Something nudges against me and wakes me. My throat feels like it hasn't had anything to drink in a hundred years. Oh God, my head.

"Mmmm."

Tim groans next to me and it's muffled by the pillow he has buried his face into. He mutters something that sounds like 'Fuck'.

I sit up and immediately regret the movement as the whole room tilts violently. I hold my head in my hands to still the spinning but I can feel myself swaying dangerously towards the edge of the bed. I manage to find my footing and steady myself well enough to make the journey to the kitchen sink. I grab some headache tablets and a glass of water; drinking from it as I carry it to the bedroom.

"Tim."

"Mm."

"Tim."

I touch his arm gently and he sighs.

"Here," I say as I hold the water out to him. He looks at me reproachfully and forces himself into a sitting position. He is pale and his hair is sticking out at odd angles. His hands shake slightly as he takes the glass from me, drinking it in large gulps and quickly swallowing the tablets I hold out to him.

"What time is it," he asks me sleepily.

I turn the clock on the table around. Half two?

"It's half two," I tell him. That's irritating. Nearly a whole day is wasted now.

"Don't," Tim laughs a little.

"What?"

He gives me a look.

"You're thinking, 'What a waste of a day! There is no point in existing now, moan moan moan moan.'"

He puts on a voice to impersonate me and scrunches his face up in mock annoyance. I want to be annoyed at him but I smile and he breaks into a grin. I slump onto the bed next to him and he lays down head to toe with me. There is an amicable silence between us.

"My butt hurts," he says crudely. I can practically hear him smirking. There's something undeniably funny about hearing his posh school-boy accent saying the word 'Butt'.

"I wonder why," I laugh. "Drunk sex is never a good idea," I cringe remembering certain times in my youth when I'd woken up feeling like Tim feels now..

"I used to have to be pissed to have sex with you," he says idly. I lift myself slightly to look at his elegant form stretched out beside me.

"Why am I so fucked up Ivo," he asks me painfully.

"You have your reasons," I say, hoping it sounds kinder out loud than it does in my head. It feels like we're going in circles on this topic and my patience is being worn down.

"But you've had it shit and you got on with it and got a job and a flat and a car and everything. Why couldn't I just be like you and have a bloody backbone," he sighs angrily.

I don't know how to respond. I'm shocked that he wishes he were more like me.

"That must have hurt you," he says softly. I stare at the ceiling.

"What?"

"Me, getting drunk before I slept with you. Back then. You must have known."

I thought back to the very beginning of our turbulent relationship. I did know he was drunk. I called him on it a number of times. I brought champagne to get him inebriated faster because I have never been more desperate for anything in my whole life than for him. When I'd come back to our hotel room in Juneau to find him hungover and surrounded by empty beer bottles, my automatic assumption had been that he'd been sleeping with another man.

"I knew," I reply quietly. I can taste the guilt that lines my words. I'm sure he must too.

"I'm so sorry, Ivo," he tells me and he begins to stroke my foot with his long, elegant fingers.

"It felt amazing," he insisted as though my silence was because I was worrying about under-performing or something like that. "I just remember thinking that I was straight and that wasn't what straight people should do."

He is thinking aloud now.

"But I wanted it so badly, because it was you. And I'd never felt like that before about anyone. Like I just needed it, you know? I mean, I slept with Emily and all but it was sort of because I felt I had to. And at Leythe you just did so it wasn't like, a sexual thing. Not really. Not for me anyway. But then you showed up and when Martin mentioned your name it got me excited just thinking about it."

His hand is tickling my foot but I don't want to put Tim off his train of thought. He so rarely reveals what he is really thinking.

"I was so nervous. So nervous," he repeats. "I was scared it was going to be like it had been before at school and then when you were kissing me I was scared you wouldn't like me and I didn't know what I was doing. Well, I did. But not really. Not with a guy. I think that's why I drank so much. Because I couldn't shut my brain up."

He starts running his fingers along my other foot now. I close my eyes.

"It hurt so much. It hurt like fuck," he says with a dry laugh. "I'd forgotten how much it would and then I didn't want to say stop because I still wanted you. I wanted you to want me to stay and I guess being drunk was a bit of a painkiller. I knew you wouldn't really hurt me. Like, if I had said stop, I know you would have. I don't know. I just think sometimes that I know why I did stuff or why I do it now. But I don't really."

He seems to be finished for now.

"Ivo," he asks timidly. I can hear him scratching somewhere on his leg.

"Yes Tim?"

"Are you okay?"

"Mmm. Thinking."

"About what?"

I sigh.

"What you just said. Other things. Last night."

"Oh."

It was true. I was thinking about all those things. My brain was sluggish however and the thoughts were coming to me very slowly. I always laugh when I read something Tim has written, or when he gets me to read to him from passages in his romance novels (I think he is trying to inspire the romantic in me) when he writes about a moment in time in a way that is untrue to the real-life moment. As though all at once you can love someone when you see them in that first moment whereas in reality you lust after them before developing a relationship and over time you grow to love them.

But I remember when I first saw Tim. It wasn't the first time we met. It was quite a good bit before. He'd been holding the door open for a young brunette and he gave her a charming smile as she ducked under his arm. Being gentlemanly, he continued to hold it for me to catch so that he wasn't slamming the door in my face. It felt like he had though. He gave that brief smile that comes with courtesy to strangers before turning away and catching up with the slip of a thing that was trying to pass for a woman.

I remember feeling like all the air had gone out of my lungs. Was that his girlfriend? Why were all the good-looking ones straight? Mentally I could hear my sister scoff because she had always told me the opposite. I'd never wanted more for someone to be gay. And single. And interested. And not a student. And in my bed.

I'd been on my way to chat to Martin one morning when I saw him up ahead of me. He was with a small number of other students; some vile thing clinging on his arm. Even being straight surely he could do better than that. Maybe he has no personality, I had thought. I could feel myself shake slightly at the time. No doubt jealousy. I had wanted to march right up to him and demand to know what he was doing with that giggly little blonde. What happened to the brunette? Did he have a whole coven of women stashed away somewhere?

I was preparing myself mentally to push past them to get into Martin's office and as I approached my stomach did a back-flip when Martin opened the door and greeted them all. In they filed in a somewhat single file bar the beautiful young man and his average blonde girlfriend. She was almost dragging him into a kiss which pleased me immensely. He looked about as uncomfortable as I felt and muttered something to her before slipping away into the office. The blonde girl looked at me as she passed but evidently she didn't think of me as a concern.

English. He was studying English. And Martin would know who he was. Now I could see him with the disguising motive of seeing Martin. It had almost been too perfect. I'd stood in the hallway for a long time debating whether to go in before gathering all my resolve and knocking loudly on the door. I heard Martin's huffing and puffing at the interruption and when he opened the door he looked surprised to see me.

"Ivo, my dear man. What can I do for you?"

He'd allowed me to step into the room and in the far corner they all sat in a little circle. I spotted him immediately and had to tear my eyes away to reply.

"I'm sorry," I had told him. "I didn't realise you had a tutorial. I can come back later."

I think that's what I said. Adrenaline makes some part of it all a bit blurry. He hadn't even looked up though. Surely by the law of averages if you will something hard enough it has to happen eventually. He was just idly doodling in his book. Part of me wanted to knock something off Martin's desk to grab his attention but I had to admit defeat and vow to try again another time.

God. He was beautiful. He is beautiful. I sit up and when I look at him he is looking at me with concern.

"Ivo," he says slowly, as though I'm foreign and unable to understand him.

"The last time I had a boyfriend, I was twenty three," I tell him. Preparing for a monologue of my own. It has gone on too long without being said.

"It was only a half relationship, really. We both liked each other but it wasn't really anything more. We told each other it was love but I doubt he was fooled. I don't imagine he was upset when we broke up. I know I wasn't."

Tim sits up with an expression that tells me I have his undivided attention.

"I figured that was how it always would be. I could have something casual every now and then; not get too attached. People like me don't get the same as everyone else in life. We're built differently.I would just devote myself to what I loved doing. Study more, learn more. I guess I just resigned myself to a constant disinterest in the human form."

Tim shuffles a bit towards me.

"When you saw me watching you, from the window," I tell him. I can feel the embarrassment creeping into my skin. "That wasn't the first time I watched you. Not by a long shot. You held the door for me once at the start of term and I just wanted to look at you forever. I felt sick most of the time. Thinking about you. It was very distracting. You never noticed. I thought for sure that you would and then you would file a complaint against the madman who was stalking you but you were oblivious. Chasing skirt tails."

I laugh but even the memory of how much it hurt to watch him was hurting me now.

"I used to walk the long way to my office so I could walk past the library. I used to fantasise about stealing a book of yours and then casually having to find you to return it."

The only word to describe Tim right now is stunned.

"The fact that you could think I wouldn't like you," I laugh and shake my head.

"You're the love of my life," I say quietly. "Completely."

I can't bear to look at him so I just stare at my lap. My heart is hammering like crazy. This is too much, why I never told him before. I force myself to look him in the eye. I'm prepared for him to get scared off like before. I'm not overly prepared for him crying however. There is a constant stream of silent tears that are rolling down his cheeks.

He hugs me so violently I feel like he may crush me. I hug him back harder and I smile when I hear him squeak. It's an endearing sound.

"So you spent all that time fucking torturing me and keeping me on my toes for nothing," he says in mock annoyance.

"If I'd told you all that, you would have run a mile."

He seems to think about that for a moment. He then nods. I want him to say that I'm the love of his life too but there are two reasons that I doubt he will. The first being that he is young. His future is unpredictable and ten years from now it could be entirely different. How will he know that I am the one until a time when he is certain there is no one else. The second being that my sister probably pipped me to the post. He may not think it now but at the time, it was love. The only kind of love he knew but to him that was just as real and heart-breaking as any other kind.

"Anyway," I say as I wipe his cheeks. "You were the one who started it; torturing me and keeping me on my toes. I swear half my students were almost failing because I was preoccupied stalking you or fantasising about you."

He smirks at me.

"Really," he asks coyly.

"Mmmhmm. You had me whipped boy. One flutter of those eyelashes can be deadly."

He smiles.

"So, in the lift-"

It's my turn to smirk now.

"You walked past the library on purpose."

"And you followed me."

We're eyeing each other up now like we had then. Kissing him in that lift is the single most memorable moment of my entire life. I had felt his stare on me. The half-glance the very instant he had stepped into the lift. I could even see the little eye roll he did when the man in front of us took his time leaving. When his head turned to look at me. Fucking hell. I thought I was going to have a heart attack right then and there. I thought he was going to yell at me. Ask why I had been following him, demand to know why I had watched him and his girlfriend. What kind of sick pervert am I and he was going to have me fired from the Universi- oh.

His hand had reached out to stroke my cheek. I could feel it against every single hair in the stubble I had neglected to shave. He felt soft and gentle against my skin. It was a gentle caress but my blood was boiling. Years of frustration that I didn't know I was feeling just needed to be expressed in this one moment. Now, I don't remember my moving to stand in front of him but I had. His eyes. Wow. Just being this close. I could smell his shampoo and the fabric of his coat. I'd been inspecting the soft curve of his lower lip when I just had to taste it. His breathe had hitched, his mouth falling open in shock. I took the opportunity to kiss him again before reluctantly pulling away. I was definitely in trouble. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. I am so fired. But god that was worth it.

I never expected him to stumble into my office and flirt with me. God he was so hot. He was definitely going to get angry now. I wondered if he was an angry person. I couldn't imagine it somehow. He had licked his lips at me. Play it cool, I told myself. Keep him wanting a bit more. But fuck he had felt so good. He tasted of coffee and chewing gum and something else I can't describe. I'd been alone for far too long. It was almost summer. He wouldn't be a student then. Keep him waiting. Make him want you.

Tim was grinning at me now.

"That killed me, when you said 'Happy Christmas'. I was having such dirty thoughts about you and you wanted to chat about the birth of Christ," he says with anguish. "Thinking back on it, Mr Steadman, you're very kinky. Very much the iconoclast and very naughty indeed," he smiles. "I wish you'd just kissed me again. In your office."

"Well, I didn't want to be the sordid old professor who seduces young students into his bed but evidently my resolve doesn't hold up very well when you're around."

"You're not old," he pouts at me.

"Older than you by a long shot. If I wasn't with you last night I would have been one of those creepy guys watching you from the sidelines. Do you have any idea the effect you have on people?"

He looks a little flushed now. His lips red and slightly parted.

"I thought it was so sexy," he says in a rush with his eyes closing, savoring the memory. "That they were watching. I just wanted to show everybody that we are together and that they don't have a chance next to you. The way you were holding me like you wouldn't ever let go was so carnal; possessive. It was hot."

I raise my eyebrows at him.

"I had no idea that's what you meant by dancing. I think we should do that more often."

"Yeah," he nods enthusiastically. "Give that guy from last night a call and have a menage a trois," he teases me.

"We'll see," I say suggestively and Tim's eyes widen. I still have my ways of keeping him on his toes.