He likes me, he likes me, he likes me.

Jamie felt silly, like a little kid on a playground consulting plucked daisy petals for relationship advice, but that brief conversation with Bennett buoyed Jamie through the whole first week of his classes. Jamie had spent the Sunday night after his first meeting with Bennett moping in bed, looking up at the low slanted ceiling and feeling sorry for himself.

Now, though, nothing was different but everything had changed.

He likes me.

Bennett's accidental admission had been enough for Jamie, validation that Jamie hadn't imagined their connection, that Jamie wasn't the only one suffering from the sweet ache of pining for someone he couldn't have.

Nothing is going to happen, Jamie told himself over and over, as he washed dishes and while he biked to class and when he fell asleep. It didn't seem to be sinking in, though.

On Friday, he and Kit met up for dinner. Most of Jamie's friends had graduated last year, and he felt slightly unmoored. Over the summer, he'd gravitated towards Kit, who was gentle and charming and usually up for an adventure whenever they weren't foraging in a dumpster.

"Hey Milo," Jamie said as he walked up to the table where Kit was already seated. Milo was morose and seemed to be a little drunk already, which, granted, was Milo's baseline state.

"Milo's just had a bad breakup," Kit said, reaching over to pat Milo's back as Milo grimaced. "So I hauled him out of the house so he'd stop pitying himself."

"Sorry about that," Jamie said, taking a seat. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No," Milo sighed. "Well, yes. I want to whine about it, but Kit's already heard it all ten times before."

Kit nodded.

"I have," Kit said. "But don't hold back on my account—it's never stopped you." Kit grinned.

"You'd think after this many breakups I'd be used to them, and yet." Milo stirred his drink, lost in contemplation.

"How did your date go?" Kit said, looking at Jamie. "You never texted me back."

"Oh," Jamie said. "It, uh, didn't go."

Kit frowned.

"What happened?"

Oh god, Jamie thought. He should have predicted this and come up with some better story.

"He ended up having to cancel and… it just didn't work out," Jamie said vaguely.

Also he's the professor I'm assigned to and I definitely think about fucking him all the goddamn time and he totally admitted he's into me but whatever.

"You're not gonna reschedule?"

"Nah," Jamie said, shrugging like it didn't matter. Kit was regarding him closely, and he prayed they didn't ask for more info.

"Oh," Kit said finally. "Well, that's too bad. You seemed really into him."

"I'm taking a vow of celibacy if you'd like to join me," Milo offered, and Jamie was grateful for the subject change.

The server came and they ordered. Jamie always walked a careful line between being frugal and allowing himself to actually have experiences. It was one of the reasons he'd worked so hard to find such cheap housing—he'd rather spend his money trying new food and exploring new parts of the city, doing all the things he'd never had a chance to until he moved away from Welch, Georgia.

"Oh, I meant to ask," Kit said after their food had arrived. "How's your class going? The one you're TAing for?"

Walked right into that one, Jamie thought. This whole week, Jamie had felt a bit like he was caught in a house of mirrors, where every time he turned around, some reminder of Bennett was reflected back to him at a different angle.

"It's good so far," Jamie said. "The professor is… brilliant. I wish I'd had him when I took the class."

Brilliant was a bit of an understatement. The information itself wasn't new, but Bennett was absolutely spellbinding when he lectured. He had a way of making the driest information compelling, and Jamie hung onto every word.

It didn't hurt that it gave Jamie an excuse stare at Bennett without interruption for ninety minutes every Monday and Wednesday morning.

"Who're you with?" Milo asked. Milo was a grad student in the writing department and Jamie realized it was highly likely Milo would know Bennett at least in passing.

"Professor Marlowe," Jamie said, trying to keep his voice neutral.

"Bennett Marlowe?" Milo said, and both he and Kit looked impressed.

"Yeah," Jamie said, looking down at his french fries with great interest. "Have you had a class with him?"

"No, unfortunately. God, I'm jealous," Milo said rather wistfully, and Jamie felt an odd, completely irrational pang of territorialism.

"Er, why?" Jamie asked.

"Well, he's very famous, you know that, right?" Milo said, taking a sip of his drink. Both Milo and Kit were working their way through the fancy cocktail menu, trading sips of exotically colored beverages with strange garnishes.

"No," Jamie said.

"Yeah, you've really never heard of him?"

"Should I have?" Jamie said.

"You forget that Jamie is a little newborn babe," Kit said to Milo. "That whole thing happened when he was in middle school or something?"

"What whole thing?" Jamie said, looking back and forth between his two friends who were being infuriatingly cryptic.

"It was major news," Kit said. "In—god, I don't even remember what country now—there was some hostage situation at the U.S. embassy—Milo, do you know what happened?"

"I don't really remember the specifics," Milo said. "It was a mess, though. I'm sure it's all on Wikipedia. Anyway, he got badly injured and after that sort of dropped off the face of the earth. Stopped writing, and then a while later started teaching at Bellamy."

Jamie's eyes were wide. Bellamy had its fair share of impressive faculty, but Jamie had had no idea about any of this. He thought about Bennett's stiff gait, the way he favored one leg as he lectured from the front of the class, about the strange, sad sort of distance in Bennett's eyes in the picture Jamie had taken of him the night they'd met.

"What's he like?"

Jamie shook himself and realized Milo was talking to him.

"In person, I mean," Milo said. "He's always seemed a bit… well, terrifying when I've seen him around school."

Jamie hesitated, trying to figure out how best to describe Bennett, how he was stoic and sad and sweet all at once.

"He's… complicated," Jamie said after a moment.

Kit snorted.

"That's a very diplomatic way to call someone an asshole," they said, reaching across the table to steal a french fry and chewing on it thoughtfully.

"No—" Jamie said quickly. "I don't mean that—I mean, he's… a little… prickly sometimes? But—like, he snapped at me once and then apologized and… he treats me like another adult human being rather than just some dumb student, you know?"

"You sound like you've got a bit of a crush," Kit said, raising a carefully sculpted eyebrow.

"Look, he's blushing," Milo said. "I mean, don't get me wrong, he's definitely hot. Not really my type, but I wouldn't kick him out of bed."

"Milo, you wouldn't kick anyone out of bed."

"Fair point," Milo said.

"So, uh, what happened with you and the guy you were seeing?" Jamie said, desperate to change the subject.

Milo launched into a long meandering story involving a lot of people Jamie didn't know. Milo had fantastically bad luck with guys, it seemed, and for a moment Jamie wished he could tell his friends about the odd circumstances under which he and Bennett had met for the first time—they'd probably think it was hysterical.

But instead, Jamie just nodded, half-listening to Milo as he thought about Bennett.

* * *

When Jamie got home, he immediately opened his laptop. The screen glowed a blinding white-blue, and his fingers hesitated, twitching, above the keyboard.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Jamie typed Bennett Marlowe into his browser and hit search.

It felt like an invasion of privacy, somehow, as if he were spying on Bennett by reading information readily available on the internet. And readily available it was—Milo and Kit hadn't been joking about whatever had happened being major news.

Jamie ignored the lurid headlines for the moment, clicking on the Wikipedia link. The picture was Bennett with his arm around a petite brunette woman, who was grinning up at him. Jamie's heart lurched.

Marlowe with wife Michelle Marlowe (now divorced).

Interesting, Jamie thought. He chewed absently on a hangnail as he read further. Bennett was thirty-nine, had grown up just outside of Baltimore and, like Jamie, was an only child. He'd had a quiet childhood, and after he graduated college, he'd gotten a low-level job at a newspaper.

Jamie was completely absorbed, starting intently at his computer screen as he read about how Bennett had soared to prominence, about the awards he'd won and the places he'd traveled and the stories he'd broken.

Holy shit, Jamie thought. He tasted the sharp tang of blood and realized he'd still been gnawing at his fingernail.

He scrolled further to the section titled Hostage Crisis. Jamie felt almost drunk on this wellspring of knowledge about Bennett, of the chance to learn as much as he possibly could about this person who'd taken up residence in every corner of Jamie's mind.

It was frustratingly short, detailing only that Bennett had been involved and confirming that he'd sustained a bad injury. Following his return to the United States, he'd disappeared from the public eye.

There was a link to an in-depth article about the incident which Jamie ignored for now. The guilt was back—it was one thing to learn that Bennett's father was an accountant or that he'd majored in journalism at Columbia, but it was another thing to pore over the gruesome details of an international crisis that had resulted in the deaths of multiple people. It felt voyeuristic in a way, and Jamie couldn't do that to Bennett.

It was stupid, he knew, but if Jamie was going to find out the details of what happened, he wanted to hear them from Bennett.

Jamie put his computer away and got ready for bed. The bathroom was on the floor below him, and he waited in the hallway, toothbrush hanging from his mouth, as one of the other tenants washed their face.

Jamie couldn't sleep, though. His mind was going a million miles an hour, a thousand different thoughts zinging around. Jamie had known Bennett was extraordinary, and all this was confirmed by what Jamie had learned that night.

Fuck, Jamie thought, and even though he was completely alone, a low, roiling humiliation burned under his skin as he thought about how giddy he'd been that week.

Bennett was so far out of Jamie's league it was absurd. He'd been trekking across different continents and winning major journalism awards when Jamie was still in scribbling in coloring books in rural Georgia.

Other than being young and decently good-looking, Jamie had nothing to offer Bennett.

Jamie turned onto his side, burrowing into the covers. It was a warm night and stuffy in the attic, but he needed the comfort of being cocooned in his bed. Jamie had always had a tendency to fall hard for people—he developed crushes quickly, with abandon, and this time was no different.

I'm so fucked, he thought.

* * *

The next week of the semester went by easily, and Jamie settled into the new rhythm of his classes and work schedule. He'd hoped that over time his crush on Bennett might settle to a manageable simmer, but he had no such luck—in fact, it had only gotten worse.

It was Monday, and the first assignment of the semester was due. The assignment was a simple essay prompt, three pages long, and Bennett had told Jamie it was really just a way for him to get a sense of who could actually string a sentence together and who would need more help.

"Jamie—" Bennett said as the students filed out at the end of the lecture. Jamie was clutching the large stack of papers they'd just turned in.

"You don't need to worry about grading these ones," Bennett said, holding out his hand for the papers.

Jamie's face fell.

"Oh," he said, still holding tight to the stack. "Er—okay."

Bennett gave him a strange look.

"Did you… want to grade them?"

Jamie shifted, his face heating up.

"Kind of? Is that weird?" he said. "This is my first real TA duty, you know?"

Jamie could see the ghost of a smile on Bennett's lips.

"I… hadn't thought of it like that," Bennett said, and then his face was serious again. "But I'm going to have to go over whatever you grade and I want to get them back to the class by next week."

"You don't trust me?" Jamie said, raising an eyebrow.

"Absolutely not," Bennett said, and there was a hint of amusement in his expression, so faint Jamie barely saw it—but it was there. Jamie lived for those moments, when he managed to break past Bennett's stoic walls.

"Why don't we grade them together?" Jamie said. "That way you can check if I'm doing it right. I can just come to your office and work there."

Jamie was willing to admit his motives weren't very pure. He didn't care about the grading as much as he just wanted to a chance to spend time with Bennett, regardless of the context.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea," he said.

"Why not?" Jamie said innocently and Bennett pressed his lips together.

"Fine," Bennett said. "Come by during office hours."

The subtext was clear—you can come, but only when the door will be open and there's a high chance of other students dropping in and out.

"Perfect. I'll see you tomorrow."

He liked the idea of Bennett not trusting them to be alone together.

* * *

Jamie liked Bennett's office. It was very… Bennett, he thought, not that he knew Bennett well. It wasn't a huge space, but it was filled with all sorts of strange artifacts that Bennett had clearly picked up while traveling the world. The windows were tall, and outside the campus was lush, with clusters of students sunbathing or playing Frisbee on the quad.

"Hello," Jamie said, knocking on the doorframe. Bennett had been frowning at his computer and he glanced up, looking disoriented. "Still a good time to grade?"

"Oh, yes," Bennett said, gesturing to the chair on the other side of his desk. Jamie flopped down, pulling the stack of papers out of his bag. Bennett cleared a space on the desk for Jamie to work—his own papers and books were scattered everywhere.

"How are your other classes going?" Jamie said.

Bennett blinked.

"Good," he said, like he'd never participated in a casual conversation before.

"Which ones are you teaching?" Jamie said, plucking a red pen from his bag.

"Are you here to grade or interview me?" Bennett said, but there was a smile in his eyes. He was so handsome, all rugged and stern, which just made it more captivating when he smiled.

"Just curious," Jamie said, shrugging.

"This is my only lower level course," Bennett said. "I also teach two advanced writing seminars."

"What's your favorite thing to teach?"

Bennett looked mildly amused.

"I usually prefer working with upperclassmen," he said. "In smaller settings. So a lecture was… not what I'd been expecting, but they needed someone and it fit into my schedule." He shrugged.

"Well, you're really good at it—lecturing I mean," Jamie said. Bennett raised an eyebrow. "No, seriously, I mean it—you make the really boring stuff interesting. And it's obvious you're a total genius."

"I've just been doing this for a long time, but thank you," Bennett said, lifting his hand to stop Jamie. "Now, grading—why don't you grade one according to the rubric. I'll look it over after and make sure you're on the right track."

"Right, sure," Jamie said, scooting his chair up to the desk. He would have happily spent the afternoon asking Bennett increasingly prying questions but there were a hundred papers to get through.

He glanced down at the first paper, pretending not to watch Bennett watch him. He wondered what Bennett saw, if he was just some kid in Bennett's eyes.

He wondered if Bennett could ever take him seriously, could ever love someone like him.

Christ, get it together, Jamie, he told himself. Get to work.

He fell into the rhythm of reading and responding to the paper in front of him. It was decent—not good, but not bad either, and Jamie realized how much his own writing ability had grown in the years he'd been at Bellamy. He didn't consider himself a writer by any stretch, but it was gratifying to see how easy it was now to pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses in the assignment.

"Okay, done," Jamie said, setting down his pen. The assignment was now covered in Jamie's spiky, cramped handwriting. Bennett looked up from his own grading and accepted the paper from Jamie. Jamie watched as Bennett skimmed it, his brow furrowed in concentration in that endearing way that was quickly becoming familiar.

Bennett put the paper down and glanced up at Jamie.

"Well," he said, and Jamie's heart dropped. "This is very good feedback, but—if you keep going like this we're not going to be done with these papers until Christmas."

"Oh," Jamie said. "Sorry."

"No, no, it's not a bad thing," Bennett said, handing the paper back to Jamie. "You graded too well." He smiled, and Jamie's heart soared just as quickly as it had fallen. It was exhausting and exhilarating all at once to be around Bennett, to be so desperate for his approval.

"I see," Jamie said. "Well, I'll try to suck a little more next time—" He realized what he'd just said and quickly shuffled the papers, grabbing the next one as his face heated up.

It's fine, definitely haven't spent the last week imagining crawling under the desk and blowing you, he thought.

He got to work, trying to be a little less effusive with his feedback. It went faster this time, and slowly the pile of finished papers began to grow.

"I'm going to make coffee," Bennett said, standing up. "Do you want any?"

"God, yes," Jamie said.

Bennett leaned over to a small table Jamie hadn't noticed before and grabbed an electric kettle, leaving the office to fill it up. Jamie immediately stood up, going to the bookshelves to more closely examine all the weird things Bennett had on the shelves.

He was peering at a little beautifully sculpted wood figurine when Bennett came back.

"I—was just looking at—" Jamie said as Bennett raised an eyebrow.

"I got that in Kenya," Bennett said. "It was a gift from a friend I made in Nairobi." He set the kettle back on its stand and clicked it on and set about filling a small french press with ground coffee beans. The coffee smelled strong and rich, much better than the thin instant powder Jamie was used to gulping down.

Jamie sat back down, not quite ready to go back to working.

"What was your favorite country?"

Bennett gave Jamie a strange look, like he was searching for some ulterior motive beyond simple curiosity.

"I… liked different countries for different reasons. I really liked Croatia and Thailand," he said.

"That's so cool," Jamie said, and he could feel his whole face light up. "I've never been out of the country—god, even going to Canada would be awesome."

"I've been… very lucky to travel so much," he said.

"Do you miss it?" Jamie said. "Traveling? And like, reporting?"

Bennett's expression was suddenly shuttered, like a cloud passing over the sun.

"You still have a lot of papers to grade," he said shortly. "You should probably get back to work."

Jamie said nothing and returned to the assignments. He'd clearly stumbled onto a sore subject, and it took all his willpower not to keep pushing.

He fell back into concentration, and was startled when a steaming mug of coffee appeared in his periphery.

"Oh," he said, lifting his head. "Thank you."

"I should probably cut back," Bennett said, blowing on his own mug. The steam curled up, golden in the late afternoon sun. "But… that's not going to happen any time soon. Cream or sugar?"

"Nah, black is fine," Jamie said.

"Good, because I don't have cream or sugar," Bennett said, and Jamie laughed.

"I'd definitely get a caffeine IV drip if I could," Jamie said. He took a sip and moaned. "Holy shit, this is so good. I usually just get that instant shit because it's cheap and try and chug it as quickly as I can."

Bennett made a face.

"That's a travesty," he said.

"Broke college student," Jamie protested. "Hey, I was gonna ask—"

"Is this about grading?" Bennett interrupted.

"Not exactly…"

"Get back to work," Bennett said, but his voice was kind. "No more distractions."

Jamie grumbled but did as he was told.

* * *

Jamie wished he had someone to talk to about Bennett. He couldn't stop himself from picking apart every interaction they had, overanalyzing the smallest inflections and facial expressions, as though, if he looked hard enough, he'd find a way into Bennett's mind.

He was totally infatuated, he knew that much—but while his own obsession was only growing, there were no signs that the feeling was reciprocated. Whenever Jamie asked Bennett about himself or tried to strike up a conversation beyond the ethics class, Bennett was polite and distant, like they were strangers on the subway.

In the weeks that followed, Jamie spent as much time as he could in Bennett's office, coming up with the thinnest pretenses to get himself there. It was obvious, he knew, but he couldn't help himself. He felt embarrassed to see himself acting like a little puppy, practically panting and wagging his tail any time Bennett so much looked at him.

Jamie felt all tangled up in his thoughts, and so one afternoon, he grabbed his camera and found himself wandering through a neighborhood he'd never been to before. The camera helped, he'd discovered, when he was trying to process something, got his brain operating on another wavelength where it was easier to think about tough things.

The problem was that Jamie had a tendency to let his wishful thinking get the best of him. He was optimistic, but, like a Greek tragedy, his strength was also his downfall. Case in point: the whole fiasco with Finn last year.

Jamie had been totally head-over-heels for Finn for a good part of the fall semester, which wasn't that surprising. Finn was kind and smart and good-looking, and he'd been nice to Jamie. Deep down, Jamie had known Finn wasn't interested, but he'd ignored that warning voice in the back of his mind, obsessively checking his phone and waiting for a response whenever he texted Finn and look for signs that his crush might be reciprocated.

Jamie stumbled across a little park, barely bigger than a city block. The trees were starting to turn now but hadn't fallen, and Jamie felt like he was a million miles from civilization as he wandered down the path. His goal this fall was to take photos of the fiery autumn foliage for his grandma, who'd never seen real fall colors like they had up here.

He crouched down near a fallen log, snapping a few pictures of a brilliant beetle that ambled across the moss, and thought about the previous fall. He still was embarrassed by the night he'd kissed Finn, and since then, he'd lost a lot of his confidence when it came to other guys. It figured that the one guy he'd finally gotten his nerve up to talk to was completely off-limits.

So he was stuck, really. Bennett probably wasn't interested anymore, if he ever really had been in the first place.

Jamie stood up and growled in frustration, kicking at the dirt. He was tired of pining after people who didn't want him back.

* * *

Jamie was having a bad day. He'd misread the syllabus in his Middle Eastern Conflict class and been totally unprepared for their quiz, and there was something wrong with his bike—the gears clanked ominously whenever he went uphill. He was concerned about his grandma, too—she'd never admit anything, but he couldn't help feeling like she sounded different on the phone, tired and distracted. Whenever he mentioned it, she changed the subject, and he was left wondering if he was imagining things.

Yesterday he'd offered to take care of the handouts for the next class, and so after his last class he trekked to the writing department office to use the copier there.

"Hey," Jamie said to the woman at the reception desk. "I'm a TA with Professor Marlowe and I need to use the copier—he said it would be okay."

"Sure thing, sweetheart," she said, pointing to the machine in the corner. "Right over there. You know how to work it?"

"Yeah, I think so," Jamie said.

He quickly regretted it, though. The machine kept stopping after it printed out three copies, and at this rate he'd be there until morning. He turned around to ask, but the woman had disappeared.

"Goddamnit," Jamie muttered, punching buttons at random. A paper tray popped open and he shut it again. "Will you just behave please? I have shit to do."

He hit start and the copier grumbled and emitted a loud grating sound.

"Fuck," Jamie said. ERROR blinked in large, aggressive letters on the display screen.

"What's going on here?" a voice said. Jamie started and looked up to see Dr. Archer, the head of the department standing before him.

"Er—I think something's wrong with the copier," Jamie said, gesturing helplessly at the machine, which sounded like it was pretending to be a garbage disposal at this point.

"Are you a student? Why were you using the department copier? If you have something to print, you need to use the computer lab."

Dr. Archer was notoriously temperamental, but Jamie had never interacted with him before. The tone of his voice was harsh and cruel, though, and some feral part of Jamie deep inside him tensed.

"I—I'm a student, yeah, but I was printing out—for a class—" Jamie stammered. Dr. Archer's already ruddy face was getting darker, and his eyes glinted.

It was a look Jamie had seen before on someone else, and he felt a flash of fear.

"Did you break it?" Dr. Archer demanded.

"No—I mean—yes—I didn't mean to—"

Jamie's heart was pounding all of proportion for the situation.

Calm down, don't do this, not now, he told himself, but it was no use.

"Well, what did you do to it?" Dr. Archer was saying, and he took a step closer—he was so much taller than Jamie, and broad-shouldered, and he seemed to take up the whole room. Jamie flinched and stepped back.

"I—I—I don't know—"

"I have a meeting in five minutes," Dr. Archer said, louder now, and his voice felt like metal clanging in Jamie's skull. Blood pounded in Jamie's ears.

"Please—I'm sorry—"

"Sorry isn't going to get my papers printed—"

Jamie's vision was going a little dark at the edges, and he could feel his hands shaking—and something very strange happened.

His consciousness seemed to have fractured—he was watching himself, standing in front of the copier, stammering and cowering as Dr. Archer said something about wasting university resources, but layered on top and in between the scene was something else, fragments of memories decades old, of hiding in closets and under the kitchen table as voices raged and plates shattered, of the panicky dread of trying to be good but never seeming to be good enough—

Jamie squeezed his eyes shut, his breath coming in short, ragged bursts. He wanted to run, but his legs were frozen, rooted to the ground.

There was a hand on his back, and Jamie flinched, but it was a good touch—warm and firm against him, grounding and soothing—

"—too far, Greg—" a voice was saying—Bennett.

Dr. Archer's voice was still raised, striking that primal chord deep inside Jamie that made all rational thought curl up like a hurt dog, but Jamie couldn't make out the words.

Only Bennett's voice seemed to penetrate through those electric, shimmering waves of anxiety.

"—completely inappropriate way to speak to a student—" Jamie had never heard Bennett's voice like this, fierce and protective and angry.

And then they were moving—miraculously, Jamie's feet seemed to move of their own accord, and that hand was guiding him out of the office. He protested weakly, saying something about the papers still in the copier, though he barely knew what he was saying, and Bennett shushed him.

Bennett was saying something else, his voice calm and even like he were talking to a spooked horse, and Jamie focused all his attention on the hand at his back, to keep himself from spiraling out of his body again and back into the past.