Chapter 2
Malik
Malik trailed Lincoln up the marble steps, passing through the library’s double doors in the wake of an undergraduate who held them open with an absent swipe of his backpack. There had never been a moment where he felt every bit of his forty-five years of age.
The evening air inside bit sharp, colder than expected, the vents set low for winter but blasting regardless.
Every footfall pressed static from the carpet, deadening their steps but setting the skin on Malik’s arms to prickling.
It was a different kind of cold than the one on the streets, the kind engineered for books and discipline, not comfort.
Behind them, the reception’s drone faded.
No more forced laughter or cluster conversations circling punch bowls.
Here, in the anteroom just past the vestibule, space widened.
Malik waited for Lincoln to set the pace.
Lincoln did, as always. A brisk stride, hands pocketed deep, head down as if determined not to look back at the party they’d fled.
Malik’s attention snagged on the new brass plaque to their left. A rectangle, polished to catch every overhead beam, already developing the faintest patina from campus humidity and the oils of countless fingers.
Their names in equal font, no honorifics, the spacing clean and uncompromising. A single line of inscription beneath, something about “joint contributions to classical and diasporic scholarship,” but the effect was all about the names.
Lincoln’s gaze skipped over the plaque, then returned to it with a flick of annoyance. Malik stopped in front of it, blocking the corridor. Lincoln halted, impatience telegraphed in a subtle flex of his jaw.
“You can’t even look at it?” Malik’s voice was pitched low, muffled by the stacks beyond. The air caught the words and held them between the two men.
Lincoln’s eyes flicked up, then sideways. “It’s not the font I would’ve chosen.”
Malik huffed, arms crossing before he realized the gesture was a cliché. He uncrossed them, let his fingers rest against his elbows. “I doubt you picked the wall, either.”
Lincoln exhaled a dry sound. “I didn’t pick any of this.”
Malik absorbed the words, aware of the hollow behind his ribs, the absence that had followed since the symposium started.
The gap between what they performed and what had buzzed under every word exchanged since Lincoln had informed him that they needed to be in a fake relationship for the next two days.
Fake was starting to feel like something more. It wasn’t a secret that both he and Lincoln were gay, but in all the years that he’d been friends with Emmy, he’d never looked at Lincoln as anything other than his friends older brother.
He forced himself to look away from the plaque.
Instead, he studied Lincoln’s profile in the museum-bright light.
The deep lines cut along his mouth from decades of restraint, the pale skin over high cheekbones, the salt overtaking pepper in his beard, visible even in the blue cast of evening.
Malik’s own reflection barely registered in the glass.
He stood in Lincoln’s shadow, metaphorically and literally, and couldn’t decide if that was comfort or indictment.
The librarian had once described this annex as “hermetic,” and Malik saw now what she meant. The further in, the less outside world existed. Silence pressed, and so did the chill. Lincoln’s coat was wool, heavy and academic.
Malik’s was a lighter canvas, practical for short commutes but not the long Midwestern winter. Still, a bead of sweat had started at the base of his neck, tracing under his shirt collar. He recognized the signs. Anticipation, anger, the kind of longing that came with physical proximity and denial.
Lincoln shifted, weight from one heel to the other.
It was nothing, but Malik saw the ripple in his thigh through the tailored pants.
Hands still pocketed, but now the left thumb stuck out, tracing a nervous half-moon on the seam.
Malik wanted to touch that hand, not for comfort but to force some kind of reaction.
Instead, he said, “Four hours. That’s how long we’ve lasted without one of our usual arguments.”
Lincoln’s mouth quirked. “Is that a challenge?”
“It’s an observation.” Malik moved half a step closer, closing the distance so their shoes almost overlapped.
He inhaled paper, dust, a trace of the cinnamon coffee Lincoln favored.
Underneath, the scent of the man himself.
It grounded Malik, made the library less a place and more a box, a testing site for what came next.
“You sure about this?” Lincoln asked, but the question didn’t sound like a warning.
Malik’s hand found the edge of the plaque, tracing the sharp seam between metal and wall. “I’m sure you want to keep pretending, but I don’t think you can do it anymore.”
Lincoln’s head tipped forward, gaze pinned to the carpet. The fingers of his right hand twitched in his pocket, then stilled. “What do you think happens if we stop?”
Malik’s chest pulled tight. “We find out.” The words felt heavier than the air itself.
The hiss of Lincoln’s breath through his nose reached Malik’s ears. Then Lincoln looked up, eyes meeting Malik’s full-on for the first time since the dedication ceremony an hour ago.
Malik took another step. Now only an arm’s length between them. Lincoln’s chin rose, defiance and surrender both. Neither man reached for the other, but the contact might as well have been skin to skin.
A door somewhere down the hall opened. A student’s voice, raised in laughter, then muffled as the door shut again. Lincoln’s jaw set harder. Malik braced, expecting retreat. Lincoln didn’t move.
Malik’s tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth, words stacking but refusing to emerge. He wanted to say:
If we’re going to keep up the charade, we might as well do it honestly.
Instead, he stepped forward again, until he could see the stubble on Lincoln’s jaw, the way his throat moved with each shallow swallow.
“You’re blocking the hallway,” Lincoln murmured.
“Move me,” Malik said.
Lincoln’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t step aside. His pulse throbbed visible in his neck, a small betrayal. Malik leaned in, enough that his chest brushed Lincoln’s shoulder, then let the contact linger. He could have made it a joke, but there was nothing funny about the heat under his skin.
Lincoln’s lips parted, and Malik recognized the microsecond when intent shifted from deflection to invitation.
He didn’t seize the moment, didn’t break the tension.
He let it ride out, savoring the instability, the sense that everything they’d built might collapse in this empty corridor with its bad lighting and mismatched floor tiles.
Lincoln didn’t move away. If anything, he pressed into the contact, making Malik aware of every inch of overlap. For a man who’d made a profession of detachment, Lincoln was terrible at hiding the truth. Always had been.
A minute, maybe less. Malik had stopped keeping track. All he knew was that when he pulled back, the imprint of Lincoln’s heat stayed on his coat, and the air between them had changed. Lincoln’s hand slipped out of his pocket. It hovered at his side, not reaching for Malik, not retreating either.
“We should get back,” Lincoln said, but the words lacked force.
Malik nodded. “Yeah.”
But neither of them moved for several seconds, both aware the next step would set something in motion neither wanted to call by name.
“This pretense wears thin.” Malik heard the words leave his mouth, saw the ripple they sent through Lincoln’s face via a tightened jaw, eyes darting left then right as if escape routes might open in the walls.
The silence of the stacks amplified everything.
Malik advanced, closing the last of the distance.
He’d meant it as provocation, but the words were a confession.
Lincoln recovered faster than expected. “We agreed,” he said, voice raw enough to register as accusation. “For Emmy.”
Malik matched the stare, refused to drop his gaze. “You feel it too.”
Lincoln’s shoulders straightened, a last stand of dignity.
He was an expert at denial, containment, the art of pretending all heat could be redirected into academic rigor.
Malik had watched him do it across podiums, in faculty lounges, at the dinner tables of family and not-quite family.
The man could box a feeling and shelve it for years, but Malik knew exactly where those boxes were stored.
Lincoln’s right hand twitched up, as if to gesture, then dropped.
Malik recognized the impulse to reach for a lectern, a book, anything but the man in front of him.
Malik gave him no out. He reached, fingers grazing the wool of Lincoln’s sleeve.
A touch so light it might be accidental, plausible deniability if either wanted it.
Lincoln’s reaction was instant. His left hand clamped around Malik’s wrist, strong and unyielding. The move was defensive, but the contact lingered, thumb pressing into the pulse point just under the skin.
“You’re not making this easier,” Lincoln said, barely above a whisper.
Malik’s lips curled. “Not my job.”
The grip tightened, then loosened, as if Lincoln debated whether to push Malik away or drag him closer.
Malik settled the question, using his free hand to catch Lincoln at the elbow and pull.
He expected resistance, maybe even a scene.
A shove, a curse, the kind of public outburst that would let them both pretend it was an aberration.
Instead, Lincoln resisted for half a second, enough to maintain the fiction of reluctance, then closed the last gap.
Their chests pressed together. Malik felt the heat instantly.
Every line of tension, every muscle gone rigid to keep from trembling.
Lincoln’s breath cut short, and Malik’s heart kicked into a sprint, a deep throb in his sternum.