Norman's dorm room was too quiet at 2:37 a.m.
The kind of quiet that pressed against your eardrums until you could hear your own blood moving through your veins. Caleb had stumbled in around midnight, drunk on cheap vodka and someone else's laughter, then passed out face-down on his bed without even kicking off his sneakers. His soft, uneven snores filled the small space like white noise, but they did nothing to drown out the storm inside Norman's head.
He sat cross-legged on his own bed, laptop balanced on a pillow, the blue screen glow painting his face ghostly pale. The document open in front of him was titled simply: Close Reading – Eliot.
The cursor blinked at him accusingly.
He had started the paper three times already.
Deleted everything each time.
The assignment was straightforward on the surface. Choose one poem from the modernist section of the anthology. Perform a close reading. Five to seven pages. Analyze language, imagery, structure, tone. Show how the text fractures meaning and refuses to repair it. Show the damage.
Duke's voice echoed in his skull every time he tried to type a sentence.
Don't hide behind the text.
Let it hurt.
Let it show.
Norman dragged both hands through his hair until it stood up in wild spikes.
He stared at the blank page until his eyes burned.
He knew which poem he wanted.
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
The one Duke had quoted from memory on the first day, voice low and intimate, as though the words belonged to him personally. The one about measuring life in coffee spoons, about being pinned like an insect on a wall, about daring to eat a peach and drowning in the chambers of the sea.
It was the poem that had made Norman feel seen for the first time in his life.
He opened a new line.
The cursor waited.
He typed one sentence.
In T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," the speaker is trapped in a perpetual state of hesitation, his desire to act forever outstripped by the terror of being truly known.
He stared at the words.
They were safe.
Academic.
Correct.
They were also a lie.
He deleted them.
Tried again.
The speaker of "Prufrock" is not merely indecisive; he is terrified of intimacy because he knows, deep in the marrow of his bones, that to be seen completely is to be destroyed.
Better.
But still not enough.
He kept typing, faster now, the words spilling out like blood from a wound he had finally stopped pretending wasn't there.
He wrote about the yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, how it moves like a cat but never quite commits to affection.
He wrote about the women coming and going, talking of Michelangelo, how they are beautiful and terrifying and utterly unreachable.
He wrote about the bald spot in the middle of his life, the thinning hair, the rolled trousers, the fear that everything he is will be measured and found wanting.
And somewhere between the third and fourth page, the paper stopped being about Prufrock.
It became about him.
About the way he had walked into that lecture hall three days ago feeling small and invisible, and how one look from Duke Brandon had pinned him in place like a specimen under glass.
About how he had spent every moment since trying to decide whether he wanted to run or beg to be dissected further.
About how the thought of those gray eyes seeing straight through him made his stomach twist with something that felt like fear and hunger at once.
He wrote:
The speaker asks, "Do I dare / Disturb the universe?"
But the real question is quieter, more devastating: Do I dare let someone see me?
Do I dare let someone know that beneath the careful composure there is only a trembling thing that wants to be touched, even if it means being broken?
His fingers shook on the keys.
He kept going.
He wrote about the overwhelming question that is never spoken, the one that hangs in the air like smoke between two people who should never be in the same room together.
He wrote about the arms that are braceleted and white, about the perfume that lingers on dresses, about how everything sensual and forbidden is always just out of reach.
He wrote until the sky outside turned the bruised purple of pre-dawn.
When he finally stopped, the document was six and a half pages long.
Single-spaced.
No formatting.
No citations.
Just raw, bleeding confession disguised as literary analysis.
He read it through once.
His throat closed.
He read it again.
Tears blurred the screen.
Because it wasn't just about the poem.
It was about Duke's voice reading the lines in class.
It was about the thumb on his throat in the rain.
It was about the way Duke had said his name in the café, soft and dangerous.
It was about the way Duke had looked at him in the office, like he was something precious and lethal at the same time.
Norman saved the document.
He titled it: Prufrock – Final.
He did not change the formatting.
He did not add citations.
He did not make it safe.
He attached it to an email.
Subject line: Close Reading Assignment – Norman Reed
He hovered over the send button for a full minute.
His heart was beating so hard it hurt.
He clicked send.
The little whoosh sound felt like a gunshot.
He slammed the laptop shut.
He crawled under the covers, fully clothed, and curled into a ball.
He waited for regret to come.
It didn't.
Instead, something hotter and more terrifying took its place.
Anticipation.
He imagined Duke opening the email in the quiet of his office.
Imagined those gray eyes moving over the words.
Imagined the exact moment Duke realized the paper was not about Prufrock at all.
It was a confession.
It was a dare.
It was a plea.
Do I dare disturb the universe?
Norman pressed his face into the pillow.
He whispered into the dark, voice muffled and shaking,
"Please read it."
He did not sleep.
Across campus, in the silent house on Maple Street, Duke's phone chimed once at 4:12 a.m.
He was awake.
He always was at that hour.
He reached for the device on the nightstand, opened the email without thinking.
The attachment loaded.
He began to read.
By the second paragraph, his breathing had changed.
By the fourth, his hand had tightened around the phone so hard the case creaked.
When he reached the line about daring to be known, about the terror of being touched even if it meant being broken, he stopped.
He stared at the screen.
The room was completely dark except for the blue glow illuminating his face.
He read the last sentence again.
And again.
Then he set the phone down carefully.
He leaned back against the headboard.
He closed his eyes.
His chest rose and fell too quickly.
He whispered into the empty bedroom, voice raw and almost reverent,
"You beautiful, reckless boy."
He did not delete the email.
He did not mark it unread.
He left it open.
And as the first gray light of dawn began to bleed through the curtains, Duke Brandon sat in the dark with his heart pounding like it had not pounded in years.
He knew what came next.
He knew he should stop it.
He also knew he would not.
Because the paper was not an assignment.
It was a door.
And Duke had already stepped through it.