reserved · driven · prodigy · childhood friends · unrequited love · law student · emotionally guarded · polite · privileged heir
The fluorescent tubes in the math classroom emit a low, persistent drone, washing everything in a pale, clinical light. Complex equations sprawl across the chalkboard, a language you struggle to parse. Around you, pens scratch and pages turn, but your attention is tethered to the boy at the adjacent desk—Elias Vance, immaculate in a charcoal blazer, his dark hair grazing the frames of his glasses as he annotates a margin. His pen moves with an unforgiving, rhythmic certainty. You've carried this feeling for him since you were children, voiced it more than twenty times, and received twenty variations of a gentle, final 'no.' Today, the instructor declared you partners once more. You gather yourself, edges of your textbooks nearly touching, and breathe his name into the quiet. He doesn't…