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The lecture hall is bigger than you’re used to. It dips down in rows of tightly packed chairs, each aimed toward a single raised podium at the bottom. A few students are already seated: heads bent over their phones, typing on laptops, softly chattering. The lights are only half-on, dousing the classroom in a mild white glow—partially dim, yet somehow, simultaneously, too bright.
You pick an empty seat surrounded by empty seats.
There are other options—plenty of choices to be made. You choose—well, is it truly a choice if it’s inevitable? You sit alone and allow whatever may happen to happen; if someone sits near you, next to you, then it’s meant to be, isn’t it?
The seats fill up. A full class on the first day—it’s not uncommon to be overfilled, even, before some decide to move on to other time slots, other classes. The chairs on either side of you remain empty.
The clock on the furthest wall ticks down; there’s less than a minute left until the assigned class time. The professor hasn’t arrived yet, so some last stragglers are still keeping the door revolving, swinging wide and nearly shutting before being shouldered open again, each rushing to pick a spot. You lean back in your seat and close your eyes.
A whisper of displaced air brushes against your back.
“Do you mind if I sit here?” comes a breathless, low voice. Your eyes snap open, the flushed face of another student focused solely on yours. His windswept hair falls into his eyes, and he hastily swipes it back. He looks like he ran here. Maybe he did.
There’s something—cold and calculating in his gaze. The blue of his eyes is practically magnetic. You’ve never seen eyes this clear, in all meanings of the word: their color, their shine, the intelligence quietly piercing through.
The thought comes and goes, as quick and cutting as freefall: He’s dangerously pretty. It’s barely half a thought. A passing observation. You let it retreat back into nothingness, forgetting about it altogether. Nodding your head, you give him all the welcome he needs—the seat beside you is free for the taking, and he slips just as easily into your life as the thought (that precarious slope of a feeling) came and went. He’ll either stay or leave; that, you know for certain.
“Thanks,” he says, a quick flash of a grin. It’s strained, caught somewhere between real and fake.
“Yeah,” you reply, far too close to a whisper. “Yeah, no problem,” you repeat, stronger. It’s nerve-wracking to talk over yourself, to repeat what you wanted to say the first time around and failed to follow through on—raising your voice and spirits so that others can hear you, can understand. It’s tiring.
His smile shifts into something smaller but more sincere. The professor bustles in through the door at that moment, silencing whatever could have been said between the two of you. You try not to let yourself dwell on the words left behind, forgotten.
You don’t catch his name. For the next class, you make sure to arrive early and save the same spots you both sat in last time. He never shows up.
And that’s that.
Except, except—
The empty seat is not empty a week later. His grin is apologetic and somewhat bashful as he pulls his leather satchel out of your seat, asking if he can borrow your notes.
“I work part-time,” he explains. “But I’m involved in a lot of projects that need my say-so to move forward, and all of my professors are aware that I’ll be missing classes semi-regularly, at least for the first few weeks.”
“All of my notes are handwritten,” you say, eyeing his tablet. He rolls his shoulders, cracking his back. “Where do you work?” You wonder if he does heavy lifting or business deals, based on the build of his body and sharp sense of style. Maybe the business deals are the heavy lifting; you don’t particularly envy that sort of job.
“That’s fine,” he says, accepting your notebook. His eyes scan the page in seconds, flipping over to the next. “Your notetaking is very neat—I seriously appreciate this.” You fidget in your seat as his gaze returns to you. It’s weighted, measuring, and strangely curious. “You don’t know?”
“Don’t know what?”
He shakes his head, a pinch between his brows even as he smiles. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it. I work at Wayne Enterprises,” he finally answers. Then, hesitant: “Did I ever introduce myself?” He holds out his hand. How old fashioned, to offer a handshake. Maybe it’s a habit carried over from work. Maybe it’s the vaguely posh lilt to his voice. “I’m Tim.”
You take his hand in yours. He gives a firm, only slightly lingering handshake. His palm is dry yet soft—calloused yet gentle. A handshake can say a lot about a person; you hope yours holds up under scrutiny.
You tell him your name. Accept back your notebook.
Class starts.
“What genres do you like?” he asks one day, out of the blue. You’ve started to notice a pattern of how he dresses. Either it’s business suits, that high-class, would cost more than your monthly spending, sort of preppy, or painfully casual. Ripped jeans and a skateboard propped on the next seat over, casual.
Today, he’s wearing a slightly loose, no doubt incredibly comfortable, cashmere sweater. It brings out his eyes.
“Genre? Like books or movies or…?”
“Anything,” he says, as if that helps.
You tell him your favorite genre. Then, with a bolt of likely short-lived confidence, you tell him the genre you enjoyed in your childhood, stumbling over the words in your haste. Then, further emboldened by his interest and follow-up questions, you mention the genre you initially hated and that grew on you like a particularly determined fungus—you love it now. The genres you tolerate. The ones you’ll refuse to read or watch outright.
“And you?”
He pauses as if to think, but you suspect that he already has an answer in mind. “Sci-fi, probably. The amount of current technology that’s been inspired by the classics of the genre really just makes you wonder how much more we can take from it.”
“Star Trek fan?” you ask knowingly, cracking a smile. “Weren’t cellphones inspired by it?”
“Yeah,” he says, lighting up. “By their communicators, specifically—”
And so the conversation goes, a back-and-forth game of, You haven’t seen this? And inevitably, You should watch… You should read… If you like… If you trust my opinion at all, you’ll…
Until, eventually—a hundred shared recommendations later, the timeless passage of weeks—it inevitably winds around to: “You know, I heard this series is really good. We should watch it together.”
It’s Tim who says it. Offers.
A hand held out, for you to take or politely deny. You’ve never liked touch—not as far as you can remember. You still accepted that day, that first class. Accepted him.
By this point, you have long exchanged numbers for class reasons; Tim can’t always accept your notes in person, so you send photocopies and updates on what happens while he’s gone, of upcoming due dates and exams.
You think of texting each other for fun, the natural conclusion of a budding friendship. It still surprised you. It still continues to surprise you, how easy it all is—with him. With Tim.
You let him know what days you’re free.
It takes far too long, and one too many furtive glances from him, before you realize—or rather, find out—that he’s that Tim. Tim Drake.
“It was refreshing, that you didn't know who I was immediately,” he admits, maybe a little ashamed of his deception. “You didn’t have any—preconceived notions about who I was, what I’m like.”
“I still don’t,” you tell him. “Not really. The Tim Drake in the magazines, paparazzi photos, news articles? I don’t know him. I feel like I’m starting to get an idea of who this Tim Drake is, though.”
You’ve hung around after class to have this conversation. The dark clouds overhead have opened up and begun to weep, rain pouring off the steep Gothic rooves in dense, silver curtains. You watch it from under the awning beside Tim and belatedly remember that you didn’t bring an umbrella.
It wouldn’t be the first time you walked through the rain. When you’re soaked just stepping into it, getting out of the storm quickly becomes less of a priority. You’re going to stay the same level of wet—so why bother? Maybe that perspective was uncommon, considering how you never failed to get odd looks from passersby.
But it doesn’t matter this time whether you’re prepared to brave the rain or not; Tim opens up a sleek black umbrella and holds it over the both of you.
“If you’d like…?”
His earnest tone decides for you.
“Thanks,” you grin, squeezing in a little closer. It’s only to avoid the runoff, you tell yourself.
The fall semester usually trudges along, each month feeling longer than the last. The same could not be said for this one, not at all.
Final exams are around the corner, and you realize that the Christmas season has snuck up on you.
(If failing this class meant you could take it all over again with Tim—experience each and every moment anew, keep it from ending all too soon, keep the rest of December from reaching you—then you would in a heartbeat. But you’re already signed up to be in a photography course with him in the spring—you shouldn’t be entertaining impossible scenarios like this.)
You think of texting Tim, your last outgoing message having been the notes you put together for the exam. You deliberate for a little too long, staring at that blinking cursor and empty text box. You set down your phone and step out onto your balcony, the cold air a welcome reprieve.
It begins to snow.