Pitr tasted like coffee—everything tasted like coffee—as he locked the bathroom door and shoved Liam up against it. Liam’s tongue melted against his like a sugar cube. This, this was what Liam had been missing, the error in his computation: how glorious it felt to be kissed, to have that sturdy hand untuck his shirt hem, graze over the bared skin of his abdomen, flatten against his sternum as if to still his stammering heart. An impossible task, given the way Pitr nipped at his lower lip, slotted a knee between Liam’s, pressed against his thigh. Liam bit at that pulsing vein on Pitr’s neck and lapped at his salty skin.

Liam did not, in fact, know what he was doing in practice. Fortunately, Pitr was an eager teacher, taking charge with a dark look and a stubborn smirk. With Pitr’s help, Liam learned what his theories, his hypotheses had been all too inadequate to describe.

Over the next few weeks, it became a game between them: one would borrow the other’s coffee mug, smirking as he walked past to join his classmates for a study group or to retreat to the carrels. Minutes later, they’d find each other in the bathroom, fumbling with the lock, with each other’s clothes.

There were unspoken rules, too. Pitr would never acknowledge him when he was with his friends, would never so much as meet Liam’s eyes. The one time Liam tried to approach him, Pitr’s glare was so swift, so angry, it haunted Liam for weeks—weeks in which Pitr completely disappeared. Liam had messed up. He hadn’t followed the rules that kept them safe, the ones Pitr already knew, and Liam had become a risk to them both.

But just as abruptly, Pitr returned to the library, Liam’s mug in hand, as if nothing had ever happened. If Pitr could pretend, then so could he.

Because it was only a distraction, Liam told himself at first. It was better than his formulas that wouldn’t add up, than what waited for him in the rented room. But then: a hunger. A yearning. He didn’t want to have to hide. He wanted more than the scraps of Pitr’s life offered up between gasps for air in the bathroom, the mirror over the sink thickly fogged. He wanted—needed—more.

If he voiced it, though, he feared losing Pitr completely. Damning them both.

Finally, toward the semester’s close, long after most sensible students had gone home, they ended up studying side by side in the dark corners of the special collections. Pitr brushed his fingers against Liam’s, and a secret frisson ran through him, crisper and more overwhelming than anything they’d already shared. He scooted his chair closer and watched Pitr as he scrawled out his thesis notes.