Disclaimer: Still don't own.

A/N: A note on the previous chapter. The books that Professor Green spoke on are, in my head canon, Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls and Madeleine Miller's Song of Achilles and Circe. I highly recommend!

Okay, so she's curious. In a very casual sort of way—what's my weird acquaintance from high school up to these days? That sort of way. It's definitely the only reason she invited him to tag along to the pub with the rest of her first year friends, and is now sitting crammed into the booth opposite him.

And that, that feeling igniting in the pit of her stomach? That's definitely the rum and coke.

The booth was meant to seat two people comfortably, but they manage to fit five—Otis and Simon crammed into one side, Ruth next to her, Stephen perched uncomfortably high on a bar stool he's dragged over.

Otis is... mostly the same. Still tall and slender, sticking-out elbows, pretty in a sort of skittish way. But there's something about him now that wasn't there before. Maeve puzzles, watching him over the rim of her glass, but can't work it out.

Ruth is definitely flirting with him.

"So if this isn't the best place on campus, where is?" Ruth leans subtly across the table towards him, in a way that would have been positively seductive if she hadn't been wearing a very proper blouse buttoned up to the neck.

"Well, the library is pretty good, you know? And the cafeteria near the science building does good sandwiches. But I think I'd have to say this weird fountain outside the Classics department, it looks like a cherub having a really violent puke attack..."

Ruth laughs, enthralled. And Maeve suddenly realises what it is that's different. He's become confident.

But then their eyes meet, and she raises an eyebrow at him, and he stutters, flustered. Still uncomfortable around her, then. The old wicked instinct to rattle him even more kicks in, and she holds his gaze, challengingly. "So what have you been up to for the last three years, Milburn?"

He huffs out a laugh. "Well, this is my third year. Actually, I'm studying psychology, majoring in sex therapy, so some things don't change."

"Your mum must be proud."

"Bemused would be a better word for it, I think. Eric's thrilled, of course. He's been having a field day with it, for the past three years. Won't stop teasing me." He pauses, noting the confused looks on Maeve's friends' faces, and explains briefly. "My parents are both sex therapists, so it's kind of funny."

"Oh, what's Eric up to these days?"

"This and that. He seems to have a new job every month. Oh, and he's started doing a correspondence course in queer theology."

"The fuck is that?"

"Like, you know, Christian theology. But like, a sort of progressive variety. Reinterpreting all the anti-gay stuff."

"Oh." Maeve digests this. "It sounds interesting."

"It is. It's quite similar to English lit in some ways, actually. Like, a lot of it is about your hermeneutics—the way in which you read a text—and how that is going to guide what you get out of it."

"So, like how you can apply a feminist lens to Shakespeare and come up with an unconventional reading."

"Yeah, exactly, but with the Bible." Otis pauses. "He's still with Adam, actually. They seem really happy. Adam trains dogs now, and does, like, dog shows and stuff."

"Good for him."

"And what about you, Maeve? You just vanished after—"

"Uh-uh." She cuts him off. "I'm not telling you my life story here, you're telling me yours."

"Mysterious Maeve." Ruth, the lightweight of the group, is definitely a little drunk. She gestures sloppily with the hand not holding her glass. "D'you know, Oliver—" ("Otis," hisses Maeve, tapping her arm) "—sorry, Otis, d'y'know, she won't tell the rest of us anything either. Just shows up, middle of orientation week, knows fucking everything about Shakespeare, and, like, Simone de Beauvoir. And we're like, where did you come from? And she's like, wouldn't you like to fucking know? I reckon she might be a Russian spy..."

"Ruth..." says Maeve, laughing.

"Legit, though. Was she this mysterious when you knew her, Ol— Otis?"

And Otis, the bastard, smiles. "I'm afraid she'll kill me if I answer that," he says.

"Right," says Maeve, standing up. "Who's for another round?"

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