, a shadow of a smile that wasn’t one at all. He leaned in, nose brushing yours, voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “Didn’t mean it? You’re pulling away from me the second he shows up, and you think I’m too blind to notice?”
“I’m not…” you tried, but his hand slid up your side, rough and certain, cutting your words short as the heat of his palm burned through the fabric of your shirt.
He crowded you against the wall, lips grazing your jaw, then lower, the scrape of his teeth making your breath hitch. “Don’t lie to me,” he murmured, and though his voice was quiet, the weight of it pinned you harder than his body did.
Your thoughts scattered, tangled between confusion, panic, and the undeniable pull of him. “Xavier, this isn’t about—”
“One last time,” he interrupted, his mouth brushing your throat. The scrape of stubble and the hot press of his lips sent your knees weak. “Give me one more night.”
Your chest rose and fell too fast, words catching in your throat. “I—”
“You can tell me to let you go in the morning,” he cut in again, voice raw, almost pleading beneath the steel. His hands clamped tighter on your hips, dragging you flush against him so you could feel the hard line of his arousal. His forehead dropped to your shoulder, his next words cracked open, something darker than just desire bleeding through. “Just be mine for the night.”
His eyes softened, but only barely — a flash of something raw behind the anger, the kind of desperation that made his next words rougher than they should’ve been. He leaned in until his lips brushed the hollow of your throat, his tongue tracing up the line of your neck.
“You want it too, don’t you, starlight?” he murmured, kissing and licking at your skin like he was trying to brand you there. His voice cracked, a low plea threaded through the demand. “Your body is so warm… I can feel how much you need me.”
His thigh pressed harder between yours, and without meaning to, your hips rolled against it. The friction made you gasp, the moan slipping out before you could stop it. His grip tightened on your waist, satisfaction flashing in his eyes as he felt you grind against him.
Breathless, you whispered, “One more time.”
A wicked smile tugged at his lips. “That’s what I thought.”
The kiss that followed was hot and devouring, teeth catching your bottom lip before his tongue pushed past. He caught you under your thighs and lifted you with startling ease, forcing your legs to wrap around his waist. The heat of him pressed hard against your core as he carried you through the apartment, his mouth never leaving yours.
By the time your back hit his bed, you were already dizzy from the taste of him, from the sheer force of his body caging you in. He didn’t give you a chance to settle before pinning your wrists above your head, his weight pressing you into the mattress. His gaze locked on yours, fierce, unyielding.
“Tell me again,” he demanded, voice low, ragged. His hips ground down, the solid line of his arousal dragging against you in a way that stole your breath.
“Xavier,” you gasped, arching into him. Your wrists strained against his hold as your hips lifted, desperate for more. “I want it.”
His stare pinned you where you lay, wrists still caught in his grip until, finally, he let go. He stepped back, the heat of his body leaving yours, but his presence filled the room like a storm about to break.
“Strip.”
The command landed heavy in the air.
You sat up slowly, heart hammering, your body still tingling from the way he’d pinned you down. For a moment you hesitated, almost shy under the weight of his gaze — then something inside you shifted. If he wanted a show, you’d give him one.
He loomed beside the bed, tall and imposing, his arms tense at his sides until one hand dragged up to the bulge in his jeans. His palm pressed hard, a hiss escaping through his teeth as his eyes stayed locked on you.
Your fingers moved to the buttons of your shirt. One by one, you slipped them free, deliberately slow, the small pop of each fastening loud in the quiet room. You parted the fabric just enough to let his eyes glimpse bare skin beneath, then dragged it wider, letting the shirt fall open.
Xavier’s breath came heavier. He cupped himself harder, thumb rubbing along the thick line straining his jeans. “Fuck…” he muttered, almost to himself, voice low and jagged.
You slid the shirt from your shoulders, letting it slip down your arms to the floor. Then your hands went to the clasp of your bra. You toyed with it, rolling the hooks between your fingers, before finally easing it open. The straps fell loose, and you let the bra slide down, baring yourself to him fully.
His jaw flexed, curses tumbling under his breath. He tugged roughly at the swell in his jeans, the sound of fabric straining as he shifted his palm over the outline of his cock. His eyes were glassy, furious, hungry all at once.
You rose from the bed, standing tall under his scrutiny. Your thumbs hooked into the waistband of your pants, easing them down your hips inch by inch. You turned as you did it, giving him your back, then glanced over your shoulder with a sly smile as the fabric slid lower. The sight of your bare skin revealed at that slow, deliberate pace made him groan, his head tipping back for a second like he was fighting for control.
“Jesus Christ,” he hissed, squeezing himself hard through denim, his chest rising and falling with ragged breaths. “Such a tease,”
The pants pooled at your ankles, and you stepped out of them carefully, dragging the tease to its limit. When you finally turned back to face him, you weren’t bare — your panties still clung low on your hips, soft fabric an intentional barrier. His gaze locked there, dark and searing, like he wanted to tear them off with his teeth.
His knuckles were white against his jeans, his other hand curling into a fist at his side. Every muttered curse that fell from his lips made the air between you thicker, the tension stretched taut enough to snap.
And still, he didn’t move. He only stood there, palming himself, eyes devouring you like he needed to memorize every second before he lost the last thread of restraint.
The mattress dipped as you shifted back onto it, propping yourself against your palms, knees parting just enough to leave a space between them. The hem of your panties tugged at your thighs when you spread, your body relaxed but your eyes locked on his.
“I thought I told you to strip,” Xavier said, voice low, clipped — like you’d broken a rule he hadn’t even explained.
A slow tilt of your head, lips curving faintly. “I just did.”
For a heartbeat, silence. Then a sharp laugh — empty, humorless, rough. He moved in on you like a storm breaking, knees hitting the edge of the bed as he leaned down between your legs. His hand slid over the inside of your thigh, rough fingertips dragging until his thumb found the thin barrier of your panties. The slow drag of it over your folds was casual, testing, until he pressed harder — pausing at the wet heat that had already bled through the fabric.
The look he gave you then could’ve burned. His brows drew together, jaw tight, almost seething as though you’d betrayed him. “Is this really for me?”
The corners of your mouth twitched upward — you almost laughed, though his tone suggested he wasn’t joking. Your hand came up anyway, cupping his cheek with a softness that clashed with the storm in his eyes. “Xavier,” you murmured, thumb brushing his skin, “are you pretending to be mad?”
His eyes sharpened, gaze cutting through you. “I’ve only pretended not to be.”
Before you could breathe out a response, he buried himself against you. His face pressed into your thighs, mouth dragging over the soaked fabric, tongue pushing against the damp spot until heat flared sharp through your nerves. You arched back with a gasp, your spine curving into the mattress as he worked through the barrier, lips and tongue and breath all hot and messy against you.
The friction was maddening — just enough to make your hips writhe, not nearly enough to break you open. Your fingers dug into the sheets, knuckles whitening, until frustration curled into your voice. “Xavier—stop teasing.”
He pulled back barely enough to speak, his mouth still hovering over you, breath humid against the wet fabric. “Beg for me.”
There was no give in him tonight, no chance of slipping around his demands. His eyes had that flat, dangerous sheen that told you he wouldn’t be coaxed with anything less.
So you did — your voice breaking on his name, soft and shameless as you gave him what he wanted.
The sound of it must have satisfied him, because he hooked a finger under the edge of your panties and tugged them aside, baring the slick heat he’d been tormenting. Then his mouth was on you again — nothing measured, nothing slow. His tongue worked greedily, sloppily, like he meant to consume you whole. Each drag was rougher than the last, lips and tongue and teeth slipping through slickness, sucking until your thighs trembled around his head.
The rhythm of it was relentless, no space for breath, no tenderness to cling to — just heat and hunger and the sound of him devouring you. Your body seized against the bed, legs twitching, fingers twisting in the sheets as every nerve lit up under his mouth.
And still, he didn’t slow. He didn’t want slow. Not tonight.
The pace of his mouth grew frantic, sloppy, almost savage against you — tongue dragging, lips sucking, nose brushing the tenderest parts of your skin until sparks flared white-hot behind your eyes. Your thighs snapped around his head as your orgasm tore through you, muscles clenching so tight you could feel the tremble in your calves. A strangled cry left your throat, your whole body bowing up from the bed before crashing back down, chest heaving, nails clawing at the sheets.
Still, Xavier didn’t stop. He pushed deeper, tongue working messily as if he meant to wring every last shudder out of you. The overstimulation came sharp, searing — your hips jolted against his mouth in helpless, broken thrusts. “X–Xavier, please—” you whined, voice cracking as you tugged at his hair, pulling him up. “Too much… sensitive—”
Finally, he relented, lifting his head with his mouth slick, eyes red-rimmed and dark. He stripped quick, movements clipped and impatient, tossing clothes aside as if they offended him. You barely had time to catch your breath before he was crawling over you, heat and weight pressing down, the mattress sinking under the span of his body.
You let out a shaky laugh, brushing damp hair from your face, though your lips curved into a tease. “What happened to my bunny?” Your tone was light, playful, but there was a tremor beneath it. “You’re being so mean tonight.”
He didn’t crack. His face stayed hard, lines carved deep in his jaw as his mouth closed over your chest. Teeth grazed, tongue laved, lips pulling your nipple into the wet heat of his mouth. The sharp suck made your breath stutter, your back arch.
“I’m being mean?” he murmured around you, voice edged and bitter, vibrating against your skin. His teeth grazed again before he pulled back, a flush marking your chest where his mouth had been. “You’re the one who was smiling, laughing, with some other guy in front of me all day.”
The anger in his tone made your stomach twist — not fear, but something headier, darker. He shifted lower, and suddenly the blunt head of his cock was pressing at your folds, sliding through the slick mess he’d made of you. Just enough to tease, to smear himself in your wetness, not enough to push in. The contrast was unbearable: the stretch almost there, the intrusion denied.
“And now,” he went on, voice rough, as the head dragged up and down your entrance, catching on your clit in maddening passes, “you say you don’t want to do this anymore.” His gaze locked on yours, unwavering, his jaw tight as he rutted just shy of entering. “That’s all it took? One guy gives you a little bit of attention and now you want to get rid of me.”
Your lips parted, his name spilling out in a breath meant to soothe, meant to explain: “Xav—”
But it was cut off in an instant, strangled into a moan as he pushed forward. The head breached you, then the thick, stretching length of him slid in slow, heavy, unstoppable. The drag was exquisite and punishing, your walls straining around every inch as he seated himself deep, filling you so completely your eyes fluttered shut.
“Fuck—” Xavier hissed through his teeth, the curse hot against your neck. His hips slammed forward, rough and sloppy, like he couldn’t control himself anymore. Every thrust was mean, desperate, dragging a moan out of you whether you wanted to give it or not.
“I don’t get it,” he rasped, jaw clenched as he drove into you harder. “What could he give you that I can’t? What’s so fucking special about him?”
You tried to catch your breath, to explain, to soothe, but the words fell apart the second he snapped his hips sharp and deep. Your voice cracked into a moan, eyes rolling back, nails sinking into his shoulders.
“Xavier—!”
He dropped lower, forehead pressing to yours, breath ragged, voice breaking between thrusts. “Tomorrow, when you’re looking at him,” his pace faltered, stuttered, “laughing with him,” another harsh thrust, your cry cutting through the air, “you’ll still feel me. I won’t let you forget me.”
Your chest heaved. Heat spiraled low in your belly, curling tighter with every punishing roll of his hips. “W-why are you so jealous?”
His rhythm staggered. For just a second, his eyes flicked open, wide, confused, before anger burned through again. He snapped his hips forward so hard the headboard rattled, and you cried out.
“You don’t get it, do you?” His voice cracked, raw. His hand slid up your ribs, pinning your wrists harder against the sheets. “Why do I have to be your little secret? Why do I stay in the shadows while he gets your attention out in the open?”
Another sharp thrust. Your body arched, strangled moan spilling past your lips.
“Do you think this—” he shoved deep, gritting his teeth as his cock twitched inside you, “—is all I’m good for?”
Your walls clenched hard around him, wet and needy, each rough snap of his hips forcing another whimper from your throat. His breath was ragged, face twisted in something darker than lust — anger, jealousy, desperation — yet the way his cock dragged against your walls had you trembling on the edge anyway.
Your voice fractured around a moan, desperate to cut through the haze. “N-no, that’s not it—Xavier, it’s just—”
His pace faltered only to sharpen, each thrust slow and brutal. His mouth brushed your ear, voice low, dark. “Just what?” His teeth grazed your skin. “Because all I see is you spreading your legs and acting like this is the only place I exist. You only remember me when I’m buried inside you.”
A whimper tore out of you, back arching against the sheets. “That’s not…ah—Xavier, please—!”
“Please what?” His jaw was tight, his forehead pressing into yours as he grabbed your chin, forcing your eyes open when your head tipped back in surrender. His gaze burned, red-hot and unflinching. “Look at me when I fuck you.”
The command sent another shudder through you, your walls fluttering around him. He held your wrists pinned above your head, grinding deep until your breath hitched, until you couldn’t think. His free hand slid down your trembling stomach, finding your clit with a cruel kind of precision.
Your cry was sharp, broken. “Xavier—fuck!”
He circled you harder, rolling his hips against yours, the drag of his cock syncing with the relentless press of his thumb. His voice stayed calm, deadly soft even as you writhed beneath him. “Tell me. Could anyone else make you cum like this? Hm?”
You shook your head, words spilling ragged between moans. “N-no, no one—fuck—Xavier, I can’t—”
“Can’t what?” His lips ghosted yours, voice a low hiss. “You can take it, star. Cum on my cock, show me how good it feels,”
That final command tore you apart. Your body bowed against him, thighs trembling, walls seizing tight around his length as your orgasm crashed through you. You cried out, clenching hard, your slick dripping down his cock as he kept working your clit through it, dragging every last wave out of you until you were shuddering and breathless.
The way you clenched broke his composure. Xavier snarled under his breath, pulled out with a rough stroke of his hand, and came hot across your stomach. His head dropped, chest heaving, his release splattering your skin as his cock twitched in his grip.
For a moment he stayed like that — hovering over you, forehead still pressed to yours, breaths uneven, his dark eyes locked on you like he was daring you to look away.
The tremors in your body hadn’t yet stilled when your hand lifted, almost without thought, to cup his cheek. His skin was hot, damp from exertion, and beneath it his jaw flexed tight — anger and restraint wound together. For one breath he hesitated, but then he leaned into your palm, lashes lowering as if your touch was the only anchor he had left. The air between you thickened, and when you tugged him down the kiss came desperate, messy, all teeth and tongue and the taste of something too sharp to name. His hand, still wrapped around your wrist, loosened at last, letting you clutch at him like you’d fall without the hold.
Your chest was still heaving, the air hot and heavy between you when the kiss finally broke. His lips hovered, parted like he meant to say something but the words caught in his throat. His eyes searched yours — dark, fevered, desperate — and you realized he looked just as undone as you felt.
His body still hovered over yours, chest dragging against yours with every ragged breath, but when his lips didn’t find yours again, you realized he was trembling. A beat later, he collapsed forward, burying his face in the crook of your neck. His damp hair clung to your skin, sticky with sweat, and his breath scorched a path across your collarbone.
“I don’t want to let you go,” he rasped. The words were muffled, but you felt them more than you heard them, vibrating against your pulse. His voice cracked like he hadn’t meant to say it out loud, like it slipped past a wall he’d been holding up for too long.
“Xavier…” Your hand moved without thinking, sliding into his hair, still damp from exertion. You combed your fingers through the strands, gentle, grounding, while your chest heaved beneath his weight. The words tumbled out before you could stop them.
“I wanted to end this because…” Your throat tightened. You swallowed, the words breaking uneven. “Because I thought it’s all you wanted from me.”
He stilled. Completely. Then he lifted his head just enough to look at you, his face still so close you could feel the ghost of his breath on your lips. His eyes were raw, open in a way you’d never seen before — dark but vulnerable, glinting like something fractured inside him.
“Why,” he said hoarsely, disbelief roughening the edges of his tone, “would you ever think that?”
Your breath caught. You couldn’t look at him, not directly, so your gaze slid aside, landing on the line of his shoulder, slick with sweat. “Because… outside of this you just treat me as a friend,” you admitted. The truth burned, humiliating to say out loud. “So I assumed you didn’t want me. Not… like that.”
For a moment, he just stared. His eyes widened, his lips parted like he’d forgotten how to breathe. And then the look on his face shattered something in you. He looked—devastated.
“Fuck,” he whispered. His voice broke, low and guttural, like it hurt him to force the word out. “I’m sorry. I…, star, I’m sorry.”
Your heart twisted as his forehead pressed to yours again, almost desperate, his hands bracing on either side of you like he needed to cage himself close or he’d lose you.
“I thought this was all you wanted,” he confessed, his words tumbling out in a rush. “When it started, I thought… you regretted it. That you’d shut me out completely if I pushed for more. So I stayed quiet, I stayed careful. I thought I was doing the only thing that kept me from losing you.” His voice cracked, the faintest tremor running through it. His thumb brushed your cheekbone, tender in a way that undid you more than the roughness had. “I wanted more. I’ve always wanted more. But I would’ve let you use me forever if it meant I could have you, even if it was just like this.”
Your breath caught sharp. The confession knocked the air from your chest, left you staring at him wide-eyed and speechless. His face, open and raw, cut through every assumption you’d built between you.
For a moment, the silence stretched thick, pulsing between you with everything unsaid. Then, because you didn’t know how else to keep from breaking apart completely, you flicked his forehead with your finger.
“Idiot…you should’ve said something,” you whispered, voice trembling despite the tiny gesture.
“Ow.” He actually winced, catching your wrist before you could pull your hand back. His lips ghosted against the inside of your palm, kissing it softly, lingering there. “Yeah,” he admitted against your skin. “I should’ve.”
He kissed lower, tracing the ridge of your wrist, the pulse that leapt there. The scrape of his teeth made you shiver. His mouth followed a trail up your arm, slow and reverent, before finding your throat.
“Instead of telling you…” His voice was a low murmur against your skin, words half lost in the press of his lips. “…why don’t I show you how I really feel?”
His mouth moved higher, leaving tender, wet kisses along the line of your jaw, brushing at the corners of your lips until he finally claimed them. This kiss was nothing like the ones before — no anger, no frenzy, just raw, aching sweetness. He lingered there, slow and consuming, like he meant to pour every unsaid word into your mouth until you understood.
The kiss broke only because he shifted, bracing himself above you. His gaze searched yours once, as if for permission, before he guided himself back in with an agonizing slowness.
You gasped the moment he pressed deep, body arching instinctively against his. The stretch of him, the heat, the drag — it stole your breath, sent pleasure sparking up your spine before he even started moving.
“You’re squeezing me so tight,” he whispered, forehead brushing yours, his breath hot and shaky. “God, you feel so good.”
His hips rolled forward, slow, deliberate, his pelvis nudging against your clit each time he ground into you. The friction had your legs trembling, already coiling with tension. He set the rhythm like he meant to savor you, savor this, dragging it out until every tiny grind had you shivering.
Your hands slid up his back, clutching at his shoulders, your voice catching in a moan when he pushed just right.
He leaned in close, his lips brushing the shell of your ear. “Every time we do this, I imagine you asking me to stay,” he murmured, the words spilling soft and unguarded. “Making me yours.”
You whimpered, tilting your head as his mouth trailed kisses down your neck, across your collarbone, worshipful and unhurried. His hands were everywhere — sliding over your hips, smoothing your thigh up higher around his waist, pressing firmly into your ribs like he needed every part of you beneath his palms.
“I want everyone to know you’re mine,” he whispered against your throat, pausing to kiss the hollow there. “I want so much more than this.” He shifted, catching your mouth again in a kiss that tasted of raw longing. His voice broke against your lips as he asked, “Do you want that too, star?”
“Yes, Xavier—ngh—yes,” you gasped, the answer torn from you on a moan when he ground especially deep, his pelvis circling against your clit.
“That’s it,” he coaxed, voice roughened but tender. “You’re so beautiful like this, falling apart for me.” His thumb found your jaw, tilting your head so he could kiss the corner of your mouth, then lower, nipping at your throat in reverence.
The pleasure coiled hotter, tighter, until you couldn’t stop the choked moans spilling out, your body trembling beneath his as he moved with steady, unrelenting sweetness. He whispered through it all — how good you felt, how much he wanted you, how badly he needed you to know you were his.
When it broke, it was sharp and shattering, pleasure ripping through you so hard you cried out his name, clutching at him. He groaned deep in his chest, the sound raw, and drove in deep as your walls fluttered around him. The feeling pulled him under with you, his release spilling hot inside as he held himself flush, forehead pressed to yours.
He stayed there, breathing hard, kissing you softly between every word. “My star,” he murmured, voice shaking with more than just exertion. “You’re mine.”
The air between you hung heavy with warmth, both of you slick with sweat and still trembling faintly from the release. Xavier didn’t pull away, not yet. He stayed buried inside you, chest pressed to yours, arms tightening like he thought you might slip away if he let go. His lips found your hairline, a slow, lazy kiss.
“Stay here tonight,” he mumbled, voice low and rough with exhaustion.
You smiled faintly, your fingers tracing the sharp edge of his shoulder, the slope of his neck. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Promise me something, then,” he said, his tone soft, almost boyish in its unguardedness. His lashes were already half-lowered, his breath warm against your temple. “Hotpot tomorrow. Just you and me.”
You couldn’t help the quiet laugh that slipped out, light against the hush of the room. “Hotpot? That’s what you’re worried about right now?”
“Yes,” he muttered, eyes closing, his mouth brushing your hair with the word. “Promise.”
“Fine,” you teased, combing your fingers gently through his damp hair, scratching lightly at his scalp. The pleased little sound he made had your heart stuttering. “I promise. Hotpot tomorrow.”
He shifted, hugging you tighter, nose brushing the hollow of your throat. “And promise me you’ll train with me tomorrow.” A pause. “And the day after that. And every other day.”
You laughed again, soft and breathless, scratching your nails lightly at the back of his head until he practically melted against you. “Okay. I promise.”
A quiet sigh shuddered out of him, pure contentment. He nestled closer, his lips ghosting against your throat like he couldn’t help kissing you again. “Walk home with me tomorrow, too.”
You grinned, tilting your head back enough to look at him. “You’re being so greedy, Xavier.”
His eyes opened just enough to meet yours, drowsy and heavy-lidded but shining with something raw. “You almost broke my heart today,” he said softly, the words clumsy but real. “Can’t I be a little greedy?”
Your throat tightened, but you managed a tender smile, cupping his jaw. “Just a little.”
He caught your mouth in one last kiss — slow, lingering, the kind that made time feel like it stopped for both of you. When it broke, he kept his forehead pressed to yours, breathing you in.
Wrapped up together, his arms locked around you and his words finally stilled, you felt him drift first. Sleep tugged at you too, and the last thing you knew before dozing off was the weight of him warm against you, his chest rising and falling in sync with yours.
─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──
The morning light poured pale and golden through the blinds, casting stripes across the rumpled sheets. You stirred awake to the sound of movement — the quiet shuffle of clothes, the clink of a belt buckle. Blinking sleep from your eyes, you found Xavier leaning over the dresser, tugging on his jacket, his hair damp from a quick shower.
For a second, you just watched. Watched the line of his shoulders, the way the fabric stretched across his back, the casual efficiency in every motion. It struck you then how… natural this felt. How easy it had been to wake up tangled in his warmth, to move around each other without words as you both got ready. Something almost domestic, like slipping into a rhythm you didn’t know you’d been craving until it was there.
“You’re blushing,” he murmured without turning, though the corner of his mouth betrayed the faintest smirk.
You rolled your eyes, throwing the pillow at him. He caught it one-handed, tossed it back onto the bed, then leaned down to steal a quick kiss before lacing his boots.
By the time you both stepped into the association building, his hand found yours without hesitation. Warm. Solid. The small contact grounded you in a way you weren’t prepared for, and you didn’t pull away.
Your eyes flicked automatically to your section of desks — expecting to see James hunched over paperwork, flashing that usual easy grin. But his chair was empty. Your brows knit. “Weird. Where’s James?”
Xavier’s jaw tightened just slightly at the name, but when he spoke, his tone was soft, almost too casual. “He was reassigned.”
Your head snapped toward him. “Reassigned? Since when?”
“Since this morning,” he said with a nonchalant shrug, tugging you gently toward your desk. “I made a call to Captain Jenna. I thought he’d work well with someone on the Chansia team.”
You stopped mid-step, smacking his arm with your free hand. “You’re ridiculous!”
He only smirked, clearly unbothered by your scolding.
From her desk, Tara propped her chin on her hand, watching the exchange with no small amount of exasperation. “Finally,” she muttered under her breath, rolling her eyes like she’d been waiting forever for this exact scene.
a/n: this took forever omg😭 i'm still figuring out how to write xavier so i kept getting stuck + life is so busy. but im so excited to finally have a standalone fic for him
orphic; (adj.) mysterious and entrancing, beyond ordinary understanding.
─── 012. the convergence.
-> summary: when you, a final-year student at the grove, get assigned to study under anaxagoras—one of the legendary seven sages—you know things are about to get interesting. but as the weeks go by, the line between correlation and causation starts to blur, and the more time you spend with professor anaxagoras, the more drawn to him you become in ways you never expected. the rules of the academy are clear, and the risks are an unfortunate possibility, but curiosity is a dangerous thing. and maybe, just maybe, some risks are worth taking. after all, isn’t every great discovery just a leap of faith?
-> pairing: anaxa x gn!reader.
-> tropes: professor x student, slow burn, forbidden romance.
-> wc: 5k.
-> warnings: potential hsr spoilers from TB mission: "Light Slips the Gate, Shadow Greets the Throne" (3.1 update). main character is written to be 21+ years of age, at the very least. (anaxa is written to be around 26-27 years of age.) swearing, mature themes, suggestive content.
-> a/n: hi. no comment. crickets... i love writing anaxa so much.
-> prev. || next.
-> orphic; the masterlist.
By the time the applause had subsided, the auditorium had already begun to dissolve into motion.
The transition was always remarkably efficient. Programmes disappeared into satchels. Conversations resumed before their owners had fully risen from their seats. Scholars who had spent the afternoon demanding absolute precision from one another now permitted themselves speculation in the aisles, arguments abandoned midway through one sentence only to resume seamlessly in the next.
It was, Anaxagoras had long since concluded, the least interesting part of any symposium.
The lecture was over. The real work had only just begun.
So, he remained where he was.
The stone pillar at his side offered little comfort, but he had never understood why so many people insisted upon sitting through an entire day of presentations when standing afforded a clearer view of both the speaker and the audience. One learned nearly as much by observing those who listened as those who spoke.
Today, however, he had observed very little.
His attention had remained fixed almost entirely upon the board.
It still was.
The committee would likely attribute that to the novelty of the argument.
But they would be mistaken.
Novelty alone had never been sufficient to hold his attention for two uninterrupted hours. He had attended lectures whose conclusions promised to reorder entire fields only to find himself thinking about entirely unrelated problems before the first half-hour had elapsed.
Their lecture had never permitted that luxury. Every time his attention had threatened to wander, they had asked precisely the question required to reclaim it, anticipating objections almost before they had fully formed in the audience's mind. He disliked admitting how rarely that happened.
Most of the equations had survived the applause untouched. The committee would erase them before the next session, reducing 30 minutes of argument to a clean sheet of slate. It had always struck him as an oddly honest ritual. A theory earned permanence only by surviving in other people's minds.
It occurred to him, not for the first time, that he remembered their lectures with a clarity he rarely afforded his own. Entire conferences dissolved into indistinct impressions within seconds, yet he could still reconstruct arguments they had delivered earlier, not merely their conclusions but the precise sequence in which each premise had been introduced. He had never decided whether that reflected unusually disciplined memory or a failure of objectivity.
His eyes settled upon the expressions written across the centre of the board.
He had spent enough years working with mathematics to know that the smallest alterations were often the most dangerous. Entire disciplines had been overturned by substitutions that, to the untrained eye, appeared almost trivial.
His first instinct had been to search for the mistake.
It was still what he was doing.
Not because he objected to the conclusion, because conclusions interested him very little. They could always be revised.
Assumptions were another matter.
Every proof possessed one.
Usually, it announced itself within the first five minutes.
They had concealed theirs.
His gaze remained upon the second equation.
Not concealed, he corrected himself after a moment.
Established.
There was a difference.
He found that disliked that distinction.
He closed his eyes, less in concentration than in recollection.
The lecture returned with unexpected precision. He remembered remarkably little of the audience, almost nothing of the hall itself. What remained was the argument, stripped clean of circumstance until only its internal structure persisted. He retraced it as he would a proof encountered in an unfamiliar paper, testing each transition independently before permitting himself the next.
There was a familiarity to the exercise that extended beyond the mathematics itself. He had reconstructed enough of their arguments these past few months to recognise certain habits of thought before they appeared outright: the reluctance to introduce new terminology without necessity, the preference for replacing assumptions rather than multiplying them, the quiet confidence with which they allowed conclusions to emerge instead of announcing them. He knew those patterns almost as well as his own.
The opening had been almost deceptively ordinary. A question of identity, a survey of familiar positions. Nothing in the first several minutes had suggested that the conclusion would depart so radically from the existing literature. Even their criticisms had been restrained. They had granted every established model its successes before asking whether they had all inherited the same unnoticed assumption.
That was where his attention had sharpened.
Not because the observation was particularly controversial, but because it was correct.
State-based models did begin from the premise that identity existed as something presently describable. His own work was no exception. He had simply never regarded the premise as requiring defense. Like every assumption sufficiently fundamental, it had long ago become invisible.
He could almost remember the moment they themselves had first become dissatisfied with the premise. Over successive conversations, he had watched their questions migrate steadily toward the problem until abandoning the assumption altogether appeared less like inspiration than inevitability.
He opened his eyes again.
The equations remained exactly where they had left them.
The alteration itself was almost embarrassingly small. A single substitution. State replaced by history. Had it appeared in isolation, he would have dismissed it as a notational preference unworthy of extended discussion. Instead, it had been supported by argument, each premise established before the next was introduced, until the final equation appeared less like an innovation than the inevitable consequence of everything that had preceded it.
He found that deeply irritating…
Because he had not yet discovered where he disagreed.
He was accustomed to anticipating the direction of another scholar's reasoning several steps before they arrived there. With them, the experience was persistently different. Not opaque — opacity merely disguised confusion — but clear enough that every transition appeared obvious only after it had been made. It was an intellectual experience he trusted perhaps more than he should have.
It took him a moment to realize the auditorium had begun speaking again.
At first they remained subdued, as though the audience had not yet decided whether the lecture had truly concluded. Then the restraint dissolved. Conversations resumed across the hall in overlapping fragments, chairs shifted against the stone floor, and the measured silence that had governed the afternoon gave way to the familiar disorder of scholars attempting to think aloud all at once.
He paid them little attention.
The argument had reached a point that refused to release him.
If identity depended upon history rather than state, then the present ceased to function as the foundation of the model. It became evidence instead, the latest expression of an unbroken sequence of transformations. That much followed. The difficulty lay in the consequences. Every theorem he had developed over the past decade assumed precisely the opposite direction of dependence.
A voice entered his thoughts.
"...remarkable presentation."
Cerces.
Anaxagoras looked up only long enough to see her crossing the stage toward them.
He found himself wishing he could do the same.
Why couldn’t he?
"Congratulations," someone else offered, extending a hand before they had even stepped away from the lectern. "Your paper—has it been submitted for publication?"
Another scholar was already waiting with a question, notebook open.
"I wonder if I might challenge your use of 'history'..."
They answered before he had finished.
Patiently.
Without retreating into the language of their lecture.
Others approached them with the restless enthusiasm reserved for novelty, eager either to congratulate or to dismantle what everyone had just heard. He found himself strangely uninterested in both.
Praise had never seemed an especially reliable measure of merit, and criticism could wait until he understood the argument as thoroughly as they did.
They deserved at least that much from him.
Anaxagoras listened almost absently, not to the exchange itself, but to the reasoning beneath it. They rebuilt the distinction from first principles, arriving at the same conclusion by a different route. The structure held.
Interesting.
He returned to the proof.
If transformation were primitive, then state could no longer be treated as an independent variable...
No.
Not quite.
The objection formed almost as quickly as it appeared, only to dissolve before he could give it shape.
A second voice interrupted.
"I've never seen a student argue like that."
"Neither have I."
The remarks passed around him without inviting response.
He found, somewhat to his irritation, that he wanted the same thing.
As the crowd around the lectern continued to grow, what had begun as a series of polite congratulations had become, almost imperceptibly, another seminar. Someone had appropriated a discarded programme and was already sketching diagrams across its margins. A younger researcher attempted to reformulate the definition of history in terms of information theory, only to be interrupted by a philosopher who objected to the comparison before it had fully taken shape.
They listened to each in turn.
Anaxagoras had noticed, throughout the lecture, that they possessed an unusual habit. They did not defend conclusions. They defended the reasoning that produced them. If an objection exposed a weakness in an argument, they abandoned the argument without hesitation and rebuilt it from the last point both parties still accepted.
It was an unexpectedly disciplined way of thinking.
Most scholars, once sufficiently invested in an idea, became its advocates.
They remained its examiner.
He watched them pause before answering another question.
Not searching for a reply.
Testing one.
The distinction was slight.
It was also immediately recognisable.
One did not hesitate because one lacked an answer. One hesitated because the first answer that presented itself had not yet earned the right to be spoken.
He found the habit...
Familiar.
The thought arrived before he had intended it to.
Until that afternoon, he had regarded them as an exceptionally capable student.
The description remained factually correct.
It no longer seemed intellectually complete.
"They're looking for you."
Cerces had returned.
Anaxagoras shifted his attention with visible reluctance.
"The panel dinner begins in an hour," they continued. "Apparently someone has decided you'll be expected to attend."
"I was already expected to attend."
"Yes."
Cerces smiled faintly.
"I meant, expected to converse."
"I see."
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Cerces followed his gaze towards the gathering at the front of the hall.
"They've acquired rather a following."
Cerces considered the crowd for another moment.
"I'm not entirely convinced it will diminish."
Anaxagoras offered no opinion.
He pushed himself away from the pillar for the first time since the lecture had begun.
The movement felt strangely belated, as though his body had resumed following a conversation his mind had never left.
One last glance settled upon the board.
The committee had begun erasing it.
A sleeve swept across the upper corner of the slate, removing the first equation in a cloud of white dust.
The second remained untouched.
For another few moments.
Then he turned and left the auditorium.
He did not look back, because he had already decided what he needed.
The manuscript.
He had expected conversation.
Instead, he found himself waiting.
The committee had selected the Senior Combination Room for the evening meal, a decision justified publicly by tradition and privately by capacity. The room had hosted generations of scholars whose disagreements had long outlived them. Portraits of former masters regarded the gathering from dark-paneled walls with the patient severity peculiar to oil paintings, while conversations accumulated beneath the timbered ceiling until no single voice remained distinguishable from the rest.
Anaxagoras arrived neither early nor late. Punctuality, he had always maintained, was a courtesy rather than a virtue, and the interval he had allowed between leaving the auditorium and crossing the courtyard had been sufficient to exchange chalk for ink without inviting unnecessary conversation along the way.
The seating had already been arranged.
He paused only long enough to locate the place card bearing his name before taking his seat.
Three chairs separated him from them.
Near enough that, once the inevitable formalities had concluded, conversation would require no effort beyond leaning slightly across the table.
He regarded that as convenient.
Nothing more.
The Master welcomed the guests with the familiar sequence of remarks offered after every symposium: gratitude to the organising committee, admiration for the quality of the presentations, cautious optimism regarding the future of the discipline. The speech neither exceeded nor fell short of expectation. It existed largely to permit the first course to arrive without awkwardness.
Anaxagoras listened politely.
He could not afterwards have repeated a single sentence.
His attention drifted, not intentionally but with a persistence that gradually became difficult to ignore.
They sat several places to his left, engaged by one of the external examiners before the soup had even been served.
The examiner, a logician whose reputation for relentless questioning had intimidated more than one doctoral defence, appeared entirely unapologetic about transforming dinner into a continuation of the afternoon's discussion.
"...if identity is historical," the older man was saying, "you surrender simultaneity as a privileged description."
"We surrender its privilege," they replied, "not its usefulness."
"A distinction."
"An important one."
The examiner smiled.
"I suspected you would say that."
Their exchange continued without sharpness. Neither attempted to overwhelm the other with terminology. Instead, they moved patiently from premise to premise, as though assembling a structure they both hoped would remain standing after the conversation ended.
Anaxagoras found himself following the discussion with unexpected ease.
Their reasoning, specifically.
He recognised the route almost before they took it.
He noticed something else.
Whenever the examiner interrupted, they did not immediately begin composing a response. They listened until the interruption had entirely exhausted itself, allowing even the unfinished thought at its edge to settle before speaking.
It was an unusual discipline.
Most academics, once they believed they understood an objection, prepared their rebuttal while the objection was still being articulated.
They never seemed to.
Their attention remained wholly with the speaker.
Only afterwards did they answer.
He wondered briefly whether that habit explained why people appeared so willing to continue talking to them.
A server arrived beside their chair, apologising softly as she reached across to replace an empty glass.
They leaned back at once to give her room.
"Thank you," they said without interrupting the examiner's thought.
The words were quiet enough that few at the table seemed to notice.
Anaxagoras did.
The observation lingered for reasons he could not immediately identify.
There was nothing remarkable about thanking someone.
Nor about moving aside.
He dismissed it.
Conversation shifted again as the first course disappeared. Someone farther down the table raised the subject of publication schedules. Another asked whether the manuscript would require substantial revision before submission. A third began recounting an anecdote from a conference several years earlier in which an argument nearly identical to today's had collapsed under a single objection from the audience.
"It wasn't identical," they answered with a small smile.
"No?"
"The assumption entered on the second page instead of the first."
Laughter moved around the table.
Even the storyteller conceded the correction.
Anaxagoras noticed the smile before he noticed himself noticing it.
It appeared rarely.
Amusement seemed to arrive only after they had genuinely considered what had been said.
It altered their face more completely than he would have expected.
For an instant, the careful composure that accompanied them through lectures and seminars receded, replaced by something warmer, younger, almost startlingly unguarded.
The expression vanished as quickly as it had come.
He found himself recalling it several moments later… An unfortunate tendency.
Memory ought to preserve information in proportion to its usefulness.
This… possessed none.
He turned his attention to the wine before him.
It remained untouched.
So did theirs.
Water, he realised, disappeared from their place far more quickly.
He frowned almost imperceptibly.
Why had he noticed that?
He searched for an explanation.
Perhaps because dehydration impaired concentration, or because speakers often neglected to drink after extended lectures.
Neither answer satisfied him.
He abandoned the question, only for another to replace it.
A second year student, seated opposite them, had begun describing an idea with more enthusiasm than precision. The proposal wandered through three different fields before arriving at a conclusion that seemed only distantly related to where it had begun.
The student hesitated, evidently aware that his explanation had wandered further than intended. His gaze shifted briefly between the two scholars before settling once more upon them.
"I've been trying," he said, with the cautious earnestness peculiar to those who suspected their question might expose a misunderstanding, "to reconcile your model with Professor Anaxagoras's work on equilibrium conditions."
If I've understood both correctly, Professor Anaxagoras begins with the present state, while your lecture argues that identity depends upon the history that produced it. I don't know which framework I'm supposed to begin with. Where your work separates."
The conversation around that section of the table diminished almost imperceptibly.
"Your lecture argues that identity is preserved by continuity of history rather than recoverable state. Professor Anaxagoras's framework, if I've understood it correctly, treats equilibrium as something determined entirely by the present configuration." He paused, frowning at his own phrasing. "At least... that's how I've always read it."
The student glanced apologetically towards Anaxagoras.
"I may be oversimplifying."
"You are," Anaxagoras replied, not unkindly. "Though not fatally."
A quiet ripple of amusement passed around the table.
Encouraged, the student continued.
"If both theories are correct within their own domains, is there a point where they become incompatible? Or is one simply a special case of the other?"
The student hesitated, evidently dissatisfied with the limits of his own understanding. His notebook had remained open throughout the discussion, though the pages contained remarkably little beyond a series of arrows connecting two names that, until that afternoon, had rarely appeared in the same conversation.
He rested a finger upon one of the diagrams he had drawn.
"Professor Anaxagoras, your equilibrium conditions appear to assume that the present state contains all the information required to describe identity. Your lecture"—his attention returned to them—"seems to argue almost the opposite: that no present description is complete without the history that produced it."
He looked between them once more.
"I don't know which framework I'm supposed to begin with."
The question did not immediately receive an answer.
Not because either lacked one, Anaxagoras suspected, but because both recognised the uncertainty concealed within its phrasing. It was not, in fact, a question about equilibrium or history. It was a request for an ordering—for permission to regard one account as foundational and the other as derivative.
He found them already looking towards him.
There was nothing especially remarkable in the gesture. Any ordinary courtesy would have dictated as much. The question concerned his work no less than theirs, and they had always displayed an almost excessive reluctance to speak where another scholar's definitions properly belonged.
Even so, he became aware, rather unexpectedly, that this was the first occasion upon which their attention had rested wholly upon him since the lecture concluded.
The student looked first towards Anaxagoras.
Then towards them.
Apparently uncertain who ought to answer first.
They turned slightly in their chair.
"So long as Professor Anaxagoras has no objection," they said, "I believe the question begins with his definitions rather than mine."
Every eye at the table shifted accordingly.
Anaxagoras regarded them for a brief moment before answering.
"I have no objection."
He rested his hands lightly upon the edge of the table.
"My framework assumes that equilibrium is identifiable from the present state because the processes that produced it are, for the purposes of the model, irrelevant once equilibrium has been reached. That is not to deny that a history exists." He inclined his head slightly towards them. "Only that the mathematics need not retain it."
The student nodded rapidly.
"And your objection?"
They considered the question with characteristic patience.
"I am not certain I would describe it as an objection."
"No?"
"No."
Their expression remained thoughtful.
"I would say instead that the irrelevance of history is itself an assumption requiring justification."
"My work assumes that equilibrium may be determined from the present configuration alone," he said. "The existence of a history is neither denied nor excluded. It is simply unnecessary to the problem under consideration."
The student nodded, then turned instinctively towards them.
They did not speak at once.
Instead, they considered Anaxagoras with the same quiet concentration they had given every serious objection that afternoon, as though examining not merely the words themselves but the assumptions that had produced them. It was a habit he had recognised in the auditorium. They rarely opposed conclusions directly. They preferred to determine whether disagreement had arisen considerably earlier, at a point where both parties still believed themselves to be speaking about the same thing.
"I don't think," they said at length, "our disagreement begins with equilibrium."
The sentence was addressed to the student.
Its invitation belonged elsewhere.
Anaxagoras understood it immediately.
"No," he replied. "It begins with what equilibrium is expected to explain."
A brief silence followed.
Not the uncomfortable silence of hesitation, but the altogether different silence in which thought advances more quickly than speech. Around them, conversations at neighbouring places had begun to diminish, less from deliberate curiosity than from the peculiar gravity exerted whenever two lines of reasoning approached one another closely enough to reveal whether they would converge or diverge.
The student looked between them again.
"So equilibrium is... insufficient?"
"Not insufficient," they answered.
"Specific," Anaxagoras said, almost simultaneously.
The coincidence passed without comment.
They glanced towards him.
Only briefly.
Long enough for something almost imperceptible to soften at the corner of their expression before their attention returned to the student.
"An equilibrium describes a condition," they continued. "What I question is whether the condition alone explains why that identity, rather than another indistinguishable from it in the present, exists at all."
Anaxagoras found himself answering before the student had formulated his next question.
"It does not."
The words surprised him almost as much as they appeared to surprise them.
Not because the concession was intellectually difficult. He had reached the same conclusion in the auditorium.
Because he had spoken it aloud.
Their eyes met his once more.
There was no triumph in their expression.
No satisfaction at agreement unexpectedly obtained.
If anything, the opposite.
A kind of careful restraint, as though they had become suddenly aware that continuing too far along the same line of thought might presume an intimacy the conversation had not yet earned.
It occurred to him then that they were exercising precisely the same caution with him that they extended to every unfamiliar scholar whose reasoning they respected.
The observation should have been reassuring.
For reasons he could not immediately identify, it was not.
"So... equilibrium still exists."
"Certainly," they answered.
"But it no longer explains identity."
"Precisely."
The student frowned.
"I'm not sure I understand the distinction."
Anaxagoras answered before he consciously decided to do so.
"An equilibrium may describe where a system has arrived."
He paused only long enough to ensure the student remained with him.
"It does not necessarily explain why this system, rather than another indistinguishable one, has arrived there."
The student's attention shifted immediately towards them.
A slight smile appeared.
"Yes," they said. "That is considerably more concise than I would have managed."
The remark drew another quiet laugh from the surrounding scholars.
Anaxagoras found himself unexpectedly dissatisfied with the compliment.
He examined the reaction almost as soon as it arose.
There was no obvious reason to object to accurate attribution. His summary had, by his own assessment, been concise.
Nor had they diminished their own position by saying so.
The discomfort therefore required another explanation.
None immediately presented itself.
The student, meanwhile, had become visibly animated.
"Then..." He hesitated, searching for the correct formulation. "Would it be fair to say that Professor Anaxagoras describes stable configurations, while your theory describes the conditions under which those configurations become meaningful?"
Silence followed.
Not uncertain silence.
Evaluative silence.
Anaxagoras noticed, almost automatically, that they had not yet spoken.
Their attention remained upon the student rather than the question itself, as though determining precisely what he intended before deciding whether his conclusion followed.
Only once they appeared satisfied did they answer.
"I think," they said carefully, "that it would be fair to say our theories ask different questions."
They looked towards Anaxagoras then.
The movement was unhurried, entirely natural.
"I suspect Professor Anaxagoras would also agree that an answer need not become incorrect merely because another question proves equally fundamental."
He met their gaze.
For the first time that evening, the conversation had ceased to pass around them.
It included them.
"I would," he said.
The response came with surprising ease.
"My model was never intended to account for persistence through transformation."
"And mine," they replied, "was never intended to replace equilibrium."
The distinction, once spoken aloud, appeared almost embarrassingly straightforward.
The student leaned back in his chair with an expression that suggested an internal difficulty had quietly resolved itself.
"I think I understand."
"I doubt that," Anaxagoras said.
The student blinked.
He continued without alteration of tone.
"But I think you now know which question you are trying to answer."
Recognition spread slowly across the student's face.
"...Yes."
A faint smile returned.
"I suppose that's rather more valuable."
"It usually is."
The discussion dissolved as most discussions eventually did, not because it had reached agreement but because attention possessed limits that argument rarely acknowledged. A fresh question arose several places farther along the table concerning publication schedules; elsewhere someone had begun comparing today's lecture to a symposium held nearly a decade earlier. The student, relieved perhaps to have discovered that uncertainty itself could be productive, returned to his notebook with renewed determination.
It was not the conclusion that occupied him.
Nor even the unusual experience of finding his own work placed beside theirs without either diminishing the other.
It was the manner in which they had shared the discussion.
At no point had they attempted to establish precedence, to claim the stronger position, or to convert disagreement into victory. Their instinct had been, instead, to identify the point at which each account ceased to answer the same question, preserving what remained valid in both.
He realised, with faint surprise, that they had done precisely the same thing throughout the afternoon.
Not once had they argued against a person.
Only against an assumption.
The distinction was subtle.
It was also, he was beginning to suspect, entirely characteristic of them.
The conversation dispersed without quite ending.
Anaxagoras had only just resumed his meal when another figure appeared behind their chair.
She arrived with the ease peculiar to those who had long since abandoned any concern for ceremony, pausing only long enough to rest a hand lightly against the back of the empty seat beside them.
"So," she said, surveying the remains of the table with exaggerated solemnity, "have they finished interrogating you, or am I interrupting another examination?"
They looked up.
Something altered.
The change resisted immediate description. Their expression did not brighten so much as relax, the careful attentiveness that had governed every conversation throughout the evening yielding almost imperceptibly to recognition.
"Kira!"
"I escaped~"
"So I see..."
"Barely."
She lowered herself into the chair with an air of theatrical exhaustion.
"I made the mistake of standing too close to Professor Socrippe after dessert. I have spent the last quarter of an hour listening to the complete history of ceramic metaphysics."
They considered this.
"My condolences."
"I accepted them on your behalf."
A quiet laugh escaped them.
It was brief enough that much of the table continued speaking without noticing.
Anaxagoras did.
He realised, somewhat belatedly, that he had heard them laugh remarkably little.
Not because they lacked humour. Their words possessed an unexpectedly dry wit whenever precision permitted it. Rather because amusement, in their case, appeared governed by the same discipline that regulated everything else. It emerged only after genuine consideration, never as social obligation.
The observation should have ended there.
Instead, it acquired another.
The conversation itself had changed.
Not quite in subject... They continued discussing the symposium, the afternoon's lectures, the peculiar habits of senior academics who believed meals existed chiefly to prolong debate. Yet its movement differed fundamentally from every exchange he had witnessed that evening. There was no careful establishment of premises, no measured clarification of definitions before advancing to the next point. Entire assumptions passed between them without articulation, understood because they belonged not to the argument but to a familiarity accumulated elsewhere.
He found himself unable to follow every reference.
An unusual experience.
"You've eaten almost nothing."
The remark was delivered with such casual certainty that it scarcely resembled a question.
They glanced absently towards their plate.
"I've been occupied."
"So I've noticed."
Kira relieved them of an untouched piece of bread before continuing.
"You also forgot lunch."
"I postponed lunch."
"You forgot lunch."
"I remembered eventually."
"At quarter past five."
They made no attempt to dispute the correction.
Interesting.
There existed, it seemed, at least one person for whom their careful precision surrendered without negotiation.
The conclusion arrived with unexpected force.
Throughout the afternoon he had watched scholars challenge their definitions, contest their assumptions, even attempt to dismantle the argument they had spent months constructing. Every exchange had been met with the same composed patience, each objection examined before receiving an answer.
Here, none of that discipline appeared necessary.
Not because it had disappeared.
Because it was unnecessary between people who already understood one another.
The distinction was subtle.
It nevertheless altered something.
Until now he had encountered them only within the architecture of scholarship. Lecture halls. Offices. Manuscripts covered in annotations. Every memory he possessed of them belonged, in one way or another, to the practice of thinking.
It occurred to him, with faint surprise, that he knew almost nothing of the person who remained once thought ceased requiring defense.
And for reasons he could not satisfactorily explain, he found that absence... increasingly difficult to ignore.
orphic; (adj.) mysterious and entrancing, beyond ordinary understanding.
─── 011 (II). the symposium.
-> summary: when you, a final-year student at the grove, get assigned to study under anaxagoras—one of the legendary seven sages—you know things are about to get interesting. but as the weeks go by, the line between correlation and causation starts to blur, and the more time you spend with professor anaxagoras, the more drawn to him you become in ways you never expected. the rules of the academy are clear, and the risks are an unfortunate possibility, but curiosity is a dangerous thing. and maybe, just maybe, some risks are worth taking. after all, isn’t every great discovery just a leap of faith? -> pairing: anaxa x gn!reader.
-> tropes: professor x student, slow burn, forbidden romance.
-> wc: 12.8k
-> warnings: potential hsr spoilers from TB mission: "Light Slips the Gate, Shadow Greets the Throne" (3.1 update). main character is written to be 21+ years of age, at the very least. (anaxa is written to be around 26-27 years of age.) swearing, mature themes, suggestive content.
-> a/n: i have no words to apologize for the incredibly late chapter… i sincerely hope fo yalls forgive but most importantly i hope yn’s presentation BLOWS all of your minds because the next chapter is piping hot and coming so fucking soon yall gon be confused if im still the same author you know.
-> prev. || next.
-> orphic; the masterlist.
The pen snapped in his hand.
Ink bled down Ilias’ fingers, pooling in the creases of his palm. He cursed under his breath and shoved the papers aside. The same half-written notes he’d told himself he’d revise instead of going. The livestream was still running in the background, muted now, a frozen frame of applause and flashing lights.
He didn’t need to watch it.
“Yeah, sure,” he muttered to no one. “Bet they’re all thrilled to see you there. Bet he’s thrilled.”
His jaw clenched. The bitterness didn’t quite fit right. Pride, maybe. The kind he’d never admit.
You’d made it. You actually made it.
Ilias sighed and grabbed his phone, thumb hovering over your name. He hesitated, then pressed call.
The line clicked.
“...Hello?”
He blinked, sat up straighter at the voice. “Kira?”
“Yeah?” Her tone was casual, amused. “Didn’t expect you to call me, Ilias. The world must be ending.”
He frowned slightly. “Kira… you picked up Y/N’s phone?”
A small pause — then a quiet huff of laughter. “No… this is my phone.”
He glanced down. Sure enough, wrong name. Great. Perfect. He could hang up now. He should hang up now.
Instead, he exhaled through his nose, leaned back, and said, “Well, if it was ending, you’d be the first person I’d call.”
There was a pause. The kind that made his mouth go dry before she laughed again, quieter this time. “I didn’t know you practiced your charm on wrong numbers.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to sound nonchalant. “Guess fate’s got better aim than I do.”
“Fate, was it?” she teased. “Not your butterfingers?”
“Whatever excuse makes me look less pathetic.”
Kira laughed, the sound curling through the receiver. “Are you calling because you miss me, or because you need someone to complain to because you have FOMO?”
He hesitated, caught between pride and honesty. “Little of both,” he admitted finally.
“Hmm. I’ll take that.”
Her tone softened just a touch, enough for him to notice. “Rough night?”
He stared at the paused stream, the frozen image of the symposium crowd. “Something like that. Everyone’s there. Thought I’d call a friend.”
“And ended up calling someone better?” she teased.
“Yeah,” he said, a half-smile ghosting over his lips. “Guess that’s one mistake I’ll take credit for.”
“So,” she added, playful again, “You planning to keep me on the line, or was this just an accident waiting to happen?”
He smiled, leaning further back into his chair. “If it’s an accident, it’s my favorite one tonight.”
“Flatterer.”
“Only when it works.”
“...You should come by tomorrow,” Kira said finally. “You sound like you need someone to roll their eyes at you in person.”
He chuckled, the tension easing from his shoulders. “Careful. I might just take you up on that.”
“Good,” she replied, and he could hear the smile in her voice.
Ilias spun slightly in his chair, eyes drifting back to the paused symposium stream glowing on his laptop.
He gestured vaguely at the screen even though she couldn’t see it. “Kira, I need to talk about it. That presentation! I mean — what was that?” He huffed. “I tuned in expecting academic jargon and polite clapping, and instead I feel like I need to rethink my life choices.”
A faint rustle sounded on her end.
Kira hummed. “It was definitely intense.”
“Intense?” he echoed. “Trust me, not a soul in that room was nodding along. The second he walked onstage the entire room just—” he snapped his fingers, searching for the right word. “—he set the room on fire.”
Kira let out a small hum.
Ilias kept going, words speeding up now that he’d started. “Kira, I forgot how to sit normally. I swear I stopped breathing. It wasn’t even anything he said yet, he just stood there and I felt like I witnessed a religious event.”
A faint laugh slipped from her end of the line.
“I’m serious,” he continued. “I tuned in late and thought my stream froze because nobody was moving. But no, it was just a thousand academics collectively having an existential crisis.”
He shook his head, smiling despite himself. “And then he starts talking and casually rearranges reality? No foreplay, no warning—rawdogged my fucking brains out until it turned to sludge and then walked right off.”
Another faint rustle came through the line. Fabric shifting. Someone moving nearby.
Kira hummed again. “Mm.”
Short. Neutral.
He blinked.
“…You didn’t hate it, did you?” he asked, half-teasing.
“No,” she said quickly. “Not at all.”
A beat.
“It was… a lot to take in.”
Careful wording. Measured.
Ilias’ gaze drifted away from the screen as realization slowly clicked into place. The softened tone. The clipped replies. The background movement she wasn’t acknowledging.
He rubbed the back of his neck, voice easing without making a show of it. “Yeah… fair. Probably not ideal bedtime conversation material.”
Kira let out a quiet breath — almost relief. “Probably not.”
He gave a small huff of laughter. “Imagine having to present after that. I’d fake my own disappearance.”
A sudden voice burst loudly through the receiver—
“YOU GUYS CAN TALK ABOUT IT YOU KNOW!”
Ilias jerked the phone slightly away from his ear. “…There it is.”
“I’m serious!” you insisted from somewhere nearby, voice confident in the way people sound when they absolutely are not fine. “I am completely capable of handling a normal academic discussion!”
A pause.
Then, muttered closer to the phone, “I’m not spiraling.”
Kira sighed softly. “You are literally pacing.”
“I am walking thoughtfully!”
He smiled, gentling his tone. “Alright, alright. Let’s save this conversation for another time.”
“So,” she said after a moment, her playful edge returning like she was deliberately steering them somewhere lighter, “tomorrow. You actually coming by, or was that just smooth recovery after dialing the wrong person?”
Ilias let out a quiet breath, staring at the ceiling.
He smiled faintly. “I think I’ll sit this one out.”
A small pause followed. “Symposium energy feels… intense enough from a distance,” he added lightly. “Besides, tomorrow’s kind of their battlefield. I’d just be extra background noise.”
“You? Background noise?” she teased gently.
“Self awareness. Tragic, I know. I’m showing remarkable personal growth.”
A soft laugh escaped her.
“I’ll send moral support remotely,” he continued. “And judgmental commentary afterward. That’s my specialty.”
“Cowardice.” she said, but there was warmth in it.
“Strategic retreat.” he corrected.
Another quiet settled between them, easier now.
“…Get some sleep, Ilias,” she said more softly. “You sound like you need it.”
“Only if you promise the same.”
A small beat passed.
“We’ll try,” she said.
He smiled faintly. “Alright. Good luck tomorrow.”
“…Thanks,” she replied, quieter than before.
Neither of them hung up.
Finally, he said, almost absently, “Hey, Kira?”
“Mm?”
“…Glad I called the wrong number.”
Her laugh came soft through the receiver. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m glad you called the wrong number too.”
The line clicked a moment later.
Kira lowered the phone slowly, the faint echo of his voice lingering a second longer than it should have. For a moment she just sat there on the edge of the bed, staring at the dark screen, the quiet settling back into the room like something returning to its rightful place.
Then—
Footsteps.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
She lifted her gaze.
You were pacing across the room for what had to be the hundredth time, laptop clutched in one hand, the other moving restlessly as if arguing with invisible critics. Slides reflected faintly across your face each time you turned toward the desk lamp — graphs, equations, highlighted phrases flashing and disappearing with every pass.
“…and if I restructure the third section, then the transition into the model works, but then the conclusion feels premature,” you muttered, barely breathing between thoughts. “Unless I move the comparative framework earlier, but then it sounds like I’m responding to him, which I’m not— I wasn’t— I mean, technically—”
You stopped abruptly, staring at the screen.
Every line looked like something waiting to be dismantled.
You stared at the slide longer than you meant to, the cursor blinking patiently beside the final equation. Yesterday the structure had felt inevitable. A chain of reasoning so tight you could walk from premise to conclusion without once doubting the ground beneath your feet.
Now it felt like scaffolding.
Your fingers hovered over the trackpad.
You didn’t change anything. Couldn’t, without scrapping the entire premise.
Behind you, the mattress creaked softly as Kira shifted, the quiet movement of someone who had been watching you pace long enough to recognize the pattern.
“…You know,” she said after a moment, voice mild, “most people who aren’t spiraling don’t pace holes into carpets.”
“I’m not pacing,” you replied automatically.
“You’ve done twelve laps.”
You huffed under your breath, the faintest hint of a smile tugging at the corner of your mouth before it faded again.
Your attention drifted back to the laptop screen.
The model stared back at you in clean diagrams and confident arrows, the same way it had the first time you’d built it — elegant, self-contained, persuasive in its simplicity.
Except now you knew where the fault line ran.
It was impossible to unsee.
Finally, you said, almost too quietly—
“…Did it sound stupid?”
Kira blinked.
“What?”
“The model.” Your voice stayed level, but something about the way you were staring at the screen gave the question weight. “Before yesterday. When you heard it the first time.”
She looked at you like the question itself offended her.
“No.”
You nodded once, though you hadn’t really expected any other answer.
“He dismantled half the premise in forty minutes,” you said.
The words came out flatter than you intended, drained of the disbelief that had followed you all evening.
“Half the room looked like someone pulled the floor out from under them.”
You could still see it clearly, the way the audience had gone still, the way people stopped shifting in their seats, stopped whispering, stopped pretending they already understood where the argument was going.
Kira studied you carefully.
“You mean he challenged it.”
A quiet laugh slipped out of you, sharp and brief.
“That’s a generous word.”
Your hand tightened slightly on the edge of the laptop.
“He walked in,” you continued, slower now, trying to articulate something that still felt half like a dream, “took the framework everyone’s been building toward for the last five years…”
You gestured vaguely toward the screen.
“…rotated it ninety degrees, and suddenly half the assumptions don’t hold anymore.”
The room felt smaller saying it out loud.
“And tomorrow,” you added, “I’m supposed to stand in front of the same people and explain a model built on those assumptions.”
Silence settled between you.
The desk lamp hummed faintly.
Kira tilted her head.
“…Is that what you’re actually upset about?”
You frowned.
“What?”
“The thesis.”
“Yes,” you said immediately.
But Kira didn’t respond.
She just waited.
And after a moment, the certainty in your voice faltered slightly under the weight of her gaze.
You looked away first.
“…He knew what he was doing,” you muttered.
Her eyebrows lifted.
“Oh?”
Your jaw tightened.
“He didn’t just challenge it,” you said. “He walked me straight toward the conclusion, waited until I followed the logic far enough, and then showed me the part that collapses.”
You closed the laptop with a soft, final click.
The sudden absence of light from the screen left the room feeling dimmer.
“So what was the point?” you said, frustration slipping through now. “Why even help me work through it if the end result was just proving the entire thing unstable?”
The words hung in the air.
Kira watched you carefully, her expression thoughtful rather than sympathetic.
“You think he did that on purpose?”
You let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh.
“What else would you call it?”
Your shoulders rose and fell once.
“For a few hours yesterday I thought I had something,” you admitted. “Something solid. Something that actually held together.”
Your gaze flicked briefly toward the dark laptop screen.
“And then he just…”
Your hand moved faintly, knocking over an invisible stack of cards.
“…pulled the rug out from underneath.”
The room fell quiet again.
Kira didn’t answer immediately.
When she did, her voice was softer.
“…You’re assuming he was trying to break it.”
You scoffed.
“He did break it.”
“That’s not what I said.”
You looked at her.
Kira rested her chin on her palm again, studying you with the calm patience of someone who had already decided you were being dramatic.
“You said he walked you through the logic first,” she pointed out.
You hesitated.
“…Yes.”
“And you followed it.”
Another pause.
“Yes.”
She shrugged slightly.
“Sounds less like sabotage and more like a conversation.”
You stared at her.
“A conversation that destroyed my thesis.”
“Or one that showed you where it wasn’t finished.”
You opened your mouth to argue.
Nothing came out.
Kira watched the realization move slowly across your face.
“You wrote that model months ago,” she continued gently. “Of course someone was eventually going to push on it.”
She gestured toward the laptop.
“The question isn’t whether he broke something.”
Her eyes met yours.
“It’s whether you’re brave enough to present it anyway.”
The room went very still after that.
You looked down at the closed laptop, fingers resting lightly on the lid as if it might still pulse with the ideas trapped inside it.
Tomorrow was going to arrive whether you were ready or not.
DAY – 2
The morning sessions begin on time.
That, more than anything else, sets the tone.
The symposium hall fills slowly with people arriving in measured waves, neither rushed nor idle, programs already folded, bags placed beneath chairs. There’s no uncertainty in their movements, no visible searching. Everyone seems to know where they belong, or at least how to look like they do.
You take a seat midway down the hall, far enough from the front to avoid attention, close enough that you won’t miss anything important. The chair is comfortable in the utilitarian way of institutional furniture, designed to be sat in for hours without complaint.
The first speaker is good. You recognize that almost at once. The slides are clear, the pacing deliberate. The argument unfolds in careful increments, each premise placed so gently it barely feels like a claim at all. There is nothing to trip over, nothing to resist. The language is familiar: robust framework, within existing constraints, as supported by prior literature. You’ve heard these phrases before, in papers and lectures and review panels. They slot neatly into place, doing their work without drawing attention to themselves.
You take notes anyway, even when you don’t need them. Your pen moves automatically, capturing turns of phrase, references you already know, transitions you could map blindfolded. It isn’t about learning. It’s about staying present.
Anaxagoras’ presentation rearranges itself behind your thoughts, and the line you were writing suddenly looks… wrong. Incorrect, and terribly insufficient.
Applause.
The second speaker builds directly on the first. Different data set, similar posture. There’s a nod toward novelty early on… a reframing, a minor, albeit illogical shift in emphasis, but it resolves quickly. You can feel the moment where the argument might have stretched further, and then doesn’t. The speaker chooses coherence instead.
Questions are invited. Hands go up in an orderly fashion. The questions themselves are precise, courteous, phrased almost as affirmations. One senior academic offers a “comment” that is longer than the question itself, gently redirecting the discussion toward familiar ground. The speaker accepts it gratefully.
Applause again.
Between sessions, people stand, turn, lean toward one another in clusters that form and dissolve without friction. You pass close enough to catch fragments: a conference three years ago, a revised chapter, a forthcoming volume everyone already seems to have read.
Senior scholars move through the space without effort. They don’t look for paths; paths open for them. Others adjust instinctively, stepping aside mid-sentence, angling bodies to make room. It makes you realise something. Authority here is not asserted here, it’s assumed.
You note it all with a detached attentiveness that surprises you.
The third talk begins before the energy has time to fully reset. This one is sharper, more ambitious in scope, and you feel the room lean in by a fraction. The speaker is careful, though. Claims are hedged just enough to remain defensible. Where the argument edges toward uncertainty, it’s quickly scaffolded with citations, softened with acknowledgments of limitation.
You jot down a sentence in the margin of your notes without quite meaning to.
Applause.
By now, the rhythm is unmistakable.
There is an internal grammar to the Grove, a way of speaking that signals belonging as clearly as any credential. Arguments are rewarded for clarity, for restraint, for aligning themselves with the structures already in place.
Yesterday, you believed you understood where your own work fit inside that grammar.
This morning you are no longer sure the sentence you planned to speak even parses.
By late morning, a panel session gathers three speakers with overlapping themes. Each is given the same amount of time, but not all are careful to respect it. Their disagreements are framed as refinements, extensions, friendly clarifications. No one undermines the foundation. When a younger scholar ventures—an implication that presses a little too hard, the response is kind, even encouraging, but it redirects gently, smoothing the edge until it fits.
The applause that follows is warmest when equilibrium is restored.
You lean back slightly in your chair, pen hovering over the page. You feel calm. Calm in the way that comes from knowing how to operate inside a system.
Competence, you think, is not the same as permission.
At some point, you stop writing altogether and simply watch. The way speakers stand behind the podium, hands resting at nearly identical heights. The way slides favor clean visuals over density. The way the audience hums softly with approval when a conclusion lands exactly where it should.
The Grove runs smoothly. Efficient. Self-sustaining.
You are small inside it, yes—but not lost. You can see the contours now. Where it opens. Where it closes. That awareness feels earned, and it brings with it an unexpected steadiness.
When the morning session finally adjourns for lunch, the room exhales as one. Conversations resume mid-thought, as though they’ve only been paused rather than interrupted. You gather your things without urgency, sliding your notebook into your bag, folding the program along its original crease.
As you stand, you glance once at your name printed there, later in the day, in the same font as everyone else’s. For now, you are an observer. A participant in waiting.
And as you follow the stream of scholars toward the exit, one thought surfaces, insistent:
This place rewards polish.
What it does with something unfinished remains to be seen.
By midday, the rhythm of the Grove had settled.
You move with the crowd toward the common hall, lanyard swinging lightly against your chest. The morning has done its work. Everyone knows where they stand, at least provisionally.
You realize, absently, that you haven’t seen him.
Not properly. Not the way you’d expect someone so central to be visible.
You hear his name, though. It surfaces in conversation with casual frequency, spoken without urgency. Someone mentions a comment he made during an earlier session, another references his position on a panel scheduled later in the week. A junior scholar repeats a phrase—as Anaxagoras has argued—with the reverence of citation rather than recollection.
He exists here as a point of reference.
You glance instinctively toward the front of the hall, the places where attention usually pools. There are senior academics clustered near the long tables, speaking in low voices, their body language relaxed in a way that suggests ownership rather than entitlement. When one of them laughs, the sound carries. Others angle toward it without thinking.
Anaxagoras is not among them.
Instead, people step aside when Hyacine passes, defer questions for later, mention that he’s “between meetings” or “caught up with the committee.” It’s said without frustration, without surprise. His absence feels… structured.
You register it the same way you register everything else today: as information.
The Grove accommodates this kind of distance easily. Power doesn’t need to be visible to be felt. It circulates through schedules and footnotes, through recommendations already given and expectations already set. You’ve watched it operate all morning after all.
Someone near you asks if you’re attending the afternoon session. You nod. They wish you luck, as if luck has ever been a part of the equation. Another voice chimes in—something about how selective the program was this year, how carefully curated. There’s admiration in it, but also reassurance. The system works. It always has.
You hear his name again, followed by an easy assurance: He’s aware of it. Of you, presumably. Of the work. It’s impossible to tell. The pronoun does all the work on its own.
No one looks at you when they say it.
There’s no edge to the realization, no flare of disappointment. Whatever this day is building toward, it feels larger than any single interaction. Larger than presence or absence. The Grove doesn’t revolve around individuals, no matter how influential they are. It absorbs them, integrates them, turns them into reference points.
As you rejoin the flow of bodies moving toward the cafeteria, it occurs to you, without drama, without bitterness, that being recommended doesn’t mean being accompanied.
The thought settles as you square your shoulders and keep walking, one name among many, carried forward by a system that ticks steadily on, blind to the hands that wound it.
For a few steps, nothing changes.
The corridor carries on around you, voices low and even, conversation slipping easily from one cluster to the next.
You keep pace with it, one step after another, the rhythm familiar now. Predictable in a way that feels almost deliberate.
The Grove does not resist. It receives, and in receiving, it arranges.
You think of the panel again. The way each argument bent, just slightly, at the edges. Not enough to lose its shape. Just enough to rest comfortably beside the others. Even disagreement was guided, softened, returned.
Nothing was allowed to remain unresolved.
Your hand shifts lightly against the strap of your bag.
Unfinished, you’d thought.
Ahead, the entrance to the common hall opens wider, the sound of cutlery and conversation spilling into the corridor. The crowd gathers there, slows, reforms without effort. You follow, then pause without quite meaning to, the motion breaking just enough for the space to move around you.
No one notices, but they don’t need to.
A system like this doesn’t require attention to continue functioning, it only requires coherence.
You glance, briefly, at the people nearest you. The way they speak. The ease with which they fold one another’s thoughts into their own, carrying them forward without disruption. Nothing is dropped. Nothing left hanging.
It should feel reassuring. Instead, something in you hesitates, faint but persistent, like a line drawn just slightly off where it should be. You don’t know when it started, only that it’s there now, threading quietly beneath everything else.
You think of your notes—the language you used, the way each point aligned cleanly with the next. It had felt right at the time. It still does. And yet…
You inhale, slow and measured.
If it could be arranged like that, if it could be placed, examined, adjusted without shifting beneath the process, then it would have settled by now. It would have held.
Your gaze lowers, unfocused. But every time you’ve tried to isolate it—a memory, a pattern, a decision—it hasn’t stayed still. Not in the way the rest of this does. Not in the way it’s expected to. It doesn’t return unchanged.
The thought arrives quietly at first, almost unobtrusive, and then all at once it isn’t, because nothing here accounts for that. Not the panels, not the questions, not the careful way everything is broken down and rebuilt without loss. That assumption sits beneath all of it—that what is taken apart can be put back together again, that understanding does not alter the thing being understood.
Your fingers tighten slightly.
But that isn’t what you’ve been seeing. Not even close.
You straighten, almost without noticing. It isn’t that your work resists completion. It’s that it doesn’t survive being handled that way at all.
The realization settles with a strange, steady clarity. You were trying to make it legible here, that’s all—trying to bring it into alignment with something that depends on stability, on separability, on the quiet assurance that whatever is examined will remain intact.
Your gaze lifts, briefly, to the room ahead—to the movement, the ease, the way everything continues. It works because it can, because nothing in it changes when it’s taken apart.
Yours does.
A small breath leaves you. You don’t move for a moment longer, then, without urgency, you step forward again, letting the crowd take you in.
Nothing outward has changed. Not the room, not the rhythm, not the system you’ve spent the morning learning to navigate.
But for the first time, the thought of standing up later does not feel like entering the Grove.
It feels like interrupting it.
The corridor opens into a quieter wing, the noise of the common hall fading behind you as the flow of people thins and redirects. Signs are placed at intervals along the walls—session titles, room numbers, arrows that guide without needing to be read twice. You follow them without hesitation, the path already half-mapped from the program folded in your bag.
The room is smaller than the main hall. Not intimate, exactly, but contained. Rows of chairs arranged in clean lines, a podium set just off-center, a projection screen already lowered. A technician stands near the console, speaking in low tones to one of the earlier presenters, adjusting something on the laptop with practiced efficiency.
You step inside, pausing only long enough to confirm the session number against the printed sheet posted by the door. Your name sits where you expect it to, unremarkable in its placement, identical in font and size to the others. No distinction. No emphasis.
It feels appropriate.
You take a seat near the side, not too far forward, placing your bag beneath the chair with a small, deliberate motion. Around you, people settle in with the same quiet assurance you’ve seen all morning—papers unfolded, devices opened, brief exchanges that taper off as the session prepares to begin.
At the front, the current speaker adjusts the microphone, tapping it once, lightly. The sound carries just enough to confirm it’s working. A slide flickers into place behind them—clean, minimal, already formatted to expectation.
You watch.
Not the content, not at first, but the structure of it. The way the speaker begins with a framing statement, broad enough to hold, narrow enough to guide. The way each point follows with measured clarity, each transition smoothing the edge of the last before moving forward. There’s a rhythm to it—predictable in its progression, reliable in its resolution.
When uncertainty appears, it doesn’t linger. It’s acknowledged, contained, redirected. A limitation noted, a boundary drawn, the argument closed neatly around it.
Questions, when they come, follow the same pattern. Precise, courteous, shaped to invite clarification rather than disruption. Even the challenges resolve quickly, guided back toward agreement with a kind of practiced ease.
You recognize it now without effort.
Not just structure.
Constraint.
The system doesn’t resist deviation. It absorbs it, adjusts it, returns it in a form that can be held without strain.
Another speaker takes the podium. Similar cadence. Different data, the same underlying movement. You don’t need to follow every detail to see where it will land.
It always lands.
Your hand rests lightly against the edge of your notebook, but you don’t open it. There’s nothing left to adjust there that belongs to this space.
Nothing in your posture changes. Your notes remain closed. Your expression, if anyone were looking, would offer nothing to read.
At the front, the current speaker concludes, the final slide summarizing their argument in clean, concise terms. The moderator thanks them, voice warm, measured, already moving the session forward.
The final speaker concludes without strain, their last point settling neatly into place. Applause follows; measured, consistent, already thinning at the edges as the session draws itself closed.
Then Cerces rises.
The shift is immediate, though nothing about it is abrupt. Attention gathers rather than turns, drawn toward her with the same inevitability that has governed the morning. She steps to the podium as though it has been waiting for her, the previous presence dissolving without resistance.
“Thank you,” she says, her voice clear, carrying without effort, each word placed with deliberate care. “We’ve spent the morning tracing the limits of what can be established, supported, and sustained within our current frameworks.”
She pauses.
Her gaze lowers briefly to the program in her hand, though it’s difficult to tell whether she’s reading or simply marking the transition.
“This afternoon, we extend that work. Not by reinforcing what has already proven stable,” she adds, “but by examining what has yet to resolve.”
The distinction lands without emphasis.
“Student presentations,” she says, and this time the phrase is precise, contained, placed carefully within the structure she’s just outlined.
Her eyes lift.
They move across the room once, measured, unhurried.
Until, briefly, they rest on you.
It isn’t recognition in any conventional sense. There is no warmth in it, no visible curiosity.
Only a kind of exacting attention. As though noting position. She looks back to the program.
You step off the aisle before the path can fully close around you, moving toward the narrow partition at the side of the stage. Up close, it’s less a barrier than a suggestion, just enough to separate what happens before from what is meant to be seen.
The technician is already there.
He glances up as you approach, recognition immediate, his hand moving toward the console without pause. Cables are arranged neatly across the table, the session laptop open, cursor blinking on a blank input screen.
“Slides?” he asks, already half-turned.
You shake your head once. “No slides.”
There’s a flicker of confusion—brief, almost imperceptible before he nods and adjusts something on the board.
“Alright. Mic, then.”
He steps closer, efficient, clipping the microphone just below your collar. The wire settles lightly against your skin, cool for a second before you stop noticing it. He leans back, listening through his headset, one hand raised slightly.
“Give me a word.”
You glance past him, through the narrow gap in the partition. The current speaker is finishing, voice even, contained, their final sentence already resolving itself into something that will hold.
You turn back.
“Good afternoon.”
Your voice carries cleanly. The technician watches the levels, makes a small adjustment, then nods once.
“You’re set.”
He moves away immediately, attention already elsewhere, the space returning to its quiet, functional stillness.
You remain where you are.
From here, the room is framed differently. The audience sits in alignment, their attention fixed forward, unaware of the small calibrations happening just out of view. The session continues without interruption, seamless, self-sustaining.
A step behind you shifts the air, light, unguarded.
“You don’t look nervous.”
The voice carries a hint of brightness, almost conversational, as though the observation has just occurred to her and she’s decided to say it out loud.
You turn.
Hyacine stands just at the edge of the partition, hands loosely clasped behind her back, leaning forward a fraction as if she’s stepped in mid-thought rather than with any particular intention. There’s an easy energy to her, something uncontained in the way she holds herself, her smile quick to appear and quicker still to soften.
“I mean that as a compliment,” she adds, the smile widening briefly. “Most people do. At this point, I mean.”
You hold her gaze for a moment.
There’s nothing complicated in it. No weight. Just a kind of open curiosity, the sort that doesn’t expect anything in return.
“I’m not,” you say.
The answer comes simply.
“Oh,” she says, eyebrows lifting just slightly, like that wasn’t quite the response she’d anticipated. “Well—that’s good. That’s very good.”
She nods once, as if confirming it for herself.
“Still,” she continues after a beat, tilting her head a little, “if you are, later, or suddenly, or halfway through—” she gestures vaguely, as though the specifics don’t matter “—it’s normal. Everyone does something strange at least once. They recover.”
There’s a small, almost apologetic laugh in it, like she’s aware that isn’t the most reassuring phrasing, but offering it anyway.
You feel your expression soften, just slightly.
“Thank you,” you say, and you mean it.
She brightens at that, the response landing more easily than whatever she’d been preparing to say next.
Her gaze drifts past you then, not with intent, just following movement on the stage as the current speaker begins to wrap up. Applause flickers faintly at the edges, not yet fully formed.
“Oh,” she adds, almost as an afterthought, turning back, “and—don’t worry about matching them exactly.” She gestures lightly toward the room. “They’ll follow. Or they won’t. Either way, it’s not—” she pauses, searching briefly for the right word, then settles on something simpler “—it’s not as rigid as it looks.”
The statement is offered with an easy confidence, unburdened by the need to prove it.
You nod once.
“I know.”
There’s no edge to it. No correction. Just agreement.
She studies you for half a second—not deeply, not analytically, just long enough to register that you mean it—and then smiles again, softer this time.
“Good,” she says.
On the other side of the partition, the speaker finishes. Applause rises—measured, already settling as the moderator steps forward again.
Hyacine straightens, the shift in the room pulling her attention back with it.
“Well,” she says, stepping aside with a small, almost exaggerated gesture to clear your path, “that’s your cue, then.”
There’s something lightly encouraging in it, uncomplicated.
You incline your head.
“Thank you.”
“Anytime,” she replies, already half-turned away, as though the interaction has fulfilled its purpose the moment it’s been offered.
She slips back into the room without ceremony, her presence dissolving into the broader movement of the space as easily as it appeared.
By the time Hyacine disappeared through the curtains and the murmur of the symposium swallowed the sound of her footsteps, you had almost succeeded in convincing yourself that the conversation no longer mattered.
Almost.
The trouble with humiliation, you discovered, was that it rarely survived scrutiny and yet remained stubbornly present regardless. Every objection you raised against your own reaction was entirely reasonable. Professor Anaxagoras was occupied. The symposium schedule had been relentless from the moment the keynote concluded. Delegating a message to an assistant was neither unusual nor discourteous. There existed a dozen perfectly rational explanations for his absence, and you had spent the better part of an hour constructing every one of them with the same careful precision you ordinarily reserved for proofs.
Unfortunately, reason possessed remarkably little authority over disappointment.
The realization irritated you far more than the disappointment itself.
By any sensible standard, nothing had happened. An assistant had offered encouragement before a presentation. That was all. To interpret the exchange as rejection required a degree of self-importance you found faintly embarrassing. You knew that. You knew it with the same certainty you knew the mathematics folded neatly inside the folder beneath your arm. Yet every attempt to dismiss the feeling seemed only to sharpen it into something quieter and more persistent.
He couldn't even come himself.
The thought surfaced again, unwelcome in its familiarity.
Petty.
Unfair.
Persistent.
You closed your eyes for the briefest moment, exhaling slowly through your nose until the tightness behind your ribs loosened by a fraction. This was absurd. Whatever existed between you and Professor Anaxagoras — intellectual rivalry, reluctant mentorship, mutual curiosity, or merely an unfortunate habit of unsettling one another had no bearing whatsoever on the paper you were about to present. The work had existed before yesterday's lecture. Before this symposium.
It deserved better than to become collateral in an argument that neither of you had been willing to finish.
Beyond the curtain came the muffled cadence of Cerces' voice, warm and measured even through layers of heavy fabric. Another presentation was drawing to its conclusion. Polite applause followed, swelling briefly before dissolving into the familiar murmur of shifting chairs and quiet conversation. Someone crossed the stage on the opposite side of the partition, their footsteps fading into the wings before a stagehand offered a whispered instruction that you couldn't quite make out.
You adjusted the folder beneath your arm more out of habit than necessity. The pages inside were immaculate, every equation where it belonged, every transition rehearsed until it no longer required conscious thought. You had rewritten portions of the introduction well past midnight, not because the theory itself had changed but because the language had. Sometime between leaving yesterday's lecture and arriving this morning, your need to answer Anaxagoras had quietly dissolved. In its place remained something colder.
You no longer wished to refute his conclusion.
You wished to ask a different question.
A stagehand caught your eye from the edge of the curtain and gave a small nod.
Two minutes.
You returned it automatically.
The applause beyond the curtain rose once more before gradually settling into silence. Cerces began speaking again, her voice clearer now that the hall itself had grown still.
"...our final presentation before the afternoon recess."
Your pulse quickened—not dramatically, but with the steady insistence of a body recognizing the threshold before the mind chose to acknowledge it.
You rolled your shoulders once, smoothing an invisible crease from the sleeve of your jacket. The movement felt oddly grounding, something ordinary amidst the relentless abstraction of the past twenty-four hours.
Whatever happened after you stepped onto that stage would belong to the symposium.
Everything before it belonged only to you.
Cerces spoke your name.
You drew a single measured breath, then stepped through the curtain.
The applause met you as you stepped into the light, polite in the way symposium applause always was—measured, restrained, already fading before you reached the lectern. You scarcely heard it. The hall seemed larger from the stage than it ever had from the audience, the rows of seats rising in neat semicircles until they disappeared beneath the gallery, each occupied by scholars whose names had appeared in journals you had cited long before imagining you might someday present before them.
You placed your folder upon the lectern with deliberate care. The leather was cool beneath your fingertips. Beside it sat a glass of water someone had thoughtfully prepared between presentations, untouched except for the condensation gathering around its base. You resisted the impulse to reach for it. Your hands had nowhere useful to be except where they already rested.
The applause dissolved.
Silence followed.
The kind cultivated over decades within lecture halls and conference rooms, where every person present understood that the first sentence often determined whether the next forty minutes would be endured politely or remembered long afterwards.
You looked up.
It was impossible to distinguish individual faces beyond the first few rows. The auditorium lights obscured them just enough that the audience became less a collection of people than a single attentive presence. Here and there, a notebook opened. Someone adjusted a pair of glasses. A laptop screen dimmed before disappearing altogether.
Hyacine sat where she always seemed to, somewhere close enough to offer reassurance without drawing attention to herself. When your eyes passed briefly over her, she smiled—not brightly, not encouragingly, but with the quiet confidence of someone who had already decided you belonged here.
Beyond her—
No.
You stopped yourself before your gaze could travel any farther.
It didn't matter where he was standing, nor did it matter whether he was watching.
It didn't matter whether he'd chosen, once again, to remain nothing more than a distant silhouette at the edge of your vision.
The paper existed independently of him.
It always had.
You had simply forgotten.
Kira had claimed a seat in the very first row long before the hall had begun to fill, positioned directly in your line of sight as though daring the universe to make her miss a single second of this moment. She sat perched on the edge of her chair, hands clasped together beneath her chin, practically vibrating with excitement.
The instant your gaze swept across the audience and found her, her face lit up. She offered an enthusiastic wave before catching herself, lowering her hand only slightly as if remembering this was a formal symposium and not a celebration she had personally organized. The effort lasted all of three seconds. Her smile remained impossibly wide, pride shining openly in her eyes.
Among the gathered academics, researchers, and guests, Kira looked entirely unconcerned with maintaining a scholarly image. To her, the most important person in the room was already standing on the stage.
When the nervousness threatened to creep in, it was difficult not to notice the way she nodded at you from her seat, a silent You've got this!
That was all you needed.
You reached for the first page of your notes, then paused.
No.
Closing the folder again, you left it where it was.
The introduction had long since ceased to require paper.
You already knew the first sentence.
More importantly, you knew why it had to be the first sentence.
Taking a slow breath, you let your gaze settle—not on any individual, but somewhere above the audience, where every listener might imagine themselves being addressed.
"When we ask what it means to remain the same person over time," you began, your voice carrying evenly through the hall, "we rarely notice that the question has already chosen its answer."
A few heads lifted.
Good.
"The history of identity has been written largely as a history of persistence. We ask what survives change, what remains untouched by experience, what property endures while every observable characteristic gradually transforms around it. Whether that enduring property is called a soul, a pattern, or an informational state matters surprisingly little."
You turned, picking up a piece of chalk.
"In every case..."
The first word appeared upon the board in crisp white letters.
IDENTITY
"...identity is treated as something that exists before the question is asked."
You set the chalk down.
"I should like to suggest another possibility."
The hall became so quiet that the faint scrape of your sleeve against the lectern seemed momentarily audible.
"Perhaps the difficulty does not lie in our answers."
A measured pause.
"Perhaps..."
Your eyes drifted, almost absentmindedly, toward the single word behind you.
"...it lies in the question itself."
"For the better part of two millennia," you said, "our discussions of identity have begun from a remarkably consistent premise. Change is regarded as the phenomenon requiring explanation; identity is treated as the constant against which that change is measured. Whether one attributes that constancy to an immortal soul, to continuity of consciousness, or more recently to the persistence of informational structure, the underlying architecture of the problem has remained largely unchanged."
As you spoke, you moved away from the lectern, not with the restless pacing of someone attempting to command attention, but with the measured confidence of someone tracing the outline of an idea already complete in their own mind. The stage offered more space than you needed. You occupied only a small corner of it.
"In each case," you continued, "identity is understood as something that exists independently of transformation. Transformation may obscure it, enrich it, even threaten it—but identity itself remains the object whose persistence we seek to explain."
You turned, taking up a piece of chalk once more.
Beneath IDENTITY, you drew a horizontal line.
Below it, carefully, you wrote:
Persistence through change
The chalk clicked softly against the tray as you set it aside.
"This formulation has proved extraordinarily productive," you admitted. "It has given us theological models, legal models, psychological models, and increasingly sophisticated computational models. I do not intend to dismiss any of them. Each succeeds in describing an important aspect of human continuity."
Several members of the audience nodded almost unconsciously. A philosopher in the second row uncapped his pen. Somewhere farther back, the faint tapping of keys resumed before stopping just as abruptly.
You noticed these things only in passing. Years spent in lecture halls had taught you that attention possessed a rhythm of its own. It shifted almost imperceptibly through a room, gathering around an argument when it sensed that argument was going somewhere unexpected.
"The difficulty," you said, "is not that these models are incorrect."
You paused.
"It is that they all begin from the same ontological commitment."
There it was.
A handful of brows furrowed.
Good.
"The assumption is rarely stated explicitly, perhaps because it appears so self-evident that stating it feels unnecessary."
You looked toward the board.
"It is simply this."
Picking up the chalk again, you wrote another phrase beneath the first.
Identity is a state.
You stepped back.
"If identity is a state, then every meaningful question follows naturally. Which state? How is it preserved? Can it be copied? Can it be damaged? Can it be restored? Entire research programmes have emerged from those questions, and with good reason."
The room remained still.
"No one asks whether the premise itself is true."
You let the silence answer for you.
"Suppose, for a moment, that it is not."
The sentence was delivered without emphasis. You might have been suggesting an alternative proof to a familiar theorem.
"Suppose identity is not something that exists at a particular instant."
You folded your hands loosely before you.
"Suppose it is not a substance."
Another beat.
"Nor a configuration."
You looked across the audience, allowing your gaze to settle nowhere in particular.
"Suppose identity is not something that is..."
"...but something that occurs."
You saw it first in the front rows. Pens that had been moving continuously slowed. One attendee leaned back instead of forward, as though creating enough distance to see the argument in its entirety. Cerces, seated at the centre of the panel, had ceased annotating the programme some moments ago. Her attention rested fully upon you now, her expression unreadable save for the slight narrowing of her eyes that always accompanied genuine curiosity. You continued before anyone had time to settle on an objection.
"The distinction appears semantic."
A faint smile.
"It is not."
"If identity is a state, then it may reasonably be described by examining the present."
You lifted one hand, sketching the thought in the air as though arranging invisible pieces.
"A sufficiently complete description of the current system ought, at least in principle, to tell us everything there is to know about the identity of that system."
You let that remain.
No one objected.
"Conversely..."
You allowed the word to hang for the briefest moment.
"If identity is an occurrence..."
"...then no description of the present, however complete, can ever be sufficient."
A murmur, barely audible, rippled through the middle rows.
"Because occurrences are not defined by where they are observed."
Your gaze drifted to the single word on the board.
"They are defined by how they come to be."
The words settled over the auditorium with a stillness that was neither agreement nor dissent. It was the peculiar silence reserved for lecture halls, where conclusions were rarely accepted as they were spoken, but carried forward, examined from unexpected angles, and quietly measured against years of accumulated certainty. Here and there, pens resumed their movement across paper with renewed purpose. Elsewhere they remained suspended above untouched notebooks, their owners apparently content to postpone recording the argument until they understood the shape it intended to take.
There was little value in advancing before the previous thought had been given room to settle.
Returning to the lectern, you reached almost absently for the glass of water that had remained untouched since the beginning of the lecture. The condensation had gathered into a pale ring upon the polished wood, cool against your fingertips as you lifted it. You drank only enough to ease the dryness in your throat before setting it down with the same quiet precision.
Cerces remained motionless, her itinerary abandoned entirely now. One hand rested lightly against her chin, her expression composed save for the slight narrowing of her eyes that invariably accompanied genuine intellectual curiosity. Aglaea sat with the same immaculate posture she had maintained throughout the morning, revealing nothing of her thoughts beyond the unwavering steadiness of her attention.
Your gaze continued almost without intention.
Near the back of the auditorium, where the final row dissolved into the stone colonnade, Professor Anaxagoras stood with one shoulder resting lightly against the pillar behind him. He had not taken a seat. His expression, as always, yielded almost nothing.
You looked away before your thoughts could.
The chalk felt reassuringly familiar between your fingers as you turned back towards the board. There was a certain comfort in ideas. They possessed the decency to proceed from their assumptions without concealment.
"If the present is insufficient," you said, drawing a single line beneath the last sentence already written upon the slate, "then the difficulty lies not with observation, but with the object we have chosen to observe."
You wrote only one symbol.
H
Nothing more.
Unlike the notation that had preceded it, this one seemed almost conspicuously incomplete. A few members of the audience frowned, perhaps expecting an equation to follow. None appeared.
"I shall call this history."
You stepped away from the board before anyone had time to mistake the symbol for something more technical than you intended.
"I do not use the word in its ordinary sense. I do not mean biography, chronology, or memory. Those are all attempts to preserve the past. They tell us what happened."
Your gaze moved slowly across the room.
"I am interested in something rather different."
The chalk rested loosely between your fingers.
"I am interested in what each event leaves behind."
The distinction was subtle enough that several listeners hesitated before writing it down.
"When we speak of experience, we often imagine that it accumulates. One event follows another until, after enough years have passed, we possess what we call a life. It is an appealing image because it treats experience as though it were something that could simply be added together."
You shook your head almost imperceptibly.
"I do not believe experience accumulates."
The sentence arrived without emphasis.
"I believe it transforms."
No one interrupted.
"The difference matters."
You took a slow step away from the board, your voice remaining measured, almost conversational.
"A joyful childhood and a difficult childhood are not simply two different collections of memories. They produce two different ways of encountering the same world. The event itself eventually belongs to the past. The person to whom the next event occurs does not."
"In other words, experience does not merely enlarge the self."
Your hand rose briefly, not to illustrate, but almost to weigh the words as they were spoken.
"It changes the conditions under which every future experience will be understood."
It was no longer the silence of listeners waiting politely for a conclusion. It possessed the slower quality of collective thought, as though the room itself had begun turning the idea over before deciding whether to accept it.
You could see it happening in small, almost involuntary gestures. A philosopher in the second row lowered his pen without seeming to notice. Someone farther back, who had typed steadily since the lecture began, closed the lid of his laptop altogether. Cerces had not moved, though the thoughtful crease between her brows had deepened almost imperceptibly.
You continued before anyone could mistake reflection for agreement.
"If that is true, then identity cannot be something that merely survives transformation."
Your eyes returned briefly to the word written alone at the top of the board.
"It must also be something that is continually produced by it."
For the first time since beginning the lecture, you allowed the possibility to stand on its own, resisting the temptation to defend it immediately. A proposition offered too quickly with its proof often sounded like advocacy. Left alone for a moment, it acquired the far quieter authority of a question whose answer had not yet been decided.
The proposition remained suspended between you and the audience for several moments, not because it demanded theatrical effect, but because there was no advantage in supplying the conclusion before the premise had been allowed to establish itself. Years spent moving through lecture halls had taught you that understanding possessed its own pace. An argument advanced too quickly ceased to persuade, not because it lacked coherence, but because it denied its listeners the opportunity to arrive alongside it.
"The distinction," you continued at last, "may appear slight."
Your fingers turned the piece of chalk almost absently before setting it back upon the tray.
"I do not believe it is."
"If history merely explained how a present state had come into existence, we would have gained very little. We would possess a more satisfying narrative, certainly, but identity itself would remain exactly where we first assumed it to be—in the present, waiting to be described."
You paused only long enough to let the implication emerge.
"I am suggesting something stronger."
There was no movement across the auditorium beyond the occasional quiet scratch of a pen.
"— Because history does not simply lead to identity."
You looked once more towards the audience.
"It constitutes it."
The sentence settled into the room without resistance. It was not yet controversial. It was still close enough to familiar ways of thinking that most listeners could accommodate it without disturbing their existing assumptions.
You suspected that would not remain true for very long.
"When we speak of transformation," you continued, "we often imagine a subject upon which transformation acts. There is a person; something happens to that person; afterwards, the person possesses one additional experience."
The rhythm of your speech remained measured, almost conversational.
"It is an intuitively appealing picture."
Your gaze drifted briefly towards the board before returning again.
"It is also a remarkably static one."
The chalk traced a slow line beneath the notation already written there.
"It assumes that transformation is external to identity. That experiences accumulate around a self whose continuity has, in some sense, already been secured."
You shook your head almost imperceptibly.
"I believe the relationship is the reverse."
Silence returned—not uncertain this time, but attentive.
"The significance of an experience does not lie solely in the fact that it occurred."
Your hand came to rest lightly against the edge of the lectern.
"It lies in the fact that, having occurred, every subsequent experience is encountered by someone who has already been altered by it."
The observation was almost painfully ordinary.
Perhaps that was why it carried so much force.
"It follows that no experience remains isolated."
You allowed your eyes to move slowly across the hall.
"Each transformation quietly alters the conditions under which the next transformation will be understood. What follows is therefore never experienced by the same person who would have encountered it before."
Only now did you turn once more towards the board.
"The history of a person is not a sequence of events attached to an otherwise complete identity."
The chalk rested once again between your fingers.
"It is the continuous alteration of the very perspective through which every subsequent event acquires its meaning."
You allowed the silence to settle before turning once more towards the board. Until now, the symbols you had written had served only as placeholders, reminders that the language of philosophy would eventually have to submit itself to the discipline of formal description. There was little value in introducing mathematics before the idea it represented had become intelligible.
The chalk rested lightly between your fingers.
"If we wished to express this formally," you said, "we might begin with the simplest possible description."
Beneath the existing notation, you wrote,
Sₜ
"A state."
You did not elaborate immediately.
"A description of a system at a particular moment. Nothing more, and nothing less."
A second symbol appeared beside it.
Hₜ
"And what I have called its history."
You stepped back, allowing both symbols to remain visible.
"If identity were adequately described by the present, then we should expect it to depend only upon the current state."
With a few deliberate strokes, you completed the expression.
Identity = F(Sₜ)
"There would be nothing particularly controversial about such a model. Whatever a person is, we would expect to find it here."
The chalk tapped lightly against Sₜ.
"If our description became sufficiently complete, then identity itself ought eventually to reveal itself as one more property of the present."
You allowed the proposition to stand exactly as those in the audience would already have recognised it.
"I do not believe that is what we observe."
Returning to the board, you drew a single line through the expression—not dramatically, merely enough to indicate that it had become insufficient.
"Because the present never arrives alone."
The sentence was almost conversational.
"It arrives having been shaped by every transformation that preceded it."
You rewrote the expression beneath the first.
Identity = F(Hₜ)
The equations remained upon the board.
You regarded them for a moment before setting the chalk lightly against the tray.
"A theory," you said, "earns its place not because it introduces unfamiliar language, but because it explains something that older language cannot. If this revision is meaningful, then it should change more than our vocabulary. It should change the conclusions we are prepared to draw."
Taking up the chalk once more, you cleared a space beneath the existing notation.
"There is a familiar thought experiment that has appeared in one form or another throughout philosophy of mind. Imagine two systems whose present states are perfectly identical."
You wrote,
Sa = Sb
"They possess the same memories, the same dispositions, the same measurable characteristics. However carefully we examine them, every observation yields the same result. By every criterion available to the present, they are indistinguishable."
The chalk moved again.
Ia = Ib
"If identity depends entirely upon the present state, this conclusion follows without difficulty. There is no property by which the two systems may be distinguished, and so there is no reason to regard them as different individuals. The model is internally consistent."
You stepped back, allowing the equations to remain visible.
"It is also incomplete."
Returning to the board, you added a third expression beneath the first.
Ha ≠ Hb
"The two systems may occupy the same state while possessing fundamentally different histories. One arrives there through a continuous sequence of lived transformations. The other arrives there through replication. Their present condition may be identical, but the processes that produced that condition are not."
You let your gaze travel slowly across the auditorium before writing the final line.
Ia ≠ Ib
"The conclusion changes immediately. Not because we have discovered a new property hidden somewhere within the present, but because we are no longer asking the present to answer a question it cannot answer."
The room remained remarkably still. Several audience members had stopped taking notes altogether, their attention fixed instead upon the progression of equations accumulating across the board.
"The distinction is not between two observable states," you continued. "It is between two histories. The present tells us what a system is. History tells us how that system became capable of being what it is. If identity is constituted by that history, then identical outcomes need not imply identical identities."
You rested the chalk against the tray once more.
"This is precisely where the state-based model reaches its limit. It can establish that two systems are indistinguishable in the present, but it possesses no language for distinguishing between identical outcomes produced by different transformations. Once identity is understood as history-dependent, that distinction is no longer invisible. It becomes the very thing the theory is intended to describe."
"Put more simply," you said, "none of us would mistake our present selves for the people we were ten years ago. We think differently, value different things, and understand the world in different ways. Yet we do not conclude that we have become someone else. We recognise a continuity, not because some unchanging state has survived untouched, but because every version of ourselves arose from the one before it."
You let the equations remain on the board a while longer before turning back to the audience.
"The distinction has another consequence."
Your voice remained measured.
"We often speak of memory as though it were the foundation of identity. It is not difficult to understand why. Our memories provide the most immediate evidence that our past belongs to us."
You folded your hands loosely before you.
"But memory is not history."
A few pens resumed their movement.
"It is a record of transformation, and like every record, it is incomplete. It fades. It distorts. It reconstructs itself each time it is recalled."
You glanced briefly towards the equations.
"Consider a patient who has lost years of autobiographical memory. We do not conclude that a new person has appeared simply because recollection has been interrupted. The individual continues to reason, to respond, and to encounter the world as someone whose past has already shaped them, even if they can no longer describe that past."
You paused just long enough for the implication to settle.
"The transformation remains, even when the memory does not."
The room had grown noticeably quieter.
"This is because history does not reside in recollection. It resides in the system that recollection has already changed."
You began walking slowly across the stage.
"The same principle governs experiences far more ordinary than neurological injury."
Your gaze drifted over the audience.
"Consider the person you were ten years ago."
No one moved.
"The disappointments that seemed insurmountable then, the friendships you believed permanent, the ambitions you carried without question—many of them have changed. Some have disappeared entirely."
Your expression remained thoughtful rather than nostalgic.
"You do not merely possess memories of those experiences. You have been altered by them. The person who encounters the world today does so through dispositions, expectations, and habits that those experiences helped produce."
You rested one hand lightly against the lectern.
"This is why experience cannot be understood as something that accumulates beside identity, like pages added to a completed manuscript."
A faint smile touched your expression.
"It rewrites the manuscript as it is being written."
Several members of the audience looked up from their notebooks.
"A first failure does not simply become another memory. It changes how later risks are judged. Grief alters the meaning of future attachments. Love changes the standards by which affection is recognised. Every significant transformation quietly reshapes the perspective through which subsequent experiences will be interpreted."
You allowed your gaze to settle briefly on the word IDENTITY still written across the top of the board.
"The event itself passes."
Your voice remained calm.
"The transformation it leaves behind does not."
"The difficulty, of course," you said, taking up the chalk once more, "is that intuition alone is an unsatisfactory foundation for a theory. If history truly constitutes identity, then we must be able to describe what we mean by history with greater precision."
Beneath the existing equations, you wrote,
Hₜ = {T₁, T₂, ..., Tₙ}
The notation occupied only a small corner of the slate, though several members of the audience immediately began copying it into their notebooks.
"I do not use history to mean a chronology of events," you said. "Chronology merely tells us what happened. Two people may witness the same event, at the same time, and emerge from it fundamentally differently."
You drew a line through the word events in your notes at the edge of the board before writing another beside it.
Transformations
"History, in the sense I intend, is a sequence of transformations. Each T represents not an occurrence in the world, but the change that occurrence produces within the system itself."
You stepped back from the board.
"This distinction is essential. Events belong to the world. Transformations belong to the individual."
A thoughtful murmur passed through the auditorium.
"The same bereavement may leave one person withdrawn and another resolute. The same success may foster confidence in one individual and complacency in another. If we define history only by external events, those lives become indistinguishable. Plainly, they are not."
The chalk moved again.
Sₜ₊₁ = T(Sₜ)
"A present state does not simply succeed the one before it," you continued. "It is produced from it. Every transformation acts upon an already transformed individual. There is no neutral observer waiting beneath experience. Each new state inherits every alteration that preceded it."
Without hurrying, you added a second expression.
Hₜ₊₁ = Hₜ ∪ {Tₜ₊₁}
"This follows naturally."
You rested the chalk lightly against the board.
"History is not replaced from one moment to the next. It grows—not by accumulating events, but by accumulating transformations. Each new transformation becomes part of the process from which every future state will emerge."
You looked once more across the hall.
"Notice what has disappeared from the model."
Your hand gestured briefly towards the equations.
"There is no privileged moment at which identity resides."
The room remained silent.
"It is distributed across the entire history of transformation."
You allowed the implication to linger.
"To ask where identity is located is therefore to ask the wrong question."
Your gaze settled once more on the notation covering the board.
"The better question is this."
"How did this system become capable of being what it is?"
No one wrote immediately.
For the first time since the lecture had begun, the equations no longer resembled abstract notation. They had become a language for describing something every person in the room had experienced, yet few had ever attempted to formalise.
You remained beside the board, allowing the notation to occupy the audience's attention a little longer.
"Any model," you said at last, "must ultimately be judged by what it allows us to explain. A change in notation, however elegant, is of little consequence unless it reveals distinctions that were previously invisible."
Your hand rested lightly against the edge of the lectern.
"If identity is constituted by history rather than state, then there are phenomena that should cease to appear paradoxical."
You looked briefly towards the equations before continuing.
"Consider, for example, why two people may respond so differently to the same experience."
The question was simple enough that several listeners looked up almost immediately.
"We often attribute such differences to personality, as though personality itself required no explanation. But personality is not an independent variable. It is already the consequence of prior transformations."
You moved slowly across the stage.
"The same criticism may leave one individual discouraged and another determined. The same success may inspire confidence in one person and complacency in another. The event itself is identical. What differs is the history through which that event is interpreted."
A philosopher in the second row nodded almost absently, his pen moving again across the margin of an already crowded page.
"The implication extends well beyond psychology."
You turned back towards the board.
"If two systems occupy the same present state, we are often tempted to conclude that they possess the same identity. That conclusion follows naturally from a state-based model."
Your fingers closed once more around the chalk, though you did not yet write.
"My claim is that such a conclusion is unwarranted."
You allowed the sentence to stand without immediate defence.
"Because identity is not determined by where a system happens to be."
Your gaze moved across the audience.
"It is determined by the transformations that made that state possible."
You turned back towards the board.
"Every theory," you said, "inherits not only its strengths, but also the limitations of the assumptions from which it begins."
The chalk traced a single line beneath the equations before coming to rest.
"If identity is treated as a property of the present, then the present must bear the entire burden of explanation."
You paused only long enough to ensure the implication had settled.
"Everything that makes a person who they are must be recoverable from a sufficiently complete description of the system as it exists now."
No one interrupted.
"It is an attractive proposition."
You glanced briefly towards the notation already covering the board.
"It is also an extraordinarily demanding one."
A faint murmur passed through the middle rows.
"To sustain it, one must believe that history leaves no residue beyond the present state. That every transformation can be understood entirely through its outcome."
You shook your head almost imperceptibly.
"I do not believe this is what we observe."
Moving back to the board, you wrote only two expressions.
S₀ → S₁
Beneath it,
S₀′ → S₁
The arrows stood parallel, converging upon the same destination.
"You need not concern yourselves with the notation," you said. "It expresses only a simple possibility."
The chalk rested beneath the second line.
"Two different beginnings."
You traced the arrows lightly.
"One identical present."
Your gaze lifted from the board.
"If the present alone determines identity, then these histories become indistinguishable the moment they converge."
The room remained silent.
"My claim is that they do not."
You stepped back.
"The transformations that produced the present are not erased simply because they arrive at the same destination. They continue to constrain every transformation that follows."
A philosopher in the front rows frowned thoughtfully, his eyes moving repeatedly between the two lines on the board.
"The consequence is subtle."
You folded your hands loosely before you.
"It means that convergence of state is not convergence of identity."
For the first time since introducing the equations, you allowed yourself a faint smile.
"And it is precisely here that the prevailing models begin to struggle."
"There is, of course, an immediate objection."
The remark drew several heads up from their notebooks.
"It would be unfair to suggest that contemporary theories of identity have ignored history altogether. Quite the contrary. Some of the most sophisticated models developed over the past decade have attempted to incorporate it."
You turned back towards the board.
"Perhaps the most ambitious among them is Professor Anaxagoras's formulation of soul-state continuity."
There was no discernible change in your tone.
It was simply the next idea in the sequence.
A few members of the audience glanced instinctively towards the back of the auditorium.
You did not.
"His work represents a considerable advance over earlier theories by recognising that identity cannot be reduced to static physical structure alone. Instead, it seeks to describe the evolution of the soul as a continuous informational process."
The chalk rested between your fingers.
"It is an elegant model."
You wrote a single expression beneath your own.
I = G(Sₜ, Ψₜ)
"Here, identity is determined not only by the observable state of the system, but by the evolving state of what Professor Anaxagoras terms the soul."
You stepped back.
"The addition is significant."
There was no trace of irony in your voice.
"It resolves difficulties that earlier state-based models could not."
Several members of the audience nodded. Cerces' attention remained fixed upon the board.
"The question before us, however, is not whether the model is internally consistent."
You looked slowly across the room.
"It is."
Your gaze settled briefly upon the equation.
"The question is whether it has abandoned the original assumption..."
The chalk lifted once more.
"...or merely concealed it."
Silence settled across the auditorium.
You drew a single line beneath Anaxagoras's expression.
"Notice what still determines identity."
The tip of the chalk came to rest beneath the symbols.
"A present condition."
You moved it first beneath Sₜ
"Whether that condition is physical..."
Then beneath Ψₜ.
"...or spiritual..."
Finally you underlined the entire right-hand side.
"...it remains a description of the system as it exists now."
You set the chalk down.
"The mathematics has grown more sophisticated."
Your voice remained calm.
"The ontology has not."
No one wrote.
"It still asks the present to account for itself."
You turned back towards your own formulation, still written above.
I = F(Hₜ)
"My disagreement, therefore, is not with Professor Anaxagoras's mathematics."
A brief pause.
"It is with the question his mathematics has been asked to answer."
The words hung in the hall with a stillness that felt qualitatively different from the silences that had preceded them.
Somewhere near the front, a pen stopped moving.
Cerces no longer looked at the board.
She was looking towards the back of the auditorium.
You did not follow her gaze.
At length, you set the chalk down.
"I have not attempted to prove that identity is history."
A few heads lifted.
"I have argued something more modest."
You rested your hands lightly against the lectern.
"That if identity is treated exclusively as a present state, there are distinctions we are unable to explain. We mistake identical outcomes for identical individuals. We mistake memory for transformation. We mistake continuity for persistence."
Your gaze drifted across the auditorium.
"A history-dependent model does not eliminate every difficulty. No serious theory ever does. But it allows us to ask questions that the state-based model cannot."
You turned once more towards the board.
The equations remained exactly as you had left them.
"When we ask what it means to remain the same person," you said quietly, "we usually imagine that identity is something carried through change."
Your fingers rested lightly upon the edge of the lectern.
"I have suggested the opposite."
The room remained utterly still.
"That change is not what identity survives."
Your eyes lifted from the board to the audience.
"It is what identity is made of."
No one reached for a pen.
No one shifted in their seat.
The silence possessed an unusual quality now. It was no longer the attentive quiet that accompanies a lecture, nor the expectant pause before questions begin. It was the silence of an audience discovering that a familiar question had quietly become a different one.
You inclined your head, almost imperceptibly.
"Thank you."
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then, somewhere near the centre of the auditorium, a single pair of hands came together.
Another followed.
The applause spread gradually rather than explosively, gathering through the hall in uneven waves as people rose less from excitement than from respect for the argument they had just witnessed. Around the panel, notebooks remained open, margins crowded with hurried annotations and unfinished questions. Cerces had not yet moved. One hand still rested against her chin, her expression composed, though the thoughtful crease between her brows had deepened.
Only then did your eyes travel, almost despite yourself, towards the back of the hall.
Professor Anaxagoras still stood where he had been throughout the lecture.
He had not applauded.
Nor had he looked away.
For the first time that afternoon, his expression betrayed the smallest departure from its habitual composure—not disagreement, nor approval, but the unmistakable recognition of someone who had just encountered an idea capable of changing the course of his own work.
You held his gaze only for a moment before the applause reclaimed the room.
orphic; (adj.) mysterious and entrancing, beyond ordinary understanding.
─── 011 (II). the symposium.
-> summary: when you, a final-year student at the grove, get assigned to study under anaxagoras—one of the legendary seven sages—you know things are about to get interesting. but as the weeks go by, the line between correlation and causation starts to blur, and the more time you spend with professor anaxagoras, the more drawn to him you become in ways you never expected. the rules of the academy are clear, and the risks are an unfortunate possibility, but curiosity is a dangerous thing. and maybe, just maybe, some risks are worth taking. after all, isn’t every great discovery just a leap of faith? -> pairing: anaxa x gn!reader.
-> tropes: professor x student, slow burn, forbidden romance.
-> wc: 12.8k
-> warnings: potential hsr spoilers from TB mission: "Light Slips the Gate, Shadow Greets the Throne" (3.1 update). main character is written to be 21+ years of age, at the very least. (anaxa is written to be around 26-27 years of age.) swearing, mature themes, suggestive content.
-> a/n: i have no words to apologize for the incredibly late chapter… i sincerely hope fo yalls forgive but most importantly i hope yn’s presentation BLOWS all of your minds because the next chapter is piping hot and coming so fucking soon yall gon be confused if im still the same author you know.
-> prev. || next.
-> orphic; the masterlist.
The pen snapped in his hand.
Ink bled down Ilias’ fingers, pooling in the creases of his palm. He cursed under his breath and shoved the papers aside. The same half-written notes he’d told himself he’d revise instead of going. The livestream was still running in the background, muted now, a frozen frame of applause and flashing lights.
He didn’t need to watch it.
“Yeah, sure,” he muttered to no one. “Bet they’re all thrilled to see you there. Bet he’s thrilled.”
His jaw clenched. The bitterness didn’t quite fit right. Pride, maybe. The kind he’d never admit.
You’d made it. You actually made it.
Ilias sighed and grabbed his phone, thumb hovering over your name. He hesitated, then pressed call.
The line clicked.
“...Hello?”
He blinked, sat up straighter at the voice. “Kira?”
“Yeah?” Her tone was casual, amused. “Didn’t expect you to call me, Ilias. The world must be ending.”
He frowned slightly. “Kira… you picked up Y/N’s phone?”
A small pause — then a quiet huff of laughter. “No… this is my phone.”
He glanced down. Sure enough, wrong name. Great. Perfect. He could hang up now. He should hang up now.
Instead, he exhaled through his nose, leaned back, and said, “Well, if it was ending, you’d be the first person I’d call.”
There was a pause. The kind that made his mouth go dry before she laughed again, quieter this time. “I didn’t know you practiced your charm on wrong numbers.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to sound nonchalant. “Guess fate’s got better aim than I do.”
“Fate, was it?” she teased. “Not your butterfingers?”
“Whatever excuse makes me look less pathetic.”
Kira laughed, the sound curling through the receiver. “Are you calling because you miss me, or because you need someone to complain to because you have FOMO?”
He hesitated, caught between pride and honesty. “Little of both,” he admitted finally.
“Hmm. I’ll take that.”
Her tone softened just a touch, enough for him to notice. “Rough night?”
He stared at the paused stream, the frozen image of the symposium crowd. “Something like that. Everyone’s there. Thought I’d call a friend.”
“And ended up calling someone better?” she teased.
“Yeah,” he said, a half-smile ghosting over his lips. “Guess that’s one mistake I’ll take credit for.”
“So,” she added, playful again, “You planning to keep me on the line, or was this just an accident waiting to happen?”
He smiled, leaning further back into his chair. “If it’s an accident, it’s my favorite one tonight.”
“Flatterer.”
“Only when it works.”
“...You should come by tomorrow,” Kira said finally. “You sound like you need someone to roll their eyes at you in person.”
He chuckled, the tension easing from his shoulders. “Careful. I might just take you up on that.”
“Good,” she replied, and he could hear the smile in her voice.
Ilias spun slightly in his chair, eyes drifting back to the paused symposium stream glowing on his laptop.
He gestured vaguely at the screen even though she couldn’t see it. “Kira, I need to talk about it. That presentation! I mean — what was that?” He huffed. “I tuned in expecting academic jargon and polite clapping, and instead I feel like I need to rethink my life choices.”
A faint rustle sounded on her end.
Kira hummed. “It was definitely intense.”
“Intense?” he echoed. “Trust me, not a soul in that room was nodding along. The second he walked onstage the entire room just—” he snapped his fingers, searching for the right word. “—he set the room on fire.”
Kira let out a small hum.
Ilias kept going, words speeding up now that he’d started. “Kira, I forgot how to sit normally. I swear I stopped breathing. It wasn’t even anything he said yet, he just stood there and I felt like I witnessed a religious event.”
A faint laugh slipped from her end of the line.
“I’m serious,” he continued. “I tuned in late and thought my stream froze because nobody was moving. But no, it was just a thousand academics collectively having an existential crisis.”
He shook his head, smiling despite himself. “And then he starts talking and casually rearranges reality? No foreplay, no warning—rawdogged my fucking brains out until it turned to sludge and then walked right off.”
Another faint rustle came through the line. Fabric shifting. Someone moving nearby.
Kira hummed again. “Mm.”
Short. Neutral.
He blinked.
“…You didn’t hate it, did you?” he asked, half-teasing.
“No,” she said quickly. “Not at all.”
A beat.
“It was… a lot to take in.”
Careful wording. Measured.
Ilias’ gaze drifted away from the screen as realization slowly clicked into place. The softened tone. The clipped replies. The background movement she wasn’t acknowledging.
He rubbed the back of his neck, voice easing without making a show of it. “Yeah… fair. Probably not ideal bedtime conversation material.”
Kira let out a quiet breath — almost relief. “Probably not.”
He gave a small huff of laughter. “Imagine having to present after that. I’d fake my own disappearance.”
A sudden voice burst loudly through the receiver—
“YOU GUYS CAN TALK ABOUT IT YOU KNOW!”
Ilias jerked the phone slightly away from his ear. “…There it is.”
“I’m serious!” you insisted from somewhere nearby, voice confident in the way people sound when they absolutely are not fine. “I am completely capable of handling a normal academic discussion!”
A pause.
Then, muttered closer to the phone, “I’m not spiraling.”
Kira sighed softly. “You are literally pacing.”
“I am walking thoughtfully!”
He smiled, gentling his tone. “Alright, alright. Let’s save this conversation for another time.”
“So,” she said after a moment, her playful edge returning like she was deliberately steering them somewhere lighter, “tomorrow. You actually coming by, or was that just smooth recovery after dialing the wrong person?”
Ilias let out a quiet breath, staring at the ceiling.
He smiled faintly. “I think I’ll sit this one out.”
A small pause followed. “Symposium energy feels… intense enough from a distance,” he added lightly. “Besides, tomorrow’s kind of their battlefield. I’d just be extra background noise.”
“You? Background noise?” she teased gently.
“Self awareness. Tragic, I know. I’m showing remarkable personal growth.”
A soft laugh escaped her.
“I’ll send moral support remotely,” he continued. “And judgmental commentary afterward. That’s my specialty.”
“Cowardice.” she said, but there was warmth in it.
“Strategic retreat.” he corrected.
Another quiet settled between them, easier now.
“…Get some sleep, Ilias,” she said more softly. “You sound like you need it.”
“Only if you promise the same.”
A small beat passed.
“We’ll try,” she said.
He smiled faintly. “Alright. Good luck tomorrow.”
“…Thanks,” she replied, quieter than before.
Neither of them hung up.
Finally, he said, almost absently, “Hey, Kira?”
“Mm?”
“…Glad I called the wrong number.”
Her laugh came soft through the receiver. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m glad you called the wrong number too.”
The line clicked a moment later.
Kira lowered the phone slowly, the faint echo of his voice lingering a second longer than it should have. For a moment she just sat there on the edge of the bed, staring at the dark screen, the quiet settling back into the room like something returning to its rightful place.
Then—
Footsteps.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
She lifted her gaze.
You were pacing across the room for what had to be the hundredth time, laptop clutched in one hand, the other moving restlessly as if arguing with invisible critics. Slides reflected faintly across your face each time you turned toward the desk lamp — graphs, equations, highlighted phrases flashing and disappearing with every pass.
“…and if I restructure the third section, then the transition into the model works, but then the conclusion feels premature,” you muttered, barely breathing between thoughts. “Unless I move the comparative framework earlier, but then it sounds like I’m responding to him, which I’m not— I wasn’t— I mean, technically—”
You stopped abruptly, staring at the screen.
Every line looked like something waiting to be dismantled.
You stared at the slide longer than you meant to, the cursor blinking patiently beside the final equation. Yesterday the structure had felt inevitable. A chain of reasoning so tight you could walk from premise to conclusion without once doubting the ground beneath your feet.
Now it felt like scaffolding.
Your fingers hovered over the trackpad.
You didn’t change anything. Couldn’t, without scrapping the entire premise.
Behind you, the mattress creaked softly as Kira shifted, the quiet movement of someone who had been watching you pace long enough to recognize the pattern.
“…You know,” she said after a moment, voice mild, “most people who aren’t spiraling don’t pace holes into carpets.”
“I’m not pacing,” you replied automatically.
“You’ve done twelve laps.”
You huffed under your breath, the faintest hint of a smile tugging at the corner of your mouth before it faded again.
Your attention drifted back to the laptop screen.
The model stared back at you in clean diagrams and confident arrows, the same way it had the first time you’d built it — elegant, self-contained, persuasive in its simplicity.
Except now you knew where the fault line ran.
It was impossible to unsee.
Finally, you said, almost too quietly—
“…Did it sound stupid?”
Kira blinked.
“What?”
“The model.” Your voice stayed level, but something about the way you were staring at the screen gave the question weight. “Before yesterday. When you heard it the first time.”
She looked at you like the question itself offended her.
“No.”
You nodded once, though you hadn’t really expected any other answer.
“He dismantled half the premise in forty minutes,” you said.
The words came out flatter than you intended, drained of the disbelief that had followed you all evening.
“Half the room looked like someone pulled the floor out from under them.”
You could still see it clearly, the way the audience had gone still, the way people stopped shifting in their seats, stopped whispering, stopped pretending they already understood where the argument was going.
Kira studied you carefully.
“You mean he challenged it.”
A quiet laugh slipped out of you, sharp and brief.
“That’s a generous word.”
Your hand tightened slightly on the edge of the laptop.
“He walked in,” you continued, slower now, trying to articulate something that still felt half like a dream, “took the framework everyone’s been building toward for the last five years…”
You gestured vaguely toward the screen.
“…rotated it ninety degrees, and suddenly half the assumptions don’t hold anymore.”
The room felt smaller saying it out loud.
“And tomorrow,” you added, “I’m supposed to stand in front of the same people and explain a model built on those assumptions.”
Silence settled between you.
The desk lamp hummed faintly.
Kira tilted her head.
“…Is that what you’re actually upset about?”
You frowned.
“What?”
“The thesis.”
“Yes,” you said immediately.
But Kira didn’t respond.
She just waited.
And after a moment, the certainty in your voice faltered slightly under the weight of her gaze.
You looked away first.
“…He knew what he was doing,” you muttered.
Her eyebrows lifted.
“Oh?”
Your jaw tightened.
“He didn’t just challenge it,” you said. “He walked me straight toward the conclusion, waited until I followed the logic far enough, and then showed me the part that collapses.”
You closed the laptop with a soft, final click.
The sudden absence of light from the screen left the room feeling dimmer.
“So what was the point?” you said, frustration slipping through now. “Why even help me work through it if the end result was just proving the entire thing unstable?”
The words hung in the air.
Kira watched you carefully, her expression thoughtful rather than sympathetic.
“You think he did that on purpose?”
You let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh.
“What else would you call it?”
Your shoulders rose and fell once.
“For a few hours yesterday I thought I had something,” you admitted. “Something solid. Something that actually held together.”
Your gaze flicked briefly toward the dark laptop screen.
“And then he just…”
Your hand moved faintly, knocking over an invisible stack of cards.
“…pulled the rug out from underneath.”
The room fell quiet again.
Kira didn’t answer immediately.
When she did, her voice was softer.
“…You’re assuming he was trying to break it.”
You scoffed.
“He did break it.”
“That’s not what I said.”
You looked at her.
Kira rested her chin on her palm again, studying you with the calm patience of someone who had already decided you were being dramatic.
“You said he walked you through the logic first,” she pointed out.
You hesitated.
“…Yes.”
“And you followed it.”
Another pause.
“Yes.”
She shrugged slightly.
“Sounds less like sabotage and more like a conversation.”
You stared at her.
“A conversation that destroyed my thesis.”
“Or one that showed you where it wasn’t finished.”
You opened your mouth to argue.
Nothing came out.
Kira watched the realization move slowly across your face.
“You wrote that model months ago,” she continued gently. “Of course someone was eventually going to push on it.”
She gestured toward the laptop.
“The question isn’t whether he broke something.”
Her eyes met yours.
“It’s whether you’re brave enough to present it anyway.”
The room went very still after that.
You looked down at the closed laptop, fingers resting lightly on the lid as if it might still pulse with the ideas trapped inside it.
Tomorrow was going to arrive whether you were ready or not.
DAY – 2
The morning sessions begin on time.
That, more than anything else, sets the tone.
The symposium hall fills slowly with people arriving in measured waves, neither rushed nor idle, programs already folded, bags placed beneath chairs. There’s no uncertainty in their movements, no visible searching. Everyone seems to know where they belong, or at least how to look like they do.
You take a seat midway down the hall, far enough from the front to avoid attention, close enough that you won’t miss anything important. The chair is comfortable in the utilitarian way of institutional furniture, designed to be sat in for hours without complaint.
The first speaker is good. You recognize that almost at once. The slides are clear, the pacing deliberate. The argument unfolds in careful increments, each premise placed so gently it barely feels like a claim at all. There is nothing to trip over, nothing to resist. The language is familiar: robust framework, within existing constraints, as supported by prior literature. You’ve heard these phrases before, in papers and lectures and review panels. They slot neatly into place, doing their work without drawing attention to themselves.
You take notes anyway, even when you don’t need them. Your pen moves automatically, capturing turns of phrase, references you already know, transitions you could map blindfolded. It isn’t about learning. It’s about staying present.
Anaxagoras’ presentation rearranges itself behind your thoughts, and the line you were writing suddenly looks… wrong. Incorrect, and terribly insufficient.
Applause.
The second speaker builds directly on the first. Different data set, similar posture. There’s a nod toward novelty early on… a reframing, a minor, albeit illogical shift in emphasis, but it resolves quickly. You can feel the moment where the argument might have stretched further, and then doesn’t. The speaker chooses coherence instead.
Questions are invited. Hands go up in an orderly fashion. The questions themselves are precise, courteous, phrased almost as affirmations. One senior academic offers a “comment” that is longer than the question itself, gently redirecting the discussion toward familiar ground. The speaker accepts it gratefully.
Applause again.
Between sessions, people stand, turn, lean toward one another in clusters that form and dissolve without friction. You pass close enough to catch fragments: a conference three years ago, a revised chapter, a forthcoming volume everyone already seems to have read.
Senior scholars move through the space without effort. They don’t look for paths; paths open for them. Others adjust instinctively, stepping aside mid-sentence, angling bodies to make room. It makes you realise something. Authority here is not asserted here, it’s assumed.
You note it all with a detached attentiveness that surprises you.
The third talk begins before the energy has time to fully reset. This one is sharper, more ambitious in scope, and you feel the room lean in by a fraction. The speaker is careful, though. Claims are hedged just enough to remain defensible. Where the argument edges toward uncertainty, it’s quickly scaffolded with citations, softened with acknowledgments of limitation.
You jot down a sentence in the margin of your notes without quite meaning to.
Applause.
By now, the rhythm is unmistakable.
There is an internal grammar to the Grove, a way of speaking that signals belonging as clearly as any credential. Arguments are rewarded for clarity, for restraint, for aligning themselves with the structures already in place.
Yesterday, you believed you understood where your own work fit inside that grammar.
This morning you are no longer sure the sentence you planned to speak even parses.
By late morning, a panel session gathers three speakers with overlapping themes. Each is given the same amount of time, but not all are careful to respect it. Their disagreements are framed as refinements, extensions, friendly clarifications. No one undermines the foundation. When a younger scholar ventures—an implication that presses a little too hard, the response is kind, even encouraging, but it redirects gently, smoothing the edge until it fits.
The applause that follows is warmest when equilibrium is restored.
You lean back slightly in your chair, pen hovering over the page. You feel calm. Calm in the way that comes from knowing how to operate inside a system.
Competence, you think, is not the same as permission.
At some point, you stop writing altogether and simply watch. The way speakers stand behind the podium, hands resting at nearly identical heights. The way slides favor clean visuals over density. The way the audience hums softly with approval when a conclusion lands exactly where it should.
The Grove runs smoothly. Efficient. Self-sustaining.
You are small inside it, yes—but not lost. You can see the contours now. Where it opens. Where it closes. That awareness feels earned, and it brings with it an unexpected steadiness.
When the morning session finally adjourns for lunch, the room exhales as one. Conversations resume mid-thought, as though they’ve only been paused rather than interrupted. You gather your things without urgency, sliding your notebook into your bag, folding the program along its original crease.
As you stand, you glance once at your name printed there, later in the day, in the same font as everyone else’s. For now, you are an observer. A participant in waiting.
And as you follow the stream of scholars toward the exit, one thought surfaces, insistent:
This place rewards polish.
What it does with something unfinished remains to be seen.
By midday, the rhythm of the Grove had settled.
You move with the crowd toward the common hall, lanyard swinging lightly against your chest. The morning has done its work. Everyone knows where they stand, at least provisionally.
You realize, absently, that you haven’t seen him.
Not properly. Not the way you’d expect someone so central to be visible.
You hear his name, though. It surfaces in conversation with casual frequency, spoken without urgency. Someone mentions a comment he made during an earlier session, another references his position on a panel scheduled later in the week. A junior scholar repeats a phrase—as Anaxagoras has argued—with the reverence of citation rather than recollection.
He exists here as a point of reference.
You glance instinctively toward the front of the hall, the places where attention usually pools. There are senior academics clustered near the long tables, speaking in low voices, their body language relaxed in a way that suggests ownership rather than entitlement. When one of them laughs, the sound carries. Others angle toward it without thinking.
Anaxagoras is not among them.
Instead, people step aside when Hyacine passes, defer questions for later, mention that he’s “between meetings” or “caught up with the committee.” It’s said without frustration, without surprise. His absence feels… structured.
You register it the same way you register everything else today: as information.
The Grove accommodates this kind of distance easily. Power doesn’t need to be visible to be felt. It circulates through schedules and footnotes, through recommendations already given and expectations already set. You’ve watched it operate all morning after all.
Someone near you asks if you’re attending the afternoon session. You nod. They wish you luck, as if luck has ever been a part of the equation. Another voice chimes in—something about how selective the program was this year, how carefully curated. There’s admiration in it, but also reassurance. The system works. It always has.
You hear his name again, followed by an easy assurance: He’s aware of it. Of you, presumably. Of the work. It’s impossible to tell. The pronoun does all the work on its own.
No one looks at you when they say it.
There’s no edge to the realization, no flare of disappointment. Whatever this day is building toward, it feels larger than any single interaction. Larger than presence or absence. The Grove doesn’t revolve around individuals, no matter how influential they are. It absorbs them, integrates them, turns them into reference points.
As you rejoin the flow of bodies moving toward the cafeteria, it occurs to you, without drama, without bitterness, that being recommended doesn’t mean being accompanied.
The thought settles as you square your shoulders and keep walking, one name among many, carried forward by a system that ticks steadily on, blind to the hands that wound it.
For a few steps, nothing changes.
The corridor carries on around you, voices low and even, conversation slipping easily from one cluster to the next.
You keep pace with it, one step after another, the rhythm familiar now. Predictable in a way that feels almost deliberate.
The Grove does not resist. It receives, and in receiving, it arranges.
You think of the panel again. The way each argument bent, just slightly, at the edges. Not enough to lose its shape. Just enough to rest comfortably beside the others. Even disagreement was guided, softened, returned.
Nothing was allowed to remain unresolved.
Your hand shifts lightly against the strap of your bag.
Unfinished, you’d thought.
Ahead, the entrance to the common hall opens wider, the sound of cutlery and conversation spilling into the corridor. The crowd gathers there, slows, reforms without effort. You follow, then pause without quite meaning to, the motion breaking just enough for the space to move around you.
No one notices, but they don’t need to.
A system like this doesn’t require attention to continue functioning, it only requires coherence.
You glance, briefly, at the people nearest you. The way they speak. The ease with which they fold one another’s thoughts into their own, carrying them forward without disruption. Nothing is dropped. Nothing left hanging.
It should feel reassuring. Instead, something in you hesitates, faint but persistent, like a line drawn just slightly off where it should be. You don’t know when it started, only that it’s there now, threading quietly beneath everything else.
You think of your notes—the language you used, the way each point aligned cleanly with the next. It had felt right at the time. It still does. And yet…
You inhale, slow and measured.
If it could be arranged like that, if it could be placed, examined, adjusted without shifting beneath the process, then it would have settled by now. It would have held.
Your gaze lowers, unfocused. But every time you’ve tried to isolate it—a memory, a pattern, a decision—it hasn’t stayed still. Not in the way the rest of this does. Not in the way it’s expected to. It doesn’t return unchanged.
The thought arrives quietly at first, almost unobtrusive, and then all at once it isn’t, because nothing here accounts for that. Not the panels, not the questions, not the careful way everything is broken down and rebuilt without loss. That assumption sits beneath all of it—that what is taken apart can be put back together again, that understanding does not alter the thing being understood.
Your fingers tighten slightly.
But that isn’t what you’ve been seeing. Not even close.
You straighten, almost without noticing. It isn’t that your work resists completion. It’s that it doesn’t survive being handled that way at all.
The realization settles with a strange, steady clarity. You were trying to make it legible here, that’s all—trying to bring it into alignment with something that depends on stability, on separability, on the quiet assurance that whatever is examined will remain intact.
Your gaze lifts, briefly, to the room ahead—to the movement, the ease, the way everything continues. It works because it can, because nothing in it changes when it’s taken apart.
Yours does.
A small breath leaves you. You don’t move for a moment longer, then, without urgency, you step forward again, letting the crowd take you in.
Nothing outward has changed. Not the room, not the rhythm, not the system you’ve spent the morning learning to navigate.
But for the first time, the thought of standing up later does not feel like entering the Grove.
It feels like interrupting it.
The corridor opens into a quieter wing, the noise of the common hall fading behind you as the flow of people thins and redirects. Signs are placed at intervals along the walls—session titles, room numbers, arrows that guide without needing to be read twice. You follow them without hesitation, the path already half-mapped from the program folded in your bag.
The room is smaller than the main hall. Not intimate, exactly, but contained. Rows of chairs arranged in clean lines, a podium set just off-center, a projection screen already lowered. A technician stands near the console, speaking in low tones to one of the earlier presenters, adjusting something on the laptop with practiced efficiency.
You step inside, pausing only long enough to confirm the session number against the printed sheet posted by the door. Your name sits where you expect it to, unremarkable in its placement, identical in font and size to the others. No distinction. No emphasis.
It feels appropriate.
You take a seat near the side, not too far forward, placing your bag beneath the chair with a small, deliberate motion. Around you, people settle in with the same quiet assurance you’ve seen all morning—papers unfolded, devices opened, brief exchanges that taper off as the session prepares to begin.
At the front, the current speaker adjusts the microphone, tapping it once, lightly. The sound carries just enough to confirm it’s working. A slide flickers into place behind them—clean, minimal, already formatted to expectation.
You watch.
Not the content, not at first, but the structure of it. The way the speaker begins with a framing statement, broad enough to hold, narrow enough to guide. The way each point follows with measured clarity, each transition smoothing the edge of the last before moving forward. There’s a rhythm to it—predictable in its progression, reliable in its resolution.
When uncertainty appears, it doesn’t linger. It’s acknowledged, contained, redirected. A limitation noted, a boundary drawn, the argument closed neatly around it.
Questions, when they come, follow the same pattern. Precise, courteous, shaped to invite clarification rather than disruption. Even the challenges resolve quickly, guided back toward agreement with a kind of practiced ease.
You recognize it now without effort.
Not just structure.
Constraint.
The system doesn’t resist deviation. It absorbs it, adjusts it, returns it in a form that can be held without strain.
Another speaker takes the podium. Similar cadence. Different data, the same underlying movement. You don’t need to follow every detail to see where it will land.
It always lands.
Your hand rests lightly against the edge of your notebook, but you don’t open it. There’s nothing left to adjust there that belongs to this space.
Nothing in your posture changes. Your notes remain closed. Your expression, if anyone were looking, would offer nothing to read.
At the front, the current speaker concludes, the final slide summarizing their argument in clean, concise terms. The moderator thanks them, voice warm, measured, already moving the session forward.
The final speaker concludes without strain, their last point settling neatly into place. Applause follows; measured, consistent, already thinning at the edges as the session draws itself closed.
Then Cerces rises.
The shift is immediate, though nothing about it is abrupt. Attention gathers rather than turns, drawn toward her with the same inevitability that has governed the morning. She steps to the podium as though it has been waiting for her, the previous presence dissolving without resistance.
“Thank you,” she says, her voice clear, carrying without effort, each word placed with deliberate care. “We’ve spent the morning tracing the limits of what can be established, supported, and sustained within our current frameworks.”
She pauses.
Her gaze lowers briefly to the program in her hand, though it’s difficult to tell whether she’s reading or simply marking the transition.
“This afternoon, we extend that work. Not by reinforcing what has already proven stable,” she adds, “but by examining what has yet to resolve.”
The distinction lands without emphasis.
“Student presentations,” she says, and this time the phrase is precise, contained, placed carefully within the structure she’s just outlined.
Her eyes lift.
They move across the room once, measured, unhurried.
Until, briefly, they rest on you.
It isn’t recognition in any conventional sense. There is no warmth in it, no visible curiosity.
Only a kind of exacting attention. As though noting position. She looks back to the program.
You step off the aisle before the path can fully close around you, moving toward the narrow partition at the side of the stage. Up close, it’s less a barrier than a suggestion, just enough to separate what happens before from what is meant to be seen.
The technician is already there.
He glances up as you approach, recognition immediate, his hand moving toward the console without pause. Cables are arranged neatly across the table, the session laptop open, cursor blinking on a blank input screen.
“Slides?” he asks, already half-turned.
You shake your head once. “No slides.”
There’s a flicker of confusion—brief, almost imperceptible before he nods and adjusts something on the board.
“Alright. Mic, then.”
He steps closer, efficient, clipping the microphone just below your collar. The wire settles lightly against your skin, cool for a second before you stop noticing it. He leans back, listening through his headset, one hand raised slightly.
“Give me a word.”
You glance past him, through the narrow gap in the partition. The current speaker is finishing, voice even, contained, their final sentence already resolving itself into something that will hold.
You turn back.
“Good afternoon.”
Your voice carries cleanly. The technician watches the levels, makes a small adjustment, then nods once.
“You’re set.”
He moves away immediately, attention already elsewhere, the space returning to its quiet, functional stillness.
You remain where you are.
From here, the room is framed differently. The audience sits in alignment, their attention fixed forward, unaware of the small calibrations happening just out of view. The session continues without interruption, seamless, self-sustaining.
A step behind you shifts the air, light, unguarded.
“You don’t look nervous.”
The voice carries a hint of brightness, almost conversational, as though the observation has just occurred to her and she’s decided to say it out loud.
You turn.
Hyacine stands just at the edge of the partition, hands loosely clasped behind her back, leaning forward a fraction as if she’s stepped in mid-thought rather than with any particular intention. There’s an easy energy to her, something uncontained in the way she holds herself, her smile quick to appear and quicker still to soften.
“I mean that as a compliment,” she adds, the smile widening briefly. “Most people do. At this point, I mean.”
You hold her gaze for a moment.
There’s nothing complicated in it. No weight. Just a kind of open curiosity, the sort that doesn’t expect anything in return.
“I’m not,” you say.
The answer comes simply.
“Oh,” she says, eyebrows lifting just slightly, like that wasn’t quite the response she’d anticipated. “Well—that’s good. That’s very good.”
She nods once, as if confirming it for herself.
“Still,” she continues after a beat, tilting her head a little, “if you are, later, or suddenly, or halfway through—” she gestures vaguely, as though the specifics don’t matter “—it’s normal. Everyone does something strange at least once. They recover.”
There’s a small, almost apologetic laugh in it, like she’s aware that isn’t the most reassuring phrasing, but offering it anyway.
You feel your expression soften, just slightly.
“Thank you,” you say, and you mean it.
She brightens at that, the response landing more easily than whatever she’d been preparing to say next.
Her gaze drifts past you then, not with intent, just following movement on the stage as the current speaker begins to wrap up. Applause flickers faintly at the edges, not yet fully formed.
“Oh,” she adds, almost as an afterthought, turning back, “and—don’t worry about matching them exactly.” She gestures lightly toward the room. “They’ll follow. Or they won’t. Either way, it’s not—” she pauses, searching briefly for the right word, then settles on something simpler “—it’s not as rigid as it looks.”
The statement is offered with an easy confidence, unburdened by the need to prove it.
You nod once.
“I know.”
There’s no edge to it. No correction. Just agreement.
She studies you for half a second—not deeply, not analytically, just long enough to register that you mean it—and then smiles again, softer this time.
“Good,” she says.
On the other side of the partition, the speaker finishes. Applause rises—measured, already settling as the moderator steps forward again.
Hyacine straightens, the shift in the room pulling her attention back with it.
“Well,” she says, stepping aside with a small, almost exaggerated gesture to clear your path, “that’s your cue, then.”
There’s something lightly encouraging in it, uncomplicated.
You incline your head.
“Thank you.”
“Anytime,” she replies, already half-turned away, as though the interaction has fulfilled its purpose the moment it’s been offered.
She slips back into the room without ceremony, her presence dissolving into the broader movement of the space as easily as it appeared.
By the time Hyacine disappeared through the curtains and the murmur of the symposium swallowed the sound of her footsteps, you had almost succeeded in convincing yourself that the conversation no longer mattered.
Almost.
The trouble with humiliation, you discovered, was that it rarely survived scrutiny and yet remained stubbornly present regardless. Every objection you raised against your own reaction was entirely reasonable. Professor Anaxagoras was occupied. The symposium schedule had been relentless from the moment the keynote concluded. Delegating a message to an assistant was neither unusual nor discourteous. There existed a dozen perfectly rational explanations for his absence, and you had spent the better part of an hour constructing every one of them with the same careful precision you ordinarily reserved for proofs.
Unfortunately, reason possessed remarkably little authority over disappointment.
The realization irritated you far more than the disappointment itself.
By any sensible standard, nothing had happened. An assistant had offered encouragement before a presentation. That was all. To interpret the exchange as rejection required a degree of self-importance you found faintly embarrassing. You knew that. You knew it with the same certainty you knew the mathematics folded neatly inside the folder beneath your arm. Yet every attempt to dismiss the feeling seemed only to sharpen it into something quieter and more persistent.
He couldn't even come himself.
The thought surfaced again, unwelcome in its familiarity.
Petty.
Unfair.
Persistent.
You closed your eyes for the briefest moment, exhaling slowly through your nose until the tightness behind your ribs loosened by a fraction. This was absurd. Whatever existed between you and Professor Anaxagoras — intellectual rivalry, reluctant mentorship, mutual curiosity, or merely an unfortunate habit of unsettling one another had no bearing whatsoever on the paper you were about to present. The work had existed before yesterday's lecture. Before this symposium.
It deserved better than to become collateral in an argument that neither of you had been willing to finish.
Beyond the curtain came the muffled cadence of Cerces' voice, warm and measured even through layers of heavy fabric. Another presentation was drawing to its conclusion. Polite applause followed, swelling briefly before dissolving into the familiar murmur of shifting chairs and quiet conversation. Someone crossed the stage on the opposite side of the partition, their footsteps fading into the wings before a stagehand offered a whispered instruction that you couldn't quite make out.
You adjusted the folder beneath your arm more out of habit than necessity. The pages inside were immaculate, every equation where it belonged, every transition rehearsed until it no longer required conscious thought. You had rewritten portions of the introduction well past midnight, not because the theory itself had changed but because the language had. Sometime between leaving yesterday's lecture and arriving this morning, your need to answer Anaxagoras had quietly dissolved. In its place remained something colder.
You no longer wished to refute his conclusion.
You wished to ask a different question.
A stagehand caught your eye from the edge of the curtain and gave a small nod.
Two minutes.
You returned it automatically.
The applause beyond the curtain rose once more before gradually settling into silence. Cerces began speaking again, her voice clearer now that the hall itself had grown still.
"...our final presentation before the afternoon recess."
Your pulse quickened—not dramatically, but with the steady insistence of a body recognizing the threshold before the mind chose to acknowledge it.
You rolled your shoulders once, smoothing an invisible crease from the sleeve of your jacket. The movement felt oddly grounding, something ordinary amidst the relentless abstraction of the past twenty-four hours.
Whatever happened after you stepped onto that stage would belong to the symposium.
Everything before it belonged only to you.
Cerces spoke your name.
You drew a single measured breath, then stepped through the curtain.
The applause met you as you stepped into the light, polite in the way symposium applause always was—measured, restrained, already fading before you reached the lectern. You scarcely heard it. The hall seemed larger from the stage than it ever had from the audience, the rows of seats rising in neat semicircles until they disappeared beneath the gallery, each occupied by scholars whose names had appeared in journals you had cited long before imagining you might someday present before them.
You placed your folder upon the lectern with deliberate care. The leather was cool beneath your fingertips. Beside it sat a glass of water someone had thoughtfully prepared between presentations, untouched except for the condensation gathering around its base. You resisted the impulse to reach for it. Your hands had nowhere useful to be except where they already rested.
The applause dissolved.
Silence followed.
The kind cultivated over decades within lecture halls and conference rooms, where every person present understood that the first sentence often determined whether the next forty minutes would be endured politely or remembered long afterwards.
You looked up.
It was impossible to distinguish individual faces beyond the first few rows. The auditorium lights obscured them just enough that the audience became less a collection of people than a single attentive presence. Here and there, a notebook opened. Someone adjusted a pair of glasses. A laptop screen dimmed before disappearing altogether.
Hyacine sat where she always seemed to, somewhere close enough to offer reassurance without drawing attention to herself. When your eyes passed briefly over her, she smiled—not brightly, not encouragingly, but with the quiet confidence of someone who had already decided you belonged here.
Beyond her—
No.
You stopped yourself before your gaze could travel any farther.
It didn't matter where he was standing, nor did it matter whether he was watching.
It didn't matter whether he'd chosen, once again, to remain nothing more than a distant silhouette at the edge of your vision.
The paper existed independently of him.
It always had.
You had simply forgotten.
Kira had claimed a seat in the very first row long before the hall had begun to fill, positioned directly in your line of sight as though daring the universe to make her miss a single second of this moment. She sat perched on the edge of her chair, hands clasped together beneath her chin, practically vibrating with excitement.
The instant your gaze swept across the audience and found her, her face lit up. She offered an enthusiastic wave before catching herself, lowering her hand only slightly as if remembering this was a formal symposium and not a celebration she had personally organized. The effort lasted all of three seconds. Her smile remained impossibly wide, pride shining openly in her eyes.
Among the gathered academics, researchers, and guests, Kira looked entirely unconcerned with maintaining a scholarly image. To her, the most important person in the room was already standing on the stage.
When the nervousness threatened to creep in, it was difficult not to notice the way she nodded at you from her seat, a silent You've got this!
That was all you needed.
You reached for the first page of your notes, then paused.
No.
Closing the folder again, you left it where it was.
The introduction had long since ceased to require paper.
You already knew the first sentence.
More importantly, you knew why it had to be the first sentence.
Taking a slow breath, you let your gaze settle—not on any individual, but somewhere above the audience, where every listener might imagine themselves being addressed.
"When we ask what it means to remain the same person over time," you began, your voice carrying evenly through the hall, "we rarely notice that the question has already chosen its answer."
A few heads lifted.
Good.
"The history of identity has been written largely as a history of persistence. We ask what survives change, what remains untouched by experience, what property endures while every observable characteristic gradually transforms around it. Whether that enduring property is called a soul, a pattern, or an informational state matters surprisingly little."
You turned, picking up a piece of chalk.
"In every case..."
The first word appeared upon the board in crisp white letters.
IDENTITY
"...identity is treated as something that exists before the question is asked."
You set the chalk down.
"I should like to suggest another possibility."
The hall became so quiet that the faint scrape of your sleeve against the lectern seemed momentarily audible.
"Perhaps the difficulty does not lie in our answers."
A measured pause.
"Perhaps..."
Your eyes drifted, almost absentmindedly, toward the single word behind you.
"...it lies in the question itself."
"For the better part of two millennia," you said, "our discussions of identity have begun from a remarkably consistent premise. Change is regarded as the phenomenon requiring explanation; identity is treated as the constant against which that change is measured. Whether one attributes that constancy to an immortal soul, to continuity of consciousness, or more recently to the persistence of informational structure, the underlying architecture of the problem has remained largely unchanged."
As you spoke, you moved away from the lectern, not with the restless pacing of someone attempting to command attention, but with the measured confidence of someone tracing the outline of an idea already complete in their own mind. The stage offered more space than you needed. You occupied only a small corner of it.
"In each case," you continued, "identity is understood as something that exists independently of transformation. Transformation may obscure it, enrich it, even threaten it—but identity itself remains the object whose persistence we seek to explain."
You turned, taking up a piece of chalk once more.
Beneath IDENTITY, you drew a horizontal line.
Below it, carefully, you wrote:
Persistence through change
The chalk clicked softly against the tray as you set it aside.
"This formulation has proved extraordinarily productive," you admitted. "It has given us theological models, legal models, psychological models, and increasingly sophisticated computational models. I do not intend to dismiss any of them. Each succeeds in describing an important aspect of human continuity."
Several members of the audience nodded almost unconsciously. A philosopher in the second row uncapped his pen. Somewhere farther back, the faint tapping of keys resumed before stopping just as abruptly.
You noticed these things only in passing. Years spent in lecture halls had taught you that attention possessed a rhythm of its own. It shifted almost imperceptibly through a room, gathering around an argument when it sensed that argument was going somewhere unexpected.
"The difficulty," you said, "is not that these models are incorrect."
You paused.
"It is that they all begin from the same ontological commitment."
There it was.
A handful of brows furrowed.
Good.
"The assumption is rarely stated explicitly, perhaps because it appears so self-evident that stating it feels unnecessary."
You looked toward the board.
"It is simply this."
Picking up the chalk again, you wrote another phrase beneath the first.
Identity is a state.
You stepped back.
"If identity is a state, then every meaningful question follows naturally. Which state? How is it preserved? Can it be copied? Can it be damaged? Can it be restored? Entire research programmes have emerged from those questions, and with good reason."
The room remained still.
"No one asks whether the premise itself is true."
You let the silence answer for you.
"Suppose, for a moment, that it is not."
The sentence was delivered without emphasis. You might have been suggesting an alternative proof to a familiar theorem.
"Suppose identity is not something that exists at a particular instant."
You folded your hands loosely before you.
"Suppose it is not a substance."
Another beat.
"Nor a configuration."
You looked across the audience, allowing your gaze to settle nowhere in particular.
"Suppose identity is not something that is..."
"...but something that occurs."
You saw it first in the front rows. Pens that had been moving continuously slowed. One attendee leaned back instead of forward, as though creating enough distance to see the argument in its entirety. Cerces, seated at the centre of the panel, had ceased annotating the programme some moments ago. Her attention rested fully upon you now, her expression unreadable save for the slight narrowing of her eyes that always accompanied genuine curiosity. You continued before anyone had time to settle on an objection.
"The distinction appears semantic."
A faint smile.
"It is not."
"If identity is a state, then it may reasonably be described by examining the present."
You lifted one hand, sketching the thought in the air as though arranging invisible pieces.
"A sufficiently complete description of the current system ought, at least in principle, to tell us everything there is to know about the identity of that system."
You let that remain.
No one objected.
"Conversely..."
You allowed the word to hang for the briefest moment.
"If identity is an occurrence..."
"...then no description of the present, however complete, can ever be sufficient."
A murmur, barely audible, rippled through the middle rows.
"Because occurrences are not defined by where they are observed."
Your gaze drifted to the single word on the board.
"They are defined by how they come to be."
The words settled over the auditorium with a stillness that was neither agreement nor dissent. It was the peculiar silence reserved for lecture halls, where conclusions were rarely accepted as they were spoken, but carried forward, examined from unexpected angles, and quietly measured against years of accumulated certainty. Here and there, pens resumed their movement across paper with renewed purpose. Elsewhere they remained suspended above untouched notebooks, their owners apparently content to postpone recording the argument until they understood the shape it intended to take.
There was little value in advancing before the previous thought had been given room to settle.
Returning to the lectern, you reached almost absently for the glass of water that had remained untouched since the beginning of the lecture. The condensation had gathered into a pale ring upon the polished wood, cool against your fingertips as you lifted it. You drank only enough to ease the dryness in your throat before setting it down with the same quiet precision.
Cerces remained motionless, her itinerary abandoned entirely now. One hand rested lightly against her chin, her expression composed save for the slight narrowing of her eyes that invariably accompanied genuine intellectual curiosity. Aglaea sat with the same immaculate posture she had maintained throughout the morning, revealing nothing of her thoughts beyond the unwavering steadiness of her attention.
Your gaze continued almost without intention.
Near the back of the auditorium, where the final row dissolved into the stone colonnade, Professor Anaxagoras stood with one shoulder resting lightly against the pillar behind him. He had not taken a seat. His expression, as always, yielded almost nothing.
You looked away before your thoughts could.
The chalk felt reassuringly familiar between your fingers as you turned back towards the board. There was a certain comfort in ideas. They possessed the decency to proceed from their assumptions without concealment.
"If the present is insufficient," you said, drawing a single line beneath the last sentence already written upon the slate, "then the difficulty lies not with observation, but with the object we have chosen to observe."
You wrote only one symbol.
H
Nothing more.
Unlike the notation that had preceded it, this one seemed almost conspicuously incomplete. A few members of the audience frowned, perhaps expecting an equation to follow. None appeared.
"I shall call this history."
You stepped away from the board before anyone had time to mistake the symbol for something more technical than you intended.
"I do not use the word in its ordinary sense. I do not mean biography, chronology, or memory. Those are all attempts to preserve the past. They tell us what happened."
Your gaze moved slowly across the room.
"I am interested in something rather different."
The chalk rested loosely between your fingers.
"I am interested in what each event leaves behind."
The distinction was subtle enough that several listeners hesitated before writing it down.
"When we speak of experience, we often imagine that it accumulates. One event follows another until, after enough years have passed, we possess what we call a life. It is an appealing image because it treats experience as though it were something that could simply be added together."
You shook your head almost imperceptibly.
"I do not believe experience accumulates."
The sentence arrived without emphasis.
"I believe it transforms."
No one interrupted.
"The difference matters."
You took a slow step away from the board, your voice remaining measured, almost conversational.
"A joyful childhood and a difficult childhood are not simply two different collections of memories. They produce two different ways of encountering the same world. The event itself eventually belongs to the past. The person to whom the next event occurs does not."
"In other words, experience does not merely enlarge the self."
Your hand rose briefly, not to illustrate, but almost to weigh the words as they were spoken.
"It changes the conditions under which every future experience will be understood."
It was no longer the silence of listeners waiting politely for a conclusion. It possessed the slower quality of collective thought, as though the room itself had begun turning the idea over before deciding whether to accept it.
You could see it happening in small, almost involuntary gestures. A philosopher in the second row lowered his pen without seeming to notice. Someone farther back, who had typed steadily since the lecture began, closed the lid of his laptop altogether. Cerces had not moved, though the thoughtful crease between her brows had deepened almost imperceptibly.
You continued before anyone could mistake reflection for agreement.
"If that is true, then identity cannot be something that merely survives transformation."
Your eyes returned briefly to the word written alone at the top of the board.
"It must also be something that is continually produced by it."
For the first time since beginning the lecture, you allowed the possibility to stand on its own, resisting the temptation to defend it immediately. A proposition offered too quickly with its proof often sounded like advocacy. Left alone for a moment, it acquired the far quieter authority of a question whose answer had not yet been decided.
The proposition remained suspended between you and the audience for several moments, not because it demanded theatrical effect, but because there was no advantage in supplying the conclusion before the premise had been allowed to establish itself. Years spent moving through lecture halls had taught you that understanding possessed its own pace. An argument advanced too quickly ceased to persuade, not because it lacked coherence, but because it denied its listeners the opportunity to arrive alongside it.
"The distinction," you continued at last, "may appear slight."
Your fingers turned the piece of chalk almost absently before setting it back upon the tray.
"I do not believe it is."
"If history merely explained how a present state had come into existence, we would have gained very little. We would possess a more satisfying narrative, certainly, but identity itself would remain exactly where we first assumed it to be—in the present, waiting to be described."
You paused only long enough to let the implication emerge.
"I am suggesting something stronger."
There was no movement across the auditorium beyond the occasional quiet scratch of a pen.
"— Because history does not simply lead to identity."
You looked once more towards the audience.
"It constitutes it."
The sentence settled into the room without resistance. It was not yet controversial. It was still close enough to familiar ways of thinking that most listeners could accommodate it without disturbing their existing assumptions.
You suspected that would not remain true for very long.
"When we speak of transformation," you continued, "we often imagine a subject upon which transformation acts. There is a person; something happens to that person; afterwards, the person possesses one additional experience."
The rhythm of your speech remained measured, almost conversational.
"It is an intuitively appealing picture."
Your gaze drifted briefly towards the board before returning again.
"It is also a remarkably static one."
The chalk traced a slow line beneath the notation already written there.
"It assumes that transformation is external to identity. That experiences accumulate around a self whose continuity has, in some sense, already been secured."
You shook your head almost imperceptibly.
"I believe the relationship is the reverse."
Silence returned—not uncertain this time, but attentive.
"The significance of an experience does not lie solely in the fact that it occurred."
Your hand came to rest lightly against the edge of the lectern.
"It lies in the fact that, having occurred, every subsequent experience is encountered by someone who has already been altered by it."
The observation was almost painfully ordinary.
Perhaps that was why it carried so much force.
"It follows that no experience remains isolated."
You allowed your eyes to move slowly across the hall.
"Each transformation quietly alters the conditions under which the next transformation will be understood. What follows is therefore never experienced by the same person who would have encountered it before."
Only now did you turn once more towards the board.
"The history of a person is not a sequence of events attached to an otherwise complete identity."
The chalk rested once again between your fingers.
"It is the continuous alteration of the very perspective through which every subsequent event acquires its meaning."
You allowed the silence to settle before turning once more towards the board. Until now, the symbols you had written had served only as placeholders, reminders that the language of philosophy would eventually have to submit itself to the discipline of formal description. There was little value in introducing mathematics before the idea it represented had become intelligible.
The chalk rested lightly between your fingers.
"If we wished to express this formally," you said, "we might begin with the simplest possible description."
Beneath the existing notation, you wrote,
Sₜ
"A state."
You did not elaborate immediately.
"A description of a system at a particular moment. Nothing more, and nothing less."
A second symbol appeared beside it.
Hₜ
"And what I have called its history."
You stepped back, allowing both symbols to remain visible.
"If identity were adequately described by the present, then we should expect it to depend only upon the current state."
With a few deliberate strokes, you completed the expression.
Identity = F(Sₜ)
"There would be nothing particularly controversial about such a model. Whatever a person is, we would expect to find it here."
The chalk tapped lightly against Sₜ.
"If our description became sufficiently complete, then identity itself ought eventually to reveal itself as one more property of the present."
You allowed the proposition to stand exactly as those in the audience would already have recognised it.
"I do not believe that is what we observe."
Returning to the board, you drew a single line through the expression—not dramatically, merely enough to indicate that it had become insufficient.
"Because the present never arrives alone."
The sentence was almost conversational.
"It arrives having been shaped by every transformation that preceded it."
You rewrote the expression beneath the first.
Identity = F(Hₜ)
The equations remained upon the board.
You regarded them for a moment before setting the chalk lightly against the tray.
"A theory," you said, "earns its place not because it introduces unfamiliar language, but because it explains something that older language cannot. If this revision is meaningful, then it should change more than our vocabulary. It should change the conclusions we are prepared to draw."
Taking up the chalk once more, you cleared a space beneath the existing notation.
"There is a familiar thought experiment that has appeared in one form or another throughout philosophy of mind. Imagine two systems whose present states are perfectly identical."
You wrote,
Sa = Sb
"They possess the same memories, the same dispositions, the same measurable characteristics. However carefully we examine them, every observation yields the same result. By every criterion available to the present, they are indistinguishable."
The chalk moved again.
Ia = Ib
"If identity depends entirely upon the present state, this conclusion follows without difficulty. There is no property by which the two systems may be distinguished, and so there is no reason to regard them as different individuals. The model is internally consistent."
You stepped back, allowing the equations to remain visible.
"It is also incomplete."
Returning to the board, you added a third expression beneath the first.
Ha ≠ Hb
"The two systems may occupy the same state while possessing fundamentally different histories. One arrives there through a continuous sequence of lived transformations. The other arrives there through replication. Their present condition may be identical, but the processes that produced that condition are not."
You let your gaze travel slowly across the auditorium before writing the final line.
Ia ≠ Ib
"The conclusion changes immediately. Not because we have discovered a new property hidden somewhere within the present, but because we are no longer asking the present to answer a question it cannot answer."
The room remained remarkably still. Several audience members had stopped taking notes altogether, their attention fixed instead upon the progression of equations accumulating across the board.
"The distinction is not between two observable states," you continued. "It is between two histories. The present tells us what a system is. History tells us how that system became capable of being what it is. If identity is constituted by that history, then identical outcomes need not imply identical identities."
You rested the chalk against the tray once more.
"This is precisely where the state-based model reaches its limit. It can establish that two systems are indistinguishable in the present, but it possesses no language for distinguishing between identical outcomes produced by different transformations. Once identity is understood as history-dependent, that distinction is no longer invisible. It becomes the very thing the theory is intended to describe."
"Put more simply," you said, "none of us would mistake our present selves for the people we were ten years ago. We think differently, value different things, and understand the world in different ways. Yet we do not conclude that we have become someone else. We recognise a continuity, not because some unchanging state has survived untouched, but because every version of ourselves arose from the one before it."
You let the equations remain on the board a while longer before turning back to the audience.
"The distinction has another consequence."
Your voice remained measured.
"We often speak of memory as though it were the foundation of identity. It is not difficult to understand why. Our memories provide the most immediate evidence that our past belongs to us."
You folded your hands loosely before you.
"But memory is not history."
A few pens resumed their movement.
"It is a record of transformation, and like every record, it is incomplete. It fades. It distorts. It reconstructs itself each time it is recalled."
You glanced briefly towards the equations.
"Consider a patient who has lost years of autobiographical memory. We do not conclude that a new person has appeared simply because recollection has been interrupted. The individual continues to reason, to respond, and to encounter the world as someone whose past has already shaped them, even if they can no longer describe that past."
You paused just long enough for the implication to settle.
"The transformation remains, even when the memory does not."
The room had grown noticeably quieter.
"This is because history does not reside in recollection. It resides in the system that recollection has already changed."
You began walking slowly across the stage.
"The same principle governs experiences far more ordinary than neurological injury."
Your gaze drifted over the audience.
"Consider the person you were ten years ago."
No one moved.
"The disappointments that seemed insurmountable then, the friendships you believed permanent, the ambitions you carried without question—many of them have changed. Some have disappeared entirely."
Your expression remained thoughtful rather than nostalgic.
"You do not merely possess memories of those experiences. You have been altered by them. The person who encounters the world today does so through dispositions, expectations, and habits that those experiences helped produce."
You rested one hand lightly against the lectern.
"This is why experience cannot be understood as something that accumulates beside identity, like pages added to a completed manuscript."
A faint smile touched your expression.
"It rewrites the manuscript as it is being written."
Several members of the audience looked up from their notebooks.
"A first failure does not simply become another memory. It changes how later risks are judged. Grief alters the meaning of future attachments. Love changes the standards by which affection is recognised. Every significant transformation quietly reshapes the perspective through which subsequent experiences will be interpreted."
You allowed your gaze to settle briefly on the word IDENTITY still written across the top of the board.
"The event itself passes."
Your voice remained calm.
"The transformation it leaves behind does not."
"The difficulty, of course," you said, taking up the chalk once more, "is that intuition alone is an unsatisfactory foundation for a theory. If history truly constitutes identity, then we must be able to describe what we mean by history with greater precision."
Beneath the existing equations, you wrote,
Hₜ = {T₁, T₂, ..., Tₙ}
The notation occupied only a small corner of the slate, though several members of the audience immediately began copying it into their notebooks.
"I do not use history to mean a chronology of events," you said. "Chronology merely tells us what happened. Two people may witness the same event, at the same time, and emerge from it fundamentally differently."
You drew a line through the word events in your notes at the edge of the board before writing another beside it.
Transformations
"History, in the sense I intend, is a sequence of transformations. Each T represents not an occurrence in the world, but the change that occurrence produces within the system itself."
You stepped back from the board.
"This distinction is essential. Events belong to the world. Transformations belong to the individual."
A thoughtful murmur passed through the auditorium.
"The same bereavement may leave one person withdrawn and another resolute. The same success may foster confidence in one individual and complacency in another. If we define history only by external events, those lives become indistinguishable. Plainly, they are not."
The chalk moved again.
Sₜ₊₁ = T(Sₜ)
"A present state does not simply succeed the one before it," you continued. "It is produced from it. Every transformation acts upon an already transformed individual. There is no neutral observer waiting beneath experience. Each new state inherits every alteration that preceded it."
Without hurrying, you added a second expression.
Hₜ₊₁ = Hₜ ∪ {Tₜ₊₁}
"This follows naturally."
You rested the chalk lightly against the board.
"History is not replaced from one moment to the next. It grows—not by accumulating events, but by accumulating transformations. Each new transformation becomes part of the process from which every future state will emerge."
You looked once more across the hall.
"Notice what has disappeared from the model."
Your hand gestured briefly towards the equations.
"There is no privileged moment at which identity resides."
The room remained silent.
"It is distributed across the entire history of transformation."
You allowed the implication to linger.
"To ask where identity is located is therefore to ask the wrong question."
Your gaze settled once more on the notation covering the board.
"The better question is this."
"How did this system become capable of being what it is?"
No one wrote immediately.
For the first time since the lecture had begun, the equations no longer resembled abstract notation. They had become a language for describing something every person in the room had experienced, yet few had ever attempted to formalise.
You remained beside the board, allowing the notation to occupy the audience's attention a little longer.
"Any model," you said at last, "must ultimately be judged by what it allows us to explain. A change in notation, however elegant, is of little consequence unless it reveals distinctions that were previously invisible."
Your hand rested lightly against the edge of the lectern.
"If identity is constituted by history rather than state, then there are phenomena that should cease to appear paradoxical."
You looked briefly towards the equations before continuing.
"Consider, for example, why two people may respond so differently to the same experience."
The question was simple enough that several listeners looked up almost immediately.
"We often attribute such differences to personality, as though personality itself required no explanation. But personality is not an independent variable. It is already the consequence of prior transformations."
You moved slowly across the stage.
"The same criticism may leave one individual discouraged and another determined. The same success may inspire confidence in one person and complacency in another. The event itself is identical. What differs is the history through which that event is interpreted."
A philosopher in the second row nodded almost absently, his pen moving again across the margin of an already crowded page.
"The implication extends well beyond psychology."
You turned back towards the board.
"If two systems occupy the same present state, we are often tempted to conclude that they possess the same identity. That conclusion follows naturally from a state-based model."
Your fingers closed once more around the chalk, though you did not yet write.
"My claim is that such a conclusion is unwarranted."
You allowed the sentence to stand without immediate defence.
"Because identity is not determined by where a system happens to be."
Your gaze moved across the audience.
"It is determined by the transformations that made that state possible."
You turned back towards the board.
"Every theory," you said, "inherits not only its strengths, but also the limitations of the assumptions from which it begins."
The chalk traced a single line beneath the equations before coming to rest.
"If identity is treated as a property of the present, then the present must bear the entire burden of explanation."
You paused only long enough to ensure the implication had settled.
"Everything that makes a person who they are must be recoverable from a sufficiently complete description of the system as it exists now."
No one interrupted.
"It is an attractive proposition."
You glanced briefly towards the notation already covering the board.
"It is also an extraordinarily demanding one."
A faint murmur passed through the middle rows.
"To sustain it, one must believe that history leaves no residue beyond the present state. That every transformation can be understood entirely through its outcome."
You shook your head almost imperceptibly.
"I do not believe this is what we observe."
Moving back to the board, you wrote only two expressions.
S₀ → S₁
Beneath it,
S₀′ → S₁
The arrows stood parallel, converging upon the same destination.
"You need not concern yourselves with the notation," you said. "It expresses only a simple possibility."
The chalk rested beneath the second line.
"Two different beginnings."
You traced the arrows lightly.
"One identical present."
Your gaze lifted from the board.
"If the present alone determines identity, then these histories become indistinguishable the moment they converge."
The room remained silent.
"My claim is that they do not."
You stepped back.
"The transformations that produced the present are not erased simply because they arrive at the same destination. They continue to constrain every transformation that follows."
A philosopher in the front rows frowned thoughtfully, his eyes moving repeatedly between the two lines on the board.
"The consequence is subtle."
You folded your hands loosely before you.
"It means that convergence of state is not convergence of identity."
For the first time since introducing the equations, you allowed yourself a faint smile.
"And it is precisely here that the prevailing models begin to struggle."
"There is, of course, an immediate objection."
The remark drew several heads up from their notebooks.
"It would be unfair to suggest that contemporary theories of identity have ignored history altogether. Quite the contrary. Some of the most sophisticated models developed over the past decade have attempted to incorporate it."
You turned back towards the board.
"Perhaps the most ambitious among them is Professor Anaxagoras's formulation of soul-state continuity."
There was no discernible change in your tone.
It was simply the next idea in the sequence.
A few members of the audience glanced instinctively towards the back of the auditorium.
You did not.
"His work represents a considerable advance over earlier theories by recognising that identity cannot be reduced to static physical structure alone. Instead, it seeks to describe the evolution of the soul as a continuous informational process."
The chalk rested between your fingers.
"It is an elegant model."
You wrote a single expression beneath your own.
I = G(Sₜ, Ψₜ)
"Here, identity is determined not only by the observable state of the system, but by the evolving state of what Professor Anaxagoras terms the soul."
You stepped back.
"The addition is significant."
There was no trace of irony in your voice.
"It resolves difficulties that earlier state-based models could not."
Several members of the audience nodded. Cerces' attention remained fixed upon the board.
"The question before us, however, is not whether the model is internally consistent."
You looked slowly across the room.
"It is."
Your gaze settled briefly upon the equation.
"The question is whether it has abandoned the original assumption..."
The chalk lifted once more.
"...or merely concealed it."
Silence settled across the auditorium.
You drew a single line beneath Anaxagoras's expression.
"Notice what still determines identity."
The tip of the chalk came to rest beneath the symbols.
"A present condition."
You moved it first beneath Sₜ
"Whether that condition is physical..."
Then beneath Ψₜ.
"...or spiritual..."
Finally you underlined the entire right-hand side.
"...it remains a description of the system as it exists now."
You set the chalk down.
"The mathematics has grown more sophisticated."
Your voice remained calm.
"The ontology has not."
No one wrote.
"It still asks the present to account for itself."
You turned back towards your own formulation, still written above.
I = F(Hₜ)
"My disagreement, therefore, is not with Professor Anaxagoras's mathematics."
A brief pause.
"It is with the question his mathematics has been asked to answer."
The words hung in the hall with a stillness that felt qualitatively different from the silences that had preceded them.
Somewhere near the front, a pen stopped moving.
Cerces no longer looked at the board.
She was looking towards the back of the auditorium.
You did not follow her gaze.
At length, you set the chalk down.
"I have not attempted to prove that identity is history."
A few heads lifted.
"I have argued something more modest."
You rested your hands lightly against the lectern.
"That if identity is treated exclusively as a present state, there are distinctions we are unable to explain. We mistake identical outcomes for identical individuals. We mistake memory for transformation. We mistake continuity for persistence."
Your gaze drifted across the auditorium.
"A history-dependent model does not eliminate every difficulty. No serious theory ever does. But it allows us to ask questions that the state-based model cannot."
You turned once more towards the board.
The equations remained exactly as you had left them.
"When we ask what it means to remain the same person," you said quietly, "we usually imagine that identity is something carried through change."
Your fingers rested lightly upon the edge of the lectern.
"I have suggested the opposite."
The room remained utterly still.
"That change is not what identity survives."
Your eyes lifted from the board to the audience.
"It is what identity is made of."
No one reached for a pen.
No one shifted in their seat.
The silence possessed an unusual quality now. It was no longer the attentive quiet that accompanies a lecture, nor the expectant pause before questions begin. It was the silence of an audience discovering that a familiar question had quietly become a different one.
You inclined your head, almost imperceptibly.
"Thank you."
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then, somewhere near the centre of the auditorium, a single pair of hands came together.
Another followed.
The applause spread gradually rather than explosively, gathering through the hall in uneven waves as people rose less from excitement than from respect for the argument they had just witnessed. Around the panel, notebooks remained open, margins crowded with hurried annotations and unfinished questions. Cerces had not yet moved. One hand still rested against her chin, her expression composed, though the thoughtful crease between her brows had deepened.
Only then did your eyes travel, almost despite yourself, towards the back of the hall.
Professor Anaxagoras still stood where he had been throughout the lecture.
He had not applauded.
Nor had he looked away.
For the first time that afternoon, his expression betrayed the smallest departure from its habitual composure—not disagreement, nor approval, but the unmistakable recognition of someone who had just encountered an idea capable of changing the course of his own work.
You held his gaze only for a moment before the applause reclaimed the room.
i cant for the life of me get my own brain juices going so--tamsy x ftm reader w cannibalistic tones/"i would crawl into your skin" type vibes. if this isn't detailed enough im sowwy im half asleep rn </3
PARASITIC
╰┈➤ tamsy caines x ftm reader ੈ
warnings: creepy af tamsy, non-sexual knifeplay, gore, tied-up, dissection, freak4freak, vivisection, death
A/N: wouldn’t recommend holding my hand it’s constantly sweaty. i appreciate the sentiment however
tamsy caines is not a person who fits the description of ‘normal.’ reserved, sadistic, scheming- not traits you’d generally want in a mutual relationship. you, however, are also not a normal person.
raised in graffiti town after being tossed out by your parents, you made a living stealing and reselling high-value trash. the only item to your name was your mothers wedding ring, a dented platinum thing given to you before she died.
having heard tell of a faction called “the cleaners” and their vital instruments, you had poured as much love as you could into that stupid ring, hoping one day, you’d get out of this shithole. you wore in on a necklace so it could be close to you at all times, clutching it close on bad days.
nothing ever happened though. so you moved on.
eventually, you grew up, keeping the wedding ring on its chain as a reminder of your dreams but settling down as a freestyle graffiti artist.
sometime, though, that had changed.
a man with long blonde hair and piercing blue eyes had walked into your store and never really left. his presence was more common than his absence, always lingering in the back of your mind.
“don’t fuck with my display,” you’d bark, and he’d just shrug with a foxy smile. you’d glare, and he’d cover his mouth with his sleeve to hide a laugh.
“you’re cute when you’re angry,” he’d tease, dodging a tin can thrush his way.
you couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment he had settled under your skin, a constant, itching presence. maybe it was when he started existing in your store rather than visiting. how his banter was missed more than it agitated.
somehow, it ended with his arms around yours in the early morning, legs intertwined and faces red from the heat. dust rattles against the windows, the radio blathering about some impending sandstorm. it all registers as static in your brain, slipping away like soup in a slotted spoon.
tamsy traces lazy patterns on your skin, eyes focused intently on the rise and fall of your chest. you shrivel under his gaze, and he laughs, throaty and humming.
“i want to try something different,” he whispers into your ear, running a finger across the apex of your shoulder. you nod, leaning into the touch.
“shoot.”
“i want to tie you up and cut you open.”
you breath lodged in your throat, trying to process his words. you didn’t necessarily want to be cut open like meat on a butchers slab, but also… it’d probably be really hot.
“okay,” you sigh, lazing off the bed as you stretch. when you turn, tamsy’s vital instrument is already in his hand, eyeing you intently. it’s almost.. predatory, his gaze taking in every part of your body. covered in bites and love marks, possession more than emotion.
he helps you to the floor after much lamenting about getting blood from the sheets. the corded ropes of tokushin burning against your skin as they tie your limbs taught against your body, thighs tucked close and arms stiff against your side.
“be gentle, tamsy,” you chide, and he tsks, kneeling in front of you. his index finger lifts your chin so you meet his eyes, a scalpel blade resting against his palm. “don’t be snippy with the one holding the blade.”
rolling your eyes as tamsy straddles himself on top of you, letting your body rest against the floor and his thighs cradle your navel. the blade of the scalpel brushes your sternum, making you breath sharply.
tamsy presses the finger holding the scalpel to your lips, a drop of your blood landing on your tongue. “shh,” he whispers, “let me work.”
nodding as much as you can manage, tamsy resumes; scalpel sinking deeper into your skin. you cry, torso on fire from the pain. blood seeps in rivulets down your stomach, pooling at your thighs and under your shoulders.
tamsy’s hand dig into you- hot bolts of fiery pain that make tears gather in your eyes. it sprays in bursts, landing on your face in gory spatters. you can feel him inside you, raw and visceral and wrong. a choking sensation with no oxygen to spare.
the pain is horrible, white bolts of agony making your vision swim and nausea gather at your throat. you swear he hooks a finger against your ribs, tugging slightly and making you cry in pain.
your sobbing now, his fingers groping in your chest cavity. everything hurts, you can feel nothing but the awful warmth of you and him and oh god it hurts-
the world goes quiet, hearing turning to ringing and vision narrowing into nothing. you hear frantic calls of your name, but it’s far, far off in the distance, something echo-y and incomprehensible to your pain-addled brain.
everything goes dark as a single tear lands on your cheek.
you die with your heart still grasped in his hand.
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