Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Did you even bring any clothes with you, or were you planning on just borrowing all of mine?”

Osha readjusted the deceptively heavy duffel bag on her shoulder, then rolled her eyes.

“Please, like I’d be caught dead in your stuff,” she scoffed playfully. “Everyone gets us confused as it is.”

The matching hairstyles they were both currently sporting probably didn’t help that situation any, but their mothers had practically begged them to do it for their eighteenth birthday two weeks prior, and took a million pictures to commemorate the event. Of course, Mae already had an appointment that weekend to get her locs taken out, preferring to wear her hair naturally. Osha wasn’t entirely sure what she wanted yet, and the locs were pretty low maintenance. It’d be nice to have one less thing to worry about as she started at her new school.

Mae led her across the quad of the unfamiliar campus, and she felt a pang of nostalgia for the familiar sights of Coruscant University. But it had been the right choice to transfer out after a failure of a first year there, which was mainly her own fault for letting Professor Sol railroad her into entirely the wrong major. If her sister hadn’t intervened and helped her remember that mechanical engineering had been her passion since she was in grade school, she’d probably still be under his influence and on the road to an unfulfilling life as a lawyer. According to him, she would have been excellent, but it had never truly felt like she a dream she was trying to achieve for herself. If anything, she’d only wanted to do it to make him proud of her. But she was done with all that – she’d cut off contact with him and nearly all of her course credits had transferred to Olega U, so she and Mae might still graduate together.

“…and that’s the sports complex. There’s a million courts, everything you can think of, tennis, volleyball – and basketball of course.”

Osha followed her gaze towards the gated in court closest to the walkway, surprised to see it so packed on the night before the semester began. She just caught the tail end of a basket being made, and an eruption of cheers from the players, all crowding around a tall figure facing away from them.

“Oh, those are my friends, actually!” Mae said, and walked off the path onto the grass, placing her hands on the chain link fence, yelling some names Osha recognized. “Hey, guys! Come meet my sister!”

Two faces she’d seen in photos on her sister’s social media popped up from the crowd immediately began jogging over. The rest were unfamiliar, and they headed over at a more leisurely pace. As Osha glanced over the small group, she met the eyes of the tall guy, the one who’d made the basket, and she blinked in shock. She looked away quickly, pretending she hadn’t even noticed him, and forced herself to focus on the two people coming up to the fence.

“Hey guys, this my little sister –,”

“Little?” she huffed out. “I’m only five minutes younger!”

“Should have been faster then,” Mae teased, and before Osha could even a response to that, she turned back to her friends. “Anyway, this is Yord and Jecki. Oshie’s just moving in tonight, we managed to get roomed together.”

“Nice to meet you guys,” she said, smiling genuinely now, but it faded the moment the rest of the group came into view.

And the muscular, frat-looking bro whose facial structure seemed to have been chiseled by the gods seemed to be headed on a direct path towards her.

“Mae A!” One of the other players shouted to her sister. “You have a twin?”

“Looks like it, huh?”

Mae was greeting the others who’d come up to join them, and when she heard that strange nickname a few more times, curiosity got the best of her.

“What’s with the Mae A thing?” Osha asked, looking at Jecki.

“We had three Maes in a class last year – Mae E, Mae G, and…,”

“Mae Aniseya, got it.”

“So, what’s your name?”

Osha suddenly felt like she was in the spotlight as an unfamiliar voice chimed in, and she turned to find that frat bro had spoken directly to her. He had in fact parked himself directly in front of her, then latched a hand onto the fence, raised above his head and bringing a ridiculously corded bicep directly into her view, as if on display. Not that his arms had been hidden at all by the barely-there tank top that made her wonder why he’d even bothered wearing it. Judging from his very muscular frame, he probably spent most of his time working out – maybe he’d been scouted by the school for a sport?

His head lowered some, as if he was purposefully bringing them eye to eye, and she couldn’t help but examine him as closely as he was doing to her. He was wearing a backwards cap, but a few longer strands of straight jet-black hair still peeked out on either side of his face, and his carefully groomed facial hair perfectly complimented the shape of his face. There was no doubt he was very aware of how good-looking he was, but she wasn’t about to let him know she shared that opinion while everyone was watching their interaction

“Obviously, she’s Mae B,” one of the other players joked, and even Osha couldn’t help but laugh at that.

She’d long ago moved past being irritated whenever people made yet another twin joke, or even completely mixed the two of them up. It’d been a much bigger issue when they were younger and she’d desperately needed to be seen as more than just a copy of her sister. They’d gotten into some awful fights back then. Mae had wanted to be her shadow, and Osha had just wanted her own space and identity. It had had taken years of therapy and even some occasional distance for them to move past the codependency and resentment that had been driving a wedge between them. Nowadays, Mae wasn’t just her sister – she was her best friend.   

“No, really –,” frat bro started to say through an infuriatingly sexy chuckle.

But out of nowhere, the lights of the court flickered, and a chorus of groans erupted from their crowd.

“Looks like you guys are getting kicked out early tonight. Happy semester eve!” Mae laughed, then gestured to her. “She needs to get settled in anyway. See you tomorrow.”

They were wished goodnight by the group, and they really seemed to delight in the Mae A and B joke, which made her smile. At least she would know a few people on campus going forward.

Osha forced herself not to look back at frat bro, even though she could feel his eyes still on her as she followed Mae back to the walkway. They walked on to the end of the row of courts, and only then did she hazard a glance over her shoulder, but turned around quickly when she saw him still standing at the fence, staring after her.

“Who was that guy who asked me my name? Mr. Muscles?” was all Osha could think of to call him. She hadn’t actually gotten his name either.

“Oh, that’s Qimir. He was actually my math tutor last year.”

Osha blanched at that new information, nearly stopping in her tracks in shock.

“That guy was your tutor?”

“Yeah, I know right? Was seriously hard to concentrate, I don’t think I looked directly at him the whole semester. He’s a really good teacher actually. I think that’s what he’s going into eventually.”

Well…color her surprised.

“Osha,” Mae said with a very familiar and very annoying tone. “Are you blushing?”

“Don’t even start with me, I’m way too tired to argue with you,” she insisted with a roll of her eyes. “I told you I’m not interested in dating this year. I have enough on my mind.”

And for once in her life, Mae didn’t pursue the subject to death, and just let it go.

“Yeah, you do. But I’m glad you’re here, ok? I really think you’re going to like it here. Oh, here we go, this is us!”

*****

The first few weeks on the new campus seemed to pass like a blur, but she eventually started to gain some semblance of a routine, and surprisingly, had even started to befriend a few of the people Mae had introduced her to. It was a stark change compared to how things had been at Coruscant U. Professor Sol had pushed her so hard to fill her schedule with classes she wasn’t anywhere near ready for, and she’d always been so busy studying, she hadn’t even had time to really meet anyone outside of classes. His obvious favoritism of her hadn’t helped her reputation any, and she’d eventually given up trying to join any study groups after being turned away so many times by jealous classmates.

Now, she had more than her fair share of invites to study groups and lab partners, and when she started volunteering at the library’s tutoring lab, Osha truly felt like she had made a place for herself at Olega U. The only downside was the long trek from the library to her dorm in the evenings, and when night came earlier and earlier, she started charting her path more purposefully, avoiding any shortcuts, and keeping to the more populated, well-lit areas. Which of course brought her right past the basketball courts every night.

“Mae B!”

The nickname had ended up sticking, but she was hoping that the joke would get old and people would actually start using her real name. Still, she kept responding to it, sort of liking that she had an inside joke with people other than Mae for once.

When she turned to see who had called her, she was shocked to see frat bro himself approaching the fence. Usually when she passed the courts, someone else would greet her and the rest would wave wordlessly, given that they weren’t deep in a game. Qimir had never done more than wave and throw a few extra glances her way, let alone try to speak to her one on one.

“Hi,” she said first as he reached the fence, taking a few tentative steps towards him.

“Hi. How was your day?”

For a moment, she had no idea how to answer that question, simple as it was. Why on earth was he of all people asking after her day?

“Oh, um…fine. Pretty busy,” she stammered back nervously. “Yours?”

“Same,” he replied quickly, then stepped right up to the fence, lacing his fingers through the chain link. “How’s tutoring going?”

“Also fine,” she murmured, now alarmed.

How did he know she was tutoring? Sure, someone could have mentioned it, but why would her extracurriculars come up in conversation to begin with? Or…had he asked about her?

“Good. Just make sure you don’t push yourself too hard, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she murmured, wracking her brain for excuses to politely leave and freak out in private.

“You know, you never did tell me your name.”

Osha’s throat went bone dry and a shiver ran down her spine when his voice dropped low, almost crooning out his words. The worst part was that he seemed to notice the effect it had on her, and he leaned closer to the fence, staring intently at her with hooded eyes. His hair always seemed to have a mind of its own, forever framing his beautifully chiseled face just right without him even having to do anything. She tried hard not to follow the movement when he bit over his bottom lip, but it was impossible to resist, and she saw him grin wider. Alarms went off in her head, and she sucked in a deep breath as she pulled herself back from the brink of taking a step towards him, as if he’d subconsciously lured her to come closer.

“You already know it,” she said with as much of a sarcastic tone as she could manage, though she could hear the breathlessness of her own voice. “It’s Mae B. Our moms didn’t have a lot of imagination.”

Qimir smiled, though it didn’t seem to quite meet his eyes, then leaned back and stared at her silently for a moment before nodding absently.

“Ok. Have a good night, Mae B.”

He turned and walked back to the court without another word, and without waiting for her to respond in kind. She stood there stunned, watching him retreat, wondering what in the hell had just happened. Then she turned on her heel and rushed the rest of the way back to her dorm building, glad that Mae wasn’t inside, and sat down hard on her bed. She stared at the floor, her mind racing as she tried to make sense of the interaction she’d just had, confused not only as to why he had spoken to her in the first place, but also by the way he’d just…shifted into something so – so –

“Ugh, you would not even believe what happened in labs today!”

Mae burst in through the door, starting her tirade before she’d even taken a full step inside, snapping Osha from her frantic thoughts, and never before had she been so happy to be on the receiving end of gossip about people she didn’t even know.

The more distracted she was from her own thoughts, the better.

*****

“Mae B!”

A week had passed since their weird interaction, and while he’d still waved at her every night he was out on the court, he hadn’t approached again.

Until now, of course.

“Hi,” he said, not slowing as he ran over to the fence, much to the surprise of the other players.

Had he just walked away in the middle of their game?

“Uh, hi,” she replied, absolutely bewildered, taking a tentative step off the path.

“Yo, get your ass back here!”

She followed the words back to Yord where he stood beneath the hoop, looking incredulous at Qimir’s abrupt departure. He in turn did not even acknowledge he’d heard.

“They’re calling for you."

“Yeah, but I’m talking to you,” he said with a shrug, as if it was completely normal. “How was your day?”

“It was good,” she responded, wondering if he had seriously just stopped his game to ask her such a simple question. “How was yours?”

“Fine. Better now. I had a question for you.”

“Ok?”

“Are you ever going to tell me your actual name?”

“Mae B,” she blurted out, then smiled to herself as the pun hit her mid-sentence. “Maybe not.”

To her surprise, Qimir grinned wide, looking annoyingly cute as he just gazed at her through the chain link fence.

“I like seeing you smile,” he said softly, resting his forehead against the fence.

She had no response to his words yet again, and she just pressed her lips together and prayed that the harsh lights of the court would wash out the fierce blush spreading across her face. He seemed about to say something else when Yord grumbled behind them, loudly dribbling the ball as if to demonstrate his frustration, and Qimir appeared to bite back a laugh.

“I better get back. Goodnight, Mae B.”

“Oh, um…goodnight.”

With one last slow glance over her face, Qimir turned and jogged back towards the court. Still, she remained there for a moment, watching him and Yord exchange some words too low for her to hear, ignoring the odd glances the other players were obviously casting her way. With a final look to Qimir’s back, she turned and went home, utterly baffled.  

Things went back to normal after that last odd interaction with Qimir, and she was somewhat relieved that he’d regressed to just waving at her across the distance during her nightly trek home, always with a beaming smile. Over the next two weeks, there were a few incidents when he seemed like he might approach again, but he kept his distance.

She was starting to dread that last stretch of her journey home, but it was the safest and most direct path, and she wasn’t about to start making changes just because someone was paying too much attention to her. In the grand scheme of things, it really wasn’t that big of a deal, was it? She never saw him around campus during the day, and evenings were the only time their paths ever crossed. Maybe if he was randomly showing up in the places she frequented or even came out to the walkway to join her, she’d have reason to be concerned. But he didn’t; he just stayed on the other side of the fence, a buffer she was thankful for. She didn’t even see him every single night since he did a late tutoring session on Fridays, anyway.

Not that she’d asked the other usual players on the court about his whereabouts. It had simply come up in conversation…one that she initiated...

Regardless of how she’d come about the information, it was exactly the reason she was surprised to be walking home on a Friday only to find him standing by the fence already, clearly waiting for her.

The way his smile widened when he caught sight of her made her heart race, and she felt a strange fluttering in her chest, just above her belly.

Butterflies? Was this weird guy seriously giving her butterflies?

“Hey. How was your day?”

“It was good,” she replied, and gathered her courage enough to approach the fence. “I thought you tutored on Fridays?”

A strange look passed over his face then, and she felt a little pang in her chest at the sight.

“Yeah, but, uh…it wasn’t working out.”

“Oh,” she said, and stepped closer, frowning at the genuinely troubled look on his face. She’d never seen him this way before. “I’m sorry. Did…were they just not making any progress, or –,”

“She wasn’t really coming for tutoring,” he said quickly, not meeting her eyes directly, but still glancing in the direction of her face. “Had to shut it down.”

Despite his vague response, Osha’s brain made perfect sense of what he was actually saying – his tutee was only coming to see him, not to actually learn anything. He was clearly upset by it, and she searched for the right words to comfort him. Even if he gave her weird vibes sometimes, he didn’t deserve to be tricked and have his time wasted like that.

“I’m really sorry. Are you ok?”

He did look up at her now, seeming surprised at her question.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Not the first…,” he trailed off, then just shook his head, and very obviously forced himself to grin at her. “Actually, I feel awful. And there’s only one thing that would make me feel better – can you guess what that is?”

He was absolutely not slick, and she had to bite back the smile he was drawing out her against her will.

“I definitely have an idea –,”

“Hey Qimir,” came Mae’s voice from a few feet behind them, and she raised a curious brow at Osha when their eyes met. “What’s up?”

“Just, uh…just saying ‘hi’,” he stammered, surprisingly thrown off guard by the appearance of her sister, and he seemed to shrink into himself as he turned his attention to Mae instead. “How are you?”

“Pretty good, thanks. Hey guys” Mae added with a wave at the newcomers now sidling up beside Qimir.

The small group on the court side of the fence started chatting with Mae, leaving Osha with a sour taste in her mouth. It was only when a strangely shy glance from Mr. Muscles himself made her realize something altogether staggering.

She resented the crowd around them because she wanted to talk to Qimir alone.

That thought alone was enough to get her moving.

“I gotta get going, goodnight,” she announced, and without even bothering to check if anyone had heard her, she turned on her heel and hurried home.

She had only been in the room alone for ten minutes when Mae joined her, and she acted like she hadn’t noticed with her earbuds in, despite they fact they weren’t even playing anything. It was only when Mae placed something at the corner of her desk that Osha acknowledged her presence. She pulled out her earbuds and reached for the object

“What’s this?”

She picked up the little slip of paper, which turned out to be a crushed origami crane made of lined notebook paper. The edges were crisp and it was extremely well made despite the damage.

“I dunno, your boyfriend said you dropped it yesterday. He was going to give it back to you, but you ran off.”

There as a strange tone to Mae’s voice, and as she turned in her chair, she saw a searching look focused solely on her.

“My boyfriend?”

“Don’t play dumb,” Mae teased, raising an eyebrow as if waiting for an explanation of her own. But when Osha continued to stare blankly at her, she frowned. “Qimir? You know, Mr. Mu –,”

“Ok, ok, I get it. But he’s not my boyfriend, so cut it out with all that.”

“Does he know that, Oshie?”

She frowned at her sister’s still mischievous insinuation, then sighed, shaking her head.

“Trust me, he’s not. He doesn’t even know my actual name.”

At that, she placed the crane back down where Mae had left it, and pretending to go back to studying. It was tense and quiet for a moment, but finally, her sister moved to her side of the room and went about her own business. It was only after she’d been tossing and turning for over an hour later that night that she finally snuck out of bed and retrieved the crane, then huddled under her blanket with her phone’s flashlight on to inspect it closer.

It was a simple little thing, devoid of any special meaning to her, but she still carefully tried to smooth out the parts that had been crushed. When it was done, she just cradled it in her palm and looked at it, as if waiting for some sort of answer to emerge from its folded wings. Eventually, she felt silly for even keeping it, and while a big part of her wanted to just toss it in the bin, she just placed it in an empty corner of her nightstand drawer, hoping that if it was out of sight, it would be out of mind.

If only things were that easy when it came to Qimir, too.

*****

“Hey! Mae B!”

The sound of Qimir’s voice made her stop in her tracks just as she’d been about to pass the basketball court without so much as a glance from anyone. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Qimir at the very edge of the fence, panting hard but still smiling. Thankfully, he hadn’t walked away from the game, but she seemed to have passed just as it had ended.

She debated on just waving and continuing home, but her feet were already taking her back to where he stood waiting.

“Sorry, I know you’re going home but, uh…I just wanted to check if you got the thing you dropped? From your sister?”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t mine.”

He was quiet for a moment, his dark eyes searching her face for something she couldn’t imagine.

“Are you sure?”

She shook her head, and he pressed his full lips together as if he were thinking, then he just nodded.

“Ok. So…what did you do with it?”

“It’s in a drawer, I…well, it’s cute, I didn’t want to throw it away.”

He seemed relieved for an indecipherable reason, and her stomach felt fluttery again.

“Hang on to it. Those are good luck.”

She conjured up a little smile, then cleared her throat.

“You doing ok? About the tutoring thing?”

His own smile faded and he looked troubled again, making her regret bringing it up.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked,” she tried backpedaling, but he shook his head.

“No, I um…thank you for asking. I’m fine, though. I’m taking a break from the program until next semester.”

“Oh, that’s – yeah, you really should. Focus on yourself.”

Osha was dearly trying not to notice the soft look in his eyes as she spoke, but when she tried flashing him a reassuring smile, all he did was sigh and gaze even more strangely at her.

“Have I mentioned I like when you smile?”

“Occasionally,” she murmured, and tried to shake herself out of the trance his look was putting on her. “I…I have to get going, but, um, I’m glad you’re alright.”

“I guess I won’t be finding out your name tonight, then?”

And that was enough to fully wake her up, and she actually laughed, which made his grin spread even wider.

“Goodnight, Qimir,” she said, and before he could say anything more to her, she turned around and strode quickly back to the walkway, grinning like a fool at how shocked he’d looked to hear his own name from her mouth.

When she got back to her room, she managed for all of thirty seconds before pulling the crane out of her drawer and cradling it in her hand as she replayed that image in her head over and over again.

****

She really couldn’t have imagined that it would happen to her.

Of course she was well aware of the dangers that lurked even on the safest campus, which was why she text Mae every time she was on her way home, and vice versa – not to mention she stuck to the most crowded routes with the best lighting at night. She’d taken every precaution, but still somehow, she’d ended up realizing her blind spot when it was too late.

Her tutee, a freshman looking for help in his remedial algebra class, had seemed relatively harmless for the entire semester that she’d been working with him. She was still wracking her brain for signs that she’d missed, but he’d been well-behaved and hadn’t so much looked at her too long in all their time together.

So why the hell had he thought it was suddenly the right time to confess feelings for Osha and attempt to pull her into a kiss?

She was thankful that her mothers had insisted on she and Mae going through self-defense classes when they were still children. Otherwise, she would not have known how to turn the grip on her wrist into a submission hold, and by the time a librarian and other students had coming running in at the ragged screams from her former tutee, she was already a safe distance away from the writhing boy on the floor. After a brief interview by campus enforcement, she’d been directed to report the attempted assault to administration the next day, then offered an escort home, which she declined. Maybe it would have been safer, but all Osha wanted after the ordeal was some space to process what had happened to her.

But by the time she had reached the courts, she was practically stomping in fury at the thought of what that boy had thought he could just do to her because he wanted to. She was so rage-blinded, she didn’t hear the first call of her nickname from Yord. However, she did hear the second call which came from Qimir, and she whirled in the direction of that voice and let loose a bit of rage.

“That’s not my damn name!”

She barely registered the shocked look on his beautiful face when she screamed at him, and her anger drove her onwards towards her dorm building. From behind her, she could hear some weird sounds – metallic clanging and twanging, as well as some yells and surprised sounds of something she could not care less about.

But then suddenly, the guy she’d only ever seen on the other side of the fence was several steps ahead of her, his face full of her concern and his hands up in placation.

“Hey, please just –what’s wrong, what happened?”

She huffed and walked past him, but he fell into step with her, asking again.

“Please, tell me what happened?”

Finally, she stopped and glared ahead at nothing, still too angry to even look at him lest she release her rage on the last person who deserved it.

“I had my turn,” she spat, then took a deep breath to steady herself. “My fucking student tried to kiss me!

Before she could say anything else, Qimir was back in her line of sight, this time with his face eerily blank and his voice barely above a harsh whisper.

“Who?”

It was enough to snap her out of her angry trance, and she looked at the man in front of her, so nearly a stranger and yet so clearly murderous on her behalf. She’d expected he would be sympathetic given his own recent incident, but this…this was very different.

“It’s handled,” she said softly, watching his face for any change and finding none. “I’m ok. He didn’t do anything, I’m not completely helpless.”

“I know you’re not,” he said with just the slightest bit of emotion in his voice now. “But still…,”

He trailed off, and now feeling her anger subside with the distraction of Qimir’s presence, she sighed heavily.

“Let me walk you home.”

She wasn’t entirely sure it was a request or a command, but she nodded anyway. He began walking with her, and for a moment, it was more awkward than anything given her confused emotions. But when they’d started to near the end of the row of courts, she found herself become more aware of exactly who was beside her, and she couldn’t help but glance at him from the corner of her eye.

She’d never seen him without a fence in the way. God, he was pretty.

That was when a sudden thought hit her and she paused, bringing him to a stop beside her. Osha glanced back towards the courts, then at the man standing at her side, eyes going wide. The only entrances to the courts were at either end of the rows, and one crossway in the middle – which was nowhere near where his group had been.

“How did you – did you climb that fence?”

He gave her a slightly smug look, then casually shrugged.

“I was in a hurry.”

“Oh,” she whispered, glancing at the ten-foot fence that he’d scaled in seconds to get to her. “That’s…crazy.”

Again, he only grinned, and she felt that fluttering around her chest cavity again. Osha managed to start walking, but her mind was whirling with so many thoughts, she had no idea what to say next.

“You sure you’re alright?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah,” she reassured him, trying to smile reassuringly.

He did not look reassured.

“You don’t have to be ok, you know. You can be honest with me.”

“Because you’d understand?”

“Because I want your honesty,” he said, as if that wasn’t an insane thing for a near stranger to say to another.

She kept walking, and he just followed, seeming not to need a response, and she wondered what was going through his mind. Her dorm building was in sight, and she had no idea what would happen when they reached the doorway. Not that anything should happen – he’d only asked to walk her back, not…not anything else.

“You’re so confusing,” she finally muttered under her breath.

“I am?”

“Yes,” she said, louder now. She stopped in the middle of the empty walkway and turned to him, growing even more irritated at how his jet-black hair shone like silk under the full moon. “I don’t get you!”

“You don’t?”

“Stop asking questions to my questions! Why are you here?”

“Because I wanted to walk you home. I wanted to make sure you were safe.”

“But why do you even care?”

By the way his brow furrowed as he stared down at her, Qimir seemed to be just as confused as she was.

“I thought that would be obvious.”

His answer was only just above a whisper, and it sent a chill through her body, head to toe. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the intense gaze that pinned her in place, again searching her face for something.

“Why won’t you tell me your name?”

“Because I think you already know it,” she answered quietly, feeling like she was wringing her own heart out. “Because I think this is just a game to you.”

A sincere hurt passed over his features, and she felt regret immediately, even as her brain fought against the truth of the situation now unfolding right before her eyes.

“I do,” he admitted, taking a step closer to her, and she felt magnetized, her body bending forwards to his. “But I wanted you to tell me.”

Well, if that wasn’t enough to make her knees feel weak…

Qimir gazed down at her, his lips tight with obvious nervousness, as if he was waiting to be chewed out or dismissed. But Osha was too busy with a revelation to do any such thing.

It wasn’t a game. He wasn’t toying with her or using his insanely good looks to bolster his ego or whatever narcissists did – it had all been real, right from the very start.

“I look exactly like her,” she whispered, her eyes misting over as she remembered how he’d been Mae’s tutor the year before. Their faces were mirror images of one another – whatever he saw when he looked at Osha, he saw in Mae, too.

“I only see Osha,” he said in a voice that dripped with such fondness, she was shocked out of her own depressive spiral.

He reached out a tentative hand between them, hovering just next to her cheek, a silent question. For a moment, she couldn’t fully wrap her mind around what he’d said, the sound of it too good to be true. And then before she could think further, Osha leaned forward, bringing her cheek right into the welcoming embrace of his palm.

The shaky breath that escaped his perfect lips shook her to her core, and she couldn’t fully catch her own breath, too overwhelmed by the moment. In halting movements, she started to lean her head back, an offering in appreciation of the efforts he’d put into disarming her. Osha stood there waiting for him to kiss her, to make that final move that would remove all lingering doubt that she’d misunderstood his intentions. He leaned in towards her lips, and she could feel the heat of their breath mingling, her body melting from the inside out from the burning desire for that consummation.

And then he stopped, and instead of kissing her lips, he pressed his perfectly sculpted cheek to hers and softly spoke into her ear.

“Not tonight.”

She understood immediately why he’d refrained – she’d nearly been assaulted an hour prior, and thought she hated to admit it, she wasn’t ok yet. She needed time to move past what had happened, not to mention the investigation that would follow the complaint she intended to file the next morning. It was not the moment for what they both so clearly wanted, and if at all possible, she felt her appreciation of the man in front of her grow even more.

He really was a good one, and for some insane reason, he very much seemed to think the same of her.

Maybe once they had both recovered from their respective traumas, they could fulfill the promise of this moment, but as Qimir had said, it would not be tonight.

He pulled back to look in her eyes, and the longing that shone in those dark depths shocked and delighted her. He really did see her, and in turn, she was starting to believe she could see him as well.

“Can I come with you? The complaint, I mean. I…I can help you through it.”

“I don’t know your schedule, I don’t know if you’ll have time –,”

“I’ll make time,” he interrupted, his voice firm now. “I want to be there with you.”

Well, how could she turn that down?

“Ok,” Osha whispered, then frowned. “I don’t know what time I’ll go, and I don’t have your number.”

“Yes, you do. You’ve had it.”

Osha furrowed her brow then, and when she opened her mouth to ask what he meant by that, the door behind her cracked open, and to her surprise, Mae was peeking out looking worried.

“Hey, you were running…late,” she said with an odd tone, then glancing up to see Qimir standing there. “Oh. Oh! Ok.”

And while a small part of her jumped to make an excuse that he’d only been walking her home, the rest of her just went with the flow and smiled, glancing back at the man who’d seen her safely to the dorms.

Seeing that she was in good hands, Qimir shot her one last heated glance, and she felt her breath hitch in surprise, a fierce blush spreading across her face.

“See you tomorrow, Osha.”

Then, he began to walk away, seemingly unbothered by the obvious fact that they were both watching him.

“What. The. Fuck?”

Mae’s voice came low but deliberate as she glanced between her sister and her former tutor, but it was less accusatory and more delighted in the possibility of some juicy gossip.

Osha was lucky to get her sister upstairs before she could unload the entire story, and by the time she was done with the bad part, Mae was just a fountain of curses and threats, as well as promises that the freshman who’d dared to lay hands on her was about to find out what was worse than castration. But when the conversation had turned to Qimir’s part in the evening, her sister had softened and stayed quiet until the entire story was out in the open.

“God, finally,” she’d said when Osha had finished, probably the most surprising part of her entire night.

“What? What do you mean ‘finally’?”

“I mean that boy has been pining after you like crazy since the day you got here! Come on, you can’t really think no one else would have noticed, do you? And don’t try to say you don’t have the hots for him, too! I just don’t know what the hell took you two so long.”

Osha knew the answer to that immediately: she hadn’t been able to accept he’d liked her simply for being herself, and because of that, she’d wasted his time and created her own turmoil.

Then again, that was ok, wasn’t it? This period of her life was all about making mistakes and learning from them. She’d survived the oppression that was her life under Professor Sol, and now, she’d had her first brush against the impossible concept of something with Qimir. Whether anything would come of it – whether they’d survive the trials that came with college life, that remained to be seen. But it was a risk she was willing to take, and it was beyond obvious that he was, too.

‘You already have it’

Again, his words echoed in her mind, and she thought hard about what he could mean, tuning out Mae as she once again ran down exactly what she wanted to do to her assailant, looking around absently until her eyes landed on the origami crane she’d left atop her nightstand. She laughed under her breath.

God, it really was so obvious, wasn’t it?

Osha picked up the crane, and with the utmost care not to ruin those perfect creases, she unfolded that piece of paper until the secret note within its folds was revealed. Smiling, she read the message again and again, until she’d learnt it by heart.

Hey, I just met you,

And this is crazy,

But here’s my number,

So call me, Mae B: 555-6020