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The fall semester of Alex’s fifth year as an assistant professor does not get off to a particularly auspicious start.
“What do you mean, my class has been moved?”
Zahra doesn’t even glance up from her work, which is fair, because Alex had just stormed into the department office at 8:30AM on the Monday of the first week of classes, and she probably has a mountain of administrative work to take care of. Still. This classifies as an emergency, as far as he’s concerned.
“You can’t teach in 215 this semester,” she tells him. “There’s some kind of issue with the ventilation in the room and it apparently smells like a sewer in there.”
“Can’t they just fix it?”
It’s a stupid question, he knows that even before Zahra fixes him with a look that could wither a cactus. University facilities operates in some kind of twilight zone where time moves at half speed for only them. He’ll be lucky if he gets the classroom back next year.
“It’s not a priority. All the classes scheduled in there have been moved, and there was only one classroom open in your time slot on Tuesday-Thursday. You’re in Bailey 103 now.”
“But Z, that’s halfway across campus!” he protests. He might have gotten a little spoiled in the past years, always teaching in the same building as his office, but surely there’s some other classroom available nearer than fucking Bailey.
“It’ll be good for you, you little shit,” Zahra counters. “They just finished renovating Bailey, anyway. That room is going to be so much nicer than the nightmare you usually teach in.”
She might have a point there. Wilston 215 hasn’t been updated since the 1980s; it’s freezing in the autumn and boiling hot in the dead of winter, half of the desks are broken, and the whiteboard is permanently stained an off-putting grey. But Alex has been teaching there since first year, and it’s his nightmare (mostly because no one else wants it). He’s allowed to pout for a hot second about having his entire routine turned upside down.
Bailey 103 does turn out to be a pretty nice classroom, even if he is perpetually late because he never remembers to leave an extra five minutes early to get there. The whiteboards are fucking huge, and he fills them with his barely-legible scrawl nearly every class period. Plus, somehow he never knew that Bailey got a fucking coffee shop put in when they renovated it. Turns out he’s pretty fucking jealous of the Humanities faculty, although having his office in the same building as a coffee shop would probably be a recipe for disaster. All in all, it could be worse. Maybe the room change won’t be that big of a disruption in his life after all.
Four weeks into the semester, Henry has just about had enough. Every Thursday he has to rush out of a meeting to make it to his afternoon class on time, and almost every Thursday, he arrives to his classroom to find the whiteboards full of the most horrible chicken scratch writing he’s ever seen, and he’s graded a lot of handwritten essays. He doesn’t know who teaches in the classroom before him, but from what he’s been able to discern it seems to be some kind of political theory, which doesn’t even make sense. Their building is halfway across campus.
He knows it’s not that big of a deal. The first few times he shrugged it off, because he knows it can occasionally slip one’s mind, but it’s only getting worse. The thing is, it’s just so bloody inconsiderate, and it’s really starting to grate on him. Enough that, after his Thursday class that week, he takes to the college course schedule and looks up just who is using Bailey 103 before his class. A quick search later, he finds it: PLSC 307, Democracy & International Relations, taught by one Claremont-Diaz, Alexander.
Henry has only been on the faculty here for a year, and he’s certainly had no occasion to meet any Political Science professors. He imagines that Alexander Claremont-Diaz is probably elderly and forgetful, like so many of the faculty here, and figures that a polite email won’t go awry. Surely it can’t hurt to remind a colleague that he’s not the only one using the room. In any case, he expects to either receive an “oh sorry, I’ll try to remember” (which may or may not come with actual remembering on the day), or to be entirely ignored. He spends a few minutes trying to compose something suitable, hits send, then promptly forgets about it.
To: Alexander Claremont-Diaz <[email protected]>
From: Henry Fox-Mountchristen <[email protected]>
Subject: Bailey 103 Whiteboards
Dear Alexander,
I hope this email finds you well. I am writing because I believe your class is scheduled in Bailey 103 immediately before mine on Thursday afternoons, and I’ve noticed for the past few weeks the whiteboards haven’t been erased at the end of your class session. I’m sure it’s just slipped your mind, but I would very much appreciate it if you could wipe them down after you’re done with your class. I’m afraid I’m on a bit of a tight schedule that day, so any consideration you could give would be a great assistance.
Cheers,
Henry
––––––––––
Henry Fox-Mountchristen, PhD (he/him)
Assistant Professor
Department of English
McQuiston College
Bailey 311
To: Henry Fox-Mountchristen <[email protected]>
From: Alexander Claremont-Diaz <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Bailey 103 Whiteboards
seriously? it takes 30 seconds to erase them
––––––––––
Alex Claremont-Diaz, PhD (he/him)
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
McQuiston College
Wilston 27
To: Alexander Claremont-Diaz <[email protected]>
From: Henry Fox-Mountchristen <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Bailey 103 Whiteboards
Dear Alex,
In that case, surely you can manage it like the rest of us instead of acting like a petulant child.
Cheers,
Henry
––––––––––
Henry Fox-Mountchristen, PhD (he/him)
Assistant Professor
Department of English
McQuiston College
Bailey 311
Henry is honestly not sure what possessed him to send back the sarcastic one-line reply, other than it was nearly one in the morning and he only just finished the latest of a particularly bleak pile of grading when Alex’s email came in. Of all the things he had expected in response, that was certainly not even within the realm of possibility. He’d had to double-check that he hadn’t accidentally sent the email to a student, given the utter lack of concern for capitalization and punctuation displayed. Of course he’d immediately regretted being short with a colleague, even if it was clear that Alex was junior enough to be unlikely to be evaluating his tenure portfolio some day, but the email had already been sent. Anyway, Alex never emailed him back after the second one, so Henry figured that was that.
He’s certainly not surprised to find the whiteboards covered in possibly more writing than he’s ever seen before when he arrives at the classroom on Thursday. Disappointed, to be sure, but not surprised. A minute later, though, he’s infuriated, because he realizes that there are no erasers to be found anywhere in the room. Not on the whiteboard tray, nor on the lectern at the front. Claremont-Diaz must have actually taken them from the bloody room, because he’s never seen them disappear before. Henry does in fact need the boards for his class, so he’s left with no other choice but to climb two flights of stairs to the department supply closet, somehow find an eraser among the chaos, and return, all the while his class time is ticking away.
It’s only as he’s finally wiping the boards clean that he sees it: a little note in the corner near the lectern, written in the same nearly illegible handwriting as the rest of the board: sorry, looks like someone stole the erasers. pretty shitty luck for you.
Right, Henry no longer feels a lick of regret about his email. He counts to ten and lets out a slow breath so he doesn’t take out his irritation on his students, then puts the whole thing out of his mind for the next two hours. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t all come rushing back the minute he’s done. In a fit of pique, he grabs multiple erasers from the supply closet and stuffs them into an on-campus mail envelope along with a note that reads: I find it helpful to be prepared for my classes. You might consider it sometime. Cheers, Henry
The fact that no one carries their own whiteboard erasers with them to class is a tiny, insignificant detail, although Henry considers he might be forced to add one to his class materials to forestall things like this happening in the future. Instead, the next week, he arrives at the classroom to find no fewer than ten erasers on the whiteboard tray. None of which, of course, have been used to clean the board. Instead, Alex has left another note in the same spot as before: thanks for the tip. hope you’re prepared today.
A quick search reveals that there are no dry erase markers in the room, but Henry is not an idiot. Even before this little tête-à-tête had begun, he always carried his own markers with him, because 90% of the time the ones in the room are dried up or the tips are destroyed. If Alex thought taking the markers would throw him off, he was sorely mistaken.
Henry counts it as a small victory, even if he does still have to erase the boards.
“So what you’re telling me is that you’ve begun some kind of weird aggressive mating ritual with an English professor,” Nora says around obscenely large bites of her burrito.
“How the fuck—” Alex splutters, because he honestly has no clue how she came to that conclusion. “We’re not flirting. We’re at war.”
On Fridays, he has lunch at one of the restaurants on Main Street with his best friend and ex, Nora, who also happens to be a recently tenured Statistics prof. About half the time they end up at the Chipotle-ripoff place, because it’s closest to campus and Nora demands near-biweekly burritos. This is the first time he’s mentioned Henry’s email, mostly because he wasn’t particularly proud of the snarky reply he’d sent after one too many bourbons at the end of a very long day. Getting a scolding email about his consideration had simply been the last straw. Normally he does try to remember to erase the boards when he’s done, but he gets distracted by students who come up to talk to him at the end of class. Everyone does sometimes, which is why the fact that Henry Fox-Mountchristen—his name just as pretentious as his writing—had actually emailed him about it had been galling.
Of course, he’d been forced to retaliate after Henry’s condescending reply. Taking the erasers had been petty. It also had felt amazing, especially when he got the envelope in his campus mailbox with two more inside and another passive-aggressive note. He has no idea who this guy is, but Alex assumes he’s white and obscenely privileged, so getting under his skin is immensely satisfying.
Nora snorts as she takes another bite, and some guac oozes out onto the corner of her mouth. “Sure. I can tell you’re really in the trenches here, amigo. So what’d he do this week?”
“He took the AV cords out of the room before my class. I fucking know it was him,” he adds, before she can raise the question he knows she was going to. “Joke’s on him though because I don’t really use the projector.”
“Hmm,” Nora hums contemplatively. “Maybe next week—stop me if you’ve considered this—you could just leave him your number.”
“You’re actually insane if you think I could be interested in this asshole. He’s probably, like, 70 years old, anyway.” Never mind that Alex knows from his email signature that he’s an assistant professor and thus far more likely to be Alex’s age.
“You have looked up his photo on the English department page, right?”
In fact, Alex has not. He kind of prefers the mystery, to be honest. Apparently that’s not true of Nora, though, because she has her phone out in seconds, and he has no doubt where she’s navigating to. The disconcerting part comes when the shit-eating grin slides off her face once she scrolls down the page.
“Oh shit,” she says.
“Don’t,” Alex warns. He doesn’t want to know if this guy is someone he shouldn’t be making an enemy of. Even though, you know, he probably should care a little more about these things. He is going up for tenure next year, after all.
“Are you sure you don’t—”
“I’m fucking sure, ok?”
“Alrighty then,” Nora shrugs, and he resolutely ignores the expression on her face that implies he might be making a mistake.
“Hey Shaan, could I ask a tiny favour of you?”
The look that Shaan greets him with is deeply skeptical, as if he somehow already knows that Henry is about to ask him something questionable. “What is it?”
“You’re in 103 at noon on Thursdays, right?” Henry asks, even though he doesn’t need to. Shaan nods. “Could I persuade you to leave the tables and chairs as they are after you’re done, instead of having your students put them back in order?”
Shaan teaches a writing seminar on Thursdays, and as such he always has the students move the classroom furniture into an arrangement that better suits small group work. Henry knows that he also always has the students return them to their more lecture-suited arrangement at the end of class, because he’s a considerate person who doesn’t wish to make things harder for his colleagues.
Henry, in this rare instance, is not.
“I presume there’s a reason for this?” Shaan sighs.
Henry tries an innocent smile. “Would you believe me if I told you that the fellow who teaches in there after you prefers them that way?”
“So this doesn’t have anything to do with the cold war you’ve been waging with the bloke in Political Science?”
“Not so cold, actually,” Henry mutters under his breath. Last week Alex had left the whiteboards covered in something sticky, like he’d brought a spray bottle filled with fizzy drink to class. It had been a nightmare to clean. Shaan cocks a questioning eyebrow at him, and Henry clears his throat. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course,” Shaan replies indulgently.
“So, will you?”
“This better not blow back on me.”
“Don’t worry,” Henry assures him, “he’ll know.”
That Thursday, Henry arrives at the classroom to find the chairs in disarray—expected—and the board partially erased—unexpected. For some reason Alex seems to have cleared the middle portion of his chicken scratch notes, leaving a ring around the edge. Henry has to admit he’s a little stumped. It doesn’t seem like much of a retaliation. It’s not until he checks his email after class that he finds out why.
To: Henry Fox-Mountchristen <[email protected]>
From: Alexander Claremont-Diaz <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Bailey 103 Whiteboards
i know you were behind the chairs, asshole
[Attachment: A photo of a whiteboard covered in notes. On the background of the black marker, someone has clearly used the eraser to write out the words FUCK YOU.]
To: Alexander Claremont-Diaz <[email protected]>
From: Henry Fox-Mountchristen <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Bailey 103 Whiteboards
Alex,
Truly, your eloquence is breathtaking.
Cheers,
Henry
––––––––––
Henry Fox-Mountchristen, PhD (he/him)
Assistant Professor
Department of English
McQuiston College
Bailey 311
At mid-semester, they reach something of a ceasefire. Henry supposes they’re both overwhelmed by the midterm crunch; he knows he certainly lacks the wherewithal for battling with his one of his colleagues after spending all week dealing with students having crises over their grades. The second week, he actually arrives to find the whiteboards completely erased. Of course he spends the entire class period waiting for the other shoe to drop, but nothing happens. It seems that Alex actually just erased the boards for him. Henry doesn’t know what to make of it, but he also doesn’t really have a chance to dwell on it.
He also doesn’t stop to consider the implications of his usual meeting being canceled the next Thursday. Instead of rushing to the classroom, he can actually arrive a few minutes earlier, and those few minutes means he almost collides with someone hurrying out of the classroom after all of the students have left. The man looks to be about Henry’s age, the occasional grey hair in his dark brown curls, and when those wide brown eyes meet his, Henry feels his breath catch in his throat. He is, quite simply, the most exquisite human being Henry has ever laid eyes on. Rather unfortunately, there’s also only one person he could be.
“Alex?”
The other man’s lips tilt into a smirk that all but answers his question, and his eyes dip down to Henry’s body before snapping back up. “Shoulda known you’d be wearing tweed.”
Henry feels himself flush, and he’d like to retort something clever but tragically his voice and brain seem to have deserted him in his hour of greatest need.
“Well, see you around, I guess,” Alex says lightly, then he walks off leaving Henry frozen in place behind him.
Alex doesn’t go back to his office after class. Cancel his meetings, hold his calls. This is a fucking crisis.
“Why didn’t you fucking tell me?” he groans dramatically as he bursts into Nora’s office and nearly slams the door behind him.
“Excuse you, I have office hours now,” she says, glaring at him.
Alex has already flung himself into the open chair next to her desk and doesn’t bother removing his arm from where he’s thrown it over his face. “When’s your next exam?”
“We just had one Monday.”
“No one’s coming and you know it.”
There’s a pause, and Alex imagines she’s giving him an exasperated look. “So are you going to tell me what this is about or are you just going to lie there like a swooning Victorian maiden? Wait— it’s Thursday. What did Henry do?”
“Nothing,” Alex huffs, “except exist. But we’re not talking about that, we’re discussing why you didn’t tell me that he’s hotter than the surface of the fucking sun.”
“You literally told me not to,” she points out. “You said, and I quote, ‘I’m fucking sure’.”
“Yeah but, but— you fucking knew.” He finally pulls his arm off his face to glower at her and finds her smirking at him.
“I have to admit the prospect of witnessing this moment did have a certain appeal.”
They’ve been friends for longer than they were ever together romantically, and Nora had been there in grad school when he’d figured out that the way he watched Star Wars and James Bond movies was maybe not entirely the way that other dudes did. He’d hooked up once with a guy at a conference, but he never had time for pursuing actual relationships while he was doing his dissertation, nor when he’d been stressed out about getting a permanent job, so until this point his bisexuality has been mostly theoretical. Sometimes he wondered—to himself, never out loud—if it was real, or if he was just trying to fit in after he found out that his sister and best friend were dating, like when he was six and decided he was super into horses only because June was.
Nothing about Henry is theoretical. The man is a walking wet dream. Alex isn’t sure how his students manage to actually pay attention in class rather than just fixating on those stupid plush lips of his, and those swooping cheekbones, and those brilliant blue eyes, and—
“Alex,” Nora says in a tone that implies it’s not the first time she’s said his name. “No fantasizing in my office.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Nope. Pretty sure you were about to start drooling.”
“Fuck you,” he replies with feeling, but then the reality of his situation settles over him again. “What am I gonna do? He’s my classroom enemy, Nora.”
Nora snorts at him and shakes her head, which is less than helpful. “I refer you to my previous suggestion, which was to leave your number on the board instead of a snarky note. Or maybe in addition to. You guys seem to be into that.”
“I can’t just— he probably hates me! And he’s kind of an asshole.”
“Is he an asshole, or is he just acting like that because you were an asshole to him first?”
Alex chews his lower lip and hates that she might have a point. They hadn’t exactly started out on the right foot. Honestly, he’d be shocked if Henry gave him the time of day.
Nora sighs when he doesn’t answer and continues. “If he actually hated you he wouldn’t be doing ridiculous things like sending you erasers in the interdepartmental mail. He’d just ignore you, like everyone else does.”
“Hey!” Alex protests, but she ignores him.
“You’ve been pulling on each other’s pigtails for weeks, so maybe just try to de-escalate things a bit. Try to behave like colleagues instead of school children and see how it goes.” She pauses, looking at him contemplatively. “Then maybe ask him out for dinner and let it slip that you’d really like him to dick you down, posthaste.”
“Nora,” he groans as he slumps back in the chair again. “I can’t believe you used the word ‘posthaste’.”
“That’s what you got out of that?”
“Fuck off.”
“No, you’re the one who should be doing the fucking off,” she counters. “Stop taking up my office hours with your drama.”
“Fine,” he huffs.
“Don’t forget, dinner tonight at our place. June’ll murder you if you forget again because you get caught up in grading.”
“I won’t.”
“Oh, and Alex?” she says, just as he’s about to step into the hall, and when he looks back she gives him a wicked grin. “That man is a biscuit. Do not fuck this up.”
That he does not deign to acknowledge with a response.
Henry spends far too much of his week thinking about Alex Claremont-Diaz. Lord knows he has gobs of work to do, but more than once he finds himself staring into space, thinking about dark curls, caramel-colored skin, and absurdly long eyelashes. It is, quite honestly, a problem, which is compounded by the fact that Henry doesn’t know what to do about it. It’d be one thing if they just met at a campus event or something, and Henry could try a bit of careful flirting, maybe ask him out if Alex seemed responsive. Instead, they’ve been doing battle for weeks, and he’s pretty sure Alex despises him. Christ, he really bollocksed this up.
He hasn’t decided what, if anything, his next move should be by the time that Thursday rolls around. His regular meeting is sufficiently distracting, and he’s so rushed getting to class once again that he doesn’t really think about it at all until he gets to the classroom and sees that Alex is still there. Alex never stays long enough to run into Henry on a normal day, and what’s more, he’s actively erasing the boards. His jacket is draped over a chair at the front of the room and the sleeves of his plaid button down are rolled to the elbow, the fabric pulling tight across his shoulders as he stretches to reach all the parts of the board. Then there’s the way that those chinos perfectly hug a truly magnificent ass, which should frankly be illegal, and abruptly Henry feels like it’s gotten rather hot in this room.
Thank God he’s distracted enough that he doesn’t notice Henry gawping at him like a particularly stupid goldfish. Unfortunately Henry’s not sure some of his students don’t notice, based on the increase in tittering from the room, which is nothing short of mortifying. Right, he needs to do something about this. Despite the fact that his cheeks must be a particularly lurid shade of pink, he steps closer to Alex, finally drawing his attention.
“Almost forgot,” Alex says as he looks up from his task, that teasing smirk on his lips again.
“Oh, you didn’t have to,” Henry replies automatically, which is just about the most idiotic thing he could have said.
Alex’s eyebrows climb skyward. “You sure about that?”
“Er, well,” Henry coughs awkwardly. “Thank you, all the same.”
“No problem, sweetheart.”
Henry does not choke on his own tongue, but it is a near thing, and even Alex’s eyes go a little wide like he hadn’t really intended on saying that. Thankfully Alex excuses himself quickly after that, and Henry spends the next minute trying to get his heartbeat back to any semblance of its regular rhythm before he has to stand up in front of a class and actually teach. He might not survive the rest of the semester if this keeps happening.
As it turns out, Alex does continue lingering after his class is done, obviously delaying his departure until Henry arrives. They’d spend an entire half the semester not running into each other, so it must be deliberate, even though he always tries to make it look like he’s just running behind on packing up. Their subsequent encounters are a lot more sedate, most of the time consisting of nothing more than a nod and a ‘hello’ as they pass by each other. It is perhaps a little disappointing, but at least things aren’t actively antagonistic any longer, so Henry figures it’s a step in the right direction.
Then, a couple weeks into their new routine, he gets the first email.
To: Henry Fox-Mountchristen <[email protected]>
From: Alexander Claremont-Diaz <[email protected]>
Subject: your shirts
Dr. Henry Fox-Mountwhats-his-face,
Do you even own any prints? You’re going to put your students to sleep with those outfits.
Alex
Assistant Professor of Fashion Policing
––––––––––
Alex Claremont-Diaz, PhD (he/him)
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
McQuiston College
Wilston 27
To: Alexander Claremont-Diaz <[email protected]>
From: Henry Fox-Mountchristen <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: your shirts
Dr. Alex Claremont-Do-you-even-read,
You do realize my full name is in the ‘To’ field of the very email you are sending, yes? Anyway, in regards to my clothing, I’ve never had any complaints before. Are you so conceited that you think the students care about what you’re wearing?
Cheers,
Henry
Assistant Professor of Appropriate Attire
––––––––––
Henry Fox-Mountchristen, PhD (he/him)
Assistant Professor
Department of English
McQuiston College
Bailey 311
To: Henry Fox-Mountchristen <[email protected]>
From: Alexander Claremont-Diaz <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: your shirts
Dr. Haughty Fashion-Moron,
Ask me if I care. And they absolutely do. Can’t believe your lame-ass shirts haven’t been called out in evals yet. Maybe put some effort in. You are pre-tenure, after all.
Alex
Assistant Professor of Too Cool for School
––––––––––
Alex Claremont-Diaz, PhD (he/him)
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
McQuiston College
Wilston 27
To: Alexander Claremont-Diaz <[email protected]>
From: Henry Fox-Mountchristen <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: your shirts
Dr. A Churlish-Degenerate,
Surprisingly, my students find the content of my course interesting enough to hold their attention. If your students need patterned attire to stay alert, I might gently suggest revising your lecture style. Also, have you considered that it is not your outfits but the effort to decipher your atrocious handwriting that is keeping your students awake?
Cheers,
Henry
Assistant Professor of Actually Engaging Instruction
––––––––––
Henry Fox-Mountchristen, PhD (he/him)
Assistant Professor
Department of English
McQuiston College
Bailey 311
To: Henry Fox-Mountchristen <[email protected]>
From: Alexander Claremont-Diaz <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: your shirts
Dr. High-Falutin-Menace,
I’ll give you a break because you’re new here, but you happen to be insulting the recipient of last year’s Reynolds Teaching Award. How embarrassing for you.
Alex
Assistant Professor of Kiss My Ass
––––––––––
Alex Claremont-Diaz, PhD (he/him)
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
McQuiston College
Wilston 27
To: Alexander Claremont-Diaz <[email protected]>
From: Henry Fox-Mountchristen <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: your shirts
Dr. Acerbic Cocky-Disaster
I am quite certain you’ve never given anyone a break in your life.
Regretfully,
Henry
Assistant Professor of What Did I Do To Deserve This
––––––––––
Henry Fox-Mountchristen, PhD (he/him)
Assistant Professor
Department of English
McQuiston College
Bailey 311
To: Alexander Claremont-Diaz <[email protected]>
From: Henry Fox-Mountchristen <[email protected]>
Subject: Thank You
Alex,
You may not believe me, but the last thing I intended when I sent that first email was for you to feel as if you must apologize for the occasional lapse of memory. That said, I very much enjoyed the cake.
Regards,
Henry
––––––––––
Henry Fox-Mountchristen, PhD (he/him)
Assistant Professor
Department of English
McQuiston College
Bailey 311
“So let me get this straight,” Pez starts, only to pause, his grin sharpening. “Well, maybe not straight, but you know what I mean. You’ve been exchanging flirty emails for the past several weeks—”
“They’re not exactly flirty,” Henry tries, but Pez just shoots him a quelling look and continues.
“—he’s been lingering 10 extra minutes after his class ends every week just to say hello to you and erasing the boards, and you still haven’t asked him out?”
Henry sighs. He’s not sure how they got onto the topic of Alex Claremont-Diaz again, except that somehow it seems rather inevitable these days. It had started out as incensed rants to his best friend—who, as the Director of Student Life at the college, is always sort of bemused by the petty feuds of faculty members—but if he thought he’d have less to say after their classroom war fizzled out, he was sorely mistaken. Setting aside that Alex is quite simply the most beautiful person Henry’s ever had occasion to encounter, which is pretty hard to set aside, the taunting back and forth that has shifted from purely antagonistic to something else all together is strangely thrilling. Still, that doesn’t mean Alex is interested in him in the way that Henry wishes he were.
“He did forget again a couple of weeks ago,” Henry says, “though the next week he left a slice of tres leches cake as an apology.”
“Hazza,” Pez returns, not tempering his exasperation. “I have never once gifted apology cake to someone I didn’t want to bone.”
Henry rolls his eyes. “You’ve never gifted apology cake to anyone, Pez.”
“Well, I wouldn’t. That man has got it bad for you.”
“I’m not listening to this. We’re barely friends.”
“Hmm,” Pez hums skeptically. “There’s only a couple weeks left in the semester, Henry. Whatever brought him to Bailey Hall probably won’t last another semester. He’ll go back to his side of campus and you won’t have occasion to run into him once a week, and what then?”
Henry is not a little distressed that this hadn’t actually occurred to him. Despite the fact that it hasn’t even been going on that long, he’s already become accustomed to basking in Alex’s radiant presence, even if only for a few short moments. It’s a fixture of his week, a bright spot he looks forward to every Thursday, especially as the semester drags on to its exhausting conclusion. But Pez is right, there’s no reason to assume a Political Science professor would end up teaching in the Humanities building again, nor that their schedules would align even if he did.
Henry sighs heavily and scrubs a hand over his face. “You might have a point there,” he mutters into his palm.
“Course I do, pet,” Pez replies smugly. “Auntie Pezza is always right.”
Alex has never felt this conflicted about the end of the semester. Usually by the second-to-last week he’s just as ready to get the fuck out of dodge as his students are. Or rather, he’s eager for the students to get the fuck out of dodge so their little college town can settle into its peaceful inter-semester state, and maybe he can get a bit of writing done after he decompresses over Christmas. But this year, the end of the semester means the end of his reason to trek across campus to Bailey Hall, which greatly reduces his chances of running into Henry. And he really, really doesn’t want to stop running into Henry.
He could ask Henry out, of course, but every time he convinces himself that he should just do it, he remembers that he was the one to start their war in the first place. Yeah, they smile at each other now, and exchange stupid teasing emails, but that doesn’t mean Henry is interested in anything more from him. Alex might have done a little light scholarly internet stalking and found out that Henry’s publications focus on queer themes in 19th-century literature, which seems to support Nora’s read on him (“Halloween-in-The-Castro gay, Alejandro”), but still. Even just expecting friendship from a dude who you called a raging asshole less than two months ago seems a bit presumptuous, to say nothing of the fact that Alex would very much like to stick his tongue down Henry’s throat.
Just ask him for coffee, Alex tells himself as he spends more time than strictly necessary organizing his papers after class on Thursday. Colleagues go to coffee, friends go to coffee. It’s not necessarily a come-on. But it could be. Alex is probably overthinking this.
Henry arrives at the classroom a couple of minutes before the scheduled start of class, as usual, looking like absolute academic sex on legs, also as usual. Today he’s actually wearing a striped button-down shirt under his tweed blazer, though, thin white pinstripes on a blue background that exactly matches the color of his eyes, and even this small thing is enough to completely short-circuit whatever Alex had been preparing to say. Fortunately, it’s Henry that that pauses after his usual greeting, unmistakably intending to continue.
“Er, I was wondering,” he starts, the apples of his cheeks going faintly pink, “would you perhaps want to get a coffee later? I’m free after my class.”
“Yeah, I’d love to,” Alex replies, somehow managing to sound completely normal about this development. “Did you have a place in mind?”
“Well, there’s a coffee shop in this building, but I’m just realizing that you probably don’t want to walk all the way across campus again, so—”
“I don’t mind,” Alex jumps in, probably a little too quickly.
Maybe it’s worth it, though, for the way it makes Henry’s tentative smile widen. “Meet here in two hours, then?”
Alex has no idea what he’s going to do for two hours, but it’s certainly not work. Except he really, really can’t afford not to; he’s got a pile of rough drafts to look at for his intro class that he knows are going to make him want to claw his eyes out. He considers not leaving Bailey at all, just hanging out until Henry’s done, but in the end he drags himself back to his office and tries more or less unsuccessfully to make himself focus. An hour and a half later, he gives it up as a lost cause and heads back over to linger awkwardly outside of the classroom until Henry is finally done. Maybe he’s being kind of pathetic, but it doesn’t feel that way when Henry’s face practically lights up to see him.
They make small talk about work as they stand in line for their coffees; he finds out Henry’s teaching an upper level elective on Jane Austen and the required general education course in Western Humanities, and has to work very hard not to fall in love with the fire in Henry’s eyes as he talks about how he’s trying to get his colleagues to change the curriculum for the class so it’s not just focused on heterosexual white guys. Then the conversation shifts into not-so-small talk while they’re waiting for their order, and Alex finds himself opening up about his struggles to find his place in academia. Which is, like, definitely not first date material.
Not that this is a date. Unless it is. It kind of feels like it might be. God, someone needs to just put him out of his misery.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s any seating available,” Henry says, a little mournfully, once they’ve both received their drinks—an Americano with cinnamon for Alex, and an Earl Grey for Henry. Sure enough, the few tables in the café area are all taken by students who are clearly camped out for the long haul, which means they find somewhere else to go or part ways now that they have their caffeine. The latter is clearly not an option.
“Your office is in this building, right?” Alex asks. He’s not sure why it sounds like he’s inviting himself back to Henry’s home. It’s just an office.
“Oh yes, sure, we can go on up,” Henry agrees easily, but a kind of tension settles over them that wasn’t there before. It follows them up the stairs and down the hall, and then into Henry’s rather spacious office. Alex closes the door behind them because if he doesn’t it’s almost guaranteed someone will interrupt them, but it definitely feels like a Statement.
“Nice place you got here,” he says as he drops his coat onto the chair. He doesn’t want to sit, doesn’t want this to feel like a meeting, so he wanders over to the large picture windows overlooking the College Green and the picturesque valley beyond the edge of campus. “Damn. Who’s dick do you have to suck to get a view like this?”
Henry makes a choking sound behind him, and when Alex turns he finds him flushed to the very tips of his ears. “I’m sure I don’t know,” he manages through his coughs, still trying to clear tea out of his trachea. “It’s just the office I was assigned when I arrived.”
“Lucky bastard,” Alex grins. “Wilston is ten years overdue for a renovation.”
“Is that why you ended up teaching in Bailey this semester?”
“More or less. I was pretty annoyed about it at the beginning of the semester.”
“But not anymore?”
As they’ve been talking, Henry has been slowly inching nearer, until he’s standing much closer than one would reasonably stand to a colleague. Even to a frolleague, really. Alex has to tip his head up slightly to look him in the eye, and he’s surprisingly into it.
“It’s got it’s perks,” he says, his voice going quiet now that they’re so close together. “The rooms are nicer. Coffee shop is convenient. Sometimes the other faculty are a pain in the ass, though.”
Henry grins. “That’s unfortunate.”
“Not really.” Alex lifts his hand to pluck lightly at the collar of Henry’s shirt. “The stripes are nice. What’s the occasion?”
“Someone I wanted to impress suggested I should mix it up a bit. I was hoping it would convince him to go on a date with me.”
Ok, so it is a date. Something bright and warm bursts in Alex’s chest at having it confirmed, sending little frissons of electricity along his skin, skittering down his spine and out to fizzle in his fingertips. Henry likes him. Judging by the way he keeps looking at Alex’s mouth, Henry wants him. They probably shouldn’t be doing this at work. He can’t bring himself to care. Alex’s hand slips down to the lapel of Henry’s jacket and curls around it, tugging him slightly closer.
“Did it work?”
Henry’s eyebrows quirk upward. “You tell me.”
“We-ell,” Alex says, because he can’t resist, “it’s a good start. The blue’s a good color on you. Vertical stripes are pretty much the safest pattern you could have picked, though. I think you could go bigger. Try plaid. Maybe a polka dot.”
“Do you ever stop?” Henry asks with a soft laugh.
“Sorry sweetheart, you’re going to have to make m—”
Alex gets what he wants; Henry shuts him up with a press of his lips, and neither of them can help smiling into it. It doesn’t take long to get heated, though, when Henry pushes him back against the windowsill and inserts himself between Alex’s legs. He reaches up to sink a hand into Alex’s curls, urging him to tilt his head so that their mouths fit even more perfectly together, and Alex immediately opens up to the swipe of his tongue and the drag of Henry’s teeth against his lower lip. Henry kisses him with a kind of tenderness shot through with desperation, like he wants to take things slowly but he just can’t hold himself back, and it is utterly intoxicating. Alex very much would like it to never stop, but—
“We really should not be doing this here,” Henry breathes when they finally part, though he makes no move to pull away from Alex.
“I live near campus,” Alex offers immediately. “Or is that too forward? I could make you dinner first. Or maybe second,” he amends in a slightly strangled tone when Henry shifts and their hips press together.
“Christ, Alex,” Henry groans before he drags Alex into another blistering kiss. “Yes, let’s do that. Either. Or both.”
“Yeah,” Alex agrees eagerly, “both is good.”
Alex is in the process of throwing together a quick pasta sauce when Henry emerges from the shower wearing a too-small pair of Alex’s grey sweatpants that leave very little to the imagination. Not that Alex needs imagination. He has in fact seen everything Henry has to offer—which is quite a bit, as it turns out—very recently, but still.
“Baby, those pants are obscene on you,” Alex says before turning his attention back to the stove, not even realizing what he’d said until Henry makes a strangled noise behind him.
Just like sweetheart, it had slipped out without his permission, perhaps a little prematurely, but perhaps not, judging by the look on Henry’s face now. His cheeks, already a little flushed from the heat of the shower, get darker still, and there’s a heat to his gaze as he pads across the room on bare feet. Then he proceeds to wrap himself around Alex from behind and hook his chin over Alex’s shoulder to look down at his cooking, and it’s very difficult not to feel a lot about how Henry’s shoulders blanket his, how their bodies seem to fit perfectly together, how the brush of Henry’s lips on his neck is enough to light him on fucking fire.
“I could take them off if they’re too distracting,” Henry murmurs, his mouth curling into a grin against Alex’s skin.
Alex is about 60% of the way to taking him up on it, but as much as he wants Henry, he wants this to be more than just fabulous sex. He wants to cook Henry a nice meal with the fresh pasta he fortuitously purchased yesterday, served with a bottle of wine he’s been saving because it seemed too nice to drink alone, set on a table with a candle found in a kitchen drawer that June had probably left behind ages ago. He wants, to put it bluntly, to romance the shit out of him, even if it seems like he might not need to.
“You are a pest,” Alex says sweetly before stealing a kiss. “Make yourself useful and open that wine, will you?”
“Whatever you like, love,” Henry replies easily, and him saying that while also untangling himself and stepping away makes Alex feel simultaneously warm and cold in an extremely confusing way.
“Careful, I might hold you to that.”
Henry pauses, corkscrew in his hand. “Is it too late to stipulate: not applicable on campus?”
Alex pretends to seriously consider this, but he also can’t seem to stop himself from grinning like an idiot. “Yeah, I think so. No added clauses.”
“Oh well,” Henry sighs, not sounding all that put out about it. “I shall have to manage, I suppose.”
“Not gonna take it back?”
Returning with a couple of glasses of wine, Henry puts one on the counter and slides a hand around Alex’s waist, because he apparently can’t go more than ten minutes without touching him. “No,” he mutters, the words muffled by his face pressing into Alex’s shoulder, “I don’t think I will.”
Much later, after the pasta has been eaten and the wine has been drunk, after they’ve spent an indulgent amount of time learning how best to take each other apart, when they’re tangled together in Alex’s bed because neither of them can bring themselves to pull away, Alex can’t stop himself from pressing a featherlight kiss to Henry’s chest and murmuring, “Stay?”
Even though it’s a weeknight, even though Alex has a class to teach tomorrow, even though Henry would probably like to go back to his own place where he can sleep in peace instead of having someone clinging to him like an overly friendly octopus. But Henry’s arms just tighten around him, and it settles something inside Alex that he hadn’t even realized was awry, like a slipping gear finally locking into place.
“Whatever you like, love,” Henry answers, sealing it with a soft kiss, and it feels like a promise.
The final Thursday of the semester, Henry begs out of his pre-class meeting early, telling his colleagues that something important came up. He’s not lying; it’s important to him that he have time to pick up a coffee—with cinnamon, he knows now—for Alex before he heads to their shared classroom. It’s important that he’s there when Alex’s class ends, to witness the way his face lights up when he sees Henry, and to pass him the coffee with a murmured, “Brought this for you, love.”
Henry would kiss him if they didn’t have an audience of undergrads; the look that Alex gives him from under those eyelashes, which quite clearly says he’ll be showing his gratitude later, is bad enough.
“I talked to our department assistant this morning,” Alex tells him as Henry walks with him to the door. “Might have put in a request to have one of my classes moved to Bailey next semester.”
“And here I thought I’d finally be well shot of vexatious Political Science professors,” Henry teases.
Alex grins at him and drags a surreptitious finger along his wrist before he starts backing out of the room. “In your dreams, baby,” he says. “You’re stuck with me now. I can’t promise that I’ll always remember to erase the boards, though.”
And, well, that is a compromise that Henry is certainly willing to make.