Darcy took five years off school after her first year of undergrad. It was good life experience and she has no regrets, even when she looks at her more ambitious high school classmates' facebooks at two am and feels a little underwhelmed with her life's trajectory. It does, however, make it inappropriate for her to have a crush on the tiny, adorable history nerd in her Sociology of Religions class. She's pretty sure he's a sophomore, and therefore nineteen and seven years younger than her. (If not even younger, given that he's clearly some kind of genius prodigy child.) But she can't help it. He wears amazing sweaters, and has half his head shaved with the rest of his blond hair swooped over in that hipster look she's a total sucker for.
He's also ridiculously smart, with a memory capacity that is hard to believe, and speaks with the kind of quiet, but rock solid conviction you don't find in many people under the age of forty. She never thought of history as one of her kinks, but the thought of lazy sex on her couch while he tells her all about the Vedic period of Indian history and the origins of Buddhism turns her on like woah.
She goes to a choir concert to support a friend and sees him in the third row, his voice shockingly deep for his tiny size. She stares at his mouth for the whole two hours. And his ears, which are a little too big and super adorable. And his eyes, intense and intensely blue behind his thick glasses, until she's seriously regretting giving up on choir back in high school.
It doesn't mean anything. Just one of those harmless crushes that mostly involve x-rated fantasies. Kind of like her crush on the hot redhead on So You Think You Can Dance, who makes Darcy burn with the way she moves, all soft curves and harsh lines.
So she's crushing on this kid and it's probably inappropriate and creepy, but whatever. It's just harmless, although certainly not innocent, fantasy material.
The next class they have after the concert, he actually talks to her for a non-class related reason. "Hey, uh, I saw you at the concert," he says, a flush coating his sharp cheekbones and making her both want to coo and do very, very dirty things until every inch of his pale skin has achieved that rosy pink color.
"Yeah. My friend Stacey was singing," she says with a bright smile and no hint of her lascivious thoughts.
"Right, Stacey," he says, his long, pale fingers fidgeting nervously with his pencil. "Were you, uh, were you watching me?"
Darcy contemplates nervousness for a moment before brushing it aside with a grin and a half shrug. "Yeah, I was. I think you're cute."
He stares at her, then flushes even brighter and looks down at his page of notes and doodles.
"Don't worry, I'm not planning on harassing you or anything," she tells him, her tone light and teasing, even as a part of her mourns the fantasy that won't be nearly as fun, and will be far more creepy, now that he knows about her little crush.
There's a pause and then he's looking at her, cheeks still flushed, but blue eyes intense and unblinking. "And what if I wanted you to harass me?"
Darcy smiles, a slow curve of her mouth as warmth spreads through her and lifts the brief fog of disappointment. "I'm sure I could manage something along those lines." She bites her lip, allowing herself to feel some nerves now that the fantasy might become reality. "You know I'm not a traditional college student, right? As in, I'm kind of old," she says, just to be very clear.
"Twenty-six isn't old," he retorts, then quirks a smile at her clear surprise. "I, uh, well I think you're gorgeous. And I may have asked around."
Darcy's grinning like crazy now, feeling a little flushed herself and not with embarrassment. "The things I'm going to do to you."
Steve is bright red, looking embarrassed, determined, and delighted. They can't talk after that, as the Professor calls the class to order, but Darcy doesn't absorb a single word of the lecture. She's got a long list of fantasies and an apparently willing and eager partner she can't wait to try them out with.
She just hopes he's as in to the nerdy talk during sex kink as she is.
After class, she lingers in the hallway until he vacates the classroom. He catches her gaze and blushes, then licks his lips before walking over to stand next to her. He's actually a bit taller than her, with deceptively broad shoulders that don't quite match his tiny frame. "So I don't have class right now, want to get some coffee?" he asks her, his cheeks still a little pink, but no hesitation in his voice.
"I would love to," she says with a grin. "You can tell me all the things I missed in class today because I was too busy thinking about you."
He grins at her with unexpected wickedness. "I was wondering why you were so quiet."
Darcy laughs. "Sassy, I like it. Although I resent your implication. I am certainly not the biggest chatterbox in that class."
Steve chuckles. "No, you're not."
"I'm guessing the campus Starbucks would offend your adorable hipster sensibilities," Darcy says with a wry twist of her lips as she hitches her messenger bag a little higher on her shoulder.
"More like my anti-capitalist sensibilities," Steve mutters under his breath, making Darcy laugh again.
"Well don't worry, I'm more of a Marx fan myself. How about that little pastry shop off Cherry? It's only a few blocks away."
He agrees and they set off. When they arrive, she orders green tea and a delightfully flaky raspberry scone. He orders black coffee and a muffin with crumbling sugar on top. She's distracted by that sugar when they sit down, and the way it clings to his mouth after he takes a neat bite of the muffin.
He catches her staring and purposefully licks his lips. She bites her lip in return and gives him her best bedroom eyes. They both start laughing after a moment, but there's hunger that's not for food when their eyes meet, and part of Darcy is seriously regretting not just inviting him over to her apartment instead of out for coffee.
Steve seems to share her distraction, shifting in his seat every time she licks her lips to catch the pastry flakes after a bite of her scone.
They both break at the same time. "Do you want to-" "We could just-"
Darcy grins. "I live off campus, three blocks away."
"You win," Steve says, knocking back the rest of his coffee and then standing. "Shall we?" he asks with gentlemanly courtesy that somehow suits the moment even though what he's really saying is let's go fuck.
Darcy digs it.
She digs what he looks like on her royal purple silk sheets even more.
There's a crumbling castle tattooed on his left shoulder blade, and Latin characters inked into his hip. She traces the letters with her tongue while he tries to tell her what they mean before dissolving into incoherent curses when she bites down.
She moves back up his body, nibbling on his earlobe before murmuring "Auribus teneo lupum" into his ear. He jolts, turning to stare at her with wide blue eyes, and she grins. "Even us non-geniuses can learn some latin. Now the question is, were you referring to life? Or your dick?"
He flushes and then laughs, a low and kind of raspy sound that makes her shiver in the best way. "Life. Although my best friend would enjoy your alternative interpretation."
"Mmm," she hums, sucking a mark into the soft skin between his throat and his sharp-edged collarbone. "You should introduce us sometime."
"Only if you promise not to fall in love with him," he tells her, only sounding half serious, and she laughs as she plants a kiss on the side of his mouth. "Unless he's your twin, I think we're safe. Apparently you're my type."
He grins at her, blue eyes wide and bright, and she kisses him for real, not stopping until they don't even have enough breath left to moan. He takes advantage of the moment to roll them over, kissing his way down her body until he's nestled between her thighs, looking up at her through dangerously long lashes while she bites her lip, breathless again with anticipation.
It turns out his conviction's not limited to his words. He eats her out like he's a priest and she's his goddess, that damnably clever mouth of his perfect in all the right ways. "I had horrible asthma as a child," he says when she's coming down from the best orgasm she's had in months, "it gave me great breath control."
"You're going to be the death of me," she tells him, completely serious and completely okay with that. "But let's get back to the dick topic first."
"Yes, ma'am," he says with a sly smile. She growls at him, he is not as funny as he thinks he is, but forgives him as soon as he's eeled his way back up her body, his cock pressed against her clitoris and his lips against hers, still red and slick with the taste of her. "We talked about apotheosis, and the ways we deify individuals, like the imperial cults in Egypt and Mesopotamia."
She groans, amused and turned on and already way too emotionally attached to what is quickly turning out to be the best fuck of her life. She runs her nails down his back and anchors her legs around his hips, urging him to continue.
He does, pushing inside of her as he tells her about the Greeks and Alexander the Great and the political ramifications of apotheosis in Rome until she shuts him up with the results of her kegels exercises and then there's only stuttering breaths and moans and the filthy sounds of him sliding in and out of her.
After they've both orgasmed (her for the second time, and damn if she isn't keeping him), and made a lazy attempt to clean up with the box of kleenex by her bed, she lays on her stomach as he colors in the tattooed outline of a butterfly on her back with the pastels he carries around in his backpack. (Apparently he's an artist, on top of everything else, and if she thought either of them believed in the institution of marriage she'd probably be proposing right now.)
She's not sure that this is exactly what she was fantasizing about when she first noticed him in class, but she certainly has no complaints. He kisses the base of her spine before reaching for his phone on the bedside table to take a picture.
It ends up being her profile picture on everything for the next year, until it's replaced by the actual tattoo he designs for her.
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A/N: Auribus teneo lupum roughly translated is to hold a wolf by the ears, or, a situation in which it is just as dangerous to do nothing as it is to do something.