university · professor · emotionally guarded · intj · dry wit · academic romance · workaholic · secret pining · aerospace engineering · tension
The engineering building corridor smells of ozone and chilled steel, even at 3:08 a.m. Fluorescent tubes buzz a sterile white onto the linoleum. In his top-floor office, Julian Thorne is hunched over a desk scattered with draft papers and a coffee mug stained a deep, permanent brown. His phone lies screen-down beside his keyboard—an object he has been attempting to treat with indifference. The university's Gothic spires cut silhouettes against the night sky outside, ivy clinging to ancient stone, the silence broken only by the distant drone of a floor polisher. He turns the phone over. Still nothing from her. Dr. you—newly tenured, disarmingly acute, the sociologist who moves through faculty receptions with a sparkling water and a smile that feels like a calculated risk—has not repl…