Secret Crush

by JustAWritingGuy

Summary:

Jinx is great at science but failing English—and she’s falling hard for her literature teacher, Silco, who agrees to tutor her after class. She reads into every glance, every word. He’s cold, professional, detached… and it drives her wild. Meanwhile, Ekko tries to pull her back to something real. Vi starts sniffing out something’s wrong. But Jinx? Jinx is all in.

Chapter 1: Chapter 1

Ekko knew everything about Jinx—except the one thing that actually mattered.

He knew her scratchy pencil-grip when she was doing equations at hyper-speed; he knew how she always muttered the square roots of numbers like a prayer; he could recognize the sound of her gum-popping walk down a hall of forty kids. They’d been competing since before middle school lockers even opened, a never-ending series of science fairs, mathletes competitions, physics labs, and STEM Olympiads.

People joked that they’d be married by graduation. The only real debate was whether they'd go to MIT or Caltech for their honeymoon.

Jinx let them believe it. Why not?

It kept the heat off. It let her hide.

Because the truth—the molten, dangerous, delicious truth—was that Jinx was obsessed with someone else entirely. Not a boy. Not a peer. Not someone her age at all.

Silco.
Older, scarred, Silco, with his crumpled English department tie and voice like black velvet scraped over a dying fire.

He was the only man who ever made Jinx forget what numbers were.

She'd sit in the back of his class, pretending to doodle in her notebook, but every spiraling scribble was just an excuse to watch the way his mouth moved when he read Yeats aloud. That low, rasping cadence. The way he'd tilt his head, lashes shadowing his ruined left eye as he held a paperback between ink-stained fingers and let poetry ruin her.

Jinx wasn’t stupid—Silco didn’t flirt, not even a hint. He was too careful, too proud. But she didn’t care. She didn’t want him to look at her like she was a kid. She wanted him to look at her like she was something rare and sharp and adult.

She wanted him to see her the way he looked at first editions.

She hid it all behind the far more digestible fiction of her and Ekko.

And Ekko... god, poor Ekko. He didn’t know. He was too busy trying to beat her in AP Calculus.

They’d hang out after school constantly—half the time in some lab, the other half on rooftops eating spicy noodles and arguing about theoretical propulsion engines like it mattered more than their GPA. They’d steal batteries and fix bikes and launch bottle rockets just to measure the arc mid-air.

Sometimes he’d look at her sideways, like he wanted to say something. Like maybe he was catching feelings too. But he never did.

Which was good.

Because she didn’t want that.

Ekko was safe. Ekko was comfort. Ekko was the sound of home: the predictable clack of his boots on pavement, the way he’d curse at every incorrect answer like it’d betrayed him personally, the way he could talk Jinx down when she got too wound up.

He was the closest thing she had to family.

But Silco?

Silco was a secret. An indulgence. A dangerous little thrill she tucked under her ribcage like a broken razor.

Every time she raised her hand in his class, it wasn’t because she wanted to ask about metaphor. It was so she could hear him say her name in that voice that made vowels sound forbidden.

When she lingered after class to ask about Dickinson or Donne, she wasn’t trying to be a teacher’s pet. She was trying to breathe his air a little longer.

She’d tilt her head, lips parted, trying to seem older than she was. But never too obvious. Just enough to feel the line there, humming under her toes, knowing she couldn’t cross it. Not yet.

One time, she caught him watching her hands.

Only for a second. He’d looked away like it burned.

But it stuck in her like a slow, delicious poison.

So she kept up the Ekko act.

Let people tease her in the hall. Let them wink and giggle and say “God, just kiss already!”

Because it was easier. It was safe. It let her sneak glances at Silco in the faculty lounge without anyone noticing the way her breath hitched.

Ekko never asked questions. He never pushed.

Even when she’d lean on him after a long day, slinging her legs across his lap and pretending she was too tired to move. Even when her head would end up on his shoulder in the library, the glow of their laptops lighting equations on their faces.

He never leaned in. Never touched her hair. Never assumed.

She loved him for that.

And hated herself for using him.

Because part of her knew: if he ever found out what she was hiding—how deep it went, how long it had festered in the dark corners of her brain—Ekko wouldn’t just be heartbroken.

He’d be disgusted.

And maybe... maybe she would be too.

But for now, she kept solving math problems in the margins of Silco’s essays.

And dreaming in iambic pentameter.

Chapter 2: Chapter 2

It was after the third week of school that Silco noticed something.

Jinx sat in the back row like always, leg bouncing, pencil twirling, tongue poking the corner of her mouth as she glared at her literature worksheet like it had personally insulted her. Everyone else had moved on to underlining metaphors. She was still on question one.

She didn’t ask for help. She never did. Not when the class read poetry aloud and her voice tripped over the syllables, not when essays came back full of red pen that made her sneer and roll her eyes. She just sucked her teeth, chewed on the eraser, and grumbled under her breath.

Silco watched quietly. Waited. Counted how many times she reread the same line without progressing.

She wasn’t lazy.

She was stuck.

And she didn’t want anyone to know.

So when the bell rang and the other students funneled out, Silco remained behind his desk. “Miss Zaun,” he said, voice level.

She froze halfway through shoving her books into her bag. “Yeah?”

“Stay a moment.”

She looked up, blue eyes narrowing suspiciously.

But she didn’t bolt.

The classroom emptied. Footsteps echoed down the hallway and lockers slammed. Silco waited until the door clicked shut, then stood and walked around his desk, arms crossed.

“I’ve noticed you’re having difficulty keeping pace with the readings,” he said plainly.

Jinx bristled immediately. “I’m fine.”

“I don’t think you are.”

“Well maybe I don’t care what you think.”

Silco didn’t react. “Then humor me.”

She glared harder. Stubborn to the bone. But beneath that mask was tension—shoulders stiff, knuckles white around her bag strap.

“I’m offering a tutor,” he said. “It’s early enough in the semester that—”

“No,” Jinx snapped.

Silco raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t need some nerd to ‘help’ me sound words out,” she said, voice dropping with venom. “I’m not stupid.”

“I never said you were.”

She looked away. Jaw clenched. A flicker of shame danced across her face before she shoved it down, her mouth twisting into a smirk to cover it. “Besides. I’m busy.”

Silco studied her.

He didn’t press, not right away. Just watched her posture, the flick of her tongue against her teeth, the way she couldn’t quite meet his eyes now.

“…What would make you say yes?” he asked finally.

Jinx blinked.

Then smirked for real.

“You.”

Silco’s eye narrowed. “Pardon?”

“You wanna tutor me, old man?” she said, grin crooked. “Then do it yourself.”

Silco paused. That rasp of a breath through his nose. He didn’t dismiss her or laugh in her face. He didn’t say she was being ridiculous.

He just thought. Measured. Considered.

Then nodded once. “Tuesdays and Thursdays. After school.”

Jinx straightened.

“You’ll meet me here at three sharp. Bring whatever assignments you’re behind on. If you’re late—”

“I won’t be.”

His brow lifted slightly at the speed of her answer.

“Good,” he said.

And just like that, she was walking out—backpack slung over her shoulder, head held high, like she hadn’t just begged the one man in the entire world she had a crush on to spend extra alone time with her under the pretense of needing help with English.

She wasn’t smiling until she was already out of the classroom.

Then it hit—wide and wicked.

And she whispered to herself, “Yes.”

Chapter 3: Chapter 3

That Tuesday, Jinx was a live wire.

She tore through chemistry lab like she was on speed, finished her calculus test in half the time of anyone else, and nearly got herself detention in gym for bouncing a dodgeball off the teacher’s clipboard mid-roll call. She couldn’t sit still. Couldn’t shut up. Couldn’t stop smirking for no reason.

Ekko noticed by second period.

“You’re acting weird,” he muttered, jotting notes during physics. “Weirder than usual.”

Jinx snapped her gum and gave him a sidelong grin. “Maybe I’m just finally cracked. Happens eventually, right?”

Ekko raised an eyebrow. “What’s up?”

“Nothin’.”

“You win the lottery?”

“Nope.”

“Did someone die?”

“Wouldn’t that be great?”

“Jinx.”

She leaned back in her chair, arms behind her head like she was floating. “Don’t worry about it, Stopwatch.”

He scowled at the nickname but let it go. She knew he would. He always did. And by lunch, he’d already moved on to arguing about solar panel torque with the robotics team, leaving Jinx to hum and swing her feet from the cafeteria table like she had a secret—which she did.

Her eyes flicked to the clock.

A couple more hours until she was alone with Silco. In his classroom. Just her and him. No one else to notice how her cheeks flushed when he said her name. No one to see how close they sat when he leaned over to point something out. No one to ask why she suddenly cared about stupid metaphors.

Jinx bit her straw, a wicked little grin curling on her lips.

This wasn’t just tutoring.

This was the beginning of something.

---

She had imagined something else entirely.

All day she’d played the scenes over in her head—movie-lit fantasies of Silco’s eyes lingering a little too long, of him standing too close behind her when they read something over together, his voice dropping just a shade deeper when he said her name. In her head, it started with a touch: the brief brush of his hand against hers as he took the pen from her fingers. Then maybe he’d pause, let the moment hang. Maybe he’d tilt his head. Maybe he’d say something with weight.

But the reality?

Reality was books. Grammar. Silence.

Silco didn’t so much as look at her the way she wanted him to. He stood when she entered, gestured at the desk like this was any other after-school obligation, then launched directly into breaking down an essay prompt with surgical efficiency. His voice didn’t lower. His eye didn’t wander. He didn’t even sit beside her—he stayed at the whiteboard, occasionally turning to point at what she'd written, correcting syntax, reminding her what a compound predicate was like it actually mattered.

She stared at him longer than she should have. Waited. Waited harder.

Nothing.

She even leaned forward once when he stood beside her to review a paragraph, angled her body toward him just a little more than necessary. Her shoulder nearly brushed his sleeve. But he didn’t flinch, didn’t pause, didn’t even notice.

Just circled a verb and moved on.

The whole session lasted forty-seven minutes and felt like hours. He ended it precisely, no small talk, no wandering comments, just a quiet “Same time Thursday” as he closed her workbook and handed it back.

Jinx walked out of the classroom with a flat face and a heart full of gravel.

Not even a flicker. Not even a maybe.

No stolen glance. No hesitation. No sparks.

She felt stupid. Not for needing the tutoring—she knew her learning disability was real, no matter how hard she masked it—but for thinking, even for a second, that this might unfold like the books she read late at night under the covers. That Silco would see something in her beyond misread lines and botched metaphors.

He’d been professional.

Completely.

Utterly.

Unfuckably professional.

By the time she hit the hallway, her grin was gone. She didn’t go to the roof that afternoon. She didn’t even text Ekko back when he pinged her to hang out.

Instead, she wandered the empty band room and sat alone behind the unused piano, pressing keys that didn’t make sound, pretending they did.

---

That night, once the house had gone still—Vi's door creaked shut, Claggor stopped stomping around upstairs, Mylo's voice faded from whatever late YouTube rant he’d been watching, and Vander’s heavy footsteps echoed one last time into his bedroom—Jinx crept back into the glow of her laptop like a thief.

The clock on the screen blinked 12:41.

She should’ve been asleep. But her brain wouldn’t shut up. It never did, not since the tutoring session had ended like a goddamn teacher conference, with Silco offering her nothing but dry instruction and absolute disinterest. It itched at her, scraped under her skin.

It hadn’t even been a bad session. He wasn’t mean. He was... perfectly boring. Detached. Respectful.

Like she was just a student.

She opened a private browser tab and typed in the words she hadn’t said out loud.

how to seduce your teacher

The results came in waves—Quora threads, Reddit confessionals, sketchy blog posts written in all lowercase by girls who swore they “knew what they were doing.” Jinx skimmed past anything that ended in failure, lawsuit, expulsion, or cringe. She only read the successes.

There weren’t many. But there were some.

One girl got her professor to notice her by dressing like she didn’t care about dress codes anymore—bralet tops under open flannels, too-short skirts that rode up when she leaned forward to take notes. Another swore by eye contact: just a little too long, like she was waiting for him to say something he wasn’t supposed to. Another posted detailed tactics—showing up early to class so no one else was around, complimenting his tie like she meant it, using her voice softer, lower, whispery like she had secrets to tell but only if he leaned in.

Jinx read every word.

She took mental notes.

Skin. Voice. Proximity. Eye contact. Compliments. Subtle things. Let him imagine.

She wasn't going to be stupid about it. She wasn’t going to do anything illegal—obviously. But she could shift the dynamic. Make him wonder. Plant it in his head.

By the time the house was completely silent and her laptop dimmed into sleep mode, Jinx had already started shaping the plan. Thursday, she’d show up just a little early. Not too obvious. Her shirt—she’d find the tight black one, the one that hugged her waist and showed her collarbone. Maybe pull her hoodie off halfway through and stretch, play casual. Her voice? She could fake quiet. She’d giggle at the dumbest thing he said if she had to.

And her eyes—she’d lock on. Unblinking. Like she already knew something about him he didn’t want her to know.

Let him be the one to feel awkward.

Let him wonder if he was imagining it.

Jinx smirked to herself in the dark, already picturing Thursday afternoon, already seeing the shift. She didn’t need him to do anything yet.

She just needed him to notice.

Chapter 4: Chapter 4

Thursday, Jinx didn’t just show up to school. She arrived.

From the moment she stepped onto campus, the plan was already breathing under her skin like static electricity. Her hoodie—gone. Left behind on purpose. Instead, she wore that black ribbed top she’d found stuffed in the bottom of Vi’s drawer and claimed without asking. It hugged tight across her chest and dipped low enough to show off the smooth slope of her collarbones, that little pocket of skin right above her sternum where her necklace usually sat. She even added eyeliner. Just enough to shadow the corners of her eyes, make her lashes dark and heavy when she blinked slowly. She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror before first period and thought—fuck yeah.

Step one: establish the tone.

She didn’t sit in her usual back corner during Silco’s English class that morning. No. Jinx took the seat right in the middle of the front row, dead center. Direct line of sight. She leaned forward as soon as he started speaking, elbows on her desk, chin resting on her palm, lips just slightly parted as if the lecture was the most fascinating thing in the world.

She made eye contact. Constantly.

And every time Silco looked her way—every flick of his gaze across the rows, every time he glanced up from the book—she was already watching him.

At first, he didn’t react. Or he pretended not to. He didn’t pause or lose pace, but there was the smallest shift in his stance by midpoint. A tightening at the corner of his mouth. A flicker of his right eye when she held her stare just a second too long.

Jinx smiled at him. Not a grin. Not a smirk. Something smaller. Sharper. Let him think about it.

Step two: compliment, subtle.

As class ended and the students started filing out, she lingered—not enough to draw attention. Just enough that she passed him on the way to the door, slow, dragging her fingers across the edge of his desk like she wasn’t even thinking about it. Then, as she passed behind him, she said—

“I like that tie.”

He didn’t answer.

Didn’t even turn.

But she saw it. The pause. The fraction-of-a-second breath that wasn’t part of his rhythm. She didn’t wait for a response. She walked out and let it hang behind her.

And the rest of the day? She kept up the pressure.

She let Ekko talk and nodded when he needed it but didn’t give him her full attention. Not like usual. She didn’t follow him up to the roof after school or swing by the lab like she normally would on a Thursday. She wanted her whole vibe quiet and withdrawn from everyone else, like her focus was somewhere else now. Like someone else had it.

Step three: arrive early.

She beat the final bell to Silco’s classroom by ten full minutes. The room was still dim, half-lit by slanted gold light through the blinds. He was at his desk, grading. Or pretending to.

Jinx stepped inside and said nothing. She let the door creak shut behind her and slid into her seat like she owned the hour.

Now came the real part.

She was going to take what she’d started that morning and crank it.

By the end of this tutoring session, he wouldn’t just notice her.

He’d remember her.

---

Silco was a fucking fortress.

All day Jinx had been tightening the screws. The looks, the compliments, the outfit, the casual brush of her hand across his desk, even the slow, careful way she crossed her legs during class like she knew someone was watching. But Silco? He didn’t flinch. He didn’t sweat. He didn’t so much as blink longer than necessary.

If anything, he seemed even more composed.

It was like trying to set fire to wet stone.

By the time their tutoring session started, she was already buzzing with frustrated energy. Her plan was supposed to work. She’d read it online. She did the steps.

But as soon as she sat down and pulled out her notebook, Silco greeted her with the same precise nod, the same dry “Good afternoon,” the same pointed look at the page like that was the only thing in the room that mattered.

She tried everything.

She stretched more than she needed to, lifting her arms up over her head so her shirt rode up just enough to flash a sliver of stomach. Nothing.

She dropped her pen and bent to get it slowly, giving him a full view of the dip in her shirt. Still nothing.

She laughed at something that wasn’t funny, brushing her hand against his as he passed her book back. Nothing.

Every response he gave was clipped, academic, completely disengaged from her as a person. It was all about the work. What she got wrong in her last paragraph. How to break down a sentence better. Where the verb placement went. It wasn’t cold, exactly. It was clinical. He didn’t seem disgusted. He just... didn’t play.

Like there was a brick wall where the man should be.

By the end of the session, Jinx had her head in her hand, tapping her fingers against her temple like a metronome. Her leg bounced furiously under the desk. Silco hadn’t even looked at her mouth once. Not once. And she’d done the damn lip gloss.

When the session ended, he said “Thursday, same time,” and turned back to his papers without even glancing up to see her expression.

She walked out stiff-spined and boiling.

In her head, she cussed him out six different ways. Emotionless bastard. Cold-blooded. Tied his stupid fucking tie too tight, probably couldn’t even breathe with it on. Who the hell was that disciplined? It made her insane.

And worse?

It made her more interested.

She wasn’t going to stop.
She just had to change tactics.

If he wanted her to be serious—she’d play serious.

If he wanted subtlety—fine.

But she was going to make him look at her.

Even if it took her all year.