He was standing by the coffee kettle one night, staring down at his half-empty mug and trying to remember whether he’d been emptying it or refilling it, when the other boy approached. Liam flinched—he’d thought everyone else had gone home. Thick eyebrows on pale skin and a healthy sheaf of black bangs, begging to be swept back—Liam momentarily forgot the mug in his hand. Had he seen this boy before? Surely he’d remember a face like that. The troubled crease between his brows, the dark glint in his eyes like a warning, the stylish glasses, the dimple on his chin.

The boy smiled—Liam’s pulse galloped, not just from the caffeine—and pointed to the mug.

“Excuse me,” he drawled, his accent something Bohemian and smoky that Liam wanted to breathe in. “I think you are using my mug.”

Liam swore. Threw back the rest of the coffee. “Sorry. Damn things all run together. Here, let me wash it for you—”

“It’s all right. Hey.” The boy’s hand closed around Liam’s on the mug handle, silencing the never-ending stream of words Liam used like a reflex. Thick fingers, muscular, but smooth. Liam imagined them wrapped around his wrist. Cupping his neck. “You look like you need the caffeine more than I do.”

Liam made a noise that was supposed to be dismissive. It wasn’t.

“I’m Pitr. Medieval department.” He gently coaxed the mug from Liam’s hand. “I’ve been trying to finish this paper for . . . three days now? But I think you’ve been here even longer.”

“Theoretical physics,” Liam muttered, then, remembering himself, “Liam.”

“Liam.” Pitr’s mouth did something to the vowels that scraped Liam’s nerves raw like a blade shucking kernels of corn. His grin widened, revealing pearly teeth, full lips. A vein pulsed at the side of Pitr’s neck, beckoning. “Maybe we both could use a break.”

Liam wasn’t stupid—you didn’t get into Princeton at fifteen by being stupid—and he understood, in theory, how this was supposed to work. (Liam understood many things in theory.) He knew about the men who took the streetcars over to Brooklyn. Who went strolling in the park or the basement bar of the Savoy-Plaza.

But Liam miscalculated social cues on the best of days, and in the buzzing empty space of sleep deprivation, of his anger and desperation, he knew he might be misjudging. There were all kinds of computational errors that only revealed themselves by putting theory into practice, and—oh, had he theorized about this.

He was willing to take the risk.