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The first time Erling noticed Jude Bellingham, he was arguing with the printer.
Not loudly. The university library had rules about that, and the man seemed far too aware of them to risk being thrown out. He stood on the other side of the second-floor printing station, glaring at the machine while it flashed the same red warning for the fourth time.
“There is paper in tray two,” he whispered. “I can see it.”
The printer beeped.
“Don’t take that tone with me.”
Erling had been shelving returned books nearby, and he tried not to laugh. He honestly did. Unfortunately, keeping quiet had never been one of his greatest talents.
The stranger looked over.
He was tall, though almost everyone looked short to Erling, with tired brown eyes, a dark grey hoodie and a pencil tucked behind one ear. There was another pencil in his hand, which raised the question of how many he had brought with him and why none of them had been used to take notes on whatever he was printing.
“Something funny?” he asked.
“You are losing a fight to a printer.”
“I’m not losing. We’re in negotiations.”
The machine beeped again.
Erling set the books on a nearby table. “It only does that when tray one is empty.”
“It says tray two.”
“It lies.”
The stranger stared at him, then at the printer. “Your printer lies?”
“All the time.”
Erling opened the bottom panel, pulled out the tray, pushed it back in and pressed two buttons. The printer hummed obediently. A moment later, twenty-seven pages emerged.
The stranger looked offended by how easy it had been.
“I did all of that.”
“Clearly not in the right order.”
“There was an order?”
“There is always an order.”
The man gathered his pages and attempted to straighten them against the machine. Half slipped from his hands and scattered across the carpet.
Erling crouched to help. The pages were covered in notes about migration, identity, post-war Britain and something called cultural memory. Whole paragraphs had been highlighted in yellow, then underlined in blue, as if one kind of emphasis had not been enough.
“PhD?” Erling asked.
“Is it that obvious?”
“You look exhausted and angry at office equipment.”
“Fair.” He accepted the last page from Erling. “Thank you.”
“Erling.”
The man smiled, small and a little distracted, but it changed his whole face. “Jude.”
Then he disappeared between the history shelves, leaving Erling beside the printer with the strange feeling that something had just happened, although nothing really had.
By the end of that week, Jude had become part of the library. He always arrived a little after nine, carrying the same worn backpack and a takeaway coffee large enough to worry any reasonable person. He chose a desk in the back corner of the third floor, hidden between shelves of books nobody seemed to touch unless they were writing a dissertation, and he stayed there for hours.
At first Erling only noticed him because he was hard not to notice. Jude was there when the morning staff changed shifts. He was there through the quiet lull after lunch, still typing when the undergraduates arrived in noisy groups around four, and more than once, he was there when Erling began turning off the lights at closing.
The third time Erling found him asleep on his folded arms at ten minutes to ten, he decided it had become his problem. He stopped beside the desk and tapped it twice.
Jude woke sharply. “I’m awake.”
“An impressive lie.”
Jude blinked up at him, a crease pressed into his cheek from the sleeve of his jumper. “What time is it?”
“Nine fifty.”
“Already?”
“No, Jude, I changed all the clocks to frighten you.”
Jude squinted at his laptop. “I was nearly done.”
“You said that yesterday.”
“Yesterday I was nearly done with a different thing.”
“Of course.” Erling began collecting the three books Jude had left open. “We close in ten minutes.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“You enjoy this too much.”
Erling did. He liked watching Jude pack, mostly because Jude managed to misplace something every night. His phone would be under a journal, his pencil case behind the laptop, his student card somehow tucked inside a book he insisted he had not opened. Erling would lean against the shelf and point out each missing object while Jude grumbled that he had been perfectly organized before Erling interrupted him.
That evening, it was his scarf.
“You came in wearing one,” Erling said.
“Did I?”
“Blue. Ugly little tassels.”
“Those tassels are stylish.”
“They are tragic.”
They found it beneath Jude’s chair.
Downstairs, Jude pulled the scarf around his neck while Erling locked the front doors. Rain streaked the glass, turning the streetlights outside into watery circles of gold.
“Have you eaten?” Erling asked.
Jude paused.
It was not a difficult question. The length of the pause was answer enough.
“I had a muffin.”
“When?”
“Today.”
“That is not a time.”
“Around eleven, maybe.”
Erling stared at him.
“It was a big muffin.”
“That doesn’t make it dinner.”
“I’ll eat when I get home.”
“You said that yesterday too.”
“Were you put on this earth specifically to remember everything I say?”
Erling turned off the last lamp behind the desk. “Apparently.”
Jude smiled again. Erling was beginning to learn that there were different versions of it. There was the polite one Jude gave people who asked if the seat beside him was free, the tired one he wore when a book he needed had already been borrowed, and then there was this one, warm and crooked and meant entirely for Erling.
It stayed with him on the walk home.
The following Monday, Erling brought too much soup to work.
That was how he described it to his colleague, Oscar, when Oscar caught him putting a glass container in the staff refrigerator with a yellow note stuck to the lid.
“You brought too much,” Oscar repeated.
“Yes.”
“In two separate containers.”
“I didn’t want one enormous portion.”
“And you labelled the second one Jude.”
Erling shut the refrigerator. “People steal food.”
“Nobody here knows a Jude.”
“I know a Jude.”
Oscar’s eyebrows rose. “Do you?”
“He’s a student.”
“Students normally buy food from the café.”
“This one forgets.”
“And this has become your concern because?”
Erling looked at him. “Do you have work to do?”
“Not anything more interesting than this.”
At one o’clock, Erling carried the soup upstairs with a sandwich, an apple and a cup of tea. Jude was exactly where he expected, one hand buried in his hair while he read the same paragraph over and over.
Erling placed the tea beside his laptop.
Jude jumped. “Jesus.”
“Wrong man.”
“You can’t sneak up on people like that.”
“I am six foot four. I don’t sneak.”
Jude looked from the tea to the container. “What’s all this?”
“Lunch.”
“Whose?”
“Yours.”
The confusion on Jude’s face would have been funny if it had not also made something ache in Erling’s chest.
“You brought me lunch?”
“I made too much soup.”
“And accidentally made a sandwich too?”
“The sandwich is intentional.”
“Right.” Jude lifted the lid and steam escaped between them. “This is a whole meal.”
“That’s normally how lunch works.”
“Erling.”
There was a question in his voice, one he seemed unsure how to ask.
Erling shrugged, suddenly interested in aligning the edge of the napkin with the table. “You need to eat.”
Jude looked at him for another second before his expression softened. “Sit with me?”
“I’m working.”
“For five minutes.”
Erling sat.
Five minutes turned into twenty. Jude ate every spoonful while telling him about a professor who responded to emails exclusively between two and four in the morning. Erling told him about the library’s basement archive, where the lights were motion-activated and always switched off when someone stood too long in one place. Jude nearly choked laughing when Erling described waving both arms in the darkness while holding a box of nineteenth-century newspapers.
When Erling finally stood, Jude caught his wrist.
It was a brief touch, Jude’s fingers warm against his skin, but Erling felt it long after he let go.
“Thank you,” Jude said. “Seriously.”
“You’re welcome.”
“The soup was really good.”
“I know.”
“There he is,” Jude muttered. “I was worried you’d gone humble on me.”
Erling took the empty container and smiled all the way back downstairs.
After that, it became a routine so gradually neither of them could have said when it started.
If Erling worked the opening shift, he reserved Jude’s favourite desk by leaving a book cart in front of it until nine. This was technically against library policy, but Erling had discovered he was willing to bend several policies for Jude, especially after seeing the genuine betrayal on his face the morning an undergraduate took his seat and proceeded to watch football highlights without headphones.
Jude would arrive, drop his backpack and come downstairs before beginning work. He leaned against the front desk while Erling checked the returns, and they talked for ten minutes about nothing in particular. Jude complained about his supervisor. Erling complained about students who used slices of cheese as bookmarks. Jude refused to believe this had happened more than once, so Erling started sending him photographic evidence.
That was how Jude got Erling’s number.
At least, it was the excuse he used.
Erling handed him his phone one morning and said, “Put your number in. I’ll send you the cheese.”
Jude laughed so hard he had to cover his mouth because they were standing beneath a PLEASE KEEP QUIET sign.
His first message arrived three minutes later.
Jude: You could have just admitted you wanted my number.
Erling: I wanted to educate you.
Jude: About dairy-based vandalism?
Erling: Exactly.
The messages did not stop there.
Erling texted when requested books arrived, when the café brought back the cinnamon biscuits Jude liked, and when his desk was in danger of being stolen. Jude sent pictures of badly written academic articles, updates about his chapter word counts and, once, a blurry photograph of a fox outside his flat at three in the morning.
Erling: Why are you awake?
Jude: Why are YOU awake?
Erling: You texted me.
Jude: And you answered.
Erling stared at that message for a while.
He eventually typed: Go to sleep, Jude.
Jude replied with a salute emoji, but his green online dot remained for another hour.
So did Erling’s.
They began eating together most days. Sometimes Erling brought leftovers, sometimes Jude bought them both sandwiches to prove that he was capable of providing food too. Every two hours, Erling appeared at the end of Jude’s aisle and tilted his head toward the stairs.
“Break.”
“I just took one.”
“Two hours ago.”
“That cannot be true.”
“It is.”
“You’re making it up.”
Erling would hold up the timer on his phone.
“You set alarms for me?” Jude asked the first time.
“Yes.”
“That is deeply strange.”
“Stand up.”
Jude always did.
They walked one slow lap around the building, or sat on the stone steps outside if the weather was decent. Erling learned that Jude called his mother every Sunday, hated tomatoes unless they were cooked, and had started his doctorate because one question during his master’s degree had refused to leave him alone. Jude learned that Erling had moved from Norway four years earlier, loved old books because he liked imagining every person who had held them, and sang to himself while working in the archive when he thought nobody could hear.
“You heard that?” Erling asked, horrified.
“The whole basement heard it.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t want you to stop.”
For once, Erling had no answer.
By November, Jude had his own mug in the staff kitchen.
Oscar found it beside Erling’s and turned it around to read the large gold J on the front.
“He isn’t staff.”
“He visits.”
“He lives here.”
“Even more reason for a mug.”
Oscar watched Erling make Jude’s tea, one sugar and far more milk than Erling considered respectable.
“You like him.”
“Of course I like him.”
“No, you like him.”
Erling stirred the tea. “You said the same thing twice.”
“You’re being deliberately stupid.”
“I’m naturally gifted.”
Oscar sighed. “Does Jude know?”
Erling looked through the narrow window in the kitchen door. From there he could see the staircase, though not the hidden corner where Jude worked.
“There is nothing to know.”
It sounded unconvincing even to him.
The truth was that liking Jude had happened quietly. There had been no single moment Erling could point to, nothing grand enough to justify how completely Jude had worked his way into his life. It was only a hundred small things accumulating. The way Jude’s eyes searched for him whenever he came through the doors, the sleepy voice notes he sent while walking home, the way he saved the soft centre of his bread for last. The fact that Erling now woke on his days off wondering whether Jude had eaten, and sometimes went to the library anyway.
He liked Jude. He liked him enough that saying it aloud seemed dangerous.
So he brought him tea and asked no more of it.
Jude’s dissertation entered its final stage in January, and with it came a new level of chaos.
He stopped going home before midnight. When the library closed, he moved to the twenty-four-hour postgraduate building across campus. His texts arrived at impossible hours and made less sense each time.
Jude: Do you think identity is inherently relational or am I having a breakdown
Erling: Both can be true. Eat the pasta I packed.
Jude: You’re very bossy for a man who alphabetizes for a living
Erling: I also preserve rare manuscripts.
Jude: Sorry. You’re very bossy for a guardian of human knowledge.
One Thursday, Jude did not arrive at all.
By ten, Erling had checked the front doors six times. At eleven, he sent a message and received no reply. At noon, he called.
Jude answered after the fifth ring.
“Hello?” His voice was rough with sleep.
“Where are you?”
“Home.”
“Are you ill?”
“No. I mean, maybe. My head hurts.”
“Do you have a fever?”
“I don’t know.”
Erling pinched the bridge of his nose. “Have you eaten?”
Silence.
“Jude.”
“Don’t do the disappointed voice.”
“I don’t have a disappointed voice.”
“You do, and it works far too well.”
Erling glanced toward Oscar, who had been pretending not to listen from the returns desk. “Send me your address.”
“Why?”
“Because I asked.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“Send it.”
An hour later, Erling stood outside Jude’s flat with two grocery bags and a container of soup.
Jude opened the door wrapped in a blanket, his hair flattened on one side. “You actually came.”
“You gave me the address.”
“I thought you were sending food.”
“I brought food.”
“You also brought yourself.”
Erling tried not to read too much into the quiet happiness in his voice. “Move. You’re letting the cold in.”
Jude’s flat was small and warmer than necessary, with books stacked along every wall. Erling made tea, opened a window and ordered Jude back to bed. Jude protested until Erling threatened to read his dissertation aloud in a Norwegian accent.
“You already have a Norwegian accent.”
“I can make it stronger.”
“You wouldn’t.”
Erling picked up the pages from the bedside table. “Cultural memory represents not simply a collective recollection—”
“Stop. Fine. I’m lying down.”
Erling sat beside him while he ate the soup. Halfway through, Jude’s eyes began to close.
“Sleep,” Erling said.
“You’ll leave.”
The words were so soft Erling almost missed them.
“Not yet.”
Jude looked at him, fever-bright and unguarded. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
He slept for three hours with one hand curled loosely around Erling’s wrist.
Erling stayed until evening.
Neither of them mentioned it afterward, but something between them changed.
Jude became more comfortable touching him, a hand on Erling’s shoulder when he laughed, their knees pressed together under the café table. He started leaving his scarf at the front desk because, according to him, Erling was better at remembering it. Erling walked him home when it was late and stood outside his building while they stretched a simple goodbye into another twenty minutes.
Once, after Jude had gone inside, he reappeared at his upstairs window and waved.
Erling waved back.
He walked away feeling ridiculous and happier than he had any right to be.
Then Jude’s final deadline arrived.
The last week was awful. Jude barely spoke, even to Erling. His supervisor returned a chapter with comments that contradicted the comments from the week before, the citation software corrupted part of his bibliography, and on Tuesday night his laptop froze before he could save four hours of revisions.
Erling found him sitting on the floor between two shelves, staring straight ahead.
“Jude?”
“I’m fine.”
“You are on the floor.”
“People sit on floors.”
Erling lowered himself beside him. “What happened?”
Jude told him, voice flat.
“Can it be recovered?”
“Probably. I don’t know. I can’t think.” He pressed both palms to his eyes. “I’m so tired, Erling.”
Erling wanted to tell him to stop. He wanted to close the laptop, take him home and keep every demand away from him until he looked like himself again. Instead, he sat close enough that their shoulders touched.
“Then don’t think for five minutes.”
“I don’t have five minutes.”
“You do.”
“The deadline—”
“Will still exist five minutes from now.”
Jude let his hands fall. There were tears in his eyes, and he looked furious about them.
“Come here,” Erling said.
Jude went without hesitation.
He folded himself against Erling, forehead tucked into his shoulder, and Erling wrapped both arms around him. For a while, neither spoke. The shelves hid them from the rest of the library, and the only sounds were the heating pipes clicking behind the wall and Jude trying to steady his breathing.
“What if it isn’t good enough?” Jude whispered.
“It is.”
“You haven’t read it.”
“I have heard you talk about it for eight months. I may deserve part of the degree.”
That pulled a tired laugh from him.
Erling tightened his arms. “You are going to finish. Then you are going to sleep for a week.”
“Will you still bring me food if I don’t come here anymore?”
Erling went very still.
Jude seemed to realize what he had asked. He lifted his head, but he did not move out of Erling’s arms.
“You could visit,” Erling said.
“At the library?”
“Or somewhere else.”
“Somewhere else,” Jude repeated.
They stared at each other for a second too long.
Erling’s eyes dropped to his mouth. Jude noticed, because Jude noticed everything about him, no matter how many scarves he lost.
For one suspended moment, Erling thought Jude might close the small distance between them.
Then a cart squeaked at the other end of the aisle.
Jude pulled back and wiped his eyes. “I should fix the chapter.”
“Yes.”
Erling stood and held out his hand. Jude took it, allowing Erling to pull him to his feet, and neither let go immediately.
On Friday, at 4:47 in the afternoon, Jude submitted his dissertation.
Erling knew because his phone vibrated beneath the front desk.
Jude: DONE
Then, seconds later:
Jude: I think I’m going to be sick
And then:
Jude: Never mind. I think I’m going to cry.
Erling was already running upstairs.
He found Jude standing beside his desk, staring at the submission confirmation on his screen. His hands were trembling.
“Is it done?” Erling asked, though he knew.
Jude turned.
His face broke into the widest smile Erling had ever seen, bright and disbelieving and a little wet around the eyes.
“It’s done.”
Erling crossed the space between them and lifted him off the ground.
Jude shouted, then clapped a hand over his own mouth as Erling spun him once between the shelves.
“Put me down,” he whispered, laughing.
“You finished.”
“I finished.”
When Erling set him down, Jude kept his arms around his neck. They were so close their noses nearly touched.
“Thank you,” Jude said.
“You did it.”
“I wouldn’t have, not like this, without you.”
Erling’s hands rested at Jude’s waist. “You would have survived on muffins.”
“Probably died around chapter six.”
“Then I saved your life.”
“You did.” Jude’s smile softened. “More than you know.”
Someone cleared their throat nearby.
They separated so quickly that Erling knocked his hip against the desk. A student reached around them for a book and walked away without looking up.
Jude began laughing again.
They celebrated that evening with takeaway from Jude’s favourite restaurant and a bottle of wine Oscar had hidden in the staff refrigerator. The library director had gone home early, leaving Erling to close, so they ate in the break room with Oscar and two other staff members. Jude accepted their congratulations with pink cheeks and an exhausted smile, but every few minutes, his gaze drifted back to Erling.
By nine, he could barely keep his eyes open.
“Go home,” Erling told him.
Jude shook his head. “I’ll wait for you.”
“I have another hour.”
“Then I’ll wait an hour.”
“You just finished a dissertation. You are allowed to rest.”
“Exactly. I’m going to rest at my desk.”
There was no arguing with him. Erling had learned that early.
He found a folded blanket in the staff cupboard and carried it upstairs. Jude had pushed his laptop aside and laid his head on his arms, in the same position Erling had found him months before.
“Ten minutes,” Jude murmured when Erling draped the blanket over him.
“Sleep as long as you need.”
“You’ll wake me?”
“I always do.”
Jude smiled without opening his eyes.
Erling finished the closing routine slowly. He checked every floor, shut down the public computers and counted the register. Oscar left at half past nine with a look that moved meaningfully between Erling and the staircase.
“Don’t,” Erling warned.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face did.”
“My face thinks you should tell him.”
“Good night, Oscar.”
“Coward.”
The front doors clicked shut behind him.
At ten, the library was silent.
Erling walked through the darkened floors, switching off lamps as he went. He had always liked the building best after closing. During the day, it belonged to everyone, full of footsteps, whispers and rustling pages. At night, it felt almost alive in a different way, as if the books were breathing in the quiet.
Jude slept beneath the small pool of light at his desk.
Erling stood at the end of the aisle and looked at him.
There would be no Jude tomorrow morning. No coffee appearing beside the returns desk, no ten-minute conversation before work. Maybe he would come back next week, or the week after, but he would no longer need to be here every day. The thought had been sitting heavily inside Erling for months, and now that the dissertation was finished, he could no longer pretend not to understand it.
He did not love the routine.
He loved Jude.
The routine had only been the shape that love took while neither of them was brave enough to name it.
Erling approached the desk and rested a hand on Jude’s shoulder.
“Jude,” he said softly. “Time to wake up.”
Jude made a quiet sound and turned his face further into his sleeve.
“Come on. I have to lock up.”
His eyes opened slowly, unfocused at first. Then they found Erling, and something in his face eased.
“Hi,” Jude whispered.
“Hi.”
“Is it ten?”
“A little after.”
“I finished my dissertation.”
Erling smiled. “You did.”
“Just checking.”
“Still finished.”
Jude blinked at him, soft with sleep and wine. Erling kept his hand on Jude’s shoulder, mostly because he had forgotten how to move it.
“You stayed,” Jude said.
“I work here.”
“No.” Jude reached up and curled his fingers around Erling’s wrist, the same way he had when he was ill. “All year. You stayed.”
Erling’s chest tightened. “Of course I did.”
“Why?”
There were a hundred possible answers. Because Jude forgot to eat. Because he looked lonely at the back of the library. Because Erling liked the sound of his laugh and the crease that appeared between his eyebrows when he concentrated. Because the best part of every morning was watching him walk through the doors.
He chose the most honest one.
“Because it was you.”
Jude stared up at him.
Then, with the same sleepy certainty he might have used to reach for his tea, he caught the front of Erling’s shirt and pulled him down.
Their mouths met awkwardly at first. Erling had not expected it, and Jude was still half trapped beneath the blanket, but then Jude tilted his head and kissed him again, slow and warm in the silence of the library.
For one stunned second, Erling could not move.
Then he cupped Jude’s face with both hands and kissed him back.
Jude made a small sound against his mouth, and every careful thought Erling had kept behind his teeth for months disappeared. He kissed Jude until Jude’s fingers loosened from his shirt and slid around his neck, until the desk dug into Erling’s thigh and neither of them cared, until they had to pull apart to breathe.
They stayed close, foreheads pressed together.
“I’ve been waiting to do that forever,” Jude whispered.
Erling let out a breathless laugh. “You have?”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“You kissed me while barely awake. I am trying to decide if it was real.”
“Would it help if I did it again?”
“Probably.”
This time Jude stood first. The blanket slipped to the floor, and Erling barely had time to smile before Jude took his face between both hands and kissed him again.
It was less cautious now. Jude smiled into it, and Erling did too, which made the kiss messy and a little ridiculous. It was better than anything he had imagined, because Jude was warm and real beneath his hands, because his laugh broke quietly between them, because when Erling drew back, Jude followed as if he was not ready to let him go.
“You really didn’t know?” Jude asked.
“You are difficult to read.”
“I gave you my number.”
“For cheese evidence.”
“I invited you to sit with me every day.”
“You needed breaks.”
“I held your hand for three hours when I was sick.”
“You had a fever.”
Jude stared at him. “I asked if you would still bring me food when I stopped coming here.”
Erling considered that. “That one was suspicious.”
Jude shoved lightly at his chest, laughing. Erling caught his hand and brought it to his mouth, pressing a kiss to his knuckles.
The laughter faded from Jude’s face, replaced by something tender enough to make Erling’s heart hurt.
“Will you?” Jude asked.
“Will I what?”
“Still bring me food.”
“You could come to my flat and eat it there.”
“Is that your way of asking me out?”
“No.”
Jude’s eyebrows lifted.
Erling held his gaze. “This is. Go on a date with me tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“You said you have been waiting forever. I don’t want to waste more time.”
Jude smiled, the warm crooked one that belonged only to Erling. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yes, Erling. I’ll go on a date with you.”
“Good.”
“Are you cooking?”
“Obviously.”
“Then I was always going to say yes.”
Erling kissed him once more, because he finally could.
They left the library at half past ten. Jude wore his blue scarf with the tragic tassels, and Erling carried his backpack because Jude complained that he had carried it long enough. Outside, the campus was nearly empty. Rain had fallen while they were upstairs, leaving the pavement shining beneath the streetlights.
At Jude’s building, neither seemed willing to say good night.
“You know,” Jude said, rocking back on his heels, “I don’t have to come to the library anymore.”
“I know.”
“I probably still will.”
“You don’t have work.”
“There are books there.”
“You have approximately a thousand books in your flat.”
“The library has better tea.”
“The library’s tea is terrible.”
Jude stepped closer and slipped his cold fingers into Erling’s hand. “The librarian is all right.”
“Only all right?”
“He can be bossy.”
“The student is helpless.”
“Doctor, actually.”
“Not until you pass your viva.”
“Take it back.”
“No.”
Jude kissed him beneath the awning, quick and sweet, then took his backpack and walked inside. Halfway through the lobby, he turned and pointed at Erling through the glass.
“Tomorrow,” he called.
Erling nodded. “Tomorrow.”
The following morning, Jude came into the library at nine fifteen.
Erling had not saved his desk.
Instead, there was a takeaway cup waiting beside the returns computer, Jude’s name written across it in black ink. He leaned over the desk and pushed it toward Erling.
“One sugar,” Jude said. “Barely any milk, because apparently you’re too good for joy.”
Erling took a sip. It was exactly right.
“Where are your things?”
Jude held up a paperback. “No laptop. No notes. I’m here recreationally.”
“I have never seen you read for fun.”
“You’ve never seen me when I wasn’t writing a dissertation.”
That was true, Erling realized. There were still entire versions of Jude he had not met yet. Jude rested. Jude on weekends. Jude at dinner, Jude on dates, Jude after midnight when he was awake for reasons that had nothing to do with footnotes.
Erling wanted to know all of them.
“I finish at five,” he said.
“I know.”
“You don’t need to wait here all day.”
Jude opened his book and walked toward a chair near the front desk instead of his old place upstairs. “I know that too.”
“There are more comfortable seats.”
“This one is fine.”
Erling watched him settle into it, close enough that they could look at each other whenever either glanced up.
Oscar arrived a few minutes later. He took in Jude, the coffee and Erling’s smile.
“Finally,” he said.
Jude looked over the top of his book. “Was it that obvious?”
“Painfully.”
Erling threw a stack of return slips at him.
By noon, Jude had abandoned his book to help Erling repair a torn dust jacket. At one, they shared lunch behind the desk. At three, Erling took his break and they walked around the building, Jude’s hand brushing his until Erling caught it properly.
The routine had changed, but it had not ended.
Jude still forgot his scarf that evening. Erling still remembered it for him. They still talked too long outside the locked library doors, only now Jude stood tucked against Erling’s side, and when there was finally nothing left to say, he kissed him instead.
Erling couldn’t remember exactly when looking after Jude had turned into loving him. Maybe there hadn’t been one moment. Maybe it had happened slowly, somewhere between the forgotten lunches, the late nights and Jude always looking for him when he entered the library.
It had been a hundred ordinary days, slowly becoming something neither of them wanted to live without.
And the next morning, just after nine, the doors opened and Jude came back again.