Chapter Text
I smiled, the kind of smile that usually earned me something—an introduction, a compliment, a laugh.
“Hey. I’m Kiet.”
He nodded once. “Oliver.”
His voice was low. Unhurried. Measured like a lab reading.
That was it.
He didn’t look me up and down. Didn’t react to the angle of my cheekbones or the shine of my lip gloss. No double take. No subtle flicker of distraction.
He looked through me. Like I was… too loud.
And then, just like that, he looked back down and started writing.
I blinked.
No joke? No eye-roll? No curiosity?
“Came for the philosophy or the chaos?” I tried, still half-laughing.
“I submitted the prompt,” he replied, eyes still on the page. “The wording was imprecise. I’m correcting it.”
That was the moment.
Not the moment I fell.
The moment I began.
Because I’ve been admired. Desired. Stared at like I was a wish someone never expected to come true.
But Oliver?
He looked at me like I was white noise.
And for some wild, unexplainable reason—it burned.
Not because I needed attention.
Because for the first time in forever, I couldn’t see what he was thinking.
Not even a flicker.
He didn’t hide behind aloofness. He was aloofness.
Not cold, just… built different. Like emotion cost him energy. Like he spent most of his hours rewiring the universe in his head and had no bandwidth left to deal with casual pleasantries.
I glanced sideways again.
His notebook was a battlefield—chemical notations and clean, straight lines in ink-black rows. One margin filled with what looked like symbolic logic. Logic, for a debate prompt. He wasn’t planning to win with rhetoric. He was planning to win with proof.
I sat back.
My pulse was doing something idiotic.
Someone made a joke. I joined the laughter. Then I risked another look.
He wasn’t even paying attention to the room. Just jotting, erasing, calculating.
Unreachable.
Unimpressed.
Unmoved.
And me?
I was in trouble.
Not because he was hot—though, God help me, he was. It was the kind of beauty that didn’t bloom. It burned. Like someone pressed intellect and loneliness and precision into a human mold and accidentally made it breathtaking.
But that wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that he didn’t see me.
And I wanted him to.
Badly.
Not with awe. Not with fascination. Not with a crush.
I wanted him to look at me like a problem worth solving.
And that, for someone like me… was brand new territory.
I tried to focus.
I really did.
The Debate Club moderator was assigning partners for next week’s mock round, and someone two seats over was whispering loudly about censorship in children’s media—but my brain had exited the group chat the moment Oliver sat down.
He hadn’t said anything since that one-line dismissal. Hadn’t moved much, either, other than the steady motion of his pen.
But I was gone.
Just—gone.
I told myself I was looking for academic reasons. Trying to read his posture. Gauge his energy. Figure out how his mind worked.
But somewhere between glance number three and glance number... twenty-five, I wasn’t studying Oliver’s brain anymore.
I was admiring everything else.
It started with his hair—black, technically, but with hints of warm brown that only showed under harsh fluorescent lights. A little messy, like he hadn’t run a brush through it, but not in the cute, floppy-boy way. More like he forgot he had hair and occasionally pushed it back with ink-stained fingers when it got in the way of thinking.
God, I wanted to touch it.
Just once. Just… brush my fingers through it and see if it was as soft as it looked. Would he flinch? Would he freeze like he’d been short-circuited, or would he just blink in that eerie, quiet way and ask what I thought I was doing?
Would he whisper my name?
I blinked. Focus, Kiet.
Eyes. That was next.
Not wide or curious. Narrowed. Focused. The kind of eyes that didn’t just look—they analyzed. And yet, they weren’t harsh. No sharp lines, no judgment. Just… calm. Detached. He wasn’t observing the room. He was mapping it. Calculating probability curves and argument patterns in his head, and still managing to write flawless cursive notes at the same time.
What did he think about when he wasn’t scribbling down debate logic?
Did he have favorite numbers?
Did he dream in color-coded graphs?
Would he ever think of me when he wasn’t in the same room?
My gaze dropped to his mouth next.
Now that—that was unfair.
Because Oliver’s lips weren’t soft or pouty or shaped for drama. They were firm. Quiet. The kind of lips that probably rarely smiled—but when they did, it would ruin you.
No gloss. No chapstick sheen. Just—clean lines and unspoken thoughts. The lower lip slightly fuller, resting in that unreadable line. I imagined kissing him, once. Then I imagined him freezing mid-kiss to correct my grammar. Then I imagined kissing him harder, just to shut him up.
God, get a grip.
And then there were his hands.
Holy hell.
Long fingers. No rings. Neatly kept nails. His knuckles moved like he was fine-tuning the cosmos. Every stroke of his pen looked surgical. I had never been jealous of stationery before.
He kept tapping the end of his pen against his notepad in exact intervals. Three taps. Pause. Two taps. Pause. Like he was keeping time on some mental metronome the rest of us couldn’t hear.
I wanted to grab that hand. Press it to my cheek.
I wanted to tangle our fingers, feel the twitch of his surprise, and see if I could make him lose his place in whatever algorithm his brain was currently solving.
He turned a page.
His forearm flexed.
I may have audibly gasped.
His shirt was rolled up just far enough to expose the line of his wrist to his elbow, all subtle veins and neat, lean muscle. Not bulky. Just… strong in the way bridges are strong. Efficient. Functional. Beautiful.
I briefly considered faking a faint just so I’d have an excuse to fall into his lap and count the lines of his collarbone.
Pull yourself together, Kiet.
My gaze slid lower.
Because, look.
Oliver was not a body-first kind of hot.
But his body did exist. And it was... upsetting.
He had that unintentional good posture, like he’d spent years sitting at microscopes or in long lecture halls. No slouch. Just silent confidence. The kind of presence that didn’t scream—I’m attractive.
It whispered.
And I was listening way too hard.
Broad shoulders under a charcoal shirt. Lean build. Thighs that sat politely in his chair but looked like they could pin you against a wall without breaking a sweat. His knees were a perfect right angle, legs crossed just so. Polished shoes, clean laces.
I imagined him pinning me down in a study room. Lab coat half-off. Lips still murmuring formulas between kisses. His hands unbuttoning my shirt like he was opening a particularly stubborn equation.
I’d let him.
I’d let him rewrite the laws of physics if he said my name in that quiet, deliberate voice.
The room shifted again.
I snapped out of it.
Someone was asking for volunteers. Oliver raised his hand—silently, without ceremony, without ego.
Of course.
I looked away.
My chest was warm. My thoughts weren’t safe.
And all he’d done… was exist.
Just exist.
Quiet. Exact. Brilliant.
And I was losing my mind one quiet, dangerous feature at a time.
The room was still humming from post-debate buzz, that fizzy mix of leftover arguments, half-baked rebuttals, and snack-fueled serotonin. People had scattered into little huddles again—some swapping notes, others arguing about who actually won.
I was mentally recovering from the trauma of Oliver's entire existence, fanning myself with someone’s forgotten rubric, when someone—of course it had to be the girl with galaxy-painted nails and a flair for chaos—perked up from her beanbag and said:
“You know what would be iconic?”
Several heads turned.
She pointed. “Kiet vs Oliver.”
And just like that, the air changed.
A pause. A beat. Then: “Charm vs Lethal Brain,” someone added dramatically.
“No contest,” said another. “Oliver would destroy him with facts.”
“Excuse you,” I said, flipping my hair back in slow motion. “I don’t need facts. I have vibes, legs, and an emotional argument delivery style strong enough to win over anyone who’s ever had a crush.”
“Exactly,” someone sighed dreamily.
“You forgot glitter,” Theo muttered.
“I am the glitter,” I replied.
“Let him try,” Galaxy Nails grinned, fully committed to chaos now. “Oliver, would you be down for a mini face-off?”
All eyes turned.
Oliver, still calmly writing in the margins of his notebook, didn’t even look up. “If the moderator approves.”
That earned a soft collective gasp. Not no. Just conditional compliance. Classic Oliver.
The moderator—giddy at the idea of watching two of her most interesting members square off—threw her hands up. “Why not? Five minutes. Freestyle. Civil, please. This isn’t a courtroom, or a dating app. Keep it snappy.”
“I make no promises,” I said, sauntering to the front.
Oliver stood without flair. No rustle of nerves. No flexing for drama. Just… stood.
I turned to face him, heart absolutely doing backflips, and offered my signature, slow-lidded smirk. “Ready to lose, hot stuff?”
Every single person: “OoooOOoOohh.”
Oliver looked at me.
Just… looked.